Paradise Fields (14 page)

She got up when she calculated it must be dawn. She put on a side light and found her clothes. Some of them were still wet, but she found the sweater she had removed at the restaurant in her bag. That was dry, thank God. Then she put on the coat.

She had hoped to leave silently; she hadn't noticed him setting a burglar alarm the night before. But at least she was safely in the lift before its strident shrieking alerted the whole building to her departure.

It was still dark outside, and, looking at her watch under a streetlamp, Nel saw it was only five a.m. Too early to have woken Jake. It was a shame about the alarm, but it couldn't be helped, people in London were so security conscious. And she'd had to leave. She couldn't face him again, not until she'd had time to recover. Which might take a long time.

As she walked towards the nearest traffic lights, where the chances of a taxi were a bit higher, she wondered if she looked different. Would people be able to tell she'd had sex? Orgasms? Would her children, Vivian, Simon? God, she hoped not! She'd never live it down. Her reputation would be shot to pieces. Instead of the good, virtuous person everyone thought she was, she'd be recognised as the whore she obviously was deep down. She sighed. Well, not whore exactly, that was a bit unkind, even when she was metaphorically
beating her breast, but definitely wanton. Or wanting, even.

Right now she felt as terrible as it was possible to feel without having done something really dreadful, like mugging an old lady or committing a murder. But she had wanted to make love to him. Very, very much.

She found a newsagent just opening up, and bought a street map. Then, on her high-heeled boots, which Jake had removed so summarily the night before, she walked to Paddington Station. She still had to wait hours for a train.

IT DIDN'T DAWN
on Nel that she'd had not only sex, but unprotected sex, until the train reached Didcot. Then she started to feel sick and shake with anxiety. Mark's coat around her was a reproach. How could she have been so thoughtless? Fleur would never have let that happen. She was not only a sex-starved slut, she was stupid as well.

She closed her eyes and burrowed into the navy wool, but she couldn't rest. Just supposing she got pregnant?

It was highly unlikely. She was over forty: fertility went right down then, everyone knew that. All she had to do was to wait for her next period, then relax.

Nel knew that her chances of relaxing, ever, let alone after however long it was until her next period was due, were nil. When was her period due, for goodness' sake? She didn't keep a record; she didn't need to. If she was going away, she might calculate vaguely for packing purposes, but that was all.

She racked her brains, but couldn't distinguish one period from another, probably because she was so worried.

What would her children say? How would they cope with having an elderly single parent for a mother? Of course, they were used to her being a single parent, but not the mother of a baby.

People would think it was Fleur's, and that she was bringing it up for her. How unfair! To be castigated by society for her mother's folly! It was possible that society didn't go in for castigating these days, but it would still be horribly embarrassing for Fleur, for the boys, for them all.

Well, it mustn't happen. She would take the morning-after pill, then she wouldn't have to worry long, only until the train arrived and the chemist opened.

She remembered the first time her children had nits. She had discovered them in Fleur's hair one Saturday morning, and had the whole family on the doorstep of Boots at nine o'clock. She was beside herself with horror and shame and the conviction that she was an unfit mother because she hadn't spotted them before. The woman who sold her the toxic chemical fashionable at the time had been completely calm. She had even given her a little lecture (all lies probably) about nits only liking clean hair, and posh people getting them just as often as anyone else.

It was this memory which made Nel realise she couldn't possibly buy her own emergency contraception. She knew the people in Boots, if not personally, at least by sight, and one of Fleur's friends worked there. However discreet everyone was, Nel didn't want even two people knowing she'd had unprotected sex.

She winced again. It was Sunday! How could she have forgotten that? Now she'd have to find out which the emergency chemist was. She could go to another town, of course, somewhere where no one knew her, that would reduce the embarrassment factor. But supposing it made you terribly ill? What would she say to Fleur, if she came back from school and found
her mother groaning on the sofa, or worse, actually in bed?

No, she'd have to confide in someone, which meant Vivian.

