by Jane Corry
Or, as the police put it, it could have been ‘one more contributing factor to a tragic accident’. Of course, if I hadn’t followed Matthew down to the platform and argued over that package, he might not have died. Or maybe he would have fallen in front of a car instead, thanks to the Valium. Either way, it helps to know it wasn’t all my fault.
‘I’m so sorry you went through all that, Mum,’ Stuart says to me when Poppy is out and the girls are in bed. ‘You should never have spent nearly half a year in prison for a crime you didn’t commit.’
‘It was the right thing to do,’ I say to him. ‘Don’t forget that I am responsible for a death, even if I wasn’t totally to blame for Matthew’s.’
‘No!’ The anger in my son’s voice takes me by surprise. ‘You’ve been poisoned by this needless guilt over your old friend which has tormented you all these years. You are entitled to happiness, Mum. You’re a good woman. You just made a mistake.’
I’d hoped he would say this.
‘If you’re right,’ I say quietly, ‘why aren’t you more understanding towards your wife? After all, she made a mistake too.’
45
Poppy
It’s three months since Betty was released. She’s been having therapy and seems less frenetic than she was before any of this happened. ‘Brigid thinks I had to keep doing one hobby after another to try and block out Jane’s voice,’ she told me. ‘The strange thing is that I haven’t heard her for ages now.’
Melissa has, amazingly, passed her exams and is now at university. The house is so strange without her. She replies to my texts with one-word answers.
How are you doing?
Fine.
What’s your accommodation like?
OK.
And so on.
She replies to my suggestions that I visit her for the day with equal brevity:
No.
Daisy seems just as distant on the surface, but I’ve overheard her talking to Coco, who insists on sleeping at the foot of her bed (I don’t have the heart to say no).
‘Remember that man who kidnapped you?’ I overheard her saying one evening when her door was ajar and I was on my way up to the bathroom. ‘He was Mummy’s boyfriend when she was younger. Then she started seeing him again. It’s partly why Gran went to prison but I don’t really understand the whole story. It’s complicated.’
Her words broke my heart. In fact, they made me decide to talk to Sally about increasing her hours so I can spend a bit more time on family life. I’m still in the office during the day when Daisy’s at school but I’ve been trying not to be at my desk every evening. I make a huge effort to ignore emails and, instead, to curl up on the sofa with my youngest daughter, watching some inane teenage programme, hoping that one day she might want to talk to me and not just the dog about ‘the whole story’.
Stuart and I are politely distant. When I returned to our bedroom after Betty’s release, he wanted to sleep on the floor but I’d persuaded him to stay in our bed. He keeps rigidly to his side, as far from me as possible.
And then there’s work. After the trial, as I said, the agency enjoyed a surge of interest generated mainly by curiosity. But then one of our regular clients appointed a new CEO who wasn’t so keen on our notoriety. Work we were relying on for cash flow was cancelled. Other companies followed suit. Sally and I both knew why. There’s a lot of sheep-like behaviour and uncertainty in this business. People love you to bits one minute and turn tail on you the next. And even though I hadn’t done anything wrong in the eyes of the law, the Poppy Page Agency was associated with that court case. When Betty was released, the headlines started all over again. It didn’t matter that she was exonerated. The fact was that the business was once more mentioned in connection with a man’s murder.
It’s time for me to come clean.
I ask Sally round. We usually liaise through emails and telephone calls with occasional meetings. ‘This feels very formal,’ she says, sitting opposite me at my desk.
I stare out through the window at the garden. The rooftops. Then I force myself to look at Sally’s open, trusting face. ‘The truth is,’ I say, ‘that on the day that Matthew died, I went into the bank to beg for an emergency loan of fifty thousand pounds in cash against the agency.’
Her face blanches. ‘Fifty thousand pounds?’ she repeats. ‘But isn’t that the amount you gave to Matthew Gordon? The money that was lost in the accident?’
‘Not all of it,’ I say. ‘We got about eighteen thousand back.’
‘I thought that was your own money,’ she splutters. ‘That’s what you said in court.’
‘I did,’ I admit. ‘And in a way, it was true. The bank lent it to me on the strength of the agency’s record. I didn’t think we were going to lose business. And now they want their money back.’ I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘So the only way I can find the remainder is to sell the agency.’
I reach out to her. ‘I’m so sorry, Sally. I can’t afford to keep you on any more.’
She bites her lip. I hate myself. I’ve already let down my family. And now I’ve let down a woman who was not just the closest I had to a best friend but who also relied on me for work.
‘I see,’ she says. ‘Have you got a buyer?’
‘Not yet.’
‘But why would anyone want to buy it?’ she asks. ‘Won’t they just associate it with what’s happened?’
‘I was hoping to get something for goodwill,’ I say weakly.
Sally gets up. ‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen.’
She’s right. I’m kidding myself.
I wait a few more weeks but there’s still no interest. So now I’m going to have to do something I never wanted to do. I tell myself that it doesn’t compare with Matthew’s death, which is in my head constantly. But it’s still going to be a life-changer.
