What Women Want

‘Ellen Neill! I didn’t know you had it in you.’

‘Neither did I. At least, I’d forgotten. But white lying’s not the only thing I haven’t forgotten how to do.’

‘Not the only thing?’ Kate was so absorbed in the story that the exhaustion Ellen had noticed disappeared as her face grew more animated. Suddenly she cottoned on to what Ellen meant. ‘My God! How long have you known him? Four weeks? You don’t hang around, do you?’

‘I know. It does seem ridiculously quick but I haven’t felt like this since . . . I can’t remember when. Honestly, I feel like a teenager with a first crush. I think about him all the time, wondering what he’s doing, if he’ll phone. Do you remember that feeling? I’m as surprised as you are,’ she said, watching Kate’s expression. ‘I never imagined anything like this would happen. I never wanted anyone coming between the kids and Simon but I don’t think Oliver will. He’s so kind and considerate. I’d forgotten how good it feels to be wanted by someone and to share all those endless day-to-day tasks that otherwise you deal with on your own. It’s all happened so fast and – I know this sounds silly – I feel really happy for the first time since Simon died.’

‘Do the children know?’ As the most family-oriented member of the little group, Kate’s first thought, after her friends’ well-being, was always for their children, whom she loved almost as if they were her own.

‘Not yet.’ At the mention of them it suddenly occurred to Ellen that she’d been in massive denial. Of course she couldn’t wrap this delicious secret about herself and pretend the outside world didn’t exist for ever. What had she been thinking? Her children came first. ‘But you’re right. I must tell them. Now they’re older, I hope they’ll understand. Oliver loves kids and can’t wait to meet them. In fact, I’m thinking of taking him when I go down to see them before the bank holiday.’

‘Are you nuts? How do you think Simon’s family will react, never mind the children? His parents will probably both have a coronary. I know Simon’s mother’s been encouraging you to find someone else for years but, all the same, you’ve got to take this slowly. The reality might be harder for his family to take than they imagine.’

Kate was always so sensible. Now the secret was out, it wasn’t just about Ellen and Oliver any more. Ellen was going to have to confront and deal with the repercussions in the best way possible. If only she had kept her mouth shut, as she’d intended, and given herself a bit more thinking time – except she hadn’t been thinking.

‘You’re probably right there too but I know it’ll be OK.’ A finger of doubt gave her a sly poke but she slapped it away. ‘Oliver’s not going to try to replace Simon. How could he? But I’m so sure he’s going to get on with them.’

‘I still think you should take it a step at a time.’ Kate was obviously choosing her words, not wanting to prick the bubble. ‘It’s only been a month. You’ve got to be absolutely certain that you’re not making a mistake.’

The bubble wobbled but remained intact.

‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’ As gentle a character as she was, a determined set came to Ellen’s jaw when she fought for something she believed in. ‘I’ve enjoyed keeping him secret so far, but now that’s over, I want people to know I love him.’

‘That’s fine. But take it easy. The children will adapt but they’ll find it difficult to start with. At least don’t make them deal with this in front of their grandparents. They need to be in their own home, near their friends and everything that makes them feel comfortable.’

Ellen knew that, as usual, Kate was talking sense. The excitement of the affair had temporarily blinded her to the realities of the situation. Much as she was dying to embark on her new family life, taking Oliver to Cornwall would be a mistake. She saw that. She would go down on her own, as originally planned, come back for one last glorious week alone with Oliver before Em and Matt finally came home in time for the start of the new school term. Then she would break the news slowly and carefully.

Chapter 5

In the car, on the way to her mother’s, the voice of the Radio 4 presenter was overwhelmed by the noise of the motorway. Not that Bea noticed what she was missing. Her mind was on her son. These days, Ben was being less communicative than she could remember him in all their sixteen years together. He had barely mustered a grunt when she’d left, refusing to tear his attention from yet another old episode of Skins. Not even ‘Have a good time’ or ‘Love to Gran’. She left him lying on the sofa, his glass on the floor under his discarded socks, a faint whiff of sweat and feet hanging in the air.

