23. Trebbiano di Romagna
Unexpectedly bitter

“Oh Christ.” Sarah put her arms around Gaynor. “I can’t believe it – how absolutely awful.”

“Bloody bastard!” Lizzie pulled the cork from a restorative bottle of Macon. “Wait till I see him.”

Gaynor blew her nose. “You know, I think I just might have been able to put up with him prancing about in a frock once a week, it might have worked.” She gave a bitter laugh. “We could have gone on girly shopping trips together and swapped mascaras.” She snorted, half-crying again. “Bloody hell, I can’t get my head round this.”

“I should think not.” Lizzie looked mutinous. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do with his mascara. The creep.” She glanced around Gaynor’s kitchen. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know – gone back to London I suppose. How could he do that to me, how could he?”

Lizzie poured wine into three glasses. “All that time making you worry he had another woman and was buying her racy little numbers, and he’s bloody wearing them himself!”

“Well, I suppose he was afraid of what you’d do if you found out.” Sarah tried to be reasonable. “And you can understand that. Lots of women would be horrified if they knew their husband…”

Gaynor shook her head wildly. “It’s not that. It’s not the dressing up – I could forgive that, I think – he can’t help how he is. It’s the betrayal. The vasectomy. All those years, when he knew I was desperate for a baby.” She burst into fresh tears. “Don’t you see? He’s stopped me having a baby.”

Lizzie took a swallow of wine. “Except he hasn’t, has he? You’re pregnant, honey – and you need to start thinking what you’re going to do about it.”

Gaynor shook her head as a fresh wave of pain overcame her.

Sarah asked gently. “What does Sam say?”

“He didn’t, really – he just said if I was pregnant then … He just made it clear that he wouldn’t be very happy. He said he thought I couldn’t, and I said I probably wasn’t anyway, and…”

“You haven’t told him?”

Gaynor shook her head again.

“Well,” said Sarah. “That’s the first thing you must do. Go and see him now.”

“I don’t know.” Lizzie was doubtful. “He sounds a bit of a flake to me. I don’t think you want to go through all that again, do you? It will only drag you down. Look – if you are going to keep it… plenty of women bring up babies on their own…”

Sarah frowned. “Of course she’s going to keep him or her. And yes there are plenty of single mothers about, but it isn’t ideal. And neither are most things. It’s a matter of compromise. I thought Paul was the love of my life – well he was, but…”

Lizzie interrupted her. “Gaynor’s lived with enough depressives to last her a lifetime. It’s better to have a child on your own than hook up with some half-hearted father who doesn’t give a shit.”

Gaynor tried to get a word in. “Oh no, he’s not like that

– he’s been a wonderful father to his kids. He’s really…”

Sarah was still talking. “Richard’s not perfect. He’s frightened and he has all that baggage with Tania. But he’s a good man. He’s lovely with Charlie, and if there’s one thing that being with Paul taught me is that sometimes you just have to hang on to the good things. If Sam…”

Lizzie gave an incredulous laugh. “I don’t believe this. You were the one who told her to forget him and make it up with Victor!”

“I didn’t know then,” Sarah said heatedly. She turned to Gaynor. “If you’d told me, if I’d known you were pregnant...”

“I didn’t know myself.”

“Well, everything’s different now.” Sarah was firm.

“But does Gaynor want someone who can’t cope?” Lizzie persisted. “If he’s going to go into a decline every time things go a bit wrong, that’s no good, is it?”

“You don’t know him,” Gaynor cried in frustration. “He’s good and he’s strong. It freaked me out the first time I saw him on a bad day but he fights it – he gets through. Perhaps if he were with me all the time...perhaps a baby would…”

“Totally finish him off,” Lizzie said flatly.

Gaynor sat back, deflated. “Yes, maybe,” she said.

Sarah glared at Lizzie before turning to Gaynor. “You won’t know until you tell him.”

Lizzie, unperturbed, topped up Gaynor’s glass and held the bottle out to Sarah. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

Sarah waved it away. “I’ve got to get down to the wine bar and start the prep for tonight.” She spoke to Gaynor. “Walk down with me and go and tell him.”

