Authors: Aline Templeton
He
stood awkwardly in the doorway. ‘Look, Suzanne, can we call a truce for a moment?’
She
did not turn. ‘Fine, if you’ve come to apologize...
‘
Let’s not start that again. Come here and sit down.’
She
ignored him, but he came over, removed the dishcloth from her hand and drew her to a chair. Still wearing her washing-up gloves, she sat down reluctantly.
‘
Please don’t say anything till I’ve finished what I have to say. OK?’
Suzanne
eyed him sullenly, shrugged, and he took it for assent and went on.
‘
The mess this morning – you believe I did it. No –’ as she opened her mouth to speak indignantly, ‘hear me out. I swear to you, by all I hold sacred – the Bible, my son’s life, if you like – that I did not do it. Neither of us think for a moment it was Ben.
‘
You say you didn’t do it either, which, so help me God, is what I believed. You’ve been under a hell of a lot of strain lately, and you might – oh, I don’t know, be sleepwalking or something. Or setting me up.
‘B
ut I’ve been going round and round this in my head. Let’s assume for a moment that neither of us did it. The logical deduction then is that someone else did, but as you pointed out a tad trenchantly this morning, there were no broken windows or forced locks.’
He
paused, but she did not say anything. She was listening properly now.
‘
Is there anyone, anyone at all, who could conceivably have acquired a key to this place? I know it sounds silly, but still –’
She
stared at him. ‘Well, of course there is! I can’t believe you don’t know. How do you think the plants get watered when we go off on holiday?’
Taken
aback, he said, ‘I don’t think I ever gave it a moment’s thought – though I do always ask the neighbours on either side to keep an eye on the house.’
‘
We all have keys,’ Suzanne explained. ‘Lizzie, Laura, Hayley and me: we all keep keys to one another’s back doors. Someone’s always needing a repairman let in, or forgetting their own key, or something. Or we pop in, when someone’s away, to check on things…’
She
trailed off, into a silence that became prolonged, as they both drew their own conclusions. Then Patrick said heavily, ‘In that case, Suzanne, I think you had better get on the phone and call them in. It’s you, or me, or someone else who’s been burning things and vandalizing things, and I choose someone else.’
‘
You don’t understand, Patrick!’ she cried. ‘How can I phone up my best friends and tell them I don’t trust them any more? Women don’t work like that.’
‘
Men do,’ he said grimly, and got up, going towards the phone.
‘
Oh no, Patrick! For goodness’ sake, don’t! All that will happen is that we’ll lose all our friends overnight. I’ll think of something – just leave it to me.’
For
a moment there, they had been communicating. Now Patrick withdrew.
‘
As you wish,’ he said curtly. ‘I can quite understand that you would prefer to doubt your husband rather than your friends. Have it your own way. You always do.’
He
walked out and left her sitting at the kitchen table, eyeing the wall-phone as she might have contemplated a harmless grass snake which had suddenly reared up and opened a flattened hood.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Elizabeth, compulsively murmuring the placatory words, with no real hope that they would achieve their propitiatory object, ‘I’m sorry, I – ’
‘F
or God’s sake!’ Piers’s face was blotchy with temper and his bulging eyes bloodshot from the hangover he was suffering. He pushed his chair back from the kitchen table with a violence which would have overturned any less solid piece of furniture.
‘
What’s the use of grovelling? It doesn’t help, you know. If you directed your energy towards getting things right beforehand, instead of all this snivelling about afterwards, these things wouldn’t happen. How the hell can anyone
forget
to stock up on Alka-Seltzer over Christmas?’
Because
other people don’t drink so much that they need it. Because some people have used up more in the last three days than most people would need in a year. Because the last lot didn’t magically remove all your symptoms and you said you couldn’t think why I wasted money on them.
She
said, ‘I’m sure the shop in Chorton will be open later, even though it’s Boxing Day. I’ll run over and get some then.’
‘
And what’s the use of that? It’s now I need it, not in three hours’ time. Oh, forget it. It’ll just have to be the hair of the dog – and don’t go all pious about drinking this early in the day. This is all your fault.’
Even
after he had lurched out, headed for the drinks cupboard in the games room, there was silence at the breakfast table. Peter and Camilla, the mechanical move-ments of their spoons from cereal bowl to mouth arrested, were pale and wide-eyed; Paula’s gaze was downcast, her expression veiled.
Elizabeth
found that she was holding her breath, and released it slowly. They had survived the crisis, and the brandy bottle should buy an hour or two’s peace.
‘
Come on, darlings, eat up your breakfast. Daddy’s not feeling well this morning, so he’s a bit cross.’
The
words tripped off her tongue readily enough, with the well-honed instinct to protect, cover up. Perhaps it helped, perhaps it didn’t, but she couldn’t bring herself to think that saying to a six-year-old, ‘Your father is a drunkard and potentially violent,’ would help anyone.
With
nervous obedience the two younger children went back to spooning up their cereal, but Paula looked up, her dark grey eyes flashing fury at her mother.
‘
How
can
you?’ she cried. ‘You’re so dishonest – this whole family’s nothing but a sham! Why do you let him get away with it – this and everything else? Tell him to get his sodding Alka-Seltzer himself, why don’t you?’
Elizabeth
winced. ‘Paula – ’
She
jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, what’s the point? I can’t believe that anyone in the whole world can be so pathetic. If you would stand up to him, he wouldn’t behave like that. But you haven’t got the guts, and everything’s getting worse and worse and worse while you try to pretend that it isn’t happening. I’m going out.’
