Having It All (47 page)

And as she stood there waiting for the doorbell to ring she remembered the other side of the coin. The delicious nervousness. The excitement of a first date when anything could happen. She had
been taking it all too seriously. If she didn’t want to go to bed with him, Nick could hardly force her, kicking and screaming, to have his wicked way with her. In the end, as her convent
school had told her countless times, it was all up to her. She would just have to keep her hand on her ha’penny.

And remembering Nick’s provocative green eyes, and that smooth suntanned skin, as sleek and tempting as a toffee apple, she hoped it wasn’t going to be too difficult.

When the doorbell finally rang, she jumped up and ran downstairs before Jamie had time to get out of bed and come to the top of the stairs to see who it was.

What she needed was some fun. And Nick Winters was just the man to supply it.

‘So tell me about Mr Ward. Are you divorced?’

They were sitting at a table next to a window overlooking the millstream of a watermill converted into a beautiful restaurant. It was less than three miles from her home, yet she’d never
heard of it. Going out to dinner hadn’t been part of her life lately.

She picked up her wineglass. Nick clearly didn’t believe in beating about the bush. And yet, in a way, she liked his directness. Somehow it made things easier.

‘Not yet.’

He looked surprised. ‘Why not?’

For a moment she considered telling him about Britt but she didn’t want to sound like a victim, the wronged wife who would be grateful for any bone she was tossed.

‘David moved up North. Neither of us is involved with anyone else so it just hasn’t come up.’

She remembered Suzan striding into her sitting room loaded with presents and wondered if this was strictly true. If they hadn’t been lovers then, they might be by now. Why think about
David
for God’s sake, when she was sitting opposite the most stunning man she’d met in years.

‘But you have no intention of getting back together.’ She noticed that he said it more as a statement than a question.

‘Certainly not.’

‘Good.’ He raised his glass to hers. ‘I like to know where I stand.’

‘And where
do
you stand?’ She was amazed at her own outspokenness. Speaking frankly was clearly catching.

The green of his eyes held hers for a moment. They were mesmerizing, those eyes, their luminosity reminded her of a semi-precious stone, the kind she liked best. Diamonds and emeralds reminded
her of old rich women. Opals and turquoises and moonstones were about real life.

‘On the brink of something very special, I hope. How about you?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to laugh and say
Bet you say that to all the girls
but something stopped her, some sense that he didn’t say it to all the girls. Instead she smiled
back gently, recognizing the seriousness of the moment, but feeling things were moving too fast.

‘I like to get the lie of the land before I make up my mind.’

‘How very sensible.’ He laughed and cupped his face in one hand, his elbow on the table. ‘I, on the other hand, have always been exceptionally good at geography and know at
once when I have found my America.’

Liz caught her breath. Was he consciously referring to her favourite poem, John Donne’s erotic masterpiece, or was it sheer coincidence that he echoed its phrasing?

Suddenly images flashed into her memory of her schoolgirl passion for Donne. While her friends yearned for Mick Jagger or Jack Nicholson, Donne had been her idol, her dream. And when, lonely and
puzzled by the powerful awakening of her young body she had longed for a man to introduce her to the forbidden delights of the flesh, John Donne had been that man.

The lines from ‘To His Mistress Going To Bed’, as powerful and stirring now as when they were written more than three hundred years ago, came instantly back to her.

It had to be coincidence. Nothing about Nick Winters suggested he knew the first thing about poetry. He looked as though he’d spent more time on the sports field than in the library. She
glanced up and found his eyes on her, demanding that she return his gaze.

And then suddenly he smiled. A long, lazy, irresistible grin that instantly defused the pretentiousness of the moment.

She smiled back. She’d been mad to read so much into the conversation. Nick was attractive and charming but he was no intellectual.

Nick raised his glass to hers. ‘To John Donne,’ he toasted, smiling at her through the glow of the dark red wine, as though he could read her thoughts, ‘the greatest English
poet.’

