The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  ‘We’ll see you in a couple of days, then?’ he clarifies, his dogs looking at him expectantly.

  ‘Yes,’ Fen says softly.

  ‘Bye for now, then,’ James says.

  ‘Bye,’ says Fen.

  She phones him back immediately.

  ‘James?’

  ‘Hullo again!’

  ‘James – I do so love you.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  How sad and bad and mad it was –

  But then, how it was sweet!

  Robert Browning

  ‘Is Fen back?’ Matt asked Otter, looking at his diary as if trying to find an opportunity to slot her into the day.

  ‘Yup,’ Otter confirmed, ‘she was back yesterday – seemed pretty lovelorn, if you ask me, absence obviously made her heart grow fonder.’

  Matt chewed his lip thoughtfully. ‘Yesterday was something of a mercy mission,’ he justified, ‘and I return victorious – I’ve negotiated the same quality paper, ten per cent price reduction.’

  ‘Without selling your soul or your body?’ Otter enquired with much scepticism. Matt raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell Accounts – ha! they can put that in their pipe and smoke it!’ Otter remarked with glee.

  ‘I’m going there directly,’ Matt said, with great reserve. He couldn’t keep his grin at bay any longer. ‘Then I’ll go and blow my trumpet a little in Rodney’s office.’

  ‘We should celebrate,’ Otter said, ‘a triumphal luncheon to celebrate Art Matters’ honour being safeguarded.’

  ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ Matt agreed. ‘I’ll book the Tate restaurant. Right, I’m off to lord it over Accounts.’

  What about Fen, Matt – when will you have time to see her?

  Fen had so many butterflies that there was no room for croissant or cappuccino. Not that she’d eaten last night – for the same reason. She’d psyched herself up so much yesterday, needing to see Matt, that she had slept badly on account of all the adrenaline still surging around her. This morning, it had dissipated only slightly into a rampage of butterflies. Seeing Matt was a foregone conclusion. In a matter of hours. Soon enough, in a few minutes. Only, the minutes cruelly stretched back into hours. Fen waited in the Archive. She’d sent an e-mail as soon as she’d arrived; sweetly if rather formally requesting his company at his earliest opportunity. Only he hadn’t shown. He hadn’t replied. And Publications’ door was closed – the blind down to signify a meeting. When it was open again, just before lunch, only Otter was in there.

  ‘Miss McCabe!’ he welcomed. ‘Have you heard what a hero Holden is?’

  Fen shook her head.

  Where is he?

  ‘He’s in with Rodney at the moment,’ Otter said, reading her mind. ‘He’s probably being given a golden crown, or Freedom of the Corridor – or a pat on the back at the very least.’

  I really have to speak to him.

  ‘We’re going out to lunch,’ Otter was saying, checking his watch which, on account of his skinniness, always twisted around so that the face rested on the inside of his wrist, ‘to celebrate the continued use of quality paper at a rate less than that which we were paying!’

  ‘Good old Matt,’ Fen murmured, for whom this talk of paper and prices was somewhat irrelevant on both professional and personal levels.

  I have to see him. I have to tell him. It really can’t wait. For his sake, as much as mine.

  ‘Will you tell him, Otter,’ Fen said, ‘will you tell him that I’m here? That, when he has a mo’, I need to see him?’

  ‘Of course, Funny Face,’ Otter assured her, never having seen her looking so serious. It became her though, investing her everyday prettiness with a certain soulful beauty.

  Rodney was delighted at Matt’s victory. His immediate reaction was to leap from his leather chair and give Matt a double thumbs up. When he’d finished pacing around his office, punching the air with pleasure, he then invited himself along to the lunch at the Tate restaurant.

  Why shouldn’t he, Matt remarked to himself quite happily, firstly he’s director of Trust Art, secondly he’s offered to foot the bill from his own pocket.

  The three men returned from lunch at gone tea-time. To those who did not know the reason for their lengthy boozy lunch, the trio looked slightly the worse for wear. The men themselves, though, felt fantastic.

  ‘Crikey, am I squiffy!’ Rodney commented with a boyish giggle as he negotiated the stairs up to his floor.

