She’s still sitting there, alone under the peach tree two hours later, when Louis finally returns from Kidstead. He’d assumed Fanny would be working, since she usually was, and had stopped off at the pub on the way home, vaguely hoping to bump into Kitty. He found an edgy-looking Macklan Creasey instead, perched on a stool at the corner of the bar, being ignored by Tracey.
Macklan didn’t greet Louis warmly. Didn’t feel like it. ‘Fanny knows,’ he said, without even a hello. ‘She knows about you and Kitty. Plus she got fired today. She’s on her own in the garden, drinking whisky.’
‘She knows—Did you tell her?’
‘I was about to, Louis. Didn’t think you were being very fair, keeping secrets from her, since you were
supposed to be together…
’ He sent a pointed look towards Tracey, busy polishing glasses. ‘But she already knew.’
‘The whole ruddy village knows,’ snapped Tracey. It was the first time Macklan had heard her speak since she ran out of her uncle’s bungalow the previous evening.
‘That’s true, Tracey,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I agree with you! That is very, very true.’
She slid him a furtive glance, caught his eye, quickly looked away. ‘I reckon Fanny could do with some company, Louis,’ she said.
‘Ohhh,’ Louis groaned, ‘fuck and
damn
,’ pocketing his wallet, forgetting the drink. ‘I’m a jerk…I’m a stupid fucking
jerk
.’
So Louis found her, propped up against the trunk of the peach tree, whisky bottle in one hand, burning cigarette in the other. As he stalks across the grass towards her he can hear her muttering to herself; banging on about new beginnings again. He halts in front of her, slides gracefully to his knees.
‘Fan?’
She looks back at him. Smiles. ‘Cheater,’ she says. ‘God, you’re a waste of time.’
‘I know.’
‘Kitty thinks all men should be circumcised. She says there is probably nothing on God’s earth more beautiful than a nicely proportioned dick. When it’s been circumcised.’
He smiles; that lazy smile. ‘So she keeps telling me.’
‘Oh, Louis.’ At last, the tears that have been waiting to spill all this time, begin slowly to run down her cheeks. He puts his arms around her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
‘We really believed we had something though, didn’t we? I mean, for a little while. When we were in Spain. We did, didn’t we?’
‘Yeah. We did.’
‘We thought we’d cracked it. We were so smug. We’d found the holy fucking grail.’
‘I’m seriously beginning to wonder if it exists.’
‘Oh, it exists,’ says Fanny bleakly. ‘It’s just it comes along when you’re standing in a bar, minding your own business, in
Buxton
, and then it turns out to be—’
‘Crap,’ Louis finishes for her.
‘Horrible. Maybe it wasn’t the real thing, anyway. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe—’
‘It was crap, Fan. Come on,’ he nudges her. ‘We were better than that.’
She chuckles limply, more than a little drunk. ‘Maybe the harder you look the better it hides. Maybe that’s it…I got fired, by the way.’
‘Mack told me.’
‘Robert White says I’ve been molesting the children.’ She giggles – it turns into a tiny, feeble retch – and falls silent again.
They hold each other for a while, hearts aching with their own failure, with the endless, exhausting loneliness of their free-floating lives. Finally she disentangles herself. ‘Got a call from Ian Guppy, too,’ she says. ‘Don’t know what took him so long, except of course I’ve just paid him the rent. He says he wants me out by the weekend.’
‘He can’t do that!’
She shrugs. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, anyway. Tomorrow morning, preferably. Pack up tonight. Write a letter to the children. Can’t see much point in hanging around.’
‘Do you want a hand? Can I help you?’
‘No. Thanks.’ She hauls herself up from the grass. ‘Thanks, Louis.’ She smiles at him, and he at her. ‘What are
you
going to do?’
He glances away. ‘Oh, you know,’ he says evasively. ‘Maybe stick around here a while. Maybe, gosh, I dunno. But the work’s picking up again, so I guess I’ll hang around a couple more months.’
Fanny smiles. ‘Of course you will. Well – goodbye, Louis. See you later.’
And with that she turns and walks unsteadily back into the house.
She spends most of the night struggling to write a separate farewell letter to each of her pupils, which she intends to post (since Robert would be unlikely to distribute them) through Grey and Messy’s door as she leaves.
Finally, as the dawn seeps in beneath her hand-made curtains, she climbs up to the loft and pulls out the giant red New Beginnings trunk she’d been hoping not to use again. She throws it open in the middle of the sitting room and stops; gazes at her small house, at all the little artefacts arranged so lovingly around the place – those sari curtains, the Iranian embroidered wall hangings, the Peruvian llama rug, the broken Mexican silver lamp, the African animal carvings, the wretched dressing table left her by her grandmother…She looks at all the random tat she’s been amassing through life, lugging from one New Beginning to the next, and she thinks,
What’s the point?
