by Jill Mansell
‘Talk about jumping in at the deep end.’ Miranda goggled. ‘It must be love.’
‘It is.’ Fenn gave Chloe’s fingers a squeeze. ‘I’ve asked Chloe to marry me.’
Good grief.
‘And they haven’t even had sex yet,’ Miranda told the wide-eyed baby in her arms. ‘Honestly, some people do things a funny way round, don’t they?’ Abruptly, she looked up. ‘You haven’t even told me her name. What are you calling her?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘We haven’t decided.’
Miranda noted that ‘we’ with secret delight.
‘Something that goes with Lomax,’ said Fenn.
Miranda ruffled the baby’s dandelion-puff hair and beamed at the pair of them.
‘I’ve got it. You can call her L’Oréal.’
***
‘No sense of adventure, that’s what you’ve got,’ Miranda told Fenn, lifting a beaming Mattie out of her car seat and weaving her through the air like Superman. ‘I still think you should have called her L’Oréal.’
‘That’s why I’m marrying Chloe and not you,’ said Fenn. ‘Now, any more cases to bring out, or is that the lot?’
Florence and Tom were off on the cruise of a lifetime, flying from Heathrow to Miami before boarding ship and spending the next thirty days sailing in indecent luxury around the Caribbean. Fenn and Chloe had come over to Tredegar Gardens to see them off. Mattie, now seven weeks old, flashed her toothless grin at everyone she clapped eyes on, captivating even the taxi driver who was loading the cases into the boot.
Miranda held Mattie, wrapped up in her scarlet snowsuit, against her shoulder. Bending her head and breathing in the smell of just-washed infant, she watched Fenn help Florence out of her chair and into the back of the cab. In less than two months he had acquired a live-in lover and a baby, both of whom he adored beyond measure. It suited him, too; he had never looked happier.
Sometimes, Miranda was beginning to discover, doing things the wrong way round turned out—mysteriously—to be the best way after all.
‘How’s Bruce getting on in the shop?’ Chloe was eager to know. Bruce hadn’t been able to disguise his glee when she had rung him straight after the birth.
‘So you’re telling me you won’t be back this afternoon? This is too much, Chloe. It’s the final straw. I’m sorry, but you’re fired.’
‘Okay.’ Shrugging happily, Chloe had smiled at Fenn. ‘Fine by me.’
‘Bruce?’ said Miranda. ‘Oh, he’s got a new assistant, called Petunia. Apparently she’s twenty-three stone and looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp.’
‘Heavens.’ Chloe was alarmed. ‘Poor Bruce.’
‘Oh no, don’t feel sorry for him. She’s just what he wanted. Someone so ugly that no man’s ever going to want to have sex with her,’ Miranda explained. ‘That way, she’s never going to get pregnant.’
Tom came up to them and gave Miranda’s shoulder an affectionate pat.
‘We’re ready to go. You look after yourself, sweetheart.’
‘And you look after Florence. If she’ll let you.’ Miranda rolled her eyes at this—it was a pretty daunting prospect—but if anyone could pull it off, it was Tom. Since getting together, the change in Florence had been heartwarming.
‘Behave yourself now,’ Florence ordered from the back seat. She cackled with laughter as Mattie, with a ladylike hiccup, gracefully deposited a mouthful of curdled milk on the shoulder of Miranda’s black sweater. ‘No getting up to mischief.’ Florence waggled her eyebrows friskily as she spoke. ‘Not unless you know I’d approve.’
‘It’s been so long, I can’t remember what mischief is.’ Miranda said it jokily, but it was horribly close to the mark. Everyone, it seemed, had a rip-roaring sex life these days except her. Even Chloe, for heaven’s sake, who had last week been given the go-ahead from her unsuspecting GP to ‘resume relations with her husband’.
If she wished.
