Having It All (55 page)

She turned to David who had stopped, startled, in the middle of searching for his notes.

‘Just one last thing before you rush off, David.’ Liz reached for her coat and began to put it on. ‘Did I mention that I want a divorce?’

‘Liz! Thank God. You’re just in time. The train leaves in twenty minutes!’

In a daze Liz turned away from the red velvet Reception desk, which would have looked more at home in a New Orleans brothel, and stared at Mel who was suited and coated and stood in the middle
of an enormous pile of luggage. Liz recognized her own suitcases.

‘Why have you packed? I thought we had another session this afternoon?’

‘We did.’ Mel took her room key out of her hand and gave it back to the receptionist. ‘I’ve just cancelled it. And the session tomorrow in Newcastle. We’re going
home.’

Suddenly Liz was hit with an awful premonition. ‘It’s not the children, is it? There hasn’t been an accident?’ The afternoon when Jamie had been knocked down flooded back
to her with terrible clarity. In her new life she was supposed to be there for them. And where was she? In bloody Leeds, three hundred miles away!

‘Calm down. Nothing’s happened to Jamie and Daisy.’ Mel led her away firmly, raising her eyes to heaven. Maternal guilt. Jesus, who needed it! Liz took a couple of days off and
expected God to punish her for her outrageous selfishness! ‘There hasn’t been any accident. Unless you call Ross Slater making a bid for WomanPower an accident.’

Mel’s words were like cold water thrown in her face. It had happened. It had actually happened.

In the taxi she looked out of the window at the grey streets and was glad she was going home. Home to Jamie and Daisy. Home to Nick. Home to Crossways at the beginning of autumn. There would be
honeysuckle still scenting the garden and blackberries on the hedges in the lane round the cottage.

She thought for a moment of David and how she hadn’t been able to resist stealing a look at his face as she closed the glass door of his office. What had she expected to find? Pleading
eyes? A last-ditch attempt to catch her and make her change her mind?

Instead his face had been empty, expressionless. And she had noticed that Suzan’s eyes were locked on his. Suzan knew better than to smile. She knew the game wasn’t won yet. But it
soon would be. She was a smart girl. She would probably talk him into a white wedding.

She must stop thinking about it. David was the past. Nick was the future. She got up and edged her way out of the crowded carriage to the Buffet Car. WomanPower couldn’t afford First Class
– yet.

Behind the counter the barman, who looked as though he’d consumed more miniatures of Haig and Gordons than he’d sold, swayed to and fro in the opposite direction from the motion of
the train, moving the dirt around a glass with a filthy cloth.

‘Can I get you something, miss?’

Liz smiled at him for the miss, and pointed to the quarter bottles of champagne. They would probably be warm and wildly expensive but she needed to do something to mark this turning point in her
life. She was going to be divorced.

‘How many of those have you got?’

He handed over seven. ‘Having a party?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

They were surprisingly cold and the barman, delighted with a change from the usual halves of lager entered into the spirit of things and produced an ice bucket and an ancient packet of
peanuts.

Avoiding the curious glances from businessmen clearly wondering if she were a lady of dubious origins out on a Have-It-Away day, Liz eased herself back to the carriage. Buying champagne from
British Rail by the quarter bottle was like lighting a cigarette with a fiver, but what the hell. She was going home and she was probably about to be offered a very large sum of money. And Nick
would be waiting for her.

As she opened the carriage she remembered Nick’s advice. ‘Sell,’ he’d said, it would be a dream come true. You wouldn’t have to work. And David had recommended
exactly the opposite. Which of them was right?

She laid the glasses and the champagne bucket down on the table and began opening one.

‘What are we celebrating? No, don’t tell me. A reconciliation? I knew if you two spent five minutes together we’d be talking second honeymoons.’ Mel knew this was a
longshot but thought she’d have a plug all the same. ‘So, what’s the toast?’

Liz poured two glasses and handed one to Mel.

‘To my impending divorce!’

‘So David agreed?’ Mel tried to sound enthusiastic. The guy was crazy.

‘Not yet. But he will.’

‘Should I congratulate you?’

