A woman always knows, doesn’t she—it’s an intuition thing. Nicholas doesn’t believe in intuition, he says it’s just your unconscious mind picking up subtle signals and body language that your wide-awake self hasn’t noticed, putting two and two together and then ping! presenting you with four; so then of course you think (when four turns out to be the right answer) oh, four! How amazing, it must be my intuition.
So perhaps it wasn’t a psychic sixth sense at all, but my clever old unconscious mind jabbing me in the mental ribs: Look, he’s wearing jeans, he’s always hated jeans; look, he’s packing his own suitcase for business trips these days instead of leaving it to you; look, is that a different aftershave, a new shirt; has he always locked that drawer; since when has he been interested in playing squash?
If it had been your best friend sitting at your scrubbed pine kitchen table, a mug of cooling coffee untouched in front of her, fretting aloud over her latest psychic poke, adding it to the catalogue of sharp, pointed little prods and digs and nudges of the last weeks and months—an affair, you’d have said (inside your head, of course, because this isn’t something you can say aloud until she sees it, too), an affair, he’s having an affair!
Kit being Kit, however—
“He’s having an affair, darling,” he’d said baldly, heedless of the social niceties vis-à-vis other people’s cheating lovers, calmly blowing smoke rings across the table. “It’s as obvious as the very pretty freckled nose on your face.”
“Kit!”
He thunked the kitchen chair back onto all four legs. “Sweetheart. Staying out late: check. New haircut, new clobber—not sure about the black jeans, but however—new and hitherto unprecedented desire to play sweaty macho sports: check. Either he’s having an affair or”—he’d smiled evilly—“he’s crossed to my side of the street and can’t bear to tell you.”
“For heaven’s sake, Kit, Trace isn’t gay.”
Kit had spread his elegant hands: I rest my case.
“But Kit,” I’d whispered, wrapping my arms about the barely there bump beneath my shirt, the bump only Kit yet knew about, “how can he be having an affair, are you sure, are you quite, quite sure?”
“It’s not that I don’t care, darling girl. I love him too, you know. I realize this is absolute hell; but at the end of the day, it is best to know.” He’d sighed, getting up to make some fresh coffee. “All the signs are there, I’m afraid,” and with those few words my safe, glorious, perfect young life had teetered on the brink for the final time and then crashed irreparably about my shoulders.
I stop now beside a bush of winter sage, drawing in a deep gulp of perishing February air as the thirteen-year-old memory pounces, landing a blow to my solar plexus so powerful that for a moment I can’t quite breathe. Kit was absolutely right, of course. All the signs were there. And I hadn’t even told Kit about the dropped phone calls, the taking up smoking, the new willingness to walk the dog for hours each Sunday afternoon on the common. Classic, textbook signs. Trace was having an affair. It was obvious.
Obvious.
And wrong.
I push open the latch gate—trust Trace to have the most sweetly picturesque cottage in the village, all thatched roof and creeping roses and winding Wizard-of-Oz brick pathway—and do my best to feel like the happily married thirty-something mother of three I am, and not the distraught pregnant twenty-two-year-old child I was when last I stood at Trace’s front door.
Butterflies whisk around my insides. I take short, choppy steps to avoid slipping on the path, my breath gusting in icy plumes. I should have worn sensible flat boots, of course. Kitten heels sound so chic and girly, don’t they, and with their pretty sequins and bows—but so hopelessly lacking in traction, I could break my leg or my neck, or worse.
Kit tried to stop me from going to confront Trace that day, of course, but I wouldn’t listen, I locked him out of my car; I can still hear him hammering on the passenger window as I screeched recklessly down the gravel drive, determined, now that the poisonous thought was in my mind, to have it out with Trace immediately. It was a miracle I didn’t crash and smush myself into jelly on the way; though of course there were times in the next few appalling, grief-sodden days and weeks I wished I had. Wished I hadn’t survived the helter-skelter journey to throw those ugly accusations at Trace as soon as he opened his front door, to spit out the wonderful, amazing, precious news I’d been saving and savoring, and instead fling it at him like a gilded weapon, to wound and hurt.
I hadn’t given him a chance to explain or defend himself, because all the signs were there; instead, I’d run back to my car, blinded by tears, and of course I hadn’t even seen the slick of oil pooled in the driveway, oil from the leak in my car that Kit had been nagging me for weeks to get fixed. How could I ever put that right, how could I tell my poor little nearly baby: You’d exist if only I hadn’t been so angry, if I hadn’t listened to my “intuition,” if I’d just remembered to get the wretched car fixed—?
