An ideal husband, p.14
An Ideal Husband, page 14
Her costume jewellery would do very well, she decided; it was her birthday after all, so she could wear what she wanted. What was more, her granddaughters loved it when she wore some of her quirkier things, especially if she let them try on the necklaces or bracelets.
Dear little Heidi and Peggy, she thought with great fondness, how they never failed to lift her spirits. There was never any judgement from them, just unconditional love, and just like Angus, they never questioned her. No doubt the subject of her buying Melbury Mill would come up again in conversation today. Ashley had done his best to talk her out of it, but she wasn’t having it. Her mind, she had told both him and Arabella, was made up. And if it was an act of madness on her part, she thought now as she went downstairs as the doorbell rang again, so be it. She was tired of safe options, she wanted to shake things up, be a little reckless!
Her birthday lunch was held in the garden and while the menfolk had taken charge of the barbecue, Arabella and Caro had organised the salads and laid the table, leaving Louisa and the children to decorate the garden with bunting and balloons. Lexi had been reluctant to join in, perhaps seeing it as too childish for her to be involved with.
Now, as Ashley placed a plate of chicken wings on the table, along with another of steaks, Lexi groaned. ‘I don’t know how you can eat that stuff,’ she said. ‘You know it’s basically child abuse forcing children to eat meat, don’t you?’
‘Nobody’s forcing you to eat meat,’ said Arabella tightly.
‘But you’re forcing Heidi to eat it, aren’t you?’ Lexi replied.
‘She likes it.’
‘She wouldn’t if she knew what it really was.’
‘I’m sure she’ll make her own choice when she’s older,’ intervened Louisa amiably, ‘just as you have, Lexi. Now can I pass you some of this melon and feta salad Caro has made?’
‘Is it vegan cheese?’
‘No,’ said Caro.
‘Then I can’t eat it.’
‘How about you pick out the cheese and leave it to one side of your plate?’ her father suggested.
Lexi pulled a face. ‘But it’s contaminated.’
‘Why don’t you try the coleslaw or the potato salad I made specially for you?’ asked Arabella, cutting up one of the steaks and placing the pieces on Heidi’s plate. ‘Neither of those have anything bad in them.’
‘I’ve told you before, I don’t like coleslaw. It’s yucky. And duh, mayonnaise isn’t vegan for your information.’
‘It is when I went to the trouble to buy a jar of vegan mayo,’ said Arabella, glancing at Giles for back-up and finding none.
‘I still don’t want it.’
‘Bread then,’ said Angus, passing the basket of soft rolls towards the girl. Out of all of them, he was the least used to children, and he looked rather like he was tempted to hurl the basket of bread at the ungracious girl.
With a sigh, Lexi took a roll and examined it suspiciously.
With everybody’s plates now loaded up, apart from Lexi’s, and glasses refilled with wine, beer and soft drinks, the meal was finally under way and a silence fell on the group as they tucked in.
It only lasted a short while before Lexi was off again grumbling about the smell of cooked meat making her feel sick.
Nobody responded.
‘I said the smell is making me want to puke,’ she repeated.
‘We heard you the first time,’ said Arabella, once more seeking support from Giles.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said mildly, ‘just let everyone enjoy their meal.’
‘But it’s not fair when it’s making me feel unwell; it’s proper minging.’
‘I’ll tell you what isn’t fair,’ said Arabella, ‘is us having to put up with your constant griping. It’s my mum’s birthday and all you’ve done is complain.’
In the awkward hush that followed, Lexi looked at her father. ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that? She’s always having a go at me. She’s nothing but a bully.’
‘She didn’t mean it, love,’ said Giles, ‘it was just—’
‘I did mean it,’ cut in Arabella. ‘I meant every word! I’m sick to the back teeth of her constant grumbling and I’m sick of you never sticking up for me!’
At the sight of Peggy and Heidi’s anxious faces, and fearing that there might be no way back from this, Louisa said, ‘Let’s all calm down, shall we?’
