Danielle Steel - Bungalow 2

She made breakfast for them the next morning, and told him how to get to the school. She lent him her car to get there. He was back two hours later, the children were settled, and he was ready to get to work. They worked relentlessly on the screenplay together all through the week. The project was well in control, and moving ahead by leaps, faster and better than either of them had expected. They were turning out to be a powerful team, as they played ideas off each other, which enriched the script and the story day by day.

She spent the weekend with him and the children, showing them around. She babysat for Isabelle and Rupert while he looked for apartments. She made cupcakes with them, and they made papiermé¢ché puppets with her, as she had done with her own children years before. When he got back, the whole kitchen was a mess, but his children were beaming at their new friend. They had made little animals and puppets, and Isabelle had made a mask.

“Good lord, what have you all been up to? What a dreadful mess!” He laughed, and noticed that Tanya had papier-mé¢ché all over her chin. He pointed, and she brushed it off.

“We've had a very good time,” she confirmed with a smile.

“I hope so. It'll take you a week to clean it up.” After they put the children's creations aside to dry, he helped her clean up and put everything away. The children were playing on the swings outside, which were still there after all these years. Tanya said it was nice to see them used again. Isabelle and Rupert were bringing the house back to life, and so was he. He was bringing something different and new to her work. She was learning a lot from him, and he from her.

He said he had found an apartment in Mill Valley, and she was sorry to hear it. She liked having them there. He apologized that it wouldn't be available for another week.

“That's fine with me.” She smiled at him. “I'll be sorry when you go. It's so nice having the children here.” She was tempted to ask them to stay, but he needed to have a life and place of his own. They couldn't live in her children's rooms for six months, although it would have been nice. “I hope you come to visit often,” she said to him. “They're such sweet kids.” They had mentioned their mother to her, and looking very solemn, Rupert explained that she had died when she fell off a horse.

“I know,” Tanya said seriously. “I was very sad to hear about it.”

“She was very pretty,” Isabelle added, as Tanya nodded.

“I'm sure she was.”

She distracted them then with pads of paper and colored pencils and suggested they make drawings for their father. He had been delighted to get them when he got back. He was touched that Tanya was so nice to his children. She took all of them out to dinner that night. The children ate hamburgers and french fries, and she and Phillip had steak. And she felt like a family again, when she got back to the house, with Phillip driving, and the two little ones chatting animatedly in the backseat. They told Tanya they liked their new school, but they told her they'd be going back to England next summer, after their dad finished making his movie.

“I know,” she said, as they walked into the house. “I'm going to work on it with him.”

“Are you an actress?” Rupert asked with interest.

“No, I'm a writer,” Tanya explained, as she helped Isabelle take off her coat. The little girl looked up at her with a smile that melted Tanya's heart. It wasn't hard to do.

Phillip and Tanya continued to work on the script together for the next week. What they were doing was essentially preproduction on a modest scale. They were getting all their ducks lined up. And the following weekend he and the children moved out. She hated to see them go, and made him promise to bring them back to visit soon. As it turned out, he brought them to her house often. He brought them after school, to play in the kitchen and do homework, while he and Tanya worked on the script.

Phillip hired several local actors, and a young girl from L.A. They started shooting the movie in April. They finished at the end of June, and by then he and Tanya had worked together for six months night and day. Isabelle and Rupert were totally comfortable with her. She had them over to dinner often, and bought them familiar things to eat from the English grocery store in the city. It was fun doing things with them. One Saturday when they weren't filming, she took them to the zoo. She brought them back to Phillip at dinnertime, with cotton candy all over their faces, and they had stopped at the carousel on the way. And in the summer, she and Phillip took them to the beach. It was like a reprieve for Tanya, who said her children were much too grown up, and busy with their own lives now.

Having Tanya nearby was a relief for Phillip. He brought the children over more than he intended to, but she insisted she loved it, and his children begged to visit her in Ross. They liked her rambling old house that her children had loved, too. And over their many months of intense work, she and Phillip had become friends. They had shared many confidences by then, about their past lives, their children, and their spouses, even about their childhoods. She said it helped her writing. Insights into other people always gave her work more depth.

The children were staying with her for the weekend, and her own children were home from school, when they finally finished the movie on the last day in June. Molly and Megan thought Isabelle and Rupert were absolutely adorable, and took them out with them sometimes when they had errands to do. Isabelle was particularly serious, and Rupert had a funny little sense of humor. They were sweet children, and Tanya felt a pang to realize how attached to them she had gotten. When Phillip said they were going back in July, she wanted to beg him not to go. She couldn't imagine what it would be like once the children were gone and her house was silent again. She couldn't bear the thought. He was touched when she said it to him one night over dinner. They were doing postproduction now, and Tanya was relieved that it was moving slowly. They had been remarkably diligent about every aspect of the film. Phillip was very proud of it, and Tanya was proud of him. He had done a fantastic job, and he was thrilled with the script.

Their relationship had been entirely professional so far. Phillip was a relatively formal person, and very English. The only time he let his hair down with her was when he saw her with his children. Each time he did, she touched his heart.

“I think you should stay another year,” she teased him at dinner one night, with her children and his.

“Only if you do another movie with me,” he teased back.

“God forbid,” Tanya said, and rolled her eyes. She kept swearing this was her last film forever. It had been an enormous amount of work, more than either of them had expected or planned, but they were both convinced the results were good. Phillip was planning to edit it himself when he went back to England. He had rented a studio from a friend.

By the end of July, he had done everything he wanted to in the States. Tanya wasn't sharing the final editing process with him, but she did as much as possible before they left. He was planning to spend the last two weeks of his trip traveling around California, and surprised Tanya by asking her to go with them. Isabelle and Rupert begged her to. She had just enough time to do it with them before taking her own children to Tahoe, and then she had an idea.

“Why don't you come to Tahoe with us, after your trip? We'd love it. And then you can go back after that.” He had already let go his apartment, and she told him he could stay in the house again. It would only make the summer livelier, and once he agreed to go to Tahoe, she agreed to join them on their trip around the state. It was something to do, and Molly and Megan thought it sounded like fun for her. It worried them that all she did now was work, and she had looked so grim all year, ever since her romance with Gordon had broken up. Finding him in bed with his costar had hit her hard. It was nice seeing her more relaxed again, and they could see that she and Phillip were friends. Even Megan approved, and had mellowed a lot that year.