‘A nice kitchen,’ I said. ‘I’d like a nice kitchen leading onto a terrace where we could have breakfast each morning, and a huge fireplace in the sitting room where we can have real log fires. And a yellow bedroom for Millie.’
‘Why don’t we draw up a plan of our dream house?’ he suggested, taking a sheet of paper from his briefcase. ‘Then I’ll have something to work with.’
By the time he put me in a taxi two hours later, he’d made a drawing of a beautiful house, complete with landscaped gardens, a terrace, three reception rooms, a fireplace, a kitchen, a study, five bedrooms—including a yellow one for Millie—three bathrooms, and a little round window in the roof.
‘I defy you to find such a house by the time I get back from Argentina,’ I laughed.
‘I’ll do my very best,’ he promised, before giving me a kiss.
The next few weeks passed in a whirlwind. When I got back from Argentina, I handed in my notice and put my house on the market. I had used my time away to think things over carefully and never doubted that I’d be doing the right thing if I did as Jack had asked. I knew that I wanted to marry him, and the thought that by the following spring I’d be living in a beautiful house in the country and maybe expecting our first baby, filled me with excitement. I’d been working non-stop for thirteen years and there’d been times when I’d wondered if I’d ever be able to get off the treadmill. And because I’d known that once Millie came to live with me I’d no longer be able to travel as I had, or work the long hours that I sometimes worked, I had been nervous about what sort of job I’d end up with. Suddenly, all my worries disappeared and, as I chose wedding invitations to send out to friends and family, I felt I was the luckiest person in the world.
PRESENT
Jack, meticulous as always, comes up to the bedroom at ten-thirty in the morning and tells me we’ll be leaving at eleven o’clock precisely. I’m not worried that I won’t be ready in time. I’ve already showered, so thirty minutes is long enough to dress and put on my make-up. The shower calmed me down a little as, since waking at eight, I’ve been in a continuous state of excitement, hardly daring to believe that I’ll soon be seeing Millie. Ever cautious, I remind myself that anything could happen. Yet the face I present to Jack shows nothing of my inner turmoil. It is calm and composed and, as he stands back to let me pass, I am just an ordinary young woman about to go on a day out.
Jack follows me into the bedroom next door, where my clothes hang. I walk over to the huge wardrobe that runs the length of the wall, slide back the mirrored door, pull out one of the drawers and select the cream-coloured bra and matching knickers which Jack bought me last week. In another drawer I find some flesh-coloured stockings, which I prefer to tights. Jack watches from a chair while I take off my pyjamas and put on my underwear and stockings. Then I slide back the next door and stand for a moment, looking at all the clothes hanging neatly by colour. I haven’t worn my blue dress in a long time and it is one that Millie loves because it is the same colour as my eyes. I take it out of the wardrobe.
‘Wear the cream one,’ Jack says. It’s true that he prefers me in neutral colours so I put the blue dress back and put on the cream one.
My shoes are stored in clear boxes on shelves in another part of the wardrobe. I choose a pair of beige shoes with a heel. As we usually go for a walk after lunch, flat ones would be more practical, but Jack likes me to be elegant at all times, whether we’re walking around a lake or having dinner with friends. I slip them on, take a matching bag from the shelf and hand it to Jack. I walk over to the dressing table and sit down. It doesn’t take me long to do my make-up: a little bit of eye pencil, some blusher and a dash of lipstick. There are still fifteen minutes left so to fill in the time I decide to wear some nail varnish. I choose a pretty pink from the various bottles arrayed on the dresser, wishing I could take it with me and paint Millie’s nails, something I know she would love. When it’s dry, I stand up, take my bag from Jack and go downstairs.
‘Which coat would you like to wear?’ he asks, as we reach the hall.
‘My beige wool, I think.’
He fetches it from the cloakroom and helps me on with it. I button it up and turn out the pockets while Jack looks on. He opens the front door and, once he’s locked it behind us, I follow him out to the car.
Although we are almost at the end of March, the air is cold. My instinct is to draw it in hard through my nose and gulp it down. Instead, I remind myself that I have the whole day in front of me, and rejoice in that thought. This trip out has been hard won and I intend to make the most of it. As we reach the car, Jack activates the remote control and the huge black gates that front our house begin to open. Walking around to the passenger side of the car, he opens my door for me. I get in and a man jogging past the house looks through the gates towards us. I don’t know him but Jack wishes him a good morning and—either because he is too out of breath to speak or because he is saving his energy for the rest of his run—the man acknowledges the greeting with a wave of his hand. Jack closes my door behind me and, less than a minute later, we drive out through the gates. As they swing shut behind us, I turn my head for a glimpse of the beautiful house Jack bought for me, because I like to see it as others see it.
We begin the journey into London and as we drive along, my mind goes back to the dinner party we hosted last night. How I managed to pull it off is still a mystery when there were so many things that could have gone wrong.
‘Your soufflés were perfect,’ Jack says, telling me that I’m not the only one thinking about the previous evening. ‘It was clever of you to predict a delay in getting to the table and allow for it in your calculations, very clever indeed. But Esther doesn’t seem to like you very much. I wonder why that is?’
I know I need to choose my words carefully. ‘She doesn’t appreciate perfection,’ I say.
It’s an answer that pleases him. He begins to hum a little tune and, as I look at the passing landscape, I find myself thinking about Esther. Under other circumstances, I would probably like her. But her undoubted intelligence makes her dangerous to someone like me. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate perfection, as I first thought, it’s more that she’s suspicious of it.
It takes the best part of an hour to reach Millie’s school. I spend the time thinking about Dena Anderson, Jack’s client. I don’t know much about her apart from the fact that she recently married a wealthy philanthropist, well respected for his work with various charities and therefore an unlikely candidate in the wife-battering stakes. Still, I know only too well how appearances can be deceiving and if Jack has agreed to take her on as a client she must have a very strong case. Losing is not a word in Jack’s vocabulary, as he never ceases to remind me.
We haven’t seen Millie for a month so, impatient to see me, she’s waiting on the bench outside the front door wrapped up in a yellow hat and scarf—yellow is her favourite colour—with Janice, her carer. When I get out of the car, she rushes over, her eyes bright with tears of relief and, as I hug her tightly, I’m aware of Jack watching us. Janice joins us and I hear Jack telling her that although we knew Millie would be disappointed, we hadn’t dared to come and see her until I had completely recovered from the bout of flu that had laid me so low. Janice reassures him that we did the right thing, adding that she had explained to Millie why we couldn’t come.
‘But it was very hard for her,’ she admits. ‘She adores you both so much.’
‘And we adore her,’ Jack says, smiling fondly at Millie.
‘Say hello to Jack, Millie,’ I remind her quietly and, disentangling herself, she turns to Jack.
‘Hello, Jack,’ she says, giving him a big smile. ‘I happy to see you.’
‘And