A Whiff of Scandal

by Carole Matthews

  ‘Not exactly.’ Rose looked away, ashamed of herself. ‘But it was obvious that was what he thought.’

  Angelica looked at her sympathetically. ‘And do you care what he thought?’

  Tears spilled over Rose’s lashes and streamed down her face. ‘Yes,’ she cried.

  Angelica spoke to her softly. ‘Then I must ask you, once again. Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

  ‘No,’ Rose admitted truthfully. ‘It’s just that things are so complicated now.’ She looked balefully at Angelica. ‘Hugh has given up everything for me.’

  ‘Everything?’

  Rose exhaled an unhappy, shuddering breath. ‘He’s left his wife. And children.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I keep thinking back to what you were saying about your lover. The man who . . .’ She saw the sadness steal over Angelica’s face, deepening the lines that time had etched there.

  Angelica cleared her throat before speaking. ‘History very rarely repeats itself, no matter what people might have us believe.’ Her voice was thick with emotion. ‘There is one other thing I didn’t tell you about my grande passion.’ Angelica fluttered her hands over her hair and stared out into the garden where the vibrant colours were more suited to a hot summer’s day in the Mediterranean than a clear spring one in Buckinghamshire and made Angelica look all the more pale. She turned back to Rose. ‘He was a terrible philanderer. A flirt, a womaniser and a scoundrel.’ She swallowed with a deliberate slowness before she continued. ‘I wasn’t the first, you see. And I wasn’t the only one, even at the time. In reality he made my life a misery. Everyone knew that he’d had a string of mistresses, most of them young and gullible. Like me. That’s why he was hounded so much. I’m afraid most of my romantic notions about him are purely flights of fancy. The feeble ramblings from the ageing brain of a woman who has, by all accounts, led a terribly dull life.’ She looked at Rose wistfully.

  ‘Oh, Angelica,’ Rose said sadly. ‘At least, you have Basil now.’

  Angelica forced a bright smile. ‘Yes,’ she said emotionally. ‘And now that I’ve found him, I’m going to grab him with both hands and hang on for the ride. If you’ll pardon the expression.’

  ‘I think it’s Basil that will have his hands full with you!’

  The elegant elderly lady winked decorously and then said, ‘I want to be serious now, Rose, and you must listen to me.’ She leaned forward in her chair and spoke urgently. ‘Don’t waste your life like I did. You must do what your heart tells you. One thing I did say that was totally and absolutely true when we spoke before, you must think only of yourself. Your own happiness is paramount.’

  Rose gave a weak laugh. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it all seems irrelevant now. The house is on the market, the removal van’s booked for Friday and Hugh is waiting in London for me with open arms.’

  ‘It sounds like your decision is final.’

  If only it felt the same as it sounded, Rose thought.

  ‘And have you told Dan?’ Angelica asked succinctly.

  Rose avoided her gaze. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I think you owe him that much.’

  Rose folded her arms on the table and stared unseeing out into the garden. ‘I don’t know if I can bear to tell him.’

  ‘Then that sounds, unless I’m very much mistaken, as though you have unfinished business, my dear,’ Angelica observed. ‘Hugh may have given up everything for you, but you must now ask yourself the question: are you prepared to give up everything for Hugh?’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  SECRET PASSIONS

  Rose, Jasmine, Ylang-Ylang.

  All of us harbour secret passions. Little things that only we know can stir our blood, warm the dark corners of our hearts and make us feel like we’re walking on air. This highly fragrant and extravagant blend of luxurious natural oils will help to unlock the secret passions deep within you – so that your secret love will be no secret any more!

  from: The Complete Encyclopaedia of Aromatherapy Oils by Jessamine Lovage

  She would have no fingernails left at all at this rate. Another three had snapped as Rose reluctantly packed the dinner plates, first wrapping them in newspaper before stacking them in a tea chest with brutally jagged edges. No doubt she would slash her hands to ribbons, too, by the end of the day.

