But that wouldn’t be this woman’s problem.
It would be Sophie’s.
She felt her pulse racing. All Molly’s twig-beating for nothing.
She rang Harriet the minute the woman left, after detonating her flower bomb all over Sophie’s weekend. ‘Just to let you know,’ she told Harriet’s voicemail, ‘that the flowers have turned up for the event. The event this weekend? I thought it wasn’t till Sunday week, after we’d gone. If you could please give me a ring, that would be great. Thanks, bye!’
She had no idea how to get hold of the planner. Or the Scout leader, for that matter. She tried to remember what he looked like. Pssh. What did she plan to do with that information, exactly? Tack posters up in the village as if he were a missing cat?
Silly bean.
Dan came inside, panting and sweaty and happy. She’d never understood the runner’s high. The loafer’s lie-down, yes.
When he dropped his trainers on the floor, smudges of mud and clumps of grass streaked the tiles. She wasn’t cross, though, as it only added to the streaks that were already there from the rest of their shoes. It didn’t make sense to go through the effort of cleaning it all up when he was only going to go out into the fields again tomorrow.
Sophie would never have put such light-coloured tiling on a kitchen floor. ‘Get off me!’ she shouted when he hugged her. ‘You stink.’
‘It’s clean sweat,’ he said.
‘Sweat is sweat. Speaking of which, I had my special Russian massage today.’
‘Did I do well or what?’ He couldn’t be prouder of himself.
‘You ordered a stranger to beat me with sticks.’ She couldn’t keep a straight face, though.
‘C’mon, lighten up.’ He wrestled her off her chair, clamped her in his arms and danced her around the kitchen.
Oliver was watching them from his spot on the sofa. Katie rolled her eyes. Parental affection was beyond yuck to her. ‘You loved the massage. Admit it.’
‘I’ll go so far as to say it was interesting.’
‘First Japan, now Russia. My Soph is getting a tour of the world without having to leave England. We might even get you speaking another language one day.’
Just as she wondered how to say arrogant bollocks in Russian, Dan fished his phone from the little zipped pocket at the back of his shorts. After a glance, he set it on the table and announced, ‘I’m having a shower.’
As soon as he’d said it, Sophie wished she’d got in there first. She really felt like a bath. What a perfect way to keep the luxurious spa feeling going. Now she’d have to wait till he was finished. Not that Harriet’s house had the water pressure issues, she was betting, that theirs did, or the lack of bathrooms, but she didn’t want to deal with a dripping wet, angry Dan.
She’d just made herself a cup of tea when Dan’s phone lit up with his boss’s name.
‘Hi there, Jeremy,’ she answered. ‘This is Sophie.’
‘Sophie, how are you?’ Jeremy asked warmly. He’d always been very kind to her when they had spouse events together. ‘I hope your holiday is everything you hoped for. Sorry you didn’t make it to Italy.’
‘That’s okay, this is a wonderful alternative!’ she said. ‘Has Dan told you about it? It’s practically a mansion, with a darling village that we can walk to, and I’ve been having spa treatments every day. I’m being spoilt rotten.’
‘Well, you deserve it. Actually, I’m glad I got you. I’m sure Dan passed it on, but I wanted to say sorry if you were disappointed with the lack of bonus last year. It was a lean year for everyone.’
‘Not at all, Jeremy, please don’t worry.’ What lack of bonus? Dan had been pleased with it. He’d bought champagne to celebrate and everything.
‘I don’t suppose your husband is around?’ Jeremy went on. ‘I’ve been chasing him all week.’
‘Hang on, I’ll just see if he’s out of the shower. I think he is.’ She hurried upstairs to the bedroom with Dan’s phone in her hand.
He had his towel wrapped low around his waist. His hair stood up at all angles. Sophie always loved seeing him like that. It reminded her of sexy weekends when they first got together. ‘It’s Jeremy,’ she said, handing him the phone.
The look he gave her for her delivery service wasn’t exactly thankful. He waved her out of the bedroom.
He didn’t stay long on the call, though, because it seemed to Sophie that he practically followed her downstairs.
‘Please don’t answer my phone when it’s work,’ he said.
