by Ellen Berry
‘Mum!’ Marnie yelled from downstairs.
‘Just a minute, honey.’ Lucy wedged white plastic fangs over her own teeth (another newsagent purchase) and studied her reflection in her mirror. She looked hideous – just as the occasion required.
‘Mum!’ Marnie yelled again. ‘It’s your phone. It’s ringing again.’
Lucy pulled on a witch’s hat, which Carys had unearthed for her, and hurried downstairs. She took her ringing mobile from Marnie’s outstretched hand. ‘Hello?’ she said briskly.
‘Lucy, hi – it’s Connell.’
‘Oh, hi, Connell.’ She strode through to the kitchen where it was quieter.
‘I’m sorry,’ he started, his voice echoing, ‘but I think there’s something wrong with my sat nav.’
She frowned. Much as she was looking forward to seeing Connell after all these years, she wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling her this.
‘And I’m not getting GPS on my phone,’ he added. ‘Maybe I’m out of data.’
She pulled out her fangs and slipped them into the pocket of the dress. It was impossible to concentrate with them in. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she started, ‘but I’m actually just about to—’ She broke off at the sound of a sharp rap on the front door.
‘Pretty sure I’m only three or four miles away,’ Connell went on. ‘I’ve turned off the main dual carriageway and the road was signposted to Burley Bridge, but then it forked and I think maybe I took the wrong—’
‘But, Connell—’
‘Mum! Someone’s at the door!’ Marnie shouted from the living room.
‘Could someone answer it please?’ Lucy yelled back. Her request was ignored. She gripped her phone and strode through to the hall. ‘You mean you’re on your way here now?’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes! I’ve just pulled over to call you.’
Panic rose in her chest as she opened the front door, pulling an apologetic face as she beckoned in Roseanne, one of the school-gate mums, and her three little boys who were dressed as a trio of wizards. Marnie and Sam ran through to greet them, leaving the TV blaring. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said distractedly. ‘I won’t be a minute. There’s food in the kitchen.’ She waved a hand towards it and raked her wig back from her already clammy forehead.
‘Sorry, Connell – some friends have just arrived. Um, look, I don’t know what’s happened but it’s actually tomorrow night you’re booked in for. You’ve made a mistake.’ As she said it, doubt started to creep into her consciousness. Had it been tomorrow, or had she been the one to mess up? Certainly, she’d been prone to forgetfulness since Ivan died. Too many demands on her time, too many plates to keep spinning, coupled with broken sleep and general mental woolliness. She wasn’t proud of the fact that she had sent Marnie and Sam on a school archaeology trip to Ilkley Moor without packed lunches and they’d had to settle for ‘a dry cracker and some grapes’ (as reported by Marnie) donated by a friend. She had missed her own doctor’s and dentist’s appointments – but so far, she had never messed up a guest’s booking.
‘I really don’t think so,’ Connell said.
‘Okay. Just hang on a sec.’ She tried to exude calm as she marched through to the living room and flipped open her laptop to check her spreadsheet of bookings. There he was. ‘No, it was definitely November the first and second,’ she said firmly. There was another knock at the door, and Lucy hurried through and waved in the new arrivals, still making apologetic gestures for being on the phone.
‘Everything okay?’ Carys mouthed.
Lucy grimaced and nodded. As everyone surged into the kitchen, and the noise levels rose, she stepped into the downstairs bathroom and shut the door.
‘Connell,’ she said, ‘I’ve checked my bookings diary. You’re definitely in there for tomorrow night.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ he groaned. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I messed up.’
She held the phone to her ear, remembering again how scatty and chaotic he’d been at college. ‘Could I possibly stay tonight?’ he asked. ‘The head teacher’s expecting me first thing tomorrow. I reckon I’m literally five, six miles away.’
‘But … my whole house is full of people right now.’ Another mum had arrived with her offspring (why was it always the women out trooping the streets in the wind and the rain with gangs of hyped-up children?).
