The Hollow Heart (The Heartfelt Series) Read online

  “Time to pen the follow-up, eh?”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’ll drive you, you might need a hand, I am a lawyer after all.”

  She tutted at him as he followed her out to the car.

  “I don’t know why everyone thinks journalism is so glamorous, bloody hard work most of the time.”

  “Is this a scoop?” George asked, squeezing in behind the wheel.

  George had nearly fainted though, when only a matter of weeks later, Marianne turned up at his flat with an overnight bag, dropping it unceremoniously in the cramped hall, meeting his baffled gaze full on.

  “Thought we ought to get the sleeping together thing out of the way,” she said matter–of-factly. Then burst out laughing at the look on his face. “Well, we’re hardly teenagers are we? And I don’t think we should have it hanging over us, you know - will we, won’t we? Besides it’s time we had a nice weekend away and we wouldn’t want to spoil it by having to hide in the bathroom to put our pyjamas on.”

  She followed him into the kitchen. He was already pouring them each a very large glass of Pinot Grigio, and George did not drink.

  “George?”

  “Ah well, you see, I was hoping we could just rub along as we are for about the next ten years or so, if that’s okay with you?” His eyes twinkled, “I’m not awfully adventurous in the bedroom department, not built for it.” He patted his rather large tummy. “Girls tend to go off me once we’ve had sex, I’m afraid, usually the kiss of death.” He looked dramatically glum.

  “But you can’t put me off George. I’ve seen you in your dressing gown, with a stinking cold and holes in your socks.”

  “So you have.” He smiled and not looking a gift horse, with a glass in each hand, headed towards his shambles of a bedroom. “Follow me then, you minx and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Can I leave my socks on?”

  Making love with George was lovely, warm, easy and all-encompassing, rather like George himself. What you saw, was what you got and if there was rather a lot of it, it was all top quality, full-bodied British male, bought and paid for. When they made love and George drifted off into a pleasant, just below the surface doze, he would stroke her hair whispering, ‘My darling girl,’ over and over. He performed he thought, his secret ritual every time they slept together, whether they had made love or not and the one thing his darling girl grew to love about George, even though she hardly dare admit it to herself, was how very much George loved his darling girl. Marianne was beginning to consider, very tentatively if the ‘career-driven journalist’ might be able to make a go of it with the ‘committed to public duty’ Member of Parliament.

  She had to admit that to be so dearly loved was more than wonderful and made it so easy to love George right back, without question. She wondered, in those rare moments she allowed herself a sliver of private contemplation, whether it was too soon to hope that George could be her second chance, her hope for real happiness? She did not have to wonder for too long.

  By the time Christmas loomed on the horizon, Marianne and George had been an item for a number of months. Their relationship had nurtured gently. It was certainly no grand passion but in many ways she preferred it that way. It was lovely to have someone to talk to and walk with, and nice not to always eat dinner alone in front of the telly; or be obliged to go out with the girls because there were no boys to go out with.

  Her life had needed more balance, George had given her a whole new aspect, other things to think about, another person to consider. Her sex life had been non-existent for some time, and although she pretended it never really bothered her, with George around, who was genuinely affectionate and loving, she could enjoy how much or how little she needed. All things considered, even though she still dare not admit it to herself, she had started to hope again.

  Without thinking, Marianne put her name down for the usual skeleton staff rota over the festive period. She never bothered taking leave at Christmas, it was not that she was un-Christian but the phones were quiet and it gave her space to catch up. If the truth be told, she could not bear all the feigned jollity, or worse, colleagues feeling obliged to invite her to join them and their families. So she always worked through the holiday, only stopping to treat herself to a nice cashmere sweater or smart pair of boots to mark the occasion.

  Then one morning, singing along with ‘Last Christmas’ it occurred to her: what about George? Maybe George loved Christmas. Perhaps he wanted them to enjoy it together. She felt immediately guilty, she was so used to just doing her own thing; it was selfish not to consider George, especially as he consulted her about everything, always hoping they could do things together. By the time the song ended, she resolved to discuss their Christmas plans that very evening. But Marianne was way too late. George had already made plans of his own, for both of them - well all three of them, actually.

  Chapter Two –

  Not Just For Christmas

  It was the week before Christmas. She could see it was him through the coloured glass, standing large as a bear in the doorway of her small, suburban house. George, in his huge dogtooth overcoat, wearing the bright red scarf she had bought to cheer him up when he had a dreadful cold. He held a picnic basket in his arms, having pushed the doorbell with his nose. She opened the door; he seemed excited and nervous at the same time. The tartan rug on top of the basket moved. She jumped. This was not the offering of food and wine she had been expecting for their first Christmas together. It moved again.

  “Have a look!” he boomed.

  She lifted the fabric to reveal the pointed ears, bright eyes and shiny black nose of the tiniest puppy she had ever seen.

  She gasped.

  “George, he’s adorable. Is it a he? Is he for me? What’s his name?”

