PUPPIES ARE FOR LIFE

Linda Phillips

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

After the first major row of their married lives Susannah and Paul Harding slunk separately to their bedroom and spent the night back to back.

In the morning they glared into their muesli bowls, cast agonised glances at their watches, and dashed out to their respective cars. She didn’t remind him that he’d left his sandwiches in the fridge. And he didn’t tell her about the mascara on her cheek.

But he did mutter something about seeing a doctor.

I do not need to see a doctor, she fumed silently as she scrubbed at her face in the office cloakroom later that morning. All I need is an understanding husband.

Then, much to the dismay of her friend Molly, who happened to be applying lipstick beside her, she burst into helpless tears.

‘I thought everything was hunky dory these days,’ said Molly, steering her red-eyed companion away from the row of chipped china sinks and along the concrete corridors of C & G Electronics in the direction of the canteen.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Susannah tried to assure her friend. ‘It’s just me, being very silly. Oh lord, what’s Duffy doing there? I don’t want him to see me like this.’

Mr Duffy, their boss, was hovering by the Flexi machine.

‘Just checking up on us.’ Molly grunted. ‘Has to make sure we checked out before we powdered our noses.’ She pushed through the doors of the canteen where a strong combination of boiled cabbage and chips assailed them, and quickly changed course for the salad bar.

‘Things don’t sound fine to me,’ she said, picking up a tray.

‘Well, they are,’ Susannah insisted. She eyed limp brown lettuce leaves through the Perspex display unit, opted for grated carrot with watercress, and shuffled listlessly on. ‘Buying the cottage was the best thing we ever did. It’s been lovely decorating and settling in; wonderful to have no one to please but ourselves. We can watch what we like on the television, go for Sunday lunch at a pub. It’s wonderful … only –’ Her pale face clouded over.

‘So what’s the problem?’ Molly prompted when they had paid up and threaded their way to a vacant table. Dumping her tray among the previous occupant’s debris she settled her majestic figure on one of the chairs. ‘No, don’t tell me,’ she said, raising her hands, ‘let me guess. Er … the authentic gnarled old beams have got woodworm? Or the Aga’s set fire to the thatch?’

Susannah flapped a hand at her friend, smiling a little in spite of herself. ‘Of course not! Would the surveyor have passed it if it had woodworm? And you know we didn’t go for an Aga.’

‘Oh, you know I’m only jealous.’ Molly grinned, tossing her head, and then her face grew serious. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what’s really wrong, Sue?’

Susannah bit her lip. Could she tell Molly about the row? Would it help to get it out of her system? The scene had been replaying itself in her mind all through the night and most of the morning too. It was still so horribly vivid …

News at Ten had been blasting out its closing music when she’d wandered into the sitting room.

‘There!’ she’d said proudly, holding out the product of many hours’ hard work. Her back ached; so did her head. It had all been worth it, though – because she could see now that she might actually make a success of this thing, given time. ‘Well, Paul, do you like it? What do you honestly think?’

Paul yawned widely and stood up, unfolding himself from one of the chintz armchairs until his hair brushed the low beamed ceiling.

‘What is it?’ he asked, stretching and yawning again, and looking as though he wished he’d gone to bed hours ago.

‘Well, you can see what it is. It’s a teapot stand. Made out of mosaic tiles. I’ve just finished it.’

Paul blinked and looked more closely. ‘Ah,’ was his only comment.

‘Is that all you have to say, Ah?’ Susannah glared first at her husband, then at the article in her hand. ‘What’s wrong with it then?’

‘Um …’ He scratched the back of his head and cast her a sideways glance. ‘You do want an honest opinion?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, not meaning it, and something inside her went phut.

‘Well,’ he said, frowning, ‘it’s a bit – I don’t know. What’s the word – crude, maybe?’

‘Crude? Crude? What do you mean, crude? This, I’ll have you know, happens to be based on a Graeco-Roman design!’

‘Is that so?’ He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, rocked back on his bony heels and treated her to one of his crooked, most supercilious little smiles. ‘And did they actually have teapots in those days, do you think?’

‘What? Who? Oh, you – aargh!’ She snarled furiously, and flung it at his grinning head. It missed by inches and hit the wall, making a gash in the new magnolia silk-finish before bursting out of its wooden frame.

It was still lying in pieces on the carpet back at home, as shattered as her dreams.

No, Susannah decided, she couldn’t tell Molly all that; it was somehow much too private. Ignoring her salad she leaned forward on her elbows.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘we had a bit of a barney last night, Paul and I.’

‘You and –?’ Molly’s eyes grew round. ‘Good heavens.’

‘Yes. It’s not like us, is it? Well, it wasn’t exactly Paul’s doing, really; more my fault, I suppose.’

‘Never accept the blame for anything,’ was Molly’s prompt advice. ‘Takes two to tango, remember.’ She chewed thoughtfully on a bread roll, as though a picture of Paul doing a tango – all knotty knees and elbows – had temporarily taken her attention.

‘Mmm …’ Susannah was considering her friend’s advice. She wished she could be assertive like Molly. And wasn’t that just her problem? There had been few occasions in her life when she had held out for what she believed to be right. Normally she was placid and easy-going, doing herself down, deferring to others for the sake of a quiet life. She hated scenes; it was only when pushed to extremes that she was inclined to dig in her heels and say all manner of things that she wouldn’t have dreamed of saying in the normal course of events.

One such incident came to mind right now – one that she had long since lived to regret, because parents were always right in the long run, weren’t they? At eighteen she had defied her father and refused to re-sit a history A-level that she had badly failed. What was the point, she’d wanted to know? Taking after her mother, she was hopelessly non-academic; she would never achieve a pass. She might as well give up any idea she might have had about going to college.

Her father had been livid. A teacher at the boys’ part of the grammar school she attended, and struggling for excellence in all things so that he might one day make it to headmaster, it was hardly surprising that he did not take kindly to his daughter’s new-found independence. But Susannah had stuck to her guns. She left school with her one A-level in Art and launched herself into the job market, landing – to her delight – a reasonably well-paid clerical job with a travel agent. Those were the days! Money in her purse. Clothes. The swinging sixties. And she had met Paul.

‘Anyway –’ Molly brought her back to the matter in hand – ‘what was it that triggered off the row? That is, if it’s not a state secret?’

‘No-o, no, it’s more – well – embarrassing.’ Susannah hesitated while she picked open a minuscule paper napkin. ‘I ended up throwing something at him, would you believe?’

Molly’s next look was one of amazed admiration. ‘Lord, what I would have given to see that! You, losing your cool for once, and the mighty Paul with his dignity in shreds.’ She shook her head, chuckling.

‘But I was the one who lost my dignity,’ Susannah was quick to point out. She stared miserably at her plate. ‘Paul remained his usual gentlemanly self. He just looked at me kind of stunned and walked away. Oh dear. I’m going to have to apologise this evening, I know I am, and I’m not looking forward to it one bit.’

‘Don’t do it then.’ Molly grunted. ‘I wouldn’t.’ She began to dig into a bowl of cold pasta, bringing fat rubbery twirls to her mouth in bundles of no less than six. ‘I’m sure he must have asked for it. Men usually do.’ She chewed quickly and gulped down a stream of Coke. ‘But really, I can’t imagine you two rowing. There can’t be anything to row about. You’ve got everything you could possibly want in life: more money than you really need; a cottage most people would die for. And your kids are off your hands. What more do you want, Susannah – jam on your wodge of cake? Cream on top of the jam?’

‘But – but material things aren’t everything,’ Susannah argued timidly. She stared at a distant window. ‘Molly … haven’t you ever wanted – well – personal fulfilment, I suppose is what I’m getting at? And – and recognition? Oh, not just for being a mother and a boring old pay-clerk, but for being good at something that counts? For doing something you’ve always wanted to do and –’

But then she noticed the lines of discontent that had gathered round Molly’s lips, and was suffused with guilt. Molly was struggling to bring up three growing children on a pittance in a council house, she hadn’t had a holiday in years and there was no man in her life at all. How could she be expected to understand?

‘Oh –’ Susannah ran a hand through her short hair – ‘you don’t want to hear about my petty little problems, Molly. Let’s talk about something else.’

‘They weren’t petty little problems just now. I thought the world had come to an end.’

‘But things get on top of me at times, just like they do with anyone. Oh, I don’t know, Moll. Perhaps all the decorating’s taken it out of me.’

‘Perhaps you should take another holiday,’ Molly couldn’t help adding with more than a touch of sarcasm. The Hardings had only recently returned from a Lake District weekend in a plush hotel. They were always bombing off somewhere for ‘a little treat’.

Susannah pushed away her plate with an air of resignation. ‘OK, fair enough. So I’m a spoilt bitch. I’ve got a wonderful life and I should be grateful for it. Let’s just say I’m going through some sort of mid-life crisis and leave it at that.’ She stood up and tucked her bag under her arm. ‘Look, I don’t know about you, Molly, but I must get back to the office. I need all the Flexi I can muster for that funeral I’m going to tomorrow.’

She began to hurry away, but wasn’t quick enough to avoid hearing Molly mutter to herself: ‘Mid-life crisis my giddy aunt!’ Her tone implied that life for most people was a whole series of crises – real ones. And that Susannah didn’t know she was born.

Not a single red light. Not one tail-back of traffic. Susannah’s Peugeot hummed homeward that evening on virtual auto-pilot, leaving her too much time to think. Time to think about uncomfortable things like whether Molly was right about not apologising: should she apologise to Paul, or he to her? He had practically asked to have something thrown at him, after all.

The gears clashed from fifth to second as she changed down for the Sainsbury’s roundabout. Why should she be the one to climb down? Where had his support been when she needed it? All he had done was belittle her efforts. But then, wasn’t that what he had always done?

Her thoughts flew back to their early days together, when Simon was just a toddler and Katy no more than an infant. Paul had risen hardly any distance up the civil service ladder by then and they’d had to watch every penny he earned.

Mothers who went out to work had still been the exception rather than the rule in those days, and Susannah had never been exceptional. What could she do anyway? Jobs for the less than well qualified had been scarce and not extravagantly paid. Anything she earned would have been swallowed up in childcare costs.

She had tried to help out at home as best she could. There were the children’s clothes she’d run up from market remnants and tried to sell; the teddy bears she’d made with bells in their ears one Christmas; the rag dolls that it had been hard to get Katy to part with; lampshades; envelopes – everything you could think of.

But Paul had pooh-poohed the lot.

‘Don’t give up the day-job,’ he’d once told her, eyeing her almost-stagnant production line of headless bodies …

Susannah’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Maybe he’d meant it as a joke, but it had hurt then and it hurt now.

It had hurt last night when he’d joked about the teapot stand, which was why she had suddenly exploded. Resentment had been building up for years. Oh, she’d give anything to wipe that superior expression from his face, have him look up to her for a change, with pride and – and respect. But she couldn’t see that happening in a million years. Unless she had some success.

Success. In Paul’s book that meant making money. So that was the answer, wasn’t it? She would have to make some money, even though they were no longer greatly in need of it. It was the only measure of success that Paul and the rest of the world recognised.

And it wasn’t all pie in the sky, when you thought about it. Other women had done it before – made fortunes by making things – especially in the eighties. You could hardly pick up a magazine at one time without reading how so-and-so had begun by mixing pots of cream or make-up in their kitchen, or printing lengths of cloth in the spare room, and they’d ended up running empires. So why shouldn’t she do something similar? Of course it would mean having to suck up to that nauseating Reg Watts in the craft shop once more, but nothing ventured nothing gained, as the saying goes. Yes, that’s what she would do: she would hurry home right now, collect one of the other teapot stands … and sell it!

