Almost a Crime (5 page)

con. The quality was frequently very poor. And children

wanted you when they wanted you; they didn’t save things

up to tell you, to talk to you about, cry over.

She sighed. She had always promised herself that one day,

when the business could stand it, she would work less, a

four-or three-day week, spend more time at home with

the children. Only clients were rather like children, they

also wanted you on demand. Most of their lives belonged to

clients, Tom’s as well as hers; no moment was sacred, no

corner safe from them. She sometimes thought, in her

wilder, more distressed moments, that if she woke up and

found one of them lying between her and Tom in bed, and

an earnest discussion going on about budgets or tactics, she

would not be in the least surprised.

And sometimes, when she was really tired, really low, she had thought that whatever happened to their marriage, neither of them could possibly afford to leave it, so inextricably entwined was it in their professional as well as their personal lives.

Octavia had sometimes been tempted to make up an

interesting story about how she and Tom had met; it had

been so extraordinarily dull, not good copy at all. Other

people always seemed to have been blind dates, or met in

operating theatres or on aeroplanes. Lauren and Drew

Bartlett, the neighbours who were hosting the children’s

party in France, had met through a shared divorce lawyer.

Louise, Octavia’s best friend, had had a flirtatious letter sent

over to her table by her husband at a ball. Melanie Faulks

had met her onetime husband doing a charity bungee

jump.

Octavia and Tom had met at a lunch party, nowhere

more original, more prophetic than that. She had seen him

across the room and thought how absurdly good looking he

was, and how well dressed (blue Oxford shirt, chinos and

very nice shoes, brown brogues, Octavia always noticed

shoes), and thought also that with looks like that he must be

vain and immensely conceited. But later, when she was

introduced to him (‘Octavia, this is Tom Fleming, he’s

something to do with polities’) and he was shaking her hand

and smiling at her almost diffidently, assessing her with

wonderfully dark grey eyes, and they began to talk, she

realised she was wrong, that he was very far from either

vanity or conceit, seemed actually slightly unsure of himself.

It was very slight, the unsureness, and he had a tendency to play upon it, but he was certainly far more likeable than she would have imagined. He also possessed that particular

genre of charm that persuades people they are much more

amusing and agreeable than they had realised; in Tom’s

company silent people talked, dull ones made jokes,

nervous ones relaxed. Octavia did not make jokes, but she

relaxed and she found it easy to talk.

She told him she had never met a politician before, and

he told her she still hadn’t, he was far from being anything

of the sort, thank God: ‘No, I work for one of those new

inventions, a public affairs consultancy. Which means we

dabble in politics a bit: try to influence politicians and civil

servants on behalf of our clients, that sort of thing. It’s

actually much more fun than politics, I think. What about

you?’

‘I’m a lawyer,’ Octavia said, ‘a corporate lawyer.’

‘That sounds very grand,’ he said, smiling. ‘Let me get

you some food while you tell me about it.’

‘Only if you tell me about public affairs,’ she said.

Afterwards she thought how prophetic it had been that

even their very first conversation should have been so

workbased. And how genuinely enthralling each of them

had found it. He asked her if she would like to have dinner

with him, took her phone number.

Flattered, but never expecting to hear from him, she was

amazed when three days later she came home to a

charmingly diffident message on her machine: ‘Octavia, I

hope you remember me. This is Tom Fleming. I wondered

if you were free one night next week. Give me a ring.’

They had dinner, enjoyed the evening enormously, did it

again, and then again; a month after the party, they were in

bed, Octavia having been seduced as much by Tom’s

interest in her and admiration for what went on in her head

as his initially tentative physical advances.

She was sexually inexperienced; had only had three

lovers in her twenty-four years (a one-night affair after a

drunken May Ball not included), indeed, had begun to fear

she must be frigid, so generally uninterested did she feel in

the whole business. She would read articles in Cosmopolitan about young women’s sex drives and wonder what was the matter with her, that she didn’t seem to have one - or that

if she did, it was certainly rather weak. Lying in Tom’s

arms, after what was really a very happy if not earth

shattering event, she told him so.

‘One man I went out with told me I was rather

forbidding. You don’t think that’s right?’

‘Not in the least. Rather the reverse. I think you are

lovely, extremely sexy and clearly not in the least frigid. But

then, I am clearly in love with you, and probably

prejudiced.’

He had, even in his everyday speech, a very elegant turn

of phrase.

Tom was extremely clever; he had gone to Oxford from a

good grammar school and got a First in history. This should

have freed him, but didn’t, from the entirely illogical sense

of inferiority he had from not having gone to public school;

he was, he told Octavia, going to be proving himself for the

rest of his life. She found this touching and baffling, not

least because he had done so well, and said so. He had

smiled and said that no one who had not been put down by

an Old Etonian in the nicest possible way on their first

night dining in College - ‘Which school? Ah. Don’t think I

know that one’ - could understand how much it mattered.

‘I know it’s silly, but I am silly. I can’t bear being second

best.’

His background was modest; his father had been an

insurance salesman, and his mother had devoted her entire

life to him. ‘I came a very poor second. I don’t think they

ever wanted children, certainly they never had any more.’

They had died within a year of each other of heart

disease: ‘Not a good prognosis for me, I’m afraid.’

