Things I Want My Daughters to Know (25 page)

And now here he was. It was weird. This was only the fourth or fifth time they’d ever said hello in person. She was aware, as he hugged her, that they hadn’t quite figured out how their bodies fit together, standing up. They were better at lying down, she realized. He kissed her once, on the mouth, and then pulled her back into the hug. It was strange to be reunited with someone with whom she’d been so intimate, but about whom she still knew relatively little.

“You smell different.”

“That’s my country smell.”

“You look different, too. Is that a Barbour you’re wearing?” She stood back and looked him up and down appraisingly.

He smirked at her.

“Indeed. This is Squire Ed, an incarnation you haven’t met before.

All waxed jacket and wet gun dog.”

“When’s the next train back?”

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He adopted a Mellors accent. “Ah, m’lady, that’ll be next Tuesday, I reckon.”

“Bugger. Guess I’ll have to stay, then.”

“You’ll have to stay. Mum’ll have a Barbour you can borrow.”

“Get lost. Not in a million.”

“You say that now, m’lady, fresh from town, but give it a couple of days, and you’ll go native like the rest of us.”

“We’ll see.”

They laughed, delighted at the easy return of the easy banter, and Ed hoisted her rucksack on his shoulder, taking her hand with his other arm. “Come on, it’s freezing.”

She giggled again when he opened the door to an unlocked, ravaged old Land Rover. “You are joking! The transformation is complete, you bumpkin!”

“Dad totaled his car, I’m afraid. And Mum’s got hers at the hospital.

It was this or horse.”

“Of course.” Then, “You have horses?”

“No. No horses. Would horses have been a problem?”

“Can’t stand them. Got thrown off once. All my mates were into riding, when we were about, I don’t know, ten. Just before boys, you know.

They talked me into going with them one day. Happened first time.

Thought the bloody thing was going to trample me where I lay on the ground. Possibly the scariest moment of my life.” She had climbed in.

“How far?”

“We’re going straight home, if that’s okay. I’ve been at the hospital all day. Dad’s at the Royal Cornwall, here in Truro. Home’s about twenty minutes in the other direction.”

“Fine. How is your dad?”

“Talking today. Complaining, actually. Says the food’s awful. Why do people always say that? He wants to come home.”

“Don’t blame him. I hate hospitals. I’ve only been in overnight once; I had appendicitis when I was fourteen. Couldn’t wait to get out.”

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“I’ve never stayed. All my childhood accidents were of the outpatient variety.” She made a note to ask him about his childhood accidents.

Check thoroughly for scars at some point, too. . . .

“And how soon is that likely to be? Him coming home?”

“Another week or so at least, they say. They’ve got to treat the injuries as well as the heart thing. He’s had to have all these tests, find out what caused the problem.”

“How’s your mum? You said on the phone that she wasn’t coping all that well?”

“That’s the strangest thing. She’s this amazingly capable, strong woman, you know. She was a nurse when she met Dad. Did I tell you that? She never actually finished her training. But she was always really calm, you know. Three boys bring home a lot of bloody noses and broken limbs and black eyes. Nothing ever phased her. That’s not just how I see her—that’s how she is. Was. This has really knocked her for six.

She literally . . . fell apart. When she rang me that morning, she could barely speak.”

“He’s her husband.”

“I know.”

“She must have been frightened.”

“We all were. I’m not ready, you know. Not ready to let him go.”

“I don’t suppose anyone ever is.”

“No.”

He took one hand off the steering wheel and squeezed her knee.

“Thank you
so
much for coming, Amanda.”

She was very glad that she had.

The Land Rover was not the most comfortable mode of transport.

She felt every bump in the road. Add an unidentifiable smell, three dozen more people, some chickens, and she could have been back on the bus in Cambodia. Ed acted as tourist guide, pointing left and right at significant points—left down there was where he’d gone to junior school, right down here led to his brother’s house. At one point he ges-184 e l i z a b e t h

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tured upward, to the high hills in front of them, where a huge white house sat majestically surveying the road and everything else. “That’s where the Duchess lives. You remember—my dad’s first wife.”

