Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Oh, you’d be amazed, Toby. I’m full of surprises.’

  He threw his head back and laughed delightedly.

  A few minutes later we drew into Farlings and Toby couldn’t wait to get out of the car and run and tell Martha and the twins, who would be home from school by now. It was then that I realized, with a jolt, that Martha would be shocked. Horrified even. And if Martha would be horrified by my precipitate action, what the hell would Joss and Annabel be? As I slowly got out of the car, the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I, the next-door-neighbour, had taken these people’s son away from his school within a week of term and tentatively signed him up for another without even consulting them. No, correction, with consulting them, but just totally ignoring their instruction. Right. Unusual decision, Rosie, really rather unusual. As I followed Toby into the house, my heart sank even further into my boots as I realized that in actual fact what I’d probably done here was far worse. I’d probably raised Toby’s hopes sky-high, only to have them dashed to the ground when Annabel returned, worked her charm on Jerry and Simone, and insisted he be reinstated at Stowbridge. Yes, well, let’s see how much he loves you then, when he’s dragged screaming and kicking back to that pre-war institution, shall we, Rosie? I took a deep breath and let it slowly hiss out through my teeth. Oh God, what a mess. What a God-awful, bloody mess.

  As I walked through the back door into the kitchen, the mess loomed larger. Martha dashed towards me looking grim. Ah, he’d told her, and she already thought I was mad, and not only mad but totally irresponsible. I steeled myself.

  ‘You’ve got visitors,’ she said, jerking her head sideways.

  My heart stopped. Oh God. This was it then, was it? They’d come for me.

  ‘Where?’ I whispered.

  ‘Front hall. Went to the cottage then came up here. Been hanging around since ten o’clock this morning.’

  I nodded. ‘Right. Thanks, Martha.’

  I took down a glass and had a quick drink of water. I set the glass down shakily on the draining board, stared at it for a moment, then turned and walked through to the front of the house, trying to keep my head high. As I went along the corridor I wondered what sort of expression Marie Antoinette had had on her face as she went to the guillotine.

  I turned the corner into the hall, but as I did, I stopped in my tracks. I was confronted by, if anything, a far more terrifying sight than a couple of police officers poised with handcuffs at the ready. Because arranged around the hall, on the sofa, chairs and standing in front of the fire, looking grim and in some cases extremely tearful, was almost the entire cast of my immediate family. Philly and Miles, Mum and Dad.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ‘What’s this?’ I said lightly. ‘A council of war?’

  ‘Rosie darling!’ My mother lurched across with a sob and fell on me. She was swaddled as usual in her old mink coat which smelled of stale scent and she was gripping a lipstick-covered tissue. ‘Oh, my poor darling, my baby, you’ll go to prison!’ Her eyes widened and she drew back in horror as another terrible thought struck her. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped. ‘We’ll have to move!’

  ‘Not necessarily, Mum,’ I said disentangling her and depositing her in the nearest chair. ‘We’ll tell the neighbours I’ve emigrated, if you like. Either that or I’ve had a sex change.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ demanded Philly, looking white and tense, perched primly on the arm of a chair. ‘We had no idea until Miles came back from the pub and said the whole world was talking about it!’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve heard the verdict already then, Miles. The village tricoteuses were clicking away busily, were they?’

  ‘I didn’t stay to chat, Rosie,’ he assured me. ‘I put my pint down and came straight home.’

  ‘No casual gesture, I can assure you,’ remarked Philly snidely. ‘It takes a lot for Miles to leave a pub, but the point is, we feel so stupid, Rosie!’

  ‘Well, gosh, sorry for the inconvenience, folks. Sorry to be so shaming, Mummy, and for you to feel so uninformed, Philly. Just the eighteen years at Her Majesty’s pleasure for me of course.’ I went to the desk and poured myself a shaky drink from Joss’s decanter. May as well go the whole hog on the brazen hussy front and drink the landlord’s Scotch, I thought, and it wasn’t as if it was the first time either. Good morning, decanter, I greeted it silently as I replaced the stopper, we’re seeing rather a lot of each other these days, aren’t we?

