She couldn’t hear if the bell had rung through the heavy oak paneling, so she applied herself to the chunky brass ring, banging it hard again and again. She was just deciding whether to peep in through the windows when a faint clunking and rattling reached her ears. After what seemed like ages, the door slowly opened and her mouth dropped open. For a split second she thought it was Maddy. But although the resemblance was startling, the differences were more intriguing. The woman at the door regarded her coolly, her grooming immaculate, her clothes classic but severe, her makeup understated, but her jewelry . . . well, the only expression for it was “bling bling”! It had to be Maddy’s mother.
“Can I help you? Is there something you want?”
Her accent was almost faultless, but the too-careful enunciation betrayed her French origins. This was Seizième meets Sloane Square.
“I’m here to see Maddy. I’m a friend—Izzie. I live nearby.”
The woman’s face relaxed, the eyebrows returned to their normal patrician arch, and she extended her hand. “Oh a friend, at last! I’m Giselle, Maddy’s mother. Every day I’ve been telling her—‘Call someone. Get on with your life! See your friends.’ When her father died, I didn’t spend my time crying. Within a week I was at the beautician again and the hairdresser. A woman owes it to herself to look her best. If you look right, you feel right. Come and see for yourself. She bites her nails, her hair’s a mess! She’s chain-smoking. So bad for the complexion . . .”
Izzie followed her and the running commentary. The message was clear. Never mind the loss of your husband, just look at those open pores! Glancing around, it was obvious to Izzie that Giselle’s attention to sartorial detail did not extend to helping around the house. Stacks of papers were piled up against the walls; a school bag was disgorging its contents over the floor. Stacks of unironed laundry wilted on the stairs like dispirited passengers delayed in the departure lounge on their way to their final destination. But the little woman, with her fabulous legs, danced on in front of her, seemingly oblivious to the chaos, chattering away and gesticulating vividly.
Through the kitchen door she plunged—Izzie vaguely registered a symphony of blond wood and chrome—still talking, talking, talking, with Izzie in her wake. How Maddy coped with this was beyond her—and now, of all times.
Maddy. She was sitting at the far end of the kitchen table, quite still, a cigarette burning down in her hand, staring through the windows. She looked bloody awful: hair unwashed, stained sweatshirt, not a scrap of makeup. But worst of all was the blank, blank look in her eyes. Slowly she turned to face Izzie, her face strangely serene, her voice a quiet monotone. Giselle threw her hands up in despair and departed, still talking.
“Oh hello, Izzie. Lovely to see you. Can I get you something? Cup of tea, perhaps?”
Izzie swallowed hard. This was scary. Not what she’d expected at all. Histrionics she could have coped with. Outpourings of grief, no problem. She had big hugs and supportive talk ready and waiting. But this calm detachment, unruffled and undemonstrative, was disconcerting. Obviously, she’d have to take her cue from Maddy, and the mother wasn’t going to be any use at all. She rolled up her sleeves.
“No tea, thanks. Can I get one for you? Have you eaten?”
Izzie moved around the kitchen, emptying half-finished cups, loading the dishwasher (which she found with some difficulty behind a blond wood façade), clearing plates of congealed food, talking as she did so in a low, calm voice, the way she used to do when the children were babies. Maddy turned her face to follow her, but seemed barely to see her. No eye contact. Izzie couldn’t imagine the landscape of pain she was gazing at so fixedly. All she knew was that she had to be there, to provide some kind of a link, to help Maddy back to reality.
After some time, Maddy looked up, puzzled. “Where did Maman go? I can’t bear having her here. She’s got no idea at all. She just goes on and on all the time. Make her leave, can you?”
Izzie blanched. “Are you sure, Maddy? I mean, I would have thought you’d want someone close to you at a time like this. Is she helping with the children? Isn’t she getting your shopping in and stuff like that?”
Maddy shook her head irritably. “Does she look like she’d help with the children? She’s got no bloody idea at all. She lets Pasco play with her jewelry, then freaks out because he puts one of her earrings through the floorboards. She tells Will he’s the man of the house and has to look after me. She even gave Florence her Chanel lippy to try out, then told her off for blunting the end.”
