A Good Heart is Hard to Find

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘She does look a bit inbred. Just as well they never had any children, or they might have had to keep them in London Z—’ She broke off suddenly, staring down at Jamie’s letter.

  ‘Oh God! Did you see what Pa said about me? That bastard Gerald must have told him about—’ She stopped dead, frowning.

  ‘About what? Fallen off your pedestal, have you? Is this why you’ve deigned to grace my spare bedroom with your presence?’

  ‘Call that hellhole with a campbed a spare room?’ she said scathingly.

  ‘Please yourself, I didn’t invite you. And it didn’t seem to bother you on all those weekends you so kindly spent keeping me company while Max was away,’ I said pointedly.

  ‘What?’ Her jaw dropped and she went all Snow White with just a touch of Dopey. ‘How on earth did you know about that?’

  ‘Gerald came to see me.’

  ‘Gerald? And you told him I hadn’t been staying with you? No wonder he’s—’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t,’ I interrupted coldly. ‘Just because you’re a little sneak it doesn’t mean everyone else is! Anyway, I thought he’d probably got the wrong end of the stick. Now, spill the beans!’

  ‘I’m in love,’ she said dramatically.

  ‘Yeah, with yourself. I already knew that.’

  ‘No, with a man.’

  ‘Strange, I thought that’s what Gerald was?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m very fond of Gerald,’ she said earnestly. ‘But I married too young. I didn’t realize what love was until I met Clint Atwood when he was Painter in Residence at the university last year. He wants me to leave Gerald and go and live with him in Cornwall. He’s years younger than I am and so impulsive.’

  I stared at her, wondering if I was dreaming that my sister was having a relationship with someone called Clint.

  ‘That’s who Gerald suspected – and I told him he was mad!’ It seemed very untidy and unstructured for Jane. Her perfect image wouldn’t be just tarnished but blown to pieces; and had she realized just how much satisfaction her friends would gain from rocking her pedestal?

  ‘So Gerald’s suspicions have been confirmed?’

  ‘He searched my desk!’ she exclaimed, aggrievedly. ‘And when he found Clint’s letters he went ballistic. And he simply wouldn’t believe me when I explained that poor Clint had fallen hard for me without the least encouragement, and how I was just trying to let him down lightly. It was a little difficult, because Clint does get a bit carried away in his letters … but Gerald was absolutely horrible, and said the most wounding things to me.’

  ‘So you and Clint were having it off, then?’

  ‘Really, Cassandra!’

  ‘You were, weren’t you? All those weekends you were supposed to be here with me. And there was I thinking you were the nearest thing to a married virgin possible!’

  Jane looked huffy. ‘I just wanted for once to have a little fun. It’s all right for you, being a mistress with no ties, you can do what you want.’

  ‘Jane, I’ve been Max’s mistress for over twenty years and I felt just as tied as if I were married to him!’

  ‘Well, you don’t suppose he’s ever felt the same way, do you?’ she said waspishly. ‘He made a pass at me once.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Jane! You think everyone fancies you, and I know for a fact that Max likes curvy, tallish, dark-haired women, not skinny blonde runts. You’re just trying to distract me from your Clint. Clint indeed! Really, Jane.’

  ‘Your bit on the side’s called Jason, isn’t he? I don’t think you’ve got any call to be snide about my lover’s name!’

  ‘Jason isn’t my boyfriend, just a friend,’ I snapped. ‘And at least Jason is a good old name, even if it has been over-used recently, whereas Clint—’

  ‘I quite like it. And anyway, there’s something about him that makes me forget all that kind of thing or that he’s years younger than me, when I’m with him. My God, is he young! And strong! He can keep it up all—’

  ‘Spare me,’ I interrupted hastily. ‘I get the picture – you’ve fallen in love with good sex.’ And clearly she’d found what Orla had been looking for.

  ‘I never meant anything serious,’ she explained, ‘and I thought when he finished his year at the university I’d never see him again, only it didn’t turn out that way, and now he wants me to go and live with him at Yurt in Cornwall.’

