Five Winters(22)

“That’s right,” said Jaimie. “Beth’s going to stay the night. Well, two nights, actually.”

Olivia laughed. “Don’t be silly, Daddy,” she said. “We don’t have enough beds.”

Jaimie didn’t respond to this statement, meeting my eyes before distracting his daughter with talk of dessert. But Emily went very quiet, and I thought I saw her looking at me very suspiciously. So perhaps it was no great surprise that when Olivia marched into Jaimie’s bedroom the next morning and found me lying in bed next to her father, she announced very loudly, “My mummy sleeps there. You can’t sleep there! That’s my mummy’s bed!” And then she ran out to Emily’s room to wake her up, shouting at the top of her voice, “Beth’s sleeping in Mummy’s bed! Beth’s sleeping in Mummy’s bed!”

Although we did the things I’d imagined we’d do that day—feeding the ducks on the riverside, visiting the cathedral, playing in the garden—the day never completely recovered from that inauspicious start. Olivia seemed tired and cried at the smallest thing, while Emily was icily quiet to the point of rudeness.

“Emily hates me,” I whispered to Jaimie later in the kitchen.

He sighed. “She doesn’t hate you. She hates the situation she’s in, that’s all.”

It was a relief when it was time for them to return to Harriet’s, but it had been such a fraught day that both Jaimie and I felt poleaxed by it, so we sat holding hands in front of the TV like shipwreck victims, neither of us inclined to talk about how things had gone.





9


Who knows? If Jaimie hadn’t had to work the next weekend, and if that weekend hadn’t happened to coincide with Sylvia and Richard’s ruby wedding anniversary, then maybe we wouldn’t have repeated the whole me-meeting-the-girls experiment. And maybe, as a result, the course of our relationship would have run differently. But Jaimie did have to work, and I did go to the party.

Jaimie was meant to come with me. Even Giorgio, who was visiting Rosie from Rome for the weekend, was coming. I was meant to be going as Beth and Jaimie, not just Beth. I wasn’t meant to be facing Mark and Grace on my own again. But I couldn’t invent some excuse and cry off the way I might have for anybody else’s party. Because it wasn’t anybody else’s party. It was Richard and Sylvia’s party. So I donned my best red dress in honour of the ruby occasion, secured the peony plant I’d bought as a gift safely in the car so it wouldn’t topple over, and set off.

I was last to arrive. It was another warm day, and I could hear them all in the garden when I got out of the car. Laughter and chatter floated to me on the breeze as I made my way round the side of the house clutching the peony and a bottle of red wine, my stupid stomach fizzing with nervousness.

I emerged into the garden and saw Rosie and Giorgio, Mark and Grace, a sprinkling of friends and neighbours with their children, and of course, the happy couple—Richard and Sylvia.

“Beth, darling,” Sylvia greeted me, rushing straight over to give me a hug.

“Happy anniversary,” I said, kissing her, holding the plant out to one side so it wouldn’t get crushed.

“Hello, love,” Richard said, also coming over to kiss me.

I kissed him back before presenting them both with the peony. “It’s a ‘Burma Ruby’ peony,” I said. “I hope you can find somewhere in the garden for it. I admit, I mainly chose it for the name.”

“We love peonies, don’t we, Sylv?” said Richard, looking genuinely delighted. “Thank you. Come and let me fix you a drink. You’ve met Giorgio, haven’t you?”

“Just the once,” I said, smiling at Giorgio.

Giorgio had his arm looped around Rosie’s waist, but he disentangled himself to kiss me. “Ciao, bella,” he said. “Your boyfriend, he is not coming?”

I hugged Rosie. “No, sadly he has to work today. He sends his regards to you all.”

“What’s he doing that’s so important?” Rosie asked.

“Supervising the installation of a spiral staircase in the house he’s renovating.”

“Rather him than me,” said Mark, who would be hard-pressed to put up a shelf, let alone make an entire shelving unit, despite Richard’s best efforts over the years. I smelt something smooth and spicy on his skin as he bent to kiss me.

Grace was next, with a kiss, kiss on either cheek. “Hello, Beth.”

“Hi, Grace. How are you?”

Grace was wearing red too. Great minds think alike, as they say.

“Good, thanks. It sounds as if Jaimie’s latest project is going very smoothly, from what he says. Have you been over to see it?”

“Yes, he took me a few weekends ago.” It was the garden I remembered from my visit there—hopelessly overgrown but filled with birdsong and flowers. Jaimie had cleared part of it to put down gravel for an extra parking space. All very practical, of course, but I’d felt a bit sad to see so much of that romantic tangle hacked away.

“Everything okay?” Rosie asked me in a moment when we were alone. “You’re not cross with Jaimie for not coming?”

“Of course not. This was the only day the stair guy could come. He’d have been here if he could.”

It wasn’t true, not entirely. I wasn’t cross with Jaimie for not being here today—of course I wasn’t. But I was disappointed. Here I was, alone again, at Richard and Sylvia’s house—the scene of my hopeless, unrecognised love for my friend’s brother. If Jaimie had been here with me, I’d have been fine. But as it was . . .