by Dani Atkins
Surprised wasn’t the word I’d have gone for, and I’m sure he knew that from the silent daggers I shot at him across the room.
‘Could I have a word with you, please, Richard? Outside.’ It was a wonder I got the words out as my lips were so tightly compressed. Richard got easily to his feet, and turned to smile apologetically at my parents.
‘You’d better make it a quick one,’ my dad advised. ‘I’m just about to serve, and it’s that chicken dish you like, lad.’ Just the thought of food made my stomach twist in protest, or was it hearing my father talk to my ex so warmly?
Richard deliberately took his time, carefully pushing his chair back to the table and dropping his serviette beside his plate while I waited at the door with growing impatience. Why was he bothering? Surely he realised there was no way he was coming back to the table?
He followed me into the hall and I made sure the dining room door was tightly shut before rounding on him like a kick-boxer. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I spat out.
‘Are you going to deck me if I say “having dinner”?’ He realised quickly it was a bad moment to have gone for humour. ‘Look, your parents phoned me today, and invited me over. What was I meant to say?’
‘Er… “No” would have worked.’
‘How could I, when your dad said your mum was really upset about… you know… you and me?’
‘There is no “you and me”. Not any more. Remember?’
He went on as though I hadn’t spoken, ‘Then when he told me she hadn’t been sleeping properly because of it, what was I supposed to have said?’
His explanation stung, but it also rang painfully true. Even Richard wasn’t so insensitive that he’d have come round without an invitation. But why hadn’t Dad said anything to me about how my mother was coping?
‘And then,’ Richard continued, with somewhat less confidence, ‘I thought that… maybe… you might have asked them to call me? That you wanted to make the first move…?’ My eyes widened in disbelief, but before I could say a word, he quickly added, ‘But I see now, that wasn’t the case.’
I shook my head despairingly. This was probably all my fault. If I’d just told my parents the real reason why I’d broken things off with Richard, my dad was more likely to have approached him with a shotgun than a casserole dish. But they both still thought we’d only had some stupid row, or that I had a case of pre-wedding jitters. Now, unless I threw him bodily from the house and risked upsetting them even more, I was going to have to stomach an evening sitting across the table from him.
‘Come on, you two, it’s getting cold,’ came the summons from beyond the panelled door.
‘This is not over,’ I hissed, turning on my heel and gripping the door handle. But he also reached for the brass knob, his fingers covering mine as he stepped close behind me. For just a moment we stood on the edge of a déjà-vu chasm of memories.
‘No, Emma. It’s not,’ he confirmed on a low promise. ‘It’s not over at all.’
It wasn’t the best of meals, but it wasn’t the worst either. No one stabbed anyone with an item of cutlery, or emptied a piping hot dinner into anyone’s lap. That’s not to say I didn’t think about it, though. Richard’s recent school trip occupied most of the conversation, which was fine with me. The less opportunity we had to speak to each other, the less likely we were to end up in a slanging match.
I hated being so defensive and prickly in my own home, hated the feeling that he was invading my personal space. There were boundaries and he wasn’t respecting them, and that wasn’t going to change if my well-meaning parents kept trying to matchmake us back together again. It was hard to ignore their expectant and hopeful expressions throughout the meal. They were like scientists studying a polar icecap, eagerly anticipating the first moments of a thaw. They were in for a long wait.
When the oven timer pinged and my father disappeared to get the apple pie and custard (another Richard favourite, Dad really was pulling out all the stops) an awkward atmosphere fell over the table. Although Mum listened attentively to conversations, she wasn’t much of a contributor since her illness. But her chaperoning presence meant neither Richard nor I could say exactly what we wanted. Instead we spoke through our eyes and in our body language. When my father returned I was sitting ramrod straight in my chair, as though awaiting the arrival of an executioner instead of dessert. By the time the plates were cleared I had a colossal headache, and wanted nothing more than to retreat to the sanctuary of my room.
‘Coffee anyone?’
Richard opened his mouth to accept, and then caught the look on my face.
‘I can’t, I’m afraid, Bill. I’ve a stack of marking I have to get through tonight.’ He got to his feet.
‘Oh what a shame,’ said my mother with regret, ‘but actually I’ve got a pile of homework to mark too before morning.’
For just a moment the wall between Richard and me crumbled to dust as we exchanged a meaningful look.
‘I’ll see you out,’ I said, and he nodded in agreement. He dropped a kiss on my mum’s cheek, thanked my father for the meal, and followed me once again to the hallway.
There was less anger in me than before, chiefly because it required more energy to summon up than I currently had left. I was running on empty.
‘You can’t do this again, Richard. I can’t have you turning up at my work, or finding you here in my house. It’s just not fair.’
‘I can’t get you to see me any other way.’
I sighed heavily. ‘Then what does that tell you? You can’t force me to change my mind. Not like this. If you carry on this way you’re just going to make me hate you even more.’
He gasped at my brutality. ‘You hate me?’
I shook my head in weary confusion at the slip. Was that how I felt? ‘I don’t know. Sometimes, yes. Yes, I do. Tonight certainly came close.’
