by Fiona Harper
Her natural response would have been to stand there and shake her head in disbelief, but the rain—which was rapidly solidifying into sleet—was bombarding her top to toe. She pushed her wet hair out of her face, ran back inside and closed all the doors.
Not knowing what else to do, she sat cross-legged in front of the fire, staring at the patterns on the blue and white tile inserts until they danced in front of her eyes.
Toby had been good with show-stopping gifts—diamonds, cars, even a holiday villa in Majorca once—but none of those things measured up to this. None of those gifts had this depth of thoughtfulness, this knowledge of who she was and what she needed.
Louise stood up and placed a hand over her mouth.
Oh, this was dangerous. All at once, she saw the folly of her whole ‘daydreaming is safe’ plan. It was backfiring spectacularly. Her mind now revolved around Ben Oliver, her thoughts constantly drifting towards him at odd moments throughout the day. And now her brain was stuck in the habit, it was starting to clamour for more—more than just fantasies. Especially when he did things like this. She was aching for all the moments she’d rehearsed in her head to become real.
Heaven help her.
So much for standing on her own two feet and never letting a man overshadow her again. Ben Oliver was an addictive substance and she was hooked. She should have known from Laura’s diary that letting her imagination run free might be the path to destruction. The last thing she wanted was to lose herself again, not when she’d come so far. In the last few months she’d started to feel less like Toby’s wife and more like someone else, even if she wasn’t sure who that woman was yet. But it would be so easy to fall into the role of the woman who adored Ben, and nothing else.
Dangerous.
She looked around the room. As a declaration of independence, she ought to just pack it all up and leave it outside the door, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. If she did, the boathouse would seem as stripped and hollow as the mansion sitting on the hill, and she’d come here to escape that.
The decorations piled in the cardboard box twinkled, begging her to let them fulfil their purpose, and she obliged them, hanging each one with care from the soft pine needles, hoping that the repetitive action would lull her into a trance.
When she’d finished, she pulled the patchwork quilt off the day-bed, draped it around her shoulders and sat on the floor in front of the fire, her back supported by one of the wicker chairs. In the silence, all she could hear was the sound of her own breathing and the happy licking of the flames.
After sitting that way for a few minutes, she decided she needed something to do, something to distract herself from the thoughts bombarding her brain, so she retrieved Laura’s diary from its home and sat back down on the floor with it. Perhaps Laura had the answer.
Had her dreams turned into reality without dragging her down, or had she and Dominic just destroyed everything and everyone around them? Suddenly she really needed to know. Maybe it would help her decide what to do about her own fantasy man.
6th January, 1954
I waited nervously for Dominic at a little restaurant in Pimlico. No point in going somewhere in the West End—we’d have been spotted in a second. Instead of dressing up for lunch, as I’d so wanted to do, I had to dress down. Nicely cut dress, but it was grey, not the green one I’d wanted to wear, and I put a raincoat over the top. I also covered my hair up with a scarf.
I was early. A mix of reasons: partly because I was so desperate to actually see him and partly because I was so terrified of being late that I left more than half an hour extra for the taxi ride from Victoria.
Dominic had asked for something away from the window and the waiter showed me to a little cramped space near the kitchen where a table for two only just fitted. I stared at it in dismay before I sat down. Love is supposed to be grand and glorious. One is supposed to want to shout it from the rooftops. But Dominic and I can’t even sit in the window with the winter sunshine falling on our faces; we have to hide away in a dingy corner, disguising our love from the world.
Not for the first time a shiver rippled through me. Was this what I really wanted? And was I prepared to strip my feelings for Dominic of all their sparkle and grandeur just so we could be together? Something about this little table felt seedy. Tarnished.
I took off my gloves, folded them and placed them in my handbag, and then I sat down, staring out towards the chink of window I could see. I waited for twenty minutes, and then another thirty.
Just as I was pulling my gloves back out of my handbag, a shadow fell over me. I looked up to find him standing there.
