Goodness, Grace and Me

by Julie Houston

  But he wasn’t smiling as he stirred his coffee. ‘Harriet, I’m really sorry about this,’ he said miserably.

  ‘Just tell me how you managed to see me nearly every evening for over a week without your girlfriend finding out?’

  ‘She’s doing a languages degree and is spending the year in France.’

  ‘France? How come you were with her yesterday then?’

  ‘She was back in England for her brother’s wedding. He got married at the weekend and I was invited. That’s why I didn’t get in touch with you. I knew Anna was on her way back to her parents for the week, and I knew I needed to sort out in my own mind how I felt about her. We’ve been together a long time, you know.’

  When I didn’t say anything – couldn’t say anything – Nick sighed loudly. ‘Look Harriet, it doesn’t make me feel very good to know that I’m involved with someone else but came on to you.’

  Was there a hint in that last sentence – ‘am involved’ – as in the present tense?

  ‘When I first saw you in the union bar,’ Nick went on, ‘I knew I had to get to know you. The week I spent with you was wonderful.’

  Oops, definitely another hint – ‘was wonderful’ – as in the past tense.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me you were involved with someone?’

  ‘I suppose I was afraid you wouldn’t agree to see me again.’ Nick took my hand. ‘The last time I saw you I knew Anna would be back in the country the day after that. I wanted to sort it all out with her before I got in touch with you again. I was really honest with her. After the wedding I told her I’d met someone else and she seemed to take it OK. Even told me she’d met someone else herself in France.’

  ‘Well she would wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Would she?’ Nick seemed surprised at this.

  ‘Of course. The poor girl’s pride had been dented. So if it was all sorted how come you were cosily ensconced in the library with her yesterday?’ Damn! I hadn’t meant to let slip that I knew about that. He’d think I’d had my spies out on him.

  Nick didn’t appear to take much notice of this and went on, ‘I got back from staying with her parents on Sunday evening and planned to get in touch with you last night. I was in the library yesterday afternoon catching up with a couple of assignments when she just suddenly appeared. Said we needed to talk and how she couldn’t go back to France leaving it like this. I spent all afternoon and evening with her, trying to calm her down as she became increasingly hysterical.’

  When I didn’t say anything Nick sighed and went on, ‘Harriet, it wasn’t my intention to hurt her or lie to you.’

  ‘Well no,’ I acquiesced, ‘I don’t suppose it was. So where is she now?’ I turned to the open door, half expecting her to come through it and lay claim to Nick once more.

  ‘About one this morning I finally called her friend who came to pick her up. She’s taken her to the airport this morning. Her plane leaves about ten o’clock.’

  There didn’t seem much point in going to what was left of my lecture. Instead, Nick and I went back to his room in his shared house. Everyone else, including the goofy letch from the previous evening, was out, thank goodness.

  While Nick made more coffee, which neither of us wanted, I nervously prowled his room picking up books and reading blurbs in which I had no interest.

  ‘Have you read this one?’ I asked as Nick came into his room from the kitchen.

  ‘Um, yes.’ Nick put down the mugs on the table.

  ‘And, um, any good?’

  ‘Harriet? Will you please put down the sodding books and come here?’

  Nick unwrapped the scarf from around my neck and slowly unbuttoned each fastening on my jacket, lifting my long hair from the nape of my neck before letting the coat fall on to the floor. Still holding my hair in his fingers, he kissed the skin on my neck and I was lost.

  Making love was a revelation. I marvelled at his body, hard and tanned and lithe. I traced every sinew, every blonde hair and made it mine. His warm hands stroking my back under the softness of my cashmere sweater was a heady combination, and as he pulled it over my head, kissing me slowly as my breasts struggled for freedom, I felt truly beautiful. When he entered me I felt as if I’d come home, and when, after making sure I came first, he gave himself up to his own climax, he bit his lip to stop himself from crying out loud.

