Starting Over (6 page)

Tess began to gather the plates, knowing her hand movements were too fast and uncoordinated; in a minute one of the dishes would crack. ‘You needn’t worry at all and I’m hardly the globe’s diameter away. Let’s have a walk before you go.’

It was a brisk walk because Tess set the pace and she needed exercise before she
exploded
with frustration. God, must they be so
bloody
reasonable about Olly? If she wanted to blame him, she would!

Rain flung odd spots against their faces, golden leaves spinning around their ankles and the wind in their ears as they marched to the Cross and up
Main Road
towards Bettsbrough.

And Tess wondered how quickly she could point her parents towards home.

‘Guy, you’re a pain in the arse.’ Tess sighed down the phone. Wintry rain skittered against the kitchen window like handfuls of gravel. Hardly had she got her parents out of the door and Guy was on the phone! She’d wanted to chill out. Well, that was out of the window!

‘Just for a week, Tess, I’ll pay you straight back.’

Tess wondered how many times it had happened now; Guy finding himself short and, reluctant to share the information with his wife, Lynette, approaching Tess for funds. Which, when Lynette discovered it as she always did, would make her resent Tess even more.

She sighed again. But Guy was her cousin. All those climbed trees and teenaged exploits counted, the learning together, the lying for each other.

‘The bank is being bloody,’ he explained apologetically.

‘And you’re mystified that there’s no automatic unlimited overdraft for an unspecified period without collateral? Particularly as you’re on their staff?’ Tess couldn’t help a gurgle of laughter. Poor old Guy, life was tough on disorganised self-servers, sometimes, but Tess loved him. And it wasn’t his fault her mum and dad had made her feel stressy. She capitulated. ‘I’ll send you a cheque.’

‘Thing is,’ – she could picture Guy rubbing his angular nose at having to go into boring detail – ‘I need a couple of hundred cash straightaway or I can’t meet the mortgage. I was hoping you could transfer it online ...’

She laughed. ‘I’m not hooked up to the Internet here, yet. Out of luck, Guy.’

He wheedled, ‘I’ll take you to the cash machine.’ She pictured the beginnings of his triumphant grin.

‘You do that,’ she agreed. Let Guy come out of his way. If she was going to be two hundred pounds out of pocket and in Lynette’s bad books again, let Guy drive the necessary miles.

Waiting for the sound of his car in the lane an hour on, she finished her salad and cheese and thought about her
Dragons
illustrations. They were going well; it had seemed a big commission to dive into, but hadn’t it been ideal? A project that carried her along into a different world where she needn’t worry about people.

People. After the Simeon Carlysle debacle they’d lain in wait for her. Angel to commiserate, her pretty mouth an O of dismay. ‘Ratty and Jos just
standing
there like imbeciles! “
We didn’t realise she was in trouble
!” Would you believe it?’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

Angel half grinned, lowered her voice. ‘Did you know Ratty went for him? Smacked his head on the side of a van! But he wouldn’t have left you in that situation intentionally – he said it just looked like a bit of passion, from behind. He’s sorry you were ... upset. He did go looking for you but you seemed to disappear.’

Disappearing was something she was good at.

But all of this was irrelevant when Tess, two hundred pounds poorer, sat in the passenger seat of Guy’s car feeling the wheels spin impotently beneath them in soft, saturated soil. ‘You just about take the bloody biscuit,’ she sighed flatly, plaiting the front of her hair. ‘Doesn’t your brain ever engage? “
Let’s stop, I need to talk
,
”
’ she mimicked. ‘“
Here will do
.” Straight through a gateway and into a ploughed field, regardless of the fact that my warm, dry home is only a couple of miles away!’

Biting his lip, every emotion typically visible, Guy looked glum. However attractive he was, with his sandy hair and flat-planed face, he had an unparalleled affinity with trouble. After almost an hour of confidences, where Tess learned all about his expensive girlfriend and suspicious wife, they were stuck fast in good English farming soil.

‘If you ever
thought
,’ she griped, ‘it would make the national press.’

Guy sighed. ‘Now what do we do?’

