Hitched! (17 page)

‘You told me to find myself a sensible girl, and I have,’
George told his grandmother and she looked me up and down, clearly reserving
judgement.

‘Humph.
I’ll
decide if she’s
sensible or not.’

Letitia might be ninety, but this was no dotty old lady. She
was sharp as tacks, and she would pick up any false note. I couldn’t bear the
thought of her calling George on the pretence. It would be just an added
humiliation for him in front of his family. If Letitia realised that we weren’t
really in love, it wouldn’t be my fault, I decided.

‘Happy birthday, Mrs Challoner,’ I said, letting go of George’s
hand to shake hers.

‘What sort of gal takes up with my grandson?’

‘One who loves him very much,’ I said with a smile at George,
who smiled back, an arrested expression in the blue, blue eyes.

‘Well, that’s not very sensible for a start.’ Andrew Challoner
snorted in the background, but we ignored him.

‘Frith’s a civil engineer,’ George told his grandmother.

‘Unusual.’ Letitia inspected my face more carefully. ‘Do you
ride, Frith?’

‘Only a bicycle, I’m afraid.’

NINE

‘I thought my lack of horse-riding experience was going
to count against me,’ I whispered to George when the housekeeper showed us to
our room to change before lunch. By the time Letitia had finished
cross-examining me, it was getting late, and the meal had already been set back
an hour. The cook would be cursing me, I thought.

‘She liked you, I could tell.’ Careless of the fact that they
were waiting for us downstairs, George kicked off his shoes and threw himself
down on the bed. In chinos and a pale yellow polo shirt, he looked wonderful,
and I wished that we were in a hotel, that there were no family to be faced, no
formal lunch to be eaten.

In a hotel, I could go over to the bed and sit next to him. I
could push my hair out of the way and lean down to press my lips to his throat.
I could kiss my way up to the pulse that beat below his ear, to the jaw that
made me weak with desire whenever I looked at it. I could tug the shirt from his
trousers and slide my hand beneath it. I could explore the broad solid chest,
let my mouth drift over the sleek warmth of his skin.

But we weren’t in a hotel. We were late for lunch.

I turned away, swallowing, and opened my case.

‘It’s better to be honest, anyway,’ George was saying,
unaware—I hoped!—of the lustful turn of my thoughts. ‘She can pick up a fib a
mile off.’

I made a big thing of shaking out my dress. ‘I told her I loved
you,’ I objected.

‘So you did.’ The dent in his cheek deepened with his lopsided
smile as he got up from the bed. Grabbing his shirt below the collar, he hauled
it over his head, the way men did. ‘Maybe you do love me,’ he said, muffled.

My mouth dried at the sight of his lean, hard body, already so
achingly familiar. If only we could forget the lunch and his icily polite
family, and spend the afternoon in that wide, inviting bed with the afternoon
sunshine spilling through the open window.

‘Maybe she can’t spot a pretence quite as well as you think she
can,’ I said, unsettled by how badly I wanted to touch him. This wasn’t like me.
There was a time and a place for lazy afternoons in bed, and the middle of a
fraught family reunion wasn’t one of them.

Anyone would think I couldn’t keep my hands off George. I was
going to have to get used to not being able to touch him sooner or later, and
I’d better start now.

‘Maybe I’m a better actor than you think I am,’ I added, hoping
that it was true. Because if it wasn’t true, I was in trouble.

Big
trouble.

No, it wasn’t love I felt, I reassured myself. Lust, maybe, but
I had been so careful not to think beyond these few weeks. I had my emotions
well under control as always. My relationship with George was firmly
time-limited, like all the best plans, and I hadn’t forgotten that. Hadn’t we
just been discussing that in the car? I would be leaving soon. There was no
point in doing anything silly like falling in love with him.

Of course I wasn’t going to do that.

George had been vague when I asked him how formal the lunch was
likely to be, so I had played safe and brought my favourite summer dress. With
its soft chintzy print, it was faintly old-fashioned, but I’d always liked it.
It had a chiffon overskirt that floated when I walked, and it made me feel
pretty.

It wasn’t the most exciting dress in the world, but I felt
comfortable in it, and, with some heels and my mother’s pearls around my throat,
I was ready to go.

George stared at me as he shrugged on his jacket. In spite of
the heat, the men were all wearing suits. ‘You look gorgeous,’ he said. ‘You
should wear a dress more often.’

‘I don’t think this would be very practical on site,’ I said
briskly to hide my pleasure.