  ‘I’d say I’m downright pissed,’ Otter clarified, to Rodney’s great amusement.

  ‘Pissed!’ Rodney whispered, as if in awe of a major expletive.

  ‘Drunk as a skunk, me,’ Matt said, with much thoughtful nodding.

  ‘Go to your desks and push paper,’ Rodney said, ‘lovely, lovely quality paper! Actually, shall we go to the pub?’

  Otter looked horrified, having always thought that the director of Trust Art ought to display the same sort of discipline and authority as a headmaster.

  ‘Maybe after work,’ Matt said diplomatically.

  ‘Jolly jolly fantastic idea,’ Rodney enthused, ‘fan-tas-tic.’

  Watching their boss sway and falter off towards his office, Matt remarked to Otter that it was a good job the director’s office was a flight of stairs below theirs.

  ‘He’ll have a stonking hangover in about half an hour,’ Otter concluded.

  They entered their corridor as Fen was coming out of the Archive, ostensibly to go to the loo, or down to Bobbie’s for a biscuit – anywhere so that she could walk past Publications. She stopped in her tracks. Otter and Matt appeared not to have seen her. She watched them weave and swagger into their office.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said under her breath, ‘they’re pissed!’

  She’d be packing up for the day in an hour or so. She had to talk to Matt before then, whatever his capabilities of comprehension. She walked to his office, knocked and entered.

  ‘Fen!’ Otter, with very flushed cheeks, exclaimed.

  ‘Fen,’ said Matt, his eyes really rather beautifully dark with dilation.

  ‘Hey,’ Fen said, with a little semicircular wave, ‘do you have a moment? For a chat?’

  Matt sighed as he looked down at his desk and the scatter of papers and Post-its that had collected during his absence. He looked at his watch. Looked at his desk again. Looked at Fen. ‘Sure,’ he said. He stood up, a little unsteady. ‘Otter,’ he said, raising his hand in a wave of sorts, ‘I’ll be five minutes. Vet my calls!’

  Otter saluted. As soon as Matt had left the room, he let his head droop and drop on to his desk and fell sound asleep.

  In the Archive, Fen feels shy about facing Matt. She has to say what she has to say and she wishes he wasn’t drunk but she realizes, perhaps for the first time ever, that she simply cannot stage-manage everything as she’d like.

  ‘Fen,’ Matt says, at the very moment she turns to him, saying his name. ‘Please,’ he says, sweeping through the air with his hand to invite her to continue.

  ‘You first,’ Fen says, who finally acknowledges it is important to let Matt have not just an opinion but the forum in which to express it. She will listen. She will listen and then she will talk.

  Matt rocks very slightly from side to side and back and forth. He nods his head and tries to keep it steady, staring at the top button of Fen’s Agnés B cardigan. He lifts his eyes to her face and smiles a little meekly. In an instinctive but uncontrolled gesture, he cups her breast in his hand and kisses her a little clumsily.

  ‘The thing is, Fen,’ he slurs though he is obviously trying hard not to, ‘I actually really love you.’

  She stares at him.

  ‘I do,’ he nods vigorously, ‘I really do. I love you.’

  Still she stares. Tears welling.

  ‘But I don’t think it’s going to work out.’ He shakes his head and looks desperately forlorn.

  What? What did he say?

  ‘I don’t,’ he shrugs unhappily, ‘it�
��s not. Nah. I actually want just to be on my own for a while.’

  Did he just say—?

  ‘Single,’ Matt is saying, ‘bachelor,’ he continues, ‘for a bit.’ He tilts his head, regarding her with a mixture of benevolence, love and the simple effort to focus on just one Fen. ‘It’s too much,’ he explains, ‘to go from one to another so quickly.’ He looks at her and looks at his feet. He has about five of them, he thinks. ‘It’s unwise.’ He shrugs, bringing his head up, though his eyes continue to count his many shoes. ‘Unfair on you because it’s not right for me.’ Finally, he raises his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he says, with real remorse, ‘I do love you, Fen – but it is the wrong time. It really is.’

  And he leaves, does Matt, he leaves the Archive. He goes back to Publications, vaguely notices that Otter is spark out at his desk. He collects his wallet, his mobile phone and, for some reason, a thesaurus, and leaves for home.

