Hidden Cottage (47 page)
A long, shuddering groan from behind him made him turn and he observed Jeff with pity. Pity, and not hatred, because the snivelling, tear-stained man sitting in his kitchen, his head in his hands, looked every inch a broken man.
As if feeling Owen’s gaze on him, Jeff slowly raised his head. ‘You look like shit,’ he said, his voice croaky.
‘I feel it,’ Owen said. ‘And while we’re exchanging compliments, you don’t look much cop either.’
Shrugging off his coat and dropping it to the floor, Jeff said, ‘What the hell was that bird doing out there?’
‘I don’t think he approved of what you were doing,’ Owen replied.
‘Any more of that brandy going?’
Owen filled his glass.
‘I shouldn’t have done what I did to you,’ Jeff said, after he’d taken a swallow and seemed to pull himself together.
‘No you shouldn’t.’
‘I was angry. I still am.’
‘I get that. But you lost control. You could have killed me.’
‘I wanted to. I really did. Every bit of me wanted to keep on kicking until you didn’t exist any more.’
‘And would that have made your marriage right?’
Jeff took a long inhalation of breath and let it out slowly. ‘You know nothing about my marriage. You’ve known Mia for no more than a few months; you don’t know the first thing about us as a couple.’
‘I know Mia isn’t happy.’
Jeff jerked his head up. ‘Of course she isn’t happy; she’s just lost a child, for God’s sake!’
Not caring if his words hurt Jeff, not after what he’d just done to him, he said, ‘She wasn’t happy before Daisy’s death. You need to face that.’
Jeff flinched. ‘When did it start? And don’t lie to me.’
‘Her unhappiness?’
‘
No!
The affair. Or was it just a fling, another name to add to the long list of your conquests? What was the plan, to screw your way round the village?’
Owen regarded him with contempt. ‘I’m not that kind of a man.’
‘So it was an affair?’
‘I fell in love with Mia. I didn’t mean to. But it happened.’
‘Love? You haven’t known her long enough to love her. What you’re talking about is sex.’
Owen closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes, he said, ‘It’s not about sex, Jeff.’
‘Of course it is! It’s always about sex. For a man it’s never about anything else.’
And if you truly believe that, no wonder Mia strayed, Owen thought. Feeling lightheaded, he pulled out a chair and sat opposite Jeff.
‘Does she think she’s in love with you?’ Jeff asked.
‘I can’t speak for Mia. What I do know is that she was going to leave you, but when Daisy died, she changed her mind. From then on, she refused to see me again. She told me that you needed her, that you had no one else to turn to in your grief.’
Jeff looked shocked. ‘She said that?’
Owen nodded.
‘So it’s out of pity she’s stayed with me?’ He drained his glass. ‘Pity,’ he repeated flatly. ‘I don’t want her pity. I want her love. Her loyalty. I want what we used to have.’
Thinking of the confession he’d overheard in the garden, Owen said, ‘And for that, what do you give her? Do you give her love and
loyalty
in return?’
‘I’ve given her everything!’
‘You really believe that?’
‘I suppose in your arrogance you think you can give her more, don’t you?’
‘I can’t give her anything,’ Owen said flatly. ‘I told you, Mia broke it off between us after Daisy’s death.’
At the mention of Daisy’s name, Jeff’s eyes sparked and his composure faltered. ‘
Stop it!
Stop talking about Daisy in the same breath as your sordid affair with her mother!’ Abruptly his bloodshot eyes welled with tears and he covered his face with his hands and wept anew.
Owen went to find a box of tissues, and it was when he was out of the room that he realized something important – something that had he not been feeling so rough he would have realized sooner – every question Jeff had asked clearly indicated that he hadn’t spoken to Mia about the affair, which further suggested he hadn’t heard of it from her either. And that left Owen with the only possible conclusion he could reach: Wendy Parr had done her worst and word had gone round. Which meant that very likely Mia had no idea that Jeff had come here to confront him.
When he returned to the kitchen, Jeff was still crying loudly and without restraint. Mia had told him in Olney that she hadn’t once seen her husband cry over Daisy, not even the day of the funeral, and Owen wondered, given the extreme nature of this expression of grief from Jeff, if it was his first genuine outpouring. Was it possible that the shock of learning about the affair between Mia and Owen had released something inside him and brought him to this cataclysmic point?
