The Seven Stars (24 page)

But
Jay, without telling her, had fixed up a job with a multi-national computer firm in London. Well, she was hardly in a position to complain about lack of consultation, and they were almost doubling his salary which was already twice what she earned herself. When he explained that he had fixed it so that he too could work from home, what could she say but 'Wonderful!' For a bride to display dismay at the amount of time she would be spending with her new husband was hardly tactful. In any case, she told herself, if it got too much she could look for an office job.

Jay
had found a tiny mews house for them in Westbourne Grove, with a garage that was just big enough to house Jay's little Golf gti. It had one bedroom upstairs, which Juliette used as a daytime study. Jay had his computer equipment downstairs, at the back of the main room which opened on to the mews, so it was unreasonable of her to mind that she could never decide to go out without telling him.

If
she came down, to pop out for an errand, perhaps, he would say, 'Great! I'm just looking for an excuse for a break. Let's go and grab a coffee.' They shopped at the supermarket together, and he was even happy to browse around the dress shops, and pay the bills for her clothes. She'd had a credit card, in her maiden name: 'Why bother to renew it?' he had said. 'You don't earn enough, my love, for the sort of things I like to see you in,' and she'd agreed that she might as well cancel it. Fool that she was! They had a joint account too, only he so regularly paid for everything that she didn't even carry her cheque book.

When
Juliette tried to explain to him that the girls' lunches she arranged with her former flatmates — the only friends she had in London — were just that, Jay laughed and accused her of sexism. 'I'd like to think Laura (or Carrie or Jess) was a friend of mine, too,' he would say, looking hurt, and after that she couldn't really stop him.

`I
couldn't stand to see that much of
anyone
,
'
Carrie had said, laughing, at one of these lunches, while Jay was in the Gents. ‘But it's sweet to see someone with such an adoring husband. I should be so lucky!'

Loyalty
forbade the honest reply, but after that Juliette noticed that gradually the lunch invitations stopped.

After
six months, she suggested she should look for an office job. Jay went dangerously quiet; reading familiar storm signs, she felt herself tensing up.

`Are
you saying you don't love me any more?' he asked softly. 'Tired of me already?' He was staring at her, forcing her somehow to look into those mesmeric eyes.

`Oh
Jay, of course not, don't be silly!' She tried to laugh it off, but she was aware of sounding nervous not amused. `It's just that we do absolutely everything together, and—'

`And
isn't that just how it should be?' he cut in before she could finish. 'Modern marriages come apart because other things and other people get in the way, and I'm not taking any risks with you, my life, my only love.'

She
sensed mockery in what he said, but what answer could she make? 'Fine,' she said feebly. 'It was only an idea.'

And
the thing was, he was still, as ever, the greatest fun to be with. Even as a child, she had been flattered to be his chosen friend. The summer of the Egyptian Game, everyone had wanted to be in his gang because his ideas – bad, dangerous, cruel ideas sometimes – were the sort that no one else would think of. His fantasies became a sort of secret life for them all, deliciously scary at the time, even if they regretted it later.

That
was all behind them, of course, forgotten as far as possible, but he'd never lost his talent for originality, and now he had money as well. For the first Valentine's Day of their marriage he gave her a fur hat, then took her to Krakow where it was thirty below so she could wear it. They rode the rollercoasters at adventure parks and watched
avant
-
garde
plays where they formed a third of the audience. They went clubbing in Amsterdam. He got tickets for a Tom Jones concert and for Glyndebourne and for an amateur pantomime in a village one Christmas which was funnier than anything the West End could offer. He'd found out where there was badger-baiting in darkest Somerset, but Juliette, with horror, refused to see it as a joke.

They
even went to Egypt to see the pyramids at the height, of the Foreign Office warnings about tourist terrorism. Well, of course, since Burlow Primary Jay had always had a sort of obsession with Egypt. They all had, then, but after the horrible business with Bonnie Bryant she had been plagued with recurring nightmares about the animal-headed gods, and even now had problems with Jay's elegant collection of Egyptian antiquities. She was glad to get home after that trip, and only partly because of the danger of bombs.

They
had been married for two years before she noticed uneasily that, somehow, they had no friends. Her flatmates had married or moved away. Her neighbours might nod, but she didn't know them. Her father took them out to dinner occasionally when he came down to London, but apart from business contacts they entertained together, there was no one else they socialised with. They only had each other.

She
began to dread their evenings in, when over the coffee cups after supper he would demand, 'Amuse me!' And since it was he who usually came up with the fun ideas, it seemed only fair that she should try, though it made her feel like a caged canary, kept for its entertainment value and obliged to sing.

For
what was there to talk about? She had to cudgel her brain to think of something fresh; what could she tell him about the events of her day that he didn't know already? What opinions did she ever hear, but his own?

It
got harder and harder. At last the night came — would she ever forget it? — when she wasn't prepared to try any longer.

`Sorry,
Jay, I'm all talked out,' she said lightly, getting up to clear the table.

`Oh,
I'm sure you can do better than that,' he drawled. `I like to hear you try.' He glanced up at her, and that was when she saw cold malice in his eyes, and felt as if it had turned her blood to ice.

