Who's Afraid of MR Wolfe?

by Hazel Osmond

  He was about to have another go at talking to her when Constance came into the kitchen and shooed them both into Edith’s sitting room.

  Sitting in there on his own before, he’d remembered that night when he’d been playing Scrabble with Edith and Ellie had come home tipsy. Tipsy and beautiful.

  Now here he was, balancing a plate on his knees and making small talk with a long streak of a guy called Gerald who was Pandora’s husband. Across the room sat Frank, a man who talked constantly about money and was about half the size of his wife, Constance.

  Ellie didn’t look his way once. Mind you, she wasn’t looking at anybody else either. Just staring ahead of her, knocking back the wine. Constance and Pandora started to reminisce about Edith’s eccentricities and Jack saw Ellie cast a venomous glare in their direction.

  ‘Do you remember that speech day when she turned up in that appalling coat with the fox heads still attached at the neck?’ Constance slipped her court shoes off her large feet. ‘Terrified the first-year pupils. They had to be rounded up and frog-marched out of the hall.’

  Pandora snorted and helped herself to more wine. ‘How could I forget? Or that skirt she wore the next year. Totally inappropriate.’

  Constance nodded. ‘Totally.’

  ‘We could probably sell her clothes collection to a museum, or a travelling circus,’ Gerald said, and then sniggered.

  ‘Probably make a bob or too,’ added Frank.

  Jack wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the sound of Ellie grinding her teeth.

  ‘Wasn’t only the clothes, though, was it, Pan?’ Gerald said, taking a massive bite out of a sandwich and then proceeding to talk with his mouth full. ‘Remember when she turned up at our silver wedding with that salsa band she’d met in the pub?’ Gerald turned to Jack. ‘She got completely plastered and ended up trying to limbo under the dining-room table. Made a hell of a mess.’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ said Constance. ‘I’ve lost track of the number of times I had to apologise for her. Remember that disgusting thing she suggested to Mr Hunter? How Father stood it I don’t know.’

  Jack saw Ellie’s hand reach out for the wine bottles again. That was her third glass and he hadn’t seen her eat anything yet. He picked up the plate of sandwiches and took them over to her. She shook her head and waved him away.

  ‘So,’ said Frank, his eyes glistening, ‘what are house prices like around here?’

  ‘Had a quick scout when I went out for some matches,’ Gerald said. ‘Still look pretty buoyant. Reckon you’re looking at around eight hundred and fifty thousand for this.’

  There were appreciative noises all round, which didn’t quite mask the sound of Ellie putting her glass down on the table with some force.

  Jack felt Frank tap him on the arm. ‘Where do you live, then?’

  ‘Down by the river. Greenwich.’

  ‘Flat or house?’

  ‘Flat. Warehouse conversion.’

  Frank whistled appreciatively. ‘Bet that’s worth a bob or two now, then?’

  Jack glanced uneasily at Ellie. ‘Well, I bought at a good time …’

  ‘Bet you did. You look like a man who knows a good deal. What line of business you in? The City?’

  ‘No. Advertising and marketing.’

  A cheeky smile spread over Frank’s face. ‘Advertising and marketing. Same as Ellie, eh? You two don’t work together, do you?’

  ‘Well, we used to.’

  ‘Office romance, eh?’ Frank said, jabbing Jack with his elbow. ‘Boss and secretary?’

  Jack wondered if it was acceptable to slap the husband of a recently bereaved woman.

  ‘Ellie wasn’t my secretary. She’s a senior copywriter and—’

  ‘Secret’s safe with us,’ said Gerald.

  Jack chanced another look at Ellie. She had filled her wineglass yet again.

  ‘Leave Ellie alone,’ Constance said, and then patted Ellie’s knee. ‘We all know that you were very fond of Edith. We’re very grateful for the way you looked after her. She was such a worry to us before you took her under your wing.’

  ‘Not such a worry that you got off your backsides and came to visit her,’ Ellie snapped, standing up so abruptly that she sloshed wine on to the carpet. ‘I mean, God knows it’s hundreds of treacherous miles from Surrey to here. Shame it took her dying for you all to pay her a visit.’

