A Perfect Home (11 page)

‘How was the photo shoot?' Mrs Needles asked. ‘Sally told me that you're going to be famous in a magazine.'

‘Not famous exactly, but hopefully it will bring in more business for Emily Love.'

‘Well, I keep telling you, Claire, you need to join the W.I. and get yourself a stall here on a Friday. We've done really well today; two quilted dog blankets, a book mark, and a baby's matinee jacket. I'd make sure you got a nice table away from the draught next to me, we could have a really good natter and I'd teach you how to crochet.'

‘I'll think about it, Mrs Needles,' Claire said putting back a knitted toilet-roll cover that Ben had put on his head.

‘Are you all right today, dear?' asked Mrs Needles, ‘you seem a bit distracted.'

‘Just a little tired. I'd better get Ben out of here before he destroys the place.'

As she walked back to the car park along the High Street, Claire passed the patisserie where Stefan had bought the fairy cakes. She had always loved the little crooked shop with its mullioned bow window piled high with pyramids of meringues and chocolate brownies and multi-coloured macaroons. A painted sign swung from a cast iron bracket,
Patisserie Tremond
it read; the name was an amalgamation of Trevor and Edmond, the two men who owned the shop. Claire stopped and turned around and walked in through the pretty etched-glass door. A brass bell tinkled and Trevor looked up from behind an old-fashioned till to welcome her with a smile.

She could see the last few remaining fairy cakes underneath a glass dome on the counter.

‘I'll have all of those,' she said to Trevor pointing to the cakes.

‘Aren't they just to die for,' said Trevor. ‘We get them iced by a lovely lady that Edmond's mother knows, she's a real whiz with her icing bag and nozzle.' Then in an aside. ‘Not too good with a paint brush, she gave us a watercolour painting of the shop for Christmas; we've had to put it away in the back of a drawer.'

‘Want one now,' cried Ben jumping up for the cakes as Trevor took off the dome.

‘You're a right little monkey,' laughed Trevor. ‘I bet you wear your poor mum out. She certainly looks as though she's in a dream today.'

‘Sorry?' Claire had been thinking of Stefan's fingers peeling off the paper cake case. ‘Did you say something?'

‘I said, enjoy your cakes and come back soon.' Trevor winked at Ben and handed her two ribbon-tied boxes. Looking at the boxes she felt as though she was prolonging something, holding on to a tiny part of the last two days.

The rain had stopped; the sky had cleared and was now a bright Wedgwood blue. The air felt cool and fresh for the first time in weeks. When Claire arrived home she got Ben settled in front of the television, letting him watch any DVD he wanted. He chose one of Oliver's
Harry Potter
films, unable to believe his luck. She just wanted him to be quiet so that she could have some time to think.

What was happening to her? She felt as if she'd come down with some terrible illness: she couldn't concentrate, her heart was beating too fast, her stomach lurched, she kept forgetting to breathe, and, above all, she couldn't get the image of Stefan's face out of her head. The desire to see him again was almost overwhelming. She felt as though she was falling, actually physically falling. She tried to think about other things.

I have a lovely husband and a beautiful home
, it went round and round in her head like a mantra.

‘Who are you talking to, Mummy?'

Ben stood naked beside her in the kitchen. She hadn't realised that she was speaking out loud.

‘Oh, no one, darling. Where are your clothes?'

She bent down and hugged him. How could she have feelings for anyone who was not the father of her children?

‘I want one,' said Ben, pointing to the box of cakes above him on the table.

‘All right,' she said, absent-mindedly untying a box and handing Ben a cake before remembering that she hadn't given him any lunch. He quickly snatched the bun from her and immediately started licking off the pastel-coloured icing, not bothering with the cake itself. As Ben trotted back to the living room with his prize, Claire made herself a cup of tea and wondered how she could have turned into the kind of mother who sat her naked three-year-old in front of unsuitable DVDs, with only yellow icing for lunch. She started to make him a hummus sandwich and cut up an apple, but she knew he'd never eat it – not now that he had had a taste of highly coloured sugar.

