by Judy Astley
‘You could always drive them yourself,’ he’d grouched, his voice still just-woken deep and croaky.
‘And what about feeding Ned?’ she’d snapped back, but they both knew that wasn’t the reason.
Emily left Milly snuggled under the duvet, put Ned into his crib and went down the stairs. There was no sign of Sam in the kitchen but she could see through the half-closed slats in the plantation shutters that a light was on in his office and images on his computer were flickering. She left the light off, carefully opened the back door and, taking a deep breath and crossing her fingers in case of dangers, swiftly crept across the terrace to catch what he was looking at before he noticed her. She was being a bit sly and sneaky and she knew it, but sometimes, sometimes, you just had to keep an eye on things or they’d slide.
‘Sam? Why are you looking at property?’ Emily whipped the door open and got her question out before he could close down the site. It seemed to feature a country cottage with the obligatory roses. The details would almost certainly mention ‘an abundance of charm’. Her head whizzed through possibilities in the milliseconds before Sam could come up with an answer. Was he leaving her? Running off to live somewhere more peaceful and sane with … well, who? He quite liked Kate, a magazine editor up the road – they laughed a lot about shared journalistic in-jokes. How about Charlotte? No – he was wary of her and had once said sex with her would be like shagging an emperor-size duvet, maximum tog. Emily tried to remember if he’d said this as if it were a bad or good thing. After all, duvets were soft and comforting, although even the heaviest wouldn’t have the crush-potential that Charlotte had.
As she’d anticipated, the website was abruptly shut down and Sam wheeled round in his chair. ‘Do you have to creep up on me, Emily? I don’t look at porn and I don’t do online gambling, so can you please allow me my own space to diddle about on my own computer?’
Emily stepped inside and shut the door behind her – the morning air was close to icy and it was getting in and making her feel unsafe as if the slightest breeze could whisk her up to the clouds. ‘I wasn’t prying. I just wondered why you were up. It’s early.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. You were extra-fidgety in the small hours.’
‘So it’s my fault.’
‘I didn’t say it was a “fault”,’ he said, making quote marks in the air with his fingers.
‘No. But everything is, isn’t it? My fault, I mean.’
Sam rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. It was thinning, she noticed with shock. Oh God, he was ageing. They both were. Here was a new thing to worry about. Getting older could mean getting ill. Dying, even. She’d felt safe from that as her parents were still alive and surely there was a natural order to these things, but perhaps she shouldn’t trust in that after all? Who would take care of the children? She must add something about it to her will.
Sam sighed and reached for her hand. ‘Nothing is your fault. You’re just not … yourself yet. If you’d only—’
‘I’m not taking pills, Sam. Not while I’m feeding Ned.’
‘Counselling then?’ His voice was gentle but she could sense an underlying exasperation. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t like living with herself at the moment so there was no reason to expect him to like it either.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘About no counselling?’
‘What good would it do? It’s not as if I’m unhappy. I’d feel guilty taking up the time that someone else could use. I’ve got nothing at all in my life to complain about apart from being scared of the area I live in.’
‘Oh, Em, come on now. You know it doesn’t work like that. There might be some, I don’t know, trick of some sort? Behavioural therapy?’
‘Next you’ll be saying I should get one of those so-called adult colouring books to relax me,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not six.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that, of course I wouldn’t. But, you know, whatever it takes. Let’s try. Mindfulness might help, maybe? Or back to your yoga?’
‘Sorry,’ Emily said again. She felt helpless and weak-light and when she tried to move towards the door she found she didn’t seem to remember how to walk. She stood anchored to the spot, numb. It was cold. There was ice forming on the outside of the windows. She felt she might be freezing to a block and felt a small rise of panic.
‘No, don’t be sorry, it’s probably my fault for not being able to sort you out. I’m fairly useless, I know, but I’ve never been faced with something that seems unsolvable,’ Sam said.
Emily tried a few deep breaths but could only manage tiny shallow ones. For a few long moments she couldn’t feel her limbs, couldn’t feel how her feet connected with the ground. Was she floating? The illusion passed when Sam stood up and gave her a hug.
