The Truth About Love.......Story.....Third Part

stanley114 (25)in #story • 7 years ago

1st Part link: https://steemit.com/story/@stanley114/the-truth-about-love-story-part-one
2nd Part Link:https://steemit.com/story/@stanley114/the-truth-about-love-story-part-two

                                             **    Chapter 3**

Hope sat waiting for her father just before noon in the Pret a Manger located on the corner of Fleet Street and Arundel Street. It was convenient for both of them, a short walk from Porter Stone and the King’s College library. They were meeting early so as to be able to sit down. She held a stack of 3 x 5 lined record cards, a hundred or so, on which she had written essential facts relating to the English Civil War in different colours. Blue for the Royalists, red for the Parliamentarians.

Short Parliament April-May 1640
Cromwell forms New Model Army April 1645
Cromwell dies August 1658

Did she need to learn all the months? And once she had done the Civil War there was all the nineteenth-century European stuff to do. The notes filled two thick lever-arch files. She began to panic, as she always did, when she let herself think about all there was to do before the mock exams at the end of the spring term. It was barely a month away. And there was the dissertation to write too.
No one else panicked like she did. Oh, they all proclaimed that they were going to fail and bought caffeine pills to keep themselves awake. But no one else had even thought about starting their revision. They were all too busy doing as little work as possible and enjoying themselves. And in the middle

hard not to pout and she was aware that her mouth h ad
formed a hard -set line.
She heard his sigh. ‘Darling, I didn’t make the arrangements.’
‘I know you didn’t!’ She swung round. God, why were men always more anxious to escape blame than to explain themselves? ‘I’m not saying you did!’ No, Pia and Hope had made the arrangements, that much was obvious. ‘I’m asking why?’
He gave a half -shrug of his shoulders. ‘Sal, you’d hate it.’
‘I’d like to decide that for myself.’
He paused. ‘It would be awkward, that’s all.’ The truth was that he was right. It would be awkward and she would hate every moment of it. She could visualise it now, trapped at a lunch table with Pia, besieged by her family as they shot off well-worn anecdotes and family jokes.
She turned her back and went back to preparing dinner. Louis began whining to be let down. And then Edward dealt with awkwardness as he always did.
‘I’m going to get changed.’
He left the room to go upstairs.

Chapter 3

Short Parliament April-May 1640
Cromwell forms New Model Army April 1645
Cromwell dies August 1658

Did she need to learn all the months? And once she had done the Civil War there was all the nineteenth-century European stuff to do. The notes filled two thick lever-arch files. She began to panic, as she always did, when she let herself think about all there was to do before the mock exams at the end of the spring term. It was barely a month away. And there was the dissertation to write too.
No one else panicked like she did. Oh, they all proclaimed that they were going to fail and bought caffeine pills to keep themselves awake. But no one else had even thought about starting their revision. They were all too busy doing as little work as possible and enjoying themselves. And in the middle

of it all was her party. Mummy was doing everything, but there was still something to find to wear for the lunch. For the evening Hope was wearing a black cocktail dress, with a tight, boned bodice and a floaty skirt, that they had found in Selfridges last week. So she had lost most of her study day, the one day per week without lectures or tutorials, and had to stay up until 2.00 a.m. to finish her assignment. Meanwhile, Mummy was texting her all the time asking her this and
that.
‘I don’t want you to think I’m taking over,’ Mummy had said last week when she had come to Kennington to collect her to go to Oxford Street. She had looked up to the minute, in a new boxy fuchsia -pink jacket, but tired. Privately, Hope thought that her mother’s short, layered and heavily highlighted hairstyle - she had cut her hair short after Daddy left - made her angular features appear sharper. But she would never say so.
‘Are you sure you want to go shopping?’ Hope had asked anxiously. ‘We don’t have to go today.’
‘Why ever not? We’ve made a plan to go!’
Her mother had come from an interview at the BBC for a pre-Budget news reports in which she had been asked for her predictions on how the Budget would affect women. Hope had said that Mummy ought to sit down. She made them green tea in the Bridgewater mugs Mummy had given her as a moving -in present, four of them, each with a different set of birds.
Something for uni, Darling!
She really wished her mother wouldn’t say uni. Hope took the robins and handed her mother the barn owls. When Hope moved in, Mummy said the flat was a fine example of 196os brutalism - a sixth – floor university flat with low ceilings and worn-out grey commercial-grade carpet. It needed painting, the ceilings were stained yellow and the Formica kitchen had