Minutes later she stands with Brute and a small suitcase and two Safeways plastic bags full of chosen belongings: clothes, make-up, CVs, a couple of unread novels. The front door is open and she’s ready to leave. She takes a last look around her: at the bright red trunk, open and empty, and everything else still in place. As if she were only nipping to the pub. She falters. The room glimmers slightly with all the hope she invested in it once, and it makes her wish she could stick around and fight. She would
like
to stick around and fight…
She picks up her bag, ‘Come on, Brute. Let’s go.’ She steps out into the cold, clear, early morning, slams the door behind her, and quickly, before she can change her mind, posts the key inside.
Solomon has a ten a.m. meeting at his London gallery with an exciting new Russian client, a man with two bodyguards and a feverish gleam which reminds Solomon of some of his old prison associates. Not a man who would appreciate being kept waiting.
He ought to have travelled up to London last night, but it had been a beautiful evening in Fiddleford and he’d spent all day in the car going to St Ives and back. Apart from which his darts and croquet party was on Saturday, and Macklan had vaguely mentioned he might come round for dinner to drop off his trophy stand. (Macklan didn’t show, of course, but true to form where his father is concerned, he forgot to call or to cancel.) Which is why, at five thirty-five that Friday morning, just as Fanny is listening to her front-door key drop on to the inside mat, she hears Solomon’s new Bentley purring elegantly up the village street behind her.
She listens, panic-stricken, frozen to the spot. But to her surprise the car makes its way on and past her.
‘Lucky
!
’ she says to Brute, as the engine sound fades. ‘
Lucky!
’ again, to cover the sharp pang of disappointment. ‘Come on. Let’s go. It’s time to go.’
But then, distantly, she hears the car brake. Stop. And slowly start reversing.
‘Oh, shit!’ She turns back towards the cottage again, squeezing her hand through the letter-box, in the wild hope of somehow retrieving the keys. She can hear his car drawing nearer. ‘Shit…
fuck! Shit!
’ She doesn’t need this. Not now. She can’t face this. Desperately, she drops into a crouching position beside the garden gate, shunts the suitcase behind her and pretends to be searching for something on the ground.
He stops. Winds down the window.
‘Fanny?’ Wonderful deep voice, she thinks: authoritative, confident. Bloody sexy, actually.
‘Hmm?’ She glances up. ‘Oh! Goodness! Hello, Solomon! I didn’t see you there!’
He frowns. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What am I doing?…Nothing!’
‘Where are you going, at this time in the morning?’
‘Nowhere!’
‘Nowhere? What are you doing with those bags?’
‘What bags? Oh. Well, that’s because I was on my way—’ She stops. Tries again. ‘I seem to have lost my keys. I’m sort of locked out. Actually. Gone and posted my house keys through my own postbox!’ She rolls her eyes. ‘
That’s
the problem.’
He eyes her suspiciously. ‘Are you all right?’ he says. ‘How did the meeting go last night? Sorry I couldn’t come along and support you.’
‘Ah.
The meeting
. Didn’t miss much. No. I was fired, actually.’ A breathless, dry-throated laugh. ‘Well – suspended. I mean, I resigned. Robert White said I’d been molesting the children. Which I haven’t,’ she feels compelled to add, ‘by the way.’
‘Well, I’d be very surprised.’
‘So – when I said I wasn’t going anywhere it wasn’t
strictly
true. I was actually on my way, Solomon.’ She gives a little shrug. ‘I mean, I’m off. So,’ she continues quickly, not giving him a chance to speak, ‘well. Thank you for everything. For being my friend. And – telling me about Nick. And I’m sorry, actually I’m
really
sorry, about that time I called you…It was Louis, of course, who’d been jabbering my business around the place.
Louis
.’ She glances resentfully up at his window. (He’s not there. He’s over at Kitty’s, snoring peacefully.) ‘Who’s having it off with Kitty Mozely, it turns out. Probably as we speak. Anyway, sorry. More than you needed to know.’ She realises, distantly, that she needs to shut up. ‘So. What with this and that and the other, and bloody Ian Guppy’s chucking me out of the cottage, there’s not a great deal to keep me here any more. Not really—’
‘Bollocks,’ he interrupts. ‘Only a school full of children, all of whom seem to worship the ground you walk on. And, with the exception of four or five idiots, a bloody village full of supporters. Supporters and
friends
, Fanny. Christ. What more do you want?’
‘Well,’ she says pertly, fighting back tears yet again, eyes already stinging, ‘a job might come in handy.’
‘You’ve got a fucking job!’ The words explode from him. They roar down the empty street. Silence. ‘Apart from Robert White,’ he adds more quietly, ‘and Kitty, I presume, have any other governors accepted your resignation? I know I haven’t.’
