Trick of the Dark (15 page)

Rehearsing it as she walked, Jay eventually came up with what she hoped would keep everybody more or less happy. Her stride lengthened and her eyes sparkled as she retraced her steps at a brisker pace, eager to get back and try it out.

Not everything went as smoothly as my accession to the presidency, however. Inevitably, the ugly gossip that Jess had started did not die with her. People had begun to talk. There were times when I wondered if the feminist revolution had ever happened.

Some of you reading this will wonder whether I was paranoid. I know it's hard to believe I'm talking about 1993, not 1973. In the outside world, there were openly lesbian tennis players, actors and writers. Not many, admittedly, but some. Yet the world I inhabited was still fiercely homophobic even if it pretended otherwise. Oxford graduates tended to gravitate towards the kind of careers where gender equality was regarded with polite incredulity - never mind gay liberation. So nobody wanted to be branded as a lesbian, not even by association.

And yet, part of me wanted to believe I could dare to be different. Once I was safely ensconced as JCR President I refused to worry. Indeed, I even considered coming out and making a principled stand of it, but Louise had issued a panicked veto as soon as I broached the subject. If I came out, Louise had argued, then she would be forced into the open also. And unlike me, she was still firmly attached to her family and her home, where staunch adherence to the moral principles of the Catholic Church still held sway. To be lesbian in Louise's family would be to acknowledge that you were living in mortal sin, and she was not ready for that.

'It's all right for you,' she murmured in my arms in the early hours. 'You're gay. You know you're a lesbian. I don't. I know I love you, but that doesn't mean I have to be like you.'

So I held back. I reasoned that, if I ignored the rumour, it would fizzle and die when something more interesting came along. I was naive; I didn't understand the damage that might flow from those poisonous words.

It had started seemingly innocently. The day of the election, I left a note in Corinna's message pigeonhole confirming I'd meet her that evening as usual for a drink. I was eager to celebrate and in spite of my relationship with Louise, Corinna was still someone I wanted to share my moment of glory with. On my way out to our rendezvous, I checked my own pigeonhole and found a note from Corinna. 'Dear Jay, I'm going to have to take a rain check on tonight. Henry's mother is about to descend upon us, so I'm stuck at home. Apologies. Corinna.'

I was disappointed, but not unduly distressed. It wasn't the first time one or other of us had had to duck out of an arrangement. There would be plenty of opportunities to catch up, or so I thought.

I was wrong. The following day, another message from Corinna arrived. 'Dear Jay, with Henry's mother in residence, I won't need you to babysit Friday night. No doubt you won't be short of things to do! Corinna.' I felt mildly cross, having grown accustomed to the useful and regular supplement to my grant that babysitting for Corinna had become. But I knew relations between Corinna and her mother-in-law had always been awkward and that Dorothy would be insulted if I had turned up to take care of the children when she was in the house.

I waited for a note from Corinna to arrange our next evening out; she wasn't teaching me that term, so unless we bumped into each other around college, we communicated by notes. I waited in vain. Two weeks had passed since that initial cancellation, though I barely noticed the days slip by. There was the routine weight of academic work. There were the new responsibilities of office, where I had to bring myself up to speed with the current state of play and then develop my strategies for the changes I planned to institute. And of course, there was my relationship with Louise, still fresh, still exciting but also demanding.

Then, one afternoon, I was at an intercollegiate meeting of JCR Presidents in St John's. For once, the meeting finished earlier than I anticipated, and since I was less than five minutes by bike from Corinna's, I decided to drop in for tea. Corinna's car was in the drive, and I could see through the lit windows of the basement that the kids were home. I walked round to the side door and leaned my bike against the wall. As usual, I rang the bell and turned the door handle to walk in. To my surprise, it was locked. In all the time I'd been coming to the house, I'd never known Corinna lock the door in daylight hours.

