The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  Marnie didn’t know what the weather had been like for the last three weeks, give or take the days when she had journeyed over to the supermarket, and then she hadn’t taken much notice of it. She’d felt as if she were living under her own personal cloud dispensing a never-ending supply of drizzle.

  The front door to the manor was unlocked and Cilla was in the hallway dusting.

  ‘Oh hello, stranger,’ she said with a delighted smile, when Marnie walked in, and then explained that the family had had a few days away in Whitby for a relative’s wedding, so they were making up their hours. ‘Herv’s around too, he couldn’t get a lot done in the garden with it being so wet this past fortnight,’ she added and Marnie thought, great.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Marnie.

  ‘I’ll send Zoe in with a coffee for you,’ said Cilla.

  ‘Oh it’s fine, I don’t want to disturb her.’

  ‘You won’t be.’ Cilla checked to make sure her daughter was out of earshot before continuing. ‘I’m trying to keep her extra busy if I’m honest, she’s been ever so down recently. We don’t know what’s the matter with her.’

  Marnie remembered being that age. As well as all the hormones raging, her wings had been flapping like crazy. She wanted to fly the nest so much and live in a flat with Caitlin. Then Caitlin had decided she wanted to go off to university and Marnie met and moved in with Warren who was probably the worst of her exes because he became violent when he was drunk and he was drunk a lot. Then she left him to live in a house near Sheffield with six other people who kept themselves to themselves and weren’t the most hygienic people on the planet either, but she was happy there. She was perpetually skint and juggling finances between credit cards, but she somehow managed.

  Marnie walked into the lovely dining room, shutting the door behind her. That first bedsit she stayed in would have fitted into here about eight times over. The people above her were noisy, the people below noisier still but she was standing on her own two feet and felt free, powerful, euphoric with independence. Lilian had once told her that she felt the same when her father died. He must have been an ogre, she remembered thinking.

  Marnie could see that Herv was tidying up the plants around the lake. She sat on a chair which didn’t allow her sight of him because then it was slightly easier to keep him out of her mind. She started at the first ledger again, reading it with the express purpose of only looking for clues to where Margaret lay. She was ten pages in when there was a timid knock on the door and Zoe entered with a cup of coffee and some biscuits on a plate. Her hand was shaking, Marnie noticed, and she appeared to have the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  ‘Thank you, Zoe, that’s very sweet of you. I told your mum I didn’t want to put you to any troub—’ was as far as Marnie got before Zoe burst into tears, making Marnie rise from the table to shut the door and put her arms around the girl.

  ‘Zoe, whatever is the matter?’ she said. Zoe was breaking her heart. Marnie pushed her down onto a chair.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Zoe, face hiding in her hands. ‘I am so sorry, Marnie. It was too late when . . . I shouldn’t have . . . Oh, Marnie, I can’t stop thinking about it . . .’

  ‘Zoe, what is it, because nothing is worth getting in this state for. What shouldn’t you have—’

  ‘Please don’t tell my mum,’ Zoe implored her.

  Shit, she’s pregnant, thought Marnie.

  Zoe groaned loudly before continuing, bent over as if she had been hit by a wave of central pain. ‘Marnie, it was me that told Kay Sweetman about that man you were . . . I’m sorry.’ She dissolved again. ‘She told me to spy on you. She said that you were up to no good and after Lilian’s money and I should report back on anything I heard of interest.’

  The realisation dawned. Oh God, thought Marnie. So that’s where it had come from.

  ‘It’s fine, Zoe, go on,’ Marnie reassured her.

  ‘Lilian spoke about you so much that, in the beginning, I did think Kay might be right and I told her what I’d overheard you and Lilian talking about one day. I’m so sorry. As soon as I’d told her I knew it was wrong. And the more I got to know you, the more I liked you and we all knew that you and Lilian were fond of each other and not pretending and then when Kay told Herv about what I’d said, I could have died because she only wanted to stop anything happening between you and Herv because of Ruby and you’ve been so lovely to me and then you said that about supporting me in university and—’

  The girl was in bits. It would have been cruel to let Zoe know the damage she’d caused, especially when her sole motive had been to watch out for Lilian, so Marnie swallowed it and held up her hand to stem Zoe’s tormented flow. ‘Okay, slow down, slow down. It’s fine, Zoe, really. You don’t need to worry. I know you were fond of Lilian and thinking that you were protecting her. The fault is with Kay, she should never have tried to manipulate you like that.’ She dragged her handbag towards her to pull out a packet of tissues. ‘And the offer for help with your university costs still stands.’

