Once she’d tucked him in and checked for monsters behind the curtains, she came downstairs and dialed Simon’s office number. Lillian’s voice came on: “This is Workflow Systems. The office is now closed and will be open again at eight thirty on Monday morning. Thank you for calling.”
Strange, she thought. Simon usually picked up any evening calls if he was there. She punched in his mobile number. It rang and rang and then clicked through to the voice mail she remembered him recording in the kitchen. She could even hear Will and Florence shrieking in the background.
“Hi, this is Simon. I can’t take your call at the moment, but if you leave your number I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Darling, it’s me.” She didn’t really know what to say. “Will you be back soon? Can you call if you won’t? Love you.”
By eleven she was getting fussed that he hadn’t called back, and though she tried to get gripped by some Bruce Willis film in which he saved the world—again—she kept flicking channels and getting up to pour herself another drink or light another cigarette. At 11:15 she heard his tires on the gravel drive and, flooded with relief, rushed to the front door. She pulled it open. Oh Christ, oh Christ, it was a police car. Had he been done for drunk driving and they’d brought him home? Did they do that sort of thing?
A policeman and a policewoman got out with almost painful slowness and, as she watched with fascination as they put on their hats, she vaguely registered that Simon wasn’t getting out of the back.
“Good evening. Are you Mrs. Madeleine Hoare?” Perhaps he was down at the police station and needed bailing out. Would they take a check? “Do you mind if we come in?”
Maddy ushered them into the sitting room, switched off Bruce Willis, and tidied up the papers strewn on the sofa.
“It’s about your husband, Mrs. Hoare.” The policeman paused and glanced at his colleague. “I’m afraid he has had an accident, driving on the B42 hundred earlier this evening.” Why did they always refer to bloody road numbers? Maddy thought, irritated. “He was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, but I’m very sorry to tell you that he died in the ambulance.”
Maddy smiled. “No, that can’t be right. He’s been calling America. He’s at the office. He’s coming home.”
“Can I make you a cup of tea?” the policewoman asked. Maddy noticed she had very poor skin, and her hair was in a bun, rather like a ballet dancer’s.
“No, I don’t drink tea this late, it keeps me awake.” She was aware she was babbling. Her arms had gone cold, and she wanted to throw up.
“Mrs. Hoare,” said the policeman patiently, “is there someone we could call to be with you?”
Chapter 4
Izzie passed the rest of the week in a cloud of happiness. The lunch had gone really well, and she thought Maddy had been impressed with the unusual food she’d offered.
Even better, Marcus hadn’t drawn his usual caricature of Maddy. After she had left, Izzie had braced herself for some kind of comment, but Marcus had been refreshingly quiet. No, quite unexpectedly, he had come down with a cold, and the poor love had spent the next few days in bed, while Izzie clucked around him and tried to keep the kids from disturbing him.
Maddy had been as good as her word, and the shopping spree had been a tantalizing nibble at how the other half lives. Any more of this and she’d have blond streaks and regular tennis coaching like a proper prep-school mummy! With a whole new outfit to her name, Izzie felt like a million dollars and not even Marcus’s gloomy snuffling could put a dent in her happiness.
Unable to contain her excitement, she’d worn the new jumper the very next day (she’d hidden the trousers just for a bit and couldn’t bring herself to part with the lovely stiff, shiny paper carrier bags and tissue they’d come in), and was filling the car with diesel, when a good-looking, slightly older bloke in a Lexus had stared at her intently. Worried that she had a smut on her nose, she’d looked down, away, up in the air—anywhere but at him. Then on the way out from paying, he was there at the door as if waiting for her. Opening it with elaborate care, he’d smiled and said roguishly, so only she could hear, “I only know of one person with bluer eyes than you—and that’s me!”
She’d darted away blushing and drove off hurriedly, crunching her gears. She had glanced in the rearview mirror to see him watching her. “Bloody hell, I’ve been chatted up! Me! Married with kids. How amazing!” She’d roared with laughter and had pulled into a lay-by. Maddy would love this! Still giggling incredulously, she had left a message on her mobile, telling her the whole story.
