Nadia Knows Best (34 page)

The receptionist at the Swallow Royal buzzed Charles in his suite and informed him that a Dr. Welch was downstairs in reception wishing to see Mrs. Kinsella. Charles looked amused.

“Want me to send him away, darling?”

Miriam shook her head. “No. I'll go down and speak to him.”

As she descended the sweeping staircase, she saw Edward waiting for her. Tall, shoulders back, wearing his brown tweed suit and looking more serious than she had ever known him.

It was an odd sensation, seeing him again like this after… what? Three days? Aware that her heart was beating faster, Miriam straightened her own shoulders as she reached the last stair.

“Edward? What's this about?”

He came straight to the point. “Us. You and me, Miriam. I'm here to tell you that if you stay with Charles Burgess, you'll be making the biggest mistake of your life.”

Good grief, he was serious. Taken aback by his vehemence, Miriam said, “You don't know that.”

“I
do
know. Maybe he loved you fifty years ago, but you've both changed since then. I love you now,” Edward said forcefully, “and that's what matters. I'm never going to stop loving you. I'd never do anything to hurt you. Miriam, I don't blame you for Josephine's death. If that was what was stopping you from marrying me, then it's not a problem anymore. Is it exciting being with Burgess?” Abruptly he changed the subject. “Does the sight of him make your heart beat faster? Actually, no need to answer that. I guess it must do. It's been a long time, after all.”

“Edward—”

“No, let me say this.” His face reddening, Edward pressed his hand to his chest. “I just want to remind you of something, because you may have forgotten. The sight of me used to have that effect on you, Miriam. Remember? In that last year before Josephine died, both our hearts used to beat faster at the sight of each other. And then afterwards, you closed your feelings off. Like shutting a box. You wouldn't allow yourself to remember how you'd felt. And now you've spent the night with another man—”

“I didn't,” Miriam helplessly blurted out. “We slept in adjoining rooms, I haven't—”

She jumped as a hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was Charles, confident and seemingly entertained by Edward's outburst. Loudly enough for the receptionist and a group of Australian tourists to hear, he said, “Is this gentleman bothering you, my dear? Shall I call security and have him removed?”

But Miriam barely heard him. As usual, as
always
, Edward was right. She had loved him, pulse-racingly and passionately, until that dreadful day when the lid of the box had come crashing down. And now he cared enough about her to come here and publicly declare himself, which was an astonishingly un-Edwardlike thing to do.

At her side, Charles told Edward, “You're making a fool of yourself, you know. It's all over. I'm here now.”

Edward looked him straight in the eye. “Will you keep out of this? It's for Miriam to decide, not you.” His face was still red. Despite his stiff-upper-lip demeanor, he looked as if he might explode. As Miriam wondered what his blood pressure might be doing, she realized that Edward's hand was once more sliding inside the front of his tweed jacket; he was either carrying a gun or massaging his chest—

In the garden… Josephine shouting furiously… then gasping for air as she collapsed to the ground…

“Oh Edward!” Springing away from Charles, Miriam rushed toward him. “You're right, you're always right, I'm so sorry!”

Silence. The receptionist, the dapper doorman, even the Australian tourists were agog.

“Meaning?” said Edward, scarcely daring to breathe.

When Miriam finally spoke, her dark eyes filled with tears. “You're the one I want to marry. If you're sure you still want me.”

Across the echoing marble foyer, she heard one of the Australians whisper loudly, “Aaaw, ain't that the cutest thing? And they're, like,
ancient
.”

Imperceptibly, Edward's arms tightened round her waist before she could race across the marble floor and fell the gawping Australian with a single blow.

Closer to hand, behind them, Charles said evenly, “Miriam, stop this at once. Move away from him.” As if Edward were an unexploded bomb.

She shook her head. “I can't, Charles, I'm sorry, but I've made up my mind.”

“This is ridiculous.” Charles's voice was icy. “You can't do this.” He paused. “All I have to do is call my lawyer.”