‘Look, I won’t really need anything from you,’ Connell went on. ‘Just a bed to sleep in, basically. I won’t even need breakfast. I’m sure I can get something in the village.’
‘Tomorrow morning’s not the problem,’ she said. ‘It’s tonight. It’s Halloween.’
‘Christ, is it?’
‘Yes! And I’m having a party and then I’m going to be out with the children till God knows when. I really can’t have any guests tonight.’
‘Well, look – I could help.’
‘What with?’
‘Um, anything really. Anything you need me to do. I could, er … clear up after the party?’
Despite the fact that this situation was far from ideal, she couldn’t help smiling at that. ‘I don’t expect my guests to wipe jelly off the floor.’
Connell chuckled. ‘I don’t mind, honestly. If you just could tell me how to get to you?’
Wearily, Lucy lowered herself onto the toilet lid. ‘You mentioned a fork in the road, once you’d taken the Burley Bridge turn-off?’
‘Yep. I turned right.’
‘Well, go back to the junction and take the other fork and carry on for a couple of miles …’ She broke off. ‘But please take that road carefully. It’s been raining, there are sharp bends and it’s quite skiddy.’
‘Hey, I’ll be fine,’ he said jovially.
She cleared her throat. ‘And when you get to the village, go right along the high street until the end of the shops, then turn left up the lane and that’s our cottage on the left. You should be here in ten minutes. Oh, and there’s one other thing …’
‘Yes?’
She stepped out of the tiny bathroom and made her way down the hall and into the melee of the kitchen. ‘I don’t suppose you’re any good at carving pumpkins?’
Chapter Thirty-Three
It didn’t matter that he lacked a cape. Connell had barely put down his bags and given Lucy a hug before he was being hailed as a Halloween hero by the assorted women clustered around him in her kitchen.
‘So good to see you,’ he said warmly. ‘You’re just the same!’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, laughing, ‘but thank you.’
There was no time for more pleasantries as Roseanne – who was dressed as a particularly slinky Morticia Addams – strode over to him and announced, ‘We need your help.’ Roseanne won the mums’ race at every sports day and her smart, modern home was crammed with her sons’ sporting trophies. Used to getting others to do as she asked, she thrust the handle of a serrated knife towards Connell, plus the enormous, unyielding vegetable, which Lucy had started to hack at.
‘Oh! Right, okay.’ He looked bemused as he glanced at Lucy, then registered the makeshift bandage on her finger. ‘Have you cut yourself?’
‘Just a tiny bit,’ she said quickly, ‘but it’s okay now.’ Even the children had quietened down when this new face had arrived, but before long everyone had revved up again as they strained to bite at the doughnuts that were strung across the kitchen.
‘Please don’t feel obliged to do this,’ Lucy said quickly, aware of the women watching with rapt attention as Connell, stationed at the kitchen table now, deftly sliced the top off the pumpkin.
‘Ooh,’ breathed Roseanne admiringly.
‘It’s no problem,’ Connell said, face set in intense concentration as he continued to carve. Roseanne handed him a spoon, which he accepted with a charming smile, then proceeded to scoop out the inner flesh.
‘Gosh, you do know what you’re doing,’ breathed Carys – who knew she had the flirting gene? – as he set about carving an impressively sinister-looking ey
e.
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Connell glanced around and smiled at Lucy. ‘So sorry about the mix-up tonight.’
‘That’s no problem,’ she said.
‘Well, I’m just glad you could fit me in.’
Lucy caught Roseanne trying to quell a smirk as she looked at Carys, who raised a brow suggestively. Christ, Lucy thought, struggling to keep a straight face herself: they were acting like teenagers recently released from a girls-only boarding school, where the only male they’d seen with any regularity had been the ageing janitor. And Connell was attractive, she conceded; his eyes were a striking pale blue, like those old-fashioned air mail envelopes, and he wore his light brown hair cropped short. Although he’d been clearly a little taken aback to walk into a kitchen full of women and children, he had gathered himself together with admirable speed. Lucy was intrigued to find out what had happened in his life since she’d last seen him eighteen years ago.
