by Prue Leith
As she talked he watched her. Sometimes, when she was talking of Chris or her mother, of the catering business that was bumping along under Amal’s direction and with help from Chris, her eyes would lose their life, and it was as though she was just imparting neutral information. She stirred her coffee cup absentmindedly, the sugar long since dissolved, or ran her fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass.
But when she talked of the children she taught, of Toby and her friends, of Talika’s impending baby, her eyes would light up, and the pace of her speech would quicken. She would push her hair off her forehead with an impatient gesture, and look intently into his face, seeking understanding and approval. He liked watching her.
They finally stood up to leave at five-thirty. While they waited in the lobby for their coats, Kate suddenly pulled his sleeve and ducked her head against his chest, whispering, ‘Oliver, that’s Jarvis Stanley. He’s the journalist who wrote the story. Quick …’
Oliver looked up at the moment that the man recognised them. ‘Kate,’ he said, ‘good to see you. And with Oliver Stapler!’ He put his hand out to Oliver. ‘Jarvis Stanley, Evening Standard. Don’t think we’ve met. Kate, you know Rake.’
‘Jarvis, please, this is not what you think.’ Kate sounded desperate, but Oliver felt perfectly calm.
‘Hi,’ he said coldly but politely, ‘good to put a face to the words at last.’ He shook Rake’s hand too.
‘Would you like to join us for a drink?’ asked Jarvis. ‘I’d enjoy that. Professionally, of course. But also privately. You know I’ve always been a fan of yours, Kate.’
Oliver said calmly, ‘’Fraid not. But for the record, we are old friends, as you know, and we’ve been having a long lunch together to compare notes and catch up on how each of us has survived the damage that you and your like have done to us. And you will be pleased to know, I’m sure, that we are both just fine. Kate is doing well, and I am very happy as a backbencher.’
The coats arrived and they shuffled into them as Jarvis persisted, ‘Do you lunch together often, Mr Stapler?’
Kate cut in, ‘Jarvis, please. Leave us alone.’ But Oliver said affably, ‘None of your business, old chap.’
Jarvis smiled at Kate but again addressed Oliver. ‘Were you not concerned that to lunch with Kate at such a fashionable place could start the rumour mill again?’
‘Not at all,’ said Oliver, putting a couple of coins into the coat-check girl’s hand. ‘I deliberately chose the Wolseley. I will not pretend that Kate is not a friend, and since there’s nothing between us to get you guys excited, I’ll lunch where I like. Good day, gentlemen.’ And he ushered Kate out of the door and into a taxi. Jarvis, he noted, at least had the decency not to follow them out of the restaurant.
Oliver didn’t feel the slightest anxiety about Jarvis seeing them. He knew that the story, once he’d left government, was very small beer, and even if they carried a paragraph, he doubted that any other paper would pick it up.
He turned to Kate and at once saw that she was shaken. He put his arm round her and drew her to him a little. She did not resist, but her eyes were troubled.
‘Kate, you mustn’t worry about that journo. He can’t hurt us now, though I could kill him for spoiling a good lunch. It was supposed to make you feel better.’
She smiled then and said, ‘I enjoyed it. And thank you. It was good. I don’t mean just the food. It was good to talk.’
‘Talking to you has always been easy. I’ve missed it.’
He withdrew his arm and shifted a little to look into her face more directly. ‘Kate, why did you accept lunch so suddenly, after resolutely putting the telephone down on me for weeks?’
She smiled. Sadly, he thought. And then she shrugged and looked directly back at him. ‘Couldn’t resist,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Kate picked Toby up from Talika’s on her way home. Talika pressed her to stay. ‘Amal will be up in a minute, and we both want to hear all the details of your lunch.’
‘I know, and I want to tell you, but Chris is at home and I’m hugely late and not entirely sober.’
Talika stood with one hand on her tight round belly, the other on the door jamb. She looked, thought Kate, like an advertisement for pregnancy. The baby was due any day now, and yet she still looked so vital: slim and fit, eyes clear, hair glossy, skin aglow.
