‘And if you did decide you could stay, after all – perhaps if you didn’t need to move back to your house yet? – I hope we could be friends.’
I was now close to tears. Friends? Mary must have been in her late sixties. She could have been my grandma. Why would she want to be friends with someone like me? And – maybe I’d imagined it – but did she know I’d been lying about the house fire? There was something about the way she’d mentioned moving back to my house, but without actually mentioning the fire, in front of Pat … something about the look she’d given me … and I realised what I would really have liked to do was completely unburden myself to her, apologise for all my lies and tell her the truth. I was sure, somehow, that she’d understand, and forgive me.
But what was I thinking? If I was going to stay in Crickleford, I couldn’t possibly start blabbing the truth to people. I had to stay on my guard! Keep my secrets! Keep my distance! I wiped my eyes, gave Mary a smile, and told her I’d think about it.
‘I suppose I might be able to stay for a bit longer,’ I said, as casually as I could.
‘I do hope so. Scrap would miss you so much if you went.’
‘So would Pongo,’ Pat agreed. ‘Please come and see us, if you decide to stay.’
‘And us,’ Mary said with another smile. ‘We could take Scrappy for walks together.’
‘I’d like that,’ I said wistfully. I took the bag of books Mary handed me for Lauren, and watched them both walking away before closing the door and leaning on it. Maybe I could give it a bit longer here, and see how things panned out. I’d just have to be careful around Matt. Meet him, perhaps, but hardly talk to him at all. I could do that, surely.
That was what I told myself, anyway, as I walked into town later to meet him in The Star for coffee, as arranged. But as soon as I saw him I had mixed feelings again. In one way I was wishing I’d stuck to my guns and just refused completely to talk to him for the newspaper. On the other hand, by the time it was published I could be out of town, on my way to the Outer Hebrides and/or Timbuktu. But I wasn’t sure now about leaving! And I felt sorry not to help Matt out with his big story, now he’d turned out to be … well, quite nice to me.
In the end, we stuck to our agreement. No photo. No surname. No mention of my age or where I might have come from. I guessed he was being sympathetic to my supposed harassment from an ex-boyfriend. Fortunately I did manage not to mention being made homeless in a raging inferno, having a little girl called Holly or any of my other ridiculous lies. He was simply going to refer to me as: Emma, who was staying overnight at the house to look after Pongo the Alsatian.
‘I’m not sure that this is really going to be my big story, to be honest,’ Matt said with a sad smile, when he’d finished jotting down the few sparse details I’d given him.
‘Maybe you’ll get a better story after the trial. More stuff might come out then,’ I tried to console him.
‘Mm, maybe. Well, thanks anyway, Emma,’ he said. ‘And, well, good luck – wherever you end up. Pity you have to go, though.’
‘Thank you.’ I felt myself blushing slightly. Did he mean that, or was he just being polite? He’d looked at me in a certain kind of way, as he said it, making me wonder if we might perhaps have seen more of each other if I didn’t have to move away. But maybe I was just imagining it. ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure now, actually, about leaving,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t really want to go.’
‘Don’t, then.’
I definitely wasn’t imagining it. But then again, he was probably just hoping I’d stay around so he could get more material out of me.
‘I’m not just saying that because I want you to tell me more about the break-in,’ he said. What was he – a mind-reader? ‘I just don’t understand what you’re running away from – apart from your ex, I mean. And I presume he hasn’t found you here yet.’
I didn’t reply. He continued to look into my eyes. It was disconcerting, to put it mildly.
‘I understand that you don’t want to tell me anything,’ he went on after a moment. ‘But I haven’t I badgered you for more information, have I?’
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Haven’t I, in fact, stuck to our deal, kept my word and promised faithfully to only write what you’re allowing me to write?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I’m not going to hassle you, Emma. I can see how worried you are about talking to the press, and I understand that you don’t want your ex to find out where you are. I think everyone’s entitled to their privacy anyway.’
‘You don’t sound much like a journalist.’
