Juno couldn’t quite take it all in. She felt she was frozen in time – in a sort of framed piece of art in her own kitchen with the others, all staring, like herself, at her husband who for some reason was suddenly newly painted into the same tableau. She knew she’d downed too much red wine, too quickly and on an empty stomach, but why Fraser was standing at the kitchen door, his hands hanging loosely by his side, his face pale as he stared at her, she couldn’t think. And even while she knew, yes, she knew immediately that she no longer loved him, no longer wanted to be married to him, she also knew he knew what she’d been up to with Scott Butler. Why else would he be standing there, seemingly unable to say a word, staring at her as if he didn’t know her?
And then the still-life picture sprang into life. The second bottle of red wine she’d left to breathe while they drank the first flying from the kitchen top, spilling and splashing a seemingly endless stream of blood over both Fraser and Lady Gaga, while the pan of cooking pasta, not wanting to be excluded from the mayhem, co-ordinated perfectly its decision to boil over, erupting a steaming, spitting tsunami onto the hob and Juno’s hand.
But that was nothing compared to what Ariadne was saying as she stood, mobile in hand, her shocked eyes huge in her pale face.
‘Theo’s killed him. He’d been drinking and was driving, with Cillian in the back, and he’s dead…’
‘Cillian’s dead? Oh Jesus, no.’ Juno brought both hands to her face (the burned hand would, later, begin to hurt like hell) and gave a moan of terror.
‘No, no, no, no. Not Cillian,’ Ariadne snapped in some irritation. ‘He’s absolutely fine, thank God. Well, as fine as a four-year-old can be who’s just witnessed his father knocking down and killing someone.’
‘Oh, thank goodness for that.’ Juno realised she might actually be sick with the shock of it all. She sat down shakily, thrusting her head between her knees as Gabe moved towards her and Tilda grabbed a very affronted Lady Gaga, attempting to wipe her down with a piece of kitchen roll.
‘So, who’s dead? Who has Theo killed?’ The overwhelming relief that it wasn’t Cillian lying broken and mangled in the road had left Juno momentarily forgetting someone was dead.
‘Damian St Claire’s dead,’ Ariadne breathed, sitting down at the kitchen table once more and patting Juno somewhat ineffectually on her bent head. ‘That was Richard on the phone, Juno. Theo’d been drinking, was bringing Cillian home from school and didn’t see St Claire who was skulking down their lane and got in the way. Theo knocked him down… Fraser, how are you…?’
‘Where’s Lexia? Is she alright? Oh heavens, should we go round there? Where is she now?’ Juno still felt as though she’d been hit by a ten-tonne truck.
‘At the house. Pandora, Richard and Hugo are there. And that nice Irish woman – you know, the nanny granny Lexia seems to have become so attached to? – she’s there too. Look, you and Fraser obviously have a lot to catch up on. I’ll get off…’
‘No, no, really. Stay, Ari, and eat first.’ Juno managed to lift her head long enough to send a silent plea to her big sister not to abandon her to Fraser. Not just yet anyway. She took several deep breaths, concentrating and directing her thoughts back to the other shock of the evening. ‘Oh, Fraser, why on earth didn’t you tell us you were coming home? Are you back for good?’ she asked, her nose firmly entrenched back into her navy work skirt by an over-zealous Gabe. At least this way, she didn’t have to meet Fraser’s eyes. He didn’t appear to have any luggage with him apart from the small valise he’d always taken on short trips away but, she supposed, he could have left all his luggage in the garden. For what reason, Juno couldn’t quite think. She raised her head slightly and looked in his direction, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Hell, he knew. Someone had told him.
Fraser obviously didn’t have a clue what was going on, so Juno stood up, ran a hand through her hair, kissed Fraser’s cold cheek and took his coat. The best thing for all of them – children excepted – would be to open yet another bottle of wine and try to explain to Gabe, Tilda and Fraser the secrets that had culminated in the shocking event outside Lexia and Theo’s house earlier that evening.
*
‘So,’ Tilda said through narrowed eyes at the same time as sucking a recalcitrant worm of spaghetti slowly into her mouth.
‘Hmm?’ Juno found she couldn’t look at Fraser, didn’t want to see the hurt in his eyes as he attempted to wind his pasta, like the Italian native he blatantly wasn’t, around his fork. It had always irritated her that, before starting a hillock of spaghetti, Fraser’s usual modus operandi involved taking his knife and fork and cutting the pasta into neat manageable bite-sized bits before popping each one into his mouth and chewing methodically. He’d never shown any passion for food: butter running down his chin, eyes closed in ecstasy over a particularly succulent piece of pork crackling.
Maybe she was just a rotten cook?
