Downsizing (11 page)

Charles stood at the net and fed balls to
Noah. He instructed him about his grip, cautioned him to keep his
eye on the ball, and made him think about each stroke. Noah proved
to be a natural and was soon putting considerable force behind his
shots. He gained satisfaction from the activity. Not only did that
surprise him, but it also considerably improved his dire mood. At
the end of an hour Charles offered to arrange regular coaching for
him, and Noah didn’t protest.

“
Madeleine and I are going out
this evening,” Charles said casually as they enjoyed a swift beer
afterward. “Why not call to see Cassie and clear the
air?”

“
Yes, I suppose I’d better do
that,” Noah agreed.

Chapter Eight

On the day before his wedding Noah went to
London and stayed the night with Charles. His father-in-law to be
had insisted upon kitting him out for the occasion, which was just
as well because left to his own devices he’d probably have got
married in jeans. All Noah cared about was hearing from Maxine.
Even if she couldn’t forgive him, he needed to know that she
understood, but on the day before his life was to change forever,
his letter came back unopened. With a heavy heart Noah was forced
to accept that he’d blown their friendship beyond
redemption.

Charles made no comment about Noah’s morose
mood. Sullen and uncommunicative, only when Charles took him into
an upmarket men’s shop and forced him into an extortionately
expense suit did Noah rouse sufficient interest to
protest.

“
Just think how much money you’re
saving me, Noah. If Madeleine had her way, Cassie would, as we
speak, be organizing a wedding with five hundred
guests.”

“
Yeah, but I never wear suits. It
would be a waste.”

“
You might not wear them now, but
you’ll have to when your business expands.”

“
Perhaps, but that won’t be for a
while yet.” He sighed. “Not any more it won’t.”

“
Don’t be defeatist, dear boy, and
bear in mind that people are judged by their appearance. You won’t
let me help you with somewhere to live, so at least let me do
this.”

With no energy and insufficient interest to
protest, Noah gave in. Not only did Charles kit him out with a
suit, shirts, ties, and shoes, but with chinos, casual shirts that
screamed expensive, and all manner of other gear he didn’t believe
he needed. Then he took him back to his flat and bullied him into
changing into a pair of his new chinos.

“
Very elegant,” he declared,
emerging from his bedroom similarly clad. “Come on. We’re going out
on the town. This is your last night of freedom.”

Noah scowled. “Thanks for the
reminder.”

Charles took Noah to a trendy restaurant. He
instructed him without appearing to do so in his choice of food and
attempted to interest him in the right accompanying
wines.

Noah glanced round the room, feeling out of
place, wondering what the hell he was doing here. He figured it
must be an expensive place because the tables, spread with crisp
white linen, were spaced well apart. The lighting was dim, the
serving staff proficient and non-intrusive. All the diners were
well dressed and seemed so self-assured that Noah felt crass by
comparison. His gaze lingered on a familiar looking man, dining
tète-a-tete with a much younger woman.

“
Yes, that is who you think it
is,” Charles said, following the direction of Noah’s gaze. “He’s
quite high up in the Labour Party nowadays, always on television
banging on about family values.”

“
And I’m willing to bet that’s not
his wife he’s with,” Noah said with a cynical twist of his
lips.

Charles chuckled. “Somehow I doubt
it.”

“
Talk about double
standards.”

“
Well, he
is
a
politician.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “Yeah, point
made.”

As the evening wore on, Noah gradually relaxed
in Charles’s easy company, seeing a glimmer of light in a future
that had appeared uncompromisingly bleak. He liked Charles, a
feeling that was obviously reciprocated. His future father-in-law
possessed a wealth of knowledge that would be advantageous to Noah.
With nothing else to distract him, he intended to put all his
energies into his work and make a success of it.

* * * *

The wedding party was a subdued affair. Only
Cassie seemed as though she wished to be there. She looked pretty
in a pink suit and tiny pillbox hat and smiled radiantly at Noah
throughout the short ceremony. Joey and Rachel were reluctant
witnesses, and apart from them only the father of the bride was
present. Madeleine remained in Colebrook, in sight of her circle of
friends. That way she could honestly say that she’d not been at her
daughter’s wedding and, less honestly, that it had come as a
complete shock to her.

