Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘Love you too,’ said Susie, hoping Rufus was telling the truth.

  Mr Hobson cleared his throat. ‘I hate to intrude on this touching family scene, but there’s something I have to tell you.’

  Susie braced herself; even that very tiny movement hurt. ‘What?’ she said, and a sickening, dreadful fear took hold of her. She gripped Rufus’s hand, and realized to her immense surprise that it wasn’t enough. She wanted Alistair, wanted him to be there, to hear her sentence. Maybe, she thought confusedly, through her terror, maybe this whole thing was a judgment on her, a punishment for all her wickedness.

  ‘Mr Hobson, could you wait until my husband gets back, please? I want –’ she corrected herself – ‘I need him to be here.’

  ‘Yes, of course you do. The only thing is you’re not my only patient. I should be down in theatre again now.’

  ‘I’ll go and find him,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Oh Rufus, darling, thank you. Could I have a drink of water, Mr Hobson? I’m so terribly thirsty.’

  ‘What do you think, Nurse?’

  ‘Should be all right,’ said the nurse. ‘Just a sip.’

  Susie sipped. Her throat really hurt. ‘What’s the time?’ she asked, trying to see what the nurse’s upside-down watch said.

  ‘Almost eleven.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Susie. She suddenly remembered everything. Tilly. The flight. Rufus. ‘Oh God, where’s my son?’

  ‘Gone to find his father,’ said Mr Hobson. ‘What is it, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I have to tell him something urgently. Very, very urgently. Nurse, could you – please –’

  She lay back on her pillows, exhausted. The nurse on a nod from Mr Hobson hurried out of the room.

  ‘Mum, what is it? What’s wrong? Dad’s just coming, he –’

  ‘It’s not me, Rufus, not Dad. Listen, you have to get to Heathrow fast.’

  ‘Why?’ said Rufus.

  ‘You have to catch Tilly.’

  ‘Tilly won’t want to catch me. Or see me,’ said Rufus flatly. For the first time Susie looked at him, looked at him properly. He was very white; he looked as if he hadn’t slept.

  ‘Rufus, she will. I know she will.’

  ‘No she won’t. Last night I wanted to talk to her so badly about – well, it doesn’t matter what about –’

  ‘Me,’ said Susie quietly.

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘Rufus, I’m so –’

  ‘Mum, I really don’t want to talk about it. Sorry.’

  ‘All right, darling. Maybe another time. Well, anyway, I spoke to Tilly this morning. When I couldn’t find you. She was at her mother’s house. She sounded very down. And she’s going to New York this morning. In – in an hour. Rufus, you’ve got to stop her. You’ve got to explain things to her.’

  ‘Mum, I told you, she doesn’t want to hear. She doesn’t want to see me any more.’

  ‘Oh, I think she does,’ said Susie. ‘She may not quite know it but she does. And she loves you very much. And cares about you.’

  ‘No she doesn’t. She just wants to sign this bloody stupid contract.’

  ‘Rufus, she does care about you. She told me so, and she doesn’t actually want to sign the contract. But she will if you don’t stop her. Rufus, darling, please, go and catch her. You should be able to, if you break a few speed limits.’

  ‘I want to hear what Mr Hobson has to say.’

  ‘Well then, will you go after that? Rufus, I’m beginning to feel very upset. That’s bad for people after surgery, you know.’

  ‘All right, Mum, all right, I’ll go. After that.’

  Mr Hobson came in with Alistair. Alistair looked very drawn. He sat down in the chair beside the bed and took Susie’s hand.

  She clung to it.

  ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘the news is – what can I say?’

  ‘Please say it,’ said Susie.

