The Woman at Number 24

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘Fancy a stroll?’ said Jane when Sarah emerged. Then, ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nuffink. Honest!’ Sarah laughed when Jane pursed her lips and they idled through the curving backstreets of Notting Hill, Jane pushing her bike, its wheels making a lazy tchat-tchat-tchat as they shared a punnet of obscenely ripe strawberries.

  ‘You’ve got juice on your chin.’ Jane’s shorts were shorter than Sarah’s; they verged on indecent. ‘I saw a cracking flat today. Kitchen-diner. Shared garden. Needs a bit of TLC but the price is just stupid.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Nope what?’

  ‘Nope, I don’t want to go and view it.’

  ‘It’s a bargain. Not far away and—’

  ‘I’m not ready.’ Looking at flats would be like adultery. It would be an admission that she was leaving number twenty-four. Sarah knew that she was in denial, but she liked it there; it didn’t make her want to cry, for one thing.

  ‘I don’t want you to move, you know that, but I’m getting scared you’ll end up sleeping on someone’s floor.’ Jane sounded anxious. ‘Please let me set up a couple of viewings. No pressure.’

  ‘How did Tom’s audition go?’

  Jane tutted at the clunky change of subject. ‘No way of knowing. According to him, it couldn’t have gone worse unless he’d actually murdered the director, but Tom always thinks he’s flunked auditions. He’s confident about his voiceovers, but he refuses to see that as an actual talent.’

  ‘He’s a complex boy.’

  ‘Try living with him,’ said Jane. ‘There’s this girl chasing him. Camilla, she’s called. Some actress, they meet now and then on the voice circuit. Always texting him, suggesting a cocktail. Poor bloke’s scared of his phone.’

  ‘She’s got a cheek.’

  Jane shrugged. ‘Tom’s a good-looking bloke.’

  ‘Doesn’t it annoy you?’

  ‘Nah.’ Jane laughed, snaffling the last strawberry as they ambled past a cobbled mews peppered with geraniums and olive trees and sports cars. ‘She’s barking up the wrong tree, poor cow.’

  ‘Let’s be honest, your husband wouldn’t dare cheat on you, would he?’ The idea was laughable.

  ‘God, no! I’d kill him,’ said Jane. ‘And her. And then I’d bring him back to life and kill him again.’ She stopped dead. ‘We’re here!’

  ‘Where’s here?’ Apparently, they hadn’t been moseying aimlessly; Jane had been leading them to a small edifice of old brick with two oversized arched windows either side of a stone porch.

  ‘That antique place.’ Jane pointed at the pleasingly plain building. ‘It’s shut every time I drive past.’

  ‘The owner’s a bit lackadaisical about opening times,’ said Sarah.

  Leo emerged from the cool of the interior to fuss with the dusty books displayed in a wheelbarrow beside the sign that read: ‘The Old Church Antiques Emporium – Browsers Welcome!’ When he looked up and saw the women on the opposite pavement, it seemed that this welcome didn’t extend as far as Sarah.

  ‘You mean . . . ?’ Jane, who’d heard about the squabble, bit her lip. ‘Shit, I forgot this is Leo’s place, let’s just . . .’

  It was too late to sidle off. Leo revamped his face and waved them over. ‘Greetings,’ he said, just like the proprietor of an eccentrically charming emporium should. ‘Looking for something in particular?’

  ‘Bedside tables,’ said Jane, leaning her bike against a Victorian chimney pot.

  ‘Mismatched? Or a pair?’

  ‘Either.’

  The women followed Leo inside, and the sun was swallowed up by the high-raftered church, where the air smelled of wax and wood.

  Sarah hung back. It was peculiar to be a visitor in a place she’d regarded as her territory. She used to turn up with a deli lunch and they’d eat it sitting in an old pew or a repurposed cart or metal bed – whatever Leo was trying to flog at the time. She’d help him haul pieces around, the legs squeaking on the parquet floor, debating where to hang the signs the Old Church was famed for. Glancing at the current stock, she particularly coveted an old tin 7Up advertisement.

  Leo’s charm, the easy patter of the salesman, wasn’t working on Jane, who barely looked at the tables he showed her. Sarah knew the charm wasn’t hollow, that Leo loved every piece that went through his hands.

