Love Nest

by Julia Llewellyn

  ‘Why are they being like this?’ Gemma asked Alex. ‘Why can’t they be pleased for us?’

  ‘They’re jealous because we’ve been twice blessed. Two babies. We’ll have to come up with another name besides Chudney. What do you think of Chudwina?’

  At twenty weeks they returned for the second scan.

  ‘All’s well,’ said the sonographer. ‘They’re even both head down for now, though that will most likely change. Do you want to know the sex?’

  ‘No!’ said Alex.

  ‘Yes!’ said Gemma.

  ‘Why?’ Alex said. ‘Don’t you want a surprise?’

  ‘Not really. You know I like to be in control.’

  ‘Well, that ain’t never going to happen again,’ said the sonographer with a smirk. ‘Not with twins. Sorry, but it’s true. Get all the help you can and then some.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Alex urged her. ‘Come on. We’ve got this far. Let’s just let life take us where it wants for a while.’

  The sonographer printed out some muzzy grey photos. Two blobs in what seemed like a very small space. Chudney had a higher forehead than the other, Chudwina had squidgier cheeks. Gemma gazed at them for hours, like an archaeologist inspecting an ancient bit of Sumerian pottery for clues. Would one look like Alex and one like Bridget? Or perhaps there’d be some throwback and they’d end up looking like Grandpa Meehan, who had an enormous chin but a disproportionately small nose, not to mention a vile temper. It didn’t matter. So long as they didn’t take after her mother-in-law.

  She was overcome with the need to share her news with Bridget. There was no one else in the world, she thought, who would coo over the pictures like she had, no one else who would fully share in the excitement.

  But Bridget was still nowhere to be found. Texts went unanswered, and when she called her number it went straight to voicemail.

  ‘Why don’t you ask your parents?’ Alex said.

  Gemma was unwilling. She didn’t want to alert her mother to the fact that the two daughters weren’t in touch; she was stressed right now, as the neighbours had decided to build a second villa bang between her parents’ lawn and their sea view. Last time she’d called Mum for an update, she’d said she was too upset to talk about it, but Gemma could get a blow-by-blow account of what was going on on her Facebook page.

  Facebook.

  Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that before? Gemma proudly avoided Facebook, declaring it to be for sad, time-wasting losers. Meaning it was exactly the kind of place her sister would flourish. She logged in. She searched for Bridget Hobson. She found her straight away. Her sister had posted a picture of herself in a purple feather boa doing a peace sign. She had four hundred and ninety-five friends, from all over the world, collected on yoga retreats, in ashrams, on self-discovery workshops in the Brazilian rainforest, beach huts in Thailand.

  She had no idea if the olive branch would be accepted. But she had to hold it out. Reluctantly, against all her principles, she made up her own Facebook page, uploaded her scan picture, and – now she was part of the system – asked Bridget to be her friend. As if they were six years old. She added a message.

  If you want to see your biological children then click on this link. I hope you’re well and happy. I miss you. G xxx

  The message disappeared into cyberspace. Gemma blew a kiss after it. She’d hope, but not too much.

  Grace was delighted with her herb garden. The sage, thyme and lavender were already growing fast, the rosemary wasn’t far behind. Even though the weather had turned and it grew dark so frustratingly early now, she was fitting in as much as possible. She’d lost two stone. Anton Beleek had been back three times to negotiate with her, once with a rather snooty young woman called Lucinda, and three times she’d shown him her progress before rejecting his offer. He’d taken it in good spirit.

  Coming back into the kitchen, face scarlet, she turned her attention to the answerphone. A message. She pressed ‘play’.

  ‘Grace! It’s Verity. I have just received a call from a Lucinda Gresham at Beleek Developments. Apparently, they’ve been trying to buy the house for months and you haven’t been passing the message on to us. I can’t believe it! You know how worried we are about school fees. Really, Grace. This is awful. Call me back at once with an explanation.’

  Grace smiled and pressed ‘delete’. The next message rolled out.

  ‘Grace, all right. I have a proposition for you. We buy the house. You become its gardener. We give you the gatehouse to live in for ever and you can take charge of the grounds. What do you say to that? Eh? Call me.’

