Tara had another bad night’s sleep. This time she was back at Brownies, Branston anxiously trailing her round Troutbridge Memorial Hall as the dark waters of the River Martle crept steadily over Brown Owl’s knee socks, floating the battered papier-mâché toadstool that she’d completely forgotten about until it bobbed past the also forgotten form of Karen Lord, Pixie Sixer. Everyone was ignoring Tara’s increasingly urgent attempts to evacuate the hall before the tree fell, and she’d woken feeling more exhausted than when she’d gone to bed.
Morning weariness wasn’t unusual – even before the flooding, Tara’s mind tended to knead relentlessly at the day’s problems long after her body had switched off – but her first thought on waking was the reason for her queasy nocturnal joyride through childhood memories: Keith.
Despite what she’d said to Diane, in the cold light of day Tara wasn’t so sure she’d done the right thing. She’d been naive, stupid even, for not seeing the publicity angle first. Diane’s clear-eyed reaction flipped everything – and kept flipping it, over and over. One moment she felt bitter, furious that Dad wasn’t interested in her at all, just what profile opportunities she could offer; the next moment loneliness crashed over her, overwhelming her with shame that she’d been taken in so easily, even now. Worst of all, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly how she felt. Did she care? Was she angry, hurt, suspicious, afraid? Tara knew the questions she’d ask a client to help them explore their true feelings, hooking the slippery fish of truth from the confusing shoal of denial and delusion, teasing it out so painlessly they barely noticed. But it turned out that skill was like tickling: it didn’t work when you tried to do it on yourself.
The filter machine dripped and the smell of coffee spread through the kitchen. Tara leaned on the kitchen counter and stared into the garden, where Ruth’s favourite rose bush had recently erupted into bloom. The white roses gleamed like wedding dress satin in the pale sunshine.
Mum, thought Tara, remembering Ruth meticulously selecting which flowers to clip: two steps back from the bush, head tilted, secateurs raised, the flowers removed with a surgical snap. Every other day Ruth stuffed the silver bowl in the hallway with luxuriant sherbet-scented tea roses, a blowsy delight in Keith’s clean modern house. Toby had Ruth’s knack of making flowers sit right, the same way he could hang the right picture in the perfect spot, or place the unexpected splash of colour in a room. Tara didn’t. As the child of two artists, she felt cheated on the creative front. Toby was a quick learner: he’d absorbed Ruth’s little tricks before he bailed out at eighteen, while all Tara had absorbed was an appreciation of high thread counts and Ruth’s recipe for whipped feta dip – which Tara suspected was Diane’s anyway.
I should have asked her to show me what to do with the roses while I had the chance, she thought, aching with regret. It was the small losses that punched way beyond their size. Papercuts on her heart.
The bush rustled, throwing a shower of petals up into the air and on to the gravel, and a frightened blackbird shot out, closely followed by a determined Sybil.
Tara tried not to see that as a sign. She poured her coffee, added three sugars, and picked up her phone. She needed to get this out of the way before she could think about it too much.
‘Tara!’ Keith picked up on the second ring and sounded wide awake. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m well, thank you,’ she replied automatically. ‘Look, I just wanted to speak to you quickly about this community project.’
‘Ah, yes. How did the meeting go? I gather it was last night?’
‘Yes, it was.’ Tara tried not to think of Diane’s contemptuous expression. Or of the treehouse. It was hard, with her dad’s voice in her ear, sounding just like Dad. ‘Everyone’s really excited. Alice is contacting you today to discuss next steps.’
‘I’m so pleased to hear that!’ He did sound pleased. ‘You know, I’ve always believed, as an architect, that buildings are much more than physical constructions – they’re where people live their lives, where communities develop. At times like these, it feels right to use what building skills we have to repair those spaces, so people can get on with repairing their lives. It’s the small community projects that give me the most satisfaction, to be honest.’
Tara turned away from the window, and her mother’s rose bushes. That sounded great, but Keith had, after all, walked out on his own small community project, leaving a wife, two children and a very sad dog inside it.
‘So, with any luck we can get going soon,’ he went on, and Tara felt the nerves in her body surge with stress, tingling at her extremities.
‘How soon?’
‘Well, I’ve got nothing much on over the next few months, so I’ll shoot for a meeting for the end of next week.’
