A Banquet of Consequences (17 page)

BAYSWATER

LONDON

R
ory finished her swim at her normal time, just after eight in the morning. She always arrived at the old leisure centre as early as she could drag herself there, which was generally at a quarter past six. Today had been different due to a late-night phone call from Clare, reporting on the event at Lucy Cavendish College. She’d ultimately felt sorry for the Very Reverend Marydonna Patches, Clare had admitted with a rueful laugh. It had not been the wisest venue for the clergywoman to have chosen for the debate. As Clare had put it, “When one depends entirely upon the Bible for one’s interpretation of what it is to be female . . . Well, you know how that sort of thing is likely to go down in circumstances in which you’re surrounded by university women.”

“A crucifixion, if I might borrow from the Bible myself.”

“Hmmm, perhaps a stoning? But book sales were quite brisk at the end, I’m happy to tell you. And I daresay there wasn’t a woman present who wanted even to picture poor Elizabeth Bennet’s life post her marriage to the smouldering Fitzwilliam. When the curtain falls, the drudgery begins. Pemberley be damned.”

Rory laughed. “You must have been in your element.”

“Darling, I
was.
”

“And Caroline?” Rory couldn’t resist asking the question. “How did she hold up?”

“I’m sorry to report we’ve only just now had a few too many sharp words and she’s gone to her room in a huff. I didn’t make things easy for her tonight, I’m afraid. I’d sworn that we’d be finished up by ten, but the event went till half past eleven and she was rather put out by that. I can’t actually blame her. It was the signing. It went on and on. Everyone wanted to have a word when they got to the table and Caroline’s best laid plans to get the entire business over and done with simply fell apart. Absolutely no one who wanted to have a chat was to be moved along quickly, no matter what she tried.”

“Did she remove your business cards from whomever you might have given them to?”

Clare chuckled. “Probably but I’ve actually no clue.” She yawned loudly and added, “Good God. Look at the time.” At which point, they rang off.

Now, Rory lifted herself from the pool, muscles spent. All of the lanes were occupied at this point, and hers was taken over before she had a chance to remove her goggles and pick up her towel. The volume of noise had increased in the cavernous hall which housed the pool, and the air was heavily redolent of chlorine. Best to vacate the premises at once, Rory thought.

Arlo rose from the folded towel that was his usual post, stretched forelegs and hind legs languorously, and observed Rory as if questioning the sanity of her entire morning’s routine. She patted his head and rolled up his towel. Next came the steam room, and he would wait without while she took her fifteen minutes in there on the slick white tiles that formed the benches along the walls of the room’s two chambers. She was one of eight other women, in various stages of undress, who sweated in the wet heat of the place. At the end of the quarter hour, she went off to the showers.

It was after her shower and while she was dressing that she saw there was a message on her mobile phone. It had come in at half past eight, and the number was Clare’s. She finished dressing and dried her hair. It was just before nine when she returned Clare’s call.

Caroline Goldacre answered. Rory felt a swell of what she knew
was completely irrational irritation at the other woman’s intrusion.
What
was Caroline doing with Clare’s mobile? And what next? Access to her cashpoint card?

Rory said, “Clare rang me, Caroline. Is she—”

“It
wasn’t
Clare. It was me,” Caroline cried. “Clare’s dead! Rory, she’s dead!”

THORNFORD

DORSET

Alastair took the phone call from Caroline while sitting at Sharon Halsey’s breakfast table. He hadn’t intended to spend the night. He had called it a fling—“just a bit of fun, eh?”—when he’d first broken off relations with Sharon, deliberately trying to wipe himself out of her heart and herself out of his. He’d only had her five times before he’d been caught, anyway. One could hardly call that an affair, but one had to call it something in order to kill it off, yes? One couldn’t just say, “We best end this thing between us, girl, ’cause it’s going nowhere with nowhere to go.” That wasn’t true anyway. For he’d quickly discovered “this thing between us” had a real body and soul to it.

But he couldn’t admit that to himself. He couldn’t even
think
it lest Sharon see the longing on his face and feel the pull inside him that kept dragging him towards her.

