B01ESFW7JE

by Cathy Bramley

  The idea of ripping the sleeves off her dress and then swanning back into a party full of Nottingham’s elite was ludicrous. She wished Jo or Sarah were here to tell her what to do. She covered her face with her hands and started to shake, tears of laughter mixed with shame slid down her face. Anna hugged her but didn’t join in.

  Two minutes later, Anna had dried Carrie’s tears and was patching her face up with concealer.

  ‘There,’ she said, flashing Carrie a smile. ‘You look fab. Now, get back to the party and style it out.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Carrie. ‘I’ll keep my arm pinned to my side and no one will even notice.’

  Back out in the restaurant, Anna pointed at Alex talking to Jordan Lamb at the far end. Carrie’s nerve wavered. Trust him. The thought of re-joining her husband with her ripped dress while he was talking to a celebrity filled her with horror. Anna gave Carrie a hug and went back to find Ryan at the bar.

  Keep calm, Carrie. Besides, the worst had already happened. The evening could only get better.

  Carrie hovered at Alex’s elbow, listening while he did his best to interest Jordan in paying a visit to Cavendish Hall. He wasn’t having much luck by the sound of it.

  ‘Oh, and this is my wife, Carrie,’ said Alex, finally noticing her. Jordan inclined his head politely and held out a hand.

  He turned his blue eyes to Carrie and it was as if there was no one else but him and her in the room. She felt her pulse thump in her ears. There was such an aura about him. His face was so familiar from the TV, but at the same time she was struck by his masculinity. Sex on legs, she thought, imagining what Jo would say.

  Jordan still had his hand extended.

  If she shook it, she would reveal her bare armpit, unless … Carrie stepped right up to him, keeping her elbow in to her waist and shook his hand. They were only inches apart. Jordan looked down into the space between them.

  ‘And you’re expecting a baby! Congratulations!’ In one swift move he pulled Carrie in closer and kissed her cheek. Carrie looked down. The top of her tights were pulled up so high that they had created a waist just under her bust. Her stomach billowed out like a balloon.

  ‘No, no, I’m not pregnant!’ she exclaimed far too loudly. The colour drained from Jordan’s tan and his eyes widened.

  OK, so maybe the worst hadn’t already happened.

  ‘The only baby in there is the one I had for lunch.’ And then she laughed, a high-pitched, open-mouthed laugh. Jordan, looking mightily relieved, joined in, giving her arm a playful punch. Behind her she heard Alex groan.

  Only she, Carrie Radley, could say something so inane to one of most recognized celebrity chefs in the world. What sort of person says they’ve eaten a baby? She wiped a non-existent tear from her face and flattened her right arm to her side. Inside she was dying. She couldn’t keep this façade up for long. She wasn’t pregnant, she was fat and everybody knew it. What she wouldn’t give now to disappear. For ever.

  Alex was wearing a blank expression that she recognized as embarrassment. The evening had been a disaster and it was all her fault.

  ‘I’m not feeling well, Alex,’ she said quietly. ‘Please could you take me home?’

  Alex was at once solicitous. ‘Of course,’ he said, throwing Jordan a look of apology. Jordan was still grinning. He would be dining out on this one for weeks: the day I thought a fat woman was pregnant.

  Carrie cringed.

  ‘Oh dear, nothing you’ve eaten here, I hope?’ asked Jordan.

  ‘I’m, er, I’ve got, er …’ Carrie looked up at the huge photograph of Jordan on the wall behind them. For God’s sake, as if it wasn’t bad enough having the real Lamb staring at her, the unblinking eyes in the picture appeared to be waiting for an answer too. ‘Conjunctivitis,’ she blurted out.

  Jordan nodded goodbye to Alex, wiped his hand on his trousers with barely contained disgust and turned to the next group of eager fans.

  That was it, Carrie promised herself during the drive home. She was going to diet properly from now on. No more cheating, no more kidding herself. She would get her wish. She would have a bikini body by September.

  Alex pulled on to the drive in front of Fern House and stopped the car. They sat in silence in the dark for a moment before he reached for her hand.

