“You can’t wait for that.” I steel myself to say what I know is right. “Suze, you have to tell Tarkie yourself. As soon as possible.”
As she gazes back at me, she looks utterly ill. But after what feels like about half an hour, she nods.
—
I think I feel nearly as sick as Suze does. I’ve had to admit plenty of awkward things to Luke over the years, like when I sold his six Tiffany clocks on eBay without telling him. But selling Tiffany clocks and kissing another man aren’t even in the same category.
And when I say “kissing,” I’m being kind to Suze, because it was obviously far more than kissing. (Although exactly what? She still won’t tell me, and I’m obviously too mature to ask her to draw a stick diagram. I’ll just have to use my imagination.)
(Actually, no, don’t do that. Urgh. Bad imagination.)
We’ve agreed that I’ll make the call and then pass the phone over to her, and as I press the speed-dial button, my heart is pumping.
“Tarkie!” I say fiercely as soon as he answers. “Listen. You have to talk to Suze right now, and if you don’t, I’m never speaking to you again, and when I tell my dad, he won’t either. This is stupid. You can’t keep phoning me and avoiding Suze. She’s your wife. And she has some very important things to say.”
There’s silence on the other end, then Tarkie says, “OK, put her on.” He sounds a bit chastened, actually.
I pass the phone to Suze, then retreat. I was half-hoping Suze would ask me to stay with her, so I could press my ear to the back of the phone and hear Tarkie’s side of the conversation. But she said she had to talk in private.
Which…you know. It’s her marriage and everything. Although I would have been very helpful and given her Dutch courage and prompted her when she ran out of words. I’m just saying.
Anyway, it’s fine. She’s gone outside the tent and I’m sitting by the Mexican band, drinking a Diet Coke to dilute the tequila. A guy in a poncho handed me a tambourine a few moments ago, and he looked so eager I didn’t have the heart to say no. So I’m banging it and singing in what I think is pretty good Spanish (“Aheya-aheya-aheya-aheya”) and trying not to picture Suze and Tarquin standing on the steps of a divorce court, when suddenly there she is, back again.
My heart gives this almighty swoop and my tambourine falls limply to my side. She’s standing by the flap of the tent, her face flushed, breathing hard, looking totally freaked out.
“What happened?” I venture as she approaches. “Suze, are you OK?”
“Bex, the trees on our estate,” she mutters feverishly. “The trees. Do you remember anything about them? Anything at all?”
Trees? What is she going on about?
“Um, no,” I say cautiously. “I don’t know anything about trees. Suze, focus. What happened? How were things left?”
“I don’t know.” She’s looking bleak.
“You don’t know?” I stare at her. “How can you not know? What did he say?”
“We talked. I told him. I mean, he didn’t quite understand to begin with….” She rubs her nose.
OK, I can just imagine the conversation. Suze saying, I’ve had this dreadful thing happen, Tarkie, and Tarkie thinking she’s lost her mascara.
“Did you actually tell him?” I demand severely. “Does he actually know what’s happened?”
“Yes.” She swallows. “Yes, he…he got it in the end. I mean, the signal was pretty patchy.”
“And?”
“He was really shocked. I think I’d kidded myself he might have guessed…but he hadn’t.”
Honestly. Of course he hadn’t guessed. This is Tarkie. Only I don’t say this to Suze, because she’s in full flight.
“I kept saying I was sorry and it wasn’t as bad as he probably imagined”—Suze gulps—“and that I couldn’t, you know, bring myself to go the whole way with Bryce, and he said, Was he supposed to be grateful for that?”
Good point, Tarkie, I think silently. Although also: Good point, Suze. I mean, she wasn’t actually unfaithful, was she? In the legal sense.
(Is there a legal sense? I must ask Luke; he’ll know.)
(Actually, no, I won’t ask Luke or he’ll wonder why I want to know, and that could lead to all sorts of misunderstandings, which I really don’t need right now.)
“Anyway, in the end I said we need to meet up and talk, as soon as possible,” Suze continues, her voice quivering. “And he said no.”
“No?” I gape at her.