The end of next week? Suddenly it felt very real. Diane’s words came back to her: make him keep his distance, don’t let him push his way in.
‘Dad.’ Tara’s heart was racing, but she tried to keep her voice steady. ‘If you do this, please promise me one thing.’
‘If I can.’
Outside, by the bird table, Sybil was stalking an oblivious pigeon. Tara turned away. ‘Promise you won’t let them down.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘This hall means a lot to these people. Please see it through.’
‘Well, if you check the website, I managed to stick it out to the end of Wales’s newest multimedia art space,’ he said evenly. ‘It’s a village hall, Tara. It’s not the Sagrada Familia.’
‘I mean, if something else comes up, something more important …’ Tara heard herself backtracking, to her own private horror. ‘Please don’t leave us hanging now everyone’s so excited.’
‘I won’t, Tara. I promise.’
This wasn’t coming out right. She sank her forehead on to her free hand. There was no way she’d allow one of her clients to fudge an important communication like this. Two or three times a day she gently stopped a client from talking themselves out of a decision, and helped them grasp the scary flaming torch of their truths, instead of dropping it out of fear. But now, she couldn’t let her own fears out, in case … in case what? Despite everything, she didn’t want her dad to see how much this meant to her, and how easily he could hurt her again.
This is about me, she wanted to yell. This is about not letting me down.
Keith’s voice broke the silence, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. ‘Do they know I’m your father?’
‘I haven’t said as much. Although I guess some might put two and two together.’
‘It sounds as if you don’t want them to know.’
‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Lots of reasons,’ she said shortly.
‘I promise you this,’ said Keith. ‘By the time we’ve finished on Troutbridge village hall, you’ll want everyone to know. How’s that?’
He’s missed the point, she thought, with a childlike wrench of disappointment. He’s completely missed the point.
Half an hour later, Tara was cruising slowly down another of Longhampton’s premier residential streets, looking for a spot to hide her Mini between the Range Rovers and Volvos, bargaining with the universe.
If she could find a space, and fit into it first time, she could text Phil.
It had been three weeks and two days now since they’d last spoken; the longest silence so far, and Tara’s attitude had slipped from nonchalance to irritation and was now sliding into concern.
She slid her car into a gap in two elegant movements – Tara liked parallel parking, she was good at it – and hated herself for the way her heart bounced as she dug through the mess of paper hankies and pens and receipts in her handbag to find her phone.
Justifying Phil to her conscience was an endless system of rationalizations, balanced precariously against Justin’s shortcomings. Yes, she and Phil might only get together a handful of times a month, but every time they did it felt like their third date, i.e. matching underwear and flirtation. And Phil was actually a good boyfriend. He could do things, unlike Justin, who just moaned about being too busy or too important to grapple with life’s minor snags. Phil dealt with waiters, mice, parking wardens, fuse boxes, bad weather, PMT, all with unflustered confidence. He never made promises, but he never broke them either. And he was inventively, flatteringly good in bed. The flipside to this was a lot Tara didn’t know about what he did on the other twenty-five or so days, but they were usually too busy tearing off each other’s clothes to engage in deep discussion about the future, which Tara found surprisingly easy to live with after Justin’s micromanagement.
Sybil had been the step change. Getting a pet together – well, sort of – that had to mean something. You didn’t trust your cat with just anyone.
Tara stared at her message: Hey, Phil! How’s things? Sybil misses you – why don’t you come over for … Her finger hesitated over the screen; it was very easy to slide into innuendo with Phil.
It was already ten to nine. She couldn’t sit here thinking lewd thoughts all morning. She got out of the car, juggling the phone and her keys, still deliberating about how to finish the sentence without an obvious double entendre.
‘Tara!’
She jumped back, stumbled and swung round, looking to see who’d spotted her.
It was David. On the other side of the road, waving. Well, he was raising his hand in a formal greeting. The sort of cheery wave a post-war detective sergeant might give to a bright young vicar’s daughter. He was only missing his bicycle.
Tara considered pretending she was just admiring the car, but spotted her Mulberry bag on the back seat. Bollocks. Could she style it out? Could she leave the bag there for a few hours, come back later and …?
Her red purse peeked jauntily out of the top. Yoo hoo! Nick me! it said.
The very next lamp post even had a police notice about bag thefts on it. No, she couldn’t leave it. Damn.
