by Jane Asher
The darkness of the inner hallway was comforting; she was less exposed in here, and more able to let her face reveal the anguish and fury which fought for expression in the set of her mouth and the tension in the muscles round her eyes. She stood still a moment to listen, tilting her head upwards towards the stairwell, expecting to hear the hum of the lift’s motor making its way up to the third floor with its hated cargo. But there was nothing; just the distant sound of a television set. She frowned, puzzling over the speed at which Ruth had apparently managed to get into the lift and up to the flat in the short space of time that it had taken Eleanor to follow her in, then tutted to herself at her stupidity.
Of course, she thought, she’s gone up the stairs. Just because I always take the lift it doesn’t mean she does. She’s young and fit – even if she was carrying that shopping. No doubt she does aerobics, or step or whatever it is now. Gym. She goes to the gym. In a leotard and tight shiny Lycra leggings. She puts her hair up in one of those scrunchy things and her face goes shiny and red with the effort of toning herself. Honing herself. Honing and toning. John likes her honed. He likes to see the gleam of sweat on her neck, the tiny droplet of moisture running down from the damp hair. He puts his mouth to the—
‘Oh shut up, you silly woman!’ Eleanor snapped at herself out loud and made her way towards the lift.
She stepped out at the third floor and turned to shut the old-fashioned metal lift gates quietly, not wanting to alert her prey to the avenging eagle in camel skirt about to descend on her. As she pulled the outer gate across, she suddenly panicked, all at once completely unsure of what she would say, what she would do, when directly facing the horror of looking Ruth in the eye. She could see how the girl would greet her: an immediate smile of recognition and pleasure at the sight of her boss’s wife, a flicker of guilty knowledge at the realisation that she shouldn’t have been found here in his flat, at the possibility that this woman in front of her knew that the husband was not only a boss but a lover, then a quick and smoothly accomplished murmur of excuse and explanation.
Eleanor took the door key from her pocket and crossed the worn maroon-carpeted landing towards the front door of the flat. She held the key out in front of her, waving it about slightly as if pushing aside the irresolute thoughts threatening to stop her momentum, like a blind man feeling with his white stick for objects in his path. As she made to push it into the lock, she stopped again and listened. Still nothing but the distant sound of audience laughter from the television. She almost believed she could hear her heart beating, but knew it was the sensation of it throbbing against her chest that she was aware of, and that the two senses of feeling and hearing had become confused. As she turned the key in the lock, surprised to find her hand far steadier than her thoughts, she shut her eyes tightly against what was about to be revealed by the opening of the door.
Chapter Three
Eleanor took a deep breath and pushed open the door. The bottom edge of it brushed over the cream carpet with a faint swishing sound as it swung away from her, and she opened her eyes and looked into the darkness of the flat’s unlit hallway. She frowned a little, surprised into a mixture of relief and disappointment to find no lights on and to hear no signs of life coming from the kitchen at the other end of the passage.
‘Hello?’ she called out bravely into the silence.
Nothing.
She stepped into the hallway and closed the flat door behind her, feeling rather as she thought a lion tamer must when shutting himself into a cage with one of his animals, uncomfortably aware of the possible presence of her rival in one of the rooms in front of her. She coughed loudly as she walked along the length of the hall, unsure now whether she wanted to see the dreaded glimpse of red hair or not as she looked quickly into first the lavatory, then the bathroom, kitchen and sitting room.
She moved towards the bedroom and was annoyed to feel her heart begin its dramatic thumping against her ribs again. As she breathed in deeply but quietly in an attempt to calm it, or at least to give it more space in the uncomfortable tightness of her chest, she sensed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day the terrible urge to cry. She couldn’t remember ever feeling as alone as she did at this moment. To be creeping towards her own bedroom – or at least the bedroom she occasionally shared with John on her rare visits to London – in dread at the thought of finding the beautiful young girl she had convinced herself must be inside, was so miserably humiliating that she longed to turn to someone and appeal for the sympathy she knew she deserved for being placed in such an impossible situation. She even found herself crying out from some dim place in her soul for her mother to comfort her, a person and presence she hadn’t thought of with any particular warmth for many years.
By the time she entered the bedroom, registered it as empty and collapsed in frustration and fury onto the bed, the storm had broken, and she burst into the kind of relentless and exhausting tears that she hadn’t experienced since childhood.
