Caught in the Act (9 page)

Leonora looked up at the clock; it was too late to go to anywhere, even if she could have got through. The children were tucked up in bed and besides that, Gareth had taken the car. But it would have been good to have made plans, to have known more, to have worked out a way forward. The sense of impotence and frustration made her angry. Leonora's eyes filled with tears—not so much from despair as from pure anger. Bloody man, how dare he leave her without some sort of explanation? What was she supposed to do now, just wait and mope around while he decided their fate? Leonora dropped the phone back into its cradle, incandescent with rage.

‘Bastard, bastard, bastard,' she growled furiously. How was it that Gareth got to make the decision? How was it that he had ended up with all the power? Leonora pulled a road atlas down from the bookshelves and, wrapping her big baggy purple cardigan around her shoulders, curled up in an armchair and searched for Burbeck. Ba—B—B…She ran a finger down the columns, mouthing the alphabet to herself. Be, B…It had to be in there somewhere.

In the back of her mind Leonora could hear Gareth's voice. Words fuelled and let loose by a bottle and a half of red wine. It was earlier in the year, in the grey wet days between winter and spring. ‘It would be nice if you wore something a bit less shapeless once in a while. It's depressing to see you dressed like a bag lady all the time. You just don't bother any more—don't make any sort of effort. Have you thought that you should maybe go and see somebody?'

Leonora stared at him. ‘Gareth, since Maisie was born, nothing fits properly. It would be a waste of money to buy anything at the moment and besides, it's always cold in here and it's either wear something warm or turn the heating up, and we've already had the row about the size of the heating bills.'

He sniffed. ‘For fuck's sake, Leonora, that thing makes you look like you're sleeping rough.' Noisy cruel-tongued drunken ghosts filled her head. Well, one particular ghost, anyway.

She could see him by the kitchen door, fingers pushing the fringe back off his face. ‘I don't think I can do it any more, Leonora, in fact I'm not sure I can do it at all,' growled the ghost of Gareth past. He didn't shout or rant
—it wasn't his style. Instead he dropped the bills onto the kitchen table.

‘But I'm not asking you to do it all. I've never asked you to do it all. I am trying. I'm doing the best I can,' Leonora had said, realising as she did that that was not what Gareth meant at all.

‘re ally?' His voice was so very even, so controlled, so cold. ‘Whatever happened to, “As soon as I've finished breast-feeding Patrick I'll find a part-time job”?'

‘Oh, Gareth, Maisie—'

‘Maisie,' he hissed. ‘Maisie? What sort of name is that, anyway? You knew, didn't you? You knew that breast-feeding didn't mean you couldn't get pregnant again. Just tell me that you knew.'

‘I thought it was safe,' Leonora protested; how many times had they had this conversation? ‘I truly thought—'

‘Oh, yes, you
truly
thought—princess Leonora, earth mother, patron saint of childbirth. Half a dozen self-help books and a natural parentcraft class and you're suddenly the world's expert. Well, you were wrong, weren't you?' The venom she could hear just beneath the surface in his voice made her reel.

How could he talk to her like that? Leonora's
vision blurred with tears as she ran a finger down the atlas's index. ‘Ba, Be, B—' she said aloud, trying to steady her thoughts.

When Gareth was angry and drunk he spoke very slowly, icily enunciating every word in a voice barely above a whisper. The measured tone was so much more disturbing than if he had shouted. Words spoken in anger could be excused or apologised for, but these lingered, glacial and unyielding.

‘We've already talked about this, I've already said, I can still work in the evenings—or at the weekend,' she'd said.

‘Oh yes, that's very good, great idea—I get to do a whole day's work and then come home and have to look after those two all night.' He spat the word ‘two' out as if the taste was as bitter as gall.

‘Gareth, they are our children, your children. Other people do it. We'll find a way to sort things out. We will. They didn't ask to be born.'

‘No, exactly, and you know what, Leonora? No one asked me either. One mistake was bad enough—but two? It's driving me crazy.' He looked round the kitchen. ‘The whole place is a mess, you're a mess.'

