Love and Devotion (22 page)

A tapping sound had him looking to one of the windows. Holding up a metal teapot and a china mug, the woman was inviting him to join her in a cup of tea.

‘You’ll tell her you haven’t got time,’ he said to himself, ‘that you’re expected home.’

But he didn’t.

 

 

 

 

Harriet knew it was pointless to be so angry; it only made her feel worse. It was three days since her car had been broken into - it was now back from the garage - and she felt completely lost without her laptop. Rightly or wrongly, the theft had superseded her shock at the gruesomely sensational tales Carrie had been spreading at school. Maybe it was for the best, because who knows what she may have said or done to Carrie in the heat of the moment? It was still a mystery to Harriet and her parents why Carrie had felt the need to tell such lies - no amount of careful questioning could make sense of any of the muttered answers the girl gave them. In the end, Harriet had concluded that her niece didn’t know why she’d done it; she had promised, though, not to do it again. After a brief telephone call to the headmistress at school, it was accepted that in view of the circumstances, no more would be said on the matter. However, the subject was not entirely closed; Harriet had been on the receiving end of some strange, not to say hostile looks from some of the mothers at the school gate.

This morning had been no exception, but with so much else on her mind, she didn’t let it get to her. Back home, while she opened a letter regarding her motor insurance, she made the mistake of cursing the thieving bastard who had broken into her car. For some inexplicable reason it provoked her father to snap at her. ‘This is what happens when you rely so heavily on modern technology,’ he said. ‘You become obsessed with it and think you can’t manage without it. For God’s sake, it was only a plastic box of chips and memory boards.’

‘Thank you, Dad, for that helpful comment,’ she said dryly, both annoyed and taken aback at his outburst.

‘And as I’ve told you before,’ he went on, ‘you’re more than welcome to use my computer.’

‘No offence, but that would be like offering a kite to an astronaut to get him to the moon. Your machine’s hopelessly antiquated.’

‘Oh, well, if you’re going to be like that, I’m off. Toby? Come here, boy. Let’s go in search of more convivial company, shall we?’

‘That dog’s going to be worn out if you take him for any more walks,’ Eileen had muttered from the sink, where she was trying to remove Biro ink from one of Carrie’s school sweatshirts.

‘Nonsense. A dog needs plenty of exercise.’

Despite what her father thought, being without her laptop really was a major upheaval for Harriet. She regretted taking it down to Erin’s; she’d only taken it because she had wanted to check her emails in case a job offer came through while she was away. But it wasn’t just the hassle of buying a new one and dealing with the insurance company that irritated her, it was the loss of so much vital information and the sense of violation that really bothered her. It was the personal stuff that affected her most; all those emails she and Felicity had exchanged. It was like losing a precious photograph album. In the weeks after Felicity’s death, Harriet had spent many sleepless nights comforting herself by rereading the emails they had written to each other. Staring into the blue-white glow of the laptop screen, and hearing Felicity’s voice brought vividly to life in the amusing exchanges, Harriet could almost believe that in the morning there would be a new email waiting for her.

In the meantime, before Harriet could buy a replacement laptop, she was using Felicity’s computer in Carrie’s bedroom. Harriet had helped her sister to buy it last autumn when her old one had become unusable, and had also installed all the software Felicity had needed for her translation work, along with games and pseudo-educational stuff for the children. Jeff hadn’t been into computers; he’d used them at work but that was as far as his interest had gone. Felicity, on the other hand, freely admitted that she was an email junkie, that she couldn’t go to bed without checking her Inbox.

Harriet switched on Felicity’s computer to access her own emails, hoping to hear from one of the job agencies. In her heart, she knew that if there was a job going, they would be in touch by phone. Nonetheless she still felt disappointed when she saw there was no news from any of the agencies. She felt a failure. She missed work so much; it was her identity, she supposed. She missed the office culture, the trade in put-downs and jokes. She also missed the way computers didn’t answer back, unlike children. She used to tease Spencer that at worst, computers were like men: they just stared vacantly at you, waiting for an instruction.

