Authors: Lucie Whitehouse

The Bed I Made (44 page)

I’d thought nothing else about Richard could have shocked me but I was wrong. In the weeks before his trial, another side of his life slid out into the light. Brookwood Properties turned out to be an empire built on sand – not even that. For years Richard had been borrowing money against the projected profits from one development to finance the next, repeating the trick over and over again. When the accounts were scrutinised – after they’d been extracted from the labyrinth of companies and holding companies and fronts that he had constructed over the years – it was discovered that there was no value left in them at all. In fact, he was in debt to the tune of nine million pounds. The whole thing had been a confidence trick, a juggling act which he’d sustained with charm and lies – endless lies.

Immediately after I’d got out of hospital, I’d wondered whether I would be able to live in Yarmouth. The local gossip ran at such a pitch I began to feel like an eighth-rate celebrity, one of the train-wreck variety whose lives are played out on the front pages of the magazines which promise it all
Closer
,
Hotter
,
Now
. After the court case, however, I felt a change in the water, the turn of a tide, and suddenly I was acknowledged in the street and there were friendly hellos in the shops. The best part of it for me was that I was able to salvage a sort of friendship with Sally, tentative though it still was. It helped that three or four months after it all happened, a new partner joined her firm of solicitors, a divorcé about our age. Over an awkward coffee one morning she told me that he’d asked her out and that she liked him. She’d see, she said, blushing.

Things were also easier for her because Tom was living with his father on the mainland while he went through the motions of doing his A-levels. At the beginning of the summer he and a couple of friends were caught doing eighty along the military road in a stolen car and although he’d only received a caution, the sixth-form college he’d had lined up had got wind of it and declined to take him. Living with Gavin, Sally said, was not as cushy as Tom had hoped; his stepmother had the whip-hand and while she had tolerated his attitude when he was only an occasional visitor to her house, things were different now he was there full time.

I gave my hair a final once-over and put the brush back on the table. With all the physiotherapy, the movement in my arm and hand was almost back to normal. The very tips of my fingers were still numb but apparently even that would go, eventually. The reflection of the room I could see behind me in the mirror was still spare but that was by design now. We hadn’t moved across the landing to the main bedroom. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be in the room Pete had shared with Alice but that I liked our room better anyway. Nonetheless, Pete had insisted on redecorating the other bedroom and making it a room for guests, the first of whom was about to arrive.

I went downstairs and found my house key, then gave the kitchen one final scan. Everything was ready: the table was laid, the wine was cooling in the fridge, and the casserole was in the oven. The candles could be lit just before we sat down to eat.

Pete turned from the window where he was watching the ferry make its way across the Solent towards us. I went over and watched with him for a minute or two. It was a cold night and late in the year so there were few other lights moving on the water but it was still a beautiful view, the shifting navy surface with the spill of white moonlight across it. I pressed myself into his side. ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘It’ll be in by the time I get down there.’

‘You’re nervous,’ he said, smiling slightly.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘She’s your best friend,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Come on, I’ll walk down with you.’

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the following people for their invaluable help: Katie Bond, Alexandra Pringle and Colin Midson at Bloomsbury; Laura Longrigg; Claire Paterson, Kirsty Gordon and Cullen Stanley at Janklow and Nesbit; Caroline Bland, Katie Espiner and Cordelia Borchardt. I’d also like to thank Paul and Jenny Whitehouse, and Polly and Sophie.