Wild Oats

by Veronica Henry

  He pumped her hand enthusiastically.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re back. Your father’s missed you.’ There was no hint of rebuke in his tone either. ‘Is he well? I keep meaning to call in, but with three parishes to run…’

  ‘I haven’t seen him yet. I’ve only just got back. He’s out for the day, apparently.’ At the races, thought Jamie. So he can’t be that miserable.

  ‘Well, he’ll have a lovely surprise when he gets back.’

  ‘Yes…’ Jamie was still doubtful that she was going to be welcomed back with open arms.

  ‘And you? How are you?’ The Reverend peered at her anxiously. ‘You know where I am if you need to talk. I know it’s not fashionable to speak to a vicar in times of need these days, but I won’t spout at you, I promise.’

  Jamie hesitated. She’d been wary about going into the village, convinced the entire population had considered her flight to be uncaring and irresponsible, abandoning her grieving father in his hour of need. And she could never tell them the truth: how cruelly and wickedly he had failed to consider her needs, depriving her of her final farewell. So far, no one had judged her, and for that she was grateful. But for a moment she wanted to ask if it was normal to feel so angry with someone you loved, if she’d been right to blame Jack when surely Louisa had been as much at fault, if not more. But then Louisa hadn’t been there to take the brunt of Jamie’s fury, and Jack had. She was on the brink of asking the Reverend’s opinion, for she thought it might give her the strength to face her father with a clear conscience if she had the reassurance of a man of the cloth, when a rumble from the other end of the street announced Olivier’s return.

  ‘I’m sorry – here’s my lift.’ Jamie smiled apologetically, and watched in amazement as the vicar’s eyes glazed over in admiration.

  ‘Wow,’ he breathed. ‘You certainly know how to travel in style.’

  Olivier drew up beside them. Curtains twitched and heads peered out of windows in annoyance, convinced that some hideous motorbike was responsible for the ungodly noise. But when they saw the Bugatti, their annoyance evaporated. Noise pollution from such a gracious and noble beast was, apparently, acceptable.

  Jamie scrambled in as elegantly as she could beside Olivier, trying hard not to give the vicar an unexpected flash of her knickers, then gave him a jaunty wave of farewell as they accelerated away. Reverend Huxtable struggled to suppress a momentary stab of envy for Olivier – young, handsome, with a beautiful car and a beautiful woman – then reasoned that it was his susceptibility to the uglier human emotions that made him a compassionate man and a successful vicar.

  Of course, what he didn’t know is that everything isn’t always what it seems, that Jamie didn’t belong to Olivier any more than the Bugatti did, and that this particular car was going to cause more trouble than anyone could have imagined.

  When they got back, Olivier disappeared off to the barn to put the car away and Jamie took a plate of food out on to the little patch of lawn adjoining the kitchen garden, where a hammock was strung between two apple trees. She clambered in, devoured every last crumb then lay back, finally allowing the waves of exhaustion to wash over her.

  It was heaven to be home. She had been filled with trepidation on the journey, wondering if she would regret her return. South America had been so detached from reality that she had been able to pretend she was someone else for ten months. Mere survival had taken over her preoccupations. She’d worried that reality would hit her in the face like a brick as soon as she got back, that all the sick anxiety and pain and grief and resentment would take her breath away. But instead she felt a pleasant calm – not joy; without her mother there she could never feel that – but certainly a feeling that she could cope, and that she’d done the right thing.

  The hammock swung gently as she basked in her unexpected but welcome relief. All her senses were assaulted with sensations that had been part of her life for so many years: the smell of the honeysuckle, the gentle sun on her skin, the buzz of a bumble-bee. Exhausted from her travels, her eyes grew heavy and soon she dozed off, thinking that she might have seen some of the most wondrous sights in the world over the past few months, but she was a true Shropshire lass at heart.

