Wait. Who said she didn’t love it? Maybe she didn’t love that he could be so critical sometimes. Okay, much of the time. And his joking about her unworldliness had worn thin over the years. But it wasn’t worth fighting about.
Now who’d said anything about fighting?
This country air was doing strange things to her thoughts.
She went out front for more chairs.
‘Want a hand?’ Marion called from behind her. Through the sweaty hair that fell across her face, Sophie saw the young woman over the goat fence. ‘Oh, thank you, that’s really kind but you shouldn’t have to do any more work.’
Marion swung herself over the top rail. ‘Don’t be silly. You shouldn’t have to carry them all by yourself. Here, let me take those. We’ll relay, how’s that?’
Together they quickly shifted all the chairs. ‘You look like you could use a cup of tea,’ Marion said when they stood in the barn. ‘I was about to take a break anyway.’
Sophie smoothed her hair as best she could. ‘I must look a fright.’
Marion pointed at her dungarees. ‘Whereas I’m ready for the catwalk. Come on, I’ll put the kettle on.’
The office was framed out in one corner of the biggest barn, with plasterboard walls that ended well below the roofline. Above them, Sophie could see bits of hay and other barn debris floating in the criss-crossing beams of sunlight. The office itself, though, could have been used for any business, with its utilitarian desks, chairs, computers, printer and an overflow of paperwork stuffed into shelves. A battered radio was playing a chill-out soundtrack.
‘The goats like music?’ she asked.
‘We fight over the station all the time,’ said Marion. ‘I mean James and I, not the goats. Milk? Sugar?’ She got the carton from the mini-fridge in the corner.
‘Yes, and one, please.’ Then she noticed the ribbons tacked to the wall beside one of the filing cabinets. ‘All these for the cheese?’ One went back nine years. ‘You’ve been busy.’
Marion handed her a mug. ‘James has. He’s won all kinds of awards. He’s really quite well known. Around here, at least.’
Sophie sipped her tea. ‘I saw some of his cheeses at the deli in the village. Delia’s.’
‘Yeah, well, she’d stock the goat’s dung if he asked her to.’
‘Really? It sounds like there’s a story there.’
Marion shrugged. ‘Oh, just the usual. She had a thing for him at school. I get the feeling he was quite the catch.’
‘Then Harriet caught him.’ That explained Delia’s comments about her. ‘I should have guessed. She had a lot to say about Harriet.’
‘Everyone is into everyone’s business around here. They’re convinced she’s out to turn James into some corporate type.’
‘You mean like her.’
‘Exactly. It didn’t help when they heard about the Waitrose meeting.’ Marion relayed the whole story, goaty comments and all. ‘Even though he stood up for himself and didn’t do what Harriet wanted, they still think she’s pulling his strings. But I don’t think they actually dislike her. Well, aside from Delia. They just don’t understand her.’
‘She is unusual,’ Sophie admitted. ‘But I really like her.’
Companionably, they finished their tea.
Sophie went back to the house floating on the warmth she felt towards Marion and Harriet. Or maybe it wasn’t the feeling, exactly, that made her so happy, but its rediscovery. Like tasting a favourite childhood treat she hadn’t realised she’d missed. She wanted to gobble up these women.
Dan was waiting for her when she got back to the house. ‘Been out playing with the goats?’ he asked. Then he gently wiped her cheek with his finger.
‘Talking to Marion,’ she said. ‘She helped me carry the chairs into the barn.’
‘What chairs?’
‘For Harriet’s fundraiser. It’s not a problem. I’ve done it now.’
‘I would have helped if I’d known, but I can’t read your mind, Soph.’
‘I’m not saying you should have helped. I’m just saying I did it. I didn’t want to disturb you if you were still working.’
He levelled her with a look. Sophie braced herself. She should know better than to give him any excuse to remind her how hard he worked for them. ‘Where else is the money supposed to come from?’ he asked. ‘Huh? For this holiday? Or your spa appointments? Those aren’t free, you know.’