‘Sorry, I thought it might be urgent.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘But Jeremy said he’d been trying to get hold of you.’ Which was odd, because Dan had definitely said they’d been talking every day.
‘I said it wasn’t urgent, so drop it, Soph. I’ll decide when to answer my calls from now on.’
Just then, her own mobile started ringing. It wasn’t Harriet, though, like she’d hoped. She snatched up the handset and waved it at her daughter. ‘Katie? It’s Carlos. Want to talk to him?’
Katie was being maddeningly slow about getting up, so Sophie had no choice but to answer. ‘Hi, Carlos. All okay?’
‘It’ll be better when you’re back,’ Carlos said.
She turned to her husband. ‘Dan? Maybe Oliver can give you a hand with dinner. He missed out on your run.’ Oliver sprang from the sofa to help his dad. ‘Sorry, Carlos. Does Spot miss us?’
‘Sounds like one big happy family there,’ Carlos said.
‘Yep. Here’s Katie. Talk to you later.’ Gratefully, Sophie handed over her phone. ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she told Dan. ‘You okay to hold the fort for half an hour?’
‘Aren’t I always?’ he said, tying one of the aprons around Oliver’s waist. ‘Come on, Katie, I need you to help me, too.’
Katie’s sigh was monumental. ‘I have to go, Carlos, but text pictures, okay?’ Just as Sophie started to climb the stairs, she heard her daughter say, ‘She’s gone for a bath.’
Chapter 13
Thursday / Friday
Harriet got straight on the phone to the Scout leader after she listened to Sophie’s message. ‘You’ve got the wrong weekend for the fundraiser,’ she said when he answered. He must not have earned his badge in calendar-reading yet. ‘This is Harriet.’
He acted like he didn’t understand. ‘The. Wrong. Weekend,’ she said. ‘It’s next weekend, not this one, but the flowers turned up today. They’ll be dead by next weekend.’ Not that that was her problem. ‘Can I please have the planner’s mobile number? I need the florist to take the flowers back till next week.’
The leader had the nerve (the nerve!) to claim that Harriet had agreed to this weekend. She had not. It was the organiser’s mistake, and she was very sorry that all the posters were up and the Scouts had been selling raffle tickets for weeks. No, of course she hadn’t seen the notices. ‘I agreed to next weekend, not this one. I can prove it. I sent you a text. Just a minute. I’m sending it to you again.’ That would settle things.
They’d only agreed to host the event because, let’s be honest, Harriet needed all the brownie points she could get in the village. James was always running goat-petting days, or whatever they were, for the local school groups. Everyone knew they had plenty of room on the farm for the fundraiser.
When they’d first moved into James’s parents’ house, Harriet had wondered if people didn’t warm to her because she’d married James. You know, well-loved local boy snatched by outsider city woman. She had tried. She’d even followed the advice she found on how to make friends. Yet people seemed put off when she showed interest by asking questions about them. They didn’t laugh when she demonstrated her lighter side by making a joke, and got uneasy when she listened intently to them. No matter how hard she’d tried to fit in, for whatever reason the villagers didn’t get her.
She tapped through to her texts, scrolling down till she found the Scout leader’s mobile. Quickly she read through the trail of
messages. ‘Oh.’
He was right. The delivery people were right. Everyone was right except her. The fundraiser was this weekend. How could she have messed that up? Harriet was the least messing-things-up person she knew. She just didn’t make mistakes like that.
It was the damn holiday. She’d been distracted. Not to mention that she’d been planning the revival of her marriage, too. It was a lot to deal with.
‘Given that it’s this weekend, I’ll need to make sure the planner is on top of his game so that it doesn’t disturb my friends too much,’ she told the leader. ‘I’m disappointed about this.’ This mistake that she’d made, she didn’t say. ‘I’m very sorry, and goodbye.’
Sophie rang again just as she was about to ring the planner. ‘I’m sorry,’ Harriet said as soon as she picked up. ‘I messed up the dates. I feel terrible about it, but I’ve got the planner’s number and I’m ringing him now to put everything right. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you won’t even know they’re there on Sunday.’
‘Crikey, then they really are coming this weekend?’ Sophie asked.
