Virtue (47 page)

‘What?’

‘Anna,’ he says, his voice serious, ‘I’d love to see you. You know I’d love to see you. I meant what I said. But I’m not going to help you run away from your problems. I’m sorry you feel let down, but you’ve got to sort this out. I’ve seen Harriet in action, and I believe what she said about not meaning to lie to you. You’re going to have to talk to her. Get things out in the open. If you run away now, you’ll end up being one of those people who runs away from
everything
.’

‘I won’t!’ I cry.

‘You will,’ he says firmly. ‘I’m sorry, but you will. Strikes me that you and Harriet are the only stable things in either of your lives. If you reject
that
when things get rough, you’re pretty much saying that you’re the kind of person who’ll run away from anything. I’d love to see you. You know I’d love to see you. But I don’t want to see you if all I am is a bolthole.’

Oh, God. Not one person is on my side. I say nothing.

‘Come on,’ says Nigel, ‘talk to her. She’s a good girl, you know that. And she’s a good friend to you. You love her to death. Just sort it out, Anna.’

‘I can’t,’ I mutter. ‘She won’t want to talk to me now.’

‘’Course she will,’ he says. ‘Come on. Just call her. For your own sake.’

Then he says, ‘I’ve got to go now, Annie. I’m sorry, but I was due over at Scarborough half an hour ago. I’ll call you in a couple of days, yeah?’

‘Okay,’ I say.

‘It’ll be okay, Annie,’ he says. ‘Sort it out.’

And then there’s nothing but me and a dead line. And I go back to the futon and crawl under the duvet and cry some more, because no one seems to be on my side, because I don’t want to face life on my own any more, and because, deep in the very fabric of me, in the place that tears easily and never mends, I can’t bear to be without my best friend.

And of course, I don’t do anything. Stupid pride keeps me crying in the miserable flat above the miserable restaurant, and my tips go down because Harriet and I, however much we annoy Roy, were a good team, and one of the others and I simply don’t cut the mustard to the same extent. I give up going out. I just wander upstairs from work and sit on the futon with Henry eating leftover toad-in-the-hole and watching telly until I fall asleep. No one’s heard anything from Harriet, or so they tell me. Mel says she’s gone underground too. More likely living in her love bubble without a need for anyone else, I think uncharitably, steal several portions of bread-and-butter pudding from the restaurant and shove three helpings in my gob with cold custard before I throw it all back up again.

And then Godiva reaches out from beyond the grave once more. Three weeks after I last saw her daughter, I’m up early for someone who rarely goes to bed before three;
Rise and Shine
is still on when I turn on the black-and-white telly Mel’s loaned me while I get my life straight. And the first face I recognise is Leeza Hayman’s. There she is, bold as brass and twice as blonde, power suit and 15 deniers, legs crossed at the knee on the comfy sofa. I leap forward, turn up the volume to hear her say ‘… just as I’d always said all along. I’ve been saying for years that there was something fishy about the whole thing, so it hardly comes as a surprise to me.’

No, I think: nothing comes as a surprise to you. Surprise is a rare commodity among those who have the luxury of twenty-four hours in which to register their prescience.

‘But Leeza,’ protests Mandy, the forty-something co-host who seems to be chairing this segment, ‘you’ve been one of the most vocal figures in support of her over the past few months.’

Leeza, evidently unrattled, replies, ‘Yes, well, I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in the end enough is enough.’

We cut to camera 2, and I see that, along with Leeza on the sofa, which is one of those corner jobbies that allow the maximum number to be seated within the narrowest camera angle, are what looks like a Church of England vicar, the Shadow Spokesperson for Contentious Issues and a woman in black who looks remarkably like she might belong to the Solemnity of the Occasion Brigade. No, Goddamn it: she
is
one of the Solemnity of the Occasion Brigade. She’s the woman who told me off for taking a picture of the drag queens in Parliament Square. I sit down to watch.

Mandy turns to Solemnity. ‘Mavis Rogers,’ she says, ‘you’re a long-standing member of the Godiva Fawcett Trust. Would you say that there was some truth in what Leeza is saying?’

