What Women Want
Fanny Blake
A heartwarming and witty novel about female friendships and how they will outlast any man from the author of The Secrets Women KeepBea, Kate and Ellen have always known that they can depend on each other, no matter what. But as each reaches a new phase in their life, their bond is put to the test.Recently-divorced Bea's job is in jeopardy as she grapples with a new boss and her power-hungry younger colleagues. At home she has to deal with a stroppy teenage son and the gaping hole left by her ex-husband. Feisty, impulsive and never one to give up, she throws herself back onto the dating scene. Her friends will hold her steady.Stressed-out Kate contends with an empty nest now that her children have left home, a frantic pace at work as a GP and the growing realisation that her marriage has definitely lost its shine. Reliable, hard-working, how can she find the energy to keep going? At least her friends will lift her spirits.Then Ellen, who has devoted herself to her two children and her small art gallery for the last ten years since her beloved husband died, falls head over heels in love with Oliver.When Oliver forces Ellen to re-evaluate everything about herself and her future, so Bea and Kate are driven further away from their friend and from each other as they react differently to this unfamiliar stranger in their midst.A novel about love and life and the issues that face women today as they try to decide what they want – and come to realise what they really need…
FANNY BLAKE
What Women Want
Dedication
To Robin, Matt, Nick and Spike
Contents
Cover (#u1e94986d-d90a-5361-b40b-524930a17bea)
Title Page (#u9d197849-6537-53f5-8dd3-f7a47fafde0b)
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
An Excerpt from Women of a Dangerous Age
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Praise for What Women Want
Copyright
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1
‘I’ll get out here, thanks.’
Bea cursed as she stepped out of the taxi into the sweltering chaos of Shaftesbury Avenue. July was always hell in central London. She could feel her trousers sticking to the back of her legs. She was already five minutes late and the traffic had slowed to a virtual standstill. If only her meeting had finished on time, she would have reached the restaurant first, just as she’d planned. She wanted to be sitting calmly, waiting, so that she could size up her lunch date as he crossed the restaurant to join her. But Jade, one of the editorial directors, had made such a fuss about which photograph was used on the jacket of an autobiography by another twenty-something D-list loser of whom Bea had never heard that the meeting had overrun by nearly half an hour.
The summer heat was draped over the London streets like a thick blanket. The slight but insistent throb of a headache was an unpleasant reminder that she had drunk too much the night before. Had she? She tested herself by running through the exact route the taxi had taken home from the party. Mmm. Slightly hazy. As she picked her way through the pedestrians, walking as fast as she could without actually running, she could feel a familiar prickling warmth rising from somewhere in her chest and spreading up into her face, around the back of her neck and down into her arms. Not now, please. She had at least to arrive looking like a woman in control. Like a woman who was desirable. Not like a menopausal wreck.
She slowed down, trying to restore her cool. He – she’d been told his name was Mark Carpenter – must have paid £125 for this date too. That was the deal when you signed up to Let’s Have Lunch, a discreet dating agency for the over-forties. Having been interviewed by a woman in her twenties who, given her immaculate streaked blonde hair, flawless skin and dazzling if vacuous smile, couldn’t have any idea what it was like for someone her mother’s age to be looking for love – or even just sex, Bea wasn’t choosy – you parted with £750 in return for a pitying glance of appraisal and the guarantee of being ‘matched’ with six possible partners. Six! Any of us should be so lucky, thought Bea. Yes, he’d wait. Dwelling on the fact that she was about to rendezvous with a man about whom she knew nothing apart from his name, she almost tripped over a knot of American tourists turning their A—Zs upside down as they tried to match the streets of Soho with the map.
Cantina Italia was just up Frith Street, past all the cafés overflowing into the street with tables occupied by countless young men in white sleeveless T-shirts and girls wearing spaghetti-strap tops. If only she still had the body to carry off so few clothes with such aplomb. That was the trouble with being a few (OK, more than a few) pounds overweight. She still cared about what she looked like so wore clothes to cover up and ended up too hot, unwilling to rid herself of the layers that should be so easy to strip off and reveal all. Oh, where was the ‘longer, leaner, looser’ her that she’d been promised would begin to emerge after only ten Pilates sessions? So far all she’d managed to do was rick her back when attempting a new exercise on the reformer.
She was aware that the cream linen suit, which had started the day so well, had lost its original snap. As the morning had gone on, her look had deteriorated from the fashionably creased to the unfashionably unironed. But short of taking a forty-five-minute detour up to Oxford Street to buy something new, there was nothing she could do about that now. Remembering all she’d been taught, she pulled in her stomach – skirt would hang better – and held herself upright. ‘Imagine a string pulling you up from the top of your head,’ echoed the voice of her Pilates teacher, as Bea pushed open the restaurant door, aware that the imaginary string must have melted in the heat.
The restaurant wasn’t wide but it stretched back beyond a central table carrying a large arrangement of twirling bamboo, brilliant orange birds-of-paradise and scarlet ginger blossoms. She couldn’t see a man sitting alone. Maybe she’d got there first after all. Good. That meant she had time to go to the Ladies and check the make-up she’d jerkily repaired in the back of the cab on the way there (almost stabbing herself in the eye with her mascara) as well as compose herself. There was no point in being nervous, she reassured herself. It was only lunch, not . . .
‘Let’s have lunch?’ The voice came from behind her.
Bea turned to see an effete young man in a loose white shirt of the finest linen, the sleeves rolled up, well-cut dark trousers and expensive shoes. Surely this wasn’t him – a more perfect ‘match’ than she could ever have hoped for. Or was a younger man picking her up before she and Mark Carpenter had even had a chance to sit down?
‘I’m sorry?’ Say it again, please.
‘Let’s have lunch?’ he repeated, with the slightest of smiles, encouraging her to agree.
She hadn’t misheard. Unsure what to say, she tried a rusty attempt at a flirtatious smile. ‘Normally I’d love to, but unfortunately I’m meeting someone. Another time, perhaps.’
‘No, no, no.’ His face spoke volumes. Of course he wouldn’t make such an obvious pass at her. She was old enough to be his mother, for God’s sake. ‘I meant the table booking,’ he explained, a little too patiently. ‘Is it under Let’s Have Lunch?’
She had forgotten that the girl who had rung her about the date had explained that she would book the table for them under the company’s name. The entire restaurant staff must know why she was here. Were they all looking at her and whispering, laughing at her mistake? Flushed with embarrassment, but stifling a laugh, she murmured an apology. Hardly hearing his reply, she followed him between the tables of chattering lunchers to the dimmest reaches of the room where her eyes fell on Mark Carpenter for the first time.
He sat with his back to the wall, his head bent as he concentrated on cleaning his fingernails with a toothpick so she had a clear view of the top of his scalp through his thinning dark hair. The maître d’ pulled back her chair and her lunch-date looked up. A pleasant face – a little on the baggy side, if she had to be critical. She didn’t, of course, but she couldn’t help herself. As she sat down, still mortified by her initial mistake, Mark attempted to stand although there wasn’t enough room to do so without tipping the table towards her. She snatched at a wobbling glass.
‘Hallo. I’m Bea,’ she said, wondering what on earth had possessed her to sign up for all this. That stripy City shirt with the white collar and the navy pin-striped trousers immediately told her that this was not going to be a match made in heaven. She had been quite specific about her taste in men when filling in the questionnaire – no City types – but the agency had ignored her.
‘I know.’ He gave a nervous laugh but Bea was concentrating on the sweat beading on his upper lip, telling herself not to be so bloody judgemental. She knew sweat was beading on her forehead too, as another flush swept over her. She could feel the dampness at the nape of her neck and running down the small of her back. She tried willing herself to cool down. No dice.
As Mark sat down again, he reached behind him, whipped out a single red rose and put it in front of her. His smile revealed a mouthful of slightly overlapping teeth that Bea stared at as she tried to take in the significance of his gesture. How ridiculously over-the-top. This is just lunch, she reminded herself, not some full-blown long-term romance. You can leave whenever you want to. But, of course, she couldn’t. That would be too rude. Imagine if her date took one look at her and announced he wasn’t hungry after all. It would take weeks to recover from the blow to her self-confidence. She couldn’t do that. First impressions weren’t always everything so she must make the effort.
‘Thank you. That’s so sweet.’ She put the rose deep into her capacious bag where no one could see it, at the same time imagining what her close friends, Ellen and Kate, would say when she told them.
The waiter was standing over them, asking if he could bring drinks. Bea’s resolve to stay strictly sober flew out of the window. ‘A glass of Pinot Grigio would be lovely. Yes, a large one.’ And make it quick, she prayed silently.
‘And a sparkling water for me.’ A nice voice with the trace of an accent she couldn’t place. ‘I don’t drink,’ he added, by way of explanation.
‘Oh. Why not?’ Bea was wishing she had stuck with her resolve. He’d probably think she was a lush, drinking at lunchtime. Oh, to hell with it. Either he’d like what he’d paid for or he wouldn’t. There were always the other five.
‘Not during the working week. Need to keep a clear head for the job. You can’t play around with other people’s money without one.’
‘But it’s Friday. Surely you can have one to keep me company.’
‘No, I don’t think so. The markets don’t stop trading when I have a drink. I wouldn’t risk it.’
‘But you drink in the evenings?’ Bea was hoping for the reassurance that he was one of her sort, racing to open a bottle of wine as soon as he’d taken the key out of the front door at the end of a hard day.
‘Only at weekends. It’s a slippery slope otherwise.’
‘Oh.’ Bea was silenced. Studying the menu, she wondered what was the least she could eat without seeming rude. The sooner she could extricate herself from this disaster, the better. Could she get away with only one course? Just a starter, perhaps? No, she was firm with herself, she couldn’t. Come on, Bea, play the game.
‘What will you have?’ He broke the silence as the waiter returned, pad at the ready.
‘I think I’ll go for the goat’s cheese salad and then the grilled Dover sole.’ There. Simple, not too much and lowish on the calorie front.
‘I’ll have the scallops and pea mash. Thank you.’ He sat back, looking, Bea thought, a touch on the smug side.
‘But that’s just a starter.’ Bea couldn’t stop herself. ‘Won’t you have something else?’
‘No. That’s plenty for me. Got to watch the weight, you know.’ He patted his no doubt lean and muscled stomach. She looked at his thick chest hair growing out of the neck of his shirt. What would he be like in bed? she wondered. After all, that was one of the reasons they were meeting – there was no getting away from it. If things went well . . . He looked like one of those men who brought his own tissues and thanked you afterwards. Stopping herself going further, Bea took a swig of wine.
The lunch seemed interminable. Conversation dragged and every time Mark asked her a question, Bea seemed to have a mouthful. She ate her salad, then he picked his way through his four tastefully arranged scallops floating on a pea-green island as Bea filleted her sole with the cack-handedness of a ten-year-old, despite a lifetime of having done it without any difficulty. What was wrong with her? In desperation, she ordered another glass of wine, choosing to ignore Mark’s raised eyebrow. They trailed across all the obvious topics, never stopping on one long enough to become too confidential – where they came from (she from London and him from Northumbria); where they lived now (Islington and Clapham); their marital status (both awaiting divorce); children (one to her – Ben, now sixteen; two to him – Bella, thirteen and Stevie, fifteen); where they were going on holiday (hadn’t decided because always left it to the last minute; golf and fishing on the Spey with two friends), favourite books (anything by Anne Tyler; Fever Pitch) and films (When Harry Met Sally – sad but true; anything starring Jackie Chan – even sadder).
The only time Mark became really animated was when he talked about his job as an investment banker. But he did so in such detail, bringing in all his colleagues and the negotiations they’d recently completed, that she soon lost the thread and began to think about the drive she was going to have to make the next morning to see her mother in Kent. What time should she leave to avoid the worst of the traffic out of London? Everybody leaped into their cars the moment the sun came out and drove towards the coast like lemmings. And she was going to join them. Was it all right to leave Ben on his own since he had refused point blank to go with her? Or did that mean she was an irresponsible mother?
Then she drifted on to her own work as publishing director of Coldharbour Press, an imprint of the giant publishing conglomeration Rockfast. Perhaps she should tell Mark more about that, but it would be hard to match his work-related animation. She’d lost her hunger for the business a couple of years ago – although she was anxious to get back to the office after this was over. Something was obviously happening: too many shut doors with senior execs in secret conferences. Someone had started the rumour that an announcement was going to be made this afternoon. That would be typical. Get the announcement off management’s chests so they could have a conscience-free weekend while all the workforce would spend theirs worrying about their future with the company.
‘Shall we?’ His voice suddenly interrupted her train of thought. Oh, God, what on earth had he just said? To ask would only show she hadn’t been listening at all.
‘Er, yes,’ she agreed uncertainly.
‘That’s wonderful. I’ll be in touch then.’ He reached across the table and took her hand, oblivious to the alarm that was registering on her face. What on earth had she agreed to? ‘I’m so glad we’ve met. To be honest, I was worried that you might be a proper ball-breaker but I’ve really enjoyed myself.’
‘Gee, thanks. I do my best.’ How condescending she sounded. ‘No, seriously. I’ve enjoyed meeting you too. Would you mind if I skipped coffee?’ Once she’d got out of here, she need never see him again – whatever it was she’d agreed to.
‘Not at all. I have to get back too. I’ll just be one moment.’ He extricated himself from behind the table and, after pulling a black bag from under his seat, headed for the Gents. At least they didn’t have the awkwardness of establishing who was going to foot the bill. Let’s Have Lunch settled up for them. So they damn well should, given the little they had to do for their money, mused Bea. Perhaps Mark wasn’t so awful, really. She must try to be less demanding. He wasn’t bad-looking, just a bit humourless. She imagined he might be quite a considerate lover, if not very inventive. She was a fine one to talk. What would she bring to that particular party? She was much more out of practice than she cared to remember.
‘Are you ready?’ At the sound of Mark’s voice she looked up to find herself eyeballing a Lycra-covered crotch that revealed much more than she wanted to know about any man outside the privacy of the bedroom.
‘I should have warned you,’ said Mark, looking understandably sheepish. ‘I must apologise for what isn’t the most attractive look. But cycling is much the easiest way to get around London.’
‘Mmm. Breathing in those traffic fumes must be so good for you.’ Her mother’s words rushed into her head: ‘Sarcasm is not the finest form of wit, especially from you, Bea.’
Bea assumed his trousers had been in the bicycle pannier bag that had been hidden under his seat throughout lunch. His shirt must be in there now having been replaced by an old white T-shirt that had long ago lost its shape. On its front was a washed-out photograph. Bea peered more closely. Yes, below the words ‘The World’s Best Dad’ was the near invisible image of Mark with his arms round two indistinct young children. Bea swallowed. ‘Yours?’ she asked unnecessarily.
But Mark didn’t hear her. He was already striding out into the street where she could see what must be his bicycle, chained to a lamppost. By the time she had caught up with him, he was ready to go. Bea yanked her eyes from his pale over-muscled and extremely hairy calves to his face, now crowned by a royal blue crash helmet – never the ideal fashion accessory. Mark removed the impenetrably black goggles over his eyes and leaned forward to kiss her cheek, catching the side of her head with the helmet. ‘So sorry, Bea. Stupid not to wear it, though.’
‘Yes, yes, it would be. Of course it would.’ For once in her life Bea was lost for words, torn between hysterical laughter and tears. How could the agency have made such a mismatched pairing? You couldn’t have invented it. But wait. Perhaps she should consider, just for a moment, the impression she had given the agency. Perhaps she actually looked like someone who would find this sort of person attractive. Impossible. Much more likely was the dearth of right-aged men on the market. There can’t be many who specified they wanted to meet a woman when the shine had rubbed off a bit. Most of them found themselves a younger model within weeks of ending a relationship – or before. She knew that from bitter experience. What was it they said? When a relationship comes to an end, the man finds another woman while the woman finds herself. She wasn’t in a position to be picky.
‘So, do you have a card? Then I can email you with a when and where.’ Suddenly he looked so vulnerable, the hope in his face contrasting with the faded vision of youthful certainty on his chest. She knew then that she couldn’t disappoint him. What had she got to lose anyway? Whatever she had agreed to do, it couldn’t be that bad. She delved into her bag, scratching her hand on a thorn of the rose, whose existence she’d forgotten, and failed to find her cards in the jumble at the bottom.