The front door opens and I nearly fall into a rose bush.
“I’ve been watching you dithering for the past five minutes,” Trace says, the corners of his beautiful mouth twitching. “I actually thought you were going to go back home at one point; I was all set to come out and bodily drag you in.”
“Lord, don’t do that,” I say, alarmed. “You have no idea how the neighbors gossip in this village.”
Quickly I step past him, trying not to notice how good he smells, and straight into the sitting room, where Trace has effortlessly managed to combine his passion for angled Swedish minimalism with chintzy English country cottage. Quite how Tudor beams and horse brasses hit it off with a flat-screen television and black leather sofa I’m not sure, but in Trace’s sitting room they give the distinct impression of being more than just good friends.
Rather like Trace himself, I think distractedly: all angles, charm, and contradictions, yet such a perfect blend of everything you ever thought you wanted—
“May I say, Mrs. Lyon, how very lovely you look with your clothes on,” Trace drawls, closing the door behind me. I jump at the sound like a rat in a trap. “Not that I didn’t appreciate the effort you went to last time we met; it gave a whole new meaning to the concept of the Naked Chef.”
“You promised,” I wail, my cheeks flaming.
“Relax. My lips are sealed. Though the glitter was a nice touch, I have to say.”
“Trace!”
He holds his hands up. “All right, all right. I’ll never mention it again, yes, I promise. Now. Into the kitchen. I’ve been cooking up a storm, Mrs. Lyon, as instructed—it’s not been easy, let me tell you, Christ knows what sadistic bastard invented the bloody Aga, it’s either on or it’s off with nothing in between. I need to know exactly what you think of my white onion risotto with Parmesan air and espresso—”
“You tried it!” I cry delightedly.
“You told me to,” Trace says ruefully.
I follow my nose—such a delicious smell, I hadn’t realized until now how hungry I am; but then I couldn’t eat at breakfast, or at lunch, far too nervous, which is so silly, really, it’s not as if Trace and I—Of course I haven’t seen him in so long (apart from the humiliating glitter incident, of course), not properly, not since we were lovers, in fact, and somehow I’d forgotten quite how attractive he is in the flesh—
I concentrate furiously on the kitchen. Trace’s bête noire, a glorious French blue four-oven Aga, takes pride of place, but everything else could have been taken straight from the pages of Bon Appétit—all that stainless steel, so wonderfully stylish, of course, though can you imagine the jammy handprints?—and I spin from one delight to the next like a child in a sweetshop: all-clad sauciers, a Robocoup, a full set of Global knives (what is it about the Japanese and cold steel?), a tilt braiser; and oh what bliss, an antique Griswald cast-iron skillet. He must have stayed up half the night on eBay to get hold of one of those.
Trace lifts the lid of a saucepan simmering on the Aga and dips in a wooden spoon. “Come on, then. Try it.”
Obediently, I open my mouth. Trace leans in, palm cupped beneath the spoon to prevent drips, and I know it really is the most appalling cliché, feeding each other food, so overused in cinema, I always think; but still forbiddenly, stomach-fizzingly erotic.
Hypothetically speaking.
“De-mm-shous,” I mumble through a mouthful of heaven.
“Against all reason,” Trace agrees.
People always forget that cooking is a science as much as it’s an art. All you have to do is think about the mystery of mayonnaise: It’s the sauce most tightly packed with oil droplets; up to eighty percent of its volume is oil, in fact, and you can make them more stable small droplets by whisking a portion of the oil into just the yolks and salt to start with, so that the salt causes the yolk granules to fall apart into their component particles, and there you are, no curdling. Straightforward science.
How can anyone not find molecular cooking absolutely fascinating? It really is the next great trend in cooking. There hasn’t been a culinary revolution like this since—well, since Escoffier, really. As I explained to Trace, and I could kiss him for saying yes to all this, the way it works is that to create unusual and original recipes, you analyze the molecular makeup of the ingredients with an infrared spectrometer nuclear magnetic resonance machine—any synthetic chemist or physicist will have one—and foods with similar composition just pair well together, even when you’re sure they really, really shouldn’t, sort of like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, if you see what I mean. Heston Blumenthal is just so brilliant at this; his recipes are nothing short of genius. And so—
“Bacon-and-egg ice cream?” Trace asks doubtfully the next week, when I present him with a draft menu. “Sardine-on-toast sorbet and meringue cooked in liquid nitrogen at your table?”
“So much more exciting than crêpes flambées, don’t you think?” I enthuse.
