by Kate Field
Ethan knocked on the kitchen door next morning, and strolled in without waiting for a reply.
‘This is what you do when you have the house to yourself! I’ve caught you out.’
He had caught me having a cup of tea and reading a book at the kitchen table: a fifteen-minute break amid a list of jobs as long as both my arms. I was timing it with my watch. Eleven minutes to go. Even so, I had to justify myself.
‘I’m thinking,’ I said.
‘Thirsty work, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hungry work too?’ He pulled out a chair, sat down and put a packet of Jammy Dodgers in front of me. Goodness knows where he had been hiding those: his clothes were too well fitted to allow any bulges to go undetected.
‘What’s that?’
‘A packet of Jammy Dodgers.’ He pushed them nearer to me. ‘Also known as a peace offering. I was an idiot yesterday. Sorry.’
‘Only about yesterday? Or does that sorry cover the whole thirty-nine years of being an idiot?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’ Ethan laughed and ripped open the packet of biscuits. He took one and demolished it in two bites. He shoved the packet again so it nudged my hand. ‘Get eating. They’re your favourites, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. How do you know that?’ I couldn’t imagine Leo knowing that I had a favourite biscuit. Such mundane things passed him by, like how the toilet roll was miraculously replaced in the bathroom, and how there was a constant supply of clean socks in his drawer.
‘They were the ones you always picked out of Mum’s biscuit tin,’ Ethan said.
He’d noticed that? Not only noticed – remembered it too, after all this time. I pulled my sleeve down over my watch, so I couldn’t see my break coming to an end.
‘Did you decide to rent the cottage?’ I asked, taking a Jammy Dodger and nibbling around the jam centre: it was impossible to eat them any other way.
‘Yes, until October.’
‘I didn’t think you’d resist that love nest.’
‘Who could?’
‘Not me.’ Ethan waggled his eyebrows at me in a suggestive way, and I laughed, adding, ‘Don’t worry, next time you’re on that bed I’m sure you’ll have a much more appealing companion. When do you move?’
‘Probably over the next couple of weeks. Mum’s managing well now she doesn’t need the stick.’
‘She’ll be fine. I’ll keep an eye on her.’
‘I know you will. That’s one of the reasons I came over. Are you around next week to check in on her? I need to go to London for a few days.’
‘Next week? Well … yes, of course I can be.’ I thought I sounded convincing, but I didn’t convince Ethan. It struck me for the second time today that he was more observant than I gave him credit for.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Do you already have plans?’
‘Not definite ones. I wanted to go back to a bookshop I discovered the other day. There was something odd about the way the owners reacted to the Alice Hornby biography.’ It had been bugging me ever since my visit to the Archer’s bookshop. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if they had some knowledge of or connection to Alice – though I couldn’t see how, as I had spent weeks poring over her family tree and working my way through all the leaves and branches. ‘It might be nothing, but I’d like to go back. I’ve no time this week, as Leo has emailed me a list of urgent research.’
‘Okay. You do that on Monday, and I’ll go to London on Tuesday.’ And that was it – it was so easy. I wasn’t used to my own wishes coming first, or, quite often, coming anywhere at all. ‘And this Sunday you can come next door for brunch. I promised Mum the full works, New York style. Unless you’re seeing your teacher.’
‘I don’t think so. Brunch sounds good.’
‘Have you been seeing him long?’
‘Not really.’ I kept it brief, not wishing to spark another row; although it was tempting to argue in the hope of more Jammy Dodgers.
‘So it’s early days? Quite casual?’
‘I’m not planning a double wedding with Leo, if that’s what you’re asking. Or one at any time in the future.’
I stood up and went over to the sink, pouring away the remains of my tea. It was time to get back to work. Ethan was studying me too closely for comfort. His chair scraped across the floor as he followed me.
‘Don’t you think you’ll marry again?’
‘I can’t imagine it.’ I shrugged. Six months ago, I had believed in the whole ‘death us do part’ business. I would need some convincing to believe in that again. ‘Will you? Surely two divorces must have shown you that you’re not cut out for marriage.’
‘I’d give it one more shot. But it would have to be with the right person this time.’
