Love and Devotion (36 page)

‘That’ll be the day,’ she muttered, still cross with him.

He glanced at her. ‘It must be exhausting being such a bitch. No wonder you’re single; it must be impossible to love anyone when you’re carrying that amount of hatred around with you. Why do you have such a problem with my lifestyle?’

‘I’ve never been bothered by your sexuality; it’s your promiscuity I have trouble with.’

‘There’s nothing illegal about the way I conduct my sex life. There’s no law that says I can’t sleep with as many men as I want to. You know me: high on charisma, low on morals.’

‘Sounds to me like you’re justifying what you get up to. How’s your spiritual self squaring up to your immoral self?’

He stirred his coffee. ‘People have sex for myriad reasons. Often it has nothing to do with the other person involved. I enjoy perfunctory sex, which I’ve always preferred over hate-filled sex, or self-loathing sex. Good sex is what makes me know I’m truly alive. But I’m curious; why should you concern yourself with what a raging queer like me gets up to?’

She winced at his words. ‘I’m not concerned.’

‘You are. It’s coming at me in great waves of disapproval across the table. Let’s face it, you always were a prude. You used to hate it when Felicity and I went off for one of our experimental romps.’

In spite of herself, Harriet blushed. She hated knowing that he still had the power to do this to her. ‘What if I did?’

‘Was it because you were jealous? Jealous that it wasn’t you I was experimenting with?’

His tone was uncharacteristically gentle, but even so she could have thrown her plate at him, then ground it hard into that handsome face of his. Summoning all her dignity, she said, ‘I know you’ve always had a high opinion of yourself, Dominic, but really, take it from me, I’d have to have been two shades of crazy to fancy you.’

He chewed meticulously on what was in his mouth. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you, but actually it was Felicity who told me you were jealous.’

‘Never! Never in a million years would she have said that.’

He continued with his breakfast in silence, leaving Harriet to contemplate the inconceivable — had Felicity betrayed her to Dominic? Could she really have done such a thing? Harriet picked disconsolately at her scrambled eggs. Everything she’d believed in, when it came to Felicity, was falling apart. There were too many acts of betrayal going on. She glanced up at Dominic, and watching him unobserved as he now stared out of the window, she wondered just how many more confidences Felicity had shared with him. Was it possible that he knew about Felicity’s affair? Had he even encouraged it? She decided to test the water.

‘Do you think Felicity was happy in her marriage?’ she asked.

His fork halfway to his mouth, he said, ‘What do you think?’

‘I asked first.’

He placed his knife and fork either side of the plate, rested his elbows on the table. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘let’s consider the facts.’ He steepled his hands against his chin, but then snapped back in his chair, his hands crashing down on the table and rattling the crockery. ‘Good God, Harriet, why are you doing this? The poor girl’s dead. Have you no respect?’

Determined to make him answer her, she said, ‘Do you think she was capable of an affair?’

He sighed. ‘We’re all capable of doing the unthinkable. Even a sexually repressed morality guardian like you. But I feel certain that if Felicity had been unhappy she would have done something about it. Cheating on her husband wasn’t her style. She was above such behaviour.’

He resumed eating as though the matter had been neatly dealt with. But still hurting from the assertions he’d made about her, Harriet wanted to get her own back, and the best way to do that was to openly criticise his precious and beloved Felicity. ‘I know for a fact that Felicity was seeing someone behind Jeff’s back,’ she said. She watched his face closely for a reaction. But unusually, his expression was fixed.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

‘It’s true. I promise you.’

‘Who was it? Who was she seeing?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t worked that out yet.’ She told him about the emails and the nature of them, taking a perverse pleasure in knocking down the plaster-saint illusion Dominic had created.

His reaction was not to defend Felicity, as she’d expected, but to lean across the table and say, ‘And you really can’t think who her lover might have been?’

‘I told you. I don’t have a clue.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘How strange, because I have a strong suspicion.’

‘Really?’

‘Come on, use that analytical brain you’re so proud of. Who always had a thing for your sister? Who hated it whenever I embarrassed him in front of her. Who — ?’

