A Cornish Christmas (3 page)

‘You should bottle that,' I said.

‘Eau de Sea Cottage?' he asked, with a grin.

‘Oh yes.'

He laughed. ‘Well, it's ready if you are.'

I quickly fetched two plates from the Welsh dresser I'd restored from a charity shop in the village, and painted a deep Provençal blue, piling the thick ceramic plates high with the creamy pasta, while Stuart carried the cutlery to our little conservatory in the front of the house, where another charity find had become our dining room table, the repaired legs and old, scarred wood painted a soft dove grey.

The conservatory had become a favoured winter retreat, catching the last of the sun and the sunset while we dined.

I had plans for a velvety, blue chaise longue and a fireplace and perhaps some flowers and plants. I'm sure I could keep one alive. Stuart would probably help.

‘Red?' he asked.

‘Yes! I've been looking everywhere!' I exclaimed over my shoulder, almost cricking my neck as he passed me on his way back into the kitchen. Suddenly reminded of why I'd come down, before I was distracted by Stuart's kitchen wizardry.

He pivoted on his heel, two wine glasses in his hand. ‘Sorry?' he said, dark eyes puzzled.

I shifted the plates in my hand. ‘Oh, you meant wine... though you know I can't. I thought you were referring to my missing red paint.'

He frowned. ‘Missing paint? I was going to offer you apple or cranberry juice so you don't feel left out.'

‘Thanks, the cranberry please. Never could abide white wine; not about to start now,' I joked, and then raised a brow, undiverted. ‘You didn't by any chance take all my red paint? Like every last shade in every single bloody medium I own, by any chance?'

His eyes popped. ‘You're joking. I value my neck a little more than that... I still remember the brush incident of '06,
Everton Four
:
Broken toe
at least.'

I laughed. ‘Damn straight... that was a pure, Kolinsky sable red, a legend amongst watercolour brushes, at an eye-watering seventy pounds a pop and you used it...' I took a steadying breath; the memory, even now, caused mild panic.

‘To paint glue on the loose skirting board,' he said, head down, foot doing a half circle on the wooden floor in mock shame. ‘Muppet and I took shelter for weeks afterwards,' he said dramatically, a theatrical shudder at the memory.

I raised a brow. Muppet, who had been eyeballing our exchange and the plates in my hands hopefully, cocked her head, almost in doubt.

‘I'd hardly say weeks... and Muppet was on my side,' I pointed out.

Muppet didn't argue; she just stood in a puddle of her own drool.

‘Days surely? And, no, she wasn't; she hid with me in my shed,' he insisted, in mock horror.

‘More like an hour or two and if by “shed” you mean your man cave outside with your Xbox, well... Muppet knows where you keep the crisps,' I laughed.

Muppet gave me a rather scornful look, followed by a bulldog huff. All she saw, apparently, was that we were ignoring food, food that could be coming to her.

I took the food outside while he went to fetch the bottle of red and my cranberry juice. Later, after we had finished dinner and cleared up the kitchen and were relaxing and watching the last remnants of the sunset with its wash of pink and gold, Muppet snoring loudly, I remembered the missing paint, and considered the possibility that I had in the emotional residue of the day just overlooked it in some way. Though I didn't see how that was possible.

J
ust before bed
, my mobile rang. It was 12.30 p.m. Turning to look at the screen, I stifled a groan.

Genevieve. Stuart's mother.

Let's just say that taking her only son to live far away from London was causing her some distress – no matter how much Stuart pointed out that the move was his idea, she remained, resolutely, unconvinced, and since he refused to answer her calls in general, she phoned me instead. Because there was the faint,
very
faint possibility it could be important, I invariably answered. I blame my own mother for this; I find it hard to be rude due to years of her coaching against bad telephone manners and so I habitually find myself on the receiving end of countless marketing calls... and endless tirades from his mother. I never learn.

In the months since we'd moved, Genevieve had found several, admittedly creative, ways to try to get us to change our minds. As if selling our old house, working out the notices on both our jobs, buying a home over five hours away, and packing up all our belongings hadn't been decisive enough.

