Jake didn’t care that the adverts he had placed in all the papers had cost him a fortune, but it annoyed him intensely that he wasn’t getting a result.
Not the kind of result he wanted anyway. Just more weirdos and practical jokers and hopeful lonely hearts offering themselves in Tom’s place.
On his way into work the next morning, he stopped off at his local newsstand for Lifesavers and a ballpoint pen and the latest edition of Antiques Monthly. He waited to be served behind an old lady with a shopping basket on wheels, who was counting out change for a Daily Mirror.
‘And you can take my card out of the window,’ she told the newsagent, whom she evidently knew. ‘Deirdre’s back, safe and sound. Some kind soul rang me last night to say he thought he’d spotted her in Lavender Gardens. I rushed straight over, and there she was! Heaven knows what possessed her, but never mind, she’s home with Mummy again now. Aren’t you, my precious?’
The old woman lifted the lid of her shopping basket and devotedly stroked the pink nose of an ugly tortoiseshell cat.
‘That’s good news, Maud,’ said the newsagent. ‘Mission accomplished, eh?’
Jake looked at the cat. He had noticed the card in the window himself. Privately, he had assumed Deirdre must have been run over by a bus.
But luck had been on Deirdre’s side. The forlorn little message in the newsstand’s window had done the trick.
Jake paid for his magazine and Biro and forgot all about the Polos. He had seen Maud’s card; so had the person who had spotted Deirdre in Lavender Gardens; so must practically everyone who came into the little corner shop.
That was it, he thought with rising excitement. People bought newspapers but they didn’t necessarily read the personal columns.
Just about everyone, on the other hand, had a newsstand they visited on a regular basis.
‘How much does it cost to put a card in the window?’ Jake asked.
The man behind the counter said, ‘For a week, thirty-five pence.’
‘Oh you poor darling,’ cried Maud, clutching his arm, ‘have you lost your cat too?’
Whoever said there was no point sitting around moping, Rita decided, didn’t know what they were talking about. Sometimes a bloody good mope was what you needed more than anything else in the world.
It was what Rita had been doing for weeks, and she was buggered if she was going to feel guilty. She had drunk too much whisky, smoked far too many cigarettes, listened to hour upon hour of Alex’s beloved jazz CDs, and shed gallons of hot, aching, therapeutic tears.
Weirdly, having always thought she couldn’t stand jazz, she now found herself beginning to quite like it after all. She was even getting to grips with Miles Davis. Since not having to listen to all that crappy music anymore had been the only thing she had been able to look forward to after Alex’s death, Rita thought this typical, and probably his idea of a huge joke.
But moping—or grieving—was something you had to go through and there wasn’t a lot you could do to avoid it. Having realized this, Rita had kept visitors to a minimum, preferring to mourn alone. She had her beautiful house and her memories; it was all she needed right now. She was also, thank God, lucky enough never to have to worry about money again.
Unlike the old days, Rita reminded herself, thinking back fondly to the first years of their marriage and the grotty flat in Hackney, with the bucket on permanent drip-duty in the hallway and the rat-infested back yard. Bit different from what they had become used to here…
That’s another stupid thing people say, thought Rita: Money doesn’t buy you happiness. Okay, I might not be feeling that great at the moment, but I’d be a damn sight more miserable if on top of everything else I had to worry about paying bills.
What a load of tosh some people talked.
Today though, she wasn’t in the mood for whisky and a mope. Spring had arrived, the sun was out, and the temperature outside was on the verge of turning warm. Gazing down from the bedroom window at the daffodils bobbing in the garden below, Rita experienced an urge to embark on a bit of spring cleaning.
The trouble was, there wasn’t any to do. Her super-efficient cleaning women worked tirelessly all year round. Every window sparkled. There was no dust. If she were to drag her dressing-table chair over to the window, climb up on it and run her finger along the top of the curtain track, Rita knew it would come away clean. You could eat your dinner off the curtain tracks in this house.
But the urge to do something wasn’t going to go away. If I can’t clean up, Rita decided with a new sense of purpose, I’ll clear out.
She flung open the fitted wardrobe doors and surveyed her clothes. Rail upon rail of gorgeous dresses. Bright oranges, violets, pinks, and greens. Silver lamé. Blue and gold Lurex. Multi-colored sequins and shimmering fringes. And all with shoes to match.
It was no good. Rita knew she couldn’t do it. Alex had helped her choose these outfits. He had loved to see her in them. How could she even think of throwing any of them away?
