Skeletons (6 page)

By the time she got back to the hotel after forty-five minutes of aimless wandering around Soho, Neil had been replaced by Judy. Ordinarily this would have filled Jen with joy. They could spend the afternoon gossiping and chatting, and the time
would pass by in a heartbeat. Today, though, she would have found Neil’s long silences a relief.

She considered, for a brief second, whether she could confide in Judy about what she thought she’d witnessed, but she knew that, fond as she was of her, confident as she was that Judy would sympathize and probably give her some sound advice
about what she should do next, Judy had no filter, no concept of keeping things to herself. She parroted out whatever she had heard, regardless, completely unaware that sometimes discretion might be best.

Consequently, Jen knew that Cathy from housekeeping had once had sex with a guest whose room she was meant to be cleaning, that Graham the doorman (or Graham Roper the Doorman Groper, as she and Judy had once nicknamed him, because he had hands
that didn’t so much wander as run ahead with purpose) had a penchant for lunchtime visits to strip clubs, and that Nick, the head waiter in the restaurant, had been blessed with a third nipple right in the centre of his chest. There was no malice in
Judy’s sharing of stories, she just couldn’t help herself. It was as if she leaked, and there was nothing she could do to make it stop.

If it hadn’t been to do with Charles, Jen might have been tempted to tell her, anyway. She desperately wanted to say it out loud to someone. To see if it sounded ridiculous, or plausible, when it came out of her mouth. But her
father-in-law’s minor celebrity status meant that her suspicions would spread around the hotel like wildfire and, before she knew it, the tabloids would probably be camping out on his doorstep, rifling through his bins and taking photographs of Amelia from unflattering angles,
emphasizing her wattle and comparative lack of sex appeal.

For a fleeting moment, she even wondered if she should tell Jason what she had seen. She knew she couldn’t do it, though. Couldn’t be the one to shatter his idealized vision of his father. Not when she wasn’t sure, anyway. Not
when what she had seen might have a hundred innocent explanations. If only she could think what one of them might be.

The afternoon turned out to be a write-off as far as work was concerned. Jen tried, and failed, to concentrate, and when she accidentally called the representative of a well-known macho Scottish actor, who was expected to arrive the following
day, and told him that she had organized the Brazilian wax his client had requested in the hotel spa, she realized it was time to give up and go home. So she claimed a sudden-onset migraine and the need to go and lie down in a darkened room. Fortunately, she had so rarely taken a sick day in
all her years on the job that no one questioned
whether she was telling the truth and, in fact, their genuine concern for her almost made her come clean and admit that she was lying. She refused David’s offer of a cab, insisting that she was OK
to negotiate the Tube, and left as quickly as she could get away.

Sean Hoskins was unloading boxes from a taxi as she left.

‘Escaping?’ he said as she passed, head down. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone.

‘Something like that. Going home, actually. I’ve got a migraine.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding genuinely concerned. ‘Can I do anything? I could run round to Boots …’

She felt bad that she was including him in her lie. Touched that he would care enough to offer to help. She forced a smile. ‘No. Thank you. I’ve got stuff at home.’

‘Do you want my taxi? I won’t be a minute.’

‘Honestly, I’m fine. But thanks again.’

He peered into one of the boxes he had stacked up on the pavement. ‘I’ve got a melamine tea set from the nineteen fifties in here, if that’s any good.’

Jen laughed. ‘I’m OK for kitsch tableware, actually.’

‘Hope you feel better,’ he called after her as she walked off.

The house always seemed to Jen like a completely different place when no one else was home, echoey and somehow shabbier. Not that it didn’t always look a little shabby around the edges. Lived in. Knackered, actually. It sounded grand,
saying they had a house in London, but in reality it was tiny. Basically a two-up, two-down with a bit
of a kitchen extension. It was in the middle of a terrace of Victorian cottages that had been built for railway workers or something similar.
Short, undernourished, nineteenth-century people, anyway. It sat in a well-kept road, and their neighbours were quiet and had plants in their little front gardens, rather than the old motorbikes and broken fridges that were the accessory du jour in the street they had lived in before. They
had a small patio out the back that was a sun trap, with room for four chairs, if you didn’t mind all sitting in a tight row, like you were at the cinema.

Jen loved it.

