The Water's Lovely (24 page)

No one mentioned Andrew. Neither Heather nor Edmund asked her why she hadn't gone away, what future plans she had or if she was going to try to find a flatmate. Edmund told her they were a little nearer to acquiring their flat. The people they called Mr and Mrs
Finchley, two links down the chain, had signed the contract on the sale of their house. Heather told her they now hoped to move in in September but they wouldn't have a holiday because they couldn't afford it.

‘Not if we're going to have a honeymoon in Japan.'

‘Are you?'

‘Somewhere over there,' said Heather vaguely.

Ismay went home in a taxi because she couldn't bear the thought of the tube full of noisy drunk people and herself on her own among them. Letting herself into her flat wasn't so bad because, in the past, Andrew had seldom been there before she came in. She poured herself another glass of wine and thought about the question Heather and Edmund hadn't asked. A new flatmate was what she needed but dared not take on. Now Heather had paid up the last of her rent she was having to bear the whole of it on her own. At least I'm not spending money on a holiday, she told herself bitterly. And it's not really worth thinking about. I'm not going to look around for someone else. Because I can't have someone else here if Andrew comes back.

He may come back. People do. They split up and then they get together again. You see it all the time. He must think of me sometimes, she thought. He must remember what he loved about me, for he did love me. God knows, he said so often enough. It couldn't all go like that, in a flash, just because he's met this Eva Simber. The tears were running down her face now but she went on thinking of it. Gulping a bit, taking a big swig of the wine, she imagined being here alone and the place looking beautiful, newly cleaned by someone, even by her, perhaps even newly decorated. She'd be wearing one of those diaphanous skimpy dresses he loved on her or perhaps only on Eva – don't think of that – and she'd be lying on the sofa reading a book and
she'd hear his key in the lock. He still had a key, he must have kept it, and he'd take her in his arms and say leaving her was the biggest mistake of his life …

Somewhere in all this Ismay was also thinking that Andrew was a hard-hearted cheat, a liar and deceiver. If he came back he would be good to her, a charming lover, attentive and possessive, but after a time he would go again. Some other pretty little fair-haired waif would be waiting for him. And once more he would tell her there was no one. When he finally admitted he was leaving, it would be her fault for doing this or that to drive him away, for being selfish, for putting others before him.

She knew all this but her enduring love for him overcame it and thrust it down deep into her mind, while she still imagined him coming in and kissing her, telling her he'd made a mistake and she was his only love.

In Ivan's kitchen Pamela was preparing their evening meal. She had brought the ingredients with her, pasta and salmon and salad and a summer pudding, still in its bowl, she had made the night before. At home she hardly ever cooked anything. She and Beatrix lived on takeaway and ready meals. She asked herself why she hadn't brought something of that sort with her as Ivan, who had been in the other room watching television, came out into the kitchen and eyed the pretty salad with disdain.

‘I don't eat green things,' he said.

‘I hope you eat fish.'

‘Provided it's fried with chips. I'm a chips with everything man.'

‘I've noticed,' said Pamela. ‘I thought tonight you'd like something different. If you don't want it we could go out to eat.'

‘Eating out is expensive. And don't say you'll pay because you know I won't allow that.' He looked at the
tagliolini, the pesto, the cream and the salmon with the expression on his face of a man considering if food items were past their sell-by date. ‘I've got potatoes. Can't you make some chips and fry an egg or something?'

She was already learning that crossing him led to an outburst of bad temper. To her surprise he peeled and cut up the potatoes himself. She fried his share of the salmon and they finally sat down, not at the table which looked as if it was never used, but side by side on the sofa in front of the television. There was no wine. Pamela didn't mind too much because she had secretly brought a flask of vodka with her, from which she had taken surreptitious sips while cooking.

