A Winter's Wedding (6 page)

‘Well, let’s see what Arabella says when she comes back tomorrow. And if there’s enough room, maybe we could put Daisy in next month? But definitely not that shot of her in the rubber corset. I feel a bit ill just looking at it.’

They all burst out laughing again. Emily wasn’t considered prudish, but the way she was cringing at the pictures of Daisy was truly hilarious.

And so the button-maker’s cottage was selected for the cover, all other business was duly conducted, and the staff and various contributors were very happy. Everyone had something of theirs included in the next issue. And Emily had selected two of Jane’s other shoots for upcoming editions. Unfortunately for Daisy Churchill, though, her feature didn’t even make the grade for the bathroom supplement. Petra was right: they simply couldn’t hand Daisy twelve pages of free publicity when she hadn’t even gone to the trouble of buying a second-hand teaspoon to fit in with the image of the magazine. They would be a laughing stock in the magazine industry if they used her.

‘Thanks, everyone. Thanks so much for bearing with me today. I think Arabella will love what we’ve done,’ Emily said gratefully when the meeting ended. Then she rushed straight to her phone. The printing company was given the necessary instructions just minutes before the cover deadline.

Meanwhile, the other pages were digitally composed and finalized by the layout team on the floor below. Emily phoned around to cancel the advertisers’ lunch, sent flowers to their offices, and finally dashed over to Arabella’s house to check that she hadn’t bled to death.

‘Come in, dear Emily; it’s so good to see a friendly face,’ Arabella chirped gratefully. She was still clutching the bloody towel to her arm.

‘You didn’t kill him, did you? He’s not buried under the patio?’ Emily asked when she saw the state of the place.

Every vase and ornament in the house had been thrown, broken or smashed to pieces. At least one window pane was cracked. Arabella was all cried out, with big dark circles beneath her twinkling brown eyes. And her perfect bob was tousled and greasy.

The two women stood facing each other beside the fireplace.

‘You poor love. It’ll be okay,’ Emily said uselessly.

‘No, it’s all over,’ Arabella wept.

She did look terrible. Emily guessed Arabella had been up all night, drinking wine and venting her anger on the furniture.

‘He’ll come back again,’ Emily soothed, giving her friend a hug.

‘No, he won’t come back. I know it. We said some awful things to one another, Emily – unforgivable things. Well, mostly it was me saying the unforgivable things. But he didn’t look all that bothered. I think he doesn’t care about me any more, one way or the other. That’s worse than hating me, isn’t it?’

Emily shrugged. She supposed that it was. But what could she say? ‘You’re a strong lady, you’ll get over him,’ she said.

‘No, I’ve ruined everything,’ Arabella sobbed quietly.

‘Right, you go and get tidied up,’ Emily told her friend gently.

‘What for? What’s the point of being glamorous, anyway?’ Arabella asked dramatically. ‘Nobody cares how I look.’

‘Nonsense; we all admire your style in the office. Anyway, it’s for yourself, for your own self-esteem,’ Emily said firmly.

‘Sensible Emily to the rescue once again,’ Arabella laughed sadly. ‘If I knew how to make a trumpet noise – like in those films where the cavalry appears on the horizon – I’d make one right now.’

‘I’m serious. You’ll feel so much better after you’ve had a hot shower and brushed your teeth and put on fresh clothes,’ Emily said kindly.

‘Will you make me some tea first? I’m parched,’ Arabella said, flopping on to the sofa. ‘All that wine has left me really dehydrated.’

‘Yes, of course I will.’

‘And a nice tomato sandwich with salad cream?’

‘Yes, surely, if that’s what you want.’

‘And will you take me out somewhere later and get me blitzed?’

‘No, I will not,’ Emily said. ‘You need to rest your arm.’

‘Never mind my arm. I want to get so drunk I fall over in the street,’ Arabella said darkly. ‘I want some young hunk to take advantage of me.’

‘And what good would that do? Better to phone a divorce lawyer, or whatever they’re called, and ask for some advice,’ Emily said gently.

