Hidden Cottage (50 page)
The plates, cups and saucers all washed, Mia was refilling the sink with clean water to make a start on the glasses when Georgina said, ‘Mia, after everything that’s happened, you won’t leave the village, will you?’
Mia paused, uncertain. ‘To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what lies ahead for me. But I don’t see myself continuing to live at Medlar House. I doubt whether Jeff will either.’
‘Does that mean you’re divorcing him?’
‘I certainly can’t stay married to him. Not after what he did to Owen.’
‘Dare I ask, what about you and Owen?’
Mia shook her head. ‘I know what you’re getting at, but I can’t do that.’
‘Why not? You’re not worrying what others will think, are you?’
‘I’m beyond caring what anyone else thinks. But I need time to sort myself out. I’ve been all over the place with my emotions since—’ She hesitated, her mood instantly sombre. It was still painfully difficult to talk about Daisy’s death, especially in terms of simplistically referencing things that happened pre or post the night her daughter died. ‘I just need time,’ she repeated.
Georgina eyed her sceptically. ‘Do you want my opinion?’ she asked.
‘I suspect I’m going to hear it whatever I think,’ she said with a faint smile.
‘In that case, listen very carefully to what I’m going to say. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Imagine it was Jensen or Eliza in your shoes, and think of the advice you would give them so they could live life to the full and be happy. Will you promise me you’ll do that?’
Mia opened her mouth to respond, but her words evaporated. She stared at Georgina dumbly. Her mind whirled. And a part of her actually trembled. It was shock at suddenly seeing things from an entirely different perspective.
‘Mia?’
She dried her hands and compelled to do something she hadn’t been able to do since Daisy’s death, she hugged Georgina. Really hugged her. It felt good. ‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly, her eyes brimming. ‘Thank you for everything.’
Looking confused, Georgina said, ‘What for?’
‘For being such a good friend, and for opening my eyes. And for being so understanding. Especially about Owen.’
‘Forget it. All in the past. It’s your future that’s more important now.’
‘You’re right,’ Mia said.
The next morning Owen slept in; it was almost nine o’clock when he woke.
Pushing the duvet away from him, he got stiffly out of bed and went over to the window. He drew back the curtains and saw Putin strutting across the lawn, head down, as if deep in thought. Every morning for the last week the bird had been here, not shrieking its head off as it usually did at the crack of dawn, just marching about as though keeping an eye on Owen. Mia said he was Owen’s very own guardian angel.
He went downstairs to make some coffee. He filled the machine with water, added coffee, flicked the switch and then put two slices of bread into the toaster. With his left hand as good as useless, everything took him twice as long to do. Overall the pain throughout his body was less intense now, but coughing or sneezing was agony, as was bending. But then even sitting down or standing up was painful. The doctor said it would take four to six weeks for his ribs to heal and about the same for his fingers, maybe longer.
He was back upstairs slowly getting dressed when he heard his mobile ring; it was Bea.
‘We’ve just got back from holiday and heard the news from Rich,’ she said without preamble. ‘What the hell’s been going on there?’
‘Oh, so Rich has been shooting his mouth off, has he?’ Owen said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told him.’
‘Never mind Rich, tell me how you are.’
‘I’ve been better, it’s fair to say.’
‘Owen, don’t waste your breath on your customary forte for making light of something. Give me the details.’
So he told Bea and when he’d finished, she said, ‘Come and stay with us for a while; it sounds hell there.’
‘It’s not. Far from it. Besides, I can’t drive; I’m here for the duration. More to the point, I don’t want to be too far from Mia.’
‘My God, Owen, she had better be worth all this she’s putting you through.’
‘She is. She really is.’
When he’d finished the call and was sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating the immense task of bending down to put on his socks, he heard a knock at the back door, followed by the sound of Mia’s voice – he’d given her a key so she could let herself in. ‘Up here,’ he called to her.
He heard her light footsteps hurrying on the stairs and he smiled when she came in. Every morning she came to boss him around. That was how he described her visits to help with anything he couldn’t manage. She called it her care in the community work.
