Chapter 13
On the second Saturday in May, Theo came to pick me up at around four in the afternoon.
I’d dithered, uncertain as to whether I should meet him at our front door in the beautiful long red dress Linda and I had both seen, and jumped on, the minute we’d gone into the back room of the dress agency in Sheffield a week earlier.
The dress had been hanging in pride of place on the wall and way beyond my budget, but fitted like a glove, and the owner had oohed and aahed, saying I just had to have it.
So many others, she said, had tried desperately to get into it, but hadn’t succeeded.
‘Nobody else will be able to get into it,’ Linda had whispered in the changing room as she brought in a pair of heels for me to try. ‘Offer her twenty quid less.’
‘I can’t do that,’ I’d said.
‘It’s a dress agency. Course you can. If you won’t, I will.’
And she did. I couldn’t afford the shoes as well, but Linda said she had just the pair at home I could borrow.
So then, the question was, should I be at the door wearing the dress to go with the make-up and up-do hairstyle that Kath, Linda’s sister, had spent a good hour and a half on?
Or was it etiquette that I travel the hour up the M1 in Theo’s Mini in my jeans, taking the dress along in its protective cover?
Aunty Sandra, desperate to be in on the whole exciting shebang, had provided this after Uncle Maurice’s best suit had returned from the cleaners in the bag after an accident, allegedly with a pint of Sam Smith’s.
I’d work out where I was going to get changed later.
Theo had said, when he phoned me to check I’d got the invitation and still wanted to be his guest, that if it was OK with me, I’d be staying the night in the guest wing.
‘Guest wing. Fancy!’ Mum and Sandra twittered at each other like a couple of sparrows once Sandra had walked over from her street with the black plastic Johnson’s Cleaners cover in her hand.
‘Shame it doesn’t say HELEN SYKES on it,’ Sandra said, quoting the top Leeds fashion boutique where, apparently, Audrey Lindley, who Sandra cleaned for, had always gone when mother-of-the-bride to all three daughters.
‘Look, fold it over and no one will see,’ advised Linda who’d come round to supervise my getting ready as well as, presumably, get a good gawp at Theo Mandeville. ‘You do know who this bloke is?’ she said to Mum and Aunty Sandra as she fussed about with one of my curls that wouldn’t behave itself.
‘As in?’ Mum and Sandra leaned in to Linda, their eyes wide.
‘Well, he’s only the son of some lord and lady up in North Yorkshire.’
‘Ey, you didn’t tell us that, Anna,’ Mum said.
I’d not shared the actual invitation with anyone at home, just saying I’d been invited to a bit of a student May ball in Harrowton and I was getting a lift up there and staying the night, but Linda had quietly come up behind me at my desk as, for the millionth time, I’d taken out the stiff cream embossed invitation in order to convince myself it was real.
‘Yes, posh lot,’ Linda went on now like an unstoppable train.
‘Huntin’, shootin’, fishin’, don’t you know?
’ She laughed as she enunciated the three words and was obviously going to carry on about the Harrowton Mandevilles and their apparently great big estate at length, until I gave her a warning glare.
I’d no idea where she’d got all this information from about Theo and his family – certainly not from me.
I had an awful suspicion it was from John Dyson.
When Linda had let it slip about the ball, Dyson had walked into my office and been pretty sneery about my volte-face of working for the benefit of the NUM and the striking miners, while gallivanting off to enjoy myself with the Tory-voting establishment.
The last thing I wanted was rent-a-crowd standing on the doorstep to see me off once Theo arrived, so I lied that I wasn’t being picked up until an hour later than I actually was.
Aunty Sandra said she was so sorry not to be able to wave me off, but she had to dash, she had the perming lady round, and Linda was off to Kath’s to get her nails done.
‘Going out with John Dyson tonight,’ she volunteered as she left. ‘Tell me again you don’t mind, Anna?’
‘I don’t mind, Linda.’
So that just left Mum, insisting on pulling up weeds in our tiny front garden at the allotted time of Theo’s arrival.
I’d dashed to the loo again, adjusted my lipstick and stared at the face I didn’t recognise as my own.
Every time I’d gone upstairs, I’d rubbed a bit more at the panstick, blusher and lipstick that Kath had so painstakingly trowelled on earlier that afternoon until what remained was much more the natural me.
