Tilly Bagshawe 3-book Bundle: Scandalous, Fame, Friends and Rivals

‘Er … you’re welcome?’ said the girl, watching the beautiful girl in the couture coat twirl her way down the street. She was sure she recognized her from somewhere.

Back in her apartment, Sasha kicked off her boots, dropped her coat on the floor and ran to her bedroom, bouncing up and down on the bed like a five-year-old, whooping and laughing until she was out of breath.

After all these years, just like that, she’d done it.

She’d figured out a way to get her revenge on Theo Dexter.

It wouldn’t be easy, of course. Plenty of things could go wrong. But it was a chance, a plan, a window of opportunity she’d come to believe she would never be granted.

It was going to be a good Christmas after all.

PART FOUR (#ulink_9f1fbb8d-2a2b-508d-bc7a-0cb185d3f944)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#ulink_6bc06e35-825d-599e-b554-35b22ea1160a)

Theresa sat in the waiting room of the Bridge Street surgery, flicking through a three-year-old copy of Country Life and marvelling at how cheap the property prices were back then … back when they’d seemed astronomical. The property market had been on her mind lately, ever since an extremely polite American couple had knocked on the door of Willow Tree Cottage a few weeks ago and asked her at what price she would consider selling.

‘It is just the most utterly charming house we’ve ever seen,’ gushed the wife. ‘We were planning to buy in the Cotswolds, you know, around Oxford?’ She pronounced it ‘Arksford’.

Theresa suppressed a smile. ‘Yes, I know the area. It’s lovely.’

‘But then we came out here and Cambridge just blew us away, didn’t it, Bill?’

‘Blew us away,’ the husband agreed. For a moment Theresa wondered whether he was being literal. She loved Cambridge as much as anyone had ever loved a city, but the February winds were brutally bitter. With its bare trees and grey, plaintive skies, and the last of the holiday snow turned to sludge in the streets, neither Cambridge nor Willow Tree Cottage looked at their best.

‘You’re very kind, but I’m afraid I couldn’t consider selling,’ Theresa explained, taking their telephone number and email address anyway because they were so insistent. Ironically, had the couple knocked on her door a few weeks earlier, she might well have entertained their offer. When she first heard that Theo had applied for the St Michael’s Mastership, she’d jumped off the deep end, vowing to abandon her own bid for the job and leave the university altogether. As usual, it was Jenny Aubrieau who got her to see sense.

‘Are you out of your mind? In fact, forget that, you can scratch the question mark. You are out of your mind.’

It was the morning after Theresa’s passionate night with Horatio Hollander. Theresa had woken late, hideously hung over and in complete emotional turmoil. Thank God Horatio had left early. There was a note from him propped up against the butter dish on the kitchen table, but she didn’t have the strength to read it yet. Last night had been amazing, incredible, a complete revelation and one of the most meaningful experiences of Theresa’s life. But she already knew she mustn’t repeat it. What can I offer a boy his age? Once his infatuation wears off he’ll want children and a normal family life. All the things I can’t give him. She pictured Horatio at forty, still handsome and youthful, pushing her around in a wheelchair. Admittedly, it was a bit of a stretch. When Horatio was forty, Theresa would only be sixty-one. But the basic truth remained: she was too old for him. He would grow to resent her, and rightly so. Downing two extra-strength Alka-Seltzer, she crawled back to bed but was woken by a phone call from Jenny, demanding to know where she’d been last night and insisting she come over for brunch.

‘I really can’t, Jen. I’m too ropey to drive.’

‘Fine,’ said Jenny. ‘I’ll come and get you. Throw on a sweater, I’ll be there in five.’ An hour later, fortified by a hefty slab of Jenny’s homemade chocolate cake and numerous cups of hot, sweet tea, Theresa had confessed that she was thinking of leaving. ‘I can’t face bumping into him every day. Well, maybe I can, but I don’t want to face it.’

‘So you’re just going to pull out of the Mastership? Roll over and let him win?’

‘Come on, Jenny,’ Theresa laughed joylessly. ‘He’s already won. You know how strapped for cash St Michael’s is. Who are they going to want as Master, a penniless woman Shakespeare scholar no one’s ever heard of, who’s too inexperienced anyway, or a world-renowned superstar with a sex-symbol wife who can raise the six million they need to reroof the chapel just by fluttering his eyelashes? It’s hopeless.’

‘It’s not,’ said Jenny robustly. ‘Not if you don’t give up hope. Besides, isn’t there a principle involved here?’

Theresa took another big bite of chocolate cake and tried not to think about principles.

‘I mean, why should you give up everything you’ve worked for just because he has some passing whim about coming back to his roots? What sort of message does that send your students, especially the girls?’

‘I’ve never set myself up as a role model,’ mumbled Theresa guiltily, thinking about Horatio. What the hell was she playing at?

‘Maybe not. But you’ve never been a coward, either, not while I’ve known you,’ said Jenny. Theresa was shocked by the anger in her voice. ‘You love your life here, you love your work, you love that house. Don’t let him drive you out, T. Don’t do it.’

