The Secret of Happy Ever After (31 page)

‘You don’t always know what goes on in a marriage.’ Michelle rubbed her forehead. That showed how well her family knew her, or wanted to. ‘Dad, I thought I was doing the right thing, getting out while we were still young enough to start again. That’s why I moved away, to get a fresh start. If Mum’s encouraging Harvey, it’s not going to help him move on either.’

‘There’s, ah, no chap on the horizon at the moment, then?’

For a moment, Michelle thought about making one up, to get them off her case, but there was no point lying to her father. He saw through better liars than her every day. ‘No, there isn’t. I’m not looking for one. I’ve got my plan, and my shop to run, and that’s what I’m focusing on for the next couple of years. I’m only thirty-one and I’m all stocked up with anti-ageing creams,’ she added with a grimace. ‘I’ve a few years yet before I have to worry about being left on the shelf.’

Why did I say that, she wondered. It never even occurred to her in Longhampton. Anna’s baby panic was as alien to her as Gillian’s obsession with quilting.

You said it because Harvey put it into your mind, a voice inside her head replied, and she knew it was right.

Charles rested the last box on the edge of the boot. He regarded his daughter over the top of it, and seemed to brace himself to say something he wasn’t too sure about, the same way he did in French
hypermarchés
.

Michelle steeled herself too.

‘Michelle, love,’ he said. ‘Will you take a bit of advice from your old dad?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

He acknowledged her with a wry shake of the head. ‘Not really. Listen, don’t let work be the only thing in your life. I’m proud as Punch of everything you’ve done with that shop of yours, but no one wishes they’d spent more time in the office on their deathbed.’

‘That’s good, coming from you,’ she said. ‘Who gave me this work ethic, eh? Not Mum.’

‘I know. And I know it’s not the done thing to say, but I’d be as proud of you for having a nice little family as I would if you took over the whole dealer network. Ideally, of course, you’d have both.’ He tried a smile, to soften his words. ‘You’d make a great mum, Michelle – I’ve always thought that, the way you took Owen under your wing when . . . when your mother didn’t have enough time. Don’t plough yourself into the ground to please me, love. I already know you’re smarter than all your brothers put together. But you’ve never been as happy as them, and that’s all your mum and I really want, to see you happy.’

Michelle blinked back a tear at the anxiety in his face. Anxiety for her, and anxiety not to upset her at the same time. Although there was a lot her dad didn’t know about her marriage, and probably even more he didn’t want to know, she knew he must have been worried to have said what he’d just said. The difference between him and her mother, though, was that he’d be prepared to hear she was
un
happy, and would want to do something about it.

Maybe I should tell him, she thought, but then shied away from that at once. Harvey was too firmly embedded in her dad’s world. She couldn’t risk him not believing her.

‘I’m fine, Dad,’ she managed.

He looked at her for a long moment, just the two of them, in the car park, and years of unaired thoughts hung between them.

‘I’ll be glad to see the back of these,’ he said, heaving the last box into her car. ‘We can finally get that loft conversion started.’

‘What’s in there?’

‘All sorts. From your old room, I think. We just packed it all up. Didn’t want to throw it out in case it was important.’

‘If I’ve lived without it for the past ten years, it can’t be that important,’ said Michelle. ‘I should probably just dump it.’

Charles laid a hand on her arm. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t do that. Have a sort through first.’

She looked at him and impulsively wrapped her arms around him, surprised at how easily they encircled him now. Once she’d barely been able to touch her fingertips behind her dad’s broad back. Now she could almost feel his bones.

He’s getting old, she thought with a start. So am I.

‘Happy birthday, pumpernickel,’ he said, when she let him go. ‘Thirty’s the new twenty-one!’

Michelle contemplated telling him he was a year out, but decided not to.

16

One of the things Anna looked forward to most about the girls’ trips to America – apart from the chance to be alone with Phil, and not have to do so much laundry, and to get more than thirty seconds’ worth of hot water – was the chance to read in peace.

