Chapter Thirty Six
The Truth Hurts
There is a glacial chill. Shock takes the heat out of the moment and silence suffocates us, leaving an overwhelming emptiness. We stand, holding our breaths, waiting for an eruption but it is not to be. Seconds later, Suzanne picks up her bag and turns to Cece, tears in her voice quickly freezing over. “I’m not your save-Suzanne project any more. Ted came back to me and you’re still alone. I know what you think: ‘
Poor pathetic Suzanne. She won’t stand up to Ted and tell him where to go.’
Well, I love him. I never stopped.”
She exhaled a quavering breath. “The fact that he has a daughter is
wonderful
news. Did it ever occur to you that he was just waiting to find the right moment to tell me?”
Then she turned to Kate. “You need to accept what Neil did. Deal with your
own
children’s emotional problems and leave me alone.”
Her parting words were saved for me. She lunged, grabbing the wine glass out of my hand, hurling its contents into the garden, while I stood, stupefied.
“You drink too much; always drinking, never facing up to your own life. Well, guess what? Time to sober up and find out what happened to your
own
husband. Move on. That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it? Yeah, well good luck with that.”
“HE’S A BASTARD,” screamed Cece, as Suzanne turned on her heel and headed for the door. Her loud-speaker announcement could be heard for miles, echoing off hills from here to Greenland. “CHEATER!”
My hand, still holding the shape of the wine glass, shakes violently and I close my eyes, ashamed and hurt. When I open them, Suzanne is gone. We won’t see her again for a long time.
The sun had lost its edge. Not so much fiery brightness but a more measured heat. The festival had rolled out of town and the place reverted to life before stand up. Echoes of applause drowned out by the rigours of everyday routine. This comedown affected time and it seemed as though we were stuck in September forever.
One late afternoon, I turned up at Ribbons unannounced to find Cece ploughing through about seven pounds of macaroni cheese. Grey Goose vodka on the side.
“Kate thinks I don’t do comfort food,” she said, waving me over with her fork. “Trust me, Lori Loveheart, I
do
comfort food.”
“You okay?”
“Morbidly obese.”
Cece might have been under the weather but her wardrobe choice said otherwise: leopard print silk-satin dress and swinging chandelier earrings. I pulled up a chair. “I get worried when I don’t hear from you.”
“I’m alright–gettin’ my Kilimanjaro highs from carbs.”
“I came over to see if you wanted to hear Jim sing tonight. Hear his set and then go for a late supper?”
“Kinda busy.”
“Really?”
At that moment, Kate walked in. “Your therapist called: said today’s goal is to make friends with the person in the mirror.”
Cece pushed her plate away. “Funny ha ha. I’m fine. Nothing a gastric band won’t fix. I’m
fine
.”
“You didn’t call me back,” said Kate briskly. “You
always
call me back.”
“It’s subway syndrome. Y’know? Drop in blood pressure. Feelin’ dizzy and nauseous. Like when I’m on the six from New York to Brooklyn.”
Kate trumpeted. “Like when have you
ever
travelled on public transport, Cecelia Lee? In another lifetime?”
“It’s my fault,” Cece whispered.
“Suzanne?” I asked sympathetically.
Cece swallowed some vodka. “My mother used to say, ‘
Toots, you rush in where angels fear to tread
.’”
Kate sighed. “It’s
not
your fault.”
“I should learn how to take a step back.”
“We don’t step back, we move
forward
,” I reminded her.
“
You
are our connection,” said Kate, briskly. “You brought us together. You’re the glue that
keeps
us together.”
“I’m
sad
,” sniffed Cece.
“How sad?”
“Maria Callas post Onassis.”
“Ah
, that
sad?” said Kate flinging an arm round Cece’s shoulders, a rare demonstrative moment.
“Uh huh…”
Kate looked at me. “Gonna need more macaroni.”
We ate pasta and talked. Cece cheered up fractionally or maybe the Goose helped. “I met Suzanne over a wedding dress about eight months before I married Hugh,” she explained, maudlin. “She was the pattern cutter not the designer.”
“You got to know each other over fittings?” I asked.
