by Maeve Haran
But even as he parked his car at the end of the drive he began to sense that something was wrong. He was still twenty yards away but there was no familiar smoke snaking from the chimney, pale grey against the deep navy of the winter’s evening, as there had been in his imagination, and the deep silence of the countryside wasn’t cut by laughter or carols or voices coming from the direction of the cottage.
Leaving the presents in the car he ran up the drive, trying to fight off the beginning of panic. The sound of his feet crunching on the gravel deafened him. Hearing an unfamiliar pounding he stopped for a moment until he realized that it was his own heart.
And then he was there outside the dark and empty house. The pain in his chest was so intense that he thought he was having a heart attack. What a sublime irony that would be. The prodigal returns and dies on the doorstep. But then as it passed he realized it had simply been the bitter mule-kick of disappointment. Liz and the children weren’t here.
As a faint desperate hope he tried the front door and found it double-locked. Liz never did that if she was simply going out for half an hour, only if she was going away. He remembered how she had laughed at him when they first started coming here for double-locking the front door every time he nipped down to the village shop. ‘You’re not in London now, you know,’ she would tease and he would laugh and deliberately leave the door wide open. But they never got burgled. Burglars were unimaginable in Seamington. Even they recognized the peace of the place and dared not disturb it.
Then he had a sudden inspiration. His keys. Maybe he had his keys to the cottage with him. He ran back to the car and rummaged in his briefcase. Then he remembered where they were. In the small drawer beside Britt’s bed.
He sat in the dark car and wondered where she might have gone. To Ginny’s? But then she wouldn’t have double-locked. To her mother’s? Of course, why hadn’t he thought of that before. She must have gone to her mother’s for Christmas, instead of spending it alone here.
For a moment he considered driving over there now. Then he thought about Eleanor, with her cold patrician elegance and felt his nerve trickle away. Liz adored her mother and found her warm and loving but David had never felt that that love had been extended to an outsider from the lower orders, a cuckoo from the North who had stolen their beautiful daughter from the banker or stockbroker she should rightfully have married. And now he had compounded his crime by hurting her and abandoning her.
No. He couldn’t go there. And anyway it wasn’t the place to convince her of the justice of his case with her mother lurking in the shadows to remind her of the self-evident truth, which he knew in his heart not to be true at all, not now, that he had hurt her once and could do it again.
Her mother would simply tell her, as any mother would, that she would be mad to take him back. Eleanor would not make allowances or be prepared to see that her daughter might, too, have had her part to play in the collapse of their marriage.
Don’t do it, she would advise, don’t trap yourself in a masochistic relationship, you’re young, remember people don’t change, not really. Find someone else. A good man who will make you feel safe.
But David knew her advice would be wrong. He was a good man and he could make her feel as safe as she wanted. If she would only give him another chance.
At least he would leave the presents in the porch and she would know he had been. Carefully he unpacked them and carried them down the drive. The festive pile looked incongruous in the dark porch, as though they had been delivered to the wrong place. And looking at them he realized they made an eyecatching advert that the house was empty. He couldn’t leave them there after all. He would have to take them away and bring them back after Christmas.
As he packed them up, he felt a strong urge to leave something, a note perhaps, to say that he had been. But what would he say? No, he needed to speak to her in person, to dismiss her protests and convince her with his arguments and his love. And his best attack would be surprise.
As he got back into the car, it struck him for the first time that he had no idea where he was going. His dream had ended here, in front of the fire with Liz. And there is never provision for failure in dreams, and so he simply hadn’t considered it.
Going back to Britt was out of the question, and if he went back to his own house, she would find him. If he took the phone off the hook, she would come and wait outside. He knew Britt. For a split second the irony struck him that he was waiting outside Liz’s house, just as Britt would wait outside his. The eternal triangle. The cliché that had wrecked lives since time began. When Adam and Eve were the only two people in the world, Eve had started something funny with the serpent.
