She plunged the pasta into a saucepan and watched the maelstrom that ensued. Boiling water erupted into a fury of bubbles and steam. The penne shuddered to life, rising stridently to the surface as if trying to escape its fate. Olivia looked on, mesmerised, her mind a maelstrom too. Keeping Johnny’s secret had been a mistake. Was keeping Ruth’s secret another mistake? When Olivia’s parents had taught her right from wrong, they hadn’t covered such moral ambiguities. The starchy water boiled over on to the stove, making a horrible mess on the stainless-steel hob. Another mess Olivia would have to deal with.
It was only later, when supper had been eaten and cleared away, the girls bathed, their hair washed, the kittens fed and Martin retired to his study, that Olivia conceded this wasn’t a decision she could make alone. The responsibility was too great, the stakes too high. She needed to talk to Geoffrey.
Fourteen
Geoffrey slumped back against the wall. He tried to take a deep breath but his chest muscles were a tourniquet and he couldn’t fill his lungs.
Ruth was dead. How was that possible? He had been with her just last night. No, Olivia must have got it wrong. He lowered himself into a squatting position, his back still supported by the wall. Melting ice soaked into his socks. His feet ached with the cold but it seemed right that he felt pain. God knows he deserved it.
And why did he have to hear about Ruth from Olivia, of all people? Maybe it was some sort of cruel payback, a way of tricking him into a confession. Could Ruth have told her about the affair as an act of revenge for him having ended it? And if so, could Olivia have made up the car crash as a sick way of punishing him? It didn’t seem like the sort of thing she would do, but then having an affair didn’t seem like the sort of thing he would do.
He had been in such a state of shock he couldn’t remember what he said when Olivia called. Nothing to incriminate himself he hoped, although she now knew it wasn’t just Ruth’s mobile number he had saved in his phone, but her home number as well. Still, all it proved was that he and Ruth talked, and he had already explained that: Edward’s scholarship.
He put his hands over his eyes, as if hiding from his own towering selfishness. A woman had died and his greatest concern was whether he’d covered his tracks, got his story straight.
‘Geoffrey? Are you all right?’
His mother was at the back door. She didn’t venture out but craned her head to have a good look at him, curious and concerned. He stood up.
‘Just needed some air.’
‘Are you sickening for something?’
Guilt, remorse, an abject sense of failure. He shook his head.
‘You’re not wearing shoes. You’ll catch your death.’
Death. He thought he might throw up. As he walked past his mother into the kitchen he fabricated an appointment in Bristol. He needed time and space to try to understand what the hell was happening, and there was no chance of that if he stayed there. His mother had taken to regaling him with reminiscences about his father: protracted tales of their courtship; how he had proposed on one knee with his grandmother’s engagement ring; the summer they went to Venice and ate gelato in St Mark’s Square. Often she told the same story two or three times.
‘Will you be long?’ she asked. ‘Only I was thinking of doing fish pie for lunch.’
Geoffrey said he didn’t know how long he would be. She asked again if he was all right because he did look a bit peaky, and he should really change those wet socks. He knew she meant well but living under the same roof had plunged them back in time. It was as if all his years of living an independent, adult life had vanished into the ether.
The phone ringing was Geoffrey’s chance to bring the conversation to a close. It would be for his mother; no one ever called him on the landline.
When he came downstairs ten minutes later, his mother was waiting for him.
‘I’ve just had the most upsetting call from Claire Heather.’ She put her hand to her chest to signify just how upsetting. ‘Mr Rutherford’s wife was killed in a car accident last night.’
Geoffrey had been clinging to the ‘Olivia getting her own back’ theory. It hit him all over again – Ruth was dead. And if it hadn’t been for their sordid sex session she would still be alive. Had he smelled alcohol on her breath? He couldn’t remember. When he tried to scan back through the details, they were all blurred and jumbled, and he was terrified something might lead back to him. If Olivia found out that would be it. Thirteen years of marriage over.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Geoffrey? You look very pale.’
