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Hope knew that she’d never look like a minx in a million years. Minxes did not have fawn-coloured curly hair with lots of wispy tendrils that you could do absolutely nothing with, nor did they have rounded comforting faces with large, almost surprised hazel eyes, and small delicate mouths like shy girls from 18th century French paintings.
Matt had once told her that he’d fallen in love with her ‘other worldliness’. ‘As if you’ve got lost from a historical mini-series and have stepped out of your gown to appear in the twenty-first century,’ he’d said lovingly. Matt was given to saying wildly romantic, unusual things. He was wasted in advertising, she thought fondly.
All five counters were frantically busy for the next half an hour, with huge groups of time-pressed tourists arriving to change their traveller’s cheques into hard currency, all frantic to get some cash so they could buy huge quantities of Bath Abbey tea towels, T-shirts with the Abbey printed on them and decorated mugs before they were due back on the coach.
Finally, there was a brief lull in custom. Hope sat back in her chair, feeling drained and wondered how she’d last till her four o’clock tea break.
‘What did you buy for Matt?’ asked Yvonne, sneaking a forbidden packet of toffees across to Hope. Eating was forbidden behind the counter but Hope reckoned her blood sugar needed a top-up.
‘A tie, a bottle of that wine he likes and some aftershave,’ she said as she surreptitiously unwrapped a toffee.
‘That’s nice,’ mumbled Yvonne, her mouth full.
They chewed in silence for a while and Hope began to mentally plan her evening, the highlight of which was to be Matt’s special birthday dinner. Just the two of them, assuming that Millie didn’t kick up a fuss and refuse to go to bed. She was only four but she already ruled the Parker household with a chubby little iron hand in a velvet glove. Two-year-old Toby was such a contrast to his older sister. He was so quiet that Hope worried about him being at the day nursery every day. She knew Millie was well able to stand up to anyone who’d look sideways at her but would she stand up for Toby? You heard so much about children bullying other kids and Hope would kill any child who’d hurt her beloved Toby. With his pale, sweet face and watchful eyes, he reminded her of herself as a child. She prayed he’d grow up to be stronger and more forceful, like his father.
‘Presents for men are so difficult,’ sighed Yvonne. ‘I love the idea of those women who say things like “I’m wearing your present.” You know she’s wearing some basque or suspenders and stockings and that’s his present. I might try that with Freddie.’
‘Lovely,’ said Hope automatically, a bit embarrassed to be getting so much detail about Yvonne’s sex life. Yvonne was twenty-nine, Welsh, and very open about everything, in direct contrast to Hope. Hope liked to keep her personal life personal, although it was difficult when you worked with someone as inquisitive as Yvonne, who was quite capable of asking questions like what would Hope do if Matt ever had an affair or had Hope ever used a Dutch cap.
‘Er, no,’ Hope had said, going pink, on that particular occasion. Aunt Ruth had not brought her up to be chatty about sex and things like that. When she’d had her first period, Aunt Ruth had said nothing but had given her a book on girls growing up. Well, she’d actually shoved it into Hope’s hand and gone off abruptly to her bridge class. The subject had never been referred to again. Hope was fascinated when she read those ‘how to keep your sex life alive’ articles in women’s magazines, although she’d never have dreamed of trying any of it out with Matt.
‘You should give Matt that sort of present tonight,’ Yvonne nudged her.
‘What sort of present?’
Yvonne lowered her voice because Mr Campbell had come out of his office and was standing near the photocopier. ‘Wear something sexy and tell Matt it’s the final bit of his present.’
‘Honestly, Yvonne,’ whispered Hope, ‘you’ve a one-track mind.’
‘Yeah, one track and it’s a dirt track,’ giggled Yvonne, flicking back a bit of jet-black poker-straight hair.
Three customers arrived all at once and Hope managed to put Yvonne’s suggestion out of her mind. It wasn’t that she was contemplating wearing sexy underwear and surprising Matt. She was uncomfortably aware of the fact that Matt would probably be much happier with a new tie and a decent bottle of wine.
Two hours later, she’d braved the traffic going out of the city towards Bristol and was turning into Maltings Lane. One of the more modern streets in Bath, it was a winding road of pretty houses built in the fifties with honey-coloured Cotswold stone. Because the houses were small and reasonably priced, the street was full of young, professional couples with small children, two cars and no time for doing their handkerchief-sized gardens.