And now David was crossing over, and in a few strides he was right there next to her.
‘Good morning!’ he said cheerily.
Tara pocketed her phone, beeped the car back open and grabbed her bag. ‘OK, you’ve got me,’ she said, swinging it over her shoulder. ‘Busted.’
His eyes twinkled. ‘Oh? How so?’
‘You know how so. Have you been waiting to catch me out? And don’t go fake-innocent on me,’ she went on. ‘In the kitchen that time with Jacqueline. You were all hint-y.’
David pretended to look conspiratorial. ‘Is this where I should extract some sort of deal from you in return for my silence? Make you offer to bake my office rota cake?’
‘You could. But it would be a bit mean.’
‘Why? Do you have a particularly awful secret ingredient?’ He raised an eyebrow again. ‘Leeches? Copydex? Sultanas?’
‘Don’t give me ideas.’ Surreptitiously, Tara checked her phone to make sure she wasn’t accidentally pocket-calling Phil – it had been known – then set off down the street.
‘I wasn’t stalking you, by the way. I only saw you the once before today.’ He followed her, his long stride easily keeping up with her quick pace. ‘Was it an emergency this morning? I’ll overlook it if it was.’
‘No,’ said Tara. She found it hard to lie to David. Presumably he was doing some sort of low-level hypnotism on her now. ‘I just like driving. It’s my quiet time. My me time.’
‘Do you have a nice drive in?’
‘Yes, actually, it’s quite picturesque …’ Tara was about to describe her route in from her old house, the one she’d shared with Justin, which went through a series of pretty black-and-white villages, the oldest church in the county and, unexpectedly, a llama farm. She stopped herself: it was clear from their lunchtime walks when she’d dangled some Justin-based conversational hints that David had no intention of revealing more about his hypnotic past, and that was the only reason Tara ever wanted to talk about Justin again. She didn’t really want David linking her with him in his mind.
He was waiting for an answer. ‘Well, no,’ she admitted, ‘it’s not a long drive now. But it’s the principle.’
‘So where do you live?’
‘On Malvern Road, going out of town? Just up from the Methodist church.’
‘What, seriously? That has to be barely a mile from here. It’s quicker to walk than to find somewhere to park.’
‘No, it’s—’
‘Tara, if you’re finding parking spaces on the Poets’ Streets, you need to tell me your secret. I live in Southey Avenue – round the corner.’ He indicated another street of white-fronted villas behind the one they were on. ‘And I can never find anywhere to park. It’s why I walk everywhere.’
Tara made a note not to park in Southey Avenue again. ‘Well, good for you.’
‘Yes, it is. Tremendously good for you.’ He said it so seriously, she couldn’t take offence. ‘And fascinating too! Did you know there’s a miraculous well on Coleridge Street? Apparently, the water was part of the monastery’s spa treatments. Well, not a spa, exactly, I suppose – more of a … last-ditch leprosy treatment.’
Tara shot him a side glance. ‘No local history before breakfast, David.’
‘Just trying to make the walk interesting,’ he said, falling in behind her.
Tara kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, but mentally started sweeping up and down the local streets, trying to remember if she’d seen any ancient wells. She wasn’t even aware there’d been a monastery, let alone a miraculous spring. Although … Bishop’s Road. Huh. That was the annoying thing about David. He got her brain working.
‘Do you want to tell Hero?’ she asked, despite herself.
They were almost out of the residential terraces, and nearing the outlying shops of the high street. A lone hi-fi specialist, a Polish grocery. Tara tried to steer him down her usual shortcut through an alley full of bins, but David had already set off on the long way round and was fishing in his pocket for his pedometer.
‘Come on,’ he said, when she grumbled, ‘if we’d started our pedometers back there, we could have got a thousand steps in before lunch!’
‘Oh, good. So I can have lunchtime off?’
‘Absolutely not! Don’t you want to beat Lionel and Emily in the Step Challenge?’
‘Of course I do,’ Tara admitted through gritted teeth, because she did.
After three weeks of Jacqueline’s ‘teambuilding’ Step Challenge, Team Eminel were leading the star chart by a clear margin of 45,000 steps, despite Lionel the homeopath’s dodgy hip and his lifelong opposition to what he called ‘the tyranny of shoes’.
