‘We’d be company for each other, wouldn’t we?’ Marigold said. ‘You’ll be lonely too, now Chloe has left you.’
Helen went home feeling depressed. She felt she’d been pummelled by the events of recent weeks, and now it seemed she had a new problem. She’d given little thought to how Marigold would manage on her own.
Today had promised to be a pleasant one. Rex had said he’d come in the late afternoon and spend an hour or so working in her garden.
‘I’ll get some steak and make dinner for us,’ she’d told him, and then, feeling greatly daring, she’d added, ‘And not just dinner, bring your overnight bag.’
Rex had given her his shy smile, kissed her cheek and said, ‘Thank you.’
Helen felt her love for him was growing. She’d relied on him and he’d provided the support she’d needed for years. But everything had changed the night Chloe had told them she was pregnant and left with Adam. Helen felt she’d be less than honest if she didn’t admit to herself that she’d encouraged Rex into her bed. He was a diffident man and would never push himself on anybody, but since then, he’d been showing her real love.
This deepened relationship was still so new to them that they were both a bit shy of talking about it. He’d told her that it had brought a new dimension to his life. Helen wanted it to develop naturally. She wanted him to say the words ‘I love you’. Even more, she wanted him to suggest marriage. She felt sure that in time he would.
She set about preparing their evening meal, but when she looked up, she saw him through the kitchen window trundling a wheelbarrow across the grass. She went running out after him. ‘Rex!’
He turned, smiling, and opened his arms to her. She felt them tighten round her in a hug and his lips came down on hers. She stifled a sob.
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Marigold’s difficulties were clouding everything for her.
He held her away from him. ‘What’s the matter? Has something happened?’
‘It’s Marigold,’ she told him. ‘She wants to come and live here with me.’
Rex was smiling at her, not taking her seriously. ‘She can’t. It would be too embarrassing.’
‘I know.’ Helen couldn’t help a wail of distress. ‘I feel awful about it. And if I let her move into Chloe’s bedroom, where will Chloe sleep when she comes to stay?’
‘But you have three bedrooms, haven’t you?’
‘The third one is very small. I do have a single bed there, but Marigold complained it was cramped when she slept there recently, and I tend to use it as a box room and dump things there.’
‘Why does she want to come here when she has a place of her own?’
‘She says she can’t afford it. She reckons that without her mother, she’s living on the edge of poverty.’
‘Is she?’
‘She has only her old age pension and she’s too proud to ask social services for help with her rent. I’m afraid she’ll not be satisfied until she’s in Chloe’s room. But how can I have you in my bed if she’s in the next room? She’d be angry and never stop telling me it was wrong.’
‘She’d probably blame me,’ Rex said. ‘She’d think I’d talked you into it.’
‘I don’t want us to stop.’ Helen smiled at him.
‘Neither do I.’
‘I think we’re entitled to our pleasures, don’t you? We aren’t hurting anybody, and if we enjoy it, why shouldn’t we?’
‘No reason at all.’ Rex gave her another hug.
‘Oh dear, what am I going to tell Marigold?’
‘Helen love, only you can decide that.’
‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘But what if she won’t take no for an answer?’
‘We must find a way to keep her in her own home. I could make her an allowance.’
‘No way, I can’t let you do that. I’m pretty sure social security will pay her rent. She was quite uppity when I told her that, but I’m going to get the forms she’ll need to apply, and offer to help her fill them in.’
Rex gave her another hug. ‘That does make us look a little selfish, doesn’t it?’
‘All her life Gran coddled her, did everything for her. It would have been better if she’d made her stand on her own feet.’
He smiled. ‘You can’t say that. These last few years, Marigold has had to look after her mother, had to do almost everything for her. Anyway, it makes you sound very hard-hearted.’
‘That’s what I am.’
‘No, Helen, you’re not.’
Later that May evening, Helen was dishing up the sherry trifle she’d made for dessert when the phone rang. ‘Who can that be?’ she said as she went to answer it. She recognised Adam’s voice immediately.
‘I took Chloe to hospital at two o’clock and she had a baby girl at six this evening.’ He sounded ecstatic.
‘A girl!’
‘She weighed seven pounds and we’re going to call her Lucy.’
