Honeycote

by Veronica Henry

  Caroline had forgotten quite how horny good food and good wine made her feel. And how utterly delicious and seductive James’s bedroom was, with its flickering candles, its scented sheets, its hundreds of silk pillows and velvet cushions and the fur throw that he teased her was real wolf but she knew was fake, though it made her feel like Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago just the same. And as James trickled Jo Malone massage oil on to her breasts, she realized she’d been celibate since before Christmas. She didn’t know if absence did make the heart grow fonder, but it definitely made the sex more explosive.

  Afterwards, as they lay in an exhausted, tangled heap, she told him about selling Demelza and cried, because she missed her, and James began to understand that Caroline wasn’t as tough as she pretended. He kissed away her tears and took her again, gently this time, and she cried again. And James realized that for the first time in years he’d made love to a woman without pretending it was Lucy.

  Maybe, just maybe, he was cured.

  Two weeks later, Caroline gave in her notice at the paper, came on board officially at Honeycote Ales, abandoned her cold and soulless starter home and moved into Denham House. One lazy Sunday morning James leaned over to her bedside table. She thought he was going to turn the radio on to listen to The Archers omnibus, but he was fiddling about in the drawer. Eventually he found what he was looking for.

  A box. And inside the box, a ring. And in the ring, a socking great emerald that matched Caroline’s eyes. Not so large as to be tasteless, of course. It was just right. Just like everything James chose. And it fitted her finger perfectly. He’d waited for her to say yes, before trying it on.

  Bloody hell. She was going to be Mrs Liddiard. Mrs Caroline Liddiard, of Denham House, Eldenbury.

  James asked everyone to brunch at Denham House a week later. He cooked a huge pile of pancakes with maple syrup and crispy bacon, served with champagne and cranberry juice.

  After everyone had eaten their fill, he took his place by the fire and asked them all to charge their glasses. He had an announcement. He and Caroline were to be married at Honeycote Church in two months’ time. Caroline stood next to him and blushed prettily. Everyone cheered and agreed that a wedding was just what was needed; it was something to look forward to. Sophie and Georgina were to be bridesmaids. Mickey was to be best man. And if Lucy looked a little pale when the announcement was made, no one mentioned it.

  Back at home that afternoon, Sophie and Georgina offered to make tea while Lucy and Mickey went into the drawing room. There seemed to be a chill in the air, so Lucy laid a fire. Mickey leaned against the fireplace and chortled.

  ‘Well, that was a turn up for the books, eh? Good old James. I didn’t think he had it in him. I thought he was destined to be a bachelor for the rest of his life.’

  Lucy didn’t answer. She twisted up a strip of newspaper and stuffed it under some logs. Mickey rattled on.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be happy. You know what they say, opposites attract. And Caroline’s a good sort underneath. Heart of gold.’

  Lucy faced the fireplace, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth. It took all her self-control not to rip the logs out of the fireplace and hurl them at him. If only he knew what she’d given up to be with him; what a sacrifice she’d made. Still, it had been her own choice, her decision made of her own free will.

  They had their amnesty, their pact, but it hadn’t been easy. Even though he was trying so desperately hard to be a good patient, Lucy knew Mickey got depressed, because of the pain and the slowness of his recovery and the frustration of not being able to do all the things he wanted. But he bore it all with a forced air of cheerfulness and optimism that she sometimes found wearing. They’d tried to make love, too, and that had been a disaster. It wasn’t surprising, really, given the stress his body had suffered. Mickey, humiliated, had said give it time. Lucy had reassured him, kissed him and fallen asleep in his arms, but had to admit she’d been rather relieved.

  Lucy lit a match. Her hand was shaking. She knew it was now or never. She could turn to Mickey; tell him everything. Tell him what she’d sacrificed to stay with him. Tell him he’d destroyed all her trust and respect with his sordid affair. Tell him she could pick up the phone to James and he’d break off his engagement with Caroline on the spot just to be with her.

  But of course she didn’t. Her hand shook and she dropped the match on the hearth.

