by Susan Lewis
‘Seems you’re not quite as much in demand as you thought,’ she responded dryly.
He chuckled. ‘So how did it go? Was Sainsbury’s as bad as you feared?’
‘I’m not sure. It felt odd, but I’m glad I did it. I need to get back to normal. You and the children need me to get back to normal.’
‘You’ve done a lot better than you give yourself credit for,’ he told her. ‘It’s been a difficult time.’
‘For you too,’ she reminded him, while thinking ‘difficult’ had to be the understatement of the year. However, there was no point in trying to put it into words any grander than that, because no matter how descriptive, accurate, or cleverly metaphorical they might be, they wouldn’t lessen the pain, or change it in any way. If anything they were more likely to make it worse, so it was best to keep to the trusty old euphemisms which they were now becoming quite good at.
‘So what are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I’m on my way home. I’ve decided to write a couple of reviews. It’ll keep me busy.’ Her career as a presenter was over. She’d been unable to continue as though nothing had happened, so she’d withdrawn from the limelight completely, though lately she’d realised that for the sake of her own sanity she must do something to help fill her days. Book and art reviews were an obvious choice, but staying focused was hard, so a few days ago she’d applied for a full-time job in TV that would make her part of a team again – behind the scenes though, because nothing in her wanted to return to the public eye. ‘What shall I do about your phone?’ she said. ‘Do you want me to bring it over?’
‘No. If anyone rings, just tell them I’m at the production office all day, so they can get me here. Unless you want to bring it, and I’ll take you for lunch.’
‘You have time for lunch?’ she teased.
‘No, but I’ll make some if you want me to.’
She was touched by the offer, not only because they didn’t always find it easy to be together these days, but because his commitments to the news channel, as well as to his own independent company, meant that he rarely had time to grab a sandwich in the middle of the day, never mind break for lunch. She was about to respond when she realised she was being watched, and her expression instantly sobered. She was afraid the woman in the next car would be thinking that someone in her position should have nothing to smile about – unless, of course, it was true that celebrities, even minor ones such as Jessica Moore, simply didn’t feel things as deeply as the rest of the world.
The sun suddenly seemed too hot, burning into her skin with the same scalding intensity as the guilt that all too often blazed in her heart. Then the blessed numbness returned and sliding into the driver’s seat, she said to Charlie, ‘I’d love to have lunch with you, darling, but that would hardly make it a normal day, and as that’s what we’re trying for now, I shouldn’t duck out at the first opportunity.’
She wasn’t sure if he’d heard, until he came back on the line and said, ‘Sorry, Carl just put his head in. So, was that a no I heard? You’re turning me down?’
‘Try not to sound too relieved,’ she chided. ‘Are you in the studio tonight, or will you be home for dinner?’
‘Definitely home for dinner. I’ll try to get Nikki to join us. It’ll be nice for us all to sit down together.’
Would it? No, of course not, because one of the angels was missing, creating a hole in their lives and an empty space in the house that nothing would ever fill, but since it was all about getting their lives back on track, and somehow accepting that they were four now, instead of five, perhaps it was a good idea.
After ringing off Jessica drove carefully out of the car park, onto the Cromwell Road, then turned up towards Kensington High Street. There were closer supermarkets to their home in Notting Hill than this one, but it was the Sainsbury’s she’d come to know while she was working, so it had seemed easier to go back there for her first venture out alone.
As she turned into the crowded shopping street full of trendy boutiques, mobile phone shops and open-top buses, she was mulling over Charlie’s invitation to lunch and wondering if he’d guessed the real reason she’d turned him down. Probably he hadn’t given it a second thought, but if he had, he’d be likely to realise that it was his fame, much more than her own, that was making her head for home instead of an expensive eatery in Knightsbridge or Soho. As a newsreader his face appeared on television screens on an almost daily basis, so he could go virtually nowhere without being recognised, and whilst he seemed to handle the attention perfectly well, even now, after ‘the tragedy’, Jessica was growing increasingly resentful of the consequent intrusions into their lives.
