by Simon Brett
“Don’t worry. You’re not on the breadline yet.”
“No. But it’s not just the money. For someone like me – any freelance probably – the work’s more than what you get paid. It’s a kind of self-validation.”
“I know.”
“For me working means I’m functioning. It’s all to do with the way I look at life. I can survive anything if I think there might be an article to be written at the end of it.”
“So are you going to…?”
Jude didn’t need to finish the sentence. Gita replied firmly that she intended never to write anything about her suicide attempt. “I can’t stand that – journalists who only write about themselves. Television personalities who have heart attacks and then write books about heart attacks. Germaine Greer even wrote a book about her own menopause, for God’s sake. I write about other people. My attitude to them is obviously coloured by my own experiences and my own judgement, but I am not the subject of my writing, and never will be.” She looked gloomily across the bar of the Crown and Anchor. “But I’ve got to get something going soon. If I can re-establish myself professionally, then maybe I can start to pick up the pieces of my private life.”
“You haven’t heard from…?”
“No. Don’t expect to. Hope I never do.”
“But he did hear about your…?” Uncharacteristically, Jude skirted round the words. “What happened to you?”
“I’m sure he did. We have enough mutual friends. He must’ve done. Which I think is the thing that makes me angriest about the whole business.”
“Oh?”
“The satisfaction that he would get from that.”
“Surely not?”
“You don’t know him.”
“I’ve met him.”
“That’s not what I said, Jude. You don’t know him like I do. The idea that his walking out on a womanwould have driven her to suicide he’d regard as an alternative notch on his bedpost.”
“Oh dear.”
“And I bet even now he’s using it as a come-on in his chat-up routine – saying how sorry he is that the woman he lived with for years had such problems, how he tried to be supportive to her, but what can you do in the face of mental illness? And how he’s been terribly wounded by the experience, but he’s daring tentatively to start thinking about relationships again.” Gita took a savage sip of wine; its taste seemed no more attractive than the words in her mouth. “The bastard!”
“On the other hand,” said Jude quietly, “it wasn’t him who you turned your anger against, was it?”
Gita shook her head. “No. His behaviour just made me reflect on myself. If I could let someone treat me like that, what did that make me? And I thought of everything else that had gone wrong in my life: all the other men; the fact that I haven’t got any children whose lives I could mess up; the fact that any looks I might have had are long gone. Oh, the same endless spiral.”
“A friend of mine, Gita, once described depression as ‘constipation of the mind’, the way your thoughts get stuck and stale, and make you feel heavy and lethargic and incapable of anything.”
“Hm…”
“And he also reckoned anti-depressants acted like laxatives: freed up the flow, allowed your ideas to move again.”
“What a quaint taste in metaphors your friend had.”
“Yes.”
Gita sighed. “At my lowest – I’m not at my lowest now – but at my lowest, the whole world seems to be a reproach to my own inadequacy. Everything I see anyone else doing I think ‘I can’t do that’. It gets quite funny sometimes – well, it would be funny if it weren’t me in the middle of it all. I open a door, and I think, ‘I couldn’t make a door. What use am I if I can’t even make a door?’” She chuckled wryly. “Sorry. That’s just how I sometimes feel.”
“Not all the time, though.”
“But when I’m down there, it feels as though it’s going to go on for ever. That’s what’s so cruel. When you’re depressed, you can’t imagine there will ever be a time when you’re not depressed.”
“And when you’re high?”
“Same story. You think you’ll never be depressed again. You think you’ll spend the rest of your life glorying in how wonderful you are, loving yourself.”
“That’s not real love.”
“No, that’s a kind of manic, mad infatuation. You should know it’s the kind of feeling that can’t possibly last – but, at the time, you don’t.”
“Loving yourself is the secret.” Jude spoke very softly. “When you love yourself, you can spread love to other people.”
“I know. How easy you make it sound. But how many of us have got so few hang-ups, have suffered so few bad experiences, that we really can love ourselves?”
“It’s possible. You can learn.”
Gita was suddenly despondent. “ Some people can learn. I think if I was ever going to learn, I’d have done so by now before I became a shrivelled old bag.”
“You can learn.”
“Will you teach me?”
Jude suddenly realized how tired she was. Healing always drained her. Energy was finite. But she was going to need a lot more energy for the forthcoming conversation with Gita – and for the many other conversations that would follow.
“Yes,” she replied. “Of course I’ll teach you.”
Carole reckoned the afternoon had been a success. Gaby had been much more like the girl Carole had first encountered at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. She and Stephen were affectionate – almost silly – together, which was a surprise to his mother because she had never imagined her son had a silly side. But Gaby also seemed to have lost her ambivalence about the wedding arrangements, and had thrown herself into everything with great gusto.
Of the three venues Stephen and his mother had looked at that morning, Gaby was taken first to the Fedborough tithe barn, which she loved on sight. Of fifteenth-century construction, it had been lovingly renovated by the farmer on whose land it stood, and turned into a venue for corporate events and celebrations. The barn itself formed one side of a rectangle of outbuildings, which had been converted into toilet facilities, kitchens and conference rooms. The complex huddled in the foothills of the South Downs and, if the weather was anything like decent on the fourteenth of September, would make an idyllic setting for a wedding reception.
