Hush Hush (31 page)

Her destination was only a
ten-minute walk away, though her visit was impulsive, and it’d
be just her luck to find her quarry out.

As dusk set in, she began a
rather tired walk down the respectable, spring-green avenue.

Flat 5A had deep bay windows and
‘1803’ carved into rosy brickwork over the mullioned
front door. In the last five years, this area had become a sought
after location for the London overspill. The flat was worth at least
six times its original value at the time Rachel had bought it. Rachel
opened the front door, bearing a precarious pile of toast on a plate.
Sadie’s relief that she was in clashed with dread at the
impending confrontation.

‘Mrs F, come in! I’m
in a bit of a rush. Got a date waiting for me in town and I’m
already late. Treat ’em mean and keep ’em keen!’

Sadie followed her silently into
the thickly carpeted interior. Rachel was dressed for going out. To
match her pale gold hair, she wore a pale gold dress patterned with
an intricate red zigzag design, like the flag of some emergent
nation. She seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of beautiful
dresses.

Sadie eased downwards into one of
Rachel’s comfortably deep armchairs. She had no intention of
hurrying or apologising for the interruption. ‘I suppose we’ll
see that dress on the mini-market stall next year.’

Rachel looked down at herself,
slightly puzzled. She’d detected Sadie’s unwillingness to
be no trouble at all. ‘I don’t know if
…’

‘Was it really necessary to
flog Conor that pink and black dress, knowing he’d present it
to Angela? Did you get a perverse pleasure out of humiliating her
that way?’

Rachel blushed prettily as if
she’d just been paid a compliment. Hers was not a face to fold
into ugly creases of fear or anger. ‘You’d better explain
that one to me, Sadie.’

‘I saw you!’ hissed
Sadie, leaning forward. ‘That night, in town. I saw you getting
into a taxi with Robert. At the time, God forgive me, I thought it
was a man who looked like Robert. I only got a side-on view. And all
I saw of you was a tall woman with pale hair. But after what Angela’s
just told me, it all fell into place. You had an affair with Robert,
didn’t you?’

Please deny it, an inner voice
begged. Please give me a cock-and-bull plausible story that I don’t
have to swallow but I can take away and ponder at length.

Instead, panic and confirmation
filled Rachel’s face. ‘Angela knows?’ she squeaked.

Sadie’s heart crumbled.
‘She suspects Robert of infidelity. She’s targeted that
poor woman who works at Hartley’s.’

‘We were so discreet,’
mumbled Rachel. ‘What were you doing in town that night?’

Sadie replied in a flat,
iron-hard voice, ‘I’d done the evening shift at the
newsagent’s. My boss Gupta gave me a lift home and detoured
through the town to point out an empty shop-front he had his eye on.’

‘It was just the once,’
said Rachel quickly. ‘No affair and nothing planned in the
first place. It just
‒
happened. I went to book a holiday at Hartley’s that afternoon.
Robert saved me from the sweaty clutches of Ian Bradley. He offered
to look up a few prices for me and have them ready for me next time I
came in. So I offered to collect them at the end of the day, and give
him a lift home as well.’

‘Sadie frowned. ‘But
someone like you ... wouldn’t you just book a holiday online?’

‘Support your local travel
agency!’ Rachel punched the air feebly. ‘My date had
blown me out for the evening, but I’d already booked a table at
Tosca’s. So I decided to take Robert, as a thank-you for his
Sir Galahad impression. Thought if I phoned him first, he’d
find excuses to put me off, but if I turned up dressed to go, he’d
feel inclined to cave in.’

‘How well you knew him,’
observed Sadie dryly.

‘Well, be fair, Mrs F, I’d
known him even longer than he’d known Angela. I mean, Angela
met him on the evening of that wedding. I’d met him in the
afternoon, before Ange turned up to spend the weekend with me.’

Sadie sat stone-faced.

Rachel sighed. ‘Anyway, he
said he’d ring Ange first to tell her he’d be late. I
said,
“
Ask Ange to
come too, they can easily set an extra place, and we’ll make it
a real night out.
”
He disappeared into the back office without answering. I had no
reason to suspect he’d cooked up some fairy story. He told me
later that he’d pretended to be at some industry do with Ian.’

‘The pair of you did have
it planned between you, so!’

