The Next Best Thing (35 page)

They were a party of three taking the plane in the end. Lydia had decided there was no point in staying on with her gammy leg: if it got worse she’d rather put her trust in the Chelsea and
Westminster A&E than some travelling French quack. And she had her wedding plans to get on with. It meant that when Jane got back to the house, she and Rupert would be alone together for the
rest of the week. She told herself that it was fate; she hadn’t engineered it, that was the way it had worked out.

The lunch in La Garde Freinet had been a welcome diversion. Instead of worrying about Rupert and whether Will would take proper care of Liberty, Jane had been treated to a passionate defence of
the delights of smoking, which had lasted from the main course to the petits fours, washed down by two bottles of rose.

I like you,’ the writer had said to her halfway through the second bottle. ‘I can see we are going to have a long and profitable relationship. But honestly, you should take up
smoking, it is so good for the brain.’

And now here she was, halfway home to Rupert, alone in the Fiat Multipla. It seemed so long ago since they had arrived, with Will fussing and complaining. It felt exhilarating to have no
passengers, just the road map lying open on the seat beside her. She was her own navigator now.

She decided to pull over and take a break, and call home to make sure they’d got back safely.

Liberty answered the phone, and excitedly told Jane that she had packed her bag herself and put in three pairs of joggers. Then Jane made her put Will on so she could run it through with him and
make sure she had the right things.

‘Don’t fuss,’ he said, ‘she can always borrow anything she’s forgotten. I don’t imagine her little friend is short of clothes.’

‘That’s not the point, I don’t want her turning up unprepared, it looks like we don’t care. And don’t forget her cream and her panda.’

This is what it’s like for divorced couples, she thought. Fretting down the phone, worrying whether your child was being properly looked after.

‘All right, all right,’ he’d said, irritated, ‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’

She could tell he was already regretting his suggestion that Liberty travel back with him. He wanted to be psyching himself up for his big night out, instead of which he was taking instructions
on what to pack for a seven-year-old’s country-house party.

‘What time’s Cosima’s mum coming?’ Jane asked.

‘About seven. She’d better not be late.’

‘And how’s Lydia?’

‘Miraculously better. Didn’t mention her foot, practically skipped off the plane. I think she’s just happy to be back in London.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, then. Good luck for tonight.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Bye then.’

‘Bye.’

She sat for a moment and pictured the familiar sight of Will and Liberty at home. She ought to be there, fixing dinner and helping Liberty get ready for her trip. And yet here she was, parked in
a lay-by in a village somewhere between Marseille and God knows where, completely alone. What did she think she was doing? Rupert. She must call Rupert now, tell him she was on her way. She needed
to hear him, to remind herself why she was there.

His voice sounded distant when he answered; it must be the line. Which was funny, because Will had sounded like he was standing right beside her.

‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Just to say I’ll be half an hour or so.’

‘Good.’ There was a pause, then he said, ‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes, fine. The lunch went well. I just spoke to Will, they got back OK.’

‘Yes, I know, Lydia called.’

OF course she did. They were engaged, alter all.

‘I’ll see you soon, then. Do you want me to get anything? Bread?’

What a dreary little woman she was.

‘No, it’s all taken care of.’

‘Right,’ she said brightly, ‘I’ll try not to get another puncture, don’t want to drag you away from the stove.’

‘Drive safely.’

‘I will.’

That was a weird conversation, she thought as she started the engine. He sounded so formal, as though they were strangers. It was as if now there was no obstacle in their way they didn’t
know how to behave. She was going home to him For dinner, like couples did. It was banal, not what they had been used to. Careful what you wish for, because it might come true, wasn’t that
what they said? And she wasn’t at all sure now what she wanted.

The journey took longer than she expected, marked by several pauses to consult the map. Jane could have done with Will there, at least it would have given her someone to blame
every time she took a wrong turn, and there were plenty of occasions. There seemed to be so many roads leading nowhere that didn’t feature on the map.

