‘Alex, Gabriella… this is my – er – wife, Harriet.’ Nick was obviously stumped for words as the other two stared, entranced, at what must have looked like something from The Jeremy Kyle Show after a particularly aggressive altercation between the guests. The smell of alcohol from my still soaking rugby shirt hit the room like an escaped fart, and the two strangers recoiled slightly as they politely pretended there was nothing amiss.
‘Jesus, Hat… Libby said you’d had a fall but didn’t say it was as bad as this. I’ve been trying to ring you all evening. Why didn’t you reply?’ Nick had recovered himself and put out his hand to touch my face, but even he stepped back when he smelt the stale alcohol.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Amanda said breezily, eyeing up Gabriella as she always eyed up any attractive woman who might get in the way of her being top banana in a room. ‘You know what the A & E Gestapo are like – they’ll confiscate your mobile as soon as look at you.’ She trilled her Amanda laugh before turning to the blue eyed sex god who’d never once taken his eyes off my face. ‘Hi, I’m Mandy Henderson. You must be Alex Hamilton – David has told me all about your input into Nick’s new business.’
‘Wow,’ Gabriella gushed. ‘The David Henderson? What do they call him? The Richard Branson of the North?’
‘Where are the twins?’ I interrupted. I was aching all over: it was sympathy and a huge mug of Earl Grey I needed, not this mutual admiration society that seemed to have sprung up in my sitting room. And yes, OK, I was totally in shock that the gorgeous Alex from Harvey Nicks was in my sitting room. In my sitting room. With my husband, for heaven’s sake. What the hell was he doing here? He obviously didn’t have a clue we’d met before. Why would he? On the first occasion I was as big as a house: now I looked like something left stinking in the police cells after a night out on the town.
‘Would you excuse me? I need to see to the children. I’m sure Amanda will fill you in about what happened. Thanks so much for your help, Amanda. Really appreciate it.’
‘Darling, I’ll come with you.’ Nick put down his glass before turning to Amanda. ‘Would you mind looking after these two while I help Harriet upstairs?’
He guided me up the stairs, one hand in the small of my back. I felt so ill and longed for sleep but knew I had to see to all the kids.
‘Don’t worry about India. Mum has given her a bath and is reading her a story. Libby and I managed to feed and change the twins and sort them out between us.’
‘Where’s Kit?’
Nick snorted. “He’s big enough and daft enough to sort himself out. He’s around somewhere. Not much good with babies, I must say.’
‘Mummy?’ India appeared round her bedroom door, took one look at me and promptly burst into tears.
‘Shush, darling. I’m fine. Really. Just had a little fall.’
‘Are you going to die?’
Sylvia appeared behind her, her neatly coiffed helmet testament to her having found the blow job she’d been looking for. This morning seemed such a long time ago, I thought wearily.
‘Oh, my dear. Look at that face. And you’ve been at A & E all this time?’ Sylvia shuddered visibly, her nose wrinkling as the alcohol fumes wafted along the corridor towards her. ‘They really are quite dreadful places.’ And then, as a thought hit her, ‘Do you think you’ll still have that black eye for the wedding?’
‘Mum, for heaven’s sake.’ Nick glared at Sylvia.
‘Look, I just need to get out of these clothes and see to the twins. And a huge cup of weak tea would be heaven.’
On cue, Libby appeared, Theadora in her arms. ‘Fin’s asleep, Mum, but this little madam won’t settle.’
‘Your reward will be in heaven,’ I said, hugging my eldest daughter before transferring my youngest to my arms.
‘Much rather it was in Vivienne Westwood,’ she grinned. “Tell you what, Mum, this evening has been the best contraception ever.’
‘What’s “best conta eption ever?”’ India lisped, as Nick laughed out loud and Sylvia tutted.
‘Hairy legs,’ I said, kissing my middle daughter goodnight. God, all these children. Anyone would think I didn’t know the answer to India’s question myself.
Nick turned down the bed, found me a clean, warm pair of pyjamas, more painkillers, a huge mug of Earl Grey and then, leaving me propped up against the pillows, returned downstairs once more to see to his guests.
I must have dozed off. Kit had come in, mouth full of biscuit, taken one look at me, and said, ‘Phew, bloody hell,’ and walked straight back out again. Nick and Sylvia had both come back up, taken a baby each to change and put them back in their shared nursery and now, glancing at my alarm clock, I saw it was nearly midnight.
