Muddy Waters (25 page)

‘No we won't.' Abigail sounded like the voice of experienced authority. ‘You've let him think you're a certainty. It's your own fault, I was watching you dozing off out there propped up on his chest. If you use a man as something to sleep
on,
don't be surprised if he expects you to sleep
with.
Now, tuck your skirt in your knickers, chuck your bag out first and I'll be right behind you.'

‘Now I really
am
tired,' Stella said, drying her sand-encrusted toes on the hem of her crumpled and sea-splattered dress. The salt water stung her ankle where she'd grazed it on the window catch as she'd climbed out in the escape from Simon. It had been less difficult than she'd expected: obviously time spent leaping about in the Chameleon gym, her hands clutching silly little blue weights, hadn't been entirely wasted. Not only had her body actually fitted through the small window without so much as a squeeze, but she'd leaped up onto the loo seat and the ledge with all the casual ease of a school PE captain. Lucky, she thought, that they'd been on the, ground floor, though in her eagerness to escape she wouldn't swear she'd have found it impossible to dash across rooftops in moonless darkness and shin down a drainpipe.

‘Don't you just feel so much better after a good paddle? It's like being a kid again. There's nothing like it.' Abigail sat comfortably with her legs splayed out, scooping at the sand either side of her like a child digging herself down into a hidey-hole. The sea swooshed up the beach, stopping only a few yards in front of them. There was a thin silver line of light beginning to appear on the black horizon, but it was still dark enough to imagine seeing dead bodies carried to the sand on the waves.

‘Is it going out or coming in, do you think?' Abigail asked.

‘If we sit here long enough I guess we'll know the answer,' Stella told her, squinting into the sunrise distance to see if there were any ships to wonder about. When she'd gone to the seaside with the children, when they were little she'd always pointed out distant boats and made up stories about where they'd been and where they were going. She'd told them about Russian trawlers, on freezing year-long trips away from home, the crew missing their babies being born, the seasons changing without them there to notice. The sea had no seasons, just weather – good or bad, stormy or calm. She'd made up stories about cruise liners, full of jolly widows looking for last romances at fancy dress parties where they dressed up as 1920s flappers and Charleston'd the night away. Ruth had liked best the quarter-mile oil tankers manned by only ten men who sped round the huge flat deck on bicycles. She'd imagined them playing bike polo, or having races and going too fast, too close to the edge. Toby had liked to hear about lone yachtsmen, sea-maddened and lost and down to their last Kit-Kat.

But just now, out beyond the pier which was neglected and skeletal like disused mine workings, Stella could see nothing but the illusion of whales and seals and sharks chasing among the waves. No traffic, no frigates chasing drug smugglers, not even a left-over lilo.

‘They'll have locked us out,' she said to Abigail, turning to look back at the hotel. A few token lights showed, but nothing bright and inviting. From where she sprawled on the beach, Stella thought the hotel, looming with
faux
grandeur, looked like a Victorian temple to propriety – full of well-behaved people, who'd gone to bed at a sensible hour, having drunk no more than was good for them.

‘No they won't,' Abigail assured her, turning to look at the building, ‘There's a night porter. Think of all those civic functions people in places like this have to go to.'

Stella started laughing, a silly, young-girl snorting laugh. ‘I always think
civic functions
would make a good name for a town square lavatory complex,' she spluttered.

Abigail hauled her to her feet, ‘You're still pissed. You might as well have slept with that Simon bloke, you could have blamed it on the booze and felt no guilt at all.'

‘It would have been my fault for being drunk though,' Stella pointed out. ‘And what happened about the other one? Geoff was it? He looked all right. You don't usually go home alone, that I
do
know. Are you saving yourself for when Martin comes back?'

Abigail started walking up the beach, her shoes in her hand, ‘Saving myself for the right man, yes. Perhaps I should have done it years ago, when I had the chance. Quite pointlessly, I'm making up for lost time.' She laughed, ‘I'm enjoying watching you do the same!'

The cool air in the dead-fish dawn was restoring Stella back to a degree of sobriety. She felt Abigail's sadness and felt sorry she'd mentioned Martin. ‘Oh he'll come back, you'll see,' she said, trying to instil optimism. ‘He'll have to come back and see the children, and he'll remember what he's missing. As long as you make sure he knows he
is
missed.'

‘Maybe. Though do I want him? Like I said, I should have settled for what you've got,' Abigail said rather grumpily, ‘Come on, let's go in and get some sleep. If we sleep long enough, our admirers will be off for the day learning how to put envelopes in their windows or vice versa.'

‘
Please
Dad,' Ruth pleaded over breakfast – the only time to catch her father before his brain was overtaken by the weirdnesses of his current plot and characters, ‘it's only for one weekend, and I will clear everything up, and I'll make sure no one goes near your computer – I'll unplug it all and take it out and bring it up here if you like, and the printer as well.' Adrian continued looking distant and munching toast as if he didn't really have a clue, or a care, what he was putting in his mouth. Ruth sighed and persisted, in spite of warning faces from Toby who was making coffee behind Adrian. ‘And I'll make sure all your work is completely locked away and give the whole room a special spring clean after, and put everything back exactly as you like it.' Still no response. She leaned forward and forced him to notice her, ‘And I won't let anyone sit in your special chair or steal your sherbert lemons.' She sat back and waited, feeling there was no better offer she could make.

‘You want the summerhouse?' he said vaguely, as if he'd only just caught a few of her words. ‘To put your jewellery in for the Art Fair?'

‘
Yes
,' she said, resisting the urge to bang both fists on the table with frustration, or possibly even on Adrian's befuddled head.

‘OK,' he said simply.

‘OK? You mean it?'

‘Sure.' Adrian got up and went to collect a mug of coffee from Toby and then opened the door on a day glorious with sunshine. ‘I'm off to do some work. Be a love and bring
The Times
down to me when it gets here, if ever. That kid gets later and later.'

‘I didn't expect it to be that easy,' Ruth confided to Toby as she watched Adrian loping down the garden path. ‘You know how precious he is about his work space.'

‘That's only because he doesn't want anyone to know about all the porn he's working on. It must be dreadful to feel embarrassed about what your job is. It must be how prostitutes with families to run feel when they go to things like the school fête. I wonder what Dad says at a dinner party full of strangers when someone says “And what do
you
do?” I don't suppose he tells them “Oh, I make a fortune writing wank-fodder.”'

‘That's only because he still thinks
we
don't know, as if we're still three or something. Otherwise I don't suppose he'd care who else knew. He's only scared they might tell us. I keep expecting Willow to, just out of spite. I get this creepy feeling she knows everything about everyone.'

Toby laughed. ‘She knows why the newspapers aren't being delivered. The council man got arrested for spying on her while she plaster-casted Ellen and the paper boy's Mum won't let him come over here anymore. “Dodgy goings-on”, Mr Karesh at the newsagents said that she'd said.'

‘Not the
nice
council man? The one who's Peggy's friend?'

‘No, course not. The spooky one who's always in his car, wiping his windows and wearing little gloves. It's no surprise, really.'

‘No, I suppose it isn't. Toby?' Ruth looked around quickly to make sure they were alone, ‘Do you think Dad's, you know,
all right
?'

‘How do you mean, “all right”? Going mad, do you mean, or looking ill?'

Ruth considered for a moment, ‘Mad, I suppose. He hasn't been the same since he went out the other night. He's going round looking like he's had a bad shock. I think something's happened. It can't be just that he's missing Mum.'

Toby got up quickly and took his mug to the sink. Noisily he started unloading clean crockery from the dishwasher, crashing around the kitchen putting things away.

‘Here, you sort out the cutlery,' he ordered, hauling out the plastic basket and handing it to Ruth. ‘I'm sure he's fine, just thinking about work or something, that's all. Don't worry about it.'

‘I'm worried about
you
now,' she said, grinning at him, ‘I can't remember a time when you voluntarily had anything to do with the dishes . . .'

