Laura’s pupils were dilated until there was virtually no iris left. She began gabbling away about nothing the moment she came in, pacing up and down the room and firing questions at her sisters, yet not listening to the reply. Even more distressing was the way she treated Barney like a performing monkey. She kept ordering him to sing nursery rhymes, then she’d peal with laughter, pick him up and throw him up in the air. Barney looked anxious and confused, and several times hid from her behind the sofa, but that made Laura mad, and she’d haul him out and command him to do something else.
Barney was eighteen months old then, a stocky little dark-haired toddler who happily went to anyone, and it horrified Meggie that Laura had been driving her car with him in it while she was in such a state.
She had lost far too much weight, her face looked gaunt, and she was so thin that Meggie could see her hipbones jutting out beneath her skin-tight jeans. As soon as she could get Laura into the kitchen away from Ivy, she asked her what she thought she was doing.
‘Having fun,’ Laura said. ‘You should try it, you always were a worry guts even when you were little, but now you’re turning into a grumpy old maid who disapproves of everything.’
‘But you’ll get ill,’ Meggie argued. ‘And you could easily have an accident in your car if you’re so spaced out.’
When Laura realized she was going to get lectures rather than admiration, she soon left, but Ivy kept asking what had been wrong with her, and the day was ruined by fear of her guessing it was drugs, and wondering if Laura got home in one piece.
The following morning just after Ivy left for work, Laura telephoned, begging Meggie to come over to Chelsea because she had the most terrible pain in her stomach and couldn’t lift Barney to dress or change him.
Meggie arrived there fired up to give her sister a piece of her mind, and found Laura in bed, doubled up with pain, with a grey-green tinge on her face. Barney was still in his pyjamas, his nappy stinking.
‘I had this last week, only not so bad,’ Laura said weakly. ‘I feel like I’m going to die.’
‘It’s the speed,’ Meggie told her none too gently. ‘It serves you right. You can only abuse your body so long before it protests.’
She tried to make her drink water, but Laura was immediately sick, and because she was in such obvious pain Meggie called the doctor.
The doctor examined Laura very carefully and asked a great many questions about what she had eaten in the last twenty-four hours. He seemed very worried, and said he thought it was some kind of poisoning and that he wanted to admit her to hospital immediately.
Meggie still thought it was purely the speed, but didn’t like to admit that was what Laura had taken for fear of getting her into serious trouble. She volunteered to take care of Barney as Greg was away on business.
Laura was allowed out of hospital two days later as the cramps had gone, but although she’d had various tests, the doctors hadn’t been able to find a definite cause for them.
Meggie made her sister a light meal and waited until she had eaten it, but just as she was about to leave she saw Laura go to a drawer in the kitchen and take out a tiny pill bottle.
‘Don’t even think of taking any more of those!’ Meggie shouted, rushing forward to grab them.
‘I wasn’t going to, I just wanted to check them,’ Laura said. ‘You see, I had two of these on the morning of the day I came over to your house, and I was fine then. I took another two after I got home because I was going to go out again later. It must have been them, the pains began a couple of hours afterwards and I didn’t get the buzz I usually get with speed. I thought maybe some of these are something else.’
She tipped the remains of the bottle on to the work surface and together they looked at the small black capsules. But they were all the same, absolutely identical to the black bombers both of them had seen countless times.
‘You’ve just poisoned yourself by taking too many.’ Meggie felt irritated that Laura was trying to find another reason for her pain. ‘Let that be a lesson to you, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Laura promised me she wasn’t going to take them ever again,’ Meggie told Stuart. ‘And I think she did stick to it for a while. But then about a month later, it happened again, and that time she was dangerously ill. I didn’t know about it for some time as Greg was home – he got her to hospital and took care of Barney. Laura only phoned me as she began to recover. She said she had been close to death, and the doctor had told her she had all the symptoms of strychnine poisoning. He apparently asked Greg if she’d had any contact with rat poison.’
‘Surely he wasn’t lacing her with that?’ Stuart didn’t feel he could believe that of anyone.
‘I’m a hundred per cent certain that’s exactly what he did,’ Meggie insisted. ‘I think he opened up some of the black bombers and replaced the speed with rat poison. I doubt he did them all, I think he probably did about half in the bottle, so it was a bit like playing Russian roulette. She might get three tampered ones at once, or none, but whatever happened to her he would be in the clear as he’d just say he had always disapproved of her taking speed and she was at the mercy of her supplier. You know how straight people were about drug-taking back then – who would have had any sympathy?’ Meggie paused for a moment to drink some wine.
‘Laura didn’t even dare admit her fears to the doctor at the hospital,’ she went on. ‘Greg had thrown out the bottle by the time she got home, and when she confronted him he blew his top and said she was going mad. I just wished I’d taken some of them away the first time, that way we could have had proof.’
‘Even then it would be impossible to prove he was responsible,’ Stuart said. ‘It could have been the dealer, or anyone along the chain from the manufacturer. Anyway, Laura shouldn’t have been taking drugs with Barney around. And what right-minded person would carry on taking them after a scare like that? I don’t believe it was Greg!’
