“It’s between more than the two of you. What about Ellie and Alex?”
“What about them? They’re fine, thank you very much.”
Roger stood up slowly and shrugged his elegant shoulders. “All right,” he said. “All right. But just you be sure you know what you’re doing, Lizzie. Just don’t let the game get away from you. The stakes are pretty bloody high.” Then he turned, picked up his Tupperware, and let himself out of the house.
Lizzie’s friend Maria Dennison and her fiancé, Laurence Hendershott, lived in a small house in the Back Ends of Laingtree village. Maria and Laurence had caused a mild scandal in the village five years ago when he’d moved in with her, selling up his flat in Cheltenham and parking his tiny car in her driveway, alongside the well-known black convertible she’d been driving around the countryside for years.
It wasn’t so much that Maria and Laurence hadn’t bothered to get married. It was more that nobody had expected Maria to pull a boyfriend out of the hat in the first place. People had expected Maria to soldier on alone in her small house, perhaps accompanied by a ginger cat or sensible dog, growing ever so slightly more eccentric as the years went by.
Maria, the only vet in a five-mile radius, worked out of a tiny animal hospital next door to the doctor’s surgery, just across from her house. Lizzie had liked her from the moment they’d been introduced at the annual church fete, during the summer she and James got married. Maria had looked so straightforward and no-nonsense in her jeans and T-shirt, with her honest brown hair caught back in a schoolgirlish ponytail. But she only got to know her well after Laurence moved in with her, because Laurence and James, who met playing cricket for the local team that summer, took to each other immediately.
Laurence was a big quiet man with a full beard and warm eyes — the sort of chap you’d want to be stranded on a desert island with, not because he was sexy but because he looked as if he’d know how to make a cabin out of palm trees, or quickly knock together a seaworthy raft out of dried rushes, or catch a tuna fish with his bare hands. Disappointingly, he worked as an actuary, a job that sounded so stupefyingly dull that Lizzie always forebore to ask him anything about it.
The Buckleys had spent many evenings with Maria and Laurence, preferring to lounge around in their untidy kitchen eating Laurence’s goulash than to attend the smart dinner parties of the young married set in Laingtree and surrounding villages.
Lizzie had last seen Maria on the miserably cold day she’d left Laingtree for Sevenoaks. That day, while Lizzie raced about shoving things into suitcases and boxes, Maria had distracted the children with games and new toys. She’d even provided ham and cheese sandwiches (for Alex and Ellie), not to mention tissues, aspirins, and Rescue Remedy (for Lizzie). Just the sight of Maria sitting calmly on an old blanket in the garden, doing her level best to keep the twins away from their frantic mother, had brought tears of gratitude to Lizzie’s eyes.
Now, as Lizzie drew up alongside Maria’s house, she felt a sort of shyness come over her. It had been so long since they’d seen each other face-to-face, and Lizzie had left in such high drama. She felt slightly silly to be back again, so tamely, and with nothing resolved.
But as she opened the car door, Maria was already walking down the garden path to meet her.
“Lizzie! Christ, it’s good to see you. It’s been like a morgue around here without you lot. Come on, let’s get you inside with your feet up and a drink in your hands. Sorry I didn’t pop round to the cottage today. I was working flat out. Saturday’s my busy day now — most people can only get their creatures in to see me after work or over the weekend.”
Maria normally didn’t chatter so much, bless her, but she was obviously trying to give Lizzie time to deal with her watery eyes.
In the kitchen, Laurence hailed her with a silently raised glass of Guinness, then set about pouring a stiff gin and tonic. As usual, dinner — poached Atlantic salmon with a white wine sauce — was better than most meals you’d get in a restaurant. But for the first time ever in that kitchen, Lizzie found the dinner conversation a bit stilted. Laurence was trying very hard not to mention James, and Maria kept telling long stories about various beasts she’d treated in the last month or so, which made Lizzie uneasy because Maria didn’t generally talk much about her work.
When the plates had been cleared, Laurence stood up, flexed his grizzly bear shoulders, and said, “I’ll take a stroll down to the pub, then. See you later.” Lizzie could have hugged him for his heavy-handed tact.
The minute he was out of the door, Maria stopped fussing with the dishwasher and came back to the table, glass of white wine in hand.
“So how are you
really
, Liz?” she asked. “You don’t look too bad. Bit of color in your cheeks, at least.”
