by Gemma Fox
Diana nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about what Netty said,’ Diana began, picking up her fruit juice from the bar. She needed to go carefully.
Carol nodded. ‘But Gareth and I are only talking, Di—and as far as I know they haven’t banned flirting yet. And I don’t care what she says, he still is gorgeous. I can see what she means—he is a bad boy but I promise I’ll be careful. Honest. Cross my heart.’
Carol might be preaching restraint but her eyes were sparkling and excited. Diana bit her lip; there was no easy way to say what was on her mind, and sometimes when that was the case the best way was just to say it.
‘Did you know that he’s married?’
There was a split second, a little beat that hung in the air between them and then Carol nodded and said very deliberately, ‘Yes, he told me.’
Diana didn’t say a word. After years of being a school teacher she knew that sometimes silence could be the most powerful prompt of all.
‘They’re separated. He told me that she was unstable, quite difficult.’ Carol shifted her weight from foot to foot. ‘I mean, he didn’t say that she was mentally ill or anything but he did kind of infer it. It can’t be easy for anyone—either of them—in that sort of situation.’
Diana nodded but still didn’t comment.
Carol took a sip of her drink. ‘I do realise that I’m only hearing his side of the story and he is bound to paint himself in a good light.’ Carol looked at Diana as if she was looking for approval, or at least some understanding. ‘But he did tell me.’
‘At least he was upfront about it,’ said Diana softly, praying that Carol wouldn’t ask how it was she knew and why she had brought it up now. But it looked as if Carol had other things on her mind.
‘Yes.’
‘He seems keen?’ said Diana, looking towards the toilets.
Carol reddened. ‘There was a time when I used to think about Gareth all the time, for years. He’d bubble up in my head. When I look back it feels like we lost something good just when it was beginning, not like losing something that finished and had run its course. I remember he picked me up from work one day and was talking about going to university. He was re ally excited and I kind of knew then that that would be the end, he’d be meeting new people, doing good things—you know what I mean. I wasn’t totally naïve, once he was gone it would be so hard to hold it together,’ Carol paused. ‘So on the way home I told him what I’d been thinking and he kissed me—he seemed relieved—and said he’d been thinking it too but didn’t want to say anything because he re ally liked what we had and he didn’t want to hurt me. God, I cried for days—it seemed such a waste.’
‘Excuse me, miss—I don’t like to disturb you but can I have your autograph?’ said a voice at Carol’s shoulder. ‘You’re that woman off the telly, aren’t you?’
Carol and Diana turned and looked into the wide, open smiling face of a complete stranger, a small wiry man in a nylon raincoat and cap, who was clutching a sheet of paper and a pen.
Carol was about to say no when she realised he was actually looking at Fiona, who beamed and said, ‘Oh, of course, how very sweet,’ and then, with a shrug of mock regret to Carol, Adie and the rest of the gang who were standing around her, added, ‘I’m so sorry, this happens to me all the time. Price of fame, I’m afraid.’ And then giggling she turned her full attention on to the man.
‘A walk-on part in Casualty, that’s fame these days, is it?’ hissed Adie under his breath.
‘Sssh,’ said Carol, totally enwrapped in Fiona and the fan moment.
Easing the sheet of paper and the pen out of the man’s fingers, Fiona asked, ‘And who is it for?’ Her tone was as sweet as boiled syrup.
Behind Fiona, Diana was busy pulling a truly spectacular face, Adie was dumbstruck, while Netty gazed heavenwards. Carol just looked on in amazement.
‘Doreen,’ said the man enthusiastically, not just to Fiona but to all of them. ‘That’s my wife’s name. She loves your show, never misses it. Every Thursday without fail, we’re there.’
Fiona, without missing a beat, beamed again. ‘Well, isn’t that lovely?’ she said. ‘I’m re ally pleased.’
Carol stared at her; so much unforced fawning was positively nauseating, particularly in view of the fact that this man obviously didn’t have a clue who Fiona was.
‘Oh yes, we watch you all the time,’ continued the man in case Fiona had missed it first time round. ‘Never miss a show. My wife rang up the production company to see if they were going to put you out on video.’