I laughed.
‘Third time lucky? Good luck finding her. Wouldn’t it be easier if we were all branded at birth with the name of the person we were destined to be with?’
Ethan should have smiled: it was the sort of nonsense we’d exchanged hundreds of times before. But he seemed to be considering the idea seriously.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ he said. ‘Because sometimes circumstances get in the way of even the most perfect match. And you need to allow for second chances. Sometimes there’s a right person for one half of your life, and a right person for the other.’
I didn’t want to dwell on any of that. There weren’t enough Jammy Dodgers left in the packet to help me digest those thoughts.
‘I’d better get on,’ I said, and Ethan nodded and opened the back door. Before he could go, I called out. ‘Ethan?’ He looked back. ‘Am I invisible?’
This time he did smile, but not in recognition of nonsense. He understood; I’d known he would.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see you, Mary.’
The Archer’s bookshop was as quiet as on my last visit, but this time old Mrs Archer was snoozing in her wheelchair behind the desk when I walked in. The shop bell didn’t wake her, so I opened and closed the door a few times until I saw a glint as her eyes flicked open.
‘Bridie!’ Mrs Archer made a surprisingly loud and grating noise, rather like an infant blowing into a recorder for the first time. ‘It’s her!’
I wasn’t as offended by this lukewarm greeting as I might once have been; in fact, I felt right at home. Ava had developed a habit of referring to me as ‘her’ since Leo moved out; that was when she deigned to acknowledge my existence at all. She hadn’t spoken to me for several days, not since the news broke that I had gone out for a drink with Owen – apart from the initial accusation that I had ruined her life. I couldn’t imagine what she would do when she discovered that I was having dinner at his house. Thank goodness we had Jonas to maintain some semblance of harmony at home.
Bridie came through from the back room.
‘Hello,’ she said, employing the more customary greeting, even if her tone and expression lacked a shopkeeper’s usual bonhomie.
‘Hello!’ I sang back. It was hard not to overcompensate with cheeriness in the face of such overt suspicion. Mrs Archer pulled her blanket closer around her, as if she feared my smile might infect her with joy. ‘Do you remember I came in last week to talk about my husband’s biography of Alice Hornby?’
‘We remember,’ Bridie said. Mrs Archer snuffled. I took that as permission to carry on.
‘I had the impression that you weren’t keen on the idea.’ That was an understatement and a half. ‘I’ve brought a copy with me. I thought you might like to read it and then you can see for yourselves how respectful it is. No muck,’ I added, for the benefit of the old lady.
I held out the book, but they recoiled as if it smelt of petrol and was making a ticking noise.
‘Please read it,’ I said, and put it down on the desk. ‘All we want to do is raise Alice’s profile, and introduce more people to the pleasure of reading her books. Why should Yorkshire and the Brontës have all the fame?’
At last I detected a glimmer of interest, and the temperatur
e thawed by one degree; if I’d known that a bit of Yorkshire-bashing would do the trick, I’d have tried it last week. Bridie picked up the book – hallelujah! – and gingerly turned the pages.
‘Oh Mum,’ she said, stopping at a photograph, though I couldn’t tell which one. ‘Would you look at that?’
She bent forward to show her mother the picture and I peered over the desk. They were looking at a double-page spread, showing the oldest photograph we’d been able to find of Alice’s family home and, opposite it, a picture of how it looked now. The modern photo had been taken at the annual meeting of the Alice Hornby Society; the house was privately owned, but the owners allowed us to meet in the grounds. The house had been updated so sympathetically, that it looked largely unchanged; but the gardens had been landscaped and the sunshine brought out all the vivid colours. Mrs Archer said nothing, but a tiny, knotty hand emerged from the blankets and turned over a few more pages.
‘Do you know the house, or the Hornby family?’ I asked.
‘There’s a connection through Mum,’ Bridie conceded. Archer? It definitely wasn’t a name that featured on the family tree, but I supposed it could be a remarriage that I had missed. I was burning with questions, but before I could get started, Mrs Archer snapped shut the book and retreated into a pile of tweed.
