Читать книгу A Winter's Wish - Alice Ross - Страница 14
ОглавлениеThe first thing Amelia noticed when she awoke was her fuzzy head. The second was a strange sense of bewilderment. She couldn’t recall another Monday morning when she’d had nothing to do. In fact, she’d be hard pushed to think of any morning when she’d had nothing to do. Even on holiday she had a schedule: a swim before breakfast, a jog along the beach, a session in the gym. But this morning she had neither the energy nor the motivation to even slide out of bed. Perhaps she should just give into the urge and burrow under the duvet—
‘Thomas! Come out of there!’
Amelia jack-knifed up as her bedroom door flew open and in bowled a miniature Darth Vader brandishing a flashing lightsaber. Pip, red tinsel around his collar, followed, leaping onto Amelia’s bed with a great sense of purpose.
‘Gosh, I’m so sorry,’ apologised Annie, scuttling in after them. She scooped up her son with one hand and dragged the dog off the bed with the other. ‘I’ve told them to be quiet and stay away from your room but—’
‘It’s all right. I was just about to get up,’ lied Amelia.
‘You honestly don’t have to,’ said Annie. ‘You should have a lie-in. I would if I could. I really shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine last night.’
‘Me neither.’ Amelia didn’t normally drink so much. In fact, she rarely drank at all. A couple of glasses of champagne at work functions was as much as she ever risked. You couldn’t run an actuarial department without a razor-sharp mind. But she wasn’t running an actuarial department now, was she? She wasn’t doing anything. For the first time in her life she was completely without purpose.
‘So, any plans?’ Jake had asked her in the pub.
Amelia had toyed with a chunk of aubergine on her pasta salad as tears, once again, stung her eyes. ‘Er, no. Not at the moment,’ she’d managed to reply.
‘That’s not like you,’ Annie had pointed out. ‘You always have a plan – always striving towards your next career goal.’
I don’t have a next career goal, Amelia had wanted to wail. Thankfully, though, the attention had shifted to Mr Russell – the owner of the newsagent’s, who’d scuttled over to tell them he’d be closing the shop for a few days over the holidays as he was going to visit his family down south. As soon as he’d tottered off Amelia, unable to face more interrogation about her own sorry situation, had steered the conversation onto the much less emotive subject of Annie’s new tearoom.
‘Breakfast’s ready if you’re coming down,’ Annie informed her, whisking the interlopers out of the room and closing the door behind her.
Well, given she was now fully awake, Amelia concluded she might as well get up. Dragging herself out of bed, she padded over to the en suite and examined her reflection in the mirror. God! She looked terrible: skin the colour of putty, dark shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes, and not an ounce of her normally high-voltage energy. With a heavy sigh, she turned on the shower and whipped up a bottle of shampoo.
Half an hour later, showered and dressed in black designer jeans and a grey cashmere jumper, she wandered down to the kitchen. Sophie sat at the table in a blue gingham dress and navy cardigan, her hair in two fat bunches, spreading what looked like an entire jar of strawberry jam onto a tiny piece of toast. Cereal boxes and soggy cereal remnants, as well as a smattering of crockery – some clean, some used – a rack of wholemeal toast, and a half-full cafetière covered the table.
‘Hello,’ said Amelia.
Abandoning her toast-smearing for a moment, Sophie lifted her head and gazed at her aunt with huge green eyes. ‘Hello.’
Amelia immediately felt awkward – on the back foot. For heaven’s sake, she chided herself, she regularly presented to groups of highly educated, intelligent people. How on earth could a seven-year-old make her feel so self-conscious?
Resisting the urge to turn on her heel and shoot back upstairs and under the duvet, she pulled out the bench opposite her niece and plopped down onto it. She cleared her throat.
‘So. Are you, er, going to school today?’
Her earnest gaze still fixed on Amelia’s face, Sophie nodded.
‘Do you like school?’
Sophie nodded.
‘Do you have lots of friends there?’
Sophie nodded.
‘Right. Well, um, that’s nice.’ At a loss as to what else to say, Amelia reached for a slice of toast.
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Sophie piped up.
Amelia’s toast slipped from her fingers, landing on a couple of Coco Pops, which had seen better days.
Before she could reply, Annie waltzed into the room, Darth Vader scuttling behind her.
