“Ooh—that sounds pricey. Bad luck. Well, I’ll definitely come by. My chance to cheer you up for a change!”
Izzie had an idea. “Hey—maybe we should cook up some of those recipes in the book. See if they work. Shall we give it a try? If you’re going to get it published, we’ll have to check out that they’re doable! Just think. You could become a publishing magnate. Your money worries are over!” And laughing, they walked out to the car together.
At home, Marcus was seething. “The morons just left the skip there. Have they no brains at all? How am I supposed to move my car?”
“But, Marcus, didn’t you think to ask them to put it further along?”
“Don’t you start! Don’t you bloody start! I was inside, sorting out my contact sheets. By the time I’d finished, they’d already buggered off.”
“Will you be back in time for me to fetch the kids?”
“How should I know? Probably not. You’ll have to phone them and get them to move it. If you’d been here, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
Izzie bristled. “Now hold on! The whole reason for one of us being here was to make sure something like this didn’t happen. Don’t blame this on me! If it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t be able to have this done at all!”
“Yes, I know, I know. Can we leave this for later? I’m going to be late as it is.” And he grabbed the keys, gave her a brief kiss, shoved her seat back, and drove off, spitting gravel from the back wheels.
“Drive carefully,” she said quietly to the vanishing car.
Maddy always felt excited when she dialed Jean Luc’s number. It thrilled her to think that she had punched in some numbers here in her kitchen, and the phone was ringing in his big mas hundreds of miles away in the Cévennes. It was lunchtime, so with a bit of luck he’d have come in for a quick bite to eat and she’d catch him.
Beep. Damn, she’d forgotten they were an hour ahead. He was out and she had so wanted to talk to him. She left a message. “Salut, Jean Luc. C’est Maddy à l’appareil. Tu peux me rappeler aussitôt que possible? Je t’embrasse. A tantôt.”
Disappointed, she put down the phone. She’d felt fired up by Izzie’s idea of a sort of Country Diary and had wanted to get her teeth into the project. He’d call back, she was sure, so she pulled up her sleeves and started to tackle the washing up. Will had gone into school far happier the last couple of mornings—they’d even done some pictures together with sticky paper and shells for show-and-tell—and she felt quite smug that she was finally getting a handle on being a proper mother.
I bet Sue Templeton never lets her kids loose with the Pritt Stick, she thought, as she wiped the kitchen table and loaded the dishwasher. She imagined the scenario in that perfect kitchen. “Abigail, dear, that’s enough paint. No, not on Mummy’s curtains. Abigaaaiiil, don’t touch a thing . . .”
It was time for Pasco’s nap, so she tucked him in, set the mobile above his cot swinging, and was coming downstairs with a pile of laundry when the post plopped onto the mat. There were a couple of flyers for carpet cleaning services, a standard circular from her bank offering her a £30,000 loan “just a phone call away, Mrs. Hoare”—oh wouldn’t that be marvelous—and a letter addressed to her. It was Crispin’s bill for the building work so far.
Maddy had to make herself a cup of coffee and light a cigarette before she dared open it. Then all she could bring herself to do was peep inside without even pulling out the invoice. £2874. Plus VAT. Including £1200 from the last unpaid invoice. Thank you for your valued custom.
Oh bloody hell. She’d had no idea that it would be this much. She felt vaguely nauseated. What was this about the last one being unpaid? Anything that looked vaguely like a demand for money—Visa bills, the phone bill, Peter Jones, Harvey Nichols, school fees—had always gone onto a pile for Simon to deal with. What was going on?
She couldn’t remember the last time she had written a check. In fact, she’d never done bills, full stop. Any kind of financial transaction had been dealt with by the family solicitors after her father’s death; by Peter, her stepfather; or by Simon. And a mortgage? What the hell was that? Adverts on the television for variable rates and APRs had always gone right over her head. They were for the great unwashed.
Not for her. Her father’s hefty legacy had been more than enough, helped by a small but regular salary from the interior designer she’d worked for in Chelsea Harbour.