Resigned to another week of scanning the pages of
Computer Weekly
and waiting for the phone to ring, she sighed heavily. ‘Oh, Felicity, why did you have to die? Why did you leave me in this mess?’ She sat for a moment gazing absently at the computer screen and, suddenly filled with longing to feel closer to her sister, she wondered if it would be so wrong to read an email Felicity had sent to her - just to hear her voice, to feel her presence. In her heart she knew it would be like poking around in another person’s personal diary, but she justified her need by telling herself that it wasn’t the same, that reading something Felicity had already sent to her was perfectly all right.

She knew Felicity’s password and had no trouble accessing her sister’s Outbox. The list of sent emails was in date order and Harriet felt a chill run through her when she saw the last email had been sent the day before Felicity and Jeff had died. She also saw that the email address was [email protected]. She stared at the address and those preceding it. Scrolling back over the preceding weeks and months, there was an obvious pattern. And one which intrigued her. There were two names that appeared more regularly than any others. The [email protected] address and the [email protected] address were about evens in frequency. A strange feeling crept over Harriet. She was all too familiar with who MissTechie was - it was her email address - but who was Felicity messaging under the name of Harriet Swift? She’d never had a Yahoo account.

There was only one way to find out, but should she do it? Her hand hovered over the mouse.

Click.

Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. The text was brief and made no sense. It appeared to be scrambled. But as Harriet scanned the block of text she saw it for what it was: a code. And not any old code. This one had been used by Harriet and her sister when they were children. She hadn’t thought of it in years, but it all came flooding back and she recalled how the two of them had been sitting on Harriet’s bed one rainy Sunday afternoon when she had devised the idea. Hardly up to Bletchley Park standards, the trick had been not to leave any gaps between the words or use any punctuation or capital letters. Also, the letters of each word had to be substituted with the following letter of the alphabet - for instance, THE would be written as UIF. It had been an instant success and they had spent hours writing secret letters to each other.

Harriet knew, as she looked at the text, that there could be only one reason why Felicity had used their childhood secret code: she had wanted this kept private. She thought of Miles’s words about her having a strong sense of right and wrong. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Miles,’ she murmured, getting up from the chair and crossing the room to shut the door - she sensed this wasn’t something her parents should walk in on. She helped herself to a pen and a piece of paper from Carrie’s desk drawer and began the painstaking process of decoding the email. When it was done, she sat back in the chair and read it through.

The sound of a door banging shut downstairs had Harriet snapping forward in the chair and closing the email. She then hurriedly switched off the computer and folded the piece of paper she had written on and slipped it into her pocket.

What a discovery. Felicity had been having an affair. It was inconceivable. Her very own sister, who she’d thought had never kept anything from her.

Harriet’s first thought was that she should format the hard disk and wipe the computer clean. No one else must ever stumble across what she had. It would kill her father if he ever knew that Felicity had been leading this double life, that she had been less than perfect.

Her second thought was to wonder who Felicity had been seeing. She racked her brains to think of a name that might have come up in conversation more frequently than any other. But nothing came to mind. Knowing it went against her nature, Harriet knew she would have to read more. She wanted to know who had mattered so much to her sister. Who had meant
everything
to Felicity?

 

 

 

 

Normally one of the more attentive students in the class, Gemma was having trouble concentrating on that afternoon’s philosophy lesson on Descartes’ rationalism.

It was two weeks since Suzie’s revelation, but Gemma still couldn’t believe her sister had made such a mess of things. How could she have got herself pregnant? How dumb she had been! But even as she asked herself the question, Gemma knew the answer. Hadn’t she and Marcel taken a similar risk in Paris? Each time she thought of that occasion - when they’d realised he’d run out of condoms - she shuddered. They’d been upstairs in his bedroom and suddenly so desperate for each other that they were prepared to do it while Veronique had been in the bathroom next door. She’d told him it would be okay, so long as he came out at the crucial moment. It had only happened the once - all the other times they’d been careful - but of course, once was all it took. How crazy could she have been? Well, one thing was for sure, she’d never make that mistake again. No way. And to make doubly sure there was no danger of her feelings for Marcel getting the better of her, she’d replied to his letter saying there was too much going on for him to visit. ‘It would be better to put your trip off until next year,’ she’d written. She was slightly ashamed of herself that she’d taken this step, because it looked like she didn’t trust herself to be in the same room as him without wanting sex. Maybe the sensible thing to do was to go on the pill and have done with it.

