Always and Forever (40 page)

‘Then you’re not doing yourself any favours by staying with him if he doesn’t want to be with you.’ ‘It’d be a nightmare,’

Caroline shuddered. ‘He started the nightmare, it’s up to you to finish it,’ Mel said. ‘You have the right to find out if you stil have a marriage, if he wants to try again, or if he’s just waiting for you to find out because he can’t bear to tel you.’

Caroline digested this information and ate another fairy cake. ‘I wonder what she’s like. Younger, thinner, probably doesn’t wear Tesco’s jeans.’

Dwel ing on this was not good for Caroline, Mel realised.

‘Let’s chil out at Cloud’s Hil and you can make some decisions then.’

The girls were worn out as Mel drove back to Carrickwel that afternoon and fel asleep in their car seats, which gave Mel time to think. She thought about how sorry she was for Caroline, how lucky she was herself to have a loving husband, and how wrong she’d been to spend years envying Caroline for having it al . Being at home wasn’t the easy ride Mel had once thought it was.

She enjoyed cooking better meals for her family than before and the house had never been so clean. In fact, it was easy to see how women could become obsessed with housework and forget there was life beyond Windolene.

When that was al you saw al day, it became your focus.

That and the children. There

was such joy to be had in playing with Sarah and Carrie dressing up, painting, moulding dough animals, doing endless jigsaw puzzles and playing with Barbies. Before, when she was working at Lorimar, Mel had avoided reading what the educationalists said about the merits of creative and imaginative play. Knowing she didn’t have time for it al was another source of guilt. Now that she had time to do it, she was surprised to find it was hard work, not a matter of lying on the couch with a magazine and letting the kids get on with it by themselves. When you played, real y played with smal children, it absorbed al your attention. It was tiring.

Why is the sky blue?

What do elephants have in their trunks?

Do daddies have baby boys and mummies have baby girls? You needed a ful night’s sleep, lots of energy and the patience of Job. Mel remembered resenting the enormous sum of money she and Adrian had paid out every month to Little Tigers. These days, she had more admiration for the nursery staff than ever before.

She loved doing it and yet she could see Caroline’s point of view too: without wanting to sound selfish, she stil wanted to be more than Mummy.

It was noisy on Saturday night in Carrickwel ’s busiest Chinese restaurant, the Dragon Palace. The sounds of talking and laughter, and the plain white china clinking and banging on the wooden tables meant Mel and Adrian had to raise their voices to be heard. Despite this they were real y enjoying themselves. It was the sort of Saturday night they used to have years ago, before they had kids, and which Mel had thought she would never enjoy again. When she had been working, she had been too exhausted to go out to anything that wasn’t a ‘duty’ event, and, anyway, she had been so anxious that her motherin-law, Lynda, disapproved of her, that she had felt guilty asking her to babysit very often. Now she was a stay-at-home mum she felt more at ease with Lynda.

‘You deserve to get out,’ Lynda had said firmly when Mel had phoned her, ‘you know I love babysitting.’

And somehow Mel had believed her. It was funny how her own insecurities had, in the past, made every syl able that Lynda uttered seem more loaded with meaning than it was.

‘We haven’t been out like this for years,’ Adrian said happily. ‘Not having to be on our best behaviour because it’s work, not worrying about whether we should be at home with the kids, just relaxing!’

Mel was startled. She hadn’t realised Adrian had sensed how she used to feel when they went out at weekends in the Lorimar days. Now it appeared as if he’d felt the same way too. Her guilt had been infectious.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to stress you out too. I felt as if I was betraying the girls by being out at the weekend when I should be spending every second with them.’

‘I know. But it’s fine now. You’re not so hyper any more.’

‘What do you mean, I’m not so hyper?’ she demanded. ‘I’m only kidding,’ Adrian said. ‘I’m teasing you.’

But there was probably a grain of truth in it, Mel knew. Blast it, she had to have the last sesame prawn toast, even though she’d promised herself that the way to maintain a good figure was not to eat everything on the plate, including the pattern. ‘I’m not as hyper, you’re right,’ she said, munching. ‘You’re calmer, I’m calmer,’ Adrian said. ‘We’re al calmer.’ ‘But we’re broke,’ Mel pointed out. ‘Let’s face it, the next time we get to go on holidays, the girls wil probably want to bring their teenage boyfriends with them.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ he argued. ‘We’re managing and we’re happier. It’s sort of nice coming home each night and having you there.’

‘You mean in an I’m home, woman, get into the bedroom so I can ravish you way,’ Mel laughed.

‘That is it exactly,’ he grinned back at her. ‘When I’m sitting in the traffic on the by-pass, getting home and ravishing you is

the first thing on my mind, natural y, and possibly then sitting down and reading the newspaper and relaxing.’

‘As long as you’ve got your priorities right,’ Mel said gravely. The first, relaxing afterwards.’ Their main courses arrived.

‘We definitely should do this more often,’ Adrian said. ‘Stuff ourselves senseless, you mean?’ Mel asked.

As usual, their eyes had been bigger than their stomachs and they had ordered far too much. The table groaned under the weight of the succulent sizzling dishes. ‘No, go out together, on our own,’ Adrian said.

Mel reached over and squeezed his hand. She’d told him about Caroline and Graham and he understood how upset she’d been by their marriage difficulties.

‘Yeah, but that’s the whole point of children,’ Mel laughed.

‘As soon as they come along they do their best to make sure that you never have any more, because you never have any romantic, intimate moments. They’re the best contraceptive in the world.’

‘I didn’t say anything about making babies,’ Adrian interrupted, ‘but we could try some intimate moments later

…’ And through the steam of pilau rice and sizzling beef, Mel smiled at her husband. ‘Practice makes perfect,’ she said.

When Cleo got off the train at Carrickwel , after two miserable days at Trish’s, hiding from Tyler, she was relieved to see there was a taxi waiting. She instructed the driver to take her up to Cloud’s Hil Spa, but as they drew near the turn-off to the Wil ow Hotel, she gave in to temptation and asked him to take a detour. ‘You don’t want to actual y go into the hotel, you just want to sit in the driveway and look?’ said the taxi driver, incredulous. ‘I just want to see it, that’s al ,’ said Cleo, irritated, wishing he’d mind his own business. She was feeling very irritated these days - wel , for the past forty-eight hours, to be exact. The morning after walking out on Tyler she had cal ed in sick.

She couldn’t face going in to work and having him confront her, and though skiving off went against the grain, she had to do it.

Anyway she did feel sick - sick to her stomach, sick to her heart, sick to think that she had trusted Tyler and he had acquired her family home in an underhand way.

Even if he hadn’t, how was she going to spend time with a man who was going to rip her lovely home apart and turn it into a great soul ess corporate hotel? He’d probably have confidence-building talks with his staff about how appal ingly the

Wil ow used to be run and how it was going to be a model of ] modern hotel practice now that it was part of Roth Hotels. She just couldn’t cope with that idea.

‘He couldn’t have known who you were. It’s just a coincidence he’s bought the Wil ow,’ said Trish, when Cleo came home that night, distraught and wild-eyed over what she’d seen as Tyler’s betrayal, ‘and even assuming he did know - and I stil don’t know how he could have, seeing as you never told him your second name was Malin - what would he gain by going out with you?’ she went on, reasonably. ‘Your family have sold the place; it’s not as if he is going to get any inside information from bonking your brains out in his suite.’

‘I was not going into his suite to bonk his brains out,’ Cleo said furiously. ‘I was going in for a nightcap.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Trish, ‘and the cheque is in the post. Two of life’s great lies.

Nobody goes in for a nightcap. You must have been aware you were going to fal into bed with him.’

‘I was not!’ said Cleo. She was real y getting angry now.

Even her best friend refused to see her point of view. ‘No, seriously, Cleo,’ insisted Trish, ‘what good would it do him to go out with you just because your family once owned the hotel that his family now owns?’

Cleo gave her best friend a stony look. ‘You don’t have to make it sound so like a business deal,’ she said bitterly.

make it sound so like a business deal,’ she said bitterly.

‘It’s about feelings and emotions and how I’d feel if I was involved with him, knowing what I do and ‘

‘Ah-ha,’ said Trish, ‘so you are real y crazy about this guy and it’s upset you that he doesn’t know who you are? But you’d stil be angry with him if he did.’

‘Trish!’ screamed Cleo, so loudly that Trish had to tel her to shush.

‘You’l wake everyone up! You know the wal s in this house are paper thin.’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Cleo. ‘I’m upset. It was al going so wel and …’

‘You don’t trust him, that’s al ,’ said Trish knowledgeably. ‘If you trusted him it wouldn’t matter who he was or who you were, or what Roth Hotels were doing to the Wil ow. But you don’t because you think he was going to bonk you senseless and forget you and you’d be just another notch on the Roth bedpost. Isn’t that it?’ she demanded.

