Sealed With a Kiss (2 page)

Rather than try and divide up the furniture, the ever-practical Ian had suggested that he give her a lump sum of money. It was sitting in an envelope on the kitchen worktop, with her name and a
smiley face (oh, how that drove her mad!) written across the seal.

Kate slipped the envelope into her pocket, and left the key in its place. Sam would collect the boxes later. She left the house with only a small suitcase and an overnight bag – looking,
she thought, as if she was popping off for a weekend away with friends, instead of walking out of one life and into another.

‘You can’t just go and live on an island.’ Emma was chopping onions so furiously that she was in danger of ending up with half a finger in the chilli con
carne. ‘They could be mass-murdering fiends. They might chop you up and put you in the freezer.’

She swiped the onions from the chopping board and into the saucepan as if to illustrate her point. Olive oil hissed, filling the kitchen with a delicious smell.

Kate turned away, smiling to herself. Emma wasn’t exactly a stranger to impetuous decisions herself. She’d met her husband Sam when he’d rung her IT company looking for help
with a computer that had crashed, with all his files on the hard drive. He was a widower, father to twin girls of three, and had been on his own for eighteen months. While fixing his laptop, Emma
somehow sneaked into his heart, and into those of Katharine and Jennifer. Then another broken computer just happened to need fixing, and Emma just happened to stay for dinner (spaghetti hoops on
toast, with fromage frais for pudding and chocolate milk – ‘That’s a special treat for visitors,’ Jennifer had told her, solemnly).

In a ridiculously short space of time they were living together as a family, which horrified Sam’s ex-in-laws, until they realized how happy it had made Sam, and their precious
granddaughters. Emma and Sam would have carried on as they were indefinitely, had it not been for the girls, now six and deeply entrenched in the pink-and-princesses stage. They were desperate to
see Daddy and Emma doing Proper Dancing, and Emma wearing a lovely dress.

Kate had loved arranging Sam’s secret dancing lessons, finding ways to distract Emma while he disappeared twice a week to a studio in the centre of Cambridge. Booking a babysitter for the
girls (‘It’s the least I can do, seeing as I’m your honorary best-woman’), Kate had taken Emma on a mission to relive their teenage years, when they’d escaped from
Saffron Walden to admire the big shops and bright lights of Cambridge. They’d hung out in cafes, reminiscing over their teenage dating disasters, and watched fourteen-year-olds as they
hovered hopefully round the make-up counters in John Lewis, desperate for free samples. She smiled to herself now, remembering.

‘Pass us some tomatoes, Kate.’

‘Sorry, I was dreaming.’ Kate reached up to the cupboard. The room was comfortably untidy, strewn with school books and egg-carton dinosaurs. One end of the long table was covered in
laptops, wires and mysterious pieces of computer, which Kate, who was resolutely untechnical, chose to ignore. Emma still ran her IT company, bringing tired laptops back to life and recovering data
that had been magicked away, quite often by the fingers of small helpers. She had a constant stream of repairs coming in, and did the occasional small office upgrade, but now it was a kitchen
industry in every sense of the word. She had slipped into the role of stepmother to Jennifer and Katharine easily, probably because, as one of six herself, she was used to the muddle of family
life. Kate had loved spending time at Emma’s house as a teenager – the place was busy, and full of love and noise. The guilt she’d feel at leaving her grieving mother alone would
disappear as she’d slip, unnoticed, into the hot fug of the kitchen. Emma’s mum was always baking something delicious and shouting about homework, or lost shoes, and didn’t have
time to obsess about her daughter’s every movement.

‘Kate! She stole the red!’

Jennifer’s shriek of indignation coincided with the slam of the front door. Kate threw the tin of tomatoes to Emma.

‘Can’t you two share? Look,’ said Kate, leaning across the table and passing the furious Jennifer a scarlet biro, ‘you can have my pen.’

‘That’s not FAIR!’ Katharine looked up from her picture, thunderous with the injustice of it all.

