The Four of Us (45 page)

His high-boned face looked weary beyond belief. ‘We are in the throes of a divorce, Artemis. You left the marital home, and as I shall be marrying Serena at the earliest opportunity, yes, she has been …
is
… living here and sleeping in the bed you mistakenly refer to as still being yours.'

Artemis had never been violent in her life, but she didn't hesitate. She clenched her fist and, putting all the weight of her fifteen stone into the punch, went for gold, making thumping contact with his jaw.

Taken totally by surprise, he went ricocheting backwards, flying off his feet – and, when he landed, he didn't move.

Artemis didn't care.

Hoping she'd killed him, she scooped up her handbag and make-up box and, without even deigning to look at Serena, stormed past her, out of her defiled home.

Her car was in the double garage and the keys were in her handbag. Uncaring about her luggage, uncaring that she was leaving without any personal items – items Orlando or Sholto would have to collect for her – she unlocked the car door and yanked it open. Then, hunched behind the wheel, finally accepting that her marriage was over beyond all possible doubt, not knowing where she was going to go, or what she was going to do, she sobbed and sobbed until she could sob no more.

The next morning, when Primmie returned to the house after milking Maybelline and failing to milk Black-Hearted Alice, only Geraldine was up and dressed. Unlike the cinnamon shirt she'd been wearing yesterday, the white shirt she was wearing with grey flannel slacks and a soft grey Shetland sweater was fastened tightly at the wrists.

‘I don't suppose we'll see Kiki for hours yet,' she said as Primmie put the pail of frothing milk down. ‘This is probably the time of day she usually rolls home after partying or clubbing. How did you get on with Alice? Was she cooperative?'

‘No. She
glared
at me. Those yellow eyes are like something out of a horror film. And she's too close to the ground to milk. I just couldn't figure out how to do it.' She lifted the chrome lid on one of the Aga's hotplates and set a frying pan on it. ‘I think maybe she was cross at sleeping tethered and out in the open. With luck Matt will be round this morning to tell me how I should house her and feed her.'

‘And milk her?' Geraldine asked, amused.

‘And milk her. Do you like mushrooms, Geraldine? I picked these myself.'

‘As long as they're safe to eat, I love them.' Geraldine seated herself at one of the large deal tables. ‘I've been thinking about your kitchen garden, Primmie, and have a couple of suggestions to make.'

‘What kind of suggestions?' Primmie drizzled oil into the frying pan.

‘I've been thinking that you could grow just as much veg in a far prettier way if you made a classical French potager.'

‘A potager?' Primmie began peeling the mushrooms. ‘Do you mean vegetables in small beds edged with box?'

‘It does. The beds are called
carrés
. Instead of growing vegetables in boring long lines, they're planted out in chequerboard patterns and by colour. Jade-green carrot leaves next to the red of beetroot leaves, for instance. And golden-green celery next to the blue of Solaise leeks.'

‘And the icy green of lettuce next to orange pumpkins, and purple cabbage with tomatoes?'

‘That's it. You've got the idea. And we can bring flowers into the equation, too, by edging the beds with contrasting colour. Scarlet begonias with the green of salad crops, for instance.'

Primmie dropped the mushrooms into the frying pan and swirled them round to coat them with oil. ‘And beds of pumpkin with orange rudbeckia.'

They grinned across at each other, full of enthusiasm for a shared project that would be truly creative.

‘We'll need to make sure that we plant vegetables together that crop at the same time. With really careful planning we should be able to get two different crops from each bed every year.'

She cracked two eggs into the sizzling pan.

‘And can we grow fruit, too?'

There was no reply.

With more energy and zest than she'd felt for months, Geraldine had left the kitchen in search of pen and paper so that she could start planning out an ornamental kitchen garden as aesthetically pleasing as her flower garden in Paris; a garden worthy of a Renaissance château or a medieval monastery.

When Kiki eventually emerged from her comfortable cocoon in the pin-neat bedroom she was sharing with Primmie, it was lunchtime. The sound of Eva Cassidy filled the house with mellow music. The table with the vase of wild flowers on it was set for four. Primmie was standing at the Aga, stirring soup in a saucepan, and Geraldine was standing with her back against the sink, one foot crossing the other at the ankle, a mug of coffee cupped in her hands. By her side was a rugged-looking man wearing a bulky jersey and jeans.