‘I’m fine.’
His mother followed him to the coat stand and watched him put on his Barbour. ‘Isn’t Olivia houseparent to the Rutherfords’ daughters?’
Geoffrey never thought of Ruth as a mother and certainly never thought about her children. Yet another layer of selfishness and treachery. While he had been fucking Ruth, Olivia had been looking after her little girls. He didn’t even know their names.
*
An hour driving aimlessly on icy country lanes and one near collision with a tractor made Geoffrey wonder if he had some sort of death wish – an unconscious desire to die like Ruth by way of atonement. He found himself at the spot where they had met the previous night. How different it looked. Dappled light filtered through the gnarl of bare branches. Frost glittered like finely crushed glass.
He reached into the glove box for his stash of cigarettes. No smoking in the car. Some rules shouldn’t be broken, however extenuating the circumstances. He got out and lit up.
Ruth had claimed not to care when he told her it was over. It was just sex, after all: base and animalistic. Not so much a meeting of minds as a clashing of bodies. The equivalent of feasting on foie gras and rare steak – wonderfully decadent until you felt sick to your stomach. Had he treated her badly? Fucked, dumped and died. Of course he had treated her badly.
He took a long drag on his cigarette, remembering how Ruth had snorted with derision when he told her Olivia made him give up when she was expecting Edward. ‘Life’s too short’ had been Ruth’s retort, delivered as she blew smoke rings in Geoffrey’s face.
If he believed in such spookery, he might think she had enticed him back to this place from the afterlife. He shook his head to dislodge that thought and flicked the smouldering butt to the ground. As he stamped it out something in the undergrowth caught his eye. He walked over and picked it up: Ruth’s mitten. He gasped and spun round, half expecting to see her. A beady-eyed squirrel darted in front of him and he jumped back, stupefied. He dropped the mitten, walked briskly to the car and got the hell out of there.
*
Despite never having met Ruth, his mother seemed genuinely upset by what had happened. It started her talking in a fatalistic way about death in general, about his father, about loss and how hard it was to be the one left behind. She didn’t require any input from Geoffrey, merely that he should listen and agree. These weren’t conversations so much as monologues, and they smothered him in guilt.
When his mother tried to supplement the limited details gleaned from Claire Heather by asking if Olivia had said anything about how Ruth’s family were coping, Geoffrey was non-committal. He didn’t want to own up to not having spoken to Olivia since she had called to break the news, scared he might inadvertently give himself away. He had started to fear that he was transparent, that his betrayal of Olivia and his role in Ruth’s death could easily be identified by anyone who cared to look hard enough. And the tragic irony that Olivia was probably helping Martin care for Ruth’s bereft daughters felt too perverse to even contemplate.
In the bleak days that followed, Geoffrey tried to stay out of the house as much as possible but apart from lonely walks with Rollo and Dice, he didn’t have anywhere to go. The pub should have been his refuge of choice but there was only so long he could string out a pint and he felt like Billy No-Mates sitting there on his own.
A visit to his father’s grave rendered him overcome with shame and he had to wal
k away. When he got back to the Rectory his mother asked him to run an errand for her at the village shop. Geoffrey had avoided it in the aftermath of the factory closing. An incident in which the wife of one of his former sheet-metal workers had to put back items from her wire basket because she was a few pounds short was emblazoned on his memory. He had tried to make up the shortfall, offering the woman some money, but she refused to take it. Pride, probably, or maybe she resented taking it from him.
‘Just a couple of things,’ his mother said, handing him a yellow Post-it note.
When she opened her purse he shook his head. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, because his mother giving him money like that was a humiliation too far.
