‘I can’t help that and there’s no way I can escape the family,’ she said, twisting the flex of the phone and wondering how to tell him what she knew she must tell him. ‘Look, Sol, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and—’
He laughed. ‘Don’t bother. You’re about to tell me yet again that all this deception is killing you, that you love your husband and that you don’t want to see me anymore.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Well, yes and please listen to me. It’s been a mistake, Sol. I’m a married woman,’ she said, the words comically prim, looking at her reflection in the mirror and pushing at her long silky fair hair. ‘I have to be sensible.’
‘Why, for fuck’s sake?’ His exasperation rose. ‘We are discreet. Nobody need ever know. If you won’t leave him then we can just carry on as we are for years. You need me, darling, so don’t even think of ending it.’
The threat was there, unsaid.
She waited for him to plead with her, to tell her he loved her, words he had never used, not ever. She had never used them either, not to him. She used them to Mike but that was because it was expected of her. Mike was not overly demonstrative, rarely said the words but whenever he did he meant them and she always dutifully replied that she loved him too, which she supposed she did if love could be defined as feeling an affectionate fondness.
It was just sex for Sol, she told herself, as she replaced the receiver.
Looking at her bright eyes in the mirror, her flushed face, she knew that it was the same for her, that and the danger of playing with fire.
On her part there was one added ingredient, though.
There were no doubts where Sol was concerned.
She loved him.
Number Eight, River Terrace was a small cottage bang in the middle of the row, a narrow riverside path and a steep bank separating it from the river itself. It was little more than a fat brook at this point but when the rains came the water thundered down, although thankfully never in enough quantity to reach and spill over the top of the bank.
It was Monique’s first proper home that she could call her own, bought with the help of a hefty deposit gifted by Mike’s parents. Mike had been reluctant to accept financial help but she persuaded him that they must not allow silly misplaced pride to get in the way of taking the sensible course.
She did not tell him that Christine had also privately given her a substantial sum to help with the initial furnishing and that even now, years on, she could be relied on to hand over little helpful monetary gifts from time to time. Christine was from a family of means and in fact, as she told Monique, her marriage to Frank had been seen by her parents as a most definite downgrading of her social position. Her family tree was sound – Lancashire aristocracy no less – and when her parents died, blessedly instantly and together in a car crash, Christine copped the lot and an impressive lot it was and it was she who was propping up the business now that they were going through a lean spell.
Monique needed Christine’s help because she earned very little from her paintings and Mike was paid a paltry sum by his father for the privilege of being humiliated at every turn. She suspected that the workforce laughed at him, the boss’s son who was plainly useless. It was no wonder that Frank had no thoughts of retiring for it would go bottoms-up if it was left in Mike’s hands. At least that was what her dear father-in-law thought. Of all of them she sometimes thought that Frank could see right through her to the core of her being, not taken in as the others were by the shy sweetness she chose to portray.
The truth was she had been a wild child although she kept that quiet because she knew Christine would not approve. Christine was quaintly old fashioned and she imagined that her mother-in-law thought of her as a one-man woman just because Christine had probably never slept with anybody other than Frank.
If only she knew. It was with some amusement that Monique could not actually recall the exact number of men she had slept with.
Monique quickly learned that you had to use the assets you were blessed with and she knew from an early age that she was the pretty one, the child people fussed over, and later she realized that attracting a man was easy. Men were becoming tired and bored these days with the glut of hard-faced ambitious competitive women. On the contrary, they loved vulnerability and she knew exactly how to play that part.
All her life her parents had largely ignored her, her father never quite forgiving her for not being the son he craved and her beautiful mother irritated by her because it meant the curtailing of some of her amorous activities. The marriage had been a sham and the divorce when it came was no surprise. Following the divorce, her parents both moved from Lancaster going their separate ways and, at eighteen, neither of them was keen on making a home for Monique so when she went off to art college, that was very much it. She was on her own. She had known Sol from the sixth form at school and they chose the same course at college, supposedly by pure coincidence.
She decided early on that a life of poverty, making ends meet, was not for her and although she knew the chances of meeting and snaring a millionaire were slim she was willing to settle for a comfortable existence. She and Sol became an item at college but she ditched him when she realized he was totally without ambition and would never amount to anything.
It was much more than a brief fling. He had meant a great deal to her and breaking it off with him had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. There might have been a child from that liaison but disaster was averted when she lost it naturally at nine weeks. She never told Sol for it was nothing to do with him but she was right to ditch him for her instincts were spot on. Sol, after a brief spell teaching art at some inner-city comprehensive down south, was now content to bum along. He lived now in a flat down by the canal in Lancaster in an area largely frequented by students so that nobody really knew anybody else and she could pop in and out of the flat without question.
