Summer of Love (33 page)

‘Gus? You’d be welcome too?’ said Jody.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve got work to do. Thanks for the offer though.’ He turned to Sian. ‘Can you pop in and see Mum, quickly? She’d like to hear how it went, from your point of view.’

Sian glanced at her watch. ‘OK, but don’t let me accept coffee or tea. I’ve only got half an hour.’

‘How did it go?’ asked Fiona when they appeared in the kitchen.

‘Fine! He hardly looked back. It helped that Annabelle was there and he’d met his teacher and the head.’ Sian felt a little emotional but didn’t want to show it. Rory’s first day at school was a growing-up experience for her as well as for him. She didn’t count that terrible first attempt in London.

‘Would you like a bit of cake?’ suggested Fiona. ‘Something to cheer you up? You probably feel a bit strange.’

‘I haven’t got time for cake, I’m afraid. Melissa’s about to descend on the cottage with builders and decorators and things.’ She put on a positive expression with an effort. ‘She’s really cracking on with buying the house.’

‘Oh, poor you!’ said Fiona. ‘How utterly ghastly, a whole load of strange people tramping over your home, deciding how to bash it about. Come back the moment they’re gone. We’ll have lunch.’

Sian walked briskly down the road, thinking how much she’d miss having Fiona so near, always ready with tea and cake, wine or food.

She just had time to clear the breakfast and make the beds before the onslaught arrived.

Melissa kissed her fondly, as if they were close friends instead of deadly rivals for the same house. ‘Darling! So sweet of you to have this crowd, first thing on a Monday morning too!’

‘That’s fine.’ Sian didn’t bother to say she hadn’t really had a choice and that she might as well have a whole load of strangers cluttering up the place as mooch about missing Rory on her own.

‘Let me do the intros. This is Philip, the architect.’ Sian nodded at an amiable man in spectacles. ‘Bob – the builder, obviously! If you’re called Bob you have to be a builder these days.’ Sian smiled at the joke. ‘And this is Wendy, an interior designer.’ Melissa announced this as if it was a lovely surprise. Sian smiled again, this time more weakly.

‘Well, I’m not going to offer to make you all coffee,’ she said, ‘nor am I going to show you round. The cottage is far too small for all of us, so I’m going to be in the garden if you need me.’

‘Oh, that reminds me! I’ve got a garden designer coming in a moment. I really want a lot of decking and a hot tub.’

‘But not vegetables?’

‘Darling, let’s face it, it’s only mums at home who can grow veggies. Unless you’re a retired granddad, of course.’

That put her in her place. ‘Oh well. It seems a shame, but there you are. I’ll go and potter around outside.’ Sian really did try to smile but she knew it came out as a sickly grimace.

She was hoeing the last of the lettuces that were starting to bolt, wondering if she should pick them all and make soup, when Wendy, the interior designer, came out.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I join you? The builder and the architect are arguing about the best way to handle removing a supporting wall and I don’t think they should do it.’

‘Oh.’ Sian looked up. ‘Of course I don’t think anyone should do anything, really. I just want to live here.’

‘I think you would find that kitchen gloomy and damp in winter, not to mention small, but that wasn’t why I came to find you.’

‘Oh? What was it then?’ Sian could see the woman was trying to be friendly, but she couldn’t quite match it.

‘I saw your amazing furniture!’

Sian considered the bits and pieces she had acquired from relatives, auction houses and, occasionally, new-from-Ikea that she’d added to Luella’s basic supply. ‘Really?’

Wendy laughed. ‘Not that furniture! I meant the stuff you paint.’

‘Oh, that!’ Sian relaxed. ‘I’d forgotten about that for a moment. I’ve only got the small stuff here. Larger pieces I paint up at my friend’s barn. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to move away.’

‘Melissa said you wanted to stay really.’

‘But if Luella, my landlady, wants to sell, I can’t really stop her.’

Wendy paused tactfully. ‘Do you take commissions, for painted furniture?’

‘Of course,’ She brightened. ‘I do stuff on spec because my mother keeps buying bits and pieces at auction and I can’t resist doing it. But commissions make most sense really. I’m doing something for Melissa’s mother.’

