by Judy Astley
Sam took more champagne out of the fridge, topped up the glasses and Mike proposed a toast to the baby’s long life and good health. Sean and Thea sat together, still holding hands, as they got through as much food as they could manage. Afterwards, Thea looked around the table, taking in how happy everyone seemed about this lovely new baby. Was this a perfect moment for good news? She hoped so.
‘Aw, you two,’ Charlotte said, ‘all loved up.’ Thea grinned at her. She looked at Sean and he nodded, tapping a spoon against his glass. Everyone fell silent, looking at the two of them.
‘We’ve got a bit of – No, actually a huge lot of an announcement to make. Go, babe,’ Sean said to Thea. ‘You tell them.’
‘OK. Everyone, er – oh, this is so exciting and I’ve been dying to tell you and now’s the moment and I’m so happy I’m trying not to go bang! So … me and Sean, we’re going to get married!’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ Charlotte said, getting in first and rushing round the table to envelop them both in a hug, her cleavage almost scooping Thea up as she flung her arms round her. ‘I love a wedding, me.’
‘Darling, how wonderful!’ Anna said. ‘I’m so happy for you both.’ She got up and came to give hugs to Thea and Sean. ‘When and where?’
Thea took a deep breath. ‘Well, we decided we’d have a Christmas one. In Cornwall, something very low-key. Just a very small, simple affair and then maybe later a party in the spring for friends up here in London.’
Through the melee of congratulations and clinking of glasses came a sound like a growl from across the table. ‘I told you before, I’m not going to Cornwall,’ Emily declared, glaring at Thea and Sean. ‘And now you’ve hijacked the evening, Thea. It was supposed to be about me and the baby.’
‘Er, us and our baby,’ Sam murmured, collecting up some of the empty plates.
‘Actually, I think the words you’re really looking for right now, Emily, are: “Congratulations, how brilliant and all good luck,”’ Jimi told her.
Emily said nothing, just stared at the table.
‘Emily?’ Anna reached across the table and put her hand on her wrist.
‘She knew I never, ever wanted to go there again. All that snow!’
‘There won’t be snow.’ Sean laughed. ‘That was a crazy meteorological one-off. It hadn’t happened in two centuries before that, so you know, come on, man, what are the chances?’
‘No way.’ Emily shook her head. ‘Get married up here, why don’t you, Thea? After all, you’re the bride. You get to choose. That’s of course if the wedding actually happens. You’ve been engaged before and with plenty of fancy wedding planning half done and it all came to nothing.’
‘I did choose. Or rather, we chose together,’ Thea told her, pushing back her chair and standing up. She could feel her eyes filling with disappointed tears. It was time to go. ‘And you know what, Emily, whatever you think about the venue, if you can’t even be arsed to be just that teeny bit pleased for us, not even give us one word of congratulations, then really, I don’t think we need you to be there at all.’
NINE
October
It was now more than halfway through October and only nine weeks till Christmas and still Thea hadn’t sorted out a wedding dress or any catering and so on. It was as if she’d put the whole idea of the wedding on hold since the row with Emily. They hadn’t spoken to each other since and although her mother kept urging her to talk to her sister and make it up, she felt stubbornly that it was for Emily to apologize, even if she didn’t actually change her mind about Cornwall.
‘She’s just had a baby, Thea; her hormones are all over the place,’ Anna had reminded her, as if she needed to. ‘She’ll come round when she’s got herself a bit more together. Be kind. She won’t miss your big day, not when it comes down to it.’
What Anna didn’t know was that Thea had gone to see Emily two days after that supper, taking flowers and a little pair of sheepskin mitts for the baby. She’d hoped the two of them could have a quiet talk and she could tell Emily how much it would mean to her to have her there at her side when she got married. But she’d been told by Sam at the front door that Emily was resting and wasn’t feeling like seeing anyone. He’d looked apologetic and a bit shamefaced – and well he might because she could hear Emily calling out something to Milly in the kitchen. So she’d handed over the presents, told him to send love and tell Emily she’d like to see her soon. But she’d had no contact from her since, not so much as a cursory thank you. Her gesture had been completely ignored. It hurt, but she didn’t want Anna worrying about it. This was between her and her sister.
At school, the children were starting to buzz about Christmas and each morning there was at least one of them bragging that they were getting an iPad for Christmas and another upset because they weren’t.
‘They’re a materialistic bunch, aren’t they?’ Jenny commented in the staffroom. ‘It’s all about stuff.’
‘That’s kids for you,’ Thea agreed. ‘I remember thinking the world would end if I didn’t get a Cabbage Patch doll one year. I think Mum had to trawl every toyshop in London to find one for me. They were the present that year.’
The days were getting colder and greyer but with those delicate touches of soft autumn sunshine that light up the changing leaves and make you want to get out in the fresh air. The shops were filling up with Christmas stock and shelf after shelf in every supermarket was labelled ‘Seasonal’ and crammed with the kind of food that nobody really eats, like candied ginger and preserved mandarins.
‘So you’ve started your shopping then?’ Mrs Over-the-Road was walking her West Highland terrier as Thea unloaded groceries from her car boot, ready to take them into the house and sort out what was to stay here and what was to go with her at the weekend for half-term with Sean in Cornwall.
‘Shopping? Nothing special, it’s only the usual from the supermarket,’ Thea replied, wondering what June was referring to.
‘The cards have been in the shops for weeks now. Wrapping paper too. You have to get in quick with paper. Leave it last minute and they’re clearing the shelves ready for Valentine’s,’ June warned, peering into Thea’s shopping bags.
‘Oh, Christmas shopping, you meant. Sorry,’ Thea said, the fog of incomprehension beginning to clear.
‘Yes, of course I meant Christmas. What else would I mean? They’ve been having a visiting Santa in Asda for weeks now. You can feel it in the air, can’t you?’ June pulled her coat close round her and shivered a bit to emphasize her point. ‘In the mornings, it’s properly dark. I like dark in the mornings. I don’t trust those long summer days. You shouldn’t be getting up hours after it’s already broad daylight. It’s all wrong.’
‘You’d be a happy bunny in the Caribbean then, June,’ Thea told her, trying to gather as many carrier bags together as she could so as to avoid making two trips into the house and back. ‘It’s pretty much twelve hours of day, a quick sunset and a precise twelve hours of night, all the year round. Very organized.’
June sniffed. ‘Organized but very hot. We British aren’t meant to be hot. It makes us itch. It’s why we like Christmas: lots of woolly things to wear and plenty of good traditional food.’
‘So you’ll have got your Christmas cards already then?’ Thea said, slamming the car boot shut.
‘Me?’ June laughed. ‘Oh, of course, dear. I always buy mine in the January sales and most of the presents as well. You can’t be too far ahead of yourself, that’s what I always say.’
‘Christmas is ages yet, June. There’s plenty of time,’ Thea said.
June gave her a look that told her she was in serious Season Denial and started to haul the little dog over the road to her home. ‘It’s not ages at all. Especially at my age. Time races on and it’s all you can do to keep up with it. But if you don’t, you fall off the edge. And you’re not getting any younger either; before you know it, time will have caught up with you too. Make sure you don’t leave everything to t
he last minute.’
Well, thanks for that, Thea thought, feeling a bit unsettled as she trundled her shopping through to the kitchen. Thanks for the big reminder that the old biological clock was ticking ever more loudly in both ears. If that’s what June actually meant. She probably did. Once a woman was into her mid-thirties people seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to comment on her lack either of a husband, baby or both. Only a week ago, the head teacher Melanie had told Thea that if she was thinking of leaving the job, then to remember to give a full term’s notice. Thea hadn’t even hinted about leaving: as she’d said to Jenny, she wouldn’t want to leave her class halfway through the year. It would feel irresponsible not to take them through the full three terms. So where did that comment come from? Anyone would think they were back a hundred years ago when women had to give up teaching if they married. She was on the lookout for jobs in Cornwall though, and if the perfect one came up then maybe she’d just have to jump at it.