Lizzie shrugged. “I’m okay,” she said. “Keeping my head above water. Has — has Laurence seen much of James?”
“Oh, he sees him once in a while. James pulled out of the cricket for the season — did you know? But Laurence calls him up now and then, asks him round to the pub.”
“Has he been round here? To dinner, or anything?”
Maria nodded, her ponytail bobbing. “Once or twice.”
Lizzie could feel a pulse beginning to beat in her throat. “Has he ever, erm, has he ever brought anyone with him?”
Maria looked at her with calm compassion. “No,” she said. “He always comes alone.”
The relief made Lizzie grin like a lunatic. “That’s great. That’s fantastic. Look, would you do me a favor? Keep on asking him over, and if he ever shows up with someone — you know, a woman — let me know. Okay?”
Maria swirled the wine in her glass, then took a slow sip. “You’re asking me to spy on him?”
“ Well — not exactly
spy
. Just keep me posted. If he starts seeing someone, I think I’m entitled to know.”
“Wouldn’t he tell you?”
Lizzie shrugged. “I don’t know. His PA, Sonja, I don’t think you’ve ever met her — she seems to be cozying up to him. I swear, I’ve had more conversations with Sonja recently about the children and Mill House than I’ve had with James.”
“He’s never said anything about her to me. I’ll ask Laurence if he ever mentions the name.”
“So — you’re going to spy for me?”
Maria sipped her wine again, then gave a big, slow smile. “I’ll spy for you if you’ll do something for me.”
“What?”
“Start looking after yourself again. Do something with that hair. Put on a bit of makeup. Sit up and take a bit of notice.”
Later on Lizzie took a long, thoughtful soak in the tub. Maria had given her carte blanche to use whatever bathroom supplies took her fancy. Bemused by the range — who’d have thought Maria would be a connoisseur of bath products? — Lizzie found herself trying out a sea salt and ginger exfoliating cream. As she rinsed off, she had a sudden image of herself as an elderly lizard shedding an even more elderly skin. Finding a slightly rusted plastic razor in her own toiletry bag, she set to work on her legs and armpits, half fearful that she’d clog the plug with the thickets of excess hair that were coming off. How odd — she couldn’t have looked at her own armpits for weeks, possibly months.
As she snuggled down in the narrow bed in Maria’s spare room, Lizzie was astonished at how smooth the sheets felt against her bare legs. She was put in mind of the first time she’d ever shaved her legs, when she was about thirteen, and how her worn old cotton sheets had suddenly felt like satin.
Drifting off to sleep under Maria’s down duvet, Lizzie was visited by a minor revelation. It was suddenly crystal clear to her that the mums of Chipstead nursery hadn’t shunned her in the beginning because they’d spotted at a glance that she suffered from terminal personality defects. No. They’d shunned her because she looked like a bag lady. But then they’d found out about her broken marriage, and everything changed. Because a woman whose husband has walked out on her has a right to an unmade-up face, greasy hair, and unlaundered clothes.
The relief of finally solving this riddle was balm to Lizzie’s troubled soul. With a little smile playing about her lips, she fell into a deep and healing sleep.
The work at Mill House went quickly the next day, with Maria there to help. By two in the afternoon, Lizzie had thrown away or bagged up for charity almost as much as she’d packed. As she and Maria stood gazing at the rubble piled up in the skip, Lizzie felt an unexpected sense of relief and even virtue, as if she’d purged herself of past folly and was not only cleansed but also, in some weird sense, free to start all over again.
Throwing a last bag of odds and ends onto the pile, Lizzie rubbed her hands together in satisfaction. “Done,” she said. “Let’s go back and celebrate.”
As they pulled away, Lizzie looked out of her rearview mirror at Mill House. “It was always too postcard-pretty for me anyway,” she said.
Maria, wedged among the black bags of clothes and toys bound for Oxfam, wisely said nothing at all.
Out in Maria’s small, untidy back garden, as they sat sipping Earl Grey and eating Hobnobs straight from the bag, Maria suddenly asked, “You’re still coming to the wedding, right?”
Lizzie almost choked on a wodge of biscuit. “Christ! The wedding!”
Maria pulled a face. “Come on, Lizzie, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about it?”
Lizzie took a quick slug of tea. “Forgotten? Good grief, of course not. It’s just — I hadn’t really thought about it much lately.”