‘What’s with al this straight-talking al of a sudden?’

demanded Cleo suspiciously.

‘You’re the one who tel s me to say what I think,’ Trish said,

‘and I’m trying.’

‘I meant say what you think to men,’ Cleo said crossly, ‘not to me. You’re supposed to cheer me up and say the things I want to hear, like how he’s a lying, cheating scumbag and he doesn’t deserve me, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘Fine.’ Trish got into bed. ‘He’s a lying, cheating scumbag and he doesn’t deserve you, et cetera, et cetera. Now can we go to sleep?’

The next day, Cleo decided that she wouldn’t feel quite so bad if she went home to Carrickwel , except there was no home to go to. Her parents must have left the Wil ow by now. And they haven’t even told me where they’ve gone, she thought angrily. But if that was the way they wanted it, she wasn’t going to bother them - or her brothers. She could be just as stubborn.

And then she remembered Leah at Cloud’s Hil and how she’d said there was always a job for Cleo there. It would be nearly like being at home.

When she phoned Leah, she’d only got halfway into explaining before Leah interrupted her.

‘Of course I meant what I said then,’ Leah said. ‘I never say what I don’t mean. Not any more, anyway,’ she added, somewhat mysteriously. ‘We’d love to have you here. I’ve got just the job for you. Shal I meet you off the train or do you want to get a taxi?’

‘I’l get a taxi,’ Cleo had said, frantical y wiping away the tears that had begun to fal when she’d heard Leah’s gentle voice again.

The taxi driver obediently turned up the driveway of the Wil ow and parked. ‘Is this al right for you?’ he asked, in a long suffering voice.

‘Perfect, thank you,’ said Cleo. She looked out of the side window at her old home. It looked as though it had been empty for some time, it seemed so run down and overgrown. There were no guests now dragging their cases into the reception hal , there would be no sound of laughter or conversation echoing through the rooms, no steam rising in the kitchen, no yel s from Jacqui, the chef, as the strawberry soufflé suddenly col apsed and she found out she was out of Dover sole just as table nine ordered four of them.

The once-loved old house looked miserable, sad and lonely, exactly the way Cleo felt.

‘Some big developer has bought it,’ the taxi driver informed her. ‘Going to build town houses, they say. Don’t know how they got their planning permission to rip down a lovely old place like that, but they’re going to.’

Cleo wanted to correct him and say that, no, in fact, Roth Hotels had actual y bought the property and it wasn’t going to be town houses at al , but she didn’t have the energy.

‘Aren’t you one of them, the Malins?’ the taxi driver added, looking at Cleo curiously in his rear-view mirror. ‘No,’ she said, and it felt horribly as if she was tel ing the truth. She wasn’t one of the Malins any more; her family had turned their backs on her. ‘I stayed here once, that’s al . I was interested to see what had happened to it.’

He nodded. ‘Do you want to go on up to Cloud’s Hil now?’

he asked. ‘Only the meter’s running.’

‘Of course, let’s go,’ Cleo said. There was no point sitting here looking at the past.

She wondered where her mum and dad were and what they were doing. It hurt her more than she could say that they hadn’t been in touch again, hadn’t sent so much as a text message after the first few angry phone cal s where her mother had said that if only Cleo would say sorry, it would al be fine. Except that Cleo hurt too much to say sorry. Her pride wouldn’t let her.

Trish said they hadn’t rung because it was up to her now to make the first move.

‘The kid always apologises first,’ Trish said. ‘That’s the rule of families. Don’t ask me why, it just is.’

Now, as she thought about what Trish had said, Cleo was flooded with longing. She needed to see her family again and have everything the way it was before. But as she took a last, lingering look at the shabby facade of her old home, she knew final y and completely that it could never be that way again. The Wil ow had moved on, her family had moved on without her, and she would never get over the hurt and upset. The memory of that last row in the kitchen stil burned deep inside.

First her family and now Tyler. What was the point in being honest, genuine and up front with people when al you got back was betrayal and misery? She was going to do what Trish had done and get on with her life on her own. What was it Leah had said on the phone to her the other day? ‘It’l al work out in the end, even if it’s not the way you’d planned or the end you’d planned.’