Contracted_corporate wife

by Jessica Hart

  'Mum, Dad won't help,' said Grace bitterly. 'He never does. He'll say that he will, and then he won't.'

  That just about summed Lawrie up.

  Lou hated the look on her daughter's face. There wasn't anything she could do now about Lawrie's relationship with his children, but she wished he understood how much he hurt them whenever he let them down. Grace and Tom loved their father, but they had learnt not to rely on him.

  Lou knew what that felt like.

  She sighed. 'I'll see what I can do,' was all she could promise Grace, who slumped down at the kitchen table, her excitement evaporated.

  Lawrie wasn't a bad man. He wasn't malicious or deliberately hurtful. He was intelligent and funny, and charm itself when it suited him, but he was also thoughtless and utterly self-centred. Lou didn't mind for herself any more, but she did mind for the children. It wasn't the life she had

  wanted to give them. She had tried so hard for so long to shield them from the consequences of their father's feckless attitude to life, but the reality was that Lawrie had chosen to leave them. He had chosen a new family, and there was nothing she could do to make that better for them.

  They had lost their father and their home, and it hadn't been easy for either of them. Lou was doing her best. She loved them unconditionally, she comforted them when they were upset, she fed them and cared for them and encouraged them, and gave them the security and stability they didn't know they needed. She had been careful never to talk bitterly about Lawrie in front of them, great as the temptation was at times. It was Lou who rang him to remind him when their birthdays were, who suggested ways he could meet up with Grace and Tom, and who made sure they rang him regularly.

  And she tried to give them as much fun as she could, although she was bitterly aware that a lot of the time she was too worn down by work and worry to give them as much of that as they needed. Lawrie was always good at fun, but Lawrie wasn't always there.

  Lou ached for them sometimes. At times like now, knowing that she was going to end up disappointing them both, she would do anything to make things different for them.

  About to lay aside the note Grace had given her, Lou stopped with her hand outstretched.

  Anything?

  Including marrying Patrick Farr?

  She looked down at the note once more. Where else could she possibly find the extra money she'd need to send Grace on this holiday? And if Grace went skiing, Tom could go on his sports course...

  At the kitchen table, Grace was slumped in a familiar posture, leaning on one arm, her dark curly hair hanging

  over her face. Lou could just see the tip of her nose as she traced despondent patterns on the tabletop with one finger. Opposite her, Tom had dropped his backpack on the floor and was crouched over it, tossing pens, bits of paper and chocolate wrappers carelessly aside as he rummaged through it. Probably not looking for his homework, judging by his enthusiasm.

  As she watched them Lou felt the familiar clutch of love so intense it was almost painful. It was easy to say, 'I'd do anything for my kids', but was she prepared to do it?

  Thoughtfully, she opened the fridge and took out some tomatoes. Pasta again tonight. It was cheap, cheerful and nutritious, but sometimes she got so sick of cooking it. She picked her way through Tom's discarded mess and removed the ironing basket so that she could get into the cupboard and find some oil. That was another thing about this flat. There was no room to put anything.

  If she married Patrick, there would be plenty of room for them all to spread themselves. She thought about his six bedrooms. Perhaps if they weren't living on top of each other the way they were now, they wouldn't be so irritable with each other.

  Outside, it was a beautiful summer evening, but it was hard to tell from in here, overshadowed as they were by the backs of the house behind them. The backyards in this area were dark and gloomy at the best of times, but at least if you had one you could step outside and look up at the sky.

  Patrick probably had a garden, mused Lou. She could grow fresh herbs, and when she was making pasta like this she could go out and pick some basil, some oregano, maybe, or some parsley. She could stand with the herbs in her hand and smell the grass and feel the sun on her face.

  All she had to do was marry Patrick.

  Lou moistened her lips nervously. 'Could I have a word with you?'

