Players

by Karen Swan

  ‘No. Absolutely.’ She started pacing and found her focus again. ‘You’re right. Take things slowly. Woo her. Be the perfect gentleman and show restraint. Basically be everything you’re usually not on a date.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Well, thanks to the classy women you choose to go to bed with, your MO is well documented in black and white. It’s my job to know whether what’s being reported about you is lies or not.’

  ‘You know, you’re very good at this.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘Honeytraps.’

  ‘Just doing what it takes to save your sorry arse,’ she said tersely.

  ‘I’ll let you know how I get on.’

  He was still chuckling as the line went dead.

  Cress gave Tor and the kids a lift home from the café. They pulled up outside Tor’s narrow red-brick home, and Cress turned off the ignition. Tor didn’t unbuckle her seat. Faced with going back into the empty house and gearing up for supper and bathtime, with no prospect of Hugh’s keys in the door, her energy deserted her. She just needed a few minutes. She felt protected inside the blacked-out confines of Cress’s Cayenne.

  Cress sensed her energy dip. ‘Do you want me to come in with you? Greta can take my lot back.’

  ‘Bless you,’ Tor smiled. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  They sat together quietly for a few moments, Tor’s earlier conversation with Peter, Hugh’s partner at Planed Spaces, banging around in her head. They were at an impasse as to what to do with Hugh’s share of the business. Peter couldn’t afford to buy her out – at least not until the council contract was completed and he could explore venture capital options – and she couldn’t afford to wait.

  Tor had felt sorry for him, of course. Hugh’s death had had enormous repercussions for the business. He had been the schmoozer, Mister Charisma who’d wooed the clients (and how!) and brought in the business. Peter Golding was the technician, the backroom guy, never happier than with a protractor in one hand and a ruler in the other. Asking him to work a room and drum up new business was like asking him to pole dance for a hen party – it wasn’t going to happen.

  The two men had started that business from scratch, working all hours, sometimes through the night to see a job through – which had been easier for Peter than for Hugh. He wasn’t married and didn’t have a family at home, waiting for him. But it did mean he had an emotional attachment to the company that Hugh hadn’t. It was his dream, his baby. And the idea of someone new just coming in and calling the shots horrified him.

  So the only compromise they’d been able to reach was that Tor would leave it to Peter to find the new partner – that way he could get the fit he wanted. But a suitable investor could take months, even years, to find. Financial security was still nowhere near coming over her horizon.

  ‘You should go to Norfolk, you know,’ Cress said.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Tor said, staring out of the window.

  ‘And there’s something else you should do too.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A project,’ Cress said enigmatically.

  Tor looked at her in alarm. ‘Oh no! I am not redesigning your office, Cress. You were a bloody nightmare last time. It is simply not possible to have a cashmere blend in an industrial grade carpet. I’m not going over it again. I’m just not. Find someone else.’ Tor crossed her arms and stuck her nose in the air.

  Cress laughed. ‘No, no, no. It’s not that. It’s just that Harry’s decided he needs an apartment in LA.’

  ‘If you say so. And this involves me how?’

  ‘He wants you to do it up for him. I told him all about you.’

  ‘What?! Oh Cress, it’s a sweet thought – but don’t be daft! I can’t organize that from here. For Harry Hunter? Pah.’

  ‘Why not? All the big American companies have showrooms in Chelsea Harbour. And it’s an open budget, as you might expect. Just think what fun you’d have,’ Cress schmoozed. ‘It’s only a short-term project. He wants it completed in time for the Oscars in February. You can do it from here and he’ll pay you squillions.’

  ‘Is that what this is about?’ Tor asked, instantly suspicious.

  ‘No!’ Cress lied. ‘Look,’ she reasoned. ‘Harry needs an LA base, because he’s over there so much for the film adaptations. It’s going to happen with or without you on board, but he’s asked me to find someone for him, so you’d be doing me a favour if you’d just say yes.’

  Tor looked at her through narrow eyes.