‘Sometimes I’m jealous of Chris,’ Talika said. ‘We hardly see you now he’s back in your life. And you don’t even employ us as kitchen hands since you have your own live-in chef!’
She was half-joking but what she said was true. Chris didn’t like her to go anywhere without him, and was generally negative about Amal and Talika, and indeed about any of her friends. He wasn’t going to approve of her rolling home at six-thirty after a lunch date.
Kate had not told Chris who she was lunching with, and was aware that such secrecy, right at the beginning of a renewed relationship, did not bode well. But since he had been so violently on her side and placed Oliver firmly in the role of arch-villain, she could hardly confess to lunching with him.
She and Toby walked home, Toby chattering about a DVD Sanjay and he had watched about a baby being born into a family who already had a child. ‘Sanjay went on and on about his new baby sister or brother. He’s so lucky, Mum. I want a baby brother. Why can’t you have a baby?’
Kate was a little thrown by the thought, but she said, ‘Would you like that? For Mummy and Chris to have another baby?’
‘Why does it have to be Chris’s too? I don’t want Chris to be the father.’
Kate’s heart missed a beat but she said calmly, ‘Why not, darling? Chris is your dad. It would be good if you and a new brother or sister had the same dad, wouldn’t it?’
Toby was silent, his head down. Then he said, ‘I suppose so,’ with obvious reluctance.
Kate stopped walking and took his hand. ‘What’s the matter, darling? Don’t you like Chris?’
Toby looked up at her, his face solemn. He shook his head.
‘Why not, darling? He’s always nice to you, isn’t he?’
Toby, dropping his eyes again, aimed a kick at a drifting plastic bag. ‘No, he’s not. He’s only nice to me if you’re there. When it’s just me and him he says he’s too busy to bother with me.’
Kate winced inwardly. ‘Well, sweetheart, he has a lot to do, you know. He can’t play with you all the time.’
She saw her son’s face set into what she called his Churchillian look: grumpy and determined. He muttered, ‘Well, I don’t like him. I don’t care if he is my father.’
They walked on a few paces. ‘He says I have to call him Dad, but I won’t. I don’t have to, do I? Do I, Mum?’
‘No, darling, not if you don’t want to.’ Kate felt oddly pleased by this. The truth is, she thought, I don’t like sharing Toby.
Chris’s coat and the small back pack he used for carrying his chef’s kit around were in the hall but he was nowhere to be seen. No sign of supper on the go either. Kate left Toby to lay the table, and went upstairs in search of him.
He was in the bath, reading a car magazine. The bath was so full it was running gently into the overflow and a corresponding stream of hot water dribbled into it from the tap. He was surrounded, she noticed, by bubbles smelling suspiciously like her expensive Givenchy, a present from Amal and Talika. Forcing herself to bite her lip on these matters she sat on the loo seat, leant over to give the top of his head a kiss. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘What sort of day?’
‘Pretty bloody,’ he said. ‘I’ve been turning the garden shed into an extra room for both of us. Hefting fridges and freezers is heavy work. Also the place was so full of junk …’
‘You were doing what?’
‘Well, you need somewhere for all your school stuff and recipe books, etc, since Toby’s in your office. And I’ve nowhere to put anything.’
‘But you can’t just … Chris, the catering stores and the blast chiller, everything for the bus
iness is in there.’
‘Not any more, it isn’t. I’ve managed to get most of it outside. We can probably flog the chiller through a small ad in The Caterer, and the council or some charity could maybe collect the rest.’
For a moment Kate sat there, open-mouthed, thinking that this was ridiculous. She was sitting on a loo seat, Chris was stark naked in the tub, and they were about to have the most almighty row. She said, deliberately calm, ‘Let me get this straight. You have decided to rearrange my house without consulting me? Is that it?’
Chris swivelled in the bath the better to look at her and a wave of soapy water sploshed over the edge and onto Kate’s foot. ‘Well, yes. I hoped I’d have it finished before you came in and it would be a surprise. But it turned out to be a massive job.’
‘And how are we meant to manage the catering without the stores and fridges, etc?’