‘Fantastic! I’ve got this client, she has a massive bedroom absolutely full of furniture. You can get rid of the furniture but she won’t get rid of the fitted wardrobe, which does actually take a lot of stuff, but I just thought, you could paint it like a mural and blend it into the other walls. She said she fancied a mural but I didn’t know anyone who could do it.’

‘Brilliant. That would be a lovely job.’ Veronica was delighted with the start she’d made on the wardrobes and couldn’t wait for her to get going on the mural in the dining room, so she felt it was something she could confidently agree to do again. She hesitated, her middle-class reluctance to talk about money kicking in. ‘Is she a good payer? This woman?’

‘Absolutely. I’d make sure you got really well paid. Give me your details and we can arrange a time for you to go and see the job and meet Mrs Wilkinson. She’s quite local.’

Now she had a very good commission to think about, when Sian walked up the road to Fiona’s, she was feeling slightly less pessimistic.

‘I thought I’d take the children into town for pizza,’ said Jody when they’d greeted their children and the first day of school had been deemed a success. ‘Otherwise they’ll fall asleep in front of the telly while I cook tea, won’t eat anything and won’t go to bed. Fancy coming?’

Rory was jumping up and down like a jack-in-the-box next to Annabelle.

‘Oh, OK,’ said Sian. ‘I was going down the fish-fingers-and-oven-chips route but it’s all still in the freezer. Pizza would probably be healthier, really.’

‘As well as more fun,’ said Jody. ‘This going-to-school business is all very well, but Annabelle is my baby. I don’t know about you, but it’s a big growing-up moment for me too!’

‘Absolutely! Although this isn’t really Rory’s first day at school, it’s his first successful one, so I’m over a hurdle and we should celebrate.’

‘Come on, we can all pile into the people carrier,’ said Jody. ‘You can even have a glass of wine.’

‘This is a brilliant idea,’ said Sian as they set off, Annabelle and Rory arguing happily in the back about who was the best at sums and Annabelle’s brothers chatting about football. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of it. We used to go out for tea sometimes in London, but somehow because you can’t actually see Pizza Express, you forget it exists.’

‘I don’t forget,’ said Jody.

As they drove, Sian regaled Jody with tales of Melissa and her crew. Telling her about her morning, with Melissa mentally knocking down walls and installing hot tubs, made it all seem less horrible somehow. But of course she couldn’t tell Jody what was really gnawing away at her, even with all the distractions of the day: the Gus issue, which seemed to be preoccupying her even more than ever. OK, so he’d been friendly yesterday afternoon and this morning, but he’d behaved more like an overgrown puppy, bouncing all over her, than someone who was serious about the future. It was so difficult to tell with him and she daren’t risk getting all serious herself and asking him what his intentions were. She squirmed at the thought; it was something a father would demand in a Jane Austen novel. She suppressed a sigh. Maybe she should have just come out with it and asked him the old question: ‘Will you respect me in the morning?’ Perhaps she had just been a notch on the bedpost, a bit of fun, and he wanted to keep her sweet in case she changed her mind about letting him be a part of Rory’s life. Now she wondered if he’d be talking to her at all if it wasn’t for Rory.

She sighed. In some ways it was very tempting to just let go and live for the moment, as Gus seemed to do, but she couldn’t. She had too many responsibilities and she couldn’t risk getting hurt all over again, not now she had Rory to think of. A heartbroken mother wasn’t what any little boy wanted or needed. Gus had told her that himself about his own mother’s disastrous second marriage.

The children’s singing broke into her jagged thoughts, and she noticed they had now arrived outside the restaurant. Jody parked the people carrier – the size of a small bus, as far as Sian was concerned – and the children were extracted from the various seats. An experienced mother, Jody marshalled them all into the restaurant safely.

‘Ooh, look,’ she said, children filing under her arm as she held the door open. ‘They’ve got a cocktail bar in the old County Hotel. What’s it called?’

‘The Boca Loca,’ said Sian. She’d noticed it the other day when she’d popped into town for some more paint.

