Natalie, who’d split up from Jeff just after the Christmas before last, found herself wondering who had come between her and this Fiona. Jeff had mentioned someone, but now she couldn’t remember the details. What had Jeff said about her? If Natalie was going to write an intimate story about all of them she’d have to discover this missing woman’s name as well as that of the girlfriend who came before her and maybe the one before that.
The mourners had all left the chapel by this time and were standing about admiring the flowers, some of them tearfully. Not one among them looked even remotely likely to have been her successor and Fiona’s predecessor. The plump lady with the pretty face was impossible-too old and the wrong shape. A blonde, not unlike Fiona to look at, she recognized as a detective inspector. Natalie introduced herself to a tall, thin woman of sixty who said she’d been Jeff’s landlady in Harvist Road, Queen’s Park.
“He was a lovely man, dear. Never gave a moment’s trouble.”
“I bet he got behind with his rent.”
“There was that. Fancy his wife going and marrying someone else while she was still married to him. Is that her? I think I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
“Was he away much overnight while he was living in your house?”
“For days on end and often at weekends, dear. But it was all above board. He used to go to Gloucester to see his mother. I was ever so worried he might have been on that train that crashed.”
Not likely, thought Natalie, considering he was driving his old banger back from Long Fredington at the time. Jeff’s mother, she knew for a fact, had died in 1985 and his father was living in Cardiff with a woman Jeff disliked, the Beryl of the Polo mint wreath. They hadn’t spoken for years. “That was at weekends. Was he away much in the week?”
“In the summer he was and maybe September too. ‘I think you’ve found yourself a lady friend,’ I said and he didn’t deny it.”
Natalie went over to have a word with Zillah. “Congratulations on your impending nuptials.”
“You what? Oh, yes. Thanks.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Who could the other woman, the intervening woman, be? Well-off, naturally, either with money or in a well-paid job. Owning her home and that home somewhere in London. North London, Natalie thought. Jeff had been one of those people who treat south London as alien territory for which you probably needed a passport. Once he’d boasted that he’d never even crossed a river bridge. That made her wonder what had become of his car, that twenty-year-old Ford Anglia he’d never cleaned while he was with her. She imagined it in a pound somewhere, having been clamped or grabbed from wherever he’d abandoned it in one of the myriad interlaced streets that lie between the North Circular Road and the Great Western line.
Back home, she made a few phone calls to check that Zillah (aka Sarah) Leach and James Melcombe-Smith were indeed due to be married in the City of Westminster next morning, but found nothing. Jims must be doing the deed in South Wessex. She wondered what chance she had of securing an interview with Leonardo Norton but decided to wait until she’d talked to Zillah, who might have revelations for her beyond anything she’d yet dreamed of.
Compared with her last one and even her first, the wedding was a drab affair. When the new rule or law had come in, Zillah had thought it a brilliant idea that you no longer had to be married in a church or register office but could fix things up in a hotel, a country house, or anywhere, really, provided it was licensed for the purpose. She changed her mind when she saw the place Jims had chosen, a 1930s roadhouse just off the A10 near Enfield. Dressed in the white suit and wearing a new cloche hat with curly black and white feathers, she thought she might as well not have bothered but stayed in jeans and sweater.
The ceiling was half-timbered in black faux beams and the walls hung with equally faux linenfold paneling. Rustic chairs and tables stood about, and sofas upholstered in chintz covered in half-blown pink and red roses. Zillah had never before seen so much harness or so many saddles, bridles, spurs, and horse brasses, not even in the depths of Dorset. She was introduced to the owner of the place, a slightly superannuated pretty boy with a cockney voice who had once been Ivo Carew’s lover. Saying he was pleased to meet her, he winked rudely at Jims over her shoulder.
The registrar was a woman, young and good-looking. Zillah, for once antifeminist, wondered if she’d feel properly married with a woman performing the ceremony, though she knew registrars were mostly female these days. Ivo and the pretty boy were witnesses, and the whole thing passed off swiftly. Zillah had expected lunch even in this dump, some kind of celebration, but Jims, who hadn’t spoken to her except to say “I will” quickly said good-bye to everyone and drove her back to Westminster.
At last he addressed her. “Now we shall have to make arrangements for you and your children to decamp to Fredington Crucis.”
Chapter 24
THIS WEEK, THOUGH Josephine wouldn’t remember, Minty would have worked at Immacue for twenty years. The end of May, it had been, when she was eighteen. As she started on the shirts, she tried to work out how many she must have ironed in those years. Say three hundred a week for fifty weeks a year, two being taken off for holidays, times twenty made 300,000 shirts. Enough to dress an army, Auntie had said when she’d done ten years. White ones, blue-and-white striped, pink-and-white, yellow-and-white, gray, and blue, there was no end to it. She picked the first one off the pile. It was light-and-dark-green, a rare combination.
As often happened when she let herself think about Auntie the ghost voice spoke to her. “It’s not three hundred thousand, you’re wrong there. You never did shirts on a Saturday, not when you first went there. Not for a good two years. And there was days when you never did fifty on account of there wasn’t fifty to do. That figure’s more like a hundred fifty thousand than three hundred.”
Minty didn’t say anything. Answering Auntie relieved her feelings but it caused trouble, too. Yesterday, when she’d shouted back, Josephine had come running out, wanting to know if she’d burnt herself. As if a person who’s ironed 300,000 shirts would burn herself.
“She ought to have a celebration for you just the same. She’s bone selfish, never thinks of anyone but herself and that husband of hers. If she has a baby you’ll find yourself looking after it. She’ll bring it in here and ask you to keep an eye on it while she goes to the shops or pops round the Chinese. That Ken, he may be over the moon, but he’ll not babysit. Men never do.”
“Go away,” said Minty, but very quietly.
“Now Mrs. Lewis knows more about these things than me. She’s had the experience. Giving birth, I mean. I had all the trouble and expense of rearing you but I never had the labor pains. If Jock hadn’t been killed in that train crash you’d maybe have had a baby yourself. You’d have liked to be a grandma, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Lewis?”