Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (32 page)

‘The thing is, when Rae got pregnant she told me that she wasn’t sure
who
the father was, but it didn’t matter because one of the possibles was in a serious relationship and would pay through the nose to keep the baby secret, so she’d tell him it was his.’

‘What? She said
that
? Do you think it was true?’

‘Why not? She’s always slept around, that’s why her marriage went belly up, and she likes fair-haired blue-eyed men, so Justin might be the father – or he might not.’

I was silent, trying to take this in, and she added, thoughtfully, ‘Come to think of it, I know she had a fling with Ritch Rainford about the time she got pregnant and I’ve always thought Charlie had a look of him.’

‘Isn’t that the
Cotton Common
actor?’

‘Yes, that’s the one … but then, who
hasn’t
had a fling with Ritch Rainford?’ she murmured reminiscently.

‘Have you told Justin this?’

‘Well, I didn’t mention Ritch Rainford, obviously, but yes, I told him Charlie might not be his and he should get a DNA test. He was absolutely stunned.’

‘He would be. He’s paid out thousands to Rae in support and hush money for the last five years!’

‘But it would be really good if he wasn’t the daddy, wouldn’t it? Then you could be all forgiving and magnanimous, without any risk of tripping over the evidence any time you’re out shopping locally. And it will be entirely due to me that you got back together again!’ she ended triumphantly.

‘Marcia, this isn’t a rom com film! Here in the real world he still had an affair with Rae, so it wouldn’t make it any easier even if he wasn’t Charlie’s father.’

‘Of course it would! I bet he isn’t, and once you know for sure you’ll feel entirely different. Justin’s going to go round to her house when only the nanny’s there and get the DNA sample, so Rae doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

‘So Rae doesn’t know you’ve told Justin?’

‘No, of course not – are you mad? I’ve sworn Justin to secrecy about my telling him, too.’

‘What I don’t understand is why on earth Rae wanted so much more money anyway? I mean, I know Lars gives you both a good allowance.’

‘Well yes, good, but not hugely generous, because he has this old-fashioned idea that we should work for our livings. Of course, I’m the blue-eyed girl because I’ve got my acting career, but Rae only played at the modelling for a year or two before she married, and she goes through money like a hot knife through butter.’

‘She’s certainly always spent it as if she’s got it.’

‘It’s all pretence. When that dodgy marriage to her fitness instructor broke down, he had to be paid off and Daddy’s had to bail her out over and over again, so now he’s lost patience. Eventually he said he wouldn’t do it again, so if she couldn’t manage to spend within her means she would have to live in New York and move in with him.’

My mind had been shocked into numbness by Marcia’s bombshell, but was now up to working things out again. Joining up the dots was easy in retrospect. ‘So then Rae thought up this … scam?’

‘Of course. She was living in the London house, way above her means, so I suppose when all her friends decided that babies were the latest designer must-have, it seemed like a good idea, and the rest followed as the night does the day.’

‘I think you’re forgetting there’s an innocent child at the heart of all this – poor Charlie,’ I pointed out. ‘One day he’s going to learn the truth and then he’ll want to know who his father is.’

‘At least he might know by then who he
isn’t
! And in that case, perhaps she can pinpoint who else it might be,’ Marcia said, but not as if it was of any importance. ‘I don’t really think you’ve grasped that if Charlie isn’t Justin’s, you won’t have a permanent reminder that he slipped up a bit, so there’ll be nothing to stop you getting back together again.’

‘Marcia, I’ll never forgive either of them for what they did! Don’t forget that while he was paying out all that money to Rae, he was telling me we couldn’t afford to get married and have children,’ I said bitterly. ‘And now I’ve probably left it too late to have a baby.’

‘Did you really want to ruin your figure with sprogs?’ she asked incredulously, before adding bitchily, ‘Not that you’ve got much of a figure left to ruin!’

‘
Yes,
’ I snapped.

‘Then I’d get back with Justin and give it your best shot, pronto,’ she advised. ‘Don’t bother waiting for the DNA test results, because the more I think about it, the more sure I am that Charlie’s Ritch Rainford’s.’

