Wild Oats

by Veronica Henry

  ‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’

  Jamie tried not to sound tart, or imply that Jack was. But he persisted.

  ‘It sounds like one of those ideas that are fantastic on paper, but it could turn into a living nightmare. People are very hard to please, you know.’

  ‘Can we at least think about it? Kif’s put me in touch with someone who can give me some financial advice and work out the figures. I’m going to see him tomorrow.’ She put her hand beseechingly on Jack’s arm. ‘I don’t want to lose the farm, Dad. I really don’t. And if this is the only way…’

  Jack smiled. ‘Of course we can think about it, darling. Dreaming never hurt anybody. You go and sort the figures out and we’ll have a look.’

  Jamie couldn’t help feeling that he was just playing along with her, and that he was being a tiny bit patronizing. But at least he hadn’t said no. She shoved the fact that she’d already been to see Rod and told him the deal was off to the back of her mind. With any luck they wouldn’t be in contact over the next few days, by which time she would have her business plan intact and a loan in place, and Jack wouldn’t be able to argue.

  And as she lay in bed that night, she fell asleep dreaming of her plans. She saw Bucklebury Farm restored to its former glory. She wanted to retain the arty, bohemian atmosphere that had been instilled by her mother, but was realistic enough to know that to satisfy today’s customer one couldn’t just rely on quirkiness, that a few mod cons would have to be installed to bring it from merely comfortable up to luxurious. Even impractical Jack had spotted that. They’d need central heating that worked, for a start. And big baths with huge taps that gushed scalding hot water, deep carpets in the bedrooms, squashy chairs and sofas for guests to lounge in reading the novels that they’d been meaning to read for months. She’d cook them gargantuan breakfasts – thick bacon with proper fat that sizzled and didn’t turn to water, freshly laid eggs and freshly picked mushrooms, fat sausages that burst their skins. Black pudding, spicy, groaty black pudding that would make men groan with pleasure and their wives frown disapprovingly. Home-made marmalade dark with bitter-sweet slices of Seville orange spread on to bread just out of the oven.

  And for the children, a pair of fat Shetland ponies, chickens whose eggs they could help collect, perhaps a dear little goat. She could have a tree house built, and a Wendy house with proper curtains. As she finally drifted off, she smiled to realize that she’d already gone wildly over budget, but firmly convinced that Bucklebury Farm was going to be a huge success…

  That evening, Bella didn’t take the news about the deal on Bucklebury Farm being off very well at all. In fact, she became almost hysterical. Rod didn’t quite understand her reaction.

  ‘I thought you were happy at Owl’s Nest? I thought you loved it here?’

  ‘I do. But we’ve been here long enough. It’s been two years since it was finished. We always said we’d move on. Onwards and upwards, that’s what you said. Don’t let the grass grow under your feet, you said. Move one rung up the property ladder every two years, you said.’

  This was true. Rod could hear himself saying it as she spoke. When they’d converted Owl’s Nest, they’d always agreed they would turn it round as soon as possible. It was perfect for a professional couple. The bedroom was in the gallery, with a spacious en suite. Downstairs was a kitchen-cum-living area – large and airy, admittedly, with room for a dining table and a three-piece suite. But apart from a laundry room and another small room where Rod kept the computer to do the books and Bella’s leaflets and publicity for the dance school, there was no spare space. Any addition to the family would definitely necessitate a move.

  ‘Something else will come up,’ he murmured soothingly.

  ‘Not something like Bucklebury Farm. You said it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The only way we’d be able to afford a proper big family home without waiting another ten years.’