‘I’ll have to scribble my details on this.’ She knew she was probably committing herself to more than she wanted. But what the hell? He took the slip of paper then, to her surprise, offered his hand and gave her a vigorous handshake and replaced the goggles. Bea prayed that no one from the office had seen them together. In some disbelief she watched the back of what, if Let’s Have Lunch had their way, might be her future cycling off towards the City, then turned to look for a cab back to the fray.
Chapter 2
As Bea tapped in her security code, the plate-glass doors to the editorial and publicity floor clicked open. She walked past the reception desk, where the young temp manning it while Jean was on holiday was busy multi-tasking – nails, book and interrupting her too-loud conversation with her boyfriend to connect outside calls. Impressive as a feat of juggling, maybe, but not exactly what one looked for in a receptionist. Bea made a mental note to mention it to HR. The shelves in the reception area were crowded with Coldharbour’s latest books, primed for the bestseller list. In our dreams, she reflected wryly.
All the team knew that whatever the promises made to earnest young novelists or ego-bound celebrities, the reality was that only a few would really get the marketing push they’d been promised and only one or two might, just might, make it to the holy grail of the bestseller list. All the team knew the chances of making it were remote. The ratio of disappointment to expectation in her job was much higher than when she’d been an eager young editor twenty years ago. Back then she could take a punt on an unknown writer and expect to be supported. Calculations were done on the back of envelopes and editors shaped the profile of the publishing list, rather than accountants and salesmen. Was it any wonder that she had her increasing moments of disenchantment?
Only a few steps towards her office and Bea could sense the tension in the air. Something had happened since she’d left for lunch. Unusually, all four assistants in the open-plan area were at their desks, half hidden by piles of manuscripts, boxes of books and the low dividing screens pinned with postcards and notices that made up each workstation. The excited buzz of conversation tailed off as she approached and the girls looked up at her expectant as she walked by. Puzzled, but desperate to take off the new red suede peep-toe shoes that were killing her, she smiled at them and carried on, willing the blister she could feel burning on the side of her right big toe to subside. She was surprised to see that Stuart and Jade, the two editorial directors, were still there. In all the years she’d known them, they’d believed that, whatever the emergency, their weekends began at Friday lunchtime. They were huddled in Stuart’s glass-sided goldfish bowl of an office, door shut, intent on their discussion. Stuart looked up as she passed and said something. Jade glanced at her too. Bea ignored them, too anxious to get comfortable.
She reached the sanctum of her office, kicked off the beautiful but offending shoes and hung up her jacket with relief before turning the air-con up a notch as yet another flush threatened. Surrounded by the books that, over the years, she had brought to fruition, whether by acquiring them from American publishers or by gently prising from the authors the best book they could write, she felt at ease. This was where she belonged. Editing, working with authors, was all she wanted to do. If only it didn’t come with all the additional admin that she found so trying. Once she had dreamed of being a writer herself but that had retreated into the distance as she’d seen what a precarious existence it could be. As she sat at her fashionably curved desk, which gave her a view across the rooftops of central London, she longed for the days when she’d had a secretary who would tidy her desk whenever she went out to lunch, putting everything in order. No longer allowed such a guardian angel, this afternoon she was faced with God knew how many unread emails and assorted muddled papers – a half-read manuscript, minutes from various meetings, costing forms and the still unopened post.
As consolation, she opened her desk drawer and selected a pink-and-brown-wrapped square ganache chocolate, Earl Grey Tea flavour. Every girl needs a particular passion, she thought, as she popped it into her mouth – and hers was good chocolate. It had begun seventeen years earlier when she was thinking about getting pregnant and needed consolation after she’d cadged her last cigarette (she’d given up buying them months before). But, over time, she’d exchanged the bars of Fruit and Nut for specialist brands, so good they demanded she ate less of them (or so she’d convinced herself ). The pocket box of chocolates from Demarquette had been a present from an agent who’d found the most direct way to her heart. As her mouth filled with the divine bitter-sweetness of the chocolate suffused with the delicate citrus undertones of bergamot, she turned to the task in hand.
She tried to live by the maxim ‘only touch each piece of paper once’. It had been shared with her by someone much more successful than herself. Since then she had struggled to deal with or delegate each one as she made herself take it from her in-tray but it just didn’t work for her. So often she’d be interrupted in the middle of dealing with something and would succumb to the temptation to slip that piece of paper into the pending tray – her desk’s graveyard. Once there, nothing ever came out. Of course, there was less paperwork now than there had once been. Welcome to the world of the email. She sighed, noticing that forty more had accumulated during her brief absence. She clicked on the first just as her door opened.
‘Bea. What’s going on?’ Stuart shut the door behind him and, without waiting to be asked, cleared the unsteady pile of manuscripts off the extra chair and sat down. The rich slightly acrid scent of his sweat reached her at the same time as she noticed the damp stains in the armpits of his shirt, which was grubby at the cuff and neck. He was a good-looking guy of about thirty-five, one of the most astute and commercially minded editors she’d come across, but his personal hygiene left something to be desired. His rather brutal haircut and the razor-thin white scar that ran from his right ear to the side of his nose suggested an aggressive streak that she had never, in the three years they’d worked together, come across. If anyone asked him how he’d got the scar, he just smiled and said it was ‘one of those things’. As a result he retained a slightly mysterious aura that clearly made him extremely attractive to some, judging from the comments that Bea had overheard in the Ladies.
‘Not a clue. Why would I know anyway?’ Bea’s attention was suddenly caught by an email from Let’s Have Lunch and another from Mark that had just pinged their way into her mailbox. Damn. She’d have to open them later.
‘Come on. You’re always the first to know everything. Stephen’s always in and out of here.’ Stuart’s anxiety to find out whatever was going on was bordering on desperate. He pulled his fingers one after another so they cracked.
‘Do you mind not doing that? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s happened?’ She hated the way everyone assumed that her long-standing friendship with the managing director meant she knew everything there was to know. Though she hated it even more when she didn’t.
‘Piers arrived just after you left, looking like thunder. He came straight up to Stephen’s office and they’ve been in there ever since. They pulled the blinds so they couldn’t be seen.’ Stuart’s voice rose with excitement as he described the unexpected arrival of the chief executive of Rockfast. ‘Then all the directors were called in, one after the other, and Jan’s been looking for you. They all came out looking absolutely stony and won’t talk to anyone.’ He leaned forward as if expecting Bea to share whatever secret there was.
‘I’ve no idea what’s happening.’ Bea hated confessing her ignorance. ‘Nobody’s said anything to me.’ Only because she’d been a bit late getting back from lunch, dammit.
‘But Stephen tells you everything,’ Stuart sounded outraged that Bea hadn’t got the answer.
‘Not this time.’ But why not? Bea asked herself. She knew that Stephen was talking to the management about retiring early some time next year because he’d decided he wanted to concentrate on his silversmithing. He’d always kept the one thing he was passionate about in second place to his career while his kids were growing up but now they were in their twenties, as he’d told Bea, ‘I’m desperate to give it a proper go before it’s too late.’ Bea had wanted to protest, but she could see he had a point. She had only to glance in the mirror to be reminded that she had her own ticket on time’s winged chariot. So that was next year. If there was something to do with the business, she was sure she’d have got wind of it somehow – smoke signals always drifted off the fire in the end.
‘Here’s Jan now.’ Stuart’s excitement was almost infectious as Stephen’s PA put her head round the door.
‘Bea. There you are. Where have you been? Stephen and Piers wanted to see you urgently.’ Jan’s face was almost hidden by a sheet of blonde hair that she swept back with a perfectly manicured hand to reveal a perfectly beautiful face, and a smile that revealed a set of perfectly even white teeth.
‘At lunch, of course,’ Bea was immediately on the defensive. ‘What was it about anyway?’
‘Can’t say.’ The smile became more like a knowing smirk. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now. I’ve been asked to get everyone into the boardroom in ten minutes.’
‘What? It’s Friday afternoon.’ A meeting on Friday afternoon was unheard of. ‘I’ll go and see them now.’ Underneath the desk, Bea’s feet felt about for her shoes. The pain in her blistered toe as she stood up was excruciating but her desire to find out what was going on overrode it.
‘I think it’s too late, Bea.’ Another of those slight self-satisfied smiles accompanied Jan’s withdrawal.
Irritated both by Jan’s cool assumption of control and superior knowledge, and by Stuart’s evident disappointment in her ignorance of what was going on, Bea picked up the phone and called Stephen. Engaged. Outside her office, the rest of the staff were moving towards the board-room in the corner at the far end of the floor. Annoyed that her Let’s Have Lunch date had been today of all days – and how pointless it had been – she followed the last of her colleagues into the room.
The long modern table had been pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows so there would be enough room for everyone. Some perched on its edge, others occupied the chairs that had been randomly spaced around the periphery of the room while everyone else sat on the stained carpet. Bea took a place in the corner by the door, leaning against the wall so she could take the weight off her painful foot. Even turned up full, the air-conditioning couldn’t prevent the room becoming a sauna with that number of people crushed into it. Ties were loosened, jackets were off and pieces of paper flapped as people fanned themselves. Voices rose as speculation mounted. Could Rockfast have sold off the Coldharbour imprint? Surely someone would have heard. Perhaps Rockfast was going under. No, there’d have been word about that too. Perhaps they’d acquired another imprint. Bea stood quietly, as mystified as everyone else, batting away questions as if she knew what was going on but couldn’t possibly say while feeling cross that she was the only director in the room excluded from whatever it was.
Eventually Piers and Stephen came in, followed by the financial, sales, marketing, art and publicity directors, all of them looking particularly serious. Bea caught Stephen’s eye as he mouthed, ‘Sorry.’ At that moment, loud alarm bells began to ring in her head, but she still didn’t know why. How come Bea was the only one to have gone out that lunchtime? Piers stood. He was the only man in the room wearing a suit, rather a natty Armani, Bea noted, but he still maintained his cucumber cool in the heat. His peachy tie was set off by a lightly striped blue shirt while his dark hair was fashionably short, slicked up and back with just the right amount of gel. Quite the image of an executive who had reached the top and was going to stay there, Bea reflected, as Piers directed a taut smile at the assembled team before beginning to speak. He kept it brief, to the point.
‘As you all know, Coldharbour Press has been in trouble for a while. Despite adjustments to the publishing programme, the turnover has fallen again. The board has decided more drastic action is necessary. As a result, I have both good news and bad for you. The good is that Adam Palmer from Pennant Publishing is starting on Monday as the new MD.’ The bombshell dropped. The few who knew of Adam Palmer and his reputation for ruthlessness looked stunned – Bea among them. All heads turned to Stephen, who stood with his eyes fixed firmly on his old brown suede shoes unable to look at his staff. ‘Stephen will be taking early retirement as of August the thirty-first when he has completed the handover to Adam.’ There was a collective gasp. That was less than a month away. Bea couldn’t believe her ears. Stephen had never suggested this might happen. But Piers hadn’t finished.
‘We have also come to an agreement that Louis, your sales director, will be leaving while Sam Spooner will be promoted from his position as sales manager with immediate effect.’
Sam Spooner! He was barely out of nappies. The back-stabbing little toe-rag, thought Bea.
‘Obviously this means that there will be a number of changes to get used to over the coming weeks but I know we can rely on you all to do your best to accommodate them. The Rockfast board is convinced that they will be crucial if we’re to turn the company around to perform in the way it should. All I can add is that, apart from replacing Stephen and Louis, whom I would like to thank for all they’ve done for the company, no other changes are envisaged at this time. Thank you. Have a good weekend.’ He left the room followed by the directors, with Bea on their tail.
Stunned, the staff left the room in silence, a few holding back tears. Only a few of them knew or cared much about Adam Palmer at that moment. What they cared about was that the close team that had worked together over the last few years was changing. If the results hadn’t been everything they might have been, wasn’t that because of market forces, rather than specific individuals who had worked so hard for the company? Change was always unsettling but the more so when it was announced as unexpectedly as this. As the staff filtered back to their desks, they began to talk again, wondering what on earth could have happened to prompt this and why the change had been handled in this way.
Bea went back to her office, fending off questions by inventing an urgent call she had to make. She needed a few moments on her own to think. She shut the door, feeling hurt and confused by the announcement. What did it really mean? What were the implications for her, as one of Stephen’s appointments? She thought she did a good job as publishing director although, if she were honest, perhaps not quite as good a job as she once had. She was uncomfortably aware that recently she hadn’t been responsible for as many sure-fire successes as in earlier days.
She picked up her phone and dialled Stephen. No reply. Had he left the building on Piers’s coat-tails? That would be so like him. He always kept a strictly professional distance from his colleagues and would never stop and gossip. That was one of the things everyone respected him for. He knew every member of staff by name and would help or advise any of them at any time, but when the clock struck six, he shut the door on his office and went home. His professional and private lives were kept entirely separate. She tried his mobile. No reply.
She saw Stuart coming towards her office and swiftly picked up the phone again. When he popped his head round the door to invite her to come to the pub for a post-mortem, she signalled she was mid-conversation. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said to the dialling tone. ‘I’ve got quite a lot to do, Stu, so I think I’ll finish up here first. If you’re still there when I leave, I’ll join you then.’
It was true. She had got a lot to do but she knew that there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of her doing it now. But she wanted to talk to Stephen if only she could find him. Once she could see the main office was deserted, she went along to his office on the off-chance and knocked quietly on the door.
‘Who is it?’ He sounded exhausted.
‘Stephen, it’s me, Bea.’ She pushed open the door to see him sitting with his head in his hands, alone at the round table where he held meetings.
‘I’m so sorry, Bea.’ He looked up and Bea could see he was as tired as he sounded. She hated to think it, but suddenly he looked old.
‘But what happened?’ She went over to sit with him.
‘I wanted to tell you but Piers acted so fast, there was no time. He and the other Rockfast directors have obviously been planning something like this for ages and then Adam suddenly stepped into the frame. Piers knew I was ready to go, and as for Louis – a casualty of war, I’m afraid.’ He ran his hand through his thinning grey hair. ‘Piers warned me on Monday that they were talking to Adam but I didn’t take him seriously. Then he turned up here today and told me the plan. He’d even spoken to Sam and Louis during the week without mentioning it to me, swearing them to silence. I was just the last nail they needed to hammer in. Big pay-off. I couldn’t say no.’ Bea could see how shocked he was by the way his career had ended so abruptly and, more importantly, out of his control. Deciding to quit when it suited you was one thing. Being sacked according to someone else’s agenda was quite different.
‘What do you think is going to happen? Is it going to be the long night of the P45s?’ Bea moved over to the desk where she knew Stephen kept some whisky for emergencies in one of the drawers. Pulling the top one open, she took out the bottle and poured them both a large one. She sat down again.
‘Well, I’m going to have to play the game and show Adam the ropes but . . . honestly? Adam is bound to have his own ideas about how to run the place. I don’t think the changes will end here.’
A penny half dropped. ‘Me?’ Bea felt a rush of anxiety.
‘Maybe. But don’t spend the weekend worrying. We’ll just have to see what happens next week.’ He downed his whisky in one gulp. ‘Bea, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to get off. I’ve got a lot of things to talk about at home.’
‘Of course. I’ve got to get back too.’ Bea left Stephen as he took his old blue cord jacket from the back of his chair and picked up his battered leather book-bag.
‘Call me if you want to talk about anything over the weekend.’
‘Of course. Thanks.’
Back in her office, she sat thinking. Don’t spend the weekend worrying. How could she not, for God’s sake? On the other hand, nothing she could do would affect what happened next week, so best just to follow Stephen’s example and go home. She didn’t feel like joining the others at the pub although, by the time she got home, Ben would probably be on his way out for the night. That would give her time to think more carefully about her conversation with Stephen. On the verge of shutting down her computer, she registered the flashing icon that alerted her to new emails. Of course. She opened her mailbox. Before she went, there were two she wanted to check. First Let’s Have Lunch. Their communication was brief.
Can you make lunch on Tuesday? If yes, Tony Castle will be expecting to meet you at 1 p.m. at Belushi’s in Jordan Street, WC2.
Sod it. Why not? Life couldn’t be much worse. Fine. I’ll be there, she typed.
She opened the one from Mark.
Enjoyed meeting you very much. I thought we might have a drink at the Grape Pip, off Regent Street. Friday week any good? All best, Mark
What harm could one more meeting do? She’d go for a drink with him and see what happened. Besides, she told herself again, she must try not to judge too quickly. Give the guy a chance. She might at least try to get her full £125 worth.