CHAPTER 2

Harvey Webb prised himself from the warm leather interior of his Mercedes, set his face against the wind, and threw the door shut behind him. The discreet ‘clunk’ of the lock usually pleased him inordinately, only right now it hardly registered; his mind was on other things. How infuriating that he’d forgotten to get Julia something for her birthday in town!

He’d already bought her the main present – a garnet and pearl bracelet – but she liked to have lots of little things to unwrap. And the last thing he wanted right now was to disappoint Julia.

Oh, if only he had thought of it sooner. He could have scooped up armfuls of suitable tat in Bath, but all that talk with Jerry and Adam had put it right out of his head.

Or maybe too much lager had, he conceded, looking up and down the deserted village street, although to tell the truth he always seemed to be forgetting things lately. It wasn’t as if he had much to think about either. Bugger all, in fact. But these days it seemed that the more time he had to think – and the less he had to think about – the more forgetful he became. That was what redundancy did for you.

Turning up the collar of his trenchcoat he began to pick his way across the sodden grass verge in search of somewhere that might sell gifts, but all he could see ahead of him was a knitting wool shop with ugly yellow film stuck over its window and a bakery that had sold its last crumb. Unless … yes, he was sure he remembered correctly: across the green there was a craft shop of sorts. He’d spotted it the day he and Julia had moved into the Old Dairy and she’d sent him out to find milk.

And was that the biggest mistake they’d ever made, he wondered for the hundredth time as he pushed on the plate-glass door of Heyford Handy Crafts: moving out to a village, when all they’d ever known was the town?

‘It’s so, so pretty here,’ Julia had said when she’d first set eyes on the place, dancing up and down the narrow streets in unsuitably high heels, and he couldn’t help but admit that it was. Then. Hard to resist in mid-summer was the chocolate-box setting of Upper Heyford with its big round duck pond, its fourteenth-century church, its thatched public house and matching cottages – all grouped pleasingly round the obligatory patch of green.

But it wasn’t so pretty now. Harvey shivered. No, not in November. Gone were all the flowers that had spilled freely from countless basket arrangements; gone were the tables outside the Golden Fleece. The trees were naked, the grass clogged with leaves. It looked downright dismal under heavy grey skies, and he sighed, longing for spring to come round, as he elbowed his way into the shop.

Reg Watts leaned forward on his heavy arms and leered at Susannah on the other side of the counter.

‘Well, Mrs Harding,’ he said above the jangle of the old-fashioned bell, ‘what have you brought me this time? Dried flowers? Corn dollies? Or something I can actually sell?’

‘You did manage to sell some of my flower arrangements, Reg,’ Susannah replied with icy politeness. She glanced in the newcomer’s direction, annoyed at the untimely intrusion. This was the last thing she wanted: an audience to witness her battle with Reg Watts.

The man, she noticed, had strolled to the far corner of the shop and was pretending to examine china mugs. But somehow she just knew he was listening to every word.

‘Yes, I know I sold a few of your things,’ Reg moaned, taking a mangled handkerchief from his pocket and arranging it in a pad. Judging by his nasal twang he had a very bad cold indeed. ‘But everyone’s doing dried flowers these days,’ he went on, elaborately wiping his nose. ‘They’re all going to classes to find out how it’s done. The only thing they come in here for is to pick up ideas. No, there isn’t much call in these parts … Have you tried hawking them round the shops in Bath?’

The stranger had picked up a glass paperweight and was holding it up to the light. Or was he using it as an excuse, and really studying Susannah?

‘Coals to Newcastle,’ she snapped. ‘Every other shop in Bath seems to be stacked to the eaves with dried flower arrangements. But I didn’t come to talk about those, Reg. Take a look at this.’

Under Reg’s cynical gaze she pulled back layers of tissue from the parcel she had placed on his counter. ‘Now, you don’t have anything like this in your shop, do you?’

‘Hmm.’ Reg reached out reluctantly to grasp the item with both hands. He tipped his head backwards to view it from under his glasses, then ducked his head forward again to peer at it over the top. Susannah wondered why he bothered to wear the things when they so obviously didn’t help.

‘No,’ was the ultimate verdict. ‘No, I don’t stock anything like this. And do you know why?’ Reg beamed at his victim triumphantly. ‘Because there isn’t any call for the likes of this either.’

Susannah gritted her teeth. ‘But how do you know there isn’t going to be a demand for something,’ she persisted, ‘if you never actually display it?’

She glanced round the shop, avoiding the stranger’s eye. It was crammed with useless junk. In all honesty there was no room for more, and her teapot stand would be lost among the chaos. The world was full of hopeful artists, potters, and makers of useless knick-knacks. What chance did she stand? Then she saw the stranger’s hand reach out towards a rag doll.

‘Display it?’ Reg was muttering. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. The thing is –’ He twirled the stand in one hand. ‘Well, what I mean to say is … what exactly is it?’

‘It’s a teapot stand, of course! Or any kind of pot stand for that matter. Anyone can see that.’

Susannah whipped round in amazement; Reg’s only other customer had come up behind her and stolen her very words. She found the man smiling disarmingly above her head – and rewarded him with a hostile stare. Oh, how she already hated him for his suave, easy-going confidence. Clearly nobody had ever made him feel small, insignificant, and utterly, utterly useless. It was going to take more than a frozen expression from her to knock him off his perch.

‘Harvey Webb,’ he told her, nodding at her agreeably and reaching across to pick up the stand for a closer look. He turned it over in his hands while Susannah cringed. She now wanted nothing more than to throw the thing in the bin, forget the whole project, give up the idea of doing Something and being Someone. Criticism from Paul was bad enough; criticism from the rest of the world was unbearable.

‘This is really rather nice,’ Harvey murmured eventually, his thumbs sweeping the mosaic surface in obvious appreciation. In silence he studied the frame. ‘You made the whole thing yourself?’ he asked, slanting Susannah a glance.

‘Yes!’ she hissed back, taking them all by surprise, and she snatched the piece from his hand. There was one thing worse than criticism, she decided, and that was male condescension. Arrogant sod. At least Paul had been honest. ‘Yes,’ she went on, lisping childishly, ‘I made it all by my little self. Now isn’t that just amazing? And Daddy didn’t help me at all.’

The two men gawped at her as she thrust the stand back in a carrier bag.

‘Now,’ she said, her voice normal again as she dusted off her hands, ‘if you’ll both excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll take up no more of your time. I’ll just run along home and amuse myself some more.’

She pulled open the door, stumbled over the threshold, and let the door clang closed behind her. Reg and Harvey were left still gaping, their eyebrows raised in bewilderment at the swinging ‘Closed’ sign.

Outside on the pavement Susannah ducked her head into the wind and headed blindly down the street, feeling hot-cheeked, light-headed and unreal. She wiped her forehead with a shaking hand. What had got into her lately? She had never behaved like that before in her entire life. Well, not often. She could take a lot of ‘aggro’, but sometimes something would snap and she would go hurtling over the edge. She wished she hadn’t made an exhibition of herself just then, though.

‘Hey!’ a voice said behind her, ‘you forgot to pick this up.’

She stopped. Harvey what’s-his-name hadn’t actually followed her, had he? Not after the things she’d said? But he had. And he was holding out her black leather handbag with SWH stamped on the flap in gold. She had forgotten she had put it on the counter.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, taking it sheepishly from his outstretched hand, and expecting him to go straight back to the shop. But he didn’t. Somehow he had managed to position himself ahead of her so that he was standing in her path, and she realised for the first time how stomach-churningly good-looking he was, in a Richard Gere-ish kind of way. He stood looking directly at her, his hands now stuffed into the pockets of his trenchcoat for warmth, an infectious smile twitching at the corners of his lips.

Time kicked its heels while she eyed him back belligerently, but eventually she felt that one of them had to say something, so nodding at the doll he carried tucked under his arm with its felt feet sticking out, she said, ‘I hope Reg doesn’t take you for a shoplifter. Hadn’t you better go back?’

‘What?’ He looked vaguely at the shop, then at the upturned doll. ‘Oh, it’s all right, don’t worry. I chucked a plastic card at him on my way out. I’ll go back and settle up properly when we’ve had our cup of tea.’

‘Our –?’ She looked at the hand on her arm – a moderately large hand with broad, straight fingers.

‘Well, I could certainly do with one.’ His eyes roved over her face. ‘And I rather think you could too.’

There was no question of refusing; he didn’t give her a chance. He hustled her down a cul-de-sac before she could even begin to think what was happening. And in no time at all they were sitting opposite each other in the Copper Kettle with the doll propped against a sugar bowl as chaperone.

‘Not as comfortable as I’d hoped,’ he remarked, grimacing as he tried to settle himself on his chair. ‘One of those places that looks better from the outside than it actually is, I’m afraid. I haven’t sat on one of these horrible things since my Sunday school days.’

As he bent to examine the cane seat she saw that his hair grew thick and strong down the back of his head and was hardly streaked with grey at all. Paul’s was entirely grey and it didn’t grow right from the forehead like it used to either. There ought to be a way, she mused silently, of telling a man’s age by the amount his hair had receded. Like the rings on the trunk of a tree. A decade per half-inch perhaps? But that wouldn’t work; it would make this man young enough to be her son, which he was patently far from being.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, coming up a little flushed, ‘I suppose that dates me horribly, doesn’t it, talking about cane seats in Sunday schools?’ It was as if he’d read her mind. ‘In this day and age it’s probably pre-formed plastic, if they have them at all. I mean, I don’t know … do kids still go to Sunday school these days?’

Susannah hesitated. She didn’t want to sit drinking tea with a perfect stranger, making polite conversation about chairs and Sunday schools, of all things. And he hadn’t even asked her if she’d wanted to come; just assumed she’d be delighted to have his company. She firmed her lips and stuck her jaw out a little, making up her mind to answer him only in monosyllables. But he was a difficult sort of person to dislike and she relented almost immediately.

‘Mine went to Sunday school for a while –’ she told him, smiling faintly in spite of herself – ‘until they learned to vote with their feet, that is. But – that’s going back quite a few years now. I don’t know what goes on these days either. Anyway, if it’s any comfort to you, I remember having chairs like this at Sunday school too. So there; that dates me as well.’

And don’t you dare come out with any pat little ‘Oh, surely you’re not that old’ nonsense, she silently warned him. But he didn’t and she felt disappointed. Nor did he pick up on the mention of children, from which she deduced that he didn’t have any of his own or he would have leaped at the chance to talk about them, which was a shame because he looked as if he would have made a nice dad.

But now he seemed to be gazing about him and wondering what to say next. No doubt he was already regretting having brought her here and couldn’t wait to get away again.

‘Ugly little trollop, isn’t she?’ he came out with in the end, the laughter lines round his mouth deepening good-humouredly. ‘Our friend here, I mean –’ he inclined his head in the direction of the doll and added in a stage whisper – ‘not the waitress.’

Susannah glanced at the elderly waitress shuffling from table to table and allowed herself another small smile, then she smoothed creases from the doll’s dress with hands that she didn’t know what to do with. She suddenly felt warmer than she had all day. This man was turning out to be quite a charmer. But – she pulled herself up sharply – didn’t she know better by now than to put trust in charming men?

‘Why did you choose this doll,’ she wondered out loud, ‘if you really think she’s awful?’