‘Who cares about the site? You could wear it for me.’

I touched the pearls at my throat. They reminded me of my
mother. She had done everything my father asked of her. If he’d wanted her to
wear a bin bag, she’d have done it to please him, and look where it had got her.
I didn’t need to please George, I reminded myself.

‘I’ll wear what I feel like,’ I said.

* * *

In deference to Letitia’s age, the lunch was the main
celebration of the day. We had champagne, and then a whole salmon with
hollandaise sauce and tiny new potatoes boiled and tossed in parsley.

I would have enjoyed it if it hadn’t been for the undercurrent
of tension running around the table. Everyone was on their best behaviour, but
there was still an edge to the conversation, a stiltedness to the way the family
talked to each other. Margaret and Michael Challoner didn’t address George
directly once, but I saw them looking at him with a kind of baffled frustration,
as if they couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

It was hard to believe George was their son. I wondered if he
had always been regarded as the cuckoo in the nest. It would certainly explain
why he had kicked out against the stultifying formality of the family.

At least he had forged a strong bond with his grandmother. I
watched them together, and it was obvious that George was Letitia’s favourite.
He teased her and made her laugh and if he was aware of his parents’ coldness,
he gave no sign of it. It was left to me to make laboured conversation with them
and with George’s uncle and aunt. They were too well bred to be overtly rude to
me, but I could tell that they weren’t impressed.

I didn’t care. The feeling was mutual. Charlotte made little
effort. She was one of those pale, wilting women with wills of iron.

The only decent conversation I had was with the two boys, Jack
and Jeremy. They were a little subdued by the atmosphere but happy to talk about
some computer game they liked to play. I didn’t really follow the details, but I
gathered it was set on some alien planet populated by hideous monsters and we
had an interesting discussion about space travel and the likelihood of life on
Mars.

They were nice boys. I’d never had much to do with children
before, and I was surprised at how easy they were to talk to. Long ago I had
decided against having children of my own. Children needed too much, and how
could you ever guarantee that they would be happy? That you would always be
there for them? That a blood clot wouldn’t strike you down just when they needed
you most? I couldn’t bear the thought of letting a child down, the way my father
had let me down, or of leaving him or her alone.

Still, chatting to Jeremy and Jack made me think that having a
family might be fun too. I wondered what it would be like to be a normal
family—like the ones you saw in the TV adverts anyway—and sit happily around a
table, talking together. I even indulged myself in a little dream where I was at
one end of the table, a couple of blue-eyed kids in the middle, and their father
at the other end, gazing fondly at me and our children...

Only then I realised that the man across the table from me was
George, and I yanked the fantasy firmly to a halt before it could go any
further. George wasn’t for me. Children weren’t for me. There was no point in a
dream like that.

At least it got me through the lunch.

It was a relief when Letitia announced that she was tired and
going to rest. ‘Come on, Frith,’ said George the moment the door closed behind
her. ‘Let’s go for a walk. I’ll show you where Harry and I used to get into
mischief.’

The boys leapt up, obviously as eager to escape from the frigid
atmosphere as George and I were. ‘Can we come?’

‘Of course.’ George looked at his brother. ‘Harry?’

Harry’s gaze flicked between his wife and his parents, who
looked stonily back at him. He hesitated, then pushed back his chair with a kind
of defiance. ‘Why not?’

I’d had hopes that George and I might get to spend the
afternoon in the sunny bedroom after all, but I was glad later that we’d gone
out. I changed back into my jeans, and then George led the way out into the
summer afternoon, Jack and Jeremy leaping on either side of him like
puppies.

I followed more slowly with Harry. ‘I didn’t realise George
would be so good with kids,’ I said.

Harry smiled. He was more relaxed out here away from the rest
of the family. I was afraid Charlotte would have wanted to come too, but she had
gone to rest too. Apparently it was exhausting driving an hour from London and
having to look after your own children for a whole morning.

‘The boys always loved George. He’s more fun than anyone else
and he never talked down to them.’ Harry glanced at me. ‘He’d be a great
father.’

He would. I could imagine him playing with his sons, blue-eyed,
tousle-haired boys just like him, or swinging a daughter up so that she could
ride on his shoulders. He would love them and make them laugh and keep them
safe.

Something twisted inside me at the thought of George with
children of his own. At the thought that they wouldn’t be my children. It made
my chest ache and to my horror I felt tears clog my throat. I
never
cried. Crying meant letting go and losing
control and I wasn’t about to start now, but I was very glad of the sunglasses
that shaded my eyes.

