Snowdrops on Rosemary Lane

by Ellen Berry

  ‘Spike loved it!’

  She glared at him. ‘Of course he did. He’s a child. But what about me, and what I might enjoy?’

  ‘Why didn’t you say,’ he started, ‘if you hated it?’

  ‘After you’d spent all that money? What would’ve been the point?’

  He’d felt as if he’d been punched. The previous summer they had driven from Liverpool to Plymouth and taken the ferry to Brittany, where they had booked a pitch at a beautiful campsite right on the coast, and had had two glorious weeks there. They’d swum and fished and built campfires, and come back to the tent happy – at least, he’d thought they were happy – and reeking of woodsmoke from the driftwood they’d burnt. He could hardly bear to think of it now. ‘I thought you loved it too,’ he’d said.

  ‘I’d have loved it a lot more,’ Michaela retorted, ‘if we’d had a hotel room with a bed in it.’ The implication that he not only begrudged Michaela spending money on acupuncture, but had also forced her to spend a fortnight in a tent, wholly against her will, made him feel terribly uneasy, and a few nights later he found her sitting bolt upright at the kitchen table as if she were about to make an announcement.

  ‘Could you sit down please, James?’ she asked him.

  Obediently, he lowered himself onto a kitchen chair. ‘Kels …’ That had been his nickname for her. ‘What is it?’

  He saw her mouth twitch as she picked at the varnish on a fingernail. ‘I’m sorry, James …’ She looked down. ‘I’ve been seeing somebody else.’

  He blinked at her across the table. Her expression seemed oddly neutral, as if she had mooted the possibility of upgrading their kitchen worktops.

  ‘What d’you mean, seeing someone? You mean sleeping with them?’

  She nodded, her cheeks flushing pink.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked hollowly.

  Michaela cast her gaze downwards. ‘It’s, um … my acupuncturist.’

  At first he thought it was a joke, perhaps to get him back for ‘dragging’ her camping. But now her eyes had filled with tears and he realised it wasn’t a joke at all.

  ‘You’re having an affair?’

  Michaela had nodded mutely. So many questions had rushed through James’s mind then, such as: ‘You’re leaving me for a woman?’ Not that that would have been any worse, or better; just even more startling, if that were possible. But no, it turned out that Ally was actually Ali, a man called Alistair Jenkins, who lived a couple of miles away in an area of Liverpool far more salubrious than their own. James had just assumed the acupuncturist was female. He had also assumed that he and Michaela were still happy – or at least, content enough in that long-term-couple kind of way.

  How wrong he had been. That evening he learned that Ali hadn’t even been Michaela’s acupuncturist beyond that first appointment; they’d taken to meeting for pots of chamomile tea instead. ‘It was all very cerebral,’ she explained, which had made him want to punch a hole in the wall. ‘For ages, we just chatted about stuff.’

  Oh, how sodding cosy! How bloody therapeutic that must have been.

  ‘Right – so you held off jumping into bed,’ he snapped. ‘That makes me feel so much better!’

  The next day Michaela had moved in with a friend from work, which turned out to be a temporary measure as, within a couple of months, she and Ali had rented a place together (it had turned out that he was married too). And soon, a rather bewildered but accepting Spike was spending half the week there. Ali was ‘all right’, he said, when James quizzed him. His mum’s new flat was ‘nice’, his bedroom ‘pretty good really’. He was seven at the time. Michaela had bought him the Xbox he’d been asking for (i.e. bribed him) and all seemed right with his world.

  It wasn’t that James had been utterly passive in all of this. He had tried to reason with her, and on one sorry occasion, after downing two-thirds of a bottle of scotch – he wasn’t a whisky drinker normally – he had phoned her and cried and begged her to come back. He had even told Lucy that part today, about the whisky (what the hell had he been thinking?). But Michaela had said no, and told him that he should have ‘known’ she wasn’t happy. James had ranted some more and kicked the kitchen bin, making a huge dent in it, which he would later have to explain away to Spike by saying, somewhat unfeasibly, that he ‘knocked it with some shopping’. Cerebral Ali grabbed the phone and barked, ‘Accept it’s over, James. It’s time to move on.’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ James had fumed. He must have hurled his phone at a vase Michaela’s mother had given them, because hours later James had woken on the sofa wondering why his broken phone was lying in a puddle of water and flowers and broken glass.

