Starting Over (19 page)

Sometimes she just didn’t feel up to working and this morning was one of them. Since mislaying Jenna, the light had sometimes gone out of her days abruptly and for one enormous reason.

Angel hadn’t attempted to patch things up.

Tess kept to herself, worked long hours, taking her walks across the footpath over Carlysle land to
Port Road
so she needn’t pass the garage. Though, unavoidably, she’d run the gauntlet this morning – it was either pass the garage or walk across the fields to the ford, which was just stupid.

There had just been Jos, de-poxed presumably, bending over a Jeep on the forecourt, throwing back his ponytail and casting her a grin and a wave.

Now she walked home quickly, hiding herself behind her board with the paper taped on.

Being ostracised was a lonely business.

‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘You do,’ he needled, watching Angel washing lettuce irritably at the kitchen sink. Her sleeve kept slithering down and she had to jerk it up with her teeth, making little
urrrgh
! noises of aggravation. Toby propelled a fully laden toy car transporter carefully in and out of the chair and table legs. ‘Vrumm, vrumm, beep,’ he played softly, managing somehow to hotch on one knee and pinch Nigel against his body with the other.

Angel tossed the lettuce down and began an energetic assault on the cucumber. ‘You haven’t got kids, Ratty.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t understand how terrifying it was!’

‘I can only guess. And sympathise.’ Angel had always been super-protective. He’d known her since she was a teenager berating strangers about leaving their dogs tied up too long outside shops and crying when her grass snake died. All that caring had, naturally, devolved upon the kids to make her a tigerish mother. Jenna’s recent escapade must’ve constituted her very worst nightmare.

Snick, snick, Angel cut matchstick carrots with aggravated precision. ‘What if he’d actually disappeared with her? You hear about these things.’

‘I know.’

The handle of the food mill, being wrenched round to grate cheese, broke mid-turn, and Angel slammed it down with a tiny scream. The glass worktop saver snapped. After a pause long enough in which to count to ten, she shook out a bin bag and tipped everything in; cheese, mill and three pieces of worktop saver. Began to unwrap substitute cheese slices with such a murderous expression that Ratty felt his chest tuck up on a silent laugh. Dear Angel. Normally too nice to be successfully angry, this time she was mega-pissed off.

He got the better of his laughter and asked dispassionately, ‘Was it Tess’s fault?’

Angel threw a cheese slice onto a plate. It landed with a flap. ‘Who else’s?’

‘Was it Tess’s?’

Toby, from under the table, asked, ‘Is Tess coming?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Angel answered her son. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she flashed at Ratty.

‘How?’

Indignant hands on hips, transferring cheese crumbs onto black trousers, Angel stared. ‘She was
supposed
to be looking after Jenna!’

‘Right, she took her out. With your permission?’

‘Yes, but ...’

‘And to Honeybun?’

‘Yes,
but
...’

‘Then she left Jenna outside the kitchen door, strapped in her buggy, till she woke. Don’t you do that?’

‘Yes. But ...’

‘She went for a pee whilst Jenna was still out there, do you do that?’

‘Occasionally, but ...’

‘So. Tell me –
how
was it Tess’s fault?’

Only a small woman, Angel, but she could slam drawers shut with surprising resonance, it quite made Ratty’s ears ring. ‘She ought to choose her company more carefully, for one thing! That moron Olly, thinking Jenna was his, taking her. He wouldn’t have been anywhere near, if not for Tess!’

Ratty felt the car transporter collide with his boot, heard it shed its load and Toby mutter, ‘Oh fishcakes!’

He shifted his position, tucked his feet obligingly under the chair. ‘And she controls him, does she? We all heard her tell him quite clearly that Jenna wasn’t his, nor hers. As I understand, Olly’s in financial straits and looking for access to Tess’s bank account. Tess asked her father not to give her address to Olly but he did, and I suppose if her father hadn’t then her dappy cousin would have. And that, and Olly’s leaping to conclusions, if anything, set the whole catastrophe in motion.’

