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‘There’s a lot to think about,’ she said, more to herself than to him.

‘Take your time,’ were his last words to her.

She turned away from him to look over her shoulder and give one last wave to his children before she drove off. She caught a glimpse in the Lagonda’s rearview mirror of Pete Smith standing among his children under the lights of Claridge’s. She saw a canopy of brightness, shining warmth, an island of comfort and love in the
blackness of the night, the loneliness of the deserted, silent street. How many lives can one live in a lifetime? wondered Amy.

Chapter 4

In addition to Amanda, Amy had two other close friends. But these women were career women like herself, in their mature years, having gone through various lovers and husbands. Busy women but far more social and more interested in men than she was. They therefore considered it unfair that it was Amy who attracted the men when it was they who were on the hunt.

They were ladies who lunched together on occasion, saw each other rarely because their work and their lifestyles were so different, and spoke to each other at length at least several times a week. They earned three-figure salaries, spent money lavishly and worried about Amy, who, in their eyes, lived from hand to mouth. In fact she lived from assignment to assignment, book to book or, when desperate, from the sale of a work of art. Her income was tenuous, her life lived in the slow lane. They thought she needed excitement, a man, preferably one to give her financial security because for all the comforts and aesthetic beauty she lived with, she was still a working girl – and no longer a girl at that.

They saw her insistence on staying as much in the background as possible and living full-time in the country as negative factors in her life. Her lifestyle concerned them. They were most certainly not country girls, more
Mayfair ladies, who rarely spent more than the odd week-end in the country – and that usually meant the South of France or Tuscany. But they were caring girlfriends. That was why they were all four of them meeting for a quick lunch at Fortnum & Mason. They had heard from Amanda about the fabulous Smiths and the day on the river.

All through lunch they skirted any mention of Pete Smith. Instead they gossiped about the London scene. Amy lived vicariously through her girlfriends’ social lives, enjoying every minute of it all as long as she didn’t have to be a part of it. They knew it, and so did Amy who only on the rarest occasions allowed them to drag her into their social whirl. The waitress had just finished topping up their cups with coffee. No sooner had she left the table than Frances said, ‘Amanda says Pete Smith and his family are great. So who is Pete Smith?’

‘I never thought you’d last through to the coffee, Frances. You could have met him, you
had
been invited.’

‘That doesn’t tell us anything, Amy. Amanda says they were an attractive bunch.’

‘And?’ teased Amy.

‘Very American, apple pie and vanilla ice cream, a farmer,’ said Karen, who from the twinkle in her eyes and the intonation in her voice considered those things to be serious drawbacks to eligibility.

‘Actually, I did say all those things,
and
that he didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance with you if you were turning down suitors like Charles,’ said Amanda.

‘I’ve known Amy longer than you have, Amanda, and
I can tell you, it’s all a matter of magic with her. If the magic had been there, he would have had a chance. Was the magic there? Did your heart skip a beat? And who was he really? ’Fess up,’ demanded Karen in the nicest way.

Amy laughed, bringing a smile to all of them. ‘It didn’t take you girls long, did it? What romantics.’

‘And I suppose you’re not a romantic? That’s a laugh! Since I’ve known you, until you called it off with Charles anyway, it was one romantic interlude after another for you. Of us all, it’s you who’s the greatest romantic. The men in your life, the work that you do, the lifestyle you’ve created for yourself in the country … You make us three look like tough, realistic mercenaries when it comes to men,’ objected Frances.

‘Well!’ said Karen, and all the women had the good grace to laugh at themselves.

‘Did your heart go zing when you saw him again after so many years?’ asked Amanda.

‘Oh, he was a man from your past. Too bad.’ That was Frances again who had claimed many times she wouldn’t touch a lover from the past with a barge pole.

‘Well?’ prompted Amanda, who had been curious and had not, in the five days since the luncheon party, had time to talk to Amy except to say thank you on the telephone.

‘I confess.’

They waited anxiously to hear her confession.

‘My heart did
not
go zing. That’s not to say that I would not have liked it to, but who knows? Maybe hearts
don’t go zing for middle-aged ladies. It felt warm, comfortable, I found him sexually attractive – but then I always had. And, yes, I am a romantic.’

‘You mean, that’s it?’

‘What more do you want?’