  ‘No, I can’t now. Not after what—’

  Marnie interrupted her yet again. ‘Yes it does. We all make mistakes,’ she let loose a little laugh. Oh boy, don’t we just. ‘Is this why you’ve been so down? Your mum said you’ve been worried and that’s made her worried.’

  Zoe nodded her head as she blew her nose.

  ‘Well stop it, now. We’re good, you and I, Zoe. Thank you for telling me. Now put it to bed, please. No harm done.’ No harm done? Oh, Zoe, if you only knew.

  ‘Three times I’ve got as far as your house to tell you and I chickened out on the doorstep,’ Zoe went on.

  ‘You silly girl,’ said Marnie. ‘If your mum asks why your eyes are so red, tell her that we’ve had a girl to girl chat about . . . about leaving home or something, otherwise goodness knows what she’ll think.’

  ‘I will,’ said Zoe. She stood up to go and then suddenly threw her arms around Marnie.

  ‘You are so lovely,’ she said, sniffing hard.

  ‘I know,’ joked Marnie. ‘Now cheer up.’

  ‘I will,’ said Zoe. Marnie escorted her to the door and opened it.

  ‘You won’t tell anyone?’ Zoe asked again.

  ‘No, and I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ said Marnie, sternly, which Zoe interpreted as kindness in context, although out of context it would have sounded harsh. As it did to Herv who had walked out of the kitchen to see Zoe standing there with bowed head, bloodshot eyes and red, salt-raw cheeks.

  That’s all I need, thought Marnie. As if I couldn’t sink any lower in his estimations, now he thinks I’m bullying teenagers. She retreated into the dining room and, much to her surprise, he followed her.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about the lake,’ he said, his tone clipped and unfriendly. ‘Are you keeping it or filling it in?’

  ‘I’ll ask the new owner,’ Marnie said, in the same manner. ‘It’s not my call.’ She picked up her pen and scribbled the word ‘lake’ on her pad.

  ‘Why have you upset Zoe?’

  ‘I haven’t, actually.’

  ‘She was crying.’

  ‘As I said, I haven’t.’ Oh bollocks, could his timing have been any worse? And she couldn’t exactly explain what it was all about so she moved swiftly on. ‘Whilst you’re here, would you mind taking a look at Emelie’s cottage, the damp is terrible in it and she won’t move out so we’ll have to work around her. The wall behind her TV is especially concern—’

  ‘Is it true?’ There was demand in his voice.

  ‘Yes. Rising damp, I’m sure of it.’

  He took in an angry breath and said something unintelligible under his breath, something Norwegian and most likely a string of expletives. ‘I don’t mean Emelie’s wall. Is it true?’ He knew that she knew what he meant. She knew that he knew that she knew what he meant: what Kay Sweetman had said. And actually, now she was thinking about it, he’d believed it and judged her without question, just
as Fiona Abercrombie had done about the cheesecakes. Maybe he wasn’t so bloody perfect after all if he could take the gospel according to Kay Sweetman as the definitive version. Marnie’s temper went from 0–60 in a nanosecond.

  ‘Yes, all of it,’ she spat. ‘I’m a home-wrecking bitch because Kay Sweetman said I was so it must be true, mustn’t it? Happy? Right, now that’s sorted, I’m busy, Herv, so please sod off and leave me alone.’ He turned from her immediately and shut the door in such a way that it was less an incidental action than a statement of what he thought about her.

  Marnie flinched as it banged hard against the frame and it felt as if it had banged against her heart as well and bruised it a little more than it was already. But she was cross too. What business of his was it anyway? He had no right asking questions like that when he was bonking blondie. Marnie wondered if he’d held her face as tenderly as he’d held Marnie’s in his cottage on Cheesecakegate day. No one had ever lit up every nerve in her body, just by brushing his fingers against her cheek. But Herv Gunnarsen was a hypocrite. What had he once said to her, something about letting the past settle and not raking it up, growing flowers from it instead – it was all rubbish, mere words that sounded nice but meant nothing. And she’d heard enough of those to last her a lifetime.

