and smiled up into his eyes. Then, in a husky voice, she said, ‘It’s paradise.’
Jennie and I crept away enthralled. I just knew I’d have said, ‘It’s heaven’, and thought how much better her version sounded. How it had truly conjured up the Garden of Eden, and how the pair of them, standing on the threshold like that, had looked like Adam and Eve. Jennie had been equally overawed and we hadn’t spoken for a good few minutes.
Later that week I’d met Jennie coming up the no-through road to Potters Wood with Leila on a lead. I’d been going down it with Archie. We’d both stopped, blushed.
‘It’s a footpath,’ we both blurted in unison. Which it was, but not one we’d ever used before.
It was obvious what attracted us. Their perfect lives. Moneyed, cultured and happy, with golden children, who we later spotted around the village with the nanny, whilst Chad and Hope no doubt tried position number forty-six beneath a Chagall. Jennie and I, having imperfect lives, were fascinated; although, interestingly, we never really voiced this to each other. Never let on. This opportunity, however, was too good to pass up.
‘Where did you see them? What did you say?’ I demanded, still in her hallway.
‘In the lane, in their huge Land Cruiser. Just Hope. She slowed down, stopped and said she’d heard about the book club and would we mind, only it was just what she and Chad were looking for, and had hoped to find here, but hadn’t.’
‘Both of them? They both want to join?’
Clemmie and Archie had now found my legs and were clamouring for attention. Sometimes I did wish my children could go blackberrying with a nanny. I hoisted Archie onto my hip.
‘Yes, because he’s on gardening leave, apparently. In between films, so slightly at a loose end.’
The idea of either part of that glamorous double act being at a loose end gave us pause for thought and almost threatened to shatter an illusion.
‘Well, relatively speaking,’ Jennie said quickly. ‘I’m sure he’s got something in the pipeline. Reading scripts, et cetera.’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ I agreed quickly. They certainly weren’t allowed to kick their heels.
‘So you said yes?’
‘I said yes, and they’re coming on Tuesday. Don’t you think Simon will be rather impressed?’ She couldn’t resist adding.
Ah. That little agenda. Her own private subplot. And yes, he would. Chad and Hope were quite a feather in anyone’s cap. Once they’d been outed as Exciting Newcomers everyone had tried to nab them. Their doorbell at Potters Wood had never stopped ringing. Hope had been asked to join every bell-ringing, tapestry-making group in the village, by everyone who had a little fiefdom to push. Sylvia had popped round to see if she’d like to help arrange the church flowers.
‘Oh, I’m hopeless at that kind of thing,’ Hope had purred at the door. ‘I just pick them and cram them in a jar any old how, I’m afraid.’ She’d indicated the cow parsley tumbling sexily from a jug on the table behind her.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Sylvia had warbled. ‘I’m a plonker too!’
No wonder Hope had looked startled.
Even Simon had tried, with the local Conservative Association, and been politely – and sensibly – declined. Angie had popped round to ask if Chad would sit on the parish council, something, as chairman, she was allowed to ask, but everyone knew you had to schmooze for years to achieve. No one had reprimanded her, though. No one objected.
‘What did he say?’ we all asked Angie avidly, about six of us in the village hall at the fete flower-arranging group, when she’d bustled in late to report.
‘Hope answered the door and said he wasn’t there. She said he’d be thrilled to be asked, though, and she knew he’d be really sorry to turn it down, but he was just too tied up right now. She was still in her dressing gown, hair all mussed.’
‘Ivory silk?’ breathed Jennie.
‘Yes, and then his voice drifted downstairs, all American and husky. “What are you doing, Honey?” And she went all pink and stammered, “Oh, I-I guess he is here, after all.” ’
We all paused wistfully in our peony-trimming.
‘Sex all day,’ pronounced Jennie at length. ‘Dreamy.’
‘And maybe he really was tied up?’ mused Peggy, going back to her zinnias.
Back in Jennie’s hall, though, facing my friend now, a thought occurred. ‘But what will we say to everyone else? You know, Frank, Odd Bob, Dickie Frowbisher and everyone else who wants to join?’
‘We’ll tell them to get stuffed,’ Jennie said firmly.