‘Got to dash, I’m afraid,’ she said, whipping most of the detritus from the table. ‘It’s completely manic up at the manor at the moment. Portia’s rather gorgeous, and very generous, boyfriend, Jed, surprised her with a two-week holiday in the Caribbean, so while she’s sunning herself on a beach, the rest of us are running around like the proverbial blue-bottomed flies.’ She began bundling up the children in coats and scarves, then swiped up their accompanying baggage and headed for the front door.
‘If you want to take Pip for a walk, his lead and stuff is in the utility room,’ she called through from the hall. ‘Jake will be back at lunchtime. He’s up at the manor preparing for his next writing course. Come up later if you like. I can show you round the house, in all its newly refurbished glory. And you can sample our coffee and cake. I’ll leave a key on the table here for you.’
And with that, off they went.
No sooner had the door closed, than an eerie silence settled over the house, which suddenly seemed far too big. Unnerved by the dramatic change in atmosphere, Amelia spotted a radio on the kitchen bench. She wandered over and flicked it on. Stone Cold Sober by Paloma Faith floated out. With her back against the bench, gazing out into the frost-covered garden, she contemplated Sophie’s question.
Did she have a boyfriend?
Of course, for most people, the question would elicit a simple Yes or No. But not for Amelia. Her love life fell unreservedly into the “It’s Complicated” category. And yet again, there was no one to blame for that but herself …
‘Anyone sitting here?’ a gangly youth with dark floppy hair had asked on her first day at Cambridge. All the freshers had been summoned to a meeting on “Keeping Safe” in one of the lecture theatres.
Amelia had shaken her head, far too taken aback by how devastatingly good-looking he was to add any words to the gesture.
He plumped down on the bench alongside her. ‘I hate all this induction stuff, don’t you? Can’t wait to get it all over with and get down to some serious drinking. You coming to the meet ’n’ greet thing at the pub after this?’
Amelia hadn’t intended going to the meet ’n’ greet thing. She’d been planning on scrutinising her reading list for what must have been the twenty-seventh time, making doubly sure she’d crammed in as much as she could before lectures started. But, gazing into those sparkling hazel eyes as he awaited her response, she found herself nodding.
‘Great,’ he said, delicious lips stretching into a grin. ‘I’m Doug, by the way.’
‘Amelia,’ croaked Amelia, simultaneously wondering how her throat was suddenly lined with sand, if she’d managed to get her name right, and why all previous thoughts of reading lists, colleges and induction lectures had suddenly left the building, replaced with an overwhelming urge to kiss that delectable mouth.
For the next hour, while the speaker droned on about keeping away from the river if “one had partaken of alcohol”, and how bikes should be “secured at all times”, Amelia was aware of nothing more than Doug’s firm body squashed up against hers. She’d never had any interest in the opposite sex before – had been far too focused on achieving the grades for Cambridge to even think about having a boyfriend. But that hour sitting beside Doug proved an epiphany. Now she understood perfectly what all the girls at school had been clucking about. Because, for the first time in her life, something was happening to her that she couldn’t control. Something exciting that made her stomach flutter.
Having dreamt up dozens of ridiculously romantic scenarios around the pub meet ’n’ greet, when she really should have been listening to the dangers of leaving your laptop unattended, the reality of the occasion unfortunately came nowhere near her naïve and unrealistic expectations. Firstly, because she’d never been out drinking before: crowded pubs and copious amounts of alcohol were an entirely new – and extremely overwhelming – experience for her. And secondly, because the moment Doug fought his way over to her, another figure appeared at her side.
‘Hi. I’m Imogen Forster-Brown,’ said the tall willowy girl, shaking back a sheath of platinum-blonde hair. She ran a cursory glance over Amelia before turning cool blue eyes to Doug. ‘My friends call me Immy.’
Ten seconds in the girl’s presence was long enough for Amelia to know that she would never be calling her “Immy”. But for all Imogen continued her hair-flicking, gazing at Doug all the while with huge blue eyes, his hazel ones, much to Amelia’s astonished delight, seemed far more interested in her. He’d asked her out in the second week and Amelia had been so happy she’d thought her heart might burst. Over the ensuing months, they spent every spare moment together, and every day Amelia toppled further and further in love. Thanks to Doug, her first year at Cambridge became the best of her young life. Until she received her end-of-year exam results.
