Love And Devotion Part 6

The 'but' hung in the air.

'But what?'

He took a fortifying breath. 'Your mother and I are worried. We think that perhaps you're - '

Another hesitant pause.

Tired? Depressed? Thoroughly cheesed off that her life had hit the skids so spectacularly? Not to mention that she was homeless. Jobless. Boyfriendless. No, strike that one from the record. Spencer didn't come into it. Compared to everything else, his cowardly selfishness didn't even register.

'We think you're a little too hard on the children.'

Harriet sat back in her chair. What the h.e.l.l did that mean?

'Oh, dear, we knew you wouldn't take it well. I told your mother - '

'Dad, it's not a matter of taking it well; it's a matter of understanding. I haven't a clue what I'm being accused of.'

'We're not accusing you of anything.'

'Sounds like it to me. So come on, tell me what I've done wrong.'

'It's your manner. You're so short with them. So brusque. We're worried that you're scaring them. Adding to their problems. There's a chance you might be making things worse. Especially for Joel.'

Just then the telephone rang. With a look of relief, Bob went to answer it.

Left on her own, Harriet stared at the table. The injustice of her father's remarks made her head throb, and claustrophobia crushed in on her. She stood up abruptly. She had to get out of the house. Within seconds, she was hurtling down the drive and across the road, heading for the footpath and the ca.n.a.l. As a teenager it was where she had always gone when she was annoyed or upset. The soothing stillness of the water usually calmed her.

Right now she was far from calm. Boiling over with fury, she could hardly breathe at the unfairness of it. After all the sacrifices she had made, her parents had the nerve to criticise her. How could they turn on her? Was it her fault that she wasn't the maternal type? Not for the first time she wondered why the h.e.l.l her sister had thought she would be any good at raising her children.

At the end of the footpath she was about to go right but changed her mind when she saw a row of fishermen, their lines cast, their nets and wicker baskets in place. Instead she turned left. From here it was a twenty-five-minute walk into town, and to the nearest decent pub, The Navigation. Drinking her anger into submission could be the answer, but having left the house without any money, she was resigned to walking it out of her system. She ground the path beneath her, her arms swinging, her hands tightly clenched into fists.

And if her parents really thought she was doing such a bad job, then perhaps she ought to go back to Oxford and leave them to it! How would that suit them? Or perhaps they wished it had been her who'd died. Doubtless that would have been easier all round, especially for her father. She'd always known that Felicity had been the special daughter for him, the one he idolised. It had never bothered Harriet before, this preference, but it hurt now, knowing that her death would have had dramatically less impact. Let's face it, she'd been dispensable; no ties, no commitments, no responsibilities. Well, all that had changed. Now she had commitments coming out of her ears. It felt as if she had the full weight of the world on her shoulders.

She was so deeply locked into her thoughts that she didn't notice the man sitting on the bench until she was almost upon him. It was their new neighbour, and with his legs stretched out in front of him, he was drinking from a bottle of beer. He smiled at her over the top of his sungla.s.ses, which were set low down on his nose. 'You look different without the cap,' he said.

A week had pa.s.sed since he'd mistaken her for a boy late at night. She had been too upset at the time to stop and put him right, having just spent the previous half-hour on the towpath trying to walk off the fear that she was destined to live out the rest of her days cooped up with her parents and two small children. She'd learned that afternoon that completion had taken place on her flat. The finality of it had left her feeling trapped and isolated. The very last cord had been cut. She now had no reason to return to Oxford. And there hadn't been so much as an email or text message from Spencer - which shouldn't have surprised her; he was probably glad to be rid of her. Far worse, though, was the anger she suddenly felt towards her sister. Why did Felicity have to be so careless and die! If only she and Jeff hadn't gone out that night, they'd still be alive and Harriet wouldn't be lumbered with picking up the pieces. Appalled at her train of thought, Harriet didn't know who she hated more: the teenage boy who had done this terrible thing to them all, or herself.

Even if Harriet had had the nerve to blank their new neighbour and walk on by, she wouldn't have been able to. He was now on his feet, effectively blocking her path. 'Hi,' he said, removing his sungla.s.ses and pushing back his hair.

'I'm Will Hart. I expect the neighbourhood's rife with gossip about me, but I'd like to put the record straight and say that it's all untrue.'

She was in no mood for small talk, but forced herself to say, 'How long are you taking the lease on for? The usual six months?'

'Actually, I've bought the place.'

'I didn't know it was for sale.'

'It didn't get a chance to go on the market. The previous owners are clients of a friend of mine and when they told Marty they'd decided to settle abroad, I nipped in sharpish and made them an offer. I don't suppose you'd like to join me in a drink,' - he held up his bottle of beer as though indicating what sort of drink - 'so that I can pick your brains about the neighbourhood? I've been so busy since moving in that I haven't had a chance to get to know anyone.'

