‘No, I don’t.’ She looked at him and, even from this distance, she could feel the powerful waves of emotion pushing and pulling at her. She loved the way he was looking at her and wondered how she seemed to him. How could she, in so short a time, have given off such strong vibrations? Was she grasping at straws, still mortified by James going off like he had, choosing another woman ahead of her?
Why not give it a go? He wasn’t proposing marriage, which was just as well because she was in no mood at the moment to think about it. ‘I’d quite like to see you,’ she said, managing a smile, very aware that the reply was half-hearted as if she didn’t really mean it.
‘Great. In that case, I’m going to take you out to dinner this weekend. Consider it a date.’
‘I could cook us something here.’
‘Oh no, you don’t. I shall book us a table somewhere. Are you happy to leave the choice to me?’
She nodded. ‘I think it might have stopped raining,’ she said, standing up and suddenly anxious to leave, for she was taken aback by this and she didn’t feel at her best with her hair all scruffy and yes, she really did have the beginning of the snuffles. She needed to get away, to think about things before she blurted out something really stupid. ‘Or, at the least, it’s eased off. Funny weather, isn’t it? Quite warm in a way and the rain is so heavy and comes on so suddenly, it’s like being in the tropics.’
‘Yes. I suppose we have climate change to thank for that.’
She nodded, catching his amusement at the meteorological turn the conversation had taken.
‘I’ll be off then and I’ll look forward to dinner. Thanks, Rory.’
She paused, clutching the stuff she had come for, her excuse, and he smiled, presumably at her ridiculous formality, promising to give her a ring about the arrangements, hesitating a moment at the door before kissing her lightly on the cheek.
After the briefest of respites to catch its breath, it was bucketing down again and she hurried down the path but, once in the car, waiting for the blowers to clear away the steamed-up windows, she found herself gently touching her cheek where, just a few minutes before, his lips had lingered.
FIFTEEN
A WET AND windy autumn merged into a drier winter and Adele was long moved out of the flat and now installed, temporarily, at her mother’s. It was all becoming rather too cosy. She had her old room, a room she had once loved, a quiet haven after the bustle of the main road position of the flat, and, although Adele had tried to establish a few ground rules from the start, her mother was starting to ‘look after her’ again. Worse, she was starting to treat her like a teenager again.
Living here was stretching on too long but just now it seemed the only thing she could do. She was in a financial crisis and she was grateful to have been offered a way out even though both she and her mother needed patience to cope with the odd situation. She had left home years ago and you couldn’t do a comeback, not satisfactorily.
The truth was flats were so expensive and the way things were progressing with Rory, their relationship now deep and committed, their sex life vibrant and exciting, Adele knew that it was hardly worth her while forking out six months’ rent, which she could barely afford even if she went for something lowly and sensible. Nothing had been said about moving in with Rory and she certainly had no intention of being the first to mention such an arrangement but things as they stood were not entirely satisfactory. She felt awkward, a cuckoo in the nest, at his house, just as she felt equally awkward here.
She had spent the morning cooking for a client’s modest dinner party this evening – as requested a lasagne and an apple and raspberry crumble which would pop into the oven to heat up when they got to their client’s. Emma was doing the soup – carrot and orange – and making the bread rolls to go with it and they were booked to serve it up so she was taking time out now to prepare for what might be a long stretch this evening.
‘Every year I say I won’t bother sending Christmas cards,’ her mother said, sitting opposite her with a pile of cards and envelopes on the coffee table accompanied by a long address list. ‘It’s such a bore and your father’s no help whatsoever. If it was just “love from Louisa and Richard” it wouldn’t be so bad but I feel I must include a short letter to the people we haven’t seen for years. For one thing, I have to tell people about you and James …’ she added, looking at her accusingly.
‘I don’t see why.’ Adele leaned forward and stroked Wilson’s silky head as he rested it on her lap and looked at her imploringly. ‘Let’s take the dog out before it gets dark,’ she said, looking out on to a bright clear early afternoon. ‘You can do those later.’
‘All right.’ Her mother yawned and stretched. ‘I haven’t decided whether or not to cross Jennifer and Michael off the list. She’s being such a nuisance about it all. One minute, she was blaming James fairly and squarely and then she’s switched to blaming you. If she doesn’t buck up soon …’
‘Defrost, you mean.’ Adele smiled although she knew how much this rift was hurting her mother.
‘Exactly. It was the right thing to do, to cancel our holiday, wasn’t it, darling?’
‘It was the only thing to do. You and Dad couldn’t spend a fortnight walking on eggshells, frightened to mention me or James. It would have been no holiday for you.’
‘Quite. I’m very surprised. You were right about Jennifer. She’s showing a side of her nature I never knew existed. You think you know somebody really well and then you find out you don’t know them at all. I don’t understand why she’s changed her tune although the fact that Stephanie is a doctor and her father something fearfully high up in Whitehall must have something to do with it. You know how Jennifer is about things like that.’
‘Is that her name? Stephanie?’
‘Yes. I can’t understand why Jennifer’s getting on her high horse. After all it was James who committed adultery in the first place.’
‘We weren’t married, Mother.’