  She lifted it out. The little bundle, a West Highland terrier, squirmed with pleasure. Marianne noticed a large, ‘Paddington Bear’ type, brown paper label attached to a ribbon around the puppy’s neck. In George’s manic scrawl, it read:

  “My name is Montgomery. I’m a Christmas present from George. PS: He wants to know if you’ll marry him?”

  Shock rendered her speechless; she looked from the large man to the tiny animal. Her heart contracted, as both pairs of eyes radar-beamed adoration at her. She turned away briefly, as her past life and loves ran like a DVD on fast forward through her brain. George knew as much as she wanted him to know about her previous relationships. When he had pressed her for an answer about past loves, not long after they had met, she had merely recounted, “There was someone once.”

  “Someone special?”

  “Seemed so at the time.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No, ancient history.”

  “Married?”

  “Nearly, I thought.”

  “Children?”

  “He has now.”

  “Regrets?”

  “No way.”

  “Ah that’s my gritty, award-winning career woman,” he had said kindly, squeezing her knee.

  “And what have you hidden in the closet?” she had asked brightly.

  They had swapped early-life stories. She had spent the first eighteen months of her life in a convent in the wilds of the Wicklow mountains, while the nuns vetted various pairs of prospective parents. The couple who finally adopted her had been older than the parents of her peers. They were nice, well-educated people and she always thought of them fondly. Kind but cool, was how she would describe them, especially when compared with the parents of school friends who often invited her to stay during the holidays. Her friends always seemed to belong to big, noisy, clans who would roar their hatred of each other at the top of their voices and then squeeze each other half to death with hugs, before leaving to go back as term time approached.

  She had boarded at a good Dublin girl’s school while her parents travelled with their work. Her father, a marine biologist, and her mother his research assistant. Her special memories were their summers tog
ether, spent sailing off the coast of their favourite island, Innishmahon, a mile out to sea from Westport in County Mayo. Her parents, the Coltranes, had made sure she had a good education. She studied English Literature and then after a stint at a national newspaper, left for England to take up an internship at a magazine group before moving to Chesterford and the Chronicle.

  Her parents were proud of her, they told her, and they met up briefly whenever their schedules allowed. But they had both died relatively young, first her father with cancer and then her mother, succumbing to seemingly nothing specific, within months of each other. If Marianne were romantically inclined, she would have said her mother died of a broken heart, as she and her father had been inseparable all their adult lives.

  George sighed and squeezed her hand when she had finished her potted history. Topping up her glass, he said:

  “And what of your birth parents, darling girl? What do you know of them?”

  Marianne flashed him a look.

  “Nothing. Why would I? I was put up for adoption. No contact ever made. No mention. Weirdly, there’s a black and white photo of me as a new born baby attached to my adoption certificate, which the solicitor gave to me when mother died, but that’s it, that’s all there is.”

  He handed her the drink, sitting a little distance away to look her directly in the eyes.

  “Not curious? Not bothered?” He kept his tone light.

  “Not at all, I’d feel disloyal to my parents. They brought me up. They are my mother and father.” She lifted Monty onto her lap, wrapping her arms around him.

  “But you’re an investigative journalist, I wondered if you were looking into your own background when you came upon the ‘Babies for Sale’ scam?”

  “I was just doing my job, Jack Buchannon came up with the lead anyway, his wife Isabelle knows a social worker who came across a girl who was convinced her child had been stolen. I’m not a story, George.” She turned her attention to the puppy. Subject closed.

  George, on the other hand, could tell stories about himself and his family ad infinitum. He adored his parents, long gone, and was part of a large, rambling, flung-across-the-globe family. He had three brothers and one elder sister, all talented, liberal and bohemian, yet differentially conservative. His parents would have loved her, he often said.

  “Ahem...” He coughed bringing them back to the present. “Well, I’m sure the idea of us getting married is all a bit of a surprise, no doubt. So why don’t you take your time and have a think about it? Don’t want to fling everything at you all at once darling girl, but when you know something’s right, no point hanging about, so to speak.” He tweaked her nose and then the puppy’s. Marianne kissed George on the chin and carried the little bundle into the kitchen for some warm milk. George followed, humming, ‘How much is that doggy in the window?”

  Later, after supper, the three of them lay sprawled on the sofa. Marianne cuddled the little dog, burying her nose in the space between his ears. She inhaled him, a wonderful, indescribable puppy-baby smell. Montgomery and marriage? A future with George and Monty. An instant family. Someone else to think about, care about, someone to love. Marianne looked from one to the other, desperately hoping she was not being blinded by Christmas lights, yet at this particular juncture, she considered the whole idea an extremely appealing combination.

  A few days later the three of them were having sausages for supper on Christmas Eve.

  “Oh George, hurry up, Monty’s starving.” Marianne laughed watching the puppy run excitedly between George’s legs as he assembled the meal.

  “Well, you hurry up and jolly well give me an answer,” he told her. “And then this poor little chap will know where he stands, who his folks are and won’t fret so much about where his next meal is coming from.”

  She went to stand beside him.

  “George, there’s something I need you to know.”

