Your Roots Are Showing (16 page)

“Okay,” she said at last. “You can stay and put the tap in. But you’ve got to be out of here by five.”

“Piece of cake,” said Bruno.

“In that case, I’ll go in and make some tea.” Lizzie didn’t want tea nearly as much as she wanted a bra and sweatshirt.

“Right, I’ll get busy.” Bruno hoisted up his toolbox and strode off purposefully.

Still swathed in the blanket, Lizzie bolted for the house. She ran straight to the bathroom, where the brand new, uninstallable mirror sat propped against the wall. Balancing the mirror on the hand basin, Lizzie threw aside the blanket and bent her knees until she got a view of her bust in its ancient bikini top. The effect was rather grotesque. She seemed to be sprouting breast tissue from under her armpits. What wasn’t hanging out of the sides seemed to be bulging over the top. At least the important bits were hidden, though. She wasn’t technically committing public indecency.

More alarming than the plenitude of flesh in the breast area was the plenitude around the midriff. It was clear that large tracts of her abdomen had not cottoned on to the fact that she’d stopped being pregnant more than three years ago. She glanced down at her legs. They didn’t look too bad from the front, although they could have used a shave. But she was aware that the backs of her thighs were well-known harborers of cellulite, not to mention the less-sensational but just as incriminating common-or-garden subcutaneous fat.

Looking at the big picture — even if only in sections in a propped-up bathroom mirror — she was inclined to think her bikini days were over.

Bit depressing, she thought as she trudged off to the kitchen to put the kettle on. It wasn’t that the weather was frequently balmy enough to
warrant
a bikini; but it would have been nice to imagine you could get away with one if you felt like it.

She turned the tap to fill up the kettle, but it just coughed and spat out a single droplet. She sighed. Bruno must have turned the water off at the mains in order to get on with his outdoor plumbing. Tea would have to wait.

She was on her way upstairs to put on something decent when an urgent roar from the garden stopped her in her tracks. It wasn’t the sort of roar you ignored. She ran outside, heart banging, hoping Bruno hadn’t chopped off his finger or been attacked by hornets.

He hadn’t. He’d just gone and sawed open some pipe that was now shooting water at him, like a fire hose.

“There must be two mains,” he yelled as she came into sight. He was trying without much success to stop the water with his palm. “Any ideas where the second one might be?”

She had no clue, naturally. A frantic search began, the two of them scampering around the garden, leaving no stone unturned, while Madge yapped maniacally and tried to savage the water jet.

The corner near the oil tank had all but turned into a swamp by the time Bruno located the second mains tap in the shacklike building that might once have served as a garage.

“Thank God for that,” said Lizzie as the sawn-off pipe finally dried up. “I thought I was going to have to call the landlord. And he doesn’t even know we’re doing this.”

Bruno flicked the wet hair out his eyes. “
Now
I’ve got egg on my face,” he said with a rueful grimace. “Here I was trying to impress you with the handyman bit and I didn’t even turn the mains off properly.”

Lizzie shrugged. “Look, I wasn’t going to be that impressed anyway . . .” She trailed off and fell silent because Bruno was taking off his shirt.

It was soaked, of course, so he had some excuse — it wasn’t as if he was just doing a bald- faced striptease. But Lizzie wasn’t prepared for the shock waves that ran through her as his taut stomach and muscular upper chest hove into view. Gosh — she hadn’t realized she could still react this way. She’d thought that fizz was all gone.

She turned her eyes away chastely and was about to scuttle indoors when he said, “Look, Lizzie, would you mind giving me a hand just for a second? I need you to hold this in place while I screw this thing on.”

He held up a couple of pieces of hardware.

Lizzie opened her mouth to say that she’d be back in a jiffy, she just needed to change into something decent, but found herself muttering instead, “Okay, but don’t you dare drip on me.”

He grinned. “Why not? You’re in a bikini. At least, I
think
that’s a bikini . . .”

“Of course it’s a bikini,” she said indignantly. “What else would it be? Do you think I lie around outdoors in my underwear?”

He chuckled. “Look, just come over here and hold tight a moment, and not so much chitchat about underwear.”

Lizzie took an indignant breath but found herself speechless. He was so close to her now that she could have leaned over and nuzzled her head against his gleaming bare chest. And his gleaming bare chest pretty much filled her view.