Solemnity colours, clears her throat and begins, ‘Absolutely not,’ she says. ‘Whatever Ms Hayman’s opinion may be, there are millions of people in this country who regard Godiva as a saint, and nothing the likes of the press can say is going to change our minds. She was a good, lovely lady, and any smear stories people like you’ – she spits the last word at Leeza – ‘may dredge up are nothing but that: smear stories from petty and jealous people bent on dirtying anything good to make themselves feel better. She will always be a saint in my eyes, and in thousands of other people’s. I think they should carry on and deify her anyway—’

Leeza leans forward to get her face into shot, interrupts. ‘That’s just the sort of ignorance that’s getting this country into trouble,’ she snaps. ‘It’s not
deify
, for a start, it’s
beatify
, and in case you didn’t know, there are rules about this sort of thing. And aside from the fact that it’s well recorded that she was hardly a model of virtue, the rules say that a body must remain uncorrupted, and I think it’s been proven pretty conclusively that hers is not.’

‘Yes it is!’ cries Solemnity. ‘I’ve seen it myself! She looks exactly as she did the day she died!’

‘She died from a blow to the back of the head,’ says Leeza. ‘Hardly disfiguring. And as for the rest, it’s all in the autopsy if you weren’t too fat-headed to read it. Half her body was stuffed with silicone and the rest had been sucked so free of fat that there was nothing left to rot. It’s hardly a miracle. It’s called cosmetic surgery, dear.’

Shadow Spokesperson grabs at what he perceives to be a cue. He looks like a schnauzer and wears a well-ironed spotted handkerchief in his – horrors – blazer pocket. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘that if ever there was one, this stands as a metaphor for the kind of government we’ve got at the moment. Godiva Fawcett’s life was like the life of this parliament: government by spin, government by public image, all performance and no substance.’

Everyone turns to him with a look of puzzled boredom. Vicar, the man of peace, jumps in to save both the day and the flow of the discussion. ‘As a man of the cloth,’ he declares in fruity tones, ‘I feel it my duty to see the good in everyone. The saint and the sinner, as it were. And I think that Godiva was a very
real
person. Flawed, of course – and who among us can claim to be perfect – but good at bottom. And we must not forget the manner of her death. If ever there was a Damascene conversion, I would say that this was one—’

‘Nonsense!’ cries Leeza. ‘It was the best career move she ever made!’

A tiny silence. Then Mandy, professional to the last, says, ‘What do you mean by that, Leeza?’ and Leeza continues.

‘Godiva Fawcett was an actress, for heaven’s sake. An actress and a publicity merchant. And her career had gone into freefall years before. She’d managed to prop it up with the bleeding-heart routine, but even that was wearing thin, and she knew it. I think it’s fairly obvious that she decided to go out with a bang, that’s all. Played out her greatest scene before the camera. And jolly effective it was too.’

Even Mandy finds this one hard to cope with. ‘Well, that’s certainly a strong opinion, Leeza,’ she stutters.

Solemnity is unable to hold herself back. ‘But there were the miracles!’ she insists. ‘Everyone knows about the miracles. She was always making ill people better. Why, my own daughter came out of a year-long depression just from seeing Godiva on the television talking about her own troubles …’

‘Hardly a miracle,’ says Leeza. Pulls the sort of face you see teenage girls making at dowdy rivals in discos.

‘And I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it at that,’ says Mandy hastily. ‘Thank you so much for joining us, Mavis Rogers, Peregrine Hart-Dumplington, Leeza Hayman and Nicholas Redfern. Now some of you may remember’ – she turns to face the autocue – ‘that we reported a few weeks back on the case of the little Nottingham girl who was found to have a sycamore growing from her left ear. Well, news reaches us today of an even more amazing …’

I turn the volume down. So Godiva no longer qualifies for sainthood. After all that, she turns out to be little more than a tailor’s dummy. And through various feelings of amusement and disappointment and relief, a single word is topmost in my thoughts.

Harriet.

And of course, the wolves are back outside the front gate, just as I knew they would be. Half a dozen of them gathered, hands in pockets, on the pavement, backs to me as I round the corner. Damn. I duck back out of sight before one of them turns, speed-dial our number, which is still stored under AAA in my mobile.

She’s screening, of course. ‘This is a machine,’ says the machine. ‘If you leave a message, it will not steal your soul. If you’re lucky.’

It beeps. I speak. ‘Hello, it’s me.’

Pause. ‘Harriet, it’s me. Pick up the phone.’

She picks up. ‘Annie?’

I’m quiet for a moment, then say, ‘Hello.’

‘I’m so glad you called,’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m okay,’ I say, feeling awkward.