‘Well –’ he watched Susannah’s deft fingers tweak the doll’s clothes into better shape – ‘there was another one sitting beside her, dressed in a creamy lacy underthing and a coat of green – um –’

‘Velvet.’

‘Is that what it was? Yes, I suppose so. Well, I’d have preferred that one if it had been up to me. Much more tasteful, I thought. But I knew Julia wouldn’t agree with me. She never does. She’s more a frills and ribbons type, you see.’

‘Uh-huh. Julia being your … daughter?’

‘Wife.’

They leaned back to accommodate the arrival of the tea things.

‘So,’ Susannah said lightly, happy to leave the stirring and pouring to him since the tea had been his idea and he seemed to want to take charge, ‘you don’t think much of Lucy-Ann, I take it?’

‘Lucy-Ann?’ Glancing up from his teabag dunking his eyes followed Susannah’s back to the doll. ‘Oh lord. You don’t mean to tell me … not more of your handiwork, surely?’

‘I made them both, Mr – er –’

‘Webb,’ he had to remind her, ‘Harvey Webb.’

‘– and I made them different to appeal to all tastes. Not that it made a scrap of difference,’ she added bitterly.

‘Sorry?’ He looked puzzled.

She drew a long breath, wishing she’d not made the comment. Now she would have to explain. ‘They’ve travelled the length and breadth of the country with me over the years, those dolls, moving from shop to shop on sale or return. Just about anywhere my husband’s work has taken us, they’ve gone too. Yes –’ she sighed, putting down her cup – ‘Paul’s spectacular promotions have taken us all around the country – abroad as well on two occasions – while my sad little failures have trailed along behind us.’ She forced a grin. ‘Congratulations, Mr Webb –’

‘Harvey.’

‘– you are the first mug ever to actually buy one.’ And, she thought, surprised at herself, you’re the first person I’ve ever told this to.

He appraised her gravely – as gravely as a face like his would allow. ‘I think,’ he said after a pause, ‘I’m beginning to see why you were a bit touchy back there. But they’re beautifully made, those dolls. And so is the Roman teapot stand. I meant what I said about that.’

Inadvertently – or not, she couldn’t be sure – he had covered one of her hands with his as he spoke, and holding her eyes with his own he went on, ‘I think, Mrs Harding, you’re one hell of a talented lady. And don’t let anyone tell you you’re not.’

She gazed back at him with obvious pity. Men were so utterly transparent it was unbelievable. Did he really think she was going to fall for this stupid malarkey? Any minute now he would conjure up a huge shipping order that he was sure he’d be able to get for her: a thousand teapot stands, he would reckon, for someone he just happened to know in the business. In return, of course, for … well, really, he must be desperate, the dirty old so-and-so!

Frustration that had only been lightly tamped down since its last eruption swept her to the edge again. She slid her hand from beneath his, grabbed hold of her bag and stood up.

‘And you, Mr Webb,’ she replied as coolly as her wavering voice would allow, ‘are one hell of a patronising bastard.’

CHAPTER 3

The flowers shivered in their cellophane as Paul walked past. He stopped and looked down at them, arrested by a flash of remorse. He had only come to the service station for petrol and perhaps the evening paper, but should he buy flowers for Sue?

‘’Scuse me,’ a young woman in a green coat rasped in his ear as she attempted to dance her way around him. She might as well have bawled, ‘Get out of the flaming way!’, her tone was so full of irritation.

Paul stood his ground for a moment, blocking the woman’s path and treating her to a hostile stare before politely holding open the door for her. Women these days! What on earth was the matter with them? Bolshie. Aggressive. They’d stab you in the back as soon as look at you.

And what was the matter with Sue? What did she think she was playing at? She’d damn nearly killed him last night. If that mosaic thingy had caught him on the head, goodness knows what might have happened. He was certainly seeing a side of her just lately that he’d never seen before, and he didn’t like it one bit.

When had things begun to change? When Katy went to live in London, he supposed. But at first it had all seemed for the better. Susannah didn’t appear to be one of those women who pined over an empty nest – unless she was doing her best to hide it. But he didn’t think that was the case. And they had both thought it a good idea to go for the cottage too; so it couldn’t be that.

No, everything had been great to begin with. If retirement was going to be like this, he’d thought, then let them chuck him out of his job tomorrow! One of these pushy power-hungry young women could bash their brains out in his place, and the best of British luck to her.

Next thing he knew, Susannah had wanted to set up a work room for herself. Fair enough, he’d said, a hobby would be nice for her. He had helped her organise the room and not batted an eyelid at the cost of stocking it with materials. Meanness had never been one of his failings, and he’d quite enjoyed the project. But what he hadn’t bargained for was the amount of time she ended up spending in the room when it was finished.

At first it had been the odd hour or so. Then he would find her, in the middle of TV programmes, stealing out of the room for what he thought was going to be a trip to the fridge for an apple, or a brief visit to the loo, and not coming back for hours. He even woke up a couple of times in the night to find the bed stone cold beside him.

And then she started making excuses for things like not going out for a walk with him, or to the pub for a drink. She would always have ‘something to do in her work room’.

Gradually, day by day, he was losing her.

‘Oh, er, number four,’ Paul muttered to the forecourt attendant. Taken abruptly from his wool-gathering he began ferreting for his wallet while a queue built up behind him. At last, anxious to be out of the place and alone again with his thoughts, he threw down two twenty-pound notes, though by the time the assistant had checked the notes for forgery and slowly counted out a handful of small silver change he realised it would have been quicker to use his credit card.

But at last he was free to go – except that someone was blocking his way.

‘’Scuse me.’

Paul found himself glaring into angry blue eyes again. The woman in the green coat, having helped herself to a free read of one of the magazines on display, had dropped it back on the shelf and made for the exit at precisely the same moment that Paul reached it.

He sighed, pulled the door open and let her pass through ahead of him.

‘Women!’ he snarled. Not only had he received no thanks whatever for his chivalry, he had been rewarded with a two-finger sign.

The flowers were still shivering in their cellophane as he stomped past them. But Paul had made up his mind. Susannah would not be getting a bunch. She simply didn’t deserve it.

Black. Something black. It had to be something black.

Susannah yanked the hangers along the rail, setting her teeth on edge. Black suited her mood just fine. What a shambles she’d made of things that afternoon! If she’d kept a cool head she might at least have had the satisfaction of selling one of her dolls: cause for celebration indeed. Even Paul would have been forced to concede that. As it was, Harvey Webb, if he had any sense, would probably have marched Lucy-Ann straight back to her shelf in the shop, demanding the return of his credit card. He might have been genuine, too. He might have been a useful contact. He might even have bought her teapot stand, had she not flown off the handle.

But now she had really burned her boats. She would never be able to face Reg again, and the likelihood of finding other suitable outlets was pretty remote. Of course there were plenty of likely shops in the area, but she knew from experience that very few would show any interest in her work; and it would take her for ever to get round to them all. She simply didn’t have time. She would try as soon as she had a spare moment, of course – but her most immediate priority had to be her Uncle Bert’s funeral.

Her father had phoned her late one evening with news of the death, his voice revealing shock, for all its bluster, because his brother had been two years his junior.

‘Bert’s next-door neighbour,’ Frank May had thundered down the line, ‘a Mrs Wardle – ever met her? Well, she thought you might like to go to the funeral. Apparently you always sent Bert a card at Christmas. Can’t think why,’ he’d added with a sniff of contempt, because he’d never had much regard for Bert himself.

‘He taught me to play Canasta,’ Susannah had tried to explain, remembering how her uncle had sat opposite her at his little card table for hours at a time, sucking placidly on his pipe while the more boisterous members of the family cavorted around them. That was how she had always thought of him, if she’d thought of him at all: as something of a loner; a bit of an odd-ball whom nobody understood, except maybe herself. Perhaps she took after him, she mused, lifting a black satin party dress from the wardrobe rail.

Of course, black satin was entirely unsuitable for a funeral, even supposing she could still get into the dress, which was doubtful, but it had long been one of her favourites and she couldn’t help holding it against herself, recalling happier days. Days when she had been content with her lot and this madness about wanting fulfilment hadn’t seized her. What had happened to change things? Was Paul right? Should she really see a doctor?

She turned her head from the mirror to listen to a sound outside. As if conjured up by her thoughts, Paul’s car had squeaked to a halt on the drive. And that was him coming into the cottage. Now he’d stopped on his way through the kitchen – no doubt to look at the day’s mail – and silence fell once more.

Susannah pretended absorption in her task, dreading the coming confrontation. Another battle, she thought wearily, because she no longer felt inclined to apologise. And the likelihood of Paul suddenly seeing the light and showing understanding towards her was very remote indeed.

Eventually – after what seemed like decades – Paul creaked up the steep little staircase to their room in search of her. She didn’t have to look round to know that he had come into the room and was standing at the foot of the bed, his jaw tense and truculent as he slowly pulled off his tie.

But suddenly he was behind her, much closer than she had imagined, his hand coming up to knead the back of her neck.

‘Susie,’ he sighed into her hair, ‘I’d forgotten all about your old Uncle Bert. And I’m sorry. No wonder you’ve been so uptight. It must have been a bit much, coming on top of the kids flying the nest and us selling up the old family home.’ He turned her round to face him, his hand still massaging imagined knots at the top of her spine. ‘There’ve been too many changes in a short space of time,’ he told her, smiling down at her indulgently. ‘I think perhaps I should have been surprised if you hadn’t blown your top. Don’t you?’

She swallowed her amazement and gazed back at him; he had actually managed to come up with a solution that let them both off the hook without either of them having to admit they were in the wrong.

Did he really believe his own reasoning, though? His expression revealed nothing, it seldom did, but she thought not. The problem was still obvious to them both, and they really ought to discuss it. But when it came to relationships it was typical of Paul to sweep difficult issues under the carpet.

He couldn’t help being that way: he had been brought up by a single aunt, his parents having been killed in a London air-raid towards the end of the war, and he had had only narrow experience of relationships. His views on parenthood and families were consequently based on ideals, and he couldn’t bring himself to admit that they might fall short in any way.

‘Paul, I –’ she began, but he put a finger to her lips.

‘Don’t let’s waste any more time, analysing,’ he said, turning away. ‘It’s all over. Finished. Forget it.’

‘OK.’ She caved in. She hadn’t the energy to pursue the matter right then.

‘Well, what do you think of this for the funeral?’ she asked, snatching at a hanger and swinging a pleated skirt around on it. ‘I’ve a jacket that matches, somewhere.’

‘It’s fine. Perfect. I like it.’ The relief in his voice was obvious: they were back on an even keel. He flashed her his most wicked grin, which prompted her to throw the garment aside in disgust.

‘It looks like my old school uniform,’ she said.

‘I know; I remember it from your old photographs.’ He squeezed her bottom. ‘Perhaps that’s why I like it.’

‘Cradle-snatcher pervert,’ she murmured, knowing he was nothing of the sort. She nestled against his chest. She hated not being friends as much as he did and wondered again why she had rocked the marital boat. Held tight in the circle of his arms, the temptation to forget her crazy ideas was immense; life would be so much easier if she could do that. Could she?

Paul unbuttoned his shirt and drew her closely against him so that she could feel his erection against her navel. For a moment she tensed and almost prevented him from taking things any further, but then she remembered that they could make love when and wherever they fancied without fear of interruption, or the possible embarrassment of their offspring. It had taken them a while to adjust to this new-found freedom, but when they had got used to the idea they had made love joyfully and with abandon in just about every room in the house.

