by Anna Cheska
Oh, come on … ‘Would he?’ More likely he would have been horribly embarrassed. Imogen became aware that Tiffany was staring at them. She gave her a get-on-with-your-work kind of look. And hesitated. She had to admit she was curious. There were so many unanswered questions. ‘All right, I will.’ Why did she feel this was one of her crazier decisions?
Marisa gave a small smile of triumph, blast her. ‘Good. We’ll expect you at eleven.’ She clicked the heels of her well-polished boots together – Nazi-like, Imo couldn’t help thinking – and was gone.
* * *
‘She’s his what?’ Jude shrieked. She pushed hair spray, wax and mousse aside and plonked a cup of murky coffee on the black ledge in front of Imogen. Her greener-than-emerald eyes opened wider.
‘His daughter,’ Imogen repeated patiently. She had only dropped in to the salon on the way home from work to give Jude the lowdown on what had happened the night before. Oh, all right, and because she wasn’t too keen on going home to an empty cottage on Christmas Eve.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jude said. ‘Talk about dark and devious.’
Imo was glad that she’d caught her during a cigarette and coffee break. ‘Before my final pre-Christmas brow tidy and lash tint,’ she’d told her when she walked in, straightening her black shift and shooting Imo a wink.
Imogen took a deep breath. ‘And I’m going round there again tomorrow.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘To discuss things.’ She knew it sounded mad. It was mad. Warily, she sipped her coffee. A drink of the alcoholic variety would be more welcome – but after last night she didn’t know if it would kill or cure.
‘I won’t stay for long,’ she told Jude. ‘I’ll be with you by one at the latest.’
‘I’m not thinking of myself, sweetie.’ Jude flicked some ash from her cigarette into the glass ashtray. ‘I’m thinking of what a happy Christmas you’ll be in for – meeting up with Edward’s daughter and his bit on the side. I mean, honestly.’ She smoothed back thick auburn hair.
Imogen almost choked on her coffee. Anyone less like a bit on the side than Naomi Gibb she couldn’t imagine.
Jude inhaled fiercely. ‘You need your head examined. You said yourself you don’t even like the girl.’
‘I don’t.’ It was difficult, Imo found, to admit that she wanted to talk to her husband’s lover. Especially when Jude was in one of her cynical moods. A thought struck her. How could she have forgotten? ‘What happened with Roger?’
Jude’s ferocious green glare told her she was right. ‘Nothing happened with Roger and nothing will be happening with Roger. Not now and not in the foreseeable future, OK?’ She slammed her mug down on the reception desk. A splash of coffee jumped out in protest and landed on the appointments book. She ignored it.
‘Another one bites the dust?’ Could this be the reason for today’s transformation? Imo wondered, resolving to get it out of her friend tomorrow after Christmas dinner and a few slugs of brandy.
Jude wagged a finger at her. ‘Don’t change the subject. We were talking about your strange desire for emotional masochism on a day when everyone else in the Western world is getting drunk and pretending to enjoy themselves with Auntie Edna.’
‘That’s me.’ Imogen shrugged. Her only hope was to make light of it. ‘Always one for the difficult option.’
Jude got to her feet, picked up her ashtray and disappeared into the kitchenette. ‘Just be careful,’ she warned, as she emerged, drying her hands.
‘Of Marisa? Or of Naomi?’ Imogen laughed.
‘Of getting sucked in.’ Jude nodded in a worldly-wise sort of a way that didn’t suit her in the least. ‘That’s the danger, Imo. They want to suck you into their lives. I know. I can feel it in my water.’
Imogen refrained from debating the powers of Jude’s bladder. ‘I won’t let that happen.’
She watched as Jude began to prepare her instruments of torture. Jude was her best friend, and she was probably right. But Imo had decided. She would do what she damned well pleased.
