In an uneasy truce Lottie made a meal for Jake and they talked spasmodically about the past days, Jake insisting he had been stuck in train stations and queues as he tried to get home, the others exaggerating the wonderful time he had missed. Presents were exchanged and it was clear that no one was excited by them, except Jake who exaggeratedly praised them and remarked on the clever choices.
When Jake and Zena went for a walk in the dark, crisp night, Greg went into the dining room where Jake had dumped his cases, searched through them and found his passport. Jake hadn’t been out of the country for more than two years, when France had been his destination. He put it back where he had found it, in a wallet hidden in a pile of clothing. He couldn’t decide what to do. Should he tell his sister that Jake had been lying? Or speak to Jake himself? He was still undecided when Jake came back with Zena, who went straight to her room. Jake gathered his things and drove to his usual lodgings with hardly a word.
Greg knocked on his sister’s door but didn’t tell her what he had found. Still undecided, hoping that Jake would tell her and explain these latest lies, he said Jake was not a man to trust her life to, and left it at that. She just nodded and he closed her door, standing there for a few moments still undecided, then went to bed.
Lottie had been even more subdued over the past few days. She had cooked the food and eaten it but with hardly a word spoken. Conversations drifted around her but there was no sign that she heard what was said. She was lost in a world the others couldn’t penetrate and after a while they didn’t try, just talked and hugged her, bought her flowers and her favourite chocolates and tried to please her, but mainly, left her to work her way through her distress.
They guessed she had been thinking of previous Christmases and grieving for the loss of their father, but Lottie had put aside grief and was trying to think how he could have secretly taken risks and lost their money.
She couldn’t talk to Zena or Greg about it, afraid she would show her hurt in anger and would say things about their father they shouldn’t hear. She wouldn’t offer a word of criticism until she found out what had happened. To spoil their memories of a loving, caring father and husband then find out later that what he had done was something perfectly understandable, would be a terrible mistake. But what reason could there be? She had always felt secure in Ronald’s love. There had been no secrets between them.
Since his death there had been many nights without sleep as she tried to think of an acceptable explanation but found none. She had to find out what had happened. But would the truth be a comfort? Or a terrible shock?
Zena went about the routine tasks at the end of the day and wondered where Jake had gone. Back to London and that secretary whom, she suspected, had been less than diligent at passing on messages and letters?
Or had he found a room here in Cold Brook Vale with his ex-landlady? It was almost ten o’clock but she suddenly decided to try and find him. Whatever his reason for not coming home she had to at least listen to his explanation. She took her cycle and rode to where he had once lived but there was no sign of the car and, when she knocked, there was no reply.
On a whim she went to her flat, from which the tenants had gone. She needed to check that the place was clean and ready for new tenants arriving in two weeks. There was a light in the kitchen and she just knew it was Jake. Taking out her key she opened the door and walked in. Jake was sitting at the table, a jar of honey and a few cracker biscuits on a plate in front of him. ‘Sorry, love, but I thought you wouldn’t mind. My landlady didn’t have a room, see, she needed more notice, and I couldn’t face sleeping in the car.’
‘Where have you been, Jake?’
‘London. I was in London giving a lonely, unhappy young girl a good Christmas.’
‘Madeleine Jones?’
‘No, er, yes, sort of.’
Zena began to walk to the door. ‘Stay tonight but tomorrow I want your key.’
‘All right, I’ll tell you the truth.’
‘Or another lie?’
‘It was Rose Conelly. She wouldn’t explain why she left Greg, she just told me she can never marry. She is living in a sordid little room with no cooking facilities.’ He gave an exaggerated description of a place very different from the one he’d seen. ‘She’s friendless and very unhappy. Madeleine found out and, well, we couldn’t bear to think of her alone and without even a proper meal at Christmas time, so we invited her to Madeleine’s flat and gave her the kind of day most people have.’
