Christmas dinner or a preamble to a pep talk during Monday meeting here in the office.
‘Sorry.’
‘I don’t think you will be!’ He regarded her with a rare and wry smile. He shook his head gravely, contradicting the gesture with a chuckle. ‘You’ve been sent for – asked for by name. There’s no achievement greater, no seal of approval more valuable, than personal recommendation. That’s what you have. Your reputation precedes you already. From tiny acorns, Stella – from wee little acorns.’
She tried hard not to look confused.
‘That little acorn of a cottage at Long Dansbury may have turned into the mighty oak of Longbridge Hall.’ He fell silent before continuing to himself. ‘Unlikely though. It’s the Fortescue seat.’
She couldn’t even nod. She knew of the Eames Lounger but not a Fortescue Seat. Longbridge Hall meant nothing to her. And contracts on Mercy Benton’s cottage had been exchanged – so there couldn’t be any problems there. She tried to think tangentially about trees – subsidence? She couldn’t remember any strapping great oak that could undermine the cottage’s foundation.
‘You will go on Tuesday morning. Eleven o’clock – be prompt.’
‘OK. I’ll do that.’
‘Good girl. Your mother’s asked me for Sunday lunch – will you be going? I am looking forward to seeing young William.’
The sentence was said in an altogether lighter tone at a faster pace and enabled Stella to speak more freely.
‘Uncle Douglas – I’m sorry to sound vague. But can you just tell me exactly where I’m going on Tuesday morning at eleven – and why?’
‘Longbridge Hall, Stella. In Long Dansbury.’
‘Right.’
‘Right at the centre of the village, give or take a half-mile driveway.’
‘OK.’ She paused, hoping she didn’t look bewildered. ‘Oh – and why?’
‘The Lady Lydia Fortescue has asked for you.’
‘For me? Lady Fortescue?’
‘It’s Lady Lydia,’ Douglas corrected. ‘Actually, for a while she was The Lady Lydia Huffington-Smythe – but that was her late husband’s surname and he was a commoner so when she inherited her own family seat, she was quite happy to revert to The Lady Lydia Fortescue. But her family are also the Earls of Barbary. Between you and me – they probably make it up as they go along.’ Douglas could see that Stella was too confused to speak. It didn’t matter, really. ‘Anyway, she was rather taken with the recommendation given to her by Mrs Benton whose cottage you sold. That’s all I know.’
‘I see.’ But Stella didn’t.
‘I don’t know what it’s about – she wouldn’t say. But she owns other properties in Long Dansbury – some would say she owns the entire village. And the villagers too.’
* * *
Friday night. Stella reached across to the bedside table to check the time. Saturday morning, really, at just gone two. The working week done, the weekend upon her. A cup of tea with Jo and her daughters after Will’s football club in the morning, Sunday lunch at her mum’s with any number of the extended family. Perhaps the new Pixar movie after that – she might treat herself and Will to a 3D showing. Where had she put the 3D glasses after their last outing? And why it was suddenly so important to find them, at silly o’clock, just then? She left her bed and tiptoed into Will’s room, smiling at his fidget and gruffle when she leant over to kiss him. She peered into his toy box but knew the glasses were unlikely to be there. Still, though, she sat in his room, on the floor, her back to his bed, awhile longer. The most peaceful place in the world.
Downstairs she went, to look through the odds-and-sods drawer in the kitchen before having a satisfying flashback and going to the coat rack. There were the glasses, in the pocket of her Puffa. It made her realize how long it had been since their last trip to the cinema. It made her realize how much warmer the weather had become, that this billowing black padded mainstay of colder climes hadn’t been worn since. She tried on each pair of glasses, then buffed the lenses as best she could before placing them, side by side, on the radiator cover near the front door. It was as if Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello had come to visit and left their specs there.
Stella went back to bed. Briefly.
She said to herself, you’re seeing Jo tomorrow, remember? Remember what she said? Remember what you’d planned?
It was useless. Sleep would elude her while that envelope remained under her bed. She tried to flatter herself that it was a Princess and the Pea scenario. Actually, the envelope was inside the old canvas and leather suitcase, in which she’d kept all her secrets and treasures since adolescence. She pulled the case out, unbuckled the straps and jostled the slightly warped lid away. She could lose herself in teenage love letters and the doodles in her Rough Book from school. She could distract herself with old photos and hark back to the days when camera film was sent off to BonusPrint and returned fourteen days later as unique memories preserved on Kodak paper – not stored on an iPhone and randomly scrolled through, in little. She could do any of these things, while away time until she was tired enough to put it all back in the case and clamber into bed. But that envelope had put up some kind of impenetrable barrier between the Stella sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom at thirty-four years old and the youthful Stella epitomized by all the keepsakes in the case. Halt! Who goes there! Access denied!
It’s me.
It’s Stella.
Let me in – I want my life back.
So she opened the envelope at half past two. She remarked to herself, as she did so, that the tacky adhesive could close against itself easily enough, if she lost her nerve or if she wanted Jo to think she hadn’t opened it. But when it tore a little, in the last inch or so, she acknowledged she’d gone past the point of no return. She felt inside. A paper clip holding a compliment slip against just a few pages, A4 size. She knew the paper clip would be pink or red or orange. Something bright and certainly not steely. And the compliment slip would have a handwritten personal message on it. She knew the essence of what would be on the sheets behind it – just not the precise wording.
It’s just going to say what it is.
It can’t say anything else.
You know what it is.
You asked for it.
She slipped the contents out and in one movement, took off the paper clip (turquoise) and gave a cursory glance to the slip of paper (handwriting in red pen with some kind of doodle in the lower right-hand corner – how lucky she was to have such a sweet-natured solicitor). To one side, she placed a page which was a letter. In her lap, face up, lay a certificate over the other pages. She read it in an instant, absorbing all the information in the blink of an eye and then, immediately, read it again, out loud sotto voce, into the stillness of her bedroom.
‘Certificate of making Decree Nisi Absolute (Divorce).’
The type was tiny – as if the words were shameful and should be read in a whisper.
Underneath
