‘What kind of a shift?’
‘I started to wonder if the life I was leading was really my choice. I felt a little as if I had been standing still. I wanted to try something new to see where I would land.’
‘And sleeping with someone was your great experiment?’ Dean said quietly. ‘I thought you had more depth.’
‘It wasn’t just about sleeping with Spike. That was more of a symptom. It was bigger than that.’
‘And where did you land?’ Dean asked. ‘What did you discover?’
‘I think I discovered that I wanted what I already had,’ she said.
There was a long pause. Then Dean said, ‘So every time things are getting a little boring at home, you’re going to make a habit of having sex with strangers?’
‘There’s no need to sneer at me,’ she said, suddenly angry. She had been as contrite as it was possible to be and yet he wasn’t giving her a chance.
‘I’m just disappointed in you, that’s all.’
‘Can you stop being a bloody teacher for just five minutes?’ She got to her feet. ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re being like this. There’s no point in this at all.’
She stalked off across the bar. There must have been a wet patch on the floor or perhaps the ridiculous espadrilles tripped her up, but there was a horrible moment when she was fighting desperately for her balance and then she slid a couple of feet and landed in an undignified heap on the floor. Her first thought was that if this had happened to her when she had been wearing her linen trousers, at least she wouldn’t have ended up with at least fifty people getting a sight of her knickers. Dean was by her side almost instantly, helping her to her feet, but she batted him off and staggered to the door.
‘Fuck off and go and tell your pupils what to do,’ she shouted, causing a middle-aged couple at a nearby table to look at each other askance.
‘She’s British,’ the woman said to her companion in a carrying voice. ‘They swear a lot and get drunk.’
‘She sure is fiery!’ he replied. ‘They’re not as reserved as they look in those costume dramas.’
Still in the grip of fury, Lottie swung out of the hotel and into the smoky-coloured evening. After a few minutes of angry, unsteady marching, she stopped, took off her shoes and walked on the grass by the river. The earlier fire of sun in the mountains had now been extinguished, leaving the slopes an ashy grey. She sat down on a toppled log and watched the silky water filling the curving banks. It looked like liquid in a mould.
She knew she had hurt Dean and that what she had done might be too much for him to ever recover from, but she thought he could at least try. She shivered slightly in her flimsy dress. Tina was probably tucked up in bed in her pyjamas. It almost made her smile to think how things had changed. Only a few days ago she had been disapproving of her sister’s decision not to take a coat to the party in San Francisco and now here she was, sitting in the middle of nowhere dressed in a square of silk. Maybe Dean was right and she had changed more than she thought.
‘Take my jacket,’ Dean said, with another of his sudden appearing acts.
‘I don’t want it,’ she said, without turning round.
Why was it that men thought women were endlessly longing for someone to drape them in jackets, and why was it that women so often valued being looked after in this way? After all, women didn’t feel the cold any more than men did.
‘Suit yourself.’ He came to sit next to her on the log and she pointedly moved further along and away from him. ‘Your mouth is turning blue,’ he said.
She ignored him. For a while they sat in silence surveying the river.
‘Listen, Lottie,’ he said at last, when she thought they might sit there forever, like a pair of bookends on an empty shelf, ‘I can’t put my hand on my heart and tell you that everything is going to go back to how it was, but it turns out that I can’t actually live without you. Who knew?’ He tried unsuccessfully to laugh.
‘I did,’ Lottie said. ‘Because I can’t live without you either.’
‘I just need you to tell me that I’m what you want. We can work on the rest.’
‘You are exactly what I want,’ she said.
‘What, even though I have a small mouth and a tendency to be pompous, even though I’m stuck in my ways, even though I find it hard to switch off from being a teacher?’
‘I love you because of those things,’ she said, smiling. ‘When I really think about it, what happened was that I briefly became risk-averse.’
‘What do you mean? Surely having an affair and putting your relationship in jeopardy is the ultimate risk?’
