There was something I needed to check with Hector while I had the chance, something I already knew the answer to, but I wanted to hear it from him.
‘Can I take it,’ I said carefully, ‘that my… what I did, will remain a secret between us, and there will never be a time when the girls might get to know?’
‘They won’t hear it from me, ever. I can promise you that.’
‘Thank you,’ I said quietly.
Hector continued. ‘There is always the slim chance they might find out another way.’ He looked pointedly at me.
‘Tessa. Yes, I know. She’s unpredictable, but she’ll want to protect Zoe as much as we do our girls. It’s highly unlikely she’d say anything about… me and her father. Especially now.’
‘Highly unlikely, I agree. That’s the best we can give it.’ Hector gave me a half-smile which I could tell wasn’t easy for him.
We sat in silence for a while, thinking about our daughters. At least I was, and I believe Hector was, too.
‘We were right to tell the girls that Ben took his own life, weren’t we?’ I said eventually.
‘Definitely. Who knows what gossip they’ll hear in the village? Bad news travels fast. Anyway, if Tessa’s got any sense, she’ll have told Zoe the truth.’
‘Yes.’ I said. ‘Poor Zoe.’ I was thinking how hurt the child must be, knowing her father had left her in that devastating manner. But at least she would never know he was a murderer.
Hector and I had made a mutual decision to tell our daughters what happened at High Heaven that night. They obviously needed to be told something, and the following morning, we’d sat them down, Caitlin included, and given them the news of Ben’s death. We kept it brief and factual, citing an illness inside Ben’s head that had been there a long while, and caused him to take that action. They hadn’t asked questions, which I was thankful for. Those may come, in time, especially from Kitty, and I hope I will be ready.
Talking about the children brought us onto the subject of Caitlin. Once the main topic had been given its rightful airing, Hector, surprisingly, praised me for being a wonderful mother to all three girls. Given the circumstances, I couldn’t fully accept the compliment, but he talked about our youngest daughter, and told me how he had come to understand that her needs will come and go and be replaced by other concerns as she grows up, but will always be there. He added that it is Caitlin’s differences that make her special, and how privileged he feels to be her dad. I shed a tear at that.
‘And Honeybee Hall?’ I asked tentatively.
‘She stays, whatever it takes. It’s up to us to give her the best start in life we can, and that includes the right school.’
‘It’s getting more expensive every year.’
‘Yep, and we will manage that, too.’
We kissed then, a brief meeting of lips that had a platonic feel to it. But it was something.
I have seen Tessa once since it happened. It was a Saturday morning and I was walking back from the shops with Hazel and Caitlin when I saw her and Zoe in the square, near the oak tree. Tessa was gazing at her mobile, and my instinct was to walk on by. But then she looked up and saw me, and the decision was out of my hands.
The three girls immediately gravitated into a huddle on the bench beneath the tree, leaving Tessa and I standing facing each other.
‘Fran.’ She gave a little smile.
‘How are you, Tessa?’ I asked. Stupid question, but I couldn’t think what else to say, how to be with her.
‘Getting there slowly, thanks,’ she said. ‘Zoe the same.’ She nodded towards her daughter.
I asked Tessa if she planned to move away from Oakheart. She had considered it, she said, but not for long.
‘I love Rose Cottage. Despite what’s happened, it’s home. Anyway, Zoe would hate to be uprooted and parted from her friends. She’s doing really well at Oakheart Academy. It is a good school, don’t you think?’
And there was our entry ticket back into normal life – or close to it – as we became again two ordinary mothers chatting about our children and their school.
Strangely, we didn’t talk directly about Ben. Or perhaps not so strange. There was not one word we could have said which would not have led to thousands more. We kept him inside our minds, each knowing some of what the other was thinking, but not all. Tessa has her secrets and I have mine, and that’s the way it is.
I was grateful to Caitlin for coming to remind me I was supposed to be dropping her off at Maisie’s by eleven, giving me reason to leave without awkwardness.
I doubt I will see much of Tessa in future. Our paths will cross in the village, and through the school and our daughters. And perhaps I’ll be asked to help with her next charity venture, a silent auction, again in aid of our local hospice – she hinted as much – but we shall see.
I took a week off from the vets’ on compassionate grounds after that night; all I wanted to do – all I felt capable of – was to curl up under the duvet and sleep.
On my second day back at work, Mirabelle Hayward pushed through the door, lugging the usual shabby cat basket.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said, smiling at me as she marched up to the reception counter and plonked the basket on top. ‘How are you today?’
Evelyn widened her eyes at me, as surprised as I was by the greeting.
‘I’m fine, thank you. Who have we here then, Mirabelle?’ I peered through the bars on the front of the basket to see golden yellow eyes in a sooty face peering back at me.
‘Talullah.’
‘As in Bankhead?’
