Strange Allure

by Susan Lewis

  Richard was still talking, so she tried again to listen, but soon she was noticing the familiar comfort of his car, with its smell of leather and smoothness of speed. It was virtually indistinguishable from all the other BMWs he’d owned, except for the baby-seat strapped into the back. She wondered if she should ask about the baby, or Chrissie, but she didn’t want to, so she only looked at him as he stopped speaking, and found herself thinking that perhaps, in his perverse and exploitative way, Graham really had done her a favour, for she felt peculiarly removed from Richard now, as though Graham’s deception, and her own self-delusion, had become entangled with the memories that were real, making them feel strangely false too.

  ‘So you really thought all those emails were from me?’ Richard said, sounding both amused and surprised.

  She turned to look out of the window.

  ‘I’m sorry they weren’t,’ he said, in a conciliatory tone.

  ‘Don’t be.’ She stared out at the passing darkness, focusing neither on her own ghostly reflection, nor on the anger she could feel building inside. Instead she thought of the many times she’d shared her feelings with Graham, telling him everything he already knew. There were so many instances, all rushing to be remembered, but galling as they were, none were as hard to face as her belief in the connection of her and Richard’s souls that had enabled them to understand and read each other in a way that was existentially profound, and karmically bestowed. How grand and privileged she’d felt in the might of that love and fated power of its journey. How pompously and completely she had considered them to be special and tragic and above mere worldly affairs. And all the time she’d been thinking that way he’d been loving someone else, knowing and feeling nothing of the allure or attachment she had believed in so utterly, and had clung to so desperately.

  ‘Why?’ she suddenly said. ‘Why are you sorry the emails weren’t from you?’

  He glanced over at her. ‘Because it seems to matter to you that they were,’ he answered.

  She turned away again. ‘Once maybe,’ she muttered. ‘Not now.’

  She heard him take a breath to respond, but there was a moment before he said, ‘Good. I’m glad it doesn’t matter now.’

  More anger welled up inside her, but she was too tired to vent it with any more than the childish retort of, ‘It doesn’t.’ She was going to thank God to her dying day that he’d never seen those emails – and she had to take steps now to make sure no-one ever did.

  ‘So there’s no confusion about your mother?’ he said.

  ‘Not about the way she died, no,’ she replied. ‘But I’m still wondering why you never got in touch when it happened. You’d known her all that time, she’d made you a part of our family … She really cared about you, and you didn’t even bother to send a card to say you were sorry, or a flower to put on her grave.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d welcome it,’ he answered. ‘But believe me, I felt her death very deeply.’

  She waited for him to add, so did Chrissie, but he didn’t, and maybe because of that small sensitivity her anger deflated. It was funny, she was thinking, she’d had so many questions to ask him, but now it was hard trying to remember which were relevant. Actually, not so hard, because really, in the end, everything boiled down to why. Why had he started an affair with Chrissie in the first place? Why hadn’t he told her himself it was over? Why did he refuse to speak to her afterwards, when she’d so desperately needed the answers?

  ‘I thought we were so close,’ she told him. ‘I never dreamt you were hiding so much.’

  ‘If you’re asking me to explain,’ he responded, ‘then I can only tell you this: I loved you then, and I love you now, but not in the same way I love Chrissie. When it happened between me and her, I knew right away we were different – special, I suppose – but we both cared so deeply about you that we could never find a way to tell you.’

  She said nothing as she remembered how he’d once felt it was different for them, that they were special, and meant to be. It seemed he’d forgotten that now, though she suspected, if she reminded him, he’d insist it was true, but had just been on another level to the bond he shared with Chrissie. Then she recalled John’s belief that it was possible to have more than one soulmate. Maybe he was right. She thought of Avril and inwardly smiled. It could be that John was one too. It certainly felt that way, though it was still so early in their relationship she guessed only time would tell.

  She said, ‘So you thought Chrissie getting pregnant would be a way to tell me?’

  There was only a slight awkwardness to his tone as he said, ‘Whether she got pregnant on purpose, or by mistake, I don’t think even she knows for certain, but I would have married her anyway, just as soon as we’d found a way of breaking it to you.’ He glanced over at her. ‘Do you think you could have stood to hear me say any of this back then? God knows, it can’t be pleasant now.’

  He was right, and wrong, for it was a lot worse than simply unpleasant – and to have heard it back then would have just about killed her. ‘How long were you seeing her, before she got pregnant?’ she asked.

  ‘Almost a year.’

  Her heart folded around the words, for it was still hard to think of the betrayal without recalling the times she’d spent with them both, totally believing in Richard’s love, and never dreaming that all he wanted was to be with Chrissie. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, came a terrible yearning for none of it ever to have happened, for them to be driving along now, as they had so often in the past, totally relaxed in the strength of their love, complete in their sense of togetherness. But the feeling passed, and though she knew he still had the ability to hurt her deeply, she understood that it was mainly the unwillingness of old habits to die that was keeping her connected to him now.

