by Jill Mansell
Eddie nodded. “Must have been hard.”
“I know. But Mum knew it was for the best. She wasn’t going to beg. And the next year, she met someone else too.” Lily grimaced and took a gulp of tea. “Keir Bourne.”
“Your father.”
“Unfortunately.”
“If it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Oh, I know that. I just wish he could have turned out to be a bit less selfish, a bit more of a decent human being.” She puffed a stray curl off her forehead. “So anyway, that was it as far as Mum and Declan were concerned. She didn’t contact him after that.”
“Can I ask how you ended up here? Sorry, you don’t have to tell me that.” Eddie shrugged. “I’m just interested. I like to ask questions.”
“It’s fine. Mum carried on seeing Keir, on and off. He wasn’t a student; he lived with his parents in Exeter and worked for them in their car showroom. Don’t laugh.” Lily pointed a finger in warning, then said, “Actually, why not? Laugh as much as you like. I’m the biological daughter of a sleazeball used-car salesman.”
“It’s OK.” Eddie wasn’t laughing, but he looked as if he’d like to. “Not your fault.”
“So anyway, it got to the end of the third year and Mum finished her finals, but she didn’t do as well as she’d hoped. Then Keir’s parents lost their office manager and offered her the position, and she wasn’t sure what else she could do, so she took the job.”
“Working for the out-laws.” Eddie shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s ever a good idea.”
“I know. She stuck it out for a few months, but it wasn’t ideal. And then, at the end of October, she discovered she was pregnant.” Lily grimaced. “Which was even less ideal. She told Keir, who told his parents. They were appalled.”
“And?”
“They accused Mum of setting out to trap their precious son, as if he was the world’s greatest catch. Then they told her the problem needed taking care of. They said they’d pay for it to be dealt with and offered to take Mum to the clinic. But Mum said she’d sort it out herself.” Twisting a strand of hair around her index finger, Lily went on. “So they gave her the exact amount in cash and prepared to wave her off. That was when she told them she’d be keeping the baby. They were horrified, of course, but there was nothing they could do about it.”
There was empathy in Eddie’s silver-gray eyes. “I hope she bought something nice with the money.”
“She bought a worn-out blue Ford Escort—not from them, funnily enough—and spent the rest on baby clothes and a second-hand crib. Then she left Exeter with nowhere to go.”
“No family of her own?”
Lily shook her head. “No brothers or sisters. Just a mother who liked to drink and gamble. When Mum went off to university, her mother sold their flat to pay off the debts she’d run up at the casino. Then she married some bloke she’d met there. They refused to let Mum move in with them. So yes, she was completely on her own.”
“Yet she didn’t give you up. That’s pretty amazing. Sounds like your mum was quite a character.”
Lily smiled and nodded. “Oh yes, she was amazing. She stopped the car at a service station on the M5 and bought a road map, then closed her eyes and stuck a pin in it.”
“Ouch,” said Eddie.
“Well, probably not an actual pin. I expect she just pointed with her finger. And hit Nottingham, so that’s where she decided to go. But as she drove up the motorway, she realized she’d be passing quite close to the part of the Cotswolds where Coral lived. They’d been best friends through three years of college, and she’d heard all about Stanton Langley but never got to see it. She thought it’d be nice to stop on the way, pay Coral a quick visit, and let her know what was happening, where she was planning to go.” Lily spread her hands and said cheerily, “Well, you pretty much know the rest. Mum arrived here in the village, Coral persuaded her to stay the night…and that was it. She never left.”
“Fate,” said Eddie, finishing his last corner of toast.
“Exactly. I could have been born and lived my whole life in Nottingham.”
He pushed aside his empty plate. “So, shall we get down to business?”
Which, like a saucy nudge, brought memories of this morning’s inappropriate dream back once more. Lily felt the little hairs on the nape of her neck prickle with embarrassment. Jumping up, she took the plates to the sink and collected a pen and notebook from her shoulder bag. Then she sat back down, uncapped the pen in businesslike fashion, and said, “Right, let’s go.”
* * *
Miraculously, it didn’t take long at all. Eddie told her to write from the heart; Lily jotted down what she wanted to say; and with his encouragement, the words just seemed to spill out onto the page. Twenty minutes later, it was done.
“Wow, that was easier than I thought.” She sat back, hugely impressed with herself. “I expected it to take ages.”
Eddie smiled at her. “I knew you could do it.”
“Do you really think it’s OK?”
His gaze met hers. “It’s better than OK. It’s perfect.”
“Well, thanks. You helped just by asking the right questions.” Lily tapped the open notebook, covered in the words she’d hastily scribbled down. “I’ll write it out properly and post it later. Thanks so much for helping me out.”
“My pleasure.”
“And now I’d better get back to work.” She flipped the notebook shut.
“That’s a shame.” Eddie sat back. “It’s kind of nice having a bit of company.” Drily he added, “As long as it’s the right kind.”
Whoops, getting a bit hot again. “Well, Patsy will be home at five.”
He nodded. “I like Patsy. She’s great. We haven’t talked about her ex-husband, but Rosa told my PA what happened. Must have been pretty rough for her.”
