He halted immediately. ‘Sorry. So sorry, darling.’ He opened his arms and pulled me hard against him, right there in the middle of the street. Our hearts pounded fast together. My feet were sopping wet because I’d got the wrong shoes on, and Ludo wrapped his arms round me tightly and lifted my heels off the ground. ‘I’m really sorry. I’m being foul and it is absolutely not your fault,’ he whispered into my hair. ‘I’m just disappointed. Do you want me to cancel this appointment?’ He stood back and whipped his phone out of his pocket. ‘Find a place with you?’
‘No, no,’ I said at once, immediately placated. ‘I can do it, I promise. I’ll arrange it all and let you know where we are. Honestly, it’s not a problem.’ We kissed then, rather fiercely, on the lips. In the rain. A bit like in a Richard Curtis movie. Eyes shut, wet through, not caring. Energized. I wondered if I looked like Julia Roberts? Probably not. It was the first time we’d ever kissed like that, though, and the passion surprised both of us. We parted, panting. His eyes were on fire and I had an idea mine were too.
‘See you later,’ I said in a whisper.
As I turned and bolted back up the high street I was aware that he was watching me, appointment momentarily forgotten.
Despite my protestations to the contrary, though, finding a hotel was a bit of a problem, after all. In fact, it was downright impossible. I sat in the car in the car park, sopping wet, ringing every establishment in town. But it was very short notice and there were a lot of tourists in Binfield, all jockeying for rooms. I put the phone down on my last hope, the Swan, who’d almost laughed at me. Everywhere was full. Even the neighbouring villages. No room at the inn. Perhaps we should just drive on, go north: try somewhere further afield? Take our chances? I suspected it would be some seedy dive, though, some ghastly motel. Which wasn’t what I wanted at all. Home, then? I swallowed a great lump of disappointment, opened the car door and limped damply from it. Yes, home. I’d sneak into the hotel first to collect my things, put them in the car, and then mull it over for a moment before breaking the bad news to Ludo. We’d just have to try again another weekend. Damn.
The bar was mercifully empty now. Just a few people huddled around the fire in Aran sweaters, orange cagoules steaming dry on the backs of their chairs, walking sticks resting against the wall. My comely currant-bun lady was clearing tables. She saw me looking round.
‘Oh, they’ve all gone to their rooms, luv. We always put them in the annex across the yard, there’s that many of them. They’re very self-contained over there. Course, they eat in the restaurant, but they always retire over there early because they’ve got the rally in the morning, see. Like to be fresh. They’ll all be gone by eight o’clock tomorrow.’
I gazed at her. Earlier, of course, I’d been to our room. Unpacked. It was directly above the bar, in this small, very old section of the pub. Totally separate, were they? In the modern annex? Almost … well, in a different hotel. And if I found a different restaurant, which I was sure wouldn’t be a problem …
‘Everything all right, luv? Have you lost your key?’
‘No … no. I’ve got it. I – I just wondered if you’d got a Daily Mail or something?’
She had. And I took it upstairs. Stopped, though, en route, halfway up. From the landing window I could see the wooden-clad annex, like a row of chalets, but it was quite a distance away. Across a cobbled courtyard and a car park too. Virtually in a different street. Also, we could order breakfast in bed. Never even trouble the dining room. What’s more, there was a back entrance to this old part of the hotel; I’d passed a door that led straight up these stairs. We wouldn’t even have to come in through the front door. Wouldn’t trouble reception, perchance they were in the bar later.
I locked the bedroom door firmly behind me, had a hot bath and emerged steaming. Then I put on a white towelling dressing gown I’d found on the back of the door and sat on the four-poster to text Ludo the good news. Just. My phone was low on battery, a light told me.
He texted back.
Great! So they’re almost in a different hotel!
Which, up to a point, they were.
Heaving a great sigh of relief I changed into my Chinese dress – no time for forty winks – put on some make-up and waited for Ludo to come back, trying not to think that a gin and tonic in the cosy bar downstairs would have been nice. We’d find another elsewhere.
