Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
‘You’re asking me to stay in your big house with Humphrey over Christmas?’
Maddie nodded. ‘Just you and Humphrey. Oh, Frank and I fly next weekend.’
‘Me – stay in your big new country house over Christmas? The same house that you and Frank don’t fully live in because you don’t want to spoil it.’
Their new manor house was split into two – the east wing and the west wing, as my sister referred to it. She and Frank lived in the east wing. They never entered the west wing because, strangely, Maddie claimed it was too beautiful to live in.
‘How’s married life?’
Something flashed across my sister’s face. ‘He wants us to…’ She stopped.
‘To what?’
She cast me a weak smile. ‘To have a baby.’
‘Oh… I see. How do you feel about that?’
Maddie let out a nervous laugh. ‘I’ll be fine. All relationships are a trade-off – aren’t they?’
‘Having kids is a big decision, Maddie. I wouldn’t call it a trade-off.’
She sat up straighter and smiled. ‘Ignore me. It’s not going to be much of a holiday for Frank. He’s trying to buy out that TV and film production company. Remember the one I told you about?’
‘Yes, the American one which makes tearjerker movies? I tried to sit through that film you suggested I watch. After both the husband and the family dog died in the house fire and the much-loved grandmother got told she had some awful disease, I was a mess, so I stopped watching it.’
‘You didn’t get far with it then?’
I shook my head. ‘Eight minutes.’
‘This film company will add to Frank’s growing media company empire.’
‘When Frank takes over this film production company – will he get them to move away from making heart-warming tearjerkers?’
Maddie smiled at my description. ‘Frank calls them wholesome and uplifting family films but you’re right they’re heart-warming tearjerkers. Anyway, this deal is consuming him right now and it’s all he talks about. He barely sleeps as he’s up in the night talking to his legal team back in the States.’
I thought about her offer. It would be a break from the constant dripping sounds, and if I was going to be sad and miserable over Christmas, I might as well do it in luxury surroundings. ‘I suppose staying at yours will be better than staying here.’
‘Exactly,’ beamed Maddie. ‘Humphrey will be over the moon. Oh, and don’t worry about food. We will make sure the fridge and wine rack are fully stocked. Frank has also splashed out on a tree and decorations.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘You need a break. Oh, and Mum’s not coming home for Christmas. Gary wants them both to stay in Tenerife. He’s invited his friends out there. She was nervous about telling you, so she put it on WhatsApp. Both Aunty Flo and Aunty Karen suggested I break the news to you.’
‘I wouldn’t have got upset if Mum had told me she wasn’t coming home.’
‘The family disagreed.’
‘I’m thirty-two years of age. I am not going to dissolve if Mum decides to stay in Tenerife over Christmas.’
Maddie rubbed my arm. ‘I told them you’d be fine. Mum thinks you need some family love.’
‘What’s she up to?’ I arched my eyebrows at Maddie. If you knew our mother, you’d know how she would only start talking about “love” when she wanted something.
Maddie giggled. ‘Stop it – Mum could be entering her caring era.’
‘Worrying,’ I said, nibbling a piece of chocolate log.
‘There will be rules of course. The west wing will be out of bounds as we have a lot of expensive stuff in there. So, can I pencil you in for an all-expenses paid dog-sitting festive holiday? You’ll need to be at ours for next weekend.’
‘Yes, you can. Tell Humphrey there will be trouble if he’s naughty.’
‘No telling Humphrey off, Rachel,’ Maddie said, picking her phone back up. ‘He doesn’t like being told what to do.’
As she began tapping something into her phone, I silently vowed to give Humphrey a masterclass in good dog behaviour.
‘Will you be all right travelling down on Saturday?’ Maddie asked as she rose from the sofa. ‘We will cover your petrol costs.’ She smiled and ran her hands over her fitted designer blue jeans. ‘You remember how to get to the house?’
I nodded. ‘It’s on the outskirts of Harp Brook village. Down a little lane after the pub and after a half mile I come to a little row of cottages. The iron gates which lead to your house are a few yards after them.’
‘Wow, you have a great memory and you’ve only been there a few times,’ beamed Maddie.
‘Have you made friends with the locals yet?’ I asked, getting up from the sofa to check the water level in one of the buckets. It wasn’t too bad.
‘Frank hates them,’ said Maddie. ‘They don’t like him either. When we first moved in, he did everything he could to make friends. Now we mostly stay in the house.’
‘I’m sure the people of Harp Brook would love you both once they got to know you.’ I went to sit back on the sofa.
Maddie leaned against the window frame. ‘Frank has decided we need our privacy. We rarely leave the house.’
I glanced at my sister who was staring out of my flat window, and I got that familiar knot of worry in my tummy. Frank was the dream wealthy husband who showered her with designer clothes, sun-drenched holidays in Malibu, new cars, and luxury homes. Maddie lived a fairy-tale life. But for a while I’d sensed something in the paradise life they’d created wasn’t quite right.
The Maddie stood by my window and the Maddie two years ago before Frank came along were two different people.