Now, Vivian would have been the perfect person to turn to if Nel had just picked up a stranger at the club, lost her marbles completely, and slept with him. But the moment Vivian knew it was Jake whom Nel had lost her marbles with (God, that sounded so vulgar!), she would go on and on about seeing him again, and having an affaire, and getting rid of Simon.

Well, too bad. Nel would have to stand her ground and convince her that there was no future in the relationship, not even a wonderful, fleeting affaire. Nel sighed so deeply it was almost a sob. She didn't want commitment, or for ever, she just wanted her life to go on undisturbed. And she wanted sex. This thought was oddly settling. Nel pulled up her collar and dozed.

Nel rang Vivian as soon as she got off the train. ‘Sorry to ring you at this ungodly hour, but I knew you were getting up early this morning. You couldn't be a love and pick me up from the station?'

‘Where's your car?'

‘I walked down.'

‘And you're too hungover to walk back? Nel, I'm surprised at you.'

‘It's not that, but I do need to talk to you.'

‘Well, you can, but I've just let your dogs out, and I'm off to my bees just now. You'd have to come with me.'

‘How are they?'

‘The bees? Dunno. They've been asleep all winter.'

‘Not the bees, the dogs!'

‘Fine. The health of my bees is far less reliable.'

‘Yes, sorry.' Nel loved the romance of the bees, loved honey, loved beeswax, and thought them utterly fascinating – as long as she could be fascinated from a safe distance. And Vivian didn't really understand people with phobias about flying insects, which, though apparently they didn't want to sting you, frequently did.

‘I'll put some spare kit in the car.'

‘I could walk, I suppose. You could call in on your way back.'

‘No, these lot are miles away, and it sounds as if you've got good goss. I'll be down in about five minutes.'

‘So,' asked Vivian, when Nel had got herself and her coat into the car. ‘Did you stay with Simon's friends?'

‘No.'

‘So did you come straight back after the club closed?'

‘No! I'm not an android! I do need sleep.'

‘Some of them stay open all night.'

‘I know that now! I had no idea! We didn't go until after midnight, and we were early.'

‘We? Did one of the boys go with you?'

‘Viv, if I tell you the whole story, do you promise not to scream?'

‘Course. I'm a woman of the world, but it sounds good.'

‘Well . . .' And Nel began.

Vivian screamed. ‘You slept with Jake Demerand? Solicitor to the Hunstantons, the man who kissed you under the mistletoe?'

‘Did I tell you that?'

‘Oh for God's sake! I'm not stupid!'

Nel was forced to accept this as true. ‘Anyway, I didn't sleep with him, we had sex.'

‘I can't believe it! I didn't even know you knew him that well!'

‘I don't. It was all by accident, by chance.'

‘Darling, you don't have sex with men as gorgeous as Jake Demerand by accident. It takes months of planning, expert strategy, and you, who are practically a virgin—'

‘I'm the mother of three grown-up children and I was married for years,' Nel reminded her irritably.

‘. . . practically a virgin, certainly no femme fatale—'

‘Thank you!'

‘I don't mean that you're not very attractive, just that you're not exactly in the habit of pulling on a Saturday night, and you seem to have achieved this with no effort at all.'

Nel groaned.

Vivian drew up in the gateway to an orchard. ‘Right, come and tell me all about it while I work. No holding out on me.' She turned round and rummaged in the back seat. ‘Get that tent off and prepare to take the veil.'

‘I'm not that much of a loose woman . . .'

‘Here, take this,' said Vivian, handing Nel a white tunic, hat and veil attached.

Nel paused uncertainly. ‘Viv, why did you get a new anti-bee outfit?'

‘Because my old one had holes in and didn't work.'

Nel had thought as much. ‘Can't I just wait in the car?'

‘Certainly not! I want to hear every last detail, and it's high time you stopped being so neurotic about a few bees.'

As Nel needed quite a large favour from Viv, who might not want to ask for emergency contraception in her home town either, she did as she was told. She took off Mark's coat and exchanged it for the holey anti-bee armour.

