Looking For Lucy

by Julie Houston

  ‘Have you lot been drinking?’ I asked crossly.

  ‘Absolutely not…’

  ‘We called for a quick one at the Rose and Crown…’ Izzy and Harriet both started speaking at the same time.

  ‘JoJo Kennedy and Rafe Ahern?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry?’ All three looked at me in surprise and then Izzy said, ‘Oh dear, oh deary, deary me.’

  ‘JoJo Kennedy, the model?’ Harriet asked. ‘Oh, she’s lovely. Of course, Rafe’s having a bit of a thing with her, isn’t he?’

  ‘Bit more than a bit of a thing,’ Izzy said grimly. ‘They were plastered all over last week’s edition of Hello.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Clem? What is it?’ Grace had taken one look at my face—as Harriet continued to extol the virtues of the supermodel—and was no longer laughing.

  ‘Bloody Rafe Ahern,’ Izzy snapped. ‘He allows Clem to murder his mother’s ridiculous chicken, ropes her in to act as midwife for his damned donkey or whatever it was—where he nicks her shirt, leaving her in just a bra for every passing pervert to goggle at—then makes up for it by taking her to The Box Tree, then spends all night finding her real mother for her and then… then kisses her passionately in the kitchen…’

  ‘I didn’t tell you he’d kissed me…’

  ‘You didn’t have to, Clem. I’m a doctor—I know these things…’

  ‘And then he has the nerve to flaunt his—let’s face it—ravishing lover on your doorstep… in your own restaurant?’ Grace was really cross now.

  ‘Worse, I’m afraid,’ I said, trying not to cry.

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘It’s a surprise engagement do. If Rafe doesn’t propose to JoJo, she’s going to propose to him.’ I blew my nose, the sound trumpeting round the cavernous kitchen like some out of control elephant.

  ‘How on earth do you know that, you daft thing?’ Harriet asked, smiling indulgently while patting my hand.

  ‘JoJo told Mel on the phone. And, and I’ve fallen so in love with him. And I know I shouldn’t, because he belongs to someone else…’

  ‘JoJo Kennedy…No contest.’ Izzy shook her head.

  ‘Izzy!’ Both Harriet and Grace glared at Izzy who threw up her hands in the manner of a Jewish mama.

  ‘Look, I need to mothball my lust for Rafe Ahern.’

  ‘You can’t mothball lust…’

  ‘I need to forget my feelings for him and do a professional job here. This is my restaurant and David Henderson would have a fit if he knew we were standing around acting like a bunch of schoolgirls. Besides, JoJo Kennedy has no idea I’ve fallen in love with her fiancé-to-be. It’s not her fault, after all.’

  ‘OK,’ Harriet said. ‘You cook and keep out of the way and we’ll wait on.’

  ‘And see what we can hear as they’re eating…’ Izzy said.

  I gave her a warning glance and she threw up her hands once more, muttering ‘all right, already’ under her breath.

  ‘Is everything ready in The Orangery?’ Grace asked.

  ‘They’re not eating in there. Mel offered her the summerhouse in The Secret Garden—Betty’s laying the table down there now.’

  ‘So we have to totter all the way down the garden with the food? Won’t it go cold before we get there?’ Izzy pulled a face.

  ‘Not at all. We place the hot dishes inside thermal containers.’ I frowned as I suddenly remembered how big the thermal serving dishes were. ‘Actually, I probably would have two waiting staff out there even for one table. Betty would have had to help Emily this evening. So, I do need two of you out there and someone front of house to meet and greet. I don’t trust you, Izzy…’ I lowered my voice as Betty came in from the garden. ‘And Betty would spend all evening gawping at JoJo. Would you do that, Grace? You’ve met Rafe?’

  Izzy and Harriet had a good three-quarters of an hour to practise and hone their waiting skills down in the summerhouse while Grace and Betty helped me put the final touches to the food. It had been raining for the past few days and I’d thought we might have to abandon the idea of al fresco dining, but the day had segued into a perfectly mellow August evening. The night-scented stocks and honeysuckle were already breathing out their heady scent and the newly mown lawns and footpath down to the summerhouse were dry. The lights in the summerhouse twinkled in the warm dusk of the evening: the perfect ambiance for a romantic tryst.