He reads down the page. “Envelopes of squid filled with coconut and ginger butter, monkfish liver with tomato seeds, freeze-dried foie gras shaved over consommé, thermo minted pea soup—”
“That’ll be hot at the top and cold at the bottom,” I explain helpfully.
“Of course. Followed by roast breast of duck with olive oil and chocolate bonbons, and a dessert of fig and black olive tatin with Brie ice cream, no doubt.”
“It’s all about working with natural flavors rather than adding something chemical to make it whizzy,” I burst out, unable to contain my excitement any longer. “It’s essentially the creation of flavors and textures that will transport your taste buds to a happier world.”
“You dippy hippie, you are your mother’s daughter.” Trace grins. “Though I’m not sure what she’d say about the snail porridge. Poor old snails.”
“I need to work on a signature dish,” I muse, twisting up my hair and skewering it with a pencil, so it’ll stay out of my way. “Pino Maffeo is famous for his seared foie gras with a twenty-four-carat golden egg—he takes this small oblong meringue and dredges it in lightly whipped cream, then dunks it into the liquid nitrogen—nearly two hundred degrees below zero, imagine!—which flash-freezes the cream, creating a texture like an eggshell. And then he injects mango sauce into the meringue with a syringe, and wraps the whole thing in twenty-four-carat gold leaf. Once it’s cracked, it oozes with the yolklike mango sauce—”
“I’m the one who’s cracked,” Trace mutters. “I must be, to have agreed to this. It looks like Frankenstein’s laboratory in here, not a bloody kitchen.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I add, “I’ll need to move some of this stuff over to my kitchen at home. Nicholas has got so much work on at the moment—ever since Will Fisher retired, really, he seems to live at the office these days—he’s often back so late I’m not even awake. It would be so much easier if I could work on my recipes at home in the evening, after the children are in bed, instead of having to get a babysitter and keep coming over here.”
All absolutely true, of course (poor Nicholas, even at weekends he’s taking calls from the office); but perhaps not the whole truth.
Which is that Trace is still dangerously and wildly sexy and gorgeous, and I’m really not at all sure that being shut up with him in this cozy little cottage cooking every day—when, as we all know, a kitchen is a more sexually charged environment than the Moulin Rouge—as we have been doing all week is such a frantically good idea. I adore Nicholas, of course, absolute smitten, no question of me ever doing anything, that doesn’t even come into it; but the thing is, Trace is unfinished business, as it were; and it’s all so much better if the question of tying up loose ends never arises. For all concerned.
After I lost our baby, Trace never once reproached me; he didn’t need to. I could do enough of that myself. It all seems so sad and silly and unnecessary now. I should have talked to my mother, of course; more importantly, I should have talked to Trace. But I was barely twenty-two years old, inexperienced and desperately naïve. I could whip up a feather-light soufflé with my eyes shut, but I knew nothing about love. How strong it could be.
I couldn’t stand even to look at my face in the mirror. The thought of seeing in his eyes the loathing and disgust I saw reflected each day in my own was simply more than I could bear.
And so I refused to see Trace at the hospital, refused to take his calls after I returned home, refused to answer the door no matter how much he argued and pleaded and—finally—yelled at me to come out and face him. Because I couldn’t, you see. Couldn’t face the man whose child I’d killed through my own stupidity and lack of trust. Trace wasn’t having an affair, of course he wasn’t; it turned out he’d taken a second job (in the midst of the nineties’ economic recession, the fledgling cheese shop was floundering), a job he hated and despised, but needed: to pay for an engagement ring. An agent—someone he’d met, with bitter irony, through Kit, in fact—had offered him obscene amounts of money to become the face (if that’s the right word) of a funky new jeans label; hence the new clothes, the sudden need to keep fit, the secretive phone calls. Trace had learned to smoulder from billboards and newspapers and magazines and imbue a rather ordinary pair of jeans with enough sex-by-association to have them flying off the shelves in record numbers.
Such numbers, in fact, that they’d paid not just for one and a half sparkling carats but also for the deposit on a flat off the King’s Road, over whose threshold Trace had planned to carry me just as soon as I said “Yes.”
Which I would have done, of course. Only by the time I knew what Trace was about, it was all far too late.
The only person to threaten my monopoly on self-loathing was Kit. He tried to fix things, of course, to persuade me to let Trace back into my life. He didn’t understand—neither of them understood—that this wasn’t something I was doing out of choice. That I loved Trace more than I ever had, but I knew—or thought I knew, child-woman that I was—that our poor little baby would always be there, a shadow between us, its loss darkening and souring every sweet moment, locking us both into a gray spiral of misery and despair until nothing was left in either of us to love. I couldn’t do that to Trace. Not after everything else I had already done to him.
