Blowing It (28 page)

‘That’s not fair, Sean, or true. Ilex has been trying to sort things out with Manda for ages, Mum’s down at the hospital most of the time. Sorrel’s up to here with exams. And you want me to be sitting around, available to hear your feeble excuses?’

‘I don’t need to make excuses.’ Well, she’d give him that, a very direct, honest-looking steady gaze. Where did he get the nerve? She wouldn’t mind some of that herself.

And wow, he looked so great. Lightly tanned and wearing scuffed old faded jeans with the deep sapphire Paul Smith sweater that made his eyes look even bluer. And his hair had gone lighter in the sun. She guessed he’d been outside more than usual this last hot week, taking the girls into Richmond Park for after-school picnics, letting them race around in the sunshine. She hoped he’d had a good time with them; when it came to sorting out details of parental access she didn’t want him to be one of those dads who looked so defeated about spending forced time with their children. You could easily recognize them, slightly at a loss pushing swings in the park or trailing round the zoo for the fifth time in a season while the kids skulked and kicked at
litter
and were no longer interested in giraffes. The poor girls, they’d be maintenance children, something she’d never anticipated for them.

‘I don’t need to make excuses because I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Huh. So it was all Mary-Jane, was it? She forced you? I know she’s a bit of a slut but couldn’t she even try to keep her greedy paws off the husbands of her so-called best friends?’ Clover’s voice was rising, the fury and hurt coming to the surface at last. ‘I mean, hasn’t she managed to pull anyone in that Wimbledon job she was so excited about? No number-one seed in her personal centre court? Tell me, Sean, did she drive you down to the Common for a quick one in the woodsy bit by the Windmill, like you and I used to years ago?’

‘Now you’re just being crude. It doesn’t suit you, Clover.’ Sean scuffed his shoes on the gravel and looked embarrassed. ‘I haven’t had any kind of relationship with Mary-Jane.’

‘Ha!’ Clover laughed. ‘And now you sound like Bill Clinton! Please don’t tell me any more, I can fill in the rest of the details for myself, thanks.’

‘Again, all wrong! If you’d just fucking listen … it was all about France.’

‘
France?
What about France? Who’s going to France?’ Clover bent to pick up the courgettes and went to push past Sean but he wasn’t moving. She was almost leaning on him, shoving against him with the box. Bloody France, bloody houses.
Another
dream kiboshed along the way. Your own fault, her conscience mocked at her, your own stupid fault. Sean’s hand reached tentatively for her shoulder. She shrugged it off, but without much conviction.

‘
We
were going to France, Clover. All of us: you and me and the girls. For six weeks, this summer. And if anyone else in your family wanted to come for part of it, there’s room for them too, just the way you always wanted it.’

‘Yeah, right. You won’t get round me that way, promising something after the event. It’ll take more—’

‘It was to Mary-Jane’s place in Provence, you dim tart. She’s lending it to us. Or she was, till you got the wrong idea and suddenly took off.’ Sean took the box of courgettes out of her hands and put them back on the ground, then pulled her towards him. He smelled of hot sun and home and safety; everything she missed. No wonder it was called a broken heart – hers really, really hurt.

‘But I saw you with her outside the school. Laughing and kissing her and—’

‘I didn’t kiss her, not even close. If you hadn’t been so crazed with suspicion you’d have seen I just hugged her. And I only did that because she’d just said yes, that it was all sorted. Yes, we could borrow the house. She and Lance have got to go to New Zealand this summer for a huge family reunion. They do it every five years, she told me. I thought …
well
, I thought I’d get it fixed up on the quiet and then surprise you. It was so that we could go and try out a whole summer holiday in France and see if we really like it before we commit to buying somewhere. I thought you’d be so happy – just shows how wrong you can be.’

He looked about fifteen, she thought. Anxious and frightened. He wasn’t the only one – hell, what had she done? She’d had a stupid, idiotic one-night fling out of petty revenge. A bad enough reason on its own; how much worse was it that it turned out she’d had no reason at all?

‘Sean, I … I don’t know what to say.’ She should say a huge, almighty sorry, but then he’d wonder what for. Well OK, he’d understand she was apologizing for not hearing him out, for overreacting, but how to hide a much bigger ‘sorry’ in the middle of that? You couldn’t. She had to stuff that horrible night, the whole Harry-event, at the back of her conscience and try to forget about it. Clover had made a leap into a more grown-up, more complex world than she’d been used to: perhaps most people carried a dreadful secret something inside them that counter-balanced the good, well-meaning side. It would be her penance, that she’d know what she’d done but could never let it out to be dealt with and forgiven. Well, they were even now – but Sean must never, ever know.

