Betrayal (35 page)

One by one she took her clothes from the bag and dropped them into the laundry basket, except for two sweaters which she laid on the bed and folded neatly, following the inviolable pattern she always used. Placing the sweaters symmetrically on the shelf she regarded them for a moment before changing her mind and relegating them to the laundry basket with the rest. ‘So dirty,’ she murmured. ‘I felt so dirty in there. I don’t think I’ll ever feel clean again.’

‘Have a long bath,’ I cried rousingly, like some ghastly team leader. ‘I’ll run it for you.’

She seemed to focus on me for the first time since we had got back. ‘You’re very good to me,’ she said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I laughed awkwardly.

‘I can’t tell you how much it means, that you . . . that you’re here.’

‘Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?’ I said lightly.

There was a pause. We both looked away.

‘Would you like a drink while you’re in the bath?’ I asked in the same jovial tone. ‘A glass of wine?’

It occurred to me that she had wanted to talk and that, in my present state of inadequacy, I had missed the opportunity, or avoided it.

Attempting to be useful, I took the laundry basket down to the utility room and, not sure what else to do with the clothes, emptied them onto the top of the washing machine.

Staring at the pile, unwanted thoughts rushed into my mind, thoughts of what Ginny had been wearing on the weekend that Sylvie had died. I dreaded these invasions, but I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t stop trawling my memory for clues – denials or confirmations.

I tried to picture her in the doorway when she’d made her unexpected appearance at Dittisham that Saturday night. She’d been wearing trousers of some sort, not jeans exactly, more like tight slacks, off-white or cream, a pale shirt, and her favourite raspberry-coloured jacket. A long scarf had been jammed untidily into one pocket. But what I was really trying to see, of course, was the blood. Could I have missed it? Even at my least observant could I have failed to notice stains or spatterings of blood?

I threw the laundry basket down and, calling to Ginny to tell her where I was going, drove to the local pub and ordered chicken and chips to take away. The woman behind the bar, whom I recognised from my occasional visits, told me that strictly speaking they didn’t do takeaway, but, casting me a collusive smile, said she would manage something if I didn’t mind having it wrapped in newspaper. Waiting in a corner of the bar, I felt the scrutiny of the other occupants, and it struck me with renewed force that whatever happened, even if Ginny walked free, we would never be able to live our lives in the same way again. This realisation, though harsh, no longer intimidated me: there were worse things, for Ginny at least.

Returning with my hot newspaper bundle, I found Ginny curled up on the bed, sleeping the deathly sleep of the exhausted. I put the quilt over her and, though I checked her regularly and kept the meal hot in the oven, she didn’t wake again, and at midnight I turned off the oven and crept in beside her. When I put my arm around her waist, she gave a small fearful cry like someone caught in a night terror, then, still without waking, gripped my arm and pulled me close against her back and did not let me move away until morning. It was strange to be together in our bed again, in the security of our large comfortable house, to possess the security we had always taken for granted, yet to have lost all certainty of the future. It was like an illusion, a giant exercise in double-thinking whereby nothing was what it seemed.

Listening to Ginny’s soft breathing, an image stole around the edges of my mind, the one scene which I had until then managed to block from my thoughts: the vision of Ginny in confrontation with Sylvie. I could see fierce pride in Ginny’s face, I could see jealousy and anger, even fury, but the deed itself – that eluded me completely. I could not picture the knife, nor the hand that drove it into Sylvie’s flesh; I could not envisage the person who, having committed this cataclysmic act, coolly wrapped the body and bound it and slipped it over the side into the black water. I tried to give the scene substance and action and dialogue, but while it contained Ginny it remained dark and unformed. Maybe I simply lacked the courage for it.

During the first days after Ginny’s arrest I had latched on to the idea of her innocence as an essential survival mechanism which would enable us to get through the long months ahead. But since her declaration in the prison I had been forced to confront the fact that, though I longed to believe her, persistent doubts had settled painfully in my mind.

As I breathed the scent of Ginny’s hair, and felt in the touch of our bodies the history of our long years together, one thing was certain. We would stay together in this, we would stick it out through thick and thin. I couldn’t abandon her, and I certainly couldn’t judge her. It seemed to me that my guilt was inseparable from hers, that, in terms of blame, my selfishness was indivisible from her desperation.

