The Water's Lovely (37 page)

But she put the paper into a waste bin. Andrew mustn't see that face, Eva's face, now, on this special day. If only she could push away the story and the name as easily from her mind. She walked along the Strand to the Savoy, thinking about it, trying not to but still thinking about it. About a boy of nineteen going to prison for something he didn't do. What must Heather feel? What must Heather ever feel? She found she didn't know. She hadn't the faintest idea of what her sister's thoughts might be. Except on one subject. She knew Heather loved Edmund but it seemed to Ismay that she knew nothing else about her.

She was shown up to the suite. Andrew was already there and the room was full of red roses. He put his arms round her and kissed her as if he had fallen in love with her anew or it was three years ago when they first met.

‘Would you like to go down for dinner or have it up here?'

‘What would you like?'

‘No. This is your evening and your night. You say.'

She would have liked to dress up and go down for the sake of showing Andrew off as hers but she sensed he would prefer being up here and she said, ‘Here. This room is so lovely. And the view.'

‘Good. I'm glad. There's something I want to say to you and I'd rather we were alone to say it.'

A hint of alarm, like a cool breath on her skin, touched her. Something about the photograph in the paper? Something worse?

When Fowler turned up, letting himself in with his key, not even bothering to ring the bell, Marion was delving through her wardrobe for what to wear the day after tomorrow. It was no longer even a question of a visit to Dorothy Perkins, not even an excursion to Asda. She was too skint for either and it had to be something she already possessed but preferably an outfit Barry hadn't seen before.

‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,' said Fowler, plucking a battered artificial rose from the pile on the floor.

‘There's no problem finding something old,' said Marion tartly.

‘I've brought you something new. At any rate, it was new when they threw it away. It came out of a bin in Conduit Street and that's a classy area.' He pulled out of his backpack a flounced pink skirt with frilly hem which he had wrapped up in the
Evening Standard
. ‘Look it's still got the price tag on it. Folks are amazing what they throw away. You even get a free paper with it. You can read all about the Kensington Gardens murder.'

‘I'm getting married the day after tomorrow, remember,' said Marion. ‘I'm too busy for reading.' She
held up the skirt against herself. ‘Actually, it's just what I had in mind.'

‘Can you spare the change for a cup of tea, guv?'

‘Oh, shut up. I'll never forgive you for that.'

She found something blue, a length of ribbon. Maybe she could tie it round her leg like a garter. What could she borrow?

‘Shall I come along and give you away?' asked Fowler.

‘You don't need anyone to give you away in a civil ceremony.'

‘I'll be a witness then.'

‘We've got our witnesses.'

‘I'll be there. You can count on me. Waiting on the steps to throw confetti.'

‘You can have the bloody flat,' Marion screamed.

She had a bath and put on a diaphanous white slip of a dress. He liked her best in black or white. What was he going to say to her? The idea came into her head that it was something about Eva. That he was still mourning Eva, she had been so sweet and good – something like that. But he had never yet shown signs of mourning her. It could be something different. He had said it was her special day. She did her face, combed her newly washed hair and went back into the bedroom.

‘You are so beautiful,' Andrew said. ‘Who would look at another woman if you were there?'

You did, she thought, but she didn't say it. Not on this special day. It was seven and their dinner was due in half an hour. While Andrew opened the champagne she thought about Eva and the boy they were saying had probably killed her – a paranoid schizophrenic, a madman, a poor deluded creature? – and then she thought how Pam had once said you could never trust a man
who opened champagne without spilling a drop. Andrew withdrew the cork with practised dexterity, a foamless manoeuvre. But she already knew she couldn't trust him, didn't she? He handed her one of the tall flutes.

‘To you,' he said. ‘To us.' And then, taking her left hand, ‘Will you marry me, Ismay? Will you be my wife?'

‘Do you remember', Heather said, ‘the day we were married, I said something to you about Tess of the d'Urbervilles and her marrying a man called Angel and them confessing to each other? And you said no one does that any more. You meant about sexual things. Maybe they don't but I didn't mean that. I meant something else but I couldn't tell you. I lost my nerve.'

