Let's Dance (31 page)

Authors: Frances Fyfield

BOOK: Let's Dance

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He shoved himself in front of George and stood on Mab's grave without thinking. George had no business here. Robert regretted his action, but still he did it. He could not change. He felt betrayed. Quite a crowd, a respectable number for a funeral, including neighbours and friends he had never seen.

âWhere were they,' Robert hissed to Isabel, âwhen we needed them?' She did not move. Her imperturbability was another irritant.

âThey were trying to manage their lives,' she said. âLike you. Like I should have done. As people must.'

Isabel listened to the wind that buffeted the graveyard beneath a leaden sky. Whispered her own variation on the prayers. Goodbye, Serena, wish I'd known you and what made you tick. I'm not going to let you wreck me more than you already have. Do you hear me? Robert's son detached himself from his father, uncomfortable with the pressure on his own, small fingers. He moved to Isabel and put his hand in her pocket. She smiled at him and pulled a soon-this-will-be-over kind of face. He found a packet of forbidden bubble-gum nestling against the lining. The coat was not black like everyone else's. It was a brilliant red, Mab's favourite colour.

Mother, Isabel thought, what a monster you were to die in this fashion, simply to tar me with the brush of fecklessness. You picked us up and dropped us, left us squirming in the mud, George and me. Extracting the last ounce of drama and guilt, the way you always could. You got the house full of men in uniforms again, didn't you? You wonderful old cow.

She winked at the boy to indicate it was OK to chew the gum with such loud concentration, and turned her head. He should not have been here as his father's prop. Weeping was a private business. She thought she would weep for ever and ever, until all the fluid was
gone from under her skin. The sense of loss and unfinished business was a bottomless pit, a fountain of endless tears.

It was a short but convoluted route, Andrew said, between wishing someone dead and wishing against all wishes that they were still alive.

B
ack at the house (back at the ranch, as Robert's wife playfully labelled it), Joan neglected the supervision of funeral meats. Easy-peasy, sausage rolls and stuff. Not a wicked woman, simply a shrewd one with a life to conduct. She was looking at how Rob and she could really dance the light fantastic here, even with only five years left on the lease. Tennis on the tennis court; chairperson of local committees; devotee of local causes, homeless kids from town staring at Laura Ashley curtains.

She should have been a vicar's wife was Andrew's unspoken verdict. One of those people who believed there was nothing which could not be fixed. But she was right. The house needed children. The nice old punchbag dog was the first part of the furniture. People died so that others might be able to live. In the style to which they wished to become accustomed. Robert said she was cynical; pregnancy always brought about an advanced stage of pragmatism, Isabel said looking through a smeared window pane, good luck, get on with it.

âWhere do you live, Isabel?' John Cornell always wanted details. Even when mashing a sausage roll
between stubby fingers and carrying a large whisky. Always suss out the opposition when they look weak. He found it difficult to imagine why any youth, his own son included, found this pale and puffy-faced, big-eyed girl such a hot item.

âA flat. In a block.' Isabel seemed to have difficulty in placing it, put a hand to her brow and laughed uncertainly. âCaretaker and carpets, all that stuff. He's probably installed his relatives by now. You know what families are,' she added.

âIt'll only be a bit dusty, I expect,' said Doc Reilly, kindly, kneading the toe of a well-worn shoe against the dustless boards of the drawing room.

âIt wasn't pristine before. There was blood on the walls when I left.'

That mystified him.

T
here was less dust than she would have expected, but then Isabel could scarcely remember how long it was she'd been away and how little she'd thought of her home in the meantime. An apartment, like she told the good doctor, in a block, with a view of the sky and security provided by a caretaker aided by electronics. Autumn when she had left, winter now. Washing lay fusty in the machine, the windows were grimy and the air was stale. She looked with disinterest into the cupboards full of clothes and hung up her bright red funeral coat. Flung her single suitcase to the back and began to clean.

In the life that had preceded the departure, the
silence would have unnerved her. She would have left the dirt and flung herself at the telephone, worked her way through every contact in her black book, looking for attention. Now she liked it. The prospect of a quiet phone was not frightening.

S
ix-thirty in the evening, the ideal time for a man to call upon his mistress, even if she had sent him a letter kissing him goodbye.

Nothing new in that. Isabel enjoyed the occasional tantrum. Joe knew that as well as he knew how she could be twisted into compliance, like any woman without much will of her own. All that fiery passion turning into sweetness, the contrasts he loved, even when they hurt. He stood at the door armed with a bottle of wine and a bunch of roses. ClichÃ©d, he thought, but foolproof. Rang the bell and yodelled her name. The door opened on a long safety chain.

He proffered the roses and the wine in their un-romantic carrier bag, puckered his mouth into a kiss. A hand reddened with housework stretched through the doorway, plucked the bag from his fingers and retreated. The door slammed in his face.

âI love you, Isabel!' he shouted.

She could hear the exclamation mark. Tough luck, boy, I'm busy learning how to like myself. Somebody's got to do it.

She looked at the label on the bottle. Not bad.

A
ndrew arrived in the new year. The city streets were
covered in slush and the January sales clogged the pavements. It confirmed what had been formulating in his mind. For all his years of discontent he enjoyed the lack of anonymity in small-town life. He would never want to hide away in the wider streets of a metropolis, even if he felt at ease in Isabel's flat with modern furniture he would never have chosen. But he knew he would never persuade her back unless she wanted to go. There was nothing tentative about her greeting or her smile; nothing much of the flirt, either. He looked at her expressive face and her gestures, searching for clues to what she might become. Never a writer of letters.

There was news he could impart and news he could not. No, no burglars found and no clues. Yes, George was as well as could be expected, using muscle to shift furniture, caretaking for Andrew's father, with whom he got on surprisingly well, by the use of very few words. An interim arrangement; something better would turn up. Andrew had corresponded with Robert, without success, about George keeping the dog. Furious letters, in a desperately familiar hand. Andrew did not mention that. There seemed little enough point.

Isabel had taken the silver candlesticks and that was all. They suited a glass table as well as they had suited polished wood. She had found beeswax candles, looking like sticks of honeycomb and smelling sweet. The room was soft with the scent of affection, understated and unmistakable.

I
f he were the someone to love, it would have to be on her own terms. There would be no dynasty. Let the body howl for that fulfilment. There were a number of things she was going to be and do before she was at risk of losing her mind, but there was one negative. She was brave enough and strong enough to vow it now.

She was never, ever, going to be some child's mother.

About the Author

FRANCES FYFIELD
has spent much of her professional life practicing as a criminal lawyer, work which has informed her highly acclaimed novels. She has been the recipient of both the Gold and Silver Crime Writers' Association Daggers. She is also a regular broadcaster on Radio 4, most recently as the presenter of the series âTales from the Stave.' She lives in London and in Deal, overlooking the sea, which is her passion.

www.francesfyfield.co.uk

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Also by Frances Fyfield

A Question of Guilt

Shadows on the Mirror

Trial by Fire

Shadow Play

Perfectly Pure and Good

The Nature of the Beast

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This book was originally published in 2006 by Little, Brown Book Group.

LET'S DANCE
. Copyright Â© 1995 by Frances Fyfield. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition MARCH 2014 ISBN: 9780062301390

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