The Difference a Day Makes (42 page)

‘I think it’s being holed up in this place,’ I say, lowering my voice so the kids can’t hear. ‘And who can blame him?’

Guy looks around him. He says nothing, but I can tell that he agrees with the sentiments.

‘I’ve arranged for Serena to come and watch the children tonight so we can go out,’ I continue. ‘I hope that you’re feeling up to it after the long drive?’

‘Great,’ Guy says. He looks down at his jacket. ‘I have brought some city clothes with me so I won’t embarrass you.’

‘I’d never feel embarrassed with you.’ Then I flush at my forwardness as our eyes meet. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and show you your room.’

‘You’re having my bed,’ Jessica says proudly, making it clear that she was ear-wigging on our conversation.

I’m putting my daughter in with me, so that Guy can have her room. I only hope that my child doesn’t wriggle as much as she usually does or I won’t get a wink of sleep for the next couple of nights. ‘You’ll have to share the bed with a selection of soft toys, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s fine,’ he laughs, and I can’t believe how much I’ve missed that sound.

‘It’s not much,’ I say, as I show him Jessica’s little box room. His face takes on a worried frown.

‘Are you happy here?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I admit. ‘I’m completely miserable.’ Then I say nothing else as those stupid tears threaten to spring into action once again. ‘But it will do for now. I don’t plan on staying here for ever.’ Before I turn on the waterworks, I choke out, ‘I’ll leave you to settle in,’ and beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

Swiping Milly Molly Mandy from the work surface, I flick the kettle on, making tea while Guy is busy in the bathroom. He reappears just as I’m putting in the milk. ‘I need to walk Hamish before we go out, if that’s okay,’ I say.

‘I could do with stretching my legs.’

We look at each other over the tops of our steaming mugs. ‘It really is good to see you,’ I tell him quietly. ‘I didn’t expect you to come down so soon.’

‘It took Cheryl by surprise too.’

We laugh at that. ‘You realise that we’ll be the talk of Poppy’s Tea Room next week,’ I warn him. ‘And what they don’t know, they’ll make up.’

‘That’s true enough.’ Guy sips at his hot tea. ‘Alan sends his love.’

‘How is he?’

‘Fine.’Then he stares directly at me and asks,‘Missing Helmshill?’

I nod and a terrible sadness creeps over me. ‘More than I’d like to admit.’

 

 

 

G
uy had forgotten that restaurants could be so busy. Even though Amy had booked a table, it wasn’t ready for them by the time they arrived and now they sat squashed together on vertiginous stools at a crowded bar while they waited for it to become vacant. His stomach growled with hunger and Guy recalled that it had been a long time since he grabbed a sandwich at one of the motorway service stations.

This was tedious. Every minute, his elbow was jogged or someone trod on his foot. This was also exactly the sort of place that he hated.The sound bounced round the room off the stripped wooden floors, making the noise level so high he was barely able to hear what Amy was saying.

All the women looked sleek and high-maintenance - like Laura. He could just see his ex loving this place. All the men were wearing designer shirts, not tucked in, with skinny jeans. He felt dowdy and old fashioned in his button-down shirt and boot cuts, and previously he’d never even considered himself to be concerned by such things. As he looked round at them he wondered how many of them would be capable of castrating a bad-tempered bull though.

‘This place is very trendy,’ Amy shouted unnecessarily. The only good thing about it being so packed was that it meant she had to put her mouth right close to his ear to be heard.

‘I can see that,’ he shouted back. Guy decided that he didn’t do trendy any more. These days he was built for comfort, peace and quiet. A pint and a chilli con carne at the Helmshill Arms was about his level. This was far too stressful to be considered relaxing. He’d wondered if Amy would have slipped easily back into her London ways, but she seemed ill at ease too. Perhaps having taken the girl out of the city, the city had been taken out of the girl. Guy could only hope so.

‘Someone at work recommended it,’ she yelled. ‘Maybe we should have gone somewhere quieter.’

He was just about to suggest that they cut their losses and leave when a waitress came and told them that their table was ready. Guy helped Amy down from her stool and took her arm as they followed the waitress through the crush.

