Читать книгу Puppies Are For Life - Linda Phillips - Страница 9

The green hold-all with tan leather trim bumped against Frank’s thigh as he walked towards the boarding gate. It bulged so much with goodies for Jan and himself that it made him tilt as though drunk. His arm muscles were strained and he was panting heavily. He was getting too old for globe-trotting, he decided. But at least this was the only luggage he had to worry about. He wouldn’t have to hang about the airport waiting for suitcases to be disgorged; he could get straight off home to Jan.

Lord, what a wasted trip! And how was he going to break the news? It was the last thing Jan would be expecting to hear from him. They had both been so sure of Bert’s money. For five short days they had blissfully assumed that all their problems were over. And now they were back to square one. Back to the nightmare that had begun almost as soon as they had left England and was still going strong.

Frank sighed as the crowd slowed to a crawl. No amount of goodies would ease the pain for his wife. Poor Jan. She had always been such a help to him – even before Rose died. A kind-hearted colleague whom he’d respected and grown to love. She didn’t deserve all this.

He handed over his boarding pass, tender warmth flooding his hard old heart. Dear Jan. What would he have done without her?

Simon sat in his car, staring up at the converted house. On the outskirts of Bristol and less than a mile from the one he and Natalie had lived in, it looked almost identical: Edwardian, three floors under a grey slate roof; run-down and generally uncared for.

He bounded up the path.

‘I told you not to come here,’ were Natalie’s first words. She looked furtively over her shoulder and Simon was well aware of Lara hovering in the background. But he wasn’t going to be deflected.

‘I’ve gone to a lot of trouble finding someone to keep an eye on Justin –’

‘You really shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘The least you can do is listen to me. Come outside for a walk.’ He began to pull her across the threshold and she frowned under her straight blonde fringe. Clearly Simon was determined; there was little point in arguing. ‘My shoes –’ She stumbled into them and let him lead her outside, but in the street she rounded on him.

‘You know this is utterly pointless.’

‘No it isn’t. Listen to me. First of all, you can’t just walk out on me like this. It isn’t fair. I can’t help it if I’ve been laid off.’ Let go was how it had been put to him. As if they were doing him a favour!

‘I haven’t walked out on you, Simon. Not permanently, anyway.’

‘What? Well, what’s this all about then? I really don’t understand. We should be facing our problems together, not split up like this.’

‘We need some time on our own. Some space to think things through. Face it, Simon. Things hadn’t been going right, had they? Not since …’ She looked down the street. Words seemed to have become too painful for her. It was as if she couldn’t bear to talk about Justin and the way his coming into their lives had changed things. Unlike Simon she had never been able to accept the unplanned pregnancy, and when Justin finally arrived had regarded the bundle in her arms as one might an unexploded bomb. Nurses had attributed her fits of weeping to the baby blues, but although they had subsided, little else had improved since then.

Natalie turned to Simon, biting her lip, her anorak flaring in the wind behind her. ‘You can claim benefits, you know. And you could get a room somewhere. Oh, you’ve got a brain in your head, haven’t you? I’m sure you’ll manage all right.’

Simon snorted in incredulity. That she could wash her hands of him he could maybe come to terms with, but to be parted willingly from her child … well, it still boggled the mind.

‘Oh, Natalie …’ He groaned. He stepped towards her, his eyes moist, his hands slipping inside her coat.

‘No, Simon.’ Her voice was cold. ‘Don’t. And don’t come to Lara’s flat again. She’s not happy about it. Phone me at work if you must, and we’ll meet up, somewhere, sometime. You can bring Justin with you, if you like,’ she added grudgingly, and with that she ducked into a path that led to the back of the house and disappeared from view.

Simon was left on the pavement with a heavy heart – and a fearful one. Bring Justin with you if you like? And Lara isn’t happy? This Lara obviously meant more to Natalie than anyone else did. He spent the rest of the evening wondering why.

‘Got rid of him already?’ Lara smiled approvingly. ‘It didn’t take you long.’

