by Caron Allan
“Did you have a nice evening?” I asked a bit warily. The two men looked as though they were ready to retreat if necessary. She banged a bit more and Tetley dived out the cat-flap.
“Had a bleedin’ stand-up row wiv the teacher, didn’t I?” She said, and turned to face me. She had tears in her eyes. She came and sat down at the table and I joined her.
“Oh dear,” I said, “how did that happen?”
So she told me everything. It didn’t sound as though the teacher had a clue about baking for real people. And being young, with a university education, she hadn’t taken well to the voice of experience.
“I won’t be going back,” Lill finished up with. “And I don’t fink Joan will be coming back here neiver.” She looked at me, desolate, tears spilling down her cheeks, her anger gone and replaced by that awful what-have-I-done emotion that I could so easily relate to.
I patted her hand.
“If the teacher didn’t listen to you, she’s an idiot. No one knows more about cooking and especially baking than you do.”
I made her a cup of tea and told her about our evening. Sid and Matt wandered in, discussing self-tapping screws versus – I don’t know – screws that have to be tapped by someone else, I suppose.
“Oh God, it was horrible!” Matt said, hearing part of our discussion. I told Lill I’d decided to bottle feed, expecting a lecture on the breast-is-best topic everyone keeps on about. But Sid – Mr Shed – said, “makes sense, don’t it? You can see how much the little bugger’s getting and we can all help out. I used to love giving our kids their bottle, really good bonding time, that was. Special. Some of me best memories are of sitting up in the middle of the night, just me and the babe.”
Wow. Easy as that. But convincing my doctor and midwife won’t be anything like so easy.
Tuesday 16 September – 7.45pm
Can’t believe it! Matt and I walked Paddy to school with Billy – no tears whatsoever! When we reached the gates, Paddy’s little friend Miles was just arriving, and the two little lads ran off together, forgetting all about the rest of us! And Billy! She was running around with Millie and didn’t even notice the boys had gone into school!
Miles and Millie’s Mum is called Sara, and she works from home as an illustrator and graphic designer – how very clever! And she seems very nice, not too common or anything like that but not a hooray Henrietta either. No mention of a Man in her life so far, but obviously those children had to come from somewhere so it is only a matter of time before I winkle al the grisly details out of her.
She offered to collect both Paddy and Billy on Friday and take them back to hers for lunch and playtime. Matt and I looked at each other in astonishment. This was not an offer to turn down!
“If you’re sure it won’t be too much trouble.” I said. Did she really want four small children under her feet for an entire afternoon?
“No, honestly, it’ll be fine,” Sara-the-Martyr-slash-Saint said, and she seemed perfectly confident so in a slight daze we accepted. We chatted for a few more minutes then she excused herself.
Matt and I walked home with Billy who was skipping along happily and chatting away. How weird! How quickly all the tears and hysterics have been forgotten and given way to acceptance and even contentment, and chatting and skipping. And to be child-free for an afternoon will feel a bit odd.
Still no word from Jeremy. I think I ought to ring. Trouble is, what am I going to say?
Wednesday 17 Sept – 11.20am
Had a lovely couple of hours this morning shopping for cots and other baby essentials (well perhaps not all of them were essential!) Found some absolutely gorgeous units in a lovely range of colours. Chose blue to begin with, but then changed my mind and opted for a pale green. Then once we got home I changed my mind again and had to ring them up and ask them to send me the natural honey units instead, it will be a better match with the décor and everything, and obviously you don’t get fed up with wood-coloured wood as quickly as you do other-coloured wood. At least I hope not. They were very nice about it though, clearly they are used to dealing with pregnant women.
Anyway, all being delivered on Saturday, so ‘the boys’ will have a new project to play around with over the weekend.