  ‘Jane, Yurt isn’t a place.’

  ‘Yes it is – it’s in his letter.’

  I decided not to disillusion her. ‘So, are you going to go?’

  ‘I wasn’t, of course – I’ve got my job and my writing to consider. But if Gerald’s going to tell everybody … I mean, he must have told the parents, mustn’t he? He was being so unreasonable that I got the doctor to sign me off with stress and came here to sort things out. I thought perhaps I might go down and visit Clint and just see if it would work out, and you can tell everyone I’m resting, and not seeing visitors.’

  ‘Oh thanks. What will you do if Clint doesn’t work out?’

  ‘Come back and smooth things over. No one’s going to believe Gerald anyway, because even the parents will think he’s unhinged once I’ve explained things to them face to face.’

  I’d like to see her explain Clint to them if she abandoned Gerald in his favour, but somehow I didn’t think his cottage in Cornwall was quite what she was expecting.

  ‘Explaining face to face might be difficult from Cornwall,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but they won’t know I’ve been to Cornwall, they’ll think I’m here with you, stunned and traumatized by Gerald’s wildly unfair accusations. That’s what I wrote to them. I said I felt like an outcast, so I was going to live with one until Gerald came to his senses. Though of course, if Clint and I do decide to make a go of it, it isn’t going to matter, because I’ll make a new life down there with him.’

  ‘Jane, being disowned by Ma and Pa might hit you harder than you expect: I found it hard, and I was the least favourite child!’

  She wasn’t listening: ‘Wonder what his cottage in Yurt is like?’

  ‘Jane—’

  ‘Driven by my husband’s obsessive jealousy into the arms of Another,’ she murmured soulfully. ‘Looking for a refuge …’

  ‘That might work for anyone except the parents,’ I said critically. ‘Though it’s so Mills and Boon only you could sell it to your friends and acquaintances.’

  ‘I don’t know why you think I’m acting a part all the time!’ she snapped.

  ‘I grew up with you. And don’t think I’m going to tell lies about you being here when you’re off on a have-it-away day to Cornwall.’

  I began to open the rest of my mail, and from one big manila envelope pulled a bundle of papers and loose photographs.

  The top one was of Max: tall, curly-haired and becomingly greying, with his arm around me as we stood looking out at a vista. My hair was whipping out around my face as usual, but apart from the Gypsy Queen impression we looked like an old married couple.

  I remembered that day clearly, because later we had one of our arguments about trying for a baby before it was too late and that was a few years ago.

  The ticking of the biological clock goes manic after forty.

  There were lots of other photos, all taken without my knowledge … and a letter from Rosemary, to be forwarded with the package by her solicitor after her death.

  Rosemary for remembrance: she’d come back to haunt me.

  She wrote with a pen dipped into such pure vitriol that when I’d finished reading it my hands were shaking. Somehow, I’d always thought of her as a bloodless creature like Jane; though now even Jane had disconcertingly proved to have something other than milk in her veins.

  I’d believed Max when he told me Rosemary had never cared much for the physical side of marriage even before the accident, didn’t even mind if he had a mistress, as long as he didn’t ever leave her. But this letter was written by a woman eaten with a deep and passionate jealousy
, who had obsessively charted every detail of our liaison.

  No wonder she never asked Max questions: her detective spies kept her fully informed. I think she knew more about my relationship with Max than I did.

  She wrote to me to say that she knew Max was incapable of being faithful, but that he would never leave her, so sooner with me than a string of other women.

  She said quite a lot of other things about Max, bitter, horrible things that I hoped weren’t true, tortured outpourings of hatred and jealousy.

  I read it through twice, feeling horribly guilty and quite besmirched. Having compartmentalized and rationalized what I was doing over the years, I now felt like a complete tart again.

  A haunted, heartless tart, for this was a message from beyond the grave in no uncertain terms.

