‘Can Sam have a job too?’
‘Absolutely. I’ve already had a word with Harriet—you know, Harriet Westmoreland?—who says her son, Kit, needs to start earning his keep over the long holiday. And Izzy’s daughter, Emily, fancies working some hours too.’
‘Oh, that sounds really good.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Do you think Max is going to be OK, Clem?’
‘I think it will take time, a lot of time. It’s a terrible thing to happen to an eight-year-old. To lose both your parents.’
‘I’ve never known him wet the bed before,’ Sophie went on, embarrassed for him. ‘Why’s he started doing that now, do you think?’
‘Anxiety, stress, unhappiness. Not only has he lost his parents, but his home has been turned into a restaurant around him as well.’
‘Thank goodness we didn’t end up in one of those awful little houses we went to look at.’ Sophie placed the cake tin in the waiting oven. ‘What are you going to do about Lucy? Have you told Allegra about her yet?’
‘Yes. I had to go and see the head this afternoon. Lucy was outside the playground gates, asking the other kids which one she was. I told Allegra about her when we got home.’
Sophie whistled. ‘Blimey.’
‘Blimey, indeed. I’m going to have to let Lucy see her. If I don’t, she’ll just turn up anyway, here or at school.’
‘Suppose.’ She paused, suddenly shy. ‘Thanks, Clem…’
‘For what?’
‘For being here and looking after Max. And me.’
I kissed her cheek and gave her a hug, the first she’d ever allowed me to give. ‘My pleasure, Sophie. Really.’
*
I didn’t kid even myself that the reason I was switching on the late evening news was simply to catch an updated weather forecast so I’d know if the next day’s booked-in tennis and lunch for six could be served in the garden. I wanted to see Rafe; I wanted to see him in action, wanted to know if he was there, in Syria, and surviving.
I’d switched on the TV in the little snug that, now the huge, formal sitting room had been made over to a guest dining room as well as conference room, sufficed as our main family room. I loved this room. I loved its open aspect onto the garden, its book-lined walls and piano that I kept promising myself I would learn to play once I had more time. It was still incredibly light outside—I glanced at one of the daily papers that were bought in for the guests, but which I filched for my own use at the end of each day and saw it was June twenty-first: mid-summer’s day.
I sat on the edge of the sofa telling myself, as I had the previous two nights, that Rafe probably hadn’t even got through security yet; that there would be other reporters, perhaps more senior, who would actually appear in front of the cameras. There were various news stories: a huge financial loss by one American bank; a missing sixteen-year-old, political infighting among the ranks of the Conservatives.
And then he was there, on my screen, explaining how a US-led coalition aircraft was providing significant support to Kurdish militia fighters seeking to defend three autonomous enclaves in the country's north from attacks by IS, but that a programme to train and arm five thousand Syrian rebels to take the fight to IS on the ground had suffered setbacks…
I hadn’t really taken in before what a beautiful voice he had. It was commanding and clear, belonging to an obviously educated man. There was no doubting the northern accent, and yet I could also ascertain an occasional slight Southern Irish intonation.
He looked tired but sublime.
Clementine Broadbent, you silly bitch, sublime with a commanding voice he may be but, just like David Henderson, he belongs to someone else. He belongs to JoJo Kennedy.
I switched off the television and went to bed.
32
I need to talk to you, David.
The morning after David had come round and kissed me in the kitchen I sent a simple text. I’d spent one of those awful sleepless nights when you fall asleep because you’re so shattered, but wake up a couple of hours later and know that you’re going to be spending the rest of the night flinging the sheets off because you’re too hot, and bashing the pillow into submission as you try to send worries over the waterfall. This was a trick Izzy had sworn by to stop one’s mind going over and over problems: every time a worrying thought came into your head you had to blithely command it ‘off you go—over the waterfall, bugger off you horrid problem…’ Unfortunately, every time I found myself dropping off to sleep, it was me going over the waterfall and I woke, heart pounding, swimming upstream. At five o’clock I’d had enough, had a shower and went into the dew-soaked garden with George and a strong cup of coffee.
