Your Roots Are Showing (41 page)

“So? What does he say?” Ingrid was nothing if not persistent.

“He’s fine with it,” Lizzie lied. “Can I — can I make you some tea?”

“Oh no, don’t worry. We only came over to give you some post,” Ingrid said. “Don’t know how it ends up coming through our door. But still. Where’s that letter, Sarah. Go on. Give it to her.”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah muttered, proffering an envelope. “We’ve already opened it. But it came to our address.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Lizzie said soothingly. “I’m sure it’s just a bit of junk mail.” And she threw it into a huge wooden bowl, already brimming with neglected paperwork, that took up most of the space on top of the old bookshelf she used as a sideboard.

“No!” Sarah yelped with surprising force. “Don’t do that. You might lose it. Would you please just look at it?”

Puzzled, Lizzie took back the envelope that Sarah was holding out again. Hang on. It didn’t really look like junk mail. Nice, thick, cream-colored envelope. Single sheet of thick, good-quality paper inside, the kind with a watermark.

She took out the letter and opened it, feeling strangely breathless. It was from somebody called Warren Battledon Inc.

Dear Ms. Buckley,

Thank you for submitting
Hamming It Up!
for our consideration. I am happy to say that we’d like to talk to you about representing the book, which strikes us as fresh, funny, and salable.

Lizzie couldn’t read any more. The words seemed to have gone into squiggles all over the page. She looked up at the bright, exultant faces of Ingrid and Sarah.

“How?” she croaked. “How did this happen? I threw it away.”

Sarah ducked her head guiltily. “I know. I was there. Remember?”

Lizzie stared at her. “You,” she said. “You did it?”

“Mum did all the work,” Sarah admitted. “I just couldn’t let you chuck the book out. So I dug it out of the bin and took it home, not really knowing what to do with it. Then Mum had this idea to start sending it off to all the agents for children’s books in the entire country.”

Ingrid nodded her head vigorously. “That’s right,” she said. “Couldn’t believe you’d given up after one halfhearted attempt. So I thought I’d give it a go myself. Turned it into a bit of a campaign. It was easy enough. Just a case of wiping the spaghetti off the manuscipt and making copies. Then we just wrote a form letter on Word and plugged in the different names and addresses.”

Lizzie shook her head, bemused.

“Hang on a moment,” said Ingrid, and disappeared from the room, reappearing within seconds bearing a bottle of champagne and three plastic glasses. She pointed the bottle at a wall and popped it with surprising expertise. Before Lizzie knew it, she was swilling a cold mouthful of bubbly.

She swallowed and took another gulp, and then another. Before too long, a feeling of — yes —
euphoria
began to sweep through her, replacing the numbness of shock.

She, Elizabeth Buckley, nee Indigo, might not have a husband or a boyfriend or even the prospect of a boyfriend. But she had something much, much better! She had an agent. A literary agent!

Blinking back tears, she turned to Ingrid. “I can’t believe you did this,” she said. “You and Sarah. It’s wonderful. The best surprise anyone’s ever given me.”

Ingrid gave her a big horsey grin. “It’s all down to Sarah, to be honest,” she said. “That girl really believes in your stuff.”

Lizzie looked fondly at Sarah, who’d finished the thimbleful of champagne she’d been given and was glowing like a beacon. Then she glanced back at Ingrid — nosey, interfering, thick-skinned Ingrid. “You two,” she said with a break in her voice. “You’ve been the best neighbors I could possibly have wished for. I’m — I’m really going to miss you.”

“But you’ll send us a signed copy of the book?” said Sarah. “It’s going to be so cool, knowing somebody famous.”

Speechless, Lizzie went over and hugged the big, blushing girl. “You’ll come to Glasgow,” she said firmly. “It’s a fantastic place to visit. The cultural hub of the United Kingdom. You’ll love it. Promise you’ll come?”

By midnight, Lizzie’s happiness in her good news had all drained away, as if there’d only been a thimbleful of it, after all. Sleep refused to come. She kept rereading the letter from Warren Battledon Inc., hoping to recapture the keen jolt of excitement she’d felt the first twenty times. But she might just as well have been reading her gas and electricity bill, for all the kicks she got out of the thing now.

