Virtual Strangers (33 page)

But nothing from Adam. Nothing. Have spent the whole week visualising a screen-length list of envelope icons, and cannot quite believe none are actually there. So much cannot believe it that I spend several minutes zipping hither and thither; personal filing cabinet, post room, download manager (romantic attachment?), recycle bin, favourite places, post room again. But nothing.
Nothing
. My griffith - my
Adam
- has accepted instructions and decided never, ever to email me again. Though I can hardly believe it, I can too easily believe it. I find the last email. Read and digest and re-read it. Only four weeks have passed but it seems like a lifetime. And nothing.
Nothing at all.

Rats.

Dan arrives on Saturday morning in a flurry of laundry and nonchalant posturing, and I do what all good mothers should do in times of emotional torment, I say nothing, do nothing, avoid giving him anxious inspections, and instead, cook him fried eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, fried bread, baked beans, mushrooms and fried potatoes (which I thoughtfully boiled earlier). All of which he eats in the kitchen, in silence, while I run the new improved Simpson idea past him.

‘So, ‘I say. ‘What do you think? You, me and Ben, eh? On the piste together? I’m sure I can find somewhere happening and groovy. Somewhere with plenty of happening and groovy
aprés
ski
too. Which I won’t come to if you don’t want me to, of course, and I’ll probably have a broken leg anyway, and in any case, I have a whole stack of novels to catch up with - just bought one called
Julia gets a Life
in fact; sounds perfect for me, don’t you think? Ha ha. And Ben and I will be off at the rookies ski-school of course, so we won’t cramp your style or anything, but we will be able to enjoy a proper family holiday, and - ’

He chews on, nodding, while I witter on hopefully. ‘Of course, if you’d rather go on your own, or see if you can find some mates who might like to go with you, then of course you could just have the money -
have
it - and take yourself off and have a really good time. Absolutely. I won’t mind. You say. I haven’t said anything to Ben yet. It’s just that I thought it would be - well, it’s been a long time since we did something together, just the three of and so on.’

He stops chewing, shakes his head, picks up his mug, drinks some coffee.

Then nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, thanks. Great. Okay.’

Great okay is certainly good enough for me.

Black Monday.

Another pyroclastic moment in geological/Simpson time. A small skiing trip (six days, low alps, hovel apartment, no food, four am flight, eight hour transfer etc.) will cost appreciably more than I have in the entire world. Not including lift passes or ski hire or boot hire, which I can have, it seems, only if I’m prepared to shag the bank manger, or at least make a big pretence of being desirous to do. As I emerge triumphant from his office, I reflect that where shag lists are concerned generally, it’s far better to be on one than to have one oneself.

Feeling mysteriously euphoric after having blown my entire Everest fund, I decided I was robust enough to run the gauntlet of the Wednesday Asthma Clinic and pop in to visit Minnie in my lunch break. With Dan being home I hadn’t seen her since before the weekend, and with the prospect of her move to the Maltings now looming, I worried she might become anxious and stressed. My dad made a batch of new low-sugar drop scones, forty eight of them, no less, which I’d brought in a tin. But Minnie wasn’t there. So I tracked down a nurse.

‘Has she gone, then?’

We’d never met. She asked, ‘Are you a relative?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t really have any family. I’m her friend.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Right.’

‘So has she already been moved to the Maltings?’

She shook her head. And her expression changed and I knew immediately what she was about to say.

‘I’m sorry. Mrs Drinkwater passed away on Sunday. Peacefully, in her sleep. Heart failure, I believe.’

I stood, clutching my cake tin, imagining Minnie’s little bits and bobs waiting for her at the rest home. The place she’d so dreaded going to. Where she now wouldn’t have to.

‘Do the Maltings know?’

‘I assume so. We rang Social Services.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Well, thank you. I know you took good care of her. Um. Shall I leave you the scones I bought?’

There seemed nothing else useful I could do other than go to the Maltings and gather her things together. So with half an hour to kill still, that was what I did.

Nothing had changed when I entered Minnie’s bedroom, except that the window had been opened and the flowers removed. I repacked her few scraps of pale crackly clothing and gathered up the soap dish and ring as well. Then I sat on the bed with the battered old shoebox and began sifting through the contents. If Edward rang now I’d have nothing but bad news to tell him. Anger swelled inside me. As if he much cared anyway. Perhaps if he’d been around, none of this would have happened. He was doubtless still cavorting through the tropics, oblivious.

