by Minna Howard
‘Look, it is difficult to talk here. Perhaps I should have broken the news to you more gently,’ she said, sympathy for him again rearing up in her. ‘I don’t know much about it. She seems very well, very determined to do what she wants to do.’ She did not add that Freya had obviously got this characteristic straight from him. ‘She just happens to be eight and a half months pregnant, and she came over here to have the child.’
‘Sarah, sorry to butt in, but shall we go? We’ve a long drive ahead.’ Edward came up to them.
‘I’m coming. This is Robert Maynard, Edward Talbot, my brother.’ She hoped Edward would remember what she had told him about Freya. To her relief he did.
He said, ‘Give Robert our phone number so he can ring us if he should need to. Hang on, I’ve got a card here with all our numbers.’ He took one out of his wallet and handed it over.
‘Thank you.’ Robert rocked back and forth on his heels, looking shell-shocked. He put the card in his pocket. ‘I just want to ask Sarah one more thing.’ He looked apologetically at Edward, who nodded and left them, saying he would fetch the car.
Sarah said, ‘There’s not much more I can tell you. You can ring her in the morning, get the whole story from her. There was nothing else I could do. I didn’t want to leave her in my house.’ Seeing his face, she added with a touch of defiance, ‘I have to guard my house from you and your family.’
‘You’re exaggerating,’ he said. ‘But I still think you took drastic action.’
‘We didn’t know where you were. What else could we have done? She really wanted to be in your house, seemed relieved to be away from her boyfriend.’
‘She should have known where I was,’ he said. ‘She knew I inherited this business and have a house here.’
‘She’d left that number in France. I think she was expecting you to be at home in London.’ Seeing the flash of guilt in his eyes, she felt that her remark had been a little unfair. She was tired, and hit with that flat, empty feeling that sometimes comes after a good party. She wanted to go home. It was hardly her fault that Robert and his daughter couldn’t keep in touch with each other. Would this happen to her children? Would they go off on their own lives and lose track of Dan? Of her? She could not bear it if something like this happened to Polly. Alone and hugely pregnant at Christmas-time.
‘You know, when you are pregnant you often become forgetful; it’s part of the condition.’ Thinking of Polly, she felt she had to stand up for Freya. This is what happened with broken families, mothers gone off, fathers unavailable.
Robert noticed her expression, said more gently, ‘I’m sorry I sounded so ungrateful and bad-tempered. It is just such a shock. Freya is a very independent person, but I wish she’d told me about this coming child. She lives in France with her boyfriend, or did, by the sound of it. We do ring each other and meet up from time to time, but we haven’t for some months.’
‘Don’t you call her at Christmas-time?’ Sarah couldn’t help asking.
‘Yes, I do. I tried this Christmas, but there was no answer from her place in France. I wasn’t unduly worried as I thought she was away. They often go to the mountains at this time. I knew we’d catch up soon.’
‘She’s caught you now.’ She resisted making a dig at him becoming a grandfather. ‘We must go. The McNairs look exhausted. Ring me if you need to, though once you’ve talked to Freya you’ll know it all.’
She turned to go and find the others. He took her arm again, gently, just to detain her. He said quietly, ‘Thank you for what you did, Sarah. I do appreciate it; it’s all too much to digest at once. Thank goodness you were there.’ He smiled, and she had the crazy feeling that he was looking at her for the first time and seeing something different in her that he had not noticed before.
She felt suffused in a warm glow at the tenderness in his eyes, and for a second she basked in it. Then she muttered a goodbye and walked away. Once he’d seen what she had done to his plants, he would only hate her again.
As they drove home in the all-enveloping darkness, Mandy said, ‘Well, Sarah, you’ve certainly put the gossips here into overdrive! “Pushing herself in and taking him over” was how I heard Helen Donaldson describe it.’ She laughed. ‘Robert is certainly very attractive, single, and such a catch as the new owner of the Kettlewell Glassworks.’
Panic fluttered through Sarah like a swarm of bees.
