by Hilary Boyd
‘Well, in the autumn perhaps. Caro was stunned when I told her.’ Eleanor chuckled with satisfaction. ‘She says Charles is immensely rich, so if the boy plays his cards right he’ll be set for life.’ Her smile had a cynical tinge. ‘Obviously no fool.’
Annie didn’t bother to contradict her. There was little point challenging her mother’s default position, that people were fundamentally no good unless they had a title or a lot of land. As she sat opposite her in the quiet drawing room, she couldn’t help wondering what processes went on in her mother’s head. What had she been like when she was young, before Annie’s father died? Had she been happy then? Had she been kinder? All Annie remembered was afterwards, when her mother became more proud, more fixated with maintaining appearances. No one was going to look down on Eleanor Westbury and her daughter just because she was forced to earn a living. She told nobody about Ralph’s appalling debts at the time, just pretended she wanted something to occupy her life now that she was a widow. And because of this stubborn pride, Annie had been intensely aware that her unwanted pregnancy had hit her mother particularly hard.
The bed arrived just after three. Annie shut her mother in the drawing room and dealt with the men herself. The Vi-Spring divan, queen-size, looked almost garishly modern against the mahogany furniture, set of antique bird prints and faded Regency stripes of her mother’s bedroom.
‘Try it … go on,’ Annie insisted with a smile, after she and Mercedes had made up the bed with the new, box-fresh sheets and duvet cover.
Her mother, looking like an excited schoolgirl, sat on the edge of the mattress and heaved her legs up, settling luxuriously against the new, plump goose-down pillows. Her face broke into a broad grin.
‘Heaven!’ She pointed Annie to the other side of the bed. ‘Lie down, darling. You have to try it. Caro was right. This mattress is blissful. I shall sleep like a log tonight.’
Annie was about to resist, but she loved her mother being happy. She stretched out next to her, her head on the cool, white smoothness of Egyptian cotton. She had to admit, the bed was very comfortable. As they lay side by side, Eleanor giggled.
‘I bet you want one too, now!’
Annie found herself not only coveting a spanking new Vi-Spring bed, but also having a strong desire just to roll over on her side and go to sleep then and there.
‘Mmm … wake me up tomorrow,’ she murmured, closing her eyes for a moment.
Her mother chuckled again, and began pulling herself upright and off the bed, tweaking the turquoise-blue patchwork quilt Annie and Richard had given her for her seventieth birthday. ‘Much as I appreciate your efforts on my behalf this afternoon, darling – and you have been marvellous – I’m not sharing my new bed with anyone!’ She stood smiling down at her daughter, pushing her hairband back into place. ‘You look a bit peaky. You’re not coming down with something, are you?’
Annie opened her eyes and saw the genuine concern in her mother’s eyes. It made her want to cry.
‘No … no, I’m fine, Mother. Just a lot on at the moment.’
Eleanor nodded. ‘You do too much.’
‘Could say the same about you,’ Annie replied, and forced herself away from the seductive pull of firm springs and fresh bed linen.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Eleanor declared with a disingenuous smile.
17
Ed sat on alone in the bar. He’d sent the others home and the place was closed up to the outside world. He was in the tiny office in the basement, next to the kitchen. In the day it was like an inferno, hot from the ovens, pungent with the smells of frying food and disinfectant from the loos, reverberating with the sounds of clanging pans and barked orders of the bad-tempered Cypriot chef. But now it was just murky and depressing, perfectly suited to his mood.
Things had hit rock-bottom in the last few days. Emma refused to go back to her flat, refused to go to work, refused, in fact, to do anything but lie in his bed and cry. He was at his wits’ end.
‘What are you going to do?’ she kept nagging him. To which he kept replying, ‘What can I do?’
He felt helpless in the face of her distress. But short of stabbing Daniel – which even he could see wasn’t much of a solution – what could be done?
‘Please come round and talk to her, Mash,’ he’d pleaded with his sister. She’d agreed to drop by after work, but it hadn’t helped one bit.
