The Wrong Door

by Bunty Avieson

  More than a few pairs of eyes followed her exit but Clare ignored them all. She was out of earshot when a thin-faced woman whispered to the man beside her. Her mouth was framed by tiny lines that gave her lips a permanent look of distaste, as if she had just eaten something sour. Her words were sympathetic but her tone betrayed her. She was gloating. ‘I never believed those stories about Pete having a mistress, but obviously they were true. I can’t believe she had the gall to come. Poor, poor Gwennie. This will kill her.’

  CHAPTER 2

  It was the talk of the wake. The woman in the red dress. Darvill and Rossetti’s four secretaries stopped just short of calling her a slut. They didn’t have to. The women spent most of their working week sharing opinions on everything from the previous night’s TV to whether the senior partner was playing up on his wife. When it came to a woman dressed like that, at a funeral, they all knew they shared the same unspoken assumptions.

  It wasn’t just the secretaries who had noticed the solitary figure in body-hugging red. Everyone at the service had wondered. Who was that woman? No-one would ask Gwennie directly but all of them were consumed with curiosity.

  As the mourners arrived at the home of senior partner Gus Rossetti, they spent a few moments mingling, politely agreeing what a lovely service it had been, how beautifully the minister had spoken, and again what a shock it was for such a young, seemingly healthy man to get pneumonia so severely that he actually died from it. In this day and age. All the while they were craning their necks to see if she had arrived. Gradually the guests moved into small groups, closed circles of people they knew well in which they could at last express what they all were really thinking. Who was that woman? It was an innocent enough question. But it was the fact that they were so careful not to voice it around Gwennie that suggested there was some judgement of taste or subtlety. The woman just seemed … inappropriate … at Pete’s funeral. His work colleagues felt they had known everything there was to know about Pete. They had worked alongside him day in and day out for years. She just didn’t fit with their expectations of hard-working, modest-living Pete. Not to mention happily married Pete.

  Among some of the other women there was a sense of indignation. A few of them had entertained the idea of something more than a working relationship with Pete when he was thirty-nine, unmarried and winning awards. But he had always been courteously uninterested in following up the various invitations. Then along came Gwennie. Straight off the plane from England, just twenty-four and backpacking her way around Australia on a working-holiday visa. She came to the offices of Darvill and Rossetti as a temporary receptionist, hired to fill in for a week, and ended up staying with the company in various roles for three months. She never travelled beyond the outer suburbs of Sydney.

  Fay hadn’t liked Gwennie from the start. Fay was in her forties, plain and unhappily married. Darvill and Rossetti was her life. She had worked for the company longer than some of the partners, knew everybody’s business – and secrets – and considered herself indispensable. Forced to take sick leave for a broken leg, she had been annoyed upon her return to find someone sitting in her chair and capably doing her job. The shy, but self-contained, pretty blonde Englishwoman had proved so efficient the partners kept requesting her from the temp. agency whenever they needed someone extra, which in the middle of winter was nearly every week. Fay just didn’t trust her, she would tell the other secretaries in the tea room. She was so aloof. And that phony posh accent. Everything about Gwennie threatened the older woman.

  But the partners liked her and Fay could find nothing specific to accuse her of. It was too much of a struggle to keep her thoughts to herself and Fay found release in her snide comments to the other secretaries. They didn’t dare openly disagree with the almighty Fay.

  Gwennie knew she was unpopular, but she buried her hurt, told herself it didn’t matter and got on with the job. So the women didn’t like her. So what? There was only one person at Darvill and Rossetti who she found interesting and whose opinion really mattered to her, and that was the senior partner Pete.

  That was four years ago. She and Pete had started a secret affair and when it became obvious to them both that it was serious, Gwennie resigned, moving out of Pete’s office and into his home. She decided that if she was going to stay on in Australia then she should get a proper job and so went back to teaching, quickly landing a place at an exclusive girls’ school. Pete and Gwennie married just six months later on a beach in Bali with the local taxi driver as their witness. As far as most of the staff at Darvill and Rossetti were concerned, that marked the end of Pete’s bachelor days.

