CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sit down.” The builder dragged up a paint-speckled stool for Jo to sit on. He covered it with a newspaper and Jo sat down gratefully. For once, it wasn’t tiredness, an aching back or her recently developed varicose veins that made her want to sit down rapidly. It was the state of the cottage.
She’d expected a clean, newly refurbished place but she’d walked into a disaster area, with dust everywhere and the sound of a kango hammer blasting in her ears.
Rhona had often asked her whether she was insane to sell her cosy, modern apartment in Malahide to move into an old, ramshackle cottage in the Dublin mountains.
“You won’t be in before Christmas,” Rhona declared when Jo explained that there’d be a two-week gap between moving ‘, out of her apartment and moving into the newly painted, renovated and rewired house in tranquil Redwood Lane.
The contractor’s a very reliable man and he says it’ll all be finished by the fifth of November,” Jo replied.
“Honestly, Rho, it’s not like you to be so pessimistic.”
Rhona looked at her friend shrewdly.
“Jo, if it’s finished by the tenth of November) we’ll go out to celebrate you can have dinner and I’ll eat my hat. It’s a pity you hadn’t joined Style when Ted and I bought our house. I distinctly remember being told the house would be ready by the end of August. We moved in during a torrential downpour in October. I never got the water stains out of my mother’s old cream armchair.”
It looked as if Rhona was going to be proved right. It was already the second week in November, the builders had been working for three weeks and the cottage looked worse than , ever.
The tiny hall was filthy with muddy footprints. A week of rain had stopped work on the roof. The garden had turned into a bog and roof still hadn’t been fixed. All the cottage needed was rewiring, central heating installed, a bit of work on the plumbing and a small job on the roof, or so Mark’s contractor friend had said.
So why, after three weeks, was the entire place like a building site?
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” the builder roared over the din.
“Really, Tom? Well, that’s a relief because it looks bad, very bad.” Jo’s head throbbed in time to the kango hammer.
“Turn it off roared Tom in the direction of the kitchen.
When nothing happened, he left Jo in the tiny hall wondering what the hell she was going to say to the painters who were due to arrive tomorrow.
“Tea?” asked Tom poking his head around the kitchen door.
“We’re just brewing up.”
“OK. Now tell me what’s happened?” Jo asked wearily. She got off the stool, walked into the kitchen and stared at the big hole where the sink used to be and at the gash that ran across the recently concreted floor.
“Plumbing problem. We’ve had to rip up the floor. I did ring you at the office yesterday evening to tell you,” he added, ‘but when I couldn’t contact you, I just went ahead and sorted it out. It’ll add another two days onto the work. We’ll be finished by Tuesday, latest.”
The painters are coming tomorrow Jo said in a faint voice.
“I know, I know. I’ll ring them up and tell them not to come until Tuesday afternoon.”
“Sugar?” inquired the man who’d been working the kango hammer.
Two, please said Jo, ‘and do you have any biscuits?” Or Prozac?
They drank their tea and talked about how the rain had delayed the work, how the plumbing had delayed the work and how there was some problem with the phone line according to the man from Telecom.
“Oh, did I tell you that he came?” asked Tom.
Jo speed-munched her way through three fig rolls and drank a cup of very sweet tea before climbing the stairs. The pale wooden banisters were thick with concrete dust, lumps of plaster had found their way onto the steps. Jo ignored it.
As she walked into the second bedroom, she realised that the painters would have to spend days cleaning the walls and woodwork.
At least the cork tiles in the bathroom would only need a wash. But the pale green carpet in the smaller bedroom was so dusty Jo knew she’d have to replace it. She thought about the mounting bills and decided that judicious hoovering would have to do for the moment. Maybe she could rent one of those industrial carpet cleaners and do it herself. Then again, she thought gloomily, at seven months pregnant she was hardly in any condition to hoover anything except food up from her plate. She felt huge. Even her gynaecologist said so. Huge, broke and with a half-finished cottage hanging around her neck like a millstone. She poked at a bit of carpet with her shoe. A cloud of dust rose like white smoke from the Vatican. Blast.