Edmund said, ‘There's no need to tell me anything.'

‘There is. I'm going to tell you now. I must.'

It should have driven everything else out of her mind and for a while it did. Her ring was so beautiful, the solitaire diamond so big that for a moment or two she doubted if it could be real.

‘Of course it's real,' he said, laughing. As if any serious person, anyone who was anyone, would give a girl anything but the most precious of stones!

She was dizzy with happiness, Eva gone, the nineteen-year-old Kieron Thorpe gone, or apparently gone. Even then, though, she knew they hovered under the threshold of her conscious mind. Did there always have to be a worm in the bud?

Andrew put the announcement of their engagement in the
Daily Telegraph
. She read it over and over, it was so wonderful to see their names coupled together: Andrew Jefferson, son of Mr and Mrs Campbell-Sedge and Ismay Lydia, elder daughter of Mrs and the late Mr James Sealand. But in opening the newspaper to find the engagements page, she saw another photograph of Eva beside the proceedings in the magistrates' court where Kieron Thorpe had been committed for trial.

A feeling came to her that this exciting time, this glorious time of being congratulated and fêted and loved must be limited, would fade soon and gradually depart. And then she must confront Heather. At last, after all this time, she must know and act. Would that be the
end of her engagement, the end of everything joyous and good and life-enhancing?

Something blue was her shoes, something old the skirt and something new the tights she bought in Church Street market for fifty pence. A string of pearls she had pinched from Avice she told herself she intended to give back so that it would do for something borrowed. Brides should turn up a little late for their weddings so as to seem shyly reluctant but Marion's nerves saw to it that she was on time, even a little early. Barry's sister and the policeman called Ambury were the witnesses. The wedding passed uneventfully. Her sensations were those not uncommon to brides who are desperate to be married – that is to have the ceremony performed and the union made legal – more than to be loved and desired, a feeling of unreality, of a dream too good to be true, of faintness.

Coming down the steps from the registrar's office she had to cling on to Barry's arm and even so almost tripped on the hem of the frilly pink skirt. She saw the world, streets, buildings, people, faces, a dog, trees, cars and buses, through a pale golden haze, not entirely the consequence of the sun shining through November mist. She had done it. She had married this wealthy man with his Mercedes and his two-million-pound house, and she would never again be in want. Cheating and petty thievery could be put behind her. Lying and prevarication too. The time had come when she could afford to be good and she would be, a shining example of goodness, especially to people like Irene Litton and that sister of hers. They would admire her. She would be called a lovely woman. That Mrs Fenix, she's a lovely woman.

In the taxi she snuggled up to Barry and said, ‘Can I tell you something, darling?'

‘What's this then, a confession?'

God knew what he thought was coming. ‘I don't know what you'll think,' she said, prolonging his suspense.

‘You'd better try me, kitten.' He sounded quite anxious. Maybe he thought she was a bigamist or having a lesbian affair.

‘Well, sweetness, I've given the flat to Fowler. He's got nowhere and nothing and you and I – well, we've got so much.'

His arm already round her waist, Barry gave it a squeeze, the fact that she had promised to consult him forgotten. ‘You're an angel, do you know that? The most generous woman I know.'

He and she and Alan Ambury and Barry's sister Noreen had ‘tiffin' at a Sri Lankan restaurant with a wedding cake and flowers everywhere. Having done the gracious hostess bit for ten minutes, Marion escaped to the ladies'. Fowler had moved into the flat the moment she left it. She phoned him on her mobile.

‘I've done it. I'm Mrs Fenix,' she said.

‘Congratulations. I never thought you would. Not when it came to the crunch.'

‘Nor did I,' said Marion.

Admiring Ismay's ring, Heather said she was happy for her. She knew how much she loved Andrew. They had been together for a long time and must know each other really well. Ismay noticed that ‘for her' and that her sister failed to say that Andrew was nice or someone she'd like for a brother-in-law and she didn't blame her for that. Heather never lied. Or, rather, Heather had never lied since she went along with their mother's lying and said a downright no to Detective Inspector Fenix's question as to whether she'd been at home that afternoon. Since then she had always told the truth – so she would tell it now.

