Полная версия
No Regrets
TABITHA SOMERSET WEBB is a fashion and lifestyle designer. She lives in Hampshire with her husband Gav, and her two daughters Betsey and Primrose. No Regrets is her debut novel.
www.tabithawebb.co.uk
No Regrets
Tabitha Webb
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020
Copyright © Tabitha Webb 2020
Tabitha Webb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008228279
Version 2020-06-06
Note to Readers
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
Change of font size and line height
Change of background and font colours
Change of font
Change justification
Text to speech
Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008228262
Dedicated to all my favourite independent women.
My mum Morwenna, my sisters Julie, Merryn and Imogen,
and my daughters Betsey and Primrose.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Stella
‘Shit! Shit!’ Stella cursed under her breath as she struggled to wrangle her two-year-old, Rory, into the lurid orange foldaway seat of the supermarket trolley. One of his legs was wrapped over the handle and a pudgy arm was trapped beneath; a second arm was caught in the brake handle; a second leg was wedged into the seat mechanism. There seemed to be a final additional limb she couldn’t account for; in it he gripped a long-melted and now leaking bag of gold chocolate coins. As she struggled to unravel Rory’s multiple limbs, her caramel Celine Micro-Tote bag, a perk from her former career, slipped to the ground and spilled its contents across sticky, germ-varnished vinyl flooring. She cursed again, louder this time. She was not having a good day. Actually she’d been having a bad week. Since at least Monday, her life had been a mess. Since the call from the credit card company. The call she was going to return as soon as humanly possible. Tomorrow, maybe.
‘Sorry!’
She was blocking traffic, blocking every other mother’s access to wholesome produce, messing with their minutely choreographed schedules. One tutted, another coughed, as they stepped over, around, and between the spilled contents of her beloved Celine.
‘Sorry! I am so sorry!’
A line of pastel-wearing young mothers – picture-postcard yummy mummies, who wafted in to complete their effortless weekly shop – and their pale celery-sucking progeny had formed; the clean-mouthed, rosy-cheeked children perched upright in their foldaway seats nibbling contentedly on gluten-free, dairy-free snacks as they were chauffeured along well-trodden and orderly paths through the aisles. Her own trips followed a less precise agenda. As if to prove the point, Rory began to screech. Stella knew from experience that she had about ten seconds until the whole supermarket witnessed her motherhood failure. Panicked, she quickly wrestled her snot-faced, chocolate-smeared child out of the seat and plonked him into the body of the trolley. He stopped screaming, sitting in open-mouthed disbelief at his demotion. His jaw began to wobble in preparation for another outburst, so she squeezed the contents of an almost liquid chocolate coin into Rory’s open fist, which he immediately shoved in his mouth. Ignoring the filth on the floor and happy she was wearing her trusty Pineapple Studios sweatshirt (it was Thursday so she definitely hadn’t been wearing it for more than three days – OK, three and a half), she used her forearm to sweep together the pile of lipsticks, chapsticks, moisturisers, hand sanitisers, used wet wipes, tampons, chewed toys, painkillers and belly-fluff into a pile.
Anxiously checking on Rory, she saw that he’d had enough of licking chocolate from his fingers and had moved onto the seat. Someone with tanned shoulders and a solicitous smile was standing beside the trolley.
‘Let me,’ she said, and pulled an industrial pack of wet wipes from her South American, hand-crafted Inca shoulder bag. It was the Van Nesses’ nanny. Stella had met her, briefly, probably at the school gates. Without any fuss, and most importantly without objection from Rory, starting from the mouth and working outwards down each limb, finishing with the handle of the trolley, she cleaned every chocolatey surface. ‘There. Who’s a clever boy?’ She ruffled his hair and passed the handful of dirty wipes to Stella. ‘There, he no longer looks, how do you say, as happy as a pig in shit?’
Stella laughed at the unlikely phrasing and the Spanish accent. She couldn’t remember her name, but she knew it had something to do with chocolate.
‘Thank you. I’m… err… Stella.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Stella stared at her, waiting for the shoe to drop, but the girl just stared at her, all big green eyes, Mediterranean skin, and electric red lips pressed into a cheeky smile.
‘I don’t remember your name.’
‘I know.’
Her lips parted, revealing a smile that would have been a dental hygienist’s dream. Stella could smell suncream: shea butter and banana with a hint of vanilla.
‘I’m Coco. I work for the Van Nesses.’
‘Yes. Of course. I knew that. Yes. Lovely to see you again, Coco. I love that top on you. Is it Tom Williamson?’
‘This? I don’t know. I borrowed it. I love the colour.’
She flicked at one of the yellow spaghetti shoulder straps.
