Joely, can we talk. Please call me. Cx
Joely looked away from the text she’d received while in town earlier and stared at the flames in the kitchen hearth. She hadn’t replied yet, and had decided she wouldn’t until she was sure of what she wanted to say. There was so much going around in her head, words inflamed with anger, softened by sadness, riven with guilt even, and she didn’t think any of them belonged in a text. Or in a phone call. They needed to see each other face-to-face for what she had to say, and whatever he had to say would have to wait until she was ready.
Freda was sitting in her usual chair, apparently lost in her own thoughts as she too watched the fire. It was listless, yellow flickers rising from a glowing pile of hot, scorched logs. There was a mouthwatering aroma emanating from the Aga, one of Brenda’s flavorful veggie concoctions, and Joely found herself remembering what her father used to say to her mother when something smelled delicious.
“It makes you want to take a bite out of the air.”
She missed him so much; the grief was as tenacious as the bond they’d shared, as consuming at times as the need to hold on to him, but he’d gone and she felt as though she was clutching at air.
She shifted slightly in her chair and glanced at the time. Brenda had left several minutes ago and neither Joely nor Freda had spoken since assuring her they understood what time the pudding was to come out of the oven, and yes, they’d be sure to have a lovely evening, thank you.
Freda’s legs were stretched out toward the fender, the latest pages in her lap, but Joely had no idea yet if she’d read them for she’d done another of her disappearing acts for the day. However, Joely had spotted her standing at the end of the meadow earlier, staring out to sea. She hadn’t moved, had seemed oblivious to the wind that was buffeting her short hair and padded coat as she fixed her gaze on whatever she was seeing in the waves.
The next time Joely had looked out of the window Freda had no longer been there.
She’d turned up here, in the kitchen, about ten minutes ago, bringing only her iPad, which she’d put on the table before coming to sit down. It was very possible, Joely realized, already bracing herself, that at some point, probably while she was being subjected to more of Freda’s stinging criticisms, they were going to listen to the music that had accompanied the start of Sir and young Freda’s intimate affair.
More minutes ticked quietly by and Joely’s thoughts wandered to her mother, who hadn’t sounded her usual self when they’d spoken last night. (Not from the Valley of Rocks this time, but from the small, square balcony over the front porch, which Joely had accessed through the window of her blue bedroom. She’d managed to get two bars of reception and had frozen half to death during their short conversation. It hadn’t been easy to hear either, thanks to the combined roar of wind and waves.)
“A bit of a cold, that’s all,” her mother had insisted when Joely had asked if something was wrong. “Nothing to worry about. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Joely replied, glad her mother couldn’t see how the bellicose weather was tossing her about like a piñata. “Still not sure how much longer I’ll be here,” she shouted.
“Is she treating you well?” her mother shouted back.
“I guess so. She makes sure I’m fed and lets me use her writing room, which is pretty amazing.”
Though her mother responded, Joely didn’t catch the words and when she asked her to repeat them her mother simply said, “It was nothing. I just wish . . .” Whatever the wish was Joely still didn’t know because they’d lost the connection then and she’d been unable to get hold of her when she’d driven into town earlier.
Certain now that her mother was wishing she’d come home because Holly was being difficult, Joely decided she needed to try and call again later to find out what was really going on. It might be true that Holly was usually an angel where her beloved Grandma was concerned, but considering how unsettled she was by her parents’ breakup she couldn’t be relied upon to be at her best. And who could blame her for that?
“Is something wrong?” Freda asked, gaze still fixed on the flames. “You seem . . . agitated.”
Wondering if Freda had superpowers, Joely tried to think how to answer, but before she could, Freda said, “Is my memoir bothering you? I think you might disapprove of young Freda. You’re right to. Or perhaps you’re afraid of what’s coming next.”
Irked by the assumption that everything was about her, Joely bit back a tart response—after all, everything was supposed to be about Freda. However, it would do the woman no harm to realize that her ghostwriter had a life beyond that of some fancy form of messenger. “Actually I have a few issues going on at home,” she confessed.
Freda didn’t break her gaze as she gave a brief grunt.
Definitely everything has to be about Freda.
More emptiness passed with a backing percussion of heavy rain and a howling wind until Freda finally said, “I thought as much. Now that you’ve brought it up, would you like to talk about it? I can be a good listener.” She paused as though considering the truth of this, and apparently coming to a positive conclusion she added, “It can help to confide in someone who has no agenda.”
Joely couldn’t help it; she said, a touch wryly, “You mean you can be objective, the way you’re hoping I can be for you?”