  ‘Shit – ’

  ‘Here – let me do it.’ Mickey came over. Lucy turned away quickly, but not before he saw a tear on her cheek. She brushed it away and he said nothing, just busied himself lighting the fire. Sophie and Georgina burst in, carrying a tray of tea, laughing.

  ‘Georgina says we’ll have to wear turquoise polyester – ’

  ‘Or mauve. Probably mauve.’

  Lucy turned to face them, fully composed. She smiled.

  ‘Nonsense. I’m sure Caroline will let you choose what you want.’

  ‘Do you think she’s pregnant?’ Georgina was gloriously blunt sometimes. ‘Just think – we’ll have cousins. Five quid an hour we could get for babysitting.’

  ‘Don’t be so mercenary. You should do it for nothing if they’re relatives,’ protested Sophie, who didn’t have a calculating streak in her.

  ‘You and Ned can. You can snog on the sofa then to your heart’s content.’

  Sophie thumped her sister good-naturedly. Lucy went to pour the tea. Patrick appeared and sat down near the fire with his dad. They started to chat idly about the brewery. Georgina got out a game of Jenga.

  Lucy looked round the room and felt reassured. She’d been right to keep quiet. But as she passed round the cups, she thought it would all be so much easier to bear if only James hadn’t looked so bloody happy.

  She realized she was being an utter bitch. Behaving like a spoilt brat who wanted all the toys. She couldn’t have her cake and eat it. And she did love Mickey, deep down. He was massaging her shoulders now, sensing her tension, and she didn’t recoil at his touch. She put her hand on his and smiled up at him.

  Running off with James would have been a gamble. Staying at Honeycote was a safe bet. It was hardly a bad option. And Lucy remembered what someone had told her once: that marriage wasn’t supposed to be easy…

  26

  At Lilac Cottage, Sylvia had brought round the nursery curtains to hang. Sunlight streamed into the little room. It was an oasis of calm. Kay’s old teddy bear lay in the Moses basket, while she sat in a wicker nursing chair by the window, surrounded by plump cushions. Barton Court and Lawrence and Honeycote and Mickey Liddiard could have been a million miles away.

  Charlie and Sylvia stood in the doorway proudly. Kay seemed in a world of her own, smiling. Suddenly, she gave a gasp and clutched her stomach. Charlie rushed over, alarmed.

  ‘What is it?’

  Sylvia rolled her eyes.

  ‘It’s the baby. Very sensible. Waited till everything was ready. You go and get the car, Charlie. Have you got your bag?’

  Kay nodded. This was it. Next time she stood in this bedroom, she’d have a baby in her arms. Her very own baby. Tears stung her eyes as she picked up her hospital bag.

  As soon as Kay got to the hospital, the pains stopped. She wanted to go home again, but the nurses were worried about her blood pressure. She’d have to stay in. They sent a reluctant Sylvia home, promising to call if anything started. As soon as she’d gone, Kay told them under no circumstances did she want her mother around while she was giving birth. She’d ring her the minute it was all over, but not before. She could manage on her own. The midwife nodded knowingly, didn’t bother wasting her breath to contradict. She knew from experience that Mrs Oakley would have her mother at her side in two minutes flat once she got going. She didn’t bother to wonder about Mr Oakley. She’d seen too many strange combinations of parents and partners to think it out of the ordinary that there was no male present. In many ways it would make the birth a lot easier. Men either panicked or wanted to take cont
rol, while women stayed calm and empathized.

  She settled Kay into a side room. There were plenty free that evening and she could see that Kay wasn’t the type to benefit from chatting to the other expectant mothers, sharing horror stories about piles and swollen ankles, stretch marks and heartburn. She hooked her up to the foetal heart monitor, then a machine to measure her contractions.

