A Yorkshire Affair (Beddingfield #3)

Chapter 1

JESS

I stared at the ceiling wide awake, heart beating too quickly, breathing out of control.

Be careful what you wish for. Well, I’d wished for him back home after his eight-month dalliance away, and now I knew I no longer wanted him. Knew I didn’t love him any more. Wasn’t convinced I even liked him much.

Jesus.

Square numbers: that usually worked. I’d reached and worked out 324 (18x18) when the first notes sounded from the blackbird that lived and sang in the eaves right underneath the bedroom window.

‘Jesus!’ I muttered the word out loud this time, wrapping the pillow round my ears. ‘And you can shut up, you little fecker. Not you, Jesus, sorry…’

Roused from wherever his slumbers had taken him (probably back down to The Green Dragon with the barmaid there, or, more likely now that he was schmoozing with what he saw to be the upper echelons of society at Beddingfield Golf Club, anticipating a hole in one), Dean pressed a particularly healthy but unwelcome erection in my direction.

‘No hole in one for you here, matey.’ I tutted crossly and, sliding out of bed, made my way downstairs to do the ironing.

* * *

‘You can get straight back upstairs and take that little lot off your face.’ I looked up from the eggs I was scrambling for Lola’s and Dean’s breakfasts.

‘Everyone at Beddingfield High wears make-up,’ Lola retorted, admiring her handiwork in the convex curve of my best serving spoon.

‘But you’re not at Beddingfield High until September.’ I shook my head. ‘Go on, back upstairs right now.’

‘I’m at the high school all day today,’ Lola reminded me. ‘I knew you weren’t listening when I told you.’

I had, with everything else going on in my life, totally forgotten this fact.

‘Everybody else will be wearing it. D’you want me left out? Ostracised?’

‘Been swallowing a dictionary again, Lola?’ Dean pulled out a chair – the chair he’d reclaimed as his own once he’d moved back in a month earlier – and sat expectantly, waiting to be served, while scrolling through his phone.

‘I hadn’t forgotten, Lola,’ I lied. ‘You need to make a good impression on this taster day. You know, stand out to the staff who’ll be teaching you in September.’

‘Well, I’m not going to make a good impression if I don’t look good,’ Lola argued, eyeing the toast and eggs I sat in front of her.

‘Why’re you looking at your breakfast rather than eating it?’ I asked my eleven-year-old, irritation mounting as Dean continued to scroll rather than starting on his own food.

‘Eggs are high in cholesterol,’ Lola said calmly, picking up her knife and fork and cutting off a small amount before popping it into her – lip-glossed – mouth and chewing contemplatively.

‘Rubbish,’ I snapped. ‘They’re full of protein. And don’t you start having food issues when you’ve not yet even started high school.’

‘By your mentioning issues with food, I’ll probably end up with one,’ Lola said. ‘We’ve been doing anorexia in PSHE. Drugs and alcohol last week,’ she went on, attacking her eggs now with relish. Lola, like me, had always adored her food. ‘Sex next!’

That raised Dean’s head from his phone like nothing before.

‘Sex?’ Dean stared before reaching for his fork and shovelling food one-handed into his mouth.

God, I wished he’d use a knife and fork properly.

And wipe his mouth on the napkin I always provided.

Food was something to be revered, to be eaten slowly and relished even if it was only eggs and toast on a Friday morning.

Brought up by my mum, a single mother who’d insisted on exemplary table manners for me and my younger sisters Robyn and Sorrel, I found anything less than my mum’s – and now my own – exacting standards highly irritating.

I swallowed my irritation and sat down at the table with my own plate while contemplating this man I’d been married to for eleven years.

Being so in love with Dean Butterworth when meeting him during my first year of A levels, I’d made the decision – an utterly stupid one – to forgo my place at university because Dean hadn’t wanted me to leave him.

Mum had implored me to take up the place at Newcastle to study food sciences, to leave home and take the fantastic opportunity offered to me, but I’d been adamant I wanted only to be with Dean.

I was always a home bird, anxious at the very thought of leaving Mum, Robyn and Sorrel to go away to study, and it had been a relief to know Dean wanted me to settle down with him.

He’d encouraged me to get a job in the Sattar brothers’ local frozen food factory – Frozen – instead of taking the opportunity to study the food sciences I’d worked so hard for and, when the cottage next to Mum’s had come up for sale, I’d been off like a shot to the Halifax with Dean.

For heaven’s sake, what had been the matter with me?

Finding myself pregnant with Lola at not quite twenty, I’d married Dean and we’d moved into the cottage.