Five months later, I met Nicholas.
“It absolutely isn’t on, Trace. Not at this time of night—”
“You weren’t asleep, were you? I can tell.”
“That’s not the point.”
His voice is teasing. “I rather think it is, though. Isn’t it?”
I put the phone down for a moment, and shut the door to Nicholas’s study a little more firmly so as not to wake the girls. “It’s ten-thirty at night, Trace. I have three small children asleep upstairs, not to mention a psychotic rabbit, a cat, and of course now four hamsters.”
“Four hamsters?”
“My mother gave the girls four Russian hamsters for the Chinese New Year, one for each of them and one just in case, and so far they all appear to be cohabiting in homosexual bliss.” I sigh. “Not one of her easier presents; they shit like, well, like hamsters, I suppose. But never mind all that now, you really can’t call me this late, supposing Nicholas had answered—”
“I was bored,” Trace says carelessly, and I can’t help thinking, amused and frustrated in equal measure, no wonder Kit loved him, they’re both so much alike. “And you unbore me. Besides which, I have to talk to you about sourcing.”
“Can’t it wait until the morning?”
“Not if you’re coming with me, it can’t.”
“Coming where?”
“I’ve just unearthed this amazing new supplier in Normandy, fantastic cheeses, Mal, out of this world, you’ll love them. If we get the first Chunnel train after six, we can—”
I laugh. “Trace, don’t be absurd. I can’t do that. It’s Saturday tomorrow, Sophie has pony club, though I must say I rather think she’s growing out of this particular phase, thank God, you have no idea how expensive it is, and then Evie’s got a birthday party in the afternoon. I’m sure Metheny’s getting a cold, too; it’s just out of the question, I’m afraid.”
“Bugger. Can’t Nicholas look after them for the day?”
Nicholas is a good father, a good husband, but the idea of leaving him to cope with the three girls all day on his own while I gallivant off to France in search of cheeses—of course, Trace has never actually met Nicholas—
“He isn’t even home from work yet, Trace, I can’t expect him to mind the children tomorrow. He needs a break, he works incredibly hard.”
“So do you,” Trace says. “Harder, actually, I should imagine.”
For a mildly hysterical moment I think of the laundry room, the dirty clothes hamper filled to the brim, the overflowing ironing basket practically an archaeological dig. Of the dishwasher still full of dirty plates from last night—I just haven’t had a spare moment to crawl in it and fish out the soggy spaghetti clogging the filter—and the kitchen bin squished full with so much compacted rubbish I can’t actually get the plastic liner out. The empty larder—“Mummy! These Cheerios aren’t Cheerios, they’re dust, we’re going to starve, Evie says she’ll call social services”—the overdue car insurance, the forgotten dry cleaning, the late birthday cards, the unreturned library books. The burned-out bulb in the fridge that I keep meaning to replace, the dirty bedsheets I simply must get round to changing before they climb off the beds themselves. The Christmas thank-you letters I haven’t written, the name tapes I need to sew in, Sophie’s science fair project, the manuscript I still need to deliver, oh God, oh God—
“Where is your husband at this time of night, anyway?” Trace asks. “Didn’t you say Evie had a school thing on tonight?”
I don’t often feel angry—it’s so demanding: time, energy, I don’t have enough of either to squander on just being cross—but I could have cheerfully killed Nicholas this evening. I chose him precisely because he seemed like the kind of man who would never let you down.
“He had to work, some eleventh-hour settlement that needed to be thrashed out,” I say through gritted teeth. “Poor Evie, she was so disappointed. They’ve been doing a special project on Stonehenge and she spent hours on it, all the girls in her class did presentations and of course she was the only one there without a father watching. It broke my heart.”
“Bring her with you tomorrow,” Trace suggests. “Go on, why not? Nicholas could cope with the other two, surely, and it’d cheer Evie up, a trip to France.”
When Trace says it like that, it seems so doable. Everything always seems so simple, so easy, to him. He has such energy, such passion and determination: enough to carry you with him even when you know, in your heart of hearts, that it’s not that straightforward.
He fills the world with such possibility. Whereas Nicholas—
But I can’t start to compare them. Or I really will be in trouble.
Kit must think me still twenty-two, foolish, and wide-eyed. I do know why he exerted himself to persuade me to take the job with Trace, and it has nothing to do with the fantastic career opportunity, the dream come true, that it absolutely is. Kit has never really forgiven Nicholas for coming into my life when he did, closing the door on Trace and thus any chance Kit might have had to redeem himself. When I said I was marrying Nicholas, Kit insisted it was too soon, I hadn’t yet worked Trace out of my system, I needed Nicholas for all the wrong reasons. When what he really meant was that he didn’t want to live with his own guilt.