He had the grace to look abashed. He reached out a hand towards me, but let it fall limply back to his side when I stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t know what to do, what to say. I don’t know how to play this, to win you back.’
‘It’s not a game.’
‘I know that.’
‘There are no winners here. We all lost.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ he pleaded, his voice throaty with emotion.
‘It does. At least for now.’ I thought I was firmly closing the door with my words, but he heard something hopeful hiding between the lines.
‘But maybe – not just yet, I get that – but, in time… one day…?’ His voice trailed away.
‘No, Richard. I honestly don’t see that happening.’
He shook his head, his blond hair falling across his eyes, but not enough to hide the pain in them. ‘I’m not going to stop trying to get you back, Emma. I can’t just walk away.’ There was nothing I had left to say. ‘Please don’t throw away everything we had, everything we were.’
‘You did that. Not me. The only thing I threw away was my damn ring.’
He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Yeah. Don’t I know it? I spent a couple of hours scrabbling around in the rocks and weeds looking for it.’
Despite everything I’d said about not caring what happened to him, I couldn’t stop my instinctive reaction at his recklessness. ‘You climbed down into Farnham Ravine after I left? Are you crazy? You could have broken your leg or your neck. What if you’d injured yourself or dropped your phone? How the hell would anyone have known you’d been hurt?’
Strangely, the fact that I was mad at him for taking such a stupid risk seemed to please him. ‘Well as you can see, I broke neither. But I didn’t find your ring either.’
I shook my head at the futility of even attempting to look for it. It was long gone.
‘I thought, that if… when you change your mind, you’re going to want your old ring back.’
‘I’m not going to change my mind, Richard.’
‘Not just yet,’ he conceded.
There was nothing left
to say. We were going round in circles. I opened the door and waited for him to use it. He was almost across the threshold before he added, ‘Although incidentally, if I had fallen, the phone wouldn’t have been any use to me.’ I frowned. ‘No signal,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nothing. After I finished searching for the ring I had to walk for another hour before I could phone someone to come and get me.’
I opened my mouth to speak, and I’m still not sure if ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Serves you right’ was going to come out, but in the end I said neither, as a noise from the direction of the dining room stopped me. I turned and saw the door was slightly ajar. Through the gap my mother’s silhouette was shadowed against the wall.
‘Goodbye, Richard,’ I said, holding the door even wider.
‘Goodnight, not goodbye,’ he corrected.
I didn’t hear her come in. It could have been that the rustle of taffeta and silk, which stubbornly refused to stay folded on the bed, masked her footsteps on the bedroom carpet. It could have been the crackling crunch of tissue paper as I attempted to encase the most expensive dress I had ever bought – and never worn – into its storage box. But most likely it was the sound of my softly hiccupping sobs which prevented me from hearing that my mother had silently joined me in the spare bedroom as I struggled to pack away my wedding dress.
I felt her lightly touch my shoulder. I turned my face until my cheek lay upon the back of her hand. Gently she pulled the strands of hair away from my face, easing them back from my damp cheeks. She ran her free hand down my hair, stroking and soothing. I closed my eyes and felt as though I was ten years old all over again.
‘Move aside,’ she said softly.
I shuffled up the bed and she took my place, her hands reaching out to the folds of ivory material. With a surety that made it look as though she had spent her entire life working in a dress shop and not an art department, she skilfully began to fold the metres of fabric into place. She worked silently as the gown began to compress into a manageable shape, glancing up and checking on me with a mother’s intense concern that I hadn’t seen on her face in a very long time.
I watched her hands as they worked. I knew them so well. They lived on in a thousand memories of my childhood. They were the ones who supported me as a toddler when I took my first step; they wiped tears from my eyes when the nightmares woke me, and placed plasters on grazed knees when I fell off my bike. Those hands, so skilled in painting and sculpture, had belonged only to me when they’d brushed my hair each night, or when they’d held tightly to mine when together we’d said our last goodbyes to my grandmother in hospital. Those hands were supposed to hold her own grandchild in them one day in the future. That possibility, as she now packed my wedding dress into its container, had never seemed so unlikely.
When at last she was done she turned to me with a sad smile. ‘Don’t worry, Emmie Bear, everything will work out, you’ll see.’
I’m not sure what made me cry the most: her eternal optimism, the use of my childhood nickname, which she hadn’t called me by in almost twenty years, or the fact that by morning only one of us would remember that this had ever happened at all.
THE END
PART THREE
The old grandfather clock in the hall chimed the hour. Was it really that late? It must be because that clock had never lost as much as a single minute since the day my father had brought it home from the auction house. He never would tell my mother how much he’d spent on it, but the guilty look on his face whenever she had asked him told its own tale. That and the fact he’d never again gone to another auction after that day.
My make-up finally complete, I sat back against the comfortable upholstery of my dressing-table chair. The room was warm, uncomfortably so, and I lifted my hair from the back of my neck in an effort to cool down. The sun was streaming through the large glass panes of my window and while I was incredibly glad it wasn’t raining today, the room was fast becoming unbearable.
