by Agatha Frost
Through the haze of her muddled emotions, she still knew everything would be worth it. The stress consuming her was temporary, as was the pregnancy. Like Barker had said, they would have a baby by the end of the year, and even though that would bring a whole host of new challenges with it, everyone had been telling Julia to enjoy the process while she could.
“What are you doing to me, little strawberry?” Julia asked, resting her hands on her stomach when Mowgli wriggled away.
Hands where they were, Julia closed her eyes and exhaled. The noise in her mind calmed, allowing her to focus on her breathing. She would go back to her calm and level-headed self soon enough, and she was sure one fact Barker had parroted had mentioned the mood swings easing after the first three months had passed.
Julia remained in her meditative state until a soft knock at the door brought her back. She opened her eyes as her father poked his head into the room.
“Don’t suppose Vinnie’s orange dinosaur toy is in here?” he asked, almost in a whisper, as he looked around. “I’m taking him to your sister’s because Neil is staying home with the twins. I thought it would be better to have Vinnie sit tonight out with how he’s been acting.”
“Good idea.” Julia summoned a smile as a way of apology for her sudden exit. “And I don’t think any of his toys are in here.”
“I know.” Brian gave her a tight smile. “I just wanted an excuse to say I’m sorry. I should have thought. My day might have felt long, but it’s Saturday, so I bet yours did too. And I didn’t have to do it pregnant.”
Julia’s smile widened; she was glad he understood without her having to explain herself.
“Thank you, Dad. I appreciate that.”
Brian smiled another tight smile as he backed out of the room. These were the moments why she hadn’t been able to move them on. It was the first time since her early teen years she had lived with her father. After her mother’s death, she rarely saw her father. She ended up living with her gran until adulthood. Despite the chaos, there was something nice about being under the same roof as her father for the first time in all those years.
Hands still on her stomach, she stood and looked in the mirror at the bottom of the bed. She didn’t yet have much of a bump that anyone could see, but she could feel the slight curve and hardening of her midsection. As much as she didn’t want to ask anyone to leave, she knew she had to.
“Your daddy is right,” Julia whispered to her tummy in the mirror. “We can’t bring you into this.”
Pushing the mayhem to the back of her mind, Julia turned her attention to the evening ahead. Even though Percy Cropper had proposed to Julia’s grandmother on Christmas Day, Dot and Percy had only announced the date of their wedding two weeks ago, and tonight’s meal to introduce the Souths to the Croppers had been planned for almost as long.
Percy, especially, had been eager for the two sides to meet before the big day, and Julia had thought it was a great idea. She had been all for the coming together of two families when the morning sickness was her only issue, but given how sharp her reactions had been all week, she wasn’t sure how meeting a group of new people would go. Thinking of tomorrow’s wedding turned her stomach. The whole day would be even more of a test, and the soon-to-be-married couple still hadn’t revealed their secretive wedding theme.
After cleansing and moisturising her face and adding a little mascara and lipstick, Julia brushed out her curls and changed from the grey dress she had been wearing all day into a red one. Merely looking at her bright reflection in the mirror lifted her mood. It wouldn’t be long until she outgrew her beloved vintage dress collection, so she would enjoy them for as long as possible.
A spritz of sweet perfume later, Julia left the sanctuary of her bedroom and braved the rest of the cottage. Thankfully, the air was calmer now that Vinnie had stopped screaming, and even though mess and clutter still filled every corner of the once pristine cottage, Julia promised herself she would try to keep her mood swings to a minimum tonight.
The dining room door opened, and like the vast majority of Katie’s other clients, Roxy emerged in a cloud of strong-smelling chemicals, staring down at her nails, brows knitted together.
“I’m not paying for these,” Roxy whispered to Julia, revealing the lumpy and misshapen neon pink nails Katie had constructed on top of Roxy’s usually plain nails. “Look at the state of them!”
Julia retrieved her handbag from the side table in the hall and pulled out a crisp £20 note.
“Here.”
“She was only charging me fifteen.”
