Sowing Secrets (26 page)

I’m getting so jittery as the day I fly out rushes towards me. Part of me thinks Mal and I will fall into each other’s arms and everything will be wonderful, but the other part is gibbering with nerves in the back room.

And desperate last-ditch measures are called for: it will
have
to be the cabbage soup diet …

I was woken at some unearthly hour of the night by loud hammering at my door, and staggered down thinking the worst, as you do when that kind of thing happens. Rosie? Ma? My heart was thumping with fear as I opened the door to find …
Tom
.

He beamed at me. ‘Hi, Fran! I was passing and I couldn’t resist dropping by. Can I come in?’

I goggled at him. ‘Come in? No, you
can’t
come in! Do you have any idea what time of night it is?’

He looked at his watch. ‘Morning, just. Come on, Fran – I’d really like to talk to you,’ he wheedled. ‘Haven’t you had all my notes and stuff? I can’t stop thinking about you, and all the way up here—’

‘Tom,’ I interrupted, raising my voice, ‘I’m a married woman – and you’re a married man, come to that – and I’m not inviting you into my house at this time of the night, morning, whatever it is!’

He stared at me, brows knit. Then his face cleared. ‘I see – Rosie must have told you Clara and I still live together. But it’s an open marriage, and yours sounds pretty shaky, so how about we discuss getting together? You’d really like Clara! And don’t you think we were always meant for each other, Fran?’ he asked winningly, reaching out for me.

‘For goodness’ sake, Tom!’ I exclaimed, stepping back. ‘
Will
you go away? I don’t know why you think my marriage is on the rocks, but it’s fine, absolutely fine. I’m very happy and I have absolutely no intention of having any sort of relationship with anyone else, including you!

‘But—’

‘But
nothing
, Tom! Obviously you haven’t read what I’ve written to you, or listened to what I’ve just said. There is nothing going on between us. I wish you well – but I wish you well in Cornwall or somewhere other than here. Got it?’

He seemed taken aback, all the blond sunniness extinguished. Then he ventured hopefully, ‘So, I could just come in for a cuppa and a quiet chat like an old friend then, instead?’

‘Absolutely not. Now, good night!’

‘Shame!’ he said with a sudden grin. ‘You look very fetching in that robe.’

I tugged the lapels a bit closer together.

‘Well, let me know if you change your mind or things don’t work out. You might find yourself out there in the Caribbean thinking of me.’

‘I don’t think so, Tom!’

Unabashed by my rejection, he turned and gave me a sort of half-salute as he walked down the drive, and being still half-woman, half-zombie I waved back, which is not a good idea if you haven’t found the belt of your dressing gown yet. And
especially
not if Gabe Weston is just passing in his big flashy car, slows down and cops an eyeful before you pull yourself – and your dressing gown – together.

Quick as thought I stepped back and slammed the door shut, leaning on it, heart thudding.

That must have looked
really
dodgy. I’d have to explain to him what happened and—

But hold on –
nothing
happened! And why should I try to explain something that I didn’t do when, even if I did, it is none of his business?

‘Because you don’t want him to think you’re a complete slut?’ a little voice in my head said helpfully just as I was on the point of finally falling asleep again.

I was meeting the others at the pub tonight, but when I arrived Nia said Gabe had already been in but had had to go out somewhere. He’d also seemed in one of his darker moods.

It couldn’t be because of last night, could it? I mean, why should he care? And how dare he jump to the wrong conclusions without even asking me what happened?

At least Rhodri and Nia believed me – but then, they are
true
friends. Nia is looking after the hens and roses in my absence, which I feel guilty about, since she is working so hard both at her pottery and helping Rhodri, but there isn’t anyone else. Carrie is not a hen person.

It’s been several days now, and I haven’t seen Gabe at all. I think he’s avoiding me, and
I’m
certainly not going looking for him. It’s strange how I miss talking to him, though …
and
I’d found some more old roses to toss at him.

Still, I have more pressing problems: although I
have
managed to lose half a stone from sheer desperation (and I wouldn’t recommend the cabbage soup diet to anyone who has friends and wants to keep them), that only makes me more or less what I was when Mal went away.

