'Of course!' I reply.
He pokes his head around the door. 'Here you are! I've been looking all over! What's wrong?' he asks in alarm, seeing my miserable face.
'Simon,' I mumble.
'What about him?'
I feel tears prick at my eyes again. Dom comes over to the bed, sits on one side of it and gives me a big hug. This little piece of humanity is too much for me and I succumb. When my sniffles eventually calm down, Dom makes me tell him everything.
'So let me get this straight. Simon doesn't want to be with you because of your childhood—'
I interrupt him. 'He didn't even say that he wanted to be with me.'
'Oh. So even if he did, he wouldn't because of your past together.'
'I think so.'
'What do you think?'
'I don't know.'
'Would you be able to trust him again?'
'He hurt me pretty badly. I suppose he broke my heart really. I think he's right; we couldn't ever be together.' Tears fill my eyes once more. 'Our childhood will always be between us, won't it?'
'What are you going to do?'
'Go home, I think.'
'That would be the smart and sensible thing to do.'
'You really think so?'
'When we're back in London, I'll buy you a Cornetto.'
He pats my knee and finally says, 'Do you want me to go and find you some chocolate?'
'There you go. You can see now why I thought you were gay, can't you, Dom?'
'I am merely in touch with my feminine side,' he says with as much dignity as he can muster and sets off, his feminine side telling him that he doesn't need an answer to the chocolate question either.
I don't think I have ever been so miserable in my entire life.
Oh yes, silly me. I have.
C h a p t e r 24
A hideous evening ensues where Simon refuses to make direct eye contact with me, even when Aunt Flo starts a lively debate as to the attractiveness of short hair or long hair on men. After a while I leave them to their arguments and go to bed. I lie awake until about four, listening for the chimes of the grandfather clock in the hall until I belatedly realise that the bailiffs have taken it away. This agitates me so much that I have to turn the light on, check the time and then Meg and I pace up and down for a bit while I try to persuade myself that the events of the last few days do not justify my taking up smoking for real. Although I fail to rouse Dom, who can sleep through anything, I do wake a sodding grasshopper who begins to chirrup happily. I feel as though this is all part of a giant jigsaw puzzle but all the pieces haven't been given to me yet – if I could just understand what's missing then maybe everything will be all right.
I must fall asleep at some point because when I wake up Dom's bed is empty, stripped of all its covers, and his bags are sitting in a neat pile at the end of the bed.
There's a knock at the door and Meg bounds into the room. Dom follows with a cup of tea. 'You know,' he says, 'I think I'm going to miss this place. Our flat will seem quite empty after all this.'
'What are you going to do now?' I ask, conscious of his current state of unemployment.
'Write my novel and live off the money from this job for a while, I suppose.'
'So you'll be at home all the time?' I take a sip from the cup.
'Shall we ask if we can take Meg with us?'
'Just what I was thinking,' I smile, hugely comforted by the fact that we could possibly adopt her. Otherwise it would have been yet another loss.
'I'll go and ask now. You get dressed and packed and I'll see you downstairs.'
'Who's down there?' I ask. I'm not sure if I want to see Simon.
'All the family except Simon. He's preparing for the press conference this morning. Then we're helping load up the furniture for Aunt Winnie to take back. After that, I suppose it's the office for you and home for me.'
He smiles and leaves me to it. After I've got dressed, I start to pack up my belongings and then spend the best part of ten minutes staring out of the window. You'll feel better when you leave, I tell myself firmly, and then spend another ten minutes staring out of the window. There's another knock at the door. 'I'm just coming,' I yell at Dom and start frantically stuffing my bags with clothes.
'No, it's me, Izzy. Aunt Winnie. Can I come in?'
I walk over and open the door. Aunt Winnie and Jameson practically fall through it.
'Hello dear! Just came to see if you're all right! I've been worried about you.'
I frown. 'I'm fine, just packing up.'
