The Year of Taking Chances (39 page)

It was the first weekend of April, and Larkmead had never looked more glorious, thought Saffron as she and Max drove into the village.
There was blossom on the apple trees, the
magnolias were in full bloom and the sunlight shone golden on the old stone cottages.
She parked the hired van outside Baker’s Cottage just as the baby gave two energetic kicks in her belly.
We’re home.

‘Yes,’ she murmured, as Max jumped down from the passenger side.
‘This is it, kiddo.
Our home for the next six months.
Aren’t we the lucky ones?’

She was nearly twenty weeks pregnant now and feeling lots of movement from the wriggly little person inside.
She put her hand on her belly, loving the ripples and jumps she could feel.
‘I
think the baby’s dancing,’ she called to Max, clambering out of the driver’s seat.

‘Let’s hope for his or her sake that my excellent dance-floor genes have been passed on,’ Max replied, moonwalking to the back of the van.

Saffron snorted with laughter.
She loved having Max in her life again.
To think they might have slipped past each other, lost each other because of one unposted letter.
Look at him now sliding
his feet backwards, arms held robotically, as if he was the long-lost brother of Michael Jackson.
‘It would be a devastating blow to humanity if the moonwalking gene stopped at you, my
love,’ she said solemnly and fished in her jeans pocket for the door keys she’d just picked up from Bernie.
Her
door keys, as of today – well, for the next six months,
anyway.

That morning she, Max and her parents had packed up her London flat and she’d waved a thankful goodbye to the neighbourhood kebab shops and litter, the yellow police signs and the traffic.
She was renting the cottage until the autumn, and after that .
.
.
Well, it was too early to say.
By that time, she’d be a different person – a mother – and she would have to make
some big decisions about where to live, and who she wanted to be with.
Right now she was buying herself six months of breathing space in a pretty country cottage with two really good friends
nearby, her parents half an hour away and miles of open countryside and fresh air on her doorstep.
Everything else could be figured out further down the line.

The cottage looked different as they walked up the garden path.
The frontage had been given a fresh coat of white paint, and Saffron could see through the window that someone – she could
guess who – had added colourful poppy-patterned curtains.
Apparently Bunty had had a word with Bernie about the state of the cottage – several words, knowing Bunty – insisting
that it wasn’t fit for a mother-to-be and her baby.
And, bless him, he’d been convinced to redecorate throughout, even clearing out some of the ancient furniture to make way for
Saffron’s bits and pieces.

She smiled at Max as she slid the key into the lock.
‘Shall we?’

‘If I wasn’t carrying this ton-weight of paperback books I’d carry you over the threshold myself,’ he said and twisted his head down to kiss her.
‘Both of
you.’

‘You so wouldn’t,’ she laughed, feeling deliciously swoony from the effects of his kiss.
She could kiss that luscious mouth for Britain, given half a chance.
Olympic Kissing
Team?
Yep, she’d be on that, no problem.

Light fell into the cream-painted hall as she pushed open the door, and the baby twisted and somersaulted again, her tiny watery acrobat.
Here we are.
This is the first house you’ll
ever live in, baby.
‘Come on in,’ she said.
‘Home, sweet home.’

The cottage already felt a different place – pristine and bright, with pretty new cushions on the sofa (Gemma again, she bet) and a neat basket of wood stacked by the hearth.
She could see
through the back window that the garden was full of spring flowers, and there was a wooden bench under a trailing honeysuckle.
She could already envisage sunny afternoons out there with a book and
her feet up, maybe a barbecue for their new friends .
.
.

‘Looks like a good fairy’s been round,’ Max said, as they went into the kitchen.
There was a vase of red tulips on the table alongside a white cardboard bakery box containing
lemon-drizzle cake, with further investigations revealing a slab of Cheddar and some smoked salmon, fresh orange juice, butter and milk in the fridge.
A note propped against the vase said:
Family day out in Southwold!
Will drop round this evening when we’re back.
Love from Gemma and Spencer x.

‘Is Gemma the dressmaker?’
Max asked, breaking open a packet of cookies he’d spotted behind the bread.
‘I like her already.’

‘She’s great,’ Saffron replied, taking a cookie from the packet.
Dressmaker, neighbour, friend, newest client .
.
.
It was going to be fun working together for the next few
months.

Hourglass Designs was going from strength to strength: a solid list of customers, with many more clamouring for appointments.
Such was the demand that Gemma had now roped in Gwen,
Caitlin’s elderly neighbour, as an extra machinist, so that they could keep up with demand.
Gwen had spent her entire working life at the knicker factory in Ipswich and was nimble-fingered
and competent, by all accounts.
She was also prone to bringing in home-made cake to work, which nobody was ever going to complain about.

Help had come from another unlikely source, too: Gemma’s husband Spencer.
Although he was still recovering from his accident and unable to return to building work just yet, he’d
taken it upon himself to pitch in with the Hourglass business: negotiating better deals with fabric suppliers and the courier firm, in the way he’d always done when working with timber yards
and builders’ merchants in the past.
He would hobble down to school to pick up Darcey, if Gemma was in the middle of something, and had even taken to cooking the occasional family dinner as
well.
‘He’s systematically wrecking all our pans,’ Gemma had grumbled down the phone to Saffron, ‘and you’ve never seen so much washing up in your life – he
seems to challenge himself to use every single utensil in the house.
Not that I’m complaining, though.
I wouldn’t dare.’

