Lovers and Liars Trilogy (102 page)

She had one topic, and variations upon it. Her subject was a man Gini had never met, and in whom Gini was not interested. His name was Rowland McGuire—and Lindsay could not stand him. Or so she said.

C
HARLOTTE FLANDERS HAD BEEN
making pastry, and her hands were still floury and white. Her youngest son, Daniel, was seated at the table at the far end of the large country kitchen, happily, if messily, engaged with finger paints.

Tubs of slurpy paint in brilliant colors surrounded Danny and herself. He had deposited paint on his hands, face, elbows, and clothes; there was paint on the floor and the table. So far, he had drawn a red tree, a square house, a blue bristly dog, and a fat orange Charlotte with a fuzz of pink hair. The large, untidy, comforting room smelled of yeast; a clock ticked. Charlotte knew that she should feel tranquil, and in this situation usually did; but this afternoon she was anxious and tranquillity remained elusive. She looked down at Danny’s portrait of herself. Why is my hair pink, she wondered, and found she suddenly wanted to cry.

She hugged Danny impulsively and rested her face against his hair. The scent of his hair and skin, a scent peculiar to babies and young children, affected Charlotte deeply. It tugged at her heart. She kissed Danny, then withdrew, because he was wriggling in that maternal embrace, eager to get on with his art.

Shortly after three, still preoccupied, thinking about the weekend to come and the arrival of her guests, she left the house to take the four dogs—two fat Labradors and two violent Jack Russells—for their afternoon walk. She left Daniel with Jess, a neighborhood girl who’d come to help in the preparations for the weekend. Both were now engaged in making little sponge cakes for tea. In the garden Charlotte paused and looked back through the bright rectangle of the kitchen window, the dogs woofing and circling at her heels.

Jess was beating up sugar and butter; Daniel was assembling the cake decorations he loved, the crystallized violets, brightly colored sweets, and silver balls. Daniel liked cakes only with acid-pink icing and lots of decorations. For his fourth birthday next month, they were going to make one in the shape of his favorite animal, a hedgehog. It was to be a pink hedgehog, with chocolate-flake quills.

It was a beautiful cold, clear afternoon; the air smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke. By the time Charlotte had reached the end of her driveway, she felt calmer and soothed. Her natural serenity—the quality in her that Max most loved—was beginning to reassert itself. She tightened the bright red headscarf over her untidy hair, clasped her old coat tighter around her stomach, whistled to the dogs, and set off on her usual circuit. She would walk down to the river, past the church, and then back across the hills. By the time she reached home again, it would be almost time for Gini and Lindsay to arrive. She would just have time to shut the hens in the henhouse before it grew dark—and she must remember to do that, for there was a dog-fox hunting the area. Then, once Jess had returned to her own family, and her own older sons had returned from school, they would make tea. Toast on the fire, Charlotte thought; Danny’s acid-pink iced sponge cakes. It would be fun. She was looking forward to seeing Lindsay. In fact, Charlotte thought with a smile, she had plans for Lindsay. Her husband, Max, might have his doubts about those plans, but Charlotte, a born matchmaker, believed they might work.

Lindsay was warmhearted, independent, and strong. But Lindsay’s life, unlike her own, was difficult. She had a son who desperately needed a father figure. His own father, Lindsay’s ex-husband, whom Charlotte had met once and instantly loathed, was a handsome, weak-willed deadbeat, last heard of in Canada, who contacted Lindsay rarely and Tom never, and who put in an appearance only when short of cash, or abandoned by the latest in a long line of girls.

Lindsay deserved better than a man who had walked out on her six months after Tom’s birth. She deserved better than to spend the rest of her life supporting her supremely selfish mother—and that, once Tom left home, was a possible fate, Charlotte feared. Every man with whom Lindsay had ever been seriously involved since her divorce had been chased off by Louise, whose instinct for self-preservation was acute. Lindsay needed a man capable of freeing her from her mother’s clasp. Charlotte, much to her husband’s surprise, even had a candidate for this role; a gallant knight who would rescue her friend.

Of course, Lindsay might well feel she did not want, or need, rescuing. Well, Lindsay was wrong. Lindsay needed rescuing from herself as well as from her mother. She had to learn to trust, to perceive that pain and abandonment were not always and inevitably attendant on love. She had to be made to see that some men could be trusted, and that the right man could transform a woman’s life, just as Charlotte’s life had been transformed by Max, and—to take another triumphant example—as Gini’s life had been transformed by Pascal.