She suddenly felt rather ashamed of herself. Everything had always been so easy, and it wasn’t just the money. After school, which, to be frank, had been more like a social event from start to finish, she’d fallen on her feet working with Felicity Cook. A well-known interiors whiz, Felicity was flavor of the month at the time and anyone who was anyone had their house flounced and frilled by her. So tasteful, so agonizingly eighties, so expensive.
It had been an era of money and loads of it. Even the Yuppies could buy taste by the yard, and Felicity had no qualms about talking them into doing so. These Emilys and Fionas hadn’t even glanced at the bill and had simply paid, thrilled by their new color schemes which so cleverly brought together the roses and peonies of Colefax & Fowler’s glazed chintz with ginghams, ribbons, and bows.
But Crispin’s bill was frighteningly itemized: stud walls, plastering, carpentry, paint. How expensive it had been to create the understated, sublime decor that now filled Huntingford House. She looked around her and felt almost sick as she did a mental calculation of the contents of the kitchen alone.
The phone rang suddenly beside her. “Madeleine, sweetheart.” It was Jean Luc with his deep, earthy voice, and she could almost hear his teasing smile.
“Brilliant to hear you. How are the vines?”
“Asleep. And what about you? I so wanted to call, but I didn’t think you would want to hear from anybody. I barely saw you at the funeral—you looked wonderful, of course, but I don’t think you were there with us at all, were you?” How refreshing and how typical of him to cut to the chase. “How are you coping?”
For once she didn’t mind letting on. “Bloody awful, frankly. And I’ve just had a bill from our builder that would make your hair curl.”
“Comment?” Jean Luc’s English was good, but obviously not that good. “Oh make the man wait,” he said once she’d explained. “So, little Madeleine, what’s so urgent? Have you finally seen sense and decided to leave that horrrrrible country you live in?”
“I wish,” she replied, and for a fleeting moment wondered if it might be worth selling everything and buggering off to France where the children could roam vineyards and get brown as berries. “I’d have to come by horse and cart though, we’re that short of money.”
Jean Luc snorted with disbelief. “You? Now that I would like to see!”
“Oh get lost. Now écoute bien. I’ve something a bit odd to ask you. What’s centpertuis?”
“Have you gone mad, woman? Why on earth do you want to know that?”
“It’s just something I read somewhere and I think it’s a garden plant, but I can’t find it in my dictionary.”
“Garden plant!” Jean Luc laughed deeply. “Madeleine, it is the nightmare of my life. It’s a mauvaise herbe—how do you say it?—a weeeed. It grows everywhere and I have to spend a fortune having it dug up—it’s the only thing which makes me wish I wasn’t organic.”
Maddy roared with laughter. She’d envisaged a sweet-smelling plant with a delicate flavor that might be the secret ingredient in some Provençal recipe.
“I think it is fairly unique to France, a bit like your couch grass—but it stinks. God, the smell is incroyable!”
“Can you send me some?”
“Send you some? Don’t tell me—you want to add it to one of your disgusting English dishes?”
“Oh yes,” she joked back. “It goes so well with steak and kidney pie. No, I’ve found a book in Mémé’s things and it’s rather intriguing. Lots of recipes, but not for food I don’t think. It says Luce Ménestrel on the front
—does her name mean anything to you?”
“Mais oui. She was Mémé’s great-great-grandmother. Quite a girl from what I know. Listen, darling, I have to go. Someone has arrived at the door—the chicken man, I think—I’ll do a bit of digging around and let you know what I find about her, and I’ll get you some weeeed. How many lorry loads would you like? I can’t say I’m not worried about you—centpertuis, merde!—speak soon.”
They said their good-byes, and when Maddy put down the phone she felt excited. A weed! He’d promised he’d send her some, so scribbling down on a piece of paper some of the other—more common—herbs from Luce’s notebook, she decided to ignore Crispin’s bill and go on a shopping spree. Okay, so it wasn’t Selfridges, but spending money, now that was something she was good at.