  Message three. ‘Anton again. Why haven’t you got back to me? Listen, what do you say I come down again and take you out to dinner to discuss my plan?’

  Grace thought that could be an idea. She’d call him back once she’d planted the next lot of bulbs. She had to press on, the frosts would set in soon.

  Alex was home early that night. He found Gemma sitting in front of the television, watching the Living Channel with its non-stop round of birth documentaries. She couldn’t help it, she was addicted, crying every time the baby finally appeared. She knew she was pretty much destined for a C-section but she still wanted to discover as much as possible about every birth option and keep them all open.

  ‘I’ve got news,’ Alex said.

  ‘Oh yes?’ The woman who’d looked so immaculate at the start of the programme was now huffing on all fours. Gemma found it seriously alarming. Was this really what birth was like? Perhaps the C-section was the best idea after all.

  ‘I know where Massy is.’

  ‘What?’ That had her attention.

  ‘Frankie Holmes found him.’

  ‘Frankie Holmes?’

  ‘Yeah. The scumbag I got off. He owed me one. So I asked him to track Massimo Briganza down. Wasn’t hard. He’s living in Penge. Doing casual jobs here and there. Turns out he’s a heroin addict. Got previous for robbery and fraud.’

  ‘Oh my God. And he was Bridget’s boyfriend.’

  ‘I know. What a charmer.’

  ‘But now we can nobble him?’ Gemma imagined Massy being carried off in a Black Maria. One of the babies – Chudney, she thought – kicked to show its approval.

  ‘No, Poochie, we can’t. He didn’t commit any crime. You gave him the money.’

  ‘But it was meant for Bridget.’

  ‘There is absolutely no proof of that. Sorry, Pooch.’ Alex’s eyes lit up behind his glasses. ‘But it’s not all bad news. Frankie’s got his eye on him. He’s having a word with his contacts.’

  ‘His contacts?’

  ‘You don’t want to know. But I have a sense Massy’s petty dealings will be heavily scrutinized from now on. Meaning he may end up in A & E by the end of the week. Not to mention in the Crown Court for coke dealing.’

  ‘Frankie’s done that for you?’

  Alex shrugged. ‘I told you. He owes me. Big time. Now will you acknowledge that my job has got some uses?’

  It was Christmas Eve. At The Hawthorns, Briar Road, St Albans, Karen was squatting in front of the telly, one eye on Jonathan Ross flirting lasciviously with Girls Aloud, the other on Bea’s new bicycle, which she was ambitiously trying to wrap. All around her were overflowing packing cases. They’d unpacked a few cooking implements and bedding, but everything else was still buried under bubble wrap.

  It had all happened so fast. A month ago, despite the distractions of Phil being in and out of hospital, she’d put the house back on the market. Property was still in the doldrums and she wasn’t expecting any response, but she felt she had to do everything she could to get them out of the home where they’d suffered so much. But the very first night, the agent had called saying a couple with two small children, looking to make the move out of London, were interested. They viewed the following morning. They offered below the asking price, but they offered cash. On condition they exchanged within three weeks.

  Karen heard about The Hawthorns, a rambling house on
the town outskirts with a vast garden where an old lady had recently died (the girls hadn’t been told that, it would freak them out). They put in an offer to the family, and they’d snapped it up, on condition of a rapid sale. They’d been out of the old house by the end of the week. Not without a certain amount of tears from Karen and the girls. But the tears had quickly dried when they’d seen the size of the garden and their new bedrooms. They’d moaned a bit when they’d had to suffer a few nights of no central heating, but Phil had quickly fixed that. Now, they were both asleep upstairs.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Phil stuck his head round the door. He’d been in the cellar, working on the finer details of Bea’s new doll’s house which he’d made for her all by himself. Karen would never tell him that in Bea’s exacting circles doll’s houses had been ‘lame’ for about three years. It was good for him to have a project. The chemo and radiotherapy had gone well – the next round was due in the new year, but the doctors were optimistic.

  And Phil… Phil had been much better this time round. Still often grumpy, still snappy, but he was attempting to keep a lid on it. He appeared to be pleased about Karen’s new job, and the consequent pay rise. He was distracting himself by making over The Hawthorns, and when that was done, he thought he might try to snap up another couple of properties while the market was on the skids and have them ready in time for the recovery.