‘My darling girls.’ Pulling Kate’s ponytail with affection, then curling his arms around Emma’s waist and turning her away from the cooker for a kiss, Sam was home from
the office. Kate was reminded once again why her friend had fallen instantly for him. He was kind, and loving, and sweet. She watched the two of them as they leaned over the girls, now peaceful and
colouring in their pictures at the kitchen table. It was time to go. Two months of pottering around, living rent-free and taking the occasional temp job, had been just what she needed, but she
wasn’t part of this family, despite their protestations to the contrary. And coming home from their honeymoon to a lodger wasn’t exactly romantic, by anyone’s standards.

Kate zipped up the final holdall, adding it to the pile of cases in the hall. Emma had insisted they should leave the next morning at five, on what was going to be the journey
from hell. She clambered into bed, lying back and trying not to think about what she was letting herself in for, or why she was running so far away from home.

She had barely unpacked a bag at Emma and Sam’s place before her mother had come to visit, bringing cake, flowers and a copy of
The Lady
magazine, folded over to the Appointments
page, with several suitable vacancies circled.

‘Not that you’re looking, but you could meet someone very nice through that kind of job, darling. Ellen Lewis at my yoga class told me her daughter went to work as a PA and married
her boss. She lives in Barbados now. Gorgeous villa by the beach.’

Kate had rolled her eyes.

‘Mum, you said yourself there was no rush, and that the last thing I needed to do was end up in a relationship again. I don’t want to end up being the trophy wife to some divorced
millionaire who’s decided to marry the hired help.’

‘Yes, I
know,
darling, but there’s no harm in keeping half an eye out, is there? Time passes very fast, you know, and you’ll be thirty before you know it. And –
well, you know what happens then . . .’

‘No, Mum, I have no idea. Am I going to have a little sign above my head saying “Past sell-by date”?’

‘Don’t be silly, darling. Just take a look.’

‘It’s been a matter of weeks since Ian and I split up. I hardly think I’m on the shelf just yet.’

Muttering under her breath, she’d taken a cursory glance and had snorted at the thought of herself as ‘Personal Assistant for Family: Regular Travel to Dubai required’. Her
organizational skills were pretty hopeless, for one thing. She’d managed to wing it through her temp jobs with a large helping of ‘Oops, I think I just redirected that call to
Peru’ jokes, never staying long enough for her lack of confidence to become a real issue, but the truth was that she didn’t have much faith in her own ability. A job that involved
keeping a rich family organized as they flew back and forth across the world didn’t really appeal, although the lying-around reading books on the beach sounded quite nice. Kate suspected,
though, that the job would bore her to tears. She’d been stuck in offices since leaving university, bored to tears doing admin work (badly). Arts graduates were ten a penny, and despite
pressure from her mother to ‘Do the right thing, darling, and take a postgraduate teaching course’, she’d resisted.

Kate had promised to look at the magazine, just to keep her mother quiet. The following night she was reading it in the bath with a large glass of wine. As she smiled to herself at her
mother’s kind, but as ever slightly smothering, attempts to get her settled in a suitable position – preferably one with a suitable relationship attached – an advert caught her
eye:

There was something about the old-fashioned nature of the advert that had amused Kate. Did anyone write using Box Numbers any more? More to the point, Kate wasn’t quite sure what a Girl
Friday would do in this day and age, but it had to be better than another position as Admin Assistant (read: glorified office slave) or any more temping jobs (read: lots of hanging-up on important
people while flicking through a magazine).

She had slopped out of the bath, wrapped herself in a towel and curled up on her bed to write a response, explaining that she had lived in Scotland while at university, and exaggerating her
organizational skills quite a bit. She’d put down Sam, and another old boss (who had had a soft spot for Kate because he’d worked with her father), as references. At least Girl Friday
sounded interesting; it implied a bit of everything, she thought, but hopefully wouldn’t result in her having to work in an office. Any more filing and phone-answering and she would go
insane.

The reply, which had arrived by post a few days later, was printed on the most delightful engraved notepaper. She opened it, expecting to discover that she’d been let down gently. But no:
the cottage and the position were hers, subject to references, and would be available immediately.

