by Minna Howard
She could take it to the shop or give it to Celine or any other of her friends, but the thought of explaining how she had got it and why she wanted to get rid of it wearied her. It would die soon anyway. So many indoor plants had contracted some terminal illness or early death in her hands.
She did not see Robert for a few days, though she heard him going in and out of his house. Although she treated his gift with suspicion, she felt awkward about not thanking him for his beautiful gift. She could have put a note through his door but somehow she did not. She could not help feeling that he was ganging up with Dan against her.
Through Rebecca, she found a divorce lawyer – Hugo Pollard, a young man with a large stomach and a face like a boiled ham.
‘You know that divorce is irrevocable – there is no going back,’ he said, with the air of a doctor discussing some major surgical procedure akin to amputation. ‘Is there no way you could settle your differences – with marriage counselling perhaps?’
‘Absolutely not.’ She imagined going with Dan to some soothing counsellor who would not understand the change in him, the crippling pain that had destroyed any way back.
The more Hugo talked, the more panic-stricken she felt – putting aside their other differences, a judge might think that Dan had treated her fairly over the financial side, might not think it unreasonable for her to return the extra money he asked for straight away as a lump sum, not in dribs and drabs as it suited her after having to buy a new house and not earning nearly as much as he did. After all, the children were over eighteen and able to fend for themselves, and her house was worth a good bit, and if she sold it she could still afford to live in comfort somewhere smaller. She struggled from his office, battered and bruised.
‘The law is black or white, and most of life’s events are grey,’ she grumbled to Celine. ‘If I go through with it, I could lose the house, be forced to move somewhere cheaper. I shouldn’t have spent so much on doing it up, but you know how it is if you don’t do things at once you never do them at all, and it was looking very shabby and I didn’t like their colour scheme.’
‘You could probably get a mortgage or some sort of loan to pay Dan off,’ Celine said. ‘Ask Rebecca to look into that for you.’
‘That’s an idea,’ Sarah agreed. But it added to her fears. All these lawyers cost money, and she couldn’t afford it, especially now that Dan had written to her saying that if she did not return the money that was rightfully his, he would stop the diminishing sum he paid her every month. Was the mouse so expensive, perhaps charging him rent to live with her? Perhaps she demanded jewels and clothes from Bond Street every week.
Her financial state was beginning to be a worry. She didn’t like to ask Celine for more money, she paid her well. But perhaps she’d have to find another job at weekends, or take in lodgers to make ends meet.
Robert arrived late to the Egyptology class and left early. He barely looked her way. If he chose to ignore her, then that was fine. Her pride certainly wouldn’t let her make the first move. She couldn’t cope with any more emotional traumas. The children deserting her at Christmas to spend it with Dan was almost worse than her worries at losing the house.
She felt herself withdrawing into herself, pulling in her emotions like a snail going into its shell.
Celine noticed her mood and said, ‘Cheer up, love. Welcome to the grown-up world of independence. Perhaps Dan will break his neck, and as you are still legally his wife you’ll get the lot. Or perhaps he’ll injure himself so badly that that woman will have to push him around in a pram with the baby.’
Sarah smiled at the picture that these words conjured up, and then she was hit by a thought. What would happen if he did break something and the mouse couldn’t be bothered with him? Would he expect Sarah to pick up the reins and be a loving, supportive wife again? In the eyes of God and the law they were still married – the terrifying words ‘for better and for worse, in sickness and in health’ burnt into her soul.
Dan rang her again to tell her their travel plans; he did not mention the money and nor did she. She blurted out, ‘If you break anything, don’t count on me to help you.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ he said impatiently, going on about plane times. She couldn’t bear it, him making plans without her.
‘Why tell me?’ she snapped. ‘The children are perfectly able to cope on their own.’
‘I just thought you’d like to know,’ he said.
‘I don’t.’ She rang off, wishing she’d told him how devious she thought he was. And desperate, too, the thought suddenly hit her. He didn’t really like skiing any more, it hurt his back, yet the children adored it. Was paying for their skiing holiday the only way he would not be alone at Christmas? It was a sobering thought. His foolish love affair had cost him dear.
Dan had obviously not thought things through when he careered away from the tedium of family life in his squatting frog car, about how he might come to miss the stable structure of the family he had so quickly dismissed.
Celine said, ‘Anyway, here’s something exciting for you. Vogue wants to do their interview on Friday. Should be in the January issue.’
One dress, coupled with two others from another designer, had made Vogue’s current issue. Neither of them thought the picture had done the dress much justice; the model’s jutting hips had spoilt the line. What would the interview do to them?
Anxiety and excitement chased through Sarah. ‘Where, here, or do we go to a studio?’
‘Here. Eight in the morning before we open and I’m going to put a note in the window saying we won’t open until the afternoon.’
They spent the rest of the week wondering what to wear. How should they look?
‘Bared breasts and slits up to the navel are so naff,’ Celine said. ‘Pathetic, too, at our age. Shall we appear artistic, or just elegant?’ They settled on glamorous, like their clothes.
Celine dressed in fuchsia-pink skinny trousers with a dark-blue and fuchsia jacket cut on the cross and Sarah was in a mid-calf floral dress of blue and green.
