by Simon Brett
There was probably an easier way to get from Fethering to Morden by public transport, but Jude didn’t investigate it. Carole, she knew would have done, but Jude was content to get the train from Fethering Station to Victoria, get to the southbound Northern Line and stay on the tube as far as it went.
She had taken a book with her, a treatise a friend had written about the relationship between the NHS and complementary medicine, but her gaze kept sliding off the page. She was tired; the last night had been a troubled one, though that wasn’t the only reason for her poor concentration. Thoughts whirled around her head in unaccustomed agitation. And for some reason, she felt worried about the forthcoming encounter with Megan. Her old friend’s manner on the phone had set up a barrier between them. And, though Jude was not a person to let grievances fester, she did not think their meeting was going to be an easy one.
Getting off at the underground station was familiar from the many times she’d made the journey to visit the newly married Sinclairs, but when she emerged she found herself in a slightly different Morden from the one of twenty years before. Then it had been a depressed, dreary outer suburb. But, as house prices in London rocketed, even well-heeled commuters found themselves having to move further away from the centre to find an affordable family house. Places like Morden were suddenly in danger of becoming trendy. The change hadn’t happened yet; it was a work in progress. Morden remained a depressed, dreary outer suburb, but one perhaps on the verge of gentrification.
Jude noticed a few more coffee shops and restaurants than there had been before. Some of them even had seats and tables outside, supporting England’s doomed attempt to recreate what people liked to call ‘café society’ (which will never quite work until there’s a change in the country’s weather). In January, the only people sitting outside were desperate cigarette-puffers driven there by the smoking ban.
The Ancient Persia was a sign of the change to come. It didn’t look ancient at all. Nor particularly Persian. But it did look very new. Apart from a couple of tall, non-functioning hookahs by way of set dressing, everything else was scrubbed wood, stainless steel and glass. It was one of the new wave of exotically ethnic restaurants that were invading all parts of London. Though giving the impression of individuality, most of them were parts of chains. Equally ‘individual’ Ancient Persias could be found in Shoreditch, Crouch End and Stoke Newington. The fact that one had opened in Morden was a very encouraging sign for the area. Waitrose might come next.
The first thing that struck Jude about Megan, already sitting at the table, was her size. It was at least twenty years since they had last met and Jude knew that the menopause could be cruel. She herself had put on the pounds, but nothing to compare with the scale on which Megan had. She had given up ‘waiflike’ for ‘tubby’. Her once ‘surprisingly’ blue eyes had sunk into rolls of flesh. No one now would speak of her ‘fragile beauty’ without irony. Nor, to be uncharitably accurate, would anyone speak of any kind of beauty. Megan Georgeson, having flitted for some years through the steamy dreams of so many male television viewers, in her fifties had transformed into a dumpy woman to whom no one would have given a second glance.
She didn’t rise to meet Jude. She stayed in her seat with a half-empty glass of wine in front of her. ‘Long time no see,’ she drawled, in what now sounded like a parody of her theatrical voice.
Jude followed her instinct and did what she would have done with any of her friends, arms round neck and a kiss. The gesture wasn’t made easier by the recipient’s seated immobility.
As Jude took her seat opposite, Megan said, ‘Well, there’s a lot more of you than when we last met.’
It wasn’t in Jude’s nature to snap back with a line about pots and kettles. Instead, she chuckled. ‘Which of us can resist the march of the years, eh?’
Megan laughed cynically and downed her remaining wine. ‘Must get some more of this. Do you drink red?’
‘Well, I usually—’
But her friend wasn’t listening. She waved to a purple-jacketed waiter who was taking the order from an adjacent table. ‘Cyrus,’ she called, and held her two hands apart at the height of a bottle. Cyrus nodded to acknowledge the order. Clearly Megan was a regular at the Ancient Persia. Also, it seemed, a regular drinker.
‘Still on the red wine, I see,’ Jude observed. ‘Al always liked his red wine, didn’t he?’
‘Red wine, beer, whisky. He liked everything alcoholic. Hardly ever left the house without his little hipflask of Scotch – but you remember that, don’t you, Jude?’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘Of course you do.’ Megan reached for her glass and was disappointed to be reminded it was empty.
Jude was beginning to feel their conversation had got off on the wrong foot. So, perhaps belatedly, she said, ‘I suppose I should be offering you condolences about Al’s death.’
‘Why? He’s nothing to do with me. He hasn’t been anything to do with me for fifteen years.’
‘Maybe not, but—’
‘Anyway, why should I care what’s happened to the bastard? He screwed up my life pretty thoroughly. Five wasted years of marriage, and then I discovered the slime-ball was screwing everything in sight. I had a complete breakdown after the divorce – did you know that?’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t know, would you? Never heard from you after the marriage ended, did I?’
‘I tried ringing a good few times, left messages, but you never got back to me.’
‘Really? Didn’t I? How remiss of me.’ Megan’s tone implied that no such messages had ever been sent.
‘I can assure you I—’
Jude was interrupted by the arrival at their table of the waiter, Cyrus. He unscrewed the wine bottle and filled their two glasses. Then he poised his pen over his notepad. ‘Are you ready to order?’
