Beggar Bride (21 page)

‘But Fabian, did I do anything, say anything?’

‘No. If I’d married the Angel Gabriel Honesty would have found fault. It is nothing to do with you. These are old scores which Honesty feels she has not yet settled.’

‘Perhaps I ought to try and talk to her…’

‘Certainly not! The last thing we want to do is pander to this.’

‘But Honesty must be so unhappy! I had no real idea.’

But Fabian’s face is closed to sympathy. ‘If Honesty is unhappy then she has no one to blame but herself. But the real reason I told you this is because Ffiona herself is somewhat unbalanced and my main fear is that she might influence Honesty, in her present mood. So just be careful, that’s all I’m trying to say…’

Angela looks at her husband aghast. ‘Be careful?
Be careful in what way?

‘Oh, nothing in particular. Just don’t open parcels without due care, watch to make sure you are not being followed, don’t deliberately go wandering off alone…’

Angela stops him with her hand, frantically. Her dark eyes are wide with alarm.
‘My life is in danger?’

Fabian gives a hollow laugh. ‘Oh heavens, no! And now all I’ve succeeded in doing is frightening you! Ffiona isn’t a killer, but she does have this childish habit of exacting her revenge on anyone she blames for causing her present unhappiness. Now that Honesty has been driven out…’

‘But not by me…’

‘No, but that is how Ffiona is likely to see it.’

‘This is unbelievable,’ Angela cries, looking up at him in horror. ‘Don’t you think we should tell the police?’

‘If it comes to that I shall employ someone to take care of you,’ says Fabian easily. ‘Just for a little while.’

‘A bodyguard? You mean I’ll be spied on?’

‘Only if that should become necessary. It is most unlikely. Do calm down, Angela. I wish I’d never mentioned it now.’

It takes Angela a while to find the words. It takes her even longer to say them. ‘Wait a minute. Fabian,
you don’t think Ffiona deliberately hurt Helena?’

‘That is quite ridiculous.’

‘No… no… I only thought, one of her revenge attacks might have gone too far.’

‘What have the twins been saying to you?’

Angela rambles on as he’s never heard her before. She is being very silly, nothing like the calm, collected, self-controlled woman he knows and admires. ‘Nothing. Nobody said anything. But the newspapers say there was an open verdict on Helena’s death and now you are taking this attitude so naturally I’m thinking…’

‘Angela. Please. I don’t want to hear any more of this. You are being far too over-dramatic and that’s enough! Helena’s death was quite painful enough for everyone at the time and the last thing any of us wants is ludicrous, hysterical suggestions being made at this point in time. It is most unhelpful. Just when we are all trying to get our lives together. So please, just forget I spoke.’

Angela turns and leaves the room.

She seems to resent being spoken to in this tone, but what else is one to do when faced with such mindless hysteria? The next thing he will discover is that she is a secret bulimia sufferer or something even more distasteful than that. Has the woman no backbone at all? And she openly admits to being afraid of horses and heights.

And all because of Ffiona. Damn the woman.
Damn her.
Thirteen years on and still a thorn in Fabian’s side.

S
O—WHAT THE HELL
—how could she possibly have known Billy was hurt? She’s not a mindreader is she? All that concerned Ange was the sudden deafening silence on the other end of her mobile phone. Billy had stopped making calls for some reason or other and she was annoyed, imagining he’d got caught up in some pool game and forgotten the time, or gone to sleep in front of the telly, or he’s just pissed off about something and taking it out on her. If so he is such a tool. She knows full well how irritating it must be to get himself down to the nearest call box, a good ten minute walk every couple of hours… or sometimes he waits and makes three calls in five minutes. It’s a hassle. A real bore. But these telephone calls are mega-important. Convincing Fabian that her career keeps her busy is really essential. He’s accepted the fact that she wants to keep her own line because customers and clients know her number, and she doesn’t want to clog up his telephones with her own long-distance discussions.

The two-day silence was difficult to explain away. She had to make out that her phone had gone dead.

Just wait till Ange gets home!

Good God, anyone would think she was having a ball.

