Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘That’s OK, I understand. Listen, Harriet, don’t rush this. Take a day or two thinking about it. It may seem better when you’ve slept on it. Come and talk to me, spend a few days here.’

  ‘Well – yes, all right,’ said Harriet slowly. ‘Maybe I should. That’d be good.’

  It still didn’t feel right, but she wasn’t going to give Theo the satisfaction of knowing what was best for her, what suited her. And she could do it for a year or two maybe, get some money together and then start again. Bloody, bloody overbearing, officious man; he would not, could not go on behaving as if he owned her, as if she still loved him.

  ‘Good. Very good. You call me tomorrow and we’ll fix a trip. Goodbye, Miss Forrest. You’ll like New York. You’d suit it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet thoughtfully, ‘yes, I think maybe I would. And I’ll ring you in the morning. Goodbye, Mr Cotton.’

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he said suddenly, as she was about to put the phone down. ‘In case you thought otherwise, I took no notice of Theo’s views when I was making my decision as to whether or not I bought your company. I make my own decisions, too, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harriet, ‘oh, I see.’

  She ran herself a bath and lay in it, thinking; she woke up an hour later, freezing cold, to hear the phone ringing again. She dragged on her bathrobe and sat hugging the radiator, looking at her interestingly wrinkled feet and hands, feeling rather sick. It was her father.

  ‘Darling. Can I come and see you?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind,’ said Harriet. ‘Not tonight. I’m terribly tired.’

  ‘Oh,’ said James. It was a small, hurt little sound. Harriet didn’t care. She felt a cold, hard hostility towards him; she didn’t want to see him, didn’t want either alternative, of confrontation or pretence. She supposed she might get used to the idea of his having an affair with Susie, but she would never get over it. It was too hurtful, too literally shocking.

  ‘Surely Mummy needs you?’

  ‘No,’ he said very quietly, ‘no, Harriet, she doesn’t.’

  ‘Daddy, what is it?’ she said.

  ‘Your mother’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  ‘She’s left me.’

  ‘Oh’, said Harriet. ‘Oh I see.’ She knew she sounded dull, absurdly uninterested, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t quite sure what she should feel, what she did feel, but whatever it was, she wasn’t feeling it. Her prime emotion, she discovered, exploring her mood briefly, was admiration for her mother. Certainly not sympathy for her father.

  ‘You don’t sound very surprised.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with an effort. ‘Very sorry. Er – where exactly has she gone?’

  God, she hoped her mother wasn’t coming to her. Sympathize with her she might, but that would truly be more than she could stand. She had had enough: enough of all of them.

  ‘To stay with a friend,’ said James. ‘And quite soon, I fancy, to visit Cressida.’

  ‘Cressida? Cressida! You mean you’ve found her?’

  ‘She rang up.’

  ‘Where from? Paris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, is she all right?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘Not on the phone. It’s too complex, too difficult. I just need to talk to you, Harriet, so badly.’

  He sounded terrible; in spite of everything, Harriet felt a pang of alarm. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m frozen, I went to sleep in the bath. Give me five minutes to get dressed, and I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘Can’t I come and see you, Harriet? Please?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘but don’t leave yet. I really have to sort out what I’m doing.’

  She put the phone down feeling utterly chilled; not just physically, her heart seemed to have ice round it too, heavy grey ice, and there was ice in her veins and ice in her head. Everywhere she looked there was betrayal, loneliness, no one seemed to be there for her. She was very happy for Rufus and Tilly (who had phoned to tell her they were getting married, Tilly full of remorse that she would not after all be able to lend her any money; Harriet told her not to be crazy and she’d never have taken it anyway), very glad for Janine and Merlin (who had also phoned and asked her out to dinner, which she had rather half-heartedly refused), very sorry for Mungo (who, Rufus told her, had had his heart broken by his mysterious lady-love, but was burying himself in his work: ‘Mungo!’ said Harriet. ‘Working!’), very sympathetic with a shattered Oliver who had rung from the airport to say goodbye, a swift careful phone call, thanking her for her help, not talking about Cressida, about what might have happened. She even now felt the stirrings of pity for her father; faint, echo-y but there. You couldn’t adore someone for twenty-nine years and then feel nothing for them, just abandon them.

