Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  Yours sincerely

  Jennifer Bradman, F R C O G

  Chapter 19

  Susie 10pm

  ‘Jamie, I think I’d like to ring Alistair now,’ said Susie.

  She knew she was behaving totally out of character, that Susie Headleigh Drayton, always so serene, so in control, would never have even considered late-night panic phone calls, soul-baring sessions, ultimatums; but she didn’t feel serene or in control and she didn’t really feel like Susie Headleigh Drayton either, she felt like some alien creature, someone floundering in a nightmare, someone afraid.

  ‘Ah,’ said James. ‘Ah, yes of course. If that’s what you really want.’

  ‘Well, yes, it is what I really want. You know that.’

  She had found him in his study, sitting staring out of the window, his hand on the telephone; he had just made, he said, yet another phone call to the police. ‘No news. Not from anywhere. Apparently in the morning, they can step up the search. And the Missing Persons have been very good. Tried to be soothing, reassuring. So many people do this apparently, Susie, just vanish into thin air, hundreds every year. Nobody knows why.’

  ‘And do they return, these hundreds of people?’

  ‘Some of them, yes.’

  ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘you have some hope.’

  That was when she had made her announcement, that she wanted to talk to Alistair, to tell him that she and James wanted to be together, for however long she had left.

  He looked at her now, carefully, consideringly, and said, ‘Susie, are you really sure about this?’ and for a long, dreadful moment she thought he was going to fail her, was going to say he didn’t think after all it was such a good idea, and she knew what people meant when they said their hearts stopped. But then: ‘I mean, my darling,’ he said, his eyes moving over her tenderly, lovingly, his hand drifting out to take hers, ‘if you really want to do it now. When it’s late. When you’re exhausted, when I’m exhausted, when Alistair may be asleep. It’s after ten. I would have thought tomorrow maybe would be better.’

  ‘But Jamie,’ she said, relief flooding her, warm and soothing, her heart starting again, steady, strong, ‘Jamie, maybe it would, but I have to go in for the biopsy in the morning, and he wants Alistair to come with me, and I don’t think I could face that, go through that sham. And besides, I’m so frightened, so afraid. I’ll need you with me then. And afterwards, when I’ve had the biopsy, I want you to be there, I want you to be there when I wake up and have to hear the news and –’ She heard her voice quiver, shatter; she bit her lip, looked at him, willing the tears not to come.

  ‘Susie,’ said James, ‘Susie darling, of course I’ll come with you. Incidentally I’ve looked Hobson up, and he is absolutely the best man. So you’re lucky there. But after that –’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, after that? After that what? Jamie, you promised, you promised this afternoon, that from this day forward –’ she paused, realized she had unwittingly quoted from the marriage service, half smiled – ‘you would be with me, would look after me.’

  ‘Yes, and I will. Darling, don’t look like that. I will. But it is bound to take a little time, the disentanglement. Nobody, nobody at all can just walk out of a marriage, a household, at a moment’s notice. Or into another. What would I say to Alistair? Shove out, old chap, it’s my turn now. There has to be a little space, a little room for manoeuvre, surely you can see that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh, ‘yes, I suppose I can. But time is exactly what I haven’t got. So even if we can’t be physically together yet, all the time, I want everyone to know that’s what’s going to happen. So we do have to tell Alistair, yes.’

  ‘Right,’ said James, and there was an uncertainty in his voice that frightened her again, ‘right, yes. I suppose we do. But does it really have to be tonight? Consider the ructions, darling, the implications. And I can’t possibly tell Maggie, she’s asleep, I’ve given her something very strong. And even tomorrow, do you really think she can take this news, on top of Cressida’s disappearance, is it really fair?’

  ‘Jamie, it may not be fair, but I think I do have absolutely first claim here,’ said Susie. Her fear was growing. ‘In a year, six months, I could be dead. I really can’t wait for you, for happiness, until Maggie can handle it. I’m sorry.’

  James looked at her again, and he was clearly thinking: thinking fast. She watched him in a kind of frozen fascination, fighting back the tears. What was this, what was he doing to her?