The trouble was that Stuart turning sustainable farmer was not how the Everton men were meant to go, apparently. As far as she was concerned, she'd indulged him long enough. Yes, that's what she termed it, an
indulgence
. Which was laughable really, as Stuart didn't and wouldn't ever ask for her indulgence in the first place.

Thankfully, John, Stuart's father, didn't seem to share her opinion. In fact, every time he visited he seemed to stay just that little longer, with a look in his eyes of unmistakable longing. When he'd suggested that they consider retiring down here, she'd snapped, ‘Don't be ridiculous, why would I ever retire?'

He never pointed out that maybe he would like the opportunity. Which, to me, was the saddest part. When I'd opened my mouth to tell her, Stuart had said, ‘Just leave it.'

John would either stand up for himself or he wouldn't. Though why we should stay out of things that weren't our place when she never gave us the same consideration was at times beyond me.

‘Hi Genevieve,' I said, attempting and failing to stifle a sigh. ‘Everything all right?'

‘Yes, of course,' she replied in her customary clipped tones, completely oblivious to the hour. I could picture her sitting in their London manor house in Knightsbridge (one of several homes here and abroad), in her velvet-lined Queen Anne chair, twisting her Cartier watch around her wrist, legs crossed at the ankle (naturally) in their silk trousers. Her bobbed hair neat in its no-nonsense style – the same one she'd been sporting in every company brochure since the 1990s. A CFO for a large global firm she co-founded called ‘Women in Finance', Genevieve was so well-used to issuing orders and subsisting on her customary five hours of sleep a night – a source of baffling pride to me – that it would never occur to her that other people would feel differently. And as I suspected most of her employees were a little afraid of her, I sometimes felt a kind of contrary-like sense of duty to introduce her to the real world, or at least the part of it that didn't fall under her reign.

‘Oh... well, it's a bit
late
, Stuart and I were just about to turn off the light.'

Stuart gave me a sympathy eye roll, and held his hand out for the receiver, his shoulders slumping ever so slightly. I held up my own to say
don't worry
– it usually took him much longer to calm down following one of her calls than it did me.

Genevieve didn't miss a beat. ‘Oh, well, good that I caught you then.'

I sighed again, and she continued, oblivious, impervious, or both. ‘I've come across a rather interesting article about a fertility specialist, Dr Marcus Labuscagne in Chelsea. It says that he's developed a new technique that has shown real promise for women in the last years of their fertility cycle, like you. He has a sixty-eight percent success rate.'

My eyes closed. Mentally, I counted to three. I was barely in my mid thirties. As far as Genevieve was concerned that meant I was premenopausal. Despite me pointing out to her time and again that women were able to have children much later in life and that the fertility cycle only started slowing down at around the age of thirty-eight, a woman who was responsible for the financial success of entire organisations, whose mission it was to enhance the lives of women in business, just failed to grasp it.

The truth was, unless it was on a spreadsheet in black and white, it was a grey area for her; one that needed to be resolved, now.

‘Anyway,' she continued, ‘I've made you an appointment for this Friday. Shall I send James along with the car, or will Stuart be driving you?'

James was her assistant. Her rather abused assistant. She took pleasure in having a male secretary. James did not. Though he had on more than one occasion corrected her with the term ‘executive assistant', she pish-poshed it every single time – even though I had once heard her go to war with her husband, John, for daring to call the flight attendant an air hostess. Somehow, to her, sexism didn't occur the other way. If it did, she referred to it as ‘sexism in reverse', which was both confusing, and well, frankly insulting as far as I could see.

I took a breath. ‘Actually, Genevieve,' I began. ‘The truth is, we've decided to take a break... just for a little while. You understand.'

There was a pause.

‘A break?' she repeated.

‘Yes,' I lied.

Stuart gave me a look. It was almost a
Should we just tell her and get it over with?
sort of look. I shook my head vigorously: no. I was not prepared for that, not yet. The last time we'd told Genevieve, she'd quite simply taken over.

My house, my health, and the absolute edge of my patience.

