‘It’s a bloody great bus, Harriet. Of course it will fit us all in. That’s why we bought the damned thing.’
‘Right, OK… let’s try it a different way. Try Lilian next to Liberty with one baby seat and then Kit and India right at the back with the other baby seat.’
‘Kit, get out and get back in the back.’
‘He’s plugged into his music. He can’t hear you.’
‘Kit!’
‘What?’
‘Get out and get back in the back.’
‘I can’t hear you. What did you say?’
‘Take those damned thing out of your ears and move yourself.’
‘Move? Where to?’
‘To the very back of the bus. Take Fin with you, and let’s see if that works.’
‘There’s no room for a baby seat to be strapped in. There’s Mum’s hat and your top hat. You could both put them on your heads as we drive down and that would make some space.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. This is like a bloody Rubik’s cube. Liberty, sort yourself out and decide where you’re sitting.’
‘I had decided, but you’ve moved me again. Make your mind up, Dad.’
‘OK, well… let’s try Lilian at the back with both the twins. If necessary, she can have one on her knee, and you can have the other with you, Hat.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nicholas…’
‘Mummy, that rhymes. I’m going to call Daddy Ridiculous Nicholas all the time now.’
‘Actually, India, that doesn’t rhyme. It’s a half rhyme; what we call assonance…’
‘… As I was saying, Nicholas… quite ridiculous. We can’t go all the way to Surrey with babies on our knees. They’re not TV dinners, for heaven’s sake. And anyway, it’s illegal.’
‘Well, then, we’re just going to have to have all our bags, cases and wedding outfits on our knees. Or will we get ten years’ hard labour for that as well?’
Sounding like Arthur Scargill, back in the miners’ strike of the eighties, Nick suddenly shouted, ‘Everybody out,’ and we all unbelted ourselves once more, and trooped back on to the drive to await further instructions from our leader.
‘Nick,’ I said, trying to be calm, ‘at the end of the day there are seven seats and eight of us.’
‘Babies count as one, surely?’ he said, running his fingers through his hair. ‘They wouldn’t even pay on a plane.’
‘We’re not on a plane,’ I laughed hysterically. This was getting farcical and Nick, getting more and more exasperated by the minute, was making me want to giggle.
Liberty started pulling her bag out of the car. ‘Look, I’ll stay at home. I’m not bothered about going to this damned wedding. I’m already missing two days off school and I’ve got a mock next week and really need to spend the time revising for it.’
‘No way, Libby.’ Nick and I spoke as one.
‘Your granny would be heartbroken if you didn’t turn up for her wedding,’ I went on, cross now. ‘And anyway, you’re a bridesmaid. You can’t just back out.’
‘Right, you lot,’ Nick said, pulling his mobile from his jeans pocket and rapidly pushing buttons. ‘Got an idea – if he hasn’t gone.’
‘If who hasn’t gone where?’ I had no idea what Nick was talking about.
‘Ssshh.’
We all stood and looked at Nick, who was tapping his foot against a giant plant pot that held some rather dead looking geraniums.
‘Alex? Nick. Have you set off yet? Oh, you have. Where are you…? Brilliant. Any chance I could get a lift with you down as far as the M25…? We don’t seem to be able to fit everyone in our car… Forty minutes…? Great. See you here, then.’
My heart was doing that old flippy thing once again. Surely everyone could hear it thumping. The palms of my hands were sweaty and I had to wipe them on the back of my jeans.
Trying to keep my voice normal, I said, ‘Surely your mother hasn’t invited Alex Hamilton to her wedding, has she?’
‘To the wedding?’ Nick sounded surprised. ‘No, of course not. Why would she do that? I knew Alex was off to London this morning – wasn’t sure if he was taking the train or driving, but this fits in perfectly. I knew he wouldn’t mind picking me up. He was actually just about to get on the M6 but it’s easy enough for him to get on the M62 instead and then join the M1.’
‘He’s going miles out of his way,’ I said. ‘I’m amazed he’s prepared to come and pick you up.’
‘I don’t think he’s in any great hurry. He’s meeting up with some of the Italian lot who are over in London and then staying on for the weekend with some friends, I think he said.’
He’d not said anything to me about it.
‘Hang on a minute, Nick,’ I said, as everyone else started to climb back into the car, wanting to bag the best seats. ‘Are you seriously suggesting I drive this bloody great thing? I’ve not even tried it out yet. And all the way to Surrey? You know what my sense of direction is like.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Nick said airily. He was like a small boy, excited at the thought of a ride in a sports jobby.
‘Let Kit go with him,’ I said.
Kit, temporarily unplugged from his music, shook his head at the thought. ‘You’re joking, Mum. I don’t want to have to talk to some dude I don’t know for four hours or so. Let Libby go with him.’