He took her hand and gently placed it on the pipe. “Grip hard,” he said.

Averting her eyes from his skin, Lizzie did as she was told. She couldn’t resist stealing a couple of glances at his damp hair as he bent over his task. She was rather deep in contemplation of the way the sun bounced off the coppery highlights in his curls when a familiar voice suddenly called: “Oh, so
this
is where you are.”

Lizzie froze in position like a guinea pig in peril.

She knew that voice. She knew it better than any other voice on earth. She knew every nuance of pitch and cadence in that voice, and right now that voice was icy with distaste.

“James,” she squeaked, losing her grip on the pipe.

Bruno’s spanner immediately slipped, causing him to bash himself. “Shit,” he cursed, dropping the spanner and squeezing his thumb tight in his right hand. All at once Madge began barking at the top of her voice, the hair on her back standing on end as she danced around James.

“Shut up, Madge!” Bruno boomed. Madge simmered down but remained unconvinced of James’s credentials. Creeping over to Bruno with her tail between her legs, she shot malevolent glances at the newcomer and growled low in her throat.

Meanwhile Lizzie had crossed her hands over her chest guiltily. She was doing some quick thinking.

“James!” she cried again, this time trying to sound shrill not just with surprise but also with delight. “How nice that you’re early! You’re just in time to help Bruno here put in the tap.”

James looked at her in wonder. “Sorry, what?” he asked. She didn’t like his expression at all. You wouldn’t expect a person to be delighted to be called on, unexpectedly, to help install a tap, but Lizzie had a shrewd suspicion his dark glower went deeper than that.

Gosh, could he be jealous? Or was he just plain disgusted?

“Yes! Isn’t it great? Bruno’s putting in a tap. There wasn’t one — can you believe it? I mean, who’d have a big garden like this without an outside tap? You can’t absolutely rely on the English weather to be pissing down rain every day, after all. He asked me to help, but handyman stuff really isn’t my thing — as you know. So what luck that you got here early! A whole hour and a half early! Traffic was good, was it? Nonexistent, probably. You must have absolutely
whizzed
over here. How long did it take you, forty-five minutes? That must be some sort of record.”

Lizzie became aware that both men were looking at her a bit oddly. Oh dear. She was babbling. But what else could you do when your husband came upon you in an outgrown bikini helping a half naked man screw things together in the garden?

Then Bruno stepped forward and stuck out a big damp hand. “Bruno Ardis,” he said in hearty tones. “Landscape gardener.”

Automatically, James shook the proffered hand. “James Buckley,” he replied. “Architect.”

Lizzie beamed maniacally at both of them. “Gosh, you two are sort of in complementary professions, when you think about it. Can’t have a garden without a house, and vice versa. Well, technically you can have a house without a garden, lots of people do, but not the sort of people James works with. They always have gardens. I bet you’d like to chat. Pity Bruno has to go home now. Another time maybe. Gosh, look at the time! You’d better pack up quickly! Remember what you said about — about not wanting to be late for your, erm, your wife’s steak and kidney pie.”

“Look, Lizzie, I’ll be out of here in ten minutes or so but I just have to get this thing finished now or I won’t be able to turn the water back on.”

Twisting a little so her back was to James, Lizzie shot Bruno a beetle-browed grimace. “Hurry up,” she mouthed, jerking her head in James’s direction. Then, spotting Bruno’s shirt in a sodden heap, she scooped it up and bundled it into his arms. “Nice and dry now,” she sang out in her mothering voice. “You can put it back on.” Ignoring Bruno’s incredulous look, she turned to James, forcing her face back into a smile. Really, her jaw was beginning to ache with the strain of all this grinning. “So, where are they, then? Where are the twins? Did they go straight inside? Upstairs to their toys?”

“They’re in the car,” said James, his face set in grim lines. “Asleep.”

“Well, come on, let’s get them into the house.”

“No rush,” said James. “They’re out cold. Why don’t you go and put some clothes on first?”

Lizzie felt the blush rise from the tops of her feet, all the way up her lumpy legs, across her burgeoning chest, over her neck, and into her hairline. “Right,” she whispered, and hurried inside.

