by Jill Mansell
‘You could have phoned for a taxi.’
Wearily he shook his head.
‘Last time I did that, the bloody thing took forty minutes to turn up.’
‘What about a friend? Don’t you have any of those, to call on in an emergency?’
Since moving down from Manchester to Bath four months earlier, Eddie had discovered at first hand that all the guff about northerners being friendlier than southerners was true.
‘Plenty, thanks.’ He heard his voice sharpening but couldn’t help it. ‘I have plenty of friends.. In Manchester. How silly of me, I suppose I should have given them a ring.’
‘It was silly of you to drive.’ Pru remained calm. ‘You could have killed someone. You could,’
she pointed out, ‘have killed me.’
Eddie was beginning to wish he had. His eyes felt gritty and his head ached. He gave up.
‘So what are you going to do, call the police and turn me in?’
Pru indicated left as she turned into the entrance of Brunton Manor. He looked so crushed she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
Her voice softened. ‘Is that what you think? Actually I wasn’t planning to.’
‘Oh.’
‘Look, phone a garage. Get my car towed away and fixed.’ Pru parked the Jag neatly by the side entrance to the club but kept the engine running. ‘Am I insured to drive this one?’
Bit late to ask now, thought Eddie, but he nodded.
‘It’s covered for any driver.’
Except banned ones.
‘Okay.’ Briskly Pru checked her watch; she was already late for work. ‘So if it’s all right with you, I’ll borrow this car until mine’s ready.’
Eddie panicked. He felt like a smoker having his cigarettes confiscated.
‘But I might—’
‘Might what?’ Pru’s delicate eyebrows lifted. ‘Need it? Oh no, you won’t need it, Eddie. You’re banned.’
Chapter 13
By the time Pru arrived back at the scene of the crash, someone else had got there before her.
The Mini was still lying on its side in the ditch but the five bulging black bin liners she had piled on to the back seat were gone.
This was a major blow; Pru’s landlord didn’t know it yet, but paying the rent depended rather heavily on the contents of those bags.
Pru, who had astonished herself this morning – she’d never been that bold and assertive with anyone in her life – now felt her eyes begin to prickle with distinctly unassertive tears. All her good clothes, fifteen years’ worth, had been stolen. It had taken her hours to wash, press and check everything, making sure no buttons were missing, no hems coming undone. The woman who ran the designer as-new shop in Carlton Street, the Changing Room, had been keen to take as many of Pru’s outfits, with their impressive labels, as she wanted to be rid of.
Pru didn’t want to be rid of any of them but it was fast becoming a question of selling either her clothes or her body, and she couldn’t imagine anyone being interested just now in her scrawny frame. Selling the clothes, on the other hand, would give her enough for six months’ rent.
Pru stared at the Mini’s empty back seat and hanging-open doors and wondered who could have nicked them. Had a smartly dressed young businesswoman spotted the car on her way to work, stopped to make sure nobody was lying hurt, and taken a peek inside one of the bags? Maybe she’d pulled out the navy-blue Escada suit, held it up against herself and thought, ‘Size 10, what a stroke of luck, let’s see what else we’ve got here ...’ Then, clearly liking what she found, had she stowed the five bin bags in the boot of her own sporty little car and zoomed off to work, happy in the knowledge that that was her spring wardrobe sorted out?
Or had a gang of school kids found the bags, torn them open and dumped her clothes in the nearest pond in disgust?
‘Don’t fret about it,’ Marion Hayes declared when Pru finally turned up at Beech Farm. Arriving two hours late, and in a posh car, meant Marion’s curiosity was aroused. Before she started work, Pru was forced to sit down, eat Hob Nobs, drink tea and tell all.
‘That’s his problem, not yours.’ Marion dismissed Pru’s worries with an airy flick of the hand.
‘Just give him an estimate stating how much the stuff was worth. He’ll send it on to his insurance people. They’ll pay up.’
