John scowled furiously, his fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly. ‘I can’t believe you’re letting Nick anywhere near her. She’ll have taken one look at him and been determined to have him. Nick is a very attractive bloke, Hat. We all know that.’
John got up from the table and began to pace the room. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t set this all up herself. I bet she met Nick somewhere and persuaded David Henderson to take him on.’
I took a deep breath. ‘John, calm down. You’re not being rational. Look, I agree with you that Amanda always gets what she wants,’ I shivered slightly at the very thought, ‘but I don’t for one minute think she was behind getting Nick into her husband’s business.’
‘You don’t know what she’s like,’ John almost shouted, looking me straight in the eye.
‘Yes, I do. You know I do.’ When John didn’t reply, I got up from the table, scooped coffee into the percolator and poured on boiling water before finding a couple of mugs and setting them down before him. ‘Look, John, you and I both know that Amanda Goodners is the most beautiful and therefore most dangerous woman on the planet. But you’ve moved on from her. You haven’t seen her in years and it’s about time you got over her and let her go, for heaven’s sake.’
John looked down at his coffee for a long time before saying, quietly, ‘Did she mention me?’
‘No, why should she?’ I retorted, exasperated. ‘Do you know, John, I’m not sure she ever even knew you were my brother. She was so big in our lives – for me at school and for you when you fell so hard for her – but I don’t for one minute think those feelings were ever reciprocated.’
John’s eyes, as he raised them to mine were so haunted, I reached for his hand. ‘John, this is ridiculous, it’s twenty-five years ago. You can’t still have feelings for her.’
He laughed but without mirth. ‘I never got over her, Hat, and I never will. And if you think it finished all those years ago you’re more naïve than I thought. Amanda has never been out of my life. She has the ability, just when I think I’m back on track, to reappear and it starts all over again.’
I stared at my brother in disbelief. ‘What are you saying? That you still see her?’
‘Oh Hat, you really don’t know do you? I might not see her for years, and then she’ll ring me or she’ll send me a funny little note or she’ll be waiting by my car in the car park as if she’s never been away. Or she isn’t married with a son. She dangles me on a string, Hat, and the minute I show my feelings again, she’s off.’
I felt sick. ‘Does David Henderson know about this?’
‘God no, I shouldn’t think so. She’s like a drug, I can’t give her up.’
‘And where, in this sordid little affair, are you at the moment?’ I was beginning to feel angry now. Angry at Little Miss Goodness for messing with my brother’s head, but also for John, for his weakness, for all the wasted years. And much as I wasn’t Christine’s most avid fan, I hated the idea that I was now party to something of which she obviously wasn’t aware.
‘I’ve not seen her for nearly six months. I was just beginning to get my head round it once more when I hear Nick’s teamed up with her husband. I’m telling you now, Harriet, you have got to get Nick out of there. He won’t stand a chance once she moves in on him.’
Although this was the very thing that had been skittering through my brain since the night of the Hendersons’ dinner party, I wasn’t prepared to have John think Nick was such a pushover. He was married to me, for heaven’s sake. He loved me. No one could come between us.
‘This is stupid, John. Just because you can’t resist Amanda Goodners, there’s no reason why Nick should be the same. And anyway, I don’t imagine Nick will be seeing much of her. He’s in Italy at the moment. She’s at home in Midhope – she rang here this morning apparently.’
Hearing Libby coming, singing down the stairs, John stood up to go. ‘Well, you now know what’s been going on, Harriet. I’m not proud of myself, but there it is. You know as well as I do what Amanda is like. If I were you I’d be on that phone telling Nick to get out of this deal as soon as he possibly can.’
As if I haven’t tried, I thought, grimly, as I watched John drive off. And you’re not me and your whole security isn’t, as from a couple of weeks ago, connected to that woman and her husband. My mood didn’t lighten when, on closing the kitchen door, the phone rang and Amanda Henderson’s distinct voice sounded, immediately taking me back twenty-five years to when I was a schoolgirl.
