She paused. Her eyes returned to the view from the window.
In a moment, she’d stamped her feet into her canvas shoes and was jogging downstairs and outside, snatching up the car keys en route.
Why hadn’t she thought of the damned car?
Glove compartment, door pockets, seat pockets, under the seats. Nothing. She threw open the boot, tipping out the contents of a plastic toolbox with a shrill scream of spanners. No. She halted, for the first time uncertain. No?
Then she saw a little loop, just below the boot catch. Pulling it up sharply, she found the floor of the boot came up and she was staring at the spare wheel.
And there, cradled by the hub, was a blue canvas pouch, neat and new.
She slid open the nylon zip. Inside laid a mobile phone, a set of keys and a blue building-society passbook.
Her fingertips went numb. She hadn’t had much experience with mobile phones but knew enough from Bryony and George to switch it on and locate the phone book. The only entries read:
Dad
Ivan
Melvyn
STM
This phone
Valerie
The keys looked like a front door key and a back.
The opening balance in the passbook had been £200,000.
About £120,000 of it remained.
Diane sat in the car for several minutes outside Harold’s lovely house, admiring the fish-eye dormers and the sweeping lawns. Gareth’s father’s house. It compared badly to Gareth’s mother’s house on the Brightside Estate – and that had been the best of a lifetime of bad lots. In the huddle of L-shaped terraces slotted like a jigsaw around car parks, greens and graffitied play areas, the Jenner house on the Brightside had been in a row with maroon front doors and a dustbin alcove alongside. The Brightside. The councillors must’ve been on something when they’d dreamed that one up.
When Gareth had first taken Diane home she’d been wiping sweaty palms on her jeans, she’d been so nervous.
‘It can’t be as bad as meeting your parents was for me,’ he joked.
They found Wendy, a large, tired-looking woman, in her sitting room, setting small stitches in a ripped shirt pocket. At Gareth’s laconic introduction, ‘This is Diane,’ she removed black-rimmed glasses to stare. Simultaneously, Melvyn and Ivan appeared, each as dark as Wendy, to have a peep at what Gareth had brought home.
The room was long and narrow with a dining table at one end. A brown suite surrounded a smoked-glass coffee table on a mottled brown carpet, and the walls were beige. With five people there, three of them strapping lads, the room seemed small.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Diane offered, into the silence.
‘You’re easy pleased, then. Gareth says you’ve got your own car?’
Diane flushed at Wendy’s offhandedness. ‘A mini.’
‘You must have a good job. Well, sit down.’
Diane, unused to having her life picked over so rudely, sat slowly. ‘I work in a boutique. My parents bought me the car.’
Melvyn and Ivan exchanged grins.
Wendy stared harder. ‘Must be nice to have things like that fall in your lap.’ She set her mending aside. ‘I suppose I’d better put the kettle on, you’ll expect a cup of tea.’
Stiff with embarrassment at such ungraciousness, Diane refused. ‘No, thank you.’
Gareth said, ‘She takes one sugar, white.’
Wendy returned with a tin tray of mugs and continued her blunt interrogation. ‘So what kind of a house do your parents live in? I suppose your friends are lawyers and bank managers and they all have cars, nice new cars. It’s all right, isn’t it, when you’ve got a bit of brass in the family?’
Gareth took a green mug bearing a picture of an improbably yellow, doleful sausage dog. ‘We’re getting married,’ he said, quietly and without particular emphasis. He laced his fingers through Diane’s.
Melvyn and Ivan gave vent to hoots of derision and old jokes about balls and chains but Wendy’s hostile probing ceased.
Gareth took Diane home often in the few months before the wedding. Despite Wendy’s resentment it was easier there than at Diane’s house. They could go to his room and play records while Wendy sat downstairs in her armchair mending clothes and knitting jumpers in front of the TV.
It was on his own turf that Diane began to discover the complex person that was Gareth Jenner.
