Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  “It often helps, to hear other people describing their own torments,” the psychiatrist said to Bob.

  Bob told him he didn’t think anyone could have had torments more dreadful and complex than Janet’s; the psychiatrist patted him on the arm.

  “There you would be very wrong,” he said.

  “Has she told you anything yet?”

  “A little. I don’t have time to discuss it with you now, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, she’s a far from hopeless case. Believe me. Try not to worry too much.”

  They didn’t understand, Janet thought, lying back on her pillows after a particularly exhausting attack of rage on her therapist—she probably shouldn’t have attacked her physically like that, but she had made Janet so angry, with her soothing rubbish—they absolutely didn’t understand.

  Nobody could. They all thought it was because of Martha Hartley, her breakdown. It wasn’t at all. Of course she was sorry about Martha, and she did feel some degree of guilt—but not to the extent they all thought. Martha’s secret would have come out, it was too big, too dangerous; she could not have hoped that the concentric circles she had built so carefully about her life to protect her would remain so; sooner or later another event would have exploded into them, pushing them together, forcing a revelation. And really, what happy ending could there possibly have been for her, once the revelation was out? Her career, her personal life, certainly her political life would have been fatally damaged. It could be argued Janet had done her a favour.

  No, the reason she had wanted to end her own life was because everything she had ever worked for, hoped for—and taken such risks for—was now gone from her forever. Irretrievably gone. She could never have it back. And if the Centre Forward Party survived, Jack would be its leader, probably with Chad as his chief henchman.

  And if it did not, how could she go back to the Tories now? The best she could have hoped for with the new party was the post of deputy leader. Which would have almost satisfied her. She would have even considered that winning: a uniquely high-profile position. Given that she was a woman. She had got rid of Martha. There was just Mary Norton to deal with now. And that should be quite easy; a few hints about her lesbian friends, and the electorate would start wavering. Then she’d find something else. Well, maybe all was not lost. Maybe. She could still come back. She could. She would…

  “Mrs. Frean is asleep,” her nurse reported to the psychiatrist ten minutes later. “The sedative has worked very well. I’ll let you know if there’s any change.”

  Smith Cosmetics had thanked Fergus for his e-mail and said that they were now looking at other young girls. They said in the unlikely event of their not finding anyone else, they might contact him again, should Kate change her mind. They said there might be some leeway on the financial front, but they couldn’t possibly give any undertakings on the publicity side of the contract, which he’d told them was what worried Kate most.

  “As you must know, the press make their own decisions about what and what not to print.”

  It was a very friendly and gracious response, Fergus thought, given all the time and money they had wasted on Kate, a testimony to how much they had wanted her. Still wanted her. It comforted him, just a bit. Things might change.

  Fergus was the eternal optimist.

  Clio spent Sunday with Jocasta; she found her still in an odd mood, on an emotional seesaw, overexcited one minute, tearful the next. She said she was just trying to work out what to do, that she might go back to work, might do something quite different—when pressed on what, she said vaguely that she’d thought of property, or maybe interior design. Clio had said what a good idea; there was no point arguing with her. She was beyond reason.

  She had arrived still hoping she might help to effect a reconciliation, because she did still think that was what Jocasta wanted. She tried reason, humour, appeals to common sense. But it appeared to be a complete impasse. There had been another very ugly row the day before; Gideon had demanded that she meet him to try to have a reasonable discussion about what they were going to do next, and Jocasta had said it wasn’t possible to have a reasonable discussion with a person so unreasonable that he was actually unstable. Each confrontation was infinitely worse than the last, making that one seem comparatively pleasant, almost an exchange of views.

  Right in the middle of telling Clio this, Jocasta burst into tears, and when Clio asked her if there was anything particularly the matter, said there was, but she couldn’t talk about it. She was still drinking and smoking far too much, seemed unable to rest or settle to anything for more than five minutes. All she wanted to do was talk interminably about Gideon and his shortcomings. In the end, Clio gave up and said she must go home.