I just hope that after all this time he won’t remember, or be so pleased to see me that he doesn’t notice. On the other hand, he may have seen so much of Alison that he’s started to think it’s normal to have all your bones sticking out and boobs like two fried eggs.

I’ve done my best with what I’ve got, anyway: I’m buffed, defuzzed and exfoliated. Carrie has trimmed my hair to just below shoulder length, and camomile shampoo has taken the winter’s dinginess out of it, but unfortunately
not
the pinkness, though with all these fluorescent wash-in colours people use these days, it doesn’t stand out like it used to do. My eyelashes and eyebrows are freshly tinted and I’ve been soaking my hands in bowls of washing-up liquid to try to get half the garden out of them.

That’s it: this is as good as it’s going to get.

I’m almost organised … I think.

I’ve decided to travel in a pale blue Gap T-shirt and matching sweatshirt with jeans, and a light jacket. I can peel layers off when I get on the plane.

I’ve stuffed my comfortably shabby summer clothes into a huge yellow suitcase with a wonky wheel (one of Ma’s cast-offs), added my expensive linen dress, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, and found my dark glasses. I wish now I’d washed the sarong instead of just shaking the dust off, since it smells of Happyhen, but I suppose I can do it when I get there.

There is no way I am putting potentially exploding minty mouthwash in with my lovely new dress, it will have to go in my hand luggage.

Rosie phoned me in a last-minute panic about my going, and to cheer her (and me) I told her some interesting snippets about Grand Cayman that I’d gleaned, like the average dress size in the Caribbean being a sixteen. I hope that’s USA size sixteen.

‘And there’s a botanical garden that looks lovely, with blue iguanas,’ I said. ‘I’m really looking forward to seeing that.’

Rosie said she loved all wildlife except Mal, though on second thoughts he was tame to the point of comatose, so didn’t count, but seemed a little comforted by the time she rang off.

I do wish I’d studied the information earlier, though, because I’ve suddenly realised just how hot it is going to be on Grand Cayman, and I don’t think even my summer clothes are going to do. And also I don’t cope with heat terribly well, being allergic to the sun and practically all suncreams.

But it’s too late to worry about any of that now – tomorrow’s the day.

I rang around to say my goodbyes, which took longer than I expected, so that it was late when I took my car out to fill with petrol for the drive to Manchester airport tomorrow.

As I was driving back the radio started to go slower and slower, and the windscreen wipers and the headlights started to fade – and by the time I rolled to a stop in my drive the poor little thing was as dead as a dodo.

Perfect timing.

I knew Rhodri or Nia would have driven me to the airport, but I didn’t want to ask them when they are working so hard (and hopefully playing hard too), so I had to ring round and find a taxi to take me early in the morning instead. It’s going to cost a fortune, so thank goodness I didn’t change
all
my money into US dollars!

As you can imagine, I couldn’t sleep for worrying about whether the taxi would turn up or not, and even when it did I must have checked that I had my tickets and passport five times before we were even out of the village.

It was quite a cool night, unless I was chilly from nerves, so I was glad of the sweatshirt under my light jacket. I could simply carry my outer layers when I got there, and my sandals and sunglasses were in my hand luggage, together with the damned mouthwash and aftershave – and I was
sure
the bag was overweight.

I dolorously droned out that song about leavin’ on a jet plane as the taxi drove through the endless dark, deserted roads, and after a while the taxi driver turned the radio on, loud.

I was convinced I’d forgotten something vital, like saying goodbye to the hens.

Thirteen things
not
to do on a long-haul flight:

1) Do not drink too much alcohol just because it’s free.

2) Do not get depressed (see 1).

3) Do not eat the airline food, it mutates in your intestines.

4a) Do not sit in front of small children (they kick the back of your seat).

4b)
Definitely
don’t sit in front of toddlers, who are inclined to vomit down the back of your neck.

5) Do not sit behind someone very tall, who will recline their seat so far back their head is in your lap and you can’t use your tray. If you ask them to sit up, they flex their tattoos at you and pretend they can’t speak English.