“Yeah… until I asked her what dress she would have designed for me.”
“Big mistake. She wowed you?”
“Commissioned her there and then; and ended up buying both wedding dresses to stop Little Miss Holmes getting into trouble with her boss.”
Kate laughed. “It’s true!”
“Two husbands, three wedding dresses and two funerals– Ain’t that somethin’?”
“Suzanne will come back,” I said. “She champions forgiveness.”
I wanted to believe this but was starting to wonder if this was true. I think we all were. Perhaps even Suzanne couldn’t find her way back from this.
Cece perked up, though. “Dear number-crunching Broadbent brought Kate and I together.” She reached out for Kate’s hand across the table. “Who’d have thought?”
Kate smiled. “It was meant to be.”
“You met through work?” I asked.
“It was the sole reason I was made a partner: Broadbent wanted to make a move on Cece. I’d been working the phones until I starting hanging out with
her
.”
“Unrequited love, alas,” sighed Cece.
“Being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back is not good,” reprimanded Kate.
“I
know
that. Lindsey Buckingham didn’t write beautiful love songs about Stevie Nicks, but she sure wrote some beautiful love songs about him. She said so.”
“Broadbent has no problem when it comes to expressing his feelings for you.”
“He would love me
too
much.”
“Yeah, well, you would talk
too
much.”
“I know.”
“But he’s got your back. He won’t see Ribbons go under without a fight.”
“Broadbent has been on board with Ribbons since it launched,” explained Cece.
“He gets his hopes up each time a husband dies.”
“Kate, please,” tutted Cece.
“He asked me to send a wreath to Cece when Hugh passed. Then he asked me to send
another
wreath when Michael died, which was around three years later. I thought,
Shit, either I’ve been in this job too long or here’s someone unluckier in love than I am
.”
“She phoned me up to offer her condolences and I invited her to dinner.”
Kate returned the squeeze. “And we’ve been stuck with each other ever since.”
Then there was me, dropping into Ribbons to settle a bill for finger food, I thought.
“It was meant to be,” repeated Kate, as though reading my mind.
Kate phoned me later. She was at home unloading the dishwasher, crashing crockery and cutlery while she spoke. “Cece’s not right. She’s taken this whole Suzanne thing hard.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t regret it…”
“Regret?”
“Telling Suzanne.”
I sighed. “Y’know, I’ll admit, I had my doubts but it was the right thing to do.”
“You do?” Two plates clattered together. “
Shit
.”
I held the phone away from my ear. “Yeah, I do. She needed to know the truth.”
“She did, didn’t she?”
“Look, it’s done now. Cece will come round. She’s Cece.”
“You’re right… “
“Kate, are you okay?”
“Sure. I know Cece and I fight like cat and dog but she’s…”
“… she’s Cece.”
“Yeah.” Kate laughed. “And some.”
“I’ll call her later.”
“Financially, it was a bitch, y’know?”
I didn’t follow.
Kate continued. “I sold the house at a loss. The life insurance suicide clause kinda scuppered me.”
I tensed, wondering how to go about unchartered conversation ahead.
“Cece helped out?”
“She saved me from going under. She’d sell the shirt off her back to help someone.”
“Silk Escada,” we said at the same time and laughed.
“You would do the same for her,” I reasoned.
“Nah, she’s a much nicer person than I am. I’ve almost repaid what I owe but will be forever indebted to her in other ways.”
“Christ, don’t tell her that.”
“Aha, you’re right. She’ll have me washing dishes.”
“Worse. Scaling fish.”
She laughed some more at that. “Her heart is in the right place. She just wants to help Suzanne.”
“I know she does. So what do we do?”
“We wait.”
More waiting, I thought, swallowing a sigh. We wait and we wait some more. That’s all I seemed to ever do and, like I said, the waiting was killing me.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Remembering Everything Syndrome
McCarthy had no breakthroughs. “We wait. We work. Then we catch a break,” he said.
I got the message: there is no chronological order or queuing system when it comes to murder and crime. Urgent cases continue to roll in and demand immediate attention while paperwork piles up. Harrison’s death was dated: old case soon-to-be cold case.
