Love Life

by Nancy Peach

  Once she was confident that Clara’s complaint was fully resolved and that there were no further significant shocks in store for her, she plucked up the courage to contact her dad. She hadn’t forgotten Edward’s advice and knew that he regretted not being able to spend more time with his own parents. Her mum confirmed that the most recent postal address on his last letter was the one she had used previously, and although the conversation was strained, she understood Tess’s need to set the record straight and seek him out, if only to apologise. A few weeks after she sent her letter, she had a reply with a tentative suggestion that they could meet. They spoke on the phone – Marco’s English was perfect but had a rolling and extravagant Italian accent – and Tess found herself responding in kind, lifting the ends of her sentences into a question when she was merely stating facts. Kath, overhearing her, creased up in hysterics on the sofa, and told her she sounded like she was in The Sopranos, but she couldn’t disguise her excitement when she and Tess arranged a trip to Rimini for early in the New Year.

  Tess saw Farida intermittently; they went out for coffee or to the cinema, sometimes just the two of them, sometimes with Rob, who had still not quite built up the confidence to ask her out on her own. She also continued to see Simon as a friend, knowing that she had made the right decision about not forcing a romance that did not exist. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake and choose the safe option like she had with Pete all those years ago, abandoning passion and excitement for a stable relationship with a man who wouldn’t leave her. She knew that getting back together with Simon would have been unsatisfying and would have led to resentment on both sides.

  Simon’s acceptance of the platonic nature of their relationship impressed her – he never pressurised her into turning it back into anything more. She once mentioned his gallantry to Kath, who responded that maybe he wasn’t being a gentleman at all, and perhaps he’d just never really fancied her, which Tess had to concede was possible, although she flicked her housemate the V-sign when she did so.

  She sought Simon’s advice when she came to look for a flat of her own; Ravi had asked Kath to move in with him, and despite her reservations, she had said yes. “I think he just wants to keep me on the straight and narrow,” she had whispered to Tess, but her beaming smile belied the offhand delivery; she was thrilled. The girls’ tenancy agreement was due to expire at the end of January, and Tess had saved enough to secure a deposit on a single-bedroom flat in one of the nicer areas of Bristol. It meant that for the first time in her life, she had a real sense of financial security; something that she had worked for; a tiny piece of her own property. When the bank agreed her mortgage application she was almost as excited as the day she’d qualified as a doctor, and her mum was the same. Jake had completed his training and started work, and suddenly it looked as though her entire family were finally starting to free themselves from the financial worries and insecurities that had plagued them for so long.

  It was whilst she was with Simon, recently returned from a second viewing of the flat she would ultimately go on to buy, that she first heard about the Russell estate. They were in the agency office, Tess updating Simon as to how her tenancy agreement was proceeding whilst he made her a cup of tea in the tiny shared staff kitchen, when he mentioned a new property that was likely to be coming onto their books. His excitement was palpable, not least because apparently the vendor had specifically asked for him to do the valuation and lead the potential sale.

  “It’s an absolute stunner, Tess!” he said with obvious relish. “Basically an estate agent’s wet dream!”

  She rolled her eyes and continued filling in a form about agency fees, but he was itching to show her the photos he had taken earlier that week, and she put down her pen with amusement, turning to the screen where Simon was now opening the sales particulars.

  “I owe you one for this,” he said as he clicked on the JPEG. “It was that fella we bumped into in the bar that first time we went out. The one you said was an absolute bastard? He kept my business card!”

  Tess didn’t hear his words. As soon as she saw that first image – the gently rolling lawn, the Georgian façade, greyer in the winter light than the golden summer glow of her memory – she felt a dull pain below her chest. Simon scrolled through the remaining pictures, and she saw the walled garden where she had sat with Edward on the day of the funeral, the kitchen where he had made her breakfast that day when she had arrived from the vet’s, awkward with gratitude and embarrassed to have caught him unawares. She saw the drawing room where they had greeted Mary’s many friends and well-wishers together and finally, almost so agonising that she had to turn her head from the screen, Edward’s room. All those memories, and now, all of it for sale. So, he wasn’t coming back. The family were selling up and moving on. She could hardly bear it.

  Tess drew a sharp intake of breath, the twisting sensation in her stomach spreading to her chest, tightening her throat and draining the blood from her head. She put a hand out to steady herself on the desk and Simon looked up.

  “You all right, Tess?”

  “Oh, yes thank you. I’m fine.”

  “I know, it’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” He nodded back towards the screen. “But your little flat is going to be smashing and all. We’ll get it fixed up proper job, hey?”

  He pushed the cup of tea towards her, shutting down the photos on the screen, reluctant to tear himself aware from such a vision of loveliness.

  “It’ll be millions,” he said wistfully. “Gorgeous manor house and prime land like that. Although they have put in some stipulations. I think they’re going to sell a lot of the acreage to the local vet’s. Bit bonkers if you ask me; it’d fetch a fortune if it went to developers, but, I guess if you’re sitting on that sort of pile, you can afford to be a bit eccentric.”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “You sure you’re all right? You’re a bit pale. Anyway, you sorted that form out yet?”

