Chapter Twenty-One
Harriet kept hold of that perfect feeling—well, almost perfect—for the next two golden weeks of May. Richard spent several evenings a week in Willoughby Close, helping Mallory with her homework, kicking a ball with William, tucking Chloe into bed with her legion of stuffed animals.
Watching him, covertly of course, engaged in all these activities made Harriet realize how much the children had missed him. Not just since January, but for a long time before that. They’d all become accustomed to being without him. And while it was good—wonderful, in fact—to see Richard spending so much time with the children, she wondered how long this honeymoon period would last.
In the evenings when the kids were in bed, he spent time with her. They’d sit on the sofa with a glass of wine or take Daisy out to the garden for a late-night play. They didn’t do anything exciting, but it was nice simply to sit and talk, to get to know each other again. It was also strange, because Harriet had to keep reminding herself that this was Richard, her husband, the man she’d shared so much of life with. It felt like meeting someone new as well as slipping into something familiar and well-worn. The best kind of dating, in a weird way, although the stakes were so much higher.
But Harriet was trying not to think about what was at stake. Chloe had asked her several times if Daddy would be moving to Willoughby Close, something Harriet couldn’t quite imagine. And Mallory kept giving her speculative and even suspicious looks, but when Harriet tried to ask her how she was feeling about things, she exhaled heavily and rolled her eyes, fobbing her off with some attitude. No real change there, and yet Harriet knew her daughter well enough now to realize she was hiding her fear. She didn’t want this to crash and burn, just as Harriet didn’t.
Two weeks after that rainy picnic she and Richard were having dinner at The Drowned Sailor, to celebrate the interview he’d had that morning in London. They’d taken to making the slightly down-at-heel their regular, in part to avoid their old crowd—Sophie and Cheryl were now BFFs and had taken to acting, quite obviously, as if Harriet did not exist—but also because people they knew, people like Ellie and Jace, Colin and Anna, went there. And the food, plain and no-frills as it was, was surprisingly good.
“I’ve got a feeling about this one,” Richard said as he poured them both glasses from the bottle of champagne he’d impetuously ordered to celebrate his interview. “They seemed keen, really keen. They liked that I was willing to take risks.”
“Did they?” Harriet tried to sound pleased when what she really felt was faintly alarmed. Surely there had been enough risk taking already.
“Yes, their attitude is much more pragmatic. Win some, lose some. That’s how it is in this business.” His chest swelled, and she saw that old glint in his eye. Finally getting an interview had certainly jazzed him up.
“So when will you find out?”
“Not for a week or two. They might call me in again, talk to some higher-ups…” He shrugged. “It doesn’t happen overnight. There are a lot of details to work out, you know.”
“Right.” It had been nearly a year since he’d worked in finance. “And what about the tutoring? How is that going?”
“The tutoring?” Richard looked at her blankly.
“Yes, the GCSE students you’re tutoring in history and economics? How is that going?”
“Oh.” He looked bemused. “I enjoy it, actually. I’ve got a couple of really bright kids, very motivated. And I’ve always liked history, you know that.”
“Yes…” For years she’d bought him a subscription to a very nerdy-looking history magazine for his birthday, and he’d always read it from cover to cover and then kept the issues to read again.
“But it doesn’t pay the bills,” Richard finished. “Or a new house or anything like that.”
“But if it did…” Harriet said slowly.
Richard frowned. “What is the problem, Harriet? I’m going to get another job. I’m going to get it all back.”
She’d heard this so many times and, for so long, she’d wanted to believe it. But now she wasn’t sure she did. “But I don’t want to go back to the way we were, Richard.”
“And we won’t.” He made it sound so simple. “Of course we won’t. We’re going to be different, Hat, we’re going to be better. But I need to do this.” He leaned forward, his face intent. “I need to show I can get back on the horse, you know? I can’t walk away from it all. I won’t.” There was hard edge to his voice that made Harriet blink. Had he just given her an ultimatum?
Richard smiled and poured them both more champagne. “And how is your adopted granny?”
“Lady Stokeley?” She still had trouble calling her Dorothy. “The same, more or less.” Harriet had continued to drive her to her chemo treatments, and after that first week Dorothy had rallied a bit. She was eating a bit more, and seemed determined to fight on. She hadn’t, as far as Harriet could tell, called her nephew, but she had told Abby and Ellie about her diagnosis. Ellie had been tearful and distraught, but Abby had seemed grimly determined.
“If anyone can beat cancer,” she’d said, “Lady Stokeley can.”
Harriet had to agree with her.
“It’s good of you to drive her to Oxford,” Richard said.
“She is paying me.” Harriet had tried to refuse that first check, and then Lady Stokeley had simply given her a look, so Harriet had laughed and thanked her—and taken it. Twenty-one pounds was twenty-one pounds, after all, and half of her daily income.
