by Susan Lewis
When it was time to pay the owner smiled benignly as she wrapped the transparent white negligee in tissue which she tied with a bow, then did the same with the hold-up stockings. 'I think your husband will like this very much,' she murmured, as she walked Julia to the door her assistant was holding open.
If only they knew, Julia was reflecting as she returned to the car. They think we've got it so together, but how deceiving appearances can be - and how was she going to appear to him in this exquisite lingerie tonight? Exactly as he would want her to, of course, ready for his lovemaking, and willing to give him everything he most desired. In the old days, if the children weren't around, she'd have greeted him at the door
wearing the seductive outfit, then served him drinks and dinner, allowing him to touch her whenever he felt like it, until their need grew to such a pitch that they couldn't even make it to the bedroom. He'd take her right there in the kitchen, or the study, or the laundry room, in any position he pleased, and for as long as he could. If only she could work herself up to do that again, but right now the very idea was making her so tense inside that she had to put it out of her mind, or she knew she'd never stand a chance of going through with it.
Next stop was the Portobello market. As she headed over there, she was listening to the hard- rock band on his CD player, not because she liked it, but because he did, and it made her feel closer to him. If he knew what she was doing now, it would make such a difference to his day, she was thinking, as she turned into a street close to Sylvia's. Finding a parking spot, she was just toying with the idea of dropping in to entertain Sylvia with an account of the lunch with Kincaid, when her mobile started to ring. Since the call came up as a private number, she clicked on and said, 'Hello, Julia Thayne speaking.'
'Mrs Thayne. My name is Fionnula Barrington,' a pleasantly cultured voice informed her. 'I'm calling from Sissons, Greene and Bower in Bodmin. I got your number from your answering machine. I hope I'm not disturbing you?'
Julia was half out of the car, but sank back into the driver's seat as she registered the official tone of the call. 'No, not at all,' she responded. 'What can I do for you?'
'Is it convenient to talk?' Fionnula Barrington enquired. 'I have news of some importance.'
Julia frowned, and felt a stirring of unease. 'Yes, it's fine,' she said.
There was a pause before Ms Barrington continued. 'Could I ask you to confirm whether you're the daughter of Douglas Henry Cowan?'
Julia's mouth turned dry, as her heartbeat seemed to slow. 'Yes, I am,' she answered, feeling absurdly inundated by surprise contact with her father, when in fact it amounted to only two calls in the space of six weeks. However, that was a hundred per cent more than there had been over the past twenty-four years.
'Then I'm afraid I have some bad news,' Fionnula Barrington was telling her. 'I'm extremely sorry to tell you that your father passed away last night.'
Julia blinked, took a breath, then felt everything around her starting to change. It was as though it was coming in on her, slowly, threateningly, with sound distorted and time dislodged.
'His instructions were to inform you as soon as it happened,' Fionnula Barrington continued. 'There is an inheritance, which we will go over with you in due course. Meanwhile, his request was to be cremated and his ashes buried with his wife's at their local church.'
Wife? It seemed bizarrely like a foreign word, something she didn't quite understand, or maybe she didn't want to.
'We can take care of everything. He specifically states that you must not feel obliged to attend his funeral...'
'Stop! Stop!' Julia cried, collecting herself. 'I'm sorry, this has come as a bit of a shock.'
'Of course. I know you haven't been in contact for many years. Would you like me to call back after you've had some time to assimilate, and maybe spoken to your family?'
Oh Christ. 'Does my mother know?' she asked.
'We were only instructed to inform you.'
Not knowing what she thought about that, Julia said, 'I think I... What did he die of? Where was he when it happened?'
'It was a stroke that took him in the end, but he'd had cancer for a while. He was at home, here in Cornwall. It was peaceful.'
Cornwall? Home? 'He would have been sixty- eight,' Julia said almost to herself, and put a hand to her head as something inside her seemed to fracture. 'I'm sorry, I think perhaps I do need a few minutes,' she said. 'Can I call you back?'
