40
Scenes Off
Sheila had changed her clay-stained cords for clean denim jeans and a long, loose, blue-checked shirt, in which she looked not that much older than Bel.
Dinner was almost ready and I laid the table while she put plates in to warm and sliced bread.
‘I’ve had a sneaky gin and tonic,’ she said. ‘I had a feeling I might need it, because although I hope Zelda only wants to make up with Nile, she might have come here with the idea of changing his mind about the AI instead.’
‘Surely not? I think he’s already told her in no uncertain terms he’s not going to do it. She’s extremely pretty, though,’ I added morosely. ‘And probably very persuasive.’
‘I was dying to ask her while I was driving back from the station after picking her up,’ she confessed. ‘Only I didn’t think she had any idea that I knew about it, so I thought I’d better not.’
‘That’s true – she’d probably be mortified if she realized we all knew about it. And by the way, I’m sorry I dumped Robbie on you without any warning.’
‘Oh, it was no trouble. He wanted to drive into Haworth and talk to you this morning, but I asked him to help me wedge absolutely tons of clay, which kept him occupied.’
‘I have no idea what wedging clay involves,’ I confessed, ‘but thank you for diverting him, anyway!’
‘Wedging clay is a bit like kneading dough, only on a larger and heavier scale,’ she explained. ‘While he was at it, he told me he hoped you two would get back together and he’d been surprised you weren’t more pleased to see him when he arrived.’
‘He chose the wrong moment – and he’s chosen the wrong girl, too, because getting back together isn’t going to happen.’
‘No, I was sure it wasn’t, but I was very tactful and pointed out to him that you’d need some time to get over your fiancé’s death and you were fully occupied with your writing and the teashop.’
So that was what had put that idea into Robbie’s thick skull!
‘Well, of course I do still think about Dan a lot, but as I told Nile a while back, the nervous breakdown seemed to have somehow enabled me to move on.’
‘Oh?’ she brightened. ‘I’m not sure Nile’s entirely taken that on board, because he seems to think you still need a little space … though eventually I do hope you two will—’
‘We’re just friends,’ I said quickly, guessing where she was heading. ‘But not in the Zelda sense of the word,’ I added, hearing her voice in the hall, calling imperatively: ‘Nile – can we talk?’
‘I suppose so, though it’s almost dinner time – come into the library,’ he replied, sounding tight-lipped but resigned.
Then there was the click of the library door shutting and we exchanged a glance.
‘I think we might have a few issues to resolve before there can be happy-ever-afters all round,’ Sheila said thoughtfully.
‘They don’t exist anyway,’ I told her. ‘Not even in my fairy tales.’
The rest of us had already gathered round the table and made a start on Geeta’s delicious vegetable samosa starters, by the time they emerged together, though not, judging by Zelda’s expression, together in any other sense than temporarily inhabiting the same space.
I got my first good look at her, for the passage light upstairs was quite dim. She was tiny, with black, glossy hair falling in two perfect wings to frame a face that could only be described as cutely pretty. She was also thin and elegant, in a garnet-coloured slinky jumpsuit that probably cost the earth.
Nile was wearing his best thundercloud expression and a black shirt, probably to reflect his mood.
‘Zelda does some modelling for catalogues,’ Bel whispered in my ear.
‘What, for children’s clothes?’ I hissed back cattily, and Bel snorted.
Zelda looked at us suspiciously, then went and sat next to Robbie, while Nile took the last chair, which was opposite me. His eyes rested on me for a moment as blank and hard as grey quartz. Then the angry expression went out of them and was replaced by a wicked glint.
‘You’re looking very Lizzie Siddal tonight, Alice – all lace and flowing curls,’ he said, with the obvious intention of winding me up, though I could never resist that smile.
‘Don’t tease, Nile,’ said Sheila, and then, to my relief, the give and take of normal family conversation started up again and Teddy began feeding Casper spoonfuls of lumpy gloop, while Bel told her mother that she’d just remembered that she’d invited Thom Carey to Sunday lunch, and asked if that was all right.
‘Of course, darling,’ she said predictably.
When I turned my head I caught Zelda eyeing me closely, then she began whispering away to Robbie, which was rather rude. Whatever she said made him stare first at Nile, and then at me, though it didn’t stop him eating. Nothing ever did get between Robbie and his dinner.
‘What time is your interview tomorrow, darling?’ Sheila asked me. ‘Only we must leave the library free for that.’
‘About ten,’ I said. ‘I’m quite nervous about it and I’d like to get it over with.’
‘Are you going to take my advice and wear the dryad dress, for the photographs?’ Nile asked.
