by Isabel Wolff
As I turned out of the gates, my heart still beating so erratically that I felt dizzy, I recalled Daisy’s words: ‘This is the start of a new phase in your life, and I just know it’s going to be good.’ But how could it be, I thought sourly—how could it be—when I’d just been ambushed by my past? And now I was oblivious to the colours of the landscape as I cast my mind back with a deep sense of shame.
It was half my lifetime ago, but it had remained seared on my mind like a brand. I still remembered every detail of that spring morning with photographic clarity, though as the years had gone by, I’d thought of it less. There was nothing I could do about it, and no-one I could tell; so I’d simply suppressed it, and tried to move on. The fact that I’d had to study so hard had helped in blocking out the pain—even so, it had haunted me for years, and still does. And, strangely, I’d been wondering about Jimmy recently, almost obsessively—and now, out of the blue, here he was. Here he was, the epitome, apparently, of affluent respectability. I laughed a bitter little laugh. As I drove through the grey terraces of North London, I wondered what he did. Probably something crooked, I reasoned—how else could he have become so rich? I thought about his wife, and wondered whether he’d ever confessed to her the awful thing that he—no, we—had once done.
When I got back to the Mews, Herman was happy to see me—I knew this because his whippety tail was wagging and he wasn’t actively looking anxious. His pointy little face was in neutral gear. I took him out for his walk, and as we walked up the hill, stopping for the usual friendly exchanges with other dog-owners—‘Ooh, look, a sausage dog!’ ‘Sweet!’ ‘Does he speak German?’—I decided what I would do. I’d ring Caroline and tell her that I was sorry, but I wouldn’t be able to help with the fete after all. I hated letting her down, not least because I’d liked her, but there was now no way I’d be able to go. And as I unlocked the front door, trying to work out which of my three excuses—mum ill/dog ill/ car problems—would sound most convincing, I saw the light flashing on the answerphone. I pressed ‘Play’.
‘You have. Three. Messages,’ intoned the robotic female voice. ‘First message sent. Today at. Four. Forty-five. P.M.’
‘Hello, darling!’ It was Mum. ‘Just ringing for a chat. But don’t ring me back as I’ll be busy with the boys. I’ll try you again later.’ Click. Whirr. The machine spooled on. ‘Hi, Miranda!’ My heart sank. ‘Caroline here. I just want to thank you again, for helping us out with the dog show—you’ve saved my bacon. But I also wanted to let you know that I’ve just told two of my friends that you’re doing the judging, and they’d both heard of you, from Animal Crackers. So you shouldn’t be so modest—you obviously are a bit of a celebrity. Anyway, we’re all really looking forward to seeing you here on Saturday. Bye for now!’ Click. Damn. ‘Hello, Miss Sweet,’ said a male voice. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Cooper here.’ Detective Sergeant? I panicked wildly for a split second, adrenaline flooding my veins, then remembered who he was and calmed down. ‘Just to let you know we’ll be sending you those forms I mentioned—I do apologize for the delay—you should get them by the end of the week.’ Oh. Right. The forms. I’d completely forgotten.
‘This is too much,’ I muttered to Herman, as I opened the back door and let the early evening sunlight flood the kitchen. ‘I’ve more than enough pain without this.’ I sat down, and breathed very deeply to calm myself, but this only gave me a sharp twinge in my rib. Then I went to my computer, waited impatiently while it connected to the Net, and then typed ‘James Mulholland’ into Google. A whole slew of entries came up.
‘Welcome to James Mulholland’s Website,’ I read. ‘James Mulholland has been MP for Billington since May 1997…’ Good God—he was an MP! I felt as though I’d been struck by lightning. At the top of the page I read, ‘Links | Fighting for Billington | Billington Labour Party | News | James Mulholland was born in 1965 and was educated at Walton Comprehensive, Peterborough…’
As I read on my heart was racing—there was a photo of Jimmy, smiling smoothly. ‘Click here to find out the latest on James Mulholland.’ I clicked again.
‘James Mulholland has been MP for Billington since 1997. During the 1997–2001 Parliament he was a member of the Education and Employment Committee and the Social Security Committee. He is now Minister of State for Education (Lifelong Learning).’ Christ, he was a Junior Minister! My eyes skimmed down the page. ‘Before going into politics, James was a local radio producer and reporter…’ So that’s what he’d done. ‘He was educated at Walton Comprehensive, Peterborough and Sussex University…where he gained a First in Biochemistry.’ In ‘real life’, I read, ‘James enjoys walking in the Hertfordshire countryside, and relaxing at home with his wife, Caroline, and their three dogs.’
