The Secret of Happy Ever After (26 page)

Had Michelle had more free time to be sociable, or had Rachel been a jogger, they’d probably have got on really well, thought Michelle.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t have some interior designer in to do it.’ Rachel looked around, taking in the restored floorboards and mouldings. Her clipboard checklist dangled from her hands, all the boxes ticked and most additional space filled with jotted websites and decorating tips Michelle had passed on as they’d walked around.

‘Oh, it’s just all things I like.’ Michelle shrugged modestly, but she knew the sitting room was looking particularly good today, with the spring sunshine reflecting off the canal water, sending ripples of light onto the china blue walls. There were splashy bunches of bright yellow daffodils everywhere, and she’d brought a whole box of scented candles home, as preparation for serious dog-odour masking.

Tavish had gone back to the kennels for a night or two of pampering – really, Rachel confided, because the staff up there wanted to say goodbye – and in the meantime, she and Rory had equipped themselves for his arrival in their houses.

Michelle wasn’t sure what Rory had done, but she’d designated an area at the far end of her kitchen for Tavish and bought the only half-stylish bed she could find in the pet superstore. She’d resisted the temptation to go mad with cushions and toys;Tavish was a lodger, not a tenant.

Rachel picked up a blown-glass dove and sighed. ‘I wish I had time to do things to my house. I used to read all the magazines – you know,
Elle Decor
and
House Beautiful
 . . .’ She laughed. ‘Those days of minimalist white carpets are gone, gone, gone.’

‘Why? What happened?’ Privately, Michelle didn’t understand people who let their houses get into a state. All it took was a routine, and some discipline and proper storage. ‘I don’t see you living in a tip,’ she went on, noting Rachel’s perfectly messed haircut and dark red nails. ‘I see you with a scrubbed kitchen table and lots of Irish linen.’

Rachel laughed aloud, a generous noise tinged with just a little regret. ‘I wish! No, I moved out of a chic studio flat into a massive old house, and I had a baby, and a dog, and I ended up living with a man who thinks tidiness is a sign of not enough to do . . . Your priorities change, don’t they?’ She put the glass dove down. ‘Luckily for me, most of the time home checks reassure me I’m not the only one with a pile of stuff in every corner. Not today, though!’

Michelle smiled tightly, but she felt a pinch of resentment at the ‘priorities’ comment, more so because up till then, she’d been feeling a sort of camaraderie with Rachel, as stylishoffcomers-in-arms. Why did having kids provide you with some kind of moral trump card that turned an elegant house into a sign of ‘not enough to do’? Making your living environment as relaxing as possible wasn’t some kind of failure.

‘But anyway, you’ve motivated me to go home and tidy up,’ Rachel went on with a final glance at Michelle’s built-in cupboards. ‘Shall we have a look at your back garden?’

Once the garden had been approved (‘Fences, great – not that Tavish will want to go far . . .’) and admired (‘Those pots! Where did you find them?’), Rachel handed over a stapled set of pages to Michelle.

‘It’s our standard set of guidelines for first-time owners,’ she explained. ‘My husband, the world’s bossiest vet, wrote them, and he does go on, but it’s better than having the lecture directly from him.’

‘I’ve had dogs before,’ said Michelle. ‘I had . . .’ She paused, conscious that even Anna didn’t know what she was about to tell Rachel. She hadn’t mentioned it because she was ashamed at having left Flash behind, at not having fought harder for him when Anna had struggled so much to love Pongo along with the girls. It would also have led to awkward questions about Harvey, and she didn’t want to have to answer those either.

‘I had a spaniel with my ex,’ she confessed. ‘Flash. He’s a lovely dog, a working cocker, black and white. Speckly nose.’

‘Aw.’ Rachel looked sympathetic. ‘The ex got custody?’

‘Sort of. I wanted to move out here for a fresh start, and Flash spent a lot of time with my parents’ dogs, so . . .’ Michelle shrugged. ‘My ex suggested weekend access but I didn’t want to confuse him.’

Him meaning Flash
and
Harvey.

‘That’s tough,’ said Rachel. ‘I bet you miss him.’

Michelle nodded, but didn’t say anything, and Rachel interpreted her silence as regret, carrying on with comforting briskness.

