Your Roots Are Showing (30 page)

Lizzie had the luggage loaded and the children strapped in the car before Maria dropped a bombshell of her own, and it had nothing to do with Lizzie getting too thin for her dress.

“Oh, sweetheart, one last thing,” she said a shade too casually just as Lizzie was about to reverse out into the lane.

“Uh huh?” Lizzie felt her ears prick up, as if she were a dog. Something about Maria’s tone put her on the alert.

“While James was with us on Sunday he asked a sort of favor.”

“Yeah? Alex, stop kicking like that! You’ll damage something.”

“He wondered if he could, ah . . .”

Maria never ummed and ah- ed.

“Come on, out with it. What did he wonder?”

“If he could bring a — um — a partner. To the wedding. You know, given that it would be a bit awkward if the two of you were obliged to, ah, partner each other.”

“ I — see.” Lizzie saw nothing at all except a rapidly receding image of herself seductively slow dancing with James.

“There’s the dancing,” said Maria apologetically. “The two of you will probably have to manage one dance together, I’m afraid, but after that, if you bring partners . . .”

“We need never get within spitting distance of each other again. I see his point. Who’s he bringing, anyway?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know. I got the feeling that he didn’t have anyone special in mind.”

“It’s that bloody bitch, Sonja Jenkins, I bet. Did I tell you she’s gone and had a boob job?”

Maria twirled her ponytail thoughtfully. “Really? That doesn’t sound like James’s scene.”

“He likes big boobs,” Lizzie hissed, glaring down at her own bosom, which was looking modest and discreet for the first time since she was about thirteen. “He’s a man, for God’s sake. Do you think he cares if they’re made of jelly?”

Maria leaned into the car and said in a low voice, “Calm down, sweetheart. You’ve got to drive this lot safely back to Kent. Don’t work yourself into a state. James simply asked if he could bring a partner if he felt like it, and Laurence said yes, of course he could. The same goes for you, obviously. It might just make things easier, Lizzie.” Then, in a fierce whisper, she suddenly added, “Oh bugger, bugger, bugger, our timing’s just so screwed up, isn’t it?”

Lizzie had never seen Maria lose her cool before. It was unnerving. “It’s not
your
timing that’s wrong, Maria,” she assured her hastily. “It’s ours. Don’t worry about me. It’s no big deal. I can bring a bloody partner if I have to.”

And she pulled away quickly so they wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore.

It was as she rounded the bend onto the High Street that Alex piped up, “Sonja’s boobs aren’t made of jelly, Mummy.”

Lizzie slammed on her brakes in shock. The car behind her screeched to a halt a couple of inches from her bumper. Horns blared from every direction. Lizzie eased her foot back onto the accelerator, telling herself to take deep breaths.

“Really, darling? What are they made of?” she asked as conversationally as she could, when she was able to speak.

“Skin, just like yours, silly.”

“Oh? And how do you know?”

“Well, I seed her bare naked, you know. At Daddy’s house. But don’t worry, you gotta bigger bottom than her.”

When the children were in bed, Lizzie staggered downstairs, half-drunk with jet lag, and picked up the portrait Ingrid had so admired the day they’d shared the bottle of Chardonnay. Lizzie admired it too; always had. She’d never seen such a speaking picture of family life. The expressions on the children’s faces were so typical of each, and so well caught — Alex’s face brimming with mischief, Ellie’s full of merriment. And James: what could you say about such a battered, handsome, rueful face? He could have been a model for extreme sports practiced by laconic athletes in effortlessly elegant clothes.

The bastard.

Lizzie took the picture carefully out of the frame. She went to the kitchen and found a pair of scissors. Very slowly, she cut around the image of herself and the children. She’d have to take up scrapbooking now, so that she could use the butchered portrait on a cheerful page decorated with ribbons and stickers and pressed flowers. Maybe no one would notice the excision of the central image: her husband.

She picked up the offcut from the kitchen floor. The face smiled crookedly up at her. With a sort of low growl, she tore it viciously into shreds and threw it into the rubbish bin.

He’d broken his promise. Lizzie gave a strangled snort, somewhere between a shout and a sob. He’d broken his promise that he wouldn’t have a woman in the house while the children were with him. Well, that was it, then. There’d be no reconciliation. He’d gone beyond the pale.

