An Autumn Affair. Alice Ross
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Название: An Autumn Affair
Автор: Alice Ross
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9781474033619
isbn:
Josie nodded. ‘Which suits me fine, actually. I need loads of carbs for tennis and, since Mum became paranoid about her weight, she wouldn’t touch a carb if her life depended on it.’
‘Unreal,’ sighed Faye, wondering what she must’ve done in a previous life to deserve her miserable fate. Josie seemed to have it made here.
‘Josie, I’m just popping out.’
Faye’s head whipped around to find Josie’s mother standing in the doorway, now wearing tight white jeans and a glittering turquoise vest top.
‘Okay,’ said Josie, tossing the strawberries into the blender. ‘Oh, by the way, Mum. This is Faye Blakelaw. She just moved to the village a few weeks ago. Faye, this is my mum, Miranda.’
Two perfectly made-up, huge brown eyes regarded Faye again. ‘Hi,’ she said, with a fleeting smile this time.
‘Hi,’ gasped Faye, wondering how anyone could look so glamorous when they were just ‘popping out’. And what a gorgeous name. It was so … so … Sex and the City.
‘Oh. And Eduardo said to tell you that he’ll pop by tomorrow to sort out payment for my next block of lessons,’ Josie added.
Miranda’s shiny silver clutch bag fell to the floor.
‘Er, right,’ she muttered, bending down to retrieve it. ‘Well, I’d, um, better be off. I’ll see you later.’
‘Okay,’ said Josie. ‘Have a good time.’
‘Where’s she going?’ Faye asked, as Miranda disappeared in a cloud of expensive perfume.
Josie shrugged. ‘No idea. We used to be really close not so long ago. But now she does her thing, and I do mine.’
And that was the way, Faye discovered, that life operated at Buttersley Hall. Josie did whatever she wanted – and while the things Josie did were not necessarily the things Faye would have done, it all was still mind-blowingly awesome. Meanwhile, Miranda swanned about in fabulous clothes, looking fabulous and no doubt doing fabulous things. And all from their fabulous house with its fabulous pool. It was a gazillion light years away from Faye’s dreary life at Primrose Cottage, where her mother wouldn’t know Prada from Primark, and completely freaked if Faye happened to mention something as mundane as missing a class at college. But, of the two worlds, Faye knew which one she belonged to. Or should belong to. Which was why, ever since that first meeting with Miranda, she’d spent every possible minute at Buttersley Hall, feeding her obsession with the woman. An obsession of a purely educational nature. Miranda was Faye’s ideal role model. And Faye suspected that whatever she learned from her, however covertly, would stand her in much better stead than anything they could teach her at Harrogate Further Education College.
In fact, come to think of it, hadn’t Josie invited her over later that evening if she had nothing on? Faye reached for her mobile and scrolled down until she found Josie’s number. That she might smudge her nail varnish in the process didn’t matter one jot.
Miranda Cutler pressed hard on the accelerator of her BMW convertible as she sped along Buttersley’s narrow country lanes. With the roof down, the cool October evening air whistled through her hair. She closed her eyes, wishing it would whip away all thoughts from her head. When she opened them again, she found the car hurtling towards a high stone wall. Miranda jammed on the brakes and pulled over onto the grass verge, her heart thundering. What the hell was she doing? She could have killed herself. Not that anyone would have cared. Herself included. An impromptu death would at least offer one escape route from the hideous predicament she found herself in. A hideous predicament entirely of her own making. She ran a hand through her hair and heaved an almighty sigh. How could she have been so stupid? She was thirty-seven, for God’s sake, not seventeen. She’d been around the block enough times to know how these things worked. And having unprotected sex with her daughter’s tennis coach, who also happened to be her best friend Lydia’s toy-boy lover, was definitely not on the list. But six pregnancy tests could not be wrong. So, the burning question now was what to do about it. The answer required minimal consideration. She had only one option. A termination. But where? She couldn’t go to her GP in Buttersley. She’d have to go private. Somewhere she could be completely anonymous. Somewhere like … London. And she wouldn’t tell a soul. She’d make out it was a shopping trip – a totally spontaneous one to avoid Lydia inviting herself along.
Miranda leaned forward and rested her head on the leather steering wheel. God. Just concocting the plan exhausted her, never mind actually implementing it. And, despite intending to keep the whole sorry business to herself, there remained the ordeal of facing Eduardo and Lydia, and, more importantly, her own husband, Doug, while pretending everything was perfectly fine.
Just thinking about Doug caused Miranda’s heart to sink. Not that theirs was a conventional marriage. Nor was Miranda’s a conventional life. And certainly not a straightforward one. From a young age, things had been complicated and, even after all this time, she could still recall, as if it were yesterday, the precise day the complications began …
‘Well, I never,’ declared her dad one morning, bowling into the kitchen in his bus driver’s uniform.
‘What’s the matter, love?’ asked Miranda’s mum, frying sausages on the gas cooker.
Her dad wafted the letter in his hand. ‘Apparently I’ve been left an inheritance.’
At the kitchen table, in the navy-blue skirt and sweater which compiled the uninspiring uniform of Jarrow Comp, thirteen-year-old Miranda whipped up her head from her teen magazine. ‘An inheritance, Dad? But we don’t know anyone who’s died.’
Her father plumped down on the chair opposite hers, his kind, round face flushed. ‘Well, actually I do. Vaguely. It’s my Aunt Maud – your grandad’s youngest sister. She emigrated to Australia in the 1960s. I remember Dad organised a leaving party for her and Maud turned up in a dress with kangaroos printed all over it. She was a funny old soul. Always wore bright orange lipstick. Never married. Probably as a result of the lipstick. But, according to this letter, she passed away last month and, as her only surviving relative, she’s left everything to me.’
‘Goodness,’ gasped Miranda’s mother, momentarily neglecting the sausages. ‘Does it say how much “everything” is?’
Her father shook his head. ‘No. I have to make an appointment with the solicitor to “be furnished with full details”. I’m on an early finish today so I’ll see if they can fit me in this afternoon.’
Miranda couldn’t concentrate at school that day. Not a particularly unusual occurrence. Her ambition stretching no further than a two-mile radius of her home town, she could see no point in equations, essays and experiments, her only interest in the scholarly world being purely of a social nature.
Shuffling along to their first class, Miranda related news of the inheritance to her best friend, Tina.
‘Oh my God,’ Tina gushed. ‘What if it’s millions? You could buy one of those really posh houses on the new estate. They’ve got bidets and everything. And you could go abroad for your holidays. America. That’s where I’d go. On Concorde.’
Miranda giggled. She hadn’t СКАЧАТЬ