Chapter Four
Harriet gazed at the school gates, the late February sunshine gilding everything in gold, and watched with wary trepidation as the army of children and parents trooped towards the school doors. She felt like a soldier clambering over the trenches, once more into the breach.
“Come on, guys.” She aimed an encouraging smile, or what she hoped passed for one, at her children, who were uncharacteristically huddled around her on this first day back after the half-term. Even Mallory was sticking close to her, when she usually flounced off without a backwards glance.
Slowly they inched forward, heading for the gates, trying not to make eye contact, which was kind of awful. Where were her friends in her moment of crisis? Where were her children’s? Why did they all feel so alone?
“Harriet.” Sophie Bryce-Jones’ cut-glass tones made Harriet flinch.
Here they were. Her friends, or at least one of them, but she really didn’t want to see Sophie.
“How are you?” Sophie spoke in the hushed voice of someone addressing the terminally ill.
“Um, fine.” Harriet gave Sophie a pointed look and then gently pushed her children forward. “Come on, everybody. Before the bell rings.”
Sophie dogged her like a blasted shadow as Harriet saw each child to each classroom, heartened by how a swarm of girls enveloped Chloe as soon as she entered, and William immediately began wrestling with his best friend Oliver. Just because they’d lost everything didn’t mean they’d lost their friends. At least the children hadn’t lost theirs. As for hers…
Resolutely, Harriet turned around to face her best friend in the emptying-out school yard. Harriet had met Sophie when she’d first moved to Wychwood-on-Lea, eight months pregnant with Chloe and overwhelmed with two small children and endless house renovations.
Sophie had regarded her with a wide smile and narrowed eyes. “So you’ve bought the Old Rectory,” she’d said, her tone assessing, and when Harriet had nodded, that had somehow sealed it.
Harriet was ‘in’ before she’d even realized what that meant, and Sophie had arranged exercise classes, spa days, wine and cheese evenings. Harriet had been so grateful, so glad making friends had been easy, because it hadn’t always been, not when she’d been young and shy and nerdy-looking, when a single smile had been the highlight of her lonely days.
It had felt frankly amazing to be one of the popular mums, to have others drift closer to hear what she and Sophie were saying, to be the first to be consulted about the latest school fundraiser, or to give her opinion on the new shop/restaurant/children’s activity that had appeared on the placid horizon of their smug lives.
She’d enjoyed her status, quietly reveled in it, and tried to ignore the fact that she didn’t actually like Sophie Bryce-Jones all that much.
She’d certainly never questioned any of it, not even when Richard, with raised eyebrows, had asked mildly if she really wanted to spend two weeks in France with the Bryce-Joneses. Harriet had known Richard didn’t really like Hugh, Sophie’s husband, a beefy, red-faced man with a loud voice and an overly assured manner, who shook his hand too hard and wore red corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches for his weekend country look.
Now Sophie reached over and squeezed her arm, nails digging in even through Harriet’s coat and cashmere sweater. “Harriet, my goodness, what has happened? I saw the foreclosure sign on your house…” She trailed off expectantly, eyes bright.
Harriet had the feeling Sophie was enjoying this, and, terribly, she wasn’t even that surprised.
“I suppose you can imagine what happened,” she said, gently shaking off Sophie’s arm. “Richard lost his job and then we lost the house.” She surprised herself with the flat truth of the statement; no lies about renovations now. There was no point.
Sophie’s blue eyes widened, her lips parting. She’d had her forehead Botoxed recently, because no other expression was visible on her face. She was also tanned to a perfect golden bronze from spending half-term in Verbier. They would have gone skiing too, in their old lives.
“But you never said a word…”
“I didn’t know.”
“He kept it from you?” Sophie said, hardly able to hide her delighted fascination, and Harriet gritted her teeth.
Sophie was not doing a very good job of acting like a sympathetic best friend, but wasn’t that why she had said nothing to Sophie for the last month?
