Starting Over Read online

  Unfairly, Olly was now grumbling that Tess was lucky to have moved first and have the entire hassle behind her. Hadn’t that been his plan? Anyway, unpacking things she didn’t want wasn’t her idea of relaxation. She added the wok to the others hanging from the rack, wondering how many stir-fries people expected them to have.

  Sod it, she’d finish later.

  In a moment she was at the table in the deep blue of her workroom, picking up a pencil. The next book commission wasn’t to begin until after the honeymoon that Olly was organising. Somewhere hot and exotic, he’d promised, somewhere beautiful to walk entwined as lovers do. Bahamas? Scilly Isles? With a happy little hop of the heart, she sketched a cat in a wedding dress woven with ribbons, the dress she’d designed herself. Perhaps Africa?

  She checked her e-mail. One new message: Tess, no easy way to say this so will be direct. Given it loads of thought and the idea of moving in with you & your messy workroom has got to me. I’ve gone cold on the wedding … But probably not as cold as her heart as she read his words.

  But the casual I expect you will want to see to the return of the prezzies & whatnot had evoked a despairing, ‘I’ve only just finished unpacking all the bloody prezzies!’

  And, then, a whoosh of reality, as if she’d gone down too fast in a lift. Olly was jilting her, to use a melodramatic, old-fashioned word. How could he? Why? What was wrong with her? Was she messy? What had changed for the tall, sexy god who until the last weeks had held her and murmured about love? OK, things had been a bit cooler recently, she’d noticed that – but surely they were just wound up in anticipation of the big day? Was it she who’d wanted the greater commitment?

  If so, why had he proposed?

  And then her parents arrived, ready to attend her wedding on the following Saturday, and she had to confess with floods of tears her failure to keep Olly, to howl out the ruins of her wedding day.

  ‘The bastard!’ Her mother clasped Tess too tightly to the cushions of her chest.

  Her father, James, said very little to Tess, but he spent hours on the telephone dealing in a hushed way with guests and caterers, photographer and cars.

  Tess lay on her bed, very still.

  But later she overheard her father remark to her mother, ‘Olly must have had his reasons.’ He must. He must! And they must be down to Tess.

  And then she’d miscarried her baby.

  It had been safe inside her body and she’d let it seep out.

  Steaming cup in hand, she trod back up Honeybun’s winding stairs, opening her wardrobe door for the full-length mirror, shrugging out of her robe and nightshirt. She examined her nakedness objectively.

  Still a bit generous and soft.

  When she’d been thinner and tauter, Olly had gone from lust to indifference in a month.

  Last night, in distorted appreciation of her body, Simeon had snogged her half-senseless in a big muddy field.

  Men. She shook her head as she dragged out a fresh sweater and jeans. Who could understand them?

  She worked for the remainder of the night and into the day on a new wolf illustration, breaking only for coffee and a toasted sandwich.

  She watched from the window as Angel came knocking and she explored shades of blue for Slider from The Dragons of Diggleditch.

  Jos wandered up the drive and shouted for her. But hadn’t Jos, however worried-looking, stood by as Simeon Carlysle invaded?

  In anticipation of the delicious, plum Dragons commission she played with the opacity and fairy-tale colours of gouache and ink. A very thin gouache mix for fragility and delicacy. Ink for emphasis and line. She washed out her pens, turning on the lamp as daylight levelled out to create shadows.

  Even when Ratty escorted a sullenly hunched Simeon to rap the door, she paused only to watch them arrive and watch them leave.

  She was working. Working like she used to before her life took on the tacky quality of a ‘reader’s own story’ magazine confession – maybe she could sell her story some time, and make three hundred quid?

  But, just now, she was working.

  ‘Bloody Sunday. Fine day of rest.’ Face burning from the oven, Tess turned the joint, basted the potatoes and slammed the oven door. Her parents, judging from the piddling about she could hear going on in the drive with coats, bags and car keys, had just arrived for their first visit to Honeybun Cottage since she’d moved in. Like having a tooth out, it had to be done, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  She suddenly realised she hadn’t given the red wine time to breathe and snatched it up, flinging open the back door at the same time.

  Her father patted her shoulder. ‘Well, Tess!’

