‘That would be a huge relief, Ginny. Thank you!’
‘Pity you didn’t bid for the gym membership or the year’s worth of ballet lessons,’ she added, grinning.
‘Thanks!’
‘You’ll have to take up some sort of physical activity without Simon here to keep you active.’
I congratulated her once more on another great event and gave her a farewell kiss.
When we got home, I couldn’t wait to email Stephanie. Understanding my excitement, Simon promised to make me a coffee while I got out the laptop.
Right at the top of my inbox there was already an email from my sister:
From: Stephanie Scanlan
To: [email protected]
Subject: JJ
Hi sis
Thank God I’m back in London after that heinous trip to Bonn. I never got much further than the hotel because they kept me busy all the time with interviews. I’d been hoping to see Beethoven’s birthplace or whatever, but a chance would have been a fine thing. Not a moment to myself! JJ was here in London waiting for me. He’s invited me to move out of my hotel and come and stay in his apartment for a bit. It’s like a small palace, right in the heart of Mayfair. I’ve always wanted a W1 address! And I’ve put off coming back home for a couple more weeks — Marcus understands that I need a bit of a break after working so hard, though of course I haven’t told him I’ve left the hotel. So we’re holed up here in his big apartment — just the butler and the cook and us. It’s all so clandestine, it’s quite exciting. You wouldn’t believe it — the paparazzi sometimes camp outside the front entrance. If I go out for a coffee or to shop for clothes or handbags, I have to go out the back entrance all by myself and meet up with JJ later. We’re getting quite clever at outwitting them. I mean, there’s no way I want to be splashed all over News of the World. I’m being extra careful, don’t you worry! I can just hear you telling me to stop being silly and come back home right away. But I’m not going to. I’m having fun for the first time in ages and I’m going to live in the lap of luxury for just a little bit longer. So if Marcus asks you any questions about what I’m up to, you don’t know. Okay?
Okay!
JJ really is a sweetie. He buys me presents all the time and nothing is too much trouble. The JJ stands for Jumping Jack, because he used to leap about all over the stage. But since he’s got older and semi-retired, he’s just called JJ. You’d really like him …
Well, that did it. Stephanie had this amazing knack of blathering on about the most truly awful people and making them sound like saints, while ignoring the reality of the situation. She seemed to have absolutely no idea that what she was doing with Jade Flash was completely unacceptable. I pressed the reply button and let her have it. Then I deleted all my lecturing and started again:
From: Penny Rushmore
To: Stephanie Scanlan
Subject: RE: JJ
I’m going to ignore the contents of your last email, sis, because you know you’re in La-La Land. You need to fly out of it right away and come back home.
I have some news of my own. I’m going to Turkey in a month’s time to join Simon on his marine biology expedition! I’ve started counting the sleeps already, I’m so excited, even though he’s only just told me tonight. I haven’t even told the kids or work yet, and how on earth I’m going to get away I don’t know. But for now, I’m just thinking of that big blue Mediterranean with me floating in it, letting it wash over me, like you and I used to do on our summer holidays at the bay.
We’re meeting up in a place called Marmaris and then we’ll go on his research boat for a few days. Imagine it — I’ll be saying ‘Meet me in Marmaris’. It sounds so romantic. I’ll be in the travel agent’s first thing Monday to book my tickets — just as soon as I’ve cleared it with Ginny and Nicky. I’m sure they’ll say yes. Then I’ll have to find a way to pay for it all!
Love, P
Simon arrived with the coffee just as I sent it off.
‘Let Stephanie stick that in her craw, eh?’ he teased. ‘That should make her green with envy.’
‘How did you guess?’ I admitted. ‘She’s always been the one to get the big trips overseas, staying in posh hotels …’
‘Well, I’m afraid the research boat won’t be a like a posh hotel. But we can probably find somewhere a bit more upmarket to stay in Marmaris.’
‘What will it be like, the research boat?’
‘Probably like the ferry, only a lot smaller. The cabins aren’t like luxury-liner cabins, they’re fairly utilitarian. But you’ll be perfectly comfortable.’