‘Perhaps that’s why I still haven’t got my promotion,’ he said with a rueful smile. He paused, and then went on: ‘I meant what I said yesterday. I’d feel bad if I thought you were going because of me. I’m grateful that you’ve agreed to talk to me at all, but I won’t be chasing you for more.’
I thought about it, of course, all the way home. Was I overreacting? Was it ridiculous to threaten to move away just because one journalist had wanted to talk to me about the break-in? He did seem a completely different type of journalist from any I’d had the misfortune to be bothered by before, but could I really believe his assurances? I’d been fooled often enough before by journalists who pretended to be my friends, who’d buy me a couple of drinks and encourage me to confide in them – tell them stuff about my relationship with Shane that I absolutely shouldn’t have talked about.
The bottom line was, why would I trust Matt any more than those others? I couldn’t let my guard down just because he was nice to me, or because … well, let’s be honest, I fancied him! But I did want to stay in Crickleford, especially after Mary saying all those things about how well I’d settled in. Could I risk it?
I still hadn’t completely made up my mind the next day, but as it was Holly’s birthday I tried to put everything else out of my mind until after she’d gone off to preschool.
‘Happy birthday, sweetheart.’ I handed her the wrapped present and she tore the paper off excitedly. ‘Mummy, it’s another one of my favourite books!’ she squealed.
‘Ah, thank you, Emma,’ Lauren said, smiling at me. ‘That was a perfect choice.’
I smiled, pleased to see the little girl was so happy with it. I couldn’t remember ever being thrilled with a book, of any sort, when I was a child. But, then, I was a different kind of child altogether.
‘Will you read it to me, Emma?’ Holly asked me, looking through it at the pictures.
I hesitated. ‘I thought you were going to preschool in a minute?’
‘Yes, come on, Holly, get your shoes on or we’ll be late,’ Lauren said. ‘Perhaps Emma will read it to you at bedtime, after your party.’
I waved them off, promising Lauren I’d get everything ready for the lunchtime party while she was out, as I wasn’t working. It was hard to concentrate on sandwiches and decorations while my mind kept wanting to return to my problem. Was I going to move away? And if I did, would I ever work as a pet sitter again? I’d been enjoying it, and I was looking forward to taking on the new work that I’d been promised. This had been a new start for me, the possibility of an actual new career. I sighed. It would probably be best to go. I should know better than to trust Matt Sorrentino, just because he was charming and good-looking with an exotic-sounding surname.
By the time Lauren came home with a very overexcited Holly, I’d set the table for the lunch party, blown up all the ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘4 Today!’ balloons, arranged sandwiches, sausages and crisps on plates and put on one of Holly’s CDs of kids’ songs.
‘Ah, thanks, Emma,’ Lauren said. ‘What would I do without you?’
‘It was no trouble,’ I said. ‘But where are all the guests?’
‘Just following us down the road with their mummies. OK, here’s the first one at the door! Let the fun begin!’
And yes, it was fun, but it was also exhausting! I developed a whole new respect for mothers everywhere during the course of
that afternoon. Lauren and the other mums who stayed to help dealt, apparently calmly and effortlessly, with drink spillages, food mess, squabbles, tears (nobody liked being the first one out in Musical Chairs), a toilet accident and a panic over a lost hairband, which the child in question viewed as a major catastrophe (‘It was my bestest, favouritest pink spotty one’). It finally transpired one of the other little girls was wearing it around her wrist as a bracelet, which needless to say caused some more fuss but was handled, I thought, with admirable diplomacy. Jon managed to get home early that evening, in time to calm down his overexcited daughter and put her to bed.
‘Have a glass of wine with us, Emma,’ Lauren said, as I was helping her dish up our dinner. ‘You’ve been such a help today.’
‘But I really enjoyed it,’ I said truthfully. The party had left me feeling wistful, in a way I didn’t quite recognise. I’d found myself thinking about my niece and nephew back in Loughton. Little Jeremy’s third birthday would be coming up soon. He and his baby sister Rose were both born while I was in the States, and I’d sent them lavish, expensive gifts to make up for the fact that I wasn’t seeing them. I couldn’t afford the expensive gifts now but I’d make sure I didn’t forget their birthdays, even though I still couldn’t be there with them.
