Just Another Day

by Patricia Fawcett

  ‘Why did you give up your job, Gareth? Was it after the accident?’

  ‘Not too long after. I was OK at first, shocked but all right. But then when news got around, when it was in the papers, everybody was so sympathetic it started to get to me. It was very difficult hearing all about her at the inquest, about what a talented girl she had been, about her hopes and ambitions. It brought her to life for me.’

  ‘There must have been witnesses, people who saw what happened?’

  ‘Oh yes. Her father came over afterwards, shook my hand, told me it wasn’t my fault, but her mother couldn’t look me in the eye.’

  ‘That’s mothers for you,’ she said quietly, thinking of her own.

  ‘It killed my relationship with my girlfriend. Helen …’ he grimaced. ‘She was sympathetic at first but after a while she started to harp on at me to pull myself together, but it wasn’t as simple as that. I couldn’t get that vision out of my head because straight after the accident I stumbled across to the car and saw her slumped and bleeding you see. I think I knew straightaway she wasn’t going to survive.’

  ‘Oh Gareth.’

  He looked up and tried a smile. ‘It wasn’t Helen’s fault but she couldn’t cope with me like that. On top of that it was affecting my work and I didn’t want to do it any more. I quit without discussing it with her and she really blew her top at that and soon after that we split up.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’ Francesca asked, holding her breath.

  ‘Splitting up? Or quitting the job?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I don’t regret either. The job was no longer what it was and it wasn’t working with Helen. We both knew that. It was just a matter of time.’

  ‘I used to work in advertising,’ she said. ‘It was about as stressful as it gets, but at one time I used to thrive on it. It was never boring. I was on the creative team and I’ll never forget the horror of doing a presentation to prospective clients. Awful heart stopping moments just before you go into the room but exhilarating for all that especially if you knew you had a great idea.’

  ‘It sounds as if you enjoyed it?’

  ‘Yes. And I was good at it, Gareth. David was not keen on my continuing to work after we got married and we were moving to Yorkshire anyway so I had to resign but the truth is …’ she hesitated because she was going to criticize her late husband. ‘I had started looking for jobs in that area without telling him. There was no way I was going to go on the ladies who lunch circuit even if that’s what he expected of me.’

  ‘That might have been tricky for you.’

  ‘Yes. It would have been an uphill struggle.’

  There was a moment’s silence, but she did not want to discuss David further and he seemed to sense that.

  ‘Anyway, back to the seminar,’ he said. ‘Guess who I met there?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said.

  ‘Clive Foster.’

  ‘Selina’s Clive?’

  ‘Yes. We knew each other vaguely from way back. We were once in the same company believe it or not, but in different departments so we were never close but I remembered him straightaway. At six-five he makes a big impression, a larger than life character. Not someone you forget in a hurry.’

  ‘How did you make the connection with me?’

  ‘It came out as we chatted and I said I had moved to the West Country. He asked if I knew you.’ He smiled. ‘I think he imagined that just because I knew Devon I might know you. And, as it turned out, coincidence won.’

  ‘I might have mentioned you when I last spoke to Selina,’ Francesca said feeling a little nervous now for she didn’t like the thought of the two men talking about her behind her back. ‘She wanted to know all about the people I’d met down here and she has a habit of getting every last scrap of information out of me. Did you meet her too?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did. Wives are not normally at these dos but they had an informal get-together later at the hotel and yes I met her. In fact when she found out who I was she cornered me and said she wanted a word.’

  ‘What did she want to talk to you about?’ Francesca pushed his tea at him and some biscuits. She felt awkward suddenly for he was awkward, too, and she hoped that Selina had not been sticking her oar in, extolling her virtues and so on.

  Selina should learn to mind her own business.

  Whilst Francesca liked and was attracted to Gareth and there was no point in denying it, she was a long way off a deep commitment. Despite everything, despite the doubts that had started up, she still felt married to David, was still dreaming about him and it was unforgivable of Selina to think that there was an easy fix. A quick shag even with somebody as nice as Gareth was not going to do it for her and next time, if there was a next time, she would be a lot more cautious before diving headlong into a relationship.

  ‘You can tell me,’ she went on quietly as Gareth seemed reluctant to proceed. ‘What has she been saying? Whatever it is you can take it with a pinch of salt.’

  ‘Oh Francesca, I don’t like to do this. I’m not even sure if I should be doing it. I debated on the way over whether I should just forget it and keep you in the dark.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she spluttered, feeling a vice tighten round her chest. ‘Gareth, you drive me mad sometimes. Just spit it out. What on earth is it?’

  ‘OK. She wanted to warn me off. She said some nasty things about you. She called you a conniving bitch if you must know. I don’t believe a word of it, but I have to say with friends like that who needs enemies?’

  ‘She called me what?’ Francesca might have been in space for she truly felt gravity pushing her down into the chair, her body a dead weight. ‘Is this a joke?’ she managed to say at last even though she knew it was not.

  ‘Sorry.’