‘I’d better go and get the kids off to school. On with the day and all that.’
‘But it’s half-term,’ Emily said. ‘Didn’t you realize?’
‘Ah – forgot for a moment. Look, Emily, you’re doing a great job with Ned but … you know there are two others as well. Alfie asked me the other day if you were going to get better soon. I could see what he meant. When he’s ill he lies on the sofa under the purple blanket. And now you’re doing it. Can’t we … I don’t know, take them to the park today or something? If I’m with you, you’ll be perfectly safe, I promise.’
Emily gripped his hand tightly as he opened the door and led her back to the kitchen. ‘I’ll try. OK, I really will try. This afternoon. But you have to tell me why you’re looking at houses. Are you thinking we should move? Is it because I said I don’t feel safe here any more? I don’t mind moving. I could look at places with you. It’s something we could do together …?’ She realized she was gabbling and, strangely, half-adopting an idea she hadn’t thought through. She hadn’t written a list of pros and cons or thought about which bit of ‘not London’ would be bearable to live in. And schools – what about schools? And work? She could move her office easily enough. Clients weren’t remotely interested in where their accountant operated from, so long as they got the adding up right. Perhaps it would be a good idea. A village perhaps; nothing too remote or too tiny, because she’d want a few neighbours, but a proper, perfect little community with a school and a pub and a shop. In seconds, she had them all in a rose-covered former vicarage, planting out bean seedlings and playing with the … dog. Dog? Where had that come from? She didn’t even like dogs. They smelled and they bit. No, she didn’t want a dog. They’d get a cat. And maybe a pony, one day.
He was filling the kettle at the sink and he laughed, ‘Oh that! I was just idly looking for somewhere to rent down near Cove Manor for Thea’s wedding. It seemed like a good compromise, somehow. We’d get to be just us on our own for Christmas like you wanted but Thea also gets us to be there for her wedding. What do you think?’
Oh, he looked so pleased with himself but Emily felt only a plummeting disappointment that was surprisingly physical. She could sense her face and body getting hot and anger was making her hands shake. Her breasts tingled with the familiar prickling sensation and she felt milk seep from them. Right on cue, from upstairs she could hear the little bleaty cry of Ned waking.
‘I … I don’t know. Well, I do know, but nobody cares what I think. I’ll go and feed the baby. I can’t, I just can’t think about bloody Christmas right now. I can’t think about anything at all.’
Thea had also woken early in the morning, slid quietly out of bed so as not to disturb the still-sleeping Sean and slid her feet into the sheepskin slippers she kept at the house – the mornings were now too cold for bare feet. Christmas soon, she thought. Wedding soon. They must add up the numbers and order some champagne while there was still the chance of pre-season bargains. She must … find a dress. A new dress. Nothing like the old dress; not even close to the one that had been so pearly-tulle beautiful, that had had her name attached to it, hand-embroidered on a little silk tag, but which, in the end, had never left the shop. Right now
wasn’t the time to think about that. Sean was nothing like Rich; he may be laid-back and casual to a near-fault, but he’d never let her down the way Rich had.
Woody miaowed around her feet and threaded himself through her legs. ‘You’ll trip me up, you mad cat,’ she said to him, stroking his plush little brown ears. ‘And then I won’t be able to get your breakfast because I’ll be lying on the floor with bones broken.’ Woody purred and narrowed his squinty blue eyes at her, clearly not caring. ‘OK, what is it today? Chicken flavour or fish?’ She opened the old larder cupboard and pulled out the basket where Sean kept Woody’s stash of food. Something glinted at her and she reached inside and from under the catfood sachets pulled out a silver bracelet studded with little red stones. ‘Isn’t this pretty?’ she said to the cat, showing it to him before placing the bracelet on the worktop. She’d ask Sean about it later as someone must be missing it. Probably, she decided, it belonged to Maria, who ran most of the domestic side of the Cove Manor rental business; she organized cleaning and also occasional cooking for those clients who preferred to go for the luxury of a partly catered option. She was often in and out of the stables here, talking to Sean and calling in to feed the cat if he was away. She kept some of the manor recipes here too and had spent many an hour over the past year discussing with Sean and Thea possible meal options for the clients.
