She didn’t seem to be doing very well altogether, Octavia
thought, walking back into her office and sitting down to
Mrs Piper’s budgets. If she didn’t pull herself together soon,
she wouldn’t have anything at all.
‘Bye, Mum,’ said Zoe, as Marianne appeared at the bottom
of the stairs, holding her leather Gladstone bag, her slightly
embarrassed expression clearly indicating she was about to
leave for her weekend. ‘Have a great time.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ said Marianne. ‘Thank you very
much. Now you will keep an eye on Romilly tomorrow,
won’t you, take her to the session and so on?’
‘I promise, Mum.’
‘Thank you.’ The doorbell rang. ‘That’ll be the car now. I must go. ‘Bye, Zoe, I’ll see you on Sunday night. You’ve got my number in Glasgow, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, Mum. Er — Mum, could you — could you possibly
lend me a hundred pounds. Please?’
Zoe very seldom saw her mother angry; it wasn’t her
style. She was angry now.
‘I really can’t quite believe you said that, Zoe. Of course
I won’t lend you a hundred pounds. I actually wouldn’t
lend you ten at the moment. You have simply got to learn
some self-discipline — you failed your exams because you
never exert any. You have a perfectly adequate allowance,
and if it doesn’t cover your extravagant requirements, then
you must change them. In any case, I imagine you want the
money to go out celebrating, and I think even you must
realise you have absolutely nothing to celebrate. So - sorry,
but no. Goodbye.’
And she was gone, without even a kiss.
Zoe sat down and burst into tears.
‘Okay, hon,’ said Tim Forbes, coming into the bar where
Lyndsay was reading a rather elderly Vogue. ‘We leave early
in the morning. Home to sunny old England. It’s eighty
over there apparently. We’ll get to Heathrow about nine,
local time. Home by midnight. How does that sound?’
Octavia dialled the Bartlett house; a foreign voice answered.
Lauren would have a Filipino, exploitative bitch.
‘This is Mrs Fleming. Mrs Tom Fleming. Could I speak
to Mrs Bartlett, please?’
‘Oh — I am sorry, Mrs Bartlett has gone. And the
children.’
‘To the airport?’
‘Yes, to the airport. They were delayed, the taxi did not
come. But Mr Fleming, your children’s father, yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Octavia, ‘yes, that is correct.’
‘Mrs Fleming, he arrived and so they have all gone
together. So there was no more problem.’
‘No. No, I see. No, absolutely no more problem. Well,
thank you.’
As Zoe had done, half an hour earlier, Octavia too sat
down and burst into tears.
‘Tom, hi!’
It was Bob Macintosh; Tom had rarely been so pleased to
see anyone in his entire life. Waving the children off
through Departures, seeing them hardly glance backwards,
had left him feeling totally alone and very bleak. He had
planned to have dinner with Aubrey, but Aubrey’s father
wasn’t well and wanted to see him. So he had seemed
destined to an evening at Phillimore Gardens alone with an
icy Caroline, and an even icier Octavia: the only mitigating
circumstance being that Octavia would be forced finally to
concede he wasn’t actually in Tuscany with Lauren Bartlett.
He turned and took Bob’s outstretched hand like a
drowning man reaching for a log. ‘Bob! Good to see you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, just seen the kids off on holiday. Going home on
my own.’
‘No Octavia?’
‘No, she’s — working late.’
‘Great. Come and have dinner with me. I’m on my own
tonight as well. Maureen’s at some absurd hen night, one of
her friends is getting married. We’re staying at the
Berkeley, we could eat there. Bloody good restaurant. How
does that sound?’
‘It sounds magnificent,’ said Tom.
‘Darling, why don’t you come and have dinner with me
tonight? There are a few things I’d like to go over with
you, things I want you to tell Elvira and—’
‘Daddy, I can’t. Honestly. It’s my last night with Minty
for a week, and I really really want to be with her. I’ve
missed saying goodbye to the twins as it is.’
