Forget Me Not (28 page)

‘Thank you.’ It was strange to think that Milly had been conceived on my very last day at Arden – as though she were a leaving present from myself to myself.

‘So you have a family life now too,’ Miles said.

‘I do. It’s a bit unconventional, but I’m very happy.’ I thought of Patrick. ‘And Arden’s performing well; I’ve seen some good coverage in the business pages.’

He shrugged. ‘We all beaver away. That’s how I know Gill,’ he went on. ‘She invests some of her private clients’ money with us – she’s a very canny woman. Now … hi, there, you two!’

A couple in their early forties had appeared at Miles’s elbow. He kissed the woman on the cheek, then turned to me. ‘Anna, have you met Andrew and Jane Barraclough?’

‘No,’ I replied, smiling at them. There was something familiar about the man, though I couldn’t put my finger on what. He was very attractive; his wife, despite her expensive outfit and immaculate grooming, less so. She had a slightly pinched look, as though she were sucking on a caper.

‘Andrew and I go way back,’ Miles explained. ‘We both worked at Deutsche Bank years ago.’

‘More than I care to remember,’ Andrew pointed out with a smile.

‘Where do you work now?’ I asked, keen to place him.

‘I’m still in the City,’ he replied. Then he nodded at his wife. ‘Jane and I both work for Goldman Sachs. We’re colleagues of Martin’s.’

‘So does Jane keep an eye on you, then?’ Miles guffawed.

I saw Jane flinch. ‘That’s rather a tall order,’ she said with an air of long-suffering, ‘quite literally, as I’m on the fourth floor and he’s on the thirty-ninth.’

Why did I have this persistent sense of déjà vu? Perhaps I’d seen him at some function or other when I worked in the Square Mile, or maybe I’d seen him on TV. We chatted amicably for a few moments then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jamie, with Thea. I waved and they came over, Thea in a shimmering pale-blue cocktail dress with her hair drawn back and a white gardenia tucked behind her ear. Her slender arms had a caramel gloss from all her travelling.

‘Hi, Jamie!’ I said. ‘Hi, Thea,’ I added with champagne-infused warmth. ‘It’s so nice to see you,’ I lied. To my surprise she gave me a tight little smile, as though she felt uncomfortable in my presence. It was as though she knew that I knew – but how could she? ‘This is my former boss, Miles Latimer,’ I pressed on, ‘and Jane and Andrew Barraclough.’

As Jamie shook hands with Andrew, a look of puzzlement crossed his face. ‘We’re neighbours, mate,’ he said, smiling at him.

‘We are?’ Andrew gave him an odd, almost wary sort of look. Perhaps he’d disliked being called ‘mate’. I glanced at Thea who was sipping her champagne and staring into the middle distance as though she were already bored. So much for your PR skills, I thought. I returned my gaze to Andrew, tantalised by the feeling of familiarity.

‘You live in Blythe Road,’ I heard Jamie say. So
that
was the reason. Andrew was local.

‘Oh … yes.’ Andrew nodded slowly. ‘Of course. Sorry … er … ?’

‘Jamie,’ Jamie said amiably.

‘I do recognise you now. It’s … erm … seeing people out of context. Always throws one a bit, doesn’t it? But … you’re at number 32, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right. I’m the proud owner of the battered blue pick-up.’ He grinned. ‘And you’ve got that eff-off Bentley!’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Andrew replied. ‘We’re terrible show-offs really, aren’t we, darling?’ He turned to his wife. ‘Oh,’ he said, reddening. She’d gone. How rude, I thought, to walk away in the middle of an introduction. ‘I’m … sorry,’ he muttered. ‘She must … have … Anyway … very nice to meet you.’ He gave us an apologetic smile and was gone.

‘That was weird,’ Jamie said to Thea and me once Miles had drifted away. ‘That bloke Andrew made out he didn’t know me, but I’m sure as hell he does because we pass each other in the street sometimes – they’ve got the big corner house. Didn’t you think they were weird, darling?’ he added to Thea.

As she sipped her champagne, a frown pleated her beautiful brow. ‘Hmm …’ she replied. ‘Very odd.’

The next day was not a good one. My computer crashed and I had to call out an engineer to fix it, which took three hours; then my Broadband connection went down and I had to call him back in the early evening, and by the time it was restored I’d lost two days’ worth of e-mails. Besides which I was preoccupied with working out how to have my difficult conversation with Dad. I’d mentally rehearse the phrases I might use, but the words would stick in my throat.

