The Misplaced Affections of Charlotte Fforbes

by Catherine Robertson

  ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ said Ned. ‘No man likes t’ feel trapped.’

  Darrell saw him hesitate, frown, and then shake his head as if cross with himself. When he looked over Cosmo’s head to Darrell, she could see a heightened colour in his face. He’s embarrassed, she thought, intrigued. Why?

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ he began, ‘tha knows where Charlotte is?’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  Darrell couldn’t help the squeak of surprise, and cursed herself, as the scowl instantly reappeared on Ned’s face.

  ‘Charlotte’s out with the children and the others,’ she said as breezily as she could. ‘She’ll be back fairly soon, I imagine.’

  Ned gave a single nod, and, although her mind was churning with curiosity, Darrell felt it would not be tactful — or wise — to press him.

  ‘You’re good with babies,’ said Darrell instead, with a smile. ‘Never been tempted to have your own?’

  ‘Course,’ said Ned. Colour flared again in his face and he dropped his gaze to the top of Cosmo’s head. ‘Need a wife first, though.’

  God, thought Darrell, I sincerely hope he doesn’t have designs in that direction for Charlotte. My firm impression is that Charlotte would be no more keen to breed than to don a pair of denim overalls and jig along to ‘Come On, Eileen’.

  As if on cue, the peal of a child’s voice — Harry, thought Darrell — sounded from the lawn below. Ned stiffened, and glanced over his shoulder.

  Looking back, he caught Darrell’s eye, and she saw his mouth tighten with what, this time, was unmistakably anger.

  ‘Better go,’ he said, and stood, holding Cosmo out for her to take. ‘Can’t be caught near t’ innocents.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Darrell frowned as she gathered Cosmo into her arms.

  Ned picked up the hedge clippers, and inspected the blades. ‘Tha Mr King has forbidden us contact wi’ t’ children.’

  ‘What?’ Darrell was incredulous. ‘Surely not? That’s ridiculous!’

  Ned took the empty mug in his other hand, and stood, feet apart, arms slightly out from his sides — as though he’s expecting someone to take him on, thought Darrell. Gazing up at his bulk, she couldn’t imagine anyone who would not live to regret such a decision. Assuming they lived, of course.

  The look he was giving her was challenging and, Darrell observed, somewhat chilly.

  I’m tarred with the brush of Patrick, she thought. Whatever happened between them, all those years ago, it’s no less raw for Ned today.

  ‘I’ll have a word with him,’ said Darrell, sounding more confident than she felt. ‘He’s being ridiculous.’

  That’s right, a little voice said. You sort it out for everyone else. That’s the perfect way to avoid sorting anything out in your own life, isn’t it?

  Shut up, she told the voice. Shut up and go a long way away. All the way to infinity.

  ‘And you can see Cosmo whenever you like,’ she added defiantly.

  A screech sounded from the lawn that would have made a harpy bow down in worshipful awe.

  ‘Who needs anthrax?’ said Darrell. ‘Just mail a recording of Rosie, and all your demands will be met in an instant.’

  To her relief, she heard Ned chuckle.

  ‘She’s a firecracker, all right,’ he said. ‘Kind they had t’ ban.’

  He nudged with his toe a clod of moss growing between the flagstones.

  ‘Better go,’ he said, and bent to smile at Cosmo, who gave a happy shout, and almost launched himself out of Darrell’s arms.

  ‘Jeepers,’ she said. ‘When did you suddenly learn to move that fast?’

  ‘He’ll be crawling in no time,’ said Ned. ‘Then you’ll really know what speed is.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Darrell felt the blush rise in her cheeks, but pressed on regardless. ‘Sorry that we didn’t meet under easier circumstances.’

  ‘’Tisn’t tha fault,’ he said.

  And he nodded once, and walked off back down the steps.

  I am sorry, thought Darrell. Sorry life hasn’t been kinder to you. Sorry you’re not a father when you so clearly would be brilliant at it. Sorry that Patrick has been such an incomprehensible arse— What was he thinking? she wondered.

