She and Matt and their legal teams sat on benches below him, and sundry important-looking people bustled about, clerks, she supposed, and a typist who settled herself immediately under the bench.
Mr Justice Harris had a rich but almost quavery voice, a long pale face and an oddly sweet smile – when it showed. He looked over the courtroom and all the people in it, a sweeping, interested survey …
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let us begin.’
It was over in less than an hour; Mr Justice Harris listened courteously to what was put before him, occasionally with a sharp glance at whoever was speaking, and once or twice at Matt or Eliza, and then opined that it would be a whole week’s case and that they would need at least six weeks to have it in shape as he put it. ‘You will be required to have all your witness statements, medical reports you may want to rely on, documents, letters lodged in a month’s time. Your solicitors will then prepare your case. So I suggest the first week in July for the hearing commencing on, let me see, Monday the fifth and that date will be in the court diary and cannot change. I hope that is clear.’
There was a murmur of ‘Yes, My Lord’, and then the clerk of the court told them to rise and Mr Justice Harris swept out, without a further glance at any of them.
‘Come along,’ whispered Philip Gordon, taking Eliza’s arm, and she looked at him, slightly bewildered, feeling she wasn’t quite sure who he was, or indeed who she was, and they left the courtroom ahead of the others, and found themselves suddenly and rather wonderfully out of the building and into the sunshine, by way of a side entrance, and thence into New Square.
Eliza’s legs suddenly felt rather weak and she sank gratefully onto one of the seats and looked at the four of them, who were all looking at her in various degrees of anxiety, and said, ‘Oh, dear.’
And Matt, having refused the offer of lunch and its attendant postmortem with his legal team, and loathing the air of complacency draped almost visibly around them, said he had to get back to the office and went and picked up his car from where he had left it in Covent Garden and drove very fast out of town, quite where he had no idea, merely struggling to escape from the demons which had attached themselves to him so firmly in the courtroom that morning; he bought himself a couple of beers and parked in the gateway of a field, and sat there for a long time, drinking and thinking; and then, as the long afternoon became evening, he turned the car back towards the city, while wondering slightly desperately where he might find further distraction.
The person who would have done that most effectively, of course, was on her way to Summercourt with her mother; Gina, he knew, would be waiting for him, with food, drink, the sympathy that was beginning to enrage him, and the ongoing offer of sex; and Louise had told him if he wanted to drop by she would be in and pleased to see him.
They both waited, and for a long time; but he did not come to either of them, merely phoning briefly to say he was tired and going home.
And he walked into the silent house, filled as it still was with the ghosts of happiness and laughter, and sat with only the whisky bottle for company and wondered at the folly of both of them, him and Eliza, that they had thrown that happiness so wilfully and stubbornly away, and what, if anything could have halted them before it was too late. Which it now so indubitably was.
‘Scarlett, this is Persephone. I would like to see you, as soon as possible. And please don’t tell Mark.’
Oh, God. This was it. Mark had told her they were engaged, and she was obviously displeased. He had been very quiet when he got back from the interview, and refused to say anything, except that yes, it had gone fine.
‘And did you tell her we wanted to be married on Trisos?’
‘Yes, of course. And it was fine.’
‘And did you ask about writing the – the—’
‘Epithalamium? Yes.’ An epithalamium, it transpired, was a poem celebrating a marriage.
‘And is she going to do it?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
It was like being back with the Mark Frost she had first met. And he stayed with them for several days. And now …
‘Ah, there you are. Lovely flowers but actually next time, I’d rather have chocolates. If you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘Dorothy, put these things in water, would you? And bring us some tea.’
Scarlett sat silent. She had obviously fallen far from favour.
‘Cake?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You should eat more. You’re very thin.’
‘I like being thin,’ said Scarlett firmly.
‘Very well. If you think you look better that way.’
‘I do.’
She was beginning to get the measure of Mrs Frost. She was a bully and you dealt with bullies by facing them down. But …
‘Now, I’m not going to tell you I’m pleased about this marriage because I’m not.’
