The Younger Woman Read online

  THE YOUNGER WOMAN

  Mandy Byatt

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023

  Copyright © Mandy Byatt 2023

  Cover design by Sarah Whittaker © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023

  Cover photographs © Yuri Arcurs/Getty Images (figure) and Shutterstock.com (wine glass)

  Mandy Byatt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008459949

  Ebook Edition © February 2023 ISBN: 9780008459956

  Version: 2022-11-23

  Dedication

  For Rich – with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Then

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Now – One Week After the Matinee Performance of Time-Slip

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Eight Months Later

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Mandy Byatt

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  She’ll tell him tonight.

  Even though he isn’t in the best of moods, a common occurrence lately, she’ll tell him tonight.

  Lottie stares through the rain-spattered windscreen into the greyness of the late afternoon. There’s a storm approaching, pewter anvil clouds shrouding the hills on the horizon. Not that the weather will matter to them. They’ll be snug and cosy in the cottage, just the two of them. She can’t wait to see his face when she speaks those words that he probably thought would never come from her mouth. Over a plate of spaghetti bolognaise and a glass of white to celebrate their wedding anniversary, she’ll tell him.

  The car swings right and accelerates up the single-track lane, away from the main road, away from the storm ahead. Like the weather, the traffic all the way has been terrible, a stream of cars nose to tail along the M6, heading for the big lights switch-on at Blackpool. It’s always the same, year after year, no matter what time they set off. She’s tried to distract Nick, telling him what went on at her theatre school’s play last week, how the kids had been so excited, even the teenagers who pretended they weren’t, but Nick – as usual lately – hasn’t paid much attention. Instead, he’s huffed and puffed all the way through the jam, ignoring her attempts to engage him in a game of eye-spy, blasting his horn when someone cut in front of him. He hadn’t wanted to go to Fairview this year, had said he was too busy at work, but Lottie had insisted. After the past few months, heaven knows they both need it. A break away from the norm. And the not-so-norm.

  She’s flicked stations all the way there, trying to find a song he likes, finally settling on a local channel that plays Eighties music. But now, ten miles away from the motorway, the dual carriageway that hugs the peninsula behind them, the radio signal is lost as the car climbs higher and higher.

  And then they’re there, Nick indicating left – although they haven’t seen a car for twenty minutes – heading along the lane, the grazing sheep on either side jerking up their heads at the intruders.

  Lottie blinks. Blinks again. ‘There’s a light on. In our bedroom.’ They call it their bedroom, even though it doesn’t belong to them – it’s just the room they always stay in when they visit Nick’s parents’ holiday cottage in the Lakes.

  Nick sighs. ‘Thought you’d checked they wouldn’t be here? Told you we should have stayed at home.’

  Lottie feels her shoulders ride up. Nick’s parents are supposed to be arriving tomorrow, along with the rest of their friends, a surprise for Nick’s birthday. She’ll kill his mother if she’s come up a day early – it would be just like Gwen to want to spoil Lottie’s carefully laid plans. ‘Shall we just go back?’ she says.

  Nick reaches for her hand, gives it a squeeze. ‘Sorry, I know I’ve been a grumpy old sod lately. Work, you know? It’s hard to shake it off.’

  ‘I’ll shake it off you.’ She gives him a wink, licks her lips in the silly way that always makes him laugh.

  ‘Let’s hope no one’s decided to come here this weekend, then.’

  She feels a drop in her stomach. He’s saying the right words but does he mean them? Nothing in his face or his voice is telling her he wants to whisk her up the stairs and straight onto the bed. Her fingers find her wedding ring, twisting the platinum band round and round.

  Fairview comes back into view. There isn’t a light on in their bedroom. There isn’t a light on anywhere. Lottie rubs at her eyes. She must have imagined it. Is this yet another example of her fertile imagination making something up? An image of Tasha, Nick’s former PA, floats into her mind before she shakes it away. She won’t let anything spoil tonight.

  Pulling the car to a stop, Nick stares up at the bedroom window, where the thick brocade bedroom curtains are open, before casting a quick glance at the garage. ‘Doesn’t look like anyone’s here.’

  He gets out of the car and sprints through the driving rain to the front door. Lottie follows him, grappling with the hood of her jacket, fighting to get it over her head, but the wind whips it away.

  The door is locked. Nick fiddles with his keys, finally finding the one he wants. ‘Hello,’ he calls as he steps into the large, open-plan room that covers most of the downstairs. ‘Anyone home?’

  Flicking on the light with one hand, Lottie unzips her coat with the other. While it’s not warm in the cottage, it’s definitely aired. Usually, when they first get there, it’s warmer out than it is in, no matter what month it is. There’s silence, apart from the loud tick of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. ‘Just us, then,’ Nick says, before turning towards the open front door.

  ‘Aren’t you going to check upstairs?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Lots. There’s no one here. Just us.’

  ‘Nick.’

  He shakes his head and then bounds up the stairs before Lottie can remind him to take off his shoes. Gwen won’t be impressed at the dirty marks on the carpet. Nick’s footsteps thump on the narrow floorboards overhead. Fairview is three hundred years old, has been in Nick’s family for ages, a former tithed cottage once bequeathed to a long-dead ancestor, a groundsman for the huge stately home a couple of miles away that is now a chichi hotel.

  ‘All clear,’ he says, bending down so as not to hit his head on the low doorframe as he comes back into the room. It’s a big space width wise, Nick’s grandfather having bought up the cottages either side and knocked them through, sometime in the 1950s, but the ceilings are low and the walls are crisscrossed by timber beams.

  ‘Has someone been sleeping in our room?’ Lottie says as they head out back into the dusk to fetch their bags. The rain has eased slightly but there’s a shroud of mist hanging over the hills in the distance. Hopefully it’ll clear by tomorrow. The view, down over the valley, is stunning, something she’ll never get tired of seeing. Rolling hills, deep forest framing them, a glimpse of the edge of Coniston Water far in the distance.

  ‘So what if they have? It’s not our room, is it?’

  Lottie ignores him, pulls her jacket around her and picks up a couple of the carrier bags, leaving the heavy stuff for Nick. She hopes he’s going to lighten up a bit. His mood has gone downhill over the past couple of months, hardly talking to her and then snapping when he does open his mouth. He’s having problems at work but it’s not her fault, is it? And she thought with
that woman out of the way everything would be better between them. As he carries their bags upstairs, she sneaks a quick look at his phone that’s lying on the kitchen island. It’s got face recognition on it, but she knows his password, of course. There’s no signal – not surprising as the mobile reception in the cottage is never great. But there are no new messages either. She lets out a long breath. Of course there won’t be.

  After checking his work emails for the tenth time, all the while grumbling about the Wi-Fi signal as it dips in and out, Nick gets a fire going, so that the open-plan room is cosy by the time she’s finished knocking together the spag bol.

  They sit at the large wooden kitchen table, Nick shovelling the spaghetti into his mouth while she picks at hers. He’s telling her about the latest round of problems with the derelict hotel that four months ago his firm won the contract to redesign. He’s worried the contractor is screwing him over. He’s worried that everything that could go wrong with the build is going wrong.

  ‘What does Kas think about it all?’ she asks.

  ‘Kas has his own projects.’

  ‘Can’t you put your heads together about it?’ Lottie says, even though she already knows the answer. Nick isn’t a collaborator – he likes to work on his own, always has done, not trusting other people to do things the way he likes them done. Whereas Kas is very much a people person – just like her, although in his case too much sometimes with the ladies. She loves working with other people, although she’s loath to admit she’s found her calling in running the theatre group. Just as well she has found her calling though, seeing as she’s going to turn down the role that could have made her.

  She checks her phone while Nick rambles on. There’s one bar of signal. Ginger still hasn’t come back to her. She wonders if the casting director has gone back to Los Angeles. But she would have still returned her call, wouldn’t she? Maybe she knows what Lottie is going to say – that she can’t take the job. Nick comes first. Family comes first.

  Lottie takes the plates, scrapes the remains of her spag bol into the pedal bin, squirts washing-up liquid into the sink.

  ‘Leave that,’ Nick says, filling his glass and topping up hers. He hasn’t noticed she hasn’t touched it, that she’s just lifted it to her lips and let the wine stain them.

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘Lots, come on. Leave it.’ His hands are around her waist, guiding her back to the table where a small box sits on her placemat. It’s wrapped in shiny paper, the corners folded neatly, ribbon and a bow on top.

  ‘Happy anniversary,’ he says.

  Her hand flies to her mouth. She hasn’t been expecting anything. They don’t do presents for anniversaries – coming to Fairview, just the two of them, finding time for each other, is enough. Especially after the last few months. So why this year? She wonders if it’s a gift given out of guilt, before telling herself to stop it, telling the voice inside her head to shut up.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  Tears prick at the corners of her eyes. ‘We don’t do gifts.’

  ‘Well, it’s a special one, isn’t it? Ten years? I know it should be tin or aluminium but, well, even I know that’s not very romantic.’

  ‘We don’t do gifts,’ she says again.

