Gisela, the adventurer and realist, understood perfectly. ‘You’ve got enough money, I take it? The pay-out?’ The insider who would be privy to the exact sum of the Vistemax severance package, courtesy of pillow talk, but could not admit it, she spoke with extreme delicacy.
‘Let’s put it this way, I need my job for the time being.’
She regarded me shrewdly. ‘Sometimes we get what we want.’
‘I didn’t want Nathan dead.’
‘I meant, you wanted a serious job. And at least you know what you have to do. There’s a lot to be said for that.’ She kidnapped my arm. ‘No feeling sorry for yourself. Understand? It’s the resort of the stupid. And don’t think, Minty.’
Between not thinking and not feeling sorry for myself, there wouldn’t be much space. But Gisela had a point: setting stern standards to curb internal wails was sensible and life-preserving.
She picked her way down the path, then ran alongside a herbaceous border and stopped by a plant blooming in a bright blue cloud. ‘Marcus was right to say that enough was enough, but I wish he hadn’t. Things were fine as they were.’
The bees were banqueting on this plant, and I bent down to thieve a sprig. Its smell was sharp and vaguely familiar and I tucked it into my pocket. ‘Fine for you, perhaps, but Marcus clearly has another point of view.’
‘That’s what I mean about not thinking, Minty. It weakens one’s position.’
It struck me then that Gisela and Roger made a perfect pair. Had he but known it Marcus, with his hopeless romantic notions about his dame lointaine, had lost out a long time ago. ‘Marcus has had a rough deal.’
An unseen string jerked Gisela round to face me. ‘What I can’t make Marcus understand is that living with a person you love is not necessarily the best thing.’
I glanced back at the venerable, grey-stone manor, every window polished, every blade of grass trimmed. It was expensive, exclusive and out of reach for most. ‘So that’s it,’ I said, tumbling to the whole picture at last. ‘You don’t want to lose all this. It’s too risky. Poor Marcus.’
Lymphatic drainage consisted of someone passing their fingers over my face and neck with fluttering movements. It was not unpleasant. In fact, it was the opposite, and I felt myself slip into drowsiness.
The fingers fluttered and stroked… Birds wheeling south… The beating of a moth’s wings at dusk… Little slaps of the sea on the shore.
I was trying not to think.
Little slaps of the sea… Like the sea at Priac Bay, which Rose had described so well that day – the day Nathan had died in her flat – and to which I had taken the boys.
It was a tiny bay, she had said. (She was right and the boys had loved it.) The coastal path ran along the cliff above it and there were always walkers tramping along. Correct. Thrift grew in clumps, sea grass and, at the right time of year, daisies. The sea can be many things, Rose said, but she loved it best when it was flat, you could peer down through its turquoise glimmer to hidden rocks and seaweed. From the coastguard’s cottage you could look out over the rocks where, centuries ago, wreckers had plundered stricken vessels. A path was cut into the cliff where the pack animals had waited as the looters scrambled up with their booty.
After a while, the fingers swept across my neck. ‘You’ll feel sleepy for the rest of the day,’ the girl informed me. ‘You must allow yourself to give into it.’
As I dressed, yesterday’s headache stole back. I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock. The day stretched out in a beautifully solipsistic shape. It would be the last one like it for a long time.
I made my way out of the beauty suite – all pink swags and niches where potions were arranged in tiers to be worshipped – and my mobile rang. I answered it.
‘Minty…’ Eve sounded hoarse and frantic. ‘I no well. I ill.’
I sat down on one of the chairs in the corridor – left, no doubt, to aid those weakened by the pursuit of beauty. ‘What sort of ill, Eve?’
‘I can’t breathe.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In bed.’
‘Where are the twins?’
‘At Mrs Paige’s.’ I heard her choke, and the phone was tossed around. The choking sounded serious.
‘Eve – Eve? Can you hear me?’ A nasty silence. ‘Listen, Eve, I’m coming home now’
Gisela understood, and did not understand. ‘I suppose you must go.’ Her tone implied that she could not conceive why the au pair’s illness could not be dealt with by someone else. ‘It’s only until tonight.’
‘I know. I’m so sorry.’ I was fully dressed, with my packed bag at my feet in Reception. There were two flower arrangements in pastel colours, a portrait of a girl on horseback in a tight green costume, and three receptionists with immaculate complexions. ‘I can’t thank you enough for your generosity, but I need to go back. If Eve is really ill, I must organize cover for work tomorrow.’
Gisela tensed impatiently. ‘Oh, well.’ She was cross because her present to me had been spoilt, and because she needed to talk to me further.
‘Let me know about Marcus.’
She took a step back. ‘Of course.’
I picked up my bag and heard myself say, ‘You will think about Roger?’ although why I should care about the man who sacked Nathan was a mystery.
She flung me a savage look. ‘Don’t worry about him. He gets exactly his side of the bargain.’
On the way back in the train, I stared out of the window at the speeding landscape and remembered the Nathan who, having left Rose, came to me alight with fervour. ‘I’ve done it, Minty.’ He kissed my arm all the way up its length. ‘I’ve left Rose. And it’s all going to be quite different.’
The discrepancy between his excited words and what we were alarmed me. This man had greying hair, a knee joint that ached and grown-up children: I fancied the Lexus, his credit card and the nice house.
But the curious thing was – the really, truly curious thing – I had believed Nathan.
Eve was curled into a foetal position in her bed. The window was closed so the room was stuffy and smelt of illness. There were a couple of glasses and a half-drunk mug of tea by the bed, with a packet of aspirin.
I saw immediately that the situation had progressed beyond aspirins. Within fifteen minutes, I had bundled Eve into the car and driven her to the nearest A &E unit.
Three unpleasant hours later, during which we had witnessed a drunken fight, a screaming girl put into handcuffs and a man covered with blood begging for help, a doctor announced, ‘Pneumonia,’ over the flushed, almost comatose Eve, with a veiled suggestion that it was my fault. He explained that Eve required a couple of days in hospital to stabilize her, then a period of careful nursing. Again, I caught a hint that it was up to me to make up for deficiencies in my duty of care.
I left the hospital, furious with him, with Eve, with myself, with everything.
Paige delivered the boys back to me. When I answered the door at number seven the twins, who hadn’t been expecting me, let out a collective shriek and windmilled at high speed into my stomach. ‘Careful, you two.’
‘You smell funny,’ said Lucas, sniffing my arm, which only that morning had been anointed by the handmaidens at Claire Manor.
‘Don’t you like it? It has roses and thyme in it.’
‘Dis-gus-ting.’
Paige brushed aside my profuse thanks and declined to come in. There was no mistaking the new coolness between us. ‘How is everything?’ I probed gingerly, but she wasn’t having any of it.
‘Before you ask, I can’t help out tomorrow’
‘Oh.’
Paige shook her head. ‘Can’t be done. Linda has a day off, and I’m busy with the children. Sorry.’ She softened. ‘Why don’t you try Kate Winsom or Mary Teight?’
She left with my thanks ringing in her ears. I hit the phone.