by Nancy Barone
I caught sight of his eyes, as dark as the unknown world I was about to jump into. ‘It’s just that I’ve never done this before, you see.’
‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘But you have your reasons and you don’t have to answer to anybody anymore.’
I snorted. ‘You should put that on a business card.’
He grinned a sexy grin. ‘I keep it on the quiet side. You know.’
I looked at him. In a parallel world, I should’ve been born ten years later – to say the least – and met him instead of bloody Neil.
They say that forty is the new twenty. So technically, I was only nineteen.
‘What’s your hourly rate for the uhm… extras I require?’ I asked.
‘It depends. Do you want me to fit you in as a regular?’
‘Oh. Do you… have many other regulars?’
He hesitated. ‘A couple. IT doesn’t pay as much as you’d think.’
‘But I get first dibs?’
‘Absolutely,’ he assured me.
‘And we do this only if we both want to, yes?’
He smiled wryly, a set of dimples bracketing his firm but luscious mouth. Surely he must have known how dreadfully gorgeous he was?
He coughed. ‘So, upstairs?’
‘Yes!’ I almost screamed. ‘Follow me.’
Now, normally, I wouldn’t have done this until I’d made a decision and, oh, but who was I kidding? The bloke had perfect manners, he looked clean and, let’s face it, he was easy on the eye.
We passed into the hall and up the stairs, and I was acutely aware of him behind me, and even more aware of my thin sundress separating his body from mine. And apart from his own clothes, unfortunately. Goodness, what was happening to me? Had divorce finally flipped a switch inside me? Now it seemed I wanted everything I’d missed out on all those years, and with a vengeance.
I opened the door of the second bedroom and stepped back for him to enter. As he slipped past me with a smile, I sniffed at the air like a hound dog. We were completely alone in the world, and the only sound between us was the light padding of his feet on the carpet and the occasional creak of a floorboard.
My mind raced like that of a love-starved teenager, imagining all sorts of scenarios where he took me in his arms and kissed me, or where he toyed with the strap of my sundress and—
He looked around, poked his head into the en-suite bathroom and looked out the window down to the garden.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it.’
I gushed, despite my thirty-nine years. ‘Really?’
He grinned, warming me from the inside out. ‘Absolutely. I’d be honoured to be your lodger.’
Of course, it would have been fun to continue pretending to myself I was interviewing him as a prospective gigolo, but the truth was, I needed a lodger to boost my income that had been halved since my other half left me for a woman half my age. Ah, life was so unfair, wasn’t it? And so far, Connor seemed like a great choice, due to his – oh, who was I kidding? He was absolutely delicious, with just a hint of stubble you wanted to run your fingertips over, just to see what it felt like to be close to a man again.
Yesterday I didn’t even know he existed, and all it had taken was an ad and a phone call to see him here, in the flesh, right in front of me. I wished I had the guts to go all the way and live life instinctively. To do whatever I felt. I’d been married for years and had always toed the line, never misbehaving, always doing the right thing, and never anything that might, God forbid, bring me any personal pleasure or enjoyment.
He pulled out a sheet and unfolded it. ‘These are my credentials. Should I come back tomorrow?’
I nodded. ‘I’ll have the contract ready for you to sign and give you the keys and you can move your stuff in.’
He smiled in relief. ‘Thanks. You don’t know what it means to me to be able to start afresh.’
‘Oh, I do know, believe me,’ I answered. Having the house to myself, without Neil, having my own life back after all these years… was pure bliss. It had always been about him, his medical career, his needs. Now it was about me. But independence cost dear, so a lodger was the perfect solution. I was feeling good about this again.
‘Yeah?’ he said, but was too polite to ask why and I was certainly not going to volunteer any info as to what a woman my age was doing on her own, besides Missy, in a huge five-bed detached high above Wyllow Cove.
‘Yeah,’ I chirped.
‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow with my stuff.’
‘Great. Welcome, Connor.’
‘Thank you, Natalia.’
‘Oh – it’s just Nat.’