‘I think we look glamorous, yet creative.’ Celine studied them both as they stood side by side in front of the mirror.
‘You do the talking,’ Sarah said. ‘It really is more your shop, after all.’
‘But you are the main designer.’
The interview took all morning, and when at last it was over and the hot lights and endless people connected with it had departed, Celine said rather despondently, ‘I wish we hadn’t done it now. They might mix up what we said and make us sound embarrassing .’
‘We didn’t say anything embarrassing, did we?’ Sarah caught the panic in her voice.
‘I hope not. What if they make our clients and our clothes sound old or ugly or unfashionable or whatever. Oh, Sarah, I wish we hadn’t done it now. You know how journalists can twist things.’
‘I’m sure it will be fine; anyway, she’ll let us see it before it’s published, won’t she?’
‘I do hope so.’ Celine did not sound convinced.
*
As time went on, their fears receded. There was a lot of work on. They put the clothes chosen by Vogue in the window and quite a few people wanted one like it in time for Christmas. They were both worked off their feet. All Sarah seemed to do was work, struggle home and sleep; she even missed one Egyptology class, and had not used the half-term week to get her notes together.
One evening in December, when Sarah got back home, she found among her post on the mat a thick white envelope with her name on. Inside, there was a flourish of writing in black ink.
Just to inform you that I will be away for the next month. I have left my keys with Diana Bentley at No. 9. Sheila, who cleans for me, will be going in, otherwise no one else should be there.
Happy Christmas.
R.M.
What a relief that he had gone. She could go about her life without the constant worry of him turning up with yet another ploy to try and persuade her to sell him her
house. And yet as she went to bed that night and lay alone in the dark, she felt bereft. This was ridiculous, and she scolded herself severely; she didn’t even know where his bedroom was in his house, and the idea that they lay side by side in their beds with only a wall dividing them was barmy. Anyway, he had women companions in his bed, so he would hardly think of her at night unless it was to plot and plan how to get her house from her.
But she realised that she had found his presence next door strangely comforting. Just knowing that someone else – and, she admitted rather shamefacedly, a strong man in particular – was there made her feel safer. She had been used to living with a man most of her life, after all. Being scared of being on her own was stupid, too – vague feelings of worry, in case someone broke in, or the ceiling fell in or the water tank burst, could happen to anybody. Some disastrous things had happened to her when Dan had been away on a business trip, and she had coped perfectly well. Maybe she was joined by one wall to a man who might, in extremities, come to her aid. Though, in truth, if anything terrible did happen, Robert would no doubt use it to snatch her house from her.
She went to that week’s Egyptology class, telling herself it would be much more enjoyable without having Robert sitting on the other side of the room, or worrying about how to avoid going home with him; not that he’d asked her these last few times. But she found her mind wandering during the class. It wandered even more when Amy said with hardly concealed self-importance, ‘Please, Martha, could I have a set of notes for Robert? I promised I’d keep him up to date on the class.’
Sarah determined to write up the most amazing file. There was a planned visit to the British Museum this weekend; she might, if it were allowed, take some photographs on her iPad to illustrate it. She would take the work up to her brother’s house to do over Christmas – she needed something to fill the void left by her children’s absence.
Tim and Polly appeared back from their universities, excited about their skiing trip. Sarah resented every demand of ‘where’s my ski suit?’ ‘I need a new fleece, it’s going to be so cold’, ‘I’ve lost my passport’, and all the other things concerned with an imminent trip that kept drilling into her head, fuelling her irritation and the wretched jealousy that gnawed at her heart.
Polly guessed her feelings and once or twice put her arm round her.
‘Please come, Mum. It won’t be the same without you.’
‘I can’t, Pol,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see how difficult it will be for me, knowing he no longer wants me and is only putting up with me out of guilt and a dread of being alone for Christmas?’
‘It won’t be like that.’ Polly defended him and Sarah said no more. She thought it important to keep fathers special to their children; you could have as many husbands as you could bear to. It was one thing saying a few home truths about a husband, quite another about someone’s father.
Tim, taking after Dan, did not want to discuss it at all.
‘I can’t think why you won’t come. You love skiing, and we won’t get another chance this season.’
It was so painful knowing that never again would they plan a holiday as a happy family together. Tim could not, or more likely would not, see that.
‘You can have separate rooms, or double up with Pol and I’ll go in with Dad,’ he said, as if that would somehow solve it. Sarah could not bring herself to tell him that the pain of being with someone who no longer cared for you was worse than not being with them at all.
They left the day before she was to leave for Scotland. They planned to have a Christmas celebration when they got back, give each other their presents then. But when they begged for ski gloves and fleeces, she bought them for Christmas and gave them to them before they left.
She kissed them goodbye and walked off down the road to work, biting her lip against those dreary tears that threatened to engulf her, yet again. She was thankful that she would not be there to see them leave later this morning.
Celine said when she walked in, ‘What you need is a delicious lover.’
‘Find me one, then,’ Sarah said, with a wry smile. ‘Have you any cast-offs you can hand on?’
