by Jo Verity
Implications of their near miss rippled through Elizabeth’s mind, spreading wider and wider in the silence. Had they been injured and taken to hospital, how would she have explained it to Laurence? She’d been in a car, late at night, with three strangers – one of them a man. What’s more, she’d left Jordan with two other strangers … But thank God she had. If he’d been sitting in the boot, where he should have been, his head would have smashed against the rear window. Diane might have been in the car, too and, had there been three passengers squashed together on the back seat, perhaps they wouldn’t have bothered to use the belts.
When they got back to the house, the girls went straight up to bed, leaving her in the kitchen with Dafydd. He was standing near the sink, the table separating them.
‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘A drink?’
‘Not for me, thanks.’
He frowned. ‘What’s that on your neck?’
‘It’s nothing. A graze from the seatbelt.’
‘Let me take a look.’
He moved towards her, stopping when she took a step backwards.
‘It’s okay. Really,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘I’m so sorry.’
For what? The accident? The squabble just now? Her failure to help him ‘move on’?
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said.
Not true. He’d started this. All she’d signed up for was a few days in a new place with new people. A chance to spend time with Diane and get a tan.
‘And no one was hurt,’ she said.
‘No. I suppose not. Although I wish I’d killed that bloody horse.’
They both forced a laugh.
‘I should get to bed. I feel wiped out,’ she said.
‘Perhaps today’s walk was too ambitious.’
‘Not at all. It was perfect. The views. The wild flowers. And the beach is stunning.’
They were falling out of step. Disengaging. She felt sad but there was nothing she could do to stop it.
‘I meant to tell you how nice you look this evening,’ he said.
She looked down, almost surprised to see her unfamiliar clothes. ‘I should have asked. I hope it isn’t distressing to see someone wearing Gwen’s clothes. I wasn’t trying to look like her or anything.’
‘No need to apologise,’ he said. ‘No one could look like Gwenno.’
He might as well have slapped her across the face.
‘What time are you off in the morning?’
‘Around nine-thirty. That’s if Diane and Jordan come back as promised. What about you?’
‘I told Dad we’d go over again. The girls hate seeing their grandmother like this but they’re not children any more. They’re going to have to deal with it. We’ll go tomorrow afternoon.’ He looked at his watch. ‘This afternoon. Maybe we’ll carry straight on to Cardiff. The girls are going back to London on Sunday. I’ve arranged to meet Gwenno on the M4 to pass them over.’
She hesitated for a second, feeling obliged to ask, yet knowing he wouldn’t miss a chance to see Gwen. ‘We’ll be driving to London tomorrow evening – this evening – if that’s any use. It seems ridiculous—’
‘Thanks, but the planet has to take second place sometimes. Gwenno said she’ll bring Tomos. I haven’t seen him since Easter. It’s a shame you didn’t get to meet him. He’s quite a kid.’
Dafydd’s ex-wife and son suddenly joined them and, feeling outnumbered, she summoned up her own troops.
‘Laurence is convinced that the planet’s beyond saving. He’s right about most things.’
It was childish, but she felt less vulnerable with Laurence there to back her.
‘I’m sure he is.’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, I’m for bed. Okay if I grab the bathroom first?’
‘Of course.’ Warily he came towards her and kissed her cheek. ‘Good night, Elizabeth. Sleep well.’
After she’d brushed her teeth, she checked her neck. The shallow wound was tacky, already glazing over with the beginnings of a scab. Sore but superficial, it should heal quickly, but not before Laurence saw it. With his forensic objectivity, he would note that the injury was on the left side of her neck and therefore must have been sustained when she was a passenger, not the driver. Diane could shoulder the blame for that. She owed her more than a few.
The fanlight was open and the bedroom felt damp, the air chilled. Shivering and near to tears, she undressed. All she wanted now was to forget everything and sleep. But both beds were strewn with clothes, towels, underwear and toiletries, all abandoned in the scramble to get out of the house earlier that evening. Raising one side of the quilted nylon, she flicked everything onto the floor then got into bed.