Meg tries to play with Jameson but Jameson, being older and wiser, is having none of it. He curls up in the corner with a dignified air. Aunt Winnie closes the door behind her. I make a great show of actually folding my clothes up to pack rather than my usual practice of just stuffing them all in.
I'm fine until she actually speaks. 'So you're leaving, are you?'
I feel the tears well up in my throat. 'What else can I do?' I ask, practically choking with the effort of keeping my emotions at bay.
Aunt Winnie thinks I'm suffocating and gives me a couple of hefty slaps on the back. I eye her warily in case she starts the Heimlich manoeuvre.
She sits down on the bed. 'You could stay. Stay and see what happens.'
'Simon and I have talked about it. We don't think it's smart.'
'Smart?' snorts Aunt Winnie. 'I think of you as many things, Izzy, but smart isn't one of them.' I look at her sharply. Is that what she meant to say? 'Look, Izzy. After you went to bed last night, Dom told me what happened.' What happened when? This is the problem with having so much history in one place. She sees me looking doubtful and adds, 'When you and Simon were kids.'
'Oh.'
'I think Dom was worried about you and needed a second opinion. I kind of knew something had happened anyway. I mean, you were always really funny when Simon's name was brought up and I could see that you never wanted to come back here to visit after you'd left.'
'What was your second opinion?'
'History is a funny thing, Izzy. If you had met Simon Monkwell for the first time a couple of weeks ago, would you still be in this situation? Of wanting to be with him, I mean? Or would you have had an altogether different impression of him?'
'Er, I don't know. Are we going anywhere with this, Aunt Win? Anywhere specific?' I could really do without the philosophy lesson.
'Think of old school friends.' I think of the few I made when Sophie and I were living with Aunt Winnie. 'If you met them for the first time now, would you be friends with them? Or is the bond that you share simply common memories?'
'Are you questioning how I feel about Simon?' I tentatively ask, to try to find the point to all this.
She looks relieved and nods slightly. I come and sit next to her on the bed. 'Aunt Winnie, I love him because I know him so well. Not because we share common memories. In fact, it's the common memories that are keeping us apart.'
Aunt Winnie pats my hand for a second and looks down at the floor. 'Izzy, since we're talking about shared history, I think there's something I should tell you.'
I look at her uncertainly. Is this the link I have been missing? The thing that will make everything fall into place?
'I meant to tell you ages ago.'
'What?' This comes out a little more tersely than I intended.
'Well, Monty and I used to … how do you say it? We used to see each other.'
I get my timescale all mixed up and say in horror, 'He had an affair?'
'Oh no! No, it was before he got married.' I relax minutely. 'That was how we knew the Monkwells.'
'So what happened?'
'Oh, it was silly really. We were both too young. Only in our twenties. No, Izzy, that wasn't during the war,' she says as I open my mouth and close it again. 'Anyway, both families were heavily against our relationship, which made life pretty difficult. We had a big row one day, I can't even remember what it was about now but it seemed like the end of the world at that age, and I
huffed off saying I never wanted to see him again. I was due to go to America for a few weeks to visit some relatives and so I left without saying goodbye I was so mad at him – he could be absolutely infuriating, you know. But then, so could I. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. I returned home to find him uncomfortably engaged to Elizabeth.' She stares off into the distance, lost in a private world. 'I remember it so well; it was summer, one almost as hot as this. I was wearing a beautiful new twin-set with my pearls and I danced over to the estate, longing to see him. Thinking our silly row would all be forgotten. And there she was. Sitting on the lawn in the middle of a picnic rug, sipping champagne with the rest of the family. I didn't find out until later that they were actually engaged. The family didn't like me much. Thought I was a disruptive influence.' She leans over and whispers conspiratorially, 'I was a bit of a wild child back then. Rode horses bareback and swam in the swimming pool naked.'
'They had a swimming pool?'
