Always and Forever (52 page)

Then, they could play in the garden, she’d share a cup of tea with her mother, and cook a leisurely dinner for her family. Probably chicken again, because she’d got fed up with the made-from-scratch lasagnes and shepherd’s pies, but stil . It was perfect, real y.

Raising her head, she glared regal y at the waiter in that universal restaurant language that said ‘I wil not wait one second longer’.

‘Madame?’ He was at her side, charming up close.

She gave him her most dazzling smile. ‘We’re ready to order dessert,’ she said.

On the way home, Mel stopped off at the butcher’s and bought a real y good piece of lamb. Adrian loved lamb and it would be nice to have a special Friday night meal together. She had something to tel him.

Her mother and the girls were in the garden when she arrived. Screams and yel s of laughter could be heard, and Mel felt herself relax the way she always did when she came home to find everything al right. There was always that tiny niggling fear that something terrible would happen simply because she was out. As she stood in the hal , Mel found herself real y looking at her home. It looked different now. In the past three months, she’d done so much with it.

The windows stil weren’t clean, but Mel felt you couldn’t spend your whole life doing housework. Things were tidy, not in a hysterical, we-have-no-time-so-order-is-paramount sort of way, but in an organised, homely way. The freezer wasn’t its old no-go area, ful of supermarket ready meals and, buried down the bottom, the odd homemade shepherd’s pie. Mel would have made the pie out of guilt over not giving her family proper food and then forgotten about it because the supermarket stuff was nicer. Now she didn’t feel a moment’s guilt if the family had supermarket frozen food for dinner.

She’d started to paint the woodwork in the hal one day, with the girls ‘helping’. It had been great fun when she’d given them their own tiny brushes, some emulsion, and a section to paint, although she’d stopped the experiment halfway through when it became apparent that smal children excel ed in getting more paint on the floor than on the woodwork.

Mel compared that day to the Lorimar days of DIY, where she and Adrian would be grumpy at having to waste precious weekend time doing something as boring as painting. Tempers would be frayed and nobody would be speaking by nightfal . The woodwork was stil only half done, but she wasn’t worried. There was lots of time to finish it.

She put the shopping away and went into the garden.

‘Hel o, Sarah, Carrie. Hi, Mum,’ she said, kissing everyone hel o. ‘How’s everyone?’

When he got home from work at half-seven that evening, Adrian took an intrigued look at the tidied-up dining room, the white tablecloth, the place mats and the best napkins.

‘Napkins?’ he said. ‘What’s the occasion? No, let me guess. You’re having an operation to turn you into a man but you want to tel me in style?’

‘Close but no cigar, Sherlock.’

‘You and the milkman are eloping and you had trouble writing the Dear John letter, so you’re going to dump me over meatbal s?’ ‘How did you guess?’ Mel deadpanned.

‘But it’s the postman and not the milkman. You can lie on the mail bags in the back of the van and it’s real y quite comfy, although the blue pen off the registered letters keeps staining my clothes.’ ‘That’s a relief. I could never have borne it if it had been the

milkman.’ Adrian put down his briefcase, unknotted his tie and sat down at the table.

She put the homemade tomato and fennel bread in front of him.

‘The girls are asleep. They had a fabulous day. We went to the park in the morning and this afternoon, my mother took them to Tabitha’s birthday party, which was wildly over the top, apparently, with face painting - a proper face painter at that - and a clown.’

Adrian looked startled. ‘At a private kid’s party?’ ‘Bling, bling,’ Mel said. ‘There was even a cake shaped like a princess, and Mum and I spent ages explaining to Sarah that not everybody gets a princess cake and a face painter, a clown and a dol ’s house for their fifth birthday.’ ‘What’l Tabitha get when she’s twenty-one?’

‘The whole of AC Milan and a Porsche, I shouldn’t wonder.

Now, dinner wil be served shortly.’

‘And you’l tel me in your own good time what this is about?’ he said, gesturing at the flowers and the beautiful y laid table. Mel leaned over and kissed him, a long lingering kiss. ‘In my own good time,’ she agreed.

