An Autumn Affair

‘Can’t wait,’ Faye heard herself replying.

The swimming pool at Buttersley Hall was every bit as impressive as Faye had imagined. Yet, despite its imposing proportions, and the fabulous setting of lush lawns, two professional-looking tennis courts, and the gloriously warm September evening, it was still Josie’s mother who held Faye’s interest.

‘What does your mum do?’ she asked, when Josie surfaced for air after swimming two full lengths under water.

‘Nothing,’ Josie replied, wiggling a finger in her ear. ‘She used to work as cabin crew for one of the big airlines before she met Dad and had me.’

‘She looks really … young,’ Faye said. Silently adding a stream of other adjectives, including gorgeous, stunning, amazing …

‘She’s thirty-seven. She had me when she was twenty. What does your mum do?’

Faye rolled her eyes. ‘Panders to my hideous brother’s every need. And nags me about stupid, boring things like I haven’t eaten any vegetables, and I should be doing my homework.’

Josie giggled. ‘She sounds nice. I’d like to meet her.’

Over my dead body, Faye resisted saying. How could she possibly take Josie back to Primrose Cottage when she lived in this demi-palace with a supermodel for a mother? Honestly. Life just totally wasn’t fair.

‘I’m starving,’ she announced. ‘Should we go and order some pizzas?’

‘Okay,’ agreed Josie.

Sitting at the island in the enormous kitchen at Buttersley Hall a few minutes later, swathed in a fluffy black towel, Faye eyed her surroundings approvingly. The sleek white units were enhanced with every in-built shiny, chrome appliance ever invented. Even the tap was uber-trendy, with several other gadgets hanging off it. This was the kind of kitchen Faye would love, not the washed-out green-oak effort at Primrose Cottage.

‘This kitchen is awesome,’ she said to Josie, who was sitting at the opposite side of the island, slicing strawberries for their smoothies.

‘It’s a total waste,’ huffed Josie, shaking her head. ‘It only ever gets used when Dad’s at home now. And that’s like never.’

‘Doesn’t your mum cook?’

‘Not these days,’ replied Josie. ‘She used to make some great stuff when I was younger but now she’s hardly ever home.’

Faye’s eyes grew wide. She couldn’t imagine life without her mother trying to ram some ghastly healthy concoction down her throat every evening. Josie really didn’t know how lucky she was. ‘So you can eat whatever you like?’ she asked enviously.

Josie nodded. ‘Which suits me fine, actually. I need loads of carbs for tennis and, since Mum became paranoid about her weight, she wouldn’t touch a carb if her life depended on it.’

‘Unreal,’ sighed Faye, wondering what she must’ve done in a previous life to deserve her miserable fate. Josie seemed to have it made here.

‘Josie, I’m just popping out.’

Faye’s head whipped around to find Josie’s mother standing in the doorway, now wearing tight white jeans and a glittering turquoise vest top.

‘Okay,’ said Josie, tossing the strawberries into the blender. ‘Oh, by the way, Mum. This is Faye Blakelaw. She just moved to the village a few weeks ago. Faye, this is my mum, Miranda.’

Two perfectly made-up, huge brown eyes regarded Faye again. ‘Hi,’ she said, with a fleeting smile this time.

‘Hi,’ gasped Faye, wondering how anyone could look so glamorous when they were just ‘popping out’. And what a gorgeous name. It was so … so … Sex and the City.

‘Oh. And Eduardo said to tell you that he’ll pop by tomorrow to sort out payment for my next block of lessons,’ Josie added.

Miranda’s shiny silver clutch bag fell to the floor.

‘Er, right,’ she muttered, bending down to retrieve it. ‘Well, I’d, um, better be off. I’ll see you later.’

‘Okay,’ said Josie. ‘Have a good time.’

‘Where’s she going?’ Faye asked, as Miranda disappeared in a cloud of expensive perfume.

Josie shrugged. ‘No idea. We used to be really close not so long ago. But now she does her thing, and I do mine.’