‘One day we’ll get the girls together, leave the kids with the chaps and go there. I love cocktails.’

‘So do I,’ said Sian. ‘But they have to be strong, otherwise they’re just like Alcopops and you drink too many and get hideously drunk.’

‘Not an option now, sadly. OK, kids, what are you all going to have?’

They were just shepherding the children out of the restaurant after a very happy and noisy meal when Rory said, ‘There’s Gus!’

Sian looked at where he was pointing. She saw Gus, in a suit, ushering Melissa, also wearing a suit and a smart little hat, into the Boca Loca. He had his hand on her waist and was laughing down at her. Sian looked away quickly before she could see his hand go down to her bottom, where she was sure it was headed.

Sian felt suddenly and violently sick. She cleared her throat and wiped her forehead, which was damp. The pieces of the jigsaw seemed to fly around her head and then fit into place. Fiona’s cageyness when she’d rung and asked for Gus; the fact that he had hardly spoken to her; the suspicion that she’d heard Melissa laugh in the background when she’d phoned. It all made sense. Melissa and Gus were going out with each other. What she and Gus had was just sex – fantastic sex, but apparently nothing more. Not for him, anyway.

‘Are you OK, Sian? You look like a goose walked over your grave.’

Sian shook her head quickly. ‘Oh, I’m fine. I just – I just felt a bit odd.’ And with one quick look back at the doorway they’d so happily disappeared through she climbed into the car, all the excitement and fun of the evening destroyed.

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ asked Jody as she let Sian and Rory out at their front door. ‘You still look a bit pale.’

‘Oh, it’s just a bit of indigestion. I always forget the effect that jalapeño chillies have on me. I like them—’

‘But they don’t like you,’ said Jody, ‘as our grandmothers used to say.’

Sian managed a laugh. ‘I’ll find something for it when I’ve got Rory into bed. It’ll be a quick shower in the morning for him, I think, rather than a bath now.’

Rory, tired and full of pizza, obligingly agreed. After teeth-brushing and one story, he was happy to be tucked up. Sian went downstairs and put the television on without taking in what the programme was. But she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even work, which had always distracted her from the biggest of problems. So in the end she gave up and went to bed, haunted by the image of Gus and Melissa together.

In the morning, when she’d taken Rory to school and sidestepped offers of coffee with other mothers, she came straight home and picked up the telephone. She couldn’t just hang around waiting for Gus to get in touch, wondering if possibly she’d got it wrong about him and Melissa – although how she could have, she didn’t know. No, she would be brave and ring Melissa, ask her about it. She had plenty of excuses to get in touch with her, after all.

‘Melissa! Hi! It’s Sian.’

‘Oh. Sian!’ said Melissa after the tiniest pause, which was long enough to make Sian wonder if Gus was with her.

‘Hi,’ she said again, ‘sorry to ring so early, but I just wanted to check dates with you. When did you say the architect was coming round again?’

‘The architect? Oh! Sorry, wasn’t sure who you meant for a minute there. I’ll just check my diary.’

Sian strained for sounds of whispering while Melissa went for her diary but could hear none. She pushed aside the image of Gus in Melissa’s bed, waiting for her to come back to him.

After she had told Sian the date she said, ‘Right, sorry to be so dippy. I was out last night and drank far too many mojitos.’

Playing into my hands thought Sian. ‘Oh yes. I think I saw you, going into the Loca Boca or whatever it’s called.’

‘Did you?’ Melissa sounded embarrassed.

‘Yes, what was it like?’

‘What?’ She sounded almost panicked now.

‘The cocktail bar?’

‘Oh, lovely! You should definitely try it. Really nice. Cute guys working there too. They juggle and everything. Like that film.’

‘Cool!’ Sian found herself imitating Melissa’s girlish tones. ‘And was that Gus with you?’

‘Angus? Er, yes! We had a great evening, he’s such fun.’

‘He can be, can’t he?’ This time it was harder to keep the acid out of her voice. Hearing it, Sian decided it was time to ring off. ‘Anyway, got to dash. I’m
sooo
busy!’