  ‘I don’t expect you to care,’ he said, ‘but it’s been a very difficult time for Chrissie. She hated hurting you so much that when she found out your mother was dead she begged me to go back to you.’

  Carla didn’t comment.

  ‘The guilt has been hard on her too,’ he continued. ‘And since Ryan was born … She’s come very close to breaking down altogether. She’s still a long way from being over the worst of it.’ He laughed, dryly. ‘One of her greatest wishes is for us all to be friends, but in her heart she knows it can’t happen. Apart from anything else, she doesn’t trust me. I betrayed you, so I could betray her too. She doesn’t understand that she’s different.’

  Carla thought of the three women Rosa had mentioned, but only asked about one. ‘Does she know about the air stewardess?’

  The lengthy pause before he answered told her it was true, though she thought he was going to lie, until he said, ‘No. She doesn’t. Kate’s married too. We have an arrangement that in no way interferes with the rest of our lives.’

  ‘I wonder if Chrissie would see it like that?’ Carla responded.

  ‘Of course she wouldn’t. But it doesn’t change for a moment the way I feel about her. I love her in a way I’ve never loved another woman.’

  Carla was silent then, as she waited for the ache inside her to die away. She thought of John and Avril, and what they might be talking about now. Nothing so difficult, she imagined. Then looking up ahead she saw they were approaching the pub where Eddie was waiting, no doubt with all her neighbours, who must be agog with all that had happened. Before they got out of the car she said, ‘I’m sorry it’s been so hard for Chrissie, but I wouldn’t have been a few weeks ago. And as for us ever being friends … Does she know you’re here now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then tell her, if it can happen, and I really don’t think it can, then it’ll be because of her, never because of you.’

  Very soon they were perched on stools in front of the bar, listening to Fleur and Perry as they continued filling everyone in on their part in the drama. Carla, with Eddie at her feet, was tense with the fear that they’d reveal the sexual part of it all, but no mention was made, and she could only thank God
for their discretion – or better still, their ignorance, for there was a strong chance that nothing had actually been put into words. After a while she tried to eat the shepherd’s pie Sylvia had prepared for their return, though, on the whole, she only managed to look around at them all in the cosy firelight, and feel very tired, but safe, and relieved to be there.

  ‘So what’s going to happen to Graham now?’ Sylvia wanted to know, plonking free drinks down in front of John and Richard. Carla and Avril already had theirs, but Carla wasn’t making much headway with that either.

  Everyone looked at Angie and Pete, Cannock’s resident lawyers. ‘There’s rarely ever any bail set for murder,’ Pete answered.

  ‘Murder,’ Beanie repeated wonderingly, as though this was the first time she’d ever uttered the word aloud. ‘It hardly bears thinking about, does it? I mean, you’d never have thought, would you, him being such a gentle-seeming soul.’

  They were all silent for a moment then, as they confronted again the astonishing ingenuity of the deception that not one of them had ever even begun to suspect. To think that they’d known him, chatted with him, bought him drinks, respected him, never delving into Betty’s shyness, just accepting it as one of those queer quirks some people had; never doubting the identity of Fellowes with his smart suits and detective-looking car … That they could all have been so taken in was, well, disconcerting to say the least.

  ‘But he didn’t do it, did he?’ Joe Locke pointed out. ‘It was that detective bloke what did it.’

  ‘Yeah, but Graham put him up to it, so that makes him just as guilty, don’t it, Pete?’ Beanie said.

  Pete nodded.

  ‘What about Betty?’ Gayle Locke asked. ‘Did they arrest her too?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Maudie answered, still flushed from all the excitement.

  ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to the Old Rectory?’ Lloyd said.

  ‘Be a bit spooky to live there now, wouldn’t it?’ Sylvia shivered. ‘They’ve got it all cordoned off up there, did you see?’

  ‘Why would it be spooky?’ her husband demanded. ‘They didn’t kill anyone there, did they? It happened in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll all take notice of me next time I tell you there’s squatters,’ Maudie said, waspishly.

  ‘They was hardly squatters, was they?’ Jack retorted. ‘And you was the one who got Jekyll checking up on Hyde, so to speak, when you got that Fellowes bloke to look over old Gilbert’s house, so you don’t have that much to crow about.’

  Sylvia dug an elbow in his ribs as Maudie bristled, and the others stifled a laugh.

  ‘So who was it they offed then?’ Lloyd wanted to know.

  ‘We already told you,’ Perry responded. ‘A drunk, up in Barnsley. Don’t know his name, but I expect the poor bloke’s got one. Or he did have, when he was alive.’

  For some reason everyone turned to Carla, as though she might know the man’s name, but at that moment she was looking at John, who seemed to be looking at her rather strangely, and then she realized how close she was sitting to Richard. Was that what was bothering him? It wasn’t where she wanted to be, but when she tried to get up Richard put an arm around her, and pulled her against him. Then everyone was talking again, asking questions, making comments, spouting wisdom, though all she could hear was the voice inside her head telling her to move away from Richard. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t. Then John got up, and seeming not to see her, began shaking everyone’s hands and, bidding them goodnight. The voice inside her was still urging her to go to him, yet the strange stupor she was in wouldn’t allow it. Richard’s arm felt burdensome and wrong, but when she turned her head to tell him no words came out. It was as though she was halfway in a faint, unable to pull herself out of it, or to plunge entirely into it.