  Had Max also had a copy of this whole package? If so, no wonder he was worried about my going over there and getting the police thinking again!

  ‘What is it?’ Jane said eagerly, snatching the letter out of my numb fingers and reading it avidly. I’d have grabbed it back if my limbs had been functioning.

  ‘Rosemary – Max’s wife? Oh God, did she know all about you? And she never said? And … oh, that’s interesting. That explains a lot.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Didn’t you read that bit over the page, where she says: “Don’t think you can step into my shoes: you’ll always be just a mistress at best. I’m the one with all the money, and I’ve left it to Max on condition that he never marries you.” You know, I wondered how they could afford that palatial house, and the cars and all the rest of it, as well as all the help for Rosemary,’ Jane said. ‘I know he gets a good salary, but he has expensive tastes. So that’s why he never left her.’

  ‘He was fond of her,’ I protested weakly, since the thought had from time to time occurred to me, too. ‘And he couldn’t just abandon her when she was an invalid. With her injuries, we never imagined … I mean, Max said she would—’

  ‘Die? But you can go on for ever with a broken back as long as you can afford the right health care,’ Jane said blithely. ‘I could have told you that.’

  ‘I found it out myself later, thanks. She says … she says when she found out she couldn’t have children, she made him swear that he wouldn’t have them with anyone else until after she was gone! But he didn’t tell me that. He always said he’d rather have my undivided attention, and also that I’d never cope alone with a baby, so he’d rather wait until we could marry.’

  ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? You’d never be able to marry, so that took care of that.’

  ‘I feel so dreadfully sorry for Rosemary. But Max can’t have known how she felt, Jane, and surely the money alone wouldn’t have kept him tied to her?’

  ‘Clearly, when she found out he’d fallen for you she wasn’t happy about it,’ Jane said. ‘But she wanted to keep him, and he wanted to keep her money and you. Though if it wasn’t you, it would probably have been a string of other gullible students, so she should have been grateful.’

  ‘He’s not like that,’ I said sharply. ‘He isn’t calculating and mercenary.’

  ‘Then after a decent interval he will marry you anyway, and to hell with the money – but I wouldn’t hold your breath if I was you.’

  ‘Of course Max will marry me,’ I said, although doubts were seeping in even while I said the words. Things had not been as they seemed … and even how they seemed had been difficult enough to square with my uneasy conscience.

  And Max did like the material things in life.

  Suddenly I was starting to see a Max I didn’t know emerging – a manipulative, selfish stranger.

  Had he really thought Rosemary accepted the situation? Or had he coerced her into it at the start, like she said, with threats of leaving her? Had he been sometimes unfaithful to both of us, or was that just spite talking?

  Which was the real Max? And did I still want to marry him? Did I still, come to that, want to have any sort of relationship with him?

  I wouldn’t know until I saw him again, and then either the world would swing back to its familiar orbit, and he would tell me that he loved me and at last we could be together for ever … or it wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t.

  And maybe either way I wouldn’t?

  Later, while Jane was off soaking her carcass in coffret-scented water, I phoned Orla and told her all about Rosemary’s message from Beyond.

  She registered all the right, reassuring emotions, which is what friends are for, after all: a true friend lines up firmly on your side, whether you are right or wrong.

  Then, lowering my voice, I told her about Jane and Clint.

  ‘Lucky cow! What’s she got that I haven’t?’ she demanded enviously.

  ‘A husband, for one thing,’ I pointed out. ‘And she expects me to cover for her while she decides which one to choose!’

  ‘If she’d handled it better she might have had her cake and eaten it. What’s her husband like? Is he tasty?’

  ‘Gerald? Small, chubby, and pleasant.’

  ‘Not quite what I’m looking for then, even on the used market,’ she said, summarily dismissing him. ‘By the way, I looked Dante Chase up on the internet, and I’ve printed out some articles for you about the hostage thing. It was Colombia – they seem to kidnap each other at random there, all the time. He was freed in a military raid, but another hostage was accidentally shot.’

