by Jenny Harper
‘Why not?’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I’ll call when I get into town. You can congratulate me then.’
Tom snapped off his phone and sat, grinning inanely at the world from the dry shelter of the café. Why not celebrate by shagging Angela? It would make her happy and besides, screwing Carrie last night had done little more than give him an appetite.
When Tom arrived back at Marta’s cottage in Portobello, no-one was at home. He began to shuffle his few belongings into his case. Socks, underpants, some papers and books, his Glass Ornament script, a sweater. Anything else? He bent to check under the bed, spotted a book half hidden among some discarded rubbish. It had been kicked almost out of reach. Irritated, he burrowed into the narrow space to reach it.
Unnoticed, his pocket notebook slid first one inch out of its resting place, then another, and as he made the final lunge for the errant book, it finally slid among the crumpled tissues and screwed up wrappers and lay there, hidden.
The doorbell rang. Shit. He’d hoped to get away unseen. He backed out of the narrow space and peered out of the window. A plumber’s van was parked in the road outside the cottage. Not so bad, then. The bell pealed again, its note insistent. Tom picked up his case and wandered downstairs. He still had to find his fedora.
‘Yeah?’
‘Morrison, plumber.’ The man standing there was short and rotund, with thinning curly hair and bad teeth.
‘So?’
‘Here to mend the washing machine. Mrs Davidson not in?’
‘No.’
Tom stared at him. Marta had said something about a washing machine the day he’d bumped into her at the café, hadn’t she? She’d given him the key intended for the plumber. He stepped aside, opened the door. No skin off his nose.
‘Come on in then.’
The man headed to the kitchen, obviously familiar with the layout of the house. Tom left him to it and glanced around. This was where he had come in that first day. Funny, it seemed an age ago now. Marta had arranged that charming little dinner, designed to surprise all her guests. It had done that all right. He’d seen the shock on Jane’s face in an instant and Carrie had been scarcely less able to hide her dismay. There had been a few minutes when he’d wondered whether coming to Edinburgh had been a good idea, but then it had all become such fun. Free fun at that. He hadn’t had to pay a penny for a bed since he’d arrived at Marta’s, hotels included. Not bad going.
He’d tossed his hat here that first day, onto the hall stand, but there was no fedora there now. Living room? Nope. Kitchen? Already the washing machine was in the middle of the floor.
‘All right, mate?’
Getting a grunt in return, he scanned the kitchen. Nothing. In the bathroom he spotted Jake’s iPod and pocketed it. Fedora? Not in Jake and Marta’s bedroom or en suite, nor in the airing cupboard. When had he had it last? He stood, thinking. Downstairs there were noises of hammering and clattering.
Jane’s house. Yup. That was it. Definitely. He’d arrived in the damp and left in the sunshine and had forgotten to put it back on. Unlike him but hey, he’d had other things on his mind.
One thirty already. He’d need to speed things up a little if he was to get a train south, but he was reluctant to leave his favourite hat in Edinburgh and besides, if Janie was at home there was always the chance of a little more fun. He put his key on the hallstand, raided the contents of the change pot one last time – with a net gain of four pounds eighty-three pence – and closed the door behind him. It had been a cool place to stay but he wouldn’t be writing any thank-you letters.
‘Tom!’
‘Hello, Janie. On your own?’
Jane was looking even skinnier than he remembered.
‘Neal’s due home any minute.’
She was lying. He could always tell.
‘Great. I’m not staying long anyway. I just came for my hat.’ He could see it, behind Jane, precarious atop a bundle of coats and jackets and what looked like a bedraggled duck. ‘And to say goodbye.’
She stepped aside hesitantly as he inched assertively forward.
‘G-goodbye?’
‘You heard, darling. G-g-goodbye.’
He imitated her stutter cruelly but with great accuracy. Bending, he took her wrist in one hand and hooked up her chin with the other.
‘Now my darling girl, what is it you’re so afraid of? You always were a little mouse.’
A stifled, inarticulate sob was the only reply.
‘Jesus, Janie, what’s to be scared about?’