Small talk over a beer? No. It was out of the question. With her parents' criticism still ringing in her ears, she needed to be alone.

'It would also give me the opportunity to apologise properly for the other night,' he added.

She remembered her earlier desire to drink her anger into submission. Imagining herself gulping down a cold beer, she wavered.

'I have wine if you'd prefer. Or maybe a soft drink.'

All resolve gone, she said, 'Thank you, a beer would be nice.'

Down to his last two bottles in the fridge, Will snapped off the lids and put them on a tray, along with a gla.s.s - she was probably a refined sort who wouldn't dream of drinking straight from the bottle - and went back outside to the garden. He hoped she was feeling a bit less spiky now. When she'd appeared on the towpath she'd had a face like thunder. He wondered what she was so angry about. There was no mistaking her for a boy today. Her hair, which must have been tied up under her baseball cap that night last week, was shoulder-length and framed a small, pensive face with wide cheekbones.

'Here we go, then,' he said, pushing open the gate and joining her on the bench. He set the tray down on the gra.s.s and handed her a beer and the gla.s.s.

She shook her head. 'The bottle's fine.'

Amused he'd got that wrong about her, he wondered if she would prove him wrong on anything else. So far his guesswork told him that she was in her late twenties and he'd put money on a smile from her being rarer than an eclipse. She was small and delicately built (his mother would describe her as sparrow-boned), and dressed in close-fitting flared jeans. Her foot was tapping the ground - the knee going like a piston - and he suspected she was one of those high-energy people, who are always on the move, always looking for a way to wear themselves out. She needs to learn how to chill, he thought.

Watching her take a long, thirsty swig of her beer, he said, 'Can I ask the name of the person with whom I'm drinking?'

Without looking at him, she said, 'Harriet. Harriet Swift.'

'Well, Harriet Swift, it's good to meet you. Am I right in thinking that you and your children live with your parents in the house directly opposite me?'

She turned round sharply. Blue-grey eyes stared back at him with laser strength. 'They're not my children. They're my niece and nephew.'

Ah, so that was it. The grandchildren were staying with the grandparents. Lucky them. 'So where are their parents? Whooping it up on holiday somewhere hot and exotic?' From the way her eyes narrowed, he knew at once he'd said something wrong. The foot had stopped tapping. The knee was still.

When she answered him, her voice was eerily flat. 'They were killed in a car crash in April. The children's mother was my sister. My only sister.'

Horrified by his blunder, he said, 'I ... I'm sorry. I had no idea.'

'Please don't say you're sorry. You don't know me and you didn't know Felicity. So no plat.i.tudes. However well-meant.'

All he could think to say was, 'How old are the children?'

'Nine and four and a half.'

'Nice ages. I remember them well.'

She said nothing, just drank her beer and resumed tapping her foot.

'I have children,' he said, 'older than that, but no matter what age they are, they're still hopelessly young and vulnerable through parents' eyes. Mine live with their mother in Maywood.' Aware that her silence was making him ramble nervously, he tried another question. 'What are their names, your nephew and niece?'

'Carrie and Joel.'

She reminded him of a hedgehog curling itself up into a ball when under attack. Her clipped answers told him she didn't want to discuss the matter any further, that if he knew what was good for him, he'd back off. But he never did know when to back off. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, he acknowledged to himself that he'd done a first-cla.s.s job of putting his foot in it so far. Time to change tack to a safer line of questioning - something innocuous and guaranteed to be non-controversial. 'I'm in the antique trade,' he said. 'What kind of work do you do?'

'I'm a computer programmer. And if you really want to know, I've given up a b.l.o.o.d.y good job to take care of Carrie and Joel, only to have my parents now accuse me of adding to their problems. Apparently I scare the children. How's that for grat.i.tude! I've given up my flat, my career, my boyfriend, and for what?'

Was there nothing he could get right with this woman? He wasn't surprised she scared the kids; she scared the h.e.l.l out of him.

Chapter Twelve.

For days afterwards, Harriet felt the embarra.s.sment of losing her composure in front of a virtual stranger. She had so very nearly cried. Had he realised that? Presumably he had. 'I'm not the best of company right now,' she'd said, on her feet, suddenly desperate to escape. She'd hastily mumbled some kind of goodbye and retraced the way she'd come, then took the path she should have gone in the first place, picking her way through the fishermen's paraphernalia. She walked and walked until the light began to fade and the evening air grew thick with insects and the sweet smell of dusk. Her chest began to tighten and, knowing she needed her inhaler from her bag in her bedroom, she turned for home.

Naturally, her parents told her she'd overreacted. 'All you need to do is be more patient with the children,' her mother had said. 'Particularly with Joel. He's such a gentle little boy. Miss Fryer says he misses the - '

'Oh, so now you're throwing Miss Fryer at me?' she'd retaliated. 'As if it isn't obvious what the children miss!'