* * *
As Imogen drove through the one-way streets of Chichester back to the cottage, it began to rain and she found herself thinking not of Naomi or Marisa, but of Alex. She couldn’t resist the thought of him any longer. It was a long time since a man had touched her like that. Edward had never done it; touched her with curiosity – as if he wanted to know what was underneath, as if he were marvelling at the way skin and bone were formed to create what was on the outside …
In the darkness, even with street lamps and Christmas lights, Priory Park on her left was just a lumpen mass of blackness. In the summer the park, with its majestic trees and cool expanse of green, was playground for bowlers, cricketers, summer lovers … Oops, there she went again. Of course, Alex probably hadn’t been thinking anything of the kind last night. He was probably marvelling at the amount of make-up she had allowed Jude to put on her face. Or counting the lines.
As she stopped at the traffic lights, Imogen raised her hand slowly to touch her cheek. It was different, today’s face – devoid of the slap and colour, it felt naked and vulnerable. She glanced into the rear-view mirror. Behind her, a young, impatient driver was revving the engine of his red Porsche. Making a statement? Imogen smiled. Was Jude right? Did women wear make-up in order to find a sense of self? To be someone different? Imo shook her head in affectionate despair. Jude and her theories on beauty, women, men … But she was a special person, and she deserved to find a special man. If that was what she wanted. Imo tapped her finger-nails on the steering wheel. Was that what she wanted? What could have happened with Roger? Imo wondered, putting a hand to her face again, trying to recapture the Alex-feeling. But his touch was elusive tonight.
What rubbish. The lights changed, the driver behind her hooted angrily. Momentarily mesmerised by the rain sweeping across the windscreen, Imogen shoved the Nova into gear and accelerated – hard. Such rubbish. He was so young for a start. Practically a boy. And she was a thirty-five-year-old woman, even if she was behaving like a teenager – something she’d never done before. She shivered, and turned up the heating. Hot air blasted out at her. How old was he? Twenty-five at the most. And he was also the perfectly lovely Marisa’s boyfriend. Imo increased the speed of the wipers with the flick of a finger. She was imagining things.
She passed the fire station – all the lights were blazing, two engines parked and ready to go – and turned into Bracken Street. Why had she told him everything? It wasn’t only because of the booze, it hadn’t just been the way he’d asked, the way he’d listened …
More rubbish. But would he be there tomorrow? She hoped so. She hoped not. Oh, hell …
Imogen swung the Nova into the drive, switched off the ignition, got out of the car and tensed. The rain was falling harder, the exterior light had come on. But there was another light. A light on in the cottage.
She locked the car, ran round to the front door and groped for her keys. Her fingers were already cold and dysfunctional, rain had splattered her coat and crept inside her collar. But it was all right. It had been so dark this morning, that was all, she must have left that light on. These winter days … so dingy, so gloomy. And she certainly hadn’t been with it when she’d left the cottage with her hangover from hell.
Imogen slammed the door behind her, took a step forward and listened. Someone was in the sitting-room. She froze. Only … burglars wouldn’t switch on the radio, would they? And only one person she knew was hopelessly addicted to Radio 4.
She flung open the door. ‘Mother!’
Vanessa was standing by the cream sofa. Imogen grabbed her and enveloped her mother’s small-boned frame in a huge hug.
‘What a marvellous welcome.’ Vanessa seemed to be struggling for air. There was a strained look about her – jet lag probably. ‘Let go of me and let me look at you, darling.’
Reluctantly, Imogen released her and they drew apart. She could hardly speak, she was so ridiculously pleased to see her.<
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‘I’m sure you’ve lost weight, darling. Have you been bothering to eat proper meals?’ Vanessa narrowed her almond-shaped eyes. She almost sounded like a proper mother, Imogen thought. ‘Truth now.’
‘Better meals than you’ve had, I should think.’ Imogen pulled off her coat, flopped into the sofa and leaned back against the cushions, patting the seat beside her.
Vanessa clicked her tongue. ‘India is not merely the place to acquire a tapeworm, darling,’ she remonstrated. ‘There are plenty of other things in its favour, let me tell you.’ She sat down next to her.
‘Please.’ Imogen smiled. Christmas suddenly seemed a much brighter prospect. ‘And when you’re done, have I got some things to tell you…’
Chapter 15
‘We were childhood sweethearts,’ Naomi said. She was sitting on the rose-patterned easy chair, hands clasped, knees together. As she spoke, her sad expression changed into almost-smiling and far-away.