  And yet, among the secretaries, the rumours persisted. Fay continued to stir it up, saying how Gwennie banned Pete from doing all the things he really loved – like joining the staff at the pub on a Friday night or the partners’ regular golf round on a Saturday morning. The secretaries all agreed the marriage wouldn’t last. He was sure to tire of her. A man that attractive, that smart. And she, so stuck up and boring. And, reported one who had seen her in a tennis dress, she had bowed legs.

  There had been other stories too. One secretary on her day off was sure she had seen Pete driving in the country on a weekday morning when he should have been at a partners’ meeting. Obviously he was playing up – and really, who could blame him?

  The receptionist remembered she had taken a call from a woman refusing to give her name. She had said she was a client and Pete had missed their appointment. ‘She sounded … suspicious,’ said the receptionist, full of self-importance. ‘When I told her Pete had died she was very upset so I invited her to the funeral. Gosh I hope I did the right thing. How was I to know?’

  They recounted it all, whispering in the corner of the kitchen. And now here was the evidence of Pete’s infidelity, the woman in the red dress. They were outraged for poor Gwennie, they told each other.

  Fay was red in the face with excitement. She had abandoned her husband as soon as they arrived and now congregated with the other secretaries in the kitchen where she had a clear view of Gwennie as she struggled through the day. Fay kept tut tutting, barely masking her glee as she said, over and over again, ‘Poor, poor Gwennie.’

  It was Nicki James, one of Darvill and Rossetti’s four project managers, who finally mentioned the woman to Gwennie. Nicki always said what everyone was thinking but was too polite or inhibited to say. That haircut looks awful. Is that baby’s head nor mal? She was great to have around, unless you were on the receiving end. She didn’t do it for shock value or because she was insensitive. She was so highly attuned to the nuances of a room that she was always acutely aware of undercurrents. And she hated all that office gossip. It just wasn’t healthy, to her way of thinking. Much better to have everything out in the open. So as Gwennie was saying no for the fourth time to the plate of salmon and chive sandwiches, Nicki turned to her and asked loudly and bluntly, ‘So who was that woman in the red dress and why didn’t she come to the wake?’

  By the time Nicki asked the question, Gwennie was feeling limp, like a teddy bear without enough stuffing to keep its neck erect. She had drunk the two glasses of scotch pressed onto her by Pete’s sales manager. It had fortified her for a while, enabling her to chat with some of Pete’s colleagues whom she remembered and liked, but the beneficial effects were beginning to wear off and her head was starting to throb.

  She looked at Nicki and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Could she be a relative?’ pressed Nicki.

  The level of hubbub dropped as people abandoned their own conversations to hear what Gwennie and Nicki were saying. The mourners shifted their bodies slightly as they strained to hear.

  Nicki became conscious of her husband Rodney suddenly looking at her from the other side of the room. Rodney also worked at the architectural firm and was aware of the endless interest in Pete and his love life. His face held a warning expression that Nicki knew well but was choosing to ignore.

  ‘I don’t think she’s a me
mber of Pete’s family,’ replied Gwennie. ‘His parents are dead. They died in a car accident when he was about twenty. And he had no siblings. He never mentioned anybody else. If he had I’m sure I would have remembered.’

  ‘Oh yes, I think you would remember a woman like that,’ said Nicki. Across the room her husband’s eyes narrowed. Nicki responded with a look of surprise, wide-eyed innocence mingled with just a hint of exasperation. ‘What did I say?’ she flashed back wordlessly. Her husband’s withering glare stopped her short and she abandoned the conversation, steering it into an area less likely to get her into trouble.

  The secretaries, who had been following every word of the conversation, turned back into their circle and exchanged knowing looks. ‘She doesn’t know her,’ whispered one, with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Pete’s personal secretary, Laurelle. ‘He just wasn’t the sort.’ Laurelle agreed with the other secretaries on everything except her boss. She was devoted and loyal to Pete. In her mind that meant accepting his wife also and any details of their personal life that she was privy to remained with her. She would never believe ill of that kind, caring man she worked with every day. ‘I knew him well and I don’t think he played up on Gwennie. He loved her very much,’ she insisted.

