The Betrayal of Trust (19 page)

‘Thank you.’

‘Then let’s go into the sitting room and have a cup of tea. Dr Fison – my husband – will come to meet you too. We can talk everything over.’

The sitting room was bright, with yellow curtains and sunny sofa covers. Pictures. Nice
antique sideboard. Piano. Nice room.

Empty.

‘There are only two other residents at the moment. But in any case we are never going to have more than eight or nine. So Miss Mills will have a lot of attention – nobody is going to be left sitting in a chair staring into space.’

‘She quite likes to sit in a chair. She’s not easy with food now. She was always interested. She cooked. Far better cook
than me. Now she doesn’t want to eat.’

‘Miss Wilcox, we can’t put the clock back and we haven’t a cure but we can do a lot to stimulate and help everyone individually through each bit of the day … time doesn’t mean anything to them but there can be advantages in that.’

‘I didn’t notice any. She gets very restless. She wakes in the night.’

‘Please don’t worry. We can deal with difficult situations.
It’s always easier for people outside rather than … family.’ She looked at Lenny. ‘No emotional involvement, no memories of how they were before it started. People come to us and we start there. We take them as they are. It helps. We have no expectations.’

‘Just as well.’ Lenny stood up. Said, ‘Payments. The direct debit is all set up. Can I visit?’

‘Of course you can visit ! Whenever you like.
There’s a guest
room
if you want to stay. Just let us know the previous day.’

‘I won’t need that.’

‘She’s in good hands.’

You would say that, Lenny thought. You have to say that.

It was a relief to get out of the place, get away from the new paint and the new carpet and the emptiness.

Her hand hurt. Let Olive bite them for a bit.

She drove the van home as badly as ever.

But it was too quiet.
She had grown used to Olive’s presence – for it could not be called company now – the restless movements in and out of each room, up and down stairs, the abrupt fits of laughter, the sudden wails or shrieks or bursts of tears. The rages.

Lenny made tea and took it into the music room. The furniture seemed to settle as she closed the door. The piano lid creaked faintly. She took out Schumann,
played a few bars, but they sounded hollow in the room and she realised she was still half listening out for Olive, for sounds that meant distress or anger or accident.

Olive.

She took down one of the albums that stood in a matching line, dark blue backs arranged edge to edge.

1984.

Devon. Provence. Corfu. London.

Sunshine. Blue sea. Famous buildings. But mainly, Olive. Olive swimming. Olive
in a small boat, waving. Olive on the Rialto Bridge. Olive on Exmoor wearing a headscarf. Olive holding her hand up against the sun. Lenny had taken them. Olive didn’t like using the camera, she fidgeted about and claimed that she couldn’t see properly through the viewfinder, didn’t know which button to press. There were just a few without Olive.

Lenny turned the pages, remembering this place
or that, the weather, the small hotel, the smells, the taste of the food. Had they been happy? Lenny no longer knew.

They had not been so young by then, but not old either. 1984. They had met the year before that but things had moved quite
slowly
. Olive had been cautious. Lenny would have preferred to plunge ahead, incautiously, preferred to be reckless in those days.

Not now.

She knew where
reckless could lead.

Olive, close up, sitting on a pebble beach with her legs stretched out, face turned to the camera lens. Lenny could not read her expression but perhaps she was about to ask a question – or just to say something. Talk. Olive talked, asked, told, described, rarely waiting for a reply. It was like a small child chattering and it was one of the things Lenny had found lovable
about her at the beginning. She was not used to someone who talked as she breathed. It was when the talking had begun to wind down, when there were long silences, when a sentence would stop and never be completed, another one started, about something different, unrelated to what had gone before.

The silences had grown longer. The forgetfulness become serious. ‘What time is it?’

‘Ten past three.’

‘Thanks. What time is it?’

‘Ten past …’

Lenny set the album down, open at the page on which Olive sat on the pebble beach. When had it all changed? What had happened? She knew the answers. But not why. Never why. Only that the Olive she had first met, first loved, first lived with, had vanished.

It was getting dark but she did not put on the light or return to the piano. The cottage was quiet.
Once they had had an affectionate dog. Once.

