What Became of You My Love?

by Maeve Haran

  ‘How long are you away for?’

  ‘Only three weeks. Diving in the Isla Mujeres.’

  ‘Where on earth is that?’

  ‘Mexico, I think. Angelo booked it.’ Viv and Angelo went on so many holidays even they lost count. Their pastimes always made Ella feel slightly exhausted. Paragliding, hill walking, white-water rafting, cycling round vineyards – there was no end to activities for the fit and adventurous well-heeled retiree.

  ‘And what would I have to do?’

  ‘Just keep it looking tidyish. The allotment police are a nightmare. Keep threatening to banish anyone who doesn’t keep their plot looking like Kew Gardens.’

  ‘There aren’t really allotment police, are there?’ Cory demanded.

  ‘No,’ Viv admitted. ‘That’s what we call the committee. They used to be old boys in braces and straw hats. Now Angelo suspects they’re all LGBT.’

  ‘What is LGBT?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Mu-um!’ Cory corrected, looking mock-offended. ‘Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender.’

  ‘Good Heavens!’ Ella didn’t often feel old but she did now. ‘Well, that’s pretty comprehensive.’ In fact it probably said more about Angelo than the allotment holders.

  ‘You just need to do a bit of deadheading, sweep the leaves, look busy. We’re always being reminded of what a long waiting list there is – of far more deserving people than we are. Here’s the key.’

  Viv kissed her three times. ‘Oh, and by the way, we’ve had a burglar alarm fitted next door. Angelo insisted.’ She handed Ella a piece of paper. ‘Here’s the code if it goes off. You’ve got our keys anyway, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Ella, beginning to feel like an unpaid concierge.

  Viv was already down the garden path. ‘Off at six. Angelo hates wasting a whole day travelling so we have to get the first flight out.’

  ‘You have to admit,’ marvelled Cory, ‘they’ve got a lot of get up and go for oldies.’

  ‘Too bloody much, if you ask me. They’re trying to prove there’s nothing they’re too old for.’

  Ella double-locked the door and dragged the bolt across, then began drawing the heavy silk curtains, undoing the fringed tiebacks with their gold gesso moulding. This was a job she especially liked. The old house with its wooden floors and oak panelling always seemed to emanate a sigh of satisfaction and embrace the peacefulness of night-time.

  ‘You know, Mum,’ Cory’s thoughts broke in, ‘you really ought to do the same.’

  ‘What? Deep-sea diving? Or paragliding?’

  Cory smiled ruefully, laughing at the unlikely idea of Ella throwing herself out of anything. ‘Get a burglar alarm.’

  ‘I hate burglar alarms,’ Ella replied. She almost added: ‘You can’t forestall the unexpected, look at what happened to Dad’, but it would have been too cruel. ‘You’re beginning to sound like your big sister Julia. Come on, time for bed. Do you want a hottie?’

  Cory shook her head. ‘I think I’ll stay up and watch telly for a bit.’

  Ella went down to the basement kitchen and made tea, thinking of Laurence. It was the little habits that she missed most, the comforting routines that knit together your couple-dom. And here she was still doing it without him. Now all she had to look forward to was babysitting her neighbours’ allotment while they swanned off living the life of people thirty years younger. Except that people who were actually thirty years younger couldn’t afford to do it.

  Ella turned off the light, listening for a moment to the big old house’s silence. It had been a wreck when they’d bought it, with a tree growing in the waterlogged basement. She had coaxed the house back to life with love and devotion, steeping herself in the history of the period, studying the other houses in the square so that theirs would be just as lovely.

  ‘Good night, house,’ she whispered so that Cory didn’t think she’d finally lost it. ‘We’re all each other has these days. Too much to hope anything exciting is going to happen to me.’

  She shook herself metaphorically as she went upstairs to bed. She’d tried so hard to resist self-pity during the dark days after Laurence’s death, she was damned if she was going to give in to it now.

  Sal stood in the wastes of Eagleton Road hoping a taxi would come past. She shouldn’t get a cab, she knew. It was unnecessary and not even something she could charge to expenses, as one could in the heyday of magazines, when staff just charged everything they liked and The Great Provider, aka Euston Magazine, paid up without a whimper. Now the publishing landscape was getting as bleak as Siberia.

