Chapter 38
Later that day, following Dan and Grace’s instructions to the letter, Taffy guided Holly through the hallway of their cottage, the twins running loops around her, their little nylon book bags serving double time as effective weaponry.
‘Washing up’s all done, supper’s in the oven and also, this!’ He pushed open the kitchen door with his hip: ‘Ta-da!’
Holly glanced around the kitchen in confusion, where it appeared that every single soft drink currently in production was lined up in serried ranks. ‘So, however bad your morning sickness gets, there’ll always be something you fancy to drink!’ Taffy declared, seeming inordinately pleased with himself. ‘Although I have to give Dan some of the credit. He’s doing something similar with the local ciders, but with you feeling so sick every day—’
Holly reached forward and kissed him, partly to thank him for being so thoughtful, but mainly to stop the stream of words that were gathering speed and making her head spin. She didn’t like to rain on his parade of beverages, to tell him that sipping iced water seemed to be the most effective way to combat her sickness and avoid dehydration. Although she was quite sure that Taffy’s fondness for sugar would ensure that nothing went to waste.
‘Right,’ she said gently, pulling away after a moment, ‘are we going to talk about what’s making you feel so guilty or do I have to guess?’
Taffy fidgeted from one foot to the other. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink first? Any drink?’
Holly just raised one eyebrow and fixed him with a nononsense stare; it was the same look that Elsie always used to excellent effect and Holly was all up for practising any chance she got.
‘I’ve invited my parents to stay,’ Taffy blurted out in the end, a high colour flushing his neck. ‘And I know, I should have checked with you first, what with everything going on at work and you being quite so doubly pregnant, but—’ He frowned. ‘Why are you laughing?’
Holly held up a hand while she caught her breath, thumping him on the arm. ‘I thought you were going to tell me something really awful, you sod. You had me so worried for a minute.’
‘But I’ve invited my parents to stay, without asking. Grace tells me this is basically a cardinal sin! A relationship-wrecker. Not that I didn’t already know that – I mean, I didn’t need her to tell me that—’
‘Ah, but what Grace doesn’t realise is that I actually like your parents,’ interrupted Holly. ‘Although where we’re going to stack them, I do not know.’
‘Well, that’s the other thing,’ Taffy said haltingly. ‘When Dylan found out they were coming, then he wanted to come too, and then Bobi said that, erm . . .’ He hesitated.
‘Taffy?’ Holly asked, shaking her head, ‘is this your cack-handed way of telling me the whole bloody Jones clan are turning up on our doorstep?’
He nodded and held up his hands in surrender. ‘Aldwyn went online and he’s rented them a house nearby. They’re all ridiculously excited about it. Apparently Mum had been watching re-runs of Gardeners’ World and they featured last year’s Larkford Flower Festival. And then Mum went online and got all of a dither about seeing it . . . You know how she gets about a floral display. Plus, you know, it’s good timing actually because we can tell them about the babies when they’re here.’
‘Well okay then,’ said Holly easily. ‘How lovely that they’ve found a house to rent. I think the novelty of playing sardines in here would wear off fairly quickly, don’t you?’ She looked up to see that Taffy still looked thoroughly shifty. ‘So, what aren’t you telling me?’
Taffy wrinkled his nose, in a gesture so reminiscent of Tom in trouble, it was actually hard to imagine that they weren’t blood relatives – strike one for nature over nurture. ‘Well, the thing is – I mean, the house they rented isn’t available until Monday and they all fancied coming a bit sooner, while the flowers are at their best, apparently . . .’
‘Taffs, are they all coming to stay here?’ Holly said, completely unsurprised by this mob mentality and uncoordinated planning. This was, after all, the family who had booked a villa in Granada, Spain and flights to the island of Grenada, in the Caribbean. Apparently that tiny difference had eluded the entire family until they touched down after a ten-hour flight – including stopover! – with nowhere to stay.
Taffy nodded. ‘They’ll be here tomorrow.’
Holly looked around at the utter chaos that was their cottage, at the heaps of folded laundry still waiting to be put away, and mentally started counting beds and sofas in her head.
‘You don’t need to worry too much though, because I thought my brothers could just camp in the garden,’ Taffy offered, as if that solved everything.
Holly stepped forward and gave him a hug. ‘Darling, I love you and I love your family, but I’m not going to spend the weekend living like squatters while I feel this queasy. How about I ask Elsie if we can borrow a bedroom or two?’
‘For my parents?’ Taffy said, brightening immediately, as always desperate to please his adored mother.
Holly hesitated, before the twins shifting in her newly, more obviously rounded bump gave her a timely reminder of her priorities. ‘No. I was thinking more for the four of us. They’re very welcome to take over the whole house for the weekend – heck, they can even clean it if they like. But I’m going to sleep in a comfy bed and hurl in a toilet without a queue at the door.’
Taffy paused and Holly could see the conflict on his face. For once though, as much as she did love his family, she didn’t feel particularly moved to sacrifice her own comfort. The thought struck like lightning – how much more secure she was in this relationship than she’d been with Milo, where she would probably have offered to sleep in the garden herself just to appease his demanding mother. She grinned. ‘Once your mum discovers there’s not one but two grandchildren on the way, I’m pretty sure she won’t begrudge me a comfy bed.’
