On Wednesday morning, Anna had written a list of things she hoped to achieve that day in preparation for date night:
Lose weight
Clear up skin
Buy slinky outfit
Read and memorise interesting facts from Farmers Weekly
Practise kissing
As she munched on her fourth crumpet slathered in butter, she debated where to start. Her mother trotted into the kitchen, hair removal cream on her upper lip and her hair in rollers, whistling.
‘Today is a good day, darling, isn’t it?’ She smiled broadly at her daughter. ‘You’re going to finally spend time with someone of the opposite sex and, if you can believe it, I’ve decided to ask Tony on a date.’
Anna nodded, barely looking up from her list. ‘I can.’
‘I mean, he clearly can’t get enough of me,’ her mother wittered on. ‘And, you know, unlike my daughter, I don’t play hard to get. I mean, I have to some degree, and he clearly wants me badly.’
‘Really?’ Anna finally looked up.
‘Oh, most definitely. It’s in his eyes.’ Her mother came over and looked over Anna’s shoulder at the list. Anna tried to hide it but wasn’t quick enough. ‘Darling, I don’t know how to tell you this but there isn’t one thing on that list you can do in the space of…’ She looked at the clock. ‘Wwelve hours.’ Linda walked from the kitchen, her mules clip-clopping on the stone, and called over her shoulder, ‘Though, you can practise kissing on a melon.’
‘A melon?’ Anna said, incredulously.
Her mother popped her head back around the door. ‘Yes. It’s very real. Just don’t use the one in the fruit bowl because I had a go at it last night.’ Her mother withdrew her head and she could be heard thumping up the stairs, greeting the children.
Anna looked at the fruit bowl, then, grabbing the Marigolds off the side, delicately picked up the melon and dumped it in the bin.
Freddie and Antonia came in and sat wordlessly at the table, their eyes bleary and hair ruffled.
‘How are my two favourite people in the whole world this morning?’ she said. ‘I found a slip in your bag for a bake sale this Friday. What would you like me to bake for it?’ She smiled. This could be her Nigella Lawson-type defining moment when she would saunter up to the school with two Black Forest gateaux and the other women would fall over themselves trying to get the recipe off her. Horatio would be so flabbergasted at her domestic prowess he would beg her forgiveness for laughing at her all the time.
‘Nothing,’ Freddie and Antonia chimed.
‘Oh.’ She tried to hide her pained expression. ‘Why?’
‘You burn stuff,’ Freddie said.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that was the old Mummy. This new one is going to get it just right. I will write on here that I’m making two Black Forest cakes and bring them with me on Friday morning.’
Freddie nodded and, with his mouth full of Sugar Puffs, asked, ‘What’s in it?’
‘Well,’ Anna said, her smile fading, ‘um, I think it has some chocolate and some, um, nuts.’ She paused. ‘No, not nuts.’ Anna nodded. ‘Not to worry, I’ll look it up. How hard can it be?’
Once the kids had been dropped off at school, Anna plastered on a green face mask, painted her toes using separators and started to clean the house (surely, she figured, she would lose a couple of pounds doing the mopping alone). She stopped, every so often, to read a couple of paragraphs from the copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm she had found on her aunt’s bookshelf. She wasn’t entirely sure it was giving her much insight into farming, but she could, at least, impress Richard with her knowledge of talking animals. Above all else, she was grateful to have some time alone as her mother had dragged Diane to Cheltenham to advise her on silk thongs.
A knock at the door startled her and she wrung out the mop and waddled over to the door. Pulling it wide, she found the petite blonde from the school gates on her doorstep. Today she was wearing a sky-blue version of the same pink cut-offs, an oversized, but outrageously cool, black blazer, and a handbag half her size hung off the crook of her arm. She wore glasses and didn’t bother taking them off, so Anna was confronted with her own reflection: which was squat and green. Oh, she had forgotten about the face mask.
The blonde lady snorted. ‘Um, you’ve got something on your face.’
Anna tried to smile but she could feel the dried gunk on her face cracking. ‘Um, goodness, um. This is embarrassing.’
‘Hi, I’m Lucinda,’ the woman said, holding out a bouquet of flowers.
