A Summer Fling (9 page)

‘Me too,’ said Raychel. ‘Fiver each?’

‘Count me in,’ said Dawn. ‘Let’s go mad and make it a tenner.’ She was throwing so much money away these days, what harm would another few quid do?

Malcolm watched them from the next section. It was quite obvious they were picking horses out for the National. He spotted McAskill rounding the corner.
This should be interesting,
he thought and waited. McAskill’s whole pet department was either reading the horse-racing bit of the newspaper or faffing about with their purses. He wouldn’t like that, however much of a flavour-of-the-month Miss Swaggering-Bottom was. As Malcolm watched James McAskill lift up the paper to read from it –
the
Sun
as well
– the smile slid off his face. The big boss and Christie were arguing about something, but laughing too. Open-mouthed, Malcolm saw Mr McAskill open up his wallet and hand some paper money over to Christie. The bloody woman was fire-proof.

Grace got home that night to find that Gordon was in the kitchen looking through a seed catalogue. He had a pad open at his side and showed her the list of fruit trees he was going to order. He was the only man she knew who could get excited over Bramley saplings. Poring over the pages of the brochure had put him in an exceedingly good mood; he even offered to make her a cup of tea. He hummed while he waited for the kettle to boil, but it was a smug sort of hum that implied to Grace he was up to something more than selecting plants. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.

That Friday night, Anna had a totally believable dream in which Tony came back and had just gone to the bathroom. She awoke the next morning waiting for him to climb back into bed. Then her brain unscrambled the confusion and brutally sorted out fact from fiction. The reality of her true situation hit her harder than ever and the pain in her heart was real and crippling. After making a lunch that she didn’t eat, she fell prey to temptation and walked past the barber’s shop. There, framed in the window, she saw Tony,
her Tony
, cutting hair with the ease of a man who had no troubles in the world. She didn’t know what she had expected to see. Him crying into his scissors perhaps? Looking drawn and pale as if he was a man who had made the biggest mistake in the world? Not only did she see Tony, and it had to be said his hair was looking darker and less grey, and that was a very bright shirt he was wearing, but there was Lynette Bottom in a crop top and jeans that exposed not only a tattoo of something along the top of the crack of her arse but the dainty lace of a black G string.

Anna switched the TV on to watch the Grand National for something to do, but she could barely see the screen for the tears that blurred her eyes and flowed and flowed and flowed.

Dawn had the television on for the big race in the background as she studied the brochure of wedding favour examples which was opened up on her knee. Sugared almonds always looked very pretty but they were horrible things to eat. Her teeth shivered just thinking about the taste. She thought that maybe she should wrap a single chocolate for everyone. It would be a far nicer and much tastier alternative to bog-flavoured nuts covered in sugar, and a damned sight cheaper. She badly needed to cut some costs on this wedding somewhere. She had spent nearly all her savings already and hadn’t even thought about flowers or the cake or the honeymoon yet!

The horses were getting into position. She closed the brochure in readiness to watch the race devotedly. Her ears picked up a name of a horse: June Wedding. She wished she’d known that one was running; that would have had to have been her choice. Too late now, obviously. Suddenly they were off. She didn’t watch horse races as a rule, scared to see one of them fall and hurt itself and have to be shot. Hell, those fences were exceptionally high. A horse fell at the first. There were thirty fences in all. By the time the horses had got to the Chair at the fifteenth, Dawn was leaning forward and shouting encouragement. The brochure had long since slid from her knee and all thoughts of almonds versus Thorntons had taken second place. Elvis Smith had the lead from the beginning. He was still in first place as they passed the Open Ditch, Bechers – for the second time – then at the Canal Turn he lost the lead to Chocolate Soldier. He slid into third place behind Mayfly but then Chocolate Soldier refused Valentine’s. Royal Jelly was belting up on the inside, then the enthusiastic commentary started cranking up her adrenalin levels. She hadn’t a clue where June Wedding was. It really was a shame she hadn’t bet on that; the jockey had been in peach too, the theme colour for her own wedding. The horses approached the Elbow. Elvis Smith was back in front after a mad spurt. Suddenly The Sun Rose tore up the inside, overtaking everything but the lead horse. The commentator was screaming by the twenty-ninth as there seemed to be nothing between Elvis Smith and The Sun Rose.

