First thing next morning, Izzie reported for duty. The combination of shock, panic, and excitement at Maddy’s news seemed to have blasted away the lingering symptoms of her flu, and she was positively hopping from foot to foot as she let herself into the house.
“Flood of inquiries? Is that really what she said? What are we going to do?” she demanded. “Two hundred pots! We can’t possibly come up with that much balm in three days. We haven’t got any pots for a start, no centpertuis, no lavender, no wax. The only thing we have got is Jean Luc’s olive oil!”
Maddy shook her head helplessly. “I’ve been up all night thinking it through. It’ll certainly take more than just the two of us this time. We’ll have to get help. And I haven’t managed to get hold of Jean Luc yet, though I’ve been trying his number all night. He’s going to be gobsmacked when we tell him how much more centpertuis we need!”
Izzie looked momentarily disconcerted. “Isn’t he answering his phone? Didn’t he go home last night?”
Maddy eyed her cautiously. “No, I don’t think he did. He’s left the answer phone on, and he’s not picking up his mobile.”
Trying to look nonchalant, Izzie set to work loading the dishwasher and making coffee, while Maddy ran through the possibilities she’d come up with for helpers over the next few days. “I know Crispin’s at a loose end at the moment. I feel terrible about it. He’d pretty much banked on working for us for the next six months, and he’s only got bits and pieces of other work lined up. Thanks.”
She took the coffee Izzie offered and patted the seat next to her. “Look, I’ve started to make a list. I haven’t asked anyone yet—I wanted to check it out with you first. What do you think?”
Izzie peered at the piece of paper. “Janet Grant, yes, and she’d be brilliant with the kids, wouldn’t she? Who’s Lillian? I don’t think I’ve met her. I could ask Marcus, too. I’m sure he’d help us out.”
“Mmm,” replied Maddie quickly. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of his photography, and you might need him to pick the kids up if we’re really pushed. But we could keep him in reserve. Lillian was Simon’s secretary at Workflow Systems. She’s a bit shy but terrifically efficient.”
“But, Maddy, we can’t pay them. We’re going to be stretched enough as it is to pay for the ingredients and the packaging and everything. Are we just going to ask them to do it as a favor? You could offer Crispin your body, but I don’t think Janet or Lillian would be too keen!”
“Oh I don’t know. Janet wears comfortable shoes, and she practically has a mustache.” Maddy smiled wickedly. “No, I’ve thought about that already. It’s only going to be for a couple of days. We’ll have to offer them payment in kind—a kind of barter thing. For a start, we’ll feed them—that goes a long way with Crispin, I can tell you. He could eat toast for England! I thought I could offer Lillian some of my clothes—well, you should see the stuff she wears—and I’ve got too many jumpers, you said so yourself. Not sure about Janet—maybe she’d be satisfied if I offered my soul—but she did ask if she could take foliage from the garden for the church flowers. I may have to offer her a whole tree for this, but I reckon it’d be worth it!”
“What about me? What can I offer?”
Maddy waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I’ve thought about that too. You can offer Jean Luc some irresistible incentive to get us some more of that sodding centpertuis. I warn you, he drives a hard bargain!”
Izzie fidgeted, looking down. “If he’s been out all night, he might not be very interested in anything I have to offer. You’d better play the cousin card. I think that would—”
The phone interrupted her, and Maddy answered. “Jean Luc! At last. Where have you been? Izzie and I were worried!”
Izzie flapped her hands and mouthed a silent “noooo!” at Maddy, who turned away, laughing, and lapsed into French. “C’est pas vrai? Toute la nuit? Cinq? Tu doit-être crevé. Ah, oui, on s’inquiétait, Izzie et moi. Izzie surtout.” She paused and laughed knowingly. “Demande lui toi-même! Je te la passe.”
And she passed the phone to Izzie. What the hell had that been all about? She took the phone cautiously and found herself speaking rather stiffly. “Hello? Jean Luc?” Even to herself she sounded embarrassingly English. “Yes, we were wanting to ask you for some more centpertuis, please.”
“Izzie? It’s really you?” His voice sounded warm and smiley, and in spite of herself, Izzie felt her stomach clench. Get a grip, girl. “Wonderful to hear your voice. I feel better already, but I’m sooo tired.”
“Well, um, we need quite a bit this time. About four times as much, actually.”
