A Banquet of Consequences

  “The cops recognised her name straight off when I told them where it came from. They had me wait for the officer who’s been dealing with her. He was the one to open the envelope.”

  “He opened it. With you there? It could have been a bomb. A letter bomb or something . . . something worse like whatever that stuff is that terrorists put inside letters to kill people off when they’re exposed to it. What’s it called? Anthrax, that’s it. It could have been anthrax. Charlie, she’s mad. She’s like . . .” India couldn’t even think of how to complete the thought, so disturbed was she by the entire idea of anything that might have harmed Charlie actually being opened in his presence.

  His face softened at her tone. “It was nothing. A collection of mad writings that she’d done since Will’s death. A sort of ‘J’accuse.’ A catalogue of all the ways in which she holds Mum responsible for what happened to Will. The handwriting alone told the tale of how wild she is to have Mum suffer. The officer looked through it and said they’d add it to her file. I felt dead bad about that, as if I’d only made things worse for Lily, but what could I do at that point but let them keep it, so that’s what I did. And there’s an end to it.”

  “But she said you told her—”

  “What else could I do? You’ve seen her, the state she’s in. She rang me and I told her I’d ‘handle things’ but only if she keeps clear of Mum so she doesn’t get arrested.”

  He looked up the street in the direction that Lily Foster had taken. “I’ve been trying to hold her off, India. There’ve been too many victims of my brother’s death. I don’t want Lily to be another one of them.”

  13 OCTOBER

  FULHAM

  LONDON

  It was half past ten in the evening when Rory Statham arrived back in London. It had been a very long and difficult few days, culminating in a disturbing confrontation with Caroline Goldacre that had ended with Rory’s ushering her out of Clare Abbott’s house and then leaving Shaftesbury herself in something of a turmoil. It wasn’t till she got halfway home and stopped for petrol that she saw she’d left her overnight case behind. Then she cursed herself that once again Caroline had invaded her peace of mind. Thus, back in Fulham, she felt drained and ready for only two occupations once she gave Arlo his last stroll of the day: bathing and sleeping.

  The weather had permanently altered, bringing with it that melancholy time of year which seemed to Rory a fitting partner to Clare’s unexpected death. Autumn was intensely upon them with its sudden rain showers and its gusts of wind attacking the leaves on the trees. The light had changed as well, golden in the late afternoon, departing more quickly and bringing darkness earlier every day. Rory wasn’t looking forward to winter. She couldn’t work her mind round the idea of getting through it without Clare.

  At the end of Arlo’s walk and back at her car, Rory grabbed up the carrier bag of Clare’s post and the other bag of Arlo’s food, toys, and treats. She’d leave his travel kennel for the morning, she decided.

  She carried the bags up the steps and as she did so, she wondered if she was truly up to all the tasks that lay before her. In the last two days, she’d quickly assessed that the process of sorting through Clare’s personal belongings—let alone her professional belongings—was going to take any number of months, and she didn’t look forward to any of it, especially as the sorting was going to put her in Shaftesbury, which meant she would be in the sphere of Caroline Goldacre time and again. To make certain everything was secured in the Shaftesbury house over this period of time, she’d arranged to have an alarm system installed soon. In addition to changing all of the locks on the doors before she departed, this hadn’t been a popular move with Clare’s assistant. What had been less popular was Rory’s informing Caroline this very morning that her services would no longer be required. She would, of course, give her three months’ wages to soften the blow of sudden unemployment.

  To Caroline’s “But who’s going to deal with the post? Who’s going to care for the house? Who’s going to see to it that Clare’s work continues?,” Rory lifted a questioning eyebrow. Since Clare had been writing and lecturing for thirty-odd years, Rory could hardly name someone to carry the torch. There was no torchbearer unless another feminist was able to step forward with a reputation like Clare’s. Even if there was such a woman, it would take years for her to acquire the kind of following that Clare had enjoyed. Surely Caroline Goldacre didn’t see herself as a potential Clare Abbott. Did she?

  Rory had told her that what needed to be dealt with would be dealt with by her as she was the executrix of Clare’s literary estate. As she wished to take her time going through Clare’s papers, the occupation required to put everything in order was going to extend over many months. During this period, Clare’s post would be diverted to Rory in London, the house would be checked by a cleaning service once each week, the future security system would ensure that there were no break-ins—not that Shaftesbury was a hotbed of burglaries—and Clare’s legacy to her fellow feminists would sort itself out in the way these things usually did. As for her newest book, Rory herself would deal with what was to happen to it. Perhaps she herself would complete it. Perhaps the publishing house would take on someone to do so.

  “Newest book?” Caroline stared at her as if she’d begun speaking in tongues. “What’re you talking about? There is no newest book.”

  “Of course there’s a book,” Rory told her. She aimed for patience but recognised her tone was instead rather more snappish than was warranted. On the other hand, the woman was utterly exhausting to be around.

  “That’s simply not true,” Caroline insisted. “I don’t know what she told you—and I’ve tried to explain that she wasn’t who you think she was, Rory—but I spent hours with Clare every day and I know she was working on nothing.”

