After Ever After (46 page)

‘How are you, my dear?’ Mr Crawley stops and looks at me so tenderly that I can feel the tears threatening instantly behind my eyes.

‘Am I okay? Yep, yep, fine,’ I say stiffly. ‘Did Caroline tell you anything else?’ I challenge him.

‘She told me everything else …’ Mr Crawley begins.

‘Oh great!’ I fling my hands out in exasperation. ‘That’s fantastic. The whole of bloody Berkhamsted is going to know about it by tomorrow, aren’t they?’

Mr Crawley shakes his head, catches my angry hands, and holds them tight before nodding to the sitting room.

‘Let’s sit down. Now, Caroline won’t tell anyone else. She told me because she knows that you and I are friends, and because, well, she and I are … well, we have an arrangement.’ He smiles a little shyly.

‘You and the she-Hitler are an item?’ I exclaim, temporarily diverted.

‘Well, close friends at least. We choose to keep it under our hats, though, if you don’t mind. It’s a casual thing, not love’s middle-aged dream.’

I shrug and muse that I wouldn’t be surprised right now if Colin turned up on the doorstep to tell me he’d been turned straight by Barbara in the prop cupboard.

‘So, how are you? Really?’ Mr Crawley asks me again.

‘Hysterical and not drunk, unfortunately,’ I say. ‘And oddly all right. You sort of expect the sky to fall in, don’t you, when something disastrous happens, but it hasn’t and I’m still breathing and talking.’ I consider the miracle momentarily before continuing. ‘Fergus’s mum called me just before you came and, well, I think she’s sort of on my side. I mean, she’s not totally against me and she’s suggested I come round tomorrow to talk to him and to try and explain …’ I trail off as I wonder what on earth I will be able to say to change the full force of fate that has landed on me like a ton of cosmic bricks over the last week. ‘It will probably be a futile exercise, but it’s a chink of light to keeping me going,’ I tell him with an improbable smile.

‘Good. And now what are you going to do about Gareth?’ Mr Crawley looks awkward. ‘Caroline says you won’t call the police?’

I shake my head. ‘I know I should, I know I have a responsibility, but I just can’t go to the police because when you say it out loud it sounds like nothing happened! It’s only here.’ I tap the side of my head. ‘It’s only in here where it’s terrible and dreadful. They’ll listen to what I have to say, and that’ll be that. Just like everyone else, they’ll think it’s an affair that went wrong and that I’m making it all up to try and get my husband back.’ Even I think that sometimes, I think bitterly to myself. ‘I’d like to be certain that I was blameless, but I can’t.’

Mr Crawley puts an arm around my shoulder and I lay my head gratefully on his.

‘I understand. Don’t worry about Gareth,’ he says as if he’s arranging a fishing trip. ‘I’ll make sure he won’t hurt you or anyone again.’

I sit up and look up him. ‘Please don’t tell me you know the Mafia too?’ I plead with him.

He laughs and squeezes my shoulder reassuringly.

‘I don’t know the Mafia,’ he says. ‘But I do know how to get rid of a rat.’

Camille rushes into the room like a tropical hurricane, hot and furious.

‘Oh baby!’ she squeezes me tight, her warm skin branding me. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Cam, it’s okay, it’s okay,’ I say, disentangling myself from her long arms. ‘I’m okay, really I am.’

Clearly disbelieving me, Camille grips my face between her hands and tips my head back, examining me like I’m a horse or something and she needs to see my teeth.

‘Christ, you look like shit.’ Her diagnosis is typically blunt. ‘I’m so sorry I was late but just as I was about to leave … oh fuck it.’ She clearly thinks better of offering up one of her stock excuses. ‘I’m late because I am the sort of person who can never get their arse into gear. It’s not my fault. It’s genes. Or sheer ineptitude, one or the other.’ She delves into her Valentino bag and brings out a half-bottle of brandy. ‘I bought this because I thought you probably wouldn’t be able to sleep very well.’ She glances at Dora as she returns from putting Ella to bed. ‘So I thought, Dors, that to make it fair I wouldn’t have any either, and we’d just ply her with it until she’s blotto and then I’ll hide it or something, okay? And because Dora told me what happened and because I’m a coward and I don’t know what to say to you, I thought it’d be easier to get you drunk. I’m sorry.’

I shrug and smile. ‘Fair enough,’ I say.