‘Ok, then, Nat.’ He eyed me one last time and instead of seeing him out and closing the door, I lingered on the threshold and watched him as he got into his SUV, drove back up Abbot’s Lane, reached Sennen Road, turned left and out of sight. But not out of mind.
Wishing it was already tomorrow, I went back into the kitchen and started to do the washing up, when something on the table caught my eye. I squinted at the sugar bowl and grabbed my reading glasses. It had Salt written on it. I remembered that he’d put three spoonfuls in his coffee. The poor bloke. No wonder he was knocking down the Jaffa Cakes two at a time. With me as his landlady, he was in for quite the adventure.
I cut some fresh flowers and arranged them about and around the house, trying not to think how Missy and I rattled in this huge space. My own dream was to get rid of all the tat and downsize to a cottage in the village, just Missy, myself and a few family pictures and mementos, with a second bedroom for when my sister’s little girls came to stay. And then I could start afresh, with only the things that I had chosen rather than put up with because they were or looked expensive.
I’d buy some essentials like a new bed (top of my list), a table and enough chairs for family dinners, a sofa and a writing desk. Neil would certainly turn his pseudo-aristocratic nose up at it all and say I’d lost my mind. If anything, I’d found myself, and a whole new future.
Because I didn’t need a lot of stuff – and certainly not the high-class jewellery that I’d had to flaunt at dinner parties to make Neil happy. Emeralds, diamonds and rubies. All bought with his family’s old money, and certainly not his own salary. Beautiful objects, indeed, but what did I need any of them for? The one time I went to the annual black-tie benefit for writers in London? Besides, I’d soon lost any interest in them the moment I’d realised that every necklace, bracelet or pair of earrings had been a silent trade-off, if not an apology, for each and every one of his indiscretions. The safe was full of the stuff. You do the maths, if you care to.
I had to get away from this status symbol, as the upkeep of a five-bed detached house and its grounds was expensive. Plus it was the last link to my life with Neil, if you didn’t count the one good thing that had resulted from our marriage, i.e. our daughters Sarah and Lizzie.
I had always envisaged selling the place alongside all of its humongous, self-important furniture and family portraits that Neil had inherited from his grandparents, all pompous and impractical.
If, on one hand, I would miss the commanding views of the coast from up here, my ideal home would be something like Lavender Cottage down in Wyllow Cove, tucked away at the end of the quay. Empty, run-down and in need of a loving new owner now that Mrs Pendennis was gone, it was perfect, except for one thing. It was right next door to my mother.
I decided to leave the decluttering and packing away of all of Neil’s stuff and spent the rest of the day sunbathing with my feet up and drinking iced tea while waiting for Gin o’clock (one must have some semblance of restraint) next to a stack of magazines.
Now with the rent money to tide me over until the house was ready to be viewed, I had both eye candy and extra income. The first thing on my list was to help Sarah and Lizzie get onto their own property ladders rather than renting.
The doorbell rang and I grinned to myself. Whoever it was, they were too late. I was
already all lodgered up with someone who had even agreed to have a go at my borders and disintegrating fences, to boot. Financial freedom, happiness and relaxation, pleased to meet you. Or so I thought.
2
Domestic Drama
It was Yolanda, my younger sister, with her twins Amy and Zoe. After the umpteenth time trying IVF, she and her (now ex) husband Piers had finally managed to conceive, and the result was not one, but two bundles of joy. It was a shame that Piers had decided he didn’t want a family after all that, and that he left Yolanda for a younger woman. That was the story of the Amore sisters – no matter what we did in our lives, there was always another woman our men preferred to us.
It was lucky that Yolanda, a very popular celebrity chef with books and TV shows under her belt, had had a career to keep her going in every sense. When she was away for work, she depended on me to help her with the girls who knew my house better than they did their own. They even had their own room here, which I’d painted half pink for Zoe and half purple for Amy.
