Jude said she had fixed to meet Sara in the Crown and Anchor for a drink after the meeting, and asked if she could pass on the good news.
‘In fact,’ Arnold Bloom replied, ‘I – and many other committee members – will be adjourning to the pub, so I will be able to tell her myself. I think it would be more appropriate for such information to come from the Chairman.’
‘Of course,’ said Jude.
Arnold Bloom smiled with satisfaction. ‘How much more convenient it is,’ he observed, ‘being able to go down the road to the village pub than to be dragging all the way over to some tarted-up mansion on the Shorelands Estate.’
The Fethering Yacht Club was looking surprisingly festive that evening. This was chiefly because the Christmas fairy lights round the top of the bar hadn’t yet been taken down (and it was now into February). But the bar-room was a welcoming place, particularly in the winter, when all of the windows, right-angled to look over the Fether estuary and the English Channel, were closed. The glass was slick with condensation generated by the warmth of the large number of people inside.
Jude hadn’t been to the yacht club since her first weeks in Fethering, when she and Carole had become involved in investigating the drowning of a boy called Aaron Spalding. But, barring the Christmas lights, not a lot seemed to have changed in the interior décor. On the wall were ships’ wheels and glassed-in picture frames showing displays of nautical knots. Boards with flaking gold letters listed the club’s commodores and vice-commodores, as well as the victors in various categories of sailing. In a dusty cabinet were displayed tarnished cups engraved with the names of long-dead winners.
The whole place had an air of defeat and dilapidation about it, but that didn’t prevent its members from being very sniffy about who else they admitted to their ranks.
When Carole and Jude arrived that Friday evening, the engagement party was in full swing. Drink had been flowing for a while and the noise level of the conversation was high.
The affianced couple looked suitably radiant. Sara, in particular, glowed with happiness and looked wonderful in a defiantly scarlet dress. Careful make-up accentuated the sparkle of her dark eyes and her black hair was swept back into a girlish ponytail.
Kent looked good too, wearing an unflamboyant but beautifully cut suit in pale grey over a pale blue shirt. He greeted Carole and Jude effusively and directed them towards the bar ‘where you can order whatever you want’. The Fethering Yacht Club did not boast a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but they did have a perfectly acceptable French one (and, after all, the French had been making Sauvignon Blanc much longer than the New Zealanders).
The first people they encountered as they weaved their way back from the bar were the Braithwaites. Quintus was in blazer and crushed strawberry cords with some naval tie over his checked shirt. Phoebe was wearing rather too formal a little black dress. She moved with her customary poise.
‘Delighted to see the slipped disc’s getting better,’ said Jude.
‘Oh yes.’ Phoebe Braithwaite, being Phoebe Braithwaite, showed no embarrassment about her sudden recovery. ‘I’ve got this wonderful little man in Harley Street who’s just magic with backs.’
Jude would have put money on the fact that she had been nowhere near Harley Street since the Monday meeting. She felt certain that the slipped disc, having served its purpose of getting Phoebe out of running Polly’s Community Café, had neatly and conveniently slipped back to its appropriate place in its owner’s spinal column.
Carole had been briefly introduced to the Braithwaites at the relaunch, and Jude was about to remind them of this when Quintus, clearly unwilling to engage in conversation, hailed a couple of yacht club acquaintances across the room and led his wife across to meet them.
Standing on the edge of the social circle, looking a little isolated, was Rosalie Achter. Carole went over to greet her. ‘I think you’ve met my neighbour Jude.’
‘I’ve certainly served you in the café,’ said Rosalie rather brusquely. ‘Served practically everyone here. Not that I’d call them my friends.’ Jude wondered whether Rosalie had inherited some of her mother’s social paranoia. ‘Except perhaps Kent. Kent used to be my friend.’
‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ said Carole.
‘Ah, didn’t you? No, a lot of people didn’t.’ This seemed a rather enigmatic reply, but Rosalie wasn’t slow in providing an explanation. Her eyes, as they had been during their meeting in the Crown and Anchor, looked a little glazed. Her glass contained what looked like vodka and tonic. Once again, Carole wondered if she was a little drunk.
‘What you’re saying is: you wonder why I’m here.’
‘Not at all. As a colleague of Sara’s at the café, I—’
But Rosalie wasn’t listening. ‘It’s a perfectly good question. I think Kent also wonders why I’m here. I was invited – Sara rang me – but I don’t think Kent ever expected me to turn up. But I thought I would – just to show him.’
‘Are you saying,’ asked Jude tactfully, ‘that there’s some history between you and Kent?’
‘That’s a bloody tactful way of putting it, isn’t it? “Some history”? Yes, we were an item. Not a full, public item,’ said Rosalie sarcastically. ‘Not the bells-and-whistles variety like him and Sara. No prospect of me and Kent ever having an engagement party at the Fethering Yacht Club. Sara doesn’t even know that we were ever together. Oh no, I was just his “bit on the side”.’
Carole looked embarrassed by her frankness. Jude now thought she understood what Kent had referred to on New Year’s Eve when he mentioned ‘age difference’ as a reason for one of his relationships failing. And she remembered Carole reporting that Rosalie had been with someone but broken up four months previously. The news opened up a lot of intriguing possibilities.
‘Not that I want to get married,’ Rosalie continued. By now both Carole and Jude were convinced she was drunk – maybe she’d topped her level up beforehand to steel herself for the encounter with her ex. ‘From what I’ve seen of my parents’ marriage, there’s no way I want to go down that route. I can be quite unhappy enough on my own without deliberately adding to the misery. It’s easy enough to hate yourself. Marriage just spreads more hatred around, so that you end up hating everyone involved.’
‘But when we talked,’ said Carole reasonably, ‘you implied that you loved your father.’
‘Oh, I did. When I was twelve I adored him. And I thought he adored me too. But he seemed quite happy for me suddenly not to be part of his life. Just like that – one day I’m living with him, next I’m not. End of story. End of relationship. End of everything.’
‘I thought you still saw him sometimes.’
‘Been a while. My father, the ever-loving Hudson Vale, has got a new wife now. And twin daughters. Couldn’t show any love to one daughter, but now he’s lavishing it on two of the little buggers. Ridiculous for a man of his age to be going back to nappies and nursery school, isn’t it? But that’s what he’s chosen.
‘Maybe that’s what all men are looking for – the secret of eternal youth. Shacking up with a younger woman is supposed to do the trick – certainly Kent kept saying how young I made him feel. The blood of young virgins – huh. And this lot—’ her wide, unsteady gesture took in everyone present at the Fethering Yacht Club – ‘are all trying to recapture a time when they were younger and less stressed, just “messing about in boats” …’ She nodded derisively towards Quintus Braithwaite. ‘Getting up to stupid things in their dinghies, playing secret games and—’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Carole eagerly. ‘Do you actually know something that Quintus—?’