Octavia was then twenty-four years old. Her own

background (adored only child of very rich man, Wycombe

Abbey and Cambridge) initially worried Tom, and he was

so nervous the first time she took him home to meet her father, he was physically shaking as he did up his jacket. No one would have known, of course. Watching him chatting

easily in the dark, heavy Hampstead drawing room,

carefully respectful, he seemed the embodiment of self

confidence and charm. It wasn’t until she was able to

reassure him, truthfully, that Felix Miller had pronounced

him ‘interesting and impressive’ that he relaxed, said he felt

himself able to continue their relationship.

As they grew closer, as it became clear Tom was

extremely important to her, his relationship with her father

darkened. Octavia, who had seen this happen before, was

terrified of the eventual outcome.

She was not just an only child, her mother had died

when she was two, giving birth to a brother, who had died

also, after three agonising days. She and her father had been

all the world to one another from that day; she adored him,

saw him as the source of all wisdom. Early boyfriends he

tolerated, or, rather, dismissed as unimportant. ‘He’s a child,

darling,’ he would say. ‘Very sweet, and of course you must

go to the party with him, you’ll have fun. But he’s not

nearly clever enough for you.’ Or ‘I suppose he’s all right. I

don’t exactly admire his manners. I think you deserve

better.’

She would say, immediately, that if he wasn’t happy

about whoever it was, she wouldn’t go to the pictures or

whatever, at which he would laugh and say, ‘My darling,

it’s not important. You’re not going to marry him, are you?

Just have fun. You’re young, you must have a good time.

Go.’ She would, with at least half her mind fixed on her

father’s judgment, and very often the first outing would be

the last. She accepted her father’s judgment in all things.

But Tom had taken Felix Miller on, in all his powerful,

manipulative jealousy, and, if he didn’t exactly win him

over, developed a modus operandi with him at least. There

had been one period - after the honeymoon of her father’s

relationship with Tom, before he had come finally to realise

that he must accept him - when Octavia had despaired. The

atmosphere whenever Tom came to the house was

appalling; her father aggressively, bullyingly brusque; Tom acerbic, icily polite.

When Tom had left, Felix would tear the occasion apart,

criticising every move Tom made, every sentence he

uttered. ‘Darling, you know what you’re doing of course,

but do you really think a man who interrupts you seven

times during lunch has any real respect for what you say?’ or

‘I can see he’s very witty, Octavia, but are you sure he has a

sense of humour? That’s rather different, you know, and a

marriage can’t possibly work without it.’ And of course she

was affected by it, by the criticism, she couldn’t help it,

would analyse the interruptions, the lack of humour.

Somehow, Tom won through, the darkest hour a

confrontation when Felix questioned Tom’s ability to

support her, to make his way in the world. Tom lost his

temper. He told Felix his attitude was intolerable and left in

the middle of dinner. It preceded the dawn of a grudging

acceptance. Like all bullies, Felix Miller respected, even

feared, courage. Tom had turned up the following morning

with a set of bank accounts, a client list, and a couple of

editorials in the Financial Times outlining the success and

rapid growth of the company he worked for over the

previous three years. ‘I want you to know this sticks in my

craw,’ he had said, glaring at Felix Miller. ‘I cannot stand

self-promotion.’ (This was not strictly true, Octavia

thought, hearing about it afterwards, but wisely kept her

counsel.) ‘But if you won’t accept my own assurances, then

I am driven to presenting you with other people’s.’

Miller never apologised, but from then on he stopped

fighting the marriage. There had been an unhappy

exchange with Octavia two nights before the wedding,

which Octavia had never told Tom about, and had sworn

she never would, when Felix had, in a last ditch stand, asked

her if she was really sure if she knew what she was doing,

and when she said she was, told her she was mistaken. ‘In

six months’ time,’ he said, pouring a brandy, looking at her

across the drawing room, ‘you’ll wish you were dead. And

don’t come running to me when it happens.’

Octavia stared at him for a moment, then went straight

up to her room, locked the door and lay on her bed, staring

out at the darkness, afraid, in spite of being so much in love

with Tom, such was her father’s power over her.

Later, when Felix Miller came and knocked on her door

she told him to go away, and when he ordered her to open

it, for the first time in her entire life she disobeyed him. A

note was pushed under it, in Miller’s copperplate hand,

saying he hadn’t meant to upset her, he’d been upset

himself, loving, caring about her so much. She still didn’t

go to him, but in the morning, recognising the enormity of

the gesture, she kissed him and said she hoped they were

still friends.

‘Friends! My darling Octavia, you are everything to me,

you know that, surely.’

‘I know,’ she had said. ‘I do know.’ But the whole

incident had frightened and disturbed her more than she

would have believed. And haunted her for the rest of her

life.

The wedding, of course, was wonderful; she came down

the aisle on the arm of a Felix Miller beaming with pride

and love, although many people remarked that his expression

as they left the church, walking behind her now up the

aisle, was markedly less happy. And he made a very

sentimental speech, probably all he could have done in the

circumstances, Octavia thought, saying how much he loved

her and all he wanted was her happiness. Tom’s speech had

a slightly sharper edge to it, and there was an awkward

moment when the best man referred to Octavia as moving

from the centre of one man’s life to another’s, but on the

whole, as Tom remarked as they drove literally weak with

relief towards the airport, en route to Felix’s cottage in

Barbados, it could have been enormously worse.

Their troubles were far from over even then; Felix

Miller’s determination to move in on his son-in-law’s

professional life, pushing clients his way, advising him on

business strategy, offering him backing, was a constant

crucifixion to both Tom and Octavia, and there had been endless conflict between the three of them. Octavia was