But these days, I could hardly help myself, and was beginning to resent the fact that Yolanda always took but never appreciated anything I did for her. It was like still being married to Neil. Of course I loved those two little girls like my own, and, to be honest, pitied them for going through a childhood with a mother whose ego was the size of a cathedral. I knew what that was like, as our own mum was a drama queen, a diva and a general all rolled into one still today.
And Yolanda was very much like her, breezing in and out of her daughters’ lives and leaving the hard work for someone else to do. It sometimes made me wonder why she’d gone to all the trouble of IVF when she preferred being a celebrity to being a mother. My guess was that she wanted it all.
But I was the one who went to the twins’ PTA meetings, volunteered for all their activities and ferried them around from ballet to football. It was a miracle they didn’t call me Mum.
Luckily I worked from home and was able to be there for the girls and it wasn’t a huge upheaval school-wise for them because Yolanda’s villa was a hop from mine.
‘Nat, I need you to look after the girls for a couple of weeks,’ she said as she put her Birkin bag down.
Now, on any day, I’d have been thrilled. But I was on a deadline and this week was a bit tricky.
‘Hi, Yolanda, nice to see you, too.’
‘Oh, Nat, don’t start on me. I’m on my way to Heathrow.’
‘New York again?’
‘Tokyo first.’
That was Yolanda Amore for you, jetting to all the best exotic places, cooking and taping shows. Nigella Lawson had nothing on her. Yolanda’s divorce had done her a world of good, both financially and emotionally, while I was struggling on both levels.
‘Auntie Nat!’ Amy and Zoe hollered, hanging on to various parts of me as I steered them into the kitchen and made a fuss of them while Yolanda disappeared into my pantry, no doubt to give me advice or criticise the fact that my herbs weren’t stored alphabetically, or that I didn’t have pink Himalayan salt.
If there was one person who could make me feel bad about myself it was Yolanda. Richer, taller, thinner, younger, albeit by a couple of years, Yolanda had it all. And never missed out on the chance to rub my nose in it. Even my mother preferred her. And so blatantly, too.
Try as I might, I could not find a single memory of either of them doing something kind for me. My mother had always gone out of her way to please the beautiful Yolanda, the talented Yolanda, the graceful Yolanda, who only preened, the two of them completely forgetting my very existence.
Even when I had broken my leg at ten years of age and was being operated on, where was my mother? At a children’s beauty contest with Yolanda. And when my children were born, she had been away on a cruise both times, while when the twins were born she had been knitting and sewing and stitching bibs and blankets from the day Yolanda told her she was pregnant.
Not even when I had had a miscarriage ten years ago had she been there for me because she’d preferred to be by Yolanda’s side during her umpteenth IVF treatment. Need I say more?
‘Darlings, why don’t you two go into the garden and pick some more flowers for Auntie Nat’s vases?’ I suggested.
‘Mummy’s staying in New York for ever,’ Amy informed me matter-of-factly as she helped herself to a Granny Smith apple and took a huge bite of it. A drop of the juice hit Zoe in the face and she protested. ‘Eewww! No, she isn’t!’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said, eyeing Yolanda who was still perusing my shelves from what I could see of her through the half-open door. She let out a huge sigh and shook her head, and already I could feel my resentment growing. Easy for her to criticise my life when absolutely nothing was missing from hers. Even her producer, Bill Evans, was sniffing around her.
‘Do you want us to do the weeding for you, Auntie Nat?’ Amy asked innocently, but I read her devious little mind. She was heading for my beautiful white roses, the rebel. The minute I turned away she’d be decapitating them with sinister glee.
‘No de-weeding,’ I warned her. ‘Now go – and don’t kick at the fencing again, Amy,’ I reminded the wilder of the two of one of my rules, which she systematically disobeyed. Had she been my daughter, I’d have set her straight years ago, that was for sure.
Door closed and kids spy-proofed, I tried the kettle, which gave a huge cough and a wheeze before kicking the bucket completely. So I boiled some water in a pot and pulled out the biccies Connor had left, all the while waiting for Yolanda to bash me because I hadn’t baked my own like she did.