“It looks like a stately home!”

“It’s about as welcoming, too, from what I’ve heard. Must have loved it when they built this road a few years back, mustn’t she? Not far now—just a couple more minutes.”

“Isn’t it uncomfortable for them, living so close, when they don’t get on?”

“Not really. They move in totally different circles. The Duchess is in with the hunting set. Wankers.”

“I’m so glad you said that. I was beginning to get worried.”

“What, that my idea of a good time of a Saturday morning was dressing up like a twat and charging around the countryside, torturing foxes?”

“Yes, frankly. Let’s face it, you look the part!” Finding out that Ed was in the hunting fraternity would have been a deal breaker, she realized, and wasted the price of a (heinously expensive) single ticket from London.

“Don’t lump everyone who lives outside the M25 into the same category, you urbanite.” He was smiling.

“Sorry, sir. Point taken!”

She recollected that Ed had told her his parents had downsized, leaving the bigger, family home of his childhood to his elder brother a few years ago. Which was worrying, since the house at the end of the driveway he pulled into a few minutes later looked pretty bloody big to her. It was ludicrously pretty, too: white, with big square windows. It was built into the side of the hill and overlooked a stunning es-tuary.

“Wow.”

“Great house, isn’t it? I prefer it to their old one. They’re so close to
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the water. You can actually get down there, to the banks—there are these steps, in the garden behind the house—that go all the way down.

But up here, you get this incredible view.”

It was beautiful, even in January, with a fierce wind and a gray sky.

Amanda realized it would be stunning in the summer.

“Come on, I’ll show you around.” Ed had retrieved her rucksack from the back and fished around in the pocket of his coat for a key. “They’re not big in interior design, the aged Ps. Don’t think they’ve painted a wall since they moved in. Just plonked their furniture down and got on with it.

It’s all a bit
Country Life
for my taste, I’m afraid. Oh, and the central heating is woefully inadequate. They’ve got plenty of money to fix it, but they’re just not bothered. We’ve been at them for ages to get it upgraded, but they’re odd—they like it this way. Although how you could enjoy the kind of drafts that fly around in here up your jacksy, I don’t know. They’ve still got those archaic bar heater things in the bathrooms. Dad is the kind of bloke who’ll have the windows open in midwinter. But there are fire-places downstairs, and there’s an Aga in the kitchen. It’s just getting into and out of bed that requires nerves of steel.”

The kitchen did, indeed, have the mother of all Agas, a vast, four-oven cream one, with a drying rack hoist above it, and a bat-tery of cooking equipment hung from the wall behind. It was giving off lovely heat in the chilly air, and Amanda went straight to it. She’d grown cold, driving over here in the drafty Land Rover, and she wanted to warm her hands.

Ed came over and hugged her from behind, his arms snaking around her waist.

“It’s bloody wonderful that you’re here.”

She turned within his embrace and kissed him properly. The tip of his nose was cold. They stayed that way, kissing against the Aga, for a few minutes, just long enough for Amanda to get warm and to start to feel woozy-kneed.

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She pushed him away playfully. “Right. Enough of that. What’s a girl got to do around here to get a cup of tea?”

“I’ve got a few suggestions,” he groaned, pushing his hips into hers lasciviously, but he took the kettle from behind her and went to the sink to fill it.

“Are you sure your mum doesn’t mind my being here? It’s kind of a family time.”

“She’s fine. I told her I wanted you here. She understood completely.”

“Really?”

“Really. Actually, she’s incredibly curious about you.”

“Why?”

“You’re the first girl I’ve ever brought home.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not. I mean, there were girlfriends, while I was at school and stuff—they were around. I’m not weird. But since I left home—not a one. Why?” He looked amused at her incredulity. “How many blokes have you taken home to meet your parents?”

“Well, none really.”

“So—what’s the difference?!”

“Well . . . you’re . . . you’re older than me, for a start.”

“Hardly. A couple of years, isn’t it?”

