‘I have to tell him, don’t I? I can’t live a lie. He ought to understand that well enough,’ she adds wryly.
Oh my golly gosh. What’s she saying? What goes around comes around or something like that? At any rate, it looks like Arian’s about to get a taste of his own medicine.
‘And poor little Oscar…’ she sniffs.
Poor little Oscar will be just fine, with step-daddy Will just dying to get into his role, and a wonderful mother like Karina, and Arian around when it suits him.
‘Little Oscar will be just fine,’ I tell her firmly. ‘He’ll have you and Will, who will make a fantastic Dad by the way, and Arian will still be in his life. Actually, once he gets used to it, it will suit Arian down to the ground being a part time parent. And you have Sylvie. I’m jolly glad you didn’t call him Montgomery, by the way. Terrible name.’
She manages a watery smile. ‘Would have been ghastly for him don’t you think?’
‘Ghastly,’ I nod.
‘Lou, I think I better go and find Arian,’ she says with trepidation.
‘Good luck. If he’s a nightmare, send him round to me,’ I say resignedly.
Later I take a call from the police. Just a follow-up from Saturday night, they tell me. I confirm that nothing seems to have been taken or damaged, and that’s the end of that – or so it seems.
46
Surprisingly, after this latest episode with Karina, I don’t hear from Arian. She told me later that he took it reasonably well in the circumstances. I’m not convinced – and it’s Leo who updates me.
‘God, Lou. I know he’s upset, but I wish he’d leave. He’s been here a week now, ever since they split up.’
Oh. That can’t be much fun for Leo and Pete.
‘How is he?’ I ask, fearing the worst.
‘He’s okay, all things considered. He’s had a few drunk and disorderly sessions with Pete, but he’s starting to pull himself together. He’s got to; the new business needs them both working on it. The main problem is that he hasn’t anywhere to live. Karina and Oscar are in the cottage of course. Which is why we’ve ended up with him here.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well, he’s a big boy. He’ll just have to find somewhere, won’t he?’
I wait for the opportunity to catch Will on his own, just to check he’s up to speed with the goings-on between Karina and Arian. As suspected, he isn’t.
‘I haven’t called her yet,’ says Will thoughtfully. ‘I mean, from what you say, she’s only just got him out of there. I’m not sure she’ll want some other guy blundering in before his half of the bed’s gone cold.’
I’m not sure she would want any old some other guy, but in Will’s case, she might make an exception. I try to explain this to him.
‘Will… Don’t you think she might be quite pleased to see you? I mean, I rather thought, after Agnes and Beamish’s wedding, that you two were fairly cosy…’
‘You think?’ Will thinks about it.
Do I have to spell it out?
‘Because it’s only since then that she and Arian broke up.’
‘I guess,’ says Will, still not putting two and two together and making three.
I stand in front of this gorgeous great American and take his big Neanderthal hands in mine.
‘Idiot. She likes you.’ I stare up into his big unblinking eyes. Talk about a compromising position. I hope Marcus doesn’t walk in.
‘A lot, Will,’ I reiterate.
A broad smile stretches across his face and he smacks a kiss on my cheek.
‘You actually know that, don’t you,’ he says, grinning at me, and looking happier than he’s looked in a long time.
A little later, Zac saunters in, looking quite pleased with himself. That’s the first time I’ve seen that look on his face in all the time he’s been here.
‘Passed me exams,’ he says, looking embarrassed and pleased at the same time. He actually speaks to me now, and not just to answer questions.
‘Fantastic!’ I cry. ‘Congratulations Zac!’
He looks bemused, and saunters out again.
Then Karina turns up, completely unexpectedly.
‘The thick American was in a little while ago,’ I tell her. ‘You just missed him.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Will’s not thick, Louisa. And actually it was you I wanted to see.’
‘Oh?’
‘Were you serious when you offered me my old job back? Only I’m flying so much that I’m finding it impossible to get enough time at home with Oscar. And then there are always delays, roster changes, you know how it is….’
