The Last Resort (9 page)

“Hello?” I heard Mum say, eventually, in the quavery voice that she got when she was very upset.

“Hi Mum,” I said, and burst into guilty, terrified tears. Then, predictably, she burst into tears too.

Sharon, despite her seething resentment at not having had her fry-up yet, patted me on the shoulder in an attempt at consolation.

After much noisy sniffing and gasping and not being able to talk, I told her how sorry I was for everything—for not coming home from Paris, for sending the driver round to pick up my things, for not answering her calls for three months.

“Please, let’s just forget this happened,” she said. “Only please come and see us—you can bring Jack with you. We can put this all behind us.”

“Mum,” I said, bracing myself, “I’ve left him.”

There was a silence while she decided how to react to this news. If I were her, I would have been whooping with joy—I’m sure he seemed like nothing but trouble to her. But my mother’s manners were better than mine. “Where are you now?” she asked.

“That’s the thing, Mum,” I said, “I’ve been sort of rash. I’m not in England. In fact I’m in South Africa. With Sharon.”

“South Africa?” said Mum, the pitch of her voice rising a little. “Don’t you need your yellow fever injection for that?”

“No, Mum,” I sniffed.

“Whatever possessed you?” she said, starting to sound despondent now. “Why didn’t you just come back home? We could have taken care of you. Now you’re off with strangers somewhere—”

“Mum,” I said, my voice cracking with tears, “I’ve got a lot to deal with and I’m not sure how I’m going to just yet. I had to get away. I’m sorry, Mum.”

I heard her sigh as the anger left her. “Oh, darling. I just wish I’d known what was happening to you. I’ve been so worried about you. We even phoned the police, but they said there was nothing they could do.”

I wept again. Out of guilt. Out of bitter regret. Of everything this experience was doubtless going to teach me, I was sure that the key lesson would be that I wasn’t enough of a grown-up to run my own life yet.

“I’m so sorry,” I croaked again.

She shushed me for a while, like she had when I was a little girl. “Do you think you’re going to—to divorce him?” she asked delicately, unable to contain her curiosity.

“I don’t know,” I said. It wasn’t the first time the word had crossed my mind in the last few weeks, but it still had the power to frighten me—to conjure up memories of Mia. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do. I just had to get away.”

I could feel her weighing up whether she should ask me why I’d decided to leave in the first place. I prayed she wouldn’t; I couldn’t formulate an answer to that. Maybe in a few days’ time. Once I’d been able to think.

“Mum,” I ventured, glancing at my mobile again. Still nothing. “I suppose he hasn’t rung there, looking for me, has he?”

She was quiet. Of course she wanted to ask why I wanted to know, but she didn’t. The soul of discretion. “No,” she said, eventually.

“Will you tell me if he does?” I asked, feeling pathetic. “Will you tell me right away?”

“If that’s what you want, darling,” she said, quietly. “If you’re sure.” I could hear the unspoken question:
Don’t you think it would be better to make a clean break?

“I’m sure.”

After some more snivelling and apologising, I rang off. I was ashamed—would I have called at all if I hadn’t had an ulterior motive? Probably not. But, either way, it was better that I had. The awful knot of anxiety in my stomach had loosened a bit more.

At least now that was two people in the world that I knew still loved me: Sharon and my mother. Small victories.

Mia remained on the ‘definitely still hates me’ list.

~

“Can I have the four-egg omelette with bacon, sausage, Cheddar, onions, mushrooms and tomatoes please?”

Sharon found us a chic beachside restaurant with a panoramic view. The waitress, a black-clad Jane Birkin lookalike with a waist circumference of no more than a handspan, appeared to be stifling a gag.

“White toast please. And tea. Leave the bag in.”

She nodded again, looking greenish. “For you, ma’am?” she asked.

“Um. To drink I’ll have a mineral water.” I’d really cleaned up my eating habits recently. The last thing I needed was to continue my losing streak after last night’s sandwich. “Can I have the fruit salad, please? But without the banana. And can you ask them to leave off the fruit juice, if they usually put some on?”