But where did the amazing house come from? He’d been a journalist, not a banker, and MPs aren’t loaded. I scrolled through the other entries—mostly promotional guff—then clicked on the Guardian Unlimited site. There was an anonymous profile. Entitled ‘His Master’s Voice’, it wasn’t exactly flattering.
‘Son of an insurance salesman…early years provide little evidence of his later ambition… Walton Comprehensive, Peterborough… Sussex University…1987 joined Radio York…in 1993 he interviewed Jack Straw…so impressed, he invited him to be his parliamentary researcher…quickly rose through the ranks. At 37, Mulholland is on the fast track…good looks, charm, communication skills…“on message”…journey from radical left to centre right. In 1995 Press spokesman to Alan Milburn, then selected to fight the safe seat of Billington in Lancashire… In the summer of 2000 married the Hon. Caroline Horbury, heir to the Horbury property fortune…’ Ah. ‘…frequently entertain at their grand country pile…smart townhouse in Billington…elegant apartment in Westminster…he now puts her money where his mouth is…’
So that explained Little Gateley Manor. He hadn’t made money—he’d married it. It all made sense. As for the journey ‘from radical left to centre right’—that fitted too. I remembered again the Jimmy I’d known, and tried to square it with the suave pillar-of-the-establishment exterior I’d encountered today. I remembered too how charismatic I’d found him, and, ironically, how principled. That’s what had drawn me to him—his passionate beliefs. How misguided I was, I thought bitterly. What a dupe. And though I was only sixteen, and he was five years older, I was, at best, culpably naïve. Now I wondered whether he’d ever felt the slightest pang of conscience about the terrible thing that he’d done.
I’d always known that he’d escaped prosecution, because if he’d been arrested he would have named me. I remembered his voice on that awful March morning, as I’d stood in his flat, hyperventilating from exertion—I’d run all the way—and from shock.
‘I’ve just…found out,’ I gasped. ‘I’ve just found out.’ I could feel my face twisting with rage. ‘I overheard someone talking about it at the bus stop. How could you!!’ I croaked, my throat aching. ‘How could you! You…you…hypocrite.’ I burst into tears.
He folded his arms, then turned and looked out of the window onto the street below. I could see a muscle in his jaw tense and flex. ‘I should keep quiet if I were you,’ he said.
I was amazed at his self-possession. ‘Keep quiet?’ I wept. ‘Keep quiet?’ I was crying so much that my ears hurt. ‘No. I won’t bloody well keep quiet! I’m going to tell everyone what you did!’
He turned and faced me. ‘No, Miranda. What you did. It was you after all. Wasn’t it?’ he said quietly.
‘No. It wasn’t—because I didn’t know.’
He gave me an indolent smile. ‘The police won’t care about a detail like that. In any case they’ve already got your number, Miranda. Haven’t they? After your trip to the butchers a few months ago. And then there was your little adventure at the fur coat shop. They won’t believe you. Will they?’ I felt sick. ‘In any case,’ he went on smoothly. ‘If you name me, I’ll tell them that you did know. I’ll say we did it together. So I really do suggest that it’s in both our inte
rests for you to keep your sweet little trap firmly shut. Unless you want to go to Holloway, of course.’
It was as though I’d been plunged into a bath of ice water, and I saw, with dreadful clarity, that he was right. So I did keep quiet—for sixteen years—to my shame, and never saw him again. Until today…
I lay on my bed for more than an hour—Herman lying beside me, like a tiny bolster—just staring through the skylight as the hot blue of the evening sky turned pink, then mauve, now deepening to liquid indigo, and a kind of plan began to form in my mind. I would go to Little Gateley this Saturday—and I’d find some opportunity to speak to Jimmy alone. I’d quietly confront him and I’d get him to acknowledge me, and to admit—at last—that he’d done something terribly wrong. And I’d make him apologize to me, for what he did—because he’d damaged a part of my youth. God knows what other, physical, damage he’d caused, I thought bitterly. I’d never been brave enough to find out. And so, Alexander quite driven from my mind, I went to sleep, dreaming of fire.