Fabian’s quick temper, hostile and unkind, has unnerved her. When he is angry his brown eyes darken to the black of wet slate, but why shouldn’t she be nervous over Ffiona’s threatening behaviour? Was it so unreasonable of her to suggest that the first wife might have
bumped off the second, in the circumstances, hell, she’s entitled to ask questions, isn’t she? Fabian scares her. He’d looked at her as though he despised her. Honesty and Ffiona both detest her and the last thing Ange needs now is enemies. If she hadn’t discovered she was up the spout she’d call this whole thing off, and, of course, there’s the question of the one thousand pounds a week paid straight into the current account she’d opened with ten pounds borrowed from the DSS. Four thousand a month… that’s forty-eight grand a year, an awesome-sum, and what is more, the whole suggestion was Fabian’s, Ange just went along with it. On the first day of every month Ange’s account is going to register a deposit of four thousand pounds!

It is a miracle, a dream come true.

More than she’d ever hoped for.

And Fabian won’t even miss it!

Life is so bloody unfair.

No, no, now is not the time to divorce Fabian and quit as they originally intended, this is a far far better way to accumulate record sums, they must hang on in here no matter how unpleasant matters might be. So when she gets home this time she is going to have to persuade Billy to hang fire, to put up with this mess just a little bit longer—change the plans just a smidgeon, two years perhaps, instead of just weeks—and in that time they’ll save enough to put down a good deposit on a little house somewhere in the country and live with their two children in peace and tranquillity. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Old, slow-footed women muttering to themselves as they drag along to the shops, idle, unemployed yobs on the corners, bedraggled young mothers with bags full of shopping, all remind her that she must endure, that in the end it has to be worth it. All these people, and Ange and Billy and Jacob, too, are just so much living foam, created and driven by unseen winds and empty of enterprise. But where there is nothing you have to create
something,
all you need is a dream that is powerful enough.

She doesn’t feel powerful. She’s puffing by the time she reaches the stairs.

What the hell?
Ange stops dead, Billy’s face is a mess of cuts and bruises. Untidy black stitches seem all that hold his eye in its socket. His right arm is up in a sling. Ange feels sick with fear. ‘Jesus! Where’s Jacob?’

‘Jacob’s OK. He’s next door.’

‘What’s happened? Why didn’t you phone me and let me know about this?’

‘Because I couldn’t get to the bloody phone, could I? Not like this. I’m not Houdini. I couldn’t have dialled AND got the money in.’

‘Couldn’t Tina have gone?’

‘Tina’s got her hands full here with the two kids, cooking and feeding them and putting them to bed and everything else I couldn’t frigging well do.’

Ange catches her breath in a sob. ‘Oh Billy! My God, you look like death.’

‘I feel like bloody death. Two cracked ribs as well. I’m lucky to be alive at all, that sodding madman next door’s got the strength of a bloody gorilla.’

‘Ed?’ Ange swings round. ‘Where is he now?’

‘In custody. Where else? But they’ll let him out. They always do.’

Ange follows the limping Billy through to the kitchen where she automatically fills the kettle and turns it on. Her kitchen is spotless, quite unlike she normally finds it when she comes home from being with Fabian. Most times she has to set to and clean the whole flat, Billy is so hopeless at it. She wears rubber gloves for the job these days, afraid that someone will notice her work-red hands. Someone—Tina—has done a good job, guilt, most probably.

‘Billy,’ says Ange, her irritation overriding everything else now she knows Billy’s not mortally wounded. Now she knows Jacob is safe. ‘Why the hell did you go and get yourself involved?’ Ange stands with her hands on her hips, solidly, like a demand, like a grip.

Billy takes over, using his left hand to drop two tea-bags into the mugs and managing to wince as he does so. ‘What was I supposed to do? Just sit here and listen to her being battered?’

‘Couldn’t you fetch someone else?’

Billy’s voice rises to a shout. ‘Who, Ange? Come on, just tell me who. Who in this goddamn place would hurry forward to help some other tosser in trouble?’

She tries to reason. ‘Billy, we have talked about this before, many times. Tina has to deal with…’

‘It’s different when it’s happening, Ange, Christ, you know it’s different!’

‘But we can’t cope with our own problems, Billy, let alone Tina’s, not when she keeps inviting the bastard back!’

‘I know I know I know. Don’t go on.’

‘He could have killed you…’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘But he could’ve.’

