Almost a Crime (51 page)

have known, she was too young, too inexperienced, just winning some competition didn’t mean a thing. It was her third appointment that morning and everyone had looked

rather perfunctorily at her pictures and then virtually told

her to piss off. It had been horrible … and she had two

more people to go and see before she could go home …

Her eyes filled with tears.

Tom had been out when Marianne phoned; would be out

for the rest of the day, Barbara Dawson said. With clients.

Would Marianne like to leave a message?

‘No, no,’ Marianne said hastily, relief at this reprieve

washing sweetly over her, ‘it doesn’t matter.’

‘What’s the matter, princess? You’re not pregnant, are you?’

‘God, no! No, it’s just — well, I need some money. Quite

badly. I got a letter from the bank this morning, and—’

‘Can’t you get some from Mummy and Daddy?’

‘No, I can’t. My dad says my allowance is more than

adequate, when actually all it does is bring me back in

credit, and my mum won’t let me have any more either.’

‘Seems a bit mean. They can’t be exactly short.’

‘No, they’re not. They are mean, you’re right. I think it’s

supposed to be good for me, or something. Anyway, I

really need that job at the pub. Has Katrina made her mind

up yet?’

‘Yeah, sorry, I forgot, she said she decided on the other

girl.’

‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Zoe. Her heart did a nasty

lurch. ‘Now what do I do?’

‘There’s plenty of other jobs, for God’s sake. You can’t

have been relying on that one. She did warn you.’

‘I know,’ said Zoe, ‘but I’d thought it was more certain

than that.’

‘Plenty of bars all down the Kings Road. Shall we go to

the house?’

‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘I really don’t feel like it. Sorry.’

‘Right.’ Ian stood up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘Home! I thought you were taking me out.’

‘I was. But you’re no fun in this mood. I’m better off

with me mum and a video.’

‘Fine. Just fuck off, then,’ said Zoe. ‘That suits me really

well.’

He walked out of the bar, and she looked at his tall,

muscular back with a mixture of distaste and regret. He

supplied just about the only pleasure she got at the moment:

all her friends were away, she had only a lousy two-week

holiday at Martha’s Vineyard with her father to look

forward to, her mother was really getting up her nose at the

moment, and Romilly was fretting endlessly because

magazines didn’t want her. Zoe was thoroughly pissed off.

And she couldn’t go anywhere this evening, she had

literally fifty pence in her purse until Friday when her

allowance came in. And then she’d only be about ten

pounds in credit. And what she hadn’t told Ian, because it

made her sound such a loser, was that she’d tried all the bars

in the Kings Road and the Fulham Road and they all said

they had enough people; she’d left it too late, most students

came in in early June.

She stood up. She really couldn’t face another evening of

her mother being tense and Romilly being smug. She

walked to the door of the pub; Ian was standing outside,

talking on his mobile.

‘Hi! Ian! Sorry about that. Yes, let’s go to the house.

Good idea.’

‘Okay,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘I’ve got some grass on

me as well. We can have a really good night.’

Octavia made Gideon a sandwich, settled him and Poppy in

front of Superman, currently one of their favourites, gave

Minty a drink, and took her and the phone out into the

garden. The phone rang.

‘Boot! I thought you were going to ring me back. How’s

Gideon now?’

‘Much the same. I’m going back tonight. Hopefully

they’ll sleep.’

‘What was it you were going to tell me? Talk to me

about?’

‘Oh …’ She hesitated. ‘Well — if you can bear it. Tom’s

company is in such a bad way now, he’s got to ask my

father for money.’

‘What! After all he’s done to you? Go to your father for help? Octavia, I can’t believe that. You can’t let him.’

‘I can’t stop him. And anyway, the thing is, it won’t help

any of us if Fleming Cotterill goes bust, will it? Not me, not

the children, nobody.’

‘And your father still doesn’t know? About Tom?’