At first I jumped up, ready to throw my arms around him, because I was so thrilled at seeing him that I didn’t really register the look on his face. I stopped halfway to flinging myself into his embrace and my arms dropped back down to my sides.
His mouth was straight and his lips were thin, a horrible shape for them to be, but it was his eyes that were the worst. At first I thought there was a hardness there, a coldness, but then I realised it was because the emotions swirling underneath were so strong, so dark, that he had to be that way to hold it all together.
I said his name, and my voice wavered.
He shook his head. He didn’t sit down.
‘I can’t …’ he said. ‘We can’t …’
Then the coldness was inside me too, swirling down inside, freezing everything it touched. My question must have been written on my face, because he answered it without me even opening my mouth.
Why?
‘Because Jean is expecting my child,’ he said. ‘I can’t go through with this, Laura. I can’t be that kind of man. I will not.’
I nodded.
I understood, even as my heart was breaking.
‘I can’t see you again,’ he said, and I cried at the pain in his eyes. I cried like a fool. And for the first time, I didn’t cry for myself, because I couldn’t have the man I loved; I cried for him, for his pain.
He reached inside his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. He didn’t even touch me, just laid it on the table where I could reach it. And then, while I was still sobbing and mopping up my tears with a square of cotton that smelled like him, he took a step back.
‘Goodbye, Laura,’ he said, and then he was gone.
That was when I cried for myself, for the foolish longings I’d let grow out of control, for the wasteland that my marriage would always be after this, no matter how hard we both tried. But mostly I cried because Jean had won. She’d trumped me, and I could do nothing about it.
Louise was still staring at the pages, her mouth slightly open, when there was a knock at the door. Unable to move, she just transferred her gaze and stared at it instead.
Whoever it was—and let’s face it, she’d win no prizes for guessing who—knocked again. She rose to her feet slowly, keeping the quilt wrapped tightly around her and walked over to open it. Her heart jumped as if it were on a trampoline when she saw him standing there, his wet hair plastered to his face, a large brown paper bag in one hand and a rucksack in the other.
‘Ben.’
Nice, she thought. Eloquent.
‘Louise.’
At least they both seemed to be afflicted by the same disease.
He brandished the paper bag. ‘Can I come in?’
She stepped back and let him pass and he handed her the paper bag, which was warm and smelled of exotic spices. He moved past her and placed the rucksack on the floor.
‘I ought not—seeing as you’ve already indulged in a spot of breaking and entering today.’ She kept her voice deliberately flat and emotionless.
He stopped halfway through struggling off his green waxed coat. ‘You don’t like it? Oh, Louise! I’m so sorry. I was just trying to …’
The look of remorse on his face was like a punch in the gut. She’d tried to be cross, but she couldn’t. How could she? She grabbed the back of his coat with one hand and tugged at it, signalling for him to
stay, take it off. ‘You succeeded.’
The relief on his face was palpable. ‘Thank goodness for that. I have food in here and I didn’t want to have to sail it back across the river and eat it cold.’
She peered in the top of the brown bag. ‘Curry? That’s not very traditional.’
Ben took the bag from her and began unpacking its contents on to the low coffee table in the centre of the room. ‘Nonsense. I’m sure I read somewhere that Chicken Tikka Masala has now overtaken traditional Sunday roast as the nation’s favourite dish.’
Louise reached for the old picnic set she’d found in a box when she’d cleared out the boathouse and pulled out a couple of plates and some cutlery. Pretty soon they were sitting in the wicker chairs, feasting on a selection of different curries and side dishes. She broke a crunchy onion bhaji apart with her fingers and dipped it in some mango chutney. While she chewed, she looked at Ben, who was absorbed in his meal. Finally, when he glanced in her direction, he froze.
‘What?’
How could she say how much this all meant to her? There just weren’t enough words. And maybe that was okay. Maybe the true depth of her feelings should go unexpressed. She settled for simple and elegant. ‘Thank you, Ben.’