‘Ah, Harriet. You’re home now. How are you?’ Her assurance that I would know straight away who was speaking without any introduction did nothing to make me feel any better. ‘Hello, Amanda. I’m fine.’ I couldn’t get my head around calling her ‘Mandy.’ ‘I was going to call you back, but I’ve been busy.’ I didn’t expand on this – there was no way I was going to let Amanda Goodners know that my mother was apparently going doolally in a two-star hotel on the Isle of Man. Or that John had left me totally stunned by what he’d just told me about her.
‘Don’t worry. I just wanted to ask you if you’d had any more thoughts about this Midhope Grammar reunion before I fly off to Italy. My flight is at five, and I really need to get back to Sally Davies – you remember Sally? – with the final numbers.’
‘Italy? You’re going out to Italy?’ My heart was suddenly hammering frighteningly in my chest.
‘Yes, I’m meeting Nicky out there. Didn’t he tell you? Typical man.’ She laughed comfortably. ‘This is where I help David with his business ventures. I speak a few languages, for my sins, and my law training helps with the small print in contracts. You’d be amazed how often our contacts think they can get away with murder because their contracts are not written in English. Anyway, Harriet, can I put you down on the twentieth?’
‘Put me down?’ I asked in surprise, my head still full of terrifying thoughts about Mandy and Nicky, together, in Italy. What was I, an unwanted moggy that had to be got out of the way so that these two could make hay together while the Italian sun shone?
‘Yes, put you down for the Midhope Grammar School 100th-year reunion.’ Amanda was beginning to sound a trifle impatient. ‘Now, I’m expecting you and Grace to join us. Clare Hargreaves and Sarah Armitage were your year weren’t they? They’re going to be there.’ Amanda knew perfectly well these two were my year – they’d been with Grace and me in the ‘games shed affair’ and I didn’t think for one moment that Amanda would have forgotten this.
‘I can’t actually see Grace coming,’ I said, struggling to bring myself back to the present from my schoolgirl past, and away from possible scenarios involving Amanda and my husband in the future.
‘Well, that’s up to her. It would have been very interesting to meet up with her again after all these years.’ She paused before saying, ‘So, Harriet, it’s actually next Friday evening at the school itself at seven-thirty.’
I made a decision. My social life was pretty nonexistent at the moment, and it would be interesting to see people I’d last clapped eyes on twenty years ago. Not only that, what do they say about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer? At least if she was with me then she couldn’t be with my brother. Or my husband.
‘I’ll be there, Amanda. You can put me down.’
‘Oh, goodo. Now, any message for Nicky?’ she trilled.
What could I possibly say that could be carried via Amanda to my husband?
‘No, no message, Amanda,’ I said and hung up the receiver.
Chapter 9
Never one to do anything by half measures, Grace took on her new status as single girl in need of a social life with extraordinary gusto. Attempting to hide her hurt and fury over Dan’s affair and his subsequent behaviour towards her, Grace threw herself into a manic round of visits to the gym, training for the London Marathon, and job searching for promotion. This, coupled with a determination to go out and socialise as often as possible, meant she was able to fill much of the time she wou
ld otherwise have spent at home brooding over Dan’s defection and the constant sadness caused by her infertility.
While there was little I could do to help with the former – no way was she persuading me to pound the pavements in a sweaty tracksuit – it appeared I was to be roped in to help with the latter. On the morning of Nick’s intended return from Italy, Grace appeared in my classroom and thrust a ticket under my nose.
‘Here we are, this is what we’re doing tonight,’ she said, grinning as I warily tried to make sense of what she’d handed to me.
‘‘Sing-a-long-a-Sound Of Music’? Grace, I don’t think so. I’ve no babysitter, and Nick’s due back some time this evening.’
‘All sorted,’ she said triumphantly in the tone of voice I knew from many years’ experience meant she would brook no argument.
I glanced at the classroom clock. I had ten minutes until the kids came in for morning school and I still had a pile of unmarked maths books in front of me. ‘Go on,’ I groaned, ‘hit me with it.’