Taffy smiled. ‘When you’re right, you’re right. She is going to be so excited. They all are.’
Holly looked down at her bump, which seemed to have doubled in size overnight. ‘I think we should take the opportunity to have a little baby shower while they’re here, don’t you? A lovely little party, keep it small, and then maybe we won’t have your mum and Elsie constantly bemoaning the lack of wedding in our future.’
Holly smoothed her hand lovingly over the acorn finial at the bottom of Elsie’s staircase the next morning, running her fingers over its weathered oak contours and wondering how many lives this house had witnessed. The sunlight streamed through from the conservatory at the back of the house, making hazy stripes along the hallway.
She couldn’t help thinking that it had been a stroke of genius to come straight over and stay with Elsie after her conversation with Taffy last night. Even though she was working today, after a night on a memory foam mattress with gazillion thread-count sheets, she felt as though she were on a Cotswold mini-break. She’d left Taffy to sort out the house for his family’s impending arrival and was surprised to find she felt not one jot of guilt about this. She was actually thankful she and Elsie had managed an uninterrupted evening of plotting and planning for the auction, time running away from them on that front, as they all attempted to juggle their personal and professional lives.
She sighed happily; at this ridiculous hour of the morning, she revelled in having the house to herself, a house she was falling irrevocably in love with, even despite the insistent whispers in the back of her mind still pointing out that she was taking advantage.
Holly stepped through into the kitchen, questing for something stodgy to eat to ease the quailing vestiges of morning sickness that still marked the start of every day. She stopped dead, shocked to find Elsie sitting at the kitchen table in her hot-pink velour tracksuit and sipping fruit juice. She had a glow to her face that could only mean one thing: Felice had already been.
‘Jesus, you gave me a scare,’ Holly exclaimed, clapping her hand to her chest. ‘Have you seriously already had your physio session?’
‘Good morning to you too,’ said Elsie drily, raising one perfectly pencilled eyebrow at Holly’s outburst of questioning. ‘And yes. I find a little session with Felice always sets me up for the day rather nicely.’ She couldn’t resist a cheeky smile, adding a somewhat lascivious tone to her comment.
Elsie recapped her fountain pen and popped it back into Toby, the ugly-jug. But Toby wasn’t the one holding Holly’s attention this morning, no matter how much she loved him; there was something rather furtive about the way Elsie had so deftly folded her fancy writing paper in two and slipped it into her Smythson leather folio.
‘Sit yourself down before that gravity-defying bump of yours tips you over. How you can possibly stay like that for another three or four months defeats me,’ said Elsie, deftly changing the subject.
Holly laughed. ‘It’s only going to get bigger from here. I’ll be in need of scaffolding by the end, if last time is anything to go by.’ She didn’t look unduly fazed by the idea, merely resigned. An uncomfortable few months was a small price to pay for two happy, healthy babies. She reached forward and plucked a piece of toast from the toast rack beside Elsie, not even stopping to add butter or jam. Her hunger, when it came, was immediate and greedy.
‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Elsie.
Holly nodded, her mouth full of toast. ‘Like a dream,’ she added as she swallowed. ‘For the first time in months, actually. It’s such a beautiful bedroom, Elsie. All those stunning sculptures and that pair of sketches above the desk – well, I could have been in Paris at the George Cinq!’
Elsie smiled. ‘It is rather special, isn’t it? In fact, that used to be my room, before I became practically nocturnal and moved to the back of the house away from the street lights.’ She fleetingly squeezed Holly’s hand across the table. ‘I’m so pleased you like it.’
Holly buttered a second piece of toast, marvelling at the small niceties that made staying with Elsie such a joy – the roses on the table releasing their heady scent, the tiny silver spoon in the marmalade, even the crisply folded copy of The Times. She had no delusions that her own life could ever be managed this way without considerable forethought, planning and sacrifice, but it was still nice to enjoy it and savour the luxury while she could.
‘Those sketches in your room are the ones I’m donating to the auction actually,’ said Elsie. ‘I shall rather miss them, but between you and me, I can’t resist the chance to make an impact.’
Holly smiled – the sweeping curves of the nude ballerinas were bound to cause quite a stir and she knew full well how much this would delight her friend.
‘It turns out we owe Harriet a thank-you on that front, actually,’ continued Elsie. ‘If it hadn’t been for her stalking my every move, I would never have thought to get the insurance chappie round to make sure there was a full inventory of the house.
‘I always thought those sketches were rather beautiful, but not really worth anything – just rather lovely art, you know? Some minor protégé of Degas, we always thought . . . Anyhoo—’ She sipped her juice again blithely and Holly had to restrain herself from shaking the news out of Elsie. ‘It turns out they might actually be preliminary sketches from the Master himself. The poor chap from London nearly had a cow when he saw them and then, obviously, all hell broke loose for a couple of hours, because they’re woefully underinsured, of course.’ She paused, impish delight making her seem decades younger. ‘He seemed most upset when I told him my plans for them.’
