Guilt Edged (8 page)

I nodded. ‘I'll text him. And then I'll be down for our picnic.'

‘I
told you that there was no need for you to visit Griff this afternoon,' Aidan said tartly as he locked his car, coincidentally parked next to mine.

I wanted to yell at him that he had no right to tell me anything. But his weeks in New Zealand had transformed him from his usual sleek, debonair and possibly pampered self to a weary and battered old man. I knew that such an ordeal would have aged anyone. All the same, without raising my voice, or at least not very much, I said, ‘As I said in my text, I'm anxious that the shock of seeing anyone he didn't expect wouldn't be good for Griff. I know how you feel, Aidan—'

‘Indeed you do not!' Not just blazing eyes but a jab of his index finger, too.

Just as I'd started to feel sorry for him! ‘Well, I know how I feel. And I just want to protect Griff.'

‘I hardly think your concern is necessary.'

‘Maybe it isn't. Maybe I'm just stressed out of my mind and I'm being totally unreasonable. Look, give me just five minutes with him, since I can't bear not seeing him at all today, and then he's all yours for both visiting sessions. And then we should work out a visiting rota.'

‘When's he being discharged? I need to book nursing staff.'

‘You'll have to ask him. But he may want to come home to the cottage,' I pointed out. ‘First of all, at least.' I willed a smile into place. ‘I'm sure you're already working out some lovely place to take him to convalesce,' I added as he went puce with fury. ‘Calm down, Aidan, or you'll end up in the next bed to him,' I said flippantly.

Then I realized there were tears in his eyes. Anger? Frustration? Love? I understood all three. ‘Just go,' I said quietly. ‘I'll see him for a couple of minutes at the end.' Retreating to the car, I couldn't stop the tears – hell, more of them! Hadn't I shed enough? – and even more annoyingly I couldn't work out what they were for.

Then a text arrived. A text? I was ready to tell it to wait till I saw it was from Aidan. They wouldn't let him in since he wasn't a relative. The buggers! I was halfway across the car park before I drew breath.

So in the end I'd done it my way, having informed the jobsworth trying to exclude Aidan that if anyone would make Griff better it was his oldest, dearest friend, who would be sharing the visiting with me, starting with now and continuing this evening. My success wouldn't endear me to Aidan, of course: he was the sort of man who liked to make things happen, not to have to wait for others to wave magic wands. But I'd bounced in to see Griff, hugged him – no tubes at all today! – and told him I was on my way because someone else was waiting to see him. He knew at once, of course – and I'd rather I hadn't seen his face light up.

So when out of the blue I had a phone call from Tristam – he must have got my number from Brian, I suppose – asking me if I fancied a drink, maybe a club afterwards, that evening, I responded saying a drink and some food would suit me better. I added that since he was trade and he could tell me about pictures, I could put him on expenses. I didn't really think I could, but at least I was earning. He didn't strike me as the sort of person who'd otherwise want to be paid for, on what he might (or, of course, might not) have meant as a date. If I felt a bit iffy about that, on account of my still officially being with Morris and not being sure if I even liked Tristam, then I spun myself the same tale – I'd be learning about pictures.

Tris could eat for England. We'd agreed to meet in the village pub, since I could safely and easily walk there and back and wouldn't have to worry about my alcohol intake – or be dependent on someone I hardly knew for a lift. Altogether safer. He had the pub's double burger in a bap and chips, while I managed the standard burger without bread and with salad, just as Griff had trained me to do. Oh, and chips, of course, but half of them ended up down Tristam's throat. As did a lot of beer.

None of this stopped him talking – mostly, of course, about himself. As the bar got fuller and noisier with Friday night boozers, mostly kids wearing the same sort of rugby shirt as him, I reasoned it was a good job he'd acquired that carrying public school tone or I'd hardly have heard him. No one else seemed to be listening, so I carried on as his audience. Mother running this company, father running that. Prep school the name of which I didn't recognize, which seemed to surprise him, and public school I did. And, of course, Reading University. I made a silly quip that he should have gone to St Andrews, to hobnob with Will and Kate, but apart from registering I knew that other places did Fine Arts degrees, he didn't make much of my joke. For quite some time I was tempted to drop into the conversation something about my father being a lord, because it would have been nice to see his face. But I couldn't be bothered.