Same day – 9.30pm
Had still been fretting about Jeremy and in the end I managed to screw up my courage and so finally at about half-past five I phoned Nadina at the flat. I had my fingers crossed that it would be Jeremy himself who answered and that would save me all kinds of trouble. And if he did answer, I could then a) hang up but be happy that he was home and that all was well, or b) I could demand an explanation as to why he had arranged to come and see me and then not turned up without the slightest intimation of apology or – er – explanation.
So I dialled the number, feeling very pleased with myself for having it all planned out, and then Nadina answered.
That threw me a bit and like an idiot I didn’t say anything immediately so she stated panicking and doing the “hello, hello?” thing that reminded me of the hoax calls from Monica a few months ago and how unnerving they were for me. Which finally galvanised me into speech. I mean I completely detest the simpering cow but I didn’t want to upset her.
“Hi Nadina, it’s Cressida.” I therefore said, injecting bright happiness into my voice.
“Oh, it’s you.” She said, and didn’t bother to even try and hide her disappointment. Simpering cow. “What do you want?”
Well, I suppose I could understand her attitude – we didn’t exactly part as friends last time we spoke. But I left all that on one side because I really was concerned about Jeremy. I said,
“Is Jeremy there? Could I just have a quick chat, if he’s not too busy? Please?”
There was a silence, then some tiny snuffly sounds. She was crying!
“What’s the matter?” I asked, thinking, oh shite not again.
“He’s left me …” she sniffed.
“No! Surely not!” I reacted first and thought second. I wished afterwards I’d said something a bit more helpful and less incredulous-sounding.
“I haven’t seen him since Saturday. You’ll be pleased to know you were right, I expect. He’s found someone else!”
Now she began to really sob and I felt awful. I waited a few minutes, hoping she’d calm down. When she didn’t, in a big loud voice above the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I said, “well, did he say anything? Who is she? Where was he going? I mean did he give you any clue at all, did he tell you anything or – well – anything …?
But she just kept moaning “no” and sobbing.
“I’m coming up,” I said, “I’ll be there in two hours.”
I expected her to protest, to tell me with great scorn and venom to take a running jump. But she just whispered, “okay, see you soon.” And then she hung up.
I immediately ran into the kitchen to tell the others, who were all having a cuppa at the table. Matt wasn’t happy with my decision to go up to London.
“It could be a trap,” he said. I couldn’t see how it could be, and told him so. He did his hands-thrown-up-in- the-air-and-simultaneously-washed-of-the-whole-thing thing. Very mature. Very helpful.
Lill simply said, “well you’d better get going. But be careful and make sure you keep your phone handy just in case. And let us know as soon as you get there and as soon as you leave again.”
Sid offered to drive me, but I declined the offer. I promised to keep in touch and kissed everyone – including Sid – goodbye and set off in my little runabout.
It was a tedious drive but mercifully uneventful. When I reached Nadina’s flat and held up my hand to knock on the front door, I felt an odd sense of déjà vu. Very unsettling. I was half-expecting Matt to be right and I would find this was just one massive hoax, but as soon as Nadina opened the door and I saw her, I knew it wasn’t a hoax – it was real. No one could fake that depth of misery.
She had clearly not washed or changed her clothes for several days. Her ha
ir was limp and uncombed. She smelt terrible and her face was blotchy, her eyes red raw from endless weeping and wiping. She fell into my arms and sobbed snottily on my shoulder.
I managed to manoeuvre my way into the flat and shove her down onto the sofa. I found her a spare loo roll and yanked a few streamers off and bundled them into her hands and she made ineffectual little dabs at her face.
“Tell me what happened.” I said. She did. Basically she’d told him – don’t know why – that Monica was really alive and that she had recruited Nadina to convince me Monica was dead. Jeremy had been completely in the dark about everything.
“He’s always had a soft spot for you,” Nadina said, “and I knew if I let him in on what Monica had got me to do he wouldn’t approve. So I kept it from him.” She subsided into weeping again, but after a few minutes managed to pull herself together and continued. I was sitting next to her on the sofa and she was clutching my hand with both of hers in a surprisingly painful grip. I hope I never have to meet her in hand to hand combat, she’s deffo stronger than me.