  Kay stared fixedly for two hours at the red line, which remained irritatingly constant. There were no significant peaks at all. The midwife had told her to ring the bell if the pattern changed, or if her waters broke, or if she had a ‘show’, whatever that was. She prodded at an unappetizing ham salad and tried to take in the fact that the odds were this time tomorrow she’d have a baby in her arms. A tiny little being for whom she was wholly responsible. She realized that for the first time in years she had butterflies – not adult nerves, but the sort you got when you were excited as a child, the night before your birthday or the summer holidays. She willed the machine to start showing some kind of action. Whatever happened, she wasn’t staying here another night, baby or not. The plastic sheeting under the bed linen made her hot and sweaty, and the bed was too narrow to toss and turn. Someone down the corridor had evidently started their labour – the woman was lowing like a cow and Kay found it most disconcerting.

  She asked the nurse for something to read and was brought a couple of dog-eared women’s magazines, two years out of date, full of personal problems that made Kay’s predicament look like a breeze. Eventually she nodded off, then woke with a start when the magazines crashed to the floor. She realized she’d been dreaming about Lawrence and wondered, just for a moment, what he was doing, before distracting herself with names. She had no idea what to call her baby and hoped that when she saw it something would come to her. Everything she’d thought of so far seemed too twee or too plain. She wanted something unique and special, but not something self-conscious or outlandish. She knew that what you called your child said a lot about your social standing. And of course the child was labelled for life. Her own name was borderline; she’d been tempted on more than one occasion to change it but hadn’t been able to decide what to. And there was always the horrible possibility of someone from the past revealing the truth.

  In the end the nurse gave her a sleeping tablet, as she’d need all the sleep she could get to save her strength for the next day. Kay reckoned it was probably a vitamin pill in disguise, a placebo to stop her ringing her bell every five minutes, but she did manage to sleep until five o’clock the next morning, when she lay in bed counting the seconds until the cornflake trolley came round. The graph was still boringly static.

  At nine o’clock a cheery little consultant appeared and sent her down to delivery to have her waters broken. A midwife descended with a crochet hook and there was a wet puddle, but not a lot else. Singularly unimpressed, Kay just wanted to jump off the table, bed, trolley, whatever it was called, and do a runner. But she couldn’t. One end of the lead from the monitor was shoved somewhere unspeakable and the other was hooked up to a machine that emitted reams of graphs which were undecipherable to Kay but evidently made interesting reading to whichever midwife deigned to come in and check up on her at irregular intervals.

  Two hours of inactivity later, the consultant reappeared.

  ‘We’re going to have to put you on a drip. Get you moving.’

  Thank God. Someone was actually going to do something at last. Kay watched with interest as a tube leading from a drip was inserted into the back of her hand. She shivered with excitement and the midwife patted her shoulder, thinking it was fear.

  ‘Oxytocin. This’ll get things started, no problem. Won’t be long now.’

  Never a truer word was spoken. Wham! Kay looked round for the train that had suddenly hit her in the back. She opened her mouth to speak, but found she had no breath. The very life force was being squeezed out of her by a band of metal. She was just starting to panic, when the pain went almost as quickly as it had come.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Well done. It was a contraction.’

  ‘It can’t have been. There’s something wrong – ’

  The midwife chuckled.

  ‘There’ll be another one along in a minute. And they’re going to get a lot stronger than that, my love. Remember your breathing.’

  After that, the contractions came fast and furious. By the time Sylvia arrived, Kay was swearing like a trooper, livid with rage and fury and spitting with frustration at the midwife, who didn’t bat an eyelid at the invectives hurled at her.

  ‘Get me a fucking epidural! I don’t care how much I have to pay.’

  ‘It’s far too late for that. You’re nearly fully dilated. You won’t be able to push.’

  *

  Two hours later, the pain had reached unbearable proportions. Kay was convinced she was going to die. She reached out wildly and grabbed her mother’s hand, squeezing it. Sylvia gritted her teeth to block out the pain. She was finding it hard to cope with her daughter’s distress. Kay was sobbing.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, get Lawrence on the phone. Get him here now!’

  Lawrence would sort things out. He wouldn’t let her suffer like this. He’d soon tell that sour-faced midwife what to do. He’d always been there for her; he’d always known what she wanted. They understood each other, Kay and Lawrence. They were meant for each other. Why the hell wasn’t he here, just when she needed him most? She was going to die and he didn’t realize.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sylvia hesitated. Women said things they didn’t mean when they were in the throes of giving birth.