  Patrick had been in meetings most of the day, which was a relief in one way. The atmosphere that morning had been inevitably arctic, but Lou was desperate not to lose her nerve. Having made her decision, she hadn't got a chance to even raise the matter until Patrick had come back at five o'clock, which meant that she had spent the entire day dithering about what to say.

  Daunted by his air of chilly reserve, Lou gave him his messages and made her request. It was now or never. She couldn't spend another night like the last one, tossing and turning in an agony of indecision.

  Patrick looked at her properly for the first time that day, his eyes a glacial green. 'A word?'

  'Well, a few words.' Lou took a deep breath. 'I...I wanted to apologise for the way I reacted yesterday,' she said. 'You made a fair offer. I just...wasn't expecting it, and I overreacted. I'm sorry.'

  Something shifted in Patrick's expression. 'I'm the one who should be apologising to you,' he said gruffly. 'I didn't express myself well. When I thought about it afterwards, I wasn't surprised you were angry. So I'm sorry too.'

  'The thing is...' Lou stopped, not sure how to ask if the offer was still open. She couldn't really blame Patrick if he had changed his mind after the fuss she had made.

  'Look, why don't we start again?' said Patrick, coming to her rescue. 'But let's go somewhere we can talk properly, away from the office.' He looked at his watch. 'Do you have to go and pick up the children, or can you come and have a drink?'

  Grace was going to do her homework with a friend, and Tom had football. 'A drink would be nice,' said Lou gratefully. She had a feeling she was going to need it.

  Patrick glanced quickly through his messages. 'All of this can wait till tomorrow. Let's go now.'

  Lou was very aware of him as they caught the lift down to the ground floor. He seemed guarded, which was fair enough after the way she'd spoken to him yesterday, but not as angry as she had expected. She wasn't sure what she was going to say. It seemed a colossal cheek to ask him to marry her after all—and without the benefit of a bucketload of champagne either.

  Patrick took her to a quiet pub not far from the river. To Lou's delight it had a garden hidden away behind, with a couple of trees and some shrubs, and a few jolly geraniums in pots. They had beaten the rush-hour exodus and there was still a table.

  'You sit there and make sure no one else gets it,' said Patrick, overbearing Lou's attempts to buy the drinks.

  Closing her eyes and tipping her face to the sun, Lou felt some of the tension begin to seep out of her. It felt good to be outside, even in a crowded pub garden with the traffic roaring away at the front of the building. Of course, it would feel even better if she didn't have to ask her boss to marry her when he came back from the bar.

  'Here you go.' Her eyes snapped open as Patrick set the drinks down on the table and sat opposite her on the bench. He had left his jacket in the office and was in shirtsleeves, rolled up to his wrists.

  The sight of him was giving Lou curious flutters inside, and it was difficult to know whether they were caused by nerves or a much more primitive attraction. Either way, they had left her in the grip of a paralysing shyness, and she sipped her gin and tonic nervously, trying desperately to think of a way to start.

  She couldn't do it. There was no way she could calmly

  ask Patrick if she could change her mind about marrying him, after everything she had had to say yesterday about not being the kind of woman who would marry for money. No way. She must have been mad to have even considered it.

  She would pretend she wanted to talk about her overtime, Lou decided.

  But then she remembered Grace's fa
ce, lit up with excitement at the thought of a skiing holiday, of going somewhere different and doing something different and meeting different people. And she remembered the way Tom's shoulders had slumped when she had said, 'We'll see.'

  She thought about the cramped flat where sometimes it felt hard to breathe, and where the neighbours conducted their arguments at the tops of their voices so that Grace and Tom knew more than they ought to about the most intimate details of married life.

  And then she thought about being married to Patrick and her insides squirmed and fluttered and generally made it impossible to get to grips with anything else.

  The silence stretched uncomfortably. Lou's eyes wandered desperately around the garden, but she was very conscious of Patrick sitting opposite her. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, she could see his forearms, browner than usual after a week in the Maldives, and her gaze kept snagging on the fine hairs at his wrist and the strong, square hands playing with his glass.

