Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (37 page)

Goodness knows what the upmarket hotel he was booked into would make of that.

Unfortunately, he seemed to regard the parkin as some kind of peace offering or love token, for on my return with it he landed a kiss on my cheek and, getting back a bit of bounce, said in a horribly understanding way that he’d obviously chosen the wrong time of month to visit me and it had always made me ratty.

‘But I love you anyway, darling,’ he declared understandingly, while I was still rendered speechless with anger.

As he reversed out and drove off, waving, I wished I’d thrown the parkin at him, because it was pretty solid. He was beyond healing himself now, in my opinion: he needed a psychiatrist.

I hoped Ivo would have noticed that the car was gone and come in for high tea later as usual, but he didn’t turn up until he came to collect Flash for his evening walk, and then he was monosyllabic, so I didn’t even try to explain the scene he had witnessed … or why I’d been crying since (rage, mostly). I’d tried to hide the traces, so perhaps he hadn’t noticed.

Nor would he come in when he brought Flash back, saying he had something to do. I expect he meant going into a total black gloom and playing the most miserable classical music you ever heard in your life, because that’s what came through my walls for the entire evening.

I could have done with his quiet companionship – I missed it. Instead, I comforted myself with an extra-long session of Aunt Nan, though knowing how she felt about my living with Justin all those years instead of marrying, her first words didn’t exactly lighten my mood:

‘
Tansy lives down in London now, with her fiancé, though why they don’t get married decently I can’t image. He goes home to his mother most weekends, and Tansy comes back to me, which seems a strange how-do-you-do. Not that I’m not pleased to see her, of course, and I know she’d rather live up here than down there.
’

She was quite right: I should never have left. There was no mistaking her pride in the way she talked about me and I let her voice, with its familiar flat vowels and common-sense observations, wash soothingly over me like loving syrup.

‘
When Tansy went to art college down in London, Immy’s second husband, Lars, who was a widower with two grown-up daughters, wanted her to make his London house her home and she did for a while, though she didn’t get on with her stepsisters and went to a flat with friends. Lars still takes an interest in her – more than her mother ever did!

Now she writes and paints her children’s books and does some foot modelling too. Her mother got her into that early, when she was living with them.

No dear, I said foot modelling, not food modelling! They take pictures of Tansy’s feet for adverts and suchlike – did you ever hear of such a thing?
’

You had to give it to Rae: she never lay down and gave up, no matter how the cards were stacked against her. Beleaguered, she’d made a sudden pre-emptive strike and told her father some whitewashed version of the truth.

Of course, Lars was horrified and rang me at dawn to apologise for her. ‘She knows she did a really bad thing, Tansy: but when Charlie came along she truly thought he was Justin’s and it was right to ask him to help support the baby. But to have an affair with your sister’s fiancé …’ He tailed off, sighing heavily and, being fond of him, I refrained from pointing out that she was merely a stepsister.

‘Now I know why you broke up with Justin, but it was like your kind heart not to tell me. I’m flying over on Friday to sort this whole mess out as best I can and I’ll come to see you just as soon as I have.’

Lars was now into his seventies, but was never one to let the grass grow under his feet.

‘I’ll see Justin and arrange to pay back the money
and
have a few words about the way
he
behaved, because it takes two to tango, as they say.’

‘It certainly does,’ I agreed. ‘Has Rae told you who the real father is yet?’

If she knew, that was!

‘No, but I hope to get it out of her eventually, because Charlie will want to know, one of these days. Rae says Justin is still dead set on making it up with you, though I can’t imagine there’s any possibility of that?’

‘None at all; he’s done the unforgivable. And I’ve no idea why he still wants to marry me anyway, when I know for sure that he’d soon start going on about my weight and my clothes and all the rest of it again. He’s very, very stubborn, though, and also, perhaps I’m just the first woman ever to turn him down?’

‘You always look perfect to me,’ Lars assured me.

‘Rae and Marcia used to call me the little goblin in the fairy family.’