  Ellie stood there glowering and then shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ she said quietly, and walked unsteadily out of the room.

  After a sticky silence Constance and Pandora started to mutter about how easy it was for Ellie because Edith hadn’t been her mother.

  Jack figured that Ellie needed to be alone for a while to pull herself together. And really, what help was he going to be? He had no idea how things stood between them. Anything he wanted to say to her she wouldn’t want to listen to tonight. He should leave her alone.

  He got up slowly, excused himself and went to look for her.

  He found her out in the back garden on her knees. She appeared to be digging a hole in a flowerbed with a large soup spoon.

  ‘Don’t you have a trowel?’ he asked gently.

  She didn’t look up. ‘If I had a trowel, I wouldn’t be using a soup spoon, would I?’

  ‘Fair point,’ he said, and walked back into the kitchen. He opened a few drawers until he found what he was looking for and then went back into the garden and got down on his knees next to Ellie. She looked at the fish slice in his hand but kept on shovelling earth out of the hole.

  Jack started to slice chunks out of the hole too. Every now and again he noticed Ellie stop and wipe her eyes with the back of her hand; she had a smear of earth down one cheek. He had no idea what she was doing or why she was doing it. But how she was doing it was definitely scary, like she was possessed. He fumbled for something to say, some little bridge to build between them.

  ‘Ellie, this hole you’re digging?’

  ‘It’s not actually for Edith, before you ask.’

  There was that physical pain, as if she’d punched him in the chest.

  ‘Ellie, for God’s sake, do you really think I would say something so heartless? I liked Edith. She was … she was a one-off, funny, sharp as a knife … wicked. Why would I say that about her?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jack, but then I don’t know anything any more.’ Jack winced at the bitterness in her tone as she continued to gouge great lumps of earth with her spoon. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t have thought two daughters would sit there pricing up their mother’s possessions and agreeing what a laughing stock she was when she’s probably not even completely cold yet. So, hey, what do I know?’

  Again Ellie wiped her hand roughly over her eyes, leaving another smear of dirt behind and Jack wanted to reach over and wipe it away with his fingertips.

  ‘Different people deal with grief in different ways, Ellie,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, what the hell would you know about it?’ Ellie chucked a spoonful of loose earth on to the growing pile. Then he saw her stop and close her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she said, opening them again. ‘Of course you’d know.’

  Another punch to his chest. He dragged in a couple of deep breaths and kept his head down. ‘Forget it.’ He hacked at the sides of the hole, dislodging great lumps of earth.

  They worked together in silence. Jack was glad to be close to her, even under these circumstances. Every now and again their hands would meet in the hole and once or twice he timed it deliberately so that they would. All he could do was try to help her with whatever this manic task meant to her.

  She threw down the spoon. ‘That’s deep enough.’

  Jack watched as she felt behind her, brought out an old biscuit tin and then took the lid off and tipped its contents into the hole. He reached out and picked up a photograph of a young, smiling man in an RAF uniform.

  ‘An old boyfriend of Edith’s?’

  Ellie nodded. ‘An affair, before and after she was married to George. He’s Pandora�
�s father. Pandora doesn’t know. Nobody but me knows and that’s the way it’s going to stay.’ She took the photograph out of his hand and placed it back on top of the other papers.

  ‘He died?’ Jack said, not really wanting to ask that question at all.

  ‘No, went back to his wife. Edith never saw him again.’ Ellie started to shovel the earth back into the hole and Jack helped her, trying not to think too deeply about Edith’s lost love.

  If he wasn’t careful, he’d have another lost love of his own on his hands. Another one to add to Helen. He stopped shovelling so that he could gaze at her. Drink her in.

  Here she was, still looking after Edith. He felt as if in that very instant, kneeling next to Ellie in the garden, he understood everything about her and loved her even more because of it. Such determination to do good.

  Very soon the hole was filled and Jack took the spoon from Ellie and started to pat down the soil.

