Starting Over (5 page)

Astounding after Simeon’s pass, so brutal and ruthless, that her nightmare should feature e-mail. E-mail! The age’s most popular method of communication. E-mail and Olly.

Wadding her hair into a scrunchie, she padded down the twisted staircase, thinking about Olly, his passion for computers, his sensual lips caressing words like
virus
and
network
.

Olly never turned off his mobile. Even lovemaking could be interrupted by a client’s call. And why should Tess feel insulted? It was Olly’s
work
.

And Tess’s work? Well ... it was a job. Its demands weren’t so precise, if the deadline was a month away, she had today, tomorrow, whenever, to work.

He never saw her argument that a month’s work, after all, took a month.

When she met Olly she’d just moved from a shared house into her own flat in a leafy street in Finchley, off the main road and under the railway bridge. Olly specialised in systems for private clinics and hospitals; they seemed in a position to afford him. None of her previous relationships had prepared her for what she’d feel for Olly. She’d been infatuated. Obsessed, even.

Olly was gorgeous. Olly was popular, glad-handing his way across a favourite pub. Olly was exhilarating.

Tall with a squared, cleft chin, curtains of Nordic-blond silky hair, ice-blue eyes to sweep down to fix on Tess. Before she was ill, of course. Olly was lustful.

A lustful, exhilarating, gorgeous ... control freak. With a temper.

Initially, Olly’s intensity had been flattering. ‘I just want to be with
you
!’ It must have been obsession that prevented her from resisting as her friends gradually faded away. How could she have tolerated it? Or his attitude that, neither creativity nor kids being his thing, illustrating children’s books was a risible occupation.

He and his friends had
careers
in IT. Real work.

Despite the permanent question mark she felt she wore in her relationship with Olly, she was flat on her face in love with him. And in lust. Something else he used to manipulate her.

Olly couldn’t bear not to get his way. She shuddered as she made herself tea. Once or twice ... well, he’d slapped her face. Not a heavy blow, no bruise to show, just a short cut to Olly winning his argument. And then he’d be horrified and remorseful.

She sipped the tea, drawing her chilled, bare feet under her cotton robe as she looked out into the moonlit
garden
of
Honeybun
Cottage
.

Even now that she could see Olly Gray for the self-orientated phoney he was, she understood that there had been plenty good in the relationship. They’d had a blast with Olly’s friends and their girlfriends, clubs and dinner parties – usually at Tess’s flat. Olly wasn’t keen on having his space invaded, the apartment with one bedroom and a grey office. Then a diamond ring, the proper announcements, the unusual and expensive presents from Olly’s clients. The house hunt; Olly settling, eventually, for the town house in
Brentwood
through James’s contacts. (Olly liked James; he’d never tried to get between James and Tess.) Tess’s flat was sold to provide the deposit, and Olly’s rented flat kept on.

‘It’ll be easier for you to move first,’ he said, ‘with me working from home.’

‘But
I
work from home!’

Olly laughed and kissed the sentence from her lips. ‘I know you
do
but it’s not the same. I’ll need time to organise the relocation.’

So she moved into the new house alone for the months leading to the wedding that would be in a smart hotel frothing with spring flowers. And it was a lovely bay-windowed house of lofty, airy rooms.

Olly hadn’t been able to contribute to the mortgage payments, with rent still to manage along with his everlasting finance company commitments. ‘Keeping up with technology is expensive! All right for you technophobes.’ He talked as if funds just fell into her hands and her work wasn’t a valid earner. She knew she was good in her field but it was difficult to access the appreciative part of Olly.

‘Technophobe or not, I can manage the mortgage alone!’ she hadn’t been able to resist.

He’d glared, and then decided to smile, running his knuckles down her back. ‘Yeah, who’d have thought you’d be so good with dosh?’

With two days to the wedding, Tess was in the midst of chaos as she tried to find places for presents. Was Olly ever going to get on with his move? Unlikely though it seemed, was he in the grip of pre-wedding nerves? These days he was preoccupied, absent-minded or just plain absent. Where was he?

She unwrapped their third non-stick wok, telling herself not to worry. He’d turn up any minute, with a plan of the way his hardware was to be organised in his new office, downstairs to give him space. Tess’s workroom, upstairs, had been fully functioning for ages.

Unfairly, Olly was now grumbling that Tess was lucky to have moved first and have the entire hassle behind her. Hadn’t that been his plan? Anyway, unpacking things she didn’t want wasn’t her idea of relaxation. She added the wok to the others hanging from the rack, wondering how many stir-fries people expected them to have.

Sod it, she’d finish later.

In a moment she was at the table in the deep blue of her workroom, picking up a pencil. The next book commission wasn’t to begin until after the honeymoon that Olly was organising. Somewhere hot and exotic, he’d promised, somewhere beautiful to walk entwined as lovers do.
Bahamas
? Scilly Isles? With a happy little hop of the heart, she sketched a cat in a wedding dress woven with ribbons, the dress she’d designed herself. Perhaps
Africa
?

She checked her e-mail. One new message:
Tess, no easy way to say this so will be direct. Given it loads of thought and the idea of moving in with you & your messy workroom has got to me. I’ve gone cold on the wedding …
But probably not as cold as her heart as she read his words.

And, then, a whoosh of reality, as if she’d gone down too fast in a lift. Olly was
jilting
her, to use a melodramatic, old-fashioned word. How could he?
Why? What was wrong with her?
Was
she messy? What had changed for the tall, sexy god who until the last weeks had held her and murmured about love? OK, things had been a bit cooler recently, she’d noticed that – but surely they were just wound up in anticipation of the big day? Was it she who’d wanted the greater commitment?