That colour. That yellow colour, like a field of sunflowers, held such happy associations for Stella. It was exactly the same colour as the bridesmaids’ dresses she and Ana had worn for Dixie’s wedding. She still had a photo of the three of them: Dixie dressed in an embarrassing pink, like a prom dress, and Ana and herself, Dixie’s sun-kissed, smiling, co-conspirators. The marriage itself was obviously a catastrophe, but the wedding was as wild as any she had ever attended. There was still a gossip embargo on at least half the stories from the after-party. They would have been about Coco’s age back then, and Stella had been as young and hot and self-assured as Coco was now. She missed that feeling, but had she ever really been that hot?
‘Aren’t you cold in that?’
Coco laughed carelessly and pulled a hoodie from her bag. Stella caught a lemon scent.
‘Yes, a little. But it’s spring. It’s so important to get sun on the skin, don’t you think?’ She lifted her forearm and stroked the taut, satin flesh. Tiny blonde hairs stood up from the bronzed skin. Stella shivered. She stopped herself from comparing the tanned arm of the 25-year-old Spanish au pair with the pock-marked, UV-damaged epidermis of a 40-year-old mother of two who hadn’t had a shower or changed her clothes in about four days.
‘Lovely to see you again, Coco. How are the Van Nesses? I haven’t seen Penelope in weeks.’
‘Oh, they’re marvellous. Mrs Penelope Van Ness is on a retreat in Goa.’
‘How amazing! Well, lucky her. Say hello from me. Come on, Rory. Let’s try and get this horror show over before your halo slips.’
Rory’s eyes followed Coco as she laughed, oggling her as if she were chocolate-coated. Stella watched as she leaned down and kissed him. First on the forehead and then on the lips.
Stella had to stop herself slapping the girl away. The lips. Too much. Yuck.
‘He likes you. Very unusual.’
‘Kids love me. They know that I love them unconditionally,’ she said with great seriousness.
Eugh, thought Stella. Another new-age hippy lost in fantasy fairyland.
‘Yes, I’m sure that’s it. Lovely to see you, Coco. I’m sure I’ll see you again.’
She hurried her trolley and child into the fruit aisle as Rory tried to lean around her to grin at Coco.
‘I hope so. I’d like that,’ said Coco.
As they rounded the piled pyramid of potatoes, Rory lost sight of her and began to wail. Stella squeezed another coin into his mitt and began to surround him with food that he might – God willing – one day eat: carrots, celery, cucumbers, clementines. All the c-words. Rory sat himself down amongst the piling rainbow of fruit and veg and found himself some chocolate to lick from a receipt he’d found in the bottom of the trolley.
As she passed in front of the chilled dairy section, she caught a glimpse of Coco’s bare brown back in the biscuit aisle. She was filling her basket with Hobnobs, chocolate digestives and ginger creams. In addition to the yellow spaghetti top and the soft, grey lemon-scented hoodie (no doubt left in her bed by some 20-year-old surf instructor) now draped over her shoulders, she was wearing white trousers, spandex, whose stretch, when she reached down for a packet of Oreos, revealed she required no additional support or protection. Stella regretted her choice of tatty pink Sweaty Betty jogging pants, pants that had never broken into a run.
Stella ducked out of sight, not wanting to be spotted and forced to endure more conversation, but she couldn’t resist peeking back around the Kettle Chips installation to see what else she’d put in her basket. Three pot noodles. A box of raisin bran. A litre of vanilla ice cream. Another litre of ice cream, mango. Her posture was exemplary: her neck curved and proud like a ballerina; her shoulders square, arms and back toned, and Stella watched as, without hesitation, she bent at the waist to grab a loaf of brown bread and then four tins of red beans from the lowest shelf.
Stella swept a family pack of Kettle Chips into the trolley from the handy display and caught sight of her own clothing choices. On the front of her sweatshirt were tea and coffee stains, some splotches of grease, and she could now smell, not lemon, not shea butter, but instead, fish. Also she was wearing her mother-in-law’s hand-painted wellington boots. In fairness, they’d been nearest the door, and given there was a 50 per cent probability of rain on any day she was heading to the Common, they had felt like the sensible choice. But now, seeing Coco in all her wholesome, winsome, youthful vitality, she felt a soul-crushing shame and regret. Shame at her declining standards and regret that she’d never be able to bend from the waist and retrieve anything ever again from a bottom shelf. Instead she reached down to a lower shelf to retrieve some honey-roasted peanuts.
‘Stella? What are you doing down there?’
It was one of those shrill, Sloaney voices that expands to fill every space. It was the way, when her life was at its toughest, that Stella imagined her own voice sounded. It haunted her. She quickly grabbed an assortment of pumpkin, linseed and chia seeds, and a selection of pulses, and lobbed them into the trolley around Rory, trying desperately to hide the multipacks of mini-chocolate bars and super-sized chocolate treats, and the value pack of Kettle Chips. She knew there was fresh fruit and veggies somewhere under there.
