Almost a Crime (85 page)

felt like a schoolgirl: silly, nervous.

‘Hallo, Octavia. How is Barbados?’

‘Oh — very nice thank you. Yes.’

‘Good time?’

‘Yes. Yes, very good. Thank you.’

‘Good. Everything’s fine here. I spoke to Caroline last

night, she’s bringing Minty back tomorrow.’

‘Tom—’

‘Yes?’

‘Tom, I thought you were — that is, I thought you were

in Italy.’

‘Did you?’ he said and his voice was cold, hostile

suddenly.

‘Yes. Yes, I did. I — don’t know how — why…”

‘I don’t know either,’ he said.

There was a long silence; clearly he wasn’t going to help

her out of this one.

‘I suppose I just got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘Yes. Very much the wrong end.’

‘Why didn’t you explain?’

‘Have you ever tried to explain to a fly there’s glass in the

window, Octavia?’

She said nothing.

‘Well, I did try. Once or twice, actually. But you went

on buzzing furiously and I just couldn’t get through to you.

Gave up in the end. Bit of a shame.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A bit of a shame. But — but I thought when

they said you’d all gone to the airport…”

‘We did all go to the airport. I drove them, waved them

off and then went out to dinner.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, trying to digest this, to make sense of

it. ‘Yes, I see. Well — anyway, I’ll be home on Sunday.’

‘Fine. Goodbye, Octavia.’

‘Goodbye, Tom.’

She put the phone down; she felt very sick. It was more

than a bit of a shame. It was an appalling shame. It was the

only reason, really, she had asked Gabriel to come with her.

Because she was feeling so hurt, so angry. How stupid of

her. How extremely stupid. Not that it mattered really of

course. It didn’t make any real difference. The marriage was

over anyway. She and Tom were over. One more

misunderstanding, one bit less communication, didn’t really

matter. It didn’t matter at all. It was just a further example

of how far apart they had grown. It just didn’t matter.

She just didn’t care …

‘Why are you crying?’ said Gabriel. For the first time for

days he looked at her kindly, with concern. ‘Is something

wrong?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not really. Everything’s fine.’

But she went on crying uncontrollably, just the same.

Time was running out on him, Felix Miller reflected. No,

that put a rather negative spin on the situation. In the

dreadful modern phraseology. He was doing so well,

acquiring the Cadogan shares, he’d have to declare very

soon. And that would be pure pleasure. He’d have to put in

a pretty high bid to the shareholders: probably three pounds

a share. He’d worked the price up himself. Well, the

company was probably worth it. All his research indicated

that Cadogan had made a good job of overhauling the

company. Done his work for him. That afforded Felix some

pleasure as well. Of course hotels ran on borrowed money;

but the properties alone were worth a small fortune. And he

could undoubtedly make the thing pay. Not that it

mattered; no price was too high. The first thing, the very

first thing he would do, after robbing Cadogan of the

company that was as much a part of him as his own name,

he had once told Felix, Was get him voted off the board.

There was the little matter of the merger referral of course;

but since he had no hotels of his own, then there should

probably be no problem. He wasn’t creating a monopoly.

Just an unemployed hotel owner. That would teach Nico

Cadogan how it felt to lose something very dear to him. It

would teach him very swiftly indeed. It had been really a

very clever idea. Very clever indeed …

Marianne felt worse about Felix every day. She had treated him appallingly; and he didn’t deserve it. He often treated

her at best thoughtlessly and at worst harshly. She did not

come first in his heart: Octavia did. She was used to that.

She had not come first in Alec’s either: his career did.

Nevertheless, she owed Felix a great deal; they had had a

marriage of a sort. He had not been some casual boyfriend,

to be discarded on a whim, and her feelings for him

remained very intense. Although he had treated her

particularly thoughtlessly over their final few weeks

together, she had too easily betrayed his trust and their past,

had turned her back on him when probably he needed her

most. And he was, at heart, a good man. Of course it had

been outrageous, trying to destroy Tom’s business, desperately

urging the marriage towards a final conclusion. But he

had been driven by the best motive, however misguided:

had been driven by love. And she, without doubt the

person he loved next best in the world, the person to whom

he had turned in his awkward, truculent way, had not been

there for him, had left him to do his worst. And she was

afraid that worst might be very dreadful.

She felt guilty about Nico of course, but she wasn’t in

love with him; she felt she knew that very certainly now.

He had just been there, when she needed someone. Love,

in all its complex difficulty, was what, in spite of everything,

she still felt for Felix. It was time to make amends; time to

stop betraying Felix.

‘So when will Octavia be home?’ said Caroline. She was

spooning cereal rather briskly into Minty.

‘Oh — early on Sunday morning,’ said Tom. Then,

noticing that Minty was rubbing her cereal into her neck,

added, ‘Minty, that’s not what Weetabix is for.’

‘Oh, dear, I’d better get you another bib,’ said Caroline.

‘She needs some new ones, these are all too small. I think

I’ve got some bigger ones in this drawer — good heavens!’

‘What’s that?’ said Tom.

‘Mrs Fleming’s mobile phone. What an extraordinary

place for it to be. Underneath all the tea towels.’

‘Well, maybe Mrs Donaldson put it there.’

‘She’s away this week. Visiting her daughter and new

grandson. Well — it doesn’t matter.’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘No, it doesn’t matter at all.’ It was true,

he realised: Mrs Donaldson had been away. The house had

lacked its usual sparkling order. Trained to neatness by

Octavia, he always cleared up his dirty coffee cups, put his

clothes in the dirty linen basket, made his bed, but this

week the bed had not been changed, nor the towels, and

nor had the waste paper baskets been emptied; in his

depressed distraction he had failed to notice it until now.

