Highly Unsuitable Girl

by Carolyn McCrae

  “You?” Anya could hardly speak for the humiliation. He didn’t answer, she took his silence for agreement.

  “I’ve done what I could, I still own the cottages in Rye but the rest have been sold on. You wouldn’t have thanked me would you? It was far better I did it in the background.” Tim bit his tongue to stop adding more. This was not how he had planned the conversation.

  It was some time before he broke the uncomfortable silence. “I was so jealous of you with your children.”

  “Jealous?” Anya was tired, she wanted to go to sleep not listen to Tim talking so seriously about such important things.

  “I’ve been on my own for years.”

  “You’d never be on your own Tim. Never.”

  He looked at her meaningfully before answering sadly. “Well, Anya darling, there you are very wrong.”

  “You could have found someone. You’re not bad looking for someone nearing 60, you’re comfortably off despite the vast amounts of money you must have paid your ex-wives, you would be quite a catch.” She tried to be light-hearted but knew she failed.

  “Anya, would you believe me if I said there was really only one woman in the world I have ever wanted to be with?”

  She couldn’t answer him. She was tired. She was worried. She had gone back through the ups and downs of her life in the past hour and now she was having to face what was obviously a declaration of love from Tim, the man she had variously lusted after, disliked and even, at times, loathed.

  “The children are grown up now, they’re leaving home, you can have your life back. For seven years you’ve put your life on hold as you’ve looked after them. It didn’t seem to matter to you that they weren’t yours,”

  “They are mine. I adopted them.”

  “You’ve got years ahead of you, Anya darling, you can’t keep living your life through Geoff and his children. Look we’re at Reigate Hill so I haven’t got you long as a captive audience. I need to know something. And, honestly, if you tell me to piss off I will but I need to have asked and I need to have had a response.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” He knew he was going about this all the wrong way.

  “What do you need to ask?” She knew what was coming.

  “I need to ask if you think we could make a match of it.”

  “God you sound like some Regency buck!”

  “I mean a match. Not necessarily a marriage. We probably don’t need to go through all that. What I mean to ask is do you think Mrs Anya Philips and Mr Tim Cross could link arms and face their future together? Equals. A match.”

  “You know the funny thing Tim?” Anya was suddenly relaxed, smiling. “I have never lived with someone without marrying them. I lived with Geoff and married him, then Peter. I don’t think it would go down well at the golf club if we weren’t married so I think you should put your proposal as one of marriage. Then I might think about it.”

  “Would you? Think about it I mean?”

  “Well, there’s an awful lot to be said against it. I would have had sex with my step-son for a start.”

  “When was that? Ten years ago? He’s a big boy now and he can cope with the disappointment of his old man winning.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  “Maggie? She’s been on at me for years to find someone to spend my latter years with so she doesn’t have to worry about looking after me in my dotage. She gives me graphic descriptions of how she really does not want to get involved with clearing the house and finding a suitable care home.”

  “Is that what it has come down to Tim? We’re both afraid of being alone as we get older and all we’ve got left is each other?”

  “I can think of worse reasons for being together. But look what I’m offering Anya. Financial security for one, and don’t say you don’t think that is worth thinking about because I wouldn’t believe you. Then there’s respectability, a position in society? No don’t look at me like that! It is not and can never be unimportant. And don’t forget I love you and have loved you for 30 years. No one has loved you more or for longer. Marry me Anya. Please.”

  Anya looked out of the window as the sun set. She closed her eyes and saw herself standing in a food queue at university and seeing Geoff for the first time, standing under the clock at Charing Cross wondering what his friends would be like and then having fun flirting with them, challenging Kathleen at every turn throughout the years and losing Geoff to her, fighting for her own career and prosperity with and against Peter. She had been told by Miriam, by Vincent and Kenneth and now by Tim that others saw her very differently.

  She still wore her unsuitableness as a badge of honour yet it was a very long time since she had been that unsuitable girl. All the years of her marriage to Peter had been in pursuit of money, comfort and respectability. As mother to Geoff’s children she had made sure their life was as near as possible that of their father, and other children of his class. She had been absorbed into their privileged world. She valued the private school education, the skiing trips to Switzerland and the Concorde flights to luxury in Barbados. She had become one of them, indistinguishable from Kathleen or Esme, Margaret or Gill or Fiona or even Linda. Money had been her obsession even though she professed to despise people who felt that way.

  “Can you drop me off at home, Tim? Give me a day to think things through?”

  “Is that a ‘no’ then?”

  “No, it’s not a ‘no’, it’s a ‘please let me think about it’.”

  She looked around her bedroom thinking if only the walls could tell their tales. She had first slept in it with Geoff on the weekend of Tim and Margaret’s engagement party. Kathleen had last slept in this room on the night before her husband drowned. It had been Geoff’s room throughout his childhood and then again after he had married Fiona. And for the last seven years it had been her own refuge, where she felt close to Geoff and could talk to him of the trials and tribulations of being mother to his children.

  Anya sat on the side of her bed thinking about Tim’s offer. It was certainly tempting. He knew her better than most people and yet he still professed to love her. He offered comfort, friendship and sex. She knew it was an offer any woman of her age should jump at. Everything he had said about what he had and hadn’t done through the years rang true. For once she believed he had not been lying. He had cared about her, he had done what he thought was best most of the time. He had made mistakes. She had made mistakes. They had, perhaps, mistaken sexual attraction for something far more important. Perhaps.

  She reached up and undid the clasp of locket she always wore around her neck. She opened it and looked into Geoff’s fearless, happy eyes. When she had taken the photograph they had had their whole lives ahead of them. How little they had known. She put the chain back around her neck. Dot’s locket would always remind her that she should have high expectations of herself and never accept second best. She held her hands out in front of her and looked at the rings that never left her fingers. There was Geoff’s family emerald that she would have to give to Lizzy one day. ‘Not yet’ she spoke to Geoff as if he were in the room with her, ‘not yet’. She wore two wedding rings, hers and Geoff’s, together. She looked at her empty right hand where her mother’s ring had been for so many years. She had taken it off as Vincent and Kenny had driven away after she had signed away Fishermen Rock. She would sell it, as her mother should have done. She looked down at her hands and clenched her fists.

  Whatever she thought of Tim, however much she was tempted, she could not do it. He may have loved her for many years but she did not love him, and never had. She loved Geoff.

  It was as simple as that.

  She picked up the phone and dialled the number he had given her.

  “Tim? Is that you? Tim, I’m touched, a little angry that you have been checking up on me all these years, but really touched, and flattered.”

  “It’s a no then?”

  “It’s a no.” She confirmed.

  “May I ask
why?” There was something in his voice other than regret.

  “There are so many reasons.”

  “The children? Geoff?” Anya tried to find the right word to describe the tone in his voice.

  “No, Tim, not them.”

  “Something wrong with me then?” Was it upset ego she heard?

  “No Tim, you are a fabulous man in many ways. You must re-marry, you need to be married. But not to me.”

  “Then why?” He did seem to want to know her reasons, but it wasn’t curiosity she heard.

  “I would be so wrong for you.”

  “Unsuitable?”

  Anya smiled. She realised that subtle tone was relief.

  “Highly.”

  About the Author

  Carolyn McCrae is the prize-winning author of The Iniquities Trilogy.

  She was born in Cheshire in 1950. After a lifetime living and working in the south of England she has recently moved to rural Shropshire where she lives with her huband, Colin, and their ageing black cat.