‘Are you OK?’ Nick slid into bed beside me and held my hand. ‘Sorry I haven’t been much help, but I had to sort out a few really important things with Alex downstairs.’
‘Who is he?’ I asked.
‘Alex Hamilton. Lives in Manchester in one of the new city apartments. We took him on board in the summer. David thinks he’s made a real catch. I don’t really have much to do with him because he’s in Italy most of the time – had already been working there for a couple of years before he joined us. But when you went into labour in Harvey Nicks and I couldn’t get off that plane, I knew he was at home and texted him on the off chance he could get over and help you. I assumed he hadn’t managed it. Neither of you said anything and I totally forgot about it until just now.’ Nick paused. ‘Do you not remember him?’
‘No.’
Why on earth was I denying ever meeting him? Why, the minute I’d seen him downstairs, hadn’t I said, ‘Oh, you’re the man who came to help me in Harvey Nicks. How amazing. What are you doing here?’ Like any normal, sensible person would have done. Instead of slinking upstairs, heart pounding, face burning like a lovesick teenager.
Because I fancied him rotten. That’s why.
‘So who does Gabriella belong to?’ I asked. ‘Has she been “taken on board” too?’
‘No, not at all. She’s Alex’s friend.’
‘Friend? As in girlfriend?’
‘I assume so.’ Nick yawned. ‘Dunno… didn’t really ask. Why?’
‘No reason.’ Every reason.
Nick yawned again and nuzzled his nose into my shoulder. ‘You smell a bit like a brewery, Hat,’ he said, pulling away but, as he felt me about to kick him, protested, ‘but I love breweries. My favourite places. What on earth were you doing to fall like that? You could have knocked yourself out.’
I sighed. ‘I nearly did. I was just contemplating my baggy old body and actually thinking it didn’t look too bad considering what it’s been through in the last year and then I slipped. Anyway, I’ve had time to think in A & E, and I’m really going to sort myself out. I’ve got six weeks before this wedding of your mum’s and I want to look gorgeous. There’s no way your ex is seeing me look less than ravishing.’
‘Don’t worry. She’s not coming. Colin rang Mum this evening and he says she’s changed her mind – if she was ever coming in the first place.’
‘Oh?’ I felt a bit disappointed. One always wants to give one’s husband’s exes the once over.
‘From what I can gather she doesn’t really approve of her father remarrying so soon after her mother’s death. I think she’s sulking a bit. Anyway, she lives in Milan and very rarely comes back to this country. But even if she were there I really don’t see that you’d have anything to worry about, you know.’
‘Oh, come on, Nick. I pinched you from right under her nose.’ I thought back to that wonderful evening as a second year university student when I’d first set eyes on Nick Westmoreland: when I’d known, absolutely, that here was The One. What I hadn’t realised at the time was that Nick was very much involved with someone else: Anna Fitzgerald, and that he would have to choose between the two of us. Which he did, thankfully choosing me.
Nick laughed. ‘Past history. Twenty years ago, almost. I don’t know what it is about women and exes. We men would just eye each other up, have a pint and discuss who was at the top of the football league. You women have to bring up past history and be determined to be the most gorgeous. It’s one big competition, isn’t it?’
‘Too right, it is. That’s why I have to look my very best.’
‘But she won’t even be there,’ he protested. ‘She’s been married to some Italian count for years and her life is there now.’
‘She might not be there,’ I said, wincing as I turned over, ‘but the bloody photographer will.’
*
When I tried to get out of bed the next morning I felt as if I’d been hit by a steamroller. Or whoever was world boxing champion at the moment. Or both. Nick had got up twice to the twins in the night and now, at seven o’clock, assured me that they were flat out and the other three were in the process of getting themselves up and ready for school.
‘Strange you don’t remember Alex from Harvey Nicks,’ Nick mused, alternately towelling dry his hair and drinking a mug of tea.
‘Alex?’ I assumed an innocence I certainly didn’t deserve, having spent the last few sleepless hours when I wasn’t wincing with pain recalling that toned and honed body under the tight white T-shirt.
‘Alex Hamilton, the man downstairs when you got home from the hospital… The man David and I have taken on.’
