A Regimental Affair (33 page)

‘Hello,’ said Debbie loudly, then more quietly, ‘How is she?’

‘Hi,’ Sarah said brightly. Then, ‘How do you think?’
sotto voce
. ‘Come in, the kettle’s on.’

Sarah shepherded Debbie into the kitchen. Debbie looked uncomfortable and embarrassed.

‘Hello, Debbie.’

‘Alice, how are you?’ She sounded genuinely concerned.

Alice looked at her somewhat coldly. ‘As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.’

‘Yes, sorry. Stupid question.’

Silence fell. On the work surface, the kettle hissed and Sarah fussed around with mugs and milk. Debbie shifted awkwardly but Alice did not ask her to sit down.

‘Look, Alice, I’ve come to apologise. I feel responsible for Taz. If I hadn’t made friends with her, none of this would have happened.’

‘You think so?’

Sarah passed them both a mug of tea. Debbie pulled a chair back and sat down, despite the lack of invitation. Alice didn’t comment.

‘I do. But I also want you to know that I had no idea she was a journalist.’

‘Really?’

‘Honest. Even when we saw a story by her in one of the papers we didn’t twig that Taz and Tabitha Alabaster were the same person.’

Still Alice looked utterly sceptical.

‘We didn’t,’ confirmed Sarah. ‘In fact, I discovered that Taz was short for Tabitha at your drinks party and I still didn’t make the connection.’

Alice looked from one to the other as if trying to work out if this was some further conspiracy or if it was the truth. They both stared steadfastly at her, willing her to believe them. She dropped her gaze and looked at her mug. ‘All right, I believe you.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘And it’s not true.’

‘What?’ said Debbie and Sarah together, not following her.

‘About none of this happening if you hadn’t met Taz. Bob and Ginny happened, and Taz had nothing to do with that.’

‘But no one would have known if it hadn’t been for Taz,’ protested Debbie.

‘
You
knew,’ shot back Alice. ‘Ginny told you and then Taz, and after that who knows how many people she would have bragged to about her conquest if the papers hadn’t got hold of it.’

That’s true
, thought Debbie. To confide in one friend was one thing, but two? She must have known the story was more likely to become common knowledge with the more people she told. Had she done it on purpose? Debbie began to wonder. Perhaps Ginny was more scheming than she had thought. Suddenly Debbie didn’t feel quite so sympathetic to her friend as she had done.

‘At least,’ continued Alice bitterly, ‘Taz brought it all out in the open. If it hadn’t been for her, I might never have known what had happened.’

‘Mightn’t that have been better?’ asked Sarah gently.

‘I don’t know.’ She seemed close to tears again. ‘You mean, what the eye doesn’t see and all that?’ She sniffed and blinked a few times. ‘But it still doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen between them. We’d still have been living a lie. And as it is, we’re now living another one. Bob’s telling everyone that nothing happened, hoping against hope that they won’t be able to prove anything when, of course, a number of us know full well that it did. And I’m now wondering what else I don’t know about. What other truths are hidden?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Sarah, who had in her time wondered about her own husband’s fidelity when he’d been away and had long since decided that as long as she knew nothing she wouldn’t get excited about the subject. She knew she was being an ostrich but the alternative seemed much worse.

Debbie finished her tea. ‘I must be getting back,’ she said. ‘I’ve left Danielle with Lou and I said I wouldn’t be long.’

‘Does Lou know the reason for your visit?’ asked Alice dully.

‘You mean …?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I suppose the whole patch knows what happened by now.’ Debbie dodged a direct answer as she wasn’t going to admit that she’d had a gossip session with Lou earlier that morning.

Alice sighed. ‘It was only to be expected, wasn’t it?’

Sarah forbore saying that she was surprised it hadn’t been round the barracks the day before. She showed Debbie out then returned to the kitchen.

‘Do you want to get off home to your kids too?’ asked Alice.

‘They’re both old enough and ugly enough to fend for themselves. They don’t need me, you do.’

Alice nodded. ‘Thanks. I appreciate your support.’

‘It’s OK. What about lunch for you and Megan?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘How about if I scramble some eggs?’

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

‘Alice, it’s no bother. I’ll do some for Megan too.’

‘She won’t come down.’

