by Fanny Blake
‘At last! I thought we’d never get here. Terry wouldn’t rent anything faster or bigger than this. But you know what he’s like about saving the planet!’ She embraced Rose warmly, and Rose responded, inhaling her friend’s familiar floral scent. The cavalry had arrived.
Eve turned to Daniel. ‘Come here, you gorgeous man.’
As she hugged him, Rose watched for a second, amused to see how unprepared Eve seemed for the simplicity of villa life. There was no compromise in her wardrobe. A fashion guru would never be disappointed walking through her door. ‘If I’m run over by a bus tomorrow, at least they’ll know I had taste,’ she once said to the accompaniment of her friends’ laughter. ‘Teaming and toning’ was her watchword, demonstrated in her tan sandals, cream Capri pants, voluminous swirly top in various shades of brown and coral, and gold jewellery. Rose wished that she herself had changed into something more chic than shorts and shirt. She ran a hand through her cropped hair, tucking it behind her ear, aware how dull it must look beside Eve’s expensive streaks. But those hours in a hairdresser’s chair weren’t for her.
‘Rose. You’re looking great,’ said Eve. Daniel’s arm lay loosely round her shoulder.
Terry stood in front of Rose, arms held wide, expectant. Unusually unshaven, his face looked thinner, emphasising the narrowness of his nose and the set of his ears. She was immediately ashamed of her uncharitable thought that her brother was not at his best in shorts. He’d never quite grown out of the lanky stage that had disqualified him from the sports pitch at an early age, despite his enthusiasm for it. Perhaps it was just that she was more used to seeing him in a suit and tie: the uniform of accountancy. She smiled her welcome before being caught up in an awkward embrace, her face rasped by his stubble. Even as brother and sister they didn’t do closeness well. She extricated herself as swiftly as she could and took a step back. She ordered herself to make an effort.
‘Good to see you both,’ she said. ‘Shall we take your luggage in now?’ Terry had already lifted the boot of the car and was hauling out a single small case.
‘Just the one? You’re usually much less restrained.’
Terry looked sheepish. ‘They’ve lost one of them. But—’
‘Not just one of them, Terry,’ interrupted Eve. ‘My one!’
‘They’ve said it’ll be with us by nine o’clock tonight,’ he explained, obviously in the wake of a major row. He spoke carefully. ‘They’re putting it on the last flight out of Stansted.’
‘We’ll see,’ muttered Eve. ‘Bloody disorganised hellhole. And in the meantime, I’ve nothing but what I’m standing up in.’
Rose made sympathetic noises, aware of the amount of clutter that would be airborne in their direction that night.
Eve saw her expression and slipped an arm through hers. ‘You know I can’t travel anywhere without my straighteners, my hairdryer and all my creams and lotions, plus a change of clothes for every occasion. Got to keep up the good fight, and I’m not giving in yet. They take up so much space, that’s the problem.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Rose. She felt some relief now that Eve was here. Perhaps she would talk to her about the text. Eve would know what she should do, would reassure her that she’d got the wrong end of the stick. ‘Lost bags almost always turn up. Don’t let it spoil things. You can always borrow something of mine.’
Eve snorted. ‘Of yours? Kind offer, dearest sister-in-law, but one of your dresses would just about fit round my thigh.’
Rose laughed. ‘Nonsense. Come in and I’ll see what I can dig out.’ She took the case and carried it towards the house. ‘Good journey otherwise?’
‘Bloody awful.’ Eve was right behind her. ‘I vowed last year that I’d never fly budget airline again, but you know what Terry’s like if he sniffs a bargain. So it was the usual being herded on to the plane like cattle and then we had to sit on the bloody runway for an hour and a half because of heavy air traffic at Pisa. Then when we arrived we had to bank for another half an hour, flying so low we were practically scraping the tiles off the roofs. Terrifying. Haven’t they heard of timetables in Italy?’
‘Oh, you know what it’s like here,’ Rose said vaguely, as she led the way round the main building to the outhouses. ‘You’re in the old stable this time. OK?’