By the time she arrived it was getting dark and the lights were on in the house, guiding her in as she negotiated the gateposts. Rupert came out to meet her as she unfolded herself from the car,
stretching out limbs that were tense from the journey and the fear that she might never arrive.

‘There you are,’ he said, ‘I was starting to get worried.’ There was nothing formal about him now. His shirt was untucked as he came towards her, and before she had time
to think he had her pressed up against the car, kissing her, then sinking to his knees, pushing up her tee shirt and burying his head in her belly.

‘No more excuses,’ he said, gripping her waist, then sliding his hands down inside her linen trousers, ‘you’ve got no-one to hide behind now.’

‘No,’ she said, pulling him to her, ‘I don’t suppose I have.’

She woke to birdsong and the smell of coffee and for a moment couldn’t remember where she was. Then Rupert put the tray down and climbed under the sheets beside her.

‘I knew it,’ he said, ‘I knew it would be like that.’

She propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Like what?’ she asked, teasing.

‘Like that,’ he said, sliding a thigh across her legs so she was trapped by the weight. ‘I knew it the moment I saw you. to get you into bed, it would be the happiest thing I
had ever done. Ever.’

She ran a hand down his back and felt smooth skin over warm firm flesh.

‘I was worried,’ she said, ‘but I need not have been . . .’ ‘Why were you worried?’

‘I worried we might he stuck in that unrequited thing, you know, the perfect love blighted by circumstance. Only works when you can’t have it. I thought it might be a big let-down
when it came down to it.’

‘It wasn’t, though, was it?’

‘Well . . .’

His face fell and she took pity.

‘Only joking. Move over, you’re giving me a dead leg.’

He pulled his leg back and put his arm round her instead.

‘And anyway,’ she went on, ‘aren’t you supposed to ask me how it was for me?’

‘Nope,’ he said, ‘that’s only for losers. If you need to ask, then you really have no idea. Now, sit up, and I’ll pass you your coffee.’

She did as he asked and he plumped the pillows up behind her, making her comfortable, smoothing her hair, looking at her as if she was the most wonderful piece of work.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, ‘look at me, grinning like an idiot.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ she said, ‘otherwise I might think I’ve made the most terrible mistake.’

Two hours later, the coffee was stone-cold and the sun was streaming in through the window. Jane watched the way it played on the shepherdesses that decorated the bedroom walls
with their long dresses and poetically arched crooks.
‘Toile de jouy,’
she said, ‘that’s the phrase I was looking for. I love that wallpaper, I’d choose it
every time for my bedroom.’

‘This
is
your bedroom,’ he said sleepily into her shoulder.

‘It is for now.’

He lifted his head to kiss the side of her neck. ‘What shall we do today?’

‘How about nothing?’

‘Nothing it is.’

And so it was for the next three days. Beneath the gaze of the
toile de jouy
shepherdesses they explored a thousand new ways of doing nothing. They had been given the
most luxurious of presents: time together, giftwrapped in sunshine and privacy. Every morning they would wake and then remember they had all day ahead to do exactly as they pleased. They were drunk
on it, the freedom, the selfish oblivion to everyone and everything else. Jane could close her eyes and describe every detail of her lover’s body, their entire life was in that bedroom.

Except for every evening at six o’clock, when Jane returned to the room she had slept in with Will. She kept her phone there, and would first check her messages before ringing Liberty to
hear about what fun she was having with the horses, and what she had eaten for tea. She rang Will just once. He was full of his film project, the meetings that were being set up with those he
described without irony as ‘people who matter’.

‘What about you, then?’ he had added as an afterthought. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Oh, you know, this and that,’ she had said, grateful for his lack of curiosity, ‘nothing really . . .’

And then she had closed the door on the hotline to her real life, and returned to the heightened world she had created with Rupert, where each moment was savoured and prolonged. This is
happiness, she thought, true happiness is here and now, allowing no intrusions from what has gone before and what may come tomorrow.

‘Shall we go out?’ Jan e asked on the fourth day. ‘There’s a garden we should look at.’

‘If you insist,’ he said, his head in her lap. ‘You’re the boss.’