'Of course. I'll text my details to your mobile, including my home number. Please feel free to call me any time.'
Having rung off Julia continued to sit in the car, her feet on the pavement outside, her handbag in her lap, the phone still in her hand. She was trying to work out how to move from here, how to feel about what she'd heard, but for the moment nothing seemed to be coming through. It had to be shock, deadening her mind, while all the emotional wires tried to connect with the right responses.
She wasn't sure how long she sat there with people walking by, a traffic warden hovering and builders' debris roaring down a chute across the
road. The phone bleeping brought her back to her senses. She opened the text and felt almost surprised to see Fionnula Barrington's details, for the past few minutes were starting to feel like a dream. Her father was dead. The man she'd loved with all her heart for the first sixteen years of her life, had gone. She'd never be able to speak to him now. Never be able to ask why he'd left, or if any of what she feared was true. She might never know now if she really had been the centre of his world once, as he had of hers.
Feeling herself starting to shake she quickly pressed Josh's number into the phone and waited for him to answer. To her frustration she was once again diverted to voicemail, so after leaving a message she tried Marina at the office to find out where he was, but got that answering machine too.
She clicked off the line, closed and locked the car door and started towards the market. She'd been about to shop for dinner, so that was what she would do. Life had to go on. After all, nothing had changed. The fact that her father was no longer in the world shouldn't make a difference, when she hadn't seen him for so long, so she'd put it aside for now, and deal with it later.
At the end of the street she merged into the crowd, but after a minute or two of walking she couldn't remember why she was there. She looked around and felt unnervingly detached from the noise and bustle. Then Fionnula Barrington's words started a strange echo in her head, as though forcing themselves out from the place where she was trying to hide them.
Turning away from the market, she walked
quickly to Sylvia's cobbled mews and to her relief found the workshop door open. There was no sign of Sylvia, so she walked in, past the wheel, and was about to start up the stairs when she registered the noises coming from above. Since there was no doubt about what was happening up there, she swallowed her frustration and went back outside to try Josh's number again. She was so agitated that it took her a moment to register the fact that while listening to the ringtone, she was also hearing the melody Daniel had downloaded a week ago somewhere behind her. Confused, she turned to look back into the workshop, half expecting Josh to be standing there, but that was absurd. Why would he be here? No, it must be Sylvia's phone, with the same ringtone as Josh's. Then the musical chime stopped at the same instant her call went through to messages.
As her hand fell to her side she stood staring at the jacket draped over a stool behind the wheel. She was trying to make herself accept what she was seeing, to make some sense of it, but everything in her was rejecting it. There had to be some mistake. It couldn't be Josh's, nor was it his phone she'd heard ringing - and the noises upstairs had nothing to do with him either. But even as she stood there, trying to make it all mean something else, it was as though everything inside her was breaking apart. She pressed a hand to her mouth and tried to force herself to think. This wasn't his jacket, or his phone. She was mistaken, misreading everything, and any second now she would understand how. She
heard Sylvia laugh, then the familiar sound of Josh's voice as he neared a
climax. She was wrong though, it wasn't him. She was imagining it. She tried to move and found she couldn't, because on some level, somewhere deep inside, she realised that hearing them was devastating enough, she didn't need to see them too.
With no real connection to what she was doing, she turned and walked out of the workshop. All she knew was that she needed some time to think, to absorb the horrible nightmare her life was suddenly becoming. Her father, then Josh ... She wasn't sure if she said his name out loud, or if it was screaming silently inside her. She was walking faster and faster, though she still had no idea where she was going, or what she should do. The loss of her father was beating a horrible tattoo. She wanted to run to him, as she had as a child, to have him make everything all right again, but he was gone now, she would never see him again, and the realisation of it made her stop suddenly as she started to gasp for air. Everything was coming in on her, the buildings, the noise, the smells, the people. It was too much, she had to break free ...