It occurred to her that she could have one again. Her own dog. She could have what she wanted. Do as she liked. For two years she had had a feeling that everything was temporary. That the care homes would find it too difficult to cope and that Olive would come back to her. And Olive had. Only of course it was not Olive. Olive had gone.

However, the
moment Lenny had walked into Maytree House she had known. This was not temporary, this was not another
of
the places that could not cope. This was where Olive would stay, living and dying.

Lenny could have a dog now. Or two.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

In the quietness, she remembered things she wanted to forget.

HE BRUSHED HIS
blond hair back and it flopped onto his forehead again and he remembered being fifteen or sixteen years old and trying to plaster it down. Now there was gel, of course, but now he didn’t care, since this woman or that had told him they liked it as it was, flopping forward. But Rachel was not one of those women.

The Burleigh was an old manor house with a stylish modern
extension at the back. In Simon’s experience, there were two kinds of floodlights on hotels or pubs – cheap garish orange, and designer silver-white, like this one, but this one also had a touch of warmth which enticed you in, up the shallow flight of stone steps and into the hall. Pillars. Deep sofas and chairs arranged in corners. Lamps. Heavy curtains, drawn together. A small reception table,
not a corporate desk. The office was out of sight. Flag stones. Rugs. It was much smarter than he remembered, obviously refurbished.

But the library bar was still there, up the stairs to the right. More discreet lamps. Dark green velvet sofas.

Rachel sitting on one, in the far corner. He looked at her for several seconds before she saw him. She sat quite still, not flipping through a magazine,
not fidgeting, not putting her hand to her hair, not turning round. Just sitting.

Maybe when you see me you won’t feel the same
.

He felt the same, and yet it was not the same, because what he felt now was far more and it disturbed him so much he had
an
overwhelming fear that he would panic and run. He ought to walk away, this was the last moment in which he could make the decision, before he
became quite unable to choose. He ought to leave now.

She looked up and straight at him. And then he could not leave.

‘Hello.’ She did not put out her hand or stand up. He saw that her expression was not as tranquil as it had seemed from a few yards away. She was very pale. Her eyes were the colour he remembered, the same deep violet, but anxious.

‘Let me get you a drink. What would you like?’

‘Anything. Lime and soda?’

‘You could have one real drink. I shall.’

‘Is that all right?’

‘Yes. We can always have coffee afterwards if you’re worried. But one is fine.’

‘A small glass of white wine then, please.’

He touched her shoulder briefly. ‘It’s all right,’ he said.

He had a single vodka, chose a good Sancerre for her. Asked for something better to eat than nuts and olives.

The drinks
came first. Heavy glasses, a separate bowl of ice. Then the small tray of canapés. Good canapés.

Then silence. Rachel was looking down. He wanted to say everything and could say nothing. Drank.

‘That was – very strange. The Lord Lieutenant’s dinner … banquet,’ she said. ‘I know what you were doing there. Your job – you had to go instead of …’

‘The Chief.’

‘But what was I doing there? I still
don’t know. We were asked but of course Kenneth couldn’t …’ She stopped and looked down.

‘Go on,’ he said, after a moment. ‘If you want to. Only if you want to.’

‘I don’t know if you want to hear.’

She looked at him. What is this? he thought.

‘The thing is … Ken would like to have gone … of course he would. He used to enjoy all those things, dinners, public stuff, and now he can’t, so he likes
me to go and then come
home
and tell him everything about it. I suppose it’s the next best thing to being there.’

‘You paint the picture.’

‘Yes.’

She hesitated. ‘Some of it anyway.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been to other things … dull dinners, the theatre occasionally, opera … I‘m not very good at opera. I like ballet but it never seems to be the ballet. Then I go home and paint the picture for him.
I suppose that sounds strange.’

‘Not in the least. It sounds good. A good thing to do. Will you tell me about him? About home. No, probably you’d prefer not to.’

And he didn’t know if he wanted to hear it.

Yes, he did know. He wanted the man not to exist. But he wanted to hear her talk so that he could look at her and listen to her and feel whatever it was he was feeling. It was important.
Not small talk. Non-talk. False talk.