‘We’ll read it,’ Bridie said, stowing the book away in a desk drawer. ‘No promises, mind. Non-fiction isn’t too popular around here.’
Nor was fiction, judging by the state of the shelves; I couldn’t see any new gaps since my last visit. Even if they liked the biography, it seemed unlikely that they would ever sell a copy. But this had gone beyond sales now: there was some mystery here to do with Alice Hornby and the Archer family and I wasn’t going to rest until I found out exactly what it was.
Chapter 13
I wasn’t chickening out of my date with Owen when Daisy rang, but I certainly had more than a few wobbles.
‘Just making sure you’re still planning to turn up,’ Daisy said, knowing me too well, even though I had been careful to express nothing but enthusiasm all week.
‘Yes, of course I am.’ My indignation was pure bluster. ‘I’m dressed and ready to go when Mum toddles over.’
‘You mean when she tears herself from the arms of her lover?’
‘Urgh, don’t. That image isn’t going to put me in a romantic mood for tonight.’
‘Have you met this mystery man yet?’
‘No, not even a glimpse. She must smuggle him in and out under cover of darkness, so that’s not a good sign, is it?’
‘Perhaps he’s a toy boy half her age.’
‘That would make him younger than me!’
‘There you go. She might be afraid he’ll take one look at you and switch to a younger model.’
I snorted at that, and wandered over to the window. There was a car parked on the road again, the same blue Ford that I saw there most days. Whoever it belonged to, he was pretty keen to spend his time with Mum. I hardly ever saw her now, and when I did, she was unrecognisable: smiling, glowing, with newly dyed hair the colour of Caribbean sand, and smarter clothes. She was looking younger by the day, while I went the opposite way. But why should I be jealous? I was going out for dinner with a man, wasn’t I?
‘What are you wearing?’ Daisy asked. ‘You have made an effort, haven’t you? I know, take a photo and send it to me and I’ll check if it’s okay.’
I did, though I wasn’t planning to change, whatever she said. It had taken ages to decide on what I had on now: newish dark jeans and a midnight-blue silk blouse with sheer bell sleeves. At least it was a colour – not grey, or beige – although with my black hair it did make me look like a sorceress – or I hoped I looked like a sorceress, not a wicked old hag.
‘You’ll do,’ Daisy said, when she phoned back. ‘But take off the necklace. It’s the one Leo gave you, isn’t it? You can’t be thinking about him tonight. Have you shaved your legs? Are you wearing proper lingerie, not those droopy grey things I saw before? Have you packed some condoms?’
‘Oh God, I can’t do this.’ I sank on to the bed, feeling queasy, not so much butterflies but huge bats flapping away in my stomach. ‘I don’t know what to do. There’s only ever been Leo. What if he looks different? What if he does different things? I’m going to make an idiot of myself.’
‘No, you’re not. Don’t sound so terrified. You fancy him, don’t you?’
‘I like him.’
‘That’s not what I asked. When you see him, do you want to drag him somewhere private and tear his clothes off? Do you struggle to keep your hands off him? When you kiss him, do you forget everything else?’
‘We’ve only been on dog walks and to the pub. And it’s not really like that, is it, in normal life?’
‘Yes. As far as I remember,’ Daisy added, sighing. ‘Wasn’t it with Leo?’
‘I suppose it might have been, in the early days.’ My overriding memory was of the awkwardness. After using the law to resist me for a long time, Leo had finally succumbed when, on my sixteenth birthday, I had thrown myself on him and put him in a position where he couldn’t say no. Neither of us had had the first idea what we were doing. Leo had subsequently taken the obvious course of buying a book, which had terrified us both so much that we left it to trial and error after that.
‘Are you really telling me that you’ve never felt so overcome by passion that you lose all sense?’ Daisy gasped. ‘Oh Mary, is it because Leo’s gay? Did you never have a proper relationship?’
‘Of course we did. You have to believe he managed to overlook my femininity at least twice.’ A whole new lorry load of worries rolled into my head. ‘What if … you know … Owen can’t manage it? I’m tying myself in knots, fretting about what might happen, but he might not even fancy me.’
