The Goddess Rules

by Clare Naylor

  “You’re being a coward again. You’re so predictable,” Kate said scathingly as they drove at breakneck speed past the local post office. The second Kate uttered this Mirri slammed on the brakes.

  “I am not,” she snarled.

  “Then let’s go back. You can park up and I’ll take a stroll past the front gate. See if I can see him.”

  “Not without me,” she said ferociously. Kate shook her head. Honestly, it was so easy to manipulate Mirri. You just had to employ the same tactics you might with a five-year-old.

  Unfortunately, despite having baseball caps and large Jackie O sunglasses, Mirri and Kate managed to look more conspicuous than any visitor to the remote village for the past two hundred years. By the time they’d parked the dove-gray, vintage Aston Martin on the village green (with an appalling amount of screeching, cursing in French, and narrow misses with pedestrians), they had garnered a crowd of teenage boys large enough to hold a rock concert. They were all photographing the car with the cameras on their cell phones, leaning in the windows to ogle the dashboard, and stroking the paintwork as delicately as if it were the head of a newborn baby. Mirri and Kate looked at them in alarm.

  “Who are they? Have they nothing better to do?” Mirri spat.

  “I had no idea the effect cars had on men,” Kate whispered as one boy leaned through the window and aimed his camera at the gearshift.

  “Cor, me brother’s gonna love this. He’s gonna be so jealous he missed it. How old is it?” the car paparazzo asked.

  “Oh, really old,” Kate improvised. “Older than you.”

  “No way.” He was awestruck.

  “How fast does it go, miss?” another boy politely inquired. Kate was convinced that it was Leonard’s car that made them respectful; they looked like they’d be your common or garden-variety surly teenagers otherwise.

  “I can make it go at a hundred eighty miles an hour,” Mirri said as she opened the door, gently nudging the boy out of the way. “Now, if you excuse me, we have to go. Come on, Bébé.” As she said that the lion cub, who’d been lying on the backseat for an hour and a half, bounded out the door and onto the cricket green for an almighty pee.

  “That’s better, isn’t it darling?” Mirri said as she snapped a leash on his collar, barely noticing that their audience had suddenly multiplied from being every male in the village under the age of forty to, quite simply, every person and dog in this village and the one down the road. They were all standing around and staring at the bizarre new arrivals with more wonder than if they’d been zipped into silver space suits.

  “Do you have the map?” Mirri asked Kate as she locked up the car and set off on their stroll. “I don’t want to take a wrong turn and get lost in the woods.”

  “Got it,” Kate said as she pulled the peak of her baseball cap down over her sunglasses and hurried to catch up with Mirri and Bébé.

  Kate and Mirri wandered the mile or so from the car to the house they suspected of being Nick’s in silence. Mirri was clearly nervous, and both of them seemed acutely aware that every step they took could be one closer to finding Nick Sheridan again. Mirri was weak at the thought of the implications for her life if he turned out not to be the love she had imagined him as. It was all very well harboring notions of lost love for thirty years, as long as he turned out to be the person you hoped he was. Or more poignantly—as long as he was dead. To find him and realize that you had been wrong—well, it would shake the foundations of your world. There was no doubt about it.

  “It said in House and Garden that he had an eight-foot-high stone wall. Does that look eight feet high to you?” Kate asked as they approached the leaning, moss-coated wall of the house through the long grass and wildflowers of the shoulder.

  “Perhaps,” Mirri said as she tugged at Bébé’s leash for him to get a move on. She couldn’t bear to be hindered now. She needed to get there almost as much as she dreaded getting there.

  “Yeah, I think this is the one,” Kate said as they finally reached the gateposts with the stone pineapples and the vast, wrought-iron gates. “Look, there are lions on the gates. It said that in the magazine.”

  “Look, Bébé, my darling,” Mirri whispered to her cub as if it were a mystical sign from heaven. “There are lions on the gates.”

  “Shall we walk up the drive?” Kate turned to Mirri, who seemed to be transfixed on the house beyond the gates.

  “Do I look old?” she asked suddenly.

