Seven For a Secret (23 page)

‘And me?' Kate said, from the lazy depths of an armchair.

‘Well, yes if you like,' she told them. ‘You won't mind being on your own for a bit will you Mother? We'll be back very soon, I'm sure, and it is getting a bit chilly—'

‘Well . . .' Don't you dare want to come with us, Heather's less sensible inner voice was demanding. ‘Better be someone here in case the clinic phones,' she suggested, hating herself. Delia was frowning, calculating, but her slippered feet were tucked comfortably under her body and as she was settled with the book on the sofa, she showed no signs of unfolding herself to come with them. ‘I'll take the mobile phone in case you need to contact me,' Heather went on, heading determinedly for the door. ‘Come on then girls, don't want to miss it do we?'

From the road, Margot's garden was lit up like an airport and outside the cricket pavilion, across the road close to the playground, groups of after-match drinkers were staring at the bright spotlight on top of the crane that could be seen slowly winching itself high, clear of the trees down by the river. As Heather, Kate and Suzy made their way towards the rectory, they could hear small rumbles of disapproval from across the road.

‘They always
complain
,' Kate grumbled. ‘Don't they have any sense of fun?'

‘People don't like anything that's different,' Suzy agreed.

Heather thought they were right. ‘I expect they'll all be happily queuing to see the movie when it comes out. Or getting the video and saying to all their friends “Look that's the lane by the church” and that sort of thing.'

The village seemed like a cage very suddenly, full of hostile people who were too wary of excitement, who thought that
different
equalled
threatening.
The watchers looked just like disapproving observers, looking out for signs of trouble at the edge of an illicit pop festival. She told herself it was her own peculiar mood, a feeling that she was on the edge of being overwhelmingly thrilled. Her jeans, as she strode up Margot's drive, were just a bit uncomfortably tight, chaffing rather pleasurably and reminding her that the overwhelming thrill was nothing but a purely transient sexual one. God, if he just so much as touched me, she suddenly thought, biting her lip at the idea and feeling glad that it was now dark enough for a blush not to show.

Iain wasn't in the small crowd by the river, Heather realized, as she peered through the half-dark and the shadows cast by the circles of spotlight that picked out groups of activity. Good thing, she tried to make herself think, but she then felt cross with him for not being there when he'd promised Kate he'd talk her through what was going on. Just one more example of his unreliability.

‘Everyone looks so . . . so
busy
,' Kate commented, watching all the faces full of earnest concentration, the chewing of pencil-ends, the consulting of notes and clipboards, the adjustment of cameras, the crane, the lighting.

‘Perhaps they'll give
us
something to do,' Suzy said, nervous in case they did just that.

‘What've
you
come for?' Tamsin, embarrassed to be caught swanning about in a crushed velvet dress and jailbait make-up, demanded of Suzy.

‘Iain asked us,' Suzy replied nonchalantly, looking the absurdly glamorous Tamsin up and down with an expression that told Heather and Kate that she was trying not to laugh. ‘Why are you all dressed up? Did you think they'd let
you
be in it?' Suzy giggled, unable to stop herself.

Tamsin looked haughty and glanced at Kate. ‘Well I don't see why not,' she told Suzy. ‘After all, I mean if Kate thinks
she
can get a part . . .'

Kate glared furiously at Tamsin and flounced off in the direction of the action and the river. The two younger girls followed at a safe distance and, left alone, Heather shivered and folded her arms across her body, shoving her hands up her sweater sleeves for warmth.

‘You need a little drinky to keep you warm.' Margot appeared at her side, clutching a jug of steaming mulled wine and a couple of mugs. ‘Everyone will think it's coffee,' she whispered with a giggle. ‘Only giving it to the chosen few.'

‘You'd make a party out of anything, Margot,' Heather told her admiringly, gratefully accepting the warm, spicy drink. ‘If the Grim Reaper came calling, you'd invite him in and open the Bollinger.'

‘Got to have someone to drink with,' Margot told her. ‘Russell's not here – again. And anyway, what's wrong with being nice to Death – there's always that chance that Death just might be nice to me.'