‘Would you like me to come with you tomorrow?’ Paul asked, unclipping the fastening on her bra. ‘Drive us both up to London?’

‘To the funeral?’ Her head jerked up, leaving the tickly nest of chest hair and the comforting smell of his skin. For Paul to make such an offer was a penance indeed. ‘But why? You hardly even knew my uncle.’

‘Neither did you,’ he tossed back at her, then he quickly compressed his lips. But he was too late; he’d given the game away. Using Uncle Bert as an excuse for his wife’s odd behaviour didn’t wash.

Desire flew out of the window.

‘You’ll hate the funeral, you know you will,’ she said, pulling away from his arms. ‘It’s not your kind of thing. Thanks all the same, Paul, but I’ll go on my own as planned.’

CHAPTER 4

Julia crawled across the mattress to her own side of the bed, her buttocks wobbling invitingly. Leaning out to retrieve her nightdress, she was careful to take her time; Harvey would get a good long – and hopefully stimulating – view. But it was no good and they both knew it, although there was nothing he would have liked more than to oblige her.

‘I’m sorry.’ He sighed, staring helplessly. Oh to feel normal again!

‘It’s OK,’ she said, and collapsed into the pillows.

‘But it’s your birthday …’

‘I said it’s OK. It can’t be helped. Forget it.’

‘But we always do something special on our birthdays.’

‘Well, we’ll have to do something else that’s special, that’s all.’

‘Oh, I’m getting o-o-old,’ he said, dragging the last word out into a long self-pitying moan. ‘Correction, I am old.’

‘You’re only as old as you feel, Harvey.’

‘Right now I feel a hundred.’

Julia knelt up beside him and began pulling the sparse folds of shiny blue satin over her shaggy, highlighted hair. She wriggled, shaking the bed as she eased the garment over her breasts. Harvey looked on morosely as he watched them bounce, rubber-like, back into place. Nothing.

‘Look,’ she said, sliding under the quilt, ‘this is only a temporary thing. It’s like – well – missing periods, you know? You get a shock in your life, a bit of bad news, and the next thing you know your body’s all up the creek. Women are used to this sort of thing. Well, I am anyway; you know what my cycle’s like.’

Harvey did know. He had had to learn to live with it.

‘It’s this being pensioned off that’s done it,’ Julia went on. ‘But we’ll get over it soon. You’ll see.’

‘Made redundant,’ he corrected through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t make it sound even worse than it already is. And it’s nothing whatever like missed bloody periods! For heaven’s sake, girl –’ he thumped the mattress with his fists – ‘don’t you hear what I’m telling you? I’m old. I’m old! They were right, weren’t they? They were right all along.’

‘Who were? What?’ Julia lay back on one elbow and considered getting up. It was probably too early for her yoga class, but anything was better than lying here listening to Harvey in one of his moods. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table, spotted a stack of cotton wool pads and a bottle of nail varnish remover among the debris, and began to take off ‘Burnished Bronze’.

‘Everybody was right,’ Harvey went on. ‘All those kind, well-meaning souls who told us we would regret it.’

‘Regret –?’ The word had caught Julia’s attention.

‘I mean,’ Harvey amended hastily, wrinkling his nose as the acetone hit him, ‘you must be regretting it. Marrying me. You’ve still got your life ahead of you. And all those things they said about finding it difficult with such a big age gap between us are beginning to make sense. There you are, in the prime of your life. And here am I –’ he looked down at the mound of his body under the covers – ‘a clapped-out husk.’

Julia regarded her husband gravely for a second. Until recently he had not been so – so – negative. Yes, that was the word to describe him these days. She had never seen him like this in all the time she had known him. On the contrary, he had always been so positive, so alive, and vital, and – what did they call it? – motivated. The way she liked him to be. She scarcely fancied him like this. Actually she’d gone off sex a bit herself just lately, so perhaps that had something to do with it …

But these thoughts disturbed her a little so she dismissed them.

‘Oh, you’re being silly, Harvey,’ she scolded. ‘Just because you aren’t in the mood for once doesn’t mean anything at all. Talk about making mountains out of molehills!’

Harvey kept his next thoughts to himself. He couldn’t tell Julia that this morning’s fiasco was the culmination of days of going off it. There had been times when he had had to exercise his imagination even more vigorously than his body, just to see him through. Up until now it had worked well enough. But this time it hadn’t worked at all.

‘I tell you,’ she said, throwing back the quilt to deal with her toes, ‘you weren’t like this when you were working. You were full of energy all the time, not lying around moaning and feeling sorry for yourself.’

She’s right, he thought, pulling the bedding back to cover the parts of him that offended right now. And that was a first, too. When did Julia last let drop a pearl of wisdom from her full, pouting lips? Must have been some time before he met her.

Annoyed with himself for his lack of charity – especially as it was her birthday – he put out his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said, stroking the warm roundness of her left arm and finding that the feel of it under his finger-tips only brought home to him more vividly her enviable youth. ‘I don’t mean to be a pain. I’ll take you to Partridges for dinner tonight. OK?’

‘Lovely,’ she said, bending to kiss him and letting her breasts swing forward near his face. Perhaps there’s still a chance, she thought, flicking her tongue out to find his. But she quickly pulled away from him and left the bed; she could see by his eyes that he had slipped further from her than ever.

Frankly relieved that she’d gone, Harvey watched her snatch underwear from an open drawer and waggle her way around the bedroom in search of other bits of clothing. Then she disappeared into the bathroom and turned the shower on full gush. Never mind that she switched off The Time, The Place en route without asking him whether he wanted to watch it or not; he did, as it happened. And never mind that she activated a country and western cassette in the hi-fi system without asking him whether he wanted that either. He didn’t. At least she had gone.

Without too much effort he managed to reach the remote control where she had tossed it, and retrieved the programme; it would at least stop him thinking. But as luck would have it what did he find? A group of po-faced people banging on about how they had had to face redundancy.

‘Terrific,’ he muttered, and was about to zap it to kingdom come when one of the speakers caught his attention. In spite of himself he was soon straining to cut out Julia’s sing-along with Tammy Wynette in the shower, and to concentrate on the tragedies of life.

Well, what should he do with the rest of his own, he wondered as the presenter signed off rapidly and the closing music began to clash with the Tammy/Julia duet. Open a restaurant with his redundancy money like that twit on the box? At least, having loaned thousands in the past for similar ventures, he knew all the pitfalls one had to avoid. That chap he’d just been watching hadn’t a clue: he was obviously grossly under-funded and going to come a cropper.

How about back-packing round the world? Even though he had all but forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other. No, better to sell the car – perish the thought – and sail round. He stared at the ceiling. He really must do something.

A cloud of ‘Obsession’ announced Julia’s return to the bedroom and unaccustomed jealousy licked through him. Julia had always found plenty to keep her occupied. Since leaving the bank where she had worked as his secretary she had, at various stages, taken up ‘hairdressing in the home’, sold underwear on the party plan, and taught aerobics, aromatherapy, yoga and more recently, reflexology. She was qualified in none of these things, it had to be said, and would have looked blank if anyone had suggested she ought to be. But she always got by, and no doubt she always would.

Harvey had often wondered whether the typing certificates that had got her the bank job were genuine.

In the early days, when she had first tripped into his office each morning trailing a blanket of powerful perfume and oozing sex, he had hardly cared whether she could type or not. She had pepped up his life no end at a time when it had begun to go stale because all his friends seemed suddenly to be married and unavailable.

He found her fascinating and different, like no other woman he knew. The fact that her lip would curl in a snarl if he dared to ask her to type something, or that his letters came back as mis-spelt missives set crookedly on the page, seemed somehow irrelevant. She would bat her long lashes at him, rendering futile any complaint, and make him feel horribly wrong for daring to be critical. He felt the need to protect her; to do things for her, when she was supposed to be looking after him! Before long he was in love and wondering how it had happened.

Re-discovering Lucy-Ann lying on the carpet Julia picked her up and sat her on the shelf where a crowd of other dolls and stuffed animals jostled for space.

‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ she said, standing back with her head on one side. She smiled at Harvey where he lay spread out on the bed with his arms behind his head, and blew him another thank you kiss.

But Harvey knew it was the bracelet he had tucked inside the doll’s bloomers that had gone down best. It sparkled on Julia’s wrist as she dressed herself in a red stretchy body-suit and tight black jeans. He sighed. How much longer would she stay with him? Until his money ran out? He’d never felt absolutely sure of her; now he was even less certain. And she was so damned difficult to talk to. She kept her thoughts to herself – presumably in the belief that she had nothing worthy to say to a man of his superior intelligence. So he’d given up asking for her opinion, and if he were suddenly to defer to her after all these years he felt he would take a dive in her estimation.

He opened his eyes slowly. Julia had pulled on cream high-heeled boots and a matching leather jacket with fur lining. Her lips were an identical red to the body-suit, and her skin sported a false tan. Leaning towards him for a final kiss she gazed into his worried face.

‘You know, Harvey,’ she said in her earnest, oddly motherly way, ‘you really should find yourself something to do.’

The garnet and pearl bracelet clashed against the steering wheel as Julia started the engine. She clucked her tongue and secured the clasp. Really, she thought, Harvey should not have spent so much money. He might not get another job. He kept saying he would, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. She was more aware of the situation than he gave her credit for.

Huh! When did he give her credit for anything? He wouldn’t even discuss things with her – kept his own counsel about anything important on the assumption that she wasn’t clever enough to understand.

And she didn’t need to be given things like this, either, beautiful though they were. But he went on doing it year after year as if this was the only way he could hang on to her. It was annoying and somehow degrading; as if she could be bought. She loved him for himself, but he never seemed to believe it.

Her eyes fell on the pile of books in the passenger foot-well. He wouldn’t believe her capable of doing GCSEs either. Actually she could hardly believe it herself. Her tutor was constantly having to assure her that she really had it in her. Fancy! Dumb old Julia doing exams! Harvey would laugh his socks off if he knew.

But he wouldn’t know … yet. Wait until she passed and had certificates to prove it. Then he would have to laugh on the other side of his face.

She had thought the game was up when he was made redundant. How could she continue to keep her studying secret? But the past few weeks had shown how easy it was to pull the wool over his eyes, even with him being at home all day. He had simply assumed that she was out of the house so much because she had taken on more hairdressing; more yoga classes. He hadn’t objected at all. Presumably he felt he could hardly do that since what she earned would be their only income for a while.

Until recently she had wrestled with her assignments at home or in the college library, but of course home was out of the question now, and she had taken to going to the public library because it was eight miles nearer than the college and there were so many things to fit in to her day. This was undoubtedly risky but it couldn’t be helped. She just had to keep her fingers crossed that Harvey didn’t walk in one day and find her there. She would die if that were to happen. She would. She would die.

CHAPTER 5

‘Another corned beef sandwich?’

Uncle Bert’s elderly next-door neighbour advanced across the carpet with a mountainous plate in her hands. ‘Plenty more in the fridge, Mr May. Another three plates at least.’ Mrs Wardle looked sadly about her. ‘I didn’t know how many people to make them for, you see.’

Frank May, latterly headmaster of the Harold Vincent Comprehensive School, Middlesex, waved away the plate in a lordly manner. He also declined a chocolate finger and a lemon-flavoured cup-cake.