It wouldn't do, she kept telling herself. There was no point in going on with it. Well, there was a point, just one, but she shied away from facing it. In spite of those preliminary words of his last time, that it was sex they had really come there for, ‘that side of things', as her mother used to put it, had been surprisingly good. Or was it just that so much time had passed since the last time? Years, she thought, three or four years. Ivan, who seemed to her grossly insensitive in some areas, mean and mean-spirited, was tender and gentle and controlled in his lovemaking. She had half expected him to boast about it afterwards, that seemed in character, but he hadn't. Nor had he said, ‘Was that all right for you?' He knew it had been.

What did it matter if he didn't take her out for meals, if he wanted to eat chips, if he moaned a bit about taxes being spent on the unemployed? He looked so good. It was nice to lie in his arms and know he really desired her. After all, she wasn't going to marry him. She wasn't even going to be his partner, for that surely meant living under the same roof.

They went to bed. And it was just as good as the first time. It was better. He remembered that she had said
she should be home soon after eleven and at ten he said he would order a cab for her. They could go to the pub at the end of his street and ask the cab to call for her there. Pamela didn't much want a drink as she had almost emptied her flask but she agreed so as not to antagonise him. Did that mean she was afraid of Ivan? Women are afraid of men, she said to herself. Men are afraid of women's minds and tongues and women are afraid of men's violence. It seemed to her that she had hit on a great if unhelpful truth.

They walked down the street, Ivan with his arm round her. He asked if he could see her next day and Pamela had to say she couldn't, not next day. She had to stay with her sister. She couldn't ask one of her nieces again so soon.

‘Why not? She's their mother, isn't she?'

‘They both go out to work, Ivan. And Heather's married. They do their bit, more than their bit actually, but they can't be there every evening.'

‘I'd have thought you could have left your sister on her own. She's not violent, is she? She won't break the place up?'

‘I do leave her alone sometimes. When I can be sure she's taken her tranquilliser. But I can't always be sure.'

Out there in the street, outside the pub, he flew into a rage, shouted at her, ‘You put your crazy sister before your partner? Is that it? You put your selfish nieces before your partner. Can't you understand how I feel about you? Does your sister feel about you like I do? Do those selfish girls?'

He took hold of her by the shoulders but not to hurt her. He held her like that for a moment or two while she trembled. Then he said in a quite different tone, a weary tone, ‘Oh, what's the use? I need a drink.'

She refused a glass of wine but he became angry again, so she agreed. It made her head swim. It made
her afraid to talk in case her speech came out slurred. After about ten minutes, in which Ivan talked about teenage mothers living on benefit and hoodies on sink estates, the taxi came. It wasn't a black cab but a minicab. Pamela wasn't happy about it as she had heard too many stories about minicab drivers stealing from their fares or even raping them. Out on the pavement Ivan kissed her passionately in front of the driver and a group of young black men who cheered and clapped their hands. She had taken it for granted that the cab would have been paid for but it hadn't and when they got to Clapham the driver demanded fourteen pounds.

The first ten minutes of the BBC's early evening news was all about the United Kingdom's bid to get the Olympic Games in London in 2012. Avice was indifferent to the outcome and Marion was bored. She was disappointed but not really surprised that Avice had woken up fit and well after the tartufo dessert. After all, she had eaten a very small amount of it. Tonight was to be the night, the pear and almond tart being the poison vehicle. Not that Marion referred to it like that even to herself. The word ‘painkiller' appealed to her far more, though Avice hadn't had a recurrence of that ache in her chest and left arm.

A horrible story came next about a lot of dogs and horses left to starve to death in a stable. Avice was upset and wanted to turn it off – thank God no rabbits were involved, Marion thought – but it was quickly over and the following bit wasn't nearly as disquieting. Avice was one of those people who prefer animals to human beings, so the news that the man a newspaper had called the West End Werewolf had attacked another girl disturbed her less.

‘I don't know why they make such a fuss,' she said.
‘What do they mean, “attacked”? He only puts his hands round their necks and gives them a bit of a push. Turn it off, Marion, will you? I shan't sleep tonight when I think of those poor creatures.'