  ‘You look like you’re smashing the top on a boiled egg,’ she said, and then stood up and turned away from him. He saw her shoulders juddering and her hand go up and pass across her eyes again and he desperately wanted to grab hold of her and kiss it all better.

  Everything was completely still in the garden; around them the air was warm and perfumed with flowers and the lights were creating little glowing pools in the bushes and the trees. The perfect evening for romance if he hadn’t so spectacularly, magnificently, shagged everything up. It was going to take tiny steps to get back to her, even if she would let him. He stood up very quickly, determined to take one of the steps now.

  ‘Ellie, I know that tonight isn’t the right time to talk about this—’

  Suddenly the back door opened and a corridor of light flooded out into the garden. They both turned to see Frank striding towards them.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said, and then stared at the fish slice and spoon in Jack’s hands. His brow crinkled. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Planting bulbs,’ said Ellie.

  ‘This time of year?’

  ‘Edith bought some and never had a chance to plant them. I thought it would be apt if I did it now.’

  ‘Right,’ Frank said, still looking at the spoon and fish slice. ‘Right, well, good. Anyway, it’s nearly time to turn in and the girls have sent me out to ask about sheets and things … Could you show them where they are?’ He noticed the biscuit tin and bent to pick it up and then turned it over in his hands. ‘Very nice, bit ropey condition, but it might be worth a bob or two.’ He put it under his arm, oblivious to the look he was getting from Ellie. ‘Come on, then, time to stop all this spooning in the moonlight.’ Mightily pleased with his own joke, he started to chuckle but stopped when he caught Jack’s eye. He looked quickly at Ellie. ‘OK. Well. Let’s go and find those sheets, then.’

  Ellie followed him into the house and Jack watched them go, not sure what to do next. Nothing in life had really prepared him for the correct way to end a day that included a botched declaration of love, a death, burying the evidence of somebody’s parentage and standing in a garden with a fish slice in your hand.

  CHAPTER 43

  Ellie rolled over and then sat up quickly and scrabbled out of bed. Ten thirty – she was going to miss the Creative Department meeting.

  Then she became aware of two things: she was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and Edith was dead. That second thought made her sit back down on the bed with a bump. No more filthy Scrabble; no more huge neat gin; no more crazy clothes; no more of Edith’s sheer exuberance at being alive.

  All that love and companionship they’d built up over the years, gone in minutes.

  Ellie sat there bringing up deep sobs until there seemed nothing left to mine. She reached out for a tissue and blew her nose. Her chest felt as though somebody was sitting on it.

  Yesterday had been like that rollercoaster ride Lesley and she had tried out. The high of seeing Jack, the low of arguing with him and then the depths of Edith dying. No, not a rollercoaster ride: more like a vertical drop down a mine shaft. No wonder she’d flaked out last night. She remembered finding the bedding for Constance and Pandora and then going to sit up in her own room for a bit of peace.

  Jack’s shoes and socks were by the bed and Ellie wondered if he’d spent the night in the room with her. Perhaps he’d put her to bed.

  Yesterday morning she would have been beside herself with joy at the thought of spending another night with Jack. Now she wasn’t sure she cared any more. There was too much else careering round her brain. Thinking about a man who had dumped her and then reappeared talking regretful gibberish was too much. She kicked out at his shoes and then went to have a shower and find some paracetamol.

  The house was silent as she phoned Lesley to tell her she wasn’t coming in. That conversation was torturous. Lesley had left a message on the answerphone the night before asking how Edith was, but Ellie had not been able to face telling her the truth. Listening to the shock in Lesley’s voice, followed by the sound of her crying, set Ellie off again. It was some time before she got down into the kitchen to find a note on the kitchen worktop: Gone to sort out registrar and funeral details. Back late afternoon. Constance/Pandora.

  At least she had time to get herself pulled together. Ellie’s mind limped over the events of the evening before, but when she started to go over the bit about digging the hole for Edith’s letters, she forced herself to stop. That would mean thinking about how kind Jack had been and she didn’t have the emotional battery power for that right now.