“Oh, non! My poor back! It is only just recovering now. I am sooo out of condition, I think. But for you two, I will do it.”
“The thing is,” she gabbled on primly, “we need it very fast this time. We have to have the stuff made up in three days, and more of those little pots. Two hundred actually.”
“Non! Tu plaisantes! You are joking! Oh, Izzie, I can’t bring it over this time. I’m all tied up here. You know how it is—no one else will do but me. But I’ll make the phone calls—there’s a wholesaler in Grasse. I’ll make some time to dig up more centpertuis this morning before I go back to bed.”
Izzie’s back was growing more and more rigid as the conversation went on. “Yes, well, we’d be very grateful,” she concluded frostily. “If you could let us know where we can source the pots, we won’t have to trouble you again. I’m sure you must be exhausted after last night.”
“Oh, yes! But it was so exciting. Every time is like magic. I’ll send you both photos.”
“Jean Luc, I’m really not sure I—”
“They are so adorable. I have two of them here. One white, one black.” He paused theatrically. “I’ve got five altogether now.” He started to laugh, and suddenly she got the feeling she was the butt of some joke she didn’t quite understand. “And more on the way. The sweetest little lambs you ever saw.”
“Oh! Lambs. Of course, lambs. It’s lambing time!” She laughed, relief pouring into her. “Jean Luc, it’s so great to hear your voice . . . Yes, I wish I was too . . . of course I would . . . I can’t wait . . . Yes, of course . . . Me too . . . Now off to bed with you, young man! You’ve got to be in good shape for digging up the centpertuis for us!”
God! I must get a grip, she chided herself. I’m a married woman.
A few hours later, the troops had been rallied. Of course, Lillian had had no trouble finding temping work in Oxford, but by a stroke of fortune was free for the day and agreed readily to drive over to Maddy’s at lunchtime. Izzie sat back in admiration as she listened to Maddy laying on the charm to persuade her. She’d missed her vocation, this woman: she’d have got a first-class honors in schmooze.
Crispin had been run to ground, and it only took the word “lunch” for him to drop everything. Janet had bustled over after taking the local primary school children for hymn practice, and had arrived in a cloud of patchouli and dog hair. One of Izzie’s superdeluxe shepherd’s pies had been liberated from the freezer and was soon steaming seductively on the table in front of them. As Izzie dished out, Maddy addressed her battalion, explaining the situation, offering terms, and trying her darndest to be persuasive.
“So the thing is, we absolutely have to get the balm to Pru’s office in London by Wednesday afternoon at the latest. That way, she can get the samples out to journalists on Thursday, ready for editorials in weekend editions of the paper. And I’m afraid that means it’s going to be all hands to the pump as soon as we get the ingredients and the pots—probably tomorrow morning—Jean Luc is organizing that.”
There was a nail-biting silence.
Janet was the first to wade in with gushing enthusiasm. “Even if it means working all night, I’ll sign on the dotted line straight away. I think this could be rather fun! And you don’t need to worry about a whole tree—but if I could make free with my secateurs among your shrubbery, I’d be very grateful. I’ve got my eye on that Camellia williamsii. Can’t wait to get going on that lovely glossy bush of yours!”
Crispin, Izzie, and Maddy all suddenly studied their plates with ferocious concentration.
“I don’t know anything about cooking or stirring or anything,” said Crispin through a mouthful, and trying to wipe the smile off his face, “but I can help with loading up and you can use my van for delivering the stuff.”
Two down, one to go. Everyone turned to look at Lillian. She was hesitant. “I’ve got to be in the office during the day tomorrow, but if I come over as soon as I’ve finished, I’ll gladly help, er, Maddy! And . . . well, I’ve always admired your chic, so if you’re quite certain about those jumpers . . .”
Maddy and Izzie exchanged triumphant glances as their odd assortment of guests tucked in with relish. A rather fine Château Léoville-Barton from Simon’s cellar added to the party atmosphere, and discussions turned to practicalities. Soon Lillian was showing her form.
“We, er, we do have a terrific amount to do. Is there anything we could be getting on with before the pots and the ingredients get here?”
Izzie groaned. “Well, there is, but I’m afraid no one can do it but me! I’ll have to do four hundred hand-lettered labels—two hundred for the front, two hundred for the back—so I’d better get cracking!”
