Always and Forever (19 page)

‘No, that’s so true.’

Both Leah and Mary were staring off into the middle distance.

Daisy felt a ripple of guilt. Clearly Leah was on her own now, like Mary. They shared a common thread, while Daisy and Paula were the lucky ones. Paula was happy with her lot, but Daisy needed to appreciate the good things in her life more. Maybe she wanted too much from life. Didn’t she have enough already with her gorgeous Alex and a job she loved? Could you be too greedy for happiness?

Leah loved the tranquil ity of Carraig Hil when the day was over and before it was time to oversee dinner for any guests. She liked being on her own, liked the peace of her own company and the chance to mul over the day in her head as she wandered through the peaceful old house. She didn’t need to check that light switches and machines were off - whoever was on management duty that day did it. Leah just liked to walk through the house on her own and think.

Sometimes she thought about the past, but not too often, because it was stil painful. Time healed but there would always be a scar, the bone-deep scar of losing her beloved Jesse. It was easier to think about the day that had just gone instead of dwel ing on the past. Time had taught her that, at least. So she thought about that day and the many interesting people who’d come through the doors of Cloud’s Hil Spa. Every day there was someone new, that lost look about them, the look that made Leah want to race over and enfold them in her arms. Like Bil y and Pearl, a lovely married couple who’d come to roe spa for a three-day break when their holiday plans to Cyprus with another couple were dissolved without much explanation. Hurt and bewildered, Pearl and Bil y told Leah that they’d Always gone on holiday with Agnes and Ian.

‘She was my bridesmaid; I was her matron of honour,’

Pearl said over coffee in the relaxation room while they discussed what treatments she’d have. ‘We’ve gone away together for twenty years. Malta, Cyprus and my favourite, Rhodes.’ ‘They said they didn’t want to book this year,’ Bil y added. ‘Just that. No real reason. They were going to Ian’s sister, Marie, in Torquay instead.’

‘Our daughter booked us in here as a treat, to make it up to us,’ Pearl added. ‘Fiona’s got a great job and she’s very good to us.’

Pearl liked the reflexology best. ‘Agnes and myself tried a few things like this in the old days, but we don’t now. Since we al retired, I thought we’d have more time but they don’t want to be doing things now. I can’t understand it.’

‘Your friends are on a pension too?’ Leah asked delicately.

Her guests nodded.

Leah thought of the kind daughter who had given her parents a health spa voucher and perhaps paid for their holiday to say thanks for what they’d given her over the years. She wondered aloud if Fiona was always so generous.

Bil y nodded. ‘She says we put her through university: it’s our turn now.’

‘Might the problem with Ian and Agnes be that they can’t afford holidays on a pension?’ Leah suggested. ‘They don’t afford holidays on a pension?’ Leah suggested. ‘They don’t have a grateful son or daughter who wants to say thanks?’

The couple were shocked that they’d never thought of that themselves. Money. That was the problem. How could they not have realised? Why had Ian and Agnes not just said so? They phoned their friends that evening.

‘We’re al going to Torquay,’ Pearl told Leah happily the next day. ‘Agnes is thril ed we’re coming because,’ she lowered her voice, ‘between you and me, she doesn’t get on with Ian’s sister, Marie, but you can’t say, can you?

We’re al staying in Marie’s house but it’l be easier if there’s four of us. We can go off on our own to places and Marie needn’t feel she has to entertain us.’ Pearl and Bil y had gone on Tuesday, which was the day that Stephanie had arrived.

Stephanie was in her late twenties and was quite simply one of the most beautiful women Leah had ever seen. But she’d looked so pale and drawn when she’d arrived. Only now, two days later, had she been able to smile without the tel tale twinkling of tears.

‘You’ve made me realise that I don’t need to feel stupid,’

she’d confided to Leah that morning when they’d met doing laps in the pool. Stephanie’s face was like that of a tranquil gazel e: huge eyes in an exquisite face, surrounded by a cloud of chestnut hair. ‘You were right when you said that believing people when they’re lying to you doesn’t mean you’re stupid.’

Her lover, Ralph, had made out that he was unhappy with his marriage. He was a good liar.

‘The truth depends on where you’re standing,’ Leah had said wisely. ‘He probably wanted to believe he had a bad marriage so he could be with you … Why wouldn’t he?