‘I see.’ And Imogen could see – how she might have been as a girl with her calm voice and gentle eyes. She had been wrong to think Naomi plain. Her clothes were ordinary, inexpensive and even unfashionable, like the brown waisted dress she wore today. But her pale skin and light red hair gave her an undeniable quiet appeal.
‘At seventeen I was so naive.’ Naomi shook her head in wonder, glanced across at Marisa who had separated herself from them by sitting on the small rocker in the far corner of the room. ‘It never occurred to me that Edward and I wouldn’t be together forever. You know how it is?’ She looked to Imogen for confirmation.
Imo nodded though she hadn’t known it, she realised with a small shock.
Naomi twisted her hands together. ‘I don’t want to upset you.’
‘You’re not. Please go on.’ Imogen wanted to hear it all. It might help her find a way forward. And it didn’t quite seem as if Naomi – sitting here in this pink and flowery room that made few concessions to the time of year; a small silver artificial tree, a few cards strung above the mantelpiece – could be talking about her Edward anyway. There were now two Edwards at least.
‘I looked up to him,’ Naomi went on. ‘I suppose you could say…’ she hesitated ‘… he was everything to me. My world.’ The sadness in her eyes returned.
Imogen thought of Marisa’s words: Of course she loved him … She could see that now. Whereas Edward had never been everything to her, she realised with a pang of guilt. So what had gone wrong between them? ‘Didn’t he feel the same?’ she asked. Edward was always so self-contained, so compartmentalised. It wasn’t easy seeing him as a man to whom Naomi Gibb – or anyone else for that matter – could be everything. He wasn’t exactly a you-are-everything kind of man.
Naomi laughed softly. ‘Oh, he cared for me,’ she said. ‘I was an easy sort of girlfriend to have in those days.’
Imogen shook her head. ‘Don’t say that.’
Marisa looked up. She was wearing black again today, a soft, cashmere turtleneck and long woollen skirt. ‘She always puts herself down.’
And so do you. Imogen sipped her sherry. She had never liked the drink – it was too sweet and sickly for her taste. But she needed fortification and she hadn’t been given an alternative. Yes, Marisa was very good at putting her mother down. A pity really that she was here at all. And a good thing, Imogen decided firmly, that Alex was not.
‘I was, though,’ Naomi protested. Her fingers moved to her hair. No rings, Imo observed, twisting her own tiny amber stone. She had taken off her wedding ring the day after she’d found the photograph – a small gesture but an important one, she had felt. ‘I never complained if he was late for a date or forgot to phone me.’
‘I can imagine,’ Marisa said dryly. ‘Doormat,’ her eyes added. Imogen replaced her glass on the table beside her and licked the sweetness from her lips.
Naomi shrugged. ‘You can’t change who you are,’ she told her daughter. ‘I couldn’t have played hard to get, or whatever you like to call it, even if I’d wanted to.’
Imogen smiled in sympathy. Not everyone saw love as a game with rules, strategies and one clear winner, thank you very much. Like Jude did. ‘But what went wrong?’ she persisted.
‘Nothing at first. We drifted along for some years. We were saving.’
‘To get married?’
‘Oh, yes. Or at least, that was what I thought. I had a ring. I always assumed…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Until it happened.’
Imogen waited, though she could guess the rest. It was old as the hills and twice as corny.
Naomi’s expression changed once more. She glanced at Marisa. ‘We never took precautions,’ she said. ‘It was silly of us, I suppose, but Edward said he’d take care of it and…’
‘And he didn’t,’ Marisa provided. She was sipping orange juice, seemingly unmoved, the chair rocking gently as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Naomi shifted uneasily. It must be difficult for her, Imogen thought.
‘I got pregnant.’
Imogen glanced from mother to daughter. The innocence bit surprised her. Edward had never seemed in the least innocent to her.
Naomi shook her head. ‘I assumed it wouldn’t make much difference; we’d just get married earlier than planned. Only…’ she hesitated. ‘When I told Edward, I realised for the first time that he wasn’t ready to settle down at all.’