Miriam closed her eyes. If he was serious… well, there was nothing she could do about that. A court case would be awful, truly humiliating; it would leave her reputation in shreds. And she could go to prison; the solicitor she'd consulted in Bedminster had already warned her that this was a real possibility.

But Edward would still love her, and that was all that mattered.

“Fine,” Miriam said clearly. “If that's what you want to do.”

“Oh, don't worry, it's what I
shall
be doing.” With a bitter laugh, Charles raised his voice and addressed their assembled audience. “She's a bigamist, you know. And she ran off with my money.”

“
Our
money,” corrected Miriam.

“How much?” called out one of the Australians, a fat man in khaki shorts.

“I think I'd like to go now,” Miriam said, but Edward held her there.

“In today's terms? Over a hundred thousand,” said Charles.

“By the way, I haven't been to stay with my sister in Kent.” Edward's tone was conversational. “Laurie and I went up to Edinburgh.”

Miriam looked at him. “Did you?”

“Oh yes. Spent a couple of days in the city library up there. D'you know, it's incredible, they have all the old local newspapers stored in a vault. The newer ones are kept on microfiche, but the papers from fifty years ago are still there. Laurie and I had a good look through them.”

“What's he on about now?” complained the Australian.

“Sshh,” said his wife.

“What's really interesting,” Edward was addressing Charles Burgess now, “is that Miriam told me the date she'd left you. So we checked every paper for that week, but there was no mention anywhere of Pauline Hammond's mother being knocked down by a car and killed. As Laurie pointed out,” Edward concluded with a shrug, “it's like
The
X
-
Files
. Almost as if it had never happened at all.”

Charles Burgess paled visibly. Miriam, watching his reaction, almost laughed aloud.

“Th-that's not true,” he blustered. “You've made a mistake.”

“Oh, I think we know what isn't true,” said Edward.

“You were lying all along.” Miriam gazed at the stammering Charles. “Well, I suppose I should have known. You were always so good at it.”

“You needn't look so pleased with yourself,” Charles retorted, recovering himself. “I can still take you to court.”

Miriam, blissfully aware of Edward's arm round her waist, said, “I've already told you, Charles. Feel free. But mine won't be the only name dragged through the mud, will it? The court will want to know why I left you, and I'll tell them. OK, so what I did was wrong, I should have divorced you, but I was only nineteen at the time. I was silly and reckless, but at least I wasn't unfaithful.”

“Too right,” said the Australian wife, vigorously nodding in agreement.

Charles shot the woman a look of utter contempt.

“And taking me to court isn't going to win me back,” Miriam went on calmly. “Nothing's going to do that now, you must realize that. But anyway.” She paused and regarded Charles with an air of finality. “It's not my decision, is it? I'll leave it up to you.”

***

“…it's like going on holiday and missing a week of
Coronation
Street
,” marveled Clare. “You get back and find out that all this… God,
stuff
has happened.”

Smiling to herself, Annie finished locking up the shop for the night. Clare was right; who would have thought that yesterday Miriam would have returned with Edward to announce that they were getting married and would be moving into Edward's house?

Or that later that evening, James would have asked her, Annie, to move in with
him
?

Or, most astoundingly of all, that Clare would fling her arms round her and say, “This is brilliant, I'm so happy for you,” and actually appear to mean it?

And now this.

“I've been chatting to Dad,” Clare had announced when she'd burst into the shop just ten minutes ago, “and I've decided to move out. Not because of you,” she added hastily, glimpsing the expression on Annie's face. “I just think it's about time I stood on my own two feet. I'm twenty-three. I need to sort myself out, learn how to behave like a grown-up.”

“Well, that's… um, great.” Annie wondered why Clare had come to the shop to tell her this. “What'll you do, share a flat in Clifton?”

“That's what Dad said, but I'm not really interested. I quite fancy getting away from the whole Clifton scene… you know, the endless clubbing and wine bars and hooking up with dickheads like Piers. Anyway”—Clare led the way to the car she'd left parked on double yellows—“Miriam was asking Dad what you'd be doing with your cottage and I thought, hey, perfect, this could be just what I need, so that's why I'm here. We'll go and look at it now. If I like it, I'll rent it from you and you won't have to bother about finding a tenant you can trust!”

