Love and Devotion (7 page)

Suzie laughed. ‘One of these days I’m going to shock you and not be the respectable daughter you’ve always taken me for.’

He laughed too. ‘So why do you want the money?’

‘Promise you won’t hit the roof?’

‘Have I ever been that sort of father?’

‘I’ve bumped the car and want to get it fixed before Mum sees it.’

‘When you say bumped, you mean that literally, I hope? You’re not about to tell me the car’s totalled and you’re in hospital covered in bandages, are you?’

‘No, nothing like that. I reversed into a metal post and, well, the bumper kind of dropped off.’

‘Mm ... how fast were you going?’

‘I was hardly moving at all. So will you lend me the money?’

‘Why don’t you do what the rest of us do? Get it sorted on your insurance. If I’m not mistaken, I already pay for that anyway.’

‘Um ... thing is, it ... it wasn’t my car. It was Steve’s.’

‘Steve’s?’ Will sat up. ‘Hang on, let me get this straight. You mean to say that when you were hardly moving at all, and the bumper just
kind
of dropped off, you were driving PC Plod’s brand new Jag? The
Shaguar?’

Suzie’s answer was so faint, he scarcely caught it. Or perhaps it was the sound of his laughter bouncing off the sitting-room walls that drowned out her voice.

‘Dad, it isn’t funny. They’re back from Paris next week with Gemma and I need to get it fixed before Steve sees it. You know he’ll be as mad as hell about it.’

Will was still laughing when he ended the call. He was picturing the expression on the face of his ex-wife’s second husband when he saw what had happened to his precious new car. Steve Dodd, a.k.a. PC Plod because he used to be something big in the police force, had tried hard to be a model step-father to Suzie and Gemma, but he suspected that Steve was going to have his work cut out keeping his cool over this. Unless, of course, for Suzie’s sake, Will could get it sorted before anyone was the wiser.

Ten minutes later, when he was hunting through the Yellow Pages for a suitable body shop, his mobile chirruped with a text message from Sandra saying the coast wasn’t clear for the next few days. Sandra was a fellow dealer and had one of those open marriages that he thought only ever existed in people’s heads. Seemingly her husband would be around for the foreseeable, so any nocturnal visits from Will would be inappropriate. To be honest he was relieved. He was too tired for one of Sandra’s sexual marathons. She might not demand any form of commitment from him, but physically she was the most exhausting woman he’d ever been to bed with. There was no such thing as a quickie for her.

Putting his mobile aside, he returned his attention to more important matters: finding a body shop for PC Plod’s pranged car.

 

 

 

 

It was raining when Harriet arrived in Oxford. She let herself into her flat, went through to the kitchen, hung her keys tidily on the hook beside the breadbin and stood for a moment in the gloomy half-light, listening to the silence. The flat felt cold and empty, as if it had fallen asleep in her absence. Or ... as if it had died.

She briskly chased the thought away and went round switching on lamps, filling the kettle, and checking there was nothing amiss, that a pipe hadn’t sprung a leak or a window been jemmied open. Constant activity, she’d come to know, was the only answer.

She’d set off early that morning, trying to beat the worst of the traffic, but had still got caught in a two-mile tailback just north of Birmingham. Her father had offered to come with her, but knowing how tired her mother was, Harriet had suggested he ought to take the children out for the day to give Mum a break. It was obvious to them all that Eileen wasn’t getting enough rest, and if that went on for too long, Harriet knew her mother would be stuck in bed for days. It was such a frustration for Mum; just as soon as she started to feel well and her energy levels increased she invariably overdid it and was back where she’d started, feeling ill again. She needed to avoid emotional stress and too much physical work, but they were there for her every day of the week. There seemed no let-up. Harriet knew that her mother would carry on until she dropped. ‘Don’t worry about me, Harriet,’ Eileen had said to her only last night, ‘none of us has the luxury of going to pieces, least of all me. I wouldn’t do that to the children.’ It seemed wrong to Harriet that the focus was all on the children, but maybe that was because she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body.

