The Four of Us (50 page)

Licking dry lips, her voice raw, she said, ‘What is aplastic anaemia, Geraldine? I've never heard of it.'

‘It's a blood disease.' Her voice was perfectly steady. ‘Instead of blood-producing cells in my bone marrow, all I have are fat-producing cells.'

‘And a bone marrow transplant will rectify that?'

Geraldine nodded, her violet-dark eyes grave. ‘Yes. If I have one.'

Primmie stared at her, confused. ‘I'm sorry, Geraldine. I don't understand. If a transplant will cure you, why haven't you already had one? You have money. You're not dependent on NHS treatment.' Despite all her fierce determination to remain calm, there was the unsteadiness of fear in her voice. ‘So what's the problem? What is it you haven't yet told me?'

Geraldine shifted her position in order to avoid the attentions of a Rhode Island Red that was trying to peck her hair through the wire mesh. ‘Transplants are only usually carried out on patients under the age of forty who have a brother or a sister as a suitable match – and I'm fifty-two and an only child.'

Primmie struggled to remain calm. It wasn't easy – not when she wanted to sob in anguish at the unfairness of it all. How could Geraldine be facing a death sentence when they had only just found each other again? When, together with Kiki and Artemis, they had so much to look forward to? It was too utterly monstrous. Too vile. Too bloody, bloody cruel.

‘But the over-forty thing won't be impossible to get around, will it? Not when you can afford to go anywhere in the world for treatment?'

‘And the sibling issue?'

Violet eyes held grey.

‘There are donor registries, of course, and my consultant in Paris will be in touch instantly if a suitable match is found.' Geraldine gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Until then I'll be travelling between here and Paris pretty regularly for treatment.'

‘Which is?'

‘Blood transfusions and antibiotics.'

She saw the sudden hope that lit Primmie's eyes.

‘The prognosis is a year, Primmie,' she said gently. ‘Maybe less.'

Primmie didn't speak. She couldn't. She took hold of Geraldine's hand, their fingers intertwining.

‘I'm not going to tell Kiki and Artemis.' Geraldine looked across the sunlit field to where Maybelline was placidly grazing. ‘Not yet. Artemis would go to pieces – and I'd find that hard to cope with.' Black humour entered her voice. ‘And Kiki would begin treating me differently. She might even start being sensitive and caring – and that would unnerve me completely.'

Incredibly, Primmie felt the corners of her mouth twitch in response. The grimmer things were, the more important laughter was going to be. And, fortunately for Geraldine and her, laughter had never been a problem.

‘The name is Brett Kenwyn. Are you Miss Grant?'

Primmie regarded the leather-jacketed and jean-clad Brad Pitt lookalike in bemusement.

‘No. Are you the builder she's expecting?'

‘That's me.' White teeth flashed in a dazzling smile. ‘She said she had quite a bit of work for me. A barn to convert, a custom-made goat shed to build, a patio to lay.' He swung a heavy tool bag easily from his shoulder on to the ground. ‘Which has priority, d'you know?'

Primmie registered that, as if all his other handsome attributes weren't enough, he also had a slight cleft in his chin, and said, ‘The goat shed. Geraldine is having a rest at the moment, but I'll show you around and you can decide where it would be best placed. I'm Primmie Dove. Would you like me to show you the barn? Then you can tell me how much work will be involved.'

As she was talking, Primmie was leading the way across the cobbled yard towards the farm buildings. ‘I have another two friends, as well as Geraldine, living with me, and as I'm going to be giving holidays to groups of children I desperately need more sleeping accommodation.'

As they came to a halt in front of the dilapidated barn, Brett Kenwyn tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans and assessed it.

‘Is it going to be an impossible job?' Primmie asked anxiously.

‘Nah.' Brett eyed the exterior with a knowing eye. ‘It'll be a piece of cake. Miss Grant said dormitory accommodation was wanted.'

‘Yes. We thought young children would find a dormitory more fun. And we'll need very safe access for them – ladders with handrails.'

‘Your wish is my command,' he said, shooting her another dazzling smile. ‘And what about the goat shed? Do you want it squeezing in around the yard, next to the cow shed, perhaps? Or d'you want it tucked out in the field where she grazes?'

