by Lucy Diamond
When Jay dropped her off later on, she felt herself stiffening as he parked the car. What now? A kiss, an embrace? A smouldering look as he leaned over and took her hand?
Her heart skipped a beat as he pulled on the handbrake, but he merely smiled. ‘There,’ he said politely. It was barely ten o’clock.
She swallowed. ‘Jay, about what happened …’ she began haltingly. ‘I’m sorry about … you know. How it turned out between us. The things I said.’ There was a massive lump in her throat as she spoke. ‘I was just … upset. I think I went a bit mad.’
His eyes softened. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said gently. ‘Really. I know it was a horrendous time for your family. And …’ Now it was his turn to look awkward. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I was insensitive, I was selfish, I didn’t know how to comfort you. I couldn’t handle the situation, either.’
She nodded, her lips pressed tight together, terrified she might do something awful like let out a sob.
He patted her arm. ‘No hard feelings, yeah?’ he said.
‘No hard feelings,’ she echoed hoarsely, trying to smile.
God, it was hard being a grown-up, Polly thought to herself as she lay in bed that night. Why was it all so complicated?
Her whole life she’d tried to do the right thing, she’d tried to be someone her family would be proud of. And for so long she’d been absolutely sure of herself, convinced that she’d been on the best path forward. Returning to Elderchurch this summer had muddled everything up, though, thrown her whole life up in the air. Completely unexpectedly, she had come to regret severing herself so brutally from the people she loved, all because of a guilty conscience and the conviction that, deep down, she was a bad person who didn’t deserve any better. With hindsight, that didn’t seem to have been the best course of action after all.
From now on she would try a different way to make amends for what had gone so wrong in the past, she decided, rolling over and putting her arms around herself. She’d start rebuilding the bridges she’d smashed down all those years ago, attempt to put things right again as best she could by being a better daughter and sister, a nicer friend. And maybe, just maybe, she could even be the sort of woman that a man like Jay could fall in love with again …
Chapter Twenty-One
Clare hadn’t heard anything from Steve since his strange phone call the weekend before. She’d quizzed the children when they’d come home from his place, to try to pin down exactly what they might have said that he could possibly use against her, but they’d both looked blank.
‘The thing is, Daddy seems to have got it into his head that me making soap and bubble bath in the kitchen is some kind of health hazard,’ Clare said, trying to sound as light-hearted as possible about it. ‘I was just wondering why he would think that. Might you have said anything that gave him that impression?’
Leila bit her lip. ‘I might have said the smells make me sneeze,’ she confessed warily. ‘But that was all.’ She glanced at her brother. ‘Oh, and he asked about Alex’s leg too …’
Alex’s leg? Clare felt nonplussed until she looked down at the limb in question and saw the purple bruise blooming there just above her son’s knee. ‘How did you get that?’ she asked.
‘I was chasing Leila and tripped over a box of stuff in the kitchen,’ he shrugged, looking as if he couldn’t care less. ‘Dad went on about it for ages, though.’
I bet he did. ‘Right,’ Clare said, rolling her eyes. ‘Well, it sounds like one big fuss about nothing to me, but never mind. Thanks for telling me.’
Alex darted off down the garden to dangle dangerously from the apple tree, but Leila was more hesitant. ‘Is Dad … cross with you?’ she asked after a moment.
‘I think so,’ Clare replied, ‘but he shouldn’t be. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
Leila’s head was bowed. ‘I’m sorry I told him about the sneezing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.’
Clare hugged her. ‘I’m not in trouble, love,’ she said, crossing her fingers behind her daughter’s back. ‘Dad’s got the wrong end of the stick, that’s all.’