Owen put the box of tissues on the table. Jeff snatched a tissue from the box and pressed it to his eyes. ‘I should go,’ he mumbled.
Owen had every reason to agree, but he said, ‘You don’t have to.’
‘Why? Do you want to see me suffer some more? Are you getting a kick out of it?’
‘An unfortunate choice of words, but no, I’m not getting a kick out of seeing you this way. I don’t like seeing anyone suffer. Least of all a man who’s grieving for his daughter.’
‘Don’t waste your sympathy on me.’
Owen shook his head. After what Jeff had done to him, he had every right to throw the man out and call the police, as he’d earlier threatened, and have him arrested for assault. But the truth was – and his motives were wholly selfish – he didn’t want Jeff to leave until his hypocrisy had been exposed.
He pushed the bottle of brandy across the table. ‘Help yourself to another,’ he said.
Jeff did and for some five minutes he sat in silence just steadily drinking. Twice he blew his nose and wiped his eyes. Finally he said, ‘I hate men like you. The type women always fall for.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Come off it! You’ve worked a perfect scam on Muriel and her cohorts, had them completely wrapped around your little finger since the day you arrived.’
‘I’d hardly call being neighbourly or offering help as working a perfect scam. Can I ask you something? Why are you still sitting here? What do you want from me?’
‘I’m trying to understand you. Everyone in the village speaks so highly of you, and I just don’t get it. There again, your stock is going to crash and burn dramatically when this all comes out.’
‘The full details needn’t come out.’
‘What? You think I’m going to pretend you and Mia haven’t been having an affair behind my back?’
‘It rather depends on what it is you want, I’d have thought. If you want to keep Mia and make your marriage work, it would be better to carry on as if nothing’s happened.’
‘Not possible. Not now. How do you think I got to know about it? It’s already the talk of the village.’
It was just as Owen had feared. ‘You could brazen it out by ignoring the gossip,’ he said.
‘Oh yes, that would suit you perfectly, wouldn’t it? That way you still get to smell of roses.’
Owen leant forward. ‘No, what would suit me is if you faced up to the truth and realized that if Mia had been happy she wouldn’t have had an affair with me.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘None of this was meant to happen. I came to Little Pelham for a quiet life. I just wanted to get on with starting over again.’
‘Well, it has happened, and you need to face up to the consequences of your actions.’
‘What about
you
, Jeff? What about you facing up to the consequences of
your
actions?’
‘My actions? What the hell do you mean?’
‘What about the row you had the last time you saw Daisy? How does that weigh on your conscience? Is that what your grief for her is really about? Your guilt at how much you hurt Daisy and were never able to tell her how sorry you were?’
Jeff’s face reddened and he gripped the glass in his hand. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘Mia told me how desperately upset Daisy was.’ Owen could see a muscle twitching at Jeff’s jaw; it was a warning for him to stop, to back off, but after what he’d gone through at the hands of this man, he’d be damned if he’d keep quiet.
‘You see, Jeff,’ he continued, ‘it wasn’t just about sex between us; Mia and I talked. When was the last time you talked openly and honestly with Mia and listened to her? When was it ever not about
you
?’
Scraping his chair back, Jeff jumped to his feet. ‘You have no right to speak to me this way.’
Very calmly, very stiffly, Owen stood up too. ‘After what you did to me, I’ll say what I want. And you know what, I’d love for you to admit the real reason why you lost control earlier. I haven’t witnessed violence on that level since I was a child and my father beat the hell out of those he should have cared most about. So what is it with you, Jeff? What made you lose control? The realization that you’ve messed up? That you drove your daughter away with your suffocating love for her, and now you’re facing the knowledge that your wife wanted to leave you as well? None of that puts you in the running for husband or father of the year, does it?’
His face puce, Jeff stared at him, his bloodshot eyes once again filling.
‘So what did make you lose control?’ Owen went on. ‘Because that’s what happened out there, wasn’t it? You said yourself earlier that you wanted to kick me until I no longer existed. That’s about as savage as it gets.’
‘You’re not going to get the police involved, are you?’ Jeff asked anxiously, his glaze flicking over Owen and the damage he’d inflicted.