“Hold on a minute, Izzie,” Lillian interrupted, flushing slightly at her boldness. “I could help with that. If you can give me one of each type of label, I could scan them at work tomorrow and print out as many as you need. I’m sure no one would notice.”
“Lillian, you’re a genius!” shrieked Maddy. “But will you have time?”
Lillian shrugged modestly. “Oh, Maddy, I get my work done so much faster than all the other team assistants there, I’ve got bags of time on my hands.”
“Lillian, I could kiss you. I’ll double your jumper allocation for that!” Izzie quickly found Lillian the labels she had been using to copy from, and Lillian left shortly afterward, beaming in her new mint-green pashmina.
Back in the kitchen, Janet gathered up her bags. “What are the other ingredients you need, apart from the stuff your cousin is sending?”
“Not much really,” explained Maddy. “That’s the beauty of it. It’s actually quite a simple recipe. Just beeswax, centpertuis, olive oil, which we’ve got, and lavender. That’ll be the problem.”
“Lavender? Is that all? Good heavens, I’ve got a good friend, met her at the peace camp at Greenham actually.”
Maddy and Izzie exchanged incredulous glances.
“She runs a holistic health center in Wales, and they make some of their own remedies and oils. They’ve got fields of lavender there and I know they dry it. Shall I give her a call?”
“You lifesaver! If you could, that would be great. We could go and collect as much as she could spare us—today, if you could arrange it.”
“Well, maybe that’s something I could do,” chipped in Crispin, “if you could fix me up some sandwiches for the journey.”
“I’ll pack you a proper Famous Five picnic,” Izzie promised. “Hard-boiled eggs, as much fruit cake as you can eat, ham sarnies and . . .” they all joined in, “lashings of ginger beer!” And laughing as they left, Crispin and Janet, an unlikely alliance, planned his route to Wales for the lavender mercy dash.
Later that afternoon, Izzie went to pick up all four children so they could have supper at Maddy’s. The car park at Eagles was just as appalling as she had feared—and worse. She felt horribly conspicuous but couldn’t resist a triumphant little smile at Linda, Fiona, and Clare, clearly put out when Will bolted out of the classroom and threw himself into her arms.
Back at the house, while the children were busy watching cartoons and spreading muffin crumbs all over the sofa, Maddy told her that Jean Luc had called again. He had found a supplier for the pots, negotiated the best deal he could, gone out to dig up a load of centpertuis, and arranged for an overnight courier to pick up everything they needed that evening.
“The man’s a saint,” Maddy exclaimed. “It should all be here in the morning. And he’s offered to pay for this load.”
“God! That’s going to cost a fortune.”
Maddy put a restraining hand on Izzie’s arm. “Oh, you needn’t worry about him. Jean Luc’s loaded. He may play the simple farmer, but he made a stash as an art dealer in his thirties. He just dabbles now. The farm’s what he really loves. But being Jean Luc, he’s even managed to make a success of that!”
Izzie’s eyes sparkled. “God! Could he be any more perfect?”
“Well, there is a dark side. I suppose I should be the one to break it to you—he’s got a secret collection of Jean Michel Jarre albums.”
“That’s hard to forgive. But honestly, we’ve got to get him to invoice us, just to keep things businesslike.”
“He’s promised to, although I had to threaten him.”
Next morning, with an early courier drop-off, they were ready for business. Crispin had spent the night at the holistic health center but was due back with a van load of lavender within the hour. Lillian had phoned to say she would bring the labels by about seven that evening; and Janet had turned up carrying pots, double-boilers, sieves, jelly bags, funnels, and ladles—amassed during a lifetime of jam making—and clanked her way into the kitchen.
“Right, mon capitaine, what’s first?” She looked around, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s clear some space. Let the dog see the rabbit, eh?”
Within an hour the first batch of centpertuis was bubbling foully, and the whole house stank. Janet, who seemed oddly immune to the stench, had been commissioned to prevent its sticking to the pan, and was poking at it with a wooden spoon. Maddy had scoured the countryside, following up leads from Mr. Jacks, and had probably now bought far too much beeswax. Izzie alternated melting the wax and mixing it with the oil with cuddling Pasco. She hadn’t yet broken the news to Marcus that she’d be out all night. He had been a bit iffy about the amount of work she was putting in for no financial gain—he called it a jobby, half job half hobby—and she couldn’t in all honesty blame him. She was beginning to wonder herself if it was all jam tomorrow. She’d deal with Marcus later, but he got there first. She put down the spoon and delved into her handbag for her trilling phone.