“And . . . and . . . most of the boyfriends I’ve had have been while I was traveling . . . and I could hardly bring them home, could I? They weren’t that serious, not that I’m saying you have to be serious about someone to bring them home, or anything like that . . . and anyway, they were thousands of miles away, most of them.”

“Longest relationship to date?” He was making the tea, opening the fridge to look for milk.

“I don’t know. . . .” She wasn’t going to say first. “What about you?”

“Five months. At university. A couple of three-month ones. That’s
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it—the rest shorter than that. Not that there’s been dozens, you understand. Not several dozens, at least . . . I’m a serial monogamist. Not a very good one.”

“Oh.”

“What does ‘oh’ mean?” He squeezed the teabag, took it out, and brought her a mug. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know each other very well at all, do we?”

“So tell me yours. Then we’ll know that, won’t we? Afterward, I’ll get my inoculation records, my GCSE certificates, and the small box of my milk teeth that my mother has rather macabrely kept all these years in her knicker drawer. . . .”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“You’re evading me.”

“Four months. Okay? Four months. He was called Guy. He was from New Zealand. He was my ski instructor—I did this course over there. A couple of years ago. We got together when I arrived, and we split up, if that isn’t overdramatizing things, which it probably is, because it wasn’t all that serious, when I left. Okay?”

“You ski well?” She slapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, big picture, please. We were talking about exes.”

“Okay, so we’ve established that we’re both borderline dysfunctional with the opposite sex and possibly incapable of forming lasting relationships. Next. You ski well?”

“Oy! Speak for yourself. I’m not dysfunctional. I’m peripatetic.”

“Ouch. Isn’t there an ointment for that? I could take a look in Mum’s medicine chest. . . .”

“Be serious!”

“Why?” He took her mug from her and pulled her to him. “Why be serious? Look—I’m glad you haven’t got a closet full of skeletons. I’m glad you haven’t got a ‘one who got away’ or a ‘he was the love of my life’

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she’ll
be glad that I’m not gay. I suspect she had her suspicions, after all these years of apparent inactivity on my part.”

Amanda smiled into his shoulder. “Well, I can certainly clear that up for her.”

“Thank you! Although maybe go easy on the details of my hetero-sexuality.”

“I’ll try and hold myself back. I’m sure she’d be very proud of you, though. When will she be back?”

Ed looked at his watch. “About an hour or so, I expect . . . why?”

It was her turn to lead with her hips. “I thought you might give me a tour . . . show me . . . you know, where I’ll be sleeping. . . .”

“That would be my pleasure.” He took her hand and led her toward the stairs.

It was actually forty-five minutes. By then it was completely dark outside, and Ed’s mother’s headlights, turning into the driveway, flashed a warning signal to them where they lay catching their breath in the pretty guest bedroom, having once again proved Ed’s cre-dentials as a very, very straight guy.

“Jesus, is that your mum?”

“Yep.” Ed had jumped up like a scalded cat and was pulling his boxer shorts on.

“Great. Perfect. She’ll think I’m a slut!”

“Not if you move your bloomin’ arse.” He threw her bra at her and smirked.

Ed was dressed, but disheveled and flushed, his shirttails hanging, by the time his mother opened the front door and began calling him, and Amanda was hastily pulling her sweater over her head and smoothing her wild and tangled hair into a low ponytail.

“Ed? Are you here, love? Why aren’t there any lights on down here?

You haven’t started any fires. . . .” She sounded tired but not really cross.

“I’m on it, Mum. Give me five minutes.” There was no way down,
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except past her. Amanda rather wished for back stairs. “I’ve just been . . . showing Amanda where she’s sleeping.” Behind him, Amanda could see eyebrows being raised. He stood aside, and she saw that the raised eyebrows topped a wide, and utterly knowing, smile. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. “Mum, this is Amanda. Amanda, Mum.”

“Also known as Nancy.” Ed’s mum stepped forward and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Amanda. Welcome.” There was no edge at all to her voice, and the smile stayed broad. If she was shocked and appalled, she was hiding it well.