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‘I know, I thought I was about to be given a lecture on how spending too much time on Angry Birds had a 72% chance of Jake being a crack addict by the age of 13, but no – she wanted to talk Salsa.’
‘So what did she actually say?’
‘She decided it was going to be a good way to keep fit during the winter, when the outdoor tennis courts are closed. Remember, she gets bored terribly easily because of her fierce intellect, so the gym – or running around after her children like a normal person – just isn’t enough stimulation for her. She says the instructor is very respectful and he’s called Damiano. And you know what?’
‘What ? She’s run off with him?’
‘No ! It was the first time she has ever not bragged. She wasn’t telling me in a “Now you must do this because guess what, I’ve just raised the bar in the being-as-good-as-me stakes”, she just seemed to be enthusing about it. I was braced for the “fierce intellect” nonsense, but this time she managed to keep it all in. She says she now has a different relationship with her body – she feels more free!’
‘I don’t know what to say. I want to take the mickey but it sounds kind of sweet.’ ‘Yes, it was. For the first time, she seemed … happy.’
‘Wonders will never cease.’
‘And that, my friend, is why we must make sure we sort ourselves out with tickets this year. I’ve got the link to the website, and I’m poised like a cat, ready to pounce into action to apply. My children will be playing with knives behind my back as I sit there clicking “refresh”. Can’t wait! Apparently they allocate for the whole series in one go and we just have to wait and see which show we get tickets for. So exciting!’
‘That would be great. Not the knives bit, please – I love those kids. But imagine if we got them. I could get Matt to look after the shop for me and make a proper weekend of it – leave Rob to his squash games, and come and see you and the kids for a while.’
‘I’d love that, it’s been too long to be left with only Emma for company.’
‘It would be wonderful, cheer me right up.’
Ava didn’t realise what she was saying until she had said it. But suddenly, what had been unfurling in her was spreading its tentacles. Loneliness, unhappiness or was it simply a case of the grass always being greener?
‘Do you really need cheering up? I’m worried about you.’
‘Oh, I’ll be fine. I’m just, well … a little bit flat.’
‘Because of Rob?’
‘No. Well, yes – but not just Rob, just a creeping sense of …’
‘MUUUUM!’ Mel’s son Jake was screaming from the kitchen, alarmingly loudly even via Ava’s phone.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Oh, God! I think Wine Time is already over … It’s not fair to leave Rich to deal with this alone.’
Sounds from the kitchen were ominous. Was that a plate breaking? ‘No problem, you get back to them.’
‘But we’ll pick this up in an hour or so when I’ve dealt with this lot.’
‘Sure,’ Ava tried to give an audible but reassuring shrug but it didn’t work very well. ‘You take care and love to the lot of them.’
Ava pottered back to her kitchen with an empty glass, refilled it and then made what she could of the Parmesan, ham and eggs. She snipped a few needles from the rosemary plant she had left by the door, telling herself calmly that there was no need to let standards slip just because she was unexpectedly alone. After all, it wasn’t as if she lived with Rob yet. That was a whole separate discussion.
She sprinkled the rosemary onto the omelette, gave it a final turn, put it on one of her favourite plates and then sat with it at her kitchen table, listening to next door’s cat squawking at a blackbird. Soon she saw the bird flap up over the wall and fly away, clearly flustered. She remembered Mel’s obsession with feeding the birds in their shared flat at college: she had spent hours staring out the window at birds on the adjacent garage roof pecking away at the stale bread and bird balls she had thrown there for them. It was possibly the most unglamorous and most endearing thing any of her college friends ever did. But the two were firm buddies long before the bird-obsession revealed itself. They met at swing classes in their first year and warily spent time together, each fearful the other was what they considered to be a ‘part timer’ where their love of dance was concerned. Back in the early nineties being a dance fan had seemed almost subversive and certainly not a regular hobby for 19-year-olds, so their commitment was unusual.
‘Ava, as in Ava Gardner?’ had been Mel’s first words on being introduced to her.