  Sal began walking desultorily towards the tube station, playing one of her favourite games which decreed that if a cab went past before she got there, fate intended her to jump into it, and who could argue with fate? Sal realized she was stacking the odds by walking particularly slowly in her unsuitable high heels. The thing was, these shoes were made for taxi travel and no one, especially their designer, had envisaged a customer schlepping down the uneven pavement of Eagleton Road.

  Fate was on her side and a lone cab hove into view with its light on.

  Sal hailed it with all the joy and relief of a refugee getting the last berth on a transport ship out of some war-torn hotspot.

  ‘Middlebridge Crescent, please.’ They headed off for the rather sleazy enclave in North Kensington, on the borders of upmarket Notting Hill Gate, where Sal had managed to find an unfurnished flat thirty years ago, settling for four somewhat uninviting rooms in an unappealing road in exchange for the nearness of its glamorous big sister.

  The truth was, although Sal gave every appearance of being the career woman on top of life, there were aspects of living she was hopeless at: mortgages, pensions, savings plans. None of these had ever caught her imagination like sample sales, freebies to exotic spas, London Fashion Week – these were what made Sal’s heart beat faster.

  She paid the cab driver, and was touched that he waited till she had safely descended the steps to her front door, in case any marauding mugger should be concealed there. ‘Good night, miss,’ he called, although he knew and she knew that this description, though technically true, was an entirely generous gesture.

  ‘Good night,’ she responded, opening her grey-painted front door. Funny how grey front doors had suddenly become de rigueur on brick-fronted houses, and any other colour suddenly seemed strange and somehow wrong. That was how fashion worked, of course. Grey wasn’t simply the new black, as far as front doors went; it was the new red, green and blue.

  She shivered as she turned her key, grateful for the warm embrace of central heating, which might not be as enticing as a waiting lover, but was a lot cheaper to run and far less temperamental.

  October already. Incredible. She smiled at the memory of the photograph of the four of them and then recoiled at the thought of how many years ago it was. She had never imagined that here she would be, more than forty years later, living alone, paying her way, dependent for her standard of living on the whim of Maurice Euston and his daughter Marian, who had just been elevated to Managing Director.

  It struck her as she sat down on her aubergine velvet sofa and shucked off her agonizing heels that the all-important Christmas issue would be out by the end of the month. Of course, the whole thing had been put to bed months ago. All those children simpering round the Christmas tree in cute pyjamas had actually been sweating in a heat-wave. All the same, she – Sal – still believed in the fantasy. It didn’t matter if they had to cheat a little to make the fantasy work. She had never felt cynical and bored, never wanted to shout: ‘Oh for God’s sake, I’ve heard that idea four hundred times before!’ at some hapless young journalist.

  Sal loved magazines. When she was growing up on her Carlisle council estate, she hadn’t been able to afford them and had devoured as many as she could at the hairdresser when her mum had her Tuesday afternoon cheap-rate shampoo and set. They remained a gorgeous parcel of me-time. Gift-wrapped with glossiness and sprinkled with celebrity stardust, they broug
ht pleasure to millions. Well, maybe not quite millions, that was half the problem, but thousands anyway. To Sal, a magazine was still something you held in your hand, savouring the thrill of flicking through the first pages, not something you summoned on your iPad or furtively consulted online during your lunch break. She knew you had to keep up, though, and had worked hard to make sure these options were there, and as inviting as any offered by Modern Style’s rivals.

  Sal made herself a cup of green tea. She mustn’t let the magazine take up her entire waking life. She was no workaholic. She had other interests and passions.

  Didn’t she?

  Laura parked in the driveway of her solid suburban house. She had been careful only to have two small glasses so that she would be below the limit. Laura preferred driving to taking the bus or tube. Somehow it meant she didn’t have to leave the protective cocoon of home, and that was how she liked it. You could argue that the tube was more interesting. All those different nationalities. People reading books, e-readers, free newspapers, playing games on their phones. And the fashions. She liked seeing all the ways young women put their clothes together. But there were also beggars, stringing you some story, the noisy drunks talking out loud to themselves, and the exhausted, worn-out workers who made Laura feel faintly guilty about her easy life.

  Tonight, though she knew it was awful, she also felt slightly smug. It was amazing that, out of the four of them, she was the only one who was truly happy with her life. Ella had had that tragedy, so utterly unfair, out of the blue like that; Sal never thought about anyone but Sal, which was why she’d ended up on her own; and Claudia had been married a long time, but she was always moaning about Don’s head being in the clouds, and they never seemed to be soulmates. Not like she and Simon were.