Ratty backed the breakdown truck into the gateway, glancing left-right at each post half-hidden by the hedge. He secured the chain, checked clearance and, in a minute, had heaved Guy’s car backwards onto solid ground. He grinned through the window at Tess standing in the lane, shoulders hunched against the weather. The funny woman had a talent for calamity.

‘
Another
incident in a muddy field? At least I was here for you this time.’ The wrath in the startling eyes made him laugh out loud.

‘My cousin has the intellect of donkey crap.’

He leant his elbow on the sill. ‘Are you continuing your journey with your friend, ma’am, or do you require a ride to the village?’

Indicating her choice by suggesting a bizarre route home to her sheepish-looking cousin, Tess climbed into the cab of the breakdown truck. Ratty watched her fight the seat belt with tight, angry movements.

‘Thank you,’ she said coldly, ignoring Guy as he waved goodbye.

Ratty put the wrecker in gear. ‘Cousin, eh?’

Tess nodded, gingerly fishing long skeins of damp hair from her collar.

Ratty grinned. ‘Usually when I have to fish couples out of muddy fields they’re –’

‘Well, we weren’t! With a wife, a girlfriend and an overdraft, Guy’s pretty busy already!’

Angel, one of the least artful people Tess had ever encountered, had been quite open about her mission to winkle Tess out of her shell. ‘Come round!’ she insisted. Often. ‘I get so fed up stuck at home with the children.’

Slowly, it had become routine for Tess to call at the cottage in Rotten Row at one side of
Cross Street
, a home full of sunshine colours and children’s things. She felt at ease there, and sheltered. The children were easy, too young to judge, speculate, expect. Jenna, walking properly now, was happy with cuddles, food, the noisy entertainment of clapping songs.

As she was asleep now, Tess played with Toby on the floor with Duplo, listening to Angel, ever busy in the wholesale, harassed way of mothers of two small kids, wielding her iron or filling the freezer and churning out cameos of the village into Tess’s receptive ears.

‘She’ll have you broke, that really blonde woman. Lives up in the new village, always at your door for donations.’ Or, ‘You know Tubb from the pub? You
do
, he’s got that wiggle of hair at the front, here ...’

The iron would clatter back onto its stand as Angel shook a pillowcase out with a snap and folded it briskly. With a sigh, she turned to the awful task of ironing work jeans. ‘Don’t you think Jos is lovely? Quiet compared to the others, but lovely. Poor soul, when his parents split up
neither
of them wanted him! He’s been brought up by his grandmother. He keeps geese in his garden, they’re ferocious.

‘You couldn’t be horrible to Jos. He’s not as close to Pete and Ratty as they are to each other – it’s buy one, get one free with them.’ Having conquered the jeans she began folding sleepsuits. ‘’Course, it’s cars, cars, with the lads. No, cars
and
women. And the women are the lesser commitment – except Pete and me. Ratty says our marriage is the only half-decent one he knows. He’s good as gold, really.’

Tess looked up from the Duplo castle she was creating for Toby. ‘Really? Ratty?’

‘Generous, funny. Quite balanced.’

‘Presumably by a chip of equal size on each shoulder?’

Angel laughed delightedly, no doubt saving that one up to share with Ratty later, flicking a shirt round the ironing board. ‘When he’s good, he’s great; when he’s bad, he’s dire. But he can be really, extraordinarily kind – look how he is with Lucasta. He’s amazingly successful with women but he doesn’t involve Pete – probably because he knows I’d kill him. Apart from the garage and his place up
Ladies Lane
, he owns three houses in the village. Buys them, rents them out. He’s a right moneymaker and he says he’ll leave it all to Toby and Jenna if he never has his own offspring. He loves the kids.’

Tess began to select square blocks for her castle’s crenellations. ‘They’re gorgeous children. I’m becoming one of those sad singles who tag themselves onto a family.’

‘Oh well. I’m glad you picked this family.’

‘Don’t want a castle any more,’ said Toby, yanking Tess’s careful crenellations off again. Just returned from playgroup, he really needed a nap but was resisting.

‘Draw him something,’ Angel suggested, stowing the ironing board away. ‘There are crayons and things in that yellow box.’