Thea put Woody’s food bowl on the floor and he tucked in greedily, making little grunting noises as he ate. As she watched him she idly picked up the bracelet again, turning it over and round and deciding, on second thoughts, that it didn’t look much like something Maria would wear. She was a big jolly sort and her jewellery tended to be big and jolly too: brightly coloured wide wooden bangles; hand-crafted necklaces with large multi-coloured beads. This was delicate, fine and slender and she could see it was hallmarked but not engraved. Maria’s daughter Daisy’s, possibly? She sometimes came along in the school holidays and at weekends to help out for pocket money. She was a quiet girl, blushing at the slightest thing. The previous Christmas, Thea had accidentally caught sight of Daisy and Elmo kissing in the games room, table-tennis bats abandoned in favour of making the most of a piece from the massive clump of mistletoe that Sean had cut down from a tree in the nearby wood. They’d looked teenage-awkward but keen and she’d swiftly put herself out of viewing range so as not to embarrass the pair. Possibly Daisy had glimpsed Thea as she passed the door. It would explain why she never seemed to look Thea in the eye without going bright pink.
It was still dark outside but the kind of fuzzy dark that looks as if it’s trying to rub itself out. Thea tried the bracelet on – it was a bit big for her and as Daisy was a skinny little teenager it was no surprise that it must have fallen off. She’d ask Sean about it later. It needed to find its owner.
FOURTEEN
‘Sam sent a text. He says Emily won’t go out of the house. He doesn’t know what to do with her,’ Anna told Mike as they drove towards the south coast. Online, Anna had seen a gloriously positioned beachfront house near Marazion and had arranged for a viewing. ‘It’s got to be worth a look, at least,’ she’d said, flicking through photos on her iPad. ‘And there’s a building that’s described as a studio so maybe it’s one of those serendipitous things that is “meant”.’ Erring on the side of not getting over-excited by the prospect, Mike had said, ‘Or it could be a fancy word for a shed,’ slightly annoying Anna in the process.
‘Well, Emily will have to get over that one,’ Mike said, looking for the right exit at a complicated Penzance roundabout. ‘She’ll have full-on agoraphobia at this rate.’
‘Hmm, well, that’s about as much use as saying pull yourself together. I don’t think it’s something you just snap out of,’ Anna told him. Sometimes, just sometimes, she remembered what it was about Mike that had made her go off the year before and be adventurous with someone else. He could be a bit damn set in his thoughts, so – and she recalled a phrase Thea sometimes used – so last century.
‘It’ll be hormones. She’ll be fine once they settle.’
Mike still didn’t sound worried enough, in Anna’s opinion. ‘Typical man,’ she said. ‘Always blaming our woman-equipment. It couldn’t just be that she’s actually right to feel worried? Some of the world out there is pretty horrid, don’t you think?’
Mike slowed as they approached the village and peered around him. ‘Down this lane here, I think. And there’s parking. And no, I wouldn’t say Emily exactly lives in a hotbed of civil disarray, not by any means. She’s in one of the smart suburbs. One that’s always described as “leafy”. Honestly, sometimes I can’t help thinking that girl doesn’t know she’s born.’
‘Well, there is that. She could do with a bit of blessing-counting, but she could also get some medical help. Sam says she won’t.’
‘She needs something to look forward to. There’s Thea’s wedding. Can’t she try and be positive about that?’
‘You tell her then. Sam says she won’t even discuss anything beyond whatever day they’re currently on. We should go home as soon as we’ve seen Thea and Sean, help out a bit more with the children. You see, that’s why I have qualms about moving so far away from them all. Where will we be when they need us?’
Mike stopped the car in a pull-in area alongside what looked like a fairly standard but large-scale Victorian cottage facing the sandy beach. To the side of it, there was a long detached building that looked like a garage but was presumably the studio, and there was plenty of space to park, which was at a premium in any Cornish village. ‘I don’t know, Anna, but at least with a bit of distance, they get time to sort things out for themselves without us charging in all the time like the cavalry. Anyway, this is it. What do you think?’
