A Surrey State of Affairs (41 page)

My stomach tightened when I heard the sound of Jeffrey’s car. I rushed to the door. Jeffrey got out. He opened the door for Sophie. She got out. She was wearing a gem-encrusted green silk minidress, which I could tell with one glance was extortionately expensive, but in all other respects she was clearly the same old Sophie: slight, pale, and tetchy.

She stumbled in her new high heels as she walked up the drive, avoided my outstretched arms (which was perhaps prudent given that I was still undecided on the hug/throttle dilemma), and dashed to her room, kicking the shoes off behind her. I followed. I heard the dragging sound of furniture being moved toward the door, the crash and tinkle of a vase falling and smashing, then a series of swear words that do not bear repetition.

At the time of this writing, she has not left her room, with the exception of one furtive midnight raid on the last of Ivan’s pickle jars. If only we had not given her a bathroom. I have tried gently knocking and cajoling, and I have tried hammering in anger, but all attempts are in vain. She refuses to open the door and declares herself, once again, on a hunger strike. I called Rupert to ask his advice and he said to give her time. I hope it doesn’t take much longer.

Jeffrey has been more approachable, but only just. Once it was clear that Sophie would not be venturing out anytime soon, I made Jeffrey a cup of tea and urged him to tell me exactly how he had succeeded in extricating our daughter. He was more than usually evasive. He simply said that he had gone to the hotel, found their room, and dealt with the situation. He reassured me that Ivan would be unlikely to trouble us again; then he
opened the newspaper to catch up with the weekend’s rugby union results.

Good Lord. A terrible thought has just occurred to me. You don’t think he’s killed him, do you?

  
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

Sophie is out. Much like her brother, I suppose you could say, except that I had been waiting for this to happen. Last night, I was just drying my hair after a bath when I heard the television. I went downstairs to find Sophie sitting on the sofa, her feet tucked up underneath her, gorging herself on a plate of cheese and crackers, with
America’s Next Top Model
on in the background.

“Sophie!” I said.

“All right, Mo,” she replied, hardly looking away from the screen.

“Do you want to talk?”

“Nah.”

This morning I skipped church to keep an eye on her. She spent a long time feeding Fergie and talking to her. When I went into the conservatory to top up Darcy’s water bowl, she told me, while staring at the floor, that she’d left Fergie at that bus stop only because they were going to be thrown out of the hotel if they kept her, and that Ivan had made her do it. Then she went quiet for a few moments, before saying “Mum, did you ever notice that Ivan’s breath was really minging?”

Guessing what the word
minging
meant, I smiled and said that I had.

  
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

10 A.M.

Jeffrey’s PA just called. He has been arrested. I am shaking.

Should I hide his hunting rifle?

4 P.M.

The good: Jeffrey has not, it would transpire, shot Ivan the Terrible with his hunting rifle.

The bad: He has been arrested on suspicion of fraud.

I cannot say any more. I must go at once to the police station.

  
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9

How to describe the trauma of yesterday’s events, the stomach-knotting shame?

The phone call from Jeffrey’s PA was followed shortly afterward by the low rumble of an engine and the sight of a police car pulling into the drive, in full view of the neighbors. I do not think I possess the necessary sangfroid to be a successful accomplice. I would have made a poor Bonnie to Jeffrey’s Clyde.

I shouted to Boris to deal with the visitors, then I ran upstairs. I knew I had to hide the hunting rifle. I did not know where. I took it from the cabinet in Jeffrey’s study, holding it in a sport sock so as to avoid leaving fingerprints. I hurried from room to room in search of inspiration, knowing that at any moment the police would be upon me. The only relevant image I could summon was of some dreary gangster film Jeffrey had once subjected me to in which the criminals hurled their murder weapons from a bridge into a raging torrent. There were neither bridges nor torrents at hand.

Finally, with the sound of voices in the hall, I seized upon the idea of burying it in the newspaper at the bottom of Darcy’s cage. I opened the cage. A policeman opened the door to the conservatory. I paused. Darcy, who is not the sort of bird to spurn a spontaneous opportunity to stretch his majestic wings, launched himself out of his cage like a cruise missile and swooped across the conservatory, narrowly missing the police officer’s head. He
swore. I stood aghast, gun in one hand, extra-large men’s tennis sock in the other.

