Honeycote (12 page)

He’d phoned James and dragged him away from restoring his cornices to celebrate his decision at the Honeycote Arms. Lucy Soames had come into the pub for a warming bowl of soup after a hard morning helping her father and had found the two of them, rather perplexed, trying to force-feed Patrick steak and kidney pie. Unbeknownst to James, Mickey had got to know Lucy quite well, having called out her father on several pretexts to look at malingering horses.

‘He won’t eat it.’ Mickey had forgotten that Carola was a vegetarian and that Patrick had probably never been given meat. Lucy had come to his rescue.

‘Of course he won’t. He probably hasn’t even got all his teeth yet. Steak, Mickey, for God’s sake.’

‘I don’t know, do I?’

‘Use your common sense.’

She’d taken charge immediately, sending out to the kitchen for mashed potato, then painstakingly mixing it with gravy and feeding it to Patrick with a spoon, not minding the mess in the least. Mickey had offered her a job as live-in ‘father’s help’ on the spot, and thrown in a stable for her horse as a sop. Lucy had accepted the post eagerly. She didn’t have enough brains to follow in her father’s footsteps and had already resigned herself to a career as a nanny, so Mickey’s offer was opportune, a chance to see if this was a wise move.

Thus Patrick found his little world turned upside down, rather for the better, as Lucy took him on long conker-strewn walks and spread acres of paper out on the kitchen table for finger-painting and made him jelly and gingerbread men and boiled eggs with soldiers. Meanwhile, a rather ugly custody battle began between his parents, but it was no contest – an inner-London slum versus a Cotswold mansion? Carola hadn’t helped her cause by throwing a yoga handbook at Mickey in her fury, which had cut him over the eyebrow. Mickey won.

As Patrick settled into Honeycote, he began to pray that things wouldn’t change, that his mother wouldn’t demand him back and that Lucy wouldn’t find a job looking after a nicer little boy somewhere. So when he found his father and Lucy kissing in the hallway one day, he knew his prayers had been answered, and he’d trotted up the aisle five months later in a smart navy overcoat with brass buttons, relieved. Patrick had adored Lucy unreservedly from that day on, and hadn’t felt in the least betrayed a few years later when she’d given birth to first Sophie, then Georgina. On the contrary, he felt honour bound to protect all three of them – hence today’s mission.

He found Kay arranging a display of handpainted serving plates and bowls on a baker’s shelf. He watched for a moment and admired her talent as she created a tableau of rustic living, mixing the tableware with jars of Christmas chutneys and preserves and filling the bowls with surprisingly realistic plastic fruit. As she stood back to admire her own handiwork, Patrick moved forward to stand beside her.

‘I’m sure they’ll walk off the shelves.’

‘I guarantee there won’t be any left after the weekend. Do you want me to save one of those bowls for Lucy? I’m sure she’d like one for Christmas.’

‘I’m sure what she’d really like is for you to stop screwing her husband.’

Kay remembered what Mickey had told her: deny, deny, deny. She looked Patrick straight in the eye.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Bollocks.’

He held her gaze unremittingly. She broke away. She’d never been good at confrontation.

‘Have you told Lucy?’

‘Of course not. What would be the point?’

‘So you’re just warning me?’

‘I’m telling you.’

Kay sighed. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Patrick. It’s very complicated.’

‘No, it’s not. I mean, you don’t love him, do you? You’re not going to jack everything in just to be with him. It’s just an affair; a bit of self-gratification for the two of you –’

‘Don’t be so patronizing.’

‘At the end of the day, it’s just sex. At least, I’m sure it is for dad.’

Kay took in a deep breath. She wasn’t at all sure how to deal with Patrick. Despite his youth, he was surprisingly authoritative, with an underlying menace that she found unsettling. She had to be careful. There was too much at stake to risk him calling her bluff and telling Lucy. Or worse, Lawrence. What she needed was time.

‘We can’t talk here.’

‘I know. Meet me in half an hour at the Fox and Goose.’

‘Won’t people talk?’

Kay couldn’t resist taunting Patrick, even though she knew it might be dangerous. He just smiled.

‘Not at all. I want to discuss you supplying hanging baskets and floral arrangements at all our pubs. Bring some quotes.’

