Woman Walks into a Bar (9 page)

“I've got too much to do without waiting around for people to deign to get up!”

“We didn't expect you to wait,” Rose said. “I'd have just taken Maddie out for breakfast.”

“You will not,” Jenny said, pointing at the table next to the window in a clear command to sit. “Can you imagine? No, tea and toast will be through in a minute. And what about you, young lady? Would you like a glass of milk?”

“I don't like milk,” Maddie said.

“Well, orange juice, then?” Jenny asked her, and Maddie nodded.

“Do you mean yes please?” Jenny chided her. Maddie nodded again.

Rose rubbed her hands over her face, pushing her long hair back as she reached into her skirt pocket and took out the postcard. Pushing Maddie's book across the table toward the little girl, hoping its contents would distract her from her toast, she let herself read the short message on the back for a moment, following the familiar swirls and loops of the handwriting that she had come to know by heart over the years. And then she turned it over and looked at the picture on the front, which had become just as familiar. A reproduction of an oil painting,
Millthwaite from a Distance
by John Jacobs. This small, slight piece of card with a neatly written note inscribed on the back of it was the only reason she had run away to here, which seemed crazy if she even thought it, let alone said it out loud, but it was true.

Frasier McCleod, the person who had written the note, was the reason that she had come to Millthwaite, although she had no idea where he was, or even who he was really. That card, this place, were the only links she had with him and the possibility that had been haunting her since she had met him once, more than seven years ago, for less than an hour: that he might, just might, feel the same way about her as she did about him. That in that one and only meeting of less than an hour, when Rose had been long married and very pregnant, she might just have met the love of her life.

Rose held her breath as Jenny plonked down a plate of toast and Maddie picked it up, eyeing it suspiciously as she touched it to her lips, licked it, and then nibbled the tiniest crumb off the corner, before taking a full bite.

“Delicious!” Maddie said, nodding at Jenny, who also put down a small glass of juice. “Thank you very much, you are most kind.”

“You are very welcome,” Jenny said, a little put off by Maddie's sudden burst of good manners, but that was Maddie. It wasn't that she didn't know how to behave, it was just that most of the time she didn't see the point.

“Do you know this postcard?” Rose plucked up the courage to ask Jenny before she bustled back to the kitchen to resentfully fry bacon. “The painting of the village?”

Jenny nodded and then pointed at the wall above Rose's head, where an exact, but larger, reproduction of the same painting was hanging.

“You'll find one like that in most houses round here,” Jenny said. “It's the closest Millthwaite's ever come to being famous—well, unless you count that one time we were on
Escape to the Country
. Still, it's made Albie Simpson more money than he needs.”

“How do you mean?” Rose asked her, twisting in her chair to get a better look at the print. It was a bold and confident painting, almost as if the artist had been bored when he painted it, restless and eager to be onto the next thing, dashing it off as an afterthought, and yet, for all its carelessness, it was very beautiful.

“The artist, John Jacobs, he was a heavy drinker, a real boozer, never sober. A few years back he turned up at the pub and offered Albie his painting of the village in exchange for a bottle of whiskey. Albie—who's no better than he should be, if you ask me—took it because he fancied the look of it over his bar. And that's where it sat, until about four years ago. Then all of a sudden this fancy-looking feller from over the border turned up and offered Albie five thousand for it! Pounds!”

Jenny waited for Rose to be either scandalized or shocked, her face registering clear disappointment when she was neither.

“Well, Albie turned him down, don't know why—he must have been drunk as a dog. Or not, because the bloke doubled his offer on the spot without blinking an eye. And he said he'd throw in a print of it to replace the original if Albie shook on the deal there and then. So Albie did the deal, the man got the painting, and Albie got his money.” Jenny pressed her lips together, shaking her head.

Rose looked down from the painting, running the tips of her fingers over the writing on the postcard. A well-dressed man with an interest in John Jacobs, willing to pay what it took to secure one. That could be him. That could be Frasier McCleod. All she had to do to be one step nearer to finding out where he was, was to talk to the landlord, who might still have a number or an address for him, and then . . . And then what?

Rose bit her lip as Jenny talked on over her head, entirely oblivious of whether or not Rose was listening.

And then turn up on Frasier's doorstep, and say, what? “Hello, remember me? You came to my house once, years ago, looking for some information. I was crying, you were kind to me. We talked for a while, and the only other thing I ever heard from you is written on the back of a postcard. A postcard that I have treasured every single day since. Oh, and by the way, I think I love you. You can take out a restraining order on me now, if you like.”

