was left on the pavement with a heavy heart – and a fearful one. Bring Justin with you if you like? And Lara isn’t happy? This Lara obviously meant more to Natalie than anyone else did. He spent the rest of the evening wondering why.
‘Got rid of him already?’ Lara smiled approvingly. ‘It didn’t take you long.’
‘Yes.’ Natalie’s smile was less strong. Pleasing Lara brought a glow of pleasure … but it was hardly enough to banish her doubts. She wasn’t sure about the course she was taking, in spite of her bravado in front of Simon. Was she really a wicked mother? Or was Lara right about leaving Justin with Si? It didn’t seem right to have to support a man, but … oh, she didn’t know. She was tired of thinking about it all. So horribly, desperately tired. And it made life that much easier, falling in with Lara.
But heaven knew what Simon’s parents would think of her when they found out what was going on. They would certainly not approve, neither would they understand. Hell. She really didn’t want to fall in their estimation – any more, that is, than her inept handling of Justin must have lowered her already. Oh, she’d noticed how Susannah looked at her, as if she was doing everything wrong. Not that she said anything of course – never interfered. She could just feel it.
Really, the Hardings were much better parents than her own; she quite liked them. They had been good to her and Simon, giving them money and helping out. She wouldn’t want them upset.
Oh, but she really couldn’t think about them either. She had too much else to consider. And all she wanted to do, really, was sleep.
Susannah’s saw made comforting phwitt-phwitt, phwitt-phwitt noises as she cut up lengths of wood in her work room – or studio as she had recently begun to refer to it. It was dark outside at the moment but, during the day, light slanted through a sky-light as well as from a window at one end of the room overlooking the garden, making it not only a practical place in which to work but a pleasant one. In the centre was a large wooden table with a pair of stools pushed under it, and beneath the window was a work bench and a deep square sink. Her materials were neatly ranged on shelves.
Not for her the chaotic methods of the stereotypical artist; Susannah had to have everything in perfect order before she could create – and that included the whole cottage. If a bed was unmade or a cup unwashed it had to be dealt with first.
Susannah loved the room, her pleasure in it only slightly marred by a sense of guilt. Paul had wanted to convert this single-storey extension, which the previous owners had used as a play room, into a dining room and she had had to battle it out with him.
‘Where will we entertain?’ he’d argued, looking round at what space was available and finding it seriously lacking. Cottages were all very well, he had begun to realise, but unless you could afford three knocked into one they were a bit claustrophobic.
‘Oh, there’s enough room for a table in the alcove in the lounge,’ Susannah had pointed out with a wave of one hand. She had no patience for serving up elaborate meals, and dinner parties bored her rigid.
‘Hardly ideal.’ Paul wrinkled his beakish nose at the idea. He’d recognised, though, the determination in his wife’s eye and had eventually decided to back down.
Now, coming in from a meeting that he’d told her – over the phone when she got back from the funeral – that he wished he’d chaired himself because then it would have taken up only half the time, his face registered that same frowning displeasure.
‘You’re early,’ Susannah said, removing a length of moulded wood from the Workmate and barely glancing up at him.
‘It’s gone seven o’clock.’ He stood impatiently watching her, his briefcase still at his side.
‘Your dinner’s in the microwave,’ she went on. ‘I’ve eaten mine already.’
‘Oh.’ His shoulders drooped as he nodded his head in unwilling acceptance of the fact, but he hung about for a bit longer, shifting from one foot to the other as though hoping circumstances might change: Susannah might drop what she was doing and decide she should head for the kitchen. She might mix him a gin and tonic, or give him a welcome-home kiss. She might stand on her head and do cartwheels … He went upstairs to get changed.
And returned less than ten minutes later wearing a polo shirt and sweater that set Susannah’s teeth on edge; Paul had about as much colour sense as a cat.
By now he was carrying his dinner plate in a cloth with one hand and a glass, knife and fork in the other. He arranged them neatly on a corner of the table before hooking one of the stools with his ankle and parking himself on top of it.
‘You don’t have to eat in here,’ Susannah told him with a little laugh. But the words had a chilly rasp to them.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he tossed back at her. ‘Drop sauce on the living-room carpet, or sit in the kitchen on my own?’
‘No –’ she shrugged carelessly – ‘I just thought that, what with all the sawdust in here and everything …’
‘Tastes like sawdust anyway,’ he grunted, cautiously licking the fork. ‘A bit more isn’t going to make much difference.’
He ate in silence for a while, pausing between mouthfuls to watch her, his head cocked on one side.
‘So what’s it going to be this time?’ he finally got around to asking.
Susannah tightened the vice a little. ‘A coffee table – eventually.’ She glanced up to find him sawing at a chunk of lasagne with apparent difficulty.
The problem seemed to be one of those dried-up corners, she noted with dismay, where the pasta pokes up through the sauce and turns to indestructible cardboard in the oven. Stainless steel cutlery was no match for it – the saw she held in her hand might be more suitable – but he managed to spear it at last and surveyed it with resignation. It sat solidly on the prongs of the fork, steaming gently, and looking about as palatable as layers of loft lagging.
And if she was meant to feel guilty about the quality of the meal that evening, she did. Pulling something from the freezer and re-heating it simply wasn’t good enough, she reminded herself, even if you had made it earlier yourself. Guilt could only be kept entirely at bay by starting a meal from scratch and creating a sink-full of dirty pots. Then you had proof that you cared.
‘What’s wrong with the table we’ve got?’ Paul wanted to know, ploughing manfully through the meal.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. This isn’t for us anyway.’ She hesitated before going on. ‘It’s going to have its top done in mosaics.’
‘Oh.’
Their eyes met.
‘Bringing out the big guns now, are we?’ He was trying to make a joke of it and not succeeding. ‘I mean, if you threw something that size at me …’
Damn! She’d splintered the wood. ‘That could always be arranged,’ she growled.
He grinned at her crookedly. Then suddenly pushing the plate to one side he went over to where she was working.
‘Here, hadn’t I better do that?’ He jerked back the sleeves of his sweater to reveal the hairy backs of his wrists.
It