“Come on, Mal,” Trace wheedles, “come to Normandy with me.”
“It would be nice to just drop everything for once,” I say longingly.
“And it is business. We can be there and back in a day. You know it’ll be fun; Evie can play chaperone—oh, shit. Look, I have to go—”
Over the distant thrum of street noise, I hear a girl’s high-pitched voice; I can’t make out the words, but her sentiments are clear. I smile, wondering what hot water Trace has got himself into now. Over the years, I’ve spotted him popping up now and again in the odd gossip column—one of London’s most eligible bachelors, apparently; not that I’m jealous, of course—usually accompanied by one of an interchangeable series of whippet-thin girls with ribs like famished saints. I suppose it was only a matter of time before it all caught up with him—
“See you tomorrow,” Trace says quickly, clicking off the call.
“We’ll see,” I reply to dead air; that favorite parental euphemism for No, but I’m too tired to argue any more, smiling despite myself as I replace the phone.
He could always do this to me. Make me smile, make me believe that whatever insane idea he’d come up with—write a book, run a restaurant, marry me—was the right, the only, thing to do. Which is why I didn’t dare see him again for thirteen years, until I was sure I was quite, quite safe.
I don’t leave Nicholas’s office for a long time, staring at the framed picture of the two of us on his desk. Our wedding day, ten years ago; we look so young, so carefree, so certain.
Kit wasn’t entirely wrong in his assessment. I was a little bit reboundish when I met Nicholas; after what had happened with Trace, who wouldn’t be? But I knew without doubt that he was the right man to marry, in a way that Trace never had been. Not quite as dashing, perhaps, not as knicker-wettingly, stomach-churningly disturbing; but you can’t live on a perpetual knife edge of excitement all your life, can you? If Trace was the ideal lover, I knew instantly that Nicholas was the ideal husband. Men are like shoes: You can have sexy or comfortable, but not both.
Not that Nicholas wasn’t sexy, too. In his own way. There was a depth to him that was shadowed and dark, a carnal, sensual undercurrent of which he seemed totally unaware. All it needed was the right woman to tap into it. And I was so sure then that that woman was me.
“You didn’t tell me Liz gave you a lift back from London last night,” I say, bending to pull off Metheny’s muddy wellies as Nicholas comes down the stairs a little after ten the next morning. “She said it was well past midnight by the time you all got back. I think she could’ve done without taking Chloe to Pony Club this morning, to be honest; she looked done in when I saw her—”
“How could I have told you? I’ve only just woken up.”
I look up in surprise. “No need to bite my head off.”
“Christ. I’m barely downstairs before you’re giving me the bloody third degree. Didn’t realize this had become a police state. Where are we, Lower Guantánamo?”
“Mummy! That’s ow-eee!”
“Sorry, sweetpea. There we are, all done.” I watch Metheny toddle happily toward the sitting room, then follow Nicholas into the kitchen, unwinding my scarf and pulling off my woolen gloves. My nose starts to run in the warmth. “Nicholas? Is something the matter?”
He ignores me, flinging open cupboard doors at random. “I don’t suppose there’s any danger of a decent coffee in this house?”
“There’s a jar in the end cupboard, by the cocoa. Nicholas, is everything at work—”
“Not bloody Nescafé! I meant real coffee! You would have thought I could get a decent cup of proper coffee in my own bloody house! Is that really too much to ask?”
I stare at him in astonishment as he crashes and slams his way around the kitchen. Nicholas has always been a tea drinker; rather a fastidious and demanding tea drinker, actually, a warming-up-the-pot, milk-first, Kashmiri Chai kind of tea drinker, to whom tea bags are anathema and Tetley’s a four-letter word. I cannot recall him ever drinking coffee in his life.
In another life, I might wonder if Nicholas—but no; if nothing else, the disaster with Trace taught me the value of trust.
There’s a knock at the kitchen window, and the window cleaner waves cheerily. I sigh inwardly. I’d forgotten he was coming today, and he only takes cash. Things seem to be a little bit tight this month—we must have spent rather more at Christmas than I’d realized—that wildly extravagant Joseph coat, of course. I can’t wait for a chance to wear it. And Nicholas has been taking rather more cash out than usual recently; expenses, I should think—they’ll be reimbursed eventually, but in the meantime—and I had been hoping to get to the beginning of February without having to dip into the housekeeping money for any extras—
“Nicholas, do you have any cash on you?”