I expected the officer to grab the weapon and inspect it for blood. I imagined that at any moment I would feel the cool metal of handcuffs against my wrists. Instead, the officer—who looked only about Rupert’s age—merely showed me his search warrant and said he needed to look through all of Jeffrey’s business documents. I was confused, and then relieved, and then angry. What on earth has Jeffrey been up to?

That, of course, is the question which dictates our fate, and which kept me awake, trembling, all last night. He is being held on suspicion of making false passports and driver’s licenses and submitting inaccurate tax returns. I do not understand. He insists that he is innocent; of course he is innocent. As soon as I saw him yesterday, my anger dissipated. His eyes were red, his skin white, his tie loosened about his neck. He was the only man in the police station—aside from the policemen—who was not dressed in polyester sportswear. He told me in a small, quiet voice that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that this was all some horrible misunderstanding.

He should be charged within days. Needless to say, he is being represented by the best possible lawyer: a business acquaintance named Simon, who resembles some strange hybrid of hyena and bald eagle. I can only hope that he gets a result before the world, and in particular Miss Hughes, finds out what’s going on.

  
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10

6 A.M
.

I’ve woken up and I can’t get back to sleep. It’s pointless trying. If I do, I’ll slip back into my horrible dream that Jeffrey has been jailed for life and Sophie and I forced to visit him on a
public bus wearing velour tracksuits, having to press the button for our stop without any antiseptic hand gel. Why me? What have I done to deserve this annus horribilus? The most distressing thing that is meant to happen to a woman in my position in the fifty-fourth year of her life is the advance of a few more wrinkles. Not all this. Dear God, not this. What if he really is jailed? What if we lose the house? What if I have to start buying discount tins of baked beans?

4 P.M.

Shame upon shame. The police officer on Jeffrey’s case, a soft-featured young man who looks only about Sophie’s age, took me to the station for questioning this morning. My only comfort was that I really do know diddly-squat about Jeffrey’s financial affairs, and could assure him as such with no hesitation. It was a short interview. Afterward, I saw Jeffrey. He had missed his morning shave for the first time since he was under general anesthesia for a hernia operation in 2001. He didn’t have much to say. Neither did I.

I declined a lift home from the kind officer, who has a boyish cleft in his chin and a disconcertingly high-pitched voice. One police car sighting in our village in the space of a day is more than adequate.

Rupert is coming around this evening to have dinner with me and Sophie. I am going to bake a large and elaborate fish pie, thus hopefully engrossing myself for at least an hour and a half. I have told Boris to take a few days’ holiday. As quiet and discreet as he may be, I cannot bear anyone else in the house right now.

What will become of us? And where on earth has Boris hidden my hand whisk?

  
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

Gerald visited today. I was polishing the silverware in a futile attempt to alleviate my stress through monotonous labor when the doorbell rang.

I opened it, and there he stood, my fellow ringer and onetime admirer, dressed soberly in dark trousers and a blue shirt, with neither low-grade milk chocolates nor petrol station flowers in his hands. I was taken aback. He said, “Hello, Constance.”

I said, “Come in.”

I made the tea myself while he waited in the sitting room, then I brought it in on a tray with some of his favorite currant biscuits laid out. He didn’t touch them. He took a few sips of his tea, knitting his gray-streaked eyebrows together, then said that if the feelings he’d mentioned once before were still disgusting to me I should tell him, and he would never trouble me again. He said he’d tried everything to distract himself from them—gardening, Sudoku, teaching Poppy to walk backward—but nothing had worked. He said that he had heard what had happened to Jeffrey (How? How had the news got out?), and that he couldn’t bear the fact that I’d been put in this distressing position by a man who was not worth a single one of the glossy auburn hairs on my head. He said that, in short, he had come to assure me of his deep, his sincere, and his passionate love. Then he spilled a little tea onto his lap and looked away.