‘That’s wonderful! How’s Chloe?’
‘She’s fine. They both are. An easy birth, so they say, no problems.’
‘Excellent, I can’t wait to see the baby.’
‘They’ll be home in a few days. I’ll let you know.’
Helen rushed back to tell Rex. A wide smile lit up his face. ‘I’m glad Chloe’s well. A baby girl, eh? What time is visiting? We could run up to the hospital to see them both.’
Helen dished out two large helpings of trifle. ‘Adam more or less put me off doing that. He said they’d be home in a few days.’
Chloe had thought that once Helen had accepted her pregnancy and she was living with Adam, her troubles would be over. But Adam liked to be out and about, while Chloe needed a quieter life.
She’d been dreading the birth, and though it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, she was very glad to have that and the whole business of pregnancy behind her. Hospital had not been much to her taste either, though Lucy had been the most beautiful baby on the ward. To hold her in her arms almost made it seem worth while.
She was pleased when the time came for her to return to the comfort and elegance of Adam’s home. They’d both enjoyed introducing Lucy to the new nursery they’d fitted out for her in the bedroom next to their own.
Chloe had thought that having a child would bring her and Adam closer, but nothing could have been further from the truth. A baby did not fit into Adam’s lifestyle. They could not go out together on the spur of the moment; it needed planning, and they were too far away from Helen to have a babysitter on call. Chloe had neither the time nor the energy to serve and prepare fancy meals for when Adam came home, and the smart house lost some of its sparkle.
While Chloe doted on Lucy from the moment she was born, she soon realised Adam did not. Lucy cried a lot and kept him awake at night; he said he wished they’d made her nursery further away from their own room, preferably on the other side of the house. And during the day he complained she was always there between them, a demanding and bawling presence.
Chloe had looked forward to showing off her new baby to Mum and Rex. On the day she’d invited them to come, she’d dressed Lucy in the smart gown Adam had bought for her and she didn’t cry once. They brought gifts for the baby: Mum had managed to finish knitting her a white matinee coat and Rex presented her with a silver-backed hairbrush.
Mum was clearly thrilled to hold her, and billed and cooed over her. Lucy had a soft covering of golden down on her head, neat regular features and round eyes of the darkest blue. It surprised Chloe to find Rex carrying the baby round the room marvelling at how beautiful she was.
Adam was at home and made tea for them in the silver teapot. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ve had to buy a cake, Lucy takes up so much of our time.’
‘More than we expected.’ Chloe smiled.
‘She’ll get easier to manage as she gets older,’ Helen comforted.
‘The house doesn’t look as spick and span as it did,’ Adam said ruefully. ‘I’m going to ask Ruby, my cleaning lady, to work two extra mornings if she will.’
‘You have a cleaning lady?’ Rex sounded amazed.
‘For two mornings a week up to now. It helps me keep the place tidy.’
‘You keep it looking like a show house.’
‘No point in having a nice place and not looking after it,’ Adam said tartly.
On the way home, Helen said, ‘They seem happy, don’t they? She may be all right. Anyway, I’ll have to get used to her being an unmarried mother.’
‘She’s certainly living in luxury there.’ Rex shook his head. ‘To think of Adam employing a cleaner for two mornings a week when he was living there alone.’
‘And not much more than a lad, only twenty-five,’ Helen said. ‘He’s done very well for himself.’
‘He’d no doubt be shocked to see how I live,’ Rex said. ‘He’d probably think my flat was a slovenly mess.’
‘It isn’t,’ Helen said.
‘But it’s cramped and not at all smart.’ Rex flashed her a smile. ‘The baby’s lovely.’
‘Adorable,’ Helen agreed.
In the weeks that followed, Chloe settled into motherhood and thoroughly enjoyed caring for Lucy. She hadn’t expected to miss going to work, but she certainly missed the company of the office girls. Adam couldn’t do without his visits to top Manchester night spots and took to going out without her once or twice a week. When he returned home, she’d usually been in bed for an hour or so, and it meant he woke her up. Sometimes he woke Lucy up too.
Chloe tried not to show her irritation about this. She felt he should involve himself more with Lucy, but he wasn’t drawn to her, he didn’t want to feed or nurse her. Neither did he want to get up to her when she woke up in the night, which was most nights.