  “Mirri, I’m sure he’s not going to be there. And even if he is he doesn’t need to see us,” Kate reassured her. “But no, you don’t look old. You look beautiful.”

  If Nick Sheridan had been in his house at that moment it was very likely that he would have looked out the window to see if he could spy the two strange women with a lion cub who were heading in his direction from the village green where they had left a dove-gray vintage Aston Martin and a pack of transfixed locals. Mrs. Ogden from the post office had already dialed his number to telegram the news. As had his cleaning lady, who considered it her duty to warn him of the imminent arrival of the circus troupe. Fortunately for Mirri and Kate, Nick Sheridan’s phone rang off the hook in an empty house.

  “There are two cars in the drive,” Kate felt compelled to whisper, even though they were still a good three-minute walk from the house. The gravel drive wound around a corner and up a small hill. The front lawn was as green as Kate’s engagement ring and tufted with small clusters of oak trees. The house itself was a neat, three-story Georgian house whose rows of windows looked like kindly eyes peering out over the valley.

  “Do you feel like Elizabeth Bennett seeing Pemberley for the first time?” Kate asked dreamily as she stopped to admire the house and its gardens.

  “No, I feel like I might be sick,” she said.

  “If both the cars are here it might mean he’s in,” Kate warned.

  “Or he’s on holiday. There are no dogs barking. In England these houses always have dogs who come tearing at you with their bad breath, muddying your clothes.”

  “Good point, Miss Marple.” Kate nudged Mirri, who was in no mood to be nudged or called after an old lady.

  “That could be him.” Mirri suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. “He’s going to turn around and see us any second.” She was pointing to a man who was leaning over by the front door. Kate couldn’t make out any more than that he had graying hair, was wearing a green jacket, and appeared to be taking off his boots in the porch. “Go and talk to him.” With which Mirri disappeared behind a tree with Bébé. It was like being fourteen again and going to look at the house of the boy you fancied. Only Kate was almost thirty and Mirri was sixty.

  Kate stood on the driveway, not sure what on earth she should say to him. After all, she was trespassing. She’d be lucky not to be arrested or turfed out of the gates by a poker-faced butler. She tried to remain silent, in the hope that he wouldn’t see her and would just disappear inside. But the man’s sixth sense obviously told him that he was being watched because he looked up and scowled in Kate’s direction. Then he called out, “Can I help you?”

  “Hi there,” Kate said, trying desperately to invent a good excuse for prowling around a stranger’s garden. Kate walked slowly over to him. As she got closer she decided that if this was Nick Sheridan, then the years had not been kind to him. But then if he’d been as lovelorn as Mirri, maybe it was inevitable he’d look like this, from sheer suffering and heartache. Kate decided not to take any chances.

  “I was hoping to speak to Nicholas Sheridan,” she said in her best American accent. Which was the worst. “The famous architect.”

  “He’s not here,” the man said. Kate wondered whether he was Nick and he was just lying so he didn’t have to become embroiled in a discussion. This sort of thing might well happen to him all the time as the architect of controversial buildings around the globe.

  “I’m a student from Arizona,” Kate said unconvincingly. “I just wanted to shake his hand and tell him how m
uch I admire his work.” At this point the man softened visibly. He was standing in purple socks on the gravel, doubtless ready to put on the black brogues that were under the wooden seat in the covered gray porch.

  “I’m the gardener,” he said. “But I’ll tell him you called. He’s in Tokyo, I believe.”

  “Well, thanks very much, anyway.” Kate smiled broadly. As an American might. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the chips on her teeth as Louis had or they’d give the game away.

  “Good day to you, miss,” he said as Kate turned on her heels and retraced her steps toward the gate. She wondered how Mirri was going to sneak out from behind the tree now and escape without being seen. But then she decided that she didn’t really care if Mirri got caught. She’d thrust Kate forward and she’d made a complete fool of herself. Mirri deserved all she got. Kate smiled and strolled in a jaunty manner toward the gate, drowning out Mirri’s stranded hissing noises with the crunch of gravel underfoot.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Kate stood in front of the mirror and checked out the white cowboy hat from every possible angle.