  Cress sighed. ‘God, you drive a hard bargain. Right. Last offer. I’ll throw in Harry’s mobile number as well – you can stalk him if you like.’

  Tor couldn’t help but laugh. Cress was so ridiculous sometimes – but very persuasive.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sun was glistening on the duck pond as Tor rounded the bend and headed into Burnham Market. She’d made good time from London – two and a half hours – and she was in time to take the children to lunch at the tea-rooms on the green.

  She drove past the grand wisteria-clad Georgian town houses that stood like sentries at the south end of the village, boasting of its affluent farming past, and pulled up outside the bakery. Hopping out – oh, the bliss of being free from parking zones and traffic wardens – she unbuckled the children and they skipped along the pavement, deliberating on the likelihood of the tea-rooms serving hot dogs.

  Tor felt light today. She had slept dreamlessly – for the first time in weeks – and woken up refreshed. It had felt like a new beginning somehow, as if the page had turned and she could move on to the next chapter.

  Of course, Kate had been stunned that Tor wanted to flee to Norfolk quite so quickly – less than forty-eight hours after Kate had first mooted the idea – but she knew better than to try to stall Tor (for what, anyway?) and had couriered the key over, along with a hastily scribbled note showing how to turn on the hot water and please not to set the fire as the chimney hadn’t been swept yet.

  The tea-room was half full when they arrived and they bagged a big round table in the window so that the children could play I Spy. Afterwards, they popped into a small grocery shop to stock up on milk, bread, porridge, gingerbread men, honey, almond macaroons, Cheerios, orange juice, a couple of bottles of red and some washing powder. Clutching the rustly brown paper bags as though they were presents (the novelty of not carrying plastic bags), they all skipped back to the car.

  They found the house easily. It was halfway up a narrow lane that twigged off from the High Street and fed into wild-flower meadows. Called The Twittens – which amused Tor enormously – the front door was painted violet, probably to complement the banks of nodding lavender which brushed up from the gravel drive to tap the windows in the breeze.

  From the front, the house had a traditional Victorian brick and flint façade, with sage green painted casement windows. But as Tor went round the side to put away the bikes, she found a charming loggia that wrapped around the back, offering the perfect place to sit and look down the garden to the marshes and the sea beyond.

  It was enchanting. The garden was wild and untended. Mother Nature had been given free rein here and she had taken full artistic licence. It was like an artist’s palette of bright, clashing, tempting colour. Proportions were irregular, the scents heady.

  High hollyhocks and delphiniums populated the meandering beds, painting the garden with brushstrokes of white, purple and pink; a white wisteria drooped heavily from the balcony, looking majestic and tragic all at once, and the lawn looked more like a wildflower meadow with poppies scattered through the shin-high grasses. Best of all, though, was the simple treehouse she could just about see in the girdle of one of the crab-apple trees, and which the children screamed to go into. Rolling her eyes and knowing that she’d never be able to deter them on this, she checked the structure was sound – that the steps weren’t rickety, the wood wasn’t rotten – and then left them to it, free to run and laugh and play.

  She stoo
d at the gate, watching. It looked like a scene from an E. M. Forster novel, a landscape by Manet, an ode by Keats. Her friends had been right. This place would nourish her soul. She really could learn to feel better here.

  Locking the back gate, she opened the front door – which needed a fresh coat of paint when you got up close – and stepped inside. The hall was dark and poky, with original walls limed so heavily they may as well have been pebble-dashed. There were no pictures on the walls, no rugs on the floor; just a pale pink Lloyd Loom chair with an old shopping list and a copy of last year’s Yellow Pages on the seat.

  She threw down the car keys and, picking her way past a couple of sticky cobwebs, went through to the kitchen. It was bare. There was no fridge, the table was a child-sized one with diddy chairs arranged around it (chosen in panic by Monty because the standard adult ones were out of stock), and pristine saucepans hung from hooks suspended from the beams overhead.