‘What shall I draw?’ Tess looked enquiringly at Toby, his sturdy blondness, peachy skin and intent expression.

‘My pig.’ Toby carted a toy pig everywhere by a string that once used to activate a voice. ‘Draw Nigel.’ And he posed the soft toy, flaccid and drunk with too much hugging, on the carpet.

Full-length on the itchy smoky greyness of Angel’s woollen carpet, head supported on hand, ponytail looped over a shoulder, Tess took the pad that Toby plonked in front of her, feeling the familiar smoothness of paper under her fingers, and drew Nigel with swift, minimal strokes of soft blue crayon. Snout, trotters, wiggly tail, one bent ear.

Toby hotched closer. ‘Draw Nigel playing football!’

And, wax crayon, blunt pencil and brushy old felt pen her tools, she drew Nigel playing football in the
England
strip, porcine face pursed in endeavour. Running, heading, flat out in agony after a bad tackle.

‘Now driving,’ Toby demanded, breathing hard over the page, getting his head in the way.

Angel, a pile of clean clothes in her hands, craned to see the herd of Nigels cavorting about the large, cheap sheet of paper. ‘Oh
wow
! That’s
so
impressive! Aren’t you talented?’ She lingered to witness Nigel appearing on the page, a too-small sports car careering away with him, ears and pendulous cheeks pushed back by the draught, trotters protruding from T-shirt armholes and braced in panic on the steering wheel. Absently, she drew two tiny tattoos.

Toby slapped the page with a gleeful, podgy hand. ‘Watty got pictures like that!’

‘Really?’ She selected a once-black felt pen and added curly hair blowing back from the piggy features in the wind. And stubble.

‘Do the car green,’ insisted Toby, so close to the pad as to almost obscure the view, his hot little arm sweatily against hers, his head smelling of shampoo and biscuits.

His approval was heady stuff. Between it and Angel’s awe-struck, ‘You’re
brilliant
,’ Tess began to enjoy herself as her crayon flew over Nigel after Nigel. Too much to notice the back door opening.

But nothing so vital escaped Toby. He jumped up. ‘Look, Watty!’ he shouted. ‘Tess drawed Nigel, driving!’

Huge from her startled perspective, Ratty loomed above. ‘Clever. Very flattering. I hope we don’t have pork for lunch?’ He shot her a curious look, then smiled to prove he could bear being caricatured as a pig.

Tess hadn’t realised anyone else was invited for lunch, although entertaining was definitely one of Angel’s things. All the time that used to be spent at the pub pre-children was now spent at Pete and Angel’s house. Ratty, at least, seemed to half live there.

‘Steak pie, wedges and salad. Can you lay the table, Ratty, if you’ve finished admiring your portrait? Tess, do you prefer mustard dressing or mayonnaise? Will Jos be very long, Ratty? I hope one of you can work this bottle opener ...’

Tess was uncertain how she felt at being so …
included
. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for it. But Jos and Pete had come in, too, and to leave when there was a place set for her wouldn’t be friendly.

The page of Nigels was passed around with the salad, Pete and Jos both grinning at Ratty.

‘Would you paint a proper picture of Nigel for Toby’s room?’ Angel asked. ‘How much will it cost?’

Tess considered as she chewed her mouthful. ‘Another glass of wine.’

‘Wow, that’s a bargain! I’ll trim your hair sometime,’ Angel exchanged. Her hair and beauty salon in Bettsbrough, Tess already knew, had a bubbly, brisk manager until Angel got the kids up to school age. She was always being asked when she was going back and she always groaned about how much she missed it, the prettiness and the girlie atmosphere.

After lunch, concentrating on Toby in order to remain on the edges of the adult conversation, conscious of not being part of the easy familiarity the others shared, Tess drew him quick sketches of the three now familiar Dragons of Diggleditch. Slinker, the green-backed lizard-like one with red belly, amber spines and eyes. Slider, blue and mauve with a gun-barrel snout and tongue coiled neatly behind smirking fangs, sliding on huge feet. Finally, her favourite, Winder in cheery primrose with a green tummy and crimson spines, the inept one who kept rushing his snaky body into a knot.