Once in a Lifetime (31 page)

‘How Grace looked was at least fifty per cent of why she was hired,’ Marcella pointed out. ‘For all that you’re on the “Fabulously Hot at Fifty” list in Woman’s Way magazine, you weren’t hired for your looks.’

‘True. So why could I be fired for those same looks getting older?’

‘Beats me, Aged Wise One,’ Marcella replied.

Marcella read on. If Ingrid hadn’t been there, albeit in a strangely calm state staring into space, Marcella would have allowed herself to curse as she made her way through the pile of handwritten love letters.

Of course, they could have been sent by a crazy stalker lady who had yet to move on to boiling rabbits and kidnapping Molly and Ethan, but Marcella didn’t think so. She might not have had the corresponding letters from David to this mystery woman, but from every detail, it was obvious that she was David’s lover.

It hurt her to think of David doing this. What must it be like for Ingrid?

None of the letters was signed by name and she wasn’t sure if that was because the writer wanted to specifically maintain anonymity or merely part of some game.

Darling David, thank you for the most wonderful evening ever. I wish it wasn’t over. I wish you hadn’t had to go back to her…

Marcella couldn’t bear to think of Ingrid reading this one.

… I know it’s complicated, I know it can’t be sorted out in a minute, but I wish things were different. My darling, why does she get to have you and I don’t? It just seems unfair - she has everything. I’m sorry, David, I didn’t mean to write that. It’s just I’m upset. Perhaps I should blame all that champagne. But I feel so lonely, sitting here on my own, wearing the gorgeous negligee you bought me, wishing you were here to see it…

Marcella scanned it quickly. She’d been wrong; this would kill Ingrid if she had to read it. Negligees, and talk of ‘she’, clearly meaning Ingrid. Appalling stuff. There were dozens of letters. They said thank you for meals, nights out, lovemaking - together they represented everything David had stolen from Ingrid.

‘Well?’ asked Ingrid, after what seemed to Marcella like forever but was actually only an hour.

‘Well, we should go to bed,’ Marcella said. ‘This will all be here in the morning, but we’ll look like two mad old hags if we don’t get some sleep.’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.

The woman who wrote the love letters had never given away her age, but Marcella would bet a year’s salary that she was much younger than Ingrid.

Ingrid, however, merely smiled at her friend and said. ‘More of this coffee in the morning will soon sort us out.’

‘I’m your woman for that,’ said Marcella, smiling back.

At a few minutes after seven, Ingrid woke up and felt instantly alert. And rested. She’d only had five hours’ sleep and yet she’d slept more deeply than any night since David’s death.

Strange. Death and betrayal after death scored differently on the interrupted sleep scale. She must tell David that…

It happened a lot, thinking of how she’d like to tell him something and then remembering he wasn’t there to be told.

Most of the time, the bleakness washed over her and she wondered if this pain of loss would ever go.

But today, the realisation was different. Today, there was tremendous anger in the mix. Being angry with David was so much easier than mourning him.

In the bedroom’s en suite bathroom she washed the sleep from her face. She hadn’t taken off her make-up the night before, despite Marcella’s offer of toiletries. She’d scrupulously washed make-up from her face all her life and she’d had enough of it. It was all a camouflage, a cover to deflect from ageing and betrayal. All the unguents and creams in the world couldn’t change this.

She found an elastic hair-band in the cupboard under the sink, scraped her hair back with her fingers and tied it up. It didn’t suit her face scraped back so. She looked like a mediaeval dowager, banished to a convent.

But today this suited her mood. She had been playing the wrong role for too long. She’d believed she was a vibrant woman with the best years ahead of her; she’d actually looked forward to a time when she could go on long holidays with her still-adoring husband. It was clear now that she should have been playing the crone all along.

One desire consumed her. To find the identity of David’s lover. But unless Marcella struck gold in the reams of papers, she didn’t know where to start. She felt lost. Lost and alone.

Eleven

Fight for who you are. It takes a long time to find who you are, but when you do, take care of that person. She’s one of the most precious friends you’ll ever have.

