Almost a Crime (110 page)

between submitting to the interminable embraces of her brother and sister. They seemed unable to stop touching her, hugging her, kissing her, holding her hands, arguing

about who would have her on their lap first when she had

finished, where they might go with her that afternoon,

what she would like to do. In between arguing and hugging

Octavia, they questioned her about how she had found her,

how she had known where to go, what Louise had done

and said.

Octavia started to tell them that Louise had been very

upset, that she shouldn’t really be blamed too much for

taking Minty, and the twins virtually attacked her, saying

that of course she should be blamed, they were always being

told that being upset was no excuse for behaving badly, that

the should be sent to prison in case she tried to do it again.

‘But, Poppy,’ said Octavia carefully, ‘she’s — not well.

You know her own baby died, poor little Juliet, she’s never really got over that, it’s all very complicated.’

‘Just because she lost her baby doesn’t make it all right for

her to take ours,’ said Poppy. ‘You’re too nice, Mummy,

that’s your trouble.’

‘Not really,’ said Octavia. ‘She was my best friend for an

awfully long time, you know. I can’t forget that.’

‘Mum, she kidnapped Minty,’ said Gideon, his face very

reproachful. ‘That’s an awful thing to do to your best

friend. That’s a crime.’

‘But she didn’t exactly kidnap her,’ said Octavia, ‘and it

wasn’t quite a crime. Just — well, almost one.’

‘Well, I think it was a proper one,’ said Gideon.

‘So do I,’ said Poppy.

It was so remarkable to find them agreeing on anything,

Octavia wearily decided to leave it at that.

“There’s something else you have to know, I’m afraid,’ she said, and sat with an arm round each of them as she told them about their grandfather.

Tom drove her to the house in Hampstead; she had asked that her father should be taken there.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he said, as she

stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up to the first floor,

and the room where Felix lay.

‘No. No, thank you. I’d rather be on my own.’

‘Of course.’

She stood there, looking at him, this man whom she had

loved more than anyone in the world for much more than

half her life, this man who had made her what she was, for

better and for worse, and the pain began. It was so fierce

that she thought she simply couldn’t bear it, had to bite her

fist to stop herself crying out. All the cliches she had heard

and read, that it wasn’t really the person any more, that

what you saw was simply a shell, seemed to her to be so

much nonsense; it was her father who lay there, her

brilliant, loving, inspiring, demanding, wonderfully imperfect

father. Only he was powerless, helpless, unable to be

brilliant or loving or demanding any more, because he was

dead. He was gone, lost to her, and she could never have

him back. Never go to him for advice again, never argue

with him, listen to music with him, enjoy meals with him,

walk with him, tease him. Never hear his voice lift with

pleasure when she invited him to the house, never enjoy his

admiration, laugh at his fussing; it was over, he was over,

lost to her for ever, and she had never even said goodbye.

The last conversation they had had was the night before

the charity day; he had phoned to wish her good luck, to

say he wished he could be there with her, but it really

wasn’t his sort of thing. She knew that wasn’t actually the

reason: or not the whole reason. There were to be too

many uncomfortable elements for him in that day, preventing

him from going: Tom, Nico Cadogan, Marianne. She

hated them all, fiercely, for doing that, for keeping Felix

from her when he needed her most, hated especially

Marianne for being the person who had been allowed to be

with him, who had held his hand, soothed him, talked to

him.

She could remember her last words: “Bye Daddy,’ she

had said, ‘see you very soon,’ had been deliberately vague,

avoided designating a day in the week ahead, as she knew

he had wanted to do. ‘Goodbye darling,’ he had said, ‘and I

do hope it all goes wonderfully well. Now do get to bed

early, it’ll be a long exhausting day for you,’ and ‘Don’t fuss,

Daddy,’ she had said, laughing, and put the phone down.

‘Don’t fuss.’ Those were the last words, the very last words

he had had from her to carry with him to eternity: not

‘Thank you for everything,’ or ‘Now you take care of

yourself,’ or even ‘I love you.’

Just ‘Don’t fuss.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said aloud, her voice thick with tears,

‘and I do love you so very much.’ And then she bent and

kissed his cold forehead and said, ‘Goodbye,’ and half ran

out of the room, so full of anger and wretchedness she quite

literally did not know where she was.

She spent the evening on the phone, notifying people,

forming plans for the funeral; she felt feverish now, full of

energy, sleep seemed a remote possibility. She refused the

meal Tom offered her, managed to read to the twins, to put

Minty to bed, but she felt all the time so far removed from

reality, it was as if she was watching herself in a film or a

play. After a while people began to ring her, people who

had heard the news, who wanted to offer their sympathy;

she took the calls mechanically, listened to the platitudes,

mouthed her own in return.

Some time after midnight, Tom came in: ‘Come to bed,’

he said.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t possibly come to bed. What

would be the point? I couldn’t sleep.’

‘I thought perhaps we could talk about — well, about

your father,’ he said rather helplessly and then stopped.

‘Tom,’ she said, ‘you’re the last person I’d want to talk to

about my father. Now please go away and leave me alone.’

She felt most angry with him: him and Marianne of

course. The rush of emotion she had experienced when she

saw him in the caravan - the relief, the warmth, the astonishment that he could work such a miracle, be there,

appear from nowhere when she needed him so much - had

faded already; he had become again the person she could

not trust, did not need — and the person who had come

between her father and her. Until she had met Tom, she

thought that night, increasingly wretched, increasingly

remorseful, Felix and she had been together, perfectly

happy, all the world to one another; Tom it was who had

come between them, Tom who had driven them apart.

