Past Praying For (7 page)

‘
So? That’s a crime, suddenly?’ Hayley went to switch on the coffee machine, her invariable first action on getting home. ‘I think Marty’s a really neat name, and if I’d known you aimed to grow up so prissy, I’d have never called you Martha in the first place. I had a great-aunt Martha once, and she died guessing.’

Martha
was moving purposefully round the room, picking things up and straightening the big Kelim cushions on the floor by the log fire, now cold and dead. The expensively-faked Christmas tree in the corner, purchased complete with red bows, silver chains, imitation parcels and gold lights, looked even more tawdry with the lights off.

‘
Why can’t we have a real Christmas tree?’ she grumbled. ‘The one at the McEvoys’ looked really brilliant, all covered with proper ornaments that they’ve had for years, and real little parcels and chocolates.’

In
her stormy life, Hayley Cutler had fought every inch of the way. She didn’t play by the rules – as someone once memorably said, there are no rules in a knife fight – and you didn’t take home too many popularity prizes, but you fought, or you went under. She swung round from the kitchen area to face her daughter’s truculence.

‘
Why now, honey, I’m sure there are some sugar canes around someplace, if you rake among those packages, and you could hang them on the tree. Switch it on anyway, for goodness’ sake, and it’ll look better. And tomorrow, if you’re heading for a traditional phase, you and Mikey can fix popcorn and thread it on strings just like I did when I was knee high to a grasshopper.’

Her
intonation parodied the notion as well as the expression, and her voice sharpened.

‘
And before you ask me about tomorrow, we’ve got a delicious lunch all worked out between kind St Michael and the microwave. And if you’re about to match me up against sweet St Elizabeth McEvoy, I’d just ask you to remember that some of us have to work for a living and haven’t the time to make a career out of being a domestic martyr. I’ve filled stockings and basted turkeys with the best of them, but you all are old enough now to see the whole Christmas farce for what it really is. If it’s just an excuse for a party, and we’re the only guests, well, hell, let’s enjoy it, OK? Let’s all of us enjoy it, instead of everyone checking out my performance and giving it points out of ten.’

She
waited, a verbal pugilist weaving and ducking on her toes, to see if Martha would reply, before she poured herself a mug of the strong black coffee that was never far from her elbow, as Michael came in with the basket of logs which he set down on the wide hearthstone.

‘
Do you want me to light it?’ he said politely. He was always polite to his mother; it set her at a distance far more effectively than Andy’s tempestuous rages or Martha’s confrontations.

‘
I guess not, unless you kids –’ She was cut short by the ringing of the telephone.

‘
Quarter of one? Now who could that be?’ She wondered aloud. ‘Oh, it’s most likely Grandad, phoning to say Merry Christmas. I’ll take it in my bedroom.’

She
disappeared and brother and sister looked at each other.

‘
Most likely Grandad!’ Martha mimicked her mother’s tone. ‘Most likely Nigel, I reckon.’

‘
Or Eddie. Or one of the others we don’t know about yet. He’s probably married, phoning after his wife’s gone to bed.’

Michael
’s voice hadn’t broken yet; the world-weary sentiments sounded odd, so delivered. ‘I’m going to bed. Don’t let any fat red-faced men into your bedroom.’

‘
I’ll yell for help if I need it. I might wait up for Andy anyway.’

The
door shut behind her brother. Through the floor-boards Martha could hear the rise and fall of her mother’s voice.

She
looked at the cold white ashes of the fire and the unlit Christmas tree. It was all very well for Paula McEvoy to moan about her mother making a fuss about Christmas. Paula was only a baby who hadn’t the least idea what it was like out here in the big world where you had to look out for yourself because no one else would.

Her
eyes filled with tears, though she would have let them pull out her fingernails with red-hot pincers before she would admit to them. She wanted to be looking forward to Christmas Day, to the magic she remembered, if vaguely, when she was a very small child. But there wasn’t a chance in this family. Sometimes she thought her mother simply hated Christmas.

***

Upstairs, Hayley Cutler replaced the receiver with a grimace. She couldn’t quite believe she was stooping this low; doing the dirty on a friend, behaving like...Well, she wasn’t going to figure out that side of it too closely.

Lizzie
might be a sweet girl, but she wasn’t exciting, and Hayley had always been coolly aware of her own attractions. Piers McEvoy just couldn’t believe his luck, and he couldn’t keep his hands off her, either. Surely she could convince him that he owed it to himself to have a wife who could really make things swing.

Not
that her idea of a dream lover was someone who looked and tended to behave like Toad of Toad Hall, but time was moving on. Too many men had treated her badly of late, and she could almost hear that clock ticking. It was time for a long-term solution.

And
as far as Lizzie was concerned, if she got a good settlement and custody of the kids, she’d probably end up happier. Being weak, she brought out the worst in Piers, whereas Hayley had no doubt at all about her ability to put him in his place once the ring was on her finger. It would be good to ease off, face the future without this corrosive worry.

Downstairs
she could hear the children moving about. Just for a moment the old Norman Rockwell pictures rose in her mind; the family gathered round the fire below the laden tree, the mother reading ‘The Night Before Christmas’...

A
lump rose in her throat. She had lost them, somewhere a long way back; after the divorce, perhaps, when Chaz Cutler had removed his worthless self from their lives and even the CSA had given up trying to get money out of him. She had had to be tough then, and the children had stopped expecting cuddles and home-baked cookies from a mother who was permanently stressed-out. She tried to think of the last time she’d hugged one of them, and couldn’t. Tears spilled over, slid down her cheeks.