Which I do.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You mean you’re leaving the Big Airline too? They won’t have any pilots left at this rate. Of course you can have your old job back. I’d love you to!’
She looks relieved.
‘I’m so glad you said that. I’ve already handed in my notice,
because I couldn’t have carried on anyway. But coming back here, well. Thank you, Lou. I really appreciate it.’
Then she says nonchalantly, ‘Did Will say anything to you just now?’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Not much. You know Will. He’ll probably call round at some point, though,’ I add casually.
Karina looks at me suspiciously. ‘You haven’t said anything, have you?’
‘All I said was you probably wouldn’t mind if he called you. Or something like that, I forget now.’ I’m lying, but with only the best of intentions.
‘Right,’ she says, clearly not believing me at all. ‘When do you want me to start?’
‘Monday morning 8.30 smart,’ I say in an efficient office manager-ish kind of voice. ‘There’s a nice big pile of filing already there just waiting for you.’
‘I can’t wait,’ she says, only slightly sarcastically.
Marcus and I are going to see my parents this weekend. I haven’t been down there since they got back from their holiday, and ever since Dad’s scare, I decided that I’d make more effort. After all, you only have one set of parents.
‘Darlings!’ My mother air-kisses both of us. That’s interesting - so Marcus is now a ‘Darling’ too.
But she’s looking relaxed and even has a slight tan.
Dad comes to the door, also looking a bit tanned, and trimmer and more upright than he has for years. Golly gosh. That heart attack really has well and truly shaken things up around here.
An imperious ‘yap’ comes from the direction of the kitchen. Mum looks mildly embarrassed and Dad says ‘Ah. I forget. You haven’t met little Benjy. Benjy? Benjy?’
My parents have a dog??
Then out of the kitchen struts an elderly, moth-eaten terrier-shape, wagging its tail and baring what’s left of his teeth.
‘Good boy, good boy,’ says Dad delightedly. Even my mother has a doting smile on her face.
‘We decided that if we had a dog, we’d walk more,’ explains Dad. Then on a more serious note, he adds, ‘Chances are, if I don’t keep up the exercise and eat more healthily, the old ticker might play up again. Got to be a bit careful.’
Lunch is also a revelation. My mother, previously a master of everything deep fried, overbaked and generally cooked to a mush, has prepared the most delicious bowls of salads I’ve ever seen.
‘Mum!’ I can’t help myself. I’m completely astounded. ‘This looks fantastic! I didn’t know you could do this sort of thing.’
‘Nor did I,’ she confesses, but clearly quite pleased. ‘Much healthier than what we used to eat, isn’t it?’
Lunch is quite a jolly affair, but on the way home, I’m deep in thought. The magnitude of the changes to my parents’ lives does not escape me. Which must mean that Dad had a pretty narrow escape and presumably it could happen again.
‘You’re quiet,’ remarks Marcus.
‘Just thinking,’ I say pensively. ‘About my parents, actually. I’d never in a million years have imagined that they could ever live with a dog and eat salads.’
Marcus smil
es. ‘It is surprising isn’t it, how you can think you know someone so well and yet they can still manage to surprise you,’ he says, cryptically.
He carries on smiling, which is odd. If I didn’t know better, I’d absolutely swear he was hiding something.
47
I’m so glad that Marcus and I are having a small wedding, which reminds me, I still need to talk to the vicar, so after lunch I sneak over to the Rectory, leaving Karina in charge of the office.
‘Ah. Louisa Mulholland, I presume,’ says the rosy-cheeked Reverend Wiggins.
‘Come in, come in. Your young man not with you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Well, not this time. He will be, of course, er next time…’
‘Jolly good,’ says the Reverend, cheerfully. ‘Now, take a pew and tell me what it is that I can do for you.’
I tell him how Marcus and I want a tiny, intimate wedding, no fuss or bother, but we’d like it to be in the church, and we only live around the corner. And how we’d like to do it soon, which seeing as it’s only going to be a tiny affair, shouldn’t be too much of a problem - should it?
