The Unwelcome Guest

by Amanda Robson

  You step out of prison wearing the clothes they arrested you in. Your black Armani suit, razor-blade heels and Hugo Boss blouse; the one that tumbles with lace and frills. Your long blonde hair streams behind your head in the breeze as you walk towards the car. Your face lights up as soon as you see me. I step out of the car and take you in my arms. You smell of desire. Of warmth. Of love. I hold you against me, guilt-ridden for doubting you.

  And I know, the only philosophy I need to understand right now, is that I am part of you, and you are part of me. We will always belong together.

  160

  Saffron

  I’m sitting in the car, as Miles drives me home. Nestling into the soft leather of his Range Rover. Driving me away from my nightmare. Someone pressed a button and my life had stopped.

  I look out of the car window and my life begins again. The world moves towards me fresh and colourful. Trees. Fields. Homes. Real homes containing real people. Not just passive objects who are locked behind closed doors, and fed food that tastes like the smell from the garbage dump. We drive past people walking along with a purpose. Friends to meet. Stuff to do. Their bodies not laden with the idle procrastination of those who are incarcerated. Zombies whose lives have stopped.

  I can’t wait to get home. I can’t wait to see the children. Hold them against me, skin on skin. My body ached for them, every hour of every day, last month.

  We turn into Lexington Drive. Past the James’ house. Past the Naracotts’. The Taylors’ and the Carrington-Smiths’. People we only see at dinner parties. The handmade iron gate, full of swirls and crevices, swings open as we pull into the drive of Wellbeck House. What a difference it makes to control the iron enclosures. After so long in prison, Wellbeck House looks like a palace. Portland stone porch. Ornate stone mantels. High ceilings. High windows. I step inside feeling like a princess. Princess Saffron of the Lexingtons. This is my jewelled kingdom. And now that you are gone, I am about to be crowned Queen.

  ‘She’s here,’ Miles yells, stepping in beside me.

  The boys come bounding into the hallway. Even though I have only been away a month, it has seemed like forever. They have grown. Ben looks slimmer than I remember. Eight years old now, nearly nine. Losing his baby fat. Lean and leggy. He has lost another tooth and the gap at the front of his mouth is bigger. Did Miles remember to ask him to leave it under his pillow, remove it, and put a pound coin in its place? So much to ask. So much catching up. He runs towards me and I hold him against me. I want to stay like this and press my love into him forever.

  Harry is here, snuggling up between my arm and Ben’s head like a pushy puppy dog. My heart sings with love.

  I look across towards the kitchen. Hayley is standing by the doorway. Slimmer. Elegant and sophisticated in a clinging soft jersey dress. High heels showing the curves of her calves and the thrust of her pelvis. Made up as if she’s about to go to a wedding or appear on a TV advert. She folds her arms, puts her head on one side and gives me a look. For a second I think she looks sanctimonious. But then her lips twitch, and burst into her usual broad smile.

  ‘Welcome home, Saffron,’ she barks in her New Zealand twang.

  161

  Hayley

  ‘Welcome home, Saffron,’ I manage through gritted teeth.

  She looks so beautiful, like a delicate butterfly. I know I shouldn’t resent her, but I was so happy when she was away. Handing back the keys is going to be really, really difficult.

  162

  Saffron

  The children are in bed. Hayley is upstairs relaxing in her room. Miles is cracking open a bottle of champagne in the drawing room. He pours the celebratory drink carefully down the side of our crystal goblets and hands me a glass. We clink our bubbles together.

  ‘To your freedom,’ Miles says.

  We sit in antique chairs, on each side of our white marble fireplace.

  Miles takes a sip and wriggles uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Do you know what, I’d rather have flat.’

  Given the circumstances does he find Moët and Chandon too celebratory? He places his champagne on the mantelpiece and walks to the wine fridge behind the curved mock Georgian cupboard in the corner. He rummages about until he finds a bottle of Viognier. He pours a third of a bottle into an extra-large glass.

  ‘Cheers.’