Because she’d known Sophie was a gossip. She’d been on the receiving end of many a vicious commentary on another mum’s clothing, character, husband, children, hair. Sophie critiqued everything, and Harriet sometimes contributed. It had been hard not to and, in all truth, sometimes it had felt fun, tearing other people apart just a little, not enough to really hurt. Knowing that about Sophie, why should Harriet think she’d be exempt?
They’d spent the last six years together—exercise classes, toddler groups, PTA meetings, nights out at the pub. They’d laughed and gossiped and moaned about not being able to get a decent housecleaner or the astronomical price of riding lessons, but had they actually been friends? Did Harriet even have any?
She’d spent all her time with Sophie, and a handful of other like-minded mothers who had orbited around them, hopeful planets to their sun. She’d felt popular, part of the in crowd, but now she wondered if it had all been a mirage… like the rest of her life, it seemed.
“No, he didn’t keep it from me, not really,” she said.
Why she felt the need to be loyal to Richard now, she had no idea. Perhaps it was mere self-preservation; she didn’t want Sophie, and therefore the whole village, knowing that she’d lost her marriage along with her house. Or maybe she still did have a loyalty to Richard, to what they’d once had, even if they didn’t have it anymore. “It just… happened suddenly. We’re still adjusting.”
“You poor thing.” Sophie reached for her arm again and Harriet took a little step away.
She found she didn’t want Sophie touching her.
“How are you coping? Where are you living?” Sophie’s eyes were wide and round.
“We’re renting a place for now,” Harriet said stiffly. She could just imagine what Sophie would think of Willoughby Close, quaint as it was. “But when Richard gets another job…” She trailed off at the look of pity that flashed in Sophie’s eyes and then she fired up. “He’s got an interview today, actually. This is just temporary. But for the short term we’re living at Willoughby Close.”
Sophie wrinkled her nose. “Those converted stables by the manor? I suppose they’re cute, as long as it’s just for a little while… I went to Lady Stokeley’s Christmas party years ago, did you go?”
“No,” Harriet answered flatly. She could tell Sophie knew she hadn’t been invited.
“Are you going to the open house, then?”
“The open house?”
“For your house. There’s a viewing next week.” Sophie watched her, waiting for her reaction, and even though she was trying desperately to retain a neutral expression Harriet couldn’t keep from flinching.
She pictured everyone in the village parading through her house, and it felt like they’d all be seeing her naked. At least she didn’t have to be present.
“I don’t think so.”
“What about the PTA meeting this morning? It was supposed to be at yours but I texted everyone to say I didn’t think that was happening because of the foreclosure…” Sophie spoke as if this was a generous thing for her to have done, when Harriet knew she’d done it simply so she could be the first one with the gossip.
Of course, most people would have already known. The Old Rectory was in a prominent place on one side of the village green. Everyone would have driven by it, seen the foreclosure sign. During half-term, when everyone had been on their skiing or beach holidays, Harriet had been able to stick her head in the sand, pretend she could hide the truth forever, but now she had to face reality… in all sorts of ways.
“I think I’m going to have to give this PTA meeting a miss,” she told Sophie with a tight smile that felt like it was splitting her face. “Too much unpacking to do.”
“Are you sure?” Sophie cocked her head. “What should I tell everyone?”
“Just that I have to miss this one,” Harriet said. She felt a burning need to get away; she had the urge to start sprinting out of the school yard and keep running for as long as she could. “I’ll be there next month.” She couldn’t even imagine what next month would look or feel like. Better than this, she hoped.
Sophie pursed her lips. “All right.”
Harriet nodded jerkily and started walking. It wasn’t until she was halfway down the high street that she realized she’d automatically started walking towards her old house. She stopped and slowly turned around, and then she saw two mums from school coming her way, mums she knew, who had once inched closer to her in the school yard while she and Sophie held court. Their heads were bent close together, both of them whispering, and without thinking about what she was doing, Harriet walked blindly into a shop.