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ said Arabella, tears filling her eyes, ‘but I’ve been pushed as far as I’m ever going to be pushed.’ She suddenly sprang from her seat and hurried towards the house.
‘No,’ said Louisa as Ashley, always the first to rush to his twin sister’s aid, rose from his chair, ‘I’ll go.’ Giles, she noted as she hastened after her daughter, made only a pathetically half-hearted attempt to stand. Honestly, what was the matter with that man!
She found Arabella on the window seat on the upstairs landing. Her head was buried in her hands, and she was the picture of abject misery.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she sobbed as Louisa sat next to her, ‘I’ve spoilt the day for you, haven’t I? I wanted everything to be so perfect for you after all that you’ve been through.’
‘Darling, you haven’t ruined the day. What’s more, you only said what most of us were thinking. But my goodness, that girl would test the patience of a saint right now.’
‘I should have kept quiet, I know I should, but she won’t stop goading me. She’s relentless. I can’t do anything right in her eyes. Whatever I do is wrong. She’s a malevolent monster!’ At that Arabella sobbed even harder.
With her arms around her distressed daughter, Louisa let her cry out the worst of her misery. ‘It’s a phase,’ she said, searching in vain for something positive and placating to say when Arabella’s sobs eventually subsided. ‘Lexi’s at that tricky time in her young life when she’s confused and angry about everything.’
‘If only Giles would do more to help,’ Arabella mumbled. ‘He lets her get away with murder.’
‘I daresay he finds himself between a rock and a hard place, but I agree he could do more to support you.’
‘He’s going to have to help an awful lot more before too long.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Oh darling, that’s wonderful!’ Louisa exclaimed. And it explained everything, she thought, relieved at last to know what had caused the change in her daughter. She really should have guessed.
‘It’s not wonderful, Mum. Not when Giles is going to be so furious.’
‘Why on earth would he be furious about a little brother or sister for Heidi?’
‘He’s been adamant since forever that he didn’t want any more children.’
‘Lots of husbands say that, but he’ll change his mind when you tell him. Of course he will. How many weeks are you?’
‘Ten.’
‘And you’ve kept this to yourself all this time?’
Arabella sniffed and sat up straight. ‘I told Ashley a couple of weeks ago.’
Louisa smiled and pushed at a lock of Arabella’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Better Giles doesn’t know that. He’ll need to think he’s the first to know.’
That was the moment when they both turned at the sound of creaking. There, almost at the top of the stairs, were Giles and Lexi, and judging by the expressions on their faces, they had both overheard, if not all, then the last bit of the conversation. The most crucial bit at any rate. And then Lexi spun around and charged back down the way she’d just come, leaving her father standing alone on the stairs.
Giving Arabella’s arm a gentle reassuring squeeze, Louise stood up. ‘I’d better leave you two to talk,’ she murmured.
She edged past her son-in-law. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find Lexi,’ she said. ‘I expect she’s gone back out to the garden to join the others.’
Just as Louisa had comforted her daughter, she wanted to do the same for Lexi, to reassure the child that even though her father and stepmother were having another baby, it wouldn’t mean he would love her any less.
But when she went downstairs and out to the garden through the dining room French doors, there was no sign of Lexi and the party seemed to have dispersed, with only Angus and Ashley still sitting at the table.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Go on then,’ said Arabella, ‘just get on with being mad at me for telling Ashley before you that I’m pregnant.’
An incredulous expression on his face as he looked down at her where she was still sitting on the landing window seat, Giles shook his head. ‘Don’t you mean telling Ashley and your mother before me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘What, sorry that you’ve been caught out? But that’s not my priority right now,’ he went on, not giving her a chance to reply. ‘I’m far more interested in knowing how you became pregnant in the first place.’
Arabella held her nerve and tilted her head back to look up him and meet his eye. ‘What a thing to say, you know perfectly well how these things work.’
