The Misplaced Affections of Charlotte Fforbes

by Catherine Robertson

  Charlotte’s conscience generally didn’t trouble her. She was careful never to mislead any man into believing there might be more than just one night in bed, or any friend into thinking she was their bosom pal. She was always crystal clear about the limits of her involvement, and if people felt hurt or aggrieved, in Charlotte’s opinion, that was their own insecurity at work. She had nothing to reproach herself for.

  But her conscience was nagging her now, like her mother after the third gin. After the fourth gin, Charlotte’s mother would switch from accusatory to maudlin and, after the fifth, she’d go back to bed, so Charlotte had learned to bear with the nagging phase, knowing it would soon be over. Unfortunately, her conscience seemed to be stone cold sober. How dare you even think about breaking up a marriage? it said. You are acting not only like a woman with a cold-blooded lack of morals, but also like a woman unhinged. In a movie, you’d be played by Glenn Close. You’re like a book character created by Minette Walters. Or Fay Weldon. What in God’s name, Charlotte Fforbes, (said her conscience) is compelling you to behave like a woman who would turn Flopsy into consommé?

  Charlotte knew these were fair questions. And the only answer she had was: I’m in love. That might seem like a feeble justification to you, she told her conscience, but I am compelled. Love controls my thoughts, my sleep, my eating, even my breathing. I can’t fight it; its pull is the tune of the Pied Piper, and I am a child of Hamelin. When I’m with Patrick, it’s like the sun on my face after decades underground, warmth inside where there was frozen sea, a promise of life instead of a trail of coffee spoons marking the way to dusty death. I don’t expect you to understand this, conscience, thought Charlotte, because your job is to be — what is Patrick’s teenage cousin’s phrase? Oh yes, an utter buzz-kill. I respect you, conscience, and I acknowledge that you have a point. But you can sod off. I love Patrick and I will do anything to be with him.

  Turning back to her simple plan, Charlotte began to realise that achieving it could prove to be not so simple. Patrick might be amenable, but Clare was more problematic. These days, Charlotte gathered, Patrick’s wife was practically housebound. Seems Clare could no longer cope with the looks other mothers exchanged behind her back when they realised that Tom could not talk. Charlotte had the impression that Clare, in earlier days, would have been quick to defend her son’s development, pointing out numerous famous, high-achieving people who also had speech issues when young. She would have rattled off a list of over forty such people, from Tiger Woods all the way back to Moses.

  But the older Tom got, the less convinced Clare had become that his lack of speech was not connected to his intelligence. ‘She grilled me about our family,’ Charlotte had overheard Patrick say to Anselo. ‘Wanted to know how many retards and thickos were on the tree. I said I thought I was the only one. She didn’t find that amusing.’

  Clare had stopped taking Tom to playgroup. She even resisted taking him to the park, leaving that to Patrick. Persuading her to take Tom first on a plane and then to a European country where women were genetically programmed to coo and cluck around small boys would be, Charlotte realised, quite a challenge.

  And even if the holiday idea was accepted, there was the small matter of Charlotte’s own childminding experience. She had none. She had not grown up with younger siblings or cousins, and had no nieces or nephews. Her elder sister was childless. Charlotte’s school friends had been keen to make money babysitting, but Charlotte had always found small children both unappealing and pointless. To her, they were on a par with pet guinea pigs — you were never sure exactly how to hold them, they squealed and bit, and they rarely responded to your attempts to entertain them. While her former school friends had almost certainly grown up to have multiple children of their own, Charlotte did not even feel inclined to get a cat.

  Despite these apparent barriers, Charlotte was still convinced she’d be able to form a plan. She was a firm believer in there being a way if there was a will, and Charlotte’s will was of a quality that the village smithy would find it useful if he ever misplaced his sounding anvil.

  So when she received the phone call, it confirmed Charlotte’s view that there was no such thing as luck or coincidence, but that the forces of the universe had once again focused themselves through the prism of her self-determination.

  The person on the phone, a woman, wanted to speak to Anselo.

  ‘He’s not in the office,’ said Charlotte. ‘May I give you his mobile number?’

