Friend of the Family

by Tasmina Perry

  But now she was alone. Juliet and Peter had gone for a walk, and David had pulled on his Lycra and headed off for a run. Most importantly, as it was Sunday, Josie’s day off, she was doing what any young girl would do surrounded by the glorious French countryside: sunbathing by the pool, plugged into her phone.

  ‘Are you okay, darling?’ Amy asked, standing at the door of the media room, where her daughter was curled up on the huge cream sofa watching a cartoon.

  Tilly nodded, her thumb in her mouth, too engrossed in the action to even reply.

  Amy moved fast, running up the stairs, ducking down as she passed the landing window, her heart bumping, her breath coming fast, glad of the opportunity but knowing she only had a small window of time.

  Josie’s room was right at the top of the house, under the eaves, but with a tiny Juliet balcony and a view of the pool. Staying back in the shadows, Amy peeked out: the girl was still lying motionless on her sunlounger. Good.

  She scanned the room, but there were few possessions on show. Then again, Josie hadn’t arrived in London with much, just enough for a week of work experience. A watch, a hairbrush. There was a packet of cigarettes on the nightstand, which surprised her. She had never seen Josie smoke, never even smelled it on her clothes or her breath. Good at hiding things, perhaps.

  She crossed to the dresser and opened the top drawer. It was full of knickers, high-street-branded thongs in an assorted rainbow of fake lace. On the surface they seemed pretty standard stuff for a twenty-one-year-old, but a voice in her head reminded her that they were garments designed to be seen and taken off. Not just sexy underwear, but underwear for sex. Josie had never mentioned a boyfriend, even though Amy had teased her, out of curiosity more than anything. So if these weren’t for a boyfriend, who were they for? She dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come to her, reminding herself that she was practically middle-aged, and that even though she had a discount card for Agent Provocateur, she still preferred Marks and Spencer’s midi pants.

  In the second drawer, she found what she had come for – Josie’s meagre selection of bras. Aware that her heart was beating faster, she checked the labels: 32D, the same size as the garment she had found at the bottom of her bed.

  Her head swam. She needed air, couldn’t breathe. Without thinking, she crossed to the window, forgetting she might be seen, and looked down at the pool. Josie was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where’ve you gone?’ she muttered, casting her gaze from left to right, past the line of cypress trees by the orchard to the outbuildings beyond the pergola.

  She thought of David, running somewhere around the village, and felt cold. He’d mentioned casually a few days earlier that he liked to do a few warm-up exercises in the shade of the orange grove beyond the pool, and wondered if Josie had overheard him say that too. She turned and ran for the door.

  It wasn’t until she was tiptoeing down the narrow corridor towards the stairs that she realised how little she had thought this plan through. If Josie had returned to the villa and chose to pop back to her room for any reason, Amy had nowhere to go. She was trapped.

  Taking the stairs three at a time, she banged painfully into the wall and bounced off, turning and speed-walking through the library and out onto the terrace, where she forced herself to stop, feigning nonchalance. She felt a flood of relief that she hadn’t seen Josie – or rather, that Josie hadn’t seen her – but relief immediately turned to suspicion. If she wasn’t by the pool and she wasn’t in her room, where was she?

  As she turned, she caught movement in her peripheral vision: a figure moving through the trees on the far side of the pool house. She followed, keeping her distance, as Josie disappeared into gardens that grew wilder the further away from the house you went.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she hissed under her breath, the thought flitting through her head that perhaps David hadn’t been for a run after all. Perhaps they had arranged a rendezvous, a tryst. Out here was the perfect place, she thought.

  She came to a fence; beyond, she could see the orchards that flanked the house to the south. She pushed her way through a rusty iron gate, taking care not to make it squeak. The fruit trees were not long off harvest, their branches heavy with lemons, oranges and pears. And now she could see where Josie had been heading: a small group of green wooden loungers set in a semicircle where the trees gave way to gently sloping fields and a luscious view of the valley in the distance.