Sol had been injured in an accident a couple of years previously, injuries from which he had recovered but the compensation had been immense and he now lived off that and the small income he managed from buying and selling second-hand books in the little shop he ran.
After college, Monique returned to Lancaster because she needed the familiarity of it and she had no wish to beg either of her parents to take her in. She took a lowly paid job and together with a girlfriend managed to rent a little flat in town. All she wanted out of life was a nice home, her own car and sufficient money to go shopping without counting every single penny because that really was a bore. At that point she decided to go for the marrying-a-man-with-money option.
For a time she had to face the prospect of going for an older man but then as luck would have it Mike came along. She sussed out his background before the second date, liked the fact that he dressed well, wore good shoes, drove a new car and had an affluent air about him. Without actually checking out his bank balance she recognized him for what he was, the only son, a little spoilt, maybe, not particularly bright but that did not worry her unduly for she was bright enough for both of them.
As soon as she saw the family home, Snape House, she was suitably impressed knowing that few people could afford the upkeep of a house like that and, if she married into the Fletcher family, she saw she would be cushioned and cosseted and protected and what on earth was wrong with that.
In the absence of a good-looking millionaire, Michael Fletcher would do very nicely. He was of the right age, reasonably good looking and most important of all he absolutely adored her. Of course she could be a homemaker, he assured her earnestly, saying how refreshing that was in this day and age and there was nothing he would like better and he wanted a woman who was happy to stay home and look after the children when they came along.
She could live with that. Love, at least on her side, was not necessarily part of the equation. She liked Mike and that was enough. She accepted that he was laid back, had a genial nature, hated to upset people, but now he needed to be
more assertive and his painful slowness in learning how to do that was beginning to upset her. She despised Frank and the way he treated his son; even Christine seemed unaware of what went on in the office. The business was going nowhere fast because Frank was such a tyrant and the workforce generally disliked him every bit as much as she did. She knew the feeling was mutual, that Frank did not like her, that he thought her paintings crap, that if he had her way she would be out there seeking a proper job.
A proper job was the last thing she wanted. She did not want to be bothered with that for she loved the freedom of working from home, getting up around ten o’clock in the morning long after Mike had left for work, having a leisurely bath, making coffee and eating cereal and scrambled eggs whilst reading the morning paper from cover to cover. She would then get dressed and, if she felt like it, she might do some painting or now and again she might meet up with Sol for a naughty romantic liaison.
On several days a week, she drove her little car – a luxury Christine had helped her buy – the ridiculously short drive to Snape House for afternoon tea and if the weather permitted a stroll arm in arm with her mother-in-law round the gardens. Later, she would prepare dinner for when Mike arrived home, which could be as late as seven o’clock. He often needed soothing because he was frustrated by his father’s refusal to listen to any of the ideas he might come up with to improve the business. If Frank had not thought of it himself then it was a no-no. She had never met a man who was so intransigent or as Mike said, bloody minded.
A couple of times a month she and Christine would take a trip into Preston and do some shopping. She would steer Christine to her favourite little boutique where Christine could be relied on to buy her a little something. Her wardrobe was heaving with the sort of vintage clothes she loved, not to mention the shoes and handbags, and sometimes if she had nothing else to do in the afternoon she would spend it trying clothes on, admiring herself and parading in front of the free-standing mirror.
She loved her little home although she was not quite so much in thrall with the village itself and she sometimes yearned for the bustle of a city existence but it was just too impractical a course to pursue, for their reliance on Frank and Christine was considerable. If Mike gave in his notice they could not be sure that his father would provide him with a decent reference and even if he did it would be looked on with suspicion and the truth was she could not risk losing Christine’s support. She had thought once upon a time of trying for a diploma in education so that she could teach art but it was a fleeting notion because her heart was never in it and it would have meant getting up stupidly early and doing a full day at college and actually working for once.
In any case, she did not care for kids and although she pretended to Christine that a baby was on the cards one day it most certainly was not. Mike thought she was off the pill now, thought they had been trying for a while but each month she had to disappoint him and shake her head sadly. He was muttering now about seeing the doctor just to check all was well but she could put that off for a couple of years because of her age. Relax, she told him, and it will happen one day.
With Mike not minding very much how she furnished their home she had happily done exactly what she wanted and although it looked much the same on the exterior as the others in the row, inside it was quite a different matter.
The little living room that you stepped into directly from the street was aglow with rosy reds and deep pinks, sumptuous silky materials and fringed lacy throws covering the two comfortable sofas, which together with a leather armchair made up the seating arrangements.
‘Bloody hell, Monique, it’s like a tart’s boudoir,’ her dear father-in-law had said with a laugh when he first stepped through the door.
She took that on the chin although the remark hurt her. What did he know about interior design? He was happy to leave all that to Christine and although the thought had crossed her mind that she had not quite achieved the look she was after, that it was all slightly over the top, it was impossible to change a thing once that remark was uttered. She was not going to allow him to think that he could influence her in any way.