  My father crossed the room and put his arm round my shoulders. ‘We’re just concerned, love, that’s all,’ he said gently. ‘Tell us what’s been going on, eh? We feel a bit sort of – in the dark.’

  Oh God, this was much worse. I shrugged brusquely, knowing I was close to tears. ‘Nothing much to tell really, Dad. The Oxfordshire police had me down for a chat and asked me some rather probing questions, that’s all. Pointed out that since I hated Harry’s guts I might have had a bit of a motive, but then again, they haven’t actually charged me so there’s probably nothing to worry about. Drink, anyone?’ I waved the decanter airily.

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said Philly grimly. ‘That’s just their softly-softly approach, and meanwhile they’re quietly shoring up more and more evidence, so that when they do finally drag you in, there’ll be so much ammunition levelled against you you won’t be able to stand up. You’ll go under, they’ll submerge you with it.’

  ‘A cheery little thought,’ I murmured into my glass. ‘Thanks, Phil.’

  ‘I’ll get my man O’Sullivan on to it,’ said Daddy importantly. ‘He’s a damn good solicitor, O’Sullivan, known him for years.’

  ‘Well, of course you have because he must be about a hundred and four years old,’ scoffed Philly. ‘And he does conveyancing, Dad, which is hardly going to help Rosie on a murder charge. No, no, she doesn’t want an old provincial hack like O’Sullivan. I’ll have a word with a friend of mine, a partner at Clifford Chance. A real City hotshot.’

  Dad looked suitably crushed. ‘Of course, my love, whatever you think’s best. If you’ve got some fellow who’s more suitable –’

  ‘It’s not a fellow, it’s a woman,’ she said tartly. ‘She was at Cambridge with me. Got a starred first actually, terrific forensic brain.’ She sat up straight. ‘Yes, if anyone can get her off, Gillian can.’

  I stared at her, perched authoritatively in her cashmere overcoat and silk scarf, eyes bright, cheeks burning righteously.

  ‘When you say “get her off”,’ I said mildly, ‘you do realize I didn’t actually do it, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, of course you didn’t, darling,’ said Philly soothingly, ‘it’s just a figure of speech. I just meant that she’ll get to the bottom of it, that’s all.’

  ‘And I’ve sent for Tom of course,’ put in Mum with a sniff.

  I swung round, aghast. ‘Oh Mum, you haven’t!’

  ‘Oh yes I have, this is a family crisis! We must all band together, fight them on the beaches and all that, and we need a real man about the place now that Harry’s gone. Tom will know what to do.’

  I wondered where this left Daddy and Miles if all the real men had gone. Neatly emasculated I supposed.

  ‘He wasn’t in his office when I rang,’ Mum went on, dabbing at her eyes, ‘out on location apparently, but a frightfully sweet girl took a message, must have been his PA, I suppose. She couldn’t have been nicer. I explained that his little sister was facing a murder charge and that things were looking rather bleak, and she said that she was sure he’d want to come straight back, and incidentally if it wasn’t too much of a personal question, what exactly was the murder weapon? Well, I explained about the mushrooms being poisonous and everything and then – bless her, she was so concerned – she asked if you were a sympathetic sort of character and whether you were pretty or not and I said that you were a sympathetic character but in a bit of an underdog sort of way, and quite pretty but understandably a little jaded at the moment.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I muttered. �
��So I’ll be a jaded underdog in a TV drama directed by my brother before I’ve even made it to the courtroom, will I?’

  ‘Well, d’you know, I wondered if that’s what she was getting at!’ she said, turning shining eyes on me. ‘And actually, Rosie, it would be rather marvellous, wouldn’t it? I mean it’s bound to sway public sympathy your way, particularly if they get some gritty individual to play you, someone rather plain and unknown but with bags of integrity, and Michelle Pfeiffer to play Philly of course, and I did wonder if Sophia Loren might be persuaded to come out of retirement to play me. It’s often been said that there’s an uncanny resemblance.’ She rested her chin on her finger and presented us with her profile so we could admire the uncanny resemblance. ‘And I thought Edward Woodward for your father, and Harry’s terribly keen for James Fox to play him –’

  ‘Harry!’ I stared at her.

  Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘When I talked to him the other day, darling. You know, with Marjorie.’

  ‘Ah, right,’ I muttered, sinking down into a chair and feeling rather weak suddenly. ‘Yes, I’d – forgotten about Marjorie.’

  ‘And he agrees with me that it should be played entirely from your perspective, with you as the wronged wife and him as the out-and-out rotter, because actually he doesn’t blame you at all, my darling. He says he was a dreadful husband to you and drank far too much and can quite understand why you were glad to see the back of him.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, keep her out of the dock,’ moaned Miles, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

  ‘And he wants you to know that although he’s missing you and Ivo like mad, he’s having a lovely time up there.’ She folded her hands happily on her lap and leaned forward confidentially. ‘I must tell you, Rosie, he’s terribly excited at the moment. He’s just started a decorative napkin-folding course which he says is absolute heaven!’

  I gazed at her in wonder. It suddenly struck me that her eyes, which were always a trifle wild, were slightly madder than usual today. When I looked closer, I saw that under her fur coat she was wearing a rather eccentric embroidered shawl, and that hanging round her neck were not the usual clinking array of gold necklaces, but strings of coloured beads.

  ‘It’s all part of a table-laying course he’s doing, but Harry likes the napkin bit best because he says that the way you present your table linen plays a significant part in expressing the real inner you.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I think he’s absolutely right.’

  ‘She’s lost it,’ muttered Miles, shaking his head sadly, ‘she’s really lost it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He says it doesn’t matter,’ she went on emphatically, mistaking her dumbstruck family’s silence for encouragement, ‘whether it’s elegant peach damask or crisp Irish linen tumbling from a crystal glass, napkin-folding is a further expression of self. Harry says we shouldn’t be afraid to experiment either, folding into symbolic or representational shapes like the rising sun, or the butterfly in the circle of life.’

  Miles snorted uncontrollably at this and gasped in my ear, ‘She’s got her lines crossed, Rosie, she’s tapped into Barbara Cartland’s dead butler by mistake!’

  ‘And he’s even learning to embroider them too,’ she said dreamily. ‘He’s doing a darling little cross-stitch on red gingham at the moment, the sort of thing you might want to go with for an informal fork supper.’

  ‘Sounds like the sort of thing you might want to go with to the lavatory!’ hooted Miles.

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Philly hurriedly.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ I said, hastening after her to the kitchen. The kitchen was empty, Martha and the children had obviously gone upstairs.

  ‘Oh God, she’s barking, Phil!’ I said in horror. ‘She’s absolutely doo-lally!’

  ‘I know,’ said Philly wearily, filling the kettle. ‘I’ve tried to keep it from you, Rosie, but it’s these wretched seances, and it’s not just once a week now, it’s every night.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh yes, and always round at our house too. Marjorie’s changed the venue, claiming it’s more atmospheric at The Firs, but I reckon it’s to save her pocket. Dad says she appears bang on drinks time and then off they scuttle to the dining room to summon up the ectoplasm together. And of course Mum never actually hears these celestial voices, it’s all filtered down through Marjorie The Medium, who as far as I can make out just guzzles one gin and tonic after another, bolts copious amounts of smoked salmon sandwiches – she can’t get extra-terrestrial, it seems, without half a side of smoked salmon inside her – then shuts her eyes solemnly, lays both hands portentously on the table and makes it up as she goes along.’

  ‘Well of course she does!’

  ‘And when Mum says eagerly, so what’s old Harry up to now Marj? all she has to do is open one eye, look furtively round the dining room, spot a pile of napkins and say, ooh, well, he’s having ever such a lovely time folding napkins, Liz, and Mum’s absolutely transfixed!’

  ‘But why on earth doesn’t Dad put his foot down?’

  She made a face. ‘Dad? Come on, Rosie.’ She sighed and got some mugs down from the dresser. ‘Actually, I think he gives in to her because he feels she’s been so stressed recently. What with Harry dying and now you in trouble, he probably thinks it’s a harmless little diversion for her, and of course she absolutely went to pieces in the hospital.’

