Not Quite Nice (27 page)

Part Three – Mayday

23

Faith remained in a coma, unable to provide any information about what had happened when she had been surprised by whoever had come into her house and attacked her.

The one certain thing was that either Faith had left her front door open, or the perpetrator had had keys, so naturally Alfie was brought in for questioning. Later in the afternoon he was arrested, taken into the police station and subjected to hours of questioning about the assault upon his mother.

Once the police had finished making their forensic investigations in the Bellevue-Sur-Mer house, Sally and Theresa went in to clean up the mess.

Sally found herself again rearranging Faith’s things which had been swept on to the floor, and folding clothes to put back into the open and sometimes upturned drawers. Up in the bedroom there was a lot of blood. The mat had to be destroyed, as it was sodden. They changed the sheets and blankets on the bed, which were also bloodstained. Whoever had attacked Faith had obviously surprised her while she was having a nap, or lying on top of the bed reading.

Theresa and Sally spoke to one another in short sharp phrases – horrible, oh dear, look at this, shall we? Neither woman could really take in what appeared to have happened here: a frail old woman battered by her own son.

Both women were spinning the facts through their heads, sorry that they had been so hard on their own children, who were surely incapable of anything as bad as this atrocity.

‘I hope it’s not my fault,’ said Sally.

‘How could it be?’ asked Theresa.

‘I shouldn’t have interfered.’

‘You helped Faith out by buying the house so she could afford a little fun. Where’s the harm in that?’

‘It’s not what Alfie wanted.’

‘But it’s what Faith wanted. We cannot live our lives to please our children. And think about it, Sally, if we all went around doing everything to please them they’d hate us for that too.’

‘And, when you think about it, what difference could it make to
his
life whether she bought or rented? It’s mad.’

When they had finished making the place look smart and clean again, together they phoned the hospital only to find there was no change in Faith’s condition.

Then they locked up – having made sure to get a locksmith in, the same one who had fitted Theresa’s lock on the day she had been attacked on the steps, and secured the door with brand-new keys.

When Sally got home, Marianne was waiting.

‘I’d better tell you the truth,’ she announced. ‘There isn’t going to be a wedding. There never was. I made it all up on the spur of the moment. I was trying to divert your attention from what was
really
going on. But now you’ll have to find out, as, it’ll all become pretty obvious now that Ted’s run off.’

Sally was bewildered and said as much.

‘I am Sian’s mystery assistant.’

‘You’re what?’ Sally was very put out to think that she had been kept out of a secret shared between her daughter and her friend.

‘Naturally when I applied for the job I used Dad’s surname, not yours. But once I got the job I admitted to Sian you were my mother. I knew she was sure to find out sooner or later. Afterwards she told me she came to see you and laid down some pretty strong hints, but you never picked them up. And so she suggested we both continue to keep it quiet.’

Sally felt hurt and insulted, both by her friend and her daughter.

‘You were the spy she sent to keep a watch out for Ted?’

Marianne shrugged.

‘I have to say you didn’t do a very good job,’ said Sally.

‘I did everything I could. But he’s a blokey bloke. His own man. No one could have foreseen his running off to Australia like that, and once he’d decided to do it, who could have stopped him?’

‘So what was the point of your spying mission then?’

‘Oddly enough,’ Marianne continued as though Sally had not spoken, ‘I think it was your persuading him to buy the boat which started off Ted’s yearning for independence. Buying the boat was the first big secret he kept from her.’

‘Apart from a hundred and forty-three female tourists,’ said Sally, feeling her indignation rising.

So now everything that had happened to Ted was all her fault!

‘How is Sian?’ asked Sally. ‘Have you seen her since you came back?’

‘She’s pretty edgy, naturally enough. She keeps saying Ted’s gone off “for some space to breathe”. She keeps repeating things like “he needs to get back to his roots” and all the usual excuses middle-aged wives give for errant husbands. I imagine I’ll have a lot of work to do over the next few weeks, both in providing comfort and doing the work which Sian will be unable to do.’

Sally felt appalled by her daughter’s coolness, but said nothing.

‘You must have arrived here in Bellevue-Sur-Mer bright and early.’

‘I came back last night, actually. I was always meant to be coming here and working with Sian today. Things changed so suddenly though. Now it is vital I am here.’

‘Where did you spend the night?’

‘If it’s any of your business, I was in a hotel.’

‘You should have stayed here. You don’t need to waste money on hotels.’

‘It was late. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘And it was you who let Sian think that nothing was going on between Ted and Jessica?’

‘Nothing
was
going on between Ted and Jessica.’

‘Come on, Marianne! You saw them! Always flirting, partnering one another in the Cookery Club.’

‘Oh, you and your silly Cookery Club. I have no idea who Jessica is. That she chose the same day as Ted to leave town is nothing to do with him.’

‘Oh! You know that for certain, do you?’

‘As a matter of fact, Mother, I do.’ Marianne calmly picked up her handbag and made for the door. ‘And now I’d better get back to work. I fear that today poor Mrs Kelly is going to be in no state to make sensible business decisions.’

She left, and Sally angrily threw her cup down on to the table.

Luckily it failed to break.

Theresa went up to see David. She knew it wasn’t the same kind of pain, but having been duped by Brian, she felt somehow connected with David’s loss of Carol, and – having been there during the whole flirtation, but blind to it all – felt almost as though it had been her own fault.

