Goodbye, Jimmy Choo

by Annie Sanders

  Later that afternoon, Izzie went to pick up all four children so they could have supper at Maddy’s. The car park at Eagles was just as appalling as she had feared—and worse. She felt horribly conspicuous but couldn’t resist a triumphant little smile at Linda, Fiona, and Clare, clearly put out when Will bolted out of the classroom and threw himself into her arms.

  Back at the house, while the children were busy watching cartoons and spreading muffin crumbs all over the sofa, Maddy told her that Jean Luc had called again. He had found a supplier for the pots, negotiated the best deal he could, gone out to dig up a load of centpertuis, and arranged for an overnight courier to pick up everything they needed that evening.

  “The man’s a saint,” Maddy exclaimed. “It should all be here in the morning. And he’s offered to pay for this load.”

  “God! That’s going to cost a fortune.”

  Maddy put a restraining hand on Izzie’s arm. “Oh, you needn’t worry about him. Jean Luc’s loaded. He may play the simple farmer, but he made a stash as an art dealer in his thirties. He just dabbles now. The farm’s what he really loves. But being Jean Luc, he’s even managed to make a success of that!”

  Izzie’s eyes sparkled. “God! Could he be any more perfect?”

  “Well, there is a dark side. I suppose I should be the one to break it to you—he’s got a secret collection of Jean Michel Jarre albums.”

  “That’s hard to forgive. But honestly, we’ve got to get him to invoice us, just to keep things businesslike.”

  “He’s promised to, although I had to threaten him.”

  Next morning, with an early courier drop-off, they were ready for business. Crispin had spent the night at the holistic health center but was due back with a van load of lavender within the hour. Lillian had phoned to say she would bring the labels by about seven that evening; and Janet had turned up carrying pots, double-boilers, sieves, jelly bags, funnels, and ladles—amassed during a lifetime of jam making—and clanked her way into the kitchen.

  “Right, mon capitaine, what’s first?” She looked around, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s clear some space. Let the dog see the rabbit, eh?”

  Within an hour the first batch of centpertuis was bubbling foully, and the whole house stank. Janet, who seemed oddly immune to the stench, had been commissioned to prevent its sticking to the pan, and was poking at it with a wooden spoon. Maddy had scoured the countryside, following up leads from Mr. Jacks, and had probably now bought far too much beeswax. Izzie alternated melting the wax and mixing it with the oil with cuddling Pasco. She hadn’t yet broken the news to Marcus that she’d be out all night. He had been a bit iffy about the amount of work she was putting in for no financial gain—he called it a jobby, half job half hobby—and she couldn’t in all honesty blame him. She was beginning to wonder herself if it was all jam tomorrow. She’d deal with Marcus later, but he got there first. She put down the spoon and delved into her handbag for her trilling phone.

  “Hi. Where are you?”

  “Er, at Maddy’s,” she said hesitantly.

  “Surprise, surprise! Look, I’ve got to go to Oxford. Piers has called me about the pictures. I won’t be back till late, so don’t bother cooking for me.”

  “Oh, Marcus, I was hoping you could look after the kids tonight. We’ve got a rush on with the balm. It’s rather exciting really—”

  “Sorry, can’t really help this time. Got to go, darling. Bye.”

  Maddy looked at her as she put the phone back in her bag. “Are you stuffed for tonight, then?”

  “It’s my fault, really, I hadn’t arranged it properly with him and—”

  “We’ll do a sleepover then. Go and get their sleeping bags when you pick them up and they can all stay here. Will’s been asking for ages if Charlie could stay. Go on—problem solved!”

  Janet bustled over. “All the children here together? What fun! Perhaps we could do a little treasure hunt in the garden. Bagsy Pasco on my team!”

  By seven o’clock, the children were all fed and bathed. They’d flatly refused to eat in the kitchen, wrinkling up their noses at the smell, and Janet had set up a picnic area in the hall, complete with tent made out of the clotheshorse, picnic rug, and thermoses of Ribena. They were in seventh heaven. Good thing too, because the kitchen resembled a Chinese laundry, running with condensation and with jelly bags and pillowcases full of boiled centpertuis hanging from upturned stools, dripping slowly into Pyrex bowls. Earlier Crispin had dumped orange boxes of lavender sprigs onto the utility room floor and had had to be revived from the trauma of having to sleep on a futon and eat lentils at the holistic health center with a full English breakfast and copious cups of PG Tips.