‘But choosing you, loving you – that’s the risk, silly.’ She kissed him. His mouth fitted hers exactly and she held him as she always had, her hands at the back of his neck where his hair was curly.
‘I’m so sorry I hurt you,’ she said, when they finally pulled apart. ‘I’ll try never to hurt you again.’
He put his arms around her, and she felt the coldness disappear from her body, as if the sun had risen and lit up the sides of the mountains and set them burning again.
Chapter 36
Five days later
TINA WAS JUST A LITTLE drunk, and the grey silk frock that Lottie had insisted she wear clung in none of the right places. Her sister, on the other hand, glowed as if someone had polished her with a rough cloth and then dipped her in stardust. The wedding dress that Tina had so disliked fitted her body perfectly, the little pearl buttons that ran all the way from the small of her back to the nape of her neck acting like a marker for her curves. After a bit of persuasion, she had agreed to let her sister style her hair, and Tina had blow-dried it to bring out its natural curl and threaded the golden tresses with daisies. She was most definitely the most beautiful bride Tina had ever seen, although she had to admit her bar had been set rather low. If she ever made the mistake of shackling herself to someone for life, she was going to wear something memorable – bright red, perhaps, slit all the way to the waist with just a suggestion of underboob, a dress that was revealing enough to make people disapprove slightly. Although why she was even thinking about wedding dresses, she couldn’t imagine. She was going to live her life exactly the way she wanted to. Being married would only ever inhibit that.
She checked the pictures on her camera and thought she had probably got the most important moments so far – Lottie, pale and tremulous at the door of the chapel; the wonder in Dean’s face as he watched her come towards him; the way she had touched his arm to steady him, her face solemn despite her smiling mouth; the requisite kiss that had been so surprisingly romantic that Tina had found herself blinking a tear from her eye so she could focus her camera properly. This stuff was truly insidious. It broke even the most hard-hearted of sceptics.
When Lottie and Dean had returned to the pine lodge in Utah, their faces had been so transparently and skinlessly happy that she had felt a warm glow. She was proud of the part she had played in getting them back together. She had really grafted to make Dean see sense, going to the toilet endlessly or ducking behind bushes – on one occasion, even hiding in a broom cupboard so that she could harangue him on the phone in private. She felt she had almost made up for her manipulation of Lottie’s feelings.
‘I love him more than I can say,’ Lottie had said, when Tina asked her for the last and final time if she was sure. ‘I’m as sure as I can be about anything, and that has to be more than enough.’
Lottie and Dean were currently moving through their guests, dutifully talking to each and every one of them. Why they weren’t getting drunk and having a sneaky shag in the very nice bedroom that had been booked for their wedding night was utterly beyond her. At least Dean had the nurse’s outfit to look forward to, although Tina wondered if Lottie had actually packed it. You could take a horse to water, but you couldn’t make her frolic in it.
Tina looked around for the champagne waiter and made a beeline for his silver salver. The Cambridge college certainly provided a pre
tty backdrop for the wedding, with the river slinking by and the leaves on the well-manicured trees just turning to shades of ochre and cerise. The lawn was studded with white cyclamen and the beds were full of fragrant pink phlox and wine-red dahlias. They had been lucky with the weather – a stray hot autumn day, more beautiful than any summer one because it had not been expected. She scooped up a flute and sat on one of the chairs that had been placed by the water.
‘I wanted to check you were all right,’ Lottie said, coming up behind her.
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ Tina answered. ‘You look so beautiful I might even squeeze out a tear or two.’
Lottie laughed and pulled up a chair beside her, giving a relieved little sigh as she untied the ankle straps on her shoes and pushed them off.
‘You know I said that I would make you do one challenge?’ she asked, looking sideways at her sister.
‘It’s too late. The road trip’s over,’ Tina said. ‘You’ve missed your chance.’
‘Don’t you think, since it’s my wedding day, you might just indulge me?’
