One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon (16 page)

‘Oh might I, indeed?’ thundered Penny.

‘Yes. You might. You can’t control your horse and you can’t control your daughter.’

‘How
dare
you!’ Penny spluttered. But Santiago was on a roll.

‘I stopped to see if you needed help, but three crazy mares in one afternoon is too much even for me. I suggest you get your fat horse back to her stable before you kill somebody. Good afternoon.’

He jumped back into his spotless sports car and sped away, leaving Penny staring after him, open-mouthed.

‘Of all the arrogant, obnoxious, hypocritical …’ she muttered darkly as the Maserati pulled out of sight. Sparky, calmly chewing dandelions by the gate, farted loudly for a second time.

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Penny.

She hoped more than ever that Fittlescombe proved the doom-mongers wrong and trounced Brockhurst on Saturday. Something told her that Mr de la Cruz was not used to losing. And that a spot of very public humiliation might do him the world of good.

*****

At the Fittlescombe nets, next to the bowling green, Will Nutley was playing appallingly.

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ said Gabe Baxter. ‘But you’re batting like a blind chimp with advanced-stage Parkinson’s. What the fuck?’

‘Sorry.’ Will shielded his eyes against the long rays of the sinking, reddening sun.
Going down in a ball of burning flame. Like my hopes for getting back with Emma.

On the other side of the bowling green he saw the stooped figure of Harry Hotham, his old headmaster from primary school, heading back towards the village. Harry was retiring next term after twenty years at St Hilda’s, to be replaced by some hotshot from a Hampshire prep school, apparently.

Would Will be replaced by another ‘hotshot’ in Emma’s heart?

It was no good. Everything came back to Emma.

‘Don’t be sorry.’ Gabe’s irritated voice dragged him back to reality. ‘Be less shit. If I can get you out LBW on the third ball, de la Cruz can do it on his first with his eyes shut. You do
want
to beat the shit out of Brockhurst?’

‘Of course,’ said Will, stung.

George Blythe, Dylan Pritchard Jones, Lionel Green, Tim Wright and the rest of them had paired up in the remaining six sets of cricket nets. As Fittlescombe’s best bowler and batsman respectively, Gabe and Will had been practising together. But it was clear that Will’s thoughts were elsewhere. It wouldn’t take Einstein to figure out where.

‘Seb!’ Gabe called out across the green to where Seb Harwich, the odd man out, was waiting his turn in the shade of a crab-apple tree. ‘Bowl a couple of overs at muppet here, would you, mate? See if you can take his mind off your bloody sister for half a minute. Because I can’t.’

Seb ran over, looking about as happy as a fourteen-year-old boy could. He loved it when Gabe Baxter spoke to him like one of the men; when he called him ‘mate’ and referred to Will Nutley, one of Seb’s all-time heroes, as a ‘muppet’.

Taking the red leather ball from Gabe, Seb eyed Will wordlessly from the bowlers’ end. At school, they joked around all the time during practice, but not here. The Fittlescombe team took things seriously, and silently. Seb acted accordingly.

Rubbing the ball up and down the length of his thigh, until a pale pink stain marked the white cotton of his trousers, he launched into a short, fast run and bowled as straight as he could to Will’s middle wicket. Raising a languorous right arm, Will blocked the shot with ease.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Gabe. ‘Well done, Seb. You two keep going. I’m off to the pub.’

Once Gabe sloped off, it wasn’t long before the others began to follow him. The light was failing, and most of them had been practising solidly for most of the afternoon, anyway. Before long, Seb and Will were the last two men standing.

Will gazed out past the bowling green to the outskirts of the village. The steeple of St Hilda’s Church rose up from the rooftops, and Will and Seb both stopped and listened as its ancient bell tolled six times. It was a lovely sound, timeless and peaceful, as much a part of country life as the soft, cooing call of the woodpigeon or the smell of freshly mown grass on the green on a summer’s morning. But tonight it made Will sad.

‘She’s not coming, is she?’

Seb frowned. ‘Does it matter?’

‘I suppose not. She said she’d try to come, that’s all. When I saw her this morning. I was sort of expecting her.’

‘Emma says a lot of things she doesn’t mean,’ said Seb, adding kindly, if not entirely truthfully, ‘Look, I’m sure it’s not you. You guys are still friends, right?’

Friends.
The word sent a shiver down Will’s spine.

‘Cricket practice isn’t exactly Emma’s idea of a riveting evening, that’s all.’