  Jane Austen’s attempts to soothe her were somewhat undermined by her own distress.

  “It is a great shock, my dear. Yes, indeed. A difficult time for us all. But we must endure. We must face the very real prospect that the gentleman to whom you have lost your heart is… never to be seen again…” The wail that accompanied the comment was particularly unhelpful.

  Tess didn’t share her discovery with Kath until her housemate noticed her downcast expression and pulled her up on it.

  “You’d seemed a bit more sorted, babe?” She patted Tess’s shoulder gently. “I thought maybe you were getting over him, but I guess not?”

  Tess had not even admitted to herself that her attempts to get over Edward were not going as well as she had hoped. Looking back, the separation from Scott had somehow been easier to manage, his actions having terminated the relationship so definitively that there was at least an element of closure – and some righteous anger – to see her through the tough times. But there was no anger left in her; she had exorcised those demons with the help of Edward, and now there remained only a sadness, a yearning for what could have been. She supposed that with the sale of the house perhaps she would finally be able to shut those feelings down. If she knew there was no chance of rekindling whatever it was that they’d once had, then maybe she could move on herself. She had to try; there was no other option. Edward had made his feelings clear: he was literally moving on, by moving out.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was late December, a few days before Christmas, and the streets were cold and damp, much as they had been the morning that Tess first met Edward almost a year before. Tess was now five months into her GP registrar training, and since her discovery about the proposed sale of the Russell estate a few weeks earlier, she was occupying her time, forcing herself to enjoy the variety of clinical cases she saw. She had missed seeing children and babies during her hospice attachment, and their presence in surgery now caused her much entertainment, although this was sometimes balanced with anxiety about how quickly they cou
ld become unwell. She had also missed seeing people who were healthy: pregnant mums excited about their impending arrivals; people with lumps and bumps that turned out to be benign. It was nice to bring good news into people’s lives as well as helping them deal with the bad. She was working through the coursework elements for her membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners and had started to think about the exams she was due to sit in the spring. Although the trip to Rimini would interfere with her revision schedule, she was starting to look forward to meeting Marco. She wasn’t sure that she would ever be able to think of him as her father, but by now they had spoken several times, each telephone conversation slightly easier than the previous one, and as Kath said, a trip to Italy was a trip to Italy. She was also spending a lot of her time planning how to decorate her new flat, what furniture to buy, and which colour schemes would best complement the original features Simon had so painstakingly pointed out to her when she viewed it.

  It was Saturday afternoon and Tess had returned from a trip to town where she had bought a couple of last-minute presents for her mum and a large table lamp for herself, despite not yet having a table to put it on. She was up in her room, the gifts spread out on her bed and the lamp in a large box next to her chest of drawers, with Morris sitting proprietorially on top of it. Kath was in the sitting room with Ravi, spooning cold spaghetti hoops out of a tin and loudly deriding a medical drama on the television, when the doorbell rang. Kath backed out of the sitting room, keeping her beady eye on the unravelling saga on the screen, and was shouting to Ravi to pause it when she opened the door, her head still turned towards the hall, her hair tied up with an old sock. Turning back to the doorway she was greeted by the sight of a tall, handsome stranger carrying a large suitcase.

  He thrust a hand out towards her. “You must be Kath?” he said in an amused voice, registering her look of open-mouthed astonishment. “I’m—”

  “Oh, I know exactly who you are, sunshine.” Kath ushered him into the hallway and gave him a thorough appraising stare up and down, “And you probably would be worth getting struck off for.”

  She showed him into the kitchen, plonking the half-empty tin of hoops down onto the counter and muttering, “You wait right there,” as she crossed back through the hall to the sitting room. He could hear her whispering urgently, “Rav, RAV!! Get yer arse in gear, darling. We are out of here. Now!”

  A few moments later, Kath was back in the hallway, dragging a bemused Ravi behind her. “We’ll just be popping out for the evening,” she said loudly, in the general direction of the kitchen. And then more quietly, “I know. We’ll watch it at your place. I’ll explain, just get a feckin’ move on.”

  She went to the bottom of the stairs, “Tess, there’s a gorgeous man down here. I wouldn’t leave him unattended too long or I might jump on him,” and then headed past the kitchen door, throwing a large beaming smile in his direction and pacifying her grumbling boyfriend with, “I know, you’re gorgeous too, you feckin’ eejit, and of course I wouldn’t really…” as they left, slamming the door behind them.

  Tess had heard the doorbell and immediately her skin had prickled with an anticipatory excitement. She had to stop assuming every unexpected interruption to her daily life was a sign of Edward Russell; it was probably just a delivery driver dropping off the fabric samples she’d ordered, but the sounds of Kath’s evident agitation downstairs caused the prickling across her arms and face to intensify and she found that her heart was beating more rapidly, her breath catching in her throat. When Kath finally shouted up to her, she was already at the top of the stairs and caught her housemate’s eye just before she left with a disgruntled-looking Ravi. Kath’s excitement was palpable in that single glimpse and Tess knew then for certain exactly who was waiting in the kitchen.