Freda’s eyebrows arched, and only then did Joely notice how pale and tired she seemed, and as she wondered if reading the latest pages had been a strain for her she wondered too what had been on Freda’s mind when she’d stood in the meadow staring out to sea.
“Tell me why you’re upset,” Freda prompted. A smile hovered close to her lips. “Age and experience might count for something, so perhaps I can give some useful advice.”
Joely found herself considering the offer and what detail she might go into, and since there was no one else to talk to right now, and because she needed to hear herself voice her concerns, she said, “My husband’s left me for my best friend; my daughter’s obviously having difficulties with it; I think my mother’s stressing about my daughter; and my husband wants to talk to me—I don’t know what about, but it could be divorce.”
Freda withdrew her hands from her pockets and rested her elbows on the chair arms, linking her long fingers together. She allowed several moments to pass as she considered what Joely had told her and finally said, “The heart of the matter is your husband’s betrayal.”
Although Joely hadn’t expected that, it about summed it up.
“Or is it the loss of your best friend that’s causing you the greater sadness?”
Joely thought of Martha, detested her, and was about to speak when Freda said, “She’ll never be your best friend again so you might as well forget about her.”
Well, that was Martha dealt with, and fleetingly sorry that Andee wasn’t around to be amused by Freda’s directness, Joely said, “She’ll have to be in my life going forward because my daughter’s father is with her . . .”
Freda’s hand went up. “Let’s talk about him and you, not her. We need to sort out the betrayal, and being someone who has known it, suffered it, many times in her life, my first piece of advice to you is to stop jumping to conclusions you have no evidence for, especially if they cause you pain.”
Joely frowned. “It happened,” she said. “I’m not imagining it.”
“Has he mentioned divorce before?”
Realizing her mistake, Joely shook her head. “But it has to come up at some point.”
“Why does it have to? And why put yourself through the torment of imagining it when there are other things that should concern you more, such as who else is suffering because of this betrayal?”
Not having expected that Joely sat quietly thinking of Holly and her mother. Jamie too, because they always worried about each other.
“You believe that you and your husband are the main players in this—though you acknowledge that your daughter and ex–best friend are also involved—but in your mind it’s really about you and . . . What’s his name?”
“Callum.”
“Callum. Of course it is about you two, because if you can resolve your issues the hurt will go away for those around you—apart from the best friend, but I don’t think we’re very concerned about her. She’s no more than a moth.”
Joely blinked before remembering that this was a reference to Freda’s literary works. “When you write,” she said, “you usually turn moths into the main players.”
“But they’re still moths, and if you’re familiar with my books you’ll know that they’re drawn to the luminous aura of success, love, power—you and your husband would have represented at least two out of the three for your friend—but moths are always burned when they go too close to the source of their fascination. They don’t survive.”
Finding this thought quite pleasurable, if a little extreme, Joely said, “In this case the moth has put the light out and is creating a new light of her own, so maybe I’m now the moth.”
Clearly unimpressed by that, Freda said, “Only if you choose to be. The question is, do you want to resolve your issues with Callum?”
Liking that she might have the option, Joely said, “As far as I was concerned, we didn’t have any, but obviously he wouldn’t agree with that or he wouldn’t have gone.” She didn’t have to go into the entire truth of it all and the part she’d played herself, this was deep enough.
Freda gave a small sigh and checking the time on her watch she got up to go and take the pudding from the oven. After placing it to cool, she returned to her chair, dropping another log onto the fire before sitting down. “My husband and I didn’t have any ‘issues’ as you put it,” she said, “our marriage was sound, our understanding of each other had few flaws—I say few because I never did understand why he was unfaithful to me. Do you understand why yours was unfaithful to you?”
Joely shifted uncomfortably, not willing to take any blame in spite of knowing she should.
As though reading her mind, Freda said, “I’m not going to tell you what to do, I’m going to tell you what I did with my husband and you must decide for yourself if it was the right thing.”
Still suspecting that Sir and Mr. Donahoe were one and the same, meaning Freda was about to jump forward many years in the story, Joely was eager to listen.
“I knew before we were married,” Freda began, her eyes starting to lose focus as her lips trembled slightly and her fingers tightened their hold on each other, “that he had a roving eye. I don’t think he actually misbehaved during our courting years, at least not in the biblical sense, but he was always very comfortable in female company. He adored women, revered them, and I know he adored me. That never changed. We always loved each other from the time we first met right up until the time he died. I still love him, of course, feelings that deep don’t disappear because someone has stopped living, we all know that. What I hadn’t realized until I lost David was that in some ways they seem to get stronger, which makes them even harder to let go of.”