Next to her, Yasmin was sitting bolt upright. Her friend’s attention was fixed firmly on what Mr Sheridan was saying. She was one of the most focused people Gemma knew and she couldn’t imagine Yasmin being stupid enough to have unprotected sex. For one thing her parents and brother would kill her. For another, Yasmin didn’t want anything to get in the way of the career she had in mind. She wanted to go to Oxford and then be a fund manager in London. Gemma knew that Mr and Mrs Patel were disappointed by this; they wanted their daughter to go into the family mobile-phone business. Gemma wished she was as focused as her friend. She didn’t have a clue what she wanted to do. Some days she wondered why she was even considering university. Mum sometimes said that she was too much like her father and lacked the grit and determination for which the Stone family was famous. But Gemma thought her father was more determined than Mum made him out to be. To have done what he did - jack in a good job at his time of life, and with a young family - took a lot of guts.

But the million-dollar question was what Mum would say about Suzie’s pregnancy, other than going mental and screaming the full nine yards about safe sex and what a right Horlicks Suzie had made of her life. She’d probably ask what Suzie had thought she’d been doing having sex in the first place.

But tonight was the night. Suzie had told Gemma and Dad that she was going to break the news to Mum during a family dinner, which Suzie would cook and to which Dad was invited. This meant one thing and one thing only: they were in for an evening of pure over-the-top melodrama.

 

Maxine was suspicious; she knew in her bones that something was going on. She called through to the en suite bathroom where Steve was brushing his teeth. ‘The last time Suzie went to this much trouble and cooked for us it was my fortieth birthday. I haven’t missed an important date on the calendar, have I?’

Steve joined her in the bedroom and stood behind her as she finished applying a fresh coat of mascara to her daytime make-up. He’d changed out of his suit and was casually dressed in a pair of Ralph Lauren chinos and a pale green Tommy Hilfiger shirt. He was twelve years older than her but still looked good. He knew how to dress and how to keep the weight off - he went to the gym three times a week and played tennis as often as the weather permitted. ‘I think you should just relax and enjoy yourself,’ he said. ‘Maybe this is Suzie’s way of apologising for what her father did to my car. Take it as an olive branch.’

He kissed her neck and placed his hands around her waist, something Maxine wished he wouldn’t do. She always felt as though he was sizing her up, checking to see if she’d put on any weight. And dammit, she had. Ever since Paris, when they’d overindulged, her clothes had felt too tight. There was nothing else for it; she’d have to go on a diet, and soon. Joining a gym was out of the question. She simply didn’t have the time. Hell, she didn’t even have time to go out and buy any new outfits. When did she last spend a leisurely hour or two browsing round her favourite shoe shops? Or have lunch with friends? Her life was so hectic. But then it always had been. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Work was crazier than ever at the moment; the saleroom had never been busier. She blamed that David Dickinson and his programme
Bargain Hunt.
Not that anyone with any real sense would think there was a correlation between what went on in that programme and the real world of buying and selling. Still, sales were up and the punters, victims of first-time auction fever, kept on coming. It was their lookout, not hers. She liked to think that Dad would have been proud of her, that he would have approved of how she’d carried on the business, making it even more successful than he had. And if everything went to plan, she’d soon be acquiring a second saleroom; one in Stafford. The deal was agreed in principle, and now it was down to the paperwork between the lawyers and accountants. It was a shame her father wasn’t around to see what she’d achieved. He’d worked so hard himself, and she would have liked him to know that she really had been cut from the same cloth as him. It gave her a warm glow of satisfaction knowing that her ambition easily matched his.