  “When a young lady is absolutely determined to be a heroine there is little that can be done to prevent it.” Jane Austen’s voice was bordering on smug. “Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.”

  As she took the first few tentative steps downstairs, she felt a growing apprehension. What if he was simply here to tell her that he was selling the house, just dropping by on his way to see the estate agent or his solicitor? What if he was here to clarify something practical regarding his mum or the finances, or tying up the loose ends regarding the complaint from Clara? What if he had met someone else and wanted to let her know in person rather than find out on social media when his status changed, because, let’s face it, he would know she’d been checking. All these thoughts raced through her head but then she saw him emerge through the kitchen doorway, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the cupboard door Kath had left open, and she knew immediately from the way he looked at her that it was none of these things. The longing in his eyes exactly mirrored her own expression, their smiles widening as each realised, after such a long wait, that their feelings were reciprocated.

  All thoughts of decorum or studied nonchalance vanished. She galloped down the remaining steps and flung her arms round his damp coat, breathing in the scent of him, the warm cashmere, the clean linen, the thrilling aroma of her handsome man. He laughed but hugged her back fiercely, and then they were kissing as if their lives depended on it, tears mixing with the rainwater still damp on his face, hungry for each other as they had always been. She pulled away from him at last.

  “You’re back! You are actually back.” She squeezed him again. “I mean, obviously I’m pretty ambivalent about that.”

  He laughed.

  “I am back,” he said. “I’m sorted. I’ve had an amazing time. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I mean, frankly it was ridiculous. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. When I got the message from Henry about the bill, and when Harvey wanted to keep sending you pictures, and when Pauline said she’d bumped into you… Every time I had to keep reminding myself, she doesn’t want me to contact her; she made me promise. But then we decided to get the house valued and I remembered that boyfriend of yours, and in some sort of ridiculous masochistic way I asked for him to lead the sale…”

  “I know! I know. He showed me the pictures. Jesus, I nearly had a heart attack.”

  “And then when I spoke to him, all I wanted to do was ask about you, and if he knew where you were and what you were doing, and if he was still seeing you… I was tying myself up in knots and eventually Madeleine said, ‘Go home.’ She said, ‘We’ll make a decision about the house later, just go home and everything else will fall into place. Go back to her and tell her you love her, before she hooks up with the estate agent, or runs off with some kindly doctor who is in touch with his feelings and isn’t some sort of emotional car crash.’ So, I did.”

  “You did!”

  “And here I am. And I love you, Tess. I love you so much. I can’t bear the thought of another day without you.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, I was hoping to be just marginally cooler than this. It’s not very me, is it?”

  “You’re not wrong. Quite an uncharacteristic display.”

  “I don’t even care. Although, I guess I am going to feel a bit wretched if… I mean, you haven’t, have you?”

  “Haven’t what?”

  “Haven’t found a kindly bloke who is in touch with his feelings and isn’t going to cause you a moment’s stress or anxiety?”

  She laughed, shaking her head, and reached to take his hand, leading him upstairs.

  “And what on earth would I do with one of those?” she said. “That would be no fun at all.”

  Epilogue

  She wakes slowly, the heat from the July sun seeping through the curtains of the large sash windows, causing her to stir and press up against the warm body lying next to her. He is already awake, propped up on an elbow, gazing down as she emerges from slumber, marvelling at the happiness this woman has brought into his life. She snakes an arm around his broad chest, smiling, knowing even with her eyes closed that he is staring at her
, remembering last night. There is a suggestion of noise from the far reaches of the house, a small child’s footsteps, light on the staircase, a giggle, a bark.

  Madeleine’s voice is stern: “Leave them alone! They’ll be up in a minute. Poor Tess is going to wish she’d stayed the night in her flat after all if you rotters keep bothering her!” The giggling ceases and the footsteps descend; all is quiet again. Tess looks over to the wardrobe door where her dress is hanging next to Edward’s suit. She reaches up to stroke his face.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks.

  He grins and rubs a hand across her body from thigh to hip, across her tummy and the side of her breast. “Pretty good actually.”

  She smiles sleepily and prods him with her finger. “No, I mean how are you feeling about today?”

  There is a memorial service planned for the morning, a chance to commemorate Mary’s life, scatter her ashes, and look back on the past year, a time during which so much has changed. She is still concerned about him, a year on, despite knowing that his emotional scars have healed. She wonders if she will always feel this protective towards him – if, having seen his vulnerabilities and failings so early in their relationship, there is nothing he can now hide from her. He, of course, now knows all about her own weaknesses. She has told him about her previous low self-esteem and even admitted to the binging, something she has never shared with anyone.

  She is, again, amazed by how strongly attached she is to this man, someone who entered her life in the most unusual of circumstances and has become the focus of everything she does, every part of her consumed by him, every moment spent thinking of him. She wonders if it is unhealthy to be so obsessed, for one’s own happiness to become so intrinsically linked to that of another, but it doesn’t feel unhealthy. It feels right.

  He is reaching down to his side of the bed and she glances at his back, curious, watching the muscles of his shoulder stretching taut as he leans and returns holding a small box. Her eyebrows lift and her heart starts to beat a little faster. She is now definitely awake.