The Secret of Happy Ever After (57 page)

‘I don’t think Owen is being
trapped
into anything,’ she said. ‘She’s got a place at Cambridge to read law – that’s more than Owen managed! And I can think of much worse families to be trapped in than Anna’s. Anna’s the best mother-in-law anyone could wish for. She’s . . .’

Michelle would have said something else if the doorbell hadn’t rung.

‘I wonder who that is?’ said Carole, stopping just short of putting a finger on her chin.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ muttered Michelle. She marched through to the door and opened it. ‘Merry Christmas, Harvey.’

To no one’s surprise Harvey was standing there, carrying a bunch of flowers with the Waitrose sticker still attached. He was wearing a Santa-patterned tie with his expensive shiny Hugo Boss suit, and it made Michelle loathe him a little bit more.

‘Hi, all, I was just passing and . . . Shelley!’ he said, opening his arms wide. ‘Great to see you!’

There was an unpleasantly triumphant gleam in his eyes, but Michelle forced herself to think of Rory, and the kind, logical way he’d helped her put her thoughts in order. Reminding her that those thoughts were, it turned out, important, and not the ramblings of a neurotic woman.

‘Shall I go and put the kettle on for a cup of tea and a mince pie?’ asked Carole, to no one.

Charles gave Harvey a long look, then said, ‘I’ll give you a hand. Mince pie, anyone?’

‘As long as they’re homemade!’ Harvey said with an obsequious smile.

He thinks I’m here to roll over, thought Michelle, and she sizzled with a rare moment of advantage.

‘For you,’ he said, pushing the spiky white bouquet into her hands. Michelle looked down at the aggressive chrysanthemums and wilted foliage and felt sorry for it.

‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t they for Mum?’

‘Don’t tell her, then.’ Harvey flashed her a confident smile. ‘I think she’d be happy for me to give them to you. If I’d known you were here I’d have brought your Christmas present.’

‘I’ve got yours. You can have it now.’ Michelle looked at the flowers in her hand and put them on the sideboard, as if she didn’t really care what happened to them, then went into the hall to find the small parcel she’d wrapped for Harvey.

It had the same neatly tied and taped silver ribbon and bow on it as the rest. She wasn’t going to make a point that way.

‘Shall I open it now, or save it till the big day?’ asked Harvey as she handed it over. ‘Are you going to be here? Will we have that pleasure?’

‘’Fraid not, no,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in Paris. You can open it now if you want.’

He hesitated, not sure what to make of her tone.

‘Go on,’ said Michelle, before he could ask about her trip. ‘Open it. It’s a book.’

‘A book? Well, well, well. Talk about born-again intellectuals.’ Harvey started to undo the ribbon and Michelle braced herself for his reaction.

‘
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
?’ He looked up.

‘Probably not a lot in there that you don’t already know, but I thought you might like the ending,’ said Michelle.

Harvey’s affability evaporated. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’

‘Sort of.’ Michelle raised her chin to hold his hostile gaze. ‘I was going to give you
Divorce for Dummies
, but I thought you might already have that.’

‘What?’

‘You should be getting the divorce petition in the next day or two. Sorry about the timing but I think a new year, new start’s best for both of us. Let’s get things moving.’

‘And if I don’t want to divorce? If I want to try again, with my
wife
? Don’t those vows mean anything to you?’ Harvey looked martyred but angry at the same time. ‘I
love
you, Michelle.’ He made it sound more like an accusation.

‘Let’s drop that. This isn’t about love,’ said Michelle quietly. ‘You don’t love me. If you loved me, you’d let me go. I don’t know whether you want control of my dad’s business, or control of me, or both. You know that’s what it comes down to, and so do I. But it’s not what I want, and you can’t control me any more. I want a divorce.’

‘You know it’ll all come out if it goes to court?’ he said, his tone turning spiteful. ‘You’ll have to prove I’m unreasonable, and actually,
you’re
the one with mental health problems, you’re the one who was in therapy all those years. I’m only thinking about you, Shelley. Do you want your private life dragged in front of everyone? Our friends brought in to testify about your unhinged behaviour?’

‘Do you want your business arrangements dragged in front of everyone?’ she hissed back.

Harvey stepped back as if she’d spat at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your business arrangements. I’ve been taking legal advice. We’d have to have our joint finances checked out for any settlement, so if you want this to go to court, fine. I’m sure you’ve got nothing to hide in that department, have you?’ She left it hanging.

Harvey didn’t flinch, but his eyes weren’t as confident as before. They were making tiny movements, as if he was thinking fast.

‘I mean, what were you planning to drag out about me?’ said Michelle. ‘I was
raped
when I was eighteen. I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t hurt anyone. I only told you because I loved you and I wanted to share my biggest secret with you, so you’d understand why I was how I was. I didn’t think you’d spend the next seven years making sure I stayed that way. Now I realise it should never have been a secret in the first place.’

As soon as she’d told Rory, and watched his face freeze with sympathy and horror, not disgust, it was as if a spell had been broken. Michelle was suddenly flying above the scene, seeing it again as if it had happened to someone else, and her heart broke for different reasons. She’d shaped her life around the one night, like a tree growing crookedly around a wall, growing only to cover it up, never branching outwards. Just inwards.

Harvey wasn’t going to give up so easily. ‘And how do you think your dad would react if he found out that his princess had been keeping that secret from him all this time? Eh? Think about it.’ He curled his lip. ‘Wouldn’t take much to tell him. Might make him wonder what else you’ve been keeping from him all these years. Like why you decided to run away from his business so quickly?’

Michelle steeled herself. ‘I should have done this a long time ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Start again. Find someone else. I don’t want money or the house, I just want Flash. You’ve had him for the last three years. Let me have him now and keep everything else.’