The engaged couple made their decision instantly, and informed the farmer’s wife, who had shown them round, that they would like to book the venue. Only a mile outside Fedborough, travel from All Souls’ Church would not pose too much of a problem for the guests. In his negotiation of the costs Stephen then showed a toughness which surprised his mother. He also resisted the farmer’s wife’s pressure to employ the catering company in which she had an interest, until he had looked into other possibilities. Carole had never before seen him so assertive, and began perhaps to understand his success in his mysterious working life.
The venue sewn up, the three of them then went to visit three of Carole’s shortlisted caterers. As a guide, they took the menus and price lists which the farmer’s wife at the tithe barn had given them. With the caterers, Carole was interested to see that Stephen and his fiancée worked more as a double act, capping each other with ever more detailed questions. Gaby showed no signs of dilatoriness or reluctance. Her enquiries demonstrated that she had thought through all the logistical minutiae involved in making a wedding work.
At the end of the three exhaustive interviews, Stephen and Gaby had a brief discussion in his BMW and their decision was made. He rang through to thewinner of the contest – who would no doubt be ecstatic because they had selected the top-of-the-range menus – and said that, subject to written confirmation, the job was theirs. Suddenly, after months of vagueness, the wedding on the fourteenth of September had become a reality.
“We must sort out invitations next,” Stephen announced.
“I can do that. There’s a printer we use a lot at the agency. He’ll give us a good deal.”
“And we’ll have to work out who exactly we’re going to invite,” said Stephen.
“You’re still thinking of round the hundred and twenty mark?” asked Carole.
“Oh yes. And in fact we’re lucky…”
“How so?”
“Well, Mother, neither of us has a large extended family – so that means most of the people we invite to the wedding will actually be people we like.”
Carole wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but she didn’t think he meant to be insulting. Probably better, though, that her son had pursued a career in computers and finance, rather than the diplomatic service.
“Which is actually another advantage of us making the arrangements ourselves.”
“God, yes,” Gaby agreed. “Friends of mine have had dreadful fights when the parents wanted all the guests to be their friends.”
“Well,” said Carole, with a slight edge in her voice, “I’ll try and see to it that I don’t interfere.”
Stephen chuckled. “Oh, we aren’t worried about that.”
And he said it so innocently that Carole felt rather gratified.
“So,” she asked, “are you going to have all these people at the engagement party too?”
“Lord, no,” Gaby replied. “Mum and Dad couldn’t cope with those kind of numbers. Couldn’t cope with many of our friends either, come to that. Some of the actors I know would be a little too exotic for Harlow. No, it’ll really just be family. A chance for you and David to meet Phil…” She seemed for a moment about to say more about her brother, but decided against it. “And Uncle Robert and a few others. It’ll be very low key.”
“Fine,” said Carole, surprised how uncomfortable she felt at the casual coupling of her name with David’s.
“But there’ll be nothing low key about the wedding itself,” Stephen enthused. “We’re going to ensure that it’s a day when – ”
He was interrupted by the ringing of Gaby’s mobile, which she immediately answered.
“Jenny? Yes, it’s – what? Oh, God.”
“Are you OK? Well, let me know when you’ve checked. And I’ll give you a call as soon as I’ve worked out what I’m doing.”
She ended the call, and looked with horror at Stephen and Carole.
“My flat’s been burgled.”
But the manner in which she said the words made it sound more as though she was announcing a murder.
∨ The Witness at the Wedding ∧
Seven
“She’s very strong-willed.” Stephen spoke with some puzzlement, as though still coming to terms with various unexpected elements in his fiancée’s personality. “I’m slowly learning not to argue when she’s clear about what she wants to do.”
“You’re quite strong-willed too.”
Carole thought back to childhood confrontations when neither she nor her son had been willing to budge an inch.
“Yes.” He took it both as a compliment and an unarguable truth. “That’s why we’re right for each other.” This too was a confident statement of fact.
They were sitting over lunch in the dining room of High Tor. Which, Carole realized, reflected a change in their relations. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cooked for her son. University vacations, it must have been. When he started working, he had distanced himself. Or perhaps that had happened when she moved down to Fethering. The timing was all tied in with her divorce from David. Without either of them commenting on what was happening, Stephen had redrawn the parameters of his relationship with his mother. From that time on, they had always met on neutral ground, in pubs and restaurants, as if he was spelling out to her that the old family intimacy could never be re-established.
But the arrival of Gaby had changed that. Inviting them both to Sunday lunch at High Tor had not seemed incongruous – in fact, Carole had relished the idea and looked forward to reminding herself of her old skills with joint of beef, Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings.
Except, of course, Gaby wasn’t there. She was in Pimlico, assessing the loss and damage caused by her burglary. And that task was one which, very insistently, she had wanted to do on her own. That was the evidence of her strong will to which Stephen had referred.