  “Oh, please don’t go,” said Jocasta. She had been talking to someone on the phone, sounding increasingly hostile. “That was Josh. He’s threatening to come round; he thinks he can make me see sense, as he puts it. Such a wonderful arbiter of relationships, such an example to us all.”

  Clio sighed. “Well I’ve failed. Maybe he will be able to help.”

  “Clio, he won’t. And it’s not a question of you failing. It’s the marriage that’s failed.”

  “Jocasta, I must go. It’s Monday tomorrow and I’ve got an early surgery. And I do want to see Fergus this evening before I go home.”

  “You’re so lucky to have such a normal, stable relationship,” said Jocasta wistfully. “Oh, Clio, don’t go! You can’t leave me with Josh; he’s going to upset me. Stay and go down in the morning, you always say how easy it is. Please, Clio, please.”

  Clio hesitated.

  “Please! You can’t fail me, and you’re such an angel, such a good friend.”

  Clio wondered what on earth Jocasta would say or do if she knew the real reason for her reluctance to see Josh.

  She stayed for his visit, of course. She could never quite work out how Jocasta managed to persuade people to do what she wanted, how she used that intense will of hers, a mixture of charm and absolute determination: she had a hunch that Gideon might have been subjected to the full force of it. Would he really have wanted to get married, after being with Jocasta—what—three weeks, if he hadn’t? The fact was, she was absolutely irresistible.

  And here Clio was, in Jocasta’s sitting room, trying not to look too often at the photographs on the table of Jocasta and Josh as children, while Jocasta sat ordering a takeaway from the local Thai restaurant.

  “I haven’t eaten all weekend and suddenly I’m hungry. Hope it doesn’t make me ill, like the curry did.”

  Josh arrived, finally, almost an hour late, so that the Thai was half cold; it wasn’t even very nice. Clio sat picking at it miserably, wishing Josh would stop telling Jocasta that she was being immature and unrealistic, wondering what the point of her being there could possibly be.

  “The thing is, Jocasta,” he was saying now, “marriage is almost impossible, even when you’re trying really hard. If you’re not—well, forget it.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said Jocasta. “Or was trying to do, I mean.”

  “But I thought you loved Gideon.”

  “I do. Anyway, thought I did. But I can’t live with him; he’s a monster, leading a monstrous life. I should have seen that long ago.”

  “But he’s such a nice man,” said Josh. “He’s kind and generous and he obviously adores you—that’s what you have to concentrate on, Jocasta, Beatrice always says that.”

  “What does Beatrice always say?” said Jocasta, her tone deceptively mild.

  “Well, that in a marriage you tend to just take the good things for granted, and only notice the bad. That’s what finishes most of them off.”

  “What nearly finished yours off,” said Jocasta, “was your inability to be faithful to Beatrice. And what saved it was her incredible facility for forgiveness. Don’t ever try and get a job as a therapist, will you?”

  “Oh, piss off!” said Josh. He had gone rather red. “I’m only trying to
help, I can’t bear to see you two making each other so unhappy.”

  “I know and I’m very grateful,” said Jocasta, suddenly remorseful, “but honestly, you’re not doing any good at all. Let’s talk about something else. What’s in that bag?”

  “Oh—I found my pictures of Thailand. They were in the bottom of a cupboard, with my cameras. I thought they might amuse you.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Jocasta. “Let’s have a look. Come on, Clio, let’s clear the table.”

  He pulled them out: batch after batch, in no kind of order, shots of the steaming jungle up in the north, shots of elephants, of monkeys, of the hill villages, the sweet, smiling children; of the temples and palaces and floating markets and canals in Bangkok—“God, I can smell it just looking at them,” said Clio—of the chaos of the Khao San Road, the lady-boys in Pat Pong—“They obviously fancied you, just look at them vamping it up,” said Jocasta. The tuk tuks, the longtail boats on the great river: and then the islands, endless shots of sweeping white beaches backed by green hills, of waterfalls, of lakes, of palms tipping gracefully into water, of sheer cliffs, of brilliant flowers, of shrines, of Big Buddha—“Dear old Big Buddha,” said Clio, “I still think about him sometimes, sitting there, those eyes of his following you everywhere. Golly, this is a trip down memory lane, I feel eighteen again.”

