Got You Back (38 page)

‘OK, if that's what you want,’ Pauline said cautiously.

Stephanie ran for the train. She had no idea now if going up to Lincoln was the right thing to do, but if Katie was never going to answer her phone or return her calls then she had little option. She had no real hope that she could stop Katie doing whatever it was she was planning but she felt she had to do something. There was no getting round it: she needed James to help her. And asking him for help meant telling him the whole truth.

‘Guess what,’ he said cheerfully when he answered the
phone. ‘I've got a job.’ He paused triumphantly waiting for her reaction but Stephanie couldn't let herself be distracted and, besides, she had barely taken in what he'd said.

‘James, I have something to tell you but I can't go into it now. I need you to ring your mum and keep her talking on the phone for as long as you can. Ideally for about two and a half hours,’ she said, and almost laughed, it was so ridiculous. ‘She just told me that someone called Katie is trying to ring her. I think she's going to tell her everything.’

‘Jesus! How did she… I mean —’

‘I'll tell you the details later. I'm going to try and call Katie, get her to change her mind.’

‘Do you need her number?’

‘Actually, I already have it. Oh, and I'm on my way up there. To Lower Shippingham. To talk to her.’

Stephanie heard James splutter in what would, under other circumstances, have been a comical way. This was clearly too much for him to take in all at once. ‘I will explain everything later, I promise. The main thing now is that Pauline and John don't get caught up in the middle of our mess, OK? Just keep her on the phone for as long as you can and, hopefully, Katie'll get bored of trying. It's all we can do.’

‘I'm going to meet you up there,’ James said, and Stephanie found that she felt relieved. In truth, she didn't want to have to deal with this on her own. ‘I'll call you later,’ he said, and rang off.

Stephanie sat in the carriage and began the tedious process of dialling Katie's number over and over again, willing
her to answer. She left endless messages, asking her not to stoop so low as to hurt Pauline and John. She had said to James weeks ago that she was happy to keep Katie's existence a secret from them for ever if that was what he thought best. They could tell them they had simply grown apart, that it was all perfectly amicable, preserve their son's saintly image. She was happy to do whatever would hurt Pauline and John the least. Why couldn't he have told them then? At least they would have got used to the news of the break-up by now. They would already have been picturing their son meeting other women. The whole thing would have been altogether less heart-attack-inducing.

51

After about half an hour Stephanie paused for a moment to allow her throbbing thumb to take a rest and almost immediately her phone rang and a voice told her that she had a new message.

‘We're off the hook for a while,’ James's voice said. ‘I've persuaded them to go round to their friends for a couple of hours. Ring me back.’

Stephanie took a deep breath. Now that the possibility of Katie getting hold of Pauline and John had faded she had to face the fact that she was going to have to come clean with James. It wasn't that she thought he would be angry with her — he had no right, after all — it was just that she wasn't looking forward to having to tell him. She dialled his number reluctantly.

‘I'm on the Ai,’ he shouted, when he answered. ‘You don't have to get involved in this, you know, Steph. It's my mess. I'll sort it out.’

Stephanie closed her eyes. ‘It's partly my mess too. I'll explain when I see you.’

She ignored his pleas to tell him what she meant. It was going to be hard enough as it was without being interrupted every couple of minutes because the train had gone into a tunnel or the man pushing the refreshment cart wanted to know if you would like a free bag of peanuts with your coffee.

They agreed that they would meet at Lincoln station and drive over to Lower Shippingham together. It was hardly a plan but it was all they had.

Katie had grown bored of dialling Pauline and John's number. It seemed to be permanently engaged. It had only been a whim, anyway. It wasn't that she was trying to hurt James's parents — that certainly hadn't been her primary aim, at least, and she was trying not to think about whether that might be one of the consequences — but she wanted to punish James for her humiliation with Owen. There was no doubt in her mind that if James hadn't behaved as he had then she wouldn't have thrown herself at the nearest available — well, unavailable, as it had turned out — man and subsequently been turned down flat. On a bus. At six thirty in the morning. While pretending to be going swimming.

She was assuming that James must have told his parents about his marriage ending by now. What she knew with absolute certainty was that he would never have come clean about the reasons behind it. He wasn't that courageous. All she was planning to do was to mention to his mother that she was a friend of her son's and she was trying to track him down and leave it there. Then get off the phone as quickly as she could, leaving that unexploded bomb ticking away in the background. She dialled the number again. This time it rang and rang and then went to answerphone again. She didn't bother to leave a second message. There was no point. She could try later. Even if she never managed to get through, she thought, smiling, at some point James's parents were bound to mention to
him that someone called Katie, who had described herself as a friend of his, had left a message. That should finish him off. She wondered whether Pauline and John would put two and two together and remember that Katie was the name of the woman James had introduced them to in Lincoln all those weeks ago. That would get them thinking.

She went back to concentrating on her business plan. The bank had agreed to lend her a certain amount towards her start-up costs, providing she could show exactly how the money would be used and when she would be able to pay it back. Somehow she was finding her heart wasn't in it. She couldn't really feel excited about getting into debt and having to work all hours just to keep her head above water. The way she had worked before had suited her: life had come first and work second. If she hadn't felt like working, she had taken the day off. Now she had responsibilities and quotas and projections, and she wasn't sure she liked it.

It had been about the chase, she realized now. The important thing had been forcing James to sell her the surgery for a fraction of what it was really worth. That had been the victory. She had no real desire to be a businesswoman. Contracts had been exchanged, though. There was no pulling out now without losing her deposit, something which she could definitely not afford to do. She felt irrationally annoyed with James for putting her in the position where she would have to sacrifice her whole life to work.

She picked up the phone and dialled Pauline and John's number again. Answerphone.

By the time James arrived to collect Stephanie from the café in Lincoln station she was on her third cup of coffee and thinking seriously about getting on a train back to London. This was crazy. What were they going to do? Tie Katie to a chair to stop her calling? Actually, that wasn't such a bad idea. She certainly wasn't sure that turning up with James in tow would do any good. But there was something almost uplifting in the thought that soon everything would be out in the open. She had never quite understood Catholics with their love of confession — maybe because she had never had anything weighing so heavily on her that she had needed to confess — but now she could see it would be cathartic getting it all off her chest.

She was starting to feel like she had caffeine overload and was trying to ignore the impatient stares of the customers who were waiting for tables, hot cups of coffee in their hands, when James walked through the door and threw himself down in the seat opposite her. ‘Have you been here long?’ he said, as if they were meeting for a cup of tea and a friendly chat.

‘It doesn't matter,’ Stephanie said. ‘We need to make a plan.’

They decided to head to Lower Shippingham and talk in the car. Once they were on the way, Stephanie took a deep breath and started at the beginning: how she had found the text message and contacted Katie, the fact that they had met, their plans to unravel James's life. James listened in silence. When she got to the part about Katie being responsible for the problems with the tax and the planning people, she forced herself to look at him to see
how he was taking it. His face was flushed and she knew he was angry or embarrassed about the way he had treated Sally but that he wasn't about to say so.

‘I'm sorry,’ she said finally, when she had told him everything.

‘It's fine,’ he said. ‘It's no more than I deserve.’

‘Well, actually, I think maybe it is. A bit. You deserved most of it, I'll give you that.’ She thought she saw a small smile forcing its way round the corners of his mouth. She decided to push her luck. ‘Especially the dinner party. That was inspired.’

He actually laughed. ‘Your idea?’

‘Joint effort. It made me feel better, James. What can I say?’

‘I can't believe I so wanted to impress those people, to be honest.’

‘I can't believe a lot of things about you,’ she said, and then wished she hadn't. They didn't need to rehash all his failings again. He clearly knew them all already. So, she tried to lighten the mood again. ‘Like the fact you gave them bouillabaisse. You hate bouillabaisse.’