She had reached the river; Charlotte stopped. She clipped on the dogs’ leashes, walked along the narrow road, and paused on the bridge. Thinking about marital contentment and tranquillity, she watched a fish move through the reeds. Then, seeing the hills were now mauve, and the light was beginning to fade, she hustled the dogs together, stepped back into the road, and began making for the fieldgate just beyond the bend. Before she could reach it, and at a point where the road narrowed, she heard the car. It was on her in seconds, swerving on the bend, being driven far too fast. It cut in close, a large, brand-new silver BMW. She felt its slipstream clutch at her coat; its rapid passage sprayed her with mud. Charlotte shouted angrily after it, but its driver, a man, neither acknowledged her nor slowed. Charlotte watched the car turn into a track farther on, and begin to bump its way up the steep gradient to the beech woods beyond.

Feeling shaken, wrapping her old coat more tightly around her stomach and her unborn child, Charlotte walked on. She encountered no one on this stage of her walk, and glimpsed only one other pedestrian, a man, walking along the river road below, with what looked like a lurcher dog. He paused at the bridge, as she had done. The wind gusted. Charlotte shivered, and whistled to her own dogs. They had had their romp: it was time to return.

She made her way back through the village, past the graveyard, the Norman church, the almshouses, and the tall drystone wall that bordered the manor gardens. Lights now shone from the windows of the cottages she passed, and Charlotte’s heart lifted. Her despondency and unease faded. She wanted to be at home with her sons, and her friends, and her husband; she wanted afternoon to ease toward evening, and the evening to lengthen companionably as they sat together by the fire.

She passed two people only on this, the last stage of her walk: two girls, in school uniform, making their way back to the manor. One was Cassandra Morley, a pretty fifteen-year-old who sometimes baby-sat for her, and whose mother—a brittle divorcee—Charlotte disliked. Her companion looked like Mina Landis, who had moved to the area recently, whose father was the commanding officer of the nearby U.S. air force base. Charlotte had invited Mina’s parents for drinks that evening, along with a few other local friends.

She called a greeting to both girls, but to her surprise they seemed determined not to see or hear her. They made no acknowledgment; Cassandra, the taller of the two, broke into a run; Mina hastened after her. Charlotte heard laughter as they reached the manor gates.

How odd and ill-mannered, Charlotte thought. Rudeness from Cassandra was not unknown, but Mina, quiet little Mina, had always struck Charlotte as well brought up. She shrugged and walked on, then quickened her pace. As she approached her driveway, a small black car skidded to a halt, reversed, then roared into the drive, only narrowly missing the gateposts. By the time Charlotte had shooed the hens to safety for the night and made her way back through the orchard, Lindsay and Gini were already settled in the kitchen, which now smelled of newly baked bread.

Lindsay had Daniel in her arms, and was deep in conversation with the departing Jess. Gini—and it took Charlotte an instant to realize that it was indeed Gini—was seated at the kitchen table. Charlotte stopped short in consternation, and stared.

Lindsay had warned her to expect an alteration, but Charlotte, who had not seen Gini since she left for Sarajevo, was still insufficiently prepared. Charlotte had once considered Gini one of the most beautiful women she knew. Now she was painfully thin, and her face was without animation or color; her extraordinary silvery-blond hair, once long, had been inexpertly, even savagely, cropped.

Charlotte heard herself give an involuntary exclamation, then controlled herself as she caught Lindsay’s warning glance. Forcing herself to smile, she hurried forward. Gini rose, and Charlotte took her warmly in her arms, overwhelmed with sudden pity and distress. Gini returned the embrace, then quietly disengaged herself. As she drew back, Charlotte caught the glitter of tears in her eyes, and Gini—proud and deeply reticent by nature—at once turned her face away. Presently, with a muttered excuse, she left the room and went upstairs with her suitcase.

Charlotte turned to Lindsay, her kind face dismayed; her immediate question was what might have caused this transformation in their friend—but Lindsay, she found, was curiously reluctant to answer, and became evasive at once.

“Was that Charlotte Flanders?” Mina said as the door of the manor slammed behind them.

Cassandra was busy deactivating the expensive alarm her mother had installed: eventually, the beeping stopped.

“Four vile dogs? Pregnant yet again? Yes, it was.”