“Then tell her it’s a tip,” Julia urged, stuffing the note into Roxy’s hand when she noticed Katie about to join them. “Just don’t tell her.”
“Julia, what do you think?” Katie asked in her girlish singsong voice. “I think they’re my best set yet!”
Julia looked down at the nails again, searching for a compliment, desperate not to crush the bright optimism on Katie’s face. Since losing her family home and all its contents, her father’s death, and having to sell her pink Range Rover and most of her designer clothes, Katie had been through enough. Now wasn’t the time for her to learn the truth about her skill, or lack thereof, as a training nail technician.
“I love the colour,” Julia said finally with a forced grin. “It’s very bright.”
“I should go,” Roxy said glumly, her eyes still on her nails. “Here, Katie. Keep the change.”
“A tip?” Katie exclaimed, her hand resting on her ample chest, evidently on the verge of tears. “Look at me, Julia! I got my first tip! That will go straight into the savings pot.”
Guilt writhed inside Julia. She had been performing similar tricks all month to help lift the financial burden on her family’s shoulders. She had lied about the cost of household bills and food shopping when they insisted on contributing. They had lived in a bubble of luxury for so long, they didn’t bat an eyelid when she quoted prices more suited to Jessie living alone in her flat.
“I’ll freshen up for the meal.” Katie giggled as she pushed the money into the pocket of her impossibly tight, light blue jeans, comprising of more rips than fabric. “Thanks again, Roxy! And if you post a picture, tag me. Don’t forget to tell all the other teachers at school! I’ll give them the same discount if they mention you.”
“Oh, I’ll tell them,” Roxy said, barely feigning politeness. “Don’t you worry.”
Julia waited until Katie was shut away in the guest room to slap Roxy on the arm.
“Ouch!” Roxy cried. “Be careful, or I’ll claw your eyes out with whatever these things are on the ends of my fingers. How am I going to get them off?”
“Acetone,” Julia said. “And be nice. Katie needs this right now, and believe it or not, she’s improving.”
“I’d hate to see the women who had their nails done before me.”
“Who said they were all women?” Julia nodded at Barker and Brian, in the sitting room, watching television. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone, but it’s too funny not to. Neither was in a rush to get them off either.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” Roxy winked as she picked up her handbag from the messy pile by the door. “Violet will not be happy if I go home with these on, so it looks like I’m driving somewhere that sells acetone at this time of night.”
Julia slid open the drawer in the hallway side table and nodded at the neatly lined-up stash of acetone bottles she had been handing to most of Katie’s clients on their exit.
“You’re a one-stop-shop,” Roxy said as she picked up a bottle. “How much do I owe you for this?”
“Nothing.” Julia held up her hands. “I’m doing this for Katie’s benefit. I don’t want her to be embarrassed by how badly she’s doing. She’s staying up until at least two in the morning every single night, practising to get her qualification. She’s feeling the burden to provide.”
“Well, for her sake, I hope she gets better soon.” Roxy gave her nails another glance. “Because people will talk, an
d it’ll get back to her eventually, especially if they’re all as bad as this.”
“I know.” Julia opened the door for Roxy. “But I will not be the one to suck that one shred of joy out of her life.”
Roxy left the cottage with a promise to catch up properly over lunch soon, minus the nails. In the sitting room, Barker and Brian were glued to a celebrity quiz show. Vinnie was on the rug in front of the fireplace, munching his way through a set of frozen plastic teething rings.
“I think it was the fourth of July 1779,” Brian said confidently.
Barker turned, his face scrunched up. “You think Henry VIII was born in 1779?”
“Why not?”
“He’d been dead for three hundred years by that point!” Barker tutted and shook his head. “It’s the twenty-eighth of June 1491.”
“Get out!” Brian replied, frowning. “That’s too long ago. Isn’t he the guy who chopped his wives’ heads off?”
“Two of them,” Barker corrected him. “He had six wives altogether. Divorced two, beheaded two, one died, and one outlived him.”
