OLD DOGS,

NEW TRICKS

Linda Phillips

Contents

Cover

Title Page

1

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3

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About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Marjorie Benson was drowning. She struggled beneath the hands, tried to hold on to her breath, fought the cold clamp that clutched the back of her neck. She was about to black out. She was going …

But a second later she was allowed up from the sink and the world returned to normal – except that there was still that startling news she’d just heard.

‘What was it he said?’ she demanded of the young stylist hovering over her. ‘That chap on the radio just now?’

Angie tightened the towel around Marjorie’s head so that her words, too, came as if from another world.

‘Um … something about Spittal’s closing down, I think … Oh –’ the girl sucked in a gasp, ‘– that’s where your old man works, isn’t it? Spittal’s?’

‘Yes, yes, he does.’ Marjorie put up a hand to blot a cold trickle, and found that it was trembling.

‘I didn’t really take in much of what he was saying,’ Angie said. She shrugged. The radio was only on in the background for the music – nobody really bothered to listen to it.

Marjorie frowned. She hadn’t paid much attention either. She thought the cheerfully delivered information had included such time-worn phrases as ‘job cuts’, ‘redundancies’, and ‘bitter blow to the area’, but her ears had only pricked up on the one word: Spittal’s.

‘I can’t believe it, if it’s true,’ she muttered, allowing herself to be guided across to the cutting chair. Groping for the padded arms she sank down on to the seat, the black cape billowing around her and making her feel like a crow.

The salon’s attempt at smart black and white decor did nothing for Marjorie’s complexion. She tried not to see the tired pale oval of her face reflected back at her, or the big bare forehead that was normally hidden. Angie always seemed to manage to wash away most of her make-up, she tutted to herself. Or was it the harsh lighting from those spots in the ceiling that was responsible for the bags under her eyes? Perhaps it was the shock that had made her look so haggard.

‘Are you sure he said “Spittal’s”?’ she asked Angie, but Angie could tell her no more, and as the scissors began to snip and slash, to grind and grunt, Marjorie forced herself to pay attention to the matter in hand. Not that she could do much to stop the carnage taking place. She could only sit there and witness it.

She knew from many years of experience that Angie, like every other hairdresser she had ever come across, was programmed to carry out a certain series of manoeuvres on whatever head lay beneath her hands, irrespective of the wishes that head might try to communicate to her, or what would suit it best.

‘Thought any more about highlights?’ Angie suddenly asked, perhaps thinking it best to distract her client from the unpalatable news. ‘Or how about a coloured rinse – to blend in, sort of thing?’

Marjorie compressed her lips. Every month over the past few years it had been the same sort of suggestion. Yes, she was going a bit grey, but she wasn’t yet ready to succumb to it.

‘No thank you, Angie,’ she said, gritting her teeth in anguish as the scissors hacked into her fringe. It was going to end up far shorter than she wanted. And wasn’t it crooked on the left-hand side? Why was there a bit of a gap over one eye, for heaven’s sake?

‘That OK?’ Angie asked finally, her scissors poised above Marjorie’s head, ready to swoop for another bite if only given a word of encouragement.

Marjorie nodded and grinned back at her, dismayed at her stark eyebrows, her naked ears and her over-long neck. It would be at least three weeks before she could look in the mirror again with anything approaching equanimity.

But worse was to come. The drier whirred into action and began to scorch her scalp as Angie wielded her fiercest, most root-tugging brush. Tufts of hair were tortured and teased, blasted and blown, yanked this way and that without mercy, as Angie contrived to puff them out where they should have been allowed to lie flat and flattened them where she ought to have puffed. It was all Marjorie could do, not to wrest the brush from the girl’s hand and beg to finish the job herself.

‘There!’ Angie declared at last, adding to Marjorie’s agony by giving her a glimpse of ragged neckline with her hand-held mirror. ‘That all right for you now, do you think? Yes? All right? OK?’

‘Fine. Fine. Lovely. Thank you very much.’ Marjorie nodded at herself in the mirror, turned her head and nodded again.

Angie began rubbing her hands together then – with satisfaction Marjorie thought at first, only realising her mistake on finding waxy stuff being fingered through her hair. Why on earth had the girl done that? Now it looked greasier than before she’d walked into the salon.

She wanted to steal home by dead of night; crawl under the nearest stone. No one must see her like this. Instead, she stood up, scattering hair round her feet, and fished in her handbag for her purse. Angie conveyed her usual surprised pleasure over her generous tip, and the frightful ritual came to a close.

Only as Marjorie handed her credit card to the girl at the desk did the news hit her again. Could it possibly be true that Spittal’s was closing down?

She pulled open the door to the street and stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine of a perfect spring day. No, it was absolutely inconceivable. Spittal’s was a successful, modern and go-ahead company. They made microprocessors and other hi-tec components. How could they think of closing down?

And Philip, occupying a senior position with the company, would surely have had advance warning of any such possibility. But he’d not breathed a word about it. Not a single word. So of course it couldn’t be true.

At home, Marjorie reached for the flexible spray on the end of the bath and waited for the water to run warm. Kneeling on the bath mat she bent over the tub and set to work with shampoo. Soon she had erased most of Angie’s efforts in a glut of medicated foam. Wax, mousse and all kinds of gunk were banished down the plug hole, along with a few more hairs. At this rate, she thought grimly, chasing them round the bath, she would be bald. As well as a little too heavy round the hips. And droopy round the mouth. She sighed. Life could be so cruel.

And what if Spittal’s really did close down? Not only would it be dreadful for the hundreds of people who worked there – and God help all of them and their families – but for her, personally, it would be disastrous. Particularly right now. Because just as she’d been thinking events were swinging her way and her months of hard work were beginning to pay off, it looked as though she’d be having Phil hanging about at home with time on his hands while he looked around for another job. Time to get under her feet and throw all manner of spanners in the works. Time to dismantle the plan that she and his parents had been secretly hatching for the past couple of months. He might even – for want of something better to do – try muscling in on her act!

Now that simply wasn’t to be borne. Phil had always refused to have anything to do with his father’s business, so why should he be allowed to step in at this late stage? No, not now that she was about to do that very thing.

Although elderly, Philip’s father still ran the three small hardware shops that he’d started as a young man, but recently he had been forced to admit to Marjorie that they were really getting too much for him. Philip’s mother was already semi-invalid and had not been able to assist for some while. In fact, had it not been for Marjorie’s unstinting efforts in recent times, both with helping Eric in the shops and in doing all she could for Sheila, some other arrangement would have had to have been considered.

Marjorie hadn’t planned to help out her father-in-law; it was something she’d fallen into one day when she’d dropped by at the largest of the shops for a bag of rose fertiliser and found him agonising over VAT.

It so happened that she had a talent for all types of figure-work: taxes, book-keeping, cash-flows – all these she could handle with ease. She had worked for a firm of accountants on leaving school and would have trained up to become one herself if Becky, their first daughter, had not put in an appearance. Family life, she had then discovered, suited her even more than accountancy, and she had never felt the urge to go back to doing anything like that – until she saw Eric huffing over his official forms.

‘My oh my,’ he’d said gleefully, when she’d asked if he needed a hand, ‘I’d quite forgotten. This is right up your street, love, isn’t it?’

He’d gladly handed her all the paperwork – along with a back-log from an old cardboard box – and from then on she’d been fully involved in all aspects of the business, learning as she went along.

And now the plan that the three of them – Eric, Sheila and herself – had been working on was that, since neither Philip nor his siblings had ever shown any interest in the shops, Marjorie would take over the complete running of them from the beginning of next month. She was to accept a proper salary, which she had never been offered before and wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting if she had, since she was only too happy to help out, and she would be allowed carte blanche to make of the business what she could.

Eric and Sheila would take things more easily from then on, although Eric said he would still ‘pop in now and again to keep an eye on things’. And they would only draw from the business what little they felt they needed to live on.

‘But –’ Marjorie’s face had clouded a little after her initial burst of euphoria ‘– what are Colin and Chrissie going to think of all this?’ Her brother-in-law and sister-in-law might raise all sorts of objections to their inheritance being ‘taken over’ in this way, even though they wouldn’t want anything to do with the shops themselves.

Both Philip’s brother and his sister had elected to go their own ways, just as he had done. In fact, much to his father’s disgust, it was Philip who seemed to have set the trend, paved the way, made it easier for the others to stand up to parental authority and say no. Heedless of Eric’s protests, Colin had gone into the leisure industry and Chrissie was married to a trout farmer in North Wales.

‘Colin and Chrissie can think what they like,’ Eric grunted. ‘They’ve had their chances and blown ‘em, as far as I’m concerned. They’ve not been forgotten in our wills, if that’s what’s bothering you, and that’s all they can rightfully expect.’

Marjorie noticed that he’d not included her husband in his condemnation. Philip had always been his favourite in spite of everything, though he would never admit it. Did he still harbour a hope that his firstborn might yet one day step into his father’s shoes? And was Marjorie merely the next best thing?

But she swept the notion aside. Eric’s proposal had touched and flattered her; why should she look a gift horse in the mouth? She had always felt as much loved by the couple as their own children were – perhaps even more so since her own parents’ tragic death – and to be trusted with Eric’s pride and joy … well, it was surely to be taken as an accolade. An accolade that she had been hoping for all along but one that she’d dared not expect.

She’d not whispered a word to anyone about her troubles of late, but the truth was that she had been feeling a little low and oddly insecure, what with it being that time of life when a woman feels less than her best and society conspires to make her feel utterly useless – fit only for the scrap-heap. The future had begun to look so empty and she had been desperately seeking something she could look forward to, with pleasure or even zeal.

Next year she and Phil would be celebrating twenty-five years of marriage; and with modern medicine being what it was, and people living longer and more healthily, it looked as though they stood a fair chance of maybe twenty-five more together. What on earth were they going to do with all that time? Or more to the point, since he at least had a busy career for a while, what was she going to do? These were the thoughts that had begun to haunt her, even before their two daughters had left home and her ‘caring’ role had already begun to dwindle. Since the girls had physically removed themselves from the family home and needed her even less, a kind of panic had set in.

But she had not let her concerns remain mere thoughts. No one could accuse her of sitting back, bemoaning her fate and wailing that there was nothing to be done about it. Instead she had started sowing seeds. And it wasn’t entirely by chance that Eric had come up with his proposal, if she was honest about it: she had been slowly and carefully working on him as she helped him in his shops, slipping in the odd suggestions here and intelligent comments there, and making herself pretty well indispensable, until one evening, just after Christmas, he’d hung up his overall, turned to her with a grave expression, and said he had something to say.

He had then proceeded to put forward what were essentially her own ideas for the future of the business as though they were all his own. It seemed not to have occurred to him to promote one of his managers to do the job in his place; his only thought was of her. And what a boost it had given her! Especially when she realised the size of the salary he was considering paying her, and the degree of control she was to be given. It was all far more than she’d ever imagined.

So now her life was mapped out. With the shops to keep her occupied and the prospect of grandchildren on the way, she could happily spend her remaining years here in London where she’d always lived, amongst family and friends, and not ask for anything more.

But what if Spittal’s closed down?

Whipping a towel from the radiator she scrambled to her feet. She must see Eric and Sheila at once.

By the time she reached her in-laws’ house, two blocks away from her own, the half-heard news about Spittal’s possible closure had become hard fact in Marjorie’s mind, and the only possible outcome a dead certainty. Grimly, her keys rattling in the lock, she let herself in at the front door.

She had had free access to the house for many years, but only in recent times, when Sheila’s joints had begun to grow too painful for her to greet guests at the door, had she taken advantage of it.

