The Best Of Times

by Penny Vincenzi

  “Sorry?” she said, and then, “Fuck sorry, William; just do it again, or come in, or-”

  But, “No,” he said, “I mustn’t. Honestly, Abi, I’d love to, I really would, but we hardly know each other.”

  And that made her laugh, rather weakly, leaning against him and pulling his head down and kissing him, quite differently now, on the cheek, on his nose.

  “You really are special,” she said, “so, so special. Promise me one thing: let’s do it again, very soon.”

  “What, drinks, dinner-”

  “Yes, if you want. Drinks, dinner, kiss, and then see what happens next. OK?”

  He was silent, looking down at her very seriously, and… God, she thought, I’ve gone too far, acted like a tart; and then he smiled, almost embarrassed, and said, “Yeah, well, that’d be great. Absolutely great. I’ll ring you, OK?”

  “You’d better,” she said, releasing herself from him, grinning at him, walking towards the front door of her block. “And if you don’t, I’ll ring you. I haven’t been very well brought up, you see. That’s what I do, ring blokes I fancy. Night, William-thanks for a great evening.”

  “No,” he said, “no, thank you. It’s been terrific. You’re very special too, Abi. I hope you know that.”

  And he drove off slowly, and she stood there looking after him, and then went inside and got into bed, and lay there wide-awake, still excited, still hardly touching reality, wondering how soon she might see him again and whether that time she would be able to persuade him into bed with her. Even though… what was it he’d said? Oh, yes, even though they hardly knew each other. Incredible that people still thought like that. Absolutely incredible…

  ***

  And William drove home rather slowly, playing his favourite Bruce Springsteen CD, and wondering if it was even remotely possible that a girl as sexy and funny and fun as Abi could possibly enjoy being with him, and whether she’d meant it when she’d said she’d like to go out with him again.

  CHAPTER 23

  Laura wanted to believe Jonathan more than anything on earth. About Abi Scott. Her whole life and happiness hung on it. Because if it wasn’t true, if he’d been having an affair with her-with anyone-then there was no way she could stay with him. She had always felt that trust was absolutely synonymous with love. However wonderful Jonathan was, however good their marriage was, however perfect their life, if he’d betrayed her, she couldn’t possibly go on with it. How could you go to sleep beside a man, wake up with him, live in his house, bring up his children, if he had lied to you, if all those “I love you”s, all those “I couldn’t live without you”s, had been said to someone else?

  If he had made love to someone else, known her body intimately, caressed her, entered her, made her come, then how could you possibly stay with him, accept those lies, forgive them-and him? How would you ever believe him again if he said he was working late, on a business trip, dining with colleagues? Suspicion would poison every smile, every kiss, every caress; would distort pleasure, wreck contentment, ruin memory. That was the worst thing, perhaps: that you would remember all the most precious times-the commitment to stay together forever, the arrival of the babies, the sweetly charged intimacies of marriage-and know it had all been a sham, see it as distorted, ugly cruelly changed.

  She was trying-so hard-to get it back, the happiness and the trust. But until she knew for sure, she was failing. And becoming obsessed with the need to know…

  ***

  “Now, this is interesting,” said Freeman. They were examining CCTV footage. “Here we have our best man standing in the queue for the tyre gauge.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” said Rowe.

  “Nothing. It’s the responsible thing to do-especially if you’re thinking of driving rather fast. But the point is, Mr. Fraser told us he hadn’t done anything at the service station except get fuel.”

  “Well, I expect he just didn’t mention it. Forgot.”

  “Rowe, you don’t forget things like that. Especially when x minutes later your tyre bursts and contributes to a major accident. No, I think we should perhaps talk to Mr. Fraser again. Ask him about it. Or-which might be cleverer-talk to the bridegroom. Get a separate account.”

  “You can’t do that yet,” said Rowe. “He’s very unwell. I thought they said he might be having major surgery on Monday.”

  “Mr. Connell is also very unwell. We learnt quite a lot from him.”

  “That’s true. Although it was pretty muddled. All that stuff about feeling sleepy and eating jelly babies. And the second person in the van.”

  “I’ve told you before, Rowe, the devil’s in the details in this game.” If he said that once more, Rowe thought, he’d thump him. “The very fact that he was talking about jelly babies, not just chocolate, could be important. If he can be precise about his sweets, then we can take more notice of the rest of his testimony.

  “Now, it could be his confusion, this second person in the van. But put together with-what-three reports now about this mysterious girl at the scene of the crash, I think it bears a very close look indeed.” He paused. “You know, Rowe, I’m wondering if we can get the media interested in this one. We’d get more eyewitnesses to what actually happened. And in particular, who else might have seen this girl, and a second person in the lorry-who, of course, are not necessarily one and the same. I think I’ll talk to the PR department first thing Monday. See if they can get it on the news.”

  “So how would we go about it?”

  “Oh, we-or the PR people-contact one of their researchers, give them the story, make it sound as interesting as we can; after that it’s up to them. Bit of a beauty contest, really-”

  “I wonder if they ever found that missing dog,” said Rowe suddenly, “the golden retriever. That would be the sort of thing they’d like…”

  There was a silence; then Freeman said, slightly grudgingly, “It could be, yes. Why don’t you check it out, Rowe?”