Helplessly,
Elizabeth watched her slam the door. Somehow, she comforted Camilla, who had begun to sob, and bought the two of them off with morning television and chocolate bars. Probably it would only mean that they had rotten teeth as well as psychological scars, she thought drearily, but the instinct to sweeten life’s bitterness with sugary food lies deep in a mother’s soul.
Even
Paula believed it was all her fault. It was ironic, really; Piers and Paula both despised her for apologizing when things went wrong, yet both, for different reasons, held her to blame for not putting them right. She blamed herself for a lot of things too, though no one could try harder than she did not to make mistakes.
If
only she did have the guts to stand up to him, be a strong person, like Hayley or Suzanne who weren’t afraid of anyone. But then, if she’d had any sort of courage, she wouldn’t have married him just because he was so sure of himself that she couldn’t see how she could possibly refuse. She wouldn’t even have let herself be bullied by her father into going to the Young Conservatives’ Ball which had sealed her fate. Her wildest act of rebellion had been secretly voting for Labour ever since, which as a testimony to her strength of character said it all.
The
serious problems, though, had only started after Mother Mac died, when his drinking began to take over his life. So far, he had never hit her publicly or where it would leave an obvious mark. She tried not to think about it too much, because there was so little she could do.
She
had no illusions. If she left Piers, she would be on her own. However much she might have right on her side, he would be too strong for her. He wouldn’t really want the children, but he had the money to see to it that she didn’t have them, to punish her.
Her
head began to swim, as it always did when she allowed herself to think about it. She must stop this, stop this...She was wiping the Laura Ashley oilcloth on the table free of crumbs and putting things away – how odd, there was a smiling face in the sugar bowl this morning – when Suzanne phoned.
This
was not a surprise. The phone-call to let off steam after a stressful family occasion was a ritual, and Elizabeth’s face brightened. Suzanne’s rueful descriptions of her in-laws’ Christmas foibles were always amusing, and today it was just what was needed by way of distraction. Her tone was conspiratorial as she greeted her friend.
‘
Suzanne! You’ve survived then, have you?’
‘
Survived? Oh – oh, yes. And thank you for the parties. We all had a wonderful time.’
‘
Oh good,’ Elizabeth said, but her brow furrowed. That wasn’t Suzanne’s usual style.
‘
Are you all right?’ she asked with some concern. ‘You don’t sound like yourself at all. Was it even more horrendous than usual?’
‘
Er – no, not specially. It wasn’t too bad, I suppose.’
Suzanne
gave a laugh but she still sounded distant, almost formal, and Elizabeth felt rebuked as if by the tone of her question she had presumed on a non-existent intimacy. But perhaps she was being over-sensitive.
‘
Were Patrick’s parents on good form?’ she asked, more cautiously.
‘
Yes, fine.’
This
time there was no mistaking the constraint. She wasn’t imagining things; Suzanne was definitely keeping her firmly at arm’s length. Wondering wildly what she could have said or done to offend her, Elizabeth could only repeat hollowly, ‘Oh, good.’
‘
Er – Lizzie –’ At the other end of the phone, Suzanne cleared her throat nervously. ‘I wonder, could you dig out the back-door key you keep for me? The thing is, the insurance company has started getting stroppy about the way we spray our keys around, so we’re having to get them back. Silly, isn’t it?’
She
laughed, but the laugh did not ring true.
‘
Yes,’ Elizabeth managed to say brightly. ‘It does seem silly, doesn’t it. But if that’s what they say, that’s the way it has to be, isn’t it? I’ll drop it round later this morning. I’ve got to go out anyway. OK? Bye.’
Cold
with shock and dismay, she put down the receiver. Whatever could she have done, without realizing, that was so awful that Suzanne wanted to finish their friendship? Because she didn’t for a moment believe that tale about the insurance. Suzanne could hardly have got an urgent message from the company today, and if it wasn’t urgent, why not just ask for it the next time she came round? In any case, Suzanne had never been a good liar, and Elizabeth knew her well enough to be certain that she was lying now.
She
searched her own conscience, but it was genuinely clear. There was nothing she had thought, still less said or done, that could have upset Suzanne. They had parted yesterday, as far as she could tell, on their usual affectionate terms.
Could
it be that someone was making mischief, someone jealous or malevolent, anxious to undermine their friendship? Perhaps unfairly, her mind flew to Hayley Cutler.
They
had never been close. Somehow, Elizabeth was never convinced that she was entirely to be trusted, though they had all had some good times together, and Hayley had the gift of turning a gathering of four people into a party.
Remembering
those good times, her eyes filled. Next to her children, her friends had been the most important thing in her life which, she sadly recognized, had become otherwise joyless. With Laura – clever, elegant Laura whom she so admired – estranged already, and Hayley suspect, she would be poor indeed without Suzanne. If it were a misunderstanding, surely they could sort it out?
But
something cold and proud and bitter within her whispered that a true friend would not have listened to mischief-making, and that any approach could only result in further humiliation. The same demon prompted her to the thought that if Suzanne wanted her key back, she should retrieve her own.
Her
eye went to the drawing pinned to the kitchen noticeboard, which Milla had brought home from school last week. It portrayed a rather lopsided angel with a speech balloon which read, ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all men’ in tipsy capitals. The angel’s crayoned grin looked ironic now.
There
had been other Christmases when things had gone more dramatically wrong – several, in fact – but she never remembered one where there had been such unease on every side. She could not precisely pinpoint its source, but it tweaked at her nerves like a persistent toothache. From some hidden suppuration poison was leaking into their lives.