The Secret of Happy Ever After (37 page)

He means the baby, but he can’t bring himself to say it, she thought.

‘Fine.’ Anna had actually hoped she’d be feeling a bit more by this stage. She’d felt a bit sick earlier, and a bit crampy, both of which were on her internet symptom list as strong indicators.

‘Have you actually done the test yet? That one that says pregnant or not pregnant? In actual writing?’

‘It’s in the bathroom. It didn’t . . . It didn’t seem appropriate.’

‘Go and do it now,’ whispered Phil. ‘You’re five days late, you should be testing positive by now.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then . . .’ He stopped. ‘Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.’

They looked at each other in the darkness for a long second.

‘I’m just a bloke,’ said Phil. ‘I need facts.’

‘OK.’ Anna was dying for a pee – another sign of pregnancy, she knew, although possibly helped by the endless cups of peppermint tea she’d drunk that night. She slipped out of bed and pulled on her dressing-gown, her heart already starting to thud with excitement.

It’s going to be OK, she said to herself, finding the test she’d hidden in the cabinet. It’s one of those serendipitous things; the timing’s so bad it’s good. Michelle’s right. Get all the drama over at once for the girls.

Anna didn’t put the light on because moonlight was flooding the bathroom with a romantic sort of glow, but as she ripped open the test stick, pulled down her knickers and readied herself to pee, she realised there was no need.

Her period had started.

There was still only one mother in the house, after all.

She sank down on the side of the bath and wept.

20

Michelle’s obsession with forward planning and weekly accounts meant that she normally had the year under control, but this year seemed to be slipping past far too quickly.

Maybe it was having to do double the work in keeping two shops bustling, accounted, stocked and staffed, or maybe it was feeling more tied to her routine by the small but authoritative presence of Tavish, who only tolerated half an hour or so of after-hours pottering round the shop before he started nudging her ankles to go home. Each day seemed to pass twice as quickly, hurrying her towards the end of each week before she had time to tick off half the stuff on her ever-growing to-do list. She hadn’t cleaned her oven in weeks, and the boxes she’d brought back from her birthday lunch were still in the spare room in the flat, untouched.

If Anna’s life revolved around the girls’ exam timetables, Michelle’s revolved around lead times and stock orders and VAT returns, and they were just as demanding. It was May now, and she was starting to feel anxious about some of the stock she’d planned to introduce into the bookshop as part of her subtle slow change. She’d stumbled across a local dressmaker who was prepared to give her an exclusive supply of baby-soft cotton pyjamas, based on Edwardian bloomers – if she put in an order for autumn delivery, with a sizeable cash deposit.

Michelle knew this was a good thing but it meant finding some more money, which meant juggling the figures, and looking at the figures wasn’t quite the comfort it usually was for her on a Sunday night. The bookshop was still ticking over better than expected, and Home Sweet Home had had a good spring, but her business instinct was chafing at every week that went by with a tiny profit where there could be a much bigger one.

She chewed her pen and stared at her Year Plan, open next to the fourth cup of coffee of the evening on her kitchen table. Halfway through the year, nearly, and still not anywhere near her target turnover.

Of course, a voice in her head pointed out, the obvious answer would be get the flat upstairs as well as the shop and have
both
. Books downstairs, beds upstairs. ‘Upstairs to Bed’, even.

Oh, that was a good name, she thought, scribbling it down. Michelle dangled her pen from her fingers and idly wondered how easy it would be to persuade Mr Quentin to evict Rory.

She told herself not to be so mean. Rory was growing on her, despite his awful socks. Maybe when Owen moved on – and now the website was finished, he should be thinking about moving back to London, where he’d find some proper work – she could offer Rory the flat above the shop, and move him sideways? It wasn’t as if he’d done anything with the place; he wouldn’t even need to unpack those bachelor boxes.

