On Sunday, late morning, Roxanne found herself taking rather more care than was perhaps strictly necessary for a lunch date.
No, not a date – it was just lunch, to say sorry. Or thank you. She was no longer quite sure why Michael had asked her, other than to be kind and sweet – yes, that was it, she assured herself as she blow-dried her hair. He was just being neighbourly. This was the kind of thing people did around here. It was nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Della had made a rather clumsy attempt to set them up, on her first night back in the village, or that moment between them, which she had now decided she’d imagined, up on the hill. Anyway, Michael knew she had a boyfriend, and now he’d even met him – ouch, she thought to herself, that had been rather uncomfortable – so there was not the slightest hint that this was anything but a friendly invitation.
Roxanne took in her reflection at the dressing table mirror in her bedroom here, noticing now that her hair seemed to have acquired a pronounced shine and bounce that had been lacking recently. Was it all this wholesome country air, or the fact that she hadn’t bothered with a single hair product – bar shampoo and conditioner – since she’d left London? Some mornings she hadn’t even blow-dried it. She had just rubbed it briskly with a towel, then headed off into the hills with Stanley without a second thought. After sporting a plastic rain hood and waterproof trousers, venturing out with her hair a damp tangle hardly seemed worth fretting about. She realised now, as she pulled on a pretty blue and white floral-print cotton dress, that so much of her supposedly spare time back home was taken up with appearance-related matters.
Really, compared to many of her fellow fashion directors on other magazines, Roxanne had always considered herself to be pretty low-maintenance. However, she realised now that a ridiculous number of her lunch breaks seemed to be swallowed up by appointments for manicures, pedicures and various waxings – not to mention the occasional electrolysis treatment to zap the odd hair that sprouted out of her chin. In the fashion world, allowing a facial hair to waft about unfettered would be considered as slovenly as giving up on washing, or the brushing of teeth.
She applied light make-up, pulled on a lilac lambswool cardigan and a pair of blue canvas lace-ups. She was satisfied that she looked smart enough, but not too overly done. It was a fine balance. She didn’t want to alarm the man by turning up too glam.
Roxanne glanced out of the kitchen window and noted that she sky was a cloudless blue, the sun was shining, and the day seemed filled with promise. Della would be back from Berlin tonight, and Roxanne could happily report that all had gone well in her absence. She pictured herself telling Della about her lunch with Michael, her sister raising a brow and grinning, and Roxanne stressing that they were just friends. She wanted to be friends, very much, and hoped they would stay in touch once she had returned to London. Naturally, she would always make a point of seeing him whenever she visited Della from now on.
Roxanne picked up her bag and gave her face one last check in the mirror. She looked younger, somehow. Less lined, less weary of life. Well, that was good, she decided with a smile, stepping towards the door now. That’s precisely what was required on the day she was having lunch with an admittedly attractive and personable man.
Stanley had already been walked, and she was just saying goodbye to him – yes, she had started talking to him, like a housemate – when her mobile rang.
Isabelle’s name was displayed. Roxanne’s heart jolted. ‘Hi, Isabelle. How are things?’
‘Roxanne, I’m so sorry to call. I didn’t know if … I mean I wasn’t sure if I should, but I thought, surely you wouldn’t mind—’
‘Please, tell me what’s happened?’
‘Oh, it’s okay. Everything’s fine now. It really is.’ The tremor in her voice made it clear that it wasn’t. ‘The police have been,’ she charged on. ‘Gave me a right old lecture, of course – just like that fireman did with you. Who do they think they are, these youngsters in uniforms, being so patronising to people like us? They’ve barely lived!’
‘Isabelle, what’s happened?’
‘It was my fault,’ she continued. ‘I fully accept that. What an idiot I am, Roxanne. A stupid old woman …’
‘You are not stupid …’
‘Can’t believe I did it. I mustn’t have clicked the main front door shut behind me …’
A chill ran through her as her mind jumped to a conclusion as to why Isabelle was calling her. ‘Have I been burgled?’