‘Yes, but like I said, you won’t even know. They’ll come in the morning, set up, run their events and be cleaned up and gone by five. That was the agreement. I’ll ring the planner now.’
Sophie laughed. ‘I guess it’s cosmic payback for not telling you that Spot was a snake. No, why don’t you give me the number and I’ll ring? I’m on the ground, as it were, and … honestly, it’s felt good to have something to do here.’
‘Are you bored? Because I could send you an itinerary of things to do in the area.’
It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to knock something up. Maybe one of the local attractions followed by a walk. Her finger itched to end the call and check the weather. She could rank a top ten list of touristy things for Sophie based on the number and average star rating on TripAdvisor. Though she’d have to control for the obviously wrong reviews, and distance from the house, because that had to be taken into account. Very few people wanted to drive a hundred miles for a pencil museum. It wouldn’t take more than half an hour to put something together. An hour, tops. With driving directions; they’d need those too. Two hours, max. She had time after breakfast and before their 11 a.m. museum visit.
‘No thanks! I’m fine,’ Sophie said. ‘Maybe we’ll have a walk into the village later. Speaking of which, I saw James yesterday.’ She laughed. ‘He can’t stay away from his goats for very long, can he?’
Harriet froze. ‘Was he at the house?’ Because the London Transport Museum definitely didn’t have a branch in their village.
If Sophie noticed Harriet’s hesitation, she had the good grace not to let on. He was in the village, she explained, yesterday afternoon.
Harriet felt ill as everything started falling into place. The worry that something was wrong and the distance that she’d definitely felt between them. The fact that their duvet cover got more action in the spin cycle than Harriet had in months. While she was at the spa, assuming he was swotting up on the history of the steam engine, he could have been enjoying another kind of steamy exhibition. ‘Was he on his own?’ She knew the question sounded suspicious. Sod it. She was suspicious now. Could James really be carrying on with someone from the village?
‘Yesss. Oh, then he saw a friend.’ Sophie made that sound like an afterthought but Harriet knew better. ‘Should I not have said anything?’
‘No, no, it’s fine.’ It made no sense to ignore facts when they came to light. She may as well know the truth, much as she might not want to hear it. Much as she couldn’t wrap her head around James doing something like this. For nineteen years he’d been nothing but steadfast and devoted to his family and friends. James was the one everyone knew they could depend on.
‘Okay, good,’ said Sophie. ‘They seemed like great mates.’
Great mates. For a split second, the relief that flooded through Harriet made her giddy. ‘Then I’m sure it was his best friend. Tall, brunette?’
‘That’s her.’
It was only Persephone, not some man-stealing temptress. Why had her mind gone there so quickly? She was a solicitor. It was her job not to jump to conclusions, but to establish the truth based on the careful examination of evidence.
But then Harriet’s memory did disclose more evidence. At Persephone’s birthday party, months ago, when she’d stumbled upon them whispering together. That wasn’t unusual. They were best friends, after all. It was the way they froze, like two children playing Statues, when they saw her. Persephone had claimed they were talking boring goat stuff, and Harriet might have thought no more about it – she was James’s bank adviser, after all – if they hadn’t both looked so uncomfortable. She realised with horror just how many interrupted phone calls and furtive conversations she’d heard over the past few months. Hadn’t they been texting and ringing every day while he was in London? And now James had run back to see the woman the first chance he got.
Was it possible? She’d seemed so harmless – pretty, but nowhere near fall-in-love-and-leave-your-wife territory. Not to mention that she’d been James’s mate all through childhood and puberty and they’d had absolutely no interest in each other even when their hormones were at their most raging. So why should they now? They’d passed their expiry date on romance.
It was like suddenly expecting to travel on an old train ticket. It might have been perfectly valid once upon a time, but now someone else held the ticket for that journey. Rules were rules for a reason. Otherwise they were no better than James’s goats, and Harriet was pretty sure she’d feel the same way even if this was happening to someone else.
‘Hmm, yes, great mates,’ she said to Sophie.
‘Harriet? What’s wrong?’
She wasn’t ready for the concern in Sophie’s voice. It threatened to undo her. ‘Things haven’t been great between us lately,’ she admitted. ‘That’s why I wanted this holiday, to give me the chance to, I don’t know, make things better.’ She found herself outlining to Sophie her entire plan to get back the relationship with James she’d once had. One that was nice and even and not off kilter and sagging with emotional atrophy, and now … Persephone. Of all people.