And that was the way, Faye discovered, that life operated at Buttersley Hall. Josie did whatever she wanted – and while the things Josie did were not necessarily the things Faye would have done, it all was still mind-blowingly awesome. Meanwhile, Miranda swanned about in fabulous clothes, looking fabulous and no doubt doing fabulous things. And all from their fabulous house with its fabulous pool. It was a gazillion light years away from Faye’s dreary life at Primrose Cottage, where her mother wouldn’t know Prada from Primark, and completely freaked if Faye happened to mention something as mundane as missing a class at college. But, of the two worlds, Faye knew which one she belonged to. Or should belong to. Which was why, ever since that first meeting with Miranda, she’d spent every possible minute at Buttersley Hall, feeding her obsession with the woman. An obsession of a purely educational nature. Miranda was Faye’s ideal role model. And Faye suspected that whatever she learned from her, however covertly, would stand her in much better stead than anything they could teach her at Harrogate Further Education College.

In fact, come to think of it, hadn’t Josie invited her over later that evening if she had nothing on? Faye reached for her mobile and scrolled down until she found Josie’s number. That she might smudge her nail varnish in the process didn’t matter one jot.

Chapter Two

Miranda Cutler pressed hard on the accelerator of her BMW convertible as she sped along Buttersley’s narrow country lanes. With the roof down, the cool October evening air whistled through her hair. She closed her eyes, wishing it would whip away all thoughts from her head. When she opened them again, she found the car hurtling towards a high stone wall. Miranda jammed on the brakes and pulled over onto the grass verge, her heart thundering. What the hell was she doing? She could have killed herself. Not that anyone would have cared. Herself included. An impromptu death would at least offer one escape route from the hideous predicament she found herself in. A hideous predicament entirely of her own making. She ran a hand through her hair and heaved an almighty sigh. How could she have been so stupid? She was thirty-seven, for God’s sake, not seventeen. She’d been around the block enough times to know how these things worked. And having unprotected sex with her daughter’s tennis coach, who also happened to be her best friend Lydia’s toy-boy lover, was definitely not on the list. But six pregnancy tests could not be wrong. So, the burning question now was what to do about it. The answer required minimal consideration. She had only one option. A termination. But where? She couldn’t go to her GP in Buttersley. She’d have to go private. Somewhere she could be completely anonymous. Somewhere like … London. And she wouldn’t tell a soul. She’d make out it was a shopping trip – a totally spontaneous one to avoid Lydia inviting herself along.

Miranda leaned forward and rested her head on the leather steering wheel. God. Just concocting the plan exhausted her, never mind actually implementing it. And, despite intending to keep the whole sorry business to herself, there remained the ordeal of facing Eduardo and Lydia, and, more importantly, her own husband, Doug, while pretending everything was perfectly fine.

Just thinking about Doug caused Miranda’s heart to sink. Not that theirs was a conventional marriage. Nor was Miranda’s a conventional life. And certainly not a straightforward one. From a young age, things had been complicated and, even after all this time, she could still recall, as if it were yesterday, the precise day the complications began …

‘Well, I never,’ declared her dad one morning, bowling into the kitchen in his bus driver’s uniform.

‘What’s the matter, love?’ asked Miranda’s mum, frying sausages on the gas cooker.

Her dad wafted the letter in his hand. ‘Apparently I’ve been left an inheritance.’

At the kitchen table, in the navy-blue skirt and sweater which compiled the uninspiring uniform of Jarrow Comp, thirteen-year-old Miranda whipped up her head from her teen magazine. ‘An inheritance, Dad? But we don’t know anyone who’s died.’

Her father plumped down on the chair opposite hers, his kind, round face flushed. ‘Well, actually I do. Vaguely. It’s my Aunt Maud – your grandad’s youngest sister. She emigrated to Australia in the 1960s. I remember Dad organised a leaving party for her and Maud turned up in a dress with kangaroos printed all over it. She was a funny old soul. Always wore bright orange lipstick. Never married. Probably as a result of the lipstick. But, according to this letter, she passed away last month and, as her only surviving relative, she’s left everything to me.’

‘Goodness,’ gasped Miranda’s mother, momentarily neglecting the sausages. ‘Does it say how much “everything” is?’

Her father shook his head. ‘No. I have to make an appointment with the solicitor to “be furnished with full details”. I’m on an early finish today so I’ll see if they can fit me in this afternoon.’

Miranda couldn’t concentrate at school that day. Not a particularly unusual occurrence. Her ambition stretching no further than a two-mile radius of her home town, she could see no point in equations, essays and experiments, her only interest in the scholarly world being purely of a social nature.

