by Judy Astley
‘Because it’s just … just bloody typical of you,’ Kate had fumed the day after the charity gala. ‘You just march in and take what you want like a spoiled … Oh, never mind. It’ll all come to nothing anyway.’ Except it hadn’t. Not then, anyway.
But it wasn’t press intrusion that had driven Viola and Rachel to leave their home and take refuge in Naomi’s flat after Rhys’s death. The photographers hanging around on the pavement lost interest immediately after the funeral. That same little coterie of Rhys’s few but lunatic-level fans, however, had turned up to watch the funeral party leave the house and then seemed to hang on and around for ages after (‘What are they here for? In case he comes back as, like, a ghost?’ Rachel had asked), appearing regularly to decorate the magnolia tree by the gate with fronds of fabric that quickly became damply filthy in the suburban winter rain. They made a shrine, pinning photos of him to the fence, tied flowers to the gate and, when Viola slid out and removed their tributes after a couple of days’ grace, they turned nasty, posting spiteful, hurtful, anonymous notes through the letter box telling Viola his death was all her fault: if he was out driving too fast in the icy early hours, he must have been desperate to get away from home, and from her. The ‘B’ of Bell Cottage had been changed to an ‘H’.
Neither she nor Rachel could cope with this kind of persecution, so she’d packed up and stored their possessions, put her much-loved home up for rent and moved into Naomi’s flat. But last night … the Land Rover had taken her past the house. No lights were on; there was no sign of life from the tenant and her lovely little house looked lonely and abandoned. She fancied that maybe it missed her and Rachel – they’d had the place a long time, since way before Rhys, from back when she and Marco were first together. Also, although the car flashed past quickly and the only illumination was the pale orangey light from the street lamp, there didn’t seem to be any tacky Rhys memorabilia anywhere obviously in sight, not so much as a faded rose crumbling to desiccation on the fence. Either his admirers had gone off to get themselves a life (at last), or they were honing their shrine-making skills at the home of some other luckless dead celebrity. The tenant’s lease would be up soon. It was, Viola felt in her bones, time to go home. It was just going to be a matter of finding the right moment to tell Naomi.
The working hours were good and pretty flexible and the pupils were a lively and ever-surprising bunch, even if the pay wasn’t great. Viola told herself this every time she drove in through the ornate iron gates of the tall Georgian house that was the Medworth and Gibson Tutorial College (never to be called a crammer, according to Sandra Partridge, the principal, so of course it always was). Thanks to the tenant’s rent, she could just about afford for this work to be part-time, which had mattered a lot over these last long months since Rhys’s death, when she’d felt dismal and low and overwhelmed by so much time-consuming admin that had needed to be sorted. At Med and Gib, as it was known, she worked haphazard hours teaching English Lit to a client base made up of the rich and spoilt, but mostly rather sweet and needy, teenage dispossessed, trying to stuff their heads with enough exam-technique information to make up for the fact they’d been expelled from school, dozed away time on drugs and drink or generally spent months skiving.
Viola parked her Polo in the staff spaces behind the building and stepped out into the dusty sunshine, deliberately avoiding looking across to the area by the kitchen bins from where the sound of male teenage giggling could be heard. She took a quick glance at the car’s new tyre, admiring how clean and smart it looked compared with the others, like someone with scuffed trainers trying on a lovely new shoe. One front wing of the car was a bit thorn-scraped, but nothing that needed expensive attention. She had her rescuer’s card in her jacket pocket and she took it out and read it. The Fabian Nursery, it said, then his name: Gregory Fabian; an email address, phone number. What kind of nursery? Plants, presumably, if the night-time digging wasn’t just a weird hobby. Wouldn’t it have made good business sense to say on the card whether it was flowers or babies?
‘I spy smoke rings coming from the podgy pink face of Benedict Peabody.’ Amanda, emerging from her own car on the far side of Viola’s, nodded her head in the direction of the bins and the laughter.