Stepping into the wide, well-polished hall with its thick Indian rug she never ceased to be impressed by her surroundings. She tried not to be because Philip always referred to the house – behind his mother’s back and well out of earshot – as ‘hideous’.

Never, he had been known to say, his eyes narrowed against the clashing wall-papers, the gaudy paint work and the eclectic assortment of ornaments, had so much money been squandered to such disastrous effect.

Certainly Marjorie would not have chosen such bold patterns either, or so many of them crowded together in quite the way they were – above the dado, below the dado, outlined with borders, panelled with borders; nor would she have considered the over-large crystal chandeliers as fitting for such a house. She would not have lain inch-thick ornate rugs on top of deep-piled patterned carpets. And the swags and drapes at the window were way over the top. Yet the whole was immaculately kept and gave out a sensation of luxurious comfort. Stepping into number fourteen Rosewood Gardens was like entering a secure, well-padded sanctuary.

Marjorie slipped off her shoes, as was the custom in this household, and waded across yards of Axminster in search of her mother-in-law, calling out as she went. She found the stout little figure of Sheila Benson sitting in the breakfast room, as usual, busy with her needlepoint.

‘Thought you were going to the hairdresser’s,’ the older woman said, blinking up at Marjorie through glasses that magnified her eyes.

Marjorie gave a weak smile. ‘Oh … yes, that’s right,’ she said vaguely, her hand straying up to her hair. ‘But first I’ve some mind-blowing news for you.’

‘What? Not the baby already?’

‘No, no!’ Marjorie fluttered her hands at the idea. Her first grandchild wasn’t due for another ten weeks at least.

‘Wow, you gave me quite a turn.’ Sheila had struggled halfway out of her chair; now she fumbled her way back to it. ‘What is it, then, this news? You’re looking rather upset.’

Marjorie flopped into the large wing chair on the other side of the French window and sat with her feet tucked up under her skirt. A smell of spring and fresh-mown grass wafted through the open door, but she was hardly in the mood to enjoy it. For a while, ordering her thoughts, she watched the gardener that her in-laws hired for two mornings a week plough up and down the long lawn, making the first striped cut of the year. The man’s irritation with the ungainly cupid that had been cemented to the centre of his work area since last autumn was obvious by the way he kept hurling aside the electric cable.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I suppose you haven’t had the radio on? And perhaps it wasn’t on the local TV news. I could hardly believe it at first. But, really, it must be true.’ She turned wide, incredulous eyes to her mother-in-law. ‘Spittal’s is closing down.’

Sheila let fall her embroidery frame. She dropped her scissors as well. ‘But … but surely that can’t be true?’ She put a hand to her chest. ‘My but you’ve given me another turn!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Marjorie knelt down to retrieve the scattered items, barely managing to locate the tiny scissors amongst the swirls of leaves and flowers. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you. I should have broken this to you more gently.’

Sheila waved the apology aside and put a hand on Marjorie’s arm. ‘It was just the thought of all those poor people. Not to mention Philip. Whenever I hear of places closing down and folk being put out of work I’m reminded of my childhood and my father losing his job.’

For a moment her face reflected her bad memories but she quickly rallied. ‘Anyway, let’s not look on the black side. These days there are redundancy payments, aren’t there? Help from the government too. Not that it’ll matter so much to Philip; he won’t be needing it, will he?’

Marjorie was about to lay down the horse-and-cart tapestry in her mother-in-law’s lap, having first admired all the tiny stitches, though she had no patience herself for anything involving needles and thread. Now she glanced up sharply at Sheila’s words.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well –’ Sheila spread her hands as though she thought an explanation superfluous ‘– it looks as though he will be going in with his father after all. I mean to say, he’ll have no other choice now, will he? No one will give him another job at his age. So you see, it’s an answer to all our prayers – and not a minute before time. Just what we’ve always wanted.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ Marjorie’s voice was faint.

‘It’s what he should have done long ago,’ Sheila went on, ‘when his father reached retirement age. In fact he should have done it right from the start, the minute he got his degree. But what he should do and what he wants to do, are two different things to Phil.’ She gathered up some loose ends of wool, took off her glasses and chewed on one of the arms. Absorbed in her thoughts she failed to notice the dismay in Marjorie’s expression.

‘What makes you think,’ Marjorie said, trying to keep her voice calm, ‘what makes you think that Phil will agree to take over the business even now? Maybe he’ll have other plans.’

‘Well, I can’t think what they would be. This must have come as a shock to him; he won’t have had time to plan anything. My feeling is that he’ll be only too glad he has this to fall back on. Ha!’ She let out a chuckle, still oblivious to Marjorie’s agony. ‘Life’s full of nice little surprises, isn’t it? There you were, thinking you’d have to soldier on alone with all the shops, and what happens? Suddenly there’s Phil beside you, free to help after all. And Eric will be so thrilled when he hears the news.’

‘But – but I thought we had it all planned …’

Marjorie watched helplessly as Sheila wrapped her tapestry frame in an old pillow case and stowed it with her wools inside a hinged footstool. Something in Marjorie’s tone must have penetrated at last; she paused before shutting the lid, then put it down at half-speed.

‘You don’t sound very happy about this,’ she exclaimed with concern and surprise.

Marjorie looked away, embarrassed, hardly trusting herself to speak. Well, she silently scolded herself, what else could she have expected? Phil was Sheila’s son after all. It was perfectly understandable that she should be more pleased at the prospect of having him run the shops than anyone else on this earth. Certainly more than a mere daughter-in-law, no matter how much they loved her.

And perfectly right it was, too. The way it should really be. Yes, really. Who could deny it? Blood was thicker than water, when all was said and done.

Right or not, though, it was cruel. A ‘nice little surprise’ it was not. How easily she had dismissed the possibility of such a thing happening! How silly to have assumed that Philip would go more or less straight into another job. For of course Sheila was right, wasn’t she? No one would take him on in another firm now, not at his age. There was nothing else he could do but kow-tow at last to his parents.

But where did this leave her? She had never for one moment pictured Phil working alongside her in her new venture. Not that that would be the case; if they attempted to run the shops together she was sure he would immediately assume control of everything – see himself as her superior.

He wasn’t as bossy as his father could be at times, but he undoubtedly had that streak in him. He wouldn’t have got where he was today without strength and determination. Which meant that she wouldn’t get a look-in. In no time at all she would find herself relegated to the more menial tasks; not even allowed a say. As they were in their marriage, so it would be at work. How could she expect it to be different?

Oh, the idea was quite intolerable. She had wanted so much for herself. Had wanted to prove her capabilities and show Phil that she was no longer the dependent appendage that he had always seen her as; she was a person in her own right.

Glancing at Sheila she forced a smile. ‘Events are moving too quickly for me. I need to get used to the idea. And perhaps, before we speculate any further, we’d better see what Phil has to say. He doesn’t even know what we’ve been planning yet.’

‘No.’ Sheila gave a little shudder to emphasise her disapproval of this fact; she didn’t like secrets between spouses. They were unhealthy.

Twiddling her wedding ring round her finger Marjorie could only agree with her. She glanced down at the gold band that had once had a pattern on it but had now worn smooth; both it and the diamond engagement ring had channelled grooves in her flesh. Married all those years, she thought with a pang of conscience, and she’d been keeping secrets from Phil because he wouldn’t have liked what she was doing. Whatever would that old vicar who’d married them have to say about that?

Of course he was probably pushing up daisies by now, but recently, for some strange reason, his words had been coming back to her. Not so much about being honest with each other – presumably he’d thought that went without saying – but all manner of other unasked-for advice that he’d seen fit to offer them on the run-up to their wedding day. For example, it was his view that in all their future life-decisions the final word should be Philip’s. He should be the one to wear the trousers and Marjorie should defer to him.

Sitting side by side on the musty vicarage sofa as he delivered this instruction, they had stared at him in silence, hardly able to believe their ears, for even in those days such notions were so out of date as to be laughable.

Marjorie had sensed Phil’s suppressed mirth bubbling up, his hand tightening round hers as they solemnly nodded their heads, and she’d found it hard to keep a straight face. They had escaped from the interview as soon as they could, running hard to get well away from the vicarage before their laughter came spluttering out.

Nevertheless, a few days later Marjorie had found herself promising to obey her husband for ever more until they were parted by death. And she had largely adhered to the vicar’s words throughout her marriage; she had let Philip wear the trousers and had always deferred to him, even if at times he had jokingly had to threaten her with hell-fire and brimstone.

At least it had had the advantage that Phil had no one to blame but himself whenever things turned out badly – a neat cop-out for her, to be true, but it didn’t always suit. It certainly wasn’t going to suit her now if his plans clashed with her own …

‘Come and have dinner with us this evening,’ she urged Sheila. ‘I’m going to tell Philip everything. It’s time to sort all this out.’

2

Philip Benson hurried out of the lift and crossed the glossy foyer of Spittal’s admin. building in ten easy strides. He was far from being a vain man and would have been surprised had he been told that at least a dozen female heads turned to follow his progress before he disappeared through the revolving doors.

This owed nothing to the fact that he was the sales director; the MD himself could have stripped naked on top of the reception desk and no one would have batted an eye. But Philip Benson was ‘something else’, according to most of the women who worked at Spittal’s; he was generally considered by young and old, fat and thin, married and single, to be more than ‘a bit of all right’. Even though he was hitting fifty. Even though he’d gone grey. Even though he would soon be a grandfather. None of that mattered a jot. As for Mrs Benson, well, wasn’t she the lucky one?

Many a time had the phenomenon that was Philip Benson been thoroughly analysed, but no satisfactory conclusions had ever been reached. He was not conventionally handsome – whatever that might mean. Some said it was his slow, shy smile that did it; some his affable nature. Others considered his selflessness was the charm, for what could be more attractive than an all-round decent bloke, they argued, who had no idea that he was?

Philip’s ears would have burned with embarrassment if he’d had any knowledge of these discussions. Either that or he would have assumed that the subject of them was someone else. Happily heedless of turned heads, longing glances or wagging tongues, he ducked into the pub next door to Spittal’s in search of a much-needed drink.

Spotting his old friend in one corner, slumped over a glass of beer, he grinned that slow, charming smile of his.

‘Thought I might find you here, Tom,’ he said, jerking a stool from under the table and straddling it. ‘Things getting too hot for you back there?’

Tom almost choked as Philip clapped him on the shoulder. He looked up sourly, licking foam from his bushy moustache.

‘Bloody chaos, it is,’ he complained with a despairing shake of his head. ‘Here, let me get you your –’

‘No, no, I’m buying,’ Phil insisted. He caught the barman’s eye above the row of backs hunched round the bar and was soon well into a glass of Guinness, with another pint lined up for Tom.

‘Not exactly a good place to be in at a time like this,’ Phil said, loosening his tie. ‘Personnel, I mean.’

‘You can say that again, man, indeed you can. You can imagine what it’s been like. Nothing short of a riot.’ He pretended to mop his brow. ‘I’ve come in here to escape, though I expect the hordes will soon catch up with me, demanding to know why they’ve been laid off with only a pittance when some other sod’s being kept on, and how the devil are they going to go home and break it to the wife? Like it’s all my bloody fault, you know?’

He eyed his companion morosely, and since Phil rarely nipped in for a quick one on his way home asked, ‘And what’re you doing in here, pal? Turning over a new leaf?’

Philip drank down a few more mouthfuls before adopting a wry expression. ‘Wondering how I’m going to break it to the wife, actually, just like everyone else.’

