by Kate Fulford
“So how am I self-sabotaging?” I demanded to know.
“You may be making a monster of Marjorie so that she can take the blame if your relationship with Gideon fails.”
“What crap.” Of course it was crap. But what if it wasn’t crap? I thought back over everything that had happened since I had met Gideon. Categorically that was not true. It was definitely Marjorie and not me. Definitely.
“I would normally charge an hourly rate for my services,” Claire slung a muddy arm around my shoulder and pulled me towards her. I like it when Claire hugs me as she is not an effusive person so it feels as if she actually means it. “But as you seem to need more than the average amount of help I can give you a bulk rate.”
“I’ll give you a bulk rate if you’re not careful.” I nudged Claire in the ribs with my elbow, quite hard but with affection.
“Well thank you,” she said, removing her arm. “I hope you have found this time together useful, and I shall see you the same time next week.”
“Whatever.” I grunted, doing my best impersonation of her sixteen year old son.
The upshot of this conversation was that I felt I needed to broaden my knowledge of Marjorie in order to utterly disprove (or possibly refute, I’m never sure which it should be) Claire’s ludicrous suggestion. Helen might, as Gideon believed, have a distorted view of their mother and Meg might be as mad as her twin. I reasoned, therefore, that I needed an unbiased third party to corroborate my wholly correct intuitions about the evil old hag. The only person I could think of who might be able to shed some relatively unbiased light on the matter was Malcolm’s Basildon based sister, Cynthia. So here I was, dressed in my ill-fitting nylon ensemble with my ill-fitting teeth and awful wig, in Cynthia’s little nineteen sixties bungalow, sitting in a black leather Parker Knoll recliner trying to find out . . . well I wasn’t entirely sure what I was trying to find out but I would know it when I saw it.
“It’th very good of you to agree to thith interview.” I said. “We are conducting a . . .” survey, study, why did everything suddenly have an s in it? “ . . . we’re trying to find out about how famleeth have changed over time.”
“Famleeth?” Cynthia queried.
“You know, famleeth. Mother, father, children.”
I had called Cynthia, whose address and phone number I had, with only a little subterfuge, obtained from Gideon, and arranged to visit her for an interview. I did once work for the Office for National Statistics as a researcher, although I left quite soon by mutual consent (let’s just say the figures that I supplied might not have been as accurate as the ONS would have liked them to be, but once you’ve interviewed half a dozen people you can pretty much make the rest up) so I knew the drill. I had my computer perched on my lap and was tapping away as I recorded Cynthia’s answers to my questions. I was actually, as it happens, filling out a personality quiz Claire had thought would be instructive for me, but Cynthia couldn’t see my screen so it didn’t matter.
Malcolm and Cynthia’s father had, Cynthia told me, been a bus driver and their mother a housewife. The family had been in Basildon since around the time of the Norman invasion and not a single Rowe apart from Malcolm had ever left. They didn’t seem to be the kind of family in which Gideon would have been a much used name, as Malcolm had claimed at that never to be forgotten first Sunday lunch in Sheen, but then I might just be a crashing snob.
Brother and sister had been quite close until he met, in Cynthia’s words, ‘that stuck up cow’ Marjorie. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you only ask. By the time we got to this revelation we had shared two pots of tea and a packet of pink wafers, not my favourite biscuit but Cynthia seemed to think they were a sign of the high esteem in which she held me by this point. I therefore scoffed my way through as many as my teeth would allow.
Following his marriage to ‘that bitch’ Marjorie (Cynthia had many descriptors for Marjorie, none of them particularly complimentary) Malcolm’s career had taken off. Having been a lowly bank teller he was, in no time flat, working in the legal department of the multinational business in which he went on to build his successful and lucrative career.
“The thing I never understood was how it took off so fast,” Cynthia confided to me. Having bonded over the fact that we both had feckless husbands and disappointing children we were by now the very best of friends. We both had daughters who were bringing up their children single-handedly. We had both suffered greatly on account of these daughters, and had to take much of the burden for raising their children ourselves, but what grandchildren! If our own offspring had been somewhat below par we were both blessed with stellar grandchildren. What a lot we had in common.