Pru nodded and tried to look suitably relieved. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Marion the whole story — about Eddie Hammond being banned and therefore uninsured — not out of any sense of loyalty, but because some things were simply safer left unsaid. She didn’t fancy being arrested and slung into prison for aiding and abetting a criminal.
She couldn’t help wondering, either, just how suspicious Eddie was going to be when she suddenly presented him with a hefty additional bill for stolen frocks.
I mean, how likely did it sound, Pru thought gloomily, thousands of pounds’ worth of designer labels being nicked from the back of a clapped-out Mini? She used to buy shoes that cost more than that car.
‘Well, at least you weren’t hurt,’ said Marion, draining her tea and standing up as the clock in the hall struck nine. ‘Time I was out of here. The cows’ll be wondering when they’re going to get fed. I’ll leave you in peace.’
* * *
When Pru had finished washing up the breakfast things she scrubbed the kitchen floor. While that was drying she vacuumed through downstairs. Next she cleaned the drawing room windows.
When the floor was dry in the kitchen she threw a great pile of muddy jeans into the washing machine. Then she sat down at the table to polish silver and listen to a radio phone-in on the subject of dishonesty.
‘When my husband’s been horrible to me,’ Teresa from Tunbridge Wells was confessing with a guilty giggle, ‘I wait until he’s asleep and pinch a fiver out of his wallet. The next day I spend it on chocolate.’
Pru idly considered phoning up the programme to say if anyone listening had her bin bags, could they please give them back?
She imagined herself on the radio, appealing to the thief’s better nature: ‘The thing is, I know they’re nice clothes, but please don’t think I’m rich. Because I’m not, any more. I’m horribly broke.’
At this point, the presenter would enquire gently: ‘Pru, if it’s not too personal a question, what brought this about?’
‘Well, Gary, let me put it this way. Two months ago I had a wonderful husband, a perfect home.
I employed a cleaning woman. Now I have no husband, no home, and I work as a cleaning woman.’
‘Pru, that’s terrible. But how did it happen?’
‘How did it happen? Gary, I’ll tell you how it happened. Some husbands do the routine thing, they have flings with their secretaries. But my husband had to be different, Gary. He didn’t even have the decency to have an affair with his secretary, oh no, he had to be different, didn’t he? He had to go and do it with our cleaner.’
‘Pru, are you all right?’
Pru leapt a foot out of her chair. Marion was standing in the doorway giving her an extremely odd look.
Horrified, Pru realised she was pressing a half-polished silver candlestick to her ear, holding it like a telephone.
Hastily she pretended to be testing its temperature against her sizzling cheek. ‘Oh hi! Amazing, don’t you think, how the harder you rub, the warmer it gets?’
‘Pru, you could have bumped your head in the crash.’ Marion sounded nervous. ‘Maybe you should see a doctor after all.’
Liza had never really felt guilty before. It was awful; she didn’t like it one bit. She wondered how long she would have to wait until it went away.
She was doing the stupidest things too, indulging in the kind of antics usually reserved for obsessed ex-lovers. Although the Songbird was miles out of her way, Liza found herself driving past it two or three times a week. Her stomach churning, she would count the number of cars in the restaurant’s tiny car park and try to figure out how many customers w
ere inside.
Not many, by the look of things.
Once or twice she had phoned the restaurant, pretending to have dialled a wrong number, just to see if it sounded busy.
She even persuaded Dulcie to go along there one Friday evening, to report back on atmosphere and food. Dulcie dragged a protesting girlfriend with her — ‘God, Dulcie, can’t we go somewhere else? That place has had some terrible reviews’ — and enjoyed her meal but was hugely disappointed not to bump into Kit Berenger.
‘I thought he said he’d eaten there loads of times,’ she complained to Liza the next day. ‘I was really looking forward to meeting him again. Lying toad, I bet he never sets foot in the place.
What a swizz.’
‘But the food was fine?’ prompted Liza, bursting for details. ‘What did you have? Take me through each course.’
‘I can’t remember,’ Dulcie protested. She gave Liza a ‘you’re weird’ look. ‘We had three bottles of Côtes de something, told each other millions of dirty jokes and had to be poured into a taxi.