What about friends? He must have some friends he could go to. But he realized with a shock that he had almost no friends close enough to descend on two days before Christmas. All his friends had been shared with Liz, and by leaving her he had crossed himself out of their marital Filofaxes. For a moment he pictured the hastily covered-up horror and surprise if he turned up on Bert’s doorstep in Pinner, like Scrooge on Christmas morning.
Then he remembered that there was somewhere he could go where Britt wouldn’t find him. And neither would anyone else. In a sudden panic he delved into his jacket pocket for his keyring. Yes, there was the key.
He would spend Christmas alone. And he would think about the unthinkable: what he would do with the rest of his life if Liz didn’t want him back after all.
CHAPTER 21
It was after six when Liz finally parked outside the cottage and carried Daisy, bathed and in her sleepsuit, upstairs to her cot.
When she came down she was hit at once by the emptiness of the place. She snapped on all the lights and opened the kitchen door to let the warmth from the Aga spread into the sitting room. Then she knelt by the grate, glad that she had set the fire before she left, and put a match to the dried-out kindling, which crackled satisfyingly as the logs began to catch and spit and release the faint scent of apple into the room.
She looked round at the Christmas decorations and the welcome wreath on the front door and couldn’t help smiling. Despite the cobbling and making good they’d had to resort to, they didn’t look too bad. Maybe not quite like the photo in the magazine, but still pretty good.
She headed back out to the car and as she turned on the porch light something sparkled in the corner. As she bent down she saw that it was a short length of shiny silver ribbon, the kind used to decorate fancy presents. She’d often watched the salesgirls deftly tie a gift up in this ribbon and then run the inside of a pair of scissors down the ends to make them curl like tiny ringlets. How odd. Without thinking any more about it she put the ribbon in her pocket and went to help Jamie get the Christmas tree out of the car.
Britt sat anxiously on her huge sofa and wondered what to do. It was nearly seven and there was still no sign of David. For the last two hours she had expected him to walk in at any moment, apologetic and slightly brusque. Surely she’d be able to convince him that what she’d done was flattering, that it had simply been born out of her love for him and her desperation to keep him, and her honest belief that her need for him was so much greater than Liz’s. Liz was a survivor. She’d build a new life without him as easily as falling off a log. Surely David would see that.
Britt made herself her fourth cup of coffee and looked at the kitchen clock.
It was early yet.
‘Ugh, Mum, this is revolting!’
With unerring taste Jamie discarded the chocolate Santa filled with the disgusting substance known as ‘creme’ in favour of a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Snowman. Eating the decorations from the Christmas tree was a time-honoured tradition in Liz’s family. It had been what made helping her own mother decorate the tree such an exciting treat when she was a child.
Despite everything, as she and Jamie got the decorations out of their boxes ready to put on the tree, the glass balls, the mini-crackers, the red satin bows, and the small shiny boxes wrapped to look like t
iny presents, she started to feel the familiar sense of excitement.
She loved Christmas and she was glad that this year they would be staying here in the cottage. On Boxing Day they had all been invited to Ginny’s and on Christmas Day her mother would come for lunch, loaded with presents for her grandchildren.
David, on the other hand, had sent nothing. Suddenly a wave of bitterness washed over her that he was clearly too caught up with Britt and the baby to bother with buying any presents for his own children. She could hardly believe he could be so cruel, knowing how much presents meant to them. Rather than see their faces fall, as she knew they would, she’d bought them presents herself and put them in the back of the cupboard just in case. Tomorrow she would wrap them and pretend they were from Daddy.
As Jamie put up the last decoration Liz got out the fairy lights and draped them round the tree. This was the moment she liked best. Some people thought it vulgar to have coloured ones that winked at you, but she didn’t care. Winking Christmas tree lights were part of her childhood. Turning all the lights off in the sitting room she and Jamie lined up for the ceremonial flick of the switch that would declare Christmas open.
‘Come on, Jamie. Pretend you’re Joan Collins in Oxford Street.’
And with regal charm Jamie lifted his chin, closed his eyes and hit the switch. Twenty-two coloured lights flashed back at him and they both cheered and kissed each other.
