Almost a crime, p.54
Almost a Crime, page 54
‘This is Gabriel, Bob. Gabriel Bingham. He’s a politician from England. Gabriel, you sit in the front, then you can see more.’
Outside again, the blanket of heat had descended. He had thought the car might be air conditioned. It wasn’t.
‘How’s your dad, Octavia?’
‘He’s very well, Bob. Working too hard.’
‘And Mrs Muirhead?’
‘She’s fine too,’ said Octavia quickly. ‘How’s Elvira?’
‘Elvira’s fine. She’s very happy about the new baby. And he’s beautiful.’
‘I’m sure. Gabriel, look, you see that great palace over there?’
It did appear to be a palace: Moorish in style, vast, painted purple and aqua green, with glittering minarets. ‘Who lives there, for God’s sake?’
‘It’s the supermarket. Isn’t it wonderful? Waitrose, eat your heart out. Now look, over there, Gabriel, that’s sugar cane. See? And over there . . .’
He tried to smile, to appear pleased and interested. The drive seemed to go on for ever: hot, blindingly sunny, the old car lurching over the road. It wasn’t very pretty, not as he had imagined it, just an endless, rather narrow, two-lane highway, lined with small wooden houses set on stilts. He felt a bit sick: and very depressed. What was he doing here, why had he come?
‘Zoë? Zoë, hallo, it’s Ritz. Look, is your mum there? Oh, she’s not. Oh, I see. No, nothing’s wrong. Well, Romilly’s a bit upset. No, nothing serious. Yes, if you could. How long do you think you might be? Oh, fine. Yes, we’re both here.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Romilly. ‘Honestly. I’m just so sorry I was – well, silly.’
‘Romilly, you weren’t silly,’ said Ritz. Her voice sounded rather shaky.
‘Yes, I was. Next time—’
‘There won’t be a next time,’ said Serena smoothly, ‘not with Alix Stefanidis. I do wish these bloody people would remember who’s paying the bill.’
‘Serena—’ said Ritz. Her voice had an edge to it. ‘Not now. Now look, Romilly, what do you want to do? Go out for a drink, go home, call your mum?’
‘I certainly don’t want to call my mum,’ said Romilly. She managed a rather shaky smile. ‘It’s exactly the sort of thing she was worrying about, I expect. She’d be on the next plane down. Hideous! Honestly, I’m fine, please don’t worry about me. I—’ Her mobile rang suddenly, from the depths of her bag; she pulled it out. ‘Sorry, I thought it was switched off. Hallo, this is Romilly. Oh – hi, Fen. Yes. What? Oh, okay. I’m a bit tired. What? Oh, oh, I see. No, that’s fine. Honestly. I can spend it with my sister.’
Zoë’s stomach lurched. Now what?
‘’Bye, Fen.’ She switched off the phone, smiled the same shaky smile. ‘That was Fenella. Her grandmother’s taking them all out to the ballet, apparently. Surprise treat. So they can’t have me tonight after all. Fancy a video, Zoë?’
‘Well – I . . .’ Shit! That was all she needed. To miss the one good night she was going to get for a long time; she’d be off to the States on Monday, probably wouldn’t see Ian again.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Ritz.
‘Well, Rom can’t stay home on her own. I did have plans. But – doesn’t matter.’
‘What sort of plans did you have? Share your exciting young lifestyle with us,’ said Ritz, grinning. She was clearly glad of a distraction from the horrors of the day.
‘Oh, just going to the Ministry of Sound. With some – some friends.’
‘Sounds good. I hate going there these days, I feel so old. I do, occasionally, talent spotting, but not any more often than I have to. Shame, Zoë. Was it for anything special?’
‘Celebrating her A-levels,’ said Romilly, ‘well, hers and her friends’.’
‘Oh, Zoë, you can’t miss that. Romilly, how would you like to come out to supper with us? We were going to have a quiet evening together. Honestly, it would be a pleasure. We could go somewhere fun, like the Hard Rock. Or the Fashion Café.’
‘No,’ said Zoë, quickly. ‘No, honestly. I’ll stay home with her. I haven’t got much to celebrate anyway!’