  ‘Hul-lo!’ Her mother, smelling of face powder and her brown hair blow-dried back from her face, kissed her cheek, glancing around. ‘The table looks nice! Are those Grannie’s glasses? Aren’t the chrysanths going on a long time, this year?’

  Her father tried to take the wine bottle from her hands. ‘Shall I do that?’ His hair, too, silvering now, was also combed straight back. The pair of them looked as if they’d been in a wind tunnel.

  Tess pushed down the twin levers of the corkscrew. ‘There, done it! Let me take your coats so you can sit down. Dinner will be about half an hour. Go through to the sitting room.’

  The sitting room looked lovely. She’d polished, and vacuumed –

  even the lampshade, even the cobwebs from between the beams. The fire burned behind the guard and more chrysanthemums glowed from the low table. She managed to settle her parents into the turquoise moquette chairs with sherry and coffee and more or less keep them there whilst she whizzed around in the kitchen. She hated it when Mari hovered, saying, ‘Should you be turning the meat?’ two seconds before she was going to turn it anyway.

  So she made the gravy, poking her head around the door to keep up her end of the conversation then rushing back to catch the gravy before it clamped into jellified lumps, until she could call, ‘Come through! Dad, can you pour the wine?’

  And the meat was tender and the potatoes crisp and everything was under control, except when Tess knocked over her wine. ‘Shit!’

  James blotted his shirt with kitchen roll. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Biting her lip, she picked up her glass. ‘Sorry, Dad, it has to be red wine, too!’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He patted her shoulder and went on with his meal as if he always wore a maroon patch over his heart on his honey-coloured golf shirt. And she knew that her parents really did want the best for her, even if they irritated her like toast crumbs in bed.

  Mari cut into her pork and said, ‘Red meat?’

  Tess gulped her wine. ‘If it is, it needs to go back in the oven.’ Then she laughed, to show she was joking. And suddenly remembered that James was supposed to be eating mainly white meat and fish because of his cholesterol.

  Over dessert, crumble made from apples from Lucasta’s garden, it was Mari who asked, in a suitably solemn, measured voice. ‘And have you heard from Olly?’

  ‘No. Would you like more custard?’

  James took up the baton. ‘Ever consider getting in touch?’

  ‘No. I’ll make more coffee in a minute. Or tea.’

  Mari laid down her spoon, having cleared her plate in a way that was ladylike but deadly efficient. ‘We were thinking – you mustn’t blame Oliver for everything.’

  Tess felt her throat dry. ‘I didn’t ask him to jilt me and run away.’

  James reached across the table and covered her hand. ‘We do appreciate how you feel over that, but don’t blame him for … everything. Everything else. He didn’t make you lose the baby. Nor make you ill.’

  Mari looked anxious. ‘What we mean, Tess, is we’d be happier if you’d talk with him and get rid of some of your bitterness. Then you might not feel this need to seclude yourself over here. You might move nearer home again, to us, then we needn’t worry so much.’

  Tess began to gather the plates, knowing her hand movements were too fast and unc
oordinated; in a minute one of the dishes would crack. ‘You needn’t worry at all and I’m hardly the globe’s diameter away. Let’s have a walk before you go.’

  It was a brisk walk because Tess set the pace and she needed exercise before she exploded with frustration. God, must they be so bloody reasonable about Olly? If she wanted to blame him, she would!

  Rain flung odd spots against their faces, golden leaves spinning around their ankles and the wind in their ears as they marched to the Cross and up Main Road towards Bettsbrough.

  And Tess wondered how quickly she could point her parents towards home.

  ‘Guy, you’re a pain in the arse.’ Tess sighed down the phone. Wintry rain skittered against the kitchen window like handfuls of gravel. Hardly had she got her parents out of the door and Guy was on the phone! She’d wanted to chill out. Well, that was out of the window!

  ‘Just for a week, Tess, I’ll pay you straight back.’

  Tess wondered how many times it had happened now; Guy finding himself short and, reluctant to share the information with his wife, Lynette, approaching Tess for funds. Which, when Lynette discovered it as she always did, would make her resent Tess even more.

  She sighed again. But Guy was her cousin. All those climbed trees and teenaged exploits counted, the learning together, the lying for each other.

  ‘The bank is being bloody,’ he explained apologetically.