‘Shut up, Ange. For Christ’s sake, shut up!’

Together, at last, in harmony again and Billy is quite overwhelmed when she tells him about the money. Wealth beyond dreams.

‘What? Now?’

Ange nods, smiling.

‘The money’s in there right now?’

Ange’s smile turns into a manic beam.

‘We can go and get it out in the morning?’

‘Yep. We can go and get it out when we like.’

‘Christsakes, Ange… Awesome.’

‘I know, I know,’ grins Ange.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You didn’t think it would work, did you, Billy? Be honest.’

Billy shakes his head. ‘Not like this.
Not so quick as this.
’

‘We ought to make a plan,’ says Ange, ‘so we know what our new aims are. We don’t want to waste it, after all. This is for Jacob and you and me and the baby, this is our whole future.’

‘We’d really be in the shit if we got done now, Ange. We’d both go down.’

‘Don’t spoil it, Billy. We’re not going to be caught. It’s all going to plan, if only you hadn’t gone and messed yourself up like this. Better than I ever thought…’

Billy rips the top off another can of lager—he can manage that OK with one hand—and rolls his eyes to the ceiling with joy, his bad eye weeping redly. He dances a war dance round the flat, more like a crazy hop, while Jacob watches with wide eyes, mouth wide open, gawping anxiously at his bandaged dad. Perhaps now is the time to point out to Billy that it will take at least two years to save the money they need, that this way will be far simpler than going for a quick divorce and trying to blacken Fabian’s name with lies. Already Ange has wised up about some of Ffiona’s difficulties, Fabian’s not that easy to cheat, he’d fought all the way and won.

And look what happened to Helena.

Ange attempts to explain it all as simply as she can.

‘What?’ As the truth dawns, Billy gapes, grey-faced and desperate. ‘You mean I’d have to stay here for another two years living like this while you… I hate my life here,’ he says darkly. ‘Why couldn’t I buy a van with some of the money?’

Damn him, he’s not listening. ‘Billy, if we were careful, at forty-eight grand a year we could come out with nearly a hundred thousand. Just think,
a hundred thousand for two years’ work…
’

‘And the baby?’

‘The baby would have to be brought up as Fabian’s, just for the start, don’t you see?’

‘You swore you would stay with that git for just two weeks! Then it turned into a couple of months. You said…’

‘I know what I said. But that was before Aunty Val came up and before I knew I was pregnant. For God’s sake, Billy, you must see that this is a better idea and much less risky.’

‘And after two years? What then?’

‘After two years I’ll just disappear. Simple. There won’t be any money left in the bank, we’ll move it all to another account as we go along. I don’t see how anyone would find us.’

‘But by then you’d have his child,’ says Billy, looking on the black side as usual. ‘You’re talking about a powerful bastard. He’d hardly give up his child without making a sodding good effort to find him.’

‘Well then, I’d tell him,’ says Ange. ‘I’d let him know that the baby was never his, so finding us wouldn’t be worth it. And they can prove these things these days, with DNA.’ And if Ange recalls the sight of Fabian’s face in anger, if this image of his hard, penetrating eyes flashes before her now, then for sanity’s sake she quickly dismisses it.

The park grass, under the blossoming chestnut trees, is all speckled with daisies. The sun lies with them, in stripes and discs and spangles, resting on the warmth of the air. The blossom has drifted onto the water. Ange leaves Billy and Jacob on a bench beside the lake while she goes dressed in her best this morning—the pink suede jacket plundered from the restaurant, black leggings and her favourite flat, gold shoes—to the bank where she goes under the name of Lady Angela Ormerod.

Tina’s almost constant presence is becoming a real nuisance. OK, she’s been a great help to Billy while Ange has been away, often picking up bits for him at Tesco, babysitting Jacob when he wants to pop out of an evening, taking his washing to the launderette and cooking him little treats now and then. Getting out, and down the stairs, is easier for Tina because Petal, her pretty daughter, is now two years old and toddling.

It would be neurotic of Ange to imagine some extra closeness was developing between them, I mean, surely the last thing Tina wants in her life at the moment is another man. She has only just come round to realising that Ed is a pig and always will be, after years of hospital visits, beatings, swollen lips, bruises and sprains and silly excuses.