Great she typed. I enjoyed lunch too. (A small white lie in the interest of good relations.) Let me know what time’s best for you.
With that, she shut the screen down, grabbed the manuscript of the novel that she had to finish editing before meeting the author the following week, and walked out.
Chapter 3
‘Come and sit down, Paul. Please.’
Kate lay back on the leg of the white L-shaped sofa, patting the seat beside her. In front of her, Sky News was playing on the wall-mounted TV but with the volume turned right down. Exhaustion gave way to relaxation as her body zinged with the relief of at last being almost horizontal after a hard day’s work. She watched her husband busy preparing their supper in the state-of-the-art kitchen area at the centre of their open-plan basement.
Although he was going grey at last, Paul still had the look of the handsome man she had met thirty years ago: tall, athletic and perennially tanned; his strong jaw sagging a bit; deep laugh lines bracketing his wide mouth; wiry eyebrows now out of control; the round wire-framed spectacles that he had always favoured. He had remained slim despite his well-known love of food and drink, so he still looked good in his clothes. This evening he was casual in cream chinos and a loose white linen shirt. When he walked into a room, heads still turned, though perhaps not for quite as long as they once did, and people still flocked to him, wanting to be in his shadow. But, out of everyone, he had chosen Kate. With her petite, dark, retiring appearance and in the definitive way she approached the world, she was almost his polar opposite. It still surprised her that they had ended up together.
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ He looked up from what he was doing, giving her the oddly attractive asymmetric grin that had never failed to captivate her. ‘I’ve just to get the timing right with this cheese soufflé or I’ll ruin the thing.’
‘I thought we were having omelettes.’ Kate tried to hide her disappointment. All she wanted was something plain and simple, something that didn’t demand such attention. She wished she had insisted on her original plan of dragging him out to their local Italian after work. If they were there, at a table for two, they’d be forced to talk to one another over the trademark gluey pasta, to communicate about something other than Paul’s culinary efforts. Not that she should complain. The fact that he was a keen cook meant that she rarely had to lift a finger in the kitchen except for the odd bit of dutiful washing-up. Her friends always commented on how lucky she was to have him. Even when he’d had a long day in the City, and often with more work in his briefcase for later, he could still muster the energy to knock up a decent meal. However, his culinary enthusiasm (was there such a thing as culinary obsessive compulsive disorder? she wondered) was something she didn’t share. Falling through the door, exhausted after an evening session at the surgery, she was incapable of doing any more than flinging a ready-cooked meal from the freezer into the oven.
She picked up the latest BMJ from the top of the small pile of medical journals that served as a constant reminder of how much and how often she should attempt to catch up with the ever-advancing world of medicine. She put it down again. ‘You wouldn’t believe how late I ran today. I could have spent all morning with the first three patients alone.’ A GP who prided herself on her ability and commitment, she was often frustrated by the necessary time restrictions put on her work. ‘I kicked off with a guy who claimed he’d collected enough anti-depressants to kill himself, so that was a suicide risk assessment. Then, as he was leaving, he happened to mention that he had a jock itch so I had to look at that, which took ages.’
Paul’s full attention was on the window of the oven as he watched and waited for his soufflé to rise, so Kate just carried on, assuming he was listening. ‘After him, I had a dear eighty-three-year-old who had nothing wrong with her but who wanted to tell me about everything that was going on in her life. And then I had to refer a woman for a termination, which took ages because she couldn’t decide which hospital she wanted me to refer her to. How was I supposed to deal with any of them in ten minutes flat? Paul! Am I boring you?’
He turned in her direction for a second, making a sterling effort to appear interested. ‘No, no, darling. Not at all.’ His attempt to disguise a yawn was futile. ‘Keep going.’
She wasn’t fooled. ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll spare you. Just one of those days. How was yours?’
‘Same old, same old. Aaah.’ Said with the satisfaction of a job successfully executed. ‘I think we’re ready.’
Triumphant, he made his way to the table by the wide glass door to the garden carrying the perfectly risen soufflé, its smell filling the room. ‘Come and sit down.’
Kate dragged herself across the room while Paul examined the interior of the main course as if it was a biological specimen before serving it, then passed her the salad. He was uncharacteristically silent as they ate so she filled the vacuum with more gossip from the surgery while he nodded or shook his head, making the occasional sympathetic sound at the right moments. She could tell by the way his eyes occasionally drifted towards the kitchen that his mind wasn’t entirely on what she was saying but she forgave him. Her professional problems must sometimes seem so petty and tedious to him, but she wanted him to understand her irritation when one of the other partners had to go out for a chunk of the morning leaving her and the on-call doctor to share his patients, as well as her impatience with the practice manager who seemed to be having an awful lot of days sick in the run-up to her daughter’s wedding. Never mind the frustrations of an appointment system that rationed only ten minutes to everyone, when many needed more time – much more time.
*
Her day had begun to go wrong at 8.15 a.m. when she had turned up at the practice and asked Mrs Yilmaz to come inside before the doors officially opened.
The old woman was leaning against the wall, her stick not enough to support her for the wait until the surgery opened, a warm smell of urine and old age drifting off her. A patterned headscarf covered most of her head and face while an old patched coat hid most of what she was wearing, except for the bottom of a long, shapeless dark skirt, thick stockings and sensible black shoes. Her entire body shook with a guttural graveyard cough as she took Kate’s arm, then shuffled beside her to the glass door, coughing again as she waited for her to open it. Kate dug out her keys, aware that she was about to incur the wrath of Sonia, their draconian receptionist, who liked the practice to run the way she thought best. And that meant not having the doctors bringing in the patients to the waiting room, however needy they might be, until the clock struck half past eight on the dot. Not only was Kate about to annoy Sonia but, sensing the pent-up irritation behind her, she’d already alienated most of the remaining queue of patients. Some of them were probably on their way to work, already displeased at being late, while others always felt they had first call on the doctor’s attention. Just another Friday morning.
Having settled Mrs Yilmaz into one of the comfier chairs in the waiting room, she greeted Sonia with the cheeriest ‘Good morning’ she could muster, only to be met with a scowl and a grunt. Their chief receptionist had made herself indispensable to the practice but, all the same, a little compassion wouldn’t go amiss, thought Kate, as she walked down the corridor to her room. She was the first of the partners to be in, as usual. She liked it that way, having a bit of time to make the transfer from her life at home to her role at work, to gather herself for the day ahead. She let herself in. The pale blue of the walls at least had a soothing quality as did the view over the small haphazard garden at the back of the building.
She hung her bag on the back of her chair and sat behind her desk, where her computer was already on and a cup of coffee steaming beside it. Thank God for Evangelina, the junior receptionist, who suffered under Sonia’s large thumb but remembered the little things that made the partners’ lives bearable – a regular supply of hot drinks and occasional biscuits being two of them. Kate flicked to her appointments’ screen, her heart sinking as she registered in whose company she would be spending her morning.
With one or two exceptions, it was a question of the same old patients with the same old insoluble problems: people suffering from all manner of aches and pains that were usually merely symptomatic of their circumstances. Unloved, unhappy, lonely, unemployed: the conditions that bred so many minor complaints. All those patients wanted was a reassuring chat or a token prescription and to be sent away feeling someone was taking notice and cared about them. No one else did. She sighed. At least she had the post-natal clinic to look forward to in the afternoon. That was one of the bright spots in her week, where her examinations gave her the perfect excuse to cuddle and play with one cute, unquestioning, doted-upon baby after another.
She glanced at her watch. She had five minutes. Just enough time to check her emails and not enough to do anything else. Having negotiated the rigmarole that got her through to her NHS inbox, she ran her eye down the entries, hoping to see one from her middle son, Sam, who had recently arrived in Ghana on a school-building project. She was disappointed to find nothing.
Dear Sam, the most adventurous of their children, the one who dared to go higher, further and faster than either of his siblings, up for any kind of physical challenge. Always the dreamiest of the three, he had left school and, to her and Paul’s dismay, chosen not to follow his friends to university. With no idea what he wanted from life, he had travelled alone to New Zealand where he had found a job in the timber industry. Just when she’d thought he had settled, he was off again, this time to work towards preserving the Canadian wilderness. And now he was building a school in Ghana. She knew rationally that each of their children had to leave home and follow their own path in life. But if only his didn’t have to take him quite so far away. They couldn’t even pick up the phone for a chat when they felt like it. She missed him terribly.
On her desk, she had a calendar that Sam had given her as a farewell present. Each day displayed a photograph from a different part of the world and each day she tore one off and tossed it into the bin. Today she was saying goodbye to a yellow-and-black-shrouded Japanese monk, his legs in white stockings, his face hidden under the upside-down bowl of a straw hat, begging outside a temple in Kyoto. Taking his place, a small plane flew high through the spray that erupted into the air from a rushing Victoria Falls. In the background, the sky was a cloudless periwinkle blue. Sitting in her purpose-built medical centre off a busy arterial road that took traffic roaring through London, she couldn’t have felt more remote from either of them. She stopped herself turning up the corner of Victoria Falls to see what was underneath. Every day she performed this ritual, remembering their son, and hoping that one day when she wasn’t so caught up in the politics of her practice and the welfare of her patients, perhaps she and Paul would be able to coincide their busy lives to travel to one or two of these far-flung destinations. One day.
A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. She glanced at her watch again. Only a couple of minutes until the floodgates opened.
‘Come in.’
Pete, the senior partner, entered the room. His wispy beard and sandals gave him the air of a throwback to the sixties. He was thin, slightly round-shouldered and wore a succession of short-sleeved checked shirts that she suspected he bought in bulk from a mail-order catalogue. Kate often wondered why his teacher wife didn’t help him in the sartorial stakes. Too preoccupied with her own work, probably. Besides, not everyone was interested in what they wore. They must have higher things on their minds. She straightened her thick woven leather belt, which had swivelled to one side, retucked her coffee-coloured T-shirt into her patterned Hobbs skirt and pulled the front of her long buttonless coral-coloured cardigan together.
‘There’s bad news. And there’s bad news.’ Pete pulled up the chair to sit beside her desk. ‘Which do you want first?’
‘Oh, God. What’s happened? Break it gently.’
‘There’s no easy way to tell you this but Sally’s phoned in sick and won’t be in today.’
‘Again?’ She ignored his look of disapproval. Pete never questioned his colleagues’ reasons unless they threatened the practice. If the practice manager went sick with no warning there were always difficulties, and today was no exception. ‘But the IT people are coming in from the PCT. I suppose I’ll have to deal with them. Damn. And?’
‘And old Mr Cantor’s had a stroke by the sound of it. I’m going to have to go out there. I know, I know,’ he said, as Kate put her head into her hands. ‘But I’ll be as quick as I possibly can. Sonia will divide my patients between you and Jim. Anyone not urgent, you could ask to book to see me tomorrow.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Kate could see the blue light on her computer screen alerting her to her first patient. Sometimes she felt like King Canute trying to hold back the waves and, once again, the waves were beginning to break over her, the swell threatening to increase by the minute. ‘All right.’ She groaned. ‘We’ll manage. Let the day begin.’
‘Thanks, Kate. I knew you’d understand. I owe you one.’ He slipped out of the door.
‘Bloody right you do,’ Kate shouted after him, before making a final check that her room was in order. She walked down the corridor, past a series of brightly coloured geometric-based prints given to the practice by a grateful patient, and pushed open the door to the waiting room.
‘Stewart Bowles? This way.’
*
She looked across the table at Paul. He was staring into the middle distance, as far away as she had just been. The difference was that she had snapped back to the present and he showed no sign of doing the same. More and more often recently, he had seemed to drift off into a world of his own and she couldn’t draw him out of it. Not that he was unpleasant, just increasingly remote. When she tried to talk to him about his day, he would clam up. Unlike her, he’d never really shared his working life, preferring to keep it to the office as much as possible. He had always maintained a strict divide between the two halves of his life, even to the extent that they rarely entertained his colleagues at home. That was what he preferred and she saw no reason for them to change things. Besides, as he said, hedge-fund management wasn’t a subject likely to bring much joy to her heart whereas he had always been genuinely interested in the nuts and bolts of her profession. He enjoyed hearing about the lives that came in and out of his wife’s practice. But not so much recently. And not tonight, obviously.
‘Have you heard from Sam? I wish he’d get in touch.’ She knew she was on safe ground here. They never had any trouble talking about any or all of their children. They shared the same sadness that their child-rearing days were over, as well as the excitement and pride in what the children were making of their own lives.
‘Nothing yet. Don’t worry about him. Let’s just assume his silence is a sign that he’s too busy having a good time or has a problem getting to the Internet.’ He tried to pour her more wine but she put her hand over her glass.
‘I’ve had enough. You finish it.’
‘Actually, I’m knackered. I think I’m going to have to go to bed.’ He put the bottle down.
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Kate suddenly had a strange feeling that he was keeping something from her.
‘Nothing. Should there be?’ He looked up at her, questioning, before starting to gather their plates.
‘Don’t be silly. You seemed so far away, that’s all. I know I drone on about the practice, but if something’s worrying you, I’d like to know. If something’s not going to plan. Or if there’s anything I can help with.’
‘There’s nothing. Really.’ But he sounded far from convincing. ‘We’re just very busy and we’re taking a hammering at the moment so it’s all hands on deck. I’m just tired.’
He looked it. Shadows ringed his wide-set eyes and the crow’s feet seemed etched more deeply than she had noticed before. She reached across the table for his hand to reassure him of her support. After a second, looking apologetic, he took it away. ‘I think I’ll just clear up.’
He took the plates over to the dishwasher, loading them far more noisily than necessary, then piling up the things that needed washing up.
‘What is it, Paul?’ Kate persisted. ‘I know there’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘Kate, please. You’re not the only one who’s had a bad day. Leave it alone.’ He banged the soufflé dish onto the draining board, closing the subject. ‘I’m going up.’
Kate flinched as if he’d struck her. No ‘Goodnight’. No kiss. This was a Paul she hadn’t seen for years, not since those awful months when their marriage had almost come to grief long ago – the children had been tiny. She remembered feeling this same distance from him then, as if they were standing on opposite riverbanks, unable to get across. Each was in the other’s sight but was unable to hear what the other said above the sound of the rushing water, unable to understand the signals the other was making. When Paul finally admitted to having an affair with a member of his team at work, Kate was surprised by the relief she felt. At least she knew what she was dealing with. He said he wanted to leave her and start a new life with this woman, but Kate refused to accept his decision. In giving her this unwanted knowledge, he had also given her power.
Whatever Paul might believe he felt, she had not been prepared to give up on her family so easily. She had worked so hard in order to show him how loved and wanted he was, not just by their children but by her. She had shown him that despite lavishing so much love on Megan, Sam and Jack she still had enough left for him. She had just got out of the habit of letting him know. She was the one whose attention and support he needed, whose reassurance he wanted, whose love he treasured. When Paul had realised he still had all those things, and more, he gave up his affair, promising never, ever to have another, and Kate came to accept that, in many ways, having a husband was like having another child. Her feminist hackles rose as she tussled with the idea but, in the end, she decided to accept their unspoken pact because the rewards were greater than the cost. Paul made her life so much more than it was without him but, to keep him, she had to make sure all his needs were met. She accepted he was that sort of man and trusted him to keep his side of the bargain in return.
Following him upstairs, she thought about their marriage now and what would happen when Jack eventually left home. Times had moved on, circumstances had changed, and so had Paul and Kate. They’d weathered the journey so far but were they going to make it together to the end? She recognised the dangers of taking one another for granted, having seen the same thing happen with so many of her patients who had been to, or were heading for, the divorce courts. But with so many things going on in their lives, it was all too easy to let things slip. Were Paul’s recent silences nothing more than that or did they have a deeper significance? She didn’t like the doubts that were running through her mind. She willed them away, deciding that what sometimes happened to her patients was not going to happen to her.
Paul was still reading what looked like a company report when she came out of the shower. As she climbed into bed, he put it down and turned to her.
‘I’m sorry, Katie. Put it down to exhaustion. I’ll be OK tomorrow.’ He stretched out his arm and she curled into him, inhaling his familiar scent.