I frowned and stepped back, feeling strangely rebuffed. I could hear footsteps on the stairs leading up from the basement, and moments later, the door swung open. Corinna stood there, looking faintly worried. Behind her, I could just see Patrick rounding the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. 'Oh. Jay,' Corinna said abruptly. 'You picked a really bad moment. We're just about to go out.'

'No we're not,' Patrick said. 'You just put a pie in the oven.'

Corinna flushed, half-turning to shoot a look at Patrick that sent him scuttling downstairs. 'That's for Henry,' she said crossly, clearly flustered. She took a deep breath and arranged her features in an expression I had never seen before. It was the smile of someone who'd taken a course in facial expressions but had failed the practical. Her eyes stayed anxious, while her mouth curved unconvincingly upwards. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Some other time, huh?'

And the door closed in my face. It was as painful and as humiliating as if Corinna had actually slapped me. I felt weak in the knees, tears smarting my eyes. I was utterly bewildered by so uncompromising a rejection. For over a year, Corinna and her kids had been my family, my home. Corinna had trusted me with her children, with her complaints, with her dreams, and I had reciprocated. And now, with no warning, no explanation, no obvious breach, I was outcast.

Somehow, I turned my bike around and staggered down the drive on nearly steady legs. At the gate, I turned back for one swift glance. Patrick was standing on the window seat in the basement bay window, face blank, staring at me. When I caught his eye, Patrick half-raised one hand. He knew something had changed; it was a valediction, not a wave.

I have never been able to remember anything about the ride back to college except the blinding tears. I could think of only one reason for Corinna's defection. She'd heard the rumours and her affection wasn't enough to overcome her prejudice. Or, more likely, she'd told Henry about the rumours and he'd insisted that I wasn't to be allowed within molesting distance of his precious children.

If such a thing were to happen to Jay Macallan Stewart, entrepreneur and author, anger would sweep through her like a cauterising lance. But back then, I lacked the self-assurance for rage. However hard I'd tried, I hadn't managed to embrace gay pride yet, and part of me felt I deserved the scourge of Corinna's treatment, so guilt added to my devastation. I almost sympathised with Corinna, self-loathing piling one pain on another.

The final blow came a couple of days later, again via pigeonhole. I snatched my post greedily, seeing the familiar dashing scrawl on the college envelope. I ripped it open, staking my happiness on the forlorn hope that it was some sort of reconciliation. 'Dear Jay,' Corinna still dared begin. 'As you will recall, you had requested that I be your tutor next term for your moral philosophy option. Unfortunately, I now realise my teaching load will not accommodate this, so I have arranged for you to be taught by Dr Bliss at St Hilda's instead. She'll get in touch directly to make arrangements for you to meet. Yours, Corinna Newsam.'

I stood numb in the middle of the porter's lodge, desperately struggling to keep my composure. Corinna's denial of me felt like a physical wound deep inside. On either side, women jostled me accidentally as they went to check their own post. I saw none of them. All I could see was Patrick at the window, his bleak little face a pale shadow of my own sorrow.

4

S
eeing someone else in the kitchen besides her mother, Magda felt cheated. She'd been screwing her courage to the sticking place all morning, readying herself for confrontation, only half-listening to Catherine's tales of student life, and now the moment would have to be postponed. Almost as soon as she'd had that resentful thought, it dawned on her that the woman rising from the kitchen table seemed too familiar to be a stranger. As her mother pulled her into a hug, Magda kept her eyes on the other woman.

'Darling, I'm so glad to see you,' Corinna exclaimed, drawing her so close Magda felt smothered. 'What a week for you.'

Magda patted her on the back, pulling away to let her sister greet their mother. 'Hello,' she said with the formal smile of a woman who has been properly brought up in the kind of circles where outsiders at the lunch table were taken in one's stride. She eyed up the not-quite-stranger, taking in black hair stranded with silver and an overall impression of comfortable plumpness inside jeans and a nicely cut baggy blue shirt. A pleasant face with an air of mischief. But it was the eyes that tugged at her memory - calm, watchful, a startling pale blue with a darker rim. Like a husky, Magda thought.