Miss Fryer was the children's counsellor. For the last two months, every week Harriet had driven the children to her office, where they were encouraged to share their feelings with a woman they hardly knew. While they were doing that, Harriet sat outside in a small waiting room, idly flicking through magazines to kill the time.

'For goodness' sake, just try to be a little less stern with them,' her father had joined in, his voice sharper than she was used to hearing. 'We know it's not easy for you, Harriet. And we do appreciate all that you're doing, but snapping at Carrie for leaving her socks on the sofa won't help anyone.'

Then why are you snapping at me? she'd thought indignantly.

That had been three days ago, and since then Harriet had tried hard to do what her parents had suggested. But it wasn't easy. She kept catching herself wondering if what she'd just said or done with the children came under the category of being 'stern'. If she asked Carrie to put her empty cereal bowl in the dishwasher, was that a request too far? And if she called up the stairs, as she was about to now, to tell them to get a move on, would that be tantamount to child abuse?

'Come on, you two, I haven't got all day!'

Seconds later, the sound of the toilet flushing could be heard, followed by scuffling footsteps across the landing. Carrie led the way with Joel closely behind. 'Did you wash your hands?' Harriet asked them.

Joel held his out for inspection. 'We used Grandma's nice squirty soap.'

'Yes, I can smell it from here. Is there any left? Or have you splattered it - ' She stopped herself short, remembering she was supposed to be St Harriet, the Patron Saint of the Meek and b.l.o.o.d.y Mild. 'Mm ... well done you two,' she added. 'Right then, let's say goodbye to Grandma and get going. We've got a lot to do.' In her jeans pocket was a lengthy list of items they needed for the start of term: lunch boxes, notepads, biros, pencils, felt-tip pens, sharpeners, rubbers, glue sticks.

Harriet's mother was in the sitting room with Dora. The coffee table and the floor were covered with items of school uniform waiting to have name tags sewn onto them.

'We're off now, Mum. You're sure there's nothing we can get you?'

Eileen shook her head. 'I can't think of anything, darling. How about you, Dora? Anything Harriet can get you?'

'No, but I have something here for the children.' After a brief rummage in her handbag, she pulled out her purse. 'Here you are, you two.' She gave them each a couple of pound coins. 'You can't go shopping without a little something in your pockets, can you now?'

'You needn't have done that, Dora,' Eileen said when the front door had been shut and the house was quiet.

'I know, but I wanted to. They're such dear little children. Whenever I think about what must be going through their heads, well, I could just weep.'

Eileen picked up a bright-red sweatshirt and threaded her needle. All those years of labelling items of school uniform and here she was doing it all over again. She could remember doing Felicity's first uniform. She had sat up late into the night taking in the waistband of a pleated skirt feeling both proud and sad. It was such a milestone occasion, one's first child going to school. Felicity had been so excited she couldn't sleep, but in the morning she had lost her nerve and didn't want to go. She'd sat on the bottom step of the stairs and refused to put on her blazer. That was in the days of proper school uniforms. Not these cheap, foreign-made polyester sweatshirts that wouldn't last a term in the washing machine. After some gentle cajoling, Felicity had slipped on her blazer and they'd set off for school. In the end it was Eileen who had been more upset at the point of parting and on the way home, hiding her tears from Harriet, she had answered her youngest daughter's barrage of questions. What time would Felicity be home? How many hours was that? Would it be dark when they went back for her? Would she and Felicity have time to play together before bed? And how long would they have to play?

Even at such a young age, Harriet had wanted hard factual evidence before letting anything rest. She still did, which was why it had been so difficult trying to explain to her that she was being too sharp with the children. They had no actual evidence to give her that this was the case, only the fear that if she carried on as she was, Carrie and Joel might withdraw into themselves even further. Felicity had been a loving and affectionate mother and while Eileen knew no one could ever take her place, she and Bob, and Harriet, had a duty to offer as much love and tenderness as they could. It was the only thing that would help them to come to terms with their loss.

From across the room, Dora said, 'Now that we're alone, I can tell you all about last night.'

Eileen looked up from her sewing, thinking again how incongruous it was to see her friend with a needle and thread in her hands. 'Goodness, Dora, what have you been up to now?'

'Put the kettle on and I'll tell you. No, second thoughts, I'll make us some tea while you carry on here. I'm hopeless at sewing - all fingers and thumbs. I'm doing about one item to your five.'

'You haven't had enough practice, that's your trouble. It's a miracle I've got you helping in the first place.'

Dora had never had children and Eileen privately thought this was one of her friend's big regrets in life. Her first husband had left her for his secretary after eleven years of marriage and then her second husband had died six years ago. He'd been the love of Dora's life but with an admirable show of spirit she had picked herself up and bulldozed her way through her grief. Eileen could only hope that she and Bob would be able to do the same.

