A uniformed waiter poked his head around the canvas walls of the cabaña just as Dita started to orgasm. Ever the exhibitionist, she turned and looked right at him, her pupils dilating wildly. He blushed scarlet.
“Oh my God! I…I’m so sorry, Ms. Andreas.” He started backing out.
Theo looked up. “Don’t be sorry,” he said, deadpan. “She loves it.”
Sasha heard the news that Theo Dexter had applied for the mastership of St. Michael’s on Christmas Day.
Home alone in her Upper East Side apartment, more depressed than she cared to admit, she was sitting at her computer, gorging herself on Fortnum & Mason mince pies from the luxury basket she’d had delivered to herself, when her thoughts turned to England and home. Remembering the conversation she’d had with her dad a few months ago about St. Michael’s, she googled “St. Michael’s Cambridge Master Election” and there it was.
“I don’t believe it,” she said aloud. Her first reaction was horror. It was bad enough that Theo should still be alive, never mind richer and more famous and successful than ever. But that he should go back to Cambridge, and not just to Cambridge but to St. Michael’s? That he should be welcomed back into the academic and scientific fold? That was too much to bear. Sasha would have given away Ceres and every penny she had to stop it from happening. But as ever, she was powerless.
Angry, frustrated, and bitterly depressed, she pulled on her warmest Donna Karan cashmere coat and fur-lined boots and trudged out into the snow. I’m like Mr. Scrooge, she thought, biting back her irritation as she watched smiling families building snowmen on the sidewalks and tried not to glare openly at the elderly couple who wished her a Merry Christmas on their way home from church. I have more money than I know what to do with, but I’m miserable as sin and all alone.
Stalking past the cheery West Village storefronts with their bright holiday displays, Sasha tried not to think about Jackson and Lottie and how they were spending the day, but it was like trying to turn back the tide. She pictured them like Jim Carey in the scene from Dumb and Dumber, in an idyllic log cabin somewhere, with Jackson in a snowflake sweater, gazing adoringly at Lottie as she sat by the fire looking wifely and blissful. She was probably pregnant already. Twins most likely, perfect, adorable little Jackson clones.
Turning the corner, she was mercifully distracted by the incongruous sight of a group of protesters. There were only ten or twelve of them, stomping their feet against the cold as they waved their homemade placards in the air, but their disgruntled faces cheered Sasha inordinately. My people. The kind of people who bitch on Christmas Day. She could have hugged them.
Crossing the street to get a better look, she saw that the placards read “No Condos on Holy Ground!” and felt slightly less warmly disposed. Bible-thumpers had never been Sasha’s cup of tea, and as a real-estate developer she found it hard to muster enthusiasm for the no-building brigade either. But curiosity got the better of her.
“What’s this about?” she asked one of the protesters, a pale, skinny girl with unfortunately prominent buckteeth.
“They want to build apartments on that lot over there, next to the church. The city’s said they’re gonna consent, because it’s vacant land. But there are people buried there. It’s consecrated!” She imbued the last word with as much outraged awe as her dental challenges would allow.
“Couldn’t they move the bodies?” asked Sasha innocently. “To some other consecrated ground?”
The girl looked as if she might burst into tears. “How would you like it, if someone dug you up and dumped you someplace else, like some hunk of garbage? What if it was your mother down there?”
Thinking privately that, as she’d be dead, she’d probably be past caring, Sasha murmured something supportive and continued on her way. It was only after she’d gone another two blocks and was thinking about heading home for a sixth mince pie and some DVDs of The Office, that it suddenly hit her. An idea so radical, and yet so obvious, so simple! Running back to where the protesters were standing, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of twenty-dollar bills, thrusting them into the bucktoothed girl’s bewildered hands.
“Thank you!” she beamed. “Thank you, and good luck with your campaign! And Merry Christmas!” she added for good measure, skipping toward her apartment, her heart still racing.
“Er…you’re welcome?” said the girl, watching the beautiful girl in the couture coat twirl her way down the street. She was sure she recognized her from somewhere.
