The Hanging in the Hotel

by Simon Brett

  ‘How long has the back been bad?’

  Gaby shrugged, a movement which again caused her to wince. ‘Few weeks.’

  ‘Doesn’t Stephen think you should see someone?’

  ‘I haven’t told him it’s hurting. I have to be strong for him.’

  Carole hardly had time to register the strangeness of this remark before Gaby, almost childlike in her pleading dependency, asked, ‘Why? You don’t know a good back person, do you? Because we are going to be down here for a few days.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Carole Seddon couldn’t quite keep the scepticism out of her tone as she replied, ‘I know someone who does some healing.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘No, she hasn’t called me,’ said Jude.

  ‘Oh, well, probably the back got better of its own accord. As backs do.’

  Jude instantly picked up the implication of the last words – that all back pain was psychosomatic, and didn’t affect people who had a proper control over their emotions. As Carole had. She smiled. ‘A pain may have its origin in the head, but that doesn’t mean the bit where it manifests itself hurts any the less.’

  There was a predictable, ‘Huh.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Carole. I’m not about to go into a riff on holistic medicine. I’m just saying that the physical and the mental are deeply interconnected.’

  Jude’s neighbour sniffed. It still sounded like mumbo-jumbo to her, and she devoutly hoped she would always continue to think of it as mumbo-jumbo. Carole Seddon had been brought up to consider the physical and the mental as totally separate, and the idea of breaking down the barrier between them she found positively frightening. Unwelcome thoughts and emotions were hard enough to control as it was, without suddenly changing the traditional rules that kept them in their proper place.

  They were sitting in the front room of Jude’s house, Woodside Cottage. The space was cluttered with ‘things’ which their owner had accumulated over many years. Very few of them had any practical use. There were ornaments, shells, bottles, drapes, chains, bangles, faded photographs in frames. Each ‘thing’ represented a memory for Jude, of a time of her life, of a friend or a lover. She could have told visitors the history of each, but that was not why she had them on display. They were private aides-memoires, and in fact she was rarely asked about them. People who came to Woodside Cottage seemed to accept the clutter, as just another manifestation of its owner’s personality. And they were always more interested in telling Jude about their lives than in asking about hers.

  Even Carole had got used to the clutter, and Carole was distrustful of ‘things’ – particularly ‘things’ that brought memories with them. She tried to exclude such ‘things’ completely from High Tor, hoping to keep the lid tightly closed on most of her past life.

  The windows of Woodside Cottage were open that morning, and the warm June air presaged another hot summer. An ‘unnaturally’ hot summer, the Fethering locals would say darkly, before moving on to lugubrious talk of ‘climate change’ and its inevitable corollary of a man-created Armageddon. But that day there was still sufficient movement in the air to set the bamboo wind chimes tinkling. Not for the first time, Carole wondered why, though she’d have despised the sound anywhere else, she didn’t find the wood-chink noise irritating in Woodside Cottage.

  Jude was one of those people who carried with her a unique personal environment. Outwardly, she was a plump woman in her fifties with blonde hair gathered up into a gravity-defying structure on top of her head, but an inward serenity set her apart from other women of her age. Though her personal life had not been without its passions and disappointments, she emanated calm to everyone with whom she came in contact. It was not an effect at which she worked, it was instinctive. When they first met, Carole had felt jealous of this quality in her neighbour, but that jealousy had given way over time to a wistfulness, a recognition of how different their personalities were. For Carole, all emotional responses were hard work, the road to them fraught with misgivings and potential disasters. In low moods, she sometimes feared the only spontaneous instinct she had was for prejudice.

  Evading further well-rehearsed arguments on the subject of holistic medicine, Jude moved the conversation on. ‘How are the wedding plans going?’

  ‘Fine,’ replied Carole, instinctively echoing the conversation in the Crown and Anchor. Then, more dubiously. ‘At least, I think everything’s all right.’

  ‘Nobody getting cold feet, I hope?’

  ‘No, no, they still seem as besotted with each other as ever. It’s just . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘After being so positive about the whole thing at the beginning, a kind of apathy seems to have set in.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, they still haven’t sorted out a church, or a venue for the reception, or caterers, or any of that stuff.’

  ‘Time enough. What’s the actual date?’

  ‘Fourteenth of September. And we’re into June now.’

  ‘They’ve got three months. Many weddings have been sorted out in a lot less time than that.’