‘She doesn’t know?’ Tom’s surprise revealed the whites of his eyes. They were stained with red threads of tiredness.

‘No,’ Phil admitted reluctantly, ‘she doesn’t know a thing.’

‘But I thought …’

‘That I would’ve told her days ago?’

‘Well … with your prior knowledge … and surely you could have trusted her?’

‘Of course I could have trusted her. She wouldn’t have leaked it.’ Philip waved that line of questioning aside. ‘It was just that – well, I suppose I couldn’t broach it.’

Tom snorted his disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me our sales director is scared of his wife? But … but it’s not as if it’s even bad news for you, is it? Won’t this just suit your Marjorie down to the ground?’

Philip’s expression darkened. ‘You’re assuming I’m taking redundancy, Tom. And all things considered I suppose …’

‘Be plain daft, not to, wouldn’t it?’ Tom demonstrated his ideas with his hands. ‘Take the money – nice tidy sum –’ he grabbed air and clutched it to his chest ‘– and straight into your father’s business.’ He made a throwing motion. ‘Isn’t that what Marjorie’s always wanted? Not to mention your mum and dad.’

Tom knew the history of Philip’s rebellion very well – mostly as related by Marjorie, the ubiquitous ‘girl next door’.

She would have been about eight and Philip nine when his father’s local hardware shop had begun to make money. ‘Real’ money, that is, as opposed to scraping a living. Eric Benson was about the only person not surprised by his success. He had worked damned hard for it, he was quick to tell anyone who would listen, and he lost no time in putting his profits back into the business and buying himself another shop in the adjacent borough. He soon repeated his earlier success and bought yet another shop before calling it a day.

Three shops, he decided at the end of a particularly busy week, hardly left him with time to draw breath. And being the kind of person whose powers of delegation were nil – although it was unlikely that he’d ever realised that fact – he told himself that enough was surely enough.

After the purchase of the second shop the Bensons left their crowded flat and came to live in the house next door to Marjorie and her parents, by which time Philip was eleven and taking the dreaded 11-plus.

Not that the tests presented Philip with much of a problem – he sailed through them all in less than the allotted time and wondered what all the fuss was about – but it brought the Bensons’ attention to the whole question of secondary education, and Eric, his new-found wealth growing steadily in the bank, began to get ideas above his station.

The upshot was that Philip, his sister Chrissie, and later his brother Colin, were forced into private schooling. Forced being the only word for it, where Philip was concerned: he resented the whole idea and dug his heels in as hard as he could. He didn’t want to have to walk in the opposite direction to his friends every day and be called a toffee-nosed pansy, he complained in Marjorie’s sympathetic ear.

Already he had a lot to live down. Since moving into the new house he’d been compelled to witness vulgar displays of his father’s newly-acquired wealth, as all manner of goods found their way from the high street stores to the family home. There had been a huge new television with shiny double doors, a radiogram with record auto-change, a tape recorder that weighed a ton, and a snazzy food-mixer that worked miracles. Even a shiny new car – the latest thing on the market – appeared outside the house one day. That neither of his parents could drive was neither here nor there.

As for his mother, well, she went mad on a whole new decor for the house and ordered a truck-load of tacky knick-knacks.

Philip was endlessly ribbed for all this by his slightly awe-struck friends, and then – horror of horrors – his father had come up with the idea of sending him off to a snobby school! But at least his mother had some sense left: she drew the line at putting any kind of distance between herself and her firstborn child. He must come home to be properly fed, she insisted. The school had to be a local one.

And so Philip had had to grit his teeth – for no one could stand for long against Eric Benson’s domineering manner – and make the best of a bad job. No amount of telling him how privileged he was made a scrap of difference to young Philip as he trudged up the road each morning in his immaculate red blazer with gold and blue braid; he made up his mind to hate every minute of his new way of life. Absolutely every minute.

But of course he hadn’t. He’d gradually settled in to the school, even distinguished himself, and left at eighteen with a batch of certificates that were more than good enough to take him on to university for an engineering degree.

It was only on leaving university that the final stage of Eric Benson’s master plan was revealed, and Philip realised he was expected to take over the hardware businesses from his father.

‘With all your qualifications, lad,’ Eric had told him, throwing out his chest as he stood behind the shop counter, ‘you’ll be able to build all this into an empire for yourself. People are keen to do their own home improvements these days, and there’s big money to be made.’ He made it sound as though Philip ought to be eternally grateful, as perhaps he should; not many could expect to have such opportunities handed to them on a plate.

‘But Dad,’ he’d protested, already planning to go back to university and try for a master’s degree, ‘I didn’t spend years studying for decent qualifications just to sell spanners and plastic buckets! I didn’t, and I won’t. I’m sorry. But I won’t!’

This time he withstood the pressure from his father and the emotional blackmail from his mother. From that day on he’d had nothing to do with the family business.

Philip nodded at Tom over his Guinness. ‘Oh yes, yes, I can always go into the family business.’ His tone was heavy with scorn. ‘It’s what everyone’s always wanted. Everyone, that is, except me.’

‘Well …’ Tom swung one short leg over the other and drummed his fingers on the table, ‘… I know you’ve never been keen. But at least you have that to fall back on, haven’t you? Damn lucky you are, really, you know. Considering the alternative.’

‘The alternative,’ Phil stated unnecessarily, ‘is to move down to the Bristol office with what’s left of the London mob. And in spite of the amalgamation I can even keep my position … if I decide that’s what I want.’

Tom blew out his cheeks; Philip sounded as though he were actually considering the choice. Personally, he had soon told Spittal’s what they could do with their Bristol plans.

‘But Phil, you wouldn’t be wanting to move, would you? Not at your time of life?’

Philip met his friend’s incredulous gaze. His time of life? Did Tom see him as an old man? He didn’t feel it.

‘I don’t think this redundancy idea’s something to rush into without giving it serious thought,’ he hedged.

‘No … no. Maybe not.’ Bemused, Tom stood up and went to the bar for refills, leaving Philip alone with his thoughts.

Philip sighed when he’d gone; he had hoped Tom would understand, but he hadn’t really expected him to. Tom wouldn’t know anything about how he’d begun to feel lately, because feelings weren’t things they discussed. The trouble was that unlike Tom he was nowhere near ready to hang up his hat.

He needed a change, that was certain; needed to climb out of the rut that his life had sunk into, and Bristol seemed like an answer. The Bahamas would have been better, admittedly, but Bristol would have to suffice. Anywhere away from the area in which he had been born and bred would do. For too long he had felt as though he was still tied to his parents; still under their watchful eye. What a ridiculous state of affairs at his age!

For a long time he had wanted to escape to pastures new but it had never been practical, or so Marjorie had said. Each time the subject cropped up she had constructed a case against it. Usually it was because of the girls: they were at a crucial stage of their schooling, or too bound by their social lives. When weren’t they? But the girls had long since finished their schooling and gone on to make lives of their own. So nothing tied him and Marjie to south London any more. Nothing much would be missed.

Oh, how he longed for change! Life had become so predictable of late, with each year following the same pattern. Everything revolved almost entirely round the family circle, because Marjorie liked it that way. A great one for family, Marjorie was, particularly on birthdays and at Christmas. Birthdays demanded a slap-up meal together in a restaurant, and Christmas was celebrated at their place or at his parents’ or – a recent innovation – with their daughter Becky and her husband Steve.

Holidays, at least, they took with friends: usually Tom and Beth but sometimes with Val and Ian as well. And it nearly always had to be Spain because Beth claimed she loved it and didn’t want to try anywhere different.

They would spend most of the first week listening to Val’s long list of complaints about the hotel or scouring souvenir shops for Beth, who tended to get lost in them. The second week would pass in endless discussions on where to go next year – as if it would make any difference – and Ian would invariably make himself ill from too much beer and sun. Marjorie’s nose would turn red and start blistering towards the end of the holiday; Tom would stop speaking to Beth; and they would all come home wondering why they’d bothered to go in the first place.

When all their children were young it had been even worse, but that was thankfully in the past. They’d had a few good laughs it was true, yet one holiday inevitably became blurred with the previous one and none stood out in the memory.

Philip longed to go off with Marjorie on their own somewhere. Anywhere. It didn’t matter. But whenever he’d suggested it, Marjorie had looked at him as though he were an alien.

Philip shifted on the pub’s padded stool. His feet fidgeted beneath the table. The upheaval at Spittal’s had dug up feelings long since buried and almost forgotten. But now he must do something about those feelings before old age crept closer and it was too late. Spittal’s was showing him a way out. He would never get another chance.

‘Tom,’ he said when his friend returned, dripping their drinks over the carpet and across the table, ‘I want you to promise me something.’

‘Oh?’ Tom fixed him with a wary eye; Phil’s tone had alerted him. ‘And what would that be now?’

Philip looked away. Explaining wasn’t easy. ‘If you happen to bump into Marjorie, I’d rather you didn’t say anything to her about any of this kerfuffle. About the redundancy package I mean. And don’t tell your Beth about it either; the two of them are bound to get together before long, and then it would all come out.’

‘What? You mean …?’ Tom’s jaw began to drop. ‘But I’m taking redundancy, no question, so how … you can’t … Marjorie’s bound to wonder why you’re not leaping at the chance to do the same.’

Phil had thought about that. ‘Look, you’re two – nearly three – years older than I am. Let’s pretend there was a cut-off point and that you were given the chance of redundancy but I wasn’t; that the powers that be consider there’s still life in this old dog and they expect me to soldier on.’

‘But – Marjorie’s not stupid, Philip.’

‘She’s a little unworldly though.’

Tom knew what he meant. As with his own wife, Marjorie had never been out in the cut and thrust of big business. Both women had been content to be mothers and housewives. Marjorie would probably accept Phil’s word as gospel, not dig about asking questions. But that didn’t mean Phil could ride rough-shod over her the way he seemed intent on doing. She ought to be consulted over this important issue, given a chance to air her views, and certainly have some say in the final decision.

Tom looked this way and that, planted his stubby hands on the table and gasped like a landed fish. ‘Now let me get this straight, Phil,’ he finally managed to say, his neck reddening round his shirt collar. ‘You haven’t any intention of taking redundancy, have you? And you’re sitting there and telling me that you’re going to lie to your wife about it?’

‘Yes,’ Phil said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I have to. For the time being at least. Maybe when she’s come round to the idea … oh, I just cannot work for my father!’ His warm brown eyes pleaded for understanding. ‘I’ve never deceived Marjorie before, you know. It’ll be for the very first time. And I’m sure it’ll all work out for the best in the end.’

A difficult silence fell between them.

Tom rubbed his moustache with one hand. It made no difference to him whether it was the first, the hundredth, or the last time Phil deceived Marjorie. He might even tell a few porkies himself. But Phil? Phil, whom he had always thought of as a fair, honest sort? The man was tumbling in his estimation.

‘Well, then –’ Tom’s voice, when he finally spoke, crackled with ice ‘– perhaps it’s a good thing we’ll soon be separated, then, if you’re really going to do this. I had thought we were going to have some good years ahead of us, life-long buddies that we are. But if you’re set on going, and – and treating your wife like this, well …’

Phil might have guessed he’d have trouble with Tom. In truth he was having trouble with himself. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, draining his glass and rising. He would like to have gone into all this more fully, unburden himself to Tom, but he could see he hadn’t handled the matter very well; Tom didn’t look ripe for listening any more.

‘No,’ came Tom’s surly response. ‘I bloody don’t understand.’ Then, as Phil started to walk away, he growled, ‘I just hope your Marjorie does, the day she learns what you’ve done.’

