Wishful Thinking (21 page)

Jess said nothing but remained standing at Adam’s side. She felt as if her heart had skipped about a dozen beats before pounding back into action and making up for lost time. Before she could say anything, however, Ben pushed past her and ran towards Christian.

“Chris! We’ve been badger-watching. You should have come. We saw four of them – they were ginormous!”

Caught up in Ben’s excitement, Gray followed suit, pushing between Jess and Adam to stand at Ben’s side. “Well technically we only saw three, but we may have seen four,” he explained with that sober focus on accuracy which some intelligent young children feel is so necessary. “But they
were
pretty large – for badgers.”

“Lucky you,” Christian smiled and ruffled Ben’s already untidy hair. “I wish I’d seen them, Ben. I’ve got great night vision – I could have probably helped you decide whether that fourth one was a genuine badger or an imposter.”

“Imposter? Is that like a dinosaur?” Ben asked, causing everyone to laugh.

“Let’s get you children fed and off to bed,” Kate suggested, looking up at Jess as if for confirmation of her suggestion. “I’ve made spaghetti bolognaise for the kids. I thought we could all eat later.”

Jess propelled herself into action, hurrying to help Kate, but the latter waved her away. “I’ve got everything under control – why don’t you guys go and have a drink in the snug? Scoot kids – the first one to return to the kitchen with clean hands – and I’ll be inspecting them very closely – can help me grate the parmesan using my brand new gadget.”

Jess watched in frank admiration of Kate’s organisational skills as the three boys hurried off to the adjacent utility room to clean up. She made parenting and the running of this vast place seem so effortless. Adam had already moved off towards one of the rooms leading off from the huge kitchen and Christian came up behind Jess, placing an arm gently around her shoulders to draw her off in the same direction.

The snug was a cosy room on a slightly lower level than the kitchen, accessed by a shallow, stone staircase. It was small in comparison with the spacious kitchen though not with the rooms Jess normally frequented. Original dark beams abutted the whitewashed stone walls and ceiling and a blazing fire in the ancient wide fireplace not only warmed the room perfectly, but also cast a cosy glow over it. Jess looked around her appreciatively, delighting in the genuine oldness of the place. She had already run out of superlatives to describe this house. Every new room she encountered left her more ecstatic than the previous one.

Adam wrestled for a moment with a bottle of wine before pouring generous amounts into three oversized glasses. “So, how
was
the lovely lady, or is
she
going to jump out of the woodwork and surprise us all as well?” He asked Christian.

“Look, Adam – she turned up at my hotel without warning. She had a couple of drinks and sang a couple of songs for the pianist and then I took her back to her hotel. What was I supposed to do – get the bouncers to throw her out? She was the last person I expected to see in L.A.”

“Oh yeah? That’s funny, because she told
me
she was going; she told
Jess
she was going; she told the fucking
press
she was going – so why were
you
so surprised? And now you’ve left her in L.A. – on her own! Nice work, Chris.”

Jess glanced at Adam quickly in shock. She hadn’t expected such an angry outburst. He’s in pain, she thought. He’s jealous of Christian and he’s hurting because Amber clearly prefers Christian to him. But there’s something else there too. Fear?

“You should have sorted it, Chris.” Adam’s voice sounded calmer now, but also deeper and filled with reproach. “You had plenty of opportunities before you left. You know you’re the only person who can, but all you ever do is bury your head in the sand and hope the problem will go away – that is, when it suits you!”

Jess jumped up and began to leave the room. “I think I’ll go and help Kate with feeding the kids.”

Christian caught her hand and pulled her back towards him. “Please stay, Jess.”

“Oh yes,
stay
, Jess,” Adam echoed bitterly. “Now that he’s dragged you into this mess, you’ve become part of the problem, of course.”

Jess was shocked as much by his cruel tone as his words. “I think Ben and I need to leave.”

“No!” Christian insisted. “Or if you do, I’m coming with you. But we need to talk and you’re not leaving me again until we do so.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Adam muttered.

Jess tried to pull away but Christian held onto her wrist and, placing his other arm around her shoulder, drew her down beside him before answering Adam.

“In the first place, Adam, Tom is out there and there’s no one in a better position to deal with Amber than him. And if you cared that much about her welfare, why did you walk off and leave her at New Year when you knew she needed you the most? And for that matter, why did you abandon her in the clinic at Christmas?”

“You know why!”

Christian sighed. He looked from Adam to Jess as if weighing up all his different options before beginning his story. He reached out for his glass of wine, at the same time handing Jess’s glass to her. Before taking a sip, he chinked their glasses together and then raised his towards Adam, who was still standing at the fireplace, his own glass now empty. Christian swallowed some wine and proffered the bottle to Adam.

Unable to drink from her own glass because her hand trembled so badly, Jess replaced the goblet on the table and looked at Christian uncertainly. He took another sip of red wine before placing his glass next to hers on the waxed oak coffee table in front of them. Dutch courage, Jess wondered.

“Despite how she may come across, Amber really isn’t a bad person, Jess,” he began. “If you knew about the serial abuse in her early life, you’d have nothing but sympathy and admiration for her. What she is now, is a product of her bizarre upbringing. She suffers from a strange form of NPD – that’s narcissistic personality disorder, or at least that’s as much as we’ve been able to understand. Most of the time you wouldn’t even know – she just acts like any other celebrity who’s been catapulted into the limelight and is trying to make sense of it all. But the moment she starts to feel insecure, these bizarre behaviours manifest. Oh, she doesn’t become wild and out of control, she just gets certain ideas in her head and nothing, but
nothing
can shift them. She thinks if she wants something, nothing in the world will stop her from achieving it.”

