I peered down the aisle. I could see the young mother standing at the front of the plane now, facing the passengers, her face a picture of relief, casting about, searching for him. I gave her a broad smile and pointed over my head extravagantly.
‘He’s here!’ I mouthed.
She’d swept down the aisle in moments. Leaned right over me into James’s lap, blonde hair flowing. ‘Oh, I want to thank you so very much,’ she breathed gustily in broken English. ‘You saved my daughter’s life.’
‘No no,’ muttered James uncomfortably, but going quite pink nevertheless. He tried to get to his feet, his manners, even on an aircraft, impeccable.
‘No, don’t get up,’ she insisted, fluttering her pretty, bejewelled hands. ‘I will see you later. I just wanted to say how grateful I am, how grateful we all are. My Agathe – you saved her!’
‘Well, I administered an EpiPen, but not at all, not at all,’ James murmured, gazing and blinking a bit. She really was astonishingly beautiful. I marvelled at the yards of silky hair which hung over me, the tiny frame, the vast bust, the enormous blue eyes. Was she a film star, I wondered? She looked vaguely familiar. A French one, perhaps – well, obviously a French one – in one of those civilizing arty movies I went to with Lizzie occasionally at the Curzon when James was watching The Bourne Identity for the umpteenth time. I didn’t think this was the moment to ask and watched as her tiny, white-denimed bottom undulated back to its seat.
Once off the plane at Stanstead, on the way to Baggage Reclaim, I saw a father point James out to his son, perhaps as someone to emulate in later life: where all his GCSE biology studies could lead, and the reason he, the father, enforced the homework. The boy stared openly as he passed, as did his younger sister, and I surreptitiously got my lippy out of my handbag and gave a quick slick in case anyone should want his autograph. By the time we got to the carousel, however, most people seemed intent on getting out of the place and had forgotten the heroics. Including the mother and child, who hadn’t yet materialized, I realized, glancing around. Perhaps they were hand luggage only? Had swept on through already? Hard to imagine what they were doing on easyJet at all. But then, just as James returned from the fray with our battered old suitcase, I saw them enter the baggage hall. The little girl seemed fine now and was skipping along in front, holding a man’s hand. He couldn’t be the father, I thought; too thuggish and thickset. Indeed, there seemed to be a couple of similar heavies in tow, whilst the mother strode along in their midst, in sunglasses. Were they staff? Certainly the small, dumpy woman carrying all the Louis Vuitton hand luggage must surely be an employee, and the swarthy man with the cap couldn’t be the husband either.
The blonde seemed about to sweep on through, but then, just as she neared the exit she spotted us. She whipped off her sunglasses and came striding across, beaming.
‘Alors, there you are! Regard – look at my petite Agathe. As right as what you English bizarrely call rain, and all thanks to you, monsieur. My name is Camille de Bouvoir and I am eternally grateful.’
James took her tanned, extended hand. ‘James Murray-Brown.’
‘Orthopaedic surgeon,’ I purred. ‘And I’m his wife, Flora.’
She briefly touched the fingers of the hand I’d enthusiastically offered but turned straight back to James.
‘I knew you were a surgeon. I could tell by those hands. So sensitive, yet so capable.’
‘Aren’t they just?’ I agreed, although no one seemed to be listening to me.
‘And I would like to repay your skill and kindness.’
‘Oh, there’s really no need,’ demurred James, embarrassed.
‘May I take your email address? I somehow imagine you would be too modest to get in touch if I gave you mine.’
‘He would,’ I confirmed, scrabbling around in my bag for a pen and withdrawing a distressed tampon instead, but Madame de Bouvoir had already produced her iPhone. She handed it to me wordlessly and I tapped away dutifully, very much the secretary to the great man. Very much peripheral to proceedings.
‘I will be contacting you,’ she promised, pocketing it as I handed it back to her. ‘And now, Agathe wants to say something.’ She gently shepherded her daughter forward. ‘Cherie?’ The child was as slim as a reed, with widely spaced almond eyes in a heart-shaped face. Although not yet on the cusp of puberty she was very much in the Lolita mould: destined for great beauty.
She took a deep breath. ‘Thank you so very much, monsieur, for saving my life. I will be for ever grateful to you and thank you from the bottom of my ’eart.’
She’d clearly practised this small, foreign speech on the plane with a little help from her mother, and it was delivered charmingly. An elderly couple beside us turned to smile. James took the hand she offered, bowing his head slightly and smiling, for who could not be enchanted?
‘Mon plaisir,’ he told her.
Courtesies having been observed, Mme de Bouvoir then kissed James lightly on both cheeks three times. She briefly air-kissed me – only once, I noticed, as I lunged for the second – and then, as a socking great pile of Louis Vuitton suitcases were wheeled towards her by one of her chunky attendants, she sashayed out of the concourse ahead of the trolley, bestowing one last lovely smile and a flutter of her sparkling hand.