CHAPTER 3
The next day I was booked to see Lily Jago and her shih-tzu, Jennifer Aniston. I read the e-mail again. ‘Not allowed to take her to work any more…she’s clearly having a nervous breakdown…wreaking havoc at home…can’t cope… Help!!!!’ It sounded like a pretty straightforward case of separation anxiety. The appointment was at half past four. So I pushed away the negativity which had paralysed me for the previous twenty-four hours and forced myself to work. I spent the morning writing a flyer to send to local vets. I also called the Camden New Journal to see whether they might be interested in doing a short piece about me—anything to get the clients rolling in. I wrote my follow-up report to send to the Greens about their Irish setter, then Clare, the producer of Animal Crackers, rang. She wanted to arrange the next filming schedule and told me that the new series had just got a good advance preview in TV Life!. I went down to the shop and bought it, and there was a photo of the presenter, Kate Laurie, with a Shetland pony, and, inset, a small one of me.
We love our pets, but do we drive them crazy? it asked. That’s what Kate Laurie will be finding out in the new series of Animal Crackers with help from our resident ‘pet psychiatrist’, Miranda Sweet. It had a five star rating and was described as ‘compulsive viewing’. I felt pleased and relieved. I idly flicked through the rest of the magazine and suddenly saw Alexander’s face. It loomed out of the ‘Hot New Talent’ slot on page eight. I caught my breath. He looked heartbreakingly handsome in his eighteenth-century naval uniform. Alexander Darke in the new swashbuckling drama, Land Ahoy!, announced the caption. A shard of glass pierced my heart.
Alexander Darke possesses a beguiling blend of old-fashioned charm and courtesy, the piece began. Unused to being interviewed, he responds to questions with polite enquiries of his own. But he will have to get used to the media spotlight, for, after twelve years of ‘treading water more than boards’, as he modestly puts it, Land Ahoy! is set to make him a star. It was obvious that the journalist had fancied him. She rhapsodized about his Byronic looks…like a young Richard Chamberlain, and his athletic physique. I felt another sharp pang. This gorgeous Darke horse seems inspired casting as the brave yet unemotional seafaring man, she gushed. Well, the ‘Darke horse’ part of it was certainly true. Land Ahoy!’s female lead is the luscious Tilly Bishop, 25, who recently starred in the hit romantic comedy, Reality Cheque. I felt sick.
By now it had gone three, so I settled Herman, and walked over the railway bridge to the tube. I got the train to Embankment, then another to Sloane Square, then strolled down the King’s Road. Daisy had warned me what to expect about Lily Jago. ‘She’s a chronic drama queen,’ she’d said. I knew that Lily was a fanatical animal lover because she’d recently got into trouble for refusing to employ a Korean girl on the basis that she came from a country where they eat dogs. Lily had been taken to a tribunal, the publishers of Moi! had been fined, and it had been splashed all over the press. She’d only kept her job because she’d lifted the magazine’s circulation by fifty-six per cent in the previous year.
‘Thank God you’re here!’ she breathed as she opened the front door of her flat in Glebe Place. There were feathers in her hair. ‘It’s been absolute hell!’ I went inside, and saw that the avian trail led all the way down the hall to the sitting room. ‘Just look what the little monster has done!’
The shih-tzu sat on the sofa, amidst the wreckage of two eviscerated cushions, indignation and distress in her bulgy brown eyes.
‘I came back ten minutes ago to find this, this…devastation!’ Lily wailed. This wasn’t really devastation. I’ve seen houses where the dog has shredded the wallpaper. ‘The little vandal! I just don’t know what to do!’ I got Lily to calm down, then asked her when the problems had started.
‘A month ago,’ she replied. ‘You see, Moi! was taken over,’ she explained, as she lit a cheroot with a trembling hand. ‘And the new proprietor won’t allow animals at work. Not so much as a goldfish!’ she added irritably. She tossed back her head and a twin plume of blue smoke streamed from her elegant nose. ‘So I now have no option but to leave Jennifer at home. But the point is she’s not used to it, because for the past two years she’s always come in with me. For a while she was even editing her own section.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. She had a dogs’ beauty problem page. Anyway, she’s obviously missing office life, so I suppose that’s why she’s being beastly.’