‘Oh, right… yes. I do remember vaguely about someone helping me, but it’s almost four months ago now, you know.’ I took a too big gulp of the tea Nick had brought up for me. ‘So what’s he doing? Can the company afford someone else’s wages?’
Nick tied his tie, bending slightly and squinting into the mirror. ‘Can’t afford not to. We’re getting in so much business now I can’t do it all myself. We need someone to take over the Italian side so that I can concentrate on other areas. It’s going to be at least another year before Seb is up and running with the law side of it all, and Mandy doesn’t really want to get involved.’
Well, that was one good thing, anyway. Amanda on the board of Nick’s new company was not something I relished. But the gorgeous Alex was something else. Oh, for heaven’s sake, what was the matter with me? I was pushing forty, had five kids – God, how on earth had they all snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking? – and here I was with a black eye and a bruised fanjo, lusting after another man.
‘Are we all decent in here?’ Sylvia asked, as she knocked and came into our bedroom without waiting for an answer. Good job we weren’t swinging from the chandelier, then.
‘All decent, Sylvia,’ I trilled back. All decent, except my thoughts, which at that moment had Alex Hamilton divested of his T-shirt and about to unbuckle, very slowly, the leather belt of his jeans.
Showered, coiffed and made-up even at seven fifteen on a misty late September morning, Sylvia carefully laid a breakfast tray on my knee before standing back and critically examining my face.
‘That really is a shiner, dear. I do hope you’re going to be all right for the wedding. Now, I’m free and available all day, so you must stay in bed and not worry about a thing. Nick can take the children to the bus and India to school – can’t you, dear? – and I’ll be in sole charge of those two next door. All you have to do is lie back and get better. I’ll pop down to the village later and see what I can find to heal that black eye.’
She was obviously determined not to have a beaten up daughter-in-law in her wedding photographs – but the thought of a day in bed, doing nothing, was bliss – and I succumbed to her fussing.
By ten thirty I was bored. I’d snoozed, listened to the inane chatter of Chris Evans on The Breakfast Show, snoozed a bit more and tried and failed to get into a French novel that Amanda had left for me a couple of weeks earlier with the direction that, ‘You really must read this amazing book, Harriet. It’s left me on a different plane with regards to how I feel about myself and my life.’ Different planet, more like, I thought crossly ten minutes later, as I flung it across the room and extricated an old Hello magazine from where it had somehow hidden itself half under the mattress.
The house seemed to sigh and relax into itself, grateful for once that everyone was out and it had the place almost to itself. Sylvia had taken the babies down to the village in their double buggy in search of a birthday card for her future stepdaughter. I’d never actually met Nick’s ex-girlfriend but had often been privy to her frantic phone calls from France where she was spending a year at the Sorbonne, desperate to speak to the man who had left her for ‘that trollop from up north’ as she’d liked to call me. Nick would take the (often) middle-of-the-night phone calls, calm her down and reiterate once more that yes, what they’d had was wonderful – but she had to accept that he loved me now and wasn’t going to be part of her life any more. The problem for Anna was – and for which I had every sympathy – the fact that he hadn’t been a part of her life. He’d been her whole life. As, from the night we’d met in the union bar, he’d been mine. Anna never came back to university the following September as she should have done. She stayed on in France, moved to Italy and married a very wealthy Italian count who, apparently, was related to most of the crowned heads of Europe. I don’t think Sylvia ever got over the fact that her only son ended up with the girl from the West Yorkshire council estate when he could have had the girl from Surrey, daughter of Judge Colin – who was now Contessa somebody, living in France and Italy.
I gingerly stepped out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. Every part of me seemed to have a life of its own, demanding a response to the pain it was putting me through: ‘Yes, head, you do hurt, but the old legs hurt more. Arms? No, not even in the running in the ‘ouch’ department. And the winner is? Drum roll here. Da da da da da da… and pause for effect. Yep, no doubt about it, folks, the winner is… the bruised and battered fanjo. Round of applause for my bits and pieces.’
Blimey. Maybe I should get back into bed and stay there if I was in the middle of a conversation with my down there bits. My own personal The Vagina Monologues, as it were. The poor old thing had seen very little action lately: new babies, me feeling fat and knackered all the time and Nick off drumming up business in foreign parts had not been conducive to a wanton and energetic sex life. Or any sex life, come to think of it. I closed my eyes as I got to the bathroom mirror, counted to three, and went for it.
