Don't Go Breaking My Heart: Break Up to Make Up / Always the Best Man

‘I know that.’

He wanted to hold his stomach and laugh out loud until the retired couple gave him dirty looks.

This was pointless. If he couldn’t make her see sense, he might as well settle for improving her mood. He should have got a little gold star for resisting the urge to crack a joke and try and force a smile out of her.

‘Do you want a pain au chocolat? I saw some on the counter.’

She nodded again, a hint of a smile on her face. He jumped up and paid for it quickly. If Adele didn’t get a blood-sugar boost soon, she’d never cheer up.

He tipped his head to one side and took a good look at her. ‘You look wiped out.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

He reached forward and took her hand. She looked tired, all the fight sucked out of her, but she was still incredibly beautiful. Not in a showy way, but there was a strength in her delicate features that gave an indication of her drive and tenacity, an intelligent light behind her eyes that warned him to keep on his toes.

‘I’ll drive the next leg. Are you insured for that?’

Just for a nanosecond, she visibly sagged. ‘It’s me, Nick. Of course I’m insured. For everything—flood, fire, acts of God, spontaneous combustion…Go on, make a joke about that.’

He squeezed her hand. He’d always loved her fingers—long and fine. He’d missed them.

‘You go back to the car and sink into the passenger seat. I’ve got a couple of things to get from the shop.’

He watched her as she walked away. She always stood so straight, so proud.

How he was going to demolish those proud barriers, he didn’t know. But one thing was certain: he wanted his wife back, and he was going to do everything in his power this weekend to remind her how much she wanted him too.

Just as well he had a few tricks up his sleeve to help nudge her in the right direction.

Pretending to be asleep could in fact be very tiring, Adele decided. She twitched open an eyelid and took a sideways look at Nick. Look at him humming to himself and acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Only a few days ago she’d told this man she wanted him out of her life for good. Yes, he’d looked a little angry at the time, but now it didn’t seem as if it bothered him at all.

She relaxed her eyelid and it dropped closed.

She wasn’t a vindictive person, but part of her was really upset that he wasn’t more upset. Deciding to walk away from their marriage had been the hardest decision of her life. She wanted Nick to look at least a little shell-shocked.

A huge sigh juddered from her body.

For a person who had a pathological need to be right, she wasn’t taking much joy in the fact that, once again, her instincts had been spot-on. Nick didn’t take her seriously, didn’t take their marriage seriously. If he had, he wouldn’t be so blasé about the whole thing.

Then again, if he’d cared, he wouldn’t have left in the first place. He might say he loved her, but he didn’t love her enough. The job had meant more to him.

But now he was back, looking all delectable. And he’d kissed her in the kitchen, hadn’t he? Was there a possibility that he’d regretted his decision to abandon her?

When she’d stood at the front of the church with him, and they’d exchanged their vows, she’d thought it was going to last for ever. She’d been swept along by the intense chemistry between them and hadn’t even stopped to question if there had been enough there to sustain a fifty-year relationship. It had just seemed as if all the right ingredients were there and she hadn’t bothered to dig any deeper.

He’d made her believe they were two contrasting halves of the same whole. Sweet and sour. Light and dark. But, in the end, it had turned out that they were just too different. More like oil and water.

The analogy just didn’t hold up. As soon as the sun arrived, night was swallowed up and it was daytime again. They couldn’t co-exist without one destroying the other—and neither could she and Nick.

A voice she was learning to hate cut the silence. ‘In one thousand feet, take the next exit.’

She opened her eyes and sat up. They were leaving the motorway already? Had she really been asleep and missed most of the journey? A crazy flame of relief flickered in her chest.

It was raining, but instead of the craggy hills and pine trees she’d expected to see, there were rolling fields and hedgerows. And the landscape was depressingly flat. It all looked far too English.

‘Why are we coming off the motorway, Nick? Where are we?’

‘Somewhere just outside of Stafford. Pit stop,’ he added by way of explanation.

