Hidden Cottage (39 page)
Simon frowned. ‘I can’t believe any parent would think that.’
‘Don’t make the mistake of confusing the relationship I have with my father with that of yours with your father – the two couldn’t be more different.’ Not wanting to bring the evening down, she changed the subject. ‘Hey, I’ve got you a birthday present.’ She delved into her bag and pulled out a small package.
He grinned. ‘Oh, Channing,’ he said with mock bashfulness, ‘you shouldn’t have.’
‘You’re kidding? Late for your birthday dinner and no present? You’d never have spoken to me again.’
‘Damned straight.’ He took the present from her and gave it an experimental shake followed by a squeeze. ‘Shall I open it now?’
‘No, keep it for later when I’m not around, then you won’t have to fake your reaction. I still have the receipt if you want to change it.’
‘As if.’ He bent down to the floor and slipped the package inside his work bag. She hoped he did like it; she’d spent ages trying to find the perfect present for him. In the end, knowing his fondness for proper pens, she had settled on a Montegrappa fountain pen. It had cost a fortune, but he was worth it.
‘So what’s new at work?’ he asked. ‘Any interesting gossip for me?’
She shrugged. ‘Same old, same old. Nothing new or exciting to tell.’
‘Hey, it can’t be the same old, same old; I’m not there. How’s my replacement shaping up?’
‘He’s a nightmare. Even more untidy than you and he drinks so much coffee and Red Bull he’s like an atrociously hyperactive toddler. He’s exhausting to be around.’
‘Is he any good?’
‘He’s OK. But not a patch on you.’
Simon speared an olive with a cocktail stick and smiled. ‘Do my ears deceive me or is that a compliment from you?’
She smiled. ‘It may be the last you get, so make the most of it. How about you? Still enjoying your new job?’
‘I am, actually. Although I miss working with you. I liked being the good cop to your bad cop.’
‘And there was me thinking I was the brains to your beauty.’
He laughed and she watched him spear another olive. The truth was, she missed working with him and wished at least a dozen times a day that he hadn’t been poached by another firm. She missed the ease of the working relationship they’d had, the way they could fill in the blanks for each other. She had been shocked when he’d got on the train with her one morning six weeks ago, when they were finishing off the job in Milton Keynes, and he had confided in her that he’d been approached by one of Merchant Swift’s main competitors. She had thought he was happy where he was, that the work suited him; it was still a mystery to her why he’d moved.
Since he’d left a fortnight ago she had been worried that he hadn’t really enjoyed working with her, that maybe she was too exacting, perhaps too picky and inclined to find fault. Had she, she’d often wondered, unintentionally forced him to play second fiddle? If she had, she owed him an apology, because she would never knowingly hurt him. He was, she had come to realize, apart from Mum and Jensen, the person who mattered the most to her. Though she could never tell him that. God, no! He’d be horrified, wouldn’t he? It was all very well being work colleagues and good friends, but there were lines that absolutely could not be crossed and she didn’t want to embarrass him or risk spoiling their relationship.
Something Jensen had got right was that Simon wasn’t gay. She’d got that hopelessly wrong. Looking back on it, it now seemed absurd. No wonder Jensen had laughed at her.
During their dinner that night in Suffolk – before they’d got the awful news about Daisy – Eliza had asked Simon about the relationships he’d had. To her surprise, he’d said he’d been involved with a girl for about a year, but it hadn’t worked out. ‘In the end we just wanted different things,’ he’d explained. ‘She wanted to go travelling for a year and I didn’t. Simple as that. The last I heard from her, she was in Thailand working in a bar.’
‘And before that?’ Eliza had asked.
‘This and that. Nothing special. Why do you want to know?’
‘No reason,’ she’d lied, ‘just wondering.’
Now, feeling bold, probably thanks to her altercation with Greg earlier, she decided to ask Simon the question she’d wanted to ask him ever since he’d resigned. ‘Simon,’ she said, ‘can I ask you something?’
He looked up at her.
‘What made you leave Merchant Swift?’ she asked. ‘Was it me?’
He gave her an odd look. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘I’m concerned that it was. In Suffolk you teased me that I was a bitch to work with, but I’m worried that there might be some truth in that.’