‘Oh — very well.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘I’d have
thought she’d be asleep by now anyway. And you can see
her in the morning.’
Octavia hesitated; it was a serious temptation, she was so
tired, so dispirited. And she needed to talk to him about the
sponsorship of Cultivate. But she was going to miss Minty terribly; it was her last chance to be with her.
‘No, really. I’m sorry. I’ll call you about the cottage.’
‘Very well.’ He was clearly disappointed.
She phoned the house; a rather brisk Caroline informed
her that Minty was already asleep. ‘Absolutely exhausted,
Octavia. And rather upset at the twins being away. I
certainly don’t think you should wake her.’
Octavia assured her she would do no such thing, and
phoned her father back. The thought of an evening alone
with a hostile Caroline was hideous.
‘Is the invitation still open? Apparently Minty’s already
asleep. Had my hand slapped by Caroline very hard.
Metaphorically.’
‘My darling, of course you can. Nothing would give me
more pleasure. Do you want to go out, or shall I get Mrs Harrington to cook something special?’
‘It’s a bit late for that, surely.’
‘Well, she could do you some fish, or some steak. What
would you fancy?’
Octavia didn’t fancy anything; the thought of food made
her feel sick, but it seemed churlish to say so. She had an
inspiration. ‘Tell you what I’d like. Fish pie — that wouldn’t
be very difficult, would it?’
‘Fish pie, eh? Our favourite. Of course not. Plenty offish
in the freezer. Might not be ready till nine.’
‘That’s fine. I might not be there till nine.’
It really was too bad, Caroline thought. Octavia had
promised to see the children off and failed; Poppy in
particular had clearly been upset by it. Octavia had also
promised to get back that night, spend the evening with her
and Minty; the poor child had hardly set eyes on her
mother for days. She had been very cranky as Caroline put
her to bed.
She had no idea when Tom would be back; he’d not
even spoken to her at the Bartletts’, except to nod at her
briefly and tell her to check the children’s luggage, before
driving off. She didn’t like the way any of it was going; her
last employers had divorced, and she could see that the
Flemings were hardly on steady ground at the moment. She
had planned to talk to Octavia that night, try and make her
understand how unsettling it all was, for her as well as the
children. But now she was out with her father. Monstrous
man! In Caroline’s view, he was largely to blame for
whatever had gone wrong with the Fleming marriage.
The phone rang: Caroline sighed, went to answer it. It
was her mother.
‘Darling? How are you?’
‘Oh — fine. Thanks. All alone here, with Minty.’
‘That’s what I thought. Darling, why not bring her here
for the weekend? If Mrs Fleming is willing? I’d love to have you and her, and your father’s gone off sailing. What about it?’
‘What a wonderful idea. And of course Octavia wouldn’t
mind.’ She had done it several times before; taken Minty to
her parents’ house in the New Forest. ‘I’ll have to check
with her, obviously, and then I’ll come down first thing in
the morning.’
‘Splendid. I’ll expect you midmorning unless I hear to
the contrary. It’ll be lovely to see Minty again.’
Octavia’s mobile was on message, and Felix Miller’s phone
picked up by an answering machine. Caroline left a slightly
terse message on both to the effect that she would like to
take Minty to stay with her mother and, unless she heard to
the contrary, by nine in the morning, that was where she
would be.
This was lovely, Felix thought, smiling at Octavia across the
dining table, heaping her plate with the fish pie that had been their favourite celebration dish right through her childhood, that had been served on both their birthdays
every year, on the awarding of her scholarship to Wycombe
Abbey, her brilliant O-and A-level results, her 2:1 in Law
should have been a First, he knew, but he had smiled away
his disappointment of course, assured her it was marvellous.
They did not, however have fish pie the night Octavia
had arrived home, flushed with excitement and joy, bearing
a bottle of champagne, to tell her father she had fallen in
love with Tom Fleming; indeed, after that, they had never
eaten it together again, until now.