When they’d moved in five years ago, Hope had had great plans for becoming a gardening expert and had bought a gardening encyclopaedia along with a book dedicated to creating a haven from a small suburban plot. These books were currently jammed into the bookcase on the landing, alongside the home decorating book she’d got in a jumble sale. Hope rarely even looked at their patch with its overgrown sliver of lawn and weed-encrusted rockery where four stunted conifers sat huddled together in tight misery and refused to grow taller than six inches. Hope didn’t look at the garden tonight either: she was too late even for her usual guilt-laden ‘I wish I had time to do something with the garden this weekend’.
Marta would be furious if she picked the kids up after six fifteen. Marta ran Your Little Treasures, the nursery where Toby and Millie spent every week day. The nursery was so well-run and well-staffed that Hope couldn’t afford to voice the opinion that Marta herself was a bad-tempered bitch when it came to dealing with her charges’ parents. There was such fierce competition for places in YLT that she daren’t risk antagonizing her. If Hope’s children left the nursery, there would be thirty families queuing up to fill their places. ‘Marta is definitely short for martinet,’ joked Matt every time Hope came home on the verge of tears because of a dressing down from Marta for being late. Matt didn’t understand how Hope hated those confrontations.
The nursery closed at six fifteen and any parent who arrived a second later was treated to a lecture of the ‘if you think I’m going to be taken advantage of, you’ve got another think coming’ variety.
Hope couldn’t imagine a single person who’d dare take advantage of Marta. Pity.
She unpacked the shopping from the Metro’s boot. Next door’s cat sat plaintively on Hope’s doorstep, sheltering from the icy late September wind and generally giving the impression that he was a candidate for an animal shelter despite being so fat that he no longer fitted through his cat flap and had to be let in through the windows. Hope dragged the shopping to the door, hoping that a few hours in the locker at work hadn’t made the milk go off.
‘You can’t come in, Fatso,’ Hope told the cat, trying to open the door and insinuate herself inside without letting him in. She managed it, dumped the shopping on the kitchen floor and looked at her watch.
Six o’clock on the nail. She wasn’t going to be late. Relieved, she shoved the milk into the fridge and raced out of the house.
She hurried round the corner to the nursery which was, as usual, surrounded by double-parked cars, weary parents and cross toddlers. Hope had found it was easier to walk there instead of spending ten minutes trying to park.
‘Hello,’ she said with false cheeriness to Marta, who stood like a rottweiler at the door, grimly working out whom to bite and whom to suck up to. ‘Cool isn’t it?’
‘It is nearly October,’ Marta snapped, gypsy earrings rattling furiously.
Hope grinned inanely and then hated herself for it. If only she had the guts to tell Marta where she could stuff her sarcastic remarks. Not for the first time, Hope indulged in her favourite daydream: where she and Matt had won the lottery, thereby allowing her to give up work and devote herself to the children full time. In her fantasy dream world, being a full time mum included help from a cleaning lady, an ironing lady and someone to trail round the supermarket doing the grocery shopping. It also meant being able to tell Marta to take a running jump because Hope wouldn’t need the nursery any more. She’d look after her children herself, thank you very much. She’d be able to spend hours every day with them, doing finger painting, making up stories and doing things with cooking chocolate and Rice Krispies when the children could help stir the mixture without her shuddering at the thought of cleaning bits of cereal and slivers of chocolate off the kitchen floor for hours afterwards. She’d get to serve wonderful home-cooked food instead of making do with convenience stuff, she’d learn needlecraft and the garden would be a riot of beautifully tended plants. Bliss.
In the main section of the nursery, a bright cheery room decorated in warm colours and with plenty of toddler-sized furniture, Millie and Toby were waiting for her, clad in their padded coats and looking like baby Eskimos. Dark-haired Millie, as impatient as her father, had an outraged expression on her rosy-cheeked face. Her brown eyes flashed at the indignity of being made to wait in a restricting coat when she could have been in the play corner wreaking havoc with the bouncy cubes. Toby, pale like his mother, stood quietly with his hat in his hand. When he spotted Hope, a great smile opened up his chubby little face.
‘Mummy, got a star,’ he said delightedly.