  *

  The crunch of tyres on the gravel set my heart pounding and I buried my head in the fridge for a good few seconds before bringing out the bottle of Bollinger JoJo Kennedy had specified, with trembling hands. What if he came into the kitchen? I had a horrid feeling I might punch him hard before begging him not to marry JoJo.

  ‘Right, front door is open,’ Grace said, sensing my nervousness. ‘I’ll go and do my front of house act and take their orders for drinks in the garden.’

  ‘Rafe,’ she said gaily as she set off down to the open front door. ‘How lovely to see you. Do come into the garden and take a seat. It’s far too nice to be inside, don’t you think…?’

  *

  ‘Well, there’s no woman with him,’ Grace said, a few minutes later as she bounced back into the kitchen before heading to the bar to find whisky. ‘No JoJo Kennedy that I can see. Are you sure you’ve got this right, Clem?’

  ‘Really? He’s by himself?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. He asked for a whisky and soda and I took him down to the summer house. He’s in there all alone.’

  ‘Well, did he say anything?’

  ‘No,’ Grace said, shaking her head. ‘He seemed surprised when I took him down to the garden, but—’

  She was interrupted by the sound of another crunch of wheels on the drive and we all looked at each other.

  ‘Here she is,’ I said, my heart descending to somewhere around my knees as I turned back to the beef carpaccio I was fiddling with. ‘Front of house again please, Grace.’

  *

  ‘Is she gorgeous?’ I asked Izzy and Hat as they returned with plates and waited for me to assemble the lobster.

  ‘Of course she’s gorgeous,’ Betty piped up from the other end of the kitchen. ‘She’s a supermodel—what do you expect?’

  ‘No wonder she’s so thin,’ Izzy said indignantly. ‘She’s eaten the oysters but just picked at the carpaccio. Do you mind if I…?’

  ‘Help yourself, Izzy. Pointless it going to waste. Anyway, she’s probably too nervous to eat, waiting for Rafe to get down on his knees.’

  ‘I have to say, Clem, they don’t look to be a couple in love. His body language is all wrong.’ Harriet wiped down the granite surface with a cloth. ‘I’m going to have a good listen when I go out there again. See what they’re saying.’

  ‘Really?’ My head came up, just as I saw George racing past the kitchen door. ‘Oh, shit. I forgot all about George. I usually put him in his kennel in the kitchen garden when guests are around…’ I popped my head out of the kitchen door, shading my eyes against the darkness which seemed to have descended in the last ten minutes. I stepped into the garden, whistling quietly for him to come back to me but could see no sign of him, his blackness completely camouflaged by the inky darkness.

  There was no way I was going anywhere near the summerhouse, but it looked as if George had no scruples about doing just that. I was about to retrace my steps and send one of the others after him when a beautiful, tall blonde woman walked up the path towards the house. Dressed in the shortest and slinkiest of midnight-blue dresses, she was instantly recognisable as JoJo Kennedy.

  ‘Hi, you must be Clementine. I’ve heard all about you.’

  Had she? Why?

  I smiled, embarrassed, and muttered something about looking for a dog.

  ‘Right,’ she said, looking straight at me, taking in every aspect of me. ‘I’m looking for the loo.’

  I pointed JoJo in the right direction, and she was about to pass me and head for the front door and the Ladies; when she turned and said, smiling, ‘It m
ust be very difficult for you, Clementine. I am so sorry.’

  ‘What must? What’s difficult for me?’

  ‘If I’d known you were the woman that’s been hanging round Rafe, I certainly wouldn’t have booked our special meal here. Rafe is a bit concerned you might have taken his friendship rather too seriously, if you know what I mean. He’s feeling very guilty, really quite embarrassed about the whole thing, especially after all you’ve gone through with the death of your husband…’

  Not to mention the death of his chicken?

  ‘Rafe’s just been telling me all about it over dinner—delicious food, by the way. I suppose his finding your real mother for you can’t have helped with how you feel about him…? You’re probably emotionally dependent on him at the moment?’

  George came crashing through the hedge of the secret garden, raced over to JoJo and stuck his nose up her crotch.