They had moved there when Simone was about sixteen months, and Emily was well on the way, and she had never wanted to go anywhere else, even though they had always all been tripping over each other, fighting over whose turn it was to use the one
bathroom, moaning about the lack of cupboard space and soundproofing.

When the girls were home she barely noticed the clutter, but now she had to force herself to turn a blind eye to it and head straight for the kitchen. She had decided on her journey home that she would cook Jason his favourite meal – a
calorie-laden and time-consuming fish pie. She wanted to do something nice for him, but not so nice that he would realize something was wrong. As if she might be able to offset some of the damage his father was doing by feeding him a tasty bit of haddock in a white sauce.

She knew that if he asked her if everything was OK, she would probably blurt out what she had seen – and that was the last thing she wanted to do. That would be on a par with announcing to your five-year-old that the tooth
fairy was a kiddie fiddler, or that SpongeBob and Patrick secretly hated each other. She needed to process, to decide what she should do next, before she acted.

Spending an afternoon cooking wasn’t Jen’s natural inclination, but she knew that if she didn’t get on with it right away, the chances of it happening once Jason got home were minimal. She would get caught up in the stories of
his students – he worked, these days, teaching drama at the local sixth-form college – and opening a bottle of wine, and they would end up with grilled fish and boiled potatoes for tea. Nice, but not exactly the point. Besides, the mindless tasks of cubing the haddock, boiling and then
mashing the potatoes and making the creamy sauce would give her the chance to think things through properly.

She forced herself to replay lunchtime’s events one more time, frame by frame. Whatever way she looked at it – fast, slow, forwards, backwards – the impression it left was the same. She tried to take herself out of the picture, to imagine
the encounter from the disinterested viewpoint of a stranger. What would she have inferred if she had caught sight of Charles and Cass, knowing neither of them? She ran the film again. There was no doubt. She would barely have noticed them, just another couple, albeit of the May and December
variety – or more like March and November – but a couple without a doubt, so relaxed were they with each other, so intimate their body language. Shit.

If she was right – and the jury was still out on that one – then doing nothing in a hurry was definitely the best option. She was all too aware, though, that it wasn’t
in her nature just to let it
lie. If Charles was seeing someone, then he needed to be taken to task. She couldn’t just stand on the sidelines and watch him destroy his family. Her family. She needed time to think.

She heard the front door bang, announcing that Jason was home.

‘Hello!’ she called out, putting on as cheerful a voice as she could muster, which, given the mood she was in, wasn’t very convincing. ‘I’m in the kitchen.’

‘What have I done to deserve this?’ Jason asked as he peered over her shoulder.

Jen turned round and planted a kiss on the end of his nose. ‘I had a migraine. Actually, that’s not really true. I skived off. I thought I’d come home and be a domestic goddess, for once.’

‘Well, I’m impressed, although you really should be wearing an apron and kitten heels.’

‘And I bought a cheesecake.’

‘You bought it? You didn’t spend all day slaving over it? Shame on you,’ he said, laughing. ‘What kind of a wife are you?’

She pushed him away playfully. ‘One who will throw this whole creation in the bin in a moment and open a tin of beans.’

‘I love it when you get angry.’

She pulled him back into a hug. ‘Love you too.’

‘OK, that’s it, what have you done?’

‘I miss having people to wait on,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to let me spoil you for a bit, while I get used to both girls being gone.’

‘Spoil away.’ Jason kissed her on the forehead. ‘If you want, I could start moaning and throwing tantrums and telling you I hate you, and then it’d be as if they’d never
left.’

‘Perfect,’ Jen said. ‘And throw in some crying for good measure.’

‘Do you remember when Simone threatened to leave home because we wouldn’t let her paint her half of the bedroom black?’

And they were off into a happy reminiscence about when the girls were little – their favourite way of passing the time these days. Jen pushed Charles out of her mind. Tried to think about anything else.

Cass put down the newspaper she was pretending to read and pressed the button on the remote to mute the TV. She was finding it hard to concentrate. Ever since they had bumped into Charles’s daughter-in-law earlier – Jen, that was her name –
she had been aware of a flicker of anxiety in her stomach. At least, she thought it was anxiety. It had occurred to her that it might be anticipation. She knew that a part of her wanted everything to come out into the open. Even though that would probably be catastrophic. It was like when
you leaned over a too-high railing. Who hadn’t thought, ‘What if I jump?’ Who hadn’t wanted to push things too far, just to see what would happen?

Or maybe that was just her.