  There were shots with people in them, some occasions they remembered—“Look, there we are at the airport,” said Josh, “all of us, that nice old chap took it, remember?”—frozen in time, smiling, tidy-looking, everything ahead of them.

  And then there was island life, hundreds of people, most of whom they couldn’t remember, smiling, always smiling, smoking, drinking, waving, hugging each other; lying on the beaches, sitting in the boats, swinging on ropes over lakes, swimming under waterfalls, elephant riding, snorkelling. There were some frenetically blurred shots of the full-moon parties, people dancing, the beach covered in candles, and, “Here, look at this, remember the reggae boat?” said Josh.

  “Yes thanks,” said Jocasta, “that was how I got dengue fever, from a mosquito on one of those lakes, too stoned to feel it.”

  “What on earth are you doing there?” asked Clio, intrigued, looking at a shot of Josh lying on a rug, inhaling from a large pipe.

  “Taking opium.”

  “Josh! You never told me. What on earth was that like?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” he said, laughing. “I think it was talcum powder.”

  “God, it was all fun,” said Jocasta, “such, such fun. Hey, Josh, what’s this, posh hotel, or what? And who’s this? Martha? By that amazing pool? And on that terrace? Josh, you never told me about this, whatever happened?”

  “God—didn’t know that was there,” said Josh, flushing a dark red, and went on rather hurriedly to explain that he’d bumped into Martha leaving Koh Tao, there’d been a fire on the boat and they’d all nearly drowned. “No, it’s true, I’m not making it up.”

  They’d both felt pretty rough, and he’d had plenty of money on him, so they’d gone to a hotel near Chaweng, stayed there one night.

  “Mmm,” said Jocasta, her eyes dancing, “you dark horse. You pair of dark horses. You never said. When was that? You obviously had lots of fun. Is that why you wanted to come to the funeral?”

  “No. Well, sort of. I mean—yes, it was, actually.”

  “I think that’s very sweet.”

  Clio had been literally praying for some bell, however faint, to ring in Jocasta’s head. It clearly wasn’t going to. She had to do it. And it was now or never. She took a deep breath, and said, “Josh, when exactly was that? Can you remember?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. It—could.”

  “Clio,” said Jocasta, “what are you on about?”

  “I, well, I just thought of something. I was just thinking about—about Martha. That’s all.”

  “What about her? Except that she was obviously a darker horse than we thought. I mean—with Josh! And never telling us. And—Oh my God! You don’t think—I mean—Josh—oh my God!”

  “What?” he said irritably. “What’s the matter with you both?”

  “Just tell us when you and Martha had your little…fling.” Jocasta was speaking very slowly. “It’s terribly important.”

  “I’ll try. But I don’t see—”

  “Josh! Think!”

  “Well, it was before Christmas, definitely, because I was in Malaysia then. Sometime around October, November, I suppose. You know how meaningless time is out there, weeks feel like months and vice versa.”

  “Josh, you’ve got to do better than that.”

  “I’m trying, for God’s sake. Right—well, actually, it must have been October, yes, it definitely was, because I was on my way up to Bangkok, to see my girlfriend, well, not exactly my girlfriend, but we had been pretty involved, and she was in hospital, she’d had a scooter crash on Koh Phangan, and I had my birthday up there, my eighteenth, I do remember that.”

  “And on the way you took Martha to a hotel. Josh, Josh, you are—oh God, you’re so awful!” said Jocasta.

  “Yes, I get the message. I thought you wanted to know when I was there with Martha.”

  Jocasta looked at Clio. “So that’s October the twenty-sixth, his birthday. And Kate was born in the middle of August, so it would have had to have been November, wouldn’t it?” she said.