“Hi. Where are you?”
“Er, at Maddy’s,” she said hesitantly.
“Surprise, surprise! Look, I’ve got to go to Oxford. Piers has called me about the pictures. I won’t be back till late, so don’t bother cooking for me.”
“Oh, Marcus, I was hoping you could look after the kids tonight. We’ve got a rush on with the balm. It’s rather exciting really—”
“Sorry, can’t really help this time. Got to go, darling. Bye.”
Maddy looked at her as she put the phone back in her bag. “Are you stuffed for tonight, then?”
“It’s my fault, really, I hadn’t arranged it properly with him and—”
“We’ll do a sleepover then. Go and get their sleeping bags when you pick them up and they can all stay here. Will’s been asking for ages if Charlie could stay. Go on—problem solved!”
Janet bustled over. “All the children here together? What fun! Perhaps we could do a little treasure hunt in the garden. Bagsy Pasco on my team!”
By seven o’clock, the children were all fed and bathed. They’d flatly refused to eat in the kitchen, wrinkling up their noses at the smell, and Janet had set up a picnic area in the hall, complete with tent made out of the clotheshorse, picnic rug, and thermoses of Ribena. They were in seventh heaven. Good thing too, because the kitchen resembled a Chinese laundry, running with condensation and with jelly bags and pillowcases full of boiled centpertuis hanging from upturned stools, dripping slowly into Pyrex bowls. Earlier Crispin had dumped orange boxes of lavender sprigs onto the utility room floor and had had to be revived from the trauma of having to sleep on a futon and eat lentils at the holistic health center with a full English breakfast and copious cups of PG Tips.
“It was horrible,” he’d whispered to Izzie out of Janet’s earshot. “All those hairy legs, and they kept telling me I had too much yang energy just ’cos I asked if they had Sky TV.”
Once fortified, he was persuaded to cut up the lavender to add to the melted beeswax and looked wonderfully incongruous stirring the jam pan for hour after hour with a wooden spoon and wearing Maddy’s Cucina Direct denim apron.
“Right,” said Maddy, rubbing her hands. “It’s gone seven. Janet’s doing her Jackanory bit upstairs, I think I’ve just heard Lillian pull up outside, so Crispin take that apron off—and we’ll all have something to eat, then it’s all systems go.”
Once more they raided the freezer and realizing that the Aga and every saucepan in the house had been commandeered, had to resort to jimmying off chunks of frozen chili to defrost and cook in the microwave. Confident that this was something he could do, Crispin stepped forward with his—carefully washed—chisel and soon they were all sitting down, oblivious to the chaos, and dipping hunks of French bread into steaming bowls.
Replete, and with a glass of (more) good wine cradled in her hands, Izzie sat back in her chair and looked at this motley bunch around Maddy’s kitchen table. What funny turns life takes, she thought. It took a moment for her to recognize what she was feeling. Her children were safe and content asleep upstairs, she was working hard on something that interested her, chattering and laughing with new friends who seemed to value her, and Marcus was finding his feet at last. With a jolt, she realized she felt happy.
Seven hours later, all she felt was knackered. Two in the morning and the production line was slowing at last, but it had been relentless all night. Janet and Maddy had been carefully measuring and blending the cooled lavender-scented oil-and-beeswax mixture with the strained centpertuis at the kitchen table. As each vatful was ready, Crispin lugged it over to Izzie, who had been voted the one with the steadiest hands, for filling the pots with the least mess.
“Why me?” she’d whined.
“Darling,” Maddy had explained, “I’ve seen what you can achieve with a Barbie and a sponge cake.”
The filled pots went on down the line to Lillian, who had wiped each one down using Maddy’s best damask dinner napkins, having already got through a drawerful of tea towels, then snapped each one shut and carefully stuck on the labels. She carried out this task with extraordinary concentration, and, during a moment’s rest, Izzie had watched with fascination as she peeled each label delicately from the backing sheet with her orange-painted nails and placed it perfectly straight on each little pot.
Crispin had kept up a running total, and at two fifteen the cry went up: “That’s it. Two hundred on the pallets. Any chance of a cuppa?”
