Wild Oats (26 page)

‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked, in a small voice.

‘There doesn’t seem much point in us carrying on. Does there?’

There was a challenge in his voice. Bella looked up, and for one moment it seemed as if she was on the point of saying something, was prepared to fight for
her marriage. Then she turned, picked up the phone with shaking hands, looked at the taxi number on the card pinned on to the board and punched out the number.

‘I’d like a cab, please.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Owl’s Nest, Sandstone Lane, Upper Faviell. Thanks.’

She put the phone down and ran upstairs to pack.

Ten minutes later the doorbell rang and Bella came down the stairs slowly with her bag. Rod had opened the door and the taxi driver was hovering uncomfortably on the doormat, sensing tension.

‘Where to, love?’

‘Manor Close.’

The driver raised an eyebrow. She was going down in the world all right. He held out a hand to take her bag nevertheless. Bella turned in the doorway to say goodbye to Rod, to appeal to him one last time, but he’d turned his back on her, his body language firmly indicating that there was nothing more to be discussed.

Bella followed the taxi driver to the car, as if following her executioner to the gallows.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Rod found tears sliding down his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. They were tears of anger: anger at Bella for deceiving him, and at himself for letting himself be deceived. Tears of bitterness for the total sham that had been his marriage. He thought
of all the times he’d held her, focussing on her grief rather than his, because somehow it was accepted that the disappointment was worse for a woman, that it called into question her
raison d’être
. There had been no such support for him. Nolly, of course, had tried, but Rod had kept her sympathy at arm’s length, bottling everything up, because the minute he expressed his fears would be the minute they were realized.

Mixed in amongst them, however, were tears of relief. Relief that he probably wasn’t sterile or impotent, as he had been starting to fear over the past few months. He might have lost his mate, but now he knew the truth: he had as much chance as the next bloke of becoming a father.

As the taxi drove through the lanes back towards Ludlow, Bella opened the window in the back and took in big gulps of fresh air to suppress her hysteria. She didn’t want to break down and make a scene in front of the driver. He was curious enough already. It was obvious she’d been turfed out of Owl’s Nest, and he kept glancing in the rear-view mirror to assess her state of mind.

Instead, she chewed frantically on her perfect fingernails as she contemplated her bad luck. She’d been so careful. She’d hidden the packets at the dance studio, deep in a filing cabinet, and each month she popped each of the twenty-one pills out of its foil wrap and decanted them into an empty folic acid
bottle, which she took home. She then took one each day in front of Rod. It had been a foolproof deception.

Until today. What were the chances of Rod picking up her prescription like that? She’d only ordered them yesterday; she’d been going to pick them up on Monday and squirrel them away as usual. Now the cat was well and truly out of the bag.

She hadn’t been given a chance to explain, but then how could she? How could she make him understand that the thought of getting pregnant and carrying a child not only terrified but repulsed her? She couldn’t bear the thought of not being in control of her body, of all that weight distorting her beyond recognition. She’d seen pregnant women in the high street, with their huge distended lumps. They barely looked human. And she’d seen the after-effects in her toning classes often enough – the hideous silvery stretch marks, the wrinkles, the deflated bellies that would never regain their elasticity, the pendulous breasts with the blue veins. And she’d heard talk of disfigurements that were not visible – the stitches, the scars, the incontinence.

And that was before you took the pain of shitting a Ford Fiesta into account.

Every month she gave herself a pep talk. Every month she promised herself that she would stop taking the pill; that she’d give it a go. But every time she bottled out, finding some spurious reason. She hated herself for it. Once she’d managed three whole
days without it before panicking and rushing to the packet with shaking hands and taking the pills she’d missed all at once, then still going for the morning-after pill when she and Rod had sex that month, just in case.

