A Family Concern (23 page)

Lewis stopped speaking and they sat in silence. ‘He didn't tell me, mind you,' he continued at last. ‘When he came back downstairs, he looked very pale and I asked if he was OK, and he just nodded. Then he wanted to know if I'd any homework, and when I sat down to do it, he went to the phone. I think he called Bruce and Jan, but I didn't hear what he said, and of course at that stage I wasn't really interested.' He paused, and added reflectively, ‘I've always thought he didn't tell me for so long, because he kept hoping she'd change her mind and come back.'

‘Will you tell Freya about the tree house?' Rona asked.

Lewis frowned. ‘I'm not sure. I'll have a word with my father. We don't want to add to her stress, and we might be way off-beam.'

Rona nodded, but she didn't think so. She was relieved, though, they didn't want her to break the news.

Kate said thoughtfully, ‘If courting couples went there, she could have seen a lovers' tiff.'

Lewis shook his head. ‘It would have to have been pretty violent, to leave such an impression.'

‘If they were making love, it could have
looked
violent to a young child.'

It seemed no one else had anything to offer. Rona picked up her handbag. ‘I'd better be going,' she said. ‘I've taken up enough of your Sunday.'

They didn't try to detain her. As she drove out of the gate, she saw them standing in the open doorway, Lewis's arm across Kate's shoulders, and felt a sharp pang of envy. Oh, God, she couldn't face going home to Max's stony silence.

She pulled in to the kerb, took out her mobile, and dialled Lindsey's number. It rang and rang, then the answerphone came on. She tried her mobile, but it was turned to voice-mail. Damn! Rona thought. Where are you, when I need you?

In desperation, she pressed the key for the Ridgeways, and was rewarded by the engaged tone. At least that meant they were home. Rona snapped her mobile shut and, emerging from Brindley Grove, turned in the direction of the town centre.

There were lights in the downstairs windows when she drew up outside the house in Barrington Road. She went up the path and rang the bell. It was Gavin who answered it.

‘Rona! Hello! What a pleasant surprise!'

The sight of his familiar figure, and, behind him, the house that was like a second home to her, caught her off guard and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Hey!' Gavin's smile faded and he reached for her. ‘Come in, love. What's the matter?'

She shook her head blindly and felt his arm come round her as, minutes before, she'd seen Lewis's encircle Kate.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I'm all right. Really. Just …'

Magda's voice called, ‘Who is it, darling?' and she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

‘Rona!' Then, sharply, ‘What's wrong? What's happened?'

Rona shook her head, and as Gavin released her, went forward into Magda's outstretched arms, feeling them tighten about her.

‘Come into the kitchen,' Magda said, leading her through the open door.

‘You sound like your mother!' Rona told her, with a shaky laugh. Paola King had been of the opinion that most ills could be cured by, depending on the hour of day, a plate of home-made pasta or a cup of cappuccino and the little pastries she called
copate
.

‘Sit down.' Rona obediently did so, and Magda sat down opposite her, gazing at her intently. ‘Right; now – what's happened?'

‘I've had a row with Max,' Rona said.

Magda raised an eyebrow. ‘Hardly the first, I imagine.'

‘But the worst so far.'

‘Do you want to tell me about it?'

Rona hesitated. ‘That's why I came here,' she admitted, ‘but now I'm not so sure.'

‘When did this take place? Just now?'

‘No, last night.'

Magda clicked her teeth. ‘And you let the sun go down on it? That's not like you.'

‘It had gone down before we started,' Rona said, with the ghost of a smile.

‘So what have you been doing today? Avoiding each other?'

‘Pretty well. I had to go and see someone this afternoon, and suddenly felt I couldn't go home. Which is why I turned up on your doorstep. Sorry.'

‘Lindsey not being available?'

‘No.'

‘Then where else would you turn up?' Magda asked briskly. ‘Would you like some coffee?'

‘I've just had some, but it's made me thirsty. I'd love a cup of tea.'

‘No problem.' Magda set about making it. ‘Whoever did you have to see on a Sunday afternoon?'