He nudged her away from him and studied her.
‘Hard to believe you’ve got three kids. You’re such a little scrap of a thing yourself. What kind of a mother are you, Jane? What do your kids make of you, hey? Do they run rings round you?’ He laughed. ‘Bet they do. And yet you thought you could make a decent fist of mothering back in the day?’
Again the flicker of the eyes. His gaze intensified.
‘I’m assuming you had the thing adopted?’ he said with enough force in his voice to make her stagger back a step. ‘I half thought you might be stupid enough to keep it. I had an insane fantasy that you might even try to bring it up yourself, but you wouldn’t have had the guts for that, would you? What would that strait-laced man of yours have said about that? Huh?’
Again the shiftiness in the eyes, and a subtle change in her expression that gave him pause for thought. ‘Or did you change your mind and have the termination?’
Jane’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears.
‘You did, didn’t you? Well, well, well. Little Janie, who would have thought it? And Neal so firmly against abortion, he was telling us all.’
‘You won’t—’
It was barely a whimper. He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek and felt her move away from him, startled, like a wild thing.
‘Won’t what, Janie darling?’ he said, softly. ‘Won’t tell your man?’
That was it. He could see it in the way she slid her eyes away from him and looked at the floor, trembling. She was terrified that her husband would find out the truth. He laughed lightly and shook his head slowly, tutting under his breath.
‘He doesn’t know, does he? Oh Janie, Janie, Janie. A secret, eh? And such a very big one.’
‘There’s no secret. Neal and I have no secrets.’
‘Oh really? Is that right? You know, I think I’ll check with Carrie. Best to be sure of one’s facts, don’t you think? Especially when it’s my child we’re talking about.’
‘Carrie knows nothing!’ Jane’s voice was frantic. ‘You mustn’t ask Carrie. She doesn’t know anything about it!’
Tom reached up for his hat, put his on his head at a jaunty angle.
‘For friends,’ he said easily, ‘it seems to me that you girls are oddly lacking in the usual array of female confidences. You never told Carrie about the baby? Such a very big thing in your life, surely? And did Carrie ever tell you about our affair?’
He turned to go, then paused and looked back at Jane.
‘No? Do you know, I thought perhaps she hadn’t,’ he said shaking his head as if in wonderment, his voice mocking. ‘Friends, eh? Friends.’
He went out into the cool Edinburgh afternoon, smiling at his own joke. By the time he had reached the garden gate he was humming.
Oh, life was good. Thanks to Marta he had found a wonderful hornet’s nest to stir and with a bit of luck it could prove to be a profitable one. And thanks to dear Marta he had landed a part that might well be life changing.
Angela was waiting, legs akimbo, in London, and in a matter of weeks he should be a household name, thanks to Emergency Admissions.
Yes, life was good.
Behind him Jane stood exactly as he had left her, both hands on her throat, her mouth wide open, her face drained of all colour.
Getting a last-minute flight was expensive – but what the hell, he could afford it now. Tom slid through the security checks at Edin
burgh airport in a cloud of euphoria. He could hardly stop smiling.
‘Your birthday, is it?’ the burly woman pulling the trays through the x-ray machine asked. Her mouth was curled in an unlikely rictus that approximated a grin.
‘No, but you can pat me down any time, darling,’ Tom flirted, not allowing even her Rosa Klebb looks to deter him.
‘I wish.’
He winked at her and collected his belongings. Belt, passport, wallet, small change, phone, noteb— Notebook? Where was his notebook? Tom felt feverishly in his pockets for his precious journal. He must have packed it. Lifting his case, he retreated to a corner of the security area and started to rake through it. Socks, pants, all that, but no notebook. It was absolutely not among any of his belongings, nor in any of his pockets.
He crushed everything back into his case and stalked into the departure lounge. He had to find the notebook. Apart from all his precious records, it had a stack of pawn tickets tucked inside it, each with his name and London address – traceable and incriminating.
Think, man.
Yes. He’d had it in the café in Glasgow, definitely.
Quickly he searched for the phone number, found it, dialled, schooled his voice to calmness. ‘I was in your café this morning. Is that Cat, by any chance?’