Shuffling along to their first class, Miranda related news of the inheritance to her best friend, Tina.

‘Oh my God,’ Tina gushed. ‘What if it’s millions? You could buy one of those really posh houses on the new estate. They’ve got bidets and everything. And you could go abroad for your holidays. America. That’s where I’d go. On Concorde.’

Miranda giggled. She hadn’t really thought about moving before. She liked their house. It was only a semi on the council estate, but it was lovely and cosy. And as for going abroad for their holidays, she’d never given that much consideration either, always looking forward to their annual family jaunt to Skegness. But she decided to play along with Tina just the same. ‘If it is millions, I promise I’ll take you to America on Concorde,’ she said.

Tina’s heavily made-up eyes grew wide, her mind evidently awhirl with possibilities. ‘And you know what else we could do? Go and see Duran Duran. They might even let us backstage if we tell them you’re a millionaire.’

Hmm. Now that was something that did appeal to Miranda. Very much. Excitement began fizzing in her stomach. And so the day continued, maths, biology and history completely passing them by as she and Tina concocted increasingly elaborate schemes of how to spend the inheritance – which grew larger with every passing hour. By the time Miranda arrived home later that afternoon, she thought she might burst with anticipation.

‘Well?’ she asked breathlessly, dumping her school bag on the floor. ‘What did the solicitor say?’

‘You’re not going to believe it, sweetheart,’ gushed her mum. ‘I still can’t take it in.’

‘Is it millions?’ pressed Miranda. ‘Can we go to America on Concorde and take Tina?’

‘Woah!’ said her dad, chuckling. ‘Come and sit here beside me, love.’

Miranda joined her father on the worn brown sofa.

‘It’s not millions,’ he informed her. ‘And there’ll be no jetting about on aeroplanes. Given that it’s money we wouldn’t have otherwise had, your mum and I have decided not to waste it on anything frivolous, but to spend it on you. To invest in your future.’

Sensing, by her dad’s earnest tone, that this ‘investing’ would also not include tickets to Duran Duran, panic began nibbling Miranda’s innards.

‘We’re going to use the money to send you to a better school.’

Miranda’s heart skipped a beat. Her mouth grew dry and for a few seconds she thought she might pass out. But perhaps she hadn’t heard properly. ‘A … a better school?’

‘That’s right, love.’

Miranda shook her head in an attempt to clear it. This was becoming surreal. Were they really having this conversation? ‘B … but what’s wrong with the Comp?’

‘Far too much, in our opinion,’ huffed her mum. ‘That school’s been going downhill for years. And now we have the money to get you out of there, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We want to give you the best start in life we can, sweetheart. Send you somewhere that will bring out your potential. You’re a clever girl and I don’t want to see you wasting your life working in the factory like me.’

‘We obviously need to do a lot more research,’ her dad ploughed on. ‘But the solicitor has recommended the school his own daughters went to. It’s called Briardene in Derbyshire.’

Miranda spotted a glimmer of hope. ‘Derbyshire? But I can’t travel to and from there every day.’

‘You won’t have to,’ said her mum smugly. ‘It’s a boarding school, so you’ll be living there. It’ll be a fantastic experience. Just like something out of Enid Blyton.’

But Briardene, Miranda soon discovered, was as far away from the world of Enid Blyton as Jarrow was from Jamaica. From the moment she stepped into the marbled foyer of what had obviously once been a spectacular stately home, she felt as though she were on another planet. Her crimson uniform might be the same as those of the other girls, but there endeth any similarity. Her fellow incumbents’ rosy cheeks hinted at hours outdoors riding their ponies; their glossy hair reeked of expensive products; and their plummy accents wouldn’t have sounded out of place in Buckingham Palace. Plus they all exuded a confidence that wafted about only the truly moneyed.

Miranda wished Tina could see them – flicking locks; kissing cheeks; clunking hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and tennis racquets. She’d find the whole thing hilarious.

‘Lady Bloody Mucks,’ she’d call them. Or words to that effect.

But Tina wasn’t there. She was at the Comp. Probably sporting an outrageous pair of earrings that would be confiscated within the first ten minutes, before being ordered to the toilets to wash off her eye make-up. Miranda had never been one of the Comp’s biggest fans, but at that moment she’d never wanted to be anywhere more in her entire life.

