About Last Night

by Adele Parks

  ‘Yes, I expect a lot but I give a lot too.’

  Pip knew this was true but felt too desperate to be fair.

  FRIDAY

  46

  For the second time Sergeant Brown and PC Weybridge arrived at Stephanie’s house early in the morning. They were perfectly polite and possibly all the more terrifying for that. They kept their faces impressively impassive as they asked Steph if she’d like to accompany them back to the police station to answer a few questions. It was only when Steph said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t come right now, I have to go to the hospital and see my husband,’ that she detected a flicker of expression. The policeman looked smug and then seemed to realise that was not the suitable response so altered his face so that he looked stern. The policewoman looked surprised.

  ‘I don’t think you understand, Mrs Blake. If you are not prepared to accompany us to the police station, then we’d be forced to insist you do so,’ said the young policeman gruffly.

  Were they arresting her? Steph shook her head, uncertain as to how this could have come about. Going to the police station was such a waste of time. It was one thing absenting herself from Julian’s bedside because she was putting their children to bed and reading night-time stories, altogether another to waste time at a police station.

  ‘But surely there’s no need for that. You can ask me anything you want right now. Come through to the sitting room,’ said Steph, as she fingered the collar of her shirt. She’d chosen a pretty purple shirt this morning, it was one that Julian had once commented ‘suited her’ and so she’d decided to wear it today, to make an effort, although she was very well aware that she was making an effort for a man who couldn’t react to light or sound and breathed through a tube and a machine.

  ‘We just want to run through some of the details on your statement, Mrs Blake,’ said Sergeant Brown. Steph noticed that the policewoman didn’t seem to emit the same sympathetic vibe as she had the first time she’d visited Steph, in fact she seemed irritated. Her tone of voice had a hint of impatience and exasperation to it, it was similar to the tone of voice Steph used on the boys when she found out that one or other of them had broken or lost something and wouldn’t own up.

  ‘You said you were with your friend, Ms Foxton,’ chipped in the PC.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You arrived at seven.’

  ‘Thereabouts.’

  ‘And you left at about eleven, maybe eleven thirty.’ The policeman was reading from his notebook.

  Stephanie noticed that all three of her boys and both her parents had now congregated in the hall. Her mother was still wearing her dressing gown as she’d spent the morning concentrating on helping the boys find their school uniforms and ensuring they all ate an adequate enough breakfast, she looked wizened and wary. Steph’s father was at least dressed in his day clothes. He never came downstairs without showering and dressing first, not even on Christmas morning. Steph had never seen him in his pyjamas, except once when he was bed-bound with a particularly vicious bout of flu. His rule was that once up, you should get dressed, open the curtains and, ideally, go for a walk, he believed each day should be greeted with some enthusiasm. Yet this morning he did not look at all enthusiastic, he looked alarmed.

  Steph glanced at her sons. She needed to be getting them in the car. They would be late for school otherwise. Freddie had the least idea as to what was going on in their household at the moment and so did not look as bemused and afraid as the other two. He had the courage and curiosity to creep forward and stand close to the policeman, eyeing the PC’s walkie-talkie with delighted interest. Alfie slipped his hand into his mother’s, he was pale and passive. Harry looked at the police with outrage and resentment. He couldn’t comprehend why they had ever come to his door to deliver such terrible news as they had this week. Why not next door? Or the door of some other kid in his class? Any door other than this one in Hilledge Grove. It wasn’t fair.

  ‘Yes, I was with Pip from seven to eleven thirty,’ Steph lied again. ‘You can talk to her and she will confirm those times. I really don’t see any need for me to come to the station. My husband is critically ill. I need to be with him.’ Steph could hear her own hysteria. She wasn’t helping her case and she wasn’t helping her boys. Alfie threw her a frightened glance.

  ‘We have talked to Ms Foxton and I’m afraid there seems to be some discrepancy in the timings. We could discuss this here or you could come down to the station, Mrs Blake.’ Sergeant Brown threw out a fleeting look that caught all the boys and her parents like helpless, hopeless fish in a net.