My God, what a sight.
I showered, dressed in loose sweatshirt and pants and went downstairs. I needed fresh air and, after a strong coffee which spurred me on, decided I’d walk – very slowly – down to see how Grace was. She’d not been in touch for several days and I wanted to recount the whole ‘accident in the bath affair’ to her and make her laugh.
I followed the lane that wound gently past our house towards the dilapidated farmhouse and barn that Grace and Seb had bought three months earlier. Twenty years ago, when anything old and in need of renovation had been snapped up even before landing on the estate agent’s desk, West Lane Farm would have been in a bidding war. But, with the recession still manacled firmly to the economy and prospective house buyers dithering, their decision to buy the old place had been an easy one to make. I loved the idea of my best friend – especially since we were in the same boat of having new babies at our ripe old age of almost forty – living just minutes away.
Even after fifteen years of living on this lane… well, obviously not on the lane itself – I might have been reproducing like the bloody rabbits darting about in front of me, but I drew the line at not having a bathroom and somewhere to store my Mulberry bag – I couldn’t get enough of it. It was a visible and reliable indicator of the season we were in and the red and orange hues of autumn were already telling me summer was over for another year. Blackberries, lush and ripe, were yelling out to be picked and, as I walked slowly towards Grace’s place, I berated myself for not bringing a plastic bag to gather them in.
Derek, the one remaining tenant farmer in our area, was out in the now yellow fields as usual and, seeing me draw near, stopped the ancient David Brown tractor that had been a constant in our lives, regardless of the season, since moving into the area when Libby was just a baby. Rusted now to within an inch of its life, it was a competition as to who would give up the ghost first – Derek or the tractor. Owned by the local council, but tenanted and farmed by Derek’s family since the year dot, it was anyone’s guess what would happen to this gorgeous countryside once he packed it all in. Now over seventy, and a confirmed bachelor all his life, there was no son and heir to take over the tenancy – and we reckoned the council was rubbing its hands in glee playing a waiting game, ready to pounce on the ravishing farmhouse and surrounding fields once Derek decided enough was enough. As soon as they’d carried out their obligation to rehouse their longest sitting tenant in a one bedroomed flat in town, the council would be free to do what they wanted with hundreds of acres of prime pastureland. The farmhouse, mentioned in the Domesday Book, would be auctioned off to the highest bidder or – as rumour had it – turned into the clubhouse at the centre of a new municipal golf course. As I walked towards Derek – who I could see was peering from under his flat cap, trying to work out what was wrong with my bruised and battered face, I mentally dodged potential holes-in-one – and tried not to visualise the brambles ripped out to accommodate bunkers… and the uneven fields and lane bulldozed into an endless sea of green velvet.
Derek leaned out of the tractor, his beefy red hands still holding on to the greasy steering wheel, the tractor’s engine still chuntering like a cross walrus.
‘What’s tha’ done to tha’ face? Tha’ Nick’s not been having a go at you, ’as he?’ Concern was etched on his own face as he continued to stare at me from his cab.
‘Long story, Derek… but no, not Nick. Honest.’
‘Cos tha’ knows, tha needn’t put up wi’ that sort of o’ thing. There’s phone calls tha’ can mek nowadays.’
‘Honestly, Derek. It was an accident. I fell in the bath and cracked my head on the tiles.’
‘Aye, that’s what me Auntie Freda used to say an’ all, when me Uncle Bert used to lay one on her. I’ve seen it all afore, love.’
Oh, heavens, that’s all I needed. The whole of the village and beyond convinced Nick was a wife beater.
‘Where’s tha’ bairns? Have you had enough of ’em already?’ He had to shout above the guttural noise of the tractor, and he continued to look at my face with suspicion.
‘I’ve left them with Nick’s mum,’ I yelled back. ‘She’s taken them down to the village.’
Derek grinned, showing a distinct lack of teeth. ‘Hey up. Is t’Queen Mother back up again?’
Never short of something to say, Derek had nevertheless been momentarily stunned into silence when, on his first meeting with Sylvia ‒ who was out for a walk with a three day old Kit ‒ he’d politely asked after the new arrival.
