by Rebecca Tope
‘I will,’ she said firmly, suppressing an urge to add, Although … followed by a string of reservations.
‘Good.’ He pulled her into a long warm kiss, which she cut short in order to look into his face. His grey eyes were unclouded, shining with high spirits. His skin seemed to glow, and his mouth was still soft and loose from the kiss. He was glorious to look at.
She felt young – sixteen, to be precise. The years of separation melted away, and here was that tanned Christopher from the Prestatyn beach. Her closest friend, summer after summer, with his four younger siblings providing her with all the experience of a big family she would ever have. They had kissed obsessively that last summer, wanting and needing to take things further, but oddly unable to manage it. Lack of privacy and, perhaps, lack of courage both worked against them. Their parents had become aware of the danger, and there had been no more joint summer holidays after that. She saw Chris three or four more times, writing letters and phoning in a decreasing frequency until life got in the way and they almost forgot each other.
Now the wheel had turned, and here they were again. And he wanted to marry her. They were close to forty, with turbulent events in their respective pasts. His parents were dead, but his siblings remained at close quarters. He and Simmy lived twenty miles apart, each with commitments that would be almost impossible to shed. There was no avoiding the practicalities, she realised. Her unspoken Although … could not be dodged for long.
‘But … how?’ she breathed, hating herself for being the one to raise the question.
‘We’ll find a way. Don’t go all unromantic on me,’ he begged. ‘Not for another few minutes, anyway.’
Romantic? Sweet scents, soft light, moody background music? None of that fitted how she felt. Her momentary lapse into her sixteen-year-old self was already over. Her mind was full of images of her shop, Bonnie, her parents and this much-prized little Troutbeck house. All that would have to be downgraded, if not entirely discarded if – when – she married Chris. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘What do you mean, sorry? You’re not retracting already, are you?’ He hugged her close again. ‘I mean it, Sim. It’s really going to happen. Once that’s settled, everything else’ll just fall into place around it. You’ll see.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But what about …? I mean, shouldn’t we just wait to see …?’ Again she shivered at the sense of tempting fate. ‘We could just give it a few more months.’
He drew back slightly. ‘Oh, I see. What a twit I am. You mean the baby.’
She shivered again at the starkness of the word. ‘There isn’t a baby. That’s the whole point. There might never be a baby. Are we sure we can cope with that?’ She had watched one husband break down at the non-appearance of his expected child. There was terror in the prospect of that happening again.
‘That sounds as if you want a baby more than you want me.’ His frown was only very slight, but his eyes were less clear than before.
‘Oh!’ She hadn’t ever thought in those terms. Her worries had all been about him and how he might deal with childlessness. It was astonishingly difficult to examine her own innermost wishes – like turning a massive container ship around and sending it off in the opposite direction. She knew she did want a baby. She knew she needed a man as a result of this great desire. It had never crossed her mind to deliberately enter into single parenthood via some sort of fertility clinic that would manufacture a child for her at a price. Neither had she contemplated adopting a child. She knew with an equal certainty that she had a definite fondness for Christopher – but was that fondness born of his apparent willingness to share the parenting with her, and nothing more than that?
It hurt to follow this logic. A real pain took root inside her, born of fear and self-dislike and the extreme difficulty of facing the unvarnished truth.
‘I don’t know,’ she said wretchedly. ‘What a horrible person I must be, if that’s true.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not accusing you of anything. I was just hoping we could get to the heart of it and see what we might do about it. We’re not sixteen any more, Simmy. It’s no use pretending we are.’
‘I was, though, for a minute.’
‘So was I. So were we both all last week. Sunshine, chips, the incoming waves. But we’re back on solid ground now, and I want you to marry me. I want a baby – or two – almost as much as you do. I want a proper house and a few of the ordinary things that other people want.’
‘Only a few?’
‘I can do without the garden shed and the designer kitchen. And I’m never going to keep anything tidy. And I’m never going to have as much money as I really want, because I’m incapable of putting in the right sort of effort.’
