Love and Devotion (62 page)

‘That crazy piece was Cathy; please don’t overplay the dumb card.’

Ignoring the put-down, she said, ‘So when did the affair start?’

‘Do you mean when we first made love?’

‘I’m assuming you did that before we all went away to college. No, I’m talking about when the pair of you started sneaking around behind Jeff’s back.’

‘That was the day they returned from their honeymoon.’

Having just taken a sip of her wine, Harriet nearly choked on it. ‘You’re joking!’

‘No. I was there waiting for her. Jeff had to go away on a course and I made love to her in their bed. It was what she wanted, in case you’re thinking I forced her to do it. You see, what you never realised about your sister was that she was a lot like me. She had an intensely strong sexual nature. So strong that it emasculated dull old Jeff. He just wasn’t man enough for her.’

‘But you were?’

‘In every way.’

‘Were you faithful to her?’

‘In mind, yes.’

‘Meaning that when she wasn’t available you carried on with other men or women in Cambridge?’

‘You probably won’t understand this, but in recent years I only slept with men. To sleep with another woman would have seemed unfaithful.’

A sudden burst of laughter from a nearby table had them both looking over. ‘You’re right,’ she said, when the laughter had died down, ‘I don’t understand. You’re beyond the realms of my comprehension. But I’m intrigued: how did you feel knowing that Felicity was betraying you by having sex with Jeff?’

‘I hated it.’

‘And the children. When they came along, how did that make you feel? After all, they were a special bond between Felicity and Jeff that you couldn’t deny or take away from them.’

‘You think so?’

His voice was so sure, his face so composed, Harriet stopped in her tracks. It’s another of his twisted games, she told herself. Don’t let him get away with it. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence by hinting that Jeff wasn’t Carrie and Joel’s father.’

He shrugged and picked up his wine glass. ‘Okay then, I won’t.’

But the damage was done. She had to know. ‘Go on. Tell me, and make it the truth or you’ll wish you’d never asked to meet me here tonight.’

‘It’s possible Carrie is my daughter.’

‘And?’

‘And what? What do you want of me? A paternity blood test right here?’ He pushed back his sleeve to expose the underside of his forearm and pressed a finger to a prominent vein. ‘There, cut me open and watch me bleed some more.’

‘Oh, stop being so melodramatic. Just give me a straight answer to a straight question.’

‘I can’t. And if you think it’s that easy then you’re living in cloud cuckoo land. This is real life: ends don’t always get neatly tied up with a silk ribbon of convenience. Some things we just have to live with as unknowns.’

‘Bullshit! Who did Felicity think was Carrie’s father?’

‘Because she couldn’t be sure, she decided to keep it that way. She once said she thought I’d make a terrifyingly inconsistent father. That was something Jeff was good at, apparently.’

‘Was it why she stayed with him?’

‘One of the reasons. She thought the children would have more stability that way.’

‘How disappointing that must have been for you, to know that love doesn’t conquer all.’

‘Please don’t make fun of me.’

‘What about Joel? Why don’t you think you could be his father?’

‘Basic biology. We didn’t see one another during the time he was conceived.’ He drained his glass in one long swig. ‘I need another drink. How about you?’

‘No thanks, I’m driving.’

The moment he was back in his seat, she started interrogating him again. ‘How often did you get to see each other? And where?’

‘It varied. Once a month. Sometimes twice a month. I always went to her. For obvious reasons it was easier for me to get away than it was for her.’ He suddenly laughed. ‘We had our lovers’ trysts in some hellish places, I can tell you. I can never pass a Travel Inn or cheap motel without thinking of Felicity.’ But as quickly as his face had brightened, it darkened. ‘Oh, shit, Hat, I miss her so much. I used to believe that no one could understand a person fully. But Felicity knew me inside and out. She shared every emotion I ever experienced.’