People who came to Star’s front door were always surprised to see the two red Chinese Fu dogs guarding her door. The house, with its pale clapboard facade and wisteria-covered verandah, seemed an odd setting for the exotic lion-dog faces that stared out at the pathway. Once visitors entered the house, they understood a little more. It was a cornucopia of wonderful and unusual things from all over the globe.

Star’s house was anything but ordinary. Walking in, the first thing a guest noticed was the scent: a combination of cinnamon, ambergris and frankincense cut through with the sharp tangy aroma of lemongrass. Then they would walk across the beautiful Persian rug that was older than Star could ever tell anyone, and hear the whitewashed floorboards creak beneath their feet. The third and seventh floorboards in the hall were the creaky ones, which Star would say was lucky.

Then a guest would admire all the treasures the Bluestone women had collected over the years.

On the hall console table was an old sextant from a

seventeenth-century Dutch sailing ship alongside a wooden model of a boat that had sailed from Plymouth Rock. On the walls were Star’s tapestries, their vibrant colour contrasting perfectly with sepia photographs of other Bluestone women with strong faces and long blonde hair, taken in Morocco and Africa, Scandinavia and Alaska.

Shelves in an alcove held an exquisite Tiffany lamp and a wooden bowl, carved hundreds of years before by French monks.

In the long sitting room that stretched along the entire back of the house there were even more treasures: massive couches, tightly packed bookshelves, watercolours of rare flowers, and a collection of unusual teacups in translucent bone china with rich, gilded colours. Pride of place went to Star’s great-grandmother’s wooden rocking chair, still with its original lace cushions, and the 1940s gramophone that played Count John McCormack records beautifully, but refused to play anything else.

Lena had been to Star’s house many times before to discuss the tapestries and Kenny’s plans for the range, and she loved everything about the place: the flowerbeds in bloom beneath the windows, the beautiful orchids in the tiny conservatory with its cast-iron chairs from another era and the floral cushions that a person could sink into. She loved the rag rugs and the old chintz armchairs, the copper pots that hung over the huge stove in the kitchen. Today, she was showing this gorgeous home to her colleague, Claudia.

‘If I lived here, I’d never want to leave,’ Lena said to Claudia when Star showed them into the hall and they were immediately enveloped in the golden sense of comfort that was Bluestone Cottage.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Claudia, looking around in wonder.

‘And the smell is …’

‘Oh, just some things I’ve been making,’ Star said. ‘Special coffee and cinnamon muffins - does that sound good?’

‘Lovely,’ said her guests.

‘This is Claudia,’ said Lena suddenly. ‘Sorry, didn’t introduce you properly.’

Claudia blushed ‘Sorry,’ she said too, and held out her hand.

Sometimes people thought that Star was stand-offish. When she met people on the street she didn’t rush to hug them or kiss their cheek or take their hand. She stood back a little, a trait that many over the years had assumed to be a sign of reserve. That wasn’t the case. Touch was so important to Star.

Touching a person could help you see into their soul, or at least that’s what she had found, ever since she was a tiny child. Now she carefully took Claudia’s proffered hand and held it in both of hers.

‘Lovely to meet you, Claudia,’ she said, and drew a deep breath. The feelings she experienced were subtle, at first.

From Claudia, young, pretty and smiling, there came just a soft warmth, happiness, contentment. Suddenly, in her mind, Star could picture a young man who loved Claudia and had asked to marry her, had given her a ring, a tiny square-cut something; not a diamond, but some special older jewel.

She sensed all this, but ‘Lovely to meet you Claudia,’ was all she said.

She wouldn’t say anything about what she’d seen. Claudia probably wanted it kept a secret. Star had learned at an early age that not everybody appreciated the Bluestone women’s gifts.

Granny Star, for whom Star was named, had been able to sense the light in what she called ‘found’ objects, things that were special. If a person handed her a watch or an item of clothing belonging to a loved one, she could feel their energy, know where they were, what was wrong with them. It was a powerful gift, especially at a time when the magic most rural people looked for was ‘the cure’ for various ailments.