‘Yes,’ she replied hesitantly. Usually people turned their noses up at such a deliberately retro name, or thought she was assuming a mannered alias.
‘Wow! Named after The Barefoot Contessa. Impressive … I think my parents had been watching too many Melanie Martin dramas when I was born.’
And then the dancing began. Ever confident, Mel had paid Ava little attention for the next few weeks as she was furiously pursuing a boy whose name neither of them could remember any more. But after a few months of regular attendance at Swing Night and some pretty raucous parties, they formed a close friendship. By the end of the year they were flatmates. Despite the inherent skankiness of their student accommodation, dancing proved an irremovable streak of glamour and romance in an otherwise average student experience and despite house moves, babies and their impending forties, it remained the glue that bonded them. Mel’s unstoppable pragmatism needed a friend with Ava’s ability to let her imagination fly. And Ava’s over-imaginative tendency for anxiety was grounded by the reassuring sense Mel was always able to provide.
The unfamiliar trill of the landline jump-started Ava from her memories.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, how are you?’
Lauren’s sugary, super-kind tone was the one used when she was keen to get the polite practicalities out of the way as quickly and emphatically as possible before launching into a chat that was to involve her getting her own way. It worked like a dream in the property finding business when she was schmoozing with City players for whom she was commissioned to find idyllic boltholes in which to install their docile wives, movie location scouts who needed country homes that didn’t require the guttering to be digitally removed, or privacy conscious celebrities who wanted a driveway slightly longer than the longest of lenses. But it was too much of an old trick for Ava, who was able to read the signals loud and clear. In fairness, it wasn’t always Lauren’s tone – Ava did her fair share of whinging too, but tonight this was the last thing she felt like. She poured a further slug of wine into her glass.
‘I’m fine, sweetie, just a bit down but it’ll pass.’
‘Oh, right.’
Ava noticed that Lauren didn’t ask why she was feeling down – a classic move. ‘Rob messed me around over dinner.’ she continued, regardless.
‘Were you supposed to go out?’
‘No, but …’
‘Oh, right.’
Another slice of classic Lauren: in her opinion, if it wasn’t a smart restaurant in Marlborough or a genteel gastropub with portraits of hunting dogs on the walls, it can’t have been a big deal.
‘You sound really disappointed, though.’
‘I am. It’s no big deal, though.’ Her tone softened as Lauren showed genuine concern.
‘But you’re okay, you two?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
Now a pause when Ava would have liked Lauren to ask a little more.
‘Great. So listen, about this dress …’
And that was that.
‘Yes?’
‘There are big problems with organising this dress fitting. The woman is being totally unreasonable about timings and when I can actually get to see her. She doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not at a desk all day like normal people.’
Ava wondered what was so bad about being at a desk all day, and if Lauren had ever noticed she wasn’t either.
‘She is saying she won’t cut the fabric without my approval but the times she’s giving me are really restrictive. I can’t just drive all over Wiltshire on a whim because it suits her – I am the customer after all! Honestly, I knew I should have had it done in London, one of those lovely ateliers.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘This woman,’ Lauren seemed to spit the word, ‘is some kind of well-kept secret. One of the guys working on Bishopstone Park told me about her – she had worked on the costumes and did the dress for Violet Bennett.’
Violet Bennett, breakout star of the country-house drama Bishopstone Park, had indeed worn a glorious dress for her well-documented wedding to the romantic hero of a gritty urban crime series. Elegant, befitting of a leading lady, but avoiding the trap of trying to look like a princess, it had been praised by the weekly magazines and the designer had been the subject of much debate but a name never released. Sadly, if the tabloids were to be believed, the marriage itself was not enjoying quite the same level of success as the gown itself.
‘If she did that dress or any of the other dresses on the show maybe she can call the shots, Lauren. She’s clearly a pro – she can probably pick and choose her clients.’
A moment’s silence.
‘Look, the long and the short of it is if we don’t want the whole thing to turn into a total ’mare, I’m going to have to take a half day off work – rearranging a really important client meeting – and I’d like you to come with me.’
