Starting Over Read online

  And obviously the pleasure in belonging in Middledip would be short-lived if Ratty decided she was ‘out’. So vivid, so central. Hostility from Ratty would close the ranks against her, Angel’s friendship would shrink into a daytime thing when Ratty wasn’t around, Pete and Jos would merely wave as she passed. And she’d enjoyed being a part of a crowd with in-jokes and shared experiences.

  She’d actually begun to enjoy Ratty’s friendship, the talks over the babysitting, the van on the motorway with the trailer rattling behind. His friendship was pivotal to the rest.

  But she didn’t see what she could do to prevent it from coming to an end.

  She remembered how Olly had never let her be truly included with his friends, although he’d somehow contrived to separate her from her own. Sometime, Olly must’ve had a heart bypass. Which had made it easy to ignore the apology for his recent behaviour he’d left on her answering machine. Apology from Olly? That was a first.

  The ‘afterwards’ for Lucasta was in the village hall and they all walked there from the church together.

  Middledip owned a marvellous village hall, large and proudly kept up, with pairs of green-curtained French doors down each side. Today, blinding white tablecloths set off solemn lilies and the last of the gladioli. She thought of the gorgeously scented ruby roses at the door of Pennybun and Lucasta’s cheerful collection of daisies.

  The tea she was handed was too weak and she abandoned it in favour of more sustaining wine. Angel and Pete were across the room. Ratty, brows down at the son from Mill Hill, all rapid sentences and terse hand movements, in the middle. He appeared absorbed, but, as she ventured past in search of another drink, he leant out of his conversation. ‘Can I have a word, later?’

  She nodded. Yuk, he probably wanted to tell her exactly what he thought of her and she didn’t feel up to it. He’d accuse her of driving likely to endanger village dogs, failure to dash successfully to the rescue. He might even sue, because pedigree dogs were valuable.

  The caterers began to circulate little kits of plate, napkin and fork ready for the bun fight. Fine. Good opportunity. She glided four backward steps towards the green floor-length curtains, one sidestep and she was hidden.

  The French doors behind her opened smoothly and she was out, free. Car park, Cross Street, Port Road, skirt the Cross to Main Road, Little Lane, Honeybun. Safe.

  Staring at Ratty across her kitchen, she wondered how she could have been so stupid as to think that going home and discarding funereal dress would award her sanctuary. He’d simply come after her in his expensive suit and black tie, onyx cufflinks snicked in the cuffs.

  Inconsequentially, she thought about that dream. That dream. That hand, taking her to the heights.

  Ratty looked drained. He threw the black tie across a chair, tipped his chin to unfasten his top button and hung his jacket on the cupboard door. ‘I hate funerals.’ He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘Hate, hate, hate funerals.’ A dark curl peeped from his open collar.

  ‘Deadly,’ she agreed. Then screwed her eyes shut suddenly as she realised what she’d just said. But, seeming not to notice the howler, Ratty just dragged out a chair and flopped onto it.

  She supposed he must be waiting there for something, brooding, staring blankly at the knotty wooden table. ‘Coffee?’ she offered.

  A bored face.

  ‘Beer?’

  His face considered. ‘I’d really like a good, fat whisky. I don’t suppose ...?’

  She had only the silly, thimble glasses that’d been her grandmother’s and filled two to their fragile brims, wishing he’d get off his chest whatever he’d come to say.

  He rested his temple against his hand, heaved another huge sigh. ‘Poor Lucasta. I’m going to miss her like hell.’

  God. God, she was so hideously selfish, gearing up to have a row with Ratty if he turned arsey. They’d just buried Lucasta! A long, interesting life had ended, a bright and caring person faded to memories and here she was, jittery in case Ratty called her nasty names.

  Still, she chose a chair that kept the table between them. She licked her lips. ‘You must feel dreadful.’

  He refilled his glass. ‘God, yes. I’ve always had Lucasta to turn to. Her reality, her wisdom. She’d always make me feel better, listen, know the right thing to say.’

  ‘Yes. She had a gift for pointing you gently in the right direction.’ Uneasily, she watched as Ratty topped up his glass, rose to refill hers, then settled in the next chair. She jumped when he touched her hand, very lightly, with one fingertip.