‘Hmmm.’ The Reverend sounds unsure. ‘Problem is, young lady, I’m going away for a month in July. We can’t do it before, because there isn’t time to read the bans and do the necessary paperwork. Unfortunately it’s quite complicated these days. So, the earliest we’re looking at is round about the end of August. But hold on, I’ve got wall-to-wall weddings for at least three weeks after that. Mmm… So it will be the end of September I’m afraid,’ he says cheerily. ‘Shall I pop you in the diary for then? Before someone else books the date?’
I swallow my disappointment. I hadn’t expected to wait three months.
‘Um, yes please…’ I say, feeling very subdued. ‘Thank you.’
Then I wander back to work feeling deflated.
‘What’s up?’ asks Karina, instantly noticing my mood.
‘Oh. Nothing really,’ I say, and luckily the phone rings and prevents her asking any more awkward questions.
Marcus isn’t as disappointed as I thought he would be.
‘Don’t worry Lou. We’ll just wait. Or get married somewhere else. And anyway, you need to go and buy a dress. A really gorgeous one. Your mother wanted to help you, didn’t she?’
My heart sinks even further, because no doubt my mother will want to see me squeezed into some ghastly, enormous meringue of frilled organza, or boned white taffeta in which one sweeps along - like a ship. I’ve set my heart on a green, flowing dress that would look just as perfect walking barefoot through the fields, with my hair blowing in the wind.
But it turns out that my mother has a few more surprises up her sleeve.
‘Now Louisa, Marcus has told me that you don’t want a formal wedding dress,’ she says, as we drive up to Windsor, where she assures me I’ll find something I like.
‘I don’t,’ I say. ‘I don’t want anything formal or the slightest bit traditional this time round. I mean, the first time, with Arian, it was an incredible wedding,’ I say hastily. ‘…and I know now how hard you worked to make it like that. Thanks, Mum.’
‘Nonsense,’ she says, sounding just a little pleased nevertheless.
She even knows where to park, and then we trail along the high street, past windows of typical wedding dresses which are a million miles away from this picture I have in my head. I’m preparing to be very depressed. How can my mother, of all people, know how to help me find the dress? But give her her due, she doesn’t even so much as glance in the direction of a single meringue as we pass. Doesn’t even suggest we have to start somewhere, Louisa, just leads me down a side street, and round a corner, and then looks at a scrap of paper she’s taken out of her pocket and says, ‘I think this is it.’
I look at the window in front of us - properly - and feel a flicker of excitement. The window is full of dresses that look like what the flower fairies might wear when they’re all grown up. The colours are soft and muted, the fabrics ethereal and floaty and believe it or not, there isn’t a single meringue in sight. My heart starts to thump wildly.
‘Mrs Sparks,’ says my mother brusquely to the shop assistant. ‘And my daughter, Louisa. We need a wedding dress.’
Now, if you’d told me my mother would find the dress of my dreams to marry Marcus in, I would have hooted with laughter. My mother’s dress sense is traditional, unexciting, predictable, as befits a lady of her years – high-waisted trousers, nice little twinsets and pearls - you get the idea. And yet bizarrely, here in this shop she’s brought me to, is simply the most divine collection of dresses I’ve ever seen.
I try on one after another… in moss green, lilac, even black, just for a laugh. Imagine, me and my mother laughing together about getting married in black. It actually happens. And then hanging in a corner all of its own, I find it. The One.
If someone had leafed through the pages of my imagination, they couldn’t have done better than this. The bodice is fitted and laces up at the back, but it’s the delicate, floaty skirt that I fall in love with. It’s made of overlapping layers of the sheerest tulle and chiffon, in soft shades of shell pink and oyster, which sounds horrible but is divine. It’s pretty and funky at the same time, and you could definitely walk barefoot through the fields in it. The second I put it on, I can feel it. This is the dress I’m marrying Marcus in.