The woman leaned one hip against the table, looking entirely at home. She nodded at Magda and Catherine. 'You don't remember me, do you?'

Catherine, freed from her mother's embrace, looked her up and down, frowning. She'd always had a much stronger visual memory than her sister. 'You're one of the minders, aren't you? I don't remember which one, but you're one of them.'

'The minders?' the woman said, sounding amused.

'What we called our babysitters,' Magda said. 'Mum's undergraduates. You were always temporary, therefore generic.' She shrugged an apology. 'No criticism implied. It's the nature of the thing. You were only ever in Oxford long enough to do a degree. None of you was ever in our lives for long.'

'So which one are you?' Catherine demanded, irrepressibly blunt as always.

Corinna groaned. 'What can I say? I did my best. Somehow, the whole manners thing didn't take with Catherine.'

The woman laughed. 'I'm Charlie. Charlie Flint. I used to read you
Winnie the Pooh
, Wheelie. You always liked Eeyore best.'

Catherine gave a little snort. 'Still do. Only sensible one of the lot of them.' She stuck a hand out. 'Good to meet you again, Charlie Flint.'

Charlie shook hands. 'And you.' She cocked her head to one side, studying both Newsam girls. 'I wouldn't have recognised you, Wheelie. But I think I'd have been able to pick Magda out of a line-up.'

Magda acknowledged her comment with a raise of the eyebrows then turned back to Corinna. 'Where's Dad?'

Corinna crossed to the range and opened one of the doors, releasing a cloud of steam and the dense aroma of chicken, ham and pastry. 'He's got an Open Day at school. He's got to be there to show prospective parents round.' Magda's expression tightened but she said nothing. 'He'll be back around three, he said.' Corinna checked the pie, replaced it in the oven, then set a pan of potatoes to boil on the range top.

'Never mind,' Catherine said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. She grinned cheerily at Charlie. 'Mum, does Charlie know we have something to celebrate or are we going to have to go through the whole gruesome explanation?'

'Catherine, for heaven's sake,' Corinna said sharply.

'If you mean the court verdict, yes, I know about it,' Charlie said. 'And maybe I should leave you to it. I don't want to intrude.'

Magda caught the quick flash of annoyance on her mother's face, so she was surprised when Corinna said, 'Of course not, Charlie. You're not intruding.'

'Hardly,' Magda said. 'I feel like my whole life has become public property lately.'

Charlie smiled. 'It's never pleasant to be the focus of media attention.'

Catherine's eyes widened and her expression turned to astonishment. 'That's where I know you from,' she said with an air of satisfaction. 'Not just from being a minder. You're the one that was in the news.' She turned to her sister. 'You remember? The guy that got off with murder then went and killed those other women.' Then back to Charlie. 'You're the one that got him off.'

Charlie's expression didn't change from one of pleasant interest. 'That's not how I would describe what happened but yes, some elements of the media have chosen to express it in those terms.'

'Catherine' - Corinna dumped a bottle of red wine heavily in front of her younger daughter - 'Charlie is a guest in our home. We generally don't insult our guests.'

'Not until they've had a drink, at least,' Magda said, shrugging out of her jacket and bringing four glasses to the table. 'I apologise for my sister. I think I should just have cards printed so I can hand them out as I follow her through life. "Magda Newsam is very sorry about her sister's lack of tact."'

'Or we could institute the Catherine Newsam award for tact and diplomacy,' Catherine said. 'I'm sorry, Charlie. When I'm interested in someone or something, I tend to open my mouth without considering the consequences.'

'Keep working on the charm, then,' Charlie said. 'That'll probably save you from getting slapped too often.'

Catherine looked shocked for a millisecond, then she burst out laughing. 'Harsh,' she said, approving. 'So if that's not the way you'd describe what happened, what is?'

'Charlie might not feel like discussing it,' Corinna said, her tone repressive.