Name & Address Withheld (11 page)

‘He’s just a friend.’ Despite Lizzie’s attempt to keep her focus on her roast potatoes, she could feel her brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew staring.

‘Gran…?’

Lizzie still found it very weird when Jess and Josh called her mum ‘Gran’…it sounded so…so…set and blow-dry.

‘Yes, poppet?’

Poppet? For goodness’ sake. Jess had had the same name for all nine years of her life. Next her mother would be stashing crumpled Kleenex up her sleeve and wearing mauve.

‘You don’t usually send flowers to just friends, do you?’ Jessica shot Lizzie a look to indicate that she knew exactly what she was doing. Jonathan silently cast a sympathetic glance at his sister. Ford grillings were legendary, and it seemed that Jessica had honed the craft at a ridiculously early age.

‘Flowers, flowers…’ Josh had become a four-year-old parrot.

Lizzie gulped down her wine and wished she could be invisible. Just for an hour or two.

‘No, you don’t, darling…’

Annie might have been talking to Jessica but she was staring at Lizzie, and a smile slowly spread across her face as she sensed the discomfort of her second-born child. Lizzie decided to bombard them with information in the hope that they would retreat for analysis.

‘I met him at the City FM Christmas shindig and we’ve been on one proper date. He’s gone skiing for two weeks, during which time I hope he won’t go off me. He works in advertising. He’s a copywriter, which basically means that he comes up with slogans. I forgot to ask him what his parents do, where he was at school, his inside leg measurement or his net annual income.’

Lizzie beamed at her mother, who usually wanted far more detail than she could offer. Annie would have been happiest if any prospective sons-in-law filled out a five-page questionnaire…not that Matt was a prospective son-in-law yet in Lizzie’s eyes. In her mother’s eyes, when your daughter was thirty-two every male was a prospective son-in-law.

‘There’s no need to be so defensive, darling….’ Her sister-in-law and her mother exchanged knowing glances.

Who was being defensive? Lizzie had thought she was being funny. Clearly not.

‘What’s his name?’

Trust Alex to pick up on the crucial information she’d omitted. A natural at everything, and one of those mothers who could flit effortlessly between Play-Doh and Prada and still manage to fit in trips to the gym, Alex had a flat stomach which suggested that Jess and Josh had gestated in her handbag rather than her womb. Lizzie added interrogation to her mental checklist of Alex’s talents and filed it in her insecurity folder.

‘Matt…Matt Baker.’

‘And how old is he?’

It sounded like the final question from Alex, so Lizzie accepted it graciously.

‘I haven’t asked for his birth certificate yet…’ Lizzie smiled wryly ‘…but my sort of age.’ Although, actually, he might be a well-preserved fifty-year-old for all she really knew. But then again he wouldn’t have known about the Transformers advert if he was.

Lizzie reassured everyone round the table that it was very early days yet, but conceded that she did like him—obviously omitting to mention intercourse, or Clare’s cynicism that he would be in the arms of a chalet girl by now—and the conversation was allowed to move on. Lizzie drank a silent toast to Matt, somewhere up a mountain, and, much as she loved her family, wished she was there with him.

December the twenty-fifth when you are unhappily married with no children, with no close family with children, and with parents who have decided to go and spend the holiday season with your brother and his wife in America is possibly the worst day of the year. Not even the prospect of a skiing holiday next week was helping. Because that was in five days’ time, and right now every hour seemed to last three weeks.

Presents had been exchanged over breakfast. Hers: handcrafted silver necklace, voucher for evening spa at the Sanctuary, new coffee table book of Mario Testino portraits—her favourite photographer—and annual subscription to
Vanity Fair
. His: another navy blue jumper—classically expensive
and at least one size too big, he could change it—Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook—her favourite chef—and
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
on DVD—her favourite film.

They’d spent the rest of the morning preparing lunch—including the new Jamie Oliver approach to Brussels sprouts. He’d tried to be interested in her news, and she’d been more attentive than at any other time over the last six months, but the atmosphere was strained. Laughing a little too hard and too early at each other’s jokes. Recalling a little too eagerly anecdotes that proved they’d once had a healthy relationship. Somewhere along the line things had changed. Now they were virtual strangers with a shared archive of memories. Not enough to sustain what they didn’t have now.

