by Ali McNamara
Inside this one was a small red velvet box. I gently lifted the lid and found inside a heart-shaped locket. I could tell the locket wasn’t brand new, because it had that slight tarnish all antique silver has. I lifted it up in my fingers to examine it; it was surprisingly heavy, and the floral engraving on it was exquisite. There was a tiny note caught inside the box lid. Carefully I pried it out.
Dear Scarlett,
I wore this necklace on my wedding day, as did your grandmother many years before me. I don’t know why this of all years it seems the right time to give it to you. But something tells me in my heart that perhaps it is.
So happy 23rd birthday, my darling, I hope this year is the year that true love will cast its spell upon you.
Mum x
I cradled the locket in my hand for a few more seconds before folding up the note, placing it inside the box, and firmly closing the lid.
Then I placed it down alongside all the other twenty-two gifts, which now sat in a huge semicircle around me on the floor. Each gift sat upon the carefully folded wrapping paper it had been encased in for so many years.
I looked slowly along the line from start to finish before I returned to my first birthday once more. I picked up the little red teddy and held it up against my face again.
And it was then that I began to cry.
***
I must have sat there on the floor sobbing for at least twenty minutes before I was finally able to compose myself. I then packed all the gifts away as carefully as I could back into the box, quickly went to the bathroom to clean up my mascara-streaked face, then grabbed my coat and bag and headed out of the front door.
As I hurried along the pavement I rummaged in my bag for a piece of paper. Once found, I glanced at it briefly before shoving it in my coat pocket.
I walked down into the depths of Notting Hill Gate station. I found the correct line on the map up on the wall and then had to sit patiently on the tube train for a few stops, before I could alight and go back up into the fresh air once more.
I pulled the piece of paper from my pocket, glanced at it again, and then had to ask for further directions before winding my way along a few more streets, eventually arriving at a block of flats.
I looked up momentarily at the towering gray building in front of me before I hurried into its core. I had to wait while I rose up excruciatingly slowly in the lift until the light above my head lit with the number 5, and the doors jolted open.
It was after I had made my way along a dark and dingy corridor that I finally found what I was searching for.
I took a deep breath before knocking purposefully on the door of flat no. 504.
After a few seconds the door swung open and Rose stood staring at me in astonishment.
“Scarlett, what are you doing here so soon?” she said, her expression one of concern.
My voice quivered as I tried to speak.
“What on earth is wrong?” Rose asked in alarm. “What’s happened?”
Tears began to fall from my eyes. “M…Mum,” I just managed to utter before the tears cascaded down my cheeks in a tidal wave of emotion.
“Oh, Scarlett,” Rose said, clasping her hand to her mouth, as tears began to spring from her own eyes now. “What’s changed?”
“I have,” I sobbed, running toward her.
And it was then, for the first time in my life, that I hugged my mother.
Thirty-One
Mum and I spent lots of time together over the next couple of days. We visited galleries, took walks in the park, had lunch, and even managed to watch a few movies together—both at the cinema and at home on Belinda and Harry’s huge plasma screen TV.
“My shifts change next week,” Mum announced on Sunday when we were on our way back from seeing a double bill of Cary Grant films. We’d had to travel quite a way on the tube to find this particular cinema, which only showed classic movies. But it had been worth it for an afternoon of An Affair to Remember and The Philadelphia Story the way they were originally intended to be viewed, on the big screen. “So I won’t be able to spend so much time with you, I’m afraid. Besides, I expect you’re starting to get fed up seeing me every day.”
“Of course I’m not,” I protested, genuinely meaning it.
Mum smiled. “That’s lovely to hear, Scarlett. But unfortunately I’ll be working days next week, so I’ll only have my evenings free. Anyway, I expect you’d like to catch up with David. I bet he’s been missing you.”
“Actually, I think I have been neglecting David a bit recently, and I wanted a chance to introduce him to my new friends, and to you, of course. So you having your evenings free is good, because I was hoping to have a dinner party next week. David has some business in London so he’s going to stay over one night.”
“Oh, I’d love to meet your fiancé,” Mum said, looking pleased.
“I thought I’d invite Oscar and Ursula too—they’re the two people who were with me the night we met at the cinema. They’re dying to meet you properly; they know about everything that’s happened.”
So did my mother now. Over the last few days I had explained not only how Sean and I had searched all over London and then Paris for her, but also the other reason I was here. And, as I thought she might, my mother had heartily approved of my plan to prove everyone wrong about the movies.
“I shall certainly look forward to your dinner party, Scarlett,” Mum said now. “But you must promise me you’ll try to get out and find some more films next week—you’ve not got long in London now, and one of us has to prove your father wrong. I certainly never managed it.”
“Stop worrying, Mum,” I assured her. “Everything will be just fine—I’m sure of it.”
***
As I stood in front of Belinda’s cookbooks trying to decipher how long you marinated and how often you should stir, I highly doubted it would all be fine…well, the dinner party I was holding tonight anyway.
