What She Wants (63 page)

avoid Emily in case she got an update on whatever poor local person had just split up with their husband or lost their job or had a death in the family. ‘I could have told you he’d up and leave her … he had a roving eye, that one… God love her and all them children … the house looks like the local dump, not that I’m saying anything, mind you …’ Therefore, when Mary-Kate phoned and insisted that Virginia join her, Delphine and Hope on a girlie lunch in Killarney to cheer Hope up, Virginia refused. ‘I’m sure she’d hate me to turn up at her house tomorrow,’ Virginia had said, scandalized. ‘The poor girl must be going through enough torment without thinking that the entire village knows her husband has left her.’ ‘The entire village won’t know,’ Mary-Kate said firmly. ‘You’ll know and you’re not going to announce the news from the pulpit on Sunday. Hope needs a few people to bring her out and make her feel a bit normal. And she loves you, Virginia. She’d be delighted to see you. Let’s face it, people are going to find out soon enough, so it might be easier on her if she has a few friends who know Mart’s gone and can stop the worst of the gossip.’ ‘Why don’t you ask her if she minds me knowing?’ fretted Virginia. ‘Say you haven’t told me but that if she doesn’t mind, you will and then I’ll go with you.’ ‘Fine,’ said Mary-Kate. ‘You’re a stickler for details.’ Virginia grimaced. ‘I’ve had plenty of experience with nosy people who want to witness your misery. I’d hate to be one.’

Virginia couldn’t get Hope Parker out of her mind all afternoon. She was a lovely, rather sweet woman, Virginia felt, who was one of life’s givers and who’d be lost without that handsome husband of hers. Then again, Virginia thought sadly, she’d felt utterly lost without Bill and she’d still had to deal with the world. She’d had to face up to life no matter how devastated she felt. Hope would have to do the same.

Mary-Kate phoned that night. ‘Get your party dress on, missus, you’re coming to lunch with us tomorrow. The only problem with asking Hope would she like you to come was the fact that she got upset and thought you wouldn’t want to meet her if you knew that she’d been carrying on with that bould lad up at the hotel. She thinks you’re a very moral, decent person and was afraid you’d be disgusted with her.’

‘God love her,’ said Virginia, touched and saddened at the same time. ‘I am glad you asked me along, Mary-Kate. I think we’ll have to explain to poor Hope that the world isn’t black and white and that her true friends know that.’

‘Grey,’ said Mary-Kate sagely. ‘The world is grey, and talking of grey, I think I’ll wear my grey dress tomorrow so I better go and iron it.’

‘Mary-Kate!’ reproved her friend. ‘I am determined that one of these days I’ll get you out of your greys and your muddy browns. Bright colours would look beautiful on you.’

‘Mutton dressed as lamb more like,’ laughed Mary-Kate. ‘I don’t have your style Mrs Connell to carry off clothes like a model.’

‘Madam, are you insinuating that I’m mutton dressed as lamb?’ demanded Virginia with mock indignation.

‘Why would I do that and you an expert with a golf club? I’d be afraid you’d hit me with one of your irons.’

‘As if I’d hit you,’ Virginia said. ‘No, poison would be best, something from your chemist, then the police would think it was suicide and I’d be off the hook.’

‘You’re reading too many of those detective novels,’ Mary-Kate replied. ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow at twelve.’

Millie was acting up, which cheered her mother up no end. For the past four days since Matt had left, both children had been subdued and clingy, reacting to Hope’s palpable misery. No matter how hard she tried to be bright and breezy, the children sensed that something was wrong. Which was why Hope was so thrilled that on the morning

of the girls’ lunch in Killarney, Millie threw a major, class A tantrum.

She flew into a rage at breakfast when she heard her mother on the phone discussing going to Killarney. Toby and Millie were going to Hunnybunnikins and Millie decided that this wasn’t fair. Killarney with Auntie Delphine meant treats, sweets and possibly ice creams with chocolate things stuck in them.

‘Won’t go! Won’t go!’ she shrieked at Hope. Her Barbie beaker of milk went flying along with Toby’s cereal.

‘Millie,’ said Hope in a warning voice.

‘Won’t! Want to go to ‘Larney!’ shrieked Millie again, giving her cereal bowl a forceful shove that made it rattle to the edge of the table and whisk over it, adding to the cereal and milk disaster on the kitchen floor.

