What Women Want (28 page)

As the plane flew through turbulence, Bea clutched the arms of her seat. The seatbelt signs were on and the crew had abandoned their trolley duties to strap themselves into their seats at the front and rear of the cabin. A baby, two rows ahead of her, was yelling its head off. She shut her eyes, trying to pretend that she was in a rocking chair, a very unsteady one. Nothing to worry about, she kept repeating to herself. Planes survive much worse than this. It was a blessed relief to land in France twenty minutes later.

Contrary to Paul’s prediction, sleeping on matters hadn’t made them better. If anything, in the sober light of day, they looked worse. Even if flying to France on a whim meant she acquired some tangible proof of Oliver’s identity, there was no guarantee she’d persuade either Ellen or Kate to listen to her. Ellen had made her feelings crystal clear and Kate could be as stubborn as a mule. She’d shown that last night.

Apart from that, Bea hadn’t been able to let the office know she wasn’t going to be in today. She was meant to be presenting
Bare Bones
to the booksellers: a crucial moment for the success (or not) of any book. But the impulse to save her friendship (and possibly her friend) had taken priority over everything else. She had justified her decision to take the day off in the knowledge that Stuart would make a brilliant stand-in. However, the fact she hadn’t been able to get through to him yet to warn him was making her anxious. She would try again as soon as she got out of the airport.

The unfamiliar early start had left Bea feeling like something from the night of the living dead. By the time she caught sight of her reflection in the unforgiving glare of the lights in the Ladies at Tours airport, her hair had taken on an uncontrolled life of its own and, without makeup, her face was ashen, with purplish shadows under her eyes. What she looked like was neither here nor there. Last night’s events had galvanised her. The look she had seen on Oliver’s face had made her realise how much she distrusted him. Thanks to her inability to keep quiet, she had forced matters to a head too soon. So be it. She couldn’t wait for Suzanne to come to London in three weeks’ time: she needed whatever information there was right now. The previous evening, when Suzanne had heard what had happened, she had immediately agreed to drive from Bourges to meet Bea in a pâtisserie in the centre of Tours, just as soon as Bea could get there.

As Bea stood shivering outside the low white terminal building, queuing with the other passengers at the taxi rank, only twelve hours after they’d spoken, she switched on her mobile to call Stuart. One missed call from Kate. It could wait. Before she had a chance to dial, the phone rang.

‘Bea?’

‘Yes.’ Adam! The one person she didn’t want to speak to right now.

‘Where the hell are you? The key buyers are due in twenty minutes. I thought we were going to run through the presentation.’

Shit! In the heat of the moment, she’d completely forgotten the run-through. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

‘I’m in, er . . .’ How could she break it gently?

‘Where? Where are you? When are you going to get here?’ His rage communicated itself only too effectively over the airwaves. There was no way she was going to be able to wriggle out of this one with the old fail-safe of gastro enteritis. He would have recognised the continental ring tone.

‘In France.’ She held her breath and waited.

‘In France?’ he repeated. ‘What the fuck are you doing there?’

‘I’m sorry, but I had to come here at very short notice. It’s something of an emergency.’

‘I’m not interested, Bea.’ There was no mistaking the chill in his voice. ‘The presentation has been in the diary for weeks, as you well know. As far as I’m concerned, it should have taken precedence over everything else. The fact that you couldn’t even be bothered to let any of us know that you were taking off signals to me that something very serious is missing in your attitude towards this company.’

‘Adam, I’m sorry. I tried to get hold of Stuart. He’ll do a great job in my—’

‘There’s nothing more to be said right now. Amanda will step in for you.’

I bet she will, sighed Bea. ‘We’ll talk whenever you deign to come back.’ Without waiting for her to say anything, he hung up.

Bea was cursing under her breath throughout the fifteen-minute taxi-ride into the centre of Tours. As far as her career was concerned, she had messed up big-time. The honeymoon was well and truly over and the divorce court beckoned. Adam’s reputation travelled ahead of him. Fall foul of him and there was no way back. What made it worse was that she could imagine the alacrity with which Amanda would step into her shoes and the presence of mind with which she would fulfil the role so unexpectedly thrust on her. Bea might as well have put herself in front of a firing squad and given the order to shoot.

