Christmas on Rosemary Lane. Ellen Berry
some Sugar Puffs,’ Ivan joked late one night, as Lucy prepared a batch of pancake mix for the morning.
From time to time, she still suspected her husband was missing his old life with all those client meetings and glittering ceremonies where Brookes had scooped numerous awards. While she chatted happily with guests, Ivan could be rather reserved and prone to hiding away in the tiny study upstairs. He had his freelance work to crack on with, she reminded herself, and perhaps he was still adjusting to rural life.
They grafted all through the summer, with the children spending much of their time playing happily in the garden with their new friends. Just as Lucy had as a child, Marnie and Sam viewed the garden as being full of hiding places, the setting for their imaginative games. ‘I used to climb over that wall when I was a little girl,’ she told them. ‘The lady who lived here used to chase us out!’
‘We’re allowed to play here any time we like,’ Sam remarked with a trace of pride, his lightly freckled face browned from the sun.
‘Yeah – we’re the luckiest,’ Marnie agreed. Her long, flowing light brown hair had turned golden and, like her brother, she glowed from a summer of playing outdoors. Since school had broken up, Lucy couldn’t remember seeing them wearing anything other than T-shirts and shorts. They had inherited their father’s rangy physique, with slender limbs and skin that turned honey-brown at the merest whisper of sunshine; Lucy was paler and curvier. Both of her children had celebrated their birthdays here in the garden, with vast picnics set out on blankets, bunting strung from the trees and what had felt like the entire village descending for afternoons of games.
It had been a glorious summer so far, and Lucy had grabbed any opportunity to tend to the herbaceous borders and pots of herbs she grew for cooking. Meanwhile, Ivan regarded the lawn as ‘his’ job – much to the delight of Irene Bagshott, a widow in her sixties who lived further down the lane.
‘D’you ever loan him out, Lucy?’ she asked with a throaty laugh as she passed by one August afternoon.
‘I’m sure we could arrange something,’ Lucy chuckled, while Ivan raised a flustered smile. Since she’d met him, he had never seemed aware of his visual appeal, and dressed practically – forever in jeans, a T-shirt or sweater – rather than with any concession to style. In fact, since moving here he was proving himself to be quite the handyman. Whilst Lucy certainly fronted the B&B, Ivan wasn’t averse to fixing guttering, replacing a cracked window or sawing a precarious branch off a tree. Whenever he didn’t know how to tackle a job, he read up on it or studied YouTube tutorials, then got stuck in. It had felt crucial to Lucy for them to make a real go of their business this summer, and they had, very happily, certainly achieved that. Next summer, she felt, they could take things to another level and start offering evening meals too.
Lucy even allowed herself to believe that Ivan had settled fully into village life, and that he wasn’t missing his old workplace – or life in Manchester – at all. However, it soon became apparent that other plans were afoot, which he hadn’t shared with her.
Late one warm September night, they were setting the communal breakfast table for the next morning when he sighed and fiddled with fistfuls of cutlery before finally blurting out, ‘I have something to tell you, Luce. A job’s come up. A really good one.’
She stared at him and frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘It’s with Si Morley. Remember him?’
‘From Brookes, yes, I think so. Didn’t you used to go for a drink sometimes?’
Ivan took off his glasses and nodded. ‘He has his own agency now – it’s small but they’re doing incredibly well. A few of the guys from Brookes have already moved over to work with him.’
She nodded, wondering what this was leading to. ‘Have you applied for a job with him?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘God, no, I haven’t applied,’ Ivan said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t do that without saying anything to you, would I? No, Si approached me.’ He repositioned the cups and saucers unnecessarily.
‘But why?’ Lucy asked. ‘Doesn’t he know we’re living here now, and that you’ve gone freelance?’
‘Yes, of course he does.’ Ivan started to polish the glassware with a tea towel even though it was sparkling already. ‘He just thought of me when it came up,’ he added. ‘Apparently I was kinda the obvious choice.’ He pushed back his wavy hair that he wore longer now, since he had left his job. He was more stubbly, too, and his more weathered, outdoorsy look suited him.
‘Right,’ Lucy said. ‘Well, you know how valued you were at Brookes.’
He nodded absently, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. Lucy crossed the room to one of the two squashy powder blue sofas. As she plumped up the cushions, she tried to ignore the ball of anxiety that seemed to be forming in her gut. Surely he wasn’t tempted by this so-called ‘approach’? Ivan had agreed that he, too, needed a fresh start, especially after they had lost the baby. He wanted to spend more time with the kids and less on jumping to attention when his clients demanded it. His parents, who lived in the outer reaches of North London, had implied that Lucy had ‘forced’ him to give up his job – but it hadn’t been that way at all.
‘What is the job anyway?’ she asked lightly.
‘Oh, it’s a brand manager role. New client. A major repositioning so it’d be all hands on deck for a few months …’ He repositioned the ketchups, the HP sauce and mustards on the table, as if engaged in a simplified game of chess, with condiments.
When he wandered through to the kitchen, Lucy followed him. ‘So, who’s the client?’
‘A pretty dire hotel chain – you wouldn’t know them. They’ve been hit with a torrent of bad reviews and some of them are pretty disgusting. There’s been food poisoning scandals, outbreaks of bedbugs—’
‘Nice,’ she exclaimed with a shudder. ‘Shall I book us in for a treat?’
Ivan smiled. ‘Sure. Anyway, they’ve been bought out with a ton of new investment, and the actual properties are sound, so they’re looking to completely refurbish and re-launch as a collection of boutique urban bolt-holes.’
‘“Boutique urban bolt-holes.”’ Lucy gave him a bemused look.
‘Ha. Yeah, I know,’ Ivan chuckled, his dark eyes glinting. ‘Quite a challenge.’
Lucy unloaded the tumble dryer and started to fold Sam’s T-shirts. They were emblazoned with planets and robots; outer space and mechanics were his main interests right now. She picked up his polar bear sweatshirt, which he had recently shunned, considering it too babyish at the age of six (although he was still fiercely attached to his panda pillow and refused to sleep on anything else).
‘So, are you interested?’ Lucy ventured hesitantly, willing Ivan to say no, of course not, but it was flattering to be asked.
He shrugged. ‘I might just pop in for a chat. Nothing to lose, is there?’
She stared at him. ‘What d’you mean, there’s nothing to lose?’
‘I just think it might be a bit short-sighted to turn it down flat,’ he said quickly.
Lucy stood still, astounded. ‘I thought our life was here now? You agreed, Ivan. You said you’d had it with that kind of full-on work. It was doing your head in, you said—’
‘Lucy, I’m just saying—’
‘So how d’you think it’d work,’ she cut in, ‘if they did offer it to you? I mean, surely you wouldn’t go back to commuting? It was hard enough, those few weeks you did it.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Or would it be a home-based job? I suppose that might be okay. You’ve managed in the study so far, haven’t you, with your freelance work? I know it’s a bit cramped in there. Could we convert the shed, or build an office in