‘Forget it. Probably my fault.’ She ran her hand across his chest and down towards his stomach as she raised herself to kiss him. Sex was the one thing that had always brought them back together after the slightest disagreement. But she sensed him tense and he pulled back from her.
‘Not tonight,’ he murmured, turning his head and gently pushing her away. ‘I’ve got an early start. Sorry.’ He rolled onto his side and reached out to switch off his light.
Within minutes, his breathing had deepened and slowed until he was sound asleep. Kate propped herself against the pillows, unable to concentrate on her book, unable to switch off her thoughts. She looked at Paul, timing her breathing with his. This was the third time he’d pushed her away in as many weeks, each time citing tiredness or stress as his excuse. She couldn’t remember a time in their life together when this had happened, not even in those short-lived dark days when they had only wanted to hurt each other. Something between them had changed recently, but what? However often she had heard patients talk about lack of affection or intimacy in their marriages, however often she had listed the possible causes and counselled patience and understanding, she found it almost impossible to apply the theories to her own marriage and follow her own advice. There were any number of possible reasons for Paul’s behaviour, and his rejection not only made her question her own worth but, much, much worse than that, it hurt. It hurt deeply. She inched down under the duvet, switched off her own light and turned to lie with her back to Paul’s, waiting for sleep to claim her.
Chapter 4
‘’Bye, darling. I’ll be here when you get back. I’ll rustle up something for supper so you needn’t worry.’ Oliver put both hands on her shoulders and kissed Ellen’s forehead.
‘That would be lovely.’ She leaned into him, relishing his warmth, his solidity, the reassurance she felt when close to him. The long-forgotten feeling of being loved was pushing against the barrier of self-sufficiency and self-control that had protected her for so many years. She remembered Emma, when she was still a little girl, insisting that Sleeping Beauty was read to her every night. So, every night Ellen had picked up the illustrated Grimms’ Fairy Tales with a sigh, turned to the same page and begun reading aloud as her daughter snuggled up to her and drifted off to sleep. For the first time Ellen could almost empathise with Briar Rose, the sleeping princess who was woken with a kiss.
‘I love you,’ he murmured, as he raised his right hand to the back of her head and, somewhat to her amazement, stroked her wiry grey hair as if she was a woman twenty years younger. ‘Come home soon.’ He kissed her again, this time lingering on her lips. That’s more like it, she thought.
She pulled away, knowing that if she didn’t the temptation to go back inside and shut the door on the world for the rest of the weekend would be irresistible. ‘I’ve got to go. The gallery won’t open without me and Saturday’s my busiest day.’
‘I know. I’ll be thinking of you as I have another cup of tea, do a bit of weeding for you, read the paper.’
‘That’s right. Rub it in.’ Ellen laughed. As she turned down the front steps, she noticed her next-door neighbour staring at her curiously. ‘Morning, Mary. Isn’t it a lovely day?’
‘For some obviously more so than for others,’ growled Mary, as she hurled a bulging black bag into a bin and slammed down the lid before scuttling off down the street. Mary’s cage was easily rattled but today Ellen wasn’t in the mood to find out why. As her neighbour rounded the corner, Ellen walked down the steps and out of the gate, turning to wave, but Oliver was already inside. She imagined him walking along the corridor, straightening the pictures so they all hung exactly level. Already she knew that he liked things to be just so. Perhaps he would take himself down to the basement, tidy up their breakfast things before he went out to the patio with the paper. If only she could shut the gallery on Saturday mornings and be with him.
Their affair had been so sudden and unexpected. Only four weeks earlier, Ellen had been sitting behind her desk in the front room of the gallery, sorting through the accounts. The light had slanted through the small window behind her, reminding her that yet another summer was going by without her having bought the right blind. The back of her neck felt hot to the touch. Her headache was getting worse. She rustled in the desk drawer for the packet of ibuprofen she kept there. She stood up to get a glass of water from the small kitchenette behind her and felt a familiar prick of pleasure at the pictures that hung around the white walls.
This was the place where Ellen felt most comfortable. The hours she had spent alone here had been hours in which she had time for herself and for the quiet grieving and reflection that she needed to do after Simon’s death. Somehow the atmosphere of the gallery gave her an inner calm that she could never find at home with the children. Since her uncle Sidney had willed it to her three years earlier, she had worked hard at building up the business, extending the premises through into the large back room, knocking out one of the cupboards and the dividing wall behind it so a short passage led from the front to the back. Her uncle had taken her on at a moment in her life when she was directionless, kept going only by the need to support her kids. He had the mistaken belief that her art-college training would be qualification enough, but working there with him had taught her everything she needed to know. She had taken on the legacy and turned it into an increasingly vibrant business for him.
At the sound of the bell, she glanced up as the glass door opened and a customer came in. Him again! The same man had been at the latest exhibition opening, had been in twice during the previous week and once already this. Idle speculation had inevitably become Ellen’s way of passing the day as people wandered in and out of the gallery. The lean, angular planes of this man’s face and his dapper pin-stripe suit said ‘City’ although his unkempt, boyish, almost black hair suggested something more relaxed, perhaps in the media. He exuded a youthful self-confidence appropriate for someone in what she guessed must be his late thirties. When he’d put his hand on her desk yesterday, as he asked her a question, she had surprised herself slightly by glancing up to notice a pair of cornflower blue eyes edged with long dark lashes – eyes a girl would kill for. For a moment, he held her gaze, then turned to leave.
As she had expected, he walked past her desk, smiling as he wished her good morning. She returned the greeting. He went into the back room where, on the small black-and-white security monitor, she could see him standing in front of the same picture as he had before. Over the last couple of weeks, she had often stood there herself, transported by the richness and power of the colours. Rough semi-circles of neon pink, mustard yellow, Lenten purple and brilliant carmine were juxtaposed with others in shades of apple green, red and aquamarine, all roughly outlined and set against a background of cerulean blue edged by a darker, more mysterious night sky: Starship by Caroline Fowler. Caroline was one of the newer artists that Ellen had brought to the gallery, impressed by her use of colour and the bold statements made by her canvases. She had a strong following already and this, her second exhibition with Ellen, had cemented her success. Unusually, the man didn’t stand in front of the painting for long. As he walked through to the front of the gallery, Ellen hoped she might at last have a sale on her hands.
‘I love that painting, Starship,’ he said. ‘Every time I come in here, I’m drawn to it. I’d like to buy it but I don’t have anywhere to hang it at the moment.’
‘I could keep it here for you for a while, if you’d like.’ She opened the drawer where she kept her red stickers and receipt pads.
‘No. I don’t think that would work. It might not suit whatever place I buy.’
‘Are you moving to London?’ Ellen’s curiosity got the better of her.
That was how their conversation had begun. Within five minutes of him introducing himself, Ellen was offering him a coffee as he described where he’d been living in rural France. He’d run a small arts and crafts gallery there but felt after two years that it was time to come home, so had sold the business and was looking to start again in London. As they’d talked, they’d discovered that their shared interest in art and the business of running a gallery extended into the books they’d read, films they’d seen and even the stretch of Dorset coast she knew from her childhood holidays. As the time passed, Ellen had hardly noticed the bell signalling other customers, until one had interrupted to buy another of Caroline’s pictures.
Oliver had waited, flicking through the prints folder, as she took the customer’s details, then stuck a red spot on the label beside the picture. As she returned to her desk, he looked at his Rolex and asked if, at five to six, she was closing. Thrilled to have made the sale, she had had to phone Caroline first to tell her the good news, then happily agreed to go for a very quick drink before she had to rush home to cook the children’s supper.
She smiled as she got on the bus, remembering those magical days of snatched encounters: coffee in the gallery, a walk round the local park, lunch, a drink in the pub. Oliver was funny, concerned and, most importantly, interested in her life. Despite her half-hearted attempts at resistance, she had felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, unable to stop herself, simultaneously curious and alarmed about what might happen next. At last, three weeks after they’d first met, the moment had come when she had turned to him as they stepped out of Bistro Pepe and he had taken both her hands and leaned towards her. She had pulled back, aware of and unable to believe what was coming, but he had pretended not to notice. It didn’t matter to him that they were in a public place and that people might look askance at a younger man kissing a definitely middle-aged woman. As his lips touched hers, she felt as if she’d come home at last.
That night he’d accompanied her home and she’d invited him in for coffee. The day before, she had put the children on the train for Cornwall where, as always, they were spending the last five weeks of their long summer holiday with Simon’s family just outside St Mawes. Without them, the emptiness of the house bore down on her.
One kiss had been all that was needed to puncture the ten years of overwhelming numbness she’d felt since Simon’s death. Left on her own with two small children, then aged only five and three, she’d had no alternative but to batten down her emotions and concentrate on helping them cope with the lack of their father. What was important was that she kept Simon alive in their minds, making sure above all that they knew he’d loved them. To do that, she couldn’t include another man in their lives, however frequently her friends and family said that was exactly what the children, and indeed she, needed. Until now. At first the sex was awkward, unfamiliar, embarrassing, but Oliver’s confidence and consideration drew her out of herself until she relaxed and moved with him. Since that first night together, Oliver hadn’t left except to go to pick up a few clothes and check out of wherever he’d been staying. And she had never wanted him to.
Ellen couldn’t remember when she had felt so indifferent to what her neighbours thought of her. The net curtains of Oakham Road might be twitching as she and Oliver came and left together – let them! The only people, apart from her family, whose opinion she particularly cared about were Kate and Bea. She could imagine their faces when she told them about Oliver. After so many years of knowing her as a devoted widow and committed single mother, they would be completely taken by surprise. But keeping Oliver to herself made their relationship all the more precious, all the more intense. She didn’t want that to end by going public, even though she knew that, once the kids came home, she would have to. If not sooner.
When she did, Kate would listen to her without interrupting but Bea would probe, making Ellen give away details before she was ready. Up until now, Ellen had treated Bea’s own endeavours to hook a man with some scepticism, but suddenly she understood something of what her friend must be looking for. The discovery of Oliver had thrown a switch inside her that she had forgotten existed. That was all Bea wanted to experience. Ellen saw that now. With the menopause beckoning, they might have only a last few throws of the hormonal dice.
Musing on that unpleasant truth, she unlocked the door to the gallery, pushed up the security shutters and sorted her papers, ready for the usual steady flow of Saturday customers. She was in the back, looking at Starship, considering whether to buy the picture for Oliver as a memento of their meeting (so what if he didn’t have anywhere to hang it?), when the bell rang. Perhaps it was too soon to make such a big gesture, but she had the rest of the morning to think about it. In the meantime she would put her back into some work and go through the programme for her next exhibition, making sure everything was on track.
She went through to see her first customer of the day, and was surprised to find Kate standing there, the only woman she knew who was over fifty and could get away with a skimpy pale pink T-shirt and white linen trousers. Suddenly she felt self-conscious about the old cotton dress she’d yanked off its hanger that morning. What they said about a moment on the lips was true. All those consolatory biscuits that she’d packed away over the years had made their home very comfortably on her hips.
‘Kate! Good to see you. It’s been ages.’
‘That’s why I thought I’d drop by. Where have you been hiding yourself?’
Ellen’s mobile rescued her from having to answer. ‘Just phoning to tell you I love you.’ The sound of Oliver’s voice transported Ellen into her garden where she imagined him sitting.
‘Don’t be silly. You’ve already said that once today.’ Ellen laughed with pleasure.
‘Three times if I remember right,’ he corrected her.
‘I’ll see you later. Can’t wait.’ Ellen was anxious to cut the conversation short in front of Kate, who was staring at her open-mouthed. ‘I’ve got a customer with me.’
‘’Bye, darling. See you soon.’
‘Who on earth was that?’ Kate was watching Ellen’s face with amazement. ‘You’re absolutely glowing.’
Ellen couldn’t stop a grin spreading across her face. ‘I wanted to tell you,’ she began, ‘but I wasn’t ready or it wasn’t the right time. Look, sit down and I’ll fill you in before the gallery gets busy.’ An intense feeling of relief came with this unlooked-for opportunity to spill the beans as she launched into how she and Oliver had met.
When Kate heard that Oliver was only forty at most, she exploded: ‘Does he know that you’ve got at least eight years on him?’
‘Well, no. In fact, he hasn’t mentioned age at all. I thought that was so tactful that I decided to go along with it.’
‘But what will he think when he finds out?’
‘He won’t. Not yet anyway. He did ask me what my HRT pills were but I just told him they were contraceptives – if only – and I pretended the thread veins on my legs were scratches from the roses in the garden. And I told him I’d been grey since my early thirties! One of the drawbacks of having jet-black hair as a kid.’
‘Ellen Neill! I didn’t know you had it in you.’
‘Neither did I. At least, I’d forgotten. But white lying’s not the only thing I haven’t forgotten how to do.’
‘Not the only thing?’ Kate was so absorbed in the story that the exhaustion Ellen had noticed disappeared as her face grew more animated. Suddenly she cottoned on to what Ellen meant. ‘My God! How long have you known him? Four weeks? You don’t hang around, do you?’
‘I know. It does seem ridiculously quick but I haven’t felt like this since . . . I can’t remember when. Honestly, I feel like a teenager with a first crush. I think about him all the time, wondering what he’s doing, if he’ll phone. Do you remember that feeling? I’m as surprised as you are,’ she said, watching Kate’s expression. ‘I never imagined anything like this would happen. I never wanted anyone coming between the kids and Simon but I don’t think Oliver will. He’s so kind and considerate. I’d forgotten how good it feels to be wanted by someone and to share all those endless day-to-day tasks that otherwise you deal with on your own. It’s all happened so fast and – I know this sounds silly – I feel really happy for the first time since Simon died.’
‘Do the children know?’ As the most family-oriented member of the little group, Kate’s first thought, after her friends’ well-being, was always for their children, whom she loved almost as if they were her own.
‘Not yet.’ At the mention of them it suddenly occurred to Ellen that she’d been in massive denial. Of course she couldn’t wrap this delicious secret about herself and pretend the outside world didn’t exist for ever. What had she been thinking? Her children came first. ‘But you’re right. I must tell them. Now they’re older, I hope they’ll understand. Oliver loves kids and can’t wait to meet them. In fact, I’m thinking of taking him when I go down to see them before the bank holiday.’
‘Are you nuts? How do you think Simon’s family will react, never mind the children? His parents will probably both have a coronary. I know Simon’s mother’s been encouraging you to find someone else for years but, all the same, you’ve got to take this slowly. The reality might be harder for his family to take than they imagine.’
Kate was always so sensible. Now the secret was out, it wasn’t just about Ellen and Oliver any more. Ellen was going to have to confront and deal with the repercussions in the best way possible. If only she had kept her mouth shut, as she’d intended, and given herself a bit more thinking time – except she hadn’t been thinking.
‘You’re probably right there too but I know it’ll be OK.’ A finger of doubt gave her a sly poke but she slapped it away. ‘Oliver’s not going to try to replace Simon. How could he? But I’m so sure he’s going to get on with them.’
‘I still think you should take it a step at a time.’ Kate was obviously choosing her words, not wanting to prick the bubble. ‘It’s only been a month. You’ve got to be absolutely certain that you’re not making a mistake.’
The bubble wobbled but remained intact.
‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’ As gentle a character as she was, a determined set came to Ellen’s jaw when she fought for something she believed in. ‘I’ve enjoyed keeping him secret so far, but now that’s over, I want people to know I love him.’
‘That’s fine. But take it easy. The children will adapt but they’ll find it difficult to start with. At least don’t make them deal with this in front of their grandparents. They need to be in their own home, near their friends and everything that makes them feel comfortable.’
Ellen knew that, as usual, Kate was talking sense. The excitement of the affair had temporarily blinded her to the realities of the situation. Much as she was dying to embark on her new family life, taking Oliver to Cornwall would be a mistake. She saw that. She would go down on her own, as originally planned, come back for one last glorious week alone with Oliver before Em and Matt finally came home in time for the start of the new school term. Then she would break the news slowly and carefully.
Chapter 5
In the car, on the way to her mother’s, the voice of the Radio 4 presenter was overwhelmed by the noise of the motorway. Not that Bea noticed what she was missing. Her mind was on her son. These days, Ben was being less communicative than she could remember him in all their sixteen years together. He had barely mustered a grunt when she’d left, refusing to tear his attention from yet another old episode of Skins. Not even ‘Have a good time’ or ‘Love to Gran’. She left him lying on the sofa, his glass on the floor under his discarded socks, a faint whiff of sweat and feet hanging in the air.