Meanwhile, Caitlin had changed her mind about selling White Gables and moving out of Larkmead, and was now officially on board as the Hourglass Designs web and tech expert.
Gemma had asked
Saffron if they could formalize their working relationship too, with a contract and a proper fee structure.
So, along with Bunty, this made a mighty total of two new clients on Saffron’s
roster at McKay-Flint PR.

McKay-Flint PR?
Oh yes.
Yet another excellent development.
After Saffron had returned to London the week before, she had met her friend Kate – the McKay of the organization – for
lunch in a King’s Cross gastropub, and over plates of beer-battered haddock and triple-cooked chips, Kate had made a proposition: that the two of them form their own PR agency together.
No
more Charlotte bossing them around, no more clients they didn’t like, no more unsociable hours and feeling guilty for dashing away to doctor’s appointments or children’s nativity
plays.
‘We’ll be our own bosses, with a hand-picked selection of clients we actually care about, working from our own kitchen tables, with the occasional high-powered executive lunch
like this one,’ Kate said.
‘I’m deadly serious about wanting to make a go of it.
What do you reckon?’

‘I reckon it’s a bloody fantastic idea,’ Saffron replied at once.
‘An absolute no-brainer.
Between us, we’ve got a ton of experience and loads of great
contacts.’
She grinned.
‘I think this deserves a celebratory pudding, at the very least.’

Over a slab of gooey treacle sponge each, they thrashed out a few plans.
Kate was already working for a couple of big-name TV stars and a friend of hers, whose first novel was being made into a
film.
Saffron was going to stick with Bunty and Gemma for the time being, but would be on hand to pick up small, discreet jobs when necessary and chat regularly for brainstorming and
strategizing.

‘So are we agreed then?
Shall we do this?’
Kate asked, as the waiter brought them a latte each and the bill.

Saffron held up her mug.
‘Here’s to us, and the best new PR agency on the block,’ she said.
‘In it to win it.’

‘In it to win it,’ Kate echoed, clinking her mug against Saffron’s.

And so Baker’s Cottage was to become not only Saffron’s temporary new home, but also a sister-hub of McKay-Flint PR.
Why not?
It would be fun to work with Kate, under their own
steam, and although that meant no official maternity leave as such, Saffron planned to work around the baby when he or she arrived, in a way that her job at Phoenix PR would never have allowed.
Now
freed from her previous contract, Bunty had already booked herself in for an inaugural client meeting the following Tuesday.
‘And then Bernie’s going to whisk me away for a few days at
the seaside,’ she said happily down the phone.
‘Hashtag Bunternie – what do you think?
We could be the new Brangelina.’

‘Mmm, inspired,’ Saffron said politely, although if Bunty noticed any doubt in her voice, she was too busy leaping ahead to a new stroke of brilliance to care very much.

‘Idea alert!
Maybe we could pitch for a new TV show starring me moving to the countryside, too.
Town Mouse, Country Mouse
sort of thing.
It could be
hilaire
!’

‘
Mouse
?
Bunty, nobody’s ever going to call you a mouse,’ Saffron pointed out.
‘Country Fox, more like.
Country Vixen.’

‘Country Vixen, yes, I love it!’
A hoot of laughter came down the line.
‘Wait, I’ve thought of something even better.
City Chick, Country Buntkin.
Buntkin
–
do you get it?
Like Bumpkin, but with my name in!
I think we’re onto something here, Saff, I really do.’

Yes, Bunty was certainly going to keep her busy for the foreseeable future, that was for sure, although this wasn’t such a bad thing any more.
Ever since Saffron had let rip with a few
home truths, the two of them had forged a new and better understanding, one with mutual respect.
No more dogsitting Teddy, the perfumed Pomeranian.
No more impromptu visitations or orders barked
down the phone.
Moreover Bunty had twice appeared very publicly in Gemma’s dresses now, winning reams of gushing coverage.
When your clients started giving each other such helpful leg-ups,
you knew you were onto a winner.

‘Cooee!
Saff, we’re here!
What a sweet little place this is!’

Ah, and there was the cavalry – her mum and dad – on cue as promised, to help unload the van.
‘Hello, welcome; you made it,’ she said, hurrying to meet them in the
hallway.
‘Come in, come in!
What do you think?’

While Saffron’s mum was exclaiming about the prettiness of the cottage, and what a lovely garden and, goodness, wasn’t it going to be heaven living here, she was green with envy, her
dad hauled in her desk and set it up in the second bedroom.
Then he and Max heaved in the bed and wardrobe and the suitcases of clothes .
.
.
and gradually her new home began to take shape.

She watched Max making her mum laugh one minute, and then patiently going along with her dad’s orders about the best way to get the bed up the narrow cottage stairs the next, and felt the
baby kick and twist and turn, looping somersaults inside her, almost as if agreeing.

I like him.

Me, too.
He’s a nice bloke.

A really nice bloke.

I’m glad we sorted everything out.

I’m glad there’ll be three of us in this family.

By now, a few boxes marked KITCHEN had been brought in, so Saffron went to make a pot of tea, cutting the lemon cake into slices while the kettle boiled, then foraging through the
newspaper-wrapped crockery until she found some side-plates.
Who knew how this would work out, her being here and Max still in the city?
He had his job to think about, and two other children he
loved, plus an ex-wife who was a pain in the neck, by the sound of things.
She, meanwhile, had a new life in the country to get used to, the uncertainty of freelance work, a baby on the way and the
whole daunting prospect of motherhood looming ahead.
It could still go either way.
Nothing was guaranteed.