Comforting words, hopefully spoken. But then the bomb dropped the following week, when a letter landed on the doormat one morning. The headed paper from Steve’s solicitor and the formal language he used were merely the velvet glove for the iron fist within: My client has instructed me to convey his unhappiness at the unsuitable living conditions of the children’s dwelling place … Does not want the children’s home to become ‘a factory’ environment … Is the council aware that the domestic residence is being used as business premises? … My client hopes the situation can be resolved immediately … otherwise will be forced to contact social services and the housing department in order to take this matter further …
She read it once, and then again, because her eyes and brain couldn’t take it all in the first time. The fucking bastard, she thought. The miserable, spiteful, petty, shitty bastard’s threatening me. But why?
‘Honestly, what a complete prat,’ Polly said, scanning the letter when Clare silently passed it to her over the breakfast table. ‘Ignore him. It’s a load of meaningless flannel. He’s just trying to scare you, the pillock.’
‘Who’s a pillock?’ Leila wanted to know, from where she was sitting on the floor, trying to teach Fred to play dead.
‘What is a pillock?’ Alex asked with interest, sauntering in wearing nothing but a pair of pyjama bottoms, his hair tousled from being in bed.
Your father, Clare wanted to reply, but merely clenched her jaw and said, ‘Nobody’, before stuffing the letter into the dustbin where it belonged.
‘Come on, Fred, you pillock, roll over,’ Leila said to the dog, lying down next to him. ‘Like this!’
The hairy pillock wagged his tail delightedly, but didn’t move otherwise. Another time Clare might have laughed as Leila started pushing at his body, trying to make him obey, but laughing didn’t seem possible. She didn’t know what Steve was up to, but she didn’t like it one bit.
The summer rumbled along, with a bright sunny July morphing into a thundery, muggy August, and Steve continuing to be a jerk. When he’d next come to the house to pick up the children he’d made a point of barging through to the kitchen, as if to inspect the premises. Clare’s hackles rose as he strode around her kitchen looking for evidence of her ‘factory’ in action, no doubt. Little did he know that she’d temporarily relocated the so-called factory to the shed at the bottom of the garden so that, as far as he was concerned, she’d toed the line and done what he’d asked.
Not that he had any right to attempt to lay down the law, but sometimes you had to jump through hoops for a quiet life.
He’d sniffed theatrically – obviously hoping to detect polluting fumes of vanilla or lime, or perhaps even bring on his very own sneezing fit: proof! – but she’d already thought ahead and had flung the windows and back door wide open hours before he was due to arrive. The only thing he could smell was the fragrant grass clippings, from where she’d mown the lawn earlier that day.
So up yours, Steve.
‘Good,’ he said after a moment, as if satisfied with his inspection, and it was all she could do to stop herself from braining him with the rolling pin. Self-righteous idiot.
But if she thought that would be the end of his problem with her, she was wrong. The next morning he telephoned to say that actually he’d decided to have the children for an extra day, given that they didn’t have to rush back for school.
He’d decided. Just like that.
‘Obviously, as we have joint custody, I am entitled to have them fifty per cent of the time,’ he’d reminded her smugly, ‘and so that’s what we’re going to do. I’ll bring them back tomorrow.’
‘But—’ she said, although he’d already cut her off.
She stood there in the living room with the buzzing phone to her ear, feeling incensed that he was behaving so childishly. She hated that he was using Leil
a and Alex as pawns to get at her like this. I am entitled to have them, he’d said, as if they were things you could pick up and put down when you wanted to, things you had some divine ownership over. It made her feel sick. If he’d bothered to ask, she could have told him that Leila was meant to be going pony riding with a friend the following morning. Not any more, obviously. Now Clare would have to phone and rearrange. Thanks a bunch, Steve.
The worst thing was that there wasn’t much she could do about it. He was right: he was entitled to look after them for half of the time. It wasn’t down to her to dictate when he could have them each time, either.
She’d prided herself previously on how grown-up she and Steve had been about divorcing, how they’d managed to spare the children as best they could, how they’d maintained some civility towards each other, even when he’d first gone off with Denise and she felt like gouging his eyes out. But now he was acting like a petulant child who wouldn’t share nicely any more. And even though two could play at that game, she didn’t want to stoop to his depths. Not yet, anyway.
