The Next Best Thing

by Sarah Long

  ‘Good God, Andrew, you sound like you’re having sex,’ said Lydia. Clive looked up from serving the individual lemon tarts, which were garnished with raspberries. He must have been distracted by Dr Firth’s performance, because when Rupert came to eat his dessert he noticed that a couple of stray baby new potatoes had found their way in among the fruit.

  In bed that night, Rupert was consumed by self-loathing. I am a coward, he thought, as he lay beside Lydia in a post-coital cocoon of separateness and stared at the ceiling. I am a coward, and a bastard, and a liar. A more sensitive person than Lydia might have realised that his heart was no longer in it, that he no longer cared about the sex and the wedding plans and all the rest. Yet Lydia seemed entirely impervious, blissfully locked into her own sweet existence that was going entirely to plan.

  ‘I’m so glad you talked me out of moving,’ she said in the dark. ‘You were quite right about my flirtation with the hot tub, it was ridiculous. Much more sensible to stay here, especially now the maximalist decor is really coming together.’ She shifted in the bed, unable to sleep with everything that was churning in her brain. ‘The castle is booked and I’ve got a fantastic calligrapher lined up to write the invitations, she did Madonna’s wedding. So the only thing left to settle now is the honeymoon.’

  Rupert stared upwards in a misery of indifference.

  ‘I had wondered about the new hotel in Antigua by the people who did One Aldwych, but then it was all over the Sunday supplements, and I realised that that is the whole problem. You can’t find anywhere these days that’s not overrun by people you frankly wouldn’t choose to have lying on the next sun-lounger. But then I came across a solution.’

  She propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over her honeymoon companion, the one who would be paying for it all. There was no shame in it; she considered he was getting excellent value for money. Like those infuriating women in the L’Oréal ads, she was worth it.

  ‘There’s this travel club that operates out of New York,’ she went on. ‘Normally there’s a waiting list but I know someone who can get me in. You pay a fifteen thousand dollar joining fee, then five thousand dollars a year membership, and they find you places to stay that aren’t listed in any brochures.’

  ‘So you still have to pay for the holiday on top of that?’

  ‘Of course. But at least you know there won’t be any dorks at the next table who read about it in a magazine.’

  Maybe now was the moment, thought Rupert. He should tell her that actually he had been thinking that it wasn’t an awfully good idea for them to get married after all. He’d been having doubts for a while, and now that he’d fallen in love with her old school friend, it really was out of the question.

  Instead, he said: ‘It’s late, let’s talk about it in the morning.’

  In the morning he would think of something, or a deus ex machina would intervene and sort it out without him needing to take action. A freak earthquake would swallow Lydia up or she would be coated with fairy dust and fall for someone else. Then a flying carpet would carry him and Jane to a turreted eastern city, leaving their old lives behind them.

  Oh well, thought Lydia, at least he’s not saying no.

  ‘I thought we could go to France for Easter,’ she said as a palliative, ‘keep the costs down’. That should please him, there wasn’t much to spend your money on over there. ‘We could invite some friends,’ she went on, ‘maybe Jane and Will. She’s such a good friend to me, in a wholesome sort of way. And Will can be good fun as long as you don’t take him too seriously.’

  Jane come to France with them? Could fate really be serving him up such a delicious proposition? Rupert lay still in the dark, quietly scheming, getting to grips with this new possibility. Jane would have lunch in his kitchen just as he had dreamed, wearing her jacket that matched his tablecloth. He could show her his garden, just as he had planned it. The only difference was, she would be there with Will, and he would be with Lydia. The redundant partners, the spoilers, the flies in the soup. Even so, there was no way he was going to knock it on the head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a voice that was over-casual, ‘Jane and Will seemed very nice. Why don’t you ask them?’

