‘You’ll always be Lyd to me.’
‘I don’t like being called Lyd. Lydie or nothing. And for the record, the minute I told you I thought I was pregnant you were off. Was that nice? Well, was it?’
‘No. And I’ve spent a lifetime regtretting it.’
‘Huh! You say that now. You can’t just come waltzing back into our lives. Into Grace’s life.’
‘Grace walked back into mine, actually,’ Jonty said. ‘And I can’t say I’m not glad she has.’
‘Well, Grace might feel differently when she knows the truth.’
Lydie thrust her hands down hard into the pockets of her jacket. She couldn’t think of anything else to do with them, except perhaps to slap Jonty Grant across his still very handsome face. Although the light – like dirty custard – from the security lamps was giving him a jaundiced look now.
‘Can you stand there and tell me that was a decent way to behave? Well, can you?’
‘No. It wasn’t. I’ve gone through that frame many times in my mind, re-written it, given it all a different ending. But …’
‘But what?’
‘I think I’ve paid the price,’ Jonty said.
‘Oh, do you? And what price would that be?’
‘This isn’t the time to go through it, Lyd. Go home. Grace is going to be fine. A few bruises, maybe, a bugger of a headache, but fine. You saw that for yourself just now. You’ve had the most awful shock …’
‘You bet I have. And I told you to stop calling me Lyd. My name is Lydie. Okay?’
‘Okay. Lydie.’
‘I don’t want to go home yet,’ Lydie said, feeling herself slump as though her legs couldn’t hold her up any more. When Jonty reached for her to steady her, she didn’t shrug him off. ‘I’m too shaky to drive. I’d like a cup of tea.’
‘Black. No sugar. Just as it comes out of the pot? And if there’s a chocolate digestive going, you wouldn’t say no to that either?’
Oh, God. He’d never forgotten, had he? Was she being too hard on him? Was she?
‘Yes,’ Lydie said. ‘I think you know that.’
There were no staff in the hospital canteen at this time of night. Just a machine in the corner and pile of polystyrene cups. But black tea was on the menu.
Lydie was still carrying an aura of anger about her as she sat opposite him, cradling the polystyrene cup he’d handed her.
This wasn’t the time to tell Lydie she looked even more beautiful in middle-age than she had in her teens. That she had a sort of glow about her in her anger, something that hadn’t been there as a younger woman. Then she’d been all too ready to go along with what her parents had wanted, what he, Jonty, hadn’t wanted. What this Ralph she had so easily and quickly married to save her reputation had wanted. She was a different Lydie to the one he’d made love to underneath the arches by the river in Bath who had wanted it as much, if not more, than Jonty had. But her hair was still a delicious tumble of pre-Raphaelite curls, more orangey now in the light of the overhead canteen lamps than the hennaed auburn he knew it to be, and he yearned with an almost physical ache to reach up and touch her hair, comfort her chastely, tell her how very sorry he was that he had made her into this angry, frightened woman.
‘In a minute,’ Lydie said, all the fire suddenly drained from her, ‘someone will pinch me awake and tell me this is all a dream.’
‘Nightmare more like,’ Jonty said.
He knew he ought to go home and relieve Drew of his unwanted Becca-minding duties. Then do something about Becca. There had been a doctor in town all too keen to get Becca sectioned. Jonty had resisted then, vociferously. But not now. The doctor wouldn’t have time to see the ink dry on the form before Jonty had Becca’s case packed and on the way to the mental health unit.
But it was as though someone had stuck the soles of his shoes to the floor.
‘Yes. Nightmare,’ Lydie said at last, as though she, too, was reluctant to break the spell between them. ‘I ought to go now though. Find Ralph. I expect he’s fallen asleep in front of the TV, a glass of wine poured but not touched as usual, and he hasn’t heard the phone. God, I’m dreading this, having to tell him about Grace …’
‘Just the accident, you mean?’
‘For now,’ Lydie said.
An ambulance, siren going, light flashing, wove its way around cars down on the main road and turned into the drive next to the A&E entrance.
‘Some poor devil going through what Grace has just been through,’ Jonty said.