The first room she tackled was the bedroom. It didn’t take her long. Most of her things from this room were already up in Cheshire; only a few winter clothes were left, which she had known she wouldn’t need straight away. What little furniture she had was being packed up this afternoon by a removal firm and put into storage - there was no space left in Mum and Dad’s garage.

From her bedroom she moved to the bathroom: the linen and towels from the airing cupboard took up no more than a couple of bin liners. The sitting room was next, and with the first shelf of her books packed, the buzzer for the intercom sounded.

Spencer.

She wanted to feel pleased about seeing him again, but her pride wouldn’t let her. Let’s not forget why he’s really here, she reminded herself. During the journey down in the car she had wondered about getting in first, ensuring she was the one to end it between them. ‘Look, Spencer,’ she’d imagined herself saying, ‘let’s be adult about this. We had our fun, now it’s time to move on.’ She then imagined winning an Oscar for the most clichéd performance ever given in the history of hammy break-up scenes.

She buzzed him up and, fixing a smile to her face, opened the door. ‘Hi, Spencer,’ she said. If nothing else, he was going to remember her for being positive and upbeat. But the moment he leaned in for a kiss and she felt the dampness from the rain on his hair and cheek, and smelled the familiar scent of him, she wasn’t so sure of herself. A flood of happy memories came back and she kissed him for a fraction longer than she’d intended. Hope surfaced, too. Maybe he would stand by her after all. Maybe he’d be there for her.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he said, taking off his wet coat and eyeing the narrow hall that was crowded with boxes and bin liners.

‘You know me. If a job’s got to be done, best to get it over and done with.’ Like ending their doomed relationship, she thought. Noticing the carrier bag he was holding, she said, ‘What’s that?’

‘Lunch. I knew you’d be too busy to go out, so I called in at your favourite deli. Take your choice: avocado and bacon baguettes, coronation chicken sandwiches and a smoked salmon bagel.’

‘How intuitive of you.’ Of course, ending it in a restaurant would have been much too dangerous. An embarrassing scene might ensue.

‘You carry on with what you were doing,’ he said, ‘and I’ll set things up in the kitchen.’

Down on the floor with her boxes of books, she listened to Spencer as he unwrapped the parcels of food in the kitchen. He definitely seemed quieter than usual.
They always do when they’re about to pull the rug out from beneath you. They need to concentrate. You know what men are like, can’t multi-task like us girls.

Stop it! She warned the crazy, paranoid woman inside her head. Perhaps he was just unsure how to treat her these days. Be too relaxed and jaunty with her and he might think she would accuse him of being insensitive.

‘Ready when you are,’ he called.

They sat opposite each other at the circular table. ‘I’m going to miss Franco’s Deli,’ she said, helping herself to a baguette and ripping it in two. ‘Do you want half?’

He shook his head. ‘What else do you think you’ll miss?’

‘Just about everything.’ She looked about her, indicating her precious home of the last fourteen months. ‘This. Work. Oxford.’ She paused and looked at him meaningfully. ‘And you. Especially you.’ She was throwing him a line. Cueing him up. But all he did was smile and take another bite of his sandwich.

That was when she knew for sure that it was over.

They ate in silence, like an ancient married couple who no longer had anything to say to one another. When she couldn’t take the awkwardness any longer, she put down her baguette and said, ‘I think we need to talk.’ She cringed.

He gave her a nervous look.

‘You said on the phone yesterday that there was something you wanted to say to me.’ Once again she was throwing him a line.

He slowly finished what was in his mouth. ‘It’ll keep,’ he murmured. ‘Any luck on the job front yet?’

She would never have thought he was the cowardly type. He’d always seemed so objective and clear-headed. It was one of the things about him that had attracted her. Prepared to give him some slack, she said, ‘I haven’t had time to sneeze, never mind approach a job agency. No disrespect to my niece and nephew but they’re incredibly time-consuming. There always seems to be something that needs doing for them. I’m worn out and in bed by nine most nights.’

‘How are they coming to terms with everything?’

She really couldn’t work out if he was genuinely interested or still prevaricating. ‘They seem okay,’ she said, ‘but how do we really know what’s going on inside their heads?’

