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Chapter 3 (#ulink_f41d20ee-84ea-560b-a660-f822580fae6c)
The ‘F’ Word (#ulink_f41d20ee-84ea-560b-a660-f822580fae6c)
Gloria
Pulling up outside the school gates where her daughter was about to finish summer Day Camp for the day, she switched off the engine and glanced at her watch. She was early so she’d sit in her car for a while.
Breathe in the quiet.
This was the first year Persephone had asked to join in the events the school put on in the holidays and it meant being able to work whatever hours Emma needed without having to worry about childcare.
Not for the first time she hoped Persephone had suggested Day Camp for herself and not because she didn’t want to curtail her mum having fun at work. Lately it was easy to worry about how set Persephone was on pleasing others – something she got from Bob, rather than her, obviously.
At ten years old and considering having to get used to seeing her father with a man as opposed to a new woman, Persephone was a remarkably well-adjusted, happy, energetic, pretty well-behaved child.
She was also attached at the hip to Melody Matthews. It had been that way since the first day of pre-school and Gloria had to admit she looked on their friendship with awe. Melody had lost her mum at age four but recently had had to get used to seeing her dad, Oscar Matthews, with the owner of Hair @ The Clock House, Juliet Brown, and, like Persephone, Melody seemed happy. In fact the two girls’ mission seemed to be to champion each other through life. It was a magical connection and quite impossible to remain cynical in the face of.
She’d never had a best friend when she was Persephone’s age.
Sisters were different, she accepted, thinking of her own. The way Persephone and Melody connected, she knew they thought they were like true sisters.
But they weren’t.
Best friends could keep secrets sure.
But sisters who shared the same environment didn’t even need to be told something was a secret. It was an intrinsic part of protecting the family.
While you still lived together at any rate.
She felt her shoulders rise with tension and reminded herself she’d given these spare few moments over to the supremely simple act of sitting here and breathing in the quiet, not taking a drive down Memory Lane.
She and Bob may not have given Persephone a brother or a sister and Gloria might sometimes wish their daughter had lots of friends instead of putting all her eggs into one BFF basket, but at least Persephone had had someone fiercely loyal standing by her side when her dad came out. Someone she could talk with, cry with, hug with, forget about it all with. Someone to tell her it wasn’t so bad, that he was still her dad, that he still loved her.
She breathed in slowly, breathed out slower and felt her shoulders relax.
With an automatic glance to the windscreen mirror when she heard a car pull in behind her, she recognised Juliet’s classic Beetle, recently painted with the clock house business logo.
It would probably be polite to get out of the car when Juliet did. The awkwardness between them was much better since she’d apologised for telling Juliet if she wasn’t careful she’d end up the spinster Cat Lady of Whispers Wood.
Yep, talk about not reading her copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
But one of the reasons she’d come to like Juliet so much was that instead of cowering at the insult until the cats came home, Juliet had made the decision to push out of her comfort zone and make her life about something other than adopting stray cats and helping her mum run her mobile hair-dressing service.
Armed with a plan and a set of postcards, Juliet had managed to get her cousin Kate Somersby to come back to Whispers Wood and together they’d set about trying to buy Old Man Isaac’s clock house and open it as the day spa Kate had once dreamed of opening before her twin, Bea, had died.
Juliet changing her life had made Oscar Matthews finally view her in a whole new light and then suddenly, Kate and newcomer, Daniel Westlake, couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other either.
Gloria didn’t understand why Emma and Jake couldn’t just be like Juliet and Oscar and Kate and Daniel … simply too busy to think about ruining everything with a wedding.
When Juliet didn’t get out of her car, Gloria frowned. Usually Juliet was the first one at the gates, determined to cement her position as step-mum of the year.
Maybe she should go and check on her?
Or not.
As if Juliet would want her poking her nose in.
And yet … there was something almost too poised about the way Juliet simply sat staring straight ahead that had her giving into impulse and getting out of her car and walking up to Juliet’s to tap on the window.
Juliet jumped so high, Gloria was pretty sure her bum actually left the ancient burgundy leather upholstery of the seat. She’d been in a world of her own, hadn’t she, and Gloria swore quietly to herself as she watched her take a nanosecond to wipe at her cheeks before pressing the button to open the window.
‘Why are you crying?’ Gloria asked, forgoing any kind of greeting as the window rolled down.
‘I’m absolutely not crying,’ Juliet shot back.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
She waited for the shimmer of tears to swim back into Juliet’s eyes but when she got a measured stare back, Gloria realised the taunt hadn’t actually left her mouth and was quite pleased with herself.
