The Show (48 page)

‘They’ve already ruined us!’

‘Nonsense,’ Eddie said robustly. ‘There are plenty of other places we can take the format. We just need to be more canny about it next time. And in the meantime our domestic ratings are good. Channel 5 are keen to keep going.’

‘I agree with Gabe,’ said Laura, belting her black cashmere coat more tightly around her. ‘We can’t just bend over and let them shaft us like this. It’s a matter of principle.’

Gabe put an arm around Laura’s shoulder and pulled her in to him. For the first time in a very long time, they felt like a team. Laura’s arm slipped around his waist. She squeezed him back.

‘You can’t afford principles I’m afraid,’ said Eddie firmly. ‘I’m as pissed off as you are, believe me. But I’m not pouring good money after bad and I strongly advise you both not to do so. We’ll all recover. The person who this
really
affects is Macy.’

Macy’s name cut the bond between Laura and Gabe like a scimitar through silk. Nothing was said, but they stepped away from each other, the moment of closeness gone.

‘She was all geared up to move back to the States with what’s-his-face,’ Eddie continued, oblivious.

‘Warren,’ said Gabe.

‘God knows what she’ll do now.’

‘I’ll call her,’ said Gabe. ‘Break the news.’

‘No. I’ll do it.’ Eddie’s tone made it clear he would brook no argument. ‘I’m the one who got her involved in
Valley Farm
in the first place. I’ll tell her. But I’d like to do it in person.’ He looked at his watch. If he hurried, he could still catch the 2.02pm back down to the Swell Valley. ‘Will you two be all right if I make a dash for it?’

Laura and Gabe watched as he jumped into a cab.

Even now, after this awful, unexpected news, there was something ludicrously chipper about him, a relentlessly positive spring to his step.

Laura looked at Gabe. Part of her wanted desperately to ask him to lunch. To hold on to that brief, lovely moment of togetherness they’d felt, united in outrage against Fox. But the moment was gone, and Laura’s courage with it.

‘I’ll see you on Saturday then?’ she said miserably.

‘Yep.’ Gabe looked at his shoes. ‘And at some point we need to talk about next steps. With us, I mean. The decree nisi.’

‘Of course,’ said Laura. The divorce had been put on ice for this deal that never was. Now there was no reason not to go ahead with it. ‘I’ll call my lawyers today. You should do the same.’

Gabe hugged her goodbye but it was a perfunctory gesture, back to business as usual. Watching him walk towards the Tube, Laura felt every atom of happiness leave her body, like dust being sucked into an invisible vacuum cleaner.

How had it all gone so terribly wrong?

Back in the Swell Valley, Macy was also having a difficult day. She’d woken up at five with terrible period cramps – never a great start – then gone downstairs to check her emails. Seeing one from Austin Jamet at the top of her inbox, she opened it eagerly, hoping for his usual amusing banter. Instead she read a short but strongly worded paragraph informing her that her father was in his last days, perhaps hours, and was ‘literally begging’ to see her before he passed away.

Macy slammed the computer shut and began pacing the house. How dare her father try to emotionally blackmail her like this? And how dare Austin agree to do his dirty work for him? For a lawyer he certainly seemed more than usually concerned about his client’s personal affairs. She wanted to go for a run to work out her frustrations, but icy cold sleet was pounding down outside and she’d be soaked to the bone. Today was supposed to be signing day with Fox, a celebration. But of course Per Johanssen had to spoil that, the way he spoiled everything good in Macy’s life.

By the time Warren called at ten, she’d written four drafts of an email to Austin and deleted them all, before finally sending a two-word note – ‘Not Coming.’

‘You should go if you want to,’ Warren told her, inadvisably.

‘I
don’t
want to!’ Macy was borderline hysterical.

‘You could see some houses while you’re out there. That Colonial in the Beverly Hills Flats looked great.’

‘Is that all you can think about? House-hunting?’ Macy snapped.

She knew she was being unkind and unfair. Warren was giving up a lot to move back to California with her. His bank had agreed to transfer him to their LA office, but he’d be earning a fraction of what he made in London and would have to rebuild his practice from scratch. Meanwhile, Macy blew hot and cold. One day she was excited about the move and nagging him to look at listings with her. But the next she shut him down completely. As if not talking about leaving England would somehow prevent it from happening.