She rang off, leaving me in turmoil. In fact, I broke into harsh, bitter sobs as soon as I’d put the receiver down, and that’s how Ivo found me a few minutes later when he walked back in with Flash.

I’d tried to stop crying but somehow, once opened, the floodgates proved impossible to shut again, a bit like Ivo’s Pandora’s box.

‘Tansy, what’s happened?’ he exclaimed, but seeing I was too choked by tears to reply, put his arms around me and gave me a wonderfully comforting hug instead. I relaxed into his arms and cried into his shoulder for ages, but eventually I calmed down enough to explain that something Marcia had just told me had upset me.

‘She was here?’ He darted a look towards the door, as if she might be hanging on the back of it with the coats, like a bat.

‘No, she called me from London. She’d been to see my ex-fiancé –
she
said to try and get us back together, but since I broke up with him after I found out that he’d had a fling with my other stepsister, Rae, she had a wasted journey because that was
never
going to happen!’

‘Right
,
’ he said slowly.

‘Actually, there’s more to it than that. I found out recently that Rae’s little boy is Justin’s too.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said sincerely. ‘That must have been a terrible shock.’

‘It was, though it also explained a lot. When we got engaged we planned to get married the same year and start a family, but then suddenly Justin kept putting me off and saying we couldn’t afford it … though part of it was my weight, I think, because once the initial rosy glow had worn off, he said I should lose a couple of stone, so he could be really proud of me on the big day!’

‘There’s nothing wrong with your weight!’

‘I am a bit plump.’

‘Pleasantly plump,’ he insisted. By now we were both sitting on the cushioned settle by the stove and I’d broken out some emergency Meddyg.

‘He’d got a bit critical about me generally about then – my clothes, friends, everything. But anyway, I found out he’d not only been paying Rae maintenance the last few years, but also hush money so she didn’t tell me. He said it was because he loved me and didn’t want to lose me, but if that was true, why did he sleep with Rae in the first place?’

I didn’t wait for him to reply. ‘No: Marcia might think that if the child isn’t Justin’s it’ll make it all right, and I can forgive him and carry on as if nothing ever happened, but it
did
and it’ll always be between us. Do you understand?’

‘I certainly do,’ Ivo said. ‘When you look back at what you thought was a happy relationship and discover that underneath it was all built on lies, it shakes you to the very core. “I thought her as chaste as unsunn’d snow”,’ he added.

‘Your wife was unfaithful to you?’

‘From almost the moment we married. She just jotted them all down in her diary, as if they were lunch engagements – the where, when and how often, with stars for performance!’

‘That must have been an awful shock. I’m so sorry!’

‘Don’t be: I think reading it in the diaries, inch by slow inch, is my penance,’ he said bafflingly, because he didn’t say what for and I couldn’t ask, since his face was getting that familiar shuttered look again.

‘I see what you meant about the Pandora’s box now,’ I told him, with a long sigh. Ivo still had one arm draped around me for comfort, but gave my shoulders a brief squeeze and then got up to go.

Upset or not, I made sure he didn’t leave without his supper box.

‘You deserved much better than that fiancé of yours,’ he said, before vanishing into the night.

Flash, who had been leaning against my legs while I was sitting on the settle, poking a sympathetic wet nose into my hand from time to time, gave a brief howl and I had to make a real effort not to follow suit.

Chapter 29: Describing Circles

Peter died while Imogen was still young, and Violet had another go of the pneumonia not long after Immy had Tansy, and that was that. Though between you, me and the lamp post, she’d undermined her health with heavy drinking for years.

Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.

While we were opening up the shop, I told Bella about Marcia’s call and how much it had upset me all over again.

‘But it’s really weird that Marcia’s so keen to get me and Justin back together when I know she’s never even liked me! Yet there she was, stirring things up and telling Justin I still missed him.’

‘Do you think it might be jealousy, because she really fancies Ivo and she’s worried that you will get off with him again, now you’re living next door to each other.’