Oh, yes, you will, thought Marion, imagining with a shudder the feel of strange hands touching her neck. She skipped out into the kitchen. Lately she'd been remembering the ballet lessons she'd had when she was a child and Fowler not much more than a baby, and she executed a couple of pas de deux and an entrechat on her way to picking the morphine bottle out of her bag. Two slices were cut from the pie and Marion poured morphine liberally over the plate on the left (M comes after A in the alphabet). For the first course she had grilled a piece of fillet steak for Avice and a piece for herself with new potatoes and peas. It was to be a particularly nice meal. After all, it was the last Avice would ever have.

Fifty thousand pounds was a serious sum of money. It should be spent wisely. With the knowledge she had gained from her employment as an estate agent's receptionist, Marion calculated that she would get two hundred and fifty thousand for her flat or maybe even three hundred. Add another fifty thousand to that and she she could buy something quite charming. Not in a basement, for instance. She pirouetted about, humming a Coldplay song, and then she carried the tray into the living room where Avice waited.

It was rather unfortunate, she thought, that the principal storyline in Avice's favourite hospital sitcom happened to deal with the subject of poisoning. And, to be precise, poisoning in a cake for the sake of monetary gain on the part of a nurse. It didn't, however, put Avice off starting on her slice of pear and almond tart. Starting but not continuing.

She brought a forkful to her mouth and it seemed to Marion that her hand hovered there for far longer than usual, trembled an inch or two from her lips while she made some comment on the homicidal nurse's appearance. Marion muttered something in reply. Sighing a little, Avice opened her mouth, received the forkful of tart – and if she didn't quite spit it out, she contorted her face into an expression of nausea, pushed the plate towards Marion and said, ‘Taste that!'

‘Mine is all right,' Marion murmured.

‘I can't help that. Taste mine.'

One forkful wouldn't kill her, Marion thought. A crumb or two wouldn't kill her. Cautiously, gingerly, she tasted a small fragment from Avice's plate.

‘It has been soaked in cough mixture,' said Avice.

It had. Marion went out into the kitchen, poured the dregs from the bottle into a teaspoon and drank it. Cough linctus, no doubt about it. Someone had emptied out the morphine and substituted Benylin.

Fowler, she thought, always Fowler.

It was so green. Like the country but not quite like. Eva had never been in Kensington Gardens before or if she had it was because Daddy had brought her when she was little. They had lived quite near. She tried to remember where but even the name of the street eluded her. She didn't really know London, only lived in it. You had to. It was either London or a big house in Gloucestershire. Anywhere else was unthinkable.

She had driven up to Notting Hill and left the car that had been Daddy's birthday present on a meter in somewhere called Linden Gardens. It was funny a park being called Gardens and a street too. You didn't have to put money in the meter until eight thirty, which was just as well as she'd brought none with her. This morning she was wearing one of her white T-shirts, the one with lace round the neckline, and mid-calf-length pink pants, and she kept stealing glances at her reflection in the windows of parked cars.

The unfamiliar green space was full of trees she didn't know the names of. Mummy said she didn't know the names of anything. It was a disgrace seeing what her schooling had cost. Some of the trees looked like Christmas trees and some had their branches sweeping the ground but their leaves were too big to be weeping willows. Eva ran along an avenue of trees, passing other joggers and race walkers, and meeting men running in pairs. These gave her admiring glances. But most people
she saw were walking dogs. Eva liked dogs. She especially liked True, a Labrador named after one of John Peel's hounds, and would have had him with her but Mummy said keeping a dog in London was cruel.

It was a fine sunny day, early enough for the trees to cast elongated shadows across the sleek turf. Eva turned right and took a ride which cut through these shadows, heading for a tall tower block on the edge of the park. She passed a statue of a man on a horse and a fountain, a little house with its own garden and a fence round it and more trees and tall bushes with flowers on them. All the other runners were left behind. At one point she had seen a great glassy lake to her left but that was far behind her now. Almost her last words to herself before she got lost were, ‘I mustn't get lost.' Then she was.