Peter smiled quickly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘A quick one.’
‘Great!’ Louise ushered him into the kitchen and sat him down at the table. ‘Have a crisp. Or an olive?’
‘Flowers?’ he said, in a pretend surprised voice. ‘The good napkins?’
Louise flinched. She knew he was taking the mickey out of her reluctant reaction to his efforts at dates at home. It made her cringe, thinking of the obvious way she’d rebuffed his advances.
She struggled to hide her reaction. No point getting into a row.
‘Of course! It’s your birthday, isn’t it? There you go,’ she said, putting the wine in front of him and pouring one for herself. ‘I’ve got you a few little things,’ she added, taking each present out of the bag and laying them in front of him, in order.
‘What’s this?’ Peter took a big slug of wine and viewed the pile suspiciously.
‘Presents. For you.’
‘You really shouldn’t have,’ he said. His face tightened. ‘I don’t think presents are going to change what’s happened. Do you?’
‘It’s not like that. I wanted to give you something from me,’ said Louise simply. ‘They’re not expensive. Do you remember how we used to get each other really sweet presents, when we didn’t have much money? This is . . . that sort of thing. Go on. Open the first one.’
He started to say something, then changed his mind. Quickly, as if he were humouring her just to get it over with, Peter slipped the ribbon off the first long, flat parcel and unfolded the tissue paper.
Louise held her breath.
‘Oh, it’s lovely . . .’ His face changed and he looked up at her, to show her he meant it. ‘It is lovely.’
It was a framed photograph of the three of them, not one of the expensive portraits they’d had done at the studio above the optician’s, but a snap Juliet had taken at their parents’ house on her phone. Toby was on Peter’s shoulders, laughing gleefully at Louise peeking round Peter’s back. They were a little triangle of love, their eyes only on each other.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll take that to work. Put it on my desk.’
Louise’s smile wavered. ‘You know you and Toby are my whole world, don’t you?’
‘Toby, maybe.’ He wasn’t looking at her.
‘You too. I mean it, Peter. We just need some time together as a couple, to connect again. I’ve talked to Mum about taking Toby if you can get some time off to go away together, maybe Venice? Or just—’
‘Is that another present?’ he said, pointing at a small package.
She pushed it over, and he pulled off the ribbon, then the tissue.
Inside was a box of Pregnacare vitamins, tied to a box of Wellman supplements.
Peter looked sardonically at her. ‘Nice idea, but I think you need more than just the tablets to make a baby.’
‘I know.’ Louise swallowed, conscious of the nights she’d pushed him away, out of guilt. ‘It’s to show you that I do want us to have another child. But I want to plan for it, and talk about it, so we don’t end up driving each other mad like we did when Toby came along.’
‘We drove each other mad?’
‘Yes, we did. We didn’t talk about anything other than him; we let being parents take over our lives; I lost sight of who I was, and what you meant to me.’ Her mouth was dry and she had to lick her lips. ‘I don’t want to make excuses, but I don’t know what I turned into. It was as if I was two totally separate people – Louise at home with Toby, being a mummy, and this other Louise, who just wanted some attention that didn’t involve nappies. That’s one of the reasons I was so desperate to go back to work, to make everything the way it was before. But now I know you can’t do that.’
‘Oh, I know that now,’ said Peter, his voice tense and metallic. ‘I’ve tried, these last weeks. I’ve tried to pretend it didn’t happen. I tried to blot it out of my mind, that photograph, knowing you wanted another man more than me, but I can’t. It’s changed everything.’
‘Not everything,’ said Louise. ‘It hasn’t changed me loving you, or Toby being the most wonderful thing in our lives.’ She paused. This wasn’t going right. He was supposed to be more thrilled about the baby idea.
Maybe I should just go, she thought, but Juliet’s face floated up in her mind, urging her on.
She put the next present in front of him; this was the ‘proper’ one. The one that she thought was really boring but which gadget-loving Peter had had on his wish list for ages.
‘What’s this?’ Peter asked, unwrapping more crossly now. ‘Oh great, sat nav.’
He didn’t sound that thrilled.