‘That’s very good,’ Roseanne observed as Connell completed the second eye.
He chuckled. ‘I’m just winging it here. I really don’t have a clue.’
‘False modesty,’ Carys chuckled.
‘Don’t let us put you off,’ Roseanne added, having bagged the chair next to him now. If she edged any closer, Lucy thought, she’d be on his lap.
‘Well, you look like you’ve done this before,’ remarked Carys.
‘Not since I was a student,’ he replied.
‘So, you two know each other from college?’ asked Jodie, another of the school mums who’d just arrived, having perhaps been alerted that a handsome stranger had shown up at Lucy’s tonight.
‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Unlike everyone else’s costumes, there was nothing scary about Jodie’s white leotard, frothy pink tutu and lilac wings; on the contrary, it showed off her enviably lithe body. However, Lucy feared that it wasn’t suitable for the cold, wet night – the ballet slippers especially – and hoped she had brought a warm jacket.
‘So, where are you from, Connell?’ she wanted to know.
‘Nottingham,’ Connell replied, ‘but I studied in Leeds. That’s where Lucy and I met …’
‘And what brings you up here?’
‘I’m an artist,’ he replied. ‘These days, I work mainly in stained glass—’
‘Ooh,’ Roseanne exclaimed. ‘That’s … amazing.’ If Connell’s pumpkin-carving skills were impressing the assembled audience, with this new factlet they were agog.
‘So it’s a working trip, really,’ he continued, getting up to wash his hands at the sink, and gratefully accepting a mug of tea from Lucy. ‘I’m here to do a project with the primary school.’
‘We’re getting stained glass at the school?’ Roseanne beamed at him, seemingly oblivious to her own children’s altercation over who got to bite the chocolate-covered doughnut off the string.
‘Yes – there’s been funding awarded,’ Connell explained. ‘The idea is that we involve the kids right from the start. So they’ll come up with ideas in art sessions, and then we’ll work together to translate these into glass.’
‘How will you do that?’ Lucy asked, handing out mugs of tea – although she could be offering absinthe for all the attention her guests were paying her.
‘Some pieces will be made from simple leaded glass,’ he explained, ‘just like you’d see in a typical church window.’
Jodie was gazing at him, nodding, as if she was about to slither off the chair and dissolve into a pool of joy.
‘And with others we’ll actually fuse the colours,’ he continued, putting the finishing touches to the pumpkin now – carving out eyebrows, for goodness’ sake, ‘so they merge together. The effect’s like melted jelly sweets.’
Roseanne looked orgasmic now, and Lucy considered dampening a tea towel with which to dab at her brow. Connell stopped. ‘I don’t want to bore you all with this. You look like you have a busy night ahead.’
‘Oh no, not at all. It’s fascinating!’ Jodie exclaimed. With all this talk of fusion and things melting, Jodie, too, was looking quite flushed. And now Roseanne was praising the finished pumpkin – ‘It’s a show-stopper!’ – as if Connell had carved St Paul’s Cathedral out of ice.
‘Look, everyone!’ Jodie called out to the children. ‘Isn’t this the best pumpkin you’ve ever seen?’ But they were too thrilled by the doughnuts to care about a frankly inedible vegetable, and soon they all started demanding to set off into the cold, damp night.
‘Let me show you to your room,’ Lucy said to Connell, surprised that none of the other women had offered to do it for her.
‘Oh, you’re too busy for that,’ he said. ‘Just point me in the right direction and I can sort myself out.’
She frowned. ‘Are you sure? I’m sorry you’ve arrived to such chaos.’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said firmly. ‘And, look – please, don’t worry about entertaining me.’ Cue another quick look between Lucy’s friends. ‘It’s just lovely to see you,’ Connell added warmly, ‘and I’m really looking forward to catching up.’
Despite the wind and the rain, Connell’s arrival seemed to have sprinkled no small amount of joyfulness on the proceedings as the women herded their children outside, and they made their way towards the village hall.