‘What do you mean – a divorce lawyer?’ Arabella gasped.

‘I mean, only if you’re serious about it all being over. You said that David said that he wasn’t coming back,’ Emily reminded her patiently.

‘Yes, that’s right. I did say that.’

‘Well, then. Better to be organized.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it, though,’ Arabella said in a panicky voice.

‘You just told me he did mean it.’

‘I wanted you to disagree with me,’ Arabella sobbed.

‘Has he said this before? Has he ever said he’d leave you?’

‘No, he’s never said that before – no matter how bad the rows were.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘Do you think he’s really left me?’ Arabella whispered, looking fearfully at the walls, as if the room might be bugged by MI5.

‘Look, I don’t know if he meant it. I haven’t really met him, have I? Or really talked to him – he never comes to the magazine get-togethers. But there’s no harm in finding out where you stand, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘So you think I should divorce David before he divorces me?’

‘I said that I think you should get some advice. Why don’t you get tidied up first, yes? And eat something afterwards?’ Emily said slowly, shooing her boss up the stairs and then going towards the kitchen to fix her a snack.

Emily usually tried not to become involved in the personal lives of other people, because she was always so tempted to take over the
responsibility
for everything. And she also didn’t like it when people wanted her to agree with their viewpoint, in case they blamed her later on if things went pear-shaped. So she was definitely letting the lawyers advise Arabella on this one.

‘Thanks for standing in for me at work today,’ Arabella called down the stairs. ‘And I know it’s a bit of a mess around here. I’d leave it for the cleaning lady, but if she saw this lot she’d march straight out of here and never come back. She’s very temperamental. And if my cleaning lady deserts me as well, I think I really will lose the will to live.’

‘It’s okay,’ Emily called back. ‘I think I can handle it.’

But the kitchen was even worse than the sitting room.

‘Oh, Arabella, what have you done?’ Emily said when she saw the scene of devastation in the airy basement kitchen. A large pan of spaghetti sauce had been emptied into David’s open briefcase. Some of the sauce had spilt on to the floor and across the stone tiles, where it was now hardening nicely. The spaghetti itself was stuck to the kitchen window in a great, glistening lump. There were broken wine bottles and spilt red wine all over the floor. Emily counted the remains of about ten bottles before she gave up. Most of the bottle labels appeared to be vintage and expensive.

Maybe Arabella’s husband really had meant it when he said he was never coming back?

‘I think the poor man got out just in time,’ she said under her breath. ‘Arabella must have been in a murderous mood to have done this.’

Emily’s stomach did a small somersault then. She suddenly had a premonition that something very bad was going to happen – something much worse than Arabella vandalizing her own lovely kitchen in this way. But then she told herself to stop being so silly, that she wasn’t a psychic.

‘Okay,’ Emily said, reaching for the dustpan and brush and a whole roll of paper towels. ‘Time for my Kim and Aggie routine; whoever said a career in magazine publishing would be all about meeting celebrities, and non-stop glamour?’

Then she thought of her little attic in Twickenham and how peaceful it was there, and suddenly she didn’t feel quite so sorry for herself any more.

And then she thought about Dylan – and wondered if she was doing the right thing in letting a relatively normal man into her not-quite-normal existence.

6. Arabella’s Husband

It was February now and Arabella felt heartbroken every time she saw a display of Valentine cards in a gift store window, or red roses in a florist’s window, or one of those ribbon-and-cellophane affairs with a cuddly rabbit inside on the petrol station counter. She’d tried chatting to the handsome hunk in the red T-shirt, but he’d looked right through her, as if she were invisible. So presumably there wasn’t much hope of the two of them conceiving a baby in the flower bed out the front any time soon. Arabella felt her age more than ever when she was sitting in the queue for unleaded petrol one day, and she saw the hunk of her dreams kissing his teenage girlfriend on the station forecourt. The girlfriend was wearing low-slung jeans revealing a tattoo of a rose on her lower back. She also had a diamond stud in her nose and super-long acrylic fingernails. Arabella’s mating-in-the-marigolds fantasy keeled over and died instantly, for how could she compete with a rose tattoo and a nose-stud? She turned to look out of the passenger window and then switched on the radio for company. There was a play on BBC Radio 4. It was something to do with a tea plantation in India in Victorian times.