Had the marriage worked, had Tom still loved her, it

might have been justified; but Tom had proved faithless and

worthless and the whole thing in vain. Her father had been

right; she should have listened to him, stayed with him,

stayed safe, stayed properly loved.

She went to work next day; she felt she had to. She had

meetings later with the priest, with the undertaken,

solicitors, all the dreadful compulsory ritual that follows a

death. But for the morning at least she could pretend life

was normal; could smile and talk and pretend things were

the same.

Melanie, recognising this, recognising the therapy she

was providing piled her desk with memos, reports,

accounts, to be read, studied, made out; nothing difficult,

nothing dangerous, nothing that exposed her to a press that

only wanted to know about her baby being kidnapped by

her best friend.

Sarah Jane, magnificently, fought them off, lying, denying,

confusing them. ‘It’s all right,’ she said when Octavia

wearily thanked her at the end of the morning, ‘they’ll get

bored with it soon.’

Sandy phoned, awkwardly inarticulate, saying how sorry

he was; she thanked him, asked about Dickon.

‘He’s pretty upset. But Charles is here, that’s helping a

bit.’

‘And Louise?’

‘She’s all right,’ said Sandy briefly. ‘They — well, she was sent to Holloway, to the hospital wing. But probably she can go back to the Cloisters on bail.’

‘Poor Louise,’ said Octavia, and meant it.

Gabriel phoned too; to say he was sorry about her father,

to ask after Minty. She thanked him, rather formally, could

find nothing else to say to him. He had assumed an oddly

unreal quality; it seemed impossible now to believe she had

known him at all, let alone slept with him, laughed with

him, quarrelled with him, imagined herself, albeit briefly, to

be in love with him, all so recently ago.

Marianne phoned, several times; Octavia refused to speak

to her. She couldn’t bear the thought even of being in the

same room as her: Marianne who had been where she

should have been, said the things she should have said,

stolen her father’s last hours from her. She knew it was

absurd, illogical, hysterical, but she couldn’t help it; she

could no more have smiled at Marianne, listened politely to

anything she had to say, than danced on her father’s grave.

Tom, too, she could not speak to; as with Marianne, his

patience, his refusal to take any kind of offence made her

more angry, more outraged, not less. Finally, just as she was

leaving the office to go up to Hampstead, he got through

on her direct line.

‘Tom,’ she said, ‘Tom, will you please, please just leave

me alone.’

‘What about this evening, what do you want me to do?’

‘I don’t want you to do anything. I just want you to go

away,’ she said. ‘It’s all over, Tom, nothing’s changed.’

‘Octavia—’

‘Tom, I know you were wonderful over Minty. I know

you mean well now. But I don’t want to be with you any

more. Don’t you understand? Is it really so difficult?’

‘No, not really, I suppose,’ he said and rang off without

another word.

She arrived home at half past five, early enough to bath

Minty, play with her, put her to bed. Minty seemed totally

unaffected by her ordeal, indeed was exceptionally cheerful.

Her tooth had come through, her appetite was enormous and she was embarking on what was clearly destined to be

crawling, creeping on her stomach, with some rather

intensive help from the twins, who were each holding one

hand and one plump ankle and half pushing, half pulling her

along. Usually she would have been screaming indignantly;

tonight she was giggling and trying to cooperate.

‘It’s as if she knows how fortunate she is to be safely

home,’ said Caroline, smiling down at them indulgently.

Relief and remorse had transformed her rather brusque,

touchy personality into something rather softer and almost

sentimental; Octavia felt it unlikely it would last.

‘Yes, well, maybe she does. Has she been all right today?’

‘Perfectly all right. Really. You wouldn’t think anything

had ever happened to her. Oh, now before I forget, Mr

Fleming phoned. He’s going to be very late, he said to tell

you, probably not back until well after midnight. Dinner

with a client, at the Savoy, I think. Yes, the Savoy.’

‘Fine,’ said Octavia briskly, and wondered why, when

Tom was doing exactly what she had asked him to do, she

should feel so bleak and bereft at the prospect of spending

the evening all alone.

‘And Mr Cadogan phoned, wants to speak to you.’

‘Well, I don’t want to speak to him,’ said Octavia.

Nico rang again: at about seven thirty, while the twins were having their supper. Poppy answered the phone before Octavia could stop her. ‘Yes, she’s here, just hold on, will

you?’

Cursing, Octavia took the phone.

‘Octavia? Nico Cadogan. I’m so sorry about your father.’

‘Thank you,’ said Octavia.

‘You must be very — upset.’

‘I am, yes, Nico, as a matter of fact.’

Surely he must hear the hostility in her voice. He didn’t

appear to.

‘Look, I know Marianne wants to talk to you. I also

know you’re avoiding her for some reason.’

Octavia suddenly felt very angry. And oddly brave. It was

as if the anger in its white heat had burned out her careful

self-control, set her free to say and do what she wanted.

‘I wouldn’t say I was avoiding her, Nico. I simply don’t

want to talk to her.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Nico Cadogan calmly, ‘you don’t

have to say a word. Just listen. She has something very

important to tell you, apparently. I have no idea what it is,

because she won’t tell me. But it’s to do with your father.’

‘I don’t want to talk to Marianne about my father,’ said

Octavia, ‘and I would be grateful, Nico, if you would stay

out of this anyway. It’s nothing to do with you. Absolutely

nothing at all.’

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there,’ said Nico. ‘It is

something to do with me, because it’s distressing Marianne

considerably that you won’t speak to her. And that, in turn,

distresses me.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t care very much if either of you is

distressed,’ said Octavia. ‘I don’t see you have anything

much to be distressed about. Actually. I mean, I’ve just lost

my father. For ever. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye