‘
That’s what you get for fornication outside marriage
– and under my very roof, too!
’ I heard Aunt Nan’s voice say in my head, though more in sorrow than in anger. I expect she knew I couldn’t help myself last night – and neither could Ivo.
Then something – some instinctive knowledge of loss – made me spring out of bed and rush to my studio window overlooking the back garden. The red Jaguar had vanished.
Downstairs Flash looked at me accusingly.
‘Not you, too!’ I told him, fondling his ears. ‘I’ve already been ticked off by Aunt Nan. I don’t suppose Ivo told you why he left so early or where he’s gone?’
Flash thumped his tail then asked to be let out, and that’s when I spotted the note Ivo had left, stuck with a dolphin magnet to the front of the fridge.
It said he’d left for Stratford for a few days because he needed to be alone to think things through and he was so, so sorry about what happened … but not as sorry as I was when I read it! If he ever apologised for touching me again, I’d
hit
him.
And just to add insult to injury there was a PS: ‘Could you possibly go in and feed Toby while I’m away?’
Just as well I knew where he hid the back door key. The key to his heart was another thing entirely. I think he’d thrown that one away.
‘“Tansy darling, I’m so, so sorry
–
I really didn’t mean that to happen!”’
Bella read aloud.
‘“I wasn’t thinking straight and I need some time on my own to work things through, so I’m going off to Stratford and I’ll ring you later – if you can forgive me. Ivo.”’
She looked up at me. ‘He does call you “darling”,’ she offered consolingly, but she was clearly clutching at straws. I’d poured the whole sorry tale into her ears the moment she’d arrived, of course, and we were still sitting in the kitchen, even though the clock was inexorably ticking towards opening time.
‘He’s a luvvie,’ I pointed out. ‘I expect actors call each other “darling” in every sentence. No,’ I sighed heavily, ‘I’ve fallen in love with him all over again, but he’s made it plain he only sees me as a friend, and I know last night it was only the shock making him look for comfort.’
‘Yes, and
wha
t a shock! I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me about his wife being unfaithful all this time – or exactly how much you were seeing of each other.’
‘We saw an awful lot more of each other last night,’ I said, with a slightly hysterical giggle.
‘Tansy!’
‘Yes, OK – I didn’t tell you about his wife, because it didn’t seem like my secret to tell.’
‘I can’t imagine why she ever looked at another man when she had Ivo,’ she said frankly. ‘He may not be my type, but still –
phwoar
!’
‘That puzzled me too, but she seemed to have been a very insecure person and I think she just needed the reassurance that she was attractive, because she kept putting in the diary that she loved Ivo and didn’t want him to find out.’
‘But then to abort the baby just so she could get a part in a soap series – it beggars belief!’ Bella exclaimed.
‘It may not even have been his baby, but that doesn’t make it any easier for him.’ I paused. ‘Bella, I was sure he was still in love with her, despite being angry when he found out about the affairs, but now I don’t know what he’s feeling.’
‘Probably neither does he, that’s why he’s gone away,’ she suggested. ‘It’s just a pity he didn’t hang around long enough to talk to you before he left.’
‘“Goodbye”’ would have been quite nice,’ I agreed, ‘but if sleeping with me was just a search for oblivion, then he probably regretted it as soon as it was over and couldn’t wait to get away. Now I expect he’ll tell the Management he’s moving straight back to Stratford and he may not even keep the cottage on at all.’
‘That’s it, look on the bright side! But I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Bella said, even though I thought she secretly agreed with me.
Then something occurred to her. ‘Did you … you know, use
protection
last night?’ she asked.
‘I – no! I never even thought of it! It was all a bit … sudden. And Ivo wasn’t thinking at all. But I’m hardly going to get pregnant from a one-night stand after what they said at my fertility MOT, am I?’
‘I suppose not,’ Bella agreed, ‘but there’s more than pregnancy to worry about and you should be more careful.’
‘It’s not exactly like I make a habit of sleeping around!’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, then added dreamily, ‘Neil would like children and the sooner the better really, so Tia has some siblings before there’s a huge age gap.’