It was the start of another incredibly beautiful day, and George was in his element chasing the early-morning bunnies that Eric the gardener was forever muttering about. Shit, what was I going to do about David? Here was a man I’d spent a year having increased-pulse-rate fantasies about and, let’s be honest in all this, thoroughly enjoying the lingering looks, the brushing of his arm against mine, the delicious feelings that came about by the very fact of having a fantasy love object. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what David Henderson was: stardust, fairyland, pure fantasy. Now that there was a chance this fantasy might be coming to fruition, I was running scared. Scared, I also now realised, that my backing off from his advances might lead to his pulling out of Clementine’s. And that was something I couldn’t bear to happen.
My phone beeped as George and I walked in the Secret Garden that was, even at this early hour, suffused with the extravagant calls and song of birds and insects.
I’ll be over at midday.’
I glanced at my watch as we walked. It wasn’t quite six o’clock. David Henderson was obviously another Margaret Thatcher—ruling their world on too few hours’ sleep.
I made sure not to drop Allegra off in the playground as was my usual wont, but walked down to the village a little later with her and accompanied her into school, delivering her right to the classroom and Miss Fisher’s care.
As I began my walk back up the hill out of the village towards home, a black BMW sidled up beside me, following in my footsteps until I turned and saw Lucy at the open window of the car’s passenger side.
‘Clem, we need to talk.’
Hadn’t I sent a similar text to David Henderson only a couple of hours earlier? ‘Yes,’ I said, knowing she was right.
‘I thought I’d see you at the school gate but we obviously just missed you…’
‘We?’ I peered into the car and saw a youngish Asian man in a black T-shirt and jeans, shades hiding his eyes.
Lucy didn’t bother introducing us, and after a somewhat disinterested glance he looked away. ‘Get in,’ Lucy ordered, ‘and we’ll drive you up.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I need the exercise. The gates at the bottom of the drive are on a code so you’ll have to wait until I get there.’
I needed the five minutes or so walk up the hill to try and dispel the fear that was mounting at Lucy’s—not totally unexpected—reappearance, and to think about what I was going to say to her. The gates were very rarely locked, particularly now with so many staff and customers needing entry at different times of the day and evening, but after Lucy’s initial visit, I’d started to lock them whenever practicable, making sure Mel, Grace and Betty knew the code to let themselves in.
Betty had obviously forgotten it. She was sitting on the grass verge on the lane, pressing numbers on her mobile while the black BMW was parked up, like an indolent black cat, at the side of her.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Clem,’ Betty said, indicating with a nod of her head the BMW. ‘I’m sorry, love, I’ve forgotten the code. And I suppose that’s your sister? Probably a good job I couldn’t remember it—I wouldn’t have known if to let them in or not.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’ I smiled, sounding more confident than I felt. I keyed in the code, the wooden gates to the drive slowly opened and Betty and I walked up to
the house as the BMW went full throttle past us, scattering Peter’s doves in its wake.
‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ Betty asked, obviously dying to know what was going on. ‘Rather than getting on with the veg, I mean…’
‘No. Honestly, Betty. She’s my sister, after all. There’s nothing to be worried about.’
‘Hmm. Well, I don’t like the look of the chap she’s with. I’d keep an eye on the silver if I were you…’
I wondered if Betty would have felt differently if the man had been white, no sunglasses and driving a white Ford, but wasn’t about to question her obvious pigeon-holing of Lucy’s friend.
I suggested we sit in the garden—I didn’t want Lucy and the man wandering around the house—and asked Betty to bring us out some coffee.
Lucy pulled a face. ‘Ooh, get you, ordering people about to wait on you. You have got it made, haven’t you?’
‘Lucy, I don’t own any of this. I work here, just like the other staff do…’
‘So, it’s David Henderson is it who owns all this gaff?’ The man spoke for the first time, gazing round at the beautifully manicured lawns, at the trees and flowers in full summer bloom and at the mellow walls of the house where a couple of swallows, oblivious to the human activity below, were systematically swooping in and out of its ancient eaves.