  It was an object of pride to Laura that Simon loved her and his home as much as he did, that they were perfectly happy in each other’s company. Of course she loved her friends, but Simon came first.

  And she knew he felt the same about her. In fact, the only source of friction between them was their children. When Bella had become a Goth, Simon was appalled. Laura, on the other hand, rather admired her for it. She knew that she herself was a boringly conservative dresser and partly blamed this for Bella needing to express her individuality by clothing herself like the heroine of a Hammer horror film in a silk top hat, veil and Victorian riding gear. When Bella had dyed her silky blonde hair inky black, Simon had almost cried.

  And she knew that their son, Sam, quiet, heavy-metal loving Sam, who loathed all sports, was a disappointment to Simon too. Simon had been so thrilled at having a son that he had plonked him in front of the TV for Match of the Day from the moment he was born. And the only result had been that Sam hated football until he was at least twelve.

  Even though it could be stressful at times, Laura was still grateful that both her children lived at home. Home and family were the same thing in her book. And, Laura had to admit, their children were especially precious after all the fertility problems they’d had. There had been times when Laura had almost given up. Simon had argued the whole thing was taking too much of a toll on her, though she’d felt that he was referring to himself. He had hated all the rollercoaster of hope and disappointment of assisted conception even more than she had. And then, finally, at forty, to find that she was pregnant with Bella! She would never forget that positive pregnancy test as long as she lived. And to make their world complete, Sam had come along two years later.

  Ever since their arrival, she had wanted to be here for them, not out at work, but providing a safe and happy environment. She relished being home when they came back from school and shouted, ‘Hi, Mum, I’m back.’

  Still hugging herself at how much she loved them she went up to bed. The sight of her bedroom always made her happy. It was so exactly what she’d wanted. Soft carpets, crisp white linen, roses in a vase. The air in the room was cold since Simon, the product of boarding school, liked the window wide open. It was one of the few things besides the children that they argued about. Fortunately, he slept like a corpse so she could get away with closing it as soon as he nodded off. If she remembered, she would guiltily open it a few inches in the morning before he woke.

  As she slipped into bed he murmured and turned. She thought perhaps he was feeling amorous and experienced a wave of guilt as he shifted back to the wall, eyes closed.

  The sheets had been clean this morning, which always gave her a dilemma. There was something seductive about clean sheets, but, equally, did one want to spoil them with the messiness of making love? Not that they had much of that these days. Simon seemed perfectly affectionate yet rarely pushed for sex. Laura had even wondered about Viagra.

  ‘With my husband we had to wait forever for it to work,’ warned Susie, her tennis partner. ‘Not to mention me having to wank him like a Thai hooker all the time unless he did it himself. And then, just as you’re nodding off, there it’ll be, poking into your bum. And once it’s up, it’s up for hours.’

  Laura had giggled, imagining an erotic puppet show with Mr Punch using his willy instead of the usual stick and chanting, ‘That’s the way to do it!’

  On the whole she was glad Simon was sound asleep.

  What Became of You, My Love?

  ————

  Maeve Haran is an Oxford law graduate, former television producer and mother of three grown-up children. Her first novel, Having It All, which explored the dilemmas of balancing career and motherhood, caused a sensation and took her all around the world. Maeve has written nine further contemporary novels and two historical novels, plus a work of non-fiction celebrating life’s small pleasures.

  Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages, and two have been shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award. She lives in North London with her husband (a very tall Scotsman) and a scruffy Tibetan terrier. They also spend time at their much-loved cottage in Sussex.

  Also by Maeve Haran

  ————

  The Time of Their Lives

  Having It All

  Scenes from the Sex War

  It Takes Two

  A Family Affair

  All That She Wants

  Soft Touch

  Baby Come Back

  The Farmer Wants a Wife

  Husband Material

  The Lady and the Poet

  The Painted Lady

  Non-Fiction

  The Froth on the Cappuccino

  (republished as Small Pleasures to Save Your Life)

  First published 2016 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2016 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-9188-6

  Copyright © Maeve Haran 2016

  Cover design by Anne Glenn

  The right of Maeve Haran to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third party websites referred to in or on this book.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  Maeve Haran, What Became of You My Love?