Of course, Stuart had asked after the trial where the money I’d given Matthew had come from. I’d explained I had borrowed it against the agency and that ‘I’d be able to pay it back before long’. Now it’s time to be open with my husband, just as I was with Sally.
I wait until Daisy is in bed and Betty is in her room. We’re sitting in separate chairs in the sitting room. Facing each other. Then I explain my financial situation. I twist my hands. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Stuart stands up, just as Sally had done earlier. He’s going to walk away from me too. I don’t blame either of them.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Use our savings to pay the bank off.’
I stare at him. ‘Why?’
‘Because what else can I do? You’ll be declared bankrupt if I don’t. I can’t allow the girls or my mother to suffer any more grief.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. I reach out a hand to touch his shoulder but he moves away.
‘I’m thinking of closing the agency anyway,’ I say. ‘My name has tainted it.’
He seems surprised. ‘Surely people will forget.’
‘Really?’ I give him a sad smile. ‘You can’t. So why should they?’
46
Betty
Slowly, very slowly, we are all learning to put our lives back together. I have to admit that there were times when I wasn’t sure this would happen. We’ve had our moments. I had to send several messages to Melissa, begging her to change her mind when she said she wasn’t coming back for the Christmas holidays. My oldest granddaughter can express herself better in texts than on the phone, when she just clams up. She never used to be like that. I suspect she’s too upset to speak.
Why should I come back, after what Mum did?
she types.
Because she’s sorry. We all make mistakes.
Not adults.
Especially adults.
I can see from the dots that she’s writing furiously.
But they’re meant to know better.
No one is perfect and that includes parents. Your mum might be closing the agency and she’s really upset about it. Please come back. It would me
an a lot to her.
I hold my breath. The reply takes a few minutes. But then it comes.
OK.
Did I do the right thing or not? Perhaps an absent Melissa might be better than a sullen, hurt one who refuses to let her mother collect her from the station. But her reply, when I made the suggestion, is sharp and to the point.
Just Dad.
When she’s home, she spends most of her time at Jonnie’s house. ‘Young love,’ I say to Poppy. ‘There’s nothing like it.’ It’s true. There isn’t. It’s only when you get older that you realize how special it was.
I can’t pretend that Christmas was easy. ‘Very nice,’ said Stuart coolly when he opened Poppy’s present, a navy-blue fountain pen. I happen to know she’d spent a long time choosing it.
‘Thanks for the voucher,’ she said to him in response.
He shrugged. ‘I thought you could get what you wanted.’
In other words, he couldn’t be bothered to choose something more personal. Or maybe I’m being old-fashioned. After all, it’s what the girls always want.
‘Hope you like this, Gran,’ says Daisy shyly. ‘We saved up to buy it, didn’t we, Melissa? The lady in Selfridges said it was a “classic”.’
‘How lovely of you!’ I begin unwrapping the pretty silver paper with the twirly bow. Then I stop. A lump sticks in my throat. It’s perfume. Not just that. The floral fragrance is very like the one that Jane used to wear: the same one that haunted my nightmares afterwards. I can still picture the bottle that I would ‘borrow’ from her dressing table to smell nice for Gary …
Tears fill my eyes.
‘What’s wrong, Gran?’ asks Melissa.
Everyone is looking at me. But I am waiting. Jane hasn’t spoken to me for months now. Surely she’ll have something to say about this? A caustic comment like ‘I don’t know how you can even think of wearing it!’
But no. There’s nothing. Maybe she really has well and truly gone.
‘I’m just overwhelmed,’ I say, holding both girls to me. ‘Thank you.’
Of course, I can’t spray it on me. It would bring back too many sad memories. But I will keep the pretty bottle on my dressing table because my grandchildren – my wonderful girls – gave it to me as a sign of love. The kind that can’t ever be broken.
The rest of the day is pretty flat, to be honest. The girls watch a film and Stuart says he has some ‘emails to catch up on’.
‘At Christmas?’ I question.
He shrugs. ‘It’s for research.’
Boxing Day is completely different, thanks to Coco. ‘Come on,’ says Daisy who doesn’t seem to blame her mother as much as her sister. ‘Let’s take the dog out for a family walk.’
‘Is Mum coming too?’ asks Melissa sharply.
‘Why wouldn’t she?’ says Stuart, who’s just finished cooking bacon and eggs for everyone.
I watch Poppy flash a look of gratitude towards him. But my boy looks away.
We go to the park. Stuart is striding on ahead now on the crisp, icy grass with the girls and Coco. Poppy falls back and I do the same so we can walk side by side.
‘You know,’ I say, plunging my hands into my coat pockets to keep them warm. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about your husband. I wanted him to tell you himself but he won’t.’
Her eyes widen. I suddenly realize she’s scared. I wonder if she’s going to ask me the question about him and Janine, which I’ve been wondering about myself. But she doesn’t. So I continue.
‘Stuart knew about your affair with Matthew long before the court case.’
‘What?’ Poppy gasps, running her fingers through that lovely auburn hair in the way she does when she’s surprised or nervous. ‘How? Who told him?’
