Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (42 page)
Justin got up again with an effort, towering over me. His face had more than a healthy glow and his eyes were not quite focused – goodness knew what alcohol Marcia had been pouring into him! It quickly became apparent she’d been pouring more lies into his ears, too.
‘Marcia said you were getting close to that widowed actor next door and I came to tell you I won’t have it,’ Justin slurred, with a menacingly jealous look.
‘Don’t you tell me what you will or won’t have!’ I told him angrily, and then gave him such a sharp push that he stumbled back into the basket chair again. ‘Get a grip! I’m friends with my neighbour, nothing more, and Marcia’s just spinning you lies because she has the hots for him herself.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Justin said, narrowing his bleary, slightly bloodshot blue eyes at me.
‘I don’t care if you believe me or not. And in any case, what I do is no longer any business of yours.’
Well, that did it. He heaved himself up, saying he was going to teach me a lesson I wouldn’t forget and trying to grab me. This would have been scary, since he’s so much bigger than I am, but fortunately he wasn’t entirely in charge of his legs and fell backwards into the chair even as I was reaching for a handy frying pan to defend myself with.
He’d never been violent, so I wasn’t quite sure what he had in mind, but this was an unpleasant side of him I’d never seen before, presumably buried deep and brought out by the drink.
‘You try anything and I’ll ding you one with this pan,’ I threatened, then told him to get out.
He refused to go, though, crossing his arms across his broad chest and staring at me with bleary belligerence, so I left Flash and Toby watching him intently while I went into the parlour and phoned Timmy. It was providential that he and Joe were staying in Ormskirk this weekend and I prayed they were not out somewhere. Luckily they were home.
‘Justin’s drunk and stubborn and he says he’s staying here with me tonight. Marcia dropped him off, so I need to get him into a taxi back to her: she got him in this state, so she can cope with him.’
Timmy quickly grasped the situation and he and Joe turned up half an hour later, by which time I’d given Justin a slug of the cooking brandy in the hope it would render him slightly more malleable while we all wrestled him into a taxi. It did – in fact, almost comatose.
The driver was not too keen on his drunken passenger, but relented when I removed Justin’s well-stuffed wallet and paid him double in advance.
‘It’s well after midnight: no wonder he turned into a pumpkin,’ Timmy said, as the taillights receded up the lane.
‘Now he’s gone somewhere else to vegetate,’ Joe put in.
‘Enough with the vegetable jokes,’ I said, grinning, ‘or we’ll never get to the root of it.’
‘What a turnip for the books!’ Timmy said, irrepressibly.
Ivo came back on Sunday afternoon, while I was in his kitchen feeding Toby. I’d left the door open to the garden and he walked in and dropped his bags just inside the door before standing and looking at me with a very odd expression on his face. I mean, I’d expected embarrassment, or worry, maybe, but this was more … accusatory.
Toby ignored him because he was in the middle of one of those cat mimes, trying to tell me he’d prefer a different flavour cat food to the one I’d opened.
‘Hi, Tansy,’ Ivo said finally. ‘I’ve been to see Marcia, that’s why I’m late back. I wanted to tell her I knew about Kate having the abortion and that she’d helped her.’
‘What did she say?’ I asked. I’d been edging towards the door, ready for flight, but now I waited.
‘That she’d tried to persuade Kate out of the abortion and there hadn’t seemed any point in telling me afterwards … but she was wrong. It would have made a big difference.’
‘Yes, of course it would,’ I agreed. ‘Well, I’d better be off, I’ve –’
‘Don’t go yet,’ he said. ‘Look, I really am sorry for what happened and I’m hoping you can forgive me – and that it hasn’t mucked things up with Justin?’
I stared at him. ‘
What
things?’
‘Come on, you don’t need to pretend. Marcia told me she’d been putting him up while he was flat-hunting, but he spent last night with you – you’d invited him over.’
‘I had not, and no – he didn’t!’ I declared indignantly.
Ivo eyed me closely. ‘He
wasn’t
here?’
‘Well, yes, he did turn up late and drunk – but uninvited,’ I admitted. ‘Then he refused to leave.’
‘So he stayed the night?’
