Almost a Crime (56 page)

‘Why did you do it?’ said Octavia. They were sitting, she

and Louise, in her car, just down the road from Rookston.

Louise had met her on the doorstep: for that at least she

admired her. She was looking terrible. ‘You can’t come in,’

she had said, ‘we can’t talk here. It would be dreadful for

Daddy, for Dickon.’

‘I don’t care where we talk.’

‘Let’s go for a drive.’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Louise said simply. ‘I just — fell in love

with him. I’d never felt like that before. I really hadn’t. It

was just—’

‘Don’t tell me. It was bigger than both of you. You

betrayed me, your best friend, and your own husband,

simply because of some romantic fantasy you felt you had to

live out. You always were strong on all that stuff. Jesus,

Louise. How old are you?’

‘I’m thirty-six. Same as you. That’s the whole point.

Time’s passing, isn’t it? We haven’t got that much time left,

have we?’

‘Oh, the biological clock. That old thing. Next thing

you’ll be telling me is you felt you had to have another

baby.’

‘Well, I did. That as well.’

‘But you’re not pregnant? With Tom’s baby? Tell me

that at least isn’t true?’

Louise looked at her. Her blue eyes were very dull and

heavy. ‘No, I’m not pregnant,’ she said finally.

In spite of everything, all the pain, that was somehow

better.

‘How — how did you know it was me?’ said Louise.

‘He knew about the abortion. I only told one person in

the whole world: your mother. And then she told me you

found out. Nobody else knew, nobody at all. So it had to

be you. There were other things. But I ignored them. I

knew it couldn’t be you. Not you. Not my best friend.

Why did you tell him about that? Hadn’t you betrayed me

enough?’

‘Because it was so awful. So unfair. I’d lost Juliet. One

day I had a lovely, warm, smiling, breathing little girl, and

the next day she was ice cold, dead. I had to put her in a

coffin, I put her in myself, you know, and kissed her and said night night, sleep tight, and then … then …’

Octavia felt her eyes fill with tears in spite of everything,

felt her heart literally ache. ‘Oh, Louise.’ She put out her

hand, tried to take Louise’s.

She snatched it away. ‘No! Don’t touch me. And what

do you do? You just carelessly throw a baby away. Chuck it

out. Oh, I don’t think I want that one, you said to the

doctor, it’s not quite perfect, pull it out, would you, pull it

out and throw it away, down the sluice, only be quick, I’ve

got a meeting later this morning. It was safe in there,

Octavia, safe and warm; it trusted you, it was alive; my baby

was dead. You had a choice; I had no choice.’

‘That was it, was it?’ said Octavia slowly. ‘You were so

angry with me, so jealous, you had to hurt me the way you

most could?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Louise, and smiled at her, her sweet, gentle

smile. ‘No, we’d been sleeping together long before I knew

about you. About your baby. Until Mummy was ill and I

found that letter you’d written her. How sweet, you

coming to her for advice. Why did you do that, exactly?

Why not talk to Tom about it?’

‘Tom was away. In the States. He didn’t even know

about the baby. He’d been more or less commuting for

weeks and weeks, working on some new account or other.

I tried to tell him, but we had a row about something

stupid; then he went back, and I had the test. And you

know the rest.’

‘If someone had said to me,’ said Louise, ‘“Your baby has

spina bifida,” do you think I’d have cared? Do you think I’d

have thrown her away, put her in an incinerator? That’s

what they do, you know, with those babies, those aborted

babies. They burn them, they—’

‘Shut up!’ said Octavia. ‘Just shut up. And don’t try to

compare the two. Juliet was a child, a person, she was nine

months old; my baby was — was just a fertilised egg.’

That’s what she’d kept telling herself, that it was only a

fertilised egg, not a baby at all, not really, not something growing in her, being nurtured by her, not something she’d betrayed. That was what she had hung on to: what had kept

her from cracking.

‘Why didn’t you tell Tom? It was his baby too, he might

not have felt the same, he might have thought it was

actually worth keeping, caring for …’

‘I thought it was best not,’ said Octavia, very quietly. ‘I

knew he wouldn’t want it. The whole thing was a mistake,

he’d said there was no way he wanted any more children,

and illness, any kind of deformity, sickens him, he really

can’t cope with it. He can’t even bear the children being

sick. Everything has to be attractive for Tom, perfect, clean,

wholesome. There was no way he’d want to keep a — a

deformed baby.’

‘But you didn’t actually know that. Not for sure. You

didn’t give him the option even to think about it.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Octavia again. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut

up. Don’t you start preaching morals at me. Don’t you try

and tell me I’m wicked. What you’ve been doing was

disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. I can’t bear to look at

you, knowing you were screwing my husband. You. My

best friend. And then pretending you were sorry for me,

wanted to help. Asking me if I knew who it was, if we were

still sleeping together, for Christ’s sake. That is truly sick.

What you did was a total, utter betrayal. Of years and years

of affection and trust and sharing of everything — oh, God, I

don’t want you in the car with me, even. Get out, Louise.

Get out and walk. I’m going home. I absolutely loathe you.

And it hurts more than I can tell. Far more than when I first

found out about Tom. The very last thing you said to me

this afternoon, I can hardly bear to think about it, the very

last thing, “Remember I love you.” You said that. You told

me you loved me. God! You don’t know what love is. You

have no idea. No idea at all. Get out. Go away. And don’t

ever come near me again. Ever.’