‘It’s not like that at all,’ she protested. ‘He lives in the next house to me in London and…’
‘You mean he’s the frightful man who swears that your house is his?’ Sarah had told Mandy all about it.
‘Yes, and I had to break into his house through his garden to let his hugely pregnant daughter in.’
‘Now I’ve clicked!’ Mandy exclaimed. ‘You were telling him about that, and the local gossips thought you were pulling him.’ She laughed. ‘That’s what living in a tight community does for you. Most of the people around here are lovely, but they do jump to conclusions, especially from outsiders. Oh dear,’ she sighed, ‘I’m afraid that by tomorrow they will have married you off, or at the very least imagined you are having a torrid affair.’
‘But that’s terrible!’ Sarah wailed. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth. We hate each other.’
‘You know what they say about hate and love,’ Mandy said brightly. ‘Do take up with him, then you can live up here, closer to us.’
‘Oh, come on, Mandy, don’t be silly!’ Sarah protested.
Mandy laughed, and leant over from the back seat and touched Sarah’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know anything about it, but that last look he gave you was hardly one of hate.’
‘Nonsense. You’re as bad as the rest of them,’ Sarah retorted, but she could not forget that sudden glow his last look had provoked in her.
Twenty
The following day, Polly rang.
‘Dad’s baby’s been born and he can’t get back to see it,’ she announced with no preamble, her voice breathless as if she could not wait to expel the words.
Sarah’s heart felt as if it was somebody’s punch-bag. Yet underneath she felt a pang of – was it relief, that Dan had missed that most intimate of moments? Her mind raced back to the birth of their own children, the magical moment when they both saw for the first time the tiny being they had created together. It was these special, intimate times that he was now sharing with someone else which she found so hard to accept.
‘We can’t change our plane tickets, so he can’t leave until the thirtieth of December, unless he pays full fare on another flight,’ Polly went on. ‘He’s in a state; well, so is she, crying down the phone. She sent him a picture of the baby on the iPad but we couldn’t see much as it was all wrapped up.’ She sounded disgusted. ‘She shouldn’t have got herself pregnant in the first place, if she can’t cope with it.’
Sarah silently agreed with her, but it would not do to start on a hate campaign against that pathetic mouse. She wasn’t the only woman to want a child from the man she loved – or even didn’t love but just wanted a baby before her body clock wound down. It would have been tough for her to have had to go through childbirth on her own, especially if it was her first time. But what havoc and pain she had caused them all, though Dan had been to blame, too. Now there was a new baby in the middle of it all. Poor little thing; it was hardly its fault.
Dan hated wasting money. Would he ditch his ticket and pay over the odds to get back to her three days earlier? It would be interesting to see.
‘It’s up to him what he does. You two enjoy yourselves – while you can.’ The pain at the news seared through Sarah’s heart.
‘It’s just so cold, and the chalet girl can’t cook,’ Polly complained, listing a string of grievances until Sarah said sharply,
‘Look, Pol, you chose to go skiing with your father. We all know it can be very cold out there at Christmastime, and that chalet girls can’t always cook.’ All the hurt she was feeling surged towards Polly. She’d known about the coming baby
and yet somehow she had been living in some sort of denial. Now the baby had been born, it was living proof that Dan had ditched her, had slept with and set up home with someone else. ‘I can’t talk any more now, Polly. I’ll see you in a few days anyway. Bye.’ She put down the receiver, blew her nose firmly and went to the other end of the kitchen, where Edward and Mandy were just serving up lunch,
Seeing her face, Edward said, ‘Bad news?’
Her nephews were not in the room; Sarah could hear them scrapping in the playroom off the kitchen. She fought to stop the tears that sprang up in her throat, failed, and when Mandy put her arms round her, she sobbed on her shoulder.
After a moment, she said, ‘I wish I could get over Dan. He’s gone, doesn’t love me anymore, but his baby has been born and I feel terrible. Betrayed all over again.’
The phone rang once more. Edward answered it. He looked over towards Sarah and mouthed: ‘It’s Robert. Do you want to talk to him?’