‘Absolutely!’

‘Oh yes? Then why are you crying?’

At Lewes station Mel’s red BMW sat waiting for them in the car park, as reassuringly brash as ever, with all its shiny extras still intact.

‘One thing I like about the country’ – Mel’s tone implied that the list of things she didn’t like was far longer – ‘is that people have proper respect
for cars. You don’t find the wheels have been nicked every time you stop to make a phone call.’

But Liz wasn’t listening. She was thinking about Nick and picturing his face when she told him David was going to be all right about the divorce. And she realized how much she’d
missed him.

He might have elevated hedonism into a lifestyle, but it always made him fun to be with. Sometimes the way he never took anything seriously annoyed her, but tonight his gentle teasing was just
what she wanted.

She could go straight home to Jamie and Daisy, but they’d be asleep by now and she knew that, selfishly, the person she most wanted to see was Nick. She needed him to hold her and to make
love to her to chase away the blues that had descended like a hammer on the final nail in the coffin of her marriage. She wanted not to think but only to feel. To be abandoned and wanton in the
safety of knowing that he loved her and that he would understand. She wanted him to tell her about the wonderful life they would have together.

As they drove along the road towards Seamington, she turned to Mel, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

‘Mel, I don’t want to go home yet. Could you drop me off at Nick’s? I’m going to drop in and give him a surprise.’

It was on the tip of Mel’s tongue to say that not everyone liked surprises and that Nick might be one of them, but she could hear the anticipation in Liz’s voice and she told herself
she was being ridiculous.

But in the cold night air, which had changed almost overnight from summer to autumn, she shivered all the same.

‘Why not go home first and see Jamie and Daisy and give him a ring. I’ll run you over if he’s in.’

Liz laughed. ‘But that’d be ridiculous. Jamie and Daisy will be asleep. And we practically go past his front door.’ She looked at her friend curiously. ‘You don’t
like him, do you?’

‘I’m not marrying him.’

‘That’s not the point. Why don’t you like him?’

‘Liz, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t mean anything. Don’t be so touchy.’

And Liz realized she was right. Where Nick was concerned she
was
touchy. She tried to make her voice sound neutral. ‘What is it you don’t like about him?’

Mel gave in. She could hardly tell the truth, that she thought he was vain and lightweight and selfish. But she might as well stick the knife in a couple of inches anyway. She thought for a
moment, trying to pin down her instinctive distrust of the man. ‘I can’t imagine him with egg on his tie.’

‘So who wants a man with egg on his tie? Certainly not you!’

‘You know what I mean.’

And the trouble was, she did. ‘And you can picture David with butter running down his chin, I suppose.’

‘As a matter of fact, I never thought I’d say it. But yes, I can.’

They were approaching the right-hand turning to Firle. Nick’s drive was only a quarter of a mile away. Should she go? Bloody Mel, she’d almost put her off. It was now or never.

‘You can drop me here. There’s a light in the sitting room. He must be in.’ She climbed out of the car and leaned on the window. ‘You go on, Nick can drop me
home.’

She watched Mel turning round and started walking down the drive. The scent of honeysuckle was everywhere, even more heady and sweet than in the daytime, its pink and yellow blossom growing wild
in the hedgerows and twisting itself round the Old Rectory’s white iron gateposts.

As the gravel crunched under her feet she stood for a second in the pitch dark drinking in the perfume and thinking of autumn. The leaves would start to fall soon. The hips were already on the
roses and the apple trees in Nick’s orchard were heavy with apples, each as red and shiny as the poisoned one in
Snow White.

In a matter of months, a year at the outside, she would be living here, picking white daisies and roses for her flower arrangements, a basket on her arm, wearing an old straw hat, the Lady of
the Manor. She smiled. Eat your heart out, Marie Antoinette.

As she got to the front door she wondered whether to ring the bell and decided it would be more fun to go round the back and surprise him. The kitchen door would be open as usual.