  And so this is where, almost twenty years ago, in 1993, the Nick bit of the story starts. It was fortuitous that Grace, who had been with me at every other momentous happening since the age of eleven, should have been with me on that evening in the union bar.

  And that, for the first time, also since the age of eleven, when Grace and I first set eyes on ‘Little Miss Goodness’, I’d once again fallen utterly, and irrevocably, in love.

  Chapter 1

  ‘So, this David Henderson. Tell me something about him, and why he’s invited someone he only met last night to his house for dinner.’

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against the car headrest, soothed by the steady hum of tyres on wet road and the Mozart clarinet concerto that always reminded me of school speech days long gone.

  When Nick didn’t respond I turned my head towards him, and opened one eye.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘David Henderson? Why has he invited us for dinner when you only met him last night?’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d only met him last night.’ Nick had the grace to look uncomfortable if not downright shifty.

  ‘Yes you did,’ I retaliated, sitting up properly now. ‘Yesterday morning you said you were having a meeting and dinner with some businessman Brian Thornton was going to introduce you to. You didn’t say you already knew him.’

  ‘What difference does it make, Harriet, whether I met him last night or a month or so ago?’ He was irritable, obviously tense about the evening ahead.

  I knew it shouldn’t make any difference, but it did. The knowledge that Nick had been what I could only think of as, well, plotting, with this man, made me uneasy. Glancing over at Nick, I could see that, irritable and stressed as he was, he was also animated, full of unspent energy. This was the old Nick, the one I’d not seen for years. Not since the months straight after University when he’d taken all that life had to offer, grabbing it with both hands and started his ascent to the top with his new textiles company. For fourteen years the business could do no wrong as Nick took on more and more people and the company expanded. He gained the respect, not only of other newcomers to the business, but also of the old West Yorkshire mill owners who, struggling with new technology and obsolete premises, very often turned to him for advice. Within a year of marrying we were able to leave our tiny rented flat and move into the old farmhouse we now lived in. Once the children were born, and decisions needed making about education, we were in a position to go private, despite my dad’s mantra to ‘remember your roots, Harriet’. To quote some corny seventies pop song, ‘we had it all.’

  And then, quite shockingly, the business had failed, one of the very first victims of a recession that would continue, unleashed and out of control, leaving devastation in its path. It had started slowly at first with a couple of bad debts which, though annoying, weren’t enough to rock the boat or stop us having what would, it turned out, be our last wonderful holiday in Barbados. Because Nick’s business, The Pennine Clothing Company, had been so successful in such a short time, he had been able to pay off most of the start-up loans within a few years. But there had been one loan outstanding, and when the banks became jittery and demanded larger, faster repayments at exactly the same time as Nick’s three biggest customers all went bust, the death knell on the business was sounded – loud and very clear.

  Which is why, apparently, we were now on our way to have dinner with someone who Nick reckoned could be the answer to his prayers. What those prayers entailed was anyone’s guess.

  ‘You’ll really like David,’ Nick now said, in an effort to mollify me. ‘And Mandy is grea
t too.’

  ‘Mandy?’

  ‘David’s wife. You’ll really like her. She’s wonderful. Very supportive. Good dress sense.’

  His wife? He knew his wife too? And when had he ever noticed anyone’s dress sense? The unease I’d been feeling over the last couple of weeks began to intensify and I could feel my stomach start to churn.

  ‘Nick,’ I spoke slowly. ‘What are you up to with this David Henderson?’ And then, as an awful thought hit me, ‘Oh, please don’t tell me you’ve already handed in your notice at Wells Trading?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Hat, of course I haven’t. I might hate the damned place but it has kept a roof over our heads for the last two years. Look, we’re nearly here. Just relax, put a smile on your face for God’s sake will you, and make an effort to be civil – for my sake?’