‘I’m sorry, I should’ve—’
‘Please,’ Roxanne cut in, ‘if someone’s broken into my place, then it’s not the end of the world. I mean, yes, it’s horrible to think someone’s been there – but really, there’s very little to take …’ It struck her how little emotion she felt about her own home.
‘Oh, it’s not your flat,’ Isabelle exclaimed. ‘Yours is fine. It’s mine. They came in and kicked the door in. Just one shove was all it’d have taken, the policeman said. It was that flimsy …’
‘Isabelle, that’s terrible! Are you okay? Have they taken anything?’
‘Not much – not really – so I don’t know why I’m making such a fuss. They’ve just …’ Her voice cracked. ‘They’ve just made a terrible mess, Roxanne. I mean, broken so many things of mine …’ She was crying now, properly crying, making her words difficult to decipher. In the twelve years she had known her, Roxanne had never seen her shed so much as a single tear.
‘Oh, Isabelle. What sort of things?’ Roxanne asked, enraged by the thought that anyone could do something like this to an old woman living alone.
‘Just my ornaments, pictures, vases, nothing valuable. None of it is. It’s just a load of junk really. And my records …’
‘They broke your records?’ she gasped.
‘They opened my living room window and threw them out into the street, like frisbees – can you believe it? They’re still lying out there all over the place. That’s what makes the police think they were kids, teenagers – just people on drugs or drunk, doing it for the hell of it …’
She was crying so much now, Roxanne could barely understand her at all. ‘Is there anyone who can be with you right now?’ she ventured.
‘Don’t like to bother people …’
‘But you need someone with you. Things like this are really traumatic. It’s a violation, Isabelle – it’s not about having things broken or stolen. It’s about not feeling safe in your own home …’ She hesitated, wondering whether to suggest what had popped into her mind. ‘What about your son? I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about your situation. But if you need someone with you—’
‘He won’t be with me,’ she blurted out, sounding almost angry now. ‘I can’t call him. He’s made sure I don’t even know where he is …’
Roxanne blinked, and the silence stretched between them. She glanced down at Stanley who seemed to have interpreted her putting on shoes and readying herself for leaving the flat as an indication that he was coming too.
Of course, she could take him to Michael’s with her – she was certain he wouldn’t mind, as the two dogs got along fine. Only she wasn’t going for lunch now. She couldn’t possibly go. ‘I’m coming home,’ she announced. ‘I’ll just have to make a few calls to sort out things here …’
‘No, please, that’s not why I called—’
‘It’s fine, Isabelle. I’ll need to find someone to walk Stanley later, that’s all. Della’s back tonight.’
‘But I just wanted someone to talk to! You can’t come back.’
‘Well, I can’t stay here,’ Roxanne said firmly, ‘so please don’t worry. Just sit tight and try to be calm, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
It might have surprised Roxanne to know this, but the fact that Michael owned a bakery didn’t mean that he was an excellent cook. Oh, he could bake all right, of course. He’d always been a reasonably competent bread maker but now he’d had to up his game dramatically, and was confident that pretty much any kind of loaf, cake or biscuit he made would turn out all right. Okay – better than all right. He was proud of everything he offered in the bakery now. However, making lunch today was seriously challenging him. He had wanted to make something light and summery – it was a beautiful day, and he planned for them to eat in the garden at the back of the shop. Perhaps he should bake something? He was aware that some people feared pastry but it was a sort of security blanket for him. Such fuss was made about having cold hands and rubbing in the fat with a light hand, but it was really very simple. And then, once you had your pastry right, your finished dish was pretty much guaranteed to be delicious. He decided on a light and summery roast vegetable tart.