  Fen?

  Fen?

  Are you crying?

  I am crying. Of course I am. Wouldn’t you?

  But hasn’t he just made it easy on you? Saved you a ghastly task?

  Fen awakes in the early hours. She flicks on her bedside lamp. No Matt in her bed. No more Matt full stop. She glances around her room. There were things she wanted to say to him, too. Quite a lot, actually. It would be wrong to, she decides, now that she knows the score. She leaves her bed and sits on the floor with her back to the wall, focusing intently on the temperature knob of the radiator on the opposite wall. Though it is summer, her room is always just a little chilly, not that she’s had the radiator on. Radiators only work from October to April – Django had told his three nieces so, and they still believed him. Django. Django. She’d be home in a day or so.

  ‘Oh Matt,’ she murmurs, ‘I so love you. I am so sad. So sorry.’

  She goes to her window. There is no vestige of dawn at all. She hears sirens. An ambulance, she presumes, on its way to or from the Royal Free Hospital. She crosses her fingers, as Django taught her, to invest the unfortunate with luck and life.

  ‘Matty,’ she says, though she has never called him that. A tear oozes from the corner of her eye. It makes a very slow, hot and stinging passage down, along the side of her nose, to under her nostril where her tongue, stretched to the limit, dabs it up. ‘Oh Matt.’

  Fen goes back to bed.

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ she sobs into her pillow, ‘that I am deeply in love with you. I’d realized that it is you with whom I want – wanted – to walk forward. I’d made my mind up – and it was you. It was you.’

  FORTY-SIX

  Being at Trust Art for the remainder of that week was hard for both Fen and Matt. Fen arrived early, left early, bought her lunch on her journey in and ate it in her Archive. She also exerted the powers learnt as a schoolgirl, managing to restrict her trips to the toilet to once mid-morning, once mid-afternoon. Matt had taken a day off on account of his hangover and, on his return, had so many outstanding obligations that he barely left his office, sending Otter to fetch his post or bring him sandwiches.

  ‘It’s over with Fen,’ he told Otter, but not until the close of the week.

  Otter, bewildered and unhappy, could elicit little from Matt. He went to the Archive. No Fen. She’d obviously left early for the weekend.

  Fen had phoned Django from St Pancras to announce that she was coming home on the next train out. Django knew his niece well enough to know when to probe and when to just let her be. He had always been able to judge Fen’s level of distress by her degree of politeness. He deduced that she was troubled indeed, extremely sad, on account of her being so excessively formal and courteous. Varying degrees of quietness meant the girl ranged from out of sorts to downright angry. Excessive chatter meant she was fretting about something. But politeness had always signified sadness.

  ‘Darling!’ he had said. ‘How the devil are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you,’ Fen had responded, ‘how are you?’

  Later, he had asked after her job.

  ‘It’s going very well, thank you,’ Fen had told him.

  Django had had a bit of an accident with the Tabasco bottle and rather too much of the fiery condiment had hurled itself into the gazpacho soup he’d made. He’d apologized for it, assuring Fen that he wouldn’t be remotely offended if she left it and had cheese on crackers instead.

  ‘It’s very nice, thank you,’ she told her uncle, sipping demurely from the spoon to prove it, ‘a little spicy – but in a piquant way. Honestly.’

  He ascertained that her sorrow must run to a great depth indeed when he offered her After Eights that evening. Almost absent-mindedly, she worked her way through the entire box, thanking him for each and every chocolate, whilst listening very courteously to all that he rambled on about that evening. Django knew, unequivocally, of the depth of her distress when she took her leave of him to have a very lengthy but silent bath.

  ‘She always sings in the bath,’ Django said to himself, finding two After Eights that Fen had overlooked, camouflaged at either end of the box. He took both chocolates and slipped them into his mouth, hamster style, to the inside of either cheek. It was the way he ate satsumas too. And cherry tomatoes.

  ‘She always sings in the bath, that girl, always.’

  Fen?