  3

  Zoe Drace, conversely, didn’t get the Shropshire thing at all. When she’d told people she was moving from London to Ludlow, they’d all exclaimed in delight and envy, gushing on about blue remembered hills and Michelin-starred restaurants, which Zoe didn’t give a fig for. She wasn’t one to coo over jus. Give her a crowded wine bar and a plate of pasta and she was happy as long as she was amongst friends. Food had never been elevated to art or science in her book. Sure, it was something to be enjoyed, but not hallowed and revered. Dinner parties in her book meant a couple of cartons of Covent Garden soup sloshed into a saucepan and spritzed up with a swirl of crème fraîche, followed by Delia’s tart’s spaghetti and shop-bought profiteroles or cheesecake. She didn’t need adulation for her culinary prowess. Why spend hours sweating over a hot stove and panicking about whether the filo parcels were crispy or the soufflés were rising while everyone else sat around getting sloshed and having fun? Not that she didn’t make an effort – she made sure the table looked nice and that there were flowers. And she particularly made an effort with her appearance. While some of her friends were neurotic about never serving the same dish twice and made careful records, she was obsessive about never being seen in the same outfit twice. You weren’t what you ate, in Zoe’s book. You were what you wore.

  This morning she was dressed down in vintage Levi’s and a black Joseph T-shirt. She examined her short, choppy bob gloomily. There were chunky streaks of marmalade and apricot amongst the natural dark brown: she could, just about, get away with another fortnight before her roots needed doing. But who the hell was she going to trust with it? She’d loitered outside most of the hairdressers in Ludlow, scrutinizing the fruits of their labour, but none of them came up to scratch. She’d have to wangle a trip to London out of Christopher.

  Christopher. The very thought of him made her heart flump down to her JP Tods. Try as she might, she couldn’t fathom the change in him. Almost chameleon-like, he had taken on the mantle of his surroundings. In just a few months, he’d gone from city slicker to country gent. A year ago he wouldn’t have been seen dead in baggy green cords and a sports jacket. Zoe wouldn’t have minded, but he wasn’t even wearing them ironically…

  When Christopher’s father Hamilton had had a stroke eight months before, none of the Draces had realized what an effect it would have on their lives. The initial prognosis had been very optimistic: they had been assured that with time and physio, he should make an almost full recovery. But for some reason, the will to recuperate wasn’t in him, and he had slid further and further into an inexplicable decline. Christopher’s mother Rosemary had been beside herself with guilt and worry.

  Christopher had looked very serious the last time he had come back from visiting his parents. He waited till the children were in bed, then opened a bottle of red wine, urging Zoe to sit down.

  ‘It’s pretty grim, Zo. My mother isn’t coping at all. I think we’re going to have to put Dad in a nursing home,’ he’d admitted, and her heart had gone out to him. He looked so woebegone. It must be horrid to realize suddenly that your parents weren’t going to live for ever, that they were frail and fragile. She’d hugged him, and offered to come and help him look for homes. Sometimes you needed an objective eye when you were very emotionally involved.

  ‘Thanks, but that’s not really the problem. It’s the firm.’ The way he said it, and the way he didn’t quite meet her eye, made Zoe instantly suspicious. Hamilton Drace ran an estate agency and auctioneers, one of the oldest and most respected agencies on the Welsh borders, an outfit that had barely entered the twentieth, let alone the twenty-first, century. It traded solely on its reputation rather than what it had to offer. And there was no doubt that its driving force was Hamilton, with his connections, his local
knowledge, his personal service, his charm. Without him at the helm, it would fade into oblivion, sidelined by the sharper young agencies who had more aggressive tactics and competitive fees.

  Zoe swallowed. She thought she knew what was coming.

  ‘Well,’ she said brightly. ‘He would have been retiring soon anyway. All good things must come to an end.’

  Christopher shook his head.

  ‘I’ve got to go and take over.’

  ‘What will you do? Live at your mother’s during the week, and come back here at weekends? I suppose it’s do-able.’

  Christopher met Zoe squarely in the eye. There was no point in beating about the bush.

  ‘We’re going to have to move.’

  Zoe blinked. Once, twice. Then laughed.

  ‘Don’t be silly. How can we?’

  ‘It was always on the cards for me to take over. You know that.’