  ‘What happened back there, Carrie? You seemed fine and then—’

  ‘Ryan Cunningham happened.’ She turned to him, the golden glow from the security lights highlighted the concern in his deep brown eyes. ‘Remember the Ryan I told you about from uni? That was him.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’

  Alex moved towards her as if he was going to take her in his arms, but she flung her door open and jumped out. She disgusted herself, she didn’t deserve a hug.

  Chapter 11

  It was May by the time Jo managed to meet Carrie and Sarah again and she was the first to arrive at the Pear Tree in Woodby. There were no other women in the pub, just several ancient men. Jo strode up to the bar and ordered a glass of wine.

  God knows why she had come tonight. She was in a foul mood. Work was crap. Her love life was crap and she had just said goodbye to Abi and Tom who were flying off to Australia in the morning for the whole summer. Sometimes she wished she could do that, just fly off and escape her life for a while. Come back when someone else had sorted everything out. She checked her watch. Sarah and Carrie should be here any minute. She had got the time right, hadn’t she? She scrolled through her emails until she found the three-way conversation they had had last week. A reluctant smile tweaked the corners of her mouth.

  Email to: Jo Gold (work); SarahDaveZac

  From: Carriebikinibod@gmail.com

  Dear Jo and Sarah,

  Just wanted you to know that my diet is going really well and I’ve actually lost weight!! Hope you are both having success with your wishes too. How about meeting in the Pear Tree for a drink next week (diet coke for me!)? It would be lovely to catch up.

  Carrie xx

  Seeing Carrie’s email address never failed to raise Jo’s spirits. It seemed to radiate hope. She was happy for her. If Jo was honest, Carrie’s was the only wish that she really had any interest in making happen. She always had a suspicion there was more to Carrie under that jokey exterior than met the eye; that there was something she was not telling them, like a flower that was afraid to blossom.

  She took her change and the glass from the barman and chose a table in the corner.

  That husband, Alex, could be the root of the problem. Jo hadn’t met him yet, but everything that Carrie had told her about him led her to think that he might be a bit domineering. What Carrie needed was a job. Something to give her a bit of confidence and independence outside of the house. Then maybe if she wanted to, she would have the courage and means to leave him.

  Jo felt a twinge of guilt; she hadn’t even met the man and she was plotting to split them up. Just because she wasn’t the marrying kind, didn’t mean she had the right to pass judgement on other people’s lives.

  The door opened and Carrie and Sarah appeared. She told herself to be sociable and gave them a wave.

  Half an hour later, the little pub was packed. Two glasses of water sat in the centre of the table holding the pretty bunches of bluebells Carrie had given them both from her garden. Jo was making her way through a stack of beer mats; peeling the top layer off and shredding them into tiny pieces.

  ‘It’s times like this that I really miss smoking,’ she said, her eyes trained on a group of young men – too young for her, really – who were laughing and joking at the bar. ‘A nice glass of wine, a chilled-out evening … my hands don’t know what to do with themselves. I’ve completely ruined my nails.’

  This village had no suitable talent whatsoever. She abandoned her manhunt and swept the scraps of cardboard into a pile.

  ‘Your nails are immaculate,’ argued Carrie, pulling Jo’s fingers towards her.

  ‘Compare them to mine,’ said Sarah, holding hers out. ‘All dry sk
in and blunt nails.’

  ‘Two words,’ said Jo, who was in no mood to soft-soap anyone this evening. ‘Hand-sanitizer. It’s terrible for your nails. I bet you’ve got some in your bag, haven’t you?’

  Sarah looked taken aback. ‘Well, yes, but you can’t be too careful with germs, especially with a child in the house.’

  Jo tutted loudly. Abi had never been that precious over Tom and he had never picked up any dreadful diseases. ‘I don’t understand how you can be so paranoid about Zac when you’re out at work all day.’

  Sarah’s jaw fell open. ‘It’s precisely because I’m out all day that I’m paranoid about germs. It’s one of the few things I can do to minimize risk. I feel like I’m short-changing him by not being there, but what can I do?’

  ‘Let’s not argue,’ said Carrie, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

  ‘Surely if you were that bothered, you’d stay at home with him?’ said Jo flippantly.

