Fern Britton 3-Book Collection: The Holiday Home, A Seaside Affair, A Good Catch. Fern Britton
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I made love to you.’
‘Oh, er, yes. Must be … quite a long time now.’
‘Shut up and let me kiss you.’
‘Let me clean my teeth first.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Kiss me.’
‘I’m a bit tired, actually.’
Pru stopped advancing on him. ‘It’s Belinda, isn’t it?’
‘What?’ Terror gripped Francis.
‘You fancy Belinda. Are you having an affair with her?’
‘NO!’ he almost shouted.
‘Do you want to have an affair with her?’
‘NO.’
‘I’m not blind, Francis. I saw you in the kitchen with her that day, playing with the kids, chucking grapes at each other. And then that time you let her dress you up as a sea fairy.’
Pru moved to sit on the edge of the bed and hugged herself. For the first time, Francis saw her vulnerability. He moved towards her and put his arms round her shoulders.
‘I love you, Pru. I may not have said so often enough. But I do.’
She turned and looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I love you too. You’re not going to leave me for Belinda, are you?’
‘God, no!’
Then Pru’s mouth was on his. As she lifted herself on top of him, her Kindle slid to the floor. In the dying light of the screen a passing moth may have read the title: Fifty Shades of Grey.
*
Over in The Bungalow, Henry popped his head round Dorothy’s door to say good night and found her weeping.
‘What’s all this, old girl?’ He walked to the bed and sat beside her. She sniffed. ‘I can’t stop worrying about the girls and Abi and Jem. What’s going to happen to them? If you die first, I’ll be left with all the mess. They’ll be furious that you never made a will …’
Henry felt a twinge of guilt and sighed. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You know what you should do. Find out if Susan is still alive. Do what you should have done forty-odd years ago. Even if you have to pay through the nose, it will be worth it for the peace of mind. Please … for the children’s sake if not for mine?’
Henry kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll get on to it tomorrow. I promise.’
Dorothy took his hand and gripped it tightly. ‘We’re old, Henry, and time won’t wait. Do the right thing, for the children and for me.’
Henry padded back to his own room, deep in thought. He knew he was being an old fool. Dorothy meant the world to him and he had let her down. He lay in his bed, looking at the cosy clutter around him: old copies of The Times, books that had belonged to the children when they were young – he spied a copy of Five Go to Smuggler’s Top and remembered Connie’s addiction to Enid Blyton. As his eyes roamed the shelves, they settled on something that he had barely noticed for a long time, though it must have been there since they moved into The Bungalow. It was a battered but still intact box containing the first prototype of Lawyer, Lawyer produced by the factory. Henry threw the covers off and went over to the shelf, removing the game from beneath a Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. So much of his life was down to this game, he mused. Work, Dorothy, the house …
Henry thought back to the first time he laid eyes on Dorothy. More than forty years had gone by, yet it seemed as if it were only yesterday …
*
Henry had just returned from lunch on a dreary, overcast Wednesday when his father’s secretary appeared, summoning him to the old man’s office. He knocked on the half-glazed door and went in without waiting for a reply.
His father was sitting behind his big old desk, silhouetted against the Crittall windows, which looked out on to the factory car park. He was wearing his usual office clothes of loose tweed trousers, twill shirt, knitted tie and sleeve garters.
‘Ah, Henry, come in. Are you busy this afternoon?’
‘Nothing too important. Why?’
‘I’d like you and Miss Danvers –’ he waved to the corner of the room just behind the open door – ‘to join me for a meeting about advertising. Apparently we’re not doing enough.’
Henry turned to where his father had pointed. Miss Danvers, the cool typist who’d joined the firm a month or two ago, was smiling at him warmly but without any hint of flirtation. She took a couple of steps towards him, juggling her shorthand book and pencil into her left hand and offering him her right. He shook it and asked rather pompously, ‘Do you have advertising experience, Miss Danvers?’
That smile again. ‘Yes, a little. I worked for the Surrey Advertiser after leaving secretarial college. Occasionally I’d be roped in to help with the classified ads.’
‘So, not an advertising executive then?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘No. Sorry.’
Henry’s father coughed and indicated that they should take a seat. ‘Now we’ve established that neither of you have advertising experience, perhaps we can get this meeting under way. I propose starting an advertising department for the company. Just a small team at first: you two.’
‘Really, Dad?’ Henry was excited. ‘When? What’s the plan? What’s the budget?’
The three of them had spent the rest of the afternoon devising an advertising strategy. Carew Family Board Games was viewed in the industry as a relic of the fifties and sixties; while tradition and the cosy family image remained important to the brand, they needed to show that board games still had a place in the seventies.
‘Times may change, but the fact remains: the family that plays together, stays together,’ declared Henry’s father, Clarence. ‘Nothing can beat the fun of a family sitting round the table playing Ludo.’
Henry looked up under his eyebrows to see if Miss Danvers was familiar with his father’s favourite catchphrases. She gazed steadily back at him with a small curve of her lips.
He returned his attention to his father: ‘Absolutely, Dad.’
‘I’ve an idea,’ said Miss Danvers. ‘How about redesigning the Snakes and Ladders board? Instead of the usual nursery rhyme figures, how about having some more modern faces pictured on the board? Maybe pop stars? David Cassidy and the Partridge Family, or the Jackson Five.’
‘Good idea,’ said Henry warmly.
Mr Carew senior looked bemused. ‘I don’t know who the hell they are, but why don’t you ask Sylvia in the art department to mock something up? Anything else?’
Dorothy, confidence growing, spoke again. ‘Supposing I contact Thames TV and the BBC and ask if we could have the franchise to use their popular programmes? In Ludo, for instance, each of the four teams could be a children’s programme: Blue Peter, Dr Who, Crackerjack and Catweazle?’
Henry’s father leaned back in his chair and placed his hands firmly on the desk in front of him. ‘Genius! Why haven’t you thought of this, my boy?’
Henry was still gasping in awe at the brilliance of Miss Danvers. ‘I’ve got some catching up to do, I agree.’ He turned to her: ‘Are you sure you need me as a colleague?’
She laughed and looked down at her unused notepad.
His father got to his feet. ‘Right! That’s the new department up and running. Henry, your office is now the HQ of Carew advertising.’
He ushered the two fledgling advertising executives to the door and rang through to his secretary to order his afternoon cup of tea. ‘And,