If so, why had
he
proposed?

And then her parents arrived, ready to attend her wedding on the following Saturday, and she had to confess with floods of tears her failure to keep Olly, to howl out the ruins of her wedding day.

‘The
bastard
!’ Her mother clasped Tess too tightly to the cushions of her chest.

Her father, James, said very little to Tess, but he spent hours on the telephone dealing in a hushed way with guests and caterers, photographer and cars.

Tess lay on her bed, very still.

But later she overheard her father remark to her mother, ‘Olly must have had his reasons.’ He must. He must! And they must be down to Tess.

And then she’d miscarried her baby.

It had been safe inside her body and she’d let it seep out.

Steaming cup in hand, she trod back up Honeybun’s winding stairs, opening her wardrobe door for the full-length mirror, shrugging out of her robe and nightshirt. She examined her nakedness objectively.

Still a bit generous and soft.

When she’d been thinner and tauter, Olly had gone from lust to indifference in a month.

Last night, in distorted appreciation of her body, Simeon had snogged her half-senseless in a big muddy field.

Men. She shook her head as she dragged out a fresh sweater and jeans. Who could understand them?

She worked for the remainder of the night and into the day on a new wolf illustration, breaking only for coffee and a toasted sandwich.

She watched from the window as Angel came knocking and she explored shades of blue for Slider from
The Dragons of Diggleditch
.

Jos wandered up the drive and shouted for her. But hadn’t Jos, however worried-looking, stood by as Simeon Carlysle invaded?

In anticipation of the delicious, plum
Dragons
commission she played with the opacity and fairy-tale colours of gouache and ink. A very thin gouache mix for fragility and delicacy. Ink for emphasis and line. She washed out her pens, turning on the lamp as daylight levelled out to create shadows.

Even when Ratty escorted a sullenly hunched Simeon to rap the door, she paused only to watch them arrive and watch them leave.

She was working. Working like she used to before her life took on the tacky quality of a ‘reader’s own story’ magazine confession – maybe she could sell her story some time, and make three hundred quid?

But, just now, she was working.

‘Bloody Sunday. Fine day of rest.’ Face burning from the oven, Tess turned the joint, basted the potatoes and slammed the oven door. Her parents, judging from the piddling about she could hear going on in the drive with coats, bags and car keys, had just arrived for their first visit to Honeybun Cottage since she’d moved in. Like having a tooth out, it had to be done, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

She suddenly realised she hadn’t given the red wine time to breathe and snatched it up, flinging open the back door at the same time.

Her father patted her shoulder. ‘Well, Tess!’

‘Hul-l
o
!’ Her mother, smelling of face powder and her brown hair blow-dried back from her face, kissed her cheek, glancing around. ‘The table looks nice! Are those Grannie’s glasses? Aren’t the chrysanths going on a long time, this year?’

Her father tried to take the wine bottle from her hands. ‘Shall I do that?’ His hair, too, silvering now, was also combed straight back. The pair of them looked as if they’d been in a wind tunnel.

Tess pushed down the twin levers of the corkscrew. ‘There, done it! Let me take your coats so you can sit down. Dinner will be about half an hour. Go through to the sitting room.’

The sitting room looked lovely. She’d polished, and vacuumed –

even the lampshade, even the cobwebs from between the beams. The fire burned behind the guard and more chrysanthemums glowed from the low table. She managed to settle her parents into the turquoise moquette chairs with sherry and coffee and more or less keep them there whilst she whizzed around in the kitchen. She hated it when Mari hovered, saying, ‘Should you be turning the meat?’ two seconds before she was going to turn it anyway.

So she made the gravy, poking her head around the door to keep up her end of the conversation then rushing back to catch the gravy before it clamped into jellified lumps, until she could call, ‘Come through! Dad, can you pour the wine?’

And the meat was tender and the potatoes crisp and everything was under control, except when Tess knocked over her wine. ‘
Shit
!’

James blotted his shirt with kitchen roll. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

Biting her lip, she picked up her glass. ‘Sorry, Dad, it has to be red wine, too!’

‘Don’t worry.’ He patted her shoulder and went on with his meal as if he always wore a maroon patch over his heart on his honey-coloured golf shirt. And she knew that her parents really did want the best for her, even if they irritated her like toast crumbs in bed.

Mari cut into her pork and said, ‘Red meat?’

Tess gulped her wine. ‘If it is, it needs to go back in the oven.’ Then she laughed, to show she was joking. And suddenly remembered that James was supposed to be eating mainly white meat and fish because of his cholesterol.

Over dessert, crumble made from apples from Lucasta’s garden, it was Mari who asked, in a suitably solemn, measured voice. ‘And have you heard from Olly?’

‘No. Would you like more custard?’

James took up the baton. ‘Ever consider getting in touch?’

‘No. I’ll make more coffee in a minute. Or tea.’

Mari laid down her spoon, having cleared her plate in a way that was ladylike but deadly efficient. ‘We were thinking – you mustn’t blame Oliver for everything.’

Tess felt her throat dry. ‘I didn’t ask him to jilt me and run away.’

James reached across the table and covered her hand. ‘We do appreciate how you feel over that, but don’t blame him for …
everything
. Everything else. He didn’t make you lose the baby. Nor make you ill.’

Mari looked anxious. ‘What we mean, Tess, is we’d be happier if you’d talk with him and get rid of some of your bitterness. Then you might not feel this need to seclude yourself over here. You might move nearer home again, to us, then we needn’t worry so much.’