‘You don’t have children, do you,’ Esther says, making it a statement rather than a question.
‘No, not yet. We thought we’d enjoy a couple of years on our own first.’
‘Why, how long have you been married?’ Her voice registers surprise.
‘A year,’ I admit.
‘It was their anniversary last week,’ Diane chips in.
‘And I’m still not ready to share my beautiful wife with anyone else,’ Jack says, refilling her glass.
I watch, momentarily distracted, as a tiny splash of champagne misses the glass and lands on the knee of his pristine chinos.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Esther begins, her curiosity getting the better of her, ‘but were either of you married before?’
She sounds as if she wants the answer to be yes, as if to find a disgruntled ex-husband or wife lurking in the background would be proof that we’re less than perfect.
‘No, neither of us were,’ I say.
She glances at Jack and I know she’s wondering how someone so good-looking managed to stay unattached for so long. Sensing her eyes on him, Jack smiles good-naturedly.
‘I must admit that at forty years old, I’d begun to despair of ever finding the perfect woman. But as soon as I saw Grace, I knew she was the one I’d been waiting for.’
‘So romantic,’ sighs Diane, who already knows the story of how Jack and I met. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of women I tried to set Jack up with but no one would do until he met Grace.’
‘What about you, Grace?’ Esther asks.‘Was it love at first sight for you too?’
‘Yes,’ I say, remembering.‘It was.’
Overwhelmed by the memory, I stand up a little too quickly and Jack’s head swivels towards me. ‘The soufflés,’ I explain calmly. ‘They should be done now. Are you all ready to sit down?’
Spurred on by Diane, who tells them that soufflés wait for no one, they drain their glasses and make for the table. Esther, however, stops on the way for a closer look at Fireflies and, when Jack joins her rather than urge her to sit down, I breathe a sigh of relief that the soufflés are no way near ready. If they were, I would be near to tears with stress at the delay, especially when he starts explaining some of the different techniques I used to create the painting.
When they eventually sit down five minutes later, the soufflés are cooked to perfection. As Diane expresses her amazement, Jack smiles at me from the other end of the table and tells everyone that I am very clever indeed.
It’s during evenings like this that I’m reminded of why I fell in love with Jack. Charming, amusing and intelligent, he knows exactly what to say and how to say it. Because Esther and Rufus are newcomers, he makes sure that the conversation as we eat our soufflés is for their benefit. He prompts Diane and Adam into revealing information about themselves that will help our new friends, such as where they shop and the sports they play. Although Esther listens politely to their list of leisure activities, the names of their gardeners and babysitters, the best place to buy fish, I know that I am the one who interests her, and I know she’s going to return to the fact that Jack and I have come relatively late to marriage, hoping to find something – anything – to tell her it is not as perfect as it seems. Unfortunately for her, she’s going to be disappointed.
She waits until Jack has carved the Beef Wellington and served it with a gratin of potatoes, and carrots lightly glazed with honey.There are also tiny sugar peas, which I plunged into boiling water just before taking the beef from the oven. Diane marvels that I’ve managed to get everything ready at the same time, and admits she always chooses a main course like curry, which can be prepared earlier and heated through at the last minute. I’d like to tell her that I’d much rather do as she does, that painstaking calculations and sleepless nights are the currency I pay to serve such a perfect dinner. But the alternative – serving anything that is less than perfect – isn’t an option.
Esther looks at me from across the table. ‘So where did you and Jack meet?’
‘In Regent’s Park,’ I say.‘One Sunday afternoon.’
‘Tell her what happened,’ urges Diane, her pale skin flushed from the champagne.
I hesitate a moment, because it’s a story I have told before. But it’s one that Jack loves to hear me tell, so it’s in my interest to repeat it. Luckily, Esther comes to my rescue. Mistaking my pause for reticence, she pounces.
‘Please do,’ she urges.