  She went to her room, pulled out some leggings and a big sweater and some thick socks, dried her hair – God, it looked awful, wispier than ever, maybe she should have it cut off again – then went back into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. As she got warmer, began to come back to life, the numbness left her and she began to ache. She ached with weariness and loneliness and misery, she ached in every bone, every muscle, in her head, in her stomach and in the very heart of herself. She was very tired, she would have liked to go to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she lived again the awful scene when the receiver, having arranged for the phones, the electricity to be cut off, having picked up all her books, all her files, all her chequebooks and bank statements, asked everyone to leave the building with him, and they filed out, her and her four girls (none of whom would go without her: ‘We’re all in this,’ they said to her, ‘we’re all in this with you’), taking with them only their personal possessions, and some work folders – ‘they’re personal,’ Harriet said defiantly, ‘pictures of our own, to hang on our own walls in our own homes.’ She could see he didn’t believe her, but he allowed them to take the folders all the same; he was not an unreasonable man, just a very dry and precise one. But as he stood there, screwing a padlock onto the door, snapping it shut, looking up at the building with a strangely satisfied expression, as if it had somehow become his, all the work, all the love she had put into it negated by that one action, she could gladly have killed him.

  The girls had asked her to go for a drink, but she refused; she said she had things to do; and that was when she had settled in the doorway and the policeman had found her.

  She sat in the kitchen, drinking the tea, putting off without knowing quite why the moment when she had to phone her father again, staring out at the misty rain, wondering what was to become of her. Was she to end up one of those powerful, rich New York women who returned at night alone to empty, stylish apartments after long days of ruling companies and running lives? Or was she to stay here in England, following her instinct, picking up a myriad of untidy tangled ends, battling to get back to where she had been before? Here she was, twenty-nine years old, bankrupt – well, maybe that was an achievement in itself, at so tender an age – absolutely alone, or so it felt, her mother concerned only with her sister, her father become someone she preferred not to see, her friends scattering – ‘Now don’t start, Harriet,’ she said aloud, feeling the treacherous tears rising, the choking sensation in her chest, ‘don’t start.’

  The phone rang sharply; God, it must be her father again, she’d promised him five minutes and it was almost twenty-five. It was.

  ‘Harriet –’

  ‘Sorry, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Listen, you stay there. I’ll come down. It’ll only take me an hour or so. And I’d like to come home.’

  ‘You would?’ He sounded touchingly, frighteningly grateful.

  ‘Yes, I really would,’ she said, and found to her surprise it was true. She wanted to go home: to go home to the Court House. This flat wasn’t home, even with the Aga; the only other home she had was her studio and that was
barred to her, its locks changed, the heart ripped out of it. She would go home and see her father, spend a few days with him, perhaps discover why he had done what he had; and there, where she had grown up, where she had become what she was, with all the good and all the bad, she could decide what she wanted and what she should do. She felt more cheerful straight away; journeys always lifted her spirits, distracted her. She would play some really nice music, and stop on the way at a service station – Harriet was always surprised by how much people disliked service stations, they seemed to her lovely warm womblike places, faintly reminiscent of fairgrounds with all the cheerful tat and rubbish for sale, and she liked the food too, cheerful rubbishy food – and she would arrive at the Court House and her father would be waiting for her and she would at least be somewhere she belonged, where someone cared about her.

  That reminded her of Janine; she ought to ring her, tell her she definitely wouldn’t be going to dinner with her.

  Merlin answered the phone: Janine had gone out, he said, gone shopping: ‘Oh, I see. Well, look, Merlin, I’m going home. Now. To Wedbourne, so I definitely won’t be joining you for dinner. My father sounds pretty low. Thank you anyway, and I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Quite all right, Harriet. I’ll tell Janine. Your father does sound bad. He phoned here, wanted Theo –’

  ‘Theo!’ said Harriet. ‘What was Theo doing there?’

