Life as I Know It (28 page)

The Downs seemed different in the dull light of late afternoon. The dogs bounded around us like a couple of puppies as we strolled hand in hand along the well-trodden paths. The air was cooling fast, and I pulled up the collar of my winter coat and thrust the hand that Dan wasn’t holding deep into my pocket. As the light began to fade we headed back to Dan’s car, but not before I’d recognized the place where he had first come across me huddled with the dogs the week before.

“I want you to remember this place always,” I said, lifting my cold face to his. “This is a special place where our two souls met for the first time.”

“You romantic thing, you!” he exclaimed, taking my face between his hands and kissing me on the lips. I felt my body thrill at his touch and I snuggled into him.

“Do you believe that two souls might recognize each other?” I asked, my voice muffled in his jacket. “I mean, without their bodies? Do you believe in life after death?”

“My goodness, Jessica, this is a bit deep, isn’t it?”

“I know. I think about it, that’s all. I just wondered what you believe?”

“My father was brought up a devout Catholic, but the church didn’t approve of him divorcing. It wasn’t just the once, either. He made quite a habit of it and they cast him out. He taught me to believe in God in my own way and not to listen to rules made by mere mortals in God’s name.”

“So you do believe there is a divine Creator? Someone or something with a plan for us all?”

I felt him shrug. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I sometimes wonder what his plan is for me,” I said, pulling out of his embrace and taking his hand again. “Come on, it’s getting dark. We ought to go back to the cars.”

He strode along beside me, the dogs at our heels. When we arrived at the parking lot, he pulled me around to face him and looked deep into my eyes.

“Do you know, I reckon we were destined to meet and fall in love. I think God sent that lightning to make sure I didn’t miss you.”

I smiled up at him, then dropped my gaze. “What if He sent it for a different reason? Some big plan we don’t yet understand?”

Dan looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes taking on a faraway stare.

“I don’t have the answers, Jessica, but I do know you were
heaven-sent to me. If there is a bigger plan, then you being here with me is definitely part of it. You heard from Dad what my love life has been like until now. I took girls out for all the wrong reasons, dumped them, got dumped myself sometimes, never made a commitment. I’m thirty, Jessica. I don’t want to live like that anymore. I want you.”

“You’ve only known me a week.”

“I knew you were ‘the One’ within a minute of meeting you.”

I laughed and he threw his arms around me, crushing me to him.

“There, it’s your laugh. It sends tingles right through me. I told you I couldn’t bear it if I never heard that sound again. No one else has a laugh like yours.”

“Come on,” I said, kissing his cheek. “Let’s go back to my flat.”

He opened the rear door of his car to let the dogs jump inside, while I fished in the pockets of my coat for my own car keys. I glanced up to find him grinning at me through the fading light. “Now, there’s an offer that is definitely heaven-sent.”

I woke up at eight-thirty on Sunday morning, having sneaked an extra hour with Dan the night before because of the hour change. Dan had stayed for a couple of wonderful, passionate hours, but had been happy enough to leave just before nine and go home to get his father’s supper. I’d gotten myself ready for bed and prepared myself for the turmoil of family life I was about to reenter.

Grant was sitting in the kitchen, fully dressed and drinking orange juice when I appeared downstairs ready for the day ahead. He ignored me and carried on reading the Sunday paper that he had spread out on the breakfast bar. I could hear the children in
the playroom and slipped past him to say good morning to the brood.

“You look remarkably fresh, considering your late night,” Karen commented. She was eating a croissant and had a cup of coffee on the playroom table next to her.

The thought crossed my mind that it was having spent time with Dan that had refreshed me. When I’d arrived back as Jessica the previous day I’d felt terrible—until I’d spent a while by myself and then with Dan.

The children were clustered around the table drawing busily. “The others saw that fantastic picture Teddy did of you,” Karen said through a mouthful of flaky crumbs. “They’re competing to see if they can do anything as good.”

I went to each of the children in turn, resting my hand on the tops of their heads as they bent over their pictures.

The feel of their glossy hair beneath my fingers made me feel warm inside.

“It is amazing, isn’t it?” I commented, sitting on a low chair next to them and watching the children draw. “Teddy is only four and he’s definitely gifted.”

