‘And you were attracted to David right away?’ Slider asked.
‘I admired him for the way he’d got over his disadvantages and moved himself into a different world. Without being resentful. There were other working-class students, of course, but they tended to be – what’s that word they use nowadays?’
‘Chippy?’ Atherton suggested.
‘Oh yes. There were a lot of chippy people around back then. But David wasn’t the least like that. He loved the fact that I came from a privileged home. He made me feel it was something to be proud of. So we – clung together, I suppose. And then – well, he was tremendously attractive. Thick, black hair, blue eyes, wonderfully athletic. And that charm of his . . .’
‘You fell in love,’ Slider suggested. She assented by a slight nod. ‘But you didn’t get married for quite some time.’
She sharpened. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Slider said. ‘We found the marriage certificate, you see, so we know the date.’
She sighed. ‘There was a lot of opposition at home. Mummy was horrified because he wasn’t “one of us”. Daddy insisted David must prove himself before we could get married. They hoped I’d meet someone else if they made me wait.’ Her mouth hardened as she said it. ‘For five years they threw eligible men of the “right” sort at me, made me go to every dance and party, tried to pretend David was just one of the field. It wasn’t until he was a senior houseman, and Bernard Webber got him a registrar slot, that they gave in.’
Interesting, Slider thought. She would have been of age on leaving university, and could have married him then, but it did not seem to have occurred to her to do it without permission. Or was it a matter of money? It wasn’t in his remit to ask, though he’d have liked to.
‘We got married,’ she went on, ‘and he proved them wrong – as far as career and income went. Mummy always looked down her nose at him rather, but Daddy respected him for what he achieved. I always kept the women thing away from them, until the end. But they wouldn’t have cared about that, anyway, as long as there wasn’t a scandal. They would have told me not to make a fuss. And I didn’t, for a long time. But in the end, it just wore me down.’ She met Slider’s eyes. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. The constant, constant—’ Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. ‘The lies. The excuses. The “conferences”. The “medical emergencies”. The tawdriness of it all! The way those girls behaved – no restraint. No self-respect. Notes left in his pockets. Telephone calls – the ones where they hang up when I answer and the ones where they pretend to be calling from work. The ones who sat in their cars outside the house hoping to catch a glimpse of him. The ones who were friendly to me at functions to show there was nothing going on and the ones who glared furiously at me across the room. The ones who showed up at the house in tears. The ones who thought he would marry them. They didn’t understand the first thing about him. He would never have left me. And I’d have put up with it, if it was just an occasional thing, if it was kept out of sight. But it just – never – stopped.’
She looked around her helplessly, and Atherton, divining her problem, jumped up and brought the box of tissues to her from the coffee table. She looked at him properly for the first time as she took one and said, ‘Thanks.’ He thought she might have been quite attractive if she ever smiled.
‘It must have been very hard for you,’ Slider said when she had dried her eyes and discreetly blown her nose.
‘It was. I did care for him, you see, and in a way he couldn’t help it. He was just made that way. He loved sex, and he couldn’t resist when it was offered. And of course a doctor gets offered lots of it. He was a very uncomplicated person, really. But I just couldn’t go on. He cried when he moved out. I hated that. We sold the house – we had a lovely place in Chipperfield – and the London flat, and divided the money, and I bought this house.’
‘Did he pay you maintenance?’
‘No. I told you, we shared the capital. I didn’t want anything else from him. I wanted to cut him out of my life, and that’s what I did. Made my own life, concentrated on my own career.’
‘Which is?’ Slider asked.
‘I co-own an employment agency – Sturgess and Beale, in Chiswick. We specialize in placing disabled people.’
It was a bit of a conversation-stopper. ‘That must be very – rewarding,’ Slider managed.
‘It is,’ she said, back in control and blanking them out again. ‘Since then, as I say, I have had nothing to do with David, beyond the occasional phone call. I can’t even recall when the last one was. Last year some time. So I don’t know what he’s been getting up to.’
‘Do you know where he’s been working recently?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I have no idea how he supports himself. He could be a taxi driver for all I know.’
‘Has he ever suggested to you that he had money worries?’
‘No. I imagine he does all right, since he’s still living in that house in Shepherd’s Bush. I know that cost quite a bit when he bought it. But he wouldn’t ask me for money anyway. He’d get short shrift if he did! When I think of what he made me give up . . . I loved our life – the parties, the holidays – living in the country – our lovely house. And it’s come to this.’ She looked around her bitterly. ‘A semi-detached in Ealing. That’s all I have to show for all those years.’
What was so bad about that? Slider thought. It was a pretty nice house. He made a non-committal noise.
She looked at him. ‘And now he’s dead. Shot. He shamed me, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to come to that. You’ll find there’s a woman at the bottom of it. Some jealous woman or some angry husband. I suppose he’s gone out in a blaze of glory, in a way. I don’t know if that isn’t an ending he’d have approved of.’
They were interrupted at that moment by the sound of a key in the front door, and her faced snapped back instantly into hauteur, salted with a hint of annoyance. She rose to her feet, forcing Slider, who’d been brought up that way, to stand as well. A man came in from the halclass="underline" a lean, well-built man – though a couple of inches shorter than her – in his forties, with a deeply weather-tanned face, unruly dark hair and bright-blue eyes. He was wearing a donkey-jacket over a navy guernsey, heavy cord trousers and mud-stained work boots.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know you had visitors.’ His accent, while not as cut-glass as Amanda’s, was quite pure – a surprise, given his clothing, and hands which had seen manual labour in the recent past. He saw Atherton looking at them and put them behind his back.
‘These gentlemen are just leaving,’ Amanda said. There was a pink spot – of annoyance or embarrassment, or both – in her cheek. Slider stood his ground sturdily and smiled enquiringly until she was forced to say, ‘Robin Frith, an old friend of mine. These gentlemen are police officers. It seems David’s had an accident.’
She gave him a glare that would have turned Medusa to stone, and a flick of the head which made him say, ‘Well, I won’t interrupt,’ and absent himself hastily.
Slider could hear him going upstairs; and Amanda’s body language was urging them towards the door.
‘I mustn’t keep you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’m not able to tell you anything useful.’
‘Oh, you’ve been very helpful, thank you,’ Slider said, but more to give her something to think about than because it was true.
‘Odd,’ Atherton said when they had left. ‘Don’t you think it was odd?’