“God, I suppose so. Never bloody ends, does it? In my wallet, should be on my desk. I’m going to have a shower before this place turns into Piccadilly Circus.”
Pausing only to grab his mobile phone charger from the kitchen counter, he stalks up the stairs, his stiff paisley back screaming resentment. I wipe my streaming nose on a wodge of paper towel. Resentment at what I’m not quite sure. He wasn’t the one up at six with three children.
His battered leather wallet is lying on his desk. I pull out a couple of twenty-pound notes, dislodging several till receipts and a photograph of the children as I do so. I stop and pick up the snap, my irritation melting. I love this picture. It was only taken a couple of months ago; Evie has a large purple bump right in the center of her forehead, forcing her fringe to split in two around it like a shallow brook around a rock. She did it running down Stokes Hill with Chloe and Sophie; she was so determined to win the race, she couldn’t stop, she ran full-tilt into the side of a barn at the bottom. Absolutely refused to cry, of course. It took two weeks to go down. And Sophie, just learning to love the camera, her head tilted slightly to one side, looking up from under those dark lashes—oh dear, she’s going to be devastating sometime really rather soon. And Metheny, cuddled in the center. My milk-and-cookies last-chance baby. So plump and sunny, beaming with wide-eyed, damp-lashed brilliance at me. The photograph is a little out of focus and all three of them could have done with a wash-and-brush-up first; but it captures them, the essence of them. This is who they are.
Judging from the creases in the picture, Nicholas loves it, too. I can see marks in the print where he’s traced his thumbnail fondly over their faces, just as I’m doing now.
A childish shriek emanates from the other room, followed by a crash and the sound of running feet. I shove the picture back in the wallet, and pick up the folded till receipts scattered across Nicholas’s desk.
A name on one catches my eye. I pause. La Perla? I didn’t even know he’d even heard of them. I certainly wouldn’t have if Kit didn’t keep me courant. And he spent—I blanch—how much?
Good Lord. How very sweet and generous and romantic of him; and how very, very lovely. Things have been rather—well, quiet, in the bedroom recently. After the sexual feast at Christmastime, it has been very much famine this last month or so. This is clearly his way of putting things right.
Smiling inwardly, I fold the receipt carefully and replace it, so that Nicholas won’t know I’ve seen it and spoiled his Valentine’s Day surprise.
It takes me ten days to find a dress worthy of bedroom naughtiness from La Perla. I used to love shopping, of course, but these days I’m always so conscious of the cost. Sometimes I look at my yummy Gina strappy sandals or the silly pink Chloe bag I just had to have the summer I met Nicholas, languishing at the back of my wardrobe now, pockets filled with coins that are probably out of circulation, it’s been so long since I used it; and I think, that’d pay for the girls’ school uniforms for the entire year. How could I be so wickedly extravagant, what was I thinking?
But Nicholas has obviously gone to such trouble. So I scour Salisbury for something truly special, a miracle of a dress that will successfully hide the fact that while I may technically be the same size ten I was before I had three children, there’s no denying that everything has shifted a little further—well, south. At what age do you give up on your looks, I wonder. Sixty? Seventy? When do you decide, OK, I’m done, no more mascara, no more highlights, no more diets, I’m just going to get saggy and gray and wrinkled and fat and happy?
You know, I can’t wait to be old. It’s middle age that petrifies the life out of me.
I finally find what I’m looking for in one of those dreadful boutiques where the shop assistants look like Parisienne models and you have to ring a doorbell to get in. I would never have even dared to enter if I hadn’t been desperate. But it really is a lovely dress, I think, as I stand in the middle of the shop floor and wrestle with my conscience. It fits me perfectly. It might be expensive but it’s such good quality, it’ll last for ages. And it’s in the sale; only ten percent off, but still, ten percent is ten percent. I know I wasn’t going to buy black again, but this is totally different from my other black dresses, I haven’t got one that’s above the knee like this, and anyway black is timeless, it’ll never go out of style, and so slimming. And of course I won’t have to buy new shoes, my old black courts will go perfectly, so that’ll save money. It’d be a false economy not to get it.
And then at the till, as one credit card after another is declined, and I pull out the emergency only-if-the-roof-comes-down plastic, only to find that it too is over the limit—though since I haven’t seen a bill for ages, I have no idea by how much—I wonder if I can possibly persuade Nicholas to take back the extravagant La Perla without offending him.
Scarlet with embarrassment, I turn to slink out of the shop, feeling like a criminal. The smart assistant probably thinks I’m a bankrupt, one of those shopaholics you read about, or worse, that I stole the cards—
“I thought it was you.” Trace grins, barring my path.