Bells tinkled as she hurried inside, blinking in the gloom. It was a quaint teashop with willow pattern teapots and mismatched cups in the window. She’d only been in there once before, to buy a last minute present of a box of macaroons for a teacher. A woman about Harriet’s age appeared from the back room, blinking in surprise at the sight of her.
“Sorry, we’re not open yet…”
It was only nine in the morning. Harriet looked around, noting the white wrought iron chairs, the spindly little tables. She’d always meant to take Mallory here for a girly chat, a proper cream tea.
“Right.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want anything but do you… do you mind if I stay in here for a minute?” Her lips trembled and she pressed them together. “I just need to avoid someone out there for a few minutes.”
The woman tilted her head, surprise and sympathy both visible in her expression. She had a friendly face, round and dimpled, with gray eyes and a frizz of light brown hair. “Sure. I’ll just be in the back, tidying up.”
“Okay.”
Harriet sank into one of the chairs, her head in her hands, her legs weak. This was no way to live her life, ducking into shops and hiding from everyone she knew in a village with a population of two thousand. She knew that, but she couldn’t keep herself from it. Not yet. Somehow she had to find the strength to face everyone down… or else move out of Wychwood-on-Lea completely. A fresh start for all of them, perhaps, except the children had their friends and she liked Wychwood-on-Lea. She didn’t want to move.
“Here, I thought you could use this.”
Harriet looked up to see the woman set a cup of tea and a pain au chocolat on the table in front of her. Tears filled her eyes at the thoughtful gesture.
“Thank you. You’re very kind.”
“Are you all right? Anything I can do to help?”
Harriet shook her head. “Not unless you have about a million pounds going spare,” she said, “or a time machine.”
“Neither, I’m afraid. I’m Olivia, by the way.”
“Harriet.” Harriet smiled and took a sip of tea, feeling a little cheered by this exchange.
Her life had fallen apart but people were still friendly. Some people, anyway.
She thought of Sophie’s thinly disguised malice and patently false air of concern. Her alleged best friend was clearly enjoying Harriet’s fall from grace. Would Sophie drop Harriet as a friend now that she’d lost her big house, her husband, and any form of income? Of course she would. Harriet felt a pang of loss, not for Sophie, but for the yawning absence her friend’s defection would create. She didn’t have any other friends, not real ones.
From just about the moment she’d arrived in Wychwood-on-Lea, Sophie had claimed her as her own, and, in all honesty, Harriet had been happy and relieved to be claimed. Making friends had never come easily, not since her school days. Having Sophie take care of it all, effortlessly bringing Harriet into her exalted circle, had felt like magic. A miracle.
Sighing, she took a big bite of pain au chocolat, savoring the sweetness. Olivia watched her kindly, her hands on her hips.
“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
“I will. You’ve been amazing, thank you,” Harriet said sincerely as she dashed pastry flakes from her chin. “I really needed a friendly face right about now.”
Olivia smiled. “That is one thing I have, I think,” she said, and then disappeared into the back room while Harriet sat alone, soaking in the peaceful solitude, and sipped her tea and ate her pastry, all the while letting her mind blissfully empty out. She needed not to think for a while.
Eventually she had to stir herself; with shock she realized she must have been sitting there for nearly an hour, because Olivia came out to flip the sign on the door to open, and an elderly woman with a plaid wheelie bag came in to buy some loose tea and a packet of macaroons.
“How much do I owe you for the tea and pain au chocolat?” Harriet asked after the woman had left, and Olivia arched an eyebrow.
“A million pounds? No, seriously.” She waved her away. “It’s on the house.”
“Oh, I couldn’t…”
“You could and you will,” Olivia said firmly. “I was glad to be of some small service.”
“Thank you,” Harriet said, meaning it truly, and then she took a deep breath and stepped outside to brave the high street.
