Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
at once.
Jimmy picked up his pen and rotated it in his fingers.
‘How is Darcy?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Okay. It isn’t about that.’
‘Do I know what it’s about?’ Twin images of her, the responsive woman and the uncontrollable girl, collided uncomfortably in his mind. What had he said to her? We’ll fix it, don’t worry …
‘I need to see you.’
‘How about lunchtime?’ It was a fine morning and it had always been a pleasure to have a couple of drinks in the middle of the day and to admire Lucy’s long legs revealed by one of the tiny skirts she wore. Jimmy named a country pub they had visited in the past.
‘I haven’t got the car. Cathy’s taken it.’
‘Then borrow Hannah’s, or take Darcy’s or the bloody au pair’s. How many cars have you got out there?’
‘I’m not insured,’ Lucy’s voice wobbled. She was about to cry.
‘You’re a big girl,’ Jimmy told her. The afternoon seemed less inviting in prospect. ‘I’ll be there at one. I have to go now.’
Jimmy arrived early. He was already sitting at the bar with a drink in his hand when he saw the Range Rover swing into the car park. Lucy seemed surprisingly small perched up behind the high steering wheel. When she came into the bar in her little skirt with her blonde hair tangled as if she had just got out of bed, Jimmy thought how young and fresh and irresistible she was. The recognition warmed his smile of greeting.
‘I’m not insured to drive that thing,’ Lucy said. ‘I took Dad’s keys. You’ll have to say it was you, if anyone’s seen it.’
‘You looked entirely the part,’ he said, grinning at her.
Lucy would not have a drink. He bought her a Coke and they went to sit on an oak settle with a high back that partly shielded them from the rest of the room. She faced him at once, pushing her hair back from her forehead.
‘I did a test,’ she announced. ‘One of those pee in a test tube things. I’m pregnant.’
Jimmy glanced around them. No one’s head had turned in their direction.
‘For sure?’
‘For certain.’ Lucy’s eyes were fixed on his face with an intensity that he did not like. He had been reassuring himself that it was drink that had made her hysterical the other night, but now he was not so confident. He took hold of her hand and rubbed it as if she had complained of the cold.
‘Have you seen your doctor?’
‘Dr Robertson? The family physician? “Doctor, I’m expecting a baby.” “I see. And is the young man pleased about it?” “Actually he’s my father’s best friend.”’
Her fingers clenched on his, pinching him, reminding him uncomfortably of the scene outside the Frosts’.
‘Lucy, Lucy, don’t do this. It’s difficult for you, it’s a bad thing to have happened, but we’ll make it all right, don’t worry.’
Jimmy looked round the bar again. Several conversations in the vicinity seemed to have faltered. He finished his beer and pushed the glass away. ‘I can’t talk to you in here. Let’s go for a walk, shall we?’
To his relief, she stood up to follow him.
Outside the sun was shining. Across the road there was a green footpath signpost, and beyond it a stile and a path running beside a ploughed field. Jimmy had noticed the path before, and the wood on the far side of the field. He took the lead over the stile, and Lucy followed again.
The thorn hedges were fresh with still-curled leaves, and there were pale, starry clumps of primroses along the bank. Somewhere overhead a lark spiralled in the light sky.
‘Spring has sprung,’ Jimmy said in an attempt to be cheerful, but Lucy gave no sign that she had heard him. She was walking quickly, with her eyes on the ground and her clenched fists pulled up within the sleeves of her baggy sweater. He took her arm, making her slow her pace.
‘What would you like to do?’ he asked, as gently as he could.
Lucy shrugged and shook her head so that the knotted hair bobbed over her forehead.
‘I don’t know. It’s a baby, isn’t it? It’s our baby, yours and mine.’
‘Not yet, it isn’t. It’s a cluster of cells, no more. We can arrange for you to have an abortion, you know. It will be quick, and safe, and when it’s over you will be absolutely relieved.’
They had reached the second stile that led out of the field and into the wood. The sunlight slanted through the trees and made pale green and silver vaults ahead of them. Lucy swung her legs over the stile. She looked back over her shoulder at him.
‘I thought you were a Catholic,’ she said.
‘I am.’ It was Holy Week.
‘I thought you didn’t believe in abortion, then.’
It was quiet in the wood. Lucy had turned to face him and she walked backwards, away from him, with her arms stiff at her sides.
Jimmy said, ‘I don’t, in general. In this specific instance I do.’
‘That’s nice and convenient for you, isn’t it?’
A flicker of anger ignited in him. He lunged forward and held her before she could scramble out of his reach. As soon as she was caught Lucy confronted him and he saw the mixture of sullenness and defiance and fear in her. Her skin was pasty and her lips were chapped. For Jimmy her appearance had always possessed the ability to change itself almost by the minute. It was one of the things about her that appealed to him, and now she looked positively plain. As she scowled at him he felt the flame of his anger slyly transmuting itself into desire.
There was a wood-pigeon in the trees, he could hear its throaty call.
Jimmy didn’t loosen his grip on her, but he moved his head forward and touched her ragged lip with the tip of his tongue.
‘You are like a snake,’ Lucy said.
‘Is that so?’’
He slid his hands down her back to her small, hard bottom, and drew her hips against his. He moved his tongue between her teeth, forcing the kiss on her until at last her mouth opened to him. Then her arms went around his neck and it was Lucy who was kissing him. She clung to him, almost hanging from his neck so that he had to ease her weight in his arms.
‘I love you,’ she groaned. ‘I really love you, you know.’
Over her shoulder, Jimmy glanced left and right into the undergrowth. There was a clearing to one side under a canopy of trees.
This would have to be the last time, he told himself.
He half lifted her, half drew her after him into the clearing. The grass was damp and brambly with bare patches of earth in between the weedy tufts, but he was too eager for her to want to search for a better place. He pulled off his jacket and put it on the wet grass, and Lucy wriggled out of her sweater and threw it down too. She unlaced her shoes and then peeled down her thick tights. Jimmy knelt in front of her, his eyes on the white skin of her thighs and the lick of fair hair exposed by the ridden-up elastic hem of her skirt.
He undid himself, thick-fingered with haste, and Lucy leaned forward, greedily taking him in her mouth.
He let her for a moment, and then he forced her backwards on to the crumpled bed of their clothes. He ran his fingers over the veins that were faintly visible under the white skin, and then he slid his fingers inside her and watched her face as her eyes closed and her mouth opened, inviting him.
‘Jimmy,’ she whispered.
He withdrew his fingers so that