Falling for You

by Jill Mansell

  Estelle’s heart began to race. He loves me!

  “Bet you say that to all the girls.”

  Will ran his fingers lightly down from her throat to her cleavage.

  “I’ve never said it before in my life. And you’re trying to make me late for work.”

  “Sorry, I’ll stop.”

  “Don’t stop.”

  “No, no.” Moving her hips, Estelle said seriously, “You can’t possibly be late for work. I’ll just let you get dressed—”

  “Don’t stop.”

  Estelle shook her head. “I don’t want to be responsible for getting you into trouble. I’d never forgive myself if—”

  “Shhh,” murmured Will, a broad smile on his face as he settled back against the pillows. “Don’t stop…”

  Afterward, when Will had headed off to the edit suite he rented from Carousel Productions, Estelle picked up the phone and called Kate.

  Was she only a hundred miles away from Ashcombe? It felt more like a million. Cleverly, she’d remembered to block her own number first.

  “Mum?” Kate sounded relieved to hear her voice. “Mum, where are you? Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine, darling.” Estelle was careful not to sound too fine. She was aiming for coping bravely in the face of adversity rather than having the time of her life with an adoring younger man.

  “Are you coming home?”

  “No.” Sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed, Estelle gazed out of the window at the rows of higgledy-piggledy Mary Poppins–style rooftops.

  “Where are you?”

  “In a hotel. How’s Tiff?”

  She had to ask.

  She couldn’t not ask.

  “Still really bad.”

  “And Marcella?”

  Kate brightened up. “Oh, Marcella’s OK. She’s got a thing for Twiglets now.”

  “Well, that’s not so terrible.”

  “She dips them in custard.”

  Estelle still thought this was an improvement on the pickled walnuts. “How’s Norris?”

  “Fat, greedy, slobbers a lot. Pretty much the same as Dexter.” Kate paused. “Are you going to ask about Dad?”

  “Go on then.” Estelle was wary.

  “I haven’t seen him. He’s still at the hospital. But if he was here, I wouldn’t speak to him. He’s been a complete idiot. Speaking of idiots,” Kate said abruptly, “Will Gifford was down here yesterday. Honestly, what an idiot. I swear he thinks he’s Hugh Grant. He was wearing that awful green sweater with the moth holes down the front.”

  Estelle’s gaze slid guiltily to the offending sweater, now flung across the chair in the corner of the bedroom. She’d personally removed it, moth holes and all, from Will’s more than willing body last night.

  OK, concentrate.

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Oh, he pretended to be shocked”—Kate sounded scornful—“but he was over the moon, you could tell. Interviewed me in the pub, then raced off to the hospital to see Dad. You can’t blame him, I suppose. He’s a journalist. All this business has brightened up his boring documentary no end.”

  Estelle bit her lip. This was probably true. She couldn’t blame Will if he was secretly delighted with the way things had turned out, for the sake of the documentary, if nothing else.

  “Mum? Norris really misses you.”

  “Does he?” Estelle managed a wobbly smile. How completely ridiculous. Norris wasn’t even their dog.

  “I miss you too,” said Kate.

  “Oh, darling…” Overwhelmed, Estelle’s hand flew to her throat.

  Sounding embarrassed, Kate said, “Bet you never thought you’d hear me say that.”

  Chapter 43

  Estelle put the phone down and had a little cry. Her life was changing so fast, she couldn’t begin to get to grips with it. For now, like an alcoholic, all she could do was take things one day at a time. Like today. It was lunchtime, the weather was beautiful, and she was going to go out for a couple of hours. No more cushions had been Will’s parting shot as he’d left for work. OK, but she could buy food for dinner tonight. Roast lamb, Estelle decided as she headed for the shower. Will had always loved her roast dinners. A gorgeous leg of lamb, lots of fresh vegetables, crunchy roast potatoes with garlic…

  Then glorious sex, probably.

  Followed by Belgian chocolate truffle ice cream, Estelle thought happily.

  Then more sex.

  * * *

  “Hi! Can I give you a hand with those?”

