An Eligible Bachelor

by Veronica Henry

  *

  Sally stood in the queue at the post office.

  ‘I want a first-class stamp, please.’ She shoved a fifty-pence piece under the window. ‘Will it get there tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ The woman behind the counter shrugged as she poked a stamp and some change back towards Sally. ‘Last post goes at half five.’

  Sally licked the stamp and stuck it on as squarely as she could. Somehow it was important that her letter looked perfect; she’d printed the name and address out three times before being satisfied that it was neat enough. She stood for a moment in front of the red pillar box, her heart thumping, wondering if tomorrow her daughter would be holding this very envelope in her hands. And what would happen then. Briefly, feeling rather silly, she kissed it, then shoved it through the letterbox and walked away.

  14

  Honor treated herself to a luxurious lie-in on Saturday morning. She could hear the cartoons thudding up through the bedroom floor as she snuggled under the duvet, looking back over the week’s tumultuous events and knowing this was going to be her only chance to recharge her batteries, both physical and emotional. She wanted more than anything to be strong for Johnny’s arrival that afternoon. They might have signed a peace treaty, agreed to move on from the past, but she was still aware that Johnny was capable of railroading her, despite his reassurances. She was sure he was genuine when he said that Ted came first, but he wouldn’t put himself far behind.

  She’d gone to collect Ted from Henty’s the night before, but there hadn’t been a quiet moment to ask her advice, or seek her reassurance. It wasn’t a scenario you could blurt out in ten seconds flat, and there was too much going on at Fulford Farm for a heart-to-heart. Henty had looked amazing, for a start. She’d had her hair done, and it made her look totally different. There was a definite gleam in her eye that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘Wow,’ said Honor.

  ‘Travis made me,’ explained Henty.

  ‘Travis?’

  Henty beckoned to her with a mysterious grin, opened the door to the playroom and pointed to Travis, who was supervising an elaborate Meccano construction with Ted and Walter.

  ‘My new nanny’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ Honor couldn’t fail to be impressed. She did a mock swoon. ‘He’s divine.’

  ‘He’s Mary Poppins on testosterone. He’s totally changed my life.’

  ‘What are you going to do with yourself?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Henty, half wanting to spill the beans about her new project, but knowing that Charles was likely to be earwigging. ‘Some of the house could do with redecorating for a start.’

  ‘That’s deeply dull,’ protested Honor. ‘You should do something for yourself’.

  ‘Something will come to me,’ Henty assured her. ‘If not I can always just sit and look at Travis.’

  Honor smiled at the memory of her friend’s transformation, and snuggled deeper down into the blankets. Just as she’d managed to doze off again, the phone rang.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Guy. ‘Complete emergency. It’s Gaynor’s fortieth. We need a cake. Tell me to fuck off and go to Marks and Spencer if you like, but I thought I’d try you first.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Honor sighed, pulling on her dressing gown. ‘I’ve got just the thing in the freezer.’

  The cake took her the rest of the morning to decorate. By the time she and Ted had cleared up and had some lunch, the doorbell rang. Honor opened the door to find Johnny proudly bearing a state of the art Perspex guinea pig run that was going to take up the entire living-room floor. And a cardboard box stuffed with hay.

  ‘Eejit!’ shouted Ted. ‘Eejit’s arrived!’

  ‘Have some respect,’ joked Johnny as he carried in the guinea pig palace.

  ‘It must have cost a fortune!’ Honor exclaimed, as Johnny carefully slotted the myriad pieces of see-through tubing together, Ted hopping up and down with excitement beside him.

  ‘Nah. One of my clients was getting rid of it. One of the perks of being a vet.’

  Finally the palace was assembled and Eejit was ceremoniously removed from his cardboard box.

  ‘There, now hold him gently but firmly, under his tummy.’

  Honor felt a lump in her throat as she watched Johnny show Ted how to handle the little bundle of fur. The look of pure delight on Ted’s face as he watched Eejit scurry through his new home matched the look of delight on Johnny’s as he surveyed his son. Her heart contracted slightly with guilt – she’d deprived the two of them of this joy for the past six years. How selfish did that make her?

