Anything but Vanilla(60)

‘He dumped his clothes on the floor for his mother to pick up and wash.’ Something Alexander wouldn’t know about, she realised. ‘I don’t suppose you did that at boarding school.’

‘No, but I’m getting the picture. She found a packet of condoms?’

‘With one missing.’

‘So? She had to assume that at his age he’d be trying to get into some girl’s knickers. At least he was taking precautions.’

‘It wasn’t what he was doing, Alexander, it was who he was doing it with. My mother had three children by three different men. I look a lot like her except for my hair. She was blonde...’

‘She assumed you were going to follow in her footsteps?’

‘Three girls without a father to their name, living on their own with only a slightly dotty grandmother who’d lost all her money to a con man? Her imagination was working overtime and she packed him straight off to his uncle in America for the summer.’

‘Presumably he could have said no.’

‘Me, or the summer at Cape Cod with hundreds of girls who would fall for his...’ she adopted an American accent ‘...“cute” English accent.’ At the time it had felt like a knife being stuck into her heart, but it had happened a long time ago. ‘Which would you have chosen at eighteen?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. ‘I might have been besotted, Alexander, but I imagine he thought much the same as his mother.’

‘Oh? And what was that?’

Exactly what his mother had thought was made very plain when she’d turned up at his house the following morning.

‘That I was a little tart who’d lumber her son with an unwanted baby. Presumably that’s why he’d picked me as his date in the first place. The tart bit...not the baby. He was smarter than that.’

‘Well, you certainly showed them. Or did the rest of the village mothers keep their sons on leading strings?’

‘If they did, it backfired. I could have dated any boy in the school that last year.’ She could laugh about it now, but at the time she had just felt dirty... ‘I finally understood why Elle didn’t date.’

‘She didn’t?’

‘We have a family song... “Oh tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you? There are a few, kind sir, But simple girls, and proper too...”’ She began cheerfully enough, but then her voice faltered... ‘Our family attracts scandal like wasps to a picnic.’

‘There’s more?’

She shrugged. ‘Basil ran off with his girlfriend’s brother and was written out of the family history by his father and brother. Grandma realised too late that she didn’t like the man she was about to marry...’

‘Too late? It isn’t too late until the vows are made.’ The teasing look vanished and there was an edge to his voice.

She raised her hand to his cheek, turned his face towards hers.

‘Better to admit the mistake before the wedding,’ she said.

For a moment he resisted, but then raised a wry smile. ‘You’re absolutely right. You can’t expect a woman to hang around waiting for months, years...’

He will leave...

‘What was her name?’ she asked.

The only sound was that of a blackbird in the lilac below her window, the catch of her breath in her throat, and it seemed like for ever before he said, ‘Julia. Her name was Julia. She decided my best man was a better bet.’

His bride and his best friend. Could it be any worse?

‘I left him to help her organise the wedding. He was there with her, talking to the vicar, choosing the venue, doing all the stuff I should have been doing instead of being on the other side of the world playing Tarzan.’

‘She said that?’ she asked, shocked.

‘She was angry. She had every right to be. And maybe a touch defensive.’

‘More than a touch, I’d say. She must have known what you were doing when she agreed to marry you.’

‘She’d assumed that I’d stop. Join the board of WPG. I may have given her that impression. I may even have believed it.’ He glanced at her. ‘It’s not a mistake I’d make again.’

‘No.’

Message received and understood.

He would leave...

A long peal on the door bell broke the tension.

‘That will be the pizza,’ he said.

‘If we don’t answer, maybe he’ll leave it on the step.’