Fiona continued to nod and smile, her handwriting flowing across the page. ‘re ally? That’s wonderful,’ she said.
‘Watched every single episode we have, right from the beginning.’
Carol looked at Diana; OK, they’d all got it now but the little man wasn’t put off so easily. ‘My wife says it’s amazing what some people will put up with.’ He grinned. ‘You and them builder boys with their MDF don’t half do some weird things to people’s house. Glue and fur fabric? All that glitter and fairy lights. I always wonder where you come up with the ideas. That Chinese room you did in Clacton—I said to my wife they won’t be best pleased with that, I said, they’re more your pine and magnolia with a nice dado rail, I said. Remember that one? They had to bleep a lot of it out. It got in the papers. I think they were planning to sue.’
Fiona tipped her head on one side as if listening to every last word and held the smile so tight that Carol wondered if rigor mortis had set in. It was a pose so polished that Carol suspected Fiona had to have practised it a lot at home in front of the mirror.
The man’s smile didn’t falter either. ‘I re ally wish I’d got my camera with me. My wife is never going to believe you were in here in Burbeck. On a bit of a recce, are you?’
Netty, Diana, Jan, Adie and Carol watched and listened and waited. They didn’t believe it either. ‘No, I’m here on a break with friends,’ Fiona said through gritted teeth.
The man nodded. ‘Nice work if you can get it. I thought maybe you was going to give the pub the once-over. It could certainly do with it.’
Fiona smiled and, totally unfazed, handed him back the sheet of paper, signed, ‘To Doreen with lots of love and all best wishes from Indecipherable Squiggle,’ and underneath a row of very neat little kisses.
The man positively beamed now. ‘That’s champion,’ he said. ‘You wait till I tell my missus.’ And with that he scurried away all pink-faced and excited.
Fiona picked up her drink and took a long pull on the straw, every thing about her demeanour and her body language defying anyone to pass any kind of comment at all. A heartbeat later and Gareth reappeared from the loo, and Fiona beamed at him. Carol decided that to appease Diana she wouldn’t make a beeline for him; let Fiona have him a while.
‘Carol Smillie, what d’ya reckon?’ said Adie, a little the worse for wear as they headed back towards the hall.
‘No,’ said Jan, ‘Fiona is far too ginger for that and not Scots enough.’
‘I am not ginger, I’m new-penny blonde,’ snapped Fiona from a little further up the path.
‘How about that other blonde one then? What’s her name?’ said Netty. ‘The one with freckles who does paint effects on everything that hasn’t got a pulse?’
‘Is that the one on daytime television, great tits and a fan-tas-tic arse?’ said a stray unidentified male voice from somewhere amongst the crowd of stragglers.
Fiona huffed. ‘No, it is not. Look, could we talk about something else? He was terribly sweet and people do make mistakes. It’s easily done when you’ve got a well-known face.’
Netty—who had drunk a lot of Pernod—laughed. ‘A mistake which you were not exactly quick to rectify. Christ, you’ve got some neck.’
The walk back to the hall was punctuated with several more guesses about who the man in the pub thought Fiona was, which on the whole Fiona chose to ignore. She was also getting increasingly huffy with everybody.
Full of her
own thoughts, Carol ambled along. She hadn’t deliberately meant to hang back but that was what had happened.
‘You OK?’ asked Gareth
Carol smiled and pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders. ‘Yes, thanks. I’m fine, just tired, that’s all.’
‘We re ally haven’t had much chance to talk.’
‘No I suppose not, but it’s been so nice to be with everybody and we’ve got the whole weekend.’ She tried to sound casual.
He moved closer, and caught hold of her hand and then continued in an undertone, ‘I realised, seeing you tonight, that I’ve re ally missed you. I won’t say I’ve thought about you all the time because that would be a lie but I have thought about you over the years and wondered.’
‘And wondered what?’ Carol said softly, looking up into his face.