‘You said yours was getting a bit out of date. Look, I’ve programmed it so this is home. So you’ll always know where to come. Where we are.’ Louise knew she sounded desperate now.
‘Thanks,’ said Peter. He checked his watch.
‘One more.’ The final throw. Louise passed him a little box, wrapped up in a wonton knot of tissue.
He unfolded it; it was the ring box their wedding rings had come in.
‘Oh God, Louise, not . . .’
‘Open it.’
He met her eye and sighed, wearily. Then, because he really had no option, he opened it.
Inside were tiny rolls of paper, jammed into the gaps where the rings had been.
‘What’s this?’
‘Unroll them.’
Slowly, Peter unrolled the scraps of paper and read the numbers and letters. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘They’re passwords,’ said Louise bravely. ‘To my email, to my mobile, to my Internet banking, to my computer. Everything. I know I’ve broken your trust in me, and it’s going to take a lot for you to trust me again, but I swear to you, I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide. You can check up on me any time of the day or night – I don’t mind.’
‘I don’t want to police you . . .’ Peter looked horrified.
‘It’s not about that. It’s about me saying to you that you will never, ever have a reason to doubt me again.’ Louise stretched out her hands across the table, her eyes brimming with tears. She knew this was her last chance; their marriage, their lives together would turn left or right after this moment. ‘I’ve been so stupid, but I’ve never been more sure of how much I love you, Peter. You are the man I want to grow old with. If I lose you, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. Please, can you try to forgive me?’
Peter pushed his chair back, and for a sickening moment, Louise thought he was about to storm out. He stared at her across the table, almost unrecognisable as the awkward but quirky man she’d known in the early days, and her heart flickered with a nearly forgotten desire for his long, rangy body. She never wanted to see him so distracted and angry again, but part of her thrilled at the newness of a side she hadn’t seen before.
Maybe she didn’t know him inside out. Maybe there was hidden terrain to explore over the next forty years.
‘You’re not the only one who’s been stupid,’ he said gruffly. ‘I didn’t realise you were struggling. I thought just because you’d got everything under control you didn’t need my help. I felt like I was in the way.’
‘How could you feel that?’ Louise nearly yelped. ‘The more stressed I am, the more organised I get! Haven’t you realised that? In all these years?’
‘I stopped looking,’ he said. ‘I stopped asking.’
He stood up, and Louise held her breath, terrified he was about to walk out. It sounded like an exit line.
But it wasn’t. Peter reached over to where she sat and pulled her to her feet, wrapping his arms around her so their faces were close.
‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he said with a fierceness that surprised her. ‘And I never want to see you beg like that again.’
Louise had no good line. She hadn’t dared plan that far. Instead she kissed him with a hunger that neither of them had felt since their very early days, and the good dinner burned to a crisp, unattended, in the oven.
Chapter 27
Juliet didn’t subscribe to the popular whinge that Christmas started earlier and earlier every year, because for her, Christmas generally began in September, when she and Kim made their first round of corporate mini Christmas cakes.
But this year, without the cake reminder, Christmas had ambushed her as far back as October. The requests for holiday pet-sitting started to come in thick and fast, but she turned them all down, bar Hector – Mrs Taylor was off on a cruise with Albert, her fancy man – and some feeding of Boris and Bianca for Mrs Cox. Mrs Cox was off on holiday too, to visit one set of grandchildren in Florida for Christmas, then on to another set in Tuscany for New Year.
‘That’s the joy of three husbands, my dear,’ she said, pressing ‘a little something’ into Juliet’s hand as a seasonal tip. ‘One lot of children of my own, then two sets of stepchildren make a nice clutch of grandchildren to take care of their old granny’s holiday requirements.’
‘Three!’ Juliet couldn’t stop herself. She’d noticed the plethora of family photos, but not three wedding ones.
‘All before I was sixty, too.’ Mrs Cox sighed and put her hand on her chest, her wedding-ring hand with the single diamond solitaire. ‘Bob died on active service when I was just twenty-seven, God bless him, then Lionel was in a car crash, and poor Walter had a blood clot. Life’s not one long poem, Juliet. It’s a book with a series of chapters. You’re sad for a while; then you turn the page and see what happens next.’