Obviously on a roll, she decided she couldn’t let the crying go and taking the plunge, said, ‘Look, as a,’ she took a deep breath and forced out the ‘F’ word, ‘friend – can I just mention then that even though you say you were absolutely not crying, it would appear your mascara is woefully non-water-resistant.’
‘What? Oh no.’ Juliet slid her hand into the bag on the seat next to her, withdrew a mother-of-pearl mosaic-studded compact that Gloria just knew Juliet had made herself, and whipping it open, stared at her reflection, gave a whimper of dismay and then dived into her bag again. This time she withdrew a home-made and perfectly hand-stitched pouch in black velvet with little embroidered bees all over it and Gloria stared, wondering how the hell, in Juliet’s hands, all these mismatched, second-hand, home-made things could always all go together. Withdrawing a pack of face-wipes from the pouch, Juliet rubbed at her cheeks and muttered, ‘Thanks.’
‘So …?’ Gloria prodded, leaning down to rest her hands on the open car door frame so that Juliet couldn’t close the window and ignore her.
‘So?’
Gloria fought the need to roll her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’ God, this ‘F’ word thing was tricky.
‘Absolutely.’
Gloria tipped her head to the side, increasing the intensity of her narrowed gaze. ‘Why are you lying? Should I phone Oscar? Get Kate for you?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Are you sure?’ They’d certainly be better at taking the bruised expression out of her eyes than she was going to be.
‘I’m completely sure, thank you.’
‘Looks like you’re stuck with me, then.’ She studied Juliet as her nervous hands slipped her compact and face-wipes back in her bag and she sucked in her bottom lip, presumably to stop it wobbling. Making a keep talking motion with her hand Gloria advised, ‘Just tell me quickly. You’ll feel better and have time to pull yourself together before Melody comes out because I know you don’t want her seeing you like this.’
Juliet sighed. ‘You’re not going to stop until I tell you, are you?’
Gloria flashed a smile. ‘I always knew those Ditsy prints you insist on wearing didn’t fully reflect your personality.’
Being potentially called ditzy earned her an arched eyebrow before Juliet shook her head slightly, and said, ‘Look, it’s just bad period pains, okay.’
‘So pop a couple of painkillers and be done with it … oh!’ Her brain caught up with her mouth.
Juliet wasn’t pregnant then.
Again.
Still.
Yet.
Nothing slowed down the passage of time quite like not being pregnant. Gloria remembered that from before Persephone had come along.
A lump formed in her chest. At Christmas last year, you’d only had to look at Juliet to think she was pregnant.
She’d had that glow about her.
Coupled with the tiredness and the meepyness it was a natural conclusion.
And wrong.
It had turned out to be overwork and excitement about opening up The Clock House.
But eight months later and Juliet still wasn’t pregnant?
A fact which made the vintage-chic hairdresser’s usually bright button eyes dull and defeated.
Gloria rubbed at her chest. She should never have got out of the car. Juliet needed someone with an A* in friendship, and she only had a C-. Okay, maybe a C+ on a good day.
‘Yep. “Oh”,’ Juliet replied and then dragged in a shaky breath and pasted on a smile. ‘I’ll get over it though and be absolutely fine in a jiffy.’
Liar, liar. ‘Look,’ Gloria said, searching for a way to make it better. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you that the way you parent Melody is—’
‘Don’t,’ Juliet whispered, cutting her off. ‘Don’t be nice to me.’
Oops. Gloria actually got that because she absolutely hated it when she was upset and someone tried to be nice to her. Still. With the ‘F’ word to take into consideration, maybe a less obvious approach was needed. ‘How about I take Melody home with me and Perse this afternoon? You know the two never turn down the option to extend their day together. I can give her tea and you can – I don’t know – take a little time out to howl at the moon or something?’
‘You’re being nice,’ Juliet sniffed. ‘And Melody will be out any minute and like you said, I don’t want her to see me upset.’
Gloria was pleased about that. The last thing kids needed when the world was already so bewildering was to realise that parents hardly ever had their shit together.
When Bob had first left she hadn’t been able to cry at all and then one night, she’d checked her daughter was asleep before creeping out the back door and picking her way down to the bottom of the garden to finally give in to a crying jag. She’d repeated that pattern for a while and maybe all those tears rolling into the soil was why the flowers always bloomed better there, although as a method of growing award-winning roses, she thought she’d give suggesting it to garden designer, Jake, the swerve. Nobody ever needed to know she cried like an actual human.