To Liz it was nothing less than a miracle. She felt alive again. Nick Winters was like no man she had ever met. She had been brought up with a saying of the English upper
crust, ‘Never trust a man who is too good-looking or too well-dressed,’ and he was the living proof of its wrong-headedness.

She had never been able to talk to any man so freely – he seemed endlessly interested in her, wanted to know everything about her life from the day she was born, right down to the tiniest
detail. And after years of David’s strong opinions and deep passions she couldn’t believe she’d met a man who was so non-judgemental. She tried to think of anything that would
shock him or of which he would even disapprove and failed. Live and Let Live, was Nick’s philosophy. He simply took people as he found them. Especially women.

And of the fact that he took
them
often, she had no illusions. Everywhere they went women threw themselves at him. And yet, to her astonishment, when she made the hardest decision she
could remember and refused to get into his bed that first night he had accepted it with astonishing ease, hadn’t even argued or tried to persuade her to change her mind.

Irrationally she had been almost insulted. But then she realized she was grateful that he had left her to set the pace. With one painful mistake so fresh in her memory she didn’t dare
cloud her judgement with sex, especially the kind of sex she knew Nick would offer her. She knew that with him once she jumped into that deep and murky pool she would never want to come up for air
again. And she knew she had to be right about him before she even put a foot on the diving board.

When the right moment came she would know.

So instead of making love, they laughed and romped with almost childish pleasure. And Nick planned romantic treats and sent her single red roses and whisked her off to surprise breakfasts on the
beach with a hamper and champagne, and from time to time she would find a small surprise hidden somewhere in the house, planted there by Nick to remind her of him. He was the most romantic man
she’d ever met. And within weeks she wondered how she had ever got through life since she’d left London without him to tease her and laugh with her.

She didn’t need Mel to tell her she was falling in love.

‘So tell me about him! The way you’re looking these days you ought to bottle him! You’d make a fortune!’

Mel looked at her friend in amazement. It was early May and they were sitting in the garden. England was enjoying an early heatwave and already the paddling pool was out and Daisy was screeching
with delight as Jamie soaked her with a water pistol.

She’d never seen Liz look like this before. Her hair had grown and now tumbled to her shoulders, reminding Mel of Maria Schneider in
Last Tango in Paris
, the role model for a
million women who dutifully took her photo to their hairdresser and asked him to transform them, no matter how unpromising the material, into a vision of smouldering sex bomb.

Liz’s skin was brown and freckled and she’d left off her bra under her khaki silk top with its shoestring straps. She looked sensational. It was as though someone had switched on a
light inside her. And Mel couldn’t wait to meet the man who’d done it. She thought for a moment of Garth and wondered if this was what she would look like if they ever lived together.
So far she’d taken the clairvoyant’s advice and stopped chasing him – well, almost. And so far it had made no difference at all. She sighed.

‘So, go on, tell Auntie Mel. What’s his secret? Does he anoint you with almond oil and ravish you to within an inch of your life? Is he the best lover you’ve ever
had?’

Liz blushed. Mel would find the truth far more shocking.

‘Well actually, er . . .’

‘Er, what? Er, yes or er, no?’

‘Er, I don’t know. We’ve never actually made love.’

For the first time in months Mel was lost for words. Then she repeated faintly, so as to reassure herself of its accuracy, ‘“
You’ve never actually made love
”?
Why ever not for God’s sake?’

‘I suppose after David I’d just lost my nerve. I wanted to take my time. I didn’t want to get hurt and I didn’t want Jamie and Daisy to be hurt either. I wanted to be
sure first.’

The truth gradually dawned on Mel. ‘You mean you’re looking this good without sex?’ She pinched the cellulite on her thigh. ‘Maybe that’s where I’m going
wrong.’

Liz grinned and leaned forward, feeling the sun warm her bare shoulders. ‘It isn’t just Nick. He’s part of it, of course, but it’s everything. The kids have settled in.
WomanPower’s going well. I love the country. I’m happy. I’m really happy for the first time in years.’