‘
I am leaving for England tomorrow
,’ a man said, ‘
but I will never forget you
.’

‘For pity’s sake,’ Arabella said sadly. ‘This is getting ridiculous.’ She felt loneliness trying to pull her down into its murky depths, like an octopus with super-sticky tentacles. Some days she was so tense and scared she could barely concentrate on her work. David had still not moved back in, and he was also refusing to answer his mobile phone. She’d been emailing and texting him obsessively for weeks, but she’d not received a single reply. Her letters to his office went unanswered, and she’d even been stopped at reception in the steel-and-glass building where David worked and been asked to leave by the security guard. That had been a bit embarrassing, actually, as the guard had told her to stop being so silly and hysterical and just leave quietly. Or he would have to call the police. He’d put one hand on her back, as if she were a psychiatric patient, and steered her out of the door and right down the mobility ramp on to the footpath. Talk about disgraceful. Was that any way to treat the good lady wife of one of their key workers?

‘I’m telling you, Emily,’ Arabella said now, lighting another cigarette on the fire escape at the magazine’s offices. ‘There’s something crazy going on with David.’

There was a rare spell of sunshine that day, so they were having lunch outdoors on two fold-down chairs. Emily had a plain cheese sandwich from home while Arabella was picking half-heartedly over an M&S salad.

‘Do you know, there’s something about chilled orange segments that makes me feel quite melancholy,’ she said.

‘Stop buying that particular dish, then,’ Emily suggested. ‘Get a nice bagel instead.’

‘Yes, I suppose I should, but a salad always looks so healthy, doesn’t it?’ Arabella said, pushing the remains of her lunch to one side and lighting a cigarette.

‘Listen, I don’t mean to sound completely heartless, but I know there’s something going on with David, Arabella. I’m so sorry, and I know it must hurt dreadfully, but it would seem that he’s left you.’

‘Well, yes, I am painfully aware that my husband no longer appears to be living in the marital home with me. But there’s something else going on – he wouldn’t just walk out on me like this unless he had somewhere else to go, unless he had a Plan B. He doesn’t like staying in hotels no matter how swanky they are. And he’s got a slight germ phobia about using hotel showers.’

Arabella’s ashtray on the fire escape was overflowing. She was now throwing her lipstick-covered butts into Emily’s empty shortbread tin.

‘What do you mean?’ Emily said carefully. ‘Do you think he’s got another place to live? Like he’s renting a city-centre apartment or something?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly it! I’m starting to think he’s been planning to leave me for some time. It was the way he looked at me the last time we were arguing; his eyes were just so cold,’ Arabella said forlornly. ‘I got a feeling that day that he really hated me – you know, when I poured the pasta sauce into his briefcase?’

‘You shouldn’t have done that, I dare say.’

‘Big deal – his briefcase was empty, anyway.’

‘Arabella, look, please don’t take this the wrong way,’ Emily said carefully. ‘But don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, things had come to a natural end with you and David?’

‘No. Not at all; we were madly in love.’

‘But you just said he hated you.’

‘I said I had a feeling he hated me
that day
. That was just my perception at the time, though. And it was only that particular day. Remember that; it wasn’t all the time.’

‘Why is it okay if he only hates you sometimes?’ Emily said slowly.

‘Look, he was mad at me because I told him he was rubbish in bed, okay?’ Arabella said with a flash of guilt that turned her neck tomato red. ‘Actually, I told him he was the worst lover I’d ever had … and his feet were a bit yellow … and he had bad breath.’

‘Well, you know what men are like about that sort of thing. They have very fragile egos – no wonder he stormed off in a giant huff,’ Emily said, shaking her head sadly.

