Honeycote (45 page)

‘I couldn’t do it, James. I’ve got to stay.’

He sighed.

‘Of course you have. I know that. But in that case, please make it up.’

Lucy moved towards him. He flinched inwardly: he didn’t want physical contact with her. He didn’t want her sympathy. So he said what he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t, just to keep her at arm’s length. ‘And don’t forget – you’re guilty too. You wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on if Mickey found out about us.’

Lucy looked at him sharply. Was that a threat? Would he ever tell his brother? She thought not; he’d have nothing to gain. But he certainly had a point.

James watched her go sadly. He couldn’t deny that he’d had the tiniest pinprick of hope that she might chose him over her life at Honeycote. But he hadn’t been surprised when she hadn’t. Moreover, he was gracious enough to be able to hand her back to her family without protest; he wasn’t so arrogant as to expect their happiness to be sacrificed for his sake. Yet again, he was doing the gentlemanly thing.

Lucy got back from her confrontation with James feeling utterly drained. As she walked back into the kitchen, Sophie flew into her arms, eyes shining.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Ned. We’ve made it up. He’s taking me out clubbing tonight.’ She looked at her mum anxiously. ‘If that’s OK? Patrick and Mandy are coming as well.’

‘Of course it’s OK, darling.’

Sophie was bubbling over with excitement and panic. ‘What am I going to wear?’

Lucy spent the next half hour going through Sophie’s wardrobe with her, giggling and trying things on. She realized it was the first time she’d had fun this year; the first time she’d laughed. And as she saw the four of them off to Cheltenham, the girls looking incredibly glamorous and the boys each slightly anxious, but trying not to show it, she felt a pang of shame.

James was right. There was no point in her and Mickey spending the rest of their lives wallowing in misery. She allowed her imagination to wander as far as Sophie and Ned’s wedding, she and Mickey sniping all the way to the church, undermining everything marriage stood for. Wedding vows might be a cliché, but they were true.

She walked into the sitting room. Mickey was in there watching some trashy Saturday evening game show. He looked up at her. He’d given up trying to smile at her lately; it only made her retreat further into herself. But to his astonishment she smiled at him. Very tentatively, and it didn’t quite reach her eyes, but it was a start.

‘We need to talk,’ she said. ‘We can’t go on like this.’ Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘We need to…’

She could hardly get the words out.

‘I don’t want to live like this any more.’

Mickey swallowed. He wasn’t sure what she was going to say. Was she going to kick him out? Ask for a divorce? She’d got grounds. Unreasonable behaviour. Adultery. Take your pick.

‘So what do you want?’ His mouth was dry, but he thought he’d do the honourable thing for once. ‘If you want a divorce – ’

To his surprise, she looked at him horrified. An icy trickle ran down her spine. Perhaps that was what he wanted. Perhaps Mickey had been unhappy all this time. Perhaps it wasn’t her choice at all, and he wanted out. She spoke in a whisper.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘My God, no!’

Mickey grabbed her.

‘I want us back again. You and me. The way it used to be.’

He squeezed her so tight it hurt. For a moment she resisted, every muscle in her body rigid with tension. She’d spent so much time blocking him out lately that it went against the grain for her to capitulate. But as she felt the strength of his arms around her, and smelt his warm, familiar smell, she realized that all she wanted was to be held by him, for all the horrors of the past few weeks to recede and for the healing to begin. She relaxed, and as he hugged her to him even more tightly, she began to cry. She’d wept bitter tears on her own before now, but she hadn’t been able to share them with him. The relief was enormous.

Eventually her tears subsided and she found she was able to snuggle into him.

‘So – what do we do? Forget any of this ever happened?’ Mickey knew he was being a tad optimistic.

‘No. We can’t do that.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘We can’t forget it. Because that’s the only way we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

So they talked. And Mickey was surprised to find that what Lucy had found even more hurtful than his adultery was the fact he’d kept his problems a secret from her; that he hadn’t been able to confide in her how desperate things had become. She told him that she’d felt a fool when the truth had come out, like some dippy little wife who couldn’t be trusted. Mickey insisted that he’d just wanted to protect her, but Lucy insisted she didn’t want to be protected. Perhaps if he’d been honest with her from the start, things might have turned out differently.

