A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

  But the truth was that neither the quitting nor the length of time required were criteria met. Freddy had been to the casino every night while he was at Bettina’s. He needed cash for his getaway. And over three subsequent nights he had won nearly fifteen hundred pounds – half of which he’d had to hand over to James for the bankruptcy. So he hadn’t called Max. What with the money he’d got selling his sound system and camera – ripped off on both counts, inevitably, by the man in the Shepherd’s Bush electronics shop because he could smell Freddy’s desperation – he had enough, he reckoned, to keep going for a few weeks. Longer, maybe, if he was careful, and if his plan for Malta worked.

  *

  Freddy did not sleep the night before he was to meet with the Official Receiver. James had organized all the documentation, then briefed him on what and what not to say. But Freddy was almost shaking with anxiety as he made his way to the Victoria office that morning. His grim mood was not helped by the unlucky coincidence of bumping into Glyn Matthews in Victoria Street.

  Freddy had seen the sound engineer out of the corner of his eye – realizing he must just have got off the train from Carshalton, where he lived – and panicked, quickly veering to the right, hoping to escape across the road. But a phalanx of buses was storming down the busy street in both directions, the tyres sending up clouds of spray from the earlier rain, and he was marooned on the pavement as Glyn, breathless, caught up with him.

  ‘Thought it was you.’ Glyn, unsmiling, made no attempt to shake his hand. ‘Trying to avoid me, I see.’

  When Freddy didn’t answer, Glyn went on, ‘Can’t blame you, really. All a bit of a mess.’

  Freddy had taken heart from the man’s understatement and said, ‘Glyn, hi. I’m on my way to see the Official Receiver right now. It’s been a nightmare.’ He smiled, but Glyn’s expression darkened at his words.

  ‘Nightmare, is it? I’ve been ringing and ringing you, Freddy. Phone’s gone dead.’

  Freddy squirmed. The man’s eyes were like knives to his soul. ‘Yeah, had to get a pay-as-you-go. All my accounts are frozen, so the old number’s been cut off. I’m skint.’

  Glyn’s eyebrows went up. ‘See, that’s what I don’t get. Man like you, wife like yours, friends like Isla-Mae’s daddy . . . Seems hard to grasp, you running out of money like the rest of us.’

  ‘Seems hard to grasp for me too.’ Freddy was trying hard not to resent Glyn’s hostile tone. ‘Why were you calling me?’

  Glyn gave a harsh laugh. ‘Funny that. I was ringing to borrow some money. A loan, like. Having trouble with the mortgage, what with Cath not well still.’ He shook his head. ‘Should’ve known.’

  Freddy just wanted to dissolve into the concrete of the wet pavement. The bleak despair, the disdain in his former friend and colleague’s face were devastating. He had known Glyn for more than fifteen years, employed him for nearly ten. They had admired each other, been mates. But now he was looking at Freddy as if he actually hated him. And why not? Glyn had a sick wife, three teenaged children, and was probably having trouble finding another job quickly enough – despite his reputation.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Glyn. I wish with all my heart I could help. You have no idea how terrible it is, knowing I’ve wrecked so many people’s lives . . . People who depended on me.’

  At the obvious sincerity in his voice, Glyn’s face softened just a little. ‘Yeah, well. Don’t like asking for money, anyway. Just made me sick to my stomach when I heard Samuel say it’s the gambling ruined the business.’

  So he knew. Of course he did. Freddy bowed his head. There was nothing to say, no excuses to hide behind with his old friend. Standing there, he felt exposed in a way he never had before – even with Lily – stripped bare by Glyn’s contemptuous gaze.

  *

  Mr Dubash, assigned to him by the Insolvency Service, was quietly polite, nondescript, not at all the disapproving ogre Freddy had anticipated – he was almost disappointed. Dubash had offered Freddy water in a white plastic cup, settled him at the beige, melamine-topped table in the otherwise bare interview room, and merely got on with the job in hand. Freddy kept waiting for judgement or rebuke, but none was forthcoming from the diffident official.