‘I don’t want you to stay home and look after me, Zoë. Look, I really would like to go out with Ritz and Serena tonight. The Fashion Café’d be great, really cool.’
‘Rom, if I go out, I won’t be home till four or five in the morning. You can’t stay at the house alone. Mum would never forgive me.’
‘Why not? God, I really am not a child! But look, tell you what. Mrs Blake would come over. Just to sleep at the house. She offered yesterday when she was doing the ironing, before I fixed to stay with Fenella. How’s that?’
Zoë hesitated. It was very tempting.
‘I’ll ring Mrs Blake,’ she said finally, ‘just to make sure she can come.’
Mrs Blake said she’d be glad to come over. Steel Magnolias was on Sky and she had been going on to Mr Blake about how she wished they could get it.
‘I’ll order a cab for you, Mrs Blake. On Mum’s account. About half past eight, that all right?’
That way she could see her safely into the house before she went off herself. Romilly was right, she told herself, they really should stop treating her like a baby. When Zoë had been sixteen, she’d flown out to Sydney to stay with her aunt Bella, all by herself, and then travelled on the train down to Melbourne, also by herself, to meet her cousins there. There was no way her parents would think Romilly was old enough to do that. It was the curse of the youngest child, that Romilly was always going on about. And she did seem to have recovered from her ordeal now. Nothing had happened to her after all; she’d just been a bit embarrassed. It would do her good to have a grown-up evening with Ritz and Serena. Put it in perspective. And she probably did need to do a bit of PR on them, if she was going to make this modelling thing work. She really did seem fine. Absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about at all.
It just wasn’t fair of Sandy, Louise thought: not to come and see her more. She needed people to talk to, ordinary people, not the wretched other patients and the ghastly nurses, and the doctor with his endless questions. Why couldn’t Sandy see that? She was trying so hard to cope with it all, and he just wasn’t doing anything. Obviously, she hadn’t behaved exactly well: but for heaven’s sake, Sandy of all people should understand why. Nobody seemed to understand how much she hurt. What it had been like, all of it. First losing Juliet, then her mother. And discovering what Octavia had done. She still couldn’t believe that of her. Having an abortion, getting rid of a baby. After all the things she had said when Juliet had died, about how she admired Louise so much for her courage, about how she wouldn’t be able to bear it, about how she could hardly begin to imagine how much it hurt, about how she had cried for nights out of sympathy with Louise. She’d been able to bear it, all right: she had just trotted along to the clinic one morning, let them scrape the baby out of her and throw it away, and then go off to her busy life, her important meetings, without another thought for her dead baby. Killed, incinerated, that’s what they did to them, she had read about it. Just because it wasn’t quite perfect enough for her perfect family, and perfect marriage.
Octavia deserved to lose her husband, she really did. She deserved to lose her baby. She needed to be shown how much it could hurt, how much Louise had hurt. But how did you do that, to a woman who was so hard, so tough, she could just throw her baby away, in between breakfast and lunch? How could she have ever loved Octavia, thought she was her friend? Louise wouldn’t have had an abortion if they’d said her baby had had two heads. You looked after babies, you didn’t murder them. And then Octavia had had another. Just like that. Less than a year later. A healthy, beautiful baby. Who was still alive: Octavia’s baby hadn’t been found dead in her cot one morning, white and cold and still. Octavia’s baby could sit up and laugh and say dad-dad.
Juliet had just started to talk; she hadn’t said dad-dad though. She’d said Mum-my. Not mum, not mum-mum, but Mum-my, very beautifully, only the day before she had died. She had been sitting on Louise’s lap, and she had looked up at her and smiled that beautiful, perfect smile and reached out her fat little hand and touched her hair and then said, ‘Mum-my.’ It was the first and the last thing she had ever said. Mummy. And now she was lying under the earth, in her little coffin, with her toys in it, wrapped in her blanket, and she would never say or do anything, ever again. And the other baby, the baby she had managed to make with Tom, that was dead too, washed so painfully out of her that terrible day. Two cold, dead babies: when she needed them so much. And Octavia, who didn’t need any babies, who had everything else she could possibly wish for, including Tom, had a baby as well. Octavia deserved to lose that baby. Lose her for ever. Then she would know how it felt, what the pain was like.
