Soldier's Daughters (18 page)

‘That’s a shame. It would have been a good finishing touch.’

‘Never mind,’ said Luke. ‘With what you’ve done here, everyone will be well impressed.’

Immi nodded at him from the top of the ladder, a satisfied smile on her face. ‘Glad you like it. Dunno what I’m going to do with all this fabric when the party is over. I think I’ve bought the entire UK stock. If it was blue and white I could sell it to Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
for spare pinafores.’

Luke gave her a worried look. ‘You’re bonkers, do you know that?’

‘Maybe.’ Immi climbed down the ladder again and jumped the last couple of steps. ‘God, I’ve been up and down today like a whore’s drawers.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ he said, dryly.

‘Oi, Luke, that’s well out of order.’

‘Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Anyway, you’re the one who said it.’

‘Hmm.’ Immi gave him a hard stare and put the fabric and the drawing pins down on the top step of the ladder. She changed the subject. ‘So, who are you bringing to the party?’

‘Haven’t really thought about it yet.’

‘You don’t have a girlfriend?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Just curious, Luke, just curious.’ Immi fiddled with the corner of a chipped nail. ‘Luke?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you been to Kenya?’

‘Yeah, couple of years ago. Why?’

‘I volunteered for rear party but the chief clerk told me I’m going on the exercise along with everyone else.’

‘Don’t you want to?’

Immi shrugged. ‘Not a big fan of creepy-crawlies, if I’m honest.’

Luke grinned naughtily. ‘Oh, that’s not good. They have millipedes out there the size of marker pens, and dung beetles like tennis balls, not to mention the snakes, the flies and the bats, and that’s before we get started on the things big enough to eat you alive.’

Immi’s eyes were like dinner plates. ‘You’re kidding me,’ she whispered.

‘Nope,’ said Luke cheerfully. ‘And there’s the other things you’ll have to contend with, like heatstroke and insect bites. Oh, and every plant you come across has thorns on it the size of darning needles.’

‘That’s it,’ said Immi. ‘I’m going to throw a sickie. They can’t make me go if I’m ill.’

‘I think they probably can and almost certainly will.’

‘I’ll go AWOL,’ said Immi with a hint of desperation.

‘Honestly, Immi, you’ll be fine. You’re going to be back at HQ. Probably the worst you’ll encounter is the RSM in a mood. No one is going to send a REMF like you into the field.’

‘REMF?’

‘Rear echelon mother… well, you can guess the last word,’ said Luke.

Immi rolled her eyes. ‘God bless the British Army – an insult and an acronym all in one hit.’

‘Anyway, I was thinking…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, if you haven’t got a partner for this bash we could go together. Not a date,’ said Luke hastily, ‘but it would stop us both looking like sad loners.’

‘I am not a sad loner,’ said Immi haughtily. ‘I’m between boyfriends.’

Luke shrugged. ‘Forget it, then.’

‘No!’ She realised she’d shouted. Immi lowered her voice. ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. Luke I’d love to accompany you. Truly.’

‘Really?’

She tried to look nonchalant. ‘Yeah, if you’d like.’

And she felt as if all of her internal organs were pogoing all at once. She managed to resist punching the air and yelling ‘Yesss!’

On the officers’ married patch Maddy was cooking up a storm of dishes for her buffet lunch, which had seemed quite distant when she’d arranged it and now was to take place later that day. The surfaces were covered with pots and pans, wooden spoons and a couple of open recipe books, while the sink was stacked with utensils waiting to be washed up. It was fairly chaotic but Maddy was humming happily as she looked forward to the party.

She checked on the spread she’d laid out on the large dining-room table. The army thoughtfully assumed that all officers’ wives – even junior ones – liked nothing better than to entertain vast numbers of people and so every quarter was issued with a table that could seat at least eight, with the chairs to match. As Maddy and Seb, when he was home, tended to eat on trays on their laps in front of the TV, their dining room was mostly a completely redundant space, but as Maddy admired the buffet she was going to be serving up to the twenty or so people they’d invited, for once she was thankful that they had the wherewithal for such entertaining. Not, she reasoned logically, that she would have been so ambitious if they hadn’t.

She tweaked a napkin straight and rearranged a couple of plates of quiche, checked the cling film over the salads… There, she thought with a sigh of satisfaction. Perfect. Well, as perfect as she was capable of making it. So, just the garlic bread to heat up, the French dressing to make and Nathan to feed. Yes, everything was going according to plan. Time to gild the lily and put on something Nathan hadn’t slobbered down. Bless him, it wasn’t his fault he was teething again, but it did make him dribble – a lot.