Each time he walked into the shop, Geoffrey did a quick scan to see who was there. He didn’t want to bump into a disgruntled ex-employee or anyone else for that matter. His head was full of Ruth and Olivia and the dire consequences if the truth got out. When he spotted Lorna Reed out of the corner of his eye, he instinctively felt a surge of relief – friend not foe – but then remembered that Johnny had gone to the other side of the country to earn a living and Lorna may well blame Geoffrey for that. He wanted to speak to her but wasn’t sure what sort of reception he’d get. He paid for the bin liners, bleach and Brillo pads – his mother got through a lot of bleach and Brillo pads – and looked at Lorna again. This time she noticed him too. She didn’t smile, which cleared up the question of what sort of reception he’d get, but did abandon her wire basket and come over.
‘Can we talk?’ she said quietly.
She looked tired – washed out. Her eyes had lost their ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly’ sparkle; the promise of sharp wit and playful put-downs. She seemed troubled, as though her suffering was no longer limited to the company of fools.
‘Yeah – of course.’
She glanced round the shop and then back at Geoffrey. ‘Not here. What about the Rectory?’
‘My mother’s there.’
‘Mine then.’
They didn’t say much on the five-minute car journey; small talk about the weather mostly. Still, he was pleased she wanted to talk at all, although wary of the subject matter. Certainly nothing light, if her grim expression was anything to go by.
When they reached the cottage, the familiar smell of old wood and yesterday’s embers triggered a dozen years of memories. Great memories. Geoffrey wanted to say so, but Lorna might not want to be reminded how good things used to be; how much fun they all used to have.
The sitting room was too cold to take off his Barbour. Lorna turned the thermostat up a couple of notches, then threw some logs and a firelighter into the wood burner. She looked around for a box of matches and Geoffrey said, ‘Let me.’ He produced a box from his pocket, lit one, touched it to the firelighter and watched the flames take hold.
There was something primeval and satisfying about creating fire. One of his favourite memories from those boyhood camping trips – collecting wood, twigs for kindling, piling it all up and coaxing it to life. Nothing tasted as good as warm, squidgy marshmallows toasted by a roaring blaze. Geoffrey had a terrible singing voice but it didn’t matter round the campfire – the pleasure was in the camaraderie. Rousing choruses of ‘ging gang gooli gooli gooli gooli watcha’; surely the most ridiculous lyrics ever written. No one had a clue what they meant.
Lately he had longed to go to bed at night and wake up a child again. Not that his childhood had been the stuff of Enid Blyton adventures, but it was safe and uncomplicated. What he wouldn’t give now for uncomplicated.
‘I saw Olivia yesterday,’ said Lorna.
What? He had walked straight into a trap. Olivia must have told Lorna her suspicions about him and Ruth. That’s why Lorna wanted to talk to him, why she looked so wrecked. She had been tasked with extracting a confession. It made perfect sense. Who would Olivia turn to if not her best friend? All he could do was play innocent and deny.
‘Where did you see Olivia?’
‘Here – we had an argument. A fight really. I was very upset.’
‘You and Olivia had a fight?’
Lorna pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her hands and hugged her waist.
‘She kept something from me, something she shouldn’t have. Something about Johnny.’
Johnny? So this wasn’t about Geoffrey at all?
‘Did you know?’ asked Lorna.
‘Know what?’
Her gaze was unrelenting. ‘About what that curate did to Johnny? Did he do it to you too?’
‘I’m sorry, Lorna. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘The curate who lived at the Rectory when you were a boy. He was a paedophile.’
‘A paedophile? How—’
‘Your father suspected he had abused Johnny and moved the problem on. When he finally got caught, he killed himself.’
No, Lorna had this wrong. His father would never have protected a paedophile. Geoffrey rewound to Boys’ Brigade; camping on Exmoor, envious because Johnny and another boy got to sleep in the curate’s tent. The curate had left soon afterwards – the end of Boys’ Brigade; the end of his childhood friendship with Johnny. Geoffrey swallowed hard to staunch the upward swell of bile.
‘You didn’t know?’ said Lorna.
He shook his head. ‘How did Olivia know?’
‘She overheard Johnny and your father arguing.’
‘What? When?’
‘She didn’t say but I googled it. He hanged himself in July. And when I think back, that was when Johnny changed: became distant, morose, angry. I thought it was because he couldn’t find a job.’
