Rumours (7 page)

Stella thought, I'd rather not open it at all.

K. Sx

U ok, babes? Jxx

Yep xx

Everyone had told Stella that, if there was an optimum age when change would have a minimal effect on a child, then she'd taken that decision for Will at exactly the right time in his life. Home. School. Just the two of them. Stella bit the bullet and went for change. Her loved ones had praised her, as if it had been a canny choice she'd systematically made and not the only angst-ridden option she'd felt she had. Actually, the only choice she'd really had was between Harpenden and Hertford and her big brother had made that an easy one, with the cut-price offer of his rental house.

That evening, listening to the teacher praising Will, the feeling of Stella's heart expanding even more for her popular, industrious and bright little boy was tempered by the presence of the little low red plastic chair empty next to the one on which she sat. It was as if the full impact of all the wonderful words was somehow reduced because it was heard by only one set of ears. Parent's evening.

Four terms in, she no longer felt conspicuous as the lone single parent in Will's year. If anything, she was pleased to have moved to a community in which stable family values were strong and she'd grown to enjoy the genuine warmth extended to her. Waiting outside the classroom, busily browsing art folders and maths books, admiring the displays of
Words Into Pictures
on the walls as if the corridor was an overflow for the Royal Academy, Stella felt happy, lucky, that she and Will were there. He had his little gang of chums – and she was now very much one of the mums.

‘Mums' night out next Friday, Stella – Will can come for a sleepover if babysitting's a problem.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Wasn't Will fantastic in assembly last week! Quite the little actor!'

‘Thank you.'

Much to be very grateful for. Just that hiccup of an envelope at home, waiting to be opened. Its contents already known yet the effect they might have, strangely unfathomable.

* * *

Whenever Douglas Hutton asked to see her in his office, Stella was never sure whether she'd find her boss or her uncle in there. When she was summoned on Friday, the morning after parent's evening, she just couldn't tell who'd be behind his desk. Belinda, Steve and Gill eyed her suspiciously; Geoff, though, didn't look. He liked Stella and had decided early on to turn a blind eye on any rumoured favouritism and focus on his files instead whenever Douglas Hutton put his head around his office door and said, Stella – a quick word.

‘A strange one, this,' was Douglas's opening line. He looked at Stella quizzically, as if alternating between seeing her as his niece and as his newest member of staff who was already proving her worth. ‘You've been asked for. By name.'

‘Oh?'

‘Really, I ought to be taking this myself – if it comes off. Being head of the company, and more experienced than any of you. And you'll have to steel yourself – if it comes off – to that lot out there baying for your blood. But whatever I want – and whatever the others won't want – has no bearing, whatsoever, on what this potential client wants.' He paused. ‘Are you all right?'

Stella wasn't sure how to tell him she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. ‘I'm fine. I'm just not entirely sure I understand.'

‘You can't understand,' he said gruffly. ‘I haven't told you yet.' Douglas was famous for his lengthy scene-setting, whether it was an introduction to a choice anecdote recounted at Christmas dinner or a preamble to a pep talk during Monday meeting here in the office.

‘Sorry.'

‘I don't think you will be!' He regarded her with a rare and wry smile. He shook his head gravely, contradicting the gesture with a chuckle. ‘You've been sent for – asked for
by name
. There's no achievement greater, no seal of approval more valuable, than personal recommendation. That's what you have. Your reputation precedes you already. From tiny acorns, Stella – from wee little acorns.'

She tried hard not to look confused.

‘That little acorn of a cottage at Long Dansbury may have turned into the mighty oak of Longbridge Hall.' He fell silent before continuing to himself. ‘Unlikely though. It's the Fortescue seat.'

She couldn't even nod. She knew of the Eames Lounger but not a Fortescue Seat. Longbridge Hall meant nothing to her. And contracts on Mercy Benton's cottage had been exchanged – so there couldn't be any problems there. She tried to think tangentially about trees – subsidence? She couldn't remember any strapping great oak that could undermine the cottage's foundation.

‘You will go on Tuesday morning. Eleven o'clock – be prompt.'