6) Do not accidentally lock yourself in the loo to remove toddler vomit (see 4b) and have to shout for help: the whole compartment will be watching you like a floor show when you come out, and may even applaud.

7) Do not forget to take a change of clothes in your hand luggage (see 4b and 6).

8) Do not forget to take refreshing wet wipes (see 4b, 6 and 7).

9) Do not worry about the future (see 1 and 2), because it’s going to happen whether you worry or not.

10) Do not forget the name of the apartments you will be staying at, thus delaying for half an hour the rest of the queue at the sticky Styx of customs as you attempt to convince them you are an innocent tourist.

11) Do not attempt to explain the presence of half a gallon of mouthwash, a bottle of sherry, a rancid T-shirt and a hundredweight of assorted men’s toiletries in your hand luggage.

12) Do not ignore any of the above points or you may arrive jet-lagged, constipated, hungover, depressed, smelly, and so hot you are about to spontaneously ignite like a gum tree because you’re having to wear the thick sweatshirt you set out from home in.

13) Do not try to work out whether you have lost or gained a day of your life, just concentrate on blocking all memory of this flight out of your memory
for ever
.

I oozed out on to the airport concourse in Grand Cayman like a wet and odoriferous dishcloth in need of a good wring out, dragging the suitcase with which I had been reunited after a nail-biting wait by the luggage carousel. Had I been able to remember where my suitcase keys were I might have abandoned all modesty and ripped off my sweatshirt then and there in favour of something much cooler.

I felt dizzy from jet lag and panic at the thought of seeing Mal again. I was most definitely
not
the slender sylph he was expecting and I could only hope that he’d be so happy to see me again that he wouldn’t care if I was just a
little
overweight.

I’d already put this theory to Tanya, the young woman who’d sat next to me on the plane.

‘I’m sure your husband is
dying
to see you and you’ll have a lovely time,’ she’d assured me sympathetically. Then she urged me to drink lots of water to prevent dehydration, which I did, although I also continued drinking the gin, of which they must have had an endless supply, unless they were distilling it in the galley.

I could see Tanya now, cool and elegant in tie-waist linen trousers and a sleeveless top, heading off with her husband, who was on Grand Cayman designing a house for a rich client. She’d said we would be bound to keep running into each other on such a small island and pressed on me as a parting gift one of her bottles of expensive sun lotion, which she assured me I wouldn’t be allergic to.

There was no sign of Mal, but everyone else seemed to be heading out towards the front doors so I followed after them slowly, dragging my enormous suitcase, bulging carry-on bag and duty-free carrier with me. I was starting to have
very
dark thoughts about butt of malmsey-style, double domestic drowning incidences, one in minty mouthwash, the other in sherry – but that was probably the more homicidal aftereffects of the gin.

I spotted Mal standing outside in the shade, perfectly bronzed and with his dark, glistening hair clinging like satin to his beautifully shaped head. He wore a crisp blue shirt unmarked by any unseemly hint of perspiration, and ironed cream chinos.

He didn’t notice me immediately since he was talking to his mother – or to be more accurate she seemed to be haranguing him on some subject. She looked like a wizened sparrow next to him, her skinny frame decorously covered in drab floral cotton and the green lining of her sunhat casting an unearthly pallor across the sagging folds of her face. It rather beggared belief that the one had ever sprung from the other.

I trudged towards them like the last survivor of an expedition, an unwelcome one they’d already claimed the life insurance for, and when they caught sight of me they abruptly stopped talking and stared.

‘My God, it’s the summer pudding!’ Mal exclaimed, unforgivably.

‘Well, Frances,’ Mrs Morgan said, ‘you look rather hot and bothered, I must say.’

‘Hello, Mrs Morgan; hello, Mal,’ I said, with a slight, betraying quiver in my voice, for there seemed to be a complete dearth of bunting, flags and loud hurrahs about my advent. The cherished dream in which, our passion freshly rekindled, we renewed our vows under the palm trees before returning to the marital nest like a pair of homing doves shrivelled and turned to ash on the spot and was blown away by a hot breeze that smelled of coconuts and fruit cake.