Anna took the large bouquet of lilies and smiled. ‘That’s so lovely of you. How wonderful. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. I won’t stay.’ She pointed at her white Land Rover, showroom-white, parked on the drive. ‘I just came to introduce myself and tell you there’s a group of us who do yoga and coffee mornings and so on…’
Anna smiled broadly, sniffing the flowers. ‘I’d love to.’
Lucinda shook her head. ‘No, sorry, it’s exclusive. What I meant to say is that if you wanted to try and gain membership to our club, you need at least two members who can vouch for you, yah? One of them has to be the president.’ She pulled her glasses down with her forefinger and looked over the rim at Anna. ‘I’m the president.’
‘Oh, right.’ Anna cleared her throat. ‘Well…’
Lucinda cut in. ‘Anyway, we’ll all be at the cake sale on Friday. Maybe you can meet the others then.’ She turned daintily and moved off, leaving Anna clutching the flowers, a lump in her throat.
Anna knew what might get Lucinda’s attention. ‘Well, I will be at the cake sale. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. In fact, when I lived in London, Nigella asked me for tips on how I kept my cakes so moist.’
Lucinda turned back. ‘As in Lawson?’
‘Yes,’ Anna said, her heart hammering as she realised she was diving into dangerous waters. ‘Will you be at Horatio’s little soiree on Friday evening?’
‘Of course. Have you been invited?’ Lucinda’s wrinkle-free forehead creased ever so slightly.
‘Yes. Horatio invited me personally.’
‘Well, he’s a charitable man.’ Lucinda made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘Oh, and Anna?’
‘Yes?’
‘Your zip’s undone.’ With that, Lucinda slid into her Land Rover and roared off down the lane.
Anna looked down, flushed: she was indeed displaying her greying M&S undies. She went inside and dumped the flowers in the bin. She had never met anyone like Lucinda before: so in control, so slim, so manicured, so perfect. She felt a strange mix of indignance and a yearning to be just like her.
Anna touched up her red lipstick and pulled down her old faithful black cocktail dress. Diane told her she looked like a goddess, but she couldn’t banish the image of perfect Lucinda from her mind, and instead felt frumpy.
‘Just you wait until I get my hands on this Lucinda. Parading up here like that. She should be ashamed,’ Diane had said.
‘Yeah, but she probably meant it all in a nice way.’ Anna tried to give Lucinda the benefit of the doubt.
‘Uh, hello?’ Diane pretend-knocked her friend’s head. ‘Anna, normal people just invite you to join a club, not tell you you’re excluded until two people, herself conveniently being one of them, give you permission to be a member.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, who wants to go to fucking yoga and drink coffee with a bunch of botox-brain bimbos anyway. Yoga’s not even healthy.’
‘Isn’t it? I thought it was.’ Anna looked at her friend.
‘Yeah, healthy if your body’s made of plasticine. No one in their right mind should be able to put their legs behind their head and not expect repercussions later. It just hasn’t been around long enough for the doctors to find this out.’
‘I thought it was an ancient Indian thing?’
‘No, that’s just marketing.’ She shook her head emphatically.
Diane, who had just commenced urban dancing with the children, noticed Anna look in the downstairs mirror for the umpteenth time.
‘You look a million dollars,’ she said breathlessly, giving Anna a hug. ‘Forget Lucinda and just enjoy yourself. The kids will be fine.’ Diane clutched her heart. ‘I may not be, but they will.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll make sure we’re all out of the way by the time you get back in case…’
‘No chance.’ Anna shook her head.
‘No, not you. In case your mum comes back with Tony and wants to parade her new silk thong.’
Anna felt nauseous. ‘That is something I definitely don’t think anyone needs to see. Tony included.’
A knock at the door and Anna felt a fluttering in her stomach. She hadn’t been on a date since the guy who referred to his manhood as Spartacus. With that in mind, she pushed down her nerves and opened the door. Richard wore jeans, a blazer and a white shirt showing off his olive skin.
He smiled at her. ‘You look beautiful.’
Diane came up behind her and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Told you. Now, go and have a good time.’ She nodded towards the twins. ‘We’ve got to figure out our moves.’
Anna followed Richard to the Jaguar parked up on the drive and he held open the passenger door. ‘I thought we might go to a little Italian place I know.’
They barely spoke during the drive over and Anna realised that the ‘little Italian place’ was in fact a Michelin-starred restaurant. Once inside, they were led to a table in the corner and Richard took her coat from her and passed it to the maître d’ before ordering champagne.