She broke off, her face crumpling and soundless tears running down her cheeks. The tissue she’d been twisting in her hands was useless—she’d shredded it into tiny pieces, dropping them on top of a pile already in front of her on the table. Izzie darted forward with a packet of soft tissues from her bag and thrust a bundle into Maddy’s limp hands.
A soft cough behind her made Izzie jump. A small, dark-haired young woman had come into the kitchen and looked expectantly at her. “Excuse me, Madame. You are her friend?”
“Er, yes. Yes, I suppose I am. You must be Colette. How are the children? Where are they?”
Colette beckoned her out through the door, and Izzie followed, mystified.
“I feed them upstairs. I make like a little pique-nique every night and they think it’s a game.” She shrugged sadly. “I don’t know what else to do!”
“I’m sure that’s just right, Colette. Is there anything I can do to help? Have they finished eating?”
Colette looked a little uneasy. “Oh, Madame. Maddy, she don’t go to the shops since the enterrement. There is nothing in the fridge now. I don’t know what to give them tomorrow.”
Izzie nodded firmly. “Right. I see. Let’s go and make a list, then.”
The fridge was just as Colette had described, and the freezer was little better. Together they worked out what would be needed for the next few days and Izzie got ready to return to the supermarket. From upstairs floated a warbling soprano singing Puccini. “What on earth . . . ?”
“Maddy’s mother. It’s all she do. She come downstairs, she tell Maddy to pull herself together, then she goes upstairs and has a bath. I hope she go soon.”
Back in the kitchen, Maddy was now standing by the window, staring at the sunset. She jumped violently when Izzie touched her arm.
“I’m going to get some groceries. I won’t be long. Do you want to come? Can I get you some ciggies?”
“Yes. Yes—the children need some bits . . . I don’t know. Just some . . .” Giselle rustled into the room.
“It’s all right, Maddy, I’ve done a list with Colette. Twenty fags okay or shall I get two packs?” Izzie ignored Giselle’s scowl. In a satin peignoir with her hair wrapped in a turban, she pursued Izzie to the front door, haranguing her on the harm smoking would do to Maddy’s complexion.
“Madame,” Izzie said firmly as she stepped through the door, “I reckon her complexion is the least of her worries at the moment.”
Yikes. Another fifty quid gone. Even choosing the generic brands, the shopping still came to more than Izzie could afford. She’d have to sort out the money with Maddy later. Back at the house, everything was much the same. Only now, the hall was full of luggage. Giselle’s voice floated from the kitchen. “See if you can get those floorboards up. Those earrings were very expensive. I’ll get your friend to take me to the station. Your stepfather will pick me up at Marylebone. I’ll call you tomorrow. Now, for goodness sake, wash your hair. I’m sure darling Simon wouldn’t want you to let yourself go.” A sound very like glass shattering was followed by a shriek.
By the time Izzie had got back from the station, and had cleared up the broken jar and sticky marmalade, Colette had put the groceries away. Maddy still hadn’t moved but the pile of shredded tissue had increased. Izzie made fresh tea, pressed a cup into Maddy’s hands, and sat down next to her.
The silence drew out. At last Izzie could bear it no longer. “I’m so sorry, Maddy. You must be feeling
terrible. I’m sure it’ll ease with time.” God—that sounded trite.
Maddy turned to her, seeming to see her for the first time that evening. “Come on, Izzie, you know that’s crap.”
Izzie looked down into her mug, mortified by her crassness.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say.” There was a long, long pause.
Finally Maddy spoke. “I’ve lost everything.”
“I know nothing could ever replace him but, Maddy, you’ve still got your children and this lovely home.”