Always attuned to the slightest change in her, he said, ‘Are you all right? You look tired.’
‘I had trouble sleeping,’ she said, coming over to the bed. ‘Lots on my mind.’
Taking the socks from him, she knelt on the floor and put them on for him. She then found his shoes and put those on as well. There was nothing fundamentally intimate about someone putting your socks and shoes on for you, but for Owen it felt excruciatingly intimate, and while he was grateful for everything Mia did for him, he hated being treated as an invalid. He was also concerned, knowing how Mia’s mind could work, that she felt guilty at what Jeff had done and coming here to help him was another sacrifice she was prepared to make.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s no need for you to do this, I can manage.’
Still kneeling in front of him, she said, ‘Are you sure? It’s no bother for me. Or are you worried that I care what people might be saying because I come here every day?’ Before he could reply, she said, ‘I don’t give a damn about gossip. All I care about is you being well again.’
Hearing the heated conviction in her voice, and with her lovely defiant face so close to his, he was dangerously tempted to tilt her chin up with his good hand and kiss her. But he daren’t. Despite seeing her every day, there had been no physical contact between them, apart from the practical job of helping him into his clothes, and no matter how much he hoped it could be otherwise, he wasn’t about to ruin things. For now she was relaxed in his company and was being a good friend to him; that had to be enough. Although he did have the vaguest feeling that the night she came here after Jeff had gone berserk she had kissed his forehead. Though the state he’d been in, he could have dreamt it.
‘Well,’ he said, wishing she’d get up from the floor and stop making this so difficult for him, ‘I can see you’re in a feisty mood this morning. I’d better be on my best behaviour. So what was on your mind that you couldn’t sleep? Too much talent-show excitement? Was it the thought of Joe in those awful Lycra leggings?’
The defiance went from her face and was replaced with a more solemn expression. ‘It was something Georgina said to me last night, about living life to the full and being happy.’
He cautioned himself to tread warily. She’d told him before that she could no longer stay married to Jeff, but as to what came next she hadn’t said, and he hadn’t asked. Any question from him would be too loaded. ‘Happiness,’ he said carefully, ‘is often something we have to allow ourselves to feel.’
‘I know. But once you’re convinced of a thing, it’s hard to shake off that belief.’
Once more choosing his words with care, he said, ‘Do you think you can, Mia? Or will you always go on punishing yourself for something you didn’t do? Daisy’s death wasn’t your fault. Being unfaithful to Jeff had nothing to do with it. I understand the sacrifice you feel you have to make, but it’s wrong.’
‘That’s what I was thinking about last night. Again it was something Georgina said. She told me to imagine it was Jensen or Eliza in my situation and to think what advice I would give them.’
‘And what advice would you give?’
‘I’d say and do everything I could to stop them making the biggest mistake of their life.’ Her eyes dark, she raised a hand and touched his cheek. ‘So if you could be patient with me, I think I could perhaps follow that advice myself.’
He swallowed. ‘Perhaps my wits are a little dull from the aftereffects of concussion, but could you explain exactly what you mean by that?’
‘I mean I don’t want to rush things, but I want there to be an
us
. I want the chance to be happy with you.’
Now he couldn’t resist her. He leant forward to kiss her and immediately let out a yelp of pain.
At once she got up from the floor and was on the bed beside him, her face full of concern. ‘I can’t even kiss you now,’ he groaned. ‘What a useless wreck I am.’
Her gaze burning into his, she said, ‘But I can kiss you.’ And she did. It was a beautiful kiss, long and lingering, and made his heart beat double time.
When she pulled away, he said, ‘Do you think if I took enough painkillers we could risk making love?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘Don’t even think about it. No sex until you can manage to put your own socks and shoes on.’
Sunday afternoon in Brussels and after a difficult week at work when the slightest thing had pushed him perilously close to the edge of his patience and sanity, Jeff lay sprawled on the sofa in his pyjamas and dressing gown. He hadn’t bothered to wash, shave or dress since Friday. To do anything other than lie here took too much energy. The television was on with twenty-four-hour rolling news, but it was merely background noise. Occasionally he turned up the volume to drown out the racket coming from the apartment above.