Rose blinked as the foolishness of what she was doing washed over her with a wave of icy-cold reality. This was madness, a crazy teenage wild-goose chase, in which she'd selfishly involved her daughter. Frasier McCleod hadn't written her a coded love letter, he'd written her a thank-you note, a polite little formality that somehow she'd turned into some grand forbidden passion. What on earth was she doing here? And yet she couldn't go home, she couldn't take Maddie back to the home that she knew, where she could eat her favorite bread, or back to the nice teaching assistant in school who sat next to her and helped her keep up, and played with her at break time when no one else would. There was no way she could go home. A postcard, a painting of Millthwaite, might be why she was here, so far from home and following the thread of a fantasy that was bound to unravel to nothing as soon as it was pulled, but it was not the reason she'd run away.

“Anyway, old Albie was laughing on the other side of his face when the painting sold for four times as much, a year or so later. Turned out that the man who sold it was some arty-farty type from Edinburgh. Made a packet on it, and has made a ton more besides since he started selling the old git's other stuff. That bloody John Jacobs, sitting pretty on all that money. You know what I say? I say it's a shame that he sobered up, otherwise maybe we all would have had a chance of getting hold of one of his paintings. I know I'd have swapped him a hot breakfast for one.”

“What do you mean?” Rose asked her, suddenly hooked back into her stream of words, a cold wash of shock drenching her in sudden shudders.

“Well, he lives up the road, doesn't he?” Jenny said, her expression mirroring the look of shock on Rose's face, as she saw the impact that piece of information was having on her guest. “John Jacobs, he's lived up there for almost ten years now, the last three of them sober, by all accounts. We used to see him a lot in the village, in the pub, but not so much anymore, which is a good job, if you ask me, the miserable old bugger. He's rolling in cash, he is, but does he ever do anything for his community? This village is dying on its feet and he's quite content to sit up there like a king in his castle, not caring what other people are thinking.”

“That sounds like him,” Rose said slowly, turning away from Jenny's hawklike eyes to watch Maddie, her head close over her book, Bear sitting demurely on the table as Rose took the news in, reeling and dizzy. Why it had never occurred to her that the artist might paint the place he lived in, she didn't know, but it hadn't. Not until that moment. And now she had no idea how to react.

“Why, do you know him, then? Old Jacobs?” Jenny asked her.

“Do I know him?” Rose said thoughtfully. “No, I don't suppose I do. Although perhaps I ought to. He is my father, after all.”

Keep reading for a sneak peek of Rowan Coleman's beloved novel

Mommy by Mistake

Available now from Gallery Books!

Conception

Natalie Curzon
had been stuck on the Northern line in the half dark on the day she met the man who would completely change her life in the most unexpected way.

She had been feeling sticky, hot, and mildly anxious on that unseasonably warm April morning because she knew that she was going to be late for her meeting with the lingerie buyer at Selfridges, a meeting it had taken her and her business partner, Alice, months to arrange. Natalie ­didn't want to be late for that meeting; who knew how long it would take to rearrange it?

First she noticed the man looking at her, or rather she felt his gaze as she read over her presentation notes again. For a second or two she kept looking down at the words without reading them and then as she looked up he looked down again, rattling his newspaper to smooth out the pages. Natalie saw him shift slightly in his seat as he studied his paper with infinite care.

Natalie wondered if he had been admiring her. It would be nice if he had, but she remembered only too well the time she had thought that the whole world was admiring her because everybody she passed was staring and smiling at her. In fact, it had turned out that her wrap dress had slipped open at the front, revealing a gray and much machine-­washed bra to the public at large. The incident had caused her considerable embarrassment and her friends and colleagues much hilarity, not least because she was the codirector of a sexy lingerie company. She had never again gone out in public in anything less than her finest underwear.

After giving herself a quick once-­over to check that she was fully dressed, Natalie decided she could let herself think he was admiring her. He probably ­wasn't, he was probably scrutinizing the Tube map over her left shoulder. Still, even the possibility gave her a small inner glow. She would have let the moment pass without incident, taking enough satisfaction in a potential unknown admirer, and never given him a second thought. But as she looked back down at her notes she sensed the man watching her again.

The second time she looked up, he did not look away. Hesitantly, Natalie glanced over her shoulder to see if he really was looking at something else. When she looked back he was still watching her, and this time he smiled. Natalie returned the smile instinctively. He was about her age—perhaps a little older—dressed in a good, dark blue tailored suit. His left hand was bare and there were no telltale tan marks on his ring finger. He ­wasn't handsome exactly, but he had something about him, a kind of mobility in his face that made him interesting to look at, with his closely shaven pale skin and slightly ruddy cheeks. He had thick, dark, longish hair that curled over his collar, and as he held ­Natalie's gaze she noticed he had very dark eyes, almost black.