You’re warm, kind and beautiful.’

‘You make it sound so plausible,’ Stephanie sighed. ‘I’d prefer to think he just couldn’t help himself, not that he wanted to hurt me.’

‘It doesn’t sound like he wanted to hurt you,’ Leah pointed out. ‘He hurt himself too. And at least you can talk to friends about the pain of the affair and get on with life; Ralph has to hide how hurt he’s feeling from everyone, especial y now that his wife is having a baby. So you’re doing better. You can share it and move on.’ ‘You’re right,’ said Stephanie, surprised.

People often couldn’t see what was in front of them, Leah knew. Stephanie genuinely believed she was only reasonable looking and couldn’t see that her besotted, married lover would have sold his soul to the devil to be with her. The longer Leah lived, the more she realised that people were blind to so many things. The secret to surviving, as she had discovered for herself, was opening your eyes and seeing the world and yourself for what they both were.

Today, she had seen that Mary Dil on had done that. She was a survivor, Leah was sure. For al she was able to laugh about her ex-husband, she admitted that she had loved him dearly and it was clear that she was finding it hard bringing up their children on her own. But Leah knew that she would do it. It was Daisy, sweet, trusting Daisy, who was in need of help. Leah had good instincts and she was pretty sure that someone had once told Daisy not to wear her heart on her sleeve. When asked what she’d like most in the world, Daisy had been flip and had given only half the truth: ‘To be happy and to eat as much chocolate as I want,’ she’d said.

‘Get pregnant, then you do both!’ had been Paula’s riposte.

Only Leah had seen the look of desolation that swept over Daisy’s lovely face when Paula spoke. Was pregnancy what she real y wanted above anything else? Perhaps.

Leah hoped she’d be able to help Daisy: she felt such warmth towards the younger woman. For al that she seemed to have it al - the partner, the career, the nice home - Daisy yearned for something else, and Leah was sure that a child was only part of it. Time would tel .

It was nearly time to get ready for dinner. Leah had one more room to walk through. She stepped into the hot tub room and stared out at the lights of Carrickwel , sparkling like rhinestones on a bed of velvet.

She loved this view of the town and the surrounding heartlands. High on her beautiful mountain, she felt as if she were watching over Carrickwel , ready for when she was needed to lend a hand.

Of course, solving other people’s problems was always easier than solving her own.

It was nearly ten years since Leah had turned her own life around and dragged herself out of hel . What was it people said about hel ? Religion was for people who were afraid of hel and spirituality was for people who’d already been there? She’d been there, but she’d learned so much on the journey there and back.

Mel sat propped up against the pil ows on the spare room bed and rocked Carrie’s smal body rhythmical y. The last coughing fit had been the worst and Mel would have gladly given a year of her life to be able to make the frightened look disappear from Carrie’s eyes. She’d woken crying at just after two a.m. and had worked herself up into a frenzy of sobbing and a crowing cough for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and Mel was at her wits’ end. Just when she thought she’d have to do something - phone the doctor, phone somebody, because warm sponging and the medicine hadn’t taken down Carrie’s temperature or calmed her - Carrie suddenly drifted off to sleep in her mother’s arms.

That had been ten minutes ago, but Mel stil rocked her gently, grateful that the toddler no longer felt so burning hot.

But anxious that Carrie needed to rest, Mel wouldn’t dare put her down on the cool sheets until she was truly in a deep sleep. So she rocked, ignoring the cramp in her shoulder and the tiredness that permeated every muscle of her body. Tiredness was nothing to the fear that something was seriously wrong. Now they were back on safe ground, Mel al owed herself to relax just a fraction. She’d take Carrie to the doctor first thing in the morning, she promised.

They’d be there at nine on the dot. No, earlier in fact.

Everything else, including the Wednesday breakfast meeting, could go hang. Her baby was al that mattered.

Her babies. Who’d said that children were like your heart running round on its own little legs? It was so accurate.

They were her heart and her soul, and yet she was always rushing to make time for them. What was the point of working al the hours so the girls could have a better future, when their present was a Mum-free zone? Since the row with Caroline, Mel hadn’t been able to get the notion of giving up her job out of her head. She’d even mentioned it to Adrian, but instantly regretted it because he’d looked total y shocked at the idea. ‘Wel … financial y, I mean, I suppose we’d save on the Little Tigers fees,’ he’d said, doing his best to recover from his initial reaction, which was, ‘You’re not serious!’

