Tomorrow it was marketing’s turn to display our leanness. Liam and I both had to present a plan to improve profits and we’d been warned that Ruthless Rod would give one of us the heave-ho based on our performance. The other would be promoted.
I’d questioned Liam about his plan, but he’d scratched his head and said he was still working on it. He always did fly by the seat of his pants. I didn’t dare tell Rosie I’d offered to help him pull his pitch together. If I got the job, fine; if he got it, also fine. These days I just couldn’t get worked up about things; que sera, sera as Doris Day would say.
She lifted her head and gazed at me fiercely. ‘You are the better candidate, Verity Bloom. Make it happen. Make that job yours.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
She sighed and strode into the living room and seconds later I heard her boinging about to her celebrity fitness DVD. I cleared my plate away and closed the laptop.
It was time for the bluebell walk with Gabe and Noah.
Five minutes later, I’d twisted my hair into a messy bun, added a smudge of eyeliner to my green eyes and shoved gifts of a bottle of real ale and a chocolate dinosaur in my bag. I said goodbye to a puffing and sweaty Rosie and was about to slam the front door when I remembered something I’d almost certainly need . . .
‘Tissues, tissues, tissues,’ I muttered under my breath as I bent down to rummage through my half of the bathroom cupboard, pushing aside bottles of conditioner and body lotion. ‘Oh gosh!’
I dropped to my knees and stared at a new, untouched box of tampons on the bottom shelf. I did a quick calculation and my mouth went dry. No doubt about it; I was well overdue my monthly visitor.
My heart thumped and a hand flew to my stomach automatically.
I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before now; it was so unlike me not to be on top of this sort of thing. I gave myself a shake and told myself not to jump to conclusions; sure, the time of the month had been and gone, but more than likely it was just a bit late. Perhaps, deep down, I was more bothered about the threat of redundancy than I realized? That would be it – stress. Very common. A baby, though . . . A thrill shivered through me and my mind whirled with the implications.
I focussed on taking deep breaths as I let myself out of my little townhouse and into the golden sunshine. I jumped into my small car, started the engine and set off in the direction of the Trent Canal.
The thirty-minute journey was the perfect length to examine my potential pregnancy from every angle. My conclusion was this: practically speaking, I probably wasn’t having a baby, but if I was, I’d cope. Like always. This wasn’t the first time something unexpectedly life-changing had happened to me and I doubted it would be the last. As to how I actually felt about becoming a mother of my own baby . . . I wasn’t quite ready to let those thoughts in yet.
As I parked in the lane by the canal I made a deal with myself. I’d buy a pregnancy test on the way home so that I could stop all this speculation. But in the meantime I was putting this new development on hold and concentrating on what really counted, today, this minute, which was being here on this special day with the Green men. (That’s Gabe and Noah’s surname, by the way, not their skin tone.)
I crossed the grassy bank and started along the towpath. It was bliss to be outside in the warm early evening air and I felt the tension in my shoulders melting away with every step. A row of pretty barges decorated with hand-painted signs and cheerful flower pots stretched along the water’s edge, and as I got closer, I spotted the Neptune.
‘Daddy, she’s here, she’s here!’ I heard Noah squeal.
My three-year-old godson, dwarfed by a bright yellow life-jacket, was bouncing up and down on the deck of their blue and silver boat. Gabe scooped him up into his arms and the two of them waved like mad.
I felt my heart swell with love for them both. Gabe with his tousled curls, baggy jumper and shorts, and Noah, a miniature replica of his father. And all I could think was how incredibly sad it was that Mimi was missing from the picture. Suddenly, the feelings of grief that I’d been holding back all day rushed to the surface and my eyes began to burn.
Today was the anniversary of my best friend Mimi’s death.
Two years ago, Gabe had found his wife dead on the bathroom floor. Sudden Death Syndrome at only thirty years old. Gabe lost his childhood sweetheart, baby Noah would never remember his mum and the sunshine had disappeared from my life in a flash. No warning, no explanation and no time for goodbyes . . .
I blinked furiously, plastered on a smile and raised my hand high.