At home, she composed herself and set about skimming the chicken soup she’d put on earlier for Marcus. He hadn’t fancied anything else to eat for a couple of days, though he’d raided the kids’ treat box while she’d been out, leaving nothing for her to put into their school bags for break but a couple of amaretti biscuits.
She thought she heard a rustle of papers as she went upstairs, but when she popped her head round the door, he appeared to be asleep. She turned to creep out, but was arrested in her flight by his rasping voice. “Darling? Z’at you? Come and sit with me for a while. It’s so boring when you’re out.”
She perched next to him on the bed, stroking his forehead with the tips of her fingers, and made the stupid mistake of asking him how he felt. For a moment he was stoical about his symptoms. But only for a moment.
“. . . and my throat feels a bit worse than yesterday, so I think I might need some of those lozenges that make it feel numb, you know, the ones in the little tube, and I got this awful pain under my ear when I blew my nose earlier. Oh, could you empty the bin for me . . . ? It’s full of tissues. The ones you got were a bit rough, and now my nose is red, so I used some of that Clarins stuff you put on when your face goes blotchy. It feels a bit better now. Any chance of a cup of tea, lovey? Children all right, by the way?”
Once she’d related her morning’s doings, carefully omitting any reference to the man at the garage, she went to make him some tea and checked that the soup was just simmering. By the time she went upstairs with it, and a couple of hot cross buns, toasted and buttered for a treat, Marcus was sitting up in bed and had resumed reading the paper. He stared at her as she came in.
“New jumper? I haven’t seen that before, have I? It makes you sort of fluffy. Bit of a new look for you, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” she challenged, bristling slightly. “Fluffy cute like a rabbit? Or fluffy ditsy like Meg Ryan?”
“More fluffy dog hair like Fiona Price!”
“Right you!” Looking back later on what she did next, Izzie did see it was clumsy but she was provoked. She’d picked up the pillow without thinking and had meant to boff him on the head with it. How was she to know he was just taking a sip of tea? It had taken half an hour to clean up the resulting debris and she doubted she’d ever get the stain out of Marcus’s fleece dressing gown. There was nothing hoarse or croaky about his yell as the hot tea splashed across his chest and trickled down into his lap. “At least,” she ventured once it was all sorted, “it’s cleared up your throat.”
She made up for her clumsy impulse by being extra nice to Marcus for the rest of the day. She cut a chunk of baguette lengthways into sticks and buttered each one, just the way he liked; she brought the good radio upstairs so he could listen to The Archers; she even cut his toenails for him—well beyond the call of duty. Her mobile made a funny little bleeping noise, just when Pat Archer was about to harangue Tony (again), and she dashed downstairs to get it. Peering at the screen, she could see it was a text—her first ever—and she fumbled to open it.
“of course he was hitting on u! u look fab in that jumper. c u l8r”
Izzie spent some time decoding the message, then some more time working out how to send one back. She was quite pleased with the result, which she thought came over as modern and dynamic:
“wanna meet 4 coffee nxt wk.”
She sat down at the kitchen table with a satisfied smile
on her face. New jumper, text messaging, new best mate (jumping the gun a bit there, maybe), new blue eyes. She stretched her legs out and leaned back, her hands clasped behind her head. Things were looking good!
By the following week, Izzie’s elation had evaporated. She checked and rechecked her mobile, but there was no reply from Maddy. She really couldn’t do any more without being unbearably pushy. She suppressed the uncharitable thought that Marcus may have taken a call from Maddy and simply forgotten to tell her, but to be on the safe side, she had dialed call return every time she had been out.
Pissed off with herself for even caring, and with nothing better to do, she went into efficiency mode for the next few days, clearing out cupboards, defrosting the freezer, and tidying away old toys. Digging out the stepladder, she heaved herself and a box laden with Duplo up into the loft with difficulty. There was a funny, fruity scent in the cold air. She sniffed. Where was that coming from? Shuffling boxes and old tea chests around, she soon found out. A lusty growth of mushroomy things was blossoming under the eaves and had spread onto some old velvet curtains folded against the rafters. This could not be good!
