The Best of Times (50 page)

“Yeah. God, it’s awful out there. Pandemonium.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Oh … just along there. In the car park. What are you doing here?”

“Mate of mine’s getting married; he’s asked me to be best man. We were just getting together with the ushers.”

“Really? When’s the wedding?”

“In April.”

“Lambing time.”

“No, not for us. We do early lambing.”

“Oh, of course you do. In the lambing shed …” She looked at him and smiled. “See how much I’ve remembered? Well I guess I wouldn’t have forgotten that.”

Oh, God, God, she shouldn’t have said that. It had been all right till then; he’d been fine, totally fine, about to move on, say cheers. But the lambing shed …

“My car’s down there, too,” he said. “Let me help you with your bags.”

“Oh … OK. Thanks.”

There was no tension, no uneasy silence as they walked; she asked him how he was, what he’d been doing, what was the main activity on the farm in the winter. He’d forgotten how interested she was in everything, and how much he enjoyed the interest. It was extraordinary—extraordinary and extraordinarily pleasing.

Her car was on the ground floor; he realised that he’d been hoping it would be a longer trip, that they’d have to go up in the lift, that the encounter might continue as long as possible.

She opened the boot. “Thanks, William. That’s really kind of you.”

He put the bags in; she shut the boot, turned to look at him. He caught the strong, heady scent he remembered; he felt a bit dizzy.

“It was so nice to see you,” she said. “I’ve often thought how nice it would be. Just to … well … say good-bye more happily. But it didn’t seem very likely. I mean, those sorts of things only happen in films, don’t they? And books? What are the chances of William
Grainger, farmer, and Abi Scott, photographer’s assistant, actually bumping into each other, on the off chance? One in millions. Billions, probably.” She leaned up, gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Bye, William. Once again, I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” he said, and in that moment he genuinely couldn’t think why she should be apologising.

“Me being me. Right, then …” She turned, walked to the door, opened it. “Take care. Oh, and happy Christmas.”

She got in, slammed the door, started the engine. William stood there, mute, helpless, unable to do or say anything. She was there, not in his memory, not in his imagination, but for real. Funny and fun and sexy and interested. Interesting and absolutely on his side. And now she was going … again. Leaving him to his new—or rather old—life, blank, monotone, nothing to look forward to as he spread slurry in the cold, did the hated paperwork.

She put the car into gear, wound down the window, blew him another kiss. “Bye,” she said again.

She moved forward; he jumped out of the way, managed to smile. The car moved slowly off. She was going, leaving him again, and that had to be right, had to be the only thing. He should just be glad—as she had said—that they could say good-bye more happily. There was absolutely no alternative. None whatsoever.

• • •

Barney couldn’t believe how much it would hurt: losing Toby. Sometimes he thought it was even worse than losing Emma. At least he could have gone and talked about Emma to Toby, the one person in the world—he had thought—he could trust, talk to about anything. You couldn’t admit to being that foolish to many people.

It was like discovering the Rolex Oyster you’d been given for your twenty-first by your parents was a cheap fake. Toby, his best friend, whom he’d have trusted with his life, had turned out to be a cheap fake himself. He still couldn’t quite believe it. Or, worse, that he’d
been so stupid and that Toby had pulled the wool over his eyes for so long. That hurt too. He also felt incredibly angry quite a lot of the time: angry with Toby, angry with himself, angry with Tamara.

He knew he’d never forget as long as he lived that night she came round and ranted and railed at him; he’d thought that she’d finally had a nervous breakdown because of her cancelled wedding.

But then as she calmed down and he managed to get her to tell him just what it exactly was he was supposed to have done, and as the hideous realisation dawned, he felt so terrible he thought he was actually going to be sick.

“Well,” she said, “what have you got to say, Barney, did you really think you could get away with it, all that crap?”

There had seemed no point at that moment in telling her it was Toby who was giving her the crap, Toby who was lying; it was Toby who must be confronted. He simply said he was very sorry she was so upset, that there was obviously a terrible misunderstanding and he would do his very best to sort it out. She had left, after hurling a few more insults at him; she was so clearly genuinely upset that Barney had actually felt quite sorry for her.

