The other contributing factors to her terrible week were a broken high heel in Charing Cross (it was not explained what she was doing there) and turning up for what had transpired was the wrong day for an audition.
This, the others suspected to be the result of self-induced memory loss due to too much alcohol. But the reality was that, in spite of her predilection for a drink or fourteen, when it came to her career, Francesca was able to put drink aside and function surprisingly well.
Francesca’s theatrical exaggerations were something the group of friends actually delighted in as, fully aware of herself, Francesca was thoroughly good at deliberate self-parody. She was so warm, outgoing, sweet-hearted and amusing that most people loved her, though some found her too much. And she was, after all, an actress, albeit not quite landing the roles she once had. The friends suspected this was down to her drinking habits. But they had all seen her in a London play some years before, for which she had received good reviews. And they watched avidly when she had various parts on television, series and plays.
Francesca enjoyed and made much of the fact of her profession for these non-theatre friends. There was always her latest theatre story that frequently made everyone howl with laughter, along with the fact that the drunker she became, the funnier it made her. A keen cook whose weight and curves did not worry her, like she crammed herself into tight clothes, she also loved to cram friends into Smith’s Cottage to eat delicious Italian food learnt from her childhood in Fredo’s.
Lately, she seemed to be at the cottage more. Her friends worried that the parts were starting to dry up.
In response to Francesca’s impression of the casting director, Katie’s raucous cackle rang across the garden and Hamish’s belly laugh barked the bass line.
When they had first met them, exhausted after an evening of the Nicholsons’ jollity, a slightly shell-shocked Jay and Eliza had quietly agreed that when the couple laughed, they sounded like a donkey and a drunk Father Christmas. But as time had gone by, they had grown used to their loudness and become very attached to them, in particular Hamish.
The others chuckled and as he joined in, Eliza was relieved to see the gaunt, stretched look of Jay’s usually handsome face lifting. He was already relaxing, as she had hoped. It looked like they were in for a fun evening. He always cheered up in Francesca’s company.
“So, what was the audition for?”
Upping the tone, Eliza was aware that under her bravado, Francesca was becoming desperate for some acting work, not just for the money but also and maybe more for reputation.
“Oh, just a part in a fucking fringe play – probably rubbish anyway…” She did her usual performance of seeming unconcerned.
“Bad luck missing it though.”
“Own fault – silly fool that I am. Thought Thursday was the twentieth when it was actually fucking Wednesday. Other way round I could have bedded down with an old friend, of which I have a few in the great metrop,” she arched the eyebrows, “but ’twas not to be, ’twas not to fucking be.”
In a gesture of sympathy, Eliza reached across under the table to pat her pal’s knee and brushed against another hand that was clearly Bob’s. But he didn’t remove it. Nor did he look faintly embarrassed. That was who Bob was. Untroubled by what people thought of him, a man subject to his own rules.
A piercing wail shattered the peaceful village scene and brought an abrupt end to the conversation. Siren blaring, an ambulance hurtled past the Old Cock garden, heading towards Sparepenny Lane.
Deafened again by the scream of two police cars following the ambulance, the friends were alarmed. Things like this didn’t happen in Heronsford.
“Oh God, you don’t think it’s something to do with the Ryans, do you?” Hamish addressed the air. Bob fished his mobile phone out of his pocket.
“Or Rose,” said Eliza, looking at Jay, who looked anxious.
“I’ll call Patrick.”
It rang with no reply.
“I think we should walk down there and see if it’s anything to do with the Ryans or Rose,” said Jay. Drained of colour, he gulped down his beer, twisted his legs round the end of the bench and stood up. Katie followed suit and pulled herself up from the table, becoming hopelessly entangled with Homer who was running around in circles. Eliza followed suit and Francesca downed her drink at speed. They all set off to fast walk the half a mile towards Sparepenny Lane. As they drew nearer and turned into the lane, they could see the ambulance and police cars.
Passing Rose’s cottage, Eliza and Jay were particularly relieved to find nothing unusual. Rose Cooper cleaned (or “mucked them out” as Annie joked) and did a bit of cooking for both Eliza and Annie. Eliza loved Rose deeply, who had been a large part of her life since she could remember. When she had been young and her mother was working much of the time in London, Rose had been employed as a daily nanny from Monday to Friday.
Along the lane, a young policeman was cordoning off Sparepenny Place with blue and white tape wrapped around a tree and a road sign. One by one the group sat down below a sycamore tree on the verge of the lane opposite the gateway to the house. Loud cracking sounds in the branches above made some of them jump and all of them glance up to see a couple of crows extricate themselves from the tree and flap away. They landed on the roof of the shed that was Louise’s dark room in the garden. There was no sign of Patrick, Louise or their daughter Sinead.
Artistic, talented, could-be-difficult, from the men’s perspective, Louise was a very attractive woman. But the wives were wary of her unpredictable and flirtatious nature.
Francesca was the closest to her. She found it easier to forgive her for sometimes being crabby and at other times for being ostentatious and loud-mouthed. By the same token, she could be great fun.