As he closed the trapdoor the following day, Frank, the lovely builder from down the road, shook his head and sucked the air through his teeth. “This isn’t good, Izzie. What you’ve got here is a big case of dry rot—and that won’t wait for no one.” He promised a quote by Monday, and she spent the weekend nauseated with worry, not even daring to tell Marcus. How much would it be? She tried to imagine the worst. Could it be as much as a thousand?
“It’s going to be five grand, Izzie love, even if you do the minimum. Proper job, you’re looking at seven.” Frank’s kindly voice down the phone at eight thirty on Monday morning couldn’t soften the blow. “It’s not something you want to leave. I’m pretty busy, but I could fit you in before the end of the month.”
When she finally broke the news to Marcus, he was even more clueless than she was about how to raise the money. The only solution that presented itself was the building society. That was one humiliating meeting! Five minutes in, it was crystal clear that they could no more extend their mortgage than win an Oscar.
Standing in the sitting room a couple of days later, idly wondering if she were too old to go on the game, her glance fell on the piano. A fine old boudoir Bechstein, it had been part of her life and had stood like an old friend in her parents’ sitting room. She’d learned to play on it, sitting on her mother’s knee until she was tall enough to reach the pedals. Now the children were doing the same—only last night Charlie had been sitting with her practicing his scales, his face screwed up with concentration, his tongue poking out as his little hands fumbled for the notes. It felt like a body blow, but it was the only solution.
“This veneer’s rather stained,” said the prissy little man from the piano warehouse, a few days later. He shook his head patronizingly, and she felt like setting fire to his horrible patterned acrylic sweater. “People just don’t know how to treat pianos. I suppose you’ve been using it as a side table. It’s a crime to treat a piano as fine as this like a piece of furniture—it’s a work of art.”
“Thank you for reminding me,” she hissed through her teeth. His attitude changed, however, when he sat down to play it and a Schubert impromptu flooded the room. “Oh—you’ve had it tuned—it has a very fine tone.” He hit a wrong note and trailed off. Fed up with his censorious manner, she leaned over and, picking up where he had stopped, she completed the piece in the upper register. With sudden respect, he suggested a price that would comfortably cover Frank’s quote, but she couldn’t meet his eye as she arranged for him to collect it. She made damned sure it would be tomorrow when she knew she wouldn’t have to be there to witness it.
Marcus was sympathetic that evening, when she told him tearfully what she’d done, at the huge sacrifice she had made. But he couldn’t hide his relief that the problem was solved. She brushed off his clumsy suggestion that they could replace it with an upright, and took herself off to bed, drained with misery—what would her mother say when she plucked up the courage to tell her?
But the next day, Marcus finally made the jibe she’d been waiting for since Maddy had come to lunch. He caught her in the doorway, coat on, making her escape before the piano men arrived, and checking her mobile once again. He shook his head knowingly. “Your new mate turning out to be a bit of a disappointment, is she?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that I was expecting a call.”
“From Maddy, I presume.”
“No. Well, yes. I was just checking—”
“Izzie, my little darling. I warned you about her type, didn’t I?” He put an avuncular arm round her shoulders. “She was filling in time. She was probably at a loose end that day. Don’t take it to heart, sweetie. You’re worth ten of her. People like that can be very cruel and insensitive . . .”
Tears had started to prick in Izzie’s eyes, until his last sentence. She turned to him, stony faced. “Thanks for your advice, Marcus, but I’m sure Maddy will get back to me when she’s free.”
He looked uncertain for a moment, and was about to say more, but Izzie turned on her heel. “They’ll be here any minute. I’m going to pick up the children,” she called over her shoulder. “They’ve got swimming this afternoon, so we won’t be back until later.”
And silently mouthing, Drop dead, Marcus, she swept out of the house.