29
SATURDAY: 7.05AM
The need to pee woke her. She must have fallen asleep within minutes of crawling into bed – either through exhaustion, or a head so jam-packed with nagging thoughts that they’d found no room to circulate. Unfortunately no cerebral Mr Muscle had seeped in and zapped her concerns whilst she slept because, as soon as she opened her eyes, ‘things’ started chugging around.
Having kicked up that fuss about Jordan, before going to bed she had, without thinking, switched her phone off. If he had sent out an SOS, she’d missed it. She checked. There was nothing from him. She could only assume that all was well. (A word of reassurance from Diane was too much to hope for.)
Her relief was short-lived. At ten past two, Alex had left a message. What now? Ben often phoned to recommend a film, or to tell her that he’d seen a spectacular sunset but Alex wasn’t big on random acts of communication. Bracing herself, she listened.
Alex appeared to be drunk – agitated, anyway – and, guessing from the background noise, he was speaking to her from a railway station. ‘Mum? I’m in Sheffield.’ (It sounded like Sheffield but she couldn’t swear to it.) ‘It’s not great here.’ (Sheffield?) ‘Where are you? Cardiff isn’t it? I was wondering … Look. Ummm. Shit. I didn’t realise it was so late. Shit. Sorry.’
That was it. No how’s Jordan or are you having a good time? It didn’t surprise her. Nor did the fact that he’d had forgotten where she was. Cardiff? Carlisle? What difference did it make to him? He knew damn well that – good old Mum – wherever she happened to be, she would ensure that Jordan was okay and would hang onto him until someone bothered to come and collect him. Despite listening to the message three times, she was no closer to understanding why he’d left it. It didn’t tell (or ask) her anything. It merely left her feeling anxious.
Shivering in her thin nightdress, she pulled on a cardigan and tiptoed into the kitchen, closing the door so as not to wake Dafydd. She would see him sooner or later – she wanted to see him – but not just yet, not until she had organised her thoughts (and her hair). She made tea and toasted two slices of bread, spreading them with butter and honey, suspecting that, before the morning was out, she would be glad of the calories. Eating her solitary breakfast, she wondered what Gwen’s parents would make of this stranger in their kitchen, this woman from London who had flitted into their ex son-in-law’s life, spent a night with him in their double bed and flitted out again.
A trill from her cardigan pocket, announced an incoming text message.
Looking forward to seeing you and to some home cooking. ×××× L
Home cooking? What an odd thing to say. Some sort of sexual innuendo? Unlikely. Words were Laurence’s stock in trade and he used them with surgical precision. Home cooking probably did mean … home cooking. A hand-raised pork pie, perhaps? Or a junket? Definitely not a quick-and-easy something grabbed from the freezer.
She rinsed her breakfast plate and looked out of the window. The sky was leaden, heavy with the rain that Dafydd had predicted would soon fall. The world, which yesterday had pulsated with summer colour, looked flat and lifeless.
She showered and washed her hair, taking care to rinse out every trace of shampoo, determined that today it would behave itself. Returning to the bedroom, she retr
ieved her bits and pieces from the floor where she had dumped them in her haste to get into bed. Her clothes were crumpled and everything needed washing. Even so, she rolled every item carefully, as if it were clean and freshly ironed.
What should she do with Gwen’s clothes? There was no question of putting them back in the drawer, unwashed. Or of leaving them for Dafydd to launder. (Had they become lovers, it might have been a different matter.) She could rinse them out now and put them on the line but, with rain on the way, they wouldn’t dry.
She buried her nose in the red T-shirt. Sun cream. Deodorant. Although no one was watching, she felt self-conscious but she couldn’t resist licking the fabric. Salt. In that instant, she was on the beach, scuffing through the shallows, listening to Dafydd’s tales of storms and shipwrecks, hurling pebbles into the waves and writing her name in the ribbed sand.
