I Should Be So Lucky (25 page)

Greg stowed the fork in the back of the Land Rover, then smiled at her. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be my choice for an evening’s entertainment, but each to their own. And you have to admire the fact that he did actually have a dog. Attention to detail, you see.’ He slammed the back door shut. ‘Shall we go now, or did you want to check out the, er … players?’ He nodded in the direction of the lit cars.

‘No! I mean, yes, let’s go!’ Viola clambered into the car and pulled her scrunchie off her hair, shaking it loose around her face. She could feel she was blushing. This wasn’t a conversation she’d ever expected to have, certainly not with Greg. Well, not with anyone. The stuff you learn …

‘Excellent – let’s leave them to it and get out of here.
Some
people do have very strange pastimes, don’t they?’ he said, starting the car and heading out towards the road.

‘You’re so right. But they’d probably say the same about us,’ Viola replied, looking back at the neat patch of ground where no one would suspect that months from now there would be a stunning display of exuberantly frilled tulips. That she and Greg were the only ones who knew they were there made a special bond between them, she thought.

‘Would you like to come in for a drink when we get back or … do you have to get home for … er … anything?’ she asked.

He stopped at a red light and looked at her, his face serious for once. For a moment she felt quite nervous. What was he going to say?

‘There is no “anything”. I already told you I’m divorced, Viola, if that’s what’s bugging you. My only connection with Mickey is a family one. And the business, obviously.’

‘Oh, right. But it’s OK, I only wondered. Sort of idly, the way you do, because it doesn’t matter either way, does it? It’s just you’ve not really said anything about yourself. I don’t even know where you live. Not that I need to know.’ She was waffling. Was the evening going to be a total ruin now? It had been such fun. Appalled, she realized she could almost cry, but mustn’t. How pathetic would that look? But even if she did, it
wouldn’t
be about
Greg
. It was just that for once an outing seemed to have gone right and been something she could really enjoy, without all the past
stuff
getting so much as the tiniest look-in.

‘I don’t know much about you either,’ he said. ‘I like it that we are a pair of pretty much blank pages, don’t you?’

‘Well – yes, maybe, I suppose so.’ That told her. He might as well have said, ‘No more questions.’ The lights changed and Greg crunched the Land Rover into reluctant gear.

‘And yes, please, thanks for the invitation, I’d love a drink,’ he said, which rather surprised her. She’d imagined he’d now want to drop her at the gate and screech off fast into the night. ‘But first I have to pick something up on the way – it’s only a teeny detour. Is that OK? Do
you
have to get home for … anything?’

‘No, I don’t and yes, it’s fine.’ Viola could hear her voice sounding flat and small.

They drove a mile or two further, over the river bridge and on towards a row of shops. At the corner, Greg turned off into an alleyway at the back of the parade where there was a delivery road and bounced the car over a series of pits and ruts, avoiding carelessly placed rows of wheelie bins.

‘The back of the police station is just up here. This is the bit where they keep the patrol cars,’ he said, switching off the main headlight beam and squinting
into
the darkness. He slowed down and stopped the car in the small goods yard at the back of the M&S food store.

‘
Not
the place I’d choose to hang out, to be honest,’ she whispered.

‘It’s OK, we won’t be caught. There’s just something I need to get. Stay here a sec.’ And before she could ask any more, Greg had got out of the car and crossed the yard, vanishing into the darkness. Viola closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest, suddenly feeling incredibly sleepy. It must be close to midnight, she realized, feeling both her body and mind relaxing and drifting off.

‘Look at these!’ Viola jumped as her door was flung open. Greg was waving two enormous cucumbers at her. ‘Harvest!’ he said, pushing them into her hands. ‘They’re a bit overgrown, hazard of absentee farming, but you can have these if you want. If you like them, that is; a lot of people don’t.’

‘Oh, but I do – thanks!’ She looked nervously at the shuttered back door of Marks & Spencer. ‘You didn’t … No, you wouldn’t. Even you wouldn’t break into M&S just to nick a couple of cucumbers.’

