Promoted: to Wife and Mother

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT FELT so good to hold him, to be held by him…Perdita gave herself up to the sheer pleasure of kissing and being kissed, and closed her mind to anything except touch and taste and feel and the slow burn of need. She had no idea how long they stood there under the tree, drizzle dripping through the leaves on to their heads, and she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything as long as he would go on kissing her like this.

And then consciousness returned reluctantly to make her aware that Ed had tensed and was lifting his head in spite of her instinctive mumble of protest. She tightened her hands against his withdrawal, but even as she did she heard the unmistakable ring of a mobile phone.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ed said with something close to despair as he fished it out of his jacket pocket. ‘I’m going to have to see if it’s one of the kids.’

Numbly, Perdita let her hands drop as he checked to see who the call was from. ‘What is it, Cassie?’ he barked into the phone.

Perdita’s blood was pounding through her body, making her feel light-headed and slightly unsteady on her feet. It was too much of a shock. One moment she had been safe and warm in his arms, the next she was hugging herself against the cold and the damp, listening to Ed’s one-sided conversation.

‘No…no, Cassie…because I don’t know any of these people yet…and because you’re only fifteen…I don’t care, that’s the way it is…You’re to go home…What’s wrong with your legs?…Well, get a taxi…’ Cassie’s voice squawked in his ear and he sighed. ‘Where are you?’ he asked, resigned. ‘All right, wait there. I’ll come and get you.’

Switching off the phone, he turned back to Perdita, a muscle beating in his jaw. ‘I’m sorry about that.’ He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. ‘I’m going to have to go. Cassie’s with some friends who are allegedly planning to go off to some party in a place she doesn’t know hosted by people she’s never met, and she wanted to know if she could go too. She hasn’t got any money or a coat and it’s raining, and I don’t want her walking back on her own…’

He sighed again. ‘She was supposed to be staying at home with Tom and Lauren,’ he said with an edge as he bent to pick up the discarded umbrella. ‘I’m really sorry about this, Perdita,’ he said again. ‘This wasn’t how I wanted this evening to end.’

Perdita already had a bright smile in place. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I understand.’

And she did understand, that was the trouble. She had been through this so many times with Nick. His children had been younger, but they had had to come first too. Of course they did. How could Perdita have argued against that?

She made herself remember that time with Nick as she lay in bed that night, her body still raging at the abrupt way those kisses with Ed had ended. Time and again, she had made allowances for Nick’s preoccupation with his children. Plans had been changed at the last minute, dates interrupted, holidays cancelled as Nick had danced to his ex-wife’s tune.

At least Ed didn’t have an ex in the background, but it would be just the same. Perdita knew from Millie and other friends how worrying and all-consuming teenagers could be. Of course Ed had to drop everything to go and pick up his fifteen-year-old daughter. Of course he needed to make his children his priority.

Of course Perdita would have to accept it. She would have to be the one who always said, Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. I understand.

But in the end, with Nick, she hadn’t been able to accept it any longer. Was it too much to expect that, just occasionally, she could have come first? That he would make time for her, rather than taking it for granted that she would fit in around him and the children? That he would make her feel loved and wanted and not just an extra pressure for him to deal with?

Apparently it had been. Pushed to the limit, Perdita had steeled herself to issue an ultimatum. Give me the attention I deserve or I leave. And Nick had chosen to let her go.

It was just as well Ed’s phone had rung when it did, she told herself. Otherwise it would have been too late. They would have come back to the flat, they would have made love, and that would have been it. It would have been impossible to pretend that he didn’t really mean anything to her then. And that would have been a terrible mistake.

No! cried her body, strumming with frustration. No, it wouldn’t. It would have been worth it!

But Perdita’s head knew better.

So she was ready when Ed came to find her in her office on Monday. He had rung several times on Sunday but she wouldn’t answer the phone and made sure that she went out with Rick to get her out of temptation’s way that evening.