Toby had lied, of course; Barney had arrived at the house the following evening, had told the Westons he was going to take him out for a drink, and then parked a mile down the road and confronted him.

“Mate, she’s crazy. She must have misunderstood what I said to her.”

“No,” said Barney, “she didn’t misunderstand. She was very, very clear about what you told her. In fact, she repeated it almost word for word. I’d repeat it back to you, if you like, only I don’t think I could face hearing any more lies. I don’t know why you did it, Toby. I’m baffled.”

“I don’t understand myself,” said Toby, and his voice was rather quiet suddenly. “I’ve just had so much to cope with, with the accident and the leg and so on, and it was just … easier to tell her that. I’m
sorry … I still feel pretty rotten, Barney, in pain a lot of the time, can’t sleep …”

“Oh, my heart bleeds for you,” said Barney. “I can cope with your not telling Tamara the truth … obviously. I wouldn’t either. But not lying to her about me. It’s hideous, Toby. Any other little fibs I need to know about, just so I don’t get any more nasty surprises? If not I’ll be off.”

“I …” Toby seemed about to say something, then stopped. “No, no, Barney, of course not.”

“Good. Don’t see what’s ‘of course’ about it. Actually.”

“Barney, I’m … well, I’m sorry. Very sorry.”

“Yeah, OK. I’ll drop you back. You’ll have to think of some story to give your mother. Why do I think you’ll be able to manage that?”

He had been so upset he’d actually cried after he dropped Toby outside his house, parked his car at the end of the road and sobbed like a small boy. Then he’d driven very slowly and carefully back to London.

He got home at midnight, sat down, and got very drunk on whisky, grateful only that Amanda wasn’t there; he felt betrayed not just by Toby but by life itself. It just wasn’t fucking fair.

When Emma phoned two weeks later to tell him that she’d been doing a lot of thinking and she really couldn’t see how they could possibly have a future together, or not one based on making Amanda, whom he obviously still loved so much, deeply unhappy, and not to argue and not to try to see her, he found he was hardly even surprised.

Wretched, wounded, shocked, but not surprised.

• • •

“Right,” said Freeman. He tapped the pile of papers on his desk. “Ready to go, I think. Dozens of interviews, hundreds of hours. But none of it warrants going to the CPS, in my opinion. No real charge against anyone here …”

“Not even our friend Mr. Thompson?”

“No chance. Nasty bit of work, and undoubtedly he contributed to the blowout, but you could never charge him.”

“Well, maybe he’ll be a bit more careful in future.”

“Maybe. For a bit. Then it’ll be two fingers to us all and he’ll be off again. I’d like to see him fined, at least. But … I’d say we simply have an inquest situation here.”

Constable Rowe felt quite sorry for him; he looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

• • •

Interviewed at a police station, Rick had been defiant, truculent; yes, he’d had a load of wood on board; that was his job. No, he hadn’t been driving dangerously.

“And … this wood, Mr. Thompson. Was it properly stowed in your van?”

“Yes, course it was.”

“And it was new wood, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“It had no nails in it, for instance?”

“Course not.”

“Right. Well, perhaps you could explain why several witnesses saw the back doors of your van tied together with some rope?”

“I might have tied some rope round the handles. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Doesn’t mean it wasn’t properly fastened.”

“So you’re quite sure that some pieces of wood, with nails in them, could not have fallen out of the van onto the road?”

“Yeah, quite sure. I told you, it was new wood.”

• • •

The man from the wood yard near Stroud had remembered Rick very clearly.

Particularly his request that he should dispose of the old timber for him, and that he had refused. And that Thompson had then asked
for a length of rope to tie the doors together, which had been insufficient to do the job properly.

Rick was told he would be called as a witness at any trial or inquest on the crash.

“Oh, what! I wasn’t anywhere near the bloody crash.”

“People have died, Mr. Thompson,” Freeman said. “Proper explanations for that have to be found. You could certainly be judged to have played a part in the collision that caused it. You’ll be hearing from us in the fullness of time.”

• • •

“I think I should move out for a bit,” said Jonathan. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

He had walked into Laura’s studio, where she was struggling to work; it was late; the children were all in bed and asleep.