‘I’ll have the usual,’ said Megan.
‘Of course.’ He wrote it down ‘Fesenjan.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Jude.
‘It is a very traditional Persian dish,’ the waiter replied. ‘Chicken with ground walnuts and pomegranate – very good.’
‘I’ll have the same.’ She hadn’t had an opportunity to look at the menu, but wanted to get back to challenging Megan’s accusations of disloyalty. As Cyrus moved away, she picked up, ‘I can assure you I did everything to try and contact you, but got no response.’
‘Oh well, water under the bridge.’ But Megan didn’t say it in a forgiving way. ‘So, the marriage took five years out of my life, the breakdown took two – more than that, actually. I’m still not shot of the symptoms. And when I’m finally in a state to pick up my career, I ring my agent and – surprise, surprise – there haven’t been any recent enquiries for my services. The news of my illness had somehow got out, and who wants to employ an actor who’s got mental problems? Making television is such an expensive process, producers can’t risk casting someone who might crack up at any moment. So bye-bye, career.
‘And of course that bastard Al was always stringing me along about having children. He knew I wanted to, but he kept putting it off.’
Jude’s own view was that Al Sinclair had never wanted children. He was one of those men whose ego was so huge he didn’t want his women’s adoration of him to be diluted by any other demands. But she kept that opinion to herself, saying, ‘To be fair, your television career was doing so well at that time, you wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt—’
‘I would have dropped it all in a moment to have a baby!’ Megan was now in full tragic heroine mode. Jude didn’t believe her, but understood how she had refashioned her past into something she now thought was the truth.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but—’
‘You never had children, did you, Jude?’ Megan looked at her beadily.
‘No.’
‘And doesn’t it make you feel dreadful?’
‘No,’ Jude replied, evenly and honestly. ‘The right time and the ri
ght man never coincided.’
‘Al was the right man for me, and I’m sure if we’d had a baby we could have saved the marriage.’
Jude disagreed completely. Having Megan tied to the house by a baby would have just given someone like Al Sinclair further scope for his infidelities. But there was no point in saying anything. Nothing would shift Megan from the version of the past that she had forged.
‘Well, who knows?’ said Jude, resorting to a safe platitude.
‘I know,’ Megan responded. ‘The point about being married to a bastard like Al is that …’
Fortunately, the diatribe was stopped by the arrival of Cyrus with their fesenjan. The dark brown stew, served on a bed of rice and garnished with pomegranate seeds, smelt wonderful, rich and warming, perfect for an icy January day.
Cyrus refilled their wine glasses. Megan’s was empty; Jude’s only needed topping up. And that wasn’t because of her preference for white wine. She was finding the Shiraz they were drinking quite acceptable. It was just that Megan was drinking faster than she was.
The fesenjan was as delicious as it smelt: rich, creamy and probably devastating to the waistline. For a moment, there was a silence as the two women started eating.
Then Megan said, ‘Pity Al isn’t with us today.’
‘No, it’s very sad that—’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Oh?’
Megan’s next words were accompanied by a vicious grin. ‘I mean, that this would kill him.’ She gestured to their fesenjan.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, come on, Jude, don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.’
‘Forgotten what?’
‘That Al was allergic to walnuts. For God’s sake, he was always going on about it. Turned it into a drama, like everything else in his life. Never went anywhere without his EpiPen. Kept going on about “spending his life on the edge of death”. Seemed to think it turned him into a tragic doomed artist, like bloody Keats. Oh, Jude, of course you knew about it.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t.’
‘Oh well, if that’s the way you want to play it …’ She took another big swallow of wine. Once again, her glass was emptying considerably faster than Jude’s.
‘Megan, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I knew a lot more about Al than I did.’
‘What, you stopped listening to him after a while, did you? I know what you mean. I did the same. He did go on a bit, didn’t he? But I thought you’d have taken in the information about his precious allergy, given how much time you spent together.’
‘We didn’t spend any time together. I don’t think Al and I ever spent more than ten minutes together without you present.’
Megan let out a little cynical laugh. ‘OK, if that’s your story, stick with it, by all means.’
‘It’s not a story.’ Jude seemed to have been closer to anger in the last thirty-six hours than she had for a very long time. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘Then why were you suddenly so keen to get in touch with me? And don’t tell me it had anything to do with Al’s Seth Marston books.’
‘That was the original reason.’
‘But then, when Al’s death became public, you had other reasons to contact me.’
‘The main one being that the police contacted me.’
‘And that got you worried?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No? Detective Inspector Rollins, was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I spent a long time talking to her yesterday.’
‘Right.’
Megan smiled complacently, not about to divulge what she and the Inspector had talked about. ‘And Rollins got you worried, did she?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Oh, come on, Jude. You’re not going to persuade me that you were so keen to see me just to offer condolences?’
‘I’m not saying that. Offering condolences was obviously part of—’
‘Anyway,’ Megan interrupted, ‘shouldn’t it be me offering condolences to you? You loved Al a lot more than I ever did.’