‘I’m afraid you’re really going to have to pull your socks up if you want to stay here,’ her tutor had warned.
Amelia had fled that excruciating meeting and headed straight to her room, where she’d spent the next thirty minutes throwing up. Of course she’d known she hadn’t been working as hard as she could – realised she was spending time she should’ve been studying with Doug. But, erroneously it seemed, she’d thought she might, for once, be able to balance the two – have some semblance of a normal life rather than dedicating every minute of the day to her work. Obviously she’d been wrong.
Doug, needless to say, had sailed through his exams, even achieving the highest grades in his year for his Economics studies. He was one of those enviable souls to whom academic prowess came easily. Unlike Amelia who had to slog for every one of her achievements. And slog she had – all the way through school to achieve this place at Cambridge. Just imagining the ignominy of being kicked off her course – of feeling a complete and utter failure – was enough to make her tremble from head to toe.
And so, two days before they packed up for the summer break, she made a momentous decision. For the sake of her entire future, she had to finish with Doug. She hadn’t come this far, she’d reasoned, to have it all snatched away from her. And there wasn’t only her to think about. Her parents would be devastated, along with the committee who’d painstakingly selected her for the prestigious scholarship. Indeed, even if it wasn’t a condition of the award, Amelia would feel obliged to pay back the generous contribution.
When she’d informed him of her decision, Doug had been gutted, pleading with her to change her mind but, despite falling apart inside, Amelia had stuck to her guns. And to avoid any temptation of jumping on a train and going to see him over the summer, she’d headed straight out to Goa where she’d spent the entire break with her parents. It had been the worst four months of her life, the ache in her chest and the hollow, sick sensation in her stomach increasing daily.
Dragging herself back to Cambridge that autumn had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. The moment she’d spotted Doug as he walked around the quad, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. Her entire body flooded with longing for him. She couldn’t believe how much she’d missed him, how much she ached to be in his arms again, how much she yearned to tell him she loved him. Because she did. Passionately. Absolutely. One hundred and ten per cent. Okay, so they’d have to restrict the time they spent together, and she wouldn’t come out with the first-class honours she’d always dreamed of, but so what? She’d settle for second or third class if it meant keeping Doug in her life.
She began to run after him, desperate to tell him all of this, when another figure appeared alongside him – one with a sheath of platinum-blonde hair. Imogen. Amelia came to a sudden halt as she watched them wind their arms around each other and exchange a passionate kiss. The hideous sensation that had suffused her, she could only describe as having a javelin pierce her heart.
And, once she’d firmly established that Doug and Imogen were indeed a couple, that feeling stayed with her for the next two years. Employing every strategy she could not to bump into them, she moved out of college and into a flat, a bus ride away from the university, avoided anything of a social nature, and launched herself into her studies. At the end of that torturous time, her resultant double first, which she once would willingly have offered her right arm for, seemed pointless, but it had at least made her parents proud and the scholarship committee congratulate themselves on selecting such a model student.
From Cambridge, she’d gone straight to Providential where, yet again, she’d thrown herself into her work. She’d had to. There’d been so much to take in that at times she’d thought her head might detonate. But, terrified of receiving another “you’ll have to pull your socks up” lecture, petrified of being found wanting and exposed as a fraud, she’d had to give it her all. Plus, completely absorbing herself in Statistical Methods meant less time to think about Doug, and absolutely no time to so much as contemplate another relationship, despite receiving numerous offers. Her heart had been well and truly shattered. And although the situation had been entirely of her own making, there was no way she would ever risk putting herself through that torture again.
So Amelia dedicated her entire life to her career – a concept most men, thankfully, appeared to find a turn-off, and most women found intimidating. Over time, she grew to accept that state of affairs – became resigned to being alone. And that was the way she’d imagined things would continue, until ten months ago.
‘I’m delighted to say that we have, at last, appointed a new marketing director,’ the MD announced at a staff meeting. ‘His name is Doug Carver. You might know him actually, Amelia, he was at Cambridge the same time as you.’
Amelia’s jaw dropped. Her head began to swim. She had the strange sensation of looking down on herself, like she was present in body but not in mind. It was several seconds later before she realised the entire room was staring at her.
‘Oh, er, yes. Yes,’ she’d stammered. ‘I, er, do know him.’