***

They pulled up outside the cottage and Clare bounced out of the car, entranced.

“This is so
sweet
. When I first met you I thought it'd be really grotty, but it's not at all!”

Drily, Annie said, “Thanks.”

Inside, Clare rushed from room to room in a state of excitement. Since it was tiny, it took no time at all.

“If I'd known you were coming I'd have tidied up. Sorry it's a bit of a mess.” Hurriedly Annie tipped a pile of ironing behind the sofa and kicked a couple of magazines out of sight.

“Ha, you're joking, I can make
loads
more mess than this. And it'll be my very own place, so nobody will be able to give me grief about it.” Joyfully, Clare surveyed the sunny glass extension to the living room, not grand enough to be called a conservatory. “I can keep my easel here. Really, I'm turning over
such
a new leaf. No more drinking, no more men, I'm just going to concentrate totally on painting, get my career properly off the ground… Can we look upstairs now?”

Clare was like a whirlwind; Annie struggled to keep up. The bathroom was minuscule but clean. The second bedroom was more of a walk-in cupboard. But the main bedroom was good enough, and the view from the diamond-leaded windows had Clare in raptures.

“This is great, I can see all the way down the lane!” Flinging open the window, she leaned out so precariously that Annie almost grabbed her ankles. “And it's so peaceful, like being right out in the country. Which is just what I need,” Clare added over her shoulder. “No distractions, just lots of peace and quiet and—whoooahh, who is
that
?”

Peering past, Annie saw what had caught Clare's attention.

“Oh, that's Danny. He lives in one of the big houses overlooking the village green.”

Danny glanced up as he jogged past the cottage, his long hair bouncing off his shoulders and his mouth broadening into a grin at the sight of Clare in her perilously low-cut scarlet top. Without breaking stride, he raised a hand in greeting and jogged on down the lane.

“Danny LeBlanc.” Clare gazed incredulously after him. “The soccer player, right? Plays for City.” Whirling round, she said, “Is he single?”

“He's so single he has a revolving front door. The locals call his house the department store.” Annie gave Clare a please-don't look. “Trust me, Danny's the last man you'd want to get involved with. He's impossible, up to all sorts of mischief—”

“And what a pair of legs. Oh yes, I am definitely going to rent this cottage.”

“I thought you wanted to concentrate on your painting, give men a miss for a while,” Annie pleaded. Although she already knew it was a lost cause.

“A
while
,” emphasized Clare. “I didn't mean fifteen
years
.”

“But Danny LeBlanc, he's not what you need. He treats all his girlfriends appallingly.”

Clare flashed her a dazzling, supremely confident smile. “That's because he hasn't met me yet.”

“I can't believe you're doing this,” said Laurie. “I thought everything was fine. After… you know, at the hotel, I thought that was it, you'd made up your mind.”

“I had. Only not in the way you thought. God, this is difficult.” Nadia rubbed her temples and wished she had some kind of script to follow. “I'm sorry, but it's never going to work. We can't go back to how we were. Everything's changed.”

It had taken a while, but she'd finally made up her mind. Everything
had
changed, including her feelings for Laurie. Maybe it had something to do with his devil-may-care attitude toward work—formulating any kind of career plan was seemingly beyond him. Then Jay had given her a cutting from the paper. A local radio station was on the lookout for a gardening expert to fill a weekly question-and-answer slot. Jay had said, “You should apply, you'd be great at that.” Encouraged, she had told Laurie, who had laughed and said, “Watch out, Howard Stern, Nadia's after your job,” and had then gone on to poke fun at the tiny radio station, telling her she shouldn't waste her time.

Little things, but they added up.

