Never Too Late (3 page)

hazel eyes and a smile like a child in a pet shop. But

nobody would dream of taking advantage of the solemn,

dignified and somewhat wary woman she’d turned into

overnight. Which was where her ‘cross old cow’ look came

in useful, even if Rosie hated it.

‘Are you having the whole works for the wedding?’

asked Gwen.

‘Yes.’

Simon had never been married before and he wanted to

get married in style. And Evie, who secretly lived for

romance, had allowed herself to be persuaded into the

whole veil/wedding march/confetti rigmarole.

Her mouth curved up at the corners as she thought of

the exquisite medieval cream silk dress in the Wedding magazine she’d hidden in her office drawer under her supply of manilla folders. It had parchment silk ribbons

criss-crossing the tight bodice and tiny silk roses clustered

around the hem. Pure fantasy. All it needed was a

knight on a white charger. She’d been cheated out of her

ideal wedding dress the first time round: it wouldn’t

happen this time.

‘Rosie, I’m home,’ Evie called, slamming the front door

shut with her hip and dumping the drenched grocery bags

on to the hall carpet. She untied the large headscarf and

slid it off making sure not a drop of rain got on to her

carefully styled hair.

It had taken an hour with heated rollers to create the

bouncy, wavy style Gwen had recommended and Evie

didn’t want to ruin the effect with an impromptu shower.

‘Rosie,’ she called again, more loudly. Nothing. Evie

shrugged off her raincoat and dragged the bags into the

kitchen.

The debris of her seventeen-year-old daughter’s breakfast

still lay on the kitchen table: a square of toast with teeth

marks in it lying on a crumb-covered plate, a butter-splodged

knife slung across the plate and the marmalade jar abandoned

without a lid on it.

That morning’s half-filled coffee mug would undoubtedly

be up in Rosie’s room, along with at least six other

such cups in varying stages of mould development.

‘It’s a biology experiment,’ she joked blithely, whenever

her mother complained about the furry green sludge inside

the endless mugs she rescued from the bedside locker and

the desk where Rosie did her homework.

‘Yeah, well, you never wash your experimental equipment,’

fussed Evie, who did not really mind cleaning up

after her hopelessly untidy daughter.

‘I don’t ask you to,’ pointed out Rosie, who was well

used to her mother’s fussing.

‘Your room is a health risk,’ Evie protested. ‘That’s why I

do it.’

‘Mould is penicillin and that can’t be bad, now can it?’

Rosie would argue happily. There was no winning an

argument with her. She didn’t care. Careless, that was

Rosie all over. Who the hell knew what she’d be like when

she’d finished her final year in school and got out into the

big bad world officially? Evie shuddered to think.

Rosie looked about twenty already: tall, slender and

striking, with an oval face that could adopt a coolly

indifferent air with ease. In her black jeans, the three quarter length leather coat she never seemed to take off

and with her long dark hair offsetting her father’s glittering

sloe-black eyes, she appeared twice as grown up as the

other girls in her school.

She was only three years younger than Evie had been

when she got pregnant and was already about ten years

more advanced. Teenage years were like dog years, Evie

reckoned. For every one normal year of their life, they

advanced about seven.

If Rosie made it into the same graphic design course as

her adored Aunt Cara, Evie would have no control over

her anymore, a terrifying thought. It wasn’t in the far-off

future either: Rosie had six more months at school. Six

months to meltdown.

Watching her beloved daughter grow up so rapidly had

presented Evie with a terrible dilemma: should she tell

Rosie that she’d got pregnant at twenty; that that was

why she and Tony had got married? Or would the

salutary tale be ruined because Rosie had an image of her

late father as some sort of demi-god and would be

devastated to learn that the fairy-tale romance she’d been

told about as a curious child wasn’t so much of a fairy

story after all? Evie didn’t know. She was simply sorry

she’d tried to make up for the lack of Rosie’s dad by

making him into the sort of hero the little girl could be

proud of.