Lizzie went to the bookshelf in the dining room and pulled out the shoe box containing the divorce papers. Suddenly, her brain was teeming with things she could write as evidence that James’s “unreasonable behavior” had destroyed their marriage.

On a piece of scrap paper, she began to draft a few points, writing fast and furiously. “Slept like a corpse through night feedings, night terrors, and bed-wetting incidents but NEVER understood why I was terminally tired; was INCAPABLE of putting clothes in the laundry hamper; expected toddlers to live without incident in a house full of priceless ANTIQUES; never told women to BUGGER OFF when they started chatting him up; never told his mother to GET THE HELL OUT of our garden . . .”

Abruptly, the point of Lizzie’s pencil broke off. She stopped writing and sat for a rather long time, staring sightlessly around her. At last, she shook her head, stuffed the papers back into the shoe box, and went into the kitchen. Dragging around the footstool she used to access the upper cabinets, she yanked open doors until she found a large jar of peanut butter. Grabbing a large spoon, she was about to begin shoveling the incredibly fattening stuff into her mouth when a ragged cry from above gave her pause. Somebody was having a bad dream again. She pushed the peanut butter back into the cupboard and hurried off upstairs to soothe and cajole. Being a mother was ironic, that way. So often, some mundane parenting task saved you from yourself.

Lizzie was now looking forward to Maria’s wedding about as much as she’d looked forward to having her wisdom teeth removed. Maybe slightly less.

The worst thing was, she’d have to pick up the phone and ask Bruno to squire her to the grisly event. It was either Bruno or the bloke in the white coat and ponytail who worked at Boots with Tessa. They were the only two single men she knew. Thankfully, the thing was still some weeks away so she wouldn’t have to pop the awkward question just yet.

And it
was
going to be awkward. The last time she’d seen Bruno, he’d been looking reproachfully at her over a cup of tea while Ingrid wittered on about that weekend’s car boot sale. And she’d been trying not to look back, because she’d had no intention of letting him know that only moments before she’d been plotting the quickest way to get him out of his clothes and into her bed.

Altogether, Lizzie was reluctant to think too hard about Bruno, let alone ring him up to ask him to partner her to a wedding. But Tessa didn’t think Lizzie should be putting off the evil hour. “You want to nail things down ahead of time so you can relax,” she advised one evening in early August as they cooled down after a surprisingly hard forty-minute run along the hilly bridleway off Back Lane. “It’s no good phoning him up the week before, only to find he can’t make it. I mean, if James really is having a thing with this Sonja bitch, you have your pride to think of. You can’t go to the wedding alone. It’s absolutely crucial that you have a partner.”

Tessa was right, of course. The embarrassment of having to ask Bruno out on a date would be nothing compared to the embarrassment of watching in solitary splendor as James snuggled up to Sonja during the slow dances. Even so, she couldn’t quite bring herself to pick up the phone and dial Bruno’s number. After all, he was bound to turn up on her doorstep sooner or later and then she’d be able to ask him face-to-face, without making a big production of the invitation.

But the days went by and Bruno failed to darken her doorstep. Probably he was appalled that he’d ever kissed her. Perhaps he was too ashamed of his cheek to show his face in her garden again.

Only that didn’t sound like Bruno.

Then, on the fifteenth of August, with just two weeks to go until the wedding, Lizzie heard the distant snarl of a lawn mower. After a moment or two she set down her pencil — a rhyme for “pomegranate” refusing to materialize anyway — and took herself off to the barn.

She stood at the gate watching Bruno mow, aware that it wasn’t much good shouting to attract his attention. Nor did she feel like running after him over the newly shaven lawn. Madge soon spotted her and came tearing over the gravel driveway to jump up at her.

As Bruno turned the mower at the far end of the lawn, he finally noticed her. He hesitated a moment, then switched the machine off and came striding over.

“Hi, Lizzie. Have you come to see Ingrid? She’s not in, you know.” The chill coming off him was reminiscent of the draft she often noticed when she walked past her fridge, which really didn’t seal at all well.

Lizzie gave a taut smile. “Actually, I just popped over to say hi to
you
.” The attempt at carelessness didn’t quite come off, largely because of the blush that swept over her entire body. “Haven’t seen you since . . . well, in quite a while, anyway.”

He looked hard at her, frowning slightly, and she blushed more, if that was humanly possible. After the
barrage
of flirtation he’d subjected her to since the day they’d met, you’d think she’d be entitled to walk over for a chat without him acting as if she was presuming on a friendship that didn’t exist.