‘Aye, this is Cat.’
‘I’m Tom. The guy in the corner? We had a chat.’
‘Aye, I remember.’
Her accent was much broader than he remembered. He tried to tune his ear in and persisted.
‘Cat, sweetheart, I believe I left my notebook in your lovely café. Do you have it there?’
‘I dinnae think so. Haud on a wee minute.’
He waited. In the background he could hear voices, their conversation too distant for him to make out, then she was back on the line.
‘Naw. Sorry. It’s no’ here.’
Shit. ‘Are you absolutely sure? I was sitting by the window—’
‘Ah ken where ye were sittin’. It’s no here.’
He ended the call, all thoughts of charm fleeing. No point in wasting energy on her now.
What could have happened? He’d hopped on a train to Edinburgh, but he hadn’t looked at the notebook on the train, he was sure of it. He’d gone to Marta’s and packed, but definitely hadn’t emptied his pockets. Then to Janie’s, but again, there had been no occasion to look at his notebook.
What, then? It had been picked up by someone in the café, someone who had taken his seat before the place had been cleared possibly. That seemed the most likely.
The loss was catastrophic. He had to hope that whoever had found the book would put it in an envelope and post it to him. He had to pray for it. He might even be moved to send a reward.
Above him, the departures board flashed up his gate. Time to go.
There was nothing he could do about it now.
Chapter Twenty
Marta spotted Tom’s keys as soon as she let herself in. They were sitting neatly on the hall table like a precious gift.
He’s gone. The realisation brought a shaft of sunlight into her heart.
Beside the keys, an envelope. She ripped it open. A bill from Mr Morrison for the repair of the washing machine. Reasonable, thank heavens. Tom or Jake must have let him in.
‘Jake? Hi! I’m home!’
Her answer was a crash and a muffled thud from upstairs.
‘Jake?’
She took the stairs two at a time, her slim legs scissoring across the treads.
‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’
He was in Tom’s room – the spare room, she corrected herself mentally, spare. Free. Empty. Vide. Frei. The start of a new era of peace and order, of togetherness and renewal.
But Jake was looking anything but renewed. He’d been raking his hair with his hands, a clear sign of stress, and he was flushed. The bedclothes were heaped in an untidy pile behind the door and the bed itself was skewed across the room.
‘What are you doing?’
Now that she could see he was unhurt, irritation surfaced. He didn’t have to strip the bed or tidy and clean the room, she would have done that. Marta liked cleaning, she found it therapeutic. What she did not like was disorder. She stepped into the room to straighten the bed.
‘You should have left that to me.’
‘Left what?’ Jake asked shortly, dropping on his knees behind the bed so that all she could see was his rump. She pulled up short, unable to move the bed until he shifted.
‘The bed. The tidying. Now that Tom’s gone—’
‘Gone.’ Jake’s head appeared above the mattress and he twisted back onto his feet. ‘He’s gone all right – and the bugger’s taken my iPod with him.’
‘Your iPod? Surely not.’
‘It’s disappeared, Marta. I left it in the bathroom this morning and unless you have “tidied” it somewhere in your inimitable way, it has disappeared. Conjured by His Luvviness’s amazing and famous sleight of hand from the cold, hard surface of the bathroom ledge into some snug and barely visible pocket no doubt.’
‘I can’t believe Tom would do that, Jake. Are you quite sure—’
‘I’ve looked everywhere.’
‘Mr Morrison was here,’ Marta said, clutching at an unlikely straw in the form of Archie Morrison’s well-padded person.
Jake stopped moving restlessly and stared at her.
‘Are you seriously suggesting Mr Morrison came up to the bathroom and pocketed my iPod?’
The friendly plumber had fixed the leaky taps, the faulty central heating, the badly lagged pipes and broken cisterns in Jake’s parent’s aging 1930s bungalow so often that Mrs Davidson Senior almost regarded him as one of the family.
Marta quailed.
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I don’t think your playlist would be quite Mr Morrison’s thing.’