'The first thing Elizabeth did was to dig it up and put a rose garden over the top of it. Of course, my behaviour means nothing now, it's probably called spirited or something, but back then it was very non-PC for the prospective Lady of the Manor. The Monkwells wanted someone with more dignity. Someone who would treat the servants as servants, not chums to have a good gossip with in the kitchen garden. Elizabeth fitted the bill beautifully. The family loved her and apparently shoved Monty at her so hard he was engaged before he knew it. Poor love; when I think back, he did look a little dazed that day.'
'So what happened when he saw you?'
'He didn't see me. I came around the side of the house and saw them all sitting on the lawn. Monty was holding Elizabeth's hand with his back to me so I just turned and ran. I couldn't have gone over to him, not with all the family there – it would have been far too embarrassing. I never knew whether he found out I'd been there. His mother saw me but I doubt she ever mentioned it. I sometimes used to wonder if things would have been different if he had seen me.'
'Didn't you try to contact him?'
'Pride, Izzy, my dear. The downfall of many a relationship. I was furiously angry with him and didn't really believe the marriage would happen. If I had taken it more seriously I think I would have stayed and fought for him. When you're so young, you don't realise how decisions like that can change lives.'
'Do you think he loved her?'
She looks pensively into the distance, somewhere over my shoulder, and then says quietly, 'Yes, I think he did. The boys were born, and then you and Sophie were born, the happiest days of my life.' I lean over and squeeze her hand appreciatively. 'I started to hear less and less of them. Started to lose contact with the people who told me about them. Time moved on for all of us.'
'But you never married, Aunt Winnie.' It suddenly strikes me that this is the unfortunate affair that my mother mentioned to me. It was Monty. Winnie looks down at the table for a second and then says quietly, 'No. But I'm not sure we would have been happy together. We've both mellowed a lot now but back then we were pretty fiery and we used to have some dreadful rows. Elizabeth was a very settling influence on him. You always need one rock in a relationship.'
'That's very pragmatic of you, Aunt Winnie.'
'Well, you can't spend your life mooning around. You have to get on with it and extract what you can when you can.' She pats my hand quite forcefully.
'So how did my parents come to live at Pantiles?' I ask.
'A little masochistic of me. When your father was stationed here and your mother decided she wanted to keep her horses somewhere, I suggested the Monkwell estate before she'd even finished the sentence. I wanted an excuse to go there and see how they were all getting along. So, there your parents settled for a few years, and naturally the Monkwells were getting along just fine without me. Anyway, I'm glad I've told you at last. I've been meaning to for years but never found the right time.'
We both sit in silence for a second, me in slight regret that none of this is the answer I am looking for about Simon. It does, however, explain some of the peculiar behaviour going on around here.
'Funny how two families can be so inextricably linked together, isn't it?' I say softly. 'You and Monty, me and Simon.' Aunt Winnie pats my hand again. 'Neither of them worked out, did they, Aunt Winnie?'
'That's not all, Izzy.'
'How do you mean?'
'Stay until after the press conference?'
I nod and she leaves me to finish my packing.
Our last breakfast at the estate is very subdued. Everyone is exceedingly concerned about the takeover negotiations and we all leap for the phone whenever it rings, hoping it might be a decision from the American investors before the deadline. But it's either a fellow boy scout for Harry, or a newspaper reporter wanting a quote from Simon, or a sultry female voice wanting to speak with Will (I had no idea he was such a ladies' man). I am quite thankful for the repressed atmosphere as I can just blend into it without much comment. Aunt Flo returns from taking Poppet out for a walk and I make a mental note to check my luggage later to ensure Poppet hasn't crept into it while I wasn't looking. We then make Harry run around in a last-minute flurry of bob-a-jobs as he is driving us all insane with how he, Harry Delaney, has only managed to raise forty-six pounds and thirty pence while ruddy Godfrey Farlington, who seems unbearably precocious and in need of smacking with a large stick, has raised so much more.
I look at Monty in a new light after Aunt Winnie's revelations. I try to picture them when they were younger but I can only see them as they are now, not just in terms of how they look but also in their responsibilities and attitudes. I can't imagine either of them being young and carefree. I look over at Aunt Winnie. Nope, it's no good. I just can't do it.