‘Next to the cow shed, if you can manage it. It will be less of a trek when I milk her.'

‘I charge seventy pounds a day,' he said, ‘and if you want me to start work right away, I can.'

Primmie smiled sunnily. ‘Then please do, Mr Kenwyn.'

‘The name is Brett. Do you want the goat-shed roof thatching?'

‘Yes, please, Brett. And call me Primmie.'

‘OK, Primmie.' She was treated to yet another dazzling smile. ‘Then I'll start digging the foundations out now.'

‘If he were on the books of the agency I've just divested myself of,

he'd be earning himself a fortune,' Geraldine said an hour or so

later as, standing at the side door, a mug of tea in her hands, she looked across to where Brett Kenwyn, naked to the waist and muscles rippling, was hacking out foundations for the goat shed with a pickaxe.

Primmie's eyes widened. ‘Did you have
men
escorts on your books, as well as young women?'

‘Goodness, but you're naive, Primmie! Of course I did. They had to be intelligent, though, as well as good-looking. When women are paying for a man to escort them to public functions they don't want it to be obvious, the minute he speaks, that he ‘s hired out by the hour. My agency was top-of-the-market and all the escorts who worked for it were deluxe in every sense of the word.'

‘And you now have nothing at all to do with it?'

Geraldine's mouth tugged into a smile. ‘That's right. My pimping days are well and truly over – though looking at our builder, I can't help seeing dollar and pound signs. There must be well-heeled women in Cornwall who would be happy to pay for a handsome young escort – especially one with such a torso.'

Primmie didn't know if Geraldine was teasing her or not, but was taking no chances. ‘Well, if they are, you're not going to be the one providing them with someone,' she said spiritedly. ‘I could explain a lot to Matt, but not that!'

Geraldine eyed her curiously. ‘Forgive me if I'm being a little too nosy, Prim, but is having Kiki; Artemis and me here cramping Matt's and your style?'

Primmie didn't pretend to misunderstand. ‘Well, it is a little bit,' she said truthfully. ‘But Matt has a very cosy little cottage in Calleloe – and I shall probably begin spending the odd evening or so there.'

‘Or the odd night or so?'

‘Or the odd night or so.' She smiled. ‘Good men are hard to find. Matt reminds me of Ted – and I loved Ted with all my heart and still miss him.' Her eyes were overly bright. ‘I'll always miss him, because what we had together was so very perfect.'

‘And is it perfect with Matt?'

Primmie's smile deepened. ‘Not yet, but I think it will be some day. And that's worth working towards, isn't it?'

When Kiki came back after an Oxfam trawl with Rags, it was late afternoon.

‘There's a bloke digging to Australia next to the cow shed and he's playing one of my Rock ‘n' Roll Greats CDs,' she said indignantly. ‘Who lent it to him? I don't want him sneaking off with it.'

‘No one.' As the sound of Gene Vincent singing ‘Blue Jean Bop' drifted from the far side of the farmyard, Primmie continued laying the kitchen table for three, certain that Artemis wouldn't be back from Gloucestershire till late. ‘The bloke in question is the builder who's going to convert the barn and make a shed for Alice. His name is Brett and if he's playing a rock and roll CD it's his own. That sequinned beret is nice. Did you find it in Calleloe?'

‘Helston, in a boot sale.'

In skin-tight jeans, leather jacket and gaudily sequinned beret, Kiki strode back out of the kitchen and into the porch, opening the side door so that she could hear the music more clearly. ‘Blue Jean Bop'was followed by Little Richard's ‘Long Tall Sally'.

‘Are you
sure
it isn't my CD?' she shouted back to her, over her shoulder.

‘Positive.'

‘Forgive me if I'm not convinced. I'm going over to check.'

Geraldine, who had been sitting in the rocking chair near to the Aga, put down the gardening magazine she had been leafing through. ‘How old would you say Brett Kenwyn is, Primmie?'

‘Early thirties.' Primmie put a bottle of Merlot on the table. ‘Why?'

‘No real reason.' It wasn't the truth, but there was no point in putting her thoughts into words. Kiki had always done exactly as she wanted to – and Brett Kenwyn looked like a young man who could take care of himself.