Julia cleared her throat. “There’ll be some beheadings happening in here soon if you don’t get ready for this meal. We need to leave in five minutes.”
Barker and Brian didn’t break away from the TV until the host confirmed that Barker was, of course, correct.
“Learn something new every day,” Brian announced, slapping his hands on his knees as he stood. “I’m only changing my shirt, love. Won’t take two minutes.”
Brian exited the sitting room, leaving Julia with Barker and Vinnie. She took her father’s place and rested her head on her husband’s shoulder.
“1779!” Barker scoffed. “And your dad is the one who deals in antiques! Can you believe he thought Henry VIII was born in—”
Vinnie threw his teething rings across the rug and then flung his head back as the loudest scream yet rattled his tonsils.
“Barker, I miss it just being the two of us,” Julia whispered, Vinnie’s cries drowning her out. “I’ll ask them.”
Barker sat up, relief spreading across his face. “You will?”
“As soon as my gran’s wedding is out of the way,” Julia said, swallowing the nagging doubt in her throat, “I’ll ask them to find somewhere else.”
2
O n paper, Dorothy South and Percy Cropper’s romance shouldn’t have worked, and yet somehow, they were perfect for each other in every way. She was a tall, slender wasp of a woman with a correspondingly razor-sharp sting to her words, whereas he was a short, rotund, bespectacled retired magician with an air of whimsy.
In the middle, they had things in common. They were both in their eighties and widowed. They lived alone in the same village. They loved old movies and music and, most importantly, they enjoyed engaging in local gossip – arguably their biggest shared passion.
But their differences made them work, or so Julia had always thought. Like two sides of a magnet, they snapped together harmoniously. Percy doted on Dot and seemed to enjoy being put in his place, and Dot adored Percy, whose eccentric personality brought out more of her playful side. They had only met at the tail end of the previous year, when Dot joined the choir to sing at Julia’s wedding, and they had only been engaged since Percy popped the question on Christmas Day six months ago, but their marriage couldn’t come soon enough.
In many ways, it felt like they were decades too late for each other, but Julia knew they would enrich each other’s lives for as long as they could, and that was all that mattered. She just wished they had decided to improve each other’s lives by marrying when her mind and emotions weren’t feeling entirely out of control.
She parked her vintage aqua blue Ford Anglia outside the closed library across the road from the Comfy Corner restaurant. Already, the din of dozens of simultaneous conversations, scattered with loud laughter, and all drowned out by soft music reached her ears. When all she wanted was to hide from the world in her bedroom, why had her gran selected the only, and therefore most popular, restaurant in Peridale on the busiest night of the week?
“Are you alright?” Barker asked as he let his seatbelt slide back. “You look pale.”
“I feel sick.”
“Maybe you should go home and—”
“No.” Julia popped off her seatbelt. “I can’t miss tonight. It’s important.”
People had often accused Julia of putting other’s needs before her own, but she had never seen it as a negative trait. She was a selfless woman, but when her own words echoed back, a small part of her wished she could take the selfish route for once.
Katie’s car pulled up behind her, boxing her in with the vehicle in front. The decision made for her, Julia grabbed for the door handle. Perhaps she would never have been able to duck out of something so important, but this was the closest she had ever come to doing so.
“Vinnie’s all settled with the twins,” Katie announced as she climbed out of her new car. “For Neil’s sake, I hope he doesn’t set off again, or he’ll have three screaming babies on his hands.”
Julia had grown used to watching Katie descending from the monster heights of her locally infamous hot pink Range Rover. It was still somewhat comical to watch her struggle to get out of her new low-to-the-road baby pink Fiat 500, especially in her usual heels, body-conscious jeans, and low-cut top.
Katie had sold her beloved Range Rover almost as soon as the for sale sign went up outside the manor. Brian had tried to convince her she should keep something from her old life. Katie, rightly so, knew both how much money could be made from its sale and how much she would save in fuel consumption by driving something more conservative. As soon as the advertisement went up, many, including Dot, mocked Katie for trying to sell such a garish car.