“No problem,” she said, brightening visibly.

“Fruit salad?” said Sharon, once she’d gone.

“What?” I said, taking my mobile out of my bag.

She shook her head. “Never mind.”

Camps Bay was sickeningly beautiful, of course, but I couldn’t find it within myself to care. If you want to know, it consists of a long, wide, white beach, edging a steep-sided green and gold cove. A rash of luxury mansions made its way from the ocean to halfway up the mountains—protected, for the time being, from the blazing sun that waited behind them. It was profoundly peaceful and empty. “That’s Lion’s Head, and that’s the other side of Table Mountain,” said Sharon, pointing up to a series of blunt-topped hills. “We’re climbing that tomorrow.”

“Are we?” I said absently, looking at the mobile again.

“So you’d better be having a heap of pasta for dinner Carbo-loading and all that.”

I stared across the panorama of the bay. Ten or twelve families dotted the beach, and a few couples strode along the sand, arm-in-arm. I felt a barb of sadness squirm in my chest. What was I doing here? Why had I left?
This wasn’t supposed to happen,
I thought bitterly.
I’m meant to be with my Prince Charming, living happily ever after.

For the first halcyon weeks of being his wife, it was really as if we were made to be together. It felt like we were formed in the very same instant on opposite sides of the universe, fated to come together despite the earthly obstacles. During that time I never doubted the existence of God—the incredible speed with which things between us came together, despite the odds, constituted undeniable proof.

I’d spent nearly my whole life dreaming of meeting someone like him. But as soon as I’d got what I wanted, I’d gone and sabotaged it all.

“Right,” said Sharon as she drained the last bit of tea from the mug. The waitress had brought her a little china teacup and a pot, but she’d sent it back. “Put your bloody phone away and tell me about how you got yourself into this mess.”

When she put the question that way, I knew where I had to start. It was with Jack calling me to the kitchen.

I walked down the corridor towards his voice. When I turned the corner, he was standing by the main counter with his back to me, still barefoot. (Maybe it was because my mother drummed it into me from toddlerhood, but I thought of bare feet, even on a lovely clean kitchen floor, as somehow uncivilised. For whatever reason, him being barefoot was just sexy.) He’d hung his damp hair towel over one of the kitchen stools.

“I hope you like quail,” he said over his shoulder. “I do.”

He’s so... louche,
I thought, feverishly. “Um, I’ve never had it.”

“Well, give it a go. I thought we should get to know each other a bit,” he continued. “I realised just a minute ago that pretty much all we’ve done is introduce ourselves.”

I brightened. “That would be lovely. That’s a great idea.”

“Oh, and I hope you don’t think it’s strange that I just hired you off the street,” he said quietly. “Or, out of a gallery, I suppose. I just thought you had a good look about you. I thought we would get on.”

“I understand,” I said, flushing with pleasure. “I-I think I feel the same way.”

Now you do,
I commented to myself.
You didn’t at first.

“Good,” he said, nodding as he chopped up the quails. (I’ve always felt sorry for quails, poor little things.) “I’ll start. My middle name’s Rudolph. Isn’t that dreadful?”

I smiled. I loved playing stupid icebreaker games like this. Daft, but comforting. “My middle name’s Charlene. That’s worse.”

“Oh.” He looked at me stonily. “That’s my mother’s name. You don’t like it?”

My scalp prickled as horror swept through me. “Oh, no, no, I do, it’s just—” I scrambled, mortified. Then I detected the flicker of a laugh on the edge of his lips. He was teasing. The cheek of him! “I hate it, actually,” I said, smiling slyly.

He laughed, looking up at me from behind long lashes. The same lashes I’d admired on his brother. “I do too. It’s horrible, isn’t it?

“Not as bad as Gertrude.”

“But worse than Wilma.”