‘Wow,’ Holly said, still slightly reeling from the cavalier way that Elsie had shared her news. To think she’d been sleeping under the gaze of such priceless historical pieces. She was rather pleased she hadn’t known, to be honest, as she doubted she would have slumbered quite so peacefully.
‘Well, anyway, the whole insurance thing got me thinking. Not to mention the spectre of Hurricane Harriet’s return. She’s gone to London – shopping apparently, but you can bet she’ll have swung by the family lawyers while she’s there – she seemed rather attached to the notion that I’d lost the plot. Her meeting my darling Felice while she was here was hardly ideal – lots of spluttering about the age gap. Am I supposed to have a geriatric physiotherapist, do you think?’ Elsie meandered off topic with such regularity these days that Holly had become accustomed to simply sitting her out until she got back on point.
‘Look,’ said Elsie thoughtfully, as Holly returned to the table with a fresh pot of tea, ‘I’ve decided that, if the vultures are already circling, we’d better do things a little differently. I don’t want any questions left unanswered – surely no inheritance is worth it, if it also unleashes Harriet on you?’ She popped a morsel of toast into her mouth and chewed for a moment, holding up a hand to stop Holly interrupting. ‘So, what I’d like is this. To keep things straightforward – Holly, will you buy my darling Toby jug from me? A sale, pure and simple, and then I know he’s in happy hands. None of this inheritance tax bollocks.’
Holly laughed, humouring her. As though Toby was going to be the inheritance tax issue at hand! But if it made Elsie happy, then why not? She flipped open her phone case and tugged out her emergency tenner. ‘Of course I will. The twins adore him. Will this do?’
‘Haven’t you got anything smaller?’ Elsie protested.
‘Nope. But he has to be worth ten quid, doesn’t he? Even to make the boys smile? And you know I’m rather fond of his smushy little face anyway.’
Elsie reached forward, a slight tremor in her hand, and firmly shook Holly’s. ‘Deal,’ they both said at once.
‘Well thank God for that,’ Elsie gasped. ‘I’ve been holding my breath about him for days. I’ve barely slept since Harriet turned up.’
Holly gave her a sideways look. It was natural to want your prized possessions to pass down into loving hands, but Elsie seemed to be taking the notion to the extreme where Toby was concerned. ‘And I promise to remember the lesson he brings,’ Holly reassured her. ‘No giving all my money to gambling husbands, I promise.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Elsie interrupted. ‘But now to the crucial matter at hand. Toby is now, officially, yours. Bought and paid for. Yes? And according to the lovely man on the television last week, not to mention the insurance valuer chappie, he’s worth roughly the same as this house . . . I did say, didn’t I? Ugly but priceless.’ She paused and fixed Holly with an impenetrable stare. ‘So, I’d like to propose a trade. You buy this house fair and square and pay for him with Toby. No more endless soul-searching of your tiresome moral code required. Everything above board and I get to do what I want with my things.’
Holly’s mouth was open in shock. She could barely compute what Elsie was suggesting, let alone respond coherently. ‘Is that even legal?’ she managed eventually.
‘I have a man in a suit with lots of fancy letters after his name popping round in an hour who says it is.’ She looked utterly delighted with herself. ‘So typical of Harriet not to look beyond the aesthetics. But she can’t say I didn’t offer now, can she?’
‘I don’t really understand,’ Holly confessed.
‘Am I going too quickly for you?’
‘I think you might be actually – I’m really missing my coffee; ginger tea doesn’t really wake up the brain cells, does it?’ Holly breathed out slowly.
‘Well, I’ve decided that the Degas sketches will sort me out rather nicely. Sell the pair together and split the proceeds. One half can go to the Air Ambulance thingummy and the other half ought to cover a five-year lease at Sarandon Hall – and frankly even that seems rather optimistic. So, Holly darling, do pay attention. If I kick the bucket before it expires, I want you to pick your favourite pensioner from work and install them instead. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Holly faintly, tears threatening. ‘I’m a little speechless.’
‘Oh my darling girl, I do hope those are happy tears? This is something I really want to do – you mean the absolute world to me.’
‘And you to me,’ Holly managed. ‘I’m so incredibly grateful, Elsie. This will quite literally change my life. But do me a favour? Please stop talking about a future without you in it. I keep hoping you’ll change your mind and we can all live here together—’
‘Just one big dysfunctional happy family?’ Elsie said, a little choked herself.
‘Exactly,’ said Holly. ‘Although we might need to agree a code for when your physio comes round. I’m not sure I want to walk in on your yoga practice again—’ She sniffed inelegantly and just about managed a tremulous smile.
‘Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?’ said Elsie happily, gently dabbing her eyes with a lace hanky. ‘You know, I’m not normally one for delayed gratification, but I have to tell you, Holly, this moment really was worth waiting for.’
Holly smiled. ‘I didn’t even know this was what I wanted, until it was a possibility.’
Elsie nodded. ‘You can pop that in your notebook, darling. Words to live by – don’t ever give up on what you want most, in favour of what you want right now.’
Holly hugged her and dropped a kiss onto her papery cheek. ‘Then I’m incredibly lucky, because for once in my life, they’re exactly the same thing.’