‘Yes, all right,’ said Felix, ‘I can see you on Monday. Soon
enough for you?’
Tom thought fast. He could probably string the bank
along for the weekend. And he didn’t want to rush at Felix.
It would be very counterproductive. And at least it would
give him a chance to talk to Octavia about it. That wasn’t
going to be easy. ‘Yes, Felix, Monday morning would be
great. Thanks. And thanks for going to the sports day
yesterday. I hear you covered yourself with glory. More
than I would have done.”Yes, well, it was nice for Gideon to have someone
running in the race. Pity you couldn’t go, Tom. Octavia
was very upset. She sets great store by such things. I don’t
think I ever let her down on one official occasion, all the
time she was growing up.’
‘Really?’ said Tom, feeling his teeth going on edge. ‘See
you on Monday, then.’
‘Yes. Don’t be late.’
‘I’ll try not to be,’ said Tom wearily.
He put down the phone, feeling nauseated. He had never
thought it would come to this. Crawling to Felix Miller.
Asking for his help. Well, he probably wouldn’t get it. At
best he’d get his arse kicked very thoroughly. And if Felix
had got word of his - behaviour … God, it was a miracle
he hadn’t. He still didn’t really understand why Octavia
hadn’t told him. It was extraordinary. He supposed in some
odd way the whole thing reflected back on her, showed her
up as a failure too. Not Daddy’s perfect little girl any more.
Her judgment wrong, her performance as a wife seriously
under question. Though Felix wouldn’t see it like that.
God, no!
Tom diverted his mind from the prospect of Felix seeing
it any way at all, and decided he should call the bank. He
buzzed for Barbara, told her to get David Jackson on the
phone.
‘Sure. Oh, and, Tom, a message from—’
‘Barbara, I don’t want any messages now. Okay? About
anything. It can keep. Whatever it is. Unless it was the
Bank of England waving a hundred grand at me.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Barbara briskly.
‘Fine. Later, then.’
‘I really do think,’ said Felix, ‘that you only have yourself to
blame. You’ve let those children run rings round you,
encouraged them to do exactly what they want, and now—’
‘I’m sorry, Felix,’ said Marianne, ‘but I really don’t think
I want to listen to this.’
‘Very well. Now, look, about the weekend—’
‘I don’t think I want to talk about the weekend, either,
not just now. Goodbye, Felix.’
She put the phone down, and sat looking at it; its image
blurred suddenly. She felt beleaguered. Zoe’ was behaving
very badly, was being rude and obstructive; she was waiting
to hear if she had a job at a pub near the Tower of London.
So far she had had one trial evening, which had gone badly,
and was waiting for another. She had found the complex
orders, the ‘same again’ rounds, even the computerised tills,
very difficult; for some reason, which Marianne was unable
to understand, it was out of the question for her even to
consider any other work until this was settled. She was
altogether in a strange state, jumpy and irritable and more
than usually protective about her comings and goings,
especially at the weekends. Her financial situation was dire,
and she was in a state of permanent rage with the bank,
whom she saw as entirely responsible for it; Marianne had
drawn a line under any further loans herself, but she knew
Zoe was borrowing from Romilly. Who, as Zoe lost no
opportunity to point out, had more money than anyone in
the family now.
But the real problem was Romilly. At the meeting at
Choice, Marianne (telling herself that, after all, she had
custody of her, so was absolutely within her rights to make
such a decision) had agreed to a limited amount of
modelling work for Romilly during the school holidays,
which (she told herself again) Alec really need not know
about for the time being. What she tried to ignore was a
small, dangerous, truthful voice telling her that legally she
might be within her rights, but morally she was not.
Romilly herself carried with her an air of slightly distant
self-confidence, and even slighter, but unmistakable, superiority;
it astonished Marianne that she could have changed so
much and so swiftly.
But the Christie’s contract was more of a problem. The
shoot was scheduled for the beginning of September, and
inevitably that was going to run into the start of term. The
dates would only overlap by a day or so, but it was a
dangerous precedent to set so early. It would also be very
high profile. A slowly growing panic was settling itself into
a small area of Marianne’s stomach; so far she had managed
to hold off on the meeting with Serena Fox at which i’s
would be dotted and t’s crossed and she, on Romilly’s
behalf, would be required to sign the contract, but she
knew it was only a question of days, a week at the most.
She had wanted to discuss the whole thing with Felix, get
his invariably sound dispassionate judgment on the matter,
but …
‘Marianne? Nico Cadogan. Why haven’t you returned
my calls?’
‘Nico, I—’
‘Look, what are you doing on Sunday? How about
dinner?’
‘Nico, no. Really. I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I—’ She stopped. She had tickets for the last, gala
performance at Covent Garden before it closed for refurbishing.
She had been going to take Felix as a surprise. It
suddenly occurred to her he didn’t deserve it. And what
was she doing, turning her back on the one person in the world who didn’t appear to be openly hostile to her at the
moment?
‘I know you like opera,’ she said, ‘but how would you
feel about a bit of ballet as well?’
‘Passionate,’ he said.
‘I cannot believe you’re going to do that. Seriously. Ask my
father for money. After what you’ve done to me. Honestly,
I just don’t think I can continue with this conversation. It’s
making me feel sick.’
‘Octavia, will you listen to me?’ They were at home, in
the drawing room. He stood up suddenly, came over to
her, bent down, put his face close up to hers. ‘Fleming
Cotterill is on the brink of bankruptcy. The bank is about
to foreclose. We’ve already lost two crucial clients, and
we’ll probably lose more, thanks to that mailing. We can’t
pay the rent or the rates on our building. We won’t be able
to pay the staff at the end of this month. Aubrey and I
haven’t taken any salary this time round.’
