Getting Home (37 page)

‘Of course, poor lamb.' John was completing his own assessment of the clientele. Three bankers, on the house table. The chef must be branching out. ‘How did you find out?'

‘This.' She pulled the letter from her bag and dropped it in front of him. ‘In the studio mail. I mean, she sent it, of course. The other woman. This has destroyed my life.' John was in delight, he was bouncing in his chair; the sample dialogue was going great.

‘You know her?' He picked up the letter with a decent show of distaste and scanned the lines, thinking how truly pathetic heterosexuals could be, how pitifully vulnerable in these degrading attacks of erotomania, how absurdly unable to cast their sexual relationships in the proper recreational mould.

‘Not really. Her kids were at school with Damon.'

‘Uh huh. And what's she like?'

‘Gross. I mean, really fat, you know. Messy. And obvious. The kind men like, tits everywhere.'

‘Attractive?'

‘John, she's
fat.'

‘Right, right. So – and does she do anything?'

‘Some ridiculous poxy run-down garden place in Westwick.'

‘How many kids?'

‘Oh, I don't know.' Her memory suggested a picture of Gemma mountainous at the centre of a mob of snornosed filthy infants. ‘A lot.'

John was seeing a blurred newsprint picture next to a 24-point headline; the protocol for photographing the mistress in these stories was something dishevelled and unposed, possibly indicative of the fatal charms but fundamentally unflattering. There would be plenty of time for the fully styled portraits if the romance ever came to anything. Right now the proper thing would be something rather rough-hewn featuring breasts, flowers and some cheeky-grinning spawn of sin who might perhaps clean up into decent Norman Rockwell types. ‘Good;' he confirmed. ‘Good. So what do you want to do?'

‘I'm heartbroken,' Allie told him with emphasis. ‘I'm devastated.' Few women had ever looked less devastated. She was as bright as laser, as up as a name in lights, as trim as a tender off Saint Tropez. Her suit was in zingy tamarillo, of the new one-button, super-short style. Whatever surgical procedure had taken place over the summer had given her the cheekbones she had never had before. ‘It was such a shock,' she continued. ‘I thought we had the ideal marriage. Ted was a wonderful husband, a great father. I thought we loved each other.'

The waiter bustled over with garnished plates. The staff were swathed from waist to floor in tight spotless white aprons which revealed a tantalising triangle of bum cleft at the rear and caused them to walk geisha-like with many tiny steps, delicately wiggling the pelvis.

‘Why don't you forgive him?' John suggested.

‘Isn't that a bit … fragrant?' she asked. ‘I don't want to be put in the box with all those politicians'wives and Kennedy women. I can't be a role model for the women of the twenty-first century if I just kind of wallow around forgiving all the time. I hate that, that downtrodden “Stand By Your Man” thing, it's sort of demeaning, don't you think?'

‘Family values,' he proposed. ‘People love 'em, don't ask me why.'

‘Yes, they do, don't they?' Her plump lips, glistening with balm, corrugated in perplexity. The
Family First
audiences actually went ‘aah'over family values, like they did over kittens or puppies.

‘How would it work out, a divorce?'

‘Oh, OK, I suppose.' Her little forehead, nerves paralysed with cattle virus to preserve the carefree serenity of youth, registered nothing, but the eyes triangled as she thought of the riches of Oak Hill. ‘Men are so devious, aren't they? I made him put everything in joint names of course but they always find ways to hide things. Besides, I don't want a divorce; I want our lovely life back. I want things to be like they were. I love Ted, after all, and I'm sure he loves me.'

‘So this woman, would she talk, d'ya think?'

‘Her?' Allie demanded indignantly, affronted that even crumbs of public attention might be gathered up by her antagonist. ‘Why should she?'

‘Well, she sent you that letter. She's looking for trouble, isn't she?'

‘Not that kind of trouble …'

‘If her place is run down she'd be grateful for the cash. Some PR smartie gets hold of her, she could rake it in.'

