Almost a Crime (62 page)

someone to talk to; Gabriel had phoned several times, but

she simply didn’t feel ready for the emotional pressure of

seeing him. She had begun to recognise slowly, and with a

sense of dreadful irony, the true implications and complexity

of the loss of Louise from her life, Louise who had

always listened, always understood: who had counselled,

sympathised, teased, been on her side. Who would, who

could replace her? It was not just a betrayal, she could see

that now; it was a death in her life, and one she would

never recover from.

‘I just wondered,’ said Gabriel now, still talking to

Melanie, ‘I just wondered if you had any idea if she was

avoiding me. I rang her three times over the weekend and

she just said she wanted to be alone.’

‘Look,’ said Octavia, forcing a smile, trying to sound

bright and in charge of things, ‘I am here, you know. I can

talk. You could try asking me yourself.’

‘I did,’ said Gabriel, ‘all weekend.’

‘He did,’ said Melanie.

Octavia burst into tears.

Later, when Melanie had gone — ‘You can have ten

minutes, Gabriel, then I’ll be in with a large bowl of cold

water to throw over you both, we really do have work to

do,’ — and she was sipping some strong coffee, she said, ‘I’m

sorry. I just felt so wretched all weekend. I feel as if I’ve had

- no, I’ve still got - some terrible illness. There’s a lot I

haven’t told you. It’s so — oh, I don’t know. I’m sorry. But

it is lovely to see you.’

‘Well, it’s not bad seeing you,’ he said, ‘and it’s all right, I

understand. I think. But when can I see you? Or are you

still not ready?’

‘I would like it,’ she said quickly. ‘I really would. It’s

difficult though, and the children are very upset, specially Poppy.’

‘Of course they are. But they could surely spare you for

an hour or two? This evening maybe.’

‘That would be lovely,’ said Octavia. ‘Yes, we could

have an early supper. But I mustn’t be long.’

She and Tom had agreed to meet that evening at home,

to talk, to try and decide what to do with their lives. Or

what was left of them.

‘You’re on. How about high tea? Very appropriate. I’ll

pick you up here — when?’

‘Six?’

‘Fine.’

She reached up to kiss him; the door opened.

‘I said ten minutes,’ said Melanie. ‘Sarah Jane, bucket of

cold water please.’

‘I’m going,’ said Gabriel. ‘Right now.’

He disappeared, his shambling body in its unpressed

trousers and checked country shirt incongruous in the chic

office. Octavia looked after him smiling. He was so …

‘Nice,’ said Melanie, looking after him. ‘Really nice.

Very sexy. As sexy as his voice. Just what you need,

Fleming. Now come on, we have work to do, remember?’

Nico Cadogan had been heard to describe himself a

mischief connoisseur. ‘I would never make the stuff myself,

but I do know a good sample when I see it. Like wine. I

can smell it.’

He did of course make it himself from time to time; but

he found the true pleasure in adding to a brew, stirring in

whatever ingredients came to hand. And just at the

moment, he found himself confronted by an excellent

sample. The fun to be extracted by helping, just slightly

unorthodoxly, a man whom he not only liked and admired,

both personally and professionally, but who was also loathed

and under attack by the rival for his lady love’s hand. ‘This,

Cadogan,’ he said, smiling into the mirror that Monday

morning, ‘is truly vintage stuff.

It had been true, what he had told Marianne on Saturday;

he was in love with her. She seemed to him what he had

been seeking for many years: beautiful, intelligent, charming

and — most surprising of all perhaps — nice. Extremely

nice. Her struggles over her disloyalty to Felix — however

justified — had been tiresome but at the same time infinitely

touching and rather pleasing. There was, in spite of her

sense of humour, and sense of fun, an underlying seriousness

to her. She thought carefully about everything, both

large and small; none of her judgments was reckless or even

haphazard, whether they concerned a choice of pudding, of

politics — or something much more personal. He loved her

too for her intense concern for her children. Nico had no

children, no experience of true parental love, having been

raised in nanny-run nurseries and dispatched to school at

eight, but he could sense nevertheless that the way

Marianne directed her family was the right one.

And then she was easy to please: in a sophisticated

woman it was a rare quality. She enjoyed things: food,

wine, clothes, conversation, her wretched golf, and, it

seemed, sex. He was quite shaken by how wonderfully sexy

she was. He had expected responsiveness, a capacity for

pleasure, a desire to please; he had not expected quite the

level of energy, the exuberance and - as she slowly grew

more familiar to him — the creativity.

‘Intelligent, that’s what it is, that body of yours,’ he had

said, stroking it, smiling at her, as they drank buck’s fizz in

bed, and she had said intelligent maybe, but it had seen

thirty-nine summers and it wasn’t quite what it had been.

‘Nonsense. So you were married at—’ and she had said

eighteen, she was a child bride, and that her parents had

been very worried about it. ‘Quite right, too,’ he had said,

so they should have been. What kind of man would have

taken advantage of someone so young, so inexperienced,

and landed her with a child just a year later?

‘Ten months later, actually,’ she had said, ‘and I wanted

it, I wanted that desperately. And I was right, you see. Here

I am with three nearly grownup friends.’ Adding more soberly that she felt she was hardly grown up herself.

‘I find you quite grown up enough,’ he had said, and

removing her champagne glass, had set about proving it.

That was the occasion he had discovered the inventiveness.

He

was thinking about it now, when the phone rang: it

was Felix.

Nico Cadogan was not a natural villain. He felt a stab of

guilt. ‘Good morning, Felix.’

‘Look, just a quick call. I want you to do me a favour.’

‘Yes?’

‘Reconsider resigning your account from Fleming Cotterill.’

The guilt eased. ‘I’m sorry, Felix. I have no intention of

doing that.’