  He takes two large gulps of Viognier and necks half his glass. I have never seen him drinking like this. His eyes are empty. His face is red.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Why would Mum poison herself, and not tell us she was ill and needed support and help?’

  I shake my head. I do not know what to say.

  ‘Why would she do something as dreadful as killing herself and setting you up for it? I am so shocked, my mind can hardly focus. It is as if the ground I walk on has been pulled from under me and I don’t know how to move forwards anymore.’

  ‘Miles, don’t make me say it.’

  He turns his empty eyes towards me. ‘Don’t make you say what?’

  ‘I told you so.’

  His body bends. He winces as if I have punched him in the stomach.

  ‘I know you did.’ He bangs his wine glass onto the coffee table, stands up and walks towards me. He stands in front of me, bereft. Devastated. ‘Hold me, Saffron.’

  I stand up and step towards him. He pulls me against him. We cling to one another like ivy around a tree trunk, clasping, burrowing, digging for comfort. I feel the vibration of sobs building in the back of his throat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Saffron, for not believing you.’

  These words, so long in coming, fill me with warmth. They contort to jubilation, which I suppress. Jubilation is too much. All I want is peace. Peace to live my life with the man I love; without your interference, Caprice.

  ‘It was hard for you. She was your mother. You loved her.’

  His body trembles against mine. ‘What has happened is impossible to accept. It has shattered all my perceptions of my family life. Made my past a lie. I will never be able to come to terms with it.’

  ‘You will, Miles. Together we will come through this. Together we can come through anything.’

  163

  Hayley

  Over a hundred people are at Caprice’s funeral. The ancient church is swathed in a moving mass of people dressed in black. School gate mums. Bridge club. BPC. Your university friends. Aiden’s business associates. Saffron’s colleagues, Ted and Julie. School friends. Past neighbours. Even some people from the ‘look-at-me’ houses down the road have turned up to pay their respects. The turnout comes as a surprise, but I wonder how genuine their feelings are. I suspect most people have come to support you, Saffron and Aiden.

  I’m sitting right at the front in the cheap clingy dress I bought at Primark. Part of the family; responsible for looking after the children. No longer mistress of the household. You and Aiden look smart, in dark suits and ties, flanking Saffron, who is sitting to our right. Saffron looks as funky as ever. She is wearing a black and white block dress, and a tiny black hat with an enormous feather, which curves halfway down her back. My charges are sitting next to me, backs stiff, smart in children’s suits we found in John Lewis; mouths tightly shut, eyes glued to the altar at the front. No wriggling. No giggling. Little angels today, please.

  The only person who is lightening the colour of the occasion is the vicar, a young woman with a sweet sing-song lilt. She is wearing layers of white, which represent the righteousness of Christ. Ben told me that. He seems to know so much these days. A purple stole around her neck. We sing Caprice’s favourite hymn: ‘Now Thank We All Our God’. We kneel to pray. The vicar stands up. Time for the eulogy.

  ‘We are here, not to mourn for our beloved Caprice, but to celebrate her life. She was a devoted wife to her adored Rupert, a devoted and much-loved mother and grandmother. A giver, not a taker. Everyone who met her loved her.’

  164

  Saffron

  Not everyone who met you loved you. Not everyone, I shout in m
y head. Some of us hated you. Some of us wanted you dead. Then a mystical sensation wraps itself around me. I have been in this situation before, listening to the eulogy at your funeral. I look around. Everything is the same as my dreams, except the church is larger and there is no beach. The same silver cross stands in front of me, moving towards me, growing larger in my memory, in my mind. My body jolts as if I am about to wake up, but nothing happens. This time, my nemesis, you are dead. I will never have to put up with you again. Long may you rest in peace.

  165

  Hayley

  Memories flood towards me. I see Caprice standing in front of me, wearing cream silk, and magnificent waterfall earrings of sterling silver. Kitten-heel sandals in matching cream. Always so smooth. So elegant. Always doused in her favourite perfume, Opium by YSL. She looked a little bit like Audrey Hepburn but paler.

