by Karen Swan
Laura nodded. ‘And who are the people living abroad?’
Rob reached down into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope. ‘Alex and Sam. But as I said, I’m trying to get them over here. Everyone’s details are in there.’
Laura peered into the envelope before looking up at him. ‘You’re going to a lot of trouble for this. Is it a significant birthday for your wife?’
‘They all are, aren’t they?’ he remarked with a smile. ‘But she’s going to be thirty-two.’
‘Oh.’ Laura’s age. ‘Well, look, if you’ve got a bit of time, we could start with your interview now. It would be helpful for me to get some background on her.’
Rob shifted in his seat. ‘Okay. What do you want to know?’
‘Let’s just start with some basic background stuff – where you live, family, how long you’ve been together.’
‘We live in Virginia Water in Surrey, and we’ve been together for five years, married for over four of them.’ He answered with the slightly frozen look of a game-show contestant.
‘Oh, so it was a fast engagement, then.’
‘Yes. I suppose you’d say it was a “love at first sight” scenario. I couldn’t risk letting her get away.’
Laura nodded. ‘And do you have any children?’
It was an innocuous enough question, but she might as well have asked him his favourite sexual position. His face froze, his muscles setting to stone in front of her. ‘. . . No, not yet.’
The ‘yet’ was telling and Laura’s cheeks flamed. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ She felt like she’d been prying rather than just doing her job.
He gave an embarrassed smile, raking a hand through his hair. ‘No, it’s not . . . It’s a perfectly reasonable question. I am paying you to reflect her life, after all. It just feels quite early to be talking about my private life with you when we’ve only known each other for two and a half minutes, that’s all.’
Laura nodded and fixed a patient smile on her face. If everyone was going to be as reticent about being interviewed as Rob, she’d never get the necklace made for next Christmas, much less this one. ‘If you’d rather wait a bit, I can always interview you later on. Last, even.’
He looked at her for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yes, perhaps that would be better.’
Laura took a sip of her coffee, smudging the heart out of recognition, and they watched a woman in a suit order a latte and panini. The woman’s eyes slid over Rob and then to Laura as she sat down. Laura straightened up.
He looked over at Laura guiltily as they sat in continued silence. ‘I suppose I could have just emailed this over to you rather than making you come all the way here to see me.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘It’s just that I thought we’d be better off clearing the air properly before you begin. You’re going to get to know an awful lot about my wife and her life in the next few weeks. It wouldn’t be right if there was . . . an atmosphere between us.’
‘I completely agree.’
‘It’s just that I really need this to be perfect.’
‘I understand.’
‘My wife is my life.’
‘Of course.’
He nodded, looking over at her. ‘Are you married?’
Laura shook her head. ‘Boyfriend. Four years now.’
‘Four years?’ The exact opposite to his relationship – a slow burn. ‘Is marriage on the cards?’
Laura shook her head again, more vehemently this time. ‘Not the marrying kind.’
‘Who isn’t? Him or you?’
‘Both,’ she replied. It was only a half-lie, or half-truth, whichever way you wanted to look at it. Jack had only asked her once, three years ago, on New Year’s Eve, and he’d been so appalled by her mute tears that he’d never brought it up since. Now she had no idea whether he still wanted to marry her. Their gentle, aimless drifting side by side seemed increasingly to suit them both perfectly.
‘Free spirits, huh?’ His BlackBerry buzzed in his coat pocket and he reached over for it. ‘Damn. The clients are early. I’ll need to head back to the office.’
‘That’s fine. I’ll wait here for the next train.’
He stood up and she followed suit.
‘We’ll speak soon, then?’ he asked, shrugging his coat back on.
Laura nodded.
‘And call me if there’s anything. But there shouldn’t be any problems. Everyone’s waiting to hear from you.’
‘Sure. Great.’
He shook her hand briskly. ‘Bye, then.’
‘Bye.’
Laura watched him go – his upright, almost military bearing and purposeful march as he disappeared headlong into the crowds that frightened her so much. People moved aside for him, men and women casting sly interested glances as he passed, and then he was gone.
Laura slumped in her seat and untwisted the blue foil wrapper on the chocolate Baci he had given her – his peace offering – unable to get his words out of her head. Free spirits, huh?
