Me and Mr Jones (6 page)

When would it happen for her and David? When?

She sniffled, trying to stay positive. Come on, Emma. This could be the weekend where it all turned around. In a matter of weeks they might be rejoining the gang with their own breathless good-news phone calls.
I’ve got something to tell you!
Months from now they might be posting out their own announcement cards and asking for advice about prams. They could do it. They
would
do it.

Sorry, Sal
, she texted back eventually.
Feeling a bit ropey today, so had better not bring my germs to the party! Hope V has a lovely time, and you too. Must catch up properly soon. Love Em xxx.

There. Sent. The guilt lurked around the edges of her mind for a few minutes until she reassured herself that one day she’d be able to apologize to Sally for not being beside her this year, for letting their friendship drift.
Sorry I was so crap while Violet was tiny
, she’d say.
I was just jealous that you had something I wanted too.

And Sally would give her a hug (because Sally was the lovely, forgiving sort) and say,
Don’t worry about it, hon. I understand. I’d have been the same.
Then they’d both look over at their brood with adoration (multiple babies and toddlers, Emma imagined, crossing her fingers), and back at each other with renewed affection, and it would be okay.

It would all be okay.

After a cup of tea in the living room, watching the sun rise above the city streets, Emma crept back into bed. Seven-thirty. Let the shagathon commence!

She lay on her side, feeling jittery and excited as she looked at her husband sleeping soundly nearby. He was going to be such a great dad, she knew it already. He was an outdoorsy type, David, tall and strong, built for hunting and gathering. She could already imagine him carrying a tot – their tot! – on his broad shoulders, swinging round a giggling toddler, playing noisy games of football in the garden, helping to make paint-splattery Mother’s Day cards and breakfast in bed.

She watched his eyelids flicker mid-dream and smiled. Look at him there, so golden and strong and handsome. It was unusual to see him at rest; he was the most energetic person she’d ever met, always wanting to be out and about doing something. She’d never let on as much, but secretly he reminded her of a bouncy, boisterous dog in the way that he needed to be out every day, if not being taken for walk on a lead, then exerting himself physically: pounding around Victoria Park, playing five-a-side football with his mates every Thursday evening, swimming a ferocious, splashy butterfly in the pool on Dean Lane . . .

Lately, though, he’d even seemed disinterested in exercise. A torpor had settled upon him since he had lost his job; an inertia that leached him of energy and enthusiasm and kept him in the flat, watching daytime television. This was not a good thing. She was worried he was becoming depressed.

Feeling a pang of sympathy, she rolled closer and put an arm around his warm, sleeping form. He’d had a tough few months in all. Being made redundant had dented his pride, sending him into a downward spiral. It was hardly surprising he was self-absorbed, withdrawn into his shell. She had to keep making the effort to lift his spirits, to remind him that she still loved and wanted him, even if the architecture world didn’t right now.

She ran a hand lightly down his chest, gently caressed his nipples, snuggled closer into his body.
Brace yourself, little egg. Prepare to be invaded.

He stirred and muttered something. Encouraged, she slipped her hand along his side and down to his hip. Then he jerked irritably and his eyes snapped open. ‘F’fuck’s sake, Emma, I’m asleep,’ he grunted, pushing her hand away and rolling over.

The breath seemed to catch in her throat; her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She retreated to her own side of the bed and listened to the tick of the clock, the traffic grumbling outside, her own heartbeat slowing with disappointment.

He didn’t even want
her
any more. How could she draw him back in from the cold?

She gazed helplessly at his dozing body. This was peak ovulation time. This was their chance. She couldn’t let another month slip by with an empty womb, and her soul silting over with numbness.
I’m not beaten yet
, she told herself fiercely.
Not by a long chalk.

‘Sorry about earlier,’ he said an hour later when he finally emerged from the duvet. His skin was etched with pillow-creases, his hair stood on end and there was something adorably vulnerable about him. Then he scratched his balls, which rather killed the moment. ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’

‘No worries,’ she said lightly.
Mustn’t turn it into An Issue.
According to the Oh Baby! forum, bleating incessantly about conception often turned husbands right off sex. ‘Want some coffee?’

‘Ta.’ There was a pause while she poured and stirred, and he leaned against the doorjamb. ‘I’m a bit worried about what Dad’s going to say tomorrow, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’ She passed him the steaming mug. ‘Here.’

‘He sounded so odd on the phone the other night. He said he had something to tell me. I can’t help wondering . . .’ The pause that followed said everything. It said: cancer, heart disease, months to live. It said: blood tests, hospital, goodbye.

‘I’m sure they’re fine,’ Emma said. ‘Fit as fiddles, both of them.’ This was true. David’s parents still seemed so robust and active, running their bed and breakfast around the calendar with barely any help, still with it, still uber-competent. She thought wistfully of her own parents, now up in Scotland, who’d slumped into old age as if defeated, their lives a pale, shrunken version of before, revolving around the twin focal points of their boggle-eyed spaniel and the television viewing guide.

He ran his hand through his hair. ‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could take any more bad news right now, Em.’

She went over, gently removed the coffee mug and set it on the table, then wrapped her arms around him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said into his chest. He was still warm from the bed. ‘We’re on the way up again, I just know it.’

Mulberry House was a large sprawling farmhouse in a quiet corner of Loveday village, down in Dorset. Back when David and his brothers had been growing up, the Joneses had kept chickens, a couple of ponies and a goat, and there had been a large and well-tended vegetable plot, according to David. There was an orchard and a paddock, and incredible scenery all around – luscious green hills, woodland and the garden itself, Eddie’s pride and joy, which was a riot of colour throughout the year.