‘I see.’
‘Not particularly, at any rate.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you’re a very nice girl, and I like you very much. But—’
It would be hard for her to say that Scarlett wasn’t Mark’s intellectual equal. But she probably would.
‘But you are simply not Mark’s intellectual equal.’
‘Mrs Frost—’
‘Persephone.’
‘I’d rather call you Mrs Frost for the time being. If you don’t mind.’
‘Please yourself. And do go on.’
‘No, you go on. Tell me why that means I shouldn’t marry him.’
‘Oh, my dear girl, it’s so obvious. That you ask that question proves what a mistake it would be. I’m sure everything is hunky-dory now. Lots of lovey-dovey talk, lots of sex, lots of excitement.’
‘Yes, that describes it pretty well.’
‘But in the years to come, then what, eh? When you’ve stopped gazing into one another’s eyes and so on, what are you going to talk about?’
‘What we talk about now, I expect,’ said Scarlett.
‘And that is? Certainly not the subjects that truly interest him.’
‘Which are?’
‘Oh, my dear girl, if you have to ask that’s extremely indicative.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of the yawning chasm between you.’
Scarlett digested this for a moment; felt the tears rising; crushed them; and said, quite quietly, ‘You must excuse me, Mrs Frost. I don’t have all afternoon, I have a business to run.’
She saw herself out; as she passed through the hall she saw Dorothy hovering in a doorway, and could have sworn she saw an expression of approval on her pinched, pale face, and even the shadow of a smile.
Safely in a café about half a mile down Kingsway, she burst into tears; the proprietor, a sentimental old Italian, insisted on supplying her with a cappuccino laced with sugar for free, patted her hand and told her she was
bella
,
bella
,
bella
. It didn’t exactly solve Scarlett’s problem, but it made her feel better for a while at least.
Just the same, and in spite of her rage and indignation, she knew Mrs Frost was actually right; and when Mark rang her that night, she said she was very sorry, but she had a lot of work to do, and that it would probably extend into the next evening as well; clearly hurt, he said he would wait to hear from her, he wouldn’t bother her again. And maybe, she thought, it would be better for both of them if neither of them ever bothered the other again; and that Mrs Frost did after all know him a great better than she did and that she was perfectly justified in her claim that she Scarlett was not Mark’s intellectual equal by a very long way. And that was – arguably – no basis for a marriage. Or certainly not a happy one.
The roller-coaster ride went on and on. A particularly interesting one it was turning out to be, Philip Gordon thought. Matt’s sister was going to appear for Eliza; that must have been a big blow for him. It would shatter his confidence, surely; at this stage of the game, that was good. And then Eliza reported he had an erstwhile business partner appearing for him. ‘I thought she hated him. And what does she know about his parenting skills? Weird.’
It was, a little.
A brief note, in her unmistakably foreign-looking writing:
‘Giovanni is coming to London when I come to be a witness for Eliza and he has suggested you join us at the opera on the Wednesday night. Please, please tell him you are to be away, I could not bear to see you. M.’
Jeremy read this through eyes blurred with tears. And understood and felt the same and told Lucilla he wanted to make a trip to New York the week of Eliza’s custody case.
‘Jeremy, you can’t. I’m sorry. It’s the week of the European conference, you know it is, and all the CEOs are coming to London, it’s been in the diary for months. I’ve fixed meetings, dinners, the opera—’
‘The opera? Which night?’
‘The Wednesday. Jeremy, you can’t have forgotten, it’s
Traviata
, oh, dear, you’re so tired aren’t you, you need a break so badly. Why don’t I clear the diary for the following week, and book you into that hotel on St Bart’s you like so much?’ Lucilla’s large brown eyes looked at him with concern; he managed to smile at her.
‘No, no, don’t worry, I don’t want to go then, too hot. I might take myself down to Norfolk though, that week, if you could see your way to facilitating that. Bless you, darling.’
