The summer wedding, p.59
The Summer Wedding, page 59
‘Does Leo know she’s Dom’s?’
‘I don’t think it matters to him,’ she said. ‘When he proposed, I thought he was just being kind, but he was completely serious. He wrote letters and poetry, read up on pregnancy and childbirth, cried his eyes out telling me he wanted to do it and convinced me we could make it work, that we could look after each other and a baby, a holy trinity protecting each other. I needed Leo and his homespun pleasures, just as he needed me. And in a funny way it has worked, for many years. Iris had a tremendous childhood. She’s been the most important part of my life. I don’t regret it.’
Thinking about the shamefully Disneyesque daydreams that she’d let herself indulge in recently, including raising Hope in idyllic isolation on the Borders with an old-fashioned, breek-wearing father figure, Laney finally understood a little of what Mia had done.
‘I’ve always worried that I trapped him,’ Mia said, ‘that he’s been duty-bound to look after me. I’m sure Ivan thinks that.’
‘Rubbish!’ Laney leapt to her friend’s defence. ‘You’ve been a fantastic wife, a far better one than I’ve been to Simon. Look at the way you’ve supported him, always put him first, created a stable family home with Lito and Iris at its heart, his three generations of beautiful, witty, incredibly strong women – it’s the dream support team for most men I’ve ever known. And unless you’ve acted your socks off, you’ve never even been unfaithful. You’ve hidden behind your high walls, safeguarded from falling in love again.’
She let out a tearful laugh. ‘How could I fall in love when I never fell out of it?’
‘Believe me, it’s possible,’ Laney said without thinking, glancing at her phone with its message light flashing.
Mia gaped at her. ‘Please tell me you’re not talking about your internet man. You’ve never even met him.’
Laney shifted awkwardly, scalpel grinding through the nerve endings now. ‘So what’s Leo going to do now his mother’s had a miracle cure?’
Mia looked out to the river, where a mother duck was cruising proudly into the boathouse lagoon with her offspring outriders. ‘We both know she hasn’t been cured, Laney, but at least she’s stopped trying to control the dispatch date.’
‘The list of ailments she gave me was pretty comprehensive.’
‘As she herself says very often, it’s a miracle she’s still on the planet. But she’s got a lot of fight and she has her boy home. I think she’ll keep Leo suffering the agonies of closet living a little longer.’
‘Surely he has to tell her the truth.’
‘Well, he can hardly introduce her to a new grandchild without some sort of explanation, especially when it starts calling Ivan “Daddy” too. He’s got to talk to Iris as well. We both have.’ She picked up the little jewelled Pegasus standing between them. ‘Whether Dom’s on this thing or not, I am going to tell my daughter that I’ve never stopped loving her real father. She deserves to know absolutely everything about him.’
Laney reached out and squeezed her hands. ‘Good for you.’
‘And you need to cancel that dinner date and talk to Simon before it’s too late.’
Laney snatched her hands away so fast that the winged horse skittered across the room. ‘I have no reason not to meet RHH,’ she said, but she knew that wasn’t true. He was much more than just her secret displacement activity now, and Laney was prepared to cross the invisible line between fantasy and reality.
‘Please, Laney! You’ll regret this.’
Laney leapt up, grabbing her phone. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Hope. I’ve left her far too long as it is.’ She stalked out.
‘Don’t go, Laney!’
Her feet hammered away.
Mia groaned, rubbing the back of her neck as she went in search of the dropped flash drive. She looked up hopefully as footsteps came bounding up the outside stairs, but it was Leo, wearing such dark glasses it was amazing he could see where he was going.
‘There you are, baby!’
‘Did you just see Laney?’ Mia asked.
‘No.’ He yawned and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ve missed this place. I loved painting here. Knitting’s great for defusing stress, but it doesn’t touch this.’ He peered at his work on the walls. ‘I was rather good, wasn’t I? This landscape’s better than Abe’s Monet.’ He pushed his glasses up on to his head and peered closer. ‘Maybe not.’ He stooped to pick up the Pegasus flash drive as his foot knocked against it. ‘Hey, I recognise this. Disney gave a load away in a competition when we were promoting Myth. One had real diamonds. I don’t think it was ever found.’
‘Keep it,’ Mia muttered. ‘I don’t want it any more.’
The amused expression on his handsome face turned to concern. ‘You’ve been crying, darling.’ He rushed to hug her.
‘Girl talk with Laney,’ she explained, stepping back and cupping his face in her hands. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Great. Really great, in fact. Ivan and I have been talking too.’
‘Yes?’
‘Mia, we’d like you to carry our baby.’