‘Grizzler,’ Sylvia had intoned in her plummiest Surrey accent, ‘Liddle grizzler,’ and walked by without another word. Since then poor Kit had been known to Derek as ‘t’Grizzler’ and Sylvia herself as ‘t’Queen Mother’.
‘She’s here for a week,’ I shouted, moving aside as a terrified rabbit shot out through the hedge and into the lane, followed by a thoroughly overexcited Springer Spaniel. No doubt the dog’s owner would bring up the rear any moment.
‘I see that friend of yours and her young fella are turning old West Lane Farm inside out.’ Derek emphasised the word ‘young’ raising his eyebrows as he did. There was nothing that Derek didn’t know about what was going on in the valley. And anything he didn’t, he made up. If you wanted any village gossip, Derek was your man.
‘Yes, I’m off down there now. She’s got a new baby too, you know.’
‘Aye, and not coping too well, I hear. Mind you, having a first bairn at her age and wi’ a lad still wet behind th’ ears, I’m not surprised.’
There was no malice whatsoever in Derek’s retort, merely a summing up of the facts as he saw them. He could have been commenting on one of his own cows. Indeed, only a couple of weeks ago, he’d pointed out his favourite milker who, past her sell-by date and destined for the knackers’ yard, had been given a reprieve because he couldn’t bear to see her go down that final road. After several nights of no sleep, swollen breasts leaking and the twins yelling for my undivided attention, part of me had wished old Daisy and I could have changed places. A nice green field in which to lay my head, and then the knacker’s yard and oblivion. Lovely.
‘What makes you think Grace isn’t coping?’ I asked.
‘Grace, is it? Well, had a good long chat with Amanda, Old Frank Goodners’s daughter. She were out walking wi’ t’ new bairn the other morning.’
Blimey, our lane was becoming a granny and baby meeting place, with Nanny Derek presiding. No wonder his fields were beginning to look a bit ropey.
‘Surprised you knew Frank Goodners,’ I said. ‘I mean, Grace and I know him because we were at school with Amanda Goodners – and now she’s obviously Grace’s baby’s granny – but when did he cross your path?’
Derek grinned his toothless grin. ‘Well, you couldn’t be a Midhope mill owner and not have everyone know who you were. And he were on t’ council years ago and had dealings wi’ t’ farm tenancy. Nice chap. Used to call round when I had me girls.’
His girls? His women? What was he, the Farmer Sutra of Midhope? Or did Derek mean he’d been married and had daughters of his own, then? It didn’t surprise me a bit that Amanda’s father had been sniffing round them, randy old goat that he was. You only had to know how he’d left my mother pregnant at seventeen to twig what he was like. I had a mental picture of flaxen haired country girls, rude with health from an excess of milk, eggs and fresh country air, being seduced by the smooth talking mill owner. I was into Thomas Hardy territory now, (yes, I know, wrong county and century, but you get my drift) with Derek’s daughters all resembling Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
‘Girls?’ I asked. ‘You had girls?’
‘Aye. Twenty or thirty of ’em at one point,’ Derek assured me proudly. ‘Until t’ bloody fox got at ’em all one night. Any road, Frank Goodners used to call round for th’eggs and sometimes brought Amanda with him. I recognised her right away t’other day when she was out walking wi’ t’ littl’un. Telled me all about that friend of yours. Not coping with it at all, she reckoned.’
‘Well, I’m just off to see her now.’ I realised, as I said it, that I hadn’t actually seen Grace for well over a week. I’d phoned a couple of times and she’d texted back, but getting my older kids kitted out with new uniform and all the paraphernalia needed for a new academic year at school ‒ plus, of course, the twins, hadn’t left me any time for socialising.
My poor old bashed in bits were beginning to throb from standing in one position. Should have stayed at home, really, I thought ruefully. Telling Derek he ought to get himself some more girls – I’d be more than happy to buy any fresh eggs from him – I gingerly climbed over the stile and set off down the field to Grace and Seb’s new place. I wasn’t sure if walking was really the best idea for my battered body but I reckoned it was a bit like a rusty old car – it needed to keep moving before it seized up completely. Concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, I crossed the field, climbed the next stile with some difficulty and rejoined the lane on which, sleeping snugly at the bottom like a soporific drunk, nestled Grace’s dilapidated new home.