We couldn’t. When Ludo returned, he was not in the best of humours – the husband, annoyed at being kept waiting and wanting to get to his supper, had found fault with Ludo’s design: couldn’t understand why there was so much box hedging, even though his wife patiently explained that was the essence of a knot garden. He’d ended up saying that he hadn’t really been consulted about all this garden-design business and wanted to give it some thought. ‘Tantamount to saying: “Not today, thank you”,’ Ludo said gloomily as we trudged back up one side of the high street, having already exhausted the other, shoulders hunched against the persistent drizzle, not a brolly between us.
‘Not necessarily,’ I urged, slightly disingenuously, as we peered through Café Rouge’s window at the crowded restaurant; a queue about ten deep had already formed inside the door. ‘He may come back to you when he’s had some time to think about it.’ And when the wife picks a better moment, I thought privately. I imagined her disappointment as a project she’d nurtured and mulled over in the bath, chatted to friends about for – ooh, months now, had come crashing down because of a late contractor and an irritable husband. She’d lick her wounds and lie low for a bit, then start campaigning again in a few months’ time. Return to the knot garden in the spring. But, of course, with a different contractor.
‘No, that’s dead in the water,’ he said bitterly. ‘Another two grand down the tubes. Another wasted drawing, too. A complete waste of time, in fact.’
I bristled, because, for some reason, I felt he was blaming me.
‘Such a shame you forgot the folder,’ I said lightly.
‘Such a shame your father was in the bar. That ridiculous conversation delayed me another ten minutes.’
We walked on in silence but I was quietly simmering.
‘Sorry to be so gloomy,’ he said suddenly, hugging my shoulders as we walked towards the last pub in the high street, a nice-looking place called the Bear, complete with thatched roof. ‘The whole thing, as you say, was my own stupid fault, not yours.’
I brightened instantly, marvelling at my mercurial nature. I’d been about to snap, but I was sunny now. One minute everything was roses, the next, bindweed, and then – oh, hello – roses again.
We finally ended up in a half-empty Pizza Express at the wrong end of town. Half empty because it was in a patch of ribbon development on the edge of an industrial estate, which we agreed wasn’t quite what we’d envisaged, but better than nothing.
Frankly I was just glad to get in from the rain and get a large glass of Merlot to my lips, even if it was freezing cold. The wine and the room. But love would keep us warm, I thought, as I glowed at Ludo across the Formica table. I wondered if I should say that? Ironically, of course? No. Bit cheesy. And his demeanour, somehow, didn’t encourage it. He was looking around in a disgruntled manner. There was a hen party at the next table, the only other occupied table in the room: ten, overly made-up women were shrieking and laughing and making a great deal of cackle.
‘Very conducive to the romantic atmosphere,’ he remarked drily.
I laughed, as if he’d made a terribly funny joke.
When the pizzas arrived, tempers improved, and draining the bottle of wine helped too. Then Ludo asked nicely if they could possibly put the heating on? He rubbed his cold hands together with a charming smile.
‘Ees broken,’ a young Polish gentleman explained, spreading his hands helplessly. ‘The engineer, he come tomorrow.’
‘Ah.’
No matter. We ordered a hot cappuccino apiece after our pizzas and, as we were drinking it, mulled over the last chaotic hour or so. We
even managed to giggle about Ludo being married to Lottie and how that might work.
‘You’d have a lovely easy time of it,’ I assured him. ‘You’d loll around in your pyjamas all day while Lottie brought in the bacon. Wouldn’t have to poo-pick at the manor any more.’
‘I’m warming to this,’ he said. ‘Lucky old Hamish.’
‘Although she is a bit chaotic in the kitchen. You wouldn’t be fed as well as you are at home.’
‘Who’s says I’m well fed at home?’
‘Ooh … Ginnie says Eliza’s a terrific cook!’
‘Ah, yes, you might be right.’ He grinned. ‘Well, if I’m lolling around in my jim-jams I can rustle up supper myself, can’t I?’
I smiled and sipped my coffee. And then, as the cup met my lips, something the Jennie woman had said came back in a rush. Probably at the mention of Ginnie. I put my cup down in its saucer with a clatter.
‘Oh – Ludo. Jennie, who I met in the bar – you know, mother of Frankie, the girl who’s going out with my nephew – said that Hugo was seeing a psychiatrist in London. Said he’d been recommended by Ginnie’s best friend. That’s not Eliza, is it?’