Given all this, and her full workload, it wasn’t surprising that her nightmares had come back with a vengeance. She was waking several times a night, shocked awake by her racing heart. Then she’d lie there for ages, worrying that she would be too tired for work, angsting that she’d never fulfil the Langley’s order, and beating herself up for not spending enough time with the children. She’d already blasted through all the money from her loan and was broke again, with the bitter knowledge that there was no chance of the situation letting up until September.
Honestly! Summer was meant to be a fun time, a happy stretch of relaxed family days out, not a nightmarish series of run-ins with one’s ex-husband, or a marathon of sweating over a cauldron of scented goo night after night. Clare was usually pretty good about looking on the bright side of things and making the most of a tricky situation, but right now she felt as if she was on the verge of cracking up, clinging onto her last shreds of sanity by her fingernails.
In the end she became so desperate for a good night’s sleep that she booked an appointment at the surgery on her day off to see Dr Copper. Hopefully Angela would sort her out with some sleeping pills, which would zonk her into oblivion every evening. Surely then she’d be able to cope a bit better with everything and wouldn’t end up so ratty all the time.
But when she reached the surgery Roxie beckoned her over. ‘Angela’s phoned in sick, so Luke’s covering her appointments today,’ she said. ‘That okay?’
‘Oh,’ Clare said, wanting to groan with dismay. Oh no. It was one thing to pour her heart out and beg for sleeping pills from kind, no-nonsense Dr Copper, but quite another to have to go to Luke with her worries. Yes, technically, he’d sworn his Hippocratic Oath not to gossip to anyone about patient information, but it was going to be horribly embarrassing having to discuss her problem with him in the first place.
She was about to cancel the appointment and go home, but the thought of another night tossing and turning stopped her. She couldn’t bear the insomnia any more. She had to get some kind of prescription today or she’d officially lose the plot. She’d just have to swallow her pride and go through with it. ‘Okay,’ she said, defeated, and took a seat in the waiting area far away from Roxie so that her friend couldn’t start grilling her about why she was there.
If Luke was surprised to see her in his office, he gave no sign of it. ‘Hello Clare,’ he said, ushering her to a chair. ‘How can I help?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’m having trouble sleeping,’ she said. ‘I was wondering if you could prescribe something that would knock me out at night.’
A small frown creased his forehead. That wasn’t a promising start. ‘Is there anything in particular that’s stopping you sleeping?’ he asked, not seeming in any rush to type out a prescription. ‘Is it noise, perhaps, or is the early-morning sun waking you up … ?’
She shook her head. ‘Just old-fashioned worries,’ she said lightly, reluctant to launch into any further details unless she absolutely had to. ‘Life, you know.’
He took her blood pressure and typed it into the computer. ‘It’s a bit low, if anything,’ he said. ‘Have you been feeling lethargic lately?’
That was the understatement of the year. ‘Yes,’ she said heavily. ‘I’m knackered. That’s the annoying thing. I’m exhausted, but every night I lie awake, unable to drop off.’
‘I see,’ he replied. ‘Well, insomnia is very common, but rather than go straight to sleeping tablets, there are other things you can try first.’
She tried not to sigh. She’d read enough helpful magazine articles on the subject to know that he was going to suggest soothing lavender baths and hot milk. She didn’t want soothing lavender baths and hot milk, though. She just wanted a nice white pill that she could pop into her mouth, which would block out all the racing anxieties and sweep her into a black hole of sleep. ‘Right,’ she said glumly.
‘How much exercise are you doing at the moment?’
‘Exercise? Um … None,’ she confessed sheepishly. Great. Now he would think she was a slob. ‘Walking the dog, I suppose, but I’ve been so busy lately that even that’s been a bit rushed.’ Poor Fred. Even Polly was paying him more attention than she was these days.
‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘Well, you could certainly try taking more regular exercise. If you’re physically tired, that will help you sleep better. Thirty minutes every day could make a real difference – walking the dog is fine, but you could also think about jogging or swimming.’
She flinched at the word ‘swimming’ and he broke off and looked at her curiously.