But Owen didn’t seem in any hurry to move on. Michelle had been watching him and Becca like a hawk, and she knew Anna was watching them too – and watching her, watching them. That was . . . sometimes awkward. Although she’d reassured Anna that Owen was trustworthy (what else could she say?), she couldn’t be everywhere at once, and Owen’s behaviour wasn’t following normal patterns. Sometimes Michelle wondered if he might actually be in love.

In any case, she conceded, she knew Rory well enough by now to know that he wasn’t going to move to make way for what he still referred to as knick-knacks, albeit more jokily. Without her realising, Rory had filled in the pockets of emptiness that Anna had left when she had to give her time to the girls. The Sunday afternoons. An occasional Saturday dog walk. Neither of them were over-sharers, but looking after Tavish had brought them in and out of each other’s lives like a tide, and each visit washed up a personal detail here and there, almost by accident. Esther had insisted on reading his horoscopes, which he, like Michelle, loathed. He hadn’t chosen the name Zachary. They both liked porridge made with water.

There was a knock at the front door and she knew it was him; Rory was always punctual when it came to Tavish. Michelle pushed her chair away from the table and closed her laptop, messing up her hair to make it look as if she’d just got in from somewhere more interesting.

‘Hey!’ he said, when she opened the door. Tavish was next to him, wagging his tail. Rory had the Sunday papers under his arm, even though it was six in the evening.

Michelle let them in and Tavish trotted down the hall, sniffing the air as if he disapproved of the deep clean she’d done to pass the afternoon. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘If you’re not dashing out?’

‘If you don’t have somewhere to go?’

Rory pretended to think, then said, ‘No, don’t think I do.’

‘I’ll put the kettle on then.’

Michelle could pinpoint the first time Rory had come round with his Sunday papers – it was when he asked if he could read them at her house, as he ‘couldn’t go back to his flat because they’re resurfacing the high street’ and she couldn’t think of a non-rude way of saying no – but she couldn’t remember when it had turned into part of her weekend routine. For the past few weeks he’d brought them over with Tavish and they’d sat and read in silence for an hour before he left on the dot of five to seven and went home. Rory read the news and review sections and grumbled at the articles, and Michelle scanned Property and ripped pages out of the supplements for her mood boards.

The first week Michelle had felt rather invaded by the way Rory kicked off his shoes and flattened her cushions and didn’t fold the pages in the papers back the way they had been, but the room had seemed empty when she’d finally straightened it out again. She liked the way he didn’t talk much and left exactly when he said he would.

‘Aaah,’ said Rory, prising off one trainer with the toe of the other as he unfolded the Business section of the
Sunday Times
and sank onto the sofa. ‘What an
idiot
.’

She left him spreading out the papers over the floor and watched from the kitchen while the kettle boiled.

When he thought she couldn’t see, Rory talked under his breath to Tavish – she could see his lips moving – but quietly enough for her not to hear. Tavish seemed to be listening to him; his black ears were pricked, and his stumpy tail was wagging slowly from side to side, feathering the long hairs of his coat.

How ridiculous is that, thought Michelle, amused. As if I can’t tell how soppy he is about that dog from the way he always comes back combed.

‘Why is that dog so neat?’ she called through. ‘Have you been grooming him?’

‘No! Well, just a bit. I took him up to see Mr Quentin this afternoon.’

‘Didn’t he find it upsetting?’ she asked. ‘Seeing his old dog with someone else?’

‘Nope, they both had a lovely time. Everyone patted Tavish and talked about their own ratty little bastard that loved children and only killed black cats. I’ve got instructions for Anna to take him along next time she reads to them.’

‘Lovely.’ Michelle dropped the teabags into the pot and made a mental note to go with her. Maybe with a knee-blanket for Mr Quentin. No harm in getting him on side with the linens.

‘You should come up too,’ said Rory, reading her mind with unnerving casualness. ‘Don’t you have a favourite novel you could be sharing with them?’

‘No. And don’t you start. Anna’s been on at me to do one of those reading cards for the bookshop.’