As if.
Chapter Seven
Even on the motorway the next morning, Laura’s yellow and cream dolly car – a near-extinct Citroën 2CV that needed pushing up hills – stood out. For the last two junctions, Laura had gradually become aware that on every side of her and in front and behind she was hemmed in by sleek saloons and executive coupés in metallic navy, silver and black. Jack needed the Volvo for work, of course – he needed the boot space for ferrying furniture to and from clients’ houses. She’d been adamant about not having a van as their main car, and the Volvo had been the compromise, but it had been on its last legs when they’d bought it as it was all they’d been able to afford of the model.
Still, she could only get up to two-thirds of the speed of all the other commuters in Dolly, and had trundled along in the slow lane since joining the M11. Her sole company – the radio didn’t work, and CDs, much less MP3s, hadn’t been invented when this car was built – was a pale blue Rover, which she’d sat behind ever since they’d both emerged from the Dartford Tunnel. It was driven by a white-haired, tweed-jacketed man accompanied by his wife, who kept handing him sandwiches, and Laura was passing the time trying to guess what was inside them – chicken salad? Cheese and pickle? Egg and cress? Perhaps he was a potted-meats man. Nine-thirty in the morning was too early, she reasoned, for coronation chicken.
She was settling on ham and mustard when her junction came up and she reluctantly peeled away from them, resisting the urge to wave goodbye. She followed the signs for Riverton, as Fee had instructed her to. The roads became ever narrower, ever leafier, and she slowly became aware of an indigenous predilection for floral-stickered wheelie bins, glossy red Cinquecentos and candle shops.
After a few miles, a sign for ‘Ottersbrook’ took her off to the left, and she was soon driving past a set of white picketed mock-gates that heralded the boundary of the village. There was a newly built housing estate to her right, with boxy red-brick maisonettes set along a series of sweeping cul-de-sacs. The village store seemed to be set in a scarcely adapted house that had simply given over its ground floor to washing powder, fresh bread and bags of jelly sweets, and a couple of young girls – aged twelve, maybe thirteen – were sitting on the railings of the disabled-access ramp, dipping sherbet Dip Dabs.
There was no pavement to speak of, and the lawns of the central village houses ran down to the road. The abandoned bicycles and Nerf guns casually left out overnight showed that this was a close-knit community-watch neighbourhood.
Laura glanced down at the directions Fee had written in her large, looping script – all the Is dotted with hearts – with her gold metallic pen. She was only twenty-three, and sometimes the nine-year gap between them was glaringly obvious.
‘Past the village store on the right . . .’ she murmured. ‘Done that. Follow road to the end, turns into unadopted road . . .’ Oh great, because Dolly couldn’t even make it over gravel. ‘Last house on left, look out for the . . .’ She squinted. �
��What’s that say? Ca . . . ? Camel? Candle? Tch, what’s she on about?’
Dolly bumped along from wheel to wheel, as if she was doing a commando crawl down the unmade track. ‘As if there are any camels in Surrey, Fee. There probably aren’t even any mongrels,’ she mumbled, just as a long brown face peered over the hawthorn hedge and spat at the window.
‘Oh my God!’ she shrieked, slamming on the brakes and bringing the car to a skid-stop with the front left and back right wheels in potholes so deep that Dolly’s tummy grazed the muddy lane. She sat with her hands on the steering wheel and stared unseeing through the windscreen for a moment. Had that really been a . . . ? She got out, leant one arm over Dolly’s roof and one foot on the door frame, and stared at the camel that had gone back to eating sloe berries, masticating quite disgustingly, so that a velouté of black foamy spit collected in the corners of its mouth.
It stared back at her, clearly unrepentant at the mess it had made of her window, and for a moment she wondered how it might be possible to exact revenge on a hostile camel.
‘Her name’s Sugar,’ a voice called out.
Laura looked over, to find a rosy-cheeked woman with deep-set blue eyes and a jumble of black curls piled high walking down a garden path towards her. She had an orange-faced toddler on her hip who looked like he shared the same table manners as the camel, and a white duckling was waddling alongside her feet. ‘You know, one hump or two?’