They drove through the hills in search of a remote bastide garden, established in the seventeenth century. On the way, Jane talked about love.

‘I read a thing about couples,’ she said. ‘Most couples get together for prosaic and practical reasons. Like, they’re both available. But that’s not enough, each
couple has to think it’s unique and predestined.’

‘Like us.’

‘And so, every couple invents its own myth, about how they got together.’

‘A contact lens.’

‘And the couple will only last as long as both parties go along with it. When one person destroys the myth, the couple is finished.’

‘So what’s your myth with Will?’ He was confident enough now to mention his name.

‘Eliza Doolittle. He was my Professor Higgins. What about you and Lydia?’

‘Brits in New York. I was the caricature of the bumbling Englishman abroad, and she was my glamorous redeemer.’

He thought about those days and it seemed a lifetime ago. ‘And what about us?’ he asked. ‘What’s our myth?’ She laughed. ‘That we’re unique, of course,
and predestined for each other. Or that we’re trying to re-create the Garden of Eden. Look, we’ve arrived.’

They got out of the car and walked up through an ancient stone arch, stopping to admire some self-seeded alpines that clung to its side.

‘It’s supposed to have been designed by Le Notre,’ said Rupert, ‘but I’m not so sure. The arrangement of parterres doesn’t seem quite in keeping. I wonder if
it’s moated, I’ll just go and check.’ He went off to look at the boundaries, leaving Jane to admire the herb garden.

‘It’s definitely moated,’ he called out, catching her up, then realised she was in conversation with a man in shorts and sandals with socks.

‘I was just saying to your wife, that is possibly the best display of sempervivums I have ever seen,’ he said to Rupert, turning to point them out.

‘Tell him I’m not your wife,’ Jane whispered with a giggle.

‘It’s like I said,’ Rupert told her as they moved away, ‘the only people who know about gardens round here are the English. But there are enough of them to provide my
entire client base.’

On the way back to the car, Jane paused to call Liberty and listen to her account of the day’s triumphs. As she said goodbye, she remembered stories she had read about women who walk out
on their families. Women who pack a suitcase and leave their sleeping children, gambling on love. Sometimes they came back, years later, for tearful reunions. Often, they lived with only the memory
of their children. They made their choice and accepted the consequences.

On her final morning, Jane woke with a sick feeling in her stomach. The Monday-morning, encl-of-holiday feeling, except a hundred times worse. It was time to get real.

‘Let’s walk down to the village,’ she said, ‘break me in gently to the outside world.’

As they walked down the drive. Jane slipped her hand inside the back of Rupert’s belt, wanting to feel his flesh, storing up the memory.

Rupert took her to the
Bar des Sports
and ordered coffee. ‘I love this place,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about it the day I met you, wishing I was here instead of in the
office. And now here we are, out in public. May I say, you look quite good with your clothes on. Though better without, obviously.’

‘And you look better without the suit and braces. I should get those braces framed as a souvenir of our first meeting.’

‘You can have them,’ he said, ‘they’re no use to me.’ ‘Sentimental value only.’

‘Very sentimental.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘And now I can chuck them away, along with the Turnbull and Asser shirts. You do realise, Jane, that I’m not going
back.’ They had carefully avoided talking about the future, but now there was no getting away from it. Jane shifted on the bar stool, wishing they could continue to live in the present,
wishing they were back to where they were two days ago.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘And neither are you, not permanently.’

‘Aren’t I?’

‘Aren’t you?’

She frowned, her mind crowded by complications.

‘I think perhaps . . . we shouldn’t rush things . . .’

He grew impatient now, crashing his cup onto his saucer. ‘What do you mean, shouldn’t rush things? Come on, Jane, we’re grown-ups now! I’ve found what I’ve been
looking for, I thought you had too? Or is that just a nice little display you’ve been putting on for my benefit for the past few days . . . ?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Well then!’

‘It’s just . . .’

He paused. ‘I’m waiting . . .’

‘It’s just there are things I need to sort out . . .’

‘So sort them out. And quickly.’