Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (26 page)

‘What’s that?’ she asked. She detached one hand to point briefly, before re-attaching it firmly to the handrail.

‘The fantail. It keeps the sails pointing exactly into the wind. So if the wind shifts, the cap moves round slightly and ...’ There was a sudden lurch beneath Sarah’s feet. ‘... like that.’

‘What the hell happened then?’

‘The wind shifted slightly, like I told you, and the cap moved round.’

‘The cap ... you mean this whole roof we’re standing on
moved
? It isn’t fixed?’

‘No. Sorry, I should have warned you. The cap - the roof - is circular, right, and it’s resting on a set of wooden skids. The fantail’s attached to the cap but connected to the tower by a cogwheel that runs round outside the skids. So when the wind shifts, like it did just then, the fantail moves a couple of notches along the cogwheel and drags the cap around so the sails keep facing the wind. Clever, isn’t it?’ He laughed.

‘Very.’ Sarah drew a deep breath. She was determined not to show herself afraid. ‘And what’s the point of this balcony?’

‘Suicide.’

‘What?’ She stared at him, uncertain if she’d heard right. His face was shadowed, between her and the setting sun. ‘What did you say?’

‘Suicide.’ He raised his arms by his sides, in the position of a swallow dive. ‘Don’t you think it would be a good way to go?’

‘Michael, stop it. You’re crazy.’

He flexed his knees, as though about to jump. ‘Perfect. Two seconds sheer terror, then certain death. Can you imagine a better end?’

Sarah shuddered. I’m alone on the roof of this tower, she thought, with a man I scarcely know. What if he turns out to be a maniac?

‘Michael, don’t be silly! Stop it.’

Releasing her grip on the handrail, she clutched his arm, staring with horror at the sheer drop below. When he didn’t move, she tugged his arm again.

‘Michael!’

Instead of moving, he linked her arm with his, forcing her to stand beside him. The sails whisked behind them, turning a little faster than before. A rook flew beneath their feet, cawing loudly. I’m linked to him, Sarah thought; if the cap lurches again we’ll lose our balance and fall. He’s much stronger than me -
what the hell is he doing?

Michael looked down at her. In the dusk, his face was hard to decipher. The wind blew her hair across her eyes. We’re all alone here, she thought again, there’s no one else around for miles.
Is this how it ends?

He relaxed, reached his arm round her, and guided her back through the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as they came down from the cap to his study. ‘You were scared. I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Of course I was scared.’ Sarah’s fear turned to anger. ‘What the hell were you doing up there? It was dangerous.’

‘I’m sorry, it was stupid. It’s just that ... I like heights, I always have. But I shouldn’t have inflicted it on you. I apologise.’

‘But
why
, Michael? What’s the attraction?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. The air, I suppose, the wind in your face. The height. The sense that you’ve got to keep control of yourself or else ... If I did ever want to die, that would be the best way to go, wouldn’t it? Very quick.’ He studied her apologetically. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve no intention of dying. Not for years and years. Especially now I’ve met you.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Sarah said coolly. If that’s his idea of a compliment he can keep it. ‘Michael, it’s late, and I’ve got some papers to read before court tomorrow. Do you mind if we go back?’

On the drive home his good spirits revived. He apologised again and set himself to lighten the atmosphere with a long involved story about how as a boy he’d once got marooned on an island to which he’d rowed to climb a cliff. ‘There were gannets all over this island, and when I got down I found they’d pecked holes in my rubber dinghy. I was half a mile from the shore and no one knew where I was. I had visions of myself living on gannets’ eggs and rainwater, and growing a long beard and grey hair like Robinson Crusoe.’

‘A ten year old with a long beard?’

‘Yes, well I wasn’t sure how beards grew in those days. I thought it was something to do with the sea. It was mostly sailors who had them, after all. Like the one who picked me up in his fishing boat.’

Sarah smiled. The thought of him as a ten year boy, scrambling barefoot over rocks at the seaside, was an appealing one. Perhaps that was what attracted him to heights, she thought. A sense of reliving his youth. And young boys did do silly, dangerous things - she remembered her own son, Simon, coming home covered with blood after speeding downhill on a bicycle. The game had been to hit the hump-backed bridge at the bottom of the hill at full speed, apparently, to see how far you could fly through the air without hitting the ground. Simon had broken the record and his arm simultaneously. Sarah had been furious and shocked, both at once.

