‘Some of us aren’t tough enough to fight back,’ he said.
Beth heard a note of wistfulness in his voice and she looked hard at him.
‘Why? Who’s walking all over you?’ she asked.
He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. She knew she had struck a chord.
‘Come on, tell me,’ she said gently. ‘Better out than in.’
He scratched his head and looked away from her. ‘I can’t,’ he said eventually.
‘Why? Because you’re afraid I’ll pass it on? Do I strike you as a gossip?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said quickly. He was blushing now, he looked like a guilty schoolboy.
‘I don’t think you’d tell everyone in the office about this incident,’ she said. ‘So please trust me.’
He sighed. ‘Okay. It’s Anna,’ he blurted out. ‘I know I should get tough but I can’t. She’s got a problem with drink, you see.’
Beth was astounded. She had never met Anna, but she’d seen a photograph of her in Steven’s office, a pretty woman with dark hair and a wide, vivacious smile. Right from her first meeting with Steven, Beth had always had an image of him leading the ‘ideal’ life.
She knew roughly where he lived, a desirable neighbourhood of semi-detached houses with neat gardens. Since she’d met Sophie and Polly and seen how well behaved they were, she had imagined Anna as the prop of the PTA, a woman who could make a prize-winning sponge cake at the same time as she ran up a fancy-dress costume.
Yet suddenly Sophie’s remark about her mother liking wine too much came back to her, and she remembered Steven’s reaction.
‘Have you gone anywhere for help? How is it affecting the girls?’ she asked.
‘It’s making the girls very anxious.’ Steven’s voice shook and his eyes were bleak. ‘They never know what to expect when they get back from school. They can’t rely on their mother for anything. It’s me who keeps everything together, or tries to. As for getting help, Anna won’t admit there is a problem.’
‘I’m so sorry, Steven,’ Beth said. ‘I never guessed there was anything wrong, you always seem so cheerful.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s one of Anna’s many complaints about me, I’m too cheerful, too boring, too everything for her.’
‘Where are the girls now?’ Beth asked.
‘At a friend’s house, they are staying over tonight,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’d be rushing back to make their tea. But I didn’t mean to spill this out. I’d better go, you’ve had quite enough drama for one day.’
‘No, stay and have supper with me,’ she said impulsively. He’d been kind to her and she was going to reciprocate.
‘I’d like that,’ he said, and half smiled. ‘But I don’t want to talk about my problem with Anna any more. Just admitting there is one is enough for today.’
As Beth cooked some pasta and made a Bolognese sauce, Steven sat on a kitchen chair and listened as she told him more about the visit with Susan.
They talked in general about Susan as they ate the meal. Her life taking care of her mother, and how unfair it was that her father left everything to Martin.
‘I ought to talk to him,’ Steven said. ‘I mean, we do need to confirm that it is all true.’
‘Do you doubt it then?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘She strikes me as someone that was born to lose. Too accepting, too anxious to please. I suppose that’s why she rushed full tilt into a love affair with the first man that came along,’ he added sympathetically. ‘She must have been so lonely. I expect it was much the same with Reuben too. No wonder she went right off the rails when the second romance failed.’
Beth put their empty plates into the dishwasher, made some coffee and suggested they went into the sitting room.
‘I’m puzzled why she went for two such similar men, though,’ Beth said thoughtfully as she sat down opposite Steven. ‘If she got her fingers burned by Liam with his free spirit ideal, surely alarm bells would have rung when Reuben came on the scene?’
‘I think most of us go for the same types again and again,’ Steven said. ‘Even when we know what the outcome will be.’
‘Is that personal experience or merely observation?’ Beth asked wryly.
‘Both. I’ve always been attracted to complicated women, mostly with disastrous results. Anna once said it’s because I’m so boring I have to pep my life up,’ he said with a humourless laugh.
For some reason that riled Beth on his behalf. Maybe it had taken her a year to see there was more to Steven than an overgrown boy scout, but Anna was the one who’d married him and had his children. It wasn’t fair that she should ridicule him now and destroy his self-esteem.