‘What interview?’ asked Robbie plaintively. ‘And why is someone taking your photograph, Alice?’
So then we had to give him and Zelda a potted history of my being found abandoned and my hope that my natural mother would come forward if she saw an article about it in the local paper.
‘I had no idea about any of that,’ Robbie said blankly.
‘But I told you all about it years ago, Robbie,’ I said patiently.
‘Did you?’ His eyes opened wide. ‘I must have forgotten. I mean, I knew you were adopted, it was all the rest I didn’t remember.’
‘It all sounds very Wuthering Heights,’ drawled Zelda. ‘Who have you cast as Heathcliff?’ She glanced at Nile. ‘Or should I guess?’
‘I’ve always thought Heathcliff was more a force of nature than a real character,’ Sheila said, holding Casper who, having finished his dinner, was being passed from lap to lap around the table. I noticed Zelda hadn’t shown any interest in him, which was odd considering her desire for a baby, but perhaps she was one of those women who only liked their own children?
But Casper was so adorable, I didn’t know how anyone could resist him! Geeta took him off to bed eventually, when we took our coffee through into the living room. I only lingered long enough to be polite before I gave in to the enormous rolling waves of sleepiness that were finally catching up with me from last night’s marathon writing session.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go to bed,’ I confessed. ‘I’m sorry, but I only had a couple of hours’ sleep last night, before Nile woke me up.’
Zelda gave me another of those long stares, sniggered, then muttered something to Robbie, who was sitting next to her on the cushioned window seat.
I felt myself going pink and Nile looked angry.
‘Yes, do go, darling,’ Sheila said quickly. ‘You want to be nice and fresh for the newspaper reporter in the morning.’
‘I feel tired too – I think I might do the same,’ announced Zelda, suddenly getting up.
I might have guessed she had an ulterior motive if I’d been less thick-headed with sleep, because she grabbed my arm as we reached the landing and said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘I don’t know what about, but it will have to wait till tomorrow – I’m bushed.’
‘It’ll only take a minute,’ she said, following me uninvited into my room and sinking on to the only chair.
‘Let’s stop playing games and clear the air: when Nile and I had our talk in the library, he said he’d told you I wanted him to be my sperm donor – but he doesn’t want to do it because he’s in a relationship with you. Not that I didn’t realize that for myself at dinner,’ she added.
That blew some of the clouds of sleep away and I stared blankly at her: ‘What? Nile told you we were in a relationship?’
‘I’m not a complete fool and I could see it for myself as soon as I saw the way you were looking at each other at dinner. He says this time it’s serious, but then, he’s been out with loads of girls and he always says that.’
‘But …’ Cogs slowly turned and I realized that Nile had only told her that to put her off. My first impulse was to deny it hotly – but it didn’t sound as if she’d believe me. ‘Nile and I—’
‘Look,’ she interrupted, ‘you can tell him you don’t mind him doing it. I mean, he needn’t have anything to do with the baby, if he doesn’t want to. There’s no reason why you should mind, is there? So you could talk him round and—’
‘No!’ I exclaimed with more force than I meant to. ‘Zelda, you’ve entirely got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It’s nothing to do with me! And now I’m so tired I can’t even think straight any more and I’d like you to go away so I can get into bed,’ I finished forcefully.
‘Oh, all right,’ she said, getting up. ‘But you can’t fool me about what’s going on, so you think about it and we’ll talk again tomorrow.’
‘There’s nothing else to say. Please go away!’ I snapped, and she flounced out, giving me daggers as she went.
Wait until I got my hands on Nile tomorrow, using me as a scapegoat!
I woke late next morning so it was a scramble to get ready and downstairs in time to snatch a cup of coffee and piece of toast before the reporter arrived.
Bel was on breakfast duty and told me I was still down before Robbie and Zelda, though Sheila had long since retreated to her studio.
‘And Nile’s in the library emailing – he’s left bids for a couple of auctions today, I think,’ she added. ‘You’d better remind him you need the room.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I said, heading for the door. And I’d ask him what on earth he’d told Zelda!
‘But she was convinced she could talk me round if she saw me face to face and she went on, and on, and on, like water dripping on a stone,’ Nile explained. ‘So in the end, I thought the easiest way of getting her off my back was to tell her I couldn’t do it because I was in a serious relationship with someone else. I didn’t say who – she filled in the lines between the dots herself,’ he added innocently.
I glared at him. ‘Yes, she did – and you’re lucky I didn’t tell her that we’re not in a relationship, serious or otherwise!’
‘Yes, we are. I’m seriously attracted to you and you seriously doubt my intentions,’ he said flippantly.