  I’m sorry, too, she thought. Sorry that Anselo and I have gone past any possibility of talking like two people who care, and are now fighting like two people on the brink of an ugly divorce.

  Not that we really fought as such, thought Darrell. I sat and listened, while Anselo let fly. Let’s face it, my position was hardly defensible, and I felt that trying to explain, or even apologise, would only have made things worse.

  But, oh, thought Darrell, I wish he’d given me just one chance to tell him how I’ve been feeling, to tell him what’s been going on in my stupid head for so many months. All the things I should have told him long before now. If I had, perhaps we wouldn’t be at this terminus, this last stop where everyone has get off.

  Do I really think he’d go through with it? Darrell asked herself. Do I really think that, if we parted, he’d fight me for our child? He was angry this morning, angrier than I’ve ever seen him, and you say things you don’t mean when you’re angry, don’t you? I have to believe he didn’t mean it. I have to believe that he would never do anything that drastic, she thought. And surely even if he tried, his family — Patrick and Jenico — would stop him? Surely?

  You don’t know that, the voice from before said. Only he and Cosmo truly belong to the family — you’re only one of them by marriage. So perhaps you’d better accept that there’s a strong possibility you’ll lose your husband and your child, and you’d better accept that it’s mostly your fault. If there’d ever been a chance to save your marriage, you blew it by spending that day with Marcus. It was not entirely innocent, and you knew that, yet you did it anyway.

  I suspected before that I’d act only if I was forced to, thought Darrell, and I can hardly ignore the fact that the moment of crisis has well and truly arrived. But I’m not at all sure I trust myself to act in the right way, she thought. Nor do I have the first and faintest clue about which way might possibly be the right one.

  26

  Patrick sat on the bed, still unmade, and stared at Clare’s clothes, still strewn in the corner. He’d excused himself straight after dinner, which he’d spent in the company of Michelle, Chad and Charlotte — cheerful — and Darrell and Anselo — not very. Patrick knew something was now badly awry between them, but he could not summon an ounce of energy to ask them about it. Some head of the family I’ll make, he thought. Everyone else’s problems get buried under my own steaming pile of Richards.

  The mobile phone in his hand told him it was ten past nine at night. London was an hour behind. Eight o’clock, thought Patrick. Would she be back by now?

  There was only one way to find out. He pressed the word on the phone’s screen that said ‘Home’.

  It rang and rang, until the voice message kicked in. Clare’s voice: ‘We can’t take your call. Leave a message.’ Her tone added an unsaid, ‘if you really must’. Patrick did not leave a message.

  He’d resisted calling her mobile because he assumed she wouldn’t have answered any calls from him, and he did not want to feel the hurt and humiliation he knew this would inevitably provoke.

  Too much of that and I’ll get angry, he thought, and then I may as well just mail the divorce lawyer a bunch of signed blank cheques.

  This has all happened because I got angry, Patrick thought. I got angry at myself for being useless and aimless and weak. But I took it out on Clare, and that was a huge mistake.

  My judgement is shot. I suspect it always has been, and I’ve just, up until now, got lucky.

  When I was a lad, thought Patrick, I had no sense of consequences. Absolutely none. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, without stopping for even a nanosecond to think about what might happen as a result. I lived entirely in the present — stole and fought and drunk and fucked with
out looking forward an instant, and most certainly without looking back.

  Perhaps that’s why I did get lucky, for the most part, he thought. I managed to avoid seeing the mess I’d made, because I never looked over my shoulder. That’s what happened with Julie Marsh; I never saw because I never looked. I never looked because it never once occurred to me to do so.

  Even prison didn’t really make me wise to consequences. It had simply been an experience I had no wish to repeat, and all that did was reduce (in my thick head) the options I’d previously considered freely available to me. I could no longer steal and I had to be more careful about who I chose to fight, but as far as I was concerned, I could still drink and fuck with abandon. It was only when I got my first proper job that I chose to put the limiters on drinking, too, thought Patrick. I chose only because I liked making money better. Was that the one sensible decision I made? he wondered. Did I even know it was sensible? Or did I just do what suited me best at the time, and the fact it was also a smart thing was pure coincidence? Pure luck?