‘I’m popping upstairs,’ she told Seb. ‘I don’t suppose you could make a start on Nathan’s lunch, could you? I’m rather hoping he’ll go down for a nap in a while.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ said Seb.

‘Then he can sit in his high chair or play in his playpen.’

‘If you say so.’

‘It’ll be fine. Besides, half the people coming have kids of their own and the other half will just have to lump it. You never know, some of them might like children.’

Seb nodded. ‘Maybe, although, remembering back to my time living in the mess, most bachelor officers seemed to be hard-wired to dislike kids.’

‘Then they’re going to have to man up. Anyway, you never know, Sam and her pal might be quite maternal. Besides, it isn’t as if we’re going to ask any of them to actually do anything with Nate, like change a nappy. All they have to do is tolerate his presence. It’s not asking for much, now, is it?’ said Maddy briskly.

By the time Maddy was back downstairs, changed, made up and scented, Seb had managed to feed Nathan, mop down the worst splodges of spat-out banana from the kitchen table and Nathan’s hair and he was back playing with his toys on the floor.

Maddy glanced at her watch. ‘They should be here any minute. Best I get going with the French dressing.’

As she had bustled off into the kitchen and was busy with a blender, a concoction of oil and other ingredients, the doorbell rang.

‘You’ll have to get that Seb,’ she yelled from the kitchen, over the high-pitched whine of the MagiMix.

Seb opened the front door. And there was Michelle.

Sam was looking forward to meeting some of the married officers of the battalion socially and informally, and as it meant getting to know a few of the wives as an added bonus she was really looking forward to lunch at Maddy’s. Michelle and she had had fun over the weekend and Michelle had enjoyed meeting Sam’s mess-mates – a couple of whom had stayed over specifically to go to Maddy’s lunch party – while the rest of the time had been spent experiencing the delights of shopping in Salisbury and a trip to the cinema to see a chick-flick. Topping the weekend together with lunch out on the patch, before Michelle had to drive back to Pirbright, promised to make it a pleasant ending to a very jolly couple of days. So when Sam rang Maddy’s doorbell she was anticipating a fun few hours.

The door opened and there was Seb, who was, it had to be said, extraordinarily good looking: tall, tanned and very fit in every possible sense of the word. Yet, even taking that into consideration, Sam didn’t think his looks merited an audible gasp from Michelle. And she knew Michelle was incredibly pretty, but the look of utterly shocked amazement on Seb’s face was also odd. Sam flicked her gaze from one to the other and saw the way the pair were staring at each other – both with horrified looks on their faces. Sam’s female intuition went into overdrive. There was a sub-text here and when she got Michelle to herself she was going to get the thumb screws on her.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Seb. He seemed to be blustering and flustered. ‘I’m Seb.’ He gave Michelle a look which Sam wasn’t able to interpret but which she was sure was significant. The plot thickened. ‘Maddy’s busy in the kitchen,’ continued Seb. ‘Let me take your coats.’

As the two women began to undo their zips and buttons an almighty wail roared from the room behind Seb. He flung open a door to his right and said, ‘Bung your stuff in there,’ while he raced through another door and towards the crying.

Michelle, still looking stunned and as if she were about to cry, handed Sam her coat wordlessly. Sam was longing to ask her what the hell was going on but with Seb only yards away she didn’t dare. Sam took both coats and went into the little room Seb had directed them to use as a cloakroom. It was obviously supposed to be a study but at the moment, apart from a desk and chair, it mostly seemed to be a repository for the ironing pile. Sam dumped the coats on the desk and turned to go and saw on the wall dozens of photos of rowers and their boats.

And Michelle’s latest was a rower. But she’d said he was called Bas, not Seb.

Oh. Dear. God. Se
bas
tian.

Pennies positively cascaded. Had Michelle known he was married? wondered Sam. But she instantly dismissed the thought. Of course she hadn’t. Michelle might have her moments but she wasn’t a marriage wrecker. Sam felt herself go hot then cold as she realised what a bloody awful mess this was. She pulled Michelle into the study. One look at Michelle’s face confirmed everything in an instant. Michelle was as shocked as Sam.

‘Sam, what am I going to do?’ said Michelle.

‘So it’s Seb, isn’t it? Seb is Bas. Sebastian.’ Sam knew she was right, but she needed confirmation.

Michelle’s eyes glittered with unshed tears and she nodded. ‘I can’t stay. I’ve got to go.’