‘I suppose Bert didn’t keep any beer?’ he asked, getting up on a sudden hope. Tall, solidly built, and with a shiny pink dome of a head, he dominated the dingy front room of his brother’s terraced house. And, looking at him, it was difficult for Susannah to believe that her father lived permanently in the Dordogne. No amount of time in the sun seemed to turn his English ruddiness to a decent tan.

‘Beer?’ Mrs Wardle’s hat quivered as she looked round at her laden trays. She had made quantities of tea in large brown earthenware pots. ‘Well, I can’t say I would know about beer,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I’ll go and have a look in the scullery.’

Susannah felt obliged to help herself to another sandwich since there were so many about to go to waste, but her stomach protested after the first bite. She doubted whether she could manage to force down any more of the margarined monstrosities.

‘Family all right?’ Frank asked. They hadn’t had much chance to talk at the funeral.

‘Oh, we’re all very well, I’m glad to say.’ Susannah put down a thick crust. ‘Katy’s having a whale of a time in a flat with some friends – not far from here, as a matter of fact. I might look in on her later if I have time.

‘And Simon’s still doing well at the estate agent’s in Bristol. He and Natalie are getting on fine, though of course we’d still love them to get married. Justin is adorable – it’s hard to believe he’s ten months old already. As for Paul – well, he was going to come with me today but he found he had a meeting …’

Her voice trailed away and she looked down at her uncomfortably high black shoes. She didn’t like having to tell a white lie about Paul, and now she was going to have to ask after her wretched step-mother.

‘And Jan?’ she forced out. ‘She decided not to come with you?’

‘She’s – er – fine, thank you. Fine. But Bert was nothing to her, really – she only met him once or twice – so there didn’t seem much point in her coming all this way.’

‘You surprise me. It’s not like Jan to miss an opportunity to go round the London stores.’

‘Oh, how lovely to live abroad!’ Mrs Wardle broke in. She had come back into the room empty-handed, having apparently forgotten why she’d left it. ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. All that sea, sun and fresh air.’

‘We’re miles from the sea,’ Frank said abruptly, and he turned to look round the room in a dismissive manner that made Susannah feel even more awkward than she had before.

Mrs Wardle, it was true, was not the kind of woman her father would suffer gladly. She was niceness personified: one of those people who smile constantly and too closely into your face and can’t do enough to please you. No, definitely not his type; but that didn’t excuse his behaviour.

‘Er –’ Susannah thought quickly – ‘it was really very good of you to organise the funeral and everything, Mrs Wardle. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.’

‘Only too happy to do it, my dear. Not that there was much to be done. Bert had arranged everything years ago with the Co-op, you see. So very thoughtful of him, wasn’t it? But that was his way. Just like the vicar said.’

‘Yes …’ Susannah frowned as she recalled the brief eulogy. Words had streamed easily enough from the vicar’s lips, but what they had boiled down to was that Bert had been a nobody who had made no mark on the world – a fact that Susannah found profoundly disturbing in her current frame of mind. She had yet to make a mark of her own.

Frank coughed noisily, anxious to draw things to a close.

‘Well –’ he barked a laugh with no trace of humour in it – ‘can’t hang around here all day eating and drinking, can we? We – er – ahem – ought to get down to business.’

Susannah and Mrs Wardle looked blank.

‘The will, of course, the will,’ he was finally compelled to explain. ‘Now I know the poor old s—I mean poor old Bert’s only just been seen on his way, so to speak, but none of us has the time for life’s little niceties, do we? I’ve got a flight to catch, and Susannah’s got a train, so … well, where have you put it, Mrs Wardle?’

‘Put what?’ The woman flushed to find attention suddenly upon her.

‘The will.’ Frank visibly seethed. ‘My brother Albert’s will. He must have left one with you.’

But no amount of prompting could make Mrs Wardle recall a will. Or a solicitor. Or anything relevant. So Frank allocated them each a room and told them they must search it. Thoroughly.

‘Da-ad! You can’t!’ Susannah hissed, tugging at his sleeve.

‘What? Why not? What else d’you expect me to do?’

She jerked her head in the direction of Mrs Wardle. ‘It can wait, I’m sure,’ she declared loudly, and her father went off in a huff. She didn’t know what on earth he was doing upstairs; all she knew was that she was left to clear up the tea things.

Eventually she went to watch him turning out boxes and tipping drawers on to her uncle’s bed.

Bert had apparently collected silver paper and brown paper bags; bus tickets and bottle tops; string, candles and match books; books on fishing and fell-walking, and birds, and railways and trees.

‘Dad, this is really awful of you …’

Frank caught her expression and had the decency to show a little shame – if a slight deepening of his skin could be attributed to that emotion.

‘I don’t like having to do this, Susie, any more than you like standing there watching me. But this house is going to have to be disposed of, and the sooner I find the will the better. Someone must be named as executor. And it can’t be left through the winter with pipes freezing up and everything. There’ll be bills to sort out too: the gas, the electricity … it can’t all just be left.’

She looked up from a pile of old newspapers that had come to light. They went way back – one of them even mentioned food rationing. ‘But what makes you think Uncle Bert left the house to you?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t say that’s what I thought, did I?’

‘No. But … you do think so, don’t you?’

Frank grunted as he dragged a shoe box from under the bed. ‘Who else do you think he could have left it to? You? Since you were such great penpals?’

Susannah gritted her teeth at the little jibe. Dad would be out of her hair in an hour or so. Just put up with him for a bit longer, she told herself, and you needn’t see him again for – oh, ages.

‘Of course he won’t have left it to me,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t go building your hopes if I were you. It can’t be worth much, can it? Haringey isn’t exactly the up and coming area of London, you know. Anyway –’ she moved to peer over his shoulder as he blew grey dust off the lid of the box – ‘you’ve got loads of money, Dad. I don’t know what you’re getting worked up about.’

‘Why do children always assume that their parents are made of money? And I’m not getting worked up. If anyone’s getting worked up it’s you two hysterical women. Anyone would have thought I was trying to rob Bert’s grave.’

‘He hasn’t got a grave; he was cremated. And it’s not us making a fuss,’ she insisted, ‘it’s you.’

‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’ Frank growled as the lid flew off. It wasn’t like Susannah to stand up to him like this.

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Did everyone think she was behaving oddly? ‘Well, it looks like you’ve turned up trumps. That’s a will if ever I saw one.’

Frank didn’t need to be told. He’d already smoothed out the folds. ‘Christ!’ he muttered.

‘What? Tell me.’

He thrust the document towards her.

‘Who the hell’s this Dora Saxby?’ she said when she’d studied the interesting part. She could scarcely keep amusement from her voice: her father hadn’t benefited at all.

‘A woman he used to see.’ Frank’s watery pink eyes looked bleakly into the distant past. He put a finger in his ear, as he often did when upset about something, and absently raked it around. ‘I thought he’d given her up. She was married, you see. Perhaps he didn’t give her up after all. I lost track.’

‘A woman? I never knew.’ Susannah grinned. It was the best news she’d had all day. At least her Uncle Bert had lived a little. An image came to her mind. ‘There was an old dear at the back of the chapel today. I thought she’d got left behind by mistake. But I suppose it could have been her.’ She looked down at the will again and couldn’t resist rubbing salt into her father’s wound. ‘Did you see I’m to have five hundred pounds and the card table? Perhaps I’ll spend the money on air tickets for the family so we can all fly out to see you and Jan in your lovely romantic farmhouse. You must have finished all the renovations by now, surely? When would you like us to come?’

But they both knew she was only bluffing; Susannah would not voluntarily spend any amount of time in Jan’s company. Jan – a teacher at the same school as her father – had never been forgiven for befriending him and eventually taking her mother’s place. Even though her mother had been dead for several years by the time Frank and Jan married and Susannah then eighteen, she hadn’t been able to understand how her father could be so disloyal as to go after another woman. She still couldn’t.

The phone rang and rang in the empty cottage. Simon put down his receiver in disgust. Where had his mother got to? She hadn’t been at work – the guy who’d picked up the phone there had no idea where she was – and she wasn’t at home. But he badly needed her advice. He had no idea what he was going to do.

Reluctant to leave the comparative warmth of the phone booth, even though it smelled disgustingly of urine, he slumped against the Perspex wall. But his eyes fell on the baby buggy outside and he knew he ought to get moving. He would in a minute, he promised himself; right now he felt safe from the world.

Justin would be OK out there for a while. He was protected from the cutting wind by his plastic bubble and was fast asleep with three fingers in his mouth, blissfully unaware of his mother’s defection.

Simon made a fist and thumped the side of the booth. How could Natalie do this to her own child? How could she do it to him? Spurred by anger, he rolled out of the kiosk, grabbed the buggy, and set off down the street, hunched in his anorak and hoping no one would recognise him.

‘You aren’t normal!’ he’d flung at Natalie two days previously as she’d struggled out of their flat with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other.

‘Not all women are born mothers,’ she’d growled back. ‘I didn’t want him. And it was your fault we had him in the first place. So you can jolly well look after him.’

She humped her things down the stairs.

‘Oh, don’t keep dragging all that up!’ he groaned. ‘It wasn’t my fault the wretched thing burst.’

‘They test them to destruction, you know. Blow them up on machines. You just handled it wrongly.’

‘Well, there’s no point going over it again. It happened and we have to live with it. You should be thinking of Justin, not your stupid career.’

Simon couldn’t understand it. Justin was so cute and smart and lovable; a great kid. Nobody could not like him. How could his own mother be so set against him?

He had glared into the car that came to pick Natalie up. That friend of hers – Lara – had something to do with it, he was sure; she’d been putting all sorts of ideas into Natalie’s head, bit by bit. Feminist ideas. Ideas about independence and dedicating oneself to one’s career.

Of course, Simon acknowledged, jerking the buggy up a high kerb, feminism was nothing new to Natalie – she’d been brought up on it, after all – but she hadn’t pursued it so avidly before. Not until Lara had come on the scene. And everything had gone downhill from then on.

Losing his job had been the last straw.

‘Well, at least you can look after the baby now,’ Natalie had told him when he’d come home and broken the news. That was all the sympathy he’d got. ‘It’ll save me having to keep ferrying him around all the child-minders. And it’ll save the expense.’

‘But – but what are we going to live on? Your salary’s hardly enough.’ Teachers were notoriously poorly paid, and Natalie was at the bottom of the scale.

But she seemed to have worked things out already – as though she had been planning it all for months.

‘I –’ she cast him a wary glance before looking away again – ‘I think I’ll move in with Lara for a while. That should work out a lot cheaper.’

Simon blinked. And blinked again. ‘But what about me and Justin? There won’t be room for us – and I wouldn’t want to live with Lara if you paid me. We can’t go on living here either, with nothing coming in.’ He shook his head as though he had an insect in his ear. ‘Nat, none of this makes sense.’

‘Oh …’ She flapped him aside with one hand. ‘Go and move in with your parents. They’ll be delighted to have you, I’m sure.’

Had there been sarcasm in her tone? Simon reached the door of the flat that he must vacate at the end of the week. What had she been suggesting? That they wouldn’t welcome him with open arms? Well, they would; and they would love to see more of their grandchild.

Not that he could contemplate such a thing, of course. How would that make him look? A grown man, with responsibilities, running home to Mummy?

Not if he could help it.

‘Grief!’ Harvey muttered to himself when he finally got out of bed. His sleep-swollen eyes fell on the debris on Julia’s dressing table and followed a trail of jumble to the bathroom. He hadn’t noticed how untidy Julia was all the years he had been out working. Or if he had noticed it hadn’t bothered him. It was only now, stuck with it for most of the day, day after day, that it was really beginning to get to him.

