by Carmen Reid
'I know,' he told her, 'and you've not even asked me how I've been.'
'No,' she had to admit. 'How have you been, sweetheart?'
'Someone has just failed their Grade Six violin and I have an uncomfortable meeting with two very disappointed St Vincent's parents waiting for me on Monday.'
'Ouch,' Annie sympathized, 'I thought pupils at St Vincent's never failed anything.'
'Well, that's the idea,' Ed replied. 'She's really good, too. I think she got too nervous.'
'That's a shame. Bring in my snack, babes, then I want to tell you all about Tina.'
When the story was over and Annie's feet were thoroughly massaged, Ed felt he could only offer her the advice to 'Wait and see how it plays out on Monday.' But he did agree that if Tina could be given a DVD of the event it would be a very kind, very Annie thing to do.
'You don't think Finn will mind if you and Bob organize that?' he wondered.
'No,' Annie assured him. 'How's he going to find out anyway?'
'Well . . . that's not quite the same,' he pointed out.
'I think that's the least of my worries.'
'Right, well . . . now that you're comfy and a bit more relaxed, there's something I want to talk to you about . . .' Ed began carefully.
'Oh no.' Annie sprang up so she was sitting bolt upright: 'not the baby talk again, I really can't handle the baby talk, Ed.'
'No, it wasn't that. I wasn't going to talk about that,' Ed protested, 'but now that you've brought it up – why shouldn't we keep talking about it?'
'I'm tired.' Annie ran her hands over her face.
'So am I, but the weekends are really busy for us and maybe I need to talk about this.' He looked so serious.
'Ed,' Annie mustered up as much kindness and understanding as she could, 'Ed, I really feel as if I've had my kids.'
'Yeah, with someone else,' he broke in. 'Am I not good enough to have children with? This is so unfair! I'm competing with someone who's dead, and I can never, ever win.'
Annie flinched at this mention of Roddy. She never, ever wanted Ed to compare himself to Roddy. As he said, it wasn't fair. Roddy was dead. Annie, her family and her friends all thought the very best of him. That's how it was when you died. Everyone remembered the really, really good things. The amazing bits, the ultra-romantic and the superdad moments. All the ordinary, everyday moans and gripes were totally forgotten. Did Annie ever think back to how untidy Roddy had been? Or how charmingly irresponsible? Or the fact that he was almost always the last man standing at the bar? No, she never wasted a moment thinking about all that.
'Ed, please don't,' Annie warned him, 'it's not just about you and it's definitely not about Roddy, it's about me. I don't want to have another baby. OK? I don't want another child enough to go through it all again. I don't want to be pregnant, I don't want to give birth, I don't want to be woken every three minutes every night and spend all my time puréeing and feeling dowdy and exhausted. I don't even want to be back on the benches at the play park talking about it with the other dowdy and exhausted people. I'm not going there,' she added vehemently, just in case he hadn't got the drift.
Ed sat at the end of the sofa with Annie's feet still in his hands. But he had forgotten all about them.
There was a very sad, hurt expression on his face as he told her: 'But I've never done any of that. I've never carried a baby around at night, I've never pushed my baby in a swing or round the park in a buggy . . .'
'Well, I'm sure Hannah would love you to spend a bit more time with her children,' Annie suggested. Ed's sister had two small children now.
'Annie!' Ed replied angrily, 'that's not the point. The point is that I want to have my own child. Is that so hard to understand?'
For a moment he didn't say anything else, then to Annie's astonishment, he added, 'I don't want this to break us up.'
'It can't!' she exclaimed. 'It can't break us up. I never said I would have another baby for you!'
'You never said you wouldn't,' Ed replied.
'But you never asked before!' Annie threw back at him, feeling uncomfortably angry. 'This is a new thing.'
'Did we ever even talk about it? Did we ever really talk about anything?' Ed asked. 'We just moved in, in a great big flurry. A lot of things went undiscussed and undecided.'
'Well, we're talking about it now.' Annie tried to level her voice and keep the anger at bay, 'and I'm telling you I'm not going to do it. I don't want to do it.'
'And I'm telling you this is the one thing I really, really want to do,' Ed replied. 'I can hardly think about anything else. I'm thirty-five . . .'
Annie snorted. 'Big deal! You've got at least another forty fertile years ahead of you!'
She was too tired. Why was he starting up with this again? It felt as if she'd only just come in the door and already they were in this deep, uncomfortable, irresolvable discussion.
'I can't do this right now,' she told him quietly, then picked herself up from the sofa and walked out of the room. Taking hold of her overnight bag on the way, she headed upstairs to the bedroom.