‘And his or her family. Like us,’ Lydie said. She reached for her bag lying on the table between them, opened it and found her car keys. ‘I’m feeling stronger now. I’ll be going. Thanks for the tea. For not rushing off. I’ll …’
‘Be in touch?’ Jonty asked. He found a business card in the back pocket of his jeans. He handed it to Lydie and she took it.
‘I’ll ring about arranging to fetch her things.’
Lydie picked up her bag and began to walk to the exit. Jonty followed. Her heels clicked as she walked slightly ahead of him along the corridor that led to the car park. Jonty continued to follow even though he felt Lydie had absolved him of his helpfulness.
‘Grace won’t be able to work for you any more,’ Lydie said as she reached her car. She put her key in the lock and the door popped open – like a pistol shot in the silence between them.
‘I think we will have to let Grace decide that for herself. Drive safely, Lyd.’
And then without waiting for Lydie to tell him off yet again for returning to their former intimacy, or for questioning her for making Grace’s decisions for her, Jonty turned and ran the length of the car park to his car.
It was nearly 1 a.m. when Lydie let herself into the darkened gallery. It was always a creepy experience walking through the gallery, moonlight catching the glass of pictures on the walls, or highlighting a head, an arm, a leg of a free-standing sculpture, as though they were all watching her in the darkness, judging. It was even more creepy now for Lydie, knowing she was going to have to wake Ralph, tell him about Grace. Lydie hurried on, on tiptoe across the wooden floor, rehearsing the words she would use in her head – Grace is going to be okay, but …
Always better to give a little good news before delivering the bad, her father had always said.
Lydie stopped in the kitchen, turned the tap slowly, drew a glass of water and filled it to the brim. Carefully she leaned over the glass and sucked up the over-fill. She flicked on a light, certain she would see the remains of Ralph’s supper at least, if not all the meals he’d had since she’d been in Bath. But there was nothing. It was as Lydie had left it, nothing at all seemed to have been moved; even the chairs were neatly placed, their seats pushed well under the table. Well, Grace was living here, wasn’t she? And she didn’t like mess any more than Lydie did. It would be Grace who had kept it as neat and clean as it was.
Lydie pressed her lips together and screwed up her eyes, gathering her courage for what she was about to do. She kicked off her shoes, leaving them where they fell instead of putting them neatly against the wall as she would normally. But this wasn’t normal. Slowly she climbed the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Ralph.
The door was slightly ajar and Lydie pushed it open further with her hip, holding on tightly to her glass of water with both hands. Already her mouth was parched with nerves. It was dark in the room – north-facing rooms almost always are, Lydie thought. To put on a light or not? Lydie hovered by the small table lamp she knew to be to the right of the door. Not, she decided. She’d wake Ralph first. She stopped and listened for his gentle night-time rumbling breathing. Not quite a snore, but a more rasping breath than when he was awake. But she heard nothing.
‘Ralph?’ she whispered into the darkness, hoping her voice would stir him, so that he wouldn’t lash out if she were to touch him, shake him awake. ‘Ralph?’ she said again, only louder this time as she reached the bed and saw that Ralph wasn’t in it.
Rushing to th
e en suite bathroom, Lydie turned the handle, threw wide the door. But no Ralph.
‘Oh my God, where is he?’ Lydie slumped down on the edge of the bath, the enamel chilling to the heat of her angst-warmed body. ‘Ralph?’ she yelled into the silent house, hoping, praying, to rouse Ralph from wherever he might be.
She raced back down the stairs, glad now she’d taken off her shoes as she ran. She searched the sitting room, the kitchen, the deck terrace. Then she took the stairs two at a time and looked in Grace’s room, before rushing back down through two floors to the gallery, where this time the creepy feeling was replaced with sheer terror as to where Ralph might be.
Lydie racked her brain to think of the name of that woman who was always around Ralph, like a bitch on heat. Margot something. Barker? Barron? Surely Ralph couldn’t be with that woman somewhere, could he? Not Ralph who had never, as far as Lydie knew, looked at another woman in all the years they’d been married. Sometimes she’d wished he had – it would have given Lydie a let-out clause, wouldn’t it? She was ashamed now that she’d even thought that and she shivered in her shame, a tremor rising up her back, spreading out across her shoulders. Something she’d said to Jonty just a short while ago came back to her then – not nice, was it? Well, her treatment of Ralph in not telling him the truth about Grace, whom he adored, hadn’t been nice either.