This was not at all the scenario Allie had envisaged. The notion that some ungroomed flesh-mountain might command the tabloids, and on top be handsomely paid for it, pained her deeply. A paparazzi stakeout down on Alder Reach was a dire blasphemy against the natural order of the world. As the waiter removed their plates she gazed into the middle-distance in aggrieved silence, forcing some water into her eyes, letting her lips quiver. It was possible to see the effect in a chip of the mirror set artfully behind the carved tracery of the rood-screen.

Another course was flourished before them, pats of fish like white baby's palms balanced on little hills of pulped vegetable with rills of sauce dribbled around and two chives crossed on top.

‘What I'm thinking,' Redfern hastened to bring comfort, ‘is that you should keep control of this. Nobody elseknows about this woman, right?' He tented his fingers. Analysis, that was what was going on here, just analysis.

‘Nobody who counts,' she confirmed, recalling that of late she had seen Stephanie Sands in the shadow of the flesh-mountain, sinking to her own level indeed.

‘Well then,' – he drew his chair closer and leaned over his poised stack of food, indicating that none should earwig on the master plan – ‘the way to do this, it seems to me, is for
you
to leave him …'

‘Leave Ted?' She recoiled, wondering how the audience would take the news. ‘Isn't that a bit … radical?'

‘Sure, sure. But that's who you are, isn't it? You're assertive, in control, a shit-kicking woman of the nineties. Your husband strays – you don't collapse in a heap. You move out. Move out to a secret address. Issue a statement through somebody – your agent, if you like that you're deeply wounded by this discovery, you love your husband but you need time to think, yeah?'

‘Y-e-s-s,' Allie assented, beginning to get the picture in focus.

‘We keep it low key, maybe a couple of paras down-column in the TV news. No names, no pack-drill. Let the tabloids run with it if they choose, it'll take'em a day to get the name, minimum. Meanwhile hubby comes crawling around on the forgiveness trip and, in due time, you move back. That's where we come in – the double spread, overcoming the troubles in your marriage, more together than ever. When's your show airing again?'

‘A month:'

‘Perfect. Can you get the bedroom redecorated?'

‘F-a-a-a-b,' Allie said slowly, mentally running through the timing. She reached over and pinched his hand between her fingers, the furthest she could go in conveying affection. ‘Utterly f-a-a-a-b. John, I love you. You are a dear friend.'

‘I'm going to leave you,' Allie informed Ted at 9.10 am the next morning. ‘You've been having an affair and I can't stand to be under the same roof a minute longer.'

The denial was on the tip of Ted's tongue but he bit down on it. She was leaving him. Why spoil a good thing?

‘I've read that disgusting letter you wrote,'

‘What letter?' he asked, knowing full well but not daring to believe it.

‘The letter you wrote that Lieberman bitch,' she snapped, groping for the correctly wounded tone. ‘Or are there several women you've been pestering with love letters?'

‘No, just the one,' he confirmed in haste, trying for a hang-dog look. If, heaven knew how, Gemma ever got the idea that he had even looked at another woman this bounty would be wasted. He was no cliché, no pussy-whipped harasser trying to escape from his suburban sex desert, but a man of rare taste and intellect paying loyally for a youthful error of judgment, viz, his marriage. Gemma must understand that, or she would never have let his letter reach his wife. Hope, there was hope at last.

‘Don't try to find me. I need time to think.' Allie swept out of the door to the car where the driver had already stowed her bag.

He stared joyfully at the closed door. There is a God, he thought, smacking right fist into left palm. Then he jumped into the Discovery and sped away to Sun Wharf. An Audi Quattro had shunted an old Ford halfway in on the 31, which was the end of the joyous impulse to tear down the road to freedom, but he had Ultimate Opera II in the CD player and he picked out tracks 2, 10, 17, 23 and 29, all the Mozart, plus the Rossini, 21; and tapped his fingers happily on the windowsill. In the circumstances, his progress was exceptional, because his ear-to-ear grin spooked the other drivers who changed lanes to get away from the maniac. Normal drivers never smiled in a tailback on the 31.

‘What am I going to do?' Miss Helens demanded of her empty playground at 3.30 pm. ‘Mrs Parson hasn't called, we haven't any instructions …'

‘What a shame.' Stephanie had lingered to savour the moment. Max and Sweetheart were playing vertical hopscotch, a game Rod's daughter had recently invented, involving a bean bag and a climbable object, in this case the frame. Chalice Parsons was sitting on the playground bench, white-faced and trembling. She was ripping the hem of her dress to rags for extra emphasis.