Ava, apparently, had no essential meetings with clients.
‘Right, when is this?’
‘Just under two weeks: Saturday, 3 September.’
‘And you’d like me there?’
‘Yes, of course – I think it would be less tense if you were there and we could discuss your bridesmaid’s dress.’
Ava watched the blackbird circling the garden again, and prayed for a quick, sudden death. She swallowed another sip of wine. Being an adult bridesmaid had long been such a source of complete terror to Ava that she and Lauren had been joking about since long before she even met Rory. It was time to face the music.
‘My what …?’
‘My bridesmaid! Don’t say it like that – it’ll be fun. I’m not going to put you in a weird prom dress, you’ll be in a Viv creation just like me and we can choose it together.’
‘I’ll put the 3rd in the diary, but I want you to know that I hate you.’
‘I know you love me, sis. Honestly, if I’d known getting married was this much stress there’s absolutely no way on earth that I would have decided to do it.’
‘That couldn’t be less true. It simply could not be less true! For that ring, sis, you would have agreed to do whatever Rory asked you to do.’
‘Oh God, you’re so right!’
‘And you bloody love him …’
‘I do!’ And she did. Rory was a godsend, to the point where Ava and her mum had started to refer to him as the ‘Lauren Whisperer’. Indeed, the rest of the family was no longer able to imagine living without him. He was gentle and had eternal patience with Lauren’s more diva-ish demands, but secretly Ava suspected her sister not only really loved him but still found him wildly sexy and would do more than she was ever going to let on to keep him happy. There was also the engagement ring, which had almost blinded Ava the first time she saw it. Rory, a man who spent all day working with his hands and had been too shy to speak to Lauren’s family for the first six months they had been dating, had surpassed all expectation when he surprised Lauren with it. A woman who always maintained she would like a say in any jewellery bought for her discovered in an instant that sometimes not being in control could have its pleasures. And that instant was when she opened the small, dark green velvet box containing a 1920s Art-Deco ring: an antique-cut solitaire surrounded by three baguette cut diamonds on each side. It took her just under a second to say yes. She was as stunned with joy at being asked as she was by the heart-stopping fact that Rory had bought the piece at auction, paid for the history to be written up and presented an elegantly framed version of it to her. Lauren liked to pretend her car – a terrifyingly fast Audi TT – was her favourite possession but she wasn’t fooling anyone.
After hanging up, Ava washed up the few things in the sink. Before doing so, she carefully removed the small diamond that Rob had bought her to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Dunne’s. At the time it had seemed such a romantic gesture, so respectful of her work and her pride in the shop, but now it was hard not to see it as a friendship ring, a holding pattern to postpone any more serious discussion. Resentfully, she chipped away at the muesli around the edge of Rob’s cereal bowl, wondering if they should have a relationship more like her sister and Rory. Trying to impose such a thing would never work, but still, it already seemed as if she and Rob had been married forever and now they might never make it down the aisle. Was this the worst of both worlds, she wondered while drying up her plate and replacing it in the cupboard.
Enough, this moping must stop, she then told herself. A successful independent woman in a contented relationship should not be spending her evenings comparing diamond sizes with a sister she loves dearly. That way, madness lies. She headed upstairs, had a quick shower and set up Swing Time on her laptop to watch in bed. After half an hour, the Fred and Ginger Waltzes and the heavenly frocks lulled her into a dreamy sense of calm. Just as she turned off and turned over, her phone buzzed.
‘Sorry again about tonight, hope you had a good evening. Will make it up to you tomorrow or even better, Sunday, I promise. I won the squash!’
The thought was sweet, but Rob had clearly forgotten they were going to her parents for lunch on Sunday. As she turned over and curled up, she told herself firmly that it didn’t matter, that the absence of kisses on his text weren’t a sign. She replayed the Waltzes in her head until sleep finally came.