Robert. He was surely only ringing her to complain about her massacre of his beloved plants, which Freya must have told him about by now. She imagined him questioning her in minute detail on the state of every leaf and curling tendril. She could not face any more unpleasantness today.
She shook her head and Edward said, ‘Sorry, she can’t come to the phone right now. Could I take a message?’
Robert’s answer was obviously no, and Edward put down the receiver.
This diversion stopped her tears. She said, ‘Sorry. I really must come to terms with this.’
Mandy told her, ‘Like with a bereavement, you have to take your time. Dan’s a real louse to behave like this. I must say, though, it did surprise me. I always thought he adored you. You don’t think he had some sort of a breakdown, do you? Or has he been put on tranquillizers? They say they can change your moods and your very character. I’ve read that some people even commit suicide while on them, or kill other people.’
‘Oh, Mandy, don’t go overboard!’ Edward said. ‘I think he’s behaved appallingly, but some people do that without any interference from pills, booze or anything else.’
Shouts, cries, a crash and more scuffles came from the playroom. As Mandy left to investigate, she said, ‘Small babies are a doddle compared with hyped-up teenagers. How is Dan going to cope when the baby is this age? He’ll be seventy. I find it all I can do to cope with it now, and I’m only forty-three. I wonder if he’s thought of that?’
They heard her shout at the boys and demand that they wash their hands and quietly come to lunch.
Edward said, ‘Poor Sarah. I don’t know what to say. I suppose it is his child?’
‘I think it probably is. I do wish I understood why he suddenly upped and left. From a male point of view, do you know why?’
‘I suppose it is sex. Although you love each other, it does get a bit dull when you’ve been together for ages. Other things seem to take over. The children, work, running the house, just getting on with life. I admit, I’ve been tempted from time to time, but it’s not worth breaking up all this,’ he gestured round the cheerful, lived-in family room, ‘for a few bouts of frenetic sexual activity.’
‘I hoped Dan would feel the same. Do you think we were happy, or was I just deluding myself?’
‘You always looked happy together. I liked Dan a lot. Unless you can think of any other reason, perhaps the children growing up and leaving home or the dreaded male menopause, if that exists. But whatever name it comes under, it is very destructive.’
‘What’s so destructive?’ Mandy came into the room, followed by the two boys.
‘The male menopause,’ Edward said.
‘What’s that, Dad?’ Simon – the younger boy – asked.
‘When you have a brainstorm and think you’re twenty again, only you aren’t,’ Henry, the older one, explained.
‘That’s about it.’ Edward hastily changed the subject, in case the boys hurt Sarah by their crass remarks.
Sarah knew it was pointless, reflecting on what she and Dan had had and why it had ended. That part of her life was over and she must move on. It was no good wishing she were still happily married like Edward and Mandy.
Mandy later admitted that occasionally – very occasionally, she said, seeing Edward’s eye on her – she fancied some hunk, but they both seemed to be able to put their sexual dreams into perspective. ‘I’m all for fantasies,’ she enthused. ‘They work out as you want them to. In reality, one would be tortured with guilt and self-obsession, wondering if one was slim enough, pretty enough, sexy enough for the new man. Far less trouble to stay with the old devil you know.’ She’d laughed and pinched Edward’s bottom affectionately.
Sarah laughed too, but the pain of knowing she had lost that easy, warm relationship with Dan was difficult to bear. Like good wine, a relationship took years to mature. But if she wasn’t careful, she would become a bitter old bag whose jealousy for happy couples would ruin all her relationships with the people she most cared for.
That evening, as they sat in the snug little study by the fire, she remembered Robert’s call and asked Edward what he had wanted.
‘Just to speak to you,’ he said, ‘it can’t have been that important or he’d have asked you to ring back.’
‘Did he sound cross? I have ruined his garden, and as he seems to prefer plants to people, even his own daughter, I suppose he was ringing to complain.’
Edward thought back. ‘I don’t know how he sounded. Perhaps a bit miffed that you wouldn’t talk to him.’
