Singled Out (28 page)

When she turned up later she was definitely not pleased to hear Jason still insisting on asking Rosetta if she could squeeze him in at the Hall somewhere, but he wouldn’t be moved even when I told him he would be wasting his time and money: I intended doing whatever Dante wanted, and leaving the minute my bondage ended.

Somehow, that didn’t seem to reassure him.

*   *   *

Since Max hadn’t phoned me after the auction, I was rather hoping he’d called the vicar instead, and so got the bad news from someone else.

Unfortunately not, for on the Sunday he rang me and said gaily: ‘Hello, slave!’

‘Er … Max,’ I began, slightly nervously.

‘I bet that was a surprise? And good news – I’ll be home even sooner than you expected to claim your services, because I’m not finishing out the whole sabbatical year now! So, what’s the damage? How much am I paying for the pleasure of a day in your company?’

‘I fetched four hundred pounds,’ I said shortly, and there was a small silence.

‘But my limit was sixty pounds!’ Max said disbelievingly. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? The vicar said no one ever fetched more than twenty pounds, except for one year when you went to some old antique dealer for thirty.’

‘Mr Browne. He got Orla this year, and prices have gone up a bit.’

‘So come on, darling, joking aside, what’s the damage? I know you’re special to
me
but—’

‘It really
was
four hundred pounds, Max. Bidding was pretty brisk.’

‘So who was it?’ he demanded. ‘Jason?’

‘No, Dante Chase. He wants me to help his sister over Easter when she has her first Ghastly Weekend for Ghost-hunters,’ I said weakly, not mentioning the possible byline: ‘and also be subjected to the torment of the damned for forty-eight hours.’

‘Come off it,’ he snapped. ‘No man would pay that much money unless he’s got an ulterior motive, and he made it pretty clear at the pub that he was jealous of me.’

Actually I think it was the other way round, for if Max hadn’t become jealous of Dante that night I don’t think he would have dreamed up the idea of bidding for me at the auction at all.

‘In any case I absolutely forbid it, even if it is only for one day,’ he said flatly.

‘
Two
days, actually. Dante offered to double the original bid if I would do an extra day, and since it’s for a good cause I couldn’t very well refuse, could I?’

‘Two?’ bellowed Max. ‘No way is my girlfriend spending two days with another man!’

Max was getting up my nose but it was entirely my own fault: I really should have ended the whole thing before now in a civilised and final manner instead of all this dithering and indecision. And after being his mistress for more than twenty years I find the word ‘girlfriend’ singularly inappropriate, since I am neither a girl nor feeling particularly friendly.

‘Two days and two nights,’ I pointed out, fanning the flames a little. ‘But you needn’t think this is some kind of Indecent Proposal. Dante’s a bit piqued because I turned him down flat when he wanted to hire me to do ghost impersonations for his visitors in case it wasn’t haunted enough for them.’

I didn’t mention that Dante’s recently expressed wish to get to know me better had been instantly changed by the power of my fiction into the desire to punish me.

‘It’s all harmless, Max,’ I said, even though I am by no means convinced about that myself. ‘And the house will be full of his sister’s guests
and
Eddie, who seems to have become resident gardener/handyman, so it’s not like I’m spending the weekend alone with another man, is it?’

Not that I feel it’s really his business any more what I do.

‘You’re not spending the weekend with him, alone or not,’ he ordained, like
he
was my lord and master instead of Dante.

From feeling that if only I had a good excuse I’d try and wriggle out of my bondage, I now contrarily refused to even consider the idea. ‘Now just wait a minute, Max! That’s up to me to decide.’

‘If you had any real feelings for me you would have turned him down flat at the auction!’

‘If you had any real feelings for me you wouldn’t have gone to America for a year with Rosemary and left me behind!’

‘You hardly seemed pleased to see me when I did come and visit you!’

‘Only because all you seemed to be interested in was sex!’

‘So what do you think Dante Chase is interested in? Or is that why you’ve agreed?’ he said nastily. ‘Or perhaps you always have played the field when I’m away, and all that innocence was a put-on affair?’

‘You know very well I haven’t!’ I said hotly, for apart from my recent brief encounter with Dante there hasn’t been much of a field to play, even had infidelity seriously entered my head.