“Well, that’s not surprising, really. Anyway, Laurence says James is still prepared to be best man.”
Lizzie’s eyes began to bulge. She knew what was coming next.
“Are you still okay with matron of honor?”
Maria and Laurence were getting married at the end of August. She’d known this for almost a year now. The date had always seemed so hazily distant that she’d shelved it away in her mind as something to be thought about much, much later. But she did of course remember, quite clearly now that Maria mentioned it, that she’d promised to play the bride’s sidekick. Maria had asked her in September last year, in this very garden, over cocktails and a lovely dip made with cream cheese, pesto, and sun- dried tomatoes. Lizzie even remembered how apologetic Maria had been about not including the twins in the wedding as flower girl and page boy. “Only we’ve decided to make it an evening thing, no kids allowed,” she’d explained, slightly red in the face.
Back then, Lizzie’d had no inkling that by the following summer it would be awkward for her to play matron of honor to Laurence’s choice of best man.
Lizzie took a deep breath. “Bloody hell, Maria. You’re not going to hold me to it?”
Maria gave her most winning smile. “No, sweetheart, of course not. Not if you don’t want me to.”
“But?”
“But I’d still love you to do it, obviously. I mean, if you’re coming to the wedding anyway, why not be matron of honor?”
“Shit, Maria. Tongues will be flapping.”
“Tongues are always flapping. It’s the nature of tongues. All kinds of people know you’re supposed to be matron of honor. They’ll think you chickened out if you don’t do it.”
“Yeah, well, I
feel
like chickening out.”
“Okay, it’s your decision. I’ll give you till the end of the week. If I don’t hear from you by then, I’ll ask someone else.”
“Who?” Lizzie was curious. It seemed to her that Maria didn’t have any confidantes in Laingtree, besides herself.
“What, you think I don’t have any mates?” Maria asked with mock indignation. “Don’t worry, I can rustle up a substitute, even at short notice. But if you are going to do it, you’ll need to have dress fittings and so on.”
Lizzie studied her friend for a moment. It was so odd to hear sensible, denim-clad Maria say “dress fittings.”
“What made you decide to get married?” she asked suddenly. “You and Laurence — why do you feel you need that piece of paper? It’s not public pressure, surely? I mean, apart from a few old bats, nobody thinks twice about you living together — do they?”
Maria put her teacup down carefully. “It’s not the piece of paper,” she said. Pulling her ponytail over her shoulder, she began to stroke it gently. “We’re getting married because we want to. Well, I suppose there’re two things we want. We want the big party, the celebration of us being a couple. And then we want the total commitment of marriage.”
Lizzie frowned, still puzzled. “But you
are
totally committed. Have been for years. Everybody knows it. And — well, I just thought you were so unconventional. I didn’t think you’d go in for the wedding dress and the wedding cake and all that stuff. It just doesn’t seem like
you
. Oh, and by the way — who says marriage is about total commitment? Look at me and James.”
Maria shook her head. “You and James. Somebody needs to bash your heads together, that’s all I can say. But anyway, think about the matron of honor thing. I’d really like to have you. No pressure, of course.”
Lizzie gave a crooked grin. “No pressure at all. Look, I don’t need a week to think about it. I’ll do it, of course I will.”
S
tanding with Tessa amid a crowd of restless runners, some jogging on the spot, others stretching and lunging, Lizzie forgot all about Sarah and the children on a picnic blanket under an oak tree somewhere, eating Maltesers. Her heart was galloping and her hands were slick with sweat as she wrung them together anxiously.
She couldn’t believe it. She, Lizzie Buckley, was in a race. A race!
She felt as jittery as a thoroughbred at Ascot for the first time. Perhaps she’d astonish everybody and take off like a greyhound, leaving far more seasoned runners coughing in her dust. The way she felt at this moment, anything was possible!
“Lizzie!”
“What?”
“Lizzie, get moving! We’re off! They’ve started us!”
“Oh God, I didn’t hear the whistle.”
“Just get moving! Come on!”
Lizzie felt as if the crowd were sweeping her along, without any effort from her own legs. The throng of runners was moving as one, a human wave, carrying Lizzie in its midst like a piece of flotsam. It was marvelous! She’d be able to run like this for hours, let alone the thirty or so minutes required to finish the five kilometers.