David. So it was Sir.
And he’d turned into a serial adulterer.
“Certainly I’ve never been able to let go of mine, but I confess I don’t want to. They’re what hold me together. He was everything to me, and he always will be. Of course I’ve loved others, my family naturally—my nephews are the only ones still alive and I care for the youngest as much as if he were my own son.” She broke off for a moment, pressed a hand to her brow as though smoothing out the frown and continued. “Each one of my husband’s affairs broke my heart and he knew it. He hated himself for hurting me, swore it would never happen again, but it did. Sometimes he’d leave me for a few weeks, even a few months, and my despair was so great that my family would fear for what I might do if he didn’t come back. He always did and I always opened my arms to him, because I knew he’d realized, yet again, that nothing would ever mean as much to him as the love we shared. Other women were like a drug, you see. It was the forbidden fruit, the risk, the danger even, and there was plenty of that. He craved it as profoundly as the music he loved. He tried hard to control the urges, he really did, and I did everything I could to help him, but he was a handsome and fascinating man with the kind of magnetism that made him irresistible to everyone who knew him, not just women. You could say that he was the candle burning bright, and we were his moths—and no amount of pain could force us to protect ourselves from him.”
She paused, touched a hand to her mouth and continued. “Unlike other addicts he didn’t have to go out looking for his drug of choice, because it—they—came to him.” She gave a small, humorless laugh. “The women, tall, thin, short, blond, English, foreign . . . Each of them with their obsessions, beliefs, delusions, and most of all their temptations . . . In trying to help him I agreed to go through a period of isolation with him. We stopped our friends coming to the house and we didn’t go out unless it was locally and together. It didn’t last; he simply wasn’t cut out to be reclusive. He loved to socialize and entertain, and so did I. At weekends our home was always full of guests. We’d throw parties in the meadow, or on the beach, grand dinners in the dining room that’s now the den, or intimate soirées in the music room. He loved to play for our friends, and there were many who could take up instruments too and the rest of us would dance and sing and drink cocktails into the small hours.”
She raised a hand to her face again and Joely saw how shaky it had become. She even wondered if there were tears in Freda’s eyes, but there was no sign of any when she looked up, only of a small, knowing sort of smile.
“Aren’t you going to ask about my pride?” she challenged. “How I was able to bear my own weakness, and let him trample all over me like that?”
Though Joely had wondered about it, she simply shook her head. It hadn’t felt like the right thing to ask before the story was finished.
“He never cheated on me here, in this house,” Freda went on as if she hadn’t interrupted herself. “He always went away somewhere, I rarely knew where, but it hardly mattered. He was gone, I tried to believe he’d be back, and while I waited I wrote my books to distract myself, but the fear was always there, eating me up in a terrible, soul-destroying way. That this time I might be wrong. This might be the woman he finally leaves me for.”
She seemed to hold her breath as she turned her hands over, looking at them as though they’d been holding something precious that had somehow vanished. “That woman did come,” she said quietly. “It was inevitable, I suppose I always knew that and he did too, but what he hadn’t expected was that she wouldn’t want him. He would have left me if she had. He wasn’t only infatuated with her, he was obsessed with her, I think he even stalked her until her husband threatened to report him to the police. Even that didn’t stop him wanting her, if anything it made him more determined to win her. He was, quite literally, crazy about her and when I found out who she was . . .” She broke off and her quiet laugh was drowning in sadness.
“I advised you a moment ago,” she said, “to think about the others who are being hurt by the betrayal. Your family will always feel your pain, even after it’s over for you. For them the trust will never come back, and even if you can forgive your husband don’t expect them to do the same. In my case, it was my brother who couldn’t go on watching me suffer each time David went away. They used to be good friends, but he couldn’t stand what this new obsession was doing to me. He wanted to confront him, to tell him that it had to stop, and though I didn’t think it would do any good I agreed to let him try.”
Freda paused for a beat before continuing, her hands shaking slightly.
“He and David were both keen sailors,” she continued, speaking faster now, “so it wasn’t unusual for them to take a boat out together. On this particular day, less than a week after David had been threatened with the police, the conditions were perfect for a bracing sail out into the channel. David had no idea that my brother had other things on his mind, and I don’t know if he ever got to find out what they were . . . but I suspect he did.” She swallowed and took a shallow breath. “We’ll never know for sure what happened—a fight must have broken out, and one of them went overboard. And then when the other tried to rescue him . . . I’m sure there would have been a rescue attempt, no matter who went in.” She said this more to herself than Joely. “The police and coast guard were alerted. Their bodies were found not far from each other, about a mile along the coast from here. The search took hours.”