“This is a nightmare,” he said lightly, gesturing generally at their predicament. His skin glistened with a light sheen of perspiration that made Natalie worry that her nose was shiny.

“It is dreadful,” she replied with a resigned shrug.

­“That's my whole afternoon blown now,” he said, before adding decisively, “you know, now I come to think of it, ­what's the point in me going back to the office at all? I'm going to take the rest of the day off.”

­“You're probably right,” Natalie replied, thinking he must be someone quite important if he could just take time off like that. She thought about her meeting; it had taken her and Alice weeks and weeks of persuasion to get Selfridges to even consider stocking their lingerie. She looked at the man and wondered if he was going to continue this conversation or let them both slip back into the silence of strangers.

“I might as well take the rest of the day off,” he repeated, almost to himself. He shifted in his seat restlessly, looking as if he ­couldn't stand to spend another second stuck on the Underground train. Natalie sympathized.

“Lucky you,” she said, a touch wistfully. She glanced at the woman sitting to her right who was quite obviously eavesdropping on their conversation to pass the time. Natalie ­couldn't work out if the man was chatting her up or not. Maybe he was just being friendly, because if he was chatting her up he ­wasn't being very obvious about it. If she wanted to know for sure—and frankly she did—then she had to try to think of something to say that would elicit a reaction from him that would make his intentions clear.

“I should get back,” she said. It ­wasn't exactly the alluring and inviting sentence she was reaching for, but it was the only one that came out. She tried again. “I run my own design company called Mystery Is Power with my business partner and best friend, Alice. Lingerie, sexy but very high class, you know the kind of thing. ­We're really busy at the moment, but I must admit on a day like this and after being stuck in here it would be nice to be out in the fresh air . . .”

The man looked impressed but not embarrassed or intimidated by the word “lingerie,” and he ­didn't snigger like a schoolboy. Natalie liked that about him, because it was surprising the number of fully grown men who did snigger or blush when confronted with the posh word for underwear.

“Then ­don't go back,” he said, smiling with one corner of his mouth. He had a very nice mouth and a pleasant smile.

Natalie sat back in her seat. She wished she could be sure whether or not he was chatting her up. The ambiguity annoyed her slightly. The thing was, she liked him, or liked the look of him at least. She liked the fact that he talked to strangers on a train, that he seemed impulsive yet in control of his own life. Of course, that could mean that she was trying to establish a flirtation with a psychopath, but at least that made him more interesting than the average man. She was trying to think of something else to say when he spoke again.

“Come to lunch with me,” he almost commanded, before adding with a tad less certainty, “if you like, I mean. I know a really nice little Italian restaurant quite near to this station.”

Natalie looked back up at him. Now was not the time to be enigmatic.

“Are you asking me on a date?”

“I am,” he said, as if he had only just decided himself. “Do you mind?”

She smiled at him; he was a strangely appealing mixture of confidence and vulnerability.

“Why not,” she replied, deciding that Alice would approve of her seizing the moment, even if it meant several hundred apologies and an extensive period of groveling.

“I'm Natalie, by the way.” She held out her hand for him to shake.

“Jack Newhouse,” the man said, taking her hand. His fingers were strong and warm. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I'm pleased to meet you, too,” she said.

And then the train moaned into life and began to ease slowly into the tunnel.

There was no way Natalie could have known that from that moment on, her life was about to take a new and very different course.

Once they were out of the Tube and in the sunshine he relaxed a little more, talking to her easily. He was very charming and there was a spark about him, as if he were brimming with life and energy, that was very compelling.

“This place ­isn't at all glamorous,” he told her as they made their way into the small restaurant, where tiny red glass lanterns hung from the fishing nets that adorned the ceiling. “But it serves excellent, honest food.”

“I love Italian food,” Natalie said as they ate. “Well, to be honest, I love food. But especially Italian—somehow I've never quite managed to go to Italy. I keep meaning to, but being self-­employed makes taking a vacation so difficult.”

Jack looked almost personally affronted.

­“That's impossible,” he said. “You must go, you have to. Italy is the most beautiful, most wonderful, warm, fabulous country in the world. The best food, the best culture, the best-­looking people—mostly.”

Natalie laughed at his enthusiasm. She liked the way he approached life, as if he were open to any eventuality. He had an indefinable air about him she ­couldn't quite quantify. It seemed that, despite his boldness earlier, he ­wasn't used to seducing women, because unlike some he ­didn't trot out a parade of hackneyed phrases and clichéd lines. He was very easy to be with and talk to. The conversation flowed so comfortably that they might have known each other for much longer than just under an hour. And the more relaxed he became, the more Natalie was attracted to him.

