Your Roots Are Showing (10 page)

“Also the bra,” she said, flourishing a severe looking article of corsetry. “I think we should try to get out on Saturday afternoon for a gentle little run-walk.”

Saturday afternoon? Oh, thank goodness. “Sorry, can’t do it, Tessa,” Lizzie said joyously. “What would I do with the twins?”

Tessa’s hands stopped fussing for a moment as she turned her full attention on Lizzie. “Liz,” she said slowly, “the twins won’t be here. Remember? You told me James was coming on Saturday morning to take them to Gloucestershire. You said how annoyed you were because he got Sonja to phone and arrange it.”

Lizzie’s heart did something funny. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about the weekend visitation, even for a moment. Sonja had phoned several days ago, sounding apologetic and embarrassed, to say James had rung from Scotland and asked her to set things up.

Sonja was James’s personal assistant, the one who ran his office and took care of the minutiae of doing business. James wasn’t that good at minutiae. Lizzie had never had anything against Sonja. She seemed a nice enough sort of girl, unobtrusive and good at her job. But the day Sonja phoned to make arrangements for the weekend, Lizzie suddenly realized she loathed her. How dare Sonja bloody Jenkins be privy to the ins and outs of Lizzie’s separation from James?

Since that phone call, Lizzie had been simultaneously longing for and dreading the moment when James would walk through the door of Back Lane Cottage to pick up Ellie and Alex.

On the one hand, she was anxious about letting the twins out of her sight for two whole days. Who would wipe their bottoms after potty time? Did James know that Ellie liked sugar sprinkled on top of her Reddybrek and not mixed in? What if Alex were left unsupervised among Lady Evelyn’s breakables? What if he tried to get into a suit of armor again?

On the other hand, what freedom to be alone in the house for a whole weekend! She’d finally be able to knuckle down to some writing.

Lizzie wondered what she’d do when James turned up on the doorstep. Throw herself down at his feet and beg him to take her back? Put on a brave front and wear some feisty new outfit in the hope of convincing him that she’d changed into a mysterious and desirable new person? Or just stand there like a lump in her gray sweats, not meeting his eye, fighting back tears as she kissed the children good-bye?

Another idea suddenly presented itself. What if she opened the door in trendy new running gear with slogans like “Just bloody get on with it!” written all over her, flashing a pair of those light-up running shoes, and perhaps chatting animatedly on the phone to a friend about how her training for the London Marathon was going?

That would shake him up, and no mistake.

Tessa was still staring hard at Lizzie.

“Oh my God, you’re right. He’ll be here at nine on Saturday morning, according to Sonja. More like noon, I should think. Without me there to elbow him out of bed . . .” She trailed off. An awkward little silence fell.

“You know what, Tessa?” Lizzie said after a while. “I think I’ll give this jogging thing a whirl. No promises, mind you. I’m not into self-flagellation. But I’ll give it a bit of a go; see if I can at least manage that fun run thingy you mentioned.”

Tessa leaped up and gave Lizzie a resounding slap on the back. “I knew you’d see sense,” she said happily. “I’ll drop by on Saturday at around four, then. Don’t eat a big lunch, but don’t skip any meals either. I tell you, James won’t be able to resist you when he sees the light back in your eyes and the bounce in your step again. Gotta get going now. Don’t forget to start taking the alternative medicines. Especially the codonopsis. Bye-eee.”

Twenty minutes later, Lizzie managed to find a parking spot somewhere in the vicinity of Chipstead village hall, where the twins’ nursery school set up its daily operation. Panting with exertion after a stiff walk, she strode with feigned confidence toward a group of women already gathered outside the doorway of the crumbling red-brick building.

“Hello there,” she called out to no one in particular. The women turned surprised faces to her. “Don’t you hate the parking situation here?”

The other mothers made noncommittal noises but nobody took up the issue. In fact, it seemed to Lizzie that they turned away as quickly as they could to resume conversations that didn’t include her.

Lizzie told herself she didn’t mind. After all, they’d all known each other since the start of the school year. They’d been meeting twice a day here, outside the village hall, for months, whereas she was a brash newcomer from rural Gloucestershire. It was bound to take them a while to warm up to her.