‘No doubt he’d worked himself up with all his grievances against me and was frustrated that he couldn’t offload them,’ Sarah said.
Mandy put down the magazine she was reading and said, ‘We don’t know him, but everyone around here likes him enormously. Apart from the fact that he is attractive and not too old. Late forties, early fifties, wouldn’t you say?’
She glanced at Edward, who nodded and said, ‘More important than his effect on female hearts, he saved the glass factory. It was on its last legs; his uncle, or whoever left it to him, had been ill for some time and it was in a bad way. When he inherited it, his accountant advised him to close it.’
‘There was quite a fuss, as so many local jobs would have been lost,’ Mandy explained. ‘He didn’t live up here, knew little about the life, but when some of the workers wrote to him pleading for their jobs, he had the decency to come up and see it all for himself. Against the advice of his accountant, he decided to give them a year and see if they could turn it round. He’s lost quite a bit of money over it, I believe, but I think he’s saved it, and it’s beginning to break even.’
‘It needed some new ideas, a bit of modernization,’ Edward went on.
‘It’s quite a fun place, we should go and see it,’ Mandy suggested. ‘There’s a showroom now and some days you can watch them glass blowing. There’s also a shop and a coffee place. It’s attracting quite a lot of attention.’
Edward and Mandy went on, building up Robert’s qualities. Sarah suspected that they were building him up because they wanted her to have a new man in her life. Well, he might be venerated up here, but she knew the real man.
She said, ‘He has a girlfriend, doesn’t he? That Helen I saw at the McNairs.’
‘Oh, Helen Donaldson. I think she likes to think that she is his girlfriend. I’m afraid she has a reputation of taking over men. She’s never married, and I suppose she is getting desperate.’
Edward laughed. ‘Oh, Mandy, I don’t think she’s that bad.’
‘Some men love bossy women,’ Mandy said.
‘Dominating, you mean,’ Edward corrected. ‘All whips and spanked bottoms.’
Mandy giggled. ‘I don’t think she’s like that, do you? Anyway, Sarah, just you talking to Robert alone and so intensely that evening is bound to add more drama to his life, and when people find out that you live next door to each other in London…’ she rolled her eyes with exaggeration, ‘the mind boggles. It will generate enough gossip to liven up
the whole winter!’
‘He is the most difficult man,’ Sarah said, with irritation. ‘He is determined to buy my house for his orchids, and unfortunately he’s in league with Dan.’
‘Dan? Is he a friend of his?’ Edward asked.
‘Maybe they are now, I wouldn’t know.’ She told them about the money, and how Dan, having heard from Tim and Polly that Robert wanted her house, had contacted him.
‘So you might have to sell it, after all?’ Mandy asked.
‘I’m sure there’s a way round it,’ Edward said. ‘I’ll look into it for you, perhaps you could get a mortgage or a loan or something. I’m sure Robert wouldn’t steal it from under your nose.’
‘I don’t share your confidence,’ Sarah sighed. ‘But he’s in for a rude shock when his daughter gives birth to her baby. She said she had nowhere to go, so he might have to put her up for ages.’
‘That’s a nightmare for you,’ Mandy said. ‘You say you can hear him lumbering about next door, so you’ll hear the baby crying in the night too.’ She frowned, glanced round the room in their large, detached manor house. ‘I’ve never lived next door to anyone. I can’t imagine hearing every move they make through the wall. It must be rather eerie.’
‘It’s quite comforting, actually,’ Sarah said, before she could stop herself.
‘So, how much more comforting would it be if the wall came down?’ Mandy asked jokingly.
‘That would be terrible, Mandy. Just terrible,’ Sarah protested vehemently. Too vehemently, Mandy thought, and she smiled a tiresome, knowing smile that irritated Sarah no end.
Mandy guessed this and retreated behind her Country Life, though Sarah could see that her smile took some time to fade. She curbed her irritation with difficulty. She was fond of Mandy, and knew her sister-in-law wanted to see her happy again, but if she thought she’d be happy with Robert, Mandy was hopelessly wrong. That was just one of her fantasies, written to her own desires.