“What happens if you don’t get this job?” she asked abruptly and he blinked, looking a bit affronted.
“I’m counting on that scenario not happening.”
“I know, but…” Why did the thing she’d once wanted most now feel like something unpalatable, even frightening? The last few weeks had been good, even great in some ways, but Harriet couldn’t keep the unease from settling the pit of her stomach, a stone she couldn’t dislodge. “But what will happen if you don’t?” she pressed.
“Why are you asking?” Richard asked. “Don’t you have faith in me?”
“It’s not about faith in you, Richard.”
“Isn’t it?” Richard lifted his chin. “I know I got us into this mess, Harriet, and I told you, I’m going to get us out of it.”
Harriet knew there was no point in arguing, not now, when Richard was practically drawing a line in the sand. “I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said.
She realized she was no longer thinking of her life at Willoughby Close as a blip. A bump on the road. She didn’t want to think of it that way.
“What if…” she began, and Richard leaned over and touched her hand.
“Let’s not worry about the what-if scenarios just yet, Harriet. I’ve got a good feeling about this interview. I really think it’s all coming around for us.” He squeezed her hand, and Harriet managed to smile back.
Back at Willoughby Close, Richard walked her to her door as if she were sixteen and her father was waiting at the window, twitching the net curtains. Two weeks of dating and they had done no more than kiss, lightly, at the door. Harriet wasn’t sure how long she was going to hold back, only that she wasn’t ready yet to delve back into those marital intimacies they’d once enjoyed what felt like a very long time ago. Strange, to feel sex was such a monumental step with a man who had bought her tampons and seen her nether parts getting sewn up.
As they reached the little courtyard, now full of flower pots and climbing clematis, Richard said, “I was thinking perhaps we could all spend half-term together, go on a holiday.”
Harriet let out a surprised laugh. “On holiday? Where?” Where could they afford?
“What about a camping trip? I think we still have all the gear from that trip we took years ago.”
An ill-fated camping trip to Normandy, when Mallory had been a toddler and William a baby. Not a good time to sleep in a tent. Breastfeeding in a sleeping bag was as difficult as it sounded, and they’d taken turns chasing Mallory and rocking William, both of them looking shell-shocked from lack of sleep. Harriet had vowed never to go camping again. Just the thought of sharing such a tiny space with her entire family made her cringe inwardly a little.
“I looked online and there’s a place up in the lake district that’s pretty cheap,” Richard continued. “Beautiful spot, near Ambleside. We always wanted to go there, do you remember?”
Vaguely, when they’d briefly gone through an outdoorsy period, back in university. Harriet had somehow got it into her head that hiking was fun. She’d since learned better. And yet… a holiday. Together. That wouldn’t cost too much. It would be a litmus test of their relationship, their strength as a family… and as a couple. And the children would love it. Well, not Mallory. But Chloe and William would.
“What about Dorothy?” Harriet asked. “I need to drive her to Oxford…”
“Could someone else do that, for a couple of days?”
Harriet hesitated. She hated the thought of letting Dorothy down, and yet she was also recognizing more and more that she could not provide all the help an inform elderly lady needed. But camping… it really did feel like a test. A grueling one.
“I’ll see,” she said.
The next afternoon she stopped by Willoughby Manor to ask Dorothy if she could help to arrange another driver for the week. “I think Ellie could do it,” she said hesitantly. “She’s taking a few days off work. Or Jace…” She trailed off as Dorothy waved a beringed hand, the rings now sliding up and down her thin fingers. She’d lost weight since beginning the chemo, and she hadn’t had any to lose.
“I’m sure something can be arranged. I would hardly want you to miss your holiday.” Her blue eyes narrowed as she gave Harriet an openly speculative look. “If I am not mistaken, this is a holiday en famille?”
Harriet let out a surprised laugh. “Yes… how did you know?” She’d shared very little of her life with Dorothy, despite their many hours together.
“I have my sources.” Dorothy leaned back in her seat. She’d made it out to the terrace today, and was sitting in the sunshine, a bit of color in her cheeks. “I’m pleased for you, my dear.”
“Thank you. Although it isn’t as exciting as it sounds. Camping in the lake district.”
Dorothy gave an eloquent shudder. “Something I have never been remotely tempted to do. But perhaps you shall enjoy it.”
“Perhaps. We’re trying, anyway. To make it work.” Dorothy nodded, and Harriet knew she understood she wasn’t just talking about camping.
“I found marriage to be a great deal of hard work,” she said after a moment, her eyes closed, her face tilted to the sun. “And the work is often necessary at the very time when you least feel like doing it.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Harriet agreed. She paused and then dared to ask, “But you were happy, Dorothy? In your marriage?” Suddenly it felt important to know.