“Who would want to drive around in that?” Dot had muttered scornfully when Katie stuck an advert in the café window. “It looks like a Barbie car from the Argos catalogue all blown up! You’ll never sell that thing around here, mark my words!”
Dot had been wrong, and within twenty-four hours, the car sold to a wealthy woman who owned an equestrian centre twenty miles west of the village. Luckily for Katie, the woman had been looking for an extravagant gift for her daughter’s eighteenth birthday. She had just happened to be in Peridale to meet an old friend for afternoon tea when she saw the ad.
Debt swallowed most of the profit the moment the money transferred, but they kept a little aside to buy their new car. Though she hadn’t expected Katie to go for anything but pink, Julia was slightly glad she had opted for a much softer shade for her new life. The expensive Range Rover might have been able to pull off fuchsia, but the tiny, egg-shaped Fiat 500 wouldn’t have.
They crossed to where Jessie and her older brother, Alfie, stood in front of the restaurant, talking to a bald man in shorts. Jessie wore simple, black denim shorts and a baggy white band t-shirt messily tucked in, and Alfie was in a sharp shirt, a tie sagging at his slightly open collar. The inky tattoos on his chest and neck were on display, as were the ones on his forearms, thanks to the slight roll-up of his sleeves.
Julia didn’t know the bald man, though she guessed he was very close to celebrating his fiftieth birthday, even though he looked fitter than most men half his age.
“Mum, this is Thomas Cropper, one of Percy’s nephews,” Jessie explained. “He’s a global champion in kickboxing!”
“Everyone calls me Tom,” the man said, offering a friendly smile with the hand he held out to Julia. “And I’m only a national champion, but I appreciate the upgrade. You two must be Julia and Barker, I presume?”
“You’ve heard of us?” Julia accepted the man’s hand.
“I read your book.” Tom nodded at Barker as he shook his hand. “Rather enjoyed it. Saw you on one of those daytime chat shows last year. When I heard you were local, I had to order it to see what it was all about. Barely believed Uncle Percy when he said you were married to Dorothy’s granddaughter. When’s the next one coming out?”
>
Julia gulped, and the split second of uncomfortable silence dragged out for an hour as all eyes averted from Barker.
“Sore subject,” Jessie blurted, folding her arms and looking down at her scruffy Converse shoes. “Barker lost his book deal.”
“I didn’t lose it,” Barker corrected, barely letting Jessie finish her sentence. “We agreed to part ways. Creative differences.”
Julia smiled awkwardly at Thomas when Barker’s voice wavered slightly on ‘creative differences.’ The official statement had said it, and it was what they had been telling people around the village. Even though it wasn’t technically a lie, the truth was somewhat more complicated.
“He’s between jobs at the moment,” Julia explained when the silence dragged on too long. She had been parroting the same phrase every time someone asked what Barker would do next. “He’s taking some well-deserved time off.”
It seemed Thomas picked up on the awkward subtext as the following silence fell. He smiled firmly at Barker and asked no more questions.
“I’m Brian.” Julia’s father stepped forward, holding his hand out. “Dot’s son.”
“And this must be Sue, your other daughter,” Thomas said, extending his hand to Katie. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Jessie snorted. “Awkward.”
“This is my wife,” Brian said, red-faced, “Katie.”
“Oh.” Thomas’s eyes darted around the group. “Easy mistake.”
“We’re a weird family,” Jessie whispered into his ear. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Katie said, offering a small curtsey. “So, you’re Percy’s nephew?”
“The only one,” Thomas replied. “There’s my sister too, but she’s running late, as usual. Our dad, Ian, is one of Percy’s brothers, but they don’t get on. Haven’t spoken in years, last I heard.”
“One of?” Julia asked.
“There’s three of them. My dad, Ian, is the eldest, Percy is in the middle, and Eugene is the youngest. Eugene’s inside with his husband, Marley, but Dot and Percy haven’t shown up yet, and they’re struggling to hold our table. I only stepped out to make a call to see where – ah! – there she is.”
