The Best of Times (40 page)

• • •

Later he said, “I knew, you know; I knew the minute I saw you.”

“Me too. ‘There he is,’ I thought, ‘there’s the One.’”

“And then what did you think?”

“I thought, ‘Oh shit.’ I said, ‘Oh shit.’”

“I thought the same. I thought, ‘There she is.’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, fuck.’ I said, ‘Oh, fuck.’”

“Because it’s rubbish, isn’t it? All that?”

“Course it is.”

“I mean, I’ve got Luke.”

“And I’ve got Amanda. I’m engaged to Amanda. Who’s …”

“Who’s beautiful. And so nice, I can tell.”

“Beautiful and so nice. But I don’t seem to love her. Not like I thought I did.”

“And then there’s Luke. Who’s such a dude and so nice. But I don’t seem to love him either. So … what do we do?”

“Explore it a bit,” said Barney. “We have to; it’s the only thing to do.”

• • •

They did; they explored each other. But quickly. One long evening, talking, talking, talking. One long night, making love, hardly sleeping, in Emma’s flat. One long day, walking, talking, kissing, worrying; another evening talking, and one hurried, wonderfully awful fuck in a room at the hospital.

Like all lovers, they developed jokes, codes, secrets.

“Thanks for calling” meant “I can’t talk now;”

“Maybe tomorrow” meant “I miss you;”

“My pleasure” meant “I love you.”

And every time, every meeting led them nearer to being sure that this relationship, shared between them, was the one that mattered, and the other ones could not go on; and almost equally sure that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

• • •

What must it be like to be one of these people? Freeman thought, looking at the obvious trappings of wealth, on display even here, in this hospital cubicle: the laptop, the iPod, the silver-framed photographs by his bed, the huge plate of grapes, the box of chocolates from Fortnum & Mason, the pile of new hardbacks …

To know that if you wanted something you could almost certainly have it? To have gone to the best schools, the best universities, to have
no doubt travelled widely, to drive the best cars, to wear the best clothes?

Pretty bloody good, he supposed (having known little of any of those things), but did it make you happy? Did it create a conscience? Or did it make you arrogant, ruthless, greedy for more?

“Sergeant Freeman, do sit down.”

He gestured at the chair by his bed.

“Glad you’re feeling better, sir. And that your leg is mending.”

“Not as glad as I am. Still bloody painful, though, I can tell you. I should be home in another day or two. Thank God. Er … I thought there were going to be two of you?”

“There are, sir. Constable Rowe is on his way. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. Ah, here he is now.”

They went through the formalities, the reasons for choosing the M
4
, the exact location of the church, the late departure … “I wasn’t too well—seemed to have picked up a stomach bug, kept throwing up. All you need on your wedding day!”

“Not a hangover then, sir?”

“Lord, no, we hardly had anything the night before. Well, Barney had a few; I simply wasn’t feeling up to it.”

He was cheerfully up-front about being stopped by the police:

“Barney was driving, of course, going a hell of a lick, but then, we were very late. If we hadn’t been stopped, we’d have made it in time. Still … even bridegrooms aren’t above the law, I suppose, Sergeant?”

“Indeed not, sir. But … you did also have to stop for petrol, I believe?”

“Yes, we did. And I … well, I had to go to the loo again.”

“But … you didn’t need anything else, no oil, anything like that?”

“No, no, just the fuel.”

“Although … the CCTV shows you in a queue for the air line.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, we did … That is, we were … there.”

“Were you worried about the tyres, sir? Did you have any reason to think they needed checking?”

“No, no, in fact, they were new tyres. I was just being careful.”

“Very wise. So you didn’t think one might be soft, something like that? Which could, of course, have contributed to the blowout.”

“No, nothing like that. I just thought we should check them.”

“Even though you were so late?”

“Well … yes.”

“I see. Well … we may be mistaken, but again, according to the CCTV, you drove away … apparently … without doing so.”