‘So you let me down because of Rose being unhappy? Jake, we’re supposed to be getting married. How can I marry someone so thoughtless and unkind?’
‘You had your brother and your mother and Aunty Mabs, friends calling in. You had a home, the warmth of a loving family, good food and gifts. Rose had nothing.’
‘You spent the day with Madeleine and Rose and then lied to me. I’d have thought better of you if you hadn’t lied. We could have done something for Rose, together.’
‘I daren’t tell you, lovely girl.’
‘You daren’t tell me? This gets better and better!’
‘If I’d told you and you refused, I wouldn’t have been able to help her, see?’ He looked at her anxiously. ‘I love you, Zena, you know I do, I want you to be my wife. I want to be a part of your family. But it was Christmas and Rose had no one.’
Zena felt an irresistible urge to laugh. Seeing the smile twitching her lips Jake leapt up and hugged her. ‘I knew you’d understand.’
‘Like I understood when you bought a car we didn’t need because a friend hadn’t a car to go on holiday? And when you gave my bicycle away because a nurse in the village needed it for work?’
‘I can’t help it, my lovely girl.’
‘Will it always be like this, Jake? You putting every lame duck you meet before me?’
‘Sometimes people take advantage of me, but that’s a chance I take. I shouldn’t involve you, I know that, but if someone’s in trouble I can’t help myself. While I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I’m unlikely to change.’
‘Is there anything between you and this Madeleine Jones?’
‘Good heavens, no! Terrifying she is! She only suggested this day for Rose because she too was on her own. To be honest, I know she wouldn’t have cancelled any arrangements of her own to give Rose a good time.’
‘I think she was pleasing you, not Rose Conelly.’
Jake ignored the remark and went on, ‘If I’d told you about Rose, I wouldn’t have needed to persuade you to help her, would I?’
‘Perhaps not, but I wouldn’t have ruined your Christmas to please someone else. I suspect your impulses are for yourself and never for me. Not ever for me. There are so many instances of you being praised for your generosity, but you were giving away things taken from someone else – including me. That isn’t even honest, is it?’
‘Come on, lovely girl, you didn’t really mind about my giving away your old bike, did you?’
‘You’re evading an answer, Jake. Isn’t it the truth that you just love to be loved? That you’re happiest when people praise you and tell others how wonderful you are?’
‘We can share this thing. There are so many ways to make people feel happy and I know you’ll understand when we do it together. I won’t do anything again before we discuss it.’
‘No more secrets?’
‘None, I promise.’
An hour later, by which time Greg and Lottie were beginning to worry about her, Zena and Jake arrived home. Both were smiling. With very little explanation, Jake was given supper, a blanket and the couch.
Zena didn’t sleep easily. She was considering how she would cope with a husband who attracted lost sheep and became their saviour. She became drowsy at last and saw Rose’s face, and the many people he had helped in his life plus others – strangers – in a montage of what life with Jake would be. Then the dream became nonsense and she saw Jake in a field; laughing, surrounded by sheep laughing with him and beckoning her in
to his world. She awoke with an uneasy feeling that she would not be able to cope.
Chapter Five
Greg and Zena were having breakfast the day following Jake’s departure when Zena told him what had been discussed between herself and Jake, excusing his behaviour with laughter. Greg reluctantly told his sister that there were more explanations to come.
‘Zena, he’s been lying to you. I know it was wrong of me to search through his things but I was suspicious and looked at his passport. He doesn’t work on the Continent. He hasn’t been out of the country since he and I went to France with the boys from the pub. Remember?’
‘You must be mistaken! He brought gifts from other countries, didn’t he? He works as an agent selling protective clothing, selling on the Continent, buying from factories in Belgium. Even Jake couldn’t have made all that up!’
‘Sorry, Sis, but unless he has two passports there’s no mistake.’
She turned away and stared out of the window. ‘Come on, Greg! There has to be an explanation. I’ll talk to him again.’
‘Walk away, Sis. There’s no future with a man who lies so easily.’