  “There are twenty-four hours in a day, Caroline,” Rory said. “I seriously doubt you spent every one of them at Clare’s side. Her work habits—”

  “I know her work habits, and she wasn’t writing a book. Did you find evidence of a book? You’ve been hours looking round her office in the last two days. If there was a book she was writing, I expect you’d’ve seen it.”

  When Rory made no immediate reply to this, Caroline added, “I don’t know how to make this sound . . . well . . . other than speaking ill of her, but the truth is that Clare hadn’t a clue what to write next. She didn’t tell you that? What did she tell you?”

  Rory didn’t at all wish to go into Clare’s writing, her intentions, or her work habits any further. If Clare had been writing in the dead of night, Caroline would hardly have known. And while it was true that an initial cursory culling through Clare’s belongings had turned up nothing, Rory knew that so little evidence of Clare’s lack of productivity was inconsequential. Clare had files everywhere. She had notes everywhere. It was going to take months to go through everything. So Rory ignored what seemed to be an inappropriate yet unmistakable note of triumph in Caroline’s final remarks and she got herself out of Shaftesbury as soon as she could.

  All things put into the balance, she considered it generous that she’d given Caroline three months’ wages and fifteen minutes to clean out her desk. During that time, Rory remained in the same room with her, the better to make certain Caroline removed nothing from the house save what was hers.

  At her own front door at last, Rory let herself and Arlo inside. She lived on the first floor of the building, and she unclipped Arlo’s lead and told him to go ahead. She followed him up the stairs with her carrier bags. He waited at her flat, his tail swishing against the floor, and once the door was unbolted, he trotted for the kitchen. She could hear him nosing his bowl along the floor. She chuckled and joined him, doing the appropriate business with his food and water. He set to, and wearily she put on the kettle.

  On the work top, she saw that her answer phone was blinking. She punched the button for messages as she took tea from the cup
board and rustled in the fridge for a pint of milk. She poured it into a jug, brought down her teapot, and took note of the messages that came off the answer machine. Her sister, her mum, her managing director, two hang-ups, and then, “Called your mobile but couldn’t get through,” a woman’s voice said. Working class, Rory thought, West London by the sound of it. “It’s Barbara Havers here,” the voice then clarified. “I’ve got the results of the second autopsy and I’d like to come round and have a chat. It’s what you thought. They’ve sorted a different cause of death.” She went on to leave two numbers: her mobile and her work number at the Met. If Rory could ring her so they could set up a time to meet . . . ?

  Yes! Rory thought. She knew it. She knew it.

  She glanced at the time. Eleven twenty. It seemed rude to phone Barbara Havers on her mobile and wake her if she was asleep, so Rory rang the work number and left a recorded message. She would be at home all day tomorrow—“or rather today by the time you get this,” she told the detective sergeant—so if Barbara came round, they could easily meet, and she was eager to do so.

  That said, she made her tea and thought about the message the detective had left: a different cause of death altogether. She’d known Clare had the heart of an ox, Rory told herself. Thank God she’d not rested content when she’d been told about a fatal arrhythmia.

  SHAFTESBURY

  DORSET

  Alastair rose at midnight. He’d slept only fitfully from nine P.M. He was due to rise at two, and after lying awake from half past ten onwards, he gave up entirely on the idea of sleep. He didn’t want to be abed anyway, at least not in this house.

  The last twelve days had brought a complete sea change to Caroline. It was as if she’d been holding some disquieting form of herself in complete abeyance for years until the moment that Clare Abbott had died. Or perhaps it had been the appearance of Clare’s friend Rory Statham first in Cambridge and then in Shaftesbury that had finally undone her. Alastair didn’t know. All he was able to understand was that this version of Caroline was set to drive him off the edge.

  Just like Will came to him, a horrible thought. He pushed it from his mind and sat with his head in his hands on the edge of the bed where he’d slept alone for ages. And alone defined how life was going to be till the end of it, unless he took action.

  Caro was taking action aplenty. First she’d cleaned every inch of the house, up at dawn and working madly through the day and into the night: using toothbrushes on the grout between tiles, rags in her hands and knees on the hardwood as she did the floors, buckets and newspapers and sharp white vinegar on every window, the cooker and the fridge and every cupboard emptied and cleaned in the minutest detail with cotton wool swabs, rooms emptied of all their furniture and their furniture polished, rugs dragged outside and scrubbed and hosed, clothes cupboards divested of every scrap within them, curtains laundered, walls cleaned, ceilings and lighting fixtures scoured. During it all, she did not speak. When it was over, however, she began to talk.

  Her childhood and the hurts she’d suffered at the hands of an unmarried Colombian mother who had not wanted her, who had been forced to keep her, who had taken her from the land she’d known the land of her birth the presence of the only person in her life who’d actually and truly loved her the wonderful nurturing grandmother who’d given her a beautiful kitten that had been left behind when she and mother had journeyed to London where she was as alone as she’d ever been . . .

  The early marriage to escape only to escape do you understand the Colombian mother who’d long been deserted herself by the man who’d made her pregnant with Caro . . .

  This marriage to a man a surgeon who’d not cared two figs about her once he’d got what he wanted off her, his two sons . . .

