Hush Hush (30 page)

‘She doesn’t know
about this and never will. It’s our shame to live with.’

‘Maybe she’s on her
way over this minute. By broomstick.’

Angela turned her back and strode
to the window. She hated rowing with Robert. They’d had
mercifully few major rows over the years. They always digressed
‒
no matter what the origin or provocation
‒
into Robert’s verbal assault on Sadie.

His dutiful son-in-law act hid a
seething resentment that surfaced all too quickly when he lost his
temper for other reasons. It upset Angela and would’ve appalled
Sadie.

‘I know what Sadie thinks
of me, and at times like this, I wonder if she’s swayed you
over to her side. She thinks I’m weak, unsuccessful, lacking
moral fibre. So of course I’d hop into bed with a woman after
sharing a side salad with her. Have you looked at Magdalena properly?
Why would she hop into bed with me?’

His logic was comforting. Angela
turned to him, almost relieved to side-step the issue of the receipt
by soothing his ruffled feathers over Sadie.

‘Mum’s critical of
everyone. Look how I’ve disappointed her, leaving my job
without even being pregnant as a cover story.’

‘But mostly, you’ve
disappointed her by marrying me, Mr Average. She sized me up long ago
and found me wanting. She needles me all the time, pretending it’s
a cosy bit of family ribbing. I’ve tried with her, Ange
‒
because she’s your mother.’

‘I know you have. Maybe
‒
you know
‒
you’ve
tried too hard.’

The wrong thing to say. ‘What
do you mean by that?’

‘I just mean, you should
always be yourself with her. I told you that from day one. Don’t
even give her the satisfaction of trying to impress her. You kind of
invite her to despise you.’

‘And this,’ said
Robert slowly, ‘is the woman you were thinking of inviting to
live with us. Thank God I knocked that idea on the head. For a start,
we wouldn’t be able to have private slanging matches like this,
would we? We’d have to go out for a drive so you could accuse
me of bonking Magdalena.’

‘But Robert
‒
’

‘The subject is closed! I
told you the truth. It’s up to you whether you choose to
believe me or not. I accept no responsibility for your paranoid
suspicions. That’s my final word.’ He sat down and turned
up the telly.

Rebellion bubbled in Angela.
Robert only occasionally invoked the ‘final word’ clause
of their marriage contract, an unwritten clause that Angela usually
acquiesced to because it was invoked so sparingly and always when
she’d pushed him further than she’d accept being pushed
herself. But this was different. She wasn’t being paranoid.
She’d seen the panic in his eyes, the deep blush of guilt on
his face when she’d pointed out the strange anomaly of stingy
old Ian booking his underlings into a pricey restaurant, then happily
buggering off. It was a shot in the dark, and it had struck home.

She switched off the telly and
stood in front of it. ‘You’re perfectly entitled to take
Magdalena out for a meal. And I’m entitled to wonder why you’ve
been so shifty about it. You’re jumping around like a scalded
cat, protesting your innocence too much. I didn’t come down in
the last shower, Robert, and you’re a crap liar, for which I’
‒
here her voice
broke
‒
‘for
which I’ve always been thankful. I never wanted to marry a
double-talking smooth bastard.’

He turned to her earnestly. ‘And
you didn’t. You married plain old Robert Carbery, who couldn’t
cheat on you if Miss World came through that door wearing a
G-string.’

His look went right through her.
‘Oh, Robert, don’t let’s fight!’ She flew to
him, leaping on top of him in the chair and crushing the life out of
him. Privately, she remained unsure that he’d done no more than
swap fortune cookies with Magdalena. But as long as she was unsure,
she had to believe him.

‘It’s OK,’ he
mumbled into her hair. ‘Apology accepted.’

She stiffened and drew away. ‘I
don’t remember apologising for anything.’

He threw up his hands. ‘So
we’re back to square one.’ He shoved her away, depositing
her in a heap on the floor, and stood up. ‘Honestly, Angela,
this clinging little wife routine doesn’t suit you. This is
what comes of giving up work and festering at home all day, imagining
all sorts about the people who are out there in the big, bad world.
Well, for your information, I can’t avoid women on the bus or
Magdalena at work. I suggest you get a life before it’s too
late, and give your overworked imagination a rest.’