  I can only ever sulk for a maximum of five minutes, by which time I’ve usually had enough of giving the cold-shoulder treatment and need to start talking again. Life is just too short to spend it in silence. The sulking gene, rife throughout my mother’s side of the family, seemed to have mutated and come to a natural standstill with Aunt Zilla, my mum’s youngest sister. She once kept a sulk going for almost two months, only communicating with my Uncle Maurice through her sons – my cousins. It became a family joke; my dad even opened a book and took bets as to how long Uncle Maurice would be in Coventry for this time. With the odds at twenty to one for a two months’ silence, my Granny Morgan scooped the winning bet and, obviously still on a gambling high, blew it all on an orgy of slot machines one wet, Sunday afternoon in Blackpool.

  I adjusted the mirror to check that my lippy was still in place and to try out the little pout I’d been practising the last few weeks.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with your lips?’ Nick asked nervously, peering at me as we crunched onto the drive in front of one of the most beautiful houses I’d ever seen. A 25 Beautiful Homes junky, I was about to overdose.

  ‘Just putting on my pout to impress,’ I said airily as we got out of the car. ‘My God, Nick, who are these people? They must be billionaires.’

  ‘Well, millionaires at least,’ Nick agreed and then, catching sight of my foolproof ‘pout to impress the rich and famous,’ laughed out loud. ‘Stop it, you idiot,’ he grinned. ‘You look like Donald Duck.’ Straightening his tie and stroking my bottom in the way he knew I loved, we walked up the steps to a door that, for sheer size and grandeur, would have given Buckingham Palace a run for its money. ‘Behave yourself!’

  Unfortunately, not only did being likened to Donald Duck make me laugh, but I now had it in my head that the Hendersons were about to metamorphose into the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and I was going to have to curtsy. By the time the huge polished door opened I was having a serious fit of the giggles.

  Now some women laugh delicately. A feminine, tinkling little titter that in no way compromises their standing in society, their carefully applied make-up, or their knickers. Unfortunately I am not, and never have been, one of said women. When I laugh, I roar. I snort. Tears amalgamate with snot and I am, in a word, a liability.

  With tears coursing down my cheeks and legs desperately crossed, I clung to Nick, hysterical with laughter.

  ‘For God’s sake, Hattie, think of something to take your mind off it!’ Nick hissed. ‘Think of the little boy who stopped Holland flooding by putting his finger in the hole in the dyke.’

  This was the worst vision Nick could have suggested. As the door opened, an appraising pair of brown eyes took one look at me practically on my knees, mascara running down my flushed face and gabbling hysterically about ‘Dutch lesbians,’ before turning to Nick for explanation.

  I reckoned I could do one of three things: apologise calmly to David Henderson and then go home and kill myself. Or pretend I was a mad wife in the style of Mrs Rochester, and wait for Nick to kill me, or thirdly … I didn’t need a third option. The sight of David Henderson’s wife appearing behind her husband in an obvious desire to find out what all the commotion was about had the same effect on my hysterics as a sudden shock on hiccups.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ laughed Nick heartily. Too heartily. The bray hanging in the air while the couple at the door tried to make sense of what was in front of them gave every indication that Nick could count donkeys among his ancestors.

  ‘Harriet was just, er, recounting the joke one of the children in her class told her today,’ Nick continued desperately.

  ‘Well, Harriet,’ said David Henderson kissing my cheek, ‘you must share it with us all over dinner. Lovely to meet you at last.’ At last? ‘Do come in. This is Mandy.’

  ‘We have met,’ I muttered, as all three looked at me in surprise.

  ‘We have?’ Mandy peered at me, looking me up and down as if I were a particularly strange specimen she’d been asked to identify in an A-level biology exam. ‘I don’t ... I’m sorry …’

  She tailed off when, sighting a downstairs’ cloakroom ahead, I interrupted with, ‘Look, do you mind if I just nip to your loo?’ and made a dash for it.

  Shame the Alice Cooper look wasn’t the height of fashion that season. A black rivulet of mascara had descended down each cheek, one finishing somewhere around my left ear, the other merging with the ‘Crimson Dawn’ lipstick that must have departed company with my lips on the Hendersons’ steps.