‘Yes.’ Natalie’s smile was less strong. Pleasing Lara brought a glow of pleasure … but it was hardly enough to banish her doubts. She wasn’t sure about the course she was taking, in spite of her bravado in front of Simon. Was she really a wicked mother? Or was Lara right about leaving Justin with Si? It didn’t seem right to have to support a man, but … oh, she didn’t know. She was tired of thinking about it all. So horribly, desperately tired. And it made life that much easier, falling in with Lara.

But heaven knew what Simon’s parents would think of her when they found out what was going on. They would certainly not approve, neither would they understand. Hell. She really didn’t want to fall in their estimation – any more, that is, than her inept handling of Justin must have lowered her already. Oh, she’d noticed how Susannah looked at her, as if she was doing everything wrong. Not that she said anything of course – never interfered. She could just feel it.

Really, the Hardings were much better parents than her own; she quite liked them. They had been good to her and Simon, giving them money and helping out. She wouldn’t want them upset.

Oh, but she really couldn’t think about them either. She had too much else to consider. And all she wanted to do, really, was sleep.

Susannah’s saw made comforting phwitt-phwitt, phwitt-phwitt noises as she cut up lengths of wood in her work room – or studio as she had recently begun to refer to it. It was dark outside at the moment but, during the day, light slanted through a sky-light as well as from a window at one end of the room overlooking the garden, making it not only a practical place in which to work but a pleasant one. In the centre was a large wooden table with a pair of stools pushed under it, and beneath the window was a work bench and a deep square sink. Her materials were neatly ranged on shelves.

Not for her the chaotic methods of the stereotypical artist; Susannah had to have everything in perfect order before she could create – and that included the whole cottage. If a bed was unmade or a cup unwashed it had to be dealt with first.

Susannah loved the room, her pleasure in it only slightly marred by a sense of guilt. Paul had wanted to convert this single-storey extension, which the previous owners had used as a play room, into a dining room and she had had to battle it out with him.

‘Where will we entertain?’ he’d argued, looking round at what space was available and finding it seriously lacking. Cottages were all very well, he had begun to realise, but unless you could afford three knocked into one they were a bit claustrophobic.

‘Oh, there’s enough room for a table in the alcove in the lounge,’ Susannah had pointed out with a wave of one hand. She had no patience for serving up elaborate meals, and dinner parties bored her rigid.

‘Hardly ideal.’ Paul wrinkled his beakish nose at the idea. He’d recognised, though, the determination in his wife’s eye and had eventually decided to back down.

Now, coming in from a meeting that he’d told her – over the phone when she got back from the funeral – that he wished he’d chaired himself because then it would have taken up only half the time, his face registered that same frowning displeasure.

‘You’re early,’ Susannah said, removing a length of moulded wood from the Workmate and barely glancing up at him.

‘It’s gone seven o’clock.’ He stood impatiently watching her, his briefcase still at his side.

‘Your dinner’s in the microwave,’ she went on. ‘I’ve eaten mine already.’

‘Oh.’ His shoulders drooped as he nodded his head in unwilling acceptance of the fact, but he hung about for a bit longer, shifting from one foot to the other as though hoping circumstances might change: Susannah might drop what she was doing and decide she should head for the kitchen. She might mix him a gin and tonic, or give him a welcome-home kiss. She might stand on her head and do cartwheels … He went upstairs to get changed.

And returned less than ten minutes later wearing a polo shirt and sweater that set Susannah’s teeth on edge; Paul had about as much colour sense as a cat.

By now he was carrying his dinner plate in a cloth with one hand and a glass, knife and fork in the other. He arranged them neatly on a corner of the table before hooking one of the stools with his ankle and parking himself on top of it.

‘You don’t have to eat in here,’ Susannah told him with a little laugh. But the words had a chilly rasp to them.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he tossed back at her. ‘Drop sauce on the living-room carpet, or sit in the kitchen on my own?’

‘No –’ she shrugged carelessly – ‘I just thought that, what with all the sawdust in here and everything …’

‘Tastes like sawdust anyway,’ he grunted, cautiously licking the fork. ‘A bit more isn’t going to make much difference.’