“He said he was doing something very important for your dad and he wasn’t going to interrupt it. And then the signal finally went. So.” Suze shrugs, as though she’s not bothered, but I can see her hands clenching and unclenching nervously.
“So that was the end of the conversation?” I say disbelievingly.
“Yes.”
“So you don’t know how things stand?”
“Not really.” She sinks onto a barstool next to me and I gaze at her, feeling slightly dumbstruck. This is all wrong. The whole point of ringing your husband for a full and frank confession is that you talk everything through, and by the end you’re either going to split up or you’ve made up.
I mean, isn’t it?
The trouble with Tarkie is, he doesn’t watch TV, so he has no idea how these things go.
“Suze, you need to buy some box sets,” I say fervently. “Tarkie has no point of reference.”
“I know. He didn’t say anything like I thought he would.”
“Did he say he needed some space?”
“No.”
“Did he say, How can I trust anything you say now?”
“No.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“He said he could understand me being tempted by Bryce and he’d fallen under Bryce’s spell too…”
“Very true.” I nod.
“…but we were Cleath-Stuarts, and Cleath-Stuarts don’t compromise; it’s all or nothing.”
“All or nothing?” I pull a face. “What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know!” wails Suze. “He wasn’t clear. And then he started talking about this famous tree we have on the Letherby estate, Owl’s Tower.” The freaked-out look returns to her eyes. “You know how all our biggest trees have names?”
I do know. In Suze’s spare room, there’s a booklet about the trees, and I have tried to read it, except I fall asleep every time I reach Lord Henry Cleath-Stuart bringing back seeds from India in 1873.
“Talking about a tree is good!” I exclaim encouragingly. “It’s a very good sign. It says, I want our marriage to last. Suze, if he’s talking about trees, I think you’re OK.”
“You don’t understand!” wails Suze again. “I don’t know which tree Owl’s Tower is! We’ve got millions of trees called Owl’s Something. And there was one really famous one which was struck by lightning and died. He might be talking about that one.”
“Oh God.” I stare at her, my confidence slightly dented. “Really?”
“Maybe Tarkie’s saying that Bryce is the lightning bolt and now our marriage is a charred stump with smoke rising from it.” Suze’s voice quivers.
“But maybe he’s not,” I counter. “Maybe Owl’s Tower is some really healthy oak which is still standing after lots of trials and tribulations. Didn’t you ask him which tree it was?”
Suze looks more agonized than ever.
“I couldn’t admit I didn’t know,” she says in a small voice. “Tarkie always says I should take more interest in the trees on the estate. So last year I told him I’d been round with the head groundsman and it was all really interesting.”
“Had you?”
“No,” she whispers, and buries her head in her hands. “I went riding instead.”
“Let me get this straight.” I put my tambourine down on the bar, because you can’t think properly with a tambourine in your hand. “Tarkie thought he was giving you a coded message that you would understand due to your shared love of the family trees.”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t the foggiest what he meant.”
“No.”
Honestly. This is the trouble with living in a stately home with great poetic symbols everywhere. If they lived in a normal house with one apple tree and a privet hedge, there’d be none of this hoo-ha.
“OK,” I say firmly. “Suze, you need to find out which tree Owl’s Tower is. Phone your parents, phone his parents, phone your head groundsman—anyone!”
“I already have,” admits Suze. “I’ve left them all messages.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know. Wait.”
I can’t quite believe this. Basically Suze’s marriage is either over or not, depending on a tree. This is so bloody Tarquin.
Although I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been the plot of a Wagner opera.
Suze gets down from her barstool and starts pacing round on the spot, nibbling her fingers and checking her phone about every two seconds. Her eyes are wild and she’s muttering to herself, “Is it the chestnut? Maybe it’s that big ash.” She’s going to drive herself insane like this.
“Look, Suze.” I try to grab her arm, but miss. “Calm down. There’s nothing you can do now. You need to think of something else. Let’s go and look at the fair. Suze, please,” I beg, making another swipe at her arm. “You’ve had a really stressful time. It’s not good for you. It’s all cortisol and stuff in your veins. It’s poison!”