Thank God for slate floors, Hope thought calmly. She’d put lovely rugs all over the downstairs of the house to cover up the beautiful but cold slate floor. The only place without a rug was the kitchen, scene of many meal time disasters. It would only take a minute or so to clear away and Hope could deal with that. She could deal with simple, everyday matters without any problem, she’d realized over the past few days. If the range went out, she calmly lit it again. If Toby walked mud into the ochre and burnt sienna rug in the sitting room, she cleaned it up. The beauty of these things was that they could be fixed. Unlike her and Matt. So she was dealing with the whole situation by not thinking about it and by acting on super-calm auto pilot, serenely being a capable mother and trying not to give in to too many moments of despair. If she did that, she’d be a wreck.

‘Toby,’ she said now, ‘you’re a good boy and I’ll give you more breakfast in a moment.’

She kissed the top of his head and began to clear away the mess.

Millie sat crossly on her seat and scowled at everyone. She wanted to be noticed. She wanted to be begged to be good, she wanted attention. Instead, she was getting none.

Speculatively, she bounced her spoon across the table and onto the floor. Hope said nothing but picked Millie up and carried her into the living room where she sat her on the couch. ‘Toby and I are having breakfast and if you don’t want any, you can sit here,’ Hope said firmly. Then she turned her back on her astonished daughter and went back to Toby. After a full minute of sitting there crossly, Millie started peering into the kitchen. Hope was talking to Toby, telling him what sort of fun day he’d have in the creche and how Giselle had said there was going to be finger painting and all sorts of other excitement. He’d have to go on his own, of course, because Millie wouldn’t be going. Giselle didn’t allow naughty girls in. Shocked, Millie glared at them both. After another minute, she wriggled off the couch and stomped into the kitchen. Her big dark eyes were sad and her full lower lip wobbled the way it did when she was upset or on the verge of a tantrum. Now, it was wobbling in an upset way. ‘Can I go to the Bunny place, Mummy?’ she said tearfully. Hope pretended to consider this. ‘I thought you didn’t want to go,’ she said, ‘and you know that Giselle doesn’t like naughty girls in the creche. She’d be very cross if you spilled your milk.’ Millie’s lower lip wobbled some more. Hope reached out and hugged her. ‘All right, darling,’ she said, kissing the top of Millie’s head, ‘you can go with Toby. And we don’t want any more tantrums at breakfast, OK?’ Millie was instantly delighted, her cherubic face creased up into a big smile. ‘No Mummy,’ she said innocently. With the children safely installed in Hunnybunnikins until half three, Hope went home, climbed into bed and started to cry. Rocking back and forth with the duvet around her, she sobbed and sobbed, letting all the tears she’d had to stifle come out. She cried for herself, for her marriage, for the children and, finally, for darling Matt. Hope could barely manage to think about his anguished

face without feeling like the most evil woman on the planet. He’d looked so devastated. She could see his face and remember those words as if they were engraved on her heart; engraved without an anaesthetic: We were supposed to be everything to each other, you were my whole family and I thought I was yours. And you’ve just destroyed that. She remembered in the early stages of their relationship, when she had fallen deeply in love with Matt and become hopelessly dependent on him, how she’d cried one night and told him that she’d always been scared of people she loved leaving her. ‘I won’t leave,’ Matt had said gently, fixing back a strand of her hair that had come loose from its scrunchie. ‘Don’t be afraid, Hope. We’re like the musketeers, always together. I love you.’ It was the first time he’d said it: in a quaint little pub in Oxford where they’d gone for Easter weekend. All around, people were chatting and laughing, tapping their feet to the background folk music, asking loudly for pints and demanding crisps and toasted sandwiches. Hope didn’t notice the noise because she was so in love. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered joyfully, not having had the courage to say it until he did. ‘My little musketeer,’ Matt had said warmly. He’d bought her an antique edition of the Dumas classic as a first wedding anniversary present. ‘The Three Musketeers’ she’d exclaimed, thrilled and at the same time ashamed because her present to him was a boring briefcase. ‘The first wedding anniversary is the paper one,’ Matt had said proudly. ‘What better paper than a book like this? I love it, it’s one of my favourites.’ Now, sitting on their bed, Hope drew her knees into her chest and rocked some more, trying to comfort herself in her wild grief. She knew exactly where the book was now, sitting, still wrapped up carefully in tissue paper, in a box