‘I wouldn’t mind helping him with his project,’ Jodie said with a grin.
‘What d’you know about stained glass?’ Lucy teased her.
‘Nothing, but I could learn,’ she chuckled. ‘There are courses, night classes. Sounds like you just fuse a few things together. How difficult can it be?’ There were gales of laughter and several suggestions of how Connell might be ‘entertained’ during his brief stay. So buoyant was the mood that no one really cared when, naturally, Josh’s dragon costume scooped first prize, while his mother fluttered about, saying, ‘I don’t know how he won. It was all thrown together at the last minute.’ Because naturally, it was uncool to admit that one had been hand-stitching individual dragon’s scales over the preceding weeks.
By the time trick or treating was finished, and the children were laden with goodie bags, Lucy had to concede that Halloween had been pretty successful. Her finger had finally stopped bleeding and, as she and her children approached Rosemary Cottage, she saw that Connell must have found tea lights somewhere as the pumpkin was flickering in the porch window now, as if to welcome them home. And when she stepped inside, she saw that the party devastation had all been cleared away in the kitchen, with order almost restored. Connell was beaming at her from the sink, wearing a slightly crumpled wizard hat that someone must have left behind.
‘Wow!’ She looked around in wonder. ‘You shouldn’t have. You’re supposed to be a guest here. I could have done it.’
‘After schlepping around out there all night?’ He laughed and dropped a stray paper plate into the bin bag, then knotted it up.
‘Look,’ she said to Marnie and Sam, ‘Connell’s cleared up all the mess!’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Marnie said, more concerned with delving into her goodie bag. Although Lucy had already introduced them, the children were accustomed to new people around the place, and so what, if a guest happened to have cleared up?
Lucy smiled. ‘Well, I’m very grateful. That was so thoughtful of you. I’ll just get these two ready for bed and scrub off this face paint.’
‘I was going to say it suits you,’ he teased, and she laughed.
‘And while I’m doing that,’ she added, ‘maybe you could do one more thing and pour us a glass of wine?’
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was one of those nights that just seemed to unfold with no concern over the time. As they worked their way through the bottle of wine, Lucy told Connell what had happened to her husband, and he’d expressed concern and shock, of course, but mainly, he had listened.
In turn, Connell had sped through the significant events of his life since he had last seen her. No, it hadn’t worked out with Zelda. She had ditched him for a wealthy record
company executive and, the last he’d heard, she had a chi-chi homewares shop in the Cotswolds. ‘You know the kind of place,’ he said, grinning. ‘Fifty quid for a set of coasters.’
Lucy smiled. He was easy to be with after all this time. In fact, it was the first time they’d ever spent an evening together, just the two of them, and he seemed far more considered than she remembered. He’d been pretty boisterous back then, concocting ridiculous cocktails in the blender his mum had bought him, involving vodka, coconut milk and cherries, she remembered now. ‘Not quite what Mum had in mind,’ he said, laughing as they reminisced. ‘I assume she’d been thinking more banana smoothies, to get some nutrients into me.’
Lucy opened a second bottle of wine and topped up their glasses as they relocated from the kitchen to the squashy sofa in the living room. ‘So, after Zelda, what happened then?’ she asked.
‘Um, well, the rest of my twenties were dedicated to prolonging my adolescence as long as possible,’ he said with a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I lived with another girl for a few years. We worked together at the same design studio, before I decided to go freelance. But it wasn’t right. My thirtieth birthday was thundering towards me and I had to make a decision. I knew she wanted kids and it wasn’t fair to keep things going.’ He broke off and sipped his wine. ‘They’re a bit of a milestone, aren’t they, those decade birthdays?’
‘I guess so,’ she replied. Her last one – her fortieth – had been marked by a wonderful party in a Manchester bar, masterminded by Ivan, and she could hardly bear to think of it now. ‘So, you broke up?’ she prompted Connell.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, it was kind of sad, but she moved on quickly and married someone much better, someone who really had their act together. She’s mum to twin girls.’
‘And you’ve never been married yourself?’