‘I often think those who label others as boring are the real bores,’ she said pointedly. ‘They’re too wrapped up in themselves to see or hear anything else.’
‘Maybe that’s so, but I suppose I am dull company compared with men who go womanizing, boozing or gambling. I have always played it safe, tried to maintain the standards I was brought up with. I seem to be a target for women who like that about me at first, but then once they’ve got me, ridicule me for it.’
Beth sensed his pain, and her heart went out to him for it reminded her of the way her father treated her mother. ‘Did Anna have a problem with drink when you met her?’ she asked.
‘Not a problem. She was very much a party animal. Vivacious, fun-loving. Drinking tends to go with that, of course. All her previous boyfriends had been very possessive, she said they didn’t like her to shine, tried to keep her under lock and key. She made it very clear to me that if I became like that she’d drop me. I’ve never been the jealous kind, I enjoyed seeing her being the life and soul of the party. She was beautiful, witty, and I loved the wildness about her.’
‘I expect she secretly wanted you to be possessive too,’ Beth said. ‘Maybe she didn’t feel valued without it.’
‘Well, why say she hated it?’ he said, frowning with puzzlement.
Beth smiled. ‘Women can be very contrary. Anyway, when did the problem start?’
‘After Sophie was born. She was fine with just Polly, we still went out quite a lot, had friends round too. But then when Sophie came along two years later, she had postnatal depression for a while. When she came out of that, she seemed to resent being tied down by motherhood. She kept talking about going back to work – she had been a graphic artist before she had the children – but she never actually attempted to find a job.’
Beth nodded. ‘How did the drinking start?’
‘At first, when the girls were tiny, it was purely social. I tried to make things better for her by babysitting so she could go out with her old friends. She often came home legless. Then she would have girlfriends in during the day, and that usually involved a bottle or two of wine. Before long I was regularly arriving home to find it in a terrible mess, and Anna half cut. It just progressed from there. Now she’s rarely sober.’
‘Poor you,’ Beth said, remembering how sweet his children were and understanding now why he hadn’t wanted her to go home with him that evening. ‘Do you ever take a tough line with her?’
‘I try,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘But I know if I get too heavy she’ll use that as an excuse to leave me.’
‘Would that be such a bad thing?’ she asked gently, feeling deeply sorry for him.
‘I couldn’t bear the girls to lose their mother,’ he said. ‘She might not be much of one, but she’s all they’ve got.’
‘I think they’d be happier without her,’ she said. ‘I know because of how it was with my father.’
Beth never told people about her childhood and the only reason she felt compelled to tell Steven about it now was because it seemed relevant to how it was for Polly and Sophie. She explained how isolated and distressed she felt as a child because of her father’s unreasonable behaviour, and how her mother had stuck by him for exactly the same reasons Steven had just brought up about Anna.
‘Anna has every right to drink herself to death if she thinks that is great fun, and sober people are boring,’ she said forcefully. ‘But she has no right to bring you and the children down with her. The worst thing about people like Anna, and my father, is that they have such huge egos. By pandering to them, letting them do what they want to do, you are stroking that ego and making them feel even more powerful.’
‘She isn’t egotistical,’ he insisted. ‘She can’t help it.’
‘Rot,’ Beth said heatedly. ‘That’s just a cop-out from dealing with it on her part. “Poor little me, I can’t help swigging away at a bottle and then crashing out and forgetting to feed my kids!” If you start to believe that, Steven, she’ll never sober up! If my mother had left home with us kids when we were small, we’d have been no worse off financially than we were at home. We wouldn’t have had to witness the ugliness. We could have had a home where there was peace and laughter.’
She paused for a moment, not sure whether or not she was wise to continue. But she decided to do so anyway. ‘I grew to hate my father, Steven. Hate him so much I’d have cheerfully killed him given the right opportunity. Polly and Sophie will grow to hate Anna if you let it go on. And worse still, they might very well become alcoholics themselves, or find themselves another one to marry or live with. That’s what children of alcoholics do.’