‘Yes, he would,’ I said after a moment with a non-committal
smile.

‘Are you and George thinking...?’

‘Oh, no.’ I even managed a laugh. Not a very good one, but a
definite laugh. ‘We’re not nearly there yet.’

‘It’s just you seem really good together,’ said Harry. ‘George
needs someone like you.’

How little he knew his own brother! I was the last kind of girl
George needed. Having met his mother, so coldly focused on the success of the
bank, I could understand even more why George longed for the warmth and comfort
of a true homemaker. I was never going to be one of those.

We poked around in the barns, stuck our heads up into the old
apple loft and explored the stables, sadly empty now, and then we crossed the
fields into the dappled shade of the little wood at the far side where a stream
ran sluggishly. Clearly they hadn’t had all the rain that had plagued my site in
the early days.

The smell of wild garlic was intense in the heat of the
afternoon. I pulled at the burrs that clung to my jeans. ‘I can see what a great
place this must have been for boys,’ I said. ‘George told me about all the
holidays you used to spend here together.’

‘Yes, we had some good times.’ Harry looked sad.

‘He misses you, I think.’

Harry didn’t answer at first. We were walking side by side
along the edge of the stream. ‘I should have supported him,’ he said suddenly.
‘But I had school fees to think about and Charlotte felt...’ He trailed off.
‘Well, anyway, I should have stuck by him. I knew he was doing the right
thing.’

‘George doesn’t blame you, Harry.’

‘I blame myself.’ Harry’s mouth set in a straight line, and
suddenly he looked much more like George.

‘It’s hard for him, cut off from everyone,’ I said tentatively.
‘Maybe you could see each other every now and then?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll talk to Charlotte about it. Letitia’s right.
This rift has gone on long enough.’

I hoped that Harry would make the effort. It wasn’t my business
to interfere between George and his brother, but I hated the thought that George
was going to be alone when I left.

Which was ridiculous, of course. George had masses of friends.
He didn’t need me. Still, I liked the idea that he could reconnect with his
family. At least I had Saffron.

Ahead, George and the boys had stopped and were peering up into
the branches of an old oak.

‘I was just wondering if it’s still there...yes, see that?’
George pointed up to a straggle of frayed rope. ‘Your father and I used to swing
across this stream on that.’

‘Until it broke,’ said Harry. ‘George fell in the water and
broke his ankle the day we were due back at school.’

‘Remember how we rigged up our own version of paintball in the
wood?’

Harry laughed. ‘And the trouble we got into when the entire
paint pot fell on that busybody neighbour of Letitia’s when she was walking her
yappy little dog?’

After that, they vied with each other for the memory of the
times they had been at their naughtiest, and of course the two boys drank it in.
It turned into a nice afternoon in the end. We found a bridge further upstream
and played pooh sticks, and then we sat in the long grass and dangled our feet
in the water.

On the way back, we stopped to talk to the ponies in the
neighbouring paddocks. At least, George and the boys did. I hung back. I didn’t
care what George told me about holding my palm flat, I couldn’t forget just what
big teeth those horses had.

‘Do you ride?’ I asked Harry, who was watching his brother and
his sons with a smile.

He shook his head. ‘Not any more. George was always the one
with the horses. He’s absolutely brilliant with them. I’m glad he’s got the
chance to ride up in Yorkshire. George is never going to be happy without a
horse.’

George needed more than a horse, I thought. After seeing him
with his nephews, I thought he needed a family of his own too

A family he could never have with me.

* * *

That evening we gathered for drinks on the terrace. The
heat of the afternoon had faded, and the shadows were just starting to stretch
across the lawn in the golden light.

Letitia looked fabulous in a burgundy dress and jacket, a
magnificent sapphire necklace around her neck and diamond rings winking on her
gnarled fingers. The other women were similarly glamorous and bejewelled. I felt
distinctly underdressed in my plain red wrap dress, in spite of recycling the
pearls and heels I’d worn earlier.

Dinner was not a comfortable occasion. Letitia retired after
the toast, and the boys were also in bed, which left George’s uncle, Andrew, to
rule the roost.

I didn’t care for Andrew. He was a bully, I decided, and
Michael Challoner was spineless for not standing up to him in support of his
son. We women did our best to keep a stilted conversation going, but Andrew was
determined to make George pay for the family’s wounded pride, and the moment
there was a pause, he would start hectoring.