  So. ‘Everything’s fine,’ Karen said, smiling. ‘Do you feel better being here? Away from Coverley Drive?’

  ‘I do. I know it’s all superstitious baloney but I feel as if the demons have lifted. What I was wrong about was thinking we had to go so far. Just the other side of town is fine. And what about you? Has it broken your heart not being in Coverley Drive?’

  ‘Nope. I’ve realized that much as I thought I loved Coverley Drive, you can’t actually have your heart broken by a house. It’s the people who are in it that count. Though it helps if the heating’s working.’

  ‘I told you I’d be able to sort it. I’m a real man now.’

  Karen smiled at him. He was gaunt, still the same bleached colour as his shirt, completely bald now – almost certainly for ever. But in the twinkling lights of the tree, she could see the old Phil, the one she’d loved far more than she’d ever realized. The Phil she suddenly wanted to be curled up in bed with, celebrating the fact they’d made it through another year.

  She hadn’t forgotten Max. In fact, she missed him with a fury that was physically painful. At least once a day she had to lock herself in the toilet for a secret cry. Virtually every night she dreamed about him and woke sweaty and confused. He’d been working out his notice, so occasionally she’d spotted him across the canteen, and felt as if her heart had stopped. She’d read his stories in the paper. Every now and then, a text from him had arrived. Or an email. She’d deleted them, without reading. But most days now she managed to smile at things the girls said. She’d even laughed at Sophie’s reaction on realizing life with a newborn baby wasn’t straight out of the Cath Kidston catalogue. Work kept her incredibly busy, making all the changes she’d itched to do years earlier, and even though circulation wasn’t going up, it was staying steady, which was something in these times. Talking to doctors about Phil kept her busy. But Max was leaving for South Africa this week. By the time she returned to work in the new year he’d be gone for ever. That would make it easier. She’d get through it. In time she would be happy again.

  ‘Can you prove it?’ she asked Phil, forcing a grin. Forcing grins was the only way to get through this.

  ‘Prove what?’

  ‘That you’re a real man.’

  Phil grinned. ‘Oh well,’ he shrugged. ‘If I must.’

  He scooped her up in his arms. Karen shrieked, delighted. He couldn’t be as weak as she’d feared. Either that or she’d lost weight.

  ‘There’s a lot of rooms in this house that need christening.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Remember when we moved into Coverley Drive? We managed the conservatory then.’

  ‘And the shower room. And the utility room.’

  ‘And the freezing cold attic,’ he laughed.

  ‘We’d better get a move on,’ she said gamely. She wasn’t in the mood, but she had to try. It wouldn’t be as bad as she feared.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ he said. ‘I think the kitchen might be the place. Right over the Belfast sink.’

  ‘Get you, Mr Drake!’

  ‘I have got you. Luckily.’

  They started to kiss. It had been a long time. Phil’s hand crept up inside her shirt. Images of Max flashed through Karen’s mind.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Mrs Drake,’ Phil whispered in her ear. ‘You know I owe everything to you.’

  ‘And a Merry Christmas to you too, my darling.’

  Gemma was now the size of a Sumo wrestler. She sat on the sofa watching corny Christmas movies and ordering pre-wrapped presents on the internet. She had agonizing heartburn. She had piles. About nineteen hundred times a day and night she waddled to the loo. She was loving every second of it.

  For the past few weeks her regular interest bills from Raf the pawnbroker had been replaced by letters warning her that if she didn’t pay her debt soon, he was going to have to sell the bracelet. Just a couple of days ago one had arrived saying the bracelet was now on sale and she’d receive whatever money was left after interest and expenses were recouped. It would probably be a thousand or so quid, she calculated. When the cheque arrived she would give it to an egg donation charity.

  Her parents had no desire to leave Spain and his were visiting Alex’s brother in San Francisco. So they would have a quiet Christmas at home. For Christmas dinner, he was going to prepare a duck, with red cabbage and potatoes in goose fat. No Christmas pudding, they both hated it; instead they were going to divide a chocolate log between them.