  ‘Well, obviously there was more to Pete than met the eye,’ said Fay with a meaningful sigh. ‘Poor, poor Gwennie. I just feel so sad for her.’

  The other women nodded, united in their feigned sympathy.

  *

  The brief appearance of the woman in the red dress leant a frisson of excitement to the afternoon, which passed Gwennie by. Almost. It took till the early hours of one morning a few weeks later for it to reach critical mass somewhere in the back of her brain, causing her to sit up in bed. Who was that woman? The one in the red dress. Gwennie remembered seeing her enter the chapel. Nicki James had mentioned her at the wake. But the woman hadn’t come to the wake. Why not? Who was she? How did she know Pete? She obviously wasn’t a work colleague or Nicki would have recognised her. Gwennie was sure she wasn’t one of Pete’s university friends. She was too young for that crowd. And he didn’t have any relatives still living.

  Could she be an unaccounted for cousin? Someone Pete hadn’t told her about? He didn’t speak about his family much, or his childhood. It was possible, she supposed. But still it didn’t feel right. Something was out of place. And why, if the woman went to all the trouble of coming, would she then sneak off without a word? Lord knows Gwennie had stood and politely suffered the muttered condolences of everyone else who had come to the service.

  She looked at the bedside clock, knowing it would be around 4.30 am. It was. That figured. She had woken every morning around this time since Pete had died. It was when the sleeping pills wore off and her mind was at its most active. Whirring and spinning and worrying. She could take another pill and be groggy all day; toss and turn till dawn, which wasn’t far off; or get up. Getting up made the most sense but it would be cold outside the bed. And she could sense the emptiness of the house all around her. She looked across the vast expanse of the queen-size mattress and cried – loud, harsh sobs that welled up from the depths of her being and echoed about the bedroom and down the long polished wooden hallway. After an hour she stopped, momentarily exhausted. There was too much grief in there and it didn’t seem to make any difference how much she let out. Still there was a bottomless well of pain inside her, threatening at any moment to swallow her. She felt utterly wretched. Bleak. Everything that had been alive and fresh seemed to have withered and turned to ash, like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.

  She couldn’t imagine that she would ever feel better. Her grief counsellor said it would take time. Lots of it. The well-meaning woman had described it as a slow, gentle healing. She told Gwennie she would go through recognisable stages – shock, anger, acceptance, sadness – and Gwennie couldn’t remember the rest. It all sounded so inconsequential and irrelevant. She couldn’t believe that one day she might feel happy again. That possibility had just been ripped from her.

  She had toyed with the various options as she lay curled up on the kitchen floor, a ball of white-hot pain where the very act of breathing caused her physical agony. And she hadn’t completely dismissed those alternatives. She kept them to one side of her mind, like a back-up. They were always there if it did all get too much. Maybe she could slit her wrists. Or take pills. Neither option sounded too hard. Or too painful. Not compared with the piercing sharpness that accompanied every breath. But not today. She would try and get through today, Thursday. See how she felt tomorrow. Maybe Friday would be the day she’d take the coward’s way out. One day at a time.

  Thank God she was on school holidays. She didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. No classes to attend to. Not for weeks. After that … well … she would worry about that then.

  She thought again of the woman in the red dress. What was it about her? Just that she was … what was the word? Flashy … overt. Like a sleek red sports car. Kind of obvious. Not Gwennie’s sort of woman at all nor, she imagined, would she be Pete’s. And yet there she was at his funeral service.

  Her thoughts were possibly because of the hour, that bewitching time of pre-dawn darkness when the only people awake to hear the neighbourhood dogs yelp their frustrations are the insane, the guilty and the grieving. Something about the energy of the day at its freshest magnified the mood of the mind. Her grief counsellor had told her that between 4 am and 5 am was the magic hour – the loneliest, the most eloquent or the sharpest. It depended on your own particular state of mind, she had said.