She refrained from adding just how well. Over the years she’d resisted the constant urge to google him, to follow his career. But, on a particularly wet, miserable day in February a couple of years ago, she’d given in. Huddled up with her laptop, her heart pounding so hard she’d thought it might bring on a coronary, she’d typed his name into the search engine. And up he popped, working for a multinational retailer in their New York office. A photograph accompanied his profile. The moment she saw it, her stomach had flipped. He looked older, of course, and his hair, no longer floppy, was short and trendy. But he was still Doug. Her Doug. Or at least that had been her thought for a few seconds. Until she googled Imogen who, she discovered, was a freelance journalist, also working in New York. A series of pictures of the pair of them attending high-profile celebrity events had also been magnanimously provided. After that, Amelia hadn’t looked again. But now here he was – Providential’s new marketing director. How the hell was she going to handle that?
Not very easily, it transpired.
‘And of course you already know Amelia,’ the MD said, when Amelia entered the meeting room ten minutes after everyone else on Doug’s first day at Providential. She hadn’t intended being late but the nerves, which had steadily ballooned as the dreaded day approached, had got the better of her that morning. And despite – or perhaps because of – swallowing half a bottle of herbal calming pills, she’d thrown up in the work loos.
‘How are you, Amelia?’ Doug asked, rising to his feet and striding over to shake her hand.
Amelia had thought she might keel over as she’d placed her hand in his. Thankfully she’d managed to hold it together.
‘We’ve had to make a slight adjustment to Doug’s induction programme,’ the MD informed her, sparing her the need to cobble together something resembling a response. ‘He’ll be spending the next two days with you, Amelia. Sorry for the short notice, but you won’t have to make any adjustments to your diary. The idea is that he sees exactly how we operate here.’
Amelia didn’t have a clue how she was going to operate from now on. Just seeing Doug, hearing his voice, breathing in his scent, which still seemed so familiar despite all the intervening years, dredged up all the feelings she’d long since resigned to that faraway place known as the past.
‘Can you believe this?’ he asked, the following day when they were alone in her office. He grinned at her across the desk, hazel eyes twinkling with amusement. ‘You look great. How’ve you been?’
‘Oh, fine, you know,’ she replied, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking half as much as her legs. ‘You?’
‘Good. Really good. I spent a couple of years in New York and then moved to Sydney. But it’s great being back home. Great seeing you.’
At his obvious enthusiasm at their unexpected reunion, Amelia’s emotions executed a swift turnaround and, for the first time since being informed of his appointment, she found herself smiling. ‘It’s a bit weird though, isn’t it?’ she said hesitantly.
Doug laughed. ‘Weird but brilliant.’
The two days he spent with her were, much to Amelia’s amazement, a complete and utter pleasure. She’d forgotten just how easily he could make her laugh, how relaxed she felt in his presence. Rather than the exhausting charade of trying to be someone else, with Doug she could just be herself. And every time he looked at her with those twinkling hazel eyes, yet another part of the igloo she’d assiduously constructed around her heart melted away.
She hadn’t asked about Imogen and Doug hadn’t mentioned her. But finding out that he’d moved from New York to Sydney, she clung to a scrap of hope that perhaps they’d split up.
They hadn’t. But by the time Amelia found out, it was too late. Three weeks into Doug’s appointment had come the Providential Annual Conference. An event to which she usually dedicated every bit of her attention. With Doug there, though, not one speaker, however impressive and well researched their presentation, had held her interest for more than three minutes.
‘Let’s skip the talk this evening and go for a drink,’ he suggested, nudging her in the ribs like a naughty schoolboy.
Amelia had rolled her eyes. ‘You might be a big-shot director, Mr Carver, but you really haven’t changed a bit,’ she joked.
‘Would you want me to?’
Amelia had gazed into those sparkling hazel eyes and shaken her head. ‘No. I wouldn’t.’
Just to confirm what she’d already long since suspected, those few seconds had been enough for her to know that she was still hopelessly in love with this man. Every one of her feelings for him had returned – with several years of interest added. She loved Doug Carver – and she always would.
The drink had inevitably led to a meal, and then a kiss. A kiss that – outside the Italian restaurant in which they’d spent two of the best hours of Amelia’s life, giggling like a couple of schoolkids and spooning each other creamy desserts – had sent her head reeling. They’d ended up in her bed at the hotel, where several more best hours of her life had followed.
