Martin stood up and walked over to the window. It overlooked a small walled garden, laid to lawn, a wooden swing set at the far end. He stared for a long time, lost in thought, before turning back to Olivia.
‘I don’t know where she had been.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The police asked me where she had been. I had to tell them I didn’t know. Ruth came and went as she pleased, you see.’
He gave Olivia a moment to respond and when she didn’t, he carried on. ‘It wasn’t a happy marriage, but I daresay you knew that. I expected to lose her one day, but not like this.’
‘I’m so sorry, Martin. I know you loved her.’
He turned back to the window. ‘I did love her. Very much.’
*
The pet store heaved with Christmas shoppers. Olivia had persuaded Martin to get a pair of kittens for the girls – a bit of joy among the devastation – and found a litter for sale a few miles outside of Compton Cross. She was glad to have an errand to run, to shrug off the claustrophobic cloak of grief for a few hours. Harriet had taken over Olivia’s school duties so she could stay in the Rutherfords’ guest room and be on hand whenever she was needed.
Martin put on a brave face for Alice and Maisie, but to Olivia he looked haggard. In the two days since Ruth’s death he hadn’t eaten a proper meal. At night Olivia could hear him moving around downstairs. He couldn’t sleep, he said, and was too tormented to lie there staring into the darkness. The sheets and pillows smelled of Ruth. He thought he heard her breathing beside him. A few snatched hours on the sofa was the best he could manage.
The girls woke at night too. Olivia read to them, sang to them, sat patiently until they drifted off again. It had been a long time since she was up all hours with a crying child. She remembered those early months with Edward, so exhausted she could barely function.
During the day she kept the girls occupied, making cupcakes, watching films, reading, drawing. And she insisted on at least an hour of fresh air, either playing in the garden or going for a walk. As a strategy it worked well most of the time.
They grieved in ways that reflected their personalities. Alice tended to withdraw into herself, curl up with her teddy, thumb in her mouth. She regressed to being an infant, a time when her mother took care of her every need. Sometimes she wept quietly, but mostly she suffered in unnatural silence.
Maisie, on the other hand, lashed out indiscriminately. She snatched a Lladro ornament from the mantelpiece and threw it against the wall. Ruth’s make-up bag was ransacked, the bathroom mirror covered in pink lipstick. Maisie’s excuse was that Mummy wouldn’t need make-up in heaven. One minute she was animated with fury; the next, paralysed with despair. There was nothing to do but try to soothe her. She was entitled to feel angry; to rail and roar. Her mother had left her and she wasn’t coming back.
‘If you think it will help,’ was Martin’s verdict on the kittens. First Olivia had to buy one of those carriers to transport them in, a litter tray, food and water bowls, a few toys for them to play with.
She couldn’t drive so close to Lorna’s and not drop in. No car, but Johnny had probably taken it to London. Olivia parked and spotted Lorna looking out from the upstairs window. She waved and came down to open the door. An old jumper of Johnny’s swamped her slender frame. The silver spangly hairband must surely belong to Lily. Olivia hadn’t seen Lorna since that afternoon at Millfield. They had spoken only once, and that was for less than five minutes.
Instead of tea Lorna offered her a glass of wine from an open bottle on the kitchen table. Since when did Lorna drink in the afternoon? Olivia hated that she had the power but not the courage to put Lorna out of her misery. It felt as though too much time had passed, and secrets grew bigger with time.
Olivia did have a small glass of wine, not because she wanted one but because she didn’t want Lorna to have to drink alone. They went into the sitting room; warmer than the kitchen. The wood burner radiated a gentle heat, Benji contentedly curled on the shaggy rug in front of it.
Olivia told Lorna about the Rutherfords.
‘God, that’s terrible. It’s the sort of thing that makes you count your blessings, no matter how bad things seem.’
Olivia couldn’t ignore the prompt. ‘How are things with you and Johnny?’
‘I wear this old jumper because it smells of him. Does that answer your question?’