He hadn’t taken her to bed that first night after dinner in her ancient farmhouse. He’d insisted on helping with the washing-up, and he’d stayed far later than he’d intended. They’d talked themselves into exhaustion over six long hours in each other’s company, discovering how much they had in common: from being the lost children in too-large families with careworn mums and put-upon dads to having secret dreams of adulthood that had gone unfulfilled. Hers: to live for a time in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, where she would take up a career that involved the resident dolphins and the sea. His: always the impossible wish to be a warrior, with weapons of destruction slung across his chest, using those weapons to bring death to those who terrorised the innocent. Both of them laughed at dreams that came from childhood but still maintained their hold.

“I c’n see you with them dolphins,” he told her.

“Well, I
can’t
see you harming so much as a fly. Not you, Alastair. Not with your—”

“It’s my leg that got broke,” he told her. “And the bloke who set it . . . ? A dog’s dinner, that was, what he made of it.”

“I was going to say not with your sense of decency,” she told him. “As to your leg? See here, it’s just a leg. Shorter than the other, yes? I’ve seen your shoe, how it’s built up.”

“Army wouldn’t take me nor would anyone else,” he said. “Well, save Caro. I was man enough for her.”

“That’s silly. You’re man enough for anyone,” she replied.

She’d taken him to bed the third time they were alone together. It wasn’t her bed. Nor was it his. She’d called him to Yeovil to have a talk with the staff at the bakery shop there. She’d called it “good for business when the managing director himself comes to pay a call.”

Generally, he went directly to bed once the bakery vans set off with their morning deliveries to the shops across Dorset. He would have been at work since half past two, and after five hours with little enough sleep preceding them, he was in need of a kip. But Sharon’s recommendation made sense. What would it cost him to lose a few hours of sleep? Not much, he reckoned.

The meeting at the bakery shop went according to plan, but what he hadn’t expected was the secondary plan. This one took them to a nearby inn for a morning coffee. The morning coffee took them upstairs to a room Sharon had already taken. How she put it was, “I’ve got you a room for your kip, Alastair. I reckon you gave that up in order to speak to the staff and you must be dead on your feet. Would you be wanting to go up for a bit?”

He’d said, “Aye.” And then he’d added—God have mercy—“But not without you.” So it had begun, and the aftermath was not guilt at all but rather a kind of immense gratitude that God had given this woman to him.

Oddly, that was how it felt. She was his. To care for, to love, to cherish, to . . . What? he’d asked himself as they parted after that first time. What in God’s name was he supposed to do?

As he had no answer, he set about finding one, and his only course
to that end was to have her again. He told himself that he needed to understand what they were to each other because if he had to make some sort of decision about her, then he had to be clear that what was going on between them was not the same mad lust that had fueled his earliest days with his wife.

Indeed, Caroline was dominant in his thoughts most of the time. How could she not be? One didn’t walk out on a woman who’d been through what Caroline had. It would be a death blow to her and he could not deal with it. He couldn’t begin to picture the moment when he faced her over dinner in the garden on a country drive as she did the laundry while she cooked him a meal, and he’d be there telling her that he’d fallen hard for someone else, harder even than he’d fallen for her and “Let’s look at it square, Caro, what’ve we really got, you and me? Not much, eh? Best we go our separate ways.”

As it turned out, he didn’t have to play out that scenario, for Caroline had come by a stack of photos sent to her by God only knew who. He could only thank the Almighty they’d been merely as graphic as photographing a long and openmouthed kiss would make them, or depicting hand-holding, or catching him caressing Sharon’s gorgeous bum. All of that had been bad enough, however. Caroline’s reaction had terrified him. Not a bit of rage, no tears, and not a single accusation. Just an offer that she made when he looked up from the photos she’d placed on his plate instead of the sandwich he’d been expecting.

She would kill herself if that’s what he wanted, she told him. I can see you love her. I can see you want her and who can blame you because look at what I’ve become. But it’s because I can’t get over him, Alastair. I try and I fail and I give you nothing. You’re everything to me, but I’ve
never
managed to be everything to you. I won’t divorce you because you’ll lose too much when it comes to a settlement and you don’t deserve that. But I’ll kill myself if that’s what you want.