It was this thought that possibly alerted my eyes to the envelope - to the word Singapore on the postal frank. The document inside was pristine, as if new, but even before I could make out the translations (in small print beneath all the lines of Chinese), one thing jumped out that replaced my anger with sadness. This was Edward’s death certificate, and it was eleven years old.

‘Oh, I am glad you phoned, lovely,’ said Bernice. ‘Speak of the devil. We were about to try and contact your estate agency firm.’

‘Why?’

For your name and address - we don’t have them on file here.’

‘Do you need them?’

‘Well simply to tie up the file, dear. All the legal bits and bobs. And you’ve got her things, so the nursing home tell me. And we do have a will, as it turns out. Old, but valid nevertheless. Not that he’ll be seeing any of it, of course. I don’t think it was a great deal, of course, but the main beneficiary is a hospital in India, apparently. Ahmenabad, or something? Plus the Cat’s protection League, of course. But if we do make contact, we thought you’d -’

‘That’s why I’m ringing. You won’t,’ I say.

‘Won’t?’

‘Because Edward’s no longer with us. I have his death certificate right here.’

‘Goodness!
Really?
Good Lord.’

‘And it’s dated eleven years back. He died in Singapore. Pneumonia, it says.’

‘Oh, dear, dear me. And
all
that time, Minnie waiting and hoping and not knowing. Makes you weep, doesn’t it? Oh, dear, what a shame.’

‘That’s just it. I think she
did
know. This didn’t come in the post. It was in her box of papers. Which completely threw me, of course, given all the postcards and so on, but then I found her stamp pot, with all the ripped off corners. When you match them up you realise they’re all really old.’

‘Well, how bizarre!’

‘Not really,’ I answered. ‘And that’s a point. When was the will made?’

‘Oh, about five or six years ago, I believe.’

‘So she
did
know. So that proves it. I think she preferred to make believe he was still alive. And I suppose if you kid yourself about something enough, you eventually believe it yourself. But who knows? So much unfathomable stuff went on inside her head, didn’t it? Poor thing, though. She had no-one, did she?’

‘She had you, dear, at least.’

‘Hmmm. Not much consolation for two lost children though, is it? When is the funeral?’

‘Not arranged as yet, lovely. We have to sort out the finances and so on -’

‘But you’ll make it a good one, won’t you?’ I didn’t like to think of Minnie going to her rest in a coffin made of plywood with a retinue of one. ‘And you will let me know? I’d like to be there.’

‘Of course, lovely,’ Bernice assured me. ‘Just a question of unravelling all the ravels, then we’ll be on to it. Leave it with me.’

Back at work I find myself wondering just how much ravelling I want going on in
my
life. Seems to me that ravels are not good things to have. Nor are secrets.

‘That’s wonderful news!’

Davina is looking jaunty again. It has become though, I’ve noticed, a subtly different calibre of jauntiness; a jauntiness symptomatic of actually
feeling
jaunty,as opposed to just staving off a lurking hysteria. She refers to my news that Mr Habib has just called, and made an offer for Ty Willow, to which the owners have said yes. It’s a half million sale, and our highest one yet. Though a calculator inside my head gives thanks for the cash flow, I’m still underwhelmed. I wish I could share whatever the thing is that drives her. Truth is, our moods now are too closely correlated. The happier she seems the more sad I get.

‘Wonderful,’ I agree. For the Habib’s sake, really. And almost add ‘and not a Hugh bloody Chatsworth for miles.’

She bounces out of her chair and comes over to my desk.

‘Listen,’ she says. ‘About Cherry Ditchling, Charlie. You know I really am sorry about all that. I mean not about the commission - though I do appreciate how hard you worked and so on - but that, well, I know I could have spoken to Hugh, come to some sort of arrangement with him. It wasn’t on, really, was it? I know business is business and all that but, well. I do feel a bit bad about it. Even though I did have my reasons. As you know.’

I start to speak; to tell her to forget it, but her hand comes up. ‘Speaking of which,’ she says. ‘I didn’t get a chance to thank you for the other day. Not like me to dump that sort of thing on people, ha ha. You know me, bottle it all up! Onwards and upwards! Anyway, it helped a
lot
.’