But her son had been nine or ten at the time, not in his forties, like Michael. She wondered, later that evening, what it all meant. He was a nice man, clearly, and liked her - he’d said so, just once. But why play the fool on top of the windmill like that? And what sort of man jokes about suicide?

29. Dividing the Equity

A
PPROACHING KING’S Square in Leeds, Sarah walked past Leeds Town Hall, where she and Bob had been married. It had been her second wedding. She had been 17 years old, a young mother with a baby. Her own mother had offered to look after Simon during the wedding, but Sarah had refused. ‘He’s marrying me
and
the baby, Mum!’ she’d said fiercely. ‘That’s the whole point. He doesn’t want me to give him up - unlike you!’ So the three of them - Sarah, Bob, and little Simon
-
had walked up the steps of the registry office together, a family before they were even married. She’d held Simon in her arms throughout the ceremony, only passing him to Bob when she signed the register. Her mother, who’d wanted to put him up for adoption, hadn’t held him at all. Sarah didn’t regard her mother as family after that. Bob and Simon were her family, she’d felt; when she needed support she could rely on them, no one else. No one else but herself.

Now she had only herself.

She crossed the square, a slender figure in a black coat, quite alone. Her back was straight, her face pale and determined. Her heels clicked briskly up the stone steps into the offices of Ian Carr, the divorce lawyer Lucy had recommended. He came to reception to meet her, holding out his hand in greeting. ‘Mrs Newby, isn’t it? Come upstairs, please. I have fresh coffee in my office, or herbal tea if you prefer. Your husband and his lawyer are due here in an hour. We should be ready for them by then, I hope.’

He was a pleasant young man, with the right touch of sympathy in his smile. He’ll go far, Sarah thought, admiring the effortless, efficient way he put her at ease in his office - an office considerably more luxurious than her own. I should have gone into civil law, she thought. No, I haven’t the style.

‘Your main interest, I believe, is to keep your house,’ he began, handing her coffee. ‘Sadly, as I told you on the phone, our options here are limited. If your daughter - Emily, isn’t it? - had been a year younger, that would have helped, but now she is over 18 and legally an adult she is no longer dependent on you to house her. If your husband were to agree to let you stay on we could come to an arrangement, but I regret to say ...’

‘He won’t.’ Sarah thought sadly of Emily’s desire for a room of her own, of her love for the house by the river. Term would be over soon - she would be home, Sarah supposed, for Christmas. ‘So what are my options?’

‘Either to sell the house, or buy your husband out. Under Section 15 of the Trust of Land and Application of Properties Act, you should get the house valued. Fifty per cent of it is yours, fifty percent is your husband’s. So either you pay him 50% of the valuation or you sell the house and divide the equity. How are you paying your mortgage?’

‘We each pay half,’ said Sarah, thinking of the huge tax bill she’d have to meet next April. ‘What if I increase my payments to cover the full amount now - can’t I stay in the house then?’

‘Not unless your husband agrees, I’m afraid. You’d be denying him his share of the equity. But house prices have been rising, so he might be persuaded to wait, in the hope of more later. He has somewhere to live, I take it?’

‘Oh yes, he has somewhere to live,’ she said grimly, thinking of the photograph she had found last week, in his files on their computer. A young woman with long brown hair - rather thin, Sarah thought, for her taste, and with slightly buck teeth - but smiling ecstatically, and clutching her three young children to a long, full-length skirt. She looked happy, but when Sarah had enlarged the photo and focussed closer on the young woman’s eyes, she saw something - what was it? - insecurity, anxiety, greed? Something desperate anyway, yearning behind the smile. Or was that just her own jealousy, defacing what she saw to justify her own furious rage? Her hands had shaken so that she could hardly grip the mouse.

There had been other photos, and several had shown a small semi-detached house - perfectly adequate, but a step down from what Bob had grown accustomed to. She doubted he would stick it for long.

