So much for equality. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, stamp her feet, or burn any bra she could lay her hands on. You go through life thinking it’s all sorted. Equal opportunities. Equal status. Nothing to stand in your way. And, okay, you hear about the pay gap and the twenty hours or so the average full-time working woman spends on domestic chores, but that isn’t you. That’s not the way you live your life.
‘I thought we agreed…’ she began. His back was rigid as he turned the tap, shutting her out. Carys bit her lip. She could hear herself turning into some old nag going on endlessly about compromise and commitment. As if they hadn’t been through this before. As if they hadn’t worked this all out, once and for all, two years ago. Or so she’d believed.
Compromise and commitment. She would never have stayed with Joe if she hadn’t believed he’d seen her point of view. Joe always did what Joe wanted to do. She’d only understood this during the last few years, when – for her at least – spending every holiday rushing off to some activity-packed tour of India or Greece had finally began to pall. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to travel, just not all the time. She’d seen too many lost souls wandering from one exotic beach location to the next, in a rootless searching for some magical Nirvana that might be out there, somewhere.
She no longer wanted to work in a job that bored her senseless, desperately making up for the time lost inside the office with expensive meals and holidays. She needed a centre to her life. Something to build on for the future. She’d thought Joe had understood. A cold shiver snuck in through her tiredness. Had that, after all, been Joe agreeing with her simply to avoid a fight? Had he assumed, all this time, that it was just a phase, and that one day he could make her change her mind?
She pulled herself together. She was tired and stressed and not thinking straight. Hadn’t Joe proved enthusiastic about the idea of investing their money and their energies into escaping the rat race to a country cottage in Devon with a smallholding attached? He’d agreed that they would have a far better quality of life with a business of their own that they could run together.
It wasn’t as if she was asking him to give up his brilliant career. As long as she’d known him, Joe had been talking about setting up his own Accountancy Practice and – as he had agreed – where better than a small town within easy reach of the Devon countryside? Somewhere with lower costs than a big city and less competition. Plus sun, sea and surf, and a less frenetic pace of living. A kind of life where they might, after all, consider raising a family.
Far from driving them apart, the plan had pulled them back together again. She had financially supported them as Joe went through his final exams. Then he had taken over in his turn, enabling her to work part-time so that she could fulfil that dream of a horticultural course. Surely he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t meant it?
‘Coffee?’ said Joe, his back still turned.
‘Thanks,’ she returned, mechanically.
‘Or there’s some wine left in the fridge?’
She didn’t want to fight. And, above all, she didn’t want to fight with Joe. ‘Yes please,’ she whispered, finding herself struggling with tears.
‘Ah, come here.’ He turned round, gathering her into his arms. Cari snuffled ignominiously into his shoulder. ‘There’s no need to make a decision now. We can talk about it tomorrow.’
‘Joe…’
His lips brushed her hair gently. ‘Bath,’ he said. ‘With all those girly smelly things. And candles.’
‘I don’t want …’
He kissed her firmly on the mouth, silencing her protest. ‘There’s nothing we can’t discuss later.’ His eyes were soft on hers, his smile the boyish charm she could never quite resist, however cross he might make her. ‘Go on, off you go. Your waiter here will bring you a glass of the finest and then order the takeaway. What do you fancy: Indian or pizza?’
‘Pizza,’ said Carys, feeling herself relax and giving him a watery smile.
‘Excellent choice, Ms Evans. Good comfort food. Just what the doctor ordered. And I’m sure I can unearth a tub of Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer for afters…’
‘It’s a quite lot to ask of him,’ said Poppy, mildly, eying her friend with a thoughtful air.
Carys sighed. ‘Yes, I know. I’m sure the women at Tylers think I’m mad, even thinking of going off for a couple months like that without him, and they wouldn’t blame Joe if he just upped sticks and left me.’
They were sitting in the tiny conservatory that opened up into the neat rectangle of Poppy’s garden, and which was about the only baby-free space in the house. Unless you counted the eternal whirr of the washing machine stealing in from the kitchen, that is.