There was no doubt about it, lies always came back to

haunt you.

Sighing, Evie stowed the shopping away. She was in a

rush but, as usual, she found time to put everything in the

right place. Jars and tins stuffed higgledypiggledy into

cupboards was not the way Evie Fraser did things. The

antique pine kitchen in her tiny redbrick two-up, two

down may have been what even an estate agent would

describe as ‘compact’, but it was meticulously tidy. Careful

use of space meant the large larder had pull-out wire

shelves with hooks and saucepan lid holders on the insides

of the door so that not an inch was wasted.

When everything was tidied away, Evie quickly made

herself a cheese sandwich and a cup of lemon tea and took

it upstairs with her. After having a speedy shower so a blast

of steam wouldn’t make her hair droop, she slathered

herself in body lotion and then applied some makeup.

It was just as well that Simon loved the natural look,

Evie thought, as she brushed some ochre eyeshadow across

her eyelids and gave her thick lashes a delicate brush of

brown mascara.

Rosie, who wore eye make-up as if it was tribal war

paint, was always urging her mother to wear rich, dark

colours to emphasise her hazel eyes.

‘Some kohl and a line of gold eyeliner will make the

amber flecks stand out,’ she’d pointed out the last time

she’d sat on her mother’s bed watching Evie get ready to

go out with Simon.

‘Yes, and make me look like mutton dressed as lamb,’

Evie argued. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

Rosie sighed. ‘You’re not a hundred, Mum. You’re thirty

seven. The style police won’t arrest you if you stop looking

like a dowager duchess just once in a blue moon.’ Rosie

picked up the gold eyeliner she’d been proffering and began

drawing a delicate line under her bottom lashes. The

result was startling, it made her eyes stand out even more

exotically than usual. ‘Anyway, Sophie’s mother is five

years older than you and she’s thinking of getting her belly

pierced.’

‘Ugh!’ Evie said. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse. What

will she look like? And is that what you want me to look

like - a wrinkled mother in belly tops, with peroxide hair

and a nose stud?’

‘No, Mum.’ Rosie unfolded her long, slender, black-clad

limbs from the bed. ‘But it wouldn’t do you any harm to

lighten up a little. You’re too young to start wearing

support tights and floral nylon two-pieces.’

‘I don’t wear clothes like that,’ her mother protested,

throwing a bottle of pearly pink nail varnish at Rosie who

caught it expertly.

“And they’re sheer sexy tights you’re wearing now, are

they?’ Rosie demanded.

Evie looked at the black opaque tights she always wore

on the rare occasions she dressed in her one and only

on-the-knee black skirt.

‘Touche,’ she said with a grin.

Evie thought of that now as she looked at herself in the

bathroom mirror, pale beige lipstick twisted up and ready

to go on. Maybe she was a bit boring. Thirty-seven wasn’t a

hundred, she knew that. But Evie had been acting as a

grown up for so many years, she’d forgotten how to live a

little, how to loosen up. Rosie couldn’t understand that. She had no idea what it was like to be a twenty-one-year old widow with a six-month-old baby girl. If you weren’t

mature in those circumstances, you went to pieces and

there wasn’t much time for worrying about the state of

your tights or what sort of eyeliner to use.

Dumping the lipstick back in her make-up bag, Evie

poked around in the bathroom cabinet until she found her

one bright lipstick: a raisin colour she’d got free with a

magazine and had never used.

She boldly coloured her lips with it, layering the rich

shade until her mouth was a dark and vibrant slash. It was

too much, she decided anxiously. She scrubbed it off with

toilet paper and slicked on her original colour.

Ten minutes later, she was ready. Her hair was a mass of

rippling curls to her shoulders which offset the long

sleeved black velvet dress with its gentle scoop neck. The

dress clung to her waist, flared out over the spreading hips

to mid-calf, and Evie wore sheer black tights and her mock

croc court shoes. No opaque granny tights tonight. She

smiled fondly at the thought of Rosie’s delighted expression

if she was here.

