‘It’s just a little fun,’ she said.
And so, egged on by the others, deciding that her life was a little short on adventure, she accepted the invitation to join the lady at some fancy law society dinner.
‘It’s impossible to be over-dressed on these occasions,’ Selina warned her. ‘The wives keep dragging out these ball-gowns year after year so do go for something extravagant. Something frilly and low cut.’
It was a good excuse for a new frock and she chose an expensive chocolate brown strapless number nipped in at the waist with a full swishy skirt and discreet jewellery. As Selina’s guest, her husband being unavailable, she felt overcome by a girlish shyness as she followed Selina who, dressed in a burnt orange off-the-shoulder dress with a huge bow, powered ahead of her into the room.
‘Now where the hell has he got to?’ Selina said when she caught up. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t be the least obvious. He’s a darling man and he needs a woman.’
‘Does he know that?’ Francesca asked with a smile.
‘He’s been on the look-out for ages, but he can’t find his Miss Right, bless him. Oh, did I mention that he’s quite a bit older than us. He’s a very young sixty something,’ she said, smiling as she caught Francesca’s consternation.
Oh dear God. She very nearly beat a hasty retreat there and then, would have but Selina was holding onto her arm as if she was one of her children trying to wriggle free. The grip was firm but friendly and, short of making a scene, she had no option but to go through with it.
So, she recalled, it was all down to Selina’s pushiness that she had met David in the first place but now she seemed to be saying that Francesca had married him for his money and the prestige which was quite wrong although, she could not deny that, following his death, she had, to put it crudely, copped the lot.
According to Gareth, Selina had been expecting David’s paintings to go to her and was furious that Francesca had sold them. But why hadn’t she said as much? And David had certainly never said as much either but if she was going to kick up such a fuss she could have had the damned things. Francesca remembered that she had wanted to know which of David’s two favourite charities would be benefiting from the sale of the paintings and Francesca had told her. Now it seemed that Selina, using her many connections, had had the gall to check up on that, discovering no doubt that neither of them had in fact received substantial donations from her, not yet.
She was livid both at Selina and whoever at the charity had divulged the information but it was done now and there was little point in pursuing that further.
Francesca did not have to explain herself. She was not depriving his charities in any way and would make sure that they did each receive a large sum. Just now, with much juggling of funds involved, she had pinpointed what she had earned from the sale of the paintings to her own good cause, and if David was here, he would understand.
The anger abated and in its place there were tears. How dare Selina, sitting in her own smug, snug little world, make judgements about her and her motives when really she knew nothing about her?
She wished now she had made an effort to get in touch with Izzy. There was no need to put on an act with Izzy because she understood what was what. She should have told her that David had died because, notwithstanding Gareth’s sturdy offering she also needed a womanly shoulder to cry on.
They alone, she and Izzy, shared a secret that they had kept from her mother for years.
They alone knew what had really happened that day.
As a result of Francesca’s incompetence, her brother James was permanently brain damaged.
And had been for the last twenty-six years.
Chapter Seventeen
AFTER AN UNCOMFORTABLE night full of disturbed dreams, her first thought next day was to ring Selina and have it out with her.
But even as she lifted the receiver and dialled her home number it occurred that Selina would be in the office by now with her secretary fielding her calls so she hung up. It had not been the best of ideas anyway because it was impossible to have a good old head to head argument on the telephone and one or other of them would only end up slamming down the receiver or worse in tears. The alternative was a terse text message but that seemed silly and inappropriate and she had too much to say anyway.
Should she contact Clive and ask him what the hell his wife was playing at? He was an affable steady guy and she felt she could talk to him for he might be able to throw some light on it although the last thing she wanted was to throw a spoke in the wheel of his apparently blissfully happy marriage to Selina. Contacting him would be too sneaky a thing to do and she discounted that almost as soon as she thought it.
David would be shocked and appalled.
He had liked Selina even though in private he was often scathing about her and about the way she lived her life.
She recalled those cheery dinner parties in the kitchen at Selina’s where David appeared to relax, happy for Selina to tease him and giving as good as he got. He liked Selina because she was in no way in awe of him and he accepted her gentle teasing not to mention a little flirting in good part. He liked Clive, too, so far as she knew although they were a little far removed in age to be drinking buddies.
Feeling upset by the accusation Selina had thrown at her was giving her the excuse for self-pitying thoughts and she was not going to give Selina the satisfaction of letting any of this bother her.
On second thoughts, she would sit tight.
She was not going to make any move she might regret and it would be up to Selina whether or not she did. Having decided that, she felt a bit better and because sitting cooped up in the house was doing her no good at all she went out.
It was still cloudy and spitting with rain as she hastened down the path, clicking open the gate and looking back at the house she knew so well and, as she always did, she half expected to see her mother standing there in the porch, smiling and waving her off, holding onto James’s hand. She had been jealous of the time the two of them spent together when she was at school, doing things she was excluded from and, although she did try to play with him when he was little, he pushed her aside as often as not. He liked rough and tumble games, not interested in jigsaws and story books. Sometimes she thought it would all have been so different if he had been a girl; a little sister was something she could have coped with so much better.