Joely sat watching her, sensing the ache in her heart, the terrible fear she’d have known during the wait for them to come back. It seemed to be with her now, the pain of losing two people she loved so deeply that it had obviously changed her life, turned her into a hermit to live with a grief that she hadn’t even tried to escape.
Joely understood now why she’d advised her to look at who else the betrayal was hurting. “Your brother,” she said softly. “You haven’t mentioned him in the memoir.”
Freda shook her head for some time and when she finally looked up there were shadows in her eyes that Joely didn’t understand. “Christopher wasn’t a part of that story,” she said, “and I realize you think David is Sir, but you’re wrong. They shared many of the same qualities, for sure, their passion for music, their gentleness of character, and the same name, but they are not the same person.”
For some reason the admission caused Joely’s heart to twist. “So is any of it true?” she asked, suspecting she’d been deliberately misled to this point and knowing she’d be angry if she had.
“About my husband and brother? Every word of it.”
“And was your husband’s name really David?”
“Yes, but we called him Doddoe. David Oswald Douglas Donahoe. It was a name he got at school and it stuck.”
Yet throughout the story she’d just told, she’d referred to him as David, so she had been deliberately misleading.
“Are you disappointed?” Freda asked. “I think you are, but this is what happens when you make assumptions, you get it wrong. Or you could say I set a trap for you and you walked into it.”
Joely couldn’t deny it.
“I’ve told you about my husband now,” Freda continued, “to make you forget your belief, or suspicion, that he and Sir are one and the same. Sir was somebody else entirely . . . Somebody who made the world a beautiful place to be, as long as he was close. He didn’t have to try to do that, it just happened. He shaped my young life . . .” Her breath caught in her throat. “Sometimes I wonder if I loved him even more than I loved my husband, if perhaps it was because of him and what happened to him that I’m who I am now.” She seemed to consider this for a moment, though Joely suspected it was a question she’d asked herself many times before. “Losing Sir, and in the way I lost him . . .” Her words were swallowed by a swell of emotion. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him,” she said softly, “and nor did I.”
Joely was in her room sitting cross-legged on the bed as she thought back over what Freda had told her, still unsure of what she was supposed to have taken away from it all other than the warning about the damage betrayal could do to the rest of the family. And the disclosure that Sir, David Michaels, was not David Donahoe.
After, when they’d settled down to dinner Freda hadn’t wanted to talk any more about her own family, or Joely’s, instead she’d wanted to listen to the music Joely had written into the memoir’s most recent pages. Moonlight Sonata, “She Loves You,” a selection of American jazz, an aria from Handel’s Messiah, “Then He Kissed Me” by the Crystals.
Before they’d gone their separate ways to bed Freda had said, “You’re doing a reasonable job with the story so far, but your coyness isn’t serving reality. If we were writing about a young nymphomaniac I’d understand your reticence, since it’s an illness that requires sensitive treatment, not salacious exploitation. The child we’re writing about”—she put a hand to her chest—“the one who acquired more decorum and morals later in life, was little more than a very beautiful, self-absorbed slut at fifteen.”
Startled by the harshness, Joely countered, “But one who was capable of love. You said yourself that you loved him.”
“Yes, yes, I did, but I believe at this point in the relationship the physicality of it was the most important part of it, so I think it should be written that way. Use words that shock you, disgust you even, they will bring you closer to the truth.”
“The truth,” Joely murmured to herself as she slid under the duvet, abandoning all plans to chance calling her mother from the balcony tonight when the rain was coming down in torrents. What was the truth? She guessed she’d find out when Freda was ready to tell it, however, she was still determined that Freda herself would have to provide the more sensational aspects of the memoir. She, Joely, was a ghostwriter, not a purveyor of porn, even if that was how young Freda and Sir had conducted themselves. Who didn’t in the privacy of the bedroom? (She hoped not Callum and Martha, though knowing some of his more exotic tastes . . . No, she couldn’t go there.)
Anyway, she could tell that on some level—perhaps many levels—she was being manipulated by Freda and not always in a way to serve the memoir. It seemed more to serve Freda’s own sense of . . . what? Power? Control? Perhaps they were one and the same thing. She was such a peculiar woman it was hard to work out what was really going on, and right now Joely was too tired to try. She was simply going to close her eyes and fall asleep doing exactly what Freda had warned her against, trying to guess what had happened to Sir and young Freda that they hadn’t deserved.