  ‘What hospital?’

  ‘Oh!’ She flushed. ‘Nothing, it was … where’s the Earl Grey kept?’ She gazed around.

  ‘Philly, what hospital?’

  She bit her lip and turned to face me. ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Dad made me promise. He didn’t want you worried with so much on your plate at the moment. He had another angina attack the day after Boxing Day.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘But he’s fine now,’ she said quickly, ‘absolutely as fit as a fiddle. They just kept him in overnight for observation, that’s all.’

  I sat down abruptly on a stool. ‘Oh Philly, everything’s going to pieces suddenly, isn’t it?’ I said hollowly. ‘Everything’s collapsing around me like a house of cards and somehow I feel … it’s all my fault.’ I put my head in my hands.

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course it’s not!’ She seized my hands and pulled them away from my face. ‘You mustn’t think like that, Rosie, everything’s going to be fine! Dad’s going great guns now and we’re going to get you sorted out, I promise. Honestly, Gillian Cartwright’s a marvellous trial lawyer and if anyone –’

  ‘Can get me off, she can. Yes, I know.’ I raised my head. ‘Philly, you think I did it, don’t you?’

  She blanched. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Of course I don’t!’

  I nodded. ‘Yes you do, I can tell. You think because he was fat and alcoholic and unpleasant and wouldn’t give me a divorce I bumped him off.’

  ‘No! No, I –’

  ‘Oh, you don’t blame me because you think that actually you might have done the same thing yourself if you’d had the misfortune to be married to a pig like that, but you definitely think I did it, don’t you?’ I fixed her with my eyes.

  ‘All I think,’ she began in a low voice. She stopped, licked her lips and started again. ‘All I think, Rosie, is that you’ve got to stop sitting around doing nothing. You’ve got to stop waiting for the axe to fall and do something. God, they interviewed you days ago and you’ve told no one, not even your own family, for heaven’s sake! It’s this wretched inertia and hiding yourself away that looks like an admission of guilt, nothing else!’

  I stared over her shoulder into the distance. ‘Alice says I should just keep cool,’ I said slowly. ‘She says –’

  ‘Oh, Alice!’ Philly slapped both hands angrily on the counter in despair. ‘What does she know? She hasn’t got a single brain cell in her alternative little head! All she knows about is stirring her brown rice and making corn dollies out of reconstituted oats. She wouldn’t know prosecuting counsel from mitigating evidence, she couldn’t
fight her way out of a paper bag, let alone a murder inquiry!’

  ‘She’s my best friend,’ I said fiercely, ‘and just because she hasn’t got an Oxbridge degree, it doesn’t mean she’s a simpleton! I don’t know why you’ve always been so down on her, Phil, you’ve never liked her and she’s been marvellous throughout all this, if you must know!’

  ‘Well, I’d have been bloody marvellous if you’d just have let me in, but it’s one thing to be marvellous and do bugger all, and another to wade in at the eleventh hour and try to pull the cat out of the bag, which frankly is what we’ve got to do now!’

  ‘Need any help, girls?’ Miles stuck his head round the door. ‘Shall I take the tray?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake stop calling us “girls” and treating us like bloody fairies! We can actually manage a tray without our arms snapping, you know!’

  It was said with such venom I blinked.

  ‘Sorry.’ Miles withdrew hastily, probably clutching his balls. There was a pause.

  ‘Bit strong, wasn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he just gets on my tits,’ she said angrily, throwing her head back and scratching it energetically. I blinked again. Tits? Since when did Philly even admit to bosoms?

  ‘He thinks he’s so flipping macho, striding around the farm all day with his gun under his arm, popping pheasants and then appearing at the kitchen door rubbing his hands and saying, mmmm, something smells good! I’d like to boff him on the nose. I’m sick of it, Rosie. I will not play the domestic little woman any longer just to satisfy his sexist, chauvinistic pride!’

  I opened my mouth in wonder but Philly had already banged the cups down violently on the tray and stalked off into the other room. Well, I thought as I followed her through, it’s all coming out now, isn’t it?