‘Do you talk?’
She curled herself up against the armrest. ‘Yes, but not about anything that matters. Just everyday stuff: the kids, his job, my job, village news, that sort of thing.’ She drank some wine – a rough, tannic red. ‘I think I’ve lost him.’
Lorna wasn’t one of those women for whom tears came easily or often, but with this she began to cry. It made Olivia want to cry too.
‘You haven’t lost him. He’s sort of lost himself.’
Lorna blew her nose. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. I just think it might be more about him than you.’
The mood in the room shifted. They had been on the same side and now they weren’t. Lorna’s stare drilled into the place where Olivia had hidden Johnny’s secret.
‘You know something.’
One thing to lie by omission; quite another to lie outright. Olivia couldn’t do it.
‘That afternoon you came home and I was here with Johnny. He said he was upset about not being able to get a job.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d overheard him and Ronald talking at the Rectory. Arguing.’
Lorna uncurled her legs and sat forward. ‘About what?’
‘He made me promise not to tell anyone.’
‘I’m not anyone, I’m his wife. Tell me.’
Olivia thought the Rutherfords had exhausted her emotional reserves but a whole new set of anxieties twisted inside her.
‘It was years ago. Ronald had a young curate at the Rectory and suspected he had an unhealthy interest in boys.’
‘Boys? You don’t mean Johnny?’
Olivia nodded.
‘Oh God.’ Lorna gripped her stomach and doubled over. It took her a few moments to straighten up and ask, ‘But why was he talking to Ronald about it all these years later?’
‘It was in the news. The curate was arrested but killed himself before the trial. He’d been abusing boys his whole career. I think Ronald wanted Johnny to understand how sorry he was.’
Lorna got up and paced, too agitated to sit any longer.
‘And you knew all this?’ Her incredulity confirmed that Olivia had been wrong to keep it from her.
‘I wanted to tell you.’
‘So why didn’t you? I’ve been going crazy, trying to figure out what’s wrong with him; with us. We don’t have sex. He doesn’t touch me, won’t let me see him naked. I thought he didn’t love me any more, that he had another woman. I drove myself insane trying to work out who it was! Do I know her, is it someone from the village, one of the mothers from school, how long has it been going on, does he love her? I search for evidence, look through his phone, empty his pockets. And all the time you knew.’
Her hands were on her head, her eyes wide and wild.
‘Lorna, sit down, please. You’re scaring me. Let’s talk about this.’
‘The time for talking was months ago. I’ve been going through hell. My marriage is at breaking point and I had no idea why.’ She was shouting now. ‘But you knew.’ She pointed at Olivia, her index finger stabbing the air. ‘You knew and you said nothing. You watched me suffer and you said nothing.’
‘Oh God, Lorna, I’m so sorry. I thought Johnny would tell you before it got to this. I’ve hardly seen you. I was going to tell you at Millfield –’
Olivia rummaged through her bag for a tissue. She had cried more in the last few days than she had in the last few years. Benji woke up, looked sheepishly from one to the other, then crept out of the room, his tail between his legs.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing.’
; Lorna looked at her, askance. ‘How could it be the right thing? How?’
Olivia swallowed hard and attempted to marshal her thoughts into a coherent defence. She needed Lorna to understand that her motives were pure. ‘If you’d seen how he was that day. He couldn’t face people finding out – knowing that about him.’
Lorna’s chest rose and fell with the effort of trying to calm herself. ‘That’s why he left, isn’t it? That’s why he took a job on the other side of the country. He can’t bear to be touched, to be loved. He’s ashamed. He hates himself.’
She began to cry again but when Olivia reached out to her, Lorna pulled away.
‘Please, Lorna.’
Lorna shook her head and held her hands up in a ‘stop’ gesture. ‘I trusted you. You were my best friend. I told you everything. I knew something was going on between the two of you. I knew it. But you denied it and I thought, Olivia wouldn’t lie to me. If she says there’s nothing, then there’s nothing. What an idiot I am. What a stupid idiot.’
