by Karen Swan
Today he had Hen in tow, which made him rather sulky as she was bound to curb his hoovering instincts. She had settled herself easily at the table (Tor had found an old pippy oak table at the Salvation Army shop which had scrubbed up beautifully), which reduced his chances of an amuse-bouche before dinner to practically nil.
Hen was restless, laying one hand on top of the other, and then switching, before swapping back again. Tor didn’t notice. She had her back to her, in companionable silence, and was wiping down the worktops. She’d perfected her baking (as she’d promised herself), and a batch of apricot cookies was baking in the Aga, making Diggory drool like a drunk.
The kettle whistled, and as Tor prepared some piping hot tea Hen couldn’t hold it in any longer.
‘I was talking to Rhianna Weston yesterday,’ she said casually, examining her impeccable nails.
‘Hmm, have I met her?’ Tor asked distractedly, pulling the cookies out. ‘I seem to recognize the name.’
‘Oh, yes, you’ve definitely met,’ Hen smiled, her eyes offset by her cornflower blue cashmere twinset. ‘The head at the primary. Light brown curly bob, short, voluptuous. Always dresses like it’s 1954.’
Tor smiled as she arranged the cookies on the wire rack. ‘God, yes! She’s a riot. I saw her coming out of the butcher’s once wearing a pillbox.’
Hen shook her head and laughed. Tor knew many of the faces in the village now. They had accepted her readily and welcomed her into the community with a warmth and generosity she’d never encountered before. Privately, she suspected her widow status meant she got sympathy votes where once she would have had suspicion, but with Hen Colesbrook on her side as well, taking her to coffee mornings, toddler groups and even a book club (though she hadn’t yet managed to get her to the WI), she had soon become one of the best-connected people in the village.
‘Yes. We were just chatting about the school. Did you know they’re being nominated as a beacon school?’
‘Oh? What is that exactly?’ asked Tor, surreptitiously tossing a cookie to Diggory, before bringing the piled-high plate to the table.
‘It’s formal recognition of consistently achieving levels of excellence. A very big deal.’
‘Gosh, how wonderful! Honestly! How lucky are the children who get to grow up here?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘A childhood spent on some of the best beaches in Britain and now a flagship school as well.’
‘Yes, well, that’s what I was thinking,’ Hen murmured, before biting into a warm, unguent cookie.
Tor put the tea-cups down on the table. Impromptu tea breaks like this had become habitual, and she looked forward to hearing Hen’s operatic shouts of ‘Anybody home?’
They had become close quickly, and with the age gap and Tor’s own parents dead, there had been a natural inclination to fall into a surrogate mother-daughter relationship. Tor felt strangely unjudged and relaxed with Hen, and they shared a similar sense of humour, quite often laughing uproariously. But still, there were limits, and though they had never touched upon Hugh, Tor knew Kate must have briefed her fully, for Hen never pried for details. Tor liked that Hen allowed her to deal with her grief privately and didn’t try to bully her into emotional showdowns, unlike Cress (who, though sincere, was misguided).
‘What do you think of this for curtain material?’ Tor asked, pulling up a banner of vintage ticking, which she’d placed on the seat of a chair earlier. ‘I got it on eBay for a song. I thought it would look rather lovely in the bathroom?’
‘How very original. I think Kate will love that,’ Hen smiled warmly, running the fabric between her hands. She’d been a house model for Christian Dior in the fifties, before marrying her first husband, and had exquisite, and well-informed, taste herself.
‘You know, you have such a strong eye, Tor. You really should do something professionally. There are far too many people out there with appalling taste. They really do need to be saved from themselves. You may even qualify for some kind of grant. I mean, it would practically be a public service.’
‘Oh no. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Nonsense. Start here! Do up this place.’ Hen spread her palms wide, indicating the cottage. Tor had been systematically turning it into a home, a small rug here, a car blanket there, flowers in jam jars in the windows, the children’s artwork on the walls. It wasn’t chic yet, nor refined. But it had a feeling, a personality that was beginning to take shape.
