The Forever House: A feel-good summer page-turner

by Veronica Henry

  ‘I need to think it over.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do it on my own.’

  Belinda looked at her. ‘Of course you are,’ she told her. ‘Of course you are. You can do, and be, anything you want. Don’t let him break you. He didn’t break me.’ She leaned forward, her eyes shining. ‘I got the last laugh, you know.’

  *

  She’d found the phone number she wanted amongst the pile of paperwork Charlie had left behind.

  ‘I’m interested in the lease on the Peasebrook Wine Company premises. I gather they’ve been vacated?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the landlord. ‘I can’t get in touch with the owner. Slippery bugger hasn’t paid his rent for six months. It might take a while to sort things out . . .’

  ‘I can wait,’ said Belinda. ‘It’s perfect for what I want.’

  She screwed the landlord down on the price of a ten-year lease, because she knew he’d have difficulty letting it to anyone else in the current climate. And three weeks later, she took immense pleasure in changing the sign from The Peasebrook Wine Company to Belinda Baxter Estate Agents.

  Natasha stared at her in admiration. ‘You are a legend. And do you know what? You’re going to meet somebody else, somebody amazing,’ she said. ‘You’re going to meet somebody amazing and it will all be all right. I can feel it here.’

  She placed her hand on her heart. Belinda smiled.

  ‘Well, you too,’ she said.

  Charlie would probably see what she’d done today as revenge. But it wasn’t. It was about protecting Natasha from going through what she’d had to go through.

  Belinda was very aware she might have jeopardised the sale of Hunter’s Moon. She felt a little bit sick, but it was out of her hands. All house sales were precarious, she reminded herself. All house sales had the potential to fall through at any minute. But she felt guilty that she hadn’t been more transparent from the outset and given the Willoughbys the heads-up on Charlie. She’d wanted them to have the money. It hadn’t been for her own gain. And Leo had reassured her she’d done the right thing.

  Bloody money. The root of all evil.

  33

  1967

  After the party, midsummer slid quietly into late summer: a shimmering August that turned the lawns brown.

  Margot drifted around the house and garden in a state of torpor. Sally found her behaviour troubling and unsettling. She was distracted, moody, aimless. But at least there were no dramas. She seemed to have learned her lesson, after the swimming pool incident.

  Dai, conversely, seemed to have come right out of his shell. He had even entered some of his vegetables into the village fete, which seemed to drive Margot into an utter fury.

  ‘Can’t you do something useful?’ she hissed. ‘Best fucking onions?’

  ‘Onion skins very thin, Mild weather coming in,’ was all Dai could say in reply.

  She stared at him. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you,’ he replied, and stomped off to the greenhouse.

  Sally just felt sad for them. She knew he loved Margot. She had seen his panic that night. And she thought Margot loved Dai too.

  There was one evening of respite, when Annie got her exam results, and got top marks in every subject.

  Sally cooked Annie’s favourite supper – roast chicken and mashed potato and cauliflower cheese – and made her a cake with twelve candles on, one for each subject. Margot ended up sitting on Dai’s knee, hanging on to his neck and gazing up at him.

  ‘Aren’t we clever?’ she said. ‘Isn’t she clever? Our little Afterthought.’

  Sally suspected her amiable mood was down to getting the combination of pills and alcohol she was taking exactly right for once.

  ‘Do I get a reward?’ asked Annie.

  ‘Of course, darling,’ said Margot. ‘What about a lovely diamond? Buy your clever daughter a diamond.’

  She prodded Dai, who frowned. Margot knew he didn’t have the means to buy Annie a diamond.

  ‘I don’t want a diamond,’ said Annie. ‘I want to go to the grammar school. Not horrible Larkford.’

  Margot sighed. ‘Not that again.’

  She changed the subject as quickly as she could. Sally saw Annie’s face fall, and felt sorry for her. She’d been a little quiet lately, not her usual self. She just read and slept. Sally supposed it was what she needed, after all that revision. She’d worked jolly hard.