A knock at the kitchen window made her jump out of her skin.

‘Only me!’ Eddie shouted through the glass. He had a thick winter coat but no hat or umbrella, and his wet hair clung to his head like an otter’s pelt.

Macy rushed to the door. Behind Eddie, pellets of ice were bouncing off the ground like ricocheting bullets as the sleet turned to full-on hail. ‘My God, come in! You look half drowned.’

Eddie stepped inside, shaking the water off his coat and hair like a dog. ‘Bloody miserable out there,’ he smiled. ‘It’s like a war zone.’

Macy smiled back. ‘Well, it’s good to see you.’ Passing him a towel from the warm rail by the Aga, she pulled down two champagne glasses from the cupboard. ‘How did it go up in London? I assume you came over to celebrate?’

Eddie hung up his wet coat on the back of the door and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. ‘Actually, no.’

He told her the whole story. How Fox had refused to sign the deal. How it looked as if they’d been stringing them along from the start. At some point during his spiel, Macy sat down too, her legs weak beneath her.

How could this happen?
Why
had this happened? She knew it was completely irrational, but she blamed her father. Per Johanssen had poisoned things somehow. Like deadly ivy, he’d extended his tendrils of misery across the Atlantic and into Macy’s life and choked all of the good things out of it.

She had a plan. She and Warren, together, back in the States. Her career would take off again. Everything would be just like it was before. Before she came to England and met Gabe Baxter and lost herself.

‘Macy?’

She hadn’t realized that Eddie had stopped talking until he reached across the table and took her hand.

‘I know it’s bad news. But it’s not the end of the world, you know.’

She looked at him blankly.

‘You could still move back to America if that’s what you want. Begin again over there. Or you could stay on here. Channel 5 are still keen to do a third series of
Valley Farm
. I’m certain they’d take you back as co-presenter if you asked them. You and Gabe could—’

‘No.’

The word shot out, like an accidentally fired bullet.

‘I can’t. I can’t go back, Eddie. I can’t work with him.’

Eddie frowned. ‘But I thought …’

‘I love him.’ Macy stared down at the table, tracing random lines of grain on the wood with her finger. ‘I wish I didn’t. I’ve tried not to.’

‘I see.’ Eddie said quietly. ‘And what about this chap of yours? Warren?’

Macy shook her head. ‘It’s no use. Life would be so easy if we fell in love with the right people, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Eddie smiled at her kindly. ‘It would.’

He stood up to leave. ‘Don’t make any rushed decisions, my dear. Try to think of what’s best for
you.
Forget about Gabe and Warren, forget about other people’s expectations. What do you, Macy Johanssen, really want?’

Macy showed him out and sat back down at the table.

What do I really want?

What do I, Macy Johanssen,
really
want?

If only she knew.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Two weeks before Christmas, a thick blanket of snow fell over the Swell Valley and normal life ground to an abrupt halt. So many teachers couldn’t get into work that St Hilda’s Primary School closed its doors, leaving the delighted village children with an entire extra week of holiday in which to build snowmen, go sledging and generally get into the Christmas spirit.

At Wraggsbottom Farm the usual December root and vegetable picking was impossible. Instead Gabe and his team spent long days digging sheep out of drifts and repairing walls, fences and outbuildings damaged by the severe weather. The cameras captured some of this for the upcoming ‘
Valley Farm
Christmas Special’. But they missed a lot too, and Gabe found he was glad of the time alone. Waking at five to give the livestock their first feed, pulling on his wellies and crunching out through a deep white crust towards the barns, Gabe felt as if he were living in a Christmas card, like a Nativity-scene shepherd tending his sheep. Above him, the stars still shone in an ink-black sky. Around him all was beauty and peace. There was a magic to Wraggsbottom at moments like this that couldn’t be captured by a camera lens. He loved these moments, although he missed Laura and the children terribly.