If anyone asked her what she wanted for her birthday in a couple of weeks, she’d ask for a carpet-cleaning voucher.
The kango hammer started up again, the noise practically drowned out the thoughts in her head. God, what a waste it had been coming, up here today. But she had to do something on her day off instead of slobbing around Aisling’s house. It was lovely of Aisling to have offered her spare room for the two weeks when Jo was homeless make that six weeks and lovely to spend time with her friend, the first time they’d actually lived together since their flat-sharing days. But she preferred her own space to living with someone else, even if that someone was as easy-going as Aisling. And now that Sam was there every minute of the day, Jo was beginning to feel like a gooseberry. An enormous gooseberry.
She went into the main bedroom and idled away a few moments imagining
how she was going to decorate it. She’d picked a rich yellow paint to go with the cream and buttermilk curtains she fancied. But the curtain material would have to wait. God only knew how much extra the contractor would charge.
She was staring out at the muddy wasteland at the front of the cottage wondering how it could possibly be transformed back into something resembling a garden, when the baby kicked. Jo’s face grew soft as she stroked her belly lovingly.
The baby was always kicking these days, but Jo didn’t mind, except when it happened all night. On those days when she felt depressed, miserable and lonely at the thought of having the baby all by herself, all it took was a gentle reminder from her little passenger to cheer her up.
“I’m off she said to Dick, the kango-hammer man, who’d stopped the machine once he saw her making her way carefully down the stairs.
“Bye, Tom she called into the sitting room.
“He’s gone, “Dick said.
Charming, thought Jo. Rips up the kitchen floor and buggers off. What a worker.
It had started to rain. Again. She trudged through the mud where she and Mark had once negotiated nettles and long grass, and got into her car.
She’d had to push the driver’s seat back so she could fit her bump behind the steering wheel. Her size also meant she’d outgrown practically everything she owned, including her maternity trousers. Aisling was going to bring her shopping tomorrow, ‘early, so we’ll avoid the Saturday crowds’, she’d said. Aisling was great. She’d even sorted through her old ‘fat’ clothes to find something to fit Jo.
A flowery over shirt Aisling had produced, her own black maternity skirt and a pair of pale grey ski boots were today’s deeply unflattering outfit. Wedged into the driver’s seat, Jo couldn’t see her feet, but she just knew that the ski boots were filthy from the muck outside the cottage.
There was no way she could go into the supermarket in this state. Damn and blast.
She turned the key in the ignition. The engine made a high-pitched whirring noise, gave a little shudder and then died. Damn, damn, damn. She turned the key again. Same outcome. I do not believe this is happening, she shrieked. She tried again and when the engine made a third halfhearted attempt to get going, she thumped the steering wheel angrily.
Bloody car. This is the perfect time for you to pack it in!
She levered herself out of the car, marched back into the cottage and gave Dick the fright of his life when she tapped him on the shoulder.
“Jesus.” he yelled.
Jo was not in the mood for conversation.
“My car won’t start. Will you have a look at it?”
By the time Dick had pulled off his dusty overalls, tried the car a few times and spent ten minutes with his head under the bonnet poking around, Jo was at boiling-point.
“It’s your starting motor,” he pronounced finally.
“Which means what, exactly?” Jo asked irritably.
“It’s not going anywhere today,” he replied.
Jo felt as if she’d been deflated.
“What will I do?” she asked.
“Can you give me a lift to a garage or something?” she pleaded.
“Tom’s got the van and he’s not coming back for a couple of hours. He’s running over to check on a job in Bray. But I’ve got a mobile. You can ring someone.”
Rhona’s mobile phone squawked that she was either out of coverage or had her unit turned off.
Rhona was out all day, Nikki was in London and everyone else in the office was at lunch, Annette said when she answered the phone.
“I can’t go anywhere,” Annette said, deeply apologetic, ‘the man’s coming to fix Tom’s word processor and I’ve got to be here. I’ll get someone to pick you up as soon as … oh, hold on, Jo, will you.”
Jo sheltered from the rain under the porch of the cottage.