‘He certainly
didn’t
! I got Timmy and Joe over from Ormskirk to help me get him in a taxi and we sent him right back to Marcia, as she knows very well!’
He frowned. ‘But if that’s so, then why would she lie to me?’
‘Because she’s jealous, of course, you numbskull! She thinks you and I have a thing going and that’s why she’s been stirring Justin up and encouraging him to think I really want him back. She was probably peeved because you’d found out about her helping Kate, too.’
‘I did make it clear I’d rather not see her ever again,’ he said slowly. ‘But surely she wouldn’t –’
‘If you don’t believe me, I’ll give you Timmy’s phone number,’ I offered coldly.
‘Yes, of course I believe you. In fact, I don’t know now why I even listened to Marcia. It was just that when I thought you and Justin …’ He stopped and rubbed his hands over his tired face.
‘There is no “me and Justin” and I’m hoping he’s now shot his bolt and that’s the last time I’ll hear his name. And there’s no “me and Ivo”, either, come to that, so as to the other night, we’ll just forget it ever happened. It was something and nothing.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ he agreed, with a searching look from his grey eyes. ‘We can but try.’
‘You’ll be moving back to Stratford soon, so we won’t have to try for very long, will we?’
‘But I’m not moving back,’ he said, ‘I’m staying here. That’s one of the reasons I went: to tell them straight I was retiring from the stage and to sort out a few things.’
‘You’re … staying here?’ I repeated, my heart making a sudden leap and then starting to race. ‘For ever?’
‘Yes, “
my tale is done
” as far as acting’s concerned. I just want an unquiet life here in Sticklepond, writing my books, gardening, being woken at unearthly hours by Cedric, driven mad by bells …’
‘
Seriously
?’ I asked, still hardly daring to believe it, when I’d been expecting him to vanish out of my life as suddenly as he had reappeared.
‘Seriously. So it would be pretty difficult if we couldn’t get back to being friends, wouldn’t it?’ He ventured one of his rare charm-the-birds-from-the-trees smiles. ‘I missed you while I was away.’
‘I’ve got used to having you around too,’ I conceded grudgingly, which was the understatement of the year considering I felt as if the sun had just come out and an entire Welsh male-voice choir was singing ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’ in my head.
‘Oh, and I told my broker to sell the Grocergo shares,’ he added, which reminded me about the Chamber of Commerce meeting and I told him about Hebe finding the true Sticklepond mole – her nephew, Jack Lewis.
‘So all your deep dark suspicions about me were unfounded,’ Ivo pointed out.
‘Hebe’s too – and when she hears you’re going to live here permanently, she’s bound to try to persuade you to join the Friends of Winter’s End again,’ I said, and he groaned, so I don’t rate her chances of succeeding with that very highly.
Bella and I visited Poppy’s baby on Thursday afternoon when the shop was shut, to give her the little shell-pink vests and dress we’d bought. The baby was a sweet little thing and I think both Bella and I felt equally broody afterwards, though of course in Bella’s case she has some hope of having another baby or two while I haven’t even passed the starting post and never, it seems, will.
Bella and Neil’s leisurely courtship suddenly seemed to have wheels, for they were now planning a wedding. I’d promised to buy them a pig as a wedding present if I could be bridesmaid, though of course I knew Bella would ask me anyway.
She’d already chosen her RubyTrueShuze wedding shoes – palest lilac suede high-heeled pumps with flower and silver hummingbird detail!
Of course, Ivo and I didn’t easily fall straight back into our old friendly ways. Things were a bit stiff at first and sometimes embarrassing. We’d forget what we’d done and be easy together and then suddenly catch each other’s eye and it was clear we were remembering the same thing.
Ivo was careful not to touch me and vice versa … but one day we accidentally bumped into each other and Ivo went so still I thought he’d turned to stone on the spot, while I felt as if I’d received an electric shock. We gazed into each other’s eyes for a long moment – and then Bella came into the kitchen from the shop and the spell was broken. We sprang apart, slightly self-consciously.
Bella said later that she despaired of us, but it did get easier as the days went on and I decided I’d so much rather have Ivo next door as a friend, than not there at all. I’ve already got his cat: Toby went home only for meals by then.