‘I don’t think you understand. The man is not to be

trusted. I wouldn’t let him have a farthing of my own

money. Not now.’

‘But why not? What’s he done?’

‘He has set out to destroy Octavia, destroy their

marriage.’

‘That doesn’t affect his business judgment.’

‘I disagree. He’s a liar, a cheat. Not the sort of person

you’d want to do business with.’

‘Felix, the City is full of liars and cheats. All conducting

their financial affairs with great acumen. Look, if you want

to do down your own son-in-law, for what are clearly

purely personal reasons, you must do so. I’m not interested

in helping you.’

‘But it’s a lot worse than you think. Far worse things

have been going on. He—’

‘Felix, no offence, but I really don’t want grisly

extramarital details just now. Too early, in the day and in

the week and indeed any time. I’m sorry. Good morning to

you.’

Absolutely no guilt left. Felix was a monster. And in

danger of making a total fool of himself. When it came to Octavia, the brilliant mind was dull and blunted. It was almost frightening.

Marianne phoned; briefly, he told her what Felix had

said. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘poor Felix. I’ll have to talk to

him. Nico, what have I done?’

‘What any sensible person would have done,’ he said.

‘The man’s mad. Now don’t start feeling guilty. He still has

Octavia.’

He still had Octavia, Felix thought, putting the phone

down with a hand that shook horribly. He felt very dizzy

suddenly; dizzy and faint.

He found it very hard to believe what Marianne had just

said to him, what she had done. That she could not

continue to see him while he was working so savagely

against Tom. And when he had asked her how she knew,

she told him. That Nico Cadogan had told her.

‘And why is he talking to you? Are you seeing him? A lot

of him?’

And she had taken a deep breath and said that yes, she

was seeing him. ‘I do realise you will probably never

forgive me. But I simply cannot continue any longer in our relationship while this — insanity over Octavia continues.’

‘What insanity?’ he had said. ‘I’m only trying to protect

her, help her, get that - that creature out of her life, where

he can’t hurt her any more.’

‘You can’t protect her,’ she had said, her voice very low,

very intense. ‘I’ve been telling you for so long, she’s an

adult, Felix, she’s thirty-six years old, she’s not yours to

protect any more, leave her alone for just once in her life,

let her be. Let her work things out for herself in her own

way.’

‘I am shocked at you,’ he had said simply, ‘shocked and

very hurt. She would be too. As you must know.’

The shock and hurt he felt himself were far greater on

Octavia’s behalf than on his own.

‘I’m going out,’ Tom said to Barbara briefly, ‘be about an

hour. Then Aubrey and I have a lunchtime meeting. I don’t want to be disturbed by anybody.’

‘Tom, Nico Cadogan phoned. Twice. He wants to speak

to you very urgently.’

Tom really couldn’t face telling Cadogan of all people

that Fleming Cotterill was about to go belly up. Not until it

was beyond argument.

‘Tell him I’m out of town,’ he said, ‘tell him I’ll phone

him later this afternoon.’

It would be done by then: the bankruptcy petition would

have been filed. There would be no going back.

Without anything being known quite for sure, the talk had

begun about the Fleming marriage; had anything been

heard about it, people were saying; and then did anyone

think that whatever it was might be true; and then had

anyone heard what had actually happened; fed, perversely,

by the marriage’s apparent earlier perfection, by jealousy, by

resentment, by schadenfreude the rumour grew, until it was

‘of course you knew’, and ‘of course I always said’ and ‘of

course it was inevitable’; and thus in days, hours almost, the

story became fact, discussed and debated in restaurants,

across bars, over lunch, through dinner. The details were

hazy, the possibility of a break-up were vague, nobody

knew quite what had brought it about (although a lot of

people knew people who did), only that something

assuredly must have done. As both the Flemings were

constantly and separately with all manner of people, stories

ran swiftly wild: Tom was having an affair with a researcher,

Octavia with an editor; Tom had been seen with an actress,

Octavia with an entrepreneur. Most people were sorry, a

few were pleased; hardly anyone was indifferent. The

marriage had been too well known, too much of an entity

for that; it was something impossible not to have a view on.

One of the people who had a view — and who was if not

pleased, then certainly not sorry - was Lauren Bartlett. She

had always found Octavia sanctimonious, too good to be

true, undeserving of Tom’s easy, charming devotion. And the marriage had always seemed just a bit too perfect: they just didn’t come like that. Not in real life.

Tom had been certainly looking a bit rough recently, she

reflected. He was obviously under a lot of strain. And he

was actually so loyal to Octavia, supporting her in her

career while his own was so demanding.

Well, it was gloves-offtime. She’d been waiting a while

for the opportunity to get to work on Tom Fleming.

Absolutely one of the most attractive men she knew. It

wasn’t just the looks and the charm, not even the style; it

was that slight touch of awkwardness under the smooth that

was so tantalising. A bit of grit in the mix. Very sexy. A

quick lunch maybe, that would be best, under the guise of a

possible new contract. At least she could find out if there

was someone else. Someone serious, that was. She could use

the device of the friend with the account, the one with the

chemist’s chain. Probably too late, but she could string

things along. And Tom had obviously been desperate for

the business.

Yes, that would be the way to go. She’d ring Tom’s

mobile straight away.

He answered it at once; there was an odd hum in the

background.

‘Tom?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’

‘Tom, it’s Lauren. Lauren Bartlett. Hi. Tom, I just

wondered if—’

‘Lauren, I’m sorry, I’m a bit tied up right now.’

‘Of course. It’s just that I spoke to my friend again, the

one who might have wanted to appoint you, you know?’

‘Oh, yes?’ He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

‘There still might be a chance. If you’re interested, I can

fix a meeting, I think.’