A Whirlwind Marriage (5 page)

Zeke phoned at six o’clock and he sounded harassed. ‘I’m not going to be able to make it back tonight,’ he said through what sounded like a babble of voices at the other
end. ‘There’s still a long way to go before we clinch the deal. I’m sorry, Marianne.’

‘It’s okay.’ She bit back the disappointment and made her voice bright as she said, ‘The house was wonderful, Zeke. It’s the one; I’m sure of it.’

‘The house?’ And then immediately, ‘Oh, yes, of course, the Bedlows place. You liked it, then?’

‘I love it,’ she said a little flatly.

‘Good.’ The noise rose in a wave and then died down, and it was in that moment Marianne heard a familiar voice say, ‘Zeke? Are you coming, darling? I’m
famished
,’ before the babble began again.

Liliana.
Marianne stood, the phone pressed to her ear and her body frozen, and stared straight ahead across the room. Liliana was there with him.

‘Look, it’s chaotic now. I’ll phone you later, when we get back from the restaurant.’

She heard Zeke’s voice but the power to respond was just not there. ‘We’. He’d said
we
. Him and Liliana.

‘Marianne?’

She barely knew what she was doing when she replaced the receiver, but then in the next instant she had whipped it up again, lying it down beside the phone with numb fingers.

Liliana was in Stoke with him. He had taken Liliana with him.
After all she had said to him about how she felt about the other woman he had chosen, deliberately, to take Liliana with him on this trip. And now they were staying overnight.

She began to pace back and forth, her mind spinning. Had she made a mistake? It was possible. It
was
possible. She was clutching at straws and she knew it. Perhaps her mind had played a trick on her. You heard of such things. He wouldn’t have taken Liliana with him; there was no
need. The project he had employed the redhead for had nothing to do with the development in Stoke. She must have made a mistake.

She glanced at the address book at the side of the telephone and then picked it up slowly. She shouldn’t do this; she
really
shouldn’t do this, she told herself sickly as she found Sandra’s home number. She should wait until Zeke came home and then ask him calmly and coolly; that was what she should do. But the way she was feeling right now she’d be a gibbering idiot by tomorrow night.

She dialled the number.

‘Hallo, Amy Jenkins speaking.’

‘Hi, Amy,’ Marianne said carefully to Sandra’s twelve-year-old daughter. ‘Is your mother there? It’s Marianne Buchanan.’

‘Just a minute and I’ll get her.’

Marianne’s heart was thudding so hard she was pressing her hand to her breastbone when Sandra’s concerned voice came on the line. ‘Mrs Buchanan? Is anything wrong?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you at home,’ Marianne said evenly, ‘but I’ve found a financial file regarding the Stoke project which Zeke has left here. Knowing Zeke it’s probably because he doesn’t need it, but I wondered if the financial guys have gone with him anyway?’ She was safe in this; Zeke
had
left the file in his study, but she knew he had extracted relevant data the night before because she had brought him a cup of coffee just in time to hear him muttering about ‘the useless amount of rubbish cluttering up this file!’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Buchanan, I’m sure it’s all right,’ Sandra said soothingly. ‘We’d have heard by now if he needed anything.’

‘Did any of the financial team go with him?’ Marianne pressed quietly. And then she took a gamble that made her
shut her eyes tightly as she said, ‘Although I suppose there wasn’t a lot of room with Miss de Giraud going, too.’

‘Oh, there would have been room, but Mr Green had gone the day before,’ Sandra explained helpfully. ‘I think Mr Buchanan expected that everything would run smoothly and the solicitors could iron out any little hiccups between them, but of course it hasn’t turned out like that.’

‘No, it appears not.’
Talk naturally. Be upbeat.
‘Not to worry, then, if Mr Green’s there. I hope you didn’t mind me calling?’

‘Of course not, Mrs Buchanan. How’s the house-hunting going?’ Sandra asked cheerfully. ‘Seen anything you like yet?’