Heaving himself from the bed he picked up a pair of red panties, two flimsy blouses, and a heap of wet towels. He dropped the clothes in a white wicker Ali Baba and hung the towels on a heated rail. He cleaned out the shower, tidied up the line of toiletries that ran almost the entire length of the bath tub, and then made the bed.

And he didn’t stop there. Fired by – well – he wasn’t sure what had brought on this aberration, he went on to clean the whole house. And when it was all in order and fit to be photographed for Homes and Gardens, he had a late lunch sandwich and a long, hot shower. Then he sat down at the piano in the lounge.

Mozart, he thought, his hands stiff and uncooperative; that’s what I need. Something to make me feel human again.

But he discovered that what he could hear in his head could no longer be reproduced by his fingers. Not surprising, since he hadn’t played for years. It didn’t matter though; there was no one around to listen. So he went on playing, stumbling over the cold keys and repeating his many mistakes, his thoughts drifting about with the music.

Was this real life, he asked himself: cleaning the house and strumming out tunes? Was this what soldiers dreamed of in the trenches when they were miles away at war? Did they really yearn only for their homes, for their loved ones safely about them, and all this crashing, unmitigated ordinariness? And when they were safe and sound at home did they yearn for excitement again, wishing they were back in the thick of it?

Harvey dropped the lid with a jangle and covered his eyes with his hands. Being out in the thick of things didn’t seem to be the answer either: caught up in the world of business, making money, dashing about in pursuit of an absorbing career. No. All that really gave you was an excuse for not addressing the big, burning question; you could simply tell yourself you hadn’t the time to think about it.

But now he had all the time in the world. The question stood before him, and nothing would make it go away. The ultimate riddle – a riddle he couldn’t begin to discuss with his nearest and dearest because she wouldn’t have the remotest idea what he was on about – was beginning to drive him crazy: what the hell was this life all about?

But a loud thundering at the front door prevented him having to come up with an answer just then.

‘Yes?’ he demanded, his eyes sweeping the small band of workmen he found propping up the porch.

‘Mr Webb? We’ve come early,’ their spokesman told him with a grin. ‘Now’s not often that happens, is it? We saw yer car on the drive, so we knew someone must be in, and we thought – well, you ain’t likely to object, are yer, mate?’

‘Object? To what?’ But Harvey had spotted a blue van with writing on the side and it began to trigger his memory.

‘Object to us getting on with it,’ the ring-leader said. ‘Make a start, kind of thing. Get the gear into the house and have another look-see. Know what I mean? Then tomorrow we can get down to things bright ’n early.’

‘Oh.’ Harvey’s face fell. ‘The bathroom. Of course.’

Some time ago Julia had decided they must have the guest bathroom refitted, and he had absently agreed. At the time, when quotations and so forth had been bandied about, he hadn’t taken much notice except for the final cost. He had nodded at colour charts and samples and hadn’t thought he would be much affected by the actual work; he’d certainly never dreamed he’d be part of the surroundings when it happened. Now he realised his privacy was about to be invaded, when all he wanted was to be left alone with his misery and the great mystery of life.

‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ he said, holding the door a little wider, and he watched in dismay as the work-party shambled past him in paint-splattered boots. Within minutes every room in the house seemed to be cluttered with copper piping, a shiny new bathroom suite stuck all over with impossible tape, ladders in three different sizes – what would they need those for? – and a stack of filthy tools. All Harvey’s work of the past four hours had gone to a ball of chalk.

But the boxes of tiles Julia had selected for the walls were too much to stomach.

‘Oh no,’ he said, taking one between his fingers as though it stank, ‘definitely, absolutely, and most decidedly not. This lot can go straight back where they came from.’

And then he had an idea.

CHAPTER 6

The green hold-all with tan leather trim bumped against Frank’s thigh as he walked towards the boarding gate. It bulged so much with goodies for Jan and himself that it made him tilt as though drunk. His arm muscles were strained and he was panting heavily. He was getting too old for globe-trotting, he decided. But at least this was the only luggage he had to worry about. He wouldn’t have to hang about the airport waiting for suitcases to be disgorged; he could get straight off home to Jan.

Lord, what a wasted trip! And how was he going to break the news? It was the last thing Jan would be expecting to hear from him. They had both been so sure of Bert’s money. For five short days they had blissfully assumed that all their problems were over. And now they were back to square one. Back to the nightmare that had begun almost as soon as they had left England and was still going strong.

Frank sighed as the crowd slowed to a crawl. No amount of goodies would ease the pain for his wife. Poor Jan. She had always been such a help to him – even before Rose died. A kind-hearted colleague whom he’d respected and grown to love. She didn’t deserve all this.

He handed over his boarding pass, tender warmth flooding his hard old heart. Dear Jan. What would he have done without her?

Simon sat in his car, staring up at the converted house. On the outskirts of Bristol and less than a mile from the one he and Natalie had lived in, it looked almost identical: Edwardian, three floors under a grey slate roof; run-down and generally uncared for.

He bounded up the path.

‘I told you not to come here,’ were Natalie’s first words. She looked furtively over her shoulder and Simon was well aware of Lara hovering in the background. But he wasn’t going to be deflected.

‘I’ve gone to a lot of trouble finding someone to keep an eye on Justin –’

‘You really shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘The least you can do is listen to me. Come outside for a walk.’ He began to pull her across the threshold and she frowned under her straight blonde fringe. Clearly Simon was determined; there was little point in arguing. ‘My shoes –’ She stumbled into them and let him lead her outside, but in the street she rounded on him.

‘You know this is utterly pointless.’

‘No it isn’t. Listen to me. First of all, you can’t just walk out on me like this. It isn’t fair. I can’t help it if I’ve been laid off.’ Let go was how it had been put to him. As if they were doing him a favour!

‘I haven’t walked out on you, Simon. Not permanently, anyway.’

‘What? Well, what’s this all about then? I really don’t understand. We should be facing our problems together, not split up like this.’

‘We need some time on our own. Some space to think things through. Face it, Simon. Things hadn’t been going right, had they? Not since …’ She looked down the street. Words seemed to have become too painful for her. It was as if she couldn’t bear to talk about Justin and the way his coming into their lives had changed things. Unlike Simon she had never been able to accept the unplanned pregnancy, and when Justin finally arrived had regarded the bundle in her arms as one might an unexploded bomb. Nurses had attributed her fits of weeping to the baby blues, but although they had subsided, little else had improved since then.

Natalie turned to Simon, biting her lip, her anorak flaring in the wind behind her. ‘You can claim benefits, you know. And you could get a room somewhere. Oh, you’ve got a brain in your head, haven’t you? I’m sure you’ll manage all right.’

Simon snorted in incredulity. That she could wash her hands of him he could maybe come to terms with, but to be parted willingly from her child … well, it still boggled the mind.

‘Oh, Natalie …’ He groaned. He stepped towards her, his eyes moist, his hands slipping inside her coat.

‘No, Simon.’ Her voice was cold. ‘Don’t. And don’t come to Lara’s flat again. She’s not happy about it. Phone me at work if you must, and we’ll meet up, somewhere, sometime. You can bring Justin with you, if you like,’ she added grudgingly, and with that she ducked into a path that led to the back of the house and disappeared from view.

Simon was left on the pavement with a heavy heart – and a fearful one. Bring Justin with you if you like? And Lara isn’t happy? This Lara obviously meant more to Natalie than anyone else did. He spent the rest of the evening wondering why.

‘Got rid of him already?’ Lara smiled approvingly. ‘It didn’t take you long.’

‘Yes.’ Natalie’s smile was less strong. Pleasing Lara brought a glow of pleasure … but it was hardly enough to banish her doubts. She wasn’t sure about the course she was taking, in spite of her bravado in front of Simon. Was she really a wicked mother? Or was Lara right about leaving Justin with Si? It didn’t seem right to have to support a man, but … oh, she didn’t know. She was tired of thinking about it all. So horribly, desperately tired. And it made life that much easier, falling in with Lara.

But heaven knew what Simon’s parents would think of her when they found out what was going on. They would certainly not approve, neither would they understand. Hell. She really didn’t want to fall in their estimation – any more, that is, than her inept handling of Justin must have lowered her already. Oh, she’d noticed how Susannah looked at her, as if she was doing everything wrong. Not that she said anything of course – never interfered. She could just feel it.

Really, the Hardings were much better parents than her own; she quite liked them. They had been good to her and Simon, giving them money and helping out. She wouldn’t want them upset.

Oh, but she really couldn’t think about them either. She had too much else to consider. And all she wanted to do, really, was sleep.

Susannah’s saw made comforting phwitt-phwitt, phwitt-phwitt noises as she cut up lengths of wood in her work room – or studio as she had recently begun to refer to it. It was dark outside at the moment but, during the day, light slanted through a sky-light as well as from a window at one end of the room overlooking the garden, making it not only a practical place in which to work but a pleasant one. In the centre was a large wooden table with a pair of stools pushed under it, and beneath the window was a work bench and a deep square sink. Her materials were neatly ranged on shelves.

Not for her the chaotic methods of the stereotypical artist; Susannah had to have everything in perfect order before she could create – and that included the whole cottage. If a bed was unmade or a cup unwashed it had to be dealt with first.

Susannah loved the room, her pleasure in it only slightly marred by a sense of guilt. Paul had wanted to convert this single-storey extension, which the previous owners had used as a play room, into a dining room and she had had to battle it out with him.

‘Where will we entertain?’ he’d argued, looking round at what space was available and finding it seriously lacking. Cottages were all very well, he had begun to realise, but unless you could afford three knocked into one they were a bit claustrophobic.

‘Oh, there’s enough room for a table in the alcove in the lounge,’ Susannah had pointed out with a wave of one hand. She had no patience for serving up elaborate meals, and dinner parties bored her rigid.

‘Hardly ideal.’ Paul wrinkled his beakish nose at the idea. He’d recognised, though, the determination in his wife’s eye and had eventually decided to back down.

Now, coming in from a meeting that he’d told her – over the phone when she got back from the funeral – that he wished he’d chaired himself because then it would have taken up only half the time, his face registered that same frowning displeasure.

‘You’re early,’ Susannah said, removing a length of moulded wood from the Workmate and barely glancing up at him.

‘It’s gone seven o’clock.’ He stood impatiently watching her, his briefcase still at his side.

‘Your dinner’s in the microwave,’ she went on. ‘I’ve eaten mine already.’

‘Oh.’ His shoulders drooped as he nodded his head in unwilling acceptance of the fact, but he hung about for a bit longer, shifting from one foot to the other as though hoping circumstances might change: Susannah might drop what she was doing and decide she should head for the kitchen. She might mix him a gin and tonic, or give him a welcome-home kiss. She might stand on her head and do cartwheels … He went upstairs to get changed.

And returned less than ten minutes later wearing a polo shirt and sweater that set Susannah’s teeth on edge; Paul had about as much colour sense as a cat.

By now he was carrying his dinner plate in a cloth with one hand and a glass, knife and fork in the other. He arranged them neatly on a corner of the table before hooking one of the stools with his ankle and parking himself on top of it.

‘You don’t have to eat in here,’ Susannah told him with a little laugh. But the words had a chilly rasp to them.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he tossed back at her. ‘Drop sauce on the living-room carpet, or sit in the kitchen on my own?’

‘No –’ she shrugged carelessly – ‘I just thought that, what with all the sawdust in here and everything …’

‘Tastes like sawdust anyway,’ he grunted, cautiously licking the fork. ‘A bit more isn’t going to make much difference.’