“Mozart was a musical genius at the age of four,” Karen said. “I don’t think age has anything to do with it. If you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”

My mind turned to what Lauren’s lover had told me the previous night about Teddy being put into a home, and my stomach lurched at the thought.

“Do you know which school Grant and I were thinking of sending the boys to? The girls go to a private girls’ school, don’t they? Grant has showed me where it is so I’ll be able to take them tomorrow.”

“Yeah, they had their half-term break a week earlier than the local schools,” Karen said, licking flakes of croissant off her lips. “I’m not sure what they, er—you’d—settled on for the boys. At the moment the twins go to a small independent school with a nursery attached. I assumed they’d stay on through the main school. You’ll have to ask Grant about it.”

“I don’t think he’s speaking to me.”

“Oh.” She sipped her coffee, looking thoughtful. “Well, you are bound to have begun trying to find somewhere suitable by now if the boys aren’t staying on there. You are usually very organized. Why don’t you try going through your desk? It’s where you would normally keep information about things like this.”

“I don’t think I realized before how talented Teddy is,” I said, glad to follow Karen’s lead in continuing the pretense that I’d merely lost my memory. “I think Grant and I should find somewhere that specializes in art.”

She nodded. “I agree. This picture of you is unbelievably accurate.” She peered into my face. “He’s made the eyes an unusual color, though; an interesting mixture of blue over green.”

I blushed, even though she knew the truth. It was difficult keeping the lie going when Karen knew everything I said was an invention. I felt rather as if I were an inexperienced actress in a play who was frantically ad-libbing while Karen had my actual lines in front of her.

“When are we leaving?” Sophie asked suddenly, looking up from her picture.

“Leaving?”

“She means leaving here, for church,” Karen explained. “Remember, I told you the family go to church every Sunday, to the ten o’clock service.”

I glanced at Lauren’s expensive watch and realized it was past nine. “I don’t know… what time do we usually leave?”

Grant appeared in the playroom doorway. “We leave at half past nine. On the dot, so please make sure the children are ready, Lauren.”

His voice was cool, and he was obviously still very upset by everything that had happened the previous night. I turned to face him. “Anything else I should know?”

“The Sunday roast should be in the oven before we go. There’s a joint of pork in the fridge. I took it out of the freezer last night. I had a feeling you might not remember we had a roast lunch on Sundays.”

“At least you believe me at last.”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Not really,” I said, turning my back on him. He was right; he didn’t have much choice after hearing me talking to my supposed lover last night.

“I’ll start the lunch while you are out,” Karen whispered as Grant disappeared into the hall. “You go and get ready for church. And put a blouse or something over those bruises on your upper arms or you’ll have all the old dears gossiping for weeks.”

I gazed down in surprise at the tops of my arms where Grant had shaken me in agitation last night during our heated argument in the garage. I hadn’t realized he’d done it so hard.

Back in the bedroom, I surveyed the bruises more carefully in the dressing table mirror. There was a small blue circle on each side where Grant’s thumb had dug into my flesh. After rummaging through Lauren’s dressing room I changed out of the slacks and sleeveless top I’d put on earlier, into a smart designer skirt,
blouse, and jacket, then surveyed myself critically in the mirror. The singed hair was hardly noticeable, but there was a dark shadow near the scalp where Lauren’s highlights were beginning to grow out. I ran my finger down the center part and wondered how often Lauren had her roots retouched.

Another thought struck me then. Karen’s hair was brown, not blond like her sister’s. Was it possible that Lauren wasn’t a natural blonde? The thought excited me. I hadn’t adjusted to being blond very well, and if Lauren wasn’t a true blonde then I could grow it out and feel more like my real self. I remembered thinking that in the picture of Lauren on her wedding day her hair had been a lot fairer than it was now. Perhaps she’d had it bleached for the big day.

I was still thinking about my hair when I wandered into the dressing room and opened Lauren’s desk. There was a drawer where I’d noticed a pile of glossy magazines, and I leafed through them, wondering how I should wear my hair once it had been returned to its natural color.