Back in her apartment, Sasha kicked off her boots, dropped her coat on the floor, and ran to her bedroom, bouncing up and down on the bed like a five-year-old, whooping and laughing until she was out of breath.
After all these years, just like that, she’d done it.
She’d figured out a way to get her revenge on Theo Dexter.
It wouldn’t be easy, of course. Plenty of things could go wrong. But it was a chance, a plan, a window of opportunity she’d come to believe she would never be granted.
It was going to be a good Christmas after all.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY
THERESA SAT IN the waiting room of the Bridge Street doctor’s office, flicking through a three-year-old copy of Country Life and marveling at how cheap the property prices were back then…back when they’d seemed astronomical. The property market had been on her mind lately, ever since an extremely polite American couple had knocked on the door of Willow Tree Cottage a few weeks ago and asked her at what price she would consider selling.
“It is just the most utterly charming house we’ve ever seen,” gushed the wife. “We were planning to buy in the Cotswolds, you know, around Oxford?” She pronounced it “Arksford.”
Theresa suppressed a smile. “Yes, I know the area. It’s lovely.”
“But then we came out here and Cambridge just blew us away, didn’t it, Bill?”
“Blew us away,” the husband agreed. For a moment Theresa wondered whether he was being literal. She loved Cambridge as much as anyone had ever loved a city, but the February winds were brutally bitter. With its bare trees and gray, plaintive skies, and the last of the holiday snow turned to sludge in the streets, neither Cambridge nor Willow Tree Cottage looked at their best.
“You’re very kind, but I’m afraid I couldn’t consider selling,” Theresa explained, taking their telephone number and e-mail address anyway because they were so insistent. Ironically, had the couple knocked on her door three months earlier, she might well have entertained their offer. When she first heard that Theo had applied for the St. Michael’s mastership, she’d jumped off the deep end, vowing to abandon her own bid for the job and leave the university altogether. As usual, it was Jenny Aubrieau who got her to see sense.
“Are you out of your mind? In fact, forget that, you can scratch the question mark. You are out of your mind.”
It was the morning after Theresa’s passionate night with Horatio Hollander. Theresa had woken late, hideously hungover and in complete emotional turmoil. Thank God Horatio had left early. There was a note from him propped up against the butter dish on the kitchen table, but she didn’t have the strength to read it yet. Last night had been amazing, incredible, a complete revelation, and one of the most meaningful experiences of Theresa’s life. But she already knew she mustn’t repeat it. What can I offer a boy his age? Once his infatuation wears off he’ll want children and a normal family life. All the things I can’t give him. She pictured Horatio at forty, still handsome and youthful, pushing her around in a wheelchair. Admittedly, it was a bit of a stretch. When Horatio was forty, Theresa would only be sixty-one. But the basic truth remained: she was too old for him. He would grow to resent her, and rightly so. Downing two extra-strength Alka-Seltzer, she crawled back to bed but was woken by a phone call from Jenny, demanding to know where she’d been last night and insisting she come over for brunch.
“I really can’t, Jen. I’m too hungover to drive.”
“Fine,” said Jen
ny. “I’ll come and get you. Throw on a sweater, I’ll be there in five.” An hour later, fortified by a hefty slab of Jenny’s homemade chocolate cake and numerous cups of hot, sweet tea, Theresa had confessed that she was thinking of leaving. “I can’t face bumping into him every day. Well, maybe I can, but I don’t want to face it.”
“So you’re just going to pull out of the mastership? Roll over and let him win?”
“Come on, Jenny,” Theresa laughed joylessly. “He’s already won. You know how strapped for cash St. Michael’s is. Who are they going to want as master, a penniless woman Shakespeare scholar no one’s ever heard of, who’s too inexperienced anyway, or a world-renowned superstar with a sex-symbol wife who can raise the six million they need to reroof the chapel just by fluttering his eyelashes? It’s hopeless.”
“It’s not,” said Jenny robustly. “Not if you don’t give up hope. Besides, isn’t there a principle involved here?”