‘Eternal paradise and harps and all that?' Heather asked.

Margot snorted. ‘Not bloody likely, just a decent spot not too uncomfortably close to the fires of hell, I should think. Come down to the river and let's see what they're all doing.'

Margot's river frontage was two hundred feet of stone steps and ornate balustrading, with chained gaps for access to Russell's Slipper launch and Simon's dinghy. Now it had been transformed into what looked like a small dock, with a canal barge which an over-eager stylist had decked out with more flowers and decorative enamel knick-knacks than any serious bargee would ever have found room for. Beyond it was moored a small Edwardian pleasure cruiser with a striped canopy, and a tray of drinks set out on a white ironwork table. Fierce spotlights exposed a crazing of dry lines on the decking, just as cruelly as the lines of age showed on women of a certain age in harshly lit rooms. Iain still wasn't anywhere to be seen and Heather felt uncomfortably conscious that she, Margot and their children were distinctly excess to requirements. She thought that any moment they would be asked to move along, as if they were gawping passers-by, ghoulishly hovering around at the scene of a gory murder.

‘Oh look, just like a real movie,' Margot suddenly said, nudging Heather's arm and pointing towards the crane. The director, or so she assumed, was climbing onto a small platform and being hoisted up above the crowd. He wore, to Margot's great delight, a leather jacket, black baseball cap, was smoking a baby cigar and carried a megaphone.

‘Did you know they still actually used those?' she asked Heather. ‘I thought they'd have gone out with Laurel and Hardy.'

‘No, I thought something more of a phone type of thing would be what they used, wouldn't you think? All hi-tech and terrifically cool. Of course they've probably got that as well. He probably likes the megaphone thing because it's
big
,' Heather said with a giggle. ‘You know what men are like . . .'

‘What
are
men like?' Iain suddenly appeared at her side and smiled at the two women.

‘
Men
are always adding
length
,' Margot informed him cheekily. ‘One way or another they're always at it – flashy cars, guns, truncheons, whatever.'

Iain laughed and put his hands up defensively. ‘Not me, I promise. Never felt the need.'

Heather feigned intense interest in the flurry of action as a man encased in a diving suit climbed heavily into a dinghy with a couple of technicians. She couldn't look at Iain, couldn't risk him giving her a conspiratorial wink that Margot just couldn't miss.

Kate crept up and stood next to her, with Simon a few loyal paces away. ‘What are they doing? Is someone going to jump in?' she asked.

‘That's the plan,' Iain told her, leaning close to her and pointing towards the boat which was motoring upstream towards the island. ‘It's supposed to be a chase sequence, which it won't at all resemble till it's all edited together. In fact, right now it'll look pretty slow. I'll give you a running commentary,' he promised her.

‘Lights! Run sound! Cue smoke!' the director yelled from his lofty podium.

‘Heavens, they really say it!' Heather whispered to Margot. The small boat chugged slowly back towards them, with Brian sitting up in the bows wafting a smoke machine across the water.

‘Supposed to be river mist,' Heather heard Iain explain in a whisper to Kate. She waited for Kate to make one of her accustomed teenage-rudeness replies along the lines of ‘Well believe it or not I can see that for myself,' but instead she just nodded and smiled. Good grief, thought Heather, please don't let her be turning into one of those women who play dumb to let men think everything they say is just so clever. Then she wondered if she was thinking this because it was Iain, or if it would be the same if Kate had been listening as avidly to Simon.

The man in the wetsuit stood up and prepared to jump into the river, just as a distant roaring sound was heard overhead. Heather smothered a giggle as the director shouted ‘Cut!'

‘Is that supposed to be part of the sound effects?' Kate commented to Iain. ‘If so it's not very, well, effective.'

‘No, it's Concorde running late out of Heathrow,' Heather told her, ‘You should know, you've been hearing it for years.'

Kate gave her a sharp look. ‘OK, OK, don't stress,' she said.

‘Respect for your mother,' Iain said to Kate with a teasing smile and a wagging finger. Again, Heather waited for the scowl and the suggestion that he at least naff off and mind his own, but instead the girl's face was lit by a broad and captivating smile.

