“Meat and drink to these City boys—I could always tell when there was some takeover in the air with Simon. He used to come home elated and superefficient.”
“We could have done with his advice, couldn’t we?” asked Izzie.
Maddy kept her eyes on the road ahead, thinking. “I don’t know. We never really talked about business things. I wasn’t really interested, I suppose. Do you know”—she banged her hand on the steering wheel—“I think this one is up to us. We’ve been advised by everyone from Pru to the ruddy man from the Trading Standards office. We need to see what Tessutini are offering and decide whether it suits us.”
“Can we all stay tonight?”
Maddy smiled. “Have you got enough clothes?”
“No, but yours are nicer anyway.”
It seemed the City was as rife with juicy gossip as the Eagles’s playground, and Lillian spent much of the day putting off calls from the press, which she did with aplomb. “I don’t know where they get their ideas from,” she said tartly, putting down the phone for about the eighth time.
“Geoff Haynes,” Maddy and Izzie mouthed simultaneously.
“Well, I didn’t tip anyone off as such,” he explained later round the kitchen table. Peter was due any minute, hotfoot from the golf course, and Colette had taken all the children in Maddy’s car to the play barn on the outskirts of Ringford, with thirty quid in her pocket and instructions to buy fish fingers and chips. “It’s practically impossible to keep these things quiet,” he went on, “and there’s nothing wrong with a little healthy competition. Someone might crawl out of the woodwork with a rival bid.”
“Do you think anyone would want us that badly?”
Peter appeared at the kitchen door and, relieved to see his familiar face and golfing clothes in the midst of this corporate madness, Maddy stood up to give him a warm hug and put on her best Blofeld voice. “So you managed to infiltrate our massive security system, hey, Mr. Bond?”
“Well, I did nearly measure my length on Pasco’s trike by the door. Very cunning!” He gave Izzie a warm embrace too, and shook Geoff’s hand. “So the big boys are wanting a piece of the action, I hear.” She put a cup of tea in front of him.
“We haven’t really started talking it through yet,” put in Izzie, “but it seems like a pretty good offer.” Glad as ever to show off his aptitude for putting together impressive documents, Geoff distributed sheets of information, costings, and estimates around the table, and they all pored over them.
“The way I see it, their offer is good but could be better. I have factored in mail order, the Elements sales, and their interest in further products, plus other inquiries, so there is definitely an argument that within the next twelve months your profit margin could have increased greatly.”
“Mmm,” pondered Peter, “who did you have in mind to negotiate the contracts?”
“Hewlitt Pritchard have always done the fine detail for me before. I can recommend them highly. In fact, I’ve already mentioned it to them.”
“Hang on a minute there, Geoff. Are we agreed on the sale?” asked Maddy indignantly.
Peter, sensing the need to put on the brakes, cut Geoff short before he could reply. “That decision is yours. You two are the shareholders, and it is only for Geoff and I to advise and to help where we can. Tessutini’s offer is good—it is a blue-chip company and you could do a lot worse—but three or four years down the line, if sales stay as good, you could make that much and more.”
“That’s assuming that the mood doesn’t change in the cosmetics market,” put in Geoff hastily.
“Granted,” replied Peter calmly, “but I’m sure Maddy and Izzie are canny enough to move with and respond to the mood.”
There was silence as the men waited for a response. “Can we meet up with them?” said Izzie after a while.
“Certainly.” Geoff was enthusiastic. “I can arrange something for the end of the week or the beginning of next. They are based in the States as you know, so they’d need to get here, but Tom Drake, the CEO, is a great guy and I’m sure he’d want it all to be very amicable.”
“Do you know him, then?” Maddy asked.
Geoff began to gather his papers. “Er, not as such. But I’ve heard a lot about him on the grapevine. He’s pretty well known.”