‘I’m just not cut out for fame,’ she’d informed him on several occasions during the last few years. ‘I never was. In fact, I could almost be tempted to give it all up and become a full-time housewife. Or better still, I’d like to go back to Dorset to live the same kind of normal, uncomplicated life my grandparents had.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ Charlie sometimes replied, ‘let’s get a house there and go as often as we can.’
His answer could be annoying, because it showed that he’d failed to understand that no matter where she went with him, recognition would always be theirs. Or maybe he deliberately avoided the issue, since there was really nothing he could do about it, for not even changing jobs would allow him to blend in with the crowd now.
Their home in Notting Hill was a four-storey townhouse in one of the white stucco crescents that made the area so desirable. They’d moved in a little over eight years ago, from a much smaller end-of-terrace in Chiswick, mainly because Charlie had fallen in love with the place. And who wouldn’t, when it was so stylish and spacious and full of light, even on the gloomiest day. Of course it had cost a fortune, and they’d onlybeen able to afford it because Charlie’s mother, Rosa, had died, leaving them her large house in Kew. It was where Charlie and Jessica had lived for the first six years of their marriage, with Rosa taking care of Nikki while her youthful and ambitious parents made a start in the world. Jessica missed Rosa a lot, probably as much as her grandparents who’d both died before Nikki was three.
Since Notting Hill was where many of the up-and-coming were setting up home these days – and the Moores were certainly part of this elite – it had come as no surprise to Jessica when Charlie had focused his search there. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love the house too, or the glittering social life that had come with it, she’d just never really felt as comfortable with it all as Charlie seemed to. Perhaps if she could have bonded with one or two of the women, or seen something worthwhile in their astonishing need to be considered important, it might have helped her feel more at home, but she never quite managed this. Charlie, on the other hand, had no problem fitting in at all, though he insisted it was because he had no need for any bonds beyond the one he had with her and the children.
‘But I understand it’s different for women,’ he readily conceded. ‘I know how much your friendships mean to you, so I won’t take offence that you need something more than me.’ Could she have been so generous, she wondered, if she’d felt he needed something more than her? Once, she knew she’d have found it hard to take, now it was different.
If only Lilian hadn’t moved to Paris. She’d never needed her best friend more than she had these past months. Of course Lilian was always there, at the end of the phone, and whenever she could she’d talk for hours, but she was generally so busy and anyway, it wasn’t the same as having her here. However, she mustn’t begrudge Lilian her new life, for if anyone deserved to be happy it was her, even though it could be said that were it not for Lilian’s new life none of it would have happened. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that way though, because when Lilian had married Luc Véron, last Christmas, she couldn’t possibly have known what a terrible route fate was opening up for them. No-one could have known, which was why no-one was to blame. Jessica told herself that over and over. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that Nata
lie had died – but still the guilt ate at her like a cancer, for she knew in her heart that she should never have allowed her mother to take Natalie to France. If she hadn’t Natalie would still be with them, she was in no doubt about that, because she of all people knew how selfish and irresponsible her mother could be, how incapable she was of putting a ten-year-old’s needs before her own.
So why, dear God, why had she agreed to let Natalie go? It didn’t matter that Natalie had begged to show her grandmother the quaint little village where Lilian and Luc had married, to be able to stay in the same grape-picker’s cottage they’d occupied for the big occasion that Natalie had loved so much. What Natalie wanted and what was wise for her to do were two different things, and being put into the care of her maternal grandmother was definitely not wise. Which was why, in spite of Charlie’s support for the scheme, she, Jessica, should have put her foot down and refused to let Natalie go.
And she might have, had it not been a convenient answer as to who was going to take care of Natalie during the first part of the Easter break. Both she and Charlie were working, Nikki was studying for her A levels and Harry was going camping with the school.