several of the cupboard doors missing. A machine answered calls to university maintenance. No one ever got back to them. They sat surrounded by the washing airer in the corner and a pile of mugs waiting to be washed up when someone bought washing-up liquid.
Her mother had lit a cigarette. ‘Just one. And it’s menthol.’
Her mother was careful not to smoke in public. Pia Kirwan-Hughes advised women on how to manage their lives, not shorten them.
She had taken out a file from her slim tan briefcase and opened it. ‘Now. We have seventy-six acceptances for the evening, fourteen declined, and forty-two still to reply. So I’m going to say provisionally one hundred to the caterers.’
Pia reeled off the latest names to reply, most of them Hope’s school friends, the newer university friends Hope had chased up herself.
Hope was wondering where her mother planned to put Jo and the other two flat mates. It would be good if they could all be together.
‘And I’ve confirmed the menu: smoked salmon followed by chicken pie and then either chocolate cheesecake or apple strudel.’
On the other hand she wanted to sit next to Jo and that would be on the family table.
Pia looked up. ‘Hope!’
‘Oh. Yes. Good.’
Her mother returned to her notes. ‘Now. Fireworks. We could have some fireworks at the end of the evening. But then again, if you’re all going to be merry ...’
‘Merry!’
‘Or whatever term you want to apply to describe being blind drunk, perhaps it would be safer not.’
‘I think fireworks would be fun!’ Hope exclaimed.

‘Well, we’ll see,’ concluded her mother briskly. ‘And really, apart from that, everything’s done. I’ve sent an email to your father with all the details so he’s in the loop. I’m still waiting for a reply.’
Her mother was really good at saying things that weren’t an obvious criticism. She took a sip of tea and pulled a face.
‘It’s the water,’ Hope explained.
‘I’ve told Dan he can bring one friend - no more. But not to the lunch. That’s just family.’
Good. Hope knew that the phrase ‘just family’ was code between them. ‘So what are we doing about Frumpy?’
Pia raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘We’ll just have to make the most of it, darling. I have to invite her for the evening.’
Hope knew why - because Daddy might not come without her. It was a bitter thought and she pushed it away. At least she wasn’t going to be at the lunch. Mummy had been firm on that from the outset. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to pay for her. It’s bad enough that I have to pay for her incompetence.’
Hope had accompanied her mother to buy Dan new school shirts after Christmas. Really, she had wanted to stay at home and study. But her mother had plans. ‘Slough will be ghastly. Let’s go to Windsor. We’ll hit the sales and have lunch at the Castle Hotel, darling.’
Her mother, thumbing through the pile of wrapped two -pack school shirts in the Windsor branch of Marks & Spencer, had been vocal on the subject of Sally’s miserable housekeeping skills. ‘We’re very lucky that they happen to have shirts in stock. Ordinarily they don’t. Of course, I brought you up to take special care of other people’s things. But not everyone has standards, sad to say.’ They had stood for ages in the queue of bargain -hunters waiting to pay. ‘I could send her the receipt. But sometimes one has to be the bigger person. Of course, if she had any class at all, she would send me a cheque voluntarily.’

To be fair, on the few occasions they had all been together Frumpy didn’t say anything nasty or behave badly. It was just so much more relaxed when she wasn’t there. Hope found herself thinking before she said anything because every topic of conversation seemed full of potential pitfalls.
She had just reached the dates of the Long Parliament when Daddy arrived, late - but only five minutes. He kissed her and said, ‘I’m famished. BLT?’
‘Yep.’ She thought about leaving her record cards on the table to try to save their place. But it would be catastrophic if she lost them so she grabbed them and her bag. There was a queue of office workers ahead of them and some sort of delay caused by a problem with the coffee machine.
She told him about her dress and then about the menu for the evening. ‘Smoked salmon with a salad garnish thing. Then chicken pies. Mummy thought because it was March we should have something hot.’ She stopped herself. Perhaps he knew all about it? ‘She said she sent you an email telling you everything.’
He nodded but did not comment. Hope wondered if he read emails from her mother. She generally skipped bits, they were always so long.
Instead he said, hope she’s heating that marquee.’
‘We’ve hired every hot-air blower in Buckinghamshire. There isn’t going to be a formal top table. Mummy thought that would be really old-fashioned. We’re going to sit on a round table like all the others. And Mummy’s going to get one of the chefs to stay on and cook a kind of survivors’ breakfast.’

‘You should get him to make you pancakes. Get some proper maple syrup.’
‘Mummy thought omelettes and fruit salad.’
He snorted. ‘For the girls. The boys will want more than that.’

It would be brilliant if he could be there. He would make it a hundred times better. He would get the boys up and do something stupid and fun with them, take them in the garden despite the morning chill and play football or three-legged rugby. Mummy was a fabulous organiser but sometimes it was a relief to be spontaneous. And it was so tempting to ask him but if she did that it would spoil everything. Not because he would get cross. Just because he would say something like ‘We’ll see’ and they would both know that he meant no.
‘We’re calling it “The Morning After The Night Before

Pyjama Party”,’ she explained.
The queue had begun to move. Edward pulled out his wallet to pay for lunch. Turning to her, he gave her a wry smile. ‘Well, you must have something nice to wear.’
He handed her a fold of notes. ‘Get yourself some decent PJs. And I mean decent,’ he said mock sternly.
She could see they were twenty -pound notes. ‘Thanks!’
And then they had reclaimed their space looking out over Aldwych and St Clement Danes Church. They talked about Porter Stone and his clients and the new house, which she had yet to visit.
‘Why don’t you come down this weekend? Sally would love to see you.’
‘I have to work,’ she said firmly.
He said nothing more. So she jumped in and they talked about lectures and her dissertation, Victorian Women – their rights and responsibilities. Jo had thought of the title.
It was her favourite historical period. ‘Did you know that married women couldn’t even own property until 1870? Their husbands got it automatically.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked innocently.
She knew how to ignore him now. ‘And I want to look at how the universities discriminated against women and I want to research the lives of working-class women, too.’

‘It’s a big subject,’ he said cautiously. That was one of the things that was best about her father. He really listened. He didn’t just say ‘Super, darling’ like her mother. ‘Just make sure you do an outline. Keep it structured.’
‘I know,’ she said gloomily. ‘They take marks off if you go

over the word limit.’
‘That’s life,’ he said. ‘You have to work within the rules. Not that you need to think about that right now,’ he added hastily. ‘No interviews.’
It was her father who had put a stop to all that, before Christmas, when she had burst into tears in the Fleet Street Starbucks, worn down with essays and ten -page application forms for marketing jobs she wasn’t sure she even wanted. Daddy was brilliant. He told her firmly to go back and tear up all the forms, then concentrate on getting her degree and apply again next year. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
He had hit his stride now. ‘And no working right through the Easter holidays. You need a break. Is Mummy taking you anywhere?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Mummy’s working.’ They used to ski at Easter but when he left, Mummy refused to go on her own with them.
‘The book?’
‘What else? She’s got interviews and book signings and all sorts of stuff.’
Sometimes he asked her other personal questions about her mother, not in an intrusive way, in a nice way that made her feel that he was still keeping an eye on them. Like the time Granny went into hospital. And after Mummy split up with Roger and Daddy asked if Mummy was OK about it. Roger ran an art gallery in Beaconsfield and liked going to the races. He was fun.
He sounded concerned. ‘But you’re going home?’
‘Everyone’s going home. We have to. We get thrown out of

