The Magic of Christmas - Trisha Ashley 7 стр.

Thats really what I came to tell you about, Annie. He called in early on his way up to the Hall, and he said Tom was in London on Monday.

I described my conversation with Nick. Dont you think that sounds like he suspects Tom and Leila might be having an affair?

Oh, no, surely not? Not with his own cousins wife? she exclaimed, looking horrified. Annie is just too nice for her own good, but I suppose being a vicars daughter didnt exactly help to squash her natural inclination to think the best of everybody if she possibly could.

I dont know, but I certainly hope not. I cant really see him and Leila getting it together, can you? Shes quite scary, in a beady-eyed and elegantly chic way. And I always thought it must be someone local or down in Cornwall, so perhaps Nick has got the wrong end of the stick.

Im sure he must have, she agreed, and then her eye fell on the kitchen clock. Look at the time! I promised Id put in a couple of hours at the RSPCA kennels. The flus hit the staff and volunteers hard. There are no pet-sitting jobs that I cant handle myself this afternoon, but tomorrow will be busier.

She looked slightly self-conscious: Ritch Rainford has asked me to go in at lunchtime and walk Flo, because hell be at the studios in Manchester all day.

Youd better get off, then, if youre sure theres nothing you want me to do. Ill see you at the Mystery Play committee meeting later, when Ill finally get to meet the new vicar.

Oh, yes, hes he seems nice, she said vaguely, but I could see that her mind was still too taken up with the delights of Ritch Rainford to bother with lesser mortals.

Oh, before you go, can I borrow that candyfloss maker you bought for the last Cubs and Brownies bazaar? Some lusciously lemon morning mist has given me ideas.

Of course. Now, where did I put it? She vanished into the pantry and came back with a large cardboard box. The instructions and everything are still in there. Do you need anything else? Sugar?

No, Im OK for sugar, I assured her.

I left her putting Trinny in the back of her car, and then drove down to the other end of the village to drop the punctured tyre off with Dave Naylor at the local garage, Deals on Wheels. (And I know it seems confusing at first that most of the indigent Mosses population who are not Pharamonds are either Naylors or Gumballs, but you quickly get used to it.)

Then I headed for home, passing the entire contingent of the Mosses Senior Citizens Circle waiting to board a coach for the annual trip to Southport Flower Show including Unks alarmingly spry octogenarian sister, Mimi Pharamond. I slowed down, staring, and she waved at me gaily, the rainbow-coloured Rastafarian knitted hat Nick brought her back from Jamaica flapping over one eye.

Since Juno Carter, her long-suffering companion, was currently laid up after an accident, letting Mimi loose alone on the flower show seemed a recipe for disaster. I only hoped someone had been delegated to keep an eye on her. And a firm grip.

There was still no sign of Toms van outside the cottage and you couldnt miss it because it had BOARD RIGID in big fluorescent orange letters up the side and the logo of a stickman surfing. The workshop door was closed too, but in the bedroom I found his dirty clothes scattered on the rug as though washed up there by a high tide, so hed either gone out again, or come back without his van.

There was still no sign of Toms van outside the cottage and you couldnt miss it because it had BOARD RIGID in big fluorescent orange letters up the side and the logo of a stickman surfing. The workshop door was closed too, but in the bedroom I found his dirty clothes scattered on the rug as though washed up there by a high tide, so hed either gone out again, or come back without his van.

Still, clearly he had returned from wherever it was hed been. I gathered up Toms clothes, added some of Jaspers and mine, and then went down to stuff them in the machine. There was no beating them on a rock for me, even in the first flush of self-sufficiency in Cornwall, though before I bought the washing machine out of my first Perseverance Chronicle sale, I used to do the laundry by trampling up and down on it in the bath. Then I would pass it through an old mangle in the yard, which was not fun in winter.

It hadnt taken me long to realise that most books on self-sufficiency were written by men in warm, comfortable rooms, while their wives were out there dealing with the raw realities of life. Or that Tom, while initially enthusiastic, soon lost interest and succumbed to the burgeoning surfing culture instead. Once you added a tiny baby into the equation, the offer of a cottage on the Pharamond estate up in Lancashire was one I was determined we wouldnt refuse.