  Crouching behind a trunk, she watched as Josie settled on one of the loungers and opened her tote bag to pull out her headphones. She was just about to put them on when she seemed to have a change of mind and, crossing her arms, pulled her skimpy top over her head, quickly followed by her red bikini: one from the shoot, Amy noted. Fascinated, she stared at Josie’s topless form. Even from this distance, she could see the tight mounds of her breasts and her small, perfectly round nipples.

  An image came into her head. Was this what David wanted? Was this what he saw as Josie lay back on their bed, naked and covered in a light sheen of sweat? She imagined her husband’s head lowering to the girl’s nipples, sucking at them like warm cherries; hungry hands parting Josie’s thighs, easing himself into her as she moaned his name over and over. Telling him that this was what she had wanted from the first moment she had seen him. Yes, David, yes.

  Amy would have had to be blind not to notice the chemistry between them at the pool that day. It had always been there, she just hadn’t wanted to see it.

  She stopped, turning her head. Had she imagined it, or had she just heard her name being called? No, there it was again. She swivelled around. It was coming from the house.

  She glanced over at Josie, but the girl was now lying back, headphones over her ears, oblivious to everything but the sun kissing her naked skin.

  ‘Amy!’

  She backed away, out of the orchard, through the gate. The shouts were more insistent now – and she recognised the voice. David. So he hadn’t gone for a run, she thought, feeling suddenly filled with righteousness. She could see him standing by the pool, facing the house, and quickened her pace, ready to tell him exactly . . . but then she saw Tilly standing at his side.

  ‘There’s Mummy!’ the little girl cried, pointing. David whirled around, and Amy saw the anger creasing his face.

  ‘Amy, where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere, I was just . . .’ She gestured vaguely behind her.

  ‘I came back from my run and found Tilly sitting on the edge of the pool!’

  Amy’s eyes widened, looking to her daughter with alarm. Tilly pouted up at David. ‘But I didn’t go in, Daddy.’ She looked at Amy and beamed. ‘I’m not allowed without an adult,’ she said, proud to be able to recite the rules. Then she frowned. ‘Why’s Daddy angry?’

  ‘He’s not angry with you, darling,’ said Amy, looking up at David. ‘I think he’s angry with me.’

  ‘Damn right I am,’ he hissed, then thought better of it and bent to look at Tilly. ‘Why don’t you go back and watch the farm thing on the TV, Tills? I’ll be up in two minutes.’

  Tilly nodded. ‘Are you going to tell Mummy off?’

  David shook his head slowly. ‘We’re just going to have an adult talk.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Tilly, running off up the terrace steps.

  Once she was gone, David turned back to Amy. ‘So where the hell were you?’

  ‘I only left her for a minute. She was happy watching her programme.’

  ‘What if she’d slipped? What if she had slipped and fallen into the water without her armbands?’

  ‘You’re being melodramatic, David.’

  ‘Am I? She’s five years old, Amy. She can’t swim. You can’t just piss off and leave her when the mood takes you.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘You didn’t what? Didn’t leave her?’

  ‘God, David, you can b
e such a sanctimonious prick sometimes,’ she snapped, all the anger and frustration she had built up imagining David and Josie together spilling out. ‘You’re the one who wanted to go off running; you could have stayed and watched Tilly, you know.’

  ‘You really can be unbelievably self-centred at times, d’you know that?’ David shook his head in disgust and turned towards the house.

  ‘Me? Selfish?’ shouted Amy, following him. ‘You’re the one insisting that I do exactly what you want.’

  He stopped and looked at her. ‘Is this about the pact? Amy, we had an agreement and it wasn’t just for my benefit. You’re overworked and stressed out, and it’s not healthy for anyone, least of all Tilly – as I think we’ve just seen.’

  She glared at him. ‘And now I’m a bad mother too?’

