Phoebe seemed really nice. She would go into the kitchen and make small talk and be as pleasant as she knew how to be and ignore the unsettled feeling fluttering in her stomach.
Suddenly, being stuck in the little hatchback with Nick seemed like an attractive prospect. Being here, watching Phoebe potter round the kitchen, was like watching a horror movie. Only this movie had a difference: instead of everything being much, much worse, it was far, far better—what her life should be like, but wasn’t.
It was like having her worst failure served up for her so she could choke on every mouthful.
They had it all: the home, the happy marriage. They had roots. Despite herself, she was insanely jealous.
More than anything, Adele wanted roots.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHATEVER Phoebe was stirring in that pot smelled utterly fantastic.
‘I hope you like soup. It’s broccoli and Stilton.’
‘That sounds lovely.’ Adele sat down at the breakfast bar and stared blankly at Phoebe’s back as she stirred. Then she remembered her resolve to make polite conversation, but it was a bit like when she’d first learned to drive. Nothing came naturally. Every word had to be planned and mentally rehearsed. It took all her concentration.
‘How long have you lived here?’
Phoebe tasted the soup and frowned. ‘About two years,’ she said, adding more salt as she spoke. ‘We decided to slow down a little. We both had such hectic work schedules that we hardly saw each other—but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that.’
Adele dipped her head and fiddled with her fingers. She’d assumed their hosts didn’t know about her marital problems. Although she’d been cross Nick hadn’t told his family the truth, it wasn’t comfortable having her problems out in the open and sullying the atmosphere of perfect domesticity in this cottage.
‘My hat goes off to you and Nick if you’ve found a way to make it work without one of you cutting back on your work.’ Phoebe gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘I’m sure Andy and I would have been heading for the divorce courts if we hadn’t moved here.’
She opened and shut her mouth. Just a lucky guess, then. Her secrets were safe after all.
Phoebe was stirring the soup again. Thank goodness she didn’t seem to mind the long gaps in the conversation.
Adele fiddled with a lemon from a bowl on the central island. A move to the country wouldn’t have saved her marriage. That would just be a geographical shift. Nick would still be Nick, and Adele would still be Adele, and roses round the door weren’t going to suddenly make them compatible.
Phoebe banged the wooden spoon on the saucepan. ‘Done. Do you think you can keep an eye on it while I call the lads and get Max?’
Adele nodded. A dog called Max. That was the name she and Nick had picked out for the puppy they were going to get when their respective projects had been put to bed. But then there had been another deal, another project, and the time had never come.
Nick and Andy entered the kitchen a few minutes later, still deep in conversation about mechanics and motors. She shuffled in her seat and waited for Phoebe to return. At least with another female in the room there was a vague possibility the conversation might turn towards something that didn’t sound like Klingon.
Phoebe’s footsteps outside the kitchen door helped her perk up.
These were nice people. She could chit-chat, if she really put her mind to it. She just needed to get into character, telephone box or no telephone box. She bared her teeth in the beginnings of a smile, but then Phoebe pushed the door open and every molecule in Adele’s bloodstream turned to ice.
Max wasn’t an Alsatian, or even a Jack Russell. It was much worse than that.
Max was a baby.
A pink, gurgling bundle that sat in his high chair and blew bubbles at Adele while she tried to get her pulse rate under control.
It was official. Babies were now top of her things-to-be-terrified-of list. Worse than spiders by a long shot.
It was OK if she was warned, as she was when she went to Mona’s house, but when little dimpled creatures appeared out of the blue she went into a tail-spin. A crawling feeling in her tummy made her want to push back her chair and run.
She couldn’t look at him. He was too cute. His intoxicating baby scent was drifting towards her and it was killing her. She sipped warm liquid off her spoon and tried to block it all out.
The chatter around the table filtered away, almost as if she were listening to them talking underwater, and she was left alone with the knowledge that, if things had not gone so disastrously wrong, she would have had a crumpled pink newborn to call her own right this very minute.
She sucked in a breath through her nostrils and tried to shake the images away without actually moving her head. Pictures of her and Nick: laughing in a large cream kitchen, eating soup and taking turns to pace the room with a tiny bundle on their shoulder as it hiccuped.
And then the images became even more disturbing. The confusion she’d felt only days after her husband had walked out on her when she’d found the second pink line on the pregnancy test. The horror a couple of weeks after that when the bleeding had started. And finally, the deep blackness that had shrouded her for months afterwards.
She blinked and her lids stayed closed only a fraction of a second longer than was necessary.
I am not going to cry. I will just harden and harden until I can’t feel any more and then I will chat and finish my soup and leave as if nothing was the matter.
It wasn’t Andy and Phoebe’s fault. She shouldn’t punish them by falling to pieces at the lunch table.
It wasn’t even Nick’s fault. The doctor had said it was one of those things—as though she’d left her umbrella on the bus—and that there was no reason why she shouldn’t try again in a couple of months. Only that had been a bit tricky when her husband and his vital ingredients had vanished from her life, never to return.
Adele watched her hosts as, in a strange kind of slow-motion, Andy passed the basket of warm bread to Phoebe and she gave him a little smile.
Such a lot passed between them in that tiny moment and Adele’s heart clenched at the memory of times when Nick had looked at her that way. Now he was just glaring at her over his soup.
She’d been wrong. This wasn’t a horror story; it was a fairy tale.
And, if she’d believed in fairies and magic, she’d have stepped through the looking glass and taken their places. But this was real life, and real life was cold and hard and ultimately lonely.
There was no way she and Nick were headed for a happy ending.
Nick’s eyes never left Adele as he shovelled soup into his mouth. At first everything had seemed fine—the conversation had been flowing, but then he realised it was flowing around her as if she were a rock sat in the middle of a gushing stream. None of it made an impact.
He should have known she’d react like this. It wasn’t part of her neatly manicured plan and Adele did not like veering from the plan. Not one little bit.
But, stupidly, he’d hoped that bringing her here might remove the blinkers she wore so firmly strapped to her head. She wasn’t even trying. Slow-burning anger warmed his belly.
Phoebe had asked her a question and she hadn’t even pretended to be interested. She’d