He laughed and fell into step beside her. ‘Wondered what might have happened if I hadn’t gone off to uni or if we had made more of an effort to keep in touch. I suppose I was afraid to push—well, you know—we both had our plans and when you’re eighteen you don’t think that you might never see someone again. I think we assume it will be easy to just turn round and pick up the pieces where we left off. If only things were that simple.’
He pulled her close and kissed her; it felt so easy, so very very easy. Carol felt a warm soft glow in her heart.
‘Um, that feels so good,’ he purred.
They hadn’t re ally been together for very long when they were at school. A few months, rehearsals, the drama tour and then suddenly school was all over and the groups and the friendships that had seemed unshakable, inviolate, had dissolved as people headed off to college and jobs.
They had written once or twice, promised to stay friends, and met up when he came home for the first holiday but by then everything had changed. School days had ended and all at once their relationship was all done and dusted, and that special thing had gone like autumn leaves, crumpled and dried and scattered by the wind. All that was left were the ghosts and the memories and occasional intense recollections fired by a snatch of a pop song on the radio or a face in a crowd or a stray thought. Carol smiled; and now here she was standing in amongst the ghosts.
She was about to try and put her thoughts into words when she realised that Gareth had drifted away again, back to the main group or back into the shadows, she couldn’t be sure which. What was she supposed to do? Follow him? Try to find him or play hard to get? Was this a come-on? Or a put-down? Or was he telling Carol that the things he felt for her were in the past?
Just as they got into the arc of lights around the hall’s huge back doors Adie swung round and began to run back down the path.
‘Adie?’ Carol called after his retreating back. ‘Are you all right? Where are you going? What’s the matter?’
‘It’s no good,’ he said over his shoulder, heading back the way they had just come. ‘I’ve got to go and find out who the hell that bloke thought Fiona was.’
SEVEN
It was dark when the phone rang. Leonora, curled up sound asleep in the nursery with the children, blinked and rubbed her eyes, wondering who on earth would be ringing at this time of night, and then almost instantly she was wide awake. Easing her arm out from under Patrick, she leaped out of bed, hurried across the landing and snatched up the receiver.
‘Gareth?’ she said, his name spilling out before she could stop herself. ‘Hello? Is that you?’ There was a pause and for a moment Leonora thought that the line had gone dead but it hadn’t, because far far away on the edge of her hearing she could just pick out the sound of someone breathing very softly.
‘Hello?’ said Leonora, more briskly this time with a confidence she barely felt. The house was all shut up for the night, with just a little lamp glowing in the children’s room; everywhere else was wrapped deep and dark in velvet-black shadows. Leonora shivered. She felt very alone.
‘Hello?’ she said again. ‘I know that there is someone there. Who is this, please? This isn’t funny. Hello. Who’s calling?’
‘Hello,’ said a little voice, a little female voice.
‘Who is this?’ Leonora snapped, maintaining the same curt no-nonsense tone, although whoever it was had sounded far more nervous than she was.
‘I’m sorry, I know it’s late but I’m trying to contact Gareth Howard?’ said the little voice, making it a question in her uncertainty. ‘He told me not to ring him on this number but I didn’t know what else to do. You don’t mind, do you?’
Leonora felt an odd clutching sensation low down, deep in her belly. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’ she asked as evenly as she could manage.
‘My name is Jasmine,’ said the voice.
Jasmine? Jasmine who? Which Jasmine thought it was all right to ring her husband in the middle of the night?
‘Oh,’ said Leonora. ‘Well, Jasmine, I’m afraid that Gareth isn’t here at the moment, and you’re right, it is very late. What exactly did you want to talk to him about?’
She could almost hear the girl wriggling with discomfort. She made little noises of uncertainty and then said, ‘It’s a bit hard to know where to start re ally. Maybe I should ring again when he gets back. Do you know when he’s going to be home?’
If only. Leonora looked up at the clock. It was just after midnight. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ she said softly. ‘But I can give him a message if you like, when I see him.’ She held on tight to the great knot of emotion swirling around and around in her belly. She didn’t want to frighten Jasmine away—oh, no—what Leonora needed to do was to find out exactly who Jasmine was, what she wanted and what the hell was going on.