With or without Emily on board, if they were to go ahead with getting married at Christmas, she needed to get on with preparations. She’d heard that Emily was not only refusing to go to the wedding but was now hardly venturing out of the house. Thea had tried texting and emailing her – she wouldn’t respond to phone calls – but had had no response.
She and Sean were opting for the lowest of low-key events because neither of them liked fussy weddings, but even this would need some effort. Paul, Sean’s partner in the Cove Manor rental business, had taken over the running of his father’s ancestral home, Pentreath Hall, and its wonderful orangery was booked for the actual ceremony, which would be quite early on the morning of Christmas Day as the registrar had plans to go on to help out at a homeless shelter later. Afterwards, they were planning to have a beach barbecue as a sort of wedding breakfast instead of a full-scale reception, but that still needed a bit of organizing, even if it was only a matter of deciding whether to go for sausages or kebabs and how much drink to get.
Lists, Thea decided, she must make lists, and immediately. However simple and rustic the wedding, what kind of useless bride hadn’t made so much as a list of guests so close to the event? Ah yes: one who had fallen out with her sister, big time.
Three sets of people had looked over Mike and Anna’s house but as yet no offers had been made. The agent Belinda had said they were wanting ‘IBC’, which apparently translated as ‘In by Christmas’. Maybe, Anna thought as she tried to look at her house with coolly objective rather than forgiving eyes, they’d concluded that just too much needed doing. After all, not everyone finds the walls of a sitting room painted Book Room Red as cosy as she and Mike did. Some probably found its terracotta shade quite oppressive, especially in a fading October light.
One lot had included a young woman with swishy blond hair who Anna recognized from television but couldn’t put a name to. She’d begun various sentences several times with ‘Of course in my job …’ without actually coming out with what the job was, so Anna had been none the wiser as to whether she read the news or was an Olympic athlete. One couple had been a brittle forty-something pair who found fault with every single thing from the size of the rooms to the locations of the bathrooms. As Mike had commented after, you’d think they hadn’t even looked at the agent’s details. All the room layouts and sizes were on there. They’d also found fault with each other, hissing ‘darling’ at the end of every sentence when disagreeing on which bedroom would be right for ‘the twins’. She and Mike hadn’t heard from them again and Belinda the agent said they’d decided to move to France instead. ‘These are not words I ever imagined I’d utter,’ Mike said when Belinda called to tell them this, ‘but God help France.’
It had been Mike’s notion to look at a few possible ideas for a place for themselves fairly locally but on a smaller scale. ‘We can at least see what kind of thing we might like,’ he reasoned, and Anna didn’t disagree.
‘Nothing that needs work,’ she told him. ‘If I want to strip wallpaper, I might as well stay here.’
‘If we stay here, we can’t afford to strip anything, or at least not to put stuff back up again,’ he said. ‘I’ve been adding up what we’d save by buying something half this size. Heating, council tax, replacing that iffy boiler that probably won’t see the winter out … it’s endless. If we sell this, we’ll be able to afford to eat, and quite well too, for the next few years.’
And so now, curiosity tweaked by a flashy ad in a Sunday paper’s property section, they somehow found themselves in the marketing suite of a new riverside block of swish apartments sitting across a desk from a slick young man in a suit jacket that Anna could see was way too tight for him. The sleeves seemed to end halfway up his wrists and the fabric pulled across his skinny chest. Fashion, eh, she thought. Whoever had decreed that a cool look for young men was to truss them up so tight they ended up looking like Norman Wisdom?
‘So, Mick and Annie …’ Mr Slick said, looking up from the form he’d insisted they fill in to list the requirements they could easily have told him in two sentences.
‘Mike and Anna,’ Mike said. His knee was twitching – a sign that he was already bored and a bit grumpy.
‘Sorry – right. So I see you’re looking at a possible two bedrooms and some outside space.’ He looked up and smiled at them. ‘You do know these are, like, flats?’ he said. ‘No gardens?’