Maddy laughed mirthlessly. “No, Izzie. You don’t get it. Everything.” There was a long pause as she lit one cigarette from the butt of another. “I spoke to the lawyers today. The house is okay, he put that in my name, but what am I supposed to run it on? He’s left me with nothing. Absolutely nothing. There’s no mortgage so not even any life insurance.” She paused again, gazing down at the tissues in her hand. “There’s worse. It looks like he put our savings into the business—the money we had made on our house in London after we’d paid for this.” Izzie vaguely calculated how much Huntingford House must have cost—Maddy was talking about figures Izzie could only dream of. “‘Everything will be okay,’ he always used to say. Okay?” Maddy looked up into Izzie’s eyes. “Nothing for me, nothing to pay the bills . . .” Her voice cracked. “Nothing for the children.”
Maddy opened the fridge and surveyed the contents, surprised to see it was almost full with cheeses, packets of sausages and fresh pasta and something that looked like lasagne, in a serving dish she didn’t recognize. Where had all that come from?
She wasn’t hungry but, before she’d left today, Izzie had reminded her to eat. Maddy closed the fridge and opened the biscuit cupboard. That too seemed to have sprouted packets of Kit Kats and crisps. She took out a digestive from an open packet, nibbled it but, losing interest, dropped the rest in the bin. She lit another cigarette and noticed that she only had three left. Damn. She’d have to stop at the garage on the way to school.
Leaning against the sink as she smoked, she looked out of the window at the garden. Autumn seemed to have arrived without her noticing, and the leaves from the trees were strewn all over the lawn. Some she saw were still green, ripped too soon from the branches by some gale before they had had time to turn color and die. Like Simon.
She glanced at the clock, and then had to look again realizing she hadn’t registered what it said at all. She’d have to leave to collect Florence in a moment. On the sideboard, next to a bundle of papers and unread school notices, she saw Simon’s mobile, returned with his “effects” by the police. Out of some masochistic urge she picked it up and tried to listen again to her last message to him, but the save option had expired. She felt a wave of despair.
Hearing a crash from the sitting room, followed by a wail from Pasco, she rushed in to find him sitting on the floor surrounded by the debris of a vase he had pulled off the side table. It had been a wedding present. Suddenly she was overcome by a wave of anger mixed with guilt at having left him unattended.
“You stupid boy,” she screamed. “Look what you’ve done! That was precious!” Pasco wailed even louder, his face bright red with grief and tears pouring down his face. Maddy felt suddenly mortified. She picked him up and clutched him to her. “Oh God, darling, I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She sat down with him and cuddled him close, his snotty nose rubbed over the front of her cardigan and his tears now mixed with hers as they trickled down her face. Her chest ached with the effort of crying, and she felt like throwing up.
“What are we going to do, little man? What the hell are we going to do?”
She rocked him gently in her arms and sobbed with him. He was tired and fractious, she knew. He hadn’t slept at all on the drive to Burford, the urns in the back of the car. How long had it been since she’d brought them home with such guilty glee, and had inveigled Crispin into helping her get them out of the car and hide them behind the outbuildings? Two weeks, maybe three? The man at the shop had been crestfallen when she’d called to ask if she could return them, but had made damned sure he bought them back from her for less than she had paid. She’d had to get them to him today. The car was going tomorrow and she’d never get them in the back of a Fiesta.
She lay back on the sofa as Pasco quieted in her arms, his sobs now slowing to vague hiccups, and looked over at the shards of smashed vase on the floor. Simon had thought the vase too ornately French and vulgar, but she’d loved it. It reminded her of Mémé’s apartment—so stylish, so dark, every surface packed with fascinating trinkets that, as a child, Maddy had loved to run her fingers over.
Simon had never really fitted in on the few times they’d been to stay there. It had vaguely irritated her, but she’d teased him for being so British and reminded him that it was her French genes that made her so good in bed. Was it disloyal to admit now that anything about him had annoyed her? No. Not now. Not now that she was mad as hell with him.
She had no recollection of the week leading up to the funeral, only that her mother had lent her a hat to wear at the church—“so becoming, darling.” Simon’s brother Rory had identified his body—she simply couldn’t have—and she supposed he must have dealt with the funeral arrangements too. Will had been there at the service, quiet and brave and so grown-up, and she had focused all her attention on him so she hadn’t had to catch anyone’s eye. What had the vicar said in the eulogy? She couldn’t recall. Nor could she remember any of the people who had attended and kissed her and squeezed her arm afterward, muttering platitudes about how “sincerely sorry” they were.
