Left? Maggie had gone?
That wasn’t some crazy desire to go after her that had him half turning back towards the parked Land Rover was it?
‘I did suggest that she should ask if you would be willing to rent the house to her,’ Philip continued, as Finn checked his reckless impulse. ‘After all, from your point of view it would make much more sense to have it tenanted than left empty, especially with such a potentially good tenant—an elderly widow living on her own, and…’
‘A what?’
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All thoughts of going after Maggie gone, Finn stared at the agent, the brusque sharpness of his voice causing the younger man to look confused.
‘An elderly widow,’ he repeated, persisting when Finn continued to look sternly at him, ‘Maggie’s grandmother. Maggie told me the story when she came to my office to ask if she could buy the house prior to auction at the reserve price. I’m sure she won’t mind me repeating it to you.’
Finn had his doubts about that, but he quelled his conscience and gave Phillip an encouraging look.
‘It seems that her grandparents lived in the Dower House as a young married couple. Maggie’s grandfather has recently died, and she is concerned about the effect his loss is having on her grandmother. When she saw that the Dower House was coming up for auction she hoped that if she could buy it for her grandmother it might help to cheer her up a bit.’
Her grandmother. Maggie had wanted the house for her grandmother! Silently Finn digested the information Philip had given him. Equally silently he recalled Maggie’s stricken look when she had realised that he was not going to allow her to outbid him.
The story the agent had told him was forcing him to see Maggie in a different light; to see her as someone who cared very deeply about those she loved. There had been no mention of her grandmother when she had told him about her successful business, but then there had been no mention of a lover either; in fact she had denied flatly that she had one.
Later that afternoon, as he drove back to the farm, Finn discovered that he was still thinking about Maggie. As he drove across the ford he found he was actually looking down into the water, as though he might see one of her ridiculously impractical shoes there. He had noticed that she was wearing another pair of impossibly high-heeled shoes again today—only instead of seeing the choice of such footwear in the country and in such weather as gross folly, rather dangerously it had taken on an almost endearing quality, a special something that made her wholly and uniquely Maggie.
The fact that he had no close family of his own was something that Finn felt very keenly. His parents had married late in life, when their own parents had been elderly, so Finn had never known his grandparents. His father had died of a heart attack shortly after Finn’s eighteenth birthday and his mother had died less than a year later. His own experiences had taught Finn how important family was. And as he drove into the farmyard he was deep in thought.
‘And then Bas said that he didn’t care how long it was going to take, he was going to keep on proposing until I gave in and agreed to marry him. So I thought I might as well save us both a lot of time and hassle and give in there and then.’
Politely Maggie joined in the others’ laughter as they all listened to Lisa, drolly explaining how she came to be wearing a huge solitaire diamond engagement ring having sworn only weeks earlier that she was never ever going to get married.
The eight of them had been meeting up once a month for the last five years, all of them dedicated career women, all of them independent twenty to thirty-somethings, with their own flats, cars, accountants, and the wherewithal to buy their own diamond rings if they wanted them, and all of them determined to stay single. But gradually things had started to change.
Maggie wasn’t sure she could pinpoint exactly how or when that change had started to happen. She just knew that it had, and from being earnest occasions on which they discussed their ambitions and successes over a meal at whichever of London’s trendy eateries they were currently favouring, their get-togethers had begun to take on a much more personal note. The names of family members had begun to creep into their conversation, along with shamefaced confessions of parental or sibling pressure regarding their lack of partner and/or offspring, and a bonding at a much deeper level had come into being. Maggie had relished that closeness. Her friends were very important to her and she knew she wasn’t alone in that feeling. Friends, as anyone who read a magazine or newspaper knew, were the new ‘family’.
But now once again things were changing, and this time Maggie did not like it.
Caitlin had started it, returning from a holiday in Ireland to announce out of the blue that she was moving in with her boyfriend.
‘My sister has this gorgeous baby,’ was how she’d limply explained her change of heart, ‘and I suddenly realised that I’m five years older than she is and that if I’m not careful…’
‘It’s your biological clock ticking away,’ Lisa had told her knowledgeably, and that had been the start of it.
Now all of them had partners—all of them but her, Maggie realised as she listened to the others’ laughter as they teased Lisa. But they were the ones who had changed, not her; just as they were the ones who sometimes looked a little self-conscious when they talked about their altered goals. As she talked to her friends right now, the unwelcome thought struck Maggie that it was almost as though Finn, with his back-to-nature, downshifting lifestyle, was more akin to them than she was herself. She felt…she felt almost as though she was an outsider, she recognised indignantly. And for some reason she was not prepared to analyse she felt like putting the blame for this on Finn’s shoulders. And why shouldn’t she? After all he was to blame for the fact that she was sitting here thinking about him.
‘Of course Ma’s jumped on the bandwagon now,’ Lisa was telling them. ‘I think I’m going to have to physically restrain her from organising a full-works wedding—and Bas isn’t much help. He’s virtually egging her on. Mind you, if he had his way there’d be no way I’d be decently fit to walk down the aisle. Waddle down perhaps; I’ve never known a man so desperate to become a father…’
‘It’s the new thing,’ Charlotte interrupted. ‘Men are baby-mad. Everywhere you look men are downscaling, cutting back their working hours, insisting that they want to spend more time with their families. I’ve lost count of the number of couples I know who’ve moved out of the City in the last year, and all of them because they either have or want to start families.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘And after all what could be more cosy than a huge country house big enough for you to work from home, and to house a family? Loads of people are trying to persuade their parents to move in with them, too. I mean, you just couldn’t get any better childcare than your own parents, could you?’
As Maggie listened to the heated debate that followed she felt a cold sharp pang of alienness. But these were her friends, women she had shared her hopes and dreams with for the last five years—women who, after her grandmother, formed her closest relationship circle.
‘Well, moving out to the country is quite definitely a hot new trend,’ Tanya confirmed. ‘I mean look at Greta and Nigel. Of course those with the financial resources to do so have always aimed to own a house in the country along with a city pièd-a-terre, but…’
As another heated flurry of exchanges broke out Maggie remained silent, locked in the pain of her own thoughts.
‘You’re quiet Maggie,’ Charlotte noticed, turning to look at her. But before Maggie could make any response Lisa was laughing.
‘Oh, Maggie thoroughly disapproves of us all. She thinks we’re traitoresses to the cause, don’t you?’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Maggie denied, but she could see that they didn’t believe her. And she could see, too, that suddenly she was excluded from their new shared closeness.