He ate in silence for a while, pausing between mouthfuls to watch her, his head cocked on one side.

‘So what’s it going to be this time?’ he finally got around to asking.

Susannah tightened the vice a little. ‘A coffee table – eventually.’ She glanced up to find him sawing at a chunk of lasagne with apparent difficulty.

The problem seemed to be one of those dried-up corners, she noted with dismay, where the pasta pokes up through the sauce and turns to indestructible cardboard in the oven. Stainless steel cutlery was no match for it – the saw she held in her hand might be more suitable – but he managed to spear it at last and surveyed it with resignation. It sat solidly on the prongs of the fork, steaming gently, and looking about as palatable as layers of loft lagging.

And if she was meant to feel guilty about the quality of the meal that evening, she did. Pulling something from the freezer and re-heating it simply wasn’t good enough, she reminded herself, even if you had made it earlier yourself. Guilt could only be kept entirely at bay by starting a meal from scratch and creating a sink-full of dirty pots. Then you had proof that you cared.

‘What’s wrong with the table we’ve got?’ Paul wanted to know, ploughing manfully through the meal.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. This isn’t for us anyway.’ She hesitated before going on. ‘It’s going to have its top done in mosaics.’

‘Oh.’

Their eyes met.

‘Bringing out the big guns now, are we?’ He was trying to make a joke of it and not succeeding. ‘I mean, if you threw something that size at me …’

Damn! She’d splintered the wood. ‘That could always be arranged,’ she growled.

He grinned at her crookedly. Then suddenly pushing the plate to one side he went over to where she was working.

‘Here, hadn’t I better do that?’ He jerked back the sleeves of his sweater to reveal the hairy backs of his wrists.

It was some seconds before she realised what he was about. ‘What? No, no, of course not,’ she protested. But she was practically having to elbow him out of the way. Or was he elbowing her? A ridiculous little scuffle ensued during which she grew increasingly cross. ‘Look, I did do woodwork at evening class, you know.’

‘Yes, I know you did, but –’ he shook his head with a kind of shudder – ‘I can hardly bear to watch you. You’ve made a right little cock-up there, haven’t you?’

‘It’s nothing I can’t put right. And if you hadn’t sat there, chewing – a-and putting me off – I’d be almost finished by now.’

‘That’s right, blame me.’ He shrugged and folded his arms. ‘You just carry on and make a pig’s ear of it; I’ll enjoy the laugh. It just doesn’t seem right, though, somehow.’

‘What doesn’t?’ She straightened up to glare at him. ‘The fact that a woman can be perfectly capable of carpentry? Really, Paul, you must try to move with the times. You sound like you’ve just stepped out of the Ark.’

‘Well, I can’t help that. I was brought up to believe certain things. In my day girls got pastry sets for Christmas and boys were given tools. You knew where you were. If someone’s since decided to move the goal posts, why should I have to change my views?’

‘Because, dear husband, you’re going to look like some kind of dinosaur if you don’t.’

Susannah stood poised with a pencil in her hand. It really was difficult to concentrate with Paul hanging round. Usually he watched television or strolled down to the pub when she was involved with the chores or whatever. Why had he chosen her to be his source of entertainment tonight?

‘You know,’ she went on, while Paul ‘helpfully’ held her ruler in the wrong place, ‘you’ve had it too easy all these years. You haven’t had to adapt. What would you have done if I’d been a fully fledged career woman? The sort you hear about these days. You know: educated up to the eyeballs; smart, good-looking top executives; nannied children etc., etc. I don’t think you could have coped.’

‘I really don’t see why not. On the contrary, I would have liked it very much.’

‘Well, of all the bloody nerve!’ Susannah threw down the pencil.

‘What?’

‘How can you say that? You know perfectly well you wouldn’t have been able to hack it for one moment. What would you have done when your career clashed with your wife’s? When you needed to take up a post in – in Timbuktu, say, and she had to be in London?’

‘We’d have worked out something.’

‘Cloud cuckoo land,’ Susannah muttered.

‘You ought to have gone to college, Sue. You still could, you know, if you wanted. I wouldn’t stand in your way.’

‘I see.’ She nodded grimly. ‘So you really do think you’d have preferred a professional wife. You no longer think I’m good enough. You can’t go bragging to your pals at work about your wife who’s doing such-and-such a clever course at so-and-so college and who’s going to walk off in a few years’ time with some spiffing sort of degree. All you can talk about is my wife who’s only a pay clerk and mucks about making these god-awful coffee tables.’

‘Susannah,’ he said wearily, ‘this is not what I’m saying at all. Nothing could be further from my mind. What’s actually bothering me at the moment, if you really want to know, is that I feel you slipping away from me, and I don’t know why. You’re remote. You’re preoccupied. We don’t do things together any more. I’m beginning to wonder whether you stayed with me because of the children all these years and now you’d like to go.’ He stared out through the window at the night. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to us.’

Susannah melted towards him. It must have taken a lot to admit his insecurity – Paul, who normally exuded nothing but inner strength; a core of solid rock running through him that could never be shaken.

‘Paul, I –’ But the phone began to ring. Tutting with exasperation, she snatched the receiver off the wall.

The voice on the line was not immediately recognisable; it was thin, high, and tearful.

‘H-hello?’ it said haltingly, then there was a long, drawn-out sniff. ‘It’s me. I’m at the station. Can you come and get me?’ Then the caller cut off.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Paul said as Susannah looked blankly surprised. ‘That was one of the children … Simon?’

‘No.’ Susannah’s thoughts had gone winging in a different direction: sickness, death, disaster! But she managed a grim little smile. ‘When did Simon ever phone us?’

‘Not since he discovered it cost money. So it was Katy, then, was it?’

‘Well, how many children have we got? Yes, it was our dear Katy. She wants me to pick her up at the station.’ Susannah frowned as she moved towards the door. ‘She sounded very upset. I wish, now, that I’d had time to pay her a visit after the funeral. I was a bit rushed, though, in the end. What do you think’s the matter?’

‘No idea. Boyfriend trouble, I shouldn’t wonder. But I’ll go.’ He’d already reached for an old gardening jacket behind the door, eager to have something to do. ‘You’d better make up the bed, hadn’t you? I doubt whether she’ll be going back to London tonight.’

‘The bed … yes, of course. I suppose you’re right.’

The guest room had been the last one they’d decorated in the eight months since moving in, and there had been little point in making up the bed before it was needed. Actually, Susannah thought, it seemed a shame to take the new, co-ordinated sheets out of their packets. But Katy might need them so she would have to.

She sighed. She had so wanted to get on with her new project; this additional interruption was most annoying. But she instantly admonished herself for her selfishness. What kind of mother was she, to put new sheets and her own needs before a daughter who sounded as if she was in trouble?

After leaving school Katy had spent a year at secretarial college and had lived at home until she was twenty while she gained work experience with an assortment of local companies. When London beckoned with its better opportunities and higher salaries she had set herself up with a good job there, sharing a bedsit with a college friend, and leaving her parents feeling slightly nervous for her safety but with their blessing.

They needn’t have worried. Katy had fallen on her feet. When months passed with barely a backward glance or a visit from her they had decided it was time to look to their own future, hence the purchase of the cottage. So, Susannah now wondered, what could have gone wrong?

Casting a last lingering look at her splintered wood, she went upstairs.

Paul scanned the small group of people waiting outside the station. There was Katy all right; she’d abandoned her luggage and was running full-tilt towards him, her arms stretched out for a hug. Nice to know someone loved him. And she didn’t look ill or anything, which was a relief. Her ‘problem’ was probably nothing at all. An incident blown up into a crisis, if he knew his little Kate. It would all be over by bed-time. And then perhaps life in the cottage would feel a bit more normal for a few days – if she was going to stay that long. She would probably stay the weekend, anyway. And her mother could hardly ignore her.

CHAPTER 7

When the bed was made Susannah stood back to look at the room. Everything in it was new, not just the sheets. Out had gone all the dilapidated furniture they had made do with over the years, and in its place was pine. The carpet and curtains were new too, and it all looked very inviting.

Giving the neat row of scatter cushions a final tweak, she switched on the two pleated table lamps and ran downstairs; already there was the unmistakable throb of Paul’s car outside on the drive, and the slam, bang, boof! of closing doors meant he’d successfully accomplished his task. He had brought Katy home.

Susannah reached the lounge just as Paul came staggering in with a huge blue suitcase weighing down one hand and a ghetto blaster in the other. He was followed by their daughter carrying – nothing at all. Except a tiny handbag in quilted leather that dangled from her shoulder by a chain.

‘Wow!’ she said over her mother’s shoulder after the briefest of dutiful kisses. ‘Is it finished now?’ Her big brown eyes, made larger than life by the none-too-discreet application of eyeliner, began taking in her surroundings. She’d seen the cottage a couple of months after they moved in, when they were just starting work, but hadn’t been back since they’d transformed it.

But Susannah found it impossible to answer right then; she could only stare at Katy’s new hairdo. It had been bleached blonde from its normal, beautiful red-gold, and most of it had been cut off – except for one odd strand, which for some reason had been left to run down over her left cheek. Parts of it caught on her lashes as she blinked, though she seemed not to notice the inconvenience.

Susannah caught Paul’s eye and saw him shrug; then he gave her a quick shake of the head. So he had no idea why they were being honoured with this visit either. What had they talked about in the car, for heaven’s sake? Trust him to leave all the awkward questioning to her.

‘Yes, it’s all finished,’ Susannah said, spreading her arms wide and trying not to stare at the disastrous hair. ‘What do you think of it, Katy? Do you like it?’

Katy made considering noises in her throat. ‘It’s much smaller than I remember.’

Susannah and Paul exchanged glances again. So far, everyone who’d seen the cottage had raved about its cosiness and its charm; they weren’t accustomed to it being criticised.

‘It’s certainly smaller than Windy Ridge,’ Susannah had to concede, ‘but you know we bought it with a view to retirement.’

‘But that won’t be for ages yet!’ Katy shot her father an alarmed glance.

‘You don’t have to be old these days,’ Paul told her. ‘People are being thrown out of our place at a rate of knots.’

‘But that won’t happen to you yet, will it?’ Now it was Susannah’s turn to look fearful.

‘Who knows what will happen?’ Paul picked up the suitcase because it was blocking the sitting room. ‘I’ll take this little lot upstairs.’

‘You’ve bought a new three-piece suite,’ Katy declared as her father struggled out of the room. ‘What was wrong with the old one?’

‘What was wrong with it?’ Susannah laughed outright. ‘What was right with it, more like. After you and Simon had used it as a bouncy castle it was never the same again.’

She looked at Katy who had sat down stiffly on the chintz two-seater and was gazing thoughtfully round at the pale peach carpet. Anyone seeing her would have thought she had come home to discover a new set of parents instead of just different furniture.

‘Come and look at the spare room,’ she said brightly to cover her disappointment. Why wasn’t Katy falling in love with the place like everyone else?

Katy rose to her feet and trudged up the stairs in ugly lace-up ankle boots that looked almost identical to a pair Susannah remembered being forced to wear as a child. She had loathed those boots almost as much as the thick brown stockings that went with them. Come to think of it, Katy’s skin-tight leggings strongly resembled those awful stockings too. Ugh!

‘You saw our room when you were here before,’ Susannah reminded her at the top of the stairs. ‘But you haven’t seen this one done up. This is the guest room.’ Pushing open the door with a flourish she saw that the suitcase now dominated the bed and the ghetto blaster was perched on top of the smart pine dresser. It didn’t look quite the same.