The sun was setting, turning the sky Day-Glo pink on the horizon. As they walked over the Downs, hot-air balloons practicing for the upcoming festival rose from Ashton Court and drifted across the Avon Gorge. Laurie paused to watch a ninety-foot Rupert Bear float over their heads.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Who?” Nadia was glad of the sun in her eyes. She blinked, hard.

Laurie tut-tutted. “Ewan McGregor. You know who I mean.”

“Oh. No, I didn't.”

“See? Big mistake. You should have done.”

“Maybe, but I slept with you instead.”

Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, Laurie smiled slightly. “And you're telling me I was a disappointment?”

Nadia shook her head. “You said I should sleep with Jay to get him out of my system. But I couldn't do that. It wouldn't have seemed… right.”

“So you slept with me instead, and got me out of your system.”

“It was your idea.”

Drily, Laurie said, “Well, remind me never to have that idea again.”

“I'm sorry.” Nadia hadn't expected to cry. It was pathetic really; how could she get upset about finishing with someone she wasn't even properly involved with?

“Me too. I'm gutted. Still”—Laurie smiled briefly—“I suppose it serves me right for finishing with you in the first place.”

“Maybe.” Wiping her eyes, Nadia managed a feeble smile of her own.

“If I hadn't, we could have been married by now.”

“Probably.”

“So it's all my fault.”

“Oh, definitely.”

“Bugger.” Laurie sighed. “And you bring me here to tell me.” Spreading his arms, he indicated the Downs. “At least I had the decency to take you to Markwick's.”

“What will you do?” said Nadia.

“Get over it, I suppose. In about fifty years.” He gave her a tragic look. “Oh, don't worry about me, I'm tough. By the time I'm seventy-six I'll be absolutely fine.”

If he was able to joke about it, Nadia thought with relief, things were probably going to be all right. They could revert to being friends—which, seeing as her grandmother was about to marry his father, was just as well.

“There's an ice-cream van over there.” As she linked her arm companionably through his, a huge detached house floated across the gorge toward them. “Come on, I'll treat you to a Magnum.”

“Sure you don't have to rush off? Isn't Jay waiting for you?”

“Why would he be?”

Laurie raised his eyebrows. “You mean, he doesn't even know he's won?”

Something that felt horribly like panic began to spread through Nadia's intestines. Would Jay react as she had once reacted upon learning that she'd won a pair of lime-green crocheted hot pants in the school raffle?

Aloud she said, “He might not even want to win.”

Laurie started to laugh. “Now that's what I call risky. Talk about taking a gamble.”

“You gambled,” Nadia couldn't resist pointing out.

Laurie's eyes glittered with rueful amusement. “I lost.”

***

Andy Chapman from the estate agents had been showing another potential buyer around Clarence Gardens. Even if Jay hadn't let her know this on the phone, Nadia would have been able to tell by the amount of Armani aftershave still lingering as she let herself into the house.

Jay had called to ask her to come and water the garden.

“I'm stuck here at home,” he'd gone on to explain, sounding harassed. “Look, can you do me a favor? Andy's left some stuff in an envelope for me in the kitchen and I need it pretty urgently. If you could drop it round, I'd be grateful.”

Nadia had spent forty minutes with the hose, watering the parched plants and tidying up the edges of the lawn with her strimmer. Now that she was finished, it was time to pick up the stuff-in-an-envelope, to take over to Jay's house.

And here it was, left on the worktop next to the sink, a white A4 envelope containing… well, whatever it contained.

What was the difference between nosiness and idle curiosity? Well, steaming open a sealed envelope would definitely count as nosiness.

Happily, this one wasn't sealed.

As the contents slithered out onto the worktop, Nadia felt the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up in alarm.

Property details. Well, hardly that surprising, seeing that they'd been left here by Andy Chapman. But why on earth would Jay be interested in details of houses in and around Manchester?

Not the in-need-of-renovation kind, either. Quite the opposite. These were big, glamorous, over half a million-pound properties, four- or five-bedroomed and period rather than modern—in fact, not unlike the house Jay currently owned here in Bristol.