‘Solomon,’ she laughs, ‘you can’t force me to stay.’
‘Probably not.’ He sighs. ‘But I thought you might want to. After all the effort you’ve put in. I thought you were a fighter, Fanny Flynn. I thought you and I were fighters…Shame.’ He sounds disproportionately cast down. ‘I was obviously wrong.’
‘
Obviously
,’ Fanny says. She looks at the ground, mortified.
She knows, if she moves her eyeballs, her tears will spill over, and he’ll see. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, God. Don’t
apologise
,’ he says, suddenly light again. He switches off the engine, opens the driver’s door and climbs out on to the road. ‘Not to me, anyway. So where are you headed?’
He’s wearing a loose-fitting cream linen shirt, no tie and a pale grey suit. She’s never seen him in a suit before; never seen him fully dressed, now she thinks about it. Either way he is disturbingly good-looking. ‘Where am I headed?’ she repeats. She looks baffled.
‘That’s right.’
‘Erm – must admit I’m not quite sure yet,’ she laughs self-consciously, aware of how pathetic it must sound. ‘Sort of thought I’d think about that once I’d loaded the car. But maybe London?’ He’s standing beside her. Close. The smell of him catches the breeze. Lavender and sandalwood. And the warmth of him. She looks up. ‘Or Australia. I dunno.’ He’s looking at her thoughtfully, hands in trouser pockets. Dark eyes, she thinks: impossible to read. Impossibly bloody sexy. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Perhaps she had. She tries to pull herself together. ‘Anyway, goodbye, Solomon,’ she says, stepping gracelessly back from him, shoving out a hand for him to shake.
He keeps his own in his pockets. And then a flash of humour at some private joke seems to light across his face.
‘What?’ says Fanny, dropping the hand. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing,’ he says briskly. ‘Give me your car keys. I’ll help you load.’
Perhaps it strikes her, distantly, as an odd request, as a peculiarly fast
volte-face
for a man who’s just called himself a fighter, but he’s delivered the line with such total assurance, with so little doubt she will go along with it. And she is, anyway, feeling very muddled: half relieved that he isn’t
trying to argue with her, half – more than half – disappointed. And above all, distracted. He is standing very close to her.
So she passes him the keys. He says ‘Thank you’ and puts them in his pocket. ‘Right,’ he says. Change of tone now, as he climbs back into his own car. ‘I’ve got to be in London this morning, but I’ll be home about six. I’ll call Sabine, let her know what’s happening, but she’ll leave you in peace if you want her to. So make yourself comfortable. Feel completely at home. And I’ll see you later.’
‘What are you talking about?’
The Bentley engine hums back into life. ‘And tell Sabine to make you a decent breakfast,’ he says, eyeing her critically. ‘You’re wasting away, Fanny.’ He grins at her, slowly begins to edge the car forward. ‘Must be all the stress.’
‘Hey!’ yells Fanny, grabbing at the car door. ‘Where are you—What the—Give me my keys!…Stop! WAIT! This is illegal!
You can’t do this!
’
Solomon stops. ‘You’ve got nowhere to go, Fanny. You said so yourself. Nowhere to go. No one to see. And nothing to do. What’s the big hurry?’
‘It’s none of your business what the hurry is.’ But he has a point. ‘Anyway, screw you!’
He clicks his tongue. Laughs. ‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘What’s wrong with spending a day cooling off? And then when I get back, maybe I can help you drum up some kind of—’ He stops. His mouth twitches. ‘Well, shall we call it a plan?’
‘Give me my fucking keys!’
He looks at her curiously. ‘Did you even say goodbye to
anyone
?’
Fanny glances away. She doesn’t reply. Grey, Messy, the General, Charlie and Jo, Macklan, Tracey, Dane, Scarlett – Solomon. She’s leaving them without a word, without a forwarding address; without any intention of seeing any of them again.
‘You do this all the time, don’t you? I bet you do. Drop everyone. Dump everything. Run away – as soon as people start getting used to having you around.’
‘
No…
No.
No
, of course I don’t. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with that. I’ve just been bloody well
fired
.’
He sighs, apparently unconvinced. ‘Just this once, Fanny, before disappearing in a great puff of self-righteous smoke, spend the day thinking about it first…Please? What have you got to lose? You won’t have to talk to a soul. There are books and newspapers and videos. The children are asleep, and then they’ll be at school. Nobody’s there except Sabine. And I’ll tell her to look after you – or to ignore you. Whatever you prefer…’
She’s torn. She knows she ought to be angry. She tries to feel angry but actually what she feels is touched. More than touched: relieved, happy – exhilarated – that for once in her exhausting life, someone else is offering to take control.
‘Give me back my keys,’ she mumbles doggedly. It sounds very half-hearted.
Solomon chuckles, shakes his head and accelerates away.