‘Vrumm, vrumm,
Northampton
, Pederbowough,’ intoned Toby.

With deliberate movements Angel wiped down every work surface, washing out the cloth beneath the running tap. Surfaces finished, she began on the cupboard doors. ‘She could come to see
me,
’ she hedged.

Ratty snorted. ‘This is Tess we’re talking about. Since Olly dumped her she thinks rejection is her bag. So she’s hidden away, stewing. As far as she’s concerned you hate her deeply, which means we all do. You, Pete, me, Jos, all Middledip. If it gets too bad you’ll see her house on the market, you just watch.’

Angel smirked. ‘Ha! That’ll stuff your plans, won’t it?’ She began on another door.

He rubbed his chin. Gazed out of the window. Examined his motives. Was he meddling out of a genuine desire to heal the needless rift between Tess and Angel? Or was it just too uncomfortable to have the discord interfere with his measured, foxy pursuit?

He stood up abruptly. He didn’t need to explain his motives to anyone. ‘When you’ve got a cogent argument that she acted stupidly, remember to share it with me.’ He pushed his chair in and heard Toby tut as the car transporter shed its load again. ‘I’ll be interested. Because it looked to me as if she was put in an impossible situation. And rescued it.’

He wondered if she was even going to let him in, the way she stood back, returning his gaze speculatively through the newly glazed back door. He waved a reassuring hand. ‘Hi, only me.’ After a moment, she unbolted the door and let him through it.

‘Isn’t it about time you grew up?’ he asked, gently. Her hair was loose. It needed brushing. He tugged it gently, forcing her eyes round to his. It felt good, her hair.

‘Don’t you think you owe Angel and Pete an apology? It’s up to you to be big about this. I
know
you couldn’t foresee what was going to happen but I think you ought to speak to Angel.’

She snatched her hair back. ‘She didn’t look as if she wanted to hear!’

He dragged out a kitchen chair and dropped into it. ‘So – what? Shop in Bettsbrough instead of Gwen Crowther’s in case you run into each other? Become a hermit? And do I get a coffee or shall I just die quietly of thirst?’

She threw instant into mugs, took milk from the fridge. Her voice small. ‘She was so furious.’

‘Can you blame her? It was terrifying!’

‘I know.’

‘But you can’t pluck up the courage to make up?’

Back to him as she poured the scalding water, she shook her head vehemently, making her hair jig.

They drank silently. Tess avoided lifting her face; Ratty watched the top of her head and reached the bottom of his cup, out of ideas. ‘Oh well,’ he sniped, abandoning the empty cup. ‘If you decide to sell Honeybun, will you give me first refusal? Lucasta’s left me Pennybun, owning both properties might be an advantage.’

Sidetracked, Tess whistled. ‘Has she? What does the son from Mill Hill feel about that?’

‘Hopping mad. She’s left him most of the contents, aside from minor bequests. But she left most of her liquid funds to a donkey sanctuary and left the property to yours truly!’

‘Bless her.’ She almost smiled. ‘She obviously thinks more about the donkeys than
Derry
. But she appreciated you, you were good to her.’

He replied gruffly. ‘Don’t go spreading stuff like that around. Bad for my image.’ Walking through the door without closing it behind him, he shouted back, ‘But you’re a disappointment!’

Rotten Row; a medley of brick and stone. Some time in the last century fresh bricks had built up the part between dormer windows where thatch had once dipped between and the existing tiles had been added.

Off the kerb, then back on it, she looked up and down the road then back at Rotten Row. Picked out what, precisely, belonged to Pete and Angel’s property, once two. Sitting room two windows, dining room, window on the stairs, Toby’s room, two windows in Pete and Angel’s room. One stained door with thick black iron strapping, a ring to twist instead of a handle. She turned away; maybe she’d just walk on up
Port Road
today. Hesitated, and turned back.