‘Well, you know,’ Tor said slowly, ‘I was thinking of doing some bits and bobs round about – you know, as a way of saying thank you to Kate and Monty for letting us stay here. It’s just so unbelievably generous.’
‘Have you decided when you’re going back?’
Tor shrugged and looked down at her nails, which were badly bitten. In most other ways, she appeared to have turned a corner. The daily walks and plays on the beach had left her skin glowing and scrubbed – as though the salty breeze itself exfoliated her. For the first time in nearly three months, she had colour in her cheeks again, and there was some volume in her hair. Her new passion for home baking – she felt a deep-rooted need to nourish her family – meant she’d put on five pounds, and although still slender, she’d lost that shockingly gaunt look which had haunted her features. But her nails, bitten so far down as to reveal the angry red top of the nail bed, betrayed the guilt and anxieties that plagued her at night, when she lay alone in the dark without her husband.
‘Kate’s been forwarding my post up here. Marney’s term is due to start in three weeks. I just . . . Oh God, Hen, I just don’t know what to do. The fees are astronomical. I don’t think I can afford to send her now, but I daren’t give up her place. We had to fight tooth and nail, practically from birth, to get it.’ She paused, her voice dropped. ‘And . . . and . . .’
‘What is it?’ Hen prompted.
‘It’s Hugh. He really wanted a private education for the children. I feel I’ll be going against his wishes if I don’t send her . . .’
Hen leaned forward and placed a comforting hand over Tor’s. ‘He would understand that your reality is quite, quite different now – at least for the moment. And anyway, any decision you make now wouldn’t have to stand for ever. She’s only four. Maybe you could send her to prep in a few years, once your business gets going.’
‘Business?’ Tor asked. ‘Oh, that,’ she said warily, realizing just how serious Hen was about the interior design idea.
‘You should consider it, Tor. You could work from home, work your own hours. And I know you’d do well. Didn’t you say that Hunter fellow had bought the Hollywood apartment now?’
Tor nodded.
‘So that will be another string to your bow,’ Hen encouraged. ‘That’s two already and you’re not even trying yet.’ She leant in and whispered, full of mischief. ‘I know for a fact that Mo Rawlins has a wallpaper in the drawing room so hideous even the cockroaches die of fright.’ She sighed. ‘And I really must get round to redoing the library. I haven’t touched it since George died.’
George, Hen’s husband, had died five years earlier. He’d been a literary agent, so there were literally thousands of books stuffed on to bookshelves, stacked up in towers on the floor and piled high on the many reading desks dotted around the house. Hen kept fretting about the woodworm that was rife in the library and bringing the original Regency bookcases to a state of near-collapse, but she seemed incapable of making any kind of decision that would change how things had been when George was alive. Although she was an independent woman in so many ways, with a thumping social life, Tor often felt her grief was only just below the surface. The wound was still raw and unhealed, and Tor wondered whether other people could see the same loss in her.
She tried to focus her mind on the reality of setting up her own business. It was true – there would be few start-up costs and overheads would be low if she worked from home; she could fit her hours around the children.
‘Oh, Hen, you make it sound so easy,’ she said finally. ‘But
setting up my own business doesn’t solve the school situation. I won’t have the money in time. There’s only three weeks till the beginning of term and I’ll never get her in anywhere else now. All the places went two years ago. You have no idea how crazy Battersea is.’
‘So don’t send her there. Send her here.’
Tor looked up sharply.
‘What?’
‘Yes, they’ve got a place left. Rhianna told me. It’s yours if you want it.’
Tor gawped but couldn’t say anything. Her mind was a blur. Stay in Norfolk? She had never considered leaving London. It was in her DNA. She was an urban animal. Obviously, in the early weeks after Hugh’s death, it had been cathartic to escape. To get away from their old life. But she loved London – she loved the bustle, the vibe, the shops, the commons, Big Ben. OK, she didn’t love the pigeons or the noisy taxis chuntering down her road at three in the morning, or the traffic, or the congestion charge, or the sadistic traffic wardens on her street, or having the children charging round on their bikes precariously near to the roads, or the dark, narrow houses, or the gardens which were smaller than most people’s downstairs loos . . .
