A Wife On Paper

by Liz Fielding

  ‘It sounds ghastly. Steven put Toby down for Eton at birth, but I told him it was a waste of time. There was no way I’d let him go.’

  ‘Well, I guess the difference is that Toby has a mother.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose. How old were you when your mother died?’

  ‘Four. She was thrown from a horse. Killed instantly. Steve’s mother looked very much like her and I suspect she may have played up the resemblance. Dad said afterwards, when I was old enough for him to talk about it, that he thought because she looked like my mother she would be like her. He was utterly bereft, not thinking straight…’

  ‘You had a lot in common. You and Steven.’

  ‘You’d have thought so. Maybe if I’d been there for him, but I was already away at prep school when his mother finally left.’

  ‘Finally?’

  ‘She was never exactly a fixture. She’d hooked herself a millionaire with a house in London and a country estate. She didn’t realise that he spent as little time in London as possible. She certainly hadn’t counted on being a country housewife and mother.’

  ‘No one seems to have been fixed in his life. A visiting god, that’s what he called you. You descended on them during the holidays from Eton. Perfect. Unmatchable.’

  ‘Maybe I should have made more of an effort to get into some serious trouble. Be suspended once or twice. He certainly found it easy enough when he followed me there.’

  ‘Were you such a paragon?’

  ‘No, just luckier.’ Luckier all his life, until Steve met Francesca instead of him… ‘I didn’t get caught,’ he said. Then, ‘Why didn’t you marry him, Francesca?’

  She didn’t immediately answer him. Instead, she carefully poured coffee into two mugs. ‘Cream, sugar?’ she offered.

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  She fetched some cream from the fridge and added a little to her mug. He sensed that she was simply spinning time out while she sorted out an answer in her head.

  He didn’t push. He knew she was going to tell him and he was content to wait until she was ready to talk.

  She didn’t sit down but picked up her mug and crossed to the kitchen door. It opened on to a small veranda created from the roof of the new extension to the lower floor. He’d need to get a surveyor over the place, make sure that it was sound. Check out the situation with planning permission. Somehow placate the owner of the house.

  He picked up his own mug and followed her outside into the autumn sunshine. The veranda, a sun trap with a small table and a couple of chairs and pots overflowing with old-fashioned flowers and herbs, was a great addition, he had to admit. It was stoutly enclosed for safety and there was a gate protecting the steps that led down to the garden. The swing was new, too. And the brightly coloured garden toys for Toby to climb over and through.

  ‘His birthday present,’ she said, following his gaze. ‘From Steven. We were going to have a little party…’ She placed her mug on the table but didn’t sit down. Instead, she leaned against the rail so that she had her back to him. ‘It had to be cancelled.’

  He felt he should know what to say. He’d been through this. Lived through this. All he could feel was pain that another child was going to suffer such an unimaginable loss. Vow to himself that this time he would be there. That he wouldn’t let Toby down in the same way he’d let down his brother.

  That was what Steve was asking him to do. Be there. And he would be.

  Fran was silent for so long that he realised she wasn’t going to be able to look him in the face, tell him the truth, whatever it was, and his gut twisted with the certainty that it was going to be something terrible. But Steve’s features were imprinted on the boy. Unmistakable. It wasn’t that. And he was at a loss to know what could be so awful.

  Then she turned around to look at him and said, ‘I didn’t marry Steven because I was already married.’

  And then he knew.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS STUNNED silences went, the one that followed her confession was epic. It went on and on, stretching the air until she thought it would snap. That Guy might never speak to her again.

  Fran didn’t blame him. Saying the words out loud had been as shocking to her as to him. She’d buried the truth so deep inside her that for long periods she could forget those ten minutes when she’d stood in front of a registrar, barely nineteen, burning with ideals, going through a ceremony that had seemed meaningless to her. Marriage was an outdated institution. Just another way of controlling people, so why not use it against the system?