I woke early and made a shopping list: what Ginny would have called a man’s list, heavy on luxuries, short on essentials. But then Ginny had always organised the food, the cooking, the staff, the maintenance. From the earliest days of our marriage she had actively discouraged me from involvement in anything remotely domestic. She had not wanted a liberated man, and she had not got one.

In town it took time to discover the best shops.

Eventually I found olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and

endives to go with the wild salmon and fresh pasta.

I bought a few bottles of Ginny’s favourite Pouilly-´

Fume, I remembered herbs and flowers, and it was only as I arrived home that I realised I had forgotten butter and fruit juice.

I found the house silent, the bedroom and bathroom empty. Suppressing a dart of panic, I hurried through the ground floor calling Ginny’s name before emerging breathlessly onto the terrace.

She was standing looking out over the garden, wearing a Japanese wrap with a woollen coat thrown over the top. She said absently, ‘I’m here.’

My relief was so conspicuous that she must have guessed what had been going through my mind.

‘The roses haven’t been dead-headed,’ she commented in the same flat voice. ‘Oh, and the agent called. The people want to have another look round the house this afternoon at three. They’re going to make an offer, he says.’

‘That’s good.’

‘If they do decide to buy, I was going to ask you . . .’ She turned towards me, and I noticed how puffy her eyes looked, and how her skin, always so luminous, had lost its clarity and transparence. ‘Could we move straight away?’

‘Well . . . If that’s what you want.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ Her politeness was almost formal.

‘The upheaval . . .’

‘It won’t be so bad. And it’d give me something to do.’

Though she spoke dully, I was encouraged by the normality of our conversation and the re-emergence of her interest in practical matters, which had always been so important to her. As for moving, I didn’t need to be persuaded of the benefits of living full-time in London. Quite apart from the cost of running more than one home, I was forever leaving clothes in the wrong place, not to mention documents and, once, an airline ticket.

‘And would you mind . . .’ The odd formality again. ‘Could we rent something? A cottage?’

Hiding my surprise, I said levelly, ‘You don’t want to live in London?’

‘I’d rather not,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Well—’

‘Just a cottage, something really small. Near London if you want. Or . . . near Hartford. It doesn’t matter.’

Looking out over the long lawns and spiralling leaves, I began to warm to the idea of a cosy cottage without gardeners and housekeepers, a place where we could live anonymously, in every sense of the word. ‘Yes, why not?’

‘Wish we could get rid of Provence as well,’ she said with a glimmer of her old agitation.

‘Well, there’s no hurry about that. We don’t need to decide for the moment. Not until—’ I was going to say,
until things are clearer
, but tried to make a small joke of it instead. ‘Until I know whether I’m going to be gainfully employed or not.’

‘But all that bother. You won’t want the bother of running it.’

I noticed the ‘you’, the assumption that she wasn’t going to be around to organise things any more.

‘Let’s cross that bridge if and when . . . Anyway, we might want to retire there. I was thinking about it – before all this, I mean. It might be something to plan for, don’t you think?’

‘Retire?’ She looked at me as if I were talking gibberish.

‘I mean, when the time comes. In ten years. Who knows? Lots of people retire at fifty. It might be rather nice down there,’ I rambled on. ‘No rat-race. Uncluttered days. Good people. Food and drink. Friends to stay.’

‘Ten years.’ She was blinking rapidly. ‘Is that what Charles thinks I’ll get?’

‘
What?
No,
no
.’

‘What does he say then?’

‘Ginny, when I said ten years it was nothing to do with you and the –
case
.’

‘But he must have some idea what I might get.’

‘He can’t make
any
predictions, Ginny. None at all! Anyway, we’re going to get you off! Good Lord, Charles and I haven’t even discussed anything else!’

Ignoring this, or accepting it, she looked away and said, ‘I’m sorry if it’s a nuisance, renting a cottage.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘The thing is, I feel that . . . if we can have a few months in a quiet place – just us – I think I’ll be able to stand it, the idea of not coming back.’