They talked briefly for another minute, and then, after thanking Sandra again, Marianne finished the call. But again she placed the receiver next to the telephone. If Zeke rang back she didn’t want to talk to him; she didn’t even want to hear his voice.

She sank down on to the thick carpet as her trembling legs gave way and remained there for some minutes, in too much agony to even cry, her face as white as lint but her eyes burningly dry.

What was she going to do? She swayed back and forth, her arms crossed and her hands gripping her waist. This was the sort of thing that happened to other couples, not them.

After what seemed like a lifetime, but in reality was only fifteen minutes, she made herself rise, and walked into the kitchen slowly like an old, old woman and switched on the coffee percolator.

She drank two cups of black coffee scalding hot, holding the fine china between her chilled hands as she sought warmth like a small hurt animal. Her mind had gone bliss
fully numb, overwhelmed by the enormity of the catastrophe, and she sat for another half an hour in a dull stupor.

It was when she walked back into the breakfast room—she rarely used the drawing room by choice, finding its cool perfection chilling—and saw the table covered with her sketches of colour schemes and ideas for the house, that she remembered the provisional appointment for that evening.

She rang Wilf at once, forcing herself to think of nothing but the immediate conversation, and explained in a surprisingly normal voice that Zeke had been called away on business unexpectedly and she wasn’t sure how long it would be before he came home, adding she would be in touch within a few days, if that was all right?

Of course it was all right, Wilf assured her brightly. The house wasn’t going anywhere, he added before saying goodbye.

No, but she was.

She stared at the telephone as though it had been the one to make the decision, and then nearly jumped out of her skin when it rang shrilly, reminding her she had forgotten to leave it off the hook. She let the answer-machine cut in, her heart pounding so hard she felt faint, and then her brow wrinkled when a heavily accented male voice said, ‘Mrs Buchanan? Mrs Marianne Buchanan? It is very important that I speak with you.’

She hesitated, her hand going out to the receiver and freezing. And then she ignored all her finer instincts and picked it up.

‘This is Mrs Buchanan,’ she said quietly as she turned the machine off. It could so easily have been Zeke’s voice, and that would have been the last straw.

‘You don’t know me, Mrs Buchanan, but I have been seeing Liliana,’ the somewhat oily voice said smoothly.
‘Liliana de Giraud. Are you aware that she is having an affair with your husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’ The baldness of her reply seemed to flummox him for a moment, and then he said, more hesitantly now, ‘I was supposed to see Liliana tonight, but she has informed me our relationship is over and that she is at present at a hotel in Stoke with your husband. I thought you should know.’

‘Thank you,’ Marianne said evenly, forcing down the flood of nausea at hearing it stated so bluntly. ‘Goodnight.’

He was speaking again when she put the telephone down on his voice, and this time she remembered to pick the receiver up and lay it on the small occasional table before she left the room.

She only packed an overnight case with the minimum of requirements: her make-up, a change of underwear and a jumper and skirt, toiletries and one or two other belongings. She didn’t want to take anything Zeke had bought her but she couldn’t exactly walk out naked, she thought with a touch of silent hysteria.

Once that was done she walked across to the dressing table and wrote a short note on the expensive linen note-paper which had been a Christmas present from an old aunt. It was succinct in the extreme.

She folded the paper over and wrote Zeke’s name on it before propping it against the dressing table mirror, where
he would be sure to see it as soon as he walked into the room.

And then she pulled on her coat, picked up the case and her handbag and walked out into the hall, where she stared around her a trifle bewilderedly before walking to the front door. But this time she didn’t look back.

T
HIS
really was a case of from the sublime to the ridiculous! In spite of the circumstances there was a thread of dark amusement in the thought as Marianne glanced around the dingy bedsit in Hackney.

When she had left the apartment the night before she had checked into a small hotel a few blocks away, knowing she couldn’t walk the streets all night. Beyond that she hadn’t been thinking at all; she couldn’t—it hurt too much.