‘Then I’ll take lunch upstairs to her.’

‘I don’t really like food upstairs.’

Now, why didn’t that surprise Sarah? But whatever Alice felt about things normally, now wasn’t the moment for her to insist on her exacting standards. ‘Don’t you think that, just for today, it’s important that she eats something and that it doesn’t really matter where she eats it? Circumstances are hardly normal, are they?’

Alice nodded.

The phone rang and Sarah answered it again. It was Bob.

‘Sarah, I don’t know how Alice is going to take this but the military police want to come and search the house for evidence.’

‘What? What on earth for?’

‘I don’t know. But they’re on their way and because it’s military property there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Can you warn Alice?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Sarah put the receiver down. ‘Alice, I’m sorry, that was Bob. The military police want to have a look around.’

‘Well, they can’t,’ said Alice flatly. ‘This is my home and I shan’t let them in.’

Sarah explained what Bob had told her. Just as she finished, the doorbell rang. The two women stared at each other for a moment then Alice shut her eyes as if by doing so she could blot out the increasing horror of what was happening.

‘You let them in,’ said Alice. ‘I must tell Megan.’ Wearily she got up from the table and made her way up to see her daughter.

Sarah went to the door. On the doorstep were a middle-aged man in a suit and a warrant officer in uniform. Irrationally, Sarah thought that the man in the suit bore an uncanny likeness to John Thaw’s Inspector Morse.

‘Mrs Davies?’ said the TV lookalike.

‘No, I’m Sarah Milne, a neighbour.’

‘Colonel Milne’s wife?’

Sarah was just about to correct him that her husband was only a major but then she remembered that her husband had been given acting rank in order to take over from Colonel Bob. ‘Yes, yes I am. And yes, he phoned to tell me you were on your way. Mrs Davies is upstairs telling her daughter you want to search the house.’

Morse/Thaw shuffled a little awkwardly. ‘I think it would be better if we spoke indoors.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Sarah stood back to allow them to pass. As they entered the hall, Megan and Alice were coming down the stairs. The man in civvies and his sidekick introduced themselves to Alice as Major Griggs and Mr Watson. There didn’t seem much point in introducing Alice to them – they obviously knew who she was – and Megan made it perfectly plain she wanted nothing to do with them. She gave them both a filthy look and then stormed off into the kitchen.

‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Davies, but we need to see if there is any evidence of what your husband has done,’ said the major.

‘I very much doubt there is,’ she said coldly and formally.

‘The alleged affair, according to that dreadful scandal sheet, took place in Kosovo. I suggest if you want evidence that you look out there.’

‘There is a possibility that they had a liaison here too.’

Alice looked horrified at the suggestion. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, there was no affair and there certainly wasn’t one here.’

Both men had the decency to look shamefaced.

Sarah couldn’t help but admire Alice’s cool, but she didn’t think Alice would be able to maintain it indefinitely. ‘I don’t know if it’s possible, but would it be all right for Mrs Davies and her daughter to wait in my house while you conduct the search? I really don’t think either of them wants to witness it.’ She looked at Alice for confirmation. Alice nodded with a look of relief on her face that she didn’t have to watch two strange men rummaging through her personal possessions. Sarah continued, ‘I’ll be happy to escort you round the house. If you gentlemen would like to wait here, I’ll just take Mrs Davies and her daughter over to my house and when I return you’ll be able to make a start.’

Alice and Sarah made their way into the kitchen to join Megan and to explain to her what was going on. She was standing by the sink staring out of the window, her hands resting on the work surface.

‘Sarah has said we can go round to her house while the police are here,’ said Alice.

Megan didn’t turn round. ‘Oh, goody,’ she said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

‘There’s no need to be like that,’ chided Alice.

‘Like what?’ shrilled Megan, spinning round to face her mother. ‘Dad’s about to be thrown out of the army, my best friend has told the papers that she screwed him and consequently completely screwed my life too, and the police are about to paw through all my things. What the hell do you expect me to be like?’ She was white and shaking with anger. She turned away from them again and stormed towards the back door. Sarah and Alice followed silently.

Megan was waiting for the two women by Sarah’s front door.

‘Have you rung the doorbell?’ asked Sarah, ignoring the earlier outburst.

