blazed some more in sheer embarrassment. She grabbed the wine from the fridge and poured more into the glass. You moron. Imagine turning into some cretinous, violent bimbo just because some he-man sticks his hairy chest in your face?
Anyway, you’re hardly a bimbo, she groaned inwardly. You’re staring into the abyss of forty.
Sam took a large gulp of wine. How could she have let herself down like that? She should have fixed him with a steely glare and told him exactly what forces of the law she’d use to make him stop his horrible party. When she’d suitably reprimanded herself, Sam went to bed. But sleep evaded her.
It was like being fifteen again, fifteen and horribly embarrassed because the boy in chemistry class had overheard her saying she fancied him like mad. Even twenty-four years later, that memory could still make her burn with shame. Now she’d done it again.
Finally, Sam got up and took one of the sleeping tablets she kept for emergencies. This certainly qualified. She slept eventually but her hot fevered dreams were full of a tall, laughing man in a soft, loose white shirt, a man who laughed at her for behaving like a petulant, hormonal fifteen year old.
When Sam left for work the next morning, she waited to check her mobile for messages until she was outside. She wanted to be doing something when she passed the house next door, she didn’t want to be vulnerable and on her own in case she met him.
‘You have no messages,’ taunted the impersonal voice on her phone almost before she’d got to the front gate. Instead of hanging up, Sam was forced to listen to all her old, undeleted messages in order to keep up the pretence of being a busy, high-octane career woman who wasn’t interested in men. Suddenly she noticed the dilapidated house’s front door swinging open. Quickly averting her eyes in case she saw him again, she began talking into the phone.
‘I’ll be there soon, we’ll have the meeting if you’ve got all the documents lined up from New York,’ she blathered. A taxi sailed up the road and Sam stuck out her hand to hail it.
‘Bye, talk soon,’ called a female voice behind her.
Sam automatically turned to see a beautiful dark-haired girl leaving the house, smiling at the man in denims and bare feet who was holding the door. Bare chested too, Sam noticed with a jolt, and blowing kisses at the girl who looked around twenty-two at most, a stunning doe-eyed twenty-two who’d clearly stayed away from home all night if the silvery dress she was wearing under a big, man’s coat was anything to go by.
‘Take care,’ the man said in that caressing voice, but he was looking mockingly at Sam who stood there, mobile in hand and her mouth open.
‘Do you want a taxi or not, love?’ demanded the taxi driver.
‘Oh, er yes,’ stammered Sam, pulling open the door and half falling in, with her raincoat trailing after her.
‘Late night?’ inquired the driver with a smirk.
‘No,’ hissed Sam, reasserting herself. ‘Covent Garden please.’
What an asshole, she thought. Loud parties, having flings with women half his age. I mean, that girl was twenty and he has to be late thirties at least. Bloody playboy. Probably some trust fund moron who’d never had a job in his life but lived off inherited cash. Sam stared grimly out the cab window and simmered. She hated men like that.
‘I can’t believe you’re moving in a little over two weeks. I can see it now,’ sighed Betsey dreamily. ‘A summery little cottage in a beech glade, with a thatched roof and pretty sun-bleached rooms, gorgeous home grown food and quaint little pubs where you can sit outside and eat oysters and watch the world go by with the Riverdance music in the background.’
Hope glared at her over a plate of fisherman’s pie. ‘It’ll be November, not summer.’
‘I think that’s Hollywood’s version of rural Ireland,’ laughed Dan from his position beside three-year-old Opal where he was attempting to clean up the mess she’d made squelching the insides out of several packets of brown sauce. Despite his efforts, Opal managed to fling a few opened packets on the floor before he could tidy them all away.
‘No,’ joined in Matt, ‘it’s the tour operator’s version of Ireland when they’re trying to sell you a time share. You know, Dan, maidens at the crossroads, sheep in the middle of the road and a friendly local with no teeth, a pipe and a tweed cap welded to his head waving at you!’
‘Haven’t we made an ad like that already?’ Dan asked.
‘Don’t think so. But we will, we will. I love the originality of advertising,’ Matt joked.
Matt, Betsey and Dan all laughed merrily. Hope stabbed her fish pie. Hilarious. Trust them all to make a joke about it all. It was her life they were talking about, not a location shoot for a bloody commercial. She was the one who’d be transported into another country, away from her friends and Sam, so that Matt could live the advertising man’s dream. His dream, her sacrifice. A fortnight after her sister’s visit, her delight that her marriage wasn’t over had disappeared to be replaced by a gnawing fear of the unknown. Matt and Millie were thrilled with the idea of moving; Toby was thrilled because he was going up in an aeroplane; Hope was terrified.
‘It’s going to be great, love, isn’t it?’ Matt said, noticing the tautness around his wife’s jaw. ‘You’ll love Kerry, I promise you.’ He was about to reach over and hug her, but Millie, sitting between them, catapulted her plate of chips all over the table.
All four children started giggling.
Hope sighed, grabbed a handful of kitchen towels out of her bulging, ever-present toddler bag, and began cleaning up.
Sunday was family day in the local pubs and that meant a war zone of small children rampaging up and down the premises while their exhausted parents rocked irate babies in their pushchairs and mashed up food for toddlers who were straitjacketed into high chairs, in between trying to shovel some pub grub down their own throats.
Hope, Matt, Betsey and Dan had often shared Sunday lunch together but the birth of Millie, Toby, Ruby and Opal meant lunch no longer took the form of a civilized clinking of wine glasses over sea bass fillets in elegant restaurants. Now, Sunday lunch was a grab-while-you-can bean fest in whichever local child-friendly establishment wasn’t jammed by twelve thirty.
Today, they were in the Three Carpenters, a huge pub with an adventure playground outside. This was very useful for exhausting small children but it was raining today, so the kids had turned the inside of the pub into an adventure playground.
There was always one family, Hope thought crossly, who let their kids run riot and didn’t move a muscle to stop them. Millie and Toby weren’t saints but she wouldn’t dream of letting them behave like those brats who were now trying to dismantle a high chair in the corner after spending at least half an hour ripping up beer mats.
‘Seriously though,’ said Betsey, waving at the harassed young waitress in the hope of getting more wine, ‘I’ve always had a yen to live in the country. There’s something about the whole rustic life that appeals to me.’
‘Betsey, honey,’ Dan said affectionately, ‘you couldn’t survive without