‘I didn’t mean it, Emily. Well, he does have yellowish feet. But he doesn’t have bad breath, and he wasn’t my worst lover. But I was just so upset because I wasn’t pregnant,’ Arabella cried.

‘Okay, okay, so he’s a good lover, then? Maybe you should tell him that. He might come back again.’

‘He’s not always good in bed. Well, he’s okay, I suppose,’ Arabella said. She inhaled deeply, coughed loudly and threw her salad back into the carrier bag in disgust.

‘To sum up,’ Emily said, taking a deep breath, ‘David has yellow feet, isn’t exactly the best in bed, sometimes hates you, and has ignored you completely for over a month?’

‘Yes. That’s about the height of it.’

‘So why on earth do you want him back, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I want him back because I love him to bits.
Obviously
.’

Emily closed her eyes. She knew that she mustn’t tell Arabella she was one deluded wife. Ideally Arabella would work it out for herself – and come to the conclusion that she would be better off without David.

‘Why do you love him again?’ she said.

‘He’s my husband, Emily. I took my wedding vows seriously.’

‘And that’s the only reason you love him? You took wedding vows?’

‘No,’ Arabella shook her head. ‘I love him because he’s my husband.’

‘So you’d automatically love any husband? Even have an arranged marriage?’

‘No, of course not, Emily, don’t be silly. Though I do understand that most arranged marriages are designed to bring together two people who are well suited. They are not designed to fail, my darling.’

‘Well, fair enough. Let’s not get bogged down in a discussion about arranged marriage.’

‘You started it.’

‘Yes, I did … Give me another reason why you love him, then. Why did you fall in love with him in the first place?’

‘He was rich and successful.’

‘Apart from that,’ Emily said.

‘He can change a tyre really quickly.’

‘So marry a mechanic next time,’ Emily said, packing away her lunch box.

‘Emily, don’t be flippant. I meant that David is a resourceful man. That he doesn’t just give up if he doesn’t get what he wants right away. He’s clever, you know? And I loved him for it. I’m totally devastated here.’

‘I’m sorry. I know you didn’t only love him because he could change a tyre. I know you didn’t mean it that way.’

‘It’s okay. I know you understand.’

‘Sometimes these things just come to a natural end. Nobody is to blame. The feelings just go away of their own accord.’

‘Is that what happened with you and Alex?’ Arabella said gently.

‘Yes, our relationship came to a natural end all right. A grinding halt, more like. Pity he didn’t tell me until the day of our wedding. Oh, don’t get me started on all that business; it makes me feel like such a loser. But anyway, I don’t think Alex and me actually got it right to begin with,’ Emily said. ‘It was a massive, all-consuming teenage crush; and then it became a habit and a crutch. It was never true love.’

‘I’m sorry for bringing him up,’ Arabella said guiltily.

‘It’s okay.’

Arabella opened a fresh packet of cigarettes. Emily briefly thought of suggesting that Arabella might have a better chance of conceiving if she gave up smoking and took some gentle exercise instead. And found another man to be the father, of course. But she didn’t want to become a bossyboots. Emily had always found bossy people very tiresome herself. Also, all the magazine articles she had ever read advised strongly against taking
ownership
of someone else’s problems. You could console and listen and hug and support and sympathize endlessly, but you should never try to take over.

‘Emily?’ Arabella said quietly.

‘Yes?’

‘What would you do if you were me?’

‘Please don’t ask me that.’

‘No, really – would you beg David to come home?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Or would you send him flowers?’

‘Really, I don’t know.’

‘Or would you have a crazy, unsuitable affair? Get your confidence back by seducing another man?’

‘I doubt it. That would only complicate everything. What if you ended up having feelings for both of them?’

‘No, only men say that! Would you go to a lawyer and tell him to hang David out to dry?’

‘Arabella, please don’t ask my advice. This is serious. It’s not a magazine quiz.’

‘Or would you look for a sperm donor?’

‘Um …’

‘One-night stand or clinic … ?’

‘I really wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘Or would you do something else entirely?’