“My mother is Italian,” Jack said. He paused for a second as if he had just remembered something rather troubling, but then his smile returned and he went on. ­“She's a genuine Venetian, would you believe? All my childhood holidays were spent there and my mom and dad live just outside Venice now, they retired there. In fact, I am one of the few men entitled to be a gondolier because you have to be born there to be one, and I was.” He paused again and then added regretfully, “When I was a boy all I wanted to be was a gondolier.”

“So why ­aren't you?” Natalie said, smiling at the thought of Jack in a stripy top and straw hat. “I bet you do a great ‘O sole mio.' ”

“Who knows, I might be one day,” Jack said, and they both laughed, their eyes locking. It was Natalie who, disconcerted by the sudden intensity in his eyes, had to look away first.

“It is an incredible place,” he told her. “You never tire of just looking at it; even the grubbiest back alley is a work of art.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Natalie said, thinking briefly of her own far less appealing girlhood.

Jack watched her over a small vase of three red carnations, tapping his forefinger impatiently on the tabletop. He glanced at his watch and Natalie wondered if he had somewhere else he had to be. As much as he seemed to be enjoying her company, he also seemed to find it impossible to be still.

­“You're an impulsive kind of woman ­aren't you, Natalie?” he asked her.

Natalie shrugged. “I suppose I must be,” she said, feeling the thrill of the unknown bubble in the pit of her stomach. “I'm having lunch with a virtual stranger after all, and a pretty strange stranger at that.”

Jack laughed.

“Have dinner with me this evening.” Once again it was more like a command than a request, but this time there was no uncertainty at all in his tone.

“Dinner?” Natalie raised an eyebrow; that ­wasn't exactly her idea of impulsive.

“In Venice,” Jack added, his voice light but his eyes crackling with raw energy. “Naturally.”

Natalie held his dark-­eyed gaze for a long moment and knew without question that as soon as she had caught his eye on the Tube ­he'd been planning to ask her that question. What she most wanted to know was why. Why had he singled her out?

“Why not?” she said instead, being very careful not to let her nerves show. “Why ever not?”

Alice would kill her. She could be very reasonable about delayed trains and hectic schedules and even unplanned lunches with attractive strangers, but she would not be amused by Natalie taking off for the weekend with said attractive stranger. It would be the “stranger” part that would upset Alice, causing her to lecture Natalie at length about potential serial killers and con men and to remind Natalie that she had promised not to get herself into any more silly scrapes after the Paris incident.

But somehow, whatever ­Alice's warnings and remonstrations might be, Natalie knew she had to go to Venice with Jack Newhouse.

Natalie felt ­Jack's gaze on her as she watched the sun setting behind St. ­Mark's Basilica. Jack had reserved them a table on the terrace at ­Cip's Club, at the Hotel Cipriani, situated on an island just across from St. ­Mark's Square. He spoke to all the waiters in Italian. He could have been discussing the waterbus timetable for all Natalie knew, but the rhythm and the tone of the language was certainly beguiling. The animation and sheer joy in his face as he spoke his second language lit him up from the inside.

“This is marvelous,” Natalie said, tearing her eyes away from the impossibly beautiful view to look at Jack, whose skin glowed in the golden light of the setting sun. “You are a very lucky man to have this place in your life.”

Jack looked thoughtful for a moment, dipping his head.

­“It's almost too much,” he said, without looking at her. “The more joy or beauty there is in your life, the more you have to lose.”

Natalie ­didn't respond for a moment. Just as she thought she had this man figured out, he would do or say something to throw her. In that second he looked so intensely sad that she thought he might even shed a tear.

“I'd rather have happiness for a little while than never at all,” she said softly.

Then his hand reached across the table, his fingertips stopping a few millimeters from hers. They still ­hadn't touched each other, not since ­they'd shaken hands on the Tube. The anticipation tingled between them like a promise. Which was why Natalie put the slight tension she noticed in his jaw and shoulders down to his nervous En­glish genes kicking in.

“Natalie,” Jack said. “I have to tell you something.”

Natalie felt her own muscles contract. That was the kind of line that usually prefaced a breakup. It would be a record even by her own standards to get dumped in Venice by a man she had only just met. The terrible thought occurred to her that it might be her, and the awful mistake of bringing her here, that had made him feel so low a moment ago.

“You do?” she said cautiously.

“I ­don't want you to think that I'm this kind of man,” Jack said, gesturing around him with his wineglass.

“What kind of man?” Natalie asked.

“I ­don't usually bring women I hardly know to five-­star hotels on the Continent for dinner. I ­don't want you to think I'm a . . . a cad, I suppose.”

“A cad?” Natalie had to choke back laughter.

­“Don't laugh.” Jack smiled ruefully, looking down into his wineglass.

“I ­don't get you, Jack,” Natalie said. “But I like you. I really like you.”