‘Well, at the risk of boring those who have already heard it before,’ I begin, with an apologetic smile, ‘I was in the park with my sister Millie. We often go there on a Sunday afternoon and that Sunday there happened to be a band playing. Millie loves music and she was enjoying herself so much that she got up from her seat and began to dance in front of the bandstand. She had recently learnt to waltz and, as she danced, she stretched her arms out in front of her, as if she was dancing with someone.’ I find myself smiling at the memory and wish desperately that life was still as simple, still as innocent. ‘Although people were generally indulgent, happy to see Millie enjoying herself,’ I go on, ‘I could see that one or two were uncomfortable and I knew I should do something, call her back to her seat perhaps. But there was a part of me that was loath to because—’
‘How old is your sister?’ Esther interrupts.
‘Seventeen.’ I pause a moment, unwilling to face reality. ‘Nearly eighteen.’
Esther raises her eyebrows. ‘She’s something of an attention seeker, then.’
‘No, she’s not, it’s just that…’
‘Well, she must be. I mean, people don’t usually get up and dance in a park, do they?’ She looks around the table triumphantly and when everyone avoids her eye I can’t help feeling sorry for her.
‘Millie has Down’s syndrome.’ Jack’s voice breaks the awkward silence that has descended on the table. ‘It means she’s often wonderfully spontaneous.’
Confusion floods Esther’s face and I feel annoyed that the people who told her everything else about me didn’t mention Millie.
‘Anyway, before I could decide what to do,’ I say, coming to her rescue, ‘this perfect gentleman got up from his seat, went over to where Millie was dancing, bowed and held out his hand to her. Well, Millie was delighted and, as they began to waltz, everybody started applauding and then other couples got up from their seats and started to dance too. It was a very, very special moment.And, of course, I fell immediately in love with Jack for having made it happen.’
‘What Grace didn’t know at the time was that I had seen her and Millie in the park the week before and had immediately fallen in love with her. She was so attentive to Millie, so utterly selfless. I had never seen that sort of devotion in anybody before and I was determined to get to know her.’
‘And what Jack didn’t know at the time,’ I say in turn, ‘was that I had noticed him the week before but never thought he would be interested in someone like me.’
It amuses me when everybody nods their head in agreement. Even though I am attractive, Jack’s film-star good looks mean that people think I’m lucky he wanted to marry me. But that isn’t what I meant.
‘Grace doesn’t have any other brothers and sisters so she thought the fact that Millie will one day be her sole responsibility would discourage me,’ Jack explains.
‘As it had others,’ I point out.
Jack shakes his head. ‘On the contrary, it was the knowledge that Grace would do anything for Millie that made me realise she was the woman I’d been looking for all my life. In my line of work, it’s easy to become demoralised with the human race.’
‘I saw from the paper yesterday that congratulations are in order again,’ Rufus says, raising his glass in Jack’s direction.
‘Yes, well done.’ Adam, who is a lawyer in the same firm as Jack, joins in. ‘Another conviction under your belt.’
‘It was a fairly cut-and-dried case,’ Jack says modestly. ‘Although proving that my client hadn??
?t inflicted the wounds herself, given that she had a penchant for self-harm, made it a little more difficult.’
‘But, generally speaking, aren’t cases of abuse usually easy to prove?’ Rufus asks, while Diane tells Esther, in case she doesn’t already know, that Jack champions the underdog – more specifically, battered wives. ‘I don’t want to detract from the wonderful work you do, but there is often physical evidence, or witnesses, are there not?’
‘Jack’s forte is getting the victims to trust him enough to tell him what has been going on,’ Diane, who I suspect of being a little in love with Jack, explains.‘Many women don’t have anybody to turn to and are scared they won’t be believed.’
‘He also makes sure that the perpetrators go down for a very long time,’ adds Adam.
‘I have nothing but contempt for men who are found to be violent towards their wives,’ Jack says firmly.‘They deserve everything they get.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ Rufus raises his glass again.
‘He’s never lost a case yet, have you, Jack?’ says Diane.