She stopped. There seemed to be quite a lot she didn’t like, now that she thought about it.
But no! She shook her head. What was she thinking? Had she completely lost her mind? She didn’t want to stay in Norfolk and actually set up a life here. There was no doubt she loved it here, but this was only ever supposed to have been a holiday, a break, a chance to get away.
Just because the thought of returning to London made her chest hurt didn’t mean it would always feel like that. That was just nerves, right? She had friends there, a life. The memories stabbed her now, but in time she’d be able to smile back at the friendly faces on the mummy runs and not see them as the ghosts of Christmas past. Wouldn’t she?
Hen raised her eyebrows, as though reading the tumult in her mind. ‘It’s at least worth a look, don’t you think? Beacon school; rounders on the beach; packed lunches in the dunes. Forget Battersea’s waiting lists. If all that came in a glossy prospectus, you’d sign up first and conceive later.’
Tor hid her smile behind her cup of tea, blowing on it carefully, as though snuffing out a candle. Hen was right.
‘Well,’ she said finally. ‘I guess it can’t hurt to have a look.’
In the background, Diggory – satisfied that a stealth mission beneath the table wasn’t required in the children’s absence – gave a long lazy snuffle and, befitting his status as the man of the house, began to snore.
Chapter Twenty-one
‘I’ve just seen Gordon Ramsay bump-parking his Ferrari outside the Hoste Arms,’ Kate whispered tipsily as she rejoined Tor at the bar. Tonight was the grand unveiling of Rick Stein’s newest venture, his north Norfolk answer to Padstow.
‘I know. His wife’s just over there, talking to Jools Oliver,’ she murmured back, as a clutch of Jennifer’s Diary regulars wafted past. Kate had come up for the weekend, after Monty had announced he was staying in the office to catch up with his paperwork and emails. Again.
The whole town had collaborated to celebrate the launch. Bunting was strung up between the horse-chestnuts, leaflets were taped to every window in the high street, and the premises on either side of the restaurant had even been repainted in complementary whispers of willow. The pretty bowed windows flanking the front door had herbs planted in the flower-boxes, sending aromatic wafts along on the sea breeze and enticing pedestrians inside.
‘It’s not your average provincial backwater, is it?’ Kate asked rhetorically, draining her glass. ‘I’m so glad we bought up here when we did. The launch of this place is going to push property prices even higher,’ she said excitedly.
Tor watched her, trying not to feel jealous of her success. Kate had had a fringe cut into her hair – which brought intense focus to her fabulous eyes – and she’d swapped her signature diamonds for some bold green glass jumbo-sized beads. Her white wrap dress was neither try-hard, nor showy, yet draped over her supple curves she still managed effortlessly to attract admiring glances from all the men.
A woman in her prime, Tor thought. Although they were both the same age, thirty-two, she didn’t put herself in that bracket any more. She’d had her babies. She’d had her marriage. Her time had passed. Babies and grief had aged her, and she felt invisible in this throng of bustling twenty-somethings all looking over their shoulders for the photographer who’d take their pictures and put them on the front page, or the man who’d walk in and change their lives.
Expecting some tepid wine and a few cheese biscuits – she could have kicked herself; what on earth had she been thinking? – Tor had left her jeans on and borrowed one of Hen’s Dior jackets from her days as a house model. With narrow arms and a sharp waist, it punched above its weight, but still, the most effort she’d put in was washing her hair. A summer spent at the beach had bleached the mousey blonde tones almost white around her face, and the back sections now glistened like sand.
Kate was knocking back her drinks and greeting most of the people there like old friends (many of whom were, to be fair) and Tor slipped back into being the ‘new girl’ again. Kate had been coming up to Burnham Market ever since she’d been with Monty, so for over fifteen years. His family had had a holiday home here, but given that they used it for every Christmas, Easter and Summer holiday, when he came back from boarding school, he regarded it more as home than Shropshire where the family ‘officially’ lived.