‘Don’t insult my intelligence, you know that’s not what I meant. We’d decided that there would be no more children. You knew I didn’t want any more, we’d discussed it repeatedly that another child was out of the question. You knew, and yet here we are.’
‘Yes,’ she said coolly, ‘here we are.’
‘Did you do it deliberately?’
The severity of his bluntness shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. Before she had taken the test and discovered she was pregnant, Arabella had pictured this moment many times in her head, how she would break the news to Giles that she was expecting another baby. She had imagined winning him round with an Oscar-worthy performance of helpless disbelief that something like that could have happened to her – to them – when every day she religiously took the very pill to prevent it. But the carefully rehearsed scene of her imagination wasn’t going to plan, and instead of being able to put on a show of tearful distress to prove she was as shocked as her husband was, all she felt was angry hostility towards him that he could stand in judgement of her. Fair enough he was essentially accusing her of the very thing she had done, but what gave him the right to do that? Everything about his antagonistic manner totally legitimised what she said next.
‘No,’ she said with as much blistering indignation as she could summon, ‘and how could you ever think that?’
‘Then tell me how it happened.’
This was the tricky bit and she had wanted to word it so very carefully, just as Ashley had warned, but now she didn’t give a damn. ‘It was when Lexi came to stay during that half-term break in May, when your ex-wife was away on holiday. I’d had a hell of a few days thanks to Lexi’s awful behaviour, and I tripped up some days with taking my pill and then,’ she took a breath, ‘there was that night in the kitchen when we came back after that disastrous day in Aldeburgh, and I suppose—’
He raised his hands to stop her from continuing. ‘You’re seriously blaming Lexi for this? You’re making out it’s her fault?’
‘Of course not, it’s nobody’s fault. But those are the circumstances which have led to this happening.’ She tried a more placatory tone. ‘I know this isn’t what you wanted,’ she said, reaching up to him to pull him down to sit on the window seat with her, ‘but surely it won’t be so bad having another baby? Maybe it will be a boy, wouldn’t you like a son?’
He resisted her attempt to make him sit down and remained stubbornly where he was, still looking down at her, his hands clenched either side of him. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s a boy or girl, I didn’t want any more children,’ he said flatly. ‘We were complete as we were.’
You might have been, she thought, deciding to stand up so she didn’t feel at such a disadvantage, but I wasn’t. ‘Life doesn’t always go as we plan it,’ she said, ‘so there’s nothing else for it but to accept the situation and get on with it.’
He stared at her. ‘Have you ever wondered why my daughter feels so awkward around you?’ he interrupted.
Without thinking Arabella said, ‘Well, this should be interesting.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’
‘Equally there’s no need for you to lecture me!’ she fired back, all trace of her earlier conciliatory tone gone.
‘I’m not, I’m merely trying to explain why you rub Lexi up the wrong way. It’s because you’re always on her case. You can never let her have her say on something, you’re forever correcting her or rubbishing her opinions. You might not agree with them, but you could at least respect her right to hold those views.’
‘I only say what I do when she’s being rude to me, or members of my family, and would it kill you just once to take my side and not hers?’
‘I would if I thought it was necessary or the right thing to do. Out in the garden just now you humiliated her in front of everyone, so of course she was going to retaliate. Sometimes I think you forget that she’s only a child.’
‘But couldn’t you see how rude she was being? Are you really that blind to the way she treats me, and my family for that matter? There wasn’t one person round that table during lunch, apart from you, who didn’t feel the same as I did. We were supposed to be celebrating my mother’s birthday, but somehow Lexi made it all about her.’
‘You see, there you go again, exaggerating the situation and criticising her behaviour. And I’m not blind; I could see that you were upset, which was why I asked Lexi to come with me to apologise to you. That’s why we were on the stairs and overheard what we did.’
‘That was good of you to persuade her to apologise,’ Arabella conceded. Until now it hadn’t occurred to her why Giles and his daughter had been there; all she’d been aware of was that he’d just caught her telling Mum that she was pregnant.