No way was I letting my daughter in the car with Alex for four hours.
I’m the first to admit it: I am a terrible driver. I never know where I’m going, am terrified of overtaking (particularly on the motorway) and don’t trust any satnav since ending up, a couple of years ago, down a tiny one way street unable either to turn round or reverse. However, the thought of driving this hulking great beast full of babies and bolshy teenagers all the way to Surrey was nothing compared to the thought of Nick and Alex firmly ensconced in a two seater together for four hours. Talking.
‘Hat, you’ll be fine driving,’ Nick said cheerfully. ‘Just take it slowly and be aware of its size, and it’ll be no different from driving your Mini.’
As if.
I glared at Nick, genuinely terrified at the thought of hitting the Thursday lunchtime traffic in the seven seater.
‘It’ll also give me chance to discuss a few things with Alex,’ Nick went on. ‘It’ll be a bit like having a board meeting on board, as it were.’ Nick laughed at his own little joke.
I didn’t.
When Nick saw I was not to be easily persuaded he said, ‘Look, let’s just jump in and have a drive round the block together, and I can show you how the gear stick works.’
A gear stick? It had a gear stick as well? I’d driven an automatic for years and totally forgotten that such things as gear sticks existed, never mind how they worked.
‘No. I’m sorry, Nick, you’ll have to drive and Kit will have to go with Alex.’ A four hour journey, making small talk to a virtual stranger, would be hell for him – but at least he’d get there in one piece. With me driving I wasn’t sure any of us would get there before next week, if at all.
Nick was just telling me to stop being a girl and climb into the driver’s seat when the throaty roar of an exhaust heralded Alex’s arrival.
My flippy heart thingy went into overdrive and I had to scuttle back into the house so no one would see my flushed face: flushed faces are not becoming. After three minutes holding my wrists under the cold water tap in the downstairs loo I sidled back outside, to see that everyone had settled down into their chosen place on the bus and were either reading (Libby), eating (Kit), doing a dot to dot puzzle (India), or talking baby talk, (Fin, Thea and Lilian) and were – reinforced by their mutinous refusal to look up – in no mood to shift again.
Nick and Alex were both over by Alex’s gleaming, navy Porsche and, taking a deep breath, I made my way over to them.
‘If Harriet doesn’t mind my company down the motorway, why doesn’t she come with me?’ Alex was saying casually. ‘Solves the problem of her not wanting to drive. It really is a big beast, isn’t it?’ he went on, nodding towards the bus.
‘I don’t think Harriet will want to leave the children,’ Nick said hopefully, eyeing up, almost lasciviously, the leather interior of Alex’s car.
I was eyeing up Alex rather than his car and, to my shame, just as lasciviously. And Nick was right – I didn’t want to leave my babies. But the pull of four hours in a leather seat next to Alex Hamilton was too much of a temptation. He was that Hotel Chocolat box of chocolates sitting in the cupboard. You absolutely knew you should walk away, put the devil behind you, put common sense and integrity before the thrill of the forbidden. I was so playing with fire, but the little devil that appeared to have possessed me ever since our dinner party was smugly having the upper hand.
Avoiding Nick’s eye, I sighed, as if getting into a Porsche with Alex Hamilton was most certainly not on my bucket list of things to do before I died. ‘It does seem a sensible solution, Nick. The twins have been fed and will probably sleep all the way down to Surrey – and Lilian is in the back with them, anyway, and knows what to do if they need anything.’
I suppose there wasn’t much more that Nick could have said at that juncture. He knew, of old, that my driving and navigation skills were rubbish and, at the end of the day, his family would obviously be in much better hands with him at the wheel of the bus.
‘Well… if you’re sure about this, Alex. It would make far more sense if Kit came with you and then Harriet could be with the kids but, to be honest, I wouldn’t foist him on to you for the journey down.’
Alex smiled and shook his keys in my direction.
I didn’t dare look at him.
‘OK. I’ll just have a word with the kids, grab my bag and we can all get off,’ I said brightly, my heart hammering with guilt.
No one seemed a bit interested in me. The twins were both asleep, India was now watching something on the iPad and Kit, in the passenger seat at the front, was already halfway through his share of the picnic I’d prepared as soon as I’d got up that morning. Liberty deigned to give me her usual look of disdain, before continuing to read and make notes in the margin of her chemistry textbook.
‘Drive carefully,’ I said to Nick. ‘You’ve got a precious load here.’
‘Go on, get off,’ he grinned from high up in the bus’s driving seat. ‘Don’t get too carried away with the boy wonder.’
That was the moment I should have separated Kit from both his ham and beetroot sandwich and the front passenger seat and done the right thing: ordered him out of the bus and, despite his complaints, made him be the one to travel with Alex Hamilton.