  The betrayal was so colossal that she could say nothing more. Seeing her face, Gareth rose quickly to his feet, raised her off the chair and gathered her into his arms, holding her close and stroking her hair.

  ‘Hey, it’s not as bad as that. If it’s any consolation she’s just the type of woman I despise. She’s cold and calculating and on the surface bloody successful at what she does, but who knows what goes on behind the scenes. Has it occurred to you that she might be jealous?’

  ‘I can’t think why.’ Francesca sniffed. She was being daft, behaving like a little girl losing her best friend, but why should it be any different just because you were grown-up? ‘She’s got so much. She has Clive and the children and a fantastic career. What more could she want? And, look at me, what have I got? Money, yes, but I don’t have anybody, Gareth. I lost David and sometimes that’s hard to bear.’

  ‘You’ve got me,’ he whispered. ‘I know I can’t compare to your husband, but I’m here whenever you’re ready.’

  She made no attempt to wriggle free. It was a relief to be held tight by a man and just at that moment she savoured it.

  Bit by bit it came out over another cup of tea.

  Francesca wanted to know everything Selina had said and how she had looked as she said it. She even wanted to know what she was wearing at the time as if that had any bearing whatsoever on what had happened.

  The red dress. A gorgeous designer one if Francesca was remembering it. Well, that figured, she supposed, for it fitted Selina like a glove showing off her enviable and, after three children, surprisingly toned shape but somehow the colour was not so good on a blonde and she could see very clearly the pale ethereal face and the brightness of the blue eyes as Gareth tried stumblingly to describe it and her.

  The poor guy was as confused and angry as she was. He barely knew Selina and Clive nor did he know Francesca that well but he was firmly on her side. He hadn’t been taken in by those baby blue eyes and he didn’t know what on earth she was playing at but, whatever it was, he didn’t like it. From what he said she gathered that Selina was livid as the cruel words escaped her lips although fortunately she kept her voice low to avoid a scene.

  ‘Why did she
tell you?’ Francesca asked at last.

  ‘I was around and you weren’t. Who’s to know what her motive was? Maybe she’d had a few too many Martinis,’ he said. ‘Although that’s no excuse.’

  ‘You’d better go, I think,’ she told Gareth, still reeling both from the shock of what he had said and from the way she felt as he held her. She had wanted him to kiss her but he had not or rather he had merely dropped a kiss on top of her head.

  She knew he wanted her at that moment and he was behaving in a very gentlemanly fashion which both pleased and irritated her. She was mixed up emotionally and needed time on her own to think about things. She was missing not so much the sex but the need to be held close by somebody stronger than her, physically stronger anyway. It was a normal reaction, why a toddler reaches up to adults, a need to feel safe and protected.

  It was more than that, though. It felt perilously special when Gareth held her, his stubble a little rough against her cheek, smelling of soap and a nice aftershave. As he held her, she knew that it would have taken so little, emotionally shot as she was at that moment, to drag him upstairs to her bed to offer some comfort.

  But she had resisted and let him go instead.

  Chapter Sixteen

  WHEN HE WAS gone, she arranged the flowers in the jug, placing it on the wide window sill of the sitting-room, standing there and looking out onto rain. Today the rain seemed indecisive, alternating between stair-rods and light drizzle and as she opened the window and leaned out the smell was fresh, the garden soaking up the much needed moisture from days of relentless sun.

  Good.

  The river was low and they needed a deluge like this, several of them, to reduce the threat of a hosepipe ban. Closing the window, she busied herself for a while with routine chores, none of which really needed doing, but it seemed a good way to keep her feelings under control by concentrating on the normal everyday things, things she could do on automatic domestic pilot.

  The problem was the words ‘conniving bitch’ kept spinning around in her head and at the last she relented, made herself a drink and plonked down on the sofa, thinking back to the first time she met Selina as if somehow that might help her to understand why she had turned against her in the way she had.

  Francesca’s life had been simple in the days before David had appeared and become part of her routine, or rut, whichever way you chose to look at it. She had a modest pleasant enough one-bedroom flat on the first floor with cheery blinds at the windows to avoid looking out onto a not very inspiring view of the city. It was in a handy position not far from the tube station and, having climbed onto that difficult first rung of the property ladder she was in no hurry to move on.

  She hoped for something bigger and better one day, but made the best of it. She was paid a reasonable salary and she only had herself to look after. Her social life, however, could only be described as dull and, as she grew older, it became trickier. She was at that funny in-between stage, too old for the after-student life and too young to take up with some of the older ladies in her apartment block who had made friendly overtures inviting her to go to concerts and so on. She regretted turning them down once too often and eventually, not surprisingly, they had stopped asking.

  Francesca did not often join her work colleagues for an evening drink, but the day she met Selina she had been persuaded to even though she worried that she did not quite fit into their little circle; she was older than most of them even if she was not quite old enough to be their mother, but it felt very much like that as she listened, smiling determinedly to show she was not shocked at their sometimes outrageous conversation.