‘No! If he did, there’d certainly be nothing forthcoming.

He’d go berserk.’

‘Octavia,’ said Louise, ‘I think you must be some kind of

saint. I really do.’

Tom was at the house when Octavia and the children got

back; he came out to greet them, looking as exhausted as

she felt. She looked at him, hating him, filled with the new

resentment that he had avoided all the traumas of Gideon’s

accident. Louise was right; she must be some kind of saint,

to continue to shield him from her father’s wrath. And to

feel any kind of guilt about her behaviour.

The children greeted Tom ecstatically, the twins fighting

for his attention and the opportunity to present their own

version of the story. Octavia came down from handing the

sleeping Minty over to Caroline, to hear Poppy saying, ‘So

I helped the nurse—’

‘You didn’t,’ said Gideon.

‘I did.’

‘When?’

‘When she was fetching you the wheelchair. And Gabriel

said—’

‘Gabriel?’ said Tom.

‘Yes. Gabriel Bingham, he was with us,’ said Octavia.

Easily, carelessly, as she poured herself a glass of wine.

There was clearly no point trying to hide his involvement.

‘What, the MP?’

‘Yes.’

‘What on earth was he doing there?’

‘He dropped in last week, to talk about — well, about

constituency matters.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Tom. ‘Gabriel Bingham wanted to

talk to you about constituency matters? What matters?’

‘The wood,’ said Poppy. ‘You know, the one they’re

trying to build on. We met him there once.’

‘And he came to the house to talk about that?’

‘Yes,’ said Octavia. He looked so angry she was quite

frightened.

‘I see,’ said Tom. He appeared about to say something,

then glanced at Poppy and Gideon and stopped again. ‘We

can talk about that later,’ he said.

‘Anyway, he was so so good,’ said Poppy. ‘He drove

Mummy’s car really fast to the hospital and made the doctor

see us quickly.’

‘What a paragon,’ said Tom drily.

‘What’s a paragon? And then in case Mummy had to go

back to the hospital he—’

‘This hurts,’ said Gideon, shifting his foot, grimacing. ‘It

hurts so much. I need some more of those things, Mum, the

ones that stop the pain.’

‘He has them up his bum,’ said Poppy, giggling. ‘Just—’

‘Be quiet, Poppy,’ said Octavia. ‘It’s not funny. Come

on, Gideon. If Daddy can carry you up to your room, I’ll

see to it for you.’

She would not have wished Gideon a moment’s pain,

but she felt a stab of intense gratitude that he had chosen to

complain about it at that precise moment. One more

breathless phrase from Poppy, and Tom would have learned

that Gabriel Bingham had stayed the night at the cottage.

No earthly reason why not, of course — under the

circumstances, she could entertain a regiment of eligible

men if she wanted to — but it was still simpler if he didn’t.

She was sitting at her desk an hour later; there was a pile of

invitations on it that she had been setting aside day after

day. Invitations to drinks parties, private views, restaurant

openings, book launches, charity auctions: all addressed to

Mr and Mrs Tom Fleming. Some of them would be fun,

she would enjoy them, but she couldn’t face going with

Tom, and it wasn’t her they wanted, nor was it him; it was

the pair of them, the glossy, powerful pair, helping to lend

some of their personal success, their own charmed lives to

the gatherings. She knew that the moment the news broke

of their separation, their social life would be decimated. It

would be the usual problem of who was going to be loyal

to whom, to the power of a hundred; which organisation

could afford to offend which of them; which occasion was

better suited to a single man or a single woman. Their

marriage would not be broken neatly and cleanly, nobody’s

was of course, but theirs would be a multiple fracture, more

messily painful even than most, crossing as they constantly

did the lines of public and private life. They would become

not only single people, but famously unsuccessful ones,

would no longer effortlessly straddle two worlds, but would

scarcely stand on the top of one; their association and their

marriage would be no longer powerful, it would be a public

as well as a private failure. At the last function they had

attended together, fraudulently flaunting their marriage and

its success, she had had a terrible longing at one point to tap

on her glass for silence and say, ‘Our marriage is over,

totally over, Tom is having an affair and I want you all to

know,’ but of course she hadn’t, she had smiled sweetly and

continued to propagate the lie. The fertile, bankable,

valuable lie.