She wouldn’t be able to hear a thing Annette was saying from inside the cottage since Dick had started kango-ing again.
She’d have to get her own mobile phone. More money. Why hadn’t she bothered joining the AA? Why, why, why?
“Jo?” said a man’s deep voice. She gasped. It was Mark.
“What’s happened?”
She’d managed to avoid him for ages, had been frostily polite in the office, disappeared as fast as a heavily pregnant woman could whenever he seemed to be walking towards her desk to talk to her. Now there was no escape.
“My car’s broken down. It’s the starting motor, apparently.
I’ve got no one to bring me home she wailed.
“And I don’t know who to ring. It’s never actually broken down on me before.”
“Where are you? And how do you know it’s the starting motor?”
“I’m at the cottage. Redwood Lane. One of the builders looked at it for me. It’s his phone I’m using but he doesn’t have the van because Tom’s gone to Bray.”
If Mark was confused by this explanation, he didn’t let on.
“Leave it to me he said firmly.
“I’ll arrange for a tow truck to pick the car up and I’ll come and get you myself. Give me three-quarters of an hour.”
He must have really pushed the Porsche to the speed limit.
Only twenty-five minutes later his car roared down the lane and stopped outside the house.
“Nice car said Dick appreciatively, sipping another cup of tea. Too much tea, that was why the cottage was like a disaster area, Jo thought testily. Maybe she should swipe the tea bags and see how much Dick got done without a tea break every half an hour.
“Your fella, is he?” Dick inquired with interest.
Jo sniffed.
“No.”
“Mmm.” Dick muttered, as if he’d noticed the eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick she’d carefully applied in the bathroom mirror. She hoped his nose was too bunged up with cement dust to smell the liberal application of Tresor. If only she’d been able to find her brush. Not that she could have done much repair work when her hair was so damp and frizzy.
Mark swept up the path, a dark brown waxed raincoat flapping around his long legs. He looked far more at home in the wilds of the Dublin mountains than she did. Apart from her ski boots.
He also looked healthily brown after two weeks in the Maldives, the honey colour of his skin made the grey streaks in his short hair stand out even more. He was sickeningly attractive, sexy and most definitely not ‘my fella’, thought Jo desolately.
“Hello,” she said in a small voice.
“Come and sit in my car while I have a look at the engine.”
He put a strong arm around her. They walked slowly down the path. He pushed the passenger seat back, helped her in carefully and said, “I won’t be a moment.”
Jo watched him stride back to her car and lift the bonnet capably. Mark did everything capably, everything from running several businesses to fixing the coffee maker in the office when Annette said it couldn’t be fixed.
He’d made her feel safe, comforted and special for a few months. And she’d pushed him away and into the arms of his old girlfriend. Well, he’d hardly gone to the Maldives alone.
A few minutes later, Mark opened the car door, threw his raincoat into the back and eased his big frame into the driver’s seat.
“It’s the starting motor, all right. Someone from my garage is coming to get it. They’ll have it for you tomorrow afternoon.”
“Will it be expensive?” she asked tiredly.
Mark shot her a glance.
“No. I doubt it. It’s just a small job.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t suppose you’ve had any lunch, Jo, have you?”
he asked kindly.
Nobody said her name like that but Mark, with that mixture of warmth and something else, something she could never define. Tenderness. Was that it? Couldn’t be. Why would he bother being kind to her when she’d been such a bitch to him?
Jo bit her lip and looked out the window at the small patchwork fields speeding by, dark with mud. Cows huddled together in the rain, monotonously chewing silage from big metal troughs. They looked as wet as she was. They looked depressed too. Being a cow couldn’t be much fun.
She felt a hand on hers, a warm, strong hand clasping her small, cold one for a moment, “Let’s go to Johnny Fox’s. I could do with a decent pint of Guinness and some lunch, how about you?”
Jo couldn’t say anything. She just nodded.
, “Good. And you can tell me why you’re still up to your eyes in builders a month after they started.”
“Don’t get me going on builders said Jo, brightening up.