‘Kate and Lewis Tarlton.'

Magda turned in surprise. ‘The jewellery people?'

‘Yes.'

‘Regarding your new series?'

Rona smiled. ‘More regarding the “flighty wife”, as Gavin called her.'

‘The one who went off with her lover?'

‘Yes; she left her daughter with a lasting trauma, and I'm not sure Lewis escaped unscathed.'

‘Old Robert certainly didn't,' Magda said, putting mugs of tea on the table and sitting down again. ‘So where do you come in?'

And, glad to have something other than Max to think about, Rona told her about Freya's dreams and that afternoon's visit to the wood.

‘Spooky,' Magda said.

‘It was, a bit.' Rona sipped the hot tea, and found it soothing.

‘Do you think the tree house is significant?'

‘Yes, but I'm not sure how.'

‘If you told Freya what you've worked out, it might be enough to bring the rest of it back.'

‘Yes, but I'm happy to leave that responsibility to her family.'

Magda stood up. ‘Well, if you're sure you don't want to talk about Max, let's go and join Gavin. He'll be glad to see you.'

Dear Magda; unlike herself over Adele, she never betrayed the slightest hint of jealousy. Not that she'd any cause, though, in her present anti-Max mood, Gavin's arm round her had been very comforting. Perhaps it was as well Magda had appeared when she did.

They sat by the fire, chatting and listening to CDs, for a couple of hours before Rona reluctantly made a move. Gavin, possibly primed by his wife when Rona wasn't looking, had made no reference to Max, so there'd been no awkward moments.

‘How are your parents?' Magda asked, as Rona slipped on her coat in the hall.

‘On speaking terms, thank goodness. We'll be having Christmas lunch together after all. Max has booked a table at the Clarendon.'

‘That's great.' She opened the front door on to winter darkness, and Rona's heart, buoyed up by her friends' company, plummeted again. Perhaps her expression betrayed her, because Magda gave her a quick hug and whispered in her ear, ‘Good luck!'

Slowly, Rona drove home.

As she shut the front door, Gus came bounding to greet her, closely followed by Max.

‘I was beginning to wonder where you were,' he said. ‘Have you been at the Tarltons' all this time?'

‘No, I went on to the Ridgeways.'

His eyes narrowed. ‘And told them I'd been with another woman?'

‘No,' she said tiredly, ‘just that we'd had a row.'

After a minute he said, ‘Thank you for that. Let's go into the sitting room.'

Obediently she did so, seating herself on the sofa facing the fire. He followed, and stood looking down at her. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back at all.'

‘If you'd checked, you'd have found I hadn't taken my toothbrush.'

‘It's been a hell of a day.'

‘I know.'

‘At least you've had company all afternoon.'

He sat down next to her and reached for her hand. She made no effort to withdraw it.

‘Are you prepared to let me explain now?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘The first thing I have to say, my love, is that you were right and I was wrong. Adele
was
making a bid for my interest. But I swear to you—'

‘Just tell me what happened.'

Calmly and without embellishment, he did so. ‘It came totally out of the blue,' he ended. ‘I hadn't seen it coming, but with hindsight perhaps I should have done.'

‘It was so humiliating,' Rona said softly, ‘hearing that horrible man talking like that, and the rest of them sniggering.'

‘I know, sweetheart. I wanted to knock his teeth down his throat, but it might have raised the odd eyebrow. However, when you left the room, I made myself crystal-clear. By the time I'd finished, no one was in any doubt that Adele was simply a student who – and here I admit I lied – had called in to collect some sketches she'd left behind. Charlie had the grace to apologize.' He sighed. ‘I know I should have told you straight away, but you'd always been against her, and I knew the fur would fly.'

She said in a low voice, ‘I wondered if that was why you made love to me on Friday. Because of a guilty conscience.'

He pulled her roughly into his arms. ‘You little goose,' he said against her hair. ‘I made love to you because you mean everything to me, and always have, and always will, and all the Adele Yarboroughs in the world can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Does that satisfy you?'