‘Still, it’s brilliant that you’re giving Tavish a home now. It’s a bit unconventional, this dog sharing, but I think it’s better than him being in kennels. Speaking of which . . .’ She checked her watch. ‘I need to get round to Rory’s flat, give it the once over.’

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Michelle. ‘He’s left a set of keys at the shop to let you in if he’s not already there. Do you need to interview him?’

‘Rory? No.’ Rachel grinned. ‘We know Rory up at the kennels. He’s one of our weekend walking volunteers. He used to come with Mrs Quentin when she got a bit doddery and couldn’t quite manage. Nice guy.’

Michelle’s business brain suddenly wondered what a concerned neighbour like Rory might stand to inherit when Mr Quentin died. He was already the executor of the estate. Maybe there’d been method in his dog-walking. Or rather, a long-term strategy.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Nice guy.’

In the bookshop, Anna put her bag down on the desk and stared at Kelsey, but Kelsey had the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder and was pushing back her cuticles. From the tone of her voice, Anna intuited that she was on the phone to her very patient best friend Shannon, who worked across the road in the deli.

‘No Michelle?’ she said, but got no reply.

Anna wondered if she could find a book about sign language, so Kelsey and Shannon could just sit in the front of their respective shops and sign at each other through the windows. Their hands would be blurs, she thought. Never stopping, like those French women who used to knit by the guillotines.

‘. . . and I was like, I can see Ethan if I want to, Jake, it’s not like you own me or anything, and he was like, listen, Kelsey, I am so not cool with that . . .’

Anna coughed and stared at Kelsey until she turned round and said, ‘Listen, Shannon, I’ll have to call you back, yeah, I’m at work,’ and hung up.

‘No Michelle?’ Anna repeated. It was nearly quarter past ten, and she was late herself.

‘No, she’s being home-checked by the dog woman.’ Kelsey looked as if she’d either been crying or had had a late night. Maybe both. Her big blue eyes looked shiny and there were bags under them the colour of mushrooms. Anna didn’t know if it was Ethan or Jake who’d caused them. It was too hard to keep up.

Thank God I don’t have to go through this with Becca, thought Anna, with a surge of relief for studious stepdaughters. And fingers crossed Chloe stays completely fixated on impressing Simon Cowell, rather than any of the boys in her class.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine.’ Kelsey sniffed.

‘Good. Well, listen, you can do something for me.’ Anna pulled a set of cards out of her bag and some silver pens. ‘I don’t think you’ve done any book recommendations yet, have you?’

‘I don’t read books,’ said Kelsey, alarmed.

‘I bet you do. What about
Harry Potter
? Or something funny, like
Shopaholic
? I want comfort reads. Books that make you feel warm, books to read when it’s raining outside.’

‘I could do
Harry Potter
, I suppose,’ said Kelsey dubiously. ‘That first one was a short one, wasn’t it?’

‘Yay! That’s the spirit. You only have to fill up this card. I don’t need a dissertation.’

Kelsey looked uncertainly at the postcard. ‘How big can I write?’

‘Big as you want. Here’s a silver pen. Go on!’ said Anna encouragingly.

The shop bell jangled and Michelle walked in, followed by Rachel. They were both on their mobiles, although Rachel hung up when she came near the desk and smiled.

Kelsey took one look at Michelle, who was having a very terse conversation with someone, and scuttled into the back room.

‘Hello!’ said Anna to both of them. She’d tidied the shop to make it look as doggy-friendly as possible and put some of Pongo’s Bonios in the drawer, just in case.

‘Morning,’ said Rachel. ‘If you’ve got the keys, we’re just going upstairs, so I can check Rory’s flat’s not full of small furry animals and mantraps.’

‘What do you think it
is
full of?’ wondered Anna, out loud. ‘What’s in Rory’s flat?’ was another game they played in the shop when it was quiet. Even Becca joined in with that one. ‘Claymores and chess sets? Or crystal radios and life-size Daleks?’

‘Law textbooks and back issues of
Model Railways Monthly
, I should think.’ Rachel smiled and started flipping through the ‘four for the price of three’ box of kids’ books.

‘I imagine it like Lord Peter Wimsey’s apartment,’ said Anna. ‘Books and bachelor artefacts.’

