Love and Devotion (19 page)

At ten to one, leaving Jarvis in charge, Will set off to meet Marty. It was market day, which meant the town had assumed a jaunty two-for-a-pound air. It also meant that the main car park was home to an eclectic mix of stallholders selling their wares, most of which had been made in the Far East. The original cobbled marketplace had long since been considered too small to be of use, and was now only used on May Day bank holiday and the Saturday before Christmas, when wooden Hansel and Gretel chalets were erected on it and the air was fragrant with the smell of Gluwein and German sausages.

Will and Marty’s ‘usual place’ was a burger van on the edge of the market stalls. Brian, a Gulf War veteran, presided over his griddles and hotplates with regimented efficiency. Given that this was where Will and Marty often came to chat and clog up their arteries, they had nicknamed the burger van Chewing The Fat.

Marty was already there when Will worked his way through the crowds of shoppers picking over the spoils of pirate DVDs, Hoover attachments and cheap bedlinen. ‘I’ve already put our order in,’ Marty said, looking wildly out of place in his pinstripe suit, polished brogues and fob watch and chain. As a small-town solicitor in nearby Nantwich, he liked to dress the part. He reminded Will of an Agatha Christie character; the ever-loyal family solicitor. The fact that he was a resigned bachelor - the right woman had never come along - added to the illusion.

Brian gave Will a salute with his spatula. ‘It’ll be ready in a tick,’ he said, scooping up an onion ring that had flown off the spatula and landed in a tub of margarine a foot square. True to his word, within seconds Will and Marty were clutching their cheeseburgers and polystyrene cups of coffee and commandeering the one and only table Brian provided for his customers. Once they were settled, Marty said, ‘Come on then, what’s the mystery?’

Straight to the point, Will said, ‘It’s Suzie. She told me last night that she’s pregnant.’

Marty’s eyes opened wide. ‘Suzie?’

Will nodded.

‘Bloody hell! But she’s no more than a child herself.’

‘Tell me about it. She’s four months, apparently, which means in five months — ’

‘You could be a grandfather,’ Marty finished off for him. He whistled. ‘Boy, when I said it was time for you to think about growing up, Will, I didn’t mean
that
grown-up. Does this herald a wedding? I can just see Maxine holding a Kalashnikov to the bugger’s head.’

‘No. There’ll be no wedding. It was a one-off event. A mistake. Apparently the boy is going out with someone else.’ Not meeting Marty’s gaze, Will took a cautious sip of Brian’s notoriously scalding-hot coffee, but still managed to burn his tongue. He was surprised how awkward he felt admitting that Suzie had had a one-night stand. Disappointed in himself, he said, ‘The thing is, Suzie hasn’t decided what she’s going to do.’

They both fell silent. Then Marty said, ‘Hypothetical question: what would you like her to do?’

‘I don’t think I have a right to think anything, do I?’

‘Rubbish! As her father you have a gut reaction, the same as everyone else. Say it out loud. See how it sounds. Because I bet you’ve said it a thousand times in your head already.’

Pushing his half-eaten burger away, Will said, ‘Okay, you’re right, as ever. But my opinion counts for nothing, just remember that.’

‘Get on with it.’

‘Every ounce of my common sense screams out that an abortion would be best all round. But — ’

Marty fixed him with a shrewd gaze.

‘But I can’t bear the thought of Suzie making a decision that might torment her for the rest of her life. Because once it’s done, it’s done. She has to live with that decision. And let’s face it, we’ve all read or heard about women who never get over it. They feel haunted by the guilt.’

‘What does Maxine say?’

Will explained Suzie’s reason for not telling Maxine first. ‘I guess she knows that her mother will overreact and she wants to feel more in control of any decision she makes. I can’t say I blame her.’

‘Poor kid.’

‘My sentiments exactly.’ He paused, then: ‘Marty, think before you say anything, but do you suppose there’s a chance that this is my fault? You know, the whole dysfunctional family bit.’