  “Sorry,” Clio said. “Kate was nearly three weeks late. Martha told me. That was the whole point, why she was here when she had her. So the end of October would be just right.”

  “What are you two going on about?” asked Josh. “You really have lost me.”

  “Josh,” said Jocasta, filling his glass to the brim, “drink that. You’re going to need it. You really are…”

  Chapter 42

  Josh had hardly slept. He felt he would never sleep again. He had spent the night tossing fretfully on the spare room bed—he told Beatrice he had indigestion, that he’d keep her awake.

  It seemed to him it was impossible to do the right thing. He either had to tell Beatrice, who would be horrified, not to mention terribly hurt, probably finally throw him out—and what on earth would the little girls make of it, suddenly having a big sister? Or he could just not say a word and live with this awful, oppressing piece of knowledge for the rest of his life.

  It wasn’t as if she was just any old girl either: she was famous. Well, quite famous. What was it Jocasta was always saying? Once something was in the cuttings, it was there forever. It would be like a time bomb, waiting to go off. He supposed this must have been exactly what Martha had felt, and wondered how on earth she had stood it. God, she must have been brave. Brave and tough.

  And then there was Kate. Kate his daughter. The vision of her kept rising before him, all night. The girl at the funeral, so lovely, so funny, so clearly clever, discussing her future with him, was his daughter. He had a grown-up daughter. It just didn’t seem remotely possible. He thought of Charlie and Harry, still babies really, clambering all over him, pulling his hair, tweaking his nose, giggling, making faces at him, splashing him with their bathwater, lying on his lap, sucking their thumbs while he read them stories. They were the sort of daughters he wanted. That he could cope with. Not a dangerously attractive girl of sixteen. He had fancied her himself, he thought, and his blood curdled.

  And how could you start being a father to someone you’d met for the first time at that age? She was grown up, processed, done. He’d had no part of her, she was nothing to do with him; another man had done all that, read to her, bathed her, played with her, chosen her schools, laid down the rules. There was nothing of him in her.

  But there was, of course, he thought, sitting up suddenly, there was half of him in her. One night with someone, one pretty good night actually, as far as he could recall, at the age of seventeen, well, nearly eighteen, that’s all he’d been, one and a bit years older than Kate herself, carefree, happy,
just enjoying life, having fun and—there you were, a father. It was a bad system, that, very dangerous. He had no idea how it could have happened; he’d always been jolly careful, always used french letters, but everyone knew they could fail, spring a leak. That was obviously what had happened.

  Why hadn’t the bloody girl had a termination? They weren’t hard to come by, so why on earth had she hung on to it? Why had she never tried to find him, for that matter? He’d have helped her out, helped her decide what to do, given her money. At this moment, Josh suddenly had a clear vision of himself at seventeen, utterly selfish, totally immature, and thought rather sadly that he could actually see very clearly why she hadn’t sought him out. He wouldn’t have seemed to her a very good bet.

  And anyway, she might not have been sure it was him. She might have been promiscuous, sleeping with every guy she came across. She’d certainly been pretty keen, hadn’t taken much persuasion. But clearly it had been him. Kate was his. She looked exactly like him. Or to be precise, like Jocasta.

  And what would she want? This new, problematic daughter? Jocasta and Clio had both told him she was very hurt by what had happened to her, that she had been searching for her mother all her life, ever more confused and upset.

  “She just wants to know where she belongs,” Clio had said, “where she came from, if you like. You can see how dreadfully confusing for her it all is. She loves her parents dearly but they can’t supply the answers. And Martha’s death has been yet another blow; she didn’t provide any, either.”

  Whatever he decided, they all agreed, Beatrice must be told. “She’s so bloody marvellous, she’ll probably be magnificent,” said Josh gloomily, “offer Kate a home and—”

  “Kate doesn’t need a home,” Jocasta said sharply. “She’s very happy where she is. She doesn’t lack for love or attention and her adoptive parents are great. She just wants to know how and why it all happened. She’s got the dearest boyfriend,” she added.