It had once been a comfortable, warm family home, if the old photos were anything to go by, but in more recent years the house had become rather battered around the edges. The paint was flaking on the window frames, you could see missing slates on the roof, and the ivy that swamped the front of the house had caused the brickwork to become damp and waterlogged. Inside, it never felt truly warm, even on a summer’s day, and there was a permanent dankness about the front rooms, which clung to your clothes after an hour or so. As an interior designer, Emma had often cringed at the dark-painted walls and mean windows that didn’t let in enough light, and at the ageing carpets everywhere, which were no doubt covering beautiful old floorboards. There were enough style crimes in Mulberry House to warrant a citizen’s arrest, in her opinion, although only someone with a death-wish would dare voice any criticisms of Lilian’s home turf to her face.

You had to feel sorry for paying guests, though. If Emma and David were staying over for the weekend, Lilian always tried to set aside the best room for them: the one that caught the sun setting over the hills, with just a faint streak of sparkling sea visible on the horizon – but on occasions when this hadn’t been possible, they’d slept in one of the less attractive guest rooms, complete with thin, scratchy covers on the bed and the prickliest towels Emma had ever used. The Four Seasons Hotel it was not.

Outside, Eddie did his best with his garden, but he wasn’t as fit as he used to be, and the weeds were creeping in. The farm animals had long since departed, but there was still a stable-block and various outbuildings, all in differing states of chaos, which Charlie had been helping him do up for the last two years. The aim had been to turn them into ‘holiday chalets’, but so far the going had been painfully slow. This was no surprise to anyone. Charlie wasn’t exactly Captain Reliable.

They pulled up now in the small parking area next to Hugh and Alicia’s car, and David turned off the engine. Emma was always struck by the absolute silence of Mulberry House, after the bustle of city life. The house was set right back from the road, so you never heard the traffic, just the gentle peeping of little birds or an occasional seagull screech.

Talking of screeches . . . There was Lilian opening the front door and standing on the step with her arms folded over the apron that proclaimed ‘Mother Knows Best!’ It wouldn’t have surprised Emma if Lilian actually slept in that sodding apron; it was a permanent fixture on her tall, trim body. ‘Oh,
here
they are,’ she was saying, then called over her shoulder. ‘Eddie! David’s here!’

Emma got out of the car, steeling herself. She had tried her hardest to like her mother-in-law, she really had. She’d been polite and friendly, she washed up after Sunday dinner, she smiled in the right places and bit her tongue whenever the subject of politics arose. For all her best efforts, though, the charm offensive had not been enough. In fact, when Emma and David told his parents one Christmas that David had proposed and they were going to get married, Lilian hadn’t even tried to fake pleasure. ‘Why would you want to do a thing like that?’ she’d said.

David had laughed it off. ‘Because we love each other, of course!’ he’d said.

Emma hadn’t been able to laugh. The words stung even now, hurting like a running sore that wouldn’t heal. It was almost as bad as the ‘When am I going to have some more grandchildren?’ line, which she must have been asked at least seven hundred times by now. Lilian seemed to think it was her divine right, as matriarch, to make pronouncements about other people’s relationships and harass them about their fertility. Well, hello? Newsflash! It wasn’t okay, not remotely.

In contrast, Emma’s parents never badgered her about children in the same way, although this was partly because they’d always been more interested in her brother Neil, and partly because she rarely got to see them since their retirement. She didn’t get to speak to them much either, unless she made a point of phoning. Her mum remained convinced that the phone calls from Scotland to England came under ‘foreign rate’, however many times Emma had tried to convince her otherwise.

She glanced now at the woman on the doorstep – the white-haired gatekeeper to the Jones brothers, she who must be obeyed. The devil in Emma bristled, flexing his muscles. She would make things work with David because she loved him, she thought, but also because it would give her the satisfaction of proving Lilian wrong about the two of them. Hell, yes.
You can’t get rid of me that easily
, she thought, slamming the passenger door shut.

Chapter Five

Lilian had known deep down that something wasn’t right for a while, but didn’t want to look it full in the eye, for fear of having her shadowy dread brought sharply into focus. Instead, she’d told herself that everything was fine, that everyone got a bit forgetful as they became older, that Eddie had just had a lot on his mind lately.

They both had, let’s face it. Over the last week their guests had included Mr and Mrs Phelan from the Wirral, who’d complained about absolutely everything – the view from their window (as if she could do anything about
that
!), the food, the facilities in their room, the
weather
even, for heaven’s sake. Hard on their heels came Mr Castle and Ms Farthing from London, with their grizzling little baby, who sobbed and snivelled from dawn till dusk. Lilian thought she’d heard Ms Farthing crying one night too – gasping tears of exhaustion, as if she’d been broken.
Try having three boys, dear
, she’d thought, putting the pillow over her head in an attempt to block out the sound.
Then you’ll know the meaning of tired.

Finally they’d had the McPhersons, down from Glasgow, whom Eddie had managed to offend repeatedly by calling them the McDonalds, about five times in all. They’d smiled initially, as if he was joking, but gradually the smiles became wintrier, thinner-lipped and more glare-like with each repetition. ‘Has he never
met
a Scottish person before?’ Mr McPherson sniffed after the third time. ‘Is this meant to be a joke?’ Mrs McPherson demanded after the fourth. It got to the point where Lilian had to physically shoo her husband away whenever the poor pair appeared in the breakfast room, for fear of one of them leaping up and stabbing him with a fork.

It was a relief when the McPhersons finally left and she could let her breath out again. Well, for about ten minutes anyway, before she had to stock up on food for the anniversary lunch, and clean the house from top to bottom. Still, better to be busy than bored, she supposed.