Verity regularly tried to discourage. Charlotte preferred not to mention it as she’d always found her own mother’s rebukes doubled her humiliation and her need to seek comfort from it. Nail biting had been hers.
‘They’re having enough fun without me there to ruin it.’
Oh. Now this didn’t sound good.
Charlotte sat down beside her, resisting the urge to pull her into one of the cuddles they’d so enjoyed when she was a little girl. Poppy had become a big fan of space since she’d started at this new boarding school that Oli had insisted would be the making of them.
‘I thought the three of you were friends.’
‘No, Mum!’ Poppy spat. ‘We’re not friends. Typical you. Seeing what you want to see instead of seeing exactly what’s in front of your face! Can’t you see they’re only nice to me because of Jack?’
When she saw the dismay on Charlotte’s face, she crumpled as quickly as she’d roared. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy. I don’t mean to shout at you on your birthday.’
This time Charlotte did put her arms round her daughter. Stiff shoulders and all. The poor love. Feeling she was playing second fiddle to her brother. How awful. Who knew if it was true? Girls could be so difficult at that age. So complex.
She’d hated being a teen. All of the changes that had come with it. And not just the physical ones. The new schools. New cliques. New friends to invent when she needed to escape her parents’ flat. She’d been so dreadfully shy and her school had been particularly awful. Bullies. Truants. Gangs. Charlotte had always thought of the life they gave their children as a godsend. Not a well-heeled copy of her own.
Poppy eventually ducked out of the hug, loosening yet more hair out of her thick, fishtail plait. She looked more little girl than blossoming thirteen-year-old. ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Don’t worry. I’ve probably got my period coming or something.’
She tried to protest, but Poppy held up a hand that distinctly said No, grabbed a couple of canapés off the counter and slipped away into the crowd. She was right. Now wasn’t the time. Just as it wasn’t the time to tell Oli she was up to the challenge. She wanted to raise their children together. For their marriage to work. She wanted her family. Even if it meant constantly treading water to keep it.
Charlotte cringed as the calls for a speech grew louder. It had been mortifying enough opening her presents in front of everyone. The gifts had been lovely, of course. Freya’s lace-edged serviettes made from Irish linen were beautiful. There’d been no need to confess they were seconds. Izzy had bought her a delicate necklace with a starfish on it. Her favourite sea animal. And Emily had given her a Brora cardigan she already had plans to move into for the autumn. Together they had bought her membership to the Royal Academy of Arts. She’d nearly wept at the thoughtfulness. It had been so long since she’d been to a gallery. Oli found art appreciation tedious at best.
Amazing to think how many years it had been since they’d properly seen one another and yet how perfectly her friends still knew her.
She stared at the gifts on the table. The children had given her a handbag she knew for a fact her mother-in-law had selected because it was bright blue, a colour Charlotte had never favoured. Poppy had tucked a couple of her favourite sanitizing gels into the side pocket, which was thoughtful. The rest of the gifts were … nice. She wasn’t ungrateful, but couldn’t help feeling that the guests had been generous in the way one might be to a maiden aunt who only came down from her poky cottage in the Lake District for Christmas. A spiralizer. A leather-bound journal. Quite a few organic soaps and lotions. She already had the book on hygge and was fairly certain she’d seen the Christmas ornaments at one of the school’s silent auctions a year or so back.
It was extraordinary how little the people she saw every day of her life knew her. Was it because there wasn’t much to know? She always agreed with Oli. Rarely put her foot down about anything as one of the school governors. She was the tea-maker, really. Had no opinion on current events. What little news she was aware of she read in Waitrose Weekend. Not exactly a paper with its finger on the world’s political pulse.
Perhaps it was her fault Oliver had strayed. Xanthe did seem terrifically interesting, if her Instagram posts were anything to go by.
Her eyes moved over to the small velvet box placed in prime position on the gift table. It was from the jeweller’s in Sittingstone village, so his errand this morning must have been to collect it. She didn’t know whether to feel hurt it had been so last minute or pleased he’d remembered at all.
The sapphire earrings Oliver had chosen were lovely. Beautiful, in fact. But clip-ons? It was his mother who didn’t have pierced ears. She’d had hers done since she was a teen. And, again, she had never really been one to wear blue, so …
‘Speeeeeech!’
Oliver stood up, shushing the crowd in that ‘All right, already. I’ll give you what you’ve all been waiting for’ way of his. They never wanted her to say anything, thank god.
‘Charlotte,’ he began loftily as the crowd leant in and the waiting staff topped up everyone’s glasses.
The children weren’t anywhere to be seen, save Poppy who, worryingly, was wandering back towards that little nook she’d appropriated in the kitchen tent. At the edge of the crowd, Emily, Izzy and Freya had all lined up and were each holding one of her handmade cakes. It looked like a Bake-Off presentation of Charlotte Mayfield’s Greatest Cake Hits. Those girls. Until this very moment, Charlotte had thought she’d invited them out of misguided sentiment, but honestly? She’d asked them to come because she wanted people who knew her at her party. The Charlotte who adored art. The Charlotte who couldn’t enter a room without giving it a tweak or a rejig so that it looked just so, and would then appreciate that she’d done as much. The Charlotte whose hopes and dreams they’d supported rather than dismissed as silly when there were other, Mayfield-shaped hopes and dreams to fulfil. She saw now she was drowning in a quicksand of upper-middle-class beigeness. Perhaps she’d known that, without their help, there wasn’t a chance on earth she’d be able to claw her way out and find herself again.
‘What can I say about my wife of over fifteen years?’ Oli took her hand and stood back, appraising her as one might a newly purchased heifer.
‘That she has the patience of a bloody saint!’ a red-faced man shouted out. Karl, was it? One of the chaps who propped up the bar at their local. What on earth had he done to warrant an invitation? She’d not so much as said hello to the man.
‘That’s a good start,’ Oli laughed congenially. He always could play to the crowd. ‘It’s astonishing to think this beautiful creature here is forty. It seems like only yesterday she was but a naive Yorkshire lass with nothing more than big dreams in an even bigger city—’
‘Oi!’ shouted Izzy, nearly losing her grip on the carrot cake. Oh dear. ‘I think you’ll find an art history degree hardly makes her Dorothy in Oz!’
Charlotte squeezed Oli’s hand. He squeezed back, mistakenly thinking she was on board with being portrayed as a modern-day Eliza Doolittle. When had his hand stopped becoming a thing of comfort? Yesterday morning? The first time he’d sided with his mother rather than his wife? This very moment?
She pulled her hand free.
‘Absolutely right, Izzy. And of course there was the party planning. Back in the day she would’ve had us celebrating properly up at Sittingstone Castle, but this clever one insisted all the cool kids were keeping it au naturel!’
No she hadn’t. She’d done no such thing. Charlotte was about to correct him when she caught him sending a pointed look at Freya’s bunting which was now, unfortunately, a bit worse for wear.
People laughed, but didn’t look as if they were entirely sure they knew why.
He carried on smoothly, ‘Regardless.’
Indeed.
‘Charlotte