Olivia Oysten-Taylor was wearing white. Of course. Not a normal white, but the kind of white that only exists in adland. She’d also gone for a sporty look.
‘Olivia. How wonderful to see you. You look superb. Like Billie Jean.’
They air-kissed.
‘I recognised you from behind immediately!’
From behind? thought Stella. What does that mean?
‘You remember Rory?’
Olivia leaned down close to him.
‘Why did I think he was called Tom? Lovely name, Tommy. So English.’
‘Tom is his brother. He’s in primary school.’
‘Aren’t you a handsome boy? Too adorable. Are you going to grow up to be a successful man like your lovely father, Jack?’
‘Jake.’
‘Of course. The lovely Jake.’
‘How is Rups?’ She loved to say his name. Rups, what kind of a name was Rups for anything other than a teddy bear. ‘Is Rups well?’
‘Fabulous. We’re just buying a little place in Vermont, a little autumn getaway. It’s just so hard to find somewhere fun to vacation in the fall, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, so true,’ said Stella, aware that Rory was getting himself into a state again. He was chewing on the foil casing from one of his disappearing coins, half of which was drying into the fringe that Stella now saw desperately needed cutting.
He reached out a friendly hand to try and touch Olivia’s precisely made-up face. She recoiled as if the smears of chocolate were toxic, not the harmless residue of a milk chocolate treat.
Stella wished she’d worn her sunglasses. If people stopped recognising her, she’d stop having these awkward and disturbing encounters. It was the one of the major issues with living in Wandsworth – you could never pop to the shops without the risk of bumping into someone you knew, which meant you were always supposed to make an effort when you left the house, even if that meant squeezing into the Sweaty Betty leggings she’d bought five years ago, just after Tom was born, and, until that week, never worn outside the house.
Rory was burbling, gleefully wiping his fingers on his jacket. This did not concern her. Long ago she’d learned to dress her sons in dark clothing to disguise their chocolate issues.
He screeched something that she understood as ‘coin’, but might have been anything. He could have been giving detailed feedback on her failings as a mother.
‘Shh, sweetheart,’ she whispered. She gave him a carrot, which he threw to the floor.
‘Strong-willed, isn’t he?’ said Olivia. She looked pristine. Perfectly applied lipstick. Eyebrows carefully etched in. Oh for goodness’ sake, she was even wearing an actual tennis skirt.
‘Hmm. Where are you off to looking so fabulous?’
‘I have found the most sublime tennis instructor. He’s a dream. He was on the tour back in the Nineties. French. Immensely talented.’ She mimed a feeble double-handed backhand. ‘Do you play?’
‘Tennis? Not any more. Not since I twisted my knee skiing in Klosters in ’97. I just can’t do all the sports any more. I have to prioritise.’
She reached towards an upper shelf for something beige and organic-looking. Quinoa. She smiled at Olivia as if she knew exactly what it was, and how best to prepare and serve it.
‘I really must keep moving, Olivia. Tom’s been asked to try out for chess club and I don’t want him to be late for Cantonese lessons.’
‘Ah ha, sáisáugāan hái bīndouh a.’
Stella looked blank.
‘Oh darling, it’s Cantonese. It means have an auspicious day. I always help Felix with his homework.’
‘Of course,’ Stella laughed. ‘Blye-blye.’
Olivia looked confused. Stella didn’t wait to explain that she was making a racist joke.
‘We must have you all round for Pimms and a play date. Just as soon as it gets a little warmer.’
‘We must, but I’m going back to work soon. It’s going to be so hard to fit everything in.’ It was the first lie that came to mind.
‘Oh, what were you? Were you in PR?’
‘I was a journalist. Fashion and celebrity.’
‘Really, a journalist, fashion and celebrity.’ Did her gaze flit disdainfully to Stella’s stained and smeared casual sportswear? ‘How wonderfully now. Were you vlogging? What is a vlogger? How exciting. Anyway, you must come over. We’ve got a new nanny and she makes the most divine sugar-free fairy cakes. Felix and Quentin and Sebastian and Honor just can’t get enough. We could see if she has a recipe for chocolate cake for little Ror-Ror. We’ve redone the whole garden with a gazebo and a water—’
‘Yes. Yes. We must—’ Stella waved as she left, ducking down to improvise a finish to Olivia’s invitation in a whisper to Rory: ‘… water buffalos and long-tailed egrets, a flock of flamingos, and a gigantic sign saying, Motherhood is not a competitive sport. You’re right, Olivia’s a bitch. We never have to see her again.’