‘Keep that up and I may put my foot down about sharing you with the postman,’ Adrian said, pul ing her close and slipping both hands round her waist. ‘We could skip the main course, go upstairs and have dessert,’ he added hopeful y. One hand had slipped lower, onto the curve of her buttocks. ‘Not when I have spent the evening cooking you cannot,’ Mel said firmly, giving him another kiss. ‘Dessert wil be later. Nigel a Lawson’s slow-roasted lamb with Moroccan salad first.’ ‘I take it al back,’ Adrian said, shaking out his napkin. ‘Let’s eat first and have dessert later. Nigel a’s lamb should not be wasted.’

‘What gives?’ he asked later, when they had nearly finished the lamb and were both so ful that the notion of a romp in bed as the last course would definitely have to wait a while.

‘I’d like to go back to work,’ said Mel.

‘I thought you might,’ Adrian said.

‘Did you real y?’ She was surprised, but only for a minute.

He knew her so wel ; they’d been together for so long. ‘I thought you might need something else,’ he said, ‘that’s al .

Not that this,’ he gestured around the room where Carrie and Sarah’s toys were tidied into white wicker baskets,

‘isn’t enough for you, but you’ve worked al your life. It’s got to be hard to give that up. The kudos and the fun,’ he added intuitively. ‘But I want to do it differently this time,’ she said.

‘Differently how?’

‘Differently part time. That would work.’

‘What would you do?’

‘I don’t know, maybe something like I did before. Maybe working in the supermarket. I simply want to go back for a few hours every week because I like working. Working makes the fun time more fun and it would be good to feel I was earning my own money again.’

‘It’s our money,’ Adrian protested. ‘I don’t expect you to account for every penny you spend.’

‘Yes, but it is different when I’m not actual y earning any,’

Mel tried to explain. ‘It’s not that you make me feel any less like a grown-up because you’re earning the money, it’s me that feels it. How did you know I’d want to go back to work?’

she asked suddenly. ‘Did you think I wasn’t happy?

Because I was. I am.’ ‘I know you, don’t forget,’ Adrian pointed out. ‘I know that you want to be with the children, but I also know you love the chal enge of work.’

‘Make no mistake, children are a hel of a chal enge,’

countered Mel.

‘That’s not what I meant. You like the chal enge of doing something else every day.’

‘But it’s hard to have that and to have children,’ Mel sighed.

‘It was hard before. I thought I could be superwoman. I thought I could do the same job I did before I had the girls, and you know what? I couldn’t. Not that I wasn’t as clever or as committed or as ambitious, because I was torn in different directions. Having children changes you.’

‘And I loved the way it changed you,’ Adrian said gently.

‘Do you?’ She was struck by how much she loved him. He was her soul mate, he understood her and wanted what was best for her. She thought of Caroline and the way things were being patched up with Graham, and wondered if Caroline would ever feel that Graham was her soul mate.

‘I want,’ she said, ‘to be able to take care of our children and be there for them and not be missing for the doctor’s appointments and have to rush off in the morning when they’re sick. If Carrie’s tonsils have to come out, I don’t want someone else to be with her in hospital - I want it to be me.

That’s the freedom I need in a job.’ She sighed. ‘Where do you get a job where your boss understands that you’re a mother first?’ ‘Start up your own business?’

Mel’s eyes gleamed. ‘You’re the fourth person to say that to me,’ she said. ‘There might just be something in that idea.’

‘Fourth? So I’m the last to know,’ teased Adrian. ‘Who else did you tel ? The postman?’

Mel leaned back in her chair and put her bare feet on Adrian’s lap. He gently stroked her toes, and began to massage the soles of her feet.

‘Keep doing that and I’l tel you,’ she sighed.

‘We could have an early night and tidy up in the morning,’

Adrian said.

Mel swung her legs down, jumped up and took his hand.

‘Let’s live dangerously.’ Her eye caught the remains of the lamb on the table. There was quite a lot left and it had been an expensive cut of meat. ‘Actual y, I’l just put this in tin foil,’

she said, letting go of Adrian’s hand. ‘There’s loads left over and …’ Adrian burst out laughing.

‘What?’ she demanded, but she was laughing too. ‘You love lamb and you could have this cold for lunch tomorrow.’

‘I’m laughing at you, Mrs Beaton,’ he said, and he began to tidy up with her. ‘You’re right. Waste not, want not.’ ‘We can’t afford to throw money away,’ Mel said seriously, briskly gathering up dishes and plates. ‘Until I get some sort of part-time work, we have to economise.’

‘What if I told you that I’d got a raise?’ Adrian asked archly.