‘The very one. She’s lost a tooth and I want the vet to check the others.’ She held a hand to the side of her face, as if the cat could hear, and stage-whispered at me. ‘She’s getting rather ancient, I’m afraid.’ She lowered her hand. ‘But if it’s a trouble, you can make me an appointment for another time and I’ll take her back home again, right now.’
It was a mercifully easy morning; there was only a guinea pig and one quiet dog waiting with their owners. I assured Mirabelle that one of the vets would see the cat if she liked to take a seat. In truth, I would have said the same had we been crowded out, although I appreciated the difference in attitude, as did Evelyn, who nudged me in the ribs.
Mirabelle duly chose a seat, put her handbag on it and Talullah in her basket on the adjacent seat, and then trotted back to the counter.
I smiled a question.
‘I had a little word with your lovely lady vet,’ she began, leaning conspiratorially across the counter. ‘I looked out of the window the other afternoon and there she was, parked right outside my house! Of course, I had to pop out and see if she was all right, which she was, she’d only stopped there to take a call on her mobile phone. Blessed nuisance, those things, if you ask me.’
I suppress a sigh, aware of Evelyn fielding a phone call while greeting a new arrival at the same time.
‘Anyway, we were chatting away, as you do,’ continued Mirabelle, ‘and I happened to give my poor Humphrey a little mention. Do you know what she said, the lady vet? She said it had simply been Humphrey’s time to go, and no amount of extra care or medicines would have made the tiddliest difference. Which is what they said before, only… well, never mind.’ Mirabelle flapped a hand. ‘The thing is, dear, I have had time to think since then, a lot of time, and I want to say sorry. What happened to Humphrey was nothing to do with you leaving him sitting in a draught at all!’
I smothered a smile. ‘It’s fine, Mirabelle. All water under the bridge.’
She brightened. I noticed her red lipstick had been applied to her top lip only, before she obviously got diverted. ‘Water under the bridge! What a nice way of putting it. You are very kind, dear. Very kind. And while I’m here, I hope the badger didn’t upset you too much. It was rather pungent.’ She tapped her nose and leaned closer. ‘It wasn’t my idea, you know, not in the first place. I’m not one for telling tales, but you do know who was behind all that business, don’t you?’
>
I nodded. ‘Yes, I do. Don’t you think about that for one more moment.’
‘Badger? I don’t remember her bringing in a badger,’ Evelyn said, when Mirabelle had trotted back to her seat.
‘She didn’t. It’s all in her head.’
Forty
FRAN
It’s five o’clock on a grey, damp October morning. I stand in the Departures hall at Terminal 2, Heathrow Airport, surrounded by Hector and the girls, and glance at the queue shuffling ahead.
‘Message me when you get there,’ Hector says. He’s already said that, several times, and I have replied in the affirmative the same number of times. But clearly, he feels the need to say something, and it will do.
‘Mum, I’ve just thought!’ Caitlin tugs on my sleeve. ‘I’ll be able to talk to you on the computer when you’re in New Zealand, the same as I do with Nanny and Grandad, won’t I?’
‘Well, obviously,’ Hazel says, raising her eyes at Kitty.
‘I know but it’ll be different because I have never done that before, have I, Mum?’
Hector and I smile at each other over Caitlin’s head. ‘No, and that will certainly be a novelty,’ I say.
My parents insisted on paying for my ticket to Christchurch, and after a good-natured tussle, I gave in. Hector said this trip is just what I need; in fact, it was his idea. I don’t think I could ever love him more than I do now.
‘Will you be okay?’ I say to him. ‘All of you?’
He laughs and assures me for the fourteenth time that they’ll be fine, and if they can’t manage without me for three weeks it’s a pretty poor show.
‘One day we’ll all go to New Zealand together,’ I say.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Kitty and Hazel say together. ‘We’ve heard it all before.’
They giggle, and Caitlin joins in, although she doesn’t know why.
A few minutes later, after hugs and kisses all round, I stand and watch my family cross the concourse until the crowd swallows them up, and then I head off to begin my adventure.
Epilogue
My excuse for going out that October night rolled off my tongue unrehearsed. I was nipping round to somebody’s house – a friend, unnamed, not that either of them was listening. I had last minute arrangements to firm up about the book sale at the primary school on Saturday. The proceeds were going towards restocking the school’s library. That part at least was true.
But as I say, neither of them paid much attention. Zoe was in bed, reading a story to an audience of stuffed toy animals; Ben in a world of his own, as usual. I’d had the foresight to take my clipboard with me containing details of the book sale, and I had in fact winged by Cherie’s house on the way to High Heaven. Again, I need not have bothered. But the evidence was there, if anyone cared to look.
Ben’s phone had been in the pocket of his suede jacket, hanging in the hall. He’d obviously forgotten it was there and had gone to work that day without it. How convenient, I’d thought, as I called his phone early in the morning on the off-chance, and traced it there. Another example of things falling my way when I need them to.