‘Hello!’ I sped up to meet them.
Gabe lowered Noah to the deck and held out a hand to help me climb on to the boat, and I sent a mental message to my lovely girl.
Oh Mimi, I miss you so much. I’m here with your family and you’re gone and that makes me feel terribly guilty. The irony is that you’d love this: all of us getting together for a walk in the woods . . .
‘Welcome aboard the Neptune, landlubber,’ Gabe said with a lop-sided smile. He stooped to wrap his arms round me.
‘Thank you, Captain.’ I hugged him, feeling the rough wool of his jumper against my cheek. ‘How are you doing?’ I murmured, looking into his soft grey eyes.
He shrugged and laughed softly. ‘Noah gets me through. As ever.’
Noah tugged on my jacket. ‘Auntie Vetty, did you know chocolate is in your bag?’
‘Noah Green,’ I said, holding his hands and standing back to examine him, ‘I think you’ve grown even taller since I last saw you. And yes, I do know that.’
His eyes grew wide when I gave him his chocolate dinosaur.
‘You’re not too big for a cuddle, are you?’
He launched himself at me and I picked him up, squeezed him as tightly as I dared and buried my face in his baby curls. He was such a precious boy.
‘I do love you, little man. You know that, don’t you?’ I laughed as he wriggled free.
Tears threatened again as I remembered how much Mimi had longed for a baby, and how devastated she’d been when she’d discovered she was infertile. I’d been there every step of the way with her, determined to help her get her wish, whatever the cost. Gabe too, of course. Team Baby Green, we’d called ourselves. We’d stuck together through the disappointments and the tests and the drugs. Our collective joy knew no bounds when Noah was born and Mimi had so loved being a mum to the tiny bundle of boyhood. Only to have her life wrenched away from her a year later. Tragic didn’t begin to cover it . . .
And now I had to love her son especially hard to make up for the loss that he didn’t yet fully understand.
I met Gabe’s gaze and we shared a sad smile. Life could be very cruel sometimes.
‘I hadn’t even had the chance to say I loved her that day,’ Gabe murmured, rubbing a hand across his face.
‘But she knew,’ I whispered, squeezing his hand. ‘We all knew that.’
‘Next time I’m in a relationship, I’ll tell her I love her every day.’
My ears pricked up; this was new.
‘So there’ll be a next time then?’ I asked.
He shrugged casually enough but I noticed a flush to his face. ‘One day, yeah. I hope so.’
‘Well . . . good,’ I said brightly, looking down at my shoes.
Gabe had never been able to contemplate another woman in his life. It looked like he might be ready to move on and, truthfully, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Chapter 2
A few minutes later, I’d kissed Noah’s entire collection of soft toys, marvelled at the no-sew curtains Gabe had made for the living area of the houseboat and the three of us had gone back on dry land to begin our expedition to the woods.
Gabe and I each held one of Noah’s hands as we ambled along the towpath, both of us content to listen to his cheerful chatter.
The sun’s rays sparkled across the surface of the water and the boats strained gently against their moorings. Birds tweeted merrily in the cl
uster of hawthorn trees which lined the path as they settled themselves in for the evening. Many of the boating people were out on deck, some sipping beers, a few cooking food on barbecues and calling to one another from boat to boat. There was almost a holiday atmosphere along the canal and I felt my happiness gradually returning.
This was heavenly, I thought, which was apt considering the spiritual nature of our excursion.
month after Mimi had died, Gabe and I had trodden this path with Gloria, Mimi’s mum. Noah had been but a babe in Gabe’s arms. Our solemn little group had scattered Mimi’s ashes in her favourite place – a clearing in the woodland where the bluebells bloomed – and we’d each spent a few moments alone with our thoughts.
Shortly after that, Gabe had sold up the family home, abandoned his law career and moved himself and his baby son on to the canal and into a narrowboat just a stone’s throw from Mimi’s woods. He’d retrained as a French polisher and now he restored furniture for a living and, while Noah stayed with his grandparents, Gabe also made extra money taking stressed-out city-types for weekends on the waterways.
