Clive jumped to his feet. “What are you saying, Mom? For God’s sake, stop it! Dad’s dead. His body isn’t even cold yet and you’re talking shit about him to me. Stop, please!”
Frankie couldn’t hide her bitterness.
“I knew he and Jen were lovers before we got married. And his parents were so desperate for him to marry the town virgin! Ha! What a laugh. Jen and the Virgin Mary, both pregnant before they married, and still, everyone believes they’re untainted.”
“Stop it!”
“She wasn’t even here to give me her condolences, to pay her respects! The bitch! But she’ll be happy for her daughter to take what rightly belongs to us, Clive.”
“Mom, stop it, please!” Clive begged.
Frankie ignored him. “She thinks I’m the bad friend because I slept with her dysfunctional husband. I did her a favour.” She burst into tears, sobbing drunkenly. “I tried to keep that asshole on the straight and narrow, so he didn’t run around with every whore in town.”
“Now you’re starting to freak me out completely! Please tell me that you’re making this all up. Please, Ma, I beg you, stop it.”
Faith walked in and put her finger to her mouth, silencing Clive. Sitting down on the arm of Frankie’s chair, she placed the weeping woman’s head against her tummy and rocked her gently from side to side. Such a soothing gesture was unfamiliar to Frankie, but she succumbed, nestling her head against the starched uniform that smelled comfortingly of cooking oil and fabric softener. She was completely spent.
“Ssh, Madam, ssh. Faith is going to take Madam to bed now. Here’s a little pill for you.”
Frankie took the sleeping tablet and swallowed it dry. Faith helped her up and walked her to her bedroom. Her helper pulled back the sheets, removed Frankie’s slippers from her feet and helped her lie down. Then she tucked her in gently and stroked her forehead.
“Madam needs to rest. Madam must just relax, please.”
Frankie felt herself dropping off to sleep before Faith had even left the room.
The only person who could help Jen sift through all this information and conflicting emotions was Sharon, who was willing to see her early that evening.
“I have to admit that your story has been the most compelling one I’ve ever been paid to listen to.”
Jen adored Sharon: her honesty, and the way she listened. It felt to her that she was more like a friend than a counsellor.
“Well, apparently, I inadvertently played a seminal part in the events that unfolded.”
“How so?” Sharon asked.
“Because I insisted that John fire Patty. He was forced to make a financial settlement. And my phone call to Lee’s house in the middle of the night asking for Frankie gave her game away. It was the evidence Lee needed to finally point to Frankie’s indiscretion.”
“It sounds to me like John needs help,” Sharon said, her eyes boring into Jen’s. “Phew. You have dealt with enough betrayal, haven’t you, Jen?” Jen nodded. The tears welled up.
John had betrayed her for years, in every possible way. If she was honest, he had never really been supportive or understanding. If she had compared John to Lee… She now knew she would have found that Lee was much more caring and supportive of Frankie than John had ever been of her. But then, Jen didn’t have much by which to measure a husband’s worth. Her parents’ marriage hadn’t been anything to go by. Her father had openly cheated on her mother. All this time, Jen had felt grateful for John◦– that he was not like her father. But little had she known. John was just better at covering his tracks.
“All I can say now is, thank goodness for Lee. He was a constant, I guess. He had my best interests at heart always, and I can never say thank you.”
She began to cry. Her cry became a howl. Lee was dead. She would never see him again.
Sharon allowed her to cry. When Jen finally stopped sobbing, Sharon said, “Jen, I know you don’t want to go to Lee’s funeral tomorrow, but I think you should. You need to mourn him, you need to pay tribute to him and you need closure. Forget about the other people who’ll be there. Focus on why you’re there. And mourn; mourn the loss of your friend.”
Jen interrupted her, “He was my guardian angel.”
“I guess he was. He was the one person who had your back, even though you rejected him all those years ago. You know now that he loved you completely.” Jen knew Sharon was right.
After her consultation with Sharon, Jen climbed behind her steering wheel and drove back to Stellenbosch, ready to face absolutely everything and everyone head on. It was dark when she finally arrived at the farm. She had made up her mind. She would attend Lee’s memorial service. She would pay tribute to the man who had a hand in unshackling her.
She hadn’t felt this brave for as long as she had been alive.
Thirty-three
Jen and Pete were in the lounge talking when they heard John’s car pull up. The car doors slammed shut, and John and Brigit’s raised voices carried across the vineyards. He was shouting that Brigit was to turn down the inheritance Lee had left her. She was screaming back at him that she would do no such thing, that she was old enough to make her own decisions and that the inheritance was a kind gesture, proving to her how much Lee had valued her as his goddaughter.
“Bullshit! He’s trying to make a point. That’s what he’s doing. At my expense. The conniving son of a bitch!”
Jen jumped from the couch and ran to the entrance hall with Pete on her heels, ready to try to rein in John’s temper.
“Why? Tell me?” Brigit shrieked. “Is it because you can’t afford to buy me an apartment? Does this make you look…?”
There was a loud smack as John’s hand connected with Brigit’s cheek.
Everyone stood stock still for what felt like an age, until Brigit cried out, “You’re a monster, that’s what you are. Don’t you lift your hand to me again, ever!” Jen followed as she ran to her bedroom, but Brigit managed to slam the door before Jen could stop her. Knowing Brigit, Jen thought it best to let her be. She stormed back to the hallway.
John glared at Jen. “Look what the cat’s dragged in,” he sneered. “To what do we owe the honour?” John motioned to Pete. “I see you have your lackey with you. Why don’t you fuck off too!”
“I will not have you speak like that to Pete, do you hear me?” Jen spoke calmly.
“Or what?” John challenged.
“Or it will be your loss; unless of course you want to turn your children against you too.”
Pete gave her a look that said, I’m here if you need me, then turned and left the room. When she heard the kitchen door swinging shut behind him, she knew he had retreated to his cottage.
Jen went back into the lounge, her lounge, which had been photographed all those years ago for an interiors magazine. It was a beautiful cream and pistachio-green affair, with a marble coffee table as the focal point. I’ll definitely take that, she thought with affection. She had salvaged it from a junk shop and brought it back to its original splendour. Suddenly she was seeing everything in terms of what she would take with her when she left. The couches John could continue to slouch on, but the armoire, too, would find a new home with her. It had been her grandmother’s and had been handed down from her mother to her. It had originally been a depressing dark wood but Jen had lovingly repainted it using a French paint technique that was bizarre and sacrilegious at the time, though she’d noticed over the past few years that this had become quite a trend. She had breathed life back into that old cupboard, antique or not. That had been the crux of the magazine article: how Jen had managed to bring modernity into an old farmhouse, on a very small budget.