Suddenly, however, he changed gear, and started asking about me and my past – questions I always responded to in the most general of terms. I didn't want to be pitied or patronized. Fast-forwarding to my life with Griff, I talked about an apprenticeship (why on earth didn't I have the sense to call it an internship?) to teach me my restoration skills – almost true, since I was taught by two old friends of Griff's. When he asked for whom I'd undertaken freelance work since then I was truthful: it was nice to see his eyebrows go rocketing up. But there was no way I was going to give him a demonstration of my divvying skills, which he edged towards. At last we got on to what most interested me – and, to do him justice, him: what he called representational art and I called pictures.

‘Do you paint yourself?'

He pulled a face. ‘Sunday painter,' he mumbled. ‘No future in it, of course. No present, either, to be honest. I just don't have that – that edge.' He sighed, almost painfully. ‘I'd have liked to do some postgrad research but you've no idea how much that costs … So the best option was this auction house thing. And I even do that for free,' he added bitterly.

‘Presumably your parents can support you? Regard what you're doing as an investment?' I prompted, rather pleased with the term.

‘Things aren't too good on the business front, in case you haven't noticed,' he said, necking the last of his beer. Waving away my offer of another, he leant across the table. ‘These horses of yours. What's your problem with them? Isn't it a case of
caveat emptor
? I mean, used, old, second-hand – no one expects them to be perfect.'

‘I think,' I said, trying to sound judicious, not pompous, ‘there's a difference between my buying a horse because I like it and my buying a horse because someone tells me it's valuable. And by painting the horse white, you're certainly implying it's valuable, even if you don't actually use words. In other words, you're not being honest.'

‘But who's honest in this life? And aren't all values relative? I mean, take a Cézanne being sold for enough money to refloat the Greek economy. Is it worth it?'

I had an idea you needed a university education to be able to discuss such things seriously. ‘Isn't there a difference,' I ventured, ‘between a fake and something simply overpriced? I admit they're both a sort of robbery …'

‘Some fakers' work is now worth thousands in its own right,' he said, going off at what seemed to be yet another tangent. Then he lurched back. ‘Tell me, if you had a row of white horses, would you be able to tell which was kosher and which was dodgy? With this nose of yours?' He touched it lightly and smiled the sort of smile that would have had ducks flocking off the water.

I responded in kind, my head slightly to one side. ‘How would I know? Line them up and I'll see.'

‘How about if I lined them up and blindfolded you?'

There had been times, though I wasn't telling him (or anyone else, for that matter) about them, that I'd simply known – without any logic – that I had to go to a certain stall at a fair and I'd find something there. It was time for a mild counter-attack. ‘As I said, line them up and I'll see. And line up some Isaac Olivers and School of Isaac Olivers too. I'd love to know how you tell them apart. Properly, I mean. Not just with my funny instinct.'

Before he could say anything, one of the loud crowd at the bar lurched our way. It seemed they'd known each other from school, and the newcomer wasn't going to let the small matter of Tris's being with me stand in the way of a long and liquid reunion. In fact it suited me fine to settle up at the bar and slide out.

Although I'd have preferred a bit of street-lighting (one of the parish councillors was an astronomer and vetoed every attempt to pollute his night sky) I didn't turn a hair about walking home alone. Bredeham was a village, for heaven's sake, where everyone looked out for everyone else. Someone walking behind me was just taking the same route. That was all.

So I crossed over the road, just to see what he'd do. He crossed too.

Maybe he wasn't simply taking the same route.

Time for a Plan B. I'd got a torch which would double in an emergency as a cosh. I'd learned to fight without any rules at all. I'd even learned to run like hell and get away from trouble. The cottage itself would be as secure as Fort Knox.

Tim the Bear would be waiting; Aidan would have left a message reporting back on Griff; and there was nothing in the world to keep me from a good night's sleep.