Camille makes us mugs of hot chocolate and I only have to smell mine to know that it is at least 31 per cent proof. The first sip burns my mouth and throat, but after the third or fourth sip I feel pleasantly numb and distant. Dora and Camille chatter on about anything they can think of that isn’t about me, and the requisite number of hours before bedtime is allowed slowly – almost painlessly – to pass.

‘This is sort of like old times, isn’t it?’ Camille says suddenly, no doubt trying to think of one of my nan’s silver linings. ‘I mean, it’s a long time since we’ve sat around gossiping like this, and I know we’ve never actually lived together, unless you count that holiday cottage in Blackpool, but it sort of feels like we did, doesn’t it?’

Dora eyes the bottom of her mug as if she hopes some brandy might lurk there after all.

There’s a long and difficult pause.

‘It sort of feels like a Harold Pinter play,’ Dora says at last. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty mate, but I’m running out of inane and distracting things to say. Shocking, I know.’

I force my mouth to bend into a smile.

‘God, poor old Dora, comes down here to be looked after and ends up saddled with Calamity Kitty.’ I hold out a limp hand to Dora. ‘I’m sorry, mate, I haven’t forgotten that scumbag in your flat, you know. When I’m sorted I’ll go up there and beat him up for you.’

‘Oh, no need!’ Camille says as if she’s suddenly remembered something. ‘Boyfriend went round there yesterday before he had to fly back. Got him out, had the locks changed. Sorted.’ She smiles at Dora. ‘Sorry, I totally forgot, what with all this.’ She gestures broadly and begins to look in her bag again. ‘There’s a set of keys in here …’

‘I love your boyfriend,’ I say with a slight slur. ‘Why did he have to fly back yesterday? Why couldn’t he stay and come down here and change my locks?’

Camille holds out a bunch of keys to Dora.

‘Well, because you don’t need your locks changing and because he flies the plane,’ she says with a smile, although even I can see that her smile hides the fact that she misses him terribly when he’s not here.

‘Is it the absence thing, do you think?’ I ask her out of the blue. She looks at me quizzically. ‘I mean, that makes you so happy after so long. You’ve been going out for longer than some people are married.’ I find that during the course of that sentence I slip off the edge of the armchair and slide seamlessly to the floor. ‘Mentioning no names, of course,’ I finish, wondering if Fergus and I really will be divorced before Ella is one.

‘Well, I suppose the fact that we don’t see other much keeps it fresh, for sure …’ Camille looks a little wary about discussing her relationship, probably because she’s sensitive about upsetting me, but I find that I really want to know how she’s done it.

‘You know, I don’t like to analyse it too much. If I go on about how prefect he is and how much I love him, I’ll tempt fate and, God only knows, I’ve tempted it far more than I should have already. We’ve just been good together. We knew what we wanted from the start and it works,’ she finishes lightly, looking around the room as if casting about for a new subject.

Dora runs a finger around her empty chocolate mug and sucks it clean.

‘Well, we should do something,’ she says, ‘apart from sitting around here getting all maudlin and drunk. We should make a plan of action to get Fergus back for Kitty. Yes, a list of pros and cons, and help her prepare a speech or something …’

Camille gets on to her knees and, taking my hands, pulls me into a sitting position.

‘Yeah, she’s right. Sit up, Kitty, we’re going to sort you out and everything will be all right, every cloud has a silver lining.’ She smiles brightly and I give her a long hard hug.

‘I know, my nan always used to say that,’ I tell her.

I stare at the darkened ceiling for a long time, listening for the sound of my mum’s voice in the corners of the night. If only I could guess what she’d say now, if only I knew her well enough to know how she’d respond, but as hard as I listen there’s nothing there except for shadows.

‘Well, I could have told you that was going to happen,’ Doris says, admiring her hair in my dressing-table mirror.

I roll over, hoping she’ll take the hint and vanish instantly, but instead she just sits beside me on the bed, fixing me with that quizzical, practical stare of hers.

‘How did you ever get to be a sex symbol?’ I ask her cattily. ‘And anyway, if you’d known, I wish you’d warned me or something!’ I grumble. ‘What’s the point of dreaming about musical stars if they don’t give you decent advice. Gene Kelly would’ve.’

Doris presses her shell-pink lips together and tips her head to one side.