Before they’d left for the restaurant, they’d found ten minutes to take Hamish for a quick walk round a scruffy little park opposite the flat, sneaking the dog out under a dark blanket. It wasn’t too bad for Hamish at the moment as his exercise needed to be limited, but he’d need more space to run free than this as soon as his leg was fully healed. This was no place for a big dog. No wonder Hamish was miserable.

‘Perhaps we can go up to Hampstead Heath tomorrow,’ Guy suggested as they sat down. Already he was sick of the smell of exhaust fumes and was desperate for some fresh air. He felt claustrophobic, hemmed in. How on earth did people live like this permanently? How had he done it once?

‘That would be nice. I could do with a long walk.’ Amy sighed as she said, ‘This week has been a nightmare.’

‘Sounds like the job isn’t working out, from what you said on the phone.’

Amy shook her head. ‘I’ve got a young boss, who seems keen to change the world. Or rule it,’ she told him. ‘He seems to want me in the office morning, noon and night. The rest of the team are under thirty and have no commitments. I don’t think he understands that I have another life outside of work.’ She sighed wistfully.‘After spending so much time with the children at Helmshill I’m finding it hard to leave them with a nanny, even though she’s Mary Poppins reincarnated.’ She swigged at her drink.

That was another thing. The prices here were eye-watering. Something else you forgot when you lived in the country.

‘It would be a lot easier if I had the money from the sale of the house,’ Amy continued.

Guy felt himself go hot under the collar.

‘For some reason the Gerner-Bernards are delaying signing the contracts and I can’t get any sense out of the estate agent.’ She shrugged her frustration. ‘I don’t know what can be wrong. They seemed so keen on it. Now it appears that they’ve gone off the boil.’

‘Perhaps it will sort itself out soon,’ Guy said evasively. Amy would kill him if she knew what he’d been up to, and he felt guilty at the thought of his actions.

She looked across at him and smiled.‘You’re not loving London, are you?’

‘Does it show?’

She giggled at that.

‘I’d forgotten how busy it was,’ Guy explained, joking, ‘Did there used to be so many people here?’

‘Don’t ever see yourself becoming a townie again?’

He shook his head.

‘I hope we can stay in touch, Guy.’ Amy’s hand rested on his arm and her fingers burned through his shirt to his skin. ‘It would be nice if you could come down to see us every now and again.’

‘I’d like that.’ Before this, he would have thought that he’d have moved heaven and earth to come down to London to see them as often as he possibly could, if there was any chance, no matter how tiny, of him and Amy getting together.

But the truth of the matter was that he didn’t really believe it now. Would he want to spend his weekends down here in Amy’s horrible, depressing flat? If they both had demanding jobs, exactly how many weekends would they be able to wangle together? He’d thought that he could give up his life in Helmshill and move here permanently, if that was what Amy wanted him to do, but now he wasn’t so sure. It would kill him to live here - that was an odds-on certainty. Did he love her and the children enough to give up all that he cherished? He had thought that he did. He had been so absolutely sure. But now that he was here, the reality of the situation had hit him full force and the question was a lot more difficult to answer.

 

 

 

T
his is my second week of work back at the British Television Company and my third cocktail party, the third night in a row. It’s Thursday and I’m absolutely knackered. I cannot wait until Friday comes around so that I can slob out in front of the telly with the kids instead of being forced to make small talk in loud bars to people who have had too much to drink. I seem to have lost the art of trivial conversation. Didn’t I used to enjoy doing this? I’m sure I did, but for the life of me, I can’t now see why.

We’re at another ‘in’ place to go. The hot ticket. To me it just looks like another packed bar even though we have it for our company’s exclusive use. Didn’t I once find the buzz of the city energising? Now I feel that it’s sapping all of my strength. God, I’ve found this week so hard. None of my colleagues seem to find this so tiring or so mind-numbingly tedious. They all look as fresh as daisies and as if they’re having the best fun of their lives.

I’ve reached the age when a quiet drink in a country pub with a roaring log fire is more my sort of thing than standing crushed in a place where painting everything stark white and providing chairs that are impossible to sit on is considered the height of chic.