‘You’re not.’ Olivia was shouting too, trying to get through to her. ‘I’m the idiot for getting it wrong. I’m so sorry.’
The front door opened – Josh and Lily home from school. The thud of rucksacks hitting the floor, then they were in the sitting room.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Josh.
Lorna wiped her face with the sleeve of Johnny’s jumper. ‘Nothing.’
‘Mum?’ said Lily. ‘Has something happened to Dad?’
Lorna shot Olivia a warning look.
‘No, it’s me,’ said Olivia. ‘Well, a woman at St Bede’s. She was killed in a car accident. I’m looking after her little girls. It’s very sad. I got a bit upset, that’s all.’
‘Why don’t you two go and change out of your uniforms,’ said Lorna. Their reluctance suggested Olivia’s explanation had failed to convince, but Lorna followed up with the promise of take-away pizza and that did the trick.
‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ said Lily as she left.
Olivia didn’t point out that Ruth had never been a friend.
‘I should go too,’ said Olivia. ‘People to see, kittens to buy.’
A failed shot at humour. Lorna crossed her arms to discourage any attempts at a hug. She looked on in silence as Olivia put on her coat and took her keys out of her bag. There was nothing she could say to fix this. Lorna didn’t see her out.
*
A police car was parked outside the house. Olivia let herself in with the key Martin had given her. She could hear the girls playing upstairs and voices from the sitting room.
The policewoman was young and overweight, her male colleague older, his face deeply lined. They stopped talking when Olivia entered. Since that morning in her flat, Martin had borne his grief with dignity and reserve, which made his stark, hollowed-out look all the more alarming. Olivia was reluctant to interrupt but it was too cold to leave the kittens in the car and she needed to know what to do. Martin looked confused for a moment but the girls ran in, pleading to watch Despicable Me (the sitting room had the only television), and he told Olivia they could have their present now, but please take them upstairs.
‘Have what?’ asked Maisie.
It was clear Martin wanted the girls out of the way, shielded from whatever was being said in that room.
‘Your surprise – it’s in my car.’
She ushered them outside and took the carrier from the Land Rover to apoplectic squeals of delight.
‘An early Christmas present,’ said Olivia. ‘Now let’s get them in the warm.’
The next hour was almost enough to dull the pain of what she had done to Lorna. Almost. Skittish and nervous in their new surroundings, the kittens darted under the girls’ beds and had to be coaxed out with titbits and a furry mouse on a string. At the first meow, Alice scooped up the ginger kitten and kissed it on the nose. The striped one purred and stretched as Maisie stroked its soft fur. The girls were utterly captivated, but even their joy wasn’t enough to lift Olivia’s spirits and stop her dwelling on the damage she had caused by keeping a secret she shouldn’t have kept.
Lorna had been so sure of Johnny’s infidelity; the go-to explanation when a man loses sexual interest in his wife. How easy to misread the signs. Olivia wondered if that was what she had done with Geoffrey. It was hard to see clearly from deep within the no-man’s-land of doubt. The evidence against him was circumstantial, not conclusive: text messages and phone calls he claimed he could explain. Was Olivia wrong to doubt him? Had she assigned blame where none existed; jumped to the most obvious conclusion without considering the alternatives? He had never given her reason to think he was anything other than faithful, but that was before Ruth Rutherford had him in her sights.
The sound of the front door closing brought her downstairs. She told the girls to stay put, but they were too captivated with their new furry playmates to even register the request. Martin was in the kitchen, filling a glass from the tap.
‘The girls adore the kittens. Would you like to see them?’
He took a long drink of water. ‘Could you close the door, please?’
Olivia did as he asked. ‘What’s happened, Martin?’
He finished the water and put the glass in the sink. His answer was addressed to the blank space ahead of him. ‘The police think it’s possible Ruth may have been raped.’
Olivia heard the words but was unable to comprehend them. ‘What?’