  Once the kettle had boiled, she made a cup of tea and headed for the garden. Someone had left the back door unlocked.

  Outside, she took a step back at the brightness of the sun. The temperature was already high and it was going to get higher. Even in her thin kimono she felt hot and overdressed. She sipped at her tea and wandered over to where they had buried Edith’s letters and photos, and saw that somebody had scattered a handful of small stones over the area, so that it was almost impossible to tell that the earth had been moved.

  The person whom she supposed had done it was standing at the end of the garden looking up at the back of the house with his arms crossed. Barefoot and with stubble shadowing his cheeks and chin, Jack looked like something wild that had strayed into suburbia. He was heart-stoppingly sexy and he was still here, but what that meant she didn’t know, and right now she was fed up with trying to second-guess what Jack was up to. She’d been trying to work that out since that first night in his flat.

  She saw him glance her way.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked, turning to peer up at the roof.

  ‘The roof.’

  She finished her tea and fumed. One- or two-word sentences from Jack weren’t good enough right now. What she wanted were pages and pages of explanation for the way he had treated her.

  ‘Any particular reason?’ she said.

  ‘Think there’s a slate missing.’

  Ellie felt all her remaining nerves snap one after the other. Reappearing unannounced back in her life and coolly discussing the roof right after Edith had died wasn’t on. It wasn’t even his roof.

  ‘Tell you what, Jack,’ she said slowly, ‘why don’t I get you a ladder and you can climb up and have a good look. With any luck you’ll fall off it and break your bloody neck.’ She walked off down the garden, but not before seeing Jack’s face. She registered that he didn’t look surprised or angry, just resigned.

  Ellie pushed open the back door and went into the kitchen again, switching the kettle on as she walked past it. She needed more tea – what she did not need was a session of playing riddles with a taciturn Yorkshire-man.

  Jack appeared in the kitchen. ‘Ellie—’

  ‘Leave it, Jack. Go back to New York, work your way through all of the women in North America and leave me alone. I’ve had enough of trying to guess what you’re up to, what you really feel. I don’t need another of yesterday’s half-hearted little speeches telling me how you didn’t want to
want me.’

  Ellie wrenched the top off the jar holding the teabags, grabbed one, threw it in her cup and then sloshed water from the kettle on top of it. ‘Do you remember how you were always trying to get me to raise my game? Well, you were right. I shouldn’t settle for the callous way you treated me. I deserve better.’

  She jabbed a spoon into the teabag in the cup and then fished it out and slung it in the sink, not caring that it left a trail of brown liquid across the worktop.

  ‘Funnily enough, Jack, I’m a little bit upset this morning, and to be honest I’m surprised you’re still here. Shouldn’t you be off shagging someone else? It must be all of twenty-four hours since you’ve had sex. Unless of course you had a go at me while I was asleep.’

  Jack hung his head as she pushed past him to get the milk from the fridge. ‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘I know you have so much else on your mind. I know I cocked it up yesterday, but let me explain.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, Jack,’ she said, pouring milk into her cup. ‘You cocked it up way before yesterday.’ She picked up her tea and walked past him back out into the garden. This time she stayed on the patio and settled herself into one of the chairs.

  Jack came to sit in the chair opposite and gave her that intense, grey stare of his.

  ‘Ellie, sit and listen to me for ten minutes.’

  ‘No, Jack, don’t try and tell me what to do. You’re not my boss here in this garden. When I’ve finished this cup of tea, I’m going back to bed.’

  Jack sighed. ‘OK, OK. I know you’re really angry with me.’

  ‘Oh, you picked that up, did you?’

  ‘Ellie … please …’ It was the same tone he had used in the meeting room yesterday, the one that had almost made her turn back when she had been heading for the door. Even this morning it managed to take the sharpest edge off her anger. She made a vague ‘go on’ gesture, but deliberately didn’t look at him. She wanted to hear what he had to say, not be distracted by the way he looked.

  Jack leaned towards her. ‘Yesterday I was rubbish. If it had been a pitch to a client, I would have blown it. I said all the wrong things, started in the wrong place. Completely the wrong place.’