  “It was horrible,” he’d whispered to Izzie out of Janet’s earshot. “All those hairy legs, and they kept telling me I had too much yang energy just ’cos I asked if they had Sky TV.”

  Once fortified, he was persuaded to cut up the lavender to add to the melted beeswax and looked wonderfully incongruous stirring the jam pan for hour after hour with a wooden spoon and wearing Maddy’s Cucina Direct denim apron.

  “Right,” said Maddy, rubbing her hands. “It’s gone seven. Janet’s doing her Jackanory bit upstairs, I think I’ve just heard Lillian pull up outside, so Crispin take that apron off—and we’ll all have something to eat, then it’s all systems go.”

  Once more they raided the freezer and realizing that the Aga and every saucepan in the house had been commandeered, had to resort to jimmying off chunks of frozen chili to defrost and cook in the microwave. Confident that this was something he could do, Crispin stepped forward with his—carefully washed—chisel and soon they were all sitting down, oblivious to the chaos, and dipping hunks of French bread into steaming bowls.

  Replete, and with a glass of (more) good wine cradled in her hands, Izzie sat back in her chair and looked at this motley bunch around Maddy’s kitchen table. What funny turns life takes, she thought. It took a moment for her to recognize what she was feeling. Her children were safe and content asleep upstairs, she was working hard on something that interested her, chattering and laughing with new friends who seemed to value her, and Marcus was finding his feet at last. With a jolt, she realized she felt happy.

  Seven hours later, all she felt was knackered. Two in the morning and the production line was slowing at last, but it had been relentless all night. Janet and Maddy had been carefully measuring and blending the cooled lavender-scented oil-and-beeswax mixture with the strained centpertuis at the kitchen table. As each vatful was ready, Crispin lugged it over to Izzie, who had been voted the one with the steadiest hands, for filling the pots with the least mess.

  “Why me?” she’d whined.

  “Darling,” Maddy had explained, “I’ve seen what you can achieve with a Barbie and a sponge cake.”

  The filled pots went on down the line to Lillian, who had wiped each one down using Maddy’s best damask dinner napkins, having already got through a drawerful of tea towels, then snapped each one shut and carefully stuck on the labels. She carried out this task with extraordinary concentration, and, during a moment’s rest, Izzie had watched with fascination as she peeled each label delicately from the backing sheet with her orange-painted nails and placed it perfectly straight on each little pot.

  Crispin had kept up a running total, and at two fifteen the cry went up: “That’s it. Two hundred on the pallets. Any chance of a cuppa?”

  There was a ragged cheer, and everyone downed tools. They all looked utterly creased. Izzie put the kettle on again and dug out the teapot. Janet pushed back her wiry hair with exhaustion, inadvertently smearing green goo everywhere. Lillian arched her back and yawned, then went to burrow in her bag.

  “I think this calls for a celebration,” she said coyly and, with triumph, plucked out a confectioner’s box wrapped in ribbon. “Doughnuts! I picked them up on the way here.” She undid the wrapper like a child. “Wasn’t sure what you’d all like, so I got a selection. Cinnamon and apple
, toffee, custard, and jam, of course.”

  “Cor, I could murder a doughnut,” said Maddy, slumping exhausted into a chair and lighting a cigarette. “Lillian, you are a marvel. Help yourself to another pashmina!”

  The next couple of weeks of deathly silence were agony. It seemed like a century ago that they had worked through the night, then borrowed Crispin’s van and bombed—or rather rattled—down the M40 that miserably chilly afternoon to London, to deliver their hard-earned treasure.

  Brazenly, they had planted themselves on a double yellow line, and Izzie had sat nervously in the car to fend off traffic wardens, while Maddy, who had to charm the languid young girl on the reception desk into helping her, had lugged the pots up two flights of stairs to Pru’s Covent Garden office. Luckily Pru had been out, because it was unlikely she would have been able to tolerate the sight of her friend in baggy joggers and a singularly unflattering jumper of Simon’s. What would the vision of a client in her doorway who looked more like a bag lady have done for her business image?