By the end of the evening, they had made a pact. From that day on, they would have no secrets from each other. And although both of them knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that there would be sticky moments, at least they had a clean slate.

Most important of all, they both agreed, was that they had to trust each other. For what was a marriage without trust?

When Sophie, Patrick, Mandy and Ned came back at two in the morning after a tour of all the clubs in Cheltenham, they found Mickey and Lucy fast asleep on the sofa in front of the telly, which was still blaring. Lucy’s head was on Mickey’s shoulder and Pokey was at their feet. Sophie tucked a rug round the pair, and the four of them sneaked off to compare notes on their evening, none of them voicing the relief they felt that things were obviously going to be all right.

24

By mid February, there was a firm strategy in place at the brewery. A board meeting was held, where Patrick gave a very effective presentation outlining plans for each of the pubs. He’d produced a concise ream of graphs and pie charts illustrating sales targets, profit and loss margins, best and worst case scenarios that made Cowley beam from ear to ear and which Mickey was surprised to find he understood.

Patrick was thriving under Keith’s guidance. He’d taken up every challenge that was set him, and found that once he had started to look at ways of maximizing both efficiency and profit at the brewery he was fired up with enthusiasm and full of inspiration. It was wonderful to be able to get his teeth into it at last. He couldn’t blame his father for keeping him at arm’s length all that time. He obviously hadn’t wanted Patrick to get at the truth. But now it was all out in the open, Patrick let his imagination run riot, and found a mentor in Keith. Together they went to visit all of the tied houses, and it was up to Patrick to compile a report on each, summing up its strengths and weaknesses and suggesting what direction should be taken. At the same time, Patrick took it upon himself to visit rival pubs, and compiled a substantial document outlining the local competition, what worked, what didn’t and why.

What Keith had found most astonishing was that there was no computer system in place at the brewery. It meant the company was ripe for pilfering. Patrick was shocked that he could even suggest it, but Keith told him not to be so naive. He wasn’t pointing any fingers, but the place was probably haemorrhaging beer and spirits and soft drinks – all the wet goods that the brewery supplied to its tied houses. People had light fingers and if you offered it to them on a plate, they came to consider it a perk of the job. But a computer system and rigid stock control would soon put a stop to that. By the end of the meeting, they’d agreed to find quotes for the installation of a state-of-the-art computer system, which each of the tied houses was to be linked to.

Keith also felt strongly that the next step was to put a sales team in place, in order to increase their off-sales. Even if they boosted their tied trade by fifty per cent, which wouldn’t come without considerable investment in the first place, they couldn’t afford to ignore other sources of revenue. Sales and Marketing.

That was what it was all about.

Mickey agreed. And he thought he knew just the person to mastermind the project. He told Keith about Caroline.

‘She works as an ad manager for a local paper. But she’s got her head screwed on, I can tell you.’

He showed Keith the marketing plan Caroline had drawn up. It seemed an eternity away. But the strategy held up. Keith smiled as he recognized several key points from Patrick’s original pitch, but he didn’t give anything away. Mickey persisted.

‘She knows what the brewery’s all about. She knows the area. She works bloody hard. James was always complaining that she had to work late.’

‘Do you think she’ll want to come and work for us?’

‘I’ll talk to her.’

Mickey was desperate to feel involved again. He’d been to visit the brewery a few times, but found himself exhausted. The consultants had warned him that his recovery would be slow and it was deeply frustrating. He wanted to put into practice all his resolutions, but the highlight of his day at the moment was trying to solve the conundrum on
Countdown
.

He knew Caroline was the right person for the job. He remembered her passion and enthusiasm the day she’d tried to help him out. If getting her on board was the only contribution he could make at the moment, he’d do everything in his power.