I was sure that people like Oscar and Ursula who frequented trendy London restaurants all the time wouldn’t expect to come to a dinner party and be served up my trademark dish of spaghetti bolognese. But knowing those two, I highly doubted they would complain—they were far too lovely and polite for that. And David…well, David would be surprised to find I was even cooking at all; it wasn’t usually high on my list of successful pastimes.
But I wanted to impress my mother. She might not be living in the lap of luxury at the moment, but I got the feeling from some of the stories she had told me about her life that she had sampled some of the finest cuisines in the world at one time or another.
“Oh God, what do you mean, you stupid man?” I said, staring at the pages of the cookbook, where the celebrity chef grinned smugly back at me from a tiny photo at the top of each page. “What the hell is braise-deglaze?”
The doorbell rang.
“Oh no—who the hell is that at”—I glanced at the clock on the cooker—“at four bloody o’clock in the afternoon!”
I stomped impatiently to the door in my apron, with my cookbook still gripped tightly in one hand.
“Hello, stranger,” the person standing grinning on my doorstep said. “Long time no see.”
“Sean!” I nearly dropped the book in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I just heard the good news from Ursula—about your mother—so I thought I’d pop round.” He looked at my apron-clad body suspiciously. “Can I come in?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether you know what braise-deglaze means.”
Sean wrinkled his forehead. “It’s a way of cooking food in liquid, until the liquid evaporates—I think.”
“You’re in then,” I said, pulling him into the house with my book-free hand.
“What are you doing?” Sean asked when I’d shut the door behind him and he was following me back into the kitchen.
“Cooking—well, trying to anyway. I’m having a dinner party.”
“Oh, I
see.”
“I would have invited you, of course,” I said hurriedly. “But I thought you were still in New York.”
“I got back last night—been sleeping off the jet lag since. Then Ursula phoned and told me about your mother. I can hardly believe it, Scarlett, she was right here all along.”
“I know—mad, isn’t it?”
“So how have things been between you?” Sean said, picking up an onion from the counter and casually tossing it up and down in his hand. “Are the two of you getting on all right?”
“We are now. Look, it’s a really long story, Sean. Which I really want to tell you,” I added truthfully. I did genuinely want to tell him. In fact, now he was here in the house with me again, I didn’t want him to go at all. “But I’m in way over my head here with this dinner party and I really don’t have the time at the moment. Maybe we could meet up tomorrow?” I suggested hopefully.
“Or maybe we could just kill two birds with one stone and I could stay here and help you cook while you tell me all about your mother.”
I smiled gratefully at him. “You can cook?”
“I’ll give it a try,” Sean said, throwing the onion on a chopping board and starting to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. “Now, how bad can it be?”
“I’ve just about managed to light the oven successfully,” I said in a pathetic voice. “But not much more, I’m afraid.”
Sean quickly took charge and the kitchen was soon filled with countless delicious aromas—suggesting to me that he might have played down his culinary talents somewhat. I ran about the kitchen like his commis chef and, in between chopping, slicing, and stuffing, I told him all about what had happened with Mum.
When I got to the part about the gifts I watched carefully for Sean’s reaction. He had his back to me stirring something in a saucepan, but I saw him pause for a moment before he continued to move the wooden spoon around again in a slow, circular motion.
“Pass me that knife, will you, please?” I asked, gesturing to a sharp knife that lay next to him on the counter. “I think this one is a little blunt.”
Sean picked up the knife and turned toward me. As I looked up at him I noticed his eyes glisten under the bright kitchen spotlights. “I do wish you’d chop those onions under water like I said, Scarlett,” he said brusquely, hastily turning his face away. “They play havoc with my eyes.”
I didn’t like to point out I’d actually finished chopping the onions ten minutes ago and I was now well into the mushrooms and carrots.
“So everything’s going well, then?” Sean asked, when I’d finished my story and he was fully up to date.
“Yes. That’s partly what tonight is all about, so Mum can meet some of my friends—well, most of them. Maddie and Felix are still away on their honeymoon.”
Sean was silent. He pretended to concentrate hard on something in the recipe book.
“Look, why don’t you stay for dinner tonight too, Sean?” I suggested, putting down the casserole dish I was carrying. “After all, you’ve practically cooked the meal yourself.”
“But won’t it throw your numbers out?” he asked, turning his gaze from the book toward me.
I shook my head. “No, there were only five of us anyway; six will make it look much neater.”
“Who’s the five?”
“Me, obviously, and Mum. Then there’s Oscar, Ursula, and David.”
I saw Sean’s shoulders tighten when I mentioned David’s name.
“David’s coming?”
“Yes, Mum wanted to meet him.”
“I see.”
“But I’m sure she’d love to meet you too, Sean,” I said hurriedly. “She’s heard all about you from me.”
“Has she?” Sean asked keenly, his eyes bright with anticipation.
“Yeah, I told her all about how you helped me search for her.”
“Oh, right.” Sean turned back to the book again.
“Please stay, Sean,” I said, walking across the kitchen toward him. “This is an important night for me. I’d like you to be here.” I touched him gently on the shoulder.