Kate gave a little gasp and her eyes twinkled. ‘Bloody hell. That sly old dog’.
‘Who is?’ Tor tried to follow her gaze.
‘James White,’ she said, nodding towards the door. ‘Look – he’s with Amelia Abingdon. Now how the devil did he pull her? No wonder there’s so many photographers here.’
Tor smiled weakly as her brain tried to process how on earth James had ended up with an A-list star like Amelia Abingdon on his arm. Like Keira Knightley and Rachel Weisz before her, she was the latest Brit to hit the big time in Hollywood, making her name on a small-budget film that had caught the public mood and mushroomed into the biggest-grossing British film of last summer. She had refused the big-bucks blockbusters that flooded in, choosing instead to do a worthy stint at the Old Vic playing Viola in Twelfth Night before striking box-office gold again with an acclaimed portrayal of the Duchess of Argyll – she of the pearls and headless lover scandal – which was being spoken about as an Oscar-winning performance.
Her Snow White beauty of long brown hair, apple-round cheeks and red lips that suggested she was only ever five minutes after a kiss not only meant she had her pick of the scripts, but also her pick of the men. And it would appear that of all the men in all of the world, she had chosen James.
Kate and Tor watched the beautiful couple and laughed as they were snared by Henry Rowlins, a terrific bore and significant landowner in the area who – because his fields butted up to the Earl of Norfolk’s land – conveyed himself as one of the grandees of the north Norfolk social scene.
James was listening politely, but Tor could see from the way his mouth kept twitching that his patience was running out.
‘Ha, ha!’ Kate giggled, letting the alcohol wash over her. ‘Look at James. He looks bored rigid. Just wait till I tell Hunter that James has trumped him by pulling Amelia Abingdon. Coralie who? Eh, eh?’ She jabbed her elbow playfully into Tor’s side.
Tor looked at her blankly. This was the first she’d heard of Harry stealing Coralie from James.
Kate laughed, barely drawing breath. ‘I do love teasing him. He’s such an awful tart. I call him the man-whore – drives him nuts! But really, what does he expect? He thinks he can have any woman he wants. No, really, he does,’ she emphasized, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Tor wasn’t actually contradicting her. She wrinkled her nose, head tipped to one side. ‘I’ll give him credit though, he’s not all that bad. There is another side to him too. I mean, he’s not a cartoon character, for
God’s sake!’
Tor wondered whether Kate even knew she was still there, or whether she was just talking entirely to herself.
‘. . . I’m only just beginning to see it, of course, but do you know? I do think he’s actually quite lonely. I suppose that level of fame might be quite isolating, when you think about it. In fact I really must speak to Cress about it. She’ll know more than me.’
She leaned in, swaying a little. ‘Having said that,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I have noticed she’s always quite cagey when I try to bring up Hunter with her. I mean, obviously we’ve both got confidentiality contracts so we’re not going to go into any deee-tails, but as old friends you’d think we’d have a bit more of a laugh about him. I mean, we’re both working with one of the biggest icons in the world, you know? It’s another bond, you’d think.’ She sighed. ‘But you know Cress – so competitive. It’s probably put her nose out of joint that she has to share him with me.’
‘Yes, probably,’ Tor said quietly, feeling terribly mundane not to be partaking in their power Olympics.
James and Amelia had made their excuses and left Henry Rowlins and were making their way over. Tor felt her stomach tighten.
She hadn’t seen James since that day on the beach. There had been an understanding between them then, an instinct, which had comforted her for the first and only time since Hugh’s death. But now, with several weeks between them and a Hollywood actress by his side, she felt exposed.
He’d read her correctly and known not to exploit her tears on the beach, so he hadn’t called. She didn’t want his friendship – or wasn’t ready for it, he didn’t know which. Maybe too much had happened now for them to ever get past it, for what connected them to each other also estranged them from each other. It was an impossible situation, their shared secret.