Starting Over (16 page)

Gingerly, lip biting, praying for his customary docility, she hauled him into the back of the Freelander, ‘Ouch,
ouch
,’ and he stretched out slowly. He was bound to be shaken up. Dazed.

Lucasta! ‘O-h-h-h, G-o-d!’ she groaned, scrabbling back into the driver’s seat, fumbling the ignition, driving with exaggerated care into Main Road and on up to the Cross. Ratty was on the phone near the folded doors when she drew in all anyhow and slithered out of the car.

He stared. ‘Call you back,’ he said to the phone. ‘You’re crying!’ accusingly, to Tess.

Her breath was out of rhythm, nipping her chest, making it difficult to speak. ‘It’s McLaren and Lucasta! Ratty, Lucasta’s on the floor and I can’t get in! And you were on the phone, and I’m desperately
sorry
, but I was rushing and he just bounded across the road from nowhere, I’m sorry!’ Her hair clung infuriatingly to wet cheeks, she tried to shove it behind her ears but it stuck instead to wet fingers.

She took a panting breath. ‘I should’ve phoned the ambulance. But I thought you could get in, you’ve got a key, and McLaren just ...’

Ratty stilled her hands, speaking sharply. ‘Wait, tell me properly, calm down,
tell
me! Lucasta first
. What
about Lucasta?’

She dragged in a deep and ragged breath and concentrated. ‘I went round to see Lucasta and she didn’t answer the door and it’s locked and I can see her leg, she’s lying on the floor and your phone was engaged. And I got into the Freelander and I was rushing to come here and …’ Her voice dropped to an agonised whisper. ‘McLaren ran out and I ... I ran him over.

‘I can’t see any damage to him,’ she excused herself to Ratty’s back as he snatched at the rear door of the Freelander. ‘But he seems a bit ... bemused.’

All too horrible. All too horrible, rushing back to Pennybun Cottage with Ratty’s key, calling the paramedics for Lucasta whose face was darkly red, whose breathing was loud in deep unconsciousness. Then ambulance chasing, with Ratty hurling the Freelander about in complete silence, Tess snivelling in the passenger seat and McLaren shaking about silently in the luggage compartment and being a little bit sick.

Racing into the hospital. Ratty trying and failing to contact Derry Meredith, Lucasta’s son, who hardly ever came to see her and lived in Mill Hill, North London.

Tess wringing her hands and saying, ‘I’m so sorry!’

Ratty having to be the one that the doctors took into the relatives’ room. Emerging, blinking huge eyes. ‘She’s gone.’

Ratty carrying McLaren into his house from the Freelander, stone-faced. Kicking the door shut from inside.

And, after a sweaty and awful sleepless night, when Tess rang timidly in the morning, Ratty was as cold and hard as marble. ‘McLaren didn’t wake up.’

Her mind was wool, her ears refusing to accept what she heard. ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘He’s dead! OK?’ And then, with gravel in his throat, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Tess.’

Almost the entire village walked into church for Lucasta’s funeral. Tess sidled, last minute, into the hindmost honey-coloured pew, avoiding Ratty. Expressionless Ratty, foreign in a charcoal suit, with Derry, the bearded son from Mill Hill, leading the pall-bearers, two by two slow-stepping up the flagstone nave. Black coffin, brass handles – reminding her joltingly of the brass doorknocker she’d rapped at Pennybun Cottage – a row of wreaths trembling in time.

Amazing Grace
and
Abide With Me
,
but she couldn’t open her throat to sing.

Feeling as if she wanted to be invisible on the fringes of the service in the churchyard. She tried not to look at the ugly grave, the raw sides of the hole, the heaped earth, intending, the instant the minister was finished, to seek the refuge of Honeybun.

Of course, it didn’t happen. Angel worked her way backwards to join her, whispering, ‘Hasn’t it been appalling? I’ve had to get Pete’s mum to come and have the kids and Toby’s just a monster at the moment. And Jos is heartbroken to be missing the whole thing.’