the flat because the university uses them for conferences.’
Thoughts of her well-being were clearly on his mind because he said next, ‘What about Jake?’
She hated it when he asked her those sorts of questions. It made her want to curl up with embarrassment.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘He’s still in Costa Rica,’ she said noncommittally, and in truth she knew little more than that. Jake’s Politics with Spanish degree required him to spend a year overseas. Jake had pre -planned his career in the Diplomatic Service while at Welton. Jake emailed her, but usually only as part of a round robin. She doubted whether he would remember her birthday and she didn’t care. But this was not the time or place to go into all of that.
‘Well, don’t forget-’
‘I’m too good for him. I know, Daddy!’
He had disliked Jake, whom she met when she joined the sixth form at Welton, dated on and off for the two years of sixth form and attempted to date when he went to Southampton and she went to London. Daddy didn’t say why exactly, but once he said that Jake was ‘clever’ in a way that clearly wasn’t a compliment. She and Jake had decided to have a break during their first year of university. She had known long before that that something was very wrong but had not known what it was.
Already Daddy was looking at his watch. ‘I have to run.’
Her disappointment must have shown because he added, ‘Same time next week?’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll check my diary and call you.’ Sometimes they emailed but he used his Porter Stone account, which didn’t feel very private. He got up and looked at his watch again and she knew that his mind was now on work. He kissed her at the exit to Pret a Manger and she watched him cross the road until he was lost in the crowd thronging Fleet Street. There

never seemed to be enough time. It was always a snatched lunch or early dinner here and there. She was invariably left with the feeling that he was stopping off to see her on the way to his ultimate destination. Her father had become a visitor in her life. And when they were together the old familiarity could not be relied upon. It came and went, so that at times it was as if he had never left home and at others their words were uncomfortably loaded with meaning. They had lost some of the old easy understanding. Sally had it now. Hope tried very, very hard not to think about it but, as she lost sight of him in the Fleet Street crowds, she could not suppress the image of Sally hearing his key in the lock, going up the hall to meet him and welcoming him home.

Chapter 4

Sally’s father had a number of favourite sayings. His belief that the road to hell is paved with good intentions came to mind as Sally stood in the reference section of Wimbledon library looking at the book pages of the Daily Mail. The trip to the library had been well intended, a high-minded combination of intellectual stimulation plus a calorie -burning walk. But Louis had wriggled through toddler story-time while a crying baby held ineptly by a thin teenage girl with another child in tow had all but drowned out the librarian’s voice anyway. Later, as she bribed Louis with a packet of mini cookies so she could snatch a look at the library newspapers she had seen in the Daily Mail book review pages a column headed
‘Ones to Watch’. There was a thumbnail photo of Pia and a short review of her new book: ‘Smart Women, Smart Choices (6th edition) - Pia Kirwan-Hughes makes finance accessible and offers sensible tips for making your money go further. A must -have for the money -wise woman.’
She left to check out Louis’s books and the boxed DVD set of the series Letters of a Victorian Lady. She pondered if Edward knew about the review. She knew they talked, of course they did, they had two children together. Maybe at the last Welton hockey match? She pulled herself up. She had made a solemn resolution that she was not going to think about Pia or the bloody lunch.
Because what was the alternative? Edward simply refused

to discuss it. She had broached the subject on several occasions. Each time, his tone growing testier, he simply asked her what she thought he was supposed to do. Not go? And at that point she had backed off. Because the only answer was yes, don’t go! Don’t go to your only daughter’s twenty-first birthday. Or, if you must go, please insist that I come too, even though I don’t want to go because I will look fat and I will feel like an alien who has just landed on Planet First Family. So she had changed Louis’s invitations to read Sunday instead of Saturday and tried to forget all about it.
But not being invited to something she didn’t want to go
to continued to make her mad.
They reached the library counter. Ahead of them an elderly man was standing stooped, slowly taking books out of his wheeled shopper trolley. Watching the books scan, she thought about all the money Pia must make from her books. It was so fucking unfair that Pia paid nothing at all towards Dan’s school fees or Hope’s university costs. Louis, who hated being stationary in the pushchair, was kicking so hard that it was rocking violently.
Sometimes, usually at these moments, she thought how her life might have been different if she had never gone to India with Chris. Probably they would have stuck it out as boyfriend and girlfriend for the final year. And she would have left with a decent degree, a degree good enough to secure her an interview and a high -paid career, instead of a third, which triggered an automatic rejection letter. In retrospect, she was a fool not to have moved out of their shared student house when they came back from Christmas in India. Some stupid sense of pride, combined with the false hope that they would get back together, stopped her. She would sit in her room, her books spread out in front of her, supposedly revising, before realising that she had failed to register a word of what she had read. Or she would flee to the offices of the university