‘I’m ignoring that ungracious behaviour because I know you are a little overtired. And anyway, I did give you good advice. You ignored it. If you’d been a little more lady and a little less woman, you wouldn’t be in this predicament. That’s the trouble with you young women of today; you never listen, not even to your heart.’

Something other than my urgent desire to be out of this dream is calling me awake, but the brandy seems to be pressing me ever closer into the mattress.

‘Doris, I’ve got to go,’ I say urgently. ‘Tell me what you’ve come to say, and it better not be that crimping my hair is the answer.’

Doris leans close to me and the scent of Dior washes over me. ‘It seems to me that you never let your love for Fergus be free, it seemed to frighten you. Open up your heart – sing out how much he means to you. Don’t keep your love a secret any more. Oh, and by the way, a wash and a trim wouldn’t go amiss.’ She winks and is gone. As I blink awake, Ella’s cries pull back the bedcovers and compel me to her room before the imagined scent of Dior has fully evaporated.

‘Oh Doris,’ I say as I lift Ella out of her cot. ‘If you insist on showing up, I wish you’d say something at least semi-coherent.’ Ella buries her face miserably into my neck and I begin the ritual of elimination by finding some teething gel and rubbing it into her gums. If it’s not that then it’s wind, or she’s thirsty or she just doesn’t fancy sleeping right now thanks very much. In this one tiny aspect, though, fate seems to favour me for a change, and a few minutes later she is slumbering peacefully against my shoulder. I consider putting her back in her cot and creeping back to my own empty bed, and I consider taking her back to bed with me, but neither option seems to be quite right, so I sink into Fergus’s stupid rocking chair, and as it rocks back under my weight it creaks a greeting.

I pull open Ella’s curtain a chink and look down at the empty road and then up at the black presence of the hills that cancel out the stars along their horizon.

Fergus is just a mile or so away somewhere in that darkness.

I wonder if he’s sleeping?

My entire wardrobe is spread over the living room. Ella has made a sort of den in the discarded items as Dora and Camille road-test everything that I have until we find an outfit suitable for going to see your betrayed husband in. Personally I thought all black with a veil would have been a good idea, but Camille found the deep red top that suits me best and isn’t too clingy, whilst Dora picked out some black bootleg trousers, a bit too heavy for the heat that the day promises, but they looked better on my arse than my summer trousers.

‘This is obscene,’ I say, watching Ella throw my discarded clothes over one shoulder only to spin around on her bum and start the process again. ‘This is what you do when you go on a first date, not a last date, and anyway it’s not going to help, is it? The way I look is not really going to make a difference.’

Camille stands in front of me, scrutinising my outfit and frowning unnervingly.

‘You’d be surprised. I read this article about the fact that men can only understand the world visually, and anyway it will help you feel good about yourself, which in turn will give you confidence, which in turn will …’

‘Make you come across as an arrogant and unrepentant cow?’ Dora adds helpfully, wearing one of my bras on her head to the total indifference of an unamused Ella.

‘Help you express your feelings more eloquently,’ Camille finishes, flicking a warning glance at Dora.

‘Or you could just take your clothes off. I find that is usually the best bargaining tool when it comes to men,’ Dora says. ‘That and fellatio.’

‘Oh fabulous, Dora,’ I say, flinging out my arms in despair. ‘So, after all your list-making and speech-writing last night, your plan is that I go and offer my husband a blow job in return for his forgiveness? Brilliant.’

Dora shrugs and exchanges an ‘oooooh, touchy’ glance with Ella, whose head I sincerely hope this entire conversation has gone over.

‘I’m just saying get your chops round their bits and they don’t usually complain, that’s all.’ Dora looks a little petulant. ‘It’s just that when I read the speech we’d written last night it turned out to be drunken hysterical bollocks, and fellatio is my best Plan B.’

‘It’s your only Plan B,’ I tell her.

‘Okay, but you have to admit it’s a good one.’

Even if there was an alternative route to Castle Kelly I would not choose to take it. I am hoping that as the main body of the town slips away behind me into the valley I will find the secret, the magic words that will make everything all right again.

Gradually the dense network of streets breaks up into detached plots until the countryside stretches out in full view beyond the last buildings, and what few properties there are are so detached that their gardens might as well be referred to as grounds. Castle Kelly is one of these – of course, it isn’t really called Castle Kelly – that is my own plebeian nickname for the largest privately owned house that I have ever been in.