‘Lucy, do you think we can talk without—sorry, I don’t know your name…?’
‘Adam,’ the man said, sitting down and putting his feet up on the chair opposite.
‘…without Adam being here? I think this is between you and me, Lucy, don’t you?’
‘Oh, it’s fine, Clem. Adam’s my boyfriend—my partner—and once I get Allegra back to live with me, he’ll be a big part of her life. We have a stable relationship which is what the courts will be looking for.’
I felt sick. ‘I am her legal guardian, Lucy. You know that. You disappeared. You didn’t want to have anything to do with her, years without any contact. There’s no way any court will let you have her…’ The sick feeling was suddenly replaced by a blind fury. ‘I will fight you every step of the way, Lucy. You may be my sister, and God knows I’ve sided with you, fought for you, loved you all my life, but you are not having your own damned way over this. You are not having my daughter.’ I was trembling and stood up to try and control myself.
‘But, Clem,’ Lucy spoke slowly, the little cat-like smile that I knew of old which used to have Mum wanting to slap her, playing on her lips, ‘she’s not your daughter, is she? And there’s no reason for me not to have my own daughter: Adam and I have a flat, we are in a stable relationship, I am clean and out of trouble.’
Adam snorted. ‘Apart from the shoplifting last week, Luce.’
Lucy glared at Adam and then turned back to me. ‘As I told the magistrates, “Not Guilty”.’
Adam guffawed, and there was real humour in his laugh. ‘I think your answer was “Half Guilty,” as I recall.’
‘It was Buy One, Get One Free. How could I be fully guilty if one of the bottles was free?’
I stared at Lucy, my anger beginning to subside. Adam, surely, had just given me my ‘get out of jail’ card? No court would hand a little girl back to a mother she’d not seen for years, a mother who’d abandoned her at a few weeks old and who’d just been caught committing a crime the previous week.
‘What was it?’ I asked Adam conversationally. ‘Perfume?’
‘Vodka…’
Lucy shot him such a look of fury he shut up and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes against the morning sunshine.
‘I’m telling you now, Lucy,’ I said, refusing to sit down again, ‘Allegra stays with me. I’ve spent the last couple of years looking for you to let you know I intended applying to adopt her. Now that you’re back in touch, I’m giving you official notice that that’s what I’m going to do. I have an appointment with my solicitor in the morning and I shall do everything in my power to not only to keep her with me as her guardian, but to set in motion all I will have to do to legally adopt her.’
‘You’ll have a fight on your hands, Clem.’ Lucy was about to turn nasty—I recognised the signs of old. ‘I have an appointment with my solicitor too.’ She got up from the table, kicking Adam who appeared to be dropping off.
‘And don’t think about hanging round the school again, Lucy, or… or I’ll have the police onto you,’ I shouted after her as she and Adam climbed into the BMW.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I won’t,’ she called. ‘I know how to play the game; from now on I’ll be a model parent, going through all the correct channels to get my own little girl back.’ She suddenly jumped back out of the car and headed towards me. ‘And don’t you ever think you’re better than me,’ she spat. ‘I might have walked the streets—a common prostitute—but don’t kid yourself you didn’t marry this Peter Broadbent chap for his money and this house. Yes,’ she sneered, ‘I read all about him in The Yorkshire Post. And if that isn’t prostitution then I don’t know what is.’ She paused for a couple of seconds. ‘What was the line in that Richard Gere film Granny Douglas used to watch over and over again? When that rich chap is trying to set the prostitute up in a place of her own? And he says, “It will get you off the streets.” And she says, “That’s just geography.” Well, there you go, Clem…’ Lucy laughed in my face. ‘It’s just fucking geography.’ And with that, she turned on her heel and was gone.
*
‘Clementine, what is it? Are you OK?’ David seemed to appear from nowhere and came and stood behind me as I worked at the kitchen. Betty was laying up tables in The Orangery and Mel was in the office. He closed the kitchen door leading to the rest of the house, took my hand and led me back outside where, an hour earlier, I’d faced Lucy. He took my hand and I let it stay in his. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a lot earlier than I intended, but I had to see you…’
‘David, when I came over the other evening, when Mandy told me to back off—and she did, and I don’t blame her a bit—I needed a friend to talk to.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Allegra’s real mother had just come to the house.’