Michelle had finished her call, and gave her a boggly ‘I don’t think so’ look.

Anna frowned back. She couldn’t work out why Michelle was so down on Rory. Was it all to do with his son? She’d tried explaining that families were complicated, but Michelle just seemed to cling on to it, like she needed a reason to distrust him.

‘Rory can’t make it,’ said Michelle, pocketing her phone. ‘But he’s happy for me to show you round. Shall we?’ She gestured upstairs.

Anna watched Rachel and Michelle head out with the keys, then her natural curiosity got the better of her, and she called through to the back room.

‘Can you mind the desk, Kelsey? I’m just popping upstairs too.’

Rory’s flat was the same size and shape as the one Owen was currently sprawling out in, but there the resemblance ended.

Every wall was lined with bookshelves, and what wasn’t crowded with books was painted shabby magnolia. It obviously hadn’t been decorated for years and in some spots, Anna could make out Wallpaper Through the Ages – garish 70s patterns in the bathroom, spriggy 50s florals in the hall.

There was a mounted
Star Wars
light sabre along one wall, and a bicycle wheel in the hall, and two big boxes of assorted Man Junk that had obviously got stuck there when he moved in. The air smelled of washing drying on radiators; not an unpleasant smell, but a disorganised one. This was very clearly The Post-Relationship Emergency Move Flat that Rory had never settled into. Anna’s sympathies for him grew when she saw the brand new cot still in its flatpack, leaning up against the door. Bought, but never used.

She flashed Michelle a sidelong glance and could tell from her wrinkled nose that not only had she seen the cot, but she was dying to tidy up and slap a few coats of emulsion over the loud wallpaper for good measure.

‘God, this takes me back,’ said Rachel. ‘My husband’s house looked exactly like this when I first met him. Single men just silt up the place with . . . stuff. Every corridor is like an ox-bow lake, ready to cut off whole rooms.’

Out of the corner of her eye Anna saw Michelle pick a tea towel up off the floor, then, finding no hook to put it on, tut and hang it on the door handle.

‘Have you known Rory a long time?’ she asked Rachel.

‘Quite a long time,’ said Rachel, ticking off some boxes. ‘He used to walk dogs with his girlfriend, then after he and Esther split up, he carried on coming with Agnes. She and Cyril let him move in here. Probably his dream flat, I should think, above a bookshop.’

‘But not Esther’s?’

Rachel looked up. ‘I take it you’ve never met Esther?’

Anna shook her head.

‘This is not Esther’s dream flat,’ said Rachel firmly. ‘Believe me.’

‘Does she still live in the town?’ Annoyingly, Rory’s flat, like Michelle’s, had no photos for her to supply a face to the name. ‘With Zachary?’ she added, in case the detail might make Rachel open up more.

It had the desired effect. ‘No, they’ve moved. She married someone else, quite soon after she and Rory split up. Poor Rory.’

Anna glanced at Michelle to see if she was taking this in, but she was too busy peering disgustedly into Rory’s box of cracked CD cases.

‘Poor Rory why?’ she asked. ‘Was it a messy break-up?’

Rachel made a face. ‘You could say that. Isn’t it always, with kids involved? But they seem to have found a way through it, so probably best to let him put it behind him.’ She paused. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to sound pious but I know what it’s like when an old relationship follows you round. This is such a small town.’

‘He needs a fresh start,’ said Anna.

‘Yes!’ Rachel tapped her clipboard. ‘Let’s hope Tavish is part of that. It’s amazing what a catalyst for romance a dog can be.’

Anna nodded, thinking of the way Rory had been looking at Michelle in the shop, and wondered if he’d said anything to Rachel. Michelle was quite a challenge for a fresh start, but she and Rory had a lot in common. They were both single, a bit wounded, professional . . . Maybe not a shared interest in interior decoration, though.

‘Looks like he’s started making preparations,’ she said, gesturing towards the small kitchen.

Rory had put two metal dog bowls on a newspaper, written ‘FOR EATING!’ in black marker capitals next to it, and placed a big sack of premium dog food by the washing machine. There was also a lead, a tartan collar and a Santa hat from the pet supermarket, with the fifty per cent off sticker still on, and a tartan dog bed, ‘FOR SLEEPING!’.