  Patrick was nervous too, she realised slowly. It gave her the confidence to launch into speech.

  T've been thinking—'

  She began just as Patrick said, T probably shouldn't say this, but—'

  They both stopped, feeling foolish.

  'You first,' he said awkwardly.

  Lou squared her shoulders and took a breath. Just do it. 'Look, you were honest with me yesterday, so I might as well be the same today. I was furious when you made that proposal, but I thought about it a lot last night and I was wondering...well, if it was too late to change my mind.'

  There, it was done.

  Patrick had spent the previous night trying to convince himself that he had had a lucky escape. The whole idea had been ridiculous, and if he hadn't had such an awful holiday he would probably never have considered it. What if Lou had accepted him? He would have been saddled with two adolescent stepchildren and a middle-aged wife. Madness.

  So the rush of relief he felt at her words didn't make much sense. He was still raw with hurt and humiliation at her flat rejection— a man I don't even like, she had told him—mingled with guilt at the botched way he had handled things. He had hurt Lou, too, and it wasn't a nice feeling.

  He drank his beer carefully. 'What made you change your mind?'

  'Money,' said Lou bleakly. She told him about the skiing trip and Tom's sports course. 'I'm tired of struggling and disappointing the kids. Yesterday you offered me a chance to change that.'

  She hesitated. 'I know I had a lot to say about not being the kind of person who married for money, but maybe I am that person. Maybe I have to be. I've tried marrying for love, and that didn't work out, so this time perhaps I should think about marrying for a different reason, for my children. That may be the right thing to do.'

  'You don't sound that convinced,' commented Patrick, his eyes still guarded.

  'I'm not entirely convinced,' Lou admitted. 'That's really

  what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to ask you if I could think about it a bit. I can't decide anything until Grace and Tom have met you, and you've met them.' She managed a feeble smile. 'You might change your mind then!'

  Patrick's expression was unreadable, but at least he wasn't shouting at her or carrying on the way she had carried on when he had made his proposal. Lou ploughed on.

  'I was wondering if we could keep our options open,' she said. 'Perhaps we could have lunch or something together, and then see if we think it could still work?' She swallowed. 'We might decide to forget the whole idea, or we might decide it could work after all, in which case we could talk about what we would both expect out of a marriage like that.'

  'That makes sense,' said Patrick. A lot more sense than springing the idea on her, tossing down a proposal and demanding an immediate answer. It was what he should have suggested in the first place. 'All right, let's do it that way.'

  For the first time a smile touched the corners of his mouth. 'What are you doing this weekend? Why don't you bring them to lunch on Sunday? It would give you all a chance to see where you could be living if nothing else.' He hesitated. 'I've got to say that I've got no experience of entertaining children of that age, but there's a pool if they like swimming. They just need to bring their things.'

  By Sunday, Lou had talked herself in and out of the idea so many times that she didn't know what she thought any more. But it was too late to back out of lunch, so they would all go. She had this idea that if she could just see Patrick with the children, she would know what to do. It was hard to imagine them getting on, though. Patrick

  had no interest in children, and Grace and Tom would make it very clear if they didn't like him. Lou foresaw a disastrous lunch.

  Well, if it was a disaster, her decision would be made, she decided resolutely. She would just tell Patrick that marriage wouldn't work, and she would find some other way to send Grace skiing. And Tom would get his sports course as well.

  She would do it. Somehow.

  But she would try Patrick's option first.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Patrick lived in a quiet street in Chelsea that positively smelled of money. Lou felt as if, somewhere between there and the tube, they had wandered into a parallel universe that had no relation whatsoever to the busy road in Tooting where they lived. She had known Patrick was wealthy, of course, but this was the first time she had come face to face with the reality of how different his life was from hers.

  It felt very uncomfortable. This was a street peopled by different beings and the three of them didn't belong here. It had been a mistake to come.

