In-Laws and Outlaws

by Kate Fulford

  “Thanks!” I was ridiculously chuffed at Sasha’s faith in me.

  “But,” she said, fixing me with a steely glare, “this meeting never happened.”

  “No, absolutely, I swear.” And I meant it. Sasha struck me as a woman not to be messed with. “Could I just ask one thing?”

  “Yes, although I don’t promise to answer,” she replied.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why are you helping me like this?”

  “Because,” said Sasha, “Marjorie’s a monster and Gideon’s a nice man. He deserves to marry whoever he wants, and she won’t let that happen.”

  “It’s as simple as that?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sasha confirmed, “it’s as simple as that.” And with that she was gone. Again, I didn’t hear a car, but there must have been one as she was dry as a bone and so hadn’t been outside. I, on the other hand, had to cycle home through the wind and rain and was only glad that I had bought myself a second packet of Frazzles. They would, I hoped, give me the energy I needed to face what lay ahead.

  CHAPTER 21

  With my rescheduled wedding fast approaching Marjorie made a great show of throwing herself, and the money she had misappropriated from Gideon, into the affair wholeheartedly. She had even suggested that we go on a shopping trip together to choose my wedding outfit. I had been going to wear a dress I had owned for several years but Marjorie was appalled by this suggestion, and she didn’t even know that I had been married in it once already.

  “You must have something new. I’ll help you choose!” Marjorie had declared enthusiastically as she, Gideon and I discussed the forthcoming nuptials while sitting around her kitchen table. Gideon was delighted at the idea of his mother and me going on a shopping trip together. I was just as enthusiastic but for rather different reasons. Under normal circumstances I would have been horrified at the suggestion, combining as it did two of my least favourite things, clothes shopping and Marjorie. But it did offer an opportunity for me to discover when her house might be empty, and so I slapped on my best smile and acted as if nothing would please me more.

  We began our shopping trip in Harrods. I have never bought anything in Harrods, it’s not really my kind of shop. I was once there with a friend and thought that I might as well buy some teabags. I needed them and it sells them so it seemed a feasible idea. A few moments later and I was standing open mouthed and speechless with shock as an assistant picked out a box of fifteen teabags that cost thirty pounds. That’s two pounds a bag! Sensing that she was on the verge of losing the sale, the assistant tried to justify the price on the basis that the bags themselves were made of cotton. I was still unable to speak, so she went on to tell me the thread count of the cotton out of which the bags were made. It was higher than that of my bed sheets. So, as I say, not my kind of shop.

  Marjorie, on the other hand, liked to behave as if she rarely shopped anywhere else, but as I had no intention of buying anything that day it didn’t really matter where we went. If I don’t like clothes shopping on my own, I absolutely loathe clothes shopping in company. I know what suits me and I don’t need someone else muddying the waters. In addition, Marjorie and I had very different ideas about what I should wear. The only thing we agreed on was that I must wear something.

  “Oh,” Marjorie exclaimed, holding an execrable floral rag against me, “this is beautiful. It brings out your eyes.” I would almost rather have had my eyes put out than wear her choice of dress. One might have thought that she wanted me to look ridiculous given some of the monstrosities she threw in my path that day. I, however, simply smiled and murmured my displeasure very quietly under my breath. After an hour or so of this, and having been forced to try on a couple of things in order not to appear deliberately difficult, we made our way to the ground floor via the lifts.

  “They get everywhere,” Marjorie hissed as we stepped out on the ground floor.

  “What do?” I asked, bemused.

  “Russians,” she replied. “They’re everywhere.” She spoke so loudly that it was impossible that the very well dressed Russian couple who had shared the lift with us could have failed to hear her.