James and I gave her a moment to get through customs, where no doubt she’d be met by a man in a uniform, before we waddled out with our bags.
‘Great. You know exactly what that will be, don’t you?’ muttered James.
‘What?’ I said, knowing already: even now regretting it.
‘Some poncy restaurant we’ve been to a million times already. We’ll have to sit there pretending we never go anywhere smart and endure a lengthy, excruciating meal, which we’re force fed anyway on a regular basis.’
‘Not necessarily,’ I said, with a sinking feeling. I grabbed my old blue bag as it threatened to slide off the trolley.
‘We’re probably going there tonight!’ he yelped.
I avoided looking at him, stopping instead to look in my handbag for my passport. James froze beside me.
‘Dear God, I was joking. Please tell me we’re not out tonight, Flora. I’m knackered.’
‘We have to, James. I’ve got to get the review in by tomorrow.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am.’
‘Jesus.’
‘How else d’you think we’re going to pay for that bloody holiday? Shit. Where’s my passport?’ I delved in my bag.
‘I’ve got it.’ He produced it from his breast pocket. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere in Soho, I think. Oh yes, Fellino’s. I have a feeling Gordon Ramsay’s trying to take it over and he’s resisting.’
‘Hasn’t he got enough bloody restaurants? Have you texted Amelia?’
‘Yes, and she’s outside whingeing about us being late. Apparently, we should have let her know the plane was ten minutes delayed. As if I haven’t sat for enough hours in that wretched car park waiting for her.’
‘Can’t you ask Maria to put it in next week’s edition? Say you’ll go tomorrow?’
‘I’ve tried, but apparently Colin’s already let her down. He was supposed to do the new Marco Pierre but he’s got a sore throat, so someone’s got to do one.’
‘Oh great, so Colin’s got his excuse in first, as usual.’
I ignored him. We were both very tired.
‘You could google the menu on the web? Write the review from that? Say how delicious the tiddled-up turbot was?’
‘Oh, good idea. Like I did at Le Caprice, only, unfortunately, the turbot was off that night, and the scallops, both of which I’d waxed lyrical about. I’d rather keep what remains of my job, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘But you know Fellino. Can’t you ring him and ask what the special is? See what he recommends for tonight?’
‘It’s fine, I’ll go on my own.’
‘No, no, I’ll come,’ he grumbled. ‘Blinking
heck. Who goes out for dinner the night they get back from holiday?’
‘We do, if we’re going to go on holiday at all,’ I said with a flash of venom. There was the briefest of pauses. James’s voice, when it came, was light, but it had the timbre of metal.
‘Ah yes, forgive me. For a moment there I thought I was the successful alpha male in this partnership. The high-earning surgeon with a career on a meteoric rise to the stars, providing for his family.’
Heroically, I held my tongue as, tight-lipped, we followed the other weary travellers down the corridor to the escalator. We climbed aboard wordlessly, passed through Passport Control, then trundled out through Nothing to Declare.
We donned our wellies and trudged through the mud to catch up with Catherine about reading, writing and life in the country …
Q: It’s been twenty years since your first book was published. What changes over the years have affected your stories since then?
A: Over the years my books have included a wider age group of characters: I’m writing about grannies, mothers, teenagers – all sorts!
Q: Which book have you found most challenging to write?
A: One Day in May was probably the most challenging to write. I knew very little about the Bosnian war and had to do quite a lot of research, which was pretty harrowing. I had no idea …
Q: How have your protagonists changed and developed since you started writing?
A: Since I started writing twenty-three years ago my protagonists have definitely got older! Perhaps a little less scatty, but then again, perhaps not.
Q: How do you choose your characters’ names?
A: I’m going so fast I just chuck anything in and think – I’ll change that later. Unfortunately by the end I can’t think of Mavis as anything other than Mavis, so it sticks.
Q: What book are you reading right now?
A: I found a John le Carré in my son’s room; it’s called Our Kind of Traitor. V. good. I read anything that’s lying around.
Q: If you couldn’t be a writer, what would you like to be?
A: A painter – as in artist, not decorator.
Q: When you need to escape from your everyday routine, what do you do?
A: Light the fire, watch daytime TV and eat chocolate.
Q: What is your favourite food?
A: In – macaroni cheese. Out – Dover sole.
Q: What would your super power be?
A: I’d like to be able to imagine supper – and there it is, on the table. Oh, and all cleared away, too.
Q: What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A: So corny. All my children plus boyfriends, girlfriends, any other friends and of course my husband, eating around the same table. Or actually, a table somewhere hot, on holiday, abroad, i.e. without me having to cook. Oh – and grandparents too.
Q: What is the trait you most deplore in others?
A: Deplore. Golly. Quite strong. Well, I’m not mad about bad manners, which come in many guises.