She expected to find a desolate man, alone and crying, but he was pacing the room, raging, flinging things at the wall and reacting with fury to everything other than the actual loss of his wife.

‘I bought her the clothes she ran off in. And the suitcases. It’s common theft. Why should that unctuous pimp swagger round carrying my Louis Vuitton suitcase?’

Theresa suggested making a cup of tea.

‘I paid thousands of dollars for that car,’ he snarled at her as she filled the kettle. ‘It’s a Jaguar, for Christ’s sake. An icon. And I need it. How dare she take my only form of transport to cavort around with that libidinous Lothario?’

Theresa again tried to appease David, but his temper grew and grew, till suddenly it appeared to reach a crescendo.

Then, quietly, he sat down. ‘Give me the yellow pages,’ he said.

Theresa handed over the big book. David rifled through the pages.

‘I’m going to put a detective on to them,’ he said calmly. ‘I want that automobile back. Why should that smooth-talking Limey loafer have my Jaguar convertible?’

David ran his fingers down the columns, then picked up the phone. He looked up at Theresa as though she was his secretary and said ‘Thanks anyway. I’ll be fine on my own from now on.’

He fluttered his fingers at her, as though to say ‘You are dismissed.’

Without even taking a sip of the tea she had made, Theresa went back to her lonely flat.

She sat at the glass-topped table, winding back every conversation she had had with Brian, realising that all his lovely comments, made while drinking in the brasserie the night before last, which she had thought were for her, were actually directed towards Carol. None of it, not one word had been for her at all.

‘
Sometimes something comes along, and you have to seize it, or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life
.’

Brian had been talking Carol into running off with him.

Why had Theresa thought it was a coded message for her?

How stupid could you get?

Carol was sending or receiving a text too, wasn’t she, a few minutes before Brian walked in. An assignation, perhaps? Or warning him that she wasn’t alone?

Theresa let out a little sob. Why on earth
would
Brian have been flirting with her? Let’s face it, she was fat, old and washed-up.

Theresa felt even more idiotic now, knowing that she had been overcome by wishful thinking and had let her imagination run away with her.

Given half a chance, anyone would elope with Carol. She was gorgeous. Tall, witty, slim, stylish, blonde, glamorous, with a perfect figure . . . she was everything desirable in a woman.

After about an hour mulling it all over and making herself more and more unhappy, Theresa decided she must have something else to focus on or she would go mad.

She phoned Sally to ask whether there was any news about Faith’s condition. ‘Should we go in and try to see her, do you think?’

Sally told her no, the hospital had been very firm that, as Faith was in intensive care, only family members could visit her.

‘Oh dear,’ said Theresa. ‘While Alfie’s helping the police, that means no one.’

‘She’s unconscious, I suppose,’ said Sally, ‘but I do think it might be nicer if someone could be there, to hold her hand or something.’

‘I wish there was something we could do about it all,’ said Theresa. ‘Anything.’

‘I know,’ replied Sally. ‘It’s all awful. There isn’t a happy face to be found in the whole town.’

When Theresa put down the phone she thought about it. What had been written in the stars above, to make today so awful for everyone?

Faith was in hospital and still in a serious condition; Sally was unhappy because of Faith being attacked, and in her house; Sally’s son had disappeared with Zoe, a woman old enough to be his grandmother, not to mention as mad as a box of frogs; Theresa herself was upset about being such a fool about Brian, and feeling guilty for having had Imogen over here to stay, where her card had been cloned; William was alone while Benjamin fought his demons in rehab; David had lost his very glamorous and witty wife to Brian. And although Theresa had never got on with Sian, still she felt terrible for her. The poor woman must be in shock after her husband had upped and left for Australia without so much as a by your leave.

Theresa put the kettle on and made herself some tea. She looked down at her wonderful wrought-iron and glass table and mulled over the thought that it was odd how something so beautiful could have come from a shop run by a drug dealer.

She took her cup and sat.

She wished she had a crossword or something to pass the time. Or even better wished there was something she could physically do to make things better.

She grabbed a notepad and decided to write a shopping list, then she could take a bus to Cap 3000 perhaps and wander round the shopping mall, anything . . . as long as she could get out of the flat and out of Bellevue-Sur-Mer for an hour or two.

She rooted in her bag and pulled out her turquoise pen – she was happy to have it back, the one little thing which brought her a tiny ounce of satisfaction on this miserable day.

As she rolled the pen around in her hand she realised that she hadn’t seen it since that day months ago when she was knocked down and robbed.

It was one of the things snatched, inside her stolen handbag.

Her heart skipped a beat.

She thought back to the theft, and the man pushing her down the steps.

Brian had been the first person on the scene that day, apparently her knight in shining armour. That had been their first meeting. He had been at the top of the steps when she was pushed by the surly swarthy man in the leather jacket – the other drug dealer.

Brian didn’t move in till
after
that incident.

She
had
thought Brian must have picked up the pen in the flat, when he was staying here as her lodger.

But she was robbed
before
Brian moved in.

Brian had never been in the flat at the same time as the pen.

So how had he come by it?

Certainly not by picking it up while staying in the flat.

She inspected the pen again, this time taking out a magnifying glass and double-checking the inscription on the silver band to see that those really were her initials.

T.S.

Yes. It was her pen.

It had been taken from her by the man who rob­­­­bed her.