She would take Gwen’s things back to Cardiff and stick them in Diane’s washing machine. Di could return them sometime.
Before getting dressed, she examined her neck in the mirror. During the night, a rust-brown scab had formed over the wound. When she laid the back of her hand against, it felt warm, the area around it, tender but the wound itself was superficial and shouldn’t take long to heal. She took a step backwards to see more of herself. This morning, her nose looked less red. And, hallelujah, today was a good hair day. By the time she’d finished dressing, she looked pretty much like the Elizabeth Giles who greeted her every morning. Memsahib restored. She sighed and turned her back on her reflection.
Someone flushed the lavatory and the shower curtain rattled along its track. The girls wouldn’t be stirring for a while yet. It must be Dafydd. He would notice the wet shower curtain and know that she was up and about. She strained her ears, wishing that he would sing, or whistle, or do something to indicate that he was feeling okay about last night. She perched on the edge of the bed, hands sandwiched between her knees, listening, like a patient in a doctor’s waiting room, afraid of missing their name when it was called.
The bathroom door opened then, soon after, a spoon clinked against china. She wondered if she should wander into the kitchen. Wouldn’t that be the natural thing to do – one friend to join another over an early morning cuppa? She coughed to make sure he knew that she was awake. But she sat tight.
It wasn’t long before he tapped on the door. ‘Elizabeth?’
Flexing her shoulders, she smiled and called, ‘Come in.’
‘Good morning.’ He kept his eyes on the tray that he was carrying. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Lovely. Thanks.’ Already this morning she’d drunk two cups of tea but, for the sake of friendship, she would manage another.
He lowered the tray onto the tallboy. ‘I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer so I made one of each.’ Looking directly at her for the first time, his mouth set in a smile, he said, ‘It’s only instant coffee I’m afraid.’ Then he left, closing the door behind him, his coolness tantamount to turning the key in the lock.
When she was a child, her father had used similar tactics to punish her when he considered that she had overstepped some boundary or another. He would adopt an expression of pained regret and say, ‘We’re disappointed, Elizabeth. You’ve let us down. And you’ve let yourself down. We expected better of you.’ This was followed by a period of shunning, the misery of it hanging over her (and her mother, who hated any kind of conflict) sometimes for days. Elizabeth had envied – and still did, to a certain extent – people who solved their differences with blazing rows. The Shapcotts, for example, had been at it all the time, shouting and banging doors, screaming the most dreadful abuse then, ten minutes later, sharing a joke and a cigarette. It had seemed a clean, honest way to carry on.
As she stared at the two mugs, the same miserable feeling lodged beneath her ribs and she thought how good it would be to be back in London where she knew how to behave and what to expect.
In order that they might make a speedy getaway, Elizabeth collected and packed her friend’s belongings. (Diane had forfeited her right to privacy when she’d announced that she was spending the night with Joe.) Next she zipped the sleeping bags, rolling them on the floor and squashing them with her knee to prevent them from escaping as she stuffed them into their draw-string bags. When she ran out of things to pack, she opened her book, her eyes ranging aimlessly across the pages.
At three minutes to nine, Diane and Jordan turned up, delivered by someone (she assumed it was Joe) who sounded a car horn and then drove away. Released from self-imposed detention, she hurried to the front door. The pair of them looked crumpled (both clothes and faces) but self-satisfied. Diane had acquired a scuffed black leather jacket and Jordan was wearing a black bandana and clutching a carrier bag.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ Diane said.
Elizabeth checked her watch. ‘You’re not.’
‘Exactly.’ Diane kissed her. ‘I know I pissed you off last night. I didn’t dare risk making things worse.’
‘Will you stop insinuating that I’m a bully?’
‘You are, but we won’t hold it against you, will we Jay?’
Jordan shrugged. ‘I’ll get my stuff,’ he said and hurried upstairs.
‘What’s come over him?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘I promised you’d give him an extra fiver if we get away by nine-thirty. He probably thinks he’s blown it with Mimi so he’ll be happy to get out of here.’
