DISCLAIMER: This narrative piece is a Fan Fiction based on the globally popular TV Series Downton Abbey. As this is a spin of an avid fan's imagination, all rights belong to their rightful owner.
CHAPTER 1
Out from the gust of the cold London air, amidst the rush of motorists eager to be home, Edith emerged heading to her most-frequented pub three blocks away from her office.
She had a long day—three meetings in a row, one not less challenging than the others. At the end of the day, her head had begun to throb signalling an impending migraine but she stayed a little late to reply to her emails. By seven in the evening, she started feeling a little bit peckish and rushed out to eat.
The pub, known for its rustic ambiance and superb dishes, was where she intended to eat her dinner in silence.
"Good evening." She greeted the Coat Check with a smile and made a beeline to the nearest vacant table.
A groan escaped from her lips as she plopped herself on the chair. The waiter followed to take her order of Greek Salad, a slice of artisan focaccia, and a cup of tea.
When the waiter left, she leaned back and took in the pub's cosy interior while surreptitiously scanning the other tables. She and her older sister Mary had been practicing ethical people watching all their lives, an art that they mastered from their mother.
She had been looking around for a number of seconds when her eyes landed upon the profile of a woman in a secluded table in a dark corner to her left. Framed by the edge of the dividing wall to her right and a hardwood pillar to her left, the woman, in her mid-50's, could not have been someone else but her mother.
Even in the dim light that dramatically illuminated the woman's profile, Edith could make out the svelte form her mother cut even in a chunky navy blue jumper and a lighter blue denim jeans. The hand gestures, and the outline of the pretty straight nose, more pronounced whenever she glanced straight ahead, were unmistakably Cora's.
"Mama!" Edith started, her brown eyes lit up upon seeing Cora hanging out in her favourite pub which is rather more to her taste than that of her mother.
She stood up to say hello when she realized that the latter had male company whose face she could not make out in the dark save for a patch of the man's coat that the low beam of light coming from the main salon revealed to her. Shrouded in shadows, she could not even make out if the man has broad or narrow shoulders. Judging from the way her mother tilted her head up to her left when she's listening or talking to him, this person must be tall.
From Edith's vantage point, she would only risk getting seen by Cora and her companion if she peered a bit more and she didn't want that, not yet...
Every now and then her mother would lean towards him, the faintest tinkle of her laughter drifting from that corner of the pub towards where Edith was seated. They seemed very cosy and intimate and by the looks of it her mother was openly flirting with this man.
"Simon Bricker?!" Edith muttered to herself half asking.
"No, it can't be him!" Her mind shouted back in protest.
She could imagine her mother being this intimate with just one man: her father, Robert. But, of course, their story had long ended in a painful divorce five years ago, so painful that at the end of the whole debacle her parents could not even bear to look at each other for almost a year thereafter. It took all efforts to get them to look at each other again but even then Edith was not fully convinced that her parents were really seeing each other without the veil of indifference.
Edith's head started to spin, her migraine threatened to return; her heart beat wildly, her breath was caught in her throat; a chill ran down her spine and her hands begun to tremble.
Apart from Robert, Simon Bricker is the only man she knew her mother would go out with quite recently.
Six months ago, her mother, who stayed mostly in New York after the divorce, made a brief three-day surprise visit to London—to assess the feasibility of opening a gallery for a friend—and invited Edith and Mary to a dinner the night before her return flight to America.
"I want to introduce you to a friend, so Mary, Edith, please do come to dinner..." Read her mother's text.
Mary and Edith arrived on time at the exclusive restaurant where Cora booked. Their mother was with a tall and lanky guy, Mr. Simon Bricker, who sat comfortably at her right side of the table. The sisters were uncharacteristically speechless from shock which thawed into dislike when first they saw him there.
Mr. Bricker, an art historian affiliated with Cambridge was on secondment at the Smithsonian while giving lectures at Columbia. He and Cora were introduced to each other by a friend and collaborated in a project after. It was clear to the girls—very smart young women as they are—that the two were not just art collaborators, the two have started dating.
The siblings went through the whole motion of dining with their mother and Mr. Bricker in daze.
As the night wound on, the sisters bid good bye to Cora throwing a perfunctory glance at her companion. They hurried back into the parking lot in silence wishing they were not there at all. Or that Simon Bricker was not there at all. Or that tonight's dinner did not happen at all.
Midway to where they parked the car, both sisters stopped walking and looked at each other. Uncharacteristically, Mary, restrained and least expressive, managed to croak, "Oh, Edith...I was not prepared for that scene out there..." gesturing back at the restaurant. "But I guess it's time for Mama to move on..." she faltered.
After a long pause, Mary continued choking a sob, "What about papa?"
Their poor Papa is still madly in love with their mother no matter how he pretended to be stoic about the separation.
Edith could not muster herself to say something. She felt numb, crushed. Mr. Bricker's arrival into her mother's life dashed her hopes of having her parents get back together for the second time. Any children would wish to despite how old or open-minded they get. She still does.
Once she found her tongue, Edith gave her brief take on this new plot twist to their parents' lives. "It's time for Papa to move on, too, I guess."
She sounded defeated. "After all, love is not enough for people to stick together, Mary. We should know."
Edith rode a vortex back to the present. Her heart is racked by mixed emotions—disbelief and guilt over being an unwitting party to a dating life that her mother was trying to conduct in discreet.
The air in the pub suddenly became oppressive. With trembling hands, she checked with her father who must be home by now.
"Good evening, Papa. Is Mama home yet?"
For three months now, her mother has been living full-time in London to supervise the re-modelling and manage the opening of an art gallery that she co-owned with a fellow American. The work was completed after two months, just in time for its opening about a month ago. Given Cora's indefinite stay, Mary negotiated with utmost difficulty for her mother to live in the family's London house where Robert is staying instead of paying for a hotel during the whole duration.
"It's more practical and comfortable than staying in a hotel for months...though I don't doubt that Mama could pay a lifetime occupancy at the most expensive hotel in the city."
At first, Cora was reluctant and a bit weird out by the idea; Robert strongly opposed it. In the end, Mary's convincing power prevailed. So, despite their differences and unexpressed misgivings, that was how Robert and Cora found themselves together again in one roof minding their own affairs and keeping to themselves most of the time.
A couple of minutes later her father's reply beeped and ended her musings: "Not yet, darling."
That's it! She is sure of it. Her mother is having an enjoyable night out with Mr. Bricker.
Without waiting for her order to arrive, Edith grabbed her things, placed a few paper bills on the table to pay for her tab, murmured an apology to a dumbfounded waiter and walked away fast from there. The thud of her shoes on concrete echoed the dull ache in her heart and just like the way she came, she vanished into the cold London air. Her hunger forgotten.