Without word or warning, I'd come home after a long day at my full-time post as an illustrator at a busy publishing house to find a nurse with the figure of an army tank and the personality to match ensconced in my spare room, who'd followed me around only to bark orders at me to my complete and utter bewilderment. Looking back, I'm not entirely sure why I didn't send her packing straight away. Perhaps it was simply shock. She'd strapped a heart rate monitor onto my arm, dismissing all my protestations, and within the first hour she'd hollered at me, ‘Your heart rate is up!'

‘That's because I was laughing!' I'd told her, looking away from Muppet, whose antics had caused the wire monitors to start beeping.

The same thing happened two hours later when I was working on a particularly sad scene when Mr Tibbles had to say goodbye to his Aunt Flossy, the wise mouse of the forest, who died to save the Red Fairy and keep her promise to fairyland.

‘Keep calm!' she barked. In what I imagined the tone Miss Trunchbull would have used while catapulting children out of the window, in Roald Dahl's
Matilda
.

The irony of having her shout the instruction at me seemed lost on her though, so early the next morning, I decided to follow her ‘orders' by sneaking out, so that I
could
actually keep calm.

When I'd come home that evening though, I found Genevieve sitting in my living room, white-knuckled with fury, her jaw clenched as she hissed, ‘Odessa is one of the city's most experienced nursing sisters, I
cannot believe
that you just left her here without telling her where you were going.'

Odessa? Somehow in all her barking she'd never imparted her name.

‘Oh! You're a nurse?' I'd said, in mock surprise, my own annoyance clearly displayed. Who did she think she was to employ someone in our home without consulting us, and then come here to reprimand me as if I were a child? I cursed Stuart for being away on a business trip to Berlin. Though, in retrospect, that was no doubt the very reason she had acted when she did, by employing the nurse and installing her in our home, with the spare key we had given her for emergencies. I made a mental note to have the locks changed as my own emergency action that night.

‘Odessa said you hadn't even had breakfast when you left.'

I was fairly certain that what I had for breakfast was my concern but in the interest of not appearing defensive I'd said wearily, ‘I did.'

‘Toast is not breakfast,' contradicted Odessa, who resembled a female SS officer.

‘And you never said when you'd be back,' Genevieve continued. ‘Odessa has been worried sick,' she accused, folding her thin, silk-clad arms.

‘Right,' I'd said, setting down my bag. That was quite enough of that. ‘I'm afraid, Odessa, no one consulted me on your appointment... because if they had, they would have known that it was entirely out of the question. I do not want, nor require the need of a... nurse, as you term yourself, so we will not be needing your services any longer. Please see yourself out.'

When she failed to leave, my voice lowered. ‘Now.'

While Odessa had mumbled incoherently, and Genevieve had stood up to lecture me, I'd escorted Odessa out, and suggested that Genevieve, likewise, follow suit.

To her credit, she did actually leave. Her parting shot had been cutting though, a curse disguised as a warning. ‘Well, don't blame me if this pregnancy goes as well as your last.'

I'd slammed the door so hard that the glass cracked in two, like our lives two weeks later when things did, in fact, go as badly as the last.

She never did say ‘I told you so' when she heard about the miscarriage, but her words haunted me for months afterwards, despite my obstetrician, Dr Josef Tam, assuring me that I had done nothing wrong, that my blood pressure, diet, and health were all fine, that it was simply a cruel act of fate.

Genevieve's words had coloured an already strained relationship, and it had taken me months to speak to her again. Now I only do it for Stuart, though if it were up to him I wouldn't need to bother – sometimes I was sorely tempted not to.

‘That's really interesting,' I said now, remarking on her news about the fertility specialist in London with his novel approach and encouraging results.

And it
was
interesting, and a few weeks ago there was no doubt I would have been pushing her for more information. But now that we were finally pregnant and my new obstetrician, Dr Gia Harris – a referral of Dr Tam's based in Falmouth – assured us that we were likely to stay that way, provided I stayed away from any undue stress, I wasn't as interested as I would ordinarily have been.