Authors: Lulu Taylor
‘Is everything all right? Are the children OK?’ She hurried past the nanny, through the nursery playroom to the connecting door into the children’s bedroom. Opening it, she saw that they were tucked into their little white beds. Imogen was asleep, but Edward was still awake, clutching his favourite bear and staring up at her by the glow of the nightlight.
‘Hello, Mummy,’ he said quietly.
She went over, knelt by the bed and hugged him. ‘Hello, my darling. How are you?’
‘I’m all right.’ He regarded her solemnly, his blue eyes wide. ‘Daddy isn’t well. Robina said we should stay in the nursery tonight and not have our bath.’
‘Yes, darling. Daddy’s not well today,’ she soothed, fighting the panic and anger that were building up in her. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be fine tomorrow. Did you have a good day at school?’
Edward nodded, but said nothing.
‘Good boy. It’s time to go to sleep now. Good night, darling.’ She hugged him again and kissed his soft cheek. He brushed his hand down her face.
‘Can I give you a butterfly kiss, Mummy?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’ She put her face next to his so that he could flutter his eyelashes against her cheek. ‘Thank you, what a lovely kiss.’
He smiled at her, sighed and closed his eyes. She pulled the quilt up around him, and quietly went out of the room, shutting the door gently behind her. Robina was sitting in her armchair.
‘What happened?’ Tara asked quietly.
‘I’m not really sure, to be honest. Mr Pearson was here when we got back from collecting Edward this afternoon. He seemed fine then. We had our tea in the kitchen as usual, and after that we came up here to play and watch television. Then something happened and Mr Pearson just went mad. I spoke to Viv in the kitchen on the phone afterwards’ – Robina nodded towards the internal phone that connected the nursery with all the major rooms in the house – ‘and she said that it was a phone call that sent Mr Pearson so crazy this afternoon. It was awful. We could hear him roaring round the house. Apparently he’s torn the study to pieces. Then we heard him coming up here. Well, I couldn’t let the children see their father in such a state and I was a bit frightened myself, so I locked the door. A few minutes later, he was shaking and kicking the door, demanding to come in. But he was swearing terribly and was obviously not himself, so I refused.’ Robina looked at her nervously. ‘I hope I’ve not acted out of place.’
‘Of course not, you did absolutely the right thing. How long was my husband trying to break in?’
‘Not too long. But the children were very agitated.
Imo
was crying and Edward was dead white.’ Robina looked at her lap for a moment then glanced up. ‘I hope this isn’t going to happen again. I’ll have to reconsider my position if it does. I didn’t feel right at all about Mr Pearson acting like that.’
‘It won’t happen again,’ Tara said strongly. ‘I promise you that. Thank you, Robina. You did the right thing today. Please do go and take the rest of the evening easy.’
She went downstairs, full of apprehension. Their marriage had always been one in which Gerald was the leader, the mentor. She followed and learned from him. He had encouraged her in her career and told her she could do anything she wanted. The approval he’d given her had been what she’d always craved, and it helped her to blossom. She went ahead and had children earlier than she had planned because Gerald was so much older than she was and she knew he didn’t want to wait. The house they’d bought had been the one he’d chosen and it was decorated to his taste. And then, it had all started to go wrong. His need for control had focused in on the minute aspects of their existence and every facet of his family’s behaviour was dictated by him. Then he had begun to crave those beatings, to find pleasure in punishing her. It made her skin crawl to remember it. No – Gerald had changed in almost every way. It was virtually impossible to reconcile her husband of today with the smiling, generous, encouraging man she’d fallen in love with.
What could have triggered this outburst?
she wondered.
It
had to be his business. Perhaps he’d been thwarted once again in his efforts to break into the British media. It was hard to get established in such a small world, it was always going to be a struggle. Was that enough to tip him over the edge like this?
At the study door, she stopped and listened. There was no sound from within. She opened the door and couldn’t prevent herself from gasping at the sight inside. The room was torn to pieces, just as Robina had said. The antique books had been pulled off their shelves and were lying in crumpled, battered heaps on the floor. The model yachts were smashed and torn, their miniature riggings hopelessly tangled. Trophies had been swept to the floor along with the contents of the desk and tables. For a normal person, this would be a devastating mess. For Gerald, with his mania for order and tidiness, it was the equivalent of sitting in hell.