With that, he walked off. Kay watched his retreating figure in bemused amazement, not knowing what to think. What perturbed her more than anything as she went to find her car keys was the realization that rather than dreading their confrontation, she was looking forward to it.

The Fox and Goose had what it rather grandly termed ‘Private Conference Facilities’, which was in fact a charming upstairs room with a sloping wooden floor which could, at a push, seat twenty round a table. People often hired it for eighteenths or twenty-firsts or fortieths or any other occasion when they couldn’t face catering for large numbers in their own homes. Patrick had phoned ahead to make sure it was free, and ordered smoked salmon sandwiches and champagne to be sent up for his working lunch with Mrs Oakley. On his arrival he stressed that they shouldn’t be disturbed. He took the lunch tray up himself, deposited it on the table, noted approvingly that it had been set very prettily with proper cutlery and glasses and a huge vase of fresh flowers, then set off to check down the corridor. The Fox and Goose also did B&B, and Patrick had flipped through the reservation book while the waitress was finding an ice bucket, ascertaining that three of the four rooms were free. Avoiding room two, he peeped into the others to decide which was the most suitable and settled on number one. It was the largest, with a high, brass bed and its own en suite bathroom. It was unlikely that anyone would go in there, as the chambermaid had seen to every detail, and unless someone arrived unexpectedly to check in within the next hour the coast would be clear.

It wasn’t that Patrick was too tight to pay for a room. He’d probably have got it free anyway, one of the perks of the job. But it made it all the more exciting to keep the encounter clandestine. It heightened his mood and gave him a feeling of power.

When Kay arrived, demure with her briefcase, he went through the motions of asking her prices, enjoying her obvious inability to weigh up what was going to happen next. He nailed her down on the supply of hanging baskets and bedding plants for their pubs, with the assurance that she would oversee the job herself, then emptied the last of the champagne bottle.

‘Drink up.’

She looked at him over the rim over her glass and drank obediently. As soon as she’d finished, he reached out and took her by the hand, leading her down the crooked corridor that smelled of beeswax and potpourri, before chivalrously opening the door of room one and ushering her inside. She allowed herself to smile knowingly at him as she passed by, but he remained impassive.

Once inside, he motioned her on to the bed. She crossed her arms.

‘You’re very presumptuous.’

He put his finger to her lips to silence her.

‘This is the deal. You stop seeing dad and you can have me instead.’

Kay gasped. She didn’t know whether to laugh or slap him.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not. I’m assuming you haven’t got any real emotional attachment to him, so it’s basically just sex. In which case, I can assure you, you’ll be better off with me.’

Kay found herself spinning on her heel to walk out of the room, but Patrick moved too fast and was blocking the doorway. She stared him out.

‘I could scream.’

‘Yes. And then I could explain how I was trying to persuade you to stop your affair with my father. In which case everyone would find out. Which would be the most awful shame. Alternatively…’

Patrick reached out, putting his firm, confident hands round her waist and pulling her to him.

‘… we could proceed with plan A.’

Just over an hour later, Patrick drove away satisfied that his mission had been accomplished. He was quietly confident that nothing his father could do would match his own performance. He had Mayday Perkins to thank for that, the barmaid from the Horse and Groom in Eldenbury, so named because of the noise she made when she was being pleasured which, according to local legend, was often. Mayday was wild, famed for driving round Eldenbury one night on the back of someone’s motorbike wearing nothing but a pair of fishnets and a safety helmet. When he was sixteen, Mayday had taught Patrick everything she knew about what girls liked, how far you could go and how to surprise them. He’d certainly done that, judging by Kay’s response. She was hooked, he was certain. Now he just needed to make sure that she kept her side of the bargain.

Kay lay back on the bed in the Fox and Goose, naked and exhausted. She felt no desire to get dressed and leave, though she supposed she must. But she was still throbbing with desire. Even though Patrick had satisfied her once, twice – maybe three times, she couldn’t be sure – she was still on fire. She’d made up her mind about two things. One – she had to have the arrogant little bastard again. And two – she wasn’t going to keep her side of the bargain. No way was she going to let Patrick Liddiard dictate his terms to her.