She visualised his worldly possessions scattered in his room upstairs where they’d last been used, then buried under the T-shirts, pants and socks dropped on top of them. His wardrobe door hung open, revealing a row of empty metal hangers and shelves with various knots of tangled clothing that had somehow spread their way across to his unmade bed. Whenever she nagged him to tidy his room, he put the whole lot in the laundry basket downstairs – much easier than hanging it up again. If the door was shut, she always knocked – she had done ever since he’d shouted at her to keep out of his business. She hadn’t even commented on the last poster he’d Blu-tacked to the wall – two girls going topless, one touching the other’s breast, both slightly smiling with their topaz eyes staring out from under their strawberry blonde fringes. Ben had bought it from a boy at school last year. When she’d seen it, she’d frowned but managed not to say a word.

This morning, despite all attempts to bite her tongue, she’d been less successful.

‘I’m just off to Gran’s,’ she’d said, in her cheerful let’snot-get-off-on-the-wrong-foot-this-morning voice.

‘Right.’ Eyes fixed to the screen.

‘Darling. You will tidy up, won’t you?’

No reply.

‘If you could just try to do something with your bedroom so we can at least see the floor . . .’ The hope in her voice was met with silence. ‘Well, I’ll be back late tonight, then.’

‘Yeah. Right.’ He hadn’t even glanced round.

Since Colin had left, Bea had watched Ben turn more and more in on himself. Apart from having to deal with the inevitable teenage hormonal soup, he’d had to watch the father he’d adored go off with his PA, a woman almost young enough to be Ben’s older sister. Within a year, she had given birth to twins. Colin had never explained to Bea why he had fallen out of love with her. She sometimes wondered whether he had ever been in love with her at all. But, her own feelings aside, it had been hard to answer with any truth twelve-year-old Ben’s endless questions about why Dad had gone. Apart from the obvious one, she didn’t know the answers.

Together they watched as Colin morphed from a suit-and-tired executive into a complacent new husband and on into an even more self-satisfied but exhausted new father of two. Plumper than he had been, his skin shinier and more tanned, he oozed self-satisfaction. His hair, though greyer, was cut fashionably short; his clothes were no longer mail order (too busy to shop) but designer (‘Carrie helps me choose’). The idea of the pair shopping together made Bea laugh. The Colin she knew would no more set foot in a clothes shop than he would in a supermarket. But she had to hand it to Carrie: that girl had got Colin wrapped round her little finger in a way that Bea never had.

As soon as he’d announced he was leaving her for Carrie, Bea had known it would be only a matter of time before they started a family. Carrie would want kids and the only way Colin would keep her was to give them to her. What she hadn’t bargained for was the vigour with which he threw himself into second-time fatherhood. She hadn’t bargained for how upset she’d feel either. Colin had discovered the joys of nappy-changing, of bottle-feeding, of getting up in the night. When he looked for sympathy, complaining of how tired he felt at having to do all this and go to work, the floodgates of Bea’s fury opened.

‘Tired? How many women do you think feel exactly the same and have been working and looking after children for centuries?’

‘But, Bea,’ he had protested, sheepish, ‘that’s not the same. They’re used to it.’

‘Bollocks they’re used to it! What do you think I felt like when I was still breast-feeding Ben and struggling to keep my job going?’

‘But that was different,’ he had protested.

‘How? How was it different?’

‘Well, you wanted to do it.’

‘Wanted to? I only wanted to because I didn’t want to lose my bloody job. I would have felt a whole lot better if I’d had someone else getting up in the middle of the night to help.’

‘But they’re so sweet in the night. Cora—’

‘I know that, Colin. I was there with your firstborn. Remember? Shame you weren’t there most of the time too.’

‘Well, OK. I regret that now. I should have helped more. I wish I had. That’s why I’m going to do it differently this time round. I’m going to be a good father.’