Diane crooked her finger, beckoning Elizabeth into the bedroom. ‘Aren’t you going interrogate me?’
‘No need. You’ve got a smirk on your face and a very nice jacket.’
‘Lovely isn’t it?’ Diane fondled the leather suggestively then, slipping it off, she pulled her dress over her head and, clad only in black lace panties, began rooting through the bag that Elizabeth had packed for her, tossing its contents back onto the bed. She picked out a pair of jeans and wriggled into them then, still bare-breasted, turned to face Elizabeth.
‘Sooo. How did your night go?’ She nodded towards the tray on the tallboy. ‘Breakfast in bed?’
Elizabeth jammed her book into the side pocket of her bag. ‘You’ve got a mind like a sewer.’ Although her eyes were averted, she knew that Diane was staring at her.
‘You’re telling me that nothing happened?’ Diane said. ‘Two nights alone with a gorgeous man and nothing happened?’
‘Of course not. We’re not all … like you.’
‘And we’re not all like you, thank God. You know what they say – it’ll heal up if you don’t use it.’ She snatched up a T-shirt and slipped it over her head. ‘I spend one night in a tent, and another with Joe Carman because I don’t want you to feel inhibited. I don’t tease you about it or even mention it because I know what a prude you are. I leave the coast clear so it won’t be like having sex when your mother’s in the next room. And then … nada?’
‘So you slept with Joe Carman as a favour to me?’Elizabeth stifled a snort. ‘You must think I’m witless.’
‘It’s true. Look, it’s obvious that Dafydd fancies you. He even phoned Lenny and warned him off.’
‘What?’
‘He made it clear that you and he were…’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Joe told me.’
‘Great. It’s nice to know that you’re all talking about me behind my back, like I’m a … charity case or something.’
‘Whatever.’ Diane shrugged and started ramming everything back in her bag.
Elizabeth picked up the tray and left the room. She would have liked a few moments to herself, to think over what Diane had just said, but Jordan was coming down the stairs with his rucksack. He’d swapped his Stuff the Goldfish T-shirt for a new black one bearing the Wolfman logo. Pausing on the bottom stair, he turned to show off the list of dates and venues emblazoned on the back.
‘The nineteen ninety-four tour. Mint. Lenny gave it to me. And the bandana.’
‘That was very generous of him,’ she said, feeling bad as she remembered how ready she had been last nigh
t to blacken the man’s character.
‘They go for a hundred quid on eBay.’ He ran a hand proudly down the front of the T-shirt. ‘I’ll never sell it though.’
Their voices brought Dafydd out of his room and they traded greetings as if it were their first encounter of the day. Seeing him now, easy and friendly, she wondered whether she’d misread his earlier behaviour.
Had he warned Lenny off? Diane’s version of anything wasn’t to be trusted. (But Joe had no reason to tell her if it weren’t true.) Had Dafydd been trying to save her from the embarrassment of Lenny’s advances? Or what? She didn’t know what to think.
‘Breakfast?’ he said.
Diane joined them, giving Elizabeth a rueful smile and a quick hug. Elizabeth didn’t feel inclined to reciprocate but this was neither the time nor place for saying what she needed to say and she glossed over the prickly moment by offering Diane a glass of orange juice.
‘I’ll wake the girls,’ Dafydd said.
‘There’s really no need,’ Elizabeth said.
But Dafydd insisted, calling in Welsh from the bottom of the stairs. Eventually Angel and Mimi came slinking into the kitchen, grumbling and squinting against the daylight. In no time at all, revived by an argument over who should have the last kiwi fruit (Diane put an end to the stand-off by eating it herself ) they looked as fresh as if they’d slept for a week.
Dafydd was pottering around, topping up coffee cups and stoking the toaster. This morning he was wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and loose-fitting shorts which reached below his knees. Laurence rarely wore shorts except when he played squash or tennis. Shorts did nothing for him as his pale legs were on the thin side, in keeping with his physique.