Mel instantly stopped tidying. ‘What?’

‘I’ve been promoted,’ he said. ‘That was my big bit of news and I was going to save it for later, after I’d had my wicked way with you,’ he teased. ‘We’d both hoped getting my Masters would have a knock-on effect at work, and it has.

I’ve moved up a pay scale and I’m now part of the senior management team. They told me today.’

‘Adrian!’ Mel flung herself into his arms. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

‘Couldn’t have done it without your support,’ he murmured, his face buried in her hair.

‘Yes you could,’ she said.

‘No.’ He held her very tightly. ‘I couldn’t. We make a good team.’ Then he kissed her and Mel felt a surge of excitement that made tidying up fade into insignificance.

‘You’re right,’ she said firmly, picking up the lamb. ‘This is going in the fridge and the rest can wait until tomorrow.

We’ve more important things to do.’

Daisy looked around the big living room of her old apartment, empty now except for lots of boxes and plenty of dust. No matter how hard you tried to clean, there was always dust under furniture and in corners, she thought. She was sad to be leaving. This had been her home for six years. It was like a living diary, a part of her life. Would she forget those years when she walked out the door? Would it be like losing a diary, because everything here meant something? A coffee stain on the carpet in her bedroom, from the time they’d bought the new coffee machine and she handed Alex a cup and it nearly scalded him, so he dropped it. The special shoe section in her wardrobe that she had had fitted and that Alex had laughed at, cal ing her the Imelda to beat al Imeldas. The cottage barely had wardrobes, never mind adorable cubbyholes especial y made for high-heeled shoes, but there was plenty of time to get al sorts of wardrobes built. She’d bought it at a good price, so there would stil be money left over from her half of the sale of this place. ‘Those stairs would kil you,’ said a weary voice. The removal men were back in the apartment.

They had just brought the bed down to the van and they hadn’t been able to use the lift because it wouldn’t fit in.

‘I think we’l have to have tea, love,’ said the chief removal guy.

‘Go ahead,’ said Daisy cheerful y. ‘I’m just having a last look around, then I’m going off to the new house. Can I leave you here with the keys? The estate agent wil be around to pick them up at four.’

She walked out with her head held high, got into her car and checked the messages on her mobile phone. There were seven messages. Everyone knew it was moving day.

Mary said she was dropping by the new house later with a lasagne. ‘Ful fat, sweetie. Just because you want to be on a diet, I don’t.’

Daisy had decided she had to lose weight and was determined to visit the local diet club soon. Just not yet.

Claudia had rung saying they were al stil going out the fol owing evening but they were starting off a bit later, eight instead of half-seven, was that al right? ‘Casual real y,’

Claudia had said, ‘just dinner in a pizza place. Andrew promises not to set you up with anyone.’

Paula rang to wish her luck. ‘You’ve got to come and see me and Emma,’ she said plaintively. ‘We haven’t seen you for ages. Emma’s getting huge now. She wants to see her auntie.’ Daisy smiled at that message. She’d love to see Emma again. Recently, she felt as if she’d passed some sort of mental test. She could see women with pushchairs on the street and watch nappy commercials on the television, al without wanting to break down into tears. It wasn’t that her longing for a baby was any less, it was just that she was able to put it on a mental back burner. Nobody had said she would never have children. It was stil there, a possibility, waiting in the future. Since she’d never had any tests, she didn’t know if her not having a baby was a fluke or something that needed work, but without proof she refused to believe that it couldn’t happen. First, she had to mourn the children that she and Alex would have had.

Bizarrely enough, the birth of Daragh had helped her do that. Funny how a baby brought closure to the whole thing.

Mary would approve, being big on closure.

Daisy’s old friend Zsa Zsa had phoned to say she had been going out with the most divine man for the past month and he had lots of fabulous friends. ‘Now you’re footloose and fancy free - by the way, did that thing with KC ever work out? - you could join us double dating, whatever.’

Oh, no way, thought Daisy, with a shudder. She didn’t want to be reminded of KC and the horrible dark days just after Alex had dumped her. No, thank you very much, she had moved on. She was not that craven, blithering idiot any more. Hanging around with the party crowd would put her back there.

Leah’s message started with whale music. Amid the high pitched squeals and coos, Leah left a message to say she was thinking of Daisy and would love to see her soon.