The sky was heavy with unfallen snow. The temperature was freezing and the good citizens of Tours were well wrapped up to protect themselves against it. The window of the Pâtisserie de Paris was stocked with fat, curled croissants, gâteaux and tarts of every size and description. As she nudged her way through the door, Bea was hit by the rich smell of coffee, the steamy hiss of the espresso machine drowning the voices of the customers who packed the small café. A waitress dodged among the tables, carrying orders, cups and plates to the high glass counter that displayed various tiny biscuits and an array of chocolates, behind which two other girls dashed back and forth, narrowly avoiding one another, shouting requests. Heavy overcoats and macs hung crowded on the wooden coat-stands. Round the dark, panelled walls hung familiar photos of Notre Dame, the Sacré Coeur, Versailles, the Arc de Triomphe and other Parisian landmarks.

Bea checked out each table until she lighted on one tucked into a dark corner at the back. Sitting in a low leather chair was a slim woman in her forties, not wealthy-looking but elegant in a simple air-force blue fitted coat, a patterned scarf at her throat. A boyish haircut and a fine-boned face, with large, dark, hooded eyes and a long straight nose, made her stand out from the crowd. She saw Bea and smiled. As she negotiated her way through the tables, Bea felt a growing sense of anticipation, her anxiety about Adam temporarily forgotten. She noticed that beside the woman’s coffee cup was a thick manila envelope.

‘Suzanne?’

The woman nodded, shy, and waited as Bea shook off her coat and ordered a
café crème
from the waitress who’d followed her. As she sat down, Suzanne pushed the envelope towards her. ‘I’ve brought photos so you can be sure we are talking about the same person. I’ve also brought the letters from the solicitor so you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’

Bea pulled out the contents of the envelope. Oliver was standing in the main street of a small French town in front of the large window of an art gallery, his arm around Suzanne, smiling at the camera. ‘It’s him,’ she murmured. ‘I was so hoping it wouldn’t be.’

There he was again, lounging on a cushioned bench in a sunny garden. And with a young child, whom she took to be Suzanne’s daughter. And standing by a table, leaning on it, looking at a piece of brightly glazed pottery. Bea stared at them, torn between relief at not having wasted her journey and dismay at what to do next. Suzanne said nothing, letting Bea take in the contents of the envelope in her own time. Then she inched one of the papers towards her. The embossed letter heading belonged to a firm of Edinburgh lawyers, McKitterick, Drummond & McKay. Below was a contract of sale drawn up between Oliver Shepherd and Suzanne Berthaud, dated almost a year earlier. But what particularly puzzled Bea was the address given for Oliver.

‘But this says he lives in Edinburgh. I don’t understand.’

‘That’s where he comes from and where his wife lives.’ Suzanne must have anticipated Bea’s reaction.

‘His
wife
?’ She was leaning back in the chair and gripping the table with both hands as if it was anchoring her to the floor. Winded, she swallowed. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

‘No.’

‘But I thought he didn’t have any family.’

Suzanne straightened the photos into a pile. ‘When he was packing to leave, I found a letter half written to her. That was when he told me the truth for the first time. There was no longer any reason for him not to. He admitted that he had been charged with assaulting her but although a court order, I think you call it, prevented him going near her, he had been writing because he wanted to see his daughter.’

‘Assault!’ This was moving too fast for Bea. When she’d set out to dig a little dirt on Oliver, she hadn’t dreamed she would discover something so worrying.

‘Yes. Of course, when he moved in with me, I had no idea. I told you, I was really in love but things turned very bad.’

‘But he didn’t hit you . . . did he?’ Bea looked towards the street, not wanting to hear but knowing what the answer was going to be.

‘This is the one thing I haven’t told you.’ Suzanne leaned forward, both elbows on the table, as she lowered her voice so their neighbours couldn’t hear. ‘It’s something I never wanted to talk about again, ever. To anyone. But I’ve been thinking since we spoke and I must, for your friend’s sake.’ She sipped her coffee as if gathering strength from it. She kept her eyes fixed on the photos, perhaps remembering happier times.

‘What do you mean?’ Bea felt a knot of anxiety assemble itself in the pit of her stomach.