She knew Izzie had been around the house—had she overlapped with her mother?—and it must have been she who had stocked the fridge and piled up all the letters of sympathy onto the hall table. Maddy hadn’t opened many—they all said the same thing—what a lovely man he was and how if there is anything they could do to help she must call—but the phone had been predictably silent. How embarrassed people are about death.
She had vaguely registered how brilliant Izzie had been with the children since Colette had gone. That conversation had been painful. She knew she couldn’t justify the cost of keeping her on—Maddy’s meetings with the bank had made that plain—but she hadn’t had the courage to face the truth. It was Colette herself who had finally forced the issue, and her leaving had been an emotional one. The children, in their grief, had clung to her and made her promise to come back. Maddy knew she would, but it couldn’t be to work here. Her mother had been appalled. “Darling, she is a gem. What are you thinking of?” But Maddy’s pride, and some sense of self-preservation she couldn’t quite rationalize, had stopped her yelling, “Because I can’t bloody afford her anymore. I can’t afford anything.”
She gently strapped the now sleeping Pasco into his car seat and set off for Little Goslings and Florence. How much longer she would stay there Maddy couldn’t say, but it wouldn’t be much past Christmas. The interview at Eagles had really been about the effect Simon’s death might have on Will, and Mrs. Turner had sat primly with her long rather masculine hands folded in her lap, nodding reassuringly and smiling with gentle sympathy.
“Of course, Mrs. Hoare, I will make sure his form teacher keeps an eye on him. What a tragic situation for you all.”
She had been so lovely that Maddy had had to look away and try frantically not to cry. And it made it so much harder when she had to tackle the subject of the fees.
“Mrs. Hoare, I can assure you the school and the governors have had this situation before, and we know it takes time to sort out probate on your husband’s estate. We want the very best for Will, as we know you do, so let’s talk about this at the beginning of next term when you are clearer about what your financial situation will be.”
As she drove now toward Little Goslings, for the last time in her comfortable shiny car, Maddy’s throat hurt with the pain of holding back her grief and her head ached with self-pity and the headmistress’s understanding an
d lack of it. You’ve got no idea, she thought. There is no money now and there won’t be then.
She thought too about the impromptu visit from Lillian to the house some days after the funeral with personal stuff from Simon’s office. She was a funny little woman, hard to put an age to—forty-five, maybe fifty? She’d stood in the kitchen refusing to sit down, nervous and unsure, brave with her purple coat and vibrant orange hair. Unemployed.
“Mrs. Hoare, I’m sorry you didn’t get my call until it was too late,” she’d said. “I wanted to warn you that Mr. Hoare’s behavior wasn’t right that afternoon. He’d been on the phone all morning, looking so desperate, then he went out at lunchtime . . . I think he did drink quite a lot . . .” She’d left the rest unsaid, given Maddy a clumsy embrace, and left in her bright green little car.
Maddy gripped the wheel, slowly beginning to let the anger she had buried for so long boil to the surface. “How the fuck could you leave me like this, you bastard, you deceitful, lying bastard?” she said out loud. “Did you think so little of me that you couldn’t let me in on your worries? I hate you. I fucking hate you.”
Chapter 5
Izzie had slipped into a routine during the past couple of weeks. She’d kiss Marcus good-bye in the morning, drop Charlie and Jess at school, go to the shops if there was anything she or Maddy needed, pick up a paper, then drive over to Maddy’s. She wasn’t sure how much Maddy registered her presence—that spaced-out calm of the first day was still pretty much in place, although it was occasionally punctuated with periods of stormy tears and furious resentment. But whenever Maddy had cursed Simon for leaving her in the lurch, calling him names that chilled Izzie to the bone, she would later be assailed with the bitterest guilt and grief. Once or twice Izzie had found her lying on her bed, curled in a fetal position, sobbing so hard that her whole body shook uncontrollably.
Goodbye, Jimmy Choo Page 6