The Best of Times (65 page)

It wasn’t until she turned up for a preproduction meeting that she discovered the first assistant director was Merlin Gerard …

• • •

“Georgia, hi. Lovely to see you. And wonderful to be working with you again.”

“Yes. Yes, it’s great.” Thinking, thank God, thank God she had never let him know how hurt she’d been, how deceived she’d felt. “Er … how’s Ticky?”

“She’s great, thanks. Yeah. Gone back to New York, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Want to come for a drink tonight?”

“I’m sorry, Merlin, I can’t. Not tonight. Another time, maybe.” She’d even managed to smile at him.

She’d never felt more proud of herself than she had at that moment.

• • •

“You total star,” Lila said, when she told her. Lila had become just about her best friend. They spent a lot of time together, shopping, going to the cinema, and to clubs when they could afford it, sometimes jazz clubs—Lila and Anna had introduced Georgia to jazz, and
she was slightly surprised by how much she loved it—but mostly just talking, often late into the night.

“Yeah, I was pretty pleased with myself. He looked pretty … pretty surprised.”

“Good. He needs to be. And … did you still fancy him?”

“Oh, yes. Completely,” said Georgia rather sadly.

• • •

Anna had agreed—rather nervously, but with great delight—that she and Lila would play a set at the festival. Abi had said she thought they should have some jazz, and Georgia—who was still a little in awe of Abi—said rather tentatively that she knew someone who had played jazz in quite a big way. Abi had never heard of Sim Foster, but she mentioned his name to a jazz enthusiast at work and had been astonished at his reaction.

“My God, Abi, he was one of the greats, you know. Some of his early stuff, absolute classics. And she was fantastic too, great voice. Anyone who knows anything about jazz’d give a lot to hear her. Even without him. They were an absolute legend.”

Abi went back rather humbly to Georgia and told her to ask the legend if she’d be kind enough to consider playing at the festival.

She was totally dreading the inquest; she shrank from having her relationship with Jonathan brought out in court, together with the fact that she had lied when she had first given evidence. She couldn’t imagine what the outcome might be; in her darkest hours, she saw herself in jail, or at best with a criminal record.

William had tried rather cursorily to reassure her once, but after that refused to discuss the whole thing. William just wanted it over: for more reasons than one. The thought of being in the same courtroom as Jonathan Gilliatt was not appealing.

• • •

Daisy was home now, frail and very thin, moving around with great difficulty but equal determination; fortunately it was her left leg but
her right arm that were broken, so she could use a crutch to hobble from room to room. The family room had been turned into a bedroom for her, and her toys installed, so that she didn’t have to cope with the stairs.

With the resilience of children, she seemed fairly unaffected by her trauma emotionally: no nightmares, no display of anxiety. The thing that most worried her was that she had broken the rules, done what was expressly forbidden, and she said over and over again that she was very sorry she had run into the road, and that she would never do such a thing again; Laura had privately resolved that Daisy would never run anywhere unaccompanied again, or not for a very long time.

The person perhaps most adversely affected by the whole thing was Lily, whose pretty little nose had been put distinctly out of joint by all the attention lavished on her sister. Initially delighted when Daisy was pronounced out of danger, and especially when she was allowed home, she now spent a large part of every day quarrelling with her, and demanding that the bounty of new toys pouring into Daisy’s possession, supplied not only by her parents and grandparents, but school friends and neighbours, be replicated in her own, and bursting into hysterical tears when she was told they would not.

Charlie, who appeared in some ways to have become at least five years older than he had been before the accident, was alternately to be found telling her to shut up and to be glad she still had a sister to fight with, and patiently playing games with one or the other of them. He had begged not to have to go back to school until Daisy was completely well; after two weeks of acting the perfect brother he suddenly announced that even school was preferable. Laura and Jonathan, who had been a little worried by his newly saintly persona, were secretly relieved.