So it proved in the meeting an hour later. They sat in a conference room, either side of a gleaming mahogany table. Bob, to her surprise, looked different. He’d had a recent haircut and instead of his usual rumpled suit was wearing a new powder blue jumper and leather jacket - clearly intended to make him look younger. She detected a faint scent of aftershave, too. Only the bags under his eyes made him look old. He responded badly to the suggestions about delaying the sale.

‘No, of course I need it now - Sonya’s house is rented, it’s up for renewal in March, and it’s much too small anyway. The real point we need to settle is the size of each share.’

He glanced at his lawyer, a small, round man, who began apologetically. ‘Mr Newby claims 65% of the equity, on the grounds of the history of the investment. When the couple originally bought the house he paid the entire deposit himself, and all the interest on the mortgage for the first three years when his wife’s earnings were low.’

Sarah’s lawyer laughed. ‘That won’t wash, Mr Snerl, you know it won’t. Even if Mrs Newby had been staying at home looking after the children ...’

‘Looking after the children!’ Bob broke in bitterly. ‘As if!’

‘... and paid no money at all, she would still be entitled to 50% of the equity. She was contributing an equal share by looking after the family.’

‘But she wasn’t!’ Bob said. ‘She was pursuing her education - at my expense!’

‘That’s irrelevant in the eyes of the law ...’

‘I cared for my children, Bob. Don’t you dare say I didn’t.’ Sarah’s eye met her husband’s for the first time. There was something in her gaze, and the cool incisive tone of her voice, that dried the indignation on his tongue. They measured each other, and for a moment the lawyers were not there. Sarah wondered afterwards if they had continued talking, and she’d heard nothing.
How did you come to this, Bob,
her eyes asked
, after twenty years of marriage?
All based on trust, and the promise that it would continue for ever. Did you change all that with your clothes and hairstyle?

But he was a different man - at least one she had not seen before. There was a bitter wariness in his eyes, and a trembling determination not to back down, however strong his sense of guilt. He looked fragile, she thought; younger not just because of the clothes, but because of his desperate need to deny the truth, and believe he was in the right. Would she want this man back? Not really, no. Not without love. And there was no love left, in the eyes that met hers. None left at all.

She turned back to the lawyers. ‘What do we need to do?’

‘Well, Mrs Newby,’ her own lawyer said. ‘The sensible thing is to come to an agreement. Get the house valued, put it on the market, and agree an equitable division of assets. That way there’s least pain and expense to you both. Otherwise, if we go to court - well, you’re a lawyer, you know where the money will go.’

‘Yes, very well.’ The discussion continued for a while, the lawyers explaining the procedure and setting up a timetable. Then, it seemed, they were done. Her memory of the Town Hall returned. There should be a crowd of people, friends and family outside - doing what? Her mother maybe, saying
I told you so, you should have listened to me in the first place.
Her father looking sad and pathetic. Her children ...

Outside on the steps Bob said: ‘Shall we go for a coffee?’

She stared at him, incredulous. ‘What? After that?’

‘It won’t hurt. There’s a Starbucks round the corner.’

And somehow, the loneliness awaiting her seemed so final that any delay seemed a straw worth clutching at. ‘OK. Why not?’

In Starbucks there was a brief embarrassment as the cashier asked if they were together. ‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll pay for myself.’ They sat opposite each other in the window.

‘So, how are you?’ she asked.

‘Oh, fine.’ The leather jacket was new; it still creaked. She preferred the powder blue jumper. It was the sort of thing she might have bought him for Christmas; but his Christmas had come early this year.

‘Really?’ She sipped her cappuccino. ‘You’re looking a bit tired.’ It was true. The lines on his face had deepened and there was a greyish tinge to his skin. To her surprise he took out a cigarette and lit it.

‘You haven’t started that?’

‘Just a few,’ he said defensively. ‘It’s up to me.’

‘Oh, sure. You’re a grown man. Do what you like.’ She shook her head in disbelief.
Has it really come to this?
‘How are the children?’

‘At the school, you mean?’

‘No. In your new home.’

‘Oh, John, Linda and Samantha? They’re great. Really nice kids. Easy to talk to. Of course, it’s a little hard for them, having a new man in the house ...’

‘Their own father left?’

‘Yes. And there was another guy for a while, but ...’

‘So you’re third in line, are you?’ Sarah raised a pitying eyebrow. ‘They’re probably wondering how long you’ll last.’