Love Nest

PENGUIN BOOKS

Love Nest

Julia Llewellyn is the author of
The Love Trainer
,
If I Were You
,
Amy’s Honeymoon
and
The Model Wife
, all published as Penguin paperbacks. As Julia Llewellyn Smith she writes regularly for the
Sunday Telegraph
, the
Sunday Times
and many other publications. Julia lives in London with her family.

Love Nest

JULIA LLEWELLYN

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England

www.penguin.com

First published 2010

Copyright © Julia Llewellyn, 2010

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-191157-1

For Ella Winters. And her mum.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Acknowledgements

With huge thanks to the National Gamete Donation Trust for all its help in investigating the fascinating world of egg donation and IVF, and especially to Julie Hinks at the Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine, who answered so many queries so patiently (and also stood up for nurses’ rights!). Anyone who wants to know more can look at ngdt.co.uk. As ever, gratitude to Lizzy Kremer, Laura West and everyone else who works so hard at David Higham Associates. Mari Evans, you are the most brilliant editor and a joy to work with. Ruth Spencer, you’re a star, ditto Natalie Higgins, not to mention the entire team at Penguin. Kate Gawryluk, I couldn’t have done this without you. Victoria Macdonald, Maryam Shahmanesh and as ever James Watkins. And apologies and homage to Thomas Hardy.

Prelude

‘Ashes to ashes,’ intoned the vicar. ‘Dust to dust.’ It was a glacial February morning and in the south-west corner of the churchyard of St Michael’s of All Angels, Little Dittonsbury, Devon, the coffin of Nadia Porter-Healey was being lowered slowly into the frosty ground beside her long-dead husband’s.

Their orphaned daughter Grace stifled her sobs with a tissue. She leaned on the shoulder of her brother Sebastian, who was staring straight ahead with a neutral expression on his face, as if he’d broken wind in a crowded lift.

On his other side, Verity, Sebastian’s wife, sighed heavily, pulled her cashmere coat more tightly around her and glanced at her slim gold watch. Basil, who was three, clung to her leg shouting: ‘What’s going on, Mummy?’ Alfie, the five-year-old, stood rigid, like a soldier about to be despatched to the Western Front. The gravedigger stepped forward and began shovelling earth on to the coffin. Alfie stuck a finger up his nostril. Verity didn’t bother to stifle a yawn. Basil said: ‘Mummy, will there be cake soon? You said there’d be cake.’

Grace’s sobs grew louder. A dam of grief and exhaustion that had been building up for the past five years was suddenly blasted away. The tears poured out. Her mother was dead. Her beautiful mother whom she’d loved so much. Grace had done everything she could to save her, but it had still been inadequate. As ever, she had failed.

‘There, there,’ mumbled Sebastian, giving her an ineffectual squeeze on the arm. Sympathetic heads were turning. Grace felt a warm arm around her shoulder.

‘Hey, love. Hey. It’s all right.’

It was Lou, cleaner, occasional cook and general handywoman at Chadlicote Manor for the past sixteen years. Grace inhaled the familiar smells of bleach and baking – the result of being up since six preparing Chadlicote for the wake. Grace had devoured a whole tray of Lou’s sandwiches earlier that morning to fortify herself. She’d blamed their disappearance on Silvester, the spaniel. But she
was
in mourning.

‘It’s not all right, Lou. Mummy’s dead.’

‘I know. It’s very sad. But
you’ll
be all right.’

‘I couldn’t save her.’

‘No one could.’ Lou stroked her hair. ‘Life is just very cruel sometimes.’

Grace wiped the tears away from her cheeks, aware of her brother hovering awkwardly beside them.

‘Ahem, Grace. I think it’s time we got going. Showed people the way.’

‘Of course.’ Grace blew her nose, wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck, readjusted her hat slightly. ‘I’ll see you back at the house, then.’

‘Actually,’ Verity chirped up, ‘Sebby was wondering if he could drive back with you. As there’s so much to discuss.’

‘Oh!’ Grace was pleased. Since her beloved brother had met Verity ten years ago, she’d rarely had a moment alone with him. He’d been staying for the past couple of days, but he’d locked himself up in the study going over paperwork. Over the suppers Grace had prepared for him he had been monosyllabic. ‘I’m exhausted,’ was the most she got from him, although after eating he didn’t go to bed but returned to the study, while Grace polished off the leftovers.

As children they had been so close, growing up in the paradise that was Chadlicote, bicycling around the grounds, building bridges over the stream, swimming in the lake, camping overnight in the barn, pretending to be Daleks from their favourite television programme,
Doctor Who
. Her home had always been her favourite place on earth, like something from a fairytale, rambling, beautiful and full of history.