Juliet smiled and made a mental note to tell Louise. She’d never believe that nice, white-haired Mrs Cox was a thrice-married siren. How had she never asked about that? The things you learned when you looked after people’s pets.
She did wonder, as she was strolling back down the road with Minton, whether Mrs Cox had been offering her some gentle advice, but the idea of her old piano teacher advising her about love was slightly harder to get her head around than Mrs Cox’s wedding-ring collection.
Juliet spent whatever spare time she had in the afternoons listening to cheesy Christmas albums and making enormous pans of chocolate fudge, marshmallows and honeycomb. Now her baking magic was back, she couldn’t stop, and had got her jam thermometer out to tackle her Christmas-present list.
Her dad always asked for fudge at Christmas, and both sets of aunties loved Juliet’s shortbread, which she baked and packed in pretty tins. Louise pretended she didn’t eat refined sugar, but she could go through a pan of marshmallow in the course of Mary Poppins or two festive episodes of Coronation Street. Juliet didn’t have a lot of money spare to spend on gifts, but she wanted to do something to make up for the gloom she’d cast over everyone’s day the previous year. This year, she thought, I can sweeten it up.
A Willy Wonka gift box solved the problem of what to give the Kellys for Christmas. They weren’t exactly a hard family to buy for – Roisin had made her need for a saxophone very clear for a while, and Spike wanted ‘a black-and-white pig’ – but Juliet wasn’t sure where their friendship had reached, in present terms. She also got the feeling that Emer’s modest house (chosen, she now knew, for its proximity to Alec’s parents, who had promptly moved to Dundee two months after the Kellys moved in) belied a sizeable income, if the constant deliveries from Net-à-Porter were anything to go by. On her current tight budget, she didn’t want to embarrass herself by handing over a Body Shop gift set only to unwrap a Mulberry handbag or similar.
The good thing about being a cook was knowing that generous jars of sweets always went down well, and it answered the other dilemma: what to give Lorcan. Juliet planned to make him an extra tin of biscuits, with different layers of the favourites he’d eaten over the last few weeks. She thought about putting a little note in saying, ‘Each “mmm” from you was a step on the road to kitchen recovery for me,’ but though it was true, she couldn’t find a way of putting it that didn’t make it sound horrendously cheesy.
She was whisking rosewater and lilac food colouring into her third batch of marshmallows, listening to Now That’s What I Call Xmas when there was a knock at the back door, and Roisin and Florrie trooped in, closely followed by Lorcan.
‘Are you cooking?’ asked Roisin, her eyes widening at the sight of Juliet’s pink K-Mix.
‘I am confecting. Florrie, please can you keep any livestock in your pockets,’ Juliet instructed. ‘This is a nuclear sugar area.’
‘We’ve just come to deliver this,’ said Lorcan. ‘We’re not stopping.’
He nudged Roisin, who swept an envelope out of her pocket and presented it to her with a deep bow.
‘What’s this?’ Juliet turned over the envelope and saw that it was from Florrie & Roisin Kelly, Laburnum Villa, the Grange, Rosehill, Near Longhampton, Worcestershire, the World, the Universe.
‘It’s a special invitation,’ said Florrie, solemnly.
‘To my debut,’ said Roisin, with a dramatic flourish. ‘I’m the angel!’
Lorcan rolled his eyes. ‘Remember what we talked about, Roisin. You’re an angel. Not the angel. And it’s bad form to sing louder than the Virgin Mary just because you can.’
‘Salvador’s in it too,’ said Florrie. ‘He’s playing his bass in the band.’
‘The baby Jesus has a rock band now? That’s very modern,’ said Juliet. ‘Are the Three Wise Men his backing group?’
‘It’s the school Christmas event,’ Lorcan explained as she opened the flap and pulled out the card. ‘Emer’s allowed two parent places, plus a grandparent place – obviously we’re a bit short on grannies next door, so she wondered if you’d like to come with us.’
