Cocktails for Three

by Madeleine Wickham

  “You know, I can’t believe it’s really happening,” she said. “Three weeks away. That’s nothing! And I haven’t been to any classes, or anything . . .”

  “You don’t need classes!” said Giles. “You’ll be great! The best mother a baby could have.”

  “Really?” Maggie bit her lip. “I don’t know. I just feel a bit . . . unprepared.”

  “What’s to prepare?”

  “Well, you know. Labour, and everything.”

  “One word,” said Giles firmly. “Drugs.”

  Maggie giggled. “And afterwards. You know. Looking after it. I’ve never even held a baby.”

  “You’ll be fantastic!” said Giles at once. “Maggie, if anyone can look after a baby, you can. Come on.” He turned and flashed a smile at her. “Who was voted Editor of the Year?”

  “I was,” she said, grinning proudly in spite of herself.

  “Well then. And you’ll be Mother of the Year, too.” He reached out and squeezed her hand, and Maggie squeezed gratefully back. Giles’s optimism never failed to cheer her.

  “Mum said she’d pop round tomorrow,” said Giles. “Keep you company.”

  “Oh good,” said Maggie. She thought of Giles’s mother, Paddy— a thin, dark-haired woman who had, unaccountably, produced three huge, cheerful sons with thick, fair hair. Giles and his two brothers adored their mother— and it had been no coincidence that The Pines was in the next-door village to Giles’s old family home. At first, Maggie had been slightly discomfited at the proximity of their new house to her in-laws. But, after all, her own parents were miles away, in Derbyshire and, as Giles had pointed out, it would be useful to have at least one set of grandparents around.

  “She was saying, you’ll have to get to know all the other young mums in the village,” said Giles.

  “Are there many?”

  “I think so. Sounds like one long round of coffee mornings.”

  “Oh good!” said Maggie teasingly. “So while you slave away in the City I can sip cappuccinos with all my chums.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Sounds better than commuting,” said Maggie, and leaned back comfortably. “I should have done this years ago.” She closed her eyes and imagined herself in her kitchen, making coffee for a series of new, vibrant friends with cute babies dressed in designer clothes. In the summers they would hold picnics on the lawn. Roxanne and Candice would come down from London and they would all drink Pimm’s while the baby gurgled happily on a rug. They would look like something from a lifestyle magazine. In fact, maybe the Londoner would run a piece on them. Former editor Maggie Phillips and her new take on rural bliss. It was going to be a whole new life, she thought happily. A whole wonderful new life.

  The brightly lit train bounced and rattled along the track, then came to an abrupt halt in a tunnel. The lights flickered, went off, then went on again. A group of party-goers several seats down from Candice began to sing “Why are we waiting,” and the woman across from Candice tried to catch her eye and tut. But Candice didn’t see. She was staring blindly at her shadowy reflection in the window opposite, as memories of her father which she had buried for years rose painfully through her mind.

  Good-Time Gordon, tall and handsome, always dressed in an immaculate navy blazer with gilt buttons. Always buying a round, always everyone’s friend. He’d been a charming man, with vivid blue eyes and a firm handshake. Everyone who met him had admired him. Her friends had thought her lucky to have such a fun-loving father— a dad who let her go to the pub; who bought her stylish clothes; who threw holiday brochures down on the table and said “You choose” and meant it. Life had been endless entertainment. Parties, holidays, weekends away, with her father always at the centre of the fun.

  And then he’d died, and the horror had begun. Now Candice could not think of him without feeling sick, humiliated; hot with shame. He’d fooled everybody. Taken them all for a ride. Every word he’d ever uttered now seemed double-edged. Had he really loved her? Had he really loved her mother? The whole of his life had been a charade— so why not his feelings, too?

  Hot tears began to well up in her eyes, and she took a deep breath. She didn’t usually allow herself to think about her father. As far as she was concerned he was dead, gone, excised from her life. In the midst of those dreadful days full of pain and confusion, she’d walked into a hairdresser’s and asked to have all her long hair cropped off. As the lengths of hair had fallen onto the floor, she’d felt as though her connections with her father were, in some way, being severed.