Gaynor shook her head. “I did. He didn’t want to know.”

“You didn’t – you said you might be and then you backtracked. You’ve got to tell him you are pregnant for sure, and it’s his baby.”

“No.”

“You must – it’s his right. You owe him that.”

Lizzie poured more wine into her glass. “Bollocks to his rights – she owes him nothing.”

“I think …”

“Stop it,” Gaynor exploded. “Just stop! This is my life and my baby – mine and Sam’s.”

“Tell him then,” said Sarah doggedly.

“I don’t want to!” Gaynor shouted. She looked at Sarah in sudden panic. “And you mustn’t either. Or you!” she added, turning to Lizzie.

Lizzie made a face. “I won’t! I think you’re better off without either of them, sweetie.”

Sarah scowled at her. “Just because you have a problem with relationships.”

Lizzie took another mouthful of wine. “I don’t have any problem, thank you. I get shagged when I want to and I don’t have all this crap to put up with.”

Gaynor brought her hand down sharply on the table top. “Listen! I don’t want him to know. You’ve both got to promise me.”

Lizzie nodded. Sarah looked troubled.

“Please, please, promise.” Gaynor was crying again. The thought of Sam’s face the last time she’d seen him gave her a physical pain.

Sarah put a hand on her shoulder. “OK, OK,” she said reluctantly. “I won’t say a word.”

“Why aren’t they saying anything?” Claire demanded. Why don’t they come and tell us what’s going on?”

She stopped pacing the small square of vinyl flooring with its strong smell of disinfectant and sank down into a plastic chair and began to sob uncontrollably. Jamie, who’d been staring vacantly at the posters about vaccinations and roundworm, looked at her in alarm.

“It will be OK,” he said helplessly. He patted her shoulder. “Henry’s tough.”

So was Claire too, usually. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her cry like this. Privately, Jamie had wished she would sometimes. There were times when he’d have liked her to be the sort of woman you could protect or comfort or rescue in some small way – rather than being so strong and capable and so able to do everything herself that you sometimes wondered why she needed you at all.

But watching her weep now in this most un-Claire-like way he felt totally inadequate for the task. “He’ll be OK,” he said again, sitting down in the next chair and trying to hug her. Claire leapt up.

“Stop saying that!” she cried. “You saw him. Just lying there, not moving or eating, all weak…” Her heart twisted at the thought of Henry’s eyes, clouded with pain, looking beseechingly at her from his basket while Wooster whined nearby. “Help me!” he seemed to be saying. “Make me better.”

They’d struggled to lift the large Airedale into the car, his inert body weighing heavily between them. Wooster, left behind at home, had howled as they left.

“Oh God, what are they doing in there?” As Claire spoke, the door opened and a veterinary nurse came out wearing green overalls. She looked seriously from Jamie to Claire. “We’ve done some X-rays,” she said. “And now we know exactly what the problem is…”

Back home in their kitchen, Claire blew her nose. “I was so frightened,” she said. “I really thought we’d lost him.” She looked at Henry lying in his basket with a martyred expression, and the shaved patch where the stitches were. “That will teach you,” she said. “Teach you to go eating everything you find!”

The shadow on the X ray had proved to be half a red plastic ball that, the vet said, had probably been sitting in Henry’s insides for some time. It was this that had caused the intermittent symptoms, that had caused Henry to feel so miserable and put him off his food as it shifted about inside and blocked things up. Now it was removed, the vet added, he would be instantly back to his normal self, if a little sore from the stitches and woozy from the anaesthetic.

Claire had cried again when they got home, this time in Jamie’s arms, which made him feel better, though it made little impression on Wooster who had given up on them all in disgust at the attention Henry was getting, and had slunk off to the other room to sulk and debate whether his feelings would be better understood if he had a good chew at Jamie’s briefcase.

Claire took Jamie’s hand. “Thank you. I’m so glad you were here.”