‘About the other night…’ he began, but Perdita interrupted him before he could go any further.

‘It’s fine, Ed. There’s no need to explain anything. I understand perfectly.’

Ed was daunted by her bright manner. It was hard to believe that this brittle woman was the same one who had been so soft and warm and responsive on Saturday evening. He had been reeling ever since. There was normally such a refreshing astringency about Perdita and he had been totally unprepared for how sweet she had been, and his body was still aching with frustration

If only Cassie hadn’t rung when she had…Ed could cheerfully have throttled his daughter when he’d picked her up. He hadn’t, of course, but he had been in an extremely bad mood, to which Cassie had taken exception, and they had argued all the way home, which was not the way he had hoped to end the evening.

Now he couldn’t stop thinking about Perdita. The memory of her and that startling sweetness was like fire in his blood, and he had longed to see her again. He had been hoping that he could have seen her yesterday, but she had obviously been out all day and he had found himself impatient and nervous as a teenager at the prospect of seeing her today.

Talking in her office wasn’t ideal, but surely they were close enough now for that not to matter? Something about her smile, though, was making him uneasy.

‘I thought…I hoped…that we could try again this evening,’ he said as he came into her office and closed the door behind him. ‘Cassie’s under strict orders to stay home tonight! Have you got time for a drink, at least?’

‘I don’t think so, Ed.’ Perdita had got to her feet when he’d appeared and now she bent over her desk to straighten some papers. The glossy hair swung down, hiding her face. ‘I thought about it yesterday and I think it’s better if we stick to a professional relationship.’

‘You don’t think it’s a bit late for that?’

When Perdita lifted her head, he could see that her cheeks were tinged with colour. ‘I’m sure we can manage to forget Saturday night,’ she said with some difficulty.

‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to forget it,’ Ed said honestly.

Perdita swallowed and hugged her arms together the way she did when she was nervous, and it struck Ed how very familiar she was to him already.

‘I don’t think mixing business with pleasure is a good idea,’ she said uncomfortably, and he thrust his hands into his pockets, trying not to get angry. She was slipping away from him, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

‘It felt like a very good idea on Saturday night,’ he reminded her, knowing that he was being unfair but unable to help himself. ‘Or are you going to pretend that you didn’t enjoy it?’

His voice was harsh and the colour in Perdita’s cheeks deepened painfully, but she met his eyes steadily enough.

‘No, I’m not going to pretend that, but I do regret it now. I would rather we were just friends.’

‘I’ve got enough friends,’ said Ed bitterly. ‘I don’t want you as a friend. I want you as…’

‘As what, Ed?’

He didn’t answer immediately. Unable to stand still, he went over to the window and looked out, his back to Perdita, his shoulders rigid. ‘You’re the first woman I’ve wanted since Sue died,’ he told her without looking at her. ‘I think…I thought…that we could have something good together.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Perdita said quietly. ‘I just don’t think it could work. Our lives are too different.’

‘Are they?’

‘You know they are. You’ve got three children who demand all your attention.’

‘Not all of it,’ he protested.

‘Almost all of it. When they’ve had the attention they need, and work has the attention it needs, how much would be left for me? Enough for a brief affair, maybe,’ she said, answering her own question, ‘or an occasional fling. I know, because I’ve been there before,’ she said. ‘I don’t want that again. I promised myself that if I have another relationship, it’ll be a proper one. I deserve more than being someone who just gets squeezed in every now and then between other commitments.’

‘I see.’ Ed turned from the window, bitterly disappointed. It had felt so good the other night, so right, that he couldn’t believe that she was pushing him away.

But he couldn’t argue with her. He was hardly going to propose marriage after one kiss, if that was what she wanted, he thought, disappointment feeding an anger that was so much easier to deal with than hurt. He would have to know her a lot better before he could be certain that she would the right stepmother for his kids, even if he was sure that she was right for him.