‘No you didn’t,’ said Millie indignantly. Even at four, she had a perfect command of the English language. ‘I got a star.’
Toby’s face fell.
‘Millie,’ said her mother reprovingly. ‘Be nice to your little brother.’
‘He’s a baby,’ sniffed Millie, wrinkling up her snub nose.
‘He’s your brother,’ Hope said. ‘You have to look after him, not be unkind to him.’
Millie took Toby’s fat little hand in hers and looked up at her mother expecting praise.
Despite herself, Hope grinned. Millie was as bright as a button.
She said goodbye to Marta, who was hovering with intent outside the door, jangling her keys like a warder.
Holding hands, the family walked slowly home: Millie chattering away happily, Toby silent. It was the same every evening. Toby was very quiet for about half an hour, then, as if he’d been frozen and finally thawed out in the warmth of his own, safe home, he began to talk and laugh, playing with his favourite toy, currently a violently purple plastic train with endless carriages that were always getting lost under the furniture. It worried Hope. She was afraid that he hated the nursery, yet she was just as afraid of asking him in case he clung to her and begged her not to send him every morning.
One of the women at work had gone through two horrific months of her small daughter doing just that, sobbing her little heart out every day, begging her mother to ‘stay, Mummy, stay, please!’ until she was hiccuping with anguish.
The mothers with young children had all sat in silent guilt when they heard that story in the canteen.
‘I hate leaving my son,’ a single mother from accounting had said tonelessly.
‘Men just don’t feel it the same way,’ added an investment advisor who was also a mother-of-three.
They had all nodded miserably, united in agreement.
After that, Hope had spent weeks anxiously scanning Toby’s face every morning for signs that he was about to cry. If he did, she knew she’d have told the building society to stuff their job and told Matt they’d have to manage the mortgage some other way, because she couldn’t bear to go out to work when her darling little boy was sobbing his little heart out for her. But Toby never cried. He went off every morning, snug in his anorak, big eyes wide when Hope gave him a tight hug goodbye with Marta watching over them.
‘He’s just a quiet little boy,’ Clare, one of the teachers, had reassured her when Hope had voiced her fears, ‘but he enjoys himself, honestly, Hope, he does. He loves playing with the Plasticine and he loves story time. We all know he’s a shy little fellow so we really look after him, don’t worry. Millie is totally different, isn’t she?’
Yes, Hope had agreed, Millie was totally different. Boisterous and confident compared to her little brother. They reminded Hope of herself and Sam when they’d been kids: Hope had been the quiet, placating sister, while Sam, three years older, had been strong, opinionated and sure of herself.
Tonight, Millie wasn’t inside the hall door before she was off into the playroom to collect her dolls, bossing them around, telling them to drink their milk and no being naughty or there’d be trouble. She sounded a lot like Marta bossing the parents around. Hope got down on her knees to undo Toby’s coat.
‘Did you have a nice day, sweetie?’ she asked softly, helping him wriggle out before pulling him close for a big cuddle. Toby nodded his head. Hope planted a kiss on his soft, fair head, breathing in the lovely toddler scent of him. He smelled of classroom, baby shampoo and fabric conditioner.
‘Mummy loves you, Toby, do you know that? Loads and loads of love. Bigger than the sea.’
He smiled at her and patted her cheek with one fat little hand.
‘Mummy has to make a special birthday dinner for Daddy but I think we have to play first, don’t you?’
Toby nodded again.
‘Shall we have a story? What one would you like me to read? You pick.’
The three of them sat on the big oatmeal sofa, cuddled up companionably, as Hope read Toby’s favourite story about The Bear With The Magical Paw. Millie always started by saying it was a baby’s story, not for big girls like herself, but by the end of the first page she was engrossed, chewing her bottom lip anxiously and listening to the bear’s adventures. Hope followed the magical bear with The Little Mermaid, which was Millie’s favourite. She slept in Disney Little Mermaid pyjamas and her bedroom was a shrine to Mermaid merchandising.
After twenty minutes when she knew she should have been starting Matt’s birthday dinner, Hope finished the story and began to make dinner for the kids. They were fed tea at the nursery at around half four but Hope never considered a few sandwiches enough for them. Children needed hot food in her book. As the children played, Hope prepared chicken breasts and vegetables, thinking that if she was Mrs Floral Skirt, she’d be giving them organic carrot purée made from her own carrots with delicious home-made lasagne or something equally made-from-scratch.
