Chapter 5
5
‘ I t’s perfect, Caro. You really did look beautiful.’
Kay nodded. ‘There’s a glow about you.’
‘An aura,’ Helen added.
‘You look like a woman in love.’ Kay smiled.
They were sitting at a corner table in the lower ground floor café. Navy plush velvet on the arms of their chairs, mirrored panels on the wall. A tea of finger sandwiches and fresh scones and champagne laid out before them.
‘Thank-you,’ Caro said, and her cheeks flushed with pleasure.
‘Now!’ Kay took a sandwich from the bottom plate of a three-tiered stand and plonked it on Caro’s plate. ‘I want to hear all about Hollybrook Farm ––’
‘It’s not a farm, it’s a smallholding.’
‘Of course.’ Kay nodded, mouthing to Helen, as Caro turned her attention to her plate, ‘ a smallholding.’
‘A smallholding. ’ Helen mouthed back and winked. ‘What’s the difference?’ she said lightly.
‘Between a smallholding and a farm?’ Caro took a tiny bite of the tiny sandwich. ‘A smallholding doesn’t have much more than ten acres. A farm doesn’t have less.’
‘Oh.’ Helen frowned. ‘But you have chickens?’
‘Yes, and a goat. And tonnes of courgettes. And summer cabbages.’ Laughing, Caro held her hands up. ‘Look at my hands. I’ve decided, I’m getting everything done while I’m in London. Pedicure, manicure, facial, the lot.’
‘And this is definitely the last job?’ Kay said.
Caro nodded. ‘Matt asked me to stay on and do it. It’s a big one, but it will be the last one.’
Helen picked up a cream horn pastry. ‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Fine.’ Caro smiled as she turned the sandwich over and took another tiny bite. ‘I knew that when we made the move. There just isn’t time to keep coming down.’
As she spoke, Helen held her hand under her chin, catching cream. ‘I just find it hard to picture you in the middle of nowhere,’ she said, pastry sticking to her lips.
‘Londale is hardly in the middle of nowhere. It has a railway station.’ Caro laughed, but it was a lone sound, and it remained one, even as she looked up ready to share the joke. ‘The cottage is quite lovely,’ she continued. ‘Original sash windows, a stone fireplace, the Aga has three ovens, and the high street is so quaint. There’s a village store that sells just about everything.’
Kay nodded.
Across the table, Helen wiped cream from her fingertips.
‘It seemed like a fair compromise. As soon as we started looking, I knew Poland was too far for me and Tomasz wanted to get out of London.’
‘But it is a trial run?’ Kay said.
‘Three months.’ Caro picked up her napkin. ‘Of which we have six weeks left.’ Although Tomasz is in his element. He’s already decided.’
‘And you?’ Helen said carefully, ‘Have you decided?’
‘Almost.’ Caro shrugged. Then, ‘Yes … yes, I think so.’
‘Are you self-sufficient?’ Kay said.
‘That’s the plan. We’re going to have to budget.’
‘So, no more botox?’ Smiling, Helen picked up her champagne. ‘Or is there an allowance for that?’
‘Well…’ Caro said and smiled. ‘As I’m in charge of the budget.’
‘I see.’ Nodding, Helen held her glass at her lips. Original sash windows, stone fireplace… Caro might as well have been describing the family home she herself had so recently left. A house that had started as a home, morphed into an identity and finished as a prison. ‘That’s marriage I suppose.’
‘What is?’ Caro said guardedly.
‘Compromise.’
Caro didn’t speak and as Helen glanced across the table and caught Kay’s eye, she knew that if not burst, she had slightly deflated, Caro’s balloon. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t convinced, and it didn’t matter that she was a veteran of married life and Caro was a rookie. Today was not the time or place. Abashed, she added quietly, ‘I hope it works, Caro … the smallholding, I mean. Not the wedding.’ She smiled. ‘Obviously that’s going to work, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so well.’
‘Me too,’ Kay echoed. She squeezed Caro’s hand. ‘Do you feel different?’