Had I intended to kill Maria? I can’t pretend it wasn’t on my mind, although as I drove to High Heaven, all I could think about was what a betraying evil bitch she was, and how much I was looking forward to telling her that. Had she never heard of the sisterhood? Did she not know the rule that says women do not do that to other women?
In the event, I didn’t get round to any of that. She riled me from the start, recovering quickly from the shock of seeing me, demanding to know what I was doing there, and why I had tricked her when she’d thought she was meeting Ben – as if she hadn’t worked it out. As if she had the right to challenge me, over anything!
I countered her questions by asking why, when she had ended the affair herself only the week before, she had agreed to meet him tonight. Didn’t that prove something? I don’t know why I bothered asking. The answer was obvious; she’d changed her mind, decided she couldn’t do without him, and was out to rekindle their sordid little liaison.
It turned out I was wrong; well, half-wrong. She loved him, she said, those dark doe-eyes filling with tears. She couldn’t risk him harming himself because of her, and that was why she’d agreed to see him again, hoping they could talk reasonably. Her words about Ben harming himself floored me for a moment, and I was taken back to that time in our London flat when I found him out cold, with the vodka bottle and the half-empty packets of tablets. If I hadn’t come home when I did, he might have finished the job. He never said why he’d done it, but he didn’t need to. He couldn’t bear the thoughts that plagued him, about his parents and how he’d been discarded, thrown out with the trash as if he was nothing. He couldn’t stand the torture any longer.
I rescued him then, made it better. But I knew the idea was there, inside him. I knew the workings of his mind, what he was capable of. And so I believed Maria, although I didn’t ask for details of that conversation. In a place like High Heaven, I could imagine them well enough.
‘You don’t have to worry about Ben,’ I said. ‘Ben is going nowhere. Whereas you…’ We were right on the edge of the cliff, the ground pliant beneath our feet. I never got to finish the sentence. For one thing, there was nothing left worth saying. For another, she’d begun screaming hysterically.
The suicide verdict was no surprise to me. No evidence to suggest otherwise. Done and dusted, case closed.
When the news broke, I watched Ben suffer, silently, from behind a shuttered expression. I had never wanted to cause him more pain, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made in order to right a wrong. In any case, I knew he would soon get over it; his grief was born of fantasy, imagined emotion. He never loved Maria, any more than he loved Fran. Or me.
On that final night, when it all went wrong, my world was snatched from under me. I would have followed Ben over the edge had the human survival instinct not kicked in first.
When I realised they were at High Heaven together, I saw the perfect opportunity to bring my ultimatum to its natural conclusion. I would not only tell Hector what his wife had been up to, I would show him. No room for doubt then. As it turned out, he’d had half a clue all along, and the main cause of his shock was that the affair was still going on. That was the impression I gave him, anyway. And who knows? It might actually have been true.
Ironic that Ben should employ the same phone-swap trick as me to lure Fran to High Heaven. Perhaps I gave him the idea. In some obscure way, perhaps I killed Ben, too.
Now my dreams are filled with pictures of him, a perpetual slideshow, blurred with tears, grainy with deception.
Ben may be gone, but it’s not over yet.
I spoke to Fran the other day, the first time I’d seen her since it happened. She was with her two youngest and they were in the little supermarket in the high street; I saw them through the window. I had been in there with Zoe minutes before, but we had since crossed the road and were heading for The Pot and Kettle. I stopped on the pavement to fiddle with my phone, frowning over something apparently important, until a flicker in my peripheral vision gave me Fran and her daughters leaving the shop and setting off in the direction of home.
I outpaced her on the opposite side of the street, looking straight ahead, and reached the square ahead of her. I stopped near the oak tree and took out my phone again, telling Zoe to be patient and she’d have her hot chocolate in a minute.
Standing in the middle of the square, Fran couldn’t very well avoid me. We chatted, almost as if none of it had happened. There was sympathy in her eyes – probably genuine, not that I care either way – and a careful question or two. How else could she behave? I am the bereaved one, not her. She has lost nothing – at least, nothing that was rightfully hers to begin with.
I sensed relief in her demeanour as she left. She’s probably wishing she never had to set eyes on me again. Like that was ever going to happen. The village, the shops, the school, all still there. I might even start up
the art club again, after a break. And Zoe’s friendship with Hazel will, with my encouragement, continue to blossom.
Amongst the chat with Fran, I threw in mention of a vague plan for a charity auction, hinted that I might ask for her help; a request she won’t be able to refuse. One way or another, I will have Francesca Oliver at my fingertips.
Let her have her dream trip to New Zealand, play her walk-on part as loving daughter and sister. And when she comes home to Oakheart, the scars on her marriage already fading into obscurity… I will be waiting.
THE END
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The Wife's Revenge Page 23
