Till We Meet Again (19 page)

Then, when she was left with absolutely nothing, she finally decided to take some action and shot two people!

She had to be mad!

Beth’s mood wasn’t helped during the afternoon by a series of clients who were either blatantly lying to her or so cocky about what they’d done that she felt like slapping them. By the time she left the office at five, she was tense with anger and frustration.

When she arrived home and opened the front door to find two inches of water in the hall, that was the last straw.

It was clear the washing machine she’d left running that morning was the culprit. The water had run out into the hall, and now it was seeping on to the living-room carpet too. She let out a bellow of pure rage, punched the wall with her fist and burst into hysterical tears.

‘Beth!’

She turned on hearing her name being called to see Steven running up the stairs. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he called out.

‘Look!’ she snarled, pointing a shaking finger at the hall floor. ‘The bloody washing machine!’

He leapt up the last few steps, peered into the hall, then put one hand on her arm. ‘Calm down. It probably looks worse than it is.’

‘Calm down!’ she yelled at him. ‘This has just about put the hat on the day I’ve had. Any minute now I’ll get the people downstairs complaining their ceiling’s coming down.’

‘No you won’t, I expect the floor is concrete,’ he said calmly, and without any hesitation he slipped off his shoes and socks and waded into the flat.

Beth slumped against the wall, still sobbing. Steven reappeared a couple of minutes later with a bucket and cloth and a couple of towels. He put the towels down by the living-room doorway to prevent any more water running in there, and began mopping up.

‘It’s not that bad,’ he said from his bent-over position. ‘It’s mostly run out here, the kitchen floor has a slight slope. Lucky it’s all tiled. The carpet will soon dry, and as it’s clean water, it won’t leave a mark.’

His optimistic view did nothing to help Beth. She knew she was showing herself up, but she couldn’t stop crying, or even help. She stood there helplessly, tears streaming down her face as he mopped and wrung out the cloth again and again.

‘Right. Come on in now,’ he said as he finally stood up. He held out his hand to her. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll just finish off in the kitchen and make you a cup of tea.’

A few minutes later Beth had a mug of tea in her hands and her sobs had turned to mere occasional sniffs and gasps. ‘I’m sorry you had to see me like this,’ she said, feeling very embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

She had never imagined Steven to be so practical, he had always struck her as one of those men who couldn’t change a car wheel or even put in a new light bulb. She supposed that was purely because he was always so untidy. But he had been so quick and thorough, and his blue eyes didn’t hold a trace of mockery.

‘We all have days like that sometimes,’ he said sympathetically, perching on the edge of the couch as he sipped his tea. ‘Want to tell me about it?’

She looked at him and felt ashamed. His feet were still bare, his trousers rolled up to show very white, bony ankles. He’d taken his jacket off, and the shirt beneath it hadn’t been ironed on either the sleeves or the back. His hair needed cutting. He looked like the one who needed looking after.

He had such a nice face, she thought, kind eyes, full lips that suggested a generous nature. She really couldn’t understand why she’d been such a bitch to him in the past.

‘There’s no sensible explanation,’ she admitted. ‘Susan irritated me this morning, then I just got more and more wound up this afternoon. When I opened the door and saw the water, I just flipped. What brought you round here anyway?’

‘I tried to catch up with you as you left the office, just to ask how you got on with Susan today, but you were going like the clappers.’ He grinned. ‘My car was in the multi-storey near here, and as you’d left the front door open, I just came in on the impulse. I heard you yell out, and I thought you’d been burgled or something.’

‘I feel stupid now,’ she said sheepishly, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue and finding to her further shame that her mascara had smeared all over her face. ‘But thank you for mopping it up.’

‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ll pull the machine out in a minute and see if I can see what went wrong with it. I’d better push off then and let you have a lie-down or whatever.’

‘No, don’t go yet,’ she said, aware she owed him at least a bit of news about Susan in return for what he’d done. ‘I’ll just go and wash my face. I must look awful.’

In the bathroom Beth stared at herself in horror. It wasn’t just her white face streaked with black, but the realization she’d completely lost control of herself. And in front of Steven of all people!