God’s mercy, he
didn’t
want that! He jumped to his feet and begged her to forgive him for “this bloody stupid fling with Sharon.” It just happened before he knew it was happening was how he put it. One moment he was talking to her ’bout the shop in Dorchester the new building in Poundbury having to sack the shop assistant in Corfe the need for more freshly baked goods in Wareham . . . What did it
matter? He babbled, he begged, he professed whatever he needed to profess in order to assure his wife that he felt nothing for Sharon Halsey.

He almost convinced himself. He steeled himself to tell Sharon that the nothing which they had equated to a nothing future. “Bit ’f fun, eh?” was how he put it, and he made himself walk away from her sweet face as it collapsed upon itself as if from a blow.

He felt noble for two days and three sleepless nights. And then he’d rung her. He couldn’t do it, he told her. “You’re the woman for me,” he told her.

When they lay together in her old iron bed, sated and staring into each other’s eyes, it was easy to think how he would manage it all. Losing half of what he owned meant nothing to him if he could have Sharon. He’d give Caro the house. He’d give her half the shops. He’d give her—if he had to—his very soul. But when he finally broached the subject, Caro had made good on her offer. She’d cut herself, directly on the vein and deeply enough for him to see what the reality was and would always be.

So he was caught, but he could not give up Sharon. He would, he promised himself and her, find a way.

He didn’t lie when his mobile rang, and Caroline said, “Where are you, Alastair? I rang the house first, so don’t tell me I’ve awakened you from your nap. You’ve spent the night with her, haven’t you? You’ve decided that the best course is to take my heart in your mouth and chew it up.”

He glanced at Sharon, who was at the cooker in slippers and dressing gown with her baby-fine hair a mess that needed a careful brushing to detangle it. She looked his way and registered his expression. She came to him where he sat at table, she stood behind his chair, and she put her arms round him. She rested her cheek on the top of his head.

He said into the mobile, “You’ve not waked me.”

“As to the rest? You’re with her, aren’t you?” And then, “Why don’t you simply kill me yourself? Why don’t
both
of you plan something to be rid of me because that’s what you want, a clear path, isn’t it? And who can blame you for wanting to be rid of me because look at what
I’ve become. Look at
who
I’ve become. I have nothing in my life now and I’ve rung you to tell you it’s over. What I touch turns to ash, who I am poisons the air. Will knew it and you do as well and now Clare . . . Oh my God,
Clare
 . . .”

Alastair frowned. “What of Clare? Caro, what of Clare?”

“She’s dead and I’m alone here with her and I’ve rung Charlie but he’s not answering and I
need
you and that’s why I’ve phoned.
Not
because I’m checking on you. Not because I’m half mad with wanting you and wanting to keep you. She died in the night and the police are coming and I
need
you, Alastair. If I have to talk to the police on my own, if I have to find my way home on my own . . . I don’t know what to do or who to ring if I can’t ring you . . . And you’re with Sharon, aren’t you, I know you’re with her and you’ve spent the night and
why
would you want to come to me now but please,
please.
”

“Caro,” he said. “Caro, get hold of yourself, luv. I’ll be there soon.”

Sharon released him then. She went to the cooker. She saw to the eggs and the bacon. She slotted slices of toast in the holder.

He said to her, “Shar, it’s that Clare Abbott . . . Something’s happened to her up in Cambridge and Caro’s in a right state about it.”

She brought the toast to the table along with a plate of eggs and bacon. To this she’d added grilled tomatoes and mushrooms and a heaping portion of beans. A proper English breakfast it was, the sort of breakfast he’d not had at home in years.

“Eat your meal, then, Alastair,” she told him quietly. “It’s a long drive you’ve got before you.”

RIVER HOUSE HOTEL

CAMBRIDGE

Due to roadworks on the motorway, it was noon by the time Rory reached the hotel in Cambridge. She felt caught in a nightmare from which there was going to be no awakening. Her conversation with Caroline Goldacre had been interrupted by paroxysms of that woman’s tears. From it, though, Rory had managed to piece together an outline of what had happened.