Lindsay Armstrong - Married For Real

‘But you knew damn well you had me here as some kind of a hostage, didn’t you, Declan?’

‘Did I?’ he reflected. ‘Exactly what kind of a hostage, is what one wonders, to be honest. While I don’t doubt your devotion to the kids—oh, well—’ he gestured with one long, strong hand ‘—time will no doubt tell. Why don’t you invite me for the weekend, Arizona? We could start the process of apprising the world of our intentions.’

‘Come, by all means,’ Arizona replied with utterly false cordiality. In fact her stance and the look in her eyes said something quite different—come and do your damnedest, in other words.

To which, after a long, challenging moment, he merely smiled gently as if to say, We’ll see, we’ll see...

‘Dearest Mother,’ Arizona wrote that night. ‘I suppose it’s still all right to call you that and not Sister Margaret Mary, but I digress. The news is that I’m getting married again—now I know how you opposed, from the seclusion of your convent, my first marriage but from a purely materialistic sense, this one is even better. You’ve probably heard of Declan Holmes—who hasn’t? Yes, the same one who took over his father’s media empire (small media empire) at the age of twenty-six and now, at about thirty-three, could probably be justifiably termed a media magnate. Well, he was a good friend of Peter’s, he’s the children’s trustee and guardian and as I’m the children’s stepmother, it seems like a good idea. So far as your objections to my previous marriage go, he’s only ten years older than me, he’s not a father figure or anything like that, he’s a mighty marriageable man, but no, I’m not in love with him and I don’t think he’s in love with me. What else can I tell you? It’s to be a month from today...’

Arizona lifted her head and stared into the middle distance. Can I tell you that I’m incredibly confused, desperate and afraid? That I’m wondering whether I should leave the country or something like that—but how to leave the kids?

She closed her eyes then impatiently tore the sheet off her notepad and threw it into the wastepaper basket. A moment later she reached down and tore it up into little pieces, which she let fall like confetti into the basket, thinking at the same time that it was a cheap shot writing to her mother like that, that it was continuing a feud that should be over, that if the one thing her mother had done right in her life, it seemed she was making a good nun.

The next morning as she dressed, she observed the slight shadows under her eyes, grimaced then tossed her head. She pulled on jeans and a blue sweater, tied her hair back and went on her rounds of waking the children. And when they were dressed and assembled at the big table in the kitchen, she went out of her way to be as normal as possible over breakfast, served by Cloris.

‘Let’s see, Sarah and Richard, you have drama this afternoon after school. Daisy, you’re going to play with Chloe straight from school and I’ll pick you up at five o’clock and Ben—’

‘I know exactly what I’ve got on, thanks, Arizona, you don’t have to treat me as a child,’ Ben interrupted intensely.

‘Okay!’ Arizona smiled at him and got up to give Cloris a hand with the school lunches. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said casually over her shoulder, ‘Declan is coming to spend this weekend with us.’

‘Yippee!’ the twins chorused, and Daisy followed with a similar exclamation.

It was Ben who said moodily, ‘What’s he coming for? I thought he was here yesterday.’

Arizona narrowed her eyes. ‘And I thought you liked Declan, Ben.’

‘He’s all right,’ he said ungraciously. ‘But what is he coming for?’

‘It doesn’t matter what he’s coming for, Ben,’ Daisy said earnestly. ‘What matters is that he’s nice and we should be nice back, shouldn’t we?’

‘For God’s sake,’ Ben entreated, ‘can’t you make her stop lecturing us, Arizona? She’s only six—’

‘Ben—’

‘And you shouldn’t say that,’ Daisy continued solemnly. ‘Should he, Arizona? I mean talk about God like that?’

‘Eat your breakfast, Daisy,’ Arizona said smoothly.

‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Arizona replied with the patience of long practice.

‘Well, for crying out loud then,’ Ben muttered moodily, ‘what happened to the old saying about children—’ he glared at his baby sister ‘—being seen and not heard?’

‘Daisy not heard!’ Sarah said with a giggle.

Richard piped up, ‘That’ll be the day!’

Whereupon Ben got up and flung out of the kitchen with his breakfast half eaten.

Cloris wrung her hands and murmured something about growing boys, Daisy embarked upon the hazards of not eating one’s meals and wasting away, Sarah and Richard became convulsed with giggles, and Arizona raised her eyes heavenwards as she wondered where this golden, solemn little girl had inherited her lecturing and worrying tendencies from—because Daisy worried dreadfully about everything and never hesitated to expound upon it.

‘It’s all right, pet,’ she said to Daisy. And later when she dropped Daisy off, last, at school, reassured her once again.

‘Ben’s not really cross with me is he, Arizona?’ Daisy hung back in the car.

‘No, but it might be an idea not to, well, lecture Ben at the moment.’

‘What’s lecture mean?’

‘Uh—tell him what he’s doing wrong all the time—’

‘Because he might go away and never come back? You wouldn’t ever go away and never come back like Daddy did, would you, Arizona?’ Two large tears began to glisten on Daisy’s lashes.

‘No, no,’ Arizona said hastily and gave her a quick hug and a kiss. ‘Look, sweetheart, there’s Chloe waiting for you. Now, don’t forget you’re going home with Chloe and her mum after school!’

When she got back to Scawfell it was to find Cloris in a suppressed state of excitement. ‘Staying for the whole weekend, Arizona?’. She beamed widely. ‘I’ve already started on the blue bedroom and I’ve made a little list of menus—what do you think?’ She fluttered a piece of paper at Arizona.

‘I have absolute faith in you, Cloris, just don’t make it too grand.’

Cloris managed at the same time to look pleased yet slightly crestfallen. ‘Well, all right,’ she said slowly then smote her cheek. ‘The garden,’ she said anxiously. ‘It’s in a bit of a mess and we’ve only got two days, it’s Thursday today—’

‘I’m about to attack it, Cloris,’ Arizona reassured her.

‘Well, you are so good at it, but I did wonder if we shouldn’t get a gardening firm in, and then there’s Ben!’ she added dramatically. ‘What do you think is wrong with the poor boy?’

Arizona looked at her ruefully. ‘Still missing his father I would say—Cloris, don’t get into too much of a flutter about Declan Holmes, he’s only a man.’

‘I know.’ Cloris blushed nevertheless. ‘But it is a bit of an honour to know him, don’t you think, Arizona?’

‘As a matter of fact I don’t.’ Oh, hell, Arizona thought immediately, I’m going to have to do a bit of an about face soon, aren’t I? And with an impatient grimace, took herself off to attack the garden.

She backed the ride-on mower out of the shed and started on the wide expanse of lawn in front of the house. Scawfell, which Peter Adams had inherited from his parents, was situated on the south coast of New South Wales and comprised about fifty acres. The house was old, two-storied, large and rambling on the outside, but over the years Peter had redesigned the inside so that it was light, modern and very comfortable. It stood with its back to a tree-lined ridge and faced, over its several acres of lawn, the sea. There was a fairly steep cliff face beyond the lawn down to a perfect little bay with a crescent of sandy beach. It was a wonderful place to live if you liked the out-doors, sweeping vistas and the sea. Arizona, born in a city and carted from city to city, excepting while she’d been training to be a teacher, had taken to Scawfell and country life as if she’d been born to it. Always an energetic person, she’d found she loved gardening, grew her own herbs and vegetables and had reclaimed the orchard from a charming wilderness to a garden of bounty. She’d also had the stables renovated, and at present they housed three hacks and three ponies. All of which Declan Holmes had been paying for, she thought with a sudden pang.