  ‘Christ! What is it with you northerners and your animals? You shouldn’t have dogs in a restaurant. Get off, you damned thing!’ JoJo tried to push him away but George was in love. With eyes only for his new friend, he continued to sniff and follow her, gazing up in adoration with his black eyes.

  ‘Heel, George,’ I shouted and then, nodding towards the front of the house, said, ‘the loo’s that way.’ I grabbed George’s collar, turned on my own heel and, like Cinderella, slunk back to the kitchen where I belonged.

  38

  ‘Clem, Clem, Clem.’ Harriet skidded to a halt on the kitchen floor, flinging the thermal containers onto the centre island. ‘He’s just told JoJo it’s all over. He’s in love with you.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Yes, his exact words, and he knew I was hovering, listening. He said, “I’m sorry, JoJo, but this just isn’t going to work. I told you in London that I didn’t want to carry this on. I’ve fallen in love with Clementine…” He looked right at me as he said it.’ Harriet was almost jumping up and down in her excitement.

  ‘What? That Ralph chap has dumped JoJo Kennedy for you…? Betty stopped scraping plates and stared. ‘Well, there’s nowt so queer as folk.’

  ‘Gosh, this is just like being back at school when you passed messages to your best friend that so and so fancied them. Now, any message back? Shall I go back down there and pass him a note…?’

  ‘Just pass me the wine, Harriet, I need a drink.’ I felt utterly dazed. ‘Just tell me again what he said.’

  ‘I’ll act it out,’ Harriet said, laughing. ‘Right, Betty, You’re JoJo…’

  ‘I wish,’ Betty snorted.

  ‘And I’m Rafe. OK? “I don’t want to carry on with you, Betty, sorry, JoJo…’ Harriet said, affecting a deep, masculine voice. ‘“I’m in love with Clementine…”.’

  ‘Erm, would you mind awfully if I tell Clementine that myself?’

  We all turned, horrified, to the open kitchen door where Rafe was standing, eyebrows raised.

  Harriet went scarlet and, after what was probably only a second’s silence, but which seemed to go on forever, Grace poured her a glass of wine. ‘Nice one, Hat…’

  ‘Right,’ Izzy, said, walking into the kitchen carrying plates of untouched food. ‘The party appears to be over… Lobster, anyone?’

  *

  ‘But I feel so sorry for her,’ I said as Rafe and I sat in the garden. The inky blackness was lit only by the fairy lights in the huge cedar tree behind us. ‘She’s driven all this way from London to surprise you and then you turn her down…’

  ‘Clem, I’d already turned her down two weeks ago. I told her I was in love with someone else. I told her all about you.’

  For a split-second Rafe seemed unsure of himself—or was it of me? He took my hand, looking into my face for confirmation I felt the same way.

  ‘But, why come all this way up here to see you? Why tell Mel in the office it was a special dinner and she was hoping you’d propose? I don’t get it.’

  Rafe sighed. ‘Clem, I honestly knew nothing about what she’d planned. Do you think I’d have come round here, tonight, if I’d known JoJo would suddenly show up?’

  ‘All right then, if you didn’t know she’d be here, why did you turn up?’

  Rafe seemed embarrassed. ‘I thought the flowers were from you…’

  ‘What flowers?’ I stared at Rafe.

  ‘The huge bunch of red roses that arrived at the house a couple of days ago—my poor mother was convinced she had a secret admirer—with a note telling me dinner for two would be served at Clementine’s this evening…’ Rafe trailed off and then added, ‘You did sort of issue an invitation when we were at The Box Tree.’

  ‘But if you told JoJo it was all over a couple of weeks ago, what was she doing up here? I thought she’d gone off with Ted Mallabourne, anyway?’

  ‘JoJo likes the chase; she wouldn’t believe anyone capable of kicking her into touch. She’d have been convinced the only reason I told her about you was to get back at her for having a fling with Ted Mallabourne.’

  ‘She is utterly ravishing,’ I said, gazing down at my black and orange pinny.

  ‘Ferrari body, Mini mind, I’m afraid.’ He smiled, stroking my face with the back of his hand. ‘She had absolutely no interest in my work—what I’d seen in the Middle East… I don’t think she even knows where Syria is, let alone the horror of what’s going on there.’

  ‘Well, what about Hello magazine?’ I asked, still not convinced.