  It was stupid to pack most of her things as she wouldn’t be taking them back to the flat in London. It was too small, too cramped, too plush for her belongings. Leaving them here in tea chests wasn’t ideal either, but there was a finality about completely emptying the house that she was anxious to put off. If she allowed herself to think about it, there was a finality about leaving Great Brayford that she was anxious to put off too. In the end, packing these bits and pieces would only make it easier for burglars to load the entire contents of her life on to a Ford Transit. Pushing this thought aside, Rose packed on regardless.

  She was taking only the small items, bedding, china and one or two of her better pieces of furniture. Most of the stuff was only fit for a bonfire and Basil had been eager to oblige there.

  A blackbird was singing its heart out in the garden and Rose abandoned the plate she was wrapping and walked over to the back door. The door stood open and she leaned on the frame as she watched the bird perform its love song for the uninterested-looking lady blackbird that perched on the edge of the concrete bird bath shaped, for some inexplicable reason, like a cherub. The bird was a superb ventriloquist. From the high ground of the fence, it was trilling up and down its scales with a juicy fat worm wriggling in its beak – no doubt the bird world’s courting equivalent of a dozen red roses. The poor creature was getting nowhere fast. Despite his best efforts, the haughty lady blackbird refused to acknowledge him. Perhaps she should have treated Hugh like that. Disdainfully. Refusing to let him worm his way back into her life with such ease.

  There would be no more bird-watching back at the flat. Even sparrows were a rarity there and those that did appear had a scrawny, streetwise appearance that wasn’t as endearing as the friendly, well-fed birds that graced her garden here. She looked further down the lawn, taking in the improvements that Basil had started to make. It was a constant battle to maintain a plot of land this size. Turn your back for ten minutes and nature started to steal back what was rightfully hers. It was all very well having Wildlife On One in your back garden, but there were disadvantages too. The badgers broke the flowers off the bergenia, the muntjacs munched the muscari and you couldn’t go for a stroll without stepping in rabbit poo.

  She was starting to feel the pull of the pollution in her lungs. Her acclimatisation had begun in earnest. Who wanted clear fresh air laden with the foetid smell of ripe cow manure when you could just as easily be asphyxiated by diesel fumes and the smog of pollution? Hadn’t she always been a city girl at heart? Perhaps that was why she had never really settled in the country. Being woken by a double-decker bus trundling past your window may not sound as romantic as the dawn chorus or, indeed, sheep baaing, but it was just as effective. And, after all, surely the romantic quality of your alarm call depended on who you were waking up to.

  She was young and bright and sophisticated and still had so much living to do. Weekly attendance at line-dancing classes or Tums, Bums and Thighs didn’t count as living. Village life was riddled with petty ways – the constant tittle-tattle and gossip, the fact that you couldn’t change your underwear without everyone taking an interest. At least in London no one spoke to you at all. You could be dying on the pavement and people would just step over you. It was all very well having a village shop run by the fount of all knowledge, but if you went in for just a pint of milk you couldn’t get out in under half an hour. Mr Patel who ran the corner shop at the other end of the road from the flat in London barely looked at you as he gave you your change; you could be back home and in front of Brookside before the commercial break was over. And Mr Patel of London didn’t look at you as if you were barking mad when you
asked if he stocked herbal tea.

  When she came to think of it, there were a lot of things that she could well live without. But could she live without Dan?

  Bleakly, she looked back at the jagged edge of the half-packed tea chest and struggled to resist the urge to saw her wrists back and forwards across it. Who was she kidding? She would miss the village like hell. And some of its occupants distinctly more than others.

  Before she got too suicidal, Rose decided she would go and see Melissa. Pulling on a jumper over her scruffy ‘packing up the house’ T-shirt, she collected the small brown bottle of essential oils that she had blended for Mel and, banging the front door decisively behind her, headed for her friend’s house.

  Melissa, surprisingly, was baking a cake. There were smears of flour on her face, hair and T-shirt and the work surface was submerged beneath a liberal scattering of caster sugar. She was beating something that already looked within an inch of its life in a large brown bowl.

  Rose knocked gingerly on the back door and let herself in. ‘Hello!’ she said with a cheerfulness she didn’t feel.