On the following Wednesday, the sky was a rare, unbroken blue. Instead of taking advantage of the weather, Lizzie was in the bathroom, dressed in an old T-shirt and the reviled gray sweatpants (which she loved to wear now because they were so gloriously baggy that she had to fold them over at the waistband to keep them up), a tin of filler in one hand and a cheese knife in the other. She was hoping to fix the drill holes in the wall so that the landlord wouldn’t notice them when he inspected the house on Friday.

The packing wasn’t nearly done yet, but she was sure she could manage it before the truck came for the boxes and furniture on Saturday morning. It was astonishing how much stuff they’d accumulated during their summer in the cottage. Of course, James would think none of the furniture was worth packing up and shifting; most of it had been bought from the local secondhand store, after all. But Brightman was paying for the truck — and besides, she’d become strangely attached to her eclectic collection.

She and the children would spend a last night at the barn before leaving for Glasgow on Sunday.

All week she’d been tying up loose ends. At the top of the list on today’s agenda was the most important loose end of them all: the final signing of the divorce papers.

In a flash of inspiration, Lizzie had packed lunch boxes with cheese sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, and bright green yogurt, and sent the twins for a long walk and picnic with Sarah.

James, back from France the day before, had promised to be on her doorstep at ten o’clock sharp that morning, but the appointed hour came and went and the doorbell failed to ring. Lizzie, glancing at her watch every few minutes, was finding it hard to concentrate on the wall-patching job. She felt as if her ears were standing out on stalks, straining for the first sounds of an arrival. As eleven o’clock approached, Lizzie threw down the cheese knife and stormed out of the bathroom.

Without pausing to change clothes or wash the poly-filler off her hands, Lizzie shoved her feet into trainers and wrote a hurried message on a sticky yellow note, which she slapped on the front door.

“Gone running,” the note read pithily.

There, that would teach James Buckley to behave as if her time were worthless.

She set off at a sprint along the path that led down past the barn, returning Ingrid’s “ yoo-hoo” from her front garden with a terse wave.

As she sped down the hill, the wind lifting the hair from her hot head, her angry heart suddenly had reason to thump at speed. Fight or flight — and she was flying. By degrees, she began to feel better. So what if James was late? Lateness was the least of his sins, and anyway she was about to be shot of him forever.

As a matter of fact, she was glad he was late. He’d given her the impetus to get out of that bathroom. Here she was out in the fresh air, running through sun-dappled shadows, able to glimpse the blue sky through the treetops whenever she dared take her eyes off the rocky track. She relished the feeling of power that surged through her body as she fell into a steady rhythm, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She could run like this all day, if she had to. For the first time ever, she felt ready to run a marathon.

“Liz — ee!”

Her foot slipped on a rock and she hurtled into the nettles on the verge, struggling to keep her balance. Through her sweatpants, she felt a red-hot prickle from the stinging weeds. Righting herself with difficulty, she looked over her shoulder. It couldn’t be? Following her? How had he known where to go? Why hadn’t he sat down on the bloody steps and waited for her to get back, like any normal person would? And in his jeans, too. Nobody went running in jeans!

“Lizzie! Hold on a moment, let me catch up.” James ran down the hill with impressive speed and agility, given that he was wearing moccasins.

She stood and watched until he was a few paces away, then started running again herself.

“How did you find me?” she asked over her shoulder, between gritted teeth.

“Your neighbor spotted me on your doorstep. She pointed me in the right direction. But I don’t get it, Lizzie. Did you forget about our meeting?”

Lizzie’s legs picked up speed. She let them go for it. “Forget?” she spat. “How could I bloody
forget
? If you went into my dining room right now, you’d see two glasses of water on the table and a list of questions from my lawyer about ancillary bloody relief.”

James didn’t seem to be having any difficulty keeping up with her. “Why the hell go running, then?”

Lizzie stole a glance at him. He looked distinctly hacked off.

She took a deep breath. “Because I’m not operating on Buckley
time
anymore,” she hissed. “I’m back in the world of Greenwich mean time, where ten o’clock is still ten o’clock, not ten thirty, certainly not five past bloody eleven. I got tired of waiting around for you!”

James stopped running abruptly and pulled Lizzie to a standstill. “My flight was delayed. I didn’t get in till this morning; I drove straight here from Heathrow. I tried to ring but you haven’t been picking up the phone.”