3

Oliver Knox checked his watch. Why did Jade always have to be late? She’d turned being late into an art form. And there was no excuse this time. He knew her aerobics class had finished punctually.

Having completed his routine in the gym he’d stopped on his way to the changing room to peer through the glass panel in the studio door. The advanced aerobics session had been drawing to a close and the class – mostly women but there were a few men – had been sitting cross-legged on mats. They had reached the stage where they rolled their heads round on their necks with their eyes closed, which meant they hadn’t much more to do. He knew that soon after that the instructor would creep over to her tape recorder, switch off the snippet of classical music to which her flock was supposed to relax, and clap her hands. Then – rather stupidly, Oliver thought – everyone else would start clapping too, smiling foolishly at each other as though they had just been brought out of hypnosis.

He had stood admiring Jade for some time, for she was by far the most beautiful girl there, even with her long blonde hair scraped into a knot on top of her head. Her stylish aerobics gear – lime green crop-top with black cycle shorts – flattered her superb figure, and her amazing legs went on for yards before they ended at the ridiculously expensive trainers she’d bought last Saturday. In comparison to the other women she was an Aston Martin among a car park full of Ladas. Even the teacher appeared clumsy beside her.

Grinning to himself, and rippling his developing chest muscles – the work-outs were certainly doing the trick – Oliver had slipped away for a shower. Then he had gone on to the club bar in the basement, ordered himself a lager, and waited.

He was on his second pint before Jade turned up. She glided into the chair opposite him smiling her dazzling smile and tossing her freshly-washed hair. But by then Oliver had forgotten his pride in her; he had sunk into a brooding mood.

‘You’ll be late for your own effing funeral,’ he told her. He was sitting with his chin propped on one hand, a small cigar poked between the second and third fingers, and was unaware that he appeared to her to have smoke coming through the top of his boot-polish-black head.

‘Oh dear,’ she soothed, trying not to smile, ‘have we had a hard day?’ She leaned across the table and pecked his pouting lips.

Oliver glared at her all the more. He hated not being taken seriously. ‘It was going all right until I heard about Benson, but then–’

‘Benson?’ She plucked up the little menu, glanced over it and transferred her attention to the ‘Specials’ listed on the wall. ‘I don’t think I know Benson. I’m going to have the venison this time. What’ll you have? Oh, and some of that lovely wine we had the other day. Which one was it, do you remember?’

‘The most expensive one on the list,’ he growled. ‘Have you seen my Gold Card statement? It came in yesterday’s post.’

‘No.’ Jade turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘My Visa was bad enough. Why should I want to know about yours? Horrors! But so what? I could eat a whole horse.’

She studied the menu more closely, but she’d already made up her mind. She called out her order to the barman – whom they both knew well since they spent at least two, and often three, evenings at the country club – and sat back looking around.

Oliver grew more disgruntled at this blatant lack of attention. ‘You do know who Benson is. Philip Benson. Remember? I told you all about him. He’s one of the London mob. A rather significant one.’

‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’ Jade looked faintly put out. ‘Well, I beg your pardon, Olly, but I can’t be expected to remember everything. My head’s full of company law at the moment.’ But she was wasting her breath. It was no excuse, as far as Oliver was concerned, that her law exams were less than a year away and that there was such a lot to cram in: she should have remembered who Benson was.

Oliver had made a lot of fuss about Spittal’s restructuring plans over the past few months. He had been fully counting on promotion to sales director in place of Platt, who was retiring. Instead, although yet to be officially confirmed, it looked as though this bloke Benson might be coming down from London to take the job and Oliver would have to stay put as his assistant.

‘There’s no justice in this world,’ Oliver complained into his glass of lager before tipping the contents down his throat. ‘No justice at all. I mean, he’s fifty, for God’s sake. Why would they want to keep on an old wrinkly like him?’

Jade decided it would be prudent not to speak her mind. It was obvious that the powers-that-be thought Benson the more able man.

‘You know what your MD’s like,’ she reminded him. ‘He’s hopelessly old-fashioned. Moralistic. Stuck in his ways … He’s bound to go for an older man, isn’t he? One of the old school.’

‘Well, I only hope he knows what he’s playing at, bucking current trends. And how the hell did I come to be lumbered with an anachronism like that? I tell you, Jade, if I’d known what the set-up would be like I’d never have joined this firm.’

‘Your time will come, Olly.’ Jade put out a comforting hand.

‘Oh yes. When I’ve one foot in the grave and no teeth.’

Jade hooked one side of her hair behind her ear. ‘I suppose …’ her blue-green eyes flickered over Oliver’s face ‘… I suppose this Philip Benson’s a married man?’

‘How the hell would I know? Though come to think of it maybe he is. There was a discussion in the office as to where he might live, and someone suggested that one of those big new houses on the Brightwells estate might suit him. Personnel are sending him the details, anyway.’

‘God, no!’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘Not that hellhole. He’d have to be out of his skull.’

‘Yeah!’ Oliver managed a smile; it amused him to think of his new superior, whose guts he already hated on principle, coming to live with the plebs. True, some of the houses were quite desirable if you liked that kind of thing; but the ambience was all wrong. Brightwells was nothing but a huge town over-spill. Accommodation for the masses. A sprawling nonentity hastily thrown up to meet the ever-growing demand for executive-type housing.

Oliver dragged at the cigar and blew the smoke over their heads. ‘So I suppose he must be married,’ he concluded, ‘if they think he needs a place like that. What difference does it make, anyway?’

‘Well … I was just wondering. Perhaps it helped him get the job. I mean –’ she hurried on ‘– it might count with your MD, mightn’t it, whereas … now don’t look at me like that, Olly, I’m not advocating that you and I should be married, even after your divorce has gone through.’ She flushed, tossing her hair again. ‘You know I’m not.’

Olly regarded her carefully. Did she really mean that? You never could tell with women. Most of them couldn’t be trusted. They would swear blind they didn’t want something, when all the time it was the very thing they did want. Like babies. Goodness me, no, they’d protest. Whatever would I do with one of those? And half the time they’d be glued to the Mothercare window. Same with marriage. Who’d want to be married these days? they would claim. It’s a perfectly meaningless institution. Only a piece of paper … oh look, what a gorgeous ring! And I just love white weddings, don’t you?

Jade, to be fair, hadn’t been like that so far, and they’d been living together for nearly six months. But then, he had made things crystal clear to her from the start. Since his first shot at marriage had been such a failure, he told her, he believed that ‘open’ relationships were a safer bet, and had gone on to explain exactly what he meant by that. He was nothing if not honest.

‘I love you, Jade,’ he’d said, ‘but to be perfectly frank with you I can’t promise to be completely faithful. I’m not that kind of man. I need to feel free to – er – engage in other relationships from time to time. Nothing permanent, mind. Just the odd fling. I’d always come back to you …’

Seeing Jade’s startled expression – the involuntary parting of her lips, the narrowing of her cat-like eyes – he had hastened to reassure her. ‘Of course, it would work both ways. You’d be free, as well, you know. To go with other guys.’ Jade said nothing.

‘And if, on the odd occasion,’ he blustered on, since he appeared to have blown his chances and had nothing more to lose, ‘if on the odd occasion the opportunity of a swap came up – you know, at a party or something – well, it could be great. Really. It would. I mean – have you ever tried it? Afterwards you compare notes. And that’s the best part of it, you know, telling each other about different experiences – in bed – and – God,’ he’d wound up, hastily adjusting his trousers, ‘I’m getting horny just thinking about it.’

Two plates of venison arrived and Oliver stubbed out his cigar. ‘Our not being married hasn’t bothered H J up until now,’ he told Jade.

‘H J?’

‘Holy Joe. Big boss. Jocelyn Hemmingway-Judd.’

‘Oh, him. Well, no, maybe not, who knows?’ She shrugged, so that her baggy cotton sweater slipped to one side revealing a naked shoulder. ‘But it might have affected your promotability without your realising it. In his eyes –’ she made her own goggle ‘– I presume, we’re living in sin.’

Oliver waited while the barman finished glugging wine into their glasses. ‘Living in sin,’ he muttered in disgust. ‘What a load of cock. It’s the job that counts, surely? The way you do it; the results you achieve.

‘Cheers, Tony,’ he dismissed the barman, and began to attack his food. But his mind was still with H J.

‘Perhaps this new guy’s not married,’ Jade said in an attempt to lighten his mood. ‘He could be gay, you know. H J wouldn’t be happy about that.’

Oliver considered the matter. He would like to think it a possibility, because Jade was right: H J wouldn’t be able to stomach that. ‘Now how am I supposed to know whether Benson’s gay or not? I’ve not even met him yet. If it’s anything to go by, word’s come down from London to the women in our office that he’s quite fanciable. The secretaries are wetting their knickers in anticipation.’

‘Really?’ Jade grinned. She had become inured to Oliver’s coarseness. ‘I thought you said he was old.’

‘Not too old for that, apparently. Even you might fancy him.’ Oliver chewed, emptied his mouth, and stabbed the air with his fork. ‘Hey, that’s not a bad idea!’

‘What?’ Jade had a quick brain, but couldn’t follow his thoughts on this occasion.

‘Well, how about –’ he began to chuckle at his idea ‘– how about we invite him over to dinner when he moves down here and that you get on rather well with him – follow my drift? And then, when he’s nicely drooling over you and making a complete arse of himself, it’s somehow spread around the office that he’s been pestering his junior’s girlfriend. Even tried to force himself on her. Hey presto! One disgraced sales director’s booted back to the smoke. And then yours truly steps in to fill his shoes.’

Jade let out a gasp, nearly choked on a sip of wine, and sat back fanning her face. ‘Oliver B Knox! Really! You’ll be the death of me.’

‘It would be worth trying it on, though. Think of the extra money.’

‘Only you could be so daft as to dream up such a preposterous scheme.’

‘Full of imagination, I am. And it isn’t all that daft. Or original really, as you must know in your line of work. Women are doing it all the time, aren’t they – claiming harassment and rape, and no one can prove a thing?’

Jade glanced coldly across at him. ‘I hope you aren’t suggesting that women make up things like that – just for revenge or compensation? And in any case, you know I’m not allowed to handle that type of work.’

Jade never missed a chance to air a grievance about her job: she wasn’t yet a qualified legal executive and, as soon as she was, she wanted to go on from there to become a solicitor. It was a long, hard, highly competitive road on which she had set herself – especially having to work and study at the same time – and all the experience she was gaining at Hart, Bruce and Thomson’s was in conveyancing. She longed to move on to more interesting work; saw herself as the star role in court dealing with the more contentious side of the law – criminal, perhaps, or marital. Something to sink her teeth into.

‘Jade,’ the doddery old senior partner was always telling her, ‘you cannot run before you can walk.’ Some days she felt like kicking him out of the way; she would soon show him her mettle.

Oliver still had his gleaming black eyes fixed on her. ‘Would that be a definite “no” then?’ he prompted. ‘Do I take it you don’t want to play at being a femme fatale?’

He waited for her to say something, but she carried right on with her meal, wrapped up in her own private world. She obviously didn’t think he deserved an answer. Which was a pity. He was rather taken with the idea himself.

4

Marjorie sat up in bed trying to read her library book while waiting for Philip to return from taking his parents home. What a ghastly evening it had been. Normally she would have been halfway through her latest thriller by now, but with the day’s events blotting everything out she was stuck on page three and had no idea of the plot. She kept staring up at the wallpaper, not seeing it. But all she could think of was Bristol.