Her face split into a delighted chuckle – as though it was the first time she’d ever heard the joke – and Laura nodded, too shocked to find a laugh.
‘She’s the best landmark ever. Everyone in the village uses her as a reference. You know, “second left past the camel” and all that.’ Laura stared at her. The woman spoke at the speed of light. ‘Plus she’s a great security guard. Spits like buggery – I expect you just found that out. I heard your holler all the way back in the kitchen. No one’ll even try to walk past her on the lane. I’ve had to fit our postbox a hundred yards further back. Postman got fed up with it all.’ She smacked her forehead with her free hand. ‘Damn! I should’ve thought to mention it to your secretary and you could’ve picked the mail up for me on your way past. Never mind, you’re here now.’ She caught sight of Dolly – the automotive equivalent of a beached whale – shrugged at the sight and smiled. ‘I’m Kitty, by the way,’ she said, throwing open a small gate and thrusting forward a hand. ‘And this is Samuel. You must be Laura.’
Laura nodded. ‘That’s right. Pleased to meet you.’
They shook hands, and Kitty – now that she’d stopped talking – looked at Laura with interest. ‘Rob’s told me all about you. I’m so fascinated to find out how this will work. We l l , come on. Come inside. Everything’s a tip, I’m afraid. I haven’t even seen the cat for a month. I’m sure she’s been sat on or buried under a pile of washing,’ she said, leading Laura up the garden path and straight past the fat tabby sleeping in the wintry sun on one of the deep stone window-sills. ‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘Uh, well, I had a coffee and a Danish when I stopped for petrol,’ Laura said, trying not to step on the duckling that was waddling around her ankles.
‘That’s a “no”, then,’ Kitty smiled, leading her into a low-ceilinged cottage. It was a limed wattle and daub house with black timbers, tiny leaded windows and a climbing rose around the door. Inside it was predictably dark and beamy, with oak-panelled walls and a short, lethally steep staircase with child-proof gates at the top and bottom.
They stepped into the kitchen, clearly the heart of the house, for at one end of it there was an enormous inglenook chimney. An ancient racing-green solid-fuel Aga stood against the opposite wall, and there was a huge round table in the middle. The terracotta-tiled floor was covered with dozens of kilim rugs, all touching end to end like dominoes so that the overall effect was of a patchwork quilt. A small threadbare orange velvet sofa – pushed against a wall – was covered with an Ikea throw, and an Irish wolfhound was dozing happily on it. Unlike the camel, it clearly held no security qualifications whatsoever.
‘That’s Pocket.’ She winked. ‘You can guess why, can’t you?’
Laura nodded, quickly getting the gist. That dog was too big to fit in most cars, much less a pocket.
‘Don’t mind her. She’s the gentlest of giants. I always get her to look after Samuel if I have to help Joe in the yard with something.’ She lifted a heavy-looking kettle off a trivet and plonked it down on the Aga. ‘Joe’s my husband, by the way.’
‘Right,’ Laura replied, wondering where to place herself. There were towers of crispy, yellowing newspapers everywhere, a huge log basket by her knees, and plastic chew toys – whether for Pocket or Samuel, Laura wasn’t entirely sure – on the counters. ‘So is Samuel your first?’ Laura asked, reaching for some small talk.
‘My fifth,’ Kitty replied, pulling a tray of slightly overcooked bacon, sausages, black pudding and mushrooms out of the warming oven. As if on cue, a tousle-haired boy with bold, splodgy freckles wandered in through the back door, holding the duckling – or was it a different one? – under one arm. ‘Oh, Tom, there you are. Go and get me five eggs, there’s a good boy.’
Tom’s shoulders dropped automatically. ‘Oh, Muuuuum,’ he whined.
‘Go! And put that duck down. Your father will be after you in a minute to help with the hedging.’ Kitty wagged a stern finger at him and he turned in his muck boots and headed back to the hen house.
‘You have five children?’ Laura echoed.
‘Yes. All under eight, would you believe it? Tom there’s my eldest.’ She put a cup of blue-rinse tea in front of Laura. ‘Earl Grey okay? Help yourself to sugar,’ she said, pushing a bowl over, then picking up some of the bacon and sausages with a pair of tongs and dividing them between two plates. One of them had a massive chip on the rim and looked like it had at some point been glued back together again.
