‘“We Three Kings of Orient Are”, from the top.’ She forced the jollity into her voice as Mrs Bramdean launched into the familiar chords on St Hilda’s Primary School’s famously out-of-tune piano. What on earth possessed me to agree to direct this fiasco? Laura thought despairingly. I’m a screenwriter, not a schoolteacher. I don’t even like children. Then she thought about the baby she’d miscarried in the summer – John’s baby – and for the hundredth time that week found herself fighting back tears.
Twenty-eight years old, with a mane of curly hair the same blue-black as a crow’s feathers, pale skin and soulful, dark eyes like two wells of oil, Laura Tiverton was both attractive and successful. After three years spent working as a writer on two BBC dramas, last year she’d finally produced a pilot of her own, a show about a newly qualified teacher from the shires left to sink or swim in a failing inner-city comprehensive school. Although the series wasn’t ultimately commissioned, Laura was already winning praise for herself as an innovative and talented young TV writer. Her love affair with the BBC’s very handsome, very married Head of Drama, John Bingham, had only served to raise her profile further as one of the corporation’s brilliantly rising stars.
And then last spring, in one fell swoop, it had all gone horribly wrong. Laura fell unexpectedly pregnant. Although the baby wasn’t planned, she’d been delighted, believing John Bingham’s assurances that he loved her, that his marriage had been over for years, and that he only stayed with Felicia because of their children, now all in their late teens.
‘You’ve done the right thing for so long, darling,’ Laura told him over dinner, the night she did the test. ‘But now we’ll have a child of our own to think of. Don’t you think it’s time you made the split with Felicia official?’
John looked so noble and concerned across the table, his chiselled features somehow even handsomer at fifty than they had been in his youth. There was a wisdom about him, a maturity and solidity that Laura found sexy and reassuring at the same time. He mumbled something about timings and ‘being sensitive to everyone involved’, and Laura thought, He’ll make a wonderful father. I’m so lucky.
The next morning Laura was fired. Her show was cancelled, the producer citing ‘creative issues’. When Laura tried to call John to remonstrate, she discovered he’d changed his mobile number. His embarrassed PA, Caroline, refused even to give Laura an appointment to see him.
‘I’m so sorry. His schedule’s er … well it’s terribly full. Maybe in a month or two. When things have settled down.’
Reeling with shock, Laura had committed the cardinal sin of calling her lover at home. She would never forget the strained, tearful voice on the other end of the line.
‘If you’re that girl, the one trying to blackmail my husband, you can jolly well go away! You won’t get a penny out of him. And you won’t destroy this family either.’
John had always described his wife as distant and ‘completely uninterested’ in their marriage. This poor woman sounded utterly distraught. Hanging up, shaking, Laura could still hear John’s voice, mellow and reassuring: ‘Truly, Laura, my darling, it’s a business arrangement, nothing more. Felicia knows we’re both free agents. It’s you I love.’
Heartbroken and embarrassed, Laura determined to keep the baby anyway. But a miscarriage at eleven weeks put an end to those dreams too.
‘You’re young,’ the doctor said kindly. ‘You can try again.’
Laura went home and cried for a week. Then, unable to stand one more hour in the Battersea flat that had been her and John’s love-nest, she’d picked up the phone, found a six-month rental in Fittlescombe, the idyllic South Downs village where her granny used to live and where Laura had spent so many happy summers as a child, and left. Left London, left John, left her entire mess of a life.
I’ll write a masterpiece. I’ll recuperate. I’ll learn to cook and buy a dog and give up alcohol and go for long runs in the fresh air.
She managed the dog part, and now shared her home and so-called life with a fat, chronically lazy but endearing pug named Peggy. And she had done a bit of writing, in between fixing Briar Cottage’s leaky roof, dodgy electrics and jerry-rigged plumbing, as installed in 1932 and not ‘fiddled with’ since. But her latest play was certainly no masterpiece. Truth be told, after five months it was still little more than notes and a few character sketches. As for the healthy country lifestyle, Laura’s only runs so far had been to and from the larder, with Peggy waddling eagerly in her wake. If God had intended Laura Tiverton to bake, he would not have invented Mr Kipling. And, if he’d intended her to be sober, he wouldn’t have broken her heart.
‘Miss Tiverton. Miss Tiverton!’
Michael O’Brien’s howls brought Laura back to the present with an unpleasant bump.
‘I need the toilet.’
‘All right, Michael, off you go.’
‘I need to do a poo.’
‘All right, Michael. Thank you.’
‘Right now! It’s starting to come out …’
‘Oh, Jesus.’
Thankfully, Eileen Carter, Michael’s class teacher, rushed onto the stage and whisked the star soloist off to the loo before disaster struck.
Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster for the last fifteen years and the biggest flirt in Fittlescombe, saw his chance, sidling up to Laura and slipping a lecherous arm around her waist.
‘You know what they say, my dear. Never work with animals or children. I’m afraid with a village Nativity play, you’re rather saddled with both, ha ha!’
It was less of a laugh, more of a bray. Despite being drenched in Penhaligon’s aftershave, Harry Hotham still managed to smell of sweat and arousal, the familiar scent of the older Lothario at work. It reminded Laura of John so acutely, she gagged.
‘Yes, well, the children’s rehearsals are over now for the day,’ she said, wriggling free from the headmaster’s vicelike grip. ‘Mary, Joseph and the shepherds should be here at any moment for a read-through.’
‘Indeed, indeed. Well, I won’t keep you,’ said Harry Hotham, staring unashamedly at Laura’s breasts beneath her tight-fitting cashmere sweater. ‘I must buy you dinner some time though, my dear, to thank you properly for stepping in as our director.’
‘There’s really no need, Harry.’
‘No need? Nonsense. There’s every need. We’re expecting great things this year, you know, Laura. Great things.’
I was expecting great things, thought Laura, as St Hilda’s headmaster shuffled out with the remaining children and teachers. A baby. Marriage. But here I am in a draughty old church hall, trying to wrangle defecating six-year-olds while men old enough to be my father invite my tits to dinner.
‘Oh. You’re here.’
Laura spun around, her heart already sinking. Gabriel Baxter, a.k.a. Joseph, a.k.-also-a. the bane of Laura Tiverton’s existence since rehearsals began two weeks ago, looked at her as if she were something unpleasant he’d forgotten to wipe off his shoe.
‘Of course I’m here. I’m the director. Where else would I be?’
Gabe shrugged and grabbed himself a chair. ‘A man can hope.’
Laura remembered Gabe from summers spent in Fittlescombe as a little girl. He was an arrogant, irritating little shit back then, and he clearly hadn’t changed, improbably claiming not to remember Laura at all, despite their frequent childhood run-ins.
‘I