It seemed there hadn’t been much money in the boys’ childhoods. Equal pay for women had been still a few years away, which had meant punishing hours for Wendy. Now that all three Jenner boys were earning and Wendy semi-retired Gareth wanted the family to move, but Wendy wasn’t interested. ‘I’m too old to bother. And the boys need the money for their own lives. You’ll always be OK, Gareth, you a miser all your life; you’ll move on when you’ve hoarded enough. But Melvyn and Ivan have the arse out of their pants by Wednesday every week. They’d never cope with a higher rent.’
So they remained on the Brightside Estate.
Most of the petty criminals in the area had been housed in the ugly new beige-brick terraces and, although loosely law abiding themselves, the Jenners mixed comfortably with the dealers, thieves and hookers that lived beside them, treating the police like vampires – if you never invited them in you were fairly safe.
Diane won acceptance in the Jenner household, after a fashion. She might not be their sort but if she belonged to Gareth then she belonged to them and they made sure she never had a moment’s trouble from the neighbourhood.
It was Diane’s parents who fought bitterly and futilely to keep her from taking the name of Jenner.
So many rows. So many brutal words. So often that Gareth, pale with rage, had to stick out insulting disregard for his honesty and prospects.
Low life.
Wrong ’un.
Regret it all your life.
Underclass.
Don’t come crying to us.
You’ve made your bed.
We expected better.
Diane shook her head clear of the echoes of her father’s voice, and climbed from the car into spitting rain.
Harold answered the door looking as if he might just have awakened from an afternoon nap. But his bleariness soon vanished. ‘Diane! Come in. You’re a nice surprise.’ Diane smiled at his pleasure, genuine she had no doubt, reflecting how little of this kindness she saw in his son.
How different would Gareth have been if he’d known Harold from the beginning?
Harold drew Diane through the house to a tiny sitting-room at the back with two cottage-style armchairs facing the French doors. This room was comfortably worn, the small table exhibiting a careless ring or two, the chairs bleached and shiny on the arms.
She surveyed the garden while he made tea, silently apologising to him for what she was about to do. ‘Lapsang Souchong, Earl Grey or PG Pyramids?’ he proffered through the kitchen hatch.
Her mouth watered suddenly at a smoky reminiscence. She hadn’t had Lapsang Souchong for years. ‘Lapsang, please. Any lemon?’
‘Oh, yes. Lemon.’
She was glad to see he let the tea brew well in the small, elegant teapot. ‘Have you visited Gareth recently?’
‘Yesterday,’ he confirmed, with a smile that displayed his fine dentures.
‘He’s worried, isn’t he?’ She sighed, shaking a regretful head.
Harold’s smile switched off. ‘Is he?’
‘He’s not used to being so isolated. He’s normally in control. You know, finances, car services, household maintenance. He can’t believe that I’m capable of writing a cheque for the gas bill. He’s even worrying about me driving in and out to see him in hospital.’
Harold put down his china cup and stroked his large nose with one clean forefinger. ‘Well. I hadn’t realised. Do you worry about driving?’
Conveniently disregarding her initial wobbles, she gave a pshaw! of disdain. ‘Of course not. But you know Gareth. And I can tell he’s worrying about the cottage, because no
body’s been near it since the crash.’
Face clearing, Harold rediscovered his smile. ‘But it’s only twenty-five minutes from here. I can keep an eye on it.’
She tried not to let the triumph welling in her chest reflect on her face. She smiled gratefully, instead. ‘Oh, you are lovely. I suggested it myself. But –’ She paused, fidgeting, as if casting about for the right words. She let her voice drop confidentially. ‘He won’t hear of that, either. He feels so guilty that you had an angina attack because of him and Valerie.’
‘But I’m quite over that.’
‘I know.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But if I let you trouble yourself he’ll go bananas. So I thought that you could give me directions and I could do it.’
‘If you think that’s best.’ Despite his doubtful expression, Harold obligingly reached for a pad and pen. And Diane smiled.
Directions safely in her pocket, she finished her tea. ‘Better get on, I have things to do before I visit Gareth.’ She felt breathless with jubilation as he followed her down the hall, even if she’d had to fib – all right, lie – to Harold. For that she was sorry but would forgive herself.