As I pointed out to Tom at the time, if you have the contacts, you can customise surfboards anywhere, and besides, Middlemoss was as close to a home as I had ever got, and I longed to return there.

Toms jeans crackled when I picked them up to stuff into the washer, but then I always had to empty his pockets of a strange assortment of objects, from board wax to fluffy sherbet lemons.

This time the haul was a dark blue paper napkin tastefully printed in the corner with the word Leilas in gold, a teaspoon that probably came from the same place, since it was definitely classier than any of our mismatched assortment, a stub of billiard chalk, a red jelly baby with the head bitten off and a piece of pink paper folded tightly into the shape of a very small rose.

Tom had doodled in origami roses as long as Id known him, which could be very irritating when it was my shopping list or the top page of a stack of book manuscript; but equally, it used to be rather endearing when it was an apology for forgetting to tell me he was going off somewhere. At least, it was until the novelty wore off, along with my patience.

I flattened this one out and found it was the last part of a letter, abjuring my husband to Tell old Charlie Dimmock youve found someone else and give her the push, and promising, if he did, to tie him up and maybe even down if he really begged her to. It was signed Your Dark Heart.

Well, that didnt sound like Leila, did it? I could imagine shed give anyone a good basting, but would she have time in her busy schedule for bondage?

A horrible image flashed before my eyes of a naked Tom, trussed and oven-ready, and I found I was sitting on the quarry tiles feeling sick and recalling the last time we made love, which was just before Jasper was taken ill.

Id accused Tom of having yet another affair, but this time his attempt to sweet-talk me round hadnt entirely worked and hed said I was so unresponsive he felt like he was practising necrophilia. And then Id said that I felt much the same, since he might look like the man I married, but the part of him Id loved seemed to be quite dead.

This threw him into the first of his really frighteningly violent rages during which he said that living with a cold bitch of a wife who thought food could cure anything was enough to send any man off the rails, and stormed out.

After this I began sleeping in the small boxroom off our bedroom, and things between us went downhill rapidly. He made no attempt to conceal his affairs, though this note was the first hard evidence that any of them were serious

Feeling suddenly dizzy, I put my head on my knees and closed my eyes, wishing our old lurcher, Harriet, was still around to snuffle sympathetically in my ear.

When the feeling passed off I resolutely got up and washed my face in the kitchen sink with cold water, ate an entire packet of those chocolate mini-flake cake decorations, then went out to the workshop, from where faint strains of Metallica now wafted through the Judas door.

Chapter 4: Mushrooming

Tom had his back to me when I went in, spray-stencilling some intricate, hand-cut Celtic design onto a surfboard. He was wearing a mask and baggy dungarees over his T-shirt and jeans, and his dark hair curled onto the nape of his neck in a familiar ducktail.

Where his cousin Nick was built on a large and rugged scale, Tom was a slight, wiry man and every slender bone of his body was beautiful. But despite (allegedly) not being a Pharamond other than in name, he did have the unmistakable look of one, so I was convinced that all the rumours about his mother were true.

I stood there for a minute, thrown by that familiar curl of hair, shaken by the stirring of a tenderness I had thought long dead. Then he must have felt my presence, for he turned cold grey strangers eyes on me, pushing down the mask. The CD came to an end and there was silence.

His eyes flicked to the fading bruise on my cheek and away again. Youre still here, then? Thought you might have cleared off.

Like where? I demanded. And Jasper? The animals? Did you think I had an ark ready and waiting somewhere?

Ah, yes, I forgot: my great-uncle by marriage, my cottage. Poor little orphan Lizzy has nowhere to go, has she?

Dont think I intend staying with you any longer than I have to, I told him coldly. The minute Jaspers off to university, thats it. And if youre interested, his results came and he got into Liverpool.

Its always Jasper, isnt it? he said pettishly.

You should be pleased because hes your son too, whatever mad ideas youve got in your head. But Im not playing your games any more, Tom you can believe what you like.

Oh, come on, Jaspers the spitting image of Nick, my dear old no-blood-relation cousin and dont forget I caught you in each others arms at the hospital when Jasper was ill.