‘I hope I’m not being presumptuous. Do you like champagne?’
Her heart was pounding. Why couldn’t she just calm down? It had only been a couple of years since she’d been close to a man in this way.
‘I might just pop to the, um, powder room.’ She nodded, hoping ‘powder room’ still meant the ladies and hadn’t become some sort of slang for ‘drug den’.
‘Of course.’ He nodded and stood as she left the table.
Her mouth was dry and she knew she’d relax once she’d had a drink, but first she needed to check she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth or eyeliner anywhere but around her eyes. She went to the loo, checked her make-up and took a deep breath. With renewed confidence she walked back to the table with a bit more of wiggle in her hips. As she passed fellow diners, they stopped to stare and whispered to one another. It was true, she had figured it out: the key to looking sexy really was in the mind. The rest just came naturally after that.
As she neared the table, she smiled sexily at Richard who was moving quickly towards her, his eyes desperate. Even her date was finding her magnetism irresistible.
‘Anna,’ he took her arm firmly, ‘come to the table quickly.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I didn’t realise you would miss me so much.’ She giggled.
‘Look.’ He pointed at her dress.
She stared in disbelief at the train of loo roll hanging from somewhere within the depths of her dress. ‘Oh, that’s awkward.’ Anna glanced up at Richard’s face, unable to read his expression, and smiled. ‘Not used, though, so that’s something.’
Anna pulled the loo roll and it trailed across the floor and then, with as much elegance as she could muster, hoisted her dress a couple of inches and removed the other end from her knickers.
‘Anna, let’s just drink some champagne and forget about it.’ He raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’
She balled up the loo roll and dumped it on the floor, raising her own glass. ‘Cheers.’ Gratefully, she gulped at the champagne and it went some way to making her feel better.
‘So,’ he smiled, his face relaxing, ‘I heard on the grapevine that you’d thought you might leave when you saw the state of the cottage.’
Anna scrunched up her nose. ‘It wasn’t so much that. It’s just I’ve got two young kids to think about and I wondered if I was doing the right thing by them.’
‘Why did you decide to stay?’ He picked up his menu.
‘Well,’ she said, nodding her thanks as the waiter refilled her glass, ‘my Aunt Florence meant a great deal to me and I’m not a quitter.’
‘No, you don’t strike me as one.’ Richard pushed his hand through his hair, looking momentarily like the man in the ad for a hair dye to cover greys. Only the man in the ad clearly didn’t need it and would have looked equally as sexy with greying hair. Anna was so lost in her thoughts that Richard repeated the question. ‘Anna, were you close to your aunt?’
‘Very.’ She took another sip. ‘I didn’t see her the last couple of years, though, because life got in the way.’
‘Life?’ He smiled. ‘You can tell me.’
‘Just trying to make ends meet and then, not too long ago, my ex threatened to fight for custody of the children. He said he would tell the court I’d kept him away.’
‘And have you?’ he said so kindly she thought her heart might break.
‘Maybe,’ she said truthfully. ‘Not because I don’t want them to know him, but I know how easily he gets bored. I’d hate for them to meet him and then for him to leave again.’
‘So your aunt left you the cottage?’ He clearly knew she was getting emotional and she was grateful for his sensitivity.
‘Yes, she did.’ The drink had started to take hold. ‘And yet, that stupid man, our neighbour, thinks he owns it. Or he did. He seems to have let the subject drop for now.’
‘Who?’ Richard furrowed his brows.
‘Horatio.’
‘Oh, he does, does he?’ He nodded grimly. ‘That certainly sounds like him. The bloody Spencerville family think they own everything around here.’
‘I know my aunt wouldn’t want the Spencerville family to get their hands on the house.’ Then she thought about the diary entry. ‘I mean, even though it was theirs originally.’
Richard frowned and then, just as quickly, the cloud disappeared from his features. ‘Was theirs originally?’
Anna sat back in her chair, realising she had already said too much. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I don’t know what I’m saying.’
‘Are you going to their annual harvest party? Up at Ridley Manor?’ He put his hand up to get the waiter’s attention.
She nodded. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well, once you’ve seen the size of that place,’ Richard laughed, ‘you’ll know they can certainly live without your cottage.’
‘Oh, you know their house well?’ Anna slurped at her champagne, shooting an apologetic look at the waiter who had been told to pick up her wad of loo roll.