‘No, don’t tell me! I don’t want to know. If we go and investigate it’ll be turn out to be a spliff and then we’ll have to report it. And then he’ll deny it and the fallout’ll go on for ever.’
‘You’re right,’ Amanda agreed. ‘Anyway he’s leaving in a few weeks, travelling the poor long-suffering beaches of Indonesia for a few months, I imagine, like they all do, then straight into daddy’s bank.’
‘As an intern?’
‘Yes. But it’s only a gesture. Give him a couple of fast-track years and papa will get him on to the board, or whatever it is banks have.’
‘Ye gods!’ Viola laughed. ‘Don’t you just kind of despair?’ The two of them crossed the dusty tarmac that served as a break-time loitering area for the pupils. A few were dotted around on benches in the sun, texting furiously, but none of them actually chatting to each other.
‘Charlotte was talking about you after you left last night.’
‘I thought she would,’ Viola said as they went into the college’s cool, pale grey panelled hallway. ‘I bet she asked if I was seeing anyone.’
‘Pretty much.’ Amanda laughed. ‘She’s decided it’s your friends’ responsibility to help you find a new man, and that he should be somebody one of us knows and can give a kind of reference for. She said Internet dating wouldn’t be any good because you’d be sure to pick the weirdo. And that getting married to first a gay bloke and then a certified love rat disqualifies you from being trusted to find someone for yourself.’
‘Wow, thanks for that, Char,’ Viola murmured, though privately conceding there was some sense in Charlotte’s reasoning.
‘So she said we each have to find you one person we actually know and get you to meet him under supervision and see how you get on.’
‘I can’t think of anything worse. I don’t want another man. I want to tick over in peace and quiet on my own. Well, just me and Rachel. And anyway, how would it work? Would there be three of us on each date, like in Princess Di’s marriage?’
‘Didn’t get down to the details. She just muttered something about “informal little suppers”.’
‘Eugh. No, thanks. I can see it now: it would be like a job interview – Charlotte at the end of the table, telling us how much we have in common. I’ve never gone for that “having things in common” thing, like both of you being crazy about mountain-walking or opera. I prefer someone with their own interests.’
‘Ah, but you see …’ Amanda stopped, turning to Viola just as they reached the staffroom door.
Viola looked at Amanda and they both burst into giggles. ‘Yes, I know, don’t tell me,’ Viola said when she’d recovered a bit. ‘That’s exactly where I’ve been getting it so very, very wrong.’
Wuthering Heights. A-level exams were now only a couple of weeks away, so it was all a bit late to get this quartet of students to understand the appeal of Heathcliff as a romantic hero, of Yorkshire as a venue for passion and to learn that pathetic fallacy didn’t actually mean ‘feeble lie’, but Viola had been doing her best. It was a hot day too – the sun blazed in through the windows, sending the long shadows of the glazing bars across the floor and surely making all of them think of a prison. After an intense ninety minutes the two girls were sleepy and bored and Benedict Peabody was flushed, reeked of cigarette smoke and kept breaking out into giggles for no apparent reason. Funny, that.
‘I still get, like, soooo confused?’ one girl wailed. ‘Why do most of the boy names in this book have to begin with aitch?’
‘My mum’s got the box set from when it was on telly,’ Benedict told her. ‘You can come round to mine and watch it. Tonight would be good. No one’s home.’ He gave a deep, dirty chuckle.
‘Er, like, thanks but nooo?’ The girl�
�s face was twisted to an expression of near nausea. Benedict made kissy noises at her.
‘Why don’t all four of you watch it together?’ Viola suggested. ‘There isn’t any more we can discuss about the book itself at this stage – you’ve pretty much done all you can, but it’ll be a useful last-minute reminder of how it all fits together.’
‘Yah, a helicopter view,’ Benedict said, flicking his blond-streaked fringe back and looking pleased with himself. It crossed Viola’s mind that in a few months he would be using such corporate jargon on an everyday basis, at what was literally the Bank of Dad. She made a mental note that any unexpected spare cash she ever came into must be invested only in a sock under her mattress. It had to be the safest option.
