Fern Britton - Hidden Treasures

‘Maybe. Sorry, Mum, got to go, a customer’s just walked in. Speak later. Love you.’

The lovely Chloe, thought Helen. Wasting her first-class Cambridge degree in Classics by working in a charity shop in Bristol. Her social conscience and a passion to save the world from environmental collapse meant that she recycled everything – even earbuds, if she could. Perhaps she did? Chloe was only twenty-two but seemed so old for her years. A single-minded single woman. By the time Helen was Chloe’s age she’d been married a year and had just become a mother to Sean. Chloe came along three years later.

And now they were all grown-up. Sean was something big in advertising and, despite the economic mess, he could apparently afford a Porsche Boxster. Should she worry about her children a bit more, she wondered.

‘No,’ she said out loud. ‘They can worry about me for a change.’

Helen climbed out of bed, and was thrilled once again by the cream deep-pile carpet that her feet sank into. As her mother used to say, ‘It’s never your extravagances you regret, only your economies.’

Had it been an extravagance to give up her metronome life in West London? She’d amazed herself with the speed and ease of her leap from Chiswick Woman to Cornish Country Woman. One minute she was ironing Gray’s shirts and playing the apparently contented wife, the next her marriage had finished. It was almost like a film. They met, they married, they had a family, they had problems, he apologised, she endured, they became friends, they separated. Credits roll, The End. Go home. But home was no longer the London house where she’d raised a family, but a wonky-walled cottage called Gull’s Cry in the village of Pendruggan.

How Gray would hate it. The house was not built for anyone over five foot six. He would need to wear a crash helmet to avoid serious head injury. A towering six foot three with a large leonine head and a mane of greying hair worn long and pushed back off his face, he was still a very handsome man. With his bright-blue eyes and a permanent tan, most women found him irresistible; yet he had chosen her. Reliable Helen.

She thought back to the time they had first met. It was the mid-eighties and Helen was supplementing her meagre income from the BBC, where she was a secretary in the newsroom, by working odd nights in a wine bar in Shepherd’s Bush. Gray was one of the regulars. He flirted with everybody. He drank rosé wine with ice and was teased by his mates, but he’d just laugh and tell them that only real men drank rosé. He was a partner in an expensive car dealership and drove a turquoise-blue Rolls-Royce Corniche, nearly always with the roof down. Hearing the deep throb of the V8 engine as he pulled up outside, Helen would quickly check herself in the mirror behind the rows of bottles at the bar. One evening he came in alone, ordered a bottle and two glasses and settled himself at the bar. He was waiting for his latest girlfriend to arrive, but she never did. He drained the first bottle, ordered another and turned his seductive blue eyes on Helen instead. He waited for her to finish work, took her out for a curry, and then took her to his bed.

Helen had fallen completely, totally in love. Sure, she’d had a couple of boyfriends before, but no one had ever made her feel so sexy and protected. Gray (who hated his real name, Graham) liked her lack of sophistication and her dogged adoration. Two months after their first night, Helen had missed a period. She told Gray, who immediately went AWOL, leaving Helen to a fortnight of blind panic. Should she tell her widowed dad? Terrified it would kill him, she kept it all to herself for two weeks until one evening, a hungover Gray arrived on her doorstep with a bunch of tulips, a paste diamond ring from Shepherd’s Bush market and a proposal of marriage.

They were married within the month and her father had the good grace to say nothing when Sean arrived weighing eight and a half pounds. Even he knew that was a good size for a premature baby!

Helen loved being a mum and a wife. She was a good homemaker and didn’t mind Gray’s lack of support with nappies or ironing. The dealership seemed to take up all his daylight hours, but she understood. When Chloe arrived they moved from Gray’s flat to a four-storey Edwardian townhouse just off the Chiswick High Road. It had a good-sized garden which she filled with spring bulbs and summer flowers.

Then one weekend they had thrown a garden party for his workmates. Her friend Penny, whom she’d met at the BBC, came to help. It was a really warm day and she had put the children downstairs in the cool to have a little nap, taking the baby alarm with her. After an hour’s silence, she thought they were sleeping well. But when she went to check on them she heard Gray’s voice through the slightly ajar door.

‘Sssshhh, sssshh, gorgeous …’

This was the first time Helen had ever heard him talking to the children so soothingly.

‘… She can’t hear. I turned the baby alarm off.’

How thoughtful of him. She pushed the door open and saw Gray with his trousers round his ankles, entwined with a woman she’d never seen before, summer dress pushed up to her waist, knickers on the floor, one leg wrapped around Helen’s husband and one breast hanging out. She looked at Helen over Gray’s shoulder and smiled: ‘Hi.’

Gray spun round and fell over. Watching him scrambling on the floor caught up in his trousers and boxer shorts sent such a feeling of violence through her, he should’ve been glad that she didn’t have a carving knife in her hand. Instead, she checked that the children were still sleeping and went into the kitchen, where she sat at the table and sobbed. Penny found her there and, after sending her off to bed with a box of Kleenex and chucking out all of Gray’s chinless friends, she launched into Gray with such ferocity that he ran to the pub. He came back at closing time to find Penny guarding Helen’s bedroom door.

‘I have made up the sofa bed for you in the basement. The kids are asleep and I’ll stay here tonight to get them up in the morning. You have got a lot to prove. Not least, that you will never again be this shitty to Helen – or you will have me to answer to.’

He had slunk downstairs.

Penny stayed for a week, filling Helen with good sense and strength.

It took a very long time before Gray shared Helen’s bed again or was allowed to touch her. Despite his refusal to talk about what had happened or to answer any of her questions, Helen eventually decided to let her anger and feelings of betrayal go, and to give him a second chance.

The next time it happened, it hadn’t hurt quite so much.

Or the next.

That’s not to say that his serial infidelity was not a torture for her. Death by a thousand cuts. But she confided in no one. Certainly not Penny, who would have been furious. Besides, Penny had her own problems. She was having an affair with the deputy news editor, who was married.

‘I know I’m a hypocrite, Helen,’ she confided. ‘But his marriage has been over for years and at least you and Gray are back on track.’

If only you knew , thought Helen.

Penny continued, ‘They haven’t slept together for yonks, but he can’t leave her because she’s so unstable and he would never forgive himself if she did anything stupid.’

‘You deserve so much better though, Pen. How long are you going to wait for him?’ Helen said gently. ‘Until one of you dies?’

‘I keep hoping it will sort itself out. I love him so much. We are meant to be together.’

As these things do, they did sort themselves out. The mad, sexless wife appeared at the office Christmas party with blonde hair, a big smile and eight months pregnant.

This time it was Helen’s turn to look after Penny. She rang the deputy news editor at work and gave him what for in no uncertain terms. When Gray heard, he gave Penny a cuddle and said, ‘Welcome to the sinners club.’