When the phone rang, shrill and sharp in the stillness and the dark, Lydie almost screamed. Her hand shot to her mouth and she breathed in noisily, deeply through her opened mouth.
‘Yes?’ she said, holding the phone a little away from her ear. Not Grace. Please, please don’t let anything have happened to Grace. She’d been fine when she and Jonty had left, hadn’t she? A little colour in her cheeks even.
‘Mrs Marshall?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Yes.’
Lydie was instantly on the defence.
‘Ah, good. This is Cary Hospital. Your husband …’
‘No. No. You’ve got it wrong. It’s my daughter, Grace Marshall, who is with you. A head injury. I’ve just left her in A&E. They were going to find her a bed for the night, maybe two nights to be on the safe side. She …’
‘Are you alone, Mrs Marshall?’
‘Yes. My daughter, Grace, is with you, as I’ve said, and my husband, well, I don’t know where he is at … oh my God. Has something happened to Ralph too?’
What sort of divine retribution would it be, if now, after all these years, Lydie were to lose both Grace and Ralph?
‘I’m very sorry. Yes. Ralph Marshall was admitted an hour and a half ago. We found his details in a trouser pocket. Can you come over?’
‘Now?’ Lydie asked
‘I think it would be a good idea.’
Because? Because? Lydie shuddered at the possibilities.
‘I’m on my way,’ Lydie said.
She dropped the phone onto the desk, not bothering to return it to the rest. She ran up the stairs to the kitchen, thrust her feet back into her shoes, found her car keys and ran back down to the gallery. She unlocked the door and stepped out into the street, pushing it shut behind her. It was a complicated series of locks and turns to lock it so she didn’t bother. She might not have time.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Let’s try again, sweetheart,’ Drew said, even though he knew Amy didn’t have a hope in hell of hearing him. ‘Milk.’
He had a list of signs. Milk. Sleep. Drink.Water. Eat. With corresponding actions. Drew pointed to the milk in its carton, then poured a glass. Then he made the sign for milk, willing Amy to copy him.
‘Please, Amy, try for Daddy.’
But for the third time that morning Amy swiped the glass off the table in her frustration. She began to cry. Drew scooped his daughter into his arms, and found that he was crying too.
Becca had fallen asleep by the time Drew heard the diesel-ly whine of Jonty’s beaten-up truck clatter to a halt in the pottery courtyard. He had covered Becca with some sort of Indian bedspread, all paisley patterns embroidered with sequins and beads and tiny mirrors. She looked like an exotic bird, her hair tumbling over her face, breathing the sweet sleep of the innocent. Poor Becca. What would happen to her now? She couldn’t stop here any longer that was for sure. And if she did he’d be off – find another job, although he knew he’d never find one with such an accommodating boss as Jonty was where Amy and her frequent hospital visits were concerned.
He began gathering the things to make Jonty a coffee – no doubt the poor bloke would need one.
‘Hi,’ Jonty said. ‘Is that coffee I can smell?’
‘You know it is.’ How Jonty could sound so cheerful in the circumstances he didn’t know. ‘Grace?’
‘Sorry, mate. It’s been an unreal day going into night. Sorry about dragging you into all this.’
Jonty waved an arm expansively towards Becca and flicked his floppy fringe back over the top of his head, only for it to fall back down again.
‘Grace?’ Drew asked again, and only just stopped himself saying, ‘Remember her?’ He had a feeling Jonty was far more wrapped up in his unexpected meeting with an old flame than he should be, given the circumstances.
‘Grace is going to be okay. They’re keeping her in for a night or two. Safety precaution.’
‘Ah yes, safety precaution. No doubt Health and Safety will be here in the morning.’ Drew said. He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, later on this morning. Once the police have been in touch they’ll leave skid marks all the way up Barrack Hill back to the Health and Safety office.’
‘Least of my worries,’ Jonty said. He jerked his head towards Becca. ‘Been sleeping long?’