‘Well, remember you’re Ben’s father too. That’s all I can say.’ Bea gave up. There was no puncturing his unbearable self-satisfaction. She refrained from pointing out the smear of baby sick that ran down from the shoulder of his expensively relaxed Etro shirt. Let him face the world with his badge of fatherhood. Carrie must be finding her two young daughters such hard work (Bea sincerely hoped so) that she hadn’t noticed. This was not the man who had fathered Ben. She knew Ben recognised that too and was hurt by it. He didn’t want to go round to Colin and Carrie’s to have it rubbed in his face, but Colin didn’t understand that. He thought that by including Ben every now and then he was completing his happy family. Happy families – huh!

Her attention was brought back to the road as she joined the exit to the motorway too fast and came screaming up beside a red Saab that had earlier overtaken her. The two young guys turned and the passenger screwed his finger to his head, mouthing something at her. For God’s sake. She stuck her tongue out at them as they roared off. Not very grown-up, Bea, she admonished herself. All the same she felt much better.

Instead of returning to Ben, her mind flitted to Coldharbour. How safe was her job? She knew Adam Palmer’s reputation as a ruthless, manipulative boss who would do anything to raise his staff’s so-called performance levels. In his last incarnation, he’d turned round an ailing Pennant Publishing by wasting no time in getting rid of all the dead wood, building a small and fiercely loyal team who had successfully shaped and tightened the list. Would he be bringing any of them with him? If he did, how would that affect her?

As she approached the outskirts of Harmchester, she took a right into the narrow lane that led to her mother’s house. She loved the drive down there, so familiar that memories of her childhood rushed into her mind as she turned into the open gate at the top of the drive, which led to the house that stood just as it had since she, Will and Jess had been brought up there.

She crunched over the gravel to the porch, a relatively recent addition to the faded but still elegant Georgian house. Gumboots crowded the small space below the ancient duffel coats and scarves that she, her brother and sister had forgotten when they’d finally left home. It was just as if they were about to return. Housekeeping had never been her mother’s strongest point, she reflected, noticing the dried mud on the flagstones, and the cobwebs above her head. Even Miss Havisham might have set slightly higher standards. However, at least she and her siblings had been allowed to get on with their own lives, blessed with a mother who would take her independence to the grave with her, if she had any control over her future. And let’s hope she does, Bea willed.

‘Mum! Where are you?’ she yelled, as she let herself into the dim panelled hallway. Bending to pick up a few scattered letters, mostly bills and mail-order catalogues from the floor, she balanced them in the minimal space available on the small gate-legged table that held the phone.

She called again, putting her head round the door into the sitting room. The knitting left mid-row on the comfy plum-coloured sofa and the voices from Any Questions? on the radio signalled that Adele couldn’t be far away. The gilt mirror over the mantelpiece could have done with a good dusting and the hearth might have benefited from being cleaned out. The books were crammed higgledy-piggledy onto the shelves at either side of the chimney breast. Not for the first time, Bea thought her mother might benefit from moving to somewhere smaller. They had talked about the huge task it would involve, but Adele was waiting until the time was right. Whatever that meant.

‘Mum!’ She heard the familiar edge of impatience creep into her voice. Making a mental note to control it, she tried once more. ‘Mum.’ Better.

‘Here, dear. I’m in the kitchen . . .’ The crash that followed made Bea run down the flagged corridor past the stairs and through the door at the end of the passage. Her mother was on the floor, rubbing her leg, surrounded by saucepans and the rail that was supposed to suspend them within easy reach above the ancient Aga.

‘What on earth are you doing? Are you all right?’ Bea’s relief at seeing her in one piece swiftly turned to exasperation. She righted a fallen chair to where it belonged under the table, trying not to let her irritation show.

‘I’m absolutely fine. I was just trying to straighten the rail. I suppose I should have taken the pans off first. I just pulled a bit too hard and the whole thing collapsed.’ Adele rubbed her elbow where she’d caught it on the Aga.

‘But why didn’t you wait for me to do it for you? We’ve talked about this thousands of times. You could have been hurt.’ Bea couldn’t stop the edge creeping back into her voice.

‘Oh, rubbish, darling. I didn’t want to bother you. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting you,’ she announced breezily.