After Geoff left, Peter stayed on to see the children, who stormed back through the front door like the SAS, high on chips, excitement, and E-numbers. Will talked nonstop to him, introducing Charlie, showing him new toys, and telling him everything he needed and didn’t need to know. It took all four adults to orchestrate bathtime, Charlie and Jess’s homework, and stories, and Maddy persuaded an exhausted Peter to have a gin before he headed back home.
“Don’t let Geoff push you, ladies,” said Peter, swirling the ice in his glass. “He’s an experienced operator, but he can be a bit—boorish at times. You are both at a huge advantage when they have come to you with an offer, but you will need nerves of steel and a vat load of craftiness—not easy when this whole situation is new for you.”
After he had left, Maddy and Izzie cobbled together an omelet from the contents of the fridge and, over a bottle of wine, talked and talked around the subject until they were hoarse. Slowly Izzie revealed more about the hideous scene with Marcus, and all Maddy could do was listen. Izzie cried, they laughed, they drank more, and eventually, dead on their feet and a little drunk, went up to bed.
Next morning, Izzie was more capable of taking Charlie and Jess to school and, after Maddy had dropped Will and Florence, she too started to head for the barn. Alone for the first time, she thought about all Izzie had said the night before. Perhaps Jean Luc was right, and it was time to take things in hand. She pulled into a lay-by, dug out the Post-it note with Marcus’s number, and dialed, hoping he wouldn’t recognize her number and not pick up.
“Marcus Stock.”
“It’s Maddy.” There was a pause. A long one. “Can you meet me somewhere? I would like to talk to you.”
“Have you got my wife?”
“She’s staying with me, yes.”
“When’s she coming back?”
“You will have to ask her that yourself. Will you meet me?”
“Er . . . why?”
“Because we have something to discuss.”
Next she called Lillian and made some feeble excuse about remembering she had to collect something in town, then drove out on the bypass, toward Oxford and the roadside café Marcus had suggested. His car wasn’t there yet—would he come?—so she went inside, almost knocked back in the doorway by the smell of chips, and ordered herself a cup of coffee, before sitting at a Formica-topped table as far from the window as she could while still able to have a view of the car park. The other customers, an assortment of reps and elderly couples eating eggs and bacon, washed down with large cups of tea, looked at her curiously, making it quite obvious that she was an oddity in a place like this. It was clear that the ethos of Paysage Enchanté hadn’t penetrated as far as here.
He finally pulled into the car park fifteen minutes later, and pushed through the door dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and a leather jacket, looking crumpled and unshaven. He ordered coffee from the counter and sat down heavily opposite her. These people must think we are lovers, thought Maddy, and had to stop herself laughing at the absurdity.
“This had better be important,” he said with no preamble.
“Yes, I think it is.”
He hunched over the table and ran his fingers through his hair. “So, how is she?”
“She’s fine but pretty bruised.”
“Been persuading her all men are shits, have you?”
“No, ’cos they are not, and neither are you, though you are being one at the moment.”
He leaned back in his seat as the waitress put down the coffee in front of him. “Makes me laugh to see you in a place like this. Not exactly the Ivy, is it, darling?”
“Marcus, I couldn’t give a monkey’s what you think about me,
though you’ve made it abundantly clear. This isn’t about me, it’s about your wife.”
“Why couldn’t she have got in touch, then. Did she have to send you as her go-between?” He scooped sugar into his cup and stirred his coffee round and round, far longer than was necessary. Was he being irritating on purpose?
“I think she is too hurt at the moment to speak to you. Besides, she doesn’t know I’m here.” He clattered his spoon into his saucer. “But I know that your marriage is never going to work if you aren’t honest with each other.”
“Well, she certainly told me what she thought the other night.”
“Maybe, but there’s something you haven’t told her, isn’t there?”
He looked up at her sharply, almost fearfully.
“Listen, I know all about why you left that agency—”
He was about to say something but she plowed on. “Don’t give me some flannel because I know—Christ, I made it pretty plain at the party—and this time you have to hear me out. I even know which ad campaign you were working on at the time.” She realized as she said it that she didn’t, but was pretty sure he wouldn’t challenge her. “Izzie doesn’t know, does she?” He looked away from her across the café and couldn’t meet her eye. You bloody coward, she thought.