She visualised his worldly possessions scattered in his room upstairs where they’d last been used, then buried under the T-shirts, pants and socks dropped on top of them. His wardrobe door hung open, revealing a row of empty metal hangers and shelves with various knots of tangled clothing that had somehow spread their way across to his unmade bed. Whenever she nagged him to tidy his room, he put the whole lot in the laundry basket downstairs – much easier than hanging it up again. If the door was shut, she always knocked – she had done ever since he’d shouted at her to keep out of his business. She hadn’t even commented on the last poster he’d Blu-tacked to the wall – two girls going topless, one touching the other’s breast, both slightly smiling with their topaz eyes staring out from under their strawberry blonde fringes. Ben had bought it from a boy at school last year. When she’d seen it, she’d frowned but managed not to say a word.
This morning, despite all attempts to bite her tongue, she’d been less successful.
‘I’m just off to Gran’s,’ she’d said, in her cheerful let’snot-get-off-on-the-wrong-foot-this-morning voice.
‘Right.’ Eyes fixed to the screen.
‘Darling. You will tidy up, won’t you?’
No reply.
‘If you could just try to do something with your bedroom so we can at least see the floor . . .’ The hope in her voice was met with silence. ‘Well, I’ll be back late tonight, then.’
‘Yeah. Right.’ He hadn’t even glanced round.
Since Colin had left, Bea had watched Ben turn more and more in on himself. Apart from having to deal with the inevitable teenage hormonal soup, he’d had to watch the father he’d adored go off with his PA, a woman almost young enough to be Ben’s older sister. Within a year, she had given birth to twins. Colin had never explained to Bea why he had fallen out of love with her. She sometimes wondered whether he had ever been in love with her at all. But, her own feelings aside, it had been hard to answer with any truth twelve-year-old Ben’s endless questions about why Dad had gone. Apart from the obvious one, she didn’t know the answers.
Together they watched as Colin morphed from a suit-and-tired executive into a complacent new husband and on into an even more self-satisfied but exhausted new father of two. Plumper than he had been, his skin shinier and more tanned, he oozed self-satisfaction. His hair, though greyer, was cut fashionably short; his clothes were no longer mail order (too busy to shop) but designer (‘Carrie helps me choose’). The idea of the pair shopping together made Bea laugh. The Colin she knew would no more set foot in a clothes shop than he would in a supermarket. But she had to hand it to Carrie: that girl had got Colin wrapped round her little finger in a way that Bea never had.
As soon as he’d announced he was leaving her for Carrie, Bea had known it would be only a matter of time before they started a family. Carrie would want kids and the only way Colin would keep her was to give them to her. What she hadn’t bargained for was the vigour with which he threw himself into second-time fatherhood. She hadn’t bargained for how upset she’d feel either. Colin had discovered the joys of nappy-changing, of bottle-feeding, of getting up in the night. When he looked for sympathy, complaining of how tired he felt at having to do all this and go to work, the floodgates of Bea’s fury opened.
‘Tired? How many women do you think feel exactly the same and have been working and looking after children for centuries?’
‘But, Bea,’ he had protested, sheepish, ‘that’s not the same. They’re used to it.’
‘Bollocks they’re used to it! What do you think I felt like when I was still breast-feeding Ben and struggling to keep my job going?’
‘But that was different,’ he had protested.
‘How? How was it different?’
‘Well, you wanted to do it.’
‘Wanted to? I only wanted to because I didn’t want to lose my bloody job. I would have felt a whole lot better if I’d had someone else getting up in the middle of the night to help.’
‘But they’re so sweet in the night. Cora—’
‘I know that, Colin. I was there with your firstborn. Remember? Shame you weren’t there most of the time too.’
‘Well, OK. I regret that now. I should have helped more. I wish I had. That’s why I’m going to do it differently this time round. I’m going to be a good father.’
‘Well, remember you’re Ben’s father too. That’s all I can say.’ Bea gave up. There was no puncturing his unbearable self-satisfaction. She refrained from pointing out the smear of baby sick that ran down from the shoulder of his expensively relaxed Etro shirt. Let him face the world with his badge of fatherhood. Carrie must be finding her two young daughters such hard work (Bea sincerely hoped so) that she hadn’t noticed. This was not the man who had fathered Ben. She knew Ben recognised that too and was hurt by it. He didn’t want to go round to Colin and Carrie’s to have it rubbed in his face, but Colin didn’t understand that. He thought that by including Ben every now and then he was completing his happy family. Happy families – huh!
Her attention was brought back to the road as she joined the exit to the motorway too fast and came screaming up beside a red Saab that had earlier overtaken her. The two young guys turned and the passenger screwed his finger to his head, mouthing something at her. For God’s sake. She stuck her tongue out at them as they roared off. Not very grown-up, Bea, she admonished herself. All the same she felt much better.
Instead of returning to Ben, her mind flitted to Coldharbour. How safe was her job? She knew Adam Palmer’s reputation as a ruthless, manipulative boss who would do anything to raise his staff’s so-called performance levels. In his last incarnation, he’d turned round an ailing Pennant Publishing by wasting no time in getting rid of all the dead wood, building a small and fiercely loyal team who had successfully shaped and tightened the list. Would he be bringing any of them with him? If he did, how would that affect her?
As she approached the outskirts of Harmchester, she took a right into the narrow lane that led to her mother’s house. She loved the drive down there, so familiar that memories of her childhood rushed into her mind as she turned into the open gate at the top of the drive, which led to the house that stood just as it had since she, Will and Jess had been brought up there.
She crunched over the gravel to the porch, a relatively recent addition to the faded but still elegant Georgian house. Gumboots crowded the small space below the ancient duffel coats and scarves that she, her brother and sister had forgotten when they’d finally left home. It was just as if they were about to return. Housekeeping had never been her mother’s strongest point, she reflected, noticing the dried mud on the flagstones, and the cobwebs above her head. Even Miss Havisham might have set slightly higher standards. However, at least she and her siblings had been allowed to get on with their own lives, blessed with a mother who would take her independence to the grave with her, if she had any control over her future. And let’s hope she does, Bea willed.
‘Mum! Where are you?’ she yelled, as she let herself into the dim panelled hallway. Bending to pick up a few scattered letters, mostly bills and mail-order catalogues from the floor, she balanced them in the minimal space available on the small gate-legged table that held the phone.
She called again, putting her head round the door into the sitting room. The knitting left mid-row on the comfy plum-coloured sofa and the voices from Any Questions? on the radio signalled that Adele couldn’t be far away. The gilt mirror over the mantelpiece could have done with a good dusting and the hearth might have benefited from being cleaned out. The books were crammed higgledy-piggledy onto the shelves at either side of the chimney breast. Not for the first time, Bea thought her mother might benefit from moving to somewhere smaller. They had talked about the huge task it would involve, but Adele was waiting until the time was right. Whatever that meant.
‘Mum!’ She heard the familiar edge of impatience creep into her voice. Making a mental note to control it, she tried once more. ‘Mum.’ Better.
‘Here, dear. I’m in the kitchen . . .’ The crash that followed made Bea run down the flagged corridor past the stairs and through the door at the end of the passage. Her mother was on the floor, rubbing her leg, surrounded by saucepans and the rail that was supposed to suspend them within easy reach above the ancient Aga.
‘What on earth are you doing? Are you all right?’ Bea’s relief at seeing her in one piece swiftly turned to exasperation. She righted a fallen chair to where it belonged under the table, trying not to let her irritation show.
‘I’m absolutely fine. I was just trying to straighten the rail. I suppose I should have taken the pans off first. I just pulled a bit too hard and the whole thing collapsed.’ Adele rubbed her elbow where she’d caught it on the Aga.
‘But why didn’t you wait for me to do it for you? We’ve talked about this thousands of times. You could have been hurt.’ Bea couldn’t stop the edge creeping back into her voice.
‘Oh, rubbish, darling. I didn’t want to bother you. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting you,’ she announced breezily.
As Adele got to her feet, brushing plaster dust off her cardigan, Bea registered that she was still wearing her pyjama bottoms and slippers. ‘But, Mum, I’ve come to take you out to lunch. Don’t you remember? We arranged it on Wednesday.’
Adele rolled her eyes to the Kitchen Maid adorned with damp tea towels and her underwear. ‘Of course. How stupid of me. I’ll just be a minute.’
‘But you’re not even dressed yet.’
‘Nor I am.’ Her mother dived into the laundry basket for some tights. ‘It won’t take me long, darling.’ She disappeared along the corridor and up the stairs.
Bea stayed where she was, bending to pick up the pans. Should she be more concerned about Adele? Her feelings of responsibility for her mother weighed heavy even though she knew they weren’t wanted. If something happened to Adele, it would be her fault. After all, of the three children, she was the one who lived closest. Will had married his Australian girlfriend and won the bonus prize of a new life in Sydney while Jess was wrapped up in her perfect family of one long-suffering husband and two children (she’d have had the point-four if she could have arranged it) in spick-and-span heaven outside Edinburgh. Bea resolved to bring up the subject of moving house again, but not right now. She didn’t want to spoil the afternoon ahead.
Tempted though she was to do the bit of washing-up piled by the sink, she ignored it, knowing that her mother would only take her help as a form of criticism. Instead she returned to the sitting room to put the fireguard in place before standing and staring out of the window at the long garden stretching towards the copse beyond. Just the sight of it brought back all those years of hide-and-seek, bonfires, camping. If only Ben could have enjoyed the place in the same way, but childhood was different these days. Nobody was thrown outside after lunch and told to ‘go and play’ for a couple of hours any more. She could imagine Ben’s reaction if she’d ever dared to try.
‘I’m ready.’ Adele came into the room, having put on a taupe cotton skirt with a neat white blouse, car keys in hand.
‘I’ll drive, Ma.’ Although Adele’s doctor seemed to think she was still capable, the idea of her mother driving scared the hell out of Bea. She wasn’t frightened for Adele but for everybody else on the road. ‘You can navigate.’
‘Where are we going again?’
‘The Hare and Hounds in Ludborough. If we get there early enough we’ll be able to sit outside.’
The lanes were almost empty as Bea drove, ignoring Adele’s uncertain directions and relying on the satnav. They arrived without mishap and pulled into the already busy car park alongside the pub. Above the porch, darkened windows winked out from behind the profusion of vivid pink and red petunias, yellow golden eye and trailing blue lobelia crammed into the window boxes. Mother and daughter picked their way through the dim lounge bar, ordering their drinks en route, and out into the back garden, blinking at the sudden light.
It was the best kind of English summer’s day – blue sky with puffs of cloud chased across it by a light wind. Sitting in the pub garden at a table in the shade of a whispering beech tree with a bowl of soup, a chunk of crusty bread and a glass of lager, the world seemed a better place. Inevitably, the conversation moved immediately to Bea’s own life. As usual, her mother could be relied upon to put her mind to good use when listening to Bea, helping her to get matters into some sort of perspective.
Although she was of the generation of middle-class wives whose pregnancy had put an end to their ambition and who had stayed at home to bring up their children, Adele was an intelligent woman, whose husband had trusted her good sense when he had had to make his own business decisions. She had known exactly how his bank functioned, who worked there and what they did or didn’t contribute and how he was able to manipulate them to his success. As a result, she had developed a pragmatic stance from which to view life. So, as far as she could see, whatever happened at Coldharbour, there was nothing Bea could do to influence events. If she wanted to keep her job, or until she had decided whether or not she did, she should put her head down and work hard, adopting the stance that Adam Palmer expected: tough, go-getting. When she’d won his confidence, she’d be in a position to make a choice. As for Ben, had Bea ever seen a monosyllabic twenty-two-year-old who spent all day in front of the TV? Of course not. The boy would grow out of it, just like all the others. Bea had a nasty feeling that there were plenty of twenty-two-year-olds who never had.
Later, as Adele was laughing at the story of her daughter’s latest dating fiasco, Bea’s phone rang.
‘Bea, it’s Kate. You’ll never guess.’
‘Well, for God’s sake tell me, then.’
‘It’s Ellen. She’s got herself a man!’
For a moment Bea was thrown. ‘Ellen? Hang on a minute.’ She held up one finger and gestured to her mother that she wouldn’t be long.
Adele nodded, quite content to watch what was going on at the tables around her while she waited for Bea to finish.
‘Yes, Ellen. Your old university friend who’s been single since her husband died. That Ellen.’ Bea could hear Kate’s excitement. ‘I went to the gallery this morning and she told me. He’s one of her customers!’
‘You have got to be joking. After all this time? Who is he? When did she meet him?’ Bea was ashamed to admit to herself that, instead of sharing Kate’s evident pleasure, she was piqued by the idea that, after years of apparent indifference to the opposite sex, Ellen had beaten her to it. Somehow the natural order of things seemed to have been skewed.
‘They just met and he’s moved in with her already. Well, at least until the kids get back.’
‘What?’ For once Bea was speechless.
‘It’s true. He’s not even forty. And she wants us to meet him. I said I’d tell you to expect a call from her.’
Moved in with her? That couldn’t be right. Ellen would never do anything so hasty. Although she had made some canny snap decisions over the artists she took on at the gallery, outside her work life this was a woman for whom ‘dithering’ was a watchword. But what appeared to be indecision was really circumspection. And Kate didn’t make mistakes. She listened, absorbed what she was told and considered her next course of action. She wouldn’t have told Bea any of this unless she was absolutely sure it was true.
Bea ended the conversation more abruptly than she meant to. She couldn’t share Kate’s pleasure in the news, not just yet. She needed time to take it in, get over her own feelings of what felt horribly close to envy. She was ashamed of herself. What an unpleasant person she must be, if she couldn’t share in a friend’s happiness without thinking of herself first.
But why didn’t Ellen tell me? Bea wondered. We’ve been friends for almost thirty years, seen each other through so much, and yet she told Kate. Kate, to whom Bea had only introduced Ellen about ten years ago when Kate and Paul had moved to London from Manchester. Bea disliked the insidious needle of resentment that pricked her when she was reminded of the strong relationship between her two friends. But it was true that, having introduced them because she thought they’d get on, there were times when she felt the odd one out, such was the bond that had developed between them.
‘What is it, darling? I’ve lost you.’ Adele’s voice brought her back to the present.
‘That was Kate telling me that Ellen’s got herself a man at last.’
‘But that’s wonderful. She’s been lonely for so long.’
‘Lonely?’ That wasn’t the way Bea saw her friend at all. ‘What makes you say that? She’s had the kids, and Simon’s family have always supported her, as well as Kate and me. She’s always said she didn’t want anyone else.’
‘Bea, dear, try to be a little more understanding. Of course lots of people have loved her and looked after her. But that’s not the same as being in love, is it? It’s not the same as having someone special to share things with, someone to provide a buffer against the world outside, someone who makes you feel safe and loved. Your father did all those things for me – all those things that I know you’re looking for yourself, although you’d never put it that way.’ Adele reached across to grasp Bea’s hand while Bea looked away, suddenly self-conscious – her mother knew her far too well.
She wasn’t in the mood to discuss the truth of her own feelings so briskly changed the subject, making her mother laugh as she regaled her with the story of the date who had come to pick her up in his van. When she’d opened the door, the first thing she saw was a made-up double mattress in the back. All she’d let him see of her was her back as she beat a hasty retreat into her house.
By the time Bea and her mother left the pub, everything was back on an even keel and they headed into the nearby town to buy something for supper and to stock up Adele’s fridge for another week.
Chapter 6
When Bea had cut off their conversation so abruptly, Kate had understood exactly what was going on in her friend’s mind. Bea’s emotions were so transparent. But why couldn’t she just accept that Kate and Ellen’s friendship was inevitably different from the relationships Bea had with either one of them? And, more importantly, that it didn’t matter. They were old, close friends who shouldn’t be divided just because of Bea’s irrational jealousy.
She picked up the newspaper that Paul had left spread across the kitchen table and took it outside to the patio. She sat down and began to leaf through the pages while working out which jobs to do the next day. She knew that if she didn’t take the secateurs to the garden soon, the whole place would be a jungle. The white wisteria, while beautiful in flower, grew so vigorously that it was threatening to overwhelm the pergola and the apple tree beside it. The summer storms during the week meant that the weeds were pushing their way through her carefully planted borders and the shrubs seemed to have taken on a life of their own as they sprouted towards the sun, spreading sideways, fighting for space.