Theresa took another big bite of chocolate cake and tried not to think about principles.
“I mean, why should you give up everything you’ve worked for just because he has some passing whim about coming back to his roots? What sort of message does that send your students, especially the girls?”
“I’ve never set myself up as a role model,” mumbled Theresa guiltily, thinking about Horatio. What the hell was she playing at?
“Maybe not. But you’ve never been a coward, either, not while I’ve known you,” said Jenny. Theresa was shocked by the anger in her voice. “You love your life here, you love your work, you love that house. Don’t let him drive you out, T. Don’t do it.”
And in the end, Theresa hadn’t. She’d channeled her inner Blitz spirit and hunkered down at Willow Tree Cottage, working harder than ever on her book and her teaching, doing her best to impress the St. Michael’s fellowship with her quiet industry and determined professionalism. She’d also told a devastated Horatio Hollander that she couldn’t go out with him. For a few weeks afterward she would see him at supervisions, but it was torturous for both of them. Shocked by how much she thought about him and horrified by the degree to which her ending their short-lived affair had affected him physically—hardly stocky to begin with, he’d become positively gaunt, his cheeks caving in like a prisoner of war—she was relieved when Horatio eventually requested a transfer to another professor.
“It’s not personal,” he told her, sadly. “Well, it is personal, but I’m not angry or anything. I just…can’t.”
“I understand,” said Theresa. She felt like she was going into a decline herself, although her version unfortunately involved eating rather than starving. While Horatio’s ribs became more prominent daily, Theresa seemed to have developed a layer of blubber around the middle that no amount of brisk walks into college would shift. As the nights grew shorter and the weather progressed from chilly to cold to arctic, she would sit curled up by the fire at the cottage, eating Marks & Spencer’s sticky toffee pudding and forcing herself not to think about either Horatio or Theo, whose arrival was now set for mid-March, a mere three weeks before the actual elections. All the other candidates, including herself, had been diligently lobbying the college authorities for months, but not Theo. Of course not. He’ll just waltz in and steal it from under our noses, like the king that he is.
“Ms. O’Connor?”
The doctor’s receptionist, a fat, surly jobsworth of a woman who reveled in the power she wielded over her tiny, linoleum-floored fiefdom, summoned Theresa imperiously to the desk.
“You didn’t fill out your forms. I’m going to have to let this gentleman go in ahead of you. We’ll try and squeeze you in before five, if you’d like to do these now and bring them back to me.”
“But my appointment was at three thirty!” said Theresa wearily. “I’ve been waiting forty minutes already.” She wouldn’t mind so much if she weren’t so damn exhausted all the time.
The receptionist shrugged. “We need the forms. It’s part of our patients’ charter.” She pointed to a laminated sheet on the wall.
Theresa returned to her seat and began ticking boxes murderously. Patients’ charter indeed. I’d like to show her my “out of patience” bloody charter. She’d been feeling low for weeks now, but had put off coming to see the doctor for fear he might advise rest (impossible with the election so close) or, even worse, a diet and exercise regime involving neither sticky toffee pudding nor sitting vegetable-like on the couch for three hours a night devouring old episodes of Downton Abbey. By the time she’d finished the forms, provided urine and blood samples, and exhausted the paltry supply of magazines—you know you’re bored when you’re reduced to skimming through a dog-eared copy of Cambridgeshire Today—the waiting room was all but empty. Finally, the doctor showed her into his office. A short wisp of a man with the sort of pale, freckled complexion that looked even worse on men than it did on women, he nevertheless had a genial way about him, like a friendly leprechaun.
“Ah, Ms. O’Connor. Professor O’Connor, isn’t it?” He smiled disarmingly. Theresa nodded. “Well I must say, Professor, it is nice to end a long, dreary Wednesday on such a positive note.”
“Positive?” Theresa rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I’m not with you. You mean you don’t think there’s anything wrong with me?”
“There isn’t anything wrong with you.”
He was so definitive about it, Theresa found herself getting irritated.