‘It was all I could get. They really need to expand their range at the Joli Poulet.’

Stephanie smiled. ‘So what are we going to do when we get there?’

‘The Joli Poulet?’

‘Very funny.’

James took his hand off the steering-wheel and wiped his forehead. ‘I was hoping you might have a plan. I just don't want Mum and Dad to get dragged into this, that's all.’

‘Neither do I,’ Stephanie said.

‘I can't believe she'd deliberately go out of her way to hurt them. It doesn't seem like Katie at all. Well, you know that, I guess.’

‘I think she took it hard… what you did… And I think that getting her own back has made her feel better. She's definitely changed, I'll give you that.’

‘Oh, God,’ James said. ‘What are we going to do?’

The roads were so familiar. Every junction, every potential bottleneck, every handy back route was hard-wired into his brain, which was just as well because he was completely unable to concentrate on where he was going. He hadn't thought twice about offering to drive up to Lincoln to meet Stephanie but as soon as he was on his way he had started to regret his decision. He had no idea really what was going on between Stephanie and Katie, although he had worked out that they seemed to have had some contact. Presumably Stephanie had found Katie's number in his phone and had called her, or maybe it had been Katie who had got in touch first, phoning and saying, ‘I seem to be living with your husband.’ Judging by how she was behaving now, that was more than possible. Maybe Katie had never been the sweet, naïve woman she had appeared to be. Somehow it made him feel better to think that that might be true.

Stephanie was looking pale and anxious when he spotted her sitting at a table in the corner of the café and his heart pounded for a couple of beats as if to remind him that it was her he really cared about. She smiled a half-smile at him when he caught her eye but then looked
away quickly, like she didn't quite know what to say to him. He sat down.

It was hard to take in quite what Stephanie was telling him, especially since he was driving at the same time. He felt foolish, angry and humiliated all at once, as if he was the butt of an elaborate joke that everyone was in on except him. When she got to the part about the Inland Revenue he had nearly blurted out, ‘But…’ and then had stopped himself. Stephanie's point seemed to be that Katie had taken things way too far, had acted alone. And, anyway, what right did he have to complain that he had been badly treated? But he felt terrible about Sally. He felt himself colour up as he remembered the way he had spoken to her, the things he had said.

‘I feel terrible about Sally,’ Stephanie said, as if she could read his mind. ‘She should never have ended up caught in the middle of all this.’

‘I'll go and see her and explain. Apologize,’ he said, and Stephanie offered to come with him, which made him feel a little better about the prospect.

‘You can tell her she imagined the whole thing. It was all a dream, like on
Dallas
,’ she said, and he laughed. Stephanie had a knack of always being able to make him laugh when he felt at his lowest.

By the time she opened the door and found her ex-boyfriend and his soon-to-be-ex-wife standing there together, Katie had forgotten all about phoning his parents. She had got bored of the idea quite quickly, once she had realized it was unlikely that anyone was ever going to answer, and then almost immediately had begun
to feel bad about having left a message in the first place. Trying to hurt James was one thing, but upsetting his doting parents along the way was probably taking it too far. After all, they had seemed very sweet when she had met them, very vulnerable. Since when had she become the kind of person who would go out of her way to harm two seventy-five-year-olds? He had done this to her. He had made her like this. She tried to remember exactly what she had said into their answerphone: just that she was a friend of his and Stephanie's and was trying to get in touch. Enough that he would have a heart-attack if they mentioned it to him, but not enough that they would know something was wrong and worry about it. There was no need for her to do any more. Any more would tip over from justifiable revenge into something altogether darker, and she liked to think that somewhere deep inside her was still a nice person who was waiting to re-emerge once she had got James out of her system.

‘Stephanie, hi,’ she'd said, surprised as she'd opened the door. Then she'd noticed who else was there, standing slightly behind as if he was afraid of what the reception might be, and she'd added, ‘What's he doing here?’