But why, thought Liz, asking herself one of the great unanswered conundrums of the universe, why are there always two that don’t work every bloody year when they were all absolutely fine when you put them in the box?
Britt flicked on the television and tried to find something to take her mind off David and what time it was. She’d told herself he might have gone to the paper, or to some office celebration in a restaurant somewhere, or even, given his present mood, to a pub to get absolutely blind drunk.
All the same, for the last hour she had been having to fight the impulse to ring round some numbers where he might be. She sipped her decaffeinated filter coffee and tried to avoid the admission that there was one number at the top of the list. Liz’s.
‘Bedtime, Jamie. Come on, darling, it’s been a busy day.’
‘Mum?’ Jamie looked up at her, suddenly serious. ‘Could I ring Dad. Please? In case he goes away for Christmas?’
Liz felt herself freeze. She could hardly say no, and yet what was she going to say to them. If she said nothing about the baby, they might tell her, and she would have to listen to the joy and happiness in their voices. Well, there was no way she could congratulate them or wish them luck.
Feeling like the Bad Fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, Liz reached for the phone and dialled Britt’s number. It rang perhaps ten times and no one answered it. Breathing a sigh of relief, Liz began to replace the receiver, telling Jamie that no one was in, when someone finally picked it up.
Britt had been waiting by the phone all evening, yet when it rang she recoiled as though it might attack her. If he was coming back, he would have just turned up, sober and self-righteous or drunk and accusing, wouldn’t he? The phone could only mean bad news. That he wasn’t coming back tonight, or that he wasn’t coming back at all.
She wouldn’t answer it.
But not answering a ringing phone takes the kind of resolve few people have and Britt discovered she wasn’t one of them. On the twelfth ring she picked it up. ‘Hello?’
As soon as she heard Britt’s voice Liz found the old familiar anger burning through her, all the unsaid charges of betrayal, of violating the sacred taboos of friendship. She realized that she wanted to talk to Britt for as short a time as possible.
‘Hello, Britt. Is David there? Jamie wants to wish him a Happy Christmas.’
For a moment Britt felt herself plunge into the relief of knowing that her biggest fear hadn’t come true, David hadn’t gone running straight back to Liz.
‘I’m afraid he’s not in.’ Now that she knew he hadn’t run back to her, she was damned if she was going to admit to Liz of all people that she had absolutely no idea where he was.
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘No idea. He’s gone Christmas shopping. Probably collapsed into a wine bar to miss the rush hour.’
Liz realized she wanted to get off the line before Britt got a chance to tell her about the baby.
‘Right. Could you ask him to give Jamie a ring tomorrow? Just a couple of minutes to wish him Happy Christmas.’
Britt felt a momentary flash of guilt. What if she didn’t see David? It was a risk she was just going to have to take. After all, she had more to worry about than one little phone call.
At just after ten p.m. David swung the Mercedes into the Park Lane Garage, handed the keys to the attendant and crossed the road to Grosvenor House where Logan Greene kept a small but plush service flat for entertaining foreign businessmen and the occasional mistress. He had already considered and dismissed the possibility that Logan might turn up, with an under-dressed secretary under one arm after one of the many Greene Communications office parties, which ranged from warm beer and crisps on the Subs’ Desk of the Daily News, to Feuilletés au Délice de Saumon and vintage Krug at the Savoy for the management team.
But tomorrow was Christmas Eve, so he reckoned that Logan Greene, upstanding patriarch, would curb his taste for six-foot blondes with more than a passing resemblance to his daughter and return to the bosom of his family in their modest thirty-room mansion on the river at Bray.
And since Logan had transformed his home into a technological nerve centre with advanced telecommunications and flatscreen TVs in his study and bedroom and had even commissioned a portable grey box, not much larger than a briefcase, which meant he could communicate with any of his ventures world-wide direct from the fairway, David reckoned there was no need for him to venture into town for at least three days, which was how long David planned to stay in his flat.
When the phone rang for the second time that evening Britt knew that this time it must be David, so it took her an unusually long time to take in who it actually was on the other end of the phone.