  ‘I’ll get my coat,’ replied Steph with a sigh.

  47

  It had been an unexpectedly warm day, unseasonably so. The spring sun sat squarely on the shoulders of young men and mercilessly on the bat wings of older women in strappy tops who really would have been better advised to keep their jackets on. It was a peculiarly English thing, Pip decided, this unwise and rather too enthusiastic basking. Nowhere else on the planet would similar temperatures lead to an injudicious display of flesh. Pip had found the surprise heat infuriating, what was going on with the weather this week? Why was everything so unsettled and changeable? One moment it was pouring down, the next it was the sort of weather where people chose to go to riverside pubs after work, to drink beer and flick nuts at the ducks. She felt the unpredictability of the weather was somehow contributing to the week’s uncertainty, at the very least it was highlighting her tremulous time.

  Pip would have preferred it to be dull today, gloomy cloud or even electric storms might have suited her mood better; besides, she was certainly too busy and stressed to enjoy the warmth. She’d spent the entire morning in an internet café, desperately trying to do something to right her wrong. Normally, she liked spending time in the internet café near the library. Dave, the guy who ran the place, was cheerful and non-condescending. He always offered free technical advice and sometimes he threw in a free coffee too, if business was going well. Today the café had been empty, presumably everyone else had clear consciences and they were out sunning themselves in the town park. After all, how many people in Riverford had betrayed their best friends through a lack of trust in the last twenty-four hours? Pip thought it was probably just her. She’d never felt so isolated and forlorn before, not even when Dylan left her. At least then she knew the travesty wasn’t her fault.

  Dave clearly resented the fact he had to stay open for Pip, rather than join the sun worshippers. So much was obvious from the way he said the coffee machine was broken and then didn’t even give her a straw – let alone a glass – to go with her Diet Coke. He’d probably been planning on shutting shop and sneaking out until Pip arrived with her pen and paper and good intentions. As a result Dave hadn’t taken any interest whatsoever in her project, which was unusual but useful. She really wasn’t up to lying about what she was doing but nor did she want to explain herself.

  Pip had little to go on, other than three facts. She knew his name, she knew that he ran a business that had something to do with a solar power, and she knew that he was married. The third fact, although the most pertinent to Steph, was the least helpful when it came to her amateur sleuthing. However, Googling had proven fruitful. She’d come across a couple of articles about Subhash being awarded various regional awards for business and she also discovered he had an OBE. She wondered whether Steph knew this. Maybe she did, but it just wasn’t the sort of thing you mentioned to your best friend about your sort of lover while your husband was in a coma. After some further investigating, Pip had found a telephone number for Subhash’s company and called to make contact but a fiercely efficient PA had refused to interrupt his meeting to bring him to the phone. Pip had been forced to leave a message that Steph’s friend had called and could he call back immediately. It was a matter of some importance. ‘Steph’s friend,’ the PA had repeated with some scepticism. Pip felt as if she was twelve and back in the playground, announcing to some boy that her friend fancied his frie
nd. It all seemed very desperate.

  Subhash had rung back at three thirty. He apologised profusely for being so tardy.

  ‘I’ve just this minute got out of my meeting. I wish I’d been called to the phone when you rang. Is she OK? Is everything OK? I haven’t been able to reach her,’ he garbled. The love and concern in his voice was unmistakable.

  Pip felt sorry for him. She explained who she was and said that yes, Steph was OK but things were complicated. ‘I think it might be easier to explain if we met up.’

  ‘I can meet you now.’

  Half an hour later Pip and Chloe sat in the lobby of the local theatre, waiting for Subhash. Pip glanced out of the window and across the river to the groups of revellers that were desperately soaking up the afternoon rays. The sun’s warmth oozed in people’s smiles and their loud, overexcited voices. It was much cooler inside the theatre lobby, where the air con was a little too robust. Pip often felt the cold, but she’d learnt not to ever make much of the fact because people always replied that her problem was that her bones needed considerably more padding. Of course, they didn’t mean it, her angular, jutting joints – cheekbones, wrists, hips, knees – were envied. If it was true that a woman could never be too rich or too thin then Pip thought she’d got half of it right, although she couldn’t help wishing it was the other half.