I’m not quite sure why Nicholas is being so strange. First yesterday, when I called to ask him what time to get Kit over to babysit for Valentine’s Day—
“I don’t know what time,” he said tightly, “I might be working, anyway.”
“But it’s all organized! I’ve booked The Lemon Tree!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, I realize that, but it can’t be helped.”
“Nicholas, we’re talking about Valentine’s Day,” I said, disappointment sharpening my tone. “I’ve barely seen you for weeks, you’re working the most ridiculous hours these days, ever since you made partner—well, ever since Will Fisher retired, really—and I’m sorry to call you on your mobile when you’re clearly in the middle of an important meeting, but frankly, what else am I supposed to do? You miss the children’s special events, you’re shut in your office at weekends, some nights you’re barely home before it’s time to go back to work again; if I didn’t see the sheets crumpled in the spare room I wouldn’t even know you’d been here. I think the least you can do is spend one day—Valentine’s Day—with your wife.”
“Look—”
“I really don’t think it’s too much to ask, do you?”
“Look, Malinche. I said I’m sorry, but the Court doesn’t see February the fourteenth as anything other than the day that happens to fall between February the thirteenth and February the fifteenth—”
It was his tone, really, rather than anything he’d actually said. As if I was a tiresome child, a nagging wife; so unfair, when that isn’t me, has never been me.
“I’ve been so looking forward to it,” I said quietly.
“I know; I know you have, but—”
“Nicholas. Please don’t sigh,” I interrupted, really hurt and angry now. “If you think your work is more important than—”
“Look, we’ll talk about it when I get home.”
“When?” I demanded. “When would that be? Precisely, Nicholas? Because I can’t see exactly how you’re going to fit us into your very busy schedule. Actually.”
When he hung up on me, I couldn’t quite believe it. He’s never hung up on me in all the years we’ve been married. We’ve always talked things through, however difficult and painful that has been—and we’ve been married ten years, of course it’s been difficult and painful at times.
And then after that row, that rather horrid row, when I phoned the office this morning, Emma said he wasn’t working tonight after all, at least there was nothing in his diary—that tricky case must’ve settled. So I thought I’d surprise him by coming up to London and taking him out to his favorite sushi restaurant in Covent Garden (so funny, that Nicholas loves sushi; to people who don’t know him, he always seems more of a school-dinners treacle-pudding kind of man); we haven’t been there for ages.
I’d meant it as an olive branch, my way of saying sorry that we’d argued. But somehow, it’s not going quite as I hoped.
The orange glow from the streetlamps casts strange shadows across his face as he leans against the side of the black cab next to me. It makes him look suddenly old; and very tired.
A cold hand twists my stomach. He looked so shocked when I walked into his office half an hour ago, I thought Banquo’s ghost must be behind me. He still seems—oh, Lord, perhaps he’s ill. What if that’s it? He’s ill and he hasn’t told me? Cancer, even.
“Is everything all right?” I ask anxiously as the cab drops us off in Covent Garden. “Are you sure you feel—”
“I’m fine. Please don’t keep asking.”
I follow him nervously into Yuzo’s, slipping off my coat and wondering if he’ll notice my new dress. Heat rises in my cheeks. So sweet of Trace—totally unnecessary; I’m sure he wasn’t planning to buy all the front-of-house restaurant staff black Max Mara outfits—but after he stepped in and saved the day like that, how could I say no to the sourcing trip in Italy? After turning down France. Especially when he explained that Cora and Ben, his business partners, were coming too; it’s not like I’m going to be alone with him—it’s only five days—I just don’t know if Nicholas is going to see it the same way—
“Isn’t that Sara!” I exclaim.
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“Well, of course it is, darling.” I nudge his elbow. “We can’t just ignore her. Come on, say hello to the poor girl. She looks absolutely terrified of you.”
Which is rather strange, because I thought they got on quite well.
“I’m sure she doesn’t want us to interrupt—”
Men. Sometimes you do wonder.
“How lovely to see you!” I say warmly, to make up for Nicholas’s scowl. “What a funny coincidence! Are you meeting someone—but of course you are, it’s Valentine’s Day, what a silly question. I’m sure you’ve had dozens of exciting cards too, it’s so lovely to be young and single.”
She blushes rather sweetly. “Not really.”
“Malinche, let’s go and sit down.”
I remember how horrible it is to be sitting and waiting at a table on your own, feeling as if everyone is looking at you and wondering if you’ve been stood up. “What a lovely bracelet, Sara. Tiffany, isn’t it? Lucky, lucky you, I’ve always wanted one of those.”