‘I don’t think that’s it at all.’
‘I think she’s doing it to get back at me,’ said Lily, her eyes narrowing as she drew on the cheroot again. ‘For leaving her on her own.’
I sighed. This, sadly, is a common misconception. ‘Miss Jago,’ I began wearily.
She waved an elegant hand at me. ‘Call me Lily.’
‘Lily,’ I tried again. ‘Let me reassure you that dogs are quite incapable of forming the abstract concept of “revenge”. This is a classic case of separation anxiety. It’s not that she’s “missing the office”, or “trying to get her own back”. It’s simply that being alone gives her terrible stress.’
‘Well, she does have a walker who comes to take her out at lunchtimes, not least so that she can, you know—’ Lily lowered her voice ‘—wash her hands.’
‘Hmm. I see. But, apart from that, she’s on her own for what, three or four hours at a stretch?’ Lily nodded guiltily. ‘Well, that’s quite a long time.’
‘I’ve no choice!’ I stood up. Lily looked alarmed. ‘Christ, you’re not going are you?’
‘No. I’m not. I’d like you to show me your leaving routine. I’d like you to pretend that it’s the morning, and you’re about to go off to work.’
‘You mean, act it out?’
‘Yes. The whole works. Putting on your coat, getting your bag, saying goodbye to Jennifer, and locking the door. Please make it as realistic as you can and pretend that I’m not here.’
She looked at me sceptically. ‘O-kay.’
I followed Lily to the gleaming steel and black granite kitchen where she filled Jennifer’s bowl—it looked like porcelain—with Dogobix. Then, Jennifer following her, grunting, down the long, cream-carpeted hallway, Lily picked up her jacket and bag. Jennifer’s body suddenly stiffened with apprehension.
‘O-kay dar-ling,’ Lily sang. ‘It’s time for Mummy to go to work now.’ Jennifer began to whine. ‘No, sweetie, don’t cry, Mummy’s got to go to work so that she can buy you all sorts of lovely things. Like that Gucci collar you want—remember? And that Theo Fennell silver bowl? So I’m just…going out…’ Jennifer was racing crazily round Lily’s feet, whimpering and hyperventilating, ‘…for a lit-tle while.’ By now Jennifer was screaming like a banshee as Lily and I backed out through the front door. She turned the key, then bent down and opened the letter-box. ‘Bye-bye, my sweet little darling,’ she called through it, ‘bye-bye, my love,’ then she straightened up. She looked at me, and her face suddenly crumpled like an empty crisp packet. ‘Oh Go
d—I just can’t bear it!’ She unlocked the door again, scooped Jennifer up in her arms, and kissed her flattened little face several times. ‘Be a good girl, Jennifer. Be a good little girl for Mummy, okay?’ Then she put Jennifer down, and left. From inside we could hear outraged howling.
‘And this is what you do every morning?’ I said to her.
‘Yes.’
‘Now show me how you come home.’
‘Okay.’ Lily unlocked the front door, and rushed in, her arms wide open.
‘Darling, here I am again—Mummy’s ba-ck!’ Jennifer, though by now clearly confused, responded with an ecstatic grunt. ‘Did you miss me, darling?’ Lily crooned as she picked her up and cuddled her. ‘Did you? Well I really missed you too. I love my lickle baby Jennifer, and I don’t like leaving her, do I, my darling? No, no, no—I don’t!’
She put the dog down.
‘That’s how I do it.’
‘Hmm.’
We went back into the sitting room and I explained what she was doing wrong—that she was making such a huge thing of leaving and returning that she was working Jennifer up into a frenzy. ‘You’ve got to be cooler about it all,’ I advised her. ‘Be quite off-hand. In the mornings, don’t go in for these long, drawn-out departures—you make it all so much more traumatic than it has to be, and that gets her in a terrible state.’ I advised her to vary her leaving routine, and to leave her on her own at other times, unexpectedly. ‘Just pop out without telling her,’ I said.
‘Without telling her?’ repeated Lily incredulously.
‘Yes. Then come back, as casual as you like. That way she’ll get used to you coming and going and she won’t panic, which means she won’t be destructive. And when you come home in the evenings, be warm to her, of course, but not too delirious—after all, you’ve only been to work, not round the world. You’re making far too much of it all, so you’re giving her massive psychological stress.’