‘Ginny, you mustn’t—’

‘Otherwise I’m not absolutely sure I’ll be able to cope,’ she said gravely. ‘Dr Jones has given me all these pills. He says I must be sure to take them, otherwise – well, he doesn’t give me an otherwise. I think he thinks I’m half gone already. Sometimes I think I am too.’ She gave an unhappy laugh. ‘There’ve been times when it’s been so hard just to keep going. It’s as though . . . as though I can’t take it all in. As though everything’s too much for my head. And then I get frightened . . .’ She was struggling to express it. ‘Because if it’s going to be like that, then I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold on.’

I put an arm round her and pulled her against me. ‘Darling, if you’re feeling bad, you must talk to me. Promise you’ll talk to me?’ I kissed the top of her head, but my heart was plummeting at the realisation of how close to the edge she was, and how fearsome was the responsibility I faced in taking care of her. I wondered if it would ever be safe to leave her alone.

As if reading my mind, Ginny said, ‘Oh, I’ll be all right while I’m here. Honestly. It’s after . . . It’s the idea of being put away in that awful place.’

‘You talk as though it were inevitable. It’s not! Once Charles begins on your defence, once he gets your story—’

She moved away. ‘My story? There is no story.’

‘Ginny, you’ve got to tell Charles what happened.’

‘There is no story,’ she repeated with emotion.

I stepped cautiously. ‘What about what you told me – about finding Sylvie dead.’

I always forgot how acute she was, how finely attuned to nuance and omission. She heard the doubt lurking at the back of my words and said ironically, ‘But if you don’t believe me, why should Charles?’

‘I do believe you,’ I said. ‘I do! I just don’t understand why you won’t talk about it. I can’t see why you have to make a secret of it. What possible point can there be?’

‘It was a mistake. I made a mistake.’

Inside the house the phone began to ring.

‘A
mistake
?’ I exclaimed, as mystified as I was exasperated. ‘What do you mean?’

Her lids drooped. ‘I feel so tired. The drugs probably . . .’ She turned and walked into the house.

I called angrily, ‘Ginny!’ but she didn’t stop.

Crossing the hall, she seemed to hear the phone for the first time and, altering direction to pick it up, lifted the receiver almost to her mouth before changing her mind and holding it out to me.

It was George. Watching Ginny climb the stairs, I didn’t at first gather what he was saying.

‘. . . in the post. Should be with you today.’

‘What’s that, George?’

‘Something from everyone here at Hartford, something that will speak for itself,’ he said enigmatically. ‘They feel very strongly, Hugh. Also – and I hardly like to mention it, I know how busy you are – there’s a meeting with the Chartered Bank tomorrow. I don’t want to press you, but it would make all the difference if you could make it.’

It was hard to focus on Hartford matters again. I had already spent a lot of the previous week persuading Zircon and the banks to hold their loans, and George had somehow talked me into attending several strategy meetings.

‘Ten o’clock, in Cheapside,’ George urged. ‘Just an hour. Hugh – I know it’s out of your way, I realise you’ll have to come up specially, but it’s critical.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘They’re threatening to turn us down. This will be our one chance to change their minds.’

‘But they were okay last week.’

‘Something’s made them think again. It’s really critical, Hugh.’

With George every meeting was critical, every plea for help the very last he would make. While part of me resented the relentlessness of this pressure, I knew that in his position I would do exactly the same thing, that if it weren’t for my personal crisis I would be right there beside him, fighting from the front.

‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to get away,’ I told him, already feeling torn. ‘Can I let you know?’

‘Of course. But Hugh – it would make all the difference.’

I went into the study where I could be more certain of not being overheard before calling Jones. His secretary said he was doing his hospital rounds but should be able to phone me back later.

Even as I rang off I realised I could have saved myself the call. Whatever the psychiatrist might say, however safe he might rate Ginny’s mental health, I wouldn’t be able to leave her on her own. It wasn’t simply a question of watching over her, though that would be a factor for as long as she continued to talk in such disturbing terms; it was also a matter of trust. I had not forgotten the promise I had made to her on the night when we’d searched for the petrol receipt. I had promised that I would never leave her alone again, and though at the time neither of us would have interpreted this as a round-the-clock commitment, I felt I owed her as much now.