by Jessica Hart
So it was only very occasionally that she remembered Edward Merrick. When she did, it was always with a sense of shock that she could picture him so vividly: the grey eyes, the stern mouth, that elusive glinting smile. It was odd when she hardly thought about him at all.
Well, not much anyway.
One cool evening in early September, Perdita pulled into the drive of the rambling Edwardian house where she had grown up, and where her mother still lived. A huge removal van was backed into the next door drive, she noticed with relief. It looked as if someone was moving in at last. The house had been on the market for ages and she hadn’t liked her mother living with an empty house on one side. She needed all the understanding neighbours she could get.
It looked as if the removal men were almost finished. Perdita switched off the engine and sat in the car for a minute. It was something she often did nowadays. She knew she was just putting off the moment when she had to get out of the car and go inside, but it gave her a chance to steel herself for any changes in her mother.
Sometimes there were just tiny indications that she was losing control. Perdita got her fastidiousness from her mother, and seeing her with a stain on her shirt or an unwashed pile of dishes in the sink was heartbreaking confirmation that, however much she resisted it, her mother was declining. Occasionally, though, her mother would be brighter and so much her old self that Perdita let herself hope that she might be getting better after all.
‘I hate you!’
Perdita was startled out of her thoughts by the sight of a very pretty teenage girl flouncing out of the neighbouring house. ‘I wish we’d never come here! I’m going back to London!’ she shouted at someone inside and, slamming the front door, she stormed past the removal men, who were rolling up cloths and carrying empty packing cases back into the van, and stalked off down the road.
Suppressing a smile, Perdita got out of the car at last. She remembered stomping off down that very same road on a regular basis when she was a teenager. Her mother had never bothered chasing after her either.
The memory of her mother as she had been then made her smile fade as she let herself into the house. ‘Mum, it’s me!’
She found her mother in the kitchen, peering uneasily through the window at the house next door. ‘There’s new people next door,’ she said, sounding fretful. ‘I hope they won’t be noisy.’
Perdita thought of the slammed front door. ‘I’m sure they won’t,’ she said soothingly. ‘You won’t hear them anyway.’
Picking up a can from the counter, she sniffed at it cautiously and wrinkled her nose at the smell. ‘Why don’t I make some supper?’ she said brightly, trying to distract her mother from the window as she poured the contents away down the sink and rinsed out the can. ‘I’ve brought some chicken. I thought I could grill it the way you like.’
‘Oh, it’s all right, dear. I’ve made supper.’
‘Oh?’ Perdita looked around with a sinking heart. Helen James had once been a wonderful cook, but her recent attempts had been very erratic.
‘A casserole. It’s in the oven.’
But when Perdita looked in the oven it was stone cold. She took out the uncooked stew and wanted to weep. ‘I think you must have forgotten to turn it on,’ she said as cheerfully as she could. ‘It’ll take too long to cook now. I’ll do the chicken instead.’
All through supper her mother fretted about the fact that there were new people next door. She worried about the noise and whether the children would run into the garden, repeating herself endlessly until Perdita had to grit her teeth to stop herself snapping. Eventually she suggested that she went and introduced herself to the new neighbours.
‘I’ll tell them that you don’t want them in the garden,’ she said, reflecting that it might not be a bad idea to go round and make contact in any case. She would be able to leave her phone numbers in case there was ever a problem.
‘Oh, would you, dear?’
‘I’ll take them a bottle of wine as a housewarming present.’
Settling her mother in front of the television after supper, Perdita cleared up the kitchen and then went down to the cellar where her father’s store was still kept. He had loved his wine and it always made Perdita feel sad to see how many bottles he had never had the chance to enjoy.
She selected a bottle, blew the dust off and headed next door. August’s brief burst of heat seemed to have disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived and a light drizzle was falling, settling on Perdita like a gossamer web as she crossed the drive.
Reaching the front door, Perdita hesitated before ringing the bell. Should she be doing this? The poor people were probably exhausted after their move and the last thing they would want was a neighbour turning up. On the other hand, the idea that she would make contact appeared to have soothed her mother. She didn’t really want to go back and say that she hadn’t done it. She wouldn’t stay long, though. She would simply hand over the bottle and explain who she was.
There was such a long silence after she rang that Perdita was about to turn and leave when, with a clatter of shoes on a tiled hall floor, the door was abruptly opened by the same girl she had last seen striding furiously down the road. Perdita thought it tactful not to ask if she had decided better of returning to London.
‘Hello,’ she said instead with a smile. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just come from next door. I’ve brought this,’ she said, holding up the bottle. ‘Just to welcome you to the street and ask if there’s anything I can do for you.’
‘Can you get Dad to take us back to London?’ the girl asked, taking her literally, and Perdita suppressed a smile. Here was someone who wasn’t at all happy about being in Ellsborough, obviously.
‘I was thinking more about lending a cup of sugar, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh. OK.’ The girl sighed, then turned and bellowed up the staircase in a voice that belied her slight frame. ‘Dad! It’s the neighbour!’