So Jessica had put her job before her daughter, farmed her out to a woman she knew she couldn’t trust, and now, God help her, she would never see her little girl again.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ Jessica asked, coming in from the garden just as Harry went on tiptoe to put the receiver down.
‘It was Dad,’ he answered, turning his impish, freckled face up to her. With his deep blue eyes and unruly mop of sandy hair, he could be no-one else’s son but Charlie’s, he even pulled the same expressions as his father and was fast developing, Jessica had noticed, a similar sense of humour. ‘He said,’ Harry continued, trotting back across the kitchen to his art homework, ‘that he’s just picked up your car from the garage and he’ll be home . . . Um, I forget what time he said. No, I know, he said in about ten minutes.’
‘Did he mention if Nikki was with him?’ Jessica asked, starting to rinse the handful of tarragon she’d just picked from the herb pots she kept on the patio.
When she received no answer she glanced over to the long, ten-seater table that took up most of the kitchen’s conservatory extension and smiled to see how engrossed Harry was in the choosing of another crayon. They were spread out all over the place, along with his pencil cases and a drawing pad, while for once his Gameboy lay idle on top of his school bag beside him.
The conservatory, with its tall succulent plants and assortment of toys, was where the children ate their meals, often did their homework, occasionally watched TV and threw boisterous parties for friends on their birthdays. When they were just family Jessica and Charlie generally ate there too, since it was much easier than carrying meals upstairs to the formal dining area that was part of the large, elegantly furnished drawing room that ran from front to back of the house.
Harry’s head suddenly came up. ‘Did you say something?’ he asked, frowning curiously.
‘I asked if Nikki was with Dad?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ His frown deepened. ‘Is she going to be reading the news too?’ he asked.
Jessica smiled. ‘No. She’s just helping out at the studios to earn some money for the summer.’
‘Oh,’ he said, then put his chin in his hand and stared thoughtfully into space. ‘Mum?’ he said after a while.
‘Yes,’ she answered, selecting a knife from the heavy wood block to start chopping.
‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘Getting married.’
‘Really?’ she replied. ‘Do you have anyone in mind?’
‘No, but it’s up to me to carry on the family name, because I’m the only boy. So if I’m going to have children I have to get married.’
‘There’s no rush,’ she assured him.
He was clearly still deep in his reverie. ‘I think I’m probably into older women,’ he said, quite seriously.
Jessica choked back a laugh. ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Girls my age are just stupid. I mean, Sophie Towers is all right, sometimes, and I suppose Elinor Curtis is OK, when she’s not picking her nose or trying to make me say I love her . . .’ His dark eyes moved to his mother’s. ‘I want to marry someone like Natalie,’ he declared. ‘She was the best person in all the world, when she wasn’t beating me up, and locking me out of the bathroom. And I didn’t really mind when she bossed me around. And that’s what wives do, isn’t it? They boss their husbands around, and then the husband lays down the law and they have a fight. You know, like you and Dad.’
Jessica laughed through the tears in her eyes. ‘You think I boss Dad around?’ she said.
He nodded earnestly. ‘All the time. I think he’s a bit scared of you, actually.’
There was such a light of mischief in his eyes now that Jessica dropped the knife and went to scoop him up in her arms. ‘You are a terrible little rogue, Harry Moore,’ she told him, hugging him hard.
‘That’s what my teacher said,’ he cheerfully replied, hugging her back.
Jessica’s eyes closed. ‘And what did you do for her to say that?’ she enquired, standing him on his chair so they were eye to eye.
He was a picture of innocence. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered, ‘she just said it.’
Jessica regarded him suspiciously.
‘Honest,’ he cried. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ A moment later his eyes went down. ‘Well, it might have been because I told her she should stand in the corner for swearing. She said bloody, Mum, and that’s swearing, isn’t it?’
‘It could be, depending on the context.’