  The lobby was quiet. Occasionally a woman might pop in off the street to talk to someone in the box office or pick up a programme. Three such ladies stopped by as Pip waited for Subhash. Pip thought that the women were the sort of women who expected their pleasures to be tasteful and their fun to be safe and restrained, women who operated on a muted level and were no longer ever exuberant and wholeheartedly joyful. Was Stephanie like those women? Pip wondered. Was Steph happy or resentful of her life of tasteful pleasures? Pip thought she should know that much about her best friend but it was hard to make the call when she was sitting in a theatre lobby, waiting for Steph’s bit of fun which she had not been able to restrain and which had consequently bled all over her life. Pip remembered making love to Robbie on Tuesday night and a slow smile spread across her face and a warm feeling ran through her body. She was not like those women, she’d tasted abandoned pleasure, just this week. Who would have imagined that, after two years of hibernation and many years of humiliation? In all of this tragic confusion she’d barely had time to think about what a miracle Robbie was. But he was a miracle of sorts. He was a start. A possibility.

  Pip had had no choice but to bring Chloe along to this peculiar rendezvous. She now realised how much she relied on Steph for babysitting. Usually, whenever she had a half-hour appointment after school, she was able to drop off Chloe with Steph. Although, until recently, Pip hadn’t had much call to rush around the streets of Riverford; if she’d ever had a reason, it used to be something more mundane like a parents’ night at Chloe’s school rather than a desperate dash to dredge up an alibi for her friend, to clear her of any possible involvement in said friend’s husband’s hit-and-run! When had life become so complicated? Pip had considered calling Robbie and asking him to help out with babysitting again but she’d decided against it. It was one thing to ask him to babysit when Chloe was tucked up in bed and not likely to cause any aggro, it was altogether another to expect him to make her tea and oversee homework. Besides, Pip didn’t want Chloe’s first introduction to Robbie to be a hurried, scrambled-together event. She wanted the three of them to take their time over that initial meeting, to give it some gravitas and lots of good intention. Because she did hope . . . She couldn’t help but imagine . . . Pip did not dare complete the sentences, not even in her head. She thought it was enough to tempt fate by suggesting (even to herself!) that perhaps, once all this mess was sorted out, the three of them could spend a day together in London, maybe visit the zoo or the Science Museum. Would Chloe like that?

  Pip glanced at her daughter who was unenthusiastically eating a skinny banana and raisin loaf cake. Clearly the cake was as tasteless as it was worthy. Cakes oughtn’t to be worthy, they ought to be gooey and yummy but the selection available in the theatre’s café was limited. Pip secretly believed that arts venues, such as this theatre, were often unnecessarily austere. It was almost as though the theatre manager was concerned that anyone might have too much fun here and therefore instructed the caterers to only sell cakes stuffed with bran and dried fruit. Pip had no idea why Subhash had suggested they meet here at the theatre in the first place, it was a slightly odd place to hook up but he’d seemed determined.

  She spotted him straightaway, he walked directly towards her. Pip wondered whether (and how) Steph had described her.

  ‘Philippa Foxton?’

  ‘For my sins,’ said Pip, meaning it.

  Right now she would have very much liked to be someone else, someone with a smaller mouth, perhaps, or a bigger capacity to trust. Pip wondered how they ought to greet one another. She considered wrapping Subhash in an enormous bear hug, after all she had really quite terrible news to dish up, but then she thought hugging might be a bit weird. She didn’t want him thinking she was coming on to him or that she was some sort of drippy hippy, so instead she pumped his hand up and down with unnecessary vigour.

  ‘And this is my daughter, Chloe.’

  Chloe and Subhash shook hands too and then Pip dispatched Chloe (and her Nintendo DS) to a nearby table. Pip would have liked her daughter to sit and draw or maybe learn her times tables but realistically she needed thirty minutes of uninterrupted time and the truth was only the DS would enable that.