When she finally found the farm shop down a track outside Ringford, it was not quite what she’d expected. She’d looked it up in the Yellow Pages and imagined something like the one at Chatsworth, crammed with goodies and with serving assistants in crisp white aprons and hats. This one was more like a shed, with chickens strutting about outside—much to Pasco’s glee—and a small selection of sad-looking plants. A blackboard encouraged you to “order your turkeys now for Christmas.” Maddy had forgotten about all that. How different it was going to be this year. No Simon. No obscenely bulging stockings for the children. Will and Florence would have to experience a steep learning curve about how the other half of Santa’s round lives.
Inside the shop it was freezing, and a young, rather overweight girl stood behind the counter in fingerless gloves, a fleece, and a grubby apron. Cardboard boxes filled with filthy carrots and potatoes were piled up on the floor, and a man was using them to fill the shelves next to cabbages and thick, juicy leeks. A fridge displayed tubs of clotted cream, locally cured bacon, pâtés which had gone a bit crisp at the edges, and, rather incongruously, a few jars of rolled eels.
Maddy was looking around hopefully at the rather unprepossessing selection and was putting things in her basket, when the door opened behind her and someone came in, bringing with them a blast of icy air which lowered the temperature even more.
“Well hello, Maddy.” Maddy felt herself flinch at Linda Meades’s voice. She’d managed to avoid her since that awful Templeton lunch. “I didn’t expect to see you in here. Didn’t see your car outside.”
“No. You wouldn’t have.” I’m not going to give her the pleasure, she thought. “I’ve got a new one, a sweet little Fiesta. Just the thing for nipping around the lanes. My old bus was just so unwieldy, I found. Now, with this one, I can slip into the tightest parking spaces.”
Linda smiled rather uncertainly. Not knowing quite what to say, she looked down into Maddy’s basket, which was full now with every bunch of parsley, thyme, and sage that the shop possessed.
“Gosh, that’s an interesting selection of things. Making soup?”
“Oh no,” said Maddy, looking too at the basket as if she couldn’t imagine how the herbs had got in there in the first place. She thought fast. “Stuffing . . . Yes, stuffing. We’ve got a huge houseful this Christmas, and the turkey will be a whopper, so I thought I’d get ahead and do the stuffing for the freezer.”
“Right,” said Linda slowly. “I cheat, I’m afraid. I find the stuff from M&S is just as good. Less bother, you know. But how are you?” She put on her caring voice. “How’s things?”
Things? What things? Things like I’ve just lost my husband who’s left me with no money; things like having to sell my car and doubtless having to take my son out of your precious prep school. Suddenly she felt livid. Maddy had been the woman to know when it looked like her life was perfect and these sort of women could all boost their social standing by being associated with her. But then there had been that rather embarrassing and messy death of her husband, and where had they been then?
“Things are fine thank you, Linda. Just fine. Now if you don’t mind I’d better go and pay and . . . get stuffed!”
Pasco couldn’t quite understand why his mother was laughing so much once they were in the car. But he joined in anyway.
The following morning brought a bank statement and the final demand from BT. Her account showed she had the sum from the sale of her car, which wasn’t much considering she hadn’t done a part exchange, and the remainder of her monthly slug from Simon which must have gone into her account the day before he died. Time to tackle this, Maddy Hoare, she thought and, lighting a cigarette to bolster her, started to dig through Simon’s desk. For an ex-banker he was very disorganized. Notes were shoved in files with no sense of order. She began to make piles on the floor—things for the bin, unopened bank statements, circulars, and letters about the conveyancing of the house.
Pushed into one corner was a pile of ski brochures, balancing precariously on top of a pile of envelopes and more papers. She pulled it in front of her and started to sort through, opening each envelope as she went, and with each one feeling more and more sick. The water rates, insurance for her car, Crispin’s last bill, unopened; the invoice from the kitchen fitters, including the kitchen units. God, had they been that much? The bathroom suite, including glass shelving, and the carpenter’s bill for the bespoke bath surround and cupboards; her Visa bill including her last foray up the Fulham Road; all unopened. It took over an hour to find everything she was looking for, and to sort through everything she hadn’t seen.