“Of course I’ll stay, Scarlett,” he said, turning to face me again. “If that’s what you’d like?”
“I would, Sean—yes.”
As we stood silently staring at each other, I had to fight the urge to reach out and wipe away the small beads of sweat that had formed on Sean’s brow. Because if I did so, I knew my fingers would want to continue to trace a line along his nose to his mouth, where they would pause, and I would slowly replace my fingers with my lips…
There was a sizzling sound. It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t coming from me.
“Sean, the sauce!”
Sean spun round to see red wine sauce bubbling over the side of the saucepan on to the hob. “Damn, it’s not supposed to boil,” he cursed, hoisting the saucepan aloft. “I’ll have to start again now.”
Hurriedly we returned to our kitchen duties, and all sizzling—of any kind—was momentarily forgotten.
Thirty-Two
“You know what’s just occurred to me, Sean,” I said a little later when things were back under control again. “You could be Mark Darcy standing there cooking in my kitchen.”
“I don’t think Mr. Darcy cooked, did he?” Sean said, looking puzzled. “Not in the Jane Austen I’ve read anyway—he would have had staff to do that for him.”
“No—not Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones!”
“Oh right, one of your movies again.”
“Yeah, I haven’t notched one up for a while. But you’ve given me another scene this afternoon with all your cooking efforts.”
Sean thought for a moment. “Wait, haven’t I been him before? This Darcy fellow?”
I considered this. “Yeah, I said you and David’s water fight at Maddie’s wedding was like the one out of the second Bridget Jones film.”
“What about when I was in the boat, on the Small World ride at Disneyland? I’m sure you mentioned it then?”
“No, that was Hugh Grant’s character—Daniel Cleaver—I compared you to.”
“Ah, I see—I think. Which one’s better? To be compared to, I mean?”
I thought again. “Mark Darcy. Yes, definitely Mark.” After all we were talking Colin Firth here—and no woman who ever saw him emerge from that lake ever quite got over it.
“You had to think about it though. Why?”
“I…I’m not sure. Colin Firth is this quite staid, reserved character in the film, a bit like the real Mr. Darcy—the Jane Austen version. But you just know that deep inside he’d be really passionate and sexy once you got his guard down. And Hugh Grant—that’s Daniel—his personality is out there from the start—there are no hidden depths with him. He’s a bit of a cad…a smooth talker…a ladies’ man, I guess you’d call him. They both have their attractions from a female perspective, just in different ways.”
“But you liked Colin better?”
Sean had stopped what he was doing at the stove and was giving me his full attention during this questioning.
“Yeah, I think so. What is all this anyway? I thought you hated the cinema—why the sudden interest?”
“No reason,” Sean said mysteriously, turning back to his saucepan. “I just wondered, that’s all.”
I opened my mouth to question him further, but the doorbell rang again. I never had visitors—mainly because I only knew Sean, Ursula, and Oscar in London. Who could this be?
I excused myself from the kitchen, walked through the hall, and pulled open the front door without my now customary glance through the peephole.
“Surprise!” my father called from the top of the steps with his arms outstretched.
“Dad! What on earth are you doing here?”
“What sort of welcome is that for your old dad?”
“He came with me, Scarlett,” David said, appearing from behind Dad on the steps. “I hope you don’t mind?”
“No…
no, of course I don’t. I’m just surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“Good surprise or bad?” Dad asked.
“Good, obviously.”
“You’re a good liar, Scarlett—I know you hate surprises.”
“Not always,” I said vaguely. I was trying to think which film the lines we had just inadvertently spoken had been from. Oh, it was on the tip of my tongue…Oh yes, Notting Hill, of course! The part where Alec Baldwin turns up to surprise Julia Roberts at the Ritz hotel.
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” David asked.
“Yes…yes, come in.” I stood back, and they piled in, David with an overnight bag but my father, rather more worryingly, with a suitcase.
“How long are you here for, Dad?” I asked, suddenly remembering who was coming to dinner tonight.
“Just for a few days, Scarlett. It’s been ages since I’ve been down to London, and David had some sort of rail voucher that if you bought one rail fare you got one half price. So we split the cost, and I thought I’d come and see how you were getting on.”
Now David and the railcard made sense, but my father rarely took time away from the business, and for both of us to be away at the same time was unheard of.
Dad and David gave each other a conspiratorial look, and suddenly I got why my father was here. He didn’t want to risk anything going wrong like it had with my mother—not now the end of my time away was so near, and neither did David. They’d cooked this little scheme up between them to keep an eye on me. Is that what David had meant in Paris when he said he’d given my father his word? Were they in this together all along?
I was about to tell them in no uncertain terms that I didn’t need keeping an eye on when Sean appeared unexpectedly from the kitchen still wearing an apron.
“Scarlett, have you any—”
I spun round toward him.
“You!” I heard David say behind me.
Sean looked calmly between David and my father. “And it’s a pleasure to see you again too, David.” Then he ignored him and walked toward Dad. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure?” he said with his hand outstretched.