‘I’ll talk to him,’ she replied more sharply.
Greg muttered, ‘Sorry,’ and left the room.
Her outrage was bravado. She knew, deep within her, without waiting for an explanation, that what Greg had told her was true. He had seen Jake’s passport and the evidence it had shown couldn’t be denied. But she couldn’t understand why Jake would lie. Why would he pretend to have such a high-powered job? She had seen the letter from Jake’s friend recommending that he apply, that couldn’t have been a forgery, but that wasn’t evidence he had been successful.
She didn’t know what to do. There didn’t seem any point in writing to Jake at the place where he lived, those letters always disappeared without reaching him. Nor at the office where her letters were opened by the officious Madeleine Jones, and phoning was never successful, either. Glad of the excuse to delay facing Jake with these new lies, she decided she would have to wait for his next visit.
Work was a good way to ease away her humiliation and hurt. Scrubbing kitchen floors was something she didn’t need to do but she needed the physical effort. Working so fast she found extra corners in need of her attention at every house she visited. Janey Day called one day and asked her to go back to twice weekly visits as she was finding it difficult to manage. In the hope that Trish wouldn’t be there, plus the decision that she would deal with her if she were, Zena agreed. When she couldn’t find physical work she helped her mother at the stationers, giving Lottie time to shop or just have a rest. She was exhausted when she went to bed but was disturbed by unpleasant dreams.
Nelda was usually out when she went to clean, but her friend was there when she arrived one morning and between them they sorted out a few cupboards and Zena scrubbed them out and covered the shelves with paper replacing the contents in clearly defined sections again. Nelda was delighted , while wondering why they didn’t stay that way. Zena avoided telling her!
‘Now,’ Nelda said, when they had finished a third storage cupboard, ‘you are going to sit down and I’ll make us tea. Then,’ she said, waving a scolding finger, ‘then you are going to tell me what’s wrong.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Zena protested.
‘Boyfriend trouble I suppose?’
‘Well, things aren’t as they should be between Jake and me. That’s all. It’ll work out.’ Zena was reluctant to say more but, pushing a slice of cake and a cup of tea in front of her, Nelda sat, chin on hands, and waited in silence. Minutes passed.
‘It’s nothing, probably just a misunderstanding,’ Zena said finally.
‘I married Dave knowing he wasn’t the man for me and it took seven years for me to face up to it. Zena, dear, don’t marry unless you’re sure. Better walk away now rather than have the complications of a marriage to pull apart. It isn’t a pleasant experience and in my case, we hurt the children too.’
‘I can’t. It would be giving up my future and perhaps never finding someone as much as I love Jake.’
‘That’s nonsense! And definitely the wrong reason for not walking away, and you know it.’
‘It’s just that he’s so kind. He always gets involved when he hears of someone in trouble. I have to accept that or, as you and Greg advise, I have to walk away.’
Nelda listened in silence as she told her some of the help Jake had given to others, including Christmas, which he had spent with Madeleine and Rose. ‘It’s always genuine kindness; he can’t refuse to give something he has if there’s another with greater need of it.’ When she had finished, Nelda hugged her and said briskly, ‘You’re right, you have to accept the way he is if you love him, but think of the years ahead, and be aware that you will always come second. Always. You and your children. Second to strangers, to lame ducks and anyone with a good line in scrounging. Face it, Zena, and ask yourself it you can cope with that. You and any children you might have. Could you cope? I’m sure I couldn’t.’
‘I have to talk to him again, make him understand that we have to decide these things together.’ She smiled. ‘D’you know what excuse he gives for not telling me first? Because if I say no, he would have to forget it, and not asking means I don’t have the chance to disagree and he can do what he wants.’
‘But that’s the same as lying! And this do-gooding is nothing more than vanity, surely you can see that?’
Zena disagreed. Jake had no ulterior motive. He didn’t help people for his own aggrandisement, to impress or be admired. Ignoring the words she said, ‘If I continue to consider myself engaged to him, the next year will be a testing time.’