  David rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘You’re putting words in my mouth,’ he said. ‘You’re a wonderful mother, but you’ve got to look after yourself too. And this bloody job application is exactly the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing here.’

  Deep down Amy knew that what he was saying had some truth, but she was too wound up, too irritated by his controlling manner.

  ‘I knew you hated me going for the Mode job,’ she spat, jabbing a finger at him. ‘If you have a problem with it, why don’t you just tell me?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t spend half your holiday doing job applications, true. But I do understand that you can’t control when the jobs come up. What I do have a problem with is that you seem to have become obsessed with it. Obsessed to the point that you’ve neglected our daughter.’ It was his turn to point at Amy. ‘And I don’t just mean today either. How often have you been swimming with her or read her a story since we’ve been here? You couldn’t even spare five minutes to sit and watch her cartoon this morning because you had something more important to do.’

  He looked at her, eyes narrowing, then glanced over her shoulder, only just seeming to register that she had come from the direction of the grounds, not the terrace, which was her usual place to work.

  ‘What were you doing anyway?’

  ‘Nothing! I was . . . I was walking around the garden. Is it so bad that I need five minutes to myself sometimes?’ She felt herself grimace. Was that really the best she could come up with?

  ‘Amy, it’s not that—’

  ‘All right, David, I get it,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘I’m the world’s worst parent and I almost killed our daughter.’

  Anger flared in his eyes, then his expression softened.

  ‘I know you’re under pressure,’ he said, taking a step forward, arms reaching for her.

  ‘I don’t need your bloody sympathy, David,’ she growled, dodging his approach.

  ‘Amy, I was only trying to—’

  ‘I know what you were trying to do,’ she snapped, stalking back up the steps towards the terrace. ‘I’m going to check on Tilly.’

  ‘Amy, please,’ said David to her back. But she just kept on walking.

  Chapter 16

  Amy wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but the lavender festival was astonishingly lavender-heavy: stalls selling lavender soap, lavender scent, lavender pillows; even the baguettes on the bakery stall were lavender-infused. There was a parade of local farmers in traditional dress: berets, waistcoats and knotted kerchiefs for him, full skirts and bonnets for her, all driving tractors or horse-drawn wagons, each decorated with huge armfuls of lavender or sculptures of stags and horses twisted from the stalks. Tilly and the twins loved the spectacle, running around in circles, whooping and laughing. The only thing they didn’t like was the ice cream, which tasted of flowers.

  Josie trailed in their wake and Amy stole glances at her, then at David, when she knew she would be unobserved. She had been stewing on the bra, on their argument, for days. If they were having an affair, then they were damned blasé about it: the only time Amy saw David look at Josie was when he asked her if Tilly was wearing sunscreen. Still, what did that actually mean? One kind of deception was the same as any other, right? If you were capable of shagging in the wife’s bed when she was a few dozen steps away, then pretending you had an entirely professional relationship the rest of the time would be a breeze.

  Amy clenched her teeth and tried to put it out of her mind. There was nothing she could do about it now. She followed the rest of the straggling group through the stalls and up towards the lavender fields, where, according to the brochure handed out at the entrance, the highlight of the festival – the harvesting contest – would take place. A circular section of field to one side of the festival grounds had apparently been left unshorn, so that the most burly sons of the soil could wield the traditional scythe against the clock; there was even a grandstand positioned to ensure no one would miss the action.

  Tilly had run on ahead and came back reporting in a disappointed voice that ‘the flowers are all gone’. Another glance at the leaflet – exclusively in French, of course – revealed that the contest was over, having been sensibly run earlier in the day before the sun was too high.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Juliet. ‘At least we get free lavender.’

  A side benefit was that the rest of the field was open for visitors to wander up and down the long rows of lavender and pick as much as they wanted. Max and Peter took one look at the flowers and agreed that they would find a stall that sold wine: ‘not lavender wine’. David, Claire, Josie and the children followed, leaving Amy and Juliet alone.