  The meeting went on all morning, however, and Freddy, still distraught from his encounter with Glyn Matthews, had wondered if he would survive it, his head banging with lack of sleep, his whole body rackety with guilt and anxiety. He was sure the questionnaire he was asked to fill in and his answers to Mr Dubash’s questions must have seemed confused, almost incoherent, the ravings of a mad man.

  Sitting across from him, Mr Dubash did not give any response to the information Freddy offered. He merely listened to his answers with small nods, made his own notes, asked endless, detailed questions and waited patiently while Freddy scrabbled through his paperwork. He was probably used to the gibberish that scared, fractious clients presented to him in his line of work. But when eventually he let him go and Freddy was out on the street again, there was none of the exhilaration he’d expected to feel at getting over the first hurdle. He had merely slunk back to Bettina’s mansion, head well down in case another victim of his chaos should pass by.

  But now the meeting was over, his resolve to escape was absolute. It was only cowardice in face of the necessary contact with his father that held him back each time he reached for his mobile.

  Chapter 24

  Helen was in no hurry to get home, despite it being a Friday night and the end of a long and tiring week. She dawdled in her office after the others in the department had left, answering emails that did not need answering yet, making tea she had no intention of drinking, skimming a post-grad thesis she didn’t have to read for at least another month.

  Her reluctance to be home was two-fold: first, her sister’s presence. Helen and David had found a rhythm in the years since Kit had left, which worked for them both. They didn’t bother each other, David often staying late in his workshop or out in the garden, Helen pottering about, reading or planning the next outing with her birding friends.

  She went out most weekends to Farmoor or Otmore in spring and summer, Port Meadow in the winter when it flooded and the over-wintering duck and waders arrived. It was a solitary pursuit, even in a group, most of the day spent outdoors in peaceful contemplation of nature, but Helen felt it saved her sanity. She and David would usually meet for supper, but not always. Sometimes it was a ham sandwich in front of the television – there were no rules. Just two adults with very different interests, living in harmony. Or that was how she chose to view her marriage.

  Now her little sister had invaded their space, disrupted the harmony. Lily, to be fair, demanded virtually nothing of either of them, but she was still there, and even if Helen did not feel a duty to talk to her, include her in her plans, she was still lurking, a worrying presence Helen was unable to shut out.

  And she wanted to help, of course. Although her sister’s starry-eyed marriage to the ridiculous Freddy had always smacked of doom in Helen’s eyes, being right held no pleasure. She loved her sister dearly, even though they had never really understood each other.

  How long will she stay? she wondered anxiously, as she finally packed her laptop and mobile into her black nylon briefcase, switched off the office light and carried her still full mug to the kitchenette at the end of the corridor, where she emptied the contents into the metal sink and rinsed it.

  The second reason she did not want to get home today was that David was going to see Kit. He went most Fridays. Helen, as always, felt her heart skitter at the thought of what he might find. She imagined death, certainly, her beautiful son lying in a pool of his own vomit, a needle hanging out of his scrawny arm. She imagined disappearance, Kit taking off, perhaps, to London where he had friends – Do junkies have friends? – and never being seen again, the years stretching out with the pain of not knowing. She worried about violence to David, when he pitched
up with all good intentions – cleaning the place, bringing tinned soup, stew, beans and fruit, taking the rubbish down to the bins – then being attacked because he wouldn’t give Kit or his mates money. But her real dread was hearing the details of what David had found.

  He wouldn’t tell her unless she asked, and often it took a day before she dared. But in the end she would have to listen and feel the pain all over again, beat herself up for being a coward and not going with her husband, wonder if she should change her mind, if there was something they weren’t doing that might save Kit. It was the same sequence each time, and each time she came to the same unsatisfactory conclusion: she could not see him like that. Compared to poor Kit’s life, Lily’s temporary lack of funds paled into insignificance.

