Hens Reunited (23 page)

A muscle twitched in Cathy’s cheek and she folded her arms across her chest. ‘Yes, he’s back,’ she replied evenly. ‘I’m not sure what his plans are, though.’

Natasha snorted. ‘What a surprise,’ she said softly.

A coldness entered Cathy’s voice. ‘Why are you so interested, anyway?’ she asked. ‘Still carrying a torch, by any chance?’

‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Natasha sneered. ‘Carrying a torch? He wishes.’

‘Ha! No he doesn’t,’ Cathy retorted contemptuously. ‘In your dreams, love.’

Alice realized she was holding her breath. The air was charged with tension, as the two women locked gazes. Natasha reminded her of a snake rearing, poised to strike. Cathy had gone very pale. Then Alice remembered what Mags had said the other day, about Dom Fletcher’s choice of underwear: ‘
Where did you hear that? Did Natasha say that? Or Cathy?
’

Ahhh. All was clear now. Crystal clear. Alice sat down on the rug pretending to be looking for something in the back of the buggy, but her mind was spinning. So Natasha and Cathy had
both
had relationships with Dom – no wonder sparks were flying!
Ouch.
That was the downside of village life, all right – having to rub along with rivals and enemies, everyone knowing your histories. Thank
goodness
she’d turned down Dom’s advances! Imagine if she’d walked straight into a fling, with these two ex-girlfriends (ex-wives?) living in close proximity! Not that he had specifically
offered
her a fling, of course, but . . .

Alice pulled out a bottle of water and took a drink, trying to appear unobtrusive. She didn’t want to get involved in this eternal triangle, no way. She wanted to blend into the background, not be pulled in to take sides.

Luckily Natasha’s attention was caught just then by a small tousle-haired girl who was shrieking like a banshee as she rampaged around the trees barefoot. ‘Sophia!’ she yelled at the girl. ‘Where are your shoes? Put them back on this minute, young lady!’

Alice couldn’t help a guilty moment’s
schadenfreude
as Sophia blithely ignored the command and continued chasing a little boy, squealing at the top of her voice
.
The soles of her feet were already filthy.
Good for you, kid
, Alice thought, trying to hide a smile.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ Natasha said, her eyes flashing with irritation, and stalked after her recalcitrant daughter, long pale fingers clenched at her sides.

Cathy let out a strangled-sounding groan. ‘God, I hate that woman,’ she muttered. ‘She is pure poison.’ She sank down onto the blanket and rubbed her eyes. ‘Maybe this was a bad idea, us coming along. I should have known she’d be here too. Never misses a chance to . . .’ She broke off as two more women approached. Mags and Jen.

‘Afternoon, ladies!’ Jen carolled, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head as she wheeled her pushchair over to join them. She parked up on the other side of Cathy’s blanket, and Alice felt hemmed in all of a sudden. No chance for a quick getaway now, she thought with a fleeting feeling of despair.

‘Phew, it’s a scorcher,’ Mags put in, fanning herself with a copy of
Hello!
magazine.
‘
Who fancies a glass of vino plonko, then? I brought along my plastic wine glasses specially.’

‘Count me in,’ Jen said at once, spreading out a huge red blanket next to Cathy’s. She unfastened her little daughter – Poppy, was it? – from a buggy and started unpacking boxes full of sandwiches. ‘Pops, why don’t you go and play while Mummy sorts out lunch?’ she suggested. ‘Look, I can see Sophia and Aunty Tasha over there.’

Aunty Tasha?
Alice thought. Did that mean . . . Ahh yes. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed the resemblance before. Jen had the same colouring as Natasha, although she didn’t have quite the same forbidding glare.

Mags was sloshing straw-coloured wine into glasses and handing them around. ‘Here, Alice, one for you, get it down you while it’s still cold,’ she instructed, and Alice found herself raising the glass to her lips obediently.
From Mother’s Pride to Mother’s Ruin in one single movement
, she thought. Ahh well.

‘Thanks,’ she said. Clearly she wasn’t going to be able to ask Cathy about the exchange she’d just had with Natasha – not now the cavalry had rocked up with their provisions and gossip-radars.

‘Cheers, everyone!’ Mags said, knocking back a huge gulp.

Alice looked at Cathy, who was still staring in Natasha’s direction with a scowl on her face. ‘Cheers,’ she replied weakly. Life in this village just got more and more complicated. She was starting to think things would be more comfortable living in a nest of vipers.