‘I know! I wasn’t criticising, really I wasn’t. You know how much I appreciate everything you do. I was only answering your question.’
‘By implying that you had to ask Marion.’
He wasn’t in the mood to let this go. Sophie sighed. It really shouldn’t be a big deal. ‘She offered, Dan, that was all.’ She ducked her head under his arm for a hug. That usually worked better than more talking.
As his arms tightened, he murmured, ‘Fine, whatever.’ She relaxed against him. ‘What do you want to do today? I looked up some options for us. Caving or the falconry centre or the model village?’
‘Shall we go to the model village?’ she wondered.
‘Why not the falconry?’
‘Because I’m not sure I want the children handling birds. They’re so big and dangerous.’
‘They don’t have to handle them. We can look at them, can’t we? Look, Soph, you asked me to find something to do, so I did.’
‘You offered,’ she pointed out. They were no longer hugging. ‘And you know they’re going to want to fly them once we get there. I think the model village will be fun, too.’
‘You want to see a scale model of a village that’s in the village? Why wouldn’t you just look at the real village when it’s all around you? Or look at this village? It’s right down the road. Saves me driving.’
‘Fine, let’s go to the falconry centre,’ she said. ‘But you’re going to tell the children no when they ask to handle the birds.’
‘No, we’ll go to the model village, since you’re so keen on it. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.’
‘Dan, come on, don’t be like that.’
‘I’m not like anything. I just said you get what you want. Come on. Get the kids.’
Sophie faltered. ‘We can go to the falconry centre.’
‘Now I don’t want to,’ he told her. ‘I want to go to the model village. Tell the kids the good news. Today’s going to be thrilling, thanks to you.’
Chapter 15
Saturday
‘It was such a stupid thing to fight over,’ Sophie confided to Harriet the next morning. Harriet’s shoulder held her phone to her ear as she slid the hot iron across another pillowslip. Ironing was almost as relaxing as counting. She’d thought about not taking Sophie’s call so she could luxuriate in it, but she also enjoyed talking to Sophie. ‘I mean, the children weren’t exactly going to be carried off by a falcon, were they?’ Sophie went on. ‘I should have just gone along with Dan’s idea.’
A burst of steam hissed from the iron. ‘Sophie, have you ever actually used your iron?’
‘That’s a random question. Are you ironing?’
‘Obviously. I don’t ask random questions.’ Sophie was very nice but she wasn’t always logical. A question wouldn’t be asked unless it had a purpose. Even if the purpose was to make idle conversation. Which this wasn’t.
‘You really don’t have to do the ironing for me,’ she said. ‘I’ve lived in wrinkles just fine all these years. It’s bad enough when I have to iron at the donations place. Anyway, what was I saying? Right, instead we ended up at that model village and Dan was totally right. We stood in the village looking at a replica of the village. I was being ridiculous.’
‘What’s ridiculous about saying what you do and don’t want?’ Harriet asked.
‘Well, if we’d gone to the falconry centre then everyone would have been happy.’
‘Is that important to you?’ She folded the material, trapping the warmth between the layers. It would leave creases, but deliberate creases
were fine. ‘Because everyone can’t be happy if you’re unhappy, so you wouldn’t have achieved your goal anyway. Are you happy, Sophie?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Why of course? You’ve just said that Dan shouted at you. Does he do that a lot?’
‘No, I mean, not more than usual. It’s not usually serious. It’s just when I’m being silly.’
‘Which is how often?’
‘Oh, I do something wrong most days.’
‘You know that’s not normal,’ Harriet said. ‘Look at your friends’ relationships. Are their partners shouting at them most days?’
Sophie hesitated. ‘I haven’t really … I’m not in touch with my friends as much as I used to be. You know how it is, with family obligations it gets harder to find the time.’
Warning bells were ringing all around this conversation. Could Sophie really not see? ‘When was the last time you saw your friends?’
‘I don’t know, Harriet, I don’t keep records. Let me think. Maybe a year or two ago? Dan and the children are my priority. That’s what being a good wife and mother is, making them happy.’