Despite the empty feeling in her tummy, she felt her taste buds rebel at the thought of more plastic service-station food. ‘I’m not sure I’m really…Why are we leaving the motorway?’

His co-conspirator saved him from answering.

‘Take the next exit and continue left.’

Nick did as he was told for once and soon they were driving through country lanes.

She was too tired to ask. Nick was going to do what he wanted to do, whether she minded or not, so she might as well save her breath.

After about fifteen minutes they turned down a driveway and he brought the car to a halt. They were parked outside a city-dweller’s fantasy cottage: leaded windows, gabled roof, a pretty fence enclosing a half-tamed garden that looked spectacular, even at this time of year.

Nick let out a sharp blast on the horn and Adele winced.

Moments later a man in his thirties came bounding out of the cottage and grinned at Nick as he emerged from the car.

‘Nick! Glad you managed to make it after all. Have you got that washing-machine motor you promised me?’

‘Sure have. It’s in the car, but before I let you have it you have to keep up your end of the bargain—a hearty lunch for two weary travellers.’

The man grinned. ‘Phoebe’s made one of her famous soups. If you’re not careful she’ll make you drink a whole vat of it before she lets you continue on your way. Women, huh?’

Adele opened the door and stretched her journey-stiffened legs.

‘And talking of women, this must be your missus,’ he added. And before Adele could say ‘How do you do’ he’d ignored the hand she offered and pulled her into a bear hug. She sent Nick a pleading look over the man’s shoulder, but all he did was grin back.

‘Adele, this is Andy—we’ve worked on a few projects together.’

Well, that explained the fascination for odd bits of junk and anything mechanical.

Andy finally let her out of his grasp and she gave him a shaky smile.

‘Nice to meet you, Adele. I’ve heard a lot about you. Nick never stops going on about his beautiful, successful wife. I think he’s secretly hoping he can give up messing about on film sets and that you’ll keep him in the style to which he’d like to become accustomed.’

‘Oh.’

Eloquent, Adele. Very impressive. That’s a wonderful way to live up to the picture Nick’s painted of you.

But Andy didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy chatting to Nick as he led them into the cottage. Adele trudged along behind them, forgotten. She let out a large breath and ran her hand through her hair. Thanks to Nick’s build-up, Super Adele was going to have to stay for lunch. And, at this precise moment, her alter ego’s super powers were glaringly absent.

She watched the two men as she followed them inside and into a cosy lounge complete with inglenook fireplace. Andy dressed like Nick: worn jeans and tops with funky logos or slogans on them. He even had that same mischievous glint in his eye. There had to be a special-effects designers’ code or something: must never grow up and must always be obsessed with green goo and rubber latex body parts. A whole organisation of Peter Pans. Now, there was a scary thought.

She heard footsteps in the hall and turned to see a woman enter the room. Nick was instantly off his feet and squeezing the life out of her—much the same kind of greeting that Andy had blessed her with.

‘Phoebe! It’s great to see you again. How’s it going?’

Phoebe laughed and smiled as Nick hugged even tighter and rocked her from side to side until she began to lose her balance. A stabbing feeling in her tummy caught Adele by surprise. It didn’t ease up, not even when Phoebe whacked Nick on the arm and told him to let her go.

Phoebe wrestled herself away from Nick and turned to face her, still beaming.

‘You must be the famous Adele.’

Adele rose from the sofa she was sitting on, her arms and legs suddenly feeling stiff and brittle. She held out a hand. Phoebe raised an eyebrow just a fraction, but shook it anyway.

Words of greeting failed to form an orderly queue in her head. What could she say? These people seemed to know all about her but, until five minutes ago, she’d not even known of their existence. Why? Had she really tuned Nick out every time he’d talked about the fine details of his work? Had she really been that self-absorbed?

‘Hello,’ she said, trying to smile, but feeling like a cardboard cut-out.

Phoebe smiled back. A proper smile. She’d obviously decided to give her guest the benefit of the doubt. Adele felt as if she’d shrunk an inch or two. If only there were a telephone box somewhere around where she could do a twirl and come out as her.