‘Then if you really love me you’ll tell the vicar you’re turning down his offer, and you’d rather accept my bid.’

‘You know I can’t do that – it’s an open auction!’

‘I’ll make the money up to the vicar,’ he said shortly.

‘That’s not the point. It’s done, I’m going to do it, and that’s that,’ I snapped. ‘And while we are on the subject of loving you, there’s something I’ve got to tell—’

He put the phone down on me.

*   *   *

On the Monday I packed up my manuscript (clear dark copy, printed with a new cartridge) and posted it off with a wonderfully purged feeling: colonic irrigation for the soul.

When I got back home Gerald was sitting on the bench outside looking miserably at Jane’s car like it had eaten her.

… the windows slowly darkened and grew opaque as the car shuddered hungrily …

‘It spat the bones out, Gerald, but I put them in the boot,’ I said, fishing out my door keys.

He turned a drawn and wan face towards me and I could see he hadn’t taken in what I’d said, which on reflection is probably a good thing.

‘Hello, Cass. I was waiting for you.’

‘I thought you’d turn up eventually, Gerald, but it’s like I told you on the phone: Jane isn’t here.’

‘I know she doesn’t want to see me, and I don’t mean to try and force my way in or anything,’ he said pathetically, looking about as violent as a stuffed koala.

‘You don’t have to force your way in,’ I said opening the door invitingly. ‘You’re quite welcome to. And Jane really isn’t here – she’s in London, because George has had to go abroad and Phily’s being prosecuted for a spot of her old trouble.’

‘You mean she’s been in London all this time helping poor Phily?’ he said, his face clearing as if by magic.

Fortunately he was not expecting an answer to this question.

‘Oh that’s
so
like Jane, not to want to tell people when she’s helping someone in distress!’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ I said, possibly a little sarcastically.

‘And people have been implying the most horrible things,’ he said indignantly, ‘like she wasn’t really staying with you, but was off with this Clint whatever he was called.’

‘Really? Well, you only have to ask yourself, George: would Jane throw up her happy and comfortable life with you to go and live in a tent in Cornwall? I mean, how likely is that?’

‘A tent?’ His slightly protuberant eyes widened like a surprised baby’s.

‘Yes, Clint Atwood lives in a tent in a commune. Now, can you see Jane teetering about a wet boggy field in her stilettos and beige cashmere? Come on!’

I certainly wish
I’d
seen it, though. It would have cancelled out a whole load of debts.

George glowed happily as if he’d had a transfusion of something. Whatever it was, I wished I could have one too, because I’ve never managed glowing: a pallid pearly glimmer is about the best I can do.

‘What a weight off my mind,’ he said. Then his face clouded again a little: ‘But will she ever forgive me for the horrible things I accused her of – the things I did? She sent me a wonderful letter explaining everything, and I felt totally unworthy of her!’

I’d like to have seen that letter: clearly there’s hope for her novel-writing skills yet.

‘I’m sure she will, Gerald, she’s dying to see you,’ I said reassuringly. ‘Aren’t you on holiday? Why don’t you go down for the weekend? George and Phily have got lots of room and I’m sure they won’t mind.’

‘Do you think I should? Does she really want to see me?’

‘Of course she does!’ I said firmly, because by now I’m pretty sure Jane is regretting her moment of muddy madness and is longing to sink back into her usual groove.

‘Then I will! But first, perhaps I ought to try and explain to your parents? I mean in the heat of the moment—’

‘You said more than you should?’ I said. ‘I know, Gerald, Pa’s been burning the wires with messages of eternal damnation ever since, for Jane as well as me, which is a novelty. But you can’t get in touch with them, because they’re making Francis drive them here to see Jane and there’s no way to head them off. They must be staying with some of the godly en route, and Pa doesn’t let Francis drive at more than thirty miles an hour even in an emergency, so they probably won’t arrive before Friday when they’re booked into a local B&B.’

‘I’ll have to try and talk to them later, then. But at least their journey won’t be wasted even if Jane isn’t here, because once they see you again they are bound to want to become reconciled, aren’t they?’

‘I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

‘You may be surprised, now you’ve completely finished with Max.’