She had gone straight to bed and amazingly slept all night, waking early in the morning to driving icy rain against the windowpane and with no knowledge of where she was for a disturbing moment or two. And then she had remembered.

She had burrowed into the comfortable hotel bed for some minutes, finding the hours of deep, restful sleep had cleared her mind and brought some sort of clarity to the situation.

She didn’t want to bring anything with her out of this marriage; Zeke could keep his money, the car he had bought her, the jewellery, everything. No doubt people would say she was mad but she didn’t care; she didn’t want a thing from him. However, that presented immediate problems. Not the least being how she was going to live and eat until she sorted herself out and decided what she was going to do with the rest of her life. A life without Zeke.

She had cried then, for over an hour, until she’d made herself physically sick and told herself enough was
enough. She had showered in the small, neat
en suite
bathroom, got dressed, brushed her hair and then called her father.

He had answered immediately and she’d been able to tell he was frantic. ‘Annie, thank God! Oh, thank God,’ he’d said brokenly. ‘Where have you been? Zeke’s out of his mind.’

‘Zeke? Zeke’s been in touch with you?’

‘Of course he has. What do you expect when you disappear like that? He’s here now—’

And then there had been the briefest of pauses before a familiar male voice had said huskily, ‘Marianne? Where are you?’

She’d almost dropped the phone, her heart jumping up into her throat where it had set her whole being pounding as panic flooded every nerve and sinew. She hadn’t been able to speak, hadn’t even been able to breathe such had been her shock.

‘Marianne, are you there? Talk to me,’ he’d said thickly. ‘I’ve been thinking all sorts of things since I came back last night and found that note. What’s happened to make you behave like this?’

What’s happened?
The fury at his duplicity had burnt up the weakness the shock had caused in a moment and put acid in her voice as she’d spat, ‘Liliana de Giraud has happened, Zeke! Remember her? Your little playmate down in Stoke?’

There had been a moment of silence and then he’d said quickly, ‘I can explain.’

‘I don’t want you to explain, Zeke. I just want you out of my life,’ she’d said hotly.

‘You don’t mean that,’ he’d said tersely. ‘You’re hysterical.’

‘No, I’m not hysterical,’ she had said, more calmly. ‘For
the first time in months I’m thinking clearly, as it happens.’ She’d taken a deep breath and stated quietly, ‘I want a divorce.’

‘Over my dead body.’

‘The way I’m feeling right now I’ll willingly arrange that,’ she’d snapped back before she even thought about it.

It had shocked him, she knew it had shocked him, because his voice had actually been verging on soothing when he’d said, ‘Tell me where you are and I’ll come and collect you, then we can talk.’

‘The time for talking is over,’ she’d said sadly. ‘Don’t you understand even that? Can you deny you took Liliana with you to Stoke and she stayed at your hotel with you?’

‘I took her to Stoke, yes, and she did stay at the hotel, but not with me in the sense you mean.’

‘I’m not a fool, so don’t treat me like one,’ she’d said tightly as a new flare of anger had brought every muscle tensing. ‘You were with her last night.’

‘Last night I was searching the streets and ringing everyone we know to find out where you were,’ he’d bitten out forcefully.

‘You came back to London?’ she’d asked confusedly. ‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ Normally the furious, grim tone of his voice would have intimidated her, but not today. Today she hadn’t cared how mad he got. ‘When we got cut off I tried to ring you back and the phone was constantly engaged. I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know if someone had broken in, whether you’d had an accident, banged your head—anything. And so I jumped in a taxi and came home.’

How very noble. ‘That must have ruined Liliana’s plans for the evening,’ Marianne had said cuttingly.

‘Hell, Marianne,
listen
! Liliana came up to Stoke with me because she’d got some business there, that’s all. You’re paranoid about her.’

‘Put my father on.’

‘What?’