Miranda had never had a problem making friends in the past. In fact, she’d been pretty popular at the Comp. But she soon discovered that the cliques at Briardene were constructed with the same impenetrability as Norman fortresses. With her pitiful armoury of a strong local accent, a gangly awkwardness, and a blatant lack of upper-class breeding, she didn’t have a hope of infiltrating a single one of them.

Her weekly phone calls to her parents were strained. ‘I know it’s hard, love’ was batted back with depressing regularity. ‘But it’s for the best. You’ll soon settle in. You’ll see.’

But Miranda knew the chances of her settling into Briardene were as likely as a penguin calling the numbers in her mum’s bingo hall. In the absence of any better distractions, she threw herself into her studies. Despite the huge amount of money being invested in her education though, and her parents’ unwarranted confidence in her academic ability, she remained just as average at Briardene as at the Comp.

Its one saving grace was that she didn’t have to share a bedroom. Her little room on the second floor, with views over the extensive playing fields, became her haven. Every possible minute, she would scurry off there, close the door and block out the alien world behind it. Her walls were crammed with reminders of home – photos of her parents and friends, of happy times when she hadn’t a care in the world. The highlight of every day became the ritual crossing off of the date on the calendar. One day less at Briardene. One day nearer the school holidays and going home.

In fact, in the days before social media, Miranda’s only contact with her Jarrow friends was during the longed-for holidays. It soon became obvious, however, that she no longer belonged to that world either. Her attempt to modify her broad accent to fit in at her new school caused some consternation back home.

‘Listen to you. You’ve gone all posh,’ remarked Tina, when Miranda telephoned her during her first Easter holidays.

‘No, I haven’t,’ countered Miranda. ‘I’ve been away so long you’ve forgotten what I sound like, that’s all.’

A brief – and uncomfortable – hiatus followed.

‘Fancy going into town tomorrow afternoon?’ Miranda asked, desperate to rekindle the close relationship the two of them had always enjoyed. ‘Or we could go to the cinema.’

‘I, um, can’t,’ replied Tina. ‘Got to go to some, er, family thing. Sorry. Look, I’ll give you a call later in the week, okay?’

And before Miranda could reply, she hung up.

‘I thought you were going out with Tina today,’ her mum commented the following day.

‘She’s busy,’ muttered Miranda miserably.

‘Well, why don’t we go into town, then?’ her mum suggested. ‘We could do a spot of shopping. Have our lunch out.’

In the absence of any better offers, Miranda agreed.

Having mooched around the shops for a couple of hours, they were deliberating where to go for lunch when they spotted Tina over the other side of the road. Arm-in-arm with another girl from school.

‘Oh, look,’ said her mum. ‘There’s …’

Miranda felt as though someone had plunged a knife into her innards. Tears burning her eyes, she spun around and marched along the street in the opposite direction.

Back home, her mum did her best to cheer her up. ‘Don’t worry about Tina, sweetheart. Girls are fickle. They change best friends more often than they change their underwear. What about your new pals at Briardene? You’re always welcome to invite them here over the holidays, you know.’

Miranda gawped at her mother. She didn’t have any ‘pals’ at Briardene. And even if she had, how could she possibly invite anyone from there to a council house in Jarrow? The bathrooms in their stately homes would be bigger than the entire semi. And have bidets. Her mum didn’t have a clue.

‘Look, Mum,’ she pleaded, for what must’ve been the two-hundredth time. ‘I really hate Briardene. Why can’t I go back to the Comp? Then you and Dad can use all the money you’ll save to buy a nice new house or something.’

But for what must also have been the two-hundredth time, her mum shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, but we’ve made up our minds. I know it’s not easy settling into a new school. Especially at your age. But it’ll pay dividends in the end. Just you wait and see.’

Miranda didn’t want to wait and see. She didn’t care about dividends. She wanted her old life back. The life she’d loved so much – when she’d been happy and popular and carefree. In a world she’d belonged to.

Now she didn’t belong anywhere.

She was like a flailing fish out of water, desperately grabbling for air.

And it was all her parents’ fault.