‘I really don’t know, Arabella. It depends on what you want – and what he wants – doesn’t it?’

‘Would you be aloof and mysterious? Yes, you’d play hard to get, wouldn’t you? Do nothing at all for a year and see if he comes crawling back to you. Trouble is, I don’t really have a year to spare.’

‘Listen, Arabella, is that the time? I’ll think about this later, but I have to dash now. I’m meeting a reader this afternoon over on the other side of the city. I’ll call you this evening. Don’t do anything silly. Promise me now?’

‘I promise,’ Arabella said, smiling at Emily through a fog of cigarette smoke. But it was already too late to promise not to do anything silly because she
was
going to do something silly that very evening.

When Emily had gone Arabella went to the bathroom and locked the door behind her so nobody else could barge in. She took a long blonde wig out of her large handbag and combed it with shaking hands. She tried the wig on. The effect was pretty natural. Then she tried on a short denim jacket, a long white T-shirt and a pair of lurid purple leggings. A pair of bug-eyed sunglasses and a pair of flimsy flat pumps completed the look. In two minutes flat she’d gone from Wealthy-Socialite-About-Town to Lowly-Cleaning-Lady. She was average height and average weight. David wouldn’t recognize her in a million years. Nor would any of their friends and colleagues. Quickly she put her own clothes on again and folded the other things back into her bag.

Now all she had to do was hang around the office until five o’clock. Then she’d go and change into her disguise in the big bathroom on the ground floor, where nobody would take any notice of her.

At six o’clock precisely David came out of his office wearing a buttoned-up overcoat and smart brogues, looked right and left and then hurried towards the nearest Tube station. And Arabella was only ten paces behind him. She’d been sitting on a bench for over an hour, pretending to read
Heat
magazine. David walked very quickly. But Arabella was able to keep up quite easily in her comfy pumps – she was practically skipping along the footpath. Someone from a building site whistled loudly at her, but she barely had time to smile and wave back at them before she remembered she was supposed to be following her husband home from work. David got on a train going in the other direction from where they lived, sat down and took a novel out of his new briefcase. Arabella got on too, and sat a few seats away from him.

She watched David out of the corner of her eye. He looked happy, she thought. The worry lines around his ice-blue eyes had faded slightly and he was a few pounds heavier. So he must be eating well – wherever he was – she decided. His hair was nicely cut in a new style. Actually, he looked a bit sexy now. The hunted look had gone from his face. Arabella felt a bit sick again. David clearly hadn’t been pining for her the way she had been pining for him.

Twenty minutes passed without anything out of the ordinary happening. But then David suddenly closed his novel, jumped up and sprang out of the train just as the doors were closing. Arabella dropped her bag in her hurry to get off the train. By the time she’d retrieved it, the doors had closed again and she was swept on towards the next station. She cursed David under her breath all the way back to her own stop. Next time she’d be ready, she vowed.

And so the following week, she did it again. She was still disguised as a humble cleaning lady, but this time she wore a garish red headscarf, a baggy trench coat with no belt on it, and black leggings. She stood right by the door so that when David left the train, she did too. She followed him all the way along several suburban streets until he came to a row of expensive-looking houses near the river. There were eight homes in the development, all with a garage at ground level and a big sitting-room window on the first floor. Each window opened out on to a small balcony. The lights in David’s house were on already and the curtains were drawn. Perhaps he had set the lights on a timer, she thought to herself. David took a key from his pocket, glanced right and left again and then went quickly inside. Arabella punched the air triumphantly. So she had discovered her husband’s secret bachelor pad. Result! But what could she do now? she wondered. Should she ring the bell and confront him? As Arabella stood in the dimly lit street, trying to make up her mind, she heard the swishing sound of a sliding door opening. She looked up. David was standing on the balcony, sipping a small glass of wine. He’d taken off his coat and was wearing a heavy-knit cardigan. Arabella crept towards a nearby tree and stood there as quietly as she could, trying to look as if she were waiting for a lift or something. With any luck he wouldn’t look down and discover her.