OK, no need to jump to conclusions. Just because he'd asked Andy for these details didn't mean they were actually
for
him. Anyway, why would Jay want to move to Manchester?

Giving herself a mental cheek-slap, Nadia shoveled the details back into the envelope. She was being ridiculous; Jay had just bought Highcliffe House, for heaven's sake. That meant months of work. And he was employing her to redesign the garden. He couldn't possibly be leaving Bristol.

Oh God, could he?

It was only a short journey to Canynge Road. As she passed Bristol Zoo with its crowds of summer visitors queuing outside, Nadia couldn't shake off that on-your-way-to-the-dentist sensation. Turning left onto Jay's street, she realized her toes were scrunched up inside her trainers.

And with good reason. Maybe, telepathically, her toes had known all along.

After a hopelessly girlie bit of parking, Nadia switched off the ignition and wiped her clammy palms on her black jeans. Despite the heat of the day, goose bumps had pinged out all over her arms. She gazed at the For Sale sign outside Jay's house. So it was true, it was really going to happen.

Feeling sick as she climbed out of the car, Nadia clutched the envelope to her chest. It wasn't until she was ringing the doorbell that she realized she'd forgotten to check her face in the mirror. Earlier she had planned to joosh up her hair, take the shine off her nose, and stick on a bit of lip gloss. Instead, she probably looked awful. Oh well, too late now.

Bloody Jay, she could hit him.

Where was he anyway? Why wasn't he answering the door?

When he did, Nadia discovered why it had taken him so long.

“Sorry, sorry… the sticky things kept sticking to the wrong bits… and then I realized I'd put it on back to front… come in, God, this is harder work than I thought.” Looking harassed but pleased to see her, Jay ushered her into the hall. Clearly he hadn't had time to brush his hair or dash on a bit of lip gloss either. The baby, naked apart from a disposable nappy dangling from one foot, was whimpering and flailing its legs against Jay's chest. There was an ominous damp patch on the front of his denim shirt. Evidently disgusted at finding himself in the hands of such a rank amateur, Daniel gave a kick that sent the clean nappy sailing through the air.

“Mary Poppins, I presume.” Despite everything, Nadia was unable to keep a straight face. In all the time she'd known him, Jay had always been in control of every situation. Nothing fazed him.

Except, it now became apparent, the intricacies of getting a small baby into a disposable nappy.

“Just leave it,” Jay sighed as she bent to retrieve the mini-Pampers. “Bloody thing's stuck together all wrong anyway. And mind your feet,” he added as they made their way through to the living room. “The full one burst as I was taking it off. All these weird gel-beads exploded all over the carpet.”

“Let me take him.” Nadia held out her arms for the baby and Jay handed him over with undisguised relief.

“Watch out, he's like the Trevi fountain. Nearly got me in the eye when he was on the changing mat. I had no idea babies peed every couple of minutes.”

“I'd count yourself lucky. Babies don't only pee.” Years of baby-sitting during college had given Nadia the advantage; lowering Daniel onto the plastic mat—white and decorated with blue elephants—she deftly fastened the wriggling baby into a fresh nappy. Rummaging in the carry-all on the floor next to the mat, she found a clean onesie and expertly fitted him into it. Each of the snaps between his legs made a satisfying clicking sound as she fastened them. The baby looked almost disappointed, as though she'd come along and spoiled all his fun. Gazing around in search of inspiration, he opened his mouth to start bawling. Locating the bottle of water on the coffee table, Nadia scooped him up and popped it into his mouth before he could get into full swing.

“Has this been boiled?”

“Of course it's been boiled, I'm not completely hopeless.” The moment the words were out, Jay ruefully shook his head. “OK, maybe I am. Belinda's over at the house, packing up. She's leaving Bristol. I offered to look after Dan for a few hours.” He looked helpless. “I thought he might sleep.”

“Babies only do that when you don't want them to. It's their way of keeping you on your toes. Where's Belinda going to live?”

“Dorset. She's renting a place for now, just down the road from her parents.”

Bugger. Why couldn't he have said Manchester?