‘So,’ said Poppy, who never beat about the bush, not even in the throes of very new motherhood. ‘Just why do you want to do it?’
‘I don’t.’ Carys met the raised eyebrows of Poppy on bullshit alert. That’s what she loved about her friend. No getting away with anything with Poppy. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’ll sound silly.’
‘Try me.’
‘When I left Pont-ar-Eden village, all I could think about was getting away. You’re only thinking about the future, aren’t you, when you’re eighteen. I suppose now I’m older – and starting to think about maybe having children after all – I suppose I want to kind of lay it to rest. If that makes sense? I’m about to change my life. Maybe it’s time to put the past properly behind me, once and for all.’
‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ smiled Poppy. She sipped her tea for a minute. ‘There are no twins in Stuart’s family, you know. At least, not as far as we can make out.’
‘You mean, so it must come from your side?’
Poppy nodded. ‘Yeah. Weird, eh? I never thought about it, until they told us there were two in there, and that it tends to run in families.’ She frowned. ‘They were nice and tactful, and everything. But it just came up naturally while we were all chatting, and it felt horrible, the fact that I didn’t know. That I’ll probably never know. I might even have a twin out there, somewhere. So yes, I know exactly where you’re coming from.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘And I suppose it’s a kind of test,’ said Carys, at last.
‘Ah,’ said Poppy, as if she had been waiting for this. ‘Joe.’
‘Yes.’ Carys sighed. ‘We’ve been together so long, and I still really love him. But he’s always had this idea he can sweet-talk me into doing what he wants to do. I thought after that time we nearly split up he’d changed. He seemed so shocked that I might actually leave, and so hurt. I thought he’d understood that I can’t always be the one that compromises, that I have my dreams, too. He’s been so understanding since then about me giving up a respectable career and going back to college, and the stuff about moving to Devon and setting up a business and starting a family. He’s been fine with the practical things. It’s just …’ She let the sentence trail away. She had always been able to say things to Poppy she could never say to anyone else. Not even Joe. But she couldn’t say this. Not even in front of Poppy, who’d seen more of the nastier side of life before she was five than most people would see in a lifetime.
Poppy cleared her throat. ‘Mmm,’ she said, with un-Poppy-like vagueness. ‘That’s the thing about having kids.’ She raised her head as the baby monitor on the sideboard crackled into life in agreement. Carys found herself holding her breath, too. There was a whimper, followed by the beginnings of a cry, which faded almost immediately away. Poppy began demolishing her piece of carrot cake with the urgency of an explorer who might be called upon to restart the trek at any moment. ‘They change things, however much you think they won’t. And once you’ve got them, there’s no going back. Stuart adores the girls, and he’s amazing. But I do have friends who feel abandoned, because their husbands still have their careers and their friends, and their lives have scarcely changed at all.’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Carys, the wobble back in her stomach.
‘I can’t help feeling that Joe still thinks that if he’s nice to me and cooks me meals he can get me to give up this idea of looking after Mam. That I’m not really serious and he can talk me round. And if he’s like this about a couple of months looking after my mother…’ She met Poppy’s eyes. ‘I really thought he wanted a different kind of life, too. You can’t force someone to change. Not without fighting them all the time. And that’s not the way –’
The whimper was back. More insistent, this time. ‘They’ll be awake soon,’ said Poppy. ‘Once one wakes up, they soon wake up the other. Two screaming babies for the price of one. Yummy.’
Carys laughed. Her friend might talk tough, but you only had to see Poppy with the twins to see that she adored them, and would fight to the death before anyone could harm them.
‘It’s fine, I’ll go,’ came a masculine voice, as the proud father himself – bleary-eyed and slightly dishevelled around the edges – returned from hanging out the morning’s washing on the line in the garden, just in time to hear the whimper swell to a cough, followed by a splutter, which merged into a definite wail. ‘Nice cake, Cari,’ he added, with a grin, cutting himself a slice with a practiced action, followed by a quick slurp from his wife’s tea. ‘See you in a minute, ladies.’