He ate in silence for a while, pausing between mouthfuls to watch her, his head cocked on one side.

‘So what’s it going to be this time?’ he finally got around to asking.

Susannah tightened the vice a little. ‘A coffee table – eventually.’ She glanced up to find him sawing at a chunk of lasagne with apparent difficulty.

The problem seemed to be one of those dried-up corners, she noted with dismay, where the pasta pokes up through the sauce and turns to indestructible cardboard in the oven. Stainless steel cutlery was no match for it – the saw she held in her hand might be more suitable – but he managed to spear it at last and surveyed it with resignation. It sat solidly on the prongs of the fork, steaming gently, and looking about as palatable as layers of loft lagging.

And if she was meant to feel guilty about the quality of the meal that evening, she did. Pulling something from the freezer and re-heating it simply wasn’t good enough, she reminded herself, even if you had made it earlier yourself. Guilt could only be kept entirely at bay by starting a meal from scratch and creating a sink-full of dirty pots. Then you had proof that you cared.

‘What’s wrong with the table we’ve got?’ Paul wanted to know, ploughing manfully through the meal.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. This isn’t for us anyway.’ She hesitated before going on. ‘It’s going to have its top done in mosaics.’

‘Oh.’

Their eyes met.

‘Bringing out the big guns now, are we?’ He was trying to make a joke of it and not succeeding. ‘I mean, if you threw something that size at me …’

Damn! She’d splintered the wood. ‘That could always be arranged,’ she growled.

He grinned at her crookedly. Then suddenly pushing the plate to one side he went over to where she was working.

‘Here, hadn’t I better do that?’ He jerked back the sleeves of his sweater to reveal the hairy backs of his wrists.

It was some seconds before she realised what he was about. ‘What? No, no, of course not,’ she protested. But she was practically having to elbow him out of the way. Or was he elbowing her? A ridiculous little scuffle ensued during which she grew increasingly cross. ‘Look, I did do woodwork at evening class, you know.’

‘Yes, I know you did, but –’ he shook his head with a kind of shudder – ‘I can hardly bear to watch you. You’ve made a right little cock-up there, haven’t you?’

‘It’s nothing I can’t put right. And if you hadn’t sat there, chewing – a-and putting me off – I’d be almost finished by now.’

‘That’s right, blame me.’ He shrugged and folded his arms. ‘You just carry on and make a pig’s ear of it; I’ll enjoy the laugh. It just doesn’t seem right, though, somehow.’

‘What doesn’t?’ She straightened up to glare at him. ‘The fact that a woman can be perfectly capable of carpentry? Really, Paul, you must try to move with the times. You sound like you’ve just stepped out of the Ark.’

‘Well, I can’t help that. I was brought up to believe certain things. In my day girls got pastry sets for Christmas and boys were given tools. You knew where you were. If someone’s since decided to move the goal posts, why should I have to change my views?’

‘Because, dear husband, you’re going to look like some kind of dinosaur if you don’t.’

Susannah stood poised with a pencil in her hand. It really was difficult to concentrate with Paul hanging round. Usually he watched television or strolled down to the pub when she was involved with the chores or whatever. Why had he chosen her to be his source of entertainment tonight?

‘You know,’ she went on, while Paul ‘helpfully’ held her ruler in the wrong place, ‘you’ve had it too easy all these years. You haven’t had to adapt. What would you have done if I’d been a fully fledged career woman? The sort you hear about these days. You know: educated up to the eyeballs; smart, good-looking top executives; nannied children etc., etc. I don’t think you could have coped.’

‘I really don’t see why not. On the contrary, I would have liked it very much.’

‘Well, of all the bloody nerve!’ Susannah threw down the pencil.

‘What?’

‘How can you say that? You know perfectly well you wouldn’t have been able to hack it for one moment. What would you have done when your career clashed with your wife’s? When you needed to take up a post in – in Timbuktu, say, and she had to be in London?’