  It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  It was only when, pregnant with Toby, Steven had asked her to marry him that the reality of her situation had dawned on her.

  Maybe that was why she’d told Guy—to expiate herself. She was never going to be able to put it right with Steven now. But his total stillness, total silence, was so frightening that she reached out, instinctively, to hold on to the railing and brace herself for his reaction.

  Guy was stunned. Steve…yes. Marriage was the kind of mess he might have got himself into when he was younger; he’d actually asked him if there was any impediment to their marriage. But Francesca…

  Questions piled in on him. Who had she been married to? When? What had happened? She must have been so young…

  One question, the one he least wanted to ask—the one he least wanted an answer to—pushed its way to the front and refused to be brushed aside.

  ‘Did Steve know?’

  She swallowed. He saw the nervous reaction and knew the answer, even before she shook her head.

  He dragged both hands through his hair, looked up at the pale blue sky, anywhere but at her, and blew out a long breath that he must have been holding ever since she’d dropped her bombshell.

  ‘Well,’ he said, when at last he could speak through a pain that was slicing into his heart. ‘He lied to you about the house. I guess you’re about even.’

  She didn’t answer. He didn’t expect her to. There really wasn’t anything to say. He should walk away now. Take the easy way out and protest the needs of business. All she really needed was money, and Tom could handle that.

  But he couldn’t leave it. Or let it rest.

  ‘You didn’t think,’ he said, twisting the knife—in her, or in himself, he’d have been hard pressed to say— ‘of getting a divorce? Or are you against those on principle, too?’ Then, ‘Oh, no. Sorry. We’ve just established that you don’t have any principles—’

  ‘It wasn’t a proper marriage,’ she said, rallying, to cut through his vile sarcasm. But he couldn’t stop himself.

  ‘No? Maybe you’d care to explain the difference between a proper and an improper marriage to me. These are not concepts I’m familiar with.’

  She flushed, but didn’t crumble. If anything she stood taller… ‘I meant,’ she said, ‘that it was in name only. I married a fellow student when I was in my first year at university. He was going to be sent back to a country where he’d have been in danger.’

  ‘But that’s—’

  ‘I know. Illegal. But his father had been murdered, his mother was in prison. He was desperate.’ She shrugged. ‘At least, that was the story. It took me a while to realise that it was just a racket. Gullible students hot on human rights issues who thought they were being noble were being used by people who knew how to work the system.’

  It just got worse… ‘Are you saying he wasn’t a student?’

  ‘I’d seen him on the campus. He knew enough to convince me that he was reading law and I had no reason to doubt him.’

  ‘Surely you had to live with him? At least make it look as if you did?’

  ‘Only if Immigration decided to investigate. I don’t suppose they have the resources to investigate everyone, and I never saw him again once we’d parted outside the register office. Him clutching the marriage certificate to prove his bona fides to the authorities. Me clutching my ideals to my bosom, thinking I’d done something good.’

  ‘You didn
’t think to go to the police when you realised the truth?’

  ‘It took a while for me to catch on. He’d said he would have to go to London to sort everything out. That it would probably take a few weeks. It was only when he didn’t return the following term and I was concerned that he’d been deported after all that I asked someone in the law faculty to try and find out what had happened. Of course no one there had ever heard of him. I’m not stupid—’ She paused, gave the smallest of shrugs, ‘All right, I am stupid, but I knew what I’d done was against the law. That at the very least I could be thrown out of university as an example. A warning. So I just put it out of my mind. Tried to forget it had ever happened. Told myself I’d clear up the mess after I’d graduated.’

  Her knuckles, white as she gripped the railing, gave the lie to her apparent insouciance.

  ‘I didn’t, of course. I was too busy with my first job, too short of money to pay anyone to find him. Not that I had the first idea where to start. And it just didn’t seem that important.’

  ‘And then you met Steve.’