  The phrase struck her as eerily apt. Was she just another piece that went through his hands? The antiques that Leo stroked and admired were forgotten as soon as they were sold. Sarah’s self-esteem was a drunkard since the divorce, reeling this way and that; now she shored it up by reminding herself that she had more patina than Helena.

  ‘S’cuse me, Leo.’ Jane put her trilling phone to her ear and had a short conversation. ‘OK, yes, sure, bye.’ She found Sarah in the doorway. ‘Bums. Gotta dash. This client thinks he owns me.’ She made a polite, frosty goodbye to Leo, and put her arm through Sarah’s.

  ‘Actually,’ said Leo, ‘I’ve got a little something you might find interesting, Sarah.’ There was an appeal in his face. Humbled, not his usual blustering self, Leo moved Sarah, in a deep place where very few people penetrated.

  This was a fork in the road. She could go forwards or back.

  ‘You go.’ Sarah smiled at the face Jane pulled. With a tut that echoed in the cavernous space, Jane left them to it.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d . . .’ Leo was chastened, wary.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d . . .’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Look at us,’ said Leo. ‘Lost for words.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Well, not sorry,’ began Sarah, who wanted to both apologise and reiterate her gripe; the trouble was, she hated to see Leo squirm. She hadn’t turned off the love like a tap when he moved out.

  ‘I know what you mean; I’m sorry and not sorry too.’ Leo edged closer, stealing around an inlaid harpsichord, trailing his fingers along its polished surface. ‘What I meant to say the other day, and it came out all wrong, is that Helena’s talking bollocks. She was miffed about our assignations so she put a spin on them that simply isn’t true.’

  Sarah moved away as Leo made ground, noting that he hadn’t thrown in a ‘darling’ yet.

  ‘Cross my heart, Sarah, I just want you to be happy again.’

  ‘To make yourself feel better?’

  ‘Partly. But mainly because you deserve happiness.’

  Marriage had made Sarah happy. As had the flat. ‘Selling up,’ she admitted, in a small voice, ‘is breaking my heart, Leo.’

  Leo didn’t have anything to say. He skirted a dresser populated with a Festival of Britain dinner service, and Sarah took a step backwards. He noticed, and looked wounded. ‘Am I that bad?’

  Backing towards the entrance, towards the glowing outdoors, Sarah said, ‘It’s not because you’re bad, Leo. It’s because we were good.’

  The honesty shocked Leo. ‘We were, weren’t we, darling?’ he said.

  A-ha! thought Sarah. We have a ‘darling’! ‘All past tense.’ Sarah was at the porch, her shape outlined by dazzling sunshine.

  ‘Helena and I . . .’ Leo looked at the tiles on the floor, the Grade II listed ones he wasn’t allowed to remove and sell. ‘It’s good, yes, even great at times, but . . .’

  ‘But?’ Sarah hated herself for that prompt. She pleaded in her own defence that Helena had so much. And I have so little. A crumb might sustain her for months.

  Leo approached her and this time Sarah didn’t move away. ‘But, Leo?’

  Closer, he said, ‘But she’s not you.’

  Leo was close enough to touch. Sarah was unable to back off or move in.

  Leo said, ‘You’re amazing, Sarah.’

  ‘So amazing that you left me.’

  ‘I didn’t go far.’

  ‘True.’ Sarah gulped. ‘I wish you’d gone further.’

  ‘Truth is, I couldn’t.’ Leo leaned past Sarah’s shoulder and pushed the emporium door.

  The noise reverberated in the church. The
ir faces were close. Sarah turned and twisted the huge old key in the lock.

  Leo took a hank of her hair in his fingers. ‘Sarah.’

  It was neither a question nor a rebuke. It was her name, and it was Leo saying it. Time contracted, folded in on itself and she fell into him.

  Later she’d remember that they were equal partners. Nobody was taken advantage of. Both consenting adults knew exactly what they were doing.

  Their mouths met, her head back. The fit was as sexily unequal as she remembered. She felt dainty against his bulk.

  Sarah pulled back to attack the buttons on his shirt, ravenous. They tottered together, crashing into a glass-fronted cupboard which lurched on its painted legs. As Leo greedily trailed his mouth over her forehead, kissing her hair, Sarah tugged at his belt.

  Hardly any clothes were removed. The bare essentials were undone, or pulled aside. Staggering, they lay down on a vintage kilim.