  “But at least they’re not Arabs,” Marjorie continued, without lowering her voice. “Or Jews. Jews are the worst.” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Marjorie had made some vaguely racist comments before in my hearing, but Gideon had always gently admonished her, and she had always asked his forgiveness. “It’s how I was brought up, I’m afraid,” she had said, smiling obsequiously at him as if that made it all right. She had, however, overstepped the mark by some considerable margin with this comment. But although it felt terribly craven, there was nothing I could do about it. I was sure that she was testing me, trying to get me to react, so I simply had to suck it up while smiling ingratiatingly at the couple and hoping that they realised that I didn’t share Marjorie’s views.

  Once outside Marjorie hailed a cab (she was paying, so what the hell?) and ordered the driver to take us to Peter Jones. I would have preferred not to run the risk of bumping into Meg, for whom the store was almost a second home, and therefore spent an anxious hour running around corners ahead of Marjorie and scanning the crowds in the style of a close protection officer.

  “Lunch time I think,” Marjorie finally announced. “My treat,” she said as she grabbed my arm and practically frogmarched me down the King’s Road. “I want us to be the very best of friends,” she went on, “now that you’re finally going to become one of us.” I assumed she meant a Rowe not a complete bitch or a lizard eyed alien, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “That would be . . .” I searched for an appropriate word, “amazing.” I tried not to pull away from her too obviously as she leaned into me as if we were on the most intimate of terms. It was as our lunch arrived that I had the strongest sense of deja vu. Looking at the quiche that had just been placed before her, Marjorie clapped her hands together while exclaiming excitedly “I adore asparagus, I always cook it when we have someone special for dinner.” She had never cooked it for me, but I let that pass.

  “Oh,” I said, involuntarily.

  “Oh what?” Marjorie enquired.

  “Oh, how delicious it all looks.” I extemporised (another of those fancy words for lying). What I had suddenly realised was that we were in the same cafe that Meg and I had eaten in on our first meeting, and Marjorie had ordered the same meal as her twin. Well, not the exactly same, but the sisters clearly shared a love of asparagus.

  “Oh,” enthused Marjorie, “this is to die for.” I have always loathed this phrase, and hearing it issue from Marjorie’s lips did nothing to change my opinion. People die for all sorts of reasons, but asparagus quiche, however delicious, has never been one of them. “You must try some,” Marjorie continued, using her fork to carve out a piece for me and lifting it towards my mouth. The fork had a smear of Marjorie’s shell pink lipstick at the bottom of the tines and was topped with a quivering piece of custardy quiche. As I am not overly fond of being touched without having given my express permission it’s possible to imagine how I might feel about sharing other people’s food from their lipstick smeared forks. It was all I could do not to retch.

  “No,” I said, rather too brusquely, “I can’t.”

  “Why ever not? It’s divine.” Marjorie was being very effusive in her praise of what looked to me like a very ordinary piece of quiche.

  “I’m allergic.” I said. It was, if not the first untruth, at least the first outright lie of the day.

  “Allergic to quiche, I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Marjorie. Neither had I.

  “Asparagus,” I almost shouted, “I’m allergic to asparagus. Terribly allergic. It could kill me.” I was worried I might have overdone it, but at least the quiche that had been hovering dangerously close to my lips had been withdrawn.

  “How unusual.” Marjorie looked at me, appraisingly.

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” I concurred.

  After this we carried on making desu
ltory conversation of a most tedious kind, but I did manage to establish that Marjorie and Malcolm were going to be absent from home attending a dinner at the golf club the following Friday evening. So mission accomplished and at the cost of only a few hours in Marjorie’s company.

  CHAPTER 22

  “You have got to be the worst sidekick ever.” I snarled at Meg. “If Robin had lead Batman such a merry dance goodness only knows what would have happened to Gotham.”

  “I’m trying my best, and why am I the sidekick?” Meg muttered in reply. We had successfully entered Rowe HQ but it had not been without incident. Meg had, so far, turned on all the security lights, tripped over the rug in the hallway, almost broken a vase, and made enough noise on the stairs to wake the dead.