Michael kept his cookbooks rather messily stacked on a shelf in the kitchen in the flat. It had been Suzy who had been into collecting them – hence her demanding he stopped the car when they drove through Burley Bridge that first time. ‘Stop!’ she’d yelled, as if he could screech to a halt with another car right behind him. He’d pulled over by the Red Lion and they had walked back to the shop.
If that hadn’t happened, Suzy wouldn’t have fallen in love with Della’s bookshop, and emerged laden with books about yeast cookery, biscuits and party cakes. She would never have launched herself into a baking project which kicked off with her making speciality brownies to order for her friends, and culminated in the purchase of the old hardware shop with its foul-smelling drain and rising damp, which all had to be sorted at exorbitant cost. And if that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t have hired that home wrecker Rory-sodding-King to create the perfect professional kitchen, ensuring she was on hand at all times to supervise operations.
‘The thing with tradesmen,’ she’d said, ‘is that you have to keep a close eye otherwise there’s no quality control.’ How cunning to appoint herself as project manager, specifically to ‘keep an eye’ on more than the work-in-progress, as it later transpired. Meanwhile, she had encouraged Michael to take on as much supply teaching work as he could handle, ‘to keep the cash rolling in until we’re up and running’. He hadn’t imagined the ‘running’ part would entail Suzy leaving not just him, but Elsa and Jude (and Bob! What about Bob, whom she had insisted they adopt when she had seen him on a rescue site’s Facebook page?) in order to set up home in a small rented cottage in Ormskirk.
When Suzy had announced that she and Rory were in love, Michael had had no idea, not the slightest suspicion. And the thing that bothered him most was the fact that they had used their bed.
Understandably, most of their mutual friends had leapt to his aid with so many visits and hugs, great carloads of wine and casseroles and Tupperware boxes of chilli and curry and God knows what else. However, Michael didn’t want to be consoled or fussed over; he knew it made him seem ungrateful, but he couldn’t help it. Nor did he want a freezer stuffed with what he could only think of as ‘pity food’. For weeks, he could barely stomach a thing – he only made a half-hearted effort to at least partly consume a meal in order to put on a ‘we’re-coping’ front for Jude and Elsa.
Six months on, he was over her now – truly, not in a brave-and-stoical sort of way. Yes, he still felt angry and down sometimes, but then, didn’t everyone? Recently, he’d enjoyed a myriad of compliments about his breads, and that had helped to restore his self-esteem, reassuring him that he was doing something well, for his family. He felt proud of what they’d achieved here and realised, almost as an aside, that, whilst being left for someone else was no picnic, it was something you might be able to recover from. He certainly had.
While Michael wasn’t one to blow his own trumpet, he was proving himself to be more capable than he could have imagined at running his family alone. The business was ticking along, he had learned to enjoy the whole process of baking, of making something so simple and delicious with little more than flour and yeast, or his famous bubbling sourdough starter – the one he should ‘name’.
The very fact that he had invited Roxanne for lunch – albeit just as a friendly thing, certainly not as a date – felt like yet another extremely positive and, admittedly, rather thrilling step. Okay, so he’d chickened out and hadn’t planned to deliver the note; it was Elsa who had taken matters into her own hands. The audacity! he thought now, smiling. But of course he forgave her because now he had lunch with Roxanne to look forward to, entirely thanks to his daughter’s meddling ways.
When he knocked his mobile phone off the worktop and its screen smashed on the hard slate floor, he realised that perhaps he was far more nervous than he was prepared to admit to himself. But no matter. Phones could be replaced – it was ancient anyway, Elsa was always making fun of it – and in just a couple of hours’ time, Roxanne would be here. He stuffed his dead phone into a drawer and swept up the tiny shards of glass from its cracked screen. Checking his watch, he called out goodbye to Jude and Elsa who, in an extremely rare gesture, were taking the bus into Heathfield together to see a movie.
And now he turned his attentions to his tart as he lifted it from the oven. It looked perfect, he decided: its filling soft and wobbly, its crust golden. It boded well for the rest of this beautiful summer’s day.