Then I started thinking about Kate, my twin, and our own birthday parties when we were children. We’d started off having a happy childhood – hadn’t we? But from a very early age I’d been aware of the differences between us. We weren’t even very similar in appearance. Kate was dark, like our mum, and shorter than me, whereas I’d inherited Dad’s red hair and freckles. But of course, the other differences were much more of an issue, and by the time we were at senior school, we were so totally unlike each other that people who didn’t know us often refused to believe we were twins.
Lauren was smiling at me now. ‘Are you OK? You look like you’re miles away.’ She gave me a thoughtful look. ‘I expect you miss your family, don’t you?’
I felt as if she’d been reading my mind.
‘Yes, I do, of course,’ I admitted. And then I flushed, wondering yet again whether she might have heard my dreadful stories about the house fire and my parents looking after refugees.
‘Well, if it’s any consolation, you’re already like one of the family to us,’ she said. She put down the serving spoon and gave me a quick hug. ‘You know, I always used to wish I had a younger sister. I’d have wanted her to be just like you.’
I sniffed. She was making me feel tearful now.
‘You might not think that if you really were my sister,’ I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.
‘Rubbish. Honestly, Jon and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer person to have living with us.’
And that decided it once and for all. How could I leave, now? Not only had Mary said we could be friends, and that she thought I’d fitted in well, but I’d actually acquired a new surrogate family, one that seemed to like me more than my own did. And as long as they never found out who I really was, then perhaps my place, now, really was here in Crickleford with them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Within days, I’d had my next pet-sitting booking confirmed, and it was for the following week. It was for one of the ladies who’d been in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe when Annie had made such a fuss of me after the break-in. A strikingly beautiful and smartly dressed woman of Asian appearance, aged I guessed about forty, she’d been sitting on her own with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, keeping herself rather more to herself than the other customers, but as she was leaving she’d stopped at my table, introduced herself as Vanya Montgomery, shook my hand rather formally and asked me how experienced I was with cats. When I told her about Albert, and the cats my family used to have, she seemed highly delighted.
‘You’ve had pedigree cats yourself. Ah, you’ll understand my concerns, then.’
Her concerns seemed to be considerable. Her champagne Burmese, Sugar (‘That’s obviously a pet abbreviation of her pedigree name, you understand’), was a show champion who apparently required meticulous care and attention. I soon gathered that Vanya and her husband had no children, and Sugar was not only a champion but also Vanya’s baby. It seemed there’d been a local woman who could just about be trusted to look after Sugar when necessary, but she’d now divorced her husband and moved to Bath for work, which was extremely inconsiderate of her and had left Vanya in a difficult position with regard to poor Sugar. I remembered hearing about this woman from other people – she was the one with an apparent allergy to dogs. She must have let down a lot of cat owners by her thoughtless divorce and move to Bath!
‘If I find I can trust you to look after my baby, I’ll pay you well, and there’ll be a lot of work for you,’ Vanya had continued.
‘Do you have lots of holidays, then?’ I asked.
‘Holidays?’ She looked at me in surprise. ‘My goodness no, I wouldn’t leave poor Sugar just to go flitting off on holidays. Unfortunately, though, I have to make frequent business trips. That’s the price you pay for being the CEO of a multinational business.’ She smoothed her hair and gave a weary sigh. She may have made her job sound like a burden, but she still managed to sound pretty impressed with herself.
‘I’d love to look after Sugar for you,’ I’d said. ‘Just let me know the dates as soon as you have them.’ And we’d arranged that I’d call around and meet the cat this week.
I set off, feeling pleased and positive about my decision to stay in Crickleford. Vanya’s house was set on the outskirts of town, down a long drive, and was by far the largest I’d seen in Crickleford. I’d felt slightly intimidated by Vanya and her haughty manner, but Sugar soon put me at my ease. She was not only as beautiful and loveable as Vanya had said, but she also seemed to like me straight away, which was quite a relief. One of my parents’ cats had been a Burmese, so I was used to their loud vocalisation, and was well practised in engaging them in conversation. By the time Vanya had gone through the four A4 pages of large-print instructions on Sugar’s care, giving extra emphasis and finger-underlining to the parts typed in bold capitals, Sugar had curled herself comfortably on my lap, purring happily, and Vanya was beginning to relax.