Tears stung her eyes. He’d
never criticised her before for giving up work. In fact, he’d
often commented on how much he enjoyed returning to a cosy, lit house
and a hot meal
‒
especially in winter.

‘I’m off to bed,’
he said gruffly and stomped from the room. She ran after him, and
caught his arm. He shook it off, taking the stairs two at a time.

She clutched the banister and
yelled at his departing back, ‘I’m calling Ian first
thing in the morning to check on this dinner he had to cry off from
at the last minute. So you’d better get to work at the crack of
dawn and brief him on his story for the clinging little wife!’

She thought about adjourning
regally to the spare room. But the bed needed making up, and it was
colder than a fridge.

In the end, she went to bed an
hour later and inched carefully in beside him, careful not to make
bodily contact of any kind. He had to make the first move.

His hands snapped round her waist
straight away, drawing her rigid back into his chest. She didn’t
resist, but made no other move, willing him to try harder.

‘Forgive and forget, Ange?
I don’t really hate Sadie. When you get mad at me, I see her in
the background, cheering you on.’

She hesitated. He wanted her to
forgive and forget everything about the night’s proceedings,
presumably. And this attempt at an apology (which hadn’t
included the word ‘sorry’) only encompassed his rudeness
about Sadie. It wasn’t that difficult pleading
mea culpa
for harsh words about Sadie. He did it all the time.

‘What about slagging me off
for giving up work?’ she mumbled, deciding on a piecemeal
approach to extracting humility (and hopefully, the truth about the
other thing) from him.

‘Yeah, yeah, course I’m
sorry for that, whatever it is I said.’ He kissed the back of
her head. She ground her teeth. He had a foolproof way of giving that
meant she received nothing. Now she’d look ungracious and
childish if she didn’t let bygones be bygones. It was his hand
creeping under her T-shirt that did it. Of all the nerve! He not only
expected unconditional absolution for sins not even confessed, he
also expected to seal their
entente
with a bit of nookie!

‘Don’t!’ She
slapped his hand away ferociously.

He spun away, turning his back on
her, dragging the duvet with him.

She curled into a ball of misery
on the edge of the mattress. The next thing she heard was his soft
snoring. Typical man! Faced by the conundrum of an unhappy woman,
he’d given up working her out and gone to sleep.

In the morning, they didn’t
speak at the breakfast table. His head was slightly bowed over his
toast, presenting her with a poignant view of his thinning crown.

She cleared her throat. ‘You
can rest easy. I’m not going to chase up Ian over that dinner.’

His head snapped up. ‘So
you believe it was all above the board?’

Why hadn’t she said yes? It
would have cost her nothing to send a condemned man to his death with
a hearty breakfast and a lightened load.

But she’d just shrugged,
offering him a cool cheek to graze with his lips. Their last physical
contact. Even then, his mouth had felt wispy, insubstantial, like a
frond of ghostly ectoplasm.

She was trying to make a
pineapple-upside-down-cake peace offering when the call came. It was
just after midday. The phone made her jump and she cut her finger on
the half-opened lid of the pineapple tin, moving slowly towards the
ringing phone, trailing a shred of unravelling kitchen towel.

At first, she couldn’t
understand a babbling, incoherent Ian. She’d thought it had
something to do with the dinner receipt and the row. That Ian was
telling her off for impugning the behaviour of his beloved Magdalena.
‘Come now!’ he screamed.
‘
I’m
at the hospital, but they won’t tell me anything. It looks
bad.’

At the hospital, Ian told her
that Magdalena had tried to revive Robert back at the agency. But
even from the other side of the room, ringing for the ambulance, Ian
had seen Robert’s face and lips turn blue. When Ian told her
about Magdalena’s kiss of life, Angela had started giggling
hysterically. So her accusation of snogging Magdalena was true in at
least one way!

