Having It All (30 page)

Britt sat anxiously on her huge sofa and wondered what to do. It was nearly seven and there was still no sign of David. For the last two hours she had expected him to walk in
at any moment, apologetic and slightly brusque. Surely she’d be able to convince him that what she’d done was flattering, that it had simply been born out of her love for him and her
desperation to keep him, and her honest belief that her need for him was so much greater than Liz’s. Liz was a survivor. She’d build a new life without him as easily as falling off a
log. Surely David would see that.

Britt made herself her fourth cup of coffee and looked at the kitchen clock.

It was early yet.

‘Ugh, Mum, this is revolting!’

With unerring taste Jamie discarded the chocolate Santa filled with the disgusting substance known as ‘creme’ in favour of a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Snowman. Eating the
decorations from the Christmas tree was a time-honoured tradition in Liz’s family. It had been what made helping her own mother decorate the tree such an exciting treat when she was a
child.

Despite everything, as she and Jamie got the decorations out of their boxes ready to put on the tree, the glass balls, the mini-crackers, the red satin bows, and the small shiny boxes wrapped to
look like tiny presents, she started to feel the familiar sense of excitement.

She loved Christmas and she was glad that this year they would be staying here in the cottage. On Boxing Day they had all been invited to Ginny’s and on Christmas Day her mother would come
for lunch, loaded with presents for her grandchildren.

David, on the other hand, had sent nothing. Suddenly a wave of bitterness washed over her that he was clearly too caught up with Britt and the baby to bother with buying any presents for his own
children. She could hardly believe he could be so cruel, knowing how much presents meant to them. Rather than see their faces fall, as she knew they would, she’d bought them presents herself
and put them in the back of the cupboard just in case. Tomorrow she would wrap them and pretend they were from Daddy.

As Jamie put up the last decoration Liz got out the fairy lights and draped them round the tree. This was the moment she liked best. Some people thought it vulgar to have coloured ones that
winked at you, but she didn’t care. Winking Christmas tree lights were part of her childhood. Turning all the lights off in the sitting room she and Jamie lined up for the ceremonial flick of
the switch that would declare Christmas open.

‘Come on, Jamie. Pretend you’re Joan Collins in Oxford Street.’

And with regal charm Jamie lifted his chin, closed his eyes and hit the switch. Twenty-two coloured lights flashed back at him and they both cheered and kissed each other.

But
why
, thought Liz, asking herself one of the great unanswered conundrums of the universe,
why
are there always two that don’t work every bloody year when they were all
absolutely fine when you put them in the box?

Britt flicked on the television and tried to find something to take her mind off David and what time it was. She’d told herself he might have gone to the paper, or to
some office celebration in a restaurant somewhere, or even, given his present mood, to a pub to get absolutely blind drunk.

All the same, for the last hour she had been having to fight the impulse to ring round some numbers where he might be. She sipped her decaffeinated filter coffee and tried to avoid the admission
that there was one number at the top of the list. Liz’s.

‘Bedtime, Jamie. Come on, darling, it’s been a busy day.’

‘Mum?’ Jamie looked up at her, suddenly serious. ‘Could I ring Dad.
Please
? In case he goes away for Christmas?’

Liz felt herself freeze. She could hardly say no, and yet what was she going to say to them. If she said nothing about the baby, they might tell her, and she would have to listen to the joy and
happiness in their voices. Well, there was no way she could congratulate them or wish them luck.

Feeling like the Bad Fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, Liz reached for the phone and dialled Britt’s number. It rang perhaps ten times and no one answered it. Breathing a sigh
of relief, Liz began to replace the receiver, telling Jamie that no one was in, when someone finally picked it up.

Britt had been waiting by the phone all evening, yet when it rang she recoiled as though it might attack her. If he was coming back, he would have just turned up, sober and self-righteous or
drunk and accusing, wouldn’t he? The phone could only mean bad news. That he wasn’t coming back tonight, or that he wasn’t coming back at all.

She wouldn’t answer it.