  ‘Tried that,’ said the woman. ‘Went to voicemail. I can’t leave him a message because that’ll make it too easy for him to say no. I need to cajole him in person. Or threaten him. Whatever works.’

  ‘I see,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Yes, you sound like you would,’ said the woman. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘Charlotte Fforbes. Patrick King’s personal assistant.’

  ‘You said Fforbes with two fs. I heard you. Are you any relation to the Fforbes in North Yorkshire?’

  ‘Do you actually know some Fforbes in North Yorkshire?’ said Charlotte.

  ‘I asked you first.’

  Charlotte decided she liked this woman. Whoever she was. ‘What do you want with Anselo?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. If you get bored it’s your own fault. I’m Michelle, best friend of Anselo’s wife, Darrell. I used to live happily in the United States. But at the end of last year, my husband, Chad, decided to take leave of his senses, or as he insists on calling it, a sabbatical, and spend a year travelling the world with our two small children and, despite my best efforts to thwart him, me. We’ve been through South East Asia, where we had food poisoning; various Pacific islands, where we had tropical storms; Australia, where we had spiders the size of miniature pigs; and New Zealand, where we had my mother. We had a big fight because he wanted to go to Africa, but then some tourists in Uganda were conveniently beheaded, so we ended up in South America, where we reacquainted ourselves with food poisoning. We then had a huge fight because he wanted to go to Russia before it got too cold, and I said if he took us to Russia he would never have sex again, and for more serious reasons than because I’d refuse to have it with him. Then he suggested the Black Isle of Scotland, and that’s why we’re now touring northern France and why I’ve booked us into a villa in Lombardy for a month in four weeks’ time. And that is why I need to talk to Anselo.’

  ‘Is the villa in need of repair?’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Better not be,’ said Michelle. ‘For the amount of moolah I’ve forked out, I expect to be fed sweetmeats by vestal virgins and have my body oiled by eunuchs. No, I need Anselo to persuade Darrell to come over and keep me company. I had invited another friend, but the treacherous cow pulled out on me at the last minute. Shame, because I was planning to hit her up for half the cost. Won’t have any such luck with Darrell, as she’s of the cheese-paring type, but at least if she’s around, I have an excuse to escape from my family. After nearly eight months of enforced togetherness, I’m fantasising about them being abducted by black-market organ traders.’

  ‘How large is the villa?’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Huge! Vast! With luck, my husband and children will never find me.’

  ‘Large enough for — let’s say — five other adults and two children?’

  ‘I detect a whiff of machination in that seemingly innocuous question,’ said Michelle. ‘Should I take this to mean, Charlotte Fforbes with two fs, that for selfish reasons of your own, you intend to help effect my plan?’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘Leave it to me.’

  4

  ‘Any progress?’

  Patrick handed a pint to Anselo, and sat down in the leather armchair opposite.

  Anselo glanced around the pub. ‘I took Darrell for a drink here when I first met her,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask her out, but I didn’t even get close. Epic fail, as our teenage cousins would say.’

  ‘So no progress then?’ said Patrick.

  ‘Not really. You?’

/>   ‘I have broached it with Clare,’ said Patrick. ‘Well, I sort of slid the idea into conversation.’

  ‘Did it slide right on out again?’

  ‘Like a bar of soap in a prison shower.’

  The men drank beer in silence.

  ‘Is it actually a good idea, this holiday?’ said Patrick, when half his pint was gone. ‘Whenever Charlotte talks to me about it, I’m one hundred per cent convinced. But somehow, when she’s not in the room …’

  ‘Logistically speaking,’ said Anselo, ‘the timing’s perfect. The building project will be a gnat’s away from being finished. Beatrix can handle the last of it, and if she needs me I’m on the phone. That deal you’re working on will be at paperwork stage, so all you’ll need to do is pay the lawyers’ bills and let them wrangle. And you don’t have anything else on the boil, do you?’

  Patrick had half an ear on the pub jukebox. Someone had programmed it to play The Who’s Who Are You? Patrick had the original 1977 album and the 1996 reissue with the additional verse, where Roger (or Pete, Patrick supposed) lamented that he must have lost his direction because he ended up a superstar. On the jukebox, Roger was singing the family-friendly version of the chorus. In his mind, Patrick filled in the two-word blank between ‘who’ and ‘are you’.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t have anything else to do.’