Our bluebell walk had become an annual thing and a lovely way for us all to gather and remember happy times.
‘Shame Gloria couldn’t be here,’ I said, during a lull in Noah’s running commentary.
‘Hmm,’ Gabe frowned. ‘I’ve hardly heard from her since her plans to open a cookery school took off.’
Mimi’s mum, a former food stylist, had decided at the age of sixty-five to open a cookery school in the Yorkshire village of Plumberry, half an hour outside York where she was originally from. It was from her mum that Mimi had inherited her love of cooking and I guess it had rubbed off on me too. Not that I cooked any more. Not since Mimi died.
‘You don’t approve?’ I looked at him sharply.
He wrinkled his nose. ‘I think she’s taking on too much at her age.’
‘I hope you haven’t told Gloria that?’ I grinned.
Mimi’s mum was one of the most independent women I knew. I couldn’t see her taking kindly to that sort of comment.
He lifted a shoulder. ‘No. But she’s too busy to see us these days, too busy to even make it here this evening because the fitters are late putting the ovens in or something. And the building she’s taken on . . . it’s an old mill, well, half of one. That’s some responsibility.’
I nodded sympathetically but I could see both sides. Gloria had felt so bereft after losing her only daughter that she couldn’t bear not to be busy. She’d been involved with food her whole career and when I’d spoken to her at Christmas, she said opening a cookery school would be a new way to use her skills and spread her passion for cooking.
Funny how grief affects us all differently. Mimi and I used to post videos on YouTube of ourselves making stuff in the kitchen. Just a bit of fun, neither of us was professionally trained, but we had a laugh doing it. But as soon as she died, I closed the channel down and deleted the videos. My passion for cooking died with Mimi; there was simply no pleasure in it without her.
We turned off the towpath, crossed the wibbly-wobbly bridge where Noah insisted we threw sticks into the water and then waded through long grass to the edge of Mimi’s woods.
Spring has definitely sprung, I thought, as we delved under the canopy of the woodland. The trees were covered in a froth of pink-and-white blossom and now and then petals floated down through the shafts of sunlight, giving a magical illusion of snowflakes in springtime. The path was lined with tall stems of frothy white cow parsley and zingy lime ferns and I let my fingers brush gently against their feathery fronds as I walked.
Noah raced around, zigzagging in front of us, pretending to be a racing car and Gabe fell into step beside me, resting his arm casually on my shoulder. The ground was dry thanks to several days of unbroken sunshine and the air was filled with the pungent smell of wild garlic and an earthiness which, in that random way that one thought can lead to another, somehow made me think of fertility, which in turn sent a shiver of something along my spine.
Hope.
It was hope, I acknowledged. My internal debate during my drive over here had centred around the practicalities of being pregnant and what Liam was going to think about it and what to do about work. But deep down, I knew that if I was expecting a baby, it would make me happier than I had been for years; probably since I’d heard that Mimi’s IVF had worked and that one of the eggs we’d all got our hopes pinned on had been fertilized.
‘Toad!’ yelled Noah with glee.
‘Where?’ I stopped in my tracks.
Gabe squatted down for a closer inspection but, courtesy of a poke with a stick from Noah, the creature crawled off into the undergrowth.
‘How do you know it’s a toad and not a frog?’ I asked, impressed.
Three-year-old Noah gave me a look layered with sympathy and triumph.
‘Auntie Vetty,’ he sighed, dropping his stick and sliding his pudgy little hand into mine. I felt my throat tighten; I hoped he’d never grow out of doing that. ‘His back was all lumpy. Frogs are smooth. Everyone knows that.’
‘Silly me,’ I said with a giggle, and lifted his hand to my lips for a kiss. ‘It’s a good job I’ve got you to teach me these things.’
‘Look, Verity,’ Gabe pointed through the trees to where a ray of golden sun picked out the nodding heads of bluebells in the clearing. ‘Thousands of them, I’m sure there are even more than last year.’
He was right and the beautiful sight took my breath away.
‘Mummy’s favourite flowers were bluebells,’ I said to Noah, swallowing the lump in my throat.