“Honestly, I don’t know what they’re playing at. They know I’m in a hurry to move in but they don’t seem to be working any faster to make up for lost time.”
“Have you spoken to Brian recently?” Mark put his hand back on Jo’s after negotiating a sharp bend.
“He’s the best contractor I know. He usually runs a pretty tight ship.”
“He’s away all this week.” Jo was almost afraid to move in case she dislodged his hand from hers. It felt lovely to be touched, so comforting to have his fingers gently curled around hers.
“I’ll ring his office later,” Mark said, ‘and put the skids under those boyos at your house. Brian must be paying them too much if they’ve all got mobiles, and I don’t want to make them millionaires at your expense.”
Thanks,” Jo said gratefully.
“I know I should be tougher on them myself, but I’m just not up to it right now. If they said anything back to me, I know I’d cry.” She was sick of acting hard-as-nails with Mark. He didn’t have to know that when she felt like crying, it was because she’d messed up her chances with him. Nobody knew that, not even Rhona.
Jo had lost count of the times when she’d lain in bed and wondered what he was doing, who he was doing it with.
She still had the ticket stub from their trip to America in her purse
and sometimes she took it out and touched it, remembering the few days they’d had together. When anything seemed possible, even a love affair between a pregnant woman and her boss.
Jo had searched the gossip columns relentlessly, keeping an eye out for mentions of glamorous half-French painters or wealthy businessmen. But there’d been nothing.
Once or twice, she’d thought of telling Rhona what had happened, that she’d lied to Mark about Richard. Then she’d stopped herself. Mark had to be in love with Eva and Rhona knew about it, Jo was sure. Telling Rhona that she was in love with Mark would put the other woman in a difficult position.
Jo could almost hear her words, “They’re getting married, Jo, as soon as she can get a divorce.”
Mark looked over and grinned at her, the tiny lines around his grey eyes crinkled up attractively.
“I have tissues in the glove compartment if you feel like a good sob,” he offered.
“But I hope I can cheer you up.”
You sure could, Jo thought silently.
He stopped the car outside the highest pub in Ireland and hurried around to help Jo out of her seat.
Oh God, she thought, remembering the muddy ski boots.
“I look a mess,” she sighed. These horrible boots and everything.”
Mark took her face in both hands and kissed her gently on the lips.
“You look absolutely beautiful, as always, Jo.”
Still holding her upturned face, he stared at her carefully, eyes taking in her huge dark eyes fringed with thick lashes.
She stared back at him, wondering if she’d dreamed the last moment. She looked an absolute mess with her frizzy hair and her awful clothes. Had he really kissed her and told her she was beautiful? It was like some glorious dream.
Mark was watching her intensely, fingers warm on her skin and suddenly she knew what he was waiting for. A response.
He wasn’t sure, he’d taken a chance. What a fabulous, marvelous, perfectly timed chance.
Jo smiled at him, feeling the warmth deep inside her spread onto her face.
She stretched one hand up and touched his cheek gently.
She stood on her toes and arched herself towards his lips, not easy in her condition. He slid one arm around her, supporting her back as he bent down to kiss her. This time, it was no gentle, platonic kiss: it was deep and passionate, yet somehow full of love and understanding.
Mark pulled away first.
“I should have done that a long time ago,” he said.
“I’ve wanted to for long enough.”
Jo couldn’t speak. She stood looking up at him, her eyes strangely filled with tears.
“Come on.” He took her by the hand and led her towards the pub’s front door.
“It’s starting to rain again. We can’t have you getting soaked twice in one day.”
He found a pew-style seat for her near the fireplace and banked up cushions behind her to protect her back. After months of looking after herself, this act of tenderness was nearly her undoing.
“Don’t cry, Jo,” Mark said softly, sitting beside her and kissing her on the cheek.
“I know you’re all emotional. But I’m here to look after you now.”
This finished her off completely.
“It’s so wonderful,” she sobbed, the tears finally racing down her cheeks.
“You’re being so nice, after I was such a bitch to you. I don’t deserve it.”
