Once the water was cleared up, lunch continued apace. Zara managed to find fault with all the food and nearly made Caspian cry when she suggested he and Seraphina were too little to have real glasses and should surely still be drinking out of plastic beakers. Bunny and I turned into paragons of childcare virtue, lavishing the twins with completely unnecessary attention in our attempts to avoid having to make conversation – or even eye contact – with Zara. William and Daphne kept themselves to themselves at one end of the table and Xander enjoyed the whole thing enormously. He made no secret of how attractive he found Zara and roared with laughter at her bitchy comments. Lando seemed to have turned into one of his wooden sculptures: polite but stiff and showing no emotion. I longed to reach out and squeeze his hand to try to reassure him but couldn’t do anything of the sort. I smiled at him once or twice, but he gazed back at me with troubled eyes, which then slid back to Zara. I couldn’t read him at all. He didn’t seem glad that she was there, but then again, hehadlet her stay the night – albeit in her own room. Maybe the talk we had had yesterday was having some impact. Perhaps he had decided that a hermit’s life wasn’t for him, after all, and to give it another go in the beautiful house they had bought and decorated together. She may well have let him down, but she was a known quantity, and given Lando’s insecurities, maybe that was exactly what he found comfort in. Unsurprisingly, my mood dipped further and further as the meal proceeded. I ate pudding – a delicious clementine cake with brandy cream – but when coffee was offered, I took my cue.
‘Thank you, I won’t. I think it’s time the children got busy elsewhere.’
The twins mounted the usual token protests, but I had noticed that they were getting bored and twitchy, so when I gently insisted, they soon let me herd them from the room. As we left, I heard Zara’s tart little voice:
‘Finally. Now it’s the proper grown-ups, we can relax and have some fun.’
I didn’t wait to hear how anyone responded, but pulled the door shut gently behind me and steered the children towards some magazines I brought with me, full of pictures of their favourite TV characters to colour in, and with pages of stickers. Watching their earnest little faces as they pored over their work, I felt weary with fighting the truth. This was all I wanted, all I dreamed of, and I was soon going to have to confront my grief over the fact it was unlikely ever to happen for me.
I left them colouring for a moment and popped upstairs to find a cosier jumper, glad at the thought of the blessed peace of my room, if only for a few minutes, when a figure came up the shadowy stairs.
‘Oh, Penny?’
‘Hello, Zara.’
‘Just a quick word.’
I lifted my eyes resignedly to meet hers, hard little chips of diamond for me, not melting and helpless like when she turned them on Lando, or flirty and flashing for Xander’s sake.
‘I can tell from those rather unsubtle cow eyes of yours gazing at Lando that you have clearly developed something of acrushon him. Maybe you even think youlovehim.’ She gave a little laugh, as if the mere idea of my daring to love Lando was mirthful. She cocked her head on one side, but I said nothing, just stared at her. I wasn’t willing to show any emotion for this succubus to feed off; I’d rather be the dumb serf she had me pegged as. She continued, ‘Anyway, Ihateto be the one to dash your romantic hopes, but you should probably know that Lando and I were only driven apart by circumstance, and now that things have changed, it’s only a matter of time before we’re as deeply in love and inseparable as we once were.’
I wondered how long she had taken to prepare this little speech, to make sure that each and every word and inflexion were as nasty and as patronising as she could possibly make it. My continued silence was beginning to annoy her. She clicked her tongue and flicked her hair over her shoulder. But what could I say? She decided to stop toying with me and finish me off once and for all.
‘He’s asked me to stay for Christmas and then – it’s off to Greece. So, a word to the wise – concentrate your affections elsewhere. I’m sure you’ve got plenty to keep you busy with those children, but if you feel like getting out on your evening off, there’s probably a village dance or something you might enjoy.’
She afforded me a final withering glance and turned on her heel to march back down the stairs. I went to my room and shut the door gently behind me. Maybe I should be in some sort of servants’ garret, I thought, rather than this beautiful suite. But then I rallied. No. That was howshewanted me to feel, like I should be doffing my cap to her and filling coal scuttles. What a bitch. Well, she didn’t matter. And if Lando really wanted her, which he presumably did if he had invited her to stay for Christmas, then he didn’t matter either.
That evening, I opened my laptop and found the resignation letter, made a few tweaks and dated it for the first day of next term, then emailed it to myself to print off and to Mum and Dad to read over. Next, I pulled up some of the job applications in India and spent the next hour and a half completing forms and submitting them, before I lost my nerve. My original plan had been the right one, I thought. I needed to dig deep and find ‘exciting Penny’, who seeks adventure and relishes freedom. That was the way to protect myself, to move forward in life – not being such an obvious doormat that men trample over me again and again on their way to something better. I switched off the computer with a feeling of a job well done and didn’t even glance across at the studio as I drew my curtains for the night.
EIGHTEEN
The next day Bunny wanted to take the children to visit a friend of hers in the next village.
‘Do take the morning, Pixie darling. Maybe you could help Lando again?’
‘I’m sure he’s got quite enough to do with Zara here. It’s fine, I’m sure there’s plenty to keep me busy. What about the wrapping?’
Bunny clapped her hands in delight.
‘Oh, Pixie, youwouldn’t. It’s an absolutely loathsome job, I always end up awake until about three o’clock on Christmas Eve, I hate it. I can’t possibly drop it all on you…’
I laughed.
‘Yes, you can! That’s what I’m here to do – help.’
Truth be told, although I also disliked wrapping presents, I was grateful for it. I would make myself useful whilst being hidden away in my room, safe from Zara’s acid tongue. Breakfast had been a rather more sombre affair than usual with her there. While the rest of us shuffled in wearing pyjamas as usual and tried to hide behind magazines and newspapers, she appeared fully – and exquisitely – dressed and sat bolt upright at a small table by the window, graciously allowing Pilar to serve her. She kept trying to make conversation with various family members (not me, of course) about pressing issues in current affairs, but everyone resented their peaceful breakfast being intruded upon and she was met with a series of noncommittal, brief responses which varied from fairly polite (Daphne: ‘Mmm, I don’t know anything about that, dear’) to verging on rude (a grumpy ‘harumph’ from Lando). Eventually it was Xander who saved the day.
‘Oh, do put a sock in it, Zara. You know how breakfast works in this house, and we all like it. If you want civilised conversation, I suggest you go down to The Curious Badger. Cecil’s always up for a nice long chat about politics.’
I hid a smile behind my mug of tea at the collective sigh of relief that rippled around the room, but I didn’t feel even a tiny bit sorry for that horrid woman, who was looking distinctly sour.
When I took my things through to the kitchen, I was surprised to find that Lando had followed me.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked gruffly, as we stared awkwardly into the dishwasher.
I wasn’t about to tell him all the shaming things that Zara had said to me the night before; now was the moment to show I was nobody’s doormat.
‘Wonderful!’ I said brightly. ‘Quite excited, in fact. I’ve applied for some of those jobs in India.’
