The Child (Kate Waters #2)(21)

Until now. This time, he’d called her “my lady” like in the old days and flirted with her. And how good—and young—it had made her feel. But telling Emma about wanting to see Will again after all this time, she knew she had the wrong audience. And Em had sat there, her face frozen, as if she’d just vomited on the table.

Like the day I told her she had to leave, Jude thought.

It had been different when Will had made his first appearance—when Emma was thirteen. She’d liked him then, she thought. Adored him. Like I did.

? ? ?

Will had been so special when she met him at Cambridge. A boy born to succeed. She’d joked with friends later that genius oozed out of his every pore, and if she licked his skin, she would be able to taste it.

She remembered telling that to a colleague in the office once—and the way her face had twisted with disgust.

“Sounds revolting. You were a handmaiden, then?” Erica, the senior clerk at Bowen and Bailey Solicitors, had said. Erica was no handmaiden. She was a feminist. It said so on a sign on her desk—“Sexism Is a Social Disease”—and she never missed an opportunity to put her views forward. The partners were all very right on with their long hair and ironic, secondhand pinstripe suits, but they still called her “the dyke” out of her earshot. Jude was sure Erica knew—she knew everything—but she didn’t object. She probably saw it as fair exchange for being in charge.

Jude had laughed off the handmaiden barb and pretended to get on with her work. But little Barbara Walker, the office junior, wouldn’t let it drop. She’d wanted to hear all about it.

All this talk of Howard Street from Emma had awakened old memories, and Jude wondered where Barbara was now. She’d been a close friend of Jude’s once. She could picture Barbara—annoyingly pretty, she recalled, but hopeless with money. She’d moved into Howard Street—“the room on the middle landing, that’s right”—in 1983 to help Jude pay the rent, but she kept getting behind and the landlord had to keep coming round.

Al Soames, she remembered. A former public schoolboy who used to turn up uninvited and sit in the kitchen. He’d ladled on the charm, talking about all the important people he knew and the parties he went to. She’d been impressed—when she’d first moved in—but she began to wonder if he was a bit of a Walter Mitty. And he made Barbara very nervous.

Jude licked her finger and dabbed at the crumbs on her plate. Will had liked him, though. Said he was good company.

Poor Barbara had moved out quite quickly really—less than a year, she thought. Jude had been a bit fed up—it was more money for her to find each month—but Will had been pleased.

“Nice to have you to myself without the Barbie doll hanging around, making eyes at me,” he’d said. Jude hadn’t noticed but Barbara was gone, anyway, and she hoped that Will would think he had found his match—intellectually and sexually—and would settle down. At university, their affair had lasted just three weeks, but this time would be different. Then, there had been other women in the queue for his attention and they had grown impatient for their turn. Jude had found him ministering to the next girl late one Friday morning when she skipped a lecture to call on him.

She glossed over this now in her head. Along with the retribution she’d taken on the Next Girl, breaking into her room and smearing dog shit on her bed the following day. People got that kind of thing out of proportion, didn’t they?

Anyway, the Next Girl hadn’t complained. Jude imagined she’d simply taken the bedspread to the launderette. Will hadn’t found out—at least he’d never mentioned it—and he’d stayed friendly, having the occasional coffee with Jude when they bumped into each other in King’s Parade. But he’d vanished from her world when she left Cambridge.

And she’d met someone else. The total bastard, as she always referred to him now. But he’d been Charlie until he left Jude and Emma. She’d been forced to return home to her parents with a newborn baby so they could torture her with guilt.

She could feel the bitterness darkening her day, even after all this time. It wasn’t good for her to revisit past hurts. People said you shouldn’t bottle things up but she could never be this open with anyone else. People jumped to conclusions, rushed to judgment. Better to keep things to herself. She’d been too open with Will, she knew that now. She’d let him know how desperate she was to keep him. She’d gone along with everything—changed her clothes, her hair, her friends, everything. She’d even taken his advice to push Emma out of the nest when she got too difficult.

He’d made it sound caring and responsible: “Tough love will help her, Jude. You’ll see. It’s what she needs.”

She’d done it. Told her child she had to go. Helped her pack. Closed the door on her.

And, with Emma gone, Jude had poured all her energies into Will, running after him, trying to anticipate his every wish. At first, he’d loved it. Loved having his favorite meal on the table every evening, the sexy underwear she bought to please him, the phone calls at work “just to say I love you.”

But he grew to see it as needy.

“Men hate needy,” Jude told herself as she cleared the breakfast things. “It’s a big turnoff.” Will had told her so the day he left.





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