He was climbing back into the car now and starting the engine. ‘No, even I wouldn’t,’ he told her with mock solemnity. ‘I’ve got a patch of them growing over there in front of the wall. It’s nice and sunny and they get plenty of water because the security bloke is a mate of
mine
and he shares the crop. There are chillies too, but they’re not ready yet.’

‘You’re growing
vegetables
out here? Why don’t you get an allotment like anyone else?’

‘Why? There’re plenty of discarded patches of land in every town, ripe for the planting. The people’s plots.’

‘Don’t people just find the stuff and take it?’

‘Yeah. That’s OK.’

She laughed. ‘You’re a bit … I don’t know, something between ecologist and communist.’

‘In a good way, I hope. And anyone with a little time and energy can do it. Why hand over all the money to the Man when you can grow your own food?’

‘I’ve only ever grown a few herbs and some lettuce. I must try harder,’ she said.

He turned and looked at her. ‘Sorry, you’re tired, aren’t you? I should have taken you straight home. We didn’t need to stop here really, I was just showing off. Being a bloke.’

‘That’s all right. You can be a bloke, it’s allowed.’ She settled back against the headrest and closed her eyes again. ‘But yes, I am tired. Not too tired to give you coffee or a glass of wine back at mine, though.’

‘Sounds like a good plan,’ Greg said, speeding up as the Land Rover finally lurched out of the potholed alleyway on to the main road. ‘Especially as this time your mama won’t be on the doorstep, waving a rolling pin at me and shouting the odds about your honour.’

‘I’m all grown up and left home now,’ she told him. ‘Being at hers was only ever temporary.’ She sensed him turn to look at her and waited for him to ask her why … but he didn’t. It was quite a relief, to be so anonymous. How long would that last?

Greg didn’t pick through her CDs or comment on her bookshelves that contained the complete works of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens alongside bright-jacketed rows of contemporary writers. Instead, as she was in the kitchen making them both mugs of tea, he had a good look at a framed black and white photo of Viola, Marco and the then-baby Rachel which hung on the wall, all of them smiling and looking as if nothing could ever be better in their world. She glanced at the photo – that had felt so true at the time.

‘Am I allowed to ask?’ He pointed at Marco.

‘Yes. That’s Marco. My daughter Rachel’s father. Divorced but friends.’ So here it came, trickles of information-sharing.

‘Best way to be,’ he said, nodding. ‘I didn’t know you had a baby.’

‘Baby! Not these days. She’s a teenager now, staying over with a friend for the night.’ There was a short silent moment while she – and possibly he – took in that this meant that whatever happened – or didn’t happen – now, they weren’t going to be interrupted. As she reached into the fridge for the milk, Viola contemplated the mad idea of actually sleeping with Greg. As she
wasn’t
going to have an emotional entanglement ever again, it would have to be on a sex-only basis, none of that getting-involved, complicated stuff. The idea seemed brutal, cold and absolutely
not her
.

‘This is the point where we should … um … make a decision,’ he said, looking serious.

‘Is it?’ She thought she knew what he meant. Her decision had already been made.

‘Yes. Are we to stay in here or shall we take this tea and sit on that lovely squashy sofa?’

‘Well – we could …’

There wasn’t time for the rest of the answer because Greg moved close, put his arms round her and kissed her. And God, it felt good.

‘Sofa?’ he murmured when they stopped to breathe.

She’d been too close to choosing a third option of ‘bed’. That close, she realized, to rushing towards potentially wrecking a good friendship by taking her old if-it-can-go-wrong-why-don’t-I-let-it route. A whirl of common sense somehow made its way into her exhausted brain and she nodded.

‘Sofa.’