Her mother might be gone, but her presence lingered in the house, in odd corners, and vulnerable as she was just now, Francesca imagined a shadow flitted around sometimes at the extreme edge of her peripheral vision – gone of course the minute she turned to confront it. Sometimes too she would snatch a sniff of perfume in the room that had been her parents’ bedroom, instantly recognisable as the one used by her mother.
More than anything, after the accident, she had craved forgiveness but her mother had failed to provide it. More than anything, she had wanted her mother to scoop her up in her arms and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but that had never happened.
She and Izzy did not know on the day that James nearly drowned that a walker was heading their way, coming down the steep rocky path that led from the moor. He did not witness exactly what happened, hearing the commotion and setting himself the task of getting down the tricky terrain in one piece. He was not a young man, but as soon as he got there, having ascertained that Izzy knew what she was doing in administering first aid, he raced to the house by the river to raise the alarm.
Things escalated then and by the time he arrived back with the lady of the house in tow, an ambulance was already on its way and James was breathing again thanks to Izzy’s determined efforts. Standing uselessly by her side, Francesca had watched Izzy coming into her own, no longer the flirty carefree person she liked to present to the world but a competent unflappable girl, somebody who knew exactly what she was doing. With her hair plastered to her face and her clothes clinging damply to her, rivulets of water streaming down her face, she ignored all thoughts of
herself, her concentration centred on what her hands were doing to his limp little body.
‘For heaven’s sake, Izzy.’ She heard herself speak as the seconds ticked by and there was no response. After what seemed forever, she almost said ‘he’s dead, leave it’, but even as she struggled to say the words he moved.
James breathed again thanks to Izzy, coughing and spluttering and bringing up a good lungful of water and gunge, but since then he had not really come round, not properly, and his general floppiness and state of stupor was enough to cause panic.
Shocked and confused, all Francesca could think about as the lady of the house dried her and Izzy off was that moment when she opened her eyes, raised her body up to rest on her elbows and saw him standing there balanced on the parapet. Wrapped, still shivering, in a blanket, she could remember that the shock of it had rendered her completely helpless, immobile and speechless, and, as if in a nightmare, she could not do anything, say anything, eyes fixed on him as he did his wobbly tightrope walk, until beside her Izzy stirred, sat up abruptly and saw what was happening and, without a second’s grace immediately screamed at him.
‘Get down this minute, you silly little sod.’
She shouldn’t have done that.
The act of half turning was enough to upset his balance and with a yell he slipped and fell then in the worst possible position almost at the centre of the bridge. The splash was restrained with no spluttering and waving of arms, no re-emerging and then going under again. The water, at its darkest, deepest and most sinister, simply closed over him, the river shelving deeply in the centre. He could probably have made an attempt to swim but he was wearing his clothes and sandals and that made it so different from the splashing about he enjoyed in the pale chlorinated blue of the leisure pool.
‘Bloody hell, Francesca, do something,’ Izzy said, already whipping off her skirt to reveal her knickers, kicking off her shoes, preparing to go in even though it was Francesca who was by far the stronger swimmer. She, however, was rooted to the spot.
With no thought for her own safety, Izzy was in the water in a flash, wading in until the bottom slipped away from her and then swimming with very ungainly splashy strokes, reaching the spot somehow where James had last been seen. Taking a deep breath, she then submerged herself.
‘Oh God, oh God …’ Francesca was wailing now, fearing that, unless she did something they might both drown. Izzy popped up, gasping for air, before going down again and then, galvanised into action at last, Francesca set off, slip-sliding as her feet moved against the muddy bottom of the shallows, catching hold of James just as Izzy surfaced with him, grabbing him off her and leaving Izzy to make her own ungainly way back to the river’s edge.
‘You were a fat lot of use,’ Izzy said as she struggled out, her blouse sticking to her body, slime and mud coating her bottom half. ‘Did you want the little beggar to drown? Give him to me.’ Feet squelching in the mud, she pushed Francesca aside then and started the business of helping the limp little body that was James. She had done a resuscitation course and was finally given the opportunity of putting it into practice.
There followed a fiasco of immense proportions with the ambulance getting stuck in the lane but the crew were brilliant when they did arrive and by the time they got to the hospital, Francesca was breathing a sigh of relief, confident that, once the doctors and nurses got their hands on him, all would be well.
But it was not as simple as that.
James had been under water a while and whilst some children would probably recover more or less unharmed after suffering short term submersion – a near drowning – some would die and some would be left with moderate neurological problems from which they might be expected to get better. All this was very positive but there was a slim chance it could result in more permanent brain damage if, during the submersion, James had picked up waterborne bacteria for instance.
They found out about all that later. They had technical terms for it and explanations but it made no difference. Call it what you will, when you got down to it, James was just one of the unlucky ones.