  “You really have to ask?” I enquired. She and I were both dressed from head to toe in black. I was rather pleased with my outfit. I felt, and looked if I do say so myself, rather like Catwoman, to continue the Batman theme. Meg, on the other hand, looked like a badly stuffed soft toy, but at least she couldn’t be seen in the dark.

  “I’ll start in here.” I said, pointing to the bedroom where Malcolm kept his computer, and which also housed a shelf of box files. I was far from sure Marjorie would keep her secrets in such plain site, but I had to start somewhere. I had been methodically going through each file, a small flashlight clenched between my teeth so that I could see without putting the lights on, for several minutes when Meg called to me.

  “Oy!” she bellowed, in clear contravention of my instructions to keep quiet. I’ll bet Sasha didn’t have to put up with this from her operatives. “Come in here.”

  “I’m not deaf, there’s really no need to shout.” I hissed as I joined her in the master bedroom.

  “Look what I’ve found!” Meg ignored my comment, looking pleased as punch and holding up a buff folder. “It was under the mattress. It’s where she always hid her secret things when we were children,” she continued as she handed me the folder, which was about three inches thick. Marjorie was clearly no princess if she could sleep comfortably with this beneath her mattress every night.

  Opening it I saw it contained various papers and a selection of photos. Nestling at the bottom of the folder there was also a memory stick. A quick leaf through confirmed that it contained exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t want to spend any longer in the house than necessary, but I did notice that there were some documents written in French in amongst the stash. Luckily I am fluent in French. I hadn’t lied when I had told Celeste that I had been a complete dunce at languages at school. I had, but a couple of years later I had found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands and nothing much to do with it, so I had used the time to learn French. It all stemmed from a misunderstanding really.

  I had been working as a personal assistant for a wealthy couple who spent much of their time out of the country. I loved my job, which mainly involved living in their house and spending their money, or more precisely paying their bills as and when they turned up. With their full knowledge and approval, I became very adept at forging their signatures in order to ensure that everything was paid on time. It was, in truth, a disaster waiting to happen. The problem came when I used my new found skill to make a few unauthorised payments of my own. In my defence the couple really were very rich and very generous so I didn’t think they’d mind. If they’d been in the country I would have asked them. But they weren’t so I didn’t. The unauthorised payments included three months back rent for friend who was about to be made homeless, an MOT for another friend’s car without which she would lose her job, and vet bills for Aunt Audrey’s horrendous cat (this was the most ill-advised of all as I ended up having to look after it following Audrey’s death). Finally I treated myself to a very inexpensive holiday (I spent it in a tent for goodness sake). The upshot was that I was invited to spend a few months banged up (as I believe it is called) at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. The couple were really very sorry about what happened, and even offered to give me a reference when I got out, but I felt that I’d best steer clear of that line of work in future so I never took them up on it. I did, however, use my time in chokey productively. I not only learnt French, but also Italian and even a little German, which I have mostly forgotten as it is a horribly ugly and complicated language. It turned out I wasn’t a dunce at languages at all, I had just been badly taught, so it’s an ill wind that doesn’t have a silver lining, although that makes no sense at all in any language. A quick scan of the French documents clarified a lot of things. It was as I was leafing through these that Meg hissed at me.

  “I think they may be . . .” she said, but this was as far as she got because at that moment the little torch I had been reading by was rendered redundant. The bedroom was suddenly brilliantly illuminated and there, in the doorway, stood Malcolm his hand still hovering over the light switch.

  “What the . . .” he said in an ominously quiet voice as he took in the scene, me, the folder in my hands, but mostly Meg. He simply couldn’t take his eyes off Meg. I am not easily spooked but this was not good. I didn’t want the opportunity to learn any more languages. “I think that you two better come downstairs, and bring that,” he pointed at the folder in my hands, “with you.”

  Shit, shit shit, shit. And then some more shit. “And be quiet,” Malcolm muttered through gritted teeth. Huh? We followed him down the stairs as quietly as we possibly could.

  “What are you doing up there?” Marjorie’s shrill voice called from the lounge.

  “I’ll be in with the coffee in a minute.” Malcolm called to her before turning to us and putting his finger to his lips, as if we needed to be told that talking was verboten (bit of German there, so I clearly haven’t forgotten all of it). Malcolm tiptoed across the hall. We tiptoed along behind him. Meg was, this time at least, watching where she was going and so didn’t trip over the rug although I did notice Malcolm quite deliberately disarrange its tassels with his foot. Silently opening the front door Malcolm pointed emphatically to indicate that we should exit through it. We didn’t need telling twice. The last we heard was his feigning a coughing fit, presumably to cover the sound of the door closing behind us.

  Creeping past the lounge window I could see Marjorie perched uncomfortably on the edge of one of the sofas. Even when alone in her own home she looked uncomfortable. A moment later I saw Malcolm enter the room at which point Marjorie began to berate him, what for I didn’t know but I wasn’t about to stay to find out. A few minutes later and Meg and I were sitting in my car, which I had parked a few streets away.

  “Oh no!” Meg exclaimed. “You didn’t put the keys back in the shed.”

  “Really the last thing in my mind right now,” I replied. “Malcolm! Who’d have thought it? Malcolm. And he let us take the folder! He wanted us to take the folder! She is going to be livid when she finds it’s gone.”

  “She might be angry about the folder, but it’ll be nothing compared to how angry she’ll be when she can’t find this!” Meg had a huge grin on her face as she uncurled her palm to reveal Marjorie’s diamond ring.

  “What the . . . .?” Why on earth had Meg taken that? The whole point of the exercise had been to get the folder. It was, until Meg stole the ring, a pretty much foolproof plan. Marjorie could hardly call the police to report the loss of a folder of information that she routinely used to blackmail people, my short perusal having assured me that this was its purpose. She could, however, quite legitimately report the theft of a very expensive ring. “Why did you take that?” I asked, appalled at Meg’s stupidity.

  “You wanted the folder, I wanted this. We both got what we wanted, didn’t we?” Meg looked at me, the grin on her face even wider than before. I clenched my fists tightly. OK, I thought, it’s done, but it could easily be undone, and hopefully before Marjorie noticed the ring’s absence.

  “Why don’t you let me have that, I can make sure it’s safe.” I reached for the ring, gently so as not to alarm Meg, but she was too quick for me. Her
fist snapped closed around it.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “This is mine.” She didn’t go so far as to call it her precious, but there was more than a whiff of Gollum about Meg as she clutched the ring to her chest.

  “Yes,” I muttered through gritted teeth, “I suppose it is.”

  CHAPTER 23

  I was settling myself down with a glass of wine one evening a few days later, the contents of Marjorie’s folder laid out on the table in front of me (Gideon had gone for a drink with Creepy Bob, who had got the idea that he was going to be Gideon’s best man – newsflash – he wasn’t), when my phone rang. Preoccupied as I was with Gideon’s family, I had put what was going on in my own small and dysfunctional one to the back of my mind, but hearing a hysterical Sophie on the line brought it very much front and centre again.

  “Slow down, Sophie,” I said, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “He . . . he wants . . . he wants full . . . he wants full custody,” Sophie finally managed to say, in amongst the sobs.

  “But why Sophie?” I asked. “What’s changed?”

  “I don’t know, why does he do anything?” Her sobbing almost under control, Sophie had become rather more coherent. “It’s probably,” she said, “because I’ve got a new boyfriend.”

  “But you’ve seen people before.” I pointed out. “Why is Dominic so upset this time?”

  “Because he saw David with Pixie. She adores David.” Sophie explained. “He’s so lovely with her. He talks to her and plays with her and everything.”

  “And Dominic has a problem with that?”

  “He’s jealous because Pixie doesn’t like spending time with him, Dom that is. It’s his own stupid fault though. Do you know where he took her last weekend?” Sophie asked.