Jonathan had moved back home. Charlie had begged him to, and so had the girls; Laura could hardly refuse. She didn’t exactly want to refuse. But even given the surge of positive emotion towards him that she had experienced in the hospital, she wasn’t sure that she was
remotely ready to start living with him again. Or indeed if she ever would be. A slow, but savage surge of anger and resentment was filling her once more; in the adrenaline crash after Daisy’s initial recovery, it shocked her. She had thought, felt indeed, that if Daisy was given back to her, she would never mind anything again. She was horrified to discover that she still minded about Jonathan and Abi Scott very much indeed.

Once the desperate, clawing fear had subsided, once they had gone home, properly home, faced with the long, long days of sitting at Daisy’s bedside, the exhaustion of coping with her querulous demands, her boredom, and her pain, then it began. She would look at him over the table as he laughed and joked with Charlie, teased Lily, as he sat by Daisy reading to her, as he helped her with things like shopping and the school run, for he had taken compassionate leave, would watch him being the perfect husband and the perfect father once more and at times she hated him. And was shocked at herself for it.

She struggled to fight it; she reminded herself constantly of his courage and his tenderness in the dreadful days at the hospital, when Daisy had swung so close to death; she told herself that more than ever now he had earned her generosity and her forgiveness … but she was still haunted by the betrayal, the easy lies that he had shown himself to be capable of, and the way he had allowed Abi Scott to cut into the heart of their marriage.

And the thought of sleeping with him was abhorrent; she could not imagine it ever again. There would be a third person in their bed forevermore now, and no longer a shadowy presence, a vague threat, but one she had seen, heard, smelt—she would never forget that rich, cloying perfume—and watched as she sashayed across the room and kissed her husband’s mouth.

Jonathan had not suggested that he join her in their bed; he continued to sleep in the spare room without comment, and indeed as if he assumed it was the proper place for him; but one night, quite late, after they had been reading in the drawing room and she said she was
tired and thought she would go to bed, he had looked at her and smiled and said, “Do, darling. You look tired. Shall I make you a nightcap?”

He had always done that in the old days, when she was particularly exhausted, brought her a hot toddy; she hardly ever drank spirits, but she loved that; the effect of the whisky in the hot milk never failed to make her sleep. But for some reason tonight, she found the thought of it unbearable, that he was trying to deny the present, to work back into the past, when he had been a source of comfort, not pain, of reassurance, not fear, and she stood up and said, “No, thank you, I can do that for myself,” and she could hear the coldness, the rejection in her own voice.

His eyes as he looked at her then were surprised, hurt even. “All right, darling,” he said, “but the offer’s there.”

And suddenly, it happened; she could hold it back no longer, the force of her rage. “Jonathan, don’t call me darling, please,” was all she said, but her tone was ugly, almost savage, and he could not but react.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice in its turn was ice-cold, heavy with anger. “I didn’t realise you still felt so strongly against me.”

“Is that so?” she said. “You didn’t realise? What did you think, then? That I had forgotten about … about what you did, your lies, how you betrayed me, betrayed us all?”

“No,” he said, “of course not. But I thought … perhaps … we had moved on. That you could at least start to … to accept it, if not forgive.”

“Jonathan, how could you even begin to think that? Accept it, you say! Accept the fact that you preferred her to me …”

“I did not prefer her,” he said wearily. “No comparison came into it. She was … well, she was what she was. Nothing to do with you. I love you …”

“Oh, please! You love me! So much that you fucked someone else. Not just once—I could endure that—but many times. And not just fucked her—slept with her, really slept with her, lay with her all night, woke up with her beside you. Lied and lied to me so that you
could. How could you do that, Jonathan; how could you want to do that?”

“I … don’t know,” he said, “I really don’t know. It was some kind of … madness. I know, all erring husbands say that, but it’s true; it was as if I became someone else. I didn’t stop loving you, Laura; I didn’t love you any less. It was greed, a grab at something else that I knew I shouldn’t have. I can’t expect you to understand, but—”

“No,” she said, “I don’t understand. Of course I don’t. Well, I can see that you would want her, but the fact is, you couldn’t want her without rejecting me. That’s how I see it, a rejection of me, of what I could do for you, what I could offer. It makes me feel so … so lacking.”

“Lacking in what?” he said, and he looked so bewildered she almost smiled.