  This was true as well. Rod sometimes wished he could keep his big mouth shut. But he’d been so excited by the plan. And if you couldn’t share your plans with your own wife… But by painting too rosy a picture, he’d also painted himself into a corner. It was going to be very difficult to sell any alternative to Bella. Once she’d set her mind on something…

  It was a bloody nuisance. The only silver lining in the cloud that Rod could see was that Bella’s mother would be out of the equation. Pauline still helped at the dance school she’d founded, even though she’d handed it over to Bella and it no longer bore her name. She still taught the ballroom-dancing classes for the older generation, as she kept things at a more sedate pace and didn’t cause a stir by exposing her midriff. Just after they were married, Bella and Rod had raised the money to allow Pauline to buy her council house – she’d got it for less than a hundred thousand, and it was worth nearer two at today’s prices. The plan now was for her to sell the house and move into Bucklebury Farm with them – they couldn’t have pulled the deal off without her input. Rod had been wary of the idea, for although he was fond of Pauline she could be extremely bossy and opinionated. But as Bella pointed out, she would be a very useful asset if and when a baby came along – a built-in babysitter and childminder.

  Bella was weeping bitterly.

  ‘What are we going to do, Rod? What are we going to do?’

  Rod knew that this was more than just about disappointment. This was about frustration, of hopes cruelly dashed, of trying and failing and not pointing the finger of blame. These bouts of uncontrolled sobbing were becoming a regular feature of their life; monthly, to be precise, every time Mother Nature taunted Bella with evidence that once again she wasn’t pregnant. He did his best to console her, but it was very hard – not least because his own hopes had been cruelly dashed. She wasn’t to know quite how desperate he was to become a father. He didn’t want to put undue pressure on her, so he had to pretend to be resilient and optimistic. And each month he tried to make it up to her and take her mind off the ordeal; each month the consolation prize got more elaborate. He’d started with a voucher for a massage at a local beauty salon; last month’s offering had been the Audi, even though he couldn’t really afford it. The novelty had taken her mind off things for a while.

  He looked round at everything they’d done; everything they’d achieved. They were both incredibly successful; they had a beautiful home. They had everything they wanted. Except what they really wanted.

  Bella looked up. He felt relieved; she was wiping away her tears and seemed to have pulled herself together. She took in a shuddering breath.

  ‘Well, it makes one thing clear.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’ll have to stop trying for a baby until everything’s sorted out. I’m so completely stressed. I can’t cope with this and trying to… trying to –’

  She dissolved into tears again. Rod was at her side in two bounds.

  ‘No, sweetheart. Nothing’s going to get in the way of that. I want you to stop worrying right now. Things will sort themselves out, I promise you. This is just a glitch.’

  He pulled her to him as she nuzzled into his chest for comfort. She was so incredibly fragile. It was his duty to protect her. With a supreme effort of will, he managed to erase from his mind the fact that he’d thought of nothing but Jamie Wilding all afternoon.

  He buried his face in Bella’s soft, silky hair, murmuring reassurance.

  ‘We’ll get Bucklebury Farm, I promise you.’

  13

  Strictly speaking, Zoe couldn’t be described as beautiful. Her face was too round, her mouth was too wide and her eyes were too small. But she had a wonderful personality that brought all these imperfect features to life: a glow within her that lit up her smile and made her eyes sparkle, so although she wasn’t technically beautiful, people often thought she was.

  Most of the time, that is. Today, the light had definitely gone out; the fuse had blown, the bulb had gone. As she looked in the mirror, she thought with a heavy heart that she looked closer
to forty than thirty. Her face was puffy and her eyes bloodshot. Her skin was sludgy and grey.

  But that’s what you got for falling asleep half-pissed in the afternoon.

  When Christopher had told her at breakfast that Jamie was coming round for supper, Zoe had resolved to make a real effort for once and cook something nice. She really had. In fact, she’d phoned Natalie at eleven o’clock, to ask her what she should cook. Natalie was great at recipes that even Zoe could manage. She gave her instructions for something relatively uncomplicated involving chicken breasts and chestnut mushrooms and tinfoil that just got bunged in the oven and forgotten about.

  ‘You’ll be able to get all the ingredients in Tesco. Serve it with some buttery noodles and a green salad. Then go and pick some of that soft fruit you’ve been moaning about. Slosh a tub of crème fraîche over the top and a load of brown sugar and stick it under the grill for five minutes. It’ll be scrummy, I promise.’