“How did you find out?”
“Never mind that. Don’t you think that Izzie deserves to know the truth? And from you. God, Marcus, if she finds out from someone else—and with the press sniffing about us the way they are, it’s only a matter of time—you can wave good-bye to any reconciliation. It’s a bloody miracle someone hasn’t blown the gaffe already.”
“It’s none of your goddamn business, Maddy,” he muttered, looking down into his coffee.
“Yes, it is, because your wife turned up on my doorstep after midnight with Charlie and Jess, and she was beside herself. I don’t like seeing her unhappy. She’s my friend.” God, she sounded like something from The Godfather.
“And she’s my wife and the way we live has nothing to do with you.” He didn’t sound convinced.
He was right though. It hadn’t really. For a moment she couldn’t answer. Only Izzie could make the decision to stay with him, but it had to be based on the facts. Maddy decided to take a risk. She gathered up her bag, to make a quick and suitably dramatic exit.
“The way Izzie is thinking right now, Marcus, she may not want to come back. She’s a stronger person than you give her credit for—or allow her to be. And nor is she short of admirers.” She noticed with pleasure that his eyes narrowed at this. “You’ve made one major cock-up in your life, and you may be about to make another.”
Marcus looked as if she’d slapped him. Perhaps no one had ever spoken to him like this before, but what did it matter? He thought little enough of her, and some home truths from an enemy might be the only way he’d hear them. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she could not forgive you for hiding the sacking from her—that’s if you have the courage to own up at all—but you might just be lucky. If you want to keep her, Marcus, then you will have to be a man, instead of the coward you’re being now, and fight for her.” And feeling like someone in a B movie, she pushed back her chair, stood up, and walked out, leaving him hunched over the table.
Chapter 17
Maddy looked like an umpire at Wimbledon, sitting perched on the kitchen chair as she watched Izzie pace back and forth across the room. “You’re giving me a crick in my neck! Can’t you stand still for a bit? I swear you’re wearing a groove in the floor.”
Izzie stopped for a brief moment and wrung her hands so hard that loud clicking noises resounded from her finger joints. Maddy shuddered. “Ugh! Go back to the pacing. That’s even worse.”
“Sorry,” Izzie called distractedly over her shoulder as she reached the French windows. “I always get like this when I’m stressed. Something has to move. If it’s not one bit of me it’s another.”
Maddy stretched and yawned. “I wish I’d known this about you earlier. We could have saved a fortune on our electricity bill at the barn by getting you a little wheel, like a hamster, and connecting you up to the mains.”
“I’m not always this stressed, thank goodness. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so nervous before in my life. I just don’t know what I’m going to say. Or what he’s going to say. Or what I’m going to say when he says what he’s going to say.”
“You’re clearly deeply bonkers.” Maddy shifted in her seat, and reached for her coffee. “But how do you feel? Surely you must know that.”
Izzie’s frenetic pace slowed slightly. “It’s weird. I keep changing. It’s like one of those optical illusions. You know—sometimes it looks like two faces looking at each other, sometimes it looks like a goblet. Well, it’s like that. I keep seeing it two completely different ways, but there’s no middle ground. I’m not sure I’ll know what I want until I see him again. But I can’t even begin to guess what he wants.”
“Well, he did contact you, so you have to assume he has something to say.”
“Yes, but what? What does he really want? Me and the kids or divorce and half my half of PE? ’Cos that’s a possibility, too, you know. You know, I’m not even sure I want to see him. I think I might call him and cancel.”
Maddy jumped to her feet. “No! Don’t do that. You have to see him sometime, and the longer you put it off the harder it’ll be for both of you. It’s time you were going.”
Izzie stopped and picked up her bag. She exhaled heavily and let her hunched shoulders drop. “And my Mrs. Hardbastard act isn’t really going to help, is it?”