She would get undressed and she would run a bath. She would soak in it for a bit and calm down. There would be peace and quiet and Ed would calm down too. This would blow over. He was broody. It wasn't such a big deal. The feeling would pass. She knew this because she'd had broody feelings of her own in the past, and they passed.
Maybe he had too much time on his hands at the moment. Maybe he needed a new hobby or something. She'd been planning to get him helicopter flying lessons for his birthday. His dad had been a helicopter pilot and it was something Ed had said he'd always wanted to try. Maybe he'd get hooked and go out a few times a month. That would take his mind off all this baby stuff. Quite an expensive hobby though, surely? Helicopter flying . . .
Annie opened her overnight bag and began to unpack. Almost everything was grubby and would have to go into the laundry basket or the rack in her office for the clothes en route to the dry cleaner.
She picked up her beautiful blue silk blouse, shook it out gently, then headed to the office with it. As soon as she'd hung it up on the dry cleaning rack, she could tell that something wasn't right in here.
Where were her bags?
There was a slim wardrobe in the room where she kept her clothes overflow. In here were all the things not currently in use and it had got a little too full lately. So she had stored more overflow tops, skirts and even some shoes in big chequered zip-up laundry bags. There had been three of them, stuffed full, stacked against the side of the cupboards.
And they weren't here.
Annie made a cursory search of the room, but it was so small, there just wasn't anywhere else they could be. She opened the wardrobe but it was crammed full, there was no way the bags were in there. She went back to the bedroom and made a search. Not under the bed, not in the cupboards, not on top of the cupboards.
From the top of the stairs, she called down to Ed.
'Ed, where are my bags? From my office? The big laundry bags full of my spare clothes?'
There was a silence.
Oh this was so childish, was he going to do that whole sulking and not talking to her thing?
'ED!' she repeated, more loudly this time. 'Where are my laundry bags? From the office?'
Ed came out of the sitting room and stood at the bottom of the stairs.
'Laundry bags?' he asked, putting one hand on top of his head, as if this would somehow help him to think more clearly.
'Big blue and white chequered ones,' she explained.
'Owen had bags like that. He bought a whole load of them at the market to help him with his charity clearout.'
The words were falling from Ed's lips as both Annie and Ed realized what this could mean.
'He used laundry bags for the clearout?' Annie asked with horror. 'I'll have to wake him up!' she exclaimed. 'I've got to find out if he went into my office.'
'No,' Ed insisted, 'it can wait until the morning.' Annie's head was reeli
ng as she tried to make an inventory of all that could have been lost.
The charity clearout?!
'Where's everything been taken?' she asked Ed with a wail.
Chapter Twenty-one
Maria in service:
Blue cotton dress (Harveys workwear)
White apron (same)
Supportive white lace underwear (Rigby & Peller via Svetlana)
White leather clogs (Ward Walker)
Support tights (Elbeo)
Total est. cost: £120
'Oh, Mr Harry!'
It was a bright, blue-skied morning in Mayfair. The housekeepers had already washed the windows, swept and mopped down the marble entrance halls and steps. Handymen had vacuumed lawns, trimmed topiary to millimetre perfection and watered the window-boxes and bay trees at the doors.
A black cab pulled up outside number 7 and Harry stepped out, dressed in a colourful brown and red tweed jacket and red cord trousers, bearing an enormous bunch of flowers. The bouquet was so laden with exquisite and luxurious blooms that Harry needed two hands to hold it up. When he got to the shiny door, he struggled for a moment to balance the flowers in one hand so that he could ring the bell.
He announced his name to the intercom and after several long, fraught minutes, during which he worried and paced back and forth across the top step, the door was opened by Svetlana's neatly turned out maid.
'Hello, Mr Harry,' the maid smiled. 'Miss Wisneski says to you, please to come in.'
'That is so very kind of you,' Harry told her.
'I take the flowers?' the maid offered.
'They are awfully heavy,' Harry warned, 'I think I should carry them to her myself.'
'If you like. Beautiful flowers!' she added.
'Maria, I will bring an even bigger bouquet for you the next time.'
'Oh, Mr Harry!' she laughed.
As she'd been instructed, Maria showed Harry into the downstairs sitting room where he paced the antique parquet floor – salvaged from a crumbling French château and imported at vast and astronomical cost to W1.
He breathed in the intoxicatingly spicy scent of Svetlana's home and wished he could be transported back in time to yesterday morning, when everything had been absolutely fine. When he'd been just weeks away from making this fascinating creature his wife.