  ‘That was a friend of his, so it hit him pretty hard when he was killed,’ I told her, trying to pretend I wasn’t absolutely dying to see the printouts.

  I knew I hadn’t really fooled her, though.

  10

  Spawn

  ‘Good morning! This is Edge Radio, bringing you news and views from both sides of the Welsh border. For those of you who have just joined us, today’s studio guest is writer of horror novels, Cass Leigh.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Nice to meet you – can I call you Cass?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘I have to admit that I’m a big fan of yours.’

  ‘You don’t have to admit it, you can keep it secret if you want to.’

  ‘Ha, ha! Now, the critics haven’t always been kind about your work, have they?’

  ‘No, but that isn’t unusual.’

  ‘Aren’t they a little more damning than the usual reviews, though?’

  ‘Any publicity is good publicity. But it’s my faithful readers’ opinions that matter: if they’re buying the books, I must be doing something right.’

  ‘Yes. Your work isn’t for the faint-hearted, is it?’

  ‘I don’t pull my punches, certainly.’

  ‘Could you tell us something about your next book?’

  ‘Yes, it’s called Shock to the Spirits and it’s coming out in April. It’s a story about murder, and revenge going even beyond the grave.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure we all look forward to that one. And are you working on another book at the moment?’

  ‘No, I’m sitting in a stuffy studio answering a lot of inane questions. But when I get home I will be working on my next novel, Lover, Come Back to Me.’

  ‘And what is that about?’

  ‘Resurrected love.’

  ‘Er … yes. Now, a little birdie told me something just before I came on air that I find very hard to credit: that you were actually the twin sister of the celebrated poet Jane Leigh!’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘I take it my information is wrong then? We had the pleasure of Miss Leigh’s company on the programme last year, and you certainly don’t look anything like her!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You mean, no it isn’t true that you’re her twin sister?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true, but no, I don’t look anything like her.’

  ‘Oh … then perhaps we could explore the relationship between two such different writers originating from the same family?’

  ‘Perhaps we couldn’t.’

  ‘Right. Right … er, now l
isteners, I think it’s time for a record request. Mrs Popplewell of Shrewsbury would like to dedicate an Elvis track to her dear husband, Bruce. So here is the King himself with “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” …’

  My agent phoned to tell me that Nocturnally Yours had slithered, crept, wormed, and ectoplasmically materialized its way into the top-one-hundred fiction chart, which is sort of like Top of the Pops for books.

  Clearly, this was what happened when reviewers couldn’t resist looking at some of the non-literary dross that landed on their desks, and then they just had to go into print to say how awful the experience of reading it was, so thousands of other people decided they wanted to share that experience too.

  Isn’t that weird?

  If Shock to the Spirits did well when it came out in April (publication day having been brought forward due to all the publicity), hopefully my agent would be able to negotiate me a much better deal for Lover, Come Back to Me. Then maybe I could take my nose off the treadmill occasionally, and not do humiliating things like Crypt-ograms any more.

  I told Jane the news simply because she was there, a captive audience, but she was very sour grapes. Her only attempt at novel writing, bloodless as a vampire victim, had so far failed to find a publisher. Mind you, now she’d had a taste of passion she could try again.

  By only lunchtime I was heartily sick of Jane.

  This was partly because Jane got me like that, and partly because I was not used to sharing my house with anyone. (Not counting the visitations of Max, and I was even out of the habit of those, now.)

  Made me wonder if the status could ever be quo’d again.

  ‘There’s nothing in the fridge or freezer except pizza, white bread, fruit and peanut butter,’ Jane whined.

  ‘That’s my staple diet. Toast and peanut butter for breakfast, pizza for lunch, fruit any time.’

  ‘That sounds very unhealthy. And boring.’

  ‘It can’t be too unhealthy, because I feel fine. Glossy hair, shiny nose.’

  ‘Pale as death. No colour in your cheeks.’

  ‘You know very well that I’ve always been pale.’