Q: When did you last cry and why?
A: Two weeks ago, at Badminton Horse Trials, watching a great friend’s daughter jump round the cross-country course. Amazing. I’ve known her since she was seven.
Q: What has been your most embarrassing moment?
A: I suppose it has to be when I fell in the freezer in Safeway on the King’s Road many years ago, a scene which later featured in The Old-Girl Network.
Q: What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
A: Training our Border Terrier not to fight other dogs and not to chase deer. I sound like a fishwife in the woods.
Q: What do you consider your greatest achievement?
A: Training our last Border Terrier. (Up to a point. She really did hate poodles.)
Q: What is under your bed?
A: So much embarrassing rubbish. Old sofa cushions, bags of material I intend to make into things and never do, loads of old clothes, a broken lamp, stacks of paperbacks I’ve run out of space for on the shelves, the odd mousetrap … I could go on.
Q: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
A: Try to laugh it off.
Discover Catherine’s Other Books …
The Old-Girl Network
Finding true love’s a piece of cake – as long as you’re looking for someone else’s true love …
Polly McLaren is young, scatty and impossibly romantic. She works for an arrogant and demanding boss, and has a gorgeous if never-there-when-you-need-him boyfriend. But the day a handsome stranger recognizes her old school scarf, her life is knocked completely off kilter.
Adam is American, new to the country and begs Polly’s help in finding his missing fiancée. Over dinner at the Savoy, she agrees – the girls of St Gertrude’s look out for one another. However, the old-girl network turns out to be a spider’s web of complications and deceit in which everyone and everything Polly cares about is soon hopelessly entangled.
The course of true love never did run smooth. But no one said anything about ruining your life over it. And it’s not even Polly’s true love …
Going Too Far
‘You’ve gone all fat and complacent because you’ve got your man, haven’t you?’
Polly Penhalligan is outraged at the suggestion that, since getting married to Nick and settling into their beautiful manor farmhouse in Cornwall, she has let herself go. But watching a lot of telly, gorging on biscuits, not getting dressed until lunchtime and waiting for pregnancy to strike are not the signs of someone living an active and fulfilled life.
So Polly does something rash. She allows her home to be used as a location for a TV advert. Having a glamorous film crew around will certainly put a bomb under the idyllic, rural life. Only perhaps she should have consulted Nick first.
Because before the cameras have even started to roll – and complete chaos descends on the farm – Polly’s marriage has been turned upside down. This time she really has gone too far …
The Real Thing
Every girl’s got one – that old boyfriend they never quite fell out of love with …
Tessa Hamilton’s thirty, with a lovely husband and home, two adorable kids, and not a care in the world. Sure, her husband ogles the nanny more than she should allow. And keeping up with the Joneses is a full-time occupation. But she’s settled and happy. No seven-year itch for Tessa.
Except at the back of her mind is Patrick Cameron. Gorgeous, moody, rebellious, he’s the boy she met when she was seventeen. The boy her vicar-father told her she couldn’t see and who left to go to Italy to paint. The boy she’s not heard from in twelve long years.
And now he’s back.
Questioning every choice, every decision she’s made since Patrick left, Tessa is about to risk her family and everything she has become to find out whether she did the right thing first time round …
Rosie Meadows Regrets …
‘Tell me, Alice, how does a girl go about getting a divorce these days?’
Three years ago Rosie walked blindly into marriage with Harry. They have precisely nothing in common except perhaps their little boy, Ivo. Not that Harry pays him much attention, preferring to spend his time with his braying upper-class friends.
But the night that Harry drunkenly does something unspeakable, Rosie decides he’s got to go. In between fantasizing about how she might bump him off, she takes the much more practical step of divorcing this blight on her and Ivo’s lives.
However, when reality catches up with her darkest fantasies, Rosie realizes, at long last, that it is time she took charge of her life. There’ll be no more regrets – and time, perhaps, for a little love.
Olivia’s Luck
‘I don’t care what colour you paint the sodding hall. I’m leaving.’
When her husband Johnny suddenly walks out on ten years of marriage, their ten-year-old daughter and the crumbling house they’re up to their eyeballs renovating, Olivia is, at first, totally devastated. How could he? How could she not have
noticed his unhappiness?
But she’s not one to weep for long.
Not when she’s got three builders camped in her back garden, a neighbour with a never-ending supply of cast-off men she thinks Olivia would be drawn to and a daughter with her own firm views on … well, just about everything.
Will Johnny ever come back? And if he doesn’t, will Olivia’s luck ever change for the better?
A Married Man
‘What could be nicer than living in the country?’
Lucy Fellowes is in a bind. She’s a widow living in a pokey London flat with two small boys and an erratic income. But, when her mother-in-law offers her a converted barn on the family’s estate, she knows it’s a brilliant opportunity for her and the kids.
Rosie Meadows Regrets... Page 58