‘So,’ Tilda repeated, chewing just as thoughtfully as her father. ‘Next time I tell a little fib, you know a little white lie, it will all fade into insignificance compared with the whopping great perfidious untruth this family has been telling for years?’
‘What?’ Gabe glared at Tilda, while Ariadne, apparently forgetting the dreadful news she’d just imparted, gave a little snort of laughter. ‘What are you on about? Speak English, you moron.’
‘Good God, Matilda Armstrong, you remind me of myself at your age.’ Ariadne raised an eyebrow in Matilda’s direction, obviously pleased that her own genes had been shared with her only niece.
‘What I’m asking,’ Tilda said patiently, ignoring her brother, ‘is that, next time you ask if Lady Gaga is in bed with me and she is, but I say no, she isn’t…’
‘Lady Gaga?’ Fraser looked even more out of the loop than ever and Juno felt a frisson of irritation that he’d obviously never been interested enough to know the name of his daughter’s gerbil.
‘Alright, Matilda, enough.’ Juno felt tension run through every inch of her body as she stood and, rather than meet Fraser’s eye, made her way across to the sink, running her burned hand under the cold tap. ‘Right, now that we’ve got that out of the way – and, you two, this is still a huge family secret, not to be repeated to anyone…’
‘Not even Mr Donnington?’ Tilda pouted.
‘Especially Mr Donnington,’ Juno snapped.
‘Mr Donnington?’ Fraser screwed up his face in that bloody stupid way that had always irritated Juno and she had a sudden urge to slap it. And then felt awful. Oh, the poor man; here he was, all the way back from America to sort out his marriage, in his own kitchen, and she was wanting to commit GBH. Or was it ABH?
‘So, now we’ve got Part One out of the way, can we move onto Part Two and establish just what’s happened this evening with Theo and St Claire? Why don’t you two go and watch TV? This is adult conversation. Go on, off you go.’
‘You’re joking.’ Gabe and Tilda spoke as one and leaned forward in anticipation.
‘Well, I suppose it’s going to be all over the papers tomorrow.’ Ariadne frowned. ‘In fact, I bet it’s on the ten o’clock news tonight.’
Gabe whistled. ‘What’ll happen to Theo Ryan? Will Midhope Town let him carry on playing?’
‘Course not.’ Tilda was scornful. ‘He’s killed someone, knocked them down while he was driving under the influence, with a child on board. They’ll throw the book at him.’
Juno pulled a despairing face in Ariadne’s direction: Tilda had been reading the latest Magistrates’ Court Guidelines now, had she? She’d definitely know the difference between GBH and ABH.
‘What did Richard say on the phone?’ Fraser asked, speaking almost for the first time. He really didn’t look well at all, Juno thought. He’d lost weight and, yes, in the three months he’d been away, surely more of his hairline as well? Had she done this to him? Carrying on with another man? While the cat’s away and all that… This was a small village. Someone must have told him. Was it a Dear John letter? A Dear Fraser letter maybe from one of her patients with whom she’d not been quite as patient, quite as sympathetic towards as perhaps she should? Juno racked her brains. Obviously not that mad coot she’d been forced into the Eighties’ pop quiz with that very morning. Izzy? Marian? Bloody Marian, she’d bet any money it was Marian. She obviously fancied Scott herself…
*
‘I’m going round to Lexia’s,’ Ariadne stated, a good hour after Fraser had first appeared in the kitchen and sat down with them, making his way down his spag bol as if he’d never been away. No, not quite the same, Juno knew. He was different, anxious, on edge.
‘Well, you can’t drive,’ Tilda sniffed disparagingly. ‘That’s all we need, another member of the family up for drink driving. It’s an automatic driving ban, you know. Mr Donnington—’
‘What, Mr Donnington’s been banned?’ Juno interrupted hopefully. Was there finally a dent in the saintly deputy head’s halo?
‘No, he told us that in PSHE. Mr Donnington says anyone who drinks and drives is socially and morally bankrupt…’ Tilda broke off at the sudden realisation of the golden nugget of information she’d be able to offer up to her god at school in the morning.
Ariadne stood up, laughing at Tilda’s words and, reaching over, patted her niece on the bottom as she and Gabe left for the sitting room and TV. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll ring for a taxi. It might be best if I stay with Lexia tonight if she’d like me to. She can drive me over for my car in the morning.’
Don’t leave me, Juno’s eyes pleaded with Ariadne. Don’t leave me to face the music by myself.
‘I’ll get off then.’ Ariadne gave an imperceptible shake of the head in Juno’s direction. ‘You and Fraser have obviously loads to talk about, Juno.’ She turned to Fraser who was neatly folding his used paper napkin (yellow bunnies in celebration of the coming season) into four. ‘How was Boston, Fraser? Snowy? And the new job? Demanding? Enjoying it all?’