‘We’re never going to overtake them if we don’t find some extra steps somewhere,’ David continued. ‘I saw Emily in the park yesterday, whipping the poor chap on. I didn’t realize anyone could move so fast in Birkenstocks.’
‘Well, that’s Emily for you. She could start a competition in a flotation tank.’
‘What I don’t get is why she picked Lionel,’ David mused. ‘They don’t seem particularly friendly?’
‘She didn’t pick him.’ Tara was distracted by the buttery smell of fresh croissants drifting from Juliet’s Bakehouse. ‘Jacqueline engineered the pairings.’
‘Engineered?’
‘Oh, it’s one of her missions – trying to build bridges between the traditional counsellors and the alternative therapists.’ The croissants were on a two-for-one deal. How bad was it to have croissants for lunch? If she skipped breakfast? ‘I mean,’ Tara carried on, totting up the calories, ‘we’re only paired up because we were last back from lunch and the numbers aren’t even, otherwise you’d probably be striding out with someone who thinks you can cure cancer by putting a fragment of a crab claw under your pillow.’
‘Ha!’
Tara was jolted out of her croissant-gazing by the sound of David’s unexpectedly snorty laugh, and realized she’d probably said a bit too much.
‘So there’s some tension? In the Centre?’
Tara hesitated, unsure of how to reply. David was on the Credibility side of the chasm, surely? One of Us, not Them? What could be more Establishment than David’s wall of qualifications? His books?
And yet … although she was secretly starting to enjoy David’s dry sense of humour, there was definitely a shrewdness behind his affable exterior. It wasn’t just book-intelligence; he did seem to ‘get people’, as Kasia had pointed out. David seemed to see things in people they didn’t even see themselves.
‘I believe,’ she replied, carefully, ‘there’s room for a broad spectrum of methodology under the umbrella of therapeutic intervention.’
‘Really? As someone once muttered in my direction, “In English?”’
They were at the Wellness Centre door now – the walk had gone much more quickly than normal – and David was holding Tara’s gaze with that quizzical, look-into-my-eyes-not-around-the-eyes directness, as if he was waiting for the real answer. Feeling herself slipping into another inappropriately honest comment, Tara blurted out one of Justin’s meaningless space fillers. ‘It is what it is, isn’t it?’
She couldn’t break their gaze. Now she looked closely, David had unusual eyes – a delicate tiger-striped hazel, the colour of the polished oak staircase – that seemed to see right inside her. And one or two pale brown freckles on his nose that she hadn’t noticed before. He smiled, as if he could hear her thoughts, and Tara visualized fuzziness in her head. Fibre glass. Packing chips. Bubble wrap. What were you meant to do to fool hypnotists?
Wordlessly, David held the door open for her and Tara swept in, not entirely sure how the conversation had ended. Inside, Chloe the receptionist was obscured by a huge bouquet, with several therapists crowded round it.
‘They’re for you, Tara!’ Judith announced before anyone else could, and the reception committee swung round to catch her reaction, which was not positive.
Tara wasn’t a fan of bouquets. They never boded well, in her experience. Generous bunches of flowers had arrived on a regular basis throughout her childhood, usually just before or just after Dad went away for a few days; Mum seemed miserable or furious as she dismembered the arrangement into a vase, not swoony with delight like women on the television. The open-plan downstairs of the house was always filled with roses and dahlias from their own garden, so Dad’s hothouse bouquets ended up in Tara’s room, where she had to look at the slowly wilting lilies and wonder what was going on. Luckily Justin hadn’t been one for sending flowers – or doing anything controversial enough to need to apologize florally – so it hadn’t been much of a problem in her adult life.
Dad, she thought. He thinks he’s overstepped the mark so he’s sent me flowers to apologize. The last bouquet he’d given Tara was on the day of her graduation, and she’d had to leave them with her old next-door neighbour.
‘White roses,’ Hero informed her, solemnly, ‘are a magical symbol of innocent love and new beginnings. It’s a beautiful gesture. Although totally unjustifiable in an air-miles sense.’
‘They’re from that posh new florist on the high street,’ Chloe added, more pragmatically. ‘Must have cost a fair bit, bunch that size.’
‘Have you got a secret admirer?’ Bryan wagged a finger at her. He was the worst for gossip. By a long way.
Tara stared at the arrangement. Had Dad got off the phone and straight on to the florist? She could picture him doing that.