But it would take time to open up. And someone the size of the guy following me might just be able to push his way in after me. I did the obvious thing: adopted Plan C.

Which involved Afzal and his mates at the takeaway. As soon as they heard about my problem, they gathered round me protectively, making it quite clear to any observer that I wasn't alone and unprotected; if that message didn't go home, Ahmed, Afzal's fast-bowler cousin, and another guy I'd never met, went outside and stared meaningfully around. Meaningfully and actually quite threateningly. To my great shame and embarrassment, the only person in sight was a woman, heading briskly towards the car park. All the same, the lads insisted I had a lift home with the next food delivery. This involved a nice bit of banter about cricket and a highly circuitous route. Just because we were enjoying ourselves.

But someone was in the cottage. Ahmed and I shared a rapid intake of breath.

Whoever it was wasn't furtive, surely wasn't a-burgling. Not with all the lights ablaze in Griff's bedroom and now in mine. It looked as if the TV set in the living room was on. My mind went blank. Could it possibly, possibly be that they'd sent Griff home already? A tiny corner of my mind congratulated myself on having totally stripped and remade his bed, so it was hospital clean. He'd be safe with me.

It wasn't Griff. Of course it wasn't. Not with that car parked outside.

It was Morris!

Telling Ahmed everything was fine, and not to bother with the baseball bat he kept handy, I hopped out and ran to the door, waving and letting myself in.

Yes, it was Morris, all right, and, judging by the howls and sobs from upstairs, Leda, his little daughter. His wife's daughter, at least. There was also an inescapable smell. Someone had thrown up.

‘Where the hell have you been?' he greeted me, emerging from the kitchen with a glass of water.

‘Out. What's the matter with Leda?' I was already heading upstairs.

‘I thought she was over the bug, but it seems she isn't. So where were you?' He followed me. ‘I phoned you, texted you – why didn't you respond?

Because – I don't know why I'd switched my phone off. I said nothing.

The howls were coming from my room. At least it was my bedclothes she'd been sick all over. So why was there a pile of bedlinen on the floor in Griff's room?

‘Look who's here, sweetheart! It's Lina!' he called, in the soppy but desperate voice of a man who didn't know what to do next.

Leda showed her feelings about me pretty clearly. She threw up again – was this what they called projectile vomiting? – all over my duvet. And all over Tim the Bear.

I grabbed him. Leda howled more loudly. Morris yelled and tried to grab him back. I know I screamed. I flung words at him I'd not used since Griff had rescued me. I wasn't proud of them – I knew a sick toddler was more important than a sicked-on bear – but I was beyond reason.

‘You deal with her,' I managed at last. ‘I'll deal with Tim.'

My poor dear friend. My poor, much loved, increasingly battered friend. The friend who Griff had given me to deliver love and comfort at levels even he couldn't manage. He'd been wet before, but never covered in pink and yellow vomit. I carried him tenderly – if gingerly – to the kitchen and started work on him. When I thought he was ready, I bunged him in a pillowcase – didn't want his eyes scratched – and popped him in the machine for a short spin.

Only then did I return to the mess upstairs – suddenly and blessedly quiet, incidentally – where Morris was demanding more bedclothes.

‘Airing cupboard,' I said, eyeing afresh the pile in Griff's room.

‘I've used those.'

How many sets of bedclothes had they got through?

‘And a couple of towels. Er – seems she's not dry through the night after all.'

‘Whose bed did she wet?'

‘I thought if I put her in Griff's bed, you and I—'

‘You thought! You didn't think, seeing all those nice clean sheets, that I'd achieved the next best thing to a sterile bed for a man who's coming home after major surgery? Thanks a bunch. Now he'll have to go and stay at Aidan's,' I added bitterly.

‘Well, it's the obvious thing. Can't imagine why you thought he might come back here.' He dug an even deeper pit for himself. ‘Anyway, I'm sure you can turn the mattress. When it's dry.'

‘You'd better get the bedclothes downstairs,' I said. I couldn't think of anything else polite or constructive. ‘No! Wait! Tim's in the machine!'