We rounded the corner of the lake. Distracted by my thoughts, I didn’t notice what was in front of us till Hugh grabbed my hand and stopped me walking. Two Mandarin ducks were standing in the muddy path, surrounded by fuzzy ducklings. The male, bright and tufted, stood guard while the female made broody sounds and snapped at the grass along with her children.
My hand drifted to my belly.
‘Six of them,’ Hugh said. ‘They’ll be busy.’
I thought of Hugh sitting on my couch, standing guard while I wrote in his spare room. ‘Do ducks mate for life, do you think?’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s swans. I think ducks do the thing where the male sneaks up on the female and has sex with her before she can notice.’
‘Unlucky female.’ We watched as the mother herded the ducklings into the shallow water among the reeds. They popped one by one into the lake and their parents waddled after, the whole family gliding away.
I made sure Hugh wasn’t watching me and wiped away a tear.
This was utterly ridiculous. I was getting all romantic over ducks. Clearly I had to find out how Hugh felt before I went even more insane.
‘I got another phone call today,’ I said when we’d started walking again. ‘From Gwen.’
‘Oh yeah, from uni? What’s she up to? Still serving divorce papers out in Henley?’
I hadn’t actually heard from Gwen since Christmas, when she’d sent Hugh and me our usual joint card.
‘She’s got this dilemma,’ I said. ‘She’s fallen in love, completely by mistake, mind you, with her best friend. She doesn’t know what to do.’
I strolled along, holding my breath, waiting for his response.
We passed the log bench where, all those years ago, Hugh had made a pass at me and I’d laughed. Why had I laughed? Because the idea of kissing Hugh had actually been ridiculous, or because I’d known even then, deep down, that I had to do anything I could to avoid falling in love with him?
‘Male or female?’ Hugh asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Is her best friend male or female?’
‘Um. Male. Why?’
Hugh kicked a clump of grass. ‘No reason, I was just curious. Does her best friend love her back?’
‘She’s not sure. She’s too scared to rock the boat.’
‘What did you tell her to do?’
‘What would you tell her to do, if you were me?’ Inside my pockets, my hands were clenched tight. I couldn’t look at him.
‘I’d tell her to try her best to snap out of it. Falling in love with your best friend is a recipe for disaster.’
His voice was vehement, and my stomach sank.
‘She should probably try to date someone else,’ he added, ‘get her mind off it.’
‘That’s what I told her to do,’ I said.
32
If one of my confident, independent former heroines were falling in love with the guy she was having a red-hot affair with, she would probably break it off, on the premise that it would be much less painful to end the relationship sooner rather than later, when she’d had time to make her love him even more.
I was not that idiotic.
I was getting lots of the best sex I’d ever had and it was a pretty sure thing that after the baby came my sex life would be nil. Nappies and breastfeeding would be my primary focus for some time.
For another thing, I lived next door to Hugh and breaking it off with him - especially without a good reason - would be torture. It could kill the friendship, which was what I’d been trying so hard to avoid doing in the first place.
For a third (and most important) thing, I just did not want to. Why would you want to cut open your own chest, rip your heart out, and toss it casually into the street like so much rubbish?
So I pretended nothing had changed. I talked with Hugh and I laughed with Hugh and I had meals with Hugh and I served Hugh drinks in the pub and I had the wildest sex I could manage with Hugh, and every moment of that time I did my very best not to reveal that Hugh was rapidly becoming more and more the love of my life. Even when he helped me wallpaper the nursery with stars and clouds. Even when he turned up with two teddy bears for the baby, saying he couldn’t decide which one to buy so he bought them both. Even when he smiled at me and made my heart flip.
I thought about Hugh’s advice to Gwen’s fictional problem: try to date someone else to get your mind off your inappropriate emotions. That wasn’t an option for me, especially as I was growing heavier with child by the day, but I did have one other man on my mind. Maybe it was time to think more about him.
This time when I rang and asked to meet her, Sophie Tennant told me to come to the cafe at the large Tesco outside the town centre. On the phone she mentioned something about surveillance on the Thames, which passed near to the supermarket, and when she turned up she was wearing jeans and wellies that were spattered with mud. I bought her a cup of tea and a scone and she gulped them both down as if she hadn’t eaten in days.
‘What have you been doing?’ I asked, intensely curious, wondering if I could use it for a book.
‘Can’t tell you.’ She rubbed her finger on the plate to get the last crumbs of scone. ‘I’ve also nothing to report on your case. I’ve had no recognition on the drawing you and Andy produced. Actually, I tell a lie. Several people said initially that they recognised it, but when they thought more about it they realised they were thinking of George Michael.’
‘He does look like him,’ I said.
‘The clues I thought I’d got from your description of the evening haven’t panned out, not yet, anyway. I did discover one thing, which might give us a little more insight, but then again it widens the field considerably.’
‘What’s that?’
‘On the evening of the eighteenth of September there was a serious disruption to rail services to and from Paddington. Several trains were cancelled and for a few hours there were no trains in either direction at all. This time coincides with when the subject turned up at your pub out of the blue.’