Kati, our new au pair, is doing a sterling job and she’s fabulous with the kids, but I’m paying out an absolute fortune every week for childcare. It’s eating an enormous hole in my salary, and the cost of living back here is truly scary. I haven’t had time to sit down and do the sums properly - once again, that was Will’s forte - but I feel as if I’m barely breaking even. It might not even be that good.

Serena has promised to look after the kids for me a couple of nights each week to ease the burden, but that means she’ll have to make sure that she’s out of work early, which is nigh-on impossible for her even if the spirit is willing. I’ve haven’t even had the time to contact my old friends yet, never mind reacquaint myself with the babysitting circle. How would I manage to reciprocate when it was my turn, now that I’m on my own? I can’t rely on neighbours here as I might have done in Helmshill. How the hell do you make instant friends in a cold, impersonal city like London? A place where you might not speak to your immediate next-door neighbour for thirty years.

The man next to me guffaws at something that has been said and I try to switch back into the conversation and not dwell on how much my feet hurt or my legs ache or my head throbs. My companion is a high-flying executive for an Italian television company. I’m supposed to be talking to him about a raft of programmes with titles too ridiculous to say out loud - all new ideas from the crazed mind of Lawrence Holmes - and I wonder for the millionth time whether I’m really cut out for this any more. My ideas and Lawrence’s are, creatively, poles apart. Would I be happy working on the sort of programmes that would make up our department’s output? Programmes such as
Celebrity Art Exhibition
,
Celebrity So You Wannabe a Writer?
and
Celebrity Interior Design Challenge.
Every single one of them populated by people who’ve been tossed off
Big Brother
.

I had a lovely weekend with Guy - you won’t believe how much it lifted my spirits. We took the children and Hamish up to Hampstead Heath and let them run around for a few hours, all of us enjoying the wind in our hair. It felt so good to be out of that cramped flat and in the fresh air.

But now that Guy’s gone back to Helmshill, I feel quite down again. It could be weeks before we’re able to see him again. I need to visit Will’s grave too. I thought being back in London would somehow make me feel closer to my husband, but I simply feel more alone. At this rate, when will I manage to get up there? I’m so exhausted by the time that Friday comes around that I hardly have the energy to move all weekend, let alone flog up to Yorkshire and back.

I could tell that Guy didn’t enjoy being in Town again - and who can blame him? He said it was years since he’d been in the city, and that he was surprised how much it had changed. Frankly, I feel like a fish out of water after having been away for less than a year, so I can fully understand how Guy must have felt.

The man next to me howls with laughter again and I force a wide grin even though I’ve no idea what’s been said. Then I feel his hand on my backside and he turns his leery face towards me. In case I’m tempted to think that he’s done this in error, he then grabs a handful of buttock and squeezes.

‘Get. Your. Hand. Off. My. Arse,’ I say through gritted teeth in a voice that’s audible just to him. This may be acceptable behaviour in his country - though I doubt it - but it certainly won’t wash with me. The man’s English is limited but what he can’t understand in actual words he can tell from the tone of my voice and the fire in my eyes. His hand drops away, he shrugs insolently and turns his back on me to talk to another one of my colleagues.

I don’t care if it’s still early. I’ve had more than enough, and I’m fuming. There’s no way that I need to put up with that kind of behaviour. I slug back my drink - at least the champagne is good - and head for the cloakroom to retrieve my coat.

As the cloakroom attendant hands over my things, my boss appears out of the men’s room. Lawrence Holmes looks taken aback as I struggle to shrug on my coat and he marches over to me.

‘You can’t go now,’ he says.

How do I tell him politely that I can’t get out of here quick enough?

‘I’ve had it for tonight,’ I say. ‘My feet hurt. My head hurts.’ My heart hurts.‘And I’ve just been goosed by one of the Italians.’ I hold up my hands. ‘That’s me done.’

His face hardens. ‘Amy,’ he says, ‘I have to tell you that I’m beginning to doubt your commitment to this job.’

‘You know what, Lawrence?’ I reply, hands on hips. ‘Me too.’