‘Provided there’s mosquito netting at the windows and the horses have been moved out, anywhere’s perfect.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten, so I’ve put in every deterrent I could find in the Co-op, plus some calamine just in case.’ She opened the door of the old stable, now a sparely furnished but comfortable sitting room, bedroom and bathroom. ‘Why don’t you unpack what you’ve got and then come over to the terrace for a drink?’ Suddenly she had an overwhelming desire to be on her own as she admitted what must be the truth to herself for the first time. Eve wouldn’t be able to reassure her, because Daniel must be having an affair. That could be the only explanation.
‘A drink sounds like a fine plan. I’ll be two minutes.’ Eve sized up the extremely narrow double bed, the only size that would fit in the space. ‘No twin beds then?’
Rose shook her head, pretending not to notice Eve’s small despairing sigh. Her brother and sister-in-law’s sex life was not something she wanted to go into. ‘Anything you want, just give me a yell.’
‘Are you OK?’ Eve put her hand on Rose’s arm.
‘Yeah, of course. Why?’ To her horror, Rose felt tears pricking at her eyes.
‘I don’t know, you just seem a bit . . . I don’t know . . . off.’ She pulled Rose towards her. ‘Look at me.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Rose turned her head away, blinking. ‘I’ll just go and rescue lunch, and look out some clothes for you.’ She manoeuvred her way around Terry, who was blocking the doorway. She didn’t look up, just in case he noticed something was wrong. ‘See you in a minute,’ she called, her voice as steady as she could manage.
Eve said something in reply, but Rose didn’t hear what. Her head felt as if someone had poured a ton of setting cement into her skull. Her limbs were leaden as she made her way into the kitchen. Daniel. An affair. The words thumped inside her head. That text, so passionate, so needy, had driven home what until that moment she had always been able to ignore. Other women still wanted him. And this time he must have responded. She shivered, suddenly as cold as if a sharp wind was blowing around the back of her heart. What on earth was she to do?
2
Impatient for lunch to be over, Rose dipped in and out of the conversation, only responding to the remarks addressed to her then drifting off again, wondering what would happen to their family gatherings if she and Daniel split up. She picked at her pasta and salad, nausea having taken away her appetite. The others tossed around suggestions about what they might do over the following week like juggling balls, all of them possibilities but no one catching them: days of rest, country walks, visits to Arezzo, Cortona, San Gimignano, Siena or Lucca and its Festival of Lights. Eventually the talk turned where it always did: towards their families.
Eve had already extolled the virtues and despaired of the vicissitudes of her own four children, Charlie, Tom, Luke and – at last, a girl – Millie. Charlie at least had a job, whereas the twins, Tom and Luke, had sailed through school and university and emerged without a single idea of what they wanted to do in life. They depended on unpaid work experience, contacts they hadn’t yet made and parental handouts. Millie was still at college doing a degree in media studies, whatever they were, and with as much clue about her future as her brothers had about theirs. But she was having a good time, and that was what it was all about, wasn’t it?
The cotton kaftan that Eve was wearing, bought for Daniel on a Moroccan holiday, was far from cool – in any sense. Eve fanned herself with a frantic hand. ‘What about Jess and Anna? What are they up to?’
‘Anna should be here soon,’ answered Daniel, glancing at his watch. ‘When’s her flight land, darling?’
‘Six thirtyish, I think,’ said Rose,
picking up a knife to cut a sliver of taleggio, then changing her mind. She couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘She should be here for supper.’ Anna’s presence would provide another welcome distraction. Her elder daughter could be relied on to assume the focus of any gathering, although often for the wrong reasons. She could be funny, and full of ideas, like her father, but opinionated, difficult and self-centred were qualities she could assume with equal brilliance.
‘What’s she up to now?’ Eve reached across the table for the wine bottle and poured herself another glass. They all pretended not to notice the pointed way in which Terry cleared his throat.
