Promoted: to Wife and Mother

keen gaze took in Tom and then moved to Perdita, standing next to him. In contrast to her usual immaculately groomed appearance, she was looking distinctly grubby and bedraggled but there was the same unmistakable sparkiness about her. Her eyes were bright, her skin glowing and she seemed to vibrate with energy in the middle of the dreary wasteland. Even Tom looked energised by her and was unconsciously mirroring the way Perdita stood with her fork planted firmly in front of her.

‘You both look very wet!’ he said, unable to prevent a smile as he looked from one to the other.

‘Yes, and whose fault is that?’ demanded Perdita snippily.

‘Don’t try and tell me that you haven’t enjoyed yourself, Perdita,’ said Ed. ‘Grace says you and Tom have been working like dogs all afternoon. You’ve done twice as much as anyone else!’

Tom looked over to where the others were trailing back to hand in their forks, obviously realising for the first time that he had been working harder than anyone else. ‘I didn’t realise that it was a competition,’ he said, and his father grinned.

‘I’ll bet it was for Perdita! Am I right?’ he asked her.

Perdita put up her chin. She didn’t like it when he laughed at her, but she was too honest to deny it.

‘You probably would have had an easier time with another partner,’ she admitted to Tom, but he just hunched a shoulder.

‘You were cool,’ he muttered.

Ed regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Perdita works for Bell Browning as well,’ he told Tom as they turned and headed for the exit. ‘Her mother lives next door to us. She very kindly brought that bottle of wine I wouldn’t waste on you the first night we moved in.’

‘I remember,’ Tom said with a shade of sulkiness. ‘He wouldn’t even let us taste it,’ he told Perdita. ‘He said it was too good for us.’

‘Next time, I’ll bring a cheap bottle of plonk,’ she said with a laugh, and Tom brightened.

‘You’re coming again?’

‘Oh, no…I only meant…’ Perdita was deeply flustered by Tom’s question. ‘I was joking,’ she tried to explain.

‘I hope you will come again, though,’ said Ed. ‘In fact, why don’t you come to supper? What do you think, Tom?’

‘Cool,’ said Tom.

That was just what Perdita had been afraid of. After her stupid comment and Tom’s reaction, Ed obviously felt that he didn’t have much choice but to invite her, but if he had wanted her to go to supper, he could have asked her before now.

‘No, honestly,’ she said, horribly embarrassed but doing her best to laugh it off. ‘When I said next time, I really didn’t mean to invite myself! It was just a figure of speech,’ she finished lamely.

‘I know, but come anyway,’ said Ed, and smiled at her in a way that made the breath clog in her throat, and that made her heart batter in panic in case it was going to run out of oxygen. It wasn’t fair that one smile could have such an alarming effect. ‘The honest truth is that the kids are bored of being stuck with me-’

‘We are!’ Tom put in.

‘-and I could do with some adult company, so we’d all really appreciate it if you’d come,’ finished Ed, pretending to cuff his son over the head.

He was being charming about it, given that he’d been placed in such an awkward position.

Perdita hesitated. What could she say? ‘That would be lovely,’ she decided in the end. No date had been suggested, so her answer was sufficiently vague for Ed to feel no obligation to follow the invitation up.

‘What about tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ Having expected to be fobbed off with something equally vague, like a promise to be in touch or to arrange a date soon, Perdita was completely thrown by Ed’s swift comeback.

‘Isn’t Thursday one of the nights you visit your mother?’

‘Well, yes, it is…’ How did he know that?

‘You’ve been under observation,’ Ed answered her unspoken question with a grin. ‘Lauren spends a lot of time mooching in her room, which looks out over the drives, so she’s our main source of information on your movements.’

‘Dad,’ said Tom, mortified by his father’s revelation. ‘You make us sound like a bunch of weirdos spying on her!’

‘We’re not weirdos,’ Ed said. ‘It’s just that we haven’t got enough distraction at the moment and Perdita’s visits next door are the most exciting things that happen to us at the moment!’

His face was straight, but the grey eyes gleamed with amusement in a way that reminded Perdita vividly of the first time they had met.

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Well, I’m glad to know that my life seems exciting to somebody!’ she said.

‘It does, so bring a bit of excitement into our lives and come for supper,’ Ed urged. ‘It won’t be anything fancy.’

‘You can say that again!’ said Tom with a snort. ‘Dad doesn’t do fancy.’

No, Ed wouldn’t do fancy, Perdita thought, studying him from under her lashes. He would cook the way he did everything else-capably, steadily, straightforwardly.

Would he make love that way, too?

The thought caught her unawares, grabbing her from behind and startling her so that she actually stumbled. She recovered almost immediately, but she was shaken, less by the unexpected question that had popped into her head than by her instant, instinctive conviction that no, Ed wouldn’t make love like that. You only had to look at that mouth, and those hands, to know that he would be slow and sure and sensuous and-

And that was quite enough. Perdita was horrified at herself. What was she thinking?

Sending up a prayer of thanks that neither of them appeared to be mind-readers, she forced a smile.

‘What does he do?’ she asked Tom.

‘Sausages and mash. Pasta bake. Roast chicken. Spaghetti bolognaise.’

‘Hey, I can do more than that,’ Ed objected mildly. ‘I made a casserole the other day, remember?’

‘It was gross. You’re not making that again.’

Perdita suppressed a smile. She was feeling more under control now. ‘I love spag bol.’

‘You wouldn’t if you had to eat it twice a week, every week,’ muttered Tom, but Ed overrode him.

‘Excellent, spaghetti bolognaise it is-and I’ll try and provide a bottle of wine to rival the one you brought last time.’

‘Well…’ said Perdita, weakening. She was wet through and the thought of somebody else doing the cooking for once was very appealing. What was the harm, after all? There was no question of it being a date.

‘In that case, I’d love to come,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to give my mother something to eat first, but she should be settled by eight.’

‘Great.’ Ed smiled his unfair smile again as they reached the hut where Grace was collecting the gardening forks and gloves. ‘We’ll see you then.’

The first thing Perdita did when she got home was to run a deep, hot bath and she sighed with pleasure as she slid down beneath the bubbles. This was what she had been fantasising about as she’d scraped up all that disgusting rubbish, minus the glass of champagne, of course. She didn’t want to have anything to drink before she drove.

And anyway, she didn’t need champagne. She already felt as if a magnum of the stuff was fizzing along her veins and bubbling into her heart. The shameful truth was that she was ridiculously excited about the prospect of her simple supper.

Don’t be so silly, Perdita told herself sternly. It was only a bowl of pasta, for heaven’s sake! Hardly a heavy date with three teenagers in tow. But still she found herself throwing open the doors of her wardrobe and studying the contents with a frown. What did you wear when your boss invited you to eat spaghetti bolognaise with his kids? There ought to be some kind of protocol for these things, Perdita decided.

Normally she had a sure sense of her own style, but for some reason this occasion had her in a dither. It took her four attempts at getting dressed before she settled finally on a pair of loose trousers with a silk knit top, and