The hesitation in his eyes turned to warmth.
‘Why did you … I mean, why … all this?’
He put his plate down and looked at her long and hard. ‘I remember how awful it was my first Christmas without Jas.’ He gave a half-grin. ‘Put it down to me being a single dad with too much time on his hands. Jas is away, my parents live in Spain now and my sister has gone to visit her in-laws. I can’t even rely on work to be my saviour—no one wants any gardening done at this time of year.’
Oh, that just sounded too good to be true. Too nice.
‘Yes, but you didn’t have to do all this.’ A horrible nagging thought whispered in the back of her mind: nobody does anything entirely altruistic reasons. He must want something. People always wanted something.
The little scratchy voice whispered louder. Perhaps you’ve got him all wrong. Perhaps you’ve been fooled by him, just like you were with Toby. She tried to drown it out, but it just kept spiralling round, growing louder, until she had to do something to stop it.
‘I’m not sleeping with you,’ she blurted out.
Oh, Lord! Had she really just said that? Her cheeks flamed and burned.
Ben’s grin turned to stone and he stood up, and practically threw his naan bread down on the table. ‘If that’s what you think, I’d better leave.’
Instantly, she was on her feet. ‘No! I’m so sorry! I don’t know what made me say that. After you’ve been so kind …’ At that moment, she hated herself more than she’d ever done for wearing fake smiles in front of the paparazzi and pretending her life with Toby had been a glorious dream.
Ben was pulling his coat on, his back to her. She laid a hand on the still-wet sleeve, tears blurring her vision. ‘Please, Ben! It’s just …’ Oh, hell. Her throat closed up and she couldn’t hide the emotion in her voice. ‘… nobody ever does something for me without wanting something—without wanting too much—back. I’m just not used to this.’
He turned to face her, his expression softening slightly. ‘Really? No one?’
She shook her head, too ashamed to speak any more. How did you tell a man like him nobody had ever thought enough of you to make that kind of effort? She always had to earn people’s love—by being the one who gave and gave and gave. Even Toby had only kept around as long as he had because it was good for his image, nothing more. And she’d let her younger brothers and sisters grow up thinking she was strong, that she never needed anything. She hadn’t wanted to burden them the way she’d been burdened. And they’d believed it. They still believed it. And why should she tell them otherwise? They had their own lives now. It was their turn to shine. She’d had hers.
‘I’m so sorry, so sorry …’ she said, sinking into the nearest chair and covering her face with her hands. ‘I’m no kind of company at the moment, so maybe you’d better just go.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Louise mumbled something through her hands. It sounded very much like: ‘Oh, God. I’m such a mess.’
He wasn’t sure what to do. Louise had the ability to make his head swim, to prompt him into doing outrageous things that the sensible side of his brain knew he shouldn’t be doing. He looked round at the holly, the candles, the stupid tree. It was all too much, wasn’t it? He’d tried to fend her off by being nice, and the knight-in-shining-armour had swooped in and turned it into a grand gesture.
A grand romantic gesture.
One that he wasn’t sure Louise had appreciated. Not if her outburst was anything to go by.
But then he looked at the tree again. It was dripping with baubles. He’d abandoned the box when he’d seen Louise emerge from the woods, deciding it was best not to be standing there like a prize banana when she walked in. But while he’d been away getting the curry she’d decorated the ‘stupid’ tree. Something warm, something that felt suspiciously like hope, flared within him.
She was sitting all curled in on herself, staring at the floor.
‘Louise …? What’s going on? I don’t get it.’
She shook her head, still staring ahead blankly. ‘Neither do I.’
He shrugged off his coat and threw it on the sofa then came round to sit in the wicker chair opposite her. ‘You’re used to having so much … such luxury … Why are a few bits of holly and some borrowed Christmas decorations such a big deal?’