‘What?’
‘As soon as he was on the scene, you seemed to be round all the time.’
‘We saw no more of each other than we did when you were single.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘You were my friend. When Al came along, I was just pleased you’d found someone, that’s all.’
‘If that’s all, why did you see so much of us then?’ asked Megan aggressively. ‘It wasn’t me you wanted to see once Al was around.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous? As I mentioned, I haven’t noticed much sign of you being in touch with me since the divorce. Whereas I’m sure you and Al have been permanently “in touch”.’
‘Megan, that is absolute nonsense. Till he contacted me about his talk in Fethering Library, I’d hardly heard from him since the divorce.’
‘You and I haven’t been in touch since then either,’ said Megan, rather wistfully.
‘I know we haven’t, and I regret that much more. You were the one I wanted to keep in touch with.’
For a moment, there was a softness in Megan’s eyes, a flicker of the friendship that had once existed between them. But it vanished very quickly, and she was back on the attack. ‘In spite of that, it was Burton who knew you lived in Fethering, wasn’t it? I didn’t know that.’
‘I assume he heard through a mutual friend. I certainly didn’t tell him.’
‘No?’ Megan gave a weary sigh, topped up her wine glass and took a long swallow. ‘You can stop pretending, Jude. I know that your affair with Al started soon after our wedding. And it was your affair with Al that broke up a perfectly good marriage.’
‘That is just not true!’ In her shock, Jude spoke louder than she’d intended. A few of the other customers looked with characteristically English embarrassment towards their table.
‘Oh, I know what’s true,’ Megan assured her. And Jude realized how firmly the details of her recreated past had taken root in the woman’s mind.
‘And did you tell Detective Inspector Rollins about what you’ve just accused me of?’
‘Of course.’ Megan smiled complacently. ‘When you’re questioned by the police, you have to tell the truth, Jude. Surely you know that?’
NINE
On the train back from Victoria, Jude had a call on her mobile from Detective Inspector Rollins. She didn’t answer it. Partly this was because she didn’t want to share such potentially sensitive subject matter with a carriage-full of commuters. But also she wanted a bit of time to digest her encounter with Megan Sinclair.
The main feeling it had left her with was not resentment that her actions had been so traduced, but sadness. Before her marriage, Megan and she had been very close, but now that relationship was irreparably damaged. Her gloomy prognostications of the morning had proved justified. Jude found herself mourning the loss of a friend.
She also found herself chilled to the bone. In another of a series of lapses by Southern Rail, on that day, one of the coldest of the year, the heating in the carriages wasn’t working.
It was late afternoon when she arrived back at Woodside Cottage. Immediately she put on leggings, two jumpers, the central heating and an electric fire. For good measure, she lit the open fire in her sitting room.
She had intended to ring Rollins the moment she got in, but was waylaid by a message on her answering machine.
‘Hello, it’s Oliver Parsons. We met at the library the other evening. I hope you don’t mind my calling. I got your number from the phonebook. I just thought that, further to our conversation at the library … well, things have turned out rather surprisingly, haven’t they? Bit of a shock, what happened to our speaker, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, I just thought … if you’d like to talk about it further, give me a call.’ He provided his mobile number. ‘Look forward to hearing from you … maybe?’
His voice, she remembered, was
urbane, slightly teasing. And there was more than a hint of flirtatiousness in his final ‘maybe?’ Jude also wondered about the truth of his assertion that he’d found her name in the phonebook. It was certainly there, but under one of her married surnames, ‘Nicholls’. Few people knew that. She reckoned Oliver Parsons would have had to do a bit of research to track it down. Which was interesting … possibly even flattering.
She had no hesitation in deferring contact with Detective Inspector Rollins and calling Oliver Parsons instead. The more information she could get about what had happened on the Tuesday night, the better equipped she would feel to face another interrogation from the police.
‘Hello, Jude. How very nice to hear from you.’ Again, the warmth and gratifying enthusiasm in his voice.
‘I was just ringing to say: thanks for your message.’
‘And does this mean you would like to talk further about Tuesday night?’
‘It does.’
‘Excellent. As I believe I mentioned at the library, I have – had – an interest in crime fiction. But crime fact is so much more exciting.’
‘What makes you think there’s actually a crime involved?
Her question seemed to throw him for a moment, then he replied smoothly, ‘One has only to listen to the views of anyone in Fethering. They’re all certain that Burton St Clair was murdered. And from all accounts, the police are crawling all over the village. Would they do that in the case of a natural death?’
Jude recognized that it was a moment for her to be discreet. ‘Who knows? I’m not very familiar with the workings of the constabulary.’
‘Nor me. Well, that is to say, I am only familiar with the workings of the constabulary in Golden Age crime fiction, when all it involved was being in a state of perpetual bafflement and waiting around for a polymathic amateur sleuth to come and solve the case.’
‘But where do you find a polymathic amateur sleuth in Fethering?’
‘Where indeed? Anyway, you would be happy to meet up and talk about the “case”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe meet for a drink sometime?’