Sheer Abandon (79 page)

Clio had finally told Fergus about Josh. About Josh and Kate, that was. When she had finished he said, “Of course. How clever of you. It was all so obvious, wasn’t it? Staring in our faces all the time.”

“So obvious. But Fergus, I don’t know what to do. I just don’t. Whatever I do, I shall upset Josh—”

“I shouldn’t worry too much about him, spoilt brat of a man that he is.”

“Fergus, that’s not true! He may be spoilt, but he’s very sweet really. But think what it would do to poor Beatrice. And their rather strained marriage.”

“Think indeed.”

“But then Kate
needs
to know. I really think it would help her now. She’s so—bewildered, still. Martha dying has just made her worse. You said yourself she was very down. So what do I do? I feel as if I’m holding a time bomb. And Jocasta about to—well, I don’t know what she’s about to do. She’s in the most extraordinary state. Not miserable anymore. Excited, almost, but incredibly emotional. Saying one minute she wants a divorce, the next she doesn’t, not yet anyway.”

“There’s nothing any of us can do about that,” he said, “and you must just wait with this Josh business. It’s been a secret for many years and it will keep a few more weeks. Although I agree, it would probably help Kate. But the moment will arrive. It always does.”

“I hope so,” said Clio miserably. “I can’t stand much more of this.”

Jocasta had said goodbye to Nick and gone home. He had not argued, had not tried to detain her. It was all rather unnerving.

The afternoon in his flat had acquired a dreamlike quality—there were even times when she thought she must have imagined it. Nick was being as evasive, as enraging as ever: if she had been looking for some great expression of commitment, she would have been sadly disappointed.

He simply told her he would always love her, that he would always be there for her, her very best friend as he had said—and then agreed that the best thing for both of them was for him to go home as planned and for her to go back to Gideon.

“Back to the Big House?”

“Of course. I’ll send you a postcard,” he said. “I know how much you like getting postcards.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“And I certainly don’t see any need for foolhardy confessions, or anything like that.”

“Of course not,” she said, bravely bright. “It was just a bit of lovely, naughty fun.”

But when she got home to Clapham, digested what had happened, thought over what he had said, she felt a disappointment so crushing she could hardly bear it.

She would have been comforted and totally astonished over the next few days, had she heard him talking endlessly to his favourite brother, telling him how much he still adored Jocasta, loved her more than ever, indeed, but that she had made it very plain she was still hoping to salvage her marriage and it would be dreadfully wrong of him to do anything to scupper that.

“Grace, dear, you must eat.” Peter Hartley looked at yet another untouched breakfast tray. He had to leave her that morning, to do some parish visits, but he had prepared a tempting breakfast: muesli, yogurt, fruit—all the things she liked—in very small portions.

“I can’t eat. It was very nice, but I just don’t want it. Please, take it away.” She pushed it aside fretfully, and lay down again, pulled the covers over her head.

Peter took it away.

Janet Frean wasn’t eating very much either, but it was enough, as her doctor reported to Bob that morning. “She doesn’t need a lot of food, and don’t worry, we’re keeping a careful eye on it.” She was doing very well really, he said; she’d had several sessions now with the resident psychiatrist, who had prescribed drug therapy, one-to-one sessions with him or one of the other psychiatrists, and possibly, as she began to feel better, group therapy.

“It often helps, to hear other people describing their own torments,” the psychiatrist said to Bob.

Bob told him he didn’t think anyone could have had torments more dreadful and complex than Janet’s; the psychiatrist patted him on the arm.

“There you would be very wrong,” he said.

“Has she told you anything yet?”

“A little. I don’t have time to discuss it with you now, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, she’s a far from hopeless case. Believe me. Try not to worry too much.”

They didn’t understand, Janet thought, lying back on her pillows after a particularly exhausting attack of rage on her therapist—she probably shouldn’t have attacked her physically like that, but she had made Janet so angry, with her soothing rubbish—they absolutely didn’t understand.