  ‘The news is – fairly good. It’s not excellent, but it’s good. The biopsy showed that the lump was benign; but some of the surrounding tissues have undergone changes which could lead to malignancy later on. In other words, it’s something we need to keep an eye on, and long term we might need to consider a subcutaneous mastectomy –’ Susie caught her breath in swiftly, felt Alistair’s hold on her hand tighten – Mr Hobson smiled, patted the bedclothes. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, it means in its simplest terms a mastectomy beneath the skin. Which means inevitably that reconstruction is a great deal easier, and you’d be surprised how good you’d look again. And that would remove any possible danger. But there’s no hurry, you have plenty of time to think about it. I’m sorry you had to be so worried, but –’

  ‘Oh dear God,’ said Alistair. He stared at Susie, then got up and walked over to the window, gazed out. He doesn’t know what to do, thought Susie confusedly, he isn’t pleased, he’s turned against me. And who could blame him? She herself felt nothing, nothing at all.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Rufus. ‘That is just so wonderful.’ He was looking down at her, and his expression wasn’t hostile or angry, just very very happy.

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so pleased, so relieved. Thank God. Listen, I’ll go now, try and catch Tilly. Heathrow, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Midday flight to New York,’ said Susie dully, staring at Alistair’s back.

  ‘Bye, Mum. Love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ said Susie quietly.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Hobson, ‘I must go. I’ll pop in and see you later, Susie. Goodbye. Well done. You were very brave. Let us know if you want anything for the pain. Bound to be sore. Goodbye, Mr Headleigh Drayton.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Alistair. He sounded very strained. ‘Thank you so much.’

  He still hadn’t moved. Mr Hobson went out, closed the door noiselessly behind him.

  ‘Alistair,’ said Susie, ‘Alistair, please do go if you want to. You must be –’

  ‘Oh, Susie,’ he said, ‘oh, Susie, I –’

  And then he turned, and there were tears, tears pouring down his face, and he came over to her and sank onto his knees by the bed and took both her hands and kissed them.

  ‘I love you so much,’ he said, ‘so very much. I didn’t realize it, but I do. I thought we had – well, we both had – a – a marriage of convenience. Neat, functional, highly suitable. But I know now it wasn’t that at all. Not for me at any rate. I couldn’t have lived without you, Susie. I really couldn’t.’

  ‘But Alistair –’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘please don’t. Don’t start on it all. As long as I’ve got you, Susie, I don’t care. I’ve been able to live with it all these years, and I’m sure I still can. As long as you’re alive, as long as I have you. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘No, Alistair,’ said Susie, reaching out her good arm, stroking his hair gently, wiping away his tears with her finger. ‘No, it isn’t all that matters. You matter very much and I don’t deserve you. And I’m going to –’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said again, ‘please don’t.’

  ‘Alistair,’ said Susie, with an effort so immense it startled her (but she had to begin, begin now putting things right, making it up to him), ‘you’re what matters to me now. You and making you happy. We won’t ever talk about this again, I promise, but I just have to say one thing. I – did want some – something else. As you know. But now – well, I realize what I wanted wasn’t what I’d thought it was. And that what I’d got was actually better. So that’s it really. I’m sorry to have been so stupid. Sorry to have made you unhappy if I did.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ he said quite cheerfully. ‘In fact, I’m an uncomplicated sort of chap. I’d got so absolutely used to it. Had my own little arrangements of course. As I’m sure you knew. And you were always so extremely nice to me. Give me a kiss.’ He leant over, kissed her on the mouth, very, very tenderly.

  ‘And – Rufus?’ said Susie.

  ‘Rufus?’ said Alistair, deliberately vague. ‘My darling Susie, Ruf
us is old enough and ugly enough as they say to take care of himself.’

  ‘He’s not ugly,’ said Susie defensively.

  ‘You’re his mother, you would say that. Anyway, he’s got your looks and my brains, as GBS so neatly encapsulated it. And both of our happy dispositions. No doubt whatsoever about his genealogy.’ He met her eyes with a look that said let us leave it at that. Forever.

  ‘Well,’ said Susie, taking her cue from him, ‘I just hope he catches that plane and marries that gorgeous Tilly.’

  ‘So do I. Then I shall die a contented man.’

  ‘Don’t talk about dying,’ said Susie with a shudder. She felt terribly tired suddenly, tired and still emotionally in turmoil. She meant what she said: she would remove James from her life as resolutely, as thoroughly as Mr Hobson had removed her tumour. But he would not be as neatly removed from her thinking, from her heart; it would be hard, there would be struggles and pain and much confusion. She hoped she was equal to the task.