Caro dropped her head to one side. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do feel very different. They say that a change is as good as a rest and this is certainly a change, and after everything that …’ Suddenly she stopped talking, shaking her head as she picked up her napkin, folded it in half and placed it on her plate. For a long moment she looked at it. ‘What about you, Helen?’ And with a small smile, Caro looked up. ‘You must feel different too?’
‘Actually,’ Kay blurted, but she was speaking through a mouthful of scone. ‘Wait a minute.’ She swallowed a hasty mouthful of champagne, washed the crumbs away and let out a small polite burp. ‘I think,’ she managed, ‘Helen looks more like herself than she has in years. That’s exactly how I remember her in university.’
‘You mean the t-shirt?’ Helen looked at her chest.
Kay nodded. ‘It reminds me of the For Fox Sake, Stop the Hunting! you wore all through the second year of university. Remember?’
‘I do.’ Helen laughed. ‘This is supposed to be for Jack, but I haven’t unpacked, and I couldn’t find anything else.’
‘Is it really called that?’ Kay said, titling her head to read.
‘Yes, it is!’ Helen pulled the t-shirt taught. ‘Native Americans use such figurative language. You know, White Feather? Raging Bull? And when you see this place, it makes total sense.’
‘So, what would they call you?’ Caro smiled. ‘She Who Is Born Again?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Helen laughed. But Caro was closer than she knew. She was almost born again, and she did feel very different. From the inside out, she had grown confidence, like Kay had grown her hair back. Six weeks on the road, had shown her what she was capable of. Just imagine six months. She had. She’d only been back forty-eight hours. Only had a brief couple of hours with her daughter Libby, and her grandson Ben and already she couldn’t stop thinking about moving on. It felt like a betrayal. Libby had been overjoyed to see her, voicing a desire to be gone again would be a dagger to her heart.
‘I do feel different,’ she settled on, leaving out torn, leaving out conflicted, leaving out guilty. She took a sip of champagne and looked across to a table by the window, where two women of a similar age to herself sat. They wore matching floral blouses and had matching honey-highlights. One was even picking away at what looked like a piece of lemon-drizzle. Her favourite. ‘Places like this,’ she said turning back to Caro and Kay, ‘used to be my happy place. The day Jack started school, the first day I’d been child-free in seven years, I took myself off to the garden centre cafe, ordered a latte and sat and read the paper for two hours. I think it was the first coffee I’d managed to finish while it was still hot for years.’
Caro smiled. ‘I remember you telling me that.’
‘And I can’t count how many wet Saturday afternoons I spent there, trawling through the gossip pages, stuffing myself with cake while everyone else was off doing something …’
‘Exciting?’ Kay finished.
Helen paused, her mouth curling into a rueful smile. ‘More exciting than eating cake,’ she said. ‘I was even there before we went to Cyprus. I’d just seen the doctor to go on HRT, and I was so miserable, I was thinking I wouldn’t go, but imagine …’ As she stopped talking, her eyes fixed on a point halfway across the room. ‘Imagine if Cyprus hadn’t happened?’
For a moment no-one spoke.
‘Do you think you wouldn’t be divorced?’ Caro said.
Helen looked at her. ‘I don’t like to think about that. The idea that I would have just kept on doing the same thing.’ She sighed. ‘As it is, I’m not looking forward to going back to work.’
‘When do you start back?’ Kay said.
‘Next Wednesday.’
‘Oh, how funny.’
‘What is?’ Helen turned.
‘School finishes on Wednesday,’ Kay said. ‘That’s my last day.’
Helen put her mouth to her hand. ‘I haven’t even asked! How ironic. My first day back, is your last.’
‘Do you have anything planned?’ Caro said, turning to Kay. ‘A leaving party?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘I’m just having a quiet night.’ And the pocket of silence that followed was unnaturally deep. ‘So,’ picking up her glass, Kay nodded at Helen’s t-shirt. ‘I presume you’ll have to unpack for work?’
‘Yes.’ Helen said quietly. ‘I suppose I will.’