The Lie of Love (3 page)

‘Brilliant. Already you’ve
thought of things that never crossed my mind.’

‘Of course I have, that’s why you
hired me. So what are we going to call this thing?’

Darcy picked up her coffee and
blew gently at the surface. As she took a sip, she ran through connections in
her mind to come up with a name that would perfectly sum up what the campaign
was about. What did she want it to achieve, above all else? Was it for Sophie
or more for herself that she felt compelled to chase this dream?  Was it
about simply helping Sophie to walk and ridding her of the constant pain that
had become so much a part of her life that she no longer complained about it,
only suffered with a quiet acceptance? Or was it about changing her daughter’s
entire future prospects? And what would it mean for the rest of the family?

‘How about
Sophie’s Wish
?’

‘That sounds a bit vague,’ Amanda
said with a frown. ‘She could be wishing for a new Barbie for all the casual
observer would know. It needs to be harder hitting than that – poetic and
catchy yet succinctly inform the importance of the goal.’

‘The
Change Sophie’s Life
Foundation
?’

Amanda’s frown deepened. ‘Better…
but still not there… how about the
Sophie’s First Steps Trust
?’

‘Or just
Sophie’s
Steps
?
Shorter and catchier?’

Amanda began to scribble on her
notepad. ‘We’ll jot some of these down and I’ll ask people, see what the
consensus is, then we’ll choose. Let me know if any more pop into your head.’
 

Darcy nodded. ‘Sounds like a
plan…’ she was just about to pull a corner off her cake when she was aware of a
brisk breeze blowing through the café. She looked up to see the door had
opened.

‘Oh, here’s Rachel’s adorable
future boyfriend,’ Amanda said in a theatrical whisper. 

‘Future?’
Darcy said with a pretend frown. ‘You’re not matchmaking, are you?’

‘I think they’re doing a fine job
of matchmaking all by themselves. He comes in every day now, but they do both
seem to need a kick up the backside so that one of them will actually ask the
question.’

Darcy watched the newcomer
traverse the café in confident, eager strides, making a beeline for the counter
where Rachel’s blushes seemed to have intensified into something that could
power a generator as she watched him.  His hair was just a whisper away
from jet black, eyes of the brightest blue. He was blessed with the sort of
fearless smile that is the preserve of the young, of knowing that life stretches
before them like a vast, untroubled pool – shimmering aqua, waiting for that
first deep breath and the plunge into a magical world of swirling silver and
blue – where anything is still possible.  Already the summer had given his
skin a golden glow and his figure, whilst not sporting the six-pack of legend,
was lean and muscular, born of natural and regular
exercise,
and his shirtless entrance spoke of his peacock-like assurance in showing it.
 He was, without doubt, an exceptional looking boy.

‘They’d make a cute couple,’
Darcy said.

‘Watch now… he’ll order a latte
to take out. He’s done it every day for the last three weeks.
And a doughnut with sprinkles.
And he’ll give her that
boyband
smile as he does and she’ll scurry off like a
frightened mouse to get his order and hand it over with her breast heaving and
hands shaking, but watch him as he leaves with pure lust in her eyes.’

Darcy burst out laughing so
loudly that the couple, as well as quite a few other patrons, turned to stare
at her. Darcy put a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles that now wouldn’t
stop and turned her burning face to her cake.

‘You should write bodice ripping
dramas,’ Darcy finally said once she had her breathing under control. ‘I’ve
never heard a romantic liaison described in quite such a breathtaking fashion.

‘I’m glad you approve,’ Amanda
grinned.

‘Where’s he from?’ Darcy asked.
She was pretty well connected in
Lyme
Regis, as
Amanda was, but she didn’t recognise him. If he had been coming in every day
for three weeks he wasn’t likely to be a visitor to the town.

‘It’s Harry Simmons.’

‘Julia Simmons’
son?’
Darcy looked again. ‘Oh dear Lord, so it is! Last time I saw him
he was a schoolboy with trousers that were constantly in danger of falling down
and a permanent zit on the end of his nose. I hardly recognised him.’