“Did Michael . . .” I began.
“Malcolm.” Cynthia corrected me.
“Oh yeth, of courth. Did Malcolm have any higher qualificationth, in the law for eggthample?” The pink wafers had, happily, made speaking much easier as they had formed a paste between my real and my false teeth, holding them more securely in place. I would never sneer at pink wafers again.
“Not as far as I know. I do think, though, that there’s something odd there. I mean it’s as if he made a pact with the devil. I thought,” Cynthia leaned in conspiratorially, “and so did Mum and Dad, that he’d have been so much better off with other one.”
“The other one?” I asked.
“Meg. Marjorie’s sister. Identical! She was a lovely girl. When he told us he was married we thought he meant to Meg, seeing as they were engaged. That was a bit embarrassing, I can tell you. But it seemed as if Marjorie had a hold over Malcolm. I’ve no idea what it might have been, but there you go, it was just something I thought. Daft really, but I just couldn’t work out why he would have married . . . her,” Cynthia was out of venomous epithets it seemed, “when he would have been much happier with Meg. Funny, isn’t it, what people do?”
“Yeth, it ith, indeed it ith.”
“You never told me you were engaged to Malcolm!” I said accusingly.
“You never asked.” Meg replied. “It was a long time ago and I’d rather not talk about it,” she said, clearly intent on bringing the subject to a close.
“Yes, but you could have . . .” I began, but Meg held up her palm in front of my face while saying, emphatically, “enough,” so I had to let it go.
We were licking our wounds over a cup of coffee in Meg’s bedsit. We had been comprehensively outwitted by Marjorie over the misappropriated inheritance. The only positive thing that had come out of the whole sorry affair from my perspective was that Helen and Marjorie were talking again, which meant that my wedding was back on. I wasn’t really in the mood for seeing the Rowes playing happy families but I did want to marry Gideon so I was just going to have to suck it up. If, that is, the wedding were to go ahead.
I had recently received some information that had confirmed my suspicions that there was very little chance that Marjorie, having twice put a stop to my prospective nuptials, would simply think to herself ‘oh well, I gave it my best shot, but I can tell when I’m beaten’. I wasn’t about to reveal the source of my new intelligence to Meg. I had been sworn to secrecy and the person to whom I had sworn was not someone I would cross without very good reason.
“It’s hopeless,” Meg continued, “there is nothing else we can do, nothing at all.” That was how I’d felt until two days before, but armed with my new information I was filled with renewed energy for the fight.
“We may be down, Meg, but we are not out. We,” I announced, “are going to search Marjorie’s house.”
“Oh my!” Meg looked deeply shocked. “Are you quite sure that’s a good idea? I don’t know anything about housebreaking.”
“We aren’t going to break in,” I explained. “I know where the spare keys are and I know the alarm code. We just need to wait until we can be sure that both Marjorie and Malcolm will be away for a few hours, preferably after dark, and then we simply pop round and have a rummage.”
“What do yo
u think we’ll find?” Meg was clearly far from convinced by my brilliant plan.
“Secrets. Marjorie’s secrets. That’s what we’ll find.” Or at least that was what my informant assured me I would find. But I couldn’t tell Meg why I was so sure, so she would just have to trust me. I looked at her intently. “Are you with me?” I asked.
“I suppose I am, but don’t you think that ransacking Marjorie’s home might be taking it a bit far dear?” Meg replied.
“We’re not going to ransack anything,” I assured her. “We’re just going to slip in,” I wiggled my hand to indicate a snake slithering silently in one direction, “take anything that may prove useful and then slip out again.” I wiggled my hand back the other way. “She’ll never know we’ve been there.”
“Yes, but . . . breaking into her house, who would do such a thing?” Meg looked perplexed.
“A psychopath, that’s who.” I replied.
“A what?” Meg asked.
“The kind of person that would do what I’m proposing would be a psychopath,” I explained, “and it just so happens that I am one.”
“One what dear?” she asked.
“A psychopath.” I replied.
“You can read people’s minds?” Meg looked deeply shocked.
“Not a psychic,” I said, “a psychopath. They don’t read people’s minds, they murder people.”
“Well that’s a relief,” said Meg let out a little sigh, “that you’re a murderer not a mind reader.”
“I’m not a murderer.” I said. “Only extreme psychopaths murder people, and not all of them even do that.”
I’d been doing a little research on psychopaths recently, ever since I had done the personality test suggested by Claire. As far as I could work out it simply meant that I have a healthy disregard for laws and social codes, that I’m not that bothered about the rights of others, and that I’m less likely to feel remorse or guilt than non-psychopaths. I can’t see what’s so wrong with any of that, as long as I don’t take it too far. Which I don’t believe I do, but then I’m a psychopath so I suppose I would think that.
“I only have psychopathic tendencies.” I continued, “I’m not a full blown psycho, but maybe that’s why I’ll do something like this and why I’ll beat Marjorie. I will not,” I said emphatically, “be outwitted by her.”
“She’s outwitted everyone else,” Meg observed.
“Yes, but I don’t suppose she’s ever come up against a psychopath before, do you?” I replied.
“I doubt that she has, my dear,” said Meg, “I very much doubt that she has.”
CHAPTER 20
My new found confidence and determination to beat Marjorie had come as the result of a meeting I had had a few days previously. A fourth postcard had arrived which had completely baffled me. On the front was a picture of a four poster bed while on the back it said N O R W Y C H. I hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant and I didn’t feel inclined to waste my time trying to figure it out. The previous postcards had ultimately led me precisely nowhere, and I had about hit rock bottom in my quest to stop Marjorie from interfering in my life. I couldn’t see a way out that didn’t involve leaving Gideon, and that wasn’t something I was prepared to do.
I decided, therefore, that enough was enough. I would make contact with Sasha, who I was quite certain was the source of the cards, and ask her what I should do, seeing as how she seemed to know everything. As she was clearly already trying to help me I couldn’t see why she should refuse.
Finding her phone number was child’s play. I sometimes think that I should have taken Phillipe Merlot up on his offer of a partnership in his private detecting business. Considering where he ended up though, or at least the bits of him that have been found, I probably made the right decision to leave when I did. So that is how I found myself standing in a poorly lit car park under an office block in Chiswick while Storm Brenda raged outside. I had cycled over and so was dressed, due to the severity of the storm and the darkness of the night, in my fluorescent waterproof cycling gear. I looked rather like a PCSO, which is not my best look or one I would have chosen to wear to a meeting with Gideon’s supposedly stunning ex, but it was ideal for the prevailing weather conditions. I had arrived early and was just finishing off a packet of Frazzles (I had missed dinner and was starving) when I heard the distinctive click clack of a pair of high heels approaching me from behind. I was taken by surprise as I hadn’t heard a car pull up, but maybe the storm had masked the noise.
Spinning around (although spinning isn’t really possible when wearing wet weather cycling gear) the first thing I noticed was the red glowing tip of a cigarette. Sasha stopped about ten feet away from me and, despite the poor light, I could see that she was every bit as stunning as I had feared. She looked like a mash up of Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett, being tall, slender, blonde, immaculately dressed, and ineffably cool. She had on an exquisitely tailored dark coat beneath which she was wearing a pale silk blouse tucked into a pair of straight legged trousers that skimmed her slender ankles and stopped just above a pair of almost unworkably high, slender heeled shoes. Chic didn’t even come close.
“Hello Eve.” Her voice had just the tiniest hint of a foreign accent. I honestly don’t think I’d have got a look in with Gideon if Sasha had been the competition rather than ‘Dirty Nicole’. Thank goodness she hadn’t thought he was worth what I was now going through with Marjorie. “You wished to see me?” she almost purred.
“Ye . . . Yes,” I managed to squeak.
“How can I help you?” She leaned elegantly against the wall by which she was standing, and took a long draw on what I could now see was an electronic cigarette.
“The thing is,” I stammered, “well, what I wanted to ask was . . .”
“Yes,” she said encouragingly, a faint but kindly smile playing across her perfect features.
“This postcard,” I pulled the now rather soggy postcard from my pocket and held it towards her. As the distance between us was longer than that of our combined arms I had to walk towards her, rustling very loudly with each step and leaving a trail of water in my wake. “I don’t really understand what you’re . . . what I’m meant to . . . the thing is . . .” I seemed to have lost the power of coherent speech. Once I was close enough Sasha reached a languorous, cashmere clad arm towards me and took the soggy offering.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she said, having looked at the card. “I seem to have made a mistake, although it does explain . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Explain what?” I asked.
“This,” she waved the disintegrating card at me, “was meant for my husband. He’s overseas, on a tour of duty.”
“He’s a soldier?” I asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied. “This was a message meant for him.”
“Knickers Off Ready When . . .” I began.
“You Come Home. Yes,” she concluded, smiling more broadly than before, “I adapted it from the old wartime soldiers’ message. Silly I know, but it makes us laugh.” So, Sasha loved her husband and she made mistakes. I warmed to her on learning this. She couldn’t help it if she was enormously glamorous. I am not by nature glamorous. I am the kind of woman who can’t be bothered to reapply her lipstick at a party. Sasha probably wouldn’t need to reapply hers as it would never dare to get rubbed off in the first place.
“So,” Sasha said, “you didn’t get my fourth message?”
“No, I didn’t.” I confirmed. “What did it say?”
“It was so cryptic I’m afraid I can’t remember,” she began, “but the point of it was to tell you to search Marjorie’s house. She has secrets. If you want to marry Gideon you must find her secrets.” She gave me a penetrating stare while pointing her electronic cigarette in my direction.
“How,” I asked, “do you know all this?”
“Secrets, as you have probably guessed, are my business.”
“You’re a sp . . .” I began, but Sasha interrupted
me.
“We prefer operative,” she whispered.
“If you’re an operative,” I asked, “and you know all this stuff about . . . my partner’s mother, why did you let her beat you?” I felt like an idiot asking this in the face of Sasha’s almost superhuman competence, but I wanted to know the answer.
“She didn’t beat me,” Sasha replied, a look of annoyance flashing briefly across her face. “I made a strategic withdrawal.” She took another drag on her electronic cigarette. “Gideon is a very lovely man, but he and I weren’t well suited enough for me to want to deal with his mother.” Quite what she meant by ‘dealing with’ Marjorie I wasn’t sure, but I sensed she didn’t mean ‘manage to rub along with’.
“I spend all my working life trying to find out things people don’t want me to find out. I also frequently have to stop people finding out things I don’t want them to know.” She looked at me sardonically. “I really couldn’t face my personal life being filled with the same.”
“I see.” I said.
“The efforts you have put into exposing the target so far prove that you are more committed to the prize than I was,” she went on. By target I assumed she meant Marjorie, so the prize must be Gideon.
“How do you know how committed I am . . . to the prize?” I asked.
“I know all sorts of things,” Sasha said. “Your brother is an idiot, but he’s not wrong about absolutely everything.”
“Even the lizards?” I asked.
“No, he’s completely wrong about the lizards.”
“Thank goodness for that!” I gave a sigh of relief. “But these secrets, where should I look?”
“They will be close to the target, of that you can be sure. The target is clever, but not as clever as it would like to think. You are clever too. Cleverer perhaps than the target gives you credit for. I have to go now,” Sasha blew a perfect smoke ring that rose and gradually dissipated into the air above her head. If you could bottle sophistication and sell it she’d have been the richest person alive. “You know what you have to do. And you are the woman to do it, I know that much.”