Isn’t that good enough?’
’You are hopeless.’
‘If you’re so desperate to check out the food, go there yourself.’ Dulcie was miffed. Honestly, do someone a favour and all you got was abuse.
‘Oh right, I’ll do that,’ said Liza with some sarcasm. ‘I’m sure they’ll welcome me with wide-open arms.’
Heavens, Liza could be thick. Dulcie rolled her eyes in despair. ‘Do what you did last time, stupid. Go in disguise.’
The mechanics at Joe’s Autos had a great laugh when they heard what Eddie Hammond wanted them to do to Pru’s car.
Joe explained to Eddie over the phone the meaning of the technical term write-off.
‘Basically, when a car like this has a headlight smashed, it’s a write-off. Repairing the headlight is going to cost more than the car’s worth, d’you see? And I’ve had a good look at the damage to the passenger door, the wing, the wheel arch, the bonnet ... it’s just not worth it, Mr Hammond.
You’re talking five hundred quid’s worth of repairs on a total rust heap.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Eddie with a sigh, ‘but do it anyway.’
The car was ready three days later. Eddie dialled the number Pru had left with him. A spaced-out-sounding hippy answered, mumbling, ‘Yeah man, like, I’ll get her, okay?’
About half an hour later, Pru picked up the phone. Eddie wondered who the hippy was; a son, maybe? God help her if that was her husband.
But it was hardly the kind of question you could ask over the phone. He switched into brisk mode instead.
‘Pru? Eddie Hammond. Your car’s here waiting for you, all fixed and ...’ No, no, he could hardly say as good as new. ‘.. . um, raring to go. So if you’d like to bring back the Jag we can do a swap.’
‘Right.’ Pru wondered why garages always did that. When you were desperate to get your car back, it took them a fortnight just to change a wheel nut. When, on the other hand, you were enjoying yourself thoroughly, zipping around Bath in a bright-red Jaguar, they managed to carry out six months’ worth of repairs in no time flat.
Full of spite, garage mechanics.
Pru bit her lip and took a deep breath. She was doing it again, daydreaming deliberately, in order to avoid doing what had to be done next. She had been putting it off for three days and now she mustn’t put it off any more.
‘Fine, great, I’ll come up now. Thanks very much. Only the thing is, there’s ... um ... something else I have to—’
‘See you in a minute,’ said Eddie, whose other phone had begun to ring. ‘You know where my office is. Just come straight up.’
Eddie wondered why Pru Kasteliz was looking so twitchy. She should be pleased, he thought, to be getting her car back.
Bloody hell, thought Eddie, who had just written out a cheque to Joe’s Garage for £536, if anyone around here should be twitching it’s me. He handed Pru the keys to the Mini. She promptly dropped them. He watched her kneel down, her long dark hair swinging forwards as she retrieved the keys from under his desk.
‘That’s settled then,’ he said generously, ‘all sorted out and no harm done.’
Pru felt sick. She knew she should have done it over the phone. Face to face was impossible.
‘What?’ said Eddie when she had opened and closed her mouth a couple of times and no sound had come out.
Three days ago, she had been awash with self-confidence. Pru wondered where it had got to now she really needed it.
Maybe that was my lot, she thought despairingly, and I used it all up in one go, like Phil at the roulette table. One glorious, exhilarating surge of assertiveness ... and then, boom. Gone.
The meek shall inherit the earth ... as long as that’s all right with everyone else.
Wimps rule, okay? No, but really, are you sure that’s okay?
‘Look, I told you I had some things in the car,’ Pru blurted out, ‘and you said there wasn’t time to go back and lock it, so we didn’t. The thing is, by the time I did get back there, my things had been stolen. So I’m sorry, but here’s a list of what was taken. I spoke to my insurers but I’m not covered, so I’m afraid this is up to you as well.’
Eddie stared at Pru in disbelief. Then he stared in even more disbelief at the sheet of paper she had pushed across the table at him.
