by Clare Boyd
‘Oh!’ Agata cried as one of the glass candleholders slipped from her grasp and smashed on the concrete.
‘Agata! Be careful!’ Elizabeth cried, clutching her chest, trying to slow her heart.
‘Elizabeth, I not feel so …’ Agata said. Tea lights rolled off her lap. Her hand covered her mouth.
‘You don’t feel so good?’ Elizabeth asked, holding the back of her hand to Agata’s forehead. Her skin was cold and wet. ‘What kind of not well?’
‘I think I …’ Agata replied before throwing up into the cardboard box, covering all the tea light holders in lumpy yellow vomit.
Time froze. Elizabeth’s low-level headache was dialled up a notch. She knew from experience that an oncoming migraine could cause intense confusion and difficulties discerning what was real and what was not. As she stared at the sick, she doubted for a second what she was seeing.
‘You poor thing,’ Jude said, helping Agata up.
‘Oh dear!’ Elizabeth realised the smell was very real. ‘You’re definitely not well!’
‘Sorry,’ Agata croaked.
‘You need to go to bed,’ Elizabeth said, patting her shoulder. ‘Jude, you take her.’
Jude led Agata out of the house.
With absolute focus, knowing that Lucas must not see this mess, Elizabeth held her breath, picked a candleholder out of Agata’s sick and began to wash it up. Then she moved on to the next and the next, and so on, until Jude returned from the camper van.
‘They live in that shit-hole?’ Jude said.
‘Does she feel better now?’ Elizabeth asked, refusing to acknowledge the problem of the camper van.
A frown set in on Jude’s face. He picked up a tea towel to help her dry. ‘I’m afraid she said she’d been vomiting all night.’
Elizabeth hated being sick herself and felt sorry for Agata, but her stress about the party smothered her immediate sympathies; the list of jobs to complete was too long.
‘Is it a bug, or something she ate?’
If it was something she ate, Elizabeth reckoned she would feel better later and be able to help at the party.
‘She wasn’t making much sense. She was mumbling about wanting to go back to Poland to see her nephew or something. She said it was making her ill. Or the kid was ill? I couldn’t work it out. There was a lot of Polish thrown in.’
‘She’s vomiting because she wants to go home?’
‘No. She’s genuinely ill. There’s no way she’ll be able to help tonight.’
Both of Elizabeth’s hands flew up into the air. ‘Now we’re a man down! What am I going to do with the kids when everyone arrives?’ Bubbles slid down her elbows and dripped onto the floor.
‘Won’t they be asleep by then?’
‘Are you kidding me? Do you even know your niece and nephew? There’s going to be a big grown-up party going on. They’ll be hyper and Lucas will freak out if he sees them running about unchecked.’
She envisaged the children upending champagne trays and smearing canapés on the guests’ dresses. And all her hard work coming unstuck.
‘I can look after them,’ he offered.
‘Good try. No. We need you at the party.’
‘What about Mum?’ he suggested.
‘It’s the closing night of Coriolanus.’
‘Lucas’s parents?’
‘They’re too frail now,’ she said. She experienced a surge of panic. ‘Oh my God. What am I going to do? I can’t handle all this on my own. I can’t handle this.’
‘Elizabeth, get some perspective here,’ Jude said. ‘It’s just a party.’
‘You have no idea. Literally no idea.’
Pacing, trying to think, time closed in on her, and she accepted she didn’t have any choice but to calm down and solve the problem.
She dried her hands and scrolled through her phone for babysitters, skimming past various texts, mostly from guests. Some were asking what they could bring, or for directions; others were sending last-minute cancellations and their apologies.
The first babysitter she tried was Emma, but she was busy. Next she tried Victoria, Kate, Petra, Lucy and then Holly, whom the children barely knew. All of them had plans for their Saturday nights. The group email she sent to the parents at Isla’s school was met with two replies, both suggesting a babysitter she had tried already.
Near to tears, she went out into the garden to get some air, letting Jude finish the washing-up. She wanted to give up all together, defeated at the final hour. Heather was hammering one of the sixty bamboo lanterns into the ground. An idea came to Elizabeth, and she hurried to her and tapped her on the shoulder.
