That day, like every day, Lily wore clothes and jewellery she bought from the store wholesale or she wouldn’t have been able to afford them, Flash and Dazzle was a very exclusive shop. Lily’s dress was salmon-coloured with spaghetti straps and dainty hot-pink flowers embroidered in it. The bodice fit her like a glove down her torso to flair very slightly at the hips and it fell ending mid-thigh. She wore this with a pair of hot pink flip flops and a set of brightly coloured, glitter-encrusted bangles in every shade of salmon, peach and pink jingled at her wrist.
Lily had no idea whatsoever that one look at her, stylishly sporting Flash and Dazzle inventory, made the majority of sales in the shop (though Maxine knew this, for certain).
She also had no idea that, even in her current state of slenderness, her glorious beauty had not faded over the years, in fact, it deepened with maturity. Her heartbreak had only added a mysterious allure.
She’d never learned to come to terms with her beauty and still didn’t fully know it existed. She had a feeling she was no longer the ugly duckling, though. She wasn’t deaf or blind and she certainly wasn’t stupid.
She was, that day, avoiding home. It was Saturday, it had been Wednesday when Nate and the Roberts had come to meet Natasha. Nate was back today, having arranged horseback riding lessons for Natasha. This was her daughter’s most desperate desire, but as these lessons cost nearly forty pounds an hour, Lily had been unable to afford them. She had been saving up to give them to her for Christmas. The fact that Nate could afford them without blinking an eye, Lily found highly annoying.
Now, Lily had seven million pounds in the bank, money that Alistair was arranging to put in trust for Natasha. Lily wasn’t going to touch even a single penny of it.
She decided this stubbornly, even though Fazire tried to talk her into keeping at least some it, to finish the final rooms in the house, this included the entire garden level which had yet to be touched and the three rooms she hadn’t started on the top floor, not to mention her disaster of a bedroom. Fazire told her to put some in savings and to give some more to Maxine, who wanted to open another store in Cheltenham. He tried, with great determination, thus throughout the conversation, floating precariously close to the ceiling, to convince her to invest in her own future.
Lily would not hear a word of it.
It was not her money. It was Nate’s money and now Natasha’s money.
And that was that.
And Lily had made another decision, this one strategic.
She had decided to avoid Nate altogether and she didn’t hesitate to put that particular plan into action.
Lily had not been home when Nate arrived that morning. She left Fazire to watch over Natasha and hand her over to Nate when he arrived. Fazire, incidentally, wholeheartedly agreed with her Dodge Nate Plan.
She didn’t even want to meet him in a conference room with solicitors, considering the last time he’d backed her up against a wall and held her face like it was the finest piece of crystal.
She certainly didn’t want to be alone with him, considering the last time they were alone, he’d kissed her.
Kissed her!
It was insane and it was, quite simply, unacceptable.
She forgave herself for giving into the kiss. She’d been wanting to kiss Nate for eight long years, wanting to touch him, hold him, have him back and never, ever, let him go. She was allowed to give into a moment of weakness, just that once.
But not again. Never again.
The rest of that day, when Natasha met Nate and the other members of her burgeoning family, had gone relatively well. Lily had been surprised at Victor and Laura’s appearance but, if she could handle Nate, she could certainly put up with Victor and Laura for a few hours.
They’d served Maxine’s treats and had more tea and coffee. Conversation was awkward and stilted and mostly made up of Natasha’s excited gibberish, Maxine’s hilarious quips and Laura’s soft, careful comments.
Then Laura suggested a walk on the seafront, which Lily encouraged with great enthusiasm, running up the stairs to drag her genie out of his bottle (Fazire was furiously channelling his friends to tell them the latest episode in the Lily Saga) and plan her strategy with her ever-helpful friend.
At the last possible minute, Lily explained she had just remembered an urgent errand she had to run. Nate had glanced at her with a look that was both annoyingly patient and, more annoyingly knowing but she’d ignored him.
She said her brief good-byes and disregarded Laura’s disappointed look. She rushed to her beat up Peugeot, coaxed it to start and took off as fast as the little car would take her which, admittedly, wasn’t very fast.
Fazire, as planned, called her mobile when the coast was clear.
She and Fazire had carefully arranged their next avoidance tactic.
Unless Fazire phoned her, Lily was to work at the shop all day and go to the grocery store after. This, she hoped, would give Nate plenty of time to have his visit with Tash and leave. Horseback riding lessons didn’t last all day, only an hour. Even still, over a bottle of wine the night before, Lily and Fazire had made up a half a dozen excuses for her to leave again straight away in case Nate was still there when she arrived home (it wouldn’t do for him actually to know she was evading him).
Alistair encouraged her avoidance of Nate, even demanded it. He was currently working with Nate’s solicitors to set a visitation schedule and make it plain that Lily had no interest in what they were calling a “reconciliation”.
Nate’s solicitors were refusing even to broach the subject of visitation, demanding reconciliation and had gone so far as to present Alistair with a prenuptial agreement. This, Alistair returned after Jane had shredded it. Alistair didn’t read it and certainly didn’t give Lily the opportunity to do so, even if she had wanted to, which she did not.
She tried not to think of what Nate had said while they were retrieving the photo albums though she was quite unsuccessful. He thought she’d left him, which was absurd, and this confused her. He had not come after her and this angered her. That he didn’t know that Jeff and Danielle had plotted to keep them apart was obvious. That he accepted her leaving without even trying to discover why dumbfounded her. Especially since, now he clearly intended to have her back.
Then again, when he thought she’d left, there was no child involved. Now there was and if there was anything Lily understood, it was the importance of family. Lily didn’t for a second think that he wanted her but that he wanted them. More than likely Tash, with Lily as a companion and willing bed partner thrown in to sweeten the deal.
And Lily wanted no part in that.
It was closing time and usually Lily was happy to go home to Tash and Fazire on a Saturday when they’d get fish and chips and stroll the seafront or pop in a DVD. Tash liked Pixar, Fazire liked Westerns, Lily didn’t care what they watched.
Instead, she locked the doors, saw, very slowly, to the business of tidying the store, locking away the register drawer and seeing to the most minute task that would hold her back. Then she went to Tesco and instead of whipping around the store in her normal, busy-mother-on-a-mission frenzy, she checked product labels, assessed quantities and spent vast periods of time contemplating the inventories of the larder at her home before she decided on a purchase.
She packed the car, carefully placing every bag safely in the boot as if she’d be graded on its arrangement. It was strange, having time on her hands. It was an alien feeling she hadn’t had in so long, she couldn’t remember the last time she had it.