‘There’s something I really should tell you,’ Doug had said, gazing down at her afterwards.
With a lurch of her stomach, Amelia had known instinctively what it was.
‘It’s Imogen. We’re still together.’
‘Don’t you think you should have told me that before you got into my bed?’ she asked, blinking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes.
Doug grimaced. ‘I know. I meant to. It’s just that – well – I didn’t plan any of this. Seeing you again has brought back all those feelings I used to have – still have – for you. I loved you, Amelia. To distraction. And you’ll never know how much you hurt me when you dumped me.’
At that, the tears had begun to flow. ‘You know why I finished it. I couldn’t risk being thrown out of Cambridge. My parents – the scholarship – everything would have been ruined.’
‘I was ruined. I was in bits.’
‘You didn’t look like you were in bits. When I saw you and Imogen snogging in the quad the first week back.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I felt like I’d lost an arm that summer. So when she rang me up and invited me down to her place, I went. One thing just led to another.’
‘And have been continuing to lead to another for the last ten years. Things must be pretty good if you’ve lasted that long.’
‘Actually, they’re not. Up until now we’ve rarely lived in the same country. I guess it’s been easier just to let things drift than make any decisions. And it wouldn’t be easy to break off anything with Imogen. You know what she’s like.’
Amelia did know what she was like. Imogen’s mother, Imogen had informed her – and everyone else in the pub during the meet ’n’ greet at Cambridge – had been a famous model in the 1980s and had married a minor aristocrat. Brought up at some lavish mansion and sent to the best school in the country where she’d mingled with the offspring of the rich and famous, Imogen wasn’t particularly bright – in fact, Amelia suspected she’d only got into Cambridge because of her family connections. She’d scraped through with a third-class degree in English which, again, Amelia suspected was more down to nepotism – and possibly one or two large cheque towards the refurbishment of the college library – than intellect or ability. But none of that would matter to Imogen. She was used to getting whatever she wanted. And she’d obviously wanted Doug from that very first evening.
‘But surely, if things aren’t that great, you’d be better off splitting up. Even she must see that.’
He shrugged. ‘I think she probably has a different take on it to me. And from my side, I’ve never really felt the need before. There’s never been anyone else and it’s worked out okay, I suppose, meeting up with her every few weeks. But now you’re back in my life and I—’
Amelia’s heart stuttered. ‘What?’
He gazed at her for several seconds during which time any lingering fragments of ice in that area of her anatomy dissolved into a pool of water. ‘I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.’
‘Me too,’ she’d whispered, savouring that heavenly sensation of floating on air.
But all that had been ten months ago, during which time Amelia had clattered down to earth with an almighty bump. She loved Doug with a passion, but she didn’t want to be “the other woman”. She wanted him all to herself: to have a normal life with him, doing normal things, like wandering round the supermarket, spending lazy Sunday mornings in bed, going for a stroll in the park.
But he was doing all those things with Imogen, living with her in an apartment in Kensington. Up until now, Amelia hadn’t liked to put too much pressure on him. After all, it was early days in their rekindled relationship. They needed to get to know one another again – find out if the special bond that had once tethered them together could be retied. And, for all she felt sick every time he mentioned “Immy”, ten years with someone was an incredibly long time. Plus, Amelia wanted to be sure of her own feelings, confident they could have a future together, before he did anything drastic. But, last month, having spent every spare moment they could together, she became impatient.
‘Where do you think this is going?’ she asked one evening, after they’d tumbled into bed together.
‘I know where I want it to go. I want to be with you. I’ve never stopped loving you.’
Rather than swooning in his arms like she would normally have done at such a proclamation, Amelia had sat up and looked him directly in the eye. ‘So does this mean you’re going to tell Imogen about us?’
He’d nodded. ‘I am. In the next couple of weeks. I promise.’
And she’d believed him.
Until something happened to postpone his “announcement” …
A cackle of laughter on the radio jolted her back to the present. Blinking back yet another round of tears, she sucked in a fortifying breath before beginning to clear away the remainder of the breakfast dishes, suddenly aware that her every move was being monitored by a pair of dark canine eyes from a basket in the corner.
‘Well,’ she announced, ‘in the absence of any better ideas, Mr Pip, I think we should go for a walk, don’t you?’