  It was two o’clock. Juggling her house key, handbag, and four bulging shopping bags, Estelle started at the sound of the friendly voice behind her. She knew London was where you went if you wanted to get mugged in broad daylight, but this voice really didn’t sound as if it belonged to a mugger. For a start, it was female and quite posh. Secondly, Estelle discovered as she turned around, its owner was less than five feet tall.

  She was wearing smart clothes, Estelle couldn’t help noticing. Surely someone in a neat white shirt and well-cut black pencil skirt wouldn’t kick you to the ground and make off with your groceries.

  “It’s OK. I don’t bite!” The girl, who was probably in her early thirties, said gaily, “Here, you do the door, and I’ll make sure your bags don’t topple over. That happened to me last week and I smashed a bottle of Pinot Grigio—I was so cross!”

  Eventually Estelle managed to get the key fitted into the unfamiliar lock. As a red bus came trundling up the road, she nodded at it and said, “Is that the one you’re waiting for?”

  The girl beamed. “I wasn’t waiting for a bus. Actually, I was waiting for you. You’re Estelle, aren’t you? Let me say hello properly.” Grabbing Estelle’s temporarily free hand, she shook it with enthusiasm. “I’m Lucy Banks.”

  Blankly, Estelle said, “And?”

  “Well, the thing is, I’d love to have a chat with you. You see, I work for the Daily Mail.”

  “Oh. Right.” Feeling suddenly sorry for Juliet—this was the last thing she needed right now—Estelle said politely, “I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to talk about what my husband did. I’d rather just keep out of it, if you don’t mind.” As she said this, it belatedly occurred to her to wonder how this girl had known she’d be here.

  “That’s completely understandable,” said Lucy, nodding sympathetically. “But this isn’t actually anything to do with your husband. Not directly, at least. You see, this is about what Will Gifford’s been up to.”

  “Up to? Will?” Estelle was by this time thoroughly confused.

  Gently, Lucy said, “Why don’t we sit down and have a chat?”

  Unwilling to invite the journalist into Will’s apartment, Estelle took her to a garden square a couple of streets away. There on a wooden bench beneath a sycamore tree, with a tiny tape recorder whirring away on the seat between them, she learned from Lucy that a woman had contacted the Daily Mail’s offices this morning after seeing the photograph of Will and Estelle in the local paper and reading the accompanying piece.

  “Ever heard of Magnus Jonsson?” asked Lucy.

  “The record producer.” Estelle nodded rapidly, her fevered imagination conjuring up any number of bizarre images—Will was Magnus Jonsson’s son, or his lover…

  “Did you ever see the documentary Will made about Magnus?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s not surprising,” said Lucy, “considering it never aired.”

  “Why not?” asked Estelle, because this was clearly what she was supposed to ask.

  “Because it never got finished. Because Magnus and Will had a bit of a falling out.” Lucy paused. “Because Magnus found out that Will was sleeping with his wife.”

  There was a high-pitched humming noise in Estelle’s ears. She really hoped she wasn’t the one making it. A short d
istance away, on the grass, two small children were battling over a bag of bread crusts, sending pigeons up into the trees.

  “So you see, you’re not the first,” Lucy said sympathetically. “Magnus was a workaholic, away a lot of the time. Moira was lonely; she felt neglected. Then Will came along and she found his attentions so flattering, it didn’t take long for her to succumb. Will told her he loved her. From the sound of things, he has quite a way about him. I can imagine it would be hard to resist.”

  Miserably, Estelle said, “What happened?”

  “Magnus came home unexpectedly one day and caught them. Have you noticed a bump on Will’s nose?”

  Estelle nodded. How many times in the last couple of days had she kissed that bump?

  “That’s where Magnus broke it,” said Lucy. “He went berserk—well, who can blame him? He loved his wife.”

  “Go on.” Estelle gazed down at her fingers, twisted together in her lap.