  ‘For God’s sake, get him now! Before I bloody die…’ Kay was becoming exhausted. At this rate, Lawrence would be here just in time for her funeral.

  Sylvia nipped out of the delivery suite to use the payphone. She dialled Barton Court hastily. It was on divert to Lawrence’s mobile. No answer, just his voice mail kicking in. She hesitated, wondering whether to leave a message and, if so, what, when the midwife popped her head round the door.

  ‘Hurry up! The baby’s crowning.’

  Sylvia hung up and rushed back in, just in time to hear her daughter screaming blue murder. Four minutes later the midwife looked up with a beaming smile.

  ‘It’s a girl.’

  Kay, who’d been convinced it was going to be a small horse, lay back with a sigh of relief. Sylvia wiped away a tear. The midwife proffered the bundle, smiling.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’

  ‘Flora.’

  Sylvia questioned the wisdom of calling a child after a tub of marge, but thought that Kay would probably come to her senses the next day. It had been a long twelve hours.

  The next morning Kay was in a mellow and dreamlike state. She sat with her baby snuggled up in the crook of her arm, a beatific smile on her face. Her mother almost didn’t recognize her. She thought perhaps the nurses had administered her some sort of medication, some mind-altering drug. Kay was oblivious to the fact that her hair needed blow-drying. She’d managed a two-minute blast under the shower that morning while the paediatrician checked Flora over, but refused to be out of her daughter’s reach any longer than was strictly necessary. Sylvia looked on in amazement as Kay put the baby to her breast without batting an eyelid, and the little doll suckled contentedly.

  Sylvia had brought two cardigans and a hat that she’d been knitting in front of Emmerdale for the past couple of months. She was alarmed when Kay started crying with gratitude. She was sobbing and smiling simultaneously. Alarmed, Sylvia reached for the buzzer to call a nurse, but Kay shook her head.

  ‘Do you want me to call Lawrence for you?’

  Kay’s face hardened.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you were screaming the place down for him yesterday. Come on – it’s the best time to bury the hatchet, when a baby’s born.’

  But as far as Kay was concerned, the matter was closed, and Sylvia was no further in on the secret. But one thing was certa
in. Yesterday’s performance showed a chink in her armour. Kay could protest all she liked, but Sylvia knew her daughter still held a candle for Lawrence. If only she could get to the bottom of it… But it was unlikely, and for the time being the most important thing was Flora. Sylvia reached out for her granddaughter, rubbed her back to wind her and tried to decipher any family resemblance.

  Nothing. At the moment, she just looked like a baby. A very pretty baby, but that was that.

  27

  The morning of James and Caroline’s wedding, Lucy found Mickey standing in the stable yard in his suit, pale with nerves. He was alternately rehearsing his speech and feeling his pockets for the ring.

  ‘I feel a bit of a hypocrite. I’m not exactly qualified to be a best man, am I?’

  ‘Sssh,’ said Lucy. She smoothed his lapels and fiddled with his cravat, until she was satisfied with his appearance. She didn’t tell him that if anyone was a hypocrite, she was…

  Lawrence slipped into his racing suit and was amazed at how loose the waistband had become since the last time he’d worn it. He knew he’d lost a bit of weight, but not that much. Since Kay had gone he’d lost interest in food, unless he was taking Kelly out, when he made the effort to feign an appetite out of politeness. Not that Kay had ever been a great cook, but she did a weekly Marks & Spencer shop that meant the fridge and freezer always used to be full of tempting nibbles and snacks. Now Lawrence filled up from the Spar shop attached to the garage on the main road, or the post office. Eating was a chore rather than a pleasure. He managed a piece of toast for breakfast, then grabbed some soup or a jacket potato from the garden centre café at lunch. He could sometimes be tempted into a piece of carrot cake or a brownie at teatime, if his manageress nagged him, but more often than not he fell into bed at night without bothering with supper.