Louise sat there, in the settling dusk, savouring her anger, the helpful, strong anger, looking over the garden, and thinking very hard indeed about Octavia losing Minty. It made her own pain feel much better. It really did.
‘We’d better be on our way,’ said Sandy, ‘it’s after six.’ How had that happened, how had the whole afternoon just disappeared, how had he managed not to notice it, when for the past two and a half weeks, every hour had crawled painfully, sickeningly past?
‘Could we go and see Mummy again on the way back?’
‘No. Visiting hours are over. And she’ll be tired.’
‘She won’t. She said she missed us, she said she wanted to see us more.’
‘Dickon, no, old chap.’
Pattie was watching him closely; she said suddenly, ‘If you want to go on your own, we could keep Dickon here . . .’
‘No,’ said Sandy, ‘thank you all the same.’ His voice sounded sharp, even to him; it shocked him, that sharpness. It was a giveaway.
Pattie looked at him, her pale blue eyes very calm suddenly. ‘Just a thought.’
‘It was very kind. But – one visit is enough, in one day. For Louise, I mean. Come on, Dickon, off we go. Say thank you to Mrs David.’
‘Pattie,’ said Pattie, ‘please.’
‘Thank you, Pattie,’ said Dickon solemnly. ‘Thank you for having me. Thank you, Megan.’
‘We loved it,’ said Megan, ‘come again soon.’
‘Yes, do,’ said Pattie, ‘any time. Whenever you visit your wife, we’d like it.’
‘Thanks. I’d like that. Good luck with your application, Megan. Don’t forget to send the pictures.’
‘Of course not. I’ve got one frame left on the film, might as well finish it. Mum, stand up, next to Sandy. Smile, that’s right. Great. Mum can get them developed. Sandy, thank you very much for your help. I wish you’d stay for supper.’
‘Maybe next time,’ said Sandy, ‘if your mother could face it.’
‘She could face it,’ said Megan, ‘she’d like it, she gets ever so lonely.’
‘Megan!’ said Pattie. ‘Please! You make me sound very pathetic.’
She was flushed; Sandy realised she was upset. ‘I get ever so lonely too,’ he said, and realised it was the second time that day he had spoken seriously out of character.
Romilly sat back in her seat at the Fashion Café and smiled at Serena and Ritz. She felt rather lightheaded. Not only had they ordered her a glass of champagne – but only one, had then insisted she moved on to Pepsi Max – but Serena had produced a present for her, as they settled down at the table. It was a Donna Karan sweater, black, very sexy. ‘It’s to make up for today. With love from us both.’
She had insisted on going to change in the ladies’; it was quite perfect. It made her look more sophisticated without looking older.
‘I love it,’ she said happily, sitting down again next to Serena, kissing her impulsively, blowing a kiss across the table at Ritz. ‘It’s absolutely gorgeous. But you really didn’t have to.’
‘Well, we thought we did,’ said Serena. ‘You had a horrid day, and we felt responsible. Anyway, Alix Stefanidis won’t be working for Christie’s again. That’s for sure. Will he, Ritz?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Ritz. ‘And there’s some more news, Romilly. Very exciting. I think Mario Testino might do the campaign instead. You’ll like him, he’s so gentle and sweet. He did these marvellous pictures of Diana, look, in Vanity Fair, I brought them to show you.’
‘They are lovely,’ said Romilly, looking at the pictures of a new, utterly different Diana, her hair unstyled, slicked back, what could only be described as a grin on her lovely face, ‘but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘Oh – doesn’t matter.’ How could she tell them she found the very thought of being photographed by another world-class photographer totally scary?
‘Yes, it does. Come on, tell your old aunties.’
‘Don’t!’ said Romilly, sharply. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby. Like everyone else.’
‘Oh, Romilly.’ Serena looked at Ritz swiftly, then at her. ‘Romilly, we don’t think you’re a baby. We think you’re very special. A real discovery. We’re very proud of you. It isn’t easy, being catapulted into all this. No one can cope with it at first. No one. Whoever they are, however old they are.’