Before Anna could reply to any of what he’d said, the front door opened and a woman with carefully piled-up hair and scarlet lipstick was facing them. She wasn’t smiling. ‘You’ve a London registered car, I see.’
‘Er, oh, have we? Does it matter?’ Mike said, looking puzzled. Anna almost giggled: Mike almost certainly hadn’t a clue about his car registration number. She remembered, when they’d been pulled up by the police once for having a dodgy brake light, and Mike hadn’t even been able to remember what make the car was, let alone the number.
‘You have. You’re from up-country,’ the woman accused him. She seemed reluctant to let them in. Anna felt a bit cross. It couldn’t be their appearance: West Cornwall had plenty of men of Mike’s age with grey hair and a Willie Nelson-style bandana, not to mention women with boat-like purple shoes and colourful multilayered clothes. The area was rammed with pension-age hippies.
‘We’ve come to see the house. We do have an appointment,’ Mike said. ‘Or have we got the wrong place? Are you Mrs Carter?’
‘Yes, it’s for sale. But not to second-homers.’ She still wasn’t about to open the door any further, Anna could see. They’d apparently failed whatever test there was by having the wrong car. She felt quite annoyed. If this house was for local residents only, then why had it been advertised to all and sundry on a national website?
‘OK,’ Anna said. ‘Well, we aren’t looking for a second home, just a regular one. But we’re sorry to have wasted your time.’ She turned to go, feeling horribly unwelcome.
‘Oh well, now you’re here …’ Mrs Carter said, opening the door another few inches, ‘… you might as well come in and have a look.’
‘Thank you,’ Mike said, treating her to an undeserved broad smile as they went inside.
The first thing that took Anna’s breath away was the view. The front might have looked fairly traditional with big sash windows but the inside had been transformed. The entire back wall of the house, opening off from the kitchen and a large family room, consisted of folding glass doors leading to a broad stone terrace with steps to a small grassy garden with deep flower beds on each side. Beyond was the beach, the sea and the great rocky rising of St Michael’s Mount.
‘Oh, wow,’ Anna said.
‘Everyone says that.’ The owner stood with her arms folded, glaring at the view. ‘I suppose you’ll want to see the rest of it.’
‘That’s the idea,’ Mike said. ‘If that’s all right with you.’ Anna gave him a nudge. She liked what she’d seen so far and didn’t want to lose what slim chance an applicant from the wrong side of the Tamar River could possibly have of being in with a shout at buying this. Apart from the big family kitchen at the back, there were two other rooms at the front, both beautifully and freshly painted the colour of clotted cream, each with a new-looking wood-burner and plenty of deep, built-in shelf space. Anna felt pleased about that – she was willing to have a cull of her massive book collection but it would still leave a lot that needed accommodating.
Upstairs were three bedrooms each with its own bathroom, all simply furnished, painted in gentle seaside shades of white and palest greeny-blue and looking, Anna thought, like something utterly gorgeous from Livingetc magazine. She loved everything about the place, even how someone had thought it a good idea to paint exposed ceiling beams in a soft grey. In fact she felt heart-tremblingly excited about this house in a way she would never have thought likely. It wasn’t so different in age or style from their own house, but lacked all the worn-out and crumbling bits that were about to become an endless money-pit if they stayed in it. The thought of a low-maintenance home, of being able to run the heating without expecting the boiler to go into a terminal sulk, was strangely exhilarating. Below, she could see from the main bedroom window, alongside the lawn, flourished huge clumps of agapanthus. At the far end was a group of echiums, half-grown to only about three feet now but next summer they would send great bolts of flower spikes over ten feet in the air. She wanted, more than anything, to be here to see them when they did. It was like falling in love. It was more intense than the crazy zinging she’d felt when she’d first got together with Alec the year before. It was better than that, in fact – this time she knew it wasn’t going to be cut through with a huge dose of guilt and regret.