student newspaper and spend night after night sub-editing until the point came when most people thought she was the editor. At the time, she had thought Chris, a fellow history student, was the love of her life. A week before her finals, a girl, a first-year anthropology student, emerged from Chris’s bedroom wearing one of his shirts.
It was a wonder she had got a degree at all.
They had their final row in the sacred location of the Holy Lake at Pushkar in Rajasthan, on the steps that led down to the water’s edge. Chris had spent the trip making jibes about her middle-class background and criticising her relentlessly. ‘You give too much to the beggars. It upsets the balance ...’
At the lake, Chris was half -stoned and enthusing about ‘the people’. ‘They’re so open and spiritual. It’s so real.’
‘Real?’ she repeated askance. ‘Seeing everything through a drug-induced haze. How is that helping the ordinary people? Chris, I’m going.’
He had looked surprised at that, he knew she was afraid to travel on her own, but he had let her go. At the station, amid the fumes and dust, she had met up with two New Zealand girls and they had travelled together for the twenty-hour journey.
If only she had known at the time that one day she would meet a man who loved her for all the things that Chris despised.
Not that she had imagined when she first started working at Porter Stone that she would end up married to Edward. At the beginning Pia had been very much in evidence, calling frequently. It had been some weeks before Edward told her about the separation. But one Monday morning after she had been there for a couple of weeks she came into the office and checked his voicemail. It was rare for there to be any messages. Top clients had Edward’s mobile and another line was manned twenty-four hours a day for banking business. But

today there was a message. It was from Pia. Her voice was angry and she sounded drunk.
‘Edward, it’s Sunday night and I can’t get hold of you. I’ve called the flat and the mobile, which is switched off. What is the fucking point of a mobile if it’s switched off? Will you please call me as soon as you get this? I need to speak to you, the boiler’s broken down and we’ve got no hot water. None whatsoever! And I can’t find the plumber’s number. God knows how much it will cost if I use the Yellow Pages. Where are you? It’s just fucking irresponsible.’
There was a second message.
‘Edward! Call me as soon as you get this!’
Sally deleted the messages. Edward was away in Geneva. He had left on Sunday afternoon. She typed out a fax: Please call Mrs Kirwan -Hughes regarding a broken-down boiler at the Gerrards Cross house. When he was away he had asked her to send him a fax updated in the morning and before she left in the evening so that he had a written record of any changes to his diary. Edward could use email but much preferred not to.
It was a revelation how much she liked Porter Stone and the Porter Stone way of conducting business-sure, sedate, almost serene. And, of course, she liked Edward.
He broached the subject of his marriage as they sat in his office at the end of a long day running over background information for a lunch with Joe Saltzman. Joe, a property millionaire, would be a major catch for the bank. Edward had reached across his desk and picked up a photograph of his children, of Dan when he was a toddler and Hope aged nine or ten, taken on a beach, as they posed side by side in swimsuits, the sea in the background.
His tone was awkward. ‘My wife and I separated in the summer.’
She had heard that on the office grapevine but feigned ignorance. ‘I’m sorry.’