of belongings they’d never opened since leaving Bath. Curlew Cottage was smaller than the house in Makings Lane and there were several boxes in the corner of the tiny spare room, stacked neatly on top of each other and waiting until the Parkers went back home. What was their home now? Hope wondered dismally. Would she get the Dumas book in the divorce or would Matt demand it back as an expensive love token he’d bought as an investment? If only he’d get in touch, she could tell him how much she loved him and what a mistake it had all been. But after four days, she’d heard nothing. He could be dead in a ditch somewhere and it would be all her fault. Eventually, the shaking stopped and she clambered out of bed and tried to repair the damage to her devastated face. Her skin was red, blotchy and she had an outbreak of spots considering whether to appear on her chin. In spite of her misery, Hope grinned weakly at her frazzled reflection in the bathroom mirror. In films, women with marriage breakdowns got thin, developed marvellous cheekbones and looked beautiful in a deeply haunted manner. In real life it seemed as if acne and a spare tyre from comfort eating toasted cheese sandwiches and Quality Street were the only things you developed. On the off chance that Matt might have sent her an email, she switched on the computer. There was nothing from him but Sam had written.

Hope, my darling, I am so, so sorry for you. How awful. When you told me last night, I have to admit I was stunned. That bastard Matt! I will kill him. How dare he leave you without giving you a chance to explain. Anybody who knows you, knows you would never dream of having an affair. Hell, we all flirt with people, even precious Matt flirts, I’m sure. So you are not to blame yourself for anything. You were simply being a normal woman and if Matt hasn’t the

loyalty or the sense to trust you, then he doesn’t deserve you. You leave it to me and I’ll track him down and give him a piece of my mind. If he hadn’t left you on your own with the kids, then you wouldn’t have been prey to bloody predators like that De Lacy man. He’s just as bad. How dare he try and assault you like that. Have you thought of phoning the police and pressing charges … Hope winced. Dear Sam was standing up for her as usual but raging against Matt, or even Christy for that matter, was a waste of time. I will fly over at the weekend. Don’t panic. You can manage without Matt Parker and when he comes to his senses and tries to crawl back, he’ll have me to contend with. You may be able to forgive him but I won’t. Will phone later, All my love, chin up, Sam.

Hope didn’t have the energy to answer the missive. It had been difficult enough telling Sam what had happened, although Sam had been loyalty personified. On the phone, she’d been so virulently angry with her brother-in-law that if she’d been able to get her hands on him at that moment, she’d have ended up in jail for murder. ‘I’ll kill him for doing this to you!’ she’d raged furiously, leaving Hope feeling guilty. Even if Matt hadn’t listened to her side of the story, she did have something to be ashamed of and there was no escaping that brutal fact. Delphine, Mary-Kate and Virginia arrived just before noon, bearing gifts. Delphine had brought a sample of the new, hideously expensive face mask they were using up at the hotel. ‘It promises to rejuvenate tired skin,’ she said, reading the label, ‘although the advert for it on the television shows a fourteen-year-old girl without a line on her face, so I don’t know if we can

trust them. Fourteen-year-old girls don’t need rejuvenation.’ ‘Do you not have a cream that does skin resurfacing?’ demanded Hope, trying to be light hearted. ‘It’s my only hope. I’ve come out in spots. Probably from all the chocolates I’ve been munching.’ ‘Chocolate has nothing to do with your skin,’ Delphine remarked in her professional voice. ‘Spots like those are probably hormonal.’ ‘A good bottle of wine will help cure them,’ Mary-Kate said, adding her gift to the pile: six bottles of home made wine. ‘Frederich from the craft shop makes the most beautiful elderberry and gooseberry wine. It’s not Chateauneuf de whatever, mind you, but it’s very cheering to have a glass at night.’ ‘That’s why you’re so merry all the time?’ Delphine teased her aunt. ‘A glass of home made brew and one of your muscle relaxants …’ ‘I only use those for my back,’ protested Mary-Kate. ‘Yes,’ agreed Virginia. ‘She smokes hash if she wants to relax.’ ‘Jesus! Do you want to get me arrested?’ exclaimed Mary Kate. ‘I told you I only tried it that one time twenty-five years ago at a party and it did nothing for me. I was a kid, I didn’t know what they were giving me …’ The other three broke off into howls of laughter. ‘You should see your face, Mary-Kate,’ Virginia said, putting one of her famous tea cakes on the table as her offering. ‘You’re a crowd of bitches,’ Mary-Kate sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m friends with any of you.’ Hope hugged her. ‘You know we only tease you because we love you?’ she said, feeling happy for the first time in days. ‘Ah sure, I know, a stor,’ said Mary-Kate, breaking into Irish as she always did when she was touched. ‘Now come on. I’ve booked us a table at the best restaurant in town and I’ve told them to have the champagne cooling for us.’