There was a ragged cheer, and everyone downed tools. They all looked utterly creased. Izzie put the kettle on again and dug out the teapot. Janet pushed back her wiry hair with exhaustion, inadvertently smearing green goo everywhere. Lillian arched her back and yawned, then went to burrow in her bag.
“I think this calls for a celebration,” she said coyly and, with triumph, plucked out a confectioner’s box wrapped in ribbon. “Doughnuts! I picked them up on the way here.” She undid the wrapper like a child. “Wasn’t sure what you’d all like, so I got a selection. Cinnamon and apple, toffee, custard, and jam, of course.”
“Cor, I could murder a doughnut,” said Maddy, slumping exhausted into a chair and lighting a cigarette. “Lillian, you are a marvel. Help yourself to another pashmina!”
The next couple of weeks of deathly silence were agony. It seemed like a century ago that they had worked through the night, then borrowed Crispin’s van and bombed—or rather rattled—down the M40 that miserably chilly afternoon to London, to deliver their hard-earned treasure.
Brazenly, they had planted themselves on a double yellow line, and Izzie had sat nervously in the car to fend off traffic wardens, while Maddy, who had to charm the languid young girl on the reception desk into helping her, had lugged the pots up two flights of stairs to Pru’s Covent Garden office. Luckily Pru had been out, because it was unlikely she would have been able to tolerate the sight of her friend in baggy joggers and a singularly unflattering jumper of Simon’s. What would the vision of a client in her doorway who looked more like a bag lady have done for her business image?
Pru had called the following morning and had been suitably rude about having a reception area clogged up with palletfuls of little jars of healing balm, but since then there had been nothing. Izzie had made tentative inquires at the health food shop, but they could scarcely contain their indifference. Maddy bit her nails, smoked virtually continuously, and tried to occupy herself with projects to take her mind off the wait. A call from some old London friends, trying to persuade her to join them for a week in Klosters at Easter, hadn’t helped. It had been such fun last year and she ached to go, but it would have made a large hole in a grand or two she simply didn’t have. It was a door to a part of her life she’d have to shut firmly now. Christ, meeting the grocery bills was challenge enough. She tried to sound as upbeat and positive as she could, made some plausible excuse about not being able to leave Pasco, and tried even harder not to slam down the phone.
Every day had been punctuated with calls either from Izzie or to her, in which they tried to reassure each other that something would happen soon, surely? Izzie was busy with the editing job Maddy had sorted for her before Christmas—or at least she tried to take the credit for having done so—and making up time with Marcus. WorkWorld had come up with a couple of days here and there for Maddy, covering for sick staff or for those who could afford a week away in February. But each job was more dispiriting than the last—especially as she was clearly no longer trusted to deal with the public—and the evening she came home from a day spent answering the phone at a software company, during which she had managed to cut off their most important client, she drank a whole bottle of wine on her own.
Feeling like hell the next morning, and with Pasco irritable from an ear infection, she decided it was time to bite the bullet and start clearing out some of Simon’s stuff. Grabbing a roll of bin liners, she resolved to fill them with his clothes to take to the charity shop in Ringford. If she did it fast enough, she reasoned, she wouldn’t have to look and the memories would stay at bay.
Planting Pasco in a pool of unexpected winter sunshine on her bed with a pile of toys and fabric books, she pulled open the cupboards and set to. In went T-shirts and ties, hundreds of suits, jeans, and jumpers. She ripped down belts, his bow tie and cummerbund, his dinner jacket (which had cost the earth), and his morning suit (which had cost even more). She pushed it all into the bag so fast she almost ripped the plastic.
“I’m doing fine, I’m doing fine,” she muttered like a mantra, as she filled each bag frantically, desperately trying not to think about the times he’d worn them or to imagine someone else wearing them now. What would she do if she bumped into a man in Ringford High Street, and he was sporting one of Simon’s Hermès ties or Gieves & Hawkes suits? She pulled out fleeces—hastily shoving her favorite into her own cupboard and slamming the door—polo necks for skiing, handmade shirts from business trips to Hong Kong in candy colors. Stuff, stuff, stuff. Eventually four bags bursting to the gills sat on the landing.