I can hear her thinking, considering, then she says, again, ‘How are you? How are things?’

‘Fine,’ I reply. And again, ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah,’ says Harriet. ‘Fine. Keeping busy. Have you heard the news about my mother?

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not,’ she says. ‘Maybe the Solemnities will find something else to get worked up about now. They’ve had to let Anthony Figgis go, by the way.’

‘What?’

‘Couldn’t actually tie him in with any of the other stuff. Can’t keep someone locked up on a single burglary charge alone.’

‘I’m sorry.’

I can hear her shake her head. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be up to anything much else,’ she says. ‘I gather he’s been scared witless by being pulled in as it is.’

Then I think: what am I doing, talking to her on the phone? ‘Harriet,’ I tell her, ‘I came to see if you’re okay.’

Her voice changes: fear, excitement, something else. ‘You’re outside?’

‘Round the corner.’

‘Oh, thank God,’ she says, and the words come in a rush as though she’s been holding her breath.

‘Can I come up?’

‘Yes! Yes, please!’ It sounds like she is about to lose her voice.

‘I’ll tell you when I get to the gate,’ I tell her. ‘Then you’d better buzz me in. I don’t want to hand the combination over to all those gits out there.’

‘Fine.’

I drop the phone to my side, round the corner once again and walk with a determined stride towards the wolf pack. It takes a few seconds before they notice me, then they rush towards me like a wave towards a rock, break over my head in a hullabaloo of shouted questions, though, as there are only six of them, it would scarcely seem necessary. Half a dozen tape machines plunge towards my face, making me flinch. ‘You’ll take someone’s eye out one day,’ I tell a man in a polyester tie, and in return he shouts, ‘Are you going to visit Lady Harriet? What does she think about the findings of the autopsy? Will she be appealing to the Vatican? Can I have a quote on her reaction? What’s going to happen now?’

I smile sweetly and try to look calm, though inside I’m bricking it, scarcely able to keep walking. God, please let this go okay. I miss her. I can’t help it: I miss her. We reach the gate and suddenly all fall quiet as they wait to see what I’m going to do next.

‘Sorry, guys,’ I say. Lift the phone to my ear and say, ‘I’m here.’

A second later, the lock clunks and I slip inside, then lean all my weight against it to push it shut against the resistance without.

The yard hasn’t changed much, aside from a few extra tyre marks from the police presence and a pile of bin liners against the wall. I don’t know why I should have thought it would have. The car, petrol cap replaced, festers under the rowan, which is already covered in festive red berries.

And now I’m inside, I’m scared to go forward. I don’t know what to say to her. Because I know nothing about reconciliation. I have experience in obeying, in punishment, in total and final estrangement, but I’m twenty-nine years old and in all that time I’ve never spoken bitter words and then asked for forgiveness.

I’ve slowed to a crawl. It takes me nearly five minutes of dawdling to get as far as the bridge. The weather has turned from blazing sun to one of those perfect early autumn days where the air is light and the light is clean, and you’re suddenly aware that winter won’t be far behind. What do I do? What do I say? Oh, God, let me go back to before, let me un-say the things I said, take back the thoughts, just be me and Harriet, cat-ladies for ever. My stomach is churning, my skin burns, there’s a twitch in my cheek that won’t be still.

And then I realise that I can’t go through with it. I can’t face her. I can’t do this. Losing her the first time – throwing our friendship away the first time – was like a death. I’d rather die. I’d rather die myself, right now, than go through it again. I stop in my tracks, look at my shoes, make to turn back towards the gate.

And then the door bursts open at the foot of the tower and she’s pounding down the path towards me, hair flying, face twisted with – what? – I don’t know.

And then I do know. Because her arms are open and she’s shouting and sobbing all at once, ‘Darling, darling, I’m sorry! You came back and I’m sorry and thank you and oh God, Anna, you came back!’

Thursday night. There are twenty-five church candles on the coffee table and it takes nearly five minutes to light them all. But it’s worth it, because it gives me an opportunity to turn off the background lighting once the first one is lit, and then I know I look good with the warm yellow glow playing on my face and my backless dress falling lightly forward as I lean casually over them to reveal just the merest hint of breast. I use a long wax taper rather than a cigarette lighter to light them; it looks classy, and besides, I get an opportunity to pout delicately, looking all the while into his eyes over the flame, as I blow it out.