The two spots of colour I’d seen earlier in the bar returned to Ludo’s cheekbones now. He cleared his throat. ‘It is, actually.’
I blinked. Leaned forward. ‘You’re kidding. Eliza is seeing a shrink?’
‘Yes, she’s … she’s been finding life a bit tricky recently. She finds it helps.’
He sipped his coffee placidly. Was that it? I waited. Shook my head in bewilderment.
‘In what way?’
‘In what way is life tricky or in what way does it help?’
‘Well – both, really.’ It occurred to me he was being somewhat evasive about this.
‘Oh, well, you know.’ He ran a weary hand through his blond hair. Leaned back in his chair. ‘Time of life, that sort of thing, I suppose. Children growing up. Women’s problems.’ He shrugged. Gave a disarming smile. ‘Who knows?’
He should, surely?
‘Ludo, you don’t go to a psychiatrist about women’s problems. You might pop down to the Holistic Centre, or even the doctor’s, but not to a psychiatrist. There must be more to it than that?’
‘Perhaps there is. But, as you know, Ella, we don’t have the best of relationships, so I don’t really know.’
They didn’t talk at all. Which struck me as being very different to me and Sebastian, who yelled and screamed far too much. But we did at least communicate. Something else struck me too. I rolled it round in my head before I said it, like a ball of pastry gathering flour on a board.
‘Ludo, Lottie also told me – and of course she shouldn’t have done, Hippocratic oath and all that – that Eliza was seeing someone in London. She assumed – well, we both did, actually – that she meant a lover. Could it have been this doctor? If she goes up regularly?’
Ludo shrugged miserably. ‘Blimey, what is this, Ella, the Spanish Inquisition? I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps?’ I felt cross. ‘And yet the other day, when I tentatively asked whether you ever wondered if Eliza had another life, a man on the side, you said you didn’t know. Let me go along with it. Sort of led me to believe she might, which, of course, gave you the sympathy vote. When all the time, in fact, she was seeing a shrink? Getting her head sorted out?’ He glanced up, alarmed at my tone, which was, what – combative? Accusatory? ‘And how come you never told me this? We tell each other pretty much everything, don’t we? At least, I do.’
‘Now, hang on a minute, Ella. Eliza’s her own woman. How do I know what she gets up to in London? I wasn’t hoodwinking you, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps she has both? A shrink and a lover? And perhaps I was protecting her, out of loyalty? Perhaps I didn’t want the neighbourhood knowing she had mental-health problems?’
That I could believe. That rang true. Except … this was me, Ella, not the neighbourhood. He trusted me. I knew, too, that his trite throwaway line about her possibly having both was nonsense. She was hardly going to see a psychiatrist and then leap into bed with her lover, as, to assuage my guilt about seeing her husband, I’d had her doing. And Lottie said she came for acupuncture every week now. And we knew money in that household was tight. Acupuncture and a shrink. She must be desperate. Suddenly I realized she was incredibly unhappy. She must be. I recalled her tight, pinched face at dinner parties opposite the gorgeous Ludo. She had probably once been very attractive, in a thin, gamine sort of way, but she’d aged considerably; she was much more lined than the rest of us. Once, years ago, when Ludo and Eliza had given a drinks party and invited pretty much everybody, including Lottie and Hamish, Ludo had answered the door to the pair of them and gestured to Eliza, standing behind him, saying, ‘Hi, there! You know Eliza, don’t you?’ Hamish had bounded in in his Tiggerish way, saying: ‘Of course! I met your mother at the school play!’
Eliza’s mouth had all but disappeared.
Lottie was mortified, but, later, we couldn’t help giggling guiltily. ‘So stupid of Hamish, but she does look old,’ Lottie had insisted.
‘Or he looks young,’ I’d said. I’d been at the party too: it was the first time I’d seen Ludo. I remembered watching this floppy-haired man with the megawatt smile distractedly pouring Pimms in the garden for shiny-eyed women. Distracted, but surely not entirely oblivious to his charms?