But Yolanda was quiet, gathering her thoughts, and I left her a few minutes because I knew what it was like not to be able to hear yourself think with young children. When I put the steaming cup on the table, she came out of the pantry with a jar of powdered cinnamon. ‘God, how can you even find anything in there? Try it with this.’
I poured two cups and let her shake – or was it fold? – the spice in.
Yolanda and I were not that close anymore, not since she had got married. And during her divorce, she had clammed up even more, to the point that now we were ships passing in the night, meaning we only saw each other when she dropped the girls off to stay the week, or the weekend. I swear I could name their teachers and the names of the other parents off the top of my head, but it didn’t bother Yolanda, always too busy to notice anything but her own rising star, and gradually, our relationship had cooled to that of mere acquaintances. If she hardly had any time for her own daughters, what could I possibly expect? Weekend lunches or Saturday evening drinks were non-existent with her.
She stirred her tea and closed her eyes to enjoy the aroma.
‘I’m thinking of taking a cruise the minute we wrap,’ she said.
‘Hey, maybe we could go together? I’ve got a stack of brochures somewhere. How about a cruise around the Mediterranean, or perhaps even the fjords or—’
‘Sure, sure, whatever,’ she said. ‘I’ll hire a nanny.’
‘We can take care of the girls ourselves. We don’t need a nanny,’ I said, when instead I wanted to say: Dear oh dear, Yolanda, get a grip and start taking care of your own children rather than hiring perfect strangers to do your job, career or no career. But I bit my tongue. It was so rare to see Yolanda sitting at my table long enough to chat that I didn’t want to ruin the moment.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’
‘Me? I only divorced six months ago.’
‘Exactly, Nat. You should get back in the game. Perhaps a fun man this time, rather than that mummy you married.’
‘Yolanda—’
‘I’m serious, Nat. Look at you. You could be absolutely gorgeous, with that early Natalie Imbruglia look – if you only took care of yourself, that is.’
My hand absently went to my short dark hair, raking across my longish fringe, which I usually kept behind my ear. Take care of myself. Easy for her to say. I just didn’t have the time to look after long hair,
and as a result, I looked like a tomboy while Yolanda looked like a princess. But I was okay with that. We had our own personalities, and although a tiny part of me envied her huge celebrity status, there was no way I would ever swap my quiet life with her hectic one, despite the millions. I had all I needed from my column, and now a lodger.
Yolanda, for example, would never settle for a cottage. She herself lived in a sprawling mansion made of glass and concrete, a huge monolith perched above the opposite end of the cove. I’d often joked we could send each other signals by switching the lights on and off, but she barely even phoned me. We were as different as Amy and Zoe.
I glanced at the girls outside. Zoe was following Amy’s lead in a game of Frozen Statues, very much like Yolanda and I used to play. I was the quiet one, while Yolanda used to lord over me like Amy did over Zoe.
‘You deserve better than Neil,’ Yolanda continued. ‘If he weren’t the twins’ GP I’d have told you to strike him off your phone directory, the cad. Yes, what you need is a sexy man to get you going again.’
‘Going where, exactly?’ I snorted into my mug, all the while thinking of Connor. He was perfect fling material – young, handsome, and on a short lease.
She took a last swig of her tea and glanced at her watch. ‘Crap, is that the time? Girls, come and say goodbye to Mummy,’ she called out into the garden.
They came in sopping wet, probably from a hose fight by the looks of them, trailing mud in from under their feet.
‘Girls,’ I said, because Yolanda sure wasn’t going to. ‘Please wipe your feet when you come in from the garden.’
Zoe obeyed while Amy pretended to take another step while gauging me for a reaction. So I said what I always say. ‘Amy, you know that act doesn’t work with me. Now do as you’re told and say goodbye to your mum.’
Yolanda made an impressed face. ‘See? That’s why I trust you with my girls completely.’
Ah. I’d forgotten the compliments part of her game. She always buttered me up at the last minute just to seal the deal. I sighed.