  Then she heard John say, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Taking his hand, she was about to get up when Richard said, ‘Are you all right?’

  Turning to him, she said, ‘I think so, but I’ll be glad when it’s all in the past.’

  He smiled as he said, ‘You will get over us, you know. Everything takes time, I’m just sorry you were taken in by those emails. It can’t have helped, but I’d like to see them sometime.’

  Carla stiffened, as John’s hand tightened on hers, and Avril gestured for her to go no further. Now wasn’t the time, but the look in Avril’s eyes promised that it would certainly come, and Avril would make sure it was soon. For the moment, however, all Avril said was, ‘Richard, darling, I’m sure Chrissie must be wondering what on earth has happened to you by now, and as I’m in need of a lift back to London …’

  It was in the early dawn light that Carla slipped quietly out of John’s arms, tugged on a tracksuit and went downstairs to stoke up the Aga. She’d slept heavily in the aftermath of all that had happened, but now she was awake she knew it wouldn’t be possible to go back, so not wanting to disturb John she decided to take Eddie for a walk.

  As they strolled away from the village, watching the ash grey sky starting to glow red on the horizon, she was thinking of her mother and how she’d turned to Richard for help when she’d learned the truth about Graham. Knowing how attached Carla was to Graham, and what strength she and Richard drew from each other, it seemed her mother had wanted Richard to be there when she broke the awful news. How ironic that Richard was planning to break some awful news of his own at the very same time, and Carla guessed she could only feel thankful that her mother had never known about that.

  She still wasn’t clear as to why Betty had told either of them the truth about Graham, though it had been such a terrible burden to carry all these years that sharing it, and then having someone else take the responsibility of revealing it, was possibly at least a part of her motive. Or maybe it was all much more sinister than that, part of some diabolical master plan that even now was being stored up in Graham’s mind, making him half-delirious with the thrill of what he could and couldn’t control, for the sake of his art.

  Not wanting to go any further with that, she turned her thoughts to John and smiled warmly as she wondered what her mother would think of him, and his fame, and his relationship with her daughter. No doubt she’d love him, though, like many others, she might be in awe of his looks for a while. But his easy-going charm would soon have her drawing him into their family the way she had with all her children’s friends and lovers. Only Greg’s wife had ever resisted, which was a shame, but it hadn’t been in Valerie’s nature to force anyone against their will.

  Carla’s mind returned again to the letter her mother had written to Richard. She guessed it would always be a mystery how that one page had come to be caught up in the thesis, while the rest of it was in her coat pocket. Though there seemed to have been some kind of plan, divine or otherwise, for it was quite remarkable how everything had played its part in bringing Graham’s crime to light. How appalled, and no doubt fascinated, he must have been when Valerie died such a similar death to the murder he’d paid Fellowes to commit, and what ghastly serendipity had played itself out since, from the discovery of that single page in the thesis, to Fleur and Perry’s quirky search for aliens, right down to poor little Courtenay falling down the steps at Bath railway station and ending up at the hospital with six stitches in his head. If that hadn’t happened then Sonya might well have got to Carla before Betty had last night, and though the letter might well have been evidence enough to condemn Graham and Fellowes, Carla might never have got to find out as much as she had, about the emails, the purpose behind them, or the warped kind of caring that, the sexual part of it aside, she couldn’t fully deny had helped.

  After walking for half an hour or more she returned to the cottage, gave Eddie an early breakfast, then took off her tracksuit and slipped back into bed. John was still sleeping, so she snuggled in behind him and was just wondering about Avril, and what she and Richard might have talked about on their way back to London, when, in that strange linking up of minds that sometimes happened, th
e phone beside the bed suddenly rang.

  Reaching out for it, John lifted the receiver and brought it to his ear.

  ‘Carla?’ said the voice at the other end.

  ‘I’ll pass you over,’ he answered. ‘Avril,’ he said to Carla.

  Carla took the phone, then settled into his arms as he turned onto his back to hold her. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about you. Are you all right? It’s not even seven o’clock yet.’

  ‘I know,’ Avril answered. ‘But I need your advice.’

  Carla frowned. ‘On what?’

  ‘Well,’ Avril said, ‘remember you told me how Richard’s thing was being tied to the bed?’

  Carla was already starting to smile, and turning the receiver so John could hear too, she said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know, it’s strange,’ Avril said, ‘but Richard and I got awfully tired on the way back to London last night, so we stopped at this hotel, and it just so happened that he was carrying some rope, and now, of all the blessed things to happen, he’s still at the hotel tied to the bed, and I’m in a taxi on my way back to London. With his clothes.’