A Banquet of Consequences (60 page)

She said to him, “It was among my things, but you know that, you and your little bit of skirt, don’t you? What you didn’t expect was that I’d hand it over to Clare. And what you
also
didn’t expect is that someone along the line wouldn’t believe Clare’s heart gave out. So nothing’s worked out the way you planned it. But that really shouldn’t surprise any of us. In the brains department, you were always rather wanting.”

“Mum,” Charlie said wearily, “you need to get inside the house, have a cup of tea, sit down, relax, and—”

“What I need,” she cut in sharply, “is to have some words with your stepfather. You can listen to them or you can leave us. The choice is yours.”

Charlie was carrying his mum’s overnight bag, and he passed her to set this on the front step. He opened the door and said to her, “Whatever you want to say can be said inside.”

He was showing good sense, Alastair thought. There was no reason to remain outside, and the fact that Caroline wanted to do so prompted him to follow Charlie into the house. If she was after words with him, she would come along. She did.

She went into the sitting room and he had half a mind not to join her there. Charlie took himself to the kitchen, where the sound of cupboards opening and closing and water running told Alastair he was making the tea he’d spoken about. As he was considering joining Charlie, Caroline turned to him. She said she wanted a word “before you do whatever you intend to do next,” and while he had no plan to do anything at all at that juncture, it did come into his mind that they were fast approaching a point of no return when he was going to have to take an action.

In the sitting room, she went to the fireplace and there she stood. She said, “You should have thought everything out more thoroughly. The toothpaste wasn’t a good idea. Not everyone would have had access to it, just the three of us, and I’d hardly want to poison myself.”

He stared at her, trying to work out what in the name of God she was talking about.

Her expression altered, losing its sharpness but not its exasperation. She said, “The poison, Alastair? The police did trace it to the toothpaste, you know. It wasn’t difficult to put in, naturally, since these new tubes of the stuff bounce right back into shape when you squeeze a bit out. So all that was needed was squeezing, allowing the tube to reshape, putting the poison inside the hollow bit, and mixing it with what remained. I’ve had most of the day to think how it was done. Access to my toothpaste was the key, which makes it all a bit of a giveaway.”

He said to her, “What’re you on about?”

“I’m
on
about the police looking for a motive for someone wanting to kill
me
, not Clare. They want motive, means, and opportunity. And what exactly are you and little Miss Roundheels going to do about that since the two of you happen to have all three?”

“Police were here,” he told her. “Least she was, the woman sergeant. She talked about you and me. I told her if she thought I had a single reason on earth to hurt you, she could look round the place for whatever it was she was after ’cause she wasn’t going to find it and she didn’t.”

“Played directly into her hands, eh? How bloody like you, Alastair. D’you know how to put your socks on if I’m not here to say, ‘They go on your feet, darling’?” She left the fireplace and walked to the window. A table sat beneath it, on it an open fan of the magazines she spent hours perusing: celebrity tales with their marriages and their partnerships and their dozens of children, long articles about European millionaires, house decoration, women’s beauty, high-end travel, living the good life. It came to him that she read these as if expecting that it was all out there for her, just within her reach if she could only put together the proper circumstances to make it happen as she wished it would. She said to him, “You do know, don’t you, Alastair, that you’re the simplest man to manipulate who ever lived? This policewoman tricked you into telling her she’d be welcome to look round the place without bothering to get a search warrant. All she had to do was position you to invite her to overturn my drawers or whatever she did. Have a nice look round for whatever you want, you told her. Well, you can bet that your little piece of skirt won’t be so stupid, so I hope the two of you hid the poison at her place.”

“This is nothing to do with Sharon, so you best keep her out of it, Caro.”

Her expression was arch. “You’ve actually become a bigger fool than you were when I married you and I hardly think that’s even possible.”

“Mum.” Charlie was coming into the sitting room from the kitchen. He bore a tray with three mugs, tea, and the rest. He’d excavated for some chocolate biscuits, with which he’d circled the edges of a plate the centre of which held a sectioned apple. He set this on the coffee table in front of the sofa and said to his mother, “That’s not exactly helpful just now.” And then to Alastair, “Have you phoned a solicitor?”