  He’d told Lucy that bit too – about the phone and the broken vase. What must she think after hearing about him being a phone-smashing, bin-kicking maniac who’d necked almost an entire bottle of whisky in one go? And he wondered again: why did it matter to him what she thought? After all, they hardly knew each other really.

  But it did matter, he realised, as he climbed out of his car and made his way across the scrubby ground to his father’s house. It mattered very much and actually, he felt okay that he’d shared it all with her. At least, he thought he did. Anyway, he’d done it now.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As spring edged its way into a glorious summer, the steady stream of guests brought benefits – and not just in providing Lucy with an income. It meant there was little time for her to stop and wonder where her life was going, and what her future held. Looking after these strangers, as well as her children, was pulling her along, and the long summer’s days often saw Rosemary Cottage’s garden filled with children as Marnie and Sam had friends over to play.

  Whereas once Lucy had crept in to steal redcurrants, now her own kids’ friends would arrive en masse for lengthy games and sprawling picnics that Lucy would somehow manage to throw together with zero notice. She made real lemonade, syrupy flapjacks and mounds of chocolate chip cookies, which she would dole out whilst still warm from the oven. She had become known amongst the other mums for ‘going the extra mile’, as Carys put it, fondly – and perhaps she was trying to compensate for something she couldn’t give Marnie and Sam.

  She probably didn’t need to go to such lengths. Her garden seemed irresistible to children anyway – perhaps because everything grew abundantly and was wild and cottagey, rather than neat. Lucy was happy for the children to play freely here, and so tents were pitched, dens constructed, blankets and cushions dragged outside, and Bramble the spaniel was a near-permanent fixture as he scampered around on the lawn.

  James had taken to dropping round too, and she welcomed his company. She had learned more about his home life and about Spike, whom he clearly adored, and even more about the break-up with his son’s mother.

  ‘Things settled down,’ he told her, when she’d gently quizzed him about where things stood one Sunday in June as they drank tea in her garden. Chocolate-sausage-Josh was here, and the three children were busily building a den, involving a wooden clothes horse and blankets and no small degree of bossing by Marnie.

  ‘After the phone smashing and whisky slugging,’ Lucy remarked with a smile.

  James nodded and smiled too, and told her that he’d managed to behave rationally even when, that first summer after she’d left, Facebook had buckled under the sheer quantity of Michaela’s holiday photos – just like their photos, but with James replaced by Ali, and the Brittany coast swapped for Ali’s holiday home in Gran Canaria, complete with hot tub on the decking, in which the three of them were pictured, grinning in the bubbles, as if life was just one big long jacuzzi now. But at least Spike seemed fine, which was all that mattered really.

  She learned that James had met Ali, the acupuncturist, numerous times, when he’d picked up or dropped off Spike from his ex’s new place – and managed to remain civil, partly because Ali was something like six foot five with a barrel chest and oddly dense, vertically sitting hair, ‘like a sandy-coloured shag-pile carpet,’ as
James put it. They chuckled over his description.

  The two men’s encounters tended to be mercifully brief, he explained: the first involving an awkward handshake on Michaela and Ali’s doorstep, when it had felt as if Ali had wanted to crush his bones, and James had certainly wanted to punch him extremely hard. However, over the months and years, James – and, crucially, Spike – had become used to the new shape of things.

  ‘Are things still working out with Rikke?’ Lucy asked as they headed indoors; the day was growing cooler and she needed to cook dinner for the kids. Sam and Marnie had accepted her friendship with James without question, and why not? She enjoyed him being around. It made a pleasant change to have a man about the place from time to time.

  ‘She’s brilliant,’ James replied. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her, to be honest.’

  ‘No sign of your brother coming back?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it at the moment. Seems like Switzerland’s his home now – at least, for as long as this liaison lasts.’