Noah repeated the words the registrar required
him to say it a voice devoid of emotion, thinking about Maxine as
he did so. He wondered what she was doing at that particular moment
and if she knew it was his wedding day. His musings were
interrupted by the registrar informing him that they were man and
wife and inviting him to kiss his bride.

He’d made up his mind during the course of a
largely sleepless night that he wouldn’t spoil this day for Cassie.
It was too late for regrets. The memory of his companionable
evening with Charles lingered, and as a consequence he felt a
modicum of composure today.

Noah wasn’t going to waste any more time on
self-pity. By returning his letter unopened Maxine’s message had
come through loud and clear. He’d just have to get his act together
and try to make a go of this most unlikely of marriages. Even so,
he knew, with an unshakeable certainty that didn’t leave an ounce
of room for doubt, that he’d never stop loving Maxine. Thoughts of
her would continue to fill his head, and everything he attempted to
achieve in the future would be done with her in mind. When they
eventually met again he wanted her to be proud of him.

Charles treated the wedding party to lunch at
the Dorchester where he’d booked a room for the newlyweds to spend
the night. In spite of Charles’s efforts to liven up the meal with
social chit-chat, it wasn’t a great success. Rachel appeared sullen
and close to tears, Joey was privately lamenting his friend’s
stubbornness in making what anyone with eyes in their head could
see was a monumental mistake, and Noah was drinking too much and
trying not to think about anything at all.

* * * *

No one else was at home when the phone rang.
Normally she’d have ignored it, but Maxine knew Gwen was expecting
an important call and had promised to take a message.

“
Hello, Max, it’s Rachel.” Maxine
started to hyperventilate. “Max, are you there?”

“
Yes, Rachel, I’m here. How are
you?”

“
Awful.” And she burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry, Max, I can’t live with myself. I didn’t mean to ruin
your life.”

“
Whatever are you talking
about?”

“
About Noah and Cassie. It’s all
my fault.”

Maxine fell into the nearest chair, clutching
the telephone receiver so tightly that she lost all feeling in her
fingers. “I still don’t get you.”

“
Cassie came to me a couple of
months ago when I was waiting to hear if I was going to be awarded
that contract to do the catering at the tennis club.”

“
The one that kick-started your
career.” Maxine frowned. “What did that have to do with
Cassie?”

“
She told me that it was a close
run thing between me and someone else, but that her mum might be
able to put in a good word for me.”

“
But she wanted something in
return, I suppose.”

“
Yes, she was supposed to be going
up to town, to some do at her dad’s hospital on the day Joey went
to do their garden that week. She said that if I could somehow get
Noah to go instead of Joey then she’d get her mum to back my
application.”

“
Ah, I see.” But she didn’t, not
really.

“
She swore that she was fed up
with Noah ignoring her when all she wanted was to have a bit of fun
with him. If I’d known she was out to trap him I’d never have
agreed, bugger that contract!”

Maxine forced herself to remain calm. “I still
don’t understand.”

“
Well, obviously, that’s when she
got herself pregnant.”

The words were slow to penetrate Maxine’s
brain. “Cassie’s pregnant?” she stuttered, feeling as though the
walls of the room were suddenly closing in on her.

“
Yes, I thought you
knew.”

“
No, Rachel, I didn’t know, but I
suppose it explains a lot. You see, I thought she’d been seeing
Noah on the sly for months. That’s what she implied to me,
anyway.”

“
The bitch! No, Max, it was just
the once, but she managed to get herself pregnant, I can’t help
feeling deliberately, so that he’d have to marry her. Only Cassie
could manage to do it once and get herself up the duff. Anyway, if
it was a ploy to trap him, it worked because Noah thinks he’s got
to stand by her.”