SEVENTEEN

IT WAS SOMETHING
Susie Granger had said. Susie was Mac’s last visitor of the day; last hospital visitor at all, actually, for he’d be on his way home early the next morning. She’d put two ideas into Lottie’s head with one short, condemning sentence, unthinkingly uttered as the two women had left the hospital the evening before: ‘Of course now you and Mac won’t be travelling anywhere, you won’t be selling Holbrook House, will you?’

Lottie had replied with no more than a vague murmur, which Susie should feel free to interpret any way she wished, but after they’d parted outside the door to the X-ray department, she had waited for a while in the Audi, thinking. She saw Susie, all elegant straw-coloured linen and a bronze quilted Chanel bag, climb into her sassy little blue Mercedes, watched while the car’s roof slid back into the boot space and Susie drove away into the low evening sunlight, her cocoa-coloured hair
barely
rippling in the light, warm breeze. The scene reminded Lottie of a song, one that Marianne Faithfull used to sing. She delved into her memory for the title and eventually trawled it up: ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’. What an annoying song that was – about a young, suburban wife who’d given up on the dream that she’d ever drive through Paris in a sports car on a summer’s night. For God’s sake, what was with the giving up, at
thirty-seven
? What kind of age was that for whining about things you’d concluded you could never do? Especially simple, easily achievable things like a fun little car trip? What was Lucy’s problem – did she think it depended on some man to make it all happen for her? OK, granted, the dream represented a certain romantic euphoria, but what made her so defeatedly decide it was all over? Fictional Lucy, you just wanted to shake her, to tell her life was all still out there for the taking and ask her what she thought age had to do with anything.

Lottie eventually started up the Audi and drove out on to the main road towards home. As she approached the village green, the Major’s pretty house with its forlorn For Sale sign caught her attention. The garden was, after a couple of months of being abandoned at the height of the growing season, starting to show signs of serious neglect. The front lawn looked as if someone who’d become obsessed with Monty Don’s gardening style was attempting, and failing, at a meadow effect and
instead
of a delicate sprinkling of poppies, daisies and cornflowers, had found the grass being invaded by fat dandelions, many of whose heads had ripened to bloated, tatty fluff. Bindweed was threaded through the roses that hung over the fence, and the foxgloves and delphiniums had run to tall, rusty seedheads. Just as at Holbrook House, the clematis had triumphantly clambered to the roof and was making its steady way towards the end chimney.

Lottie parked by the bus stop at the side of the green, rummaged among the CDs in the glove compartment and found a pen and an old petrol receipt. She copied down the estate agent’s number.

‘And those leylandii will definitely have to go,’ Lottie startled herself, saying it out loud.

‘I’d better do a count-up. How many of us will there be?’ Sorrel opened the dresser drawer, took out a heap of cutlery and counted out a handful of forks.

‘Ten?’ Lottie said, looking up from measuring out olive oil for the marinade. ‘Or is your friend Millie staying for lunch too? That’ll make it eleven, I think.’

‘You, Dad, me and Gaz, Clover and her lot, that’s eight, Ilex plus Millie, ten.’ Sorrel added them up on her fingers.

Lottie looked round to see if anyone else was in hearing distance. ‘And Manda as well. She’s coming
too
but she doesn’t want us to let Ilex know, so make sure you don’t tell him.’

‘Is she? Wow! What, definitely for lunch or just to drop more of Ilex’s stuff off?’

‘She’ll be staying for lunch, she said. Though she did say she was bringing something for Ilex. If she’s intending to stay and be sociable then I don’t imagine it’s a bag of socks. Let’s hope it’s all back on again.’

‘Whatever. Anything that puts Ilex in a better mood. Hey, maybe she’s—’

‘Sorrel, don’t start on that one again!’

‘I was only going to say maybe she’s missing him! Can’t think why, he’s a miserable git. And someone really ought to drop him a hint that she might be coming over so that at least he makes an effort. He’s starting to look like a crusty. He’ll be drifting with the winos down at Guildford station with a dog on a string soon. Can’t you do the mumsy thing and tell him to take a shower?’