I learned this at Golden Peace. In fact, I went to a whole series of classes called Limit Your Stress Levels, which would have been really useful if I hadn’t always arrived late after yoga and spent the whole class feeling totally hassled. (I actually think I’d have felt less stressed if I hadn’t gone to the class.)
“OK,” says Suze at last, still pacing. “OK. Maybe I should try to get my mind off things.”
“Exactly! Look, we’ve got ages till we’re on duty in the ceramics tent. Let’s go and find a distraction.”
“Right.” Suze stops pacing, but her eyes are still wild. “You’re right. What shall we do? I wonder if I can borrow a horse. I could enter some events. I’ve never done a rodeo before.”
A rodeo? Is she nuts?
“Er…maybe!” I say warily. “I was actually thinking more like wander round? Look at the displays? They’ve got chickens, you know.”
Suze has always had a soft spot for chickens (which I understand even less than the pig thing). I unfold my guide and I’m about to tell her some of the breeds, when her eyes light up.
“I know.” She clasps hold of my arm and marches me off. “I’ve got it.”
“Where are we going?” I protest.
“You’ll see.”
—
Suze seems so determined, there’s no point arguing. And at least she’s stopped nibbling her fingers like a madwoman. We skirt round all the food tents, wind our way through the livestock arenas, and pass the Creative Village. (We pass it twice, in fact. I think Suze gets a bit lost, not that she’ll admit it.)
“Here we are.” Suze draws up at last in front of a tent with a sign reading HEEL TO TOE. I can hear “Sweet Home Alabama” being played on the sound system inside.
“What’s this?” I say blankly.
“We’re buying boots,” says Suze. “We’re at a proper county fair, so we need proper cowboy boots.” She sweeps me inside the tent and I inhale a solid smell of leather. In fact, I’m so overcome by the smell, it takes me a moment to register the spectacular sight before me.
“Oh my God,” I stutter at last.
“Isn’t it just…” Suze seems as overwhelmed as I am.
We’re standing arm in arm, staring upward in total awe like a pair of pilgrims at the holy shrine.
I mean, I’ve seen cowboy boots for sale, plenty of times. You know. A shelf here and there. But I’ve never seen anything like this. The racks reach the top of the tent. Each rack has about fifteen shelves, and each one is covered in boots. There are brown boots and black boots, pink ones and aquamarine ones. Some have rhinestones. Some have embroidery. Some have rhinestones and embroidery. Under a sign reading LUXURY BOOTS, there’s a white pair with inlaid python print, which cost five hundred dollars, and a pair made from pale-blue ostrich leather, which cost seven hundred. There’s even a black pair which are thigh high and marked Latest Fashion but they look a bit weird, to be honest.
It’s all so dazzling, neither of us can quite speak. Suze takes off her old brown cowboy boots, which she got in Covent Garden, and slips on a pair of pink and white boots from the rack. With her blue jeans and blond hair they look amazing.
“Or look at these.” I grab her a pale-tan pair with delicate rhinestones tracing a pattern up the sides.
“They’re beautiful.” Suze practically swoons in lust.
“Or these!” I’ve found a dramatic pair of black-and-dark-brown leather boots, which smell all rich and dark and saddley. “For winter?”
It’s like gorging on chocolates. Every pair is more alluring and delicious. For about twenty minutes I do nothing but chuck boots at Suze and watch as she models them. Her legs look endless and she keeps swishing her hair around and saying, “I wish I had Caramel here.”
(Caramel is her latest horse. And I have to say, I’m very glad she doesn’t have him here, if she’s thinking of riding in a rodeo.)
At last she’s narrowed it down to the tan boots with rhinestones and a black pair with amazing white embroidery. I bet she buys both.
“Hang on.” Her chin suddenly jerks up. “Bex, what about you? Why aren’t you trying any on?”
“Oh,” I say, caught out. “Actually, I don’t really feel like it.”
“Don’t feel like it?” Suze stares at me, puzzled. “What, trying on boots?”
“Yes. I suppose.”
“Not at all?”