‘He isn’t stupid,’ I say, ignoring the last question. ‘He wasn’t fooled when you denied remembering Matthew from drama school. So he confided in me. He thought you might still have feelings for him.’
Then I stop briefly because this is the tricky bit. ‘I agreed. I could tell something was up. It’s why I began to keep tabs on you. But, like I said in court, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this. Then one day when you went down to see your dad, Stuart rang to get hold of you. You’d just left. But he got talking to your father, who told him how an “old boyfriend” of yours had recently visited him.’
Poppy gasps. ‘No!’
I take her hands. She’s wearing the red woolly mittens I knitted for her.
‘Your poor husband was beside himself. “Do you think I’m imagining this, Mum?” he asked. I’d seen the picture he was blackmailing you with by then. I knew you’d slept together, although I couldn’t tell my son that. I loved you too much. But I also had to be honest. “No,” I said, “I don’t think you are imagining it.”
‘“Then I’m going to punch his bloody lights out,” said my boy.
‘“Don’t do that,” I told him. “That’s not going to help anyone. Just be calm. Let it run its course. Stay put and it will be fine in the end.”’
Poppy was clutching my arm as I spoke. Her face was white. ‘If he’d really cared, he’d have said something to me,’ she said.
‘No. It’s exactly because he did care that he kept quiet. He was scared you might leave him. It’s why I suggested you went down to the caravan.’
Poppy looks as though she’s going to be sick. ‘He asked me some questions about Matthew there.’
‘That’s because he was trying to give you a chance to tell him.’
Poppy looks awkward. ‘Then he made love to me.’
‘Maybe he wanted to see if you’d say no. Or perhaps he was trying to show who was boss.’ I think back to Jock’s behaviour in bed, even though I don’t tell her this.
Poppy is puce red. Although we’re close, we’ve never talked about sex openly like this before. ‘So why is he showing his hurt now but not before it came out in the open?’
‘Exactly because of that. After your confessions in court, he couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen. But it will work out. I know it will. I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you’re not noticing. He loves you.’
Poppy doesn’t say anything. Silently I pray that I’m right and that this Janine hasn’t developed into something more than a research partner.
‘Keep going,’ I say. ‘It’s a new beginning. Look how Melissa is coming round. It will be all right.’
Poppy gives me a sad smile. ‘I hope so.’
‘Mum!’ calls out Daisy. ‘Come and throw the ball with us to Coco.’
She walks ahead. It gives me time to think. It’s a new beginning, I had said to Poppy. And it’s true. What has gone, has gone. You can’t look back.
My fingers close around the small Christmas card in my coat pocket. I’d been holding it close to me ever since it had arrived via the lawyer.
Dear Betty, I read about you in the newspapers. The handwriting was old-fashioned and slightly smudged. People rarely use real ink any more. I hope you are well. I want you to know that I still think of you.
Gary had put his phone number at the bottom. But I’m not going to ring it. I’m not even going to keep the card. When Christmas is over, I will tear it into little pieces. Yet I can’t quite bring myself to do that right now because it gives me a tiny bit of comfort. It’s proof that someone once really did love me.
‘Watch out!’ calls Daisy.
A small rubber ball comes flying out of nowhere and catches Poppy on the face.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’
It’s Melissa, running up. ‘I’m sorry. I meant to send it in the other direction.’
‘It’s all right,’ she says. The beginnings of a big bruise are already forming on her right cheek. But it doesn’t matter. Melissa has her hand on her mother’s arm. Stuart is running up too.
‘Are you sure?’ he says. There’s tenderness in his voice.
‘I think so,’ says Poppy. She seems a little dazed.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ says Meliss
a.
‘And I didn’t mean to hurt you either,’ says Poppy slowly. ‘None of you.’
There’s silence for a minute as we all look at each other. Then my youngest granddaughter breaks it.
‘Group hug,’ demands Daisy.
Somehow, we’re all holding each other. Tightly. Determined not to let go.
But just as I tell myself it’s going to be all right, Poppy’s mobile rings. She breaks away to look at her phone.
And I watch her face go pale as she walks away to take the call.
47
Poppy
Reality kicks back in as I see the name of the caller. ‘What’s wrong?’ Betty asks when I hang up and return to where they are standing. ‘Is it your dad?’
I shake my head. ‘No. It’s Sally.’
Even Stuart looks up. So do the girls. They’d all liked my happy, chirpy assistant on the few occasions they’d met her.
‘She wants to buy the agency off me using her divorce settlement,’ I said. ‘She can’t give me more than five thousand pounds for the client base but she’d like to employ me as an assistant. It won’t be my agency any more, of course. But it means I’ll be back in the business.’
‘You need that,’ said Betty quickly. ‘Doesn’t she, Stuart?’
She shoots him a meaningful look and I wonder if they’ve been having words about me. Sometimes I think that the only person who has any influence on my husband is his mother.
‘It will be better than you hanging around the house, waiting for the phone to ring,’ he said.