‘No. I didn’t know if Jen and Will were up.’

‘Doubt it. It’s only just lunchtime.’ Sarah opened the door and showed Megan and Alice into her sitting room. It was clean but hardly tidy with the previous day’s paper strewn across the coffee table, the cushions flat and squashed, two dirty coffee cups on the mantelpiece and the curtains only half drawn. With a practised hand, Sarah swept up the paper and tucked it under her arm, plumped and straightened the cushions, grabbed the cups and pushed the curtains fully open. In about thirty seconds she had transformed the room.

‘Sit down,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea each and then I think I’d better get back to Montgomery House. I’m sorry about lunch. If Jen or Will make an appearance get them to rustle something up. They’re perfectly capable when I’m not around. Otherwise I’ll do something when I get back. It can’t take too long.’ But even as she said this Sarah knew she was kidding everyone. Two men, searching an entire house for slivers of evidence – letters, mementoes, keepsakes – it would take an age.

She left Alice and Megan sitting in silence, whizzed into the kitchen to put the kettle on and then belted upstairs to Jen’s room. Will might have been the elder but Jen was the more sensible.

‘Jen,’ she said as she pushed her daughter’s door open. A scene of total chaos hit her – make-up littered the dressing table, cotton buds were spilled on the floor, dirty clothes were left lying where they fell, magazines and hangers were higgledy-piggledy on the bedside rug. There were CDs out of their boxes by the hi-fi, bits of school work on the desk and, incongruously, a large cardboard cut-out of David Beckham in the middle of it all. Sarah wondered where the hell that had sprung from. She was sure it hadn’t been there the day before. She ignored the mess and the cut-out and said ‘Jen,’ again, more sharply.

‘Uh.’

‘Jen, wake up.’

‘Wassamarra?’

‘I need you to get up.’

‘Uh.’

The conversation seemed to be going round in circles. Sarah picked her way through the obstacle course on the carpet to the curtains and drew them back.

‘Whatdayawannado that for?’ slurred Jen, woozy from sleep.

‘Wake up,’ ordered Sarah. Jen opened her eyes and then screwed them tight against the light. ‘I’ve got Alice and Megan downstairs. I’m going to make them a cup of tea and then I have to go out again. I want you to get dressed and go down and make them some lunch – eggs or something – understand?’

‘Now?’

‘Of course now. It’s lunchtime.’

‘Where have you got to go?’

‘Out.’ Everything was too complicated to go into details. And besides, in Jen’s sleep-befuddled state she wasn’t likely to take anything in. ‘Come on, get up.’ Sarah hurtled downstairs again into the kitchen just in time to hear the kettle click off. She made two mugs of strong tea, sloshed milk in both, put them and a sugar basin on a tray and carried it through into the sitting room.

‘I put milk in both but I wasn’t sure if you took sugar, Megan.’ She wasn’t going to start apologising for the lack of a Georgian Silver teaset or bone china cups. In her house it was like it or lump it. ‘Jen will be down in a minute to look after you,’ she added. ‘Right, I’ll go back and make sure the military police are behaving themselves.’ Alice gave her a bleak smile but Megan looked stonily at the carpet. ‘Right, till later then.’ Sarah left them, almost glad to escape, although she didn’t think things would be much more comfortable back at Alice’s place.

When she walked through the front door of Montgomery House, the two policemen were where she had left them. When she had told them to ‘stay there’, she hadn’t expected them to obey her like a couple of gun dogs. She’d thought they would have had the nous to find a place to sit at the very least.

‘OK then,’ she said. ‘Where do you want to start?’

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ginny, Granny Flo, the children and Petroc were sitting down for lunch when Ginny’s mobile rang. At the first bar of ‘British Grenadiers she leapt up to answer it. Grabbing it from her bag, she offered the family an apologetic grin and then retired to the sitting room to talk. She knew that, realistically, it was probably either a close friend or someone from the barracks trying to get in touch with her. In either case it probably wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have in public.

It was Richard. ‘The military police have to search your room,’ he announced after a few quick pleasantries.

‘Why?’

‘Who knows?’ said Richard wearily. ‘There’s a couple of them turning over Montgomery House. I suppose they want to find proof.’