‘No, no. Silly old Robert
made it more complicated than it need ever have been.’ Rachel
clucked almost affectionately. ‘God, if he’d just been
honest like I expected him to, and told Ange that his dinner date was
with me, that I came into Hartley’s to book a holiday and that
I needed cheering up after a man let me down, do you think I’d
have touched him with a barge pole later on in the evening? Look, I
never expected to get the hots for a man I’d known for years. I
thought dinner
à deux
without sexual overtones would
be just the pick-me-up I needed after my date blew me out.’

‘A novel experience for
you?’ snorted Sadie.

‘The other thing happened
by accident,’ continued Rachel, as if Sadie hadn’t
spoken. ‘I accidentally touched his leg under the table, and he
thought it was deliberate. Not that he made a move on me. But he
looked at me in a new, expectant way, just for a millisecond. Or
maybe I imagined it.’ She shook her head. ‘I began to
tease him
‒
naughty,
I know. When the taxi dropped me at my place, I asked him in for a
night-cap
‒
just to
see what he’d do.’

‘Spare me the gory
details!’ Sadie stood up, too agitated to sit. ‘Why, for
God’s sake, did you have to play with fire with your best
friend’s husband? I don’t suppose Robert knew what hit
him.’

‘I didn’t have to
twist his arm! We’d both had a fair bit to drink by then. He
was mortified and wringing his hands before I’d even called
another taxi to take him home. Said it would kill Ange to find out,
if she didn’t kill him first.’

‘Funny you should say
that,’ said Sadie coolly. ‘Angela accused him of adultery
the night before his massive heart attack. I think it’s fair to
say the two events were linked. Ever since, my daughter’s been
tortured with guilt. For all she knows, her accusation might not even
be true. They had a huge row, and she blames herself for packing him
off into the afterlife with a flea in his ear. While you get away
scot-free, ye strumpet!’ Sadie’s vernacular resorted to
its Irish origins when she was deeply stirred. Her bottom plate
jumped in sympathy.

Rachel smoothed a fold of her
dress over one tanned knee. ‘Come now, Mrs F, you’ve
never believed that folk get away scot-free in this world.
“
Everyone
has their woes sooner or later
”
is one of your favourite maxims, no doubt stitched into a sampler and
hanging over your bed next to a rather lurid Sacred Heart.’

‘Don’t you talk down
to me!’ screeched Sadie, as she saw before her Rachel’s
patrician Englishness asserting itself, to distance her terrible act
from any impact it might have on backward micks. ‘Don’t
make out I’m overreacting after what you’ve done to my
Angela and her marriage! You should be down on your knees begging
forgiveness. Walking barefoot round Lough Derg until your feet are
shredded and bloody! And you make sure you stay away from my Angela
for the rest of her life. Ye slut!’

‘Do calm down, Mrs F.’
Rachel was coolness itself, but Sadie noticed, just in time, a
tell-tale bead of sweat gathering on her hairline. ‘I don’t
mind you putting all the blame on me, because Robert’s not here
to yell at. But just remember, it takes two to tango. And you must
feel vindicated in all this. You never liked him. You never thought
him top-drawer husband material. Not if you’re entirely honest
about it.’

‘You’re arguing like
a Jesuit,’ snarled Sadie, secretly appalled that her tolerance
of Robert had been seen through so thoroughly by Angela, Rachel and
‒
worst of all
‒
Robert himself.

‘I think you started
blaming me for things way back. You think it’s my fault that
Angela met Robert at all, because it was at a wedding I’d
invited her to. And if she hadn’t met him, you and Fenton
might’ve persuaded her to go to college.’

‘He encouraged her to give
up work and vegetate at home for four years,’ mused Sadie,
lulled by the seductive truth of Rachel’s words.

‘I happen to know that was
entirely Ange’s decision!’ said Rachel sharply. She
sighed. ‘Look at me, Mrs F. What do you see?’

Sadie looked at her grudgingly.
‘A viper in the bosom.’

‘Oh today, I’m a
viper. On a good day, I’m a clothes horse. Perfect Rachel with
her perfect life. I wonder if you and Angela have ever seen past
that.’

Here it comes, scowled Sadie. The
fabricated claim of a loveless childhood with lots of material
possessions but not the one thing she really craved. Only it wouldn’t
wash. Sadie had never felt comfortable around Matt and high-falutin’
Ginny Cockburn, but she knew that they loved Rachel. ‘Meaning?’
she snapped.