  ‘Susie, darling, don’t you think also you’re being slightly premature about the whole thing? It may prove after all this to be a false alarm: just a lump, just a cyst. You don’t know. Hobson doesn’t know, nobody knows. Why not wait at least until tomorrow?’

  ‘Jamie,’ said Susie very quietly, ‘I know. I know there’s something wrong. I don’t feel well, I’m terribly tired, I’ve lost weight. I can’t allow myself to –’

  The phone shrilled out sharply in the silence. James picked it up, she sat there looking at him, watched his face change from fear to a careful blank.

  ‘Yes, Annabel, she’s here. I’m about to bring her back. What? Well, in about half an hour I suppose. Oh, all right, I’ll put her on. It’s your daughter,’ he said, handing Susie the phone. ‘She says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Susie, ‘God, I hope it’s not Tom, or Alistair. Annabel, yes, darling, what is it?’

  Annabel’s voice, husky, sexy, expensively educated, came down the phone. ‘Mummy, some of us want to go to a club in Oxford. Is that OK?’

  ‘What?’ said Susie. She felt confused, disorientated, wrenched from fears for herself into fears for her children and husband, and thence into trivia, literally unable to believe what she was hearing. ‘Annabel, what did you say?’

  ‘I said some of us want to go to a club in Oxford,’ said Annabel irritably. ‘Well we have to do something to cheer ourselves up, it’s been a pretty bloody awful day.’

  ‘Annabel,’ said Susie, trying to keep her voice level. ‘I rather think it’s been a better day for you than for most of the people concerned. Anyway, I thought you said this was urgent.’

  ‘Yes, all right, all right,’ said Annabel. ‘Sorry. The thing is I haven’t got any money, and my cash card’s gone missing. Can you let me have some cash? Daddy said he’d give me some and then he just went off without doing it. He’s so hopeless. If you hurry back now, we can go in about fifteen minutes, I don’t want to hold everyone up.’

  Susie carefully counted to ten. She had always found it helped enormously in the past, had enabled her to deal with her children in a calm and reasonable way, even when they were enraging her. For some reason it wasn’t working.

  ‘Annabel,’ she said, and she could hear her voice rising, ‘Annabel, I’m having a little trouble following this. You want to go to a club in Oxford and you haven’t got any money. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annabel, ‘I really can’t see what’s so complicated. If you could just –’

  ‘What’s complicated,’ said Susie, settling her voice lower down the vocal range again, ‘what’s hard for me to believe is that you could see that as an emergency. How could you ring me up here, late, when everyone could well have been asleep, when everyone has been through the kind of day that’s normally confined to nightmares, when several people are feeling literally heartbroken, and tell me it’s really urgent that you have some money to go to a club. You shock me, Annabel, you really do. I’m ashamed of being your mother. Now you can go to a club if you want to, I really don’t care, but you’ll have to get your financing from someone else. And if I find you’ve asked Janet or Brian Beaumont for it, I do assure you it will be a very long time before you get another penny from either your father or me. Goodnight, Annabel. I suppose I’ll have to see you in the morning.’

  She put down the phone, looked at James and grinned rather shakily. ‘I don’t usually do that sort of thing. I rather enjoyed it. You got the drift, I
suppose?’

  ‘Yes, I did. They’re all the same, these children. We spoil them. I remember Cressida ringing Maggie from a party at two in the morning once when she was only a bit younger than Annabel, to tell her she’d broken the zip on her dress and could we take another one over. It was a round trip of about thirty miles.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Well I had a lot of trouble preventing Maggie from doing it,’ he said. ‘She always was ridiculously indulgent with Cressida.’

  ‘You both were,’ said Susie, ‘I was always telling you.’

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t seem to do her any harm.’ There was a long silence. ‘Well, that was a particularly bright remark,’ he said, with a heavy sigh. ‘Obviously it did. A lot of harm. Oh Christ. Do you think she’s seriously psychologically disturbed, Susie, or just a drama queen?’

  ‘Oh, Jamie, I don’t know,’ said Susie, ‘that is such an impossible judgment to make. Unfair to ask me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Bit of both, I suppose. God, where do you think she is, what can she be doing? I’m so frightened even now of hearing she’s been found – beaten up somewhere, in an accident, dead even. It’s such a dreadful, ghastly nightmare.’