‘Come on, boy,’ Dawn screamed at the screen. ‘Come on, you grey sod! I could do with winning some money!’

‘Elvis Smith’s going to do it,’ said the commentator. Just as The Sun Rose burst past in the last nano-second and crossed the line, winning by a short, but definite distance.

‘Jesus H!’ said Dawn. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been as thrilled as that. Her heart was galloping as if she’d just finished running the race herself. She hadn’t ridden since she was seventeen though. It had been too painful to even think of climbing on the back of a horse and cantering across the Yorkshire countryside without her parents. Her dad had been so funny, pretending they were all in Oklahoma and yeehaaing like a mad cowboy. Maybe, when the wedding was over, she would visit the riding school in Maltstone and go for a sunny morning hack. Maybe it was time to get back on a horse and revisit a few happy memories.

The tiny Irish jockey on the elegant grey horse was shaking a triumphant fist in the air. He was talking to the camera in a fast, squeaky Irish brogue and no one could understand a word, not that it mattered. He’d led a rank outsider on only his first National to victory. The last grey to win was in 1961, the commentator was saying. No one was interested in the runners-up, although their names flashed up on screen. Dawn hadn’t a clue how much money that meant the work’s betting syndicate had won but she overrode her initial impulse to tell Calum about it. If he knew she was collecting that sort of money, he’d only put less in the wedding pot. So she kept quiet and sympathized with him when he came in from the pub, having put his money on Mayfly’s nose. She picked up her brochure and got back to the argument of sugared almonds versus chocolate truffles in silence.

She learned from the newspaper the next morning that June Wedding was the horse that had fallen at the first fence.

Grace was staring out of the window after putting all the Sunday lunch pots and pans away. Sarah and Hugo had gone off for an hour or twelve to look for some new conservatory furniture, leaving Sable kicking a ball about in the garden with her granddad and Joe. He was a lovely boy, very much like Paul, kind-hearted and quiet, happiest with his nose in a book or scribbling in a pad.

Gordon had been in a very good mood this weekend. Too good a mood for comfort. He’d been smiling non-stop all weekend. He smiled when he went out to the Legion on Friday night and he had smiled and been Mr Jovial all the way through to Sunday lunch. It wasn’t a nice smile though. There was something about the way it sat on his lips that disturbed her.

She was still trying to work out what Gordon could possibly be up to – because as sure as eggs were eggs, he
was
up to something – when Laura handed Grace a cup of tea and interrupted her thoughts.

‘Mum? Hello! Tea!’

‘Oh sorry, love, in a world of my own there.’

‘So much for Sarah being an hour. She’s already been over two,’ said Laura, joining her mother watching through the window as Sable stormed off in a little strop because Joe hadn’t passed the ball to her. ‘At least you’ll have a break for the next couple of weeks while they are away abroad having their Easter holiday.’

‘She’s pregnant,’ said Grace. ‘She needs as much help as I can give her.’

‘I’m surprised she didn’t ask you to look after Sable while they went abroad by themselves,’ said Laura with a tut.

Grace didn’t volunteer that Sarah had actually asked her that and she had replied that she couldn’t take time off so soon in her new position. Sarah wouldn’t have asked her father then, knowing well in advance what his answer would have been. He didn’t mind an intensive half an hour playing with his granddaughter, in a way he had never played with his own children, but he would never have agreed to looking after a child single-handedly during the day while Grace was working.

‘She shouldn’t have got pregnant again if she couldn’t cope,’ continued Laura. ‘We all know she’s having this baby to cement up the cracks in her marriage.’

Grace didn’t comment, but she knew Laura was right and it saddened her so much.

‘You know she’s expecting to go straight back to work after the birth and for you to look after the baby, don’t you? She and Hugo are banking on you getting early retirement as soon as possible.’

‘Well, they’re going to be rather disappointed,’ said Grace with a heavy sigh. Yes, she knew that if she ever gave up her job, her workload and domestic drudgery would triple. God help her when she was eventually forced to retire.

‘If Sarah and Hugo can afford all those fancy holidays, I can’t see why they don’t employ a nanny,’ said Laura with another tut, then she thought for a second and answered her own question. ‘Well, I suppose I can, if I think about it. She’s not going to let another woman in the house when she’s all pregnancy-fat and risk Hugo’s eye wandering again. Where’s she off to for Easter? Let me guess – Benidorm?’