  ‘Do you want to spend a month in Italy?’ asked Anselo. ‘With us? And Michelle and her tribe? And Charlotte? And fifty million tourists?’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘I suppose. A break from routine’s always good.’

  Recharge, he thought. Regroup. Come back with a new perspective. Can miracles happen in a month, Charlotte?

  ‘What about you?’ he said to Anselo. ‘Do you want a break?’

  ‘I have an eight-week-old baby,’ said Anselo with a short laugh. ‘By all accounts I’m not due for a break until he turns twenty-one.’

  Patrick had as yet only dipped a toe in the dark pool that was the topic of his younger cousin’s marriage. He’d persuaded himself that any couple with a new baby spent the first weeks with a fingernail-grip on the edge of sanity, so there’d be time for things to improve. But it did concern him that Darrell appeared to spend all her waking hours with Cosmo strapped to her, wearing the exact same expression as if he were a suicide bomber’s vest, and that Anselo seemed energised at work, but quiet, even circumspect, whenever Patrick now saw him with Darrell.

  Patrick had known Anselo since he was born. He’d been a wary, quiet child, sandwiched uncomfortably between two boisterous older brothers and two hard-headed and outspoken younger sisters. And then, when Anselo was twelve, the Herne children’s much-loved father had died, suddenly, of a brain aneurysm. Jenico had stepped in to give them support, but the family had never really recovered emotionally. Due to all these factors, perhaps, Anselo had spent most of his teens and young adulthood nurturing an inferiority complex as dense and challenging as Hampton Court maze.

  I didn’t help that, thought Patrick. When he asked me for a job more than a decade ago, just as I started making big money, I misread him completely. Pegged him as a cold-blooded, greedy little bastard who wanted a free ride on the King money-train, and gave him short shrift.

  It wasn’t until Darrell came along that Patrick found out that Anselo had hero-worshipped him for years, and had seen the job as a chance to emulate his older cousin. Patrick had taken steps to repair the damage and close the distance between them, first by making Anselo godfather to Tom, then by offering him the job he’d wanted all those years ago. Anselo had proved excellent in the role, for which Patrick was grateful. He’d never had a business partner before, and the relief of being able to offload work and responsibility onto someone else was surprisingly immense. But despite this new, more equal dynamic between them, Anselo’s nature, and, Patrick had to admit, some residual guilt on his own part, meant that the gap had never been fully sealed. We’re friendly enough, thought Patrick, but we’re not true friends. That’s why I find it so hard to talk to him about his marriage. If I’m to be head of the family, however, he told himself, this’ll be my duty. I’ll have no choice but to grow a fucking spine.

  ‘A holiday would give you more time with Darrell,’ said Patrick.

  Anselo shot him a sharp look. ‘You think I need to spend more time with Darrell?’

  Fuck, thought Patrick. Oh, well, in for pound. ‘Don’t you think she’s … struggling a bit?’

  ‘And that’s my fault, is it?’ Anselo squared his shoulders.

  ‘I didn’t say that. You know I didn’t—’

  But Anselo wasn’t listening. He sat forward and stabbed his finger at the tabletop. ‘She sees everything as a threat to the baby. Everything! It’s OTT! When I mentioned the holiday, she made flying easyJet to fucking Milan Linate sound like rafting up the greasy Limpopo to a leper colony!’

  ‘Look, I’m no shrink,’ said Patrick, ‘but losing her first husband like that must have been a shock. You don’t expect a bloke to suddenly drop dead in his early thirties, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Anselo. ‘My dad at least waited until he was forty.’

  Doing bloody brilliantly so far, King, thought Patrick. Dig more of a hole and you’ll pop out in a wonton stall in Guangzhou.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Patrick. ‘I liked your dad, even though he kicked my arse on regular occasions. He was hard but fair. A top bloke.’

  Anselo stared at the jukebox. ‘So everyone says.’

  Patrick waited, not trusting himself, and was relieved to see the younger man’s shoulders relax. When Anselo met his eye again, the look on his face was almost ashamed.