He opened the oak front door. ‘I hope he appreciates you; some people might feel he didn’t quite deserve your support, all things considered.’
She stepped out over the high threshold and turned to kiss Harold’s cheek. ‘Actually, I can’t wait to talk to him.’
Chapter Ten
James tried to feel sympathy for his wife.
But so many times he’d witnessed this same sad scene – Tamzin attempting to talk something over with her mother, Valerie waving it away – and it pissed him off. Valerie didn’t dismiss Tamzin through being a bad person and it wasn’t completely because Valerie drank more than was good for her or all those around her. It was because Valerie couldn’t face up to Tamzin’s problems. Better, much, to cram her life with fun and toys.
Valerie was reasonably good at pretending to listen, he acknowledged, observing her features fixed in an expression of interest. But poor Tamz, no matter how much she practised, never quite got the hang of being satisfied with pretence.
‘Dad wants me to start my sessions with Lynsay, the therapist, again.’
Valerie smiled.
‘But you don’t think I need to, do you?’ Tamzin waited. ‘Mum?’
Valerie smiled more widely. ‘Yes, darling.’
‘Yes?’ Tamzin’s mouth turned down.
Valerie hedged. ‘What does your father think?’
Tamzin responded patiently, her expression reflecting hope now a dialogue had creaked into being. ‘That I should.’
‘Well ...’ Valerie paused and her eyes slid to the door to the room as if visualising herself slipping her body out of plaster and traction and sneaking out into her lovely fun world again. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you pop out to the coffee shop and I’ll have a little talk with him?’
Tamzin nodded, not quite managing a smile.
When she’d shut the door, James propped his chin on his fist and waited. He knew Valerie wasn’t going to talk about Tamzin.
‘James.’ Her voice was a murmur, her smile just for him.
He remained unmoved.
‘Darling.’ The smile widened. ‘Darling, now I’m getting better, would you mind bringing me in something to liven up this bloody endless squash? Just a half bottle will do, some voddy or something. Or maybe a bottle and I won’t have to ask you again for ages.’
‘You know not to ask me, Val. Waste of breath.’
‘Oh, James ...’ She pushed her fingers through her hair. It was bushy and dull, probably she’d been pushing her fingers through it all day. The roots were quite grey, he noticed with a shock, a line marking her last visit to the colourist. She stepped up from wheedle to exasperation. ‘Darling, don’t be sanctimonious. I’m in pain and I’m terminally bored; a little drink will take the edge off.’ Her eyes were still darkly bruised like a racoon’s, the rest of her face turning sepia with brown accents. She sighed, shifting slightly, wincing.
‘Sorry. No can do. Not unless you can get the doctor to prescribe it along with your painkillers.’ There was no point getting angry with her, he reminded himself. It wasn’t her – it was the drink.
But sometimes he was angry, unbelievably angry, with the woman that the drink had made her. Like over her mortifying performance at the Furness Durwent party last Christmas when she’d put her head down on the table, in front of everybody from Charlie, the CEO, to the lad in the post room, and gone to sleep. How could he forget the humiliation of hearing Charlie’s wife say under her breath, ‘Valerie’s had too much to drink – again.’
He must remember that it was the drink. Not her, the drink. He should make more effort to get her straightened out.
He tried to sound understanding. ‘I’m sorry, Valerie, I can’t bring you alcohol. Don’t you think –’ He decided to plunge in. ‘Don’t you think that it’s time you got help to stop drinking? For your health? For Tamzin? Being in here is bloody awful, I know, but it’s the perfect opportunity. You can’t smoke and you can’t drink. By the time you come home, you’ll be off both.’
Valerie snatched up her jug of water, slopping it over a get-well card with a picture of a Spitfire. ‘Oh, James, since when have I been an angel? Why expect me to start?’
Abandoning the idea that she might want to pull herself back from an abyss, he produced four envelopes from his inside pocket. ‘Post for you.’