‘Well, there’s not much I can say, is there?’ he said. ‘Except I’m sorry. But of course I will respect your decision. You don’t need to worry about me hassling you to change your mind.’

That ought to make her feel better, oughtn’t it? Perdita thought. So why did she feel so awful?

‘I hope it won’t make it difficult working together,’ she said awkwardly.

A glimmer of a smile lightened Ed’s face. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘We’re both adults, Perdita. We should be capable of keeping our personal and professional lives separate.’

Easy to say, Perdita thought as the days passed. Doing it was another matter. It was very hard when her heart leapt at the mere mention of Ed’s name in a meeting, when the sound of his voice set her heart hammering and a mere glimpse of him walking down the corridor was enough to make her hollow with desire.

And it wasn’t just at work that she had to be on her guard. There was always the chance that she would bump into him when she visited her mother. She never did, but was constantly on edge in case he appeared.

Every week, she turned up dutifully at the garden project. It made her feel better to know that her colleagues were also required to contribute to the community in some way and, when she heard about some of the projects the others were involved in, Perdita couldn’t help thinking that she was better off where she was. She and Tom cleared and dug and dug some more and, although she grumbled as a matter of form, she didn’t mind it nearly as much as she said she did. The more often she met Grace, the more she liked her, and it was a chance to catch up with Millie too, who had thrown herself into her new job with gusto.

There was something surprisingly satisfying about hard physical labour too. Perdita dug the heavy clay soil until her back ached, but in lots of ways it was a welcome respite from thinking about Ed or worrying about her mother.

Being with Tom was bittersweet, a constant reminder of Ed, but the closest she could get to him too. Tom was a restful person to work with. He was quiet, uncommunicative even, and the exact opposite of Perdita in many ways, but they made a good team. He might be sullen with his father or at college, but never with Perdita, who liked his quiet sense of humour and the sense of self-containment obviously inherited from his father. If he was still guilty of a “bad attitude” she at least could see no evidence of it.

After the first time, when Ed had picked him up, Tom had to make his own way home from the project and, as she was usually going to see her mother anyway, Perdita would give him a lift. She was never sure if she longed to see Ed or dreaded bumping into him on these occasions. Tom was frustratingly taciturn about life at home so Perdita gleaned little from him, although he did volunteer once that Ed had been in a filthy mood ‘for weeks now’.

It seemed that she wasn’t the only one suffering then. Again and again, Perdita told herself that she had done the right thing, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss down by the river. She replayed it endlessly in her head and even when she managed to think about something else, like work, it was always there, simmering at the edge of her consciousness, ready to flare up into vivid memory at the slightest provocation: the sound of rain on an umbrella, the smell of the river, the sight of Ed’s name on a report. Perdita was torn between wishing that she could rewind time to before Cassie’s call and congratulating herself on her narrow escape.

‘I just wish that I could forget it,’ she sighed to Millie one evening over a bottle of wine. ‘All I want is to not think about it any more.’

She should have been more careful what she wished for, Perdita thought wearily a few days later. Her mother caught an infection that proved stubbornly resistant to antibiotics and she grew alarmingly weak. For the next fortnight, Perdita had no time to think about Ed as she dealt with doctors and ferried her mother to and from hospital for tests.

It was soon clear even to Helen that she couldn’t manage on her own while she was unwell, and it was a mark of how ill she felt that Perdita finally persuaded her to accept some help. A carer came in three times a day for half an hour, for which Perdita was enormously grateful, but she still went round first thing in the morning to get her mother out of bed and help her to get dressed. She would try and coax her to eat a little breakfast, and then drive to the office, but it was difficult to concentrate on work and everything seemed to take twice as long as normal.

After work, she went back to check on her mother and spend most of the evening with her before she went home. Perdita felt horribly guilty about not moving in permanently, but she held back from letting out or selling her flat. Some days Helen seemed to be getting better, and Perdita clung to the thought that she could somehow get her old life back eventually.