  ‘I know. It’s just . . . Well, it’s unlike Stephen to be so dilatory. He was always terribly punctilious about forward-planning, almost obsessed with details of arrangements.’

  The question crossed Jude’s mind as to where he might have inherited that quality from, but she was too considerate to voice it. ‘Probably just shows that being with Gaby is making him more laid-back.’

  ‘Maybe.’ But Carole wasn’t convinced. ‘I’d believe that, if Gaby herself was being more laid-back. But she isn’t. She seems terribly tense, evasive when the subject of the wedding arrangements comes up.’

  ‘So she’s acting as a brake on Stephen?’

  ‘Seems to be. And she’s also very resistant to the idea of the engagement being announced in the papers.’

  Jude shrugged. ‘Surely that’s up to her. Some people want every detail of their weddings plastered all over Hello! magazine, some just tick the box for “no publicity”. There’s nothing sinister about it.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Carole dubiously. ‘But there is a right way of going about things, you know.’

  That was such an archetypal Carole Seddon remark that Jude could not suppress a little smile. Then she asked tentatively, ‘Have you . . . had further contact with David about the wedding?’

  ‘No.’ The reply was almost a snap. Carole had never liked the feeling of being nagged.

  Instantly Jude backed off. ‘Still, it’ll be interesting for you to meet the rest of Gaby’s family. Didn’t you say she’d got some relatives in France?’

  ‘Just her grandmother, I think.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘South somewhere.’

  ‘Ah.’ Pleasing nostalgia came into Jude’s brown eyes.

  Carole picked up the cue. She’d never heard the details of Jude’s stay in France. ‘How long was it you lived there?’

  ‘Two years. Well, just under two years.’ Then, as so often, before Carole had time to ask supplementary questions, her neighbour moved on. ‘Incidentally, I’ve got a friend coming to stay for a while.’

  ‘Oh?’ However much she tried, Carole couldn’t keep the frost out of her voice. The last friend Jude had had to stay for any length of time had been an ex-lover, who had not only revived their relationship, but had also died of cancer in Woodside Cottage. Even though he had proved useful in researching the background to a murder case, Carole could still not think of Laurence Hawker without a little flicker of jealousy. She had felt excluded by Jude’s absorption in him. While accepting her neighbour had many circles of friends in many different parts of the world, on their home ground in Fethering she felt a proprietorial interest. Unwillingly, she found herself asking, ‘Is this another of your lovers, Jude?’

  ‘No. By no means. A woman friend. Been through a bit of a rough time recently. Just needs to chill out for a while.’

  There were two reasons for the inward wince that this prompt
ed in Carole. First, there was the fear of someone new, someone who might unbalance the delicate microclimate that encompassed High Tor and Woodside Cottage. Second, there was the atavistic revulsion Carole felt towards expressions like ‘chill out’.

  ‘When’s she coming?’

  ‘This afternoon. She’s been . . . well, she’ll be free then.’

  Carole did not miss the hesitation. For her its instant implication was that Jude’s friend had just come out of hospital – or possibly even prison.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Gita.’

  ‘Gita?’

  Jude smiled at the ill-hidden prejudice in the repetition of the name. Carole wasn’t exactly racist. She was just one of those many middle-class English women who had very rarely encountered people of a different ethnicity from their own. Jude was amused to see the tension leave Carole’s face as she said, ‘It’s a childhood name. Short for “Marguerite”. She’s always been called “Gita”. Gita Millington.’

  ‘Oh.’ The name did sound vaguely familiar, but Carole couldn’t think from where. ‘And what’s been wrong with her?’

  But Jude wasn’t to be drawn on that kind of detail. ‘Just been under a lot of stress. Needs a break.’

  Carole clearly wanted more information, but was too genteel to press the point.

  ‘Will she be staying long?’

  Jude knew that her shrug would infuriate Carole, but she was determined to say no more. Until Gita actually arrived, until it was clear what kind of state she was in, Jude wanted to keep information to the minimum.

  Carole looked dissatisfied, but ceased her interrogation. With a slightly huffy, ‘Well, do tell me if there’s anything I can do to help while your friend’s here,’ she moved the conversation on. ‘Stephen took Gaby to look at the local churches yesterday afternoon, so I suppose that’s a step in the right direction. Though the chances of one not having another wedding already booked for the fourteenth of September is—’

  She was interrupted by the phone ringing. Jude answered it and, after mouthing ‘Talk of the devil’, said, ‘Yes, that’s me. Gaby – right. Carole mentioned you, yes. Congratulations on the engagement. OK, whereabouts are you feeling the pain?’