  Lou had done her best to make the children presentable, but she wasn't sure that Patrick would appreciate the chains looped around Grace's waist or her enormous clumpy boots. Her curly hair, inherited from her father, was a mess. Lou's fingers itched for a comb, but Grace had absolutely refused to brush it. She was going through a Goth phase, and she considered that she had made enough concessions by not wearing black lipstick.

  Tom was less trendy, but no more neat. Lou was resigned to that by now. He was one of those boys that you could send out of the door looking well scrubbed and immaculate, and by the time he was at the end of the street his hair would be sticking up in tufts, his top would have parted company with his trousers and his shoelaces would be undone.

  Today he was wearing scruffy trainers, saggy jeans and a T-shirt that had been clean when they'd left the house, but which had mysteriously acquired a dirty mark some-

  where along the line, probably when he'd been messing around on the underground escalators.

  Only the promise of a swim in a private pool had resigned the children to a boring lunch, but they were clearly impressed by the wealth that practically oozed out of the front doors of these houses. There were no terraced houses here. No flats, no shops, no take-aways or minicab firms. Each house stood in its own grounds, partially hidden by high hedges, so that you just caught the odd glimpse of the luxury within through the gates.

  Tom's steps slowed down as they passed each entrance, straining to get a look at the cars parked on the crisp gravel. 'Wow, look at that!' he said, offering a running commentary of the vehicles on display as he craned his neck to see through the gates. 'BMW...Mercedes...Mercedes...Rolls Roy ce... Porsche... Jaguar

  'Your boss must be rolling in it if he lives here,' said Grace.

  Lou didn't answer. She felt slightly sick, and her nerve was rapidly deserting her. It was all very well wanting financial security, but this kind of wealth was just obscene. She couldn't possibly marry Patrick. It would never work. She was much too old to play Cinderella.

  'Is this it?' Grace had stopped and was staring at a house set back from the road, her voiced awed.

  Lou dug out the address and checked the number. 'Thirty-three...yes, it looks like this is it.' She swallowed as she looked at the house. 'Gosh.'

  Joining her daughter at the iron gates, she peered through at a large, handsome house with large windows, its cream stucco front softened by a wonderful climbing hydrangea. A
sweep of gravel led up to the imposing front door, and the front garden had been cleverly planted to keep the house as private as possible without overshadowing it.

  Tom trailed up and the three of them stood there looking at it, their hands on the railings of the gate, like prisoners staring longingly at the outside world.

  'Mum...' Tom drew a deep breath of wonderment. 'Mum, is that his car?'

  Lou hadn't even noticed the car sitting in front of the house. 'Er...maybe. I don't know,' she said nervously.

  'How do we get in?' said Grace more practically.

  There was an intercom on the massive gate post. Lou pressed the button, half expecting some venerable butler to answer. Or more likely a beefy security guard complete with snarling Rottweiler. But it was Patrick's voice that emerged from the speaker, crisp and unmistakable.

  It's me,' she said weakly. 'Lou. We're here.'

  'Good,' he said. 'Come on in.'

  The great gates swung open, and they slipped through, unnerved by how quickly the gates began to close behind them. 'It's like being in a prison,' whispered Grace as they headed towards the front door, their shoes crunching on the gravel, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence.

  Ahead of them, the front door opened and suddenly Patrick was there, wearing chinos and a blue shirt open at the collar, but looking as formidable as ever in spite of his casual clothes.

  For some reason, Lou was finding it hard to breathe properly. 'Hi,' she said in a stupid high voice, and felt Grace flick a surprised glance in her direction.

  'Hello. Glad you could make it.' To her annoyance Patrick sounded exactly the same as usual. Shouldn't he be nervous too at the prospect of meeting her children? He might have seemed a little bit more effusive, or looked as if he was trying too hard. But no. He was just the way he always was, faintly brusque and to the point.