It was Amanda’s turn to laugh.
‘They grow up fast, don’t they? He’s just done his first year at university…. Exeter,
I think, but I can’t be sure. I do believe he’s home for the summer, helping
out at the lifeguard station.’

As Darcy glanced over for
another, surreptitious look she made the latent connection, noting that he was
wearing the regulatory lifeguard uniform of orange swim shorts and had a
whistle hanging from his neck.  She was pretty sure that they were
supposed to wear a yellow t-shirt too, although it was obvious to her now why
his was missing as he leaned across the counter and fired a dazzling smile to
Rachel, who dipped her head and blushed furiously as she pressed the lid onto
his take-out latte. ‘They do grow up fast,’ she repeated quietly, wondering why
she was suddenly feeling warm herself.

‘I know…’ Amanda lowered her
voice. ‘If it wasn’t so dreadfully immoral I’d be thinking naughty thoughts
about him too. He has turned into quite a dish.’

‘
Hmmmm
,’
Darcy tore her gaze away and concentrated on her cake as though her very life
depended on her memorising every drizzle of icing as he turned to make his way
from the café, catching her eye as he went. She suddenly felt like a child
caught by her mother for some dreadful crime against the household.  In
his wake a fresh, boyish scent lingered.

‘Dear God, he even smells divine,
doesn’t
he
?’ Amanda laughed, airing Darcy’s thoughts
as if she was reading them. ‘If that silly girl doesn’t snap him up soon I’d be
tempted to offer him the Mrs Robinson substitute.’

‘I think your
Howie
might have something to say about that.’

‘Possibly.
It’s lucky he’s stinking rich and fairly entertaining otherwise I wouldn’t care
what he had to say.’

‘You adore him; you know you do;
whatever you pretend.’

‘Well, twenty-five years marital
enslavement has to be put down to some malady so I suppose you might have a
point there.’ Amanda took a sip of coffee, her expression becoming thoughtful
for a moment. ‘You know, Julia Simmons might not be a bad person to have on
board for your project. She’s well connected and she sits on the Church
council.’

‘I haven’t seen her for years,
other than a friendly wave across the road. We’ve never been exactly close
anyway. I doubt she’d be interested in helping me.’

‘I think you underestimate the
lure of pomp and importance. She’s exactly the sort of woman who loves being at
the centre of something likely to make a stir in the town’s social calendar.
And you’re not asking her to run a marathon, only use her brains and make a few
phone calls. I think she’d be in like a shot.’

Darcy smiled as she recalled
having exactly the same thoughts about Amanda. ‘Perhaps we could ask her then,
if you think it’s worth it.’

‘I’ll pop
round and see her later today.’ Amanda drained her cup and placed it with
vigour back into her saucer. Her eyes were shining with purpose and zeal as she
turned her gaze to Darcy. ‘Now then, let’s start batting some hardcore ideas
around and get this thing off the ground. We’ve got a family to send to America!’

With promises to get advice
from
Howie
, her husband, and then get the official
strands of the campaign started, Amanda left Darcy with a brief kiss on the
cheek and a warm, sincere hug to go into town for some shopping. Darcy
negotiated the busy streets back to her car, the sun burning at her back, lost
in thought and slightly overwhelmed at the task she had set herself.  With
Amanda’s input, the thing seemed to have taken on a life of its own and
suddenly, as it bore down on Darcy, it seemed so much bigger than her and
Ged
and their children. Had she
really thought through what it would mean for them?  And she realised
something else too, something important she had neglected to do. As much as she
had convinced herself and even
Ged
that this was a good idea, she hadn’t actually asked Sophie herself if it was
what she wanted. It was all very well deciding that her daughter ought to go
through extensive and life-changing surgery on the other side of the world, but
at nine, wasn’t her daughter now old enough and qualified enough to make the
decision too?  Jake had been a very different sort of nine-year-old and
with no other frame of reference, Darcy wasn’t really sure at all. But perhaps
she should at least talk to her daughter about what was going to happen,
explain to her somehow that her quiet life would soon be tipped upside down.