She could hear him pulling the washing machine out in the kitchen, and she was reminded of how often she’d been sharp with him in the past. She really didn’t deserve his kindness now. She fervently hoped he would keep this incident to himself. She could imagine how gleeful some of the other office staff would be to hear she was capable of hysterics.

As she went back into the kitchen, Steven had pushed the machine back under the work surface. He had the hose in his hand.

‘It’s split,’ he said, showing her a small hole. ‘I’ll take it away with me and get a replacement, it’s an easy job to refit it.’

‘You’ve been so very kind,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

‘Maidens in distress have always been my thing,’ he said with a smile. ‘Do you feel like telling me about Susan, or has that got to wait?’

‘Liam, Annabel’s father, deserted her,’ Beth said tartly. ‘She’s so pathetic she thinks he did her a favour just by making her pregnant.’

‘I wouldn’t say that’s pathetic,’ he said indignantly. ‘Most women want a baby, maybe she wanted one far more than she wanted a permanent relationship.’

‘It was irresponsible,’ she retorted.

Steven smiled. ‘We’re all guilty of that sometimes,’ he said. ‘So are you saying Susan wasn’t cut up about him vanishing?’

‘She didn’t appear to be, she was too full of little homilies like “Love turns us into real women”. I found it all really annoying.’

‘Ah, so that’s what set you off.’ He laughed. ‘Shall I make us more tea? You might as well get it all off your chest in one go.’

Over a second cup of tea, Beth told him everything Susan had told her, including what Liam was like, and how Martin inherited the house and threw her out. ‘She should have stuck up for herself,’ she said angrily. ‘Why do people let others walk all over them?’

‘Some of us aren’t tough enough to fight back,’ he said.

Beth heard a note of wistfulness in his voice and she looked hard at him.

‘Why? Who’s walking all over you?’ she asked.

He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. She knew she had struck a chord.

‘Come on, tell me,’ she said gently. ‘Better out than in.’

He scratched his head and looked away from her. ‘I can’t,’ he said eventually.

‘Why? Because you’re afraid I’ll pass it on? Do I strike you as a gossip?’

‘No, of course not,’ he said quickly. He was blushing now, he looked like a guilty schoolboy.

‘I don’t think you’d tell everyone in the office about this incident,’ she said. ‘So please trust me.’

He sighed. ‘Okay. It’s Anna,’ he blurted out. ‘I know I should get tough but I can’t. She’s got a problem with drink, you see.’

Beth was astounded. She had never met Anna, but she’d seen a photograph of her in Steven’s office, a pretty woman with dark hair and a wide, vivacious smile. Right from her first meeting with Steven, Beth had always had an image of him leading the ‘ideal’ life.

She knew roughly where he lived, a desirable neighbourhood of semi-detached houses with neat gardens. Since she’d met Sophie and Polly and seen how well behaved they were, she had imagined Anna as the prop of the PTA, a woman who could make a prize-winning sponge cake at the same time as she ran up a fancy-dress costume.

Yet suddenly Sophie’s remark about her mother liking wine too much came back to her, and she remembered Steven’s reaction.

‘Have you gone anywhere for help? How is it affecting the girls?’ she asked.

‘It’s making the girls very anxious.’ Steven’s voice shook and his eyes were bleak. ‘They never know what to expect when they get back from school. They can’t rely on their mother for anything. It’s me who keeps everything together, or tries to. As for getting help, Anna won’t admit there is a problem.’

‘I’m so sorry, Steven,’ Beth said. ‘I never guessed there was anything wrong, you always seem so cheerful.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s one of Anna’s many complaints about me, I’m too cheerful, too boring, too everything for her.’

‘Where are the girls now?’ Beth asked.

‘At a friend’s house, they are staying over tonight,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’d be rushing back to make their tea. But I didn’t mean to spill this out. I’d better go, you’ve had quite enough drama for one day.’

‘No, stay and have supper with me,’ she said impulsively. He’d been kind to her and she was going to reciprocate.

‘I’d like that,’ he said, and half smiled. ‘But I don’t want to talk about my problem with Anna any more. Just admitting there is one is enough for today.’

As Beth cooked some pasta and made a Bolognese sauce, Steven sat on a kitchen chair and listened as she told him more about the visit with Susan.