But still. It was a bit discouraging. In this new town, these women represented her only real hope of a social life outside of her lifelong friendship with Tessa and her budding acquaintanceship with the Hatters in the barn. And quite honestly, the women didn’t seem to take to her.

Lizzie felt her bright smile fading as she ducked her head over her bag and dug around in it, pretending to be searching for something really important. She found a pencil and a scrap of paper and spent the next five minutes writing a to-do list, just so it wouldn’t look so obvious that no one was talking to her.
Running shoes
, she wrote.
Light-up kind. Top-of-range running gear. Sports bra
. The bra Tessa had given her was too small.

On Friday night, when most single women were out on the High Street propping up bars or dining in girly groups at cheap restaurants, Lizzie was sitting in her upstairs office at her elderly computer, sipping a gin and tonic and checking e-mail messages, one ear open for noises from the children’s room.

Ignoring a fresh spate of wails from down the passageway, Lizzie clicked on a note from James.

From: [email protected]

Sent: 22 May

To: Lizzie Buckley [email protected]

Dear Lizzie

Just to confirm I’m picking up the Smalls first thing tomorrow. Expect me around nine.

James

Lizzie took a large gulp of gin and shuddered. Never in the long years they’d known each other had James communicated with her in such a cold and truncated fashion. Would it have killed him to sign off with “Best wishes” or “Kind regards,” or even the humble but serviceable “Yours sincerely”? Of course, “Lots of love” was completely out of the question, along with “Yours ever” and “Your devoted husband.” But to end a note with no salutation whatsoever — that was just rude. Rude and unnecessary.

At least he’d written “Dear.” Plain “Lizzie” would have been too much to bear.

She took another sip of gin and rattled off a reply.

From: Lizzie Buckley [email protected]

Sent: 22 May

To: [email protected]

James

I’ll have them ready for you.

Lizzie

James hadn’t seen the children for more than three weeks. This wasn’t because of Lizzie’s move, but because he’d been away looking at a carriage house in Scotland. He’d now become such a big name in farm building conversions that people were seeking him out across the length and breadth of the country. This meant he had to go on extended business trips, which he used to grumble about because he missed romping with the children at the end of the day.

Lizzie had looked forward to his trips as times when she could eat scrambled eggs or cereal for dinner. And go to bed at eight o’clock with a cozy novel without being expected to exert herself between the sheets in any way.

Now that she was free to do all of the above to her heart’s content, she found she spent most nights scrabbling about on the inflatable mattress like an arthritic dog trying to find a comfortable spot to lie in. The small hours passed in a twilight zone of insomnia, panic attacks, and bad dreams. She would have given anything — her left ear, both little fingers (what use were they anyway?), even her right arm
en masse
— to have James’s familiar bulk under the duvet beside her. Yes, even if his return meant marathon sex sessions every night.

Oh, to recapture those days when she’d enjoyed the marathon sex sessions.

In the misty past — before pregnancy turned her body into a stretch- marked pumpkin, before the twins came along and channeled so much of her love and energy into their tiny frames — she’d loved nothing better than to leap between the sheets with James Buckley. In fact, just getting him in a clinch had been her dream — the pinnacle of her ambition in life — long before they’d ever even met.

In those distant days, James Buckley frequented Lizzie and Tessa’s grimy local, The Bird in Hand. Lizzie and Tessa used to call him Mr. Rugby because of the battered rugby jerseys he wore.

The moment he was spotted in the pub, the conversation between Lizzie and Tessa would go something like this: “Psst, Lizzie! Red alert! Mr. Rugby to starboard.” Tessa, of course, had done any amount of sailing.

Lizzie had done no sailing at all. “Where the blazes is starboard?”

“That way, that way.” For discretion’s sake, Tessa would point with a thumb. “Whoa, Lizzie, don’t look now. Crikey, you’re so obvious. Okay,
now
you can look. God, isn’t he
gorgeous
?”

“Do you think he has a girlfriend?” Lizzie would ask.

“Several, I’d imagine,” Tessa would reply. “Should I do the walk-by?”

Lizzie was always too wimpy to do the walk-by. She was saving it for an evening when she knew she looked spectacular, but sadly enough that evening never seemed to come.