“It was.”
Eddie hesitated, then said, “If you’re not doing anything this evening, would you like to come over again?”
“God,” Lily said with a grin, “you are bored.”
“Well?” Now he was smiling too.
“Can I ask you a question? Is that girlfriend of yours likely to turn up at some stage?”
“What girlfriend?”
“Oh, come on,” Lily said. “The one that had you hiding out here in the first place. The one married to the scary movie producer.”
“OK, she’s not my girlfriend. I haven’t slept with her. She threw herself at me to make her husband jealous because she knows he’s been seeing someone else.” Eddie shook his head in despair. “Seriously, the pair of them are so messed up. And as far as they’re concerned, it’s all extra publicity for the movie, so it’s fine. Never mind what it’s doing to me.”
“Oh.” He certainly sounded as if he was telling the truth. “Nice people.”
“I know. Anyway, never mind them. Will you be coming over?”
OK, how often did a good-looking famous person practically beg you to spend the evening with him? “I’ll have to consult my busy diary,” Lily said, then rose to her feet and hoisted her bag over her shoulder. “Maybe.”
Eddie Tessler’s eyes glittered. “And if you happen to stop at the shop on your way over, white chocolate Magnums are my favorite.”
Chapter 11
Patsy’s first client of the morning wasn’t a willing one. Her name was Tamsin, and she was perfectly happy with her hair the way it was.
“Noooo,” she wailed when Patsy cautiously approached with the scissors. “Don’t! I like it like diss.”
The child’s mother shook her head. “It can’t stay like that, though, Tamsin,” she said wearily. “Now be a good girl and sit still.”
Last night, four-year-old Tamsin had locked herself in the family bathroom with a pair of blunt scissors and spent a happy half hour determinedly
sawing away at her straight blond hair.
Just on one side of her head.
“Sweetie, you have to be careful.” Patsy rested her hands on Tamsin’s tiny shoulders. “Because my scissors are really sharp and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Tears welled in the little girl’s eyes. “But I like my hair!”
“Tam, it can’t stay like that,” her mother blurted out in despair. “Everyone will laugh at you. Hair has to be the same on both sides. Otherwise it just looks silly.”
“Not silly,” roared Tamsin, launching herself out of the chair. Like a mini superhero, she ripped apart the Velcro fastening of her cape and flung it to the ground. “Not silly, not silly, get away from me…”
“Oh my God, Tamsin, you are being impossible.” Her mother rolled her eyes. “I’m so sorry. She’s not going to let you do it,” she said to Patsy. “We’ll have to leave it for now.”
“That’s OK. Not a problem.” Patsy picked up the discarded cape. “Maybe in a day or two she’ll change her mind.”
“Fingers crossed. Honestly,” the woman said, “I think she’s trying to give me a nervous breakdown. Kids, eh? Who’d have them?”
It was one of those careless, throwaway comments you heard all the time, but to Patsy the words jarred like fingernails on a blackboard. A lump sprang into her throat, and when she glanced across the salon, her gaze caught Will’s for a split second before he looked away.
Tamsin’s mother said, “Do you have children?”
Patsy willed the lump to reduce in size. “No, not me.”
Clearly at the end of her tether, the woman shook her head. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
* * *
An hour later, Patsy was putting foils into the hair of another mother, this one a not-quite-natural blond in her late twenties whose three-week-old daughter was sleeping in a new pink-and-gray car seat carrier. Everyone had admired little Ella, who was utterly beautiful, with downy dark hair, a rosebud mouth, and delicate eyebrows that moved as she dreamed her baby dreams.
Her mother, giddy with the joy of parenthood but wiped out by the night feedings, had closed her eyes within two minutes of the first foils going in and was now also peacefully asleep.
Patsy couldn’t help herself: she kept stealing glances at perfect Ella, with her tiny fingers and spiky dark lashes. If she were to pick the baby up, Patsy knew exactly how that fluffy hair and silky-soft skin would feel and smell…
Maybe one day it would happen. Maybe one day her life would start going according to plan instead of spluttering and stalling like some worn-out old beater. As she carried on deftly separating the hair strands with the tail of her comb, pasting on the blue bleach, and folding the foils into neat little packets, Patsy’s mind wandered off in the direction it had so often wandered over the years.
Meeting and falling in love with Sean had felt so right, so perfect. It had been the happiest year of her life. Then they’d married and kept being happy together—well, allegedly—and she had looked forward to the next stage, which was starting a family. Just as soon as they finished renovating and redecorating the cottage, it would happen. But there was no huge hurry, because they were enjoying just being a couple, and there was plenty of time ahead of them for all that.
So they’d carried on having fun, socializing at the rugby club, going away on vacations abroad, meeting up with friends for parties and barbecues and enjoyable impromptu meals. She had the salon, and business was good. Sean, with his building company, always had plenty of jobs lined up. They worked hard, played hard, and had fun. OK, maybe the sex had tailed off a bit over the last couple of years, but wasn’t it to be expected? Most married couples experienced that.
The marriage itself, though, had felt perfectly fine. Solid and enduring. She and Sean never really argued; they enjoyed each other’s company. There had never been even the slightest hint that one day she would come home from work and hear her husband tell her he was gay.