‘If you look perfect on the
outside, people don’t want to hear or believe that you’ve
got problems on the inside. It’s just selfish to whinge when
the gods have given you so much, and your problems can’t be as
bad as theirs. Angela’s my best friend. I’ve confided
loads to her. But I still cried in secret when I heard girls at
school sniggering about my over-developed chest, calling me the local
bike, just because I had the equipment if I fancied making use of it.
I was the first in my class to need a bra, and I was punished for it.
Then there were the bullies who decided Rachel Cockburn needed taking
down a peg because she wasn’t ugly and spotty. If problems
didn’t exist for me
‒
as far as other people could tell
‒
they made it their business to invent some.’

‘So folk were jealous of
your beauty and gave you a hard time, not bothering to consider that
you had feelings too. Very sad, Rachel. But a poor excuse for doing
the dirty with Robert.’

‘You still don’t
see!’ Rachel slapped her brown leg angrily. ‘I had a
moment of weakness. I’m tortured by it every time Angela plonks
herself down in that very chair and pours out her heart and soul. God
only knows why she didn’t tell me about her row with Robert on
the night before he died, but thank God I’ve been spared that.’
She paused. As far as Sadie was concerned, she was pausing for
effect. ‘Why do you think I didn’t marry Kevin?’

‘I don’t know,’
confessed Sadie, unwittingly intrigued by this outburst. ‘Because
you like to play the field, I’d always assumed.’

‘That’s the way
perfect Rachel would have it.’ She rose and gazed
dispassionately into a mirror. ‘The real reason is that Kevin
saw right through me, teased me about my hang-ups, tried to get me to
tell all about the school bullies and cry it out of my system on his
manly shoulder. If I’d married Kevin, I’d have had to be
real all the time.’

‘But see here.’ Sadie
sat down again, shocked by her compassion for the hussy adulteress.
‘Everyone needs someone they can be completely at ease with.
It’s too tiring, keeping up an image all the time.’

‘It suits me. I am my image
now. Marshall’s a married man, you know. They all are since
Kevin. And they have to be married men with no desire to leave their
wives. They just have to want a change from reality, an hour or so
with the image their wives used to keep up, before marital boredom
and babies set in.’

‘That makes you a
‒
a prostitute,’ said Sadie firmly. ‘Even you deserve
better. Think of your immortal soul, lovey.’

‘I’m a bad Catholic,
Mrs F. I’ve never been convinced of its existence. The body as
perishable wrapping for the priceless treasure inside? It just
sounded like another swipe by the ugly brigade at anyone whose
wrapping wasn’t plain brown paper. Can I give you a lift home?
I really am late for my date with Marshall now.’

Sadie gaped at her momentarily.
She’d come here, fired with righteous anger. Now she was
confused
‒
and a
little scared
‒
by
the hollowness at the centre of perfect Rachel. Sadie could almost
hear the wind whistling over a sea of inner vastness that was either
too shallow to plumb or too deep to fathom.

But she and even Angela had been
happy enough to foster Rachel’s image. Rachel was such a good
listener and dispenser of advice. They’d refined her image,
projected their feelings onto her
‒
even predicted her responses to bolster their own conclusions. They’d
used her in the same the way that Sadie used Binky.

They’d shied away from the
chance of getting close enough to realise, as Kevin had, that Rachel
was just as capable of unhappiness and cankered feeling as everyone
else.

But getting close to Rachel
would’ve tainted her observer’s role, brought the
counsellor and clothes-horse down to the level of the rest of
humanity.

Perhaps if she and Ange had tried
harder
‒
harder even
than Kevin
‒
to
access the real Rachel under the protective layers, some moral
imperative would’ve stopped her from sleeping with Robert.
‘No,’ said Sadie finally, thinking aloud. ’I can’t
accept that we’re to blame. Everyone’s responsible for
their own actions.’

‘Well, of course,’
agreed Rachel, peering at her closely. ‘It’s called free
will. Are you serious about banishing me for ever from Angela’s
sight? Won’t she wonder why I’ve pulled the plug on our
lifelong friendship?’

Sadie hadn’t thought of
that, and admitted as much. ‘But she can’t stay in the
dark for ever. I’ll have to weigh up which pain would be harder
to bear, knowing about you or living the rest of her life wondering
about Robert.’ Sadie glanced at Rachel sharply. ‘But stay
away from anyone she meets in the future.’