But there he was, hunched in his armchair, surrounded by the debris, calmly watching the news on the plasma screen, the sound turned down almost to mute as usual.
‘Oh, hello darling,’ he said in a normal voice but without turning to look at her. ‘Welcome home.’
‘Gerald – what’s happened?’ she whispered.
‘I’m just watching the television. I want to see if I’m on it.’
‘On it? Why would you be on it?’ She stepped forward into the mess, picking her way through the things on the floor. ‘What’s happened?’ She sat down in the chair opposite him. He continued to stare at
the
screen in front of him. She realised how unwell he looked. His skin was pasty and grey, his eyes bloodshot. His lips were dry and his hands were trembling. He seemed so much older, washed out, and very tired.
Is this my husband?
she wondered. Gerald had always been so colourful, so much larger than life. He looked half his old self now.
When did this happen? Did I let it happen?
‘Something rather bad has occurred,’ Gerald said calmly. ‘This afternoon I wanted to run away. I wanted to take the children and go as far away as I could. But I can’t get away, I know that. They’ll get me eventually.’
‘Who? Who will get you?’
He looked impatient and tsked. ‘
They
will, of course.’
Oh God, he’s gone insane
. Who does he mean by “they”? ‘Are “they” people, Gerald? Or something else?’
He shot her a look and almost laughed. ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you? I wish I were, darling, I wish I were. It might be a defence – “not of sound mind”. We’ll have to see.’
‘Defence?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so. I’ve got myself into a spot of bother. When I say “They are coming” I mean the authorities. Our dear boys in blue. The police.’
Fear rushed through her, turning her hands numb and freezing her all over. ‘The police? But why?’
‘A matter of a little loan, my dear, that was not strictly above board.’ He sighed heavily. ‘To be quite frank, I’ve used some money that didn’t actually belong to me in order to further my business interests here.
Of
course, I intended to repay it but before I’ve been able to do that, the board in South Africa has been advised that there is a deficit of some one hundred million dollars in the pension fund. And they’ve got very shirty about it indeed. It’s all very unreasonable of them.’
Tara gasped. ‘Oh, no, Gerald, you haven’t!’
He looked cross. ‘I’m not going to be nagged and scolded by you. Understand? This has nothing to do with you. It’s my problem and I’ll sort it out.’
‘What are you talking about? How can it be
your
problem? What about our house, our family, everything we own?’ She felt dizziness whirl round her head. The implications of what he was saying were so enormous, she could barely take them in.
His eyes flashed suddenly and he roared, ‘If you hadn’t been so goddamned stupid and given up your job, it might have been all right! There would have been other money, access to more funds. But now …’ He was deflated again, like a balloon shrinking slowly downwards. ‘Who knows what will happen now. A court case. My assets frozen. I don’t know.’
‘Where has the money gone, Gerald?’ she asked quietly.
‘I needed it for investment,’ he said irritably. ‘I need cash to be a serious player in the media business, to buy my way in. And I’ve got to look the part, I have to have the toys, or they won’t accept me.’
‘You mean, the Scottish estate … did you pay for it with the money you … borrowed?’
‘Yes, yes. But that was nothing, just a drop in the
ocean.’
His offhand tone only fuelled her fury. She felt sick with shock. She had always known that Gerald was ruthless and believed himself above the rules made for everyone else, for the little people. But she had never dreamed he could be so stupid and selfish – not to mention immoral – as to stoop to theft. She saw in a flash how he would have persuaded himself that it was perfectly all right and convinced himself that it really was a loan he intended to repay and not a terrible breach of trust.
‘Do you know what a pension fund is, Gerald?’ she asked quietly, white anger building in her.
‘Of course –’
‘No, do you
really
know its true worth? It’s hours, days, months, years of hard toil by people who never get near a fraction of the sums you play around with every day. We’re talking about honest people who’ve worried all their lives about how to pay their mortgage and their bills and put food on the table. These are ordinary people who worked in your companies, making you richer, doing the right thing by saving for their old age. Every penny, every dollar, belonged to someone else, someone who has no other way to buy food, heat or light, who is trusting that at the end of their lives, the money they’ve salted away so carefully will be there. And you …’ Tara’s voice started to rise ‘… you’ve stolen it! Worse than that, you’ve squandered it away. You’ve taken their food and drink and security and you’ve spent it on a fucking Scottish house you don’t even need! You stupid bastard! What were you thinking?’