She didn't want anything to eat herself; her appetite had disappeared. She ought to be unloading the dishwasher and putting washing away, or sitting watching
Harry Potter
with Ben to make sure he wasn't getting scared by the CGI monsters, but she felt unable to do anything but lean against the work surface, paralyzed by the thought of Stefan.

Ben appeared with the phone in his hand – still naked but with a purple feather boa of Emily's draped around his shoulders.

‘Grandma,' he said solemnly, handing the phone to Claire. She hadn't even heard it ring. She really had to pull herself together.

‘Claire?' the clipped voice said curtly. It was William's mother. Claire sat down on a chair, suddenly feeling exhausted. ‘We'll come a little earlier this evening. My tennis tournament's been called off because of the storms so we'll be with you by six, if not before.'

‘Today?' Claire was confused. She had no recollection of any plans for this weekend.

‘Yes, of course today. You are expecting us, aren't you? William said you were looking forward to seeing us.'

‘No. I mean yes, yes of course I am. Lovely.' Claire felt herself drooping at the thought of yet another weekend with William's parents.

‘We were thrilled when William phoned us yesterday and asked us to come and see what he has planned for your new summer house,' she went on. ‘A summer house, what fun! I've seen some lovely rattan furniture that I'm sure would be just right for it, I'll show you the catalogue it's in tonight.'

Claire tried to disguise a sigh. ‘I'll look forward to that.'

‘And we haven't seen the children for so long. I expect they'll have grown.'

She wanted to shout:
It's only been two weeks since you were last here; they haven't changed at all!
But she resisted and said, ‘Yes, I'm sure you'll hardly recognise them.'

Claire hung up as soon as she politely could and rubbed her eyes until she remembered she was wearing mascara and now probably looked like a panda. Why couldn't William have mentioned that his parents were coming to stay when he came home last night or as he left for work in the morning? No wonder he had been so keen on mowing the grass.

Gradually Claire's angry thoughts subsided.
Stefan
. Would he be back in London by now? She looked at the large round kitchen clock on the wall. She thought he could be. Maybe he'd sent her an email about the apron for his sister already.

She went into the study to check, turning on the computer, aching with anticipation. She waited for it to hum into life. Nothing happened. It was dead.
The lightning
, she thought. The lightning flash as Stefan was leaving, it had knocked out the computer. The modem must have gone.
Of all the times for this to happen.
Claire wanted to wail. It would be Monday by the time she could get their local computer repairman round to mend it. There would be a whole weekend of not knowing if Stefan was trying to get in touch. Claire put her head in her hands.

What was she doing? What did it matter if he got in touch or not? He was just a man she had briefly met. She knew very little about him. He had been kind to her, but to him she was probably just another woman with a nice home that he was being paid to photograph. Just another lonely housewife dissatisfied with her lovely life.

Claire went into the living room and sat on the sofa in front of the television. She should have been clearing all her fabrics, sketches, and the sewing machine out of the spare room for her parents-in-law to sleep in. She should have been putting Ben into the car for a desperate rush to the supermarket – bread, cheese, and fairy cakes for supper would not be good enough for William's mother. Instead she pulled Ben onto her lap and cuddled him tightly. He smelled of Very Cherry shampoo and toast. She sighed.

‘Why are you doing big breathing?' he asked from beneath her embrace.

‘Just sighing, sweetheart.'

‘Silly sighing,' said Ben. ‘Silly Mummy sighing.'

‘You are so right. Silly Mummy,' she said and Ben twisted round and put his arms around her neck.

‘I kiss you all over,' he said, planting big wet kisses over her face again and again and again.

This is what matters
, she thought.
My little boy, my children, my family.

Chapter Ten

‘Scrubbed wooden floorboards, quarry tiles and slate flagstones create a naturally rustic feel around the house.'

The weekend passed in a daze of loading and unloading the dishwasher and running around servicing her parents-in-law's many needs.

‘Are you all right, dear?' Her mother-in-law asked her on Sunday morning. ‘You seem a bit distracted.'

‘Just tired,' replied Claire, who had just burned a batch of croissants in the Aga.

