Honeycote (21 page)

‘We’ll see.’

These were the only two words the lump in his throat would allow him to say. But Keith was interested to see that Mandy didn’t persist, unlike her mother. Sandra would have taken his refusal as a challenge, nagged and nagged until he was worn down. Then two weeks later she’d have lost interest and he’d be left with a horse to get rid of. Mandy just shrugged and asked for driving lessons instead.

Keith had never felt so full of resolve. He’d phone Lucy Liddiard in the morning, get her advice. See if she knew of any horses for sale. He might even ask her to look out for one for himself. He’d never ridden before in his life, but it was never too late to start.

He just hoped it wasn’t too late to start with Mandy. Get to know her. Give her a bit of the life she deserved before she set off on the rocky road on her own. He looked around the house, as soulless and impersonal and luxurious and efficient as any first-class departure lounge. It had to go. Everything had to go.

10

Three days before Christmas, Kay was digging around in her handbag, looking for the list she’d made for the last of her present shopping. It was the garden centre staff party that evening and she was going to buy jewellery from Accessorize for the girls and CD tokens for the boys. She tipped out the contents of her bag on to the breakfast bar and a couple of tampons rolled out, ringing a tiny alarm bell in the back of her mind. She didn’t seem to have used any for weeks. She flipped through her diary, trying to remember the last time she’d had a period. As she was horribly irregular and never wrote it down, she couldn’t work it out.

She stood in the kitchen trying to take in the implications. Should she panic? She thought not. She was often late – weeks, sometimes. Anyway, she was ninety-nine per cent certain she was infertile. Well, ninety per cent. All the same, it had been a long time. Perhaps she’d get a kit on the way home. It would stop her brooding. Kay always liked to know how she stood one way or the other. She shoved everything back into her bag and forgot her dilemma, concentrating instead on the job in hand.

She battled her way through Cheltenham with half of Gloucestershire, doing all her duty shopping in the first hour and saving the fun till last. She wanted something special for Patrick. After much agonizing, she settled on a beautifully soft sage green cashmere scarf that she knew would look divine tucked into the collar of his flying jacket. She wouldn’t wrap it; she’d just coil it round his neck the next time she saw him. She shuddered deliciously at the prospect, thinking about the warmth of his skin on her fingertips. She made her way hurriedly back to the car park, slowing to a halt outside the chemist. It was teeming with people buying unimaginative gifts of bubble bath and perfume and aftershave for their nearest and dearest; she really didn’t think she could be bothered to fight her way through the throngs to the pharmacist’s counter. However, now the doubt was in her mind she knew she wouldn’t be able to relax until she found out one way or the other. She went in and perused the pregnancy testing kits, wondering which one would give her the answer she wanted. Not that she knew herself. At length she grabbed the most expensive. It was bound to be the right choice.

She drove home with the stereo on full volume, the bass of Simply Red vibrating through her, making her long for Patrick. He’d met her again three days before to make up, so he said, for abandoning her at the Gainsborough. Kay savoured the memory of what he had done to her, and looked forward to being able to give him the scarf. Too soon, though, she remembered she had something to resolve before she could think about their next union.

She got back to Barton Court, dumped all her packages on the kitchen floor, then went upstairs to the bathroom with the tester. She picked at the cellophane in frustration with her red-tipped nails, until finally the package was free and she was able to withdraw the unfamiliar apparatus from its box. She stared at the white plastic for a moment, peering through the minute clear window that would soon hold her destiny. She tried to analyse what she felt, but she was riding on a tide of uncertainty. Whatever the result, it would pull her into focus, and until that moment she was in an agonizing limbo. She read the instructions carefully, feeling slightly ridiculous as she held the stick in the stream of pee she’d saved up, then set it carefully down on the windowsill to wait.

The second hand on her Rolex moved round painfully slowly. Kay hadn’t known until now that it took thirty-seven seconds to walk the entire top corridor of Barton Court and wondered if that could be included on the estate agent’s particulars if they ever decided to sell. She went back to the windowsill after the requisite three minutes and picked up the stick. There were two blue lines in the window. Confused, she picked up the instructions again to double-check what this meant.