Suddenly Steven began to cry. Beth looked at him in horror from across the coffee table. His face crumpled as the tears ran down his cheeks. It was a pitiful sight. She was aware she’d been very blunt, but she hadn’t thought for one moment she’d said anything awful enough to make him break down.
‘I’m so sorry, Steven,’ she said in alarm and went round the coffee table to sit next to him. ‘I should have kept my opinions to myself.’
In her need to comfort him, she put her arms around him and drew his face down on to her shoulder, smoothing his hair, the way she used to with her mother when her father went for her. She had never repeated it with anyone else since, and she was surprised she could.
‘Look, don’t take my word for it,’ she said. ‘Go to an expert, talk to them and get them to tell you what to do.’
‘It isn’t what you said,’ he sniffed. ‘I think it’s only the release of talking about it. I hide it every day, I even tell the girls Mummy’s ill. I never guessed you’d had a blighted childhood either. It was so brave of you to share it with me.’
‘We’re a fine pair,’ she said, and tried to laugh, but her eyes were prickling with tears too. ‘I’ve never told anyone that stuff before.’
She let go of Steven and went out into the kitchen to get some brandy for them both. ‘I think we need something for the shock,’ she said as she brought two glasses back in.
He had dried his eyes now and seemed almost composed again. ‘You are a curious, fascinating woman,’ he said, swirling the brandy round in its glass. ‘I would have laid bets that a flood wouldn’t faze you, and I certainly didn’t expect you’d be the sort to give a shoulder to cry on.’
‘Both were abnormal behaviour for me,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s been a funny sort of day all round.’
She went on to tell him what Susan had said that annoyed her that morning. ‘All that stuff about skinny-dipping in the river,’ she said. ‘She seemed so girlish and giggly about it. I think she wanted to prove to me that she had been desirable.’ She stopped short, aware she wasn’t making much sense. ‘I didn’t think it was appropriate to go on about that kind of thing,’ she added lamely.
‘She is a little odd at times,’ Steven agreed. ‘Take the gun! If that was all my father left me, I think I’d have thrown it in the river, I certainly wouldn’t have kept it all that time with a small child in the house. And why take it to Wales? It wouldn’t be my idea of a keepsake.’
‘She never told me that she could shoot, I mean when we were kids,’ Beth said. ‘Most children would, don’t you think? It would be something to boast about.’
‘Maybe her father told her to keep it a secret,’ Steven suggested. ‘It is a bit of a strange thing to teach a girl.’
‘I think we could do with talking to all the men in her life,’ Beth said. ‘It might throw a different light on her. She can be very elusive at times.’
They had a second brandy, and then a third, and all at once Beth realized that she was talking to Steven as she’d never been able to talk to a man before. They discussed cases they’d been involved with before, told each other funny stories from the courts, and discussed the guilt they both felt when someone they were positive was guilty, went free. Steven was as fascinated as she was as to why one person from a family could become a criminal, while the rest, with an identical upbringing, were sober and upright citizens. Or why, in a whole family of villains, one would go straight.
‘Look at my family,’ Beth said. ‘All three of us have turned out to be successful and well adjusted, despite our father.’ She paused to grin at Steven. ‘Well, Robert and Serena are well adjusted anyway, with much nicer natures than me.’
‘But you were the youngest, and you probably saw the worst of your father,’ he suggested. ‘You realized very early on how weak your mother was, and were determined to be different.’
‘Different was what I always felt,’ she said grimly. ‘I asked Serena once if she felt that way too, but she said she didn’t. At school I was always on the outside looking in. Not bullied or laughed at exactly, just apart. I just didn’t seem to have whatever quality is needed to make one acceptable.’
‘I wasn’t really one of the in crowd either,’ he said with a smile. ‘I was labelled a swot, and as I was no great shakes at sport, I just kind of stuck with what I knew best. But I was happy at university, were you?’
‘Well, I didn’t feel quite so weird.’ Beth smiled. ‘Mostly because there were plenty of girls much odder than me around.’