  She was glad to have Phoebe to distract her. Phoebe had taken her under her wing. The two of them went up to London on Saturdays, trawling the boutiques and cafés of Chelsea and Kensington, looking at what the girl on the street was wearing. Although she just wore her ordinary clothes at Hunter’s Moon, Sally had begun to enjoy getting dressed up in the height of fashion and being admired when they went out. The two of them looked good together – Sally blonde and Phoebe dark. Sometimes they went out to night clubs and danced all night long. Alexander could get them in anywhere they wanted to go.

  Sally learnt a lot from observation. What people were really like: the kind who were just out to have fun and the kind who were destructive. There were drugs, sometimes, though she and Phoebe never got mixed up in that crowd. And sex. There was a lot of sex going on around them. She often found herself the centre of attention. She was constantly being asked out and flirted with. But something inside was holding her back from making any commitment. She danced, had the occasional kiss, but no one interested her.

  Alexander quite often came with them, but he had kept his distance from Sally since the party. He was still lovely to her, but they were never alone together, and she suspected that was deliberate on his part. He’d just been swept up in the moment that evening. He was still funny and sweet and kind and attentive, but he treated her no differently than he did Phoebe. Almost like a big brother. If anything he was protective, just like Ray and Colin would be.

  And he was very busy. She could see that. The catalogue they’d made, with Sally on the cover, had got Phoebe taken on by three boutiques in London, so she was flat out sewing and getting more designs made for the next season. And the Lucky Charms were on tour, so he had to go away quite a lot.

  *

  Margot knew she was being a monster. She hated herself. She had lost control of everything and she didn’t know what to do.

  Every morning, she woke and wished she hadn’t. Her palms felt sweaty, her heart felt heavy and her head was pounding.

  Today she could hear cheery whistling. She slid out of bed and crept over to the window, squinting as she opened the curtain and sunlight streamed in. She winced. Whenever she surveyed the garden, snippets of the party came back to her. Most of them she didn’t want to replay in her mind. Especially her finale. Everybody seemed to make such a fuss.

  She could see Dai in the garden, trundling his bloody wheelbarrow. It was him whistling. What did he have to be so bloody happy about? She watched as Sally came out of the house and bounced over to him. He disappeared off and reappeared with a trug full of vegetables. Sally looked as if he had given her the Crown jewels, and he beamed with pride. The exchange made Margot feel sick. Why? Was she jealous? And if so, what of?

  She never made Dai smile like that. Not any more.

  She crept back to bed, fishing about in the drawer of the bedside table for her happy tablets. Well, not her happy tablets. Her not-utterly-suicidal tablets. Maybe she’d take two. That would take the edge off.

  Annie came creeping in. She had been like a little shadow around her since the party, anxious and concerned. She sat on the edge of Margot’s bed.

  ‘Mummy, do I have to go back to Larkford? Please can’t I go to school in Oxford? I want to stay here and look after you and I won’t be any trouble. I hate it there. I really do.’

  Margot couldn’t think. She couldn’t face making any decisions. And if she was honest, she didn’t want Annie trailing around after her. It wasn’t th
at she didn’t love her. She adored her. It was just that she reminded her of how awful she was. What a bloody useless mother she’d been.

  ‘But you did so well in your exams.’ She stroked Annie’s cheek. ‘Stick it out, my darling. Only two more years.’

  So Annie went back to school in September.

  It was a couple of weeks into the term when Sally realised one Saturday that Annie hadn’t got up by lunchtime, so Sally went into her bedroom to see if she was OK.

  Annie was lying on her back staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she told Sally.

  Sally could not have been more shocked. ‘How?’

  ‘The usual way.’

  ‘I know but . . . who? Where? When? Oh darling.’

  She threw her arms around the girl. Little Annie. It didn’t seem possible.

  ‘It was the party. The summer party. I planned it. I was determined to go back to school without my virginity. It’s quite easy to get someone to do it to you, you know.’

  Her little face was pale and earnest.