Nobody could. They all thought it was because of Martha Hartley, her breakdown. It wasn’t at all. Of course she was sorry about Martha, and she did feel some degree of guilt—but not to the extent they all thought. Martha’s secret would have come out, it was too big, too dangerous; she could not have hoped that the concentric circles she had built so carefully about her life to protect her would remain so; sooner or later another event would have exploded into them, pushing them together, forcing a revelation. And really, what happy ending could there possibly have been for her, once the revelation was out? Her career, her personal life, certainly her political life would have been fatally damaged. It could be argued Janet had done her a favour.

No, the reason she had wanted to end her own life was because everything she had ever worked for, hoped for—and taken such risks for—was now gone from her forever. Irretrievably gone. She could never have it back. And if the Centre Forward Party survived, Jack would be its leader, probably with Chad as his chief henchman.

And if it did not, how could she go back to the Tories now? The best she could have hoped for with the new party was the post of deputy leader. Which would have almost satisfied her. She would have even considered that winning: a uniquely high-profile position. Given that she was a woman. She had got rid of Martha. There was just Mary Norton to deal with now. And that should be quite easy; a few hints about her lesbian friends, and the electorate would start wavering. Then she’d find something else. Well, maybe all was not lost. Maybe. She could still come back. She could. She would…

“Mrs. Frean is asleep,” her nurse reported to the psychiatrist ten minutes later. “The sedative has worked very well. I’ll let you know if there’s any change.”

Smith Cosmetics had thanked Fergus for his e-mail and said that they were now looking at other young girls. They said in the unlikely event of their not finding anyone else, they might contact him again, should Kate change her mind. They said there might be some leeway on the financial front, but they couldn’t possibly give any undertakings on the publicity side of the contract, which he’d told them was what worried Kate most.

“As you must know, the press make their own decisions about what and what not to print.”

It was a very friendly and gracious response, Fergus thought, given all the time and money they had wasted on Kate, a testimony to how much they had wanted her. Still wanted her. It comforted him, just a bit. Things might change.

Fergus was the eternal optimist.

Clio spent Sunday with Jocasta; she found her still in an odd mood, on an emotional seesaw, overexcited one minute, tearful the next. She said she was just trying to work out what to do, that she might go back to work, might do something quite different—when pressed on what, she said vaguely that she’d thought of property, or maybe interior design. Clio had said what a good idea; there was no point arguing with her. She was beyond reason.

She had arrived still hoping she might help to effect a reconciliation, because she did still think that was what Jocasta wanted. She tried reason, humour, appeals to common sense. But it appeared to be a complete impasse. There had been another very ugly row the day before; Gideon had demanded that she meet him to try to have a reasonable discussion about what they were going to do next, and Jocasta had said it wasn’t possible to have a reasonable discussion with a person so unreasonable that he was actually unstable. Each confrontation was infinitely worse than the last, making that one seem comparatively pleasant, almost an exchange of views.

Right in the middle of telling Clio this, Jocasta burst into tears, and when Clio asked her if there was anything particularly the matter, said there was, but she couldn’t talk about it. She was still drinking and smoking far too much, seemed unable to rest or settle to anything for more than five minutes. All she wanted to do was talk interminably about Gideon and his shortcomings. In the end, Clio gave up and said she must go home.

“Oh, please don’t go,” said Jocasta. She had been talking to someone on the phone, sounding increasingly hostile. “That was Josh. He’s threatening to come round; he thinks he can make me see sense, as he puts it. Such a wonderful arbiter of relationships, such an example to us all.”

Clio sighed. “Well I’ve failed. Maybe he will be able to help.”

“Clio, he won’t. And it’s not a question of you failing. It’s the marriage that’s failed.”

“Jocasta, I must go. It’s Monday tomorrow and I’ve got an early surgery. And I do want to see Fergus this evening before I go home.”