  ‘When you rang, was I utterly bloody?’ He looked rueful.

  The beginnings of relief spread her shoulders. Oh joy, perhaps he hadn’t come to quarrel! ‘I’m so sorry about McLaren. But he just ...’

  He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Don’t! Don’t apologise any more, I should never have let you.

  ‘It was all me, Tess, my fault. I shouldn’t have let him escape to cannon into motorists and I should’ve taken him to the vet. But, with what was happening with Lucasta, I just let his brain swell or something until he lapsed into a coma, and told myself he was asleep.

  ‘Then you rang just when I was detesting myself most, so I took it out on you. It’s been such a crappy week.

  ‘Derry Meredith is a self-serving bastard. The funeral would’ve been sing-a-hymn-and-let’s-go-home if he’d had his way. I’ve fought him every step to get her a decent send off and paid for most of it. Can I switch to coffee? My head’s splitting.’ Ratty looked strained.

  She sent him into the sitting room. When she joined him, carrying a little circular tray with the cafetière and china mugs, a non-matching saucer holding two paracetamol, she apologised lightly. ‘Not up to Lucasta’s standards, I’m afraid. She always offered me tiny eggshell china cups and a gracious coffee pot.’

  Ratty left his blue moquette chair and joined her on the bandy little sofa. ‘Me, too.’

  Halfway down his coffee he evidently began to think about other things. ‘How’s the shoulder healing?’ Delicate but familiar, he hooked the neck of the grass-green T-shirt to one side. She imagined the brown, red and yellow flesh, and the scabs flaking off. Yuk.

  ‘Gruesome. Forgiven me yet?’

  Ignore it! Ignore his casual familiarity, his hot and gentle fingertips, his warm breath. It’s just his way and means nothing.

  She answered lightly, ‘I forgive you, if you forgive me for McLaren.’

  Side by side they sat on the softness of her sofa, he rumpling his suit, after-shave blending with his warm, comfortable maleness. Relaxing into his company she made a sandwich and fresh coffee, put some music on in the background.

  ‘So, that was your father,’ she observed.

  ‘Lester Arnott-Rattenbury,’ he agreed.

  ‘Not friends?’

  He shook his head. ‘We don’t always understand each other, it’s a different thing. I don’t dislike him but it’s difficult to feel warm. He’s looked at me as if I was an alien since I was about fifteen. He disapproves.’

  The little black curl that lay snugly in the hollow beneath his Adam’s apple moved slightly when he spoke. She moved her eyes up to his face. ‘Of you?’

  ‘Just disapproves, it’s what he does best.’ Another coffee cup emptied, he put it down on the table. ‘We don’t laugh at the same things.’

  She settled more deeply into the cushions. Ratty obviously wanted to talk; maybe Lucasta’s death had, in a way, made him lonely, needy of somebody to fall into the category between man-talk and pillow-talk. She prompted, ‘That’s sad, if you never laugh together.’

  He grinned up at the ceiling. ‘There was once ... I took my driving test the minute I could, but failed. You can imagine how pissed off I was! So, having a motor cycle licence, I bought a Reliant Robin.’

  She snorted with laughter. ‘Bet that impressed the girls!’

  ‘Actually, there was plenty of room in the back ... Anyway, the police stopped me one night in Bettsbrough w
hen there was a whole gang of people on board. I passed the breathalyser but gave them loads of attitude, so they took us all in; vehicle dangerously overloaded, blah, blah.

  ‘And they kept us there for hours! God, they must’ve had some axe to grind that night, frightened the girls to death, the bastards.’

  The music CD needed changing but she couldn’t be bothered to move; she was enjoying envisaging a young attitude-laden Ratty wowing the girls with his Del Boy Trotter-style three-wheel fibreglass van.

  ‘Predictably enough, I was released last. They impounded the three-wheeler, so I walked home and arrived about six o’clock, just as my father was getting up. And he just exploded! It was brilliant. He was absolutely on my side and made huge waves.’ He grinned again, savouring the memory. ‘He got onto a senior officer and let off real rockets about police officers with nothing better to do.

  ‘Following Sunday, my parents were entertaining friends at a boozy lunch on the patio – and up turns an inspector, to apologise.’ Ratty stuck his chest out, tucked an imaginary cap under his arm. ‘And he, personally, would ensure that there would be no repetition.