The words hit her like a body blow. Gasping
for breath, Leonora said, ‘I've been trying to economise, I've cut down—'

‘Cut down…' He had shaken his head in disgust. ‘We need more money, pure and simple. And with them—'

‘It takes two. You wanted to make love. You wanted me,' she sobbed. He hadn't moved to comfort her, to touch her; instead he refilled his glass. The hurt hung in her heart like a scar.

She remembered the first time they had made love after Patrick was born. At first it was tentative, like strangers, and then—when he realised she wouldn't break—he had pulled her tight against him and fucked her hard and fast, almost cruelly—and Leonora had gasped, and melted into him, loving it, loving him.

It had felt like he was claiming her back for himself, taking her back from Patrick and motherhood and all the things that had separated them, and she had wept with relief as they lay in the dark, thinking it would be all right, thinking that they could make it work, thinking that at last she was home.

‘You're right,' he said. ‘But I didn't know what your little game was then, did I?'

‘My game?' she gasped. ‘What little game?'

He carried on as if she hadn't spoken. ‘You
tricked me—this is what you wanted, isn't it, Leonora? Your nice little house, and your cosy little family. Well, I've got news for you…'

‘No.' She shook her head, covering her ears with her hands, not wanting to hear what he had to say, hurt and anger making her eyes fill with bitter tears. ‘You were the one who wanted a family, Gareth, that's what you said—all that stuff about having kids and dogs, and rabbits in the garden—please, Gareth—please. Where are you going?'

‘Out.'

‘What time will you be—'

The door slammed tight shut on any answer, not that she thought there would be one.

And now Gareth was gone all over again, the cruel ghost slipping through her fingers just as the real man had, and why was it that it made her feel so pitiful? How was it that he had taken all the power with him?

Once she had found whereabouts the village was, Leonora padded barefoot upstairs and put Burbeck House into a search engine on one of Gareth's precious computers and worked out the best route. She scrolled down and read the directions, heart sinking as she did. Whichever way you looked at it, Burbeck was miles from
anywhere. It wasn't going to be easy getting there without a car. It wouldn't have been easy getting there even with one. Bloody man.

‘And, anyway, what sort of job do you think you're going to get at night with a degree in Art, for God's sake? No one in the real world gives a shit about what you think about Botticelli. You'll end up filling shelves in a supermarket, working behind a bar in the pub. Cleaning offices…'

She blanched; Gareth's voice had followed her upstairs like a wraith.

‘I don't mind doing any of those things. Maybe I could find something part time during the day. Other people do it,' Leonora said, aware of how defensive she sounded.

He looked her up and down. ‘So they do, but the trouble is that that little pinko gallery job you had before you had the kids wouldn't keep us in biscuits after the childcare costs had been taken out. Your trouble, Leonora, is that you live in a fantasy world.'

‘I could paint again,' she said.

His expression told her everything; there was no need for a single word.

Leonora bit her lip and stared down at the map, trying to shut his voice out.

A taxi was totally out of the question and the train would be tricky, but not impossible—lots of changes and still a taxi ride at the other end. It would be hard with the kids. There wasn't a coach service that ran within twenty miles of Burbeck and, besides that—once she had seen Gareth, once she had had her say, what would happen then? What would they do? Did she truly expect it would all come out right? That Gareth would want to come home with them?

Trembling, Leonora scanned the notes she had made after talking to Diana's husband, trying to make sense of what she'd written. In a sterling effort to be as helpful as possible he had read everything out and she had made an equal effort to write it all down. Times of arrival, times of departure, things to bring, what to wear, schedules and then further down a scrawled note about the performance for family and friends on Sunday afternoon.

Leonora stared at it: ‘Family and friends are invited to a rehearsed read-through on Sunday afternoon, followed by tea,' and as the words settled an idea formed—maybe there was a way after all. If there was someone else going to Burbeck House from close by, or even not
so close by but passing, then maybe they might be prepared to pick her up and take her and the children as well? It had to be worth a shot.

She just needed to talk to Diana. Leonora picked up the phone on Gareth's desk and tapped in the number again.