‘Oh, OK then,’ Tina said grudgingly. ‘What do you want me to do? I’ll tell you for nothing that while I’m perfectly happy to plunge naked into the river, risking being ejected by the steely-eyed porter, if you ask me to talk to some very grim man you’ve marked out for me, I’m saying no.’
‘Your one and only challenge is to admit that, somewhere deep in that black heart of yours, you have feelings for Spike.’ Lottie’s face was almost as solemn as it had been when she had been standing at the altar. ‘I know that although you’ve done your very best to distract yourself since you got back, you miss him. The fact that you haven’t mentioned him at all tells me all I need to know.’
‘You are completely and utterly wrong,’ Tina said indignantly. ‘He’s barely crossed my mind.’
Although of course he had. She had tried not to dwell on anything Spike-related, but she had found a hundred things that reminded her of him – the way a passer-by dipped his head, or the sky being the same colour as it had been that night in the desert when they had huddled together on the blow-up mattress, a glass of red wine that tasted of blackcurrant, damson, wet rope and just a hint of soil. It made her furious with herself, but she couldn’t seem to help it. It was perverse to be languishing after a man who blatantly had no interest in her. He hadn’t tried to ring her or even send her a message. He was clearly happy to be alone, chasing meteorites across scrubland.
‘Do you accept my challenge?’ Lottie asked. ‘Remember, if you say no you will have failed.’
‘This isn’t a fair challenge at all,’ Tina protested. ‘And anyway, I could just say it and not mean it.’
‘You said you’d be able to tell if I’d had a poo in the desert or not – well, I’m going to be able to tell whether you’re telling the truth about Spike.’
Tina groaned. ‘Why have I been afflicted with a sister who thinks she’s Miss Marple?’
‘Time’s running out,’ Lottie said, lacing up her shoes. ‘Aunt Philippa looks as if she’s making her way towards us,’ and indeed, when Tina looked up, a woman in a powder-blue suit and cornflowers on her hat was marching over. She was one of the few relatives the sisters could bear, despite the fact that she always acted as if it was a crime to run out of words.
‘OK,’ said Tina. ‘Because it’s your wedding day, I’ll admit that it’s just possible that I may have slight, almost insignificant feelings for Spike. Are you happy now?’
‘There, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?’ Lottie got up and stroked her sister’s head, then skilfully cut Philippa off at the pass. She looked back, grinning as she put her arm through her aunt’s and led her to the buffet.
Weddings went on far too long in Tina’s opinion. It took about two seconds to say ‘I do’, and yet there were hours and hours in which the guests were expected to enjoy standing pinned into lawns by their heels, waiting for incoherent speeches or undignified scrambles for flung bouquets. At least as the official photographer she had something to do other than hang around hoping some more food might make an appearance. She thought she probably should take some pictures of the guests so that there was a proper record of who had turned up to endure the day.
She captured a shot of two little girls in grubby party dresses crouched digging with spoons in a flowerbed. She took a close-up of King Ramses’ head – the centrepiece of the wedding table, which had arrived from Greg that morning. A group of reunited college friends, made a little giddy by the temporary illusion that things were just the same, stood laughing in a line against a golden brick wall. A woman held a baby above her head and made it swoop, gurgling, through the air. Arms were draped around shoulders and dresses held out for examination. Heads were thrown back in laughter and tilted up to kiss. Some people posed. Others pretended not to notice the intrusion. Only one person looked directly into the lens of her camera. She took the picture before she had really registered who it was. A man in a suit, crumpled around the knees, arms by his side, his face with its sure lines just a little doubtful. She stood still and he came towards her. She could feel her body trembling although she knew no one else would see it.
‘What are you doing here?’ She tried not to smile, the habit of self-protection still strong. No point giving the game away.
‘Lottie invited me,’ Spike said. ‘Which was very kind of her considering the fact that Dean probably wants to take another swing at me. I think she really had to work on him.’
‘It’s funny, she never mentioned it,’ she said.
‘I think she meant it as a surprise. A good one, I hope.’
