Page 30 of The Importance of Being Emma
Maybe, as he suggested, we should forget we’d ever quarrelled. But I couldn’t forget those kisses, however brief and insignificant. Insignificant? To him, perhaps. Not to me. I knew they were a sign of friendship, nothing deeper; but his friendship mattered more than almost anything else in my life. Funny, I’d only realised that over the past week or so, when I was afraid it might have gone for good.
So — I didn’t want him as my mentor but I needed him as my friend. And I’d expect any long-term partner of mine to understand that.
I just hoped Mark would expect the same of Tamara.
* * *
~~MARK~~
I drove home from the airport in record time. Tamara felt chilled, so I went straight to the drawing room to light the fire while she had a shower and unpacked. By the time she came downstairs, in just a bathrobe, the room was warming nicely but the Krug was still ice cold.
It was only late afternoon and the evening stretched out ahead of us. We sat on the sofa, drank champagne and chatted for a while about the people and places we had in common.
It didn’t take long.
In the silence that followed, I studied her. Black hair, dark eyes, white skin — despite living in India for years. Everything about Tamara was either black or white. No shades of grey; or woodmouse brown, come to that . . .
‘Like what you see?’ she said, with a provocative pout.
‘What do you think?’ I leaned forward, cupped her face and kissed her hard, over and over again. Blotting out memories ofother lips, other kisses. Feeling, with relief, the familiar heat of physical response.
She brought me expertly to heel, coolly detaching herself from my embrace. I watched as she slipped off her bathrobe and spread it out on the rug in front of the fire. Burnished by the glow of the flames, her body beckoned.
‘Come here, Mark. Show me just how much you’ve missed me.’
And that’s exactly what I did.
* * *
~~EMMA~~
On Saturday afternoon Izzy, John and their tribe came to Hartfield. From upstairs, I saw their Volkswagen people carrier arrive and rushed to the front door, just in time for the children to hurl themselves at me.
I laughed. ‘What a noise, I thought the monkeys must have escaped from Chessington Zoo. Now, Grandpa’s asleep and you know how cross he gets if he wakes too soon. Go and hidequietlyin the garden and I’ll come and find you.’
The children stampeded off; over by the car, Izzy froze in the act of unfastening Emily from her safety seat.
‘But it’s almost dark,’ she said. ‘What if they trip and hurt themselves?’
John appeared from the driver’s side. ‘Nonsense, it’s light enough and they need to use up some of their energy. Anyway, they know that garden like the back of their hand. Hi there, Emma.’ He made a quick detour to kiss my cheek on his way to unload the luggage.
Izzy gave a heavy, long-suffering sigh and muttered to herself; I diplomatically bent down to fasten my outdoor shoes. When I straightened up, I found Emily watching me from her mother’s arms, her lovely little face still flushed with sleep. Izzycarried her the short distance from car to house and began to download her worries.
‘John has no idea about the dangers that lurk in gardens. And I wish he’d parked nearer the house, Emily’s probably caught a chill being out in the cold air after that warm car, it only takes a few seconds.’ A pause while we kissed, then an anxious look. ‘Who’s babysitting? John wouldn’t let me ring you to find out. I hope it’s not that girl with the motorbike, she promised Harry he could sit on it next time she saw him, I’ll be ill all evening just thinking about it.’
‘I’ve asked Sarah Perry,’ I said, letting Emily tug at my hair.
‘Thedoctor’sdaughter, excellent, I hope she’ll contact her father if she’s got any concerns, any at all, I’ll check she’s got his mobile number. How’s Dad? Is that aloe vera cream I sent him doing any good?’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ I said, ‘but it’ll do him good to discuss it at great length with you. Now I’d better go and find the kids before they fall into that pit the gardeners dug the other day.’
Her face was a picture. I extracted my hair from Emily’s chubby grasp and set off after the children.
‘Only joking!’ I called over my shoulder. ‘And John, if you’re taking those bags upstairs, I’ve put everyone in the usual bedrooms.’
It took all of the next two hours to get Izzy ready to go out, not so much physically as mentally. She grilled me about the babysitter’s IQ, fretted that James was sickening for something and generally convinced herself that she’d return from an evening of self-indulgence to find all her children hospitalised. She’d just resigned herself to abandoning them, when I happened to mention that Harriet had been off work with a sore throat and wasn’t able to go to Kate’s dinner. I might as well have announced the arrival in Highbury of the Black Death.
Izzy took a hasty step away from me. ‘Harriet’s your PA, she’ll have infected you before she went off sick.’