‘No. But only because I love Mia and don’t want to add to her problems. Plus, I think you have enough to deal with right now. What are you going to say to Mia?’
‘Is that any of your business?’
‘Since I’m the cause of what’s happened, I think it is. And I warn you, if you so much as breathe over her, I
will
go to the police.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Jeff exclaimed. ‘I’d never do anything like that.’
Staring him straight in the eye, Owen said, ‘Right now I’m having trouble believing that.’ He raised his painfully throbbing hand. ‘I’m guessing you’ve broken at least three fingers.’
‘I said earlier I shouldn’t have done that to you.’
‘Who’s to say you won’t lose control again? Now why don’t you tell me about Monte Carlo and the two women you paid to have sex with?’
Jeff looked startled and the colour drained from his face. ‘How do you know about that?’ he murmured.
‘Before I brought you in from the garden you were – for want of a better expression – out of your mind and begging your daughter’s forgiveness for the way you spent the night when she—’
‘No! Don’t say any more. Not that. Please not that.’
‘Considering that you’re condemning Mia for being unfaithful, don’t you think you should be honest about your own act of betrayal?’
Jeff shook his head. ‘What I did was different.’ He swallowed. ‘But if I could turn back the clock, I would. You have no idea how guilty I feel about that night. That I was doing that while my poor Daisy . . .’ His voice broke and his words ground to a halt.
‘We all do things we regret,’ Owen said. ‘The lesson we should learn is not to judge others when they do something wrong. Better to show compassion than condemnation.’
‘Is that what you expect me to do with Mia?’
‘I expect you to do the right thing. You need to be honest with Mia and more importantly with yourself.’
‘And if I don’t, I suppose you’ll be the first to tell Mia what I did in Monte Carlo?’
‘She won’t hear it from me. It’s for you to tell her. And now I think you should go.’
Left alone, pain and tiredness hit Owen full on. His head ached, his ribs ached, as did his back, shoulders, arms and legs. There wasn’t a bit of him that didn’t feel stiff or sore. When his vision began to blur and he felt nauseous, he thought,
Oh hell, concussion
. Just what he needed.
The moment Jeff walked into the kitchen and threw his coat onto a chair, Mia knew that he had found out about her affair with Owen. Haggard and ashen, his eyes sunken and rimmed red, his hair and clothes dishevelled, he looked awful.
She calmly listened to his anger. His disbelief. And his condemnation. She did it because everything he accused her of was true; she had nothing with which to defend herself. It was almost a relief to listen to his tirade – she could feel the black cloud of guilt that had been hanging over her since the summer begin to lift.
When he’d finished and asked her if she wasn’t going to say something, she said, ‘How did you find out?’
‘I overheard Bev talking about it. We’re the talk of the village.’ His words were heavily weighted with sarcasm.
‘Oh.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’ he asked incredulously.
She could see her calmness was infuriating him. ‘I don’t know what else to say. Other than I’m sorry. And I’m sorry that you had to hear it that way.’
‘I bet you are! Well, I’ll tell you this much: Owen-bloody-Fletcher had a lot more to say on the matter.’
‘You’ve spoken to Owen?’
‘Damned right I have. That’s where I’ve been.’
It was then that the calmness she’d been feeling left Mia and she felt a shiver of anxiety. She gave Jeff a long, penetrating look and noted there was a strong smell of alcohol coming off him. ‘Why did you go to Owen?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you come to me first?’
His tone querulous, he said, ‘Would you have preferred I had it out with you in front of your customers?’
‘So you went to have it out with Owen?’ she said, ignoring his question. ‘And how exactly did you go about that? As if I couldn’t guess,’ she added, realizing now why he looked so dishevelled. She also now noticed the grass and mud stains on his trousers.
When he didn’t reply but went to the cupboard to help himself to a glass of whisky, she said, ‘That’s your solution, is it? To resort to violence?’
‘It’s what any man in my position would do,’ he fired back at her. ‘You’re my wife, for God’s sake!’
Her hackles rose. ‘And that gives you the right to hit someone? How pathetic of you.’
‘What about what you did?’ he rounded on her. ‘How would you describe your behaviour?’