As she considered what to tackle first, she was interrupted by a sudden shout from inside where Paul, in khaki shorts, T-shirt and sandals – he’d got the message about not wearing socks with them at long last – was jumping up and down, sucking the index finger of his right hand.
‘What’s happened?’ She got up. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I cut my finger on a bloody tin,’ he muttered. ‘Where are the plasters?’
As he moved across to the sink, Kate could see the large chrome Brabantia bin on its side, rubbish spilling across a sheet of newspaper on the floor with a green plastic bucket nearby. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked, as she opened a cupboard to get out the first-aid box, then passed him a small box of plasters.
‘I’m going through the rubbish – obviously.’ Paul was running his finger under the tap, the water streaming scarlet. ‘Perhaps you should have a look at this. Stitches or septicaemia – I don’t know which would be worse.’
Years of experience of being married to one of the world’s great hypochondriacs had taught Kate to ignore all remarks relating to his well-being. They were invariably exaggerated. It had always struck her as odd that a man with such an impressive City profile should be such a wuss behind his front door.
‘Have you lost something?’
‘No! Don’t put that there.’ Paul’s attention turned from his injury as he grabbed the handful of orange peel she was about to return to the bin and tossed it into the bucket instead. ‘The fruit and veg go in the bucket, the paper in the plastic box and everything that can’t be recycled goes in the bin. How many times do I have to remind everyone?’
She stared, astonished, as he continued to rummage through the mess picking out potato peelings, teabags and leftovers from supper the night before.
‘I’m the only one in this house who takes recycling seriously,’ he added.
‘I hope you’re not saying I don’t? Sometimes I forget, that’s all. It’s going to get mixed up once it’s in the rubbish van anyway.’
‘Kate, you haven’t a clue what happens in the van – or at the recycling centre, come to that. I’m just trying to do my bit – well, our bit.’ He separated out some pieces of egg shell.
‘Isn’t this a bit extreme? The odd bit of potato or orange peel in the wrong place isn’t going to bring the world grinding to a halt.’
‘If everybody talked like that . . .’
‘Pinch me, please.’
‘What?’
‘Pinch me. I want to be absolutely certain that we’re really having this conversation.’
She knelt down and began to help him sort out the rubbish, unable to stop a snort that turned into a stifled giggle. ‘Look at us!’ Within seconds, they were sitting side by side on the floor, laughing together like old times.
‘Are you going into the surgery today?’ Paul recovered himself enough to ask, satisfied that everything was in the right place.
‘I haven’t decided. It’s such a lovely day but I suppose I ought to get on top of my referrals. Why?’
‘In that case, I’ll go down to the fishmonger’s and get the stuff for that bouillabaisse I’ve wanted to try for ages. I’ve started making some panna cotta too.’
Kate smiled. ‘Sounds good.’ She considered her husband as he went over to pull out a recipe book. He was still so much the man she had fallen in love with so many years earlier. ‘Will Jack be in?’
‘God knows. You know what he’s like. Saturday night? I doubt it.’
As if on cue, the sound of the bathroom door prefaced the sound of footsteps heading downstairs.
‘Morning, Marge.’ Jack hugged his mother. ‘Anything for breakfast?’
Kate squeezed him back, feeling a great rush of affection towards the tousled twenty-two-year-old who towered above her. She leaned against his Chelsea strip, inhaling his sandal-wood aftershave, yet again struck by the speed with which all her children had grown up and saddened by the thought that it wouldn’t be long before they’d all gone. Jack was the last to fly the nest. ‘Try the fridge. Are you going to be in tonight?’
‘In? What, here? No way. I’m off to the Chelsea match and then I’m meeting some mates. There’s a party in Chiswick somewhere.’
‘So it’s just us, then.’ Paul pulled out a used envelope and began writing his shopping list.
‘Again.’
‘Don’t say it like that. We haven’t had a night in together for ages.’
‘Yeah, Mum. Chill out. The old man’ll cook something great and you can open one of those posh bottles of wine you insist on keeping under lock and key.’
‘Only because I know they’re not safe when you and your mates are around and we’re not.’
‘Just because we finished off that crate of Château-something-or-other when you were away. How was I meant to know it was so special?’
‘My point exactly.’ She put her arm around Paul’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. ‘It’s a lovely idea. Let’s do it.’
Fifteen minutes later, she was on her own with a valuable half-hour in which to do nothing. Paul had gone off armed with carrier-bags and Jack had left for Stamford Bridge, having rejected the contents of the fridge in favour of a sausage sarnie on the way. As she resettled herself on the garden bench with a coffee and the paper, her thoughts returned to Ellen. She had been glowing from the inside out this morning, giddy with happiness. Whoever this man was, he must be a good thing if he could bring about a change like that so suddenly. Kate could still remember what it felt like, the intensity of that first flush of love – the sense of there being no one but Paul in the world, that nothing else mattered – as if it was yesterday not thirty-odd years ago.
Paul had been such a maverick then, always the life and soul, unpredictable, fun. Their children would never believe how different he was from the man they knew today. She remembered the party where they’d met, the usual student thing: crowded, loud and with plenty of drink in the kitchen. She had been sitting in a corner where it was quieter, less smoky, huddled in conversation with a couple of other medics from St Mary’s when Paul had come towards them. As soon as she saw him, her heart skipped a beat. Quite literally. She knew she wasn’t alone in fancying him, but the difference had been that, incredibly, he felt the same about her. They went home together that night and that was that. For thirty-one years their rock-solid relationship had been the envy of their friends. But the sensations she knew Ellen must be experiencing had faded long ago.
Kate sighed and stretched out her legs on the bench, leaning back with her face angled to the sun and thinking about her marriage. If anything, it was like a favourite old coat: over the years, patches of fabric had grown thin, one or two rips had been stitched up so you almost couldn’t see them – but you always knew they were there. Yet, despite its increasing shapelessness and the signs of general wear-and-tear, it still felt more comfortable than any new coat ever would. It was ‘her’. She shut her eyes, pleased with the analogy, and felt the sun warm her cheeks. Perhaps she and Paul had come to take one another a bit too much for granted over the years but tonight would be a chance to patch one of those thinning areas. Seeing Ellen had made her realise she’d like to recapture a bit of that old pizzazz and she wanted to believe Paul would too.
*
‘Darling, I can’t find the corkscrew,’ Kate yelled from the kitchen.
‘It’s up here. Come and sit down.’
She was surprised that Paul hadn’t commented on her contribution to the evening, however minimal it had been. She was used to him being more appreciative. When she’d got in, relieved to be temporarily back on top of the endless practice admin that came with her job, the scent of the Mediterranean had stolen up the stairs to greet her. Paul was absorbed in his cooking and, to her relief, refused all offers of help. Instead she went into the dining room and laid the table with the Victorian lace cloth, got out the silver, replaced the candle stubs with new, then went into the garden to snip three Belle Isis roses, their pale flesh-pink petals in full bloom. Putting them in a vase, she inhaled their myrrh-like scent, then placed them in the centre of the table. She heard the bang of the oven door, then a muttered curse, and guessed she still had time to whizz upstairs and change into a simple dusky lilac linen dress, brush her hair and even dab on a lick of lipstick before adding a quick spritz of cologne.
Paul had docked his iPod to send a piano concerto she didn’t recognise rippling round the dining room. She dimmed the lights and lit the candles, pleased with what she saw. The scene was set for seduction.
Paul came in carrying two plates. ‘I’ve messed up the panna cotta. Not thinking.’
‘That’s not like you.’ He normally got the results he wanted by adapting any recipe as he needed to. ‘But this looks delicious.’ The bouillabaisse, the garlicky croûtons and rouille breathed the South of France into the room. She watched him pull the cork on a chilled bottle of Montrachet and pour the pale, straw-coloured wine into their glasses. She lifted hers to clink with his. ‘To us.’
As Paul smiled back, she noticed the slight bags under his eyes. He looked tired. Immediately she reproached herself once more for not paying him enough attention over the last months. With the children grown-up, it was too easy to give the time that she used to devote to them to her work. Apart from that, throwing herself into the practice and all it involved meant her mind was constantly occupied, giving her little time to dwell on how much she missed her two oldest. Now that she was a partner, and had upped her number of sessions a week, she didn’t get home till nine most nights, too exhausted to do anything more than eat, doze in front of the news and go to bed. As she began to eat, she thought again about how little she knew of what really went on in Paul’s world, any more than he really did of what went on at the surgery. They met at the beginning and the end of the day, caught up with all the jobs they didn’t have time for at weekends, exchanging snippets of news as they passed each other – and so the months disappeared. An idea struck her.
‘We should think about going to see Sam. We deserve a holiday.’
‘Yes, we do. But Africa?’
‘Well, it’s going to be hard to see him anywhere else.’
‘I can’t possibly. Not now.’ Panic crossed his face before he looked down at his bowl.
‘No, of course not. But we can make plans.’ If she pressed enough, she might be able to persuade him. Dreaming up and organising the trip of a lifetime might be just the thing to bring them together again. And combined with seeing their faraway son – what could be better?
‘I’m sorry, but now isn’t the moment.’ He picked up his fork and took a last mouthful.
‘Why not?’ Why wouldn’t he explain what was causing his withdrawal from her?
‘It’s been a heavy week.’ Paul finished his meal and put his head into his hands. ‘There’s no escaping the fact that we’re going to have to make more cuts.’
‘But I thought you’d been through that.’
‘We have. But our turnover’s still down and we’ve got to cut our overheads even further if we want to stay in business.’
‘But you’ll be all right, won’t you?’ Perhaps that was what was worrying him.
‘Oh, I’ll be all right. But there are plenty of people who won’t and it won’t be easy for them to get another job in this climate. I had a young guy in the office this morning, crying, pleading with me to reassure him that he’ll keep his job and I couldn’t.’ He sounded so despairing, but Kate knew she had nothing to say that would help him. The chasm that was opening between them was already too wide for her to reach across.
The mood of the evening had changed.
‘I’m sorry, Katie. You’re right, I’m still knackered. Another early night and I’ll be fine. Coming?’
‘Actually I think I’ll stay down here and clear up. I’ve got a few things that I want to get done.’ She began to gather up the plates and glasses.
‘Well, OK. If you insist.’ He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Good night.’
Despite her earlier resolve, Kate recognised that tonight was not for romancing. The moment had gone. Pottering about in the kitchen, she relaxed in the heavy peace that descended on the house at this time of night, only ever interrupted by the odd passing car, distant police siren or the sharp, high-pitched bark of a fox. With everything put away, she made herself a cup of tea and switched on her laptop, clicking on her latest emails. At last there was one from Sam. She opened it with a happy sense of anti cipation and relief.
Hey Mum
How are you guys? Can only get online when one of the boys takes me into town. That’s why the long silence. Although I’ve only been in Ghana for a few weeks, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to be properly homesick. Coming here has been one of the best things I have ever done. After a week of acclimatisation and getting to know one another and making sure we had all the supplies we’d need, the five of us were driven to this tiny village where we’re now all living (photos to follow – have lost the lead!). I’m talking mud huts in a compound – the real deal. The villagers took to us straight away and have made us feel almost at home. I suppose they would, given we’ve come to help them build and run the school. Kev, our team leader, is dead keen that we should be helping the villagers help themselves. Enabling them by teaching them the processes rather than doing all the work ourselves. I hadn’t thought of that before but, of course, when we eventually leave, the whole point is that the project should be able to continue running without us. We haven’t actually started building yet because we’re waiting for more wood to be brought in, but in the meantime I spend hours playing football with the kids – not much of a strain! – and have even been taken hunting with the men of the village. When I’m not doing that we’re trying to work out the beginnings of a sponsorship scheme so that kids from other villages will be able to come here too . . .
As she read on, Kate couldn’t help feeling envious. What Sam was describing was as remote and intriguing to her as the photographs she saw in the pages of National Geographic, which they kept in the practice waiting room. She and Paul had always talked about how one day they would travel together but somehow they’d never got further than Europe. Early in their marriage, Kate had been happy at the centre of her new family, pitying her friends who were missing out on the joys of family life but were able to holiday where and when they wanted. But perhaps it was she who had missed out. In the end all her friends had caught her up: careers were chosen and babies were born but without the sacrifice of those early years of freedom.
She pulled down a favourite old photo from a shelf in the corner. There were the three of them, Megan, Sam and Jack, sitting in a blue plastic paddling pool in the garden. How could she and Paul have produced three such contrasting children? Smiling out at her were nine-year-old Megan, fly-away brown curls, blue eyes under fine wide-apart brows, a tip-tilted nose and a gentle mouth; Sam, at seven, with blond curls, freckles, eyes already with that faraway look despite the broad smile at the photographer, which revealed a front tooth chipped when he had fallen out of a tree; and Jack, four years younger, with short darker hair, a determined chin and a slight frown. The photo gave away exactly the people they would become: Megan married to Ned and working in the drama department of the BBC in Bristol; Sam, out of easy contact, adventuring in Africa; Jack, confident, charismatic and too soon out of university to have found his way.
Suddenly there was an almighty crash from outside, followed by the sound of something being dragged along the street. She jumped to her feet and ran upstairs into the living room where she pulled aside the curtain. There, in the middle of the road, a mangy brown fox was tearing through the contents of their food recycling bin. So much for Paul’s care in sorting out the rubbish. The animal had dragged the bin out of their front garden, forced it open, strewn everything across the road and was now sniffing round, scoffing the best bits. A sharp bark heralded the arrival of a second, which slunk between two cars further up the street, then loped towards its mate, eyes gleaming under the street light. Kate shuddered. Sitting on the back of the sofa, she knocked hard on the window to drive them away. For a moment they stopped, looked up. One stared straight at her, defiant, before going back to its feast.
The curtains drawn and lights switched off, she went upstairs to tell Paul but he was flat out, sound asleep, one arm flung across the bed, gently snoring. With a small sigh, she got herself ready for bed and slipped in beside him.
Chapter 7
‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’ Oliver came through the kitchen door, looking relaxed in his blue cashmere sweater, his hands behind his back. ‘Close your eyes.’
Oh, God. A present. Ellen knew she should have bought him the picture.
‘Hold out your hands.’
Apprehensive, unused to being given anything un expected, apart from the children’s half-baked efforts from art classes, Ellen put out a hand. She felt something, a bag, being hung over her arm. Then two more. ‘But I haven’t got anything for you.’ The part of her that had hesitated over buying the picture said that presents were reciprocal, to be given on special occasions; otherwise they were an unnecessary indulgence. Not even Simon had surprised her with something as spontaneous as this.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ She felt his hand lightly on the small of her back, aware that if he moved it a centimetre lower, it would be lying right on the roll of fat pushed up by the too-tight waistband of her skirt. He didn’t seem to notice or, if he did, to care. ‘Right. Now you can open them.’
She moved away from his hand, opening her eyes to see three bags hanging off her arm, a small one from La Perla and two large ones boasting names she had never heard of. She became uncomfortably aware of her greying, almost elastic-free Marks & Spencer underwear that had absorbed the colours from everything else in the wash over the last couple of years, of her once comfortable skirt that had seen better days, and her loose disguise-it-all cotton shirt from the same period. Out of the tissue paper came a confection (there was no other word for it) of copper-coloured lace. At least he hadn’t gone for a G-string, she saw with relief, as she separated a pair of flounced lace briefs in cotton tulle from a bra that frothed with more lace than she had ever seen on one garment. ‘Oh, God! They’re . . . well . . . beautiful.’ (And totally unsuitable.) ‘Thank you.’ (Please don’t make me try them on now.)
‘There’s more. Look again.’ Oliver had sat down and was wearing a strange expression that Ellen didn’t recognise. For a split second, it was as if the spontaneous, generous man she loved had disappeared, to be replaced by someone far more cool and calculating. Disconcerted, she looked away, reaching into the bag again, this time to find a white (more my colour) push-up (oh, no, I don’t want to show off my wrinkled cleavage) bra with matching briefs.
‘Now look in the other bags.’ The Oliver she loved was back – caring and attentive. Uncertain what she should say, Ellen sat down without a word and continued to unpack. After five minutes, she was surrounded by his purchases – an elegant lime-green belted button-through linen dress, a floral silk skirt that hugged the hips, then flared in panels from just below to be paired with a simple grey T-shirt, and a second dress in lined smoky pink cotton lawn that was low cut and fitted at the top (too fitted), empire line (will at least hide my stomach) and sleeveless (has he not noticed my flabby upper arms?). Despite her reservations about their suitability, there was no denying that he had great taste.