As she crawled off the bed, still high on a tidal wave of pure and mind-blowing pleasure, she couldn’t believe how turned on she still felt: as if someone was driving a molten corkscrew of pleasure through her. The boy was something else, that was for sure. She wondered how she had ever got through the first thirty-five years of her life thinking sex didn’t matter.

5

It was the afternoon of the dance, and Lucy and the girls were all booked in at the hairdressers in Eldenbury. Sophie and Georgina both needed a trim, and Lucy wanted her hair put up. Mandy thought she might like a hot oil treatment as her ends were feeling quite dry, and although Lucy was doubtful that the Clip Joint would do hot oil treatments, she went along for the ride anyway.

The salon was at the top end of the high street, the rougher end, next to an ironmonger’s, which had an extraordinary assortment of inexplicable articles hung outside the door that must have taken an hour each end of the day to assemble and disassemble: metal buckets, washing lines and pegs, bird-feeders, dustbins. Mandy couldn’t imagine giving any of the items house room, but something caught Lucy’s eye and she dashed inside.

‘Rat poison. There are tell-tale signs in the tack room.’

Mandy followed Sophie and Georgina after their mother, and felt as if she’d stepped back fifty years. Inside it was dark and dank, with splintered wooden floorboards and shelves piled treacherously high with mysterious objects. Two men in brown overalls hovered in the shadows, flicking ash carelessly from the ends of their cigarettes with no regard to health or fire hazard. Immediately they saw Lucy one was at her side in attendance, and no sooner had she made her request than he pulled out a stepladder, clambered to the top and triumphantly produced a box with a gaily coloured picture of a rat, teeth bared. The price was handwritten on a green dot sticker; Mandy wouldn’t have been surprised if it was in shillings.

‘Mind you keep the other animals away, now.’ The man wrapped the box up carefully in brown paper. ‘One of our customers had a Yorkie ate some of this last month and died.’ He Sellotaped the edges down neatly and handed the box to Lucy, grinning. ‘Mind you, they look like rats. That’s four pounds eighty-nine.’

‘Can I put it on account?’

The man got out a large ledger and scratched his head. He shut the book rather hastily and looked at Lucy, slightly worried.

‘Do you mind paying cash? Only it’s just past the middle of the month – we haven’t done out the new account sheets yet.’

‘Sure. No problem.’ Lucy happily drew out a tenner and the transaction was completed.

Mandy followed the others out, humbled, in a strange way, by this experience. She had no idea that places like this existed. How far more efficient it was than the massive DIY superstores she was used to, which, despite their bar-codes and computerized stock-taking, still never had what you wanted. And how lovely that they let you have an account.

If the ironmonger’s was a revelation, the hairdresser’s was even more of a shock. The window was half covered by a sagging grimy net curtain and three crooked black and white photos of rather dated bouffant hairdos gave away the trade behind the door. Inside, the decor was pink and grey. The floor was covered in a mottled peeling lino that, thankfully, camouflaged a morning’s worth of split ends that had fallen to their fate. The reception desk was formica-topped with a fake pine veneer front and would have looked more in place in a Chinese takeaway. On the wall behind the desk someone had cut out a collage of hairstyles circa 1978 and covered it in sticky-back plastic. Three cracked grey vinyl chairs perched in front of plastic shelf units displaying an array of combs, hair-clogged brushes, rollers and hairspray. A lumpen assistant with drooping bosoms, legs like tree trunks and a drunken centre parting was rinsing out a perm at a shrimp-coloured sink, dabbing ineffectually at the client’s neck with a towel, grey not to match the colour scheme but because it had once been white.

Mandy thought she’d rather have her head boiled in oil than risk anything in here. Before she could think of an excuse and beat a hasty retreat, however, the proprietor, Wendy, came bustling out from the back room, hurling aside the curtain of multi-coloured plastic strips that screened the kitchenette.

‘Sorry, just having a fag. Stressful, this job. You have to listen to everyone’s problems.’ Wendy grinned, showing a mouthful of nicotine-stained teeth, which coincidentally matched her hair. She wore a faux denim shirt, studded with pearl appliqué and knotted at the waist over snagged black ski pants. Her feet were thrust into ancient flip-flops. The paint on her toes matched that on her fingers only because they were both horribly chipped. ‘I hope you haven’t got any problems?’