Anyway, clearly Mrs Donaldson had not put the phone in

the tea-towel drawer. So who …

‘Well - I must get Minty out,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s a lovely

day.’

‘She looks awfully well, Caroline. Obviously the country

air, down at your parents’. Thank you for taking her.

Anyway, I must get off to the office. ‘Bye for now.’

‘Goodbye, Tom. Should I get you any supper for this

evening?’

‘No, that’s all right. I’ll be out. Thank you all the same.’

He drove off, flicking his mind on to the day ahead: he

had a meeting with Nico Cadogan at ten. Nico was frantic

with worry about Felix Miller’s intentions and needed to be

steadied. And something more than an upbeat letter to the

shareholders would be necessary this time. But a tiny

portion of Tom’s mind refused to be flicked, stayed fixed

on the mobile phone hidden underneath the tea towels. For

some reason, it troubled him. He couldn’t quite think why.

‘It hasn’t really worked, has it?’ said Gabriel.

He put out a hand, stroked Octavia’s flat brown stomach

gently. She tensed, then relaxed and half smiled at him.

They were lying on the beach, in the shade of the great

heavy trees; they had become oddly, quietly close, in the

aftermath of a long and raging row, a sleepless night, an

acknowledgement from him finally that he had been less than courteous at lunch, less than easy altogether over the

previous few days, and from her that she had made demands

of him throughout the holiday that he could not reasonably

have expected.

‘No,’ she said finally and with huge difficulty, ‘no, it

hasn’t worked, I’m afraid.’

‘I blame the sun,’ he said, with an embarrassed grin. ‘The

sun and Marks and Spencer.’

‘Marks and Spencer? How can you blame Marks and

Spencer?’

‘They didn’t have any decent summer clothes when I

went in that day. Just sale stuff. And winter woollies. So I

couldn’t get properly kitted out.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘yes, I see. Well — certainly partly their

fault, then.’ She smiled at him. Nearly a week of his

company had taught her not even to suggest that there were

other shops he might have gone to.

‘It’s very sad,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, just one of those things. And maybe, in a way, just

as well.’

‘Now how do you work that one out?’ he said.

‘Well, at least it’s settled things. Otherwise it might have

dragged on for months, mightn’t it? We could have gone

on and on, trying to make it work, not getting anywhere,

disrupting our lives

‘Yes, and that would have been a serious waste of time,’

he said. ‘I can see that. Your pragmatism is breathtaking,

Octavia. I really must try and pick up a few tips. Before we

part.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

‘Gabriel, you’re being silly,’ she said.

‘I’m not being silly. I find your attitude very hurtful.

Incomprehensible, even. Regarding a love affair as a - as a

sort of marketing exercise. A bit of research. It’s horrible.’

‘Look,’ she said, and there was an underlying panic in her

voice, ‘all I meant was we’d have made one another

unhappy for longer. Longer than we have.’

‘Oh, so we’re happy now, are we? Start an affair, find it doesn’t work, finish it, all inside a week, phew, that’s all right, then, no time or energy lost.’

She reached up and took his hand, pulling him down on

to the beach again. ‘Think of what might have happened.

We’d have gone on and on for weeks, months, the

occasional night here and there, all more and more

unsatisfactory. And in the end, the same, miserable finale.

Better to - well, to find out now. That’s all I meant. You

must see that.’

‘I do see it,’ he said. ‘Of course. But I’m afraid I can’t

parcel up my emotions quite so neatly, Octavia, set time

limits on them. One of the reasons, I daresay, we could

never have — well, made things work.’

‘Oh, God,’ she said, and buried her face in her hands.

‘Octavia — I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, don’t say you’re sorry. I deserved that. You’re

right. I am — well, I am all the things you said last night.

Controlling. Ruthless. Manipulative. Arrogant.’

‘Did I say you were all those things?’

‘You did. And—’ she gave him a watery smile — ‘and that

I was a concrete-skinned, self-aggrandising bitch. Gabriel,

you were right. Maybe not concrete skinned. But all the

rest. I have to be — in charge. Don’t I? That’s my problem.’

‘Well, to a degree. You do seem to need to be in control

at any rate. Have everything on time, in order—’

‘I know I do,’ she said, very quietly.

‘But is that really your problem, as you put it? It’s made

you a very successful person.’

‘Oh, very successful,’ she said bitterly, ‘so successful my

marriage is over.’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is! My children are neglected — apart from a

little quality time, at the fag end of the day. My job is at this

moment in jeopardy—’

‘I really do doubt that,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid you don’t know anything about it. Melanie is

absolutely sick of me and my carryings on. Always away,

always upset, letting people down, ducking out of meetings — that is no way to run a company. I do know that.’

‘Well, that really is all temporary, surely,’ he said. ‘When

you get back to real life — and at least in real life you won’t

have me hanging about any more — and it’s true, it would

have gone on and on, never any time together, you rushing

back to your children, me to my constituents.’

‘Perhaps even your putative fiancee?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘no, not her. Definitely not her. Not

after you.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘thank you for that at least.’

Her voice was very quiet suddenly, quiet and shaky; he

looked at her sharply.

‘Octavia?’

‘Yes?’

‘This thing not working out. It’s no reflection on how I

feel — felt — about you.’

‘Of course it is!’ she said. She was crying, rummaged

furiously in her beach bag for a tissue.

‘Oh, God,’ he said, ‘you’re seeing this as another

rejection, aren’t you? Another failure?’

‘So - isn’t it?’

‘No!’

‘Well, tell me what it is, then.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you. You as a woman. I still

think you’re one of the sexiest women I’ve ever known.’

‘Gabriel, please don’t. Don’t try and humour me. Flatter

me …’ Her eyes were full of tears again. ‘The fact is,

however you dress it up, I’ve made a hash of our

relationship, our time together and — oh, God …”