The Queen of New Beginnings (9 page)

He nodded.

“Is
any
of it true?” she asked, inclining her head towards the newspaper.

“They’ve got my name right and the fact that I haven’t managed to write anything since Barry ended our partnership.”

“And the bit about you being responsible for them losing their baby?”

He raked his hands through his hair. “Stacey and Bazza say I’m responsible, so I must be.”

“But if you’re not, you’re just going to take what’s been written about you?”

“What would you do?”

She sighed. “I hate to admit it, but I’d run away and hide, just like you.”

“You would? You don’t strike me as the run-and-hide sort. Far from it.”

“My track record says otherwise. The circumstances weren’t entirely the same, but years ago, I ran and hid from—” she hesitated, searching for the right words. “Let’s just call it a difficult situation.”

“Was it something to do with living here?”

She took a bite of crumpet and chewed on it slowly and thoughtfully. “What makes you think that?” she said at length.

“Whilst you were putting two and two together about me today, I found out something about you. Your surname used to be Barrett, didn’t it?”

“How did you come across that?”

“I met a crazy old woman called George this afternoon.”

“Good God! She’s not still alive is she? She was a hundred and ten when I was a child.”

“She was very much alive. I stopped her car to ask for directions to the shops and she pulled a gun on me.”

Alice laughed. “A small handgun?”

“It didn’t look that small to me.”

“It’s a fake. She always used to ride around with it. She wasn’t by any chance still driving her beloved Morris Minor?”

“She was certainly driving a clapped out Morris Minor. Whether it was beloved I couldn’t say.”

“How extraordinary,” Alice pondered. “Georgina Harrington-Smythe still alive and kicking. Who’d have thought it?”

“Is that her real name?”

“Yes. But she only used to use it with people she didn’t like. If she’d introduced herself as George it means she took a shine to you.”

“I’m not sure she took that much of a shine to me. She didn’t hang around to give me a lift back.”

“I wouldn’t take that personally. How did she seem to you?”

“One word covers it: indomitable. Not unlike the friend she had with her. A sex pest of a rooster who goes by the name of Percy.”

Again Alice laughed. “That sounds exactly the kind of friend George would have.”

“They did seem ideally suited,” he agreed with an unexpected flash of lightness to his voice. “Can I ask you what you’re going to do now that you know who I am?” he added.

“What would you like me to do?”

“To keep quiet. To tell no one that I’m here.”

“Then that’s exactly what I shall do. You have my word on it.”

A shadow of wary doubt covered his face. “I haven’t cut any corners to get to this level of neurosis,” he said, “so I have to tell you that I’m obliged to ask why you would do that. Why would you keep schtum for me?”

“What can I say? I like to think I’m adept at reading between the lines and you seem the epitome of a man in need of a break in life. Plus, there’s something about you I like.” She felt her cheeks redden at the admission.

“You have a weakness for failures?”

“Now you’re just fishing for sympathy. You’re not a failure. You created one of the best sitcoms ever. One of my absolute favourites.”

He didn’t look especially flattered.

“I give you my word,” she said. “I won’t tell a soul. Who else knows you’re here?”

“Only my agent.”

“And his connection with the house?”

“He knows the Armstrongs, the current owners. He asked them if a friend of his could stay here for a while. Is the house very different from how you remembered it?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “You can’t imagine how different.” Or how it makes me feel being back here, she thought. So many memories. So many emotions. It was almost too much to take in, as if she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that she was really here. But then she had always been good at blocking out anything that was too painful to deal with. When her mother had died, she had hardly cried at all. She had taken her lead from the headmistress who had delivered the news—bluntly and to the point—assuming that was the way it had to be done. What tears she had shed, she had done so in private. Even when she had seen her father visibly upset she hadn’t shared her true feelings with him. One of them had to be strong, she had decided, and who else was there to support her father? It never occurred to her that anyone should have supported her. Nor had it occurred to her that she could admit how much she missed her mother. And anyway, apart from her father, who could she have talked to?

“Will you tell me how it happened?” she asked Clayton.