  They were an outgoing lot, smart and savvy – a necessary trait in the world in which they worked – and in a way it was she, quieter and more solitary who was a little at odds with her profession. She might not be as pushy or edgy as they were, but she was the one who came up with the ideas as often as not and that was why they looked up to her and why she earned three times as much as they did. Their chat was trivial, funny and often they talked with fond exasperation about their mothers and fathers, just the sort of chat she could not participate in for fear of bringing the whole cheerful session to a grinding and awkward halt.

  A casually dropped remark; I very nearly killed my only brother and my mother hated me and she’s dead and I haven’t a clue where my father is because he walked out on us when I was ten would cause a horrified silence followed quickly by a wave of sympathy and maybe an understanding at last of why she, Francesca Blackwell, was a nice enough woman in their eyes but of a complicated frame of mind and ever so slightly distant.

  They had become a trifle insistent though, and eventually they wore her down so, in order to stop their innocent questioning, one day out of the blue she invented a nice sounding mum and dad who lived in the country and had two lively spaniel dogs and a big garden. Why the spaniels she had absolutely no idea and it was dangerous to embark on large-scale deception because a casual remark would be remembered. One girl, an animal lover, had immediately brightened when the dogs were mentioned asking what their names were.

  She would never do this again, Francesca vowed, coming up with plausible sounding doggy names and wishing the floor would swallow her up. Thereafter she confined the loving mum and dad and the dogs to obscurity before she expanded on them and it became a total nonsense. In the event it caused a minor problem at David’s funeral somebody asked if her parents were here and for a moment, stunned as she was, she could only shake her head and worry herself sick during the opening hymn that the absence of her fictitious parents might get back to Selina.

  Sitting among her colleagues on the occasions she did have a drink with them, she spent the time listening much more than offering a contribution to the conversation, and was reminded of similar one-sided conversations with Izzy. It seemed she was destined to be the listener, forever the shy one sitting on the sidelines and, as with Izzy of old, some of the tales she was listening to were indeed gloriously indiscreet. Francesca took her job seriously, working her socks off when in the office and, cocooned as she was in her particular slot there, the various romantic escapades that were taking place right in front of her completely passed her by.

  ‘I could swear they’d been at it, there and then, just minutes before,’ one of the girls was saying, finishing off her piece of juicy gossip. ‘You only had to look at her. And him.’

  They took a delighted moment to absorb this and Francesca knew with some regret that she would never be able to look that particular man in the face again without conjuring up a picture of him and his secretary enjoying a private moment in his office. It was incredible and his wife whom she had met once seemed such a nice woman.

  ‘What’s happening in your love life, Francesca?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  She saw the looks the younger girls exchanged, momentarily irritated that they might be under the impression that she had never had sex in her life and thus provoked she felt she ought to enlighten them and for once give as good as she got. If she stuck to facts instead of lying it would be all right.

  ‘I’ve had my moments. I was with somebody for two years, somebody I met at university,’ she said. ‘He was a doctor called Andrew and he wanted us to get married.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  Well, obviously not.

  She saw the questioning look in their eyes and felt compelled to elaborate on it, exaggerate it in fact by making him out to be film-star handsome aware that they placed great store in how people looked. It was the job of course, all about presentation. Did she have a photo? No she did not. Why on earth would she carry a photograph of a man she was long over.

  In fact Andrew had been Mr Ordinary, nothing to write home about so far as looks went and none of these girls would have given him a second glance. There was more to life than that though. He was charming and thoughtful and they had a lot in common and talking about it was making her feel sad.

  ‘Who dumped who?’
one of the girls asked and the others smiled and looked at her kindly and she knew that they thought she was making it all up which was ridiculous because this time it happened to be true.

  ‘It was a mutual decision,’ Francesca said, wishing she hadn’t got started on it now. ‘He wanted us to get married and he became very broody. He started talking about the children we would have one day and I had to be honest with him. I don’t want children. I’ve never wanted children and I shall never have children.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ a voice said and there was Selena being swooped on by one of their party. She was wearing a well cut navy work-suit and a plain cream silk blouse and ordered a large gin and tonic before inserting herself between them at the table, expensive rings glinting, perfectly groomed at that. Within minutes of arriving, her drink in hand, she took charge of the conversation.

  ‘I think you’re very brave,’ she said, beaming at Francesca. ‘You must never have children just because it’s what everybody expects and never be fooled by all those gorgeous babies in those adverts.’

  They laughed at that. That was what they did, subtly directing people towards a particular product with no qualms about how they might achieve that.

  ‘Believe me and I speak from experience, once you have a baby, you are completely—’ she lowered her voice before telling them causing another round of laughter. She exchanged a knowing glance with Francesca, a woman of her own age and for a moment they shared the feeling of being older and infinitely wiser.

  By the end of the little session, Selina had taken Francesca under her wing telling her that she knew this marvellous man and would she like her to arrange an introduction? He didn’t want children either so there would be no problems with that.

  ‘No, absolutely not.’ Francesca said firmly, astonished at the audacity of the woman whom she had only just met. Selina soothed her by saying that it was nothing like a blind date, that it would not be as obvious as that and that it was entirely up to Francesca how it progressed after the introduction.