Windfallen (34 page)

“I haven’t seen them.” She put the cup down on a paint-splattered packing case.

“We didn’t take the car out, did we?”

“You know we didn’t. We passed it in the drive as we came back in. You stroked it, remember?”

“That’s middle age for you,” he muttered. “You start seeing beauty in your car. It’ll be leather jackets next.”

“And hair dye. And prepubescent girlfriends.”

He’d been a bit quiet after that.

Daisy left him searching the room while she tried to locate her mobile phone, which, she eventually realized, was ringing in her jacket. No one would ring this late. Unless it was Daniel. She flung her jacket around, trying to get into the right pocket, feeling curiously fearful as she did so that Daniel might guess she had a man in the house.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

Daisy’s face fell.

“You can tell Mr. Jones that I’ll bring his car keys back tomorrow. I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to drive, and I didn’t think you were in a position to tell him. Working for him and all.”

She slid down the wall, the phone only half to her ear.

“I’ll be around about eightish. Ellie’s bottles are made up in the fridge.”

“But where’s he going to sleep?”

“He can walk back down to the Riviera. Or kip on the sofa. He’s a big boy.”

Daisy turned her phone off and, pushing herself upright again, walked back into the drawing room. Jones had apparently given up on his search and was slumped on the dust-sheeted sofa, his legs stretched out in front of him.

“Mrs. Bernard has your keys,” she said tentatively.

It took some seconds to register.

“Not by mistake,” she added.

“Bloody woman. Oh, Christ,” he said, rubbing at his face. “I’ve got a bloody meeting at seven forty-five. How am I meant to get back to London now?”

Daisy felt suddenly very tired, the previously convivial, fluid atmosphere having somehow dissipated with the telephone call. She had not been up later than 10
P.M
. for weeks, and it was now creeping toward midnight.

“She suggested you get a room at the Riviera.”

Daisy sat on the edge of the chair, gazing at the sofa opposite. “Or you could stay here. I’m quite happy on the sofa.”

He looked at it.

“I don’t think you’d quite fit on it,” she added. “Ellie gets up early, so we could wake you.” She yawned, rubbed at her face.

He looked at her, a more sober, level kind of look. “I’m not going knocking on the door of the Riviera now. But I can’t turf you out of your bed.”

“I can’t let you sleep on this sofa. You’re twice as long as it is.”

“Do you never stop arguing? If you sleep on the sofa and I sleep in your room, what happens if the baby wakes up in the night?”

She hadn’t thought of that.

He leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands. Then he lifted his face and grinned, a broad, piratical grin.

“Christ, Daisy. What a pair of drunken fools, eh?”

His smile changed his whole face. He looked mischievous, somebody’s reprobate uncle. She felt herself suddenly relax again.

“I came up here to bloody fire you. Now look. What a pair of drunken fools. . . .”

“You’re the boss. I was only following orders.”

“Only following orders. Yes . . .” He got up, began to lumber his way toward the stairs. “Look,” he said, turning, “tell me if I’m out of line here. But there’s a double bed here, right?”

“Yes.”

“You go one side, I’ll go the other. No funny stuff, both of us keep our clothes on, and tomorrow morning we’ll say no more about it. That way we both get a decent night’s rest.”

“Fine,” she said, yawning again, so that her eyes watered. Daisy was so tired she would have agreed to sleeping in Ellie’s crib.

“One thing,” murmured Jones as he collapsed onto the bed, his shoes kicked off, his tie loosened. Daisy lay on the other side, knowing that his presence should have made her feel uncomfortable and self-conscious, but somehow she was too drunk and tired to care.

“What?” she muttered into the dark, remembering, and not entirely caring, that she’d forgotten to take off her makeup.

“As my employee you get to make the coffee in the morning.”

“Only if you agree to the handmade windows.”

She heard a muffled expletive.

Daisy grinned, shoved her hands under the pillow, and passed out.