‘Especially not with two children. You’ll be expected to change nappies and take them for long walks and be home at six o’clock every evening without fail.’
He tilted his head in a warning look. ‘And what if they never happen? What if it’s just you and me?’
It was the vital question, taking her back to the core of things. Before she could answer, his phone rang, loud in the painful silence.
To his credit, he made no move to take the call. But the relief they both felt at the timely interruption could not be concealed. ‘Answer it,’ she said. ‘We need a breather.’
‘Don’t we just,’ he laughed. ‘Did I forget to mention that I really, really love you?’ The insistent device only partly obscured the feeling that these words came wrapped in. ‘It’s Jonathan,’ he reported, having glanced at the screen.
She flipped a hand at him and moved a few steps away.
‘Hi, Jon,’ he said. ‘Something up?’
The one-sided conversation that Simmy could hear gave rise to a wholesale change of mood. Chris was obviously concerned, making his friend repeat himself and asking abrupt questions. Finally, he finished the call and looked at Simmy, his face no longer soft and adoring. ‘He’s got himself into a right bit of bother,’ he said.
Simmy had met Jonathan once, and recognised this as a direct quote. ‘So I gathered,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t hear you promise to dash up there and rescue him.’
Christopher did not smile. ‘Nothing I can do, as far as either of us can work out. The best thing would be for him to keep his head down and let it all blow over.’
‘What, though? What’s his problem?’
‘It’s a long story. And I suddenly feel desperately hungry.’ He looked at his phone. ‘Not surprising, actually. Do you know what time it is?’
She gave it a moment’s reflection. ‘Two, or a bit after?’
‘It’s three-twenty-five. And we haven’t eaten more than a couple of biscuits all day.’
‘What a weird day! I can do eggs and beans, or I suppose we could go down to Bowness and find something. It’s summer – there’ll be ice cream or cream teas, or even fish and chips, if we’re lucky.’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere. Just a tin of baked beans is all I ask. There doesn’t even have to be any toast.’
With a concerted effort, Simmy found a frozen loaf and a long-forgotten tin of spaghetti hoops to go with scrambled eggs in a meal that would have horrified both their mothers. Within ten minutes, they were eating these remnants of a once well-stocked cupboard as if they were dining at the Belsfield in Bowness – which they had done once or twice over the past half-year. ‘I should go shopping one day this week and get something more interesting than this for emergencies,’ she said. ‘I never was very good at catering.’
‘Nobody is any more,’ he consoled her. Then his eyes went misty and he added, ‘Not like in Mexico, where they can produce a fabulous feast in seconds. Guacamole, beans, ribs. Incredible bread. I never ate so well as I did in Mexico. Not to mention the drink, of course.’
‘I might not let you go travelling when we’re married,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Is that going to upset you?’
‘Can’t afford it, anyway. I’m too old for all that rough sleeping
or bunking up in hostels with smelly Americans.’
‘Pardon?’
‘They stink of synthetic chemicals. Antiperspirant mostly. And the stuff they wash their clothes in. And extra spray for no reason. And something vile to repel insects. They’re like walking pharmacies. Makes me retch to think of it. Give me good old-fashioned sweat any day.’
‘My mother would agree with you,’ laughed Simmy.
They finished their meal and Simmy went upstairs to unpack her holiday bag. ‘Are you staying tonight as well?’ she asked him, from the top of the stairs.
‘I want to, but that would make tomorrow a real beast – unless I left here at about six.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘True. I’m just trying to be grown-up and sensible. Of course I’ll stay. If you’ll have me, that is.’
‘It’ll be a come-down after that fabulous big bed.’
Simmy’s bed was a large single, which meant that two people sharing had to remain in close contact all night. She had done her best to get used to it, but it did no favours to the quality of her sleep. ‘I should have got a bigger one months ago,’ she reproached herself.
‘We’ll get ourselves a luxury king-size for our new house,’ he promised.