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Honor hastily, before she lost it.

  ‘No problem,’ said Johnny. ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, big guy? Did you get the beers in?’

  Ted looked slightly baffled.

  ‘Mum said we could have Coke.’ He went over to the fridge and pulled it open, lugging out a big bottle of Pepsi.

  ‘Not too much,’ warned Honor. ‘Or he gets hyper.’

  ‘On Pepsi?’

  ‘You’ve obviously never seen a roomful of kids with a sugar rush.’

  Johnny grimaced.

  ‘Jaysus,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve got a lot to learn.’

  ‘I’ve left chicken drumsticks and jacket potatoes in the oven. Will you be able to manage?’

  ‘Oh ye of little faith. I’ll have you know I can now cook a mean Thai chicken curry’

  ‘By piercing the film lid three times and putting it in the microwave?’ Honor couldn’t resist teasing him.

  ‘From scratch. With fresh coriander on top. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll cook for you one night.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it,’ said Honor drily.

  It would be highly entertaining to watch Johnny in the kitchen. Apart from his superiority on the eggy-bread front, he was a culinary klutz. He used to survive on take-aways and cheesy Wotsit sandwiches, until Honor came along and urged him to up his fruit and vegetable intake. The prospect of becoming a fat bastard convinced him, for if Johnny was anything it was vain – when Honor wanted to really wind him up she used to pinch his waist and tell him he was putting on weight.

  She picked up the cake box on the breakfast bar. Curious, Johnny peered inside, then recoiled in horror at the man’s torso clad in leopardskin underpants.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Honor. ‘I know it’s hideous. But these cakes are de rigueur when you hit your fortieth.’

  She put the lid firmly back on the box, and took forty candles and a packet of sparklers out of the drawer where she stored them.

  ‘Be good’, she said to Ted, and gave him a kiss on the nose. ‘And you,’ she said to Johnny. ‘You’ve got my mobile number if there’s a problem.’

  ‘There won’t be,’ Johnny assured her. ‘We’re going to be fine.’

  As Honor walked up the road to Eversleigh Manor, she suppressed the urge to run back and peep in through the window. It was obvious that Johnny had no real experience with children, but as he was little more than a child himself in hundreds of ways, she thought they would probably get on. And Ted was no trouble. A lot of the kids that came back to play were absolute horrors – unable to take no for an answer, with appalling manners and a tendency to tantrums if they didn’t get their own way. Ted was polite, easygoing, happy to share: she knew that because she’d been told so by other parents, who marvelled at her doing such a good job when she was bringing him up on her own. But then she had time to spend on him. She wasn’t a mad career woman who had to overcompensate by showering him with toys and treats, like many of the other mums in the area. So she was quite happy that Johnny’s few hours of childminding wouldn’t be too traumatic for him.

  What was making her really anxious, though, was what was going to happen if they did get on? Where on earth did she go from here?

  She didn’t have very long to dwell on the matter. As soon as she arrived at Eversleigh, it was quite clear that so
mebody needed to take control. Madeleine might seem redoubtable, but she had moments when her judgement and her nerve failed her. Honor suspected Guy didn’t quite care enough about what he was doing – he had a tendency to sneak off for a fag at a critical moment. And there was nothing Honor liked better than choreographing the behind-the-scenes chaos necessary for people to really enjoy themselves. So by six o’clock she had nominated herself in charge, and delegated appropriately.

  By seven o’clock the Portiases and Marilyn, who’d been drafted in to wash up, realized they were in the hands of a ruthless taskmaster whose attention to detail was second to none. But they had to admit she had a flair for the job, an unerring instinct for the momentum needed.

  ‘It’s all about timing. The anticipation is as important as the reality,’ she explained. ‘Drinks should last long enough for everyone to become relaxed, but not totally sloshed. There should be enough canapés to take the edge off their appetite, but not fill them up. So when they go into dinner they are convivial and hungry.’