‘Don’t sound so bloody frosty! It’s not a problem. We can talk to the clients and persuade them that Amal will do as good a job, if not better. It’s stupid, Kate, continuing in this half-hearted way with a catering company that is going nowhere. Either Amal should have the business, or I should. For me to be footling around with only the rump of the customers, those too stuck-up or prejudiced to have Amal cook for them, makes no sense.’
‘So you decided it was time to put an end to my business?’
‘Well, you’d already done that, hadn’t you, in giving up in favour of teaching?’
There was some truth in that, but Kate was too angry to concede the point. In fact, she thought, I am too angry to speak at all. She stood up and walked through the bedroom to the window overlooking the garden. The first thing she noticed was that Chris had left the shed light on and the door open. Typical. Then she registered the shapes of fridge, freezer, blast chiller and several black bags lined up on the concrete apron outside the shed.
She marched downstairs, intending to investigate further, but was intercepted by an excited Toby.
‘Mum, Mum, it’s wicked.’ He pulled her by the arm into his room, until this morning still serving as a sort of ancillary office space for her files.
She stopped at the door, amazed. The camp bed, her filing cabinets and stationery cupboard had all disappeared. In their place were brand new bunk beds, each covered with a Dr Who duvet and pillow. The steps to get up to the top bunk doubled as storage boxes accessible from the side and were neatly filled with Toby’s clothes. At the end of the room was the bookcase she recognised from the sitting room, and on it were arrayed Toby’s books and toys.
On top of the old beige carpet was a bright blue rug, perfect for playing on.
Toby was jumping up and down. ‘Thank you, Mum! Thank you. It’s so cool. I can have Sanjay to stay, but I’m having the top bunk. And …’
Kate forced herself to be pleased for Toby, and to tell him that this was Chris’s doing, not hers. She could not spoil it for him, and she sent him upstairs to thank his father.
She inspected the rest of the revolution that Chris had visited on her house. Her filing cabinets and cupboard were now in the shed. So was her desk, which had been taking up too much of the sitting room. Chris had arranged one half of the shed as her office, and had put her desk under the only window. He had left the shelves in place and put some of her office kit on them. It didn’t look bad. Only brown and bleak and cheerless. She did not want an office in a garden shed, thank you.
But she had to admit that he had tried. This must all have taken backbreaking effort. And planning. He must have ordered the bunk beds in advance. And she should be pleased and touched by his wanting it all to be a surprise.
But she could barely contain her fury. How dare he make major decisions without consulting her? Even if he were her husband, which at this rate he never would be, he’d have no right … She stood in the shed, shivering. For God’s sake, it’s nearly November. How does he think anyone can work in here? She went outside to inspect the freezer and fridge and found them still full of food, but now, of course, unplugged.
Successive waves of indignation and anger engulfed her. How did he think he was going to earn his living if not by cheffing? And how on earth had he paid for Toby’s bedroom furniture? Probably on the never-never and she would have to pick up the tab. Had it not occurred to him that the blast chiller might belong to a hire company and not be hers to sell? And what a criminal waste of food.
And worst of all he was lying in that bath upstairs, smug in the belief that she would be grateful.
But she was wrong. It appeared he was now out of the bath and extending his energies to her kitchen because Toby was shouting, ‘Mum, Chris says you have to come in now. It’s supper.’
Chris says? Kate wanted to retort Tell him to go to hell, but she called back that she was on her way. On her way to a blazing row, she thought. But at least the presence of Toby would delay the inevitable. Maybe by the time they’d eaten she would be calmer.
But in the event they were saved by a phone call from Amal. Talika was in labour. Would she come to the hospital and look after Sanjay?
‘Of course. Oh Amal, how wonderful. I’m on my way.’
‘There’s no hurry. The baby seems very reluctant to appear. Probably won’t come for hours. Sanjay’s here with us in the ward. But when she goes into the delivery room …’
‘I’m on my way,’ repeated Kate.
She didn’t tell Chris there was no hurry. She just said to Toby, ‘Darling, Talika is about to have her baby. Isn’t that good? I’m going off to look after Sanjay while the baby is being born. You’ll be OK with Chris, won’t you, sweetheart?’
‘Can’t I come? I want to see the baby too.’