‘Almost,' she said, and turned her head to meet his mouth.

Gerald Fairfax locked the front door of his cottage and walked down the path to the gate, where he paused for a moment, looking up and down the road. In Dean's Crescent North, he thought with satisfaction, no two houses were the same. Some, like his, had a front path, while others, such as Farthings, where the artist lived, opened directly on to the street. Some were thatched, some steep-gabled, some of stone, some of brick. It was an interesting place to live, and he was glad to be a part of it, rather than lodging at the hotel. He spent enough time there as it was, and he needed his space.

Nevertheless, he thought with a smile, he was on his way there now, even though it was his evening off. True, he was anxious to see how Darren coped with the new duck recipe, but his main reason for going was to ask his brother's advice about a Christmas present for their father. Chris was closer to Stephen than he was, and had a clearer idea of what appealed to him.

He walked slowly to the corner of the Crescent, glancing into lighted windows as he went. He felt no guilt for his voyeurism – if the inhabitants wanted privacy, they should draw their curtains – and enjoyed these brief snapshots of other people's lives. Occasionally, he amused himself by imagining their daily routines, their places of work and their interaction with each other. He wondered if life on the inside of those windows was as idyllic as it appeared to those on the outside, or whether there were secrets and infidelities, crises and deceits in even the most united-seeming families.

Turning into Guild Street, he considered his own. They'd be surprised how much he knew about them – things they considered private to themselves, but which he'd absorbed without conscious effort. He'd been aware, for instance, of Chris's affair with Coralie Davis, long before it became common knowledge. His grandmother's secret fear was that she was losing her sight, and he'd added it to his own worry list. His father drank more than anyone appreciated, and was given to bouts of what Gerald suspected was severe depression, though he managed to disguise them pretty well. Only his mother, he thought fondly, had no secrets as far as he was aware.

Since he intended to see Darren first and offer encouragement on the duck, Gerald opted for the rear entrance. He turned into the kitchen passage, and was passing the small room he used for breaks, when, remembering he'd left some papers there, he decided to collect them en route.

He pushed open the door, and had taken a couple of steps inside before registering that the light was on, and someone was already there. Though never put into words, it was tacitly agreed that the room was his private domain, which was why he'd left personal items there. Now, to his annoyance, he found himself confronting Ted, one of the waiters, who was staring at him in consternation, his face flooding with colour.

‘Oh – Chef! I didn't know you were coming in this evening.'

‘Obviously.'

‘I'm sorry – I'd no right—'

‘No, you hadn't,' Gerald agreed sharply, wondering how often his privacy had been violated, and by how many members of staff. ‘Do you make a practice of coming here?'

‘No, really, I just …' His voice tailed off miserably as Gerald frowningly looked about him.

‘So what were you doing? Not relaxing, from the look of it.'

The man was, in fact, standing in front of the bookshelves, and a closer look revealed that one of the recipe books was slightly out of alignment.

Gerald moved towards it, and Ted said rapidly, ‘I was just checking something – it's not important. Please – there's no need—'

Ignoring him, Gerald lifted out the protruding volume – a technical tome that could be of no interest – and, aware of the man's mounting unease, reached into the recess left by its removal. His fingers encountered something soft and silky, and he withdrew his hand to find himself holding a brilliantly coloured scarf. Even as he stared at it in bewilderment, something fell from its folds and rolled under his desk – a shining gold cylinder. Slowly, Gerald raised his eyes and held the waiter's. Ted had now paled and was moistening his lips nervously.

‘Well?' Gerald said.

‘I know I done wrong,' the man said rapidly. ‘I – was going to return them.'

At Gerald's patent disbelief, he went on miserably, ‘I saw them when I was doing room service. It was a spur of the moment thing, I never—'

‘
Two
spur of the moment things,' Gerald corrected. ‘Which doesn't sound quite so feasible, does it?'

Ted's eyes fell. ‘I'm sorry, Chef. Give me a break, will you? I'll never do it again, honest.'

‘Honest isn't the word I'd have chosen.'