  Chapter 40

  Herv stomped straight from the dining room, out of the house and down Kytson Hill to Emelie’s cottage hoping the strength of his emotion would dissipate by the time he arrived there to look at the old lady’s damp wall problem, but there was too much of it for that to happen. He had spent the past three weeks – since Kay Sweetman had opened her mouth – in a state of such tension that he wasn’t sure what he was capable of. To say he hadn’t been himself was a gross understatement. He had never felt as disappointed in a person in his life as he had done in Marnie Salt. He’d thought he’d known what sort of person she was, outwardly bolshie because inside she was fragile. Lilian had warned him that she hadn’t had the happiest of lives – without indulging in detail – and if he had any intentions towards her, then he should be prepared to be a little patient. He knew instinctively that she was battle-scarred and she would need some time to accept that he was a good guy without an agenda, and when he had kissed her, he knew he had been right to play the long game because she melted against his lips as surely as he had melted against hers.

  Then he’d heard Kay Sweetman’s words and they’d been the equivalent of an arrow in his heart, never mind his Achilles’ heel. Marnie and Tine cut from the same cloth – it wasn’t something he could handle. The fall-out from what Tine had done had spread far beyond him. She’d smashed a wrecking ball against so many lives. His best friend had fallen hard for Tine. His pregnant wife had been crushed by his leaving her. Then Tine had stamped all over him too, deciding she’d ‘made a mistake’ as casually as if she’d ordered the wrong size dress from a catalogue. He’d taken an overdose, survived it, but his wife, who’d been prepared to take him back, couldn’t forgive him then for attempting to leave their three small sons in that way. It was a mess beyond mess and Herv knew he could never love another woman who could invade a marriage. He couldn’t trust a woman capable of that sort of destruction.

  He’d been half-mad with fury, determined to spit Marnie out of his life and he stemmed the bleed from his heart with another woman’s soft touch. He’d met Suzy in a pub in Skipperstone, when he’d attended a fortieth birthday party there for one of the teachers he used to work with. She was skinny and tall, blonde and the physical opposite to Marnie Salt and he was ashamed to admit that that had been most of the attraction. He hadn’t made her any promises, but he’d known she’d wanted more than he could give, despite her ‘assurances’ that she didn’t. She was attractive and smiley and hung on his every word but he’d felt no quickening of his pulse whatsoever when he had kissed her.

  His pappa had said that he had fallen in love with his mamma at first sight. They’d both been first-year students at Bergen university and she had leaned over him in the cafeteria to reach a serviette and accidentally brushed his hand. That’s all it had taken for the sparks to fly up his arm into his brain and fry it. She still made his head tingle thirty years later, Pappa said. Herv had wanted that feeling too, but he’d never been that lucky. Not until he raised his head on the day of the May fair to charge a visitor an entrance fee, whilst he was wearing an old hessian sack and false brown teeth and found a black-haired woman with the prettiest, greenest eyes he’d ever seen and he knew exactly what his pappa had experienced.

  ‘Come in,’ called Emelie, hearing Herv’s knock and he entered to find her waking up from a nap in her rocking chair.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Emelie,’ he said.

  ‘I’m happy to be disturbed by you, Herv,’ she said with a smile. ‘Did Marnie send you?’

  He answered her with a grunt and Emelie knew that her name had caused that sound of displeasure.

  ‘I can smell the damp straightaway,’ he said. ‘How long has it been like this? It’s not good. You should have told someone before.’

  ‘It’s only been this bad for a little while. Have you got time for a tea?’

  ‘I always have time for a tea, Emelie, you know that.’

  Emelie hobbled over to the kitchen and Herv thought that he hadn’t seen her bent over so badly in all the time he’d known her. She was noticeably in discomfort. And he wasn’t surprised at her cough as she waited for the kettle to boil. The black spores on the window frames would have aggravated any chest weakness.

  ‘Plenty of milk, half a teaspoon of sugar and stir it well please,’ Herv called to her as he went to inspect that wall behind her television set. He could stick his finger straight through the plasterwork. The whole lot needed to come off.