“In myself, Jonathan. I know …” She faltered, took a breath, started again. “I know I’m not particularly … sexy. I know that very well. I mean, I like sex, of course …”

“And why do you say ‘of course’?” he said. “It’s not compulsory, you know, liking it.”

“What do you mean?” she said, staring at him in astonishment. “Of course it is; it’s part of a marriage, part of loving someone.”

“And did you really see it as part of loving me?”

“Of course I did”—and she was shouting now—“of course I saw it as that. It was so precious to me; it was ours, and no one else’s, what we shared, only between us. Now it’s not anymore; it’s hers; she’s taken it, or rather you’ve given it; it’s gone; it’s gone forever and no one can bring it back.”

He was absolutely silent, looking at her with a dreadful sadness in his eyes; then he said, “Well, it seems we are done for, then. We can’t be as we were again, can we?”

“No,” she said, “no, we can’t. Never. Never.”

“Well … in that case, maybe I should go again. But I want to say a few things first. That really need saying. I did love you. So very, very much. I do love you very, very much. You are the centre of my life and
the centre of our family. I can’t contemplate life without you, Laura. Oh, that’s not some idle suicidal threat; it’s true. Of course I’d go on living, but I’d be changed. I’d be lost. I’d be pathetic, useless, dysfunctional.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’d be just fine. Still the successful, attractive, wonderful Jonathan Gilliatt.”

“Laura, I wouldn’t. I’m only those things because I have you. I’d be anxious; I’d lose confidence, judgment. God in heaven, that happened even when I was living away for those few weeks. I dithered, I took second opinions, I did what others said instead of what I knew was right, I didn’t even know what was right anymore. I made one appalling mistake—I didn’t tell you about it, and you wouldn’t have cared, I should think, given the circumstances—but I missed a cord presentation … You know what that is?”

“The baby’s head pressing on the cord?”

“Exactly. How often I must have bored you with these technical details. Anyway, the baby nearly died; could so well have been brain damaged. And I missed it, because I was so wretched, so … so lost. And deservedly so, no doubt you would say. But … well, that is how dependent on you I am. I’m nothing without you, Laura, nothing at all.”

She was silent.

“I’m talking professionally, of course, but it extends to everything. The charming, attractive Jonathan Gilliatt, as you call him, is a pathetically different chap on his own …”

“Jonathan, this is all very touching, but if I’m so important to you, why risk losing me? Why start an affair with someone else? It doesn’t quite add up. Sorry.”

“I know that. Of course I do. It was insanity. It was dangerous insanity. And I had never done anything like it before, and I never would again. And I know you don’t believe me when I tell you it was over, that I’d finished with her that day, but it’s true. But … haven’t you ever, in your perfectly controlled, beautifully behaved life, Laura,
done anything remotely wrong? Or dangerous? Haven’t you ever been tempted to kick over the traces? Oh, not to have an affair, but … I don’t know, spend too much and lie to me about it, or take a day off from cooking and buy a ready meal for the children, or go back to bed or spend the day with your girlfriends and not do any work, or not help with the homework, or …”

“No,” she said, after a few moments’ thought, “no, I haven’t.”

“Well, then,” he said, and he almost smiled, “there you have it, perhaps.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s quite … tough being married to you.”

“Jonathan, I devote my entire life to you. To doing what you want, going where you want me to be. It’s me it’s tough for, I’d say. Not you.”

“No,” he said. “Well, it may be. But that’s why—I think—I had this affair with Abi Scott. I’m trying to be honest now. Because she was bad quite a lot of the time. She wasn’t perfect. She was certainly less perfect than me. She’s greedy and amoral and she tells lies, all the time; I didn’t have to live up to her. And I have to say, I treated her very badly.”

“Oh, my heart bleeds for her. I’m so sorry.”

“I am sorry … actually. I should have shown her some consideration, after the crash. It was a trauma for her, as well, a dreadful one. And what did I do? I was so shit scared of you finding out about her that I threatened her …”

“You what?” She was shocked by that.

“I threatened her. I told her if the didn’t go along with my story that she was a work colleague, I’d tell the police about her drug habit. Not nice behaviour.”