‘All of those, Ariadne, thank you,’ Fraser returned politely. ‘Look, it’s been a long day. I think I’ll just go up and have a quick shower, Juno.’ He kissed Ariadne goodbye, reached for his valise and headed for the stairs.
‘Oh, shoot…!’ Juno jumped up.
‘What?’ Ariadne turned from fastening the buttons on her jacket.
‘The bathroom.’ Juno ran to the bottom of the stairs and shouted after her husband’s slowly ascending form. ‘The bathroom, Fraser, er, you’ll find it a bit, er, different.’
‘He seems a bit, you know, different too,’ Ariadne whispered as Juno returned to the kitchen. ‘Not quite as Uncle Quentinish.’
‘But did Aunt Fanny ever screw around?’ Juno said grimly, moving over to fill the dishwasher. ‘God,’ she berated herself, trying to fit the spaghetti pan into the dishwasher before retrieving it to wash by hand, ‘I do hate that revolting expression.
‘Fanny?’
‘No, you know, screw around.’
‘So, what do you reckon to Aunt Fanny then? With a name like that? I bet she was at it hammer and tongs over at Kirrin Island while Uncle Quentin grappled with his scientific inventions and formulae and the kids were all asleep. Mind you,’ she went on, seriously, ‘they never did sleep, did they? Wasn’t Enid Blyton always having the Famous Five tucking into sneaky midnight feasts over at Kirrin Island? I bet they never cleaned their teeth after them, and poor old Fanny would have just been going for it when George and Dick and… what were the others…?’
‘Anne and Julian,’ Juno said, scraping plates into a dish to give later to Myrtle and her mates.
‘… Anne and Julian and the dog popped up out of nowhere looking for the hidden treasure and interrupted her session with the gorgeously, rampant dark-haired fisherman. Anne, particularly, wouldn’t have been impressed – she was always a bit prudish, a bit grown up, wasn’t she? A bit like Pandora really.’ Ariadne started laughing and then, when she saw Juno’s face, immediately stopped. ‘Gosh, I’m sorry, Juno. I’m being a bit flippant here, aren’t I? What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t want to be married to Fraser anymore, Ariadne. I knew it the moment he appeared in the kitchen.’
‘The dishy doctor? Is he what’s made you feel like this?’
Juno shook her head. ‘No, he’s just the icing on the cake. Even if Scott Butler hadn’t come to work at the surgery, even if I hadn’t fallen in love with him, I’d still be feeling the same. It was such a relief when Fraser left for Boston. Now, I just feel tense, miserable that he’s back. Like I often used to feel before he went, I now realise.’
‘Yes, but he said he’s only back for a couple of days. You can stop being miserable once he goes again.’
Juno tutted. ‘I’m an honourable woman, as you agreed earlier.’
‘I’d had quite a bit of wine…’
‘I’m an honourable woman and am, at the moment, living a lie.’
‘Which this family seems to be jolly good at.’ Ariadne raised an eyebrow.
‘Well, I must be the exception. I can’t live a lie. I don’t want to live a lie.’
‘Seriously, Juno, think of the kids. Think about Gabe and Tilda.’
‘You saw Fraser with his children this evening, Ariadne,’ Juno said sadly. ‘Did he hug them, grab them as if he couldn’t bear to ever let them ever go? Did he ask about Gabe’s football, ask Tilda about Harry Trotter or Moaning Myrtle? He appeared to have no knowledge of Lady Gaga and yet Tilda had that gerbil long before he left for America.’
‘I just feel really sorry for him,’ Ariadne said. ‘It’s the way he was brought up. He can’t help it.’
‘So do I, but, Ariadne, I can’t live another fifty years with him. Another fifty years sitting across from him while he clears his throat – clears his nose by putting his two-fingered-hanky up his nostrils and shaking it about – his hanky, not his nose. While he chops up his spaghetti and folds his dirty napkin. Screw it up and chuck it in the bloody bin… that’s what I want to yell at him. That’s no way to live the next fifty years, is it?’
‘Counselling?’ Ariadne asked hopefully. ‘No? Just giving you all the options, Juno, before you throw in the towel. And…’ She paused at the kitchen door as her taxi pulled up ‘If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I could live fifty minutes with Fraser, never mind the next fifty years.’ She hugged Juno fiercely. ‘I never let you lot – you know, Pandora and Lexia and all of you lot – I never say just how much I love you all. You’re my family. There, I’m embarrassing myself now, being daft old Aunt Ariadne. Look, what I’m trying to say is, I’m here for you, Juno, if the shit hits the proverbial.’ She hugged Juno once more and, slightly tipsily, made her way down the garden path to the waiting taxi.