“Yes, it’s been quite a while,” he admitted. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been studiously avoiding you.”

“What? Excuse me? What did you just say?”

“I’ve been keeping out of your way. I thought you’d be grateful.”

“Grateful? To be snubbed?”

He gave a shrug of his large shoulders, and for the first time ever, a touch of awkwardness crept into his manner. “Well, you know. After the public snogging incident. I’m not as thick-skinned as I look. I saw you rolling your eyes at Ingrid.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Bruno.”

“Do you deny you were rolling your eyes?”

“Well . . . maybe I was. But to be honest, I was desperate to make her stay so that I wouldn’t — do anything silly.”

“Oh. You were tempted to do something silly, were you? God, the relief. I thought you were just flat-out desperate to be rescued.”

Lizzie was relieved to see the twinkle back in his eyes. Bruno without a twinkle was like a gin and tonic without ice and a slice of lime.

“Anyway, I really came over to ask if you’d go with me to a wedding,” she said in a rush. “It’s friends of ours in the Cotswolds. My husband’s going to be best man and I’m matron of honor, so it’s a complete bloody balls-up. He’s gone and asked if he can bring a partner, so now I’ve got to produce someone too. Either that or pretend I’m in the emergency room with food poisoning.”

By now Bruno was grinning broadly. “How could I refuse such a flattering invitation? When is this shindig?”

“Last Saturday of the month.”

“The thirty-first?”

“That sounds right.”

“Oh, bugger. I’m sorry, Lizzie. I have something else going on. If you’d asked me sooner . . .”

Lizzie was aghast. How dare he have something else going on, after all the Saturdays he’d begged her to go on a date with him and she’d turned him down? It just wasn’t fair. She forced her lips into a smile. “No problem. That’s absolutely fine. I’ll find somebody else. Maybe I’ll take Tessa and pretend I’ve gone lesbian or something.”

He gave a great big belly laugh. “Relax, Lizzie, relax. Of course I can do it. I was just winding you up. I mean, you deserve it — after all the rejection I’ve had to bear.”

She made as if to cuff him over the head, and Madge gave a warning snarl. “Whoa girl,” Lizzie said. “I’m not really trying to clobber him — though a proper clobbering would do him the world of good.”

Bruno just laughed again. “What do I have to wear? Full regalia?”

“Yup. Black tie, cummerbund, the lot. And —”

“And what?”

“We’ll have to sleep over. Bed-and-breakfast place, because Maria’s house will be full of relatives and whatnot.”

“Ah.”

“Separate rooms, of course.”

“Of course.”

Lizzie’s face was as red as a ripe tomato again. God, he’d think she was setting them up for some sort of shag-over. She hastened to change the subject. “The twins will be with my in-laws. Maria decided against kids at the do, I’ve no idea why.”

“Gosh, me neither. Why wouldn’t she want the little angels there? They could hand out hors d’oeuvres and kiss grandmothers.” They both burst out laughing at the thought of Alex in such a role.

“Yeah, well, apparently there wasn’t a chicken nugget or fish stick option on the caterer’s menu,” Lizzie joked.

As she jogged effortlessly back to the cottage, she thought with satisfaction that if she had to turn up with a partner, she was glad it was Bruno. At least he was always good for a laugh, and she dearly wanted to look lighthearted and carefree if James was going to be flaunting the detestable Sonja.

“Mummy! Somebody atta door!” Alex bellowed much later that same day, racing past Lizzie at the kitchen table on his black plastic scooter.

The doorbell rang again but Lizzie didn’t move. She sat at the table with a large manila envelope in one hand and a letter in the other. The letter was short, but she was reading it over and over again.

“Mummy, iss Sarah atta door,” Alex called again. “She says get Mummy to come open.”

“Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Buckley? I mean, Lizzie? It’s Sarah. Is everything okay?”

Lizzie stood up slowly. “Yeah, fine. Come on in. I’m more or less ready to go.”

Sarah edged diffidently into the room. “I can stay about forty-five minutes, I think. Will that do? Oh my godfathers, what’s wrong? Has something happened in Australia?”

“No, no, it’s nothing at all. Janie’s fine, the baby’s fine. It’s just this stupid letter. From a literary agent. Remember I sent off the manuscript? Well, this is what they saw fit to send back.”