Talking it over with someone who was not involved helped Zena to think about the situation more calmly. Jake hadn’t told her, afraid she would say no and that would have been final. That might be childish, but it was somehow endearing. The motives for his lies were always a desire to do something for someone else. She shut her mind to the passport and the fresh list of lies about his job and the foreign travel; they were less easy to explain.
She wanted to write down her frustrations in an angry letter but forced herself to wait for his explanation. She knew she was being foolish, but it wasn’t easy to walk away from a love she had felt for so long. All her plans for the future, all the dreams of a happy life were bound up with him. How could she walk away? He wasn’t really a deceitful man, just a very kind and generous one. How could she criticize him for that? But, a small voice warned, how could she believe his deceit was something trivial, best ignored?
There were new tenants coming into her flat, which was now empty and that gave her the chance to clean and paint a couple of walls before they moved in. She used that as an excuse to write to Jake, hoping that mentioning such an innocuous subject might mean he actually received it. She was almost certain that her letters were opened by Madeleine Jones and felt irritated that she couldn’t contact him apart from the office. She made no reference to the untruths about his job, revealed by Greg finding his passport, and said nothing about their ruined Christmas.
In the office, Madeleine opened it, read it and threw it away. ‘Sorry, Jake, I threw it away by mistake. Something about a new tenant, there was nothing more. The flat she owns will be empty until a week from Saturday.’
‘Love and kisses included?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Not that I noticed. It was very brief.’
Lottie had been cautiously talking to all Ronald’s friends, hoping for an explanation of how he had lost so much of their money. She felt sick every time she thought of being left only a house on which there was a large mortgage. They had both worked to buy it, so where had the money gone? She had tried to persuade her sister-in-law, always a close and loving friend until now, to discuss it but she rarely came to the house and when she did it was only to talk to Zena or Greg; Lottie she ignored.
It was toward the end of January when she decided to make an appointment with th
e solicitor to see if he knew anything that would help her get to the bottom of the mystery. During her lunch hour she went to the office with fingers crossed.
Mr Phillips was an elderly man, stick thin and with long, white hair. His suit was well tailored but loose, as though it had been made for a man several stones heavier, but his smile was welcoming, crinkling the skin around his bright blue eyes. He sent for coffee and invited her to sit near the open fire that burned brightly in the highly polished grate in the old-fashioned office.
‘I am trying to shed light on the will of my husband, Ronald Martin,’ she began.
Mr Phillips patted a file on his desk, and said, ‘Since your phone call, I have been reading through my dealings with your husband, Mrs Martin. How can I help?’
‘I can’t understand where our money went. We had no mortgage on the property, the house was ours and had been for several years. We had savings in several places. The bank of course, and the building society, and I believe my husband had shares in other businesses. Not an enormous amount but it was for our retirement, for holidays and a few luxuries.’
Mr Phillips turned pages and forms over in the file then handed her a sheet of paper. ‘These were the last dealings I had with your husband, Mrs Martin. Three years ago he withdrew all his money and put it into the bank and from there he took out a large cheque. I know nothing of what happened to it. We weren’t asked to act for him in whatever arrangements he made.’
She asked question after question and the solicitor answered as fully as he was able, offering suggestions about where enquiries might begin and offering to deal with them, but Lottie shook her head. ‘Later, perhaps. Firstly I’ll discuss it with my husband’s sister. Perhaps she knows what happened, although she seems to believe the reason was revenge for something I did.’
‘Forgive me asking, but had there been a problem, Mrs Martin?’
‘As far as I know, we were completely happy. I can’t think of anything that worried him. The loss of the money must lie with him. It must have been something terribly urgent. We all saw that he was anxious during those last days, but by then he was confused and nothing he said made any sense. All that money and all that time – why couldn’t he tell me?’
The End of a Journey Page 12