Bristol? Oh, no, no, no. Not now. Not when she was on the verge of an exciting new challenge in her life – one that she needed with increasing desperation the more she thought about it all.

After years of looking after Phil and the girls – enjoyable though that had been – she yearned to exercise her brain, to use her skills, and to achieve, in doing so, a degree of personal satisfaction. More than that: she had a deep-down need to assert herself and prove to Phil that she wasn’t as dependent on him as he’d always seemed to think, that she was an equal partner in the marriage with independent ideas and a life of her own to be lived.

But of course he knew nothing of her recent way of thinking, so as soon as he came back to the house she would try to explain. Would it make any difference to his plans, though? Could she get him to change his mind? He’d seemed so adamant that they had to go to Bristol, but even now she could hardly believe he was serious. They had lived in London all their lives.

To be honest, their suburb was no longer the place it had been – in fact it had changed almost beyond recognition like most of suburbia had done – but it had always been their home. How could Phil think of moving away? The matter of the shops aside, how could he expect her to leave Becky when she was about to have her first baby? How could he expect her to abandon this house with its comforting familiarity, their relatives and friends. Moreover how could he take her from her much-loved garden? If nothing else occurred to him, surely he must realise how much that meant to her?

Why, only that afternoon, inspired by Sheila’s gardener and urged on by the glorious sunshine she had hurried home to give the grass its third cut of the season. There would just be time, she’d surmised, to fit it in before her in-laws arrived. Their meal had already been taken care of: she had one of her home-baked pork pies lined up in the fridge, and the pastry had turned out deliciously golden and buttery – exactly as Philip liked it. With a salad prepared and new potatoes waiting to be boiled there had been practically nothing left to do. She’d only hoped that the subject they would be discussing would not spoil everyone’s enjoyment of it.

Marjorie turned back two pages, wondering how many words her eyes had travelled over without her brain making any sense of them. Pork pie, indeed! If she’d only had the success of the meal to worry about!

Although the garden had slipped into shadow and was rapidly cooling to a chill, the sky remained light and high. A peacefulness lay over everything, save the odd bird flapping from tree to tree and chattering to its mate. She would have loved to carry on pottering about on what promised to be a heavenly evening, but Philip was due home any minute.

She’d opened the garage door in readiness for him, hurried into the house, and checked that his slippers were by the back door – this last duty being performed with a guilty glance over her shoulder, as though her daughters were in hiding, watching.

‘Mum!’ they would have chorused had they been there, raising their eyes at each other. They agreed on very little, being opposites in character, but on one thing they did concur: their mother was a hopeless case.

‘This has nothing whatever to do with feminism,’ Marjorie had vainly tried to advise them whenever they bemoaned the way she lavished attention on her man. ‘It’s simply a matter of common courtesy.’ At which the girls would giggle behind their hands until their mother went on to remind them that she had carried out much the same little acts of loving kindness for them as well throughout their childhood, and didn’t they intend to do the same for their families when they had them? She sincerely hoped they would.

Marjorie had often fretted after these exchanges, wondering what selfish little monsters she had brought into the world. Had she failed in her duty as a parent?

But, back in the kitchen and arranging the salad in a bowl, she’d consoled herself that the girls seemed to have turned out well enough after all: Becky had found herself a husband, in spite of her dreadful bossiness – a trait that she had unfortunately inherited from her grandfather. And Em, eighteen months her junior, had astonished them all by plumping for a ‘caring’ profession. She whose favourite back-chat throughout her teens had been ‘see if I care’, had suddenly decided to do precisely that. She was now in her final year at nursing college.

Marjorie crushed a sliver of garlic and whisked up a vinaigrette dressing, her thoughts suddenly changing track. Why hadn’t Philip told her about Spittal’s closing? She was sure he must have known before the local media got hold of it. Why had he kept it to himself?

Well, all right, she had kept her little secret from him, as Sheila had reminded her, but she didn’t think him capable of doing the same. How well, though, could you ever know someone – even someone you had lived with for nearly twenty-five years? It was a disconcerting thought. She was still frowning when Philip’s car swooped on to the drive.

It was soon apparent, by his slackened tie and the whiff of rotten apples on his breath, that he was guilty of something he rarely did: he’d been drinking on the way home.

‘When did you find time to do that?’ she asked, nodding toward the wrought iron clock above the kitchen table. The clock was in the shape of a sunburst and had jerked out the seconds for them with its distinctive throaty rasp since the day they’d moved in. Like the contents of the rest of the house it had a dated look about it, Phil’s early distaste for materialism having stayed with him. Nothing was ever replaced in this house unless it fell apart – and even then Phil thought twice about it.

Marjorie had never much cared about the state of the house. As long as her garden was in immaculate order she was happy. Let one of the girls gouge a groove in the dining table and she would hardly turn a hair; let one of them drop a doll in her display of daffodils and she would turn purple.

‘Find time to do what?’ Philip was gazing up at the clock, not seeing any connection.

‘Find time for drinks in the pub on your way home. You’re only a few minutes later than usual.’

‘Oh … there wasn’t much going on at the office today, so I left a little early.’ He shrugged off his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair and stood looking down at it. He slipped off his tie and coiled it. When he glanced up he had a lost look about him. It seemed he had something to say and had no idea where to begin.

Suddenly remorseful, because she’d been so busy thinking about herself that she hadn’t realised quite what his firm’s closure would mean to him, she went over and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Oh, Philip! Don’t worry about how to tell me the news. I know about Spittal’s already. I heard it on the radio. And I’m so sorry that it’s had to happen to you; I know it must be a shock, but –’

‘You know?’ Alarm was plain in his eyes. ‘Good grief … I suppose it was bound to get around. Honestly, love, I meant to tell you all about it myself. I wanted to break the news gently.’

‘Well, now you’ve nothing to break. And your parents know about it as well. I went round and told your mother, and she’ll have explained everything to your father. And they’ll be here any minute, as it happens. I’ve asked them to come round so we can all have a talk about it.’

Philip pushed back his hair. It was thick, even if it was grey, and was unruly. Normally it didn’t trouble him, unless he was ill at ease. Then he would rake it with his fingers or try to smooth it down. ‘Talk?’ he repeated slowly. ‘About what?’

‘About your redundancy, of course, and what you’re going to do now that Spittal’s is closing. And about what we’ve all been thinking …’

Her voice trailed away at the sight of his grim expression. She put down the dish of coleslaw she’d been giving a quick stir, dropping the spoon with a clatter; suddenly it no longer seemed to matter that the mayonnaise dressing had collected at the bottom of the bowl.

‘Spittal’s isn’t closing,’ he said, his lips set hard in a line.

‘Yes it is, Phil. I told you, I heard it on the radio.’

‘No, Marjorie, no. It isn’t, strictly speaking, closing.’ Then he’d uttered the words that had sent a chill crawling up her spine. ‘It’s moving its premises to Bristol.’

Marjorie closed her library book and let it drop to her lap. All hell had broken loose a minute later when Eric and Sheila arrived for their meal. Phil had been horrified and angry at what they’d all been planning for him behind his back. Everything had come spilling out, even before they sat themselves down at the table – about how helpful Marjorie had been in the shops and how they’d decided she should take them over now that Eric wanted to retire – it was all laid bare.

Phil had turned an unpleasant shade of red, and had made it clear in no uncertain terms that it simply wasn’t on. Neither he nor Marjorie would be able to take over the shops, he’d told them; he had to go to Bristol in accordance with his employers’ wishes, and that was that. Redundancy? Not for him, and he couldn’t have afforded to take it anyway.

The pie was cut but no one enjoyed it. Marjorie had sat stony faced, Sheila pink and embarrassed, while Eric expressed his feelings at length and grew so agitated that he drank his wife’s glass of wine by mistake as well as his own, and then helped himself to more. In the end Phil had to run them home in his own car because his mother’s health prevented her from walking even the two blocks back to their house, and his father’s swimming head prevented him from driving them himself.

Marjorie snatched up her book once more, Phil’s return being heralded by the dull thud of a loose paving stone beneath the bedroom window. Propping the book open against her knees she tried to focus on the print. Perhaps, if she took no notice of him, he’d give the matter a rest. She’d made it clear that his plans didn’t suit her; he just needed time for the fact to sink in.

But he couldn’t leave the subject alone. He came into the room, walked round to her side of the bed and sat by her legs. She could no longer ignore him because she had to shift her balance on the mattress.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ he asked after a while.

‘Tell you what?’

‘About working for Dad all this time.’ He gave an incredulous gasp as though he still couldn’t take it in. ‘What did you think you were doing?’

‘What do you think I was doing? Helping out, of course.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, what did you think you were up to, not telling me about it? I realised you helped my mother a lot, but I had no idea you were working practically full-time for my father too. You’ve made me look such a fool.’

Marjorie bunched up a piece of frill on the edge of the duvet cover, her hands beginning to tremble with suppressed anger. Could he think of nobody but himself? And couldn’t he at least give her credit for the way she’d managed to pack so much in to each day? She’d obviously succeeded in making him feel as pampered and cosseted as he always had been – not an easy task on top of doing everything else – otherwise he’d have noticed something amiss.

‘I always meant to tell you. I would have done … but it’s your own fault, really. If you’d been more reasonable, where your father’s concerned … And anyway I was bored with being at home all day. Couldn’t you see that?’

‘You never said you were bored.’ He sounded miffed; insulted that being his wife hadn’t been fulfilment enough for her.

‘What would you have done if I had? Suggested I join the Women’s Institute? I already belonged to that. And the Housewives’ Register. And the PTA when the girls were still at school.’ She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘These things are all very well, Phil … Oh, I suppose I just outgrew them. I never meant to work for your father. It just sort of happened one day when he needed some help with his VAT.’

A weary sigh whined from him. ‘It’s made everything so much worse!’

Getting up from the bed he walked over to the window and looked out. Marjorie had been loath to close the curtains against the setting sun, but the huge orange ball had dropped behind the houses opposite some time ago and it was dark. Nevertheless, Phil still stood looking out.

‘Fancy coming up with this crazy idea of taking over the shops! Don’t you think you should have consulted me before putting impossible notions in Dad’s head?’

‘What’s crazy about it?’ She thumped her fists into the duvet. ‘And why should it be impossible?’

‘Well –’

‘You’re surely not implying that I’m incapable.’

‘I didn’t say that, now did I?’

‘You didn’t need to. It’s what you were thinking, though, wasn’t it?’

‘I hadn’t actually got that far. What I’m saying is … well … that you can’t.’

‘Well, of course I won’t be able to now. Not if you insist on taking me to Bristol. But I wasn’t to know about your plans beforehand, was I?’

‘I didn’t mean that, and you know it.’

‘No?’ Marjorie was lost. ‘Well, what do you mean, then? I don’t get it.’

But as she glared into his face she saw, to her astonishment, that he’d adopted the taut, pitying expression that she recognised all too well. It was the one that came upon him only rarely, at such times as he could not avoid the usually unmentioned subject of her parents’ demise.

Marjorie’s mother and father had died from carbon monoxide poisoning fifteen years previously. A faulty water heater had been responsible, although Marjorie had never been able to look at it that way. She saw it as largely her fault and constantly blamed herself for not being in the right place at the right time.

To add to the horror of it all it had been Marjorie’s misfortune to discover them. She had called round to see them one Saturday morning with some school photographs of Becky and Em. Fortunately the girls had not been with her – they were out doing ‘ballet and tap’.