  I am back walking around the garden of Wellbeck House, arm in arm with her. Admiring the clematis and catmint, the salvia, the geraniums, the laburnum. Sitting beneath the weeping willow tree, the day she told me you had feelings for me, and my life opened out. I look across at your handsome face, today engulfed by pain and grief. My heart aches with love for you. I wish I could hold you against me and comfort you. Saffron is sitting so close to you, her arm draped across your back. Your shoulders are shaking. You are sobbing silently. Aiden is calmer. Head up high facing the front. I tear my eyes away from Caprice’s sons and step back into my memories.

  My birthday. The look on her face, eyes soft with kindness, as she handed me my card and a bunch of roses at breakfast time. She had made me American pancakes, and she served them to me with Canadian syrup and strawberries. Just a dash of icing sugar, sprinkled across the pancakes like snowflakes. The scent of the roses she had placed in a vase in the middle of the pine kitchen table wafting around the room.

  And the necklace she bought me. She took me to London to choose it the day after my birthday. At her favourite jewellers, the Silver Mouse Trap, behind The Royal Courts of Justice, on the Strand. I lift my hand to my neck to check my treasured piece of jewellery is still there. My fingers press down against the firmness of the gold chain I wear every day, and more memories come flooding back.

  Cups of coffee drunk at leisure together in the morning after I’d taken the boys to school. Italian Lavazza, her favourite. Listening to music with her. Unusual for her age, she liked Radio 1 as well as Radio 4.

  The way she made me laugh repeating gossip from the school gate mums.

  ‘The chap in our office who checks the computers is sleeping with the head of Marketing, and they’re both married. Don’t tell anyone will you,’ she told me Penny Langton yelled into her iPhone in the playground. Everyone in the playground heard and giggled. Caprice’s stories sometimes made me laugh so much my eyes watered and my mascara ran. So black-eyed from mascara, I looked like a panda after some of our chats.

  The day she took me to Wisley, the Royal Horticultural Society. Giving me such inspiration for the gardening course I hope to study when I return home. Too early for the summer borders to have reached their full magnificence. Caprice and I had a competition to see who could recognise the most plants. Caprice won. I close my eyes and try and remember what was there. Roses, allium, lavender, red thunder, silver ghost, echinacea, achillea coronation gold. Dahlias. We walked to Battleston Hill, flanked by a sea of lilies and hydrangeas. Purple, pink, and powder blue.

  Lunch in the café. Eating steak pie and chips, drinking red wine. The exotic garden. Fronds and palms from all around the world. Bold vibrant tropical flowers. The gentle tranquillity of the woodland gardens. The sweet, homely prettiness of the cottage gardens. The lake, the trees, the pinetum. The waterlilies. The rockery and its tumbling waterfalls. Caprice bought a trolleyful of plants from the garden centre.

  ‘Next year,’ Caprice said, as I drove her home, ‘we’ll come later in the season to catch the summer borders in their full glory.’

  For Caprice, next year will never come. Tears well up inside me. I bite my lip to try and push them away. But they are volcanic.

  166

  Saffron

  Hayley’s sobs and moans echo around the church, like a stuck pig’s. Miles and I exchange glances. She’s attracting too much attention. Overegging her importance within the family.

  167

  Aiden

  Sitting in a conference room at Mann and Mann Solicitors with my brother. Floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out onto a low-maintenance leafy shrubbery. Board meeting table. High-backed leather chairs. Stiff central flower arrangement of orchids and lilies. White lilies, a favourite of Mother’s. The flowers we chose for her casket. Mr Mann, our mother’s solicitor, is dressed in black as if we are still at her funeral. His grey hair is wispier than ever. He has aged since we were sorting out Father’s estate. The fat has gone from his face, and he is painfully thin and frail. He coughs a little, to clear his throat.

  ‘This is the last will and testament of Caprice Jackson.’ A long severe pause. ‘I bequeath my estate in equal parts to my sons, Aiden Jackson and Miles Jackson. Aiden is to receive his share immediately. Miles’ share is conditional. He will receive £100,000 immediately, but the remainder only if six months after my death, his wife Saffron is still alive. If Saffron should die within the first six months of my death, the rest of his share shall pass to Hayley Manville Smith.’

