Hester and Harriet: Love, Lies and Linguine

Hilary Spiers

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781760294663
• eBook ISBN:
  9781952535291
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

Hester and Harriet are back and ready for more adventures! The gentle humour and relaxed pace make this an enjoyable read. - Daily Mail Hester and Harriet lead comfortable lives in a pretty cottage in an English village. Having opened their minds, home and hearts to Daria, a mysterious migrant, and her baby son Milo, the widowed sisters decide to further expand their own horizons by venturing forth to Italy for their annual holiday. Back in England, Daria and Milo are celebrating - they've received official refugee status with papers to confirm they can make England their home. Meanwhile, nephew Ben, who knows only too well how much he owes his aunts, is hurtling towards a different sort of celebration - one he's trying to backpedal out of as fast as he possibly can. With a huge secret hanging between the sisters, an unlikely new love on the landscape for Hester and new beginnings also beckoning for Harriet, Italy provides more opportunities for adventure than either of them could ever have imagined. But which ones will Hester and Harriet choose? As Hester and Harriet throw all their cards on the table in Italy, and potential catastrophe threatens Ben in England, it's anyone's guess how chaos will be kept at bay.

SATURDAY

CHAPTER 33

It’s just past midnight.

The communal feast has ended, as such events usually do, with the company breaking into small groups dictated by proximity, friendships or—as time wears on—inertia. Some of those leaving tomorrow have already made for their rooms to finish their packing, get their heads down for the morrow’s travel ordeal or engage in that time-honoured finale to a foreign holiday, muffled copulation.

Harriet is sitting by the window overlooking the moonlit garden with Regina and Charles and Bella and Guy, the last having been trying to persuade his reluctant wife for the past ten minutes that they really ought to call it a night.

‘You’ll be exhausted tomorrow.’

‘Oh, tomorrow,’ says Bella, leaning back in her armchair with eyes closed. ‘Tomorrow can look after itself.’ She opens one eye and inspects her glass. ‘Besides, I haven’t finished my drink.’ The eye shuts sleepily.

Guy, smiling wryly in defeat, shakes his head at Harriet. Bless her heart, she thinks, she just wants to wring every last drop out of this holiday. She hopes they remain in touch, fears that life—and Jack—may make that difficult. I must make the effort; it’s up to me to ensure it happens. She adds that resolution to the list of tasks awaiting her on her return home. Track down Stephen’s mother—

‘Your sister’s little romance seems to be flourishing,’ says Regina, peering through the window.

Hester and Lionel are seated close together outside on the terrace, backs to the hotel; in the half-light it’s hard to see, but they may be holding hands. Harriet has been trying not to look too closely for the past half-hour.

‘Getting serious, is it?’ Regina sits forward eagerly. ‘I only ask because a little bird told me that there was a very public display of affection earlier when they were cooking together. And we do like a happy ending, don’t we, Charles?’ Charles beams, whether in agreement or because that’s the way he always responds to his wife’s questions it’s hard to say.

‘Holiday romance,’ murmurs Bella from the depths of her armchair, blindly reaching out for her glass. Guy gets to it before she can knock it over and wraps her fingers around the stem, earning a lopsided smile.

I hope so, thinks Harriet. She smiles neutrally at Regina.

‘Ooh, cagey, aren’t we? She must have said something.’ Honestly, in the nosiness stakes, Regina would be neck and neck with Peggy Verndale. ‘Don’t be coy, Harriet.’

Harriet, now adding this new intelligence about her sister and Lionel to the earlier shock of his plans to stay on, manages a smile. ‘I think they’re simply good friends. Shared interests, that’s all.’

Regina turns to Charles. ‘Come along, my love, looks like we’re not going to get another word out of the sphinx and it’s way past our bedtime.’ She gets to her feet and turns to extract her husband from his chair with the practice born of long experience. She places a steadying arm under his and, after an imperious goodnight that takes in the whole room, they make their way out of the bar, oddly dignified despite the disparity in their heights and his obvious infirmity.