‘We’d have worked out something.’

‘Cloud cuckoo land,’ Susannah muttered.

‘You ought to have gone to college, Sue. You still could, you know, if you wanted. I wouldn’t stand in your way.’

‘I see.’ She nodded grimly. ‘So you really do think you’d have preferred a professional wife. You no longer think I’m good enough. You can’t go bragging to your pals at work about your wife who’s doing such-and-such a clever course at so-and-so college and who’s going to walk off in a few years’ time with some spiffing sort of degree. All you can talk about is my wife who’s only a pay clerk and mucks about making these god-awful coffee tables.’

‘Susannah,’ he said wearily, ‘this is not what I’m saying at all. Nothing could be further from my mind. What’s actually bothering me at the moment, if you really want to know, is that I feel you slipping away from me, and I don’t know why. You’re remote. You’re preoccupied. We don’t do things together any more. I’m beginning to wonder whether you stayed with me because of the children all these years and now you’d like to go.’ He stared out through the window at the night. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to us.’

Susannah melted towards him. It must have taken a lot to admit his insecurity – Paul, who normally exuded nothing but inner strength; a core of solid rock running through him that could never be shaken.

‘Paul, I –’ But the phone began to ring. Tutting with exasperation, she snatched the receiver off the wall.

The voice on the line was not immediately recognisable; it was thin, high, and tearful.

‘H-hello?’ it said haltingly, then there was a long, drawn-out sniff. ‘It’s me. I’m at the station. Can you come and get me?’ Then the caller cut off.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Paul said as Susannah looked blankly surprised. ‘That was one of the children … Simon?’

‘No.’ Susannah’s thoughts had gone winging in a different direction: sickness, death, disaster! But she managed a grim little smile. ‘When did Simon ever phone us?’

‘Not since he discovered it cost money. So it was Katy, then, was it?’

‘Well, how many children have we got? Yes, it was our dear Katy. She wants me to pick her up at the station.’ Susannah frowned as she moved towards the door. ‘She sounded very upset. I wish, now, that I’d had time to pay her a visit after the funeral. I was a bit rushed, though, in the end. What do you think’s the matter?’

‘No idea. Boyfriend trouble, I shouldn’t wonder. But I’ll go.’ He’d already reached for an old gardening jacket behind the door, eager to have something to do. ‘You’d better make up the bed, hadn’t you? I doubt whether she’ll be going back to London tonight.’

‘The bed … yes, of course. I suppose you’re right.’

The guest room had been the last one they’d decorated in the eight months since moving in, and there had been little point in making up the bed before it was needed. Actually, Susannah thought, it seemed a shame to take the new, co-ordinated sheets out of their packets. But Katy might need them so she would have to.

She sighed. She had so wanted to get on with her new project; this additional interruption was most annoying. But she instantly admonished herself for her selfishness. What kind of mother was she, to put new sheets and her own needs before a daughter who sounded as if she was in trouble?

After leaving school Katy had spent a year at secretarial college and had lived at home until she was twenty while she gained work experience with an assortment of local companies. When London beckoned with its better opportunities and higher salaries she had set herself up with a good job there, sharing a bedsit with a college friend, and leaving her parents feeling slightly nervous for her safety but with their blessing.

They needn’t have worried. Katy had fallen on her feet. When months passed with barely a backward glance or a visit from her they had decided it was time to look to their own future, hence the purchase of the cottage. So, Susannah now wondered, what could have gone wrong?

Casting a last lingering look at her splintered wood, she went upstairs.

Paul scanned the small group of people waiting outside the station. There was Katy all right; she’d abandoned her luggage and was running full-tilt towards him, her arms stretched out for a hug. Nice to know someone loved him. And she didn’t look ill or anything, which was a relief. Her ‘problem’ was probably nothing at all. An incident blown up into a crisis, if he knew his little Kate. It would all be over by bed-time. And then perhaps life in the cottage would feel a bit more normal for a few days – if she was going to stay that long. She would probably stay the weekend, anyway. And her mother could hardly ignore her.