‘So, sure, at mine tonight – it’ll be well deep. I’ll chill the fizz.’ Benedict smirked. ‘And make some calls …’ He pulled out his iPhone and started tapping into it. The tutorial, it seemed, was now over.
Now what have I done, Viola thought later as she climbed back into the Polo. How thrilled would the Peabody seniors be, coming home later to find four (or by then, possibly forty) teens boozing their way through the family wine vault and claiming it was all their tutor’s idea? And if they were watching anything on the Peabodys’ home cinema set-up, she’d be willing to bet her newly fixed car that it wouldn’t be Wuthering Heights. Still, too late now. And they were all over eighteen – officially, at least, grown-ups. If their evening went horribly wrong, it would be their responsibility. Absolutely not hers.
THREE
AFTER WORK, VIOLA took a detour before going back to the flat. Having planned to take a closer look at her own rented-out house to make absolutely sure it was clear of Rhys ribbons and such, out of curiosity she first drove along the road where last night’s roundabout was sited. It didn’t look anything like so sinister in daylight, and the shrubbery wasn’t quite as alarmingly dense as it had appeared the night before. There wasn’t much traffic, so she parked on a side road and quickly crossed to the island, looking for the patch of ground where Gregory Fabian had been planting his tree. At least in daylight she could avoid that spiky plant … What was it? Oh yes – mahonia: entirely made of thorns and malice, it had seemed at the time.
She picked her way carefully across to the centre and there, in a small clearing and on a damp, clean patch of fresh earth, was the young quince tree. It was all twigs and gawky stems, like a young adolescent, and its leaves looked too big for it, but still, it was surprisingly tall. He must have carried it here strapped to the Land Rover’s roof. And he must have brought a big container of water as well, as the earth was darkly damp and smelled of rich, fresh compost. It seemed a lot of effort to go to in order to plant a tree in a public yet rather anonymous spot.
She gently touched the tree’s soft young leaves and out loud wished it happy growing and a long life, feeling slightly foolish as she did so, wondering if the Prince of Wales felt the same, chatting to his crops. Not that his were planted in the middle of traffic islands. In fact, why was this one? Who in their right mind would put a fruit tree anywhere but in their own garden? Back in the Polo, she took her phone out and called the number on Greg’s card.
‘Hello, Fabian Nursery, how may I help you today?’ a breathy young female voice answered. A nursery assistant? Viola pictured a plump young girl with a toddler on her lap and the sweet, persistent scent of baby lotion and formula milk.
‘Er … may I speak to Gregory Fabian, please?’
‘Oh sure, I’ll find him. You might have to wait a few minutes, he’s out the back with a compost delivery.’
So – not babies then.
‘Hello, Greg here!’ He sounded very chipper, she thought, which was good.
‘Greg? Hi, it’s …’
‘Ah, the distressed damsel! So Mummy let you use the phone then. I thought all your toys would have been confiscated and you’d be banished to the naughty step for a fortnight.’
‘Oh, very funny! She’s a Lancashire mother – they don’t hold back when they’ve got something to say.’
‘I gathered. How is the car? Did you get it back OK?’
‘I did, and it’s fine. I just wanted to say a massive thank you – you were so kind last night. It was so lucky for me that you were there, even if you …’
‘… Even if you thought I was burying a body.’ He chuckled.
‘How did you know I thought that? Not that I did, of course …’
‘Oh, yes, you did! The look on your face …’ He laughed, deep and annoyingly triumphant. ‘It was such a giveaway. You half didn’t believe what you were imagining; I could tell you were trying not to think it, but it was written all over you – he’s a serial killer.’
‘I’m glad you found it so funny.’ Viola could hear herself sounding prim.
‘Oh, I did!’ He had a warm laugh, teasing, but kindly, not in Charlotte’s barbed way.
‘But you must admit, planting a tree wasn’t going to be anyone’s first guess, now was it? And anyway, why were you?’