‘Sorry?’ David stared at me.
‘I’m Allegra’s aunt, I’m not her actual mother. My sister, Lucy, is her biological mother. I’ve been her legal guardian since she was born. Now Lucy wants her back…’
‘Oh God, you poor, poor thing.’ David stroked my hair and I knew this was my opportunity to speak. To tell him this thing between us was going no further.
‘And David, I have spent the last year, as I’m sure you are fully aware, dreaming of kissing you, fantasising about… about being with you.’ Not really knowing if last night he’d been offering me a place in his bed, to be his mistress or to be the new Mrs Henderson, I didn’t quite know how to actually phrase it. ‘But I suddenly realised last night that this has to stop. That I’m not going to be the one to break up your marriage.’ I felt amazingly calm as I went on. ‘The only thing that is important to me at the moment is Allegra and my keeping her with me.’
David said nothing but stopped stroking my hair and sat down at the table.
‘I’m really, really sorry, David,’ I went on, speaking in a rush. ‘You belong to Mandy, and I’m so fed up of being with people who don’t really belong to me…’ I tailed off, not really knowing what else to say, frightened that Grace, who was already late for work, might suddenly appear and see us together and put two and two together. David still said nothing for a while but just looked at me.
‘I thought… I thought it was what you wanted, Clementine. I feel a fool now. I apologise,’ he said stiffly.
‘Oh but it was, David. It was. God, if you’d have kissed me even… even two weeks ago.’
‘Is there someone else?’
‘No. No.’ God, what is it about the male ego that men think a rejection must mean there is someone else involved? I took a deep breath. ‘David, this has been a really strange year and a half. I’ve gone from being single, to being married, to being a widow, to being the mothe
r of three children and, thanks to you, to being in charge of this wonderful place. And now my sister is trying to take my little girl from me. Allegra is the only one that matters to me at the moment. If I’ve led you on—and I know I have—then I’m truly sorry and can only apologise.’
David smiled wryly. ‘Do not adultery commit; advantage rarely comes of it. Who said that, Clem?’
‘I’ve really no idea, David.’ Jesus, all I needed was a ‘starter for ten’ at eleven o’clock on a Thursday morning when my mind was racing over the possibility of losing Allegra as well as suddenly remembering the four malevolent-looking lobsters that were awaiting my attention in one of the kitchen’s deep steel sinks.
‘David,’ I took his hand. ‘You have every right to, but please, please, I beg of you, don’t give up on Clementine’s… especially now as I will have to prove I have a stable home for Allegra.’
David looked at me in astonishment. ‘Clementine, I may have lost my head over you but, let me assure you, I never lose my head where business is concerned. Why on earth would I give up on this place? Just as it is beginning to really take off…?’
‘And is it?’
‘Taking off?’ He smiled. ‘You’ve obviously not read the latest reviews on Clementine’s. There were two last weekend: one in Yorkshire’s Best and one in Out of London. Both were gratifyingly sycophantic. Oh, and my bank manager took me out for lunch to celebrate too, so it must be true.’ David was still smiling but there was real sadness in his eyes. ‘You are a very beautiful girl, Clementine—inside and out. I only wish I’d acted earlier …’
‘David, I need you to be my friend.’
‘And I am, Clementine, I am.’ He got up as we heard a car on the drive, bent over and kissed me chastely on the cheek. ‘Even if the very thought of you drives me to distraction.’
*
‘I’m so sorry about Lucy wanting to have Allegra back, Clementine.’ The week after Lucy’s second visit, Harriet had brought her son Kit and his girlfriend Poppy round for an informal chat re their working at Clementine’s over the summer school holiday. Sophie and Sam had taken them, as well as Emily, Izzy’s daughter, for a conducted tour of the house and grounds and they were now drinking coke and, by the sound of the music and laughter emanating from the Secret Garden, having a great time getting to know each other.
Looking For Lucy Page 32