She slid the doors shut and opened Alex’s wardrobe instead. After several minutes of deliberation, she chose, for old times’ sake, the crimson waistcoat he had worn for their silver wedding anniversary party and a pair of outrageous purple silk pajamas she had bought for him on last year’s happy trip to Lloret de Mar. Weakening briefly, Rita grabbed a favorite blue and yellow striped shirt of Alex’s and a hefty silver-buckled belt with the initials R. and A. intertwined.
Then, because she knew it had to be done, she swept the remaining contents of the wardrobe, hangers and all, into five black trash bags. Boots and shoes filled another, sweaters two more.
Rita lugged the bags downstairs to be sent to the Salvation Army. Still bursting with energy, she ran back up to the bedroom and dragged a motley collection of suitcases from the back of the wardrobe. Packed inside was everything they had brought with them when they had moved but hadn’t known what to do with.
Now this, Rita thought with satisfaction, was stuff worth throwing out. A bag of tangled suspenders, years old, from when Alex had gone through a phase of wearing the things. A whole suitcase full of back copies of Jazz Journal International. Another case had been crammed with bits of a rusted old drum kit. The last one, with FRAGILE scrawled across it in green felt-tip pen, was stuffed with records in battered paper sleeves, old seventy-eights by ancient wrinkled Mississippians with names like Smokin’ Joe Swampfoot.
Kneeling down, Rita sifted through them, deciding that rather than the Salvation Army she would drop these round to the Cavendish Club. Anyone who wanted the crappy things could have them. And the magazines.
At the bottom of the case, beneath the seventy-eights, were half a dozen hardback books, also to do with jazz. They looked deadly boring and as old as the records. Rita flipped through a few of the yellowed pages, wondering idly if Poppy would be interested in selling them on the stall. The date at the front of this one was 1954. Blimey, practically an antique.
When Rita picked the book up, a photograph fluttered out onto her lap. A small black and white snap, it was as discolored with age as the pages it had been sandwiched between. With only mild curiosity—she was by this time heartily sick of all things jazzy—Rita turned the photograph over and took a closer look.
She knew at once when it must have been taken. She had bought Alex that patterned shirt the week before he’d left for Bristol, to spend the summer working at the Ash Hill Country Club. When she had broken her leg and Alex had come rushing back to London, he had turned up at the hospital wearing it. It had been bright green, with black Scottie dogs printed all over it. Each dog had been wearing a white collar. Rita, about as handy with a needle as a hippo, but so in love it hurt, had devotedly embroidered each dog’s collar a different color. It had taken hours but she’d done it anyway, and when she’d given him the customized shirt, Alex had been thrilled.
So thrilled, thought Rita, that he’d worn it on an day trip to Weston-Super-Mare.
Or wherever it was. It might have been Weston, it might not. All Rita knew was that it was the seaside, somewhere with a pier. Alex was sitting on the beach, grinning broadly.
And he wasn’t alone.
It had to be her. This time Rita didn’t have any doubts. The way they sat together, her left knee brushing his right one, was a dead giveaway. Those knees said it all.
So this was what her rival had looked like. After years of wondering, it was a relief to find out—like finally managing the last clue in a crossword puzzle that’s been niggling away in your brain. Rita, still on her knees in front of the wardrobe, held the photograph up to the light.
The woman was nothing special. Okay, she was pretty, but nothing amazing. Having envisaged everything from Liz Taylor in her heyday to Brigitte Bardot, this came as a relief. The woman Alex had had an affair with had long curly hair, a heart-shaped face, and a captivating smile. She was wearing a calf-length pleated skirt and a short-sleeved white blouse. Her feet were bare. There was a ring on her wedding finger.
Rita was surprised how calm she felt. What did it matter now anyway? Her curiosity had been satisfied, that was all. Alex’s fling had ended twenty-three years ago, and their marriage had been happy to the end. In a funny way, knowing about it—realizing that she could have lost him to another woman—might even have helped the marriage.
Maybe I appreciated him all the more, thought Rita, gazing at his dear face in the photograph. There, that’s female logic for you.
About to crumple the photo up and lob it into the wastepaper basket, she stopped and looked at it again. It was odd, but somehow she didn’t have the heart to throw it away.
Instead, she slid it back inside the pages of the book and put the book on a high shelf right at the back of the wardrobe.
Then, suddenly fancying a gin and tonic and a nice cigarette, she went downstairs.