  Rafe frowned. ‘What about Hello magazine? I’m afraid I don’t read it.’

  ‘This week’s edition. JoJo is in it… and you. You’re wrapped round each other—the magazine says you share her flat…?’

  ‘Her flat? It’s mine.’

  ‘Oh, it’s your flat?’ I said, surprised. ‘Hello magazine made out it was hers.’

  ‘I told her it was all over between us a couple of weeks ago, that I knew what she’d been up to with Ted Mallabourne. That’s when I knew it was over—I didn’t care a damn what she’d been up to. Anyway, she said would it be OK to use the flat for some photo shoot while I was away—it is a rather lovely flat—and I said OK, as long as she was gone by the time I got back.’ Rafe frowned. ‘I bet I know the photo you mean—it was taken by a friend of hers, six months ago, just after we met. JoJo does not like her own company. Once she realised her fling with Ted Mallabourne was going nowhere, she must have organised this little reunion dinner, assuming I would be won over with her charms once more and—how did she put it? —I’d realise I didn’t fancy the cook after all…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Do you fancy the cook?’

  ‘That is such a revolting expression.’ He grinned. ‘Fancy her…? Clem, I’m so in love with her I can’t think straight. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I just want to have her up against that cedar tree and…’ He smiled again. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know where this cook is, would you?’

  Rafe took my hand and pulled me towards the tree and, with the late summer evening scent of stocks and jasmine assailing my senses, leaned me gently against the cedar, cushioning my head with his arm.

  My knees almost buckling from the sheer joy of being kissed so expertly by this beautiful man, I leaned into his neck, breathing in the faint tang of sandalwood.

  You’re off to the 2016 Olympics, I told my heart and, looking into his blue eyes that were so full of love for me, I kissed him back.

  39

  The Secret Garden couldn’t have looked more ravishing, the gossamer mist already relinquishing its early-morning embrace of the summerhouse to the promising warmth of a glorious June day.

  Sarah turned and smiled as George and I made our way across the dew-shot lawn towards her. She was wearing a plain yellow cotton dress but had nothing on her feet while her cloud of still-dark hair framed her pretty face. It was obvious from the state of play in the actual summerhouse that Sarah had been up since the crack of dawn, and I smiled back at her, picturing her leaving the lodge house at the bottom of the garden where she—an
d also Poppy, now that she’d finished school and was off to Newcastle University in the autumn—had made her home, tripping barefoot through the early morning garden to get ahead with the forthcoming events of the day.

  ‘Are those for in here?’ she asked, looking round for a suitable spot to place the large jug of celandine, buttercups, campion and ox-eye daisies I’d gathered from the wild-flower meadow the children and I had created the previous spring.

  ‘No, these are for Peter,’ I said. ‘I’m going to put the jug down by the bench where the children go when they want to just sit and remember their father.’ I kissed Sarah’s cheek and continued down, across the Secret Garden, to where the bench stood in a patch of now fading bluebells.

  ‘These are for you, Peter. Thank you for loving me and changing my life.’ I placed the jug of flowers at the foot of the bench and, sitting down on the already warm wood, closed my eyes and remembered.

  *

  It was a simple ceremony led by Ben Carey, the new curate of Westenbury Church who, still in love with Sarah, had moved heaven—literally—and earth to be given the post on the death of the previous incumbent and so be near the woman he adored. I suspect there was a more physical influence on the interviewing board in the guise of David Henderson than any spiritual intervention, but had kept that little conjecture to myself these past few months.

  Not long after Sarah and I had been reunited, Sarah made the huge decision to leave Roger and move out of the rectory into a little cottage near Poppy’s school. Both she and Poppy had spent their weekends and holidays with us at Clementine’s and Roger Rabbitt, once he’d got over the shock of Sarah daring to leave him, had apparently found much solace in one of his parishioner’s arms as well as in, allegedly, her nifty way with beef and Yorkshire pudding.

  As we walked up through the fields back to the house, Allegra, in white dress and shoes, ran ahead, racing with Max and Sophie to be first in the Secret Garden to scatter rose petals on the guests as they came through the wooden gate. Betty, in charge of the four young waitresses from the village, was already waiting, a rose behind each ear and, I suspect, already a couple of glasses down, to hand out the first celebratory champagne and canapés.