There was no television; she felt strongly that it would have dominated such a small room although it of all things surprised people for how on earth could they exist without it? Quite well, thank you. They had an extensive collection of books as well as a selection of CDs so they never felt any desperate need to sit in front of a television screen. It was largely her decision and there were times when Mike wavered when he heard people at work discussing what they had seen on the box the night before but she always talked him round.
Frank thought they were bonkers but then he didn’t have much of an opinion of his son and everybody knew that he would have much preferred to train Amy up as his second in command. Frank was proud of the business but, honestly, the way he talked it up you would think he ran a huge international organization at times instead of a small-time removal and storage concern. If Amy had gone into it she would have commanded the respect of the workers for she had that air of authority about her that was patently lacking in Mike. Amy was the golden girl even though she had upped and left them in the lurch deciding that working for her father was never going to work and going out into the bigger world instead.
‘She broke her father’s heart,’ Christine had said once, in a confiding mood over coffee. ‘He doesn’t let it show, of course, but he always thought she would take over when he was gone. Everything was ready for her and then she just came right out with it one day that she was going into retail management. You should have seen Frank’s face, Monique. I am trying so hard but I can never quite forgive her for doing that to him.’
‘You poor thing.’ Monique had given her a quick cuddle and hardened her own heart to Amy, blithely skirting over the issue of her relationship with her own mother that had never amounted to much, either. Whenever she and Amy met they were courteous to each other but it was all superficial for she knew that Amy resented her, too. Amy was a workaholic, scarily ambitious, but that was her misfortune.
‘You’ve landed nicely on your feet, Monique.’
Monique recalled those words, deep with meaning, and it could have led to a full-blown row, for she had seen the danger signs in Amy’s eyes knowing that she had a quick temper but she had turned the tables on her by saying sweetly that Amy must learn to relax a little more and find the time to smell the roses.
‘Some of us need to work to earn money, Monique. We don’t all have a man willing to look after us.’
‘Poor darling. I do understand.’ She had given her a winning smile knowing that the best way to wind Amy up was not to take up the bait.
‘Not that I would ever want to be in the position of having a man take care of me,’ Amy had finished stoutly but again Monique refused to take up the challenge, which infuriated her all the more.
She used the smaller of the two bedrooms upstairs as a studio. On the Sunday before Christmas, Monique, her pale blonde hair caught back in childish bunches tied with narrow black ribbons, was working in it, putting the finishing touches to a painting. Mike was out on a secret mission – probably a last-ditch attempt to buy her Christmas present.
She was trying a more commercial approach these days and concentrating on what she could sell; namely pretty watercolours of local scenes. She had handed some over to a shop in Lancaster that specialized in local craftware and they had seemed pleased with them so she was hopeful that they might display them prominently and maybe they would catch somebody’s eye. She had also put some into a small exhibition organized for local artists and by pitching the price right had managed to sell several. Sol had offered to put some on display in his shop but she had declined that dubious offer.
Carefully, she added her name in the bottom right-hand corner.
Despite her supposed lack of ambition, her desire for an easygoing lifestyle, her lack of real success was beginning to get to her. She still just about held onto the belief that one day pe
ople might clamour to own one of her paintings. On the other hand, it was more likely that Frank Fletcher would crack a proper smile. She had known when she took up the course at art college that the chances of success out there in the real world were slim but she had hoped that eventually she might earn enough from her paintings to think of it as a proper career. Still, as Christine said she was young yet and there was lots of time so she must stay positive.
Leaning back and squinting at the canvas, she nodded at last with satisfaction. It was a painting of Beacon Fell. Christine knew quite a bit about local history and had told her that it got its name because in medieval times it was the ideal place to put up a string of lit beacons to warn of danger or to celebrate major events. From the high point there were panoramic views in all directions over Snowdonia and North Wales, the coast of Fylde, the Lake District and even on a clear day the Isle of Man. The air up there was forever clean and crisp and chill.
This painting was one of a series and she had sketched this one back last year, remembering the smell of summer as she spent a day up there, soaking up the atmosphere and taking a picnic with her. Christine offered to come along but she wanted to be alone because she could not paint and listen to Christine chattering at the same time.
‘Do be careful up there on your own. It’s a lonely place,’ Christine had said. ‘Take your mobile with you.’
‘Of course,’ she said knowing that she would leave it at home. She needed solitude away from a constant stream of trivial text messages and anyway, it probably wouldn’t work up there. As it turned out she had a lovely day and never once did she feel worried about being alone. Up in her studio, recalling the scene vividly, she blew gently on the name she had just written on the painting. She used her maiden name professionally and it was unwise to change it.
Best Laid Plans Page 4