‘Did they?’ he said, sounding taken aback. ‘I suppose, all of us being tall and fair and you small and dark, you did look kind of different.’

‘Yes, even my mother looked like one of the family and she always had lots in common with Rae and Marcia, and nothing at all with me.’

‘They were more like sisters,’ he said. ‘I don’t think your mother’s ever quite grown up and she was never much good in the mothering department.’

‘But you were are close to a father as I’ve ever had, Lars, and I’ve always been grateful for what you’ve done for me – the allowance when I was at college, all the rest of the help you’ve given me.’

‘I’d have given you more, if you’d let me, as if you were one of my own. But you just tell me if you need a bit of money behind you in your new business. How’s it going?’

‘It’s doing really well. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.’

‘I’ll visit Marcia when I come up, too. Has she been over?’

‘Just the once,’ I said, with restraint, not telling him that it was Marcia who had thrown the spanner in the works by telling Justin that Charlie might not be his, and then encouraging him to think I still loved him.

I couldn’t get back to sleep after the call, though it was a Bank Holiday Monday so the shop was shut and I’d intended having a lie-in.

Ivo appeared mid-morning, just as I’d finished experimenting with a kind of home-made version of Reese’s peanut butter cups (the great thing about experimenting with cooking being that you can generally eat your mistakes). He apologised for his grumpiness yesterday, which he ascribed to having had a visitor himself the previous afternoon: Marcia had sneaked into the garden and caught him, again.

‘Why don’t I take you for a run out somewhere?’ he suggested. ‘I think we probably both need a change of air.’

I suggested we visit a National Trust property nearby called Rufford Old Hall, since it also had Shakespeare connections that I thought might interest him.

‘But we won’t tell Hebe Winter we’ve been,’ I added. ‘She would count it as treachery!’

So we went there, and after we had toured the lovely old house we went for coffee in the tearoom and I told him about my ex-stepfather calling me and that he would be coming to see me. ‘He’s horrified and ashamed to think one of his own daughters would sleep with my fiancé.’

‘Marcia said she felt like that too, and surprised at Justin, because she knew he really loved you all the time and was sure he’d never looked at another woman since he’d got engaged to you.’

I was pretty certain that Marcia, far from feeling anything like shame at what Rae had done, was merely intent on getting me back with Justin and out of Ivo’s orbit, so she could snaffle him herself! Not, of course, that Ivo and I were about to pick up where we left off so long ago, but at least we seemed to be friends again today.

‘Marcia must have arrived after Justin finally left, because I didn’t see her car,’ I said. ‘She wouldn’t have tried to see me, because I more or less threw her out last time.’

‘She was so kind after the accident that I feel guilty that I don’t want to see her now. But it just brings everything back, and I’m sure she knew Kate was unfaithful.’

‘Then she also probably knew that Kate loved you despite the affairs,’ I pointed out gently.

‘And I am sure Justin must still love you, despite what he did,’ he said. ‘Marcia’s sure of it.’

Marcia’s obviously been telling him how right Justin and I are for each other, as well as telling Justin himself that I still love him and will forgive him eventually. She is so devious!

‘It doesn’t matter to me whether he does or not, because I can’t forgive and forget what he did!’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to see him yesterday and I certainly don’t want him moving up here and haunting me!’

‘But his visit upset you, so clearly you must still have some feelings for him?

‘I was just
angry,’ I snapped, but Ivo didn’t look entirely convinced. I don’t know how I can make him believe I’m over Justin … or why it should matter. Perhaps Ivo still loved Kate, despite what he was finding out about her.

But soon he would have finished torturing himself by reading her diaries – his act of penitence and self-flagellation, and returned to his acting profession. On this thought, Ivo suddenly told me the Management were coming up to see him in a few days.

‘The Management?’

‘Of the RSC.’

‘Oh – then I expect they want to persuade you to come back early?’