Louise was a good photographer who would only use film and pre-digital cameras to take photos of landscapes, places and, rarely, people, taken from unusual, distant angles. There was sometimes a hint of surrealism, and always solitude, about them. It was a passion for her and when she wasn’t photographing, she was developing prints in a studio in their garden that was divided into a dark room alongside a small space with a sofa and a sound system for when she felt the need to escape. Her work was quirky and clever, but the photos of desolate, lonely places did not encourage many to buy them. A few committed fans and occasional exhibitions in Cambridge encouraged Louise to keep going. The daughter of the owners of a large group of department stores, she had plenty of her own money so could afford to be an artist without the “impoverished” label.
Patrick ran Ryan’s Antiques on Trumpington Street, the road that leads past the Fitzwilliam Museum to link up with King’s Parade in the city centre of Cambridge. Due to his eye for fine pieces of furniture, works of art and objects, as well as a gift of the gab, he had done well.
The friends were all aware that the Ryans were far from experiencing marital bliss but knew that both of them adored their only child and would do anything rather than upset her. In other words, they were together for the sake of their daughter. The couple was careful to avoid rows or disagreements in front of their friends and they did not allow their lack of harmony to affect their day-to-day lives. That Louise suffered from bouts of depression was known, and her friends did what they could to help, although when the darkness descended on the unstable woman, she tended to shut herself away, and them out.
Although Louise was a devoted mother, she was in fact a bad one, either over-cosseting and pampering Sinead or getting angry and shouting at her.
If they had been asked, their friends in the village would have admitted that it was because of Patrick’s great likeability that they had befriended the couple. They saw how Louise pushed all of Patrick’s buttons in order to get a reaction from him and they were amazed by his tolerance that was almost saintly at times. He was much appreciated for being the grounded, stable father that he was to Sinead, who certainly needed his balanced hand to counteract the uneven behaviour of her mother.
The group sat in shocked silence. Then, holding Sinead’s hand, Rose came out of Sparepenny Place and walked slowly towards them. Both woman and child were clearly in a state of shock. The child kept glancing back at the house in what looked like fear. In spite of the colour drained from her usually pink cheeks, Rose’s expression and stocky body confirmed a steady strength and compassion that was the most useful thing Sinead could do with. The girl, eyes puffy from crying, looked white, miserable and terrified.
Eliza and Francesca got to their feet and moved towards them. Eliza gave Rose a hug and a questioning look, to which Rose subtly shook her head to imply, “not now”.
Francesca wrapped her arms around Sinead. “Can we do anything?”
“Not for the minute. We’re going back to my place for some tea.” The firmness of Rose’s tone clearly inferred questions were off limits.
The traumatised child started to sob again. Rose gripped her hand. Her eyes watery with tears, the kind woman clearly had the situation under as much control as she was able.
Eliza felt helpless, “Call me if you want.”
“I shall.”
Rose and Sinead walked slowly on. They turned up the little pathway through an immaculate front garden to Rose’s door. Her staunch husband Chris opened it. Eliza and the others knew the child could not be in a more caring place, with people who would do all they could to help her through whatever had happened. Chris often helped out at the farm and was devoted to Annie B. He would fetch and chop her firewood, and do any heavy jobs that needed doing in her garden, often refusing pay.
Still at the side of the lane but by now on their feet, the group hovered soundlessly. Eliza and Francesca returned with the news that they knew nothing more. Each quiet in their own thoughts, the wordless group walked back to the village. Driving at a slower pace, the ambulance passed them on its way back to the Cambridge hospital. When they reached the pub, there were no hugs this time.
Managing murmured goodbyes, white-faced Hamish and Katie got into their Toyota and Bob, dismay replacing his usually optimistic face, into his Mercedes. The others watched them drive away. Eliza linked arms with Francesca who seemed diminished by anxiety, while Jay followed slowly, looking quite shell-shocked.
“You’re not spending the night alone until we discover what the hell has happened. You’re staying with us and that’s an order,” said Eliza.
“You are not,” echoed Jay, and as an afterthought, “I mean you are s-spending the n-night with us.” He was stammering as he had done during his childhood.
“Thank you, thank you.” Francesca flushed with gratitude. Of all the women in their little group, Francesca and Louise were probably the closest. They encouraged one another to drink to excess and to take cocaine, not used by the rest of the group. Louise was a wild child who wrestled her internal demons by self-medicating. The attractive, small-framed woman was only five foot two and unable to hold large amounts of alcohol without becoming drunk. But she never allowed herself to do this in front of Sinead and made sure that when she did have a binge, the child did not know.
As they walked back to Manor Farm, an anxious look on her face, Francesca said,
“I have this feeling Louise has OD’d. I just hope that session she and I had on Monday didn’t have something to do with this. We did tie on quite a few as well as rather a lot of the old white powder and I am now worried I shouldn’t have encouraged her. Perhaps she is too fragile for all that stuff. If she turns out to be okay, I’m promising myself and you all that I shall not do that stuff with her anymore.”
Eliza put her arm through Francesca’s. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it wasn’t anything to do with you. Presuming she’s been taken to hospital, once she’s out, I have a feeling it will have been a wake-up call for her and that it will turn out to be the best thing that could have happened.”