When she reached the car she tore open the door and once inside rested her head on the wheel, willing the panic to stop. OK, she'd been dealt two horrible blows in quick succession, but though it might feel as if the world was coming to an end, it wasn't. She could handle this. She wasn't going to allow it to drag her under, or let the terrible hollow opening up inside her to fill with fear. She had the strength to get through this, she would hold her life together and be there for her children, and for herself. The thought of losing Josh brought
the panic flooding back. She'd rather die than live without him, but she hated him for this. She'd never be able to forgive him, for he knew how deep was her fear of betrayal and abandonment. It didn't matter that he had no way of knowing that her father had just died, the fact that he was back there screwing Sylvia was enough.
As the thought of them together burned painfully in her heart she heard herself cry out. It was as though she was only just registering it - Josh and Sylvia. Her husband and her best friend.
'Oh my God,' she gulped, pressing her hands to her face, 'It can't be true. It just can't.'
She didn't know what to do, or where to go. She had no way of understanding how they could do this to her. The lies, the deceit, everything they were doing was beyond her comprehension. She realised that all the time she'd been shopping for him, for tonight, he'd been with Sylvia. She felt herself becoming heavy and nauseous as she realised that the visitor who'd turned up while she and Sylvia were on the phone could easily have been him.
'No!' she gasped as the horror of it swept over her. 'Please no.'
Her mobile started to ring, but she couldn't talk to anyone now. Without checking who it was, she turned it off and let her head fall back against the seat. She wanted somehow to go back in time, to erase the awfulness of the past ten minutes, as if none of it had ever happened. Her life could never be the same again now, and she felt suddenly totally alone, isolated in a world that was seeming more remote with every second that passed. She
wasn't sure which was scaring her more, her father's death, or Josh's betrayal, but it didn't matter. Both were intolerable, though the images of Josh with Sylvia, of their beautiful bodies entwined, and their passions aroused to a point where they lost control...
She couldn't bear it, she just couldn't. Not even in her worst nightmares had she ever imagined her husband was sleeping with her best friend. She wondered how long it had been going on, if they were in love, and desperate to be together, but couldn't because of her, and the children. The pain of the thought was so sharp that she pressed a hand to her chest to stop it, then she started violently, as someone tapped on the window to ask if she was leaving.
She nodded and turned on the ignition. She had to make herself think what to do now, for she couldn't just go on sitting here, as though by not moving she could stop the inevitable. She considered going back to confront them, but a hoot from an impatient driver forced her to put the car into gear and pull away.
She needed to go home now, she realised. She had to take some time to think and decide what she was going to do. Thank God the children weren't coming back till later, because she knew there was no way in the world she could pretend everything was normal after what she'd just found out, nor did she want them anywhere around when she finally came to deal with their father.
It was just after seven by the time Josh let himself in through the front door, to find the house
unusually quiet. The unease he generally experienced after spending time with Sylvia immediately started to increase, particularly as he'd been trying to call Julia since he'd picked up her message earlier telling him to get back to her urgently. For some reason she hadn't answered her phone, so in the end he'd called Shannon and Dan to reassure himself there was no problem with them. The relief of finding out they were OK had been short-lived, for he'd then received a text from Julia telling him to ignore the message she'd left and that she'd see him later at home. She didn't usually text him. It was the children who did that.
Now, as he dropped his keys on the hall table, he tried to bolster himself by insisting there was no way she could know about Sylvia, but with the Porsche parked outside, telling him Julia was at home, and the house seeming so silent, it wasn't quite working.
'Julia!'he called.
No reply.
He went down to the kitchen, but there was no sign of her there, or the children. It didn't appear anything was cooking, either. He glanced into his study to see if anyone was using his computer, but there was no-one there, nor in the laundry room, nor the garden or downstairs loo.