Pasco still seemed happy perched on the bed, thumb in mouth, banging shapes with a toy hammer. The shelves were almost empty now, so she started another bag for things to throw away, things too old and worn even for the charity shop. Shoes. In went suede brogues for weekends and leather Oxfords for work before dressing down became de rigueur. Trainers, sailing shoes, and walking boots, shaped to his large and wide feet. She tried not to notice the worn leather soles and still tied laces—oh how irritating it had been when he’d pulled off his shoes without undoing them! Be cross with him, she told herself. There was the old Harlequins T-shirt, and a rugby shirt from the days when he’d played for a local club on Saturday afternoons.
At the back of the shelf she found his old yellow corduroy trousers he’d loved so much but that she’d persuaded him were too young fogy. She grabbed armfuls of socks, handkerchiefs, tatty T-shirts, and swimming trunks. A lifetime of events. Empty clothes that now meant nothing. Meaningless and futile. And then there was the pile of his boxer shorts.
She went to grab them too, but for a fatal moment she hesitated. Then she touched them gently, running her hands over the neat pile. All brightly colored. Flowery or striped, tartan and spotted. He’d been very particular about his boxer shorts and it had been a bit of a joke between them. Every time they had gone away he would buy a pair, as a sort of ritual. There were ones from Saks Fifth Avenue, Paris, Barcelona. It was like a world tour in pants. God, how gorgeous his body had been in them. He’d been so big and strong, muscular with fair hair on his chest and arms.
For weeks she’d buried the thought of sex, and had gone to bed each night in nightclothes as asexual as she could lay her hands on. Now her mind flooded with the memory of his warm body and about how well he knew how to turn her on. How sometimes it had been gentle and familiar, and at other times frantic and erotic. When was the last time they had made love? Had she properly shown him how much she had loved him?
Her sob came out almost like a retch, and she ran into the bathroom and heaved over the loo, again and again. She felt weak and shivery, but still she retched. The phone shrilled next to the bed. Rinsing out her mouth, tears pouring down her face, she hurried to pick it up before Pasco could reach it.
“Maddy, it’s me—”
“Oh God, Izzie.” By now her sobs were almost uncontrollable, and her legs buckled under her as she slid down the side of the bed. “I miss him. I just miss him.”
It seemed to Maddy, when Izzie had finally left, after rushing over to administer tea, tissues, and tenderness, that she would not have howled so uncontrollably to anyone else. She wasn’t sure she’d ever laid herself so open, made herself so vulnerable. Thinking back now it was almost embarrassing the things she had told Izzie in her hysteria. She’d railed about his annoying habits—how he never emptied the bins, took his pants off with his trousers, always mislaid important documents—and had been almost graphic about their sex life. Had she really told her about that time in Vienna? But Izzie had simply sat next to her, gently rubbing her back, and had listened without saying a word.
No, had it been anyone else on the phone earlier she would have sniffed, swallowed her grief, and been brave. But somehow Izzie had made her open the floodgates and, in a debilitatingly exhausting way, she felt some kind of relief that she had cried so violently. She had rid herself of a huge burden by admitting, at last, that she was lonely, that she missed his voice and his laughter, someone to share the responsibility.
Maddy looked at her face in the mirror now and tried half-heartedly to reduce the puffiness around her eyes before she faced Little Goslings and the school playground. Why did her eyebrows always go red when she cried? That night she was so exhausted, she slept more deeply than she had for ages and wasn’t even wakened by Florence crawling into her bed. She just woke to her warm body curled next to hers.
“You’re not doing the rest of the clearing yourself,” Izzie had ordered bossily as she left. “I’m coming over next time.” And true to her word, she arrived on the doorstep at about nine thirty the next morning with a bag of fresh croissants, bullied Maddy into eating them with some of Jean Luc’s preserves from his box of goodies, and then they rolled up their sleeves and attacked the cloakroom. With uncharacteristic efficiency, Izzie produced a couple of boxes and began pulling open drawers, tugging out woolly hats and mismatching gloves.
“Your anal attitude to your wardrobe obviously doesn’t extend to the cloakroom, Mrs. Hoare. This is a mess.”
Her head ached with exhaustion from yesterday’s outpouring. Could she do this? “Oh, the outdoor stuff was strictly Simon’s domain. He thought this room would be like the gun room of some country squire, with a place for fishing rods, Purdey’s, and a brace of pheasant hanging from the ceiling.”
“What on earth is this?” squeaked Izzie, as she took down a spanking new Barbour from the peg. “You really were going to take this country business seriously, weren’t you? This is so crisp and shiny as to be almost obscene. Is it yours?”