Even in Gaby’s absence, Carole still felt the lunch represented an advance, a changed understanding between herself and her son. She had forgotten how rewarding he was to feed, how much he relished his food, how he’d always been in thrall to her roast potatoes. Carole felt closer to Stephen than she had for years.
“And I gather the damage to the flat wasn’t too bad?” she asked. Stephen had spent a long time on the phone to Gaby that morning, but not yet brought Carole up to date on the burglary.
“No. Whoever it was smashed a kitchen window to get in, and managed to immobilize the alarm. He – one assumes it was a ‘he’ – was a real professional.”
“And have they lost a lot of stuff?”
“Hardly anything.”
Rather than pleasing Stephen, this fact seemed to trouble him. “Not even too much of a mess. Gaby reckoned everything in the rooms she and Jenny share had been gone through, but then replaced more or less exactly where it should be.”
“They were lucky.”
“Yes…” But again her son didn’t sound convinced. “The thing that worries Gaby…” he hesitated before sharing the confidence “…is that whoever it was didn’t even go into Jenny’s room.”
“How can they be sure?”
“Jenny’s a bit obsessed by security. She always keeps her door firmly locked. There had been no attempt to force it.”
“Maybe the burglar had skeleton keys, like they do in crime novels?”
“Well, if he did, he didn’t use them. Nothing of Jenny’s had been touched. Maybe he was just put off by the locked door.”
“Is that just Gaby and Jenny’s view, or do the police agree?”
Stephen grimaced. “They haven’t informed the police.”
“What?” His words were an affront to all Carole had learnt during her long career in the Home Office. “But they have to tell the police.”
“There’s been a break-in at their flat. Even if they haven’t suffered too badly, the police might still collect evidence to tie in with other crimes.”
“I used that argument too. All the obvious arguments.”
Stephen shrugged weakly. “As I said, Gaby’s very strong-willed.”
Carole shook her head in disbelief, and took a sip from the rather nice Argentinian Merlot she’d bought from Sainsbury’s specially. “But it’s – well, I just don’t understand. Is Gaby saying that absolutely nothing has been taken?”
“She’s not sure. She hasn’t had time to go through everything in proper detail. But, as of this moment, she can’t see anything that’s missing.”
“Which would imply – what? That the burglar lost his nerve? That he was disturbed while he was in the middle of the job?”
Stephen smiled grimly. “Or that he was looking for something specific?”
His mother nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Has Gaby any idea what that something might have been?”
“Well, if she has, she’s not telling me.” He didn’t sound as though this was an entirely preposterous suggestion. “There are still areas of Gaby’s life, things about which she’s very secretive and – ” He seemed to realize that he was close to betraying confidences, and lightened his tone. “Still, I guess that’s true of all of us, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Carole knew it was certainly true of her. But if Stephen had hoped that his words would end the subject, he was mistaken. “So had all of Gaby’s belongings been turned over, or did the burglar concentrate on one specific area?”
She could see the calculation pass through her son’s mind, as he assessed whether this information could be released. He concluded that it could do no harm.
“He seemed to be interested in her personal files. Those had been put back in place, but not quite in the right order. You know, things lik
e her passport, birth certificate, address book, health insurance details, tax records, that kind of stuff.”
“But he didn’t take any of them?”
“Not so far as she could tell, no.”
Carole was silent. They had both finished eating, but she resisted her normal knee-jerk reaction to clear the plates immediately. The current subject had not yet been exhausted.
“Stephen – do you remember, when you and Gaby and I met up in the Crown and Anchor a few weeks back?”
“Mmm.”
“You said that there was a history of murder in her family.”
His pale face reddened and, behind their rimless glasses, his eyes blinked.
“Yes, I remember. I shouldn’t have said that. Gaby really took me to task for it afterwards.”
“But you did say it, Stephen. And presumably you said it for some reason. You didn’t just make it up?”
“No.” He realized he had to make some kind of explanation. “Once again, I’m afraid I misjudged Gaby’s reaction. We’d been talking about murder cases, you remember?”
“Yes.”
“And I just thought, ooh, there’s this story Gaby once mentioned and…I didn’t realize that she’d told me in confidence.”
“So what was it? One of her family got murdered?”
“No. It was a school friend of her mother’s. I don’t know the details. Just that it was before Marie had married Howard and it all got involved with other things – ”
“Other things?”
“Other things that were happening to the family. It was a dreadful time for them, I gather. Gaby’s grandfather died round then – before she was born, so she never met him. And then her grandmother -Grand’mère they call her – had what seems to have been a major breakdown.”
“Breakdown?” Carole echoed coldly. With her deeply neurotic mother and now a grandmother who’d had a ‘breakdown’, perhaps Gaby’s own stability could not be guaranteed. She seemed fine, but Carole Seddon was the kind of neurotic who had a great fear of mental illness. “Do you know any more details, Stephen?”
“No, that’s it, really.”
“But you don’t know the name of the girl who was murdered?” He shook his head. “Or, come to that, who murdered her?” Another shake. “Or, indeed, whether anyone was ever caught for the crime?”