Today would probably have been a good time for an honest chat. For a start they were in the same place at the same time, and both conscious, but he didn’t want to provoke a showdown in front of her mother and so he’d been dutiful and gone through the motions surprisingly effectively. But it was hell. Actually, it was hell with the mute button pressed. No flaming cauldrons. No screams. Instead completely quiet, except for the gentle purring noise coming from his mother-in-law dozing in the armchair by the fire and the occasional rustle of a page being turned.

Satan had this suffering bit down to a tee. Here he was with plenty of time to think, to hypothesise, but no suitable time to talk. And what about Lizzie? Could it work even if he had lied? It seemed an impossible situation. The plot of the book he was reading seemed far more feasible, even though it involved a race of people from a parallel galaxy. He hauled himself from the sofa and decided to make a start on the washing up. The roasting tray would be a welcome distraction.

Happy Fucking Christmas. Rachel was irritated and her pride was well and truly dented. It had been the perfect moment. Candlelight, champagne, and yet he wasn’t in the mood. Wasn’t in the mood? Now he was in the bath ‘relaxing’, and he’d even locked the door.

She’d spent a fortune. She’d been in full seduction mode—
balconette bra, stockings, suspenders and a practically transparent negligée hiding under her bathrobe—but, nothing. And she’d thrown away the receipt.

Now she wasn’t even sure if she was feeling humiliated, furious or just plain frustrated. She’d imagined an evening like they’d used to have. Limbs and clothes everywhere, frantic excitement, collapsing in a sweaty heap at the end only to shower and start all over again. It didn’t make sense. He’d always wanted her. Tonight she’d been ready. And when she decided something was going to happen, it fucking did.

Glaring at nothing in particular, Rachel flung her head back onto the pillow sulkily before swinging herself back into the upright position and finding her slippers. She needed a vodka, a big one, or she was going to lose her temper. Ho Bloody Ho. But if her Christmas spirit had to come from a bottle, then so be it. No one was going to piss on her parade. Not today.

‘Your throw.’

‘Hmm?’

Lizzie was miles away.

‘Your throw.’

So far away that a four-year-old was having to remind her how to play a non-tactical throw-a-dice-and-get-your-coloured-piece-to-the-other-end board game.

‘Right. Sorry, Joshie…’ Lizzie rolled the dice. ‘Four.’

He counted her playing piece along the board.

‘One, two, three, four.’

Lizzie had landed on a square with writing. Josh looked beseechingly at his older, wiser sister.

‘Read it, Jess.’

‘You have missed your train. Go back to the ticket office.’

Josh squealed with delight at his aunt’s misfortune. Lizzie moved the piece back almost to the beginning and smiled wanly. She didn’t care if she lost. She didn’t even care that her mother was cheating. She’d been drinking for over seven hours and now she just wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere snowy, at altitude. A certain chalet, perhaps…

‘Right, then, I’m going to watch the rest of the film in bed. At least that way your heavy breathing isn’t going to ruin all the tension…’

Matt grunted sleepily before rolling over slightly to face the cushions. His breathing sounded laboured, and he was desperate to open his eyes, but knew his plan was on the verge of working. His wife bent down and kissed him on the cheek. The fumes from her all-day drinking session curled the edge of his nostrils.

‘Night. See you up there.’

He waited until he’d heard her climb the stairs, check on her mother and switch the telly on, before turning over and propping himself up on his elbow. As he rummaged on the floor for his book and made himself comfortable he allowed himself to wonder how Lizzie’s day had been. He was far too young to have screwed up.

chapter 9

T
he phone rang from somewhere underneath the papers strewn across her desk. Carefully, so as not to disturb her morning’s work which, despite its haphazard appearance, was in fact organised into piles that only she could understand, Lizzie extricated the receiver just before the call-minder service kicked in.

‘Hello?’

‘Lizzie, it’s me. I know it’s pathetic but I really miss you. Mum’s driving me mad.’

It was Clare, stir-crazy, shouting just a little bit, live and direct from the maternal home—a chocolate box farmhouse in a small village just outside Wendover.