“Nuh-uh! It’s fair enough to be angry, but don’t go in there all guns blazing. And Izzie . . . good luck.”
The hills outside Ringford were a favorite location for early morning dog walkers and after-school tree-climbing sessions, but in the early afternoon they were fairly quiet. Marcus’s car was already there when Izzie pulled up in the lay-by. They looked at each other through the windows for a moment, neither of them moving, then he got out and walked over to her slowly. He looked appalling. His eyes were bloodshot. He seemed so diminished from what Izzie remembered of that ghastly night that she couldn’t, for a moment, imagine how she had ever felt afraid of him. He stood in between the two cars and tried a watery smile that flickered, then vanished. After a moment, she opened the door and took a couple of steps toward him. “Marcus.” She nodded curtly.
“Thanks for coming. I, er, wasn’t sure, when you didn’t return my message, that you’d turn up.”
“Neither was I. But there’s no point putting it off, is there? We’ve got a lot to sort out.”
Marcus looked down. “Yes. Shall we walk?”
They set off along the path. Marcus was on his best behavior, holding the kissing gate open for her to go through first. As she waited for him on the other side, he fumbled in his pockets. “Here—got you a bag of Minstrels.”
That nearly undid her. A pathetic enough gesture, but they were her very favorites. She managed a wan smile. “Thanks, dar— thanks.”
They walked along slowly in silence at first. The afternoon sun was still strong enough to warm them. Then Marcus started to speak. “Please don’t interrupt, Iz. There’s some stuff I’ve got to tell you. I don’t know what you’re going to say about it all. It could be that you’ll hate me forever, but I have to come clean. It’s been eating me up.”
Izzie glanced sideways at him as they walked along. What could it be? An affair? Fraud? The possibilities teemed in her mind like a cloud of buzzing insects. She had to force herself to listen—and slowly, hesitatingly, the whole story came out as they walked up the hill.
“. . . no one in the ad world would touch me after that,” he ended lamely. “And I suppose I deserved it. But once I’d made the decision not to tell you, it all seemed so much easier. You’ve always been cleverer than me—oh, I know I was quick with ideas and concepts, but that’s all superficial. When it came down to it, I just didn’t have what it took. I’d been
successful, but I wasn’t anymore. I just couldn’t stand it. And you didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong—you were so wrapped up in the kids—”
“Now hold on, don’t start this ‘You don’t understand me’ crap. This is about you and your decision to deliberately mislead me and to keep me in the dark for ages, absolutely ages. We’ve been living a lie!”
Marcus threw his hands up to his face, digging his fingers into his scalp. “I know, I know! But once I’d started it all, I didn’t know how to change it. Everyone expected certain things of me, and I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that I’d blown it. So I pretended. It was like I’d—I don’t know—got onto a roller coaster and couldn’t get off.”
That was something Izzie could relate to, all right. She stopped and turned to him. “But, Marcus, you turned our whole life upside down, moved us out of London, made the children change school—just because of your pride. Ever since you were made— No, not made redundant. Let’s start being honest—ever since you were sacked, you’ve made us all live a charade. And since the business took off, you’ve been behaving like a shit . . .”
She trailed off as she looked at her husband. Every line of his body was dispirited and defeated. Suddenly she realized the fundamental change in the balance of their relationship. He was no longer the glamorous golden boy she’d idolized. She was no longer the hesitant, unconfident one. Where did this leave them? Her throat closed painfully and tears pricked her eyes.
“I know how much this business means to you, Iz, but every time you tell me how well something’s going, every time you go off to see Maddy and come back smiling and happy, every time I read something about you in the paper, I just feel like I’ve been kicked in the balls. I know I should be happy for you—but I just can’t be. I’m—I’m so jealous of your success, and I’m still pissing about with my cameras, getting nowhere. I’ve achieved nothing! I’m crap at work, I’m a crap father, I’m a crap husband . . .”
Goodbye, Jimmy Choo Page 31