“Of course you do. It’s me who doesn’t deserve you.” He handed her his handkerchief.
“Blow.”
“I’m always stealing your handkerchiefs,” she snuffled tearily.
“Sorry.”
“My handkerchiefs are all yours, everything of mine is yours.”
He meant it too, she realised, looking up at his face through the tears.
“What about Eva?” she asked.
There’s been nothing going on between Eva and myself, not for a long time. Certainly not since I fell in love with you.”
“What about the Maldives?” asked Jo anxiously.
“You couldn’t go there on your own, could you?”
Mark’s look of amazement told her he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
“Your holiday she prompted.
“I went to Spain with some friends to play golf. Male friends, I should add. I couldn’t stand a beach holiday. Unless you were with me he added, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. Think of the fun I could have rubbing sun lotion onto you.”
She drank hot tea and he fed her smoked salmon on homemade brown bread. He only started on his plate when hers was finished.
“You’re so good to me, Mark.” she said simply, leaning comfortably against his shoulder as he ate.
“I’ve wanted to be good to you for a long time but you wouldn’t let me he answered, taking a bite of bread.
“You’re very good at that “I’m an independent woman” thing, very good at scaring people off.”
Jo grimaced.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to be sorry, I can understand exactly why you’d want to scare people off.”
“Can you?” she asked uncertainly. She desperately wanted him to understand everything.
“I was so lonely and on my own when Richard left. I felt like a one-woman disaster area. I couldn’t bear to let anyone close.”
“I can see that now he said with a low laugh.
“When you split up with him … I didn’t know if that was the right time to make my move. I was afraid you were still in love with him.”
Jo let her right hand rest on Mark’s neck, her fingers stroked the back of his head. She loved feeling the breadth of his shoulders, the sheer physical size of him. He made her feel petite, even now when she was as big as a whale.
“When I asked you to go to New York, it was a gamble. I hoped you’d go. I wanted to find out how you really felt about him despite the breakup.”
“You knew we’d split up?” she asked in astonishment.
He grinned and fed her a sliver of salmon drenched in lemon juice. “Yes I haf good informants, Frauline,” he said in a mock German accent.
“I needed to know if you could ever think of me. And I thought you could and maybe even did until you told me about the baby.” He shrugged.
“At that point, I felt like such a heel, as if I was trying to take advantage of you.”
“That’s why you started treating me like your long-lost little sister she said, finally understanding.
“I didn’t feel very brotherly towards you.” Mark stroked her thigh with one hand.
“Not at all.”
Jo felt a warmth in her belly at the thought of Mark harbouring unbrotherly desires for her. She remembered the dream she’d had about him that night in the Manhattan Fitzpatrick, the dream where they were naked and entangled in bed.
“I thought you were disgusted with me, that’s why we couldn’t talk except on the phone,” she explained, dragging her thoughts away from the picture of them in bed.
“Disgusted? Never. You’ve got to understand something, Jo,” Mark said, turning to face her, ‘the way I felt about you, I couldn’t bear to see you alone, alone and pregnant thanks to that bastard, when you should have been loved and your baby should have been loved.”
She loved hearing him talk this way, loved it.
“Christ, I couldn’t bear to see you facing everything on your own.” He tucked back a few damp strands of Jo’s hair behind one ear.
“So you mean you fancied me when you brought me out to lunch ages ago, before we went to New York?” Jo demanded.
“Yes.”
“And you fancied me when we went to New York?”
“Fancied you? I wanted to drag you into bed and never let you out again. When you wore that brown painted thing, I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“That’s my Mary Gregory dress, not some “thing”.” But you liked it?” she added, with an arch smile.
“I loved it.”
“Good. I was beginning to think I’d lost my touch,” she added triumphantly.
“And I love you too, Jo. I just needed the chance to tell you.
Today was it.”
“Oh Mark.” Jo leaned against him contentedly.
“I love you too. I thought I’d never be able to say that to your face, that is.” She sat up straight.
“Do you think we should ask the garage to keep the starting motor for us as a sort of memento?”
“One we can look at on our silver wedding and feel indebted to?” he asked, kissing her again.