‘You would if you’d seen what came after that,’ Meggie said darkly. ‘He was vile to her. He stopped hiding his mistress, he stayed out at nights, refused to allow Laura any money, told lies about her all round Chelsea. He hit her lots of times too. In the end she had no choice but to leave. All she took was her car and her clothes, and she flogged the odd bits of jewellery Greg had given her and ran off with Barney. She couldn’t get a place of her own without a job, and she couldn’t work unless she got Barney into a nursery. So in the end she went to Scotland, which is where you came in.’
‘So why didn’t she tell me all this?’ Stuart asked in bewilderment.
‘Maybe she was scared that she’d look too needy and frighten you off,’ Meggie suggested. ‘I got a letter from her soon after she met you. She said that you were wonderful, but she was afraid it would fall apart because you were so young and innocent. But you must ask her about that. I can only guess at what was going on in her mind.’
Stuart drank some more wine, silently mulling over what Meggie had told him. ‘I’m going to make a start on your summer house,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I think better with tools in my hands.’
Meggie protested, but Stuart insisted. ‘It needs doing and today is as good as any to get cracking on it. Unless of course you want me to push off?’
‘No, I don’t.’ She smiled. ‘It’s nice having you here.’
Two hours later, Stuart had removed the old roofing felt and secured all the loose shingles. As he climbed up the ladder to spread the new felt over the roof timbers, he glanced back up the garden and saw that Meggie was on her knees close to the house, pulling out weeds.
She’d got him her tools and offered to help him but he’d said he could manage alone. Apart from bringing him a cup of coffee about an hour ago, she’d stayed well away. But now as he looked at her he realized he ought to have accepted her help, for even viewing her from a distance he could sense her isolation. He was pretty certain she had no real friends; she’d probably never had anyone much in her life other than Ivy and Laura.
It had been a day of revelations, and he would need a great deal more time to think through them all. Yet the one thing which stood out for him above all else was that Laura had feared their relationship couldn’t last because he was so young and innocent.
He hadn’t of course seen himself as innocent back then. But if innocence meant not understanding that some people are damaged, that events in their past could colour the rest of their lives, then he was definitely guilty of that.
Falling hard and fast for Laura as he did, he never questioned anything she told him, and he didn’t ask about her past because he was afraid she might tell him something that would make him jealous. Indeed, the very fact that she didn’t want to talk about Gregory had convinced him that she’d loved her husband deeply. When she made no attempt to get a divorce, he felt insecure, for to him that looked as if she hoped to get back with the man.
Later, when they got the flat in Edinburgh and he was unable to find work, he was aggrieved when she took a job at the casino. If she’d got work in a shop or an office he wouldn’t have minded so much, even though back in those days he believed it was a man’s role to be sole breadwinner. But casinos to him were dens of vice and the women who worked in them were honey traps to lure the suckers in and fleece them. He believed Laura was out looking for a rich man so she could have a glamorous life – he even saw her leaving him to mind Barney as evidence she didn’t really care about her son either.
But in the light of what he now knew about her marriage, perhaps his views on how she behaved back then were distorted. She might have been afraid to file for divorce because she was frightened of Greg finding out where she was. There was no doubt the money she earned at the casino helped them through a lean time, and maybe it was better for Barney that she worked at night so he didn’t have to go and stay with a stranger.
As he tacked down the roofing felt he was reminded of his first year in London. He would be doing jobs like this one, but his mind was always on Laura and dwelling on the many rows they’d had in this last year together.
He could see her now, sitting at the dressing table doing her face, all dressed up in a glamorous dress and high heels, while he ranted at her preferring the company of gamblers rather than him and her son.
‘Please don’t go on and on about this,’ he could remember her saying, her face stubborn and cold. ‘I can’t help it that there isn’t much work in Edinburgh for you. I know you don’t like the idea of me working at the casino. But one of us has got to bring some money home or we can’t eat or pay the rent. So you’ll just have to put up with it.’
Back then Stuart had only been able to look at the problems from one viewpoint, his own. He was in fact such a dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist that he thought men had a God-given right to make all plans and decisions, and that a woman’s role was merely one of support.
Jackie got him out of that way of thinking. She used to laugh at his old-fashioned ideas and challenge them. She once said to him, ‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that you drove Laura into another man’s arms? She was doing her best for both of you, but you threw it back in her face because she hurt your ego. Wise up, man, or you’ll end up with some doormat of a woman who will bore you to tears.’
Stuart smiled wryly to himself as he hammered the last tack in the roof and collected up the tools to take back to Meggie. He’d ended up without even a doormat of his own. A life spent avoiding permanent relationships because he equated them all with hurt.
He wasn’t such a tough guy after all.
8
‘Good to see you again, Stuart. I thought you were stuck permanently on the other side of the world.’ Roger Davies beamed welcomingly as he opened the door. ‘Come on in, I’ve got us a few beers in, it will be good to catch up again.’