O
NCE UPON A TIME SHE HAD THOUGHT THAT
D
ANIEL’S
return would cause her to burst, that on seeing him she would literally explode with relief and joy, that she would fizz like a Catherine wheel, send shimmering sparks skyward like a rocket. But now Daisy knew that it wasn’t like that at all; Daniel’s presence back in her life felt simply like the return of a very deep peace, the stemming of an ache that had embedded itself into her bones. It was like coming home. That was how someone had once described finding love to her, and Daisy, now resting in his arms, knew it to be true also of its restoration. It was like coming home.

She shifted slightly, and the arm, wrapped tightly around her so that its fingers entwined with her own, moved accommodatingly. She’d longed to feel that weight on her. When she was pregnant, it had felt too heavy, almost intrusive, and she’d kept to her own side of the bed, propped and supported by pillows. After Ellie it had been a reassuring reminder that he was still there. That he was still there.

But Daniel wasn’t there.

Daisy’s eyes opened, allowing the blurred shapes to come slowly into focus, trying to adjust to the chill eastern light of morning. Her eyes felt dry, gritty, and her tongue had swollen to fill the entire cavity of her mouth. The room, she knew, swallowing arduously, was hers. A few feet away Ellie stirred in her crib, speeding the too-short journey from Daisy’s deep sleep toward wakefulness, the daylight winking through the crack in the curtains onto her blankets. Outside, a car door slammed, and below on the path someone called out. One of the builders, probably. Daisy lifted her head, noting that it was a quarter past seven, and the hand slid down her side and finally dropped away.

Daniel wasn’t there.

Daisy pushed herself upright abruptly, her brain joining her a split second later. Beside her a dark head lay on the pillow, its hair thatched in sleep. She sat very still and stared at it, at the rumpled shirt attached to it, struggling to think back, piecing together the jumble of words and images. And gradually, with the inevitable force of a slow-motion punch, it hit her. It wasn’t Daniel. The arm hadn’t been Daniel’s. He hadn’t come back.

The peace wasn’t hers.

And suddenly, noisily, Daisy burst into tears.

I
T WAS OBVIOUS WHAT HAD HAPPENED
, M
RS
. B
ERNARD
thought as, in a bad-tempered spray of gravel, the rear of the Saab disappeared down the drive and toward London. You didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to work it out. The two of them had been barely able to look at each other when she came in, Daisy clutching the child in front of her like a shield, all tear-stained and pale. He, meanwhile, had looked fed up and anxious to get away. And like a man with an extremely bad hangover, which, of course, with all those silly headache pills, was what he was.

There had been all that electricity between them the night before, all that conspiratorial joking, as if they’d known each other years, not days. And the sofa, she noted as soon as she walked in, had evidently not been slept on.

“Always a price to pay for mixing business with pleasure,” she had said to him as she handed him his keys. She meant the drinking, but he’d given her a hard look—the kind of look he probably used to intimidate his staff. Mrs. Bernard just smiled. She was much too tough a bird to be frightened by the likes of him. “See you soon, Mr. Jones,” she said.

“I doubt it’ll be soon,” he replied, and with hardly a glance in Daisy’s direction, he’d climbed into his car and left. As he started the car, it was entirely possible he had mouthed the exclamation “Women!” to himself.

“What a daft mummy you’ve got,” Mrs. Bernard told Ellie quietly as they walked around the garden and back toward the house. “I think she took my advice a bit too literally, don’t you? No wonder she’s in such a mess.”

A shame, really. For in his drunken state, as he saw her out of the house the previous evening, Jones had confided in the older woman that Daisy was a bit of a revelation to him, not the sad sap he’d initially had her down as or even the ballbreaker she’d tried to present herself as. Simply, as he put it, shaking his head in surprise, “A lovely girl.”