‘He didn’t hit me often and never very badly and he was always so, so sorry that afterwards I forgave him every time. There were just a few slaps at first. Once he slammed a door on my hand, and another time he threw a plate at me.’ She hesitated and took a sip of her coffee. ‘I’m sorry. It’s painful to talk about. As time went on, he became more short-tempered but he was so kind to me in so many other ways. I felt his life had not turned out quite as he wanted and I was sorry for that. Then one day he hit me in front of my daughter, Nadine. Just once. But that was enough.’ Bea pulled out the photo of the young girl with Oliver. Suzanne nodded, then started making patterns with the sugar in the bowl, her mind somewhere far away. ‘That was when I knew it was over. I couldn’t forgive him that. I asked him to go. He agreed . . .’ She paused, lost in whatever memories she was not sharing. ‘I’m not proud of what I put up with. All you need to know is here.’ She pointed at the documents that lay on the table under the photos. ‘When he eventually left, he went back to Edinburgh.’

‘I can’t take all this in. What you told me before was bad enough, but now . . . You don’t think Ellen’s in danger, do you? I’d never forgive myself if something happened.’

‘How would I know?’ She shrugged her shoulders.

Bea looked at her. How could she be sure she could trust everything this complete stranger told her? Suppose this woman had some agenda of her own that made her want to blacken Oliver’s name.

Suzanne started talking again, nervously tapping the table with a finger. ‘I’ve told you because I think she should be warned. I put up with it to begin with because I loved him. He could be so loving, so generous, that I thought I was the one at fault and that perhaps I deserved his anger. But no. I know that now.’ She still couldn’t bring herself to look at Bea. ‘I’m so ashamed of myself and for my daughter.’

‘Don’t be. You’ve made up a hundred times by being generous enough to tell me.’

‘What will you do?’ Suzanne began to pull on a pair of deep blue leather gloves.

‘I’m not sure. I need to think. Can’t I get you another coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I must get back to see someone in Bourges this afternoon. But you may keep these, if they’re helpful.’ She indicated the envelope and then she was on her feet, pulling a blue beret over her hair, picking up her bag. She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I hope I’ve helped.’ Bea’s heart went out to her – she looked suddenly so vulnerable and unsure of herself. Was Oliver responsible for her being like this? If there had been more room between the tables, Bea would have hugged her. As it was, she had to make do with standing as straight as the chair pressed into the back of her legs would allow and offering her hand. However, Suzanne leaned forward so they could exchange awkward kisses.

Bea watched the slight figure making its way out into the cold before ordering another coffee and, as an afterthought, a slice of chocolate ganache. She ought to phone the office, but that could wait. She needed to make a plan.

*

Ben had sloped off to watch a DVD at a mate’s house so when Bea got home the rest of the evening stretched ahead of her. She’d had a shower, washing away the worst of her day and borrowing Ben’s razor to shave her legs and under-arms. He’d be disgusted, but he wouldn’t notice. If he did, she’d buy him another. Besides, the older she got, the less hair she seemed to have to shave (except for the random dark ones on her chin that were appearing with alarming regularity and needed more serious treatment), so she wouldn’t be borrowing the damn thing for much longer. Afterwards she hung up her clothes (must lead by example or there was no hope) and donned her embarrassingly old-fashioned pink floral winceyette pyjamas. Combined with the stripy cashmere bedsocks that Kate had given her the previous Christmas and her White Company towelling robe they made the most comfortable get-up she’d ever owned. Yes, she looked as if she had wandered in from a hotel bedroom somewhere but she didn’t care. Who was there to see?

Downstairs she knocked up her favourite supper of scrambled eggs and anchovies – a combination she couldn’t remember discovering, she’d loved it for so long. Many friends had remarked on it and not always favourably. She put the pan in the sink, vowing to wash it up before Ben came home but, because it always took so long, not just yet. She carried the plate through to the living room where she put it on the coffee-table while she slipped a DVD into the player. Then she sat with her legs stretched out on the sofa, arranged the cushions behind her, picked up her supper, resting it on a copy of
Hello!
(secret vice number one) and waited for the opening credits of episode 109 of
The West Wing
(secret vice number two). A whole forty-five more to go, she reminded herself, with a small frisson of pleasure.