Hidden Cottage (26 page)

‘I just don’t understand why,’ Eliza said miserably. ‘Why did he have to use and humiliate me this way? What was I, a game to him? A cheap bit of easy fun? Was he laughing at me behind my back the whole time?’

Sadness and real anger flowed through Mia, and unable to bear for her daughter to feel that she’d been used, she said, ‘Perhaps he cared for you deep down. Perhaps he was waiting for the right time to leave his wife for you?’

‘You don’t lie to the person you love,’ Eliza said hotly, snatching a tissue from the box Mia had placed on the table. She wiped her eyes roughly, blew her nose and for a moment seemed to regain her composure. But then her swollen bloodshot eyes filled with fresh tears once more. ‘If you had seen his family, Mum. His . . . his son was such a beautiful little boy. How could he do it? How could he cheat on his family like that? I just don’t understand it. I don’t think I’ll trust another man ever again.’

Later, while Eliza was soaking in the bath at Mia’s insistence and Simon was upstairs in the spare room changing out of his work suit, Mia had unearthed a lasagne from the depths of the freezer. This was now in the oven and with some frozen peas in a pan ready to heat through, she was setting the table in the kitchen and thinking of Eliza, how hurt and angry and horribly disillusioned she was. Time would eventually heal her – it always did – but for now the poor girl was in real pain and wouldn’t be able to see beyond her heartbreak for a very long time yet.

From behind her, Mia heard footsteps. She turned to see Simon, dressed now in jeans and a T-shirt. He looked thinner and much younger than before, practically boyish, as if he’d shed a layer of grown-up maturity when he’d removed his suit. Though he looked nothing like her son, he reminded Mia of Jensen. Something in the body language, the casual youthfulness.

‘Anything I can do to help?’ he asked, pushing his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He had a faint discernibly northern accent.

‘Thank you, but I’ve got everything under control,’ she said, adding some sprigs of mint from the garden to the saucepan of peas. ‘Would you like a beer?’ she asked. ‘Or a glass of wine? Or something else?’

‘Thanks, a beer would be great.’

While she sorted a drink for him, she said, ‘Everything OK in your room? Anything you need?’

‘It’s more than OK and way better than the Travel Lodge where I’m booked in for the week. Sorry if I’ve put you to any extra bother. I didn’t mean to invite myself to stay, I just wanted to see Eliza safely home.’

Mia passed him the opened bottle of beer and a glass. ‘It’s no trouble,’ she said. ‘And I’m extremely grateful you took care of Eliza the way you did.’

‘It was nothing any good friend wouldn’t do for her.’

‘How long have the two of you worked together?’ Mia asked.

‘I joined Merchant Swift as a graduate the same time as Eliza, so since forever. Well, that’s how it feels at times. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy work, but I’m not like Eliza; I don’t live for it. She’s the real deal when it comes to platinum membership of the corporate highflyer club – I just tag along in her wake.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Mia said. ‘Did you ever meet Greg?’

He shook his head. ‘No. The guy was never around. Supposedly he was always out of the country. Now we know different.’

‘Indeed we do. When did Eliza tell you about bumping into him at the airport?’

‘This morning. I knew there was something wrong when we caught the train up to Milton Keynes together. She looked awful; dead pale and like she hadn’t slept for a week. I’d never seen her look like that before. I knew about her old school friend coming to stay the night, and that she was really looking forward to it, so at first I thought maybe they’d knocked back a few too many Baileys together. When I teased her about having a hangover, she suddenly lost it and started crying.’

‘Oh, poor Eliza. How did she get through the day?’

‘Being the uber-pro she is, she threw herself into work. I suggested she claimed she was ill and came here, but she wouldn’t hear of it, so somehow she held it together, but then when we’d finished and we were packing up our things, she fell apart. No way was I going to let her go off on her own in the state she was in.’

‘That was very kind of you.’

He shrugged and drank some of his beer. ‘As I said before, it’s what any good friend would do. I’m just glad she let me help. She’s not very good at that. She sees it as weakness, I think.’

Mia swallowed back a lump of sadness. ‘You’re right,’ she said, feeling suddenly very fond of this intuitive young man. ‘She’s always been that way; ever since she was little she always had to be so fiercely independent.’