‘It seems you’re a natural,’ she said. ‘I’d like to book you for my trip next week, if you’re still available. It’ll only be a two-day conference in Brussels, so look upon it as a trial.’
I had a feeling Sugar and I were going to get along well. But the downside of that meeting was that it made me think with longing, again, about my Albert. Although he was a pedigree cat too, I’d only ever treated him as a pet – a companion – and we’d had a particularly close bond during the last few years of my time in New York, when I’d often felt lonely and in need of a friend.
I’d tried several times to contact Shane’s agent, Leo, to find out whether Albert was being looked after. I really, really didn’t want to talk to Shane. But my emails to Leo were going unanswered, and on the one occasion I’d managed to get through on the phone, sitting as usual on the bench outside the library on the Town Square, the line had gone dead as soon as I’d said hello.
After the meeting with Vanya and Sugar, I tried again to call Leo, but this time the call went straight to voicemail. I had an uncomfortable feeling he’d probably been told by Shane not to talk to me. But, desperate to find out about Albert, I left a message anyway, asking him to please call me back about a matter of some urgency. I was hoping that might make him more likely to respond, but after I hung up, I regretted it in case he thought I was after money – in which case he’d not only never call me back, he’d probably also delete my message and block all future calls from me. Well, if I didn’t hear anything soon, I’d have to email Shane. Anything would be better than hearing his voice. How depressing it was to realise that after spending so long in the USA, being feted as a kind of celebrity and chased around by the media, there was nobody there I now felt I could even contact to ask about the welfare of my cat.
The follow
ing week, as arranged, I turned up early at Vanya’s house to look after Sugar. I was surprised, as I fumbled in my bag for her key, to have the door suddenly opened for me by a large blond man in a bright lime-green T-shirt and shiny black tracksuit bottoms.
‘Yes?’ he barked.
‘Oh. Um … Mr Montgomery?’ I asked hesitantly. Vanya hadn’t said her husband was going to be there, so I hoped I wasn’t making the wrong assumption.
‘That’s me. And you are …?’
‘Sorry, I’m Emma. The pet sitter. I’ve come to look after Sugar.’
‘Oh, right.’ He smiled and held the door open wider for me. ‘Yes, Vanya did mention something about that. You’d better come in, then, Emma. I’m Rob. Make yourself at home.’ He waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. ‘I’m working from home today but I’m just off to the gym for an hour before I start work.’
‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘Did you not really need me today, then? If you’re going to be at home?’
He laughed. ‘You must be joking. I don’t get involved with looking after the cat. Vanya doesn’t trust me with her precious baby.’
There was something about his tone I wasn’t sure about. Although he was laughing and making it sound like a joke, I got the impression Rob didn’t share his wife’s affection for the precious baby. Maybe he just wasn’t a cat lover – fair enough. But there was also something about the way he was now looking me up and down, a slight spark of interest in his sharp blue eyes, that made me feel a little uncomfortable and self-conscious. I was probably imagining it, I told myself. He had a beautiful, dynamic and successful wife so why on earth would he be looking like that at someone like me?
Just then, we were interrupted by the appearance of the precious baby herself, who meowed loudly as she trotted straight over to me and then walked round and round my legs, purring happily. While I bent down to stroke her, Rob said he’d see me later, picked up a gym bag and disappeared out of the door. I soon realised he wasn’t joking about not getting involved with Sugar. He quite obviously hadn’t even fed her that morning. I’d fully expected to do so myself, of course, but I found it rather surprising that, being there in the house, he wouldn’t have responded to Sugar’s hungry demands as she walked around her empty food bowl. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted and how to get it – but that was only to be expected, having obviously been treated as a little princess all her life!
The Pets at Primrose Cottage Page 9