Somebody new had moved in and had spent the weekend shunting furniture around and playing music at full blast. Earlier this morning he’d had enough of the din and, charged with a rush of adrenaline, he’d been on the verge of storming up there to let rip. He’d got as far as the hall when he’d caught sight of himself in the mirror in his dressing gown and had at once shambled back to the sofa. Where he lay in a state of bewildered shock, made worse by increasing shame and regret.
How had it happened? How had any of it happened? He’d lost everything: first Daisy and now Mia, along with his life in Little Pelham.
None of which he could have foreseen. One of the questions amongst the many that he kept asking himself was: had he known what was in store for him, would he, or could he, have done anything different to prevent it happening? And what more had Mia wanted from him? What more could he have given? He doubted that Mia knew the answer herself as otherwise she would have told him. That’s what wives did; they didn’t hold back with their criticism or thoughts on how men should improve themselves.
But no, he wouldn’t pursue that line of thought any further. He didn’t want to risk thinking of anything that made him angry for fear of succumbing again to the awful rage of last weekend. Every night, just as he was falling asleep, he’d be jerked wide awake by the sickening memory of his aggression. Every day his shame grew, just as it had over that night in Monte Carlo.
If only he hadn’t gone to The Hidden Cottage straight after he’d overheard Bev relishing the grubby gossip she’d got from her cousin about Mia and Owen. Had he not made that mistake, he would undoubtedly have garnered some sympathy in the village as the wronged husband and Owen would have been held in contempt. Even if he had thrown a punch or two, people would have sided with him, saying it was what any man would do in the circumstances. But losing control in the way he had was another matter altogether. So it was Jeff who would be condemned and reviled; he would never escape the stain of what he’d done, and as a consequence, he knew he didn’t have the guts to show his face in the village again.
Mia hadn’t said the words yet, but divorce was inevitable. As was the sale of Medlar House. In due course he would ask Mia to pack up Daisy’s things and send them here. He trusted her to do that much for him.
He had come close to ringing Mia to ask her to have a rethink, to consider putting everything behind them and move away from Little Pelham and start over somewhere new. The idea had momentarily given him hope, had also made him recognize the value of what he’d had with Mia. Good and bad times, they had a shared history – a history that included Daisy – and he didn’t want to lose it. All he had to do was convince her he was truly sorry and she would come round. She always had. But when he’d really thought about it he’d been forced to acknowledge that his heart wasn’t in it. He no longer had the hunger in him he’d once had – the hunger and drive that used to make him fight tooth and nail for something he wanted was gone.
It was a depressing realization and, alone in his misery, he was left feeling there was nothing in the world that he remotely cared about any more.
It was a year to the day since Owen had moved here and as he looked out at the lake in the languid stillness of the silvery moonlight, he believed that The Hidden Cottage really was, as Mia liked to say, an answer to a mad, mad world.
Standing at the end of the wooden jetty, which Mia had lined with tea-lights, he waited for her to finish talking on the phone with Eliza, and wondered what she was up to. All he knew was that she had a surprise for him, a way to celebrate his first anniversary of moving to the village.
Earlier in the evening, after he’d finished cutting the grass, he’d been shooed away from the house and ordered to go for a drink at the Fox and Goose with Jensen and told not to return until it was dark. The only clue he had was that he might like to wear something warm. It was a cool May night, not cold, but with a clear star-pricked sky above him, the temperature was likely to drop and so he was well prepared with a scarf and one of his old ObeSkiWear fleeces.
In the distance he could hear music drifting across the fields. There was a concert on at Castle Ashby tonight with an assortment of eighties bands and singers performing – the appetite for nostalgia showed no sign of abating.
He turned to look back up the garden to the house. With the light on in the sitting room, he could see Mia standing at the French windows, a phone pressed to her ear. She waved to him and gestured she would be a few minutes more. He responded with a gesture of his own, relaying that there was no hurry.