‘They certainly want to make sure I’m going back “and ’tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation”,’ he agreed, so I really didn’t think he would take much persuading, especially with his next novel almost finished. My heart sank a little at the thought of losing him. I’d got used to having him around to talk to, especially in the evenings. But perhaps he would come back for weekends and I could look forward to seeing him then …

Ivo said the cakes in the teashop didn’t look a patch on any of mine, so we went back to my cottage for tea later. The air might not have been totally cleared of misunderstandings after Justin’s visit and Marcia’s Iago-like innuendoes, but I was happy that we appeared to be back on our usual friendly footing again.

Over tea he asked me where I’d got to with Aunt Nan’s recordings.

‘I listened to a bit this morning while I was cooking breakfast. She was saying how the rumours about her died down eventually, but in any case, her friends had stood by her. Then after that, she was into the home straight with happy memories of when I was growing up. I’m really enjoying this part so I don’t want it to end, especially when I know what she’s going to say in her personal message at the end. It’ll be so sad and poignant, hearing exactly what happened in her own words.’

‘I’m finding Kate’s diaries not so much poignant as appalling and harrowing,’ he confessed. ‘She might keep saying how much she loved me, but it didn’t stop her having her flings with other men, especially after she’d been turned down for a part, or been written out.’

‘It must have made her feel better.’

‘It certainly doesn’t make me feel better, knowing about it! And in last night’s entries she said I was pressing her to have children, but she was afraid it would destroy her figure and end her career.’

‘That was a bit pessimistic, but I expect her looks were very important to her.’

‘She certainly spent a fortune on clothes, beauty products and treatments – much more than I ever knew about at the time! But perhaps all women lie about that kind of thing.’

‘I don’t know, because I’ve never bought expensive things. Mine are mostly from a Swedish company who do unusual stuff, mixed up with charity shop and vintage finds.’

‘It works and I like your style – it’s very distinctive.’

‘And Helena Bonham Carter?’ I said pointedly.

‘I’m sure she must have spotted you somewhere and be copying you, rather than the other way round,’ he said with a straight face, but the laughter lurking in his clear grey eyes reminded me of the boy he had been when I first met him, so that my heart skipped several beats just as if I were a love-struck teenager!

Chapter 34: Porkers

I’ve carried on with the shop, but it doesn’t do a lot of business these days, even though I’ve a nice sideline going in bride’s satin shoes. It was getting a bit much for me, I have to admit, but providentially, Bella, Tansy’s best friend, has moved back to the village and runs it for me now. I don’t want centuries of tradition to die with me
–
Bright’s shoes have been here forever – but it will be Tansy’s choice what she does with it after I’m gone.

Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.

I got an email update from Hebe, in her role as chair of the Sticklepond Chamber of Commerce, all about the latest developments and plans. Force for Nature had come up with an exciting plan for a nature reserve with café and visitor centre, and the mill owner’s house as a living history museum. Public opinion seems to be favouring that one.

We’d got enough shops already round here, what with St Helens and Ormskirk, and if anyone wanted more than those, they could go to Liverpool, Southport or Manchester easily enough.

I’d already found a bundle of the village walk leaflets on my doorstep that morning, so presumably Hebe had dispatched one of her minions at dawn to drop them off. I didn’t remember discussing calling it ‘A Saunter Round Sticklepond’, but then again, I did miss a meeting because of a headache, so I expect it was discussed there.

Neil Seddon paid me a surprise visit just after I’d closed the shop up in the afternoon and said he wanted to talk to me about Bella, so I took him through into the kitchen and, after priming him with tea and chocolate cake, and prodding him a bit, he said, ‘You’re Bella’s oldest friend so I thought you might be able to tell me what she’s thinking. I mean, I’ve obviously said the wrong thing, asking her and Tia to move in with me, but I did mean it for the best!’

‘She’s afraid history will repeat itself,’ I explained. ‘When she moved in with Robert, Tia’s father, he was separated and promised they’d get married as soon as he’d got his divorce, only it never happened. In fact, it was a bit like me with my fiancé: we got engaged and I moved in, then nothing happened for years!’