Love and Devotion (60 page)

‘No, don’t! He’s not worth it.’

But Bob wasn’t listening. Shaking Miles’s hand from his shoulder, he marched back inside the house to the sitting room. ‘Where is he?’ he roared. ‘Where’s that conniving bastard?’ Everyone looked at him, startled. Pushing his way through the guests, he went into the kitchen. Dora was there with the children, but there was no sign of any of the McKendricks. He then crashed his way up the stairs and that was where he found Eileen and Freda in the front bedroom with Dominic. They were tending to the cuts to his face.

‘I want to speak to you, Dominic McKendrick,’ Bob said, working hard to catch his breath.

‘Can it wait, Bob?’ asked Eileen, breaking off from dabbing at Dominic’s mouth and exchanging a worried look with Freda. On the verge of tears, the stupid woman looked as useless as she always did.

‘No. It’s got to be said now.’

‘What’s got to be said now?’ It was Harvey and he looked furious. He must have followed Bob up the stairs. ‘Isn’t it bad enough that your daughter has embarrassed my wife and me by provoking my sons to brawl in front of our guests?’

Bob realised then just how much he’d never liked his neighbour. Now he knew he despised him. ‘Your son,’ he inclined his head towards Dominic, who was still sitting on the bed between his mother and Eileen, ‘has behaved far worse than Harriet ever could. He’s nothing but a marriage wrecker. See for yourself.’ He held out the photograph. ‘There! What do you say to that?’ He immediately wished he hadn’t. Parading Felicity’s naked body like this was an obscene slur on her virtue; as her father, he couldn’t have failed her more.

A stunned silence fell on the room. Freda began to cry and Harvey looked with disgust at his son.

‘I knew all along that you weren’t gay,’ he said. ‘It was just an act to annoy and disappoint me.’

At this, Dominic suddenly sprang to his feet. He pushed his mother away. ‘You, you,
YOU
! It’s always about bloody you, isn’t it, Dad? And for the record, I’m bisexual. I fuck women as well as men.’ He towered over his father and prodded him in the chest. ‘Tell me, is that more acceptable for you? Or is that equally shaming and disappointing?’ He came towards Bob now and before Bob could stop him, he had snatched the photograph out of his hands. ‘And if it’s any concern of yours, I loved Felicity. I always did and I always will. She was the only person on this Godforsaken earth who made my life worth living. I can’t function without her. She was my life. My dearest friend
and
my lover. Now I have nothing. But then I wouldn’t expect any of you to understand that when all you’re capable of doing is flimflamming your way through the shoddiness of your dull, suburban, unimaginative lives. You’re devoid of any real emotion, the whole damn lot of you.’ He took a last look at the photograph, stuffed it into his pocket and stalked out of the room, slamming the door after him.

 

Will had witnessed the extraordinary commotion in the McKendricks’ front garden; it had taken place only minutes after Maxine had left. He’d also seen Harriet leave and make her way home. With nothing else to do, he remained at the window, watching the road for any further action. He didn’t have long to wait. First an angry-looking, dark-haired man marched past, his coat tails flying - quite a feat, given the treacherous state of the pavements - and just as a flurry of fresh snowflakes began to fall, Harriet reappeared. This time she was wrapped in a purple duffel coat along with a scarf, gloves, boots and a hat - the famous black beret. His heart, so heavy these days, gave a small surge. Surprised that he was able to feel anything, he continued to watch Harriet. Picking her way carefully through the snow, she crossed the road in the direction of the footpath. In an instant, he made a decision he hoped he wouldn’t regret.

 

Eileen asked Dora to take the children back to her house for the rest of the afternoon, and hurried after Bob. She’d never seen him so angry. He was cursing out loud to himself and she was worried he might go after Dominic again and do something silly. But there was no sign of Dominic anywhere. Eileen didn’t know what to make of Bob’s accusation; she hadn’t managed to see the photograph but she could guess what it showed. In a way, it didn’t surprise her. Felicity and Dominic had always been as thick as thieves. She used to worry that they had an unhealthy relationship, and maybe her instinct had been right. She could remember thinking how relieved she was when Felicity had told her that Dominic was gay; she’d naively thought that his obsession with Felicity would magically stop. But it looked like she’d been wrong. Instead it had grown and grown. And what about Jeff in all of this? Had the poor man known what was going on? Did the children know too? Had they had an inkling that something was wrong between their parents?

She called out, ‘Bob, please, slow down. I can’t keep up with you.’ But her cries went unheeded and she slipped on the snow and nearly went over.

 

Bob went round to the back of the house. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He’d spent far too long covering up his feelings, pretending to the world that he was okay.

The snow was falling harder now and brushing it away from his eyes, mouth and nose, he felt the cold wetness of it seeping through his shoes as he trudged across the lawn.

The door at the back of the garage was open and going inside he found what he was looking for: his old spade. As soon as it was in his hands and his fingers were gripping the familiar, well-worn smoothness of the handle, he felt a detonating current of energy flow through him. How dare that foul-mouthed devil incarnate accuse him of not being capable of feeling any emotion! He’d show him!

His first act of destruction was to obliterate the snowman Harriet and the children had made that morning. Like an executioner, he took off the head in one clean, satisfying swing. The carrot nose flew past him and as the head came to rest at his feet, two round stones stared reproachfully back at him. He kicked it away, then hacked at the body. From there he went over to the wooden bird table and took a hefty two-handed swipe at it. Pain ripped through his shoulders as he made contact, but it toppled to the ground with a thud. He brought the spade down heavily on it and gritted his teeth as the sound of splintering wood filled the air.

In his mind he was smashing Harvey McKendrick’s skull to a pulp.

Dominic McKendrick’s head too.

And that joy-riding bastard who’d killed his beloved Felicity.

The bird table dealt with, he moved onto the rose bed. It was hidden deep beneath a drift of snow, but he knew the lie of the land like the back of his hand and in no time he was flattening the area.

The first blow was for all those unborn babies he’d never know.

The subsequent strikes were for cheating on his wife. For not being a better husband.

Next he attacked the pergola he’d made three summers ago after watching Monty Don build one on
Gardener’s World.
That was for making a fool of himself over Jennifer. For being so pathetically weak.

 

Petrified by cold and fear, the snow settling on and around her, Eileen stood shivering on the patio, watching Bob systematically decimate the garden to which he’d devoted so much of his life. She was glad she’d had the sense to leave the children in Dora’s care. He was oblivious to her presence - and to Toby barking frantically the other side of the patio doors - but she would stay watching over him until he’d unleashed every last demon of grief-fuelled anger and frustration from his body.

That moment came when the light began to fade and at last, spent, Bob fell to his knees and covered his head with his arms. His cries were terrible to hear. It was a sound Eileen hoped never to hear again. She prayed that it signalled the end of her husband’s nightmare. ‘Please let him be at peace now,’ she murmured as she walked stiffly to where Bob was crouched like a wounded animal dying in the snow.

 

 

 

 

‘Harriet?’

‘Yes, Joel.’

‘When will Granddad be feeling better?’

‘I don’t know. He’s very poorly at the moment. He needs a lot of rest.’

‘Carrie says he’s got flu and that she saw him crying yesterday. Was he crying, Harriet?’

‘I don’t know; I wasn’t there.’

‘Why do you think he was crying?’

‘Because he’s not feeling very well.’

While he continued to help Harriet put his toys and books into a box, Joel thought that talking with grown-ups could be a bit like going round in circles. It didn’t usually happen with Harriet, but maybe, because they were moving tomorrow, she didn’t have time to talk to him properly.

Mummy used to say that she couldn’t talk properly when she was busy. ‘I’ll answer your questions in a minute, Joel,’ she’d say. ‘Just let me finish what I’m doing.’ She was always busy on her computer. Every morning when they came home after taking Carrie to school she’d go into the spare room and switch on the computer. ‘Go and play while I send an email to your auntie Harriet,’ she would say. Mummy used to say that Harriet wasn’t just her sister, she was her best friend, too. Carrie was his sister but he didn’t think she thought he was her best friend. She had all her friends from school to play with now. She was always talking about them. He had no one. Only Harriet and Grandma and Granddad. And they were all too busy to talk to him. He suddenly felt sad. And a bit frightened. Things kept changing. He blamed it on that boring party the day it snowed. Ever since that day things had been different. First he’d overheard Dora talking to someone about Will and what a shame it was about his daughter dying and how upset he must be. Hoping it wasn’t that nice girl they’d met ages ago in that funny old shop that smelled, he’d asked Grandma about it. He could tell she didn’t really want to talk to him, because she’d hugged him and said he wasn’t to worry about anything. But he was worried.
Everyone
was dying. Who would be next?