He rolled the cocktail stick between his thumb and finger, then poked it through a corner of a napkin. ‘You were never difficult to work with, not in the way you think.’
‘What way then?’
He drank some more of his wine, then looked at her. ‘You really have no idea, do you?’
‘All I know is that we’ve always got on really well and if I’ve done something to hurt you, I need to make amends for it.’
His normally sleepy-looking eyes darkened and she had the weirdest feeling that she had never really looked at him before. Maybe she hadn’t, because all of a sudden, as though seeing him in close-up for the first time, she thought how attractive he was with his sandy hair that was styled in the habitually messy way he favoured and the way his mouth always seemed to be turned up in an easy-going smile. But really what she noticed most was that he looked so effortlessly relaxed as he sat next to her, with his jacket and tie off and his shirt unbuttoned at the neck.
‘Eliza,’ he said, jolting her out of her thoughts, ‘you did nothing wrong. It was me. I fell in love with you.’
She stared at him, stunned. ‘But you . . . but you couldn’t have . . . I mean, with me?’
‘With you, Eliza. Most definitely with you.’
‘But . . . but you never said anything.’
‘How could I? You were all loved up with Greg. I had to keep my distance. I had to hide my feelings for you. If you think about it, I did a bang-up job, didn’t I? You never guessed or suspected.’
‘Perhaps that’s because I’m a dull-witted idiot.’
He smiled. ‘Well, there is that.’
‘But I don’t understand why you felt the need to go and work somewhere else.’
‘I thought that if we were no longer work colleagues, and with Greg out of the picture, you might start to view me differently, more like a potential boyfriend, as opposed to a boring old friend.’
Feeling a great rush of affection for him, she said, ‘You’ve never been a boring old friend. Far from it.’
‘But is that all I can ever be to you, a friend? Think very carefully before you answer; there’s a lot at stake.’
She swallowed. ‘I think subconsciously you’ve been a lot more than just a friend to me for some time. I’ve missed you so much this last fortnight.’
He moved his left hand along the bar towards her hand, until his little finger was touching hers. ‘I’ve missed you too.’ Then, covering her hand entirely with his, he said, ‘How about we eat now?’
She nodded. ‘It’s your birthday; you make the rules.’
‘So it is. In which case, I’m officially claiming a kiss before the evening’s over.’
Saturday morning and Owen was at Parr’s. The last time he’d called in Mia had been here and shielded by customers, he’d had no way of knowing if she had assiduously avoided looking at him or she just hadn’t noticed him.
As he added a jar of passata sauce to his basket he heard Bob talking to the only other customer. ‘A dreadful, dreadful business,’ Bob was saying, ‘the change in that poor woman – you just wouldn’t credit it. And as for her husband, he’s in a bad way.’
Wendy joined in. ‘He sleeps in Daisy’s old bedroom,’ she said with just a little too much relish to her voice, ‘has done so ever since the accident.’
Bob shushed his wife, but she ignored him. ‘He does too,’ she asserted, ‘it’s common knowledge, everyone knows.’
‘Only because you and Bev keep telling everyone,’ Bob muttered as the customer left. ‘If you ask me, that cousin of yours needs to show some respect and keep her mouth shut. If I was Mrs Channing I wouldn’t have a gossip like her cleaning for me.’
Common knowledge might well be an exaggeration, but Owen had heard something similar from Joe, who had been asked by Jeff to install a lock on Daisy’s bedroom door. Presumably a lock to keep people out, to preserve the room as some kind of shrine.
By the time he left the shop, having nodded his head at the appropriate moment with Bob and Wendy and agreed with the general feeling in the village that Daisy’s tragic death was a crying shame, he felt ashamed for effectively giving gossip the oxygen it needed to spread. But he did it because it was one of the few ways he had of finding out how Mia was.
Another means was through Madison when she came for her piano lessons, and if not directly from the girl herself, then from her mother and Jensen, depending on who dropped her off. Initially, understandably, one of them stayed while she had her lesson, but now that they knew and trusted him, they were happy to leave Madison in his care. When the lesson was over, he would walk her home, or drive her if it was raining hard. She was surprisingly good company, full of chatter about school and her new friends and how much she loved being here in Little Pelham.