  Blimey! No wonder Mandy Henderson, aka ‘Little Miss Goodness’, hadn’t recognised me. Giving thanks to God that my pants were only slightly damp, and I’d had the good sense to stick a spare lipstick and mascara into my handbag, I set about repairing my ravaged face and composure. The huge Victorian-style washbasin in which I rinsed my hands was set into a block of exquisitely polished granite marred only by the droplets of water that had escaped my ablutions. Glancing round almost guiltily, I used one of the wonderfully soft and scented hand towels to return the granite to its former unblemished glory. There, that was better. The granite was pristine once more and I began to relax.

  ‘You silly bitch,’ I chastised my reflection in the mirror and, taking a deep breath, followed the direction of voices to a ravishingly elegant sitting room. Immensely tall windows were swathed from head to toe in cream, the superfluous silk pooling onto the cream carpet so it was difficult to tell where one finished and the other began. The walls, not to be outdone, were also clad in cream silk with the exception of the long back wall, so sated with books it almost groaned, standing to attention over a grand piano as black and shiny as a large, dignified beetle.

  ‘Ah, Harriet, there you are. Champagne?’ David Henderson left the group of men where he’d been holding court, and came over to where I stood admiring what I guessed were leather-bound first editions. ‘Do you read?’

  Stifling the impulse to say, ‘Yes, since the age of five,’ I smiled and took the proffered glass. ‘You have a fantastic collection here.’

  ‘My father was an avid collector, if not a great reader. I think he probably bought them in the same way that he accumulated his wine cellar – the enjoyment was in the acquisition rather than in the actual drinking of the wine.’

  I raised my eyebrows, as much at the thought of anyone buying a bottle of wine and preferring to look at it rather than drink it as the champagne bubbles which were going up my nose.

  ‘So, don’t tell me,’ I said, ‘You’ve got a wine cellar to match this library of books?’

  He smiled. ‘That’s where my father and I differed. While his books tend to remain pretty static, his wine portfolio is fairly quickly diminishing. Having said that, I’m not a total philistine. I do sit down some evenings when I have time and lose myself in one of his books. So, tell me, where do you think you know Mandy from?’

  ‘Amanda and I were at school together. I was a grubby-kneed third-former at Midhope Grammar when she was head girl.’

  ‘Really? Mind you, if she was so much older than you it’s no wonder she didn’t appear to remember you. You always remember the people in the classes above you at sch
ool, don’t you, but never the ones below?’ As David filled up my glass I didn’t like to remind him that my own mother very probably wouldn’t have claimed kin with the giggling, squirming jelly that had taken root on his doorstep earlier that evening.

  There were twelve of us for dinner and as David, remembering his duty as host, led me to where Nick and a group of five others stood talking by the fireplace, Amanda reappeared presumably from carrying out some task in the kitchen.

  ‘Mandy,’ he called as she hovered at the edge of a circle of four women, ‘Harriet says she was at school with you – that’s how she knows you.’

  ‘Was she? Good God! Harriet Burton!’ Mandy enunciated each syllable in the upper-class drawl that took me back twenty-five years.

  ‘Oh, you remember her?’ David confirmed, pleased. ‘I’m amazed. Can’t say I remember anyone more than a year below me – unless they were in the rugger team of course.’

  Amanda walked over and kissed me on the cheek before saying, ‘How could I ever forget Harriet? You really look very much the same as you did when you were at school.’

  ‘Oh gosh,’ I twittered nervously, ‘I think I’ve moved on a bit since the days of spots and inky fingers.’

  ‘Do you ever see your partner-in-crime these days?’ she asked pleasantly. We both knew she was referring to Grace.

  ‘Grace? Yes, I see her every day – I’ve actually been working with her for the past two years. We both teach at Stanhope Junior near Farsley.’

  The look of disbelief tempered with amazement that traversed Amanda’s face was the self-same expression regularly bestowed upon Grace and me in response to the many excuses we manufactured as to why we were without our berets, running in the corridor or hiding in the loo in preference to freezing our fourteen-year-old tushes off in the playground.