The press conference is scheduled for eleven a.m. Simon's PR firm thought it would be a good idea to have it here at the house in order to bury the bailiff rumours once and for all. Dominic and I have absolutely nothing to do as the PR firm sweep in to organise it. An efficient girl called Victoria bustles in and out of the kitchen while we lounge around on the furniture, drinking coffee and waiting for some news. Mrs Delaney is baking some sweet treats for the press which is completely unnecessary but she seems to enjoy doing it.
I take a careful look around me. Dom is chatting to Aunt Winnie, Mrs Delaney and Harry, and Flo has disappeared with Will. Monty and I are the only ones left sitting at the table. 'I had a chat with Aunt Winnie this morning,' I say to him quietly.
'Yes, she told me,' he replies. 'It's funny but after all this time she hasn't changed a bit. She's just mellower.'
'She said she used to be a bit fiery.'
'A bit! We used to have rows every second day! At least this time they'll only be once a week.'
I raise my eyebrows. 'This time?' I query.
'Well, we'll see what happens.'
'So you're going to see more of each other?'
He glances over at me. 'Next week. I said I'd take her out to dinner. That's if we're not busy moving out! Do you mind?'
'Of course not! I'm delighted!' I beam at him. That's the best news I've heard in quite a while. Mind you, that wouldn't be too difficult.
'Dom asked me if you two could adopt Meg. I said of course you could – she seems to have taken a big shine to you both anyway. But I was sort of hoping, in fact we all were, that we might be seeing a bit more of you after all this?' He raises his eyebrows suggestively.
I reach over and pat his hand, shaking my head slightly. 'Thank you for Meg, Monty.' And with this I wander out into the walled garden and call the office.
'Hi Stephanie,' I say dispiritedly.
I hear her blow out a long stream of smoke. Or she might just have been holding her breath. 'You'll be wanting to speak to Gerald then?'
'Er, yes. If he's there.'
Eventually Gerald comes on to the line. 'Are you actually returning to the office at any point today or have you taken it upon yourself to declare a public holiday?'
'I've had to tie
up a few things, I'll be back later. Do you need me?'
'I'm not sure our insurance company can afford you. Unless you come under the force majeure heading, along with other naturally occurring disasters.'
'Now, now, Gerald, don't be like that.'
'How's Dominic?'
'Going out with Sophie.'
'He told you then?'
'So you did know.'
'Aidan told me.'
'I thought Dom was trying to tell me he was gay.'
'Dominic? Gay? Are you going out of your mind, Izzy?'
'I think I probably am. Aidan isn't straight too, is he?'
'No, he definitely is gay.'
'By the way, I haven't got any parties scheduled for this weekend, have I?'
'No, no. I thought you could do with the weekend off.'
'Thanks, Gerald.'
'Bugger off now. And don't call if you need anything; you'll be better off talking to the Samaritans.'
I grin to myself and ring off.
'Any news?' I ask Monty when I return into the kitchen.
'Yeah, Sam has just been in. He says the Americans want to extend the deadline so they can have more time to decide.'
'Is that a problem?'
'I'm not sure, but Sam didn't look too pleased. They're going ahead with the press conference though. The press are starting to arrive. Shall we sneak in the back?'
At about a quarter to eleven we wander through to the drawing room, where the PR company has set up a large table surrounded by fifteen chairs at the front of the room and then rows of chairs facing it. The room is already buzzing with activity; people are huddled together drinking from mugs and eating Mrs Delaney's biscuits. A large buffet table has been erected and Dom and I help ourselves. Every couple of minutes the numbers swell until we almost have to shout over the din. Flo and Will join us, both of them looking unexpectedly thoughtful.
'Are you okay?' I ask Aunt Flo in concern.
'Yes, dear. Just a bit worried for Simon.'
'I'm sure he's faced worse than this,' I say comfortingly.
'Yes, but I haven't. They might take our house, Izzy.' She whispers the latter in my ear as though she is only just grasping the concept.