‘But I haven’t quite done that, yet, Gerald,’

His eyes widened in surprise. ‘Haven’t you? I thought you would have after it came out about his affair with that personal trainer, the one who’s admitted pushing Rosemary’s chair over the edge.’

‘Kyra?’ I exclaimed. ‘So he really was having an affair with her? I suspected as much after he told me about her shoving Rosemary’s wheelchair during an argument, and he denied it! But he said the police were satisfied the accident was nothing to do with him?’

‘Yes, though he will probably have to go back for the court case since this Kyra said the argument with Rosemary was because she’d found out about their affair. Sorry, Cass – I thought you knew all this,’ he aplogised.

‘Never mind – I’m glad you told me. Gerald, do you think Max knew what Kyra had done all along?’

‘Apparently she’s sworn he didn’t.’

‘Has she? But then, she might be as firmly under the Max influence as I once was,’ I said, and Gerald looked baffled. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I’ve an old friend on the campus out there, and he’s been emailing me,’ Gerald explained. ‘According to the latest story going round, Rosemary found out about the affair and told Kyra to get out, and Kyra said she was pregnant by Max and he was going to leave Rosemary.’

‘Pregnant?’ I felt a cold clutch at the pit of my stomach. ‘She’s pregnant by Max?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking concerned. ‘I probably shouldn’t have told you
that,
either!’

‘Yes, you should – go on,’ I urged him.

‘She miscarried, which is when she confessed to pushing Rosemary over the edge. Apparently Rosemary laughed at the thought of Max leaving her, and Kyra snapped.’

Over the edge in more ways than one … which is where I felt I was heading, too. Strangely, what was hurting most was that Max, who’d always been so fanatically careful that I shouldn’t get pregnant, had been so carried away with another woman that he was careless.

‘The university has asked him to cut his year short,’ Gerald said. ‘You could see him back before long if the police give him permission to go. Probably have to return for the trial, though.’

‘I expect he will,’ I agreed numbly. ‘And he’s still guilty of Rosemary’s death to some extent, isn’t he? Because if he hadn’t had an affair with Kyra she wouldn’t have had that argument.’

And no wonder I’d read guilt in his mind, because not only had he been unfaithful both to Rosemary and me, he must have had a suspicion Kyra’d done something, too. Yet he’d clearly considered his fling with Kyra as just that, and expected to return to me as if it hadn’t happened!

‘Are you all right, Cass?’ Gerald asked anxiously. ‘I know it must have come as a big shock, but I thought it was better to tell you everything. I just wish Jane was still here with you.’

I shuddered. ‘
I’m
not. But I am glad you told me. Could you – there’s a bottle of Laphroaig under the kitchen sink?’

‘Laphroaig?’

‘Yes, I seem to have developed a taste for it. Could you pour me a glass, do you think?’

He did, and we sat and silently sipped good whisky with bad thoughts, until after a while Gerald downed the last of his very moderate tot and drove off, not without some reluctance and an offer to spend the night, which was kind but ill-considered.

Jane would not have approved in the least, and Mrs Bridges would have counted him in and be waiting to count him out.

I certainly felt as if
I’d
been counted out.

Floored.

*   *   *

Phoned the number for Max that Jane got for me, but there was only an answering machine. I told it to tell Max I knew everything and it was all over between us, and not to contact me again, which was perhaps the coward’s way out.

I should have done it long, long ago.

Then I relayed everything to Jason and Orla at the pub in order to have my wounds washed clean with sympathy, although by then they were already pretty well rinsed with whisky.

Somehow I seemed to have lost my usual healthy appetite for food.

I think it was Kyra getting pregnant by Max that did it: the final curtain on a long-running and sorry bedroom farce.

After that I might have slid into the deep, dark pit of depression, but fortunately inspiration for a new novel dropped on me from a great height on my way home from the pub. As soon as I got back I started a new book of a Frankenstein persuasion, about a doctor heroine who is mining a Max-like character for spare parts.

The working title is
A Good Heart Is Hard To Find.

Chapter 19: A Plague On It

… a rancid tale of torture and terror. Strong stuff. Buy it!

Exposé Magazine:
‘On The Shelf’, with Lisa-Mona Bevore