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘You were there. You listened. It made me feel better.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘I feel I’ve really got things together now. Got a life-plan sorted - isn’t that what they say? And thanks for staying on. I know this job isn’t the be all and end all in your life, Charlie, but it’s not
so
bad, is it?’ She smiles and flaps the details of Ty Willow in the air. ‘Buy some really swanky outfits with the commission on this, eh!’

Even as I sit before her in my pond weed suit with my stagnant pool bow, she doesn’t seem to realise the irony in this.

‘Absolutely!’ I trill though, because it seems po-faced not to. She checks her watch.

‘Cripes!’ she says. ‘Which reminds me, I was due at Velda’s for a fitting ten minutes ago.’

‘A fitting?’

‘For a ball gown. For the CancerCope dinner. It’s going to be a pretty swish do, by all accounts. Mustn’t let the side down.’

As if. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘CancerCope? I’m going to that one.’

‘
Really?
’ I find I don’t hold her astonishment against her.

‘Yes, with Rhys Hazelton. Have you come across Rhys?’

‘So she thinks you’ve been having treatment for some sort of gynaecological problem, no doubt,’ laughs Rose. It’s reassuring to hear Rose laughing and jolly. I haven’t quite decided whether to say anything to her about Matt’s worries. Haven’t really even completely decided if he’s wrong to have them. My instinct, for the moment, is to leave things as they are.

‘Which I do have, ironically.’

‘What?’

I recall the fruitless cyber-scramble through my personal email filing cabinet. ‘It’s called utterly hopeless fixation syndrome - I’m sure there must be a pill I could take.’

‘You don’t need a pill. You’ve got the top man. I’d make use of him, if I were you. Distraction therapy - I’ll bet he’s a really well-informed shag.’

‘Oh,
please,
Rose. Don’t! I can no more think of shagging Rhys Hazelton than taking up crochet. Not at the moment, anyway. And possibly never. Nice as he is, I regret to inform you that he’s not yet lit any of the Simpson boilers. Anyway, it’s not funny.’

‘What’s not funny?’

‘The realisation that I made a point of telling Davina I was going to this bloody dinner dance with Rhys simply because I knew she’d pass the information straight on to Adam. Hardly progress, is it?’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Charlie. These things take time.’

‘But I should have left, shouldn’t I? I should have stuck to my guns and given myself a bit of space. It was one thing having Davina make me come to my senses last week - it’s quite another having to see her so happy. It’s like bing! Everything in the Jones house is suddenly rosy. And it’s not that I begrudge it -’

‘Yeah, you do.’

‘Okay, a
part
of me does, but I have this big other bit that keeps patting me on the back and telling me to buck up because I did the right thing. Which everyone knows should make you feel better. But it still feels like shit. She thanked me today, you know. For being so kind and understanding. And apologised about the Cherry Ditchling business. What a laugh! If only she knew how that particular scenario turned out....Well. Bad news, anyway, this new incarnation. I can’t handle her like this. I should go and get a job in a sweet shop or something.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I know I will, but when?’

‘Platitude time, my dear. A lot sooner than you think.’

On Thursday Davina is so jaunty that I half expect her to pop up on a GMTV dawn charity special. Too jaunty by half, and clearly oblivious to worrisome developments at work, another of which occurs when I return from picking up lunch. Hugh has propped the door open to allow the fumes from his saveloy and chips to escape, and he has his back to me, so he doesn’t hear me come in. He’s on the phone, talking in a synthesised voice. Recalling my father’s intelligence directive, I hover for a while by the franking machine.

‘Yup,’ he says. ‘Yup, yup. Whatever you say, Austin.’

Then, after a pause. ‘Well, this is exactly my
point
. You know what she’s like. She can be a bit, well -’

A longer pause. ‘No, absolutely! No, I was simply pointing it out. No, you’re right. You
can’t
take that away from her. I don’t mean
that.
Of course I don’t. And I do respect her experience, believe me. Absolutely I do. But you can’t deny she’s been a bit, well, funny, lately - you don’t know; she might have -’

And then a very short one. ‘Fine. You’re the boss. Whatever you say. Ha ha ha. Nice one!’