  “I’m not sure, do you think it’s too big for my face?” she asked Alice, an old friend from art school who was now dressmaker to the stars with a very bijoux grotto-type shop in Notting Hill. Alice was as tiny as a fairy with long blond curls that belied her formidable honesty.

  “I think it makes you look stupid, actually.”

  “I sort of do, too.” Kate turned her back to the mirror and then whipped her face around to catch herself by surprise. “It might look better in motion.”

  “It’s your wedding day, not a rodeo,” Alice pointed out. “You’re not going to be in motion all that much.”

  “I like the idea,” Kate said as she reluctantly took off the hat. She did like the idea of a cowgirl bride—a country-and-western twist to go with her boots and her groom, who had planned it all. It had always been his dream, apparently, though Kate had no clue of this because until the night he’d proposed he’d never so much as spoken the word wedding in front of her. If he had she might have dreamed up her own theme, or ways to dilute his a bit. But now she was stuck with a hat that no matter which way you looked at it, and she’d looked at it all ways, wasn’t working.

  “Yeah, on someone else maybe,” Alice said. “How about I show you some of the headdresses I made last season. They’re not expensive but they’re a bit more you. And they’ll go with that dress you liked out the back.” She went to rummage in her office.

  Kate put the hat back on her head one more time. She didn’t know how she was going to tell Jake that she looked like JR from Dallas rather than Emmylou Harris. She would much prefer a medieval look, or a Cecil Beaton debutante look—anything, in fact, but this bloody hat.

  “We could do a really cute white sparkly suit with a miniskirt and jacket.” Alice came out from the back of the shop and hung a couple of new outfits on the rail. “But it’s more Elvis than cowgirl.”

  “That might work,” Kate said hopefully. “Jake loves Elvis. Let’s try it.” She stepped into the white suit, and it did look fabulous.

  “It’s like Jackie Kennedy might look in heaven,” approved Alice.

  “And on my head?” Kate asked tentatively.

  “No way the cowboy hat. Though you might, just might, get away with the boots.”

  “Great.” Kate hugged her friend excitedly. “I think Jake’s going to love it.”

  As she was changing back into her jeans Kate’s phone rang. It was Tanya’s cell.

  “Hi, Tan,” Kate answered as she hopped up and down with her foot in one leg of her jeans while also trying to hold on to the dressing room curtain for support.

  “Okay, can you talk?”

  “Yeah, I’m in the changing room at Alice’s shop,” Kate said. There was rarely a place she couldn’t talk, in fact; when it came to chatting on the phone she was as adept as an ambidextrous octopus.

  “Great. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you yet because our parents are meant to be the first to know and we’re on our way to Robbie’s mum’s now . . . but I’m . . . well we’re . . . having a baby.” Tanya practically screamed the last part of the sentence down the phone at Kate.

  “No way!” Kate shouted. “Oh my God, congratulations.” She stopped putting on her jeans and sat down on the floor to absorb the amazing news.

  “I’m pregnant. Can you believe it?” Tanya was obviously trying not to let Robbie hear but Kate suspected that the entire street knew by now. “We did the test last night. We sat in the bathroom while we watched it and suddenly there it was. I’m a month gone, Kate.”

  “Darling, that is such amazing news.”

  “I know. And I’m not going to get too carried away, because it’s such early days and you never know but . . . ,” Tanya spilled out hurriedly, already very carried away.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Kate said, then sounded a note of caution. “And the most important thing is that no matter what happens, you’ve gotten pregnant once. So even if anything goes wrong—which it won’t—you’ll do it again. And again.”

  “I know . . . I can’t tell you how happy I am.”

  “You don’t need to, I can hear it.” Kate smiled and tossed the cowboy hat to one side. There were so many more important things in life than what you looked like on your wedding day.

  “Robbie thinks it’s totally thanks to Mirri and that amazing”—she sounded as though she was cupping her hands over the phone so Robbie couldn’t hear—“orgasm I had that night after your party.”