  Melissa’s cheeks were flushed and she blew her fringe out of her eyes with an upwards curling of her lower lip. ‘You’ll have to put the kettle on yourself, if it’s tea and sympathy you’ve come for,’ she said over her shoulder to Rose. Her hands and arms up to the elbows were spattered with a pale grey substance. ‘I’m baking a cake.’

  ‘I would never have guessed,’ Rose teased.

  Her friend frowned at her and stopped punishing the cake mix.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ Rose said. ‘It looks like a very serious business.’

  ‘It’s a bastard,’ Melissa agreed.

  Rose leaned on the kitchen table which, for the moment, was the only place which seemed to be a flour-free zone. ‘I didn’t know you were such an avid baker.’

  Melissa regarded her with disdain. ‘Do I look like one?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Rose conceded.

  ‘I tried it once with the Kenwood food processor, but I ended up with even more mixture on the floor and ceiling than I’ve got now.’

  It was difficult to see how.

  ‘And then I sort of lost the spatula,’ she said shiftily.

  That was more understandable.

  ‘This is “Chocolate Cake Made Easy” by Mary O’Hoorahan.’ Melissa pointed at the recipe book and thus flicked a shower of cake mix at the hapless page. ‘Lying bitch,’ she muttered under her breath.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Rose ventured tentatively.

  ‘It’s a labour of love,’ she snapped. ‘I’m trying to be a better wife.’

  ‘And baking a cake constitutes being a better wife?’

  ‘It’s a start.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just buy a nice ready-made cake from Mr Patel – he has an extensive selection. Or a packet mix might be less tortuous.’

  ‘That would be cheating,’ she said flatly. ‘And I’ve been doing too much of that lately.’

  ‘Oh. Anything that you want to share?’

  ‘No,’ Melissa said petulantly. ‘I’ve been very stupid and I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Does Frank know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what does he say?’

  ‘Oh, you know Frank.’ Melissa paused momentarily from mugging the fledgling cake. She wiped the hair from her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing cake mix across her eyebrows. ‘He just goes quiet – even quieter than usual – and keeps his feelings to himself.’

  ‘Are things okay between you?’ Rose held up her hand. ‘Tell me to mind my own business if you want to.’

  ‘No.’ Melissa thrashed at the mixing bowl again. ‘I don’t mind. I hope we’ll be all right. Fortunately, I came to my senses just in time. It’s funny,’ she stopped beating and turned to Rose, ‘you never do realise what you’ve got until it’s gone. Or almost gone in my case.’ Mel absently sucked cake mix from one of her fingers. ‘Why do we always take for granted the people that really love us?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Melissa,’ Rose said with a sigh. ‘But you’re going to push me deeper into my dark depression if you carry on like this.’

  ‘I thought that you’d be happy now that you’re going back to London.’

  ‘So did I,’ Rose admitted.

  ‘I’m just surprised that you’re going back to whatsit.’

  ‘Hugh,’ Rose filled in.

  ‘Hugh. Especially after all you said about him. I thought you hated him.’

  ‘So did I.’

  Melissa abandoned her attempts at ‘Chocolate Cake Made Easy’ and leaned on the work surface, placing her cake-mixed hands in the sugar with a recklessness that was admirable. ‘So what changed your mind?’ she asked.

  Rose scraped her hair back from her face. ‘He finally left his wife and kids.’

  ‘What a bastard!’

  ‘No, that’s good! It means he can commit fully to me now.’

  ‘And you’d want a man that can heartlessly ditch his wife and kids to be committed fully to you?’

  ‘Put like that, I don’t really know,’ Rose said, her face a picture of misery.

  ‘Are you fully committed to him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Rose buried her face in her hands. ‘I just feel so confused about the whole thing.’

  ‘What about Dan?’ Mel flicked her hair back from her shoulders and the ends draped in the bowl of cake mix. ‘I thought you two were about to become an item.’

  ‘Were we that obvious?’

  ‘No,’ Mel said. ‘You dark horse. I hadn’t a clue until Mr Patel told me. You certainly kept that quiet. But then I have been rather preoccupied lately.’

  Rose wrung a wry smile from her lips. ‘If we kept it quiet, how did Mr Patel know?’