’You’re not capable of looking after him,’ said Harvey nastily. ‘You can’t even keep your own legs closed. Little sluts like you never change, but they always get what they deserve. You just watch. Your dad might think you’re something special, but your mother doesn’t. She knows the real you. Just like I do.’

Michelle heard something clatter to the floor behind her, then roll along the floorboards and crack. It sounded like a plate of mince pies. Harvey’s face froze, then flushed a dark red.

‘Out,’ said a voice behind her, a voice so sharp with rage Michelle barely recognised it. ‘Get out of this house
right now
before I throw you out.’

She turned and saw her mother standing in the hall, her eyes furious. She seemed bigger, suddenly. Like a lioness.

Harvey only hesitated a second, then he turned and left.

Carole gazed at Michelle for a long second, her face freezing, then contorting with shame, and then she opened her arms wide.

33

Once she was back in her own home, in her own life, the only thing Michelle really wanted was a hot chocolate and half a slice of cake with Anna to put things right, like the old days, but Anna was impossible to get hold of.

They were both working flat out, Michelle in Home Sweet Home and Anna next door, with Becca and Chloe helping, but instead of hanging around for the daily debrief as they’d done in the early days, Anna was out of the shop before the ‘closed’ sign stopped swinging. She’d stopped giving Michelle pages of suggestions for community activities, and wasn’t even updating the reviews on the website any more. As far as Anna was concerned, it seemed from the rather formal Christmas card Michelle had got in the post – not hand-delivered – that they were work-mates. Not mates.

It wasn’t that Anna was actively rude to Michelle, but for someone as warm and interested as she usually was, her civility felt worse than outright insults. The sparkle in her face had gone and her shoulders slumped with a permanent sadness that Michelle couldn’t bear. She couldn’t share her happy amazement about Rory when Anna was clearly so miserable with Phil, and for the first time she realised how Anna must have felt on the other side of the happiness fence, watching her trudge on, refusing to discuss it. Michelle didn’t have Anna’s natural way of teasing out a problem, and she was scared of making things worse.

Even Rory had to admit defeat. ‘I tried to ask her if she fancied a pre-Christmas sherry with the Reading Aloud team. But she wasn’t having it. Too busy,’ he told Michelle one evening, bewildered by Anna’s unusual lack of enthusiasm.

The manic shopping days to Christmas passed in a blur of Dean Martin and mulled wine and pine-scented candles and beeping tills. Normally Michelle would have stayed in the shop right up to Christmas Eve, getting her lonely Christmas fix from the decorations and Carols from Kings, but this year Rory insisted on her handing the keys to Gillian on the twenty-second and leaving the festive spirit to him.

‘She’s coming to Paris with me, Gillian,’ he said firmly. ‘If you need anything, it can wait until the day after Boxing Day.’

‘Unless the shop’s burning down,’ said Michelle. ‘Or there’s a break-in. Or if Tavish is ill. Or—’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Gillian. ‘I have my instructions.’

Rory glanced quickly at Michelle. ‘If there is a problem with Tavish you can call. But my mobile. Not hers.’

Four days in Paris passed too quickly for Michelle. She and Rory walked through empty starlit streets late at night, holding hands and saying nothing while the church clocks chimed the hour; they ate croissants and drank hot coffee during the day, gobbling up the intricate old churches and the frosted gardens, and behaving more like goofy teenagers on a school trip than thirty-somethings on a first weekend away together.

It was awkward sometimes. Rory seemed determined to pass on every shred of knowledge he had about Parisian architecture whether Michelle wanted to hear it or not, and she couldn’t quite undo so many years of physical self-consciousness overnight. But he was patient, and she was determined to step outside the defences she’d built up, and so they inched their way past the scratchy moments. The occasional silences that fell in between the croissants and kisses were comfortable, like the softest cashmere blanket, and she felt safe but adventurous in a way she’d always dreamed grown-up life would be.

She wasn’t sure, not having references beyond the works of Jilly Cooper, but Michelle thought she might be falling in love. And from the way Rory looked at her, with the quiet adoration and semi-bewilderment she’d read about, she wondered if he was too.

New Year’s Eve was a bright but chilly day, with a whisper of snow in the pale sky. A perfect morning, in other words, for walking a dog. Or, if you were two friends who used to go dog-walking together all the time, two dogs.

Michelle stood on the McQueens’ front doorstep with Tavish next to her in his Christmas tartan coat, rehearsing what she was going to say when Anna opened the door.

‘
No arguments, we’re going for a coffee.
’ A bit bullying? She might be busy getting the house ready for the girls coming back.

‘
I’ve got you a present from Paris!
’ True. But excuse-y.

‘
Hey! Has your phone been off
?’ Also true. But a bit pointed.

Michelle frowned. Why did she feel so nervous? Why was she even thinking of excuses – surely she didn’t need one?

The door opened and she was surprised to see Phil standing there. He was in his dressing gown, his hair unwashed and flattened, and for a moment Michelle wondered if she’d interrupted a romantic lie-in, but the beaten expression on his face said otherwise. Phil looked as if he had a hangover that extended to every part of his body.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she said, then stopped. ‘Phil, are you all right? You look terrible. Sorry.’

‘If you’ve come to see Anna, she’s not here.’ He ran a hand over his stubbly chin.

‘Oh. Is she at her parents’?’

‘No.’ He hesitated, then admitted, ‘She’s in the flat above the shop.’

‘What? Owen’s flat?’

He nodded.

‘Since when?’ Michelle couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed, but then neither she nor Rory had been spending much time there in the last few days.

‘Since the day we took the girls to the airport. Since before Christmas.’