‘What? Because you cocked up, ergo Suzie and Gemma are destined to do the same?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard you say. Suzie’s made a mistake, that’s all. A mistake generations of girls have made before and will continue to do for years to come. Didn’t we both take our fair share of risks when we were Suzie’s age?’ He pointed to the remains of the burger Will had allowed to go cold and uneaten. ‘Eat up, Will, or Brian will flay you alive with his spatula. And that really will be the end of the world for you.’

Will knew his friend was trying to help, but he couldn’t shift the growing fear that somehow this was his fault. Had he been blinded by his arrogance? Had he been deluded into thinking he’d done a reasonable job, when all along he’d let his daughters down, hadn’t prepared them sufficiently for the traps and pitfalls that lay ahead?

 

 

 

 

After a run of bad days, Eileen was having a good one. The lethargy that had swamped her this last week had lifted and she was able to do more with the children. Carrie and Joel were now into their second week at school and the workload was considerably lighter. However, a new side to their lives had opened up. Now there was Carrie’s homework to supervise. Last night’s exercise had been to list five facts about each of the world’s main religions. Thank goodness they had Harriet to turn to; she had shown Carrie how to find everything she needed on the computer. Both of the children were dab hands at playing games on the computer, which had belonged to their mother, but using it for homework purposes was new to them. In Felicity and Harriet’s day the homework had been far more straightforward. Helping the girls to learn their times tables and spellings had been a lot less stressful and time-consuming. Not for the first time since their lives had been turned upside down, Eileen felt out of her depth. Thank goodness Joel only had reading homework to do each evening. That much she could manage.

But Joel troubled Eileen. He was having nightmares. Night after night they were woken by his piercing screams. Every time it was the same; they’d find him petrified, in tears and huddled at the end of his bed, his back against the wall, his hands covering his eyes. Try as they might, they couldn’t get him to say what he was dreaming of. Eileen regretted now that the children’s sessions with the grief counsellor had recently come to an end. If the nightmares continued, perhaps they ought to think about Joel seeing the woman again.

In a rare moment of peace and quiet, while the children were at school and Bob was walking the dog, Eileen listened to Harriet moving about upstairs. She was packing for her weekend away. Guiltily, Eileen wished she was going with her.

 

Less than five miles from home and Harriet could feel an explosion of relief rushing through her body. As she left the slip-road and joined the M6 southbound, she felt as giddy as Toad of Toad Hall when he first discovered the joys of the motor car. ‘Hurrah for the open road!’ She laughed out loud, wishing she had a pair of goggles to hand. Poop,
poop!
A cap and a cape too. And gloves.
Poop, poop!
For the sheer hell of it, she honked the horn of her beloved Mini Cooper, which she’d bought brand new on her thirtieth birthday as a special treat, and sailed out into the middle lane. She felt no guilt that she was filled with this glorious sense of freedom. Two days of not having to answer questions like:
Why are bananas called bananas and why do they turn brown? Why do cats meow and dogs bark? Why is the sky blue?
Better still, there would be no hair to brush. No faces to wash. No teeth to check. No endless games of ‘I Spy’ to play. What bliss. And nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to ruin the next few days. She’d earned the break. It would also take her mind off the disappointment of not getting anywhere with her job-hunt. The agencies to whom she’d emailed her CV had all replied with more or less the same message: that there was nothing currently available but they would add her details to their records and get in touch when a suitable vacancy came their way. It was a classic don’t-hold-your-breath response. So yes, she had every right to enjoy herself at Erin’s party tonight and then lie on the sofa tomorrow with a skip-sized tub of KFC between them while watching non-stop, back-to-back
Sex and the City
DVDs.

So stop making it sound as if you’re justifying it! she told herself. Forty-eight hours of self-indulgent behaviour was her deserved reward.

But then she went and spoiled it by recalling the look on Carrie’s and Joel’s faces when she’d told them that a friend had invited her to stay for a couple of days.

‘How will we get to school?’ Carrie had demanded, an uncompromising jut to her chin.

‘You won’t be going to school. I’m away over the weekend. And anyway, even if I wasn’t here for a school day, Grandma and Granddad would take you then bring you home in the afternoon.’

‘But you can’t go! You have to stay here with us! I don’t want you to go.’