As though disturbed from a daydream, Heather lost her balance and dropped the hammer at their feet. ‘Sorry, I was in a world of my own!’ she said, pushing up her cap and smiling.
‘Heather,’ Elizabeth said, catching her breath, picking up the hammer and handing it to her. ‘I need to ask you a favour.’
‘Sure. Go ahead.’
‘What are you doing tonight, after you’ve finished here?’
‘Nothing, why?’ she said.
‘Might you be able to babysit Isla and Hugo for us? Ten pounds an hour?’
‘Yes, I can do that,’ she answered.
Elizabeth resisted the urge to hug her. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘But what about Agata?’
‘She’s got a sick bug.’
‘Oh. Poor Agata.’
‘So awful.’
‘Will the kids be okay with me?’
‘They’re very adaptable, and they’ve seen you around the place.’ Elizabeth looked Heather up and down. ‘Will you be able to go home with your dad and change? We’d quite like it if you could bring the children down to say a quick hello to some of the guests.’
Heather looked down at her clothes, as though noticing for the first time how scruffy she was. ‘I’ll definitely change.’
And then Elizabeth did actually hug her. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’
‘My pleasure,’ Heather laughed, scratching her forehead under her cap. ‘Happy to help.’
Elizabeth had fixed the problem without calling on Lucas. In the countdown to the party, she moved on with a pumped-up feeling inside, inflated by a sense of purpose and fun. Every so often Lucas would emerge from his office to oversee the more important decisions, like the positioning of the floral arrangements or the place cards for the tables; when he failed to find fault, a rush of love for him came over her, strongly, like a dizzy spell and her insides churned with life.
* * *
Bo Seacart stood in the converted barn, stylish in buff against the all-white backdrop, like a celebrity in a magazine. The sun shone on her head through the Velux windows and warmed the room pleasantly.
‘Open some windows in here, darling, will you?’ Lucas said, joining them from the garden, ducking his head under the low beam. He was followed by Walt, who surveyed the brand-new conversion in a way that suggested he was looking rather than seeing.
Walt Seacart was a man of few words, of average height and average looks. His silver hair was cropped short into a crew cut and his cheeks were ruddy with broken veins. He looked half a century older than Bo, with his moist eyes and slack jaw, but in fact he was only eleven years her senior.
‘It’s charming, Elizabeth,’ he said in his Texan drawl, revealing his bright white capped teeth.
‘I’m so glad you like it,’ she exhaled, adding, ‘The coffee machine’s here, and I’ve tucked two yoga mats there, just in case, and if you get cold, Piotr can light a fire.’
She showed them around, alert to Lucas’s edginess, as though he was waiting for her to embarrass him. But Bo’s attention was not on Elizabeth. She was staring at Jude’s three paintings. It seemed her appetite for his work had not been blunted.
‘My God. I’d forgotten how fucking awesome they are,’ she exclaimed, dumping her monogrammed rucksack and pashmina on the Scandinavian button-back sofa that Elizabeth had found on
eBay.
Elizabeth stood next to Bo to admire the paintings. Behind them, she could hear Lucas telling Walt about Jude’s growing reputation as one of the hottest artists on the scene.
‘It’s your fault we didn’t buy these at the Wigram, Walter,’ Bo sniped.
Walter winked at Elizabeth. ‘My bad.’
‘Well, no matter. They’re now officially for sale again,’ Elizabeth declared.
‘They are kick-ass, I’m dead serious. Phenomenal. I want all three for our new cabin in Maine. Or the beach house? Walt?’ Bo said, turning to her husband. ‘I’m not missing out on them for a second time.’
‘How much?’ Walt asked bluntly.
Elizabeth had not prepared herself for this question. ‘I’ll ask Jude for you. He had them valued recently,’ she lied.
Lucas dropped his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m sure we can agree a good price, in the light of Seacart–Huxley Investments.’ And he laughed, knowing he was taking a risk by implying the deal was closed already.
Bo’s almond eyes widened at her husband. ‘Hear that, honey?’
‘How about we include it in the contract? Make up for the surplus lease liabilities, eh, Lucas?’ Walt drawled with a rare smile.