‘What new house?’ She was in the bedroom, calling down the stairs to him, missing some of his words. It was something they did a lot, and she could always hear her mother shouting, ‘Come downstairs if you want to talk to me,’ as she had done throughout Simmy’s childhood.
Now Christopher said almost the same thing. ‘I’m not having this conversation until you come down again.’
She was at his side two minutes later. ‘What new house?’ she repeated.
‘Well, we can’t live here, and we can’t live in my little hovel, so we’ll have to get somewhere new. Stands to reason.’
It should have been exciting, full of future promise and a whole new beginning. Instead she could only think of money, and her shop and how she would spend her days if she no longer had Persimmon Petals to fill her time. ‘Where?’ she breathed.
‘The logical thing would be halfway between here and Keswick. That’s Grasmere, if you look at a map. In fact, there’s nowhere else but Grasmere that would work. We’d both be about thirty minutes from our places of work. It’d be perfect.’
‘We can’t afford Grasmere. And, besides, there are hardly any ordinary houses. They’re all holiday lets or tea rooms.’
‘Who says? What about all those lovely stone cottages clustered around Dove Cottage, for a start?’
‘Won’t they be a bit pokey, as well as expensive? And there’d be hordes of trippers coming and going all year round.’
‘There’s a few other side streets with some nice properties. Kathleen Leeson had one of them, I think.’
‘Have you ever been to her house?’
He hesitated. ‘No, but I know where it is. Are you thinking it might suit us? It’ll probably go on the market any time now.’
‘I wasn’t thinking that, actually. I was just wondering about all the dusty treasures there might be there.’
‘Always less exciting than you think. Now – stick to the subject. We want to find somewhere to live, remember. There’s a lot of building going on across the road from the main village in Grasmere. Honestly, Sim, I think you should keep an open mind, don’t you?’
She shrugged, unable to cite evidence for her pessimism about property prices, and unwilling to drop the subject of forgotten antiques in locked-up houses. ‘So, tell me about Jonathan,’ she invited. ‘What’s his problem?’
Chapter Three
‘Mainly, it’s the way he makes enemies,’ Christopher began. ‘He says what he thinks and never lets anybody get away with anything. But he’s got a weird sense of fair play. It makes people nervous.’
‘I think I get it. I quite like the sound of that, actually. But what’s the matter now? Why did he phone you? You were talking to him for quite a while.’
‘He wanted me to back him up in a row he’s having with a bloke called Nick. And I’m not sure I should, even though you could say Jon’s officially got right on his side. Nick’s an old-school wheeler-dealer. The sort we auctioneers love to hate. Turns up in a massive van, and bids for all the job lots – big boxes of junk, with a bit of treasure tucked at the bottom. Then sells it at about a thousand per cent profit. All cash, hardly any paper trails. And he’s incredibly clever at it. Jonathan worked with him for a bit and learnt some of his tricks, but they fell out, and it’s been war ever since.’
‘Nasty,’ sighed Simmy, trying to picture it all.
‘It happens. It’s all a big game, with rules, when you boil it down. But Jon has a way of making his own rules. And now someone’s dobbed Nick in to the taxman, and he’s convinced it was Jon.’
‘And was it?’
‘He says not, but it’s the sort of thing he might do, on a whim. You can go online anonymously and just give a name and address and leave it to them. Treacherous thing to do. But Nick gets away with so much, it makes a lot of people mad.’
‘Does Nick pay any tax?’
‘I doubt it. I never asked him.’
‘Does Jonathan?’
‘He does. That’s the whole point. He’s insanely meticulous with the paperwork, which is odd, I suppose. Registered himself for VAT, which the girls in the office curse him for every time we sell anything for him.’
‘I see what you mean about rules,’ Simmy commented. ‘He sounds a bit obsessive about them.’
‘He is a bit, yes. But he doesn’t always understand the unspoken ones that have to do with people and how they interact. He’s no good at that stuff.’
‘On the spectrum,’ said Simmy. ‘Like most British men, according to my mother.’