Tessa had no such qualms. She was always sure of her looks. She’d stand up, smooth her hands over her hips, and undulate past Mr. Rugby and his crowd. But for one reason or another, he never seemed to look her way. He and a couple of cronies were always deep in some loud conversation about a rugby match or soccer game or the money someone had lost at the races. Sometimes there were girls in Mr. Rugby’s crowd. More vigilant than their male companions, they’d shoot Tessa poisonous looks and toss their highlighted manes like spooked thoroughbreds.

Never before had Tessa cast a man so many smoldering looks and received not a single smolder in return. The whole situation began to rankle with her. Lizzie, on the other hand, didn’t expect to make actual contact with the great Mr. Rugby. She knew he was out of her league. Way, way out of her league. But a cat could look at a king.

Then she and Tessa went away one weekend in late summer to stay with Tessa’s parents in Winchcombe, the Cotswold town where they’d retired. That Saturday morning, in a spirit of joviality ill- suited to the earliness of the hour, Tessa’s father suggested they go berry picking at Longborough Fruit Farm. Tessa wrinkled her nose and groaned, “Oh Daddy, I’m not five anymore, you know.” But off they went, all the same, Tessa kitted out for the occasion in her oldest jeans and ratty T-shirt, found in a box of clothes waiting in the garage to be donated to Oxfam, Lizzie electing to remain in her ancient, good-enough-for- the-country, floaty summer skirt.

Lizzie was never going to admit it to Tessa, but she was quite excited about the outing. There was nothing she liked better than strawberries, except maybe raspberries, and she planned to eat her fair share of both.

Tessa’s father, whom Lizzie had been told years ago to call Harold, drove at speed down green, tunnel-like lanes lined with hedges and trees all leaning over the road to shake hands with their kith and kin on the other side. The Cotswolds fields were glorious with rows of flourishing produce — wheat, corn, broad beans, even violently yellow fields of late rapeseed. Taking the scenic route at speed, Tessa’s father gesticulated through the window at purple fields of lavender. “Fill your lungs up with that,” he yelled above the noise of the engine.

“Oh, do close the window, Harold, my hair, my hair!” called Tessa’s mother, whom Lizzie was supposed to call Babs.

But Harold was having too much fun. Possessing very little hair himself, he was hardly likely to understand why women shrieked so much on this sort of expedition — that is, when traveling at full throttle in a tiny car with all the windows open. The windows remained down and, released from the pressure to look well-groomed by a sense of being buried in the back of beyond, Tessa and Lizzie allowed themselves to get into the spirit of things. They threw back their heads and belted out cheesy songs along with the radio, careless that the wind was wreaking havoc with their hairstyles.

What with the heat and the wind and the singing, Lizzie — who was often described by her mother as peaky-looking and/or anemic — was positively blooming, with cheeks and lips as rosy as a child’s by the time they pulled up, in a scattering of gravel, at Longborough.

Having installed Babs at a table to imbibe tea and pat at her hair, the rest of the party left with cartons to pick strawberries. To Lizzie’s eternal shame, she and Tessa and Tessa’s dad were still singing snatches of “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun” when they walked into the first row of strawberry plants and collided with another strawberry picker.

Lizzie was grinning back at Harold, who was trying a tricky tenor variation of the chorus, when she bumped into a solid wall of flesh. Harold and Tessa piled into her back. Head down, Lizzie observed a strangely attractive foot in a brown sandal. Feet were not normally attractive to Lizzie. They fell into two categories: functional at best, malformed and unsightly at worst. But these feet were uniformly tanned a sort of caramel color and graced with that rare thing, a set of elegant toes.

Lizzie just had time to take this in before strawberries began to rain down on her head.

She was blushing with embarrassment before she even looked up. “Gosh, I’m so
sorry
!” she stammered as she raised her head, lifting her wild hair from her forehead with one flustered hand.

And then she stopped. Because, of course, she was staring into the surprised face and bright blue eyes of Mr. Rugby.

“Here, we’ll get them up for you,” Harold offered, not in the least perturbed. “Clumsy girl, Lizzie! Come on, let’s at least help the chap with his strawberries.”

Tessa, who’d been gaping as shamelessly as Lizzie, slowly began to bend down and gather fallen berries.