Her face flamed. Don’t go there, Luke. ‘I can’t,’ she said helplessly.
‘Can’t swim? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. There are some excellent learn-to-swim classes at the leisure centre in Amberley,’ he went on, and she found herself laughing mirthlessly at the well-meaning kindness in his eyes. If only he knew.
‘I can swim,’ she interrupted him, ‘that’s not the problem. The problem is …’ She hesitated, feeling the weight of the silence between them. Oh God. Step away from the can of worms, Clare. ‘It’s not important,’ she lied.
Silence again. He was waiting for her to spill, but her lips were clamped shut now. ‘Is it something I can help with?’ he asked eventually.
‘No,’ she replied, so bluntly that it was on the verge of sounding rude. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled as an afterthought.
There was another awkward pause before he spoke. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Then I’d prescribe you plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, reduced caffeine and alcohol, fresh air and exercise. And try winding down in the evening with a bath and a hot milky drink … What? Did I say something funny?’
‘No,’ she said, smiling weakly. ‘Thank you.’
‘If you’re still having problems in a fortnight, come back and we can try something else,’ he added. ‘And of course you can always talk to me as a friend, as well as a doctor, about any worries, okay?’ He hesitated as if he was about to say something else, but she was already getting to her feet. ‘Take care,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ she muttered again, walking out of there as fast as she could. What a complete waste of time that had been.
That evening, to celebrate now having made three-quarters of the stock she needed for the Langley’s order, Clare gave herself and Polly a night off and opened a bottle of wine. It was bliss padding out into the garden, glass of wine in hand, she thought gratefully. She had been so busy recently that she’d barely been out there, only rushing to let the chickens out in the morning and put them to bed every night, her mind elsewhere. Now she noticed that the plants had exploded in one of those mad jungly rushes of growth, where everything was suddenly twice its previous size, flowering, lush and heavy with scented blooms. The roses were the colour of poured cream, their curled petals forming glorious velvety rosettes. The sunflowers beamed out like friendly golden beacons, and the lawn was thick and springy
, tickling her bare toes as she walked across it.
Marjorie and Babs seemed drowsy, so she shut them in the coop, then dragged a couple of cobwebby deckchairs from the shed and brushed them clean. She clicked their wooden frames into place, lowered herself carefully into one of them and took a sip of cold wine. Ahh. It was utterly delicious; like an elixir, restoring her sanity. She shut her eyes for a moment, enjoying the flavour in her mouth and the gently cooling evening air around her. God, she needed this. She hadn’t realized just how much until now.
Polly joined her shortly afterwards and they sat enjoying the last of the day’s sunshine in companionable silence for a few moments. Polly was a very different house-guest these days from the one she’d been at first, it had to be said. She insisted on cooking dinner and washing up every other night, and even though some of the earlier blackened offerings had been barely recognizable as shepherd’s pie and salmon fishcakes, Clare had eaten every last scrap in gratitude. Polly had become more thoughtful too – doing the supermarket run, taking her turn at cleaning the bathroom and hoovering, and reading stories to the children in the evening or playing long games with them. And yesterday Karen had phoned Clare in astonishment to say that Polly had turned up out of the blue with some flowers for her, ‘just because’, and had spent the afternoon in the garden with Graham, weeding the vegetable patch and talking about birds of prey, of all things. ‘She even wanted to get out the old photo albums and look through all our family holidays,’ Karen had said. ‘It was lovely, Clare. Really lovely.’
Not everything had changed, though. Much to Clare’s disappointment, Polly was still tight-lipped about her private life. There had been that call she’d tried to make the other week, when she was trying to apologize to someone – some bloke, Clare was sure of it – but had Polly divulged a single smidgen of information about who? No, she had not. Even more frustratingly, Clare hadn’t been able to get a thing out of her about her date with Jay, either. Not a bloody thing!
‘How did it go at the doctor’s today then?’ Polly asked conversationally. ‘Did you get some nice strong druuuugs?’