‘They’re beautiful. I would never have bought them for myself.’ Ellen was dreading the moment she was going to have to go upstairs and try them on, confident that she would look utterly ridiculous out of the comfort zone of her normal don’t-notice-me-I’d-put-a-bag-over-my-head-if-I-could look. ‘You’ve even got my size right.’
‘I know you wouldn’t. When did you last buy yourself something?’ His question didn’t need an answer. They both knew it must be months, if not as much as a year ago. ‘But it’s important that you look good at the gallery,’ he went on. ‘In charge.’ What was he saying? That she normally didn’t?
‘What’s wrong with the way I look now?’ Ellen’s voice sounded muffled as she began to fold the wrapping paper, returning it to the right bags ready for when she would secretly sneak the garments back to their shops. To her horror, she could feel her lower lip begin to quiver and her eyes sting.
‘Nothing, darling, nothing at all. But just try them on to see. Please. For me.’ She couldn’t resist the appeal she saw in his eyes.
Oliver was pouring two glasses of chilled Sancerre when, half an hour later, she came back downstairs in the lime linen, having tried on the lot and been almost pleasantly surprised by what she saw. Having those moments alone had given her a chance to steady herself. Turning back and forth in front of the mirror, she could see that somehow he’d chosen lines that actually flattered her far from perfect body, taking attention away from the worst bits. Even her upper arms looked better than she remembered them. Was it a fluke that he’d done so well or did he have a good eye? And she had to admit that the touch of silk underwear gave her a frisson that didn’t come with M&S cotton.
She’d picked up the photo of Simon she kept by her bed, wondering if he’d understand. He looked back at her: a confident man with a high forehead, thick dark eyebrows and a nose that had been knocked out of shape in a childhood bicycle accident. His eyes were kind, his chin strong and his mouth tilted up at the corners. He wasn’t a man to turn heads but he had been a dependable, kind and loving one. He would never have thought to buy her clothes. That wasn’t what their relationship was like. She had known that and hadn’t wanted it any different. Her priorities had been him and their children, not the irrelevance of the way she, or indeed he, had looked. But things had changed. She wasn’t the same woman she had been when he was alive. How could she be?
‘You look gorgeous,’ said Oliver, giving her a glass. ‘Let me see. Mmm. I thought that green would suit your skin. I was right.’ Despite her discomfort at being so closely scrutinised, Ellen was surprised to find herself simultaneously melting under his attention. Nobody had ever treated her like this. Even though she had only known Oliver for a short time, she realised he was already pushing her towards a reassessment of her relationship with Simon. She was beginning to see that there were perhaps sides to it that hadn’t been quite as perfect as she had previously believed. Not that Simon hadn’t adored her, but he was a man of few words and by nature not particularly demonstrative. A pat on the back or a slap on her bum was the most appreciative she remembered him being. And presents, other than on her birthday or at Christmas? Never.
‘Now, tell me one thing.’ Oliver took a couple of steps towards the french windows and looked out down the carefully planned and planted garden to the small greenhouse where Ellen had spent so many happy hours sowing her flower seeds, pricking out seedlings and potting them on. ‘I am right in thinking that the gallery is closed on Monday, aren’t I?’
‘Yes. Why?’ Just the two of them alone together. She’d like nothing more.
‘I’ve booked you a hair appointment. No, wait . . . Let me finish. And they’ll give you a facial and a manicure at the same time. I just thought you should have a day all to yourself, being pampered.’
‘Oliver, stop. I can’t possibly accept all this. It’s too much.’ She knew his generosity was well meant but, instead of adding to her confidence, paradoxically she felt the little she had gained over the past weeks with him ebbing away. ‘Besides, I like my hair the way it is.’
‘I know you do. But I want you to feel even better about yourself. I was just walking past that salon on the high street and I thought you’d like it. That’s all.’ The smile left his face and he began to snap his left thumbnail with the nail on his middle finger. ‘I can easily cancel the whole thing, if that’s what you want.’
Ellen had always thought of the beauty business as an excuse for absurd self-indulgence, something for women with more money than sense. Although Bea’s and Kate’s battle waged against the onslaught of time had always amused her, she had no wish to join them. Shouldn’t women accept the inexorable march of time, and age the way nature intended? She was used to a quick trim with Angie at the small hairdresser’s on the corner, with the result that style and chic had eluded her for years. But she was happy with that. Overcoming her discomfort and accepting Oliver’s present gracefully would be hard, but she could see he was going to be so disappointed if she didn’t. Weakened by his forlorn expression, she waved her hands. ‘No, no. I’d love to go. It’ll be a real treat. I haven’t done anything like that for years. Thank you.’
‘Right. Well, that’s agreed, then. The other thing I wanted . . .’
Before he had finished his sentence, Ellen had picked up the empty bags and was halfway up the stairs with them, crying, ‘Back in a minute. Let me show you the skirt . . .’ She stuffed the bags into the bottom of the wardrobe, just in case she changed her mind and needed to return anything, and sat on the bed to take a few deep breaths. No more! This generosity was overwhelming. Since Simon’s death she’d had to get used to being in control of her own life, but since Oliver had visited the gallery, her world was spinning off its axis and she couldn’t right it. She had been swept into this unlooked-for relationship with a man she didn’t know yet felt as if she’d known for ever. She was besieged by unfamiliar feelings that thrilled yet threw her off kilter.
Close by the photo of Simon, there was another of him with Emma and Matt on the last family holiday they’d had together in Cornwall. The four of them together on a family picnic at an isolated cove not far from Towan beach, a favourite spot that the summer tourists to the Cornish Roseland rarely discovered. The children were due to come home in just over a couple of weeks. What were they going to think of all this? She had wondered whether she should ask Oliver to move out until she’d told them, but she didn’t want him to go. Their relationship had given her a new recklessness that had overthrown almost everything she’d held close. At the same time she was frightened by what was happening to her, not knowing how to pull things back under her control but at the same time not wanting to. She felt as if she had climbed aboard a giant switchback, increasingly petrified as it neared the top of each peak, her stomach rising into her mouth as it tipped over into the descent, screaming to get off yet wanting the excitement never to end.
She looked beside the radiator where she always left her shoes, never having got round to organising a shoe rack in the wardrobe. To her surprise, the jumble that she had left this morning had been transformed into a neat row of six matching pairs. She opened her underwear drawer in the hope of finding tights she could wear with the floral skirt. As she pulled out a pair, a cascade of red confetti flew up and fluttered to the floor. Startled, she bent down and scooped up the pieces only to see that each one was shaped like a heart.
Suddenly she felt an unfamiliar sense of relaxation. How wonderful that this adoring and adorable man had come into her life and wanted to look after her. However in control of things she had appeared, there had always been an ever-present underlying fear that everything was about to fly apart. If he would do something as special as buy her clothes, tidy her shoes without being asked, and add a sprinkle of romance to her drawers (she smiled at the pun), what else might he be capable of?
She slipped the skirt over her head, then the T-shirt, pulled on the tights and one of the four pairs of heels she owned and almost skipped back downstairs.
Chapter 8
As her alarm cut through the clouds of sleep, Bea swam up towards consciousness and reached across the bed, congratulating herself on having remembered to change the sheets the previous morning. Not that she’d known what was going to happen then, of course. Anticipating the moment her hand would come into contact with a body of the male persuasion, she stretched out further, moving her arm up and down. Nobody. Suddenly awake, she opened her eyes. Definitely nobody. He must be in the shower. Or making them tea, perhaps. She curled round in the warmth of the duvet, luxuriating until he reappeared, piecing together for herself the previous day.
This time Let’s Have Lunch had got it right. As soon as she had seen him walking towards her across the airy, mini-malist Asian-fusion restaurant, she had known. A confident stride, a well-cut suit, brown eyes with a twinkle, a full head of hair, without a recessive gene in evidence, and, most important, an easy smile. If she half shut her eyes, there was definitely enough of a resemblance to Gabriel Byrne to make him extremely attractive. The second morning from hell since the arrival of Adam Palmer at Coldharbour Press had dimmed at the prospect of lunch in the company of Tony Castle.
She was not disappointed. There wasn’t a moment of awkwardness as they introduced themselves, not a moment of hesitation as they weighed each other up. Lunch sped past in a haze of laughter and conversation with an undertow of sexual tension that had made itself felt almost immediately, only to intensify the longer they spent in each other’s company. The dishes of sea bass with garlic, ginger and soy, oven-roasted lamb with fiery spices, flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce came and went, eaten almost unnoticed. Wine glasses were topped up with a never-ending stream of Sauvignon Blanc as they got to know each other. Lunch bled imperceptibly into the afternoon so that when Bea looked at her watch to see whether it was time to return to the office she was astonished to find it was already four thirty. It had hardly seemed worth going back for an hour, particularly when she briefly considered the glum faces that would surround her as they waited for Adam’s axe to fall. Her decision was made in a nano-second. She was having a good time. Why stop? If questioned, she’d just say she’d been with an author.
The graphic-design company in which Tony was a partner seemed to have little need of him either so, instead, they agreed that nothing would be nicer than to cross the river to Tate Modern. They wandered between the rooms, both of them less than half intent on the pictures on the walls. In the darkened space of a video installation, she accidentally brushed her hand against his. Did he too feel the jolt of electricity that had travelled between them? They emerged into the glare of the gallery, Bea feeling as though something in the world had shifted.
Rather than seeing more, they decided to stroll along the South Bank, stopping to watch the river traffic, leaning over the stone wall by one of the Victorian wrought-iron street lights in the shade of the giant plane trees, dazzled by the sunlight on the water. It was unusual for Bea to feel so relaxed in a stranger’s company but, she pinched herself, she really did. Tony must have kissed the Blarney Stone several times before he’d moved to London. His flow of conversation was effortless and amusing, his attention flattering, his company diverting. Everything she could have asked for in a date. As they took themselves into a small tapas bar, it dawned on Bea where all this was leading. And lead there it did.
The sex had been better than good, earth-moving, even. A half-smile slid across her face as she remembered how spontaneously and how well they’d connected. Her fear of embarrassment at getting her kit off in front of someone new had proved groundless. Tony hadn’t recoiled in horror at the sight of her body, stranger to the gym as it was. In fact, she seemed to recall, as her smile broadened, quite the reverse. Nor was she the inhibited sex-starved singleton she’d worried she might have become during the drought since Colin’s departure. To her surprise, she had found that her self-consciousness was disappearing with age.
What was keeping him for so long? Her thoughts were taking her in one direction and one direction only, and she was aware that there were a good forty-five minutes or so that could be put to good use before they both had to leave for work.
Not wanting to wake Ben by shouting, Bea edged herself out of bed, draping her faded but attractively Bohemian silk dressing-gown round her. Her attention was caught by the dust on the bedside table-top and the base of the light, all too visible in the sunshine leaking through the gap in the curtains. Not wanting Tony to realise her slummy side just yet, she grabbed the black cotton knickers she’d been only too pleased to abandon on the floor the night before and did a quick dust with them before hurling them into the laundry basket. Pleased with the result, she went to find him in the bathroom. To her surprise, the door was wide open. There was no sound of running water from inside, no steam misting the windows, as it did after the shower had been used. The blue and grey towels sat neatly folded, untouched. Turning to go downstairs, she noticed that Tony’s shoes were no longer where she remembered him slipping them off by the radiator in the hall. She couldn’t hear him opening cupboards, trying to find what he needed to make tea in a strange kitchen.
There was a good reason for that, as she discovered when she reached the ground floor and could see along the hallway to the long kitchen. Tony wasn’t there. He had gone. Gone without waking her, without saying goodbye.
Mystified, not to say disappointed, Bea decided to make herself a cup of tea to have in the bath where she would ponder this turn in events. Why would he have gone off without saying anything the night before? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he had thought that mention of an early meeting the next day would interrupt the enjoyment of the moment. He had been right. She stood on her tiptoes and stretched, confident that he’d call her later in the day. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she began planning what they might do that evening. Or was that rushing things? But going that fast seemed to be working for Ellen, so why shouldn’t it for her?
Except that, clearly, it hadn’t. The rosy glow that had enveloped her on waking began to evaporate as realisation dawned. The bastard had legged it and, worse than that, he’d gone in the middle of the night with no explanation. She cast her mind back, trying to find one for him. Had he disguised his real reaction to her body? Had gravity, food, drink and childbirth taken the toll she feared? Should she have had the Brazilian she’d been meaning to endure and hadn’t quite got round to? Perhaps she was even more out of practice than she’d thought and it had showed. What had been so good for her might not have been so good for him after all. But he had touched her, reassured her, even complimented her.
Puzzling over how someone could say the things he had without meaning them, her fury was compounded when she found the bathroom door locked. Could it be? Her hopes rose for a moment as she knocked – quite gently so as not to wake Ben. No reply. She tried again, louder this time.
‘What d’you want?’ Ben’s voice boomed through the glass panel.
Disguising her disappointment, Bea yelled, ‘For God’s sake, hurry up. You know I’ve got to go to work.’
Work. The day ahead rushed towards her, tsunami-like. This morning she was having her first official meeting with Adam to discuss ‘the future of the editorial department’. Being late was not an option. A headache that had until that moment been distant thunder on the horizon began to rumble unerringly in her direction.
‘Ben!’ she yelled again, rapping on the glass.
‘OK, Mum. OK.’ Ben unlocked the door and shambled out. ‘Chillax.’
‘If you say that to me once more, I’ll . . .’ For once words failed her as she pushed past him into the room that, minutes ago, had looked unused. Now it looked as if a whirlwind had blown through it. The pile of towels had been knocked to the floor beside an open magazine that lay half hidden by Ben’s discarded T-shirt and pants. The basin was dotted with black stubble, the razor left lying by the toothpaste tube, which was leaking into the soap dish. Bea started the shower and, with a heavy sigh, pulled off a bit of loo paper to mop up the splashes on the floor round the toilet where Ben had missed – again. No amount of asking, telling, shouting or begging seemed to make any difference. Every day started in the same old way, except that this one was even worse than usual, thanks to Mr bloody Castle.
By the time she was strap-hanging on the tube, already wilting in the heat, Bea realised she had made a big mistake in the wardrobe department. The cotton shirt she remembered looking so great on her the previous summer and that had still looked great when she was standing quite still in front of the mirror this morning was now straining dangerously across her bust while her shoes, fashionably pointed, gripped the joints of both her big toes in separate agonising vices. However, her Nicole Farhi deep blue cotton jersey skirt was nothing short of perfect.
The insult (which was how she now saw it) dealt by Tony Castle had insinuated its way to the back of her mind where it lay temporarily dormant as she concentrated on the morning ahead, going over how she was to protect her staff’s and her own jobs. Equally dormant were her concerns about how Ben might be spending his day and about her mother. She couldn’t afford to let anything or anyone deflect her focus. As she saw it, everyone who worked with her did a valuable job and didn’t deserve to lose it. They were relying on her to speak up for them and she would.
*
With the shirt problem righted with a large safety-pin (unpleasantly reminiscent of a nappy-pin) supplied by one of her younger colleagues, and unable to feel her feet, Bea knocked on Adam’s door and went in to face the enemy as the ten o’clock reminder beeped on her phone.
He barely glanced up. ‘Just one moment while I finish going through these figures.’
Rude, but at least it gave Bea time to sit down and assess her surroundings. In the couple of days he’d been there, Adam Palmer had made his mark, insisting that he take over Stephen’s office from day one. Not a popular decision with the rest of the staff, who felt that after so long with the company Stephen hardly deserved to be so humiliated. He, however, had been unbothered by the move. ‘What does it matter to me, Bea? It’s just an office. I’ll be out of here in a few weeks. I can see that he wants to make an impression and, let’s face it, I did have the best office in the building.’ Over the weekend, Stephen had moved into a smaller one on the other side of the open plan. Now that the axe had fallen, a change had come over him. Already, he looked like a man with a weight removed from his shoulders. He no longer wore a slightly anxious, distracted expression, as if something terrible was about to happen unless he did something to divert it. All those budgetary worries he had carried about with him for years had been parcelled up and passed on to Adam. He had been in the office as little as he could get away with as he silently prepared his exit. Bea was already missing his ready friendship.