Chapter Three
Sunday, 28 August
‘Sunday drivers!’ spat Rob, slamming on the brakes of his somewhat battered Polo as an elderly couple in a dark green Rover pulled out in front of them with no warning. Ava winced, lurching forward and feeling the seatbelt cut into her chest across her necklace. Meanwhile, Wogan chatted chummily on the car stereo. Ava had barely slept, her nerves were jangling and there was a small well of nausea in the pit of her stomach. At this stage it could have been nerves, Rob’s driving or that extra Scotch she had had before bed last night causing it. Either way, she just wanted to close her eyes and block everything out. Instead, she turned to Rob, whose face was now puce with rage. A tiny bead of sweat trickled down from his hairline to the front of his ear. His hair seemed thinner than she had realised before, volume masking the areas of scalp that were beginning to peek through.
‘Easy!’ she said, hands pressed onto the dashboard. She looked back at the elderly couple’s heads bobbing away as they chatted away to each other, oblivious to their part in the drama playing out behind them.
‘We’re running late. You know how your parents are about us being late. We can slow down, if you like and then we’ll arrive with 10 minutes of wise-ass comments about how we’re never on time. Your choice!’ muttered Rob, raising a sanctimonious eyebrow.
‘I really do think they would prefer us late than dead …’
‘Oh, so I’m trying to kill you now? My apologies! I thought I was doing my best to employ my driving skills to get you to your parents’ in time. My mistake!’
‘Come on, I know you’re only doing your best. Relax!’
‘It’s hard to relax, knowing Lauren and Rory will have been sitting there for half an hour already when we arrive, late as usual, turning up like bad pennies.’
‘No one minds, they’ll be pleased to see us. Dad will make some stupid dig and then we’ll all forget about it. Jeez, why are you getting in such a state about it?’
‘You’ll all forget about it – I won’t! And you know why I’m getting into a so-called “state” about it.’
‘Don’t try and pin this mood on me, that just isn’t fair!’
‘Well, there’s a marked absence of anyone else to …’
‘To what, to blame this on? Hmm … I’ll tell you what, how about you? How about you take responsibility for this weird, petty fixation you have about my parents not liking you because it’s all in your own head! It’s simply something you invented and none of us know why.’
The track playing on the radio ended and Wogan piped up again, jolly as ever. His tone was so completely at odds with the mood in the car that Ava almost started to giggle in desperation. Instead she turned her head and gazed out of the window at the fields now whizzing by. She was exhausted at having this fight with Rob again. A couple of years ago, not long after Rory really became one of the family, Rob had convinced himself that Ava’s parents did not like him, that they somehow thought he wasn’t good enough for their daughter. It was simply not true and based on nothing beyond what seemed like an elephantine chip growing on his shoulder. He had clearly cherished his role as ‘the good boyfriend’ prior to Rory’s arrival more than any of them realised. Having known him for so long, Jackie and Andrew were thrilled when their daughter had ‘finally’ fallen for him. During those early years of Dunne’s Ava felt as if she and Rob were some kind of dream couple – blessed to see the potential in each other. Now, five years on, the cracks in their relationship were deepening but what really stuck in Ava’s mind was that neither of her parents loved Rob any less than they ever had.
‘You know, things have changed,’ said Rob.
‘Yes, I do. But what changed was you, not them. All they ever wanted was for me to be with someone who loves me, which you do, so that’s fine.’
But this statement was met with further silence and no confirmation of the fact that he loved her. Welcome to stability,thought Ava, it looks a lot like being taken for granted. Meanwhile, Rob stared ahead, tensing his jaw. Ava watched the muscle on the side of his face flex and relax, and thought of the nights she had lain awake recently, hearing him grind his teeth. What has happened to us and how can we undo it? A tractor turned out in front of them, followed by a small rush of cars coming down the lane from church. Ava saw Rob’s hands grip the steering wheel even more tightly. Clenching and letting go … Clenching and letting go.