He was a good actor; he didn’t look remotely rattled.

“Ah. Well … well, maybe we did. I … I went in to pay for the fuel, you see. It was all a bit of a blur. We were pretty stressed out, as you can imagine.”

“Indeed. But … try to remember, sir, it could be important.”

“Yes, I suppose it could. Yes. Look, I … I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. The thing is … Barney … you know my best man, Barney Fraser? Did he … did he explain about what happened?”

“Not as far as I can recall, sir, no.”

“Ah. Well, actually, you see, I … I did want to check the tyres. As I said. But he was so worried about how late we were … Well, it was his main duty, after all, to get me to the church on time … Anyway, he said there wasn’t time to check them, that we couldn’t wait, that they’d be fine, persuaded me to carry on …”

• • •

“Perhaps you didn’t see the latest report from Forensics?” said Constable Rowe as they drove down the lane. “The one that came in last week, while you were away, about the fragment of tyre with the nail in it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Freeman. “I saw it. Very interesting.”

“But … if that was the cause of the blowout, as Forensics seems to think, what was all that about whether or not he checked the tyre pressures?”

“There have to be some perks in this job, Rowe,” said Freeman, “and seeing little shits like that squirm is one of them.”

It was a great pity, as Linda Di-Marcello remarked, that Georgia looked like she did and did what she did. The tabloids all tracked her down, and there were two or three nightmare days when the story ran in most of them. Her hauntingly lovely little face, with its great dark eyes and wayward cloud of hair, sat above the caption, “M
4
Mystery Girl,” or in some cases, “M
4
Mystery Girl Found,” and then informed the reader not only that the mystery girl in the lorry was Georgia Linley from Cardiff, but that she was an actress who had just won a part in a new Channel Four drama and that she was on her way to her audition in London when the crash occurred.

There was a quote from Georgia, composed by Linda with damage limitation in mind, saying how sorry she was for any problems she might have caused, that she was unable to answer any questions about the crash because it was still under police investigation, that she had visited Patrick Connell in the hospital several times, that he was recovering well, and his wife and she had become great friends. All of which, as Linda also remarked, was true.

Just the same, it was acutely unpleasant for Georgia, and she continued to feel ashamed of herself, and, most of all, dreadfully anxious about starting work on
Moving Away
, and about how badly the other members of the production team might think of her.

• • •

Jonathan still felt he was living in a nightmare.

Even a call from that old goat Freeman, telling him that there was evidence that the crash appeared to have been due in large part to the lorry sustaining a shattered windscreen—why couldn’t these people speak proper English?—but that they were still gathering evidence, failed to make him feel much better. If they were still gathering evidence, then it could even now be seen as important that he’d been on the phone, and God knew where that could land him.

He looked back on his old life—years ago, as it seemed, rather
than weeks—with its easy, pleasant patterns, with something near disbelief. He was often depressed, frequently nervous, his professional confidence shaken, his smooth charm roughened by weariness and self-doubt.

The whole household seemed on tenterhooks, no one easy, even the children; Charlie was edgy, less trustful, almost wary of him, the little girls awkward and fractious. Taking their emotional cues from their mother, he supposed, without realising it.

Laura had moved away from him; she was oddly self-contained, less hostile, but far from warm. They were sharing the marital bed once more, but it was as if she had drawn a barrier down it, holding him from her by sheer force of will. He felt she was biding her time, waiting for something to happen—she knew not what, only that she would recognise its significance and therefore whether or not their marriage was still viable.

And he could see that the danger of that something, while as yet nameless and formless, was still extremely real.

• • •

Abi had never been so happy. Day after day it went on, like some wonderful, long, golden summer. An absurd, sweet happiness, born of this absurd, sweet love affair. Absurd and so extremely unsuitable. For both of them …

It had begun in earnest that night in the farm office. Adjacent to the lambing shed.

Not many people had sex in farm offices adjacent to a lambing shed. Or not many people she knew, anyway. Well, nobody she knew. Maybe they did in the country. Life was certainly different there.