‘Put my father on,’
she’d screamed furiously.

‘Not till I finish talking to you.’

She had put the phone down on him, she remembered now as she walked across to the small grimy window and looked out into the rainy street below, and nothing had given her so much pleasure for years.

Then, in case he tried to trace the call, she had gathered her things together and gone quickly down to Reception to pay the bill; she had been out of the hotel in minutes, only to find the gloomy wet morning was not conducive to walking the streets of London.

After boarding a bus without having the slightest idea of where it was going she had found herself in Hackney, and, having spied a small café, she had bought herself a breakfast she couldn’t eat. But in the café’s steamy window there had been cards advertising all manner of things, one of them being a bedsit a few streets away above a charity shop.

Thirty minutes later and here she was.

She turned from the window and surveyed the dismal room again. It held a two-seater sofa which converted to a bed of sorts, a tiny table and two somewhat battered straight-backed chairs, and a small single wardrobe, all of which stood on a large square of faded carpet.

One corner of the room was sectioned off by a free-standing, dilapidated bamboo screen, behind which stood an old gas stove, an ancient square sink, two feet of work-top with a cracked bin underneath and a rickety old mustard-yellow six-foot cupboard, containing odds and ends
of crockery and kitchen utensils, a kettle and two saucepans, with shelves below for storage of tins and suchlike.

But it was cheap by London standards and that was the main thing, Marianne told herself bracingly, as she walked across and turned on the small spluttering gas fire on the wall in front of the sofa. She still had an old bank account in her maiden name she had never bothered to close after she had married Zeke and which contained a few hundred pounds, but other than that she was virtually destitute.

Of course she could go back to live with her father, but somehow, after being a married woman and living her own life for two years, that was not an option she would consider. Besides which, this way she was truly independent and Zeke didn’t know where she was. Which suited her just fine.

The lump in her throat threatened to choke her, and she blinked furiously. No more crying, not now; that could come later, in the still of the night. For now she had to see about finding work—any work: waitressing, retail sales, whatever. She needed something to tide her over the next few weeks while she licked her wounds and decided how best to proceed.

She could do this; she
could
. She wasn’t going to crumple; she wouldn’t give Zeke and Liliana the satisfaction. Zeke and Liliana… Just coupling their names together in her head made her feel sick, and she took several deep, steadying breaths before turning off the fire in preparation for going out.

Essential groceries and hunting for work—they were the only things to concentrate on at the moment, she told herself firmly. Thinking of Zeke made her feel weak when she needed to be strong, so she wouldn’t think of him.

That resolve was sorely tested over the next two weeks.

Marianne had found work almost immediately in a small family supermarket at the end of the street in which her bedsit was situated.

The supermarket seemed to be run on the lines of a corner shop, with everyone who entered it being greeted as an old friend by the Polish family who owned it, and much gossiping and setting the world to rights being done over the fresh fruit and cold meat counters.

On Marianne’s first visit on the day she’d arrived at the bedsit the matriarch of the family had winkled out of her that she’d just moved in to number seventeen and was looking for work, and the next day, when Marianne had called in for a pint of milk and admitted she’d found nothing, Mrs Polinkski had offered her a temporary job in the supermarket for a few weeks while her married daughter was away visiting her husband’s family in Poland.

Marianne had accepted gratefully; buying a few modestly priced clothes and items of underwear to supplement the basic survival amount she’d left with, plus the first month’s rent for the bedsit and setting up with groceries and so on, had eaten into the bank account alarmingly.

The Polinkskis were kind and friendly, and the work was not difficult, but the first two or three days had been a nightmare Marianne wouldn’t have wished on her worst enemy. Every moment, whatever she was doing, there had been a separate part of her mind that was mourning and grieving for what had gone.