‘The post-mortem: she had bruises on her wrists and thigh. There was blood too – just a speck on the cuff of her blouse – but the police say it wasn’t Ruth’s.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And they found semen.’
Olivia looked at him, loath to ask the obvious question, but Martin spoke and she didn’t have to.
‘They asked if Ruth and I had been intimate the day of the accident.’ He shook his head. ‘Intimate. She barely let me touch her.’
He gripped the side of the worktop and folded forward, arms outstretched. Olivia pulled out a chair and guided him to it. She sat opposite.
‘I can’t take it in,’ she said. ‘It’s too awful.’ Incongruous laughter filtered through the ceiling. ‘But the police aren’t sure she was raped?’
Martin stared at her. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Nothing. I—’ She hung her head, unable to finish the sentence or meet Martin’s quizzical stare.
‘They’re not sure of anything,’ he said after a short but uncomfortable silence. ‘They’ll run the DNA through a database but other than that, it’s guesswork. The policeman said they may consider asking staff to give DNA samples in order to rule them out, but I hate the idea of everyone knowing. It seems such a violation.’
The girls burst into the kitchen, each one cradling a kitten.
‘Daddy, look,’ said Alice, lifting hers up for him to admire. Her cheeks had a healthy blush. ‘Her name is Miss Kitty. Would you like to hold her?’
‘Maybe later.’
‘Mine’s called Tiger because she’s got stripes,’ said Maisie. She laid the kitten in Martin’s lap. ‘If you cuddle her you won’t feel so sad about Mummy.’
He rubbed his eyes, murmured something about being allergic, handed the kitten back to Maisie and excused himself. Olivia thought it best to leave him alone. She wondered if his faith would bring relief, or if he’d blame God for taking the wife he loved so blindly, for robbing his young daughters of their mother. Ronald used to say faith tested was faith strengthened. Time would tell.
‘Why don’t you take Tiger and Miss Kitty back up to your room,’ said Olivia, ‘while I make us some supper?’
The girls skipped out, their cheerfulness the only light in a dark and disturbing day.
*
Olivia found a modicum of consolation in the simplest of tasks: taking a shower, doing the laundry, preparing a meal. They reassured her that some things remain unchanged, even in times of sepulchral change. The world may be in chaos but you still have to wash, dress, eat, especially when the
re were children to consider.
The day of her grandmother’s funeral, Olivia’s mum had busied herself making dozens of sandwiches: carefully trimming the crusts, cutting the bread into perfect triangles, arranging them in uniform rows according to their filling. Olivia’s dad had tried to get her to sit down, but she kept making more and more sandwiches.
As Olivia stood in front of the open fridge, thinking about what to cook for supper, she understood her mother’s compulsion. So much was out of our control. There was comfort in routine, in even the most mundane of chores.
Spaghetti bolognese: Alice and Maisie’s favourite. In the cupboard Olivia found tinned tomatoes and a pack of dried pasta. Penne, not spaghetti, but close enough. She already had a bulb of garlic and half an onion from the chiller at the bottom of the fridge. There was a courgette and some broccoli too – she would sneak those into the sauce. The mince was left over from Olivia’s home-made beefburgers, which the girls said weren’t as nice as the ones they had on the beach at Weston-super-Mare. Martin let it go. He had more important things on his mind than pulling up Alice and Maisie on their manners.
He had made spaghetti bolognese the first time Olivia came to supper. Ruth had been so wantonly unhappy and didn’t care who knew it. Drunk, dismissive of Martin, indifferent to the girls. Was it that unhappiness which had driven her to young Tom?
Olivia didn’t believe Ruth had been raped. More likely she had met young Tom or some other lover and the bruises were an unfortunate coincidence. Martin said the police had nothing to go on and Olivia had information that may well be relevant. On a rational level she knew she should go to the police, tell them what she had witnessed in the cricket pavilion, but when she thought of the hurt that would cause Martin, her resolve weakened to the point of atrophy.
An Unsuitable Marriage Page 21