‘Have you thought about counselling?’

‘They’ve been seeing a woman for a couple of weeks. I’ve no idea if it’s helping them.’

‘What about for you and your parents?’

She shrugged. ‘Not really our thing.’

‘So you’ll just tough it out?’

‘Isn’t that what most people end up doing anyway?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been this closely associated ...’ he hesitated, ‘... this near to death before. Have you thought of keeping a journal?’

‘Whatever for?’ She could feel herself getting cross with him. If he’d never been this close to death before then perhaps he ought to shut the hell up with his half-baked advice.

‘I once read about a man who’d lost his wife and he decided to work through his grief by writing everything down. Whenever he couldn’t cope, he turned to his diary. I reckon that’s what I’d do in your shoes.’

Harriet couldn’t think of anything worse. She’d feel too exposed and vulnerable putting down any of the thoughts she’d had since Felicity had died. She also felt that if Spencer knew the first thing about her, he wouldn’t have made such a suggestion. Looking at him across the table as he reached for another sandwich, she felt like she was having lunch with a stranger. It hit her then, that that was the reality. Here she was, patiently waiting for him to come clean and say that it was over between them, when the truth was, there was no ‘them’. How could there be? They scarcely knew each other. Theirs was a fledgling relationship, still in its early stages. They’d worked together, had been to bed together, but Spencer couldn’t possibly know what really made her tick. Just as she didn’t know the real him.

Seizing the moment, she said, ‘Spencer, I think we should get this over with. I can’t think of a single good reason why you would want to carry on seeing me now that my circumstances have changed so dramatically, so let’s not kid ourselves that after today we’ll be anything but friends.’

He stopped eating. She saw and heard him swallow. He looked a picture of awkwardness. ‘You knew, then, what it was I wanted to say?’

‘A smart girl like me? Of course I knew.’

‘And you’re okay about it?’

‘Perfectly okay.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’ Letting out his breath and visibly relaxing, he said, ‘I shouldn’t have doubted you, really. You’re always so pragmatic. Another girl would have called me every name under the sun for being so shallow and only thinking of myself.’

She looked at him steadily, resisting the urge to slap his face. ‘We both know that’s not my style.’

‘But you do see, don’t you? It’s the children. I’ve never wanted any, and ... well, if we’re to continue seeing each other, if we were to get seriously involved, the children would be a factor. And I’m not convinced — ’

‘Please,’ she interrupted him, ‘you don’t have to explain. Believe me, I know
exactly
how you feel.’

 

Driving home later that evening, Harriet realised that for all her brave toughing-it-out talk, for all her reasoning of the situation, she was more hurt and disappointed than she’d expected. But what hurt the most was the look of pure relief on Spencer’s face when they’d said goodbye. Would it have cost him so much to have pretended to be more upset?

As she headed north, with each mile that she put between herself and Oxford, her anger grew. Rejection was an ugly thing. You could dress it up as prettily and as civilly as you wanted but it still boiled down to the same hurtful blow: the person on the receiving end was left to think they weren’t good enough.

By the time she reached Keele Services on the M6 she had to stop and be sick. If ever she had needed her sister at the other end of the phone, or right here with her, this was it. Felicity would have bucked her up; she would have made her laugh and said all the right things. She would have told her Spencer was a shallow toe-rag of the highest order, that she was better off without him.

She emerged from the toilets and joined a queue for a cup of tea to take away the vile taste in her mouth. She had to admit that part of her anger lay in the misguided shred of hope she had clung to. Spencer had been the only thing left that symbolised the woman she had been before Felicity’s death - the woman she still wanted to be. Losing him meant she had to sever that tie and submit to the only certainty in her new life: that her days as an independent, carefree woman were over. She was now a parent. A parent whose will had to be subjugated to the needs of the children in her care.

As she sat in the busy service station, surrounded by a coach party of raucous pensioners on their way home after a day out, she finally accepted that her old way of life was over. It was as dead and buried as Felicity. Feeling pathetically sorry for herself she thought of everything she’d lost - her sister, her home, her job, her identity, and now her boyfriend. What next? Her mind?