He appeared to like the idea of settling down with someone who was going to have his tea on the table and his socks washed.

But I’d learnt the hard way, his seeing no problem in continuing the single life of going clubbing with his mates, constantly down The Green Dragon and offering every girl who came to have her car serviced at his garage in the village, any other servicing they might require.

There’d been few unable to resist his seduction techniques, his stocky, gym-toned body, his dark curls and olive skin, the contrast of those quite amazing blue eyes (blame my Irish-Italian heritage, he’d boast) and easy patter.

I’d fallen for it myself for years. How could I blame these girls, especially the more uptown ones who appeared to relish the idea of a bit of rough trade?

Since he’d relinquished his beloved footie for golf, while searching out Ralph Lauren at the local designer outlets, I knew he fancied himself a little more upmarket these days.

(All golf gilet and TK Maxx knickers, Robyn had scoffed and, whereas a few years ago I’d have been offended, now I had to agree.)

Always Dean in and out of my life. Dean, who’d constantly cheated on me throughout our eleven-year marriage.

Was I doomed to be like my mother, always making herself available for just one man?

In Mum’s case, Jayden Allen, the charismatic – and let’s face it, exceptionally good-looking – reggae singer and prolific womaniser who despite having fathered all three of us Allen girls had rarely been a presence for either Mum or us.

Why in God’s name had I taken Dean Butterworth back?

‘Mum? Mum!’

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re pouring tea into the milk jug!’

‘Bugger!’ I stopped pouring, glanced across at Dean who was messaging someone and, standing to clear the table, I ordered Lola upstairs to wash her face.

‘She’ll only put it on again once she’s on the bus the village school will have ordered to ferry them across to Beddingfield High.’ Dean spoke without looking up.

‘She’s eleven, Dean.’

‘Exactly.’ He grinned, then stood, pocketed his phone and, seeing through the kitchen window Mum walk over from her own garden, grabbed his jacket.

‘Lisa.’

‘Dean.’

There was absolutely no love lost between my mum and my husband.

‘He’s still here then?’ Mum asked as the kitchen door banged behind him and he walked past the window, phone pressed to his ear.

‘Of course he is,’ I snapped. ‘He’s my husband.’

‘Yes, and a hard dog to keep on the porch.’ Mum raised an eye but said nothing further.

‘Well, you’re the expert in husbands like that,’ I muttered under my breath, fetching another jar of home-made jam from the pantry. Some husband, I conceded, buttering two more thick slices of the deliciously moreish sourdough bread I’d made and baked at 4 a.m.

More damned calories I didn’t need.

I spread it lavishly with the previous season’s blackberry jam, not caring that stress and lack of sleep were making me, as they always did, turn to food for comfort.

Well, I obviously did care. It wasn’t easy inheriting a big backside, being described as a big handsome lass when both my two sisters had been blessed with the majority of Mum’s petite Asian genes.

I sometimes felt like a cart horse in a paddock of tiny show ponies when all four of us Allen women were in a room together.

‘So, what does Dean think?’ Mum was asking now, watching my face closely as she always did when she was worried about me.

‘What does he think?’ I managed to get out through a too-enthusiastic bite of bread and jam.

‘Actually’ – Mum sniffed over her cup – ‘does Dean ever think?’

I moved from the table, walking over to the window, wanting to cry which, with a mouth full of bread and jam, was not that easy to accomplish.

‘I’m sorry, darling, that wasn’t nice. It’s just, you know, you were doing so well without him. About to start a new career as a chef in your own restaurant…’

‘Mum, it’s not my restaurant. It’s Kamran’s restaurant. You know that.’

‘And Fabian’s,’ Mum soothed. ‘Fabian wants you to be a part of his dream with The White House. So, what does Dean think? Is he going to be around to look after Lola when you’re cooking at the new place? Most evenings? Is he… is he at all… interested?’

‘He thinks I’m mad.’

‘Mad?’

‘Giving up a good job to go into some venture that might not work.’

‘Typical!’ Mum sniffed, pouring herself what was left in the teapot. ‘What’s wrong with this milk?’ She sniffed again, this time suspiciously at the jug.

‘Nothing. I’ll get you some more.’ I moved from the window over to the fridge.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘About Dean?’

‘No, not about Dean. About relinquishing your hold on Hudson House.’

‘I do feel I’m deserting the old dears. Poor Tom was in tears yesterday.’

‘Well, you and Fabian and Kamran aren’t actually turfing them out, which is what you were worried about. You’ll still be up there, can still pop in and see them all, albeit in your chef whites.’