Although … maybe they were from Phil? All right, so a phone call would be a much better way to apologize for his silence, but maybe the card would include directions to some romantic boutique hotel? Her stomach fluttered traitorously.
‘Must be from a client,’ she said, as calmly as she could. If Bryan’s intrigued expression was anything to go by, the watercooler rumour mill would be whirring off its axle by lunchtime.
‘A client that fancies you!’ Kemi purred.
‘No, they’d have sent dog roses,’ Hero corrected her. ‘Meaning pleasure and pain. Or maybe tuberose, for dangerous pleasure.’
Chloe gave Hero a side eye, then turned back to Tara. ‘Aren’t you going to see who they’re from?’
‘Haven’t you already peeked?’ Tara lifted the huge bunch off the desk.
‘Morning, David!’ Chloe added, spotting him collecting his post from the pigeonholes behind them, and Tara caught a quick glance pass between Hero and Chloe. David was already popular with Chloe and the reception team, most of whom were dog lovers.
‘Morning, all!’ David waved his post in a crisp salute, then, unseen by the others, raised his eyebrow in passing at Tara as he went up the stairs to his room.
‘Tell us who they’re from at least, Tara!’ Hero protested as Tara gathered up her bag and flowers and, after a subtle delay, followed him up the stairs.
Tara didn’t respond because she didn’t intend to open the card until she was safely on her own.
To her surprise, the flowers weren’t from her dad. The card read, Thinking of you always, Pumpkin. All my love, Big Phil xxxx.
Tara sank back against her desk, feeling conflicted. Every now and again, Phil sent her generous presents: a bottle of champagne here, some fancy chocolates she’d mentioned she liked there. He’d once sent her a pair of silk pyjamas so nice she still hadn’t worn them. The problem was, he never called her Pumpkin, or referred to himself as Big Phil. He called her Taz, and himself something a lot worse than Big Phil.
Either he’d forgotten what he called her or, more likely, somewhere Pumpkin was opening a card reading something she wasn’t expecting at all.
Tara was surprised by how crushed she felt. It was one thing to have suspicions. Another thing to have someone drag your suspicions out from the back of your mind where you were studiously ignoring them, and force you to examine them properly. And then to examine yourself.
She had to face it. The reason she and Phil never got beyond that three-date feeling was because there was nowhere else to go. And it wasn’t just Phil putting her in that box: she was letting him do it. A shiver of shame crawled across Tara’s skin, and she rammed the flowers in the wastepaper basket as if they were covered in ants. But they looked obscenely wasteful, stuffed in the bin, and she stared at them crossly, knowing they’d catch her eye all day.
Who could she give them to? Kasia?
She retrieved them with a sigh and marched out into the corridor, but even as she lifted her knuckles to knock on Kasia’s door, Tara realized she’d then have to explain why she was giving them away, and probably get a dose of well-intentioned life coaching in return. Could she leave them in reception ‘for everyone to enjoy’? No, they’d just be a focus for discussion. Or put them in the kitchen? Or throw them out of the window?
Tara stared down into the velvety, expensive roses, and wished she hadn’t allowed herself to start developing proper feelings for a man who, if you snapped him in half, probably had Bad Break-Up written through him like a stick of rock.
On the other hand, she definitely had a good reason to call him now.
‘For God’s sake, Tara, this is so tacky!’ she spat at herself.
There was a discreet cough from down the corridor.
David had just opened his door to a woman with a shaggy black dog in tow. All three were staring at her, and not bothering to hide their curiosity.
Tara swallowed.
‘The flowers. Still quite tacky. From the … flower food,’ she said lamely, and slunk back into her own room, Phil’s roses under her arm.
She had five minutes before her first appointment of the day: Jeannie McAllister for her introductory assertiveness coaching. Take your own medicine, she told herself, and dialled Phil’s number.
When it went to voicemail – as it had done the last two times she’d called, and left not-very-cool messages – Tara closed her eyes. ‘Phil, can you call me, please? There’s something we need to talk about.’ The outrage was already draining pathetically from her voice. ‘Hope you’re all right. It’s been a while!’ (Why, Tara, why?) ‘Um, I’m fine. Sybil misses you. So do I.’ (Oh God.) ‘Bye.’
She looked at the flowers on her table. Jeannie – or as she was now going to be, ‘My lucky hundredth new client!’ – was going to get a really nice surprise.