‘So there’s a chance he was a delayed rail passenger trying to kill some time,’ I said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t have used the phrase ‘killing time’ myself, knowing what it was he ended up doing, but yes. We could well be looking for someone who’s not local at all.’
‘Someone from London?’
‘Or any of the locations that the trains from Paddington via Reading serve - Swindon, Bristol, Swansea, or anywhere in between. Or anywhere with a connection from one of those places. You said he didn’t have an accent, but that doesn’t necessarily rule out other parts of the country.’
I thought of what I’d said to Hugh about Reading: that people were either stuck here or that they were passing through. I was stuck, and George was probably passing through. It was typical.
‘Anyway, I’ll keep looking,’ Sophie said. ‘I haven’t exhausted every possibility yet, not quite. Sorry I don’t have better news for you.’
She sat back in her plastic chair, stretched, and pushed back her hair, looking momentarily surprised when she found a bit of reed in it. Then she dropped the reed on her saucer and gave me one of her penetrating looks.
‘Why did you ask to meet me when I could have easily given you all this over the phone?’
‘I, uh, thought that was how it was done.’
‘No, I told you I could give you an update over the phone, and you said you’d rather meet, remember? How come?’
‘You know, when you start firing questions you’re a little bit scary.’
She shrugged. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything.’
Of course, she meant exactly the opposite, and again I found I wanted to tell her.
‘I’m in a new relationship, but I don’t know how Hu—the man feels about me. I sort of feel like if you can’t find the father of my child, then it’s a sign that I should take a risk and tell this new man how I feel about him.’
Sophie’s forehead wrinkled. ‘So it sounds as if you don’t actually want me to find the baby’s father.’
‘No, I do. He deserves to know, even if he doesn’t want anything to do with it. And the baby deserves to know, too.’
‘If I do find him, does it mean you’re going to end this relationship you’re currently in?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll think about that if it happens.’
She took some time to think about this, absently picking more bits of reed out of her hair.
‘Eleanor, I always tell my clients not to hire me to find any information they don’t really want to know. I think you fall into this category. Maybe you should pay me for my time so far and we should quit.’
‘Sophie, I want the best for my baby. I have to find George, even if that means my current relationship doesn’t work out.’
‘Forgive me for saying, but how do you know that your current relationship wouldn’t be the best thing for your baby?’
I thought about Hugh helping with the nursery, Hugh with two teddy bears in his arms.
Then I thought about Hugh two or three or ten years down the line, stuck with a woman whom he didn’t love and a baby who wasn’t his, all because he was chivalrous and kind and decent.
‘I need to do my best to find George,’ I said firmly.
‘All right,’ she said, standing up to leave, ‘it’s your life. Only make sure you prepare yourself for how you’re going to feel if I do find the baby’s father, and your relationship is over.’
33
Hugh wasn’t in when I got home, though I knew his shift had finished two hours before. I tried to read a book and then took a bath, though every time I started to relax I heard some sort of noise from somewhere and started up, sure it was Hugh returning.
I fielded a phone call from Sheila. She didn’t mention Richard the vicar, which was a relief, though the possibility did strike me that she wasn’t mentioning him in the same way I wasn’t mentioning the private detective.
Hugh still wasn’t back by the time I was ready to go to work at the Mouse and Duck. I walked to the pub, chewing on my fingernail.
I wasn’t worried about him being out. I knew Hugh well enough to know that although he got through more than his share of women, he wasn’t a cheater. If there was any sort of relationship going he would always end it before starting something up with another woman.
However, even though I knew he wasn’t off having wild sex with someone else (who would doubtlessly not be pregnant), his absence hammered home the fact that Hugh and I didn’t have a proper relationship. There was no commitment, beyond our friendship. If he did meet someone else - if he had already - there was nothing stopping him from ending our arrangement.
I had secrets; maybe he did, too.
The pub was quiet, as usual. I greeted Martha and Maud, who were the only two regulars there. ‘Have either of you seen Hugh?’ I asked as casually as I could.
‘Er,’ said Maud, swirling her drink in her glass.
‘No, love,’ Martha said quickly. The two of them exchanged a look and then it was straight into the baby advice for me.
They were terrible liars. I smiled and assured them that yes, I’d put safety plugs in all the electrical sockets in the nursery, that the decorating was nearly all finished, thank you, that Hugh had put together a changing table only yesterday, and I had hung the curtains. Yes, I had been careful whilst on the stepladder. Yes, I was still planning to breastfeed. No, I hadn’t started rubbing sandpaper on my nipples to toughen them up. I nodded and slipped away behind the bar before they started talking about engorgement and cabbage leaves again.
Why would they cover for Hugh? What was he up to? I wasn’t sure whether any of the pub regulars knew about me and Hugh being lovers. He’d tried to lean over the bar and kiss me one Saturday night when he’d had a pint too many, and I’d pushed him away. It was going to be difficult enough to get our friendship on its prior footing if we broke up; I didn’t need to be answering questions from all the punters, too.