  ‘Convivial and hungry,’ repeated Guy obediently, as if it was a mantra. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Not too long a wait once the starters are cleared. Then everyone should get their main course at roughly the same time,’ Honor continued. ‘As they’re all having the same this should be easy, but I suggest we serve up in here and each take in two plates, so everything stays hot.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Then we have a good ten or fifteen minutes before pudding, so everyone can have a fag and a wee.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Seriously – everyone will be dying for one or the other by then. Followed by cheese. And tonight, with coffee – the pièce de résistance. Gavin the Groin. At this point you can also try and ply them with more champagne, though it might be worth assessing how far gone they are, and whether you want to add a carpet cleaner to your overheads.’

  Mick sat in the lounge bar of his local. It was dingy, rundown and unwelcoming, so it suited him down to the ground. He was grinding his teeth with rage. Rozzi Sharpe had phoned him earlier, putting the pressure on. Jesus, didn’t she think he’d have been in touch by now if he’d sorted it? Women had no bloody patience. They wanted everything done yesterday. He’d placated her in the end, telling her Sally had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend but she’d be back Monday, and they’d come in then.

  ‘She can’t wait to set the record straight,’ he assured her. ‘Tell the world what a fraud her daughter is. This is the chance she’s been waiting for. Her chance to get her own back.’

  If he could only find Sally, he could talk her round, he knew he could. He’d always been able to control her. And once she realized how much was in it for them, she’d soon comply. But he had to find her first.

  He couldn’t believe she’d gone. She wasn’t answering her phone either. He shouldn’t have had a skinful the day before, but he hadn’t been able to resist celebrating. He’d woken up on the sofa at three o’clock in the morning with a stiff neck and a blank memory. He couldn’t remember for the life of him what he’d told her or what had happened. Had they had a row? They must have done, else why would she have disappeared like that? Along with the money out of his jacket. That had gone too. He’d had to scrat around in the pocket of his dirty jeans to get enough for a pint this evening. What was she thinking of, leaving him with nothing?

  Bitch. She was an evil bitch, just like her daughter.

  At Fulford Farm, the atmosphere was surprisingly genial for a Saturday. Usually there was squabbling (Lily and Robin), sulking (Charles and Thea) and tears (Henty and Walter), as everyone tried to negotiate what they were doing for the evening. But with the arrival of Travis, calm seemed somehow to have descended. He and Charles had spent the afternoon schooling Charles’s horse, with Thea and Lily happily looking on. Charles was feeling so affable as a result that he offered to take Henty out for supper. Thea, who would usually be desperate to go to some hideous teenage gathering in a highly inconvenient location, was for once happy to stay in, so Henty was spared the trauma of the teenage hysterics which she always found utterly exhausting. By the time she’d finished remonstrating with her daughter she’d usually lost any desire to go out and socialize herself, but tonight she’d actually been able to have a long, luxurious bath without any interruptions.

  As she put her make-up on, she decided that this week had been a real turning point in her life. Any doubts she’d had about Travis’s suitability had evaporated: although he was utterly drop-dead gorgeous, he had an underlying steeliness and self-control that convinced her he was no threat to her daughters. He took absolutely no crap from either of them. Henty wasn’t sure how he did it. Whenever she tried firm and no-nonsense with Thea and Lily, they wiped the floor with her. But Travis had them jumping to attention. They didn’t even attempt to answer him back. It was quite extraordinary. Like now, for instance – he’d actually got them cleaning their tack. In the kitchen, admittedly, which was always a mess – there were reins and stirrup leathers strewn everywhere, sweaty girths draped over the backs of the chairs and horrible grass-encrusted bits in the sink – but Henty didn’t care because she was going out and Pizza Pete had already been contacted and was delivering in an hour.