Certain that her parents would be at home she hadn’t even taken a key. She had knocked and rung with no result and eventually spotted them through a window at the side of the house. The tableau was one that would for ever be printed on her mind: the pattern the sun was making on the black and white tiled floor, the day’s post half-opened on one of the work-tops, two untouched cups of coffee on a wooden-handled tray, and the horribly familiar clothes that the two inert figures were wearing as they slumped together by the back door.

Later it was realised that the key had been removed from the keyhole, probably for safety reasons following a spate of burglaries in the area, and hidden under the biscuit tin. If Marjorie’s parents had ever been conscious of their possible fate, the locked door and the missing key had effectively sealed it.

But, Marjorie now wondered, if this is what Phil was thinking about, what had it to do with her ability to run the shops? Unless … was he alluding to the fact that she had had a breakdown after the event? A perfectly understandable breakdown, surely, under the circumstances? And if so did he really think it had any bearing on her present-day capabilities?

It proved to be the case as his next remarks showed.

‘The responsibility. The stress. The long hours …’ he was saying.

‘But I’ve been doing most of the work for months!’ Oh, how exasperating he could be at times! He stifled her with his over-protectiveness. It was like being a child not allowed to grow up. A prisoner driven mad for escape. ‘Phil, I really don’t need molly-coddling like this. That was fifteen years ago. Just because I cracked up a little then, doesn’t mean I can’t handle a bit of stress. A certain amount of stress is essential in life. It keeps you on your toes and functioning. I know I can manage those shops.’

‘Well, I’m afraid you won’t get the chance to prove what you can do, one way or the other.’ He drew the curtains across the window. ‘And I won’t be doing it either.’

‘Phil!’ She growled his name through clenched teeth. Her dream was slipping from her grasp. The shops had been her escape route – in fact, her only means of escape. Because what could possibly replace them? No one else on this earth would put her in charge of three shops. No one else would put her in charge of anything. She had no formal qualifications. No CV. She would never get past the first post.

Clutching at straws, she found herself willing to compromise where only hours before the idea had been abhorrent.

‘Look,’ she said putting one finger and a thumb to her temples where a muzziness signalled the start of a headache, ‘O?, so you haven’t been made redundant, but couldn’t you resign from Spittal’s instead of going down to Bristol? Then you’d be free to take over the shops and we could both run them together.’

‘Oh really?’ he scoffed. ‘And live on what, may I ask? They don’t bring in that much profit, you know – and there’d be four of us to support. Anyway, even if it were possible I could never take over from Dad. He simply wouldn’t let me, and you know it.’

‘But of course he –’

‘He wouldn’t. Not in reality. Oh, he’d willingly hand over the reins, I know that, but he’d still be there, breathing down my neck, telling me what to do. He would, you know he would.’ Arms gesticulating he paced the room. ‘You’ve no doubt experienced it for yourself. He can’t keep out of it, can be? Can’t trust anyone but himself. As soon as he’s set you to carry out a task, he starts forcing himself in on the act.’

Marjorie’s silence, her compressed lips, told him he was right. Working for Eric could be frustrating.

‘You see, I do know what goes on in Dad’s little empire; he made me work there in my holidays, remember? Even as a young lad I could see that staff turned over at an astonishing rate, and that managers came and went. I don’t suppose anything’s changed. Many’s a time when you would have had to bite your tongue in front of him, Marjie, and try to smooth people out behind his back. Tell me if I’m wrong.’

But Marjorie couldn’t do that. ‘What you say is true,’ she agreed, ‘but I’m sure he’d stay out of the way now. He isn’t a young man any more and he’ll need to take things easy.’

Phil came back to the bed and fished under his side of the duvet for pyjamas. Finding none there he went to a drawer for a clean pair and began to undress.

It isn’t fair, Marjorie thought morosely as his lean legs were stripped bare. Phil could eat what he liked – and he liked all the ‘wrong’ things – and still not put on any weight. He had much the same slim figure that he’d had the day they married, which was more than could be said about her. She slipped down on the pillows pulling the duvet up to her chin.

‘No,’ Phil went on, ferreting in the wardrobe for a trouser-hanger, ‘what Dad should do is sell up and get out. Think about it intelligently: the shops are all too small and they’re in the wrong places. “Little shops round the corner” are a thing of the past. People would rather drive out to a superstore any day. Get more choice and pay less.’

Marjorie sank further down the bed. What he was saying had a ring of truth. Each year was proving more of a struggle than the last, but only because Eric refused to get up to date. She felt sure there was room for a lot of improvement. But all Phil seemed to want to do was to go on banging nails into the coffin containing her dreams.

‘And when he’s sold them off – though who would want them now heaven only knows – he should invest whatever they bring in. If he’s careful he should have enough money to buy professional care for the two of them for the rest of their lives.’

‘So that you can wash your hands of them?’ Marjorie was open-mouthed. To think that Phil could be so mean. Was it right that his parents should have to pay for care? Shouldn’t it be provided freely by their children? But of course, the world wasn’t like that any more, although she had thought Phil, being of the old school, would have seen things differently. Increasingly she had the feeling she no longer knew the man she had married.

She watched him screw up his underwear and toss it on to the heap in the bottom of the only built-in cupboard that the room possessed. In spite of his words she thought she could see him struggling with his conscience.

‘I have no intention of washing my hands of anyone,’ he said. ‘I’ll help them to find someone reliable to manage the shops so that Dad can retire if he really wants to, though I don’t believe for a minute that he will, and we’ll get someone to help Mum as well. OK? I shall always be around for them when there’s a crisis.’ He paused before shutting the cupboard door. ‘Bristol isn’t so very far away, you know.’

5

With the entire contents of their home somewhere between London and Bristol, Philip and Marjorie checked into a hotel for the night. Falling into what purported to be a four-poster bed – well, it did have four rough posts meagrely swathed in cheap curtaining – they groaned with exhaustion.

‘Soon be there,’ Philip said in the awful hearty tone he’d adopted ever since Marjorie’s last bastions of defence had crumbled.

She had resisted this disruption in their lives with all her strength. Childishly she had at first adopted the attitude that if she ignored Phil’s plans they would go away, but of course they hadn’t. He’d continued to be as determined to move as she’d been to stay put. The arguments they’d had over the weeks! None of which had done any good.

She had had to leave everything in the end, because what alternative did she have? Break up the marriage and leave Phil – or bow to his judgement as per usual? But of course leaving him was unthinkable. She had loved him since the day she’d set eyes on him and still did.

She thought she’d lost him once, years ago when he’d gone off to university. Surely that was the end of their close, but entirely innocent and platonic friendship, she’d thought. Never would he return to her, still unattached, and see her in a romantic light. And yet the unlikely had happened. He’d sown his oats and come back to her.

What had been the attraction of ‘the girl next door’? she had asked herself at times in later years. But she hadn’t enquired too closely: she’d merely been grateful for the fact.

No, she could never leave her husband. But he did deserve to suffer a little for dragging her away from all that she knew and loved, so at the moment he was firmly consigned to the dog-house.

‘Just think,’ he went on remorselessly, ‘tomorrow night we’ll be sleeping in our brand new home.’

‘In our dreadfully saggy old bed,’ she grunted. Shame had seized them when the removal men, in full view of the neighbours, had carried out the cumbersome double divan. Neither of them had realised quite how decrepit it had become.

Perhaps Phil saw his wife in much the same way, Marjorie thought, adjusting her pillows for the night; she had been around so long he simply didn’t notice her any more. Because if he looked at her with just one ounce of interest wouldn’t he realise how unhappy he’d made her?

She’d tried to tell him, tried to explain her feelings and her needs, but when she’d come out with words like ‘escape’ and ‘challenge’ it had sounded to him as though a move to new pastures was exactly what she needed. He’d even admitted somewhat sheepishly that he’d been feeling a need for change himself. He’d not been able to see – or hadn’t wanted to see – that her ideas were not at all the same as his.

New pastures! Tears collected under her eyelids as she thought about her lovely old garden and Phil’s apparent indifference to it. Maybe it had been stupid of her, but she had mown and clipped and tidied, right up to the last moment. Philip, seemingly so easily able to shed all his old attachments, had been irritated to find her dead-heading the last of the tulips while the men were carting the dustbin away.

‘There won’t be anyone here to appreciate your efforts,’ he told her, gazing around for the last time at the immaculate scene. He might have been surveying crop-damage, judging by the look on his face. ‘Anyway, the relocation company will be taking care of all this. It’s their responsibility now.’ He glanced up at the guttering as though, in accordance with sod’s law, it might come clattering down at this crucial stage of the transaction and he would yet have to see to its repair. He really couldn’t wait to turn his back on it all, it seemed.

Running a hand for the last time over the perfect globe of her favourite Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Nana’, Marjorie had doubted that anyone would lavish as much loving care on her prized specimens as she had. Over the years she had painstakingly cultivated every inch of the hundred-foot plot to create a miniature paradise. It was her proudest achievement – after the girls, of course.

When she and Phil had first moved in, the garden had contained only a rectangle of grass, one cherry tree, a grave-like island bed and a straight concrete path. It seemed inconceivable that a 1930s semi could have remained so unaltered throughout its previous ownership, but there it was. And it stayed that way for the first two years of their marriage. Philip had mown the lawn, when pressed, and Marjorie had weeded the bed.

Her passion for gardening had not begun until Becky’s first summer. Having rocked the baby to silence in her pram, she would stretch herself out under the cherry tree beside her and try to grab a little sleep. But while her body craved rest from the hard work that one small child seemed to generate, her mind could not ignore her surroundings. She found herself longing to conceal the bare wood fence, to grow something against the house, to erect a trellis against a too-keen-to-gossip neighbour.

Soon she found herself doing more than pulling weeds. She scattered seeds, cadged cuttings, scraped money from the housekeeping for minuscule shrubs. And Philip was nagged into doing a bit more than just the mowing; he put up trellises, screened the dustbin, and relaid the path with stepping-stones. In time the garden took shape. Now largely Marjorie’s preserve since Phil had been far too busy in recent years, it was the envy of all who saw it … or had been.

A tear trickled towards her ear, threatening to dampen the hotel’s lumpy pillow, and as she reached up to wipe it away Phil went on in his bright, bracing tone: ‘It’s going to be fun, you know.’

Lying snugly within the confines of the four-poster he set out his plans for their future life. There would be new places to investigate, new friends to be made, new neighbours to meet. A number of the neighbours would be Spittal’s employees. ‘Brightwells is so handy for them, you see.’

None of them was known to Marjorie though. The only Spittal’s people she knew were the redundant ones being left behind in London. And new friends? How would they make new friends? It was something they hadn’t had to do for a long time, and those they’d had up until now had been acquired with no conscious effort that she could recall. They’d just happened.

But she must stop this destructive line of thought; it wouldn’t get her anywhere. Looking backwards was pointless. She must start addressing the future. Be positive. Take life by the scruff of the neck and make it work for her. Yes, that’s what she would do: find herself a new role and build a whole new life. Somehow she must be able to claw her way back to the state of happiness and hope that had been hers until so recently. Couldn’t she? Surely it wasn’t that impossible?

And certainly her problems appeared less daunting the following morning as she spread sweet jelly-like marmalade on cold triangles of brittle toast. The sun was shining in a cloudless haze of blue, and she could almost feel in holiday mood as she gazed through the hotel window.

Phil drummed his fingers on his place mat, impatient to take her to the new house. ‘First you complain they’ve brought the toast before you’re ready for it,’ he grumbled, ‘then you wolf six slices.’

‘Moving’s given me an appetite,’ she said, and went on crunching slowly.

‘Aren’t you keen to see the new house?’ His eyes danced as though he had a huge, mysterious Christmas present waiting for her.