Too early to pick up the children, she went to bury the accumulated misery of the past week at the supermarket. Mooching round the store, trying to resist the biscuit aisle and looking to see what was reduced, she failed completely to notice Sue Templeton standing dead in front of her. She nearly knocked her over with the trolley—in her current mood, she would have been quite happy to do so—and her scowl seemed to take the old cow by surprise.
“Oh, Izzie, fancy meeting you here. You look different somehow. Have you lost some weight?”
Izzie stared at her, startled. It was so unlike Sue to say anything that could be construed as a compliment, she knew it must have been spontaneous—and genuine.
“No, I don’t think so—we don’t have any scales, but my clothes don’t feel any different. How are you?”
“It must be that sweater then. Been at the sales, have we?” That was more like it. Sue was back in her stride now, but Izzie’s “bugger you” mood prevailed.
“No. Popped into Libra with Maddy the other day. We both bought loads!”
Watching Sue’s mouth drop open was worth the fib, but when her expression turned to one of solicitude, crossed with avid curiosity, it was Izzie’s turn to be wrong-footed.
“What an awful business! Have you heard any more details?”
“I . . . er, no, no more details.”
“Those poor little children. My heart bleeds for them. How’s she coping? No one’s seen hide nor hair of her.”
“Coping? Oh . . . as you’d expect. Up and down, really.”
The awful lurching in Izzie’s stomach was getting worse. Her mind raced to put together the hints of Sue’s cliché-ridden drone. If she hadn’t started this stupid charade, trying to impress Sue with her intimate knowledge of Maddy’s life, she’d have found out by now. She framed her question with care.
“So when did you hear about it?”
“The very next morning. Gary had heard something on the traffic news. Of course you’ll know. It took them ages to clear the road, and the car was a write-off. The fire brigade got him out, but he didn’t even make it to the hospital. Terrible mess apparently, but isn’t it lucky no one else was involved?”
Suppressing a sob, Izzie stumbled away from Sue, muttering something about fetching the kids. She paid for the groceries in a daze, shoved the bags in the car, and left the trolley spinning in the car park as she gunned the engine and drove to school. On the way, she groped for her phone, found the number, and left a message when no one answered.
“Maddy, it’s me. I’m on my way.”
; Her face looked set and horribly white in the rearview mirror, so she pinched her cheeks and tried to relax her shoulders before she went into the playground. Never had the children been picked up so quickly or efficiently. They seemed to sense her urgency.
“I’ve got to pop out for a bit this afternoon, darlings, so I thought you could miss swimming for once.”
In the back, the children silently exchanged a high five. Mummy never relented on the swimming, no matter how they tried. At home, Izzie unloaded kids, bags, and shopping at top speed before calling up to Marcus. “Can you put the shopping away and feed the kids? I’ve got to go over to Maddy’s straight away. Not sure when I’ll be back.”
He was downstairs like a shot. “What on earth? But I’ve been stuck here all afternoon. And now you want to race off to see that woman. She leaves you hanging on for days, and you go haring off there at the drop of a hat—”
“Stop now, Marcus. Just stop it.” She put her hand on his chest. “Her husband, he’s . . . her husband is dead. He was killed in a car crash. I have to go. She’s not answering calls. I have to make sure . . .”
Marcus fell back, his face pale, nodding in mute agreement.
“Yes, go. I’ll do the kids, don’t worry ’bout that. See what you can do. If there’s anything we can . . . I’m sure there won’t be, but—take your mobile and call me if . . .”
She squeezed his arm, touched by his unquestioning support. “Thanks, darling. Love you lots.” And, jumping into the car, she set off for Huntingford House, trying not to think what she would find when she got there.
She located the house without much difficulty. It was easily the largest in the village, and she felt a little ashamed at a brief stab of envy. Maddy had all this, but no Simon to share it with now. What a tragedy! Guiltily remembering her uncharitable feelings toward Marcus only a few hours earlier, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that her husband was safe and sound at home with their children. He had been wonderful, stepping into the breach like that. She really must be more patient with him. Resolving to lead a better life in every way, Izzie took a deep breath and marched up to the door.
Goodbye, Jimmy Choo Page 5