C
amille smoothed the algae wrap over Mrs. Martigny’s bulk, running her hands along her stomach and back again to ensure even coverage. In places it had already started to dry, and she used her fingers to push more of the muddy unguent around, like someone smearing tomato sauce onto unbaked pizza dough. Then, swiftly, she pulled off a length of plastic wrap, smoothing it over the top of Mrs. Martigny’s stomach and around each thigh before covering her with two warm towels, still fresh enough to smell of fabric softener. The movements had a languorous, precise rhythm, and Camille’s hands were sure and swift. It was a job she could have done in her sleep. Which was just as well. Because her mind was far away, still locked into a conversation she’d had several hours earlier.

“Do you need any help?” said Tess, poking her head around the door so that the looped tape of whale noises and electronic relaxation music oozed in through the gap. “I’ve got ten minutes before Mrs. Forster’s highlights have got to come out.”

“No, we’re fine. Unless you want some tea or coffee. A drink, Mrs. Martigny?”

“Not for me, Camille dear. I’m just drifting off nicely under here.”

Camille did not need some help. What she
was
going to need was a job. She closed the door on Mrs. Martigny and her twenty-minute anticellulite wrap, digesting Kay’s apologetic words of earlier that morning, feeling the black clouds that she’d staved off for so long finally gather ruinously around her head. “I’m really sorry, Camille. I know you love this place—and you’re one of the best beauticians I’ve ever worked with. But John has always wanted to move back to Chester, and now that he’s retired, I don’t feel I can really say no. To be honest, I think the change will do us good.”

“So when are you selling?” Camille had tried to keep her face blank, her manner upbeat.

“Well, I haven’t told Tess or anyone else yet, but I was going to put it on the market this week. And hopefully we can sell it as a going concern, so that the two of you can keep your jobs. But between us, Camille, I don’t think Tess will stick around for long. She’s got itchy feet. You can tell.”

“Yes.” Camille attempted a smile. Neither of them said the unspoken, about her own job prospects.

“I’m sorry, love. I’ve dreaded telling you.” Kay’s hand reached out and touched Camille’s arm. A tentative, apologetic gesture.

“Don’t be silly. You must do what you think is right. No point hanging around here if you’d rather be somewhere else.”

“Well, my son’s up there, as you know.”

“It’s good to be near your family.”

“I have missed him. And now his Deborah is expecting. Did I tell you that?”

Camille had made the right, encouraging noises. She heard her voice from far off, as if it belonged to someone else, approving, exclaiming, reassuring, all the while frantically making internal calculations about what this was really going to mean.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Hal had told her the previous night that if he didn’t get a commission in the next ten days he was going to have to admit defeat and wind up the business. He’d said it in a curiously flat, unemotional tone, but when she reached for him that night, attempted to comfort him, he pushed her gently away, his rigid back a silent rebuke. She did not persist. She never did now. Let him come back to you at his own pace, that was what the counselor had said. She didn’t say what Camille should do if he didn’t come back.

Camille sat very still outside the treatment room, only half hearing the sounds she usually found a comfort: the muffled explosions of the blow-dryer, soft-soled shoes shuffling along the wood floor, the broken rhythms of human chatter.

Her losing her job would not be his fault. But he would use it as another stick with which to beat himself, another brace with which to widen the gap between them. I can’t tell him now, she thought. I can’t do that to him.

“You all right, Camille?”

“Fine thanks, Tess.”

“I’ve just booked Mrs. Green in for an aromatherapy facial on Tuesday. You were a bit booked up, so I offered to do it myself, but, no, I wouldn’t do. She said she wanted to have a word with you about something.” Tess laughed good-humoredly. “I’d love to know what these women tell you, Camille. I reckon one day you’re going to make a fantastic source for the
News of the World.
”

“What?”

“All their affairs and stuff. I know you’re very discreet, but I bet this town is a right old hotbed of bad behavior underneath.”

A
QUARTER OF A MILE ALONG THE COAST
, D
AISY SAT ON
a small, turfed outcrop, a few feet above a shingly cove, Ellie sleeping beside her in her stroller. The sky was bright and still, the waves bobbing politely, tiptoeing their way backward and forward across the beach. In her hand she held the letter.

She didn’t cry. She felt too cold to cry.