Mind you, Millie hated home-made food and was passionate about fish fingers and tinned spaghetti shaped like cartoon characters so there wouldn’t have been any hope of her eating anything organic.
Hope thought proudly of her new cookbook still in its plastic bag in the hall. Soon, she’d be making fabulous meals that everyone would love. She undid the cling film covering the steaks. The instructions looked simple enough but steak was so difficult, so easy to ruin and cook until it tasted like old leather. She’d have loved it if they were going out to dinner instead but Matt’s colleague and best friend, Dan, was organizing a birthday dinner on Thursday, in three days’ time, and that was going to be his party. The agency had netted a huge new account and it was going to be a joint celebration. Hope knew it would be childish to say that she’d prefer a private birthday dinner with just the two of them. After all, Matt was a much more social animal than she was and he loved the idea of a big bash where he could charm them all and get told he was the cleverest ad man ever. Hope always felt a bit left out at these fabulous advertising parties. Even though, as a working mother with two small children, she was the Holy Grail for advertisers, they weren’t nearly as interested in her when she was physically present as they were when she was represented as the target market on a graph in the office.
She’d better buy a dress for the party, she reminded herself. Adam, Matt’s boss, had a new glamorous wife, Jasmine (Matt had, in an unguarded moment, described her as ‘better than any of the women on Baywatch’), so Hope planned to doll herself up to the nines for the occasion.
Thinking of the party to come, she dished up dinner for the children and brought it and a cup of tea for herself to the table.
‘Dinner! Toby and Millie,’ she called.
The dinner routine involved Toby and Millie sitting opposite each other at the small kitchen table so that Millie couldn’t reach Toby’s mug of milk and spill it. Their mother sat at the end, refereeing. Millie, as usual, played with her food and demanded fish fingers in between sending bits of carrot skidding across the table. Toby loved his food and ate quickly, his Winnie the Pooh plastic fork scooping up bits of cut-up chicken rapidly. He drank his milk and ate his entire dinner while Millie bounced Barbie backwards and forwards in front of her plate, singing tunelessly and ignoring her meal.
‘Millie!’ remonstrated Hope as Barbie kicked a bit of chicken onto the floor. ‘Eat up or I’m going to have to feed you.’
She whisked Barbie from Millie’s hand and the little girl immediately started to roar. More bits of chicken hit the deck.
‘Millie! That’s so naughty,’ said Hope, trying to rein in her temper and wishing she didn’t feel so tired and cross. So much for quality time with the kids.
At this point, Millie wriggled off her chair and pushed herself away from the table, jerking it and spilling her mother’s cup of tea.
‘Millie!’ shouted Hope as scalding tea landed on her uniform skirt, which she knew she should have changed as soon as she got home.
‘I always know I’m in the right house when I hear screaming as soon as I get home,’ said Matt caustically, appearing at the kitchen door looking immaculate and out of place in the small kitchen which was always untidy.
Hope ground her teeth. This wasn’t the homecoming she had planned for his birthday. Candlelight, the scent of a succulent dinner and herself perfumed and in grape velvet had been the plan. Instead, the scene was chaos and herself a frazzled, frizzled mess scented only with perspiration from running round the shops at lunchtime. Children and romantic, grown-up dinners were mutually exclusive, there was no doubt about it.
Millie stopped wailing instantly and ran to her father, throwing her rounded baby arms around his knees and burying her face in his grey wool trousers.
‘Daddy,’ she cooed delightedly, as if she hadn’t just been flinging her dinner around the room like a mischievous elf moments before.
He picked her up and cuddled her, the two dark heads close together, one clustered with long curls, the other a short crop with spreading grey at the sides. Matt was tall, rangy and lean, with the sort of dark, deep set eyes that set female pulses racing and a solid, firm jaw that had stubborn written all over it. The scattering of discreet grey in his new, very short haircut suited him, transforming his handsome good looks into something more mature and sexier. Even after seven years together, the sight of him all dressed up with his eyes crinkling into a smile and that strong mouth curving upwards slowly, could set Hope’s heart racing. The terrible thing was, she didn’t think that his pulse still raced when he saw her.