Yesterday she had been even more of a live wire and much too fidgety to concentrate on the Grade One exam pieces he was coaching her for in readiness for December when she took the exam. It was very unlike her to make so many mistakes or to be reminded so frequently to soften her wrists and to curl her fingers. They’d given up on the tarantella and moved on to the andante and when things still hadn’t improved, he’d decided there wasn’t any point in forcing her to play when she wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So he’d asked her if there was anything on her mind. And then it had all come tumbling out: Jensen and Tattie were getting married. ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone,’ she’d said, ‘not yet. It’s a secret. And the best bit is JC’s going to be my dad. If I had the choice of all the dads in the world, he’d be the one I’d choose.’
Back at home now and making himself some coffee, Owen thought that if he’d had the chance to choose his father, he certainly wouldn’t have got stuck with a vicious bully like Ron Fletcher. A man who thought nothing of lashing out at his wife and child, or threatening two women who had shown a young boy nothing but kindness. A man who sadistically threatened to set fire to The Hidden Cottage with both Gretchen and Lillian inside it. That was the moment when Owen had finally stood up to his father.
Owen had known from the start that if his father ever knew about his piano lessons, he would put an immediate stop to them, as well as to his friendship with Gretchen and Lillian. He would do it on the basis that Owen was getting above himself, which was an accusation regularly hurled at him. As was the claim that Owen’s mother spoiled him. ‘You’re turning him into a cissy!’ Ron would shout. ‘He’s got as much backbone as a wet sock! Look at him, just sitting there like a whimpering dog.’
Anything that smacked of bettering oneself was anathema to Ron Fletcher. Reading anything other than a betting slip was classed as subversive and he proudly boasted that he’d never read a book in his life and had no intention of ever doing so. If he’d been drinking and caught Owen or his mother reading a book, he would snatch it out of their hands and throw it on the fire. That was if he was in a good mood. In a bad mood he’d make Owen rip the pages out one by one. The first time Owen refused to do it, he was belted so hard on the side of his head, his ears rang for a whole day.
For months and months Owen didn’t tell his mother about his visits to The Hidden Cottage; he didn’t want her to be involved. He knew it was better for her to be in ignorance rather than live with the fear of keeping something from her husband. But then one day, because he hated lying to her, Owen risked it and told her about Gretchen and Lillian. It was pride that made him do it; he wanted to share with her something for which he’d been told he had a talent. Amazed and curious, she then went with him to The Hidden Cottage to meet Gretchen and Lillian, and a friendship struck up between the three women. But it was a friendship that led to the secret ultimately becoming known to Owen’s father.
One afternoon, home from work much earlier than usual, Ron Fletcher found the house empty and when Owen and his mother appeared at the back door, having been at The Hidden Cottage, he was waiting for them with a furious look on his face. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he demanded. They were never supposed to go anywhere without him knowing their exact whereabouts. Their days had to be thoroughly accounted for; it was a way to screen out any meddling influences. If he could have kept Owen off school, he would have done. If he could have kept them permanently locked inside the cottage, he would have done that as well. He ruled the way any tyrant does, by instilling fear and subservience. He had it down to a fine art and only needed to follow through with about seventy-five per cent of his threats to ensure total obedience.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he repeated, his voice weighted with menace, his large bulk filling the small kitchen.
With no ready lie on his mother’s lips, Owen had stepped in with one of his own. ‘We’ve been for a walk,’ he said, ‘up to the allotments.’
‘Why?’ he rounded on Owen. ‘What’s up there to see?’ To Owen’s mother: ‘Who’ve you been talking to?’
His mother, a hopeless liar, had hesitated with a tremble and it was all her paranoid husband needed to know that she was hiding something from him. Owen was sent up to his room and, lying on his bed, his head stuffed under the pillow, he heard the familiar noises of his father carrying out his special brand of interrogation. And then he heard the crying. The awful sound of his mother crying.
The next morning, her bruised face and careful way of moving filled Owen with a burning and shameful anger. It was just the two of them in the kitchen, his father having already gone to work at the farm, but still Owen couldn’t say anything to his mother for fear of making things worse. Hadn’t he made it worse already by telling her about The Hidden Cottage? His breakfast barely eaten – he’d felt too sick to eat it – he gently kissed her goodbye on the cheek and said just one word: ‘Sorry.’