It was a very special recipe, worked on and fussed over
down the years by Mrs Harrington, haddock and scallops
cooked in a white wine sauce with prawns under a
wonderful flaky pastry lid; served always with new potatoes
and Octavia’s favourite vegetables, runner beans.
When she had been little, she had gobbled it up greedily,
always asking for more; then as caution and concern over
her figure took over, she had rationed herself carefully.
That change had saddened Felix; he had loved to watch her, plump and glowing, tucking in unself-consciously, her
little round face watching him closely as he cut into the
pastry, ladled the wonderful contents on to her plate. The
tense teenager who had pushed her prawns on and off her
fork, piled her plate high with the beans, rejected the
potatoes, had been a worrying stranger.
Tonight, she was actually eating more than he had
expected. ‘Do you know, I’m starving,’ she said as they sat
down, ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’
‘Octavia, that is madness. When you work so hard, why
not?’
‘Oh — too busy. Frantic, you know, finishing up to go
away. Dad, don’t look at me like that, I’m hardly fading
away.’
‘I think you are actually,’ he said, studying the sharp
cheekbones, the thin arms.
‘You can’t be too rich or too thin, you should know that.
It’s all right, I’m only joking. No, it has been difficult lately,
what with one thing and another. And I’ve been so upset
about this Tuscany business. For some reason it seems well,
the very last straw.’
He was encouraged by that; that she should, finally, be
talking in such terms. He had been so afraid she was going
to accept what Tom had done, stay with him, take him
back even.
‘I know it doesn’t alter what he’s done, but it’s so brutal,
so — oh, I don’t know. I honestly think if he’d stayed, if we
could have had some time together, time to talk — well…’
She smiled at him rather weakly.
‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ said Tom Fleming. He leaned forward
slightly hazily across the table, put his hand over Bob’s.
‘Terribly, terribly sorry. To have embarrassed you. So
terribly sorry.’
‘Tom,’ said Bob, signalling to the waiter for the bill, ‘you
haven’t embarrassed me. Not in the least. I wish I could
help more.’
‘Helped a lot. Just having you to talk to. Really, really
helped. Not good at talking, us men, are we, Bob? Oh,
God. What a fool I am! Bloody, bloody fool. Wonderful
girl like Octavia and I have to go and do that to her. I love
her so much still, Bob, you know. So much.’
Half an hour later, Bob Macintosh gave a ten-pound tip to
the young porter who had helped him get Tom Fleming up
in the lift, and settle him on to the bed which Maureen
would be occupying the following night. Then he removed
Tom’s shoes and tie, got into the other bed himself and lay
in the darkness, listening to Tom’s snores and worrying
slightly that Maureen might not actually be at a hen party.
Octavia lay in bed in her room: it felt very strange. She
looked round, smiling at its absurd familiarity, at the way it
was so unchanged; as she had got ready for bed, she had felt
almost frightened, so easily did she slip back into its rituals,
putting her used underwear into the linen bag hanging on
the door, showering away the strains of the day in the
adjacent bathroom, pulling a cotton lawn nightdress out of
the chest of drawers, opening both the windows, settling
into the bed — God it was soft, so wonderfully soft, she had
forgotten, opened the book she had pulled out of the
bookcase. Even the bookcase was kept fresh and up to date,
like the flowers; there were all her old favourites of course,
but on the top shelf, her father kept a steady supply of the
new novels, the bestsellers that she called junkfood reading.
There was a new Maeve Binchy there: wonderful. Just
what she needed. She had only just opened it when there
was a knock at the door: it was her father. He was carrying
a tray, with a blue and white mug on it.
‘I’ve brought you a milky cure. I thought you needed
one.’
‘Dad! I’m fine.’
‘Octavia, you are not fine. You practically fainted down
there, when you said you were going to drive home.