And so passed the next three years, Miranda’s resentfulness towards her parents burgeoning with every one of them. After the first summer she’d given up begging to return to the Comp. Despite all her tears, reasoning and misery, her parents continued to insist that it was for her own good, and attributed the ensuing surliness to teenage years.

At sixteen Miranda announced she would be leaving Briardene.

‘But what about your A-levels? University?’ her parents entreated.

‘I’m not going to university so there’s no point doing my A-levels,’ Miranda batted back.

Disappointment settled over their faces. But Miranda was devoid of sympathy. What did they expect? She’d suffered long enough.

The day she walked out of Briardene for the very last time, she’d felt as though a ten-ton weight had been lifted from her young shoulders. Freedom loomed. But what to do with it? Until Briardene, she hadn’t much considered her future, subconsciously assuming it would involve a local job, a local lad, and a couple of kids. Now, though, none of that seemed right. She no longer belonged in Jarrow. She didn’t belong anywhere. Nor did she have any remarkable skills or talents. What she did have, thankfully, were her looks. When she’d started at Briardene she’d been a gawky, gangly teenager with braces and spots. But, just after her fifteenth birthday, things began to happen. She filled out – in all the right places. The braces came off to reveal perfectly straight white teeth. Her skin cleared. And, like a true student of the school, she grew her hair.

Feeling devoid of roots, she came up with what she considered the perfect career: cabin crew. At least Briardene had ensured she achieved all the requisite qualifications – her not-too-lacking list of GCSEs thankfully including maths and English. The minimum age for applications being eighteen, she bided her time working in shops and restaurants in and around Jarrow, gaining experience serving the great British public. Her parents, naturally, had been gutted. Having invested a small fortune in her education, they’d expected more. But Miranda refused to feel guilty. She’d done her bit. She’d stayed at Briardene for as long as she could endure it.

The most depressing result for Miranda wasn’t her status-lacking career choice, but the vast rift which now existed between her and her parents. They’d been so close once: a tight, loving family unit. Now they existed in parallel universes. And the most depressing part of all was that Miranda couldn’t imagine ever finding a way to mend the rift; couldn’t imagine ever forgiving them for subjecting her to Briardene.

Consequently, she spent as little time as possible in their presence, treating her bedroom exactly as she had her room at school. Spending every spare moment she could in there; crossing off the days on her calendar until her eighteenth birthday.

Tina and her other friends in Jarrow having long since deserted her, on her days off she’d catch the bus to Newcastle airport and watch the cabin crew strutting through the departure gate, soaking up every detail of their appearance, right down to the way they walked and talked. On the day of her eighteenth birthday, her application was in the post. And, after a gruelling round of tests and interviews, she was accepted. The day she received the news was the day Miranda felt her life was about to begin.

And so it had.

Based in Manchester, she’d left Jarrow without as much as a backward glance, taking to her new career like a duck to water. After only a few months, she was assigned the New York route, upon which travelled several regular faces. Doug’s included. Doug’s was a nice face. Not conventionally handsome, but with pleasant features, and kind brown eyes. Miranda correctly estimated him to be about ten years older than her, in his late twenties. At well over six feet, he literally stood out from the crowd, always immaculately dressed, and, unlike some of the punters who treated the crew as nothing more than skivvies, always polite.

She bumped into him one day outside Macy’s. He’d been returning to his hotel after a business meeting. Miranda had been shopping. He invited her for a coffee. She accepted. And, surprisingly, for the first time in years – ever since she and Tina had been close in fact – Miranda found herself relaxing in someone else’s company. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was about Doug that made her feel like that. It could have been any number of things: his easy-going charm; his kind brown eyes which, on closer inspection, twinkled with humour; the fact that he shared her working-class roots, but had relentlessly followed his vision of success. He was so clever; so capable; so grounded; so in control. And he knew exactly where he belonged.

After that first meeting, they made every effort to see one another as often as possible. Not half as often as either of them would’ve liked given their hectic work schedules, but often enough for an astounded Miranda to find herself pregnant four months later. She’d been on the pill, but with jetting all over the place, and the time differences, had obviously slipped up somewhere along the line. Surprisingly though, for one so young, and only just starting out on her career, the idea of having a baby or, more precisely, the idea of having Doug’s baby, appealed to her. She’d already decided to keep it, whatever his reaction. But, albeit slightly baffled by the news at first, his surprise had quickly turned to joy.