  Lucy smiled and gave James a quick glance as she extracted pizzas from the freezer. Occasionally, she wondered whether he had had many ‘liaisons’ since he and Spike’s mum had split up. He hadn’t mentioned anyone, and she got the impression that with his son, his work and weekly dashes to Burley Bridge to see his father, James’s life was pretty full.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said as he was about to leave. ‘I have something in the car for you. It came from a boat I was working on—’

  ‘What is it?’ Lucy asked.

  They headed outside where he lifted an enormous cork pinboard from the boot of his car. ‘Please say if you don’t want it,’ James said quickly. ‘I just thought, with Sam having that museum in his room, maybe it’d be handy—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it would,’ she started.

  ‘I don’t want to dump it on you.’ He smiled apologetically.

  ‘No,’ she said, beaming, ‘it’s fantastic. That’s so thoughtful of you … but doesn’t Spike want it?’

  James shook his head. ‘He’s always rescuing bits and bobs from the boats I work on. There’s not a spare inch of space on his bedroom wall.’

  ‘Well, thank you for thinking of us.’ Lucy called Sam over as James carried the board towards the house. ‘Look what James brought for your room, love. You could pin exhibits to it – feathers, leaves and all sorts …’

  ‘That’s great,’ he enthused. ‘Thanks!’ The sight of her son grinning up at James made Lucy’s heart turn over. How lucky they were in so many ways, she reflected, with friends who cared about them. And how lucky she was that she had run into James in the hospital car park last year.

  As he left that day, she hugged him warmly without a second’s thought, and it felt just right.

  Chapter Twenty

  How good it felt to be back in Manchester for the day, in a buzzy bistro with bare wooden tables and bright Sixties graphic prints on the walls. Andrew and Nadeen, Lucy’s best friends from her old workplace, had finally persuaded her to drive over for a long lunch. Although they had always kept in touch, it had shocked Lucy to realise that it had been months since she’d ventured further than Heathfield. The trip had required lipstick, plus a thought-about outfit including her low-heeled patent shoes that hadn’t seen the light of day since she’d left the city. In Burley Bridge she was welded to her walking boots, Birkenstocks and wellies and, admittedly, sprucing herself up again had felt pretty refreshing.

  She had bought Marnie’s birthday presents in town – Sam’s eighth birthday had passed the previous week – and now she and her friends were catching up, talking over each other, repeatedly having to apologise to the waiter for not even having looked at the menu yet. ‘You kept this talent quiet,’ Nadeen exclaimed as Lucy showed them pictures of her latest floral displays on her phone.

  ‘I always dabbled,’ she said with a grin, ‘but I kept it under the radar at work.’

  ‘Like a dirty secret,’ Andrew sniggered.

  Lucy nodded. ‘I didn’t think flower arranging would rank that coolly as a hobby.’

  Nadeen laughed. ‘You thought it sounded a bit nana-ish, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She chuckled. ‘And I knew MC had me down as being a bit traditional anyway. Anyway, how are things there—’

  ‘We’ll come to that later,’ Andrew said impatiently, peering at her screen. ‘Look at that gorgeous shop display, Nads. God, Lucy – it’s so professional!’

  ‘I am professional,’ she teased him. ‘At least, I try my best to appear so.’

  ‘Talk about multi-tasking,’ Nadeen murmured approvingly. ‘Any more jobs coming up?’

  ‘Funnily enough, my hairdresser called to say someone wants me to do some wedding flowers. Phyllida-someone. It’s her daughter’s wedding next month and apparently the florist has let them down so they’re pretty stuck.’

  Nadeen’s dark eyes widened. When she’d arrived, Lucy had noticed how pulled-together her friends looked: Andrew in his box-fresh pale blue T-shirt and black skinny jeans, his dark hair immaculately cropped, and Nadeen in a snug-fitting pink sweater and denim skirt, her glossy, jet-black bob looking perfect as ever. Both child-free, her friends had always exuded glamour at work, as had most of Lucy’s other colleagues; it was just the way things were at Claudine, and back then, she had probably stopped registering it. Although she knew Nadeen and Andrew would never judge her, Lucy was thankful now that she had made a special effort with her appearance today.