‘And what’s Marmaris like? I have to confess I don’t even know where it is.’
‘Here, I’ll show you if you let me onto the keyboard for a minute.’
He pressed a few keys and brought up Google Earth, honing in on coastal Turkey and then Marmaris. It seemed quite a big port town, with an enormous marina surrounded by open-air cafés and bars.
‘It looks beautiful,’ I said, hugging him with excitement. ‘I wish we could go tomorrow.’
‘It’ll keep. The time will just fly by with all the organising you’ve got to do, you’ll see.’
Chapter 13
Sadly, the time didn’t fly at all. It dragged. There was so much to be dealt with, and it seemed as soon as I’d put out one fire, another would flare up in its place.
Adam, of course, said he wanted to come to Turkey with me, as soon as I told him the next morning.
‘That’s grand, lassie. You deserve a bit of a break,’ Dad said. ‘But Adam, I’m afraid you’ve a lot of growing up to do before you can go to a place like that.’
Adam wasn’t impressed, but he readily admitted he hadn’t saved enough from his weekend stints working at McDonald’s to cover the airfare, even if there had been a place on the research boat for him — and if I had wanted him to crash my romantic holiday.
Charlotte also clamoured to come along, but was much less insistent than her brother. Apparently I’d phoned her in the middle of some intense discussion with Jacinta about the Pregnancy Diet. It seemed to have struck a snag.
‘I hate haricot beans, they’re disgusting,’ she said, after giving up on persuading me to shout her a Mediterranean holiday.
‘Legumes are very good for you,’ I said, feigning a prissiness I didn’t feel to cover my incipient mirth.
‘So far we’ve tried haricot beans, kidney beans, pinto beans and white beans and I can’t stand any of them. They all taste like capsules of pressed cardboard. I’ve given up. But Jacinta eats them night and day. She says they help her morning sickness.’
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but they … you know …’
‘What do you mean, “you know”?’
‘Well, they … they give her a bit of gas sometimes.’
‘Oh, do they?’ I sounded all innocence but inside I was dying to cackle with glee. You’re a nasty woman, Penny Rushmore, I chided myself. But oh, it felt good!
‘Yes, and it’s a bit, like, um … smelly.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity,’ I said, sounding all heart while inwardly gloating.
‘I wish she’d give it up.’
‘But it’s better than the poor woman suffering from morning sickness all the time.’ I reckoned the fact that Charlotte had mentioned Jacinta’s bodily functions at all must be an indication that things were pretty bad.
‘Yeah, but Dad’s getting quite cranky. He says he can’t stand the constant pong.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity,’ I repeated, finding it even harder to stop myself laughing.
Less than ten minutes after I’d ended the call, Steve phoned.
‘I hear you’re jetting off to Turkey,’ he said, after only perfunctory pleasantries.
‘Yes, I’m going to meet Simon over there in a month’s time.’
‘So you’ll be expecting Charlotte to stay here a while longer,’ he said with a touch of irritation.
‘That’s up to her,
I guess. She’s old enough to look after herself now. If she wants to come back here, she’s welcome. And if she wants to stay with you, I dare say she can.’
‘I dare say,’ he sighed. ‘And what about Adam? Is he coming here too?’
‘No need for that,’ I said breezily. ‘He and Dad make excellent company for each other. And Tigger,’ I added, before he could try to throw in a guilt trip about the dog as well.
‘That dog is a law unto himself. He’ll go feral while you’re away. Adam completely ignores him. You’ll be lucky if he remembers to feed him.’
‘You’d be surprised how resourceful Adam can be when he’s left alone. Besides, Dad will be there to keep an eye on them both.’
‘Huh,’ Steve said disparagingly.
I didn’t reply. He was obviously in a total grump about the whole thing.
‘I’m surprised you can afford to go,’ he added. ‘Obviously I gave away far too much in our settlement.’