  *

  Saturday morning, and Helen had requested a family conference. Lily had been with them nearly two weeks and nothing had been discussed about her sister’s future since that first night, when Helen’s enquiry had been firmly shut down by her husband. But something had to be done.

  Now the three of them sat round the kitchen table, David looking preoccupied as if he were miles away, her sister gazing blankly out at the garden. Helen had a pad of paper in front of her, and a biro which she was clicking impatiently, watching David slowly pour coffee from the cafetière and hand a cup to both her and Lily, stir brown sugar into his own, leave the wet spoon on the wooden table – men.

  ‘Right,’ Helen said, feeling as she did in one of her first-term seminars, chivvying ten half-asleep nineteen-year-olds texting on their phones. ‘Let’s start with what you can do, Lily. Skills.’

  Lily blinked, turned her attention from the garden, raised her eyebrows very slightly. ‘Well . . . I don’t really have any.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Of course you do. You can draw. You volunteered at the hospital.’ Helen stopped, drew a blank. Her sister had married Garret at twenty-three, just out of art college, then chosen to be a full-time mother, which Helen had never completely understood. The lack of ambition, lack of desire to interact with the world outside her family, baffled her. ‘And there’s Prem. She employed you for years. Doesn’t she have anything she can offer you?’

  ‘Not at the moment. And even if she did, I couldn’t afford London rents or the commute. I still had the house when I worked there before.’

  She saw Lily’s eyes glaze over. Her sister had barely gone out since she arrived, just trailed round the garden, staying up in her bedroom most of the time. Helen was worried: she looked so pale and was even thinner, if it were possible, than usual. And she was making no effort to look nice, or even wash her hair. Those jeans were the ones she’d been wearing all week.

  ‘Okay. Let’s think of the options.’ She looked at her husband, who was playing with a piece of green twine he must have brought in from the garden, head bent. ‘David!’

  He jumped. ‘Yes. What?’

  ‘Please, we’ve all got to pull together on this. Lily needs help.’

  ‘Right . . . right. Okay.’ He sat up straighter and turned to Lily. ‘What do you like doing, Lily?’

  She gave him a sad smile. ‘Not much, really. Drawing mostly. Reading. Films. Hanging out with the twins. Cooking, sort of, but I’m not very good at it.’

  Helen refused to buy into her self-disparagement. ‘That profile wouldn’t even attract someone on Twitter, let alone an employer,’ she said, her tone light, and Lily did smile. ‘Do you touch-type?’

  ‘Two fingers, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And you don’t cook. Did you do things like spreadsheets or bookkeeping at the chair shop? Logistics, maybe?’

  Lily didn’t even know what logistics were. ‘God, no. Prem handled all the admin. I just dealt with the customers.’

  ‘So retail, then. Perhaps there’s a bookshop or one of those design places that sell silk cushions and stuff . . . things that an older person might be good at. Because the fact is that students are so cheap to employ round here.’

  When Lily remained silent, the faraway look still in her eye, Helen, frustrated, spoke more sharply than she intended: ‘Make an effort, Lily. You have to get work.’

  ‘I know I do. And I appreciate your help, obviously. But I just don’t know what I can do. As you point out, I’m not exactly a spring chicken.’ She swallowed. ‘I suppose I could work in a care home or something.’

  ‘You could. Is that something you’d like?’

  Rolling her eyes, Lily answered, ‘No, I’d be bloody useless at it. But there doesn’t seem much choice, does there?’

  ‘No need to be snippy.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  There was silence, just the faint swish of David’s shirtsleeves rubbing across the table as he did cat’s cradle with the string, his big hands calloused and scarred, chopped about by the tools he used to make his furniture. ‘Why doesn’t she just join an agency?’ he asked, looking at Helen. ‘They’ll know what to do with her. Maybe she could be a PA to someone.’

  ‘I am here, you know,’ Lily said tartly, which brought a slight frown to David’s forehead. ‘Sorry, David.’ She gave a long sigh. ‘I’m being a brat. That’s a good idea. I’ll look online and find one.’