‘Perhaps I’d better go,’ said Carys, slightly regretfully.
‘And not see the babies?’ Poppy waggled a finger at her. ‘Don’t think you can escape that quickly. Stuart will never forgive you. You’ve never seen a man so proud of his achievements. You’d think he’d given birth to them himself. I’d finish your tea, though. Once they arrive, chaos reigns.’
Above them came the soothing sounds of Stuart relapsing into baby-speak as a second wail erupted to echo the first.
Carys giggled. She had known Stuart through work for years, almost as long as she had been friends with Poppy. The transformation of Mr Sex-on-Legs, smart-suited alpha male into doting dad from the moment Poppy’s bump appeared, never ceased to amaze her.
‘I know,’ said Poppy. ‘Architects don’t change nappies.’
‘Suits him,’ said Carys. ‘To be honest, I thought you were mad when you two got together. I’d never have put him down as the fatherly type.’
‘Oh, he’s an old softie really, underneath all that strut,’ said Poppy fondly. ‘Bit of an old-fashioned family, that’s all. Got to keep the front up, don’t you know? His dad would throw a fit if he knew anything about our real lives.’ Her grin was mischievous. ‘I’m always careful to appear ever so dutiful whenever we visit, and I haven’t sworn once.’
‘Never.’
‘Hey, it keeps the family peace, so no skin off my nose for a couple of days every now and again. The least I can do for Stuart loving the real crotchety, loud-mouthed with serious issues, no-holds-barred, me. It’s a manhood thing.’
Above their heads, the wails had softened more towards burbling, to much creaking of floorboards and running of water, along with encouraging mutterings from Stuart, who was clearly taking on single-handed the heroics of a double nappy-change to give them a few more minutes in peace.
Carys sighed. She and Poppy were almost exactly the same age, only a few days between them. It was strange to think now that at their joint thirtieth birthday party, just three years ago, neither of them had even considered the whole settling down and having children thing. They’d eyed without envy the friends nursing fractious babies, or chasing toddlers with minds of their own and an ability to get into all kinds of trouble. They’d pitied the ones who left before the dancing really got going to relieve the babysitter and get as much sleep as they could before the next day began. What kind of life was that? they’d whispered to each other over their champagne. Especially when compared to the three weeks backpacking round Thailand that stretched in front of them to mark this momentous milestone in their lives.
It seemed that the crossover from their twenties to thirties had changed them both in more ways than simply the appearance of the first fine lines and a B&B unaccountably gaining in appeal over a sleeping bag in a tent.
‘Joe said it was just hormones, when I first started thinking about children,’ she said. Women were like that, he’d informed her sagely, she remembered with a wince. It was the approaching thirty-five and the biological clock ticking that did it, according to Joe. ‘Maybe he thinks he can get me to change my mind about that, too.’
‘I thought you said he’s become quite misty-eyed these days whenever you’ve visited friends with kids?’
‘That’s true.’ Carys gave a wry smile. ‘But that’s when we’ve been able to hand them back after a few minutes. He likes the idea of taking them to football matches and teaching them how to surf. I’m not entirely sure he’s got his head around the rest of what having a family means.’
Above their heads, nappy changing appeared to have been successfully completed, and was being followed by a tuneless, but enthusiastic rendition of ‘Hickory dickory doc’, accompanied by fresh-nappy squeals and chortles.
‘At least Tylers have been good about me working away from the office for a couple of months,’ Carys remarked, attempting to regain her optimism. ‘I have to admit, I didn’t think they’d be that reasonable.’
‘And risk losing you?’ Poppy, she discovered, was watching her closely. ‘You underestimate your skills, Cari. Where else are they going to find someone as efficient and experienced in dealing with accounts? And I know from Stuart that you’ve a really good reputation for building relationships with clients. I’d have thought letting you do accounts over the internet, rather than you using up your holiday and taking the rest as unpaid leave, was a price worth paying, as far as Tylers are concerned. Pity about your course, though.’