  That said, though, it was a bucolic delight. The floor was laid with large flagstones which had worn to a mellow patina and the solid oak freestanding units were painted in an apple green which was flaking off, only adding to its charm. Tor went and ran a hand over one of the units, which had a white enamel top. It was cool to the touch – perfect for making pastry, she sighed. She rather liked the idea of herself in a pinny, making jam and bakewell tarts. But the pièce de résistance had to be the glossy chocolate brown Aga that gleamed proudly against the back wall. All this place needed – except for a fridge and a decent table – was a lab stretched out in front of the Aga, whimpering in its sleep as it dreamt of chasing cats.

  She opened the back door, letting the children’s jubilant shrieks carry from the garden into the house and waken it up. She poked her head around the door to a small pale blue sitting room which had nothing but a washable loose-covered sofa and a glass-topped coffee table. An ancient-looking telly with stand-up aerial sat on a removals box in the corner. She sighed – getting the children to cope without Sky might be the hardest thing of all.

  She walked down the corridor and climbed the creaky stairs, looking in on the bathroom – yikes! really and truly a peach suite – and smiling at the sight of the bunk beds in the spare room. Kate was so sweet, and a devoted godmother. Tor hoped so much she’d be a mother herself some day.

  The master bedroom – if you could call it that – had an antique French corbeille bed which Tor recognized. Kate had bought it for her first flat, but Monty wouldn’t have it in the house when they moved in together. He preferred a ‘cleaner’ style. Tor smiled. It looked good here. The vintage vibe worked.

  The bed was dressed with white cotton sheets and some thick wool cream blankets, edged with blue stripes, which had belonged to Kate’s mother at boarding school. A pea green eiderdown sprinkled with daisies nestled on top. It looked like the bed from ‘The Princess and the Pea’.

  Tor couldn’t resist climbing on and lying down for a moment. She suddenly realized she was shattered. Moving up to Norfolk and escaping London for the summer had expended a lot of emotional energy. If she could just rest for a moment . . .

  She heard the children burst into the house.

  ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Where are you, Mummy?’

  ‘I’m in the bedroom!’

  They thundered up the stairs and down the landing like a herd of baby elephants, jumping on the bed to join her. They loved lying down with Mummy.

  They lay like that for, oooh . . . minutes, before Oscar started pleading for some juice. Tor ruffled his head and padded downstairs to the kitchen. Walking back in, she put her hands on her hips and looked around happily at the naked little house.

  Time for a coffee, she felt.

  She was just scanning around for a plug-in kettle – there was a whistler next to the Aga, but she hated those – when her mobile rang.

  ‘Have I driven you away, is that it?’

  She laughed. ‘No.’

  ‘Then what the fuck are you doing in Norfolk already? You said you were going to think about it. Next thing I know you’ve run away.’

  Tor smiled. ‘Cress, I have not run away. This was your flipping idea.’

  ‘I’m coming up. Something’s wrong. Kate thinks so too. She’s just been on the phone.’

  ‘Well, clearly.’ Tor rolled her eyes.

  ‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, Victoria Summershill,’ Cress shouted down the line. ‘It’s not normal to suddenly uproot yourself and your family for two months with half an hour’s notice. I know when something’s wrong, and I’m telling you something’s wrong.’

  ‘What, you mean besides being widowed, left with three children and pretty much broke? Of course something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. Nothing’s right. What further justification do I need for getting away?’

  Cress sighed down the phone and it whistled down the receiver. ‘I’m your friend, Tor. I’m worried about you. You don’t share anything. You just keep on being superwoman. You haven’t even cried, for God’s sake. You’ve got to Let – It – Out. I’m worried you’re going to make like . . . like a Buddhist monk and spontaneously combust.’

  ‘Oh, you are dramatic,’ Tor dismissed. ‘I’m completely fine. I’ve simply taken Kate up on her very kind offer a little earlier than expected.’ There was an unconvinced silence. ‘I promise to stay away from matches.’

  ‘Hmm, well. I thought I might come up this weekend anyway. Keep you off the streets and all that. Mark’s taking the kids camping. They’re staying in some yurt in Dorset. From the looks of things it’s practically got an Aga and a spa attached. He wanted to take Greta but I told him over her dead body.’ She cackled mischievously.

