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Jill Mansell: Falling for you

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The toddler in the pushchair next to her spat his dummy out on Estelle’s shoe. Retrieving it and handing it back to him, she was rewarded with a face like thunder, as if it was all her fault. Strongly reminded of Kate at that age — the haughty attitude, the indifference — Estelle straightened up and quelled the butterflies in her stomach. She loved her daughter, of course she did, but she was also slightly afraid of her.

Oh Lord, that was an awful thing to even think. Not afraid, intimidated. Kate had inherited her father’s somewhat aloof manner, and the emotional distance had been furthered by the school she had attended. Estelle hadn’t been convinced that sending her to super-expensive Ridgelow Hall was necessary, but Oliver had insisted. ‘Can you imagine how she might turn out if we dumped her in the nearest comprehensive?’ he’d demanded. ‘Good heavens, woman, are you out of your mind?’ So Estelle had capitulated, thinking that maybe she was wrong after all, but the long-suppressed doubts had come back to haunt her. And as for the local comprehensive, well, it hadn’t seemed to do Maddy and Jake Harvey any harm. They may not have PhDs and stratospheric careers, but they were thoroughly nice people and had grown into the kind of young adults of which any parent would be proud. Plus, of course, they adored their mother. Despite all the truly terrible things that had happened to Marcella over the years, Estelle secretly envied her.

‘There he is! Dad, Dad, over here!’ The family at her side began screaming and Estelle was forced to dodge out of the way to avoid getting entangled with their frantically flapping banner. Dad, letting out a roar of delight, raced over and hauled several small children into his arms. As they showered him with kisses and he told them how much he’d missed them, Estelle saw him catch his wife’s eye and mouth: Love you. The wife, who was forty if she was a day, beamed like a teenage bride and blew him a kiss, happy to wait her turn.

Estelle’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. Now she was reduced to envying total strangers –

total strangers waving the kind of banner her own daughter would sneer at and pronounce naff.

She wouldn’t mind betting this couple would be having fabulous sex tonight.

Then she straightened, because Kate was coming through, pushing a trolley piled high with cases and looking like a celebrity travelling incognito in a sleek charcoal trouser suit, dark glasses and trilby-style hat.

‘Darling! Yoo-hoo,’ Estelle called out(slightly naffly), waving an arm to attract her attention.

Catching sight of her, Kate altered course and came over, proferring the undamaged side of her face for a kiss. Hugging her rather too enthusiastically in a feeble attempt to keep up with the neighbours, Estelle dislodged the trilby, which managed to land in the lap of the toddler in the pushchair.

The small boy stared at it as if it were a bomb. Kate snatched it up and thrust it back onto her head. Estelle flinched as one of the small children said, ‘Mum, what’s happened to that lady’s face?’

‘Sshh,’ his mother chided. ‘It’s not nice to say things like that. Poor girl ...’ She pulled a sympathetic face at Kate. ‘I’m so sorry. You know what children are like.’

Shooting the woman a look that could have pickled walnuts, Kate said brusquely, ‘Mum, can we get out of here? Now?’

Kate waited until they were racing down the M4 in the Lancia before speaking again. ‘Will Dad be there when we get home?’

Estelle shot her an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, darling. He had to work.’

‘Par for the course.’ Kate watched her mother light a cigarette. Estelle, a furtive smoker when her husband was around, had needed the boost of a Marlboro in order to brave the terrors of the motorway.

‘But he’ll be home soon,’ Estelle went on brightly, as she had done for the last twenty-odd years,

‘and he can’t wait to see you.’ She paused. ‘I thought we’d have dinner tonight at the Angel, just you and me.’

Kate shuddered. The Fallen Angel was the only pub in Ashcombe. Just you and me could be roughly translated as: the two of us sitting at a table while everyone else in the pub ogles us from the bar and sniggers at the posh bird’s comeuppance.

She hadn’t asked to be the posh bird, they’d just saddled her with that label God knows how many years ago, and ever since then she’d been stuck with it.

‘Darling. I know. But you have to face them at some stage.’

Estelle was only too aware of what gossipy small-town life was like.

Kate sighed and gazed out of the window as Berkshire sped past them in a blur of motorway-constructed emerald-green turf and geometrically planted trees. She knew her mother was right.

Aloud she said, ‘We’ll see.’

‘You’ll have to tell Mum,’ said Jake.

‘I can’t tell Mum.’ Maddy covered her face with her hands. ‘She’ll go ballistic.’

‘You still should. She at least has a right to know he’s back.’ Jake kept his voice low. They were outside in the back garden of Snow Cottage, Maddy sitting cross-legged on the grass and Jake lounging in the hammock, his eyes shielded by dark glasses, a can of lager in his hands. Upstairs, Sophie was having her hair rebraided by Marcella, in preparation for the ceremony.

‘He’s been back for months and she hasn’t known about it. He’s living in Bath,’ said Maddy.

‘What are the chances of her bumping into him?’

‘About the same as the chance of you bumping into him,’ Jake pointed out. ‘And you managed it.

Jesus, I can’t believe he didn’t recognise you. You must have been even uglier than I remember.’

‘I was.’ Memories had nothing to do with it; Maddy had the unfortunate photos to prove it, but she reached over and gave the hammock a shove anyway, causing Jake to spill ice-cold Fosters over his bare chest.

He flicked lager back at her with his fingers. ‘Thanks. So what happens now? I take it you won’t be delivering to his company.’

Maddy paused. She’d already told Juliet, who could betrusted to be discreet, and Juliet had reacted with typical pragmatism: ‘Look, I’m not just saying this because it means more business for us, but we are only talking sandwiches here. And you did say his staff were keen on our stuff. I mean, why should they miss out?’ She’d shrugged, then gone on in her gentle way, ‘Of course, it’s entirely your decision.

Whether you want to or not. You said he was a nice man; what did he have to say about it?’

‘That it was up to me.’

‘Well, just think it over.’

This was what Maddy had been doing ever since.

‘Daddy!’ A cross voice bellowed out and Sophie’s head appeared at her bedroom window. Put some clothes on. I can’t get married if you’re not wearing a shirt.’

Rolling sideways out of the hammock and landing with practised ease on his feet, Jake handed Maddy his half-empty can of lager.

‘I still think you should tell Mum.’

Maddy pictured Marcella’s reaction. As far as family feuds went, the Harveys and the McKinnons knocked the Montagues and the Capulets into a cocked hat. She thought of Kerr and her stomach contracted.

‘Maybe. But not yet.’

Chapter 5

Marcella worked as a cleaner at the Taylor-Trents’ house, which was how Maddy knew that Kate Taylor-Trent would have arrived home by now. It seemed almost incredible to imagine that they had once been best friends, playing happily together and sharing everything, right up until the age of eleven.

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