The Best of Times (28 page)

CHAPTER 21

It was much scarier, the second recall. All actors knew that. Far more hung on it. You had more to lose; you were higher up; you had farther to fall. The pressure was really on …

“I don’t know if I can face it,” Georgia said. “I’ve been feeling so terrible all the way up on the train. I thought I was going to be sick twice. I spent most of the journey in the loo.”

Linda struggled to keep her voice level.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said. Georgia couldn’t be pregnant, could she? That would explain a great deal. “I know how tough it is at this stage. Just the same, you’re clearly in with a very fighting chance. Try to be positive, Georgia.”

“I am trying,” said Georgia. “It’s just that I’m so tired. I can’t sleep for stressing about it, and what if I don’t get it, then what? I’m terrified, Linda, absolutely terrified …”

Linda felt a strong desire to slap her.

“Well, you don’t have to go,” she said. “There are three other girls, all still in the race. Just give up now, why don’t you?”

Georgia stared at her. “Of course I’m not going to give up,” she said, her voice throbbing with outrage. “That’s a ridiculous thing to
say.” And then she suddenly sat down in the chair opposite Linda’s desk and started to cry.

Linda pushed a contract to the back of her desk. There had to be more than this part. There had to be.

“You can’t go on like this, Georgia; you’ll have a nervous breakdown. What is wrong?”

Georgia looked at her, and there was something like terror in her great brown eyes. She took a deep breath and then said, “Well, it’s … That is …”

“Yes?”

“Well, you see, I …”

And then she drew back, as if from some deep physical danger—literally shifted her body in the chair. “No, I’m sorry, Linda, really sorry. I’m being silly. I’ve just got my period; I feel like shit.”

She wasn’t pregnant then. That was something.

“OK. You going to be all right on your own?”

“Of course I am. Promise. I’ll see you later.”

She seemed OK. Just going a bit over-the-top emotionally. Nothing new there, then.

• • •

“That looks like a lot of paperwork.” Constable Rowe smiled at Sergeant Freeman; he didn’t smile back.

“It is. It’s Forensics’ report on the crash.”

“Oh, yes. I thought you’d read it.”

“I have read it,” said Freeman coldly. “I like to keep referring back to it. As our investigations go on. Certain things fall into place. Or don’t. And the loose wheel nut they found on the road. Where the hell does that fit in?”

“Surely it came off one of the other cars in the collision?”

“No, Rowe, it didn’t. We would know that from the examination of those cars.”

“Obviously, yes. And … not off the lorry?”

“Not off the lorry.”

“Well … perhaps it isn’t very important. Maybe it had been in the road a long time.”

“I doubt that very much,” said Freeman, “and so does Forensics. The devil’s in the details in this game, Rowe; I’ve told you before. This is a detail. We just have to find out how important it is.”

“Or how much of the devil is in it, I suppose,” said Rowe.

“Yes, Rowe. Precisely.”

• • •

At last, Mary was allowed to go home. The next day, anyway. A whole week after the accident. And even now, not exactly home—they said it was too soon for her to be on her own, but to stay with Christine. Which wasn’t ideal, of course, but it was a lot better than still being in the hospital. And she got on pretty well with Christine, always had … although she sometimes felt, absurdly, rather nervous of her. She had inherited her father’s build, rather than her mother’s, and his rather heavy features, rather than her mother’s sparkly prettiness.

She was wonderfully capable, ran her home along almost military lines, but she was also judgmental, very strict with her family, easily made impatient. And she was deeply conventional. So how would she react to her mother’s news?

It seemed to Mary quite likely that she would be shocked, and if not shocked, disapproving. It was quite a difficult situation for any daughter: to discover that her mother had been corresponding with a man—of whose existence neither she nor her father had any knowledge—for sixty years. And that they had been—finally—reunited.

Russell came in to see her every single day, and every day, each meeting had been happier and more wonderful than the last. Any doubts that she might have had had fled, leaving her at once excited and at peace about him and his part in the rest of her life. The only thing that was unthinkable now was not being together. After sixty
years of separation she and Russell were going to be married. They had been given this priceless treasure, this second life; they must nurture it and honour it and savour the happiness it so clearly contained.

Russell had continued to stay at the Dorchester; Mary had suggested he move to a hotel nearer Swindon, but he was absurdly nervous, it seemed, of anywhere other than the West End of London, had had this deep conviction that the only proper place to be was an expensive, upper-class one. She had teased him about it a lot; she could see she probably would again.

“So when I’m home in Bristol, will you still insist on staying there?” she had said, and, “No,” he had said; he was investigating a hotel between Bristol and Bath that sounded pretty decent …

“Only pretty decent, Russell? You sure that’s good enough?”

He had been fretting over the hospital too, saying he would rather she was in a private one, but she had told him that was ridiculous; this really was a very good place.

They’d had to arrange the times of his visits quite carefully, so that they didn’t coincide with Christine’s. He said he couldn’t see the problem with that; he couldn’t wait to meet Mary’s children, both of them; but Mary told him she thought it might be a bit of a shock for them, particularly for Christine, who had adored her father, and she wanted her to be well prepared before being confronted by a totally strange man who would, after all, become her stepfather. It would be a hard thing for a woman of almost sixty to understand.

