When they played tennis they let me be their ball girl, that kind of thing. The others used to tease Liam about me. I was so besotted I didn’t even care.’ Dulcie sat back dreamily in her chair. So dreamily she spilt red wine down her T-shirt. ‘On our last night, he gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, 'See you next year.' I was so happy I almost died on the spot. I gave him my address and he promised to write to me. My parents couldn’t get over me crying buckets all the way home, when I’d always hated Tenby so much. I swear, that was the best holiday of my life.’
‘I don’t remember this,’ said Pru. ‘You kept pretty quiet about it. So what happened, did he write to you?’
‘Nope.’ Dulcie grinned. ‘I must have driven my mother mad. I kept accusing her of intercepting the post and destroying his letters. Poor Mum didn’t know what I was talking about.’
‘Did you write to him?’
‘Not often. Only about twice a day.’
‘Dulcie!’
‘Don’t go all feminist on nie. I was only fifteen.’
‘So this Liam ... he was the one you were so desperate to snog?’
‘He kissed me here.’ Half closing her eyes, Dulcie touched her cheek. ‘I can still remember how it felt. It was stupendous,’ she looked rueful, ‘but it wasn’t a snog.’ Then she smiled at the memory. ‘Can you imagine the sheer agony of having to wait a whole year to see him again? I was crossing off the days to August. Dammit, I was crossing off the hours.’
‘And did you?’ said Pru, by this time riveted. ‘Did you see him again?’
‘Did I heck! The cottage was let out to a pair of geriatric spinsters. No sign of Liam or his friends anywhere ... and God knows I spent enough time looking for them.’
‘You never told us any of this.’
‘What, that I was dumped?’ Dulcie started to laugh. ‘Excuse me, I did have some pride. I’d have told you about Liam if there’d been anything to tell.’
The photograph of Brunton Manor’s new tennis pro was back up on the noticeboard, having been plucked from Dulcie’s grasp by an irate receptionist.
‘And now he’s coming here to work,’ Pru marvelled. Dulcie hugged herself. ‘It’s fate.’
‘It didn’t work out brilliantly last time.’
‘I was fifteen,’ Dulcie rolled her eyes in exasperation, ‘he was seventeen. I had spots and the haircut from hell – how could it have worked out?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘That’s why it’s fate. We’re adults now. This is our second chance,’ she looked smugly at Pru, ‘a chance to make a real go of it. You’ll see.’
Chapter 17
Pru called Terry Lambert her mystery client because she had never seen him. Terry, brother of Marion Hayes over at Beech Farm, was a solicitor who lived alone in a picturesque Bath-stone cottage high on one of the hills surrounding the city.
‘I’ve been telling him for years to get someone in. Men, they’re hopeless,’ Marion had robustly declared, before phoning Terry and informing him that she had found him a cleaner.
Marion had given Pru the spare key to Terry’s house. Every Tuesday afternoon Pru let herself in, spent four hours restoring order from chaos, took the money her absent employer left for her on the kitchen dresser and let herself out again.
Even if she hadn’t met him, however, she felt she knew Terry Lambert quite well, having hung up his clothes, dusted his bookshelves, washed up his breakfast things and put endless CDs and videos back in their cases. Divorced four years earlier, he was in his mid-thirties, with no children. He earned a jolly good salary and drove a metallic-green Scorpio. Pru knew all this because Marion had told her. According to Marion, her brother was quite a catch: handsome, generous and kind to animals.
‘Once you’re back on an even keel,’ she told Pru with an encouraging wink, ‘you could do a lot worse, you know, than our Terry.’
Pru couldn’t imagine ever getting back on an even keel, nor was she the least bit interested in getting to know another man. Anyway, kind to animals he might be, but with the best will in the world you could never classify Terry Lambert as handsome.
She didn’t say this to Marion; it didn’t seem polite to point out that if the photo in Terry’s bedroom was anything to go by, he was half-man, half-anteater.
But the photograph of Terry and Marion with their now-dead parents was clearly of sentimental value. Whenever she polished the ornate silver frame Pru couldn’t help studying it, touched by the similarities between father and son. Both had dark eyes and thick, straight eyebrows, pronounced laughter lines and mouths that curved upwards when they smiled. They also shared the same nose, big and beaky and truly attention-grabbing.
Marion, luckily for her, had followed her mother’s side of the family; her eyebrows were narrow, her nose pert.
It didn’t feel odd to Pru, talking to Terry Lambert on the phone, but she wondered if it was strange for him. After all, she knew a lot about her mystery client but he knew next to nothing about her.
In fact, Terry didn’t appear to find it strange. He sounded charming, and thoroughly relaxed.
‘... the thing is, I’m going to be working unpredictable hours,’ Pru explained, ‘so I won’t always be able to manage Tuesday afternoons. If it’s a problem—’
‘No problem,’ Terry replied easily. ‘I’m at work between eight and six, five days a week, so it doesn’t affect me. Come round any time you like.’
Relieved, Pru said, ‘Thanks.’