  The first time was hurried and rough, little more than a blur. They lay flat on their backs, staring up at the hammered beams far above them.

  ‘Wow.’ Leo’s chest rose and fell.

  ‘We should get divorced more often,’ said Sarah. The flippancy surprised her. Sex had liberated her spirit. It had brought them close. Intimacy had washed their slate clean.

  Leo gasped with delight and shock and then, despite their lack of breath, laughter rolled over them. Sarah hooted, knees up against her chest. She was as light as a feather, as old as the hills: she was loved.

  Then Leo turned to her, purposeful, his lips, foreign and familiar, were on hers and this time it was slow, and Sarah cried as they moved together.

  *

  Infamously able to sleep anywhere, Leo was silent beside her on the rug.

  The hectic noise, the whispers, the feel of soft bodies, hard bodies, had all receded and the Old Church was its stately self again. A dog barked outside. Pipes gurgled. Sarah’s stomach grumbled.

  She wondered how they would be with each other now. The rightness of it receded. Doubt sneaked around her like a serpent. Sarah’s exposed breasts seemed improper. She inched her knickers up past her hips.

  Like a B-movie Dracula, Leo shot up. ‘Bloody hell, darling!’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Sarah. ‘Bloody hell.’

  They giggled, coyly, until Leo reached out and pulled her face towards his, crushing her lips and knocking the breath out of her all over again. Their foreheads touching, he whispered, ‘It’s best if you leave first. We can’t get home at the same time.’

  Disassociating her lips from Leo’s, Sarah felt like a hit-and-run victim, until she realised Leo’s actions didn’t match his words. He stared, as if committing her to memory.

  ‘You are sublime,’ he whispered.

  Suddenly gallant, he turned his back as they dressed. Sarah heard Leo do up buttons and drag up a zip as her body sparkled. She was radioactive.

  Clothes back on, knees wobbly, Sarah felt musky, primal, not at all ready for the sunny streets of Notting Hill.

  *

  Back at number twenty-four, Sarah sat perfectly still in a patch of sunlight that lay across the floorboards like a rug. She heard the street door close and listened to Leo’s feet on the stairs. Then the door to Flat B opened and shut and he called, ‘Wifey, I’m home!’

  That was how he used to greet Sarah. She shut her eyes to it, squeezing them tight, forcing away the feeling of being replaced, as if she was a toy, by a newer version.

  The downside would have its moment, but for now Sarah held on to the euphoria. Love did indeed turn this wise woman into a fool. No shower. She preserved Leo’s invisible handprints on her body, at her throat. She wandered about the flat, her thoughts like chiffon hanging in pretty rags.

  Leo wanted her. He still needed her. The sly story about buying Flat A was a red herring; Helena was jealous.

  After months of beige celibacy, the technicolour sensuality of lovemaking had shaken Sarah. She was in love with herself. Her toes were in love with the floor. Her fingers were in love with the cup of mint tea she held.

  A shout from the now twilit garden drew her to the window. Tom was threatening Jane with the watering can; Jane fled, prettily, crazily.

  They looked so fresh in their summery whites, playing a blameless game. An invisible barrier divided them from Sarah. The Royces were married and she was a mistress; they were the heroes of their own story but Sarah was the villain of somebody else’s.

  Chapter Eleven

  Notting Hill, W11

  This calendar is FREE to valued customers!

  Tuesday 28th June, 2016

  IF YOU DON’T WANT ANYONE TO FIND OUT, DON’T DO IT

  Sarah was something she’d sworn she’d never be: an adulterer.

  Her own family had been blown to smithereens by infidelity, the parts finally reassembling to make a Frankenstein version of the original Lynches.

  As a child she’d believed that her mother drove her father to have an affair; Sarah absolved her perfect daddy. Now, as Sarah finally accepted the truth of her mother’s insult – ‘You’re just like him!’ – she realised it had been his choice.

  She’d made a similar choice, fully aware of the deadly wake left by her little boat as she chug-chug-chugged into Leo’s arms.

  Jane had called her a goody-goody. And now here I am, having an affair with my own husband.