Chloe had certainly wished. And, she had later shyly confided to Miranda, it had all gone Very Well Indeed. Furthermore, having only ever slept with one other man before, she now realized that contrary to what Greg had always told her, he wasn’t brilliant in bed at all. In fact, compared with Fenn, he’d been completely average—
‘Send me postcards,’ Miranda blurted out to Florence, banishing the troublesome memory from her mind. It wasn’t that she wanted to have sex with Fenn—good grief, no!—but Chloe’s verdict had come as a bit of a bombshell, all the same. If Greg was only average, well…
I must get out more, thought Miranda. I’m missing out on goodness knows what.
The trouble was, the only person she really wanted to get out more with had gone off with someone else and was no longer about.
‘Are we ready?’ said Tom, as Chloe leaned through the open window to give Florence a kiss goodbye.
‘Got my hip-flask.’ Florence patted her coat pocket with satisfaction. ‘That and a passport’s all I need.’
‘You should behave yourself too,’ Miranda said, when it was her turn at the window.
‘Are we allowed to get married?’
‘Only to each other.’
‘Me, marry some pervy vicar? Hah, you must be joking.’ Florence exchanged a look of mock horror with Tom. But beneath the folds of Florence’s dashing black cape, Miranda realized, there was some serious hand-holding going on.
Honestly, what were they like?
‘If they had acne, they’d pass as a couple of teenagers,’ she said when the taxi had disappeared around the corner.
‘Except teenagers can’t afford to cruise the Caribbean,’ Chloe pointed out. ‘Oops, Mattie’s just thrown up on your shoulder again. D’you want to give her to me?’
‘Come in for a bit,’ Miranda urged, feeling suddenly lonely. A whole month alone in an otherwise empty house loomed ahead. What if she went a bit mad and started talking to herself?
But Chloe was still holding her arms out, ready to take Mattie back.
‘We can’t. We’re driving up to my mother’s for the day.’ Sensing Miranda’s disappointment, she said, ‘It’s a big family party. Oh, but you could come along too if you like.’
Miranda shuddered and shook her head, recalling the last time she and Chloe’s mother had met, outside Adrian’s house in Milligan Road.
‘It’s okay, I’m fine. Loads to do, really.’
Fenn, taking Mattie from her, said, ‘Like changing into a clean sweater.’
‘Is he always this bossy?’ Miranda rolled her eyes. ‘Because if you decide you can’t stand it a minute longer, you could always run away, you know, come back and live with me.’
Fenn swiftly fastened Mattie into her car seat in the back of the new Volvo. The days of the black Lotus had long gone. Chloe smiled.
‘Thanks, but I think I’ll stay where I am.’
Envying them for being so happy, Miranda stood and waved until the dark green Volvo was out of sight. She turned and made her way back into the house, catching a whiff of baby-sick as she went.
Right, now what?
Apart from stripping off her sweater, which appeared to be a bit of a must.
Chapter 62
In Miranda’s experience, when heroines in slushy films found themselves depressed and with too much time on their hands, they always seemed to find something deeply worthy and constructive to do in the way of housework. Miranda, who wasn’t heroic in any shape or form, had noticed this and decided they must be barking mad. If you were miserable, doing something as awful as scrubbing the kitchen floor was only going to make you feel much worse, surely. Any fool could see that.
Anyway, what on earth was the point of cleaning the house when Florence had just jetted off for a month and nobody was going to see it?
Miranda tapped her fingers fretfully against the telep
hone, then punched out Bev’s number. How often had Bev been at a loose end on a Sunday and rung her, to suggest going out somewhere nice—i.e., containing plenty of men—for lunch?
But the phone rang and rang. Bev wasn’t there. Of course she isn’t, thought Miranda as she hung up, she’s over at Johnnie’s being all happy and coupley and so lovey-dovey it made you want to be sick.
Honestly, talk about ingratitude. You take the trouble to sort out your friends’ hopeless lives for them, you find them their perfect partners…and the next thing you know, they’ve swanned off into happy-ever-after-land without so much as a by-your-leave. Huh, you’d be lucky to get a postcard.
If it wasn’t for me, Miranda thought, Bev would never have met Johnnie in the first place. And Fenn wouldn’t have met Chloe. Indignantly, she pulled her sweater over her head, bundled it up and flung it in the direction of the stairs.
Typical, as long as they’re all right, that’s all that jolly well matters.