‘Forget I mentioned it,’ Mel had said, angry with herself for raising the subject. If she gave up work, they’d find it difficult to manage. Mel’s Christmas bonus had kept the family coffers afloat many a year Adrian’s salary would go up if he got his Masters degree, but the increase wouldn’t be a lot.

His augmented pay wouldn’t support a family of four and the mortgage on Goldsmith Lawn, surely.

‘It was a stupid idea,’ she’d added quickly. ‘I’m sorry I mentioned it. I’d go mad without the office, you know that.’

‘No, I’m sorry for what I said,’ Adrian had insisted. ‘It was a shock, that’s al . Seriously, if you want to give up work, Mel, we could just about manage.’

Mel had ruffled his hair then. ‘I was just daydreaming. Can you see me giving up everything I’ve worked for at Lorimar?

Not likely.’

The next morning, Sarah was fascinated to find her mother and baby sister asleep in the spare room.

‘Why are you in Granny’s bed?’ she wanted to know, looking

adorable in Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas and one Tigger sock, her blonde hair tousled from sleep.

Mel stared at her blearily. It had been wel after four when she had last noticed the smal bedside alarm clock, and now it was after half-seven and they’d al overslept. Beside her, Carrie lay sleeping serenely.

‘Carrie was sick in the night and I didn’t want her crying to wake you, darling,’ Mel said.

‘I could have got into bed with you too.’ Sarah objected to having been left out of this big late night treat, and clambered into the bed to set things right. She wriggled close to her mother and began to suck her thumb. Using one hand to hold Sarah, Mel stroked Carrie into wakefulness with the other. Carrie felt merciful y cool to the touch and her cheeks were no longer flushed. Yawning delicately, she opened her eyes and beamed up at her mother, long blonde lashes spiky around her huge blue eyes.

Despite her tiredness and her dread of the day ahead, a day where she’d have to juggle like mad to take time off work, Mel felt blissful y happy. This was where she should be. Not at work, where she’d worry about her babies, but here, hugging them and taking care of them. Mothering them. It was the most basic instinct, after al . Nobody could care for Sarah and Carrie quite like her. She was genuinely irreplaceable to her children.

The doctor’s surgery was packed, even at ten to nine in the morning, and Mel, who had rushed there with Carrie after dropping Sarah off at Little Tigers, began to see her notion of making it in to work by twelve receding.

Her mother was coming to take care of Carrie at eleven, but Mel wondered if they’d be out of the surgery by then, never mind back home. She looked at the other patients, for the most part women with smal children, and wondered if she stood at the top of the room and said she was a busy executive and had to be in work soon, would they let her go next? She’d probably be stoned to death with copies of GolfPro and Hel o!. With Carrie balanced in her arms, clutching her purple and green fluffy sheep, and the rest of the waiting room listening, Mel began the delicate task of resetting her day. First up was a cal to Sue, the publicity department assistant who, unaccountably, hadn’t taken her office phone off voice mail. ‘If you’re screening cal s, Sue, please pick up. This is urgent. I’ve had to miss the eight-thirty meeting to take Carrie to the doctor and although I phoned Vanessa in marketing and asked her to make my apologies, I only got her mobile voice mail and she hasn’t phoned back, so can you check that she did and phone me to confirm? Then, you’ve got to cancel my eleven o’clock.

I’d do it myself but the number’s on my desk and I haven’t got my Palm Pilot with me.’

Idiot … Mel could visualise it on the charger on her desk, left behind as she made her usual mad dash out the door the evening before.

‘Mummy, want to go home,’ whimpered Carrie. ‘Doan like this place.’

After some cuddles and some juice, Mel attacked the phone again.

‘Then could you beg Anthony to take over that briefing with the work experience students? I should be in by …’ she faltered. Twelve? Half-twelve? Should she go for broke and say after lunch? ‘One,’ she said final y.

With nothing but magazines they’d read before to amuse themselves, the other patients must be listening to every detail of Mel’s increasingly frantic attempts to track down Sue. None of the mothers looked at her with any vestige of feminine sympathy. Mel thought of how, in their place, she’d send a smile of sympathy to another woman struggling, as a sign of sisterhood.