‘I’ve just spoken to your wonderful mother-in-law and she totally agrees with me that you’re looking a little tired and overworked and could do with a night out at the theatre. She’s more than happy to sit in with the kids while you gain a little culture.’
‘My wonderful mother-in-law, as you so succinctly put it, will be overjoyed at the thought of being in my sitting room to welcome back my husband and to find out before I do just what has been happening in Italy.’ It still very much rankled that Sylvia had given Nick the wherewithal to be in Italy in the first place, and she knew it. She’d been pussyfooting around me ever since Nick broke the news to me that she’d given him what amounted to a huge slice of her life savings.
‘Oh give the poor woman a break,’ Grace said, impatiently. ‘Most people would kill for a mother-in-law like yours. Now, Sylvia and I have sorted out the housekeeping, as it were, between us so it’s just a matter of dropping off at the fancy dress hire shop on your way home.’
‘Why? Don’t tell me you’ve organised a fancy dress party for me to go to as well?’ This really was going too far. The only reason I was going along with her plan for a night out was my childish need for Nick to realise that he wasn’t the only one who could have a good time on his own. Although I was desperate to see him, it wouldn’t do him any harm to come home to find me not there. I could do, ‘getting on with my own life’ as well as the next woman. Alright, as well as Amanda.
‘Do you not know what ‘Sing-a-long-a-Sound of Music’ is?’ Grace asked in amusement.
‘Of course I know what the “Sound of Music” is,’ I said huffily. ‘I assume this is what Valerie Westwood has been rehearsing for the last few weeks. Mind you, she’s kept it quiet. She’s normally practising her words and touting tickets long before the first night.’
‘No, you daft thing. This is a sort of spoof. The audience all get dressed up as something to do with the “Sound of Music” – like being a nun, or one of the Von Trapp family or Maria herself – and then we go along and watch the film.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Grace repeated, starting to laugh at the expression on my face. ‘Well, we go and sing along with all the songs and heckle the baddies and cheer the goodies.’
‘Dressed as a brown paper package tied up with string?’ I said in disbelief.
‘Hey, that’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought about that one.’
‘So what had you thought about?’ I was curious to know what she intended going as even if I was damned if she was getting me to go along with her on this whole debacle.
‘Not sure yet, but there are plenty of nuns’ habits available at that fancy dress place on your way home. I’ve just rung them and asked them to put one aside for you.’
‘You’ve certainly done your homework,’ I said and then catching sight of Darren Slater who was skulking in the cloakroom rather than freezing his tush off out in the playground and no doubt taking in all our conversation, I shouted, ‘and I hope you’ve done yours too, Darren Slater.’
‘So, I’ll pick you up about seven. We want to get a good seat. All the better to hiss at the countess.’
I shook my head incredulously. I might, secretly, be a bit tense at the thought of Nick’s return home that day – I knew I’d have to quiz him into the ground about Amanda’s presence with him in Italy– but I didn’t really want to let on to Grace just how twitchy I was feeling about the whole thing. Better to pretend everything was fine. Maybe I could even relax and believe my own lovely dream, of Nick arriving home, sweeping me up the stairs and tumbling me into bed with the words, ‘My darling, Harriet, no one compares to you. How you could even think I could be tempted by another woman when you are all woman to me?’ Or something along those lines.
‘Well?’ Grace interrupted my vision of Nick handing me the single red rose he just happened to have about his half-naked self, ‘Are you up for it, or not?’
‘I don’t believe you’re expecting me to dress up in a nun’s outfit and sit in that fleapit of a theatre, booing and hissing when I could be at home lying in wait for my long-gone husband, ready to tear the clothes off his fit, tanned body the minute he walks in the door.’
Grace did waver for a moment. ‘Well, put like that you might just have a point. But there again, I bet you’ve always wanted to sing and yodel along with a lonely goatherd.’
‘Always. Top of my list of things to do. Right, I’ll come with you on one condition.’
‘Ok. What is it?’