‘But why is that more important than making yourself happy?’ Harriet pulled another pillowslip from the dwindling pile. Only three to go. The flat and fitted sheets were already cooling on their labelled shelves in the cupboard. She’d saved these as a treat for last.
Sophie hesitated. ‘It’s not more important, but it’s as important. That’s what I’m saying.’
‘Then you still wouldn’t have achieved your goal for everyone to be happy. You wouldn’t be happy.’
Harriet worried that might sound harsh. Yes, it was nice for everyone to get their way, but it wasn’t always possible. Then one had to weigh the feelings of others against one’s own. That was the point. Sometimes James or Billie got what they wanted, but sometimes Harriet did, too. Sophie didn’t seem to get her turn very often.
Harriet was about to clarify her position – she didn’t want Sophie thinking she was being judged – when Sophie moved on.
‘I’ve been meeting some of your neighbours. Well, not neighbours exactly, but people in the village. The butcher, and the barmaid at the pub across from the spa. And Delia.’
‘Hmph, Delia. She’s not my biggest fan.’
‘No, I got that impression,’ said Sophie.
‘Delia thinks I’m autistic. Most of them probably do.’
Sophie paused. ‘You don’t, though? Think you are? I don’t mean to offend you by asking. It’s just that you brought it up and there’s a lot of talk about it now, you know, documentaries and things, and people are recognising it more.’
‘I’m not autistic,’ said Harriet.
‘Are you offended?’
She truly wasn’t. She’d had the word thrown at her many times, by classmates and colleagues who didn’t know her very well. People loved easy labels almost as much as they did their own judgements. It wasn’t usually malicious, just ill-informed. Harriet never minded correcting them. ‘Why would I be offended? You only asked a question. I know how I am, and I can see why you’d ask. So no, I’m not offended.’ Harriet paused. ‘The opposite, actually. It’s only because I’m so organised that I can do everything I do. I’m a good solicitor because of it, and I can run a house and keep the family happy and do everything I want because of it.’
‘It just seems exhausting,’ Sophie said. ‘Don’t you get tired?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
‘I mean inside your head. I’d need a lie-down if I had to think about everything you do.’
‘That’s why I count,’ said Harriet. She didn’t tell everyone this. It must mean that Sophie was her friend. She smiled. ‘Patterns. I see them all the time, so I count them. And outlines of things. Geometric shapes. They’re everywhere.’ She glanced around the living room. ‘Windowpanes and the wooden bits in between, the sash, sides, top. The architrave is in three pieces … the walls, the pictures, each side of the matt, each side of the frame.’ Her eyes travelled into the hall. ‘Then the spindles on the stairs, the bottom square parts and the rounded top parts and the empty spaces in between, then the handrail, the one at the bottom, the newel, that round part at the top. And the stairs, of course. It’s very relaxing.’
‘Blimey, Harriet, that sounds like a nightmare.’
‘It’s not. I like it.’
‘And you see these patterns everywhere?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘No wonder everything is so neat.’
‘Right.’ Harriet felt like Sophie understood her.
‘You’re in the right profession,’ Sophie said. ‘You and Dan. Even if it is really frustrating living with one of you.’
‘One of us?’
‘Solicitors,’ Sophie said. ‘You can be so infuriating. Not you-you, you solicitors, I mean. You haven’t been working as much as Dan this week, have you? I’m afraid you’ll have to throw him out of the office when you get back. I’m living with a workaholic.’
Harriet laughed. Right now she’d swap her potentially (but hopefully not) straying husband for Sophie’s workaholic one in a heartbeat. ‘You can’t blame Dan for keeping a close eye on things after what happened,’ she mused. ‘I wouldn’t be away from my desk for two weeks either if I were him. It’s better to be safe than sorry. In fact, I did ring in, and I’m not even dodgy.’ She jumped into the yawning silence at Sophie’s end. ‘I’m not saying he’s definitely dodgy this time.’
‘There is nothing dodgy about Dan.’