Thankfully, Sophia kept Natasha busy for much of the afternoon, fighting with the boys, then falling out of a tree and screaming blue murder. Alice wasn’t at all sorry when Natasha eventually packed up her (largely untouched) picnic spread and dragged her daughter off home. ‘Wanna go to McDonald’s!’ Sophia screamed at the top of her voice and Alice had to stifle a giggle at the look of fury that appeared on Natasha’s face.

‘Ding dong, the witch has gone,’ Cathy sang under her breath, joggling little Joe on her knee as they watched them go.

‘She’s horrible,’ Alice agreed in a low voice, casting furtive glances around for Mags and Jen. Luckily both were attending to their children, well out of earshot. She nibbled on her second Bakewell tart, dabbing a wet finger to pick up the pastry crumbs at the bottom of the silver foil dish. ‘So what was all that about when we got here, anyway? Why was she so bitchy about Dom?’

Cathy turned in surprise at the question and Joe let out a squawk at the sudden movement. ‘I didn’t realize you knew him?’ she said, and Alice blushed, immediately regretting asking. That was daytime drinking for you – it made you blurt out all sorts of things you were meant to be keeping shtum about.

‘I don’t really,’ she confessed. ‘He popped round the day I moved in. Then, next I heard, he’d told the whole village he’d been up in my bedroom and I had Mags and Jen over there giving me knowing looks, as if . . .’

Cathy looked hurt and Alice closed her mouth hurriedly. Oh my God. She could have kicked herself. What was she saying? This was the last thing on earth Cathy wanted to hear, what with Dom having previously dumped all over
her.

‘I mean . . .’ Alice tried to backtrack quickly. ‘I don’t know the guy from Adam, so . . .’ Thankfully, Iris chose that moment to stir, having slept through the entire picnic thus far, and let out a wail. Saved by the yell. ‘Ahh. Are you hungry, pickle?’ Alice got to her feet (rather woozily) and located the pot of veggie mush for her daughter’s lunch. Perfect timing, Iris, she thought, turning away from Cathy and hoping that their awkward conversation about Dom would now judder to an abrupt halt and die of natural causes.

Cathy had other intentions, though. ‘Well, take it from me, he’s lovely,’ she said defensively. ‘Natasha did her damnedest to ruin his life but he got away from her, thank God. She just can’t bear it that he wised up to her and told her where to go.’

Alice bit her lip. She really
really
wished she’d kept her mouth shut now. Dom was clearly too painful a subject, judging by the jut of Cathy’s chin and the drawn look on her face. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just . . . I just didn’t know why she was being so frosty.’

‘I think Natasha was born with an icicle up her bum,’ Cathy said with a small smile. ‘She’s trouble. Stay away from her.’

‘I will, don’t worry,’ Alice said truthfully. She had no wish ever to meet Natasha again after this first encounter. She put a bib on Iris and spooned some food into her mouth. There – subject closed, she hoped. Next time she’d know better. Cathy was obviously still very loyal about her ex and blind to all his faults. Alice did not want to make her new friend feel any worse by talking about him. All the same, she couldn’t help feeling intrigued. What on earth had
happened
between Cathy, Natasha and Dom?

Later that evening, the heat became oppressive. The sky, which had been a bright, cloudless blue the entire day, was now invaded by dense, dark clouds which blotted out the sinking sun. There wasn’t a breath of wind in the air any more, just rising heat from the baked earth.

Iris was tired and grouchy and took a while to settle when it was her bedtime. Alice felt drained too after drinking wine in the sun, and found herself leaning on the side of the cot, willing her daughter’s eyes to close. She’d often wished Jake could be there to help out at times like this, when she was already dog-tired and ready to crash out herself. Imagine if she could kiss Iris’s warm up-turned face, then creep out and ask her husband to do the bedtime honours for a change. Or better still, imagine if he were to come into the room at this very moment and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Here, you look knackered,’ he’d say. ‘Go and pour yourself a glass of wine. I’ll take over now.’

Imagine!

‘It’s not going to happen, is it?’ she murmured to Iris, who was chewing sleepily on her cuddly bear’s ear. ‘It’s just us two, soldiering along together. But don’t you worry. Everything will be all right.’