In reality, though, she knew that she would never force the issue. She had no doubt that, if she did so, she would be running the risk of losing Charles from her life altogether. In fact, not even running the risk, it was a certainty. He had told
her many times that he couldn’t openly acknowledge her. He had too much to lose. She almost certainly wouldn’t see him for dust. And, despite everything, she really did believe that he loved his family in Twickenham. All of them, even his wife, Amelia.

It had felt so strange – thrilling, almost – to meet the woman who was married to his son. Jason, she knew, was the eldest. Then there were the two girls, Poppy and Jessie. Their names were all so
familiar to her. There were grandchildren too. Three, as far as she knew. She didn’t often ask, and he didn’t often share. Actually, she had told him a while ago, when they were having one of their fights (they often argued – in fact, they had been squabbling about something or
other when Jen had come along) that she didn’t want to hear any more. She didn’t care about Amelia, Jason, Poppy or Jessie. They were nothing to her.

She hadn’t really meant it.

Still, it had given her an undeniable buzz. Meeting Jen. Shaking hands with her. Knowing she held all the cards. It had passed through her mind that with one sentence she could blow the whole thing apart. Throw their secret out into the open and
watch his family implode. She could inflict unimaginable cruelty with just a few words. Thank God she hadn’t done it, hadn’t been overtaken by an urge to self-destruct. It was a powerful weapon to have, but one she knew she would never use. It frightened her just how tempted she
had been.

It wasn’t in her nature to be mean. She was a people-pleaser, she always had been. At school she had always been the one with her hand up, whether she knew the answer or not. Please, Miss! Choose me! Like me! It was pitiful, really, her
need for approbation. No wonder she had never met a man who actually wanted to plump for her as his life partner. She was too needy, too clingy, too afraid of rejection. She had always pushed
her suitors away eventually, driven them to the point
where they would turn round and say they’d had enough, and then she’d felt overwhelmingly let down when they left. Everything was a test to her. And few people ever passed.

Her mum had always told her she should just relax, be herself, and not over-think things too much. But since when had her mum been an expert on relationships? She hardly had an exemplary track record herself.

That reminded her. She must ring her mum. She usually tried to call her every other day, but sometimes she was so busy at work she would forget. Work had a tendency to take over her life, if she let it. She tried to remember if Barbara had said
she was going out. Her mum had a hectic social life that usually eclipsed her daughter’s. Partly it came with her job. Barbara worked in the offices of a finance company – doing admin, nothing too glamorous – but the staff seemed to still be stuck on the eighties’ maxim of
‘work hard, play hard’ and Barbara was always going for drinks and cocktails after work. Not that Cass could remember the eighties. She was barely even two when they ended. But she’d seen
Wall Street
.

Barbara picked up on the second ring.

‘Darling, hello.’

‘Hi, Mum. I’ve not called you in the middle of something, have I?’

‘No, of course not, how are you?’ Barbara always said this, whenever Cass asked, so for all Cass knew she could have been in the middle of performing heart surgery, but set it aside to chat to her daughter.

‘Fine. Having a night in.’

‘Me too. I’m treating myself to a glass of wine before I start cooking.’

Cass knew that cooking meant popping a ready meal for one into the microwave. Barbara used to love to cook. She would come home from work every evening and prepare elaborate meals, sipping on a big glass of wine while she threw things
flamboyantly around the kitchen. Now she rarely bothered. Cass, living on her own as she did, empathized. She could never understand why anyone would buy all the separate ingredients and spend hours putting them together when you could just opt for the finished product.

‘What are you having? I’ve got a Waitrose lasagne. It doesn’t look as good as yours, though.’

Barbara laughed. ‘You should come home, then. I’ll make you one. If I can remember how.’

‘Maybe at the weekend.’

‘Really? That would be lovely.’

‘I’ll drive up and we can load up at M&S.’

They talked for a couple of minutes about nothing much: Barbara’s frozen shoulder and the appointment she had with the doctor for a couple of days’ time; a dinner party she was going to the following night; the problems Cass was
having with her washing machine. Even though neither of them would have admitted it, it was hard to find new things to talk about when they spoke so often.

Afterwards, Cass decided to have a long bath and then an early night. She needed to process what had happened, go through it moment by moment and wring every last
trivial detail out of the memory. She
needed to get it straight in her head before she could allow herself to think what, if anything, might happen next.