So far she had not set eyes on their new home. Philip had acquired it entirely on his own, having seen it briefly on a visit to his new place of work. Such had been Marjorie’s resentment that she had steadfastly refused to go down to Bristol with him on that occasion, nor had she been anywhere near it since. She’d been curious about it, naturally, and now the thought of it gave her a fluttery sensation inside – what woman wouldn’t feel stirrings of interest at the prospect of a brand new house? – but she wasn’t going to let on to Philip.

She’d merely sniffed when he’d first shown her the artist’s impression of Plot 19, The Paddock, Brightwells. He had thrust the estate agent’s brochure at her the minute he’d arrived home from his trip, crossing his heart and swearing to die that the house he’d found for them looked just like the picture on the front. It was ready for immediate occupancy, too, he told her, the couple who’d originally intended buying it having dropped out, and the builders had set an incentive to exchange contracts within a month – an incentive that Phil told her he was keen to take advantage of.

‘Why have the couple dropped out?’ Marjorie asked, drying her hands on the kitchen towel and studying the picture. It was a classy-looking place, admittedly, and she quite liked looking at houses even though she had no intention of moving out of the one she was in, so she took the details into the through-room and spread them about her on the settee.

Phil followed her like an eager puppy. ‘I don’t know why they dropped out, exactly. The agent didn’t say. People do change their minds, you know.’

‘Not usually at so late a stage,’ Marjorie argued. She smelt a rat already. There must be something wrong with it, although it certainly looked fine on paper.

‘A spacious lounge,’ she muttered to herself, skipping through the blurb, ‘ample dining room and a Victorian-style conservatory?’ Not only that but a study, too, where Phil could keep his astronomy books. And the kitchen was an absolute knockout. Enjoying cooking as much as she did, it was hard not to feel a thrill.

She studied her husband for a moment. ‘You say those people had even chosen the bathroom tiles, and all the fittings and carpets?’

‘Yes, yes, they had. But nothing we wouldn’t have chosen ourselves. That’s the beauty of it all: we could move in straight away.’ His eyes glazed over. ‘Just imagine! No more worries about this jerry-built heap. No more patching up the roof, or the dodgy bit of guttering round the back …’

‘Bit on the pricey side for the provinces, isn’t it?’

Phil waggled his hand judiciously. ‘So-so.’

Marjorie frowned; events felt as though they were racing along at a rate of knots beneath her reluctant feet. Phil had told her the other day that they wouldn’t even have to sell their own house before buying the new one: the relocation company would take it on. All they had to do once the legal side had been completed was to move out with their furniture.

He’d been drip-feeding her such tit-bits of information for days by then, no doubt hoping to wean her towards full acceptance of his plans. Aware of his tactics, she had armoured herself well against them.

‘You can manage to afford this –’ she flapped the brochure ‘– but you can’t afford to go in with your father? I don’t quite see your logic.’

‘I’ve told you a hundred times –’

‘Three bathrooms? Three?’ She pounced on a black and white room plan. ‘What would we need three bathrooms for?’ In her mind’s eye she saw a lorry load of Harpic trundling up to the front door, a trailer of toilet rolls dragging behind. ‘And five bedrooms!’ she gasped. It would be like running a boarding house. She looked up at her husband as though he had taken leave of his senses.

‘You were worried about leaving our friends,’ he reminded her. ‘Well, that’s why we’ll need extra rooms – for when they come down to visit us. And for the girls, of course.’

‘Our friends?’ Marjorie snorted. ‘If Beth and Tom are anything to go by we’ll never see any of them again.’

The house details forgotten for a moment, Marjorie stared into space. ‘I simply don’t understand it. Beth and Tom were so … well, uppity, I thought, when we saw them the other day.’

They had met up by accident at a mutual friend’s house the day after Spittal’s closure was announced, and the minute Tom and Beth had put in an appearance the atmosphere had noticeably chilled. Naturally Spittal’s plans had been first on the list for discussion, but Tom and Beth had stood to one side looking awkward, even frosty, and had hardly attempted to join in.

Marjorie had come away puzzled and not a little hurt. Philip had gone quiet too, so she presumed he was feeling the same. ‘It’s almost as if they were jealous of us,’ she remarked on their way home in the car, ‘jealous because you’ve been given the opportunity to move with the firm and Tom hasn’t. Funny, I never would have thought they could be like that. Would you?’ But Philip, offering no comment, simply stared at the road ahead.

Marjorie had smiled grimly; she would have liked to reassure Beth that she’d be delighted to change places with her any day, and would have said as much if it had just been the two of them having a cosy chat, without Phil there, ready to glare his disapproval. As it was, she had pretended a resigned acceptance of her fate and said little.

Turning back to the brochure she wondered what Beth would do if confronted with a huge new Tudor-style house at Brightwells. She peered more closely at the artist’s impression and feigned an innocent expression

‘What sort of trees are these?’ She knew that as far as new gardens went, two rolls of turf and some chicken wire were all you were likely to be given.

Phil fixed her with his most quelling expression. ‘You have to plant those yourself.’

‘This one’s bigger than the garage.’ She jabbed her finger at a large, impossibly green willow tree, arching over a perfect lawn. There were none of those messy bits of twig and leaf lying about underneath it either. ‘Take all day to dig a hole for a tree like that,’ she scoffed, ‘and then you’d need ten men.’

‘Marjorie. Please. Don’t be tiresome. I know you’re going to miss the garden here, but just think what you could do with this plot. You’d have a whole new canvas to make your mark on.’ He rustled through the leaflets in search of a plan of the entire ‘paddock’. ‘Look, the garden’s going to be a bit smaller than we’re used to, I know, but you’ve been saying lately that this one will soon be too much for you to keep up with, and I’m sure you could make the new one just as nice …’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure I could. Given twenty-odd years and a fortune. We’d have to go back there on day trips from our nursing home to see how it was all coming along.’

Phil flung down the specifications.

‘I can see there’s no pleasing you,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know why I bother to try.’

She jumped up from the settee. ‘You know how you can please me,’ she wailed back at him. ‘You can tell me we’re staying put. You know how I hate the thought of moving. At our time of life it’s ridiculous. And you know how much I’ll miss my lovely garden. I’ll miss all our friends as well!’

She stood up, letting the brochure and its contents scatter. ‘You don’t seem to give a damn about me any more. You don’t give a damn about anyone. All you think of is yourself.’

Tears had not been far away. She’d stormed back into the kitchen where she had been scrubbing the grids from the cooker and started clanging them about.

It must have sounded as though the bells of hell had been let loose, Marjorie thought as she popped the last piece of toast into her mouth. She put down her knife, wiped her fingers on her napkin and sat up straight. The moment could be delayed no longer. Her new life was about to begin.

Sunshine warmed the back of Jade’s neck as she paused in front of the antique shop. She hadn’t meant to come down this street today. She need not have done so. The firm of Bath solicitors for whom she worked could be reached just as easily by any number of back street routes. And yet here she was, balanced on the balls of her feet as a gesture towards making her stop a brief one, but knowing full well that she would not. She had passed this window before and knew that in the middle of the tasteful display sat a wonderful Moorcroft vase. A vase that she fiercely coveted.

Her eyes gleamed; her lips parted. A hunger gnawed at her stomach. Oh, but it would look so good in their little hallway! The yellow ochre of the walls and the tones of the rug that she had chanced upon last month at the antiques market, would complement it perfectly. She had to have it!

Her ankles relaxed; her heels touched the pavement. The decision had been made. Fending off a fleeting vision of Oliver’s dark displeasure she swivelled one fashionable navy blue loafer towards the entrance to the shop, and the other quickly followed.

OK, she told herself as she pushed on the heavy glass, so it costs a lot of money. A hell of a lot. Far more than I ought to lash out. But it’s my own money, isn’t it? What’s it to do with Oliver?

It was almost as though she were echoing her sister’s words of the previous day. Jade had complained to Selina that recently Olly seemed to be growing twitchy with regard to her spending too much money and that he hadn’t been like that when she’d first met him.

‘What’s it to do with him?’ Selina had said, adding rather nastily, Jade thought, ‘Don’t tell me your blinkers are wearing out. I always wondered what on earth you saw in him.’

Jade had glared back at the shorter, dumpier version of herself and not answered. But she had sometimes wondered the same thing herself. What had she seen in him? Especially after that crazy speech of his, when he had suggested they move in together. The conditions he’d set down!

Right at the beginning she had had no doubt as to his attractions: intelligence, energy, ambition. He was a mature man with knowledge of the wider world, and she couldn’t abide silly, inexperienced boys just starting out in life. He might be a bit on the short side, admittedly, but she’d never liked wearing high heels anyway. And he did have rather nice dark sweeping eyelashes.

But that speech! Eyelashes notwithstanding, she had nearly ditched him there and then. Strangely it was his honesty that had stopped her; his frankness and his ‘openness’. How refreshingly, wonderfully different he was!

In those early days he’d been generous with presents too – remarkably so, since he had an almost-ex wife and two children lurking in the wings. They must be making demands on his salary, she guessed, even though he was earning quite well. But he still managed to make her feel cherished.

She didn’t like to dwell too much on Oliver’s past. He rarely mentioned it himself. And while it was a little disconcerting to think that he’d ditched his whole family, she had the impression that it was not something he had done lightly or without good reason. His ex must have been pretty awful to him, mustn’t she, to have merited being dumped like that? It wasn’t as though Oliver had had someone else lined up either; it was only months after the event that he’d met Jade.

Having thought over Oliver’s crazy speech for a little while she had realised that what he was proposing might suit her. After all, the last thing she wanted was to be tied down. She didn’t want the complications of marriage and children because of the career she planned to pursue. She could quite understand that Oliver might have had enough of that level of commitment too. And while the thought of ‘other partners’ was a bit hard to swallow, at least she would know where she stood.

All in all it seemed a sophisticated, responsible, modern and thoroughly practical idea. The way things were heading everyone would be going in for detailed marriage contracts before long, so why not ‘living together’ contracts too? Infinitely sensible. With both eyes wide open, where could she go wrong?

But she hadn’t bargained for him turning miserly the way he had. Well, to hell with Oliver’s meanness …

Within ten minutes Jade had secured the Moorcroft vase and made the fawning young salesman’s day – not to mention her own.

Godfrey Hart, her boss – a gentle, quiet man in his early sixties – was less thrilled. He had expected Jade in the office over an hour ago. In the ordinary course of events he wouldn’t have minded so much, only today she was supposed to have sat in on an interview with a particularly interesting client in order to gain valuable experience.

He would have liked to point out, too, that since her flat, in one of the lesser-known Georgian crescents, was but a stone’s throw from the premises of Hart, Bruce and Thomson, she really ought to be able to get to work on time. Particularly as other members of staff managed perfectly well, though they had to commute into town.

But he was a weak individual where Jade was concerned. Her wide-eyed delight in her purchase, in the sparkling spring morning and in life in general, rendered him, as usual, powerless. All he could find in his heart to say as she proudly held out her vase for his approval was, ‘That’s really beautiful, my dear. Shall I lock it away in the safe?’

6

Marjorie wound down the passenger window for a closer look. ‘Yes, that’s definitely a brick wall out there. No doubt about it.’

Philip ground his teeth. He had had about enough of Marjorie’s sarcasm lately, her hurtful little jibes. And she had obviously made up her mind not to like the house, no matter what its merits might be. Resting his elbow on the sill of his own open window he rubbed a hand over his mouth. He mustn’t let himself be drawn into an argument when on unsafe ground, he told himself. Marjorie had every right to find fault with things; she had never wanted this move. It was all down to him. He just wished she would keep quiet about every little setback, although even her silences somehow managed to convey disapproval.