“What isn’t getting us anywhere?”

“Well … drifting along like this. With you obviously unable to bear the sight of me.”

“Are you surprised by that?”

“No, Laura. But we can’t go on like this for the next forty years or whatever.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to. I’m just … trying to decide what’s best. For all of us.”

“I presume by that you mean the children,” he said, “rather than me and you.”

“Well … me as well. But mainly them, yes.”

“Right. Well, I think rather than go on living in this poisonous atmosphere—”

“I hope you’re not implying I’m creating the poisonous atmosphere?”

“Well … to a degree, you are. Obviously with some justification, but …”

“Jonathan, I can’t believe you said that. I haven’t done anything.

I’m not doing anything. Just trying to … to cope with what you’ve done. You’ve betrayed me totally, Jonathan, lied and lied to me, broken every promise, all your marriage vows.”

“Laura, I’ve said so many times I’m sorry, desperately sorry; I would give everything I have for it not to have happened …”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Your precious career, your doting staff, your adoring patients? And if you’re that desperate about it, why didn’t you realise how wrong it was, what damage you were doing to us and our marriage? No, you must have felt you had some kind of right to it, to her. And in that case, then either you’re rotten through and through, which actually I don’t think you are, or there’s something wanting in our relationship. So don’t try to explain, because I don’t think I could bear it.”

She could see she had shocked him: not by what she had said, but that she had said it at all. This was not the Laura he knew, berating him; this was not his gentle, softly spoken wife. But then, she thought, he was not the Jonathan she had known, not the loving, loyal husband and father, who had the family at the very centre of his being. They were moving far and fast from their old selves, and there was no knowing where and how far apart they would end up.

“Well … in that case, I’ll go,” he said. “There’s no point in my staying. I really can’t see it’s of any benefit to the children. I’ll arrange to see them at weekends and so on. And then we can decide what to do next.”

“Yes. All right.”

She felt sick suddenly.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said, and walked over to the door. There was a scuffle on the stairs; she looked up and saw Charlie staring down at her, his face white, with two brilliant spots of colour forming on his cheeks. He had obviously heard every word.

• • •

Georgia was still slightly surprised to find herself living with a friend of Merlin’s … well, not actually living with him, obviously, but in a
room in his house in Paddington. She had imagined herself living in a flat with a load of girls, or men and girls, sharing everything, eating together, going around together, not virtually on her own, having to budget and cook for herself and get herself up and out in the morning. It had all been a bit of a shock at first. But there simply hadn’t been an option.

It had all begun with a row with Linda, with whom she’d been staying; Linda was being really odd. Far less interested in Georgia than she used to be, demanding, critical, making a fuss about stupid things like a couple of cups left unwashed, or music being played too loudly, and nagging endlessly about finding a place of her own.

She’d looked at about a hundred—well, at least ten—room- and flat-shares one Monday morning, and they were all horrible. She’d just never expected it to be so hard. And then she’d gone in to work in the afternoon and Bryn Merrick had actually shouted at her when she kept getting a scene wrong, and she’d half run out of the hall at six and arrived back at Linda’s flat in floods of tears. To find Linda not there; she’d spent a miserable evening on her own until Linda came in at nine o’clock in a foul mood, all because some contract had been cancelled and she’d been with lawyers all evening.

Georgia managed to express sympathy, and to make Linda a cup of tea; but then once Linda had settled on the sofa and reached for the TV remote, she said, “Linda, I need to talk to you.”

“Georgia, must it be now?”

“Well … yes. If you don’t mind.”

“And if I do?”

“I’d still like it.”

“Oh all right. “Linda put the remote down, folded her arms, and looked at her. “What is it?”

“It’s … well, Linda, I’m finding it all so hard. The series, the rehearsals, all of it. Mostly Bryn Merrick. He just doesn’t like me, and that makes me nervous. You know I still feel … bad about the accident, and I’m still so aware of what they must think of me. And today I totally blew a scene, and everyone was so … so, like, hostile to me,
and I cried all the way home. I wondered if you could help, have a word with Bryn or something, or even if I should just resign or something, let them get someone else for Rose …”