But now they would be alone together all day and every day, for a while, and she could tell Christine all about it. And hopefully Christine would be really happy about it. Hopefully …

• • •

“Abi?” It was William’s calm, deep voice. “Abi, it’s William here. I’ve just had the police on the phone—got to give them an interview, wondered if they’d approached you as well.”

“Oh, William,” said Abi, thinking it would be worth going through any number of police interviews to have William discussing
them with her. “William, it’s great to hear from you. Yes, they have. In fact, it’s tonight; I am so not looking forward to it.”

“Oh, it’ll be all right,” he said easily. “You were just a witness, that’s all; nothing to worry about. All you’ve got to do is give them a straightforward account of it.”

She wondered, What on earth would William say if he knew about the real her …? “When are they seeing you, then?”

“Tomorrow morning. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it either; my father’ll be getting involved, probably, telling them the field’s been ruined with their helicopter.”

There was a long silence, then he said: “Look. I was wondering. How would you like to have a drink tomorrow night? We can have a chat, compare notes.”

“William, that’d be great. Really.” Was this for real? Was he actually asking her out? God …

“OK. It’s a date. Where should we meet, Bristol, I s’pose?”

“Well, that’d be nice. Long drive for you, though. And then you won’t be able to drink much.”

“Oh, I’m not a big drinker anyway. Tell me where we can meet. You can show me a few of the bright lights over there; how would that be?”

“Great,” said Abi. “Really great.”

“Good.” He sounded slightly surprised himself. “And meanwhile, don’t worry about the interview. All you’ve got to do is tell the truth.” If only it was as simple as that; if only she hadn’t got to lie and lie, and remember so many crucial things … “It’s no big deal. What about your friend the doctor; I expect they’re seeing him as well?”

“Yes, I believe so,” said Abi, and then: “He’s not a friend, William, just a business connection. I thought I’d told you, I’d never met him before Friday. He gave me a lift from the conference …” This was quite good; she could rehearse her lines.

“Oh, OK. Well, it’ll be interesting to see what they do want to know. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

She sat thinking about him for a bit after ringing off: sitting there
on the tractor, looking tanned and so bloody fit, with those lovely kind, sort of hazelish eyes …

Oh, God
. What was she doing fancying a farmer, of all things? And a posh farmer at that. What was she doing seeing him? Where was the sense in that? She should be distancing herself from everyone and everything to do with the crash, not going out with them. She was bound to give the game away, slip up …

She had been genuinely hurt as well as angered by Jonathan’s rejection of her; she had not, of course, ever imagined their affair had any real future, but somehow he had beguiled her—with his generosity, his enjoyment of her company as well as her body, his apparently genuine interest in her—into thinking he did actually care about her as a person. And how stupid had that been? Of course he hadn’t. He was like all the rest of them. He had wanted what he could get out of her, and beyond that—nothing.

Abi took a very dim view of men—not unnaturally, considering what she had endured at their hands. She was aware of being something of a walking cliché: knocked about by her mother’s first boyfriend, after her own father had walked out, seduced by the second, and then forced to listen to his lies that she had seduced him. Which had resulted in her being thrown out of the house at the age of fifteen. There had been a long parade of boyfriends, a few of them permanent. By the time she was twenty-one, Abi had turned into the sort of person she really didn’t like—without being able to see what she could have done about it.

She couldn’t suddenly become marriage material now; she couldn’t wipe out her rather desperate past. No one was going to look after her; she had to do it herself, and part of that seemed to be taking her sexual pleasure where she could, rather as men did. Only it was all right for men. Even married ones like Jonathan. It was all very unfair.

The reports in the Sunday papers had been awful: the lorry driver, who she now knew was called Patrick Connell, “very seriously injured and still in intensive care;” Toby Weston, the bridegroom (the media
had latched on to that story in a big way), still “heavily sedated,” his leg with its multiple fractures a “grave cause for concern;” and there were several photographs of the families of people who had died, and of the blond girl in the Golf, taken on some beach the previous year, laughing, holding the hand of her boyfriend. And there were a lot of annoying stories about Jonathan, his courage, and how hard he had worked, how calm he was and how skilful. Although—annoying as they were—they were true. It was one of the reasons she didn’t actually want to drop him in the shit.

• • •

What was he getting into? William wondered. It was insane, absolutely ridiculous. But … so what? Who said relationships had to be sensible? Wasn’t that the whole point, that relationships couldn’t necessarily be called to order, that an attraction was uncontrollable and could, if followed, lead to some very pleasant chaos? William would have welcomed a bit of chaos into his life just now. He was too young to be settled into total predictability, too old to have to conform to his parents’ lifestyle. He wanted an adventure—and if not an adventure, at least an excursion to adventure’s perimeter. And Abi had seemed to be leading him towards one, beckoning him with her long, magenta fingernails, luring him with her dark, knowing eyes. OK, she could clearly be troublesome, but God, she was a living, breathing master class in sexiness.

So … what was wrong with that? Absolutely nothing at all. In fact, it looked rather the reverse.

William put the tractor into gear and sent it up the hill feeling suddenly pretty bloody good.

• • •