‘I sort of guessed that much.’

With her eyes shut and her ears submerged beneath the water, Eliza lay in the bath listening to the amplified sound of her breathing. At the same time she pictured her tears sliding into the water, slowly adding to the volume until finally the bath overflowed.

Married.

A husband.

A father.

It didn’t matter how many times she said the words, the shock didn’t lessen. If anything it multiplied and she felt worse.

But trust Mum to try and make her feel less upset by saying that maybe Greg did love her, that he was waiting for the right time to leave his wife. She didn’t blame Mum for saying that; she was just desperate to find a way to make Eliza feel better. To lessen the pain. To make her feel less worthless and used.

If any of that theory was true, why hadn’t Greg shared it with her? She would have understood. She would have given him time to sort things out. But no. He was a coward. A cowardly, lying, cheating adulterer. Nothing he could say would ever make her think well of him again. And the proof of his guilt was that he hadn’t been in touch. Not a single text, phone call or email. Nothing. Only the resounding silence of his guilt.

Last night, when she had been beside herself with tearful rage, Serene had said that she should speak to Greg again. That the only way she would ever feel the matter was truly closed – for her, not him – was to have one last conversation with him. ‘Otherwise you’ll have endless imaginary conversations inside your head and drive yourself crazy,’ her friend had said.

Serene’s last words to her this morning, when she’d left for her flight, were: ‘You must make a list of all the things you want to say to Greg. Then in a fortnight’s time, insist that he meets you. You might not get the answers you want, but if you don’t do it, you’ll always regret that you didn’t have the courage to face him.’

For now Eliza knew she wasn’t strong enough to do that. If she were to be in the same room as Greg, she would disintegrate and she couldn’t allow that to happen. Never again would she allow herself to be so weak.

Chapter Thirty-One

Tuesday afternoon. The school bell had rung more than fifteen minutes ago and JC still hadn’t come to collect her.

This, Madison planned to say to Mum, was exactly why she needed to have a mobile phone. ‘I would only use it for emergencies,’ she would say, as she had already said about a hundred times, to which Mum always said, ‘No dice, missy, you’re too young to have your own mobile; you’d only do something silly with it, like lose it or break it.’

But she wasn’t too young; there were plenty of children her age who had one. And anyway, she was way more sensible than Mum. Who was it who lost her mobile on a train last year? Mum, that’s who! And who was it who dropped her new mobile and cracked the screen? Mum, that’s who!

Madison could see Mrs Tyler coming over to check on her. Mrs Tyler had a big mole on her chin with a yucky thick hair sticking out of it and it didn’t matter how often she told herself not to look at the mole, Madison’s eyes were always drawn to it. ‘No sign of your mother, then?’ Mrs Tyler asked.

Madison shook her head. ‘Mum’s working today; Jensen’s coming for me.’ She didn’t really understand why, but Mum had told her always to use JC’s proper name to a teacher. Something about making him sound more official.

‘In that case, be sure to wait here,’ Mrs Tyler said. ‘No going off on your own. I’ll be back in a minute or two.’

Madison watched Mrs Tyler go back inside the school building. She knew the way home perfectly well, and she knew where the spare key for the front door was kept, but she also knew that to walk home alone would send Mum crazy-mental. And she’d probably go crazy-mental at JC too for being late.

But where
was
JC? He’d never been late before. Dropping her PE bag to the ground where her other bag lay, she switched from one hand to the other the painting she’d done in Art, and looked at her watch. JC should have been here precisely nineteen minutes ago. Around her were a few other children waiting to be picked up. She was glad she wasn’t the only one still waiting.

Lauren and her mother had hung about for a bit, but they couldn’t stay any longer because they had to dash off for Lauren’s violin lesson. When Madison thought about it, Lauren was always dashing off somewhere. Yesterday at the school gate her mother had said to Mum that she’d be glad to get out of London, when their pace of life would slow down. ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Mum had said. ‘We’re looking forward to it as well.’

Lauren and her family were leaving London next week, way before the end of term. Mum and JC said that if everything fell into place, it wouldn’t be long before they too would be leaving and moving into the lovely little house they’d found at the weekend. It had the cutest name: Lily Cottage. Mia had told them that if anything went wrong, they could always stay in The Gingerbread House until they found somewhere else.