  If things are about to slot very nicely into place, why are you so out of sorts? With Matt now out of the picture, you can at last develop your relationship with James on an equal footing. The contract on your house is up for renewal next month. You could indeed take up the option on your PhD and move back to Derbyshire too. Where else would you find an atmosphere as conducive to study as your beloved home county? It all makes sense. You were equally in love with two men. Now there is only the one man available to you. So why the melancholia? Yes, yes, we all know how dear Julius denied himself love after he lost the one woman for him – but life needn’t imitate art, Fen. You have a home with James, and he has a home in your heart.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell Fen,’ James says to himself, quietly but sternly, whilst tending to Mrs Brakespeare’s roses. ‘I’ve put it off and put it off, but I shall tell her this time. I have to.’ He wields his secateurs with expertise. ‘I have no idea how she’ll react, really.’ He pricks himself on a thorn. It’s actually such a rare occurrence that it shocks him. ‘But I have to tell her.’ There’s blood. ‘She deserves to know.’ He sucks his thumb tip. ‘She needs to know as soon as possible.’

  ‘Whatever happens – however she is – I must tell her. At all costs. The cost will ultimately be too dear otherwise.’

  FORTY-SEVEN

  All the best work of any artist must be bathed in mystery.

  Auguste Rodin

  Barry and Beryl bound up to Fen, slathering on her, shoving her, whacking her with their tails.

  ‘Hullo, dogs,’ she says, rubbing the tops of their heads and trying to keep her face well away from their slobbering, ‘hullo, you two.’ Beryl scoots off, haring from Fen to nowhere in particular, returning at full pelt to welcome her again. Fen stands with legs apart and braces herself for Beryl’s hurling rebound. Barry then runs circles around Fen, hampering her passage to James, who is standing on his doorstep laughing. She trips just as she’s about to reach him and he catches her, planting a kiss affectionately on her forehead.

  ‘Hullo, gorgeous,’ he greets her.

  Fen throws her arms around his neck and keeps herself pressed against him, her mouth at his neck, the smell of him filling her nose. Remember it. Remember it. Her eyes are scrunched closed. She will not allow herself to cry.

  I must not wimp out.

  ‘That’s some welcome,’ he marvels, trying to keep his arms around her while protecting her from the paws and claws of his dogs who are leaping up at her.

  I mustn’t put it off. I have to tell her today.

  As she sat in the kitchen, watching James make coffee, Fen realized how much she loved being there. With both dogs resting their chins on eac
h of her knees while gazing up at her adoringly, she thought how much she loved them too.

  ‘The money came through for the Fetherstones,’ he told her. ‘That’s why we’re having Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee rather than Nescafé.’

  ‘Coffee beans won’t fix the leak in the roof,’ Fen said, sipping the hot, delicious liquid though she knew that caffeine on top of her current high levels of adrenaline was a very bad idea.

  Start! Stop putting it off.

  ‘The Tate has invited me down to the unveiling next month,’ James told her, ‘but I don’t think I’ll go.’

  Fen was relieved, but nevertheless asked James why he wouldn’t attend. He took a seat opposite her. Though his dogs regarded him thoughtfully, they chose to return their chins to Fen’s knees.

  ‘It wouldn’t seem right,’ James explained. ‘It’s not as if I’m a philanthropic benefactor – I did it for the money.’

  Fen nodded.

  ‘You can represent me, if you like,’ James said.

  I must tell him. I must talk to him. The longer I leave it, the more uncomfortable I’m feeling – and the more unfair it is on him. I’m boiling hot but my blood has turned cold. Darling James – forgive me.

  ‘James –’ Fen said, staring at her plate. She continued to stare at her plate. James waited for her to continue. ‘May I have more coffee?’ she requested lightly.

  Stupid girl! I’d kick myself – and hard – if I didn’t have these two gorgeous dogs monopolizing my legs.

  ‘Biscuit?’ James offered, regarding her quizzically – not that she’d know as she was avoiding eye contact at all costs.

  Maybe right now is not the right time – but I have to do it soon, before she goes.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fen, taking a chocolate Bourbon and scrutinizing the glints of sugar crystals scattered on its surface. Come on, come on – you need to do this. ‘I – it’s –’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said James, looking into the biscuit tin and knowing for a fact that the Hobnobs were well past their best-before date, ‘gone stale?’