  ‘Oh, he came to see Janine. Not sure why. Anyway he’s gone now, rushing off to see Sasha, apparently.’

  ‘Sasha! Theo’s gone to see Sasha? Merlin, are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. He said something about buying her some roses, I’d got some for Janine you see, and –’

  ‘Yes, I see, Merlin,’ said Harriet very quietly. ‘Well, send my love to Janine. Goodbye.’

  ‘Bye, my dear. Are you all right? You sound a bit down. Not surprising really, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘not really.’

  She put the phone down, picked up her car keys and her bag, and, keeping her mind carefully blank, walked out of the door.

  Harriet had had her appendix out when she’d been eleven; due to the bungling of an inefficient anaesthetist (whom her father had had removed from his hospital within the week), she came round from the anaesthetic a little too soon, before she was even out of the theatre. She had never forgotten it, the way she was hurtled from darkness into white-hot pain; she had screamed, and then was dispatched swiftly back into the darkness and awoke again hours later, safely and aware only of mild discomfort, but traumatized nonetheless. Her experience that evening was much the same: one moment she was driving automatically and dully down the Cromwell Road extension and the next she was in such emotional pain that she almost crashed the car.

  Theo back with Sasha. Taking roses to Sasha, rushing to meet Sasha, only – what? – two hours after he had told her he loved her still, that he had always loved her, that he felt nothing for Sasha, never had, had only married her to ease the pain of losing her, losing Harriet. ‘Christ!’ she yelled aloud, throwing her head back, trying to concentrate, to keep at least most of her mind on the road, the traffic. ‘Christ, Theo, how could you, how could you?’

  Chapter 39

  Theo 6:30pm

  Theo sat at his desk looking at the relics of his marriage to Sasha: a large fake diamond engagement ring, her keys to the house in The Boltons, the Daimler and the Range Rover (he had never allowed her to drive the Bentley) and a rough draft of the articles of association of her new company. Mr Hennessy had proved to be younger and better-looking than he had expected, and possessed of a redoubtable legal mind, but he was more than a little out of his depth with his new client. Theo felt almost sorry for him.

  Right. He would phone Mungo, fix a place for dinner, go back to the office and do some work, and then maybe try, just try phoning Harriet again.

  Mungo sounded subdued but no more; he said it had been a bitch of a day but he was looking forward to seeing his father. ‘Me too,’ said Theo. ‘Ritz, eight o’clock?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Mungo.

  Theo spent two hours trying to distract himself from the thought of Harriet, and then rang her flat. No answer. The studio. No answer. He tried Rufus, Tilly, the Headleigh Drayton house: Annabel told him sulkily that everyone was at the hospital visiting her mother and she had been left to answer the phone. ‘And before you ask, she’s fine.’

  ‘Good,’ said Theo, ‘send her my love. Harriet’s not there?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sure she’s not, it’s family only tonight.’

  ‘All right, Annabel. If by chance she phones, get her to call me.’

  ‘I will if I’m here,’ said Annabel. ‘I’m hoping to go out.’

  ‘Love you too,’ said Theo and rang off. He had forgotten briefly about Susie; he ordered some flowers for her, and then rang Janine again. She was out, but Merlin answered the phone.

  ‘She rang – oh, about half an hour ago. Said she was going home to Wedbourne. I told her you’d been here, said you were off to see Sasha –’

  ‘You what? Merlin, I wasn’t.’

  ‘But you said you were, my boy. I heard you. You said you were going to take her some roses.’

  ‘No, Merlin, I said I was going to see Sasha’s lawyer. You must have misunderstood. Sasha and I are getting divorced. It was a joke about the roses.’

  ‘What, already? That’s a pity. Quite liked Sasha. I’d have liked to have her around for a bit longer. Oh dear, well, I’ve given some duff information then.’

  ‘You have a bit.’

  ‘Even told her you were taking flowers along,’ said Merlin cheerfully. ‘She will be confused. Better get onto her.’