Heaped around the chocolatey boy were layers of food products: wholemeal, wholegrain, certified organic through to seeds and pulses, then layers of confectionery and snack food, and at the very bottom, out of anyone’s reach and now compressed and distorted by the weight of junk, a medley of fruit and veg, mostly bruised by Rory and soon to be inedible. She really had to do something about her diet. She reached down for a jar of Nutella and felt something weaken in her back. A disc. God no, not a disc, not now. With a groan, tentatively, she pulled herself upright, and couldn’t help recalling the effortless fluidity of Coco’s bottom-shelf manoeuvre: Tuladandasana-Nutella, balancing stick with Nutella. Now there was a smart and specific goal she could set for herself. One day she would retrieve a jar of Nutella from a bottom shelf without the threat of total spinal failure. More yoga, she promised herself. Or maybe Pilates. She would do some research she decided; no point in making rash decisions.
Perhaps she should be buying more seeds and legumes? (She must look up ‘legumes’; they sounded so Whole Foods.) She searched the shelves for more seed-like products and immediately felt better. If she just bought a selection of ‘good’ foods – natural foods, lentils, wild rice, pine nuts, sunflower seeds – she could figure out what to do with them later. They would look good in her cupboard, and just the thought of buying them made her feel thinner. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a diet plan in the world that didn’t advocate seeds – perhaps she could roast her own in the oven and then put them in an old jam jar to snack on? This was definitely a possibility. She was sure she’d seen Victoria Beckham wandering around with some seeds and it seemed to work for her, even after four designer kids and two successful careers.
Rushing through the aisles, she kept an eye out for Coco, and another for Olivia. What a shame, she thought, that nowadays her friends were more like Olivia, not interesting like Coco? Coco might frankly be a bit weird, but Olivia… Olivia was everything she didn’t want to be, but was terrified she was becoming, but she also envied her. Thank god she still had friends like Ana and Dixie to keep her sane; sharing the chaos of their lives helped her convince herself that she wasn’t losing her mind, or wasn’t losing it alone at any rate.
She didn’t see Coco again, but Olivia, her back to Stella, fortunately, was paying for some bottled water at the six items or less counter when she saw to her delight that Rory had at some point managed to wipe four of his chocolate-covered fingers down the back of Olivia’s tennis skirt. The chocolatey stripes looked like shit in the bright lights of the supermarket. As if she’d run out of paper and used her hand before wiping it clean on her blue-white tennis kit. Her moment of joy was interrupted by the cashier.
‘Sorry, love, can you try it again?’
‘What?’
‘It’s not working.’
‘Oh, it must, surely.’ She felt the heat rising to her face and sweat begin to press through the pores across her top lip. She remembered with shame the unreturned voicemails from Barclaycard.
‘Wait, sorry. I’ve another,’ she tried to laugh. ‘Too many holidays, isn’t that the way?’
She found her personal bank card, and prayed to all the gods of organised family finance that she’d left some money in there.
‘That’s fine.’
The beads of sweat began to dry and Stella found consolation and distraction in the memory of Olivia’s stained whites.
‘Good lad, Rory. You’ll go far.’
Stella was still giggling at Rory when she emerged from the supermarket into a downpour. The oppressive darkness of the low clouds, the ubiquity of water all around them, filled her with blood-chilling dread and she promised herself that she’d return the calls to Barclaycard. For once, she knew that this cash-flow issue was probably not her failure. The Barclaycard was paid from Jake’s account. A wave of anxiety connecting the Barclaycard issue to Jake’s recent moodiness stopped her in her tracks but she shook it off and began to load the SUV while Rory grinned and proudly showed her his two newly minted chocolatey panda eyes.
‘Joker,’ she laughed as he screamed on being separated from his trolley.
Chapter Two
Ana
‘So, are you ready, Rex?’ called Ana, her long, dark hair dripping down her caramel back as she stepped out of the shower into their tiny mirrored bathroom. ‘Are we really going to do this? I really want it to be the right thing, for both of us, I don’t want you to feel… trapped.’
She scrunched her hair dry, wrapped herself in the towel, and padded into the wood-panelled Seventies galley kitchen where Rex was drinking a coffee.
‘Not that I have any idea where we’ll put it,’ said Ana, looking around their postage-stamp-sized studio flat. ‘I must water that plant.’ In the window of the kitchen, a spider plant, overflowing with hanging clones, was miraculously dehydrating. Weren’t they like cockroaches? Able to endure a nuclear winter, but not a Battersea spring. Part of Ana’s training for adulthood, and eventual parenthood, was built around a progression: the goal being to firstly keep a plant alive for longer than six months, then graduate to a pet and if both are still thriving 12 months later, a child. The spider plant was still alive. Her cat, Boris, a half-feral tabby, had moved out a few months before. Rex insisted he must have been run over, but Ana knew he was still alive: on more than one occasion she’d seen him hiding behind the bins. He’d pretended not to know her.