Stella drove out of the hotel car park and wished she was going straight home. There was no reason why she shouldn't, she thought, cursing herself for being hampered by habitual kindness. She could easily just drive Abigail back to her house and tell her it was time she started practising coping by herself. It couldn't be that difficult, it wasn't as if Martin had
died.
But then she thought, how would it feel if Adrian went off with someone else, went off and left her? Wouldn't she even think she'd prefer it if he'd died, then at least there wouldn't be the dreadful grief of the death of love. She sighed gently as she pulled away from a pedestrian crossing light. She was being ridiculous. Of course it wouldn't be preferable to have him, or Martin dead. Abigail sat beside her, contentedly looking out of the window as they drove along the seafront, passing all the small hotels and boarding houses, all painted in a selection of sweet-pea pastels. She didn't, Stella thought, look as if she was actually doing that much anguishing about anything more hypothetical than the possibilities of what to wear.

There weren't yet many people about, even close to midday, not in the sense of families having their main summer holidays – those, Stella assumed, had flown off loaded with Factor 15 to the Spanish sun, but there were lots of little gatherings of older people, in optimistic floral cotton frocks topped with sensible cardigans or the inevitable beige Dannimac jacket.

‘Don't ever let me buy a beige waterproof jacket,' Stella murmured to Abigail, as she stopped to let a collection of these cross the road. ‘Just kill me if I ever do. Promise?'

‘Good grief, darling, of course I promise,' Abigail agreed solemnly, understanding exactly.
That's
why I like her, Stella thought, driving away and feeling more cheerful.

Venetia and James were waiting to be collected in a small ante-room close to the main front entrance of their school. The pink and cosy study, haphazardly furnished with what were not quite antiques and cluttered with photos of and paintings by former pupils, was friendlier and less formal than a staffroom or Head Teacher's office. It was obviously the place where children were taken to have bad news broken to them, or to wait with their dire infections to be whisked off home to where they couldn't harm others. It was probably also, Stella speculated, the room where parents were informed that their failure to meet the fees could no longer be indulged, or that their child might flourish more productively in an alternative environment. Abigail and Stella walked in and were greeted by the house mother who looked anxiously at Abigail as if trying to work out the right words to deal with the situation. They probably weren't in her training manual, Stella concluded, watching the stocky woman's eyes darting here and there and avoiding quite meeting Abigail's when she talked. ‘They're all packed and ready,' she said quietly, almost whispering, leaning towards Abigail in a confiding sort of way. Abigail pulled back slightly, as if terrified that it was
she
who was expected to do the confiding.

‘Mum!' James, a gangly and heavy-footed ten-year-old, got up as soon as he saw her and rushed across the room, hurling himself against his mother, almost knocking Stella over on his way. ‘Why are we going home
now
?'

Venetia, demure and strangely controlled for eight, sat coolly on a fringed velvet chair, her feet hardly touching the floor. She made no move towards Abigail, but smiled politely at Stella. Stella felt the child's tension and wished she'd waited in the car. She blamed Abigail for dragging her in, tempting her by telling her there was one of Bernard's early paintings over the fireplace. She looked at it with neighbourly curiosity, relieved that, more suitably in a school for such young children, it was an unchallenging, rather dull still life and obviously painted long before he'd discovered that teenage girls would cheerfully strip off all their clothes for him. Venetia, when she looked back at her, was still looking as uninterested as if she was waiting for a bus. I bet Bernard would never dare ask
her
to get her kit off, Stella thought.

‘Darlings!' Abigail gushed, ‘We're all going home, and then we're going to stay at Stella's house and visit her lovely island and all the artists on it. They're having a fair! You'll like that.'

Venetia's pretty lip curled and Stella wondered if the temperature really had dropped enough to make her shiver.

‘With swings and rifles?' James asked. ‘Can I win a fish?'

Abigail laughed. ‘Not that sort of fair, darling,' she told him, hugging him fondly, thrilled at his enthusiasm. ‘An
art
fair, lots of gorgeous things for sale, and paintings and jewellery.'