  Pru had called the following morning and had been suitably rude about having a reception area clogged up with palletfuls of little jars of healing balm, but since then there had been nothing. Izzie had made tentative inquires at the health food shop, but they could scarcely contain their indifference. Maddy bit her nails, smoked virtually continuously, and tried to occupy herself with projects to take her mind off the wait. A call from some old London friends, trying to persuade her to join them for a week in Klosters at Easter, hadn’t helped. It had been such fun last year and she ached to go, but it would have made a large hole in a grand or two she simply didn’t have. It was a door to a part of her life she’d have to shut firmly now. Christ, meeting the grocery bills was challenge enough. She tried to sound as upbeat and positive as she could, made some plausible excuse about not being able to leave Pasco, and tried even harder not to slam down the phone.

  Every day had been punctuated with calls either from Izzie or to her, in which they tried to reassure each other that something would happen soon, surely? Izzie was busy with the editing job Maddy had sorted for her before Christmas—or at least she tried to take the credit for having done so—and making up time with Marcus. WorkWorld had come up with a couple of days here and there for Maddy, covering for sick staff or for those who could afford a week away in February. But each job was more dispiriting than the last—especially as she was clearly no longer trusted to deal with the public—and the evening she came home from a day spent answering the phone at a software company, during which she had managed to cut off their most important client, she drank a whole bottle of wine on her own.

  Feeling like hell the next morning, and with Pasco irritable from an ear infection, she decided it was time to bite the bullet and start clearing out some of Simon’s stuff. Grabbing a roll of bin liners, she resolved to fill them with his clothes to take to the charity shop in Ringford. If she did it fast enough, she reasoned, she wouldn’t have to look and the memories would stay at bay.

  Planting Pasco in a pool of unexpected winter sunshine on her bed with a pile of toys and fabric books, she pulled open the cupboards and set to. In went T-shirts and ties, hundreds of suits, jeans, and jumpers. She ripped down belts, his bow tie and cummerbund, his dinner jacket (which had cost the earth), and his morning suit (which had cost even more). She pushed it all into the bag so fast she almost ripped the plastic.

  “I’m doing fine, I’m doing fine,” she muttered like a mantra, as she filled each bag frantically, desperately trying not to think about the times he’d worn them or to imagine someone else wearing them now. What would she do if she bumped into a man in Ringford High Street, and he was sporting one of Simon’s Hermès ties or Gieves & Hawkes suits? She pulled out fleeces—hastily shoving her favorite into her own cupboard and slamming the door—polo necks for skiing, handmade shirts from business trips to Hong Kong in candy colors. Stuff, stuff, stuff. Eventually four bags bursting to the gills sat on the landing.

  Pasco still seemed happy perched on the bed, thumb in mouth, banging shapes with a toy hammer. The shelves were almost empty now, so she started another bag for things to throw away, things too old and worn even for the charity shop. Shoes. In went suede brogues for weekends and leather Oxfords for work before dressing down became de rigueur. Trainers, sailing shoes, and walking boots, shaped to his large and wide feet. She tried not to notice the worn leather soles and still tied laces—oh how irritating it had been when he’d pulled off his shoes without undoing them! Be cross with him, she told herself. There was the old Harlequins T-shirt, and a rugby shirt from the days when he’d played for a local club on Saturday afternoons.

  At the back of the shelf she found his old yellow corduroy trousers he’d loved so much but that she’d persuaded him were too young fogy. She grabbed armfuls of socks, handkerchiefs, tatty T-shirts, and swimming trunks. A lifetime of events. Empty clothes that now meant nothing. Meaningless and futile. And then there was the pile of his boxer shorts.

  She went to grab them too, but for a fatal moment she hesitated. Then she touched them gently, running her hands over the neat pile. All brightly colored. Flowery or striped, tartan and spotted. He’d been very particular about his boxer shorts and it had been a bit of a joke between them. Every time they had gone away he would buy a pair, as a sort of ritual. There were ones from Saks Fifth Avenue, Paris, Barcelona. It was like a world tour in pants. God, how gorgeous his body had been in them. He’d been so big and strong, muscular with fair hair on his chest and arms.

  For weeks she’d buried the thought of sex, and had gone to bed each night in nightclothes as asexual as she could lay her hands on. Now her mind flooded with the memory of his warm body and about how well he knew how to turn her on. How sometimes it had been gentle and familiar, and at other times frantic and erotic. When was the last time they had made love? Had she properly shown him how much she had loved him?