‘Come on, Emms, get up.’ Marsha, in no-nonsense mode, had pulled his girlfriend out of bed and made her shower and get dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. She’d made her eat some toast and drink some tea, and Emms had looked better for a while, he’d thought. So he’d suggested they watch a movie to take their minds off the situation. Crap idea that turned out to be!
She’d immediately pulled a face. ‘Why won’t anyone take me seriously? You all expect me to get on with my life, just totally forget what that bastard Daniel did to me. But I can’t … I really, really can’t.’ She’d begun to cry again and Mash had lost her rag.
‘For Christ’s sake, Emms. OK, if what you say happened, happened, then it must have been horrible. But at worst it was a drunken grope, surely? Daniel’s not a monster …’
Emma’d got really hysterical then, and he’d started shouting at his own sister. She obviously didn’t believe a word of what Emms said. This had shocked him – Marsha knew her better than anyone did, and she was always on his side – the best and most loyal sister anyone could have. Scrupulously fair too. Whatever their parents’ faults, they’d all been brought up to be fair, Lucy to the point of mania sometimes. So he’d found himself asking: Do I believe Emma? He hadn’t hesitated when she’d expressed a desire to be with him in the wake of the Lewis fiasco; he’d simply grabbed the opportunity. Marsha had reminded him of the risks – broken heart, jealousy, loss of face – but he’d been a willing lamb to the slaughter. I love her, he reminded himself as he sat alone in the cold glare of the neon strip-light. I’ve always loved her. But do I trust her?
He got up and gathered his jacket from the hook on the back of the door. Switching the light out, he made his way up the narrow stairs in the glow from the street. The bar key-ring was heavy with all its various keys and clanked loudly against the glass door as he undid the lock and fastened it securely behind him. The street was almost empty and he realised it was after two. He shivered. What shall I do if I can’t believe her? The thought of her kissing Daniel made him almost throw up. And then there was his mother.
Annie was seeing a client in Chelsea about a fiftieth-birthday cake that morning. But she had time before that, and as she pulled on her pink Chanel jacket she knew what she wanted to do first.
It was mid-morning and she had a choice of tables in Ed’s Islington bar; he wouldn’t be busy for another hour or so. She was tired; she hadn’t slept well. Richard had rung to say he was staying in town overnight. The merger was gathering pace, he had to work late, be in the office early. He told her he was staying with Andrew, an accountant friend who had a small flat above a pub, five minutes’ walk from Richard’s office. Andrew lived in Dorset and spent three nights a week in town, but Annie couldn’t bring herself to ask if Andrew would be there. She was tormented for most of the night by the thought that this was an excuse for her husband to spend the whole night with tasty Kate.
A waiter, blond and skinny and looking as if he should still be in fifth form, came over to take her order.
‘Is Ed Delancey here?’
The boy looked round. ‘Uh, yeah, he was a minute ago. Shall I find him?’
She nodded, and he wandered off through the door which led down to the kitchens, leaving her waiting nervously.
‘Mum, hi.’ Ed’s greeting was cool. He sat down at her table.
He looks as tired as I feel, she thought.
‘I haven’t got long,’ Ed added, constantly monitoring the activity in the cafe as he spoke, although there were only three other tables occupied.
‘I know, but I wan
ted to see you, darling. To touch base.’ In her nervousness, she had lost track of what she’d planned to say, her mind so taken up with her errant husband.
Ed sighed. ‘It’s all a mess.’
‘I know, and I’m so sorry. I know I’ve handled it badly. How’s Emma getting on?’ She forced herself to ask the question, although Marsha had already told her the answer.
‘Emma’s not getting on, Mum. Not at all.’
She hesitated, agonising over how to respond. Should I rehash the whole thing, now? Here? Is there any point? She decided there wasn’t.
‘I miss you, darling. Very much. I hate all this coming between us. Can we try and get past it? Will you come round soon … have supper?’
She watched his face soften.
‘Oh, Mum … that’s not going to be easy. Emms …’
The boy-waiter came over and stood looking apologetic until Ed noticed him.