But after they’d been sent to boarding school they’d seen much less of each other. Sebby left school at seventeen, after a mysterious incident involving the groundsman’s lawnmower, and went into ‘business’, although Grace never really knew exactly what that meant. She went to university. Every now and then he’d popped down for an evening, taken her out to dinner and made her feel glamorous and popular, things that – being three (all right, maybe four. Sometimes five) stone overweight – she felt very rarely.

Not knowing what to do with her first in classical studies, she’d stayed on to do a PhD. But after two years she threw in the towel. She enjoyed her research but she’d had enough of teaching bored students, just a few years younger than her but seemingly from a different planet. Students who wore crop tops and cut-offs, miniskirts and flimsy dresses, rather than the Evans smocks Grace had resigned herself to.

They seemed so busy surreptitiously checking their texts, and submitting essays that had been downloaded word for word from the internet, and Twittering and Facebooking, that they didn’t have headspace for doughnuts and jelly and Coronation chicken and all the things that haunted Grace’s dreams. They looked at her round body with barely concealed pity.

She realized she was getting fatter because she was sad, missing the country she’d grown up in. It was time for a change of career, although Grace didn’t know what. The summer holidays were coming and she decided to return to Chadlicote, to think things through. Two weeks before she was due to return, Daddy crashed his car coming home drunk from greyhound racing near Totnes. He died instantly.

Grace resigned from her job. Although Daddy had made a will, the rest of his affairs were in a mess. With Mum in shock, it was left entirely up to Grace to sort it out.

She hoped for some support from Sebastian, who, after all, was tied down to no particular job. By now he’d had various careers. A tapas bar that didn’t attract enough trade – bad location, they realized with hindsight. He’d launched a couple of websites, produced one or two films that never got released. Mummy would have loved to have seen more of him; she’d never concealed that Sebby was her favourite – and rightly so, he was better-looking, cleverer and more entertaining than Grace. But around that time Sebby had met Verity and was too busy wooing her (as romantic Grace thought of it) to give Grace a hand.

So Grace single-handedly and not altogether successfully tried to sort out her father’s numerous debts. She was too tired and busy and grief-struck even to think about a social life, and nearly a year passed before she could turn her attentions to the neglected house and grounds. It wasn’t as if Chadlicote had been in the family for generations – her grandfather had bought it cheaply as a crumbling ruin and set about restoring it. When Daddy had inherited it, the work was only part done and since he was far more interested in who was racing in the two-thirty at Doncaster than in replacing worm-gnawed floorboards, the place had remained ramshackle. To Grace that was part of its charm.

However, it couldn’t stay like that. She began to list ways of reviving Chadlicote – converting the outhouses into holiday cottages, opening a restaurant, hiring it out for weddings. She was fired with excitement. Her mother, however, was more dubious. Nadia Briggs, as she was originally known, was the only child of a railway worker and a housewife. They had great ambitions for their beautiful daughter and sent her to finishing school. After that she did a bit of modelling, before marrying Blewitt Porter-Healey, who was seen as a catch because he was the heir to a big house.

Nearly thirty years of living in that same big house, which also turned out to be draughty and unmanageable and four miles from the nearest shop (and thirteen miles from anything even vaguely resembling a boutique or beauty parlour), had only slightly dimmed Nadia’s stylishness. In her early fifties, she was still far more striking than her daughter.

Grace adored her mother. She was also a bit scared of her. The awareness that she had failed to fulfil any of her hopes was one of the main reasons she turned so often to the biscuit tin.

‘You’ve lost a few pounds,’ Nadia said with a frown as the two of them sat one evening about a year after Daddy’s death on the back terrace with its views out towards the lake. ‘Have you been doing Scarsdale like I told you?’

‘Sort of, Mummy. And just spending lots of time outdoors has helped, I think.’

‘Thank heavens.’ She slapped her daughter’s hand, as it reached for the bowl of rice crackers. ‘No! I said you’ve lost a few pounds. Not that you can go crazy.’

‘Sorry, Mummy.’

‘Keep up the good work. It might help you find a husband. Lord knows, you’re handicapped enough as it is. Young girls shouldn’t be living in the middle of nowhere with their parents. They should be sharing flats with other young girls in London. Going dancing and having fun. That’s what I did after I left school.’

‘But I don’t really like London. I prefer the country. And I’m really happy being here with you, Mummy.’

Nadia shrugged. ‘And I’m happy to have you here, my dear. After decades of being alone when Daddy was at the greyhounds, it’s nice to have some company. It’s you I’m worried about. These are your best years. You don’t want to spend them locked up with me in the middle of nowhere, your lovely looks lost in a casing of blubber.’