‘Well, there wasn’t a wall here before,’ he snapped, unable to keep tetchiness from his tone. He loosened a button on his shirt. Although not yet mid-morning the car was already uncomfortably warm. The thermometer on the dashboard showed that the outside air temperature was unusually high for late spring and he wondered, as he surveyed the garish red brickwork silhouetted against the powdery blue of the sky, whether they were in for a scorching summer.

‘I suppose,’ he said, having turned the car in the lane, ‘the woman from the site office brought me to see the house this way as a short cut.’ Canny bitch, he added silently. She’d certainly seen him coming! A lot of building had been done since that visit, none of which he had been aware of at that time. And now that he could see the way the development was going he realised that nobody in their right mind would want to spend the price being asked, to live on such a cluttered site. It would have been far better to have gone for something more exclusive. Aloud he said, ‘That wall must belong to our garden. Look, you can see our roof on the other side.’

Marjorie craned her head for the first glimpse of their new home as the car bumped back down the lane. The roof – their roof – with its rows of raw brown tiles, looked solid enough even for Philip’s peace of mind; the black plastic drainpipes equally so. She must try to like it for his sake. It wasn’t fair of her to keep longing for their old place when it had been such a worry to him.

She would try not to spoil his pleasure, really she would, and it could only be half an hour, after all, since she’d made vows to herself about being positive. How quickly her intentions had slipped! But it wasn’t easy. Her trepidation was increasing with each passing minute

Having rediscovered the site office, Philip took his bearings and set off down what they soon realised must be the main and only thoroughfare into the estate, and as he drove, the silence that accumulated in the car with the passing of each block of houses, pressed down on them.

Marjorie found a song running through her head. What were the words? Something about little boxes made of ticky-tacky. She recalled it from years ago but its message, sadly, had not reached the ears of the architects. She glanced across at Philip, who had his hands fixed doggedly on the steering wheel, and wondered whether he was finding it difficult not to turn the car round again and head back the way they had come.

‘Didn’t see any of this lot,’ he managed to murmur, ‘when the woman showed me the house. Think some hedges must have been ripped out too.’

‘Oh?’ Marjorie lifted her eyebrows as she looked from side to side. It was hard to imagine how all these houses could have escaped Phil’s notice, hedges or not. There were hundreds of them. Simply hundreds. Spreading in every direction. And yet the plans they had been given had shown only fifteen in all. A select little development, they’d supposed The Paddock to be.

‘I thought …’ she began to put her question to Phil but he anticipated her.

‘Obviously there are other builders here. Ones I knew nothing about. Of course, they don’t show you those on your plans.’

‘No, but –’ Her tone implied that he should have made more enquiries. Heavens, couldn’t he have seen what was going on? ‘Somehow –’ she scrutinised the plots more closely ‘– they don’t exactly look as though different builders put them up. I suppose they are different in little ways, but overall they tend to look much of a muchness. Even ours isn’t all that different from what I remember seeing in the brochure. Where is it now, by the way?’

They were speeding away from the completed properties now, bumping over rutted mud left behind by countless works vehicles. The unmetalled road continued its relentless march across a pot-holed field and Philip followed it, his eyes fastened on the horizon. And now Marjorie realised that the solitary house looming ahead of them was their new home – the only one of that particular phase to have been built.

‘What’s happened to the rest of The Paddock?’ she demanded, bewilderment setting in.

The car had come to a halt on a slab of bare concrete which would be their drive when the work was finished, only at the moment it fell two feet short of the garage and didn’t quite meet the road. Twin panelled doors faced them beneath a grand pointed roof; their cars – Phil had promised her a new one – would be sheltered in a detached property of their own, large enough to house several homeless families. But that, and the adjacent house, were the only buildings around them.

‘This is the first of The Paddock to go up,’ Phil said, patting his pockets to locate the keys to the front door. ‘The builders’ll start work on the rest of them as soon as people put down their names.’

‘You mean, we have no neighbours yet?’ Adopting the attitude of a stranded sailor Marjorie shielded her eyes and squinted at the ‘ticky-tacky’ estate shimmering through the heat haze in the distance. Civilisation lay miles away across a sea of reddish, dried-up mud. ‘How many people have put their names down?’

‘Really, Marjie, I can’t be expected to know everything, can I? Look, I’ve found the keys now. Let’s go inside. I’m sure you’re going to be thrilled when you see this.’

And she was. She had to admit it. She fell in love with the kitchen at first sight; couldn’t wait to unpack her utensils and start cooking something. But Phil, laughing his first real laugh for weeks, took her hand and wouldn’t let her put her head in another cupboard until she had seen everything else. By the time they returned to the kitchen her cheeks were flushed with excitement.

If only he’d thought about the boiler!

‘Oh, Phil …’

He turned from his investigation of the fuse box to find her pale and trembling behind him. Moisture gleamed on her lip. Her complexion resembled candle wax.

She pushed him into the utility room and showed him the white appliance on the wall. ‘It is a gas one, isn’t it?’ Their previous house had been ‘all electric’, which had suited Marjorie just fine. She had managed to overcome her fear of gas sufficiently to enter other buildings where it was installed, but she couldn’t bear the thought of it in her own. The lighting of it, the way it blipped into life, the roar of it under a grill – none of this could she bear to contend with.

‘Oh, Marjie, I meant to warn you.’ But clearly he hadn’t given it a thought. In his efforts to get her to make the move at all it hadn’t even entered his head.

‘How could you?’ she whispered. ‘How could you?’

‘I’m sorry, really I am … don’t look at me as though I’ve done this deliberately. But it’s all new and perfectly safe. Look, we can have special detectors fitted.’ He tried to take her in his arms. ‘What happened to your mother and father – it’ll never happen to us.’

But he knew that that wasn’t the point. Marjorie could do without gas appliances as a constant reminder. So could he as well if he were honest with himself. Marjorie wasn’t the only one still haunted by the event; nor was she the only one to have the occasional nightmare. The whole family still suffered. Naturally it had been worse for Marjorie as she had been the one to find them, but he’d been devastated too. He had known her parents for most of his life and a lovely couple they’d been. Then there had been the two girls, mere youngsters at the time, who couldn’t begin to understand. And his own parents who had lost good friends. And the milkman had been so cut up about it because he thought he should have noticed something, and – well – the list went on and on.

Phil looked up from his morbid musings to glimpse the removal van trundling towards the house across the landscape which, only a few minutes previously, they had been looking down upon from the landing window and jokingly nicknamed the Red Sea. There was nothing more he could say to Marjorie now, or do for her, except suffer a gross black mark for his gaff and get on with the work in hand.

‘Your money,’ Oliver said flatly that evening, watching Jade as she swept aside a Tiffany lamp that had been a ‘must have’ four months ago, but which was now apparently out of favour, and installed the vase in its place.

‘That’s right.’ She darted a chilly glance at him, noticing that he’d already changed for the country club. Leaning against the door frame in his track suit he looked full of pent-up vitality, but hard-faced and narrow-eyed as well.

‘Do you mean you bought this with your salary or with the savings from your modelling work?’ he went on in the tone she’d come to know so well: the tone that was ninety per cent geniality but ten per cent heavy sarcasm. ‘Because the first can’t possibly cover it and the second’s been spent ten times over.’

Jade’s pleasure in her purchase drained away. She flounced into the bedroom and began stripping off her navy suit. ‘Trust you to take the fun out of everything.’

She was well aware that her savings had long since gone. Did Oliver have to keep reminding her? He’d even begun to hint that perhaps she should take up modelling again, do a bit in her spare time to help cover her expensive lifestyle. What spare time? she asked herself, pulling a leisure suit over her bra and pants.

She picked up a brush and ran it down the long shafts of her hair, then clipped back the two front sections of hair with blue combs. Suddenly she looked ten years younger than her twenty-six. Yes, she thought without conceit, checking her reflection in the glass, she could certainly still do some sort of modelling work if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. She’d had more than enough of all that.

She had begun a career in modelling at eighteen when she left school. It had been entirely her mother’s idea. Her mother had practically pushed her into it because she had always wanted to be a model herself, instead of which she had become pregnant before she left school and had to marry Jade’s father.

Jade had gone along with the idea at first, being attracted by the possibility of making a little money to set her on her feet. Pointless to expect her no-good father to give her a start in life; he’d never had a bean himself. Well, not for long anyway. And perhaps she owed her mother something for the struggle she’d had bringing up Selina and herself; with their father flitting in and out of their lives she’d had a rotten time of it. Dad had drifted in when he needed money to fritter on horses and out again when he’d cadged all he could.

On leaving school Jade hadn’t decided what she wanted to do with her life. It wasn’t modelling, she knew that as soon as her mother suggested it. Modelling, she was inclined to believe, was not all it was cracked up to be. But it would be something to be going on with – just supposing she could actually find someone prepared to take her on …

To her surprise, the first agency to which her mother accompanied her accepted her without hesitation. The agent could hardly believe her luck as she eyed Jade up and down. It wasn’t every day that a girl of this calibre walked in off the street. She promised Jade great things and apparently knew what she was talking about. By the end of Jade’s first year, work was flooding in at such a rate that she could pick and choose what she did.

Someone suggested she ought to apply to a bigger agency in London, and soon after taking that advice Jade found herself smiling from the covers of increasingly glossy magazines. There was talk of the big fashion shows – London, Paris and New York.

She knew she wasn’t happy with what she was doing but she threw herself into the work, telling herself all the time how lucky she was. Her mother kept telling her, too. Millions of girls would give anything to be in her shoes, she was constantly reminded, and just think of the money she was making! Jade, though feeling trapped, could only agree. She found it impossible to call a halt. With so little time to stop and take stock of herself she couldn’t plan what she wanted to do next.

Time ticked on and Jade did nothing to alter the course of events, but after three years of hectic schedules and living out of suitcases she began, to her mother’s chagrin, to make real noises of discontent. Jade questioned what they were doing, fell into gloomy silences and continually dragged her heels.

During one particular scramble behind the scenes she found herself in a space that would have confounded a pixie, having to wriggle out of one complicated and – in her opinion – ghastly outfit, into another equally hideous creation, and emerge looking beautifully immaculate. Inside she was screaming with frustration. This, she decided, was ridiculous; this was not the way she wanted to spend one more minute of her life.

‘It’s degrading, superficial and monotonous,’ she told her mother later. ‘A nonsensical way to live. In fact it isn’t life at all. And what will I do when my looks fade? What shall I have to fall back on?’

Besides, she didn’t like the way ‘normal’ people regarded her – like some kind of mindless freak. Especially men. To them she was so much meat and didn’t have a brain, whereas in reality she knew she was bright and intelligent.

‘I’ve decided to jack it all in,’ she’d announced, wiping off her make-up for the last time. ‘I’m going to do something in law.’

Oliver had been standing in the tall bay window overlooking the street, his thoughts presumably still on money. ‘Perhaps, we should come back here to eat after we’ve been to the club,’ he suggested. ‘Is there anything left in the fridge?’

Jade made a face in the mirror. ‘Even if there is I don’t feel like cooking it. I’ll feel even less like it after advanced aerobics.’

‘But –’ Oliver got no further. Down in the street a dark green van had been cruising backwards and forwards along the crescent. Now, having abandoned hope of finding a parking space the driver stopped in the middle of the road, jumped out and began to unload large flat packs of frozen food. Oliver read the words Gardiner’s Gourmet Foods

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