The sash of the old casement creaked in protest as I pushed it up to let in some much needed fresh air. I noticed several cars that had been parked outside were already pulling away, filled with family and friends who were heading for the church. Above the noise of their engines I could hear a neighbour mowing their lawn and the smell of freshly cut grass wafted into the room on an eddying breeze. The fragrance overtook the smell of the flowers sitting in a vase on top of the antique dresser.
I crossed over to the bouquet of white freesias, which I had carefully arranged in a crystal vase. I bent my head and the auburn strands of my hair mingled with the funnel-shaped blooms as I breathed in deeply. He had sent me the flowers yesterday, and they were absolutely perfect. It was a lovely gesture and so very typical of him. What made it even more special was the message he had written on the small card that had accompanied them. I pulled it out from between the long green stalks and read it again. His words brought a smile to my lips and I lightly ran my finger over his name.
I sighed, and went back to my preparations.
CHAPTER 11
I walked up the hill to Caroline’s place of work with the wicker basket of muffins bumping against my hip. I had no way of knowing how this meeting would go, or what she would make of the peace offering I had just collected from the bakery. Best case scenario: she would accept my apology and we could put the whole thing behind us. Worst case: I left with a basket of muffins hurled at my head.
The bell above the door tinkled, heralding my arrival, and the three men inside the estate agents all raised their heads from their computer screens to look in my direction. One of them got to his feet, smiling warmly.
‘Emma. It’s good to see you again. How are you?’
‘Fine thanks, Trevor,’ I replied distractedly, trying discreetly to look past Caroline’s boss to the desk where she sat.
‘She’s not in today,’ he informed me, stepping back lithely, as though I might require visual confirmation of her absence. ‘I take it you’re here for Caroline, and not to buy a house? She’s off sick. She phoned in this morning.’
The bell in my head clanged a little louder. ‘Did she say what was wrong?’ I asked, fixing my gaze firmly on him. Trevor looked slightly unsettled by the intensity of my question and the smile slid slowly from his lips.
‘Er no… she didn’t. I just assumed it was, you know… women’s problems.’
‘I see,’ I replied, resting the heavy muffin basket on the edge of the office junior’s desk. I caught him eyeing the cakes eagerly and gently slid the basket out of his reach. He grinned good humouredly.
I turned back to Trevor. ‘Did she say whether she’d be back tomorrow?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t ask. I had clients with me so I couldn’t chat.’
‘Okay, no problem. I’ll give her a call when I get back to the shop and see how she’s doing,’ I said, picking up the basket and turning to leave.
‘She won’t answer the phone.’
The alarm bell was clamouring appreciably louder. I turned back to look at Caroline’s other work colleague, whose name I never could remember.
‘I’ve tried to call her several times this morning about a sale she was arranging. But the phone just rings out.’
The urge to pull one of their telephones towards me and punch in Caroline’s number was a real and tangible thing. I clenched my fingers into the palm of my hand as though to stop them from embarrassing me further in front of my friend’s colleagues. They were already looking at me with open curiosity. I guess I hadn’t been as successful as I’d hoped in keeping the panicked look off my face.
I didn’t wait until I was back at the bookshop. In the five-minute walk from Caroline’s place of work to mine I tried both her home and mobile numbers eight times. The guy with no name had been right. She wasn’t answering.
Throughout the morning my concern continued to gently simmer. If she hadn’t picked up by lunchtime, I decided I would ask Monique if I could pop out to check on her. I knew Caroline’s habits nearly as well as my own.
Her mobile was always kept beside her bed, and there was a telephone on Nick’s nightstand. If she was ill at home there was no way she would have been able to ignore the duet of both phones ringing in her ears.
One o’clock came and went and twenty rings of Caroline’s phone had still yielded no reply. That was enough. I couldn’t rest until I checked she was all right. I left the counter and went into the back room to tell Monique I was going, only to find her buttoning up her coat and swirling a long silk scarf around her throat.
‘You’re going out?’ I asked unnecessarily.
‘Is that not obvious? Do you not remember, I have an appointment with that new salesman. I am going to let him take me for an expensive lunch and will let him think that this poor little French woman doesn’t understand the intricacies of running a business. I will wait until we have had the brandies before letting him know the proposal he is making is screwing me under.’
‘Over,’ I corrected automatically.
‘I know that, Emma,’ she said, with a wink. Of course she did.
Monique’s absence left me holding the fort, so there was no way I could check on Caroline, which had been the only thing tamping down my panic all morning. My concern was like a restless tiger, pacing back and forth in its cage. It had nowhere to go, and the longer it was contained, the more desperate and dangerous it grew.
I didn’t want to bother Nick at work, but as I didn’t have his mobile number I had no other way of finding out if Caroline was okay. He was bound to have been in contact with her if she was off sick, and could at least put my mind at rest. It took ages to be put through to his department and when eventually his phone was answered, I was told he was unavailable.
‘I need to speak to him quite urgently,’ I said, hoping I was exaggerating, but afraid that I wasn’t. ‘When will he be free?’
‘I’m sorry; he’s away from the office for two days at a conference. If it’s really urgent I could try to get a message to him.’
I considered this for a moment. ‘No, that’s all right. It can probably wait. I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ I replied, trying to squash my ballooning anxiety back into a manageable-sized container.