  *

  Jane caught up with Sarah as she left for work. ‘I’ll walk you part of the way.’ Jane was en route to the tube station. ‘Yet another meeting with this damned Suffolk guy. He’s narrowed the search area down to Southwold, but I can’t make him understand that there’s nothing on the market that’s big enough.’ She was smartly dressed; this was Work Jane. ‘I won’t ask you if you’ve thought about a new flat, what you can afford, square footage. I’ve given up on you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sarah, who didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘I’ve got a mad day ahead and so has Tom. He has a second audition for Vile Bodies. So tonight we’re going to drink ourselves stupid. I know you never leave Notting Hill but if you pack your passport and a sarnie for the journey you could join us in Covent Garden later.’

  ‘Tonight’s Mavis night.’ Sarah had already planned dinner; Mavis set the bar high.

  ‘There are easier ways to give to charity,’ said Jane, ‘than sitting through dinner with our resident witch.’

  I look forward all week to my meal with Mavis. ‘Witch was often another name for the wisest old woman in the village.’

  ‘It was also the name for a witch.’ Jane was rooting in the large satchel she always carried. ‘Old ladies eat early. We’re not meeting until nine. Come after you’ve kissed Mavis goodnight.’

  ‘Can’t,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m meeting Keeley, my supervisor, for a glass of wine.’

  ‘To chat about your job?’ Jane winced. She knew about Sarah’s predicament.

  ‘Yeah.’ Sarah nodded as Jane swallowed the lie. It was ugly to bend trust out of shape.

  ‘Did you and Leo kiss and make up after I left the Old Church?’

  That was so near the mark that Jane jumped; she’d certainly kissed most of him. ‘What? No. Well, yes. We’re talking again, and before you start, Jane, it’s better when Leo and I are friends.’ She almost coughed at that whitewash of a word.

  As they parted, Jane found what she was looking for in her satchel. ‘Reading matter for your coffee break. A Sunday Times magazine I kept from two years ago.’ Walking backwards, she said, ‘It explains Mavis’s accent. Those Bennison birds grew up in luxury.’

  A cloud hung over St Chad’s despite the battering sunshine. The police had been called when a man with a history of domestic abuse had barged in, demanding to take his eight-year-old son home. There’d been whispers of a knife that had proved to be untrue, but the whole building was jittery.

  None more so than Keeley, who’d been to a budget meeting with her superiors; from the look on her face as she stalked the corridors it hadn’t gone wel
l. Sarah kept out of her way at lunchtime, tucking herself into a corner of the staffroom with an indifferent salad and the Sunday Times magazine.

  Zelda Bennison: a life in writing

  ‘I believe in love, all kinds of love,’ the prolific novelist tells Jodie Leskovac on the publication of her thirty-eighth book Tell Me What to Do.

  The five-storey house in one of London’s smartest streets is the perfect backdrop for Zelda Bennison CBE. Like her surroundings, she is tastefully put together and doesn’t show her age; it’s incredible that the woman pouring us both a bracing Scotch is seventy years old.

  ‘No surgery, I assure you.’ The author wrinkles her nose distastefully. ‘I wash my face with soap and water and I live cleanly.’ She lifts her glass. ‘Bar the occasional indiscretion.’

  Her study is tidy and organised, her writing materials neatly laid out on an antique desk. Tantalisingly, the computer is dark and the notepads are face down. Like all Bennison fans I’m keen for titbits about the next book.

  ‘It’s about love.’ Bennison’s hair should probably be white by now, but it’s tinted a cashmere blonde, cut to hang crisply above her shoulders, which are neat in a sharply tailored dress the colour of the autumn leaves in the private garden square beyond the window. ‘All my books are about love.’

  ‘Even the murders?’ I venture.

  ‘Especially the murders. One must feel very strongly about another person in order to expend so much energy killing them. What’s that if it isn’t love?’

  The topic seems timely, as Bennison is a newly-wed.

  ‘Yes, my darling Ramon.’ Bennison’s austerely attractive face softens as we look at a framed photograph of the actor Ramon Kaur that adorns her desk. ‘Call him a toy boy and I’ll never buy The Times again,’ she warns over the rim of her tumbler.

  The three-decade age gap is ‘simply a number. We respect each other. It’s rather beautiful after the pain of the recent past.’ The sudden death of Bennison’s first husband, publisher Charles Mulqueeny, ended forty-five years of marriage. Photographs of the pair show a dashing, well-matched couple, both handsome, both undaunted by impending old age. She won’t discuss her bereavement beyond saying, ‘It tests one.’