  TWELVE

  Sunday afternoon found Jane and Will and Liberty in one of those so-called communal gardens that are hidden away in the snobbier parts of London. You might think from the name that these were democratic pleasure grounds for all-comers, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact they were strictly private, for keyholders only, while everyone else remained outside, noses pressed against the railings. The keeper of the keys was invariably someone who spoke like Prince Charles and got very snooty about what you could and couldn’t do in the gardens.

  One thing you were allowed to do in Ladbroke Gardens was hold a children’s birthday party. Liberty had been invited by her school friend Lolly to take part in a teddy bear’s picnic. Five hundred chocolate teddy bears had been hidden among the bushes, and the children were supposed to find as many as they could before returning to Lolly’s house to watch a troupe of acrobats and a three-man magic show, followed by tea, when someone from a well-known boy band would be singing ‘Happy Birthday’. As these things went, it was really rather modest.

  Will didn’t normally stoop to attending children’s parties, but he was making an exception since he vaguely knew the birthday girl’s father from university. Mark Thomas was one of those old-fashioned northern meritocrats who had climbed out of grimness, encouraged by a self-taught father who read improving books when he got back from the pit. He won his grammar-school place and Cambridge scholarship in the days when education was still the poor child’s passport to success. After a stint at the BBC, Mark had become a hugely successful thriller writer. Like Will, he was on to his second family, and like Will, he remained a socialist. It was galling that Mark had earned enough from his middlebrow books to buy himself a cavernous house in Notting Hill even after the cost of a divorce, but Will forgave him. At least being less rich left him the intellectual high-ground.

  They stood talking together now, the travel writer and the thriller tart, grey-haired old dads, watching the children running around, stuffing the teddy bears into party bags, their eyes alight with greed.

  ‘Little beggars,’ said Mark. ‘How many have you got now, Will?’

  ‘Three,’ he said, ‘two boys and a girl. Jane was keen to have more, but I told her, “It’s all right for you to say that, but don’t forget I’ve already been there.”’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Mark, nodding in sympathy over women and their outrageous demands. ‘I was a softer touch than you, though, I’ve got seven. Wouldn’t be without them, mind.’

  Will watched Jane coming towards them, holding some evergreen leaves and bark samples that she had stripped off the trees. She always did that when she visited gardens, she liked to take home samples and identify them from a large guide to trees that she kept by the bed, like a nerdy girl-guide with her stamp collection. Will found it rather sweet. She was wearing a long cream sweater-coat that she had found in a charity shop and a cloche hat that made her look young and vulnerable. He introduced her to his friend, and was pleased to see the gleam in Mark’s eyes.

  ‘Thank you for inviting Liberty,’ she said. ‘I do envy you this garden, but I am rather mystified. For all the cultural diversity everyone claims for Notting Hill, I can see nothing but white people in here.’

  ‘Good God, Jane,’ said Will, embarrassed, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t talk like my grandmother. People aren’t identified by their colour any more. Anyway, that’s nonsense.’ He gazed around, trying to prove her wrong. ‘Look, there you go, over there!’

  A black man had just arrived through the gate and was being greeted by everyone he passed.

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s our piano teacher,’ said Mark, ‘he’s a great guy, knows everyone.’

  Poor bloke, thought Jane, he couldn’t get a moment’s peace with all that lot fighting over
him.

  Her phone rang, and she stepped back to answer it.

  ‘Only moi,’ said Lydia. ‘Where are you? I’m lying butt-naked on a slab with my acupuncturist.’

  So beat that if you can. Even on a Sunday afternoon Lydia liked to be competitive.

  ‘Good job I haven’t got a video phone then. I’m in Ladbroke Gardens as it happens.’

  ‘Listen, we were talking about Easter and we wondered if you and Will would like to come and join us in France. We’ll be staying at Rupert’s house in the South.’

  Jane was lost for words as her secret world came ebbing dangerously close to her real life. She had seen Rupert just two days ago and he hadn’t said anything. They had walked over the bridge to the Tate Modern to see a weather installation, hanging like a luminous orange cloud. She couldn’t imagine spending several days together with him and Will and Lydia, she wasn’t sure she was up to that.