“Exactly!”
“We should keep Rhona’s telephone as a memento as well,” he added.
“Why?”
“Because yesterday she told me that you weren’t really with Richard, that he hadn’t come back. Why the hell did you say he had?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was pining for you when you were obviously in love with Eva,” Jo said defensively.
“I
couldn’t bear you to pity me or think I was a foolish pregnant woman.”
“I’ve never met anyone as imaginative as you in my life,” Mark said.
“Does this mean that if I don’t ring you first thing tomorrow morning, you’ll suddenly decide that I’ve gone off to the South of France with someone else?”
Jo didn’t answer. She was thinking of the most important question of all, the one thing she had to ask.
“The baby. The baby is the most important thing in my life, Mark. I have to think of her first. Can you love my baby, even though she’s Richard’s?”
“She won’t be Richard’s baby,” he said simply.
“She’ll be our baby, our child. If I hadn’t wanted both mother and child, do you think I’d be here? I’m not like him. I don’t just want the beautiful journalist and nothing else, no ties, no commitments.
I want the woman, the mother, you.” Mark turned on the seat, held her hands and looked at her.
“I know you’ve been hurt, Jo, but you’ve got to trust me. I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again. And as for that bastard …”
She placed a finger over his mouth.
“Don’t ruin it by even talking about him,” she said.
“He’s bad news, always has been, although I didn’t realise it for a long time. Let’s just forget about him.”
They sat in front of the fire for an hour. Jo warmed her toes after Mark had carefully taken off her ski boots.
“I can’t remember when I last saw my feet,” she said cheerfully, as the warmth of the fire sank into her bones.
“Was I always really horrible to you?” she asked, hating to think of how she’d been fatally drawn into disagreeing with every second word Mark had said at the editorial conferences.
“Brutal,” he replied.
“You were so argumentative, always determined to have your say because you had such strong opinions about ‘everything. But I liked that. You were never afraid to have your say. And if you were proved wrong, you always said so, which I like even more.”
“Like the posters with the three words wrongly spelled?”
she asked.
“Like the posters,” he agreed.
“You were so angry with yourself that day when you realised they’d nearly gone to the printers incorrectly. And you were twice as angry with me for mentioning it at the meeting. I remember you were wearing that pink cardigan thing, it was really quite see-through.”
Jo grimaced.
“I know, I only realised how transparent it was later.”
“I noticed,” he said with a small smile.
“You came back into the boardroom after the meeting to get your notebook, all barely concealed temper.” He paused and grinned.
“I was trying not to stare at your breasts because I could see the faint outline of your bra through the cardigan … It was quite a feat to talk at all.”
“I thought you were a pig and I was waiting for you to make a sarcastic comment!” Jo exclaimed.
“I was trying not to grab you and tell you I was crazy about you there and then,” Mark said.
“Really?” she asked in delight.
“I was going to throw that cardigan out.”
“Don’t you dare he murmured.
“Next time you wear it, I want to take it off.”
“I might not fit into it ever again,” Jo said ruefully, looking down at herself.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll just have to find something else for me to rip off Mark said gently.
It was nearly four when Mark looked at his watch.
“I’m afraid that we have to go, darling he said, smiling down at her as if he couldn’t quite believe that she was his.
She knew how he felt.
“I’ve got to go to this business dinner in town at eight and I’ve got a meeting in Jurys beforehand.” He got to his feet.
“Oh.” Jo couldn’t hide her disappointment. She’d hoped that they could spend the evening together and now he was telling her about his plans, plans that had nothing to do with her.
“You’re invited, my pet, so don’t get upset. I’ll pick you up at half six he added, tickling her under the chin.
Jo beamed at him.
“You’ve certainly got me figured out.”
“I’ve been doing research for over three years he said.
“My God, are you all right? Is it the baby?” he asked suddenly, as Jo let out an anguished squeak.
“No. I’ve nothing to wear!” she wailed.
“Nothing glamorous that will fit me, anyway.”
“Is that all?” Mark gave her a hug.