They’d met in the pub and he’d suggested they go to another one a couple of miles away: “Too many people here I know.”

“Are you ashamed to be seen with me, William?” she’d said.

And he’d blushed and said, “Of course not,” in tones of such horror that she’d laughed. “It’s just that we’ll be … well, you know, interrupted
all the time.” And they’d driven to the other one in the Land Rover, and she’d had two vodkas and he’d had two beers and it had straightaway begun to get out of hand. Or rather she’d got out of hand. She just couldn’t stand it, sitting there, looking at him, with those bloody great feet of his, and his ridiculously sexy mouth … and she’d savoured that mouth now that she knew what it could do … and his eyes moving over her, looking at her cleavage and her legs … and she’d shifted her chair nearer him, and pushed one of her legs up against his, just because she wanted to touch him, even through those ridiculous trousers he’d worn—what were they called, cavalry twill or something? Really grossly old-fashioned—and then he’d said would she like another drink, and she’d said, “No, William, not really, thank you very much,” and he’d looked a bit nonplussed, and she’d said, “I tell you what I would like, William,” and he’d said, “What’s that?” looking slightly nervous, and she’d said, “I’d like to go out to the car,” and they’d sat in it and snogged rather deliciously for a while, and then she’d said … after he’d made it clear he wanted what she wanted, every bit as much, possibly even more, “I’d like to go back to your house. To your room,” and he’d been so horrified it had been quite funny.

“Abi, we can’t do that. I’m sorry. We just can’t. You’ve met my parents; can you really imagine them sitting calmly watching TV if they thought … if they knew … we were … Well, it just doesn’t happen. Honestly, if I tried, I’d be so … so … well, I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

She decided not to ask him what he’d done in the past, simply said, “Well, we have to find somewhere, William. I’d suggest going back to mine, but I don’t think I can wait that long …”

That was when he’d suggested the office.

It hadn’t been too bad, the office. It was away from the house, quite far away; they’d gone in his car down a long track, to part of what he called the lambing shed. Which was hardly a shed, but a huge building that could have housed half a dozen families. They went into
it; the office was at the far end, a surprisingly clean, warm pair of rooms … “This is my bit, mine and Dad’s; the other’s for the farm secretary. She—”

“William, I don’t want to know about the farm secretary … Oh, God, can we just get on with it?”

He started to kiss her: that incredible style of kissing he had, slow and hard and sort of thoughtful; and while he did so, she managed to pull her dress off: all she was wearing under it was a pair of pants.

And then he’d started kissing her breasts in the same way, and then she’d pushed him down onto a sort of large couch thing, and … well, then it had all been totally incredible.

It seemed to go on for hours, wonderful, wild, noisy hours, as he worked on her body, made its sensations rise and fall, ease and tauten, as he moved slowly, then fast, then slowly again, pushed her to the edge, then pulled her back, as she felt everything with her head and her heart as well as her body, as he invaded every aspect of her, every capacity for pleasure she had, as she came, yelling with triumph, and then again and then, yes, yet again.

• • •

And now, nearly two weeks later, it was … well, it was absolutely great. They alternated between her place and one of the empty holiday cottages on the farm … He said he hadn’t thought of them before, and they were certainly more comfortable than the farm office. She didn’t mind William’s insistence that they only use candles in case his mother or the cowman who lived quite near them noticed the lights on and came to investigate; it seemed rather romantic. They cooked Ready Meals, usually curry, on the time-warp electric stoves, and drank some very indifferent wine and then had a lot of wonderful sex. She didn’t even mind the drive home at some point in the night; in fact, she rather liked it: the roads were clear, and she could play the radio and sing loudly along with it, and think about William and how sweet and funny he was and how much she loved being
with him, and not just for the sex. Her only fear, and it was truly dark and dreadful, was that William would find out what she was really like.

CHAPTER 31