  ‘I just thought if I lost my virginity I might become like the other girls at school. That maybe that was the missing piece of me. That maybe sleeping with someone would turn me into a somebody.’

  ‘But you are a somebody. You’re a very special somebody.’

  ‘I’m not like everyone else. I don’t care about clothes and make-up and what to do with my hair. I don’t care about boys. I just don’t!’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Sally tried to stroke her hair and reassure her.

  ‘It was horrid. I don’t see the point. Just a load of grunting and thrashing about and jabbing his stupid horrid thing!’ She threw her arms out in despair. ‘I mean, what is all the fuss about?’

  ‘I think perhaps it’s about finding the right person.’

  Annie just shuddered, then lay back on her bed.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Her voice was very small. She was very small.

  ‘Sweetheart, you need to tell me who the father is.’

  ‘Oh, just some boy at the party. I think he came with the band. I don’t even know his name or where to find him.’

  ‘Would Alexander know him?’

  Annie sat up in alarm.

  ‘If you tell Beetle, I will die. You mustn’t tell him. You absolutely mustn’t. Promise?’

  Sally could tell by the tone in her voice that she meant it.

  ‘I promise. I’ll have a think about what to do. But I don’t want you to be frightened. Whatever happens, I won’t let anybody make you do anything you don’t want to. Don’t you want to tell your mum?’

  ‘Absolutely the last person on the planet who should know about this is Mummy. Promise me you won’t tell her. Swear?’

  Why was she so afraid of her mother finding out? Sally thought Margot would take it in her stride. She wasn’t some old-fashioned, judgemental harridan.

  ‘The thing is, I don’t want to get rid of it. I know I was a mistake. They call me The Afterthought, but really they should call me The Mistake.’

  ‘Oh darling.’ Sally wrapped her arms around the girl and pulled her in tight. ‘No one could think you were a mistake. No one.’

  Annie went back to school on Sunday night and Sally promised her they would talk about it the next weekend and make a plan.

  Several times she went to talk to Margot, even though it would be breaking Annie’s confidentiality, but Margot was totally preoccupied and seemed to look straight through Sally whenever she spoke to her. She was far too embarrassed to talk to Dai about it. And she knew Alexander wouldn’t be able to cope. He would want to know who it was, and would want to go after them and probably kill them, and that really would be shutting the barn door.

  In the end, she swore Phoebe to secrecy, because she couldn’t think of the right thing to do and two heads were better than one.

  Phoebe clapped her hand over her mouth when she heard. ‘Oh the poor darling!’

  ‘You mustn’t tell her I told you.’

  ‘Of course not. Maybe we should go and talk to Doctor Ponder?’ Phoebe grimaced. ‘Though I can’t imagine talking to him about something like that. Should we tell Mum?’

  ‘I promised Annie we wouldn’t.’

  ‘Mum would know what to do, though. I know you think she’s as mad as a snake, but she can be good in a crisis.’ Phoebe bit her lip. ‘Well, other people’s. She’s not very good at her own.’

  Sally sighed. ‘Let’s talk to Annie at the weekend. I’ll have to tell her I’ve told you.’

  *

  It was Friday morning when Sally answered the phone in the hall at Hunter’s Moon. She heard pips, and then Annie sounding very small indeed.

  ‘Sally? I don’t feel very well. I wonder if you could come and get me a bit early. But don’t say anything to anyone. Just say it’s a tummy bug.’

  She was as white as a sheet when Sally collected her, and barely spoke on the way home. As they turned into the drive, she spoke.

  ‘We don’t have to worry any more, by the way.’

  Sally stopped the car and stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘The one good thing about Larkford is people always know people.’

  ‘What have you done? What people?’

  Annie took in a sharp breath and held her tummy. Sally frowned. Annie was in pain. Not feeling sick because she was pregnant.

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘It’s OK because I went to someone very, very posh in Harley Street. Not a knitting needle job. I took some money out of my Post Office savings.’ She frowned. ‘It’s funny because someone had taken some money out of it. Fifty pounds! Who would have done that?’