“Malinche—”
“Nicholas, do stop. So, is this your first Valentine’s together, Sara? Or is it wildly indiscreet of me to ask? It’s always so romantic, I think, when—”
Her phone beeps twice; she scans her messages, and then suddenly jumps up and grabs her coat. “Oh, God, I’m a complete idiot, he’s in the sushi bar on the other side of the square, I must have got it wrong. So lovely to meet you again, Mrs. Lyon, have a lovely evening. See you tomorrow, Nick, bye.”
I can’t quite explain the feeling of relief. Sara is a very attractive girl—even dear loyal Nicholas couldn’t help but notice she exudes a sensuality no red-blooded male could ignore; but she is clearly taken, off the market, as it were, which is so wonderful. For her.
“Well, she seems very keen.” I smile. “How lovely.”
“Can we order, please, Mal?” Nicholas says tiredly.
I’m sure he’s sickening for something. The last time he was like this, he ended up in bed for four days with a temperature of a hundred and two. He’s so distracted he can barely hold up his end of the conversation through dinner, and nearly forgets to give me the glossy paper bag he was putting into his briefcase when I walked into his office. Only when I teasingly remind him does he hand it over to me with a faint smile.
“I’m sorry. I—um—I didn’t get you a card,” he says, not quite meeting my eye.
“Oh, Nicholas. As if that matters.” I open the bag and unwrap a flimsy parcel of pale pink tissue. A slither of plum silk whistles into my lap. “Oh, how beautiful!” Holding the delicate bra-and-knickers set up against my chest, I take care not to let the fragile lace brush against my dirty plate. “Do you like them?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t have bought them otherwise.”
I glance at the labels and laugh. “I can tell it’s been a while. These are two sizes too big; I’ll have to take them back and exchange them. You kept the receipt, didn’t you?” I hesitate, suddenly spotting the tiny duck-egg blue box at the bottom of the bag. “Oh, Nicholas. You didn’t—”
I draw a breath when I see the silver hoop earrings. “Nicholas. They’re exquisite. I don’t know what to say.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. I have the strangest sensation, as if I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, my life hanging in the balance.
Then, “Happy Valentine’s Day,” Nicholas says softly.
He smiles at me, a quiet smile that reaches his eyes; and it’s as if a warm Caribbean breeze sweeps gently across our table.
I kiss his cheek. “I don’t know why I deserve all this, but thank you. You really are the most romantic man—and I’m sorry I got so upset yesterday, I didn’t mean—”
“No, I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry about everything.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“For not appreciating you the way I should. For not being grateful for what I have. For not telling you that I love you often enough. And I do love you, Mal.” His expression is suddenly hunted. “I love you more than I can tell you. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me—”
“Don’t laugh. I mean it, Mal. Sometimes things happen—people make mistakes—and you don’t realize what you have until it’s too late.”
The purple silk lies pooled in my lap. “What are you trying to say, Nicholas?”
“Nothing. I just—you and the girls, you come first, you know that. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I say uncertainly.
Suddenly, I’m afraid. A door opens up in my mind, leading somewhere I don’t want to go. Firmly, I close it.
“Mal, why don’t we go away somewhere, spend some real time together?” Nicholas suggests suddenly. “Just the two of us; we can leave the girls with my parents or Louise. The Lake District, maybe, or Paris, you’ve always loved Paris. Or even Cornwall—we could go back to Rock; I know it’s changed a bit since our honeymoon days, but we could try to stay at the same cottage we rented then, sit in front of the fire, just talk. Get to know each other again. Couldn’t we?”
My eyes prickle. Maybe Nicholas isn’t ill, but he’s certainly strained and tired. How long has he been overworked like this, and I haven’t noticed? Too preoccupied with the girls and recipes and book deadlines—and Trace.
I’ve barely noticed Nicholas’s comings and goings this last month or two, I’ve been so caught up in the distractions of my own life. Including fretting about a relationship that was over thirteen years ago. If there’s an unexpected distance between Nicholas and me, isn’t it as much my fault as his?
“Let’s go home,” I whisper.
That night, after we make love with more tenderness and sweetness than I can remember for a long time, after he’s brought me to orgasm three times and fallen asleep in the warm tanned curve of my arms like a trusting child, I stare up into the darkness and realize how incredibly lucky I am to have this man. Trace may offer exciting possibilities, but Nicholas gives me things that are real. The things that matter. Happiness, security, contentment, love.
I smile to myself. Even if he does forget that I don’t have pierced ears.