  ‘My father was propped up against the mantelpiece, clutching a massive whisky, listening intently. He considered his response carefully, then said, “It’s no wonder the children call you pigs!”’

  ‘No!’ Tess breathed in delight.

  ‘It was a magical moment in father-son relations. He’s OK but we’re not that close. I think he’s waiting for me to grow up. Sad. Long wait.’

  Late into the evening of keeping Ratty company in his unhappiness, Tess plucked up the courage to present him with what had been intended as a peace offering or a conscience salver. From a photograph supplied by Angel, with pastels on black paper, Tess had captured McLaren, long ears listening, tongue lolling from his wide doggy laugh. Feathery coat van Dyck brown and burnt sienna between the white, eyes brightened with a starburst into a knowing expression.

  She watched him stare. ‘Almost too painfully good,’ he murmured. And he dropped a kiss on her temple.

  He’d made himself at home, shoes off, feet on the table, head tipped back on the sofa cushions. She looked at his throat, the upward thrust of dark hair. Once, it had been one of her favourite things, when standing next to Olly, to look up at the smoothness of his throat and tiptoe to kiss it. One of her favourite things. Sometimes he’d twitch away, sometimes he’d accept the caress and rest his hand in the small of her back.

  To replace Ratty’s silence she began the latest instalment in the story of Olly, because she could always change the subject if he glazed over.

  ‘I rang Guy.’ He turned to listen; she tucked her feet up and burrowed sideways into the sofa to face him. ‘He claimed he hadn’t heard from Olly for ages. ’Course, he would say that. I threatened to insist on all my money back, which made him laugh, so I said I’d tell Lynette about his girlfriend.’

  ‘Foul play!’ He grinned. ‘Did he cave in?’

  She thought about Guy’s alarm, palpable even across the wires. ‘Immediately. Hell hath no fury like Lynette! So now I know.’ His eyes enquired, so she went on.

  ‘Apparently, in the last months before the supposed wedding, Olly met someone.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Dazzling, apparently. But more importantly, loaded, a company director with responsibility for a large IT department!’

  ‘Aha, a better bet?’

  ‘Tons better. And loads of consultative work to outsource, potentially lucrative. But, unfortunately, the contract proved to be a little over Olly’s head and he’d never admit it. So he just ploughed on, getting in a horrible mess and covering up.

  ‘Meanwhile, the wedding date loomed and he began to wonder whether I was the best he could do. Dazzling Director was, as you pointed out, a much better bet, so he hooked himself up with her. But, presently, Dazzling Director realised what a bollocks he’d made of her precious intranet. She shunted him off to a contract with a subsidiary north of the border whilst she tracked his errors.

  ‘Before long, he was axed, both his companionship and his services dispensed with, and his invoices ignored. Panic, panic, for Olly. And the loaded lady, muddied by his mistakes no doubt, wasn’t too fussy about spreading the word.’

  ‘Bad situation.’

  ‘Right. Funds didn’t materialise and other contracts were slow to develop, but Olly still had his lifestyle to be serviced. So, he thinks, maybe ditching reliable old Tess was an error of judgement. It might be naff, earning her living scribbling piccies for kiddies’ books, but it is a living and she owns her own house. He has a chat with good old James, gets half a story, steams up here with the mistaken impression he has leverage in the shape of a shared baby. Because he wanted somewhere to regroup. And where better than somewhere that’s free?’

  He shifted beside her. ‘You’re better off without him.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself.’

  Ratty linked his hands behind his head. ‘I don’t suppose you feel like letting me spend the night here?’

  Spend the night? Her heart tripped up, her mouth opened but her locked brain refused to supply any words. His smiling eyes held a message she knew she ought to be able to decipher, but the thumping in her chest spread to her head, confusing her.

  ‘I’d be no trouble,’ he coaxed. ‘But the thought of a comfortable bed is very attractive. Mine seems a long way away, through the cold, dark night.’

  She squeaked, stupidly, ‘But I’ve only got one bed!’

  ‘I don’t mind sharing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He watched her for a few more moments before his grin widened. ‘OK. Through the cold, dark night to my own cold, lonely bed it is.’ He began to gather what he’d left in a trail behind him: shoes, tie, jacket.

