The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  The traffic was doing a slow-moving conga through Troughton. It halted completely outside the railway station, even though the traffic lights ahead were green. They changed back to red and then back to green and she was still in the same position and so Marnie presumed some poor sod had broken down. Other poor sods were waiting at a taxi rank to her left. There wasn’t a shelter, a couple had umbrellas or hoods up, but the woman holding an overnight bag off the ground and standing last in the queue had neither and she looked drenched.

  Then Marnie realised who it was – Hilary Sutton. She had that thin stripey beige raincoat on which had been dyed dark brown with rain and her shoulder-length grey hair was hanging over her face in soaked rats’ tails. Even if she was a Sutton, Marnie couldn’t have left her like that. She pressed down the window and called out. ‘Mrs Sutton, want a lift?’

  Hilary looked over, squinting in an effort to see who was calling her.

  ‘It’s me, Marnie. From Wychwell. Want a lift?’

  Marnie was surprised that she accepted. She had thought that Hilary might have refused with a haughty, ‘No thank you.’ But she opened the door and said, ‘I’m very wet. Do you have something I can put over your seat?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s only rain, it’ll dry,’ said Marnie. ‘Get in.’

  So Hilary did, after quickly whipping off her coat and putting it in the footwell. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve been stood there for ever. I’m dripping all over your car.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Marnie. ‘It can’t be helped.’

  ‘I never usually have a problem getting a taxi there.’

  ‘Been anywhere nice?’ No sooner had Marnie asked the question that she remembered Titus saying his wife had been away at her poorly sister’s.

  ‘London,’ replied Hilary. ‘I go and see my sister one weekend every month. She’s not very well.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Marnie. Ahead the traffic had started to move, albeit at a snail’s pace.

  ‘I like to go there. I like sitting on the train and reading.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Marnie.

  Hilary opened up her handbag to get out a tissue and started dabbing her face with it. Marnie saw that she had a copy of the first Country Manors in there. She wouldn’t have thought Titus’s wife would have been the sort.

  ‘You too,’ said Marnie.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Country Manors. You’re reading it too.’

  Hilary looked slightly caught out, as she were ashamed of being seen with such a controversial tome. ‘Someone on the train gave it to me to try. Have you read it?’

  ‘I’m half-way through the second one.’ The car was picking up pace now, thank goodness. ‘I prefer it to the first but stay with it. The second one is a cracker, but you need to have read Buyers and Cellars for it to all make sense.’

  ‘I will. Thank you.’

  ‘She’s certainly done very well out of it, hasn’t she? The author?’

  ‘Has she? I don’t know.’

  ‘They say she’s earned ten million this year.’

  ‘Doesn’t make you happy though, does it?’

  ‘I think I’d be considerably happier with ten million in the bank. Wonder why she doesn’t reveal who she is.’

  ‘I worked in public relations in London before I married Titus and came to live up here,’ said Hilary. ‘I can tell you exactly why: because all that intrigue is very marketable.’

  Hilary didn’t look like someone who had worked in public relations. She looked like someone who had never worked and did some needlepoint every so often when the job of counting her money became a tad too boring.

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Marnie, driving slowly through some deep pools of water at the side of the road. ‘Quite a change for you then, leaving a PR job in London to come up to Wychwell.’

  Hilary didn’t answer for a while. When she did speak, she said something Marnie hadn’t expected at all.

  ‘I hate Wychwell.’

  ‘Really?’ She was even more shocked that Hilary had disclosed it to her.

  ‘When I married Titus, the deal was that we’d live there whilst his father was ill and then we’d move down south. I’m a city girl. I can’t be doing with all this green.’

  The contemptuous way in which she said it, made Marnie chuckle and she immediately apologised for that.

  ‘I’m sorry for laughing. I’m just surprised.’

  ‘I like noise and shops and . . . life. If I didn’t have an injection of London in my veins every month, I think I’d lose the will to live.’