“Well…no.” I gesture at the boots. “But you carry on.”
“I don’t want to carry on.” Suze seems a bit crestfallen. “I wanted to buy us both a pair of boots. You know, to make up. To be friends again. But if you don’t want to—”
“No, I do! That would be lovely,” I say hastily.
I can’t hurt Suze. But I’m feeling that same weird, twisting-in-my-stomach feeling as before. Trying to ignore it, I take a pair of boots off the nearest rack and Suze hands me some socks.
“These are nice.” I slip them on. They’re brown with a black laser-cut design and fit me perfectly. “Good size too. There we are. Done.” I try to smile.
Suze stands in her socks, holding two pairs of boots in her hands, her eyes narrowed.
“That’s it?”
“Er…yes.”
“Aren’t you going to try any more on?”
“Well…” I run my eyes over the boots, trying to feel like I used to. Boots! I tell myself. Suze wants to buy me some cool boots! Yay!
But it all feels false to my own ears. When it’s Suze trying them on, I get all excited for her—but when it’s me, somehow it’s different. To show willing, I quickly pull down a turquoise pair and slide my feet inside. “These are nice too.”
“Nice?”
“I mean…” I cast around for the right word. “Gorgeous. They’re gorgeous.” I nod, trying to look enthusiastic.
“Bex, stop it!” says Suze in distress. “Be normal! Be excited!”
“I am excited!” I retort—but even I can tell I’m not convincing.
“What’s happened to you?” Suze gazes at me, her face pink with agitation.
“Nothing!”
“It has! You’ve gone strange! You’ve gone all—” She stops herself suddenly. “Wait. Are you in debt, Bex? Because I’m paying for this—”
“No, I’m not in debt, for once. Look…” I rub my face. “I’ve slightly gone off shopping. That’s all.”
“You’ve gone off shopping?” Suze drops both pairs of boots with a thud.
“Just a bit. You know. For myself. I mean, I love buying Minnie thi
ngs, and Luke….Look, you buy yourself a pair of boots.” I smile at her. “I’ll get some another time.” I pick up the boots she dropped and proffer them. “They look fabulous.”
But Suze doesn’t move a muscle. She’s staring at me warily.
“Bex, what’s up?” she asks at last.
“Nothing,” I answer at once. “I just—you know. Everything’s been a bit stressy, I suppose….”
“You seem flat,” she says slowly. “I didn’t notice it before. I’ve been too wrapped up in—” She halts. “I wasn’t taking notice of you.”
“There’s nothing to take notice of. Look, Suze, I’m fine.”
There’s silence. Suze is still regarding me with that wary look. Then she comes over, grabs my arms, and stares into my face.
“OK, Bex, what do you want most of all in life right now? Not only things, but, like, experiences. A holiday. A job. An ambition—anything!”
“I…well…”
I try to summon up some kind of desire. But it’s weird. It’s like that place inside me is hollow.
“I just want…everyone to be healthy,” I say lamely. “World peace. You know. Usual stuff.”
“You’re not right.” Suze releases my arms. “I don’t know what’s up with you.”
“What, because I don’t want a pair of cowboy boots?”
“No! Because nothing’s driving you.” She peers at me in distress. “You’ve always had this…this energy. This engine. Where’s it gone? What are you enthusiastic about right now?”
I don’t say anything, but inside, something’s quailing. Last time I was enthusiastic about something, it nearly cost me all my relationships.
“Dunno.” I shrug, avoiding her eye.
“Think. What do you want? Bex, we’re being honest with each other.”
“Well,” I say, after a gigantic pause. “I suppose…”
“What? Bex, talk to me.”
“Well,” I say again, and give an awkward shrug. “I suppose most of all I’d like another baby one day. But it hasn’t happened. So. I mean, maybe it’ll never happen. But whatever.” I clear my throat. “You know. It’s no big deal.”
I raise my eyes to see Suze gazing at me, stricken.
“Bex, I didn’t realize. You’ve never said anything.”
“Well, I don’t go on about it.” I roll my eyes and take a few steps away. I don’t want any sympathy. In fact, I should never have mentioned it.