  She sat on for some time on the squashiness of the sofa. Wondering. He’d just been teasing. She supposed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mondays and Thursdays were village clinic days, up Port Road in a building used by various peripatetic health services. Angel wanted Tess, sitting at Angel’s kitchen table, chilled through with the Curse and legs like washed rope, to consult the GP there. ‘It can’t be right that you suffer like this every month, Dr Warrington will sort you out.’

  Tess made a face like a bloodhound. ‘I don’t like doctors.’

  ‘He’s really nice. Don’t be so defeatist!’

  When Tess finally made the effort to go a week later, she was pleasantly surprised by Dr Warrington, forty, blunt and kind, talking through her options with casual sympathy.

  After childhood ailments and before falling into the clutches of Dr Flowers, her parents’ GP, she’d rarely seen a doctor. Nearing retirement, never looking at her, Dr Flowers had spoken about ‘female workings’ and scribbled hasty prescriptions. She’d felt a flubbery mess.

  Much better was easy-going Dr Warrington, who listened and offered practical help. ‘There’s Mefenemic Acid, which works on the muscles of the womb, so there’s no weight gain or lethargy, I promise. Or, there’s the low-dosage contraceptive pill – what form of contraception do you use?’

  Her breath caught in her throat, sent a flush across her cheeks. ‘I haven’t, um, y’know, needed it. Recently.’

  ‘Might you?’

  She thought about Simeon’s onslaught, of getting tipsy, the possibilities. Or even if Ratty’s offer had been serious – which surely it hadn’t been – and she’d wanted to ... ‘Might be an idea,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s good protection. Doesn’t replace safe sex, of course.’ He could’ve been talking about three different ways to cook beef, with his direct looks over the desk, rather than the prospect of Tess admitting someone into her body.

  Clutching the prescription she’d need to go to Bettsbrough to fill, she felt hopeful and in control, and decided to skip in to Rotten Row to see how Toby was.

  Toby, she discovered quickly, was scabby, itchy, bored and looking for trouble and he’d found it in torm
enting Jenna, who was hugging her bowl of potato, fish and peas to avoid big brother’s thieving fingers.

  ‘No-no!’ she pleaded, red-faced, when Toby advanced on the high chair at the side furthest from Angel.

  ‘But it’s my lunch!’ howled Toby in an ogre’s voice.

  ‘No-naaaaah!’ Jenna shrieked, screwing her head frantically as Toby slunk behind her high chair to avoid Angel’s vengeful hands.

  Wading into ‘No-no-no!’, ‘Stop it, Toby!’ and renewed groans of ‘It’s my lunch!’, Tess intercepted the uncharacteristically horrid Toby, swinging him into the air. ‘Hey, what’s your problem, spotty boy?’

  ‘Madhouse! Madhouse!’ Angel wailed, frazzled, hair sticking up. ‘Toby still can’t play with other children and he’s bored out of his skull. Jenna’s fed up with being cooped up indoors, particularly with Toby being a demon from hell. But I can’t keep them apart!’

  This was where Tess came into her own, this was where she knew, smugly, she excelled. ‘Tess to the rescue! I’ll take him upstairs for a few minutes.’ She jogged Toby strenuously in her arms as she carried him up to his room. ‘C’mon, you, I need you.’

  ‘What for-for-for?’ he yelled, letting his head snap back with satisfaction at such delicious violence.

  ‘I need a new drawing of Nigel,’ she improvised. ‘Nigel with chickenpox, for a Get Well card.’ Behind them, Jenna’s tortured screeches subsided as she was left in peace with her potato and peas. ‘Where’s that Nigel? Where’s your pad? C’mon, fetch the crayons!’

  They snuggled together on Toby’s pillows. Nigel, perched on Toby’s legs, modelled and Tess began drawing a large, grumpy, sorry-for-himself Nigel, who had nasty itchy scabs exactly where Toby did. ‘In his ear, and up his nose,’ Toby stipulated.

  As the drawing progressed his interjections became fewer, his fidgeting stilled and, after twenty minutes, he let his head tip back in sleep. She eased away, leaving his pad propped so he could see poor old poxed-pig Nigel when he woke, and crept back downstairs to where Jenna avoided the facecloth by snatching her head from side to side and craning backwards.