“
Well, he would. He feels very
strongly about that sort of thing.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
It’s not your fault. I always
told him his prick would get him in trouble one of these days,” she
said with a brittle laugh. “Are they married yet?”

“
Yes, this morning.”

“
I see.” She could hear her deep
sigh echoing down the line. “Well, that’s that then.”

“
He looked miserable, if it’s any
consolation.”

“
Not much, no.”

“
And to cap it all, I found out
from one of the committee members at the tennis club that they’d
already decided to give the contract to me. Cassie was simply using
it as a means to coerce me into helping her. The cow!”

“
Well, that’s Cassie all over.”
She paused. “Rachel, does he ever mention me?”

“
No. Joey tried to talk about you
the other day, and he thought Noah was going to thump
him.”

“
Well, thanks for telling me, but
I’ve got to go now. The children need me.”

“
Wait, Max. Do you want me to give
a message to Noah for you?”

Maxine let out a long breath. “What’s the
point?”

“
Well, it might make things easier
when you come home at Christmas. I mean, it’s a small town so
you’re bound to bump into each other.”

“
I won’t be coming back to
Colebrook, not at Christmas or any other time. I can’t see him,
Rachel. It would only make things worse.”

“
Yes, I can see that, I suppose.”
But Rachel probably thought she’d come round. That’s precisely what
the old Maxine would have done but that person no longer existed.
“But can’t you and I keep in touch, just on the telephone? I can’t
bear to think of parting with you all together, especially after
what I’ve done.”

Maxine was silent for a long time, remembering
all the times during their school days when Rachel had intuitively
understood her unhappiness and loyally supported her.

“
Yes, all right, Rachel, I’d like
that. I need regular reports on how that business of yours is going
anyway, just to make sure that you don’t make a complete mess of
it. But I’ve got a couple of conditions.”

“
Anything,” Rachel said
eagerly.

“
Firstly, I don’t want to hear
anything about Noah and Cassie,” she said with a catch in her
voice. “I don’t want to know when the baby’s born, what sex it is,
where they’re living. In fact I don’t even want to hear their names
mentioned ever again.”

“
Fair enough. And your second
condition?”

“
You have to promise me you won’t
tell anyone, especially Joey, that you are I are in contact. If you
want to make up for any perceived misunderstandings then you’ll
agree to that. Otherwise it’s no dice, I’m afraid.”

“
Of course. I understand how you
feel, Max, and I agree.”

Maxine held it together until she replaced the
receiver and then waited for a reaction to set in. She was alone in
the house, supervising the children. Nancy was asleep, and Peter
was drawing at the kitchen table, completely self-absorbed and
barely aware of her presence.

Satisfied that they didn’t need her, Maxine
decided that now was as good a time as any to examine Rachel’s
news. She’d been in Cambridge for over two weeks, and life had been
so hectic that she’d had little time to dwell upon her own
feelings. Or lack of them. She managed a brief smile when she
remembered that first, disastrous, bike ride. She’d barely been
able to walk for three days afterward, having become painfully
acquainted with muscles she hadn’t previously known she possessed,
but she was now becoming an old hand at this cycling business. The
three-mile ride into Cambridge, which had seemed more like three
hundred on that first day as she puffed and sweated, lagging well
behind the rest of them, could now be accomplished with comparative
ease.

Derek gave her a tour of Jesus College. She’d
seen it once before when she attended her interview but had been
too nervous to properly appreciate its splendor. This time she
enjoyed the beauty of the old buildings, all the more enticing
because the college had been founded on the site of a nunnery and
turned into a college after it gained a reputation for
licentiousness. Maxine supposed that must account for its
peacefulness. She felt its history keenly, especially now when the
place was devoid of noisy undergraduates, and she drank in the
atmosphere of calm academic excellence. Walking through the main
entrance via the walled passage, Maxine knew this was where she was
supposed to be. She admired the immaculate quadrangles and ancient
religious statues, proud that she’d been selected to be a part of
it all but suddenly terrified that she’d been admitted by mistake
and would be asked to leave.