The tests provided inconclusive and the doctors suggested in the end that her mother was simply at an age when it took longer to bounce back from an infection. Perdita held on to the hope that this was just a temporary situation and made herself concentrate on the signs that Helen was indeed getting stronger. When those were few and far between, though, she would spend the night at her mother’s house, sleeping in her old room, and those were the times she found hardest.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mother, but she hated living with her. Their personalities had clashed at the best of times. She was too impatient to be a good nurse, Helen James too old and set in her ways to be a good mother any more. Perdita hated the fact that she was old and ill and resented her for her stubbornness. Too often she would end up snapping at her mother, and then spend the rest of the day feeling guilty.

At least she still had a job, Perdita reminded herself constantly, although she worried, too, that her performance was not as good as it should be. Still, the situation could be so much worse. She ought to feel grateful for what she had.

But as the days turned into a week and one week into two, and she was still staying with her mother, it became harder and harder to feel grateful instead of exhausted and frustrated and dangerously near the end of her tether.

She reached the end of it one cold, wet November evening when she put some of her mother’s clothes into the washing machine and helped her upstairs to bed, only to find when she came down again some time later that there was water all over the floor.

Close to tears of tiredness and strain, Perdita rang a few numbers, but it was almost ten o’clock at night and nobody would come out until the next morning. Which meant another morning off work while she waited for the engineer to arrive. Hearing the desperation in her voice, one of them suggested that she pull out the machine and see if one of the hoses at the back had come off. ‘If that’s the case, you could fix it yourself, love.’

Well, yes, if she had the strength to pull the machine out of its slot. Sloshing around in the great pool of water, Perdita struggled to get a grip of the machine, but it was hopeless and in the end she gave up. She would go and ask if Tom would give her a hand. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

But it was Ed who answered the door, not one of the children, as she had hoped, and Perdita was horrified at her body’s instant, instinctive and quite uncontrollable reaction. It was as if every sense, every nerve ending, had forgotten that she was tired and miserable and was jumping up and down and cheering instead. It was a worrying sign when a month of severe talking-tos had simply left her body overjoyed at the mere sight of him again.

‘Perdita!’ he said in surprise.

Still smarting from her rejection, Ed had tried to make things easier for both of them by avoiding her as much as possible, but now he was shocked at her appearance. Once his own instinctive leap of joy had subsided, he saw that she was pale and drawn and so tightly wound that she looked as if she would snap if he touched her with his finger. ‘What is it?’ he asked in concern.

To her horror, Perdita felt tears grab at her throat and for one terrible moment she thought she wasn’t going to be able to speak at all as she forced them desperately down.

‘I was wondering if Tom could come and help me move my mother’s washing machine,’ she managed, but her voice was shamefully cracked and wavering all over the place. ‘I’ve had a bit of a flood.’

‘I’ll come,’ said Ed.

Shouting up the stairs to tell his children where he would be, he walked back with Perdita, who was intensely grateful that he wasn’t going to ask questions. It would take so little for her to burst into stupid tears, and the quiet reassurance of his presence was making her worse, not better. It would have been so much easier to pull herself together if he had rolled his eyes at her uselessness, or been annoying or patronising.

But Ed wasn’t like that. He pulled the washing machine out easily, found the hose that had come off and reattached it without the slightest fuss. Pushing the machine back into place, he turned to find Perdita mopping ineffectually at the water that covered the floor.

‘You look terrible,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’

‘I was just coming to make something when I found this mess,’ she said wearily. ‘I don’t think I can face anything now.’

‘You need something or you’ll be ill too.’ Ed hesitated. ‘Why don’t you go and have a bath or shower and I’ll have a look in the fridge?’

The thought of a bath was so inviting that Perdita had to close her eyes to resist it. ‘I need to dry this floor first,’ she said.

‘I’ll do that.’ Ed took the mop from her and it was a measure of Perdita’s tiredness that she simply didn’t have the strength to snatch it back. ‘Go on, off you go-but don’t fall asleep in the bath or I’ll have to come up and get you!’