“Oh, Cass.” Mina took off her coat and hung it up neatly. “We should have spoken to her. She’s nice. She’s been really good to my mother, trying to help her fit in…”

“Sure, sure—she’s nice.” Cassandra sounded impatient. “And she
talks.
Mina, we don’t have the time. Also, she’s always asking questions—like, how’s my mother?
Where’s
my mother? Why lie more than we need, right?”

“I don’t know.” Mina’s small pale face contracted. “I feel guilty, I guess. My parents are going there for drinks this evening. What if she mentions she saw us?”

“So what if she does? They know you’re coming here.”

“Not this early. If she mentions the time, my mother will know something’s wrong. She’ll know we played hooky—”

“Oh, forget it,” Cassandra said carelessly. “She won’t even remember. If your mother does ask questions tomorrow, make something up. Say one of the teachers was ill. Who cares? It won’t matter by then.”

“What if my mother calls tonight?”

“She’ll get the answering machine. We’re going to the theater, remember? In Bath. With my mother. It’s a long drive, we’re meeting friends for dinner afterward, then my mother’s driving us back. We won’t be home until after midnight… Come on, Mina, it’s a perfect alibi. Not even your mother can crack it.”

“What if someone at Charlotte Flanders’s mentions your mother’s away? What if she told someone in the village that she was going to New York?”

“No way,” Cassandra said with a shrug. “She doesn’t bother with people in the village. She calls them the peasants. Anyway, it was a last-minute thing—she just took off. Just
relax,
Mina, let’s make this place look occupied. Then we’ll eat, all right?”

Cassandra ran up the wide staircase that led up from the hall and turned off to her right. Mina followed more slowly. She tried to persuade herself that she was not having second thoughts about this scheme of Cassandra’s. After all, Cassandra had been to raves before, and she said they were amazing, just great. The one at Glastonbury last summer, the one outside Cheltenham just before Christmas, and now the one tonight.

Cassandra had told her all about it, what it would be like: a huge barn up in the fields, miles from the nearest house; hundreds of cars, buses, trailers bringing kids and new-age travelers from all around. Music and dancing and stars so bright and seeming so close you could reach out and touch them. And the man called Star. Cassandra had told her all about Star.

Mina mounted the stairs and turned left. She entered a succession of opulent, overfurnished bedrooms, all advertisements for Cassandra’s mother’s skills as an interior decorator. Mina switched on lights and drew chintz curtains as Cassandra had instructed her to do. Cassandra’s mother was so careless; just taking off like that for New York, leaving Cass alone in a large house. Her own mother seemed to forget that Mina, too, would be sixteen in a few months. She continued to treat Mina as if she were ten: she worried about everything—men, parties, cars, smoking, drinking. She saw the world as a dangerous place filled with pits ready to entrap her daughter, but the nature of these traps embarrassed her. She would try to discuss them with Mina, and then she would become flushed and confused. Sex and drugs were the two things she most feared, but she could never quite bring herself to use those terms, so she would talk about “boys” or “pot,” or clip little scare stories from the newspapers about unwanted pregnancies or heroin addiction and leave them on Mina’s desk. The transparent subterfuge made Mina angry. She would ball up the clippings and throw them away unread.

Until her father was posted to England, until Mina began attending the Cheltenham Academy, until Cassandra became her friend, Mina had for the most part accepted her mother’s fussing: she loved her mother and could see the protectiveness was well meant. Then, a few weeks before, during the Christmas holidays, when she and her mother were alone in their house, Mina had picked up the telephone extension in her room, intending to call Cassandra. She had interrupted a conversation between her mother and an Englishman whose voice she did not recognize. She was about to replace the receiver, then stopped.

“Darling,” Mina heard her mother say urgently, “darling, I’m desperate to see you too. But I can’t. Mina’s here—we’ll have to wait until next week.”

Mina felt herself go very cold, then very hot; the blood rushed into her neck. She stood there, unable to move, still clutching the receiver. She heard it all, the whispered questions, the reassurances of love, the details that spelled out lies and adultery. Then she replaced the receiver very quietly, went into her bathroom, and was sick. Lies, lies, lies, she thought to herself: the lies made her miserable and furious, and her thoughts tangled and hot. After that she was much more prepared to listen to Cassandra, and much more prepared to emulate her: so what if it involved lying to her mother? Lying didn’t matter now that Mina knew her mother was a cheat.