‘You don’t mean — ’

‘I do. Okay, I admit it’s a shot in the dark from where you’re sitting, but I know my brother and I know that he was always crazy about Felicity.’

‘But ... but she was never crazy about him. And surely Miles just isn’t the type?’

‘Are you saying my brother is too dull to fall in love with anyone, or that he’s not worthy of being loved? I’m shocked; you’re worse than me for condemning people out of hand.’

‘I didn’t say that. All I meant was, Miles isn’t the sneaky sort. He’s level-headed. And he’s certainly not a home-wrecker.’

‘How perfectly good you make him sound.’

‘That’s exactly it. He is good. He’s kind and thoughtful. He’s — ’

‘He’s a man,’ Dominic interrupted. ‘He’s a man with as great a sexual appetite as the next. Gay or straight.’ He pushed his unfinished breakfast away and leant back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Have you looked through Felicity’s things for proof? There must be diaries, letters, or
billet doux
you can mull over.’

‘No. We got rid of most of the stuff like that. There are a few boxes left in the garage, but my guess is I won’t find anything. Felicity and her lover went to great lengths to keep their relationship secret, so she wouldn’t have been silly enough to keep anything that would give them away.’

‘But you said the more recent emails indicated she was going to leave Jeff. If that was her intention, there would be no need for secrecy. Their love for each other was about to come out into the open.’

‘You really believe it’s Miles?’

‘Yes. In fact, the more I think about it, the more certain I am. Call it instinct, but it fits.’

‘So why hasn’t he confided in me? Or even you? Why, now that Jeff and Felicity aren’t around, does he want to keep the secrecy going?’

‘Apart from wanting to avoid any unnecessary ill feeling and disapproval, perhaps it’s a final act of devotion to Felicity. In his mind, it would be something they’d both take to the grave with them. I could quite imagine him doing that. You know how intense he can be.’

Harriet thought about this. Dominic was right; Miles was intense. Her thoughts then turned to his unconcealed distress at the funeral when he’d made no attempt to hide his grief. Was his sadness out of proportion for mourning a friend? Seeing his face before her, a more recent memory came into Harriet’s mind. It was of her and Miles in the park in Maywood when she’d begun to think that maybe, after all these years, their friendship was developing into something deeper. That it was meant to be. And what of that comment he’d made about wanting to do more for the children, that they felt like family to him? Confused, she poured herself another cup of coffee. None of it made sense. If he’d loved her sister, why did he now want to spend time with her?

Dominic, listlessly drumming his fingers on the table, broke into her thoughts. Disappointed that the reaction she’d sought had fallen flat, Harriet said, ‘You don’t seem very shocked by what I’ve told you. After all, you did just say you thought Felicity was above such behaviour.’

‘You expected me to be shocked? How odd. No, the truth is, the imbroglio of a love triangle that included my brother is quite intriguing and I — ’ His words stopped abruptly and his gaze shifted. Staring into a space just above her head, he said, ‘Don’t turn around, Hat, but there’s the most hideous man looking this way.
Harriet!
I said don’t turn round.’

Oh, Lord, it was Howard. Acknowledging that he’d spotted her, he raised his hand and started to come over. ‘Dominic,’ Harriet whispered, ‘that man’s my boss. Be nice or him or — ’

‘Or what?’

She didn’t have a clue. That was the trouble with Dominic; he didn’t have an Achilles heel like most normal people. She’d learned a long time ago that you can’t threaten a man who has no morals.

 

 

 

 

While the girl with the dangling, light-up pumpkin earrings read to them, Joel watched the door anxiously. He wished Harriet would come. He also wished Grandma hadn’t made him wear the wizard’s hat she’d made; it was too big and kept slipping down over his eyes. One of the other children had laughed at him earlier and another boy kept trying to knock it off his head. He raised his hand to suck his thumb, but quickly changed his mind. Instead he shuffled closer to Carrie on the floor, even though she’d been nasty to him at breakfast and had called him a baby for not letting Grandma put his silky in the washing machine. He looked around the bookshop, searching for Miles. Miles was nice. Carrie said they had to be extra specially good when Miles was around. Because if they were naughty, he might not want to marry Harriet.

Once more he thought of Harriet and wished she was there. He pushed the cuff back on his jumper and tried to work out what time it was. But he couldn’t. And anyway, he couldn’t remember what time Granddad had said Harriet might get there. He would have liked for Grandma to come with them but she needed to rest and when he’d asked Granddad to stay, he’d said, ‘Nonsense, a big boy like you doesn’t need his grandfather hanging about. You go on and enjoy yourself. Be good now.’

Maybe if he closed his eyes, held his breath and counted to ten, the door would open and Harriet would be there. He tried it. Then tried again, this time counting to twenty. But when he got to sixteen he opened his eyes with a thought so terrifying it made his heart beat faster. What if Harriet wasn’t coming? What if she was never coming because she’d had an accident like Mummy and Daddy? His bottom lip began to tremble. He pressed his fists to his mouth and squeezed his eyes tightly shut and tried to think of something nice. But he could only think of nasty things.

 

Bob left the car in The Navigation’s car park and took the steps down to the towpath, the carrier bag of shopping he’d fetched for Jennifer weighing heavily from his right hand. With no Toby to slow his progress by rootling around in the undergrowth, he made it to the
Jennifer
Rose in a matter of seconds. He tapped on the side of the boat and was about to let himself in through the hatch doors as he usually did, when he heard the sound of a man’s voice. Perhaps it was someone from the marina with news about the engine parts? He stepped into the saloon and was surprised to see a man shutting a large briefcase and handing over a piece of paper. But the bigger surprise was seeing how ill Jennifer looked. She appeared to be a lot worse than yesterday, when he’d insisted that she must stay in the warm and let him do her shopping for her.

Before he had an opportunity to apologise for bursting in, Jennifer said, ‘It’s okay, Bob, come on — ’ But her words were cut short by a racking cough that made her shoulders shake. ‘Excuse me,’ she managed to say, before disappearing to the prow of the boat where Bob could still hear her coughing painfully.

The man, clearly a doctor, and one Bob didn’t recognise from his own surgery, looked at him. ‘Are you the friend she says is looking after her?’

‘Yes. How is she?’

‘Not good. Ideally, she needs to get off this boat. She has a chest infection and the damp will only make things worse.’

After the doctor had left, Bob filled a hot-water bottle for Jennifer and helped her into bed. ‘You need to do as the doctor says, Jennifer; you must go home to get well.’

She shook her head. ‘No. I’ll soon pick up. Once I’ve started the course of antibiotics he’s prescribed, I’ll be on the mend.’

He looked at her doubtfully. ‘If you’re worrying about the logistics, don’t. You can leave the boat here and I’ll drive you home.’

A small smile appeared on her washed-out face. ‘You’re very sweet, but I couldn’t possibly put you to so much trouble.’

‘It wouldn’t be any trouble. Warwick is no distance. You could be home by this evening. It’s much better to be ill in your own bed in your own home.’

Again she shook her head. He wondered why she was so reluctant. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to be amongst your friends and family?’

‘They all live miles away.’

He then remembered how she had deliberately cut herself off from everyone by living in the middle of nowhere. ‘What about your children? Couldn’t you go and stay with them?’

‘Goodness, Bob, it’s only a chest infection. I’ll be fine.’

Not easily defeated, he said, ‘I know, why don’t I drive you to your friends in Hebden Bridge? That’s not far.’

‘They’ve just gone off on holiday to Bali. Now, please, stop fussing. But if you want to be useful, you could make me a drink.’

‘I wish I could do more to help,’ he said ten minutes later as he handed her a mug of tea. ‘And for the record, I still think you’d be better off at home. The doctor said the damp will make things worse.’

She put the mug on the shelf behind the bed, then, to his surprise, reached for his hand. ‘But if I went, I’d — ’ Gripped by a bout of painful coughing, she covered her mouth with a hand. Finally, she rested back against the pillows.

‘What were you going to say?’ he prompted.

‘No,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s better I don’t say it.’

He stroked her hand. ‘Please tell me what it was.’