  ‘Hallo? Jane, can you hear me?’

  It must be the house with the check tablecloth, thought Jane. The one he had told her about, with the iron gates and the green shutters and the garden where he grew his Beale’s roses. He must have put Lydia up to this, he must have told her to invite them. What was he playing at?

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said guardedly, fiddling with a piece of silver-birch bark that she had picked earlier, and dropping pieces of it onto the ground. ‘We’d obviously have to bring Liberty,’ she added.

  Dammit, thought Lydia, she’d forgotten about the child. She turned to restrain the acupuncturist who was being a little too intrusive with his needles.

  ‘Sorry Jane,’ she said, returning to her phone, ‘Sami was getting a bit carried away. Of course you can bring Liberty if you want, but doesn’t she have to go to school?’

  ‘Not at Easter.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Lydia thought quickly. It would be churlish to withdraw the invitation, and one child wasn’t going to ruin things, was it? It could just play in the garden, or watch telly. It might even work in her favour to prove to Rupert what a bore it was having children. He seemed to be hoping for them to start a family right away. Or he used to be, he hadn’t mentioned it recently.

  ‘Right, that’s settled then,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll need to check with Will,’ said Jane, ‘I don’t know how he’s placed . . .’ Although she could guess that Easter with Rupert would not figure high on Will’s list of things to do before he died.

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry, he’ll be up for it,’ said Lydia. She was sure that Will would want to come; she could tell he still fancied her from the way he had flirted with her at the party, kissing her goodbye on the neck just below her ear to prove he still remembered her favourite places. It would be good to have a frisson running as an undercurrent. Anything to break the monotony of a week a deux in the French countryside. ‘Let me know then,’ she continued, ‘quite soon if you would, so I can wheel in some replacements if you can’t make it. I don’t want to be stuck out there with only my fiance for company, darling though he is. After all, I’ve got a lifetime of that heading my way.’

  Jane felt a stab of jealousy. She wished she had a lifetime of Rupert to look forward to, she couldn’t think of anything nicer. It was clear she would be accepting the invitation, she couldn’t throw up the chance of spending a whole week with him, even in such strange circumstances. ‘I’ll call you back,’ she said.

  Jane put her phone away and walked back to join the men. ‘Time to go back for tea, I reckon,’ said Mark. ‘I’ll get Vanessa to herd them up.’ He wandered off to help his wife, a tiny blonde thing chosen to complement his own rugged physique. Will turned to wait for Jane.

  ‘That was Lydia on the phone,’ said Jane, thinking she might as well broach the subject right away, ‘inviting us to Provence for Easter. Rupert’s got a house there, apparently.’

  ‘Is he going too?’

  ‘Of course, they’re engaged.’

  ‘Engaged! At their age, I ask you. It’s quite grotesque, like they’re a blushing couple of teenagers.’

  ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think I think?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.’

  H e pretended to ponder the question. ‘Let me see, Easter, springtime, when a travel writer’s thoughts turn to journeys, to undiscovered lands . . . or else to a banker’s anodyne second home that is bound to epitomise the worst style tendencies of Provencale life. I’d say it was a bit of a no-brainer, wouldn’t you?’

  Jane decided to appeal to his well-developed sense of meanness. ‘It’s a cheap option to take Liberty on a week’s holiday.’

  He thought about it again. He’d be off soon on his proper travels. And at least Lydia could be entertaining. They might even find an opportunity to relive old times: why not, it might be fun, and he would enjoy getting one over on the banker. Maybe he’d give her a call next week, meet her for lunch and see how the land lay.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, ‘you can tell her we’ll come.’

  ‘So,’ said Jane to Rupert on the phone a few days later, ‘I finally get to see your house in France ‘

  They were supposed to be meeting up later at the sir John Soane Museum, but she couldn’t wait to speak to him.