‘I know.’ Carys swirled the remains of her tea, gloom threatening to descend once more. ‘Brilliant timing, eh? It would be just when they’re going to be doing so much of the practical stuff. I haven’t said anything to Joe yet, but I can see me having to redo the entire year. We were planning to start looking at smallholdings this summer, but now it looks as if we’re going to have to put it off for another year, at least.’
‘Gardening,’ announced Poppy.
Carys blinked. ‘Gardening?’
‘Set yourself up as a gardener while you’re at your mum’s. I know it’s not the same as working on a farm or in the grounds of some grand mansion, but at least you’ll be doing practical stuff, and you’ll be learning.’
‘I’m not sure…’ began Carys.
‘It can’t take much to set up, surely? We’ve got loads of tools in the shed Stuart and I aren’t going to use for years. Better they get used than rot. That was one of the first things we decided on, when we knew we were having twins: hire a gardener to mow the lawn and cut things back for the duration. It wasn’t easy to find one. A really good one, that is. You can choose your own hours, fit them around Tylers stuff and your mum. At least you’ll know you’re making a start along the way you want to go. Sorted.’
‘Oh, it’s not the practical side,’ said Carys. ‘It’s just I’m just not sure they have gardeners in Pont-ar-Eden. It’s not that kind of place.’
‘Rubbish. We’re not talking major landscaping here. There’s bound to be someone who wants a lawn mowed or a hedge trimmed. I bet lots would prefer a woman, especially an older woman living on her own. There have to be some posh houses. And didn’t you say there was some big house next to the village. Garden of Eden, or something?’
‘Plas Eden,’ said Carys, slowly.
‘There you are.’ Poppy was triumphant. ‘Didn’t it have a famous garden? One with a funny name?’
‘Blodeuwedd’s Garden,’ provided Carys.
‘That’s it. I knew there was a garden there, somewhere. Blod-’ Poppy struggled. ‘Blod- what was it?’
‘Blodeuwedd. Blod-ay-weth. The woman made of flowers.’
‘Even better.’
Cary smiled. ‘She’s not a real woman. And there aren’t even many flowers in the garden. At le
ast there weren’t the last time I was there. It’s the story from the Mabinogion.’
‘The what?’ said Poppy, who made no bones about the gaps in her education, largely due to a youthful habit of truanting in favour of various unsavoury pastimes. She had more than made up for this lack since, but clearly not as far as Celtic culture was concerned.
‘The Mabinogion. It’s a series of really old Welsh myths? They’re supposed to go right back to ancient Celtic gods and goddesses. Blodeuwedd was a woman created out of flowers by a magician, for a man who’d been cursed by his mother never to have a human wife.’
Poppy snorted, loudly. ‘Yeah, right. Old man makes woman for some geek who’s never been kissed. You can just see what they’d come up with: porno starlet with a permanent Brazilian and no brains. Stepford wives, here we come.’
‘Not quite no brains. He was supposed to be un-killable, but she fell in love with somebody else and worked it out anyhow.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Poppy, scornfully. ‘Live by the robot, die by the robot.’
‘Except he didn’t die. Not really. But she got punished, all the same.’
‘Typical.’
Carys swirled her tea again. ‘I always felt sorry for Blodeuwedd, being made to be only what someone else wanted, with no choice and no chance of living her own life at all.’
‘Not exactly a happy story to call a garden after, if you ask me.’ Poppy gave a wicked grin. ‘I’ll bet you it was some lord of the manor telling his womenfolk what to expect if they didn’t toe the line.’
‘Probably,’ replied Carys, gloomily. Out of the corner of her eye, she became aware of an exceedingly sharp-eyed gaze from Poppy, who was sitting bolt upright and quite clearly gearing herself up for the interrogation of the century.
‘Oooh, aren’t they gorgeous,’ cooed Carys hastily, as a creak of the stairs heralded the arrival of Stuart balancing one fluffy-haired, slightly damp-faced and wobbly-smiling twin on each arm, each clutching a very dog-eared cloth animal of the vaguely bunny variety.
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