  ‘Oh Merlin,’ said Theo in agony, ‘Merlin, this is terrible. And I can’t get onto her. If she’s on the way to Wedbourne.’

  On the M40, in the pouring rain, in that bloody Peugeot of hers, that went so much too fast, that she never had serviced; upset, angry, thinking he was rushing off to see Sasha with flowers. Christ Almighty, what a mess.

  ‘Better get after her then,’ said Merlin. ‘You can catch her up easily. Bit of sport. I’d come with you if I didn’t have so much to do here. Very complicated, getting married. Can’t think how you’ve managed it five times.’

  Theo ran out of his office, tore down the stairs, into the car park, into the Bentley, roared out into Dover Street. It was raining; the traffic was appalling.

  An hour later he was still not even on the motorway.

  He rang James. ‘Is Harriet there?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’m getting worried about her actually. The weather’s frightful and she’s been over two hours already.’

  ‘Can’t you ring her on her mobile?’

  ‘She doesn’t seem to have it with her.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Theo.

  After the Beaconsfield turn-off, the traffic eased. Theo put his foot down, tried to tell himself she was all right. It wasn’t dark, she was a good driver, she wasn’t hysterical, she’d be fine. Probably just stopped for a coffee or something. Or run out of petrol, she was always doing that. Silly girl. Stupid girl. Why couldn’t she have listened to him at lunchtime, then she’d be all right, safe, with him – His car phone rang. ‘Yes?’

  It was Janine. ‘Theo, I am so sorry. I just heard what Merlin did. The stupid, stupid old man –’

  Even in his anguish Theo was amused to hear Merlin, who was only a little more than ten years Janine’s senior, described by her as an old man.

  ‘It’s all right, Janine. I remember how it happened. I was talking and my phone rang mid-sentence. He meant well.’

  ‘He should not have meddled. We have just had our first quarrel. I have told him –’

  ‘Janine darling, not now.’ He really couldn’t face the details of a lover’s tiff. ‘Have you spoken to James?’

  ‘Yes, and she is still not there. He is very worried.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Theo and rang off.

  It was
round the next corner, between the huge white chalk cliffs near the Thames turn-off, that he hit the tailback to the crash. It was maybe half a mile ahead: he could see it, several cars and a lorry packed together, police lights flashing, two ambulances. The traffic was at a complete standstill. Theo sat there for roughly thirty seconds, thinking he was going to throw up, then got out of the Bentley, just left it in the fast lane, and ran, ran down the hard shoulder, his lungs straining, his heart bursting, until he reached the heap of cars. One of the ambulances was just pulling away; a policeman waved him back.

  ‘Not now, sir, if you don’t mind. Keep the area clear. Terrible mess.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Theo. He walked forward slowly, peering terrified into the wreckage. Two of the cars were unrecognizable. The third was a Peugeot. Crumpled, mangled, standing almost on its tail, but still indisputably a Peugeot. A Peugeot 205. Black. Christ Almighty. A K-reg black Peugeot 205.

  ‘Not now, sir,’ said the policeman again.

  Theo ignored him, went on.

  ‘For God’s sake, sir.’

  ‘I think,’ said Theo, speaking with immense difficulty, ‘in fact, no, I know – that’s my girlfriend’s car.’

  A police car took him to the hospital; he stood in the doorway of casualty while the young sergeant went up to the desk, made inquiries. He looked over his shoulder at Theo, then turned his back on him and followed a nurse into the netherland beyond the waiting room. Theo knew then; he knew that she had died. She had died, and she had died thinking he was a cheap, tacky boor who lied and fucked around and did not, as she had said so often, know the meaning of love. She was lost to him now, lost forever, and he would never get the chance to be with her again, talk to her again, hold her, care for her, love her. She was gone, in all her passionate, lovely courage, gone in a tangle of metal, crushed, brutally murdered by a mistake, by a misunderstanding. Theo felt suddenly violently sick; he rushed outside and threw up, over and over again, then walked very slowly back into casualty, into reception, sat down and put his face in his hands.