  There was a knock at the door. The nurse stood there with an enormous bunch of roses. ‘For you,’ she said. ‘Aren’t they lovely?’

  Susie looked at Alistair; he had got to his feet and was picking up his coat. The knuckles on his hands were white. He didn’t look at her.

  She looked at the card. ‘For my darling,’ it said, ‘with all my love.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the nurse, ‘there’s been a mistake. These aren’t for me. Please send them back to the florist, and make sure the person who sent them knows that. Thank you.’

  ‘But Mrs Headleigh Drayton –’

  ‘Nurse,’ said Susie, and was surprised at the firmness in her own voice, ‘please take them away. I really really don’t want them.’

  Chapter 32

  James 11am

  ‘Really, James. Do you make a habit of rifling through other people’s possessions?’ said Julia. She was standing in the doorway; she looked from the letter in his hand to his face, and smiled, her carefully placed, dazzling smile. ‘Perhaps I see now where Cressida got some of her unfortunate genes from –’

  ‘Please don’t insult my daughter,’ said James.

  ‘James, I have every right to insult your daughter. And I am hugely relieved that in the end I was able to save my son from a marriage that even he had become deeply unhappy about.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’ said James. He sat down again on the bed, drained his glass. It had helped; he walked over to the bar and poured another one.

  ‘I’ve never seen you drink,’ said Julia.

  ‘You’ve never seen me in need of a drink before,’ said James. ‘Now, would you like to explain what this’ – he shook the letter at her – ‘was all about?’

  ‘I would have thought it was self-explanatory,’ said Julia. ‘My father, God bless him, was deeply worried at the prospect of Cressida getting her hands on his money. He had left it all to Oliver, as you know, although held in trust until after my death.’

  ‘I did, but I didn’t think it was so very much,’ said James.

  ‘It was an enormous amount. We – he always tried to play it down, in fact it was quite a well-kept secret, but we’re talking real money. We had even kept from Oliver how much was involved until after his twenty-fifth birthday. I think it’s very bad for young people to get the idea that they don’t need to work, or to make their own way in the world. But Cressida did know. I’m not sure how she found out, but she certainly knew. I think perhaps your extremely overpowering friend Mr Buchan might have told her. These millionaires all know one another, know what they’re worth.’

  ‘Why are you so convinced that she knew?’ asked James.

  ‘Because she asked Oliver about it. If he was really going to inherit that much money. He told me, he seemed slightly bemused by it, and by the fact that she knew.’

  ‘Oh, really? And when was this rather strange conversation?’

  ‘A year ago. When she was staying with us at Bar Harbor.’

  ‘I see,’ said James. He felt slightly sick. ‘Well anyway, I don’t quite follow –’

  ‘Oh, James, really. Cressida was marrying Oliver entirely for his money.’

  ‘Julia, I won’t –’

  ‘James, please be quiet. She didn’t love him. She certainly had a bit of a crush on him, maybe last summer when she was staying with us, but no more than that. But she decided to marry him and she manipulated him into it. I could tell, the morning they announced that they were engaged, that he was uncertain, not quite happy, but he’s so loyal, Oliver, such a gentleman, he would never admit it. I tried to get him to talk about it, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘I think,’ said James, speaking with difficulty, ‘he is probably old enough to make up his own mind.’

  ‘Oh, really? How very naive of you, James. But then your marriage to Maggie has been so perfectly happy, hasn’t it, you probably don’t understand the complexities of lesser mortals.’

  Shit, thought James, does she know about that as well? He took another slug of whisky. He was beginning to feel very strange.

  ‘Anyway, gradually I discovered it wasn’t just maternal anxiety. I was right. Your daughter was – is – a tramp, James. A slut.’

  ‘Julia, please be careful what you say.’

  ‘I shall say what I please. She had several – what shall I say – lovers. One of them in New York, while she was staying with us.’

  ‘This is absurd. How do you know?’

