couldn’t begin to count the number of nights she’d whiled away in this place, first with Sam and the team, and later with Hooker when they’d continued to come here, long after the matches had stopped and the players had moved on to life after university. Convenient to the house that he was then sharing with three other would-be lawyers, the pub was warm compared to the unheated chill of home, and convivial since someone or other they knew would usually turn up of an evening. Since then, the place had changed. The old boys and locals who propped up the bar were long gone, turfed out in favour of gastro-pub splendour.
She knew exactly where he’d be sitting. At the table by the fire, where thirty-something years ago (no, she couldn’t remember exactly: always a small bone of contention between them), he’d leaned across and asked her to marry him. Moments after accepting, she’d watched him get dragged off to a game of pool. Given the flak from his mother’s appalled reaction to the unromantic nature of his proposal, he’d taken Lou out to dinner and repeated it, organising the diamond engagement ring to be found in the bottom of her champagne glass. She accepted delightedly to a bored round of applause from three Turkish waiters.
Now she thought about it, the romance that was so absent from his original proposal had been absent from most of their married life. They had loved one another, of that she was sure, but those early years devoted to their careers and babies made it hard to carve out pockets of time for themselves. Their separate jobs – hers as a fashion journalist, his as a corporate lawyer – took them travelling to opposite ends of the country and sometimes of the world, leaving a succession of overpaid nannies to hold the fort. The money she earned salved Lou’s conscience – at least she was paying for the best childcare possible when she was away. By the time she began working from home, when Jamie was fifteen, Nic thirteen and Tom ten, the original driving force had disappeared from their marriage altogether. Almost without them noticing, Lou and Hooker’s paths began to cross less frequently until they had started to live their lives almost entirely in parallel.
There he was, just as she expected, nursing the remains of a pint, an untouched glass of white wine opposite him. He looked up, spotted her and raised a hand. Measuring in at just over six feet (with a heel on his shoe), he was still a handsome man, distinguished-looking some might say, with deep-set eyes, a vertical furrow running up from the bridge of his slightly skewed nose (rugby-playing break), smooth skin that, when he was feeling particularly smug, reminded Lou of a frying sausage about to split its skin. Imagining the speed with which this bonhomie would be transformed into something far less pleasant as soon as he heard her news, made her want to turn and go home. Then she remembered Nic and her resolve stiffened.
‘Excuse me?’ A young woman touched her arm. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Lou Sherwood?’
‘Mmm?’ Half turning, Lou took a closer look. Shiny fifties-styled hair, heavily lashed brown eyes intent on her, lipsticked lips, neat black suit, glass of champagne in hand. A distant bell of recognition clanged somewhere in the back of Lou’s mind but she couldn’t place her.
‘It’s Tess. Tess Granger. It’s been years. How are you?’
Tess Granger? Lou racked what she laughingly called her brain for something that would give her a clue to the younger woman’s identity.
‘Tess, of course.’ She was still trying to identify her while she bluffed. ‘What are you doing now?
‘After you left, I was made assistant to Belle Flanders. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have got this far.’
Aha! So they’d worked together over ten years ago at Chic to Chic. Belle had been one of the hungry young things snapping at Lou’s fashionable heels, but who the hell was Tess? She must have been there when she’d left, forced to give up her exhausting career partially thanks to redundancy but also by the equally exhausting demands made on her by Nic who was setting out on her teenage years with alarming abandon, and the two boys – so much easier. Nic was running wild, refusing to curb her will to any au pair. That and the redundancy had come at a time when Lou had begun to wonder what she was doing in the magazine world. She had become tired of the travelling and the endless demands made on her time. Her face didn’t fit any more, but she’d had enough. She’d even thought she might start her own dress shop then but Hooker had insisted the children needed their mother at home. He didn’t trust the sequence of au pairs looking after them not to fill their heads with rubbish and foreign swear words. He said only a parent could be trusted to teach their children what they needed to know. But Lou sometimes wondered whether she’d managed to teach them anything at all. However, she had begun to notice the way he had been looking at the young women they’d employed in the name of childcare, and caved in, partly for that reason and partly because she was too exhausted to resist.
‘I’m so glad it’s all worked out for you.’ Her powers of recall had totally deserted her.
‘It certainly has! I left six months after you and went to the States. Now I’m back as the new editor of Stylish. We’re celebrating.’ She gestured towards a young man and a couple who were talking and laughing at a table by the window. ‘Where are you now?’
Stylish? The glossy young rival to Vogue and this young woman was the editor. Suddenly Lou felt about a hundred years old. She looked down at – oh, no – her fleece, the convenient style bypass for the middle-aged woman. Shit! She deliberately hadn’t followed her resolve to stick to statement dressing that would advertise her business, because she hadn’t wanted Hooker to think she was making a special effort just for him. She hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she might bump into someone she knew. If only she’d changed into the pomegranate velvet coat she finished just before she went away. It had taken ages to make but the cut was so flattering, it had been worth every minute.
Hideously aware that the make-up she’d put on that morning was no longer a refuge for her almost certainly shiny nose, and praying her lipstick hadn’t leaked into the tiny vertical wrinkles that had recently been making a bid for domination around her mouth, she thanked God that her recent haircut had temporarily tamed things so at least in that department she looked acceptable. Perhaps Tess wouldn’t notice the rest.
Of course she would. Just move on, swiftly.
‘That’s fantastic news. I’m so sorry I can’t stop to chat, but I’m late meeting someone.’
‘Well, great to see you. We should catch up. Lunch or something.’ She held out a small embossed card.
Knowing Tess had absolutely no intention of following up this suggestion, Lou took the card, at the same time registering how useful the other woman might be to her. But it wasn’t too late to say something. ‘In fact, I’m setting up a new business that might interest you.’
Tess cocked an eyebrow. ‘Really? Then we should definitely stay in touch. Call me.’ But she sounded as if anything initiated by Lou would be of little interest to her.
‘Thanks. I will.’
They both turned back towards their respective engagements, Lou aware that Hooker was watching her, his glass now almost empty. He gestured a request for a replacement since she was by the bar. Irritated by the way he assumed she would do his bidding and even more by the fact that she was doing it, she shouldered her way through and ordered a pint of Adnams, Hooker’s long-time preferred real ale, and a large vodka and tonic for herself as the need for a shot of Dutch courage more powerful than the waiting glass of wine overcame her.
Hooker half stood as she approached, hobbled by the chair seat digging into the backs of his knees. By the time she’d put down the drinks, divested herself of her coat and sat down, his welcoming smile had changed into a grimace of pain. He sat down with evident relief. Unlike so many men his age, he still
