Sandy had been half asleep in front of the television; it
was, he often said, his main hobby these days. He fought his
way back to reality through a fog of the best part of a bottle
of Beaujolais.
‘Yes,’ he said, standing up, switching the TV off. ‘Yes, in
here, in the breakfast room. Want a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said, coming in and sinking on to the
old sofa. ‘That would be lovely. I’m awfully tired. Dickon’s
asleep in the car.’
‘I’ll get him in. How’s your mum?’
‘Dying in front of our eyes. The hardest thing is not to
let her see it herself. Being brave and cheerful and
pretending—’
‘She’s not stupid,’ said Sandy carefully. ‘Don’t you think
she knows?’
‘Sandy, if she knows, she’s pretending too. It’s her way of
coping.’ Her voice was sharp; she was clearly struggling to
be patient, not reproachful.
Sandy felt instantly clumsy and insensitive: as he did most
of the time with Louise. ‘Sorry. Sorry, darling.’
‘They’re talking about getting further nursing help now.
Daddy and Janet and the District just aren’t enough any
more.’
‘So — how long? Do they think?’
‘Oh, weeks. Possibly less. I hope less, in an awful way.
It’s so terrible to see her like this. She can hardly eat now,
and what she does often comes up again. Oh, dear.’
She started to cry; Sandy sat down beside her, put his arm
round her. She was very thin; thinner than he could ever
remember, even after — well, after then. That.
‘This is an awful lot for you to cope with,’ he said,
suddenly. ‘And coming back here all the time, to look after
me. It adds to the strain. Why don’t you just stay there?
Until - well …’
‘Oh, Sandy, no. I can’t abandon you. You’ve got a lot on
your plate at the moment as well, it’s not fair.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, ‘as long as you have Dickon with you.
I obviously can’t cope with him.’
‘I know you can’t. Of course I’d take him. Oh, Sandy,
it’s so sweet of you. I really don’t deserve you.’
‘Yes, you do,’ he said, ‘and it’s nice to be able to do
something for you for a change. Now look, drink this tea
and I’ll go and get Dickon from the car.’
He undressed Dickon, and tucked him up in bed.
‘Night night, old man.’
‘Daddy, Granny’s very ill, you know,’ Dickon said, his
dark eyes very large. ‘I’m frightened she’ll die. Like Juliet.’
Sandy couldn’t think what to say. Dickon’s terror of
death completely defeated him. ‘Granny’s very strong,’ he
said finally. ‘And doctors are very clever these days.’
That was wrong, he supposed; Louise and the child
psychiatrist had both insisted Dickon should be always told
the truth, said he must confront and be helped through his
fears, not led away from them. Sandy, who found any
emotional confrontation difficult, felt uneasy with that.
Anna was almost certainly going to die, but Dickon should
be spared from that knowledge for as long as possible in his
view; he wasn’t yet five years old. Equally he disliked the
insistence that Dickon must realise what death actually
meant; Sandy was not religious himself, but when his own
grandparents had died, he had been told they had moved on
from earth to heaven, where they were having a very pleasant time indeed, up above the clouds, sitting among
flocks of angels. The thought of them being up there
together and probably with their two smelly old Jack
Russells and his grandmother’s hunter had comforted him a
lot. By the time he had grown out of that vision, he had
grown out of his grief at losing them; he couldn’t see why
Dickon couldn’t be fed with the same harmless nonsense.
‘So she probably might get better, then?’ he said now, looking up at his father, his voice more hopeful.
‘She probably might.’ That wasn’t actually a lie; extraordinary
things happened to cancer patients. You heard about
them all the time. ‘So don’t you worry about her, old chap.
Just be nice and brave and cheerful for her and Mummy,
and that’ll help a lot.’
‘I will.’ Dickon’s eyes were closing. “Night, Daddy. You
go and look after Mummy. She hasn’t been very well on
the way home. She told me not to tell you.’
‘Really?’ said Sandy. ‘What sort of not very well?’