‘I need to close the school for the afternoon,' Miss Helens protested. ‘I have a doctor's appointment.'

‘Oh dear. That is a problem,' Stephanie agreed with her sweetest smile.

‘I've got this number for Mrs Parsons but there's no answer.'

‘She must be out.'

Chalice began keening like an Arab widow.

‘And there's no answer from Mr Parsons either.'

‘He must be at work.'

‘We called his mobile.'

A struggle took place in Stephanie's heart. One faction held that it would be most excruciatingly embarrassing for Allie and Ted if, when they had wronged her so gravely, she returned good for evil by sheltering Chalice until they returned home. The opposing faction moved that Ted and Allie were so morally deficient that they would feel very little if any embarrassment in those circumstances, and that taking Chalice home with her would in addition oblige Miss Helens, to whom she also owed no favours. The opposition also accused her of inverted masochism in even considering helping out here. She allowed it to prevail.

‘We must be going,' she said cheerfully, ‘Come on kids, into the car.'

Miss Helens abandoned all pride and followed them to the pavement. ‘Mrs Sands,' she begged, ‘I know you sometimes take the Parsons girls.
Would
you …'

‘How could I possibly expose Max and Courtenay to …' and she indicated Chalice, now screaming from the prone position on the ground, ‘such a disruptive influence, especially when they've both been so recently traumatised?' Stephanie watched while Max attentively handed Sweetheart into his infant seat and buckled her safety belt with chivalrous care. She moved a few steps back towards The Magpies'lynch gate, out of the children's ear-shot. ‘And, of course, Max has had his problems here as well, hasn't he? Mr Fuller and I both feel our children need special care right now. We really must put them first.'

She had played the ultimate trump, the right of a parent to put the needs of her own child above any other consideration. Miss Helens coloured magenta, twitched ingratiatingly, muttered assurances and began sidling crabwise away from the Cherokee. Chalice's ululations were piercing, the noise echoed weirdly along the empty street. Stephanie sighed. ‘I can't bear her being so upset,' she admitted at last. ‘Chalice! Come on, you can come with us.'

Three hours later, at home, she got a call from Ted, in the lather of embarrassment which usually covered a Westwick husband when he was required to do something more than pay for one of his children. She listened, idly wondering how many words he would use before being obliged to say ‘sorry'. Or if, in fact, he would be able to avoid the hardest word altogether. Which is what he did.

‘I do apologise, Stephanie,' he granted with excessive graciousness. ‘I do hope we haven't put you out. I had no idea this had happened until I got the school's message. Cherish is still at St Nicholas's. Allie must have had some misunderstanding with the help. I'll be back for them as soon as I can. You're not going out, are you?'

‘Where would I go, Ted?' she asked without remorse. ‘I schedule my meetings in school time.'

‘Well – uh – I'll be right over as soon as I can. Hope the traffic isn't too bad.'

Waiting, she screwed up her nerves. A confrontation was necessary, avoiding it would do more damage in the end. She was learning the interesting principle of vengeance, that an evil deed must be paid for, otherwise the evil of it would actually increase. She went upstairs to Stewart's desk, and took out the letter left with his will.

‘Stay a minute, Ted,' she invited him, when he arrived 90 minutes later, flustered and irritable but still giving off the vinous aroma of a good lunch.

‘Oh no, I wouldn't trouble you …' Chalice, comatose in front of the television, showed no sign of helping him make a quick getaway.

‘Perhaps you already have,' Stephanie responded, indicating a seat at the end of the table and moving a stack of plant brochures so she could look at him directly but keep a physical barrier between them.

‘I don't understand …'

‘I
didn't understand, Ted, when I found that Stewart had written me this sweet letter in case anything ever happened to him. Now something has happened to him, of course I read it.' She passed him the page. ‘What I didn't understand was the bit about out house – see, down at the end there?'

‘It's a very good letter.' Ted was wishing he had Stewart's way with words. ‘There's still no news, I suppose—'