It was a long time since Michelle had been able to bend down. They had had to get rid of the vacuum cleaner they used to have, the kind with a long hose you pull along like a little dog, because she couldn’t bend down enough to fetch it out of the cupboard and put it back. The upright one they had now was better, but only marginally, because to connect the attachments, she had to make the huge effort of lifting the cleaner by its handle onto a chair and performing this operation at thigh level. Afterward she had to stand still for a moment, one hand pressed against the mountain of her bosom. But once she’d got her breath back, she managed to screw in the nozzle on the brush hose and finish the cleaning of the room. Then she went out shopping.
Not to Waitrose this time but nearer home to the Atlanta supermarket at West End Green. She put kiwi fruit into the trolley, Ryvitas, and a large pack of dry roasted peanuts, but as, almost automatically, she took a big bag of doughnuts from the shelf, her hand was stayed in midair and very slowly she put it back again. The same with the thick wedge of Cheddar cheese and the Cadbury’s Milk Flakes. She was bracing herself not to succumb but to leave the cheesecake where it was in the chilled foods cabinet when a voice behind her said, “Stoking up the boilers, are we? Maintaining the avoirdupois?”
It was Jeff Leigh. Strange things were happening to Michelle in Matthew’s absence. Her mind was in a turmoil as she thought thoughts she hadn’t had for a dozen years and looked at people she was used to with new eyes. For instance, she was seeing Jeff as if for the first time and perceiving him as very good-looking, that it was obvious why women found him attractive. And equally obvious that his charm was spurious and his looks skin-deep. Any reasonable person, not blinded by a love that must be mostly physical desire, would dislike and distrust him. She didn’t answer his question but asked him where Fiona was.
“At work. Where else?”
“To keep you in the luxury to which you’re accustomed, I suppose.” Michelle surprised herself, for she couldn’t remember saying such a thing or using such a tone in all her life before.
“It always amazes me,” he said, smiling genially, “how you women scream for equality with men but you still expect men to keep you and never to keep them. Why? In an equal society some men would keep women and some women keep men. Like Matthew keeps you and Fiona keeps me.”
“Everyone ought to work.”
“Excuse me, Michelle, but when did you last set foot in a nursery for a living?”
After she’d walked off in silence he was sorry he’d said that. It was cheap. Also it would have been funnier to have said something more about her shape and weight. Something on the lines of applying for a post with the Fattist Society, if she was in need of a job. Jeff bought the half-pint of milk he needed for his morning coffee and the smoked salmon sandwiches which would be his lunch and went home to think about the hours ahead before Fiona came home.
For years now Jeffrey Leach had planned each day with care. He gave an impression of casual insouciance but in fact he was meticulous, well-organized, and industrious. The trouble was that he couldn’t exactly tell people how hard he really did work, for most of what he did was dodgy or downright illegal. Yesterday, for instance, he’d driven himself to an Asda store and, presenting at the checkout the J. H. Leigh credit card he’d found to pay for their week’s groceries, had asked for cash back. The weary girl, who’d been on for three hours, asked how much. Jeff, who’d been going to say fifty, asked for a hundred pounds. She handed it over and he wished he’d asked for two. Yet she’d looked long and hard at the card before giving him the money, so that he’d heard a little warning bell tinkling.
Home now, he took the card out of his wallet and, resolutely but not without regrets, cut it into six pieces with Fiona’s kitchen scissors. These he put into the waste bin, careful to cover them with an empty cornflake packet and a pair of Fiona’s laddered tights. Better safe than sorry even if safety was going to cost him. The card had served him well as cards go, and as cards go it went. He’d get another somehow or other. Maybe Fiona would get him one. American Express was always writing letters telling their clients to apply for cards for family members. A live-in lover was a family member, wasn’t he? For the life of him he couldn’t see how he was actually to marry Fiona unless he got up his nerve and committed bigamy like Zillah. He’d give more thought to that when August approached.
Jeff used his mobile as seldom as possible, making most calls on Fiona’s phone. He lifted the receiver and rang his bookmaker, placing a bet on a horse called Feast and Famine running at Cheltenham. His almost uncanny success on the racecourse owed more to instinct and serendipity than knowledge of horseflesh. It enabled him to pick up a nice little weekly income. He was in need, however, of a larger sum immediately. Fiona still hadn’t got an engagement ring and the sort he usually picked up for twenty quid in Covent Garden market or off a stall outside St. James’s Piccadilly wouldn’t do for this top-quality woman. Once he’d run a most successful scam, offering-through an advertisement and on receipt of a five-pound note-a brochure on how to be a millionaire within two years. He’d made a small fortune before applicants began writing furious letters asking where their brochure was. But he couldn’t repeat the exercise. Imagine the post he’d get and Fiona’s face when she rumbled him.
Zillah had been right when she’d decided her husband would not blackmail her. To his credit, demanding money with menaces had never crossed Jeff’s mind. The engagement ring would have to come from another source. Fleetingly, he thought of Minty. Funny little thing. She was the cleanest woman he’d ever slept with. Even if he hadn’t met Fiona and quickly picked up on her wealth, he’d have had to drop Minty. What man would fancy the bed smelling of Wright’s Coal Tar soap every time he’d had a bit of a cuddle? Still, he might have got her to take out that mortgage on the house before he left her. Why hadn’t he? Because he was a decent bloke at heart, he told himself, and making one fiancée pay for another fiancée’s engagement ring was too low even for him.
Jeff had a look around the house for money. There never was any, he knew that by now, but he never quite gave up hope. Fiona didn’t seem to have any cash. It was what came of being in banking, he supposed, everything on paper, cards, computers. She’d once told him she dreamed of a day when cash as such would disappear and be replaced by paying and being paid by iridian means or a fingerprint. He looked in a tea tin in the kitchen that seemed to serve no purpose but to contain money, though it never did, and through the pockets of Fiona’s many coats. Not even a twenty-pence piece. Still, he had enough to get along on and when Feast and Famine came in first, as it undoubtedly would, he’d net five hundred.
When he’d drunk his coffee and eaten his sandwiches, Jeff went out. Even on such a fine day it would take too long to walk to Westminster, but he did get as far as Baker Street before taking a bus. He had no doubt that the woman he’d seen yesterday, driving and nearly crashing the silver Mercedes, was Zillah. This was the first time he’d been sure. The glimpses he’d caught of a dark woman at a window in Abbey Gardens Mansions might have been her and might not. When he’d last seen her in Long Fredington (and bade her farewell, though she didn’t know it) her hair was scraped back and fastened with an elastic band, and she’d been wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. This woman, the one in Abbey Gardens, looked like an Oriental princess, all big hair and jewelry, and some kind of low-cut satin top. It was a matter of chance that he’d seen her the day before. He hadn’t brought Fiona’s BMW; it was too much hassle parking it. He’d done it like today on foot and by bus and, after hanging about for a long time, ended up outside that flash restaurant and been leaning against the wall wondering what to do next. And she’d come along in that car out of Millbank.