Dad, there’s something I need to ask you
.

I know it was a long time ago
.

Photo of Mum with
…

I didn’t mean to upset you
.

Please will you tell me the
truth?

What I wanted to say seemed quite unsayable, especially after so long. Perhaps it was better to keep family secrets buried, I thought, as the days went by; then life could simply go on as before.

In the meantime I had two new commissions to get started on – a patio garden in Camden and a roof terrace in Maida Vale – and I was spending more time with Patrick. Milly remained a little diffident with him, as she tried to work out his role in our lives.

‘Patrick’s a friend of Mummy’s,’ I would tell her. ‘And he’s your friend too,’ it suddenly occurred to me to add one day.

‘No.’ She shook her dark curls. ‘Milly’s friends is Gracie and Phoebe and Carna and Lily …’

‘Because only other children can be your friends – is that it?’

‘… and Luisa,’ I heard her add.

‘Oh.’

‘And Jamie,’ she concluded.

‘Right. Well … Patrick would like to be your friend too. One day. When you know him a bit better.’

To his credit, Patrick hadn’t put a foot wrong. He would just chat to Milly and read to her, or do painting or Playdough with her. He’d push her on the swings or gently spin her on the roundabout. He took us to Legoland one Saturday, then to the Science Museum the next weekend. If he stayed overnight, he would make sure Milly was asleep before coming upstairs, and he would always leave before she woke up. ‘I feel she knows me now,’ he said a few days after the Edwards’ party. We were sitting in my garden, having a late breakfast. He trickled some of his own Bee Good honey on to his toast. ‘I hope that gradually Milly will come to accept that I’m part of the picture,’ he went on. ‘But I was thinking that maybe the three of us could have a little holiday, later in the summer, then she’d see that we’re, well, together in every sense.’

The thought of being ‘together in every sense’ made me feel suddenly happy.

‘A holiday?’ I repeated. I glanced at the sheaf of unopened mail in front of me – three letters, a postcard and an airmail packet with a strip of stamps with tropical birds on them. It was Milly’s birthday present from Xan.

‘Yes,’ Patrick said. ‘A holiday. Would you like that?’

I sipped my coffee. ‘Very much. But where would we go?’

‘How about Cornwall? There’s a nice hotel I know near St Mawes. The beach is only five minutes away. We could take Milly paddling and rock-pooling.’

I had a sudden vision of Milly’s net jumping with shrimps. ‘That sounds like bliss. But when do you have in mind?’

‘Late August? I’ll be going to New Zealand again in early September.’

I batted away a wasp. ‘Late August would be fine.’

‘It’ll be my treat.’

I reached for his hand. ‘You’re a very generous, nice man, Patrick, but I wouldn’t hear of it.’

As he looked at the newspaper I opened the first envelope, which contained a flyer for the International Fuchsia Convention in Stoke. In the next was an invitation to join the west London branch of the National Begonia Society. Then there was a friendly postcard from Elaine, who was looking after a baby in Scotland.

‘What’s this? I murmured, opening the last letter, which had a local postmark. I read it. ‘It’s about Milly’s end-of-term concert.’

‘A concert for three-year-olds?’ Patrick said.

‘I think they just sing a few songs, and the mums and dads come along.’

‘Could I come?’ he suddenly said.

‘Sure,’ I heard myself say, though I felt a little uneasy – it was too early. ‘But it says here that the parents are expected to make the costumes! I hate dressmaking,’ I wailed. ‘And I’m busy.’ I looked at the letter. ‘When is it? July the twelfth! That’s in two weeks. They could have given us more warning,’ I muttered.

‘What’s Milly playing?’

‘A Flower Fairy apparently – a forget-me-not one: the show’s called
The Magic Garden
.’

‘But she’s got that fairy outfit you gave her. You could adapt that.’

‘That’s true… It’s pale blue so all I’d have to do is make some dark-green satin leaves and tack them on to it with lots of little deeper blue flowers; maybe Cassie could knit her a blue hat. And I could make a magic wand with a blue flower on the end, instead of a star,’ I added, suddenly enjoying myself now, ‘and I could get her some blue ballet shoes, or dye some white ones. Not such a tall order then.’ I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘And what dates would suit you for Cornwall?’ Patrick asked.