Elizabeth did not understand what a surplus lease liability was, but she understood that Walt was making an in-joke.
‘You’re on!’ Lucas bellowed, clapping him on the back. ‘Come on, dude. Let’s crack open a couple of cold ones.’
As they filed out of the barn, Lucas winked at Elizabeth, and she brimmed with pride, knowing she was responsible for providing the cherry on the cake of the business deal of a lifetime.
But straight away, a twinge of concern about the party tightened her mood, reminding her that she could not be complacent. The evening ahead of her felt like the start of a long tightrope walk above a raging waterfall, where one misstep could be fatal.
Seventeen
‘What do you think?’ my mother said, cocking her hip.
Dressed in a pink flowery skirt suit, she stood in the tiny space between the bed and the mirrored wardrobes. She had come home to see us, and to attend a Salvation Army fund-raiser tonight. Her curly brown bob was brushed and turned under, and her lips were painted pearly pink. There was wisdom and kindness in her face. Instead of babysitting next door, I wished I was going to the fund-raiser with her. That was how badly I didn’t want to go to Copper Lodge. Not even a little bit of me had wanted to help out, but Elizabeth had looked desperate, and I had softened. At least the extra cash would help fix my car, which had been making strange whirring sounds.
‘Oh Mum. You’re gorgeous,’ I said, leaping off the bed and squeezing her tightly. ‘We’ve missed you.’ I pulled away and straightened her skirt, where the petticoat had created static. In the brief silence, I wondered idly what her take on the wristwatch incident would be, interested to know whether Agata had struck her as the type to steal. Asking her would risk sending her down a dubious line of thought about Lucas. And I didn’t want that to stick in her mind as it had in mine. I was trying hard to park that thought. Three streets away. No, even further. Out of town.
‘It’ll do for the golf club,’ my mother said, putting her hands on her hips and grinning at me. I glanced over at my father, who was in the corner, buttoning his shirt.
‘You scrub up nicely, Mrs Shaw,’ he said. He was gazing at my mother as though a supermodel stood in front of him.
‘I have to admit, it’s rather nice to be dressed up again. I’ve been in the same jumper for weeks.’
‘I bet I know which one,’ I said.
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ she tutted, puckering her lips, trying to stop the smile. My mother rarely went for more than a few minutes without smiling.
‘The navy one with the bobbly strawberries?’
Mum chortled. ‘Well, it’s a cheery one, you know, for poor old Mags. I tried doing her hair and nails, you know, but honestly, it was such a silly idea. It made her look worse.’
‘It was a lovely thing to do.’ I reached out to touch my mother’s care-worn hand.
She asked, ‘Are you going to be okay tonight?’
I pulled my bathrobe tighter around my body and flopped backwards onto their marshmallow-soft bed. ‘Yes. Fine,’ I said, recalling the chaos of Copper Lodge, Elizabeth’s restrained hysteria and Lucas’s intense mood. By the time I had left, Elizabeth’s voice had risen by two octaves and Lucas had shut himself away in his study. I was sure Elizabeth would have burst into tears if anyone had clapped their hands or snapped their fingers.
‘What am I going to wear?’ I asked.
Her father straightened his tie. ‘Something sensible and clean. You’re not a guest.’
‘I know that, Dad.’
Mum laughed. She would always laugh to dispel tension between me and my father.
‘I’ll help you choose something nice,’ she said, taking me by the hand and leading me along the corridor and into my room.
‘How’s Rob, love?’ she said. She pulled out my only pair of smart jeans. ‘You haven’t mentioned him since I’ve been back.’
‘He’s okay,’ I shrugged, tugging the jeans on. I had spoken to Rob twice over the past week. Both times had been brief and forced. Our chat about marriage had been there between us, lying low but not forgotten.
‘It’s difficult spending time apart.’
‘It’s not been easy,’ I admitted.
Mum sat on the bed and smoothed her skirt over her knees. ‘Lucas hasn’t been a distraction, has he?’
