by Maeve Haran
‘And six buttonholes for the bridegroom and ushers. Yes she is.’
‘How much do we owe her for this lot?’ Even Gaby was beginning to realize how much the whole day was costing.
‘Ella says they’re her gift to you. Plus all the centrepieces for the tables.’
‘Oh, Mum, that’s really kind of her!’
‘Yes.’ Claudia hoped a little chink of reality might be opening up. ‘It is.’
‘Sally . . .’ Lara began.
‘Sally? Oh dear, this must be serious. Call me Sal, everyone does. Sally sounds like someone else.’
They were in Sal’s flat and Lara was making her a supper of gnocchi with tomatoes. With Lara here the flat didn’t seem empty. She had a knack for adding unobtrusive touches – a couple of red tulips in a jam jar – a scented candle – that made Sal’s flat of twenty years more a home than it had ever been before.
‘I have to go back to Trondheim tomorrow. Max must spend some time at the university and I need to look after the children.’
Sal knew she must hide her disappointment. She’d been so lucky to have Lara here this long. ‘Lara, you have been so kind, having you here really has made all the difference.’
‘Max’s mother is happy to take over again soon. I will come back next week.’
‘You really don’t need to.’
‘But I want to.’ Lara’s bright blue eyes looked momentarily troubled. ‘Am I interfering? Would you rather I didn’t come?’
Sal laughed out loud. ‘I love having you. I have never had anyone to look out for me since I was a little girl. Always the big independent woman, me. I didn’t need a man. I didn’t need kids. But when you get to sixty, life can start to feel a little lonely, and you’re not as strong when something like this comes out of the blue. So, yes, I would love you to come back. If you really can come without too much disruption to your own life.’
‘Max’s mother, Hedvig, likes the chance to put right all my slack discipline,’ Lara laughed. ‘She gets them to sit up straight, do their homework, have good table manners.’ She grinned wickedly. ‘So when I get home again they are very, very pleased to see me. I do have one condition, though. Not condition. Request.’
‘Fire away.’
‘That you tell your employers the truth, that you are ill, that you are being treated for cancer. So that they understand and can give you the time off you need to get better instead of snatching a day here and a day there. It is too much strain. You worry they will not keep you on but I worry that with so much stress you will not properly recover.’
Sal closed her eyes. Lara’s dislike of secrets had a remorseless logic. She had too many of them in her life.
This last occasion when she had needed time off for a hospital appointment, when another lie had been called for, she had not carried it off as easily as before. Lies needed confidence and all of a sudden hers was in short supply.
‘OK.’ She smiled at her new-found daughter. ‘Done. I’ll tell them as soon as I know when I have to go in for the operation. Lara Olsen, you are a miracle.’
‘I bet you didn’t say that when you did the pregnancy test.’
‘Maybe not,’ Sal conceded, thinking how weird it was that what should be the scariest, unhappiest moment of her life was turning out to be so wonderful.
Ella arrived before 5 a.m. at Nine Elms Market to choose the wedding flowers, impressed at how well organized it was, and how easily accessible it was to ordinary people like herself. She thought maybe she would need some special florist’s pass to the biggest flower market in the country, but it was open to all.
The market itself was a little daunting with its acres and acres of stalls, some general, some specializing in particular varieties, all bustling and busy with crowds. It felt like every florist in London was here buying at the same time.
She wanted to find the very best choice for Gaby’s wedding and place her order today for collection in time for the big day.
It was so hard. She had come for cream roses and lilies but other blooms kept tempting her with their velvety petals and exotic looks. Tiny white stephanotis with its seductive scent, palest pink hydrangeas, jasmine flowers, and glorious peonies – her favourite flowers – pink and dark red and creamy off-white.
She was just beginning to feel dizzy at the range of choices when someone caught hold of her elbow and turned her gently round.
‘El-la!’
‘Wenceslaus! What on earth are you doing here?’
Minka, her arms loaded with blooms, was standing behind him.
‘We are having a goodbye party at the salon. Minka and I are going back to Poland for a few months to start a business there and we are saying goodbye – don’t forget us – to Minka’s customers.’
‘So, are you closing the salon down?’
‘No, not at all.’ Minka shook her head. ‘Is nice little earner, as you Brits say. We have opened another in Acton Town. We have one little problem. Our manager we have lined up has been poached by old boyfriend, you remember, one in Porsche? He do it deliberately to make trouble. Now we have to find new manager, double quick.’
‘How about you, El-la?’ Wenceslaus asked. ‘You are very organized lady.’
‘Me?’ Ella was flattered that he had forgotten her leaving keys in doors, losing her car, and other examples of not being ‘organized lady’ at all.
‘I’m too busy already with the allotment. Besides, I don’t know anything about hairdressing.’
‘Not that important. Stylists all self-employed. Just need someone to make sure salons well-run, have stuff they need, are nice to customers, not keeping all profits for themselves. Anyone who has brain could do it.’
‘Well, I do have a friend who helps run a supermarket.’ This was exaggerating Laura’s role a tad but she was sure Laura could manage LateExpress if she got the chance, and why not the salons?