  ‘I told you I’d take you there one day,’ he said, swivelling round in his office chair so he didn’t have to look at Richard, ‘but it wasn’t my idea to invite you both. Lydia thought you’d be good company. I couldn’t argue with that, though I’m not sure old Sinbad would be my first choice of holiday companion.’

  He took a sip of water from the bottle on his desk; just thinking about Will made Rupert go hot under the collar. He always referred to him as Sinbad now, demonising him as an old sea-bandit.

  ‘So it wasn’t your idea, then?’ said Jane. ‘I wondered what you were up to . . .’

  ‘I know what I’d like to be up to,’ he muttered quietly, checking to make sure Richard wasn’t listening in, ‘I’d like us to be going there, just the two of us.’

  ‘Never mind . . .’

  ‘What do you mean, never mind? We can’t go on like this, you know that.’

  Jane doodled on an envelope. She knew he was right, but she didn’t want to hear it. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she said. ‘Are you still all right for this afternoon?’

  Rupert saw Richard was off the phone and waiting to talk to him. ‘Of course,’ he said, more calmly. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Working. And thinking about my garden. I’m going to plant a hot summer-bed, with only yellow and orange flowers.’

  ‘Are you? I hope you’re going to include geum borisii, gorgeous deep orange flower, hummocky green foliage . . .’

  ‘It’s on the list.’

  ‘Coreopsis verticillata is very striking. And Gertrude Jekyll was very keen on using dwarf evening primroses with geum borisii, you could back it with some purple leaves, like stinking hellebore.’

  ‘Too tasteful, I’m only going for the really bright stuff. I want it to be truly garish!’

  ‘African marigolds then. Yellow Climax, with double, globular flowers, you can’t get more garish than that!’

  Richard was standing beside his desk now.

  ‘Got to go,’ said Rupert in a businesslike voice, ‘I’ll sec you later.’

  Jane hung up and pushed aside her gardening books. She was translating a book on Lacan now, a French psychoanalyst feted by the the sobcante-huit generation, a kind of Freud for hippies. She was just getting to grips with the Hysterical Discourse when the doorbell rang. Probably someone selling dusters. Will told her to ignore them, but she felt sorry for them, cold-calling like that, trying to sell stuff at twice what you’d pay at the supermarket.

  She opened the door and looked up to see Rupert, standing big in the doorway, arms crossed.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered in delight, looking round to see if anyone was watching. She didn’t even know her nei
ghbours’ names, though, so they were hardly going to snitch on her. ‘We’re supposed to meet later, at the museum.’

  ‘I just had to see you.’

  ‘You’re mad. How did you know Will wasn’t here?’

  ‘A hunch . Anyway, I knew it would be you who answered the door. Can I come in?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I suppose so.’

  He grinned. ‘Very gracious of you. So this is your home. You’ve seen mine, but I’ve not seen yours, it’s only fair.’

  He stepped into the hall and she closed the door behind him. It was odd seeing him there by the Perspex balustrade, out of his setting. For a moment she thought he was going to sweep her up in his arms and ravish her there and then, but he just said, ‘Which way to the garden?’

  She pointed down the stairs and followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Your office,’ he said with a smile, looking at her computer and the messy pile of books, then opening the French windows.

  ‘Behind the shed, right?’ he said, walking outside and down the path until he came to the hot bed, newly dug over and marked with wooden sticks. ‘I just wanted to check the site, you have to be careful about drainage for coreopsis, and they prefer some shelter. But that’s OK, you’ve done your homework.’ He looked up. ‘You can invite me in for a drink now, before we go out to lunch.’

  ‘Are we still going to the museum?’

  ‘Of course. I never break a date.’

  In the kitchen, Jane took a bottle of wine from the fridge and uncorked it. She felt clumsy and self-conscious, it was mean of him to sneak up on her like that when she wasn’t expecting him. She hadn’t even got changed yet, but maybe her pyjamas could be passed off as a tracksuit.