  Even more gratifying, she’d already typed nearly three thousand words of her new opus the day before. She’d been thoroughly excited by the word count facility on her laptop. At first she’ clicked on it after virtually every paragraph, but now she’d restricted herself to every half an hour. Three thousand words in just one day! If she carried on at that rate, she should have a sizeable chunk done before long. The words just seemed to be spilling out of her, just as they had when she’d written Chelsea Virgin. The bare bones were there already, in the notebooks she’d extricated from her tights drawer, but Henty had been pleasantly surprised how lucidly it all came together. It was as if there was a voice in her head dictating to her, and all she had to do was type it in. It was the most glorious feeling. She’d sneaked back into her little room this afternoon, just for an hour, and reread what she had already written, terrified that it would be the most utter rubbish. But it wasn’t. It was funny. Sexy Slightly outrageous. Naughty but nice. She couldn’t wait for Monday, for an empty house, when she could sit back down at the keyboard and have another bash.

  It was incredible how the hideous events of last Saturday, when Charles had made such a fool of her and then lost his licence, had turned out to have a silver lining. And the nicest surprise of all was that when she dried her hair it actually looked almost as good as when Gianni had done it. As she surveyed the final results in the mirror, Henty felt on top of the world, the happiest she’d felt for a long time.

  Her euphoria was short-lived. She spotted Fleur’s sleek navy-blue Mercedes convertible as they drove into the car park of the Honeycote Arms, and her heart sank. Henty prayed Charles wouldn’t notice her – that the Gibsons would already be seated in some dark little corner. Luck, however, was not on her side. As soon as they walked in, Charles’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Look who it isn’t!’ he exclaimed, and bounded straight over to the bar, where Fleur was perched on a stool swinging her legs carelessly as her husband ordered their drinks. She slid off her stool as soon as she spotted Charles and snaked a sinuous arm round his neck.

  ‘Charles – darling. What a surprise. I didn’t know you ate here.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘I know. Isn’t it fab? We come here every Saturday if we’re not going somewhere else. Robert, look – it’s Charles and Henty’

  She managed to make ‘Henty’ sound like ‘fat lump’. Robert, standing patiently at the bar with a twenty-pound note folded between his first two fingers, greeted them genially.

  ‘Hello, you two. What’ll you have to drink?’

  ‘Hadn’t we better go through?’ asked Henty anxiously. ‘Our table was booked for eight, and it’s already quarter past.’

  ‘I know! Let’s see if they’ll push our tables t
ogether,’ Fleur was trilling excitedly. No! Henty wanted to scream. I don’t want to sit here while my husband gawps at your unfeasibly large and suspiciously upright breasts.

  But it was too late. An amenable waiter was nodding as Fleur outlined their desire. Moments later two tables were conjoined and the Gibsons and the Beresfords were ushered into the dining room. Trailing miserably behind, Henty surveyed Fleur’s champagne suede mini and high-heeled boots with the diamanté studs, and immediately felt enormous and a total frump. She didn’t suppose she could get Fleur’s minuscule skirt over one of her thighs. Her combat trousers and the silky knit sweater that had made her feel svelte and a little bit trendy now made her feel stumpy and middle-aged and as if she was trying a bit too hard. Deep down she knew that Fleur looked as if she was touting for business, but superficially she desperately wanted to wear an outrageously short skirt and silly boots. Fleur’s legs were bare, and even though it was October they were toned, silky-smooth and tanned. Henty knew hers were flabby, dimpled, blotchy, hairy and white. She shuddered with revulsion at the thought of them being exposed.

  Henty sighed as she sat down and took her menu from the waiter. She was going to feel utterly inhibited now. If she ordered anything more substantial than a rocket and red onion salad for starters, she knew Fleur would look at her pityingly as if to say it was no wonder she was the size she was. And Henty desperately wanted the wild mushroom tortellini. And bugger – here came the waiter with a basket of warm home-made breads and a big pool of green olive oil to dunk it all in. The men helped themselves eagerly.

  ‘Don’t you want bread, Henty?’ asked Charles.

  ‘No – I’ll never be able to manage my main course otherwise. The portions are huge here.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can resist,’ said Fleur. ‘This bread is totally scrumptious.’

  She ripped off a hunk of tomato focaccia and dipped it in the oil, then ate hungrily. Henty was sure she was taunting her. She bent her head and studied the menu, wishing she was at home with Travis and the kids, with pizza and Ben and Jerry’s.