There was a pause, followed by a muffled shout of, ‘Coming!’ A few moments later, Perdita heard the sound of feet echoing on the uncarpeted staircase and she turned, a welcoming smile pinned to her face, only for it to freeze in shock as she saw who had reached the bottom of the stairs.
Ed Merrick.
CHAPTER THREE
P ERDITA’S heart lurched into her throat. The sight of him was a physical shock, a charge of recognition that surged and crackled through her body so powerfully that she felt jarred and jolted. She barely knew the man, after all. He shouldn’t seem so startlingly familiar. Ed was looking tired and more than a little grubby in a T-shirt and jeans but the keen eyes were just the same as she had remembered. He had the same mouth, the same air of cool competence, the same ability to discompose her just by standing there.
‘It’s you,’ she said stupidly.
Ed looked equally surprised to see her, and for one awful moment she thought that she was going to have to remind him who she was, but then his face cleared and he was coming towards her with a smile.
‘Perdita…’ For once Ed seemed to have lost his normal composure. ‘Sorry…you’re the last person I was expecting…’
Ed, in fact, was completely thrown by the sight of Perdita standing in his hall, as slender and as vivid as ever, throwing her surroundings into relief and yet making them seem faintly drab in comparison.
He remembered her so clearly from the course in June, and had been looking forward to seeing her again. He had hoped to bump into her on one of his visits to Bell Browning over the summer, but he hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of her. He had asked, very casually, if she were around one day, but she had been away then for some reason and he hadn’t wanted to push it by asking again.
There would be time to get to know her when he moved permanently, Ed reasoned. People would think that he was interested in her, which he wasn’t, or at least, not in that way. Quite apart from the fact that he was pretty sure someone like her would already be in a relationship, she wasn’t at all his type.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t see that she was attractive, in a striking rather than a pretty way, but she was nothing like Sue, for instance, who had been soft and sweet and calm and loving. There was nothing soft or sweet about Perdita. She was edgy and astringent and restless and when she was around, calm was the last thing Ed felt.
Her performance on the last day of that course had exasperated and impressed him in equal measure. In spite of all her complaints and in spite of the rain, she had contributed more than anyone else to the success of the tasks, and Ed was fairly sure that she had enjoyed herself too. Her ability to motivate and defuse tension with humour was extraordinary, he had thought. So he had remembered her, yes, but only because she was such an impossible person to forget. He wasn’t interested.
So he was rather taken aback by the way every sense in his body seemed to leap with pleasure at the sight of her.
Perdita herself seemed less than delighted to see him, and he stopped himself before he found himself greeting her with quite inappropriate warmth.
There was an awkward pause. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ Ed asked after a moment.
It sounded all too much like an accusation to Perdita, who flushed. ‘I…my mother lives next door,’ she said, ridiculously flustered by the situation. ‘We saw the removal vans so guessed you’d just moved in. I just popped over to welcome you and give you this.’ She held up the bottle of wine awkwardly.
‘That’s very kind,’ said Ed as he wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘Sorry, I’m filthy,’ he explained and took the bottle Perdita was holding out to him. His brows shot up as he read the label. ‘This is more than just a bottle of wine! I hope you’re going to stay and share it with me?’
‘Oh, no, I mustn’t,’ Perdita stammered, stepping back, as gauche as a schoolgirl. ‘You must be tired if you’ve been moving all day.’
‘Please,’ said Ed, and unfairly he smiled. ‘I’ve had a long day and you don’t know how much I’ve been wishing that I could just sit down with a glass of wine! I can’t share it with the kids, and I don’t like to drink alone.’
‘Well…’ Now it would seem ungracious if she rushed off, Perdita decided. ‘I mustn’t stay long, though. I’ve left my mother on her own.’
‘Have a glass anyway. Everything’s chaos, but come into the kitchen and I’ll see if I can lay my hands on a corkscrew.’
Ed’s daughter looked from one to the other suspiciously. ‘Do you guys know each other, then?’
‘Your father is my boss,’ Perdita told her.
‘And this is my daughter, Cassie, as you’ve probably gathered,’ Ed put in.
Cassie tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘God, is he as grumpy at work as he is at home?’
‘You’d probably need to ask his PA,’ said Perdita, amused. ‘I haven’t had much to do with him yet.’
‘It’s no use asking his PAs. They always think he’s lovely, but we know better,’ said Cassie with a dark look at her father. ‘At home, he’s a tyrant! He’s so pig-headed and unreasonable!’
‘Really?’
‘I couldn’t bear to work for him,’ Cassie declared. ‘I’d be on strike the whole time!’
Ed seemed quite unfazed by all of this as he led the way into the big kitchen at the back of the house. ‘I’m so unreasonable that after a day moving house with three bone-idle teenagers, I decided that it was more important to sort out some beds so that we could all sleep tonight, rather than dropping everything to set up the computer so that Cassie could instant message her friends right away.’
‘Very tyrannical,’ murmured Perdita.
‘See?’ Cassie shook back her hair and changed tack without warning. ‘Can I have some wine?’
‘No,’ said Ed.