  ‘Even then… Until I realised I was pregnant and Steven was so excited, wanted to get married immediately. I went to see a solicitor then, but since I had no way of finding the man I’d married I was told I’d have to wait the full five years before I could institute divorce proceedings without his consent.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell Steve?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  Understand? Of course he didn’t understand! ‘Try me,’ he urged.

  ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  She looked a touch desperate. ‘He worshipped me, Guy. Had me on this pedestal…’ She looked at him. ‘It’s an uncomfortable place to be.’

  ‘Especially when you don’t deserve to be there.’

  She flared up. ‘I told you you wouldn’t understand. But then you’re comfortable up there looking down on the rest of us, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not…’ He stopped. He’d asked for that. Deserved it. ‘Is there anything I can do to help? To sort it out?’

  ‘It’s a little late for that, wouldn’t you say? But no. The five years were up this year. The decree was finalised a couple of months ago.’

  The relief he felt was foolish beyond words. But real none the less.

  She turned away from him to look out over the garden. ‘How ironic that Steven should have booked a wedding. I was going to do that. Take him to a tropical island, tell him the truth… Maybe he found the brochure I’d brought home and thought I was hinting.’

  ‘You were that sure he’d say yes?’ he demanded brutally. ‘When he knew what you’d done? Or maybe you were going to gloss over that bit?’ And then, when she flinched, he’d have given anything to call the words back. Of course his brother would have said yes. Maybe even come clean about his own deception…

  ‘Unfortunately there was no way to get around that word “divorced” on the marriage certificate. Besides, I wanted to climb down to earth. Ground our relationship. Think about having a brother or sister for Toby.’

  The tears were close again, but she managed to hold them back as, with a gesture that took in the house, the garden, everything, she glanced back at him.

  ‘That’s what all this was about, Guy. He was so insecure. He thought he had to give me all this to keep me with him. It was a long time before I understood that. He deserved to know, to be sure that I would never have left him…’

  ‘And now?’ The knife was definitely in his own gut.

  ‘Now?’ Francesca released the handrail as if, having unburdened herself, she no longer needed its support. ‘Now I think we’d better get back to business. I’d still like to go into the office today. I’ve got a business to run.’

  She didn’t wait for him to speak, but walked resolutely towards the door, leaving him to decide whether he would join her or not. He stepped back, let her pass, and then after a moment he retrieved their untouched mugs of coffee and followed her inside. She’d brought down Steven’s large briefcase, too, and she started emptying it of files, notebooks, catalogues. Keeping her head down in an attempt to hide the fact that tears were running down her cheeks.

  ‘Why don’t you check the laptop?’ she suggested.

  ‘If that suits you,’ he said briskly, as if he hadn’t noticed.

  She dug his handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. ‘I don’t actually have much choice in the matter, do I? And the sooner it’s done, the sooner you’ll be gone.’

  He was saved from answering by Toby, who raced through the hall and then came to an abrupt halt just out of his reach, suddenly overcome with shyness.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Connie said, following him at a more sedate pace. ‘He lost all interest in the ducks the minute he heard that his uncle Guy was here.’ Then, seeing Francesca’s expression, her face fell. ‘I should not say?’

  ‘No problem,’ he said quickly. Then, ‘Hi, Toby.’ His voice was unexpectedly thick with emotion as he smiled at the child, wanting to sweep him up, hug him, but his long absence denied him that pleasure, that joy. He would have to earn his place in his brother’s family and he hadn’t made a good start. ‘I didn’t know I’d be seeing you today or I’d have brought your ball with me.’

  ‘’s’okay.’ The boy took a step nearer, his eyes wide as he looked at the laptop. ‘Can I play on that?’

  ‘Oh, right! Budding genius,’ he said, grabbing his chance before his mother intervened and sent him off for a nap—anything to keep the bullying monster away from her precious boy. Held out his hand in a mute invitation to join him. Toby didn’t need any further encouragement, but scrambled up on to his lap. ‘Right, Mr Einstein, this is what we’re going to do. Since this fine machine has a CD rewriter, we’re going to copy some files so that I can take them home to look at and leave your mother in peace. Want to help?’