‘Yes?’
‘Uh, there’s a problem with the till printout … it’s not …’
‘I’ll be right there,’ Ed said, and the boy disappeared back to the other side of the bar.
‘I’d better go.’ He was already on his feet. ‘I’ll call you. Do you want a coffee or something?’
She shook her head. ‘Thanks, but no, I have to be at a meeting.’ She wanted desperately to hug him to her, but she knew she couldn’t do that in front of the others. So she just laid a hand on his arm. ‘Love you,’ she whispered as he turned away.
At least he didn’t yell at me, she thought, her heart a bit lighter as she made her way to Highbury and Islington Underground. He knows I love him. Whatever’s happened, he must know that.
The client in Chelsea wanted a cake for her husband’s fiftieth, which was to be marked by a grand party in September, to be held in a marquee in the substantial garden behind their Chelsea Embankment house. She told Annie the cake had to be in the shape of the knot garden her husband had apparently planted nearly twenty years ago, and which was his pride and joy. But she was not happy with Annie re-creating it in icing sugar without first seeing the real thing.
‘You see what I mean?’ Veronica Mather stood beside Annie as they contemplated the knot garden from the large sash window in the first-floor bedroom, which her host had flung wide. ‘It’s best seen from here first, so you get the real impact of the design. I’m sorry to drag you all this way, but you’ll admit, it would have been hard to get a proper idea from a photograph.’
Annie gazed down at the square of garden, set at the end of the paved terrace. It was bordered by the traditionally immaculate box hedges, the green rows inter-woven in four lozenge-shapes joined by three concentric circles. Between the hedges were fine-gravel paths, and the centres of the lozenge shapes had been planted up with lavender, while the smaller sections contained other herbs. Annie recognised pink lamb’s ear and the dark green spikes of spearmint leaves. It was pretty, certainly a faultless example of the genre, but to Annie, taming nature to such a neurotic degree seemed a bit pointless.
‘Philip designed it himself. He prefers to call it a parterre,’ Veronica was saying with a roll of her eyes. ‘But I can’t see there’s much difference.’ She turned to Annie. ‘Shall we go down and you can see it at close quarters? The lavender and box smell divine together.’
Veronica insisted Annie stay for a glass of wine. She brought the bottle out onto the York-stone terrace, and seemed to have all the time in the world, detaining Annie for another hour with minuscule details of the impending party. And Annie found she was happy to comply. The cake would be good for business, because between them they could create something spectacular.
By the time she left the house on the Embankment she was quite drunk. She began to walk unsteadily up towards the King’s Road and, on impulse, called Charles.
‘I’m in the area, two sheets to the wind after half a bottle of wine on an empty stomach. Do you fancy a cup of coffee somewhere? I can’t go back to the office like this.’
‘Come over,’ Charles laughed. ‘I’m waiting for the plumber to finish unblocking the sink, and I’m bored to bloody death.’
By the time Annie had found a taxi and arrived at Charles’s flat, the plumber was packing his stuff into a worn canvas bag. She lay back on the sofa, puffed out by the climb up the stairs in her inebriated state.
‘Daft client,’ she complained. ‘Had to show me her grisly knot garden, when a photo would have done just as well. Then wouldn’t let me go.’
Charles disappeared, to arrive back a moment later with more wine and two glasses. ‘I need to catch up,’ he said, as Annie groaned.
But she drank the soft white burgundy appreciatively. ‘Better than Veronica’s,’ she said. This is fun, playing hooky with Charles Carnegie, she thought. Blast Richard. Nothing so great in my life that I need to rush home for right now.
‘Louisa still in France?’
‘Yup. I’ll probably join her next week.’
‘Try to sound more enthusiastic!’
But Charles didn’t laugh. He seemed to be deciding whether he should tell her something or not. ‘To be honest, Annie, Louisa and I aren’t … well, we aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye at the moment.’
‘Seeing eye to eye? About what? What do you mean?’ She was having trouble focusing on what he was saying.