  That seemed to satisfy them both, but Helen was not so easily pleased. ‘You’ll need some skills, Lily. You can’t just sign on at an agency and say you can draw and type with two fingers, then expect to get a job. You’ll definitely end up in a care home.’

  ‘You could sketch the inmates in their final days,’ David said with a grin. Then, seeing Helen’s frown, corrected himself: ‘Sorry, “residents”. And type up their letters . . . slowly. Two-fingers Lil, the pride of Heaven’s Gate,’ he added, throwing his arms wide with a flourish and making Lily giggle. ‘You’ve got to create a USP.’

  ‘Oh, very funny. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother.’ Helen got up. At least she’s smiling, she thought. It had been a rare event recently.

  ‘Can’t you sell your drawings?’ David said, serious this time. ‘You’re good.’ He pointed towards the sketch of Kit.

  ‘God, no,’ Lily replied, looking horrified at the suggestion. Helen knew she had done many portraits of her friends and their children over the years and thought her sister had talent but, as usual, Lily hadn’t bothered to develop it further. It would take too long to build up a client base when she needed money right now, Helen’s business brain concluded. But it was something she would talk to her about another time – a sideline for the future, maybe.

  ‘If I were you, I’d go online and find a site that teaches you to touch-type. There are thousands – my students use them all the time. It won’t take long to learn if you concentrate. I mean, you haven’t got anything else to do at the moment. Then you’ll have something to sell.’ She knew she sounded prim and bossy, but what else would galvanize the woman?

  *

  It was only when she and David got into bed that night that Helen asked her husband about his visit the day before.

  ‘I didn’t see him,’ he said, leaning back on his pillows with a sigh, holding his reading glasses in one hand, the latest Bill Bryson in the other. Two paragraphs would set him off snoring – no fault of Bill’s. ‘He wasn’t there, I don’t think.’ He pulled himself up and turned on his side to face her. ‘The door is usually snibbed, or even ajar – people wander in and out all the time, it seems. But today it was locked. The bell doesn’t work, but I banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox. I couldn’t see anyone moving about, but the kitchen has a blind, which is always down, and the letterbox just gives onto the corridor.’ He paused. ‘It didn’t feel as if anyone was there, Helen. You know how you can tell.’

  ‘Did you wait?’ Helen saw the usual images looming in her vision with terrifying reality.

  ‘I waited outside for a while, then knocked on the next-door flat. An old boy lives there who can hardly walk, but he usually opens up eventually. He
must be away or something, because he didn’t yesterday. I sat in the car for an hour at least, watching the entrance to the flats. Kit didn’t come back, but he’d probably gone round to someone else’s place . . . I don’t know, just out looking for more drugs.’

  ‘What should we do?’ Helen asked, her nerves jangling. ‘Suppose he’s in there?’

  ‘I’ll go back tomorrow, see if he’s about. There’s this girl, Kirsty, who’s often with him, and there was no sign of her either. The door was locked, as I said, so maybe they’ve just gone for a trip somewhere.’

  ‘A trip? In the state he’s in? For God’s sake, David! From what you tell me, he wouldn’t get to the end of the road. No, there must be something wrong.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not taking so much stuff at the moment. Maybe he’s a bit better and they went to Scotland or something. The girl’s Scottish – she may have relatives up there.’

  Helen both loved her husband’s optimism and was infuriated by it. David, she thought, made Pollyanna look like a party pooper, always putting a starry gloss on any situation – the exact opposite of herself. ‘Shouldn’t we phone the police? Get them to check the flat . . . just to make sure.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d take much notice. He’s not a child. He can go out if he likes.’

  ‘He’s not a child, but he’s a vulnerable adult, David. Doesn’t that count?’

  ‘Where drugs are concerned, not really. If they thought he was dealing, well, that’s another matter. There’d be a dawn raid and the whole nine yards. Or if he was being violent . . . But an addict who’s not home?’