  ‘This is amazing,’ said Juliet, taking a deep inhalation. ‘It’s good to get out of the villa, out of town.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Amy, still distracted.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ said Juliet intuitively. ‘You’ve been quiet all week. David said you weren’t well the other day.’

  ‘I’m just stressed,’ Amy said with a wave of her hand.

  ‘Have you been taking the BlissVit?’

  ‘I have, actually, though maybe I need Dr Al Saraf to up the dose.’

  ‘Are you sure everything is okay?’ Juliet persisted. ‘I mean with you and David? There seems to have been a bit of an atmosphere the last few days.’

  ‘It’s fine. He just thinks I’m obsessed with work.’

  ‘Well he’s right about that, isn’t he?’ Juliet smiled.

  Amy paused, then looked at her friend. She had to talk about it with someone, had to let it out or it was going to eat a hole in her brain.

  ‘What do you think of Josie?’ she said finally.

  Juliet immediately looked up, her shrewd eyes searching Amy’s. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  Amy gave a wry smile. That was the downside of knowing someone for twenty years: they could key into every nuance of your expression and voice.

  ‘I found a bra in our bed.’

  Juliet laughed, perhaps expecting a punchline, then fell silent when it didn’t come.

  ‘Hers?’

  Amy shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ Her voice cracked, and warm tears began to trickle down her face. ‘Wasn’t mine, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Maybe it was Claire’s?’

  ‘Why on earth would one of Claire’s bras be in the guest bedroom? Besides, Claire’s a little bit more enhanced than that – this was 32D.’

  ‘It’s a pretty common size,’ said Juliet reassuringly. ‘They had guests staying before we came. One of Claire’s friends, perhaps. 32D wouldn’t be so unusual.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Amy. ‘But what if it is Josie’s? It’s her size. I went into her room and checked her underwear drawer.’

  ‘Oh Amy,’ said Juliet, stepping over and rubbing Amy’s arm. It wasn’t consolation, more like disappointment, and Amy pulled away.

  ‘Seriously, Jules, what if they’re having an affair under my nose?’

  ‘What’s started all this? The bra?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘No, bef
ore that,’ she said, trying to think about the question before she spoke. ‘The photo shoot maybe. Maybe before that even. Nothing specific,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just a feeling. But have you not seen the way men are around her? Max, the driver, the photographer, the gardener who tends the pool . . .’

  ‘Max pants around anything female with a pulse. Besides, she’s pretty, sexy, and men . . . well, men are men.’

  Neither of them said anything for a few moments.

  ‘So when is this bra incident supposed to have happened?’ Juliet asked.

  Amy didn’t have the answer to that, but she had spent hours thinking about it.

  ‘Maybe on Monday. Remember we took the kids into the village. Josie stayed behind and Max and David were supposedly playing tennis. But Max is always on the phone, isn’t he? What if David crept away and shagged Josie in our bed, what if . . .’

  Juliet conjured a tissue and handed it to her, giving her time to compose herself. Amy was glad they were at least five rows away from the nearest lavender pickers.

  ‘You do know this is all pure speculation, don’t you, darling? I mean, has there been anything else? Has David been acting differently recently?’

  ‘Like how?’ asked Amy, blowing her nose. ‘I’m new to all this.’

  ‘The classics: has he been working late? Taking more showers? Buying new clothes or aftershave, hiding his mobile phone? Things like that.’

  Amy shook her head. ‘Not that I can remember. He always works late, but the other stuff . . . I’ve been so busy at work, a circus could have rolled into our back garden and I wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘And do you have any reason to suspect Josie?’

  ‘Nothing beyond a feeling that she’s trouble.’

  Juliet raised an eyebrow. ‘Women’s intuition?’

  Amy managed an ironic laugh. ‘Or just paranoia.’

  Juliet walked on, pondering it.

  ‘You do know there’s a much more likely explanation, don’t you? Max.’