Suspecting that her family and friends would consider her to be irresponsible at best, and taking her life into her own hands at worst, she’d lied about a telephone interview and had
satisfied them with fuzzy images of the Auchenmor estate on Google Maps. Kate had decided that, if nothing else, it would be a chance to escape reality for a few months, assuming that her employers
didn’t kill and eat her. And even then, she supposed, she’d be escaping another tedious office job or the prospect of her mother trying to marry her off to one of her friends’
nephews.

Leaning across and peering at the screen of Emma’s huge computer, Elizabeth had tutted. ‘But there’s nothing
there
, darling,’ she’d pointed out, looking at
the images of the island.

‘Yes, there is, Mum, there’s plenty there. There are beaches, and an ice-cream parlour, and . . .’ She paused, trying to rack her brains. There wasn’t really much else,
actually. Emma had spent a morning on Google, with Kate sitting beside her drinking tea. They’d established that the island hadn’t really embraced modern life and was a bit behind the
times, in comparison with the tourist-savvy islands like Mull and Arran, with their visitor websites, downloadable walking maps, lists of hotels and restaurants. ‘Anyway, I don’t want
shops. I want stamping along the beach in the rain, and taking my dog for a walk on a frosty morning. I want lying in bed reading a book all day and doing all the things I couldn’t do because
Ian thought they were lazy, or untidy, or pointless. I might even take up painting. Or write a book.’

Her mother had raised her eyebrows. ‘Maybe a bit of time away from reality will be a good thing. But I’ll be checking up on you, you do realize that? No running away and wallowing in
self-pity. And if you’re not happy, I’ll be coming to rescue you.’

‘It’s the west coast of Scotland, not the North Pole,’ Kate had laughed, handing Emma yet another tissue. ‘Stop crying, silly. You should be glad to get me out of your
hair – you’re the only newly-weds I’ve ever known who’ve been stuck with a lodger to cramp your style.’

‘The girls do a good enough job of that, anyway.’ Emma blew her nose and took a deep breath. ‘But you can’t call round for a cup of coffee when you live a six-hour car
journey away, not to mention an hour-long ferry crossing, too.’ Kate squeezed her friend’s shoulder. ‘On the plus side, maybe I can sneak off for girly weekends.’

‘You can. We can hit the town. I hear there’s a monthly ceilidh at the village hall – just don’t forget your sporran.’

Kate did a little Highland jig, making Katharine look up from her Barbie dolls and giggle.

‘Seriously, though, what exactly
are
you going to do? I mean, apart from build a house for Robinson Crusoe, or whatever Girl Fridays are supposed to do?’

‘I have absolutely no idea. And believe me, after five years of living with a man who had a spreadsheet to manage everything, that feels pretty amazing.’

‘Not
everything
, surely?’ Emma’s eyebrows rose in horror.

‘Not
that
, no. But he was the one who’d tell me when my period was due. I suspect that was more because he was terrified I might get pregnant. That’d be just my
luck.’

Emma flinched, almost imperceptibly. Kate watched as her friend reached for the pile of washing on the table and started refolding it, automatically.

‘Sorry. You know I don’t mean it like that.’

‘I know. But it’s . . . hard. I feel like it’s never going to happen.’

Nearly two years ago Emma and Sam had decided – helped along by a lot of nagging from the girls – that they’d like to have a baby. So Emma had come off the pill and had waited.
And waited.

She’d searched every website, read every book, visited specialists first at the hospital in Cambridge, then down in London, taking the train with her heart full of hope, convinced each
time that they’d find the answer. But, Emma explained to Kate sadly, unexplained infertility is exactly that: every month they hoped, and every month their hopes were crushed. She loved the
girls with all her heart, but they desperately wanted a little brother or sister, and so did she. Having to explain over and over again that babies don’t come to order was excruciating. Emma
found herself staring at photographs of the girls’ mother in their bedroom, wondering how it had felt to carry not one, but two little lives. Sam didn’t really understand: he was so
full of love for Emma, and happy to have found love again when he’d least expected it, that for him another baby would be an added blessing. For Emma it was a desperate, primal longing.

‘It will happen. I promise you.’ Kate gave her friend a kiss on the cheek. ‘And it’ll be a lot easier to make it happen without me lurking around the house all the time,
getting in the way.’