‘My heart bleeds for you.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Octavia! Don’t you realise what will
happen to you, if the company goes down? I shall quite
possibly be declared bankrupt. The house will go.’
‘Tom, I want a divorce, I don’t care what happens to the
house.’
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid! There will be no money, don’t you understand? No money at all. Not for the children, not for you, not for anything. Doesn’t that worry
you?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m not going to be bankrupt. I have my
own income. I’ll look after the children.’
‘Octavia, with the greatest respect, your salary will hardly
cover the food and clothes bills. Certainly not anywhere for
you to live, certainly not things like school fees.’
‘We could—’ She stopped herself.
‘Go and stay with your father? Yes, of course you could.
Without me. And what do you think that would do to the
children? What sort of message would that send out?’
‘Nothing like the message your behaviour will send out
to them,’ she said, ‘when they hear about it.’
‘Well, what they hear is entirely up to you.’
‘I suppose you want me to lie to them? Pretend you’re
the perfect father still, that we’re just going to live in
separate houses for a bit?’
‘Something like that, yes. Don’t look at me like that,
Octavia. I’m not looking for protection for myself, it’s them
I’m thinking of. Whatever I’ve done, do you really plan to
rub their noses in it? If you’re really hellbent on this
divorce, we owe it to them to make it as painless as possible.
They don’t have to know—’
‘That you’re a cheat and a liar?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, they don’t. And they shouldn’t.
They’ll be hurt enough by the very fact of our separating. I
think we should tell them the usual things; that we’re not
getting along very well any more, that we’re still friends,
that we think we’ll be happier living apart.’
‘That would be very much nicer for you, wouldn’t it?’
‘God, you’re a bitch,’ he said, and he looked down at her
with such distaste that she felt chilled suddenly. ‘Of course
I’ve behaved badly. Appallingly. I don’t feel very happy
about it, you know. I feel ashamed and wretched. I’ve been
trying to put it right. As best I can. They shouldn’t be made
to feel ashamed and wretched about me. If you go down
that path, it’ll be an own-goal for you, Octavia.’
‘Tom, I’m sorry, but you should have thought of that.’
He sighed, turned away from her. ‘All right. Have it your
own way. Do what you think best. But what’s best for them
has to be for things to go on as much as possible the same
way. Staying in the same house, going to the same schools,
seeing the same friends. I’ll move out, if that’s what you
want—’
‘Of course it’s what I want.’
‘I’ll go and live in some hovel. But let’s not hurt them
more than we have to. It isn’t fair.’
She stared at him. ‘I can’t believe you’re talking of fairness.’
But he had touched something in her, some core of
common sense for the children. He was right. They did
deserve protection. From the truth, the ugliness. If she
loved them, she should do that for them. It wasn’t fair, it
was hideously unfair. But it was what she should do.
She sat looking up at him, thinking how much she hated
him. ‘All right, Tom. Talk to my father. I won’t make
things any more difficult for you. But sooner or later, he’s
going to find out, and then God help you.’
‘I don’t know how you can ask me that,’ said Louise. Her
large blue eyes were shocked. The of all people. Your best
friend. Of course I think you should divorce him. And give
him the most horrible time possible. Bastard! He doesn’t
deserve you, Octavia, he really doesn’t.’
‘I know, but what he said about the children: it’s true.
They really are the innocent ones in all this. They shouldn’t
have to suffer.’
‘What about you?’
The, Oh, Lulu, nothing is ever just one person’s fault, is
it? I must have done something wrong, a lot probably, to
have made Tom be unfaithful.’
She pulled fretfully at a long, trailing arm of honeysuckle
that was dangling down on to the table; they were sitting
outside the cottage, watching Poppy patiently playing catch
with Dickon. Minty was on her knee; every so often she
dropped a kiss on the top of her small dark head.
‘Octavia, stop it,’ said Louise. ‘That is just nonsense. You
can’t think like that, you mustn’t. Tom is a cheat and a
bastard. He didn’t deserve you in the first place. He doesn’t
deserve anyone half decent.’
Octavia sighed. ‘I must say, I have hoped that whoever
she is, this woman, she’s putting him through hell. Absolute
hell.’
‘How’s his company now?’
‘Very bad. One of the things I was going to tell you was that he’s going to—’
‘Mummy, can we take Dickon for a walk? It’s getting so
hot.’
‘Not just yet, darling. Mr Bingham is coming over.’
‘Why?’
‘We have some business together, he and I.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘Oh — work. It’s very complicated.’
‘You always say that,’ said Poppy, ‘when you don’t want
to tell us something. Anyway, how long’s he going to be?
Me and Dickon are getting bored, aren’t we, Dickon?’
Dickon, who would have jumped off a fifty-foot
building if Poppy had told him it was all right, nodded
vigorously.
‘I’ll get you some drinks,’ said Octavia. ‘Or what about
an ice lolly?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Louise?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Louise, laughing. ‘They make my
teeth hurt.’
‘How are your teeth?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Weren’t you at the dentist on Friday?’
‘Oh, yes. Only a check-up, though.’
‘You had toothache before,’ said Dickon.
‘No, I didn’t, darling.’
‘Yes, you did. When you went to the dentist the other
time. When you had all those letters to post. And we went
to the McDonald’s when you got back and—’
‘Oh, then. Yes, I’d forgotten that,’ said Louise. She
smiled at Octavia. ‘Lost a filling. Always horrid, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, horrid,’ said Octavia. ‘I wouldn’t forget it so
quickly.’
‘It was ages ago,’ said Louise.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Dickon, ‘it was just the other day.’
‘Dickon, it wasn’t.’
‘It was. I remember—’
‘Mrs Fleming. Good afternoon.’
Octavia jumped up, smiling, feeling absurdly nervous.