‘I can’t let you do this,’ she said helplessly.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, what about Lauren and Cassie and Tom?’

‘They’ve had something to eat, and they know where I am. They’re all supposed to be doing their homework, but I have no doubt that the minute they heard I was going out they all sloped downstairs and are happily watching some rubbish on television,’ said Ed in a dry voice.

‘Still…’ Perdita hesitated and he glanced at her.

‘Still, what?’

‘You shouldn’t be doing this for me when…well, you know…’

‘When you don’t want to kiss again, and have been avoiding me ever since?’

At last there was some colour in her cheeks. ‘You said you didn’t want to be friends,’ she reminded him.

Ed sighed. ‘I was angry and disappointed, and I didn’t act in the grown-up way I should have done,’ he admitted and then he smiled. ‘Of course we are friends, Perdita,’ he said gently. ‘And what any friend would do now is insist that you go and have a bath. Go on, off you go,’ he said, making shooing motions with his hand, and Perdita succumbed to the wonderful temptation of being told what to do.

When she came down after her bath, the floor was clean and dry, the washing machine whirring to catch up with its interrupted programme, and the kitchen smelled wonderfully of grilling cheese.

‘I’ve made you macaroni cheese,’ Ed told her, seeing her sniff appreciatively. ‘It’s not very glamorous, but I couldn’t find much in the fridge and, anyway, it felt like good comfort food. I’ve also taken the liberty of finding another bottle of your father’s wine. I’m sure he’d agree that you need a glass right now.’

Taking the dish of macaroni out from under the grill, he pulled out a chair from the kitchen table with a flourish. ‘If madam would care to take a seat?’

Perdita sat obediently. There was a horrible constriction in her throat which made it impossible to speak but she managed a smile, albeit a very wobbly affair.

Ed set a plate in front of her and presented the dish with a serving spoon. ‘Help yourself,’ he said.

But Perdita couldn’t. All at once the pressure of tears was too much and she had to press her fingers to her eyes to hold them in, and even that wasn’t enough to stop the humiliating trickle from beneath her lashes.

‘Hey, what have I said?’ Ed put down the dish and allowed himself the luxury of touching her. How could he not rest his hand on her shoulder when her head was bent so that the dark, silky hair swung forward to hide her face and she was so clearly in need of comfort?

‘Nothing. I’m just being pathetic.’ Pride helped Perdita draw a deep breath and lift her head, and she brushed the traces of tears furiously from her cheeks. ‘I’m just not used to anyone looking after me,’ she tried to explain. ‘It’s only because you’re being so nice to me,’ she added almost accusingly.

The grey eyes filled with humour. ‘Would you rather I was horrible to you?’

‘At least I wouldn’t snivel,’ said Perdita with a return to her old form, and Ed smiled as he pulled out a chair and sat down at the end of the table.

‘You’re tired and overwrought,’ he pointed out. ‘A few tears is the least you’re allowed. Now eat up your macaroni before it gets cold!’ he pretended to scold her.

Perdita picked up her fork. ‘This looks delicious.’

‘I’m afraid the sauce is a bit lumpy,’ Ed apologised with a grimace. ‘I can never get it to go smooth. The kids are always moaning about my sauces.’

The sauce was, indeed, lumpy but to Perdita, tired and hungry and desperately in need of some warm, comforting stodge, it was one of the best things she had ever eaten.

‘It’s fantastic,’ she said in between mouthfuls.

‘I feel sure you’re just being kind,’ said Ed, but she could tell that he was pleased. ‘You should hear Cassie and Lauren when I make it for them. They get down on their knees and beg me to go on a cooking course where I can learn to make a sauce properly, the minxes!’ he finished with a grin.

‘You don’t need to go on a course,’ said Perdita. ‘I can teach you how to make a sauce. I’ll teach you all, in fact. There’s no reason why your kids shouldn’t learn, too-there’s no mystery to it!’