‘Really, Steve, you’re going too far. It’s none of your business how I can afford it. And, since you brought it up, you’re the one that made a killing on our settlement.’
‘Now look here, Penny, that’s a lie. You took me to the cleaners. There you are sitting pretty in our family home while I pay child support.’
‘Yes.’ I gritted my teeth and choked back a tart retort about having another child to support soon. I vowed to myself to say no more or we’d be hammer and tongs for the rest of the evening. Steve had indeed allowed me to stay in the house as long as Adam was still at school, but as soon as that came to an end, the house would have to be sold. And Steve had made sure he’d kept all his toys: expensive new exercise machines, a hundred-or-so-speed bike, the old Triumph motorbike and the classic Triumph Stag — which were both worth quite a bit when they were roadworthy, which wasn’t often.
Simon had headed home before breakfast to take his son Zak to football and returned after lunch to take me over to his lab to show me his tuna project. It was actually fascinating — for a short time, anyway, although a lot of it was gobbledegook to me. Simon showed me what he’d achieved so far. Apparently the whole idea was to track migratory tuna off the coast, since there were fears the species were being depleted by overfishing. In response to my more intensive questioning, Simon became quite animated as he told me where various schools had been discovered, off the Three Kings Islands miles up north.
Then he explained that he’d been in touch with scientists from Istanbul University in Turkey who’d been conducting similar research for their government’s fisheries department, along with research into tuna spawning grounds in the Bay of Antalya, on the south coast of Turkey, and the Bay of Mersin, between Turkey and Cyprus, which was why he was going there. Now I had the motivation of going there too, I started to take it all in.
On Saturday afternoon, he took me to the university’s lab up the coast, where he showed me some of his project work. An afternoon thunderstorm drenched us both in the time it took to run from the lab back to Simon’s old Range Rover. We laughed at ourselves, my hair sticking to my head, Simon’s T-shirt clinging to his chest, and we hugged happily in the pouring rain.
He dropped me home, promising to come round later with Thai takeaways to watch a DVD. With Adam gone to work at McDonald’s and Dad tactfully watching TV in his room, we spent a romantic evening together on the couch — our last before his imminent departure.
‘The next time we’re together like this, we’ll be in Marmaris,’ I said, snuggling up to him as the movie credits started rolling.
‘Except the weather will be a lot warmer,’ he said, indicating the window, which was being pelted by rain. ‘I gather it doesn’t rain a lot over there at this time of year.’
‘Yay! I’ll look forward to that.’
• • •
There was only one more family member to tell about my plans — apart from my oldest son Josh, who was living in the UK, eating his way around building sites — and that was Mum. I had a feeling she wouldn’t care less, and she didn’t. I chatted away about my plans but she was more interested in Mr Jamieson, who was sitting beside her, patting her hand and chatting to her as if he had been her lifelong partner. After a while, she started singing a tuneless song, repeated over and over while the persistent Mr Jamieson kept patting her hand.
I looked at Dad. He’d come as far as the day room with me, but had refused to venture past the first line of chairs when he saw Mum sitting next to his bête noir. He was staring, unblinking; he didn’t acknowledge me.
‘Okay, Mum,’ I said, standing up.
‘La la la la la,’ she continued.
‘I’ll be off now. Bye.’ I gave her a peck on the cheek. Mr Jamieson went an even deeper shade of puce and looked as if he might explode. I pulled a face at him and shrugged. He could go jump as far as I was concerned.
‘Oh there you are, Ms Rushmore,’ a nurse said, approaching me from the doorway. ‘I wanted to catch you before you left. Do you mind if we have a word?’
‘No, what is it?’ I said, wondering what further awfulness Mum had been up to.
‘Well, I’m afraid something rather unpleasant has happened.’
‘Not Mum’s feeding difficulties?’ I said. Mum had been throwing her food around of late, they’d told me, putting her food in her water glass and tipping the lot on the floor.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Can you come with me to the office? I know Mrs Small would like to have a word.’
‘Oh. She’s here today? I didn’t think she worked Sundays?’