“Rhona’s bound to have something glam from her three pregnancies and we’re not far from her house. We could drop in and pick something up.”
Rhona answered her mobile with her characteristically brusque, “Yes!”
“Hi, Rho, it’s Jo here. Where are you?”
“Stuck behind a bloody truck on the dual carriage way You sound as if you’re on a car phone, Jo.”
“I am. I’m with Mark.”
She was rewarded with a triumphant roar on the other end of the receiver.
“With Mark as in with him in the car, or with Mark?” Rhona demanded.
“With him answered Mark, who could hear his editor’s roars.
“Yahoo! Thank you for ringing me to tell me,” Rhona said in a quieter voice.
“Actually, I’m ringing because I need something sexy in the maternity-dress line for this dinner Mark is bringing me to tonight,” Jo said apologetically.
“We’re only a few miles away from your place …”
Typical. I personally coordinate the match of the decade and you just want to rifle through my wardrobe.” Rhona did her best to sound outraged but failed.
“I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Ted will be there so tell him to put the kettle on.
Better still, I’ll phone him myself.”
When Rhona swept, into her sitting room half an hour later, she brought a bottle of rose wine with her.
“We’ve got to celebrate,” she said, kissing Jo warmly on the cheek.
“It’s only sparkling wine but it’s better than tea. I’m so happy for you, Jo,” she whispered.
“You deserve him. He’s a wonderful man.”
Mark got up from his seat beside Jo and held Rhona in a bear hug.
“Thanks for everything.” He turned to face Jo.
“If it wasn’t for this lady, we’d still be freezing each other out every time we met.”
“My wife is a formidable woman,” Ted agreed, handing them all glasses of frothy pink wine.
A second bottle of rose had been consumed by the time Rhona and Jo finally made it upstairs to rummage through Rhona’s wardrobe with five-year-old Susie and eight-year-old Lynne eagerly accompanying them.
“Do you want to see our room?” inquired Susie, who was holding Jo’s hand.
“Of course. Will you show it to me?” asked Jo.
After five minutes admiring Susie’s teddies, her dolls and Lynne’s latest potato-print picture, she followed Rhona into the spare bedroom.
“I shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach hiccuped Rhona, heaving open the old pine wardrobe door.
“You had half a glass, and Mark only had one that means that Ted and I drank practically two bottles on our own.”
“Well, it’s not as if you’re going anywhere,” Jo pointed out sensibly.
“Oh Rhona, this is lovely she said, taking out a long cream silk dress with tiny buttons all the way from hem to neck.
“Lovely if you’re six foot and six stone said Rhona, sitting down on the bed.
“This is my spare wardrobe, the one the girls like best she added.
“And it’s where I keep all the stuff I should never have bought because I can’t fit into it. Lynne, show Jo the stuff at the back beside the sequin ned dress.- ?
There’s a nice velvet thing I wore when I was having Susie.”
“Can I try it on?” asked Susie. She looked up from the basket of lipsticks she’d taken off the dressing table.
“No darling. It’s for big people only.”
“Really big people said Jo when she saw it. On the hanger, the long-sleeved empire-line dress in midnight blue looked big enough to fit Rhona and Jo together.
But when Jo put it on, she found that it was amazingly ( flattering. The high waist drew the eye to her cleavage so that you didn’t notice her huge bump, while the long, tapered sleeves gave it a faintly medieval air.
“Perfect!” Rhona said, looking at her deputy editor through narrowed eyes.
“Purfect, purfect!” sang Susie, admiring the broad pink smile and bright red eyebrows she’d drawn on herself with lipstick.
“If Susie does your make-up, you’ll look stunning added Rhona gravely.
Thank you, Rho.” Jo said suddenly.
“Thank you for this and for what you’ve done for Mark and me.”
“Well, I knew that if I didn’t do something, the pair of you would never sort things out. Of course, this means I have to sit up at the top of the church for the wedding and I get to wear an enormously mad hat.”
“Anything you want replied Jo with a large grin. She sat down on the bed.
“Come on, Susie, put on my lipstick! “