Fortunately she didn’t meet anyone she knew as she walked back to Willoughby Close and let herself in. The house was quiet and still, the breakfast dishes strewn across the kitchen table—in her old house, she’d used the simple pine table as a crafts station in the family room. She lay one hand against the old, weathered wood that was covered with bits of glitter and dried splotches of paint.
It was the first real piece of furniture she and Richard had bought, back when they’d been newly married and poor. She’d had an internship in publishing and Richard had had his first job in finance, being a badly paid dogsbody to a bunch of middle men. They’d both been so proud of that table, buying it from an overpriced furniture shop in Camden Town and lugging it down crowded pavements, all the way back to their poky flat where it had been surrounded by folding chairs and plastic crates.
They’d slept on a futon on the floor, their wedding presents still in boxes because they’d had no place to put them all. What use was a twelve-piece set of fine china when they didn’t have a table? Except of course they finally had one then, and now Harriet remembered how they’d ate their first meal on it using the Meissen, with candlelight and sterling silver to boot.
They’d been so happy then. She remembered the feeling, that shimmering, we-can-do-anything feeling, like bubbles inside her, floating up and up… when had she last felt like that? When had she lost it?
Tears sprung to her eyes, so suddenly she couldn’t stop them as she’d been doing for the last month, choking everything down and soldiering on. Now she sank onto a chair and rested her arms on the table, lowering her head as the tears trickled down her cheeks and her shoulders shook with the force of her feeling.
It felt good to cry, good and bad, because while the release was cathartic, the aftermath would be awful, an emotional hangover. Still, she let it out because she needed to, she needed to grieve and not just for the house, which she missed like a lost limb, or even for her old life, which she missed like her favorite coat, the coziest blanket, but Richard. Richard she missed the way you missed your heart beating.
She missed him—the smell of him, aftershave and Polo mints, the feel of him, sinewy and well-muscled. When they’d first been married he’d been skinny to the point of scrawniness, a little endearingly embarrassed about it. Harriet had force-fed him enormous fry-ups and mashed potatoes made with butter and full cream, and he’d started working out at the gym and began to bulk out, at least a little.
She missed waking up in the morning with her toes tangling with his, the feel of a warm, hard body in bed next to her. She missed the sound of his hand fumbling for his phone to shut off the guitar chords of his alarm. She missed his arms snaking around her waist, and the way her chin just fit on top of his shoulder. She missed looks across a crowded room or a restaurant, wry self-deprecating looks, because they were both laughing on the inside at the same thing.
How could it be all gone? Had it meant nothing? She cried for all that and more, because the man she’d fallen in love with wouldn’t have believed a twenty-six-year-old who wore a red satin push-up bra as part of her work wear understood him. The man she’d fallen in love with wouldn’t have lied to her for six months.
But maybe the man she’d fallen in love with had disappeared a long time ago. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d tangled toes or shared a silent, laughing look. She feared it had been years.
Eventually the full, body-wracking sobs trickled into hiccups and sniffles and then a few long, shuddering sighs. When she finally finished, one last shudder wracking her frame, she rose from the table with a big sigh and went in search of tissues.
An inspection in the bathroom mirror showed her just how indulgent she’d been, with puffy eyes, red nose, and running mascara. The face of grief. Harriet let out a hiccuppy half-laugh and set about repairing the worst of the damage, before she stopped, wondering why she was bothering.
She was going to spend the day in the house, unpacking boxes, seeing no one. She had no one to look good for, no one to impress at Pilates or a coffee morning and the catwalk of the school run was still four hours away. The realization that she had a day by herself, a day off, was a relief.
Later that afternoon, before school pick up, Harriet steeled herself to drive by the Old Rectory. After Sophie’s snide comments she needed to see it, lance the wound.
It looked depressingly empty, the windows blank and curtainless, the ‘Foreclosure-To Auction’ sign bigger and brighter than she had anticipated, stuck right by the front gate, the branches twined above it now bare of roses.