After a second or two Gareth appeared to remember Carol was there, watching him and he said hastily, ‘I'm sorry, I'm hogging the spotlight. Why don't you tell me about what you've been up to? Diana tells me that you're a gardener now and have got a fleet of hoaryhanded sons of the soil hanging on your every word. Shades of Lady Chatterley?'

‘I bet Diana didn't say that at all and besides, the Lady Chatterley thing was the gamekeeper not a gardener,' Carol said. ‘And I'm interested in how life has been treating you since we last met.' She wanted to know about him, all about him, but Gareth wasn't going to be so easily swayed.

‘God, no, I'm just another geek, nothing special.'

‘Are you still in the theatre?'

‘On the periphery. I'm involved in IT for a couple of art projects, galleries, but how about
you? Successful business woman, own company, double-page spread in the Sunday colour supplements—you didn't ought to be so modest, Carol. I'm very impressed.' To her astonishment, as he spoke Gareth lifted a hand and drew a finger down over her cheek. ‘You know you haven't changed a bit.'

She stared at him. How could anyone say something like that and it not sound like a re ally cheesy line? ‘Don't be silly,' Carol said, torn between delight and feeling hideously selfconscious. Further up the table Adie and Netty feigned swooning and added mock vomiting. She could have killed them both. Easily.

Gareth seemed oblivious. ‘I'm serious. OK, maybe there's a wrinkle here and a line there,' he traced them with his eyes, ‘but you look very much like the Carol I remember.'

The Carol he had screwed, she thought ruefully, wishing for the first time that there had been some wine.

It was also very different then, when sex and all the things that surrounded it were mysterious possibilities and rumours, uncharted waters out beyond the shallows of a few embarrassed fumblings and a lot of urges that nobody knew the right name for. Certainly not like
married sex, a chore that came between sorting the laundry and cleaning out the guinea pig.

Sex in the sixth form then was part of a whole unknown continent—something and somewhere yet to be explored. Sex and desire were noisy back then too, a bit like a loud hum or the insistent buzz of cicadas, that ran like an undercurrent to lots of encounters.

Sitting out on the veranda of the cricket pavilion, reading through a scene in the play, bathed in sunshine the colour of fresh lemons squeezed through a cloudy sky, Carol remembered it well. It had been very noisy, practically deafening.

She must have read the play through a hundred times since that first time in the pavilion with Gareth. The last time was earlier in the week, just before she had packed to come to Burbeck House, from a book that, like Miss Haze's, was all neatly annotated, numbered and underscored. But even so, no matter how many times she read it, without fail it always took her back to that moment and that place and Gareth Howard. Hard-wired history, half a dozen lines in and she was up there on the playing field in the sunshine.

It was a warm day in early spring. Carol had
stretched, and pulled up white socks, which were regulation school uniform whether you were eighteen or not, and looked across at him. Gareth was so close she could see the pulse in his throat and the merest trace of shaving stubble.

‘So where shall we go from?' he'd said conversationally, flipping through the script. ‘How about act one, scene five: From the first time we're together. Macbeth and Mrs Macbeth at home, weighing up the pros and cons of killing the king, because the three witches—'

A.k.a. Netty, Diana and Jan and the wart, thought Carol.

‘- told him that he'll be king, and Mrs Macbeth has the perfect plan to help him on his way. So she's not best pleased when Macbeth bottles out, and says so. That's a bit later.' He flipped through the script. ‘Act one, scene seven.'

Carol nodded and began to read and then hesitated, marking where she had dried with a pencil so she wouldn't lose her place. ‘The woman is a complete loony. I can't believe Macbeth does what she tells him. Surely he must be able to see that she is nuts.'

‘Self-seeking and morbidly ambitious is what
Mr Bearman told me, rather than barking and drooling,' Gareth said, looking up from his own notes.

‘Right,' Carol said, nodding in what she hoped was an intelligent way. She knew what barking and drooling were; morbidly ambitious wasn't quite so obvious.

Gareth smiled at her. There was a funny uncomfortable little pause and the noise that sex and desire made got louder. Carol reddened, self-conscious at being with him and being so close to him.