‘Funny old world,’ says Guy, eyes coming to rest on his now-sleeping wife. He puts his arms around her unresisting body and pulls her upright. ‘Will we see you in the morning, Harriet?’

She nods and rises to kiss his cheek, then his wife’s.

Bella mutters, ‘Nighty night.’

‘Aspirin,’ says Harriet in Guy’s ear, ‘before she goes to sleep.’

He smiles his thanks.

‘Sweet dreams.’

There is a slight chill in the air, but neither Hester nor Lionel is minded to move. They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, staring up at the stars, the bright moon spilling a path across the garden. A minute gecko darts up from beneath the table in front of them and quivers on the edge, regarding them quizzically with head inclined as if questioning their invasion of his territory. A second later, with a flick of its tail, it vanishes. Lionel clears his throat.

‘What was he like? Gordon?’

Hester, thoughts far from her late husband, drags herself back from her reveries. She gives the question due consideration. Gordon. She tries to conjure him. ‘Big man. Over six foot. It was one of the reasons I was attracted to him.’

‘Oh,’ says Lionel, conscious of his just-above-average height. He sits up a little straighter.

Hester laughs briefly at the memory. She hasn’t missed Lionel’s reaction. ‘It mattered so much more then. Not sure why.’ She recalls the years of adolescence, low heels or no heels according to her current boyfriend’s stature, her apologetic stoop, before she grew into her character and her height and ceased to care.

Lionel relaxes.

‘Kind man. Very kind. Would have made a wonderful father but . . . well.’ She wonders not for the first time whether that’s true. It’s become one of her tenets, trotted out routinely. She can’t remember now when she first said it: certainly not while Gordon was still alive. Perhaps it’s simply what she wants to believe, part of her personal mythology.

‘Where did you meet?’

‘Oh, uni. As everyone did in those days.’

Lionel shifts in his chair; he didn’t.

‘He was a rugger bugger.’ She registers Lionel’s surprise. ‘Oh no! Not one of those loud obnoxious ones—not a Bullingdon type. Dear Lord, what do you take me for?! No, more driven, training all the hours God sent. I used to trail round every weekend to watch him play.’

‘You?!’

‘I know. Hard to credit. Anyway, he got a decent enough degree, joined his father’s firm.’

Lionel raises a questioning eyebrow.

‘Stockbroker.’ She catches his expression. ‘Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. This was before the height of the Thatcher boom in the City. Gordon missed all that. Comfortable, yes, but not silly money. Anyway, he hated it. Cooped up in an office all day behind a desk. He decided he wanted to strike out on his own.’ She frowns at the memory. ‘His father was furious. Incandescent.’ The rows and recriminations, short-lived as they had been, had not been pleasant. She knew that initially Gordon’s parents had suspected she was egging him on; nothing could have been further from the truth.

‘What did he do? Gordon.’

A sort of embarrassment washes over Hester’s face. Even now she finds it absurd. ‘He . . . opened a shop.’

Lionel cannot mask his astonishment. He knows Hester made her career in local government, gathers she was quite a high-flyer; somehow he cannot reconcile that with a shopkeeper husband, especially one who, like her, had attended a prestigious university. ‘A shop?’

‘Uh-huh. Not what you were expecting, is it? Nor me. At the time. I thought he was completely barmy. I told him so in no uncertain terms. But he was so very unhappy and I was already making my way up the greasy public sector pole. I had a modest amount of money from our parents’ estate and we invested that in the business . . .’

‘What sort of shop was it?’

‘Sports equipment. And shops, not shop. Within a couple of years, he had three of them. A little empire. Fact is, he was a brilliant businessman. It suited him down to the ground. Talking to customers all day, demonstrating equipment, trade jollies—best thing he ever did. I was so proud of him.’ She realises, Gosh, I was, wasn’t I? So why did I never tell him that? ‘His father had to eat humble pie.’ Which, to his credit, he eventually had. Although he had to the end enjoyed his little dig: never ‘How’s business?’ when they visited, but ‘How’s trade?’ It drove them both to distraction. But Gordon’s first career had stood him in good stead; his knowledge of the stock market had helped him to build a very tidy portfolio in time.