  ‘Because I followed her. There was just something about her. I was suspicious, once I had established that she knew about the money. And every other day she went off on long shopping and sightseeing expeditions, saying very charmingly, I have to say, that she liked to be alone. And of course she was extremely hostile to me. When we were alone. To the point of rudeness.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ said James dryly.

  Julia ignored him. ‘I tried to talk to Josh about it, but he wouldn’t take any notice. Of course, he’ll trust anyone with a pretty face and nice manners. So I followed her one day. She went down to Gramercy Park, spent the day in some man’s apartment. I saw him open the door to her, saw her kiss him, go inside.’

  ‘Julia, this is horrible. I’m not going to listen.’

  ‘Nobody would listen to me. I tried to tell Oliver, after she’d gone home, but he just got angry. There was another incident as well, some nonsense about an attack. Josh thought I knew nothing about it, but the hall porter mentioned it, and I put two and two together, phoned the limo hire company. It wasn’t very difficult. Finally I made Oliver confront Cressida next time he saw her. She denied it, of course, wept, stormed, said I hated her, that she’d kill herself if he didn’t believe her, or walked out on her. He was still unhappy, but he was completely in her thrall, you know. Even though he didn’t actually love her, she had some strange influence over him, he wanted to make her happy. She was a very emotionally powerful girl, James. And very neurotic of course. Before I despaired of her, I begged her to see my analyst –’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said James, ‘you and your analysts.’

  ‘She agreed actually,’ said Julia quietly. ‘She went a few times, then said it was too much for her.’

  ‘So you really expect me to believe that Oliver went ahead with this marriage, knowing that Cressida was sleeping around –’

  ‘James, he didn’t actually know it. Well, not until the end. He wouldn’t know it. He blinded himself to it. And don’t forget they weren’t seeing a lot of one another. There was a lot of pride involved by then, pride and kindness, and an innate decency. Oliver is a very trusting, straightforward person. There was nothing I could do with him. He got angry with me, told me it was I who was obsessed. He just kept saying “Mother, I’m going to marry her, I love her, she needs me.” The more I tried to tell him, the less he believed me. Although I think at the end, when he knew about this pregnancy, he must have done. But by then it was too late. It was only days before the wedding.’

  ‘And wh
at makes you so sure, Julia, that it wasn’t Oliver’s baby?’

  ‘James, it couldn’t have been. You should know that. The dates don’t make any kind of sense.’

  James was silent, knowing she was right; remembering his own unacknowledged certainty of the night before.

  ‘So – I realized there was nothing I could do. Except appeal to Cressida.’

  ‘Which you did?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. And she did what she does with Oliver, cried, told me I hated her, that I was crazy, jealous because I was taking Oliver away from her. And then she said, and I’ll never forget it, “Julia, you can’t stop it now. You just can’t. He’ll never back out now. Never.” So then I knew I had to try and do something myself. I just wanted to hurt her, to make this marriage less what she had hoped, stop her getting her hands on what she wanted. Stop her going down the aisle feeling quite so triumphant. I did think that way the marriage would be a lot less likely to last. If I couldn’t stop her marrying Oliver, I could make sure she divorced him pretty damn quick. Which I was sure she would.’

  ‘So you told your father he had to change his will?’

  ‘Yes. I just don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I went to see him, down in Palm Beach, and I told him everything, and he agreed to do it. He’s a very – amenable old man.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said James, thinking of the almost psychotic adoration that the letter had exuded.

  ‘And I thought I would just let Cressida know.’

  ‘On the night before the wedding? That was unspeakable. Cruel.’

  ‘Oh really, James. You can say that still, in the light of what she did to you? How blind you all are about her. She’s rotten, James, thoroughly rotten. And you’re all taken in by her, by that sweet little face, those charming little ways. All of you. Except maybe that old Merlin fellow. He seemed to see through her. Anyway, when I went up to say goodnight to her – maybe you’ll remember – I showed her the letter. She just read it in silence, there was no reaction whatsoever, she just threw it onto the bed. And then she said “Goodnight, Julia” and went over to the dressing table and started cleaning her face. And I picked up the letter and went out, and that was the last time, thank God, I ever saw her. But obviously she decided after all that it wasn’t worth it …’