I expect she considers I lead a tedious life, too, Imogen thought.
She pulled her car on to the pavement, leaving the drive free for her parents’ Volvo and walked down the long, narrow garden to the house. Just inside the door was a pile of post and she stooped to pick it up, absently looking through the envelopes to see if there was anything for her. There was one letter. It was in a cheap white envelope and the address was written in a handwriting she did not recognise. It had been posted locally the evening before. She took it with her to the kitchen and put it on the table while she filled a kettle to make coffee. All the time she was willing the phone to ring, or the doorbell. Patrick would have an explanation for everything, she thought. If only Patrick turned up everything would be all right. She made instant coffee in a mug with a cartoon of Margaret Thatcher on the side and opened the letter.
Dear Imogen, it said. I’m sorry you were so upset today. I think we should meet when I’ve more time. We need to talk. Perhaps we could have a meal together. I’m sure you’ve no reason to worry. I’ll be in touch soon.
It was written in a bold and confident hand and it was signed Dorothea. Imogen could imagine her writing it, dashing it off in a moment, perhaps while she was sitting in her car outside some client’s house. There was nothing new in the letter. It was a gesture, a form of showing off. Look at me, it said, I’m incredibly busy but I can still find time to show my stepson’s neurotic girlfriend that I care about her. It was as if she had seen a ghost. She tore the letter into pieces, then set fire to the paper in an ashtray. She rinsed the mug and the ashtray under the tap and went up the stairs to her room.
She had first suspected that Patrick was in love with Dorothea Cassidy on Easter Sunday. She remembered it vividly. She had been invited to the vicarage for lunch, then she and Patrick had spent the afternoon together, walking along the River Otter. There was a quiet, overgrown place where they knew they would not be disturbed. They lay under the trees and threw stones into the water. She had her head on his stomach and he stroked the hair away from her face.
‘We should elope,’ he had said, ‘ and live here for ever.’
She had moved away from him, so she was face down, watching the dragonflies on the river. She did not look at him because she was nervous about what he might say. ‘ Why don’t you leave the vicarage?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps we could get a flat together.’
‘Perhaps we could!’ he said, apparently enthusiastic, so she rolled back on to her side and took his hand, relieved. But when she went on to make real plans, to discuss where they might live, when he might move, he said it was not something to hurry.
‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said, expansively. ‘We’re all right as we are.’
So she realised that something was holding him at the vicarage. She thought at first it might be his affection for his father. They had been alone for such a long time that there was a special bond. It was only later on that Easter Sunday as they were walking back in the dusk through the trees with the sound of church bells in the distance, that Patrick made some casual reference to his stepmother. The trivial remark was made with such reverence that she saw, quite suddenly, that the real attraction was Dorothea.
Since then she had considered Dorothea a rival. Even when she was most depressed she had never dreamt that there was anything physical between them, but in comparison to Dorothea she felt excluded and inadequate. The jealousy crept up on her without her realising what was happening. At the start it was a minor irritant, almost amusing. Didn’t Patrick see what a fool he was making of himself? she thought. He was surely too old for a teenage crush. It was all the fault of that crazy boys’ school his father had sent him to. But it had steadily become more debilitating, and soon the secret and desperate jealousy was as much a part of her relationship with Patrick as her infatuation for him.
It was a private obsession. She started to count the number of times he mentioned Dorothea in each conversation. She noticed that when Dorothea was alone in the vicarage he made excuses to go home early to see her. Imogen knew that the obsession was destructive. She knew her hostility to Dorothea only increased the likelihood of Patrick leaving her, yet she was unable to stop herself. ‘Why does Dorothea have to run around doing all that social work?’ she would ask, sneering. ‘Hasn’t she got enough to do in the church? Shouldn’t she dress more like a vicar’s wife?’ Patrick seemed so wrapped up in admiration for his stepmother that he did not notice the criticism and was only too glad of the opportunity to talk about her. Soon Imogen knew even the most intimate details about her. Dorothea could never have children, he said melodramatically. It was one of the tragedies of her life. That was why she was so committed to social work. She loved all the children she worked with as if they were her own.
Not once since Easter Sunday had Imogen actively blamed Dorothea for what was happening to her. She had too little confidence for that. She blamed herself, bottled things up, and grew thinner and more frail and beautiful. She just wanted Dorothea out of the way.
Now she had got what she wanted and there was nothing left but this dreadful panic. She lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, at the cracks in the plaster she remembered from childhood illnesses, when fever had made the patterns dance in front of her eyes.
I didn’t really want her out of the way, she thought. Not literally. Not like that. She would have been able to handle the situation, she thought. Patrick would have seen sense in the end. She would have come to terms with it, if only Dorothea hadn’t decided to meddle, if she had not turned up at the hospital with her unendurable compassion and her pretensions to sainthood.
Dorothea had arrived on the ward without warning the afternoon before. She had run up the stairs from the radiotherapy out-patients’ waiting room and looked glowing, radiant. It was a quiet time and the other nurses were in the canteen having lunch. Imogen was on her own in the office. She had looked up from the desk and there was Dorothea, smiling, slightly out of breath.
‘I’m worried about you,’ Dorothea had said, coming straight to the point. There was never any small-talk with Dorothea. She despised it. ‘ You haven’t been looking well lately. I never get a chance to see you on your own at the vicarage. Patrick keeps you all to himself.’
‘I’m fine,’ Imogen had said, looking blankly out of the window.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dorothea had said and sat down on the visitors’ chair, frowning slightly to show her concern. ‘You’ve been miserable for months. Look at all the weight you’ve lost. What’s Patrick been doing to upset you? Or is it work?’
And then, despite herself, Imogen had blurted it all out, and Dorothea had listened, fixing Imogen with such a concentrated look that it seemed that nothing in the world mattered more to her than Imogen’s happiness. And she had promised to put everything right.
Imogen had gone home from work that night not sure what to expect. She had wanted to believe that Dorothea had a magical power to arrange things, but was afraid that the meeting between them might provoke some crisis. She had shut herself in her bedroom. Her parents were preparing to go out and she could hear them calling to each other between the bathroom and their bedroom about what earrings went best with her mother’s dress. Then the doorbell had rung with an unusual ferocity and she had fled down the stairs to answer it. Patrick stood on the doorstep, as he had on the night they met, but he refused to come in.
‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.
‘Come in. My parents are going out soon.’
‘No. Not here. Get your things. We’ll go to the pub.’