  She seemed far more concerned about the money than what had happened to her.

  ‘Oh God . . .’ Sally’s voice was strangled and there were tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘Oh you poor darling. Why didn’t you say? I would have come with you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. You’d have stopped me. I know you would because you’re a good person. And I’m not. I’m an awful person.’ Annie shut her eyes and leant her head back. ‘I just want to go to sleep for a week.’

  ‘Let’s get you into your room. Everyone’s out. Have you got everything you need? Do I need to go to the chemist?’

  ‘I’ve got bags of STs. And some pills.’

  Sally got her up the stairs as quickly as she could before anyone saw her. If anyone was going to find out about it, it would be when Annie was fit enough to deal with the aftermath.

  Luckily she had made all the beds earlier in the week, so she got her into a clean nighty and tucked her into fresh sheets, then brought her up a hot water bottle to hold against her tummy. She thought it would probably soothe it. She felt furious for poor little Annie. She told Margot that it was a stomach bug she had picked up at school. Margot just wrinkled her nose and said she hoped she didn’t get it.

  Annie went back to school the following Monday, with strict instructions from Sally to phone if she felt unwell.

  The atmosphere in the house felt dark as the evening drew nearer. Sally and Dai were sharing a pot of tea in the kitchen and making a list of seeds they wanted to buy for next year from the catalogue when Margot came in, querulous and spoiling for a fight.

  Sally looked at Margot and remembered she’d taken a call from the bursar of Larkford that morning.

  ‘The bursar phoned this morning. I think you’ve forgotten to pay the school fees.’

  ‘How is that any of your business?’ Margot banged her teacup down. ‘How dare you discuss my private affairs with the bursar?’

  ‘I was just passing the message on.’

  ‘You were prying.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Margot. Leave the girl alone.’ Dai shot his wife a warning scowl.

  ‘No. I won’t. I’ve got a few things to say, as it happens.’ Margot pointed a finger at Sally. ‘You’ve wormed your way into this family, haven’t you? What are you hoping? That I’ll leave and you can step into m
y shoes?’

  ‘How dare you?’ Sally’s voice was low and trembling. She stood up and faced Margot. She wasn’t afraid of her. ‘You will not judge me. You are a terrible wife and you’re a terrible mother. There are things going on under your nose that you have no idea about because you’re only interested in yourself!’

  She stopped. She mustn’t say any more. She mustn’t betray Annie.

  ‘Oh, I know what’s going on all right.’ Margot pointed at Dai. ‘He’s besotted with you. He can’t take his eyes off you. And you keep pandering to him. Snuggled up in the potting shed.’

  ‘What?’ said Sally. ‘We’re discussing radishes!’

  ‘I saw you both at the party. If I hadn’t come up the stairs, I know what would have happened. You must think I’m stupid.’

  ‘I think you’re a lot of things. Not stupid. But selfish. And uncaring. And—’ She stopped as a thought occurred to her. ‘Did you take that money out of Annie’s savings account?’

  She couldn’t believe she’d said it. But she’d had enough of Margot’s accusations.

  ‘How dare you?’ Margot’s face was rigid with fury, her eyes blazing.

  ‘You did. Didn’t you? Because who else would it be?’

  Margot shut her eyes and took a deep breath in. She opened her eyes again, and they had gone from blazing to icy.

  ‘It was to pay you. Actually. Which was my mistake. I think you’d better go.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sally. ‘I think I had.’

  ‘I’ll telephone a taxi.’

  ‘Where will she go?’ Dai looked bewildered, unsure how the argument had escalated at such a furious rate.

  ‘I don’t care. But at least I won’t have to look at you looking at her like a lovesick teenage boy.’

  Dai stood up, towering over his wife.

  ‘If I was in love with her, it wouldn’t be a surprise – because she’s the only person who cares about anyone or anything in this family. She’s the glue that’s been holding us together, and if you can’t see that then you are stupid.’