  “Moira left Magnus and went to live with Will. They spent a couple of weeks together at his apartment, then a month in the Caribbean. Moira paid for that. She thought they’d be together forever—she was absolutely besotted with him—but soon after they arrived back in London, Will ended it. Moira was devastated. Magnus took her back, but the marriage didn’t survive. They divorced a year later. When Moira read in the local paper that Will was up to his old tricks again, she felt she had to do something. She’s a nice lady,” Lucy concluded earnestly. “She isn’t motivated by spite. She doesn’t want you to make the same mistake she did and give up on a perfectly good marriage for the sake of someone like Will.”

  Estelle said stubbornly, “Maybe she had a perfectly good marriage. I don’t. Look, so what are you saying, that Will’s nothing but a con man?”

  “Not a con man.” Lucy proceeded with care. “Not exactly. I’m sure he does care for you very much, in his own way. But we’ve done a bit of digging around and he does seem to make a habit of persuading lonely women to fall for him, then fairly rapidly losing interest in them. Usually after they’ve spent a bit of money on him, I have to say.” She paused. “According to the receptionist at Carousel Productions, one of last year’s conquests bought him a brand-new BMW.”

  “He doesn’t have a BMW.” Estelle was numb.

  “I know. But it’s how he funded his trip to Australia. Finished with the woman,” said Lucy with a grimace, “and promptly sold the car.”

  Estelle swallowed. She felt as if she were trapped on a fairground ride, being spun around and around and not allowed to get off.

  “So I was an easy target, is that it? I’m sorry, I can’t believe this. Will told me he loved me.”

  Next to her on the bench, Lucy took a slim notepad from her bag, then flipped through it until she found the page she was looking for.

  “Did he tell you he’d never felt like this about anyone before?” she asked, and Estelle felt the palms of her clasped hands break out in a sweat.

  She couldn’t speak.

  “Does he tell you that you’re the one he’s been waiting for his whole life?”

  There was a lump the size of a horse chestnut in Estelle’s throat.

  “Does he call you the other half of his soul?” Lucy persisted, her French-manicured finger moving slowly on down the list. “Does he talk about the poem you’ll have engraved on your joint headstone when you’re both gone? Does he have nicknames for each of your elbows? Is he—”

  “Stop!” Unable to bear it a moment longer, Estelle buried her face in her trembling hands. “Oh God,” she wailed. “Please, just stop.”

  * * *

  “You’re back!” exclaimed Will. “Are you OK? When I saw the food on the floor I thought maybe you’d been kidnapped by aliens.”

  He hadn’t been home long himself. The shopping bags of food Estelle had unceremoniously dumped before going with Lucy to the garden square were still there on the kitchen floor. The Belgian chocolate truffle ice cream had melted, seeping like treacle across the tiles. Estelle stood and gazed down at the mess, as well and truly ruined as her own life.

  “Something is wrong.” Will looked wary, like a guilty man opening his front door to find a policeman on the doorstep.

  “Smile,” Estelle told him. “You’re going to be in the Daily Mail tomorrow.”

  “The Mail. Oh God, Oliver’ll go ape. He might pull out of the documentary.”

  “Well, it’ll be a real shame if that happens,” said Estelle. “Again.”

  Now Will looked like the guilty man discovering that the policeman had proof of his crime.

  “Moira Jonsson saw the piece in the local paper this morning.” Had it really only been this morning? It felt like months ago.

  “Moira Jonsson.” Will shook his head. “She’s just jealous. We were together for a while, then we broke up. She never got over it.”

  “You were making a film about her husband!” Her voice rising, Estelle shouted, “All the things you told me, you’d already told her. And it’s not just the two of us either.”

  “Who told you this?” Will’s eyes narrowed.

  “A journalist.”

  “Oh, come on, now you’re being naive. They’ll make up anything—”

  “Not this time,” yelled Estelle. “Apparently there are quite a few older married women around whose elbows have nicknames!”

  Trapped, Will said, “So? It’s not against the law.”

  “Yesterday,” Estelle said shakily, “you brought a bag of travel brochures back here. We spent half the evening talking about going away on vacation. You kept saying you’d love to go to the Caribbean, remember? Because you’d never been there before.”