‘Here, carry this lot, will you?'

Nel received a wooden box full of bee paraphernalia with good grace, and followed as Vivian strode ahead, glamorous as ever in her wellingtons. The hives were on a slight incline and when they were a little way away from them, Vivian dumped her own load on the ground.

‘It's the first time I've looked at the bees since I tucked them up last winter. They may well have all died.'

A small, cowardly, part of Nel hoped they had died, then they wouldn't buzz so much. ‘They don't usually all die in the winter, do they?'

‘No, but there's always a first time. They quite often do die for no particular reason. Can you manage that kit?'

‘Really, Viv, I think it would be better if I just stayed here.'

‘You don't have to go right up to the hives, but come nearer, then you can take notes for me.'

As this seemed to indicate that Vivian had forgotten Nel had a story to relate, Nel didn't argue, she just resolved to keep upwind and as far away from the bees as possible.

Vivian stuffed a bit of hessian into her smoker and set light to it. ‘So, how did you meet Jake? Come on! Did you arrange it? Number five hive.' Vivian puffed at the squat wooden structure.

‘No! I met him quite by chance. I was
window-shopping when a taxi full of men, including Jake, drew up behind me. He must have spotted me.'

Vivian took out a hooked tool, burrowed into a seam on the top of a hive with it, and gently pulled.

‘Oh my God, bees,' said Nel, as several of them flew out and landed on her.

‘Don't panic. They don't want to hurt you. I've got a goose's feather if you want to brush them off.'

‘I don't know how you can keep so calm!'

‘Practice. This hive all seem fine. Bit of mouse damage at the bottom, but otherwise all present and correct.'

‘And very noisy!'

‘So then what happened? Pass me that bit of food, will you? I'd better give them something to eat.'

‘Is this it?' She handed Vivian a square of brown something which Nel might have been tempted to eat herself, had she been in that sort of mood, it looked so like fudge.

‘So? You're holding out on me, Nel!'

‘Not on purpose. It's these bees. They're very distracting.'

‘So what happened?'

‘With Jake? Well, the others were his workmates; it was some sort of staff do. They made me go with them. We went to an Italian restaurant. It was fun.'

‘What were you wearing?'

‘What I'm wearing now, only without the veil.'

‘Sorry, wasn't thinking for a moment. Number seven. No obvious activity. Let's have a look at a super.' She prised out a narrow rectangle full of wax. ‘Oh. What a shame. You're safe to come and look, they're all dead.'

Nel didn't want to look, but also didn't want to tell Vivian her most intimate secrets at full volume.

‘Now, I wonder why that happened?'

‘And after that, Jake and I went to this club.'

‘There's no clue at all. Perhaps it's a virus. I hope they don't all get it.'

Nel was torn between relief at being free from the third degree she had been enduring, and irritation that Vivian seemed to have lost interest in her story.

‘Go on,' said Vivian, examining another rectangle full of wax and dotted with holes. ‘They've had plenty to eat. They've just died!'

‘Go on with what? What number did you say this hive was?'

‘Seven. And you know perfectly well. What happened when you went to the club?' Viv clearly hadn't lost interest.

‘Oh my God! It was amazing. Unisex toilets, a vibrating floor—'

‘Enough with the floor, already. What happened between you and Jake? Did you kiss while you were dancing?'

‘Certainly not!' Did she have the right to sound indignant, Nel wondered?

‘And did you see Fleur, by the way?'

‘Yes, but of course I couldn't see if she was up to anything.'

‘I could have told you that you wouldn't be able to.'

‘So why didn't you?'

‘Because you wouldn't have listened. You are rather prone to panic, Nel. Sometimes.'

That
was
unfair. ‘I think I'm coping with these bees quite well!'

‘These bees are only half-awake! Now, could you please move the story along from you being in the club,
failing to spot Fleur snorting cocaine, to you sleeping with Jake – sorry, having sex with him. It's just a figure of speech. We're on number ten hive now, by the way.'