Promoted: to Wife and Mother

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‘I was thinking more about lending a cup of sugar, that kind of thing.’

‘Oh. OK.’ The girl sighed, then turned and bellowed up the staircase in a voice that belied her slight frame. ‘Dad! It’s the neighbour!’

There was a pause, followed by a muffled shout of, ‘Coming!’ A few moments later, Perdita heard the sound of feet echoing on the uncarpeted staircase and she turned, a welcoming smile pinned to her face, only for it to freeze in shock as she saw who had reached the bottom of the stairs.

Ed Merrick.

CHAPTER THREE

PERDITA’S heart lurched into her throat. The sight of him was a physical shock, a charge of recognition that surged and crackled through her body so powerfully that she felt jarred and jolted. She barely knew the man, after all. He shouldn’t seem so startlingly familiar. Ed was looking tired and more than a little grubby in a T-shirt and jeans but the keen eyes were just the same as she had remembered. He had the same mouth, the same air of cool competence, the same ability to discompose her just by standing there.

‘It’s you,’ she said stupidly.

Ed looked equally surprised to see her, and for one awful moment she thought that she was going to have to remind him who she was, but then his face cleared and he was coming towards her with a smile.

‘Perdita…’ For once Ed seemed to have lost his normal composure. ‘Sorry…you’re the last person I was expecting…’

Ed, in fact, was completely thrown by the sight of Perdita standing in his hall, as slender and as vivid as ever, throwing her surroundings into relief and yet making them seem faintly drab in comparison.

He remembered her so clearly from the course in June, and had been looking forward to seeing her again. He had hoped to bump into her on one of his visits to Bell Browning over the summer, but he hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of her. He had asked, very casually, if she were around one day, but she had been away then for some reason and he hadn’t wanted to push it by asking again.

There would be time to get to know her when he moved permanently, Ed reasoned. People would think that he was interested in her, which he wasn’t, or at least, not in that way. Quite apart from the fact that he was pretty sure someone like her would already be in a relationship, she wasn’t at all his type. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see that she was attractive, in a striking rather than a pretty way, but she was nothing like Sue, for instance, who had been soft and sweet and calm and loving. There was nothing soft or sweet about Perdita. She was edgy and astringent and restless and when she was around, calm was the last thing Ed felt.

Her performance on the last day of that course had exasperated and impressed him in equal measure. In spite of all her complaints and in spite of the rain, she had contributed more than anyone else to the success of the tasks, and Ed was fairly sure that she had enjoyed herself too. Her ability to motivate and defuse tension with humour was extraordinary, he had thought. So he had remembered her, yes, but only because she was such an impossible person to forget. He wasn’t interested.

So he was rather taken aback by the way every sense in his body seemed to leap with pleasure at the sight of her.

Perdita herself seemed less than delighted to see him, and he stopped himself before he found himself greeting her with quite inappropriate warmth.

There was an awkward pause. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ Ed asked after a moment.

It sounded all too much like an accusation to Perdita, who flushed. ‘I…my mother lives next door,’ she said, ridiculously flustered by the situation. ‘We saw the removal vans so guessed you’d just moved in. I just popped over to welcome you and give you this.’ She held up the bottle of wine awkwardly.

‘That’s very kind,’ said Ed as he wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘Sorry, I’m filthy,’ he explained and took the bottle Perdita was holding out to him. His brows shot up as he read the label. ‘This is more than just a bottle of wine! I hope you’re going to stay and share it with me?’

‘Oh, no, I mustn’t,’ Perdita stammered, stepping back, as gauche as a schoolgirl. ‘You must be tired if you’ve been moving all day.’

‘Please,’ said Ed, and unfairly he smiled. ‘I’ve had a long day and you don’t know how much I’ve been wishing that I could just sit down with a glass of wine! I can’t share it with the kids, and I don’t like to drink alone.’

‘Well…’ Now it would seem ungracious if she rushed off, Perdita decided. ‘I mustn’t stay long, though. I’ve left my mother on her own.’