‘I have actually, but it’s too late for Christmas,’ Celine said. ‘As you know, I am going to one of my ex’s for Christmas. He’s getting on, and bits of him are wearing out, but we have a good time. I’ll hand him over after New Year.’
Sarah laughed, but she did not say how she was dreading her first Christmas as a discarded wife. It was the anniversaries that were always the worst; like after a bereavement, the happy memories held such pain. The comfortable happiness of her brother and sister-in-law would make her feel worse, making her yearn for her and Dan to be together as they used to be, but she couldn’t not go because of that. She’d have to get on with other people’s happiness; at least she’d had some in her life, and she still had a lot to be thankful for.
They were shutting up the shop until after the New Year, and Sarah did not get back home until nearly seven. As she approached her house, she saw that someone was standing by Robert’s front door. Perhaps it was the cleaner, or the neighbour with the key. She quickened her steps, worried suddenly that something might be wrong with her own house.
The person turned as she reached her door. She was a young, heavily pregnant woman.
When she saw Sarah she said, ‘Are you the person who lives next door to Robert Maynard?’
‘Yes.’ Sarah looked at her under the streetlight. She was an attractive, well-dressed woman of about thirty years old. She felt the old prejudice jump in her. Was Robert responsible for this woman’s condition? Had she come to give birth to his child on his doorstep?
‘Perhaps you’d let me in, then. I don’t have a key, and Diana seems to be out. I never said I was coming, but maybe he’ll turn up later this evening.’
‘He won’t, he’s gone away for a month,’ Sarah told her, seeing by the woman’s expression that her prejudice must be written all over her face.
‘Damnation! I knew I should have rung. Anyway, please could you let me in to his house?’
‘I don’t have a key.’ Sarah now saw that the woman had a large bag sitting on the pavement.
‘Oh.’ The woman sounded surprised. ‘I thought you would, being such a close neighbour to him.’
‘We are only close because we share a wall,’ Sarah said darkly. She wanted to get into her own house, out of the cold. To sit down with a glass of wine before starting her packing for Scotland. What could she do with this woman? Maybe Diana would soon return and she could decide whether or not to let this woman into Robert’s house. She glanced hopefully down the street towards No. 9, but it was still in darkness.
‘I really don’t know what to do. I haven’t got anywhere else to go.’ The woman sounded a little desperate. ‘I’m sure Diana will be back soon,’ she added doubtfully.
It was cold and damp, and it would be churlish to go into her own house and shut the door on this woman in her present state while they waited for Diana’s return. The situation irritated her. Had Robert got her pregnant and then gone off to wherever without telling her? This was surely his responsibility and he should be here to deal with it.
She said, ‘Surely you know where Robert is, or has he just gone off and let you down?’ All the angry words and accusations against him banked up inside her head like planes ready for take-off.
She was about to let them fly at this woman when she said, ‘I’m not very good at keeping in touch with him. I feel rather ashamed of myself, but I have no other choice at this moment in my life. I’m the prodigal daughter, turning up because I’m in one hell of a mess and I’ve no one else to turn to.’
Seventeen
‘You are Robert’s daughter?’ Sarah hoped she didn’t sound too surprised.
‘Yes. I’m Freya Maynard. I live in France, or I did until this morning. What’s your name?’
‘Sarah Haywood.’ She squinted at this girl in the half-light. She was tall, dark hair flowing from a
fur cap. She would have to ask her in. It was far too cold to go on standing here on the pavement.
‘You’d better come in while we wait for Diana.’ Sarah opened her front door and Freya followed her in.
Freya went into the living room, saying as she looked around, ‘It’s very like Daddy’s house, except he has got the dining-room-cum-kitchen this end. His living room opens up on to the garden.’ Sarah did not care what his house was like. She thought instead of how like Robert Freya was. She didn’t look particularly like him facially, but the way she moved and certainly the way she seemed to commandeer her house were just like her father. At least the house was tidy and clean; Polly and Tim, perhaps feeling guilty at leaving her behind, had done it for her.
Freya sat down on the sofa. ‘You don’t mind if I sit, but my back’s giving in. If I’d known how uncomfortable this pregnancy lark would be, I’d have thought twice about it.’
As apparently Freya had nowhere else to go but her father’s house, there were perhaps more important factors she should have considered before embarking upon a pregnancy. But Sarah didn’t say anything. You couldn’t say anything remotely judgemental these days. People were allowed to behave however they wanted to, expecting small children to fit in with their romantic arrangements and assuming that society would pick up the pieces if anything got broken. Then they wondered why they were often so unhappy. Having and doing it all did not make for an easy life.
She felt annoyed by this girl sitting here when she wanted to relax after the last frantic day in the shop before shutting down for the Christmas break. She wanted to think about her packing for Scotland. If Freya had been anyone else but Robert’s daughter, she might have felt differently. Besides, what would happen if Diana had gone away for Christmas?
She said, ‘So you didn’t know that your father would not be here?’
‘I didn’t know what he was doing. He’s a law unto himself. But it’s my fault I haven’t been in touch with him for ages.’ She undid her coat, struggled out of it and settled herself comfortably back on the sofa.