‘Ah. I thought you might ask that. How can I put this? I was releasing it into the wild.’
‘What wild? It’s on a West London roundabout, not running about in a meadow with its mane flowing!’
‘True,’ he conceded. ‘But then I’d worry a lot if it were running about at all, frankly. Fruit trees only do that for people who’ve been taking weird substances, I’m told. Tell you what, why don’t you come and buy me a thank-you drink sometime soon and I’ll tell you all about it. Or would that be tricky?’
Viola hesitated. It was a useful phrase, ‘would that be tricky?’ It quite possibly covered the two basic options of ‘Do you find me disgustingly repulsive?’ and ‘Do you have a husband?’
‘By which I mean – will your mother ever let you out again?’ He laughed again, but this time sounded slightly nervous. There was a short silence while each of them considered the fact that he’d effectively just asked her out.
‘Or you could just come and have a look at the nursery if you like, and I can show you the trees that are still in captivity.’ So now he was backtracking. She couldn’t work out whether this was disappointing or not. Not, would be the sensible answer.
‘Actually, I’d love to see the nursery, if that’s OK. I’ve lived here ages but have never heard of it before. Ooh, sorry – that doesn’t sound good, does it?’
‘Hey, no worries. It’s a bit specialized, so most people haven’t. At the weekend? Next week? Just send me a text when you want to come over and I’ll make sure I’m not out doing a delivery or something. It’s only a couple of miles from you, close to the river. Hard to spot from the road but there’s a sign up.’
She was glad it wouldn’t be a pub, she decided. That would feel like a date and she didn’t want that, not yet, not with anyone, whatever Amanda and Charlotte and the book-group coven thought. But in case she ever did, it would have to wait till she was back in Bell Cottage. There had to be absolutely no chance of a repeat of the night before. If Viola wasn’t to spend the rest of her life as a single woman, fiercely protected by her nightwear-clad mother from louche admirers and the sin of the post-midnight hours, then she and Rachel had to be out of that flat.
Her phone rang just as she was setting off again to take a look at Bell Cottage. ‘Did you know your tenant’s moving out?’ As ever, her straight-to-the-point sister Kate didn’t bother with a hello or how are you. Viola wondered if this was because of their age gap – ten years, Viola being very much the afterthought baby of the family. From infancy she was used to being told things, rather than being asked about them. Miles and Kate, near-adolescents by the time she came along, had sometimes seemed like extra parents.
‘Hello, Kate, and no, I didn’t. I’m on my way there now, actually. How do you know?’
‘I didn’t know you were going there. How could I?’ She sounded defensive.
‘I don’t mean that. I meant how did you know about the tenant? She’s got more than another month on the leas
e – I was just about to give her notice that it wouldn’t be renewed, actually.’
‘Really? Oh well, I’m sure you’ll get another renter easily enough. I’m there now, outside the house. There’s a removals van. I hope you’re not far away because I’ve got places to be.’
Viola had only intended to drive past slowly, like a burglar casing the joint, checking for Rhys photos and that his name wasn’t freshly spray-painted on the gate. She hadn’t wanted to stop and spy through the fence, but just remind herself that the place was actually hers. So what was Kate doing there? She lived out near Esher. Viola’s little white house – up a long quiet avenue between a church and the park – wasn’t likely to be on her way to anywhere.
Kate’s Range Rover was parked a discreet fifty metres or so behind a removal truck. The double iron gates to the garden of Bell Cottage were wide open and a big blue sofa was being carried out and loaded. As Viola drove up, she could see boxes in the garden, ready for their turn in the van. So it seemed Kate was right.
‘See? I told you. Didn’t she tell you she was going?’ Kate opened the Polo door and sat down heavily beside Viola. She was looking plumper, Viola noticed; her hair was showing a new flecking of grey at the roots and she was a bit out of breath.
‘No. But the rent is paid up to date so I suppose she can do what she likes. It’s great, as it happens, really works out well.’