  ‘Cress, stay with your family. They need you. You’ll have fun. You can’t keep babysitting me.’ Bugger. She wanted some solitude. Well, as much as you could get with three children under five.

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘No. You can’t.’ Tor’s voice was firm.

  There was a brief pause.

  ‘Oh, please let me come,’ Cress pleaded. ‘You know I’m not cut out for all that back-to-nature, sleeping under the stars crap. Oh, hang on a sec.’

  Tor heard some background murmurings, then Cress came back on the line. ‘I’ve got to go. Harry’s on the other line from LA. This conversation is so not over. I’ll speak to you later in the week.’

  And the line went dead.

  Tor sighed. Cress left her feeling exhausted at the best of times. She needed that coffee.

  She went over to the Aga. It was hot! The previous owners must have left it on. ‘That’s so dangerous!’ she muttered to herself, looking around for the dials to switch it off.

  In the absence of the fridge, she unloaded everything into the pantry, which was damp and cool (although it also meant the loo rolls were soggy.) It was better that than hanging the milk in a plastic bag on the back door handle in the eighty-degree heat, though, she figured.

  Having scored her cup of coffee, she began pootling around the kitchen, putting away Oscar’s bottles and the vast amount of plastic tableware and paper plates she’d brought up. Although Kate and Monty had bought a job-lot of beds, sofas, tables, chairs and towels from Ikea on completion day, and the previous owners had left the curtains – though Tor sorely wished they hadn’t – it was still a basic furnish. She’d need to stock up while she was here.

  Taking out the ingredients from the freezer bag she’d packed in London that morning – God, it felt like days ago already – Tor threw together a spaggy bol, the children’s favourite.

  As part of her break with the past, Tor decided not to eat with the children at 5 p.m. She was an independent grownup, and it was time she ate like one. She put her plate on the back of the Aga to keep warm (no microwave either) and ran the kids a warm soapy bath.

  Marney and Millie were beginning to bicker. Tor knew they were approaching the witching hour, the time when Daddy’s absence was most acutely felt. The excitement of the day had exhausted them anyway. She thought fast.
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  ‘Who wants to go cycling after bathtime?’

  The children’s jaws dropped. They never left the house after supper.

  ‘Me!’

  ‘Me!’

  Skinny little arms shot up into the air, and twenty minutes later, their damp hair was being pushed under cycling helmets. Tor had no route or itinerary to follow. They were just going on an exploring cycle through the village and down the lanes.

  The cool evening air felt delicious on their skin and the little family looked a deceptive picture of pure, unfettered happiness. Marney cycled alongside Tor without stabilizers – so proud – with Millie ahead of her with stabilizers and Oscar bouncing on the baby seat on the back of her bike. They sang ‘Daisy, Daisy’ at the top of their voices and gathered bunches of wild flowers (she had no idea what they were and resolved to buy a book that would teach them all) which Tor stuffed into the V of her jumper, for arranging in jam jars on the kitchen table.

  They stayed out for nearly an hour, way past bedtime, and they all trudged up the stairs without needing to be asked when they got home. But the exhilaration was as short-lived as their flushed cheeks, and the tears came anyway, as the children faced the end of another day with Daddy nowhere in sight. Every sob tore at her heart. Her actions had brought this upon them. It was all her fault.

  Tor snuggled up with Millie on the bottom bunk, singing lullabies to her babies until they had fallen asleep, and she stayed with them long after their breathing had changed, listening to their gentle snores. She deliberated running a bath for herself but she feared the peach and terracotta tiles in the bathroom would give her a headache. Besides, there was nothing to do in a bath but think. And she certainly couldn’t afford to do that.

  So she changed into her pink flannel pyjamas (which had a sartorial age of eighty-six) and finally ate her supper on the washable sofa, with a glass of Merlot, watching TV through a fuzz of snow.

  So this is how it will be, she thought resolutely. And it’s fine. She had got through this first day without any major mishaps or catatonic spells.