  They’d gone on to talk about Natalie’s birthday the day before yesterday. The girls had all missed Zoe like mad, apparently. Nat filled her in on all the gossip – one of their friends was plucking up the courage to go for a tummy tuck, and they debated the relative merits and dangers of plastic surgery. While they chatted, Zoe gravitated towards the fridge, the phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. If she couldn’t actually go for a girlie lunch, a chat on the phone and a glass of wine were second best. There was nothing wrong with that, surely? By the time she came off the phone, she felt depressed, so she topped herself up again, and sat down to watch telly just for ten minutes.

  And now here she was, at ten past four, looking like shit with her head throbbing slightly from the three big glasses of wine she’d drunk. She only had twenty minutes to get to Twelvetrees to collect Hugo and Sebastian. And she hadn’t been to Tesco. She couldn’t go now; the boys absolutely loathed going round the supermarket and she didn’t think it was fair to inflict it on them after a day at school. They needed to run round and let off a bit of steam.

  She had a quick look in the cupboard for inspiration. Pasta and salad. Even she couldn’t screw that up. And she’d get the boys to go and pick some of those sodding raspberries from the garden for pudding. She could get cream and some fresh Parmesan from the post office. Surely that would do for what was only a casual supper? She didn’t know why she was putting herself under pressure.

  She was trying to prove herself, that’s why, a little voice told her. The truth was, Zoe had always felt a bit… well, threatened by Jamie. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her. She did, very much. It was just that she felt that Jamie was everything Christopher secretly wanted her to be. And they shared so much of their past. They were comfy with each other; each fitted the other like a pair of old slippers. They had no need to pretend. Zoe felt as if Christopher was his true self when Jamie was around.

  And Jamie made Zoe feel shallow and superficial. She was the sort of girl who wasn’t all that bothered about clothes and make-up. Zoe couldn’t imagine her hyperventilating in LK Bennett or Whistles, or going for a quick fix in Space.NK. No, she was the sort of girl who would nonchalantly pull on whatever was at the front of her wardrobe and look irritatingly fantastic in it.

  Zoe remembered her coming to Christopher’s birthday barbecue at Elmdon Road a couple of years ago. Jamie had worn jeans, flip-flops – not designer ones, but the kind your mum bought you from Wool-worths when you were a kid – and a little white vest top that made it screamingly obvious she had no bra on underneath. Every man in the room had been dribbling, while every other woman spat tacks – they’d all gone to vast expense to make themselves look understated and casual. Sixty quid Zoe had paid for her flip-flops, and the bloody flower that had made them that price had fallen off after she’d worn them twice. But the men had flocked round Jamie like bees round a honeypot.

  Yes, Jamie definitely had a way of making her realize what a silly, superficial cow she was. Not that she meant to, Zoe was sure of that. In fact, she always admired what Zoe was wearing and was utterly genuine, bemoaning the fact that she was unadventurous when it came to clothes, never had the time to go shopping and didn’t really have anywhere to wear nice things even if she bought them. Which just made Zoe feel even more like a spoilt lazy bitch.

  Zoe imagined Jamie in her position. She would cherish Lydbrook as it was; she wouldn’t wander round longing for a lilac Aga – she’d be happy with the nasty blue one. She would no doubt be incredibly supportive of Christopher, instead of moaning at him as soon as he walked in through the door of an evening. She wouldn’t be impatient with Rosemary – she’d probably go for long walks with her and her horrible, dribbly dogs. She would have picked all the runner beans by now, sliced them up and blanched them and put them in the freezer. She’d take homemade cakes to Hamilton and go and read to him three times a week. Zoe had been very fond of Hamilton, but she couldn’t bring herself to go and visit him. The home depressed her. The other inmates terrified her. The nurses intimidated her. A couple of times she’d lied to Christopher and said she’d been – after all, Hamilton was hardly likely to contradict her. Anyway, Zoe reasoned, Christopher felt less guilty if he thought someone had been in to see his father. He didn’t get the chance to go as often as he felt he should, and his sisters, Kate and Emma, lived too far away to visit regularly. So a little white lie on her part made everyone feel better.