Mrs M. poked Mal with the handle of a furled black umbrella, and he finally advanced and kissed me gingerly on the cheek, then recoiled. I could hardly blame him, for he is
so
fastidious and I was hardly in the chilled and plumply perfect condition in which I had set out from the refrigerator of North Wales.

‘Ugh! You smell rank!’

‘Do I? I hoped it had gone off a bit. I’m sorry, darling – a baby threw up on me and the smell sort of lingers. I’m dying to shower and change into something cooler, it’s so hot!’

‘And
I
am urgently in need of a rest, so perhaps now that you have
finally
arrived we can go back to the apartment?’ Mrs M. said.

‘Of course, Mother. And
this
isn’t hot, Fran,’ Mal said, picking up the case and leading the way towards the car park, leaving me with the carry-on bags and duty frees. ‘This is quite cool for Cayman. You’ll soon acclimatise.’

Personally, I thought I had more chance of stewing in my own juice until perfectly braised, but all my breath was taken with trying to keep up without dropping anything breakable. By the time we got to the car the sweatshirt was soaked through and I longed to remove it, toss it in the rubbish and never see it again. My jeans felt like thermal corsets.

Mal’s hire car was a monster: some big four-wheel-drive thing that he had to hoist his mother into. She sat regally in the back while we loaded my luggage in, and then I got in the front, since he said the air conditioning would hopefully take the worst of the smell away.

This was not quite how I had envisaged the start to my second honeymoon.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Only I couldn’t remember for the customs people, and I thought they weren’t going to let me in for a while there.’

‘It’s an apartment block by the sea, on the edge of town. Paradise Falls.’

‘It certainly seems to have,’ I muttered limply. All my pores were so far open I felt like a loofah.

‘That’s the name of the apartments, not the area. I’ve hired a car for you from tomorrow,’ he added casually.

‘Tomorrow?’ I echoed, staring at his dark and competent profile. Relaxed and, aside from a faint wrinkling of his patrician nostrils, seemingly happy.

‘Yes, of course. How else would you get around? It’s the only way to show Mother the island and do the shopping and so on, because I’ll be working most of the time. You did bring your driving licence, didn’t you?’

‘What?’ I was starting to go light-headed and gritty-eyed; was this jet lag or a hangover? Or both? ‘Oh, yes, I think so … Mal, the car’s not as big as this one, is it?’ I enquired timidly.

I’ve only ever really driven one car, the little Beetle currently rusting mournfully on the drive at home.

‘No, it’s quite small, but air-conditioned. Automatic. They’re mostly automatic.’

‘But I’ve never driven an automatic, Mal!’

‘Nothing to it. You’ll soon pick it up.’

‘I feel a bit nervous about it,’ I ventured. ‘I’m twitchy enough at home in my own car!’

‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ he said impatiently. ‘I don’t know what the fuss is about! They drive on the left here too, and in all the residential areas the speed limit is only twenty-five miles per hour.’

He pointed things out to me in an instructional sort of way as he drove – not the sights, but a sort of orienteering programme: the supermarket, the way to the hospital, the road to the centre of George Town … I hoped he wasn’t going to test me on them later, because they all passed me by in a glaze of exhaustion.

‘Here we are,’ Mal said, turning down a rough road and pulling up on coral sand outside a low white block of apartments. I couldn’t see any falls, paradise or otherwise.

Inside, it was all open plan, with tiled floors and ceiling fans. Through the windows lay an improbable vista of wooden decking, coconut palms and a swimming pool, and beyond that a coral beach and wide expanse of turquoise sea.

It was just like an advert; when Mal opened the sliding doors to the deck I expected lithe, tanned young men to rush up and offer me their Bounty bars, but the only thing to rush in was a great rolling wave of hot scented air.

I was still standing by the door surrounded by baggage, like a wilted lettuce in urgent need of a bit of TLC, when Mal said solicitously, ‘You must be tired.’

‘Gosh, yes,’ I began, then realised he wasn’t talking to me.