But I didn’t.
I waved my family off and, like a lamb to the slaughter, slid into the passenger seat of the Porsche. The smell of leather and the faint tang of a musky aftershave assailed my senses as Alex leaned over to check my seat belt.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked softly.
‘No. I shouldn’t be here with you. I should be with my family. It’s only because I am really and truly terrified at the thought of driving that great thing down the motorway that I’m bagging a lift.’
Alex grinned as he quickly did a U-turn at the top of the drive before heading back down it and then up our lane to the main road and towards the M1. ‘You’re looking very gorgeous today,’ he said, taking his eyes off the road for a second.
‘Just concentrate on the driving, Alex. I want to get there in one piece.’
‘How can I concentrate when I have you next to me, all to myself?’ Alex gave me his slow sexy smile that turned my insides to liquid. His hands, capable on the steering wheel, were still faintly tanned from a recent trip to Italy, and I wanted to touch them, stroke the fine dark hairs that were escaping from the cuff of his navy cashmere sweater.
‘So… what have you been up to recently?’ I asked, desperate to bring a semblance of normality to the journey.
He laughed. ‘What, apart from having filthy thoughts about you in very little but silk French knickers?’
I could feel myself going scarlet and tried to hide my red face in my bag, rummaging around for something – anything – that I could fish out as proof as to why I was in its depths.
‘Mint?’ I squeaked pulling out a battered tube of Polos.
‘I’d rather have you,’ Alex said, stroking the V between my first finger and thumb, while continuing to drive with one hand.
‘Could you just concentrate on the road?’ The light caress of his cool fingers was making me feel horribly turned on, and I shifted in my seat as he smiled and returned both hands to the wheel. He was a good driver, fast but not flashy – and I knew I would have hated it if he’d hogged the fast lane and intimidated those in front by tailgating, forcing them into the middle lane because of his upmarket vehicle. He was alert, courteous to other drivers, and I began to relax as the Porsche ate up the miles and Alex concentrated on getting us down to Surrey.
His plan for the weekend, he told me, was to meet up with a couple of the Italian contacts who happened to be over in London on a first ever trip. David Henderson had asked him to introduce himself, take them out for dinner that evening and show them some of the sights of the capital.
‘I lived and worked in London for about five years after I left university,’ he said, ‘so I know some of the better restaurants. And apparently they want to see some nightlife.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s really not my scene any more, but these guys have been very much a part of getting L’uomo to where it is after such a short time. Apparently I have to take them wherever they want to go.’ Alex smiled somewhat ruefully. ‘I hate to admit this, but your husband is a genius – what he and David have accomplished between them in the last year is really quite incredible.’
I felt an electric jolt of guilt. What on earth was I doing with this man, being so easily seduced into his Porsche when I should have been with my husband and my children in the family bus?
‘What do you mean – you hate to admit it?’ I asked.
‘I admire the guy. It makes it that much harder to be lusting after his wife. Probably just as well, Harriet, if I drop you off at your mother-in-law’s and keep well out of your way in future.’
Disappointment hit me like a wet flannel. I didn’t want him to keep well out of my way. I wanted to push the sleeve of his sweater up so I could trace the veins and kiss the inside of his wrist. I wanted to open the top three buttons on his shirt, really slowly, and put my face to his chest and breathe him in. I wanted… Oh, I wanted.
‘Harriet,’ he said, gently. ‘You’ve gone very quiet. Is that what you want? For me to make sure I don’t have any contact with you any more?’
When I didn’t say anything, couldn’t say what I wanted, he checked his mirror and started pulling into the slow lane. Within minutes we were off the motorway, and Alex had taken a road that led to a large country pub.
‘I could do with a coffee,’ he said, ‘and stretch my legs. I thought this place was round here somewhere.’
Alex parked the car and grabbed both our jackets, which he’d slung into the back before setting off from home. It was chilly out of the womb like warmth of the car, and I shivered: after some lovely late autumn days, it seemed as if November was determined to remind us of her reputation as a miserable old harridan. We walked down towards the entrance of the hotel, past a slow moving stream at the edge of the car park, the first few words of a poem drifting into my head.
‘No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon…’
I broke off, trying to remember the next line of Thomas Hood’s November.
‘No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.’
Alex chanted the next line and, grinning down at me, saw that I was impressed.
‘Bet you don’t know the next bit,’ he said ten minutes later as he brought out two coffees to the wooden picnic bench where I’d parked myself, still shivering as much from being there with this man as from the dank cold.
‘Next bit?’
‘To Thomas Hood’s poem.’
I was doubly impressed. He knew the poet’s name as well.
I laughed. ‘Go on.’