  This was true. But, like death itself, to Zoe this prospect had been something rather unimaginable that was going to happen in the far-distant future. Not now, for God’s sake.

  She tried very, very hard to be good about it. Christopher was being so brave about his father, whom he adored, and she didn’t have the heart to put him through any more stress. And when her friends saw photographs of Lydbrook House, set on a tributary of the River Teme between the villages of Upper and Lower Faviell, they were all green with envy. After all, it looked pretty impressive: huge, built of grey stone, with gables and pointy windows and a terraced balcony that looked over the lawns right down to the babbling rivulet, garages and outhouses and garden rooms and summer houses and even the remnants of what had been a grass tennis court. Zoe managed to persuade herself that a large country house was a natural progression at her time of life, and she’d never have to scour the roads for a parking space outside her own home again.

  The reality was different. Lydbrook House would have been described by Drace’s as ‘a country home in need of some updating’ – understatement of the century. Rosemary and Hamilton were not into interior decoration, being resolutely outdoor people. Acres of worn carpet, reams of faded curtains, threadbare upholstery and large, ugly furniture abounded. The kitchen was hell, fitted with fifties Formica units, with sliding frosted doors that jammed when you tried to open them and nasty metal handles. There was an Aga, but it was in a hideous shade of light blue that Zoe could not begin to persuade herself was fashionable. And every available work surface was covered in orange and brown flowered sticky-back plastic. The wallpaper was almost retro, covered in line drawings of root vegetables – leeks and beetroot and parsnips; she’d seen something similar in House and Garden that was over fifty pounds a metre. But this was yellowing and peeling off in great chunks.

  Her lovely furniture from Elmdon Road was swallowed up by the house and didn’t go remotely. Her sage-green Conran sofa hovered apologetically by the French windows in the drawing room, looking decidedly out of place next to the faded chintz and worn tapestry of the Draces’ battalions of mismatched chairs and sofas. Her beautiful light beech table and matching chairs looked utterly ridiculous in the enormous, gloomy dining room, so she’d stored them away in one of the outhouses until the day when the heavy wallpaper and curtains and carpet could be stripped away and replaced with something light and airy.

  The boys, of course, loved Lydbrook. As well as their father’s old bedroom in the attic, they had a huge room over the top of the garages with a ping-pong table and enough space for Christopher’s old Hornby train set, for the days when it was raining and they weren’t able to venture out into the paradise of their garden. They were in absolute heaven. Zoe, by contrast, was in absolute agony every time they went out to play. She would hover anxiously by the French windows, tucked out of sight so they couldn’t see her, convinced that they would be tempted down to the river and into the water and immediately be sucked under by an angry current and swept away for ever. Christopher told her she was being over-anxious. The boys were old enough to understand the dangers, and sensible enough not to venture riverwards without adult supervision. After all, Christopher and his two sisters had grown up at Lydbrook with no fluvial mishaps.

  And then there was Christopher’s mother, Rosemary – or Ro, as she was known, though Zoe could never quite bring herself to use this term of endearment as that would somehow be accepting Rosemary’s presence. For Rosemary was part of the Lydbrook package. Not that she was intrusive: she hovered apologetically; spoke in a tiny voice; scuttled off to her own quarters thereby racking Zoe with alternate guilt and irritation. She would almost have preferred Rosemary to be overbearing and bossy – at least then she could have fought back, snapped at her. But how could you complain about someone who was no trouble at all? Someone who was enormously helpful, in fact. Someone who’d uncomplainingly sewed all the name tapes on the boys’ new uniform – a thankless task if ever there was one – and ploughed through mountains of ironing when you weren’t looking, leaving baskets of crisp clothing in the airing cupboard. Who would happily babysit at the drop of a hat. Who would play snap and twenty-one and pontoon with the boys on wet Sunday afternoons. Saint fucking Rosemary. Zoe didn’t feel as if the house was her own while Rosemary was hovering in it. Which, of course, it wasn’t.