‘She was sick. She—’
‘Dickon—’ it was Louise’s voice, speaking from the door — ‘you promised, I didn’t want to tell Daddy, make him more worried. Sandy, I’m fine. Honestly. Good night,
darling one, give Mummy a kiss …”
‘What sort of not very well?’ said Sandy again, as they went
downstairs.
‘Oh, hideous sore throat. Had it all day. Nothing to
worry about, honestly. But they make you feel rotten all
over, those things.’
‘Poor old you. I’ll find you the Lemsip.’
‘Would you, darling? Thank you.’
She did look rotten, he thought; it undoubtedly added to
the exhaustion. The familiar old raw panic gripped him;
then he pulled himself together. She absolutely could not be
pregnant. It still haunted him, that — despite everything he
had done, despite her passionate avowals that she would
never, ever even consider it. He thanked God, or the power that he imagined to be God, not to mention medical science, every day, every week, every month, most
fervently every month, that she couldn’t be pregnant, that
they weren’t ever going to have to go through that again.
When Octavia was getting dressed next day, she pulled the
handkerchief out of her drawer by mistake. It made her feel
very odd; she threw it down on the bed as if it was
something obscene, something she couldn’t bear to touch,
and stood staring at it for quite a long time, her eyes boring
into it, as if it could tell her something, trying to summon
up some kind of image from it: almost as if, she thought,
and had to laugh at herself, it was a latterday Turin Shroud.
It stopped seeming funny quite quickly.
She folded it up again and wrapped it very carefully in
some tissues and put it in her briefcase to take to the office.
She didn’t want it at home, but she felt she had to keep it; it
was important, central to her strange new life. Then she
went and washed her hands, several times. Like Lady
Macbeth, she thought distractedly.
She felt very tired that day; she had slept badly the night
before. Tom had been very late, and, until she heard his car,
she’d tortured herself with visions of him in Her bed,
wondering what She was like in bed and how She behaved,
and in the end began to feel she was watching some porn
movie. She had finally taken a sleeping pill at three, had
found waking up almost impossible, struggling out of a
thick, dry-mouthed fog, had taken a taxi to work early, not
daring to drive.
She was drinking a strong coffee when her phone went.
It was Tom, Tom sounding slightly distant, and she heard
her voice, not tearful at all, saying, ‘Yes?’
‘Just to let you know,’ he said, ‘that I’ve just had a call
from Michael Carlton. He said the meeting with you went
well. He seemed pleased. I just thought I should thank you.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said, and put the phone down quite
gently. Only the thought of what she was going to do for
Patricia David and Barries Wood kept her from slamming it viciously enough for him to hear.
‘I saw Michael Matthews last night,’ said Tom, ‘MP for
Romford North. He’s very interested in this takeover of
yours, going to table a few questions for us.’
‘Good. I’ve balloted the shareholders,’ said Nico Cadogan,
‘and presented the streamlined new company to them,
as you said. All we can do now is pray, I suppose.’
‘I think you’re paying me to do a bit more than that,’ said
Tom, laughing.
‘Maybe. Very good day at Ascot, by the way. I enjoyed
it. Thank you. You must let me take you and Octavia to
dinner one evening soon.’
‘That would be very nice,’ said Tom, ‘thank you.’
‘She’s very bright, your wife, as well as beautiful. You’re
a lucky man.’
‘I hope so,’ said Tom.
It seemed to Cadogan an intriguing reply.
‘This is marvellous, Octavia!’ Patricia David’s voice was
breathless with pleasure. ‘We could never have done
anything as good as this. Thank you so much.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Octavia. ‘It was quite easy, really. I
went there, you know, to the wood, and it can’t be
allowed. But you really will have to do much more than
issue that press release, and put up a few of those notices.
Now, as long as it’s turned down at local level, you’ve got
time on your side. They’ll appeal, it’ll take months, with
luck. But if it’s true, the rumour that it’s going to be passed
— well, that’s more difficult.’