She’d sought out Magdalena
in the relatives’ waiting room, tried to drag her down to the
chapel of rest for ‘moral support’, but really to show
her the end result of her adulterous handiwork. But Magdalena had
resisted heroically, clinging on to Ian and staving off Robert’s
madwoman widow until Sadie sailed into the room, prised Angela’s
hands off Magdalena and said she would escort her to the chapel of
rest.

At least she’d only had to
look at his face, the white pallor of death overlaying the blue, like
a ripened Stilton. The rest of him had lain under a sheet emblazoned
with the hospital initials. She’d concentrated very hard on the
W.G.H., stamped blackly on pale blue cotton. She’d wondered if
a casual observer would mistake the sheet for monogrammed linen.

The coffin was brought into the
house the following day by the undertakers.

Time passed in frame-by-frame
sequence as they drew the living room curtains, draped the
mantelpiece in purple crepe paper and set out the closed casket on
runners next to the telly. When they left, and it was just her, Sadie
and Robert’s mother, she’d stared fearfully at the closed
lid.

She imagined it padded inside
with pastel silk. Robert wearing some New Age smock chosen at the
undertaker’s discretion (she’d declined to surrender his
best suit for the occasion; she couldn’t bear to part with it),
his lids closed over brown eyes that would never sparkle on the world
again, cotton wool padding out his sagging cheeks with a ‘peaceful’
idiot smile and his hands folded across his chest, the back of one
still fresh with scratch-marks. She’d scratched him
accidentally the previous week, during a bit of horseplay on the sofa
in
Coronation Street
’s ad break.

But even as she looked, the lid
began to creak open. The bitten half-moons of his nails appeared,
pushing up the heavy oak.

She gasped and looked in terror
at his mother and Sadie. But they’d noticed nothing. Sadie went
on saying the rosary with half-closed eyes, his mother crying noisily
into a bloomers-sized hanky.

Angela turned her eyes back to
the lid, shaking with terror. His wedding ring glimmered from the
coffin’s maw as his hand went on pushing up the lid. She
screamed.

She woke in a terrible sweat next
to the hissing gas fire.

It was dark outside. She was
bathed in the fire’s orange glow as well as its heat. She sat
up, wrapping her dressing gown lapels round her neck. Bloody hell,
what a nightmare! All brought on by discussing their last row with
Sadie.

Angela yawned, stretched,
shuffled into the kitchen. She avoided, at all costs, looking at the
flower stalks sticking out of the bin.

At the back of
the bus, Sadie spread the battered little card over one knee. Most of
the message was illegible. It started out boldly with,
‘
Dear
Angela, please for
…
’
then vanished frustratingly under a melange of damp stains and runny
ink. The mind boggled. Please forgive me, but Kate’s need is
greater
…
?
Please forget me and get on with your own life? In the bottom
right-hand corner, the letter
‘
C’
had clashed with a globule of pesto sauce, elongating into a Book of
Kells ‘L’, the sauce posing fancifully as a
fire-breathing snake wrapped round the base of the character.

But Sadie remained convinced it
was a C. The flowers had still been fresh, so couldn’t have
been long in the bin. A delivery that very morning perhaps? Whatever
the content of its message, the card and flowers had provoked a
violent act of closure from Angela. But you never knew with Angela.
Conor might’ve written, Please forage about in the wardrobe for
your best glad rags, and meet me for dinner next week. She was the
type to hack off her nose to spite her face, wallow in self-pity and
contempt for human nature, and ignore olive branches and second
chances as they followed her down the street, screaming for
attention. Angela expected the worst, so that if it materialised into
the merely bad, she’d be able to cope.

Yes, but wait! Look what had
happened after years of marriage to her soulmate. He’d very
possibly done the dirty on her! No wonder she found it hard to heed
the pleas or excuses of a bloke she’d only known five months!

Blinking out of the bus window,
Sadie hastily pocketed the card. She heaved herself up and tottered
to the front.
‘
Sorry,
I’ve just missed my stop. Can you drop me anywhere here?’

The bus driver declined to pull
in, but stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The rubber doors
hissed and folded back. Sadie clambered down with as much haste and
dignity as she could muster. It was a secret dread of hers that one
day soon, a boy-racer bus driver would squeal away while her trailing
foot still rested on the bottom step.