‘Come out to the barn, Nick. I want your input on something I’m building. I’m supposed to be making a crazed tennis-ball machine for an ad I’m working on, but it’s just refusing to be as diabolical as I want it to be.’

‘If you want diabolical, I’m your man,’ Nick answered, already starting towards the door.

Phoebe shook her head.

‘Lunch will be ready in about twenty minutes, you two. Don’t make me come and fetch you, OK?’ She turned to Adele and gave her a wink. ‘Boys and their toys, right? Our two are worse than most, I suspect. Why don’t you come through to the kitchen and we can chat while the men start pulling that machine to bits?’

‘Sure.’

She wanted to be bright and sparkling and charming—Super Adele—but her super powers seemed well and truly buried under a whole heap of other junk. Out of order. Please try again later.

Phoebe seemed really nice. She would go into the kitchen and make small talk and be as pleasant as she knew how to be and ignore the unsettled feeling fluttering in her stomach.

Suddenly, being stuck in the little hatchback with Nick seemed like an attractive prospect. Being here, watching Phoebe potter round the kitchen, was like watching a horror movie. Only this movie had a difference: instead of everything being much, much worse, it was far, far better—what her life should be like, but wasn’t.

It was like having her worst failure served up for her so she could choke on every mouthful.

They had it all: the home, the happy marriage. They had roots. Despite herself, she was insanely jealous.

More than anything, Adele wanted roots.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHATEVER Phoebe was stirring in that pot smelled utterly fantastic.

‘I hope you like soup. It’s broccoli and Stilton.’

‘That sounds lovely.’ Adele sat down at the breakfast bar and stared blankly at Phoebe’s back as she stirred. Then she remembered her resolve to make polite conversation, but it was a bit like when she’d first learned to drive. Nothing came naturally. Every word had to be planned and mentally rehearsed. It took all her concentration.

‘How long have you lived here?’

Phoebe tasted the soup and frowned. ‘About two years,’ she said, adding more salt as she spoke. ‘We decided to slow down a little. We both had such hectic work schedules that we hardly saw each other—but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that.’

Adele dipped her head and fiddled with her fingers. She’d assumed their hosts didn’t know about her marital problems. Although she’d been cross Nick hadn’t told his family the truth, it wasn’t comfortable having her problems out in the open and sullying the atmosphere of perfect domesticity in this cottage.

‘My hat goes off to you and Nick if you’ve found a way to make it work without one of you cutting back on your work.’ Phoebe gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘I’m sure Andy and I would have been heading for the divorce courts if we hadn’t moved here.’

She opened and shut her mouth. Just a lucky guess, then. Her secrets were safe after all.

Phoebe was stirring the soup again. Thank goodness she didn’t seem to mind the long gaps in the conversation.

Adele fiddled with a lemon from a bowl on the central island. A move to the country wouldn’t have saved her marriage. That would just be a geographical shift. Nick would still be Nick, and Adele would still be Adele, and roses round the door weren’t going to suddenly make them compatible.

Phoebe banged the wooden spoon on the saucepan. ‘Done. Do you think you can keep an eye on it while I call the lads and get Max?’

Adele nodded. A dog called Max. That was the name she and Nick had picked out for the puppy they were going to get when their respective projects had been put to bed. But then there had been another deal, another project, and the time had never come.

Nick and Andy entered the kitchen a few minutes later, still deep in conversation about mechanics and motors. She shuffled in her seat and waited for Phoebe to return. At least with another female in the room there was a vague possibility the conversation might turn towards something that didn’t sound like Klingon.

Phoebe’s footsteps outside the kitchen door helped her perk up.

These were nice people. She could chit-chat, if she really put her mind to it. She just needed to get into character, telephone box or no telephone box. She bared her teeth in the beginnings of a smile, but then Phoebe pushed the door open and every molecule in Adele’s bloodstream turned to ice.

Max wasn’t an Alsatian, or even a Jack Russell. It was much worse than that.

Max was a baby.