‘Mary, calm down. You don’t have to do anything unless you want to, even if he cooks your dinner.’ I nodded, pointlessly as she couldn’t see me. ‘And I think we can take it as a given that he does fancy you. Why else would he lure you to his house? To show off his spag bol?’ She laughed. ‘Irish nymphs with glossy black hair and emerald eyes are pretty rare in these parts. You’d be surprised by how many men fancy you.’
‘None, now Leo’s taken himself off that list?’
‘Seriously, have you walked round in a blindfold all your life? Have you never so much as flirted with a man who wasn’t Leo?’
‘No,’ I said – but I didn’t say it quickly enough. There had been a fatal moment of hesitation, and Daisy was on it like a vulture.
‘Mary?’ I could picture Daisy’s expression as clearly as if she’d been in the room: the surprise, the excitement, the curiosity. ‘Who?’
‘No one,’ I said. I stood up as memories jostled to take root in my head, the reminders that I had once glimpsed the passion Daisy spoke of, had once come close to losing all sense. There was no reason why I couldn’t find that with Owen, was there? Abandoning the flat shoes I had pulled out of the wardrobe, I picked up a pair of sexy heels instead. ‘Mum’s here. I’ve got to go.’
Owen hadn’t made spag bol. He served up a proper three-course meal of salmon, tarragon chicken, and melt-in-the-middle chocolate pudding, which we ate at a candlelit table in his tiny kitchen. The obvious care he had taken to get the food and the atmosphere just right made me so tense that I was petrified I might bring back the delicious food at any moment. Gulping wine was doing nothing to steady my nerves, despite my best efforts.
‘Coffee?’ Owen asked, when I finally finished my pudding, unable to stretch it out any longer. I nodded, and watched as he opened the cupboard and reached past the regular coffee cups for oversized mugs. It obviously hadn’t escaped his notice that I’d drunk more than my share of two bottles of wine. ‘Go through to the lounge and make yourself comfortable.’
I tottered next door, wondering what he expected me to do: loll on the sofa as if I were at a Roman banquet, waiting for him to feed me after-dinner mints? I prowled around t
he room, inspecting the photographs of his children, the small collection of books, all on art, and the paintings on the wall. Owen startled me when he came in and I almost toppled forwards and banged my nose against the glass of the picture I was peering at.
‘Sorry!’ I said. ‘I was trying to decipher the signature.’ That was harder to say than I’d anticipated ‘You painted this, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ He acknowledged it without embarrassment or false modesty. I liked that. ‘It’s of Loch Shiel in the Highlands. We spent a few summer holidays there when the children were small.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ I took the mug that Owen held out, sat down on the sofa and slurped the coffee. It was strong, and sobering even in two mouthfuls. ‘Do you not go there anymore?’
‘No. It’s not the same going back on my own, and when I go away with the children they want shops and nightlife, not mountains and solitude.’ Owen sat down beside me. ‘What are you doing this summer?’
‘We’re going to St Ives. We go every year.’
‘We?’
It took my staggering brain a moment to catch up with Owen’s meaning, and when it did I felt mortified. I’d answered automatically – and of course I’d meant me, Leo, Jonas, and Ava, with the usual assortment of mothers and friends coming and going. I booked the house every August, ready for next year; and last August I’d had no reason to suspect that this year the tectonic plates beneath our marriage would have shifted and pulled us apart. I’d paid the deposit on booking; the balance would have been collected by direct debit by now.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. Perhaps I looked as woebegone as I felt, because Owen shifted so that his arm lay across the back of the sofa, resting with gentle strength against my shoulders. I leaned back into it, soaking up what comfort I could. ‘I’d not thought about holidays, and how they’ll change. I suppose it will just be the three of us now.’
I lapsed into silence as I tried to imagine me, Jonas, and Ava rattling around the St Ives house for five weeks. Perhaps Mum would join us for a couple of weeks as she usually did – unless she made other plans with her mystery man. There would be no Leo, no Audrey – no break for me from the pressure of entertaining teenagers through the summer. But it might be worse: perhaps I would have a longer break than I could wish for. Leo and Clark might want to take the children away on holiday themselves, maybe somewhere more exciting than Cornwall. What would I do then, on my own?