He said, ‘You don’t have to get up to go to work, Chloe, so it’s only fair you should see to the baby.’
Chloe was always tired and felt she and Lucy spent a great deal of time on their own. She wished her mother and Rex were nearer; the garden would be a pleasant place to take Lucy on a hot afternoon.
‘You need to get out more in the day by yourself,’ Adam told her. He’d provided a large Silver Cross pram for Lucy’s outings.
‘I know, I know. Couldn’t you take the odd afternoon off so we could all go out together?’ she asked Adam.
‘That could be difficult.’
Chloe thought the next best thing would be to go to an auction with him, so one day he drove her and Lucy to an auction room in the Peak District. Chloe was fascinated, but Lucy was restless and wouldn’t settle in her carrycot. It was too long for a baby to be in a noisy and unfamiliar place, and Adam said he couldn’t concentrate on the buying and selling.
‘I’d get you a car, if only you could drive,’ he told her. ‘What about driving lessons?’
‘Who would look after Lucy while I was learning?’
‘You could ask Ruby.’
Ruby was now working for them four mornings a week, and Adam, who was very fussy about cleanliness and order about the house, thought she needed every minute of that. But she was working for someone else in the afternoons and occasionally they asked her to babysit of an evening as well.
‘Couldn’t you have Lucy on the back seat in her carrycot?’
‘I don’t know whether I could cope with that,’ Chloe said. ‘How could I concentrate on what the instructor was telling me if she was crying in the back?’
When she saw the look of impatience on Adam’s face, she gave up.
Rex had stayed overnight with Helen for the last three nights and was cooking egg and bacon for their breakfast while she took a bath. She had hinted that she’d like him to move in permanently, but he knew she was worried about Marigold, and they’d have to decide what was to be done about her first.
He felt guilty. He was increasingly fond of Helen and he recognised that she was giving him her heart. He didn’t want to lose her – his life was vastly improved now she had a larger part in it – but it was Chloe who haunted him still. If it weren’t for Chloe, he’d ask Helen to marry him. Make an honest woman of her, as the saying went. Then Marigold could come and live with them, if that was what Helen wanted.
But Rex couldn’t commit himself to Helen while he still held feelings for Chloe.
Helen came downstairs in a cloud of fragrant bath scents and put the bread in the toaster. She’d had a storm of tears yesterday when Marigold had told her she was having nothing to do with social security; she was not going to be a burden on the tax-payer. He could see Helen frowning over this.
‘I’ve given her money but that doesn’t satisfy her. She says she’s getting old now and needs physical help.’
‘No, Helen,’ he told her. ‘She’s perfectly capable of looking after herself. For heaven’s sake, she was taking care of her mother as well, only a few weeks ago. She hasn’t got over the shock of that yet. Give her time.’
‘She doesn’t want time, she’s impatient with me. She thinks I should have her here. She is my mother, after all.’
Rex sighed. ‘I suppose that house is too big for her.’
‘The house is awful, I can’t just leave her where she is. She thinks this is luxury.’
‘I do too.’ Rex dished up their breakfast and pulled up a chair in front of his plate.
‘If Marigold were here,’ Helen said, ‘having you round for a meal wouldn’t be the same. We wouldn’t be able to talk, would we?’
Rex felt as though he had his back to the wall. He hadn’t expected Gran’s death to catapult him and Helen into an impasse. He couldn’t make up his mind what to do for the best. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Helen’s feelings.
‘Our problems are the result of Victorian thinking,’ he said. ‘What’s happened in your family and what’s happened in mine wouldn’t happen today. It won’t happen to Chloe; she’s much more up front and in tune with the times.’
‘But it’s still affecting you and me, and how do we stop that?’ Her eyes were pleading with him across the table. He knew it was on her conscience that she’d done nothing about settling Marigold.
It came to Rex in that moment, and he almost laughed outright. ‘I must get myself a house that’s halfway decent. Heavens, Helen, when I saw how Adam had set himself up in the grand style, it made me feel I was being silly to live the way I do. My business has prospered over the years and yet I spend little of the profit. I could afford to buy myself a house with some comfort now. I’m going to do that, and when we want to be together, you can come and stay overnight with me.’