It wasn’t so much what James had said; it was the way he’d said it. No, it was the way he’d
looked
at her as he’d said it — not with the look of a man who wants his wife to cover her body because he can’t bear to share her glorious nakedness with the rest of the world. No. Rather, with the look of a man who is pained by the sight of his wife making a spectacle of herself by sporting flesh that is no longer sportable.

By the time Lizzie had ripped off the despised bikini and thrown it into the rubbish bin, she was in dire need of a brown paper bag to breathe into; failing that, she was just about ready to put a plastic bag over her head instead. But as she pulled on her leggings, she told herself, out loud, to get a grip. Why should she be hyperventilating with humiliation just because James had given her a withering look? What did she care if he didn’t like the redistribution of flesh about her person? She’d borne him two children, and if he wasn’t keen on the effect this had had on her body, then he could jolly well haul himself out onto the club and pub scene and find himself a younger model. Which he was probably doing already, come to think of it. Bruno, who wasn’t even a father, could at least appreciate the body of a mature woman. Or so she gathered.

Lizzie yanked an oversized T-shirt down over her head. Then, with a flushed face, accelerated heartbeat, and distinctly combative air, she walked back outside.

Bruno was gone. Probably a good thing, on the whole. James was leaning on his car, keeping a watch on the twins.

“Right,” Lizzie called, walking toward him. “I’m covered from head to toe. Are you happy now?”

James stood up, pushing the floppy fringe out of his eyes. “Delighted,” he said dryly. “By the way, your man said he turned the mains back on.”

“He’s not
my man
. He’s a friend of my neighbor’s.”

“Oh?” James raised his eyebrows. “I thought he was a gardener.”

Lizzie felt a flash of irritation. “He’s a landscape gardener
and
a friend of my neighbor’s. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know. And while we’re on the subject of Bruno: I was in a bikini because he arrived unexpectedly while I was sunbathing, and
he
didn’t have his shirt on because . . .”

James held up a hand. “Lizzie, please, you don’t need to explain. Let’s just unload the twins and call it a day, if you don’t mind.”

Lizzie stamped her foot. “I wasn’t bloody
explaining
. I was telling you the facts. But apparently you don’t want to know. Apparently what I do means absolutely nothing to you. Fine. I’ll bear that in mind from now on.”

“Shush,” said James. “You’ll wake them up.”

Lizzie glanced through the window at the sleeping twins in their car seats. “What did you do to them, anyway? Normally they spring back to life the minute I turn the engine off.”

James shrugged. “None of us got a lot of sleep last night,” he said shortly.

“Is that why you brought them back early?” Lizzie wondered.

“Not really.” James looked surreptitiously at his watch. “I brought them back because the whole thing was a bloody nightmare. They were howling for you by midmorning, and Mum was ready to bite a chunk out of somebody.”

“Ah,” said Lizzie in a neutral tone of voice, trying to disguise the little stab of joy she felt to know they’d missed her. She’d half feared they’d be spoiled rotten by everybody at the manor and never want to come back to Sevenoaks again. “I hope this isn’t going to be a problem,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment. “The children need to see you on a regular basis, you know.”

“I know,” said James. “But don’t worry, they won’t be spending any more time at the manor. I’ve found a little house in Chipping Norton.”

What? What was that? Found a house?

But James didn’t give her time to ask any questions. Looking at his watch again, he groaned, “It’s later than I thought. Better get a bloody move on.”

“Oh, right.” Ironically, now that he was leaving, Lizzie felt all her rage and indignation draining away. In its place, pure panic rushed in. She took a deep breath and burst out, “How about a coffee for the road?” Oh dear. She’d meant to sound so casual.

He gave her a surprised look, then dropped his eyes. “I’ll get a drink when I fill up with petrol. I really have to get back now. Catch up on some work.”

Lizzie shrugged. “Okay, maybe next time.” She unbuckled Alex and eased him out of his car seat. It was heavenly to feel the warm heft of the little boy in her arms again. She looked at his sleeping face — the rosy cheeks and ridiculously long eyelashes. Gently, she placed a kiss on the spot between his eyes.

“You’ve missed them.” James stood cradling Ellie in his arms, watching Lizzie.

“What can I say? I’m a real sucker for punishment. Come on.”