“Right, as if you’d see me dead in something like that!” Maddy laughed finally, extracting a cricket bat from Pasco’s overenthusiastic ministrations. “He was so proud of that—we bought it in one of those ghastly huntin’-shootin’-fishin’ shops on Jermyn Street as a sort of celebration of our move.” She smiled ironically, remembering how he’d bought a tweed flat cap too, and had posed in front of the shop mirror. “I made him take me to N. Peal afterward, so I could get a big cardy to shore me up against the howling country air.”
Izzie continued to hold up the offending coat in mock horror. “He could at least have run it over a couple of times in the car to give it that beaten-up look . . .” She stopped suddenly. “Oh, Maddy, I’m so sorry, that was—that was really tasteless. I’m . . . honestly . . .”
The look on Izzie’s face was nothing short of poleaxed. She couldn’t take her eyes from Maddy’s. But Maddy simply dropped the pile she was sorting and went over to take Izzie in her arms. “It doesn’t matter—I hadn’t even thought you were being tactless. I have no more energy to cry anyway.” Then from nowhere she felt a bubble of laughter shoot up to the surface. “It’s quite funny really.” She snorted. “I’ve got this sort of image of someone like Sue Templeton driving frantically backward and forward over a coat”—she could barely speak now—“like . . . like Kathy Bates in that awful movie . . .”
Her tears, wonderful tears of mirth, poured down her face. Izzie started to smile uncertainly.
“Misery?”
“No, I’m fine really,” replied Maddy, stamping her feet and trying to control her hysterics. She could feel Izzie’s shoulders shaking with laughter too, as she caught the mood.
“No, you cretin.” Izzie howled now. “That’s the name of the movie . . . Stephen King . . . with James . . . Caan . . .”
“Aaah,” was all Maddy could reply, and collapsed onto the floor rocking with laughter. Pasco waddled over to her and threw himself into her arms, and for a few moments she thought she’d be sick again, this time from the effort of laughing.
From the kitchen, they could vaguely hear the sound of ringing. “Isn’t that your mobile?” Izzie was pressing her cheeks as if in pain.
Maddy pulled herself and Pasco to their feet. “It’ll be my mother. She always calls the mobile.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “She lives in some misguided hope that I’m always ‘out and about keeping busy.’” By the time they got to the kitchen the ringing had stopped and there was a voice message. She pressed the button to listen and Izzie held her ear close to the phone too, to hear what Giselle had to say.
“Daarling, it’s Maman. Good to see you are too busy to answer the phone, but I’ve just been reading the Telegraph. What on earth is all this about you and your friend making some cream of Luce’s? Couldn’t believe my eyes—it must be you. Have you taken leave of your senses?”
The message finished, and Maddy looked at Izzie in disbelief. Without saying any more, she ran to grab her purse. “Hold the fort for a moment. I’ll just see if the village shop has still got a copy,” and without looking behind her, ran out and slammed the front door.
The speed with which she dived into the shop and grabbed one of the last remaining copies of the Daily Telegraph must, she thought, have confirmed the villagers’ growing suspicions that she had lost the plot completely since Simon had died. Maddy virtually threw the money at Miriam behind the counter, gasped a breathy “thanks,” and legged it out again.
She laid the paper on the table and smoothed it out with her hand. “Where will it be?”
“Well, I only read the Guardian, of course”—Izzie smiled superciliously—“but it’s hardly likely to be under world events or obituaries, is it? Try health and beauty.”
Maddy flicked over the pages, virtually tearing the thin paper in her haste. There, on the left-hand page, next to a big article about diet drinks, were two columns of text with a small picture of one of their, their, little jars with Izzie’s drawing plain to see, under the headline “Pots of Gold.”
Maddy ran her finger along the lines of text and read the words aloud:
Well it had to be French, didn’t it? Only those clever continentals could create a beauty treatment that would be the elixir of life. But luckily for us British women, it was rediscovered by a couple of country housewives—
“Housewives?” Izzie gasped in disdain. “How dare they?” Maddy read on:
These two Cotswold earth mothers, Madeleine Hoare and Isabel Stock, stumbled by accident on the notebook of a nineteenth-century relative of Madeleine’s from the Cévennes region, and they have re-created it at their scrubbed pine kitchen table . . .