As Roger led the way into the huge kitchen at the back of Pembroke Villas in Kensington, Stuart was pleased to see everything was still much the same as when Jackie was living here. He had helped with the construction of adding a conservatory to the already large room because Jackie wanted guests to be able to lounge on settees in comfort while she was cooking.
The greenery from the garden had grown considerably and draped itself over the glass roof, the sofas were shabby now, and there was more clutter than in the old days. But it had retained some of Jackie’s artistic flair along with the character and sense of comfort and conviviality she had been so keen on.
Stuart had already explained to Roger on the phone that he hadn’t heard of Jackie’s death until his return to the UK, and that he’d been to see Belle and Lena. Roger appeared to have moved on considerably for he didn’t linger on the sadness of Jackie dying, and hardly mentioned Laura’s trial. He was more interested in talking about sailing, which he’d recently taken up, and said he was considering retiring early and going to live in Spain.
Just as when he visited Belle, Stuart had no intention of revealing his views on Laura, only to get yet another perspective on the events. He was also genuinely anxious to see Roger for his own sake, as they’d always got on well in the past.
It was a bit of a shock to find him so aged. Stuart knew he had to be around fifty-seven, but he looked far older than that. The little hair that remained was white and he had a big paunch and bags under his eyes. He looked nothing like the blond, blue-eyed Adonis he’d been when Stuart met him twenty years ago.
‘It’s nice to be here again,’ Stuart said, sitting down on one of the sofas. ‘We had some good times in this kitchen.’
‘I think that’s why I’m so reluctant to sell,’ Roger said as he got a couple of beers from the fridge. He stood still in the middle of the kitchen, looking around him. ‘It certainly doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to rattle around alone in a house of this size. But I’ve got so much stuff and it’s a daunting prospect to have to sort it all out and get rid of it.’
‘That’s the one and only advantage of keeping on the move,’ Stuart said. ‘You don’t get to hoard anything. But I’m beginning to think it’s time I settled down somewhere. I can’t roam for ever.’
They chatted and laughed for a couple of hours, about mutual friends, old times and the property market and drank a large number of beers. It was only once the pizza they’d ordered arrived that Stuart reminded himself this wasn’t purely a social call.
Belle had implied Roger would have a long list of grouses, but so far he hadn’t voiced any. He had only mentioned Jackie in relation to incidents and people who were part of their set in the seventies. He seemed very balanced; he was neither dismissive about his wife’s value, nor too sentimental. Stuart felt he’d accepted what had happened, and was in the process of putting a new life together, for he even mentioned a new woman friend.
Once they’d finished the pizza, and were both very mellow, Stuart thought it was time to broach more thorny issues. ‘Do you still keep in touch with Belle and Charles?’ he asked.
‘Not if I can help it,’ Roger said with a chuckle. ‘I never liked Charles, he was too up himself. And Belle became a whinging bitch within a few years of marriage to him.’
Stuart grinned. ‘I didn’t see Charles when I called on them, he was out somewhere. Can’t say I was disappointed either. But fancy them running a guest house! A bit of a comedown, isn’t it?’
‘Charles claimed at the time that he wanted less stress and more golf,’ Roger said. ‘But I think it was more likely that he was short of readies. There was a rumour going around at the time he left London that he was in a spot of bother over one of his construction sites. But then there were always rumours about Charles, you’ll probably remember that he was always one for sharp practice.’
‘That’s why I gave him a wide berth,’ Stuart agreed. ‘Mind you, most of the property developers back in the sevent
ies were the same. Jackie had the right idea – every place of hers I worked on was tip-top. No cutting corners, good design, quality fittings.’
‘She believed in doing up each place as if she was going to live in it. J used to argue with her about it when she first got started.’ Roger smiled ruefully. ‘I said she couldn’t make any profit that way. But I was wrong – her integrity showed, and they sold fast. A smaller profit but a quick turnover is more valuable in the long run.’
‘I wish I’d bought one of her places back then,’ Stuart said. ‘She offered me a small top flat in Battersea Bridge Road and as I recall it was a couple of thousand. Typical dumb Scot, I thought the mortgage would be a millstone round my neck. I saw a flat just like it offered for sale the other day and it was a hundred and fifty thousand! And that, I’m told, is a bargain!’
Roger laughed. ‘Property prices are ludicrous in London now. A young couple just starting out have no chance of getting a home like this one. Jackie tried to talk Belle into buying that flat in Battersea too. It was before she married Charles. But that little bimbo thought Battersea was too downmarket for her!’
‘I bet she’s sick about that now,’ Stuart sniggered. ‘I suppose back then she thought she ought to be living across the bridge in Chelsea. She was always a bit preoccupied with status, funny really when you think how Lena and Frank were, they didn’t give a toss about such things. By the way, have you got any idea why Belle implied Lena had gone senile? I found her bright as a button.’
‘Well, Belle likes to divide and rule. She wouldn’t have wanted you to see Lena, just as she wouldn’t want you to see me or Toby if he was still around.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I dare say because of just what we are doing right now. Discussing her. She wouldn’t want me telling you that she sold the house in Duke’s Avenue with undue haste.’
‘Did she?’
Faith Page 21