  ‘Jamie, she may be hurt, or worse, I suppose,’ said Susie, speaking carefully, ‘but I do think it’s unlikely. I think actually it’s far more possible that she’s just run away, to escape. Taken herself off. She’s sent two messages to you after all.’

  ‘I know, I know, but they could be fakes, bluffs, she could have been forced into sending them. You just don’t know, do you? The police were reassuring, but they would be. That’s their job. And if she had run off, Christ, what kind of a state must she have been in? Pregnant, frightened – What did we do to her? I’ve made a terrible hash of parenthood, Susie. Of everything.’

  ‘You’ve done pretty well with Harriet,’ said Susie. ‘The sort of daughter everyone dreams of. Successful, clever, nice – Jamie –’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘I know this is all terrible for you. But I have something terrible to deal with too. And I really can’t wait. Please let me ring Alistair.’

  She watched James disentangle himself from his thoughts with a great effort, turn to her. There was something in his eyes, apart from love, apart from sympathy, that troubled her. Trying to analyse, she realized that he looked trapped, cornered, almost desperate.

  ‘Jamie, what is it? You don’t have any – doubts about this, do you? You’re not going to fail me. Because I don’t think I could bear it if you do, don’t think I could handle it.’

  ‘No’, he said smiling at her, holding out his hand, ‘no, of course not. No doubts at all. Come over here. God, Susie, I love you. I love you so much.’

  She went over to where he sat at his big desk, took his hand, bent down to kiss him. His mouth as always was very warm, very dry and firm.

  ‘You taste of peppermint,’ she said.

  ‘Peppermint tea. My mainstay.’

  ‘God,’ she said, ‘I don’t know how Alistair would get by without his booze. Aren’t you ever tempted?’

  ‘Yes of course,’ he said simply. ‘Every day, almost.’

  ‘Then why don’t you ever –’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, lightly, ‘it just doesn’t agree with me. That’s all. It just isn’t worth it.’

  ‘Tilly’s lovely, isn’t she?’ she said. She felt him tense slightly.

  ‘Why did you say that. Then?’

  ‘No reason,’ she said, surprised. ‘I was just thinking about her. How strange it is that all our lives have intertwined. I often think about her mother, poor woman, how dreadful that must have been.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so do I. Of course.’

  ‘Dreadful for you, too, though. But I’ve always hoped she does realize that it really wasn’t your fault that the other little baby died. In any way. When – when Tilly asked you to show her the garden, she didn’t –’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No, she didn’t say anything. Of course she knows about it, knows I delivered her. But she certainly doesn’t seem to hold it against me.’

  ‘Well, she shouldn’t,’ said Susie, ‘you were completely exonerated, at the inquiry. Just the same –’

  ‘Susie, can we stop this please? You know it upsets me, talking about it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, startled. ‘Look, why don’t I make us some tea – peppermint if you like – and we can sit in the drawing room and talk sensibly. I’m feeling calmer now. I’m sorry if I seemed hysterical earlier. Not like me.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not like you at all. It’s one of the things I most love about you, Susie, your serenity. It’s beautiful. It restores me. It’s been restoring me today.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, and bent to kiss him, feeling in spite of everything suddenly happy, light-hearted, thinking how much she loved him, how wonderful it was that they were finally going to be together, all the time, openly, peacefully, no more concealment, no more pretence.

  She went out to the kitchen, made some tea, carried it into the drawing room. ‘Merlin and Janine are late.’

  ‘He’s probably arguing over the bill,’ said James.

  ‘Yes, probably.’ She took a sip of her tea, waited, looking at him, willing him to take up the subject of herself and their future, wondering why she felt so nervous. Well, it was not entirely surprising: under the circumstances. She was not in any way herself.

  There was a long silence: he said nothing. He didn’t even look at her. Susie felt her skin begin to crawl; finally she took a deep breath, said, ‘Jamie, Jamie please. Can we talk about this? Can I ring Alistair?’

  ‘Susie, I don’t know. I’m not sure.’