He had been sitting in the chair opposite but now he got up and moved to the sofa, beside her. She looked troubled for a second, but remained quite still.

‘Tell me.’

‘There’s … I suppose a long version. And a short version.’

‘Whichever you like. Start with the short one?’

‘All right.’ She drank her wine. He looked at her hand on the glass and wanted to
touch it, though only to reassure her, or so he told himself. But he did not.

‘Ken has Parkinson’s disease. He’s had it for six years now and it’s a vile illness. It takes everything away little by little … dignity mainly. That’s the worst. He could go out, even now, but he won’t – he hasn’t for a long time, because he feels ashamed. He hates the way it has made him look and sound. God knows
he’s no need to be ashamed or embarrassed, though he’s every right to be angry. He has changed, you know? He is the same man but – not the same. I barely know him. So I feel ashamed of that. There, you have it.’ She looked away. ‘We’ve been married for nine years so there were barely three before … Ken is much older than me … so, you see …’

He did. He saw everything and took in what it meant.

‘If I didn’t go out to that sort of thing occasionally – like the banquet – it’s not often, you know?’ She looked up at him, as if she needed reassurance or even his permission. ‘I need it. I have to be myself somewhere, to be me. Just me. God, how selfish is that?’

‘Why? I don’t see that at all. Does … your husband …’ He couldn’t say what he meant.

‘I told you – he likes me to go instead of
him, he says he likes to think of me at these things … but he likes my company too, a lot of the time. Someone comes in when I’m not there … he has a rota of carers – they’re pretty good but he can’t talk to them. It’s not the same.’

She finished her wine and set the glass down but did not look at him.

‘Can I ask something?’ he said. ‘You don’t have to answer.’

‘But I’ll try.’

‘You must sit
next to all sorts of people at these functions.’

‘God, isn’t that an awful word?’

‘Sorry. I’ll never say it again. Now you’ve stopped me in my tracks.’

She was laughing. ‘Perhaps I know what you were going to say.’

‘Do you?’

‘You were going to ask if … if this was something I’d done before. Met a person by chance and then wanted to meet them again, not by chance. And did it. Met them. That’s
what you were going to ask me, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done it before. Absolutely not. I can’t imagine how it would ever happen.’

‘But it did.’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like another drink?’

‘Thank you. Lime and soda now.’

At the bar, he wondered how long they had, when she had to leave, when they could meet next, where they could meet … He was light-headed.

When he returned
she was sitting very still again. She glanced up.

‘You did believe me? About meeting people. I couldn’t bear you to think –’

‘I don’t.’ He put his hand over hers.

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she said.

The drinks came.

‘You haven’t eaten any of those.’

‘Nor have you.’

He took one. Put it down again.

‘But you
are
here. We are.’

‘Yes. I … I don’t understand what happened, Simon. I told myself
all the way that I wasn’t coming here to meet you … all the way. Turning off the road, up the drive … I wasn’t coming.’

‘Listen, it’s easy for me. I’m a free agent – in case you were wondering about that. There’s just me.’

‘I know.’

‘How?’

She flushed slightly. ‘I found out. Asked people. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that but I had to know.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t turn round.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you?’

‘Very.’

‘Can we have dinner?’

‘No. I have to get back.’

‘But not straight away. Please?’

‘No. Tell me. Tell me about Simon.’

‘What, work?’

‘No. We talked about that. I mean Simon. Not his job. You are not your job.’

‘I sometimes think I am. A lot of the time. I have to be.’

‘And the rest of the time? Tell me about that.’

He told her, told her more than he had ever told anyone,
told her not only about now, Cat and the children, his father, Judith, his flat, his drawing, but about the past, his mother, Martha, Chris, and then childhood, things he had almost forgotten but
which
bubbled to the surface as he spoke, leaning his head against the sofa back, looking at her sometimes, and sometimes away. He could not believe how much he told her and how she listened, very still,
listened as he did not know anyone could, quiet, attentive, relaxed next to him, saying nothing though sometimes she smiled.