‘Maybe you could apologise to Lexi,’ he said, his voice softer now.
Never! Arabella wanted to shout. Never in a million years! But in a clearing of her mind, she suddenly saw an opportunity, that if demeaning herself by saying sorry to Lexi would help to win Giles round about the baby, then so be it. There were times when you just had to swallow your pride, and this was one of them.
‘Of course I will,’ she said, ‘and I’m sorry for reacting the way I did at the table. I’m probably strung out with hormones right now.’
He nodded. ‘We’ll speak about that later.’
For the first time since she had discovered she was pregnant she felt the weight of worrying about sharing the news with Giles ever so slightly lift from her. It was going to be okay. Just as Ashley had said. They were over the worst.
But she was wrong.
When they went downstairs there was an almighty commotion kicking off. Everyone was crowded into the orangery and at the centre of the mêlée was Lexi, red-faced and staring sullenly back at them all. Both Heidi and Peggy were crying their hearts out. Ashley had Peggy in his arms and was trying to soothe her, and Heidi, on seeing Arabella, ran pell-mell at her.
When Lexi saw her father, she pushed past Arabella and threw herself at him. ‘Tell them, Dad, that I’m not a liar! I’ve told them what happened, but they won’t believe me. They’re blaming me!’
‘What on earth is going on?’ he demanded above the cacophony of noise as his daughter clung to him.
‘There seems to have been an accident of some sort,’ said Louisa.
‘What kind of accident?’ asked Arabella, lifting Heidi up. And then she saw it. On her mother’s worktable, a set of beautifully painted miniature furniture lay in shattered pieces.
‘I saw them do it!’ cried Lexi. ‘It was Heidi and Peggy who broke the stupid bits of furniture. Why would I do it?’
‘I’m sorry, Lexi, but that’s simply not true,’ said Caro. ‘I saw you in here on your own when I took Peggy to the toilet. She hasn’t been out of my sight for a single minute the whole time we’ve been here, so I know she couldn’t have had anything to do with this.’
Coming from her sister-in-law, the most rational and infuriatingly fair-minded of people, Arabella didn’t doubt Caro’s assertion for a second.
‘It’s you who’s lying!’ wailed Lexi, her face buried in her father’s chest. ‘Why would I do it?’
‘That’s a very good question,’ said Angus from where he was standing next to Mum and looking at the remains of what must have taken her so long to create.
‘And why would you be so cruel as to blame Peggy and Heidi?’ asked Ashley. ‘Just look at the state of them thanks to you.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Giles. ‘You’re not going to interrogate my daughter and upset her any more than you have already.’
‘She did it because she’s angry at knowing that I’m pregnant,’ announced Arabella.
‘I didn’t!’ screeched Lexi. ‘I couldn’t care less if you’re having another stupid baby. Why would I?’
Arabella was about to reply when Giles silenced her with a severe look and her mother said, ‘Come on everyone, I think we should all go back out to the garden.’ Her voice was tight with what Arabella recognised as barely controlled emotion.
‘And perhaps we should have your birthday cake,’ suggested Caro in an attempt to defuse the dangerously charged tension in the room.
‘Good idea,’ said Ashley. ‘What do you think, Peggy, will you help Grammy blow out her candles? Heidi, you too?’
The two girls miraculously fell quiet. Then: ‘Cake!’ they chorused together, turning to look at their grandmother who smiled at them encouragingly.
‘I don’t want any stupid cake,’ said Lexi, emerging from her father’s chest. ‘I want to go. I want to go now!’
‘Yes,’ said Giles, ‘I think we should. Arabella?’ He looked at her for agreement. But she couldn’t give it, and whatever the consequences of her decision would be, she didn’t care.
‘That’s all right,’ she said, clutching Heidi to her, ‘you two go; I’ll cadge a lift home with Ashley and Caro.’