  ‘I like London, but I wouldn’t want to stay there all the time,’ said Marnie. ‘I’m a town girl. Or at least I thought I was, but I’m enjoying village life give or take . . . er . . .’ Hilary ended the sentence for her.

  ‘Busybodies. And there’s more politics in Wychwell than there is in the whole of the houses of parliament. And there’s no children in Wychwell, simply a load of empty houses and a few people who think they’re better than anyone else on the planet. Let me tell you, I was glad when I heard that you’d got the job of dragging it kicking and screaming into this century. I had a little giggle to myself when we were all in Lilian’s will-reading meeting. I thought good on you, whoever the new owner is. I did hope it was you.’

  Marnie was touched as well as taken aback. ‘It’s not me, but thank you for that, Hilary. You’re one of very few supporters of change, though. I can’t imagine my proposals will go down well.’ She obviously hadn’t checked the Sutton bank account yet.

  ‘The shop and the pub haven’t got any customers. There will be even more houses empty when the old ones die. Wychwell will be a ghost village in fifty years if something drastic doesn’t happen. I might hate living there but I wouldn’t want to see that.’

  ‘I have plans,’ said Marnie, aware that Hilary might be fishing for information for her husband, but somehow she didn’t think so.

  ‘Good. You do what you have to,’ said Hilary.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I liked Lilian,’ said Hilary. ‘I didn’t have much to do with her because I think she was wary of me, because I’m married to Titus. I always thought that was a shame because I admired her. I think we could have been good friends if I hadn’t had the Sutton name.’

  They were just passing Scarpgarth Nursery school, which prompted Marnie to ask,

  ‘Do you have any children, Hilary?’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ she replied. ‘Titus wasn’t bothered anyway. He has a child. He doesn’t think I know, but I do. I always have. He’s never laid claim to her and I have no idea how he can do that.’

  Marnie did.

  A silence fell for a long minute then Hilary suddenly swivelled in her seat towards Marnie.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve lied to you. I haven’t been to see my sister, I’ve been having an affair. There’s a coffee shop around the corner here. You don’t fancy stopping do you? I’ll pay.’

  Hilary’s hands were shaking when she picked up her cup.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I blurted that out,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had anyone to talk to and I’m going slightly mad, I think. Probably the menopause. I hardly know you and there I am telling you my most guarded secret.’ Her grey eyes were brimming with building tears. ‘You could tell Titus and spoil my plans. I must be ill.’

  Marnie reached across the table and squeezed her arm. She felt freezing to the touch.

  ‘I give you my word, what happens in the Red Café, stays in the Red Café.’

  Hilary smiled tentatively.

  ‘I don’t go down south to see my sister. Jennifer died two years ago but I didn’t tell Titus. I just carried on going down there every month. I’ve known Julian and his wife for many years, as friends. Then dear Louise died, weeks before my sister did. Jennifer and I were very close, twins, identical. Julian and I helped each other through our grief. I don’t think either of us thought our friendship would change into what it has.’<
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  Marnie tried to think of something valuable to say. ‘Wow’ was all that came out.

  ‘Titus and I haven’t lived as man and wife for a long time. I’m merely someone who washes his clothes and pours him a brandy in the evenings after he’s eaten the meal I’ve cooked. I think I got used to living in the rut. I might always have been there as his unpaid servant had Julian and I not . . . found each other. I am making plans to leave Titus but I need to stay around for a tad longer. I want Titus never to forget the day, you see. I want him to realise exactly how much he has underrated me. But I shall be going very soon.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Marnie again.

  ‘Julian told me of his true feelings last month. I didn’t think my heart could hold so much joy. He’s the most wonderful man.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Marnie as a variation on wow.

  ‘Tell me, I don’t look the type.’

  ‘You don’t. I’m in shock.’

  ‘I don’t know why I told you. I don’t trust very easily.’

  ‘I promise I won’t breathe a word,’ said Marnie, notching a little cross on her heart with her finger.