‘I saw the announcement in the paper. Marilyn at work showed it to me. She said you must be very grand and I said, no, you weren't but Andrew was.'

‘Quite right.'

Ismay was suddenly overwhelmed with love for her sister. What did it matter what she had done thirteen years ago? She had been a child, hardly into her teens. No, it didn't matter much but it mattered what she had done last summer. What she did for me, she thought, for me. And it worked, what she did. It brought Andrew back and now I'm engaged to him and I'll be his wife, and when we've been married for half a century I'll look back and remember my sister gave me this. No, I won't. I'll remember Kieron Thorpe who served fifteen years in prison for what she did for me.

‘I brought a bottle of wine. Shall we have some?'

As Ismay opened it and filled two glasses she thought how much she needed it to help her through what she was about to do. For now she knew she must do it and today, tonight, before Heather and Edmund went away.

‘Does Andrew know you've come here?'

‘Of course he does, Heather. He's not set against you like that. He'll come round.' To her truthful sister she had told a lie and another to Andrew. He didn't know where she was. He thought she was at a friend's office-leaving party. I need this wine. I shouldn't live like this but I do and when I'm married to Andrew I always shall. To brace myself for the lies I shall have to tell him. To fortify myself against the lies he will tell me. For his infidelities and for my daily stress. It's that or St John's Wort or Prozac – or worse. ‘Heather,' she said, ‘can we talk? I have to ask you something.'

‘All right. What is it? If it's about Andrew, yes, I'll come to your wedding. I'll even be a bridesmaid – a matron-of-honour, they call them when the bridesmaid's
married – and I'll be as nice as I can to Andrew but, you know, Issy, I can't answer for Ed.'

‘It's not about Andrew. It's about Eva Simber.'

Heather raised her clear and calm blue eyes to Ismay's, innocent, childlike eyes. ‘Oh, yes, poor Eva. I see they've got someone for killing her. He's only nineteen. I met her, you know. I talked to her on the phone but I did actually meet her.'

‘You asked her to give Andrew up.'

Heather looked surprised that she knew. ‘Yes, I did. That was the point of talking to her. She wasn't my sort of person and I certainly wasn't hers.'

Ismay was breathless now. Hyperventilating was what they called it and now she knew what it meant. It affected her voice, which came out at the first attempt in a whisper. She tried again. She was staring at Heather and she took a deep breath, unclenched her hands and spread them flat on her knees. She tried to speak evenly. The words she used, just the words themselves, shocked her. ‘Did you kill her, Heather? Did you?'

In Heather's incredulous stare she had her answer but she persisted. ‘Did you?'

‘Did I kill Eva?' Heather spoke roughly. ‘Are you mad?'

‘Don't be angry.'

‘Of course I'm angry when you ask me something like that. What sort of a question is that? Of course I didn't kill her,' Heather said. She seldom got cross but when she did Ismay was afraid of her anger. ‘Why do you ask a thing like that? I can't believe it. You think I'd go into a park and strangle someone? You think I'd plan something like that? Do something like that? I wouldn't be surprised if Mum had asked me that but not you.'

Ismay said in a small, almost humble, voice, ‘You never tell lies, do you?'

‘I suppose I do sometimes, little ones, like saying I can't go out somewhere when I can, that sort of thing, but no, I try not to.'

‘You know why I thought you'd killed Eva?'

‘For the reason I'd talked to her, I suppose. To make her give Andrew up.'

‘That, yes. I thought you'd killed her for me.'

‘Well, thank you very much. I'm not a psychopath. Just for your information, Issy, I think she was on the point of giving him up the last time I talked to her. Next time she'd have agreed, I'm pretty sure she would have only there wasn't a next time because Kieron Thorpe killed her.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Ismay.

‘You didn't suspect any of your friends of killing her, did you? You didn't think Pam might have. You suspected me. You thought it was me because of Guy.'