  ***

  Georgia was beginning to feel she had two heads. Or two selves. It was very odd. There was the Georgia who had just got a part in a prestigious TV series, who was feeling pretty pleased with herself; and there was the other Georgia, who was scared and miserable and ashamed of herself, who didn’t remotely know what to do to make things better. Or rather who did know, but seemed to entirely lack the courage to do it.

  She could be walking through Cardiff, going to meet a friend, listening to her iPod, and looking in the windows of Topshop, and without warning the terror would be there, the terror and the awful despair. She would stand still, shaking, feeling she would never move again, trying to set aside the memories and the guilt, and then she would have to call the friend, plead illness, and go home again, creeping under her duvet, crying, sometimes for hours at time.

  And then, equally without reason, it would go again, and she would find herself able to say, Well, was it really so bad, what she had done? And no one need ever know, and one day, yes, one day she would go and see Patrick-who was, after all, still alive-and say she was sorry…

  Only… she knew she couldn’t. She really, really couldn’t.

  ***

  “Wednesday’s the big day now,” said Toby. He had rung Barney at work; his voice was painfully cheerful.

  “Yeah? For… what?”

  As if he didn’t know.

  “Oh-this final washout thing. If they don’t think it’s working then-”

  “Well, then, they’ll try again,” said Barney.

  “Mate, they won’t,” said Toby.

  “Course they will. They’re not going to give up on you.”

  “No. Just take the leg off. Or some of it.”

  “Oh, Tobes. Of… of course they’re not. Whatever makes you think that?”

  “Because the fucking doctor told me so. He was very nice, very positive, said he was fairly confident that it would be OK, but we had to face the fact it might not be. I’ll have to sign a consent thing, apparently, before I go down. Shit, Ba
rney, I’m scared.”

  There was a silence; then Barney said, “So… have you told Tamara?”

  “Oh, no, no. I thought it would upset her too much.”

  “Well, that’s very brave of you,” Barney said carefully. “What about your parents?”

  “No, I haven’t told them either. Poor old Mum, she’s upset enough as it is.”

  “Well…” Barney sought wildly round for something to say that might help. “Well… tell you what, Tobes: would you like me to come down on Wednesday? Be there when it’s done? Not in the operating theatre, of course-don’t think I could cope with that-but I’ll spend the time beforehand with you, be there when you come back. With two good legs, obviously.”

  “Shit, Barney, you are the best. Would you really? Yeah, that’d be great. They said it’d be the afternoon probably. I was thinking what a ghastly long day it would be. But… you’ll be-”

  “I’ll be there…”

  Sometime, when Toby felt better, Barney thought, they should discuss the little matter of the tyre. Just so that they were saying the same thing. If anyone asked Toby. Which they probably wouldn’t…

  CHAPTER 24

  Patrick was in the grip of a horror and fear that had a physical presence, that were invading him as surely as the pain had done on the day of the accident. Somehow talking to the police had made it worse, had made him more certain that he had gone to sleep; just hearing his own voice, describing it, made it seem impossible that there had been another explanation. He had killed all those people, ruined all those lives; it was his fault; he had blood on his hands as surely as if he had taken a gun and shot them all.

  And not being able to remember anything made it worse, rendered him completely out of control. They’d told him it would come back, his memory, but the more he tried to remember, the more difficult it got; it was like trying to see through a fog that was thickening by the day. Even the other person in the van seemed to be disappearing into that fog. And even if someone had been there, he had still been at the wheel…

  The horror never left him; he lay for hours just wrestling with it, woke to it, slept his drugged sleep with it, dreamed of it. There was no room for anything else: for hope, for calm-just the horror rendering it ugly and even obscene. It was all going to go on until he died; there was no escape anywhere. He reflected on all the skill and care that were going into his recovery, or his possible recovery, and there seemed no point, absolutely no point at all in any of it. He wished it would stop altogether; he wished he could stop.

  And then in a moment of revelation, it came to him that actually, if he really wanted that, he could.

  ***

  “You look tired, Mum; why don’t you go through and watch TV. Gerry’ll help me clear away, won’t you, Gerry?”

  “Oh… no,” said Mary. Her heart thumped uncomfortably. “Look… I’d like to talk to you both about something. The thing is… well, look, dears, this may come as… well, as a bit of a surprise to you, but you know I was on my way to London last week? The day of the crash? I wasn’t entirely honest about the reason. I was going to meet someone.”

  “Yes, you said… A friend.”

  “Indeed. But he was a little more than a friend.”

  “He? Mum, what have you been up to?”

  Christine’s eyes were dancing.

  “Well, the person I went to meet was an American gentleman. Called Russell Mackenzie.”

  “Good heavens! And-”

  “Well, and we met a very long time ago. During the war. He was a GI and we… well, we became very fond of each other.”

  “What, you had an affair, you mean?”

  “Certainly not,” said Mary. “Not in the way you mean. We didn’t do that sort of thing in those days. Well, I didn’t, anyway.”