“Are you ready, Lauren? It’s time we were going,” Grant shouted up the stairs.

I jumped guiltily. Not only had I allowed Karen to start the lunch for me, I had also neglected to check that the children were clean and tidy; or that they had eaten sufficient breakfast or been to the toilet. Grant might have thought Lauren wasn’t a particularly maternal person, but she must normally work a lot harder than I was managing in her stead. I admitted to myself with a pang of inadequacy that if Karen hadn’t arrived when she had, the children wouldn’t have had breakfast on time all week.

I was about to stuff the magazines hastily back into the drawer when a letter fell loose from inside one and drifted to the floor. Bending to retrieve it, my gaze alighted on the heading at
the top and my breath felt as if it had frozen solid in my chest. Running my eyes over the typed print, I felt a mixture of anger and fear.

The letter was from a home in Kent for brain-damaged children, inviting Mrs. Richardson to an informal inspection of their facilities with a view to placing her son Edward in their care.

The church was
some degrees warmer than the one I had been dragged to as a child. The vicar, rather than being a stuffy, self-opinionated old man, was a woman in her thirties who seemed friendly and approachable. The service appeared to be tailored for families, and the children sat quietly in the long wooden pews, with the exception of Teddy, who wandered about in the aisle without attracting any signs of disapproval from the rest of the congregation. Grant, who had been sitting for a while with his son on his lap, whispered that Teddy always did this. If we tried to stop him he would scream, shout, and throw himself on the floor. I had yet to witness that side of our child’s behavior, although having seen one of his nightmares I had a good idea what one of Teddy’s tantrums might be like.

At one point in the service the congregation was given the opportunity to pray quietly, and I scuffled down onto the hard kneeler, squeezed my eyes closed, and let my thoughts wander. In that moment of quiet contemplation, I found myself wondering if the omnipotent forces of the universe thought I was doing a
good job of being Lauren. To my own surprise, I realized as I sat in that quiet place that it mattered to me very much that I was.

“I wish You would send a sign that I’m doing the right thing,” I prayed dreamily. “There has to be some point to all this, doesn’t there?”

A warm hand touched my arm and I opened my eyes to find Teddy smiling at me. Because I was kneeling, our faces were at the same level, and I found myself gazing directly into his sea-green eyes. Sophie and Toby also had those mesmerizing green-gray eyes inherited from their father, along with variations of his reddish brown hair color. Only Nicole had her mother’s blue ones and the light mouse-brown hair that I suspected lay beneath my own highlighted locks.

I grinned back at Teddy, peeking through my folded fingertips at the rest of the congregation, who appeared to be silently conversing, eyes closed with God. Feeling like an outsider, I returned my gaze to Teddy, who had wriggled in next to me and rested his head against my shoulder. In a moment of spontaneity I kissed the top of his carroty curls and mouthed a silent thank-you toward the ceiling. It seemed that Teddy had accepted me for who I was, even though he appeared to know that I was not his mother, and this was certainly as much of an answer from on high as I could reasonably expect. After all, I told myself with an inward chuckle, He couldn’t be expected to send a lightning bolt every day.

Prayers over, I slid back onto the hard wooden seat. Teddy climbed onto my lap and sat there quietly with his ball hugged to him. I thought of the letter in Lauren’s desk and vowed it wouldn’t happen. Teddy wasn’t going to any special home—I’d make sure of that.

After the service we trooped through to the newly built
redbrick church hall. The architects had obviously been tasked with making it match the church itself, which was a large Victorian monstrosity, but inside the hall it was spacious and airy, with a window into a small kitchen through which two middle-aged ladies were serving coffee and trays of orange squash.

“Can I have a cookie, Mummy?” Toby asked, eyeing the selection on the plate.

“Just one, or you’ll spoil your lunch.”

I noticed Sophie slipping two cookies into her hand, and Nicole, who had been watching her older sister, followed suit. I was about to say something when I realized that in the scale of things one more cookie really didn’t matter. They hadn’t heard me say anything to Toby, so it wasn’t a case of making my point. I took another cookie off the plate for Toby, telling him that since he’d been a good boy he could have the extra one, then watched as he ran off to join his sisters at the activity table.