‘It was Daniel who advised me to do it!’ Gerald said, looking almost frightened of her for the first time in his life. ‘And Terence! If anyone should be blamed, it should be them. They were the ones who came up with the idea.’
She looked away from him, hating his cowardice. Couldn’t he take responsibility for this, at least? ‘But how did you get your hands on it? I’m just amazed this was allowed to happen. What about the board? The reports to the regulators? The auditors?’
‘It was fairly complicated,’ conceded Gerald, with a touch of his old pomposity as though he was rather proud of his achievement. ‘A complex structure of companies and trusts was needed to release the money.’
‘And you were going to sneak it back the same way, were you?’
‘Yes. We thought it out very carefully. It was Terence’s masterstroke, really. No one would lose out. Everyone would get their money back.’
‘Once you’d got yourself a big, lucrative piece of the media pie and had started to make some money.’
Gerald nodded. ‘That was the plan.’
Tara shook her head. ‘And now it’s in smithereens.’ She couldn’t believe how foolish Gerald had been, how selfish. ‘How did it come to light?’
‘That is something I intend to find out.’ Gerald crumpled again, looking scared and defeated. He put his head in his hands. ‘Oh Christ, Tara. I can’t believe it’s come to this.’
‘Nor can I,’ Tara said soberly. She stared at her hands
clasped
in her lap. She no longer recognised the man sitting opposite her. She couldn’t even bear to look at him. He was a violent, unpredictable man, who’d wrecked havoc on her life, on the lives of her children and on the lives of those employees whose pensions he’d stolen. All this time, as her love for him had faltered and died, she had wondered how she was going to escape him and whether she could bring herself to leave him and break up their family. But in the end, he had finished it for her, by indulging his own arrogance and greed. She was filled with a strange calm. ‘The house is in both our names, isn’t it? The children and I can stay here for a while, I expect, depending on what happens.’ She stood up and took a deep breath. ‘But I don’t want you here any longer.’
‘What?’ Gerald lifted his head and stared at her, incredulous.
‘You heard. You’d better leave.’
‘I can’t believe my ears! So much for the fucking supportive wife!’ he shouted. ‘I’m in trouble and you don’t want to know. After everything I’ve done for you! I’ve made you, I’ve fucking
created
you, you thankless bitch.’
‘I didn’t want it to end this way any more than you did. But you must have known we couldn’t go on much longer. Not after the way you’ve been behaving. The other night was appalling. I don’t know if you even fully realise what you’ve done.’ She stared at him and he had the grace to drop his gaze.
In his madness, he had taken the belt in his hands and begun to lash out at her, not caring if he flicked
her
in the face, or caught her across the arm. Her protests had just spurred him on, and he’d growled a curious, throaty growl that made her skin go cold. When she’d turned and run, he’d chased her down the hall until she’d locked herself in the guest bedroom, refusing to open it despite his roars of anger outside in the corridor.
She knew then that their marriage was over. This just confirmed it. It opened the door to freedom, at last.
‘It’s one thing to attack me. But when you frighten and threaten our children, when you tell me you want to run away with them … I can’t ignore that. I can’t tolerate this any more. The children and I can’t live in fear of you for the rest of our lives. I want you to leave immediately.’
‘You’re nothing without me,’ he snarled.
‘We’ll see. You can go to my City flat and stay there. I’ll call John now while you’re packing. If the police come, I’ll tell them that’s where you are.’
‘I can’t believe it.’ He looked amazed. ‘You’re serious. You’re really throwing me out in my hour of need.’
‘You brought this upon yourself. It’s not safe for us to be around you. I’m sorry, Gerald. I know you need help and I’ll try to make sure you get it. But the children come first. Now, I’m going upstairs to start collecting your things.’ She moved calmly and confidently across the room, hoping he couldn’t see how frightened she was inside. He was a stranger to her now. A man who would pound at the nursery door,
terrifying
the children inside. A man who would steal the retirement fund of his employees and spend it on a house he didn’t need. A man without self-control and with no understanding of the effects of his actions.