She’d just have to get Laura to meet them.
Claudia had said she could invite a friend to the post-wedding party, since it was outdoors and, unlike the select wedding and reception, designed to be big and noisy and more-the-merrier. She had a feeling Claudia would stretch it to two, especially if she knew why.
‘Just don’t put it on Facebook,’ Claudia had teased, ‘or all the disreputable oldies in the county’ll turn up.’
‘Look, I’m doing the flowers for a wedding in Surrey next weekend and there’s a big party afterwards. I’ll see if you two could come along.’
She quickly dialled Claudia’s number. ‘How’s everything? This is a bit of a cheek so please say no, but could I bring two rather than one to the evening party?’
Apparently, since she was doing the flowers, she was very welcome to invite two friends along, Claudia insisted.
‘Come to the dance and meet my friend Laura,’ she suggested to them both. ‘See if you hit it off.’
She wrote down the address and handed it to them.
Wenceslaus and Minka, with their boxes of blooms, waved and headed for the car park. It was only when they were out of sight that Ella remembered that, in her enthusiasm to find Laura a better job, she’d forgotten that among the other people invited to the party were her daughter Julia and her husband Neil.
CHAPTER 24
‘Mum, you’re not ready.’
This was an understatement, to say the least. Olivia had asked Claudia to take her shopping for her wedding outfit, yet here she was, still in her dressing gown, her hair unwashed, staring at her reflection in the triple mirror as if she needed confirmation of her own existence.
Claudia sat down next to her on the wide stool, and put her arm gently round her mother’s shoulders. ‘Have you taken your pills today?’
Olivia shrugged. ‘I hate them, Claudia. I don’t feel like me.’
‘But you really need to, Mum.’
She almost wept at the cruelty of her mother’s condition, that the mad bursts of energy that had worried them so much should be counterbalanced by such desolation as s
he saw in her mother’s face today.
‘You should go without me. I’m no use to anyone in this mood.’
‘Absolutely not. First I’m going to get your pills.’
‘I don’t know where they are,’ Olivia replied mutinously. ‘I’ve forgotten where I put them.’
‘I’ll ask Dad.’
She found her father sitting in a deck chair outside the back door reading the newspaper. It was such a familiar image from her childhood that the years rolled away. ‘Hello, Pops,’ she greeted him, ‘hiding out here as usual.’ She sat down opposite him.
Len smiled, but she could see it was an effort, unlike the spontaneous good humour she was used to. ‘Mum OK?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Not really. Is she taking the medicine? She says she doesn’t know where the pills are.’
Len sighed. ‘She hides them. Usually I find them and stand over her till she takes them. She finds different places to put them in. I wasn’t up to it last night, I’d forgotten you were coming.’
‘Will she be well enough for the wedding?’
Len smiled, some of his anxiety evaporating. ‘Try and keep her away.’
‘Good. Can you have a look in her usual hiding places? I’m not sure a shopping trip’s a good idea. I’ll wash her hair and maybe we’ll see if she’s already got something suitable in the wardrobe.’
Len put down the crossword. He’d aged years since her mother’s diagnosis, as if their mental and bodily health were inextricably linked, which perhaps they were when you had been together as long as they had. Each gave the other a reason for breathing.
Claudia followed her father into the kitchen. He opened up various jars and tins. ‘Nope. She’s getting cleverer.’
He eventually found them hidden under a pile of hand towels in the downstairs lavatory. ‘It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.’ He opened his arms and Claudia hugged her beloved father, realizing how much of his strength and twinkly good humour had depended on Olivia’s glowing energy source.
She would have to get more involved with them, help them get back the balance that had sustained them over so many years. It struck Claudia with a sudden icy panic that she had lost the equilibrium that sustained her own marriage.
How easy it was for things to fall apart if all you did was stop making the effort to keep them together.
She’d been worrying about her mother and how to deal with her condition, and she’d been worrying about her daughter, hoping she hadn’t fallen for the wedding rather than the man. But perhaps what she should be worrying about was herself and what was happening in her own life.
Sal sat at her desk at New Grey, surveying two very different communications. The first was a letter informing her of her mastectomy date. The second was the invitation to Claudia’s daughter’s wedding just three days earlier.
She wanted to get in touch with Lara and tell her at once. But first she had a promise to her daughter that she had to fulfil.
‘Rose, do you think I could have a word?’
Sal had promised Lara faithfully that she would come clean about her illness, but she was dreading it all the same. She had decided to broach Rose first, even though Michael Williams was CEO, because she decided Rose would be more likely to be understanding. There was also, she had sometimes sensed, an affinity between Rose and herself. They both recognized in each other the strength and endurance of women who had taken on the world largely alone, and who had revelled in doing so, but who were beginning to see the cost to themselves.
Thankfully, the timing of her announcement was good. They had just had their latest circulation figures and New Grey had climbed noticeably under Sal’s editorship after several periods of decline.
It was another glorious day and all the windows of Rose’s office were open. As it backed on to a goods yard, with no buildings to steal its light, it was so bright they could almost be in the country.