“How what happened?”

“What the papers are calling your
spectacular fall from grace
.”

“Maybe. But first, I want to know more about you. Tell me about those circumstances that made you run and hide.”

She ran a finger round her buttery plate, then licked her finger. “It’s a very long story.”

“I’ve got time,” he said. “I’m not due anywhere for the foreseeable future, certainly not for the next few hours. How about you?”

Alice thought of what was waiting for her back at Dragonfly Cottage. Probably only another irresistible offer from Bob to turn down. But there was the slimmest of chances that James might call. He never had got around to saying whatever it was he’d wanted to share with her, and his parting words were to say he’d give her a ring. He hadn’t said when.

“No,” she said, “I’m not busy this evening.”

“Then let’s have another cup of tea and some more crumpets and you can tell me your story. If nothing else, it’ll take my mind off my predicament.”

They both got to their feet at the same time. Alice took charge of the toast and he poured the tea. And all the while she kidded herself that what she was about to tell Clayton was for his benefit, to help him escape his problems for a few hours, but deep down she knew that what she was about to embark upon was for her own benefit. Being back at Cuckoo House had done exactly what she had known it would. It had crystallized the past and awakened an ache deep inside of her.

They sat down again at the table.

“It was the cherry liqueurs that did it,” she said quietly, surprising herself that this should be her starting point.

Alice’s stepmother, Julia Raphael-Barrett, had a vague, spacey manner. She drifted aimlessly about Cuckoo House as if she were lost. With hindsight, she probably was.

When her father brought his new bride to live at Cuckoo House, it was the first sighting Alice had of the woman who had replaced her mother. The wedding had taken place in London at Kensington Register Office while Alice was at school writing an essay about Charles I and his belief in the Divine Right of Kings.

Julia didn’t arrive alone. With her came her two children—Rufus and Natasha—and two items of furniture: a delicate antique dressing table and a matching stool with a pretty silk-covered seat. The furniture had been ineptly wrapped and tied to the roof of Bruce Barrett’s Jaguar and for Alice there had been something pitiful about the arrival of the upside-down dressing table and stool. With their graceful legs poking through the plastic wrapping, Alice could imagine the disgrace at being forced to travel all the way from London in such humiliating circumstances.

While the three strangers had stepped cautiously out of the car and looked guardedly about them at their new home, Alice’s father had made a great drama of hefting the furniture down from the roof, cursing loudly at one of the straps which threatened to get the better of him. He had then led the way with an embarrassing excess of enthusiasm and when he threw his arms around Alice and kissed her, she almost expected him to say, “Darling, I went to the pet shop and look what I came home with for you!” Laughing and joking, he ushered everyone into the house, issuing instructions as he went: introduce yourselves…make yourselves at home…put the kettle on, Alice. In an effort to calm things down, Alice had shyly offered to take Natasha and Rufus upstairs and show them their rooms.

It soon became apparent that, not unlike her predecessor, Julia had no interest in anything of a domestic nature and encouraged Alice, along with her own children, to do whatever they wanted rather than bother her. She didn’t mind if they left their clothes strewn on the floor of their bedrooms, or played music so loud the windows rattled, or made bonfires that got out of hand, or broke a window as a result of an energetic game of Ker-Plunk, or left trails of muddy footprints through the house.

In many ways, Alice had always had a free reign to do as she pleased, but sharing that freedom with Natasha and Rufus made it all the more enjoyable. Tasha, as she insisted Alice call her, was the same age as Alice—thirteen—and Rufus was three years older. Whereas Tasha was open and direct, Rufus was quiet and withdrawn. He scowled a lot and was often astonishingly rude. Alice developed an instant crush on him.