“Not as bad as Griselda.”

“But worse than Egberta.”

“It is
not
worse than Egberta!”

He laughed again, this time without a trace of shyness. I laughed too. As the familiar smells of cooking filled the apartment, it lost its chill. I began to feel at home.

“I don’t work very hard every day,” he explained as he selected a bottle of white wine from the mini cellar unit in the corner of the kitchen. I glanced nervously at the clock; it was only 10:30. Were we really going to start drinking now? How Continental. “Especially when I’ve just come back from somewhere—back from a trip, I mean. Some days, we’ll do quite a lot of things. Driving around to appointments, going to auctions, going to gallery events. We’ll do a few evenings, but don’t worry, you’ll get the time back.”

“I’m not worried about that,” I said, thrilled. “I don’t mind working hard.” I would never have said that at the dealership, but this was completely different. Jack wasn’t Victor.

“Well,” he twinkled, “you mustn’t let me tire you out. I can be demanding.”

The possibility of a double entendre crossed my mind. I dismissed it.

He rummaged around in the cupboard and located a wine cooler, into which he put the wine. Relieved that we weren’t going to open it just yet, I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

“Why don’t you help me chop up these vegetables? I thought we could have mashed potatoes and some Swiss chard. Do you eat chard?”

“Yes,” I said, having never heard of it.

“A woman after my own heart. Here. Wash it, then chop it up, then put it in that steamer thing over there. We’ll cook that at the last minute.”

I did as I was told (chard’s a kind of spinach, apparently), while he took care of the mash. He peeled and cubed the potatoes. Using water from the espresso machine, he got a pot going on the stove, and turfed the potatoes into it like a consummate professional. “Mary Hazel’s always on at me about getting a kettle. I know I should, but it’s such fun to annoy her,” he grinned.

Once the vegetables were on, we sat around the island and he chatted to me, sweetly and continuously. I could tell he was putting a lot of effort into making a good impression on me. I was absurdly flattered. Why did he care what
I
thought of him?

He told me about his mum, who was not called Charlene, but Fenella. “You’ll meet her sometime, I’m sure.” Fenella and Alfie, Jack’s father, were divorced. He seemed horrified to hear that my dad had passed away.

“Were you very little? Was it terrible?” He looked so sad that I sort of felt sorry for
him.

“I wasn’t that little,” I said simply. “It was awful, but, you know, it happened.” Not wanting to make him feel obliged to commiserate with me the whole morning, I changed the subject. “Are you and your half-brother very close?”

Jack looked at me with an unreadable expression, then chuckled. “We’re as close as we can be, without being each other’s favourites.”

I paused, not sure how to proceed. I was sure that Jack would be mortified to hear how rude Tam had been to me, but if he was just being reticent and he and his brother
were
in fact thick as thieves, it would put me in a bit of an awkward position.

“Why do you ask?” he inquired.

Fuck it,
I thought. “He was quite a h-horror at my interview, to be honest. Really rude and horrible. Is he usually like that?”

Jack laughed, but it sounded hollow, somehow. “He is, usually, yes.”

An uncomfortable silence hung between us. I kicked myself for being so stupid as to open my mouth in the first place.

“Please don’t take it to heart, though,” he continued. “Tam’s just very self-involved. He is my brother, of course, so I don’t want to sound uncharitable, but he’s not really very interested in how other people feel. He’s a bit ruthless, really. It’s just the way he is.”

“Oh,” I said, uncertainly. That definitely sounded like him. “But why does he act like that? Like other people don’t even matter?”

There was a pause. Then Jack sighed. “I’m not completely sure, but I think Tam’s a bit of a narcissist. He had a difficult upbringing, you know, and he had to learn to take care of himself early and all that. So he’s got defences. Sometimes I think he’s not capable of many emotions except the ones that support self-preservation.” He glanced across to me, a look of uncomfortable vulnerability on his face. “Does that make sense? I feel like I’m waffling.”