Granddad?

Carrie said that Granddad had caught his flu germs at the party and that was what had made him go mad and wreck the garden. But Joel didn’t believe Carrie. He’d never heard of anyone wrecking a garden because they weren’t feeling well. He knew what had really happened. Granddad must have drunk too much wine at the party, like Dad did that time when he got cross with Mummy and threw all her books out of the window. It was raining, but Mummy went out in her slippers to get them. But they’d fallen into a puddle and she cried because they were ruined. She said they were her favourite books of poems. But they weren’t like the poems she read to them at bedtime, the funny ones with the nice rhymes. They were serious ones without any pictures. He hadn’t liked seeing Daddy like that, all angry and using bad words.

 

Harriet didn’t approve of lying to the children. When it came to important matters, she’d always believed in being straight and honest with them, but out of respect for her parents she had agreed, for the time being, to keep quiet about Dad’s breakdown. Just as she’d done with Suzie’s death. Perhaps, when she and the children had moved, and she didn’t have her mother’s wishes to tiptoe around, she would talk more openly with them.

Meanwhile, she had the move to deal with. ‘Come on, Joel,’ she said, brightly, ‘a little faster with those toys or we’ll still be here when the removal men arrive in the morning.’

‘What time are they coming?’

‘About nine o’clock, so we need to be ready nice and early.’

They worked together for another twenty minutes, until finally every last cuddly toy, book and game had been sealed up in a packing box. ‘There,’ she said, ‘all done.’ Noting that Joel was looking uncertainly at his now-empty room - all that was left was his silky lying on top of his folded pyjamas on the bed, along with his new slippers - she added, ‘You’ve done a fantastic job, Joel. I don’t know how I would have managed without you.’

He gave her one of his notoriously wobbly smiles, the one that he knew was expected of him, but he didn’t really mean. ‘Can I have my bath now?’

‘You’ll have-to see if Carrie’s finished in there.’

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but Carrie had decided that she was too old now to share a bath with her little brother. Harriet knew that Joel didn’t like this new arrangement, which made him feel excluded. She listened to him talking to his sister through the closed bathroom door and yawned hugely, stretching her arms above her head. She was exhausted. She had spent most of the day getting ready for the move. A blessing really, because it had taken her mind off the events of the last forty-eight hours.

No one had come right out and said it, but it was officially all Harriet’s fault. If she hadn’t taken it upon herself to confront Dominic so dramatically, and to make Miles stand up to him once and for all, her father wouldn’t have gone berserk and smashed up the garden. Nor would Harriet’s mother been forced to witness him go through such a harrowing ordeal.

The first she’d known about Dad’s breakdown - and that he knew all about Felicity’s affair with Dominic - was when she’d come home later that evening and found Miles in the kitchen drinking tea with her mother. Mum had told her she’d had to call out the doctor for Dad. ‘He’s fast asleep,’ Eileen had explained. The doctor gave him something.’ Her mother had then taken her outside to show her the garden and even in the dark, Harriet could see the extent of the damage. What hurt most was the sight of the Wendy house — it was the only thing her father had left standing. It stood there bleakly in the snow and shadows, like a lone, traumatised survivor of a massacre.

At no stage did Eileen ask where Harriet had been for the last three hours, for which she was grateful. Perhaps her mother had guessed where she’d been and was saving Miles’s feelings. Harriet could see that Miles was desperate to talk to her but Harriet had done enough talking, so she offered to go back out into the cold and fetch the children, who were still with Dora. Across the road, the curtains were drawn at Will’s and she pictured him sitting by the fire where she’d left him earlier.