Gwen Crowther, black mac buttoned over her shop overall, dabbed her eyes. ‘Poor Lucasta, we’re all upset, I
shall
miss her.’

Of course, Pete followed Angel and, automatically, they converged with Ratty as the service ended.

Ratty, well-brushed, crisp and most unlike himself, walked alongside a man with startlingly silver hair. Dead straight, it swept across his forehead with the neatness of a bird’s wing above blue eyes that held an expression of control. He was somehow familiar; maybe she’d seen him around the village.

For the funeral Tess had plaited away her hair, bought a stark navy dress which flounced around her ankles and had three-quarter length sleeves to cover her bruises. Her heeled navy shoes sank into the grass, giving her an excuse to lag. But, in the end, she couldn’t avoid contact with Ratty’s waiting eyes. She slid her gaze past and behind him.

‘You’ve met Tess Riddell,’ Ratty told the silver man. ‘Tess bought Honeybun Cottage from The Commuters.’

‘Of course.’ The man extended a very clean and soft hand.

Met? Tess tried to remove the puzzled O from her lips and smiled weakly, pummelling her memory. She was plainly expected to remember. In the expectant pause for her to join the conversation, her mind went absolutely blank.

Her glance flickered back to Ratty.
I’m stuck
.

Neutrally, he cooperated. ‘Tess is a very talented illustrator, Father.’

Father! And ‘very talented’. Wow, very nearly a standing ovation by Ratty’s standards. She was able to gather herself to respond, eyeing Lester Arnott-Rattenbury with interest. ‘We met at the ball,’ she agreed, as if she’d known all the time. So many dinner jackets had accompanied her around the dance floor that she’d stopped looking at who filled them.

Lester Arnott-Rattenbury was familiar for the features he shared with his son. The contrasting hair had thrown her, but the likeness was there, though Lester’s expression was so careful where Ratty’s was ever a mirror for his thoughts: the humour that so often lit his face, the grimness that sometimes spoilt it, concentration for those who entertained him, contempt for those who bored him.

She resolutely avoided his eyes, sure now they’d be shining with accusation, inevitable anger, even dislike.

I don’t want to speak to you, Tess.

Since she’d heard them, those words had whipped around her mind, kept time with her footsteps as she walked through the village and along the bridleways where the nettles were growing long and reaching towards one another.
I don’t want to speak to you, Tess.

She had, after all, killed his dog.

Some dreary business she’d occupied herself with, that day, the day after Lucasta and McLaren’s deaths, brushing away, blotting away, wiping away the sliding tears. Somewhere, sometime she’d heard it was an actor’s trick to prompt tears by telling themselves, ‘My dog is dead.’ As she ironed jeans and shirts, her mind kept helplessly supplying, ‘His dog is dead. I’ve killed his dog. Poor, poor McLaren!’ The tears slid on.

And obviously the pleasure in belonging in Middledip would be short-lived if Ratty decided she was ‘out’. So vivid, so central. Hostility from Ratty would close the ranks against her, Angel’s friendship would shrink into a daytime thing when Ratty wasn’t around, Pete and Jos would merely wave as she passed. And she’d
enjoyed
being a part of a crowd with in-jokes and shared experiences.

She’d actually begun to enjoy Ratty’s friendship, the talks over the babysitting, the van on the motorway with the trailer rattling behind. His friendship was pivotal to the rest.

But she didn’t see what she could do to prevent it from coming to an end.

She remembered how Olly had never let her be truly included with his friends, although he’d somehow contrived to separate her from her own. Sometime, Olly must’ve had a heart bypass. Which had made it easy to ignore the apology for his recent behaviour he’d left on her answering machine. Apology from Olly? That was a first.

The ‘afterwards’ for Lucasta was in the village hall and they all walked there from the church together.

Middledip owned a marvellous village hall, large and proudly kept up, with pairs of green-curtained French doors down each side. Today, blinding white tablecloths set off solemn lilies and the last of the gladioli. She thought of the gorgeously scented ruby roses at the door of Pennybun and Lucasta’s cheerful collection of daisies.

