The Best Of Times

by Penny Vincenzi

  “What…? Oh, no, course not, go ahead.”

  She’d thought he meant just to sit and read or something; but he smiled rather determinedly at her.

  “I… that is, was it you in the lift an hour or so ago? Going up to ICU?”

  “Might have been. I mean, I have been up there, yes.”

  God. She hoped he wasn’t trying to chat her up. She looked at him. No, he was probably worried about someone.

  “Do you have a relative up there?” she said.

  “No, no. Not up there. You?”

  “Oh… no. Just a friend.”

  “Not Mr. Connell?”

  “How do you know about Mr. Connell?”

  “Oh… most people do. In the hospital.”

  “Really? Well I… I don’t.”

  “Is that right? I thought I saw you with Mrs. Connell.”

  “You must have imagined it. Look… who are you? Are you something to do with the hospital? Or…”

  “I suppose I’d better come clean,” he said. “I’m a reporter. Daily Sketch.” He held out his hand. “And you are…?”

  Georgia stood up. She wasn’t prepared at all for what she did next; it was as if she was watching someone else.

  “You can just fuck off,” she said, and her voice was very loud. “Fuck right off, away from me, away from the hospital, away from Patrick Connell. You are totally disgusting, writing lies about people, implying things you don’t know are even remotely true.”

  She half ran out of the café.

  All the other customers sat transfixed, staring first after her and then at Osborne, who stood up, trying to look as if he was in control of the situation, and then hurried out after her and into the car park, where both his car and his laptop were waiting.

  Part Four. Moving On

  CHAPTER 30

  All she’d done was sigh. And it had been a very small, quiet sigh… she’d thought. That nobody could possibly have heard. But that’s what had done it. Had launched her into this dangerously stupid, totally wrong, and wonderfully right-feeling thing where every day, every minute was amazing and shiny, where everyone, however dull or unpleasant, seemed charming and amusing, where every task, however disagreeable or onerous, seemed engaging and fascinating. Where she felt calm and cool one moment, and dizzy and sparkly the next; where she looked in the mirror and smiled at herself; where she relived every conversation, every memory, every confidence, every sweet, small discovery, and yet still they seemed fresh and important and worthy of further examination still. Where she was, in a word… or rather two… in love. Absolutely, unquestioningly and for the time being, at least, most joyfully in love. And able to see that what she had felt for Luke had not been love at all; it had been finite, reasonable, entirely suitable in every way. How she felt about Barney was infinite, unreasonable, and entirely unsuitable; and it was the most important and defining thing that had ever happened to her.

  ***

  He’d said he ought to go that afternoon, once he had seen Toby and knew he was all right. And he’d told Emma that he really should get back to London; there was some really important client coming in the next day, demanding to see the whole team, and Barney had work to do before then. Emma nodded and said yes, of course, and that she’d keep an eye on Toby but she was sure he’d be fine and would probably go home in a few more days.

  From which viewpoint-one from which she and Barney would never see each other again-everything looked suddenly rather bleak. Which was ridiculous, because he had Amanda and she had Luke and…

  “Yes, I see,” said Barney. “Well, that’s excellent news. Good. Thank you again, Emma. Couldn’t have got through the day without you.”

  “Of course you could,” she said, smiling.

  And, “No,” he said, “no, I couldn’t. Not any of it, actually.” And he bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek and said, “Bye, then,” and turned away; and that was when she’d sighed and he’d heard it and turned back to her and there was a brief silence, and then he said, “Emma, could I… that is, well, could I buy you a drink? Just to say thank-you for all your help and support today. And all the other days. I’d like to, very much. But if you’re working, of course, or you’ve got something else on…”

  “No,” she said, “no, no, I’m not. Working. Not after six, anyway. And I haven’t got anything on. No.”

  “So… does that mean yes?”

  “Yes. I mean, it does mean yes. Thank you. That’d be great. Yes.”

  And wondered if he realised as clearly as she did what he had asked and what she was saying yes to.

  ***

  They had had a drink in a pub she had suggested. It was a lovely evening; they sat outside and chatted. Slightly awkwardly. Quite awkwardly, actually. Both knowing why. She should have said no. She shouldn’t have sighed.

  After a bit he said he should go; and she said she should go; and they got back into Barney’s car and drove back to the hospital, so that Emma could pick up her car.

  “Well,” she said, “that was very nice, Barney. Thank you. And… don’t worry about Toby anymore.”

  And she smiled and she certainly didn’t sigh. Mistake, the whole going-for-a-drink thing. Big mistake.

  ***

  Barney remembered the next few moments for the rest of his life. Watching her smile, open the door, swing one long leg out of it. And feeling a rush of sheer and shocking panic. She was going, the moment was passing, the day was over, the excuse almost gone. Well… good. He was engaged, she was… well, probably nearly engaged. What was he doing even thinking what he was thinking?