‘No, and I don’t intend to.’
‘An unbroken track record – that’s quite something,’ muses Rufus, impressed.
Esther looks over at me. ‘Your sister – Millie – is quite a bit younger than you,’ she remarks, bringing the conversation back to where we left off.
‘Yes, there are seventeen years between us. Millie didn’t come along until my mother was forty-six. It didn’t occur to her she was pregnant at first so it was a bit of a shock to find she was going to be a mother again.’
‘Does Millie live with your parents?’
‘No, she boards at a wonderful school in North London. But she’ll be eighteen in April, so she’ll have to leave it this summer, which is a shame because she loves it there.’
‘So where will she go? To your parents’?’
‘No.’ I pause for a moment, because I know that what I am about to say will shock her. ‘They live in New Zealand.’
Esther does a double take.‘New Zealand?’
‘Yes. They retired there last year, just after our wedding.’
‘I see,’ she says. But I know she doesn’t.
‘Millie will be moving in with us,’ Jack explains. He smiles over at me. ‘I knew it would be a condition to Grace accepting to marry me and it was one that I was more than happy to comply with.’
‘That’s very generous of you,’ Esther says.
‘Not at all—I’m delighted that Millie will be living here. It will add another dimension to our lives, won’t it, darling?’
I lift my glass and take a sip of my wine so that I don’t have to answer.
‘You obviously get on well with her,’ Esther remarks.
‘Well, I hope she’s as fond of me as I am of her – although it did take her a while once Grace and I were actually married.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I think the reality of our marriage was a shock to her,’ I tell her.‘She had adored Jack from the beginning, but when we came back from our honeymoon and she realised that he was going to be with me the whole time, she became jealous. She’s fine now, though. Jack is once again her favourite person.’
‘Thankfully George Clooney has taken my place as Millie’s object of dislike,’ Jack laughs.
‘George Clooney?’ Esther queries.
‘Yes.’ I nod, glad that Jack has brought it up. ‘I had this thing about him…’
‘Don’t we all?’ murmurs Diane.
‘… and Millie was so jealous that when some friends gave me a George Clooney calendar for Christmas one year, she scrawled on it “I don’t like George Clooney”, except that she spelt it phonetically – J-O-R-J K-O-O-N-Y – she has a bit of trouble with the “L”,’ I explain.‘It was so sweet.’
Everyone laughs.
‘And now she never stops telling everyone that she likes me but she doesn’t like him. It’s become a bit of a mantra— “I like you, Jack, but I don’t like George Cooney”.’ Jack smiles. ‘I must admit that I’m quite flattered at being mentioned in the same breath,’ he adds modestly.
Esther looks at him. ‘You know, you do look a bit like him.’
‘Except that Jack is much better looking.’Adam grins. ‘You can’t believe how relieved we all were when he married Grace. At least it stopped the women in the office fantasising about him – and some of the men too,’ he adds laughingly.
Jack sighs good-naturedly.‘That’s enough, Adam.’
‘You don’t work, do you?’ Esther says, turning back to me. I detect in her voice the thinly veiled scorn that working women reserve for those who don’t, and feel compelled to defend myself.
‘I used to, but I gave up my job just before Jack and I got married.’
‘Really?’ Esther frowns.‘Why?’
‘She didn’t want to,’ Jack intervenes. ‘But she had a high-powered job and I didn’t want to come home exhausted and find that Grace was just as exhausted as I was. It was perhaps selfish of me to ask her to give up her job but I wanted to be able to come home and offload the stress of my day rather than be offloaded onto. She also travelled quite a lot and I didn’t want to come home to an empty house, as I already had done for many years.’
‘What was your job?’ Esther asks, fixing me with her pale-blue eyes.
‘I was a buyer for Harrods.’
The flicker in her eyes tells me she’s impressed.The fact that she doesn’t ask me to expand tells me that she’s not going to show it yet.