I stared at her. ‘One of the Ugly Sisters, jealous of
me
?’

‘Why not? You and Ivo obviously had chemistry first time round.’

‘Well, there might be one or two reasons. Let me see …’ I ticked them off on my fingers. ‘One, we’re not Romeo and Juliet any more, a lot of water’s passed under both our bridges; two, he’s still grieving for his wife; three, after what Justin did with my stepsister I’m never going to trust another man with my heart ever again; and four – now, what could that be? Oh, yes, we don’t fancy each other.’

I left Ivo’s revelation about his wife’s unfaithfulness off the list, which I expect had put him as firmly off future relationships as much as Justin’s affair had done to me. Bella and I shared most things, but I felt that these were Ivo’s personal secrets …

‘How do you know he doesn’t fancy you?’ she asked.

‘You just do, don’t you? He’s only just started talking to me a bit – in an old-puppy-love-turned-to-friend kind of way. At least, I
think
we’re slowly becoming friends. He was really kind last night when he came back with Flash and found me crying after Marcia’s phone call.’

‘How kind?’ she asked, with interest.

‘Just
nice
– gave me a big hug and let me cry all over him, nothing else. What about you and Neil?’

‘Friends too,’ she said firmly, but I suspected he was slowly creeping into her heart.

It would be all too fatally easy to let Ivo creep back into mine …

Neither Ivo nor I had mentioned anything deep and dark since that evening, but that was often the way: you’d confide something important and then sort of step back and not mention it again for ages. I even did it with Bella sometimes, so maybe that was why she didn’t know much about when I broke up with Ivo all those years ago.

But I did think it helped our burgeoning friendship, for we were slowly getting to know each other again. So much so, in fact, that I’d given him my back door key so he could come in and fetch Flash for his walk on Thursday, when I was finally planning a day trip to London to visit the RubyTrueShuze showroom.

Bella would let out and feed the hens and take Flash for a little walk before she opened the shop, but after she left at lunchtime it would be a long stretch until I got home again, so I was more than happy when Ivo said he’d let Flash out into the garden in the afternoon, and then take him for an extra long walk.

‘And could you possibly feed the hens in the afternoon – I’ll show you what to give them – and then shut them up before dusk?’ I asked.

‘OK. Not that I know anything about hens.’

‘You don’t need to. They put themselves to bed. You just have to shut and put the catch down on the door, to stop the foxes getting in.’

‘Sounds easy enough.’

‘That’s great – thank you! I know Bella would come back and do it, but she gets little enough time with Tia as it is. And I won’t be too late back – probably before you return from walking Flash,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to the RubyTrueShuze showroom to look at new styles and put in a much bigger order than before, and then I’ll lunch with friends and come back again.’

‘The shop is doing really well, then, if you’re putting in bigger orders?’

‘Yes, business is building much faster than I thought it would. I think it helps that on the RubyTrueShuze website it names me as the only stockist in the Northwest!’

‘Your aunt would be proud of you,’ he said, and I nodded, my eyes suddenly welling with tears.

On the Wednesday evening the first official Sticklepond Chamber of Commerce meeting was convened in the village hall, and there was a good turnout.

Hebe had already got up a petition against the retail park and contacted Force for Nature, who campaigned against experimenting on animals, but also for any domestic or wild creature in danger of any kind, and they had promised to back the campaign.

But there was a surprising amount of support for the retail park being stirred up in Ormskirk, mainly based on the promise of new jobs. Laurence Yatton thought the consortium who owned the Hemlock Mill site were behind it, and was trying to find out who they were.

‘And perhaps you might see who the shareholders of Grocergo are, when you have a moment,’ Hebe suggested, ‘since they would be the main retail outlet on the site. We might find that someone concerned in the application for the retail park had a vested interest.’

Hebe seemed to have everything organised and we were really all there just as supporting cast and occasional Greek chorus, though when I suggested that we might get together to produce some kind of village trail leaflet, which would guide visitors on a tour of the village and surroundings (including, of course, Winter’s End and all the shops, cafés and pubs) she said it was an idea of great genius.