Dora was the only woman Eileen knew who had had cosmetic surgery, but her real claim to fame was that during her twenties she had been a model and became the 'legs' of a leading brand of tights and stockings. Her legs were seen on billboards, in magazines and of course, on the packets themselves. She hadn't made a fabulous amount of money, not like the models of today, but it had given her an independence a lot of women in those days never had. But for all her independence, Dora, at the age of sixty-two, couldn't imagine life without a man in it, and in her search for husband number three she had joined numerous dating agencies and answered scores of Lonely Hearts ads - always in the posh papers, like the Telegraph or The Times. Some of the men she'd been out with had been quite pleasant, but some had been absolute no-hopers. But after each failed date or brief relationship, Dora always bounced back smiling. She was one of life's great survivors and always believed that her Prince Charming was just around the corner. 'What I need,' she often told Eileen. 'is someone steady like Bob.'

Of course, Dora had no idea about Bob's affairs all those years ago and Eileen would never dream of telling her; that would be too disloyal. Every marriage had its secrets and Eileen wasn't prepared to divulge hers, not even to a good friend like Dora. What would be the point?

She reached for another name tag and thought of Bob. With each day that pa.s.sed he was becoming more cool and distant. In bed at night he felt a million miles from her. Without kissing her goodnight, he'd switch off his lamp and lie on his side with his face turned away. It was useless asking him if he was all right, because she knew he wasn't. Which of them was? Things could never be as they once were, but Felicity was dead and no amount of grieving would bring her back. But Bob didn't seem able to move on. It was as if Felicity had died yesterday, not nearly five months ago. There were times when Eileen believed that Bob resented her because she was coping better than he was. But she was only coping because she knew she had to.

It had been the same three years ago when she'd suddenly fallen ill with a mystery virus. She'd woken one morning with a violent headache and had gone to work at the Oxfam shop as normal, but by lunchtime she was back at home and in bed. She was still there when Bob came home from work, by which time she suspected she was coming down with flu. Four days later she was no better and barely had the energy to sit up and eat. It was six months before ME was diagnosed and she was forced to change her way of life, accepting that some days her legs would feel like jelly and her back would ache so much at night that it would keep her awake. She had to learn to pace herself, to use efficiently what little energy she had. She had been prescribed a low dose of Prozac to keep her emotions on an even keel too.

'Tea's up,' announced Dora.

Rousing herself, Eileen made room on the table for the tray and, putting aside her sewing, she said, 'So, Dora, would I be right in thinking it was another date last night?'

Dora poured the tea, took her cup and saucer back to her armchair and once she was settled, knees and ankles together, she said, 'I've joined The Soiree Club.'

'Heavens, what's that? It sounds like something Hyacinth Bouquet would join. Do you have to give smart candlelit dinners?'

Dora laughed. 'As good as. Every other week there's a dinner party held in the house of one of the club's members and you simply sign up for whichever one you want to go to.'

'Does that mean you all have to take your turn?'

'Yes.'

'But what if you can't cook?'

'Like me, you mean?' Dora was known for her Marks and Spencer microwave meals for one. 'No problem. We're given a list of caterers we can use. As you'd expect, the gentlemen tend to use that service more than the ladies.'

'It sounds expensive.'

Dora stirred her tea. 'As I've always said, what cost the price of a good man?'

What cost indeed, thought Eileen.

Annoyed that she couldn't get everything they needed in Kings Melford, Harriet drove on to Maywood. The woman in the shoe shop had all but laughed in her face when she'd asked if they had any plimsolls. 'We sold out of them weeks ago,' she'd said. 'You could try Woolies; they might have a few pairs left.' But the Back to School racks and shelves in Woolworth's were practically bare. Another time and Harriet would know not to leave these things to the last minute. How long had it taken her sister to learn these tricks?

By the time they'd driven to Maywood, Joel had fallen asleep. His flushed cheeks were puffed out, and his head was tilted so far forward his chin was almost resting on his chest. It seemed a shame to disturb him. But it had to be done. Harriet called his name softly and as she unclipped his seatbelt, he stirred. With his eyes still closed, he reached out to her. 'Can I have a drink, please, Mummy?'

Harriet froze. She caught Carrie's intake of breath. 'I'll get you a drink when we've done the shopping, Joel,' she said in a tight voice.

His eyes slowly opened. They were dark with sleepy confusion. But giving him no time to dwell on his mistake, she lifted him out of his seat and he stood wobbling by her side as she hooked her bag over her shoulder and locked the car. 'Right,' she said, taking his hand, 'bring on your plimsolls, Maywood!'

'Who are you talking to?' Carrie's face was scornful.