  Pip carefully and concisely brought Subhash up to date with the events of the week. On cue, his so obviously intelligent face flooded with concern and shock. Pip faltered when it came to explaining her part in the drama.

  ‘So the hit-and-run happened when she was with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, so it seems.’

  ‘And she asked you for an alibi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t give her it.’

  ‘No.’ Pip felt shame flood her body again but instead of blushing she felt as though all her blood had run to her feet. This was perhaps fitting as her world was upside down.

  ‘Why not?’ He seemed bemused.

  ‘I thought – I thought that, maybe, she had done it.’

  ‘You thought that of Stephanie?’

  ‘For a time.’

  ‘Strange.’

  Pip glared at Subhash. In that one word it seemed to her that he’d understood everything. He’d understood how she had failed Steph. How she had doubted and betrayed her. He didn’t have to say so but Pip knew that he thought Steph would have given her the alibi, even if it had meant lying to the police and even if she hadn’t been able to account for the missing hours. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe it was right. Pip didn’t know anymore. All she knew was that Steph would have done as much for her because there was nothing Steph would not do for her. Pip, it seemed, had limits.

  ‘Of course I’ll step forward and explain that she was with me. Let’s go to the police station right this moment,’ said Subhash firmly. He stood up, his chair scraped along the wooden floor and inside Pip’s head, his impressive height was shown to its full advantage. Pip could understand why Steph had fallen for this man. He oozed integrity and simplicity, but he was no fool, he was clearly quite unafraid. He was a lot like Steph. Pip tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, indicating that he had to sit down again.

  ‘She doesn’t want you to do that.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She doesn’t want you or your wife to get embroiled in this.’

  Subhash saw at once what that must mean. ‘She’s staying with him. Isn’t she? She’s standing by her man.’ He collapsed back into the chair, folding in on himself. He put Pip in mind of a crumpled sheet of paper, upon which the beginnings of an idea had once been sketched but now the idea wasn’t going to be developed. The paper was screwed into a ball and tossed aside into a rubbish bin.

  ‘I think so,’ and
then more firmly Pip admitted, ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘If he gets well, she’ll choose him.’

  ‘And even if he does not,’ said Pip carefully. She knew Subhash must be hurting but she believed Steph had made the right decision. She thought Steph ought to be with Julian – not the Julian who sent mucky and heartbreaking texts to another woman and then screwed her in a fancy hotel, but the other Julian. Steph ought to stay with the trustworthy, ambitious, honourable and steadfast Julian. He was the one that deserved Steph. Oh God, it was complicated.

  ‘I thought this would be her choice almost the moment she kissed me. I hoped I was wrong when she stayed with me and got drunk on miniatures but Steph is not the sort of woman who could ever manage to—’ He broke off.

  ‘Have an affair?’ suggested Pip.

  ‘To hurt,’ clarified Subhash. ‘I had no right hoping for it. How is he? The husband.’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘And Steph?’

  Pip shrugged. ‘I haven’t spoken to her today. I’ve been trying to find you and I’ve had to pick up Chloe and . . .’ Pip stopped talking. It appeared that no matter how much she did for Steph, it never seemed quite enough. There was too much debt. Steph had thoroughly looked after her when she’d most needed it, yet when Steph had turned to her for help, she had let her down. Would she ever be able to fix this? Suddenly Pip felt unsure that she could. She had thought about Steph pretty much all day. She’d tracked down Subhash but she’d also had to whip up that sample apron for Selfridges, she couldn’t keep putting it off. After she’d popped that in the post she’d quickly dashed to the supermarket because there was absolutely nothing in the fridge or cupboards, they were even out of the basics like washing powder, cornflakes and ketchup. Pip couldn’t really afford to keep buying that sort of thing at the local corner store when they were half the price at the supermarket. Then she’d had to collect Chloe from school so she hadn’t called Steph or Mr and Mrs Amstell today for an update. She had managed to find the time to call the hospital earlier that morning but had only been told the usual ‘no change in his condition’, which told her precisely nothing, actually. From the way Subhash was staring at her right now, Pip thought she was a failure as a friend. Thinking about Steph all day was not enough. Action was needed.