‘The flight out took it out of Mother, Fran: she’s still taking it easy.’

‘I’ll just rest for a little while,’ she agreed. ‘I will see you later, Frances.’

Mrs M. did look pretty whacked, and I was glad to see her vanish into her room like a genie returning to its bottle. I uncharitably wished I had a stopper.

‘
At last we are alone together
!’ I whispered melodramatically to Mal once our bedroom door had swung silently shut behind us, because, truth to tell, I was feeling a bit strange and shy after our separation, and he wasn’t exactly looking user-friendly.

But I don’t think he can have heard me, since he just said, ‘That’s my bed near the window, Fran, and the shower’s through that door. I’ll leave you to unpack. Oh, and you needn’t bother about the cooking tonight because I’ve got cold food in,’ he added, and vanished without even one tender word.

Then I finally registered his last sentence: I needn’t bother about the
cooking
? I
was
cooking!

I found I was mournfully singing ‘Don’t You Want Me, Baby?’ Then I caught sight of myself in the long mirrored doors of the wardrobe and decided that even the most loving husband could have been excused a quick getaway: it was definitely another ‘Thriller’ zombie moment.

Removing my clothes and showering with some exotic-smelling gel (a strange choice for Mal, I thought) was blissful – except I couldn’t get dry afterwards. My pores seemed to be permanently jammed into the ‘open’ position.

I put the coolest of my old sundresses on, then picked at cold meats and salad in a haze of exhaustion before crashing out on my designated twin bed … but not before reviving just enough under the cooling whirr of the ceiling fan to kiss Mal good night.

He accepted the kiss rather unenthusiastically, then fended me off with the news that, in deference to his mother’s presence and prejudices, we were not going to cohabit in any meaningful sense!

‘I wasn’t intending running through the first ten pages of the
Kama Sutra
tonight anyway,’ I said tartly. ‘I just wanted a hug! Is that too much to ask after we’ve been apart for so long? Haven’t you missed me, Mal?’

‘Yes, but one thing leads to another, and I just feel … well, we should abstain. Until she’s gone home,’ he added, not looking noticeably eager to sweep me into his manly embrace. Then his mobile phone went off and he dashed out.

Maybe this was all a nightmare, and I would wake up any minute to find myself still at home, with time to cancel my ticket?

Next morning Mal woke me up at some hideously early hour.

‘I’ve had breakfast,’ he informed me, as though he had performed some amazing feat. ‘I let you sleep on, but now you’ll have to get up so I can drop you at Coconut Rentals on the way to work to pick up the hire car.’

‘Today?’ I wailed pathetically, scrabbling in my open suitcase for something cool enough, even though I knew there was nothing remotely suitable in there. It would have to be last night’s faded and shabby cotton sundress again. ‘Now? I’ve still got jet lag, Mal, and I don’t know my way about yet!’

‘It’s a small island and they’ll give you a map,’ he said callously, easing me out into the living room by sheer willpower. ‘You can’t get lost.’

I
can get lost in our
village
.

I made some coffee, hoping it would wake me up a bit, while Mal got himself perfectly organised for work. I opened and closed all the cupboard doors while I drank it, to check out what was in there. The fridge was an enormous thing with an ice dispenser that I would have liked to have taken home with me. Or climbed into.

‘I’ve left you some instructions under that piece of coral on the counter,’ Mal said. ‘And I’ve hired you a mobile phone while you are out here in case I need to call you, and you can also use it for
brief
transatlantic calls.’

Just as well Nia had explained the newly discovered delights of her mobile phone to me! I expect they all work much the same way.

Mal was still holding forth, neatly ticking his mental list off item by item: ‘The maid’s not in until Monday. You need to wash up and clear any food spills immediately or we’ll get ants and cockroaches in. Turn all the ceiling fans off and open the doors and windows when you get back – we only close them and use the fans at night, electricity is expensive. We don’t need the air conditioning at all. Here’s your door key. I’ll be back about five thirty, probably, but I usually have a swim before dinner. Oh, and leave Mother to sleep – she hasn’t got back into her usual routine yet.’