‘If you were hoping for a gourmet meal when you got in
you’re going to be sadly disappointed,’
Ged
called as
Darcy closed the front door behind her and wandered along the hallway to a warm
yellow and white furnished kitchen, following the charred smell of burning
meat. He stood amongst the debris of a cooking attempt, a striped apron barely
covering his broad chest, his cropped dark hair framing a face that was still
intelligent and handsome, even in his mid-forties but that today was also
distinctly red and flustered. ‘I forgot the chicken was in the oven until Jake
told me he thought the fire service needed calling out.’

Darcy reached up to kiss him.
‘Don’t worry about it. I had meant to be in early enough to start it but I got
stuck with Amanda.’

‘Oh, yes, the big board meeting.
Has she managed to talk you out of this madness?’

‘On the contrary, she’s very
excited by all this madness and she is dying to get started.’ Darcy picked a
stick of raw carrot from a freshly cut pile on the chopping block and bit into
it. ‘She thinks it’s a brilliant idea.’

‘I might have known she’d be as
mental as you. Like peas in a pod, you two.’

‘People used to say that about
us
,’
Darcy said as she took another bite of her carrot stick.

‘Yeah, well… one of us had to
become the sensible one.’
Ged
turned and hauled a blackened looking carcass in a baking dish to the back door.
A swift twist of the key unlocked it and he went outside, returning a few
seconds later empty handed. ‘It’ll have to sit out there for a bit until it’s
cooled enough to throw away. God knows what we’re going to eat now.’

‘Where are the kids?’ Darcy asked,
too preoccupied to worry about an alternative for their evening meal just yet.

‘Upstairs. Jake is
skyping
or
facetiming
or whatever it is he does with Brandon
for hours on end, and Sophie is in her room watching
My Little Pony
for
the seventieth time this week. They lead thrilling and productive lives, our
kids.’

‘They’re just kids,’ Darcy said,
biting back the irritation from her voice as she left him to go and find them.
‘They’re entitled to be lazy once in a while.’

‘Once in a while I wouldn’t mind
so much…’
Ged’s
voice faded
as Darcy climbed the stairs and tuned him out. He was obviously in one of his
passive-aggressive moods because he’d been left to start dinner alone and was
desperate to engage in an all-out argument without actually appearing as though
he was.  Half an hour and a bottle of beer would see him calm down enough
for her to be able to usher him towards the TV so she could fix some pasta or a
salad in relative peace again as he went glassy-eyed in front of the news.
 

She’d been a very young
twenty-two and he had been a worldly-wise thirty-year-old when they first
bumped into each other – literally – on the Cobb, and from the first date she
had thought that the proverbial sun shone from his backside and that every word
coming from him was a great wisdom. He had travelled the world and she had
barely been further than Weymouth.
He had studied at university to Masters
level
and she
had flunked out of a catering course at the local college, desperately lost on
the vast ocean of life with no idea where she wanted to be. This remarkable man
came one day and took her under his wing and she was grateful for it.

Fifteen years later, she had
grown up a lot. More often than not, these days she wished she had pushed him
right off the side of the Cobb and into the sea at that fateful meeting. Every
passing year that saw Darcy’s yearning to grab life by the scruff of the neck
increase saw
Ged
retreat
into the impending twilight of his. It wasn’t a place she was ready to join him
at just yet and it was a wedge between them that was becoming too big to
ignore. Having children had calmed her for a while, but now they were getting
older and would need her less and less – even Sophie’s condition wasn’t
preventing her from becoming more independent and, perversely, if this campaign
to help her daughter walk was successful Darcy knew she would be signing her
own maternal redundancy papers. It wasn’t something she liked to dwell on and
she had decided that denying her daughter this chance for such selfish reasons
was deeply wrong.

Popping her head around a door
emblazoned with the moniker
Sophie’s Room
and plastered with curling
stickers of brightly coloured and glitter embellished ponies, Darcy found her
daughter stretched out on her bed like a piece of limp ribbon, absorbed by the
TV screen at the foot of it.  Darcy couldn’t help but note the slight but
constant griping movement of Sophie’s toes, a sure sign that even at rest and
apparently relaxed, Sophie’s muscle spasms were causing her discomfort.