‘I’m not sure it’s mine, either,’ Will sighed. All of a sudden, the beer garden at The Fox had an appealing ring to it. If he hurried, he could catch the others before George got in the first round. ‘Anyway, you’re right: what does it matter?’ he reassured himself, smiling at Seb. ‘She’s coming to the match on Saturday. That’s the main thing.’

‘Oh, yeah, she’s coming all right,’ grumbled Seb. ‘The question is, who will she be cheering for?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, ever since she heard about you-know-who playing for Brockhurst, she’s had stars in her eyes like you wouldn’t believe. She went over to his house this afternoon, you know.’

Will looked ashen. ‘To de la Cruz’s house?’

‘I know,’ said Seb, mistaking Will’s expression for disapproval. ‘It’s embarrassing. Like some sort of groupie. Anyway, come on.’ He threw the cricket ball high in the air and caught it one-handed. ‘We came here to practise. Let’s practise.’

As tempting as it was to slope off to The Fox and drown his sorrows, Will Nutley pulled the visor down on his helmet, a look of grim determination settling over his usually placid features.

‘Fine,’ he said to Seb. ‘Give it your best shot.’

There was only one thing for it now.

He was simply going to have to annihilate Santiago de la Cruz.

Penny Harwich checked her reflection in the mirror of the ladies’ loo at Capo, the swanky new Italian restaurant in Lewes, feeling faintly absurd.

For one thing she was on a ‘date’, a ridiculous enough idea in itself at her age and after twenty years of marriage. For another, her date was with Piers Renton-Chambers, a man who, if possible, felt even more awkward in romantic situations than she did. And for a third it was only six o’clock in the evening. The only people Penny knew who knowingly ate their dinner at six o’clock were either children under eight or what her son Seb rather unkindly referred to as ‘Reaper-cheaters’, i.e. those so elderly and infirm they had to be wheeled to their beds each night before sunset.

In a long, slightly hippyish dark-green dress, with matching dangly jade earrings, Penny had made an effort with her appearance tonight, something else that added to her embarrassment. After her ill-fated run-in with that vile man Santiago de la Cruz yesterday, she’d returned home and dashed straight to the loo for a pee. There she’d looked in the mirror and almost screamed at the red-faced, sweat-smeared, bedraggled harridan she’d seen staring back at her. No wonder Santiago had thought she’d lost her marbles. With her flaky skin and deeply shadowed eyes, weighed down with more bags than Mariah Carey setting off on tour, she looked as if she were about to turn sixty, not forty. Piers had telephoned moments later to ask her out to dinner. Still in shock, Penny had said yes, thereby plunging herself into a second, even deeper layer of panic. She’d spent the rest of the night washing, conditioning, trimming, exfoliating, moisturizing, deep-cleansing and Veeting any hair that had the temerity to appear anywhere on her body, until her skin glowed red and raw and her gums bled from excessive brushing. Then this morning, only marginally calmer, she’d driven herself into Chichester for a haircut and blow-dry that she absolutely couldn’t afford, and some new make-up from Bourjois that she’d once read in a magazine was the same stuff as Chanel, just in cheaper packaging.

But now that she was here, looking primped and pretty and with Piers waiting at their painfully early table, she felt foolish and deflated.

This is Piers.

This is me and Piers, eating some spaghetti I could have cooked at home and pretending we’re … what? Teenagers? Lovers?

Bloody Santiago de la Cruz. Penny blamed him for all of it. She felt a headache coming on, and wished to goodness she were curled up on the sofa at home in front of the telly.

Back at the table, Piers stood up and pulled out her chair as she approached.

‘You’re back.’ He smiled. ‘Thank heavens. I started to wonder if you’d done a bunk. I was picturing you shimmying out of the ladies’ room window and legging it down Lewes High Street like Zola Budd.’

‘Sorry.’ Penny immediately felt guilty. She really didn’t know why she was making such a big deal out of one simple dinner with Piers, especially after he’d been so kind and made such an effort. It wasn’t easy to get a table at Capo at short notice.

Unfortunately, her headache was getting worse. She clutched at her temples.

‘Are you all right?’ Piers asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Penny groaned.

‘Is it me?’

‘No! God, no,’ said Penny. ‘You mustn’t think that. To be honest with you, it’s Emma. I know I should let it go, but she just seems to be getting more and more out of control and further and further out of my reach.’

‘Do you not think most parents of teenagers feel the same way?’ Piers asked kindly.