  Jenico used to tell me I was lucky, thought Patrick. He didn’t mean it as a compliment.

  Shit, thought Patrick. Jenico.

  The prospect of telling his uncle what had happened filled Patrick with sick dread. Marriage failure was hardly uncommon in the Herne–King clan — Patrick’s own parents were a prime example — and Jenico accepted that not all the clan even wanted to be married. Aishe, Anselo’s sister, was a single mother, and Jenico’s youngest daughter was currently living with her partner, and showing no desire to emulate her sisters and walk down the aisle in a dress with a price tag that made your eyes water almost as much as prolonged retinal exposure to the dress itself.

  No, admitting that his marriage was in trouble was not the issue for Patrick. What he dreaded was admitting that it was all his fault.

  I fucked it up, thought Patrick, which I imagine, to Jenico, will seem like déjà vu all over again.

  When I was young, Patrick thought, I never appreciated how much effort Jenico put into being a surrogate father to me. By the time I was rampaging around as a teenager, Jenico had little kids of his own, not to mention a sense of duty to all the other cousins. Anselo was one of five, for starters, Patrick thought, and when they lost their dad, Jenico stepped in as surrogate father for them as well.

  In retrospect, Patrick was amazed Jenico had made any time at all for the ungrateful, resentful, ignorant, selfish shit that he’d been back then. But his uncle had kept at it because he’d felt, as the head of the family, that it was his duty. He’d kept at it because there were no other grown-up men around — the family had lost them all through desertion and death.

  He put the effort in, Patrick thought, because he wanted me, one day, to step up and be a man, become one of the family’s leaders. He thinks that day is soon.

  But how can I be the next rom baro? Patrick thought. I might have his size, but I certainly don’t have his stature. A man who splits his family apart through his own stupidity is hardly fit to be a mentor and guardian for all his other relatives.

  He ran his thumb over the screen of his phone.

  Should I ring her mobile? he thought. Can I handle it if she doesn’t pick up? And what should I do if I can’t get hold of her at all? Fly back with Tom, I suppose. Some holiday I’ve turned this into.

  Patrick scrolled down his list of contacts until he hit ‘K’. Clare King, he thought. He’d been chuffed beyond belief that she’d taken his name when they married, because she was so fiercely independent. He’d never taken it as read that she’d want to give up her maiden name, and it had felt to him like an honour that she’d chosen to do so.

  His thumb hovered over her name on the screen. Then he sucked in a deep breath and pressed down.

  It went straight to voicemail: ‘Clare King. Leave a message.’ Patrick hesitated, cursed himself for it, and spoke.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I fucked up. I miss you. Call me.’ In the nick of time, he added, ‘Please.’

  He hung up, and cursed himself anew for being an inarticulate fuckwit. He hadn’t even managed to say he loved her.

  It was uncomfortable sitting on the bed, so he lay down on it instead, on top of the covers. He could smell Clare’s scent on the pillows. She had worn the same perfume ever since he’d met her. It was called Fracas, a name that when he’d first learned it had made him shout with laughter.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Clare had said dryly, ‘it was either that or Poison by Christian Dior.’

  Patrick turned his head to inhale the scent. When he and Clare were first going out, he only had to catch a whiff of it to feel the stirrings of an erection.

  Now, he thought, all I feel is an urge to fucking cry. But grown men don’t cry. They stay strong, because others depend on them.

  There was a quiet tap on the bedroom door, and Patrick’s heart sank. Fuck it, he thought, I’ve had enough of people today, trying to be kind, trying to be careful. Just leave me alone. How else will I fucking get used to it?

  But the door opened, and Charlotte appeared in the gap. Not caring if his reaction was obvious, Patrick heaved a sigh, and hauled himself back into a sitting position.

  ‘I’m sorry for intruding,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wanted to see if there was anything I could do.’

  Her gaze went to the pile of clothes in the corner. ‘Such as tidying the room.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about the room,’ said Patrick. ‘It can stay like this till doomsday for all I care.’