They talked in general about Susan as they ate the meal. Her life taking care of her mother, and how unfair it was that her father left everything to Martin.

‘I ought to talk to him,’ Steven said. ‘I mean, we do need to confirm that it is all true.’

‘Do you doubt it then?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘She strikes me as someone that was born to lose. Too accepting, too anxious to please. I suppose that’s why she rushed full tilt into a love affair with the first man that came along,’ he added sympathetically. ‘She must have been so lonely. I expect it was much the same with Reuben too. No wonder she went right off the rails when the second romance failed.’

Beth put their empty plates into the dishwasher, made some coffee and suggested they went into the sitting room.

‘I’m puzzled why she went for two such similar men, though,’ Beth said thoughtfully as she sat down opposite Steven. ‘If she got her fingers burned by Liam with his free spirit ideal, surely alarm bells would have rung when Reuben came on the scene?’

‘I think most of us go for the same types again and again,’ Steven said. ‘Even when we know what the outcome will be.’

‘Is that personal experience or merely observation?’ Beth asked wryly.

‘Both. I’ve always been attracted to complicated women, mostly with disastrous results. Anna once said it’s because I’m so boring I have to pep my life up,’ he said with a humourless laugh.

For some reason that riled Beth on his behalf. Maybe it had taken her a year to see there was more to Steven than an overgrown boy scout, but Anna was the one who’d married him and had his children. It wasn’t fair that she should ridicule him now and destroy his self-esteem.

‘I often think those who label others as boring are the real bores,’ she said pointedly. ‘They’re too wrapped up in themselves to see or hear anything else.’

‘Maybe that’s so, but I suppose I am dull company compared with men who go womanizing, boozing or gambling. I have always played it safe, tried to maintain the standards I was brought up with. I seem to be a target for women who like that about me at first, but then once they’ve got me, ridicule me for it.’

Beth sensed his pain, and her heart went out to him for it reminded her of the way her father treated her mother. ‘Did Anna have a problem with drink when you met her?’ she asked.

‘Not a problem. She was very much a party animal. Vivacious, fun-loving. Drinking tends to go with that, of course. All her previous boyfriends had been very possessive, she said they didn’t like her to shine, tried to keep her under lock and key. She made it very clear to me that if I became like that she’d drop me. I’ve never been the jealous kind, I enjoyed seeing her being the life and soul of the party. She was beautiful, witty, and I loved the wildness about her.’

‘I expect she secretly wanted you to be possessive too,’ Beth said. ‘Maybe she didn’t feel valued without it.’

‘Well, why say she hated it?’ he said, frowning with puzzlement.

Beth smiled. ‘Women can be very contrary. Anyway, when did the problem start?’

‘After Sophie was born. She was fine with just Polly, we still went out quite a lot, had friends round too. But then when Sophie came along two years later, she had postnatal depression for a while. When she came out of that, she seemed to resent being tied down by motherhood. She kept talking about going back to work – she had been a graphic artist before she had the children – but she never actually attempted to find a job.’

Beth nodded. ‘How did the drinking start?’

‘At first, when the girls were tiny, it was purely social. I tried to make things better for her by babysitting so she could go out with her old friends. She often came home legless. Then she would have girlfriends in during the day, and that usually involved a bottle or two of wine. Before long I was regularly arriving home to find it in a terrible mess, and Anna half cut. It just progressed from there. Now she’s rarely sober.’

‘Poor you,’ Beth said, remembering how sweet his children were and understanding now why he hadn’t wanted her to go home with him that evening. ‘Do you ever take a tough line with her?’

‘I try,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘But I know if I get too heavy she’ll use that as an excuse to leave me.’

‘Would that be such a bad thing?’ she asked gently, feeling deeply sorry for him.

‘I couldn’t bear the girls to lose their mother,’ he said. ‘She might not be much of one, but she’s all they’ve got.’

‘I think they’d be happier without her,’ she said. ‘I know because of how it was with my father.’

Beth never told people about her childhood and the only reason she felt compelled to tell Steven about it now was because it seemed relevant to how it was for Polly and Sophie. She explained how isolated and distressed she felt as a child because of her father’s unreasonable behaviour, and how her mother had stuck by him for exactly the same reasons Steven had just brought up about Anna.