  ‘Here you go, Herv,’ said Emelie, bringing out a mug in one hand and a large slice of cheesecake on a plate in the other. She saw how he glowered at it.

  ‘Thank you, but I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I made it especially too,’ said Emelie, with a disappointed sigh.

  ‘No you didn’t, stop fibbing,’ Herv shook his head disapprovingly at her. ‘Where’s the damp coming from? Can I look in your cellar?’

  ‘I don’t have one,’ said Emelie. ‘The cheesecake is delicious. Apple strudel. Marnie made it for me.’

  ‘I don’t like apples.’

  ‘Oh, Herv Gunnarsen, you are not a good liar.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about her.’ He lifted the mug which looked tiny in his hand, easily crushable. ‘There must be a water leak somewhere.’

  ‘I think Marnie likes you very much, Herv,’ said Emelie.

  ‘I don’t think she does,’ he said, his tone flat. ‘Have you noticed any damp patches upstairs?’

  But Emelie was determined to pin him to the subject. ‘I also think that what Kay Sweetman said to you about her was evil.’

  ‘I really don’t care.’ Herv returned his attention to the crumbling wall in an attempt to assess the extent of how far the damp had risen.

  ‘Yes you do,’ chuckled Emelie, dropping back into her rocking chair. ‘You can’t fool an old fool. You know, everyone thought that Lilian was a little cuckoo, but I swear she could see into people’s souls. She told me that she knew from the first minute of meeting you, what a good man you were. And how you’d fit into Wychwell as if you were meant to be here.’

  ‘I thought a lot about her too,’ said Herv.

  ‘And she loved Marnie very much. Like a daughter.’

  ‘I really think you should move out of this house whilst the work is being done, Emelie. I’ll get my tools and some materials and come back tomorrow to start it.’

  ‘Herv, it’s Sunday tomorrow, it can wait.’

  ‘It can’t. I am free so I will do it. I’ll leave a note for . . . to tell . . . her it’s a definite priority.’

  He couldn’t even say her name, thought Emelie. He wouldn’t have been so hurt if his feelings didn’t run so deep.

  ‘T
hank you. I’m sure Marnie will agree to whatever you suggest. Lilian couldn’t have left Wychwell in a kinder pair of hands, could she?’ she said.

  She saw him rub his forehead with his fingertips as if he was a genie rubbing a lamp to make an answer to that appear. And one that would avoid any reference to Marnie Salt’s name. But Emelie persisted gently.

  ‘You know, Herv, you might think I’m a silly old spinster who doesn’t know anything about life, but you’d be wrong. Love is a rare privilege not a common right. Don’t turn it away if you’re lucky enough to find it.’

  Herv smiled at that. ‘My mother used to say the same thing.’

  ‘Both of us can’t be wrong,’ Emelie smiled back.

  Herv picked a crumb from the cheesecake plate and placed it on his tongue. The flavour spread in his mouth and with it a picture of Marnie flooded his brain. It was the same with everything about her, a touch, a smile, just being in her orbit had that great an effect on him. For good and bad.

  ‘My mother and my father fell in love at first sight,’ said Herv. ‘They said it was the sort of thing that they’d only believed existed in books and films and imagination, but still they felt the full thunderbolt.’

  ‘I know that feeling too, Herv,’ said Emelie.

  ‘I didn’t think I ever would.’

  ‘But you did. And with someone who couldn’t have disappointed you more.’

  Herv looked into Emelie’s wise, blue eyes. It was as if she could see inside his head, see the thoughts madly tumbling around in it.

  ‘People aren’t perfect, Herv. Saints have pasts and sinners have futures, as they say. But are you really going to take Kay Sweetman at her word?’

  ‘I asked her and she admitted it.’

  Emelie came back at him more sternly now, ‘Oh, Herv, did she really?’

  ‘Yes she did. Only five minutes ago,’ and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why would she do that if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘So you came bursting into my cottage because you’d had a row with Marnie, hadn’t you? Maybe she’s as hurt and angry as you, Herv. Maybe she’s disappointed in you also for believing too easily the word of a malicious woman with an agenda.’