She
dashed them away. She couldn’t afford the sort of weakness that candles and carols and too much champagne produced, which was one of several reasons why she hated Christmas. But this Christmas was bleaker than ever.

Beside
her bed lay the letter from her bank manager about the future of the employment agency, which she had read so often in the hope that this time she could make it mean something different that it was dog-eared and curled. All those readings told her only one thing; at whatever cost of self-loathing, there was no way but to follow her reluctantly-chosen course, or lose everything.

She
had borrowed in the belief that the recession was at an end, but somehow there still weren’t the jobs available, and if there were no clients, there was no commission. If she lost that, all of the sacrifices – of close, warm family relationships and the right to act feeble and pathetic when you felt that way – would have been for nothing. She hadn’t been able to loll around the place being a homemaker and learning gourmet cuisine, she had gone out and hustled for herself and her family instead of sitting on her butt with her hand out, and this was her reward.

And
she had made an enemy. She tried not to think about it because it made her feel sick to her stomach. She had always, somehow, been an outsider, and this forced her to admit that she didn’t even know which of the people who disliked her hated her this much. The anonymous letters were bad enough of themselves – three of them, bitchy and poisonous. But this last one; that had really scared her.

This
one had been threatening, talking about striking at her heart in the best melodramatic style. She had torn it up and burned it, of course, told herself that nutters who were perfectly harmless acted this way, and tried, unsuccessfully, to put it from her mind.

Then
she had come downstairs the other morning to find a pretty, polished red apple sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, with one of her kitchen knives stuck through its core.

When
she had checked that none of the kids had suffered from a suddenly-abandoned snack-attack, she had sat down and stared at it in mesmerized horror. The back door was locked, the windows were latched.

The
hideous, inescapable conclusion was that the person who hated her had a key. And there were only three people who kept a key of hers; they all kept them for one another. Suzanne Bolton, Elizabeth McEvoy, and Laura Ferrars.

***

Suzanne Bolton parked the car neatly in the garage, so that the cork she had suspended from the roof to show where to stop just touched the windscreen. It was an old-fashioned wooden garage, and Ben had had to get out to open the big double doors. She padlocked them closed herself, as usual, while the men, engaged in some earnest low-voiced conversation, went on ahead into the house.

It
was not, naturally enough, in the same league as the McEvoys’ exquisite Lodge, but Suzanne was entirely satisfied with it. When you had lived in a succession of army houses, even a cottage like Bentham’s which was short of space and cursed with the sort of sloping ceilings that meant that half the room was unusable was a dream come true. They had spent what money they had on good carpets, immaculate decoration, and a good kitchen and bathroom, and if the furniture came from one of the cheaper discount warehouses at least it was new and smart-looking. She had seen Piers McEvoy’s lip curl when they came to dinner, but then she wouldn’t have given houseroom to some of those shabby rugs he put on his floors.

All
over the house the evidence of Suzanne’s skills as a needlewoman, seamstress and homemaker were displayed. As she entered the hall now, the lights of the Christmas tree which stood at the foot of the stairs greeted her, and she viewed it with satisfaction.

She
had chosen it carefully; it was a good shape, and it was certainly worth the extra to get the kind that were treated to stop them shedding needles everywhere. She had bought new lights for it, silver and gold instead of the old coloured ones, and this year she had gone for huge tartan bows. There was an evergreen garland over the fireplace in the hall, also caught up with a tartan bow, and there was a pile of presents under the tree. A few, the ones wrapped in dark green tissue and tied with tartan, were her own for Patrick and Ben, and the people they would see tomorrow. She always felt faintly aggrieved that by Christmas Day the packages were such a motley lot; it really looked nicer two weeks before with all her own coordinated parcels ready for posting.

She
went through to the kitchen to check that the timer had gone on for the turkey. Patrick’s parents and one of his aunts were coming for lunch at two o’clock, and she wanted it cooked ready to slice cold by then. They were expected for drinks again at the Lodge – she spared a sympathetic thought for poor Lizzie – and she didn’t want to be fussed by having too much to do when they came back.

The
black and white kitchen was immaculately tidy, with the culinary
mise
-
en
-
place
set up for tomorrow with the same precision she employed when she set up the instrument table for an operation. If you were theatre sister in a London teaching hospital, disorder of any kind made you feel threatened and uncomfortable.

From
the scullery Tigger set up a yapping and she let him out – a quick, neat little Jack Russell bought as a companion for Ben once she had managed to establish, quite firmly, that he would have no siblings.

‘
Tea, Patrick?’ she called, switching on the kettle as he followed her into the kitchen.

He
contemplated the suggestion. ‘I don’t know if I want tea. Perhaps I’ll just go straight up to bed.’

‘
You’d better have at least a couple of glasses of water before you do,’ she warned him, ‘or you’ll regret it in the morning. In any case –’

She
jerked her head meaningfully towards Ben, who had drifted into the kitchen and was kneeling on the floor accepting the dog’s extravagant greetings.

‘
Do you want some hot chocolate, Ben? Or a biscuit? No? Then off you go upstairs, and bring your stocking down to the hall and we’ll get it hung up by the fireplace.’

She
surveyed him fondly – tall and thin for eleven, with the horn-rimmed spectacles he had insisted on having giving him a quaintly severe expression. He was such a good boy, and she was coming to rely on him more and more, as Patrick became more and more unsupportive.

Ben
unfolded himself obediently from the floor, went slowly to the door, then hesitated.

‘
I can’t remember where it is.’

‘
Good gracious, where it’s always kept, silly! In the middle drawer in the chest on the landing. Hurry up now – it’s very late.’