‘Sorry, Mommy dearest,' she purred, linking her arm through Heather's as if trying to create a cute on-show tableau of family harmony.

Simon, at a discreet distance under the trees, was watching Kate and feeling angry and chewed up inside. She was practically bloody kittenish with that leery old man – could hardly stop smiling at the old goat. He'd never seen so much of her orthodontically-perfect teeth. They, and her bright hair, shone so ridiculously in the dark, he was surprised the director of the film hadn't ordered her off the set for messing up the light-readings. Darren was right, he should either settle for something a lot less challenging in the way of women, or make more of an effort to get her interested in him. He'd secretly read several of Tam's copies of
Just Seventeen
, and knew that was what feisty Nick Fisher on the problem page would have advised him to do (if, of course, he was the sort of bloke who wrote in – it amazed him that so many did . . . ). So he'd do the effort bit first; the other was like giving up altogether, and he wasn't about to do that without a fight. What kind of effort, though? That was the problem, one that even N. Fisher would find hard to solve. Perhaps Darren would have an idea, seeing as he seemed to be pretty clued-up about everything else.

Heather couldn't believe the attention to detail that went into the filming. She and Margot sipped their mulled wine and watched the dinghy make five more runs with its smoke machine and the diver jump over the side just twice. He was to swim under the water towards the two moored boats, with just his flippers occasionally visible for the cameras. The first time he swam too deep and arrived at the boats with the director shouting that he might as well have been a bloody trout, could he please manage a
soupçon
of visibility.

‘Is he usually so rude?' Heather whispered to Iain.

‘Yes, absolutely all the time. Especially when something like this takes hours when it could be done in minutes if things went right.'

The next time the dinghy sputtered down the river with its dripping diver, the engine died out. ‘Cut!' was yelled furiously from above on the crane.

‘I think someone's been sitting on the fuel line, don't you?' Kate commented to Heather, pointing to Brian awkwardly manoeuvring himself around in the boat.

Heather had stopped concentrating, beginning to think it would be rather nice to go home and get warm. Feeling ridiculously keyed-up about Iain had made her unusually shivery in the clear and dewy night, and the grass beneath her thin canvas shoes was uncomfortably damp. She'd wait for a suitable gap in the action and then leave, she decided. This time, as if in celestial compliance with her wishes, the smoke trailed from the dinghy just as it should, the diver swam with his flippers aloft like an exuberant sealion, and just as he reached the Edwardian boat Heather's mobile phone trilled out bright and loud through the silence.

‘Cut! Fucking cut!' yelled the director, flinging his baseball cap down across the boats and into the river. He and everyone else in the garden turned to look as Heather hastily and with enormous embarrassment fished her phone out of her pocket.

‘Better come over here out of the way,' Iain said, propelling her across the garden towards the deserted terrace while she fumbled with the aerial. All she could think of was that his hand was pressing firmly into her back as she walked, making it hard even to think of what she was supposed to say to greet whoever was calling.

‘Heather? Are you there?' her mother's anxious voice squawked down the phone. Heather, as if she could be seen, pushed Iain's hand away and she turned to face the house so she didn't have to look at him.

‘What's wrong, are you OK?' she managed to ask.

‘No, well yes, I am, but Edward isn't. The clinic phoned and he's now got Cheyne-Stokes breathing and isn't likely to last the night.'

Chain smokes? Heather, her mind not really on the call, tried to sort out what Delia was talking about. Her mother liked medical terminology – bones were always ‘fractured' never just broken, people she knew got a ‘carcinoma' not plain old cancer, although anything remotely gynaecological was referred to as You Know, accompanied by a meaningful downward glance.

‘My extremely old Uncle Edward is dying. I'll have to go. Where are Kate and Suzy?' Heather, feeling rushed and flustered, said to Iain at last. He made a move towards her, with the excuse of being comforting, but she moved faster and walked past him back towards the crowd.

‘Why don't you go on ahead and take your mother to the hospital, and I'll find them and explain to them what's happened,' Iain suggested. ‘And will they be all right at home on their own, or shall I ask Margot to put them up?'