  But of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. She was still her father’s daughter; she still bore his name. And she was still the beneficiary of all his shady dealings. Other people’s money had paid for her clothes and her skiing trips and the little car she’d been given for her seventeenth birthday. The expensive year off before university—history of art lessons in Florence followed by trekking in Nepal. Other people’s hard-earned money had been squandered on her pleasure. The thought of it still made her feel sick with anger; with self-reproach. But how could she have known? She’d only been a child. And her father had managed to fool everybody. Until his car crash, halfway through her first year at university. His sudden, horrific, unexpected death.

  Candice felt her face grow hot all over again, and tightly gripped the plastic armrests of her seat as, with a jolt, the train started up again. Despite everything, she still felt grief for her father. A searing, angry grief— not only for him, but for her innocence; her childhood. She grieved for the time when the world had seemed to make sense; when all she’d felt for her father was love and pride. The time when she’d happily held her head high and been proud of her name and family. Before everything had suddenly darkened and become boated in dishonesty.

  After his death, there hadn’t been nearly enough money left to pay everyone back. Most people had given up asking; a few had taken her mother to court. It had been several years before everyone was finally settled and silenced. But the pain had never been alleviated; the damage had never been properly repaired. The consequences to people’s lives could not be settled so quickly.

  Candice’s mother Diana had moved away to Devon, where no-one had heard of Gordon Brewin. Now she lived in a state of rigid denial. As far as she was concerned, she had been married to a loving, honourable man, maligned after his death by evil rumours— and that was the end of it. She allowed herself no true memories of the past, felt no guilt; experienced no pain.

  If Candice ever tried to bring up the subject of her father, Diana would refuse to listen, refuse to talk about it; refuse to admit— even between the two of them— that anything had happened. Several years after moving to Devon she had begun a relationship with a mild-mannered, elderly man named Kenneth— and he now acted as a protective buffer. He was always present when Candice visited, ensuring that conversation never ventured beyond the polite and inconsequential. And so Candice had given up trying to get her mother to confront the past. There was no point, she had decided— and at least Diana had salvaged some happiness in her life. But she rarely visited her mother any more. The duplicity and weakness of the whole situation— the fact that Diana wouldn’t admit the truth, even to her own daughter— slightly sickened Candice.

  As a result, she had found herself shouldering the entire burden of memories herself. She would not allow herself the easy option, like her mother; she would not allow herself to forget or deny. And so she had learned to live with a constant guilt; a constant, angry shame. It had mellowed a little since those first nightmare years; she had learned to put it to the back of her mind and get on with her life. But the guilt had never quite left her.

  Tonight, however, she felt as though she’d turned a corner. Perhaps she couldn’t undo what her father had done. Perhaps she couldn’t repay everyone. But she could repay Heather Trelawney— if not in money, then in help and friendship. Helping Heather as much as she possibly could would be her own private atonement.

  As she g
ot off the tube at Highbury and Islington, she felt light and hopeful. She briskly walked the few streets to the Victorian house where she had lived for the last two years, let herself in at the front door and bounded up the flight of stairs to her first-floor flat.

  “Hey, Candice.” A voice interrupted her as she reached for her Yale key, and she turned round. It was Ed Armitage, who lived in the flat opposite. He was standing in the doorway of his flat, wearing ancient jeans and eating a Big Mac. “I’ve got that Sellotape, if you want it back.”

  “Oh,” said Candice. “Thanks.”

  “Give me a sec.” He disappeared into his flat, and Candice leaned against her own front door, waiting. She didn’t want to open her door and find him inviting himself in for a drink. Tonight, to be honest, she wasn’t in the mood for Ed.

  Ed had lived opposite Candice for as long as she’d lived there. He was a corporate lawyer at a huge City law firm, earned unfeasibly large amounts of money, and worked unfeasibly long hours. Taxis were frequently to be heard chugging outside the house for him at six in the morning, and didn’t deliver him back home until after midnight. Sometimes he didn’t come home at all, but caught a few hours’ sleep on a bed at the office, then started again. The very thought of it made Candice feel sick. It was pure greed that drove him so hard, she thought. Nothing but greed.

  “Here you are,” said Ed, reappearing. He handed her the roll of tape and took a bite of his Big Mac. “Want some?”

  “No thanks,” said Candice politely.

  “Not healthy enough?” said Ed, leaning against the banisters. His dark eyes glinted at her as though he were enjoying his own private joke. “What do you eat, then? Quiche?” He took another bite of hamburger. “You eat quiche, Candice?”

  “Yes,” said Candice impatiently. “I suppose I eat quiche.” Why couldn’t Ed just make polite small talk like everyone else? she thought. Why did he always have to look at her with those glinting eyes, waiting for an answer— as though she were about to reveal something fascinating? It was impossible to relax while talking to him. No idle comment could go unchallenged.

  “Quiche is fucking cholesterol city. You’re better off with one of these.” He gestured to his hamburger, and a piece of slimy lettuce fell onto the floor. To Candice’s horror, he bent down, picked it up, and popped it in his mouth.

  “See?” he said as he stood up. “Salad.”

  Candice rolled her eyes. Really, she felt quite sorry for Ed. He had no life outside the office. No friends, no girlfriend, no furniture even. She had once popped across to his flat for a drink in order to be neighbourly— and discovered that Ed possessed only one ancient leather chair, a wide-screen TV and a pile of empty pizza boxes.

  “So, have you been sacked or something?” she said sarcastically. “I mean, it’s only ten p.m. Shouldn’t you be hammering out some deal somewhere?”

  “Since you ask, I’ll be on gardening leave as from next week,” said Ed.

  “What?” Candice looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “New job,” said Ed. “So I get to spend three months doing sod-all. It’s in my contract.”

  “Three months?” Candice wrinkled her brow. “But why?”

  “Why do you think?” Ed grinned complacently and cracked open a can of Coke. “Because I’m bloody important, that’s why. I know too many little secrets.”

  “Are you serious?” Candice stared at him. “So you don’t get paid for three months?” Ed’s face creased in a laugh.

  “Of course I get paid! These guys love me! They’re paying me more to do nothing than I used to get working my arse off.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s immoral!” said Candice. “Think of all the people in the world desperate for a job. And you’re getting paid to sit around.”

  “That’s the world,” said Ed. “Like it or slit your wrists.”

  “Or try to change it,” said Candice.

  “So you say,” said Ed, taking a slurp of Coke. “But then, we can’t all be as saintly as you, Candice, can we?”

  Candice stared furiously at him. How did Ed always manage to wind her up so successfully?

  “I’ve got to go,” she said abruptly.

  “By the way, your man’s in there,” said Ed. “Ex-man. Whatever.”

  “Justin?” Candice stared at him, her cheeks suddenly flaming. “Justin’s in the flat?”

  “I saw him letting himself in earlier,” said Ed, and raised his eyebrows. “Are you two back together again?”

  “No!” said Candice.

  “Now, that’s a shame,” said Ed. “He was a really fun guy.” Candice gave him a sharp look. On the few occasions that Ed and Justin had met, it had been clear that the two had absolutely nothing in common.

  “Well, anyway,” she said abruptly, “I’ll see you around.”

  “Sure,” said Ed, shrugging, and disappeared back into his flat.

  Candice took a deep breath, then opened her front door, her head whirling. What was Justin doing there? It was a good month since they’d split up. And more to the point, what the hell was he still doing with a key to her flat?

  “Hi?” she called. “Justin?”

  “Candice.” Justin appeared at the end of the corridor. He was dressed, as ever, in a smart suit which verged on trendy, and holding a drink. His dark curly hair was neatly glossed back and his dark eyes glowed in the lamplight; he looked to Candice like an actor playing the role of a moody intellectual. “A young Daniel Barenboim,” someone had once admiringly described Justin— after which, for several evenings, she had noticed him sitting casually in front of the piano, and sometimes even fingering the keys, despite the fact he couldn’t play a note.

  “I apologize for dropping in unannounced,” he said now.

  “Glad to see you’ve made yourself at home,” said Candice.

  “I expected you back earlier,” said Justin, in a slightly resentful tone. “I won’t be long— I just thought we should have a little chat.”

  “What about?”

  Justin said nothing, but solemnly ushered her down the corridor into the sitting room. Candice felt herself prickling with annoyance. Justin had a unique ability to make it seem as though he was always in the right and everyone else was in the wrong. At the beginning of their relationship, he had been so convincing that she too had believed he was always right. It had taken six months and a series of increasingly frustrating arguments for her to realize that he was just a self-opinionated pompous show-off.

  When they’d first met, of course, he had dazzled her. He had arrived at the Londoner fresh from a year’s experience on the New York Times, with the reputation of a huge intellect and a barrage of impressive connections. When he had asked her out for a drink she had felt flattered. She had drunk copious quantities of wine, and gazed into his dark eyes, and had listened admiringly to his views— half persuaded by everything he said, even when she would normally have disagreed. After a few weeks he had begun to stay the night at her flat every so often, and they had tentatively planned a holiday together. Then his flat-share in Pimlico had fallen apart, and he had moved in with her.

  It was really then that things had gone wrong, thought Candice. Her hazy admiration had melted away as she saw him in close proximity— taking three times longer than herself to get ready in the mornings; claiming proudly that he couldn’t cook and didn’t intend to learn; expecting the bathroom to be clean but never once cleaning it himself. She had come to realize the full extent of his vanity; the strength of his arrogance and eventually— with a slight shock— that he considered her no intellectual match for himself. If she tried to argue intelligently with him he patronized her until she made a winning point, at which he grew sullen and angry. Never once would he admit defeat— his self-image simply would not allow it. For in his own mind, Justin was destined for great things. His ambition was almost frightening in its strength; it drove him like a steamroller, flattening everything else in his life.

  Even now, Candice couldn’t be sur
e which had been hurt most when she had ended the relationship— his feelings or his pride? He had almost seemed more sorrowful for her than anything else, as though she’d made a foolish mistake which he knew she would soon regret.

  However, so far— a month on— she hadn’t regretted her decision for an instant.

  “So,” she said as they sat down. “What do you want?”

  Justin gave her a tiny smile.

  “I wanted to come and see you,” he said, “to make sure you’re absolutely OK about tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” said Candice blankly. Justin smiled at her again.

  “Tomorrow, as you know, is the day I take over as acting editor of the Londoner. Effectively, I’ll be your boss.” He shook out his sleeves, examined his cuffs, then looked up. “I wouldn’t want any . . . problems to arise between us.” Candice stared at him.

  “Problems?”

  “I realize it may be a rather difficult time for you,” said Justin smoothly. “My promotion coinciding with the break-up of our relationship. I wouldn’t want you feeling at all vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable?” said Candice in astonishment. “Justin, it was me who ended our relationship! I’m fine about it.”

  “If that’s the way you want to see it,” said Justin kindly. “Just as long as there are no bad feelings.”

  “I can’t guarantee that,” muttered Candice.

  She watched as Justin swirled his glass of whisky, so that the ice-cubes in it clinked together. He looked as though he were practising for a television ad, she thought. Or a Panorama profile: “Justin Vellis: the genius at home.” A giggle rose through her, and she clamped her lips together.

  “Well, I mustn’t keep you,” said Justin at last, and stood up. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Can’t wait,” said Candice, pulling a face behind his back. As they reached the door she paused, her hand on the latch. “By the way,” she said casually, “do you know if they’ve appointed a new editorial assistant yet?”