TWENTY-ONE

THE STORM PAINTING
halfway up the stairs would be one that Naomi would definitely keep, when it came down to the last few of them. That and the big nude portrait of her that had so horrified Kate and Miles when they’d been young teenagers. ‘Mum, you actually
posed
like that?’ Kate had been wide-eyed with shock, adding, ‘Gross!’ Miles had said nothing, just blushed and tried not to look. Back then, she’d told them – as a tease – that she intended to hang it in the sitting room, big, brazen, rude and bold over the fireplace, and they’d been so gratifyingly horrified that she’d very nearly done just that. ‘You are disappointingly bourgeois,’ she’d told them, which had given them a bit of a surprise. It wasn’t a word that usually featured in her Lancashire vocabulary. Viola had asked what it meant and Naomi had told her not to worry about it, it was something she’d never be. And of course she wouldn’t really have
hung
it there. Never mind her children’s embarrassment and the blushing, speculative glances from their visiting pals, she didn’t want her own friends making comments and doing a lot of wondering either, especially Monica, who’d ask no end of questions. In the end it had stayed forever out of public view up in her bedroom, where the only visitors for the past few years had been the window cleaner and the man who steam-cleaned the carpets. If they saw any resemblance between the voluptuous, sofa-sprawled floozy with the generous mass of auburn curls and the brisk, brick-shaped matron with a penchant for purple and a collection of gory novels, they were discreet enough not to comment.

She would call David the dealer sometime in the next few days, let him know that one more rare Stonebridge was about to come on the market. In spite of the recession it would fetch a top price, because she’d been as careful with the selling as Oliver had trusted her to be, and his pictures had a still highly desirable value of rarity. When it came to the art market, he’d told her, slow release would be the trick. Like the tablets he’d been prescribed for the pain.

They were all coming for a celebratory supper at Bell Cottage now Viola had had a few days to make sure everything was working and she and Rachel had settled in. It had to be today, as Rachel would be off to Ireland with Marco the next morning. Marco, James, Kate and
Rob
(hmm – that would be fun, not), Miles (but not Serena – it was her reiki night), and Naomi would all be there. She would have family round first, friends later, Viola had decided, as she was feeling ridiculously nervy about putting together a meal for people again after so long. At her mother’s flat, cooking had been reduced to the bare essentials, and she sometimes felt guilty that the most labour-intensive home-cooked food Rachel had had over the past year had been a simple roast chicken. Her excuse had been that the flat’s kitchen had been basic, to put it kindly, and she’d simply got out of the catering habit. The best meals they’d had there had been courtesy of Naomi and her skill with a tasty Lancashire hotpot and sumptuous shepherd’s pie.

Today, Viola was going to remind her ever-doubting family that she could not only live perfectly capably without constant backup, but could actually get by more than well enough in the food-and-foraging department. From now on, she resolved to make a real effort and do the efficient working-woman thing – filling the freezer with home-cooked pasta sauces and casseroles and fishcakes, so Rachel would be able to come home to real food instead of pizzas and ready meals. For one thing, without the rental income, that kind of instant food would be out of their price range. ‘Move over, Nigella,’ she murmured as she parked the Polo at the supermarket, switched off the
Woman’s Hour
chirpy discussion on Whatever Happened to Herpes
and
took her enormous shopping list out of her bag.

The store was full of exhausted-looking women with superactive school-holiday children in tow. Every aisle contained at least one infant having a tantrum, another child crying and a third racing round, arms stretched out for maximum crashing-into potential while they whooped fantasy-animal noises. Any sensible woman would have shuddered and been glad her child was past this stage, but Viola was surprised to find she was feeling a bit envious. It hadn’t really hit her before, but now she couldn’t help a piece of important knowledge burrowing into her brain uninvited: she wasn’t likely to be needing the babycare aisle at the supermarket ever again. She shook her head sharply for a second, almost consciously trying to dislodge and evict the thought, but it wouldn’t go away and it brought with it a little seed of regret. Rachel wouldn’t have the support and love of a brother or sister when she was older.

Suppose something terrible happened (and how easily Viola had seen vibrant life wiped out in an instant), and Rachel hadn’t a sister to turn to, as she had Kate? But, she reminded herself, Rachel had cousins closer to her in age than a sibling could now be, an aunt and an uncle on her mother’s side of the family, both of them fond of her. And best of all she had her father and James, and her lovely aunt Gemma. All would be well. There were plenty of only children in the world and they got by absolutely fine. And where had this thought
come
from, anyway? It wasn’t as if she was planning on having another relationship, let alone another baby. Kissing Greg had felt wonderful – she’d forgotten how blissfully her body could respond to a much-wanted touch – but he had done the sensible thing and left soon after. ‘Bloody reluctantly’, as he’d put it, with a final delicious doorstep snog.