Her hands were trembling so much it could have been a bomb. It was hardly surprising they trembled, Eddie thought when he saw the size of the bill. More of a bombshell.
‘You mean you want me to give you another fourteen hundred pounds?’ He sounded totally baffled. ‘For a bag of old clothes?’
‘Five bags,’ whispered Pru. She wanted to tell him that if she had sold them through the Changing Room, she would have got more than that, but the words wouldn’t come.
‘You can’t be serious,’ said Eddie.
Pru stared down at her fingers, scrunched together in her lap. She knew what she should be doing. She should be fixing Mr Eddie over-the-limit Hammond with a haughty glare and telling him in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t her fault her car had been smashed up and spun into a ditch, that he was the one in the wrong and that if he found the prospect of reimbursing her so appalling ... well, then she would see him in court.
Joan Collins would have done it. Joan would have carried it off brilliantly. Maybe that’s my trouble, thought Pru. No shoulder pads.
‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’ Eddie Hammond demanded suddenly. It crossed his mind to wonder about the hippy on the phone. Was there a drug problem there? Was Pru so desperate for money to feed her son’s/lover’s/husband’s addiction that she would do anything to raise extra cash?
He jabbed at the list with an agitated finger.
‘How do I know these clothes were really stolen?’
Well, thought Pru, I could show you a few empty fitted wardrobes.
Or she could have done, if the house hadn’t been repossessed.
He was right, of course. She had no way at all of proving it. She couldn’t blame him for being suspicious either.
I’m gullible, Pru thought, but even I’d have my doubts about something like this.
‘It’s okay, it doesn’t matter.’ Realising she’d started to shake, she stood up and made a dash for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Eddie half rose out of his own chair, confused by the abrupt volte-face.
Quick, thought Pru, get me out of here before I start blubbing.
‘Home. Thanks for getting the car fixed.’ She shook her head violently. ‘It doesn’t matter about the clothes.’
Chapter 14
Liza took Pru along with her to the Songbird on Saturday night. She picked her up at eight o’clock.
Pru, thrilled to be invited — anything to get out of that bedsitter — said, ‘This is a treat. I thought you’d have brought your new chap. Couldn’t he make it?’
‘No.’ Liza slotted Sibelius into the tape deck. ‘Mainly because I didn’
t ask him.’
Pru recognised the look on her face. Clearly, new chap was no more.
‘But you said he was gorgeous last week.’
‘Last week he was. This week,’ Liza said heavily, ‘he started asking me about my star sign. I mean, give me a break. He’s supposed to be a grown man.’
It occurred to both of them, though neither said it aloud, that considering it was mid-April, so far their New Year’s resolutions weren’t turning out terribly well.
Entering the restaurant was nerve-racking. Liza, wigged-up and dressed-down, knew she was being irrational. No one had ever recognised her yet, so why should they suddenly start now?
But that didn’t stop her heart pounding like a Sally Army drum the whole time they were being greeted and seated.
Liza’s eyes flickered to the left. There was the little waitress who had been in such a fluster last time. Quick flicker to the right ... and there serving behind the bar was the attractive blonde who had tried so valiantly to keep the rugby rabble in check. Liza wondered if this was the girl whose feelings she had hurt so much, Kit Berenger’s cousin.
Sweat began to prickle her scalp beneath the unflattering mouse-brown wig. She felt like a spy, a wartime secret agent desperate not to attract the attention of the enemy.
‘Relax,’ said Pru, ‘no one’s looking.’
‘I know. I just don’t want to be recognised.’
‘It’s hardly likely, if even Phil didn’t spot you.’
Oh bum.
‘Phil!’ gasped Liza, covering her mouth in dismay. ‘Shit!’
‘Well, yes,’ said Pru, ‘I know that now.’
‘I mean I can’t believe I did this to you. This is where .. . and I completely forgot ... Hell’s bells, how could I be so insensitive? Why didn’t you say something?’
Liza cringed. Then she double-cringed, realising they were actually sitting at the table where Blanche had wriggled her toes with such enthusiasm in Phil’s trousered crotch.