Now how in God’s name did he tell Mariella? He could hardly write. And he had to warn her, say when he would be at the opera house. Maybe, maybe – yes, the one person in the world he could trust …
‘Oh, Jeremy, darling, darling Jeremy, I’m so sorry. How sad, how dreadfully, dreadfully sad. For both of you. I can’t imagine how much it must hurt.’
‘Unbearably,’ said Jeremy with a heavy sigh.
‘Oh, God, what a tragic story. And also a wonderfully romantic one. But of course you would be too good to let it go on. I think Mariella might just manage it, she’s not used to sacrifice.’
‘She’s been marvellous,’ said Jeremy, swiftly defensive of his love. ‘So wonderfully brave.’
‘Sorry, and yes, I’m sure she has. God, it’s an operatic plot in itself. Yes, of course I’ll write to her, I’ll be terribly discreet, I’ll wrap it all up in fashion gossip and I’ll just say you’ll be at the opera house on the Wednesday and you asked me to tell her. She’ll understand and then she can ring me if she wants. Poor Jeremy. You look so tired.’
‘I am tired,’ he said. ‘Unhappiness is very exhausting. I’ve never known it before.’
‘Not even when I broke off our engagement?’
‘My darling, I’m afraid not. This seems to be my first experience of love. I hope that doesn’t offend you.’
‘Of course not,’ said Eliza, giving him a kiss.
Four days later came a phone call from a distraught Mariella to Eliza. ‘Please, please tell Jeremy, that is the night we too are going to the opera. Tell him I beg him not to come.’
‘I’ll try. But it’s work, they’re clients, I can’t see … but I’m sure he’ll try. Oh, darling Mariella, you must be so unhappy and I’m so sorry.’
‘I have not known how to be unhappy before,’ said Mariella simply.
Eliza felt she could hardly remember not being unhappy. And frightened too, more so every day. She kept looking at Emmie, as she sat on her swing laughing at her, or cuddled up to her watching children’s TV, or kicking Mouse determinedly into a dozy trot, or telling her sleepily at bedtime that she loved her, and she was the best mummy in the world, and thinking that if she did lose her, she wouldn’t even want to live any more. But – it was beginning to seem more and more likely.
Philip and Toby had called her to a meeting and said they really thought a robust judge, ‘which he will be, Eliza, almost certainly’, would want at the very least to read her psychotherapist’s report and that they would like to discuss the whole matter with her. ‘She will need your permission to waive confidentiality, you see.’ Eliza was silent.
‘Eliza,’ said Philip gently, ‘if you refuse, you will not only alienate the judge, who can still compel Mrs Miller to release it on grounds of contempt of court, but it will look very much as if you have something to hide.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I’m sorry. And I – I will. But it could be very bad for me – us. You might want to give up on me altogether.’
‘May I say,’ said Toby Gilmour, half-smiling, ‘that speaking personally, but I feel confident for both of us, I would never do that. It is quite simply unimaginable. And you’re talking to a man, you know, who has seen the very worst of human behaviour. Now come along, let’s get it over and done with. And if it’s really so dreadful that I do actually feel shocked, I shall eat my wig. How’s that?’
And she had told them about it without sparing herself, her gaze fixed firmly to the floor, and when she had finished there was a silence and then Toby Gilmour said, ‘My dear, dear Mrs Shaw’, and she could hear the smile in his voice, ‘or perhaps now I am getting to know some of your most intimate secrets, I could manage Eliza – look at me.’
She did so; with great difficulty.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘listen very carefully please. What you’ve described to me – us – is, of course, unfortunate, under the circumstances. It is also absolutely understandable, and was provoked and quite considerably so, both by your having lost your baby and by Emmie, who is clearly manipulative and very sophisticated, and you shouldn’t be quite so hard on yourself. If everyone who lashed out once or twice at a child were fingered, I suspect most of the nation would be under the scrutiny of the social services. Nevertheless, your husband will no doubt make excellent capital of it, and we will have to be very fully prepared for that. Now, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? I think the best thing we can do is approach Mrs Miller, and ask her if she would be agreeable to our going to see her.’