But not answering a ringing phone takes the kind of resolve few people have and Britt discovered she wasn’t one of them. On the twelfth ring she picked it up. ‘Hello?’

As soon as she heard Britt’s voice Liz found the old familiar anger burning through her, all the unsaid charges of betrayal, of violating the sacred taboos of friendship. She realized that
she wanted to talk to Britt for as short a time as possible.

‘Hello, Britt. Is David there? Jamie wants to wish him a Happy Christmas.’

For a moment Britt felt herself plunge into the relief of knowing that her biggest fear hadn’t come true, David hadn’t gone running straight back to Liz.

‘I’m afraid he’s not in.’ Now that she knew he hadn’t run back to her, she was damned if she was going to admit to Liz of all people that she had absolutely no idea
where he was.

‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’

‘No idea. He’s gone Christmas shopping. Probably collapsed into a wine bar to miss the rush hour.’

Liz realized she wanted to get off the line before Britt got a chance to tell her about the baby.

‘Right. Could you ask him to give Jamie a ring tomorrow? Just a couple of minutes to wish him Happy Christmas.’

Britt felt a momentary flash of guilt. What if she didn’t
see
David? It was a risk she was just going to have to take. After all, she had more to worry about than one little phone
call.

At just after ten p.m. David swung the Mercedes into the Park Lane Garage, handed the keys to the attendant and crossed the road to Grosvenor House where Logan Greene kept a
small but plush service flat for entertaining foreign businessmen and the occasional mistress. He had already considered and dismissed the possibility that Logan might turn up, with an
under-dressed secretary under one arm after one of the many Greene Communications office parties, which ranged from warm beer and crisps on the Subs’ Desk of the
Daily News
, to
Feuilletés au Délice de Saumon and vintage Krug at the Savoy for the management team.

But tomorrow was Christmas Eve, so he reckoned that Logan Greene, upstanding patriarch, would curb his taste for six-foot blondes with more than a passing resemblance to his daughter and return
to the bosom of his family in their modest thirty-room mansion on the river at Bray.

And since Logan had transformed his home into a technological nerve centre with advanced telecommunications and flatscreen TVs in his study and bedroom and had even commissioned a portable grey
box, not much larger than a briefcase, which meant he could communicate with any of his ventures world-wide direct from the fairway, David reckoned there was no need for him to venture into town
for at least three days, which was how long David planned to stay in his flat.

When the phone rang for the second time that evening Britt knew that this time it must be David, so it took her an unusually long time to take in who it actually was on the
other end of the phone.

‘Hello, Britt. This is Conrad Marks.’

Britt looked at her watch. It was ten-thirty. For a moment, irrationally, she thought he might have some news about David. She could hardly imagine David crying on Conrad’s diminutive
shoulder, but you never knew. Maybe they’d bumped into each other in The Groucho Club.

‘You’re probably wondering why I’m ringing so late.’

‘Just a bit.’

‘Sorry. I’m a night bird myself. I make all my best decisions at about two in the morning. I wondered if you could drop into my office tomorrow. There’s something I want to
discuss with you, and I’d like to get it tied up, or at least on the table before we all retreat to that bosom of mayhem and murder, the family.’

‘What time do you want me to come in?’ Britt was still dazed and puzzled by his call.

‘Whatever time suits you.’

‘Midday?’ By then surely David would have contacted her if he was going to, anyway maybe it would be good for him to find she wasn’t sitting chained to the phone.

‘Fine. I’ll cancel something. See you tomorrow. Sleep well.’

Britt sat holding on to the receiver for nearly a minute. What did Conrad Marks want with her that he would cancel a meeting on Christmas Eve to tell her about? As she put the phone back on the
hook Britt realized with amazement that she hadn’t thought about work once all day.

Liz woke earlier than usual and rolled over in bed till she could tweak the curtains open with her toe. One of the delights of this cottage was the discovery that if she lay on
the left side of the bed and piled her pillows up she could see part of the garden, a tiny section of the orchard and a small sliver of the field opposite without even getting out of bed.