That was when his father had changed too. Geoffrey had assumed it was all the shit going round about the factory; all those out-of-work parishioners. So did this mean that his father’s heart attack might not have been Geoffrey’s fault? And Johnny cutting him out – that wasn’t his fault either? How could Olivia not have told him? She knew he blamed himself for all of it.
‘I can’t take this in,’ he said. ‘Have you spoken to Johnny?’
‘It’s not the sort of thing you discuss on the phone. He’s coming home this weekend. I’ve asked my sister to have the twins.’
A heavy sigh hinted at how much she was dreading it.
‘I don’t know what to say, Lorna.’
‘And you’re sure Olivia never told you?’
‘Never said a word.’
‘She told me Johnny made her promise not to, but I’m so angry with her. I’ve been going through hell – even convinced myself Johnny had another woman.’
Geoffrey shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t do that to you.’ Because he’s not an unfaithful bastard like me.
Geoffrey was still getting his head around Ruth’s death and now he had to try to make sense of this too. Olivia, his father, Johnny – they had all lied by omission.
Lorna checked her watch. ‘I’m sorry, I have to get to work.’
‘I didn’t realise you had a job.’
‘Didn’t Olivia tell you that either? I clean for a woman in Axbridge.’
Lorna was a cleaner? An image of her scrubbing floors made his gut twist. Christ, is this what she had been reduced to? The four of them were golden, and now look.
‘Olivia and I haven’t talked very much,’ he said.
Such a statement would usually have propelled Lorna into full-blown marriage guidance mode – pick up the bloody phone then, send her flowers, sneak her out to lunch – but she had nothing to say on the subject.
‘Will you forgive her?’ he asked.
Lorna thought about it for a moment before she shrugged. ‘Will you?’
Too complicated a question to even try to answer. Knowing what had gone on with the curate would have made Geoffrey feel less culpable, and in keeping it to herself Olivia had compounded his misery. A lesser betrayal than his own, but a betrayal all the same.
*
He dropped off Lorna in Axbridge and had just parked at the Rectory when Olivia called. She so
unded flat and exhausted when she asked if he could meet her in the café at the out-of-town Tesco. She needed to do a food shop. Thirty minutes. See you there.
Even at eleven in the morning, he had to drive round the car park twice to find a space. It was mayhem – flustered mothers unloading bulging carrier bags from unwieldy shopping trolleys; strapping uncooperative toddlers into their child seats. All of this in the name of Christmas.
Olivia was already there, sitting alone at a table in the corner. His heart kicked at the sight of her. The tumble of blonde hair loose around her shoulders, the perfect symmetry of her face, made him think of purity and innocence and how far he had strayed. As he walked towards her, bristling with adrenalin, the compulsion to unburden himself gripped him like a fist. He would tell her it had meant nothing, that it was already over and he was the one who had ended it. That wouldn’t cancel out the infidelity – not even death could do that – but it would make Olivia see he was sorry, that it was her he loved.
Geoffrey was already at the table before she looked up. No smile, just a cursory nod of acknowledgement. He would have leaned across and kissed her but there was a cool stillness about her that deterred him. Instead, he pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘You look worn out,’ he said.
Olivia sighed. ‘I am.’ She cupped her hands around the coffee mug, as if to comfort herself. ‘I said I’d get some food in, although Martin is barely eating.’ Small talk. Safe territory.
‘Things have got much worse,’ she said, her voice so quiet he had to lean forward to hear.
A woman on the next table shouted at her little boy, who objected to the indignity of being strapped into a high chair. Everyone turned and stared, the collective opprobrium enough to silence the mother but not the boy.
‘In what way?’ said Geoffrey, wishing the small talk could have lasted a bit longer and trying to screen out the toddler’s noisy tantrum.
Olivia looked at him from under the long sweep of her eyelashes. ‘The police are considering the possibility that Ruth had been raped.’
Geoffrey tried and failed to swallow.
An Unsuitable Marriage Page 22