  He carried on frying the sausages.

  “I did want to marry someone a long time ago. It would have been a terrible mistake, I was young, foolish. It ended badly.”

  “I know,” he replied, turning the gas off.

  “You know?” she was shocked.

  “Of course I know, I’m a politician, I want to marry you, if there are any skeletons in the closet I need to know about them, so we can face things together.” He pulled her to him, giving her a huge George hug. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  Marianne sat down at the breakfast bar; George poked the sausages around a bit.

  “It was not long after my parents died. I was feeling pretty low and my boss gave me a commission for a series of articles on young Brits living in Paris. I fell madly in love with Paris and everything about it, stepping out with a well-known celebrity photographer. You may have heard of him, Claude Dubec?” George nodded to her to continue.

  “Well, it was a typical whirlwind romance. My parents had left me a small legacy and my glamorous new boyfriend liked the high life, so it was fun, for a while, sort of a rebellion thing, I guess. My folks had been totally work-orientated, convinced their research would ultimately be for the good of the planet, and I had always been such a well-behaved, dutiful daughter. But they’d have spun in their graves, if they had one, if they’d known I frittered a good chunk of my inheritance on sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and a very inappropriate partner.” She smiled wryly.

  “No grave?” George was surprised. “Your parents I mean, no grave?”

  “Oh, the association with convents doesn’t mean we’re staunch Catholics, or anything like that. It just usually means things are done properly, particularly where education is concerned. My parents were eco-warriors before there was such a thing, so I scattered their ashes in the sea off Innishmahon, the island where we used to holiday when I was young.”

  “We should go there one day you, Montgomery and I, would you like that?”

  But Marianne was not listening.

  “George, my relationship with Claude, do you know everything? How it ended and everything? What it meant for me, how I can’t…” Her voice cracked.

  He went to her, taking her face in his hands, there were tears in his eyes.

  “Yes I do, and it’s you I love, you I want. If I have you and Monty I have everything I need.” He kissed her softly on the mouth, “Put it this way, we don’t have to make love in the dark on my account, unless that’s because you can’t bear to witness my man boobs and wobbly tummy in the flesh!”

  “Oh George, stop it,” she said solemnly, “You’re alright about it then? All of it?”

  “Are you?” he asked. She stood up and returned his hug.

  “I am now.”

  “Good, because we’re starving.” He laughed, releasing her to serve the food.

  She said yes the following morning, still in her pyjamas, squeezing George and Monty together as tightly as she could. She knew she wanted every Christmas to be special from now on.

  Christmas and New Year melted into spring as she, George and Monty made plans. They had a new home to find, George in particular wanted a large house, with a study for himself, and some sort of area they could turn into a library-cum-music room for Marianne. He played the piano badly and hoped Marianne would accompany him on the violin she had started to learn as a school girl but had not touched for years. Monty joined in too, making a strange yet tuneful snuffling noise.

  “Watch out Britain’s Got Talent!” George regularly pronounced.

  To the amazement of her colleagues and the amusement of Marianne herself, she had taken her foot off the career accelerator to focus on building a life for the three of them, even taking owed holiday to house hunt and shop for furnishings. Sophie, one of Marianne’s oldest and severely neglected friends, was thrilled at the news her career-driven chum was finally settling down to some semblance of domesticity. She was also delighted to be roped in to help, as she was particularly adept at internet research, being toddler-bound and freelance.

  It was all coming togeth
er nicely, and although George was under an enormous amount of pressure at work, the three of them were having a lovely time, with Monty making the final decision about anything they could not agree on. This was achieved by Marianne laying cuttings from magazines or swatches of material in front of him and saying fetch. He would always grab something and head off to his basket triumphantly. Once retrieved, this would then be deemed their selection.

  It was a fabulously bright May day. It had rained earlier, so everything looked freshly washed, the sun was quickly warming the tarmac and there were spots of glimmering heat haze as George headed north along the M1 towards home and a well-earned weekend. He was trying to put a particularly hellish morning behind him, having endured a series of very tense meetings with civil servants and academics, relating to a report he was working on, followed by a barrage of emails from locals opposed to a new Chesterford planning application.

  He was longing for home. The relatively new home he shared with his gorgeous fiancé and their adorable West Highland terrier. The home that smelled of fresh paint and Chinese takeaways, and stood curtain-less before the world, yet wrapped itself around him in a comfort blanket of chaos, clutter and love. As he turned the music up, his mobile rang; he answered speaking into his ‘hands free’ microphone beside the sun visor above the windscreen. No answer. The new-fangled instrument was always playing up. He checked his phone, it displayed the discreet code that was the Prime Minister. He grabbed it, punching the answer button.

  He did not see, in the split second it took the car in front to slam on its brakes, the lurch of the juggernaut with a foreign number plate, as it tried to avoid a pheasant wandering in the slow lane. But he heard the slam, like the boom of a cannon, as the car in front plummeted into the undercarriage of the truck and, hauling at the wheel to avoid it, he swerved towards a coach that should not have been in the fast lane at all.