Still carrying the carefully wrapped vase he'd bought from Sylvia, he returned to the hall and called out again. 'Hi, I'm home. Where is everyone?'
His voice echoed into the silent TV room, the drawing room and up over the stairs.
'Julia!' he shouted.
'I'm in here,' she finally answered.
Realising her voice had come from the drawing room, he pushed open the door and frowned, for at first it appeared empty. Then he saw her standing by the window, and he knew right away that something was horribly wrong, not only from the way her back was turned, but because she was wearing her winter coat.
'Is everything all right?' he asked, as though the lightness of his voice could make it so. 'What are you doing in here? Where are the kids?'
'They're out for the evening.' As she turned to look at him he was taken aback by the paleness of her face, and the blankness of her eyes. It was as though she'd turned herself into a shell.
'Are you going somewhere?' he asked, meaning the coat.
She didn't answer.
Feeling awkward, and even vaguely annoyed, he held up the parcel. 'I've got a surprise for you,' he told her, 'a peace offering, I suppose. I'm sorry for everything I said the other night.' The words seemed to echo inside his head and he suddenly wished he hadn't bought the vase, for if anything represented his guilt this had to be it.
'What is it?' she asked.
He took it to her and handed it over. 'Why don't you open it and find out?'
Dragging her eyes from his she lifted the parcel from the bag, unwound the bubble wrap and gazed down at the exquisite harp-shaped porcelain vase. 'Of course,' she said quietly.
She looked up at him and a thud of horror struck hard in his chest. She knew.
'How much did you pay for it?' she asked.
He found himself unable to answer.
'Two, three thousand pounds?' she prompted.
Anger suddenly galvanised his voice. 'What the hell has got into you?' he demanded. 'Don't you like it, or something?'
'I'm just wondering what the price of your conscience is,' she replied.
He stared at her hard, wondering how the hell she'd found out, and if there was any way he could deny it.
'I was at Sylvia's today,' she told him. 'I know you were there too, so please don't deny it, and please don't try telling me i
t was to get this, because if you do, I'll smash it over your head.'
'Of course it was to get that,' he cried, then his eyes widened in disbelief as she let the vase slip through her hands and smash to smithereens on the hardwood floor.
'Tell me, is that how you pay her for sex?' she asked. 'Or is it just to buy off your conscience?'
'Julia, for Christ's sake .. .'
'How much was this one?' she cut in, lifting a porcelain crescent moon from its plinth. 'Two thousand?' Without waiting for an answer she raised it over her head and flung it against the wall where it dissolved into a thousand pieces.
'Julia! Just stop .. .'
'What about this one?' She was picking up another. 'One thousand? Less?' She hurled it into the fireplace, then turned back to face him. 'Do we have one for every time you fucked her?' she asked tightly, 'Is that what our little art display is all about?'
'Have you completely lost your mind?' he cried.
'Not yet, but I'm getting there.'
'For Christ's sake stop,' he shouted, as she began destroying pieces that had nothing to do with Sylvia. Lalique. Baccarat. Natzler.
'Julia, pull yourself together,' he roared, trying to grab her.
'Don't touch me,' she hissed, pushing him away. Her eyes were blazing with fury now, her voice shredded with contempt as she laid into him. 'How could you? How fucking could you?' she raged. 'She was my best friend, my best friend, and you, you faithless bastard ...' She slapped him so hard in the face that it cut his lip.
'You think every woman's on this earth just to part her legs for you, don't you?' she seethed. 'That's all that matters to you. Sex. We're not about anything else, you and me, and if you can't get it here, well that's all right, just as long as you don't go without. Am I right? Yes, of course I am. Forget about our marriage, forget about who you might be hurting, don't even bother to consider your children, just make sure you get what you want. Well you're a whore, Joshua! Do you know that? A filthy, disgusting whore who doesn't even come close to deserving the love of his family. You're even soiling our home just by being here.' Her lips were quivering, her chest heaving as she fought for air.