  From the look on Will’s face, he knew what was coming next. “OK, so maybe I have. Once.” Sulkily he said, “But it wasn’t much of a vacation, let me tell you, with Moira clinging to me like a leech the whole time.”

  “She probably felt she was entitled to be clingy, seeing as she paid for the entire trip. Tell me,” said Estelle, “is it all a deliberate ploy? Do you do it to spice up your documentaries, make them more interesting for the viewers?”

  “No.”

  Estelle had already guessed as much. After all, Magnus Jonsson had pulled out of filming; his documentary had ended up not getting made.

  “So it’s just that we’re available, is it? Lonely, neglected wives, grateful for the attention. Oops, I almost forgot—lonely, neglected, wealthy women.”

  Giving it one last go, Will said desperately, “It isn’t like that. I’d never sleep with someone unless I cared about them. The money isn’t important.”

  “Nice try,” said Estelle. “Very convincing.” Cuttingly she added, “But I’m still not going to buy you a brand-new BMW.”

  His eyes flickered with guilt and she knew it was all over.

  “Where are you going?” Will asked as she stalked past him.

  Reaching the hallway, Estelle glimpsed her reflection in the mirror on the wall—the mirror that she had bought and hung there yesterday to brighten up the narrow space. She looked exactly what she was: a foolish forty-five-year-old woman who should have known better and was now living to regret it.

  “To pack my things,” she told Will, discovering that she didn’t even have the energy to cry. “After that, I don’t know.”

  Chapter 44

  “I don’t know what to do anymore,” said Kate. “I don’t even know what to think. I just…oh God, I don’t know…give up.”

  “It’s like the world’s gone mad,” Nuala suggested helpfully. Using the tongs to transfer a cherry Danish from the glass cabinet to a paper bag, she added, “Like waking up and looking out of your window and seeing that the grass is purple.”

  Maddy, who was about to set off with the morning’s deliveries, asked, “Have you spoken to Estelle this morning?”

  “Like wildebeest stamped
ing down Main Street,” said Nuala.

  “She hasn’t been in touch.” Kate shook her head helplessly. “It’s just unbelievable. My mother’s run off with a boy toy who’s only out for what he can get. My father’s at the hospital with his ex-mistress. They have a son together, I’ve got a half brother I never knew I had, and he doesn’t even know who his father is because he’s lying there in a coma.”

  “Orangutans swinging from the trees, the Taj Mahal where the war memorial used to be,” said Nuala. “Flying saucers whizzing through the sky.”

  “Just ignore her,” said Maddy.

  “Sorry. That’ll be eighty pence.” Nuala handed the bag to Kate. “But wouldn’t it be weird if that did happen?”

  Maddy rolled her eyes in despair. “And I have to live with her,” she told Kate.

  “What about Sophie?” Along with the rest of the town, Kate knew that Sophie had been prescribed a course of antibiotics as a precautionary measure. “Is she OK?”

  Maddy smiled, touched by her concern. “She’s absolutely fine.”

  Marcella turned up as Kate was leaving. Marcella had a ten o’clock appointment at the hospital’s prenatal unit, and she was hitching a lift into Bath with Maddy.

  “Got everything?” asked Marcella as Maddy loaded the iceboxes into the car along with a bag containing clean clothes for Juliet.

  “I’ve got everything. Have you got everything?”

  Smugly, Marcella held up her pink raffia basket. “Prenatal notes. Spare panties. Urine sample. What more could a woman need?”

  The basket was heavier than that. Pulling it open and surveying the contents, Maddy said, “Pickled gherkins, a pomegranate, two orange Kit Kats, and a tube of tomato puree, by the look of it.”

  “Don’t curl your lip at me like that,” Marcella protested. “I have a blood sugar level to think of. It doesn’t do to get peckish.”

  * * *

  Having dropped Marcella off first, Maddy parked the car and made her way over to the intensive therapy unit. There was a family, distraught and sobbing, in the waiting room. When Juliet emerged from the unit, Maddy hugged her hard, then asked, “Shall we go outside?”