‘Hello, Britt. This is Conrad Marks.’
Britt looked at her watch. It was ten-thirty. For a moment, irrationally, she thought he might have some news about David. She could hardly imagine David crying on Conrad’s diminutive shoulder, but you never knew. Maybe they’d bumped into each other in The Groucho Club.
‘You’re probably wondering why I’m ringing so late.’
‘Just a bit.’
‘Sorry. I’m a night bird myself. I make all my best decisions at about two in the morning. I wondered if you could drop into my office tomorrow. There’s something I want to discuss with you, and I’d like to get it tied up, or at least on the table before we all retreat to that bosom of mayhem and murder, the family.’
‘What time do you want me to come in?’ Britt was still dazed and puzzled by his call.
‘Whatever time suits you.’
‘Midday?’ By then surely David would have contacted her if he was going to, anyway maybe it would be good for him to find she wasn’t sitting chained to the phone.
‘Fine. I’ll cancel something. See you tomorrow. Sleep well.’
Britt sat holding on to the receiver for nearly a minute. What did Conrad Marks want with her that he would cancel a meeting on Christmas Eve to tell her about? As she put the phone back on the hook Britt realized with amazement that she hadn’t thought about work once all day.
Liz woke earlier than usual and rolled over in bed till she could tweak the curtains open with her toe. One of the delights of this cottage was the discovery that if she lay on the left side of the bed and piled her pillows up she could see part of the garden, a tiny section of the orchard and a small sliver of the field opposite without even getting out of bed.
But this morning she felt more energetic. Since it was Christmas Eve there was still lots to be done so she put on her thick dressing gown and
furry moccasins and slipped quietly downstairs and made herself a cup of tea. Thanks to the Aga, now supplied with all the fuel it would hold, the kitchen was deliciously warm and she leaned against it, waiting for the kettle to boil, willing herself not to pinch one of the mince pies she’d made last night and doing so all the same with a slight feeling of guilt, swiftly followed by absolution on the grounds that it was, after all, Christmas.
Taking her tea back up to bed for a last five minutes of peace she leaned out of the small casement window, criss-crossed with frost and watched the mist burning off the valley, revealing a sharp blue sky almost Provençal in its depth of colour. Yet there was nothing Mediterranean in the temperature. Shivering slightly, Liz pulled her dressing gown round her more tightly.
As she stared out over the peaceful valley she wondered where David would be spending Christmas. In some plush hotel perhaps? Not at home. She couldn’t see Britt up to her elbows in stuffing.
Watching her breath curl in the freezing air, she remembered her very first Christmas with David. That had been in a hotel too. Her parents had taken a radical step and announced that they would be spending Christmas in Switzerland. It had taken Liz days to recover from the shock of discovering that her parents were people. They made choices. And they had chosen not to have a family Christmas but to spend it on their own, skiing. Secretly Liz had been scandalized and more than a little hurt. She had always had a family Christmas. And when David had suggested they spend it in a hotel, she’d thought it sounded dreadful. Hotels weren’t the place for Christmas, no matter what her parents thought. Christmas amongst strangers with nothing to do but sit around and watch television, bloated and idle, waiting for the next meal to come round. It was a horrible idea. Wait and see, David had said, you’ll love it.
And he’d been right, she had loved it, though not at first. Withyton Manor had been quite unlike any hotel she’d stayed in before or since. From the moment you stepped in the door at Withyton you were transported back to the nineteenth century. To Liz’s horror she found she was expected to dress up like a Victorian matron, play parlour games and eat stuffed goose, she who loathed hotels where you were met by Mine Host or shared even a table with the other guests. It ought to have been ghastly, full of bores with mutton-chop whiskers and Sherlock Holmes complexes, but it wasn’t. It was the best Christmas she had ever had. From the first moment she was handed a glass of rum punch, the recipe taken from Mrs Beeton, she realized that almost all the other twenty guests were young and friendly and just as self-conscious as she was, and she began to relax and enjoy herself. By Boxing Day she was winning at charades and could sing ‘Daisy, Daisy’ unaccompanied.