Grace laughed. She knew Laura was joking, seeing as Hugo had dropped it into the conversation at least fifty times that they were using a five-star hotel in Lanzarote as their base while they looked around the island with a view to buying a property out there. Hugo was a snob of the highest order, and Sarah wasn’t far behind him these days. They were both very concerned with having bigger, better and more expensive things than anyone. Grace hadn’t a clue where that trait in Sarah’s personality had come from – Paul and Laura weren’t materialistic at all.

‘They’ve got a day flight too, so I just hope Sable doesn’t get too restless.’

‘Sable is a brat,’ said Laura. ‘She’ll kick up, of course, and annoy everyone on the plane and Sarah will see it as her “naturally expressing her feelings” and praise her for it.’

Grace nodded. She felt guilty even thinking it but Sable was quite a difficult child to love. She was spoiled, rather like Sarah. But that had been Grace’s own fault.

Sarah hadn’t been old enough to remember her real mother when she died and Grace had tried to make up for that by indulging her too much. Add to that all the pretensions that Sarah had acquired since marrying the stuffy, arrogant, workaholic company director, Hugo, and she had become a bit of a monster. Grace loved all her children, but increasingly she felt that Sarah looked down on her and, yes, it hurt.

Laura took a long sip of tea. ‘Have you seen Paul recently?’

‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘And I’m seeing him next Saturday as well.’

‘Has he said anything to you?’ asked Laura mysteriously.

‘Anything about what, dear?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular,’ said Laura. ‘Just anything.’

‘He’s told me all about Rose Manor,’ said Grace.

‘Have you seen the pics? Lovely, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is, or at least it will be when he’s done all the work.’ Grace had no doubt of her son’s abilities to turn the wreck of a house into something lovely. He was a perfectionist, a hard worker with vision. She couldn’t have wished for a better son, not even if she could have borne her own. She had been only twenty-one when an infection in her womb had resulted in her needing a full hysterectomy. Then, by a cruel irony, she’d had to nurse Laura through the same just after Joe was born. At least her daughter had a little comfort in her memories of one child growing in her body.

They stood and sipped their tea some more, staring out at Gordon in the garden with the children. Both thinking on the same lines.

‘It’s ridiculous this Paul and Dad thing, don’t you think?’ said Laura wistfully.

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ said Grace. ‘I wish I could. I can’t even broach the subject – he just walks out of the room.’

Joe suddenly fell to the ground, clutching his head and crying hard which wasn’t like him at all. He was a hardy lad and not at all given to tears. Laura rushed out.

‘What’s the matter, love?’ called Grace a few steps behind her daughter as Joe cuddled into his mum’s shoulder.

‘He’s all right,’ said Gordon and grabbed the boy’s arm. ‘Come and play, Joe.’

‘Gordon, what happened?’ asked Grace.

Joe struggled against his granddad’s grip.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Gordon in that ‘don’t-make-a-fuss’ voice of his.

‘He’s bleeding, Dad. What happened, sweetheart?’

‘Sable threw a rock at me,’ said Joe.

‘Didn’t,’ said Sable with her tongue pulled out. She was so like Sarah when she was little. All blonde corkscrew curls and watery blue eyes – a perfect picture of innocence.

‘Come and play football and stop being stupid,’ said Gordon, pulling Joe away from his mother’s embrace.

‘Let him go, Dad, he’s hurt,’ said Laura.

‘He’s not
that
hurt,’ barked Gordon. ‘He’s going to carry on playing football. Stop crying, Joe. Here, kick that ball.’

Instead though, Joe sprang back to his mother’s arms.

Gordon snapped nastily, ‘For goodness sake, stop mollycoddling him. He’s all right. Joe, come back here and kick this ball.’

‘I don’t want to play any more,’ said Joe.

‘KICK THIS BLOODY BALL!’ yelled Gordon and stabbed at the ground in front of him with a determined finger. Laura felt her boy wince and she tightened her arms around him.

‘Leave him alone, Gordon,’ said Grace. ‘The boy’s hurt. Look at his head. Sable, I am going to tell your mummy what you’ve done to Joe when she comes back.’