‘Well!’ says Lionel, flummoxed. This wasn’t at all what he had pictured. ‘And so . . . were you sporty?’

‘Not really. Could play a half-decent game of tennis if required and I’m not a bad croquet player, but I’ve always preferred indoor pursuits, preferably cards. Mind you, Gordon played a mean hand of bridge himself.’

Lionel, aware of his shortcomings in that department, shrinks a little. This Gordon sounds quite a character. Quite a . . . paragon.

A breeze ripples the leaves of the bushes beside them as ribbons of cloud scud across the face of the moon. Shivering slightly, Hester pulls the neck of her cardigan tighter around her throat.

‘Want to go in?’

She lays a hand on his for a moment. ‘Not particularly. I’m fine. You?’

Lionel wishes he had thought to don a vest under his thin shirt but shakes his head; he doesn’t want to break the moment. ‘I wouldn’t want you getting cold.’

Hester’s hand, warm and dry, returns. ‘I’m not cold.’

Harriet cannot sleep. She knows she’s had at least one glass too many. She knows too that she is starting to obsess again about the future, her temporary equilibrium unsettled by Regina’s relentless probing. She’s tried a shower, a few pages of her novel, an old half-completed cryptic crossword she’d found crumpled at the bottom of her handbag, a hot chocolate from the sachet in her room (watery and over-sweet) and—her activity of last resort—writing a list of her worries. So far it reads:

Stephen (? Marion—Tues)

Mary

Move?

Hester

Lionel

She underlines Hester heavily, almost scoring the paper through, then for good measure rings the name, noting the irony that in so doing she has half crossed out the words above and below. For Hester is the key, the spider at the centre of a web over which Harriet feels she no longer has any control. A wave of powerlessness tinged with self-pity assails her once more, bringing in its wake a hot shaft of anger. For hadn’t it been Hester who first broached the idea of sharing a home? Hester who fixed on Pellington as the ideal location? Hester who had found The Laurels, chivvied Harriet into pooling their finances, laid down the ground rules for their co-habitation, assumed without discussion dominion of the kitchen and much else besides? She chooses to forget the many occasions when she herself had asserted her views and Hester had backed down without demur. It suits her for the present to lay at her sister’s door all responsibility for her turmoil, to blame Hester for Stephen’s dilemma, for her own potential homelessness, for upending what had promised to be a comfortable and secure retirement. And why? Because Hester is a back-stabbing, solipsistic snake-in-the-grass! Concealing that letter from Stephen all those weeks and jumping to wrongheaded and catastrophic conclusions! Carrying on with Lionel like a love-struck teenager! Pathetic! Harriet throws the pad and pen down on the covers, fired with righteous indignation. She won’t be a victim. She doesn’t have to dance to Hester’s tune—and she won’t.

She scrambles out of bed, throws on her dressing gown and hurries down the corridor towards the foyer. The light at the reception desk is still on.

‘Ah! Alfonso, sorry to disturb you, but I wonder if you’d be so kind . . .’

CHAPTER 34

It’s just past midnight.

Someone is hammering on Ben’s head. No, not on: inside his head. With a tiny pickaxe. Whoever is wielding it has found the most tender part of his cortex and is relentlessly swinging away at it, like a miner attacking a particularly inaccessible seam of coal. Ben forces his eyes open, finds that he is not trapped in a mine but has fetched up on a ship in the middle of a ferocious storm, pitching and yawing as the horizon dips and slews amid stomach-dropping plunges. He feels very, very unwell. Clawing his way upright he feels metal, sees a void immediately below him and vomits copiously into it.

Hedge is bored. He and Louisa have been snogging energetically for ten minutes now and his tongue is flagging. He pulls away; the suction broken, Louisa droops to one side and is instantly asleep, snoring lightly. One of his mat...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• SUNDAY
• MONDAY
• TUESDAY
• WEDNESDAY
• THURSDAY
• FRIDAY
• SATURDAY
• SUNDAY
• MONDAY
• TUESDAY
• WEDNESDAY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR