The Displaced Nation

“Do I look OK?” I ask, fastening the clasp on my necklace, and turning to face Oliver.

After a desperate couple of hours yesterday in Macy’s, I’d bought a lipstick red, off-the-shoulder dress to wear to tonight’s torturous party. Now I’m zipped into it, I’m pleasantly surprised at how I look. You know, considering I’ve had twins and everything this year.

And while red isn’t normally my colour, I’m damned if I’m going to a party where Melissa will be acting like a tramp and flirting with Oliver while her real clandestine lover makes speeches about “proactively engaging interdependent results” or some such corporate-speak nonsense, and the other wives whisper and point and stock up on gossip for their next coffee morning.

No. If anyone’s going to play the tramp around Oliver, it’s me.

Oliver looks me up and down, apparently agreeing that this dress is an improvement on my usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt, and gives me a leer that suggests our evening won’t be over when the party finishes.

“You look fabulous,” he says. “You never get any older, did you know that?”

No, I didn’t. Inside, I feel ancient; withered beyond my years after the ups and downs of the last eighteen months, and the last six in particular, but nevertheless, it’s good to hear that I carry Life’s burden well on the outside. Even if it means a heart attack from built-up stress farther down the road, at least I will die looking good.

Downstairs, I hand a fussy, teething George to Maggie, who is babysitting tonight.

“You go off and have fun, both of you,” she says. “It’s pleasure and not business, isn’t it?”

Oliver pulls a face.

“Depends how you look at it. I’d rather go and see the new Bond film, to be honest.”

You and me both, Oliver. In fact, I’d rather lie down in the road and be run over by a slow-moving truck.

“We know everyone there, though,” Oliver goes on. “That makes it less of an ordeal. And it’s at the Golf Club, so the food should be good.”

Yes, I know everyone. Let’s see…Anita, Julia. Caroline. Caroline’s husband Terry, the boss, who’s offered Oliver a job (the one I’m not supposed to know about) as a bribe because, if my womanly intuition is correct, Oliver knows something about Terry’s antics with Melissa, who is also coming to the party.

No, Oliver’s right. It won’t be an ordeal. It will be a minefield. No matter how good the food is, I’d better not drink too much and tread on any mines.

“Take no notice of him,” I say to Maggie. “We’ll have a lot of fun.”

She looks at me, a little frown on her face.

Maggie always knows when I’m lying.

*  *  *

“You stayed near Bath, right?” Anita asks me. “How was it?”

We’re at the Golf Club just outside Woodhaven, the posh one where Oliver takes his customers when they visit. This function room is trying to be Upper Class Olde English and failing miserably.They’ve got the horse prints right, but the carpet would look more at home in a cinema foyer. Also, Upper Class Olde English would never, ever fix fake beams on a popcorn ceiling.

I hold a glass of Pinot Grigio in one hand and a paper plate of appetizers in the other, feeling light-headed already, despite my earlier vow not to drink too much. It’s so much easier to take a sip of wine than it is to gracefully negotiate dim sum towards my mouth.

There’s definitely a gap in the market for quality liquidized hors d’oeuvres. Baby food shots for adults. Pureed Peas and Sun-Dried Tomatoes with Pernod.  Avocado and Duck Coulis with Cointreau. That kind of thing. Come on — it’s no worse than pineapple and cheese on a stick, is it?

“Oh, you know.” I shrug. “English. Cold, wet. Full of people with fixed opinions of life in the USA because they once spent a week in Florida.”

After a few days of our English vacation, I realised I was no longer quite one of “them”. “Home” wasn’t where I used to think it was. I’m not sure when it happened, exactly. Perhaps it was the evening when I had to concentrate on the accents on TV, used as I was to a nasal New England voice reading the news. Or perhaps it was when someone in the pub started to criticise “the bloody Yanks” and I couldn’t stop my rage rising, or myself from rushing to America’s defence. It’s the nearest I’ve ever got to being in a bar fight.

But, somewhere, I’d changed. That much I knew.

“And how about–” Anita moves in closer so that our plates of dim sum overlap. “How about you and Oliver?”

I deliberately misunderstand her.

“Oh, Oliver had a great time in England. We’ve never been to that part of the world before. It was spoilt a bit because his mother turned up early, but then mine couldn’t make it because she and my dad caught flu, and –”

I look around the room. Where is Oliver? He’d been nearby when Anita first started talking to me.

Anita leans in even closer.

“Don’t look now,” she whispers. “But Melissa Harvey Connor just arrived. She’s wearing a dress exactly like yours.”

*  *  *

Due to various factors involving turkeys and pumpkins, this post is shorter than usual. Kate apologizes for this, and hopes to get an extra episode onto TDN before the next scheduled Libby’s Life, which is on November 29.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #65 – All about a dress (by Melissa)

Previous post: A post from Melissa – LIBBY’S LIFE #63

A note for Libby addicts: Check out Woodhaven Happenings, where from time to time you will find more posts from other characters.  Want to remind yourself of Who’s Who in Woodhaven? Click here for the cast list!

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode.

STAY TUNED for Monday’s post!

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It looks much easier in movies. Being a private detective, I mean.

If this were a movie, for example. I’d have taken Oliver’s phone with us to the park and, while Jack played nicely on the slide, I’d have scrolled through a couple of texts and emails until — ta-da! — I discovered irrefutable evidence that proved Oliver wasn’t getting any extra-curricular entertainment from our landlady. Then next week I could have returned in triumph to the Coffee Morning Posse, demanding an apology for them spreading untrue rumours.

This isn’t a movie, however, so what happens instead is this:

While Oliver trundles his mother off to see the sights of Bath, the children and I walk to the park. Jack insists on jumping on every fallen leaf he sees, so a ten-minute walk becomes a thirty-minute loiter. When we arrive at the park, he leaps into a big pile of leaves, twisting his ankle on a tree root beneath, and falls over and skins his hands. This makes not only him cry but George and Beth cry too, and while I’m all for sibling bonding, I wish they’d find another way to do it. Fortunately, no one else is at the park that early, so I’m spared the disapproving stares and visits from social services. Hugs, cuddles, pats on the back and “there-there”s have no effect, and all three kids bellow in unison until an ice cream van comes along, tinkling “Greensleeves”.

Motherly love is all very well, but it’s no match for a Flake wedged in an ice cream cornet.

So what with adorning Jack’s hands with Spiderman plasters, decorating the twins’ faces with ice cream, and discovering, too late, that the baby wipes are back at the house, it’s no wonder that playing Nancy Drew falls down the pecking order of my to-do list.

When I do get round to perusing the contents of Oliver’s phone, I’m first nervous about what I might see, then disappointed at the dull reality.

Oliver’s inbox consists of emails from customers complaining about this, that, and the other; automated reminders for finance meetings and business development brainstorming sessions; an email in September from Terry Michaels, Caroline’s husband, asking Oliver out for a drink after work (I didn’t know Oliver was that pally with the boss); and a bunch of joke emails from Oliver’s colleagues that probably wouldn’t pass any political correctness tests. The only messages from Melissa were a couple in which Oliver had queried the overtime she’d claimed in August, and she was fighting back, saying she had indeed been in the office until 8pm on August 21, 23, and 24.

There was nothing interesting in his inbox, in fact, until I got to one from HR, dated three weeks ago. It certainly made up for the rest of the inbox contents.

Oliver, it seems, has been offered a new job.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but life partners normally share this kind of information, don’t they? It’s the first I’ve heard about this job, though.

It would still be in Massachusetts so we wouldn’t have to move, so that’s good. But get this: the letter states that the position would come with a company car up to the value of $35,000, first class travel while on company business, and two weeks extra paid vacation. The salary, the email says, would be commensurate with the grade, plus a bonus percentage based on past performance, to be evaluated by Assistant Head Honcho Terry Michaels. (A-ha! Hence the invitation of a drink after work, a few days later.)

I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of the grading system in Oliver’s company, but I do know that at present there is no company car, he gets four weeks holiday like everyone else in Milton Keynes, and if he wants to travel even business class he has to be flying long-haul, like to Australia. This job would be a big career leap for him.

Why wouldn’t Oliver want to share the possibility of good news with me? I suppose he could argue that he didn’t want to get my hopes up in case nothing came of it.

Or maybe he turned it down.

But why would he do that?

Having raised more questions than I’ve answered, I take the children home, and carefully replace the phone on the window seat in our bedroom.

*  *  *

“How did you like Bath?” I ask Sandra later, when she and Oliver return to our little cottage. Oliver, I sense, has run out of patience already — not a good thing when Sandra is here for another five days.

She wrinkles her nose.  “Those Georgian houses all look the same. I can’t see the difference between them and  the new Barratt estate in Milton Keynes.”

“Philistinism” doesn’t begin to describe the attitude of my mother-in-law towards architectural aesthetics.

“A bit more expensive than your average Barratt house,” I say. “We could never afford to live there, anyway.”

“Not even with what Oliver makes in America?”

“Nope,” Oliver says.

“I thought that was the whole point of you going out there, to get a promotion,” Sandra says, pouting.

We didn’t tell her that. She assumed it. Heaven forbid that we should leave Milton Keynes to expand our horizons and get away from family irritants.

“Yes. Well. Sometimes these things don’t happen as planned. There’s no promotion in the immediate future, I assure you, and we won’t be buying a house in the Royal Crescent anytime soon.”

I bet we could afford it if he took that job in the email. I’m dying to say this, but of course that would mean admitting I’d been snooping through his phone.

“You should try sleeping with your boss!” Sandra laughs, and splutters all over Jack who has come to her for a hug. He steps away quickly.

“Not my style, Mum,” Oliver says. “I leave that sort of thing to other people. Me, I’ve got principles.”

He walks into the living room, where I can hear him talking softly to the twins, who gurgle back.

“What’s his problem?” Sandra asks, jerking her head in Oliver’s direction.

I shrug. “Hormones?”

But not his.  Someone else’s hormones are causing him trouble.

I leave that sort of thing to other people, he said.

His query about Melissa’s overtime. His boss’s request for a man-to-man chat over a beer, and an offer of  a job he could have only dreamed about six months ago.

Me, I’ve got principles, he said.

Like everyone, Oliver has his faults.

But I know that taking bribes isn’t one of them.

*  *  *

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #63 – A post from Melissa

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #61 – A voice in the dark

A note for Libby addicts: Check out Woodhaven Happenings, where from time to time you will find more posts from other characters.  Want to remind yourself of Who’s Who in Woodhaven? Click here for the cast list!

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode.

STAY TUNED for Monday’s post!

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Something has woken me. A voice.

I lie in bed and stare around the semi-darkness, wondering if an old, lost spirit lingers in the whitewashed walls of this Georgian cottage. I have no idea what time it is; the only clock in the room is that on Oliver’s cell phone which is lying on the window seat in our bedroom, its little green light flashing every few seconds. With no phone signal in the village, Oliver’s phone has become merely an expensive timepiece. The idea that the Voice might not be of this world discourages me from getting up to check its display, so it could be the middle of the night or nearly dawn for all I know; morning arrives later here than in Massachusetts, and winter, it feels, will not be long coming.

Perhaps one of the children has had a bad dream? I strain to listen for any sounds of wakefulness from the little bedroom next to us, where the three of them are tucked up. Hearing nothing, I decide I must have been dreaming myself, or that the jackdaws who helpfully drop twigs down the chimney into the fireplace are on night duty, cawing and pacing on the roof. I am about to turn over and reclaim some precious sleep when the Voice comes again: outside, under our bedroom window. A hoarse whisper, no doubt fondly intended to be quiet, but in reality raucous enough to awaken the whole street and the dead in the churchyard opposite.

“Yoohoo! Coo-ee! It’s me! Oliver — are you awake?”

I stay still for a second, not believing or wanting to believe what’s outside. Something that shouldn’t have been here for another three days. Should I ignore it? Will the voice and its owner go away if they get no response?

Chance would be a fine thing.

I sigh, resigned to our family’s fate for the rest of the day — the week, even — and nudge Oliver awake less gently than he’d like or is used to.

“Wake up, O dearest one. Rise and shine. Go open the front door. Your mother’s here.”

* * *

“So yesterday I said to this girl in your office, Oliver — Melinda, I think her name was — I said, ‘But he’s not arriving in England until tomorrow, so he must be there with you.’ And she said, ‘No, he definitely left last Sunday and he’s staying in the goonies in the back of beyond for two weeks.”

“Melissa, not Melinda. Boonies, not goonies.”

I shift George onto my other hip, and one-handedly fill the kettle. It had proved impossible to return to sleep once Sandra entered the house, screeching and cackling, so with bad grace I’d got out of bed and dumped some small children on her. If she was going to arrive three days early, she could make herself useful.

“Melissa, that’s it. She sounded like a lovely girl. Anyway, she said Oliver would be here all week, so why didn’t I ring him on his mobile phone? But I couldn’t get through, I just kept getting his answerphone message, so I thought, sod it, I’ll get an early train tomorrow to Bath. It’ll be a nice surprise for them.”

As if I didn’t already have enough reasons to murder Melissa Harvey Connor in cold blood.

I sit George in the rental cottage’s one highchair and get the teapot ready, putting an extra teabag in for Sandra who likes her brew a violent shade of orange.

“Oh, no tea for me, please!”

I turn, surprised. “No?”

“Not unless you’ve got green tea.”

I hold up the box of PG Tips.

“Evil stuff,” she says. She who once gave my three-year-old Red Bull. “Haven’t drunk it for a week now. I’m on a health kick. Green tea only for me, please.”

I pour boiling water into the teapot. “Haven’t got any.” If you’re going to turn up out of the blue and visit people unannounced, you’ve got to have what you’re given. “It’s PG Tips or apple juice. Or you can have the twins’ Cow and Gate if you’re desperate.”

It’s funny, I think — at one time I’d have been polite, even offering to run out and find some in the village. The health food shop at the other end of the high street probably sells green tea, after all, and as it’s now 8:30, the shops will be open.

But after the crisis that Oliver and I have had, all due to Sandra’s insistence upon Oliver’s silence about his family history? Sandra can damn well sing for her green tea.

“Are you sure you don’t want a cup?” I ask.

Sandra leans over to Beth who is kicking one foot in a bouncy chair, and strokes her cheek.

“Evil stuff,” she says again. “Give me a glass of water and I’ll go outside for a smoke.”

* * *

“What are we supposed to do with her?” I ask Oliver in an emergency conference in our bedroom. “We were going to Windsor to Legoland tomorrow, but I really don’t want her tagging along, moaning about nowhere to smoke and them not having herbal tea. Anyway, the car’s not big enough for all of us. Thoughtless woman.”

Oliver opens his mouth then shuts it again. Presumably he was going to defend Sandra, but over the last few weeks he’s learned that my sympathy threshold for his mother has plummeted. Her mention of Melissa only serves to make things worse.

Since we arrived, I have tried to worm information out of Oliver about Melissa, but every time I bring her name up — casually, nothing accusatory, asking about her job — he shoots a hunted, sideways glance at a random object in the room and changes the subject. I am getting nowhere, not to mention frustrated as hell and more suspicious by the minute.

“I could stay here and you take her out with the children. Go round Bath or someth—” He trails off. I imagine my expression reflects the outrage I feel.

“Your mother, your problem,” I say. “How about you take her round Bath and I stay here with the children and go to the park?”

He nods.

At least he’s getting to know when he’s lost an argument.

* * *

They’ve gone. The house is quiet, or as quiet as it gets with a preschooler and two six-month-olds. But it’s significantly quieter than when an overgrown teenager in her fifties is added to the equation.

“Can we go to the park now?” Jack asks.

I smile at him. “Of course. Put your jacket and shoes on while I get the twins ready. I’ll just nip upstairs and get changed.”

I strap Beth and George into their double pushchair, then run up the stairs.

In the bedroom, I pull on a sweatshirt, straighten the bed, then cross to the window to draw back the curtains — and stop. In the few days without a phone signal, Oliver has evidently lost his habit of taking his phone everywhere he goes. The phone is still lying on the window seat, its green light winking.

Because I’ve had to turn the alarm off on it every morning, I know Oliver’s password to unlock it.

I unplug the phone, slip it into my jeans pocket, and run back downstairs.

“Let’s go,” I say to Jack.

*  *  *

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #62 – Private investigations

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #60 – Cotswold espionage

A note for Libby addicts: Check out Woodhaven Happenings, where from time to time you will find more posts from other characters.  Want to remind yourself of Who’s Who in Woodhaven? Click here for the cast list!

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode.

STAY TUNED for Monday’s post: a review of Helena Halme’s new book, The Englishman.

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You can take the girl out of England, but you’ll never take England out of the girl. It’s home, and always will be.

At least, that’s what I thought until Oliver and I landed at a major British airport at stupid o’clock yesterday morning, after a night flight with a cranky four-year-old and two wailing five-month-olds in tow.

“Welcome home!” the uniformed bloke on passport control said to us. “This is your first time back in nearly eighteen months? Well, it’s great to have you in the country!”

OK, I’m lying. He said nothing of the sort. He scowled at me and Oliver, then shot a death-glare at Beth and George. “They’re American,” he said suspiciously, holding Beth’s blue passport by one corner as if it were radioactive.

“Well, technically they have dual–” I began, before he interrupted me.

“No UK passports?”

This visit was planned quite quickly, and although we’d got the twins official and legal as US citizens, they didn’t have the British paperwork yet.

“No, I haven’t got around to registering the birth with–”

The uniform held up one hand to silence me.

“How long will they be in the United Kingdom?”

Oliver passed him our travel itinerary which stated we would be going back to America in two weeks’ time.

“And you’re all travelling together for the duration of your visit?” the uniform asked.

“That’s right,” Oliver said.

“They’re five months old,” I said, sotto voce. “We thought we’d give them another couple of years before we sent them InterRailing round Europe on their own, but if you think they’re up to it now…”

Oliver trod heavily on my foot, and I muffled a squeal. My feet were swollen after a six hour flight with George asleep on my lap.

Another official wandered up to the booth.

“Have you got a problem, Derek?” she asked.

“He certainly has,” I muttered, and Oliver trod on my other foot.

The second official looked from Beth to her passport photo. Good luck to her trying to find the resemblance between Beth’s two month old self and as she was now, three months later. “They’ll need to be registered as UK citizens as soon as possible,” she said, “or it could cause a lot of problems.”

Goodness. The grilling now was not, therefore, classed as a “problem”?

“OK,” she said reluctantly to the first uniform. “Let them in.”

I gazed at my blameless infants as their passports were stamped and grudgingly handed back again.

“Poor little things,” I cooed at them as we walked away towards the baggage carousel. “You came home for a little light espionage, and they spoiled all your fun.”

Thankfully, I had run out of feet for Oliver to tread on.

* * *

So here I am, back in England, in the Cotswolds. It’s an unfamiliar region to me, as I’ve never been farther west than Reading before, so it isn’t technically “home”; but they still drive on the left, and I can buy Crunchie bars in the corner shop. It’s home enough for me.

You’d think that, given my extended absence, I’d have some introspective observations to bring you — Libby’s Thoughts On Returning Home — but all I can observe is how small everything is. The roads are Victoria Beckham-slim, the cars are like Matchbox toys, and as for the bed Oliver and I are sleeping in…Well. Give me King Size over Cosy, any day.

But the bed has to be cosy. King Size wouldn’t get up the narrow staircase in our rented cottage which, according to the plaque over the door, was built in 1723. It’s a tiny chocolate box house, all honey stone and honeysuckle on the outside, and low ceilings, plaster walls, and unexpected beams inside. Oliver is already sporting a lump on his bald patch.

Egg-sized lumps aside, though, it’s an idyllic place to spend two weeks. The front window looks out onto the high street, with its ancient market square cross, medieval church, and Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe selling tea towels and corn dollies to gullible tourists. For a real village — as opposed to Harry Potter’s Hogsmeade — this is as escapist as they get.

Better make the most of it before Mum and Sandra arrive next week, though. Thank God the house is too small for them to stay overnight, and they will be forced to sleep at the bed-and-breakfast down the road. For this first week, however, Oliver, the children, and I are on our own in this little Wiltshire backwater that has managed to bypass social evolution for the last 200 years.

OK, maybe not social evolution. They wear jeans and T-shirts, not smocks and straw hats, which is how everyone in Milton Keynes imagines West Country types. But they’re a bit behind in the technology race in Chipping Magna. There’s still a working red phone box in the High Street, which I thought was very quaint and sweet, because most red phone boxes have been bought up by Hollywood luvvies and converted to shower cubicles.

After half an hour in the cottage, we discovered the reason why the last non-shower phone box stood in this village. There’s no mobile phone signal in Chipping Magna.

“This is a disaster!” Oliver held out his useless cell phone in one hand and raked his — decidedly thinning, I noticed — hair with the other. “I’m supposed to be on a conference call with Seattle on Monday! How am I supposed to check my emails? Does this house have wi-fi?”

I gave him a pitying look. “I’d say this place has only just been hooked up to the national grid, wouldn’t you? Think yourself lucky that we’ve got electric lights instead of tallow candles.”

Then I turned away before Oliver could see me smirk.

I could be helpful and tell him that there was an internet cafe in the supermarket five miles away, where we stopped to get bread and milk. But here’s the thing. I don’t want him to be on the phone or emailing — and it’s not just because he’s on holiday and shouldn’t have to work for the next two weeks.

No. You see, if he can’t phone or email, he can’t communicate with Melissa Harvey Connor.

Bet you thought I’d decided to let that one lie, hadn’t you? Come on. You know me better than that. I’ve been doing some quiet investigations back in Woodhaven. That she started working for Oliver at precisely the same time that we were having marital problems, together with her husband Jeffrey stomping out of the house two weeks after she began, did little to allay my suspicions. No wonder the Posse had decided that she and Oliver were an item. But still — this is Oliver we are talking about. He’s no saint, but Melissa just isn’t his type. He might be OK as her boss, but I know that in a social (or more) situation, she would terrify him. I just can’t see it. He’d be mincemeat.

And yet — as my dad would say — there’s no smoke without fire. The question is: where did the fire start, and who lit the match?

I’m hoping that these two weeks with limited social opportunity — no phone, no internet, no texting — two weeks of Oliver and me being forced to sit and talk to each other, in other words, might give me a clue about what’s going on.

Because when the next coffee morning rolls around, I need to be able to stand up to the Posse and say, “Guess what, ladies? You owe me and my husband an apology.”

The jobsworth at the airport, worrying that our baby twins were here for some 007 spying, was barking up the wrong tree.

I’m the queen of espionage round here.

* * *

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #61 – A voice in the dark

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #59 – Fanning the flames

A note for Libby addicts: Check out Woodhaven Happenings, where from time to time you will find more posts from other characters. Want to remind yourself of Who’s Who in Woodhaven? Click here for the cast list!

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode.

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Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Somehow, I manage to get away from that hideous coffee morning. As I drive, I automatically answer Jack’s questions about the finer details of Ironman’s personal habits — “I have no idea how he goes to the bathroom. No, I can’t imagine Ironman wearing Pampers.  Yes, I suppose he might go rusty if he’s not careful.” — but I’m not really paying attention.

Anita’s words keep looping around in my head.

“Jeffrey Connor’s gone back to Shelley,” she’d said. Shelley, his first wife, whom he’d left for Melissa Harvey. Jeffrey and Shelley Connor had been Melissa’s tenants — just as Oliver and I are now.

I cringe every time I replay my innocent reply:

“Why? What happened to him and Melissa?”

And Anita’s embarrassed answer: “We all assumed you would know about that.”

Her meaning was unmistakable: We assumed you knew because you are involved in this situation. Or, rather, not me, but Oliver.

It was as if someone had smacked me over the head with a large stick. Everything made sense: the sudden silence as I entered Anita’s house, as if they had been talking about me; Charlie’s protectiveness, as she loudly emphasised my “post-natal depression” as the excuse for my four-month absence from Posse society.

It wasn’t post-natal depression, not in the conventional sense. It was my inability to face anyone because of the issues Oliver and I were having about his father’s marital history.

Now, though, I wish I’d been brave enough to venture onto the coffee morning rounds. Without me there to set the story straight, rumours had flourished like unattended dandelions. In my absence, everyone had gossiped behind my back, assuming I wasn’t showing my face in public because Melissa Harvey Connor was having it away with yet another tenant of hers: Oliver.

How ridiculous. Right? I mean — when would Oliver see Melissa?

Yet here’s the thing: while I can keep telling myself that it’s all conjecture and careless whispers amongst silly women with too much time and not enough brain cells, and I don’t believe a word of it, at the back of my head a little voice of paranoia insists that rumours have to come from somewhere.  As my Dad would say: “There’s no smoke without fire, Libby.”

What to do now? I wonder.

Do I ignore the smoke? Douse the embers? Or — fan the flames?

If the topic comes up, I decide, I will probe.

*  *  *

“How was your day?” Oliver asks over dinner. “Did you go to Charlie’s leaving do?”

I pause. “Yep,” I say, trying to keep my voice light and casual, and instead hearing it come out high-pitched and tense.

“Everything all right?” Oliver shoots me a look which I interpret as concerned.

Concerned for whom? Me? Or him?

“Fine,” I say, hoping my voice sounds more natural.

“OK,” he says. Oliver tends to take things at face value. If I say I’m fine, then I must be.

“I hear Jeffrey’s gone back to England.” I cut into a piece of chicken on my plate, and glance up quickly to watch Oliver’s expression, which is a study in nonchalance.

“Yeah. He decided our landlady wasn’t a good enough trade-in for his first wife. Gone back with his tail between his legs.”

“It took him this long to work that out? Everyone else could have told him Melissa’s a complete bitch.”

Oliver raises his eyebrows. “She’s not that bad. A bit overbearing, maybe. Jeffrey didn’t handle her right. You’ve got to be firm with her.”

I choke, cough, and run into the kitchen where I splutter out a wad of half-chewed chicken.

“And you’d know about this, I suppose,” I say, when I return to the table.

“Well, yes. Of course I would.” He looks around the table for ketchup. Honestly, it drives me nuts how Oliver insists on drowning everything with ketchup. If I took him to Alain Ducasse, he’d be asking for ketchup to go with the foie gras. “Seeing as she’s been working at the company for — what?  Three months now.”

I lean back in my chair, aware that my jaw is dropping open unattractively.

“She works at your place? Why? She’s a realtor. You never told me.”

Oliver shrugs. “Housing market has tanked around here, and Jeffrey got her this admin job. I suppose she joined when we…when you and I weren’t talking much to each other.”

And whose fault was that? I want to scream, but instead I count to ten, very slowly, because I need to know more.

Suddenly the Posse’s whispers don’t seem so careless any more.

“Do you see much of her at work?” I ask in that same fake-casual voice.

“She works for me. Technically, I’m her boss.”

“And there is no connection between that and the fact that Jeffrey has decided to return to his first wife.”

He hesitates, just a fraction of a second too long, and my internal bullshit radar switches to high alert.

“Now you’re just being silly,” he says, sticking out his chin.

We finish our meal.

There is silence in the room, marred only for me by my internal radar’s sirens and red flashing strobe lights.

*  *  *

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #60 – Cotswold espionage

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #58 – Careless whispers

A note for Libby addicts: Check out Woodhaven Happenings, where from time to time you will find more posts from other characters.  Want to remind yourself of Who’s Who in Woodhaven? Click here for the cast list!

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OK. Let’s do this.

My finger hovers over the doorbell for a couple of seconds before I push the button. Inside, a torrent of barks from Anita’s dog, Champion, reminds me of the morning at this house, nearly a year ago, when the same dog diagnosed my pregnancy, literally sniffing it out.

Approaching footsteps in the hall, accompanied by the skittering of doggy claws on slippery wooden floorboards.

Anita opens the front door wide, and I catch a glimpse of the Coffee Morning Posse chattering in the kitchen, at the end of the corridor behind her. Everyone turns to see who’s arrived, and the chatter stops; as if someone flicked a volume switch to “Mute”.

“Libby,” Anita says, at first looking at me, then quickly averting her eyes. “We didn’t… expect you. Come in.”

She takes Jack’s hand and the twins’ changing bag, and leads the way to the back of the house. I follow, feeling like Scarlett O’Hara when Rhett forces her to go to Melanie’s party after she and Ashley are caught in a clandestine clinch. It’s clear from the silence and Anita’s awkwardness that I’ve been the subject of conversation.

Could they know about Oliver and his bigamist father? I wonder. No. That would be impossible. No one in Woodhaven knew about that except Maggie, and she would never say anything to anyone — least of all to the Posse.

I haven’t seen any of the Posse since early May, a couple of weeks after the twins’ birth, when Anita brought round a Tupperware-encased casserole for our freezer. Two days after the arrival of that Chicken a la King, Oliver’s half-sister Tania paid us her fateful surprise visit, and my life turned towards the sign marked “Hades on Earth”. Hanging out with the Expat Sisters over lattes, pretending everything was hunky dory chez Patrick, didn’t feature on my agenda after that.

Silly to assume my absence went unnoticed, though. I’ve turned down so many invitations to coffee, dinner, and pot luck lunches that the gossip machine must have been working overtime. “Bring all the children, and let’s have dinner!” the phone conversations would start, and my inner reaction would be Let’s not. Let me just hide. Outwardly, I would mumble an excuse, but since I’m no Meryl Streep, the other person surely knew I was fobbing them off. “Another time, then,” they would say.

Except that after a while, of course, there were no other times.

Naturally, it was Maggie who set me back on the path to social redemption.

“You can’t hide away forever,” she said to me at regular intervals over the last few weeks. “You need more company. You need people your own age.”

Eventually, after Oliver and I reached our tenuous truce, I felt my wounds had been sufficiently licked and the time was right to enter the outside world again. An email from Anita, sent to all the English Posse wives, offered the opportunity I needed.

Charlie and Lee are heading back to sunny Milton Keynes! the email said. We will be holding a farewell party for Charlie on August 23 at my house. Please RSVP…..etc etc etc

I didn’t RSVP, though. I didn’t trust myself to keep a promise to attend. Glancing round Anita’s kitchen now, meeting the curious stares and false smiles, I wish I hadn’t come.

“How they’ve grown!” Charlie appears at my side, gives me a hug, and bends down to take a better look at the twins. “They’re — what, about three months now?”