After dinner, Geraldine, looking desperately fatigued, went straight to bed and Kiki announced she was going into Calleloe, to meet Brett Kenwyn for a drink.

Primmie, assuming Kiki's interest was entirely musical, was quite glad of her plans. It meant she would have time to herself until Artemis returned, and time to herself was something she had wanted ever since her talk with Geraldine out by the hen arks.

Going into the small room that looked out over the front garden, she sat at Amelia's big old desk and switched on her laptop. Five minutes later she was online. She didn't check in on the Friends Reunited website. Instead she entered ‘Missing Persons, USA' in her search box. Geraldine might not have a brother or a sister who could give her a bone marrow transplant, but she did have a cousin. Minutes later, knowing that her search would be long and involved, she typed in ‘Francis Sheringham'.

When Artemis returned late that night with a mountain of luggage, she was in reasonably good spirits. ‘The Serena bitch wasn't there,' she said, as she and Primmie curled up on either end of the sofa, drinking milky cocoa, ‘but Orlando was. I explained that Hugo was a friend who was kindly going to ferry some personal items to Cornwall for me. I don't know why, but both he and Rupert looked quite dazed.'

‘Good.' Primmie, comfy in a shabby woollen dressing-gown, took a sip of her cocoa and grinned at her over the rim of her mug. ‘I don't know about Orlando, but Rupert was always difficult. The last thing he would have expected was for you to be in the company of a highly eligible man.'

Artemis, resplendent in a Rigby & Peller lacetrimmed peignoir, shot her a sheepish grin. ‘It was very good for my self-esteem that he couldn't quite work out my relationship to Hugo. Now I know why escort agencies have male escorts for hire, as well as girls. Somehow, having Hugo with me helped me to keep my dignity.'

‘And was his retaining the house mentioned again?'

‘No. I didn't want to get into that kind of a discussion in front of Hugo – and if he suggests that part of the settlement will be our home in Corfu, I shall sell it. I've done a lot of thinking this last forty-eight hours and one decision I've come to is that I don't want to live with reminders of a marriage that is over. I was a very loyal wife to Rupert and he was never loyal to me in return.'

She slipped off the fluffy mules she was wearing and wriggled pearly-pink-painted toes against a cushion. ‘The most terrible thing I'm having to come to terms with, Primmie, is that I don't think he ever really loved me at all. Not in the way Ted loved you. Not in the way I always wanted to be loved. I thought being married to a man with everything would be a fairy tale, and it wasn't. Nearly all Rupert's friends have the attitude that extramarital affairs are perfectly OK – it's all some of them seem interested in, apart from hunting – and that it's middle-class to behave differently.' She gave a despairing shrug. ‘And I
did
behave differently. I was never unfaithful to Rupert – not once.'

‘Don't get weepy,' Primmie said gently as Artemis looked as if she was about to fill with tears again. ‘Start thinking about what you're going to do with your future.'

Artemis blinked the pending tears away.

‘I'm going to buy a house on the Lizard – near to you,' she said purposefully. ‘And instead of simply being a glorified party-caterer for Rupert, I'm going to help you look after the children who come here for holidays and I'm going to act as a part-time receptionist at Hugo's art gallery.'

Primmie's eyebrows rose quizzically. ‘Does Hugo know this yet, or is it going to be a happy surprise for him?'

‘He suggested it to me over dinner this evening.' She saw Primmie's eyes light with prurient interest and added quickly, ‘We wouldn't have got back to Calleloe in time for dinner and so we stopped off at a restaurant in Launceston.'

She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was after midnight and she said gratefully, ‘It was nice of you wait up for me, Primmie. Did Kiki and Geraldine go to bed ages ago?'

‘Geraldine did. Kiki isn't in yet.'

This time it was Artemis's eyebrows that rose high. ‘In from where?' she asked, as if Kiki were fifteen, not fifty-two.

‘In from an evening out in Calleloe with the builder who started work here this afternoon.'

Artemis's jaw dropped. ‘How come she's in the mood to be dating workmen? I thought she was supposed to be feeling suicidal?'

‘She's obviously feeling suicidal no longer. And she hasn't gone out with a gang of work
men
, Artemis. She's gone for a drink with a workman. The carpenter-cum-builder Matt recommended.'