It was her first real crush and she kept it hidden; he was her stepbrother, after all. He was easily the best-looking boy she had ever set eyes on. He was tall—almost as tall as Alice’s father—broad-shouldered and he had the most amazing blue eyes. His skin had an olive hue, as did Tasha’s, and his hair was very dark. His hand was constantly pushing his dangly fringe out of his eyes. He excelled at whatever he put his mind to, particularly sport, and the window sills in his bedroom at Cuckoo House were devoted to his collection of cups, shields and awards for all his achievements—tennis, cross country, high jump, long jump and cricket. He had an enormous appetite, yet never gained any weight, and Alice frequently found herself in the kitchen late at night making him a sandwich.

Tasha idolized her brother, but that didn’t stop her from teasing him or sneaking into his room to “borrow” his things. Rufus would rant and rave that he couldn’t find his calculator or the CD he’d just bought and Alice would be torn between wanting to be the one who “found” the missing object and therefore rewarded by being in Rufus’s good books, or being in cahoots with Tasha.

Alice had no idea why her father had married Julia, or how they’d met, but she was glad he had because for the first time in her life, she had a proper best friend and a sister all rolled into one. “We’ll be like twins,” Tasha announced one day. “We’ll even pretend we are to anyone who hasn’t met us before.”

“But we don’t look anything alike. We might both have dark hair,” Alice had conceded, “but I’m pale and freckly and you’re…you’re beautiful.”

There was no denying the disparity. According to Julia, who was a redhead with skin paler than Alice’s, Tasha and Rufus had inherited their looks from their father, who had been half French. Tasha’s skin was a fraction darker than her brother’s but here eyes were the same extraordinary blue. Her nearly black hair was long and silky and Alice loved to brush and comb it. No matter how hard she tried, she could never get her own hair to fall in the same sleek way that Tasha’s did; it was much too thick and wavy. Tasha had shown Alice photographs of her father and explained that he had died two years ago in a skiing accident in Switzerland. Rarely did Alice hear Rufus talk about his father, but then seldom did she refer to her mother.

That summer was one of the happiest times for Alice. There were no arguments between her father and Julia, no screaming matches and no plates or ornaments thrown. She was not a voluble or argumentative woman, but somehow Julia managed to get her way on most things. It was only later that Alice came to realize that this was more to do with her father being on his best behaviour for his new wife than Julia having an easygoing temperament.

At Julia’s insistence they acquired a cook. Mrs. Randall came in five days a week and her arrival at Cuckoo House transformed Alice’s eating habits. Used to her mother’s cack-handed attempts, or those of a teenage au pair, she had been a picky eater and often ate nothing but toast and peanut butter. But the delicious meals that Mrs. Randall produced were a revelation. Melt-in-the-mouth cakes and pastries appeared, as did wonderful soups, pies and casseroles. Herbs were used, and not just from dusty little glass jars that were years old. These were real herbs that Mrs. Randall grew in pots on the window sill. Everything was homemade—Alice’s mother had once made an inedible cake using a shop-bought cake mix—and Alice enjoyed watching Mrs. Randall at work. She found it comforting to watch the magical process happen before her eyes, breathing in the tantalizing smells, enjoying the warm steamy environment. She would sit in rapt attention as Mrs. Randall weighed ingredients, chopped, mixed and rolled, sending little puffs of flour or icing sugar into the air. If Alice was lucky, she would be allowed to use the shaped pastry cutters, or better still, given a spoon to lick clean the mixing bowl. Tasha, who didn’t know what all the fuss was about and considered herself too grown up for such things, left Alice to it.

The summer passed and in September Tasha switched schools to the boarding school that Alice attended. For a while they convinced everyone that Tasha was Alice’s long-lost sister who had been kidnapped at birth. When they started to over-exaggerate the story—Tasha had spent several years being brought up in a Bedouin tent in the desert—the other girls smelt a rat and refused to believe anything they said. Tasha had said it was a relief; she’d grown tired of trying to remember their story. But Alice had been disappointed; she’d had all sorts of further embellishments planned.