Strangely, things seemed to become easier between us right after our first high tea together following his return, when I remembered Florrie’s well-meaning herbal tonic and made Ivo two special scones, which he ate with great relish.
‘These are different,’ he said, and oddly enough
he
seemed a little different after he’d eaten them, too … more relaxed, his spring not quite so tightly wound, nor his eyes so haunted. Perhaps they’d given him amnesia? I ought to have eaten one.
I told Florrie next time she called in and she said he’d be a changed man, just wait and see …
As May turned to June I relied on Ivo more and more, for the shop was hectically busy but the garden didn’t stop growing and fruiting, and the dog still needed walking. When I had any free time, I seemed to spend it jamming, chutneying and brewing away …
Ivo was in and out of the cottage and we shared the cat, the dog and the produce. In fact, the only thing we
didn’t
seem to be sharing was a bed.
Raffy was still visiting him, and I assumed Ivo had told him what he had discovered about Kate and received some good advice. Raffy called in on me one day too, and said Ivo needed a lot of time and understanding, and when I said I had an infinite supply of both, he laughed.
Far from finally vanishing from my life, as I’d hoped, Justin emailed and texted a couple of times insisting we had something to talk about and saying he was sorry if he’d been a bit drunk the other night. (A bit!) It became apparent that he had no recollection of anything that had happened after he’d arrived at my cottage!
I didn’t reply to any of them: we had nothing to talk about. He was my past, an uncomfortable dream I would rather forget, if only he would let me.
New plans for the nature reserve had been submitted and approved in record time, so all the Chamber of Commerce members could relax, but not rest on our laurels, for it was getting into peak tourist season and the village is Sticklepond Saunter busy.
While Bella and I both found the hectic shop very exhilarating, as the month went on I began to feel a little …
odd.
I went right off coffee, for a start – and then even Meddyg, which I could have done with just to keep me going.
‘I wonder if I’m sickening for something?’ I said to Bella eventually. ‘I just feel weird, and funnily enough, although I haven’t put weight on, my clothes don’t seem to fit me the same.’
Bella’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Have you thought … you might possibly be
pregnant
?’
The question and all its possibilities hung shimmering on the air for a moment, then I said with a shaky laugh, ‘Don’t be daft!’
‘At least think about it – that clinic didn’t say you
couldn’t
get pregnant, did they?’
‘No, just that my window of opportunity was about to vanish. And that was months ago, too.’ But now I came to think about it, my erratic cycle seemed to have stopped entirely and we’d been so busy I hadn’t even noticed.
‘I
can’t
be pregnant!’
‘Do a test and then you’ll know one way or the other,’ she urged.
I looked at her blankly.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you mind the shop and I’ll pop out to the chemist in your car and get one.’
I did the test next morning after a largely sleepless night – I’d been so distracted the previous evening that Ivo had asked me if I was feeling well!
So did Bella, when I rang her at dawn to say the test was positive.
‘I don’t know how I feel,’ I replied. ‘Happy, sad, over the moon, afraid, delighted … you name it. This isn’t how I wanted it to be, but then, I thought it was never going to happen to me at all!’
‘It’ll be fine, you’ll see,’ she said soothingly. ‘But you’ll have to tell Ivo at some point, won’t you?’
‘I suppose so, though I don’t think this will be news he wants to hear. But it’s early days yet, so I’d like to keep it to myself in case anything goes wrong. And why would he believe it was his anyway? He’d probably think I really
had
slept with Justin!’
‘I’m sure he knows you better than that,’ Bella assured me. ‘And you’ll have to tell him. I mean, he’s
entitled
to know.’
‘I don’t know how he’s going to take it – especially when you think about what happened with Kate …’
‘It’s tricky, but
you
aren’t Kate and you want the baby, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do! I really, really do,’ I confessed.
It might shatter the friendship with Ivo that we’d been so carefully building up again, but I would risk all to hold this lovely, unexpected and fragile gift I’d been so carelessly given close to my heart.
Of course I was totally distracted for the rest of the week and I know Ivo was puzzled, but whatever Bella said I was determined to keep the news from him as long as I could. I simply couldn’t guess how he’d take it.