  Gwennie was like a tightly wound knot, filled with energy that needed outward release or it would turn inward and fester. By the time dawn tentatively poked under her blinds, she had a plan of action. She started right after breakfast. It would be an unpleasant task and she needed to fortify herself so she took her time, soft boiling an egg and making toast and tea. Her hands shook as she ate and egg spilled on her T-shirt. Nevertheless it was the most she had eaten in one meal since Pete had died and she felt a little better after she had finished. She washed her dishes, put them away and went into the study.

  Gwennie and Pete shared a large custom-built room at the back of the house. Pete had designed it especially, knocking down an internal wall to create their perfect space. He had a desk at one end with a deep workbench where he could spread out huge sheets of paper. To the left of his work area were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and to the right a four-drawer filing cabinet. Using his swivel chair to roll across the carpet, he could reach everything he might need.

  At a right angle to his desk was the faded floral couch where Gwennie liked to sit and write letters to her friends and family back home in Sussex, to mark students’ papers or to read a book while Pete worked on the design of some fabulous new building. Her position gave her a view through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows along the side of the house and the tranquil half-finished Balinese garden. A terracotta bird bath was hanging from a tree branch where only she could see it. She put out food every morning to encourage the birds and her efforts had been rewarded. Each day half-a-dozen would drop by for a bit of a feed and their morning bath, splashing about and preening themselves. She and Pete had spent many companionable hours in that room, working on their various projects.

  This morning she didn’t go to her part of the room, heading instead for Pete’s desk. A folder from the funeral parlour lay on top where she had left it. She rifled through, ignoring the death notice and official paperwork. The account had been due a week ago, which was when she had stumbled across what she was now looking for. The condolence book. It was white and bound in leather. People who had come to the service had signed it – a memento of the occasion. Of all the incongruities of the day it struck Gwennie as the most laughable. She had one similar from her wedding. Perhaps she could use them as bookends. How suitable as she shelved her life with Pete. Who comes up with these little touches, she wondered.
>
  She opened the book, holding the edges carefully with her fingertips, as if it might hurt her. The opening page had Pete’s name, date of birth and date of death. She turned it over quickly. The next six pages had rows and rows of handwritten names.

  She read through them all, noting on a pad any she didn’t recognise. There were just four:

  Julie McCracken

  Linda Hewitt

  Terri Pryor

  Clare Dalton

  Everybody else was either a workmate or university friend or old client.

  Gwennie turned to Pete’s briefcase, sitting on top of the filing cabinet. It felt so strange to be opening it. She had seen inside it countless times. Packed it for him. Tucked in little notes or photos to surprise him. But now, surrounded by the silence of the empty house, it felt strange, as if she was prying somehow. On Pete, for God’s sake! She told herself to stop being so foolish. Imagine what Pete would say.

  In his briefcase was Darvill and Rossetti’s internal office directory. She checked off the names. Julie McCracken, head of accounts, extension 62. Linda Hewitt, contract division, extension 49. Gwennie put a line through them on her pad. Terri Pryor and Clare Dalton didn’t appear to be listed.

  Gwennie remembered a sympathetic lady from the wake, in her sixties with bright red hair, scarlet lipstick and soft green eyes, who had taken her gently by the elbow just when she had started to feel trapped. This woman seemed to sense precisely at what moment Gwennie was being overwhelmed and had asked if she would mind a ‘quiet word’, expertly extracting her from the group of tongue-tied but well-meaning mourners. The ‘quiet word’ had turned out to be: ‘Would you like a moment to yourself?’

  As soon as she asked, Gwennie realised that that was exactly what she wanted. The woman had led her to a bathroom further down the corridor that no-one else was using. ‘Take your time,’ she said. It was just what Gwennie needed. She stood for a few minutes sagging against the door then splashed cold water on her face, smoothed back her hair, massaged her temples and took a few deep breaths.