She poured them both another drink. ‘I kind of reinvented myself for university anyway,’ she went on. ‘I dressed in a mysterious manner, big black hats, long coats, long scarves trailing behind me. Once I’d struck that pose it was easy to act out the part. One of my flatmates used to call me Greta Garbo.’ She giggled.
‘That’s kind of how I saw you when you first joined the firm,’ Steven admitted. ‘Aloof, beautiful, but with a heart like a glacier. How did you see me?’
Beth was touched that he’d thought her beautiful, so she couldn’t be entirely honest and admit she thought he was a nonentity.
‘Kind of like a boy scout, I think,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘A bit too helpful, too earnest. You improved on closer inspection.’
‘Anna says I am ingratiating,’ he said dolefully. ‘I’m not, am I?’
‘No, you aren’t,’ she said firmly, despite having thought that about him in the past. ‘It sounds to me as if Anna is just nasty to justify her own behaviour.’
‘Most of the women I’ve known have been a bit nasty,’ he said with a cheeky grin.
‘You know why?’ she asked. ‘It’s because you are too nice. Some women, including me I expect, see that as something to crush.’
‘So what sort of men do you go for?’ he asked.
‘None,’ she replied. ‘Not any more. It’s too bloody hurtful.’ As the words came out of her mouth, Beth realized she was getting drunk. Sober, she would never make statements like that which gave away so much about herself.
He took her hand in his and squeezed it. Just that, no platitudes or asking for an explanation. ‘So we’re both walking wounded,’ he said after a few moments’ silence. ‘And we spend our days defending more people like us.’
Beth had never thought of herself as being anything like the people she defended, but all at once she saw it was so, and for no reason she could
explain she began to cry again.
What is it, Beth?’ Steven asked, and his arms went round her. ‘Try and tell me.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’ She sobbed against his shoulder.
He put one hand under her chin and lifted her face up to his, looking down at her with tenderness. ‘I’ve seen a change in you since Susan turned up in your life again. So why don’t you start by telling me how it was between you two?’
Chapter eleven
‘We met on the bank of the river at Stratford-upon-Avon,’ Beth said. ‘Both ten, both alone, and I suppose, with hindsight, she was as desperate for company as I was. But at that time I thought I was unique in being lonely and anxious. To me, Suzie looked as if she hadn’t a care in the world.’
She went back then, explaining how she was in Stratford staying with her aunt because her father had beaten her mother up. But as she went on to describe her first meeting with Susan, she found herself slipping back, recalling things she thought she’d forgotten.
It was very hot, and she was roasting even though she was only wearing the shorts and blouse Aunt Rose had bought her that morning. It had been embarrassing because she had said neither of her two dresses was fit to be seen out in, yet it was wonderful to be given clothes which weren’t passed down, and that really fitted her.
Overall, Beth was glad she had called Aunt Rose and told her that Father had hurt Mother. Mother was still cross with her about it, but Beth felt she was secretly glad to be having a holiday with her sister.
Her aunt and uncle’s house was only a small terraced one, but it was a dream house to Beth, bright, clean and very comfortable. Mother had been put in the guest room, which was very pink, frilly and flouncy, similar to the way Aunt Rose dressed. Beth was in the cosy box-room. Yet the best thing about the house was that it was so close to the town centre. You only had to walk a few yards down the street, turn the corner and there you were right by the shops. Beth hardly ever went beyond Battle at home, and there wasn’t much in the way of shops there. Stratford-upon-Avon had all kinds. Amazing toy and gift shops, smart coffee bars, you could buy anything from a quarter of sweets to a fur coat. Most of the people visiting here, however – and there were so many of them – seemed more interested in taking photographs of everything, from the old Tudor buildings to the flower displays, than buying stuff. But then Aunt Rose had said all these hundreds of people only came to see William Shakespeare’s birthplace. Beth had only ever heard that name, she had no idea what the man had done that made him so fascinating. She hadn’t liked to ask either, for fear of looking stupid.
Till We Meet Again Page 18
