Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (34 page)
‘He’d never even got round to divorcing his wife like he’d promised, so under the terms of his will everything went to her – not that there was much anyway.’
‘So then she moved back here, presumably?’
‘Yes, her parents had a tiny granny flat over the garage, which was empty, but it’s not ideal being so close to her parents, especially since her mother’s become so house-proud it’s practically an illness. Her parents have their own lives, too, and she feels she’s really intruding.’
‘Couldn’t she get her own place?’ Ivo suggested.
‘She’s saving for a deposit, but I can’t pay her much yet, though I’ll put her wages up as soon as I can. She’s really glad of the extra work you give her.’
‘It’s been a godsend finding her. And it’s another strange coincidence that you and I are both writing away every morning, only a wall apart, isn’t it?’
‘I often think that,’ I agreed, then asked brightly, ‘How
is
your autobiography coming along?’
He gave me a look. ‘Stop pretending you don’t know that I’m Nicholas Marlowe, because I saw you with a stack of my novels in Marked Pages and realised that Bella must have told you.’
‘She did,’ I admitted, ‘but only because we’ve been best friends for ever and we know whatever we tell each other will remain secret. Your books are brilliant!’
‘Thank you. I usually enjoy writing them, it’s just that with everything else, it’s taken me a while to get back into the routine and my publisher’s pressing for the next one.’
‘I know the feeling,’ I agreed. ‘Now I’ve read them, I understand why you want to keep your writing name a secret.’
He nodded. ‘I was afraid everyone would think I was basing my characters and plot on real people and situations, even though I’ve created a second smaller company of players in the books.’
‘The murders all take place when the company’s on tour, rather than in Stratford, though,’ I said.
‘You must have read a few!’
‘Felix has been trying to find them all for me.’
‘And I admire your children’s books – I think you’re very talented indeed.’
‘We should set up a mutual admiration society then,’ I said with a grin.
‘I think we already have,’ he said, helping himself to a last slice of apple upside-down cake before I could clear the plate away.
The following Tuesday was particularly busy, for not only did I approve an exciting new range of
Slipper Monkeys
merchandise – pencils, bags, lunch boxes, soft toys and lots of other things – but all the lovely shoes I’d ordered from RubyTrueShuze when I was down in London arrived too.
There were so many that Bella thought I’d gone quite mad – and perhaps I had.
‘It’s a gamble, but I think having a much larger stock might increase the sales even more,’ I explained. ‘We’ll see!’
But there was one pair of the shoes that I’d picked out in London specially for me: medium-heeled pumps of soft white leather with pale blue crystal butterflies on the toes. I’d fallen in love with them and thought I’d wear them when I had high tea on Sundays, just as Aunt Nan had worn her wedding dress: a family tradition. She had worn her wedding finery to feel closer to her fiancé, Jacob, and I wore my beautiful shoes to feel closer to Aunt Nan.
I teased Bella that if she got married I’d give her the shoes of her choice as a wedding present. ‘Neil looks very smitten. Even Ivo noticed.’
Her fair face clouded. ‘I’m not ready for another relationship, though it’s good for Tia and me to escape from the flat. Neil takes us out to nice places, or back to his cottage.’ Then she added, pointedly, ‘You and Ivo looked very cosy when we dropped in on Sunday!’
‘We do seem to be becoming friends,’ I admitted. ‘I’ll miss him when he goes back to his acting again – and by the way,
he
knows that
I
know about him writing those novels.’
‘Well, that’s a relief! I don’t have to pretend any more,’ she said.
The inner sanctum where the RubyTrueShuze were displayed looked like an Aladdin’s cave of treasures by the time we’d finished pricing and setting out the new stock. The artfully placed ceiling spotlights sparkled off diamanté and Swarovski crystal trimmings and added a soft sheen to silk embroidery and smooth satin.
I added to the stock some of the vintage shoes Timmy had found, and the rest on the ‘display only’ shelf, then Bella took some pictures and put them on the vintage page of the website, adding an announcement that we’d just had a huge delivery of wonderful new bridal shoes.