  ‘Julian has two children, both daughters, one pregnant. Beautiful girls. I shall be a sort of grandmother at Christmas.’ Though the natural set of her expression was a sad, slightly haughty one, when she smiled it lent a softness and warmth to her whole face. As if a light had been turned on inside her.

  ‘There will be children in my life at last. Not my own, but it doesn’t matter. I shall love them as much as I would if they’d been mine.’

  Her eyes looked glazed with a slick of happiness. Marnie wondered if Judith had had the same delight in her eyes when she found out she had been approved for adoption. Before she realised she’d taken in the spawn of Satan.

  A waitress passed and Hilary gave her a ten-pound note and told her to keep the change.

  *

  Outside the rain was subsiding now and the sun was trying to put in the odd appearance, when the clouds scuttling past allowed it to do so. Hilary insisted that Marnie drop her at Blackett Bridge and allow her to walk up to the Lemon Villa so that no one would see them together and start tittle-tattling.

  ‘Thank you for listening to me, Marnie,’ said Hilary as the car pulled to a halt. ‘And good luck with what you have to do.’

  ‘I’ll need it,’ said Marnie. ‘Some people are really not going to like me slashing all the monies they’ve been claiming from the estate. They’ve all got to stop, I’m afraid.’

  She waited for Hilary’s expression to change but it didn’t.

  ‘We don’t claim anything from the estate ourselves. Titus draws – drew – a wage for doing the accounts. He didn’t need to do much though: record things, chase rents when he had to and arrange for maintenance when needed,’ said Hilary. ‘If only Lilian had told him how bad things were, he might have been able to help because he is very astute when it comes to financial matters.’

  He certainly is that all right, thought Marnie.

  ‘He says that Lilian kept so much hidden from him, blundered on, made terrible decisions. Is he right? Is that what you’ve found?’

  So, Hilary really didn’t know the truth of the matter. Marnie decided to leave her in blissful ignorance. For now, at least.

  ‘I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it all, but yes, it does appear that Lilian’s decision-making wasn’t that good.’ Lilian’s decision to keep Titus in the job, anyway.

  ‘Thank you for the lift.’

  ‘Good luck yourself,’ said Marnie. ‘I hope it all works out for you, I really do.’

  ‘You know, for years I believed that how Titus rated me was a fair assessment, until I learned from Julian that someone who doesn’t know your value can’t possibly tell you what you’re worth.’

  And with that, Hilary Sutton got out of the car, put on her soggy raincoat and set off in the direction of the Lemon Villa.

  Later, Marnie was in the process of making herself a hot chocolate before bed when she remembered the red box. She took it out of the under-stairs cupboard and put it on the kitchen table but she suspected she’d be throwing all the contents away because it looked to be full of junk. There was a hideous pot vase she’d made at school. It must have been shoved away in a cupboard because it had certainly not been out on display, gracing a shelf. A flood of memories came rushing back to her: sitting at the potter’s wheel creating it, giggling with Caitlin next to her, whose pot looked more like a giant erection. She had tried not to think about Caitlin because it hurt but they’d had some great laughs together and made so many plans that had come to nothing, as teenagers do: share a house, travel the world, have a double wedding.

  There were a few old school books, a bracelet of her mother’s which was hideous and plastic and probably why Gabrielle had decided she could have it. A small teddy bear – a souvenir from a school trip to Chester Zoo; a programme from a play Marnie was in and a clear plastic document folder. Marnie tipped the contents onto the table to find letters from the adoption agency, cards with Marnie’s NHS and national insurance numbers on them and an old passport with a clipped corner. She opened it to see her eighteen-year-old self looking back at her, short cropped punk hairstyle, large bright eyes and lips set in a ‘fuck you all’ sneer. She wanted to climb into the photo and tell that girl she was all right, she was okay, she would survive. But to stay away from any man whose name began with a letter of the alphabet.