Parenthood had really cut into her reading time. Before she was married, Anna’s diary revolved around her holidays and the books she planned to take with her, and if she had enough baggage allowance to allow for everything she’d stockpiled.

She’d only taken a tiny reading bag on honeymoon to Venice (four books, two wedding-themed, two Italian-set) and by then Phil had known her well enough to appreciate that four books meant almost total concentration on him. In the holidays they’d shared afterwards, they’d arrived at a compromise; she’d read, while he swam in the pool. The fact that he let her do that made her confident she’d chosen the right man.

Now the holidays had had to be scaled back, but Anna didn’t mind having a stay-cation. Even as she was folding up a pile of T-shirts for Becca’s suitcase, Anna was feverishly planning her escapist reading list for the Easter holiday like a foodie planning a massive nine-course blow-out. For once she wasn’t scouring the Sunday papers for reviews, she was cherrypicking books off the shop shelves. Rediscovering how dark Roald Dahl really was had given her an urge to re-read all her childhood favourites, especially now Lily was showing an interest in reading more together.

The whole of the Narnia series, maybe, she thought, as the paperback covers flashed into her mind’s eye. That was topical, with Aslan and Easter and all that. Her imagination immediately threw up the snow scenes – the Turkish Delight and the magical drink in the goblet that tasted of something delicious. In Anna’s head, it was hot Ribena.

Or Miss Marple? That would be nice if the weather was good. In the garden, with a plate of hot cross buns and a pot of tea, working her way round St Mary Mead’s homicidal vicars and parlourmaids. Miss Marple talking like Joan Hickson. Everyone being terribly English. Bliss.

She knew she should probably spend the week thrashing out the baby issue with Phil, while they had some privacy, but something was stopping her. Fear. Weariness. She couldn’t bear to think about it.

Becca and Chloe were in Becca’s bedroom with her, bickering about something while they packed their suitcases with the pile of clean clothes Anna was decanting from the laundry basket, but Anna wasn’t listening. She’d developed a method of tuning them both out until the bickering reached a certain pitch at which she’d have to step in. Or if there was a pause.

Like now.

She looked up from the basket, now nearly empty, and saw that Becca and Chloe were glaring at each other. Neither of them was holding a disputed item of clothing, so it couldn’t be the usual argument.

‘What?’ she said.

Chloe widened her eyes at Anna. ‘I should be on the website, not her.’

‘No, you shouldn’t.’ Becca went back to her make-up bag, which she was meticulously repacking to be as small as possible. She had a lot of revision to take, too, and had already been weighing her bags on her home-luggage-checker. ‘I’ve been doing all the reviews, and the blog comments. What have you done?’

Chloe tossed her hair. ‘Shut up. I did a review.’

‘Did you?’ said Anna, surprised, but pleased. Her target was to have a gold-edged ‘We Love’ card on each shelf in the shop; Becca had contributed about half the total so far, each neatly filled in with her uniform cursive. ‘I didn’t see that. Did you put it up? If we’ve run out of stock of what you reviewed, let me know and I’ll re-order some.’

Chloe fidgeted. ‘Not for the shop. For the website. I emailed it to Owen.’

‘Well, I haven’t seen it,’ said Becca. ‘He never mentioned it.’

Something snagged in Anna’s mental alert system. Why would Becca have seen Owen’s emails? Had things gone beyond a bit of Saturday job flirtation? She’d noticed a frisson between them, but since Owen could generate a frisson between inanimate objects she hadn’t taken it too seriously.

This would be a good time to ask Becca, she thought. As soon as Chloe gets bored and slopes off to phone Tyra about her braces, I’ll ask then. Getting information out of the girls without the other two overhearing and cackling was like one of those brainteasers involving boats and chickens and foxes.

‘So, how’s the website going?’ she asked, hoping to bore Chloe away.