‘The café closed down about eighteen months ago and she’s been on a horticultural course ever since. Living in some sort of commune. At thirty!’ Rose closed her eyes for a second. Her headache was getting worse. ‘I’d so hoped she’d be settled down with a proper job by now.’
‘Charlie mentioned that he’d seen her.’ Eve always talked about her eldest son with a dash of reverence, as if surprised that he could possibly be theirs. ‘Said she was cooking up some scheme.’ She raised her glass to her lips, narrowing her eyes as she sipped.
Daniel groaned. ‘Now what? We’ve had the teaching, the stall, importing rugs, the café, tutoring . . .’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘She’s got the sticking power of a used stamp. How’s Charlie’s teaching going?’
‘Oh, no worries there,’ Terry assured him quickly. ‘He loves Gresham Hall and they love him. Not what I was expecting him to do at all – rather hoped he’d follow in my footsteps – but it’s going well.’ His paternal pride was expressed in a narrow smile that transformed his rather nondescript features, creasing his eyes into slits.
Rose understood exactly how proud her brother must be of his eldest son, her nephew. She wanted success for her own children too. There was at least some sort of security to be found there. Though not always happiness, she reminded herself. Charlie had broken away from family expectation and pressure. Not for him the family hotel business, now run by Daniel, nor his father’s sound accountancy profession. No, he wanted something of his own, and teaching seemed to be his thing. She had hoped once that Anna would go down that path too. After dropping out of her university course, her elder daughter had embraced the teacher-training course that Rose had found for her with barely expressed gratitude. As soon as she’d completed it, with minimum accolades all round, she had decided to run a market stall selling paste jewellery. Nothing that came close to a career as far as Daniel and Rose were concerned. Not, of course, that the stall lasted long. Just as with everything else, Anna soon got bored.
‘And Jess?’ Eve’s question broke into Rose’s thoughts, but she was too slow to prevent Daniel replying.
‘Just great. Doing a wonderful job managing Trevarrick – well, deputy managing in fact, but it’s only a question of time. If only it weren’t for—’
‘Anyone for more fruit or cheese?’ interrupted Rose, fanning herself with a napkin, feeling sweat begin to prick at her forehead. She wondered how the girls would react when they heard their parents were separating, then stopped herself. Perhaps the affair (if that was what it was) wasn’t as solid as the fragment of text implied.
‘Are you all right? You look pale.’ Eve’s words seemed to come from a distance.
‘Fine. It’s probably just the heat.’ Rose waved a hand, dismissing any thought of illness. All she wanted to do was remove herself to lie down and think. Alone.
‘I thought you said it was cooler here than last week,’ Eve accused Daniel. ‘It’s like a bloody furnace.’ She picked up her BlackBerry, which had been lying silent on the table, and began accessing her emails.
Terry glared across the table at his wife and coughed that cough again: short but disapproving. ‘Do you have to?’
‘What?’ she complained, scrolling down a list. ‘They’re not responsible for the weather, Terry. I’m not being rude about the house. You all know I love it here. I just like to be able to breathe, that’s all.’ She held up her arms to both sides, as if the non-existent wind would blow into her armpits, then lifted her hair from the back of her neck.
‘You know that’s not what I mean. Can’t you leave your BlackBerry alone while we’re on holiday? Or at least when we’re all together.’
‘You are silly, darling.’ Eve smiled a taut little smile, putting all the stress on the last word. ‘They don’t mind. They know I need to keep in touch. An agent’s on duty twenty-four seven. And I’m expecting to hear from Rufus.’ Her attention returned to the phone.
Terry shook his head but said nothing. His mouth was drawn into a thin, irritated line.
To Rose’s relief, their spat had distracted Daniel from what he’d been about to say. She couldn’t bear another rant about Adam: unreconstructed hippie, ten years older than Jess, with no career prospects, and on and on. Instead, he smiled, the genial host once again. ‘This is much cooler,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll just have to get up early and sleep through the middle of the day.’