“What you mean is, you don’t know what’s wrong with me. Because I can assure you, I’m not in here for the fun of it. I don’t know what it is, if I’m anemic or I’ve picked up some sort of virus. But my energy levels…what?”
He was laughing at her now, his pale-blue eyes creased at the corners, chuckling quietly to himself. “I’d stick to the literature if I were you, Professor. You make a lousy doctor.”
Too annoyed to think of a comeback, Theresa folded her arms sullenly.
“You’re pregnant, my dear.”
Theresa went white. Without thinking, she grabbed the chair for support, sinking down slowly into it. It took a second or two to process what he’d just said. When eventually she spoke her voice sounded croaky and odd.
“That’s not possible. I’m infertile. I tried for years…my ex…specialists.” Her powers of sentence construction seemed to have deserted her. “There’s no way. I’m forty-four.”
“Well, sorry.” The doctor shrugged. “But you are pregnant. I can tell you that with one hundred percent certainty. You’ll need to have a scan, but I would guess you’re somewhere in the region of three months along. Does that ring any bells?”
Yes. Christmas bells. Horatio’s loving, tortured face loomed into mental view. It was ridiculous, impossible. All those years of trying and hoping, of ovulation tests and IVF and sperm spinning and macrobiotic diets. And here she was, ten years and one drunken one-night stand later…
“You must have missed at least one period.”
“Probably,” Theresa mumbled. “I’m so irregular anyway. I thought”—she laughed nervously—“I thought it might be menopause.”
“Again, I’d stick to the poetry. So I take it the pregnancy is…unexpected?”
She nodded, stunned.
“But, you’re planning to go through with it?”
She looked up as if she’d been stung. “Go through with it? Yes. Of course.”
“Sorry,” said the doctor. “We have to ask, NHS policy, I’m afraid. But I’m very pleased for you, really. Congratulations.”
Ten minutes later, armed with a stack of papers about sonograms at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital maternity ward, Theresa walked down Bridge Street in a daze. Her heart was pounding so fast she felt as if she’d just been chased by muggers. Adrenaline coursed through her veins until she wanted to laugh out loud, or shout, or run very fast up to a random stranger and hug them until she’d squeezed the breath out of their bodies.
Of course, this meant the end of the mastership. She’d faced long enough odds as a woman in t
he first place, even before the whole drama with Theo. But a single mother in the Master’s Lodge, pregnant by one of her students? Not even Jenny could tell her that wasn’t hopeless.
Jen. I must call her! Jenny had been there all those years ago when Theresa had been trying so hard for a baby with Theo. Jenny had held her hand as her hopes soared and then dashed repeatedly, each failed implantation chipping away another tiny piece of her soul. After her divorce from Theo, Theresa had finally accepted defeat, grieving privately for the baby she had longed for but knew she would never have. It was hard at first, but over time the pain subsided. Eventually even the dreams stopped. Motherhood was not Theresa’s destiny. Shakespeare was her destiny. Shakespeare, and cats, and sticky toffee pudding.
It was a strange feeling, to have the dream that you had buried and mourned handed back to you, alive and vibrant and suddenly miraculously real. The feeling was two parts ecstasy, one part terror. Theresa walked back to college in a dream, starting her car and almost killing two kitchen staff as she swerved wildly onto Jesus Lane. She had no recollection of the drive home, nor of walking through her front door. All she knew was that she was suddenly there, in the living room, with Lysander and the other cats mewing for food like neglected children, curling themselves hopefully around her legs until she nearly lost her footing.
“Stop it! Go away, all of you!” she shouted, instinctively shielding her belly with her hands. Then she felt guilty and started pulling cans of Kitty Kat out of the pantry, spooning them onto saucers. It’s not the cats’ fault I’m knocked up. Maybe I should go and lie down?
In the end, with an effort, she pulled herself together, lit a fire, and did what every sensible Irishwoman does in such circumstances: put the kettle on. After two cups of PG Tips and half a packet of Hob Nobs, the fog in her brain at last began to clear.