‘Um… Quite well, yes. I’ve lived here all my life.’
‘So you know the entire Spencerville family? I’d imagine you do.’
‘Yes. I know them. We’ve had our issues in the past.’ He paused. ‘I don’t always see eye to eye with Horatio.’
‘That makes two of us.’ Anna took a bread roll and sliced through the butter, adding it to her plate. She started to munch happily. ‘He’s such a pompous oaf. He thinks he’s above me.’
‘That sounds like him.’
‘What has he done to you?’ Anna desperately wanted to try the sun-dried tomato bread too, but, noticing Richard hadn’t picked any up, decided against it.
‘He’s taken many things from me in the past. Horatio doesn’t understand not to touch what another person owns.’ He nodded. ‘So, telling you he owns that cottage isn’t out of character, I hate to say.’
‘Dreadful man.’ Anna put her hand under her chin, elbow propped up on the table.
‘Anyway, you can see for yourself at the party.’ He nodded at the waiter. ‘I’ll order for us both.’
Anna frowned. How did he know what she wanted to eat? She sipped at her champagne, her brain fizzing with alcohol and Richard’s words. While Richard finished ordering, she summoned up the courage to ask him the one burning question that had been on her mind all evening. ‘Richard, would you like to accompany me to the drinks party on Friday?’ She blushed. ‘If you’re free.’
He took her hand. ‘My God, you’re beautiful.’
She felt her cheeks grow even warmer. ‘Would you?’
‘I’m so sorry but I’m away,’ he said. ‘But any other time and I wouldn’t have hesitated.’
‘Oh.’ Anna sat back. ‘Never mind.’
‘Who will you take now?’ He winked. ‘Will I be jealous?’
Anna thought of Diane and shook her head. ‘I doubt it.’
Richard dropped her off at home, walking her to the door. Her heart was racing. She hadn’t done this bit in a long time.
‘Would you like to come in for coffee?’ she said. It seemed a good start.
‘I’d love to.’ He stepped towards her and caressed her cheek with his hand. She closed her eyes and could feel his breath on her lips, when her mother’s voice, like a foghorn, caused her to snap her eyes open.
‘Yoooooohoooooooo!’
They turned to see her mother and Tony walking drunkenly up the drive and opening the gate onto the garden path.
‘Hallo, darling,’ her mother called out loudly, despite the fact she was almost on top of them. ‘Not interrupting, are we? Don’t want to stop any rumpy-pumpy now, do we, Tony?’
Anna gave her mother a cold, hard stare. ‘Mum.’
‘Darling, no need to look at me like that, when you’re standing in a public place.’
‘It’s my house.’
‘Our house,’ her mother corrected her. ‘Anyway, don’t let us stop you. I promised Tony a cup of tea, a Hobnob,’ she winked, ‘and a private viewing of my new La Perla thong. Told him the botty isn’t what it used to be, but he seems happy with the arrangement.’ She grinned at Tony, who appeared to only have one outfit as he was still wearing the blue boiler suit he wore to work around the house. ‘Isn’t that so, Tony?’
‘Arrr.’ He nodded, his eyes blinking rapidly beneath his bushy eyebrows.
They pushed past Anna and Richard and her mother pinched Anna’s cheek, looked at Richard and said, ‘You know, you’ve got a good one there. She’s like a diamond in the rough. Imagine how gorgeous she would be without the puppy fat.’
Once the door was closed, Anna could barely bring herself to look at Richard. When she did, he was smiling. ‘Well, it’s certainly been an eye-opening evening.’
‘Yeah, so, I’m really sorry about the looroll thing and my mum and the thong thing.’ As she spoke she knew she had blown it. ‘My life is tragic.’
‘No, it’s not.’ He smiled and leant in towards her. ‘You are beaut—’
Her mother opened the door once more and whispered to her. ‘Sorry, me again. Won’t be a minute, Richard. It’s just I’m wondering if it’s too late to talk to my daughter about the birds and the bees.’
‘Mum!’ Anna hissed in dismay. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Darling, we never had that chat when you were growing up. I just feel this might be the time to have it.’
Richard cleared his throat.
‘Mum,’ she whispered loudly, ‘I’ve got two children. There might be a clue in there somewhere.’
Her mother threw her head back, laughing. ‘Oh yes, right you are. Sorrrrrrrrrrry!’