‘Too late for that now.’ Eve smiled. ‘It’s nearly four. Time for a bit of pool work, I’d say. I couldn’t eat another thing.’ Satisfied there was nothing urgent demanding her attention back home, she stood up and began helping Rose clear the table.
‘Nor me.’ Terry got to his feet, flapping away an inquisitive wasp. ‘I’m taking my book into the shade somewhere.’
The others studiously but obviously avoided catching each other’s eye. Terry’s dedication to The Global Effect of Micro-Economic Management Techniques, a tome that had lain on his chest while he snoozed, always apparently open at the same page, had been the family joke of last year.
‘Don’t say it,’ he warned, as Rose raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve brought a Harlan Coben with me this time.’
‘Only because I made you swap it for that economics textbook you’d laid out.’ Eve threw the words back over her shoulder at him. ‘He was livid,’ she whispered to Rose.
‘I’m interested in the subject, OK? Nothing wrong in that.’ Having had the last word in his own defence, he left the table.
Rose gave a weak smile. They’d made Terry the butt of their family jokes for years. As his sister, she sometimes wondered whether she ought to be more protective of him, but he rose to the bait so readily, and anyway, he usually sniffed out the funny side of things in the end. He was too easy to tease.
The two women crossed the terrace into the kitchen, the relative cool of the room a welcome contrast with outside.
‘I’ll make coffee.’ Still on autopilot, Rose picked up the stained espresso maker. ‘Dan won’t have any, though. Mustn’t pollute the temple that is his body.’ She unscrewed the gadget and dropped the top half on to the worktop with a crash.
Eve looked up, unable to ignore either the irony or the noise. ‘What’s going on between you two? Something’s up, I can tell.’
‘Sorry to disappoint, Miss Marple.’ The words were almost lost under the noise of the water running into the sink before she filled the base.
As Rose ground the coffee beans, Eve held her hands under the tap, then splashed her face and her neck, soaking the top of the kaftan. She seemed oblivious. ‘Have it your way. But if you do want to talk, you know you can trust me.’
‘I know. Thanks, I appreciate it.’ The coffee on the hob, Rose set about the washing up, Eve alongside her, crumpled tea towel in her hand. ‘But it’s nothing. Nothing I want to talk about at the moment anyway.’ She banged a saucepan down on the draining board.
Eve looked at her quizzically but obviously thought better of saying anything.
Rose trusted Eve not to leak a secret outside the family, but . . . to keep it from Terry? Would she? Eve and Terry’s marriage had always been a mystery to Rose. She had been delighted when Eve accepted Terry’s proposal. Eve had been her closest friend since Edinburgh days, when she and Daniel had studied at the university and Rose was at the art school. At the same time, she’d worried that Eve was still on the rebound
from her marriage to Will: a marriage that had only lasted a couple of years since their hasty wedding that first summer after they’d left university. On the face of it, Eve and Terry seemed to have so little in common. Eve was expansive, outrageous, fun. With the best will in the world, none of those adjectives could be applied to her brother. Yet despite Rose’s doubts, Eve and Terry had stuck together over the years, presumably happy with one another despite their habitual public bickering. She had never been able to fathom the mechanics of her brother’s relationships. He wasn’t an intimate talker or sharer, never had been. Eve must find that frustrating. Or perhaps when they were together he became a completely different person and the two of them did hold those conversations that made so many marriages. Rose would never know.
She and Daniel told each other everything. Always had. Always. Or so she’d thought. S: the letter hissed through her thoughts, winding round the Sarahs, the Susans, the Samantha and Sally they knew, but never wrapping itself round any of them for long.
What would this mean for their marriage? Everything she thought she knew, on which her life had been dependent, had been thrown into doubt. If Daniel had kept this woman secret, what other secrets did he have? How much had he said that he didn’t really mean? She stopped the questions there. If she confided in Eve, there was no guarantee Terry wouldn’t get to hear, and he, soul of indiscretion and insensitivity that he could occasionally be, was perfectly capable of blurting out something to Daniel without thinking.