When I’d hurried back downstairs, Mum was already at the gate chatting to Theo.
I was more than relieved to see that, like me, he was in jeans and T-shirt and that he wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet of our street seeing him in his penguin suit in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.
‘Here she is,’ Mum said proudly as though exhibiting a prize pumpkin at the Rothersley Amateur Garden Federation.
‘Wait until you see the dress,’ she added, nodding towards my black plastic protector.
‘Now, drive carefully,’ she admonished as Theo took my overnight case, ‘and can I say, just once again, how sorry I was to hear about Fliss? Anna tells me she was a special…’
‘Mum, I’m going,’ I said quickly, cutting her off at the pass, ‘I’ll see you sometime.’
‘Anna, you look fabulous. Your hair up suits you.’ Theo smiled across at me, and I began to relax for the first time in days.
He was here. I was here. I wasn’t done up to the nines in my posh frock and heels – big mistake that would have been.
‘Your mum’s great: so friendly. But why does she think I was a special friend of Fliss’s?
’ He turned to look at me as he started the engine and I felt myself go pink under the tan panstick and Theo’s questioning, appraising look.
‘Oh, she gets things wrong,’ I said. ‘Hears one thing and makes up the rest. So,’ I went on hastily, ‘what time does this thing actually start? Are you sure your parents are OK with me staying the night?’
‘Of course. There’ll be a houseful; one more won’t faze them.
’ Theo turned the engine and indicated, giving me time to have a good look at his profile, just to reassure myself he was still as gorgeous as I’d built him up to be.
He was, for heaven’s sake, even more so.
His dark blond hair was newly washed – I could smell some unknown shampoo – and as he executed a three-point turn and we headed back the way he’d come, I was already replying to my and Theo’s grandchildren when they asked: ‘How did you meet Grandpa, Granny?’ I’d clearly metamorphosed into North Yorkshire mode for some reason too, I scolded myself.
Where did the more usual South Yorkshire Grandad and Nanna go?
And how, in the space of thirty seconds in the car, had I gone not only to having Theo’s children, but seemingly his grandchildren too?
When we’d done with the usual chatting about what we’d been up to, what sort of week we’d had, how work/studies/exams were going, we lapsed into a bit of an awkward silence.
Was Theo regretting asking me to this ball?
The Mini ate up the miles, soon leaving South Yorkshire, passing through Leeds in West Yorkshire and carrying on to our destination in North Yorkshire.
Theo indicated, turning off the motorway at the next junction and, almost immediately, we were driving along country lanes. ‘Are your parents OK with me just turning up like this?’ I asked, rooting around for something to say before realising I was repeating myself.
‘Turning up like this?’ Theo laughed but didn’t actually answer the question as he turned to me. I was conscious only of his height, his broad shoulders and quiet confidence. How could any man of only twenty-two be so self-assured?
‘I hadn’t realised, until you told me the other week, you were actually older than me,’ I said. ‘You must have had a gap year before uni?’
Theo nodded. ‘Three actually.’
‘Three?’
‘Spent the first travelling round Europe, through Thailand and Bali and then on to Australia and New Zealand. I loved it so much in the South Island, I stayed on, working on a sheep farm.’
For a split second Theo looked so sad, almost bereft, I’d have bet any money it was some girl who’d kept him there.
‘Dad wasn’t too pleased when I decided not to take up my place at Leeds, although to be honest he wasn’t all that impressed at my not getting into Oxford or Cambridge or St Andrew’s – where he’d been an undergrad – in the first place.
But then, he realised that my knowledge of sheep and all things ovine might be useful on the estate once I could be finally persuaded to return. ’
The estate? The only estates I knew were a couple of notorious council ones not far from our street.
And ovine? Was that to do with sheep? ‘So how many sheep were you looking after?’ I asked, trying to appear interested in what I’d always thought of as devil-eyed stupid creatures with dirty bottoms.
‘I couldn’t tell you,’ Theo said. ‘I always fell asleep counting them.’
‘Too many late nights over there…?’ I started and then realised he was laughing at me. ‘Oh… right… I get you.’ I tutted, laughing myself.