‘Have a glass anyway. Everything’s chaos, but come into the kitchen and I’ll see if I can lay my hands on a corkscrew.’

Ed’s daughter looked from one to the other suspiciously. ‘Do you guys know each other, then?’

‘Your father is my boss,’ Perdita told her.

‘And this is my daughter, Cassie, as you’ve probably gathered,’ Ed put in.

Cassie tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘God, is he as grumpy at work as he is at home?’

‘You’d probably need to ask his PA,’ said Perdita, amused. ‘I haven’t had much to do with him yet.’

‘It’s no use asking his PAs. They always think he’s lovely, but we know better,’ said Cassie with a dark look at her father. ‘At home, he’s a tyrant! He’s so pig-headed and unreasonable!’

‘Really?’

‘I couldn’t bear to work for him,’ Cassie declared. ‘I’d be on strike the whole time!’

Ed seemed quite unfazed by all of this as he led the way into the big kitchen at the back of the house. ‘I’m so unreasonable that after a day moving house with three bone-idle teenagers, I decided that it was more important to sort out some beds so that we could all sleep tonight, rather than dropping everything to set up the computer so that Cassie could instant message her friends right away.’

‘Very tyrannical,’ murmured Perdita.

‘See?’ Cassie shook back her hair and changed tack without warning. ‘Can I have some wine?’

‘No,’ said Ed.

Cassie heaved a dramatic sigh. ‘I’m going to go and ring India and tell her how boring it is here!’ she announced and, when this threat had no visible effect on her father, she flounced out.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Ed, locating the corkscrew at last in one of the boxes piled on the kitchen counters. ‘Cassie is a bit of a drama queen, as you probably gathered.’

‘She’s very pretty.’

‘And knows it,’ he said wryly. ‘When Cassie is in a good mood, there’s no one more delightful—and no one more unpleasant when she’s in a temper! It can be exhausting just keeping up with her moods.’

‘My best friend has two teenage girls,’ said Perdita, who had spent many hours plying Millie with wine and listening to the latest crisis with either Roz or Emily, and occasionally both. ‘I gather they can be hard work. It always seems that boys are easier, but that’s probably because Millie doesn’t have one!’

Ed smiled ruefully. ‘Probably. Tom can be just as difficult in his own way, and so can Lauren. They’re upstairs, but I’ll spare you the introductions for now. It’s been a long day and for now I’d just like to sit down and relax for a few minutes!’

He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. ‘Are you OK here? The sitting room is even more of a mess, I’m afraid.’

‘Here’s fine.’ Perdita watched as Ed poured the wine and then burrowed his nose in the glass reverently. Something about the intentness of his expression, something about his smile, something about the hand curving around the glass made her squirm inside and she wriggled involuntarily in her chair.

Ed lifted his head and smiled at her across the table. ‘This is a wonderful wine. Do you always give away bottles like this to your neighbours?’

‘No, it was just the first one I found in my father’s collection,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know anything about wine, to be honest. I’m sure Dad would be glad to know it had gone to someone who appreciates it, though.’

‘I remember you said your father had died.’ Ed took another appreciative sip and put his wine down. ‘Does your mother live on her own?’

‘For the moment.’ Perdita turned her own glass very carefully by the stem. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came round, actually. I wanted to give her new neighbours my contact numbers in case there was ever any problem. She hasn’t been well recently, and it’s taking her a long time to get over it. I try to come every day, but she’s alone at night and when I’m at work, and that does worry me sometimes. Some days she seems fine, but others she’s not so good.’

‘Couldn’t you get someone to come in and help her?’ said Ed. ‘When my own mother was ill, she had excellent carers. There was someone in the house with her twenty-four hours a day.’

‘I’ve tried suggesting that, but she won’t hear of it.’ Perdita sighed and stopped fiddling with her glass, taking a sip of wine instead. ‘Sometimes I think that the only thing keeping her going is her determination not to lose her privacy. That’s really important to people of her generation. I do understand. It must be awful to feel dependent, but it’s so frustrating too. Her life—and mine!—would be so much easier if she would let someone pop in and cook and clean at least. As it is—’