‘She often pops in for the afternoon because this is when we get most of our visitors.’
‘Oh. Should Dad come too?’
‘I think she’d like to talk to you first.’
‘Oh.’ I went up to Dad. ‘Mrs Small wants to have a word to me, Dad. Do you want to stay here or come with me?’
‘Pah,’ Dad said. ‘I’m not staying here to watch this!’ He followed.
The nurse showed me into Mrs Small’s office where the buxom, fearsome matron, or whatever they’re called these days, invited me in. Noticing Dad hovering behind, she asked if he’d like to come in too.
‘Aye, I would indeed,’ he said warily, standing behind one of the visitor’s chairs.
‘Please have a seat, Mr Rushmore.’
‘I’ll stand, thank you, Mrs Small.’
I sat in the chair in front of Dad, feeling his wiry strength pushing down fiercely on its back. Mrs Small closed the door behind us and pulled her chair to the side of her desk, facing us.
‘Well, Ms Rushmore, Mr Rushmore,’ she coughed nervously. Cripes, I thought, if Mrs Small is uneasy, it must be bad. She composed herself and continued. ‘I’m afraid Mr Jamieson and your mother were found together in the linen cupboard the day before yesterday,’ she said at last.
‘What?’ Dad cried, pushing even harder on the chair so it trembled with his anger. ‘That man! I knew he was the devil incarnate.’
‘They must have gone in there some time after lunch. We had quite a job to prise the door open. Mr Jamieson appeared to have wedged it shut with something. When we did manage to get it open, the two of them were in a tight clinch and refused to be parted.’
‘That’s the final straw!’ Dad cried. ‘I’m taking her out of here.’
‘Please, Mr Rushmore, it’s not that simple. You see, your wife is perfectly complicit in this. In fact, the nurse suspects she might have initiated it.’
‘I don’t believe it. It’s that Jamieson fellow. I’ve been watching him. He’s been conditioning her to accept his advances.’
‘Would it be better for Mum to go somewhere else, away from Mr Jamieson?’ I asked.
Mrs Small managed to persuade us otherwise. She pointed out that there was nowhere else on this side of town that had a secure unit suitable for Mum, and that very soon she would need to go into the secure hospital anyway. Her urinary incontinence had recently extended to faecal incontinence and she was dependent on aides to feed her, keep he
r clean and even help her walk. Just how she’d made it into the linen cupboard, Mrs Small agreed, was anybody’s guess.
‘We can’t force them to stay apart,’ she said in conclusion, ‘but we are keeping a much closer eye on them to ensure they don’t go off together again. And the linen cupboard is now locked at all times.’
I could tell Dad was still fuming after we left the office.
‘I could kill her!’ he said quietly.
‘Who? Mrs Small? But …’
‘No, not her. Colleen. I could kill her!’
‘But Dad …’
‘It’s just not right, behaving like that. She’s my wife.’
‘But Dad, it’s not really her anymore. They told us that, remember? Her mind’s not her own.’
I could see tears in his eyes. I went to put my arm round him, but he brushed me off.
‘No, leave me alone. I need to think this through.’ And with that, my usually kind, loving father stomped off ahead of me and plonked himself down on a garden seat in the centre of the rose garden.
I thought it best to leave him there and waited in the car, using the time to call a couple of friends, then listened to the radio. It was almost twenty minutes before he joined me.
‘Sorry, lassie, I got a bit carried away there.’
‘It’s okay Dad, I understand how awful it must be for you.’
He didn’t say any more so I kept the radio on all the way home and left him to his thoughts.
Chapter 14
The Monday morning meeting got off to a roaring start when Ginny kicked off her report by saying that Madama di Palmivera had spent the weekend holed up with one of the members of the chorus — a young hunk half her age who’d been so intimidated by her attentions that he hadn’t dared refuse.
‘Poor fellow is so shagged out after a weekend with La Stupenda that he’s called in sick for rehearsals this morning,’ Ginny chuckled.
‘Bet that went down well,’ I said.
Head Over Heels Page 12