Tom came back in with the eggs, and Kitty hurriedly cracked them and scrambled them up.
‘Here you go,’ she said, setting the plates down on the table. The wafting aroma finally piqued Pocket’s interest and she raised a languid head as the two women began to eat.
‘This is wonderful, but really, you needn’t have gone to so much trouble for me,’ Laura said, watching Kitty heartily smack huge dollops of HP sauce on to her plate.
‘Nonsense. Rob said you were coming all the way from Suffolk. You must have been driving for what – three hours?’
‘Thereabouts,’ Laura agreed, munching on some sausage. ‘My car isn’t really geared up for motorway driving any more. I might have been quicker driving in reverse.’
‘She’s pretty, though,’ Kitty smiled, and Laura liked the way her eyes crinkled into themselves.
‘Yes.’ Laura took a sip of the tea. ‘It’s a lovely place you’ve got here. Have you lived here long?’
‘All my life. The farm’s been in my father’s family for four generations. I grew up in this house.’
‘Seriously?’ Laura exclaimed through a mouth full of food, suddenly ravenous. She’d been on the road since six this morning, and hadn’t appreciated quite how hungry she was.
‘Yes,’ Kitty said, spooning some beans on to the heel of a cob loaf. ‘Sometimes I think it’d be nice to have somewhere new, though, with bigger rooms and straight walls. I even went and had a look at the show home for the new estate on the edge of the village.’
‘But a new place wouldn’t be a patch on here. This is bursting with character.’
‘That’s estate agent speak for poky, with rising damp and no right angles or insulation,’ Kitty chuckled. ‘But no, you’re right. I could never leave this place. It’s just an idle fantasy for those days when it gets too much – you know, kids fighting, animals wandering in and out like they own the place, Aga’s gone out, half the roof tiles have blown off in the night. The thought of magnolia paintwork and wall-to-wall carpet, a thirty-foot garden and a damp-coursed utility room – aaaah, bliss!’
‘I suppose you have it much the same yourself, don’t you?’ Kitty asked, wrapping her hands around her mug, her pretty eyes peering curiously over the steaming mug. ‘Husband, kids, animals . . . ?’
‘Boyfriend. And no kids. But we have a dog called Arthur. He’s gorgeous, an Irish terrier. He’s nearly four now. We love him to pieces.’
‘Have you been with your boyfriend long?’
‘Almost four years, although . . . we were friends before that.’
‘Oooh, think he might propose?’ Kitty asked excitedly.
‘No,’ Laura said briskly, wondering how, within five minutes of stepping into this stranger’s house, she was tucking into a full English and sharing her private life. She didn’t ‘do’ intimacy. With anyone. Well, possibly Fee, but she always complained it was more like surgical extraction than genuine intimacy. ‘I’m not sure marriage is ever going to be my bag.’
Or motherhood, she thought to herself as Samuel staggered back through. His face was still stained orange and he was sucking on a wooden Thomas the Tank Engine, the legs of his babygro sleepsuit tied round his waist to reveal a yellow-tinted and very low-slung nappy that hung to his knees.
‘Just look at him,’ Kitty tutted, a blend of adoration and exasperation in her voice. ‘I’d better change his nappy before Joe comes in and insists he lives out with the pigs. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’ll just be a sec.’
Laura watched as Kitty scooped Samuel into her arms and headed up the creaky staircase. Kitty was not at all what she’d spent most of last night bracing herself for. Given Rob Blake’s power-trip dynamics and ‘international set’ appearance, she’d been expecting his wife’s friends to be Russian models with endless legs and coke habits. But Kitty was so . . . well, normal.
She noticed Pocket was staring at her through one open eye – doubtless getting ready to lay her claim on the scraps – and she got up, taking the plates over to the worktop by the sink for something to do. Pocket followed at a trot. Laura found a bowl of leftovers on the windowsill and proceeded to scrape the bacon rind and beans into it, tossing a few stray pieces of eggy bread to Pocket, who caught them in clashing teeth.