‘Oh,’ Katy said from the door. She slowly stepped in, her eyes drawn to the bed. ‘You’ve got a new bed too!’ she gasped. ‘What have you done with my old one?’

‘Katy –’ Susannah picked up a doll from the window-sill and fiddled with its hat. She had dressed it to tone in with its surroundings, but Katy appeared not to have noticed it. Turning round she found a recumbent Katy – boots and all – testing the bed fully clothed. ‘Katy –’ she began again; but how could she explain to her daughter that this was not exactly her room? Nor was it her home any more, not really. Well, of course it would always be home to her in a sense. And yet … it wasn’t.

‘We – er –’ she thought quickly – ‘we decided we ought to put in a double, since this is really a guest room, you know. I mean, when you’re here a single would be fine, but when Simon and Natalie come to stay – and little Justin, of course – it makes sense to –’

‘But this one’s hard as a rock. Mine was nice and soft. It had a hole that fitted me, too. Right in the middle of the mattress.’

‘Well, now it’s gone to the tip.’ Susannah sat the doll down with a bump. ‘This mattress will be much better for you,’ she added, struggling for a more sympathetic tone. After all, she reminded herself, Katy had definitely sounded upset about something over the phone. ‘Soft beds are bad for your back. And anyway you’ll not notice it just for a few days.’

Katy slanted a look at her mother. ‘I’ve come for much longer than that.’

‘Oh … really? How – how come you’ve got time off right now? I thought you were saving your days for Christmas.’

Katy swung herself off the bed. ‘I’ve lost my job,’ she said flatly, beginning to pull drawers from the dresser to see what was inside. There was nothing in them; only a woody piney smell that began to permeate the tiny room.

‘Lost your –’ Words failed Susannah for a moment. Then she hurried over to where Katy was standing. No wonder she’d shown no enthusiasm about the cottage, with news like this on her mind. ‘Oh, Katy I’m so sorry! But how?’ She could see the girl’s reflection in the cheval mirror and sensed that tears were close in spite of her attempt at non-chalance.

I –’ Katy swallowed – ‘I can’t do the work any more; they’ve given me the sack. I’ve got two months’ pay to come – and – and – oh, Mum, I don’t know what to do!’

Susannah saw her own distraught face reflected back at her as Katy turned and buried herself in her arms. When her daughter finally came up for air she ventured another question.

‘But why can’t you do the work, Katy?’ She took the opportunity of brushing aside the hair lock. ‘You were managing very well. I thought they liked you. They made you secretary to the Head of Department, didn’t they?’

Katy nodded and sniffed and mopped her eyes with a tissue. ‘I thought he was so nice at first but he turned out to be nothing but a slave-driver.’ She snorted with disgust. ‘He had me working all hours and I didn’t get a penny extra money for doing it. But if you complain you’re done for, you know; they just get shot of you for some reason or other and find someone else.

‘Do you know, there were forty-three applicants for that poxy little job? I was over the moon when they picked me. But now –’ her tears welled up afresh – ‘I’ve got RSI!’

‘Oh good God!’ Susannah whispered, her stomach taking a turn. This was her worst nightmare realised: that a child of hers should contract some deadly disease. How on earth would she cope? She found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, not knowing how she had got there, or what to say. ‘But what is it, this RSI?’ she managed eventually. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.’

‘Where have you been all your life?’ Paul said suddenly from the door. ‘It’s what typists and chicken factory workers get these days –’ He went over to Katy and hugged her for the second time that evening. ‘Isn’t it, my precious love?’

Katy nodded and allowed herself to be comforted by her father’s long, strong arms. He was like a cuddly bear in his thick woolly sweater and she sighed with a surge of relief.

‘Repetitive Strain Injury,’ Paul went on over his daughter’s head, for Susannah’s benefit. ‘I was watching a programme about it the other night. If you perform the same movement with your hands over and over again …’

But Susannah was nodding dumbly; she now recalled hearing about it. You got pains in the hands and arms after a while. Some people got it really badly and were crippled for the rest of their lives: they couldn’t even lift their arms to do their own hair. And they would never be able to work again.

‘A lot of doctors,’ Paul was saying, ‘don’t even believe it exists, let alone trouble themselves to try and sort out a cure. I believe I read about a case in the paper recently where someone successfully sued for compensation. I’ll look into the possibilities tomorrow.’

Katy cast him a look of gratitude: at least he wasn’t taking the attitude that she was swinging the lead, like some people did. ‘I can’t do anything much with them,’ she said holding out her hands. ‘And they hurt like flaming hell. Do you think I could have a hot water bottle, Mum? Oh, and I’ll need you to unpack my case …’

‘Of course Mum’ll make you a hot water bottle, won’t you dear?’ Paul was still clinging to his daughter as though she had been away for ten years instead of only a matter of months. He let her go at last and followed Susannah downstairs.

‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books, isn’t it?’ he said, rubbing his hands together as they went into the kitchen. ‘Fancy getting our Katy back! Now you won’t be bored any more.’

Susannah turned and stared at him for a moment, before going over to the sink. She began to run water on to the sad remains of lasagne she found there and went to wipe spills from the microwave.

‘How long is this RSI business going to last?’ she asked, Paul trailing her round the kitchen. She stopped to throw a startled look at the ceiling as loud thumping came down through the beams: Katy had managed to plug in the ghetto blaster.

‘No idea,’ he replied. ‘I expect she’s hungry, don’t you? What have you got to give her?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She suddenly felt extraordinarily tired.

‘Well, I must say you seem really pleased to see your own daughter. Couldn’t you make more of an effort? She needs your support, poor kid, not the cold shoulder you’ve been giving her.’

‘Oh, I haven’t! Have I? I didn’t mean to. It’s just that … look, there’s some ham for your sandwiches tomorrow …’

‘Give it to her, I don’t mind. I don’t begrudge my daughter anything in her time of dire need, even if some would. Not when the whole world must seem to have turned against her the minute she’s set foot in it. Poor kid.’ He watched Susannah take bread from the bread bin. ‘I don’t understand what’s the matter with you, Sue. You’re her mother, for heaven’s sake.’

‘She’s a young woman now, Paul, not a child. Do you realise I’d had two babies by the time I was her age?’

That seemed to throw him a little. ‘God,’ he muttered, ‘were we crazy?’

‘Just normal for those times. You got married, scraped as much of a home together as you could for a year or so, and then got down to filling it. Just think if we’d waited until I was older, we’d still have little ones hanging around.’

‘Hmm,’ he said, still thoughtful. ‘I don’t mind our young Justin, of course, but little ones at our age …’

‘Well, that’s the way it would be if I had been your career-type,’ she pointed out. ‘Career women are putting off having babies until it’s practically too late to bear them. Over forty they are, in some cases. Here, the hot water bottle’s ready.’

‘Hmm,’ he said again.

It lay between them on the work top – a dingy flop-eared apology for a rabbit that Susannah had taken from the bottom of the medicine cupboard. It bore a label forbidding anyone to throw it away, on pain of death.

Paul finally picked it up and held it out to her. ‘I think it would look better if you took it up. Don’t you?’

Jan was in celebratory mood. She had opened a bottle of Côtes de Bergerac, prepared a crisply roasted duck, and made the farmhouse kitchen as cosy as possible – given the difficult circumstances – with candles and a huge fire: Now all that was needed was for Frank to loosen up a little after his journey, and they could have a memorable evening. But, having demolished the food and drunk two-thirds of the wine, Frank was still withdrawn and barely communicative.

She observed him across the table with the detachment that even a short separation can bring. Something was definitely wrong. Of course he was no spring chicken – nor was she – but the trip back from England seemed to have drained him far more than it ought to have done.

She reached out to the block of mature English Cheddar that now sat between them and cut herself another piece from its corner. ‘Absolutely delicious,’ she pronounced, popping crumbs of it into her mouth. With her cheeks sucked in and her eyes half-closed, she looked to be in seventh heaven.

‘Mmm,’ Frank said absently, toying with a crust of bread. It would have been more than his life was worth to have failed in the minor duties he had been given for the trip, and he congratulated himself on having at least managed to remember the block of cheese, the jar of ploughman’s pickle, the slab of fruit and nut chocolate, the eighty tea bags, and the three tubes of Jan’s favourite moisturising cream from Boots.

‘Have another piece,’ Jan urged, so that she, too, could help herself again without appearing greedy. ‘And,’ she ventured to add, ‘tell me when you think the money will be sorted out.’

So far they hadn’t talked much about the funeral or its implications; Frank had stripped off for a shower the minute he got in and she had been busy with the meal. But still Frank wouldn’t be drawn.

‘I suppose,’ Jan pressed on, ‘it’ll take ages, won’t it, having to sell Bert’s grotty old house before we can do anything else? Or did you get the solicitor to agree to hurry it all along? Couldn’t it be sold by auction, perhaps? Or –’

Frank swallowed down more of the wine while his wife prattled away, hardly aware of its subtle flavour; tonight he desired only numbness. Eventually, realising that even another bottle wouldn’t be sufficient to achieve that, he raised his travel-tired eyes to hers and told her as gently as he could that they could expect nothing from his brother Bert.

‘Oh, but … surely …?’ Jan suddenly lost her appetite and let fall her piece of cheese.

Fingering a locket that hung perpetually round her neck, her gaze wandered past Frank’s left shoulder and pierced the gloom. In the light of the wavering candle-flame her closely shorn head appeared gaunt, her neck thin and scrawny, and her eye sockets deeply shadowed. Only her eyes shone through like glittering marbles.

‘Well, who is going to get Bert’s house? Susannah? Not that I’d begrudge it her really. You know I hold nothing against her, even though she’s never taken to me …’

‘No, well, it’s not Susannah; it’s some old flame of his.’

Jan giggled her relief. ‘Now I know you’re teasing me. For a minute I thought –’

‘No! No I’m not, Jan. Honestly. I only wish I were.’

And Jan could see from his face that he was telling her the truth. ‘But –’ Her gaze wandered over his shoulder again. She could just about make out the tarpaulin that stretched from one side of the farmhouse to the other. It concealed a door-less, window-less construction yawning open to the winter sky. ‘I never knew Bert had an old flame. The wily old devil.’

‘Not so much of the “old”. Don’t forget he was younger than me.’

‘Yes, but he always seemed so much older, somehow, on the few occasions I met him.’ She sat back in her chair, her hands slapping down on the table. ‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books, I must say. What are we going to do now?’

‘I’m sorry, Jan, really I am.’ Frank ran a hand over his face and looked glummer than ever. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and say it: it’s all my own stupid fault? I should have been nicer to Bert while he was alive. Brotherly love and all that. Then we’d be out of this dreadful mess.’

Jan let out a sigh. ‘I never wanted to be married to a hypocrite, Frank. At least you’re always honest about your feelings.’

‘Yes, and just look where it’s got us: well and truly in the mire.’

It wasn’t in Jan’s nature to be down-hearted for long. ‘Actually,’ she pointed out, ‘apart from your air fare for the trip, we’re no worse off than we were a week ago.’

‘We’re not a jot better off, though, either.’

‘But at least we’ve got each other.’

Frank managed a smile at last. Dear old Jan. He should have known she would hold nothing against him.

He looked at the remaining goodies, unpacked in delighted haste and still scattered across the table. It had been a horrendously expensive shopping trip, all in all, but well, what the hell …

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