‘Are you in trouble with Mummy?’ Matt asked.
Millie managed a strangled sob. ‘Yes,’ she said sadly.
‘She wouldn’t eat her dinner, she was throwing it everywhere and she’s just spilled my tea,’ Hope said, knowing she sounded shrewish but unable to help it.
‘Never mind,’ Matt said easily without even looking at his wife. ‘It’s only a bit of tea, you can wash it.’
Still cuddling Millie, he ruffled Toby’s hair and walked into the living room, his big body cradling Millie easily. Toby clambered off his seat and ran after him. In seconds, the sounds of giggling and laughter could be heard.
Hope looked glumly down at her cream uniform blouse which was now stained with splashes of tea. One corner had escaped from her skirt and hung out untidily. Very chic. Ignoring the tea things, she went upstairs and stripped off her uniform. She’d have to sponge the skirt because she only had two and the hem was down on the other one. In her part of the wardrobe, she found the grape velvet two-piece and pulled it on. She brushed her hair, put on her pearl earrings and spritzed herself with eau de cologne, all without looking in the mirror. It was only to apply her lipstick that she sat at the small dressing table and adjusted the oval mirror so she could see herself.
She was old fashioned looking, she knew. Not the showily beautiful and spirited leading lady of romantic novels: instead, she was the quiet, sober Austen heroine with expressive, anxious grey eyes. Empire line dresses would have suited her perfectly because she could have shown off her generous bosom and hidden the slightly thick waist and sturdy legs. She looked her best in soft, muted colours that complemented the thick-lashed, eloquent eyes. Her grape outfit fitted the bill, while the dark navy and maroon of her uniform clothes made her look dull and middle-aged.
Now she put lipstick on and pinned her hair up. Piled up, it showed off her slender neck. Finished, she touched the small silver and enamel pill box on the dressing table for luck. It had been her mother’s and touching it for luck was as much a part of Hope’s day as brushing her teeth after meals. She didn’t remember her mother so the box with its orchid illustration was special, the only thing she’d got left really. Sam had a matching box only hers had a picture of a pansy on it.
The pillboxes were among the only things they had of their mother’s. She and their father had been killed when the girls were small, when they’d been driving home from a night out and their car had been hit by a drunk driver. Their father had been killed outright but their mother had lived long enough to be taken to hospital and died soon after. Not that Sam or Hope remembered much about it and Aunt Ruth, left to bring them up in her austere house in Windsor, had been very keen on ‘not dwelling on things’ and had disposed of most of their parents’ personal belongings. Consequently, they had very few mementoes of Camille and Sandy Smith. Except that Millie was named for her grandmother. Dear naughty little Millie.
Hope smiled and wondered what she’d leave her children to remember her by if she died suddenly: a dirty dishcloth or a basketful of ironing probably.
Downstairs, Matt was watching CNN with the children sitting either side of him, both utterly content. Hope stood behind the sofa and planted a kiss on his head.
‘Sorry I was a grump when you came in,’ she said softly. ‘Let’s get this pair to bed and I’ll make you a lovely birthday dinner.’
‘Daddy, you have to read me a story,’ said Millie querulously, knowing that the treat being discussed didn’t involve her.
‘I will, honey,’ Matt said absent-mindedly, still watching the news.
‘A long story,’ Millie said, satisfied. ‘Really long, about trolls and fairies…’ She shuddered deliciously.
‘No trolls,’ Hope said automatically. ‘You’ll have nightmares.’
‘I won’t,’ insisted Millie.
‘No trolls,’ said her mother firmly.
Matt did his bedtime story duty and when he came downstairs, the steaks were sizzling deliciously under the grill and Hope was wrestling with a recipe for herb and garlic butter she’d found in a women’s magazine. Fresh herbs, honestly. Who could be bothering with fresh herbs when they cost so much in the shops and went limp and tasteless after two days.
‘Smells good,’ Matt said, returning to his seat in the sitting room. He flicked around with the remote and found the sports channel. Through the double doors between the sitting room and the kitchen, Hope could see him put his feet up on the coffee table. He’d changed from his suit into his oldest jeans and a faded sweatshirt she could have sworn she’d thrown out. She shrugged. It was his birthday, he could wear what he wanted to.