  ‘Can I?’ Toby looked up at him with a wide-eyed wonder that tugged at his heart. ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He took an unused CD out of the laptop case. On the point of giving it to Toby to hold, he spotted the state of his fingers and thought better of it. Instead he said, ‘Can you press that button for me?’ When the drawer clicked out he laid the CD in place. ‘Now push it back until it clicks—gently.’

  It took Toby a couple of goes to make it click shut and he looked up for reassurance.

  ‘Good job. Okay, now I’m going to take your finger…’ He took his tiny hand in his own and laid the end of his finger over Toby’s. ‘And we’re going to press that key. Just once. Lightly.’ He tapped the key with Toby’s finger and a list of files came up. ‘Oh!’

  ‘You liked that? Want to do it again?’

  After doing it half a dozen times they moved on, and between them they marked the files and copied them to the CD. It took longer than if he’d done it on his own, but that didn’t matter. He’d wasted too much time, staying away, doing the right thing. This was the right thing…

  When they’d done he looked up and discovered that both Connie and Francesca were watching them, apparently transfixed.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’ Francesca swallowed. ‘It’s just that…people don’t usually let little boys play with thousands of pounds worth of computer hardware.’

  ‘No? Believe me, this was easy. Toby speaks English. It’s a lot harder when you’re in some place that the world forgot—or more likely never knew existed—and the kids only speak some dialect that has never been written down.’ Then, ‘And I resent “playing”. We weren’t playing, we were working.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I’ll, um, get on. Connie, maybe Mr Einstein over there could do with a nap.’

  He lifted Toby down and said, ‘Off you go, partner. Next time I come I’ll bring your ball.’

  ‘Will you play f’ball with me?’

  Football. He swallowed. His brother might have protected his laptop from sticky fingers, but he knew that Steve would have played football a
ll day with his little boy: he’d never quite grown up himself, after all. And who would be there for the child now if Guy disappeared back overseas, left lawyers and money to do what his brother had expected him to do personally? Care.

  ‘I’d like that,’ he said. And, when the little boy put his arms up for a hug, it was his turn to choke back the tears.

  After Guy had gone, with Toby asleep and Connie tackling a pile of ironing, Fran determinedly ignored the faint smell of scorching and took everything up to Steven’s office. She longed to just put her head down on his desk and weep, but what use was that?

  Instead, she set about looking through the papers. What she should have been doing instead of watching Guy with Toby.

  Guy drove to his office, dealt with the condolences, then worked his way through his messages. One of them was from the pair he’d met at the funeral. There was no point in putting it off and he called back, only to discover that they didn’t want money. They wanted to buy an option that Steve had negotiated to import silk goods from China. Things were looking up. He took the details and promised someone would get back to them.

  Then he shut himself away in his office, leaving instructions that he was not to be disturbed. He booted up his computer and inserted the CD holding the files he’d copied from Steve’s laptop. And he laid the envelope containing Steve’s letter on his blotter.

  If Francesca’s confession had been in the nature of a hand grenade, the letter had all the allure of an unexploded bomb, and he put it, unopened, to one side. First he had to know how bad things were—and, since Steve had cashed in his life policy, it had to be bad.

  He spent the afternoon picking over the financial bones of Steve’s company. It did not make for happy reading.

  The business had initially been successful. Supplemented by the money that should have been used as a deposit for the house it had made enough to support the lavish lifestyle Steve had created for himself and Francesca. But in these recessionary days it was making little more than enough to pay his staff and sometimes that had been a close shave. As Guy had suspected, Steven had cashed in his life policy in a desperate bid to reduce his overdraft and hold off the bank. But he hadn’t cut back on his own expenses.