‘It’s going really well,’ said Becca at once. ‘Owen’s doing this really clever thing where you can put in a book you like, then get two or three more recommendations based on that. It’s called the New Favourite Read Generator.’ She turned pink. ‘Working title, obviously.’

‘I would hope so,’ said Chloe sarcastically. ‘It sounds like a really crap band. The sort you’d like.’

‘He’s done all that by himself? I thought Owen would be more into music than books. I could have had him writing reviews.’

‘I’ve been helping him. A bit.’ Becca’s blush deepened, and Chloe rolled her eyes.

‘Like,
more
than a bit. Are you going to
charge
Michelle for all the work you’ve done on the website? Which is, basically telling Owen what to write?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Becca hastily. ‘It’s not been that much,’ she added, before Anna could say anything. ‘Mainly when I’m there working anyway.’

‘You don’t mind because you get to sit up there in his flat with him in all your free periods, going “Oooh, Owen, let me tell you about F. Scott Fitzgerald,”’ muttered Chloe, with a sly glance at Anna to make sure she’d caught what she’d said.

‘Have you been spending your free periods there?’ Anna asked. This was starting to add up. Becca never left the library if she didn’t have to.

‘No!’ Becca glared daggers at Chloe. ‘One.
One
free period last week, when Owen texted me to ask something about a review I’d written and it was easier to go there and explain it myself, since I was on the high street anyway, getting some lunch. From the deli. We get a ten per cent school discount, so it’s cheaper than the canteen.’

That sounded a bit too complicated to Anna, and she noted that Becca’s ears were now going red. She addressed a question to Chloe, to be sure of getting an honest answer. ‘Are you allowed to be off the school site during the day?’

Chloe scowled. ‘Year thirteen are. It’s just us that have to stay in the stupid library. Most of her emo friends go to the bookshop – I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.’

‘Well, I walk the dog round the block at lunchtime most days. So all those Goths in the back room are from the school?’ said Anna. Kelsey had taken particular offence at their habit of drinking all the coffee and then leaving after buying one paperback between the four or five of them, always second-hand and usually featuring vampires.

‘Duh,’ said Chloe. ‘Can’t you tell by the smell of hairspray? And tragedy?’

Anna gave her a warning eyebrow-raise.

‘Anyway, you’re in charge of the bookshop, you should be able to decide who’s the face of the website,’ Chloe went on, in more ingratiating tones. She blossomed visibly under the warmth of direct attention, even when it was of the warning kind. ‘I need the exposure more than Becca. And then when I’m famous, and I’m on the television, they can show the bookshop website as a funny flashback to
before
I was famous, and that’ll be more publicity for you.’

She added an instant dazzling beam that Anna found half charming, half scary.

‘That’s going to be funnier than even you realise,’ scoffed Becca. ‘The shop assistant who needs to be told that
Moby Dick
is a book, not an author.’

‘And you think the website’s going to do better with some frumpy geek advertising it in her frumpy geek glasses?’

‘Stop it!’ said Anna. There was too much information here to process all at once. She had the unsettling feeling that she’d missed something vital. Miss Marple wouldn’t have missed it. Or Michelle.

‘Are those my jeans?’ demanded Becca suddenly. ‘Chloe? Don’t even try to sneak those out of the basket, those are
mine
!’

She went to grab them and Chloe snatched them out of her way.

‘Stop it!’ Anna put a hand out to prevent a tug-of-war developing.

‘Does it matter who takes them?’ Chloe demanded. ‘I’m saving you some precious grams on your baggage allowance. I’m doing you a
favour
.’

‘You can’t get even get your calves in them,’ Becca pointed out. ‘They’re a size ten.’

‘I am a size ten,’ howled Chloe.

‘In
America
.’

Chloe drew in a breath so loud and dramatic Anna was surprised the contents of the washing basket weren’t sucked up like a tornado.