She might have heard the warning in Sophie’s voice if she hadn’t been so distracted by the flaw in her logic. ‘I don’t want to split hairs, but un-dodgy solicitors don’t end up in court over missing evidence unless they’re wrongly charged, and Dan was, in point of fact, responsible for missing evidence. He took witness statements home in the client files when they should have been logged in and kept where the prosecutor could access them. That’s not my opinion. It’s a matter of public record,’ she added, just to clarify things. ‘But I’ll concede that he might not be dodgy any more.’ Although that wasn’t what her colleague had intimated, and leopards and spots and smoke and fire came to mind, but she was willing to give her friend the benefit of the doubt.
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ Sophie said, ‘but stop calling my husband dodgy!’
‘I’m talking about his last offence. Over the missing evidence.’ Surely Sophie wasn’t claiming not to know about this. ‘And I said he might not still be dodgy.’ Honestly, Sophie should listen more carefully.
‘The only offence is what you’re giving me right now,’ Sophie said. ‘How can you say something like that? I thought we were friends.’
‘But we are friends!’
‘Not when you start throwing accusations around, we’re not. Really, that’s so mean.’
Harriet wasn’t trying to be mean. She never imagined that Dan would go through all that and not tell his wife. She’d assumed Sophie knew.
Even if she hadn’t assumed that, though, she still wouldn’t have kept it from her, precisely because she was Sophie’s friend. And Sophie should want to know. She should be grateful to have a friend looking out for her best interests. Just like Harriet was grateful for Sophie telling her about seeing James in the village. Was that easy to hear? No, of course not. That’s what made friends so valuable. They sometimes said the hard things.
But Sophie wasn’t sounding at all grateful. ‘I think I’d like to go now.’ Harriet could feel the chill all the way from the Cotswolds. ‘I’ll thank you to keep your rumour-mongering to yourself from now on.’ With that, she hung up on Harriet.
Harriet had no trouble seeing that Sophie was cross. She just couldn’t understand why, when she was doing her friend a favour by telling her. Where was the sense in shooting the messenger when the facts were still the facts?
Nobody seemed keen to talk to Harriet. Billie sloped into the kitchen, phone in hand as usual. Harriet’s perfectly amena
ble attempts to engage her daughter were met with grunts. Until she started outlining the plan for the day.
‘Mum, I really don’t want to go on another forced tour today.’
James looked up from his paper. ‘I second that. I think even prisoners of war got rest time under the Geneva Convention. Let’s just relax today.’
‘We are relaxing,’ said Harriet. ‘And I cannot believe you’ve just compared yourself to a POW. We’ll take a picnic onto Hampstead Heath. What’s not relaxing about that? We’ve got the whole afternoon until we go to the zoo. It’s only a forty-minute walk from the bottom of the heath, or thirty minutes if we catch the Overground and walk.’
Harriet had loved the heath since even before she’d met James. Not normally one for willy-nilly nature, she was surprised by how calm she felt there. No matter how often she tried to explain the difference, James never understood how she could love it so much and yet hate the countryside. But it was rural open-endedness that she objected to. The heath was huge. It felt wild and natural, but it had borders, and distinct areas inside it, with the ponds and Kenwood House at the top. Countryside was okay when it was contained.
‘You’re ridiculous.’ Billie poured herself a bowl of cereal as Harriet tried to remember what that insult was for. Oh yes, today’s plan.
‘You’re coming with us, so you may as well get used to the idea. We’re leaving at eleven thirty.’ Harriet glanced at the ticking clock on Sophie’s wall. Billie looked at her phone. ‘And why don’t you leave that thing at home today? I’m sure there’s nothing so urgent that you can’t give it a rest for a few hours.’
‘Yeah, right, good one, Mum.’
They both glanced up when Owen came in. He might not have been part of the plan but Harriet found that she was glad to have him in the house, even if he had nearly given her a heart attack when he’d first turned up. Sophie had been right. The boy really wasn’t any bother at all. If anything, he gave Billie something to focus on aside from Harriet’s faults.
The Staycation: This summer's hilarious tale of heartwarming friendship, fraught families and happy ever afters Page 15