Chewing down on her tongue to stop anything unhelpfully nice from coming out of her mouth, the irony that lately it was usually the other way around, wasn’t lost on her and then she was sending up a silent prayer of thanks as Juliet’s phone chirped. She stared pointedly at the phone sitting on the passenger seat. ‘Honestly, only you could have some sort of saccharine-Cinderella-sounding bird-cheeping as your ringtone.’
Juliet picked up her phone. ‘It’s a text from Emma. She wants us all to pop into Cocktails & Chai ASAP.’
Gloria tried not to sigh at the timing. Her shift didn’t start for two hours but maybe she could get Bob to take Persephone a couple of hours early.
As if realising what she was thinking, Juliet said, ‘We can take the girls with us. Afterwards, I’ll take Persephone back to mine until Bob’s ready to pick her up, or I can drop her off at Bob’s for you?’
‘Well aren’t you just begging for a distraction,’ Gloria surmised.
‘Going to help me out? It would help take my mind off …’
‘Stalking storks?’
Juliet laughed a little and Gloria felt the lump in her chest dissolve. Surely she got points for at least not making Juliet feel worse. Maybe Fortuna was right. Maybe there was enough ‘nice’ inside of her now.
‘So why do you think we’ve been summoned to Cocktails & Chai?’ she asked. ‘Do you think Emma’s finished the screenplay?’
Emma had never shown regret about declining her big break in Hollywood to stay and manage Cocktails & Chai. Privately Gloria thought that was probably more to do with falling in love with Jake Knightley than running the village tearoom and bar. Then Jake had mentioned her getting back into the writing she used to love before acting. One off-the-cuff suggestion she write a screenplay about his Knightley Hall ancestors, George and Lilly, and the next thing they all knew, Emma was buying How to Write A Screenplay for Dummies and talking a lot about storyboarding, which to Gloria sounded about as much fun as waterboarding, but each to their own. Emma’s un-waning passion for writing this screenplay at least stopped her talking about weddings, so Gloria was all for it.
Now she watched Juliet perk up at the thought of celebrating Emma finishing her screenplay and Gloria worried it wouldn’t come out right if she offered Juliet some words about taking the time to acknowledge she was upset about not being pregnant, instead of filling her world with distraction after distraction. ‘Heads-up,’ she ended up saying, ‘here come the adorable little monsters, now.’
‘Gloria?’
Gloria turned to look back at Juliet. ‘Hmm?’
Juliet smiled up at her. ‘Thanks for – well, just, thanks.’
Gloria looked back at the two girls running full-pelt towards them. ‘Don’t go mushy on me,’ she muttered out of the side of her mouth, ‘you know it brings me out in hives.’
As the girls greeted them Gloria kept a close eye on Juliet, who she thought did an excellent impression of a sponge, soaking up the distraction of the girls’ running commentary about a girl called Arabella Jones getting chosen to dance in the local production of The Nutcracker at Christmas.
It was barely August.
What happened to the long hazy summer days where the most taxing thing you had to decide was whether you wanted to go swimming in the river at Whispers Ford or spend the day under the tree on the village green making daisy chains?
Not that she’d ever done either of those when she was ten.
The summer she’d turned ten she’d taken the bus into town every day to visit her dad in hospital.
Taking a leaf out of Juliet’s rapt expression she tuned back in to hear the kids launch into a ringing endorsement of the ballet ‘taster’ session they’d signed up for, followed by a whine on why they’d been ‘allowed’ to simply give up on their ballet dreams years ago?
Gloria was compelled to remind them of the presentation they’d delivered charmingly titled ‘Basic Human Rights’ which had turned out to be a thinly disguised rail against the way Madame Benoit, who was about as French as Poirot, thought one hundred pliés in first position constituted a term’s worth of lessons.
As the girls looked at each other and then immediately launched into a speech about how they were prepared to forego some of their basic human rights if it meant they got to dance like Arabella Jones, she couldn’t help wondering why on earth Juliet would want to add to her family.
The negotiation was pretty much full-on, twenty-four-seven three-six-five.
But as she looked at her daughter and felt a happiness she was afraid might manifest itself on the outside like the sort of sparkle Edward Cullen came out in when the sun hit him at, well, any angle, she knew why.
Becoming a mum was the best thing that had ever happened to Gloria.
It was why she was determined to change for the better.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_1c122691-2e1c-54e0-b614-3dab78c49a70)
Popping the Question (#ulink_1c122691-2e1c-54e0-b614-3dab78c49a70)
Juliet