‘Do you think she would have approved of you lying and manipulating me? How you deliberately set out to destroy a potential relationship between Miles and me?’ It was only now that Harriet trusted herself to acknowledge that her original instinct about Miles wanting more than friendship with her had been correct. That she hadn’t imagined the intimacy of that moment in the park with him.

‘If you’d been serious about Miles,’ Dominic said, ‘it wouldn’t have mattered what I said or did.’

‘That’s absurd. You nipped it in the bud before either of us really knew what was possible. You still haven’t told me why you did it. Do you really hate your brother so much?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with hate. It’s about love and happiness and being deprived of it. Why should you and Miles have what I couldn’t?’

‘You admit it, then? That it was purely a selfish motive? As soon as you suspected Miles might be interested in me, you put a stop to it.’

‘But of course. What else could it have been? If you’re dying from a disease, why would you wish others good health? You want that good health for yourself.’

‘Destroying my chance of happiness would have made you feel better?’

‘Do you feel better for punishing me here this evening? Does making me explain my feelings for Felicity make
you
feel any better? Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Inflicting pain on others is really quite pleasurable when you get down to it.’

‘That’s the most depraved thing I’ve heard you say.’

‘On the contrary, it’s merely a matter of understanding and coming to terms with the innate treachery of the life we’re given. One thing is for sure: I shall never again allow myself to become emotionally dependent on another person. From now on I shall be a confirmed tart. I shall be as promiscuous as I want and, as Byron said, I shall spend the rest of my life trying to save myself from myself.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re covering up the fact that the driest of souls got scorched by love. You’ve discovered the hard way that there’s something more powerful in the world than your ego.’

‘How exceedingly poetic of you. Are you talking from experience?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘So be it.’

They sat in silence for some minutes while a group of people at a nearby table gathered up their coats and bags and made a noisy exit. It was getting late, the wine bar was thinning out, and by rights Harriet should be making a move herself, but she still had a list of questions she needed answering. ‘How long did you think you could keep the lie going for?’ she asked.

He smiled, even though it must have hurt his mouth to do so. ‘Which lie? I’ve told so many.’

She didn’t return the smile. ‘The one about Miles being Felicity’s lover. The game would have been up the moment I confronted him.’

‘Ah, but the damage would have been done. Would you have believed his denial? Every time he kissed you, you’d have wondered if his lips had kissed your sister’s before yours. I know how you hated the thought of being second best to Felicity.’

Determined not to rise to the bait, she said, ‘But the photograph put an end to it all, didn’t it? Did you know I would find it eventually?’

‘No. I didn’t know she’d kept it. We had an agreement that only I would keep pictures of the two of us together. It was a good one, wasn’t it? Caught me at my best, I like to think.’

Again she refused to be reeled in. ‘It was clear from the last few emails you and Felicity exchanged that she was going to leave Jeff for you. But according to what you said earlier, she’d stayed with him to give the children the stability you couldn’t provide. Why the U-turn?’

‘What you have to understand is that the really important things in life often happen to us through a snap decision. A decision made by instinct. You don’t decide to fall in love; it just happens. When it’s the real thing, there’s no shilly-shallying involved. You suddenly know for sure that you have to be with that person or life has no meaning.’

‘What provoked the snap decision in Felicity’s case, then?’

‘She’d had enough. Plus Jeff had started to suspect that she was having an affair. He was becoming irrational. He got drunk once and threw some of Felicity’s things out of the window. He was also accusing her of being unfaithful in front of the children.’

‘Did he suspect you?’

‘Why would he? He thought I was gay.’

‘You really think — ?’

He suddenly held up a hand. ‘Enough! More than enough of you playing the grand inquisitor. Now it’s my turn to ask a question. It’s the reason I wanted to talk to you in the first place. I’ve kept it to myself all this time, but I don’t want to carry my suspicions alone any more. Have you ever wondered about the accident that killed Felicity and Jeff?’

‘What kind of a question is that? I think about it practically every day.’

‘But have you wondered if it was an accident that could have been avoided?’