‘Not like this,’ said Penny. ‘And most eighteen-year-olds aren’t earning six-figure salaries and being told how bloody marvellous they are on a daily basis. It doesn’t help.’

‘No.’ Piers nodded understandingly.

‘Nor does Santiago de la Cruz.’

They ordered food. Penny’s headache persisted, but she did her best to ignore it. Over a large glass of Chianti and a delicious calamari salad, she slowly started to relax and to pour out her anxieties about Emma. How utterly devastated she’d been by her father’s defection. And how this had taken the twin forms of intense insecurity, particularly regarding men and sex, and burning anger towards her mother.

‘But surely she can’t blame you for Paul leaving?’ Piers said reasonably.

‘She does,’ said Penny.

‘But … he’s gay.
He
left
you
for another man, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Yes. And Emma would say I drove him to it.’

‘How? By having a vagina?’ asked Piers.

It was the funniest thing Penny had ever heard him say, not to mention the rudest. For the first time all evening she threw back her head and really laughed, then immediately regretted it when the throbbing in her temples returned with a vengeance.
What on earth is wrong with me?

‘You’re terribly pretty, you know. When you smile,’ said Piers. ‘You should try it more often.’

It was a clumsy chat-up line, but Penny appreciated it all the same. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he might be about to lean over the table and kiss her. But, instead, his slight forward motion turned into a wave towards the waitress.

‘Bill, please,’ he said briskly. ‘You know, I’d be happy to talk to her if you’d like.’

‘Emma?’ Penny looked at him incredulously.

‘Yes. You know, as an older man. It might help.’

Penny tried to imagine anybody Emma was less likely to listen to, or respect, than Piers. Both her children wore their loathing for the only man she’d spent any time with since their father left on their sleeves. Was it possible that Piers hadn’t picked up on this hostility? Did he – could he possibly – imagine that Emma would accept him for one split second as a substitute father figure?

‘It’s a very kind offer,’ she said carefully. ‘But I don’t think it
would
help. In fact, I’m sure it wouldn’t.’

‘Really?’

He looked crestfallen. But there was no way around it. Any attempt to foist his advice on Emma would end in abject disaster. Blood injuries couldn’t be ruled out.

‘Really,’ Penny said firmly.

‘Perhaps I could have a word with the irksome Argie, then. Get him to back off,’ Piers offered helpfully, resting one hand lightly on the small of Penny’s back as he escorted her out to the car park.

‘Something tells me that wouldn’t work, either,’ she said with a sigh, climbing into the driver’s seat of her battered old Renault Clio. ‘But I do appreciate the offer, Piers. Truly. Sometimes I have no idea why you’re so kind to me.’

As soon as she said it, she regretted it. It sounded horribly as if she were fishing for a compliment; or, worse, some declaration of Piers’s intentions. Perhaps thinking the same thing, Piers cleared his throat awkwardly and leaned in through the window to plant a clumsy kiss on Penny’s cheek. ‘You’ll be all right to get home?’ he mumbled, more for something to say than anything.

‘Of course,’ said Penny blushing. ‘Thank you for a lovely dinner.’

In her eagerness to get away, she shot out of the car park far too fast, then promptly got lost in Lewes’s complicated one-way system. One of Paul’s biggest bugbears in their marriage had been her nonexistent sense of direction. Feeling his invisible vibes of disapproval now, Penny got more and more anxious, turning the wrong way down a one-way street and almost hitting the wall of one of the narrow, cobbled alleys that led out of the old town. By the time she emerged onto Heywoods Lane, the familiar back road to Fittlescombe and the other Swell Valley villages, sweat had soaked through the back of her dress and adrenaline was still coursing unpleasantly through her veins. The headache that had come and gone all evening had now reached epic proportions, as if all the stresses of her family life were trying simultaneously to drill their way out of her cranium.

Suddenly, she began to feel dizzy. She wound down her window for some fresh air, but it didn’t seem to help much. Forcing herself to focus hard on the road, she tried to grip the steering wheel more tightly, but her palms were so sweaty they started sliding around everywhere. Shooting out her right foot in search of the brake pedal, she accidentally hit the accelerator instead, sending the little car jerking forwards like a broken toy. After that, everything happened at lightning speed. She saw another car in the distance, coming towards her. Then, like some awful surrealist nightmare, the hedges on either side of the lane seemed to rear up and enclose her. Penny swerved, and felt the steering wheel slip out of her hands completely. Then everything went black.