‘We know?’ Mike said, only slightly mocking the upward lilt of the young man’s voice. ‘But the ones at the top have large terraces? We could see them from outside?’
‘Oh, the penthouses.’ He smiled. ‘I should tell you, those are the top of the range, price-wise?’
Mike twitched some more. ‘It’s fine. We did see the prices.’
‘Oh right, er … OK.’ He had a good appraising stare at Mike’s leather jacket and blue bandana and Anna’s long velvet skirt and said, ‘Sorry, I’d have thought you might be looking for something a little more … compact. So you’ve looked at the finer points?’ He handed over a fat glossy brochure. ‘This kind of place attracts mostly young professionals, what with the basement pool and gym and a bar and restaurant on site.’ He cast another thoughtful look at the two of them, who were so clearly the opposite of ‘young professionals’, and turned his iPhone over and over on his desk.
‘Couldn’t we just go and look at one of the penthouses? Please?’ Mike asked.
‘Oh absolutely. Of course, if you’re sure.’ The young man jumped out of his chair, rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a card. ‘No keys here, all computerized, electronic, state of the art.’
The lift was entirely mirrored, which Anna didn’t like. Face on, at home, in a good light, she would see herself reflected and not be too depressed at what she saw. Now she couldn’t avoid herself from all angles and noticed that her neck was not as long as she was sure it had once been, and that her upper back was a bit rounded. She pulled her shoulders back, standing as straight as she could to deny evidence of the advancing years. Thirty-something professionals. How did they afford places like this? Even the smallest, barely bigger than a cupboard, was well over three hundred thousand pounds. She imagined them as neighbours she would probably never see, or if she did, it would be in the lift. They’d be looking tense in running gear, fiddling with a fitness wristband and avoiding eye contact. She’d be in her multiple colourful layers and wondering how terrified they’d be if she said hello and wasn’t it a lovely day.
Floor ten: the lift stopped and opened on to a caramel-painted corridor. A light flipped on, the agent zapped the keycard and they were in.
‘It’s like a hotel suite,’ Mike said, frowning, looking at the pale grey sofa, the carefully placed ornaments, the uninspiring paintings of vague riverside scenes. ‘No character.’
‘Actually, that’s rather what I like about it,’ Anna said as they toured the space. ‘Especially the bathrooms.’
‘Of course it’s obviously a show flat, designer-led decor, an example of what you could achieve,’ the agent
told them. ‘It’s to reflect that you’re actually buying into a lifestyle. Though of course …’ He hesitated. ‘I can see this particular style might not appeal …’
‘Buying into a lifestyle?’ Mike spluttered. ‘Bloody hell, man, I’m pushing seventy. If I haven’t got a “lifestyle” sorted by now it’d be a pretty poor show.’
‘Mike …’ Anna warned, worried about his blood pressure. ‘Come on, let’s look at the outside space.’
The agent slid the massive glass doors open and they went out to the terrace, which was broad and generous and paved with dark stone. ‘Obviously pots are key,’ he told them, indicating a pair of olive trees tethered to a rail and blowing fitfully in the wind. ‘Pots and the view.’
‘Bloody splendid, I’ll give you that,’ Mike actually agreed. ‘But now I’m thinking it’s just too high up. I know it would be next to impossible but I can’t help imagining the grandchildren falling off.’
‘Oh, I don’t think they could do that,’ the agent tittered. ‘Not unless they dragged a table over to the edge and climbed up and over the barrier.’
As he laughed off what he’d said, Anna shivered, imagining Milly and Alfie doing exactly that and plummeting to the car park below, becoming nothing but blotchy, bloody splats. ‘Look, thanks and all that but, you know, it’s not for us, this. Sorry. Let’s go, Mike. I can’t live here or in any high-up place. Not now that thought has got into my head.’
Safely out of the cruelly mirrored lift she took hold of Mike’s hand as they went across the road to get a reviving drink at the riverside pub. ‘At least that’s one option ruled out,’ she told him when she’d recovered from the horrors of her imaginings. ‘It’s got to be something with the garden on the actual ground. Do you agree?’