‘What should we do?’
‘I’ll try and find out for you. I’m better informed on
getting planning permission than fighting it. But let’s see.
You should hear this week, I understand.’
‘Yes. After the planning meeting. Two days’ time.
Anyway, I’m going to whack this release of yours out to the
local papers right now.’
‘Yes, do. And no reason why you shouldn’t try the
nationals. The Guardian would be a good idea, and the Independent. They’re the greenest papers.’
‘Thank you. Octavia, we’re so lucky to have you on our
side.’
‘Yes, well, remember, just keep quiet about it,’ said
Octavia. ‘I really mean it, Patricia. It would do you, never
mind me, huge harm if it got out I was involved in all this.’
God, she thought, putting the phone down. This really
was playing with fire. The funny thing was, it was making
her feel so much better.
Melanie came in. ‘Hi. Everything okay? Look, we’ve had
a call from your friend Lauren Bartlett. She wants us to call
her. Next Generation, I presume. Do you think we’ve got a
chance there after all? It would be marvellous to get it, such
high profile, a real honeypot account, and Diana’s rumoured
to be very interested.’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Octavia.
Lauren Bartlett was in a hurry. ‘Big dinner party for Drew.
I’m frantic. I’ve got to get the flowers and my hair done
before the cook arrives. Now look. We’ve decided we
might like your firm to help us with our day at Brands
Hatch. We really are just slightly out of our depth, so
providing we can meet on the fee—’
‘Lauren,’ said Octavia firmly, ‘our fee is fixed. We don’t
work for less, for anyone.’
‘Not even friends?’
‘Well—’ She knew Melanie could bend the rules to get
this one. ‘Well, we could talk about it.’
‘Oh, I see. I have to say, if it’s not possible, there could
be a problem. Anyway, there’s something else. There’s a
children’s hospice we make a grant to each year, which is
under threat. Basically it needs rehousing, and a lot more
money than we can possibly supply. We’ve applied for
lottery money, of course, but we’re not hopeful. Needless
to say, our old friends the cuts are to blame. Tom knows all
those MPs, do you think he could help?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Octavia.
‘This is what I thought. We’d like to come in to your
company and have a meeting; if we made it towards the end
of the working day, I thought Tom could join us, you and
me, that is, afterwards. Discuss what he might be able to
do.’
The arrogance was breathtaking. ‘I will ask,’ she said, ‘see
if he has any ideas.’
That was usually enough; people felt soothed into a sense
of security, usually false, by the notion that Tom Fleming,
who famously spent half of his working life at the House or
so he encouraged people think — would address his brain
and contacts to their problems.
Lauren was not most people.
‘No, I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Octavia. I want
to discuss it with him personally. Could you put it to him?’
‘Yes, of course, but I can’t promise—’
‘No, I realise that. Now how about next week for the
meeting, Tuesday, say? Tuesday afternoon. That would suit
me very well. I’ve another dinner party on Monday and the
theatre on Wednesday, so — yes, Tuesday. We could come
in at four thirty?’
Octavia looked at her diary; it was enragingly empty. ‘All
right by me. Let me just check with my partner, Melanie
Faulks.’ Melanie was also free; Octavia gritted her teeth,
went back to the phone. ‘Yes, that’s fine.’
‘Good. And you’ll speak to Tom?’
I try not to these days, Octavia thought, a sudden sadness
sweeping over her, but, ‘Yes, I will ask him of course.’
Tom said he couldn’t possibly meet anyone anywhere next
Tuesday; he had to attend a meeting with Nico Cadogan
and his bankers in London, and then had a late meeting in
Oxford. ‘I probably won’t be back that night.’
‘Any other day next week?’ said Octavia. She hated this,
but Lauren Bartlett’s account probably hung on Tom’s
association with it.
‘No, sorry,’ he said shortly.
‘Well,’ she said with an enormous effort, ‘could I suggest