Maddy hadn’t let the experience mentally scar her for life. Kate and her snobbish new friends may have found it amusing to sneer at her and her friends, but it had been just as enjoyable making fun of them in return, ruthlessly mimicking their la-di-da voices and loudly discussing whose daddy had the biggest helicopter or the plushest yacht.
This had carried on until Kate had left Ridgelow Hall. From then on, throughout her time at finishing school in Switzerland, followed by university, then the move to New York, their paths hadn’t crossed. Very occasionally Kate paid fleeting visits home, but never ventured into the town. More often, Estelle and Oliver flew out to visit her, or to meet up with her for long holidays in glamorous locations across the globe.
Then had come news of Kate’s accident, and Maddy hadn’t known what to think. Vacationing out in the Hamptons with a group of friends, Kate had crashed the car she was driving and had sustained horrific injuries to her face and neck. Estelle, naturally enough, had been distraught. Oliver had organised the best possible medical care and lined the pockets of the world’s most skilled surgeons. Maddy had been horrified and ashamed to discover that although it was a terrible,
Now, almost a year on and despite the best efforts of the surgeons, Kate Taylor-Trent was arriving back in Ashcombe with a face that bore the still very visible scars of the accident. If she saw her – and sooner or later they were bound to bump into each other – Maddy wondered if she would have to be nice to Kate, the one-time friend and latter-day enemy she hadn’t set eyes on in over eight years.
Despite the countless hurtful names Kate had once called her, Maddy didn’t suppose she’d be allowed to retaliate now. When you were twenty-six, it was probably one of those things that was frowned upon. Even if you did sometimes still feel fourteen years old inside.
The wedding was a huge success, despite Tiff and Sophie’s refusal to kiss each other when Marcella declared, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ on the grounds that kissing was,
Now, having spent the evening watching a celebratory Rugrats video, the bride and groom were upstairs in their bunk beds, fast asleep. Sleeping over at each other’s houses two or three times a week suited their single parents perfectly, and when both Juliet and Jake wanted to go out on the same night, like tonight, Marcella was always happy to babysit. (Not that anyone was allowed to call it that.
As Sophie had loftily pointed out, ‘We aren’t babies. You just look after us.’) Looking in on them, Maddy tucked her niece’s spindly brown leg back under the duvet and carefully removed a cross-dressed Action man (wearing one of Barbie’s tutus)from under Tiff’s neck. She headed downstairs and found Marcella stretched across the sofa eating jalapeno-chilli crisps and watching a documentary on BBC 2. Since meeting Vincenzo d’Agostini three years earlier and moving into his house up on Holly Hill, Marcella had found new – and much deserved – happiness. Everyone adored Vince and declared that they were perfect together. With a pang, Maddy saw that the documentary was about foster carers. Marcella’s inability to have children of her own had been a source of sorrow to all of them; even now, at the age of forty-three, she still harboured powerful maternal urges.
‘I could do that.’ Marcella pointed at the TV screen with a crisp. ‘D’you think they’d let me, or am I too old and decrepit?’
Maddy leaned over the back of the sofa and gave her mother a big hug. ‘You’d be brilliant, but don’t just rush off and come back with one as a surprise. It’s the kind of thing you need to talk about first.’
‘That was different, Bean was only a puppy.’ Marcella recognised the dig. ‘There wasn’t time to discuss it. The man said if I didn’t take her, it’d be curtains for Bean. So what else could I do?’
‘Ooh, I don’t know, how about wave a placard saying, 'Go on, tell me a heartrending story, I’m a total pushover'?’
‘But look at her!’ Marcella reached for Bean, who was curled up beside her, and swung the little dog into the air. ‘Even if the man was lying to me, how could I have said no? If you’d been there, you wouldn’t have been able to either.’
‘I wouldn’t have paid him fifty pounds,’ said Maddy, because Marcella truly was the queen of gullibility. The traveller who had sold Bean to her on a busy street corner in the centre of Bath surely hadn’t been able to believe his luck.
‘Are you saying Bean wasn’t worth it? Oh, sweetheart, don’t listen, cover your ears! Anyway,’
Marcella went on, folding the puppy’s long floppy ears lovingly under its jaw, ‘isn’t it time you were gone? If this programme’s going to make me cry I’d rather do it in peace.’
Maddy imagined telling her mother that the man she’d met on Saturday night and liked so much was in fact Kerr McKinnon. Marcella might not burst into tears, but the torrent of abuse that would pour forth would be spectacular.
Surely it was kinder not to let her know.
The Fallen Angel was busier than usual that Monday evening. Joining Jake and Juliet at the bar, Maddy was struck once again by the beauty of the pair of them, Jake so lean and blond and tanned, like a surfer, next to Juliet with her bewitching dark hair and eyes, lily-white skin and voluptuous figure.
They made the perfect couple visually, got on like a house on fire and adored each other’s children, yet there wasn’t so much as a flicker of chemistry between the two of them. It was such a waste, but there was nothing anyone could do about it; they simply didn’t fancy each other — ooh, drink.
‘Thanks.’ Maddy sat down next to Juliet, who had thrust the glass of Fitou into her hand. ‘No sign of the other team yet?’
Monday night was darts night and this evening they were up against the Red Fox from the neighbouring village of Claverham.
‘They’re always late. So did you tell Marcella yet?’ Jake waved his empty lager bottle at Nuala, behind the bar. ‘Another one of these, darling, thanks. Well?’ He returned his attention to Maddy, one eyebrow raised.
‘No, I just couldn’t. That smells fantastic.’ Keen to change the subject, Maddy lifted her head as one of the waitresses emerged from the kitchen with an array of plates balanced on each arm. To the right of the bar was the restaurant area, where several tables were already occupied.
‘Coward,’ retorted Jake.
Juliet gave him a prod. ‘Leave her alone. I don’t see why Maddy has to tell her at all. Even if Marcella does find out that this chap’s moved back to Bath, she could always pretend she didn’t know he had.’
Maddy nodded. That made sense, actually. OK, so maybe it was a little underhand, but if she was only doing it