  He saw Charlotte’s expression flicker, but she was back to her usual cool self in prompt fashion.

  ‘Well, I suppose that is what the cleaner is for,’ she said. ‘Even though all I’ve seen her do to date is rearrange the dust with one of those feathered things that looks as though it spends its off days draped round the neck of Gina Lollobrigida.’

  She met Patrick’s eye. ‘However, said cleaner is not due for another two days. I thought you might prefer not to wait until then.’

  ‘Charlotte,’ said Patrick wearily, ‘I don’t care what state the room is in. I seriously fucking don’t.’

  When she hesitated, he wanted to scream out loud. Do I actually have to tell her to fuck off? he wondered.

  ‘Very well.’ She started to back out the door, and Patrick silently cheered.

  ‘But if there is anything you need,’ she said, still not quite out of the room, ‘anything at all, I’ll be here.’

  I need my wife, thought Patrick. I need a son who speaks. I need a whole new modus operandi, because the one I’m currently using is as fucked as an old Austin Princess.

  Can you give me all that, Charlotte? he thought. Not fucking likely.

  But then he noticed that her hand was not just holding the doorknob, but gripping it so tightly that her knuckles were protruding. It’s taken some nerve for her to come up and talk to me, he suddenly realised. And I’m being a gold-medal arsehole.

  ‘Thanks for the offer, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘But the best thing you can do for me is stay away. I need to stew in my own juices for a while yet. Best leave me to it.’

  ‘What about the others?’ she said. ‘Shall I keep them away, too?’

  Christ, she’s determined, thought Patrick, and he didn’t know whether to be pissed off or admiring.

  ‘Be the sphinx outside my temple?’ he said with a faint grin.

  ‘Someone told me once that I was a lioness,’ said Charlotte. There was not a trace of a smile on her face. ‘Perhaps that’s my true calling? But I’ve had to wait for a person who mattered enough to me to pursue it.’

  Then she said, ‘Do you want to take Tom down to breakfast tomorrow?’

  Thrown by her sudden change of direction, Patrick took a moment to register her question.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I would.’

  ‘Then I’ll make sure he knows to come to your room,’ she said. ‘Good night.’

  And without waiting for a reply, she closed the door.

&n
bsp; Patrick blinked. Had he misheard her? Had Charlotte really said he mattered to her?

  She won’t mean it like that, he told himself. She’s being loyal, that’s all. Like she was when she put up with me offloading all my problems on her the other day. Another example of me being weak, he thought, and felt a bilious rush of self-loathing. And proof that Charlotte could never have feelings for me other than a sense of duty and obligation. Which to be frank, thought Patrick, I have done fuck-all to really deserve.

  She’s a good girl, Charlotte, he thought. Under that cool, efficient exterior, she has a good heart. If she ever decides to get married, I hope she chooses a bloke who genuinely appreciates her, who knows the true measure of her worth. The kind of bloke Clare should have chosen, he thought bitterly, instead of a knuckleheaded fuckwit like me.

  He remembered that Clare and he had once talked about whether they would get married again if the other one died.

  ‘I’d be happy for you to remarry,’ she’d said. ‘Just as long as you never forget that every woman who came before me was a mistake, and any woman who comes after is a downgrade.’

  She’d been smiling at the time, but Patrick knew she’d meant every word.

  I couldn’t imagine being married to anyone but Clare. And, fucking hell, I couldn’t handle seeing her with anyone else but me.

  The idea of it bloomed in his head like a toxic fungus — Clare in another man’s bed, in another man’s house, perhaps even with another man’s child.

  And I know just what kind of bloke he’d be, thought Patrick. Rich, handsome, educated, successful and well-connected — a score of five to my feeble two. He’d know a good wine from a bad, whereas anything short of wood alcohol is fine by me. He’d bring Clare breakfast in bed, of freshly squeezed orange juice and eggs Benedict that he’d whipped up himself on the Aga. He’d be able to complete the Times crossword. And he’d undoubtedly know the correct fucking way to pronounce quinoa.

  His mobile phone was on the bed. Patrick snatched it up and stabbed his finger on the screen.