‘What if one day is soon?’
Carrie was missing something. Angela’s eyes were bird- bright, beady with expectation.
‘What do you know?’
‘Oh.’ Worry crept across her face. ‘Shoot, I’ve given the game away.’
‘Well you hadn’t but you have now.’
‘If he did ask you, you know, to marry him, you’d say yes, wouldn’t you?’ The lines in her forehead deepened as she realised she’d dug herself into an even deeper hole.
‘Angela. What do you know?’
‘You mustn’t tell him I told you.’
‘Like I’m going to do that.’
‘He asked to borrow one of your rings, to get the size right.’ She sighed. ‘And he showed me lots of pictures, to check he’d get something you’d like.’ She brightened. ‘But he didn’t say when. Although, now I’ve spoilt the surprise. You’re going to have to act surprised when he asks you.’
‘You muppet. How could he not know you are the worst person at keeping secrets?’
‘I kept one.’
Carrie sighed. ‘You did.’
‘If he asks, what are you going to do, about, you know? You’ll have to do something.’
‘Yeah, I will and I should have done it years ago, instead …’ she paused. Instead of deliberately ducking the issue. ‘I need to do something about Richard Maddox.’ See, if she said his surname, it made it less personal, as if he wasn’t her Richard. As if she wasn’t entitled to call herself Carrie Maddox. ‘It’s time we got a divorce.’
Carrie dragged herself up the stairs to the staff room, consigning whoever had timetabled double drama for Year 7’s last periods on a Friday to the very far reaches of hell. As usual the staff room looked as if a cyclone had torn through, followed by marauding Vikings, hotly pursued by random burglars. The cupboard was bare of a single clean coffee cup and the biscuit barrel offered nothing more than crumbs.
Glad it was the end of the day, Carrie retrieved her bag and phone from her locker and a yellow post-it note fell out. With a smile she scooped it up from the floor. Alan had a habit of slipping them through the crack in the door.
Dinner tomorrow night? Prezzo or Pizza Express. Both have offers on. Lots of love Ax
He was out at a quiz night this evening with his cycling buddies and she’d promised herself a curry, a glass of wine and an hour with her laptop. Since she’d won a playwriting competition a few months ago, she’d been tasked with making a few changes so that it could be considered for a West End run. She had until September to get it sorted. So far, good ideas had been elusive. Thank goodness for the long summer holidays.
She tucked the note in her bag and checked her phone to find a text message from her sister, assuming it would be the usual can you pop to Tesco and pick up … she scanned it quickly.
Exciting news. Grab a bottle of something French!!!!!
‘Why French?’ she asked walking through the front door and into the living room holding out the bottle of Macon Villages, currently being feted on the supermarket shelf as reduced from £9.99 to £5.99. A bargain, no less, although she was sceptical that this bottle had ever been sold at £9.99.
‘We need to start getting in the mood,’ said Angela, bouncing out of the chair beside the fireplace.
‘The mood for what?’ Carrie flopped gratefully into the small two-seater sofa piled high with mismatched cushions. Friday night was batten-down-the-hatches night. Once her shoes were kicked off, she wasn’t going anywhere, although in her head she fondly imagined she still went out dancing. With a sigh she nestled into the comforting embrace of the cushions. This was her favourite room in the house. The only one not co-ordinated to within an inch of a paint chart.
‘A holiday. I’ve found us a free cottage, villa, house thing in France.’ Angela sat back down, clasping her gnarled hands, the joints ravaged by arthritis, on her lap.
Carrie’s ears pricked up at the magical word. ‘How free?’
‘Proper, real free,’ Angela giggled. ‘Oh, Lord, I sound like Jade. Marguerite, at Winthorpe Hall, offered me the use of her house in France for the whole summer.’
Angela worked at a rather swanky residence for distressed gentlefolk of advancing years. Basically it was an extremely posh old people’s home with an army of carers, an à la carte menu for dinner each evening with wine and its very own private cinema with screenings every night.
Her duties, as far as Carrie could work out, involved making up a fourth at bridge, completing shopping runs to the Clinique counter at the local Boots for age-defying potions, managing library visits and accompanying the residents on cultural excursions to the Royal Opera House or the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was a tough job but someone had to do it. Although, to be fair, Angela’s work opportunities were fairly limited.
‘And does Marguerite have all her mental faculties? Actually own the house? Or did she sell it years ago and she’s forgotten that minor fact?’
‘Marguerite most definitely has every last marble intact.’ Angela nodded her head to emphasise the point. ‘She’s so sharp she could slice slivers from a block of ice for her six o’clock G and T. With all her airs and graces, she’s like one of those old Hollywood stars. You should see her slippers, I swear they’re trimmed with marabou, or whatever that fluffy stuff is called. She has a different pair every day, to match her outfit.’
‘She sounds quite a character.’ Carrie could imagine her quite well tripping down the corridors of the very grand Winthorpe Hall. It was more like a luxury hotel than a home for the elderly.
‘She is.’
‘This place she has in France, I’m sorry, but why would she have a place out there and not live there? Or not sell it?’
‘She keeps it for her family. And she does go out there, when they visit, but she likes company. That’s why she moved into Winthorpe. Anyway the whole family are going to America this summer. The house will be empty and she said we can have it. What do you reckon?’
Carrie reckoned that it sounded far too good to be true, but in the absence of anything better coming along in the next few weeks before the end of term it was definitely worth considering. Blimey, once upon a time, she’d have happily leapt on the back of a scooter with a tent and a sleeping bag on her back and gone. Being cautious had crept up on her. Maybe it was all those risk assessments they were so fond of at school. You couldn’t take a trip anywhere without seven levels of form filling-in. OV8s, SF9s and a triplicate V13a.
‘Whereabouts is it?’
‘South of France. Provence sort of way,’ Angela paused, wrinkling her nose in thought, ‘Or around there. It’s in a village.’
‘And what sort of accommodation?’
‘I think, from what she said, it’s all on one level, a bungalow. She said it’s got fabulous views.’
Estate-agent speak for ‘it hasn’t got much else going for it’.
‘And the market in the village is wonderful and there are plenty of lovely places nearby to eat.’
‘The kitchen is dire you have to eat out.’ Carrie could see it now. No wonder Marguerite’s family weren’t keen on going.
‘What