  ‘I realize that the perfect mother should sacrifice everything for her child,’ Sarah replied tartly, ‘but I’m obviously not a perfect mother and Dave staying at home with our baby works for us.’

  She folded her arms and looked the other way and a frosty silence descended between them.

  Jo mentally kicked herself. What did she really know about motherhood? ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Ignore me. I apologize.’

  Sarah gave her a tight smile and nodded, but Jo wasn’t convinced that she’d been forgiven. She turned her attention to Carrie, who was swirling the ice round in her glass and making a bad job of not staring at the table next to them, where the waitress had just set down two large plates of steak and chips. Carrie looked good; her hair was pulled back into a pony tail and Jo could see the beginnings of a fine set of cheekbones.

  ‘Is temptation striking, Carrie?’

  Carrie scooped out an ice cube and crunched on it. ‘Yep. Bloody starving.’

  She sighed and dragged her eyes away from a chip that had been dropped on the floor. ‘I keep telling myself that a craving is just a thought conjured up by my imagination. If I repeat it in my head often enough my imagination might give up and start craving iced water.’

  ‘You’re looking really thin, Carrie,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Carrie blushed and sat up a bit taller.

  Jo bit her tongue, glad that Sarah was at least still talking. It was good that she was being positive, but there was no reason to exaggerate quite so much. Carrie was doing well, but she was some way off ‘thin’.

  Sarah took her notebook out of her bag and rifled through the dog-eared pages until she came to a blank one. ‘I suppose we ought to take notes for the wish list. Although I don’t feel as if I’ve made any progress.’

  Neither did Jo. In fact, she realized, she couldn’t give a stuff about her wish. It had been a stupid idea in the first place and nothing was further from her mind than curing her pathetic fear of heights. She opened her mouth to admit how she was feeling and then caught sight of Carrie’s face glowing with pride. Her heart sank. She couldn’t do it; Carrie would be so disappointed.

  ‘Who wants another drink first?’ she asked instead.

  Sarah was talking about work when Jo got back with the drinks.

  ‘Sometimes I question the ethics of my profession,’ she said, fiddling with the hem of her polka-dot skirt. ‘I mean, the job’s great. I love totting up figures and making the balance sheet work and I love seeing clients’ faces when I’ve saved them loads of money by doing things with their capital asset register.’

  ‘You make it sound quite naughty.’ Jo arched an eyebrow at her as she handed her a second glass of wine.

  ‘You think everything sounds naughty,’ scoffed Sarah. ‘But it’s the endless pursuit of profit that gets me down.’

  ‘That’s business, Sarah,’ said Carrie. ‘You’ll have to get used to that if you want to be a partner. Not that I know anything about it.’

  Oh, for God’s sake … Something in Jo snapped and she felt her heart speed up with stress. What was she doing in this village pub with these two women, who she barely knew and who definitely didn’t know her? They were nice enough people, but Sarah pretty much had it all and Carrie, the cosseted housewife, didn’t have a care in the world except how many calories were in a Diet Coke versus a lemonade. Meanwhile back in the real world, Jo had thirty-odd livelihoods to worry about, a factory to keep going and nobody – nobody – to love her.

  ‘It’s a nice position to be in,’ said Jo, trying to rein in her frustration, ‘not being bothered about profit. But the reality is that if I don’t make a profit, I make a loss. Correction – I am making a loss. That means that I can’t just sit there tutting and shaking my head sadly. I have to plan for redundancies. I have to decide which members of my staff I can do without, and which ones I will be telling that they have lost their jobs, that they won’t be able to pay their mortgages next month.’

  She sat back in her seat, heart racing, and took a sip from her glass. The frosty silence was back. Sarah looked like she’d been punched in the face, her eyes wide with shock, and Carrie was squirming in her seat.

  ‘Well, when you put it like that,’ Sarah muttered meekly, ‘I can see that the pursuit of profit is quite important.’

  They all stared into their drinks.

  Well, this was fun. Jo cast about for a safe topic of conversation.

  ‘Here’s the vicar,’ said Carrie with relief as the door opened and he walked in accompanied by a group of middle-aged women. There was something about that man; it was as if the mood lightened when he was around. Jo watched him share a joke with some of the other customers and then wait in line at the bar.