  ‘And you’re mystified that there’s no automatic unlimited overdraft for an unspecified period without collateral? Particularly as you’re on their staff?’ Tess couldn’t help a gurgle of laughter. Poor old Guy, life was tough on disorganised self-servers, sometimes, but Tess loved him. And it wasn’t his fault her mum and dad had made her feel stressy. She capitulated. ‘I’ll send you a cheque.’

  ‘Thing is,’ – she could picture Guy rubbing his angular nose at having to go into boring detail – ‘I need a couple of hundred cash straightaway or I can’t meet the mortgage. I was hoping you could transfer it online ...’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not hooked up to the Internet here, yet. Out of luck, Guy.’

  He wheedled, ‘I’ll take you to the cash machine.’ She pictured the beginnings of his triumphant grin.

  ‘You do that,’ she agreed. Let Guy come out of his way. If she was going to be two hundred pounds out of pocket and in Lynette’s bad books again, let Guy drive the necessary miles.

  Waiting for the sound of his car in the lane an hour on, she finished her salad and cheese and thought about her Dragons illustrations. They were going well; it had seemed a big commission to dive into, but hadn’t it been ideal? A project that carried her along into a different world where she needn’t worry about people.

  People. After the Simeon Carlysle debacle they’d lain in wait for her. Angel to commiserate, her pretty mouth an O of dismay. ‘Ratty and Jos just standing there like imbeciles! “We didn’t realise she was in trouble!” Would you believe it?’

  ‘I’m not sure I do.’

  Angel half grinned, lowered her voice. ‘Did you know Ratty went for him? Smacked his head on the side of a van! But he wouldn’t have left you in that situation intentionally – he said it just looked like a bit of passion, from behind. He’s sorry you were ... upset. He did go looking for you but you seemed to disappear.’

  Disappearing was something she was good at.

  But all of this was irrelevant when Tess, two hundred pounds poorer, sat in the passenger seat of Guy’s car feeling the wheels spin impotently beneath them in soft, saturated soil. ‘You just about take the bloody biscuit,’ she sighed flatly, plaiting the front of her hair. ‘Doesn’t your brain ever engage? “Let’s stop, I need to talk,”’ she mimicked. ‘“Here will do.” Straight through a gateway and into a ploughed field, regardless of the fact that my warm, dry home is only a couple of miles away!’

  Biting his lip, every emotion typically visible, Guy looked glum. However attractive he was, with his sandy hair and flat-planed face, he had an unparalleled affinity with trouble. After almost an hour of confidences, where Tess learned all about his expensive girlfriend and suspicious wife, they were stuck fast in good English farming soil.

  ‘If you ever thought,’ she griped, ‘it would make the national press.’

  Guy sighed. ‘Now what do we do?’

  Ratty backed the breakdown truck into the gateway, glancing left-right at each post half-hidden by the hedge. He secured the chain, checked clearance and, in a minute, had heaved Guy’s car backwards onto solid ground. He grinned through the window at Tess standing in the lane, shoulders hunched against the weather. The funny woman had a talent for calamity.

  ‘Another incident in a muddy field? At least I was here for you this time.’ The wrath in the startling eyes made him laugh out loud.

  ‘My cousin has the intellect of donkey crap.’

  He leant his elbow on the sill. ‘Are you continuing your journey with your friend, ma’am, or do you require a ride to the village?’

  Indicating her choice by suggesting a bizarre route home to her sheepish-looking cousin, Tess climbed into the cab of the breakdown truck. Ratty watched her fight the seat belt with tight, angry movements.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said coldly, ignoring Guy as he waved goodbye.

  Ratty put the wrecker in gear. ‘Cousin, eh?’

  Tess nodded, gingerly fishing long skeins of damp hair from her collar.

  Ratty grinned. ‘Usually when I have to fish couples out of muddy fields they’re –’

  ‘Well, we weren’t! With a wife, a girlfriend and an overdraft, Guy’s pretty busy already!’

  Chapter Five

  Angel, one of the least artful people Tess had ever encountered, had been quite open about her mission to winkle Tess out of her shell. ‘Come round!’ she insisted. Often. ‘I get so fed up stuck at home with the children.’