Iris’s round peachy face lit up with one of her sudden beaming smiles as if she’d only just noticed Alice there, and the rush of love that surged up inside Alice swamped all wishes of husbandly help and glasses of wine. Maybe it was better this way, anyway. You only had to look at the women of the village to know that Happy-Ever-Afters were few and far between – her, Cathy, Natasha – they’d all been dumped on by various men. And even Capable Katie, who was always so together about everything in life, had recently stumbled on the relationship front. Maybe it was better just to wash your hands of it and make do the best you could alone.

As if to prove a point, Iris’s eyelids suddenly drooped shut, like blinds being pulled down, and her breathing deepened. The soggy bear fell out of her fingers and lay face-down on the sheet.

There. Jake wasn’t needed after all. Alice stood for a moment gazing at the way Iris’s eyelashes fell in such a perfect sweep across her plump cheeks, at her rosebud lips slightly apart, at the soft dark hair that was just starting to curl at the ends. ‘Sleep well, sweetheart,’ she whispered into the semi-darkness.

Then she went to pour her own wine, all by herself.

Curled up on the sofa an hour or so later, with a paper bag full of raspberries leaking slightly on her lap, Alice was so engrossed in a fat romantic novel, it took her a moment or two to hear the gentle tapping at the door. She jumped up in surprise, knocking over the glass of wine balanced next to her, and sending the raspberries scattering all over the carpet.

‘Bollocks,’ she muttered, putting the book down and picking her way through the squashed fruit to answer the door. She caught sight of the clock on the mantelpiece as she went – eight thirty. Who would be coming round at this time of the evening? She had a sudden yearning for the safety chain and fish-eye spyhole she and Jake had had in their front door in London, feeling vulnerable on her own here now.

She hesitated before opening the door. ‘Who is it?’ she called through the wood, her fingers around the handle.

‘It’s Dom,’ came the unexpected reply, and she twisted her mouth in a helpless grimace. What did
he
want? She hadn’t seen him since she’d snapped at him in the lane for gossiping about her. He was persistent, you had to give him that.

She pulled open the door, conscious that she still had her grubby vest top on, and that she hadn’t plucked her eyebrows for about a year. If Dom liked his women to be as flawless as Natasha, or as pretty as Cathy, he was really lowering his standards to be calling on her.

‘Hi,’ she said, feeling disconcerted as a memory of the catfight there’d been over him at the picnic earlier flashed into her mind. She paused, wondering what he was doing there. Should she shoo him off the premises before any more rumours sprang into life?

‘Hi,’ he said. He had a bottle of red wine in one hand and a bunch of wilting sweet peas in the other. He took a step forward, thrusting his offerings towards her, and she caught the flowers’ sweet heady fragrance with the movement. ‘Look – I come in peace,’ he said baldly. ‘I feel like we’ve got off to a bad start. May I?’

Oh Christ. Now what? Was this how he’d collected his other bedpost notches, charm and perseverance, doorstepping unsuspecting victims and plying them with booze and posies? Well, she could see through his tricks! She wouldn’t be impressed by such niceties. She drew herself up taller and looked him in the eye. ‘Sure,’ she replied coolly, with a dismissive shrug.
If you must
, was the subtext. ‘Come on through.’

Her heart thumped uncomfortably as he walked into the cottage and shut the front door behind him. His fingers brushed hers as he handed her the flowers and she stepped into the kitchen away from him to get a vase so that he wouldn’t see her blush. Stupid Alice! The blood was rushing to her face – all that wine, presumably. Village life was turning her into a right old lush.

He followed her into the kitchen and the room felt absurdly small with him in there, leaning against the worktop while she found a glass stem vase and filled it with water. The scent of the sweet peas was intoxicating but she felt determined to keep a cool head. He probably didn’t realize she knew all about him and his former conquests. Decided he’d try it on before the word had spread to her – well, too late for that, sunshine, she thought.

‘Have you got a corkscrew?’ he asked, and she felt herself flush a deeper pink. Impatient or what? What was wrong with the man, why was he so desperate for a drink?

‘Sure,’ she said, pulling one out of the utensil drawer and getting down a single glass for him. She remembered, just then, her fallen glass in the living room – oh, and all those raspberries that had spilled everywhere like blood spatters after a murder. Great. It would look as if she’d been having a food fight all on her own in there. ‘Can I leave that with you?’ she asked, handing it over, along with the corkscrew. ‘I’ll just get my glass from the other room.’