But she didn’t let them last for long. If Ruth wasn’t here in the flat, where the hell was she? Had Eleanor fantasised that it was indeed the same girl that worked for her husband whom she had seen entering the building ten minutes ago? Could her overstimulated jealous imagination have created this doppelgänger of Ruth to taunt her and mislead her? Eleanor suddenly found herself feverishly examining yet again the early morning’s evidence that had begun the nightmare she had been living in ever since. Once more she trawled her memory for the tiniest hint of uncertainty or ambivalence. But even as she did so, she knew she was right. Some deeply rooted female instinct told her not to waste her time. There was an affair going on. And she had seen Ruth walk into this very block of flats. Ignoring the puzzling question as to where the girl could possibly have got to, pushing aside visions of her escaping from a bathroom window or hiding under the kitchen sink, she rose instead from the bed in a movement of intense but controlled energy and began to search the bedroom and bathroom for any evidence, however tiny, of an alien female’s occupation, certain that nothing could escape the concentrated scrutiny she gave to every corner, examining everything as intently and revealingly with every effort of her mind as with the needle-sharp beam of a finely focused torch.
After twenty minutes or so she gave up. She was certain that no other woman had occupied the room, or, if she had, she was so extraordinarily clever at covering her tracks that Eleanor knew she was no match for her. She carefully tidied everything back in place, splashed her face with cold water in the bathroom sink and made her way out of the flat and back towards the lift.
After waiting by the gates for a couple of minutes and hearing no sign of life she abandoned it and decided to walk, much less daunted by the thought of going down three floors than she would have been at having to climb the stairs coming up. The time it would take her to get back down to the ground floor stretched ahead of her rather comfortingly; the three or four minutes spent in the no man’s land of the stairwell would give her a further chance to recover and take stock. She was aware again of the sounds of the television she had heard earlier, and as she made her way down the stairs it became louder, reaching a climax on the first floor, where it clearly came from the open door of one of the flats. The sheer ordinariness of the varying notes and cadences of the human voice, interspersed with bursts of clapping or laughter, was deeply reassuring, and Eleanor glanced up at the door as she passed, catching a brief glimpse of a grey-haired woman in the doorway. She heard the door close quietly behind her as she went on down, muffling the noise of the television, and she reached the ground floor in a better state of equilibrium and calm.
The journey back to Surrey was uneventful. She still had no idea what she would do next, but managed to put away the car, open up the house, read the note left by the cleaning woman and attend to a frantically welcoming dog without feeling the need to know. She surprised herself by reaching for the telephone and dialling her brother in Gloucestershire, unsure what she would say to him but satisf
ying some deep-seated urge to make contact with someone.
Andrew picked up the phone in dread. For the last few years he’d always hated answering it, knowing he would find it difficult to hear what the person on the other end was saying and, even worse, knowing he might well be completely unable to identify them even if he could hear them. What appeared to be the entire collapse of his memory system, at least as far as names and faces went, caused him much embarrassment and annoyance, and at times like this, when Catherine was out of the house and he had no option but to pick up the receiver, he felt very hard done by.
‘Hello? Winstead 354?’
‘Andrew? Andrew, it’s me.’
Now that was familiar. He felt a huge sense of relief wash over him as he recognised the voice of his sister, and the fact it took him a split second to remember her name seemed amusing rather than serious.
‘Nellie. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Well I – no, I’m fine.’
There was a small pause, and Andrew panicked slightly at the thought that something was expected of him. He went quickly over the conversation he’d had with Catherine that morning before she left. Was there any message he was supposed to do, have done, give to somebody? It wasn’t Nellie’s birthday or anything was it? It wasn’t his own birthday, surely? He smiled to himself. No, his internal address book and mug shot files might be completely out of sync but he did at least know that his birthday was a good few months away. But it was odd, Nellie ringing up like this out of the blue. The occasional call she made to them was more likely to be at a weekend than in the middle of a Monday afternoon.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course. How’s Catherine?’
‘She’s fine. She’s off shopping in the village. Stocking up after yesterday. We had one of our parish dos. She put on the most marvellous spread.’
‘Oh, right.’
There was another silence and Andrew shifted his weight off the more arthritic of his hips and cleared his throat. The small hall clock made the odd grating noise that it did before chiming, echoing in the polished quietness of the cottage hallway, and he turned to look at it.
‘She should be back soon,’ he went on. ‘She’s been gone about three-quarters of an hour. How’s John?’
Well, yes, thought Eleanor, of course he’s going to ask that. It’s only normal. The huge significance this simple question has for me is irrelevant to him.
She opened her mouth to give him some sort of noncommittal reply, then stopped, struck by the thought that if she were to answer with any sort of truth at all she would have to say she had absolutely no idea. How was John? Was he happy? Guilty? Miserably wretched and bored with his life of compromise; at having to come back to his worn old wife every weekend after the joys of Ruth’s firm young flesh? Or did he revel smugly in his cleverness at having deceived her, enjoying the rest and comfort of a well-ordered Surrey home after the rigours of his London life? She couldn’t stop a short grunt of disgust spilling out of her mouth at her own stupidity.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, Andrew. He’s fine, thanks. I thought I might pop down and see you both for a few days – are you a full house at the moment?’
Why did I say that? she thought. She had had no idea she was going to ask before it had slipped quickly out, but even as she waited for him to answer she found the thought of an escape route rather comforting.
