Jill Mansell - Falling for you

Despite the countless hurtful names Kate had once called her, Maddy didn’t suppose she’d be allowed to retaliate now. When you were twenty-six, it was probably one of those things that was frowned upon. Even if you did sometimes still feel fourteen years old inside.

The wedding was a huge success, despite Tiff and Sophie’s refusal to kiss each other when Marcella declared, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ on the grounds that kissing was, yeeugh, gross.

Now, having spent the evening watching a celebratory Rugrats video, the bride and groom were upstairs in their bunk beds, fast asleep. Sleeping over at each other’s houses two or three times a week suited their single parents perfectly, and when both Juliet and Jake wanted to go out on the same night, like tonight, Marcella was always happy to babysit. (Not that anyone was allowed to call it that.

As Sophie had loftily pointed out, ‘We aren’t babies. You just look after us.’) Looking in on them, Maddy tucked her niece’s spindly brown leg back under the duvet and carefully removed a cross-dressed Action man (wearing one of Barbie’s tutus)from under Tiff’s neck. She headed downstairs and found Marcella stretched across the sofa eating jalapeno-chilli crisps and watching a documentary on BBC 2. Since meeting Vincenzo d’Agostini three years earlier and moving into his house up on Holly Hill, Marcella had found new – and much deserved – happiness. Everyone adored Vince and declared that they were perfect together. With a pang, Maddy saw that the documentary was about foster carers. Marcella’s inability to have children of her own had been a source of sorrow to all of them; even now, at the age of forty-three, she still harboured powerful maternal urges.

‘I could do that.’ Marcella pointed at the TV screen with a crisp. ‘D’you think they’d let me, or am I too old and decrepit?’

Maddy leaned over the back of the sofa and gave her mother a big hug. ‘You’d be brilliant, but don’t just rush off and come back with one as a surprise. It’s the kind of thing you need to talk about first.’

‘That was different, Bean was only a puppy.’ Marcella recognised the dig. ‘There wasn’t time to discuss it. The man said if I didn’t take her, it’d be curtains for Bean. So what else could I do?’

‘Ooh, I don’t know, how about wave a placard saying, "Go on, tell me a heartrending story, I’m a total pushover"?’

‘But look at her!’ Marcella reached for Bean, who was curled up beside her, and swung the little dog into the air. ‘Even if the man was lying to me, how could I have said no? If you’d been there, you wouldn’t have been able to either.’

‘I wouldn’t have paid him fifty pounds,’ said Maddy, because Marcella truly was the queen of gullibility. The traveller who had sold Bean to her on a busy street corner in the centre of Bath surely hadn’t been able to believe his luck.

‘Are you saying Bean wasn’t worth it? Oh, sweetheart, don’t listen, cover your ears! Anyway,’

Marcella went on, folding the puppy’s long floppy ears lovingly under its jaw, ‘isn’t it time you were gone? If this programme’s going to make me cry I’d rather do it in peace.’

Maddy imagined telling her mother that the man she’d met on Saturday night and liked so much was in fact Kerr McKinnon. Marcella might not burst into tears, but the torrent of abuse that would pour forth would be spectacular.

Surely it was kinder not to let her know.

The Fallen Angel was busier than usual that Monday evening. Joining Jake and Juliet at the bar, Maddy was struck once again by the beauty of the pair of them, Jake so lean and blond and tanned, like a surfer, next to Juliet with her bewitching dark hair and eyes, lily-white skin and voluptuous figure.

They made the perfect couple visually, got on like a house on fire and adored each other’s children, yet there wasn’t so much as a flicker of chemistry between the two of them. It was such a waste, but there was nothing anyone could do about it; they simply didn’t fancy each other — ooh, drink.

‘Thanks.’ Maddy sat down next to Juliet, who had thrust the glass of Fitou into her hand. ‘No sign of the other team yet?’

Monday night was darts night and this evening they were up against the Red Fox from the neighbouring village of Claverham.

‘They’re always late. So did you tell Marcella yet?’ Jake waved his empty lager bottle at Nuala, behind the bar. ‘Another one of these, darling, thanks. Well?’ He returned his attention to Maddy, one eyebrow raised.

‘No, I just couldn’t. That smells fantastic.’ Keen to change the subject, Maddy lifted her head as one of the waitresses emerged from the kitchen with an array of plates balanced on each arm. To the right of the bar was the restaurant area, where several tables were already occupied.

‘Coward,’ retorted Jake.

Juliet gave him a prod. ‘Leave her alone. I don’t see why Maddy has to tell her at all. Even if Marcella does find out that this chap’s moved back to Bath, she could always pretend she didn’t know he had.’

Maddy nodded. That made sense, actually. OK, so maybe it was a little underhand, but if she was only doing it in Marcella’s best interests .. .

Anyway, why had it suddenly gone so quiet in here? As the conversation died, Maddy swivelled round on her stool, realising that someone had just walked into the pub behind her.

Oh shit, please don’t let it be Kerr McKinnon.

It wasn’t, although the new arrival had caused just as much of a stir. Although stirs were supposed to be noisy, weren’t they? And this was the opposite of noisy, more of an anti-stir.

Along with everyone else, Maddy couldn’t help gazing at Kate Taylor-Trent. She would have done it anyway, even if Kate’s accident hadn’t happened; it had been eight years since she’d last seen her, after all. But the livid scars were there for all to see, despite the baseball cap pulled down over her forehead. As Kate followed her mother through the pub to the restaurant area, she gazed determinedly ahead, refusing to catch anyone’s eye.

Under his breath, Jake murmured, ‘It’s like that bit in High Noon.’

Apart from a few of the locals acknowledging Estelle with a nod and a mumbled, ‘Evening, Mrs Taylor-Trent,’ nobody else was speaking. Desperate to break the embarrassing silence, Maddy burst out laughing as if she’d just heard a brilliant joke, then realised too late that she sounded as if she was laughing at Kate. Hurrying to cover the faux pas, she said brightly, ‘Juliet, you should have seen them, they were so funny,’ and promptly realised that this only made her sound more guilty.

For good measure, Kate chose this moment to look back over her shoulder and stare directly at her.

Feeling dreadful and prickling all over with embarrassment, Maddy pretended she hadn’t noticed and took a huge glug of Fitou.

‘Who were so funny?’ said Juliet, puzzled.

Highly entertained, Jake ruffled Maddy’s hair and said, ‘Nobody. Well, apart from my sister.’

‘Tiff and Sophie, I was talking about.’ Maddy decided to go for the bluff and pretend she hadn’t just been blurting out any old rubbish. ‘They looked so sweet tonight in their bunkbeds, that’s all I meant. Sophie insisted on sleeping in her wedding dress.’

‘And you’re still blushing,’ Jake couldn’t resist pointing out.

‘Oh, shut up.’ Seeing Kate had caused her to regress; she was feeling stupid and inadequate all over again and now to cap it all she was redder than her glass of red wine. Right, stop it, enough.

Nuala Stratton leaned across the bar, agog. ‘Is that her? Is that the one who was always so horrid to you?’

As if Estelle Taylor-Trent were likely to bring any number of half-stunning, half-scarred 26-year-olds into the restaurant for dinner.