‘I thought you were going to breed pigs, instead?’ I said, and she laughed.
‘Yes, those too! We’re going to have a day out at a rare-breed farm on Sunday with Tia, but I think we know what kind we’d like best.’
A faint hammering could be heard and she started and looked at the clock. ‘It’s well past opening time, and that sounds like a frantic bride on the doorstep!’
My
Slipper Monkeys
illustration turned into a giant doodle and was crumpled up and thrown forcefully into the wastepaper bin. In the end, I gave up altogether and went down and made tomato chutney, then racked the Meddyg. I’d just finished when Ivo finally rang me …
The conversation, such as it was, cannot be said to have gone well, partly because he began by apologising for sleeping with me.
‘Will you
stop
apologising?’ I snarled through gritted teeth.
‘But I know you must have felt as terrible as I did next morning,’ he said, adding insult to injury. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Probably too much Meddyg,’ I suggested.
‘I had knocked a lot back while reading the diaries, but that’s no excuse. And I’m really fond of you, Tansy. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.’
Too late, I thought, but didn’t say.
‘Look, I’ll be back on Sunday and we’ll talk it through then.’
‘I don’t think we need to talk about it at all,’ I suggested. ‘Much better if we just forget about it and move on.’
‘
Forget
?’ he repeated, as if this was a concept he found hard to grasp. Then he said, ‘At the moment I just need space, to sort things out in my mind. It’s like a kaleidoscope – you know, when you shake it and all the bits fall into an entirely different pattern from the one you started out with?’
‘Well, good luck with that, then,’ I said, wondering if he might be trying to shake
me
out of the kaleidoscope altogether.
‘How’s Toby?’ he asked after a slight pause.
‘He’s hardly noticed you’ve gone,’ I lied, because Toby had looked pretty put out by the time I’d remembered to go and give him his breakfast.
‘You’ll have to give him space,’ Bella said.
‘I know, but I wish he’d stop damned-well apologising for touching me! Anyway, I don’t suppose he’ll be in Sticklepond much longer and we can just pretend it all never happened until he goes.’
‘Easier said than done,’ she said, looking at me doubtfully as if she knew that the events of that night tended to replay themselves in my head at the oddest moments …
Florrie and Zillah Smith paid me a surprise visit after the shop had shut, so it was just as well I’d thrown myself into a frenzy of baking earlier and had fresh bara brith and some Fat Rascals made.
‘Zillah saw something in the leaves, and she said to me that we ought to come and see you,’ Florrie explained, settling herself comfortably at the kitchen table and reaching for the plate of Fat Rascals.
Zillah smiled, gold teeth flashing. ‘That’s right. There’s trouble at the moment, I could see that, but it’ll pass, eventually. Here are some chocolates Chloe sent, so you can stop eating the stock!’
‘How did you know I ate some chocolate shoes –’ I began, amazed, but Zillah just shook her head, big gold hoop earrings swaying.
‘Florrie, give her the …’ she paused, ‘
tonic
.’
‘Tonic?’
Florrie produced a little phial of some greenish substance. ‘It’s not for you, it’s for that actor next door that you’re so friendly with. He needs it.’
I took it dubiously and the contents shifted viscously when I tilted the phial.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Oh, heartsease, that kind of thing,’ she said vaguely.
‘I think
I
could do with some of that,’ I commented without thinking, then went slightly pink.
‘Oh, no, you’ll do – just be patient,’ Zillah said, and suddenly I was sure they knew what I’d been up to!
‘You want me to give this to Ivo when –
if
– he comes back?’
‘He will come back and I don’t mean you should
hand
it to him, of course, but bake it into something. It would make a nice cheese and herb scone.’
‘You’re quite sure it won’t do him any harm?’
‘On the contrary. Trust me, I’m a witch,’ Florrie said with a cackle of laughter. Then she dipped her slice of buttered bara brith in her tea, so that a fatty sheen spread across the surface.
Florrie reminded me before they left that Hebe had called a Chamber of Commerce meeting at seven that evening, which I went to more in search of distraction than anything.