‘And why haven’t you?’

‘Because I don’t have time.’ Michelle opened and shut her cupboards, looking for the right plate to put the biscuits on. ‘I’m already thinking about Christmas.’

‘Get out of here. It’s barely summer.’ Rory had wandered in while her back was turned. ‘What’s this?’

Michelle glanced over her shoulder to see Rory flicking through her mood board folder for the new shop, with pages ripped from style magazines, and the catalogues and order forms from various companies.

‘Bedlinen,’ she said. ‘My winter project.’

‘Looks like nice stuff.’ He flicked through some more. ‘Warm.’

‘It is,’ she said. She wasn’t sure what she felt about Rory passing opinions on bedrooms. Presumably his was quite bare, monk-like with shelves of literary fiction and a bottle of water by the bed. Was he a sheets and blankets man? Or a duvet lover? The door had been shut the day she’d nosed round his flat with Rachel and Anna, and now she wished she’d peeked in.

‘It’s gorgeous, especially the quilts. They’re real heirloom pieces.’ She felt more confident talking about her shop idea; even her dad had thought it was a smart move. ‘It’s a known fact that when times are tough, people cut back on going out and spend a bit more on their homes instead. Nesting is the next big thing. People always need somewhere to sleep, and women
love
their bedrooms.’

Rory gave her a quizzical look. ‘It’s very . . . neat.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, I mean, it’s very demure, all these cushions on the bed. And pretty virginal lace pillows. It’s not exactly sexy, is it? For a bedroom. I can’t imagine this being the scene of any crimes of passion.’ He pointed at the perfect, cloud-like cocoon on the page. ‘It’d take you ten minutes just to get the throw pillows out of the way before you could ravish anyone.’

Michelle stared at him. The mental image of Rory throwing cushions to the floor and tumbling his woman on the bed, struggling to undo buttons and zips, was a troubling one. She’d never pictured him that way, but he was speaking as if crimes of passion were a feature of his life.

He has a
son
, she reminded herself.

‘But what would I know,’ he went on, seeing her face. ‘I’m not your target customer.’

‘No.’ Michelle swallowed. That was
her
bedroom he was talking about. She had eight pillows, and no crimes of passion, by choice. ‘Anyway, I’ve been doing a bit of market research on my customer base, and lots of people round here get those catalogues for The White Company and Cologne and Cotton, but . . .’ She rubbed her fingers together, as if she was touching the finest Egyptian cotton. ‘But half the pleasure is
feeling
the sheets, and you can’t do that with a catalogue, can you?’

She blinked at the sensuous way she was rubbing her fingers together and stopped.

‘Indeed you can’t.’ Rory turned the page and examined the lambswool blankets. ‘And how much of Home Sweet Home are you going to devote to this boudoir-ware?’

‘I think bedlinen like this deserves a whole shop of its own, don’t you?’

‘A whole shop! Blimey.’ Rory looked up. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’

‘Well, by the time you’ve made up a bed or two and put in some shelving for the blankets . . . You need a bit of space. You have to recreate a whole bedroom that the customer wants to buy.’ Michelle poured the tea and ignored Tavish, who was begging for a biscuit by her side. ‘Have you been feeding him from the table again?’

‘No, your honour.’

‘How come he’s giving me a paw?’

Rory looked up and tsked at Tavish. ‘I have no idea. He must have learned it somewhere else. So what have you got your eye on? That old betting shop on the corner that’s closing down? Is it like Monopoly – when you’ve got three shops you can build a hotel on one of them?’

She furrowed her brow at him, surprised he was being so dense. ‘Keep up, Rory. It’s going to be next door. The bookshop.’

‘The
book
shop?’ Rory stopped pouring his tea.

‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ said Michelle. ‘You knew all along that’s what I wanted to do – wasn’t that why you told me I should take in Tavish, to try to persuade Mr Quentin to let me change the shop sooner?’