Louise got out of the car and walked. She walked back to

the house and went in and smiled at her father and said she

was fine, that the little walk with Octavia had done her

good. And then she went upstairs and read a story to Dickon, who said he had a tummy ache. She went and

chatted to her father for a while, about her mother, and

how he was coping and what his plans were, and about

Sandy’s business, and about Dickon and how he would

soon be at school and that he seemed to be much better and

happier these days. After that she kissed him good night and

went to have a bath, and lay in it for a long time, and

looked at her legs and decided they needed shaving and she

went to find a razor and spent quite a long time doing that,

and then she massaged her favourite body lotion into herself

and brushed her hair and put on a nightdress, one of her

favourites, white lawn, trimmed with lace, and then she

went down to the kitchen and made herself a hot drink and

filled a carafe with water, and lay in bed, reading magazines

until she fell asleep over them.

She woke up with a start, a few hours later, and looked at

the clock. It was already half past two. She’d wasted a lot of

time.

She sat up in bed and reached for the small hoard of

sleeping pills she had found in her mother’s medicine

cabinet, and the four which Dr Hodgen had left for her,

and started to swallow them, very carefully, one by one …

Dickon woke up feeling horrible. His tummy hurt, he felt

sick and he was rather cold; when he sat up, he felt dizzy.

He stayed in bed for a bit, hoping to feel better and go back

to sleep, and then realised he felt sicker than ever, slithered

out of bed and made for the bathroom.

Halfway there, he realised he wasn’t going to make it; he

stood on the landing, alternately vomiting and crying.

Charles appeared looking anxious. ‘Oh, dear, bad luck,

old chap. Look, let’s get you into the bathroom, that’s the

ticket, get those off — oh, whoops, not again, poor old

soldier.’

‘Janet said I shouldn’t eat so much ice cream,’ said

Dickon, through chattering teeth.

‘Well, she was right. She usually is. Come on, off with

the jacket as well. Good boy. Now shall we put you in the

bath, do you think?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Dickon, ‘and get Mummy.’

‘Oh, we don’t want to bother poor Mummy. She was so

tired. Let’s just get you cleaned up, and then back to bed.’

‘I want Mummy,’ said Dickon and started to cry.

‘Maybe. When you’re all cleaned up. Come on, now,

hop in here. Was it Janet’s own ice cream? Yes, I thought

so. Very rich. Your uncles used to make themselves sick

with it too. That’s better, lie right down, in the water. Now

where are we going to find you some clean pyjamas, I

wonder …”

Dickon sat in the bath, shivering; he felt much better, but

he still wanted his mother. Surely she’d want to look after

him if she knew he was ill, however tired she was?

His grandfather came back into the room, helped him

out of the bath, and snuggled him dry in a towel. ‘Feeling

better?’

‘Yes, much. Thank you. But I do want Mummy—’

‘Look, tell you what,’ said Charles, ‘you get into my bed

for a bit, and we’ll see …’

‘Yes, all right.’

When Charles came back to his room, Dickon was asleep,

breathing steadily, his colour much better. He looked at the

clock: almost half past four. It would soon be light. He’d

have trouble getting back to sleep himself now. Two hours

of wakeful misery, remembering, missing, longing for

Anna. He decided a tiny, second nightcap would be a good

idea; he went downstairs and made himself his second hot

toddy of the night. As he passed Louise’s room, he stopped,

turned the handle and peeped in; she was sleeping soundly,

quite heavily even. Good. That was exactly what she

needed. Charles eased himself into bed beside his grandson

and fell asleep with surprising speed.

Tom woke up at five with a start; he was still on the sofa,

the screen was a whining white-out, and he was almost

unbearably cold. Where was Octavia? She must have come

in without him hearing her, probably realised he was there

and went on up to bed, not wishing to speak to him. He’d

better check.

Rubbing his eyes, he staggered out to the hall: the chain

wasn’t on the door, but she was always forgetting it. He went

up to their room, but the bed was empty; he checked both

guest rooms, even the small spare bed in the corner of the

nursery. He stood there for a while looking at Minty,

determinedly asleep, her bottom thrust into the air, her rosebud mouth working gently round her thumb. Thinking of the other baby, the one before Minty, the one Octavia had

discarded: how could she have done that without consulting

him, discussing it, how could she have not told him she was

pregnant even? Whatever the reason, Minty was actually the

result. Strange to think that she might never have been born,

never existed. And now, oh, God, now there was another

child of his, waiting to be born. A child Louise had taken from

him by stealth - he had read somewhere that was the female

equivalent of rape — trapping him viciously, more efficiently.

What was to become of that child, who would care for it? Its

half-insane mother? Its hapless, amoral father?

Tom made a sound that was half-sigh, half-groan, walked

quietly out of the nursery. More important at this very

moment to find Octavia. He was beginning to feel uneasy.

Perhaps the cottage: yes, that wasn’t so far from Rookston. He

phoned it: there was no reply. He left a message, just the same.

She might be on her way there. But — where was she? Where

had she spent the night? Surely, surely she wouldn’t have done

anything — anything stupid? Or had an accident, driving in a

distressed, exhausted state? Maybe he should phone the

police. Or the hospitals …

Dickon wondered what the awful noise was: thunder?

Something falling downstairs? No, of course, it was snoring.

Loud snoring. Right next to him. His grandfather. He

turned his head, looked at him. Charles was lying on his

back, his mouth open. Each breath sounded louder than the

last. It wasn’t a very nice sound. Dickon sighed. Maybe he

should try and go back to his own bed. If he went back to

his room, he could at least look at the Thomas the Tank

Engine book his mother had been reading to him.

Very carefully, he edged his way out of the big, rather

high bed, tiptoed across the room. He let himself out,

closed the door very carefully and walked down the

corridor towards his own room. He looked longingly at his

mother’s door, but Grandpa was right, she was very tired,

he shouldn’t wake her up. Specially not now he was better.

He went into his own room, rather pleased with himself;

and then realised that the book wasn’t there. Of course; his