At that moment I imagined Eliza, hunched and gaunt opposite some psychiatrist in London, huddled in that camel coat she always wore; Liberty’s headscarf round her neck, like someone from another generation, Lottie and I would whisper. Ludo wore pink trousers, velvet jackets, patterned shirts with mandarin collars: we’d all felt rather sorry for him with his frumpy wife. But had she been, rather desperately, staking her claim? As his wife and the mother of his children? Pearls. Sensible skirts. Be sensible, Ludo, her clothes seemed to say. Whistling in the wind.
I watched as he smiled at the pretty waitress who’d arrived, in place of the Polish gentleman, with the credit-card machine. He punched out his number. I thought he’d singled me out. Thought I was special. Perhaps I was? Just because his wife was mentally unstable and rather conventionally dressed, it didn’t mean he’d had heaps of affairs and that she was suffering the after-effects, did it? The waitress departed. I took a deep breath.
‘Ludo, am I the first woman you’ve ever had an affair with?’
He looked surprised as he pocketed his wallet. ‘Ella, you know you are. You’ve asked me that before.’
‘I know. It’s just …’
Just that you’ve been economical with the truth, I thought. You didn’t let me in. Didn’t tell me your wife was seeing a psychiatrist in case I felt sorry for her. So sorry, in fact, that I might have felt a complete heel about seeing you. Might have thought twice. And very occasionally you’ve dropped tiny hints that Eliza might have her own romantic life. Perhaps used it as leverage to push me a little further into having an affair.
We walked quietly back to the hotel, once in a while remarking on a window display, or the fact that the rain had abated slightly. We gave a brief laugh now and again at nothing in particular, desperate for levity. He had his arm round my shoulders, but it felt odd. Unnatural. I gazed in a cook-shop window as we passed. Some gadget for squeezing lemons caught my eye. I’d recently taken to doing that like Jamie Oliver, letting the juice slip through my fingers, leaving only pips in my hand. Why should that image spring to mind? Of something slipping through my fingers, only sour pips remaining? We walked on in silence. I felt sad. For me, partly. I’d wanted my moment in the sunshine. Knew I’d needed it. Had wanted to love and be loved. But most of all I felt sad for all middle-aged women. Single ones, obviously, but particularly those with charming, youthful husbands. Was Sebastian in that category? He was certainly very good-looking, but in a more craggy, unusual way, and he didn’t do conscious charm. Conscious insults, more like, I thought with an involuntary smile. Any charm he had was surely a by-product. A mistake.
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We went round the back of the hotel to the entrance I’d told him about – the fire escape, as it turned out, which had certainly escaped me – and tried the door. It was locked.
Ludo rattled the bar, irritated. ‘Oh, well. We’ll just have to go round the front.’
‘Yes, I suppose,’ I said nervously. ‘Only, I just hope Dad –’
‘Oh, bother your flaming dad!’
I turned, astonished. He looked furious. Something of the man I’d seen at the school fete, bad-tempered and disaffected as Eliza had admonished him, came back. That rather did it for me. That show of temper. I felt the colour rise in my own face; his was still taut and pale. Without a word, we turned and stalked round to the front of the pub in silence. As we went through reception, a young man on the desk glanced up from his BlackBerry with a smile. Neither of us acknowledged him. I stopped at the foot of the stairs.
‘Look, Ludo, you go up. I’m going to have a drink in the bar.’
‘Oh, darling, I’ll join you. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. So stupid.’ He took my hand, shamefaced.
‘No.’ I regarded him rather deliberately. Retrieved my hand. ‘You go up.’ I said it slowly.
He tried to laugh it off. ‘Our first row!’ he said lightly. ‘Had to happen.’
I didn’t reply. But he knew I meant it. I saw realization pass across his eyes. Realization that I wouldn’t be coming. At all. At least – not in that capacity. In what capacity, then, I wondered desperately? After all, my things were in that room. Were we to lie beside each other like statues all night? I was certainly too pissed to drive home. But I’d think about that later. Right now, all I wanted was some time alone to think, and a very large drink. I was aware of the young man behind us listening possibly. Or possibly not. Possibly texting his mates and not giving a damn about a middle-aged couple having a tiff.
‘I’ve got a key,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll be up later.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling.’ Ludo laughed lightly. He riffled a hand through his blond hair. ‘I’m not going up without you. This is absurd! Come on. I’ll tell you what – we’ll both have a drink. I could certainly do with one.’
My Husband Next Door Page 32