He nodded, retrieved a torch from his pocket and wriggled away from me to shine its beam under logs, looking for more toads. ‘Cos they are blue like her eyes.’
‘That’s right, dude,’ Gabe ruffled his son’s hair. ‘And Mummy had the prettiest, bluest eyes in the world.’
Noah stuck the torch back in his pocket and crouched down to examine the underside of a fallen log.
‘Turn the torch off, Noah, or the batteries will run out,’ I reminded him.
The little boy straightened up immediately and switched it off. ‘Like Mummy’s.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘My mummy’s batteries ran out,’ he explained, blinking up at me with those green eyes which tugged at my very soul.
Oh my God. That boy.
My heart might explode. I heard Gabe clear his throat and I couldn’t bring myself to even look at him.
‘Come on,’ I said gruffly, giving my godson’s hand a squeeze. ‘Why don’t we pick some flowers to take back to the boat?’
Noah and I busied ourselves collecting bluebells while Gabe lowered himself on to a tree stump and disappeared for a few minutes into the memories of his happy marriage.
I reached for a tissue and dabbed my eyes.
Gabe’s doing a great job, Mimi, he is the best dad ever and I know I’m biased, but seriously, Noah is a child genius! I didn’t know the difference between frogs and toads and I’m thirty-two.
The novelty of flower-picking wore off as soon as Noah had a plump handful. I looked at Gabe; he had a bunch in his hands too.
‘We’d better get those in water,’ I said softly, touching his shoulder.
Gabe stood and nodded and the three of us headed back towards the bridge.
‘Are you coming to ours for tea?’ Noah asked. ‘Beef stew will be there. And sweetcorn,’ he added, hopefully.
‘Yes, please come, Bloomers,’ Gabe added.
I gave him a hard stare for using my teenage nickname.
‘Sorry, couldn’t resist,’ he said with a grin. ‘Seriously, some conversation not about the comparative size of dinosaurs would be hugely appreciated. And I’ll share that bottle of ale with you?’
‘I’d love to.’ I shook my head apologetically. ‘But I’ve got to get home, I’m afraid, boys.’
‘Oh,’ Noah whined.
Gabe’s face fell too and my heart t
wisted with guilt.
‘Wise move,’ he said stoically, gesturing for me to go across the bridge in front of him. ‘My cooking’s not a patch on Mimi’s.’
The guilt deepened then; poor Gabe, he was getting better in the kitchen, but before Mimi died he barely knew how to turn the oven on.
‘Sorry, but I’ve got a big day tomorrow, I need an early night.’ And I’m not drinking alcohol before doing a pregnancy test, I added to myself. ‘But I’ll come back soon. Promise.’
‘Good, because I need lessons with a needle,’ he grinned. ‘Noah asked me to sew up a hole in his pyjamas the other day. I sat down on his bed and ended up sewing them on to his duvet by accident.’
As we walked back along the towpath towards the Neptune, I wrapped an arm around Gabe’s waist.
‘I’m so proud of you, Gabe; Noah is a credit to you.’
‘Thanks,’ Gabe’s step faltered and he took a deep breath. ‘Verity?’
I turned to face him. ‘Yes?’
He swallowed before murmuring, ‘He needs his mum.’
My heart heaved in my chest and I was the first to look away.
I could so easily climb into Mimi’s life like a pair of jeans that fit perfectly. I loved Gabe dearly and between us we’d do a fantastic, if slightly unconventional, job of bringing up that little boy who meant so much to us both. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do; Noah might need a mum, but Gabe and I could never be more than just friends.
I tightened my arm around him. ‘I’ll be the best godmother I can be, Gabe, I promise. But I can never replace Mimi.’
I hugged and kissed them both warmly before they climbed back on board their boat and I made my way back to the car wishing there was more I could do to help out that darling, lonely man.
‘What’s in the bag? Chocolate?’ Rosie grabbed the plastic carrier bag from me as soon as I came in the door.
So much for the detox.
Wickham Hall: Part Four - White Christmas Page 11