But this morning she felt more energetic. Since it was Christmas Eve there was still lots to be done so she put on her thick dressing gown and furry moccasins and slipped quietly downstairs and
made herself a cup of tea. Thanks to the Aga, now supplied with all the fuel it would hold, the kitchen was deliciously warm and she leaned against it, waiting for the kettle to boil, willing
herself not to pinch one of the mince pies she’d made last night and doing so all the same with a slight feeling of guilt, swiftly followed by absolution on the grounds that it was, after
all, Christmas.

Taking her tea back up to bed for a last five minutes of peace she leaned out of the small casement window, criss-crossed with frost and watched the mist burning off the valley, revealing a
sharp blue sky almost Provençal in its depth of colour. Yet there was nothing Mediterranean in the temperature. Shivering slightly, Liz pulled her dressing gown round her more tightly.

As she stared out over the peaceful valley she wondered where David would be spending Christmas. In some plush hotel perhaps? Not at home. She couldn’t see Britt up to her elbows in
stuffing.

Watching her breath curl in the freezing air, she remembered her very first Christmas with David. That had been in a hotel too. Her parents had taken a radical step and announced that they would
be spending Christmas in Switzerland. It had taken Liz days to recover from the shock of discovering that her parents were people. They made choices. And they had chosen not to have a family
Christmas but to spend it on their own, skiing. Secretly Liz had been scandalized and more than a little hurt. She had always had a family Christmas. And when David had suggested they spend it in a
hotel, she’d thought it sounded dreadful. Hotels weren’t the place for Christmas, no matter what her parents thought. Christmas amongst strangers with nothing to do but sit around and
watch television, bloated and idle, waiting for the next meal to come round. It was a horrible idea. Wait and see, David had said, you’ll love it.

And he’d been right, she had loved it, though not at first. Withyton Manor had been quite unlike any hotel she’d stayed in before or since. From the moment you stepped in the door at
Withyton you were transported back to the nineteenth century. To Liz’s horror she found she was expected to dress up like a Victorian matron, play parlour games and eat stuffed goose, she who
loathed hotels where you were met by Mine Host or shared even a table with the other guests. It ought to have been ghastly, full of bores with mutton-chop whiskers and Sherlock Holmes complexes,
but it wasn’t. It was the best Christmas she had ever had. From the first moment she was handed a glass of rum punch, the recipe taken from Mrs Beeton, she realized that almost all the other
twenty guests were young and friendly and just as self-conscious as she was, and she began to relax and enjoy herself. By Boxing Day she was winning at charades and could sing ‘Daisy,
Daisy’ unaccompanied.

And the real revelation had been David himself. She had had no suspicion of his talents at mimicry or that he could do a complete Music Hall turn, and his suggestive rendition of ‘My Old
Man Said Follow the Van’ made her laugh till tears streamed down her face.

But the nights had been the best part. Happy and tired from a walk in the grounds or a long game of charades, she slipped on her Victorian nightdress and was allowed to keep it on for a full
minute before David got into bed too. And as he pulled it off again, she laughed and was grateful that the one thing that did not date from the Victorian era was the central heating. Still laughing
they rolled from the bed on to the floor and did things to each other the Victorians would have greatly disapproved of until, tangled together, they fell asleep on the floor and woke up, freezing
and giggling in the early hours and did it all again in the wide mahogany bed.

‘Hello Britt, sit down, can I offer you a glass of wine?’

Conrad took a sip from an elegant triangular glass which she recognized as part of Sven Dansk’s One Only collection. It had probably cost nearly as much as the desk it was sitting on.
Metro must be doing well. It was on the tip of Britt’s tongue to say no thanks, I’m pregnant, but some instinct told her that this was information best kept to herself. ‘No,
thanks, Conrad. A Perrier would be lovely.’

As Conrad poured her mineral water, adding ice and a slice of lime, she wondered again why she was getting the red carpet treatment. OK, so Conrad was delighted with
So You Think
You’ve Got Problems
and they were working on other ideas for Metro, but until today she’d been treated just like any other independent producer, in other words a slightly annoying
little company that prestigious and important Metro TV was doing the big favour by commissioning programmes from it at all.