“What need have I for a solicitor?” Alastair asked. Charlie was being mother with the tea and the mugs. He drew over the smallest of three stacking tables, putting a mug upon it and administering milk and sugar. This, he indicated, was for his mother, and he placed the table next to an armchair at a distance from the sofa as if with the intention of keeping her and Alastair apart. “I’ve not done nothing,” Alastair said. “So what’s the point of ringing up someone and telling him . . . what? That I’ve done nothing but the coppers are here and what should I do next?”

“It’s always best . . .” Charlie handed a mug to Alastair and indicated that he was to sit on the sofa. It came to Alastair that his stepson was in therapist mode, but he knew it was going to take more skills than Charlie possessed to smooth the wrinkles in this marriage. Charlie said to him, “Look . . . You mustn’t talk to the police again. Really. I know you want to help and that’s quite admirable—”

“He wants to help me to my grave,” Caroline said. “And so does she, Miss Butter Wouldn’t Melt. God, I ought to divorce you
just
so you can see what she’s really been after all along, Alastair, which isn’t you. It’s this.” She flung her arm in a wide gesture that took in the room. “It’s this place, this business. It’s the money the business brings in, how we’ve built it from barely nothing, and now she’s too happy, isn’t she, to step in and enjoy the results of our work.”

Alastair gaped at her, so incredulous was he. Charlie began to say something, but Alastair interrupted. “You’re a bloody mad cow, that’s
what. You’ve done nothing. It’s Sharon an’ me built this business. Oh, you were good for two months of work, weren’t you, but then it was the boys, always the boys, and how they kept you too busy and ‘Alastair, I can’t be everything to everyone,’ when you and I together . . . That was the deal and you well know it.”

“The
deal
? What are you saying, that marriage is some kind of
deal
?”

“Mum . . . Alastair . . . This isn’t going anywhere useful,” Charlie said mildly. “If both of you will take a moment to—”

“I’m saying,” Alastair cut in, “that we agreed if we brought the boys to Dorset, if I sold up
everything
in London—my shop, my work, my house—that we would work together to build a life here, only I was doing all the work along with Sharon. You understand that? With Sharon and her never saying a word about anything but never a word specially about you and your television programmes and your magazines and your women’s meetings and your takeaway food in place of proper meals because you were far too busy, weren’t you, with your ‘boys.’ And that was it, wasn’t it, Caro? They were always
your
boys, no matter I was a proper father to them.”

“Be quiet, both of you!” Charlie raised his voice to get their attention, then went on more quietly with, “Everyone’s nerves are raw. When people are in this state, they say regrettable things that have far too much weight. You need to let your passions cool because in this kind of state, there’s absolutely nothing to be gained that—”

“So just go to Sharon. Go!” Caroline’s voice rose above her son’s. “I do
not
care any longer. It’s always been about you at the heart of things. It’s always been what Alastair wants, what Alastair needs, and never a single thought for anyone else. Oh, you pretended to be a proper father to them. And you pretended you were reluctant to leave London because there was so much you ‘loved’ about your stupid work. And all along we both knew the truth is that I lifted you out of a real tip, and it was only because of my divorce from Francis and the money I got off him that we were even able . . . Oh, you and your
ridiculous
business. Some pathetic shopfront in a part of town that no one would ever think about visiting when anyone with any sense at all would have a stall in a market—”

“Listen to yourselves,” Charlie said. His was the voice of reason.
“This is exactly what people do in this kind of state. It’s a case of slash, burn, and take no prisoners. Mum, stop it. Alastair, stop it. You’re both worn out. You’re both frightened.”

“I’m not feared of nothing,” Alastair said. “The coppers want to look round this place? Let ’em, I say. They want a search warrant for a deeper look? Even better.”

“Because it’s gone, what you used, isn’t it?” Caroline said. “No. It’s not gone. Sharon has it.”

“Don’t you say her name another time,” Alastair warned her. “I swear to you, Caro, if you start accusing that decent, loving, God-fearing—”

“Cocksucking,” she snapped. “Can I add that to the list?”