‘As good as. You hung around too long. You could have got married years ago, had a family by now.’
‘Mother!’ Adele warned, not in the mood for all that again. ‘Come on, let’s get some air. I want to talk to you about Rory.’
‘Really?’
*
The village her mother lived in was out on the Lancashire coastal plain, flat and good for walking. They quickly left the village behind, heading for the path that skirted the fields. Wilson shot off as soon as they let him off his lead and she and her mother walked briskly behind. It was a truly lovely winter’s day, their breath showing in little puffs as they exhaled, the ground frostily crisp under their feet.
‘Rory’s asked me to marry him,’ Adele said, stuffing her hands into the pocket of her padded jacket. ‘Last night. It came out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting a proposal from him. It was all very romantic. He’d made dinner, a surprise for me.’ She smiled for it had been such an effort for him and even though the kitchen had resembled a battleground afterwards, the thought had been there. He hadn’t got down on his knees, not quite, but it was considerably more romantic a proposal than James’s and, more importantly, Rory meant it. She had seen the anxiety in his eyes, had known that he would be crushed if she turned him down.
But she could not say yes, not straightaway.
She had asked for some time to think it over. It had disappointed him, she knew that, but it was too important to be rushed into.
‘Well, well …’ Louisa glanced at her. ‘It’s a bit quick. You’ve only known him since October.’
‘Does that matter? I knew James all my life and that didn’t work out for us, did it?’
‘Are you asking me what I think?’ Louisa sniffed, calling out to Wilson as he threatened to get too far ahead of them. She waited until the dog had careered back to her, reaching down to praise him before she continued. ‘Because it won’t matter what I think, will it? It’s up to you, darling. I feel guilty about James. Maybe we did try to force you into it
. I’m sorry. You played so nicely together as children.’
Adele laughed and, after a moment, so did Louisa.
‘Mad, isn’t it? As to Rory, I must say he seemed a nice man, what little I saw of him.’
The two of them had dropped in briefly, in passing, and stayed for a cup of tea and a few tentative words, Louisa making it fairly plain that she was not going to be a pushover with this. Adele knew that she worried about his age, his being divorced, having two grown-up daughters.
All of that.
In a way, she worried about that too.
‘You do make your life unnecessarily complicated,’ her mother went on after a moment’s thought. ‘Why on earth you couldn’t meet a lovely man of your own age, a man without any baggage, I shall never know. I hear from your grandmother that you’ve been talking to her about him.’
‘Well, yes, it came up when she phoned me,’ Adele said. ‘She likes to know what’s going on.’
‘So do I.’ Her mother sighed. ‘He’ll only ever be able to give you half his attention, you do realize that, don’t you? I’m not saying his daughters will come first but what they think about you is bound to have some influence on him. How do you get on with them by the way?’
‘Fine.’ Adele had met the girls, his girls, separately. Faye was in her first year at college up in Durham and Jackie was just about to complete her degree. ‘Jackie’s got a boyfriend. She’s talking about getting married herself, in fact. Rory’s not too happy. He thinks she’s far too young but Angela—’
‘She’s the ex?’
‘Yes. She approves.’
‘Why did she leave him? I think you ought to ask him that. After all, as your father has always said, it takes two to tango. I don’t believe this business of just one of the parties being solely to blame.’
‘He doesn’t talk about it and I don’t like to press him.’
‘You should. You need to know these things.’
They stopped as the path petered out. There was a stile and a further rougher trek but they had had enough and clouds were hurtling in, probably carrying the rain that had been promised for later in the day.
‘What about children?’ Louisa sighed. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ve changed your mind?’
‘Sorry, Mother. I’m sticking to that.’
‘Have you told him?’
‘Not yet.’ Adele pushed her hair back under the furry hat she was wearing. ‘I assume he won’t want children. Not at his age.’
Her mother laughed. ‘Ah, so you are thinking about the age gap?’
‘Well, yes. As you know, he’s got two daughters. I don’t suppose he’ll want to start all that again. A second family.’
‘Two daughters? I would be careful about making assumptions, darling. Have you considered the fact that he might love to have a son? Men do. Your father was always just a little disappointed that we never had a boy after you.’
Adele side-stepped Wilson, who was trying to roll in something too terrible to contemplate, and they spent a moment persuading him out of it before Louisa fastened him back on his leash.
‘I will talk to him,’ she promised her mother. ‘But what if he does want a baby? What if he does want to try to have a son this time? What will I do then?’
‘I don’t know. It entirely depends on how much you love him,’ Louisa said. ‘You might risk losing him. Oh, darling, as I keep saying, why on earth do you have to complicate things so much? Look …’ She set off at a fast trot at the first spits of rain and Adele hurried to keep up with her. ‘All I want is for you to be happy. I’m sorry but I can’t tell you what to do. You have to work it out for yourself.’
‘I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. Get married anyway,’ Emma told her bluntly. The dinner party last night had been a huge success but there was no rest for the wicked for they were catering for an eighteenth birthday party later in the week and were assembling the buffet. ‘You can always agree to have a baby but then make bloody sure it doesn’t happen.’