Before she met Frank, Maddie was lively and sociable. She was the centre of her little community in Northwest London and would always be at someone’s house party, summer barbeque, having an impromptu coffee morning or raising money for her community. Her social media would be ablaze with photos of her mingling at a barbeque, or a birthday party or grinning with a small army of charity gardening volunteers. I couldn’t recall the last time Maddie had told me she’d been out with her old friends. All she did now was stay inside her luxury home and she never used her social media anymore.
I could never tell Mum I was worried about Maddie’s marriage as she would first scream down the phone at me, call for Gary to make her a new cocktail to calm her nerves and then lecture me on what a bloody good catch Frank was and how my sister would never have to struggle financially, like she did when Dad left us.
‘Maddie, don’t you miss strolling into town, going for a coffee or a pub lunch, bumping into some friends and having a nose in some local shops?’
Maddie shrugged, wandered around my living room and came to a stop at my makeshift Olivia shrine. I’d covered a little table with photos and personal things which reminded me of Olivia and made me feel she was still with me in some way. Maddie lifted one of the photo frames and smiled. It was the photo of Olivia and me at a line dancing event. Olivia had seen the event advertised and had one of her lightbulb moments – we both needed to experience line dancing. The next night we both dressed up as cowgirls and pulled two handsome cowboys – well… two lads from Brighton with rubbish American accents.
Two years ago, Olivia applied to be my flatmate. I didn’t know her before that. We hit it off the second we met. Her flat-share interview started in the kitchen over a coffee and ended many hours later in a cocktail bar after a lot of dancing, squealing, and chatting. We had the same sense of humour, the same taste in men and I loved how she wrote novels in her spare time. I’d also never met someone who enjoyed talking as much as I did. In a matter of weeks, we went from strangers to flatmates to – as she put it – ‘soul sisters’.
Maddie peered underneath the table at Olivia’s pink vintage typewriter, along with a pile of her self-published novels. ‘My favourite is the regency romance where the duke falls from his horse into an icy river and is saved by a beautiful maiden who nurses him back to health in her little cottage in the woods. Oh, my goodness, I was an emotional mess by the end when he goes back to find her.’
Pulling my knees into my chest, I wished Olivia could hear Maddie’s unofficial book review.
My mind brought back that awful day at the end of September when two police officers came to my flat to inform me Olivia had been in a road accident. She’d been cycling to work and she collided with a car. Paramedics tried to save her at the side of the road, but nothing could be done. It was one of the worst days of my life.
Maddie touched Olivia’s pink coffee travel mug, which I had kept. ‘Whenever I came to visit, Olivia would always appear carrying this. Sometimes I wondered whether it was surgically attached to her hand.’
I smiled and blinked away tears. Maddie came to perch on the sofa arm. ‘It must be hard living in this flat with all your memories of her and your dripping ceiling. Have you thought of finding somewhere new to live?’
‘If I moved away, I wouldn’t feel close to her.’
I felt my sister’s warm hand on my shoulder.
‘If I am honest, Maddie, the shrine for her over there is not working. I don’t feel close to Olivia here, but I’m giving it time.’
‘Rachel, I know you don’t want to, and I get that it still hurts like hell, and you want to stay close to her, but you do have to move on with your life.’
‘I’ll think about it in the new year.’
Maddie continued. ‘You’re not tied to a job right now so you could go anywhere.’
‘Yes, good point,’ I mumbled.
‘Why don’t you leave project management and go back into catering?’
Years ago, after leaving college with an array of catering and cooking qualifications. I started a small mobile catering company. I turned an old blue camper van into a mini kitchen, and I made and sold food at festivals and weddings. I gave it up as it didn’t make much money and Mum kept nagging me to get a proper job.
The idea did awaken something inside of me. Maybe I could go back to what I once loved. My mind reminded me of Mum’s five-year job change nagging campaign. ‘That would result in Mum setting up another WhatsApp chat about me and I would never hear the end of it.’
She nodded. ‘How are things… romantically?’
‘Non-existent. I blame Sam for cheating on me last Christmas.’
Maddie checked the time on her phone. ‘I better be getting back. Remember to be at ours on Saturday morning. We leave at noon. Frank will give you a lecture on the house rules.’
I patted her on the arm. ‘He doesn’t need to do that. I know the rules. You’re right about me needing a break.’
‘Oh, and we now have a cleaner who will be coming in every few days. Frank also has a builder working on the new kitchen. The builder will be there. I’m sorry.’
‘Will I be able to cook food?’
Maddie laughed. ‘The new kitchen is being built on the end of the old one. Frank has kept the old kitchen, but he has said eventually it will become a playroom.’
My sister fiddled with her gigantic engagement rock and her wedding band. ‘I’ll get pregnant. We’ll go back to live in the States so I can have the baby over there. Frank thinks the healthcare is better.’
‘Living over there made you sad.’ I reached out and touched my sister’s arm. Her blue eyes were watery.
‘It will be all right. He says I can split my time between here and the States.’
That familiar knot in my stomach returned.
‘Thanks, Rachel, for the dog sitting. You can chill out and relax. Humphrey loves you so he will be thrilled. I told Frank you’d be the perfect dog sitter. Good as gold and no trouble.’