  Slowly, it had become routine for Tess to call at the cottage in Rotten Row at one side of Cross Street, a home full of sunshine colours and children’s things. She felt at ease there, and sheltered. The children were easy, too young to judge, speculate, expect. Jenna, walking properly now, was happy with cuddles, food, the noisy entertainment of clapping songs.

  As she was asleep now, Tess played with Toby on the floor with Duplo, listening to Angel, ever busy in the wholesale, harassed way of mothers of two small kids, wielding her iron or filling the freezer and churning out cameos of the village into Tess’s receptive ears.

  ‘She’ll have you broke, that really blonde woman. Lives up in the new village, always at your door for donations.’ Or, ‘You know Tubb from the pub? You do, he’s got that wiggle of hair at the front, here ...’

  The iron would clatter back onto its stand as Angel shook a pillowcase out with a snap and folded it briskly. With a sigh, she turned to the awful task of ironing work jeans. ‘Don’t you think Jos is lovely? Quiet compared to the others, but lovely. Poor soul, when his parents split up neither of them wanted him! He’s been brought up by his grandmother. He keeps geese in his garden, they’re ferocious.

  ‘You couldn’t be horrible to Jos. He’s not as close to Pete and Ratty as they are to each other – it’s buy one, get one free with them.’ Having conquered the jeans she began folding sleepsuits. ‘’Course, it’s cars, cars, with the lads. No, cars and women. And the women are the lesser commitment – except Pete and me. Ratty says our marriage is the only half-decent one he knows. He’s good as gold, really.’

  Tess looked up from the Duplo castle she was creating for Toby. ‘Really? Ratty?’

  ‘Generous, funny. Quite balanced.’

  ‘Presumably by a chip of equal size on each shoulder?’

  Angel laughed delightedly, no doubt saving that one up to share with Ratty later, flicking a shirt round the ironing board. ‘When he’s good, he’s great; when he’s bad, he’s dire. But he can be really, extraordinarily kind – look how he is with Lucasta. He’s amazingly successful with women but he doesn’t involve Pete – probably because he knows
I’d kill him. Apart from the garage and his place up Ladies Lane, he owns three houses in the village. Buys them, rents them out. He’s a right moneymaker and he says he’ll leave it all to Toby and Jenna if he never has his own offspring. He loves the kids.’

  Tess began to select square blocks for her castle’s crenellations. ‘They’re gorgeous children. I’m becoming one of those sad singles who tag themselves onto a family.’

  ‘Oh well. I’m glad you picked this family.’

  ‘Don’t want a castle any more,’ said Toby, yanking Tess’s careful crenellations off again. Just returned from playgroup, he really needed a nap but was resisting.

  ‘Draw him something,’ Angel suggested, stowing the ironing board away. ‘There are crayons and things in that yellow box.’

  ‘What shall I draw?’ Tess looked enquiringly at Toby, his sturdy blondness, peachy skin and intent expression.

  ‘My pig.’ Toby carted a toy pig everywhere by a string that once used to activate a voice. ‘Draw Nigel.’ And he posed the soft toy, flaccid and drunk with too much hugging, on the carpet.

  Full-length on the itchy smoky greyness of Angel’s woollen carpet, head supported on hand, ponytail looped over a shoulder, Tess took the pad that Toby plonked in front of her, feeling the familiar smoothness of paper under her fingers, and drew Nigel with swift, minimal strokes of soft blue crayon. Snout, trotters, wiggly tail, one bent ear.

  Toby hotched closer. ‘Draw Nigel playing football!’

  And, wax crayon, blunt pencil and brushy old felt pen her tools, she drew Nigel playing football in the England strip, porcine face pursed in endeavour. Running, heading, flat out in agony after a bad tackle.

  ‘Now driving,’ Toby demanded, breathing hard over the page, getting his head in the way.

  Angel, a pile of clean clothes in her hands, craned to see the herd of Nigels cavorting about the large, cheap sheet of paper. ‘Oh wow! That’s so impressive! Aren’t you talented?’ She lingered to witness Nigel appearing on the page, a too-small sports car careering away with him, ears and pendulous cheeks pushed back by the draught, trotters protruding from T-shirt armholes and braced in panic on the steering wheel. Absently, she drew two tiny tattoos.