Evie wished she had some decent jewellery to set the

neckline off but since she’d been given the diamond ring,

all her other jewellery looked small and insignificant

beside it. The tiny opal pendant she’d bought in Spain

years ago looked ridiculous on its slender gold chain

compared to the magnificent engagement ring. So she left

her neck bare.

Her taxi had arrived and she was just leaving the house

when the phone rang.

‘Mum, hiya. I’m in Sophie’s,’ Rosie said. ‘I won’t be too

late.’

‘What’s “not too late”?’ demanded Evie, staring in the

hall mirror and dusting away a speck of mascara.

Her daughter sighed heavily. ‘Eleven … twelve at the

latest. You’ll be out, anyway, won’t you? What is it you’re

going to?’

‘Simon’s office party.’

‘What are you wearing?’ asked Rosie. ‘Nothing too

raunchy, I hope. We wouldn’t want Simon’s entire firm to

get collective heart attacks at the sight of you in your

gownless evening strap.’

Evie frowned. She hated the way Rosie mocked Simon’s

job. OK, loss adjusting wasn’t the most dangerously exciting

profession on the planet and certainly couldn’t match

what Tony had done for a living. But then, not everyone

could be a policeman decorated for bravery. And finally

Tony had been too brave for his own good.

Evie just wished Rosie would stop idolising her father

and make a bit of an effort with Simon.

‘I don’t have any gownless evening straps in my wardrobe,’

she said mildly, thinking of the perfectly organised

wardrobe in her room, with its small collection of classic

clothes. Evie believed in buying little and often, and she

loved the conservative elegance of tailored clothes. She was

wearing the most daring outfit she owned. ‘And if I did,

you’d probably have borrowed it long ago, you brat.’

‘Mum, if you had a gownless evening strap in your

wardrobe, I’d have a heart attack with shock!’ Rosie joked.

‘What are you wearing?’

‘My black velvet … and sheer tights, in case you’re

wondering!’

They both laughed.

‘I got my hair done, it’s sort of curly,’ she added.

‘Great.’ Rosie sounded enthusiastic. ‘Knock ‘em dead,

Mum. See you.’

She rang off. Evie sighed. She preferred it when her

daughter was home at night, when she knew where she

was and what she was doing. But Rosie was nearly eighteen:

her mother couldn’t lock her away in a plastic bubble.

Maybe that was why she felt so old, Evie thought,

grabbing her coat. Having a practically grownup daughter.

Or maybe it was just the sense of loss looming in the

future, when her beloved Rosie was so grown up she left

home and there’d be no more cosy evenings together,

watching telly, laughing over old Father Ted episodes and

having emergency snack breaks in the kitchen when they’d

sat up late talking.

She put one hand on the front door and was about to

brave the icy December weather when she stopped. Racing

upstairs, she found the raisin lipstick, slicked some on

her lips and stuck it in her handbag. Rosie was right, bless

her. She had to lighten up a little.

Simon greeted her at the door of the Westbury Hotel

function room with an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

Dressed in his dark suit, which made his sandy hair appear

almost blond, he looked palely handsome and Evie felt that

flicker of pleasure that sometimes washed over her when

she realised she was going to marry him. He was a good

man, a kind man. If only Rosie could see it. She slid a hand

inside his jacket, feeling his lean frame through the soft

cotton of his white shirt. All that squash kept him very fit.

‘I’m so glad you’re here!’ he said, sounding incredibly

relieved.

‘Are you?’ whispered Evie happily, as he helped her out

of her coat. The room looked so pretty, she thought,

decorated like the rest of the hotel in subtle festive greens

and gold.

‘God, yes,’ Simon exclaimed. ‘Hugh Maguire, the

Managing Director, arrived a few minutes ago absolutely