“It’s bloody limed oak,” shrieked Maddy, incredulous. “Pleeese!”
. . . a healing balm which they allege is the cure-all, treat-all cream that should be the only one to grace our bathroom shelf. The ingredients couldn’t be more “naturel,” including an obscure little plant exclusive to the vine-growing regions of France. The jar is delightful, the cream a mesmerizing shade of green, and though the smell might put you off, it’s no pain, no gain when it comes to the pursuit of perfect skin. When I tried some on my winter pallor, I have to confess an overnight improvement. Could this discovery have us chucking out the cleansers, toners, and moisturizers we so cherish? I could be convinced.
Paysage Enchanté Baume Panacé (healing balm) costs £24.99 (plus £3 p&p) for a 100 ml jar and is available by mail order from Huntingford House, Huntingford GL53 0XX (01547 324867).
They both stood in stunned silence for a moment. Then read and reread the article.
“‘I could be convinced,’” whispered Izzie in awe. “Do you know what this means? Only the bloody beauty editor of the paper thinks we’re onto something. This is the kind of editorial most cosmetic houses would kill for.”
Maddy felt panic grip her. “She’s put in my phone number, Izzie. Pru’s gone and put the phone number on the ruddy press release. You know what’s going to happen—we’re going to be inundated with calls from wrinkled and careworn readers. And look at the price she’s put—that’s five times what we were charging at the Fayre. We don’t take credit cards, we haven’t even got much stock left. What the hell are we going to do? What’s the readership of this paper?”
“Oh, I don’t know—million and a half?” Suddenly the phone started to ring.
It wasn’t until after Maddy got back from school and had fielded a further ten calls on the answering machine, that it stopped ringing long enough for her to get hold of Pru. She finally tracked her down in a taxi and had to shout to make herself heard above the noise of traffic in the background.
“What the hell have you done? The phone has been nonstop all day—it’s gone crazy.”
“Well, that’s gratitude! Actually, darling, I had no idea the papers would pick up the press release so quickly. Listen, I’ll call you back this evening and we’ll sort out how you can cope, but in the meantime take names and addresses and ask them to send a check payable to you. You have thirty days to fulfill a mail-order request anyway, so don’t panic.”
That evening, Izzie came over after the children at both houses had been put to bed, and they sat down at the table with notepads and pencils, laughing at their efficiency.
“Right, let the meeting commence,” said Maddy pompously. “What’s on the agenda?”
“Well, Madam Chairman, we have had a squillion calls from people wanting pots of gunk when we have practically no stock and no raw materials to make any more.”
“Thank you. Item two: panic! Izzie, this is dire. We’re going to have to get organized. Don’t we need to set up a company or something, so the checks can be paid into that? And it would help if we could take credit cards. And what about the stock?”
“I feel sick,” said Izzie, refilling their wineglasses. “I’ve always been terrible at this kind of thing—I deliver my accounts to the accountant in a shoe box. Let’s face it, neither of us is renowned for our financial expertise, are we?”
“If in doubt, make a list.”
Over the next half hour they wrote down everything they needed: bank manager, credit card facility, pots and centpertuis, lavender, more oil, Jiffy bags, labels, and a new phone number. Valium, Maddy added as an afterthought.
She leaned back in her chair. “You know who we need?”
“Lillian.”
“Got it in one. I’ll call her tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s phone Pru again and see what she has to say.”
Pru was remarkably uncontrite about the predicament she’d put them in. “Frankly, darling, I’m amazed, but I think the product has just hit a nerve. Perhaps we’re all fed up with the horrors of the twenty-first century—global warming, cloning, collagen injections, Botox, nanotechnology. With what you are offering, it’s cheap at the price. I was going to put it at forty-five pounds at one point, but I knew you’d blow a gasket. Now, you are both brilliant women, so get yourselves sorted and get as much help as you can. You need to decide if you want to take this seriously.” Maddy could hear her inhale her cigarette. “Oh, by the way, I had a call from the Daily Mail.” Maddy gasped. “Nothing to worry about, but they want to come up and do an interview with you both. Can I tell them Friday? But listen, girls—you’re going to have to think about your image here. If we’re going the back-to-nature route, you’re going to have to hide your Dualit toaster and forget about wearing anything Christian Lacroix. Think Mrs. Beeton meets—I don’t know—Greenpeace!”