Standing on the mooring beneath the belly of the boathouse, leaning against one of the stilts, Laney was too busy typing a message to Richard HH to notice the murmuring of conversation above. After many false starts and attempts at false jollity, she ended up simply saying, I am coming tonight, which at least had excitingly sexual connotations that cheered her up.
He replied straight away. If you’re sure. RHH x
It wasn’t quite as flirtatious or saucy as she’d expected – ‘I’ll make sure you come, darling Laney’ or ‘Let’s come together’ was more his usual line – but she reminded herself that he was in meetings all day, and anyway, their dinner was going to be a perfectly respectable affair, not the sordid one Mia predicted. She was merely meeting a fan of her radio show with whom she’d struck up an amusing acquaintance.
Denial in place, she hurried back towards the house, taking the woodland path as a shortcut. As she did so, she glanced at a text she’d just spotted from Iris and then reread its contents in such disbelief that she walked straight into an overhanging tree branch.
‘Hope!’ she shrieked, setting off at a sprint this time.
Chapter 50
The Obelisk had been Oscar Benson’s fantasy Bond-baddie headquarters made reality, complete with high-tech electronics that he’d abandoned with no instruction manuals when signing the house over to his first wife in the divorce settlement. The famous windmill with which it shared its plot was visible for miles around, but its ultra-modern neighbour was cleverly concealed in a dip alongside a stretch of woodland. Two huge concrete posts topped with intimidating camera poles guarded the gates to the public road, which swung open when Griff’s hire car approached. Only accessible through the deep fir woods, the long drive was a gleaming black river of tarmac along which Oscar had once driven his sports cars at high speed, awarding himself points for each squirrel and rabbit he took out. It was like going from day to night as the car plunged into the densely planted pine, the canopy overhead blotting out the light and making Griff think of Tolkien’s grim Mirkwood.
‘It’s more of a fortress than Sueño,’ he muttered. Closer to the house, there were more barriers and gates. Griff peered at a flat screen built into yet another concrete gatepost. ‘What’s that?’
‘Fingerprint reader,’ Iris explained, leaning across him to touch it. As she did so, the familiar charge of excitement ran between their bodies and her mouth couldn’t resist brushing against his. Once their lips touched, she was helpless to pull away, and the kiss deepened.
‘Child on board,’ a sing-song voice reminded them from the back seat. ‘And Gogs.’
Hope peered around her battered bear, giggling furiously as Iris blushed and wriggled back into the passenger seat, the studded metal gates swinging open.
Griff whistled. ‘That’s definitely statement architecture.’
Part garage forecourt, part Gherkin, the Obelisk was a long, flat rectangle propped up on concrete legs with a huge phallic glass dome balanced on one end. It was exceptionally ugly. To its left was the hangar-like garage complex that had once housed Oscar’s large collection of totally impractical and undrivable cars in temperature-controlled and hermetically sealed splendour. A swimming pool and gym complex lay beyond that, consisting of metal trusses connected by gleaming glass flies’ eyes.
With a loud purr, a panel opened in the Obelisk’s phallic dome and Chloe stepped on to the roof of the garage forecourt, waving at them. ‘I’ll come down!’
‘How?’ Griff was peering at the structure in confusion. ‘There are no stairs.’
‘There’s a lift,’ Iris explained.
Moments later, Chloe appeared from a door hidden in one of the concrete legs and walked forward to welcome them, regarding Hope with anxious excitement, taking in the untameable Benson hair and broad-backed solidity, along with the same heart-shaped mouth as her own. When Hope beamed up at her and whinnied, scraping her foot against the dry earth like a pony, it was the perfect introduction: Chloe had always felt more confident around animals than humans.
Holding her breath, Iris watched as her friend reached out an uncertain hand and touched the little girl’s head, a broad smile stretching across her face as she ruffled the wonderful bedspring hair before dropping down to be on the same level, vet to miniature pony.
‘Hello, Hope. I met you a couple of times when you were very little. I’m Chloe. We have the same daddy.’
‘I have two daddies.’ Hope trotted out her favourite line.
‘You call our daddy “Daddy-o”, don’t you?’’
‘He likes cars and has a fat tummy. I like ponies,’ she added brightly.
‘Me too.’ Chloe smiled, taking her hand. ‘Do you want to see my house?’
When they all reached the door in the pillar, it opened, revealing the lift. ‘It’s only designed for two,’ Chloe said. ‘You’ll have to wait until it comes back down.’
‘What happens in a power cut?’ Griff laughed.
‘There are floating stone steps at the back leading up to the Zen roof garden,’ Iris explained, as Chloe and Hope stepped into the lift. ‘They’re treacherous – Oscar was always falling off them into the reed beds. I think he sued the architect.’ She looked from her crutches to his sling. ‘Best wait for the lift.’