  ‘I probably do need to spend more time with Darrell,’ he said. ‘It’s just that she makes it so … hard.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ll get Clare on board, and we’ll help you with Darrell.’

  ‘Thought Clare had already said no?’

  ‘She did,’ said Patrick, ‘but Charlotte’s tracked down a Cambridge University study that proves exposure to foreign languages at a young age vastly improves a child’s own facility for speech. I’m considering showing it to Clare.’

  Anselo raised an eyebrow. ‘Only considering?’

  Patrick stared into his now empty pint glass. ‘Believe it or not, the subject of Tom not talking hasn’t actually come up between us. We both know that we both know but — no need to point out the irony — we haven’t talked about it.’

  Anselo looked at his own glass, which was still three-quarters full.

  ‘Oh, I believe it,’ said Anselo. ‘Some words have a habit of staying unsaid.’

  Patrick managed to get his key in the front door on the third try. Anselo had gone home after only a couple of rounds, an example that Patrick had applauded but failed to follow. The pub had been Anselo’s choice. Patrick’s own local was closer to his Clerkenwell office, and wasn’t, he admitted, going to win awards for its menu or ambience any time soon. But as long as you didn’t mind that your feet didn’t always lift off the carpet first go, and knew, if anyone decided you were looking at them funny, how to stare back in a way that ensured any such claim withered in their mouths, the pub was a good place to drink.

  Anselo’s pub had been a good pub in a different way. It had a jukebox, into which Patrick had programmed Pinball Wizard, Baba O’Riley and an encore of Who Are You?, followed by Ziggy Stardust and Heroes, which he’d sung along to, while exhorting the couple at whose table he’d somehow found himself sitting to join in. They were regulars here, they’d told him. Been coming here since they were married, thirty-five years ago. Overcome by this towering display of loyalty, Patrick had pulled out a handkerchief and loudly blown his nose. And then he’d bought them all another round.

  Probably that hadn’t been the wisest decision, thought Patrick, as he attempted to close the front door quietly behind him. Neither had been ordering the pizza with extra hot sausage. Patrick could already feel it fomenting an armed insurrection in his gut.
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  The hallway was dark, and there was no light coming from the kitchen below, or the rooms above. Instinct suggested the best direction to head in right now was the opposite one to any person who might be sleeping — or, worse, might not be — so Patrick made his way very carefully down the stairs. It was amazing, he thought, how hard you could focus on putting one foot in front of the other and yet still fuck it up. No wonder babies were born not knowing how to walk. Learning to was good practice for getting rat-arsed in later life.

  At the kitchen door, he swore, his shin having struck a hard object that seemed to be blocking his way. He ran his hand over the wall to find the light switch and, after a few moments of blinking and more swearing, could see that said object was an old fireguard that was propped against the doorway and kept firmly in place by a pile of bricks on one side, and a moss-covered garden statue on the other.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Patrick. Giving thanks that his height reduced the threat to his crotch, he stepped over the guard and into the kitchen.

  The room looked the same as usual. Everything was clean and tidy. Patrick had no idea why there should be a fireguard blocking the door, and no inclination to think of one. He hung his suit jacket over a chair, and went to drink water from the tap — two activities frowned on by Clare. He splashed some water on his face, and wiped it with a tea towel, which he left screwed up on the bench, a move that not only risked a frown but also the distinct possibility that the tea towel would be served up to him in place of his morning toast.

  Despite regular reminders of his recent pizza, which made him wary of standing too close to an open flame, Patrick opened the refrigerator. There was plenty of food, if you looked at it one way. If you looked at it another, there were vegetables, hummus, goat cheese, skim milk and rice bread. But fuck me, he rejoiced, there was also a beer. He knew he shouldn’t, but he took it. It was one beer. It could not make his condition materially worse.

  He carried the beer to the squashy sofa and sank down with relief. He liked this sofa. It was too short for him to lie on full-length, but soft enough for that not to matter if he chose to sleep here. Which he had, possibly more often than a marriage guidance counsellor would approve. And he would again tonight, he decided, because, frankly, he could not be fucked moving.