Dorothy didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally she said, “Young people these days, and I count you among them, set so much store by happiness. You’re always asking yourselves, ‘Am I happy? Is this making me happy?’ as if that is so very important.” She let out a rasping laugh. “I cannot imagine how one can determine such a thing, especially amidst such endless analysis.”
“You haven’t answered the question,” Harriet reminded her gently. “But I understand what you’re saying.”
“Do you?” Dorothy opened her eyes. “I wonder.” She sighed, her gaze now on the green lawn rolling out to the yew hedge border. “My marriage was something I am proud of,” she said at last. “Because it took work, at times a great deal of work. Because I stayed in it, even and especially when the work was required. At times I was happy, yes, at times I was very happy. But overall, at the end of my life? It’s not whether I’ve been happy that concerns me.”
Harriet couldn’t help but be a bit shocked by this. “What concerns you, then?” she asked.
Dorothy was silent again, and Harriet didn’t think she’d answer. “Oh, the usual claptrap,” she said on a sigh. “Whether I’ve been a good person. A good wife, and sister, daughter, friend. I never had the chance to be a mother, not properly, more’s the pity.”
“Not properly?”
Dorothy just shook her head. Harriet could tell she was starting to tire, and she decided they’d had enough of a heart-to-heart for the moment, although she would love to know more.
She helped her back inside and settled her in her bed with a cup of tea. She’d done a shop at Waitrose a few days ago so at least Dorothy had plenty of ready-made meals and tins of decent soup, proper milk and not boxes of UHT, as well as a pack of freshly made chocolate croissants—Harriet had seen, to her satisfaction, that two had already been eaten.
Harriet was still mulling over the old lady’s words as she headed back to Willoughby Close. Was she too concerned about her own happiness? Her children’s happiness? Was she chasing pleasure with an ax rather than living life as it came, accepting the joys along with the sorrows? Maybe happiness was a by-product rather than an end point—and if so, what did that mean for her and Richard?
She supposed right now it meant they’d go camping.
Two weeks later, for the first day of half-term, Harriet was gazing into the back of the Rover, wondering how on earth they were going to fit all their camping kit in it, while Richard attempted to stuff the badly folded-up tent into the roof box. The weather for the lake district was forecast, unsurprisingly, for rain.
“Maybe we should have a staycation,” Harriet said, even though she didn’t mean it. William was wildly excited to camp, and had been wearing the head torch Richard had found in the mess of their camping gear for the last twenty-four hours, including when he was asleep.
“This is going to be great,” Richard said firmly, and then managed to close the lid of the roof box.
Harriet looked up at the sound of a car approaching, her eyes widening at the sight of the cherry-red Mini Cooper convertible speeding up the lane. Richard straightened, squinting at the car as it pulled up in front of number three.
The woman driving the car looked like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and the Duchess of Cambridge. Long, shiny caramel-colored hair streamed from underneath a wildly patterned scarf. She removed her oversized sunglasses to inspect Harriet and Richard, giving them both a rather cool smile.
“Hello,” she said after a pause and Harriet managed a smile, shocked by the sight of this movie star type swanning into Willoughby Close.
“Hello.”
The woman stepped out of the car, revealing a svelte yet curvy figure that was poured into a pair of designer skinny jeans and a flowing, low-cut top of purple chiffon. The eyes behind the sunglasses were a smoky, purply-gray that complimented her top perfectly. She was utterly gorgeous, super sexy, and Harriet was immediately conscious of every fault and flaw she possessed, from the poochy belly hidden by her loose T-shirt to the gray in her hair and the deepening crow’s feet by her eyes. Plus she had a pimple coming out on her chin.
The woman reached into the back of the Mini and picked up a little crate that held a very small dog, the kind one could put in a pocketbook. She turned back to Harriet and Richard with a small smile.
“Are you my new neighbors?”
“What…” Harriet’s jaw nearly dropped before she managed to rally. “Yes, that is, if you’re moving into…”
“Number three, yes.” The woman glanced at the cottage next to Harriet’s with a small, wry smile. For a second Harriet was able to look past the woman’s obvious glamour and beauty to see something vulnerable and sad underneath. But only for a second.
“Oh, well, then.” Harriet gave her a bright smile. “I’m Harriet Lang, and this…” She paused for a second, wondering how much to explain, but then Richard stepped in.
“Richard,” he said. “The husband.”
“Right. No husband here, I’m afraid.” The woman clutched the dog crate closer to her, her smile turning brittle.
There was a story there, but one she wasn’t about to volunteer and Harriet was hardly going to ask after two seconds’ acquaintance.
“Ava Mitchell,” she added, extending one elegant, well-manicured hand. “Nice to meet you.”