Never mind me.
***
When the doorbell rang an hour later, Miranda knew that whoever was at the door, she really didn’t want to see them.
Sprawling across the sofa in front of the TV, plucking your eyebrows whilst watching Little House on the Prairie, was possibly the most effective method going if you were desperate for that white-rabbit-struggling-to-break-in-a-new-pair-of-contact-lenses look.
Oh yes, massively flattering, thought Miranda, surveying the result in her eyebrow-plucking mirror and making the unhappy discovery that her eyes exactly matched her Pepto-Bismol–pink thermal tank top. Of course I’m going to open the door and frighten whoever’s on the doorstep witless.
The doorbell rang again.
She ignored it.
It rang for the third time.
Miranda crawled across the sitting room floor and up on to the window seat, inching her eyes over the window ledge like a sniper in the forest…
And came face to face through the glass with Danny Delancey.
Hugely embarrassed, imagining how silly she must look, Miranda instantly ducked down again.
‘Too late, Miranda.’ Danny, his voice carrying clearly through the closed window, didn’t bother to hide his amusement. ‘I looked just now and saw you with your big bottom in the air, wiggling across the carpet.’
Yanking the front door open, clutching her coat around her, Miranda said indignantly, ‘I do not have a big bottom.’ As an afterthought she added, ‘And even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a big bottom.’
Not that she wanted one herself—no thanks very much—but it seemed only sisterly to make the point. After all, Chloe’s bottom wasn’t what you’d call petite and Fenn seemed pretty smitten with hers.
‘Would you like me to say I saw your delectable little bottom wiggling across the carpet?’ Danny grinned, unperturbed by this outburst. ‘I will if you want. I just thought it might alarm you, seeing as I’m not normally the flowery-compliments type.’
This was true, Miranda couldn’t deny it. Still, she was almost sure there was a hint of a compliment lurking in there. Deep down.
Somewhere.
‘I didn’t want to answer the door in case you were a Jehovah’s Witness.’ She stepped back reluctantly, and wished with all her heart she hadn’t been quite so vigorous with the tweezers. ‘And I haven’t been crying, okay? I’ve just plucked my eyebrows.’
‘I’ll believe you, thousands wouldn’t.’ His dark eyes flickered over her clothes. ‘Why are you wearing a thermal tank and a coat?’
‘I had to take my sweater off, there was sick on it. Not my sick,’ Miranda added defensively. ‘Mattie’s.’
‘Glad to hear it. Florence and Tom get away on time?’
‘How did—?’ Miranda stared at him, wondering how he could have known they were leaving today. Then she wondered why she was bothering to wonder, since pretty obviously Florence had rung and told him herself.
‘She was just keeping me in touch. Thought I might be interested.’ Danny’s tone was neutral.
‘If she told you I was lonely and needed cheering up—’ Miranda began furiously, but he stopped her in her tracks.
‘She didn’t. Actually, I’m the one in need of help.’
Oh well, that stood to reason, he looked so utterly helpless standing there in his dark-blue sweatshirt and faded Levis, with his battered leather jacket slung over one broad shoulder and his humorous dark eyes glittering down at her in that completely unfair way.
‘Go on,’ muttered Miranda, wondering if she was ever going to be able to look at him without experiencing that swooping sensation—like leaping dolphins—in the depths of her stomach.
‘I’ve got a new kite in the car,’ Danny told her. ‘I need to get some serious practice in, so that I can dazzle that nephew of mine with my skills. And I need someone to untangle me when it all goes horribly wrong.’ He paused. ‘Fancy a trip to Parliament Hill?’
‘Dazzle him with your skills?’ echoed Miranda. ‘Better take a tent with us, then. This could take years.’
Danny’s mouth began to twitch at the corners.
‘Is that your charming way of saying yes?’
Determined not to let him see how overjoyed she was, Miranda replied, ‘Actually, it’s my charming way of saying: what the hell, I could do with a good laugh.’
***
When had she last come up here, that time with Florence? It must have been back in April, Miranda finally worked out. And now it was November, but the kites were still out in force.