This had been from Joel and the squealed vehemence of his words had taken Harriet aback. They’d been upstairs sitting on the floor in Carrie’s bedroom, reading the latest Harry Potter before bedtime. ‘I’ll only be gone two days,’ she’d explained patiently.

‘But you will come back?’ Everything Joel said these days was peppered with buts.

‘Don’t be silly, Joel,’ Carrie had said, ‘of course she’ll come back. Won’t you, Harriet?’

While her niece’s steely gaze elicited a suitably reassuring reply — ‘I’ll be back before you’ve even missed me,’ — Harriet had felt a twinge of irritation that her movements were being monitored so thoroughly. It was like being a teenager again and being grilled by Mum and Dad about what time she was expected home.

At breakfast this morning and during the journey to school, neither of the children had spoken to Harriet. She was surprised how hurt she felt.

But no matter. She refused to feel guilty. It wasn’t as if she was going away for a fortnight’s holiday. Two days off; was that so very bad? And she’d gone to great lengths to make sure that she’d covered all bases in her absence, reminding her mother that it was Friday and therefore sausage and chips night - the one meal Joel was guaranteed to eat - and that Carrie’s weekend assignment (when did the word ‘homework’ become defunct?) was to make a Muslim prayer mat and that everything she needed - coloured bits of paper, felt-tip pens and glue - was on the dining-room table. ‘Why a prayer mat?’ her father had asked, in an incredulous tone of voice that suggested the world had gone crazy. Harriet hadn’t bothered to respond. She knew what her father meant: that breadth and ethnic diversity was all very well, but how about the basics? How about teaching the children to read and write good, honest, home-grown English? Just before she’d set off, she’d written a last-minute list for her parents:

Enough! No more thoughts about Carrie and Joel. Or Mum and Dad. She was off the hook. She pressed down on the accelerator and swooped on towards Oxford and the life she’d left behind.
Poop, poop!

 

Harriet suspected she was drunk, but not quite as drunk as the bleary-eyed bore she was talking to. With all the interrupted nights she’d had lately because of Joel’s nightmares, if she spent another second in this man’s company she’d nod off, no trouble. She glanced desperately around, hoping for some polite reason to extract herself without appearing rude. Someone choking on a peanut would be perfect. But there was nothing doing. Everyone else was either helping themselves to the plates of food she had helped Erin put out earlier or tossing back drinks as though any minute someone would call, ‘Time gentlemen, please’. She decided simply to walk away. He probably wouldn’t notice she’d gone.

She went to look for Erin. She knew Erin was embarrassed that only a handful of Harriet’s friends had replied to the invitations and only two had bothered to turn up - Gary and Paula who used to live in the house next door. Holidays were blamed, which only served to remind Harriet of the gap that now existed between her and her friends, or those she’d thought were friends. They could holiday out of term-time, whereas she was doomed for the rest of eternity to spend her precious time off with other young families in damp seaside cottages building sandcastles and pretending she was having a ball. Or worse, driven insane by staying at one of those purpose-built places in the middle of nowhere where she’d be forced to swim, cycle and hit balls from dawn to dusk. No more relaxing walking holidays in Tuscany or the Pyrenees for her. No more dreams of one day snorkelling in the turquoise waters of some faraway island.

Harriet suspected the real reason for her so-called friends not showing up was that she was still infectious, incubating a double whammy of those highly contagious germs of the recently bereaved and the out-of-work loser. ‘Nobody knows you when you’re down and out,’ as Eric Clapton put it so succinctly. Well, to hell with them! If she’d become a pariah, it was their problem, not hers.

Erin was otherwise engaged when Harriet found her. Pressed against the combi boiler in the kitchen by a man who didn’t look like a central-heating engineer, she waved Harriet away. Back into the crowded sitting room, Harriet pushed through the noisy mob of guests to help herself to another drink. Inspecting the bottles for something suitable for a girl hellbent on a good time, she found the ideal tipple tucked in behind the vodka and Bacardi Breezers. A bottle of Baileys: it was her and Felicity’s favourite drink from way back when. They only ever drank it when they’d drunk too much already. Dominic used to call it their devil’s homebrew of sugared cream and Benylin.