  Her sob came out almost like a retch, and she ran into the bathroom and heaved over the loo, again and again. She felt weak and shivery, but still she retched. The phone shrilled next to the bed. Rinsing out her mouth, tears pouring down her face, she hurried to pick it up before Pasco could reach it.

  “Maddy, it’s me—”

  “Oh God, Izzie.” By now her sobs were almost uncontrollable, and her legs buckled under her as she slid down the side of the bed. “I miss him. I just miss him.”

  It seemed to Maddy, when Izzie had finally left, after rushing over to administer tea, tissues, and tenderness, that she would not have howled so uncontrollably to anyone else. She wasn’t sure she’d ever laid herself so open, made herself so vulnerable. Thinking back now it was almost embarrassing the things she had told Izzie in her hysteria. She’d railed about his annoying habits—how he never emptied the bins, took his pants off with his trousers, always mislaid important documents—and had been almost graphic about their sex life. Had she really told her about that time in Vienna? But Izzie had simply sat next to her, gently rubbing her back, and had listened without saying a word.

  No, had it been anyone else on the phone earlier she would have sniffed, swallowed her grief, and been brave. But somehow Izzie had made her open the floodgates and, in a debilitatingly exhausting way, she felt some kind of relief that she had cried so violently. She had rid herself of a huge burden by admitting, at last, that she was lonely, that she missed his voice and his laughter, someone to share the responsibility.

  Maddy looked at her face in the mirror now and tried half-heartedly to reduce the puffiness around her eyes before she faced Little Goslings and the school playground. Why did her eyebrows always go red when she cried? That night she was so exhausted, she slept more deeply than she had for ages and wasn’t even wakened by Florence crawling into her bed. She just woke to her warm body curled next to hers.

  “You’re not doing the rest of the clearing yourself,” Izzie had ordered bossily as she left. “I’m coming over next time.” And true to her word, she arri
ved on the doorstep at about nine thirty the next morning with a bag of fresh croissants, bullied Maddy into eating them with some of Jean Luc’s preserves from his box of goodies, and then they rolled up their sleeves and attacked the cloakroom. With uncharacteristic efficiency, Izzie produced a couple of boxes and began pulling open drawers, tugging out woolly hats and mismatching gloves.

  “Your anal attitude to your wardrobe obviously doesn’t extend to the cloakroom, Mrs. Hoare. This is a mess.”

  Her head ached with exhaustion from yesterday’s outpouring. Could she do this? “Oh, the outdoor stuff was strictly Simon’s domain. He thought this room would be like the gun room of some country squire, with a place for fishing rods, Purdey’s, and a brace of pheasant hanging from the ceiling.”

  “What on earth is this?” squeaked Izzie, as she took down a spanking new Barbour from the peg. “You really were going to take this country business seriously, weren’t you? This is so crisp and shiny as to be almost obscene. Is it yours?”

  “Right, as if you’d see me dead in something like that!” Maddy laughed finally, extracting a cricket bat from Pasco’s overenthusiastic ministrations. “He was so proud of that—we bought it in one of those ghastly huntin’-shootin’-fishin’ shops on Jermyn Street as a sort of celebration of our move.” She smiled ironically, remembering how he’d bought a tweed flat cap too, and had posed in front of the shop mirror. “I made him take me to N. Peal afterward, so I could get a big cardy to shore me up against the howling country air.”

  Izzie continued to hold up the offending coat in mock horror. “He could at least have run it over a couple of times in the car to give it that beaten-up look . . .” She stopped suddenly. “Oh, Maddy, I’m so sorry, that was—that was really tasteless. I’m . . . honestly . . .”

  The look on Izzie’s face was nothing short of poleaxed. She couldn’t take her eyes from Maddy’s. But Maddy simply dropped the pile she was sorting and went over to take Izzie in her arms. “It doesn’t matter—I hadn’t even thought you were being tactless. I have no more energy to cry anyway.” Then from nowhere she felt a bubble of laughter shoot up to the surface. “It’s quite funny really.” She snorted. “I’ve got this sort of image of someone like Sue Templeton driving frantically backward and forward over a coat”—she could barely speak now—“like . . . like Kathy Bates in that awful movie . . .”