Rufus had refused point blank to consider moving schools and with ten grade-A GCSEs under his belt, he stayed at his current boarding school in Somerset and moved up into the lower sixth. His subjects were all science based; he was going to be a doctor. Alice would often daydream about him examining her. The thought of him doing so caused a slow thud in her chest and a sudden awareness of her body. In particular its many shortcomings. Why couldn’t she have a chest more like Tasha’s? Why did hers have to be so flat? And her nose too snubbed. And her chin too pointy. And why, oh why, did she have to have freckles? Rufus was always teasing her about them. She had got so upset on one occasion, she had taken a nail brush to the bridge of her nose to rid herself of the horrible things.

“What the hell have you done to your face?” demanded Rufus when she finally emerged from the bathroom and sat down to supper.

“Yes,” chimed in Tasha, “you’re very red. Is that blood on your nose?”

Oh, the shame!

The next morning she awoke to find that her nose looked like it had been pebbledashed during the night; it was a mass of pin-prick scabs.

As well as Mrs. Randall, they now had her husband to keep the garden looking more like a garden and less like a wilderness. He mended the old greenhouse and at his wife’s suggestion, he created two large fruit and vegetable plots.

Alice’s father’s level of interest in the running of the house was as insignificant as it had always been, and once Julia was sure that all responsibility for the house and the children lay securely in the hands of others—an au pair would materialize during the school holidays—she washed her hands of them. It was then that she picked out a room for her own private use upstairs and turned it into what she called her sanctuary. It was where she could go to escape the hurly-burly of three children. She read in there, took naps late in the afternoon and listened to music. Mostly classical and more often than not operas by Puccini. Her favourite books all seemed to revolve around tragic heroines such as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.

There were times when Tasha could be openly critical of her mother. “I’m never going to be like her when I grow up,” she would say. “She’s so pathetically useless. I’m going to do something with my life. I don’t want to be just a wife and mother.” Rufus, on the other hand, had a much closer relationship with their mother and if he ever heard his sister criticising Julia, he would rebuke her severely.

It was following one of Tasha’s declarations that she was going to do something worthwhile with her life, that Alice shared with her her dream to be an actress. “An actress,” repeated Tasha, her eyes wide. “What a brilliant idea! Why don’t we both be actresses?”

So it was agreed, she and Tasha would both be big stars. They rushed to tell Rufus the news. He scoffed at their excitement. But even so, the following term he accompanied Julia to see them both in their school production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream—
Alice’s father couldn’t make it; he was away on a photographic trip. Rufus had been surprisingly generous with his praise and had actually said they were the two best things about the production. Alice had basked in his words but Tasha had ruined it by saying that what he’d meant was that it was all relative, that they were only marginally better than the awfulness of the play. It was true that the girl playing Puck kept muddling up her lines and that the scenery had wobbled and the lights hadn’t worked properly, but the play hadn’t been that bad.

Rufus’s appearance at their school caused a massive stir. For weeks afterwards, Tasha and Alice were pestered by girls wanting to know all about the heart-achingly good-looking Rufus Raphael-Barrett. Tasha was a mixture of nonchalance (“oh, that’s just my silly old brother”) and shining pride. Alice, on the other hand, felt a faint stirring of jealousy. It was a new phenomenon for her and she wasn’t at all sure she liked it.

Exactly a year after they’d come to live at Cuckoo House, Tasha confided in Alice that Rufus hadn’t approved of his mother marrying Alice’s father. In his opinion, Bruce Barrett wasn’t good enough for his mother. What’s more, he believed Bruce wasn’t right in the head. Ever quick to defend her father, Alice had said, “But he’s a brilliant photographer,” as if this explained everything. But Tasha sided with her brother and said that surely Alice had to admit that he wasn’t normal.

From then on, Alice observed her father through new eyes. Suddenly she could see that his behaviour was far from normal. She was so used to his wildness and unpredictable ways that she had never thought anything of it. Now she began to cringe whenever he stamped about the house and yelled uncontrollably at the top of his voice, declaring that he was living with a houseful of idiots. She cringed too when Julia was out and he offered to show the au pair his darkroom. It was obvious to Alice that the honeymoon period of her father’s good behaviour had passed.

For the first time in her life, Alice was ashamed of her father and she hated herself for it. Never had she felt more confused or upset.