Hardly surprisingly, the scene that would be seared forever into her memory: Sean, white-faced with anguish, not wanting to hurt her but knowing he must, because he simply couldn’t live with the secret anymore. It had been raining; the smell of dry earth soaking up water and giving out its distinctive loamy scent still reminded Patsy of that evening. Sean’s voice had been strained as he’d uttered the words: “I’m sorry. I’m gay.” And she’d said “Shut up, you’re not,” because it was about as likely as him telling her he was Superman and could fly.
It had felt like being trapped in an airless plexiglass box, watching your own husband become a different person entirely and unable to stop it from happening. He’d been wearing cargo trousers and the deep-blue cotton chambray shirt she’d bought him last Christmas, and he’d said, “I’m so, so sorry. I never wanted this to happen. I thought it would be OK. I thought I could do it, but I can’t.”
That was when she’d abandoned all semblance of dignity and begged, which was shameful and embarrassing to look back on, but in her own defense, she’d been in a state of shock and disbelief. She’d told Sean he could do it if he just tried harder. It was a mistake; he was confused. He couldn’t really be gay… For crying out loud, look at him: he drank pints of lager, he played rugby, he had no fashion sense at all…
In the five years that had passed since that world-changing evening, the fashion-sense comment had become something of a standing joke, but at the time it hadn’t been remotely funny. She’d been desperate to prove to Sean that he’d made a terrible mistake.
The door to the salon swung open, and Will’s next client burst in with a cheery shout, causing baby Ella, startled by the sudden noise, to open her eyes and whimper. Her exhausted mother slept on. Patsy put down the bleaching brush, peeled off her thin disposable gloves, and crouched in front of the baby in the car seat, gently stroking the side of her angelic face and making shushing noises to soothe her back to sleep.
Such a beautiful little thing…
Once Ella was settled once more, Patsy went back to applying the foils. Ah, the baby issue; it had seemed like the least of her worries at the time. Devastated though she’d been, she had never managed to make herself hate Sean. He’d been heartbroken too. In his own way he had still loved her. And she’d been the one who’d received the most sympathy from the inhabitants of Stanton Langley. Many of the older contingent, in particular, had been appalled with Sean for giving in to something he had no business dabbling with. A couple of vociferous women accused him of copying George Michael and Elton John and jumping on the bandwagon. He was attention-seeking, they scornfully announced, just showing off; there was no need for it.
They’d split up anyway. Sean had moved into one of the tiny houses down the road, which wasn’t ideal, but the choice of available property in the vicinity was limited. Then he’d taken over as landlord of the Star, and gradually his friends grew used to the idea of his sexuality, and it stopped being the talk of Stanton Langley.
Until fourteen months later, when he met someone else and fell in love again. Only this time with a man.
Ironically, he had Patsy to thank for the meeting; if it hadn’t been for her, the two men never would have found each other. Once she’d gotten used to the idea, she’d told Sean, “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”
In the years since then, Patsy had been happy for them but not so happy with herself. To begin with, she’d been a wreck, a hopeless case, in no emotional state to meet anyone else. Then she’d tentatively begun dating again, wondering each time whether this might be The One.
To which the answer was invariably no. Every single date had been a disaster, which rather indicated either that she was terribly unlucky…or that she might be partly to blame herself.
And now here she was at thirty-five, still utterly single and no nearer to having the family she longed for above all else. As time had passed, her lack of luck with men had beco
me a source of entertainment for the rest of the village. Which, while not great, somehow turned out to be easier to bear than their pity and sympathy.
But it still wasn’t much fun, living through the series of disappointments and knowing that as each new month passed, your eggs were becoming fewer and smaller, shriveling up like old grapes. On the surface, she might put on a good show, making fun of herself and her manless state, but inwardly it was hard sometimes not to wonder: Why me?
The foils were finished, and her next client, Tess, had just arrived for her weekly wash and blow-dry. Leaving Ella’s mother asleep, Patsy got on with shampooing Tess’s hair. While they were over at the sink, Ella woke up and began to cry. Having just waved off his last customer, Will scooped her out of her car seat along with the bottle of milk that was tucked in beside her. Within seconds he had settled himself in the next chair, snuggled the baby into the crook of his arm, and was feeding her like a pro.
“Look at you,” Tess marveled. “You’re a natural.”
Will grinned. “This is what happens when you have seven nephews and nieces. You get plenty of practice.”
Ella was noisily guzzling her feed, not bothered one iota that she was being held by a stranger. Patsy felt a clutch of envy in her stomach as she saw that tiny hand clasping Will’s index finger, dark lashes batting as she gazed trustingly into his eyes.
Oh God, how many eggs did she have left? Was it ever going to happen to her?
“By the way, heard about your chap on the tandem,” said Tess, her head bent back over the sink. “Bit of a no-hoper, was he?”
Still thinking about babies, Patsy said, “Just a bit.”
“Ah, story of your life! Never mind, there’s got to be someone out there for you. Tell you what—my Fred’s meeting up with his steam-train mates over the weekend; he could ask around if you like, see if any of them are on the lookout for a date.”