Oh,
he covered up at once. He veiled his gaze, and then he was smiling, saying, 'But never mind! It doesn't matter. I'll put on a CD, shall I, while we clear up?'

It
was
The
Magic
Flute
, of course, as she had known it would be. But as Juliette went mechanically about the domestic tasks, she knew what she had seen, and with Mozart's sublime
Isis
and
Osiris
aria filling the room just a little too loudly, everything fell relentlessly, horribly into place. She had been feeling like a helpless bird in a cage, because that was exactly what she was. She was friendless, because he had made her so. And knowing him as she did, how could she have been stupid enough not to realise before?

She,
privileged to be his other self, had rejected him. He would, with some justice, have seen her defection as cruellest treachery, and he was making her pay. How could she have imagined he had forgiven her? How could she have forgotten that Jay Darke never let an injury go unpunished?

His
possessiveness was prompted by revenge, not devotion. Their little house was a prison, not a love-nest. Their partnership wasn't a marriage, but a custodial sentence.

She
was the victim in one of his games, one of his bizarre, cruel, endless games. And she didn't know what to do.

In
her precious breathing space, when he went to the Friday morning meeting, she phoned Laura, married now with an infant, but still living in London. Perhaps if she went to see her next week she could resurrect the old friendship, talk about her problem, get some of Laura's down-to-earth advice which might give her a proper perspective on things.

Laura
was delighted to hear from her; it was easily arranged. She said nothing about it to Jay, but the next week he didn't leave at his usual time.

`Aren't
you going to the office today?' she asked, carefully casual.

`There's
nothing much on at the moment,' he said without looking up from the sports page of the
Independent
. `We decided I might as well stay here.'

Juliette
had no choice but to confess.

`Oh,
that's nice,' he said blandly. 'We haven't seen Laura for ages. How lucky that I can come too.'

She
saw that he had known about it all along. With his skills, bugging the phone would be child's play.

She
could bear the elaborate deception no longer. Gathering her courage she said as temperately as she could, `You're spying on me, aren't you, Jay?'

His
anger, like sudden lightning tearing the sky, tore their marriage apart. She cowered under the lash of his spite and contempt; he didn't strike her, though she felt she would almost have preferred honest physical violence. At least the injuries he inflicted would have been visible.

After
the storm, the calm. He phoned Laura to cancel the visit, citing a forgotten engagement and laughing about Juliette's forgetfulness, promising they would both come and see the baby some other time. Then chillingly, he went on as if nothing had happened.

In
the weeks that followed, he took her out, talked to her, made jokes and made love, as if this had been a married tiff like any other. Yet he didn't trouble to veil the cruelty in his eyes any more. He was playing with her, like a cat with a defenceless mouse.

Then
he had the security cameras installed, which covered upstairs and downstairs in the little house, so there was no privacy at all any more. Even when he was asleep he could be party to her sleeplessness, review her restless wandering about the house, savour her wretchedness as she sipped tea in the middle of the night. He took to security-locking the windows and front door and taking away the keys on the mornings when he went to the office.

Juliette's
work was suffering. She could settle to nothing; like a hamster in a wheel, her mind scrabbled round and round the problem without finding any fresh answers, and she was terrified of what in his ingenuity he might do if she tried to leave him and failed.

She
could phone the police, but they were notoriously reluctant to interfere in domestic matters, and how could she claim imprisonment when their neighbours would declare that she was out with her husband almost daily? She could phone her father — but Jay would know before ever he arrived, and she didn't trust Harry not to do something outrageous, something that would get him into trouble. Jay would love that.

If
she broke out, ran away, she had no money. She had looked, during one of his absences, for her cheque book on their joint account, but he must have destroyed it. He had taken even the small change out of her purse now.

If
the money order from one of the French companies she did translations for hadn't arrived during one of his Friday morning absences, she would be his prisoner, his plaything, still. She had laid her plans meticulously, and, mercifully, it hadn't occurred to him to remove her passport.

When
she arrived in Ambys, she had phoned her father, despite her grandmother's bristling disapproval, to tell him what had happened. He had exploded in protective rage, as she had known he would, but she made him promise to do nothing until he met her in London when she came home. With his support she felt she could confront Jay and finish the whole sad game.

‘B
ut don't go by yourself, Dad, he's dangerous,' she warned again. 'Clever.'

Harry
Cartwright had snorted. 'He's a sick bastard,' he said. 'He may have brains, but I can tell you when it comes to dealing with unpleasant customers I wrote the textbook. No —' as she protested, 'don't worry. I use the sort of lawyers who have boys like him for breakfast. They'll have him tied in so many legal knots he'll fall flat on his face if he takes a step in your direction.'

She
still feared Jay's vengeance, but Dad's confidence was comforting. After all, he hadn't got where he was without making enemies, and all the evidence suggested that he could handle it.

She'd
stay for another couple of days, and then she'd go home to draw a double line under that strange part of her life, and start over again. Perhaps she might even think about working in France. Grandmère would love that.

To
the monotonous lullaby of the crickets, Juliette fell asleep.