As if her body wanted to confirm the result, Kay was overcome by a wave of nausea. Rushing to the loo, she leaned over the blue and white china bowl and retched and retched until she was empty. Shakily, she washed her teeth and face, then took a deep breath before looking at herself in the mirror. She looked different, even from this morning. It was not just that she was pale and drained; there was something that hadn’t been there before. Knowledge. Knowledge of the little being inside her; a little cluster of cells. But whose? Only one thing was certain. That half of them were hers.

Suddenly her waistband felt uncomfortably tight. She’d noticed that her waist had been a little thicker lately, but she’d put it down to her age, her metabolism slowing down, and had promised herself membership of a gym in the New Year. Now the reason was obvious. Kay made herself a cup of tea, threw it up and prepared to face her husband.

Lawrence strode proprietorially through the garden centre, noting with pleasure that all the Christmas trees had nearly gone and that the decorations were seriously depleted – selling trees as a loss leader, at a rock-bottom fifty pence a foot, had been a stroke of genius. The kindly-looking pensioner he’d hired as Father Christmas was dandling toddlers on his knee outside his grotto while their parents, Lawrence hoped, flashed the cash. He looked at his watch and decided to stroll over to the house for some lunch. Kay should be back from her alleged shopping trip by now. He wondered if she’d taken the opportunity of an illicit liaison with Liddiard.

Kelly’s revelation hadn’t entirely surprised him, though he was annoyed that he hadn’t worked it out for himself. If Kelly had cottoned on, so might other people, and Lawrence didn’t do humiliation. But before he took action, he needed proof – he didn’t want to go steaming in and making accusations without solid evidence. After all, he only had the word of a brainless little bit of fluff who for all he knew bore a grudge again Mickey and might be stirring things out of malice.

He was going to bide his time. Meanwhile, he thought he might pop home and suggest an early afternoon bonk. If Kay was at it with Liddiard, that would make her squirm.

‘Darling, I’ve got some wonderful news.’

Kay shook her head in frustration. For the past hour she’d been experimenting with how to break the news to Lawrence, but ended up sounding like some sap from a black and white movie. In the end she needn’t have worried. Lawrence came into the kitchen, took one look at her and asked what was wrong.

‘I’m pregnant.’

The words were bald, but she knew with Lawrence there was no beating around the bush. You had to come straight to the point. She didn’t quite know what reaction she was expecting, but when he stared at her and his eyes went dark, as black as ink, and he turned on his heel and left the room, she knew she’d blown it.

*

They’d talked about starting a family not long after they got married. Kay had been unsure at first, being only just over thirty, but Lawrence was keen not to be too aged a parent. They weren’t scientific in their attempts to procreate, but certainly did it often enough to be in with a fighting chance. When nothing had happened after eighteen months, Kay had casually broached the subject of fertility treatment and had been somewhat relieved when Lawrence had dismissed it out of hand. If it wasn’t meant to be, he’d said, then who were they to interfere with nature? Kay had read enough articles about IVF to know that she didn’t really want to be first in the queue, and had been happy to leave it at that. So she couldn’t have kids. So what? If the snotty, whinging specimens she’d come into contact with were anything to go by, she wasn’t missing much. Then Lawrence had become absorbed in Barton Court and the subject seemed to be forgotten, to Kay’s relief.

Deep down, however, Lawrence was tormented by what he considered to be their failure. He needed more information. After making exhaustive inquiries as to the best consultant, he found himself in a small cubicle doing something unspeakable into a test tube, only to be told by a grave-faced Frenchman that his sperm were weak, feeble and intent on swimming the wrong way, and that without scientific intervention they would never reach the goal they were destined for. He was, to all intents and purposes, sterile. He found it, as well as incredibly painful, somewhat ironic that the purveyor of seed to half of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire would never sow his own.

He hadn’t told Kay. It was a painful secret he kept locked away; something that he need never humiliate himself by revealing as she seemed quite happy to remain childless, at least for the time being. She blamed herself, of course, and he never thought to disabuse her of the fact, but then neither did he rebuke her. They just had a tacit agreement that Oakley offspring were not to be.