The stained door crashed open suddenly and Angel stood in the opening, hands on hips, hair in bunches, which made her look thirteen. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t be so
wet
! Either come in or go and throw yourself under a bus but don’t skulk about out there like a muddy dog!’

In the kitchen where she’d sat fancying herself part of the family so often, they hugged. ‘I’m
so
sorr––’

‘No!’ Angel snipped her off.

‘But –!’

‘No. It’s all over.’

Tess hugged Angel harder, beaming. ‘I feel as though elephants have dismounted from my shoulders!’

‘Hi. Only me.’ A dark, wet evening, he shifted foot to foot outside the kitchen door, shoulders hunched. When she opened the door he bent forward into the warmth, dripping coldly onto her quarry tiles, and kissed her. ‘Well done.’ Turned and went back into the night.

He’d gone, and her lips were still wet from his rainy kiss when she touched her mouth with her fingertips.

‘You’re a gorgeous, sexy woman.’

It was Christmas in the sitting room at Rotten Row, the first time he said it. After the children had finally gone to bed, hugging their best new toys, the adults had collapsed among rags of wrapping paper and half-dishes of nuts to watch Christmas shows and eat what they’d already had plenty of. The fire danced, smelling sooty and woody, redolent of the season.

Jos left to ‘meet some people’.

And Angel, lounging on the floor between Pete’s feet, shot Ratty a look of mischief. ‘Not going with Jos?’

Ratty sank lower as if too comfortable to move, and grunted.

‘Slowing down, Rats?’

‘Must be.’

Pete and Angel laughed and looked at one another. Ratty looked at the television. Tess looked at everyone else. ‘What’s funny?’

Angel leaned over and tapped Ratty’s knee to make him look. ‘You know what? You and Tess might as well be married.’

‘
What
?’ As Tess’s mouth opened her eyebrows flew up in her hair.

‘You two. Don’t pretend! Round here, the pub or Honeybun, every evening together, these days.’

‘Not every!’ Tess disclaimed hotly.

Ratty’s concentration remained on the set and his can of
Ruddles
County
, as if the discussion had nothing to do with him.

‘
Nearly
every. You babysit, in comes Ratty, and here you’ll both be when we come home. If I ring Ratty in the evening and he’s not home, I find him at Honeybun. If you have a meal with us he stays, instead of leaving after the brandy to go tarting about the nightclubs!’

Tess scoffed, ‘Rubbish!’ Gulped two steadying mouthfuls of wine.

‘He plays with your hair, for Christ’s sake! Him and his Rapunzel complex. Plays with your
hair
! Doesn’t he?’ Angel appealed to Pete.

‘Sure. Another beer, Ratty?’

Tess felt Ratty gently disengage his hand from the ends of her hair as he reached for the new can.

‘Bet he bought you a Christmas present.’

Tess rolled her eyes as if the question was too stupid to answer. Beneath her jumper, the delicate silvery star on a chain around her neck felt suddenly heavy. Riveting suddenly hot eyes on the television, she sniffed. ‘You’re just overtired with horrendous cooking and dealing with excited kids and going mental at the thought of doing it all again for the in-laws tomorrow! Take your frustrations out on someone else.’ Angel’s needling had begun a couple of days ago when Ratty invited them all for supper and Tess, unwary of his seasonal speciality, got squiffy on whisky-soaked mince pies drowned in hot Advocat and Ratty had had to cart her home.

‘Leave her alone, Angel,’ Pete said, gently.

Maybe recognising that she’d gone far enough but determined to have the last word, Angel muttered, ‘
Just
like a married couple. And thanks for reminding me about the in-laws, by the way.’ She cast A Look at Pete, who grinned, winked and blew her a kiss.

Turning slightly from his corner of the sofa, Ratty joined the conversation. ‘Anyway, we’re not like a married couple. We don’t have sex.’