sometimes their mothers were almost strangers to them.
Oliver knew that it was a struggle for his parents to send him to the exclusive prep school he attended, but no matter what sacrifices had to be made there always seemed to be just enough money for things like a new school uniform, and extras, like the skiing holiday he had had just after the New Year.
Once he had seen Pepper safely round into the back garden, he excused himself, telling her gravely, “I’m just off to cricket practice…I might make it on to the first junior team this year.”
Pepper watched him until he had disappeared then headed into the garden.
“Pepper, my dear! You’re early…”
“The traffic was in my favour for once.” Pepper kissed Mary’s cheek and allowed the older woman to hold her close. Mary Simms was the only person she ever allowed to embrace her in that way. Instinctively Pepper always held herself aloof and remote from others, but Mary was different. Without Mary…
“You’re looking very well, Mary—both of you are, in fact.”
There was no emotion in Pepper’s voice as she studied their faces. No one looking at her could guess how close were the bonds between them.
Mary Simms, who had grown up in a rambling old vicarage near Cambridge, populated by not only her parents but a collection of ancient aunts and uncles as well, had almost from birth been used to showing her affection freely and physically. It hurt her more than she could ever put into any words that Pepper had been denied the love she herself had known as a child, and with which she surrounded her husband and son.
Philip Simms greeted Pepper with his usual absent-minded bonhomie. Philip was a born teacher; he had the gift of communicating to his pupils the desire for knowledge. He had taught her so much…given her so much. Here in this shabby house she had….
“Did you see Oliver?” Mary’s voice cut through her thoughts.
Pepper smiled at her.
“Yes. He was just leaving. He said something about cricket practice.”
“Yes, he’s hoping to be chosen for the school’s junior team.” Love for her son and pride for his achievements shone out of her eyes as Mary talked.
Philip was carefully transplanting some young plants, and Pepper watched him. He was always so gentle and careful about everything he did, so endlessly patient and understanding.
“Come on inside, I’ll make us all a cup of coffee.”
The kitchen had changed very little since the first time Pepper had seen it; true, there was a new washing machine and fridge freezer and a new cooker, but the large cupboards on either side of the fireplace and the heavy pine dresser were just as Pepper remembered them from long ago. The china on the dresser had belonged to one of Mary’s aunts, as had much of their furniture. Money had never been of prime importance in the Simms’ lives, and for Pepper coming back was like crawling back into the security of the womb.
As Mary made the coffee they talked. Neither of them ever ceased to marvel at Pepper’s success; they were as proud of her as they were of Oliver, in some ways perhaps more so, but they didn’t totally understand her—how could they?
As she sat on one of the battered formica-covered stools Pepper wondered what Mary would say if she knew what she had done. For a moment her eyes clouded, but it was pointless trying to apply Mary’s code of ethics to her own actions. Her life, her emotions and reactions were so complex that neither Mary nor Philip could ever really understand what drove her.
They had been so upset when she first decided to leave Oxford, but neither of them had ever tried to dissuade her. She had spent nearly a year living in this house, cared for, cosseted and protected by its owners. They had sheltered her and given her something that she had never experienced before in her entire life. They were the only true good and Christian people that Pepper knew; and yet she knew many who would disparage and deride them for their simple lives and their lack of interest in wealth and success.
Coming here was something she needed almost as much as she needed revenge. She had to force herself to limit her visits. Once a month, Christmas, and birthdays…
She and Mary drank their coffee in the sort of silence that only exists between people who know one another well and are completely at ease with themselves and each other. Afterwards Pepper helped Mary to wash up and then prepare the lunch, simple domestic tasks that none of her executives or her staff would ever have imagined her doing, but no one else was ever allowed to see her like this, vulnerable and dependent.
After lunch they all went out into the garden, not to sit down and drowse in the early afternoon sun, but to attack the weeds that relentlessly threatened Philip’s flower beds. As they worked, he talked. He was concerned about one of his pupils. Listening to him, Pepper was flooded with love and humility. But for this man she would still be exactly what she had been at sixteen, an uncivilised, uneducated, little savage, who knew only the laws of her gypsy tribe, governed by emotion rather than logic.
She left shortly after five o’clock on Sunday, after afternoon tea on the lawn, eating Mary’s homemade scones and some of the jam she had made the previous summer. Oliver was there with a couple of friends, who studied her car with amused nonchalance. While she watched them Oliver had grinned at her, a conspiratorial, engaging grin that showed quite plainly the man he was going to be. Already in Oliver Pepper could see seeds of great personal charm; of intelligence and drive, and more.
All his life, wherever he went, whatever happened to him, he would have these years to look back on; the love of his parents, the security they had given him, and all his life he would benefit from those gifts, just as a seedling plant growing in good, enriched earth would grow stronger and hardier than one that had to struggle in poor soil.
Handicaps of any kind could be overcome, but they left scars like any other injury. Oliver would grow into adulthood without those scars.
Pepper got up and bent to hug and kiss Mary and then Philip. All of them walked over to her car.
“It’s Oliver’s school’s Open Day in three weeks’ time,” Philip told her. “Will you be able to come down for it?”
Pepper looked at Oliver who grinned bashfully at her.
“Well, since he’s my godson, I suppose I shall have to make the effort.”
She and Oliver exchanged smiles. She knew that she had struck exactly the right sort of note in front of his friends. They had all reached the stage where any display of adult emotion was deeply frowned upon.
She got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. Ahead lay London, and Monday morning.
Would they respond to her letters? Somehow she felt they would. She had dangled a bait none of them would be able to refuse. All of them, for their varying reasons, would expect to benefit from a connection with Minesse Management. Pepper smiled grimly to herself as she headed for the motorway—a brief twist of her lips that held more bitterness than amusement.
3
On Monday morning Pepper overslept and was late. She could feel the tension building inside her as a traffic jam in Knightsbridge delayed her still further.
Up ahead of her she could see people milling in and out of Harrods, Knightsbridge, the Brompton Road, Sloane Square; all of them had become a shopping paradise for those with money to spend.
Elegant women in Sloaneish Caroline Charles outfits, wearing Jourdan shoes, paused outside shop windows. It was here in Harvey Nichols that the Princess of Wales had shopped prior to her marriage to the heir to the throne, and in nearly every department in the exclusive store were girls whose sharply cut British upper-class accents mirrored hers. American and Japanese tourists gathered outside Harrods’ main entrance. Pepper noticed absently that Arab women were much less in evidence now than they once had been.
She glanced impatiently at the clock