She looked across the empty table to the bookshelves, where Stephen’s accumulation of Coldharbour’s titles had already been thinned so that the recent better-selling ones were standing face out to impress any visitor. Beside them were a select few that Adam had presumably been responsible for at Pennant, all having had an enviable stint on the bestseller list. Nothing like driving your success home where it’s not wanted, thought Bea. On the walls he’d hung a couple of modern prints and on his desk stood a large, framed snapshot of an attractive woman, all blonde pony-tail and cheekbones, and a freckle-faced curly-haired boy of six or seven.
So, like attracts like, thought Bea, as at last Adam looked up from his papers. She saw a lean aquiline face with steely grey eyes that appraised her for a moment before a slight smile was allowed to cross his lips. Beneath his casual but expensive striped open-necked shirt there was the suggestion of a well-worked-out body. A copper wristband sat just below the dark leather strap of his square-faced TAG Heuer watch. As he stood up to walk round the desk to join her at the table, she couldn’t help noticing his jeans (with a crease), silk socks and soft tan leather loafers.
‘So, you’re Bea Wilde.’ Far from unfriendly, his tone was more matter-of-fact.
Bea braced herself. ‘Yes. I’m the publishing director, as I think you probably know.’
‘I certainly do.’ He leaned across the table towards her and got straight to the point. ‘Would you say you’ve done a good job here?’
‘Yes, I would.’ Bea’s hackles rose in preparation to defend herself.
‘Let’s see. What was the last book you were responsible for that made the bestseller list? Remind me.’ He leaned forward. No smile now.
‘Jan Flinder’s A Certain Heart.’
‘My point. That was spring last year. Why nothing since then?’
‘You know as well as I do that that’s an impossible question to answer. We’ve had a couple that made it close, others we had high hopes for. But everyone knows that publishing’s not an exact science. If it was we’d all be rich.’
‘Of course I know that. But, these days, one would hope for more success on a list than you’ve had here.’ Adam smacked the palm of his hand on the table as he stood up to pace the room. For a few moments, he stared out of the wide plate-glass window across London. Then he turned to her. ‘We’ve got to do some drastic housekeeping. I’ve been going through the figures and, of course, talking everything through with Piers. He agrees with me that we have to reduce our overheads if we’re going forward. There’s no alternative but to lose the slack from every department.’
Bea’s stomach plummeted but she kept looking straight in his eye. This was what she’d been dreading. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Redundancies.’
‘But we need everyone we’ve got in Editorial,’ she protested. ‘There are only six of us. There really isn’t any slack. Everyone’s working to their full capacity.’
‘I know that. So I’m also proposing that we cut down the number of titles we publish per year. I want you to do fewer better. You won’t need as many staff.’ He tapped his chin with a manicured finger.
Already Bea was running through the people in the department. Stuart and Jade were indispensable. As for Alice, the managing editor who commissioned a few of her own non-fiction titles, and the two assistants, Becky and Warren, Bea couldn’t reward their loyalty and enthusiasm by putting them out of work.
‘I really don’t think we can do without any of them. Stuart and Jade—’
She was about to start justifying everyone’s employment when he cut her short. ‘The decision’s been taken, I’m afraid. I want you to lose two members of your department.’
‘Two!’ Bea’s breath was taken away. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘It’s the only way I can make the numbers work. If you’re unable to help, then perhaps you should think about your own position. I’m only interested in keeping people who’ll work with me, not against me. Think about it. We’ll talk again in a couple of days or so.’ He looked at his watch, then returned to his seat behind his desk and his papers, indicating that the meeting was over.
Bea was reeling from the brutal no-nonsense approach that she’d just encountered. Gone was Stephen’s gentle old-fashioned all-around-the-houses method of broaching something unpleasant. He’d hated upsetting his staff – but (Bea failed to dismiss the disloyal thought) the company might not have been in such a mess if he’d adopted a more leader-like approach.
As soon as she was back in her office, Stuart and Jade made a beeline for her.
‘What’s he like? Is he as tough as they say?’
‘Well, let’s just say he apparently learned his management style at the knee of Genghis Khan.’
‘What’s he going to do to the editorial department? He’s bound to want some changes, isn’t he?’ Jade’s anxiety betrayed itself in her quieter-than-normal voice.
‘Bea, you have to tell us what’s going on.’ Even Stuart, normally bothered by nothing, had dropped his customary laid-back manner.
‘Nothing’s going on.’ Even to hint at what had been said at this stage wouldn’t be in anyone’s interests. ‘All he wanted was a rundown on the staff and to go through the upcoming programme. That’s it. As soon as there’s something to tell, you two will be the first to know. Promise.’ She was surprised to discover that she hadn’t dropped the childhood habit of crossing her fingers to excuse herself when telling a lie. Just as long as they hadn’t noticed.
The rest of the day disappeared as she caught up with correspondence, put together editorial notes on a manuscript whose author was coming in the following day, talked to the publicity and art departments about the approaches they were taking to a couple of her books, and dealt with all the day-to-day business of an editorial department. Whenever possible, she avoided speculative conversations with anyone about the future of the company.
Only when she had closed her front door, thrown off her shoes, poured herself a glass of red plonk and sunk into her deep red sofa, eyes shut, did she take time to concentrate on her first conversation with Adam. A tad disenchanted with her career she might be, but not enough to throw in the towel right now. And there was something about this ruthless management style that she found exciting. His macho approach was outrageous, but she was curious to see if he was all he was cracked up to be and whether he would be able to deliver. If he could, then perhaps she wanted to be a part of his new team. If he couldn’t, it would be interesting, and maybe she would survive him. The challenge he presented was one she couldn’t possibly duck. Adele was right. However, sacrificing two members of her staff, none of whom had shown anything other than enthusiasm for their jobs, was an almost impossible demand. She sat there wrestling with the problem, convinced that a bit of lateral thinking was all that was needed to solve it. Not so.
The front door slammed as Ben crashed in, hurling his bag on the floor and himself towards the kitchen, yelling, ‘What’s for supper?’
Her ‘Hi, Ben. Good day?’ went unheard. Putting her work life to one side she concentrated on making a bowl of pasta and a green salad for them. Annoyed that she refused to let him eat his on his knees in front of the TV, Ben refused to answer her questions with anything other than grunts and monosyllables until he’d finished. Then he disappeared into the sitting room, dragging his bag behind him and muttering something about ‘Bloody parents.’ None the wiser about his life, Bea cleared up while returning to her previous musings, still getting nowhere.
Salvation came when the doorbell interrupted her ever more circular thoughts. Surely Tony Castle hadn’t come back for more. She stood to give herself a quick once-over in the mirror on the kitchen wall. Mmm. Could be worse. She ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt at windswept-and-interesting, then turned the dimmer switch to a more flattering level without quite switching the light off. Taking a deep breath and pinning on her most winning smile, she walked down the hall and flung open the door.
Chapter 9
‘I’m sorry to arrive out of the blue, but I know you’re cross with me.’ Ellen stood on the doorstep, looking expectant, with a bottle of wine in one hand and a brown and white box that Bea instantly recognised with delight as being from Artisan du Chocolat.
‘Of course I’m not.’ Bea’s disappointment at Tony’s no-show wrestled with surprise, as she ushered Ellen into the kitchen. ‘Let me find the corkscrew. You know where the glasses are.’
‘I should have called you to tell you first but it’s just that Kate came into the gallery, Oliver phoned and I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to tell you both days ago but I was so wrapped up in what was happening that I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s been crazy.’
‘Slow down.’ Bea was laughing as they settled themselves at the table. ‘God, look at you. You’re completely different.’
A blush began to colour Ellen’s cheeks. ‘I know. Oliver suggested I had my hair cut like this. Do you think it’s OK?’
‘OK? It’s taken years off you. But what about the dress? I’m used to Ellen, the woman who single-handedly keeps Levi’s afloat. You look amazing.’ She made Ellen turn around, taking in the lime dress, the slight heels, the dab of makeup, the urchin cut. Something had happened to her friend that had transformed her almost beyond recognition. ‘I’m dying to know all about everything but tell me slowly. And in detail.’
Ellen understood how miffed Bea had been not to be told her news first. They had been friends since they’d met at university and were so familiar with the way each other’s minds worked that they often didn’t need to ask what the other was thinking. Ellen’s coming round this evening was an olive branch. Bea took it readily.
Friends again, they raised their glasses in a toast, comfortable as ever at Bea’s kitchen table. As they talked, the candles on the table flickered in the breeze that was also carrying in the sounds of the neighbourhood through the wide-open patio doors. Beyond them, the small back garden was lit with a few discreet outdoor lights – a mail-order bargain from an interiors magazine. The overhead dimmers were low, the under-unit lighting giving out just enough background illumination. Thanks to an uncharacteristic cleaning frenzy a couple of days earlier, the black granite worktops of Bea’s kitchen were unusually tidy, apart from a disorganised stack of papers by the phone. The much-cherished double-door American fridge punctuated their conversat ion with the sound of ice cracking in the ice dispenser. Through the side window, they could see over the garden wall into the neighbouring kitchen where a woman stood with her back to them, round-shouldered with exhaustion, as she worked her lonely way through a vast, precarious pile of ironing. Down Bea’s hallway, a strip of light escaped from under the door of the sitting room, with a not-so-muffled bass beat that indicated the defiant presence of Ben. It wasn’t long before Bea had caught up on the unexpected developments in Ellen’s life, the when, where and why answered.
Naturally sceptical about the concept of love at first sight, she nonetheless had to concede this seemed to have been what had happened to Ellen. Seeing her friend so happy was enough to dispel the negative thoughts that Bea had been trying to keep at bay. ‘He sounds terrific – and just the man for you. What does he do?’
‘Actually, nothing at the moment.’ Ellen looked half apologetic in the face of Bea’s badly hidden surprise. ‘He hasn’t been back in the country for long. But he’s applying for curator and gallery jobs. There just aren’t that many around, that’s all. I’m sure he’ll get something in the end.’
Bea decided to change tack to what mattered more. ‘What about the kids? Do they know? When are they coming back?’
‘That’s just what Kate asked. I’ve thought so hard about them and, of course, I’ve talked to Oliver.’ Her face brightened as she said his name. ‘They’ve been having such a lovely time in Cornwall that I haven’t dared hint at anything over the phone.’
‘Well, you’re going to have to tell them.’
‘That’s what she said too. But I don’t know when.’
‘Maybe you should take a few steps back. Get him to move out, then introduce him gradually into their lives.’
Ellen’s face crumpled.
‘It doesn’t have to be for long, for heaven’s sake. I may not be the best example of hands-on motherhood but I do know that if you’re serious about him you have to do this properly.’
‘You’re right. You’re a good friend not to let me make such a stupid mistake.’ A note of resolve entered Ellen’s voice. ‘I’ll have to get him to see that’s the right thing to do.’
‘Just as importantly, when do we get to meet him?’
‘I’ll think of something as soon as I get back from Cornwall. Promise. But I don’t want to make him feel like something in the zoo with the two of you giving him the once-over.’
‘Mmm. Sticking our fingers through the bars to give him a poke or a handful of nuts. We might be a bit much, I can see that.’ Their laughter was that of old friends who completely understood one another.
‘No. What I’ve got to do is sort this out. I think I’ll go down alone to Cornwall for the second last week of the holiday as planned. I’ll tell them I’ve met Oliver and they can meet him after they get back.’ Her relief at having made a plan gave way to anxiety. ‘Do you think they’ll like him?’
‘God knows. I hope so. But as I haven’t met him how could I possibly know?’ Bea was as relieved as Ellen that they’d reached a conclusion but was impatient to catch her friend up on her own news. As she was wondering, with an unusual degree of tact, how to change the subject, the sitting-room door opened, a shaft of light illuminating the hall, falling across the multi-coloured woollen rug Bea had lugged home from Marrakesh, regretting it every step of the way. Inveigled into a shop in the souk, she’d been unable to resist either the mint tea or the guile of the shopkeeper. The light hit the long mirror over the radiator, illuminating the reflection of the Bryan Pearce harbourscape hanging on the opposite wall, a reminder of family holidays in St Ives. Ben emerged from the sitting room to slouch into the kitchen, an empty glass in one hand and a plate in the other.
‘Hi, Ben. How are you getting on? Must be nearly A-2s, isn’t it?’
Bea envied Ellen’s breezy chat-among-equals approach, not to mention her ability to ignore the expression of non-cooperation that was making itself plain on Ben’s face.
‘Yeah. All right,’ he muttered, avoiding Ellen’s eye by keeping his own fixed on the floor. He put the plate and cup on the side, before opening the fridge to take a beer.
‘Darling! Not on a week night,’ said Bea.
Ben returned the can with a grunt, exchanging it for a carton of milk and a yoghurt. He lifted the carton and tipped it towards his mouth.
‘Ben! How many times have I—’
‘Bea,’ hissed Ellen.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘But, honestly, I—’
Ellen silenced her with a glare. As Ben opened a cupboard and started piling biscuits on his plate, she tried again: ‘Which subjects have you gone for?’
‘Haven’t decided yet.’ Ben shook his fringe out of his eyes. ‘Maybe English, history, media studies. Maybe I’ll just leave school and get a job.’
Don’t rise to it, Bea said to herself. Don’t rise to it. Simultaneously, she heard her own intake of breath and her sharp ‘Ben! Don’t be so bloody ridiculous.’
‘Well, I might.’
‘Perhaps now isn’t quite the right moment to discuss it.’ Ellen was the epitome of family conciliation as Ben disappeared, armed with his supplies, his thunderous mood adequately communicated by the hunch of his shoulders, the slam of the door and the increase in the music’s volume. Bea took a swig of wine. ‘Bloody child! Sometimes I think I can’t get through to him any more.’
‘He’s only saying it because he knows exactly the reaction he’ll get,’ said Ellen. ‘And you know nagging never works.’
‘I can’t help it. He drives me mad.’
‘He’s just at that age,’ Ellen reassured her. ‘You’ve got to ignore it. He’s still a great kid underneath all that.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so. Give him a couple of years and you’ll see.’ Ellen got up to put the kettle on. ‘Now, where were we? I think it’s your turn.’
‘How long have you got?’ So saying, Bea launched into her latest news from the work and dating front, giggling about Mark and bemoaning Tony Castle. For the next couple of hours, they would go back and forth over the same well-trodden ground, as they examined and re-examined their lives, loves (or lack of them) and children. They had spent countless similar evenings in each other’s company, enjoying the friendship, discretion, support and advice. Even if Bea’s feathers were ruffled from time to time, Ellen took that in her stride. That was what friendship was about, thought Bea. Ultimately, nothing was strong enough to break the bond between them.
*
Before she went to bed, Bea made herself a cup of hot chocolate and took it to the sitting room, ignoring the debris that was evidence of Ben’s earlier occupation. Mothers and children – who’d have ’em? She opened the box Ellen had brought and took out the distinctive brown tub of pink and black pepper caramels. As the fusion of sweet and savoury flavours melted in her mouth, she thought with affection of Adele and with some sadness of the last conversation they’d had together when she’d dropped her mother at home.
They had sorted out the shopping and sat down with a cup of tea before Bea had touched on the subject of Adele moving house. To her surprise, an uncertain look crossed Adele’s face and she said what she must have been bursting to say all day.
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Bea. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t know how you’ll react. Janey Blythe has asked me to move to Bournemouth with her. There.’ She sat back, looking pleased but apprehensive, waiting to see the effect her announcement would have on her daughter. Janey Blythe was Adele’s near neighbour, a sprightly, slightly younger woman who, like Adele, was widowed, with her children long established in their own lives. The two had grown particularly close after the deaths of their husbands and Bea knew they spent hours talking about their own and their children’s lives. Janey was always keen to try new things. Her last idea had been to encourage Adele to go to the local pottery class with her. The three wonky vases on top of the old upright piano suggested lots of enthusiasm but little skill.
‘Ye-es.’ Bea was hesitant, worried she’d been wrong in her assessment of her mother’s state of mind. She’d clearly completely lost her marbles. ‘But where? And what about the house?’
‘I’m going to sell it. I’ve been rattling around it for years. We’ve found two flats – actually, Janey has – in a new development principally for old crocks like us very close to the sea front.’ Adele was beaming at the prospect of something so different.
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