When a travelling woman named Madeline had come to

Ardagh selling pots and pans, people had flocked to her as word spread that she could cure bad backs. Nobody quite knew how she did it, but once they had been to see her, whatever back problem they had was gone. It was a simple, crude magic, but it worked. Granny Star told her little granddaughter how she and Madeline, recognising the sixth sense in one another, had talked about the way their powers set them apart.

‘People fear what they don’t understand,’ Madeline said.

‘They want it, and yet they fear it.’

‘Is it easier when you’re moving from place to place all the time?’ Granny Star wondered.

‘It is and it isn’t,’ Madeline said. ‘Travelling is all I know.

People welcome you when they need you, but when they are better, they want you gone. When that happens, it’s horrible to feel they don’t like having you around.’

‘I understand,’ Granny Star had said. Her gift had been brought into the open many years before, when she’d used it to find a missing woman. Since then, many people had come to her, but afterwards they would hurry away, eyes shifty, afraid someone might see them. They needed her help, but they didn’t want anyone to know they’d turned to a Bluestone woman rather than falling to their knees in church.

Star’s own experience had taught her that this was as true today as it was then, and so she was careful about letting people know what was revealed to her when she touched them.

Holding lovely Claudia’s hand, Star stiffened suddenly.

Something came to her like a pulse of electrical current, something to do with a woman and David - her David. She tried to work it out, but it was hazy, the way things were blurred when the person didn’t know what was going on. Whatever it was involved David and a woman close to Claudia, but Claudia was innocent of it all. Suddenly Claudia took her hand away.

‘It’s a beautiful house,’ she was saying. ‘I love those old maps, and those teapots are just adorable.’ Everyone admired Star’s teapots. She’d been collecting them since she was a small child and there were scores of them: blue-and-white willow pattern ones, a colourful hand-painted one from Greece, a couple decorated with delicate Chinoiserie that she’d acquired on her travels. Most precious of all to her was a tiny handcrafted pottery one with a slightly uneven spout and a willow handle. It was very old and had been her great-great grandmother’s. Tea drunk from that pot could give the drinker a vision of their destiny. Star had only used it a few times in her life. It should not be abused, her mother had said.

‘Star has an amazing collection,’ Lena agreed. ‘Is this a new one?’ she asked, running a finger over a fat rose-coloured teapot with a chipped handle.

‘I bought it in the antique shop,’ Star said blankly. Her mind wasn’t on teapots. It was on Claudia’s hands and what she’d seen, a flicker of another woman who was close to David. The woman hadn’t been Lena or someone who worked closely with David; it was a different kind of closeness, something to do with love - but that didn’t make sense because the woman was linked to Claudia, and how could David be in love with a woman linked to Claudia?

She felt the urge to touch Claudia’s hand again, but it mightn’t work a second time. Her magic was strange like that: it delivered its gifts when it felt like it, not on request, and especially not when her need to know was so strong.

Star felt shaken and clumsy, which was unlike her. She spilled the tea leaves when she was making the tea and then knocked the jug over so that milk flooded the wooden kitchen table, almost reaching one of the tapestries she’d laid out for the visitors to see.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, quickly grabbing a tea towel to mop it up.

When they were all seated, enjoying tea and some of Star’s

muffins - though Star, in her troubled mood, barely noticed their taste - they talked briefly about David.

‘It’s such a cliche, but I can’t believe he’s gone, I just can’t,’

said Lena mournfully. ‘It was so sudden. One minute he was here and the next he was gone.’

‘I know.’ Claudia put down her muffin as if her appetite had vanished.

Star watched her. There was something strange going on, she could sense it. No, not strange so much as sad. Sad and full of pain. For someone.

In the cool of the barn-cum-studio beside the farmhouse, Natalie hammered away at copper coils, bending them into shape with the tiny jewellery hammer. It was satisfying work normally, pounding away with purpose. Today, it was painful.