‘No, no, just us. Yes, of course, Nellie, come any time you like. Just you, or could John manage a few days?’
‘No, just me. Not immediately, I don’t think, but maybe in a week or so. I’ll give you a ring. There are a few things I need to ask you.’
This last sentence filled Andrew with foreboding. Even as a practising vicar he had hated to be confronted by other people’s problems, much preferring the ceremonial and administrative side of his job to the shepherding and nurturing of the flock that was an inescapable part of it, and since retirement he had been even more uneasy at having to discuss anything of any personal depth. For a man who had spent all his working life representing or at least acting as an officer for the Church, his reluctance to discuss matters of the spirit or of emotional depth was a tiresome handicap, but one which he had managed to overcome by hiding behind the comforting rituals of the job. He had coped quite happily with his parishioners’ divorces, bereavements, illnesses and deaths by not only using the designated paragraphs from Prayer Book or Bible, but by trotting out the well-used formulaic words of comfort that he had copied from older and wiser colleagues during his training. But if anyone ever looked him in the eye and attempted a direct conversation with him about what he really believed in himself, or tried to tell him, really tell him, about their passion, agony or a dark night of the soul, he would dip his head in embarrassment and change the subject.
Now there was something in the way Eleanor had spoken that made him think that something very emotional indeed was about to come his way, and he curled his toes at the thought of having to face it.
After lunch the office always tended to quieten down a little, and John found a moment to pop over to see Ruth across the corridor.
‘Oh hello, Mr Hamilton,’ she smiled at him, ‘how was the lunch?’
‘Good, thank you, Ruth, very good. That’s all well on course and the client seems very happy. The last house should be finished next week. Thanks for all your help on that as usual – and the food was excellent, too. We should use that place again.’
‘Yes, right, I’ll make a note of it. Did you want me for some letters now?’
‘No, don’t worry, we’ll leave it for now. Come and do them about four, would you?’
‘Of course, Mr Hamilton.’
Just as John turned to leave he remembered what he had come to ask her.
‘Did you manage to get that spot of shopping done for me, Ruth?’
‘Yes, of course I did. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Much better, in fact. Much better.’
She gave him a little encouraging smile and he nodded back at her.
‘Jolly good. Thanks again. See you at four.’
He walked back to his own office and shut the door behind him, feeling more settled than he had during the morning, now that things seemed to be getting sorted out. Ruth had become indispensable during the five years she had worked for him. She was pleasant-looking, too. What was it she was wearing today? He knew he wasn’t too good at women’s clothes, but he tried to picture her attractive body as he had seen it seated at the desk not a minute before. Pale blue. That was it, wasn’t it? A pale blue jumper of some sort; pleasingly tight. Her pretty red hair fastened up in one of those slide things. Very nice. He smiled a little to himself and shook his head. He gave a little sigh as he smoothed his straight greying hair back with both hands and then sat heavily into the leather swivel armchair behind the desk, hitching up both knees of his trousers automatically as he lowered himself into it, regretting the Stilton and biscuits he had unwisely indulged in after the chicken, but congratulating himself on having stuck to mineral water. He shook his head a little and smiled to himself as he thought, not for the first time, how lunches had changed since before he had become chairman. In those days they had taken place in the office dining room and lasted two or three hours; good, rich food – three courses minimum – always accompanied by plenty of claret, a Sauternes perhaps with the pudding, and port with the cigars. A certain sleepy fullness hung over everybody who had taken part for the rest of the afternoon – certainly there was not much work accomplished, or if it was it had always been a wise precaution to look over it carefully the next morning. On taking over on his father’s retirement, John had moved quickly to curtail such enjoyable excess, and, just as he saw his friends in the City doing, he cut his own and all the staff’s lunch breaks to a maximum of one hour when taken as part of the normal office routine, or an hour and a half when entertaining clients. The in-house catering had had to go: pleasant though it was to be cooked for by a regu
lar small team who knew one’s every taste in food and drink, it was an extravagant indulgence that the company could do without.
The plans for the development of fifteen four- to six-bedroomed detached houses on the estate just outside Manchester were still spread out across the desk, and he pulled them over towards him, swivelling the large photostatted sheet round to face him. He was particularly proud of this project: the houses were going to look elegant and well-proportioned, with just enough garden round each one to give a feeling of privacy, in spite of his having insisted on squeezing in one more than the originally scheduled fourteen. He had listened to his architects’ arguments about angles of building height, diagonals of wall relative to ground span, proportion of garden size to number of rooms, but he was convinced the illusion of space given by the carefully planned hedges, arches and strategically placed walls would make up for the small amount of land he took from each plot. His speech to the planning officer had been masterful, even if he did say so himself.
It wouldn’t be long now before they finished the final plastering, and the interest from local estate agents had been extremely encouraging. He particularly wanted a quick turnround for these, and reached for the phone to check on the progress of the show house, and to remind himself of the date of its opening.