‘You’re not suggesting — ’

He leaned forward, placed his elbows squarely on the table, his battered face inches from hers. ‘I’m convinced Jeff deliberately made no effort to avoid that car. I think he was mad at Felicity because she’d finally told him she wanted to leave him, and he took matters into his own hands.’

A tremor of fear ran through Harriet. She swallowed. ‘You have no proof of that.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.

‘I have the memory of the last conversation I ever had with Felicity. She said she’d just told Jeff that she wanted to leave him.’

The tremor grew and Harriet feared she might be sick. The thought of Felicity knowing, in the last seconds of her life, that she had driven her husband to kill them both was too horrifying to take in. ‘Then you must accept your part in their deaths,’ she said, fighting hard to keep her composure. ‘If you hadn’t been so obsessed with Felicity they’d both be alive today.’

‘You think I don’t wake up every morning reminding myself of that?’

She shook her head wearily. ‘Oh, Dominic, how do you live with yourself?’

‘I exist, Hat. Nothing more. I’m the swimming lad the mermaid took for her own, and now I’m drowning.’

‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

‘I just told you, I’ve kept it to myself all this time.’

‘Good. I don’t want the children ever doubting their parents. I want them to grow up feeling proud of their mother and father. You must swear on whatever is most precious to you that you will never utter to another living soul a word of what you’ve just said. Because if my father hears about it, he will kill you. I’m serious; he will tear you apart, slit your throat, rip out your insides. He’ll do just about anything to exact his revenge on you for depriving him of his favourite daughter.’

‘Who knows, maybe I’ll spare him the trouble.’

 

They left the wine bar at chucking-out time. Harriet offered to give Dominic a lift to Miles’s flat down by the river, but he refused. ‘I need some fresh air,’ he said. ‘Unless that was a subtle attempt on your part to see Miles. He’d probably appreciate seeing you.’

‘No. I’ll talk to him another time. I’m too tired now. I need to get to bed; I have a busy day tomorrow. When are you going back to Cambridge?’

‘I think I’ll slip away quietly in the morning. I shouldn’t take advantage of my brother’s hospitality any longer than necessary.’

‘I’m amazed he’s let you stay at all.’

‘That’s because he’s one of life’s incorrigible optimists. A shame he never got into religion; he’d have made a wonderful evangelist, always hoping for a quick conversion. He’d love nothing better than to prove to me his way is better than mine.’

‘His way is infinitely better than yours, Dominic.’

‘But it hasn’t got him what he wanted, has it?’

‘I don’t know. What is it he wants?’

‘Oh, Hat, haven’t you figured that out? He wants you, of course.’

She frowned. ‘Is that one last try to stir things up?’

‘You really are hopeless when it comes to matters of the heart, aren’t you? Why do you suppose Miles did this to me?’ He raised a hand to his face. ‘Think also of the poem he read that night at Novel Ways. It was written for you, when you were shagging Will and he thought he’d lost you. Now give me a gentle hug goodbye so that I know we’re friends again.’

In spite of everything that he’d said and done, Harriet put her arms round him and kissed his cheek. He was such an integral part of her life - and her sister’s - she couldn’t say goodbye without making her peace with him. A car went slowly past in the slushy snow, illuminating them with its headlamps. A voice shouted out, ‘Phwoar! Give her one mate!’

They both smiled. ‘Take care you horribly sick, perverted man,’ she said.

He kissed her again. ‘Take care yourself, you hard-hearted bitch. I shall await an invitation from you to eat crumpets by your cosy fireside one day. Maybe Miles will be there too. Oh, and just so that I can be sure of having the last word, remember that in a really dark night of the soul it is always three in the morning, day after day. Also, the big, crucial questions are unanswerable. Goodbye, sweet thing.’

Harriet watched him buttoning his coat as he walked away. A sadness came over her as she wondered what would become of him. And what had he meant by that reference to the mermaid?