  And now panic did hit her, hot, liquid panic, filling her head and her chest, making her limbs feel light and odd.

  ‘Jamie, what do you mean, you’re not sure? Not sure about what?’

  ‘About the way you want to handle this.’

  Well, that was better; not totally all right, but better.

  ‘You mean we should wait till tomorrow? Well, maybe if it was really early, but –’

  ‘Well, possibly, yes.’

  ‘Jamie, what are you saying?’ She heard an edge enter her voice, hated it, couldn’t control it. ‘Jamie, look at me.’

  He looked at her, briefly, before she could read his eyes, then looked away again.

  There was a long, frozen silence; she felt suddenly still and calm, the panic gone.

  ‘You’re not going to do it, are you?’ she said finally. ‘You’re not going to leave her, not going to be with me.’

  ‘Susie, there’s no need to sound quite so dramatic. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just not convinced that it’s actually the best thing for us to do.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘And would you like to tell me why that is, why you’re lacking in this conviction?’

  ‘Darling, I – oh, for God’s sake, come over here, let me hold you.’

  ‘I think I need a little more than holding,’ she said, and she could hear her voice exactly as it had been when she spoke to Annabel, oddly controlled and cold. ‘I’d rather you didn’t try to confuse the issue that way, James. I think we have a little straight talking to do here. You promised me earlier that you would be with me, leave Maggie, and now –’

  ‘I didn’t actually,’ he said. ‘I said I would be with you as long as you needed me. And I will. That isn’t quite the same thing as disrupting two marriages, two households at a time when –’

  ‘At a time what? Jamie, what are you saying? I don’t understand. The only time I have is now and it’s possibly very short, and I need you, and as far as I’m concerned you promised me – Jamie, for Christ’s sake, explain, because I –’ She stopped, biting her lip, looked at him, willing his absolute reassurance, knowing with the same icy certainty that it wasn’t going to come.

  ‘Look,’ he said, and his voice was steady, level, patient, ‘look, Susie, I know how frightened you must be, an
d I really do want to help you all I can. But you could be in for quite a tough time and I’m not entirely convinced that ripping two families apart is quite the best background for it.’

  ‘James, I –’

  ‘Susie, let me finish. You wanted me to explain. If you do what you say you want to do, then you’re going to cause so much unhappiness, so much pain. You’re such a family person, Susie, do you really want to add to your children’s grief? Because that is what you’ll do. They won’t just be afraid of losing you, grieving for you, they’ll be grieving at the breakup of their family, they’ll be angry at what you’ve done to their father. Who incidentally they do adore. Is that really fair? Is that really going to make you feel better, stronger, more able to cope? Because I don’t think so. And all right, you don’t love Alistair, but do you really want to hurt him like this? Is it really the legacy you want to leave him? I can’t believe it is, Susie, I can’t believe it of you.’

  There was a long silence; through the roar of confusion in her head, Susie dimly heard a car pull into the drive: a tiny piece of her brain thought it must be Merlin and Janine, home from their date – God, don’t let them come in here – but the rest of her was still focused entirely on James and her pain.

  ‘All right,’ she said firmly, ‘all right, you can’t believe it. And I know it’s true, what you’re saying. But the thing is, James, they’re strong, they’ll survive. Whatever I do to them. And I can help them, I can try to explain. But I have to think of myself, because I’m not strong, I’ve discovered, not at all, and the only way I’m going to get through this is with you. All my life I’ve had to share you, James, had to live out this long charade, and OK, it’s worked very nicely on the whole. I haven’t exactly liked a lot of it, it’s been quite hard watching you, thinking of you with Maggie, however much I’ve smiled and known that was a charade too, I haven’t liked never spending a night with you, or almost never, haven’t liked a lot of the sneaking off and the lying, certainly haven’t liked pretending even to myself quite a lot of the time that Rufus was nothing to do with you, haven’t liked not being able to share him, enjoy him with you. But I’ve put up with it, because I’ve loved you so much it seemed worth it. Better than the alternative. Now everything’s changed. I’m frightened and I feel very alone and, like I said, I need you, I need you badly.’