  Having fixed for Gaby to come and see her the following morning, Jude told Carole she’d better be getting on. Carole agreed that she should be getting on too. There was shopping to be done, and Gulliver needed a walk. Jude said that a car was coming to pick her up at two. She was going to meet Gita. Resisting the appeal in Carole’s pale blue eyes for more information, Jude saw her neighbour to the door, and made herself a quick lunch of bruschetta with salami, cheese and tomato.

  The car was on time. It was a big expense, but a necessary one. Carole’s offer of help would certainly have covered a trip to North London in her immaculate white Renault, but Jude didn’t want to confuse Gita with new acquaintances. An anonymous hire-car driver was a pricey option, but the right one.

  The clinic was private, housed in two adjacent West Hampstead mansions. The girl at reception was expecting her. Miss Millington was ready to leave. If Jude wouldn’t mind waiting for a moment, a nurse would take her to Miss Millington. The doctor would like a word.

  Gita looked pale rather than ill. A smile flickered across her lined face at the sight of Jude. Though not resisting her friend’s hug, she did not return it. She was docile almost to the point of being uninterested. On heavy medication, Jude reckoned.

  Gita Millington was almost her exact contemporary, but looked older. Without its usual make-up, her face seemed pulled downwards by care. Her hair had always been carefully dyed to reproduce its erstwhile dark-chocolate sheen, but enforced absence from the hairdresser now left a stripe of white along the parting.

  She was dressed casually, too. Trainers and grey jogging bottoms, a zip-up navy-blue fleece a couple of sizes too big, whose sleeves came down over her knuckles. A scruffy nylon knapsack on the floor by her chair presumably contained her other clothes. Gita, normally so soignée, seemed to have lost interest in what she looked like.

  She seemed, in fact, to have lost interest in everything. Again, probably the medication.

  There was a lot of it. The woman doctor, practical, efficient and seemingly determined to allow no glimpse of personality, took Jude through the various pills and doses. She concluded by asking how long Gita would be staying in Fethering.

  Jude shrugged. ‘As long as she wants to. There’s no rush from my point of view.’

  The doctor said this was good, and checked that Jude would be there a lot of the time.

  ‘Yes. I do work, but most of my clients come to me.’

  The doctor asked politely what her work was. On hearing a mention of the word ‘healing’, a professional disapproval of alternative medicine froze into her face, and she reiterated the importance of Gita’s taking her medication regularly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Jude. ‘I’m not about to put her on a regime of St John’s Wort and aromatherapy. I believe in complementary medicine. I don’t think you should exclude anything that might help.’

  The doctor’s sniff suggested that there were a good few things she would exclude. She then gave Jude a list of phone numbers, and told her that she shouldn’t hesitate to make contact in the event of ‘another incident’.

  At this, Gita spoke for the first time. Her voice sounded furry, unfamiliar to herself, as if she had not used it for a long time. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  She didn’t speak again in the car on the way back. Jude chatted a bit about Fethering and the surrounding area, but soon stopped. The lack of response from Gita was not combative, though, and the atmosphere in the silent car was peaceful.

  When they arrived at Woodside Cottage, Jude paid the driver – yes, it had been expensive – and led her guest inside. Was Gita hungry? No, most of all she was tired. Very tired. Would it be all right if she had a sleep?

  Jude showed her the spare bedroom and the bathroom, and went downstairs to prepare a meal for later. While she was in the kitchen, the phone rang.

  ‘Hi, it’s Gaby Martin. You know, we spoke earlier about my back.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thing is, I don’t really want to waste your time.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t be wasting my time.’

  ‘No, but coming tomorrow morning, well, I’m not sure that . . . Point is, my back actually feels better, so I think we should take a rain check on it.’

  ‘OK. It’s your back, it’s your decision.’

  ‘Sure. Sorry to mess you around.’

  ‘No problem. And if it does get bad again, and you’re in the area, just give me a call.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. Bye.’

  Slightly odd, thought Jude. But not that odd. Backs, she knew, worked by a logic all their own.

  Half an hour later she tiptoed up again to the spare room.

  Gita Millington was out cold, her face more relaxed and younger in sleep. The short-sleeved nightdress revealed what the tracksuit top had hidden.

  A bandage held in place a dressing over the slashes on the inside of her left wrist.