‘The thing is he said that he’d be round to see me tonight; he promised,’ said the voice at the end of the phone. Jasmine’s tone was high and nasal. She sounded young and nervous and full of tears. ‘So I waited in for him at the flat and then when he didn’t come round I nipped round to the pub but he wasn’t in there either. Nobody had seen him. I didn’t know what else to do. You didn’t mind me ringing, did you?’
Leonora decided not to answer that.
‘I don’t understand how you got this phone number,’ she said slowly, although she could already hear the voice of instinct telling her all the things she needed to know.
‘He rang me a couple of times from there and I did 1471 and I told him I’d got his number and he said—well, he said I wasn’t to ring him there.’
Leonora felt sick.
‘What exactly is your relationship with Gareth?’ she asked. Leonora almost said ‘my husband’ but managed to hold the words back.
The girl’s tone lightened. ‘Didn’t he tell you? He’s my boyfriend.’
Leonora felt the breath die in her chest. ‘Your boyfriend?’ she repeated.
‘Yes, I thought he would’ve probably said something to you but then again I suppose he’s got to be careful, what with the divorce and everything,’ said the girl called Jasmine at the far end of the line. She sounded so very sure of what she was saying. ‘I met him when he came in to the shop. I mean, I know he’s a bit older than me, but I don’t mind—father figure and all that—and I re ally need someone to keep me in line.’ She giggled.
Leonora sat down heavily on the top of the stairs. ‘Do you know who I am?’ she began slowly. It sounded as if the words were coming from a very long way away and took so much effort to say.
‘His sister,’ said little Jasmine brightly. ‘He told me all about it, don’t worry; said that he was living with you until he could get himself sorted out; said it was nice for you to have him about, what with the kids and everything. Give you a hand and stuff. He said they were quite young, bit of a handful. Said you were nice—that’s why I didn’t think you would mind me ringing you up. I know he told me not to, but I re ally didn’t know what else to do. I know that he’s been under a lot of pressure lately. He said you’d been re ally good to him since his divorce—he told me how his wife had robbed him blind, took him for everything he’d got.’ She pau
sed for breath and then said, ‘The thing is, he told me he’d be round tonight so’s we could go and look at a flat. I imagine you’ll be glad to get him out from under your feet, won’t you?’
The girl, oblivious to the effect she was having, appeared relieved to have someone to talk to. Leonora could find nothing she wanted to say, and now that Jasmine had found her voice she seemed reluctant to shut up.
‘I know that he’s strapped for cash at the moment but I’ve phoned my dad and he’s already said that he’d lend me the deposit to give us a bit of a start, and my mum said she’d help us out with some bits and pieces. You know a pram and that, although I said I thought I should wait until after the scan. I mean, you never know, do you?’
No, you never do, thought Leonora as Jasmine’s words hit home, one by one like nails into a coffin lid.
Across the landing Patrick began to stir and almost as soon as he did the baby let out a little keening cry. ‘Jasmine, I think that you and I need to talk,’ said Leonora quietly. ‘Can I ring you back? Or maybe you’d like to pop round for a cup of tea some time?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jasmine. ‘That would be great. I’m re ally glad I rang now. Have you got a piece of paper? I’ll give you my number.’
Leonora pulled her big purple cardigan down off the newel post. In the pocket was the piece of paper she had taken from Gareth’s office earlier and a biro she must have taken from his desk. Jasmine gave her a number and she wrote it down.
‘When is a good time to ring you?’ asked Leonora, wrapping the cardigan around her shoulders, amazed that she sounded so very calm, so very even.
‘I’m off this weekend,’ said Jasmine brightly. ‘So any time is good for me.’
From the nursery the baby began to cry in earnest. Leonora felt her milk come in, Pavlov’s dog in reverse, but before she could speak Jasmine said, ‘Sounds like you’re wanted. I’d better let you go, hadn’t I?’ And then laughing, added, ‘God, I’ve got all that to look forward to. All the fretting and sleepless nights.’