‘Couple of hours. I gave her an industrial strength Horlicks.’
‘Good man, good man,’ Jonty smiled and chuckled quietly. ‘Er, you know, thanks.’
‘Okay. I’m off now though. I expect Mum will still be up waiting for me.’
‘And Amy?’
‘Shouldn’t think so, but you never know. I’ve found since her deafness that Amy gets a sixth sense about things, gets frustrated when she can’t put her thoughts into words.’
Suddenly there seemed to be a lump in Drew’s throat. He was way out of his depth with being mother and father to Amy, he knew that, although he was trying damned hard to learn the ropes.
‘Could you spare me a few more minutes?’ Jonty asked. ‘I feel I owe you.’
Drew looked at his watch, the figures seemed bleary through his tiredness. Really he ought to go. But he also still needed a job.
‘Okay. Five minutes.’
‘Good man. Well, obviously Becca has been telling tales. It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines now for you, does it?’ Drew shook his head, raised his eyebrows a fraction but didn’t answer so Jonty carried on. ‘I am Grace’s biological father. It’s as simple as that …’
‘Simple? Are you kidding? Who’s going to be the one to tell her?’
‘I think that’s going to have to be Lydie’s job. Her husband, Ralph, doesn’t know either. And neither did I until a few hours ago. You do believe that?’
‘Naturally. You might be a lot of things but I wouldn’t have you down as a liar. Becca? Has she had something to do with any of this?’
‘No and yes. I was the one who couldn’t hack parenthood all those years ago. Thought I had all my wild oats to sow and Lydie was just the first. Been a few since then, of course, but I honestly can’t remember a single name now they were that long ago. Lydie has rarely been far from my thoughts between then and now. God, it was a shock seeing her, I can tell you. Anyway, I always knew I wanted to run my own pottery – didn’t think Lydie was from the sort of background to live on own-brands and market bargains while I got it up and running.’
‘You still are getting it up and running. Without Becca …’
‘Yeah, okay, I know. I suppose you could say I’ve been doing penance for my sins ever since, caring for Becca. God, what an unholy mess I’ve got us all into. I should have had her
sectioned years ago and at least Grace wouldn’t be in hospital right this second, even though it looks like fate or the gods or divine retribution have sent Grace and Lydie back to me.’
‘What about Becca’s cash input. The rubies?’
‘Ah, the rubies. Becca’s not totally off the wall. She’s still got the nous to take that bastard of a husband for every penny she can. Can you believe he is up for a ministerial post – health? Wants to take a firm line on abortion for starters. The Catholic in him, no doubt, except he didn’t have too many Catholic principles when he dragged Becca kicking and screaming to some back-street abortion clinic, did he?’
‘The rubies, Jonts?’ Drew reminded him. He really did need to get off now. And he didn’t know he was liking taking the priest’s role at this makeshift confessional.
‘Becca’s little bit of blackmail. His family still thinks Hugh and Becca are together – living that upper-class life that often condones lovers and mistresses, I suppose. Charles and Camilla all over again except Camilla got her prince in the end. Hugh’s folk live on the Scottish borders in some sort of baronial hall, rarely travel south, if ever. I assume Hugh must go back from time to time, and lies through his back teeth about Becca every time. He’s certainly paid Becca handsomely for her silence all these years, but at what cost to Becca really?’
‘Her life basically,’ Drew said. He stood up and yawned.
‘Yeah. What a bloody price, and I’ve aided and abetted that shit Harris by vicariously taking his cash. Did you see it’s all over the press that he’s marrying his secretary? Becca got a letter, handwritten, from Hugh asking for a quickie divorce. Can you believe? Yes, you probably can. But he’s going to get his comeuppance very soon, because legally he is Becca’s next of kin and I’ll have no hesitation in letting the doctors know that in the morning.’
‘Just as you got your comeuppance a few hours ago?’
‘Something like that. Only rather more publicly.’
‘Right,’ Drew said. ‘I think I’ve got the gist of it all. I could be in a bit late in the morning, but I will need to dip those iris bowls if they’re going to go on the next firing so probably somewhere around eleven. Okay?’
Red is for Rubies Page 17