A pink, gurgling bundle that sat in his high chair and blew bubbles at Adele while she tried to get her pulse rate under control.

It was official. Babies were now top of her things-to-be-terrified-of list. Worse than spiders by a long shot.

It was OK if she was warned, as she was when she went to Mona’s house, but when little dimpled creatures appeared out of the blue she went into a tail-spin. A crawling feeling in her tummy made her want to push back her chair and run.

She couldn’t look at him. He was too cute. His intoxicating baby scent was drifting towards her and it was killing her. She sipped warm liquid off her spoon and tried to block it all out.

The chatter around the table filtered away, almost as if she were listening to them talking underwater, and she was left alone with the knowledge that, if things had not gone so disastrously wrong, she would have had a crumpled pink newborn to call her own right this very minute.

She sucked in a breath through her nostrils and tried to shake the images away without actually moving her head. Pictures of her and Nick: laughing in a large cream kitchen, eating soup and taking turns to pace the room with a tiny bundle on their shoulder as it hiccuped.

And then the images became even more disturbing. The confusion she’d felt only days after her husband had walked out on her when she’d found the second pink line on the pregnancy test. The horror a couple of weeks after that when the bleeding had started. And finally, the deep blackness that had shrouded her for months afterwards.

She blinked and her lids stayed closed only a fraction of a second longer than was necessary.

I am not going to cry. I will just harden and harden until I can’t feel any more and then I will chat and finish my soup and leave as if nothing was the matter.

It wasn’t Andy and Phoebe’s fault. She shouldn’t punish them by falling to pieces at the lunch table.

It wasn’t even Nick’s fault. The doctor had said it was one of those things—as though she’d left her umbrella on the bus—and that there was no reason why she shouldn’t try again in a couple of months. Only that had been a bit tricky when her husband and his vital ingredients had vanished from her life, never to return.

Adele watched her hosts as, in a strange kind of slow-motion, Andy passed the basket of warm bread to Phoebe and she gave him a little smile.

Such a lot passed between them in that tiny moment and Adele’s heart clenched at the memory of times when Nick had looked at her that way. Now he was just glaring at her over his soup.

She’d been wrong. This wasn’t a horror story; it was a fairy tale.

And, if she’d believed in fairies and magic, she’d have stepped through the looking glass and taken their places. But this was real life, and real life was cold and hard and ultimately lonely.

There was no way she and Nick were headed for a happy ending.

Nick’s eyes never left Adele as he shovelled soup into his mouth. At first everything had seemed fine—the conversation had been flowing, but then he realised it was flowing around her as if she were a rock sat in the middle of a gushing stream. None of it made an impact.

He should have known she’d react like this. It wasn’t part of her neatly manicured plan and Adele did not like veering from the plan. Not one little bit.

But, stupidly, he’d hoped that bringing her here might remove the blinkers she wore so firmly strapped to her head. She wasn’t even trying. Slow-burning anger warmed his belly.

Phoebe had asked her a question and she hadn’t even pretended to be interested. She’d just stared into space and ignored her. He’d seen the hurt look on Phoebe’s face, caught her eye and shrugged an apology.

How dared Adele do this?

Maybe he should have warned her about his little detour. Maybe he should have warned Andy and Phoebe that things were less than cheery in the Hughes household. But that did not give his darling wife the excuse to behave like a spoilt child. He was going to drag her into this conversation even if she came kicking and screaming. A little civility was not too much to ask.

‘What do you think of the soup, Adele?’

She turned to look at him slowly. ‘Hmm?’

‘The soup. What do you think?’

‘Oh.’ She hurriedly took another spoonful. ‘It’s nice.’

Well, monosyllables were better than nothing.

He faced Phoebe and grinned. ‘The closest we ever came to home-made soup was buying the over-priced ones in cartons and emptying them into a pan.’

‘I’ve got some recipes for really tasty but easy ones, if you’re interested,’ Phoebe said, looking hopefully at Adele.

Adele smiled back. Sort of. Progress at last.

‘Thank you, but I really don’t have time.’

