THERESA CAME BACK FROM holiday early. She had heard of Ned’s death. She brought round a very solid potato and chicken pie as a gesture of condolence and reassurance, and wept quite a lot. Heavy tears fell down her wide, firm, young face. She had burned in the Majorcan sun: she was now bright pink. Grief did not help her complexion. She was very big; her waist as wide as Alexandra’s hips, but she had a train of youthful admirers, which she would swat away as if they were flies. She loved only Sascha, she said. Alexandra thanked Theresa for the pie and offers of help, but said she was okay on her own for a bit. Sascha wouldn’t be back until after the funeral. She would of course in the meantime pay Theresa her usual wages.
Hamish said, over supper, “I’m sorry we had our little tiff. We must both make allowances—I can see how upset you are. I never got to know you as well as I would have liked. Ned moved in circles so very different from mine. One makes assumptions about show business people. You are very brave. And as lovely as your photographs. Just not very organised, and in need of help.” He laid his hand upon her arm. For a moment she was startled, but it was a brotherly and consoling touch and she was appreciative. She was grateful that he’d recovered from his spasm of dislike for her, though she still had no idea what had triggered it. She was just glad he was there in the house. The place stayed quiet, and Diamond slept peacefully, without gasps and snorts of alarm.
Hamish went to bed at ten o’clock. He was tired, as he said, both physically and emotionally. Ned had been his only brother. Alexandra and Sascha were now his only family. His own had disintegrated. He was, he said, a typical product of the times: living alone, along with 28 percent of the population. He liked statistics.
It took Hamish an hour to get to bed. To wash, to think, to have a bath, to find soap; he borrowed Ned’s pyjamas, which Ned never wore. She could understand that. She’d been wearing one of Ned’s shirts all day. That would have to stop, she supposed. Hamish asked for a glass of water. She provided it. He had tucked himself up like a little boy. He looked after her pathetically, as if wanting a bedtime story.
When he had finally settled—worse than Sascha—Alexandra looked through Jenny’s address book. She found the address of an “L. Peacock,” in Clifton, Bristol. She looked up Peacock in the directory and found
“Peacock, Leah,” and called the number. She counted the rings. Eight.
Good. The woman was in bed.
“Hello?” enquired a soft, good natured voice, though sleepy.
“It’s Jenny,” said Alexandra, using Jenny’s voice. “I’m so unhappy.”
“Jenny,” said Leah, “don’t do this to me. I can bear some of your unhappiness, but not all of it.”
“I loved him so much,” said Alexandra/Jenny. “But he wasn’t mine to love.”
“It’s the Whispering Guilt again, Jenny,” said Leah. “Don’t listen to it. It means to fill your mind with poison. How many times have we talked about that? I want you to go to sleep. Now what is our sleep word?”
Alexandra put the phone down. She found a “Dave” in the address book, but he turned out to be a plumber, annoyed at being disturbed. She used Jenny’s voice, gave Jenny’s address, and asked him to come round in the morning to fix a leak. Early if possible. She called Jenny Linden.
It was some time before she answered. Good, again.
“Who is it?”
“This is Ned,” Alexandra whispered. “From the other side.”
She called the second Dave in the book and got an answerphone. Dave Linden, Theatrical Lighting, freelance. He answered half-way through the message.
“Hi,” said Alexandra brightly. “This is Alexandra Ludd. I think we met once or twice, at parties. You’ve been up to The Cottage once or twice. And I think we once met at Lyme Regis.”
“That’s right,” he said. “It’s rather late. Do we have to talk now?”
“Yes,” she said. “We do. I understand your wife suffers from unrequited love for my husband, now dead. That she’s been stalking him.”
“I don’t know what you mean by unrequited,” he said. “What was unrequited about it? Why do you think she and I aren’t together? I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry for you, but I don’t want you saying bad things about Jenny. She looked up to that bastard you married. He could talk her into anything. She believed everything he told her. I should have gone over and killed him myself; I always wanted to. She wouldn’t let me. How could you stand him, a woman like you?”
“I loved him,” said Alexandra.
“And I love Jenny,” he said.
He wept. Alexandra felt mystified. How could a man seriously be in love with dumpy little Jenny Linden?
“I don’t want you to do anything nasty to her,” said Dave. “You’re a powerful woman. You could crush her, just like that. I’m not sorry your husband’s dead. I’m glad. He ruined my marriage.”
“You don’t think,” Alexandra asked, “that it’s all in your wife’s head? That she’s deluded? Obsessed? That what she tells you simply isn’t true? I don’t know what she’s told you but my impression is it’s all fantasy. I was calling you to ask her, for God’s sake, to lay off. My husband has just died. I can’t cope with your wife’s insanity as well. I want you to control her, keep her out of my way. People might even believe the dreadful things she’s saying. That Ned and she were having an affair.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” asked Dave Linden. “It’s really warped. Why are you pretending you didn’t know what was going on?”
“Nothing was going on except what went on in your wife’s head,” said Alexandra. “You’ve got to get her on some kind of medication and out of my hair.”
“But they’d grope each other in front of you,” said Dave Linden. “I saw them. You aren’t blind. You must have known. That was what turned them on. You and me having to watch them, having to imagine them together. She said it was her way of getting over it, I wasn’t to stop her. It made things worse. But why did you put up with it? Are you sick in the head or something?”
“I never saw them grope each other,” said Alexandra. “Ned always put his arms around women. He was just being affectionate.”
“Then they’d dance together,” said Dave Linden, “and laugh together and look at you and me out of the corners of their eyes and their hands would be everywhere. And you were the one who sent our invitation out. ‘Dear Dave and Jenny, do come. Ned and I…’ Through the letter box, down on to the mat: more torture. She’d agree you were a bitch to do it. I’d refuse to go; she’d put the pressure on: ‘Oh, Dave, oh, Dave, I love him so, let me get it out of my system. Then we’ll be together again.’ So we’d go, and I’d see you watching—”
“Ned always danced close to women,” said Alexandra. “I never minded. I can’t even remember him dancing with Jenny. I’m sure you’re right and he did but I don’t remember. All this is in your head, Dave. She’s told you so many lies.”
“Jenny doesn’t lie,” said Dave. “Jenny never lies. You’re the one who’s mad, not Jenny. You’d go up to London knowing they’d be together. The moment you’d walk out the door she’d walk in. He died fucking her. He died fucking my wife. Too much excitement. Now leave me alone.”
He put the phone down. Alexandra went to bed. She slept in Sascha’s room. She wanted the smell of his soft child’s skin in her nostrils: next best thing to having his real presence. Abbie hadn’t washed the sheets on Sascha’s bed, thank God. It wasn’t so much a sleep as a passing-out, unconsciousness forced on her mind.
She woke with the phrase in her head “When you walked out she walked in.” Madness. Cold crept round the edges of Sascha’s small quilt. She went back to her own bed, and for a moment thought she could feel Ned’s warm presence, but it was only Diamond, who had somehow got upstairs again. She did not push him off the bed. Anything warm and alive would do.