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder. She’d heard the phone ringing a few times last night and this morning, but just at the moment she wasn’t taking any calls. Bruno might still be trying to get in touch, and even if he wasn’t, too many people in general seemed to think they needed to reason her out of going to Glasgow.

“Well, it’s not as if you’ve never been late before,” she said irrationally. She gave her head an angry little shake and started running again. Fast. He fell into stride beside her.

“Lizzie?”

“Yes?”

“Shouldn’t we be heading back? We’ve got a lot to cover.”

“Well, okay, if you’re getting tired. Let’s go back.”

“I didn’t say I was getting tired.”

She glanced at him. He certainly didn’t look tired — no panting or wheezing — but his neck and arms were beginning to glisten. He must be sweating horribly inside those hot jeans. Possibly chafing too, in the crotch area. All those tough denim seams. Jolly good. Bloody excellent.

“We might as well finish the loop, now we’re this far,” she said. “Pointless turning back. Am I going too fast for you?”

“Too fast?” he asked with something like a snort. “This is a stroll in the park.”

“Okay,” she breathed, “we’ll step it up.”

If they’d been belting along before, now they began to run as if pursued by cohorts of demons, helter-skelter down the rocky path, arms pumping, feet flying, the scenery shooting by in a blur of green. It was stupid. It was dangerous. It was only a matter of time until one of them sprained an ankle.

Lizzie hadn’t felt so good in days.

At the bottom of the hill, she raced him along the lane, through a tunnel-like pathway, and then up the long, punishing hill beside the cornfield, toward home. Never before, in all her weeks of training, had she pushed her body so hard. Yet, unbelievably, every time she thought she’d reached the limit of her stamina, she found further reserves of energy and endurance.

She kept stealing sideways glances at James, looking for signs of weakness. She’d never been running with him before, though she’d spent many a drizzly Saturday morning watching him play various ball games with effortless grace. His profile now was stern and determined, yet he seemed to move quite easily. He was a natural athlete, the lucky bugger. She was pretty sure he hadn’t been running in years. How he was managing to keep up with her, she had no idea — especially in those heavy jeans and leather-soled shoes. By now his T- shirt was plastered to his chest, dark with sweat. As they ran, he suddenly pulled the shirt up over his head and, without slackening his pace for a moment, stuffed it through a belt loop.

She looked at him once, naked from the waist up, and then studiously kept her eyes straight ahead.

Treacherous bastard. He was clearly trying to intimidate her with his washboard-flat stomach and rippling muscles. How would he feel if she suddenly stripped off her big T-shirt and began running in her sports bra?

No sooner had the thought occurred to her than she acted on it. After all, her sports bra was black and sturdy, not some flimsy, see-through wisp of lingerie. Lots of women worked out in tops just like it. Why should James daunt her with his flawless French tan? She wouldn’t allow it. She’d fight back.

As she tucked the T-shirt into her pants, James stumbled and nearly took a nosedive. He recovered himself quickly. Risking a few glances at his face, she saw that he was looking straight ahead in frowning concentration.

“Not much farther,” Lizzie panted as they left the cornfield behind them. “Just round the bend.”

It was then he began to sprint in earnest, drawing away from her over the grassy meadow with the inexorable acceleration of a sports car leaving a farm tractor in the dust.

Lizzie was at the far end of her tether. She could barely draw breath. She had nothing left; she’d used up every ounce of energy, every reserve of speed, every particle of power in her body. Her chest was on fire; her shins were shrieking; her pulse was so loud you could have used it as the backbeat for a rock anthem. James’s blue jeans were simply speeding away from her, uncatchable, unreachable, untouchable, soon to be out of sight.

But she wasn’t going to let the bastard beat her.

“Run, Lizzie,
run
,” she growled at herself.

And she ran.

As she ran, she imagined a rope between herself and her husband’s fleeing back, a rope she was hauling in as fast as she possibly could, hand over hand. She was dragging him back to her, reeling him in with the force of her will.

She gained on him steadily until at last they were level again, running shoulder to shoulder. She heard a loud, wordless yell, like some sort of strangled war cry, and realized suddenly, with shock, that the noise was coming from her own throat.