She went back to playing with her soup, although hardly any of it made its way into her mouth.

He’d have done better if he’d let her stay in a sullen lump at one end of the table. Jumping right in and hoping Adele would follow had been a bad idea. That was what he’d tried to do with this whole trip in the first place, and look how that was turning out.

When was he ever going to learn?

The kitchen seemed darker and more oppressive than it had done when they’d started eating and it took Nick a few moments to realise it had nothing to do with Adele’s mood and everything to do with the fact it was about to rain. Huge grey clouds hung precariously in the air, darkening the sky as if the sun had just set.

Andy stood up. ‘Give us a hand, mate? We left half that motor outside the barn and the bits will rust if they get left out in the rain.’

Nick ran out to join Andy as they scooped various bits of scrap metal off the grass in front of the barn he used as a workshop and dumped them inside. It had always fascinated him how cogs and shafts and odd little shapes fitted together to make something useful. Something that worked—each bit playing its part.

The rain started to splash down in big drops that ran through his hair and down his face as he collected the last pile of stuff.

He’d been so confident when they’d started their journey this morning that he’d be able to win Adele round, but now he wasn’t so sure. Their marriage wasn’t just on hold, it was lying in pieces and he wasn’t sure they could put it all back together and still have something that worked.

Adele swished a damp tea towel round a soup bowl then placed it on the stack with the others. At least she couldn’t mess up helping with the dishes. The added bonus was that it was a chore that involved very little talking. None at all, if she were lucky.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Phoebe wiping her son’s face and unbuckling the harness of his high-chair. He smiled at her as she lifted him up and immediately thrust his chubby little hand into Phoebe’s hair and tugged. She didn’t seem to mind. She just laughed and kissed him on the nose.

The dish Adele was wiping slid through the soggy tea towel and didn’t even attempt to bounce off the tiled floor.

Nothing could go wrong while wiping up, huh? Famous last words.

‘I’m sorry, Phoebe. I should have changed to a fresh towel when this one got damp.’

Phoebe shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. I drop stuff all the time. I now only ever buy cheap white crockery from the market. It’s never hard to find something that matches when the inevitable happens. I’ll go and get the broom. Here—’ she extended her arms and held Max towards her ‘—if you could take him, I’ll be back in just a tick.’

Adele looked at the little legs swinging in mid-air and swallowed. However, before her mind had made a conscious decision, her hands had found their way under Max’s armpits and she drew him to her chest.

Phoebe disappeared out through a little wooden door and Adele was left alone in the kitchen with a warm little body in her arms.

Max had stretched his neck to breaking point almost to follow his mother as she crossed the kitchen and, now that she was gone, he let out a squeal of part-rage, part-despair.

Max didn’t understand his mummy was coming back in just a minute and it would do no good to calmly explain that, just because he couldn’t see her for a bit, it didn’t mean she was gone for ever. Adele stroked his hair and whispered what soothing words she could. The truth that Mummy was coming back soon did nothing to negate this little one’s sense of abandonment. She just couldn’t communicate that to him. He stiffened against her, arched his back and screamed.

Know how you feel, she thought. Only she’d learned early on that stamping and screaming never worked when the people you loved disappeared. They left anyway and they didn’t come back, no matter how good you tried to be.

She tried bouncing Max up and down, hoping his life turned out better. But there was no way Phoebe and Andy would leave this little one to wither away at boarding-school, spending some of the school holidays with distant relations that didn’t really have room for him.

Thankfully, Phoebe returned and Max stopped yelling. He seemed quite happy to take hold of her jumper with his fists and babble to himself as long as he could see Phoebe sweeping up the pieces of the broken dish.

He even looked up at her and beamed now he felt safe again. Adele’s heart stuttered. He was so adorable, with his tufty black hair and toothless smile. And he smelled so good—of baby powder and innocence. It was all she could do not to cook up a kidnapping plot.

Baby smiles, she decided, were as effective on her armour plating as hydrochloric acid.

Phoebe had just about finished clearing up the mess Adele had made.