And now the bitch had told him she was pregnant. He cursed her for not being more prescient, not guessing at the truth, but why should she? She’d never heard the consultant’s doom-laden words – ‘It would take a miracle.’ And he knew bloody well there hadn’t been a miracle. He knew that in the split second it had taken Kay to meet his eye.

So now their partnership was over. There was no way he could allow it to continue. It wasn’t a tragedy, more of an inconvenience. They’d worked well together.

As he drew his chequebook out of the right-hand drawer of his desk and pulled the lid off his fountain pen, he was perturbed to find tears stinging his lids. He brushed them away angrily, debated the sum he was going to write in the oblong, signed his name with a flourish, then went to unlock his filing cabinet.

He walked back into the kitchen where Kay was sitting at the breakfast bar, cradling her head in her arms. She looked up at him as he wordlessly held out the letter from the consultant. Her stomach churning, she read through the diagnosis, then looked up at Lawrence.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she croaked. ‘You let me think it was my fault…’

He gave a dismissive shrug.

‘And you were going to let me think that brat in your belly was mine?’ His tone was flat. Emotionless.

‘Hard to say which is worse, isn’t it?’

He handed her an envelope containing the cheque he’d just written.

‘You can keep your car as well. You’ve got half an hour to pack.’

‘Lawrence – ’

‘There’s no discussion, Kay. There’s nothing to say. You’ve got no defence.’

Half an hour later, Kay sat in her car, shell-shocked, suppressing a strange desire to laugh uncontrollably at the absurd turn her life had taken. Only two hours ago, she’d been quite oblivious, happily doing her Christmas shopping. Now, here she was, banished from her own home, estranged from her husband, pregnant, with a cheque for a quarter of a million pounds in her pocket.

She knew there was no point in trying to worm her way back into Lawrence’s life. She knew when he made a decision it was final. And she considered she’d got away quite lightly. When she’d taken the cheque, she’d accepted the deal. She was out of his life. End of story. She’d packed her clothes, some toiletries, dug out a few private papers she might need and marvelled at how her life had fitted into the boot of her Boxster.

She hadn’t really had a chance to take in the implications of what he’d told her, or feel aggrieved that he’d never chosen to tell her before. All she felt was relief that their confrontation hadn’t been uglier. She supposed that her pregnancy had prevented Lawrence from any violence he might be capable of.

So where now? What now? It was three days before Christmas – what the hell was she supposed to do? She certainly wasn’t going to go back to her parents. Her scenario was daunting enough without bringing Slough into the equation. Kay rarely left anything to chance, but she was finding it hard to be rational, so she pulled out the AA map she found in the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. She’d open it and drive to the very first place that caught her eye.

Frome. Somerset.

It took her just over an hour and a half to get there.

Somehow the further one got from the Cotswolds and the nearer one got to Bath, the local stone lost its warmth and became rather forbidding. Kay wondered if that really was the case, or if it was her state of mind. As she drove down the steep hill into Frome, she looked anxiously round her, for Kay was a great believer in first impressions. It was quite a plain little town, more down to earth than Eldenbury, but clearly lively, as the high street was lined with a bustling street market. Signs for the public library and municipal buildings were more prominent than those for local tourist attractions, indicating that real people actually lived here. But Kay was also pleased to note a decent butcher and a delicatessen, and amongst the ‘turnips’ were quite a few well-dressed women, as well as some decidedly alternative types – to which Kay had no objection. At least the local community wouldn’t be narrow-minded, which was pretty important in her condition. Furthermore, Bath was only twenty minutes by car, from where London was less than two hours by train. She thought she might be able to survive here.

She sought out a local independent estate agent and perused the properties for sale. Prices were way down on the Cotswolds, despite Frome’s proximity to Bath. But that was a definite advantage. She’d need some change from what Lawrence had given her to live on. However, the selection of houses for sale was disappointing: a large majority were on modern estates, of which there were clearly several in the locality, or dreary little poky terraces, or apartments in converted buildings of the type Lawrence used to specialize in and which Kay knew were always grossly overpriced. The estate agent explained that there was an area of Frome that was particularly sought after, with attractive period properties, but these were usually snapped up even before they were advertised, and because of the time of year they had nothing of interest on their books at the moment.