  He put out his hand onto her arm. Her thin, brown arm. Which was warm and felt… well, felt wonderful. She looked at him, startled; then down at his hand and then back at his face. Her eyes, those huge blue eyes, meeting his. It was fatal, awful. “Don’t go,” he said. “But, Barney…”

  “Please don’t go. I don’t want you to go.” And then, very quietly: “I don’t want to go either.” He put the car in gear, drove very fast out of the car park, down the road, towards Cirencester. He knew the whole area extremely well. Knew where there were lanes, quiet lanes, with gateways into fields where you could stop. And park. And turn to someone. And kiss them. Over and over again. And feel them kissing you back.

  ***

  Later he said, “I knew, you know; I knew the minute I saw you.”

  “Me too. ‘There he is,’ I thought, ‘there’s the One.’”

  “And then what did you think?”

  “I thought, ‘Oh shit.’ I said, ‘Oh shit.’”

  “I thought the same. I thought, ‘There she is.’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, fuck.’ I said, ‘Oh, fuck.’”

  “Because it’s rubbish, isn’t it? All that?”

  “Course it is.”

  “I mean, I’ve got Luke.”

  “And I’ve got Amanda. I’m engaged to Amanda. Who’s…”

  “Who’s beautiful. And so nice, I can tell.”

  “Beautiful and so nice. But I don’t seem to love her. Not like I thought I did.”

  “And then there’s Luke. Who’s such a dude and so nice. But I don’t seem to love him either. So… what do we do?”

  “Explore it a bit,” said Barney. “We have to; it’s the only thing to do.”

  ***

  They did; they explored each other. But quickly. One long evening, talking, talking, talking. One long night, making love, hardly sleeping, in Emma’s flat. One long day, walking, talking, kissing, worrying; another evening talking, and one hurried, wonderfully awful fuck in a room at the hospital.

  Like all lovers, they developed jokes, codes, secrets.

  “Thanks for calling” meant “I can’t talk now;”

  “Maybe tomorrow” meant “I miss you;”

  “My pleasure” meant “I love you.”

  And every time, every meeting led them nearer to being sure that this relationship, shared between them, was the one that mattered, and the other ones could not go on; and almos
t equally sure that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

  ***

  What must it be like to be one of these people? Freeman thought, looking at the obvious trappings of wealth, on display even here, in this hospital cubicle: the laptop, the iPod, the silver-framed photographs by his bed, the huge plate of grapes, the box of chocolates from Fortnum & Mason, the pile of new hardbacks…

  To know that if you wanted something you could almost certainly have it? To have gone to the best schools, the best universities, to have no doubt travelled widely, to drive the best cars, to wear the best clothes?

  Pretty bloody good, he supposed (having known little of any of those things), but did it make you happy? Did it create a conscience? Or did it make you arrogant, ruthless, greedy for more?

  “Sergeant Freeman, do sit down.”

  He gestured at the chair by his bed.

  “Glad you’re feeling better, sir. And that your leg is mending.”

  “Not as glad as I am. Still bloody painful, though, I can tell you. I should be home in another day or two. Thank God. Er… I thought there were going to be two of you?”

  “There are, sir. Constable Rowe is on his way. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. Ah, here he is now.”

  They went through the formalities, the reasons for choosing the M4, the exact location of the church, the late departure… “I wasn’t too well-seemed to have picked up a stomach bug, kept throwing up. All you need on your wedding day!”

  “Not a hangover then, sir?”

  “Lord, no, we hardly had anything the night before. Well, Barney had a few; I simply wasn’t feeling up to it.”

  He was cheerfully up-front about being stopped by the police:

  “Barney was driving, of course, going a hell of a lick, but then, we were very late. If we hadn’t been stopped, we’d have made it in time. Still… even bridegrooms aren’t above the law, I suppose, Sergeant?”

  “Indeed not, sir. But… you did also have to stop for petrol, I believe?”

  “Yes, we did. And I… well, I had to go to the loo again.”

  “But… you didn’t need anything else, no oil, anything like that?”

  “No, no, just the fuel.”

  “Although… the CCTV shows you in a queue for the air line.”

  “Ah, yes. Yes, we did… That is, we were… there.”

  “Were you worried about the tyres, sir? Did you have any reason to think they needed checking?”

  “No, no, in fact, they were new tyres. I was just being careful.”

  “Very wise. So you didn’t think one might be soft, something like that? Which could, of course, have contributed to the blowout.”

  “No, nothing like that. I just thought we should check them.”

  “Even though you were so late?”

  “Well… yes.”

  “I see. Well… we may be mistaken, but again, according to the CCTV, you drove away… apparently… without doing so.”

  He was a good actor; he didn’t look remotely rattled.

  “Ah. Well… well, maybe we did. I… I went in to pay for the fuel, you see. It was all a bit of a blur. We were pretty stressed out, as you can imagine.”

  “Indeed. But… try to remember, sir, it could be important.”

  “Yes, I suppose it could. Yes. Look, I… I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. The thing is… Barney… you know my best man, Barney Fraser? Did he… did he explain about what happened?”

  “Not as far as I can recall, sir, no.”

  “Ah. Well, actually, you see, I… I did want to check the tyres. As I said. But he was so worried about how late we were… Well, it was his main duty, after all, to get me to the church on time… Anyway, he said there wasn’t time to check them, that we couldn’t wait, that they’d be fine, persuaded me to carry on…”

  ***

  “Perhaps you didn’t see the latest report from Forensics?” said Constable Rowe as they drove down the lane. “The one that came in last week, while you were away, about the fragment of tyre with the nail in it?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Freeman. “I saw it. Very interesting.”