He lunged towards her. Charlie leapt between him and Caroline, upsetting the small table that held Caroline’s tea. She cried out, “Do you see what you’ve made me come home to? Don’t you know what will happen if you leave me here, with the two of them planning and scheming against me?”

“Christ, Mum,” Charlie said. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything. Nobody does. Just that someone somehow managed to put something into your toothpaste and that’s the limit of what we—”

“You’d like it as well!” she hissed. She rose, advancing on him. “That would be
exactly
your style.”

Charlie took a step back from her. “Jesus,” he said. “What are you saying?”

“Me,” she said. “Dead. Out of your life so that you can scurry over to India’s pathetic little house and reduce yourself to whatever that little cunt wants you to be in order to get her to return to you. And you can’t do it yet, can you, because as things stand I’ll fling myself in front of a train before I let you lower yourself to beg and grovel and be less than a man because that’s what she wants, don’t you understand that? And I won’t allow that, I will never allow that, I won’t have you end up like Will, with me standing by and seeing India do to you what Lily Foster did to your brother.”

She finally took a breath, her chest heaving. The silence among them was shattering because in it her words took on a power that was fueled to ever greater heights by everything that had passed before she spoke them.

Charlie was the one to speak. “Lily made my brother happy,” he said with some dignity.

Caroline gave a short laugh. “Oh for God’s sake. You’re as big a fool as your stepfather. God in heaven, why am I surrounded by such pathetic men?”

Which was when Charlie left them. He said only, “I’m not discussing India with you, Mum. And clearly, there’s nothing I can do here,” and he was gone.

Years of living with her had told Alastair what to expect next: the on-the-edge-of-a-knife alteration in Caroline that was soon in coming. Where one might consider a further rampage as a distinct possibility—launching an attack upon the nearest person, overturning tables, crushing the glass of photographs beneath her feet—he knew that this would not be her way. She stumbled back to the chair that Charlie had arranged for her. She sat there, looking stunned at his departure, as if someone had slapped her hard across both cheeks. Her eyes filled.

“Why do I hurt the people I love?” she said. When Alastair did not reply—for what, indeed, was there to say in answer to such a question—she began to weep. “What’s wrong with me? I didn’t intend things to turn out like this. I didn’t want my
life
to turn out like this. Oh, I
wish
I’d been the one to use that toothpaste. I wish I’d shoved the entire mess of it down my throat. The world would be a better place now if I’d done that. That’s what you think, isn’t it, Alastair?”

He said, “I don’t think anything, Caro.”

“Ah, well . . . Yes. That’s exactly what I’d expect of you.”

So he left her. He’d made this drive to Thornford. He had to cleanse himself of all that had gone on with his wife and his stepson.

He entered Sharon’s house. He’d seen her car, so he knew that, at last, she was at home. There was music playing from the kitchen where she kept a radio tucked towards the back of one of the work tops. He followed the sound of it, and there she was. He merely watched her for a moment.

She was cleaning her cupboards. Everything had been removed from them and was now arrayed before her. Wisely, she was turning each package and tin to examine its best-by date. As he stood there, she tossed into the nearby rubbish bin a small half-filled bag of coconut.

He said her name.

She shrieked, turned. She clutched her throat. “Such a fright!” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in. And you’ve caught me in the midst of
such
a mess.”

“Autumn cleanup?” he asked her.

“That’s exactly what,” she said. “Has something happened, Alastair? Because how you look . . .”

“You’ve not had my messages about the coppers?”

“Oh yes, I did get the message.”

“And you know not to let them inside. You’ve no need to. They’ll make you think there’s a need, and they’ll make you think it’s owed them. But you’ve not got to do a single thing.”

Sharon’s face softened. She tied the strings of the rubbish bag, and she carried it to the door, placing it in the dust bin outside. She turned back to him and her expression was as fond as it had ever been. She said to him, “It’s how you care for me.”

“What is?”

“Why I’m yours.”

He felt completely unburdened when he heard those words. He crossed to where the radio was, and he turned the knob to shut it off. In the silence it seemed to him that he could hear not only his own heart but hers as well, and it seemed to him that they beat in unison.