‘Whatever. Anyway, Jon wants me to talk to Nick, and persuade him that nobody gave him away and it’s just a random check. After all, the tax people are obviously interested in our line of business. Everyone uses cash and, even if they’ve got a docket for their total sales, they’ll be doing little deals in the car park without even thinking about it.’
‘They’ll probably ask you about Nick anyway, then.’
‘They probably will,’ he agreed. ‘And I’ve got no problem in sticking up for Jon, if Nick plays rough. He’s a good bloke, under his grubby exterior. They both are, basically, but Nick can take care of himself. I’m not so sure about Jon.’
‘You should be careful,’ she said, without thinking.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh – I don’t know. I must be channelling my father. It just sounds rather fraught. I mean, Jonathan must be quite worried to phone you on a Sunday afternoon about it. He’d already texted you, hadn’t he?’
‘That was about something different.’ He sighed. ‘Which still isn’t finally sorted, but it’s not going to be long now. He wants me to put pressure on the legal people. I told him that’s a long way beyond my pay grade, but he still wants to see me about it all, sometime this week.’
‘You’re talking about the house clearance in Grasmere?’
‘Right. The people who take charge of this sort of thing have kept it all sealed up until somebody got around to ticking all the boxes. Poor old Philip thinks he’ll be dead before it’s all finished.’ He wiped a hand across his brow in a parody of exhaustion. ‘It’s all too much. I need you to rescue me from it all. Oh – silly me. That’s what you’ve just done, isn’t it? A week on a faraway island was supposed to recharge my batteries. Now they’re already running down again.’
Simmy laughed. ‘All these men in your life! You make it sound so exciting and important. I don’t understand a fraction of it. How does it all get decided, for a start?’
‘You don’t want to know. There’s a cruel and unnecessary punishment for people who let their old folks die without making a will. Except the big guns are only brought in when there are no relations, and the friends can’t prove their honesty.’
‘Se
ems fair enough to me.’
‘It’s very fair. But incredibly long-winded. I do my best not to get involved in any of that stuff, but it catches up with me from time to time.’
She knew they were deliberately prolonging this conversation, for fear of having to face difficult personal questions. Or one particular personal question, which was still hanging in the air. It had occurred to her before that absolute frankness in a relationship might sound desirable, but it failed to recognise that most people had a very shaky grasp of their own inner workings. Try as they might, they couldn’t capture all the nuances and contradictions that governed their emotions. She had discovered that something that felt true one day might change overnight into something much less dependable. If you put that thing into words on a Monday, you might well be in trouble if it came back to bite you on Tuesday, when your feelings had altered. Safer, then, not to say much in the first place.
But Christopher had other ideas. Having made his proposal and had it accepted, he was eager to take things to the next stage. ‘We don’t want a big production of a wedding, do we? Do you think September’s too soon? What’s this house of yours worth?’ Before she could say much, he was looking at property websites. ‘Hardly anything for sale in Grasmere at the moment. But I don’t think it’s any more expensive than here.’
‘Chris, you’re going too fast.’ She looked round at her pleasant living room, with favourite pieces of furniture from her home with Tony in Worcestershire. Moving up to the Lake District had been traumatic and exhausting. Another move was not entirely appealing.
‘Why? What is there to wait for?’ He was genuinely confused. ‘Have I missed something?’
‘Not really. It’s just me. I’m a moral coward. You’re making it all sound easy and obvious. And I suppose it is – I just need to get it all clear in my mind. The shop …’
‘What about the shop? Nothing needs to change where that’s concerned.’
And so they went on, with Christopher making strenuous efforts to be patient and understanding in the face of her worries. She could see he wanted reassurance that she really did love him, really wanted to marry him and live with him. And she really did – in theory. But his earlier question – would she love him enough, if there was just him and no baby? – remained unanswered. She needed someone uninvolved to talk it over with, space away from Chris to carefully analyse the answer. And he lacked the patience to let her have that. Eventually, he brought himself back to this core issue.