‘I can’t do that. That wouldn’t be fair.’
Emma shrugged. ‘You did ask me what I thought. Consider the options then. Can you afford a place of your own just now?’
‘Hardly. I could just about scrape the deposit for another flat. And my gran’s offered me a loan but I don’t like taking money from her because she never lets me pay it back.’ She sighed. Her grandmother had also offered her a temporary home – her house was huge, after all – but she hadn’t wanted to upset her routine and living with her gran seemed one step worse than living with her parents. ‘The thing is I’ve got to do something. My parents have been incredibly patient but …’
‘Don’t tell me. They’re driving you bonkers?’
Adele nodded. ‘I’m back in my old room and it doesn’t seem right any more. And then if I spend the night with Rory, I get such looks from my father the following day. Honestly, you would think I was still a teenager.’
‘OK. Be realistic, Adele. So you could afford a place of your own. Something very small and crappy or, if you marry Rory, you can live in that gorgeous house. He has a great job, fantastic car …’
Adele nodded. He drove a Jaguar, bottle green with cream leather interior, which, unlike her own little heap, was always beautifully clean. She suspected he loved that car very nearly as much as he did her.
‘He spoils you already so just think what it will be like when you’re married to him. As I see it …’ Emma wiped her floury hands and glanced at the clock. They were in Emma’s mother’s kitchen. Emma lived here with her parents but because it was such a rambling old-fashioned farmhouse, her part of the house quite separate from the rest of the family, she didn’t seem to have the same problems with that set-up as Adele. It was a working farm at that but Emma’s brother had taken over the running of it when her parents retired. Her mother was more than happy for them to use the kitchen for the business even if it wasn’t ideal.
‘As I see it, it’s a no contest,’ Emma continued, filling the baked cases with the fruit Adele had prepared. ‘Go for it. Oh, by the way …’ She hesitated, watching Adele as she wiped down the surfaces. ‘There’s a unit going begging on the industrial estate at Back End and I’ve sent for the details. We should think about it, Adele. We’ve got to decide how far we want to take the business.’
‘I know.’ Adele nodded. They had anticipated a rush as Christmas approached but underestimated the amount of business it could produce. For the past few weeks, they had been up to their eyes in small mince pies which were selling like, well, like hot cakes both on their market stall which they still had and in the shops that stocked their produce.
It was crunch time, had been for some time now, and just lately they had had to turn down a couple of jobs because they couldn’t be in two places at once, nor did they have the manpower to do what had been required of them.
‘If we moved into that unit,’ Emma went on, eyes shining now, ‘we could employ another trained cook and some part-timers to help out and we could really start to make money. We could afford to advertise properly and what with our word-of-mouth recommendations we would be quids in. We should do it, Adele. Sometimes, you have to take a chance.’
‘It will cost money.’
Emma frowned. ‘Yes but you have to spend money to make money. Have a word with your father. He’s the accountant.’ She placed the pies into the oven and set the timer. ‘Look, sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up just now. We’ll talk about this later when you’re not so preoccupied with your love life.’
‘Thanks. And it’s me who should be sorry. I’m being such a pain. And thanks for what you said. It has helped.’
‘Good.’ Emma looked unconvinced. ‘If it was me, I’d say yes like a shot but then the chances of a good-looking guy like Rory asking me to marry him are zilch.’
‘Stop running yourself down,’ Adele told her sternly. ‘If you didn’t give off such negative vibes, you’d have the guys buzzing round.
’
‘Maybe. Now, come on, we have a million things to do.’
‘Right. You’re a saint, Emma, to put up with me.’ Adele picked up the peelings to take them to the compost area.
Emma eyed her ruefully. ‘Don’t I know it,’ she said.
SIXTEEN
IT WAS SEVERAL days later before she got the chance to speak to Rory. He often spent days away on business and she was getting used to that, spending the time when he was away at her mother’s, feeling increasingly guilty that she was just using her mother’s hospitality. He was due back this evening, business concluded successfully according to his phone call, so, having decided that she could not put it off any longer, she had gone over to his house, let herself in with her key and prepared a celebratory meal.
Her mother’s words kept coming back to her. It was all very well for Emma to tell her to just go ahead with it, marry Rory and keep quiet about how she felt about the baby thing but it was too important to let it lie. She had to find out how he felt about it. And, if he wanted a baby, boy or not, then she would have to have a drastic rethink at that point.
She did not want to lose him.
She did not want him to walk away from her.
Rory liked to lift her hair at the back and plant a kiss there, such a gentle feather of a kiss but when he removed his lips it was as if a little burn remained there. Nobody had ever done that before, kissed the back of her neck, and to her it did it every single time. Like touch paper.
After the little kiss, which would set a wriggle of longing off within her, he would turn her round to face him and there would be such love in his eyes, in his smile, that she would gasp at it, heat flooding into her face, scalding her cheeks.
Tonight, with him being absent for several days, tonight she knew they would make love, but there was no rush and she savoured the anticipation of what was to come. When he arrived home, looking tired after the trip, he showered and changed into casual clothes before coming downstairs, where she fussed around him, getting drinks for both of them.
Rumours and Red Roses Page 12