“Four months. Exactly.” I wish with all my heart that it was someone else’s farewell party. Anyone except Charlie. Caroline would be my top pick of people to dispatch back to Milton Keynes. I can see her on the other side of the family room, standing next to her awful brat who’d made Jack’s life a misery. She’s holding her own new baby, which is dressed in a black Harley Davidson onesie with fake leather boots and a kelly-green elasticated headband. Boy or girl? It’s still anyone’s guess.

“They’re beautiful,” she says. “And you look very well, too. Post-natal blues are such a curse — I hope you’re feeling a bit better now?”

Charlie speaks the last sentence in a slightly louder tone, as if to make sure the rest of the room hears clearly. She nods slightly at me, encouraging me to say something, to play along with her.

“Much better,” I say, wondering where this is leading.

“Good! I hear there are some wonderful drugs available for depression these days. I expect you know all about that, though.”

“Well, I’m not actually—”

“Come and sit down where it’s quieter.” Charlie interrupts me, then picks up George’s car seat and carries it through to Anita’s formal living room. I follow with Beth. As I sidle past the basement door, I hear Jack issuing orders about the rules of a made-up game involving Ironman and Captain America. Sad, I think. Has Lightning McQueen had his day in Jack’s world?

“I think you should know,” Charlie says, flopping down next to me on Anita’s leather sofa, “that there’ve been a lot of theories about your absence. Rumours spread very quickly around here, as you know, but as soon as anyone voiced an opinion, I simply stepped in and told them you’ve been suffering from PND. I figured that it probably wasn’t too far from the truth.”

I reflect on this. Yes — I’d been depressed following the twins’ birth, although the two events weren’t connected.

“That’s about right,” I say.

“And I presumed you’d rather have that circulating as general knowledge than the real reason.”

I nod, before remembering that no one could possibly know about Oliver and Tania.

“Wait — what ‘real reason’?” I ask, but Charlie is already getting up.

“They’re calling me,” she says. “Time to cut the cake.” And off she rushes, back to the kitchen.

By the time I’ve gathered up the two baby seats and lumbered with them towards the cake room, Anita is in full flow with an emotional goodbye-to-Charlie speech.

“The best thing about being here in Woodhaven,” she says, blinking hard, “is the lovely people you meet. The worst thing is when you have to say goodbye to them.” She sniffs. “I’m going to miss you so much, Charlie.”

You and me both, I think.

Julia passes a couple of large gift-wrapped boxes to Charlie.

“This is from all of us,” Julia says, and I feel guilty, because I haven’t contributed anything.

Charlie murmurs her slightly embarrassed thanks, and begins unwrapping them. There’s a big coffee-table book full of photos of Massachusetts; a lace tablecloth which I recognise as being from the craft store in Woodhaven; a pottery house — a miniature of the one on Main street that belongs to the Historic Society. Right at the bottom of the second box, there’s a map of Milton Keynes and a copy of the Highway Code. A joke, of course — Charlie doesn’t need either, but it’s a reminder that she’s been away from her home town for nearly five years, and she might need a refresher course in driving on the left.

“Give our love to Milton Keynes,” Julia says.

“And to Jeffrey and Shelley, of course,” pipes up Caroline from the back of the room. She looks over at me and smirks, but I don’t know why.

Everyone else in the room knows, though. The heavy silence descends again.

Jeffrey and Shelley? I think. I only know one Jeffrey, the one who is married to Melissa Harvey Connor.

“Does she mean Jeffrey Connor?” I whisper to Anita, who’s standing next to me.

Anita casts a glance around, as if searching for a door to take her into a parallel universe, far away from here. “That’s right,” she says.

“So — he’s in England now?” Oliver never mentioned it. “What about Melissa? Has she gone too?”

It’s so long since I’ve seen Melissa. The last time I saw her was the week of the early winter storm, when I caught her sniffing Oliver’s sweatshirt in our bedroom, and I got the locks changed the following week.

Anita stares at the floor. Perhaps she can see the door to the other universe. “He’s gone back to Shelley,” she says at last. “The wife he had when he first came out here, five years ago.”

“Goodness.” So much scandal for such a small town. “So what happened to him and Melissa?” I ask.

Anita’s very quiet, for a long time. “We all assumed you would know about that,” she says at last. “I’m sorry, Libby.”

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #59 – Fanning the flames

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #57 – Coming clean

A note for Libby addicts: Check out Woodhaven Happenings, where from time to time you will find more posts from other characters.  Want to remind yourself of Who’s Who in Woodhaven? Click here for the cast list!

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode.

STAY TUNED for Monday’s post.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net