Mrs Gregg,’ Xander said. He respected her right to be addressed like this – even though eight years on and being privy to the end of her marriage, the birth of her grandchildren and that Unfortunate Incident at the Roundabout With That Silly Car Which Wasn’t Her Fault, Xander considered Mrs Gregg to be on the outer ring of his family.
‘Seventy-two minutes?’ she ventured. Xander cocked his head and smiled. ‘Seventy?’
‘Sixty-eight,’ he said.
‘Very good, that,’ said Mrs Gregg. ‘Tea?’
‘Please.’ They sipped in amicable silence, each leafing through the documents on their desks. Xander looked up. ‘You’ve had your hair done.’
Mrs Gregg touched it self-consciously but smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Very nice,’ said Xander. He wished his own mother would wear her hair in a similar style – elegant and in place – instead of the unruly thatch half in, half out of a bun, invariably adorned with debris from the garden. ‘Mrs Gregg, can you take this to the post office? And can you pick up a nice greetings card – blank inside?’
She glanced at him. When Xander had been steady with Laura for all those years, he’d never once asked her to help assist in the running of that relationship. He’d scoot off at lunch-time himself and return with flowers or something bulky in a bag which would sit quietly taunting her from the chair in the corner until he left in the evening. That was another part of her training going to waste – he had no need for her to alert him to Valentine’s Day, or Special Occasions. Yet today he was asking her to buy a card, blank, just like his expression.
‘Blank inside,’ she said, writing it down and, without looking up, she asked, ‘And what should be on the outside?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘something soft – floral perhaps. Or a landscape.’
She wrote it down. Floral. Landscape. Unlikely to be a special card for a ‘significant other’ – or however his generation referred to girlfriends these days. She felt strangely relieved and yet somehow disappointed for him too. He’s such a nice young man, she often described to her friends at bridge. It’s a bit of a waste, she’d say. Perhaps he’s not a lady’s man, one of her chums might venture. Oh, he’s not like that, Pauline would say, almost defensively. The contradiction had never confronted her – how she wanted to mother him, be at the helm of his life, yet keep the Decorum of Division she’d been trained to maintain.
‘Anything else?’
‘Treat yourself to a Danish pastry,’ said Xander.
‘Why, thank you!’
With Mrs Gregg gone, Xander leafed through his diary and in-tray. Design, print and packaging wasn’t a sexy business, but it was a solid one and even in the dire economic climate, Xander found his long-term clients remained loyal. He’d cut overheads instead of staff and it had been serendipitous that Keith, the designer, had asked to go part-time just when the office rent had been hiked, so Xander and Mrs Gregg moved to these smaller premises in the same building. Everything remained the same. Apart from the chair that had been in the corner of the old office, on which the flowers or the bag with the bulky object for Laura had once sat.
I don’t need that chair, Mrs Gregg, Xander had said. And that’s when Mrs Gregg realized Xander had broken it off with Laura – right at the point of engagement, she assumed. Though he said they could bring the chair with them, if she felt it might be useful, she’d declined. If he didn’t need it, who was she to suggest he might, at some point, in the future?
‘I bought this card – it has flowers and a landscape and is what I’d call gentle. I have paper napkins with this very design.’
‘Monet,’ said Xander.
‘No, no – it wasn’t pricey.’
‘Monet,’ Xander said again, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘The Garden at Giverny.’
‘One of my favourites,’ Mrs Gregg said, as if there’d been no faux pas.
‘It’s most appropriate, thank you.’
Xander made a couple of calls and then, with the card open on his desk and his pen thoughtfully pursed between his lips, he gazed out of the window before beginning to write.
‘I’ll take the post,’ Mrs Gregg said at the end of the day.
‘There’s not much,’ said Xander.
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘I can post it on my way home.’
‘Let me,’ said Mrs Gregg. ‘You know those country lanes – if you get stuck behind something, you’ll be trundling along for hours and miss the post altogether. I’ll pop it in the box outside Elmfield Estates – it’s at the end of my street. It’s never collected before six. Never.’
‘OK,’ said Xander. ‘Thanks.’
She was barely out of the office door before she was leafing through the mail. Yes, yes, them, them, boring, boring. Ah! Aha!
Lady Lydia Fortescue
Longbridge Hall
Long Dansbury
Hertfordshire
Xander’s handwriting: even, bold and steady, written with his trademark calligraphy fountain pen. Mrs Gregg tutted at the envelope. Convene with women your own age, Xander, not an upper-class old battleaxe. Cut your ties with minor aristocracy! Venture forth into the real world – the one beyond Long Dansbury.
Chapter Three
Stella didn’t often go out, nor had she had her friends over that much recently. Her social life had dwindled over the last three years but this was her call because the invitations to socialize were no less forthcoming. Her close friends, her oldest friends – those she could count on the fingers of one hand who brought her all the dependable warmth and comfort of a well-fitting thermal glove – were always at the end of the phone, consistently energetic respondees to text messages and Facebook updates. Indirect contact and communication had become so easy that it was hard to remember when time was last spent together actually in person. She didn’t mind; she was always busy and, with the new job, tired too. It wasn’t as if she had much spare time to wonder how to fill it. But two weeks into her new position at Elmfield Estates, Stella had now settled into the routine. It was as if she’d been swamped by paperwork, floor plans and surveyors’ reports and had suddenly looked up and thought, where is everyone? So tonight, butternut squash soup simmered on the stove and a baguette was ready on the breadboard awaiting the arrival of Jo, the closest Stella had to a sister. Tomorrow, she’d invited herself over to her older brother Robbie’s and the day after that, their eldest brother Alistair would be hosting Sunday lunch for her on the condition she brought their mother and dessert. It did cross her mind that in one weekend she could conceivably regain the stone she’d lost over the last two years.
Jo arrived with a packet of tortilla chips, a jar of salsa, a great new haircut and, predictably, the suggestion of a date with some bloke who had a tenuous link to someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew Jo – and Stella had barely closed the front door.
‘Come on in, madwoman.’
‘You do realize I haven’t actually seen you since Pancake Day?’
Stella laughed. ‘Ah yes, when Stevie burnt herself on the pan, Scarlet spilled the sugar all over the floor and you referred to Michael as Tosser all evening?’
‘He was Chief Tosser – in charge of flipping the flipping pancakes,’ Jo justified. ‘And I told my daughters to keep away from the stove and let me do the sugar sprinkling.’
‘How are they all?’