And actually, it
was
distracting, because Hebe told us that to her deep regret (and obvious chagrin) she’d discovered that her nephew Jack Lewis was one of the members of the consortium proposing the Hemlock Mill retail park, and he was behind all the campaigning.
This made everything clear, since Jack, Sophy Winter’s wicked cousin, was a bad lot who had been exposed on TV a year or two ago, swindling elderly people out of their property. There was a big rumpus and he hadn’t been seen much in Sticklepond since.
‘Once Laurence had told me, I spoke to Jack,’ Hebe continued, then paused while we all imagined
that
scene.
‘The outcome is that he has now persuaded his fellow members of the consortium that selling the land to Force for Nature, so that it can be turned into a nature reserve, is much the best option. I have it on good authority that planning permission will not be passed for the retail park, particularly in regard to the fact that the expert the council brought in has now identified the site as a habitat of the rare blue-toed newt.’
‘I didn’t know there was such a thing,’ Felix said.
‘That is because it
is
so rare,’ she said.
Then we tossed a few promotional ideas around before Felix’s mobile went off and he had to dash off home. Poppy had gone into labour.
I had to go, too: I had a dog expecting a decent walk, and a peeved cat to feed.
It was noon next day before we heard that Poppy had had a little girl and both were doing well.
‘Yet another little girl in the village!’ Bella pointed out.
‘Perhaps Aunt Nan was right about there being something strange in the water,’ I agreed, and then we decided to club together to buy the baby something pretty in pink, since it seemed likely that once it started to toddle it would be inevitably attired in jodhpurs, gilet and paddock boots.
‘And so is Tia these days; she’s pony mad now,’ Bella said.
It distracted my mind from my own woes for a bit, because I’m already missing Ivo – and so is Flash, who doesn’t understand where he has vanished to. I did want Ivo to come back, yet I also dreaded seeing him again. I didn’t know how we could get over what we’d done and resume our friendship, which was clearly all that is on offer … and which seemed even more precious in retrospect.
And I’d hoped that Justin had
finally
given up on me, but no: he emailed to say he was now flat-hunting in the North because his move was imminent and he hoped to see me soon – there was no reason why we couldn’t still be friends and he missed me.
I hadn’t given him even a passing, irritated thought for ages, so that was hardly mutual. Besides, one old-lover-turned-friend was more than enough to cope with, and Justin had been pushed right out of both my head and my heart.
Toby moved in with us, though he did eat his meals in his own home. He’d simply appeared out of the darkness on Wednesday evening after we’d got back from our walk and stalked past us into the kitchen, where he took possession of a cushioned basket chair.
Flash and I were both disconcerted at first, but soon got used to the situation, though I was sure he’d abandon us when Ivo returned … if he ever did return.
But, his six-month sabbatical would soon be up, so he’d be off again soon, anyway, and presumably take Toby with him.
I felt restless and edgy on Saturday night, wondering if Ivo really would come back next day, and if so, what we could say to each other …
It meant it was late before I asked Toby and Flash if they would care to avail themselves of the garden before I locked the kitchen door for the night and went to bed, so it was a shock when, before I could lock it again, it was suddenly flung open and Justin barged straight in!
Flash leaped at this unwelcome intruder and in the ensuing pandemonium it became pretty obvious that Justin had had considerably too much to drink – especially when he stumbled and fell heavily into the basket chair on top of Toby.
Cat scratches seem to take for ever to heal, don’t they? But luckily Toby seemed unhurt, except in his dignity.
I calmed Flash down and he retired under the table with Toby. Then I turned to my unwelcome visitor, who was sitting staring owlishly at me from the depths of the basket chair, while sucking his bleeding hand.
‘What on earth are you doing here – and at this time of night?’ I demanded. ‘You didn’t drive here in that state, did you?’
‘No, Marcia dropped me off.’
‘
Marcia
?’
‘She’s putting me up and she’s been looking for flats for me too. I’m going to rent for a while, then we’ll see …’
‘That makes sense, because I think you’ll find yourself heading back to London in pretty fast order,’ I said. ‘Why’ve you come here?’