“I took the day off because I wanted to talk to you,” said Jamie. “See you for a change.”

Claire smiled at him. “And I want to talk to you, too. I’ve been meaning to for ages.”

Jamie waited.

“I know we hardly get any time at the moment.” She laughed, still light-hearted with relief over Henry. “Ships that pass in the night. Those little weather people in the old clocks. You come in and I go out. I get in and you’re fast asleep having to get up early…”

“Yes,” said Jamie. “That’s what I want to talk about.”

“Well I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” went on Claire brightly. “And I thought, you know, that things aren’t really working out with Sarah. She’s not happy. She’s fed up in the kitchen and we can’t pay a chef as well as both of us. Not yet. So I was wondering…”

“Yes?” Jamie suddenly looked hopeful.

“There’s this place for sale over in Margate. A restaurant. It’s a bit run down and old-fashioned but it could be fantastic. It’s got great sea-views and if we stripped it out and did it up, it would make a great café-bar.”

Jamie’s face had fallen again but Claire went rapidly on. “And I thought, I’d still keep my share in Greens but Sarah could manage that – with a chef and maybe Gaynor helping out. I like Sarah so much, I really do, but I think, to be honest both of us are the sort of personalities that want to run the show.” Claire smiled. “So I would take over the running of the new place. And I also thought –” Claire’s smile widened into a positive beam. “You could give up work and do it with me!”

She jumped up and pulled open a drawer. “I’ve got the details here and I’ve done some figures. The bank seemed to think it wouldn’t be a problem – there’s already so much more equity in Greens from when we bought it, and then there’s this house. And the way house prices have been moving! I think we could really make a go of it, it would suit everyone…”

“Except me,” Jamie said.

Claire stopped. “But you said you wished we could spend more time together.”

Jamie turned away from her and looked out of the window. “Yes. Proper time. Sitting talking to each other time. Not me trailing along behind while you build your empire.”

Claire stared at him. “Is that how you feel?”

“Oh wow! You’ve remembered I might have feelings.” Jamie turned back and scowled. “Do you know, I can’t remember the last time you asked me anything about what I thought. Not that I ever see you to speak to. You’re in that wine bar almost the entire time that I’m at home, except for the hour or so when you talk about it if I’ve stayed awake for you. You never ask how my job is or how I am. The only creature you’ve showed any care or emotion towards for months is that dog!” He jerked a foot towards Henry.

Claire looked shocked. “Henry could have died!”

“So could I, for all you’d have noticed!”

They stood gazing at each other, startled.

“Well, I’m sorry,” said Claire, stiffly. “It does take a lot of work when you’re trying to get a business up and running. Catering always means long hours. Of course I’d like to spend more time with you, but the wine bar…”

“Is so important to you, you want to buy another one.”

“For us to do together,” said Claire defensively.

Jamie put his hands down flat on the tiles of the work surface as if bracing himself. “Suppose I don’t want to do that. Did you even think about what I might want?”

“Well, I thought…”

“You didn’t think at all!”

Claire was silent for a moment. Jamie was never like this. She felt as shocked and bemused as if Henry had staggered from his basket and bitten her! “What do you want, then?” she asked tentatively.

Jamie looked out at the garden again. “The bank have offered me a transfer,” he said harshly. “A two-year contract, promotion and lots more money. It’s a fantastic opportunity.” He swung back round to face her. “It means leaving here. And that’s what I want.”

“All right,” she said faintly, her mind racing. She suddenly realised how much her heart was hammering. She needed Jamie. She supposed it didn’t have to be Margate. She could get another bar somewhere else, get more staff, make sure she spent some evenings at home with him. She didn’t want to leave Broadstairs but they could rent the house out, two years wasn’t a lifetime. She didn’t like the expression on her boyfriend’s face or him talking like this, she wanted the easy-going, accepting Jamie back.

“All right,” she said again, more loudly. “Take it then. I can adapt my plans if I have to.” She forced a smile. “Where is it?”

He looked at her hard. “Tokyo.”