Everything was happening so fast. It was like a dream. The best ever dream. Especially as yesterday Mum had spoken to the head teacher of the school in Little Pelham and heard there would be a place for Madison in September. Not only that, but just like with Lauren, it was all arranged for Madison to leave ahead of the end of term here and spend a couple of days in her new school before it closed for the summer holidays.

It was weird, but Lauren seemed to be turning the whole thing into a competition. She kept going on about the enormous garden she was going to have and how they’d only be a short distance from the sea and that her new bedroom would be as big as their classroom. Madison knew she was exaggerating, but that was OK. What wasn’t OK was that Lauren had looked at the photograph JC had taken of Lily Cottage and described it as tiny, no bigger than an iddy-biddy dolls’ house. ‘Is that it?’ she’d asked. ‘But I thought you’d be getting something bigger like we are.’ Hurt and annoyed, Madison had put the photograph away, thinking that she wouldn’t miss Lauren one little bit when she was living in Little Pelham. And anyway, she had a new friend now: Beth.

Madison looked at her watch. Again. JC was now twenty-three minutes late. And she was the only one left to be picked up. Now she was worried. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d had an accident? What if he’d had his headphones on and had crossed that busy road by the corner shop without looking?

Suddenly breathless and all hot and sticky, she tried to stop the thought going any further. JC had to be all right. Because if he wasn’t, if something bad – something
really
bad – happened to him, then they wouldn’t move to Little Pelham. The thought of anything horrible happening to JC made her stomach flip with panicky fear. She hated it when she felt like this, when one minute she felt brilliantly happy and the next she felt sick and scared. That was the trouble when you wanted something too much; the more you wanted it, the more chance there was that you would lose it.

That was how she felt about JC. He was the nearest she had ever had to a father. Just recently she had come close to calling him Dad. She didn’t know how he would react if she did, or what Mum would say, but he really was like a proper dad to her. She probably saw more of him than Lauren saw of her father; he didn’t ever collect Lauren from school.

Madison had never known who her father was, or even what his name was. Mum always said it wasn’t important. Not that they ever talked about it. Why should they? Mum was right; all that mattered was the people Madison already had as family and they were Mum and Grandma Barb and Grandpa Tom; they were her family. Well, that’s how it had always been until now. Now it was different. Now there was JC.

When they moved to Little Pelham, there would be no more sleepovers for JC – he would be with them all the time. Just like a real family. And there would be Mia to see every day. Maybe not
every
day, but quite often. And that was a nice thought. It was always nice being around Mia. She was so beautiful. But in a quiet, calm way that made Madison feel all warm and happy. She had lovely eyes, sort of purply-blue, which didn’t sound at all lovely, but they were. And she let Madison help in her hat shop; she didn’t treat her like a silly baby who couldn’t be trusted.

But none of that would happen if something bad happened to JC. Why wasn’t he here? Where was he? She looked at her watch. He was now thirty minutes late.

From behind her she heard the sound of Mrs Tyler’s bossy voice. ‘Madison, I think you’d better come in and wait in the after-school club now.’

But then two things happened at the same time. Mrs Pearson, the school secretary, came hurrying over and JC jogged in through the school gate. ‘Madison, I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I got held up with a work thing.’

She was so relieved to see him, to know that he was all right, tears pricked at the backs of her eyes and she threw herself at him. ‘I thought something terrible had happened to you,’ she said, her face buried somewhere in his stomach.

‘Hey there,’ he said, bending down to look her in the face, ‘nothing bad is going to happen to me, I’ve got hidden powers; I’m Mr Invincible.’ Then straightening up, he said to Mrs Tyler, ‘I did call. I left a message with the school secretary to say I was running late. The message was passed on, wasn’t it?’

Realizing that she’d forgotten all about the painting she’d had in her hands, Madison picked it up from where it had fallen on the ground next to her bags. At the same time, Mrs Pearson stepped forward. ‘That’s what I came to tell you, Mrs Tyler. I was looking for you earlier, but I couldn’t find you.’