‘You're just in time for lunch,' Primmie said with a beaming smile, for all the world as if Kiki had just come in after a hard morning's work. ‘Matt is dying to meet you. Matt, Kiki Lane. Kiki, Matt Trevose.'

Unused to such polite introductions so early in her day, Kiki summoned up the manners to shake his proffered hand. It was a strong handshake and to her vast relief he didn't gush about how thrilled he was to meet a seventies/ eighties rock star and to lyingly say, as most people did, that he had every record she'd ever recorded. All he did was look a little bemused and say that he was pleased to meet her.

‘Matt is a neighbour and a good friend,' Primmie said, still stirring the soup. ‘Ever since I arrived at Ruthven he's helped me with absolutely everything. Would you like a coffee? You look as if you're gasping for one. There is lashings in the pot.'

‘And so it didn't matter about Black-Hearted Alice being left out of doors last night?' Geraldine said to Matt, ignoring Kiki completely. ‘Primmie thought she might have been unhappy about it.'

‘Not in the warm weather we're having at the moment. In the winter she'll need housing, though. Goats don't like cold and they hate rain.'

Kiki poured herself a coffee, not adding milk or sugar to it. She'd spent most of her life waking up in strange beds and strange places, having to fight off hangovers and get to grips with where the hell she was – and whom she was with. This morning, with no hangover and no unwelcome bed mate, was, though, the most disorientating morning she could remember.

For one thing, she was in a lovingly cherished home, not a hotel room or her littered London flat. For another, both Primmie and Geraldine were with her. It was almost like the days decades ago, when, with Artemis, they'd all lived together in Kensington. And last, but not least, there was the conversation. Goats?
Goats?
Who cared whether they didn't like cold and rain? And where was the dog? It had gone to sleep on the rug beside her bed, but was now nowhere to be seen.

‘Rags is enjoying the September sun,' Primmie said, opening a door of the Aga to check on the fish she was baking. ‘The hens aren't too keen on him, but he's leaving them well alone.'

‘Rags?' Kiki took a deep drink of coffee. ‘Who named him Rags?'

‘I did, because of his liking for the rugs.' Primmie closed the Aga's door again and, from another of the its generous compartments, took out a soup tureen that had been warming. ‘I'm quite happy for you to re-christen him, if you want to. He is your dog, after all.'

‘No. Rags is fine.'

‘There's homemade soup for lunch – and fish that Matt caught early this morning. Geraldine's made the vinaigrette dressing for the salad.'

‘I can't cope with lunch just yet; I need a bit of fresh air. Does the headland end in cliffs? Are there walks there?'

‘There are no cliffs – which is a good thing because I won't have to worry about the children who are coming to stay falling over the edge of them. You can walk for miles, though. The coastal footpath runs right across the headland. And if you want really dramatic cliffs, Kynance Cove is only ten minutes away by car. Turn left at the main road and just keep driving. You'll soon come to signposts for Lizard Point and Kynance Cove.'

Kiki made no response and, looking across at her as she poured soup from the pan into the tureen, Primmie said perceptively, ‘If you want to borrow my car, you can.'

‘Thanks.' Kiki drained her coffee mug and put it down on the table. ‘I'll do that, then. See you all later.'

Minutes later she was bumping down the track in Primmie's Vauxhall Corsa, Rags's untidy bulk in the passenger seat beside her. He hadn't been a companion she'd intended having, but the minute she'd stepped from the house he'd careered across to her, and when she'd opened the Vauxhall's door he'd been inside the car even before she was.

The expedition she was making was only a recce, but as she turned left into the narrow main road it occurred to her that, when she made her final expedition, she was going to have to go to great lengths to make sure Rags wasn't with her. She didn‘t want him scrambling down the cliff face trying to reach her after she'd jumped, or, even worse, simply leaping off the top of the cliff with her.

She chewed the corner of her lip. When she'd left London, she hadn't had a shadow's doubt about what it was she was going to do – or why she would be doing it. Now, though, things no longer seemed quite so clear-cut. Somehow, almost without her being aware of it, her mood had shifted.