Meanwhile, there had been no contact from Suzanne. Texts and calls went unanswered. As a result, we more or less buried ourselves in work. Kate had her hands full with work and Ella and Jack, while Cece made the most of an upturn in business, churning out more frangipani fillings than a Parisienne patisserie.
“She’s still in a carbohydrate tailspin,” said Kate, when I called to check up on our friend. “But I’m pretty confident she’ll come through it.”
It is not to say that we didn’t miss Suzanne. We fell into the habit of talking about her as though she were on holiday–keeping a note of all the things we had to tell her; show her; the anecdotes. We couldn’t accept that she might never return. I thought back to one of the last times we met for lunch: Suzanne in a full-length Chantilly lace gown and nude gossamer shawl despite the mid-day heat.
In truth, we were preoccupied with our own lives; our own mysteries. McCarthy didn’t give up–the waiting was endless but, true to his word, he kept me informed.
“I’m going over toxology reports again,” he said. We met in the Holyrood office foyer. He’d been pumping scalding vendor-machine coffee down his throat while he waited for me to descend 22 floors.
“
Again
?”
“To be sure.”
“To be sure he was
drunk
?”
“To rule out drugs–”
I let out a breath that could power a steam train. We’d gone over and over this and I stuck to the same mantra as before: he was clean. Yes, I know my sister misused meds but Harrison was different.
“Drugs?”
“To be sure–”
“Will this ever be over?”
McCarthy stared. “Your husband was moved from the car. It wasn’t an accident.”
The persistence in his voice startled me. Made me want to call in the defence team. I wanted to take the heat off me. “Do you really believe that the person who emailed the police–he was with Harrison in the car?”
“I think so. Unless you know otherwise.”
This rattled me but I pushed on with another question. “Harrison must have known who it was?”
“Yes.”
I hooked change out of my pocket for the drinks machine. “More coffee?” I’m guessing McCarthy could read me like a book but I had no idea what was going on in his head.
He shook his head. “But I’ll have one of those.”
“Coke?”
“Yeah, whatever–beat the heat.”
I rolled out another question to break up the silence between us. “You’ve spoken to his colleagues in Dundee?”
“We’ve gone through the names. We’ll go over them again.”
I pressed the iced drink to the inside of my wrists.
This time it was McCarthy with a question. “No one in your family has been followed?”
“No–and I’ve tried to spare my mother most of the details. She lives alone.”
“Your sister?”
“She knows.”
“She…?”
“Gwendoline.”
“Gwendoline Walker–like you?”
“Correct. You don’t take notes?”
McCarthy finished his drink and crushed the can, which seemed to signal that the conversation was over. “No need to. I seem to remember
everything
–can’t switch off.”
He smiled but I was on the level–more in control, less likely to lean over and lick the side of his face or do something equally mortifying on the back of an impulse.
“Which can be a curse, I guess.”
“There’s good stuff and bad. Like there is with everything.”
I returned his smile. “Hyperthymestic syndrome.”
“Hyperwhat?”
“Remembering
everything
–over and above the norm.”
He grinned and offered a handshake. “It had to happen–I finally have a syndrome!”
I felt his iron-strong hands and, as I released myself from his grip, said lightly, “Well, I wouldn’t get too excited, I’m no expert–my father was the brain surgeon.”
Chaos shows its face once more. Out of the blue, I had, shall we say, a run-in with Daisy at Ribbons. Everything was coming to a head and I took my frustration out on her.
It happened late one afternoon when I headed to the restaurant to see if I could catch Cece before the supper rush. Daisy made brief eye contact from across the room before turning her attention back to online reservations or whatever was captivating her on the computer.
I bristled. No, I would say I seethed. Lack of sleep is lethal. I made a beeline for her, hips like shovels, knocking a chair sideways from the table.
She looked up, startled. The noise had thrown her; the sight of me powering on jet engines in her direction alarmed her more. Close up, she had slight smudges of shadows under her eyes but it didn’t make her look less beautiful, more vulnerable perhaps. She looked older.