  ‘Such a waste.’ She sighed. ‘To be that good-looking and choose a life of holiness. I’d quite like to be sinful with him.’

  ‘Is that the type you go for?’ Sarah pushed a ringlet of hair off her face and looked at her defiantly.

  ‘Eyelashes like that? Don’t we all?’ said Jo, relieved to get the conversation back on to a lighter note.

  ‘I think Sarah means the unattainable type,’ said Carrie, earning a nod from Sarah. ‘Married to his job.’

  ‘Married men are totally …’ Jo paused.

  She stopped herself from adding ‘attainable’. Her standard procedure of casually dating married men because they were so undemanding and not interested in commitment might not go down too well in present company.

  ‘Story of my life,’ she said, changing tack. ‘All the men I ever meet are married to someone, or something. And unfortunately I don’t think I’m the marrying kind.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Carrie, ‘you just need to meet the one.’

  ‘Like you did with Alex?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Exactly. Now have you been trying those visualization exercises I sent you to lower your fear levels?’ Carrie asked. ‘Our New York trip is getting closer, you know.’

  Jo narrowed her eyes, but decided to let Carrie’s change of subject go. In truth, she was regretting having agreed to even attempt to cure her heights phobia; in the grand scheme of things, it was the least of her problems. She was regretting inviting them both to come to New York with her too. She would be far better off on her own in September, trawling Manhattan streets for inspiration for Gold’s.

  ‘It’s not a priority at the moment,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I’m not really sure I want to carry on with this wish list.’

  ‘Really?’ said Carrie, disappointed. ‘That trip is the highlight of my year.’

  Oh God, now she felt like a total cow.

  ‘So what did you come tonight for, then, other than to have a go at my parenting skills?’ said Sarah, two pink spots forming on her cheeks. She shoved her notebook back in her handbag. ‘You made a deal, signed a contract and if I remember rightly, you were more up for it than me.’

  Sarah looked furious and Carrie was chewing her lip. Jo’s heart sank. It wasn’t their fault that she was consumed with getting the Josephine Gold collec
tion off the ground, that that was the only spark that was keeping her going. They weren’t to know that Patrick had been subdued since the meeting with Shaw’s and that even he seemed to be losing hope.

  She groaned and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Again. I’m not on great form tonight. I’ll be honest, the main reason I came tonight is that Abi flies to Australia tomorrow. She’s renting her house out for the summer. She’ll be back in September for Tom starting school. I had to come to Woodby to say goodbye, we both shed a tear. Daft as it sounds, it felt like we were saying goodbye to Fréd all over again,’ said Jo quietly.

  The tension between them hung in the air, the noise of the pub fading away until Jo felt as if the three of them were inside their own little vacuum.

  Carrie shifted forward to the edge of her seat and grasped both of their hands.

  ‘Come on! Remember how this started? Fréd’s funeral? We can do this, can’t we? Besides …’ she eyed up the plates on the next table. There were still a few chips left and the waitress was on her way over to collect them. ‘If you don’t hold me back I might have to rub my face in those chips.’

  Carrie’s stomach gave an almighty rumble, breaking the spell, and they all giggled.

  ‘OK, OK, you’ve persuaded me.’ Jo took a deep breath and resigned herself to continuing with the wish list. Carrie was right: she was still that workaholic person she had been at the funeral. She hadn’t changed a bit. If she didn’t lift her head up from her computer every now and then, she’d be a spinster for the rest of her life. She couldn’t bear that.

  ‘Now then, lady.’ Sarah nudged Carrie’s arm. ‘Tell us about the diet. Last time we saw you you’d only lost a couple of pounds. Now you look like you’ve lost loads?’

  Carrie shifted awkwardly, opened her mouth and instantly shut it again.

  ‘Come on, spill!’ said Jo.

  Carrie shrugged. ‘I’m trying to cut out sugar and keep busy, so I don’t have time to eat. I’ve been gardening, going to yoga …’

  Jo stared at her thoughtfully; she still got the impression that Carrie was keeping something back.