Ed brightened. ‘Would you really do that?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s what any friend would do,’ she quoted his own words back at him.

There was a tiny pause. ‘So is friends really all we can be, Perdita?’ Ed asked after a moment.

Perdita didn’t answer directly. She put down her fork and reached for her wine. ‘Did I ever tell you about Nick?’ she asked, her eyes on the glass she was turning slowly between her fingers.

Has she told you about Nick yet? Ed remembered Millie’s words at Perdita’s lunch party.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Is Nick an ex-boyfriend?’

‘He was more than a boyfriend,’ said Perdita quietly. ‘Nick was the centre of my world for two years. I loved him the way I’ve never loved anyone else. I would have done anything for him.’

Ed wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear all this, but he had asked, he supposed. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in compromise?’ he said, remembering what she had told him when they’d first met. ‘You must have compromised somewhere along the line if you lasted two years.’

‘I did,’ she said, her expression sad. ‘I compromised everything I believed about myself. I thought I was strong and independent and confident, and it was a shock to realise when I met Nick that I was ready to chuck all of that out of the window as long as I could be with him.’

Ed frowned. ‘Didn’t he love you?’

‘He said that he did,’ said Perdita, wondering how to explain Nick to a man like Ed, ‘but he was always afraid of committing himself to me.’

‘What, even after two years together?’

She bit her lip. It still wasn’t easy to think about how blindly she had believed in Nick, how determinedly she had closed her eyes to what she didn’t want to see. It hadn’t all been Nick’s fault.

‘Nick hadn’t been separated from his wife that long when I met him,’ she tried to explain. ‘He still felt guilty about splitting up the family, and he was very concerned about his two children, although they actually adapted to the new situation better than either of their parents.’

‘Were you the reason Nick and his wife separated?’ Ed made himself ask, and was relieved when Perdita shook her head.

‘No, there was nobody else involved. Their relationship had simply broken down and it had all got very nasty-and it went on to be even nastier with the divorce settlement going to court. I understood why Nick was wary of getting married again after that, but I didn’t mind. Getting married and having children of my own honestly wasn’t an issue for me. I just wanted to be with him,’ she said simply. ‘And when we were together, it was wonderful.’

Her expression was wistful and Ed poured himself a glass of wine to distract himself from it. He wasn’t enjoying hearing about how much she had loved bloody Nick at all.

‘What was the problem, then?’ he asked, conscious of an edge to his voice that shouldn’t have been there.

Still twisting the glass between her fingers, Perdita sighed. ‘Nick didn’t want us to live together. He thought it might be too difficult for his children to accept me at first, so initially I was introduced as a friend who went back to her own flat at the end of the day.

‘The custody arrangements were that Nick saw them one day a week and alternate weekends, but his ex-wife was constantly wanting to change the arrangements.’ Perdita’s mouth thinned at the memory. ‘I’m still sure she was just trying to make trouble between us. She used to go in for a lot of emotional blackmail, telling Sasha and Robin that Nick didn’t love them enough, didn’t want to see them, all that kind of nonsense, and Nick fell for it every time.’

She shook her head. ‘I’d tell him to just ignore her, but he would tie himself into knots trying to placate her because he believed that made life easier for the kids. Maybe he was right, I don’t know. All I know is that I was always the one pushed down his list of priorities. You wouldn’t believe how often we’d have something planned for the weekend and it would get changed at the last minute because Nick had agreed to do something with the children.’

Ed tried to imagine Perdita meekly accepting the way her plans were continually changed, but he just couldn’t do it. She was much too strong a person for that…wasn’t she?

But even the strongest people could be vulnerable, he knew, and love made you more vulnerable than anything else.

‘It sounds to me as if this Nick was jerking you around,’ he said bluntly, and Perdita lifted her shoulders in a strange gesture of defeat.

‘He wasn’t doing it deliberately, but yes, that was what was happening,’ she said. ‘And I put up with it.’