‘I’ll be home in a couple of days. So enjoy having the place to yourself and listening to all your crap CDs before my return!’

‘Two days…’ Lizzie was on automatic pilot and still concentrating on the letter she had been in the middle of answering when the phone rang. ‘Right, OK…’ Now focusing on the voice in her ear, she snapped back to the present just in time to take an active part in the conversation that Clare had already started without her. ‘What day is today anyway?’

‘Sunday…all day. Honestly, you’re obviously deep in “Ask Lizzie” land. I don’t want to interrupt the master at work, but I am—and I can’t say this too loudly for fear of being overheard by one of her ornaments—bored, bored, bored. You know how much I love my mother, but there are only so many times you can have the same conversation and pretend that it’s all news to you without wanting to hit someone…’

Lizzie laughed. Clare made her laugh.

‘I can’t believe I’m only forty-eight minutes away from Marylebone. It’s like a different era out here. I’m beginning to find this whole relaxing thing quite stressful, and if my mother suggests I read another one of her Aga sagas I think I’ll scream. There aren’t even any proper shops for me to wander round. I can’t feel guilty about spending too much money because there is absolutely nothing to buy. I’m starting to say damn and blast. I’ve found myself poring over catalogues and have even considered ordering a shirt from one of them even though I know it will be disgusting.’

‘Hang in there. I’m working away at this end, so it’s not like you’re missing a great party atmosphere. Putney is deserted. I think about ninety per cent of our neighbours are
chez
parents in the country or skiing. I went to Sainsbury’s the other day and there wasn’t even a queue at the checkout.’

‘Unbelievable…’ Scarily, Clare felt, Lizzie’s stories were just about as exciting as her mother’s. She’d have to organise a girlie night out on the town when she got back before they slid into middle age without even noticing. Next they’d be comparing detergents instead of dates. It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Any calls?’

‘Nope. None for you at all. Sorry.’

‘Any for you…?’

Lizzie hesitated. Surely she couldn’t be so bored that she wanted to know how many times her mother and Jonathan had called over the last week. She was almost ashamed to admit that it ran into double figures.

‘Well, a few.’

Clare sighed. Lizzie was being deliberately obtuse. It might be tactless, but she was going to have to ask anyway.

‘So you haven’t heard from you-know-who?’

Lizzie smiled at Clare’s attempt at tact and diplomacy. She didn’t know why substituting his name with the ‘you-know-who’ thing was supposed to make her think about ‘who-he-was’ any less. And, thanks to Clare, her mother now knew there was a ‘someone-of-interest’ who ‘might-have-called’ too.

‘Matt?’ As if she was waiting to hear from a selection of recent sexual conquests… ‘Nope. He’s still skiing.’

Clare knew that much. She also knew that there was an effective telecommunications system which operated throughout Europe, both on mountains and in valleys. Surely he could have found a five-minute window between steins of lager? But she decided to be upbeat for now. ‘Right. When’s he back?’

‘Sixth or seventh I think…’

Clare knew there was no way that Lizzie was capable of being that blasé, but let it pass all the same.

‘Oh, and thanks so much for telling Mum about the flowers.’

‘Don’t be so over-sensitive. Flowers are a good sign as far she’s concerned. It gives her hope. She only means well. Strangely enough, she just wants you to be happy.’

‘I am happy…’ Lizzie made a conscious effort to move the conversation away from her. She had nothing to report. All she’d done was work, food-shop and watch a few classic films on television. ‘So how’s country life? Been to any gigs at the village hall?’

‘Thankfully I’ve managed to talk her out of all of them. It’s at times like this I really wish I had a brother or sister to dilute all this parent-child bollocks. She still thinks I’m fourteen. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I have my own business. I employ people…’

Clare suddenly interrupted her own soliloquy of boredom. Lizzie was actually only half listening whilst speed-reading a few letters. She’d resisted the urge to actually type anything into her computer because she knew only too well how irritating it could be to hear other people’s keyboards in action when they were supposed to be giving you their undivided attention.

‘Look, I’d better go. Mum’s just got back from walking the dog and I’ll be in trouble if she thinks I’ve been gassing to you the whole time she’s been out as we live together for most of the year. See you on Tuesday… Byeee.’