Cassie heaved a dramatic sigh. ‘I’m going to go and ring India and tell her how boring it is here!’ she announced and, when this threat had no visible effect on her father, she flounced out.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Ed, locating the corkscrew at last in one of the boxes piled on the kitchen counters. ‘Cassie is a bit of a drama queen, as you probably gathered.’
‘She’s very pretty.’
‘And knows it,’ he said wryly. ‘When Cassie is in a good mood, there’s no one more delightful-and no one more unpleasant when she’s in a temper! It can be exhausting just keeping up with her moods.’
‘My best friend has two teenage girls,’ said Perdita, who had spent many hours plying Millie with wine and listening to the latest crisis with either Roz or Emily, and occasionally both. ‘I gather they can be hard work. It always seems that boys are easier, but that’s probably because Millie doesn’t have one!’
Ed smiled ruefully. ‘Probably. Tom can be just as difficult in his own way, and so can Lauren. They’re upstairs, but I’ll spare you the introductions for now. It’s been a long day and for now I’d just like to sit down and relax for a few minutes!’
He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. ‘Are you OK here? The sitting room is even more of a mess, I’m afraid.’
‘Here’s fine.’ Perdita watched as Ed poured the wine and then burrowed his nose in the glass reverently. Something about the intentness of his expression, something about his smile, something about the hand curving around the glass made her squirm inside and she wriggled involuntarily in her chair.
Ed lifted his head and smiled at her across the table. ‘This is a wonderful wine. Do you always give away bottles like this to your neighbours?’
‘No, it was just the first one I found in my father’s collection,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know anything about wine, to be honest. I’m sure Dad would be glad to know it had gone to someone who appreciates it, though.’
‘I remember you said your father had died.’ Ed took another appreciative sip and put his wine down. ‘Does your mother live on her own?’
‘For the moment.’ Perdita turned her own glass very carefully by the stem. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came round, actually. I wanted to give her new neighbours my contact numbers in case there was ever any problem. She hasn’t been well recently, and it’s taking her a long time to get over it. I try to come every day, but she’s alone at night and when I’m at work, and that does worry me sometimes. Some days she seems fine, but others she’s not so good.’
‘Couldn’t you get someone to come in and help her?’ said Ed. ‘When my own mother was ill, she had excellent carers. There was someone in the house with her twenty-four hours a day.’
‘I’ve tried suggesting that, but she won’t hear of it.’ Perdita sighed and stopped fiddling with her glass, taking a sip of wine instead. ‘Sometimes I think that the only thing keeping her going is her determination not to lose her privacy. That’s really important to people of her generation. I do understand. It must be awful to feel dependent, but it’s so frustrating too. Her life-and mine!-would be so much easier if she would let someone pop in and cook and clean at least. As it is-’
She broke off, embarrassed suddenly. Too often lately she had found herself going on and on about her mother’s situation, as if it consumed her. It wasn’t a healthy sign.
‘As it is,’ Ed finished for her in a practical voice, ‘you have to do everything. Isn’t there anyone else in the family who could help, or are you an only child?’
‘No, I’ve got two brothers, but one emigrated to New Zealand a couple of years ago, and the other lives in Devon and is married with three small children, so obviously he can’t be expected to help, especially when there’s me with no husband or family to take into account. It goes without saying that I have to be the one to give up my life.’
She broke off abruptly. ‘Sorry, I should have a paper bag to put over my head when I start going on like this!’ she apologised. ‘It’s just that I get so resentful sometimes, and then I feel guilty. The fact is that I don’t want to give up my job to look after my mother. I don’t know how I would manage financially, but perhaps that’s just an excuse? My mother spent enough years of her life looking a
fter me, after all. Am I just being selfish in not selling my flat and moving in as a full-time carer?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Ed frowned as he considered her situation. He could quite see how frustrating she found it. ‘It does seem hard that all the responsibility falls on you. Couldn’t your brothers at least help persuade your mother that she needs some practical care?’
‘Mum doesn’t believe in worrying men about domestic details,’ she said wryly. ‘She’s always so thrilled to hear from them that, of course, she tells them everything is fine-and then tells me at length how good it was of them to have called her when they have such busy lives!’
Hearing the bitterness in her voice, she flushed. Ed was a sympathetic listener. Too sympathetic, perhaps. He didn’t gush, or exclaim, or tell her how awful it was for her. He just sat there and listened with a thoughtful expression that made her want to blurt out all the worry and grief and frustration and resentment bottled up inside.
But he had problems enough of his own and, anyway, he was her boss. Remember that, Perdita?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said wearily. ‘I shouldn’t be like this. I love my mother. I should be grateful that I’ve still got her, not moaning about what a worry she is.’
‘It’s normal to feel resentment,’ said Ed. ‘When you love someone, it’s hard to cope with the fact that they can’t be what you need them to be any more. I loved Sue very much,’ he told Perdita, ‘and I miss her still, but there were times when I was angry with her for getting ill, for dying, for leaving me to cope on my own, for leaving the kids without a mother…I had to try and be strong for her and for the kids, and yes, I resented the fact that there seemed to be no one to help me be strong.’