‘He’s a grown man, Sorrel.’ Even to herself she didn’t sound very convinced of that. When was the moment when anyone could be deemed to be grown up? One blip and even the most stable and responsible person could be reduced to childlike insecurity and a juvenile sulk.

‘Yeah, right. We’re really seeing signs of that lately, aren’t we?’

Lottie started on the garlic, crushing it with the back of the knife, chopping it neatly and adding it to
the
oil, lemon and coriander. She stirred in yoghurt and the cubed lamb went in next.

‘And if it
is
all back on, why doesn’t Manda just phone and tell him?’ Sorrel went on, delving into the drawer again for knives. ‘Maybe then he’ll stop moping around. Ever since he got here, he’s been looking like somebody took all his toys away.’

‘Yes, well maybe the only call he needed was a wake-up one. Most people do, now and then.’

‘Yeah … um, right. Bit deep for me, that. I’ll just take this lot out to the garden, do the table,’ Sorrel said, heading for the French doors. She didn’t want to think about wake-up calls. Hadn’t they all had enough of that this last couple of weeks? She’d got through the exams, just, but it hadn’t been easy. Gaz had been right about Carly’s lot at school – but only partly. When it had been about her folks selling the house, sure – they’d been too interested, too wanting to know stuff. But when they’d heard how her dad had almost died, it had been different. She’d felt that the sympathy was genuine this time. She’d explained to ever-cynical Gaz that it had to be because anyone could relate to something as awful as almost losing a parent, whereas the thing about moving from a multi-million-pound pad was gossip-worthy but hardly a tragedy. There’d been small examples of new kindness, such as when she’d forgotten to take a bottle of water into the second French paper, Carly had been the one who’d immediately given her one from her own supply.
Stacey
had asked her in the lunch break if she’d like her to pick her up for the next day’s exams on the way to school, sensing that Sorrel might not be feeling up to driving herself with so much to think about. School staff, who’d rather tended to leave her to her own devices over the years, had asked every day how Mac was and whether she needed it mentioned to the examination board that she was having to deal with a traumatic family time. It was all a bit late, of course; school was over now, for ever, thank God, but it was a comforting note to go out on.

Lottie went into the garden to sort out the seating. It was the most glorious June day – even given the haphazard standards of Holbrook House’s garden maintenance, the place was looking wonderfully full-bloomed. The lupins seemed to have triumphed, this year, over the annual invasion of fat aphids, the self-seeded Cosmos, antirrhinums and ancient clumps of blousy scarlet peonies kept the long borders’ vegetables more or less out of sight of the terrace. If Gertrude Jekyll came visiting to check out her original creation, she might, just for today, manage to concede a generous B-plus rather than the usual better deserved D-minus.

The battered old table out on the terrace was plenty big enough for them all but chairs would need to be brought out from the kitchen to supplement the garden benches. Usually it was Clover Lottie could rely on for this kind of help but
although
Sophia and Elsa had been up and playing in the garden since the early hours, Clover and Sean seemed to be still in bed. Good. Enjoy it while you’ve got each other, she thought, glancing up at their window in the east wing; you never know when the fates will stop your roundabout and chuck one of you off your painted pony.

Her sister Caro had shrieked when Manda told her that Ilex had proposed and had phoned every day since to demand an update. ‘You can’t leave it too long,’ she’d insisted as the days passed. ‘You have to give men an answer pretty soon before they forget they’ve asked you anything at all.’

Manda had left out the bit about him being in handcuffs at the time and was now wondering two things: first, if he’d only asked her under the duress of the arrest, as a desperate bid to get the police on-side, and, second, that she had actually mistimed her reply after all, leaving it far too late. There was a difference between having a dignified interval between question and answer and leaving it so long that he could only conclude she’d considered him beneath contempt as a marriage prospect. It was possibly her own fault that he was now convinced she’d flounced out of his life for good, but something had had to be done to shake him up. If she’d given in after a couple of days, that would have set a pattern for the rest of their lives together. If they had one. She wasn’t going to be a doormat wife, oh
no
. All the same, if it all worked out, she would keep the half-brick with its now desiccated pair of roses that he’d tied to it as a memento of Ilex’s great moment of high romance. If he never gave her another crazy episode to outdo that one, she’d have that brick as a single silly treasure to remind her that when it came to it, Ilex could get her up there with the daftest mushy movie moments that had her damp-eyed and sniffing at the cinema as the credits rolled.