  Zoe picked up her car keys with a heavy heart. She was a lousy, rotten wife. Why couldn’t she just snap out of it and enjoy what she’d got? Why did that big, black cloud of negativity follow her round, making her hate everyone and everything – not least herself? And why was Christopher so incredibly patient with her, when clearly what she needed was a good slap?

  Sometimes, she longed for her friends from London to come up, just so they could sympathize with her plight. She remembered when she’d left, how they’d all promised to come for the weekend as soon as she was settled. But none of them had. Nobody wanted to pile into the car on a Friday evening and battle with the London traffic, then have a four-hour journey with the kids screaming in the back, only to repeat the exercise in reverse after lunch on Sunday.

  In some ways, Zoe was grateful that they hadn’t fulfilled their promises. She hadn’t been able to admit to any of them quite how awful it was; she went along with their impression that she was living in some Homes & Gardens heaven. She didn’t want to disillusion them. She couldn’t bear the thought of them all sitting round in the Bluebird Café the following week, saying ‘Poor, poor Zoe…’

  Jamie bounded in through the front door of Lydbrook at seven o’clock that evening, just as she always had as a child, and then stopped short in the hallway. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so familiar now? Things had changed. She knew Kif wouldn’t mind her barging in like this, but Zoe might have other ideas, and she was the mistress of the house now. It probably wasn’t the done thing in London, to wander into someone’s house without knocking. Not that you’d be able to – Jamie remembered the armoury of Yale locks and bolts and chains on Kif’s house in Shepherd’s Bush. She was about to backtrack and knock on the door when she realized she’d been spotted. There was a figure at the bottom of the stairs. A ghostly, pale figure that it took Jamie several seconds to recognize.

  ‘Rosemary?’

  Rosemary was standing rooted to the spot, clutching a plate. On it was a rather grey slice of dried meat and a spoonful of coleslaw.

  ‘Jamie.’ She gave a weary smile. ‘I heard you were coming. I was just going upstairs for my supper…’

  ‘Aren’t you going to join us?’ Jamie stepped closer. Was it her imagination or did Rosemary seem to recoil?

  ‘No. No, no. I’ll let you young ones have fun. I’m not very good company these days, I’m afraid.’

  Rosemary was already halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Wait!’

  Rosemary halted, without turning round.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Hamilton,’ said Jamie. ‘I really am. It must be awful for yo
u.’

  Rosemary said nothing for a moment, just stared down at her unappetizing plate of food.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  And before Jamie could commiserate any further, she’d disappeared up the stairs.

  Jamie stood in the hallway, rather puzzled and unsure what to do. That was a very strange reception indeed. Why on earth had Rosemary bolted like that? She’d seemed almost eager to get away from her. Perhaps, because it was inevitable that the conversation would turn to Hamilton, Rosemary found it too painful and wanted to avoid sympathy and platitudes. Jamie knew from experience how sometimes you desperately wanted people to talk about anything but your own problems. Perhaps she should have gone bowling cheerfully up to her and told her how lovely the garden was looking, or asked her for a recipe for tomato chutney? She remembered only too well seeing people after Louisa had died, steeling herself for the inevitable commiseration, wishing that someone would come up and say something completely frivolous, so she could have a normal conversation instead of being reminded of the hideous truth…

  And Rosemary had always been rather reticent. She’d never been a social animal like Hamilton; she’d always kept herself to herself. Jamie remembered her as a kindly, shadowy figure hovering in the background. Louisa had once rather cruelly referred to her as a bit of a drip, and said she didn’t know why on earth Hamilton had married her. But then Jamie had no doubt that Rosemary was just the sort of wife an energetic, robust and sociable creature like Hamilton needed. Someone to run the house, look after the children and clean his hunting boots. That didn’t make him a chauvinist; he was an English country gent and he’d been brought up to expect that sort of treatment. And Rosemary had always seemed quite happy with her role. She wasn’t downtrodden by any means. She in turn was an English country gentlewoman, with her dogs and her garden to keep her amused, her faded prettiness, her pink cheeks from spending so much time outside, her Liberty lawn blouses and needlecord skirts and sensible shoes.