Hebe Winter convened a Chamber of Commerce meeting, but it was much like the first, in that she mainly just wanted to tell us all what she had organised, rather than consult us.
Laurence Yatton was still delving into the affairs of the Grocergo supermarket chain and the consortium who owned the land, with Lucy Winter’s help – they were both brilliant with computers.
Meanwhile, Force for Nature was now spearheading the campaign against the retail park and had even drawn up new proposals for a nature reserve instead, with a café and information centre, bird hides and walkways.
‘We are aware that there’s still a certain amount of support for the retail park, though,’ Laurence Yatton said.
‘I expect it’s because of the jobs it would generate,’ Poppy sighed. She seemed to have given up on the jodhpurs and was wearing maternity trousers with a flowing flowered top over her bump.
‘But wouldn’t a nature reserve generate quite a few jobs too?’ I asked.
‘Yes, though not as many, of course,’ Hebe replied. ‘But you would have to balance that with the number of jobs lost due to small businesses closing, if the retail park is approved.’
Then she passed round the proofs of the Sticklepond village trail leaflet for our approval, and they looked very good, with a discount ticket attached that gave half-price entry to either Winter’s End or the Witchcraft Museum, if you bought a full-price ticket for the other.
Later, I told Ivo about the meeting but he still wasn’t entirely convinced that a retail park wasn’t a good idea.
‘After all, it wouldn’t occupy the whole site; there could still be a nature trail around the rest of it.’
‘But everything would be disturbed by the building, and then all the cars and noise later,’ I pointed out. ‘But it’s looking very doubtful they’ll get permission anyway, what with all these rare plants and animals on the site, and Force for Nature involved.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said, taking a slice of banana bread. ‘Where has your aunt got to currently in her story?’
‘She hasn’t got anywhere. She’s diverged from the plot altogether again, so it’s back to rationing and cooking. She mentioned the first bananas appearing after the war and it made me remember this recipe.’
‘Kate’s diary entries are increasingly angry that she’s not getting any of the parts she’s auditioned for. She thought it was because she was getting too old for some of them, but to be honest, although she was beautiful, she wasn’t that good an actress … and I think, deep down, she knew it.’
‘In that case, perhaps she had very low self-esteem, and that’s why she had the affairs?’ I suggested cautiously, emboldened by the glass of Meddyg I’d just drunk.
‘You could have a point,’ Ivo admitted thoughtfully. ‘She constantly needed reassurance that she looked good, that I still loved her …’ A spasm of emotion crossed his face.
‘Then I’m probably right, and she was just using the affairs to prove to herself she was attractive,’ I said. ‘They didn’t mean anything to her. You were the significant man in her life.’
‘I think … that’s made me feel slightly better,’ he said slowly. ‘Not that I deserve to, really …’ he added, but I decided not to delve into what he meant by that.
‘Justin had the opposite problem, because his self-esteem was bloated by his mother forever assuring him how wonderful he was,’ I told him, then poured us both another fortifying glass of Meddyg and passed the plate of buttered banana bread again.
Imogen took up modelling right after she left her expensive finishing school, which was something Vi wasn’t too keen on her doing. Rightly so, because she fell in with some artist and had my great-niece Tansy out of wedlock, which was still quite a scandal, even then … not that much had changed since I was a girl.
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
A couple of evenings later, while Ivo was out with Flash and I was just about to melt some chocolate to cover a sponge cake, Justin rang me and the moment I heard the strange mixture of triumph and anger in his voice, I guessed what he was going to say.
‘Tansy, I’ve just got back from the hospital and the results of a DNA test on Charlie were waiting for me: I wanted to tell you right away.’
‘He’s isn’t your son, is he?’ I said flatly, not knowing what I felt, except it probably wasn’t what he was expecting.
‘Can you believe it?’ he exclaimed. ‘It means I’ve been paying Rae for nothing all these years, because even if she’d tried to blackmail me over our affair, I could just have denied everything and she couldn’t have proved it.’
‘Oh, well, that would have been all right then, wouldn’t it?’ I said sarcastically, but he wasn’t listening.
‘All these years – all these years!’ he repeated. ‘And all that money! I’m going to get it back, though, you’ll see.’