‘OK. I'll do that.'

‘Good girl. Your mother's asked me for Sunday lunch – will you be going? I am looking forward to seeing young William.'

The sentence was said in an altogether lighter tone at a faster pace and enabled Stella to speak more freely.

‘Uncle Douglas – I'm sorry to sound vague. But can you just tell me exactly where I'm going on Tuesday morning at eleven – and why?'

‘Longbridge Hall, Stella. In Long Dansbury.'

‘Right.'

‘Right at the centre of the village, give or take a half-mile driveway.'

‘OK.' She paused, hoping she didn't look bewildered. ‘Oh – and why?'

‘The Lady Lydia Fortescue has asked for you.'

‘For
me
? Lady Fortescue?'

‘It's
Lady Lydia
,' Douglas corrected. ‘Actually, for a while she was The Lady Lydia Huffington-Smythe – but that was her late husband's surname and he was a commoner so when she inherited her own family seat, she was quite happy to revert to The Lady Lydia Fortescue. But her family are also the Earls of Barbary. Between you and me – they probably make it up as they go along.' Douglas could see that Stella was too confused to speak. It didn't matter, really. ‘Anyway, she was rather taken with the recommendation given to her by Mrs Benton whose cottage you sold. That's all I know.'

‘I see.' But Stella didn't.

‘I don't know what it's about – she wouldn't say. But she owns other properties in Long Dansbury – some would say she owns the entire village. And the villagers too.'

* * *

Friday night. Stella reached across to the bedside table to check the time. Saturday morning, really, at just gone two. The working week done, the weekend upon her. A cup of tea with Jo and her daughters after Will's football club in the morning, Sunday lunch at her mum's with any number of the extended family. Perhaps the new Pixar movie after that – she might treat herself and Will to a 3D showing. Where had she put the 3D glasses after their last outing? And why it was suddenly so important to find them, at silly o'clock, just then? She left her bed and tiptoed into Will's room, smiling at his fidget and gruffle when she leant over to kiss him. She peered into his toy box but knew the glasses were unlikely to be there. Still, though, she sat in his room, on the floor, her back to his bed, awhile longer. The most peaceful place in the world.

Downstairs she went, to look through the odds-and-sods drawer in the kitchen before having a satisfying flashback and going to the coat rack. There were the glasses, in the pocket of her Puffa. It made her realize how long it had been since their last trip to the cinema. It made her realize how much warmer the weather had become, that this billowing black padded mainstay of colder climes hadn't been worn since. She tried on each pair of glasses, then buffed the lenses as best she could before placing them, side by side, on the radiator cover near the front door. It was as if Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello had come to visit and left their specs there.

Stella went back to bed. Briefly.

She said to herself, you're seeing Jo tomorrow, remember? Remember what she said? Remember what you'd planned?

It was useless. Sleep would elude her while that envelope remained under her bed. She tried to flatter herself that it was a
Princess and the Pea
scenario. Actually, the envelope was inside the old canvas and leather suitcase, in which she'd kept all her secrets and treasures since adolescence. She pulled the case out, unbuckled the straps and jostled the slightly warped lid away. She could lose herself in teenage love letters and the doodles in her Rough Book from school. She could distract herself with old photos and hark back to the days when camera film was sent off to BonusPrint and returned fourteen days later as unique memories preserved on Kodak paper – not stored on an iPhone and randomly scrolled through, in little. She could do any of these things, while away time until she was tired enough to put it all back in the case and clamber into bed. But that envelope had put up some kind of impenetrable barrier between the Stella sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom at thirty-four years old and the youthful Stella epitomized by all the keepsakes in the case. Halt! Who goes there! Access denied!

It's me.

It's Stella.

Let me in – I want my life back.

So she opened the envelope at half past two. She remarked to herself, as she did so, that the tacky adhesive could close against itself easily enough, if she lost her nerve or if she wanted Jo to think she hadn't opened it. But when it tore a little, in the last inch or so, she acknowledged she'd gone past the point of no return. She felt inside. A paper clip holding a compliment slip against just a few pages, A4 size. She knew the paper clip would be pink or red or orange. Something bright and certainly not steely. And the compliment slip would have a handwritten personal message on it. She knew the essence of what would be on the sheets behind it – just not the precise wording.