  Mother had always said it would be clear-cut. Fifty-fifty. What has happened? What is this? I look across at Miles. His eyes are dark and thunderous. He is ashen.

  ‘What has happened? What has Mother done?’ Miles asks.

  168

  Miles

  The wording of my mother’s will burns me, like acid.

  ‘What has happened? What has Mother done? We always thought the money would be split fairly between Aiden and I?’

  Mr Mann leans back in his chair. ‘This is how your mother wanted it to be. It was her money. She was very definite in her instructions, which I faithfully recorded in her will.’

  ‘But what’s all this about Saffron dying?’ My body is rigid with fear. ‘When did she add that? Why does she think Saffron might die?’

  Mr Mann widens his shoulders and folds his arms. ‘She rewrote her will a month before she died. I don’t think she meant to imply Saffron might die. It’s just a condition of her will that she decided to impose on Miles’ inheritance.’

  ‘Was she compos mentis?’

  His eyes harden. ‘That is tantamount to accusing me of malpractice.’ He pauses. ‘Of course she was. As a solicitor I wouldn’t have allowed her to change her will, if she wasn’t.’ His voice is tight and clipped. ‘I knew your mother for fifty years. I was always very aware of the clarity of her mind.’

  I stand up, put my hands on the conference table and lean towards him. ‘You don’t need to get heavy with me. I have no intention of contesting my mother’s will. Or accusing you of anything. But I’m sure you must understand, as a lot of money is involved, I am now most concerned for the safety of my wife.’

  169

  Aiden

  We step out of Mann and Mann Solicitors, and stand on the pavement outside. I am shocked and surprised. Worried about Miles. Worried about you, Saffron. What was Mother up to? Why Hayley? She hardly knew her. She had been your nanny for less than a year. Hayley being mentioned in the will is a lightning bolt.

  I look across at Miles. He has an expression on his face that I have never seen before, despite all that we have been through over the years, including our childhood fights, the death of our father, our mother. Even when he punched me after he caught me kissing you.

  It’s a dull August day. A gritty sky. Pan-scrub clouds blocking the sun. But despite the cloud the background temperature is high. Solid heat presses against my body. I wipe the sweat from my brow with my hankie, and undo my tie.

  ‘Come on, mate, let me take you for a drink,’ I say. ‘Let’s go to The Bear for a quick one.’

  Miles’ face softens a little. �
�Yep. I think I need more than one before I go home.’

  We walk to The Bear in silence. We step inside. Tuesday night. Not many customers. A group of scantily dressed young women in the corner. Bras showing. Lycra sliding from their shoulders. Two elderly men, heads together over a pint, and us.

  ‘What can I get you?’ I ask.

  ‘A double whisky.’

  ‘All right, you sit down. I’ll go to the bar.’

  As I set up a tab and order the drinks, I look across the room to Miles, to check he is all right. He has chosen a table near the fireplace and is sitting, body stiff, with his head in his hands.

  I place his whisky in front of him and sit down next to him.

  He looks up. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters, lifting the glass to his lips and knocking it straight back.

  I put my hand on his arm. ‘We’re in this together. What are we going to do about it?’ I ask.

  ‘First, I am not going to tell Saffron.’ He pauses. ‘And I don’t want you to either. She’ll freak out, start to panic that someone is going to kill her. You need to help me protect her for the six months. We need to watch where she goes, everything she does.’

  ‘Protecting Saffron will be my pleasure.’

  The look I have never seen before intensifies. ‘If you touch her, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘I can assure you, your wife doesn’t want me to touch her. And after so much rejection, I don’t want to touch her anymore.’

  He stands up. ‘Just getting another drink. What would you like?’

  I look down at my pint. I’ve hardly touched it. ‘I’m fine thanks.’

  I watch him walk to the bar, body a little looser after his double whisky. He returns with another large one, bangs the glass on the table and sits down again.