Harry’s eyes opened wide with indignation. ‘She said that we were all going to visit the Bloody Tower next term. Honest, that’s what she said. So I put up my hand and told her she should stand in the corner.’
Jessica watched him and waited for the grin. It wasn’t long in coming. ‘You knew very well she wasn’t swearing, didn’t you?’ she said, starting to tickle him.
‘She thought I was serious though,’ he laughed, and yelped as he tried to break free. ‘Let me go, or I’ll fart,’ he cried.
Jessica laughed again and pulled him into a bear hug. ‘You are such a boy!’ she told him as he howled with laughter. Then suddenly he was leaping to the floor as the front door slammed upstairs. ‘Here’s Dad,’ he shouted. ‘Dad! Dad! Guess what?’
As he thundered up to the hall Jessica turned back to the chopping board, still smiling, but aware of the constant heaviness in her heart that she knew would never go away. Natalie should be running up there with him, fighting to get to her father first, the way she always had. Then, hearing Charlie’s shout of triumph as Harry told him how many runs he’d scored in cricket that day, Jessica found herself almost resenting the way they were able to behave as though nothing bad had happened to their family at all.
Looking up as Nikki came into the kitchen, she said, ‘Hi darling, how did it go today?’
Nikki was scowling down at her mobile phone, then her cheeks suddenly turned crimson as she shouted, ‘Dad! Did you send this?’ She spun round as Charlie came down the stairs behind her.
‘Send what?’ he asked, all innocence.
‘It was you,’ she cried, laughing in spite of herself. ‘Oh Mum, he is like soooo embarrassing.’
The fact that Nikki had stormed off in a strop this morning, without even saying goodbye to her mother, was clearly forgotten, and Jessica found herself smiling at the twinkle in Charlie’s blue eyes as he looked at his daughter. As usual he seemed to be filling the room, not only with his imposing physique, but with the very energy of his presence. She’d often thought how everything felt safe when he was around, and almost anything seemed possible. That was before, of course, because now almost nothing felt safe. However, that still didn’t change the fact that he was a strikingly good-looking man, with strongly defined features that even in
repose showed his inherent good nature, while the unruly thickness of his lustrous sandy hair was the delight of many a cartoonist – and apparently an irresistible magnet to female fingers, an imposition Jessica had been forced to live with over the years, to the point that she barely even noticed it any more.
‘What is it?’ Harry was demanding, jumping up and down as he tried to grab the phone from Nikki’s hand. ‘Let me see.’
‘No way.’ Her deep brown eyes darted back to her father. ‘That is so not true,’ she told him.
‘What isn’t?’ Harry wanted to know. ‘What did he say?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ Charlie informed her.
From his expression Jessica knew that whatever it was, it had everything to do with him.
‘How do you know that, when I haven’t even told you what it is?’ Nikki challenged.
Jessica laughed as Charlie staggered back. ‘I walked right into that,’ he conceded, his eyes full of mischief and his smile as roguish as his son’s.
Nikki banged his arm with her clenched fist. ‘It is so not true,’ she said through her teeth.
‘Then what are you getting so worked up about?’
She blushed again. ‘I’m not. When did you send it? Oh my God, no-one saw you taking his picture, did they? Dad, please tell me no-one else knows, or I’ll never be able to go back there.’
‘I was very discreet,’ Charlie promised.
‘But he’s looking straight at the camera!’ Nikki protested. ‘He must have known you were taking it.’
‘Of course he did. I told him it was for me.’
Nikki’s head fell back as she groaned. ‘That is it. I’m never setting foot in those studios again. Mum, he’s totally out of order this time. You’ve got to speak to him. Look!’ she demanded, shoving the phone at Jessica.
When Jessica saw the heart-framed picture-text of Freddy Crossland, the new trainee reporter on the programme Charlie presented, though she understood Nikki’s embarrassment, she had to smile. ‘He is pretty gorgeous,’ she said, handing the phone back.