It's just going to say what it is.

It can't say anything else.

You know what it is.

You asked for it.

She slipped the contents out and in one movement, took off the paper clip (turquoise) and gave a cursory glance to the slip of paper (handwriting in red pen with some kind of doodle in the lower right-hand corner – how lucky she was to have such a sweet-natured solicitor). To one side, she placed a page which was a letter. In her lap, face up, lay a certificate over the other pages. She read it in an instant, absorbing all the information in the blink of an eye and then, immediately, read it again, out loud sotto voce, into the stillness of her bedroom.

‘Certificate of making Decree Nisi Absolute (Divorce).'

The type was tiny – as if the words were shameful and should be read in a whisper.

Underneath this, the font was much larger and in upper case. Stella raised her voice a little, accordingly.

‘IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

PRINCIPAL REGISTRY OF THE FAMILY DIVISION.'

She reverted to a lower tone for the next part, as it was in the same point size as the first.

‘
Matrimonial cause proceeding in Principal Registry treated by virtue of section 42 of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 as pending in a divorce county court.
'

She looked at the next part quietly before clearing her voice.

‘
Between Stella Ruth Hutton Petitioner

and Charles John Taylor Respondent

She read to herself again, before repeating it out loud.

Whereby it was decreed that the marriage solemnized …

At St Peter's Church, St Albans

Between the petitioner and the respondent be dissolved

‘Dissolved,' said Stella. Thinking of soluble aspirin. Of tears. Wondering if destroyed or deconstructed or even dismembered were better words.

Out into the night she continued to read aloud. ‘…
final and absolute … said marriage was thereby dissolved. Dated this 13th day of April
.'

There were notes but Stella just skimmed these again. The type was small, the language dense and the content non-personal. The information she'd needed to see in black and white, that she needed to hear herself say, that she'd applied for all that time ago because it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, had sunk in. It coursed through her blood like anaesthetic. She was surprised to simply feel numbness, not pain. She felt flat and it was bizarre. She'd assumed that in spite of it all she'd be upset, yet the tears she'd anticipated didn't come. Instead, her eyes were kept busy by the majestic, circular red crest of the court's stamp, with its emblem of lion and unicorn, just overlapping the words ‘absolute' and ‘dissolved'.

Divorced.

It is done. It is gone. I am a divorcee.

It was final, confirmed, official, legally binding. It was what she wanted but still, it was so blunt. Yet it didn't hurt her – there wasn't pain the way there'd been pain when she'd left Charlie. She just felt tired. Very very tired. As exhausted as if she'd scaled a mountain she'd spent so long in training for. She could sleep now. And when she woke, she'd take in the view that daylight would bring, of all that stretched ahead.

With a dog under one arm and three-year-old Sonny wriggling under the other, Caroline Rowland manoeuvred the buggy with her foot so it didn't block the entrance to the Spar. She then plonked the dog beside it with a look that said Stay – Or Else, and into the shop she went, managing to buy only what she'd come in for and cajole Sonny into thinking the dried apricots were his idea of a snack.

Caroline made multitasking appear effortless and her willowy beauty was unruffled by the daily challenges of two very young children, a dog and a husband who commuted to London. Her self-deprecating sense of humour, delivered in her upbeat Geordie accent, helped – as did a copious supply of Nicorette gum. She was one of Xander's closest friends and that they should live in the same village, having met nearly two decades ago at Nottingham University, was no coincidence. They'd dated, briefly, or rather they fell into a bit of late-night snogging at the Students' Union disco in Freshers' Week, but neither of them could remember much about that. It wasn't long after that that Caroline met Andrew and adopted the role of older sister to Xander (though she was in fact younger by two years) and Xander, an only child, couldn't believe his luck, or what he'd been missing all those years. After university, they'd all shared a house in Highbury and then, when they finally decided that they'd be grown-ups – and Caroline married Andrew and Xander set up his own company – they all ended up in Long Dansbury.