  ‘Mr Patel knows everything.’ Melissa tapped the side of her nose. ‘Well, nearly everything.’

  ‘Does he know why Gardenia left?’

  ‘He thought it was because of you. Apparently, Dan’s been crazy about you since you arrived. Gardenia couldn’t stand the competition.’

  Rose tipped back on her chair. ‘That is pure conjecture. I’m sure this village is the one that made the original molehill into a mountain.’

  ‘Villages thrive on gossip,’ Melissa informed her. ‘There’s nothing else to do. And, besides, you have given them rather a lot to talk about.’ She smiled kindly.

  Rose huffed unhappily. ‘I suppose I have really,’ she admitted.

  ‘So you and Dan weren’t getting it together?’

  Rose hesitated. ‘Not in the Luther Vandross sense of the word,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘This is me you’re talking to, Rose.’ Melissa wagged a cake-mixed finger at her. ‘Honesty is the best policy.’

  ‘We weren’t getting it together, as you so nicely put it,’ Rose sighed, ‘but not for the want of trying. We just seemed to have more than our fair share of near misses.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Then Hugh happened.’ Rose opened her hands and expressed hopelessness. ‘Dan found out. He was mad. We had a fight.’

  Mel’s eyes widened with delight. ‘You hit him?’

  ‘Emotionally, right below the belt,’ Rose said flatly.

  ‘Wow,’ Mel breathed. ‘This really is true love!’

  ‘Oh, Melissa, don’t start that again. I know what your idea of true love is.’

  Mel folded her arms, oblivious of the cake mix still caking her hands, and stared directly at her. ‘And what’s yours, Rose?’

  ‘Are you going to do something with that cake before it’s too late?’ Rose asked. ‘If you’re not going to put it in the oven, do you mind if I go and stick my head in there instead?’

  ‘Just let me finish it and then I’ll make us a cup of tea.’ Melissa turned back to the mixing bowl and poured the watery beige liquid into two sandwich tins. ‘Mary says it’s supposed to be the consistency of double cream.’ There was a worried look on her face.
‘It looks a bit runny to me.’

  ‘It doesn’t look terribly chocolatey either for chocolate cake,’ Rose pointed out.

  ‘Oh, bum!’ Melissa cried in dismay. ‘I knew there was something I forgot.’ She stared malevolently at the cake tins and slammed them in the oven anyway. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough of being domesticated for one day. Frank’s so sweet, he’ll eat it whatever it tastes like.’

  ‘That’s what I call true love, Melissa,’ Rose said sagely. ‘And now that you’ve found it, don’t throw it away.’

  Her friend turned and wiped a generous smearing of cake mix across her top lip. ‘Perhaps it’s time you took your own advice.’

  They both sat at the table and nursed cups of tea. Melissa had scrubbed the cake mix off her hands and arms with a reasonable degree of success, but dried splotches of it still stuck to her face. Rose didn’t have the heart to point them out.

  ‘So there’s no possibility of a reunion,’ Melissa said as she sipped her tea.

  ‘The words fat and chance have a certain ring to them,’ Rose replied.

  ‘You should go and see him.’

  Rose sighed hopelessly. ‘What good would it do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Melissa said tartly. ‘I’m not a bloody mind reader. I just don’t think you should leave without talking to him.’ She put her cup down firmly on the table. ‘If what Mr Patel says is true – and there’s no reason to doubt it, he’s usually spot on – Dan is in a terrible state. He’s not eating properly—’

  ‘What’s he doing in Mr Patel’s shop then, if he’s not eating properly?’ Rose interrupted. ‘It’s a grocer’s. You realise that this could prove to be a fatal flaw in your argument.’

  ‘He went in to get some Chum for Fluffy.’ Melissa was righteous in her indignation. ‘It may disappoint you, but you haven’t put the dog off its food as well. Just Dan.’

  Rose hung her head. ‘What shall I do, Mel?’

  ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘When did Mr Patel say?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Rose nodded in confirmation. ‘Tomorrow it is.’

  ‘Then I suggest you finish your tea, get your butt out of that chair and go and find him.’