7
22 June
Eliza went through the kitchen door to the corridor that led to the children’s sitting room. She opened the door and went in.
“Hi, you two. Sorry but we’re back early. Everything okay?”
Juliet and her boyfriend were into a heavy snog on the sofa. They were wrapped round one another’s bodies. Determined not to embarrass another member of her family this evening, she tried to look as though this was normal in her house. The couple hastily unravelled themselves to sit upright. They both looked red-faced.
“We’re fine, Mum. Watching Enders.”
“So it seems,” Eliza laughed to make light of the matter, but this only served to embarrass them further.
The dreamy-looking – if incredibly dull – boyfriend was now sitting well away from Juliet. At her daughter’s age, Eliza would have been crazy about a boy that looked like him.
“Won’t interrupt. Have you eaten?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Francesca’s here and we’re having supper in the kitchen.”
“Okay. See you later.”
They avoided eye contact both with Eliza and one another. When Eliza returned to the kitchen, the unwashed-up evidence of their meal was in the sink.
“Well, it’s either a bad accident, an OD, or, God forbid, a death. Whatever it is, it’s horrible.” When Francesca was serious about things or affected emotionally, she would stop her usual cursing. Eliza was relieved to see how sensitive Francesca could be.
“No point in conjecture,” said the ever-practical Eliza. “And I’d rather not alarm the girls until we know what’s happened, so mum’s the word, okay?”
“This anxiety is making me feel sick,” was her reply, but Francesca knew Eliza was right. For this evening, they should avoid the subject for all their sakes.
Jay crossed to the larder and reappeared with a bottle of red wine. He waved it in the air and the women nodded.
“I’ll make some pasta.” Eliza filled a large saucepan with water, salted it and put it on the hot plate of the old cream Aga that had been there since she was a child.
The kitchen was large and inviting with a mellow feel. Cheerful poppy-red walls, painted by Eliza, surrounded an irregular floor of old quarry tiles, some that had broken away at the edges or had split. The inglenook fireplace with an exposed brickwork surround of small, early English handmade bricks housed the ancient cream Aga and a once white butler’s sink was still where it had been for more than half a century, although Annie had updated the taps twenty years ago. The house had surprisingly high ceilings for a half-timbered and brick farmhouse. This made the roughly hewn lime-washed beams on the ceilings not oppressive in the way that darkened ones can be.
The three sat at the long, old faded table eating their spaghetti Bolognese with little enthusiasm. Conversation loath to come to them. Francesca in particular was unable to stop her imagination running riot while Jay stared with glum, teary brown eyes at the table.
But the drink kept flowing and once they had consumed a bottle, they began to realise that Eliza was right. That speculation would get them nowhere. She suggested a game of Scrabble to take their minds off it, but Jay, still looking shaken, said, “You two have a game. Sorry, but I think I’ll turn in. Been a rotten evening.”
When he’d left the room, Francesca said, “I’ve never seen Jay in such a state.”
“Yes, I know. He’s been in such a stress about the business, which has more or less hit the skids, and I think Bob showed him up this evening by paying for the drinks. Jay’s such a proud man and now this awful business with the Ryans… it’s all too much for him. The stutter’s come back.”
“Never heard him do that before.”
“A long story.”
“Tell?”
“Completely and utterly confidential, okay?”
Francesca mimed zipping her lips.
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Of course!” The women linked their little fingers in a gesture of promise.
“Well… okay. Jay had a foul stepfather called Ralph, who he was terrified of as a kid. The
bloody man hid it from the mother, but behind her back he mentally abused the poor little boy, constantly belittling him and tripping him up and threatening him with violence.
“Jay’s older sister tried to protect him, but she just got threatened too.
“Their own dad had died when she was eight and Jay was only five. Their heartbroken mum had rebounded into marriage with this awful man. Jay developed a nervous stammer as a result. At least he was at boarding school when he was older, but by then the damage was done.”
“Did his mother know what was going on?”
“Neither Jay nor his sister ever dared tell her because Ralph threatened to hurt their mother if they did. Then an incredible piece of luck saved Jay. One dark evening, Ralph’s flash American car that he loved to race around in, skidded on a bend and he died hitting a tree. When the crash happened, Jay was thirteen. It turned out that one of the car’s tyres had a puncture. Jay’s wish had come true. Liberated by Ralph’s death, he was at last able to tell his mother, who was mortified to learn how the horrible man had tormented her beloved son. She got him the best possible help for the stammer. He conquered it well, but it still returns when he is especially overtired, tense or emotional.”
“So the stepfather was a penis with a penis extension car,” murmured Francesca. “Poor Jay.”
They discussed the Armstrongs’ problems for a while and Eliza was grateful to unburden as Francesca was an excellent person to talk to about such things. Good at understanding how emotions can disturb and upset people, and at being sympathetic and helpful to them. This was one of the reasons Francesca was such a friend to Louise. Louise swung from being highly capable, driven, full of ideas and a thoroughly cheerful, fun person to be with to a badly depressed person, sometimes to the point where it almost crippled her. But she had been on medication for this for the past couple of years and it really did at last seem to be helping her temperament maintain a steadier balance.
The Decoy Page 4