Of course the glass of Scotch she had had last night was nothing to do with why Ava felt so sick and in her heart she knew it. She had tried to look forward to the weekend, surrounding herself in a cloud of positively all week, but the nervous knots she could feel just tightened as doubt and anxiety unfurled themselves. She had tried to pretend to herself that she had had a stressful week at work, but she knew that wasn’t true. Matt had worked so hard and with such a sunny attitude that she was actually thinking about giving him a bit of time off to enjoy the last of the summer on his surfboard. He was charming to the female customers and mates with the men who needed a hand in choosing flowers for their loved ones. In so doing he had definitely affected the shop’s turnover and been a pleasure to work with.
Only a couple of days ago she had enjoyed a drink with Sarah from Ruston’s the hairdresser and their fruitful exchange of local gossip had been as much fun as ever. Ava was sure that other shops and businesses did it too, but she and Sarah always laughed at the way the locals assumed they were all so anonymous – especially some of the fancier wives from the smart villages outside Salisbury. Little did they know their shopkeepers were taking an interest in their lives, noticing their children growing older, their hair getting longer (or greyer); their cars bigger. It was as if a whole local soap opera was running, kept alive by gossip between the shops around the market square, and Ava adored being a part of it. There had been great pleasure in the discovery that one of her clients was ordering flowers to be delivered to herself at work, even going so far as to pen romantic cards to make her colleagues jealous. That joy was even greater when Sarah revealed she had attended school with the same woman, who had a terrible reputation for stealing other peoples’ boyfriends.
No, it hadn’t been a bad week at work at all – it was life at home that was behind this sinking feeling. Rob had not taken well to being reminded about the long-planned Sunday lunch and had been making sly little comments about it since Tuesday. The resentments bubbled over this morning, leaving them silent in the car, all the while simmering and unable to find a way out.
It was not how Ava had ever imagined that Sunday mornings with her true love would be. During two long years after she had broken up with Mick–just as all of her closest friends were falling in love, getting engaged or married – she had fantasised about the Sunday mornings they were all having. She would wake with a start, wondering how to fill the next three or four hours until it was acceptable to call someone and not be interrupting anything, while her imagination cruelly filled in the time by picturing her friends in exaggerated romantic scenes. She never went quite so far as the cliché of the single long-stemmed red rose in a slim glass vase on a tray, but there had been bleak weekends when similar images presented themselves and taunted her. The Romantics – wildly in love, sharing the newspapers in bed, their side tables holding smug little cafetières of heavenly-smelling coffee and dainty fruit salads comprised of carefully sliced berries that they would feed to each other between kisses. Whether or not these scenes had ever taken place was neither here nor there to Ava. Now she could grudgingly admit that when she first got together with Rob there had been very a little of that for he wasn’t really one of life’s natural relaxers. Enjoying a moment was ‘wasting time’ and holding hands in the street only meant ‘shoving it in people’s faces’. By the time they crossed the divide into romance, they had known each other for so long that those early Sunday mornings together had not proved as much of a discovery as they usually were with a new boyfriend. So little heat, so little intrigue. It wasn’t that Ava hadn’t loved him – in fact, she had been relieved when there turned out to be so little left to discover – thank goodness for none of the nasty surprises she had been dreading! But that stage seemed so far away, as if it had faded with time. If he was so reluctant to show her he loved her at all these days, what did that say?
It’s just a phase , she had told herself that morning, all relationships go through bad patches. So for the first time in months Ava had gone against her natural instinct and actually tried to be proactive about things. Convinced a bit of a spice was what would rock the status quo, she decided to channel Lauren’s effervescent confidence. Rob had been sitting up in bed reading the motoring section of the paper when she rolled over and kissed him, nuzzling right up against him, pushing her head through the crook of his arm. He had smiled, given a little sniff of a laugh and kissed her on the top of her head … then batted her away as if she were a naughty toddler. In that moment it was as if a piece of her had been rubbed away, as if there was slightly less of her.
‘Oh, come on! What’s motoring got that I haven’t?’
‘It doesn’t want to talk to me about the future – and it doesn’t have morning breath either,’ he told her coldly.
Ava withdrew at once and perched on the edge of the bed, increasingly vulnerable in her pajamas.