‘No comfortable feel in any member…’
I burst out laughing, spilling coffee on to my leather gloves. ‘No! It’s not,’ I giggled. ‘You’ve just made that up.’
‘Google it when you get down to Epsom.’ Alex took my gloved hand and pulled it inside his warm wool jacket. ‘Cross my heart.’
It was a dangerous place for my hand to be. It meant the whole of my body was within inches of his… and I wanted to lean right into him, to breathe him in, to put my other gloved hand on his heart, where my traitorous right hand already sat.
‘Come on,’ Alex said, taking my hand in his, ‘let’s have a five minute walk to stretch our legs before we set off again.’
We walked in silence down past the stream and over a little wooden bridge, slippery with rotting vegetation, towards a largish wood whose trees stood silent, watching in the still, damp air.
‘You haven’t said what you want, Harriet,’ Alex murmured quietly, as we walked. ‘We’ve had one illicit kiss in your hallway a couple of weeks ago when I came round for those papers. What would have happened if your Mrs Doubtfire hadn’t come back?’ When I didn’t say anything because I honestly didn’t know the answer, Alex went on, ‘I’ve kept out of your way since then because I wanted to give you chance to back out of anything that might have started between us.’
Alex had given me just enough come-on, and then backed off, leaving me wanting more. If, on that Tuesday afternoon, he’d have pushed me up against my newly decorated hall wall, hands everywhere like a sexually deprived octopus, I’d have been out of there like a shot. Instead, I’d spent the last few weeks dreaming of his touch, wanting to see him. Wanting more.
He stopped suddenly by a huge beech tree whose fallen leaves, the colour of over stewed tea, sat limply, forlornly, at its base. There wasn’t a whisper of a breeze to stir them into life. He leaned against it, dropping my hand. This was my second chance of the day to leave with my integrity intact – to flee the ridiculous situation of standing in a damp wood with my heart pounding, and return to my safe, if unadventurous, life with my husband and children. I knew that if I’d made the decision to laugh, poke him in the ribs and say, ‘Come on, Alex, you ridiculous person, what on earth are you playing at trying to seduce me in a damp wood in the middle of nowhere? That little kiss we had the other week was a huge mistake. Now stop messing around: this has gone far enough. Get me down to my mother-in-law’s and my family right this minute,’ he would have done just that. We’d have walked back to the car and he’d have driven me quickly and competently to Nick and the children and gone on his way.
But I didn’t. Under that huge beech tree, the scent of decomposing leaves filling my senses, I made a Jelly Deal with Alex Hamilton, sealing it with a second, much longer kiss than the one in my hallway on that Tuesday afternoon. This was a proper kiss, deep and long: a kiss that, this time, without any thought whatsoever for anything except the wonderful sensation of abandonment, I instigated.
I simply leaned into Alex as he stood against that giant of a tree and kissed him. It felt so strange, kissing someone who wasn’t Nick. I looked into those forget-me-not blue eyes and did just that: forgot all about anything but the dangerous, illicit thrill of the feel of my lips on his. He kissed me back – a firm, open mouthed kiss, his hands in my hair pulling me into him until we were both using the tree for support. He reached into my jacket, his warm hands sliding around until they came to the hem of my sweater: he moved them upwards in a slow, lazy foxtrot on my bare skin until I could have sung out loud with the sheer excitement of it all.
‘Harriet,’ Alex whispered in my ear, his breathing heavy, ‘I hate to tell you this, but I have no comfortable feel in my member…’ He began to laugh. ‘… and it’s either ripping your knickers off and having you here, right now, in the middle of this wood or…’ He looked at his watch, ‘… doing the sensible thing, getting back in the car and taking you to where you need to be…’
Before he could finish what he was saying my phone rang. Startled, I jumped guiltily and, rearranging my sweater, reached into my jacket pocket, which seemed to have found itself somewhere up around my ear.
‘Mum? Dad says “Where are you?” We’ve been here fifteen minutes and he thought you’d have got here before us.’ In my guilt and confusion Libby sounded plaintive, accusing.
‘Hi, darling,’ I forced myself to speak slowly, taking deep breaths. ‘We stopped for a while because I needed the loo and then ended up having a coffee. We won’t be long now. Is everything OK? Are the twins OK?’
‘Yes, we’re fine. They slept all the way down, so I suppose that means they’ll be awake most of the night now. Lilian and Granny are feeding and changing them. It’s a fabulous place here. How much longer are you going to be?’
I looked at the clock on my phone. I couldn’t believe it: we’d been stopped over an hour. I’d have said fifteen minutes. ‘On our way again now,’ I said brightly. ‘My fault we’re behind. There was a second-hand book sale on next to the cafe where we stopped, and you know what I’m like with books…’ I trailed off.
The lies had started.