It was hard for Imogen to imagine. When she’d met Edward, he’d been thirty-four, and – according to Vanessa – already old before his time.
Naomi looked into the distance as if she were remembering. ‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘Edward was prepared to marry me. He was always a loyal man. He took his responsibilities very seriously.’
Imogen too had thought him loyal – until she’d found out about his other women. But she let this pass.
Naomi sighed. ‘But I could tell, you see, that he actually didn’t want to marry me.’
‘Ah.’ Imo was beginning to understand. She stared at one of the Christmas cards – a huge, red Santa driving a sleigh – and thought of Alex.
She was brought back to the here and now by a snort of derision from the far corner of the room. ‘As if that mattered,’ Marisa said. Her voice was clipped and cold. ‘I don’t know why you expected him to be overjoyed. Wasn’t it enough that he was willing to do the decent thing?’
Naomi cast a despairing look towards her daughter. ‘She doesn’t understand,’ she told Imogen.
‘What is there to understand?’ Marisa snapped. ‘What I do understand is that you deprived me of a father for my entire childhood.’ Bitterness was clear in the curl of her lip.
Imogen tried to see things from Marisa’s point of view, but despite the fact that she should hate her, it was Naomi she felt sorry for.
Marisa looked around the small room as if she were about to enlarge on the subject of deprivation. ‘Just because he didn’t leap up and down cheering when you got yourself up the duff,’ was what she actually said.
Imogen had a clear and shocking mental vision of this. Hastily, she reclaimed her sherry.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Naomi said. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so proud.’ But even now, sitting there so upright, clearly grieving deeply, Imogen had to admire her dignity.
‘You let him back out?’ she asked.
‘Better than that,’ Marisa answered for Naomi. ‘She told him she wasn’t pregnant after all.’ She recrossed her legs and stared straight at her mother. ‘And then she left him.’ The rocker creaked into startled action.
‘Goodness.’ Imogen could see that must have taken some courage.
Naomi smiled in acknowledgement. ‘I didn’t want him, you see, if it was half-hearted. What would have been the point? He meant too much to me for that. I couldn’t have stood it.’
Imogen’s heart went out to her. Better to risk everything and have the chance to have it all, she thought. She had been right to come. The love story Naomi was telling her had confirmed what she had always
known, deep down. She might have imagined herself in love with Edward, but perhaps it was more a case of being in love with love. ‘So you hid it from him?’
‘I went away.’ She seemed to sit up even straighter. ‘Edward was shocked. And the strange thing was—’
‘He never guessed?’ Imogen knew how dense men could be. Either that or they were experts at sticking their heads in the sand and waiting for the bad things to go away.
‘That’s right.’ Naomi smoothed her dress. ‘I went away thinking…’ she glanced at Marisa ‘… perhaps wrongly, that I didn’t need him. That I could look after my baby alone. That she would never want for anything.’
Imogen noted that Marisa wouldn’t quite meet her mother’s eye.
‘And then I didn’t see him for twelve years.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Twelve years. That made him thirty-seven by Imogen’s reckoning. She and Edward would have been married for two years by then. Imogen was relieved. That meant that when they were first together, first married, then – at least – there was no one else. And now she sensed it was her turn to speak.
‘I met him when he was thirty-four,’ she said. ‘He came along at exactly the right time and seemed to do all the right things. I thought I loved him. I wanted to be loved.’
Naomi sat up straighter, seemed to be holding back her grief. ‘And he did love you. He told me you were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. That he could hardly believe it when you agreed to marry him.’
Imogen bowed her head. ‘That isn’t enough,’ she said.
Marisa put it more directly. ‘You two are like chalk and cheese.’ She tossed her hair from her face. ‘Having both of you must have been a dream come true for Dad. Adore and be adored, the best of both worlds.’
Imogen looked at Naomi who had loved him so selflessly. Yes, she could see why Edward had wanted this woman in his life.
‘We met again by chance.’ Naomi took up the story once again. ‘In Hereford – that’s where I was living by then.’
‘Hereford?’ Imogen tried to recall a trip Edward might have made there. Surely she should be able to remember something so significant? But, no.