‘Is Oscar really as much of a monster as he’s always made out?’ Griff asked in an undertone once the lift doors had closed.
‘He’s bloody strange. I always used to think that was where Chloe got the more suspect aspects of her personality, but given what her mother’s like, I think the question should be where she got any nice characteristics from.’ She gripped his hand when the lift returned and they stepped in.
Confined in the small space, they looked at one another for the briefest moment before their mouths took on lives of their own, rushing together in an urgent seal of lips, tongues and breath, hands running across shoulders, up throats and through hair. When the doors opened, they burst apart reluctantly.
‘Why can’t this house be fifty storeys high?’ Griff breathed.
‘Oscar probably wanted it to be,’ Iris was trying to control her wobbly legs enough to walk in a straight line, ‘but the local council could only take so many backhanders before fingerprints showed up.’
Griff stopped short: he had walked out of a lift with most men’s fantasy woman into a small boy’s fantasy house. He preferred the lift with Iris, but this was some compensation.
Little girls were less impressed, and Chloe was showing Hope around the space-age house at full throttle, well aware that the pony element was distinctly lacking, a design flaw that had somewhat blighted her own childhood. ‘It’s all controlled by computers and is totally eco-friendly, sustainable, et cetera, which was the only way Daddy-o got the planning – ironic given he’s such a petrolhead.’ She wasn’t quite up to speed with talking to a five-year-old yet.
Hope looked puzzled. ‘What’s a petrolhead?’
‘Well, we’re pony-mad, so I suppose you could call us hoofheads. Daddy-o is car-mad, so he’s a petrolhead.’
‘I heard Mummy call Daddymon a dickhead last week,’ Hope said. ‘Does that mean he likes—’
‘Puddings!’ Iris rushed forward. ‘Especially Spotted Dick.’
Griff was admiring the kitchen, which had glossy black-marble-panelled walls and one huge minimalist island that appeared to be a solid slab of wood the length of a cricket wicket without any evidence of an unsightly appliance or sink. Abandoned ingloriously on top of it, like a drunkard on an empty dance floor, was Chloe’s tatty university rucksack, spilling textbooks and notepads.
‘Help yourselves to drinks,’ called Chloe as she led Hope through to the huge reception room, in which a grand piano was laden with framed pictures of her clearing huge fences on small, solid ponies.
‘What would you like?’ Iris asked Griff as she leaned on the island, turning to find his mouth against hers.
‘You.’
Oh, the bliss of kissing him. Any minute now she’d be spread-eagled on the glossy wood top, dragging him with her. But, remembering Hope was within earshot, she pulled breathlessly away.
Flustered, she reached beneath the surface and pressed a button, which suddenly caused a section of the wood to slide away and reveal a huge professional hob. ‘Damn, that’s not it. I’m looking for the fridge.’ She closed it again. Then she turned sharply as she heard Chloe saying to Hope, ‘Daddy-o was in a film called Dalrymple. Have you heard of it?’
‘Are there ponies in it?’
‘No, but it’s very funny. Your mummy wrote some of it.’
‘All of it,’ Iris corrected cheerily, having had the full story from her mother when Oscar was threatening his ex-wife with lawsuits to get his hands on the sequel. She raised her eyebrows questioningly at Chloe over Hope’s head, but her friend’s kind gaze darted away.
‘Would you like to see the cinema room? We can watch a bit of Dalrymple if you like.’
‘Yes please! Is there popcorn?’
‘Absolutely. There’s a machine in there. Let’s get drinks first.’
Chloe led Hope back towards the kitchen and pressed a button that made one of the shiny black walls slide back to reveal a vast fridge entirely made up of wine racks and bottle holders with an ice-maker the size of a small tumble-dryer in the middle. Chloe lifted a flap in the door, which contained a stash of Innocent smoothies. She plucked out two.
‘What’s going on, Chloe?’ Iris whispered as she passed.
‘I’m just getting to know my little sister,’ Chloe whispered back, but those clever, honest eyes stayed lowered as she hurried away, explaining to Hope that the cinema room they were about to enter had twenty speakers and heated massage seats.
Iris watched her worriedly. Chloe was fundamentally honest and a lousy actress, which made it very hard for her to cover up. She definitely had a hidden agenda, and Iris doubted it had anything to do with Cloud Man.
Griff had wandered away to admire the view from the glass walls that ran the full length of the rectangle on stilts. ‘This place is amazing.’
On a long, narrow table set up at one end there were piles of old architect’s plans and structural engineer’s drawings. Beside these was an OS map covered with pen marks and computer print-outs of weather charts. When Griff picked them up to study them closely, he noticed a hand-held weather monitor lying beneath. ‘I think these are flight predictions. Is Chloe’s mother a hot-air balloonist?’