  “But… if that was the cause of the blowout, as Forensics seems to think, what was all that about whether or not he checked the tyre pressures?”

  “There have to be some perks in this job, Rowe,” said Freeman, “and seeing little shits like that squirm is one of them.”

  It was a great pity, as Linda Di-Marcello remarked, that Georgia looked like she did and did what she did. The tabloids all tracked her down, and there were two or three nightmare days when the story ran in most of them. Her hauntingly lovely little face, with its great dark eyes and wayward cloud of hair, sat above the caption, “M4 Mystery Girl,” or in some cases, “M4 Mystery Girl Found,” and then informed the reader not only that the mystery girl in the lorry was Georgia Linley from Cardiff, but that she was an actress who had just won a part in a new Channel Four drama and that she was on her way to her audition in London when the crash occurred.

  There was a quote from Georgia, composed by Linda with damage limitation in mind, saying how sorry she was for any problems she might have caused, that she was unable to answer any questions about the crash because it was still under police investigation, that she had visited Patrick Connell in the hospital several times, that he was recovering well, and his wife and she had become great friends. All of which, as Linda also remarked, was true.

  Just the same, it was acutely unpleasant for Georgia, and she continued to feel ashamed of herself, and, most of all, dreadfully anxious about starting work on Moving Away, and about how badly the other members of the production team might think of her.

  ***

  Jonathan still felt he was living in a nightmare.

  Even a call from that old goat Freeman, telling him that there was evidence that the crash appeared to have been due in large part to the lorry sustaining a shattered windscreen-why couldn’t these people speak proper English?-but that they were still gathering evidence, failed to make him feel much better. If they were still gathering evidence, then it could even now be seen as important that he’d been on the phone, and God knew where that could land him.

  He looked back on his old life-years ago, as it seemed, rather than weeks-with its easy, pleasant patterns, with something near disbelief. He was often depressed, frequently nervous, his professional confidence shaken, his smooth charm roughened by weariness and self-doubt.

  The whole household seemed on tenterhooks, no one easy, even the children; Charlie was edgy, less trustful, almost wary of him, the little girls awkward and fractious. Taking their emotional cues from their mother, he supposed, without realising it.

  Laura had moved away from him; she was oddly self-contained, less hostile, but far from warm. They were sharing the marital bed once more, but it was as if she had drawn a barrier down it, holding him from her by sheer force of will. He felt she was biding her time, waiting for something to happen-she knew not what, only that she would recognise its significance and therefore whether or not their marriage was still viable.

  And he could see that the danger of that something, while as yet nameless and formless, was still extremely real.

  ***

  Abi had never been so happy. Day after day it went on, like some wonderful, long, golden summer. An absurd, sweet happiness, born of this absurd, sweet love affair. Absurd and so extremely unsuitable. For both of them…

  It had begun in earnest that night in the farm office. Adjacent to the lambing shed.

  Not many people had sex in farm offices adjacent to a lambing shed. Or not many people she knew, anyway. Well, nobody she knew. Maybe they did in the country. Life was certainly different there.

  They’d met in the pub and he’d suggested they go to another one a couple of miles away: “Too many people here I know.”

  “Are you ashamed to be seen with me, William?” she’d said.

  And he’d blushed and said, “Of course not,” in to
nes of such horror that she’d laughed. “It’s just that we’ll be… well, you know, interrupted all the time.” And they’d driven to the other one in the Land Rover, and she’d had two vodkas and he’d had two beers and it had straightaway begun to get out of hand. Or rather she’d got out of hand. She just couldn’t stand it, sitting there, looking at him, with those bloody great feet of his, and his ridiculously sexy mouth… and she’d savoured that mouth now that she knew what it could do… and his eyes moving over her, looking at her cleavage and her legs… and she’d shifted her chair nearer him, and pushed one of her legs up against his, just because she wanted to touch him, even through those ridiculous trousers he’d worn-what were they called, cavalry twill or something? Really grossly old-fashioned-and then he’d said would she like another drink, and she’d said, “No, William, not really, thank you very much,” and he’d looked a bit nonplussed, and she’d said, “I tell you what I would like, William,” and he’d said, “What’s that?” looking slightly nervous, and she’d said, “I’d like to go out to the car,” and they’d sat in it and snogged rather deliciously for a while, and then she’d said… after he’d made it clear he wanted what she wanted, every bit as much, possibly even more, “I’d like to go back to your house. To your room,” and he’d been so horrified it had been quite funny.

  “Abi, we can’t do that. I’m sorry. We just can’t. You’ve met my parents; can you really imagine them sitting calmly watching TV if they thought… if they knew… we were… Well, it just doesn’t happen. Honestly, if I tried, I’d be so… so… well, I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

  She decided not to ask him what he’d done in the past, simply said, “Well, we have to find somewhere, William. I’d suggest going back to mine, but I don’t think I can wait that long…”