She didn’t answer, only looked at him, and he looked back and she saw the hope in his face. She felt the thud of her heart. It seemed that perhaps he wasn’t indifferent to her after all.
‘I gather she gave you a challenge,’ he said. He smirked a little, but not too much.
‘She’s the most annoying sister in the world.’
He leant towards her. She hesitated, not because she wanted to make him wait but to give herself the time to choose, the time to look him in the face and know all of it and jump anyway. Then she took a deep breath and kissed him.
*
Later, when people were beginning to gather their bags and their children, who, high on staying up late and fizzy lemon, still ran in endless circles round the garden, and when the river had assumed its night-time glisten and the grass had turned just a little damp, Lottie and Tina danced together slowly across the lawn.
‘So, is it happy ever after?’ Lottie asked Tina.
‘It’s happy tonight and perhaps tomorrow,’ Tina said, smiling. ‘That’s as far as I am prepared to plan.’
‘It’s as far as any of us should plan,’ Lottie said, putting her head on her sister’s shoulder.
‘I wish Mia could have seen you today, looking so serene and so lovely.’
‘I wish she could have seen you,’ said Lottie, ‘visibly swaying after five glasses of champagne, tears on your face, making your speech about how men come and go but sisters last forever.’
‘Yes, I caught Dean’s eye at one point and he looked like he wanted to kill me.’
They both laughed.
‘Dean really didn’t want Spike here. I had to tell him that I thought you and he had a real chance to be together.’
‘I love you.’
‘I want that in writing.’
They continued to dance even though the music had stopped.
‘Mia would have approved of today, I think. I hope,’ said Lottie.
‘Are you kidding? She would have been right at the front, beaming.’
‘We have to hold fast to each other, for us and for her.’
‘Yes, let’s hold fast forever,’ said Tina. ‘Let’s never argue again.’
‘Come on, Tina,’ said Lottie. ‘Be realistic.’
Lottie swung her sister round in a classic square dance move they had learnt as cowboys, and Tina smiled as she bent under
her arm to end up where they had begun.
Acknowledgements
THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN DURING a period of change and anxiety. It was difficult at times to think about a holiday road trip when life was rather bleak, but sticking at it also gave my days shape and purpose.
I would like to thank all the people who have helped me and my family navigate what has been a less than smooth ride. I love each and every one of you.
I would also like to thank my agents, Luigi Bonomi and Alison Bonomi. I hope you know how much I appreciate your support and your faith in me. I am grateful to Sarah Bauer at Bonnier for her cheerfulness and invaluable editorial insight, and to Katie Lumsden for her keen eye. Thank you also to my copyeditor, Rhian McKay, and my proofreader, Jenny Page.
Felix and Olivia and Sid and Jack bring pleasure and pride to my life and make me feel so lucky. I thank my mother, Valerie, for her wisdom, and apologise to her for not always listening.
Lastly, and as ever, I thank my husband, David, who remains true and steadfast whatever life throws at him. I intend to ensure that however long or short the road, we will live it a lot.
About the Author
Madeleine Reiss was born in Athens. She worked for some years in an agency for street performers and comedians and then as a journalist and publicist. She has two sons and lives in Cambridge with her husband and her younger son. Her previous novels are Someone to Watch Over Me, Before We Say Goodbye and This Last Kiss.
The Inspiration Behind Live A Little
I AM ONE OF THREE SISTERS, and although some of our characteristics (shared and distinct) have crept into the novel, we are not very much like siblings Mia, Lottie and Tina in Live A Little. The road trip featured in the book is, however, true to life.
My sister Tania and I took almost exactly the same route several years ago in a white convertible. We wore cowboy hats and had adventures and marvelled at the beauty of America – although, I would like to make it clear that we didn’t pick up a handsome hitchhiker, since we were both happily married and not even a little bit interested in sexy geologists. My youngest sister Thomasina wasn’t able to come on the trip, but I am glad to report that she is alive and well and didn’t travel with us in an urn.
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