He still had no idea what he'd done or what had gone wrong. He was still none the wiser as to why she had suddenly phoned him up on Friday morning to tell him that she needed to 'press pause' not just on the wedding but on their entire relationship. No use trying to talk her out of it, she'd insisted, she'd given this a lot of thought and she'd made her decision.
Because of an inescapable work commitment, he'd been unable to come here to try and change her mind last night, but that hadn't stopped him trying to call her every twenty minutes. Now that it was Saturday morning, he'd come as soon as he thought she'd be up.
He didn't care what he had to do, or how long it was going to take, there wasn't the slightest doubt in Harry's mind that he had to win Svetlana back.
In the vast mirror with the ornate golden frame above the mantelpiece, Harry looked at his reflection. There was a gleam of sweat on his large, white forehead, so balancing the bouquet awkwardly on his raised knee, he took a clean, ironed white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the dampness away.
Looking in the mirror again, he now caught the reflection of the painting hanging on the wall behind him.
Ye gods! he couldn't help thinking, that's a Warhol! Maybe this woman is completely out of my league.
'Bye-bye my darlings!'
He could hear that Svetlana was now downstairs in the hall kissing her two boys – Petrov, aged nine, and Michael, seven – goodbye.
Such well-behaved, solemn little boys, Svetlana thought as she ruffled Michael's dark hair and pinched his chubby cheek gently with her thumb and forefinger.
Maria immediately approached with a brush in her hand and smoothed the boy's hair back into place, shooting Svetlana a look.
'I miss you on Saturdays,' Svetlana told her children. 'Be good darlings and I see you at suppertime, ya? Maybe I come eat with you?'
Both boys smiled at this unusual prospect.
'OK, you go now,' Svetlana instructed and watched as they went down the steps and towards the back door of their father's car which the driver was already holding open.
As soon as the boys were in the car, Svetlana turned to the drawing-room door and burst into the room in a swirl of fragrance and fuchsia chiffon: 'Harrrrrrrrry!' she announced with one of her broadest smiles, 'vat vonderful flowers!'
She plucked the bouquet from him, placed it on the coffee table then threw herself into his arms instead.
'I've missed you!' she declared and pressed her lips against his, giving him a hit of Chanel lipstick.
'You've missed me?' he spluttered, when the welcome kiss was finally over, 'but I'm here, I've been here . . . I've been trying to phone you all night. You just needed to say and I would have rushed over!'
The surprise in his voice was obvious. He hadn't expected to be welcomed back so eagerly. Was this just some little game she'd been playing?
'I know,' Svetlana said, taking hold of his hand, 'I've been a verrry silly, silly girl.'
With these words, she led him out of the downstairs drawing room and towards the stairs, to her more cosy, less formal sitting room.
'We talk . . .' she told him, 'we make up . . .' she purred.
Harry trotted obediently in her wake, blissfully unaware that it was Uri's unexplained, last-minute date cancellation which had helped Svetlana to change her mind.
As Svetlana and Harry made their way to the privacy of the upstairs sitting room, a second taxi was pulling up at the far end of the street. It wasn't a black cab this time, but a battered old minicab: a silver Nissan with rust spots and a dangerously low-slung exhaust. There was no fare to pay as the driver was doing the passenger a favour, because they had a mutual friend.
The side door opened and the passenger stepped out. Her red stiletto heel struck the tarmac with a crack. A very long, very slim leg tightly encased in skinny jeans followed. Finally narrow hips, a slim waist and willowy arms, showcased in a tight scoop-necked jumper. The long waterfall of blonde hair, the creamy face and glassy grey eyes, were stunning. But there was a determination to this girl. She was not just a pretty face. She looked as if she was a girl with a cause. A girl on a mission.
She'd popped the boot open and was hauling out her two substantial bags before the driver had even made it round to the back of the car to help her, but she assured him that she was fine. With strong arms and shoulders, she lifted the bags onto the pavement, then pulled out the handles so she could wheel them along.
With her head held high, she began to march purposefully towards number 7, heels rapping loudly on the pavement.
* * *
In the cosy upstairs sitting room, Svetlana was keeping Harry happy. Whether or not there was going to be anything on the cards with Uri, Svetlana had decided that she still needed Harry in the meantime, until it was a little more definite.
Harry was kissing her neck tenderly. 'What do you want me to do?' he asked as his hands untied the belt of her dress, loosening the fabric so it fell away from her body. 'What would you like?' he breathed against the skin at the nape of her neck as she slid down against the soft velvet of the sofa. He opened the front of her dress and stroked the pink satin of her bra in a way that made her nipples tingle with excitement.