And in the end, Theresa hadn’t. She’d channelled her inner Blitz spirit and hunkered down at Willow Tree Cottage, working harder than ever on her book and her teaching, doing her best to impress the St Michael’s fellowship with her quiet industry and determined professionalism. She’d also told a devastated Horatio Hollander that she couldn’t go out with him. For a few weeks afterwards she would see him at supervisions, but it was torturous for both of them. Shocked by how much she thought about him, and horrified by the degree to which her ending their short-lived affair had affected him physically – hardly stocky to begin with, he’d become positively gaunt, his cheeks caving in like a prisoner of war – she was relieved when Horatio eventually requested a transfer to another professor.

‘It’s not personal,’ he told her, sadly. ‘Well, it is personal, but I’m not angry or anything. I just … can’t.’

‘I understand,’ said Theresa. She felt as if she was going into a decline herself, although her version unfortunately involved eating rather than starving. While Horatio’s ribs became more prominent daily, Theresa seemed to have developed a layer of blubber round the middle that no amount of brisk walks into college would shift. As the nights grew shorter and the weather progressed from chilly to cold to arctic, she would sit curled up by the fire at the cottage, eating Marks & Spencer’s sticky toffee pudding and forcing herself not to think about either Horatio or Theo, whose arrival was now set for mid March, a mere three weeks before the actual elections. All the other candidates, including herself, had been diligently lobbying the college authorities for months, but not Theo. Of course not. He’ll just waltz in and steal it from under our noses, like the king that he is.

‘Ms O’Connor?’

The doctor’s receptionist, a fat, surly jobsworth of a woman who revelled in the power she wielded over her tiny, linoleum-floored fiefdom, summoned Theresa imperiously to the desk.

‘You didn’t fill out your forms. I’m going to have to let this gentleman go in ahead of you. We’ll try and squeeze you in before five, if you’d like to do these now and bring them back to me.’

‘But my appointment was at three thirty!’ said Theresa wearily. ‘I’ve been waiting forty minutes already.’ She wouldn’t mind so much if she weren’t so damn exhausted all the time.

The receptionist shrugged. ‘We need the forms. It’s part of our patients’ charter.’ She pointed to a laminated sheet on the wall.

Theresa returned to her seat and began ticking boxes murderously. Patients’ charter indeed. I’d like to show her my ‘out of patience’ bloody charter. She’d been feeling low for weeks now, but had put off coming to see the doctor for fear he might advise rest (impossible with the election so close) or, even worse, a diet and exercise regime involving neither sticky toffee pudding nor sitting vegetable-like on the couch for three hours a night devouring old episodes of Location Location Location. By the time she’d finished the forms, provided a urine and blood sample, and exhausted the paltry supply of magazines – you know you’re bored when you’re reduced to skimming through a dog-eared copy of Cambridgeshire Today – the waiting room was all but empty when the doctor finally showed her into his office. A short, wisp of a man with the sort of pale, freckled complexion that looked even worse on men than it did on women, he nevertheless had a genial way about him, like a friendly leprechaun.

‘Ah, Ms O’Connor. Professor O’Connor, isn’t it?’ He smiled disarmingly. Theresa nodded. ‘Well, I must say, Professor, it is nice to end a long, dreary Wednesday on such a positive note.’

‘Positive?’ Theresa rubbed her eyes tiredly. ‘I’m not with you. You mean you don’t think there’s anything wrong with me?’

‘There isn’t anything wrong with you.’

He was so definitive about it, Theresa found herself getting irritated.

‘What you mean is, you don’t know what’s wrong with me. Because I can assure you, I’m not in here for the fun of it. I don’t know what it is, if I’m anaemic or I’ve picked up some sort of virus. But my energy levels … what?’

He was laughing at her now, his pale blue eyes creased at the corners, chuckling quietly to himself. ‘I’d stick to the literature if I were you, Professor. You make a lousy doctor.’

Too annoyed to think of a comeback, Theresa folded her arms sullenly.

‘You’re pregnant, my dear.’

Theresa went white. Without thinking, she grabbed the chair for support, sinking down slowly into it. It took a second or two to process what he’d just said. When eventually she spoke her voice sounded croaky and odd.

‘That’s not possible. I’m infertile. I tried for years … my ex … specialists.’ Her powers of sentence construction seemed to have deserted her. ‘There’s no way. I’m forty-four.’

‘Well, sorry,’ the doctor shrugged. ‘But you are pregnant. I can tell you that with one hundred per cent certainty. You’ll need to have a scan but I would guess you’re somewhere in the region of three months along. Does that ring any bells?’

Yes. Christmas bells. Horatio’s loving, tortured face loomed into mental view. It was ridiculous, impossible. All those years of trying and hoping, of ovulation tests and IVF and sperm spinning and macrobiotic diets. And here she was, twelve years and one drunken one-night-stand later …

‘You must have missed at least one period.’

‘Probably,’ Theresa mumbled. ‘I’m so irregular anyway. I thought …’ She laughed nervously. ‘I thought it might be menopause.’

‘Again, I’d stick to the poetry. So I take it the pregnancy is … unexpected?’

She nodded, stunned.