Jess listened quietly. She knew the story of Narcissus from her classical studies. He was a youth of extraordinary beauty who, upon seeing his own reflection for the first time and not realising it was himself, fell deeply in love with it and, unable to leave it, ended his life in suicide. She assumed this medical syndrome must have something to do with destructive self-love. She would look it up later but now, needed to listen to what Christian told her about it.

He went on, “She needs to be adored – almost literally. As long as she feels she’s the centre of everyone’s universe, she copes very well…”

“
Your
universe, you mean!” Adam interjected.

“No!” Christian said firmly. “She would do exactly the same if she felt you had abandoned her.”

“But I
did!
” Adam shouted angrily. “That’s exactly what I did – and she didn’t travel five miles across London for me, much less five
thousand
miles!”

“Oh that! The only problem with that is: it’s not mine.” Adam looked at Christian with frank disgust. “She told me it was
yours
.”

Jess gasped and Christian snatched up her hand and squeezed it firmly.

“It’s definitely not mine – she told
me
it was yours!”

“Oh god,” she said faintly. “I think I’d better go.”

*

When Jess re-entered the kitchen, the three boys were just finishing their bowls of spaghetti, their faces smeared liberally with tomato sauce and talking to Greg who had just returned from checking on the animals.

“Mummy!” Ben greeted her eagerly. “Gray said I can sleep in his room tonight. He’s got bunks!”

Jess looked at him in dismay and then caught Kate’s eye. She suddenly felt close to tears. How could she disappoint Ben yet again by dragging him away when he was having such a good time? But she couldn’t stay here and be near Christian. She couldn’t cope with all the
mess
Amber had created between them. In fact she couldn’t cope with Amber full stop. She had never come across such a powerful adversary and didn’t have a single tactic to fight her.

Kate whipped away the boys’ empty plates and replaced them with bowls of home-made apple crumble and ice cream, which the greedy youngsters began to devour as if it was their first meal for a week. Jess carried their plates over to the sink and began to wash them, her tears splashing into the soapy washing up water and causing the bubbles to make tiny popping sounds and disperse.

“What’s wrong?” Kate whispered, coming up beside her.

“I don’t think I can stay here. I think I need to go back to London.” Jess sniffed.

“Tonight? Surely you’re not serious. Have you seen the fog out there for one thing? And for another, have you seen your little boy’s face?”

Jess turned her own tear-streaked face to Kate. “Yes, I know! I know! That’s what’s so terrible. He’s had the best day ever here and he’ll hate me for months for taking him away, but I can’t stay here. It’s all just too much.”

“What is it? Maybe I can help?” Kate asked, almost pleadingly.

“It’s Amber.”

Kate snorted in contempt. “That mad cow? I told Adam a year ago he was an idiot to get involved with her. Oh I know we’re all supposed to feel sorry for her and worship the ground she walks on, but personally I think she gets far too much of that and not nearly enough of the truth. Sorry, Jess, but you mustn’t expect me to be her number one fan when twice she’s tried to sell this place from under our feet.”

Jess sniffed back her tears again, but this time her expression showed surprise.

“But I thought the farm belonged to Adam?”

Kate released a little explosion of air through her lips. “Of course it does – but try telling that to her when she’s off in cloud cuckoo land. She actually sent buyers round once and an agent and surveyor another time – without a word of warning to us! She said she was acting in Adam’s interests. She gets some very strange ideas in her head sometimes. I’ve learnt to take absolutely no notice of her and I suggest you do the same.”

“I don’t think she’ll let me,” Jess said sadly.

“Well if I thought you were dragging Ben away and risking your lives driving up to London in this fog, I doubt if I’d be able to give you serious thought either. And that would be a great shame as you’re so much nicer than Amber.”

Jess smiled and walked over to the French window to look out. The fog had indeed come down very quickly as night had fallen. She could barely see beyond the tiled terrace. She wasn’t sure she would have the courage to make the journey up to London. She’d avoided night driving as much as possible since her frightening ordeal before Christmas.

The ordeal that had led to her meeting Christian for the first time! Somehow that seemed like a contradiction in terms. She’d found herself stranded in his parents’ lovely old hotel with him in much the same way as she was now stranded in this beautiful old house. There was something both comforting and disquieting about that coincidence. Maybe history would repeat itself and he would disappear again in the middle of the night, rushing off across London – or the world - to be with Amber at a moment’s notice.

He came up behind her now at the window and put his arm around her shoulders, his head nestling so close to hers that she could feel his warm, wine-scented breath sweeping her cheek. He began to rub her arm very gently as he gazed out beyond her at the foggy night. She thought if she moved her head ever so slightly to her right, she could kiss him. She had that same quivering, melting feeling his nearness produced in her and she wanted nothing more than to relax in his arms and let him take control. Not just control of the moment and her decision whether to leave or not, but of all the difficult decisions she might ever have to make. But she swallowed back her momentary weakness. It was all about self-preservation now, she thought
. I won’t let him use me as some sort of Amber-bait.

“It was snow, not fog, the last time you were marooned with me, remember?” He asked quietly as if tuning into her thoughts.

She nodded her head very slightly, her eyes still fixed on the impenetrable fog. “And you went racing off in the night to be with Amber.” Her voice sounded cold and she heard him catch his breath in surprise though whether at her chilly retort or the iciness of her tone, she could not be sure.