“So he thought Monica was really dead. Then what?” I prompted.
“Then on Friday he decided to finish early and he came home and she was here with me, drinking wine and plotting her next move. Funny it’s usually another man isn’t it? When partners come home early from work?”
I flapped impatiently at her with my only free hand, and mercifully she stopped wittering and got on with it.
“I could tell Monica was upset by how angry and – I don’t know – disgusted he was. Monica, he and I had a massive row, then Monny left … and Jeremy and I … we rowed, Cressy, I’ve never known anything like it. I was actually scared. I’ve never seen him so angry. The look in his eyes …”
“So what did he do?” I asked. I had a bad feeling about this – I kind of knew, or thought I did – what he had done. There was a horrid sort of inevitability about it.
She sighed. She was quieter now, spent. She slurped a little of the tea I had made her almost an hour earlier. I hoped in a little while to persuade her to have a shower too.
“Monica rang later to ask if I was okay. I told her how angry he was. I told her he’d said we had to admit what we’d done to you. I told her – and him – that I thought you’d already worked it out – because of the photos, you know. I reminded him about his call to you, those horrid things he said to you. He had already been feeling really bad about that. Anyway she told me just to leave him to calm down; she said she’d think of how to handle him. But for the first time ever he didn’t come to bed that night, he slept on the sofa. Saturday morning he went out for a little while, then he came back and packed a bag and he went out again. I ran after him, telling him I was sorry and that I loved him, but …” her voice trailed away and she sat looking down at her fidgeting fingers. Another couple of tears rolled down her cheeks, and with her silence, and her frantic fingers, it was even worse than when she was sobbing. After what seemed like forever, she said softly, “but he just ignored me and then he – just – left.”
She began to cry softly again. I felt awful for her, I knew myself the terrible gnawing pain of losing someone, although I reminded myself there was still the possibility of her chap coming back home once he stopped feeling so furious. I leaned back against the sofa and she collapsed on my shoulder and wept.
A bit later I told her about his phone call to me on Saturday. She perked up immediately.
“So he was coming down to see you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he was going to tell you everything?”
“Well, yes, now I do. At the time I thought he might still be angry with me. I thought he was going to serve me papers or something, because of – well, you know.”
“Hmm.”
“Look Nad,” (yes, now I’m doing it too!) “I really think you should go to the police and report him missing. Get the police to look for him.”
She blustered, shocked.
“Surely not! I mean …”
“Just as a precaution,” I said. In the end I managed to convince her. We went to the nearest police station, sat there for about two hours completing paperwork and talking to a nice lady officer who tried to reassure Nadina. It was a bit tricky, there was so much about Monica and me and Nadina that we had to leave out. Hopefully it sounded like a love-triangle thingy turned a bit nasty – a triangle formed of Nadina, Jeremy and Monica, obviously, not me, Monica and Nadina!!
I must just stop and ring everyone at home and let them know I will be rather late getting back.
Same day – 3am (so technically Thursday)
Just had to ring home again to tell them I‘m staying here with Nadina for at least tonight, and possibly a bit longer. She’s distraught.
The police rang earlier this evening. The body of a man matching Jeremy’s description had been found early on Sunday morning in the car park of the motorway services. Nothing to indicate identity had been found on the body, which was obviously a bit odd in itself, and the car is a company pool vehicle, so it has taken a while to yield personal details
We were taken down in a police vehicle to try to identify the body.
Too upset to write anymore at the moment. Suffice to say that yes, it was Jeremy.
Saturday 20 September – 7.30pm
I came back home this afternoon. Nadina is much calmer now, though obviously still distraught, but she is composed. She said she appreciated everything I’d done for her but that she felt she needed a little time on her own before she goes up to stay with Jeremy's parents in Norwich. Also, she has got so many things to organise and sign – well, I know how much work the death of a loved one can create. And the police will need to be able to contact her too.