The tea she was handed was too weak and she abandoned it in favour of more sustaining wine. Angel and Pete were across the room. Ratty, brows down at the son from Mill Hill, all rapid sentences and terse hand movements, in the middle. He appeared absorbed, but, as she ventured past in search of another drink, he leant out of his conversation. ‘Can I have a word, later?’

She nodded. Yuk, he probably wanted to tell her exactly what he thought of her and she didn’t feel up to it. He’d accuse her of driving likely to endanger village dogs, failure to dash successfully to the rescue. He might even sue, because pedigree dogs were valuable.

The caterers began to circulate little kits of plate, napkin and fork ready for the bun fight. Fine. Good opportunity. She glided four backward steps towards the green floor-length curtains, one sidestep and she was hidden.

The French doors behind her opened smoothly and she was out, free. Car park,
Cross Street
,
Port Road
, skirt the Cross to
Main Road
, Little Lane, Honeybun. Safe.

Staring at Ratty across her kitchen, she wondered how she could have been so stupid as to think that going home and discarding funereal dress would award her sanctuary. He’d simply come after her in his expensive suit and black tie, onyx cufflinks snicked in the cuffs.

Inconsequentially, she thought about that dream.
That
dream. That hand, taking her to the heights.

Ratty looked drained. He threw the black tie across a chair, tipped his chin to unfasten his top button and hung his jacket on the cupboard door. ‘I hate funerals.’ He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘Hate, hate,
hate
funerals.’ A dark curl peeped from his open collar.

‘Deadly,’ she agreed. Then screwed her eyes shut suddenly as she realised what she’d just said. But, seeming not to notice the howler, Ratty just dragged out a chair and flopped onto it.

She supposed he must be waiting there for something, brooding, staring blankly at the knotty wooden table. ‘Coffee?’ she offered.

A bored face.

‘Beer?’

His face considered. ‘I’d really like a good, fat whisky. I don’t suppose ...?’

She had only the silly, thimble glasses that’d been her grandmother’s and filled two to their fragile brims, wishing he’d get off his chest whatever he’d come to say.

He rested his temple against his hand, heaved another huge sigh. ‘Poor Lucasta. I’m going to miss her like hell.’

God. God, she was so hideously selfish, gearing up to have a row with Ratty if he turned arsey. They’d just buried Lucasta! A long, interesting life had ended, a bright and caring person faded to memories and here she was, jittery in case Ratty called her nasty names.

Still, she chose a chair that kept the table between them. She licked her lips. ‘You must feel dreadful.’

He refilled his glass. ‘God, yes. I’ve always had Lucasta to turn to. Her reality, her wisdom. She’d always make me feel better, listen, know the right thing to say.’

‘Yes. She had a gift for pointing you gently in the right direction.’ Uneasily, she watched as Ratty topped up his glass, rose to refill hers, then settled in the next chair. She jumped when he touched her hand, very lightly, with one fingertip.

‘When you rang, was I utterly bloody?’ He looked rueful.

The beginnings of relief spread her shoulders. Oh joy, perhaps he hadn’t come to quarrel! ‘I’m
so
sorry about McLaren. But he just ...’

He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘
Don’t
! Don’t apologise any more, I should never have let you.

‘It was all me, Tess, my fault. I shouldn’t have let him escape to cannon into motorists and I should’ve taken him to the vet. But, with what was happening with Lucasta, I just let his brain swell or something until he lapsed into a coma, and told myself he was asleep.

‘Then you rang just when I was detesting myself most, so I took it out on you. It’s been such a crappy week.

‘Derry Meredith is a self-serving bastard. The funeral would’ve been sing-a-hymn-and-let’s-go-home if he’d had his way. I’ve fought him every step to get her a decent send off and paid for most of it. Can I switch to coffee? My head’s splitting.’ Ratty looked strained.

She sent him into the sitting room. When she joined him, carrying a little circular tray with the cafetière and china mugs, a non-matching saucer holding two paracetamol, she apologised lightly. ‘Not up to Lucasta’s standards, I’m afraid. She always offered me tiny eggshell china cups and a gracious coffee pot.’