Valerie riffled through them, halting, as he’d known she would, at the one with the familiar dark blue and white logo. Hand trembling slightly, she ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter. Then sagged, miserably. ‘The CAA have suspended my licence pending investigation.’
He managed a neutral tone. ‘I was afraid that that would be the outcome. They took a blood sample, didn’t they?’
She nodded, just barely. All except her bruises had whitened, even her lips.
‘You tested positive for alcohol?’
She shrugged, folding the letter over again and holding it tightly so that he couldn’t read it.
‘Was it a particularly bad day?’
She shrugged again, eyes lowered, a frown nipping a pinch of skin between her eyes.
Impatience reared up. ‘God’s sake, Valerie! You risked your life and Gareth’s. What if you’d had one of our daughters with you? My daughters? You have to conquer this –’
Valerie snapped her head up, eyes glittering. ‘Don’t preach. I hate you when you preach, James.’
He took a deep breath, fighting hot red fury. It was a good time to leave the room. ‘I’ll collect Tamzin from the coffee shop.’
He stepped out into the carpeted corridor, shoulders rigid. It was not Valerie. It was the drink. He must remember that, when she snapped. It was not her; it was the drink. When she called him darling as if she still meant it – it was not her. It was the drink.
His attention fell on a hurrying figure ahead of him in a green summer dress threaded with white ribbons and his heart leapt. ‘Diane!’
The hurrying figure froze.
‘Diane?’
Slowly, she turned. ‘James.’ Diane flicked a smile on and off and turned towards Gareth’s room.
A fresh wave of anger hit him. Diane wasn’t Valerie and she had no business trying insincere smiles on him. Did she really think he’d be so easily dismissed? Three quick steps and he was able to grab her hand. ‘We need to talk.’
At first it seemed she’d twist away but then she gave a tut and allowed herself to be towed past her husband’s room and through the two cream doors that led to the comparative privacy of the stairwell.
She dragged her hand free as the doors swung shut behind them. Her eyes were slightly red-rimmed – had she been crying? – and she was pale and unsmiling. He made to pull her up against him but her coldness hit him like a truck.
‘I’m sorry that I didn’t ring you.’ He prepared to explain what had happened, what had
been happening, since the night in the back of his Merc. The night that had sustained him ever since.
Her eyebrows rose a fraction, as if she hadn’t, until now, noticed whether he’d rung or not. ‘I expect you’ve been busy.’ She sounded remote and polite and she let her hand lie flaccid in his.
He tried to connect with her eyes, to make her understand. ‘Tamzin had a really bad week. She’s hardly slept and neither have I. I didn’t want to call you when I felt so –’
‘No explanation necessary.’ Diane removed her hand without letting him capture her gaze and turned back to the door, head high but hectic colour telling him that she might be pretending like hell to be cool but, inside, she was fighting mad.
Even as he shot out an arm to halt her, he cursed himself. All wrong, James. Wrong time (too late), wrong place (Gareth and Valerie in nearby rooms). Obviously she wouldn’t want to talk about their recent sexual congress here at the top of the stairs with nurses passing the other side of the doors. But he tried to inject into his voice the familiarity there had been between them. ‘About that night –’
She paused. Her voice was light. ‘It’s all right, I know the score.’ She ducked his arm and shoved open the door.
‘Diane! I should have –’
‘We shouldn’t have, more to the point. It was stupid and it was wrong.’
‘It wasn’t! It couldn’t be more right.’ Aghast, he watched her stalk off, her dress swinging against her bare legs.
He should have rung. Even if Tamzin had yanked him as taut as a violin string with her methods of expressing the deep melancholy that had sucked her into its scary embrace.
The ugly and frightening scores on her arm had been such a disappointment, after her recent good patch, that black moods had swum over him. He’d coped, he always did, but he hadn’t wanted to taint his next conversation with Diane with the misery that permeated him so thoroughly.
Sometimes he could only deal with things by compartmentalising. And so he’d tucked away the wonderful episode, to be brought out later and enjoyed.
With hindsight, one quick call to explain would’ve been a good plan ...
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