Who would buy their house? Who would live there? The thought of seeing a family, maybe even one she knew, making the house their own caused her hands to clench on the steering wheel. She didn’t think she could stand it. And what about the children? What if they were invited over?
Chloe didn’t even understand that they weren’t going back, not to that house at least. It was like some sort of holiday to her, and as for Mallory and William… She was worried about how angry they both seemed, especially Mallory. She wanted to say or do something to make it better, but she felt powerless and she doubted Mallory wanted to hear anything she had to say.
Harriet leaned her head against the steering wheel, her eyes closed, and wished she was coping better. Wished she was strong enough to help her children cope better. And what if this wasn’t temporary? What if Richard never got a job, they never got together, the rest of her life unraveling like a loose thread. It felt all too possible.
With a sigh, she opened her eyes and saw it was five minutes past three. Once again she was going to be late for pickup.
“How was it?” she asked when Mallory slouched towards her, fringe in her face and school bag hitched high on her shoulder. A couple of months ago, Harriet had given her one of her old designer leather bags for school but now she wondered how appropriate that was. Mallory was eleven, but she was copping the attitude of a sulky sixteen-year-old, bulky Prada bag included.
“How was what?” Mallory asked in a bored voice, and Harriet gritted her teeth.
When had Mallory started being so rude? Was it since their lives had blown up or before? Harriet couldn’t actually remember, which seemed a bit alarming.
She tried to think back to Christmas—what had the children been like then? She felt a prickle of shame to realize she hadn’t actually paid too much attention to them. She’d been so busy, cooking for nine—her parents and brother and wife had all come for Christmas dinner, and Simon and Jessie were both staunchly vegan. She’d also been in charge of every single person’s presents, including Richard’s parents in Norfolk, because he didn’t buy anything except for her. Buying presents had become a negotiation worthy of the UN, with Harriet making sure every child had the same amount of presents under the tree as well as in their stockings, and that the presents were roughly equal in terms of amount spent since Mallory and even William seemed to know how much everything cost.
Mallory had developed the irritating habit of detailing the price as the recipient opened her present—’A pair of Heelies! That’s at least forty pounds!’
And then of course there was the decoration, worthy of Country Life, everything polished and wrapped, gleaming or glowing, and definitely perfect.
And the house had looked good, with candles in every window, fresh evergreen looped around the banisters and over the doorframes, interspersed with little bows of crimson velvet. Standing there, looking at her daughter’s shuttered expression, Harriet wondered who had made the rule that her house had to look like a photo shoot. Who had decided that was important?
Well, she had, obviously, but the trouble was she couldn’t remember when. None of that seemed very important anymore.
“How was school, Mallory?” Harriet clarified. “Was it… was it okay?”
Mallory flicked a scornful glance and then started walking out of the school yard. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Which left Harriet in an awkward position. She didn’t want to say because kids might be asking about our house. They might be teasing you. Maybe her daughter didn’t know what it was like to be teased, not like she had, and that of course was a good thing. But Harriet still felt wary. She decided to leave the question unanswered and she called to William and reached for Chloe’s hand before following Mallory down the street.
Then her daughter turned left instead of right, instinctively going towards the village green and the Old Rectory instead of down the narrow lane towards Willoughby Manor and its close.
“Mallory,” Harriet called gently and her daughter acted as if she hadn’t heard her, striding ahead, all flying hair and far too much attitude. “Mallory. You’re going the wrong way.”
Mallory stopped mid-stride and then whirled around and started towards Willoughby Manor, her expression both anguished and furious. Harriet’s heart ached for her daughter, and she reached out one hand, wanting to offer some sympathy, some understanding, but Mallory didn’t want it. She shrugged off Harriet’s lame attempt and kept walking, her head held high.
Sighing, Harriet pulled Chloe along, called to William again, and headed home.