The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella

‘I wasn’t going to,’ she protested, wondering what on earth Ben had said, stuffing pizza into her mouth to give herself thinking time. ‘You know me,’ she said, when she’d managed to swallow it, then taken a sip of wine. ‘I never did know when to shut up, and he always seems to catch me with my guard down.’

‘Well, that’s promising. How far down?’

Further down than she’d ever imagined. He’d kissed her…Then, realising that Sue was regarding her through suspiciously narrowed eyes, she snatched her hand away from her mouth.

‘I hurt my knee,’ she said. ‘He gave me a lift, that’s all.’ Then, because the one way to distract Sue was to make her laugh, she shrugged and said, ‘Well, apart from the compost.’

‘The compost?’ she repeated.

‘And the rabbit. And the herb garden.’

‘Rabbit!’

She pretended to bang the side of her head. ‘There seems to be an echo in here.’

‘Very funny. Okay. Back up. Start at the beginning.’

Success…

‘Where to? The lift? It was nothing.’ Almost nothing. ‘Ben startled me, I fell off a ladder, fortunately I landed on him.’ She described the scene, the interesting exchange of views.

By the time she got to the part where Ben’s spectacles had fallen to bits in her hand, Sue was practically crying with laughter.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she declared.

‘It’s true! Every word.’ Well, nearly every word. But why spoil a good story by sticking to the truth? ‘Anyway, having maimed me, he had no choice but to strap me up and drive me to the Chamber of Commerce reception.’

‘And then you talked?’

‘You know how it is,’ she said. ‘You sit there with your trousers round your ankles while someone straps an ice bandage around your knee. You have to say something, and “ouch” gets a bit monotonous.’ Uh-oh. That was the trouble with storytelling. Knowing when to stop…‘He didn’t think I should go,’ she said. ‘To the Chamber of Commerce.’

‘He was right.’ Sue clearly wanted to ask about the trousers-round-the-ankles scenario, but surprisingly let it go. ‘Tell me about the rabbit,’ she said.

‘Roger? Oh, well, I needed some compost for the ferns…’ Sue looked as if she was about to interrupt, decided against it ‘…and Ben took me to the garden centre because obviously I couldn’t fetch it on my bike.’

‘Obviously.’

‘And while I was there I went to look at the rabbits. Do you remember them, Sue?’

‘I remember you wanting one and your mum having none of it.’

‘Mmm. Well, there was this little black one.’

‘And you bought it?’

‘Roger. And Nigel. He’s a guinea pig. Ben built them a run.’

‘That’s quite a conversation you’ve had. He seems a very indulgent…’ She paused. ‘Not landlord. What is he, exactly?’

‘House-mate?’ Ellie offered. ‘And, yes, I suppose he is. He even ate my cooking.’

‘You cooked for him?’

‘No!’ She laughed. Ha, ha, ha…‘Not for him.’

Sue’s surprise was understandable. She had never even cooked for Sean. But then he’d been so much better at it than she was.

‘I just needed someone to taste what I’d cooked.’ And somehow, despite her determination not to tell, the entire story just spilled out. Milady. The column. Lady Gabriella…

‘Wait! Wait!’ Sue said, her eyes widening with horrified fascination-and entirely missing the impressive point that Ellie was now a columnist for a national magazine. ‘You not only somehow convinced this Cochrane woman that you’re “Lady Gabriella March…”’ she punctuated the air with quote marks ‘… but that you have three children? How old are they?’

‘Well, Oliver is eight. He’s really musical. Sings in the choir. Sasha is six and pony mad. Chloe is just a toddler.’In the face of Sue’s open-mouthed disbelief, she said, ‘Stacey loaned me one of her suits. I looked older.’

‘Even so, you’d have had to have been married at eighteen with a honeymoon baby.’ Then, perhaps remembering that that had been her dream, Sue said, ‘So, does the heroic Ben know he’s playing the role of the fictitious Sir Benedict Faulkner?’

‘No! I mean he’s not.’ Sue didn’t look convinced. ‘Honestly. This started before Ben came home.’ Then she’d written about him building the rabbit pen…‘Besides,’ she said, ‘my title is a courtesy one.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That it’s mine, nothing to do with the fictitious husband.’ Sue still looked blank. ‘That my father is an earl or something?’ she offered.

‘You are in so much trouble, Ellie March,’ Sue said, grinning as she cut them both another slice of pizza, sucked the juices off her thumb. ‘No wonder you’re having trouble sleeping.’

‘It was just one night.’ Then, ‘What did Ben say? This morning.’

‘Just that you’d had a sleepless night.’ She smiled. ‘He was such a gentleman. When he realised he might have given entirely the wrong impression, he went to great pains to make sure I didn’t think that it was the result of a night on the tiles.’

‘As if.’

‘Well, indeed. The thought never crossed my mind which, when you think about it, is pretty sad. We haven’t got a life between us. Not a real one, anyway.’ She chewed meditatively on her pizza for a moment, then said, ‘He did ask me about Sean.’

‘Oh?’ Ellie couldn’t quite place the feeling that clenched at her stomach. A frisson of satisfaction that he was interested enough to want to know about the man she’d loved? Or was it nothing more than irritation that he should go behind her back and pry? Or both? ‘What, exactly, did he want to know?’

‘If Sean was jealous of your talent.’

‘What?’ All afternoon she’d been racked with guilt. Now she discovered that he’d been maligning Sean. ‘That’s outrageous!’

‘Uh-oh. Big mouth, large foot…’ Sue picked up the bottle, topped up both of their glasses. ‘If it’s any help, sweetie, I’m sure he was just concerned about you. He’d seen your drawings,’ she pointed out, as if that was enough. ‘Let’s face it, none of us understood why you chose English over Art.’

‘It wasn’t complicated. I just wanted an ordinary life, Sue. I wanted to be married to Sean. To have children.’

‘You could have taught art.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t.’

And because she didn’t want to think about it any more, and because she knew it would divert Sue as nothing else could, she said, ‘Ben has invited me to go with him to a family wedding on Saturday.’

‘Oh?’

‘Only because he doesn’t want people to think he’s a sad bastard who hasn’t got a girl. Or a closet gay.’

‘He’s not, is he?’

‘No!’ Then, when Sue smiled, wished she hadn’t been quite so emphatic. ‘He’s definitely not a bastard. His parents were childhood sweethearts.’

‘It’s not as rare as you’d think, then? So, who are you going as? Ellie March or Lady Gabriella?’

‘Myself,’ she replied.

‘You’ll be wearing a pair of extra fine Marigolds and a Busy Bees sweatshirt, then?’

Ellie stowed a new pair of the bright yellow rubber gloves she wore to protect her hands in her backpack. It would serve Ben right if she did appear on Saturday morning wearing them, and her Busy Bees sweatshirt.

Sean. Jealous.

Obviously that was what everyone thought, she realised as she fetched her bike from the shed. Sue hadn’t said as much, but it had been there, in her voice. In everything she hadn’t said.