  “But… you were in love with him?”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “Very much.”

  “Gosh, how romantic. Weren’t you tempted to marry him, go out there after the war, be a GI bride or whatever?”

  “No. I wasn’t. I had promised to marry your father; we were unofficially engaged. He was in a prisoner-of-war camp. As you know.”

  “But… you still had an affair-all right, a relationship-with this chap?”

  “Yes, I did. But he knew there was no future in it, that I was going to marry your father.”

  “But he carried on… chasing you? And you let him?”

  “Well… yes. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it was wartime; things were very different.”

  “Of course. Anyway, he went back to the States?”

  “Yes, and married someone else in due course, and I married your father. But… we kept in touch. We wrote… regularly. All through the years. We remained very… close. In an odd way.”

  “How regularly? A few times a year?”

  It was best to be truthful. This was too important not to be. “No, we wrote at least once a month.”

  “Once a month! Did Dad know?”

  “No, he had no idea. I knew it would… upset him. That he wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’m not sure I do either.” Christine’s face was suddenly flushed.

  “You’re telling me you were so involved with this man you wrote to him every month, for years and years and years, right through your marriage, but it didn’t affect your feelings for Dad?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “But, Mum, it must have done. I couldn’t deceive Gerry like that.”

  “It wasn’t exactly deceit, dear.”

  “Mum, it was. Did he tell his wife? This Russell person?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Well, it sounds pretty unbelievable. I mean that all you did was write. Did he ever come over; did you meet him without Dad knowing?”

  “No, Christine, I didn’t. I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Well, go on.” She was looking almost hostile now. “What happened next in this romantic story?”

  “Chris!” Gerry was looking very uncomfortable. “Don’t get upset.”

  “Well, I am upset. I suddenly discover there’s been another man in my mother’s life that my father didn’t know about-if Dad had found out, Mum, don’t you think he’d have been upset?”

  “Yes, I do. Which was why I never told him.”

  “Well, then. It was wrong. Anyway, go on.”

  Mary felt like crying; this was exactly what she had feared.

  “Well, now, you see, Russell’s wife has died, and… he’s come over to see me, and we… well, we still feel very fond of each other.”

  “Has he been to the hospital?”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “But you didn’t tell me?”

  “No, dear.”

  “You were obviously feeling guilty about it. That proves it, as far as I’m concerned. He was there, in your marriage to Dad, even if Dad didn’t know. I think it’s really, really bad.”

  “Chris. Easy! Your mum’s done nothing wrong.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s a matter of opinion. Anyway, what happens next? I hope he’s not coming here.”

  “Not if you don’t want him to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But I would like you to meet him.”

  “I don’t want to meet him.”

  “But, Christine, we are planning to spend a lot of time together. A lot. I know you’d like him if you only met him.”

  “I don’t want to like him. And what does ‘a lot’ mean? I hope you’re not planning to set up house with him or something?”

  “Chris!” said Gerry.

  Mary met her daughter’s eyes steadily. She had hoped to take it gently, to let Chris meet Russell, get to know him, but-

  “Actually” she said, “we are hoping to… well, to get married. We feel very strongly that we’ve spent enough time apart.”

  “Oh, please spare me. You’ve been reading too many Mills and Boon books, Mum. You’ve not been apart from this man; you’ve been married to Dad. Whom you
were supposed to love. Poor old Dad! He must be turning in his grave.”

  “Chris,” said Gerry, “I think we’ve had enough of this conversation. You’re really upsetting your mother.”

  “Good. She’s upset me. And I don’t know what Timothy’s going to say. Oh, I’m going to go and do the clearing up. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

  Mary felt dreadful. Russell had been wrong: he’d said Christine would understand, would be happy for her. Now what could she do? Everything was spoilt suddenly; she felt guilty and ashamed, instead of happy and excited.

  She went to bed and lay thinking about Donald, and that he would actually have minded very much if he had known, and feeling, for the very first time, that she had betrayed him.

  ***

  “I know it’s awful of me,” said Tamara, slipping her arm through Barney’s as they walked towards the lift, “but I’m beginning to feel just the tiniest bit selfish about all this. I mean, I haven’t said one word to Tobes, obviously, and he can’t help what’s happened, but…”

  Her voice trailed away; Barney felt a wave of rage so violent he actually wanted to hit her, instead of taking her for a drink, as she had persuaded him to do. She had come back to work at the beginning of the week-“Well, I was so bored, and fed up, working suddenly looked like quite fun by comparison”-and had appeared by his desk after lunch, suggesting that they should go for a drink after work.

  And so here he was, up on the forty-second floor of Vertigo with her, and faced by at least an hour of her phony distress-well, he supposed the distress was genuine; it was just over the wrong cause…

  “Yes,” she said, sipping thoughtfully at her champagne, “like I was saying, Barney, I just can’t help it; I feel really, really bad.”

  “About Toby, you mean?”

  “Well, yes, obviously, poor angel.”

  “How do you think he’s doing?” said Barney, desperate to postpone the moment when she would clearly expect sympathy. “With his leg, I mean?”