And when she used to cry when she came on, she wasn’t faking it. They weren’t crocodile tears. They were tears of shame that she wasn’t able to give Rod what he wanted, no matter how hard she tried to do battle with her head. She wept because she felt she wasn’t normal – all normal women wanted babies, didn’t they? Once you were happily married, which she certainly was, it was a natural progression. But nothing she did could conquer her fear. She peered into prams, examining newborns, hoping they would emanate some sort of magic scent that would make her broody. Once, she was charmed by a particularly winsome specimen giving her a heart-melting grin from beneath a white velour beanie hat. Bella felt a tiny little flicker of something inside her, and wondered if at long last her maternal instincts were kicking in. But one look at the mother changed her mind. She’d once attended Bella’s aerobic classes, and had been lean and toned. Now, with her drooping breasts and thickened waistline, combined with dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep, she was barely recognizable. Bella recoiled in horror, all inclinations to procreate vanishing into thin air.

The taxi turned into the road that led to her mother’s house. Bella’s heart sank. As council houses
went, it was perfectly pleasant. All the old windows had been replaced with smart UPVC leaded windows; the garden was tidy. But not all their neighbours were as conscientious with their upkeep. The estate was notorious as a dumping ground for the villains of the area. Not least several of Rod’s brothers, who ruled the estate with a rod of iron. Cars destined for the scrap heap, some of them without wheels, littered the roadside. Broken fences, peeling paint, front lawns worn bare by relentless football practice – it was a predominantly depressing neighbourhood, despite the efforts of some.

Bella sighed. She’d worked so bloody hard to get herself out of here. She thought of the long days and nights she and Rod had spent doing up Owl’s Nest. Her nails had been ruined, but she hadn’t minded. She’d worked tirelessly, sanding and stripping and scraping, then painting and staining and polishing. Now here she was, back to square one. She felt her heart slither down to her boots, just like Snakes and Ladders, when the counter slid back down the snake after landing on an unlucky square.

She’d landed on an unlucky square all right. But it had been of her own making.

Pauline answered the door, and looked questioningly at Bella’s suitcase.

‘We’ve had,’ said Bella, very carefully so she didn’t cry, ‘a bit of an argument. I don’t want to talk about it at the moment. But can I come and stay?’

*

As Jamie tossed and turned in her bed that night, trying to get to sleep, she went over and over what Olivier had said to her, and realized he was right.

It was a sobering thought, but Jack was now her only living relative – the only one that meant anything, that is, though there was the odd aunt and a few cousins floating around. Until she got a husband of her own, and had children, which seemed a long way off if not totally unlikely, he was all she had in the world. She had to do everything in her power to preserve her relationship with him. And she didn’t want to be filled with regret. She knew now that you could never be sure what was round the corner. Her mother’s death had taught her that.

Maybe it was part of growing up to accept that you couldn’t make everything right, to learn to live with things as they are. Hundreds of clichés spun round her head – make the best of a bad job, like it or lump it, every cloud has a silver lining. She couldn’t change the past or wave a magic wand and save Bucklebury. Jack had been right to salvage what he could from the wreckage. By coming along and throwing her hands up in horror, Jamie realized she’d shown herself up as naive, unrealistic, reactionary.

Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. And this way was less of a risk. Jamie saw now that her head had been in the clouds. What did she know about running a country hotel, or any sort of business for that matter? Her expertise was childcare, getting newborn babies to sleep through the night, not pandering to the whims
of demanding, querulous house guests. She should stick to what she was good at. She could have ended up making a very expensive mistake, putting a lot of time and effort into a project that ultimately lost them everything.

With Jack’s plan, at least they still had a toehold. He could still wake up and enjoy the same view he’d had for forty years; breathe the same air. And presumably they would have a certain amount of control over how the development looked – she’d get Kif’s advice; make sure that there were certain stipulations built into the contract. No hideous UPVC conservatories; no ghastly fast-growing conifers. From what little she’d seen of Owl’s Nest, Rod was a sympathetic renovator, using authentic materials that blended in with the surroundings. And anyway, if he was going to be living in the farmhouse, he wouldn’t want to look out on anything unattractive; no doubt he’d take as much care over the conversion of the stables as he would the renovation of the house.