Over at Riverside Hall, Annabel Wellesley went through the motions of preparing for the festive season. In the kitchen, she soaked the sloe berries in gin and prepared the Christmas pudding. In the grand hall, she got the gardeners to put up the twelve-foot Norway spruce, and dutifully trimmed the tree with lights and baubles. In the library, she lit fires and put out Eddie’s favourite Diptyque Myrrhe candles, the ones that made the entire house smell like a medieval church. But she felt like a ghost in her own house, a stranger in her own body. While the snow on the lawn muffled the sounds of nature, the wind and birdsong, and wrapped everything in a numbing white quilt, so Annabel felt as if all her senses were somehow numb and muffled. As if she were in some odd sense removed from herself, and from reality.

She knew she was depressed. She just didn’t know how not to be. What should have been the merriest of Christmases, full of old Westminster friends and jolly political parties, was now set to be a dull, village affair. Even the much-talked-about sale of
Valley Farm
in America had come to nothing. Macy Johanssen was returning to America after Christmas. And though according to Eddie the show would go on, it felt to Annabel very much as if its moment had passed. Gabriel Baxter was no longer the happy-go-lucky family man he had been when it started. The Reverend Clempson and his hardy band of protestors had long since disbanded, and the presence of cameras no longer roused any emotion in the village, either anger or excitement.

Things were no better on the family front. Ever since the Fox deal went wrong, Eddie had been spending more and more time up in London; supposedly on business, although Annabel couldn’t stop herself worrying he might have an ulterior motive. Not that she could blame him if he
were
playing away. He was probably tired of being met with vacant stares at home and climbing into bed next to a zombie. In her current, depleted state, Annabel could no more have sex with her husband than fly to the moon. As for Milo, he had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth, more concerned about the life problems of the family cleaner than his own mother or father and the misery that Magda’s ‘secrets’ – aka lies – had caused.

One Tuesday afternoon, having finished hanging holly garlands all the way up the grand staircase, Annabel sat down in the drawing room with a cup of tea and
The Times
. Eddie had left for London yesterday and wasn’t due back till tomorrow. Alone as usual, Annabel had polished the silver, walked Wilf, and continued the thankless task of decorating a house that no one but she spent any time in. Gazing out of the window, wondering listlessly how she might spend the remaining hours before bedtime, she was astonished to see a car coming down the drive. And not just any car. Milo’s black VW Golf – filthy dirty and so overloaded with suitcases strapped to its roof that it looked as if it might be about to sink into the ground, was hurtling towards the house at inadvisably breakneck speed.

Dropping her newspaper, Annabel ran to the front door. She hadn’t realized till that moment quite how worried she’d been about her son. But as the car came to a halt, the sensation of relief was so overwhelming she found she had to lean against the wall for support.

‘Hello, Mum.’

Unfolding his long legs, Milo climbed out of the driver’s seat, smiling at Annabel as if nothing had happened. She waited for him to come up the steps and fall into her arms. But instead he walked round the car and opened the passenger door. To Annabel’s horror, Magda Bartosz emerged.

‘Lady Wellesley. I’m so sorry …’ she began.

Milo put a protective arm around her shoulders. ‘You must call her Annabel.’

‘She most certainly must
not
,’ Annabel spluttered. She turned to Milo, her relief already replaced with outrage. ‘What on earth is
she
doing here? I thought they sent her back to Poland.’

‘They did.’ Milo was still smiling, an almost beatific look of happiness on his face. ‘It took me a hell of a time to track her down, too. But I did it. I found her, and I asked her to marry me, and I’m delighted to say she accepted.’

Annabel gripped the wall more tightly.

‘You’re engaged?’

‘Nope. We’re married!’ Milo looked adoringly at Magda. ‘We didn’t think we’d get Magda’s papers through in time for Christmas. There’s such a backlog at this time of year. But James Garforth kindly pulled some strings and here we are. We’ve been driving for four days straight, but,’ he threw his arms wide, ‘we made it.’

Eddie held the phone away from his ear to prevent himself being deafened.

‘All right, darling. Calm down.’

‘Calm
down? CALM DOWN?
They are
married
, Eddie.
Married.
That conniving little witch has married our son!’

‘Yes. I got that part,’ Eddie said calmly. ‘Where are they now?’

‘At The Fox. I told Milo in no uncertain terms that that
woman
wasn’t welcome in our house.’