Caroline had gone back to Evesham to lick her wounds. Her treatment at the hands of the various Liddiards had shocked and subdued her. She kept her head down, worked hard, met her targets. And she grovelled to Ian, the owner of the yard where she kept Demelza. First, she apologized for her appalling behaviour on Boxing Day, then she offered to sell him Demelza. That way she could pay off her debts, both for her livery and her various credit cards, and have a bit left over. She was going to put it towards her Australia fund. She needed to get away, to travel. She was nearly thirty and she hadn’t seen anything of the world. Perhaps life in another hemisphere would restore her faith in human nature.

So when she got a phone call from Mickey, she was extremely wary. She listened as he outlined what he wanted from her: to put a marketing strategy in place and recruit a sales team.

‘I know you’re the girl for the job.’

Caroline snorted.

‘After the way your brother and your son treated me? Why should I, Mickey? They treated me like shit.’

‘This would be for me. Please, Caroline. I’m a prisoner in my own home. I need someone like you in there, batting for me. Someone I can trust.’

The old Liddiard charm and flattery oozed down the phone wire. By the end of the conversation, they’d reached a compromise. She was owed a couple of weeks’ holiday, so she’d use that in the first instance just to test the water. She wasn’t going to burn her bridges to come and work for Honeycote Ales. In return, she demanded two things. A hefty fee, which Mickey was going to have to finalize with Keith, but which would buy her a flight to Sydney. And an apology from Patrick. Both of which she got.

In certain quiet moments at the bank, Graham Cowley thought that God probably knew exactly what he’d been doing when he’d sent Mickey Liddiard crashing into that wall. It looked as if things really were going to turn out for the best at Honeycote Ales, and he was probably more pleased than anyone, as it had saved him from the thoroughly unpleasant task of calling in a loan. That was something he always hated doing, but he’d had a special place in his heart for the brewery and even though the Liddiards could be an ungrateful and arrogant bunch at times, they were also charming and eminently forgivable on both counts. It belonged in their hands.

The most pleasant surprise to him had been how well Patrick had turned out. He’d written him off as an over-privileged young oaf with more looks than brains, who was afraid of getting his hands dirty. But it showed just how wrong you could be. Cowley looked upon it as a lesson – it was never too late to learn in this business.

What surprised him even more, however, was that Lawrence Oakley hadn’t retaliated after Cowley had rejected his plans out of hand. He wasn’t the type to take no for an answer. At the very least Cowley had expected him to move his accounts elsewhere, but he hadn’t. In fact, he’d been in to see Cowley on a couple of matters, asking him for advice. And he hadn’t mentioned Honeycote Ales at all. Yet again it proved that you shouldn’t make sweeping judgements.

The truth was, Lawrence had been chilled and chastened when he heard about Mickey’s accident. For several days after his meeting with Cowley, he had prowled around the garden centre in a furious rage, making his employees’ lives more miserable than ever. He’d worked out a plan to go over Cowley’s head: he’d bloody well make sure that if he didn’t lose his job over this one his chances of promotion would certainly be scuppered.

But somehow once he heard about the accident the edge went off his desire for revenge. What was the point of getting back at someone who to all intents and purposes was a cripple lying in hospital, who had nearly died? It would give him no satisfaction at all now to pull the rug out from under Mickey’s feet. It would do nothing but make him look bad.

He wondered why that bothered him all of a sudden. Lawrence had never really cared what people thought of him, as long as they did what he wanted. Why was he getting a conscience at this stage in his life?

Deep down he knew it was because even if he did get revenge on Mickey, it wouldn’t make him any happier. Because he suspected that Mickey wasn’t really to blame. Lawrence could never escape from the fact that he had behaved appallingly towards Kay by hiding the truth from her about his infertility. Perhaps she had minded being childless more than she had admitted. Perhaps she’d had herself checked out on the quiet, just as he had, and discovered the fault must lie with Lawrence. Then, unable to confront him because the shutters were down, maybe she’d searched for a father elsewhere. And perhaps Mickey Liddiard had taken pity on her, had been happy to oblige…

He knew he was making allowances. He was pretty sure Kay had been with Mickey for the thrill and not his sperm. But it was only now, when the pang for fatherhood was so sharp, that he realized the injustice he had done his wife. They should have discussed it, found a way of getting round the problem together. There were miracles every day in the paper. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had the cash for the best treatment.