By the time Jamie fell asleep, she felt happier. She’d resigned herself to the fact that buildings didn’t matter, that the most important thing to preserve was her relationship with Jack, and she wasn’t going to fall out with the one person she had left in the world over a pile of old bricks.

16

Having made her resolution, the very last thing Jamie wanted to do was go and apologize to Rod Deacon. But she had to, before it was too late. She prayed to God that he hadn’t de-instructed his solicitors on the back of what she’d told him, but as they’d heard nothing to indicate that, she presumed he was just biding his time. Meanwhile, she was going to have to bite the bullet. Eat humble pie. Swallow her pride. She cursed herself for her impulsiveness. If only she hadn’t flown off the handle the week before, she wouldn’t have to humiliate herself now.

On Monday morning, she dressed carefully for the confrontation, wanting to look calm and collected and to dispel the image of last week’s ranting harpy. She put on the linen skirt she’d worn to the bank and tied back her hair neatly. Happy that she looked businesslike, and trying to ignore the dread that was churning in her stomach, she ran out to the car before she could change her mind and bottle out.

To her annoyance, both cars were parked outside Owl’s Nest. She didn’t really want Bella as an audience while she grovelled, but she had little choice. She rapped on the door and waited. And waited. After what seemed like an age, but was probably only a
minute, she rapped again. She had to admit she felt a certain relief when there was still no reply. She needn’t have the conversation she’d been dreading after all. She was scrabbling in her bag to find a pen and paper, in order to write a note and explain the situation, when Rod answered the door.

He looked absolutely terrible. He was wearing a white T-shirt and boxer shorts, still not dressed even though it was lunchtime. He hadn’t shaved either, and his eyes were bloodshot. His hair stuck out at all angles. There was a definite smell of last night’s beer.

Jamie recoiled slightly, but was grateful. If he’d come to the door looking crisp and fresh and irresistible, she would have found the task even harder.

She coughed to clear her throat.

‘I’ve come to apologize,’ she began carefully. ‘And to say – just ignore what I said the other day. I overreacted. I was exhausted. And a bit… emotional. I’ve got everything a bit more in perspective now.’ She smiled. ‘The deal’s still on. Pretend I never said anything. As soon as the solicitors have done their thing, we can sign.’

He stared at her dully. When he spoke his voice was gruff.

‘There’s not a lot of point now.’

Jamie frowned. This wasn’t quite what she’d been steeling herself for. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Bella and I have split up. So there’s no need for the comfortable family home any more.’ His tone
dripped acid bitterness. ‘Added to which, I won’t be able to afford it. Not with an ex-wife to support.’

Jamie tried to take in what he was saying, genuinely shocked. Rod and Bella had seemed so together the other day. For heaven’s sake, they’d both come home in their lunch hour for a romp. What on earth could have happened?

‘I’m sorry,’ Jamie faltered, really not sure what to say.

‘Don’t be.’

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Do you want to… talk about it?’

He looked at her without really seeing her.

‘No. I don’t think I do.’

But he made no move to shut the door. Jamie hovered awkwardly, not sure what she was supposed to do. She hated to leave him in this state. He looked utterly distraught, and her initial instinct was to comfort him. He looked bereft, distressed, inconsolable, like a small boy who’d lost his mummy while out shopping. The urge to take him in her arms was almost instinctive.

But then she remembered how she herself had suffered at his hands. Perhaps Bella had undergone a similar indignity; flown the coop because of some callous, unfeeling action on Rod’s part. She remembered how desperate she had been to get away from him, all those years ago. She felt all her pity evaporate at the memory, and her heart harden.

‘Well, no doubt you did something to deserve it,’
she said, unable to stop the words coming out. He looked as if he’d been slapped.

‘What?’ His expression was pained.

‘Come on, Rod. We both know what you’re capable of. You don’t appreciate what you’ve got, and then you go and dump on them from a great height. Basically because you can only think about yourself.’

‘What are you talking about?’