I reached into my bag for my diary. ‘The eighteenth to the twenty-fifth?’ I suggested, ‘so that we avoid the bank holiday traffic?’

‘The eighteenth to the twenty-fifth sounds good. I’ll ring the hotel I have in mind and try to book one of their family suites.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better go. I’ve a meeting at ten. I’ll ring you later, gorgeous.’ He bent to kiss me and left.

Finishing my coffee, I allowed myself to project ahead, as I increasingly do these days. After two and a half months, Patrick and I were a couple. We planned our week together and compared diaries. The early uncertainties in our relationship had gone. I no longer worried that he wouldn’t ring me back when I left him a message: our teeth no longer clashed when we kissed. By now we were beginning to feel that we knew each other and that our lives were converging.

I still luxuriated in the knowledge that Patrick had fallen for me and pursued me, and that he wanted me. If I stayed with him my life would be … nicer, I reasoned. With him I’d have stability and the chance of a proper family life. Milly would have the father figure she needed and maybe a sibling, or even two. I suddenly saw myself with three children, lined up beside me like Russian dolls.

But where would we live? In Patrick’s house possibly – it was big enough, though the bees would have to go. I imagined them vacating the hives in an indignant swarm. Or we could buy a larger house in Brook Green, if Patrick could bear the memories. Or there were some nice houses in Ladbroke Grove with big gardens. I imagined myself digging a new border and filling it with flowering plants.

I put down my cup and picked up the parcel from Indonesia. I undid it and removed the prettily gift-wrapped present ready for Milly to open when she got back from school. And I was just cutting out the stamps for her to keep, when I saw that there was a postcard inside – it was of a green and black butterfly with turquoise swallowtails. Milly will love this, I thought. Then I turned it over and saw that it was for me.

Sorry Milly’s present is late
, Xan had written in his familiar scrawl.
I’ve been in East Timor for the last few days for
Newsnight.
But this is to say that I’m definitely returning to
London next month
.

‘What?’ I murmured.

As I told you in my last e-mail my posting here ends on
5 July so I’ll be deputy editing in the newsroom until early
September while they decide where to send me next. I’ll be
back in Stanley Sq. on 6 July and hope to start spending some
time with Milly then. X
.

ELEVEN

My predominant emotion was dismay. I didn’t want Xan to come back now, stirring up old emotions just when I’d begun to feel happy again. Nor did I want his other half getting involved – the thought of it made me feel sick. I imagined opening the door and seeing Xan standing there with his ultra successful, no doubt fantastically attractive American girlfriend – or, quite possibly, she was his fiancée by now. I knew it was unreasonable of me to exclude her, given that I was with Patrick, but I couldn’t stand the thought of another woman playing happy families with my child and my ex.

Pumped up with a kind of insane energy, I went to my computer and did something that, until now, I’d resisted doing. I Googled ‘CNN + Trisha Fox’. Up popped a photo of a beautiful blonde in a flak-jacket on a palm-fringed road somewhere in the tropics. No, I did
not
want to meet her, I decided, as I skimmed through her terrifyingly impressive CV detailing her internship at the White House, her doctorate in International Relations from Harvard and her Emmy nomination for her ‘outstanding coverage’ of the Asian tsunami.

I composed a quick e-mail to Xan:
Your message about
coming back to London didn’t reach me as I’ve had computer
problems and lost two days’ e-mails, so this has come out of
the blue. Of course you can see Milly – as much as you’d
like. But I’d rather your girlfriend wasn’t involved as
… how could I justify it without him thinking I was jealous? …
I
feel it would be confusing for Milly and I’d like to keep things
simple. I hope you understand this, A
.

I read through it, then clicked on Send.

‘I’m not having it,’ I muttered as I drove to Fulham to do a new site survey. ‘If Xan wants to see us, he comes on his own.’

The garden I’d been asked to look at was in an old vicarage in Eden Lane, just off the North End Road. I rang the bell of the rather gloomy red-brick house and an attractive but worn-looking blonde woman of forty or so opened the door. She had a baby girl of about six months in her arms, and twin boys of about eighteen months were clamped to either leg, like koalas.

‘Hi,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m Pippa. This is Kitty, Jack and Alfred.’