‘She’ll kill me,’ Francesca said as they waited at the hospital for her mother to arrive, unaware at that time of course of the extent of the damage. ‘It’s all my fault. I promised her I wouldn’t go near the river. If he dies, she’ll kill me.’
‘He’s not going to die,’ Izzy said calmly, putting her arm round her.
‘Look at you. Your blouse is ruined.’
‘It’s just a cheap thing from Dorothy Perkins,’ Izzy said, catching her glance. ‘What does it matter?’
‘I know. I’m being daft.’
‘Don’t you dare go hysterical on me,’ Izzy told her, watching her closely. ‘It’s going to be all right. He started breathing again, didn’t he? And it is not your fault. It’s his for being so stupid. I distinctly remember you telling him not to climb onto the bridge.’
Francesca gave her a look. Nice try, Izzy, but she had said no such thing.
‘We can’t blame him,’ she said. ‘He’s just a little boy. I can swim better than you. If I’d dived in straightaway I would have got him out sooner.’
‘Well, you didn’t, did you and we can do sod all about that now. I’m trying to help you here, Francesca. I’ll say it was my idea to go down to the river so that I could have a smoke.’
‘No.’ Francesca drew a sharp breath. ‘Don’t mention smoking. She doesn’t know I smoke.’
‘It’s just an excuse,’ Izzy said, voice low. ‘We have to get the story straight. I’ll say it was all my idea if it helps get you off the hook. We won’t tell her you froze. You couldn’t help it. I’ve heard about that happening to people. People stuck on a mountain ledge who suddenly can’t move a muscle. That’s what happened to you.’
Froze? Yes that was exactly what had happened, but not before the awful thought had flashed through her head that, if James was gone, it could all go back to the way it had been before he arrived. Her mother might have some time for her again. Had that very thought stopped her from doing anything? She could not bear to think of it now for, if it had, then that very nearly made her a murderer or she would have been if he had drowned.
‘Best not tell your mum what happened,’ Izzy said. ‘We’ll say it was you who dived in and got him out. That sounds better. It was you who dived in and untied him …’
‘Untied him?’
‘Even though it was murky, I saw him straightaway but he was tangled up in weeds,’ Izzy told her with a shudder. ‘I’ve no idea what they were but they were wrapped round him and he had struggled and made it worse. Look …’ she showed her hands which had scratches on them. ‘I tell you I thought I wasn’t going to make it. Another minute and I would have had to come up without him. I was bursting to breathe.’
‘Thanks, Izzy. You were fantastic.’
‘Not really. We couldn’t just stand around and let him drown, could we?’
‘I’m his sister not you,’ Francesca said sharply. ‘If I’d jumped in before you, I would have got him out quicker than you, wouldn’t I? You can’t even swim properly. I’d have got there in half the time it took you,’ she finished bitterly, knowing she was not making sense, knowing that it was terrible of her to take it out on Izzy.
‘You’ve already said all that so shut up now. Just look at us. Look at my hair.’ She pulled at it, frizzing up as it was. ‘My mum’s going to go spare. That was a new blouse, cheap or not.’
‘I’ll buy you another.’
‘No you won’t. Sorry.’ Izzy sighed, putting an arm round her. ‘It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we got him out and got him breathing again.’
‘She’s here.’ Francesca stiffened in Izzy’s arms.
Izzy looked up as Francesca’s mother walking very quickly headed down the corridor, hair awry, her face dreadful to behold. ‘Let me do the talking. You’ll only put your foot in it.’
And so it was Izzy who came up with the lie and she did nothing to stop it.
Whether or not her mother believed her was another matter, but it was Izzy who covered for her, Izzy who took the blame. It had been Izzy’s idea to go down to the river so that she could indulge in a spot of smoking and James had climbed onto the parapet even though Francesca had told him not to.
Worse, she went on to say how it was Francesca who had jumped in without a moment’s hesitation and pulled him out. Even worse, the local paper got wind of it and published a little article where they hailed her as a heroine, “Sister saves little brother”.
Her mother took it all in, listening to Izzy, but looking only at Francesca and it was soon after that, when they understood the extent of the harm that had come to him that the icy veil came down between them, a veil that was never ever lifted.
When they were able to bring him home, just a shadow of the James that once was, she stood helplessly by as her mother gently lifted him from his wheelchair and settled him in the chair in the sitting-room, lifting up his legs for him and putting them on the footstool, tucking a blanket round him, stroking his face and fussing him as if he were a baby again.
Her eyes met Francesca’s as she stood up and it was like looking at a stranger, a stranger who despised her.
‘Are you satisfied now, madam?’ she said softly. ‘Just look what you’ve done.’
Thinking about James and her mother was a mistake and, to make her feel better, Francesca popped into her favourite café for a coffee and a slice of apple cake with a dab of clotted cream. She picked up a newspaper from the rack and found herself a corner table where she could watch the comings and goings. It was mid afternoon and lunch was over so it was fairly quiet. Opening up the paper, Francesca almost hid behind it, not wanting conversation today.
Conniving bitch. The words echoed in her head. What had happened to make Selina hate her so?
Just Another Day Page 15