‘It won’t be like that,’ Grace said. And she didn’t think it would. She wasn’t a weirdo. She was twenty-five; she’d work out a plan to revive the house, she’d lose weight and somehow on the way she’d meet a man.

But her hopes were put on ice again. Because Nadia, who had always been so active, walking at least five miles a day with the dogs, began complaining of joint pains and stiffness.

The symptoms got worse and eventually she went to see a specialist. He ordered some tests and then some more before eventually breaking the news that Nadia had motor neurone disease.

‘What, like Stephen Hawking?’

The consultant cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s a very advanced form of the disease.’

‘So I’ll end up in a wheelchair. Talking. Like. A. Robot.’ Nadia said the last bit in a synthesized American voice.

‘And being a world-class physicist,’ Grace added. The consultant didn’t laugh.

‘There are many, many treatments available to maximize quality of life,’ he said.

These treatments began immediately. Nadia popped dozens of pills a day. Saw endless therapists. Grace’s days were crammed with ferrying her to various appointments – her mother’s hands had suddenly and dramatically got too shaky for her to drive. There was no time for anything else. What choice did she have? This was her adored mother. They couldn’t afford nursing care anyway, plus Nadia found that idea intolerable.

‘I don’t want some man who couldn’t get a job anywhere else giving me a bath and helping me into my underwear,’ she cried. ‘Not when my darling daughter can help.’

Sebastian and Verity had got engaged, so he was tied up with wedding plans. He did call twice a week, and Mummy was always thrilled to hear from him and would spend the rest of the day reporting to Grace: how Sebby was looking into starting a hedge fund, how Verity’s bonus from the bank where she worked was going to be more than a million, how they were planning a bash at the Grosvenor House Hotel and a honeymoon in the Maldives. Grace was glad Nadia could live vicariously through them. For her own part, she was so busy just keeping Mummy well that she had no time to look after the house and grounds. Whole sections of the once glorious gardens disappeared under weeds. Wallpaper peeled. Algae stifled the lake.

And slowly Nadia’s legs became weaker and weaker until she was confined to a wheelchair. Her arms and hands started to go too, so everyday tasks like turning taps, brushing hair, dressing, doing up buttons became more and more difficult. Her head began to loll as her neck muscles weakened.

Over the final couple of years she found it harder and harder to speak and then swallow as her throat muscles atrophied. In the final days Grace was spoon-feeding her, bathing her, even changing her nappies. Lou helped out as much as she could, and tried to persuade Grace to come out occasionally for the odd supper at her cottage in the village. But so often Mummy would call, frustrated because she couldn’t get undressed, or frightened – as her mind began to slip as well – at being alone in the house. Even if she didn’t, Grace felt so guilty leaving her that she couldn’t really enjoy herself. It was easier to stay at home. And eat. Cakes that Lou baked. Biscuits. Family bars of chocolate wolfed down in a couple of mouthfuls. Jacket potatoes covered in comforting mountains of melted Cheddar. Whole tubs of ice cream, straight from the freezer, that burned her lips and gave her heartburn, but tasted so smooth on her tongue.

*

It was five years between the diagnosis and Nadia’s death at the end of a long, cold winter when the house’s various boilers kept breaking down and the roof started resembling a colander. Grace could do nothing about her beloved home. She was either helping Mummy, or she was too exhausted to do more than cook a whole packet of pasta, smother it in butter, devour it and collapse.

Now Nadia was gone. Grace was exhausted. She was thirty-four, but she looked far older. She felt some relief that Mummy was, at least, at peace, but all her anxieties were now channelled into the collapsing house that she now owned jointly with Sebastian – Sebastian who had also aged, thanks to the quick arrival of Alfie and Basil, not to mention the folding of more business ventures. Grace told herself something would work out. With Lou’s support, she put in place a vague plan to have some kind of holiday – her first since all this had started. Then she would lose four stone and set to work to raise the funds to restore Chadlicote to its former glory.

‘So…’ Sebastian said, climbing into the beaten-up old Land Rover which stank of Silvester, the spaniel, and Shackleton, the pug.

‘Are you sure you won’t change your minds? Stay the night?’ Grace turned on the ignition and backed out of the car park. Verity and the boys had arrived late last night and made a lot of fuss about how cold the house was and how frightened Basil was by creaking pipes in the night. She wasn’t surprised when Sebastian now shook his head.

‘We’ve got to get back. Alfie’s got a birthday party tomorrow.’ He cleared his throat as the car bumped along a winding country lane. ‘Now, listen, there’s something we need to talk about,’ he said hastily. ‘What are we going to do with Chadlicote?’

Grace glanced at him as she negotiated the tight bend next to the entrance to Cudd’s Farm. ‘I know it needs a lot of work. But we’ll get there. I can devote myself to it now.’