  “Do you want me to tell her the news?” Kate asked. “She’s been kind of down since she wrote to that guy Nick. She hasn’t heard back yet.”

  “Okay, and tell her thank you so much. She’s magical. But she mustn’t tell anyone yet,” Tanya said sternly.

  “Well, let’s hope that her definition of not telling anyone’s a bit more stringent than yours,” Kate said, and the two girls laughed. “Darling, I have to go, and so do you. But let’s meet up to celebrate tomorrow when you’re back. I’ll bring Jake along.”

  “Brilliant,” Tanya said. “Thanks Kate, you’ve been amazing through all this. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Kate said, and hung up the phone with a warm smile to herself.

  Mirri was dropping off to sleep in a garden chair in the baking afternoon sun and Bébé was lying next to her on the grass. She was alone for the first time in weeks. Kate was out shopping for wedding dresses and Leonard had gone to Scotland for the Glorious Twelfth—the beginning of the grouse-shooting season. The peace was just what she needed. She’d been to dinner with three different men this week—including last night’s visit to the palace, which had been entertaining, but she’d drunk far too much delicious wine and was feeling the effects. Still, that was the price she paid for not letting the grass grow under her feet. Not only had she not heard back from Nick Sheridan yet—and she was sure that he must be back in the country now; nobody went to Toyko for more than a fortnight, surely—but she was also missing Jonah. Purely as a lover, but nonetheless it wasn’t a happy feeling, having a void. And she didn’t really have the energy or inclination to fill it right now. She was still waiting to see what, if anything, happened with Nick. She pulled her sun hat down over her face to stop the wretched wrinkles etching their way like a road map across her skin, when she heard the garden gate slam.

  “Who’s that?” She tipped the sun hat up over her head and lifted her chin to see. Striding down the garden path was not a photographer with his wide-angled lens pointing at her cleavage, but Jake. He was heading for Kate’s shed and didn’t appear to have seen, or heard, her. Though Mirri didn’t assume anything, she found him insufferably rude and wouldn’t put it past him just to ignore her.

  “Kill, Bébé.” She patted her lion cub on the head and pointed in Jake’s direction. He’d disappeared into the shed now. But Bébé simply turned over and showed his face to the sun. Mirri tried to go back to sleep but didn’t li
ke the idea of The Slug sniffing around in Kate’s shed while she was out. Eventually she took off her hat and sat up. She fastened her sarong around her bare breasts and stood up. Padding down the path silently, without shoes on, she wondered whether she’d catch Jake in some compromising act. Maybe trying on Kate’s underwear.

  “Are you looking for something?” Mirri walked in to find Jake flipping through Kate’s paintings.

  “Hi there.” He hardly looked up as Mirri walked in the door of the overheated shed. “Just looking through Kate’s pictures to see if there’s anything we can give to my aunt Catherine for a birthday present. I completely forgot to get her something.” He lifted a small watercolor of a mill house next to a pond out and appraised it.

  “You’re doing what?” Mirri asked.

  “Oh, Kate won’t mind. I’ll check with her first, you know to make sure it’s not priceless or anything.” He laughed. But Mirri didn’t respond. She stood with her hand on the open door, as if blocking his exit.

  “That’s her parents’ first house, where they lived before she was born. She went down last summer and painted it on the anniversary of her father’s death,” she said fiercely, then added, “but you probably didn’t know that, did you?” Unfortunately for Jake he was too involved in trying to find the right painting for Aunt Catherine, before her birthday supper this evening, to notice the menace in her voice.

  “No, I didn’t know that. Right, well I won’t take that one then. Thanks for the tip.” He moved on and was checking some still lifes, including one of a stuffed zebra head next to some paintbrushes, when Mirri moved inside a few more steps and closed the door gently behind her. She went over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it.

  “Have you booked the honeymoon yet?” she asked as she crossed her legs beneath her sarong.

  “The honeymoon?” He looked blankly at Mirri, vaguely wondering why she’d come in rather than leaving him alone with the paintings. He was in a hurry. “No, I was thinking maybe we’d go to Umbria in October. My mother’s got a house there.”