Falling for you

Estelle shot her an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, darling. He had to work.’

‘Par for the course.’ Kate watched her mother light a cigarette. Estelle, a furtive smoker when her husband was around, had needed the boost of a Marlboro in order to brave the terrors of the motorway.

‘But he’ll be home soon,’ Estelle went on brightly, as she had done for the last twenty-odd years,

‘and he can’t wait to see you.’ She paused. ‘I thought we’d have dinner tonight at the Angel, just you and me.’

Kate shuddered. The Fallen Angel was the only pub in Ashcombe. Just you and me could be roughly translated as: the two of us sitting at a table while everyone else in the pub ogles us from the bar and sniggers at the posh bird’s comeuppance.

She hadn’t asked to be the posh bird, they’d just saddled her with that label God knows how many years ago, and ever since then she’d been stuck with it.

‘Darling. I know. But you have to face them at some stage.’

Estelle was only too aware of what gossipy small-town life was like.

Kate sighed and gazed out of the window as Berkshire sped past them in a blur of motorway-constructed emerald-green turf and geometrically planted trees. She knew her mother was right.

Aloud she said, ‘We’ll see.’

‘You’ll have to tell Mum,’ said Jake.

‘I can’t tell Mum.’ Maddy covered her face with her hands. ‘She’ll go ballistic.’

‘You still should. She at least has a right to know he’s back.’ Jake kept his voice low. They were outside in the back garden of Snow Cottage, Maddy sitting cross-legged on the grass and Jake lounging in the hammock, his eyes shielded by dark glasses, a can of lager in his hands. Upstairs, Sophie was having her hair rebraided by Marcella, in preparation for the ceremony.

‘He’s been back for months and she hasn’t known about it. He’s living in Bath,’ said Maddy.

‘What are the chances of her bumping into him?’

‘About the same as the chance of you bumping into him,’ Jake pointed out. ‘And you managed it.

Jesus, I can’t believe he didn’t recognise you. You must have been even uglier than I remember.’

‘I was.’ Memories had nothing to do with it; Maddy had the unfortunate photos to prove it, but she reached over and gave the hammock a shove anyway, causing Jake to spill ice-cold Fosters over his bare chest.

He flicked lager back at her with his fingers. ‘Thanks. So what happens now? I take it you won’t be delivering to his company.’

Maddy paused. She’d already told Juliet, who could betrusted to be discreet, and Juliet had reacted with typical pragmatism: ‘Look, I’m not just saying this because it means more business for us, but we are only talking sandwiches here. And you did say his staff were keen on our stuff. I mean, why should they miss out?’ She’d shrugged, then gone on in her gentle way, ‘Of course, it’s entirely your decision.

Whether you want to or not. You said he was a nice man; what did he have to say about it?’

‘That it was up to me.’

‘Well, just think it over.’

This was what Maddy had been doing ever since.

‘Daddy!’ A cross voice bellowed out and Sophie’s head appeared at her bedroom window. Put some clothes on. I can’t get married if you’re not wearing a shirt.’

Rolling sideways out of the hammock and landing with practised ease on his feet, Jake handed Maddy his half-empty can of lager.

‘I still think you should tell Mum.’

Maddy pictured Marcella’s reaction. As far as family feuds went, the Harveys and the McKinnons knocked the Montagues and the Capulets into a cocked hat. She thought of Kerr and her stomach contracted.

‘Maybe. But not yet.’

Chapter 5

Marcella worked as a cleaner at the Taylor-Trents’ house, which was how Maddy knew that Kate Taylor-Trent would have arrived home by now. It seemed almost incredible to imagine that they had once been best friends, playing happily together and sharing everything, right up until the age of eleven.

Then Kate had been sent away to boarding school — Maddy vividly remembered their tearful parting — and that had been the beginning of the end. When Kate returned from Ridgelow Hall after her first term there, she had invited along her new best friend, a confident twelve-year-old called Alicia whose father was a newspaper magnate. Alicia had resisted Maddy’s efforts to join in with them, and Kate, anxious to impress Alicia, had begun to slavishly follow her lead. Finally, Maddy had overheard Alicia drawling, ‘She wears those awful glasses, her father drives a taxi for a living and her stepmother’s black. Daddy would have a fit if he knew I was associating with someone like that.’ Bursting into the Taylor-Trents’ vast kitchen, Maddy had given Alicia a resounding slap before racing out of the house. For the rest of the afternoon she’d expected Kate to come over to the cottage and apologise. She didn’t, and Maddy hadn’t set eyes on her for the rest of the school holidays.

After that, Kate only had time for her bitchy rich school-friends. When they did encounter Maddy in the town, they smirked and sniggered behind her back, but always loudly enough for her to hear.

Glossy-haired and immaculately turned out themselves — teenage It-girls in the making — they made fun of Maddy’ s clothes, the clanking great braces on her teeth, her general gawkiness and, of course, her National Health specs. The rest of the time they talked loudly about their parents’

wealth, the exotic holidays they were taking this year, and how ghastly it must be to be poor and knobbly-kneed.

Oh, how they’d laughed at her knees.