Primmie, of course, was partially responsible. Primmie had always been sunshine and light, and still was. It rubbed off. She'd actually found herself wishing she'd got up a bit earlier so that she would have had the appetite for the lunch Primmie had prepared. There'd been the smell of bread to go with the soup and she hadn't had homemade bread since … when? She couldn't remember. Never, probably.

She also hadn't woken up with a hangover, which was a rare change. Though she'd seen the red light years ago where all drugs but weed were concerned, alcohol had always been a prop she'd never even tried to do without – and alcohol was something she obviously needed to get back into suicide mode. One thing she was sure of, there wouldn't be enough of it at Ruthven. Primmie might have had a bottle of Bell's and some red wine in the house, but it was a certainty that where the whisky was concerned Primmie bought it a bottle at a time – and not all that often.

Instead of the countryside being as bleak as it had been on Bodmin Moor, the road out to Lizard Point ran between fields that had once been full of corn and that now, the corn cut, were a stubble-fired, faded yellow. Other fields had cattle in them and every now and again there were strings of small, squat, whitewashed cottages, their gardens bright with white marguerites and brilliant blue agapanthus.

She pressed the button for the passenger-seat window, opening it low so that Rags could stick his head out. It was a beautiful day, with hardly a hint that it was no longer high summer. Occasionally there were clusters of trees at either side of the road, their branches interweaving so that she would find herself driving through dappled groves of light.

It certainly wasn't
a
day for committing suicide – or even for contemplating it.

High above Kynance Cove she parked in the National Trust car park and, having no interest in the cove itself, didn't bother walking down to it. Instead, Rags at her heels, she set off along the top of the cliffs, the tough grass springy beneath her feet.

The cliffs weren't as she had imagined they would be. They were high, certainly, and the drop was steep, but the cliff face shelved outwards from its lip, not inwards. In throwing herself off it, she would be at great risk not of instant death, but of agonizing injuries as she bounced off first one rocky protuberance and then another.

Standing as near to the cliff edge as, with Rags, she felt it was safe to go, it occurred to her that the only way she could have drummed up the nerve to throw herself over the edge was if she'd driven down to Kynance the night the idea had first entered her head. Then, anaesthetized by alcohol and in pitch blackness, she would simply have taken a running jump and that would have been that. Now, though …? Now, as she stood, staring down at the ribbon of sand at the cliff's foot, it no longer seemed such an easy, obvious option.

For the first time it occurred to her to wonder who would find her body. The beaches and coves of Cornwall were popular destinations for families with children and, though not unduly caring about children, she certainly didn't want one to live with nightmares because of her. And then there was the question of who would identify her. When she didn't return to Ruthven, Primmie would report her missing to the police. And it would be Primmie who would be asked to identify her.

She'd gone through life not giving a damn about anyone but herself, but she couldn't do that to Primmie.

As if reading her thoughts, Rags tugged at the sleeve of her leather jacket, trying to get her to move backwards, away from the cliff edge.

Suddenly, his doing so struck her as being eminently sensible. She had, after all, things to do. If she was going to stay with Primmie in Cornwall – and it went without saying that she was – then she needed to get herself other clothes apart from the ones she was standing up in. With luck, Calleloe would have a charity shop.

And Rags needed a trim and a bath.

Putting all thoughts of suicide on hold, she stepped away from the cliff, beginning to walk back over the grass towards the car park. Before she found a charity shop, she needed to find a dog-grooming parlour. Geraldine could be as rude as she liked to her, but she wasn't going to have her being rude about Rags. When Rags returned to Ruthven, he was going to look like an entrant for Crufts.

Artemis drove nervously into Calleloe. The streets were so narrow and steep she didn't know how cars were managing to pass each other and she was so tired that driving had long ago ceased to be either effortless or automatic. When she'd disembarked from the MS
Caronia
, ten hours earlier, she'd had faint hopes that the nightmare of the last few weeks would be at an end; that Rupert would have ended his affair with the Serena creature and that she and Rupert could continue with their marriage as if the word divorce had never been mentioned.