As she sat leafing through the invitations, Tom came into

the room, his face tight, his mouth white round the edges.

She knew what that meant. Rage. Rage and recrimination.

‘Can I just establish something?’ he said.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Thank you. Not content with alienating one of my most

important clients, you’re now taking your involvement with this business of the wood further. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself, to

keep her voice level. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘To the extent of getting involved with the local MP?’

‘Yes.’ Getting involved with: that just about described it.

Her head, her heart, her body; all very involved. Wonderfully,

joyfully involved. ‘Is there anything wrong with that?

Now?’

‘Wrong? Oh, no. Nothing wrong. Criminally stupid

perhaps, epically self-interested, absurdly destructive. Not

actually wrong, of course.’

‘Tom, I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

‘You really don’t, do you?’ he said. ‘I find it hard to

believe, but you don’t. You can’t see that even if Carlton is

a lost cause, there may be other clients out there, possibly

on the brink of joining us, or even contemplating leaving

us, given the rather unfortunate events of the past few days.’

‘So what if there are?’

‘Well, if there are, they might find the prospect of my

wife continuing to act rather publicly against me and my

best interests rather less than reassuring. God, Octavia, I

sometimes do wonder if you’ve got any sense at all.’

‘Oh, do you?’ she said. ‘Do you really? Well, that’s very

interesting, Tom. I mean, it’s really seriously awful, isn’t it,

what I’m doing? Trying to preserve a bit of countryside,

halt the spread of concrete just a few more miles? Much

worse than having an affair, lying to me, deceiving me—’

‘Oh, shut up,’ he said. ‘At least I have the grace to admit

what I did was wrong, to express contrition for it. I don’t

dress it up as some piece of idealism.’ His eyes were brilliant

in their hostility. ‘Don’t you realise what you’re doing,

Octavia? With great success, it seems. Destroying me

professionally and financially, and destroying your family

and its security into the bargain. Why, in the name of God,

can’t you—’

‘I think it’s you who should shut up,’ she said. ‘I’m trying

so hard not to destroy you. I’ve gone to enormous lengths to keep the details of your squalid liaison from my own father, in case he changes his mind about lending you some

money. God almighty, Tom, do you think that’s been

easy?’

‘Oh, let’s not get into that,’ he said. ‘There’s no point

in this conversation, none whatsoever. If you want to ruin

me, Octavia, go ahead. I’m going upstairs, I’ve got work

to do. Just don’t be surprised if you find your own extremely

comfortable, feather-bedded lifestyle rather altered

suddenly.’

At Reading service station on the M4, Mick Rice and his

girlfriend Jackie had stopped for a cup of coffee and some

chips, and for Mick to refuel his bike.

‘Where’s this letter got to go, then?’ said Jackie.

‘City. EC4. Then we can cut right up West, go to a few

bars and that. I got double money for this. “It must be there

first thing,” she said, “absolutely first thing.” Classy bird,

she was. I felt sorry for her. She was really upset.’

‘How do you know that?’ said Jackie, her voice slightly

muffled through a mouthful of chips. ‘She tell you about it?’

‘No,’ said Mick, ‘she didn’t need to. She was crying.

Crying quite hard, matter of fact.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Octavia. She put the phone down, sat

staring at it as if might leap off the desk of its own volition.

‘Oh, dear God.’

Sarah Jane, who had been with her when the phone

rang, looked at her in alarm. ‘You all right, Octavia? You’re

very pale. It’s not Gideon, is it?’

‘No,’ she said with a great effort. ‘No, he’s fine. But I