‘And what might I ask, Cinders, is the magic formula that has reduced you from riches to rags and made you happy without even partaking of Prince Charming’s prick?’

‘It’s simple really. Or maybe very complicated. I’m not
driven
by work any more, that’s all. OK, so not working at all was a mistake. I ended up bitching at the
children and feeling trapped. But now that I’ve got WomanPower half the week and the kids the rest, it’s bliss! Work’s part of my life but not all of it!’

Mel heard the pleasure in her voice and hugged her. Only Liz could sound this happy without being smug. This Nick must be quite a boy.

She watched her friend bend down and pull Daisy on to her knee and marvelled that this could be the same stressed-out, dark-shadowed person she’d been less than a year ago. She was calm
and relaxed, more beautiful than Mel had ever seen her. And her brain hadn’t even turned to jelly. She was helping run a business.

Mel thought about her career-woman friends, tired and guilty if they had kids or deafened by the ticking of the biological clock if they put them off, and wondered, not for the first time, if
Liz might have a point. It was heresy but it just might be true.

And then, unexpectedly, the thought of Britt came into her mind. She’d heard that Britt had forsworn men and was throwing herself into her work to try and get over losing the baby. Poor
Britt. The stereotyped workaholic woman.

Daisy was pulling Liz’s hair and making her squeal out loud. She rolled over with the baby on the grass, a picture of relaxed and natural happiness. Mel grinned and poked her.

‘You know what you were saying about not being ready to get between the sheets?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take it from one who knows, Lizzie, you look pretty ready to me.’

‘I spent the weekend with my friend Liz Ward, you know the one who threw up her TV career for motherhood, and I think she may be on to something after all.’

Mel looked round the boardroom at the twenty
Femina
acolytes who had gathered for the weekly editorial meeting. She knew she was going to get burned at the stake for this, but
she’d always fancied herself as a kosher St Joan.

All the same, she avoided Olivia’s eyes. She didn’t want the milk in her coffee to curdle before she got a chance to drink it.

‘Now before you all throw up, listen a second. Liz is saying something new. She isn’t saying women should all be housewives again. She’s saying that what women want is
balance
, not success at any price. And do you know, looking round at all of us, I think she may be right!’

She turned to the woman on her right. ‘Why did you never have kids, Marie? Scared you wouldn’t get to the top if you did? And do you ever see yours, Jane? How many nannies has Jack
had, Elaine, nine is it, or was it ten? All I’m really saying is are we so sure we’ve got it cracked?’

All the way back from Liz’s, Mel had been honing an idea. And now was the time to announce it.

‘I think
Femina
should devote the whole of the September issue to the subject. It’d make a great cover. SUCCESS: WOMEN COUNT THE COST. Or maybe that’s too negative.
How about, BALANCE: THE BUZZWORD OF THE NINETIES. It’d be great! Hey, we could do a survey, find out what women
really
want. It’d cause a real stir!’

Carried away with her enthusiasm Mel hadn’t noticed every face turn to the head of the table.

Olivia sat there rigid. Mel had broken the two most basic commandments of
Femina.
She had challenged its philosophy, and she had flouted its founder. And even if they supported her, no
one dared say so.

For a fraction of a second there was total silence. And then, from the far end of the table, someone started clapping. Gradually one or two others followed, until nearly everyone round the table
was joining in.

Mel leaned forward to see who had started it.

Her heart turned over and she even forgot that this round of applause had probably sealed the end of her career at
Femina.
Sitting at the far end of the table in a pair of crumpled blue
jeans and a peach sweatshirt, his face lit up by a warm, encouraging smile, sat Garth.

It was so hot outside that Liz decided to make a picnic on the lawn. Daisy was already happily romping on the rug with Nick but Jamie, as usual, kept at a wary distance. She
watched him for a moment, troubled. He didn’t like Nick. But then that was understandable. Despite their efforts to soften the blow he saw Nick as a threat, a replacement for his father.