She blinked very slowly, as if moving those tiny muscles was a huge effort. ‘It wasn’t always that way. The money … the stuff … that all came after I married Toby. Before that I was … we were … poor.’
He leaned forward, hoping she’d turn and look at him sometime soon. ‘I didn’t know that.’
She raised one shoulder and let it drop again. ‘It’s no secret. Tabloid fodder in the early days. But they don’t know it all. Hardly anyone knows the truth …’ She moistened her lips and met his gaze. ‘My mum died when I was twelve and my dad got ill the following year. His work were great at first, but then he was on sick pay and then on benefits … With five kids to look after, it didn’t stretch very far.’
She stopped talking and just gazed into the fire. He wanted to say something, but he had the feeling she hadn’t talked about this in years and that if he made a sound she might clam up completely. Instinct told him that wouldn’t be a good thing.
‘I did my best to fill mum’s place, but it was just like when I used to dress up in her shoes and clump around in them when I was little.’ She paused to smile at the memory. ‘I did my best, but I wasn’t her. I cooked, cleaned, was nurse to my father and sergeant major to the other kids, but I was out of my depth and no one came to help me.’
She rolled her eyes and gave him a wry smile. ‘In my dramatic teenage way, I imagined myself a modern-day Cinderella—overworked, unpaid, at everybody’s beck and call … But what we lacked in money and glamour we made up for in other ways.’
Ben had a feeling nobody knew any of this about Louise. They wouldn’t judge her if they did, but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t broadcast this. She wasn’t full of herself, but she was proud.
‘And then Cinderella’s fairy godmother turned up?’
She let out a dry laugh. ‘If I ever see that woman again I’m going to have her prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions act. I thought fairy godmothers were supposed to bring happy ever afters, not divorce and disaster.’
And then her expression grew more serious, lines creasing her forehead. ‘She brought me Toby. He was handsome, rich, famous … and he looked at me as if I was something more than the no-hope skinny girl who was failing all her exams, like I was destined for more than trudging through the crappy jobs that no one else wanted to do day after day.’
Well, at least the big-headed lump of an ex-husband had got something right. ‘You are worth more,’ h
e said softly.
Louise paused for a moment, but then she carried on talking, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to react to his words. She rested her elbows on her knees, put her chin in her hands and looked at him. ‘Was it first love with Megan?’
He nodded. That seemed such a long time ago now, as if it had happened to two other people in another life. ‘I had the biggest crush on her at school, but she was so shy it took me months before I could manage to tell her about it. But when she finally let me know she was interested too … That was it. I knew right then she was the one for me.’
And she could have been the one for him, if she’d only just believed it. Instead she’d pulled the plug and had given up, leaving their marriage to flatline.
Louise sat up again and nodded. ‘First love … it’s a bitch,’ she said. ‘I fell as hard and fast as first loves come.’ She let out a gentle self-mocking laugh that was more of a loud breath. ‘I thought Toby was my salvation, my knight in shining armour, charging in to save me from my life of drudgery. I just didn’t realise the price tag would be quite so high …’
He reached over and touched her hand. ‘What seventeen-year-old girl would have been able to resist that? It must have seemed like the answer to everything.’
‘I should have known.’ She shook her head. ‘Mum would have realised. She would have told me I was just dazzled, that I needed to slow down and think instead of rushing into marriage … But I was too selfish and too impatient.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I got what I deserved.’
Ben stared at her. How could she believe that? How could she believe that what her husband had done to her was in any way her fault?
‘It doesn’t work like that, Louise.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, could you please tell karma that, because I think, in that case, I’ve got someone else’s just desserts.’
That’s when the realisation of why she’d freaked out at his kind gesture finished creeping up on him.
Louise Thornton, the woman the press believed had everything, didn’t know how accept a simple gift, even one of time and effort rather than money and things. How odd, when she gave of herself constantly—any fool could see that if they looked hard enough. But he had a feeling she’d forgotten that giving was only half of the equation.