  ‘Are you going to do it?’ Andrew asked after their orders had finally been taken. ‘This wedding, I mean?’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything yet,’ Lucy said. ‘My hairdresser just wanted to check it was okay to pass on my number.’ She paused. ‘So, come on. What’s the latest at work?’

  Andrew glanced at Nadeen and rolled his eyes. ‘It’s a car-crash, Luce. You know Claude was supposed to be a separate brand, so it didn’t affect the main lingerie lines?’

  She nodded. ‘So MC’s still going ahead with that? I thought it might be just a whim.’

  ‘A flash in the pants?’ Andrew quipped, and they all sniggered before he turned serious. ‘Unfortunately not. Those elephant briefs are already out there in loads of stores. Have you seen the press coverage?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘Not really, no.’ She felt lamentably out of touch with the fashion retail world these days.

  ‘Well, we’ve pretty much lurched down the stag party route now,’ Nadeen said with a grimace. ‘It’s awful, Luce. You wouldn’t recognise the place.’

  ‘What made him do this?’ Lucy asked, baffled. ‘It seems mad. It’s not what Claudine’s known for at all. It’d be no weirder if he suggested launching a range of, I don’t know – air fresheners or biscuits. It just doesn’t fit.’

  Nadeen shrugged. ‘I guess he assumed the party thing’s a massive market, and we all know that kind of tat costs pennies to produce. It’s his background, apparently – stag and hen novelties. He made a huge success of it in his last job.’

  ‘But so far, not with us,’ Andrew added. ‘It’s completely bombed, as far as we can tell. We’ll probably all be out on our ear soon. Don’t suppose you need a gardener at Rosemary Cottage?’

  Lucy gave him a pained smile. ‘You can’t even keep a cactus alive,’ she reminded him, ‘and the countryside makes you feel weird.’

  ‘No, I like it – to visit.’ He grinned.

  ‘Anyway, you’re lucky to be out of it all,’ Nadeen added, then caught herself: ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No, I know I’m lucky in a lot of ways,’ Lucy said quickly.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ Nadeen added. ‘You seem so … together these days. So positive again.’

  ‘You really do,’ Andrew said, squeezing her hand.

  Lucy chuckled. ‘Don’t make me cry, you two. Let’s not get emotional—’

  ‘Check out this then.’ Andrew whipped out his phone and brought up a picture to show her. ‘This is what you’re missing at w
ork.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lucy leaned forward.

  ‘More creatures have been released into the wild,’ he sniggered.

  ‘Tiger pants!’ Lucy gasped, peering at the screen.

  ‘Yep, they’re the newest,’ Andrew explained. ‘And look – there are bears, hippos, a cuddly koala …’ The three became hysterical as Andrew scrolled through the new additions.

  ‘Just in case you ever find yourself missing the place,’ Nadeen said with a smirk.

  Lucy smiled. ‘I miss you two but I don’t miss, you know – the job.’

  ‘Well, you have a job anyway,’ Andrew reminded her. ‘Two, in fact. You run a thriving B&B and you’re a top florist now.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said, ‘but, you know, I am thinking, maybe I could step things up a level.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked.

  They broke off as a selection of small plates were brought to their table: delicious tapas-style dishes of the kind that Lucy hadn’t encountered since she left the city. Lucy considered Andrew’s question for a moment. She would always love and miss Ivan, of course she would; her life had changed forever on that Euston-to-Manchester-Piccadilly train. Likewise, she would forever be Mum to Marnie and Sam, and remember the baby that might have been. Those aspects were all vital parts of her, but they weren’t all that she was. She was only forty-three years old – since when did forty start being preceded by ‘only’, she wondered? – and, hopefully, there were decades ahead of her.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said, ‘there are a few old-fashioned florists in Heathfield, the kind that do bog-standard bouquets and centrepieces, that kind of thing. If I was more proactive in actually attracting work, then I’m sure I could be a lot busier.’ She paused as they all started to tuck in. Lucy had already decided she would avoid offering funeral flowers; she couldn’t face being involved in anyone’s loss, even from a distance. For Ivan’s cremation service – operating on autopilot, really – she had ordered a casket spray, and along had come a stiff arrangement of lemon and cream roses, which hadn’t seemed right at all.