They had been happy once. She wasn’t imagining that. Of course, day-to-day life wore the edges off the passion they’d felt at the beginning, but that had only been hormones anyway.
She still loved him even though, God, he could drive her mad. She was so tired of feeling like the not-well-liked headmistress all the time.
‘It’s a good plan,’ said Sophie, ‘though do be sure you’re not blaming yourself, because it takes two to make a relationship.’
‘I’m not blaming myself,’ Harriet said.
‘That’s what you just said.’
‘You’re very imprecise with language, Sophie. I didn’t. I said I’m trying to make things better. And I will. It’s all planned.’
‘Do you have different plans, depending on the weather?’ Sophie asked.
Harriet thought she heard laughter in her tone. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Er, not really.’
‘Have you even checked the forecast for today?’ asked Harriet.
‘No, why, is it going to rain here?’
‘I don’t know, that’s the point of having forecasts.’
Sophie did laugh that time. ‘I love how literal you are. It’s fine, I’m sure. We can take our chances with a walk anyway.’
Harriet searched the Met Office site as soon as she hung up.
Less than 20% chance of rain, she texted Sophie.
Her phone buzzed back immediately. Told you it was fine.
If only the same could be said for her marriage. Even faced with an eyewitness to his sneaking around, she didn’t want to believe it. James and Persephone?
There seemed an easy resolution, of course. She could go in right now and ask him. As tempting as that was, she couldn’t let her emotions overrule common sense. The key to a successful prosecution was alw
ays solid preparation. She’d only known about him sneaking off to Persephone for about two minutes. There might not even be sufficient evidence to charge him. What if she was wrong? That wouldn’t give him the warm fuzzies about their marriage.
No, she had to stick to her plan and keep her eyes open. If there was any truth to her suspicion, she was sure she’d see it now.
Without an itinerary to prepare for Sophie, and their own plans for the day nailed firmly down, and definitely not thinking about what James might or might not have been up to with his best friend, Harriet found herself at a loose end after breakfast. Billie was still asleep, of course. Owen must be as well, because Spot’s bedroom door was firmly closed when she crept by.
She had her eye on the towel cupboard in the bathroom. Or, to be more literal, it would be the towel cupboard by the time she was finished. A shiver ran down her spine when the sliding door got snagged on something. Peering in, she saw the problem. Some of the towels had fallen off the shelf and were wedged between the door and whatever was on the floor behind them. It took a few contortions to reach in and clear it, but the towels were a red herring. It was the shoes mixed in there that stopped the door.
It was a relief to finally get it open. Harriet liked things sliding smoothly, in life and in household hardware. But what a landslide inside! All the shelves but the bottom one, which had emptied itself onto the floor, were stuffed full. She couldn’t make head nor tail of the contents.
Plunging her arm right into the heaped depths of the shelf, she swept everything to the floor.
A thrill ran through her. To instantly sweep clear such chaos! This was creative destruction playing out in Sophie’s cupboard, except that it wasn’t products and services but facecloths and those silly loofahs that women only got as gifts. As if the giver thinks: I know what she’d love for Christmas … a strong hint to exfoliate more.
Along with the loofahs, Harriet excavated a trove of informational items from the pile. For instance, she now knew that someone suffered from earwax build-up (three open kits) and thrush (hopefully only Sophie). Sophie’s favourite colour was probably aqua. Most of the towels were that colour even though the bathroom accessories were dark blue and clashed a bit. There were enough scented candles to light a Roman Catholic Mass, but not one had been lit anywhere in the house. Someone was either romantically optimistic or had a friend who thought their house could use the extra fragrance. There was a secret midnight chocolate eater in residence, because otherwise the half-crushed boxes of Celebrations with only the Bounties left would have been kept downstairs in the kitchen. And Dan’s willy was probably big. This last titbit came courtesy of the open box of extra-roomy condoms hidden at the back of the shelf.
The Staycation: This summer's hilarious tale of heartwarming friendship, fraught families and happy ever afters Page 13