Rose had succeeded in turning her office into more of a library, with oak bookshelves covering every spare inch of wall, a big old-fashioned desk and two wing chairs next to the real fireplace. ‘I spend so much time here I like to feel at home,’ she laughed, pouring them coffees from the cafetière she always used with her home-made shortbread biscuits.
‘Do you make them yourself?’ Sal marvelled. Nothing she found out about Rose would surprise her.
‘Actually, they’re from the café round the corner,’ Rose admitted with a wink. ‘I buy them in bulk every week.’ She handed Sal a coffee. ‘Right, what can I do for you?’
Sal sipped her coffee. ‘Rose, there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘That you’ve got cancer.’
Sal almost gasped. ‘How did you know?’
‘My dear Sally, I’m almost eighty. Half my friends have had cancer. I recognize the signs.’
‘Do the others know, Michael for instance?’
‘Michael’s a man. He only notices what’s put in front of him, and what’s been put in front of him is that the circulation’s rising, we’re getting more advertising and we’re starting to be noticed on Twitter and other social media. I would say Michael is pretty pleased.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘More to the point, what kind of cancer?’
‘Of the breast. I’m about to have a radical mastectomy.’
‘Good. Best get the whole thing out of the way. Who needs breasts anyway? Any secondaries?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Even better. Now you’ll be needing time off to recover from the operation.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘My friend’s daughter is getting married in two weeks and my operation is on the following Tuesday.’
‘I’ll see if Jonny can pop back in and take over for a bit.’ She flashed Sal a mischievous smile that deepened the runnels in her lizard-like skin. ‘Otherwise I might have to have a go at editing. That would really annoy Michael, but I think I’d be rather good.’
‘Rose,’ a Niagara Falls of relief was flooding through Sal at the wonder of the woman, ‘you are truly amazing.’
Rose chortled. ‘Thank you. Now I’m assuming you want this treated with discretion, seeing as you’ve been to such lengths to disguise it.’
‘I’ve never been much good at handing out pity and I certainly don’t want to receive it.’
‘I understand perfectly. I’d be the same. But the main thing is you get better, because we want you to keep running the magazine, to take it on to bigger and better things. Maybe even America. When do you want the time off?’
‘Not till after the operation. I’ll be fine until then. Thanks, Rose. I really do appreciate this.’
‘No problem, as our American brethren say. Or is it the Aussies? I’ll tell Michael and ask for his discretion.’
Sal found she was almost singing as she went back to her desk. She stopped for a moment and texted Lara: You were right. No more secrets. Rose was wonderful. And so are you. Xxx
The day was so blindingly beautiful that Ella, walking back from the allotments, stopped at the spot where the Grand Union flowed into the River Thames to watch the light on the water. It sparkled and danced under the bluest sky she could ever remember seeing. Crossing her fingers that it would keep up the good work for Gaby’s wedding, she turned to continue her journey.
On the other side of the path there was a row of workmen’s cottages she must have passed a hundred times, without really noticing them. Today the middle one caught her eye. It boasted a sign announcing FOR SALE BY AUCTION.
On a sudden whim she rang the number of the estate agent and made an enquiry.
The agent consulted his database. ‘Must be Number three, Grand Union Cottages, due to be auctioned next week. My colleague’s about to show someone around. Would you like a peek afterwards? No time like the present.’
Which was how, an hour later, Ella found herself looking out at the River Thames from the window of Number three, contemplating something she had never seriously contemplate
d before – a move from Old Moulsford and the house she had shared with Laurence and where she had brought up her family.
The cottage was a very different prospect from her present house. Three small bedrooms instead of five large ones, only one bathroom – though it was at least upstairs and there was a loo on the ground floor – a through sitting room, a small but pretty back kitchen looking into a lovely garden.
It also had several things to recommend it. First of all, the extraordinary views over the river; it was also near the allotments where she was spending more time now that Viv and Angelo had let her take over; finally, it seemed to be in surprisingly good condition, and, as it was in the centre of the row, it felt particularly safe.
Living here she wouldn’t need a Wenceslaus to ward off burglars, she would have near neighbours either side.
‘Any idea what it’ll go for?’
‘Maybe half a mill? You never know at auction, but look at the vista.’
What a strange world it was, Ella thought. These cottages were almost certainly built for river workers, and would have been tied to their jobs. The rent would have been about ten shillings a week, fifty pence in modern money, and now they might fetch half a million pounds! The original occupants would have refused to believe it. But still, if Julia had been correct with her Internet investigations, her current home was worth enough to pay off the mortgage, buy this and give her daughters a sizeable lump sum each.
As she stared out at the sunlit water it made her smile that this was exactly what her daughter and son-in-law had wanted her to do all along. But now the boys were leaving their boarding schools and Julia and Neil seemed to be making a go of things, so it would probably matter less. And perhaps if she’d given them the money sooner Neil would never have seen how much it meant to Julia to have them home.
Of course she’d have to hold on to some money to fund her old age.
A question that had never occurred to her suddenly became real. I wonder how long I’ve got? She was almost sixty-four now, just like the Beatles’ song. Would she have fifteen more years, which would make her nearly eighty, or maybe twenty? For God’s sake, not thirty?