‘Don’t be daft!’ I snapped. ‘You realize she’ll tell Robbie the first chance she gets? If she hasn’t already!’
‘Well, that’s all right because you don’t want him, do you? Or … do you?’ He eyed me narrowly.
‘No, of course I don’t!’
‘Bel said she walked into your flat just after he’d arrived and found you both in a clinch.’
‘It was one-sided: Robbie had just pounced on me and was being a bit overenthusiastic,’ I snapped. ‘Not that I wasn’t pleased to see him – I’m very fond of him – and anyway, it isn’t any of your business!’
‘Right: that puts me in my place, then,’ he said sarcastically. ‘But if you seriously don’t want him back, then I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about, because by telling Zelda you and I are an item, I’ve solved two problems in one.’
‘You might at least have warned me what you’d said!’
‘I didn’t get a chance, or I expect I would have, but I really didn’t expect her to buttonhole you so soon.’
‘She didn’t waste any time: when she followed me upstairs last night it was to ask me to persuade you to help her get pregnant.’
‘Then I hope you told her that wasn’t going to happen. You look really pretty in that top, by the way,’ he added. ‘Not a bit Lizzie Siddal – or dryad.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I told him, slightly baffled. ‘And stop trying to change the subject.’
‘I wasn’t – I meant it.’ He raised that quizzical dark eyebrow again, looking slightly piratical. ‘And here’s your reporter arriving to interview you,’ he said, hearing the distant ring of the doorbell and unleashing one of those sudden and demoralizing smiles on me. ‘I’ll bring him into the library and head everyone else off.’
The reporter was young, keen and enthusiastic and had already read all the articles printed from the time I was found. He said it would make a great human interest story and my having come back to the place where I was born to open up a teashop added a nice extra dimension.
Both the article and the advert about the opening of The Fat Rascal would be in Thursday’s edition. There was no going back now.
He took a couple more photographs of me with his digital camera and said he’d hoped it would be a nice day, not a misty wet one, so we could have gone outside and got the distant Oldstone into the background.
‘But we’ve got lots of stock pictures of it: maybe I could Photoshop something?’ he said, perking up, then took himself off.
Going over the whole story again had been more draining than I’d expected and I really didn’t want any more confrontations with Zelda, or an aggrieved Robbie, should she have revealed everything to him by now, so I stuck my head cautiously out of the library door and listened before emerging.
The house was eerily quiet except for a faint clattering in the kitchen. When I went in I found Sheila alone there, brewing herself a cup of coffee and popping something into the toaster.
‘Teacake?’ she said. ‘I need a bit of soothing carbohydrate, and you look as if you do, too.’
I nodded and she sliced another in half and gave me the first one when it popped out, lightly browned and smelling fruitily delicious.
‘Zelda just told me Nile wouldn’t help her with the AI, because he was in a serious relationship with you,’ she remarked casually.
‘Last night she told me that too, but I’ve just had it out with Nile and he only said it to get her off his back,’ I explained.
‘Yes, I know it’s early days in your relationship, and really you would both prefer not to tell everyone about it yet, but I suppose he felt he had to.’
I stared at her and she gave me one of her warm smiles, like the sun coming out.
‘Unfortunately, Zelda doesn’t give up easily. She asked me to try to persuade you to persuade Nile – how complicated things are getting! – and I had to be very, very firm with her about not interfering. Now I’m afraid she’s rather angry and upset and, since she said all this right in front of poor Robbie, he’s much the same.’
‘When he arrived he seemed to be cherishing the mad idea that we could carry on from where we left off when he went to Australia. You’d think I’d been sitting in a tower like Rapunzel for the last few years, waiting for him to come back.’
‘I expect by now it’s starting to dawn on him that you’re not the girl he left behind, but a strong, independent woman: just what Nile needs.’
‘Sheila!’ I exclaimed, and she opened big, innocent blue eyes wide.
I liked the strong, independent bit but I still wasn’t sure I was what Nile needed – or vice versa. Anyway, it made me feel a bit like medicine, to be taken until the symptoms cleared and then the bottle could be thrown away.
‘Zelda had already started confiding in Robbie when they went to the pub yesterday, so I think he’s now chief confidant,’ I said. ‘Where is everyone now? The house is very quiet.’
‘I made Bel and Nile take them for a walk on the moors. It’s stopped raining and I expect it will clear the air.’
I thought that was optimistic: it was probably sulphurous with banked-down emotions.
Unkindly, I suddenly thought how nice it would be if Bel and Nile simply abandoned Zelda and Robbie somewhere in the middle of the moors without a map.