  Whom he did not love do you hear me he could not love them because he only loved himself and one of those sons tormented from childhood with a ghastly misshapen deformed do you hear me deformed ear a diminutive stature an affliction of words that he could not control and that none of them ever understood and with no one to help her deal with this care for him help him serve him . . .

  Till the husband left her that was what he did he left her long before she left him because he was there but he wasn’t there unwilling even to touch her and did he know how that felt . . . have you any idea how that feels Alastair . . .

  And what it did to her to be so rejected and how seeing him that night at the panto had made her feel whole again for the first time so that she could actually feel something beyond the despair that had been haunting her for years because of what she herself had been made to do that her own mother had forced her to do . . .

  So leave me if you want to and dance on my grave when I kill myself because I see it in your eyes every day how you wish how you want how you compare me to her and curse the day that I phoned you and said I’ve left him darling come to me now because I’d slept with you and I thought I was meant to be with you after that because why else would I have slept with you it’s not as if you’re anything to write home about you know.

  He shouted at her. He wanted to strike her, just to silence her. Nothing more than that. But then she shut herself up in her room for forty-eight hours and he’d begun to fear and he’d begun to hope and he asked himself what had happened to him that fear and hope were one and the same now. He’d rescued her, he thought. He’d rescued her, hadn’t he, from the husband and the miserable life she had with him, but who was now there to rescue him?

  He rose from the bed in the dark and went to the window. There was faint moonlight on the road outside. Across the street where a hedgerow marked a farmer’s field, a dark shape waited and watched the house. Lily Foster, he thought. Who else would huddle like a ghoul in the darkness in the middle of the night, praying each day to bring ruin upon them?

  The ASBO hadn’t stopped her, as Alastair had known it would not. She was too filled with hate. Until she extracted from them whatever it was that she believed needed to be extracted, she would continue to dog them. But now she was far cleverer than she’d been at first, when she’d shown up at the bakery, when she’d invaded their house, when she’d followed them, when she’d harangued them from near and from far, when she’d left her unsettling calling cards of faeces, dead birds, and worse on their front step. If he rang the police in this dead of night, he knew she’d be gone long before they arrived despite her not being able to see him moving towards the phone, punching in the number, murmuring, She’s back, she’s just outside, she’s a threatening presence who means us harm and you must stop her now. The police would come, but they’d not find her or any sign of her on the verge where the ground was soft and her footprints might have been left had she been less clever about where she stood. He was helpless in the face of her continued presence. It was as if she anticipated what every move inside the house would be, long before either he or Caro made it.

  God, Alastair thought, what had happened to them all? Will dead, Charlie with a marriage in ruins, himself a discarded husband in his own house, and Caro . . . Who knew who she was any longer because Alastair did not recognise in her the woman he’d married with his heart full of hope.

  That heart was Sharon’s now. And sleepless as he was this night, he would go to her. So he took his shoes up from the floor and he descended the stairs. Out in the night, he made no effort to hide the sound of the bakery van roaring to life. Eighteen miles to drive, and they would pass as if he flew above them because at the end of them Sharon was waiting.

  He had his own key, and he let himself in to her house. Quietly and in the darkness, he climbed the stairs.

  She’d not closed the curtains in her bedroom. She never did, he’d learned. She liked the moonlight as it moved across her room, and she liked being able to see the stars, which she could do, for the window faced the back of the house and the paddock beyond it with no obstruction at all but a barbed wire fence and far in the distance the shadows of a wood. br />
  He watched her sleep. He allowed himself to feel the strength of his longing for her. Everything seemed possible with Sharon, if they could be allowed to forge a path on their own.

  The word yes came to him, and it was a yes in all possible ways, sweeping aside impossibility, duty, pledge, and promise. He told himself that he could not live another day as he’d been living with Caro. He vowed that no matter the cost, he would not fail to bring an order to his life that was being defined by this lovely woman who lay sleeping before him.

  Sharon’s eyes opened. She did not start as someone else would have done, waking to see a man standing over her bed. She was instantly aware of who he was, for she pushed bedcovers from her body and she extended her hand to him.

  She wore an insubstantial gown, and through it he could see the tempting brown aureoles on her breasts and the dark triangular thatch between her legs. When she said his name like a question, he told her he wanted just to look at her.

  Do you not want to sleep? she asked him.

  He told her there would be no sleeping for him tonight but that was really of no account as he had only two hours before he had to begin his work.

  Shall we make love then? was what she asked next.

  No. I just want to look at you was his response.

  She sat up then. Over her head she pulled the gown, which she dropped to the floor. She turned on her side and in doing so, she put him in mind of a painting he’d seen long ago, in some museum where he’d gone to dodge a harsh winter rain up in London. In this painting, a woman lay naked on her side, with only a necklace of pearls hanging upon her voluptuous body. She had her arms extended over her head and in a corner a servant of some sort—she’d been a black woman, hadn’t she? he asked himself—acted as the guard of her vulnerability. She’d presented herself as an offering to the painter, just as Sharon did for him now, with one arm curled beneath her head and the other resting along her thigh.