Jake, his hands clutching a small pile of assorted packaging he had salvaged from under the bed, sat heavily on the mattress.
‘I’ve been offered that contract in London.’
‘Oh.’ She swayed and leaned back against the doorpost for support. ‘Oh, Jake.’
Her mouth was dry.
‘You won’t take it,’ she managed at last. It came out not as a question but a statement.
Jake’s nostrils flared, his eyes widened and he turned to her with barely suppressed violence. Marta jerked back with shock, and her elbow hit the door frame with a jarring crunch.
‘Don’t tell me what I will or won’t do, Marta. I’m sick of it. Absolutely sick of it, do you hear me? For years you’ve told me what I should do – do you realise that? Go for this promotion, Jake, move to that office. Buy some new clothes, Jake – or worse still, you’ve gone and bought them for me as though I don’t even have a mind or an opinion of my own. We’ll spend Christmas here, New Year there. We’ll go to Corfu for our holidays. We’ll learn to ski. There’s been no end to your decision-making, Marta.’
‘I thought—’
‘What? What did you think, exactly?’
‘You didn’t seem to mind. I thought you liked being organised. You’ve always been so absorbed in your own work, you seemed quite pleased that things just ... happened ... around you.’
He had got up from the bed and was staring out of the window. ‘This cottage ... living in Edinburgh, for Christ’s sake ... did I ever have any part in any of the big decisions of our lives?’
She took a tentative step towards him. ‘Jake? What’s the matter, darling? What’s changed? If you’re upset about Tom, he’s gone now—’
‘Tom! Tom!’
He swivelled round so swiftly that she squeaked like a frightened kitten.
He said, slowly and carefully, ‘Bringing Tom Vallely here to stay was a perfect example of just what is wrong in our relationship, Marta. You spend your entire life helping people. Very laudable, I’m sure. Unfortunately, sometimes that has a serious impact on the people closest to you and you just don’t think it through before you go jumpin
g in feet first.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Think about it. Just when I needed your support most, all I got was an intruder in our lives. Making himself at home. Helping himself to our food, our drink, our money—’
‘I didn’t know that he would—’
‘Know? I don’t suppose you did, Marta. But you didn’t stop to think either, did you? That day he arrived – you hadn’t even bothered to call me, to let me know he was coming.’
Disbelief at the change in her husband was changing into dread. All this anger ... something was pouring out of him that had clearly been long suppressed, something that altered him, made him a different person.
Or perhaps it wasn’t like that at all? Maybe the fault was hers, maybe she’d been blind to his needs and his feelings, selfish in a way she had never understood.
‘Don’t do this, Jake. I know it’s only for a few months, but don’t go. Please? I really need you.’ When did I last tell him I loved him? She raked her memory and found no references. ‘I love you. Don’t you love me?’
‘Love you?’
Jake ran his hand through his hair. She watched as it stood on end and longed to go to him, smooth it down, but didn’t dare.
‘I don’t know any more, Marta. I can say that quite truthfully. Maybe it’s not all your fault. It was easier for me to let you make the decisions. But things have changed. I lost my job.’
The earlier anger had dissipated and sad weariness had replaced it.
‘I’ve tried so hard to hold everything together, gone along with your suggestions about agencies, applications, revamping my CV. I’ve tried really hard – and when that didn’t work, I took the job in the bar.’
Marta held her breath.
‘I’ve been on the edge, Marta, hanging on above a sheer drop. The last thing I could handle was competing for your attention ...’
His voice trailed away and the uncharacteristic flare of temper subsided.
How had things come to this? From a mislaid iPod to a full-scale row.
‘Let’s talk again later, Jake, you’re too upset right now. Here, give me a hug.’
The fury might have burned itself out, but he clearly wasn’t prepared to unbend.
‘I found this lot under the bed,’ he said, avoiding her arms and instead indicating the rubbish he’d found. He picked out one item and held it out to her. ‘Looks like a notebook of some kind. You might want to post it back to him. I’m doing a double shift tonight. I’ll sleep in here. Tomorrow I’ll pack some stuff and move to my mate’s until I go down to London.’