But at least we have had some long chats in the last 36 hours or so, and she has told me everything – basically confirming my suspicions – that Monica decided to play dead to torment me, that she enlisted Nadina as her assistant by telling her of the terrible things I’d done, (and completely ignoring what she herself had done) that I’d killed Huw and his girlfriend and even attempted to kill Monica herself.
“But of course,” Nadina wept, “now that we’ve had this time together and I know how devoted you are to Matt and the little ones, I know you could never do anything so wicked as to take the life of another human being.”
“Of course not!” I responded, fingers-crossed behind my back. “I could never do a thing like that. And it was Monica who killed my darling Thomas.” And I proceeded to give her a heavily edited account of all that has happened over the last year, dwelling especially on the little gloating “Criss Cross” texts Monica had sent me. Nadina was suitably horrified. She wept a bit more, for Thomas and for me as well as herself and poor departed Jeremy. She begged me to forgive her, which of course I did. Only too happy to.
So now there she is in her empty little flat in London and I am back here in the bosom of my warm and loving family. I am curled up in an armchair with two small children and two small cats and we are reading “Room On The Broom”, which is lovely and always makes me feel a bit weepy ad sentimental.
But my thoughts return to Monica again and again. Somehow she got her talons into Jeremy. Nadina didn’t have much idea where he was going or why, but I don’t think it could have been that he just happened to be in the area, he was clearly a special trip to see me to tell me what he had found out and to apologise and warn me about Monica being alive.
And somehow – no doubt the police will soon be able to tell us how – Monica managed to corner Jeremy, and overcome him and murder him. This time there is no attempt to disguise the death as an accident or suicide or natural causes, and therefore the Boys In Blue will investigate the murder, solve it, and Monica will be sent to prison for the rest of her life and we shall all be safe in our beds at night.
Monday 22 September – 8.05pm
Sid’s birthday today! He’s 58. For some reason that surprised me, though I’m not too sure why it should because
his son is 32 so obviously poor old Sid had to be getting on a bit. But Sid is so young-looking and so keen on technology and a lot of other modern stuff, it always makes him seem younger than he really is.
Lill stayed up late last night finishing off a cake for him, and Matt has taken both Sid and Lill (poor Lill! But she is so good – nothing is too much for her beloved Sid – I only hope Matt and I are half as devoted a couple as Sid and Lill. When she left this morning I tried to persuade her to save herself but she just smiled and said “it’s a day out”. Poor Lill!) to the National Shed Exhibition at the NEC at Birmingham.
Another perfect drop off at school, and another nice little play-date for Billy and her new pal.
A quiet, relaxing day, with no further news re Jeremy or Monica. Had a text from Nadina last night just to let me know she is going up to stay with Jeremy’s parents in Norwich for a couple of days and thanking me once again “for just being there, Cressy, my dear, dear friend”. Yak. Still she is in the midst of grief. One must try to make allowances.
Tuesday 23 September – 8.30pm
It seems like forever since Henrietta and I have had our ‘usual’ down at the pub. So it felt like a real treat to get together and catch up and to drown my sorrows in a huge glass of hot chocolate with all the trimmings – baby marshmallows (pink and white), whipped ie squirty cream and now – crumbled chocolate flake pieces! I was in hog heaven!
But then – oh dear – Mavis rang Henrietta on her mobile. Was vaguely surprised that both Mavis and Henrietta even had mobiles, let alone knew how to use them.
Anyway it was a distress call – and we had to abandon our drinks and run over to the church. I was slightly consoled by the fact that I’d already scoffed all the interesting bits of my drink, and only had the slightly scummy not-very-hot chocolate to drink.
When we reached the church, Mavis was waiting for us outside the side door. She looked more than a little agitated. She led us inside, saying,