The slightly confused smile dropped off his face for a second, before he remembered that appearing to be confused might be the best way to play it. ‘Excuse me, darling?’
Ugh. I was too tired and angry and humiliated to faff about. There were times when being able to channel an alter ego superbitch came in handy. ‘She’s just sent you a pictorial recap of the other night.’
‘You were snooping on my phone?’ He stepped closer, ducking his head in an attempt to avoid a scene.
I took a step back. ‘You left it on the table. No snooping required.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Can we talk about this somewhere else, please? Several of my associates are here.’
‘No. Who is she?’
‘No one,’ he snapped, rolling his eyes in contempt.
‘No one? No one, as in, you don’t even know the name of the woman you cheated on me with?’
‘Oh, come off it, Eleanor,’ he muttered. ‘What are you talking about, cheating? Please don’t start getting all possessive on me, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘What?’ I was the one to look confused, now. ‘What else do you call it if you sleep with someone behind your girlfriend’s back?’
‘I call it perfectly acceptable, if they aren’t exclusive.’
‘You specifically asked me to be exclusive! In August, before I went on the Italian Nonna’s food retreat!’
‘Well,’ he shrugged, glancing about the reception foyer, because it was apparently far more important that he maintained his reputation with his associates than with me. ‘You didn’t ask me back.’
So, I broke up with my non-exclusive boyfriend. Thankfully, he’d proven himself to be a total arse, so I wasn’t too heartbroken about it. Just a little bit lonely – Marcus had made me feel like a grown-up, who knew what she was doing, and had a semblance of a future up ahead. He’d validated my job, laughing off my concerns with comments like, ‘Lighten up, darling – you write humorous food reviews, you aren’t testifying in court.’ He mademefeel a tiny bit less like an arse. Or, at least stopped me having so much time to worry about it.
But all that newfound empty time, the time that mattered, in between the fluff and the frippery of my increasingly ghastly job, was now time spent gradually facing up to the fact that I couldn’t keep going any more. The further Nora slipped down this one-way slope to Bitchiness Abyss, the more I loathed what I did. And it wasn’t ‘only a job’, it was my life, and if I had even the slightest modicum of self-worth, I had to acknowledge that how I spent my one precious life mattered.
Here’s a useful tip when deciding whether your chosen career is destroying you one torturous meme at a time: if you are too ashamed to allow your family to read the words you write, then for goodness’ sake,what the hell are you thinking?
I was free now though, wasn’t I? Here in the strong, ancient embrace of Damson Farm? Tucked away in between the gently rolling East Midland hills, amongst the bees and the sheep, the lights of Ferrington glinting through the orchard? After all, I’d had no more messages from the stalker since I’d left. Sure, I’d blocked them, but if they were that determined they’d have simply got another number.
Surely that must mean I was safe.
Mustn’t it?
9
I decided to address that question by ensuring I was too busy and worn out to think about it any more. I finally gave in and left Lucy a message, explaining how I’d been doing a lot of thinking and had decided to resign, which of course then meant that unfortunately I would have to let her go. I told her I’d provide her with a stellar reference for Miles if she wanted to carry on as Nora, how much I valued her, and hoped we’d stay in touch blah, blah, blah. I also added that I’d had some disturbing messages. Although they had clearly been aimed at me, and they’d stopped now, I strongly urged her to put everything Nora-related on pause until I could fill her in.
For the rest of the weekend I worked on the study, sorting and dusting and scrubbing away layers of neglect. I folded Hope’s giant heap of clothes into neat piles and rearranged her changing table so there was actually space to change her on it. Daniel helped me swap the furniture about, so that Hope had a space to sit near the window, and he could charge his tech without wires trailing across the room waiting to be tripped over.
I also cooked, and took Hope for a walk around the nearby lanes while Daniel caught up on some work. Then, finding him conked out on the study sofa, we baked cookies with the last of the flour and sugar. In the evenings, we ate dinner once Hope was asleep, lingering over a decaffeinated coffee until the ripe old party hour of nine o’clock, when Daniel would either go to bed or head back to his desk.
Sunday afternoon, Billie phoned Daniel and asked if she could speak to me, so we cried and talked and breathed through a couple of awkward silences.
‘I’m sorry you weren’t told,’ Billie told me, voice trembling. ‘Things hadn’t been… you know, things were never good between us, and then she didn’t cope very well with me moving on. So we’d not seen each other for a long time, beyond the odd hello. I hadn’t realised you’d stayed in touch. Although I wouldn’t have known how to contact you even if I’d thought about it. And. Well. We were so overwhelmed with it all. Hope, the farm, the police. Given the circumstances, we kept things small. There’d been enough fuss.’
Given what circumstances?I wanted to ask. Charlie would not have wanted a small, quiet funeral, no matter what the circumstances of her death. She’d have wanted funny stories and noisy toasts and masses of food and drink, all finished off with a singalong. A send-off that people would have talked about for years afterwards. I felt a stab of anger that I had missed my opportunity to ensure she had a funeral befitting her. But then, it seemed like she’d changed in the year or so before she died. Who was I to say what this older, wiser, sober Charlie would have wanted? Who was I to comment on how a grieving mother, a bereft brother should say goodbye?
* * *
Monday morning, Daniel had a meeting in central London with important energy bigwigs, and needed to leave early to catch a train from Newark. ‘I would have made my excuses and dialled in, but if you don’t mind watching Hope again, it would make my boss very happy if I showed up in person.’
‘Of course, no problem. But can you leave me some very clear and minutely detailed instructions?’
Waking just after 6.30, I slipped out of bed in the hope of squeezing in a coffee and maybe even a shower before my housemate’s summons. At the first creak of the floorboard, a thin wail informed me that I was kidding myself. Daniel had taped a spreadsheet to the end of her cot. He might as well have written it in computer code.