‘How did he feel? Did he make a pass?’

Amy ignored the questions from her girlfriends and asked, ‘Amanda, you were there. How did you find him with me?’

This was an opportunity for Amy to refresh her memory of that day. Certain things were becoming clouded. Though Pete had remained vivid in her mind the following day and for several days after, that sense of the sexual chemistry between them was beginning to fade, helped perhaps by Amy’s not having heard from Pete since she had driven away from him.

‘Attractive, intelligent, sexy. A big, quiet man, sort of like Gary Cooper or James Stewart. The quiet Americans they used to portray in the movies. A good man, interesting in his own very straight way. A little out of his depth or maybe just surprised by the different lifestyle we live. Incredibly happy to be with Amy and his children. The kind of man who’s always pleasant to be around. Did he fancy our Amy? Rotten, I would say, but he was holding back. But that might be me wanting her to have such a good man in her life. He was very cautious. Showed nothing. So what’s the story, Amy?’

‘I don’t honestly know if there is a story, Amanda. He walked up to the table in Claridge’s where I was dining with Charles, and until he spoke I didn’t even recognise
him. I had forgotten him nearly thirty years ago – until I heard his voice. We were lovers and in love when we were young. I left him for someone else, someone quite the opposite to him, dumped him without a second thought. I was out of control, had fallen madly, deeply, passionately in love as I had never been before. I didn’t let him down easily or very nicely. One day we were everything to each other and the next I walked out on him with barely a word. I shattered his life and his dreams. Truth be told, when he approached Charles and me and I realised who he was, so much time had passed that what had happened between us in the past didn’t seem at all important. Not for me, nor for him. It was instant relating instead, as if we never had a past.’

‘And?’ asked Amanda.

‘And I liked him as I always had. I had forgotten how nice a human being he is, and was enchanted by his children. I’ve not heard from him but somehow I think I will. For the moment there’s no more to it than that.’

The three women had been listening intently, hopefully, hanging on to Amy’s every word. These were not the sort who liked to see a man get away. They were riveted by this peek into Amy’s past. Her friends around the table were women who had known her for many years and therefore had some knowledge of her immediate past. But Amy had always been extremely secretive about her life and loves before she had moved from the States to Europe. Oh, the odd reference, but only fleeting. Nothing more.

Amy didn’t have that all-American trait of laying out
her life for anyone to see. She was always tight-lipped about herself, past and present. Frances had once summed her up as, ‘Lots of self-esteem, big libido, little ego, and just the right amount of vanity.’ She had been right. Even Amy herself, when she heard it, had to agree.

Riveted by news of a new man in Amy’s life, and hearing of the Amy of decades ago, made ruthless by passion, the great, grand love that can destroy, they realised for the first time why she played so loose and so free with the men who fell in love with her. Why she rejected marriage to Charles, and before him Anthony Kramer, a long-time suitor the girls had begged her to marry. Charles was too young while Anthony Kramer was of their generation, an American like Amy, not very handsome but attractive, sexy, erudite. As Frances used to put it, ‘Mega wealthy, a man who enjoys spending his money in the sort of ways Amy approves of.’ Both men were still around and in her life years later; they still had hope. But she never relented, kept her unmarried state, her short-term sexual love affairs, until she had given up even these. Now the puzzle as to why was suddenly solved. The three women sat silent for several minutes, each looking at the others. None of them had to say anything, each of them understood what they had never guessed: that there had been a one and only man in Amy Ross’s life. And whatever had happened to that love affair had left her too damaged for love, the commitment of a long-term relationship. That life she lived long before they met her, that life she rarely spoke about, had caught up with her.

‘The other man, Amy. That’s the real story, isn’t it? Do tell.’

The women were surprised and somewhat embarrassed to see the colour drain from Amy’s face. Embarrassed for her, that she had been caught out; embarrassed for themselves for having been so prying and the cause of some anxiety about the other man in that long-ago love story: Pete Smith.

‘What a clod you are, Frances,’ snapped Amanda.