‘You have to come with me to Amanda Goodners’ school reunion thingy tomorrow night.’
‘No problem,’ said Grace airily. ‘I’d already decided I wanted to go. Didn’t I tell you?’
‘No! You said definitely no way were you spending an evening with people we didn’t even like when we were fifteen. You said we’d more than likely despise them now.’
‘Did I really say that? How short-sighted of me. Now that I’m on a quest to get out and meet new people it sounds like a great idea. Count me in.’
‘But they’re not new people,’ I said in exasperation at her unexpected volte-face. ‘They’re old people plus an extra twenty-five years.’
‘Brilliant. I shall look forward to it immensely. And because you’ve been such a good pal all these years, and especially tonight in coming with me dressed in your nun’s habit rather than hanging around in your best suspenders and high heels waiting for that wonderful husband of yours’ – she paused for effect – ‘you can come and get ready at my house tomorrow and you can borrow my new Max Mara jersey clingy dress that I’ve not even worn yet.’
‘Can I really? Wow!’
‘Absolutely,’ said Grace magnanimously, ‘for you are my very best pal in the whole of the world.’
‘Very best pushover in the whole of the world,’ I muttered irritably to myself that evening as I struggled with my wimple in front of the dressing table mirror. It just wouldn’t sit properly at all. Every time I thought I’d got it right, it fell to one side giving the general impression of my being a cross-eyed, mentally defective penguin.
I had our part of the house completely to myself, Sylvia having offered to give tea to the children in her flat and then take them all to the cinema. She really was bending over backwards to be helpful at the moment.
I assumed that Kit and Liberty would plump for one showing while Sylvia and India would watch something more suitable for five-year-olds. That said, the two elder children were usually more than happy to watch a Shrek- or Toy Story-type film, and Sylvia usually fell asleep after the first ten minutes or so no matter what she was watching.
Nick had phoned earlier, leaving a message to say he’d be home around ten o’clock. When I’d tried to phone him back on his mobile there’d been no reply, and I assumed he must have already got on the plane.
Grace was late. I gave my wimple another tug and adjusted my suspenders. I’d thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone, as it were, in hopeful anticipation
of a night of passion with my husband on his return, as well as a night of goatherd yodelling. It really was a very strange feeling seeing my features defined quite differently from usual by the black and white starched material, knowing that, underneath the incredibly heavy fabric, I was wearing underwear of which any high-class whore would be proud.
‘Hattie, I’m running late. Could you save us some time by meeting me at the top of your lane in ten minutes?’ Grace called from her mobile.
‘Dressed like this?’ I started to say, but she’d rung off and there was nothing for it but to gather my bag, my habit and my dignity and dash up the darkened lane that led to the main road.
With the excess habit gathered haphazardly into one hand for ease of movement, and my wimple held centrally with the other, I staggered up the tree-lined lane. It was a beautiful evening, sharply cold and with a full moon already sailing to the west like an extravagant silver cheese. Ever since Nick, who’d once spent a summer with relatives in America, had told me how Americans look for the rabbit in the moon rather than the man in the moon, I’d looked out for it whenever there was a full moon in the heavens. I stopped for a few seconds to hoist up my frock and decipher the rabbit, which was lying on its side. A sudden rustle of leaves and a sneeze that appeared to come from the middle of the bush ahead of me rooted me to the spot, heart hammering in my chest. This was a fairly lonely lane; there was no reason to be on it unless en route either to our house, Ralph-Next-Door’s house, or the Melvilles’ Farm which made up the little hamlet where we lived. I stood stock still now, unwilling to carry on up the lane past the bush where the sneeze appeared to have originated. There was another rustle of leaves and the bush gave the impression of parting. A dark figure stepped out and gave a little start at the same time as an involuntary scream escaped my lips.
‘Jesus, Ralph, what on earth are you doing lurking in the bushes?’ I squeaked, relief flooding over me like a warm shower.
‘Who’s that?’ Ralph answered, peering through the dark from his position just to the left of the bush.
Goodness, Grace and Me Page 11