The sun was out too, brightening a cloudless hyacinth-blue sky, but it was colder than before, an icy north-easterly wind zinging through Miranda’s hair and numbing the exposed tips of her ears.
All over the hill, children wrapped up against the cold raced around, battling to seize control of frantically flapping kites and miles of unraveled nylon cord. The adults, expertly coaxing their kites into performing gymnastic displays of Olympic brilliance, stood their ground and scarcely moved at all.
Racing around like a lunatic and getting garroted by your own kite string was clearly a very immature thing to do.
To impress his nephew, Danny had bought a monster of a kite, crimson and double-winged and as uncontrollable as a charging rhino. Every time Miranda threw it up into the air, it leapt skywards for a few seconds, lulling them both into a false sense of security, before plummeting back to earth with a vengeance. Twice, it had missed her head by inches and she’d had to learn to dodge out of the way. When she took her turn at trying to fly it, it promptly hurled itself into the nearest tree.
Danny inched his way along the high branch around which the cord was tangled.
Fit body. Very fit, Miranda couldn’t help noticing. For about the hundredth time in the last hour.
‘I don’t know why you’re bothering,’ she shouted up at him. ‘That kite is a psychopath. It doesn’t deserve to be rescued. You should teach it a lesson and leave it up there to rot.’
The kite was released at last, amid a flurry of falling leaves. Danny swung himself down from the branch and landed next to Miranda. Having glanced briefly at her, he busied himself brushing bits of bark from his jeans.
‘The thing is, some kites are easy, you get on with them from the word go. Others need a bit more work. You can either give up, or you can persevere. But if you get there in the end…well, that makes it all worthwhile.’
Miranda’s nose and cheeks were pink with cold. She had tugged the sleeves of her warmest sweater over her knuckles and her arms were wrapped around her waist, but she was still prone to fits of uncontrollable shivers. She watched the kite slither off across the grass then begin to leap upwards, straining against its leash like a slavering Rottweiler.
‘Take it to the vet. Have it put down. If you re
ally want to impress your nephew, take up rollerblading instead.’
‘You’re freezing. Here, put my jacket on.’ Danny shrugged it off and placed it around her shoulders.
‘I didn’t know it was going to be this c-cold.’ Surreptitiously, Miranda sniffed the collar of the jacket, breathing in a lungful of that oh-so-familiar aftershave. ‘I suppose you tried to persuade your girlfriend to come up here with you, but she had more sense.’
There, managed it at last! She’d slipped the subject into the conversation but in such a deft and casual manner that he wouldn’t guess how long she’d been dying to bring it up.
‘Girlfriend,’ Danny said thoughtfully, winding the kite back towards him.
‘You remember. Blond. Posh-looking. Waves at you like this.’ Miranda waggled her fingers in pseudo-friendly fashion, accurately mimicking the girl she’d seen sitting in his car.
She was careful not to sound bitchy. That wouldn’t do at all.
‘I think you must be talking about my sister,’ Danny said. ‘Caroline. Eddie’s mother.’ Helpfully he held out his hand, palm downwards, indicating the height of his nephew. ‘You remember Eddie.’
‘Your sister.’ Miranda breathed out slowly. ‘You made me think she was your girlfriend.’
‘Did I?’ Danny frowned, not altogether convincingly. ‘Oh no, she’s definitely my sister. Although she certainly wishes I had a girlfriend. In fact she’s so desperate to see me settled down, she spends her life trying to fix me up with her single friends.’
He wasn’t exactly looking thrilled. Exercising caution—and a degree of jealousy—Miranda said, ‘And you haven’t found one yet that you like?’
The kite, fully rewound now, had arrived back at Danny’s feet. It flapped rebelliously amongst the fallen leaves like a truculent teenager.
‘It can’t escape if we sit on it.’ Danny held one wing down with his Timberland-booted foot until Miranda was settled on the kite, then he joined her. ‘Oh yes, I’ve definitely found one I like.’
His faded denim knee was inches away from her own, his tone amazingly casual. Almost as if he was telling her about a car he had seen and was thinking of buying.