Charles shrugged. ‘It’s been a bit rocky for a while. You know, the usual thing with Louisa.’
‘Not sure I do.’
Charles gave her a frustrated glance.
‘Too much wine. You mean you’re having an affair?’
Charles shook his head vehemently. ‘I’m most certainly not. No, I told you about her … her mad turns. She can be so tricky. And, well, I suppose I’ve rather had enough of it. We had another row about Daniel the other night and it was the last straw in a long line of last straws.’
She pulled a face. ‘Oh, I see. Didn’t take too kindly to you meeting up with your long-lost son, eh?’
‘It wasn’t that. I never told her. She was just so crazy about the whole thing. I’m not sure I can cope with her moods any more.’
Annie tried to marshal her wandering senses.
‘You’ll lose half your money if you divorce her,’ was all she could think of to say.
‘Oh, Annie, I don’t give a stuff about the money.’ He sighed. ‘But obviously it would be a nightmare for all sorts of reasons – not least because she’s so unstable. God knows what she’d do if I said I was leaving her.’
‘You never know, she might be relieved.’
He looked at her as if the idea hadn’t crossed his mind.
‘Relieved? You think so?’
‘I really have no idea. Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.’
Neither spoke for a while, the problem of Charles’s marriage seeming suddenly too complex for both of them. He got up and put on a CD of Sonny Boy Williamson. The soft blues harmonica lulled Annie and stopped, for once, the tormenting thoughts about Richard spinning around her brain.
‘Keep it to yourself … don’t mention it to no one else,’ she sang along. ‘This song seems a tad too close to the bone.’
Charles obviously hadn’t been listening to the lyrics. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing … just seems to be a song about cheating.’
‘I told you, I’m not cheating.’
‘Not you …’
He cocked his head, his expression curious.
‘Not me either,’ she muttered, embarrassed suddenly.
They listened in silence to the music.
‘Talking of cheating, has that Emma come clean yet?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. Doesn’t seem likely she will. And Daniel still hasn’t called.’
‘Not sure I’d call either, under the circs. Too complicated.’
Story of your life … and mine for that matter, she thought.
The alcohol didn’t seem to be working any more. She was feeling headachy and depressed. For the first time in her life, sh
e had no plan. In the past, when faced with trauma she’d buried it, covering the grave with ranks of distracting blooms. Now there seemed nothing, no panacea, that would do the job successfully.
Charles reached over from his chair and held his hand out towards her. She took it.
‘I’d better get home.’
She got up, and Charles got up with her. ‘Dance with me,’ he said, pulling her close against him and beginning to sway to the plaintive, sexy rhythms of Sonny Boy’s harmonica. The movement itself was comforting, and she went with it, making no attempt to extricate herself. It seemed safe in this separate reality, with this man who was both deeply familiar and a complete stranger, listening to music from a different time and culture – and easier to stay than to go.
For a while they danced, her head on his shoulder, their bodies hot and close on the muggy summer afternoon.
‘Kiss me,’ he said softly. ‘Kiss me like you did all those years ago on the grass.’
‘You don’t even remember it,’ she retorted, but she held his gaze for what seemed like a long moment.
‘Oh, but I do … I do.’
She didn’t have time to answer, because Charles bent swiftly and kissed her upturned face. The kiss was urgent, needy, and it took her completely by surprise, lifting her up in a sudden fierce whirlwind of desire. Her body responded almost without her permission, as if it remembered that first time too, when their lips, cold from the orange ice lollies, had come together. After a while, he drew her towards the bedroom. Breathless and weak, she followed him.
As she lay down he began to undress her slowly, covering each bit of skin that he laid bare with soft kisses. She helped him, caressing his body in return, unbuttoning his shirt and lifting it away from his tanned shoulders, until they were both naked on the cover of the bed. He pulled away and she saw him stare down at her.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered.
But something about the moment brought her up short. Her breathing sounded loud and ragged in the quiet bedroom. What the hell am I doing? She pushed him gently off her and sat up, clutching the bedcover to her nakedness.