He seemed uncertain of what to say but reluctant to leave the subject. ‘We waited until the end of the school term. We wanted Hope to finish her GCSEs.’
‘Of course.’
‘Not that one can protect them entirely.’
‘No.’
‘You may well come across certain ... appointments They’re ... meetings I have with Pia. I put them in the diary as Cavendish Square.’
She had noticed those and known that they must be personal. She had not known what to say, made nervous herself by this unaccustomed hesitation she observed in Edward. She nodded.
‘Naturally, I would like this kept between ourselves.’
She spoke a little too quickly. ‘Of course!’
She was slightly offended that he might think otherwise. Discretion came naturally to her. Already in the short time that she had worked for Edward she had developed a loyalty to him.
He hesitated again and looked at the clock. It was nearly seven. And she knew then that he was thinking about returning to his flat in the Barbican, to the alien feeling of a key in the lock of an empty home, to reheating some ready-made meal and eating alone in front of the television. And she felt a pang for him.
He must have said something to Pia after the boiler calls because there were no more voicemails. She observed as Pia moved out of his life. Her calls to the office tailed off and then stopped, although sometimes she could hear him through his closed office door sounding fraught on his mobile. The Cavendish Square appointments ceased abruptly. There was a lull for a while. But then other calls started. For a couple of weeks or so from a girl called Beth. One from a girl called Jemima. And then from Louise. Even now the recollection

of those messages from Louise Winter had the power to un-nerve Sally.

Ed! Just reminding you - La Pot au Poule at eight.
Ed! Do you need me to arrange the car for Thursday? I
usually allow two hours for the journey.

That last had been a black -tie dinner party in Wiltshire. Louise Winter, a forty -something divorcee with time to fill and alimony to spend, had been a regular caller, keen to engage in long chats and to ‘liaise about Edward’s diary’, anxious to book him for dinners, concerts, gallery openings, first nights and more than one charity ball. That had not been the worst of it. After a few weeks of Louise’s calls, Edward had asked Sally to book two tickets on the Eurostar to Paris. Louise had come to the office on the Friday afternoon prior to their departure. She was radiant - her figure svelte, her complexion tanned in the depths of winter. She carried a
long sheepskin coat and a Louis Vuitton holdall.
Edward had returned on Monday with a box of Fauchon Marrons Glaces, which he left on her desk with a note in Louise’s handwriting on George V Hotel headed paper.

Sally,
Thank you so much for organising such a fabulous trip.
Merci beaucoup!
Louise

Ordinarily she would have at least kept the box but the knowledge that Louise had picked it out made her sour. She threw it away, contents and all, in a wastepaper bin on Fleet Street. She had been very conscious of her weight in those days. Later, she was to find out that Edward had broken up with Louise on their return from Paris. If she had known

that she would have spent a much happier weekend, kept the Marrons Glaces and avoided recurrent conversations with her mother about how little she was eating.
They fell into a comfortable working routine. But one day, when Edward was away on a day trip to Frankfurt, there as a sharp knock on her open door. She looked up to see the six-foot, expensively suited figure of William Overton.
‘Hello.’ He apparently did not feel the need to offer his name, even though they had never been introduced. But she knew who he was: he had been pointed out to her by Brickie as one of the bank’s rising stars, a former Guards officer recently graduated from the Harvard Business School.
‘I need the Joe Saltzman file,’ he said casually.
She felt an instant pang of anxiety. Joe was proving tricky to reel in. But Edward had confided to her that he was close to persuading Joe to move all his personal and business banking to Porter Stone. It would be a major success for Edward.
‘Oh?’
‘Yep. Nothing to worry about,’ William Overton said patronisingly. ‘Saltzman mentioned he wanted some advice on OMDs. I need to look over the file.’
OMDs? Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark? No. Offshore Money Deposits.
It would be much the easiest, simplest thing to give the file to William Overton. He had walked over and was leaning presumptuously against her desk. She observed his eyes flick over her papers. Something didn’t feel right.
‘I’ll need to check-’
‘No need to trouble Ed,’ William interrupted smoothly. ‘The Chairman wants me to hurry it along.’ He shot her an insincere smile. ‘Top priority. So, if you would ... I’ll take it now.’
His voice sounded light but she could see the tension in his face. Now she was sure. She knew his game. He wanted

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