‘Maybe that little sewing business of yours is too much for you. You have got three children and a house to look after as well.'

‘I think I'm managing all right, thank you,' said Claire, trying not to sound defensive. ‘Emily Love is doing very well, I practically sold out at the school fête and I've had an email from a local kitchenware shop asking if they can stock my aprons and tea cosies.'

‘It's a good thing that William has such a well-paid job he can support you all,' the older woman droned on. ‘And he's so good around the house – a real “new man”. I always knew he'd make a lovely husband, even when he was a little boy.'

‘Did you?' asked Claire, turning on the juicer and drowning out her mother-law's voice.

William appeared in the kitchen in a striped dressing gown, fresh from the shower.

‘Ben is on the sofa rubbing toast and jam all over the cushions.'

‘Could you take it from him and clean his hands?' she asked, pouring orange juice into a glass jug and giving William's father's porridge a stir.

‘The poor boy has only just got up,' said William's mother, patting her son affectionately on the shoulder. ‘Don't worry, darling. You have your coffee, I'll deal with Ben. I don't know why you let the children eat in the living room anyway.'

‘That's just what I always say to Claire,' said William, joining his silent father at the table and sorting through a thick pile of Sunday papers. His mother returned to the kitchen carrying a very sticky Ben who was wrestling in her grasp and resisting all attempts to wipe his hands and face.

‘I want Scooby Doo.' His voice was muffled by a damp cloth.

‘Ben! Behave.' William barked from behind a giant wall of newspaper.

‘Television at breakfast time can't be good for children,' her mother-in-law observed as Ben escaped back into the living room. ‘William never saw any television before teatime when he was a child, let alone as soon as he got up.'

‘That's what I always say,' said William.

‘There
was
no television before teatime when William was a child,' his father said dryly, from behind his own wall of newsprint.

His wife ignored him. ‘The children should be having breakfast with us, not glued to those terrible Technicolor American cartoons.'

‘They will be having breakfast with us,' said Claire, through gritted teeth. ‘As soon as I can get these croissants cooked and the table laid in the dining room.'

‘I hope the magazine photographer got some nice pictures of the dining room,' William's mother leant against the Aga as she drank her coffee. ‘I've always loved the curtains, I knew the taupe linen would work so much better than those second-hand Sanderson ones you found and that oak dining table was one of my best finds. What fun it must have been to pretend to have your Christmas dinner in there.'

Claire didn't mention that Stefan had decided they should do the Christmas dinner shots in the kitchen,
‘it's got more of that lovely informal feel that we're trying to get across in this shoot.'

‘I've told all my friends in the tennis club to look out for the article when it comes out,' William's mother continued. ‘Though I've always thought there's something a little vulgar about showing off your home in public.'

Claire looked briefly out of the kitchen window and thought of Stefan standing in the rain. Suddenly everything felt much better.

At lunchtime the tree surgeon came and by teatime the space where the yew trees had been was a clear view to the smudged horizon above the sea.

‘That's better,' said William's mother, looking up from a Sunday supplement magazine. ‘Those trees always gave me the shivers.'

‘I'll miss them,' said Claire, putting a cup of coffee down beside her. ‘They were as old as the house, if not older. I've got a feeling the house won't be the same without them. Cutting down yew trees is supposed to bring bad luck.'

Claire could see her mother-in-law's plucked eyebrows rising above her large black sunglasses. The cat jumped up onto her lap and was immediately pushed away.

‘I hope you're not being superstitious, Claire. I can't stand superstition; it makes no sense at all. I usually find it's a sign of ignorance.' Claire glanced at the four-leaved clover pendant hanging from her mother-in-law's neck and said nothing.

The first time Claire met William's mother, Claire had immediately realised that she wasn't the sort of girl that William was meant to marry. It was obvious from the way his mother pursed her thin lips together when she looked at her and wrinkled up her nose as if finding her distasteful, like a nasty smell. She constantly asked questions about Claire's background – her parents, her grandparents, her childhood home – as if searching for something suitable about her. Or trying to find something bad enough to persuade her only son to give Claire up.