  ‘Got to keep your strength up,’ Alex grinned. He kept telling her how much he was enjoying her new, curvy body.

  ‘If I breastfeed the twins I’ll have to eat like a horse, apparently.’

  ‘I’ll order you some oats.’

  She ruffled his hair contentedly.

  ‘You know, I feel so happy here. It’s funny – before I was pregnant I was fretting about how we had to be living in the perfect house, near the perfect school, that our lives just wouldn’t work if everything didn’t fit into the blueprint. Now I realize I’d just been watching too many property shows on telly. You don’t have to live in a vast house to be happy. So long as you’ve got your loved ones around you and a roof over your head, that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Alex said, as she paused for breath. ‘I think you missed your vocation writing Hallmark greeting cards.’

  ‘Bugger off,’ she laughed as the door buzzed.

  ‘Can you get that? With any luck it’ll be DHL delivering the baby monitor. Once they’re done, I’ve got everyone ticked off.’

  ‘Hello?’ Alex said into the entryphone. ‘Hello?’ There was a tiny pause and then he said, ‘Bridget. Yes. Of course you can come up.’

  44

  Lucinda and Gareth were sitting in a pub in the City, surrounded by flushed-faced workers, released for the holidays, ties removed, clinking glasses, full of Christmas goodwill to all men.

  ‘So how’s everyone at Dunraven Mackie?’ she bellowed, over the jukebox. Jona Lewie was pleading to stop the cavalry. Tiddle-diddle, pum-pum. Tiddle-diddle-pum.

  ‘The same as ever. Marsha’s son’s on remand for GBH now. Niall’s wife’s pregnant again. Joanne keeps stealing my deals. All as normal, in other words. Oh, and I had a call from a chap called Daniel Chen the other day. He wanted to let you know he’s marrying the lady you found hiding in the shower. Whatever that means.’

  Lucinda laughed. ‘Long story.’

  ‘Do you miss us?’

  ‘I miss you. But otherwise no.’

  ‘Well, you’re doing great guns as far as I can tell. I read you acquired the site of the old hospital in Fitzroy Square. That’s a fantast
ic location. How did you do it?’

  ‘Aha,’ Lucinda winked.

  ‘So it’s working out with Anton?’ Gareth said this carefully.

  ‘Not too badly.’ Lucinda was equally cautious. ‘I’ve slaved for him. He gave me a chance. I owe him. He’s put me in charge of a huge project in Devon converting an Elizabethan manor house into an oligarch’s mansion. Everyone’s bleating about how the economic climate’s all wrong for it, but we’re going to have the last laugh. When happy days return we’ll be up and running, ready for billionaires with cash to splash on mink-lined fridges.’

  ‘Sounds great. You know I’m from Dorset, just next door. You’ll have to give me a tour some time when I’m down visiting my folks.’

  ‘I’d love to. Come and have a tour some time. Maybe a sneaky swim in the pool. Watch a film in the cinema room.’ Lucinda smiled. She’d been thinking a lot about Gareth recently. Although work was frantic and very fulfilling, she was still a bit lonely. She’d considered internet dating or speed dating, but the prospect was too depressing. After all, even in the unlikely event of meeting someone who wasn’t a serial killer, she’d have to lie as usual about who she really was. No wonder she’d never got close to anyone.

  Gareth had loomed in her memory. Kind, funny, reliable. Interested in property. Really very good-looking, when you thought about it. And she’d spent so much time in Devon recently she was well aware a West Country accent didn’t mean you were a bit dim. Far from it, judging by the toughness with which the contractors had negotiated their deal.

  ‘Anyway, that’s me. What about you?’ she continued.

  ‘I’ve got a new girlfriend, actually,’ Gareth said shyly.

  ‘Oh! Right! Lovely!’ Lucinda took a larger than usual sip of her gin and tonic. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Mia.’

  ‘How long’s that been going on for?’

  ‘Oh, just a month or so. You know. Early days. We’ll see.’ Gareth shrugged, his face bright pink. ‘Actually, she’s going to join us in a minute. She works in a solicitor’s firm near here. That’s how I met her. She was doing some conveyancing.’