‘You can’t,’ hissed Sam, desperately. ‘Not without endless questions. And if those start to get asked, God knows what’ll happen. Michelle, you’ve got to fake it. Now you’ve turned up you can’t bugger off. Stay for a while, till lunch is over, and then you can say you’ve got a migraine or something, anything. But you can’t turn on your heel and leave.’

Michelle showed a flash of defiance. ‘Why shouldn’t I? I don’t care what these people think of me. This mess isn’t my fault.’

‘And it’s not Maddy’s either – is it?’

Michelle shook her head. ‘I don’t know if I can, Sam.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘Bas… Seb… I think I love him, and I feel so betrayed. Sam, I feel… I feel grubby. I don’t screw married men.’

‘And you didn’t think you had. You wait till I get Seb alone,’ whispered Sam, her anger blazing out of her eyes.

‘Sam, I don’t think I can pull this off. I can’t go out there and pretend I’ve never met him.’

Sam gave her friend a hug. ‘Yes, you can. Just for an hour or two. You won’t have met most of the others either, remember, and you barely know James or Will or the other guys from the mess. They won’t be able to tell whether you’re acting normally or not.’ Sam made a lame attempt at some humour. ‘Or as normal as you ever act.’ She grinned encouragingly at Michelle, who still looked stricken. ‘Please. I know you don’t know Maddy but, please, do this for her. It’s not her fault. Talk about innocent by-stander. However, Seb I am going to kill.’

Michelle rubbed her forehead and sniffed. ‘No, I want to do that.’

‘Attagirl. So, can you do this? Can you pretend you’ve never met Seb before? And can you pretend you are having a great time—?’

The doorbell went again.

‘Coming,’ called Seb from the sitting room.

Sam hugged Michelle again and then sashayed out of the study, patting her hair as if she’d spent the time titivating and not carrying out emergency surgery on a broken heart.

Susie and her husband, plus James and a bunch of other single officers who had arrived mob-handed, all piled into the house together while Maddy emerged from the kitchen and the lunch party got going. What should have been a jolly Sunday rapidly became, for Sam and Michelle, a nightmare, with both of them terrified they’d make a mistake and the truth about Seb and his philandering would emerge. And it wasn’t just she and Michelle that Sam had to worry about; anyone with only half an eye could see that Seb was acting really strangely. He was like a cat walking on tin-tacks – all nervy and wild-eyed. He was either gazing at Michelle in utter bemusement, jumping like he’d been stung whenever she spoke or moved, or bouncing around with so much bonhomie that eventually even Maddy noticed.

‘What’s got into you?’ she demanded to know when she got him alone in the kitchen for a second. ‘You’re acting like an over-excited five-year-old at his own birthday party. Calm down.’

‘Sorry, Mads,’ he said, contritely. ‘I guess I’m not used to playing host.’

Bewildered, Maddy shook her head and handed Seb an open bottle of red and another of white. ‘Keep everyone topped up with wine until I’m ready to put out the hot dishes,’ she instructed him in a low voice. ‘It’s only going to be another five minutes. And if any of the guys want beer, there’s plenty on the patio, keeping cold. Only make sure they shut the French windows after them if they go out to get some; this house is hard enough to keep warm without a screaming draught racing through it.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Seb.

A few minutes later the garlic bread had heated to Maddy’s satisfaction and she was able to call her guests through to the dining room to help themselves.

Thank God, thought Sam, that this was a buffet party, and she and Michelle could choose where they sat and with whom – and that wasn’t going to be near Seb or Maddy. However, as Maddy cleared away their plates from the main course, Susie Collins, whose husband was, Sam knew, Seb’s officer commanding, insisted that they all played musical chairs and moved places ‘so we all get to talk to someone new’. As a result Michelle ended up on one side of the room and Sam on the other and, without Sam to ride shotgun, Michelle was firmly on her own.

Sam tried to pay attention to the conversation she was involved with but it was hard when she was also desperately ear-wigging what was going on over on Michelle’s side of the room. Michelle was saying very little as far as Sam could gather, which was a total relief, and was mostly answering questions with monosyllables while listlessly picking at the apple crumble Maddy had dished up for pud. It was obvious to Sam that Michelle was finding this party the most appalling charade and the strain showed on her face. Thankfully, though, because no one else in the room had ever met her before, the others present seemed to assume that being quiet and a bit sullen was Michelle’s normal persona – which was horribly unfair on Michelle in many respects but, frankly, given the situation, thought Sam, things could be a lot worse. She longed to find a way of giving her a hug – or get her away from the torment – but without being rude she couldn’t think of a way out. Sam resolved to leave, dragging Michelle with her, at the first, polite, opportunity.