  There was an envelope in the pile, handwritten to Miss Marnie Salt at her mother’s address. The top had been slit open precisely with a knife, but the letter was still inside. Marnie took the two folded sheets of light blue paper out. The sender’s name and address was written at the top, in neat handwriting.

  Laura Hogg

  ‘Evergreens’

  Sunningdale Avenue

  Reading

  Berkshire

  It was dated 4 May 2002. Puzzled, Marnie read on.

  Dear Miss Salt, or may I call you Marnie,

  I hope you won’t mind me writing to you, but I felt I had to . . .

  the letter began. She scanned it quickly to find out what it was about. Phrases leapt out at her from the page.

  . . . I know what you must have gone through . . . You must NOT think that any of it was your fault . . . four years before . . . I’m so sorry . . . they should have prosecuted, then it wouldn’t have happened to you too . . . My parents never knew it was him . . .

  Marnie slumped to the chair and started the letter again, reading every word now. Reading every word of a woman who had once been a girl, like herself.

  . . . I kept my son . . . It has taken me a long time to trace you, using up quite a few favours – some possibly illegal, but as soon as I heard about you, I felt I had to find you. If I do not hear from you then I will presume you wish to be left alone, but please feel free to contact me and talk – any time you wish, I would be more than happy to be there for you.

  By the time she had turned the page she had to wipe the tears forming thickly in her eyes. Tears of sadness for the girls they had been, tears of relief that she was not alone. And after the last word had been read, tears of anger that her mother had kept this letter from her when it could have made all the difference. Why had she kept it? Had she wanted to give Marnie some belated relief after her death? No, that didn’t make sense because finding it now could only show how much Judith Salt had drawn out the pain for years when she could have stopped it. Or had she merely forgotten about its existence?

  Marnie growled and that growl turned into a scream and with that scream, her arm lashed out sending her mug and all the things from the box scattering to the floor.

  Marnie sank her head onto her arms and cried for her thirteen-year-old self who’d been so starved of love that when it came calling, she hadn’t been able to resist.

  Chapter 32

  Marnie hadn’t been able to sleep properly and eventually gave up the ghost and rose extra early to make the cheesecakes but
her head was far from the task in hand. The contents of the letter she’d found in the box had been swirling around in her head, throwing it into turmoil. She wanted to dig up her mother and ask her why she hadn’t told her about what Laura Hogg had gone through. She wondered if Laura Hogg’s mother had called her a tart and slapped her face in anger and humiliation and walked around the house like a player in a Greek tragedy, back of her hand pressed against her forehead as she proclaimed, ‘oh the shame’.

  As Marnie waited for the van to arrive to pick up the cheesecakes, she took out a pad and a pen and began to write a letter to Laura Hogg but she didn’t know how to start it.

  A picture landed large and vivid in her head. A stiff-faced nurse, bringing her a warm cloth to ease the pressure in her breasts.

  ‘It’ll dry up eventually,’ she said, her voice kippered and unsympathetic. She’d been right, of course. The milk had cried out of her breasts in the beginning, and unneeded had pined away in the end.

  Marnie forced her focus onto the blank sheet of paper in front of her.

  Dear Miss Hogg,

  I must apologise for not writing but I never received your letter. I found it in my deceased mother’s possession . . .

  No, she couldn’t say that. She screwed it up into a ball and started again.

  Dear Miss Hogg,

  Thank you for writing to me all those years ago . . .

  But what if Miss Hogg was now married with children and had put this episode behind her? To get a letter might stir everything up again, as it had done for her. Maybe she should leave well alone. What was it that Herv had said once: Sometimes it is best to let the past settle.

  She looked up the address on the internet and found that the Hoggs had lived there until 2005, but there was no trace of them after that. She felt bitter that Judith had robbed her of the opportunity to respond. As if she hadn’t taken enough from her.

  She started to write the letter she would have sent anyway. It didn’t matter now that it had crossings out all over it.