‘Of course they can,’ said Romilly. She was shocked to find tears rising in her eyes. ‘I was so feeble. As if it mattered. That – that bit of material coming off. Off my boobs,’ she said loudly and clearly. The people at the next table stared at her; she stared back at them boldly. She didn’t care. It seemed important: to stop behaving as if she couldn’t bear to talk about it. When it had actually been quite – well, quite funny.
‘Romilly,’ said Ritz, putting down her glass, looking at her very seriously, ‘of course it mattered. Let me tell you something. When Kate Moss was just starting, she arrived at a session and some dirty old man tried to make her take her bra off. And you know what? She just refused and left. Listen, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You hold all the cards. You’re the face of the millennium. Everyone’s going to be talking about you soon. And if you don’t want to take your bra off, you certainly don’t have to.’
‘Really?’ said Romilly.
‘Really. More chips?’
‘Yes, please!’
Marie France Auguste sat in the first-class compartment of the Paris to London Eurostar, sipping at a glass of champagne, and thinking complacently how pleased Serena would be to see her. It would be good to give her a surprise. She knew she hadn’t been terribly nice to Serena lately, and she felt remorseful about it. She might not be exactly madly in love with her, but she was fond of her, and she owed her a lot and certainly didn’t want to upset her. Well, actually, she couldn’t afford to upset her: her career would go right on the skids if she did. Marketing directors could do a lot for junior product development executives if they felt so inclined. And so far, Serena had felt very much inclined. She looked at her watch; nine. The train got into Waterloo at ten thirty; she could be with Serena by eleven. And then they could have a really good night together.
It never occurred to her for a moment that she might not be entirely welcome.
Steel Magnolias was just drawing to its tear-stained conclusion when the phone rang: Mrs Blake swore and went to answer it. It was her husband. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said, ‘but I think you’d better get over to St Thomas’s. It’s your mum, love. I’m sorry, but she’s had a stroke.’
‘A stroke! Oh, God, Phil, a bad one?’
‘I’m not sure. I don’t think anyone knows yet.’
‘Poor Mum. You’ll come, too, won’t you?’
‘’Course I will. What about that little lot there?’
‘Oh, I’ll ring Zoë. She said she could get back if there was a problem.’
‘All right, love. Best get a cab.’
Mrs Blake phoned Zoë on the number she had given her; it told her that Zoë would get right back to her. That didn’t sound too good. Now what did she do? Distractedly she flipped open the telephone book, looked down the list of numbers under Emergency. Not a lot of help: doctor, dentist, gasman, plumber. Oh, and here were all the children’s mobile phone numbers. Spoilt brats, thought Mrs Blake. Still – useful. And yes, here was Romilly’s. At least she would know that she’d be coming home to an empty house; she could probably make other arrangements. She dialled the number.
‘Then you’ll have to stay with me,’ said Serena. ‘That’s absolutely no problem. There’s no way you can go back to an empty house. I’ve got a very nice spare room and—’
‘Serena,’ said Ritz, ‘Serena, perhaps it would be better if Romilly stayed with me.’
Romilly saw Serena look at Ritz, saw a very strange expression in her face: if she hadn’t known better, she would have said it was anger.
‘I really don’t see that,’ she said. ‘You haven’t even got a spare bed, let alone a spare room.’
‘Yes, I know, but—’
‘But what, Ritz?’ The blue eyes were icy cold, the mouth tight and hard.
Romilly suddenly felt very uncomfortable. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘look, it really doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine for a bit. Zoë’ll be in later . . .’
‘No,’ said Ritz, ‘no, we have to look after you. Of course you can’t go home alone. Sorry, Serena, I – I just didn’t want you to be – well, put out in any way.’
‘I won’t be,’ said Serena briefly. ‘I’m surprised you thought I would be. Very surprised.’
Romilly suddenly felt she had to prove to them that she was actually more grown up than they thought. And improve the mood of things at the same time. ‘Let’s have another glass of champagne, shall we?’ she said. ‘My treat. Mummy always says it’s the best thing at the end of an evening. Ends it on a high.’
‘Your mother,’ said Ritz, smiling at her, ‘is a woman after my own heart. But I’ve got my car, so I daren’t have another glass of anything. Let’s go back to your flat, shall we, Serena, have it there? How would that be?’