Part of her hated Zeke and another part ached for him so much it was a physical pain, but on the Sunday morning—her day off from the supermarket, which had occurred three days after she had started work—she’d awoken and realised the whole day stretched before her and she was alone. It had felt so alien, being alone. Not having had a period of self-sufficiency and independence
at university, she had gone straight from caring for her father in the family home into a marriage with Zeke, and again she had been giving incessantly.

Suddenly the only person she had to care about was herself. There was no one to look after, no one to share with and cook for, just…her. Marianne Buchanan. And she didn’t even have a TV to serve as an opiate against the constant longing for Zeke.

She’d sat up in bed as that thought hit, furious with herself. Wouldn’t Zeke just love it if he thought she was mopey and miserable! Well, she wasn’t—she wouldn’t let herself be.

She had forced herself to get dressed and eat some breakfast and then she had cleaned the bedsit from top to bottom, which had taken most of the day. She didn’t think it had ever been really cleaned since the house had been converted to the charity shop, with the bedsit and a storage area for the shop’s excess stock—plus a small bathroom—above.

When she had finished the bedsit was squeaky clean and sanitary and she’d been exhausted, but she had made herself go to the cinema while the curtains dried in front of the gas fire; when she’d got home she’d put them up again—hoping the creases would drop out by themselves—and then had fallen into bed and was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

She had written to her father the first evening at the bedsit—just a short note, telling him not to worry and that she was fine, but giving no address—and on the Monday evening she’d written a longer letter, which had been reassuring and warm, but she still hadn’t disclosed her whereabouts.

She wasn’t quite sure how she had come by the knowledge, but she was certain in her own mind that her father’s
sympathies were more with Zeke than his daughter, and she found she didn’t trust her father not to give Zeke the address if he asked. It would be well meant, she had no doubt about that, but disastrous as far as she was concerned, and she couldn’t risk it. In a week or two, when she was thinking straighter, she would contact Zeke herself with regard to the divorce, but for now just getting through each day was enough.

But she was managing—she was coping well, she assured herself as she walked home to the bedsit at the end of her second week of working for the Polinkskis. She still had a great lead weight where her heart should be but she wasn’t crying herself to sleep every night now, so that was an improvement overall. Definitely. And in spite of her misery one thing had clarified in her mind. She was going to go to university and get that degree she’d put on hold.

She was a survivor. Before the breakdown of her marriage she would never have termed herself such, but she
was
a survivor, all right. Zeke, Liliana, life—she wasn’t going to let it all beat her. As long as she didn’t see Zeke she’d get through this.

‘Marianne?’

She froze, the shock all the more drenching because of the nature of her thoughts. For a wild, desperate moment she hoped the big dark figure that had just stepped out of the shop doorway was a figment of her fevered imagination, but then Zeke took a step towards her, and with an instinct that was pure self-preservation she turned and ran.

He caught her before she had even reached the end of the street—as he’d been bound to. At six foot two and with the physique and fitness of a honed athlete it had been a foregone conclusion, she thought despairingly, as his hand on her arm swung her round to face him and almost lifted her off her feet in the process.

‘What the hell did you take off for like that?’ he snarled furiously. ‘What sort of a monster do you think I am? I’m not going to hurt you, Marianne.’

Not going to hurt her? For a second she almost laughed in his face. He was
killing
her, couldn’t he see that?

‘How…how did you find me?’ she asked shakily, trying to shake his hands off her arms but to no avail.

‘Does it matter?’ he asked irritably, and then as she continued to stare up into his dark face he added in a quieter tone, ‘I hired someone to track you down, if you want to know. Satisfied?’

‘You did
what
?’ She was more than a little grateful for the outrage that brought her as straight as a ramrod. ‘How dare you, Zeke?’

‘How dare I?’ He swore, very explicitly, which wasn’t like him. ‘You take off like a bat out of hell, leaving just that note, and you ask me how
I
dare? You’re priceless!’

‘Just so, and you can’t afford me,’ she said cuttingly. ‘I consider faithfulness of inestimable value and it’s clearly just too costly for you.’