But the thought of getting into his new bunk quickly reconciled Toby to being left with Chris. How easy it is to win a child’s affection, thought Kate. A mixture of bribery and attention, and bingo.
* * *
It was a relief to Kate to transfer her thoughts to Talika. Of course she looked wonderful, just as she had a few hours before, radiant and relaxed. Amal, on the other hand, kept getting up from his chair beside his wife’s bed and prowling the ward.
‘C’mon, Amal, relax,’ said Kate, ‘you’ve done this before.’
‘He hasn’t, you know,’ said Talika. ‘Sanjay was born in Delhi, at my grandmother’s house. And there childbirth is women’s work. Amal was not allowed anywhere near.’
She stopped talking as her belly muscles gripped her. As the contraction faded she said, ‘We’ve hours yet, so now you’ll have to tell us about lunch with Oliver.’
So Kate explained how they had had a four and a half hour lunch and how all her indignation and resentment had evaporated. ‘I’d no idea how little choice he had. He is convinced he behaved badly, but when you think how busy cabinet ministers are, and how ruled by their diaries, it’s understandable, isn’t it? If someone says, “You do the job the taxpayer pays you for, we’ll take care of Kate,” it must have been a big relief. He’d little idea what I was going through, and …’
Amal interrupted, ‘And he didn’t want any more links with you to get in the way of his climb to the top.’
Kate opened her mouth to defend Oliver. But then she said, ‘Yes, there is that as well. He said as much.’
They talked on about Oliver, and the Wolseley, punctuated by Talika’s contractions. Kate told them about meeting Jarvis Stanley and Rake. ‘Oliver was just great. Polite, but relaxed and somehow in control. He’s wonderful. He really is.’
Talika said, ‘I think you must be in love with him. Probably have been from the start. You’ve forgiven him everything. Did he mention your confession in the public prints about loving him?’
Kate laughed. ‘Talika, I’ve told you. I never said I loved him. That was the newspaper sub adding a sensational headline. But no, thank God. Oliver was the soul of discretion. Not a word.’
Another contraction mercifully let Kate off that conversation, and then they were talking about Chris.
Kate told them
of his taking over the house, reorganising Toby’s bedroom and her study. Trying to be the husband and father, unasked. As she spoke she found her resentment returning.
‘Half the time I don’t know what I feel. I suppose it’s good for Toby to have his dad back, though he didn’t seem to appreciate it until tonight, when he got a new bedroom out of it. And I like having a man about the place, most of the time. And a lover. He’s a great lover. But he does drive me mad. He’s so bloody untidy, and thoughtless. Even when he does things with the best of intentions, like this study in the shed, it infuriates me.’
‘It would infuriate me too,’ said Talika, ‘but the bottom line, Kate, is does he go or does he stay?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know! He wants us to go to Australia, new start and all that. Either that, or get married so he can work in England. I’m tempted by Australia. I’d be less grumpy and territorial if we had a place that wasn’t mine, I’m sure. But workwise, why should he do any better with me and Toby in tow than he was doing before, which was not well? And he’s already got a family to support. It’s mad.’
Amal had his watch in his hand and was studying Talika. ‘Shouldn’t the contractions be speeding up by now?’
‘Stop fussing, darling. Mother Nature knows what she’s up to, I’m sure.’ To distract him, she said, ‘Kate needs your advice on Chris, Amal.’
‘That’s easy. All I’ve heard in favour of Chris is that he’s Toby’s dad and good in bed. It’s not enough, Kate. Chuck him out!’
‘Wow! That’s a bit brutal,’ said Talika.
‘Well, I see a woman at best lukewarm about the man. Meanwhile, her mother, her son, and her best friends are not even lukewarm. They think he’s a disaster.’
Kate turned to Talika. ‘Is that true, Talika? Do you think he’s a disaster?’
Talika said, ‘Hold on a sec,’ and puffed her way through another contraction, Amal breathing with her and Sanjay joining in. Then Talika relaxed and smiled her serene smile. ‘If you marry him I will discover he’s the best man on earth, Kate. But if you don’t I’ll think you have been very wise indeed.’