to enjoy their lives—not make them anxious and uncertain.
‘Let’s eat Chinese!’ Vicky suggested.
‘Oh, yeah! Terrific,’ said Tom.
‘OK, I’d like that,’ Bianca said, picking up her cup and draining the last of her coffee. ‘I’m going to get the car out of the garage—hurry up, you two! Don’t forget your briefcase, Tom—and your games kit.’
The rain fell in the same relentless way as Bianca drove to work later, having dropped off her children. It was still raining later when she was dressing the window of Zodiac Fashions, the little boutique she and a friend ran.
‘We did much better with the January sales than I’d dared hope, and I’m really pleased with the new spring styles. I. Are you listening? What’s the matter with you?’ Judy Turner suddenly realised that Bianca had stopped work and was just standing in the window, gloomily gazing out into the almost empty, rain-washed street.
One hand absently tucking stray strands into the otherwise immaculate chignon in which she habitually wore her black hair, Bianca turned round, sighing. ‘Apart from this weather, the fact that I am now forty, and that I’m utterly fed up, you mean?’
Judy put down the account books she had been working on behind the counter. ‘I’ll make the coffee, you watch the shop, then you can tell me all about it.’
‘I just did!’ Bianca called after her departing back, then got on with the window-dressing, easing a bright yellow dress on to a haughty-looking model whose arm kept getting stuck in one position.
Bianca normally enjoyed this job; it gave her a chance to indulge her creative streak, finding accessories to go with a garment or a season, making the window look so attractive that women hurrying by simply had to stop to look at it. Today she wanted an air of spring; she had put a line of little yellow fluffy chicks along the front, sprays of pink apple blossom were pinned on the sides and the models would be carrying spring flowers—all artificial, of course, but they were surprisingly reallooking and had cost far more than real flowers would have done. You could use them again and again, however, which made them cost-efficient.
When Judy came back with the mid-morning coffee, the window was almost finished, and she went outside briefly to assess it, coming back with a smile. ‘It looks great! I love the chicks—pity we haven’t got a mother hen to go with them. You’ve got a real flair for window-dressing—didn’t you say you once went to art school?’
‘I started at college, taking an arts course, but then I met Rob and by the end of my second year—’ Bianca broke off, a little pink, laughed, and finished, ‘Well, I was pregnant, so I left without finishing the course.’
Judy laughed too. ‘The old, old story. But couldn’t you have gone on with your studies? Why did you have to leave college? Were your parents difficult?’
‘They weren’t too pleased at first, but they were very good about it. That wasn’t why I left college. I can’t blame anyone else for that. It was my decision. I simply wasn’t interested any more. I had this strong urge pushing me along—I wanted my baby, I wanted to be a wife and mother; I didn’t want college. Later on I wished I hadn’t been so stupid and I could have kicked myself for not finishing my course, but at the time all I knew was that I was obsessed with going along a different road.’
‘Did Rob feel the same?’
‘He was very keen to get married, too. He was much older than me and he wanted to start a family, have a home. So we got married in a hurry, my parents gave us some furniture, his parents gave us the deposit on a flat. Rob had a good job, of course, so we could manage without me going out to work. I stayed at home and looked after Vicky. I didn’t want to leave her with some stranger. I wanted to look after her myself.’
Bianca’s dark blue eyes were smilingly wistful as she sat down to drink her coffee. ‘I sometimes think those were the best years, those first years, we were so happy!’
‘You still miss him, don’t you?’
‘Every day.’
Judy gave her a look in which affection and concern mixed with faint impatience. ‘It has been three years, Bianca! You should be over it by now. I mean. I know you loved him and the two of you were very happy together, but you can’t go on grieving forever; it isn’t right. Life has to go on, and, after all, you’re still young.’
‘Forty isn’t young!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, forty isn’t old either—you’re in your prime! No wonder you’re fed up. I bet you haven’t had sex since he died.’
Suddenly scarlet as she remembered the vivid dream she had had a few hours ago, Bianca almost spilled her coffee.
‘Honestly, the things you say!’ she spluttered.
‘It isn’t just men who need sex, you know,’ snorted Judy. ‘Women have the same urges. We’re just not encouraged to face up to it. Have you even been out on a date yet?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Has anybody asked you out?’
‘Judy, stop it! What’s got into you?’
‘You give off stop signs,’ Judy told her bluntly. ‘Any man who looks at you gets that old “don’t even think about it” signal, so they back off fast. Men need encouragement. They need to be sure they won’t get their faces slapped if they so much as ask you out.’
‘I’m not looking for another man!’ Bianca told her fiercely. ‘I’m too old to start again with someone else. Anyway, I’ve got the children to think about.’
‘They aren’t going to be around all the rest of your life, Bianca. They’ll grow up and move out, get flats, get married—it’s only natural; they’ll soon be adults who need their own lives.’
‘Not for years yet. Tom is only fifteen!’
‘And when he’s twenty you’ll still only be forty-five. I bet Vicky gets married young. She’s so pretty, she’s going to be swamped with men. When they’re both gone, what will you do? You could live to be eighty—all on your own!’
A shiver ran down Bianca’s back.
Judy saw the change in her face and said coaxingly, ‘Do something about yourself—change your hairstyle, stop wearing those boring pale pink lipsticks, get some sexy clothes.’ She leaned over to sniff. ‘I like that scent, by the way—that’s more like it—something musky and mysterious, not that wishy-washy lavender or rosewater you’ve been using for years! You could have men dropping from the trees if you took some trouble.’
Bianca thought of that as she walked down the busy street to lunch at a small bistro later, leaving Judy to take care of the shop. As she passed under a barebranched poplar tree amusement lit her blue eyes at the idea of men floating down from it to land at her feet, like a Magritte painting.
By one of those strange coincidences life threw at you, a second later she looked into a travel agent’s window and there was the same image again.
The window was dominated by a large poster advertising holidays in Spain; out of a bright blue sky floated men in bowler hats and dark