Stunned, she walked back into the kitchen and, like an automaton, sat down with her diary and wrote in the dates when the insurance, utility bills, and council tax were due to be paid. Apart from the phone and school fees for January, which she could just about cover if she was very careful over Christmas, none of these was due before March. But then there was Crispin’s bill, the carpenter, the bathroom, the kitchen. And then they had to eat.
Slowly and hesitantly she started to write down the figures due on the back of an envelope, and twice she checked the final figure. She let the pen fall onto the paper. It couldn’t be right, could it? How the hell had this happened? Simon must have simply picked up the bills from the hall table and stuffed them away, in denial. She looked around the room, at the exquisite turned detailing on the blond wood, the huge dresser she’d had made specially to fit the big wall by the door, the American fridge she’d lusted after. She’d talked him into buying all of it, justifying the expense with well-thought-out and oh-so-rational arguments about how it was “pointless to spoil such a beautiful ship for a ha’penth of tar,” and Simon had merely concurred. But then he always had—whether it was the darling mirror she just had to put over the fireplace in Milborne Place, or the sweet little hotel on St. Kitts which would be so romantic for a couple of weeks, just the two of them.
She ran her hands over her face. Had she really milked him dry? Not perhaps in the old days, when he was earning a shed load and getting bonuses that would make you raise your eyebrows in disbelief. But recently? Her face burned at the thought that he had simply gone along with her whims to keep her happy about the move. Meanwhile things had been going badly wrong at work.
She’d heard Crispin’s van crunch into the drive earlier and, like a coward, she went back to the study with a bin liner for the rubbish pile she had accrued and avoided him until he was up the ladder replacing some guttering. Finally, she made him a cup of coffee and went outside.
“Good morning,” she called up to him. He looked down the ladder at her and started to come down.
“Thanks, that’s just what I needed. It’s bitterly cold out here.” He swallowed a mouthful. “That guttering is not too good, you know. I think we’re going to have to fix it all the way round.” He took another gulp, and waited for the usual “whatever you need to do” from her.
Maddy looked at him. It would make a paltry dent in her debts, but he seemed a nice enough chap. She thought she’d try her luck.
“Crispin, since my husband died, I’ve had a rethink, and I’d like to stop and think a bit more about the project . . .”
H
is face fell. “Oh, well. I’ve ordered those new sashes you wanted for the top windows. They’re pretty rotten you know. And I can’t store them, ’cos I haven’t got a yard at the moment. The previous place I rented has gone up for sale for development.”
Maddy couldn’t remember having agreed to any replacement windows—perhaps he’d asked her when she was so low she hadn’t even known her own name. She realized now just how much had gone on around her as she had sat in her cocoon of grief. If she didn’t stop him, Lord knows what the next bill would come to.
“No, Crispin. I haven’t been exactly honest. You see, I’m going to have to tighten my belt a bit on finances. Actually you are going to have to stop.” She felt tears well up and she turned away from him. “I don’t think I can even meet your last bill, I’m afraid,” she finally choked out. “In fact, I know I can’t.”
Too polite to gasp in disbelief that a woman surrounded by such affluence could possibly be strapped for cash, he stood in silence. They both gazed around the garden, shrouded in the dankness of the November day, like a couple of vague acquaintances who had met unexpectedly. Maddy couldn’t think where to go from here. Izzie would know. What was the deal when you couldn’t pay a bill? Would he sue her?
The misery of the dewy grass, wet pathways, and lifeless, dormant plants seemed to match her mood. Then through the bare trees she saw the garden sheds where so recently she had hidden the urns with him. Would it work?
“Crispin, you said you hadn’t got a yard.”
“Yes, that’s right.” He looked puzzled.
“How’s this for a deal?” For a moment she prayed she might be onto something. “You use my sheds as your yard—they’re secure and there’s a separate driveway which goes out to the lane at the back—and set off the rent against what I owe you?” She looked at him encouragingly.
“Well, it’ll take a while. I only paid two hundred quid a month at the old place.”
“Hopefully soon I’ll be able to pay you back properly,” she was treading water frantically now, “but do you think it would work? Does it sound fair?”
Goodbye, Jimmy Choo Page 9