‘She used to travel all over the world first class,’ Diane says breathlessly.
‘Not all over the world,’ I correct. ‘Just to South America. I sourced their fruit, mainly from Chile and Argentina,’ I add, largely for Esther’s benefit.
Rufus looks at me admiringly.‘That must have been interesting.’
‘It was.’ I nod.‘I loved every minute of it.’
‘You must miss it, then.’ Another statement from Esther.
‘No, not really,’ I lie. ‘I have plenty here to keep me occupied.’
‘And soon you’ll have Millie to look after.’
‘Millie is very independent and anyway, she’ll be working most of the time at Meadow Gate.’
‘The garden centre?’
‘Yes. She loves plants and flowers so she’s very lucky to have been offered the perfect job.’
‘So what will you do all day long?’
‘Much the same as I do now – you know, cooking, cleaning, gardening – when the weather permits.’
‘You’ll have to come for Sunday lunch next time and see the garden,’ says Jack.‘Grace has green fingers.’
‘Goodness,’ says Esther lightly.‘So many talents. I’m so glad I was offered a post at St Polycarp’s. I was getting quite bored being at home all day.’
‘When do you start?’
‘Next month. I’m replacing a teacher on maternity leave.’
I turn to Rufus. ‘Jack tells me you have a huge garden,’ I prompt and, while I serve more of the Beef Wellington, which, along with the vegetables, has been keeping warm on a hotplate, the conversation around the table revolves around landscaping rather than me.As everyone laughs and talks together, I find myself looking wistfully at the other women and wondering what it must be like to be Diane, or Esther, to not have someone like Millie to consider. I immediately feel guilty because I love Millie more than life itself and wouldn’t change her for the world. Just thinking about her gives me new resolve and I get purposefully to my feet.
‘Is everyone ready for dessert?’ I ask.
Jack and I clear the table and he follows me through to the kitchen, where I place the plates neatly in the sink to be rinsed off later while he tidies the carving knife away. The dessert I’ve made is a masterpiece – a perfect un cracked meringue nest three inches high, filled with whipped Devon cream. I fetch the fruit I prepared earlier and place slices of mango, pineapple, papaya and kiwi carefully onto the cream and then add strawberri
es, raspberries and blueberries.
As I pick up a pomegranate, the feel of it in my hand transports me back to another time, another place, where the warmth of the sun on my face and the chatter of excited voices were things I took for granted. I close my eyes briefly, remembering the life I used to have.
Conscious of Jack waiting, his hand outstretched, I hand the fruit to him. He slices it in half and then I scoop out the seeds with a spoon and sprinkle them over the rest of the fruit.The dessert complete, I carry it through to the dining room, where the exclamations that greet its arrival confirm that Jack was right to choose it over the chestnut and chocolate gateau I would have preferred to make.
‘Would you believe that Grace has never done a cookery course?’ Diane says to Esther, picking up her spoon. ‘I’m in awe of such perfection, aren’t you? Although I’m never going to get into the bikini I bought,’ she adds, groaning and patting her stomach through her navy linen dress.‘I shouldn’t really be eating this considering that we’ve just booked to go away this summer but it’s so delicious I can’t resist!’
‘Where are you going?’ Rufus asks.
‘Thailand,’ Adam tells him. ‘We were going to go to Vietnam but when we saw the photos of Jack and Grace’s latest holiday in Thailand, we decided to keep Vietnam for next year.’ He looks over at Diane and grins. ‘Once Diane had seen the hotel they stayed in, that was it.’
‘So are you going to the same hotel, then?’
‘No, it was fully booked. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of being able to go on holiday out of term-time.’
‘Make the most of it while you can,’ Esther says, turning to me.
‘I intend to.’
‘Are you going back to Thailand this year?’Adam asks.
‘Only if we can go before June, which isn’t likely with the Tomasin case coming up,’ says Jack. He looks meaningfully across the table at me. ‘After that, well, Millie will be with us.’