For as long as I could remember, Lucas had been a distraction. A resident in the hinterland of my mind, representing a kind of distant, abstract alternative life. There lived the delusion that a tweaked chain of events might have brought us together: had I taken the place I’d been offered at Capel Manor horticultural college in London, we would have worked near each other and possibly met up. Had I remained at East Surrey College to complete my diploma, instead of wild-water swimming across Europe, I would have been living in Connolly Close the year he moved back home in his final year at SOAS. Had my father mentioned he was living next door again, I might have been galvanised to fly back from my beach-bum life with Frank in Hossegor a few weeks sooner to see him. And Lucas might not have gone to the party in London to fall in love with Elizabeth. If, if, if. But, but, but. But I couldn’t tell my mother that.
‘Lucas is not a distraction, Mum,’ I said firmly.
There was no what if; only what there was now. And now, Lucas was not my reality. Whether he was sleeping with Agata or whether Agata was a thief, it was as it should be, and it was none of my business. Lucas was married to Elizabeth and I was with Rob, and I would never be unfaithful to Rob, however many problems we were having.
She handed me a white top to wear with my black jeans. ‘Sorry. Just checking.’
My father interrupted us. ‘Come on, Sally, it’s five thirty already.’
At his command, she darted out. I trailed her as she ran around collecting her lipstick and keys and changing out of her slippers.
‘Bye, you guys,’ I said, adding, ‘Be good, and if you can’t be good …’
‘… be careful!’ my mother said, winking at me.
I waved them off with a sense of relief.
* * *
At six o’clock I was ready, half an hour early, and sitting in front of the television with a ham sandwich and a can of Coke. Before I had taken a bite, I spotted an old-style Fiat 500 zoom into the drive and I went out to see who it was.
Elizabeth’s brother, whom I had met briefly earlier, popped up through the sun roof. ‘Your chariot awaits.’
‘To go next door?’
‘I was on my way back from Boots and thought I’d scoop you up on the way.’
‘Thank you. That’s kind.’ I smiled, gathering my things and getting in next to him.
‘Isla and Hugo are wreaking havoc.’
In the plastic bag at my feet, I spotted extra-strength Nurofen. ‘
Who has the headache?’
The small car lurched off. ‘My sister.’
He revved the engine and honked the horn as we left the close. I imagined Mrs Barnaby at number 23 poking her nose through her curtains and I leant back into the tatty leather seat to enjoy the three-minute ride.
‘This is fun, isn’t it!’ he said.
I glanced over at him. He had wild dark hair and rosy cheeks and a crease of amusement at the corner of his mouth.
‘I’m looking forward to hiding in the kids’ bedrooms,’ I said.
‘Don’t bet on it.’ He parked up next to the Huxleys’ two BMWs.
‘What do you mean?’
He rubbed his hands together and affected a sinister accent. ‘Lucas has vays of making people have fun!’
I said, ‘I’m staff. I’m invisible.’
He chuckled. ‘You are far from invisible.’
I didn’t know how to take that. There was a long silence as we sat in the car staring at the house ahead of us. The flames of the lanterns flickered through the glass.
‘Ready?’
‘No.’
‘Neither am I,’ Jude said. ‘Let’s stay here.’
* * *
Elizabeth looked as though she were made of gold. She wore a dress of yellow silk, mid-calf and loose across one shoulder. Her eyes were smoky black. A wave of her hair was swept to the side, falling at her cheekbone, leaving the other side of her face exposed. Her necklace was impossible to miss. The drop of a blue jewel in the centre seemed to be winking at everyone in the room, saying, ‘I’m around the neck of the most beautiful woman here!’
‘Thank you for coming early, Heather.’ She smiled at me and squeezed Jude’s forearm with her skinny fingers, heavy with diamonds. ‘Thank you for getting her.’
It was clear they had planned my early kidnap. ‘No problem,’ I replied, as did Jude. ‘Jinx,’ we said, again at the same time. We laughed. I liked his eyes.
‘The house looks amazing, Elizabeth,’ I said.
The windows were pulled wide, opening the house into the garden. The path was lit up by the bamboo torches that I had hammered into the ground earlier. Candles littered every surface. Bouquets of pink roses and sunflowers and elderflowers filled every corner. Waitresses skittered about with trays. A harassed blonde woman arranged bright macarons into a rainbow shape on large silver dishes.