Even my mother is quiet as she looks at me in it.
‘Beautiful,’ is all she says, just as I wait for the torrent of criticism to pour forth. But there is none, which is most unlike my mother. Luckily she insists on paying for it, because it’s the most expensive dress in the shop.
After she has been so amazingly wonderful, the very least I can do is take her out for lunch. But narky Mum is back and picks holes in everything our waitress brings us. The coffee is bitter, the juice isn’t fresh and she’d have found a better sandwich in the Co-op.
‘Honestly Louisa. I can’t believe you’re not going to send that back… and such a ridiculous price for a salad…’
Oh yes, situation completely normal.
I entrust my dress to no-one. I can’t give it to Emma because she’ll start asking nosey questions about the wedding which I won’t want to answer. I don’t want to leave it with my mother, because when I go and pick it up, she’ll definitely smell a rat, and all mine and Marcus’s plans for stealth and secrecy will be blown sky high out of the water, so it’s a bit of a conundrum. Then I think, I know exactly who will understand and not tell a soul and be utterly discrete. I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of this before.
I call round to see her when I know Beamish is elsewhere, because I can just imagine him putting his bumbling foot right in it.
‘The thing is Agnes, we just want to be married. We don’t want any fuss, and we don’t want to wait ages or get wound up planning an enormous, elaborate reception or anything like that…’
Agnes gives me a slightly exasperated look. ‘Louisa. Dear. You don’t need to explain that to me. Don’t you think that I, of all people, know exactly what you’re getting at?’
I must look nonplussed, because she laughs a bit, and then I realise.
‘Oh,’ I say, feeling rather dim. ‘I think I’ve just said to you exactly what you said to me and Rachel just before we went and organised you an enormous party. Oh my goodness.’
But Agnes only smiles. ‘It was wonderful, Louisa, and we will be forever grateful to you and Rachel for organising it. But if you’re telling me you just want to get married quietly, I completely understand. So I’ll hide your gorgeous dress and say absolutely nothing to anyone. Now, shall we have a cup of tea, and you can fill me in on what’s happening at work. I’m afraid most of it goes right over Beamish’s head.’
Which is not the slightest surprising.
48
Not long after, comes what turns out to be the morning from hell. I’ve barely unlocked the office when I take a call from someone on the A34 Winchester bypass. He tells me, and I quote, ‘The
re’s a bleedin’ horse box on its side and some horrible noises goin’ on.’
My blood runs cold. As soon as he rings off, I’m back on that phone quicker than lightning. Miles is already the opposite side of the county on a rescue mission of some description, but I reach Marcus, Emma and Will, who go straight over there. It honestly sounded horrendous. Apparently one of the horses has somehow broken out and been in a collision with a lorry.
Later, Emma fills me in. Vets see some fairly horrible situations, but she’s terribly upset. The horse had to be put down there and then.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it, Lou. It was terrified, and so badly injured… And all because some idiot lost control while overtaking and ploughed into them, that’s the worst bit. It happened because someone was in a hurry.’
Karina’s late this morning, but I’m too preoccupied to notice.
‘Sorry, Louisa,’ she says when she gets here. Then seeing my face adds, ‘What on earth’s been going on?’
I fill her in, but she already knows. It turns out the horses were on route to Sylvie’s yard, which is why Karina’s so late.
‘The one that survived is only a baby. He’s a three year old,’ she tells me. ‘Hasn’t exactly had a sparkling career on the racecourse, but if he’s come through this, perhaps he’s destined for greater things.’
She doesn’t mention the other horse, and I don’t like to ask.
‘So have you seen Will?’ I ask much later, cautiously, in case she hasn’t.
There’s a small smile there before she even answers my question.
‘Yes…’
‘And…’
‘He came for supper. Actually he helped put Oscar to bed, and read him a story if you can believe it. I mean for goodness sake, he’s only a few months old. Far too young for stories.’
‘And…’ I ask brightly.
The Impossible Search for the Perfect Man Page 27