‘You can hold the video camera,’ said Roisin graciously. ‘And be in the entourage.’
‘I’d be honoured!’ Juliet wanted to laugh, but she felt a lump in her throat as she read the painstakingly printed card, inviting ‘Dear Juliet and Minton’ to a ‘night of Christmas cheer at St Winifred’s School’. Roisin and Florrie had drawn angels in glitter, and, incongruously, giant plum puddings, plus a dog that looked like Minton with reindeer antlers.
‘I don’t think Minton can make it, though,’ she apologised to Florrie. ‘He has a very full social calendar this time of year.’
‘Say if you have too,’ Lorcan added. ‘It’s not compulsory.’
‘What do you think I’d be doing?’ she asked, amused by the idea that she’d be anywhere other than in her armchair.
‘I dunno. But I don’t want you to think we think you’re short of dates coming up to Christmas.’ Lorcan stumbled over his words, trying to sound casual. ‘You might want to be out at parties, not hanging around schools with these attention-seeking eejits. And me.’
‘Lorcan, I’d only be hanging out with you anyway – here, with a paintbrush and the skirting boards. I might as well be at the school, listening to DJ Jesus and his angelz.’ Juliet pulled an excited face at the girls, who were waiting for her reaction. ‘It’s years since I’ve been to a nativity play. I can’t wait. It’s going to be mega!’ she added, in a bad impersonation of Roisin.
‘I don’t sound like that,’ howled Roisin, delighted.
Lorcan stopped fidgeting with his tape measure and grinned up at her from under his dark lashes. He had quite a shy private smile, not the broad confident one he flashed in public, and Juliet felt a flipping sensation in her chest that reminded her so clearly of being at school that she could almost feel the braces on her teeth.
Immediately, she felt herself pull back as if she’d touched the sugar pan. Hadn’t she learned her lesson with Michael? It was too soon. And now she knew it wasn’t just her with issues to get over, there was even more reason to keep their friendship as it was – a lovely, supportive warmth in her life.
Paint fumes, she told herself. It was paint fumes and the holly-and-mistletoe effect of winter messing with her head.
‘Well, prepare to be blown away,’ he said. ‘Emer’s done the costumes. And she’s had Alec send all the spare material from Spiderweb’s last tours so they’re not short of spangles in Bethlehem this
year. Oh, no. The shepherds just have to follow the crackle of Lurex to the stable. I just hope they don’t have candles.’
‘I have a light-up halo,’ said Roisin proudly. ‘Although Mrs Barker doesn’t know that yet!’
At four o’clock on the day of the nativity play, it started to snow.
It snowed so thickly that Juliet had to wonder if Alec had hired some stage-effects company to arrange it for the kids as part of their Christmas present. She’d got back from walking Damson in the park, where the bandstand was festooned with coloured lights just beginning to glow in the dark, when the first flakes began to flurry around in the air, settling first on car roofs and postboxes, and the edges of the kerbs, quickly turning the pavements dusty white, then more dense white and, within an hour, a matte blanket of crunchy softness over the whole street.
Lorcan knocked for her at six, while she was still deciding what to wear.
‘You’re not meant to be here for another half-hour!’ she yelled down the stairs as he let himself in with a ‘Hello?’
‘I had to come. Emer’s driving me mad, trying to decide what to wear. I mean, how hard it is to get dressed for a nativity play in a blizzard? You just wear everything you’ve got, right?’
Juliet thought it was quite endearing how little Lorcan understood about women, despite living surrounded by them.
She took a final look at her reflection and decided that she’d better go in the outfit she’d got on: a denim skirt, thick tights and a soft green cashmere jumper Louise had given her, for no apparent reason. She thought it might have been a man’s jumper by the way it fell off her shoulder, and it made her feel both small and warm, which was no mean feat.
It was nice to have her generous sister back, she thought. The big sister who’d tell you what suited you, and then buy it for you too.
‘Pleeeease, are you ready to go?’ Lorcan yelled up the stairs. ‘We’ve got a car coming in ten minutes. Emer wants the kids to arrive in style.’