  She thought longingly of their old house in Shepherd’s Bush. It was hardly palatial, and once the swing and slide had been put up in the garden there was only just room for a picnic table for barbecues. But she’d had neighbours – like-minded couples who were in the same situation. There was always someone to leave the kids with, someone to have a coffee with, a moan and a gossip with, a much-needed glass of wine at six o’clock. It was secure, cosy, whereas Zoe felt as if she’d been set adrift on a vast ocean at Lydbrook House. As soon as she’d dropped the children off at school there were six long hours to fill with no one for company.

  The biggest problem was, of course, they had no bloody money. Christopher had sat her down very seriously. He had their bank and credit-card statements and some buff-covered files. He’d explained their situation to her carefully, patiently and apologetically.

  They’d sold well at Elmdon Road. But once they’d paid off the mortgage – which had swollen considerably by the time they’d extended it to put in a Shaker kitchen and a conservatory and converted the attic rooms to include a new bathroom – and taken into account that Christopher was going to lose his company car (they’d need at least thirty grand for a decent new estate), there was only a couple of hundred grand left. Zoe couldn’t see the problem, until Christopher pointed out that he was going to have to take a drop in salary, that there were the fees at his father’s home and the boys’ school fees to take into consideration.

  Zoe swallowed.

  ‘So – there won’t be much left over to do up the house?’

  ‘Um… no. I’ve worked out that you can have two hundred pounds a week housekeeping. And that’s got to include petrol.’

  ‘So why are we having to pay your father’s fees?’

  Christopher put it straight on the line. His parents were broke. Drace’s was in danger of going under. He was going to have to spend at least fifty thousand of the profit from Elmdon Road in order to salvage it. A revamp, a relaunch, Internet presence – and he was going to have to subsidize a drastic cut in their agency fees in order to attract some new custom.

  ‘I know it’s going to be hard. But if you think about it, life’s much cheaper here. The boys entertain themselves, there’s no parking to pay, no tube fares. The garden’s full of fresh vegetables…’

  He trailed off a trifle lamely at this, not quite able to meet Zoe’s eye. Fresh vegetables? she wanted to scream. Fresh vegetables that I’ve got to pick and bloody wash the mud off? Zoe was the type who bought her green beans already topped and tailed, her carrots cut into batons, her jacket potatoes scrubbed and gleaming…

  Today was Wednesday. She thought she hated Wednesdays the most. On Mondays she always had hope. Each Monday morning, with the zeal of one embark
ing on a diet, she convinced herself that this week was going to be different, this week she would find a kindred spirit at the school gates, a decent gym, a decent dress shop, and an exciting whizzy new social life full of people who didn’t come to school covered in dog hairs, wearing jodhpurs that made their arses look five times the size they already were.

  By Wednesday that dream had always been shattered, and she had reached screaming pitch. By Wednesday she had picked up the phone to her friends back in London and turned green with envy at what they were doing. This particular Wednesday, her friend Natalie was hosting a birthday lunch at the Bush Bar and Grill. Everyone had put their children into aftercare so they wouldn’t have to rush off at three with Sancerre and cigarettes on their breath. She’d been tempted to get on the train and surprise them by walking in – but by the time she’d thought of it, only a helicopter would have got her there in time. She’d spent the morning sulking in front of the telly. At lunchtime, she tortured herself imagining what all her friends would be wearing, what they would have bought Natalie, the juicy gossip they’d be imparting, the champagne they’d order…

  Fucking Shropshire.

  Zoe got up, went into the kitchen, wrenched open the door of the ancient fridge that, like the wallpaper, was almost but not quite retro, and pulled out the remains of last night’s white wine. She poured herself a glass.

  ‘Happy birthday, Natalie,’ she toasted her friend, from what felt like sixty million light years away.

  Tiona Tutton-Price stepped over the threshold of the red-brick terraced cottage, her heart beating wildly in excitement as it always did when she stumbled across a gem. It had all the ticks in all the boxes. Walking distance to the town centre (although Tiona, who never walked anywhere if she could help it, had driven) but far enough off the tourist trail to have plenty of street parking. All the original features untouched; nothing modernized. And a pretty walled garden. She let Mrs Turner show her round, though she didn’t need to look. Nevertheless, she made polite cooing noises.