The kitchen was dark but neat and tidy, even the tea-towels hung neatly on their rack and the J-cloths folded over the sink. There was a faint smell of bleach, comforting and antiseptic, like
matron’s office at school. He’d clearly given the housekeeper the evening off. But the lights in the hall were on and she noticed that one of the bulbs was dead, the only wrinkle in the
otherwise perfect setting, but like a pimple on the face of a stunning woman it showed all the more.

She walked across the hall, her feet silent on the antique Persian rug. A bluish light flickered from under the door of the drawing room and she realized the television must be on.

As her hand gripped the door handle she heard voices, and stopped for a moment trying to work out whose they were before she went in.

She turned the door handle.

Afterwards she would wonder how different her life would have been if she had gone home that night. But at the time she simply smiled and pushed open the door.

For a moment she stood frozen in the doorway.

What she saw was, in some ways, a harmless and innocent scene. And yet the little tableau was typical of Nick’s unthinking hedonism

Nick lay on the sofa, face down. And next to him, on the rug by the open fire, Henry knelt giving him a massage.

Neither had seen her and as she listened to the sounds of pleasure as Henry’s fingers kneaded at the knots of tension in Nick’s back it struck her how sexual the act of massage could
be.

Nick’s eyes were closed, a smile of deep contentment on his face, and occasionally he let out a little groan of pain or ecstasy. How like Nick not to care who it was who gave him pleasure,
but simply to lie back and surrender to the moment.

And she heard her own voice finally speak, hardly recognizable as her own, as though it were someone else who was talking.

‘What a touching little scene. Old and faithful friend massages away the young master’s aches and pains. But then you do have a particularly demanding life, don’t you,
Nick?’

Henry jumped up, startled, knocking a cup of tea over as he did so, looking as guilty as if she’d found them curled up in bed together.

With athletic grace Nick simply sat up and patted the seat next to him. ‘Liz, darling. I didn’t expect you back tonight.’

‘Clearly.’

Nick ignored the acid in her tone, or maybe, she thought bitterly, didn’t even notice it.

‘I had a frightful headache and Henry suggested a massage. Did you know Henry had healing hands?’ He smiled his most winning smile. ‘People come to him from miles
around.’

‘Don’t bother with the excuses, Nick. I’m not interested.’

‘Liz . . .’ she heard a pleading tone. But not from Nick. From Henry. ‘It wasn’t what you thought.’

‘And what did I think, Henry?’

Henry looked away and shrugged. To Liz he seemed somehow infinitely pathetic. The old dog who had outlived his usefulness, still waiting at the table for any crumb of affection or pleasure Nick
cared to toss him. And she saw, now, why Nick had wanted to come back here the other day and show off the engagement ring. Poor Henry.

For Nick she realized she felt nothing except a hollow, empty deadness.

As she watched him with his easy provocative smile, shrugging as if he had been caught out in some minor social
faux pas
– forgetting his host’s name, or using the wrong
knife – for the first time she saw the truth about him.

He was like a child, used to having its own way simply because it
was
a child, who had grown up and suddenly discovered it had another, far more powerful weapon. Its sexuality. And
since that fateful day had never missed a chance to use it on both men and women.

She wondered for a moment if Nick and Henry had been lovers or if Nick was just using him.

And, wearily, she realized that it made no difference. She couldn’t marry Nick.

She had two children already. She didn’t want a third.

Feeling numb and empty, she turned to go. Nick reached for her hand and tried to stop her but she shook him off. She knew he loved her in his way. But tonight she knew it wasn’t
enough.

Slowly she walked out of the room and opened the front door. Then, as the reality of what she’d seen finally hit her, leaving it wide open she ran down the gravel path to the lane,
thinking of nothing but how she had to get away, to fill her lungs with fresh air and feel the cold wind on her faming face.

Suddenly it struck her that she had no car, that it was nearly midnight and she was two miles from the nearest phone box and even further from her home.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except this feeling of stupidity, of being blinded to the truth because of her passion for him. As she stumbled along the lane in the total blackness
of the countryside, she felt no fear. A rapist could jump out of the bushes and she’d just laugh. She was impregnable. No one could hurt her any more than she’d been hurt already.

‘You knew! You knew all along! And you didn’t tell me!’