‘Can you do that?’ I asked, startled.
‘Why not? I’ll take her through the courts for it, if necessary, because it was extortion. She must have been pretty sure the baby wasn’t mine.’
‘But there was also a chance that it was and I don’t think there’s any point in trying to get your money back, because apart from the allowance she gets from her father, she hasn’t got any. It’s you who’s been subsidising her expensive lifestyle the last five years.’
‘If
she
can’t pay me back, then maybe her father will,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Especially if I threaten to give the story to the papers!’
‘You wouldn’t do that, would you? You’d hate the publicity, and it would be a sort of blackmail too, so you’d be almost as bad as Rae!’
‘Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t come to that: he’d pay up first. He’s loaded, isn’t he?’
‘No one is as well off as they used to be and he was never any kind of Onassis,’ I said dampeningly. ‘Please, Justin, don’t tell him what Rae did. He loves her and he’ll be devastated.’
‘I’ll only tell him if she refuses to pay me back,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Can’t you see that I’m doing this for
us
, darling? On a nest egg like that we’ll be able to get married, move out of London and start that family you want. I’ve conferred with colleagues about who’s the best man to consult about IVF if we have any problems, though I’m sure that clinic you went to was just being alarmist and –’
‘Just hold it right there,’ I broke in furiously. ‘This changes
nothing
, Justin! Can’t you see that it’s all too late – for us, for a family … for
everything
?’
‘Of course it changes everything. You’ll realise as soon as it’s all sunk in. You’re just a bit stunned by the news at the moment,’ he said, so soothingly that I would have hit him if he’d been in the room. ‘I’ll call you again tomorrow, darling, when you’ve taken it in.’
‘Don’t bother – I already have!’ I snapped, but he’d rung off.
The cake never got its chocolate topping and I’d comfort-eaten a big chunk out of it by the time Ivo brought Flash back. He walked in the kitchen door – we don’t stand on ceremony now – took one look at my face and asked me what was the matter.
‘It’s Justin. He just rang to say he’d had the DNA test result back for Charlie, the little boy I told you about – my stepsister’s child. And he isn’t his.’
‘That must have been a bit of a shock,’ he said, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down next to me. Flash, who had pushed a sympathetic wet nose into my hand and seemed to feel he had done his bit in the empathy line, went to inspect his dinner bowl for signs of scariness.
‘It wasn’t totally unexpected,’ I explained to Ivo, ‘but I just went numb when he told me! And now he seems to think it makes everything right between us, when really it changes nothing, because he still betrayed me with Rae!’
‘Yes, just because the evidence isn’t there any more, it doesn’t take away the fact,’ he agreed.
‘I wish he could see that, but no matter what I say, he carries on thinking we can get back together and play happy families as if nothing had ever happened! And he doesn’t accept that it’s probably too late for me to have a baby now, even if I could forgive him, which I can’t.’ I felt hot tears trickle down my face and wiped them away with my fingers.
‘Oh, come here!’ Ivo said softly, pulling me up out of the chair and into his arms, to have my cry out against his shoulder …
I found myself suddenly thinking that if this got to be a habit, I really wouldn’t mind!
‘I honestly do understand,’ he said, ‘because I wanted children too. Kate was the reluctant one, though when the roles dried up, she came round to the idea. In fact, we’d just found out she was pregnant when she was offered the
Cotton Common
role out of the blue …’
My own woes forgotten, I pulled away to look up at his face, shadowed by that haunted sadness again. ‘The papers didn’t mention that, though I’m sure they said she’d just joined the cast.’
‘Yes, she had, but she was convinced they could write the baby into the script, so she wasn’t going to turn the part down. She’d come up to stay with Marcia in Middlemoss to see the production company – we’d only just started renovating the cottage then, so she couldn’t stay here – and then the accident happened when she was on her way home.’
‘I’m so sorry, Ivo!’ I told him, hugging him back and thinking that to lose his wife and baby in the crash had been much worse than anything Justin had done to me.
‘There’s no way of knowing now whether the baby was mine or not, but I’d have loved it anyway.’