Amy felt cold, her mouth suddenly dry. Frances had given her a fright. The real story? The other man? Those two things had been long forgotten, dealt with emotionally a long time ago. But what they conjured up now was that dream she had had less than a fortnight ago. It flashed through her mind and unnerved her in the same way as she had been unnerved upon awakening from it. A dream of Jarret Sparrow? The arrival of Pete Smith? None of it made sense. What had those two things to do with her life? She took a sip of the hot coffee and a deep breath. She closed her eyes for a second and took another deep breath, sighing slowly, becoming more calm. Or was it a sigh of resignation? When she opened her eyes the anxiety her friends had seen in them only moments before was gone.

Everyone at the table looked relieved. For a short time something unpleasant had settled over the women and they were all glad it was gone. Frances, Karen and Amanda were further relieved when they saw a smile on Amy’s still pale face.

‘No, she’s not a clod, Amanda. What she said didn’t
upset me in the least. What it did was to remind me of a most unpleasant dream I had some days ago, and that
did
upset me. Now it’s passed and I’m all right. It was a dream about that other man – of whom, by the way, I have no intention of telling you the least little thing! He’s a man I haven’t thought about any more than I have of Peter these last twenty odd years, and no one I care to talk about. The only thing I will say is that to dream of one and have the other arrive is odd indeed. Now can we leave it at that?’

The women didn’t mind dropping the subject. Each of them had had in their time some man they didn’t want to bring back into their life, even in conversation. They understood, but that understanding was not enough for them to continue their lunch in the same easy way in which it had begun.

Amy was driving. All the way home she and Amanda spoke about any number of things, anything and everything except the hiccup at lunch which had so upset her. When Amy drove through the gates of the Whatelys’ house and up the drive she was holding her breath, just praying that Amanda would not at the last minute bring up the incident.

They had, since it was a bright sunny day and still unusually warm weather, driven to London in the open Lagonda. Amanda wore a sable and knit jacket, and a hat with a scarf over it tied under her chin. Amy had her usual white silk scarf covering her hair and one of Charles’s gifts wrapped round her: a 1920s full-length jaguar coat in fabulously good condition. There was
besides the Lagonda’s super hot heater to keep them warm. Now, with Amy still in the driver’s seat and the motor running, Amanda was out of the car and reaching into the back seat for her shopping: Harvey Nichols, Harrods, The White House, The General Trading Company. Bags of it. Amy felt relieved, now that they had made it home, that the subject of Peter and Jarret was closed.

It would have been had not Dick Whately come out to greet his wife and help with the shopping. He greeted Amy with a kiss and then, walking towards Amanda, said, ‘Had a nice day, ladies? Well, I can see you did, Amanda.’ Then, gathering all of her shopping from the boot and the back seat of the car, Dick laughed and teased the women, ‘Just a normal girls’ day out! Amanda buys out the store, while Amy doesn’t even have a new handkerchief. I wish you would use Amy as your example when you’re out shopping, my love.’

‘It’s the same old speech every time he sees a shopping bag,’ said Amanda, standing next to the still seated Amy, not the least annoyed by her husband’s suggestion. Both women knew he didn’t give a fig what his wife spent.

Dick leaned down to give his wife a peck on the cheek and asked the two women: ‘Good lunch? Lots of delicious girly gossip, a little true confession, the usual?’

Amanda deliberately stepped on her husband’s toes. Rather than interpret this as a signal to be quiet, he exclaimed, ‘Christ, Amanda! What was that for?’

Amy realised that she had not fooled Amanda into thinking she was no longer disturbed by the dream or
Pete Smith. The two women looked at each other, and in the gaze that passed between them Amy saw Amanda’s concern for her and appreciated that she had tried to hide it ever since the luncheon party had broken up.

‘Because it was a signal to shut up, Dick. And that was because you were right on the mark. Maybe not true confessions so much as murky revelations.’

‘Yours?’

‘Dick!’ Amanda was distinctly annoyed now.

‘Sorry about that, Amy. I’m a clod.’

‘Don’t be silly, Dick, there’s nothing to be sorry about. The girls only got a little to chew over. You can be sure I didn’t give much away and have declared the subject closed. Which it is.’ Then Amy gave a light flirtatious laugh to ease the awkward moment for Amanda and Dick.

‘Stay for dinner,’ urged Amanda.

‘No. Thanks, but I really do want to get home. I have calls to Switzerland to make.’

‘Buying, selling or consulting?’ asked Dick who was always fascinated by Amy’s work in the art world.