  Nick looks down at his hands and then back up at her. ‘I haven’t been very easy to live with these past few months, work and …’ His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. ‘And, well, I just wanted you to know I love you, Lots—’

  She smiles at their joke. ‘I love you more, Mr Moore.’ And she does. She loves Nick more than anything, has loved him since the day she first clapped eyes on him.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Lottie had whispered to Ruth as a tall guy with a floppy fringe waved at Ruth as he’d made his way to the changing rooms.

  Ruth had stopped pedalling. ‘Nick? I work with him.’

  ‘Oh my God, he’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Cool it, sister, you’re red enough as it is,’ Ruth had said.

  Lottie had wiped at her face with her gym towel. ‘You didn’t tell me you worked with such a hottie.’

  Ruth had rolled her eyes. ‘Doesn’t float my boat.’

  Nick pushes the box towards her now. ‘Go on, then, open it.’

  ‘We don’t do gifts,’ she says for the third time, even though she has got him something. It’s tucked away in her bag, the best present she could ever give him.

  ‘I’m not expecting a present,’ he says, ‘if that’s what you’re worrying about.’ He reaches for her hand, draws it up to his lips. ‘I just want you, Lots. Nothing more.’

  She swallows, stares at his blue eyes, so blue that on their first date she had asked him – as people always do – if he was wearing coloured contact lenses. ‘Nothing fake about me,’ he’d said then, words that at times over the past few months she’s clung on to.

  ‘Just you,’ he says again.

  Lottie sniffs, trying to hold back the tears. These are the words she’s wanted to hear, the words that would have pushed away that horrible, crawling suspicion of what her husband was up to, why he was working later and later, coming home stinking of whiskey.

  Her nails slide under the Sellotape, discarding the wrapping paper to reveal a blue box with the words Tiffany & Co embossed on the top.

  She opens the box and gasps. An eternity ring, diamonds circling a platinum band, lies on a bed of crushed satin. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful. Gorgeous.’ With her hands on his face, she kisses his lips, breathing him in, her Nick, still her Nick.

  ‘Put it on then. Here.’

  He takes the ring, slides it onto her finger, just as he did with her engagement ring eleven years ago and her wedding ring a year after that. It’s a perfect fit. Just like they are. How could she have ever doubted him? How could she have ever doubted her marriage? Nick wouldn’t let anything come between them – deep down she knows that – wouldn’t let anything or anyone come between them. And nor would Lottie.

  He pulls her down to sit on his lap, his hands on her stomach.

  ‘I did get you something,’ she says. She can’t keep it in any longer. She doesn’t want to keep it in any longer.

  ‘I told you, I don’t want—’

  She gets off his lap and reaches for her bag, takes out a long thin box.

  ‘A pen,’ he says, ripping at the paper, spotting the Montblanc name. ‘Always wanted one of these. Very fancy.’

  He opens the box, his fingers reaching inside and then stops. ‘What? What?’ he says again, before he takes out the pregnancy test stick and peers at it. ‘I don’t understand.’ He turns it over, waves it at her. A pink cross stares back at them. ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘It’s mine, you idiot. I’m pregnant.’

  He shakes his head. Opens his mouth and then closes it again. She’s said some mad things to him these past few months, she knows that now, and he’s looking at her at this very moment as if this is just another of her inane utterings.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she says again.

  ‘But how? You can’t be.’

  ‘I can be. I am. Emma said it might happen, didn’t she? And that other consultant we saw before her. They both said sometimes it just does.’

  He pulls her back towards him, resting his cheek on her stomach. ‘I promise I’ll look after you, both of you. I’ll never let anyone or anything hurt you,’ he says, softly, as if he’s speaking to the cluster of cells inside her. ‘It’s a miracle.’

  It is a miracle, a miracle they’ve finally done it, finally made a part of them. And it’s a miracle they’ve done it in the worst few months of their marriage. They’ve hardly touched each other, only making love a handful of times.

  And then he cries, and they’re both crying, and he’s ushering her to the sofa and putting a cushion behind her, and shaking his head, tears rolling down his face.

  ‘We need champagne. We need to celebrate.’

  ‘We’ll get some tomorrow.’ She’d been meaning to bring a bottle but had forgotten, left it in the fridge.

  Nick goes over to the wine rack in the kitchen. ‘There’s bound to be one here.’ He pulls out a silver-foil-capped bottle before shoving it back in the rack. ‘Prosecco? No, got to be champagne.’

  ‘Prosecco will do, darling.’

  ‘We are toasting our baby’s head with champagne. I bet there’s some in the cellar,’ he says, moving over to the white-painted door at the far end of the kitchen. ‘It’s locked. Where’s the key? It’s always in the lock.’ He darts to the front door, picking up the two keys from the keyholder, trying them in the lock of the cellar door, but with no luck.