A Regimental Affair (43 page)

Netta picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said. Ginny strained to try to hear the other voice, but it was just a garble. ‘No, she’s back … fine … yes … yes, please … absolutely … see you in a bit. Bye.’

Ginny looked inquiring. ‘It was Petroc,’ explained Netta. He’s been out in the Land Rover looking for you. Now he knows you’re safe he’s going to the school to pick up Jack.’

‘Oh shit! I’d forgotten.’ Ginny began to cry. ‘I can’t be trusted to do anything right. I didn’t even remember poor little Jack.’

‘But there’s no harm done. He doesn’t know you’ve forgotten him, and it’s no trouble for Petroc to get him.’

The door to the kitchen opened and Chris came in.

‘Ginny,’ he said, striding across to her. Ginny felt herself shrivel at the thought of the tongue-lashing she deserved to get from him. ‘Ginny, there’s something you and I need to get straight.’
Here it comes
, thought Ginny. He stopped beside her and perched on the edge of the table. Ginny was acutely aware of his thigh almost against her arm. She felt distinctly uncomfortable at his proximity. It would have been bad enough even if Netta had been the only person present, but to have his wife just a couple of feet away … the last thing she wanted was to give anyone else a reason to hate her. Weren’t there enough in the world already? She braced herself for his anger.

‘I’ve been out of my mind with worry about you.’

‘But …’ Ginny was puzzled.

‘Where the hell did you get to? I’ve had everyone I know looking for you. I thought you’d done something rash, something desperate. I’ve been imagining every ghastly scenario possible.’

This wasn’t how she’d expected the conversation to go. ‘But you were so angry with me. All that stuff connecting me with the hotel.’

‘Angry? With you?’ Chris shook his head. ‘God, no. I was furious with the paper for printing that load of shit, but I couldn’t give a stuff about the connection with you. There’s no way a story like that is likely to affect our business. It didn’t say anything bad about the hotel – almost the reverse. I’d have had to pay a fortune to get a picture of it in a national paper. Hell, I didn’t realise …’ He gave Ginny an anguished look. ‘Can you forgive me? The last thing I meant was to make things worse for you. I wanted to tell you that I admired you for what you’d done. Netta told me your motives. I think you’re fantastic, quite wonderful.’ He took her hand.

‘No,’ said Ginny, snatching it back. ‘Chris, please. This is all wrong.’ She shot Carole an apologetic look and edged her chair away from Chris. What was the man thinking?

It was Chris’s turn to look puzzled. ‘What is all wrong? I’m not with you.’ He took her hand again.

Ginny didn’t know what to say. Had he no shame? Such obvious comments, with his wife just there! Just because Carole was being unfaithful didn’t give him the right to drag her into the mess too. ‘Chris …’ she started. Then she looked at Carole. ‘Carole … I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ asked Carole, her face clouded with puzzlement. ‘What on earth for? Chris has said that you haven’t done the hotel any harm. Possibly the reverse. So why are you sorry?’

‘Look, I don’t want you to think that Chris … that I … that Chris thinks I …’

Carole looked puzzled. ‘Why on earth should I care what Chris thinks about you? Unless of course he was being unfair about you and your wonderful office skills.’

‘But …’ Ginny felt as though reality was bypassing her completely. What the hell was going on between these two?

Then Carole’s face cleared. ‘Ginny, you don’t think I’m married to Chris, do you?’

‘But the kids, the dog …?’

Carole and Chris roared with laughter. ‘They’re mine,’ said Carole. ‘They’re nothing to do with Chris. Christ, if they were it would give the island something to gossip about. We’re brother and sister-in-law.’

‘But …’ said Ginny, still not understanding. She looked at Chris. ‘… but you said you ran the hotel to support your family.’

‘So I do. Carole was married to my brother. He was drowned at sea eight years ago. He owned half the hotel, so now I share it with Carole. If we don’t make a profit, her kids starve.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Carole admonished gently.

‘So you don’t live together?’ Chris shook his head. ‘So when the dog hurt himself and you were worried about the blood on the carpet …?’

‘I was worried for Carole’s sake. Can you imagine the nausea of getting dozens of little blood-stained doggy paw-prints out of the best Axminster?’

Ginny laughed. ‘God, I got it so wrong. And when Vicki told me you had gone to the mainland and that Chris was in a mood because he thought you were having …’ Her voice petered out.

‘Vicki told you what?’ asked Carole, still laughing.

‘She thought you had gone to the mainland to see a man,’ mumbled Ginny, none too clearly.

‘I wish!’ said Carole with feeling. ‘My trip was much more prosaic. I think Vicki just feels I ought to be looking for someone else; that I’ve been without a partner for quite long enough now. No, I went across for nothing more exciting than a trip to Marks and Sparks. And that puts Chris in a bad mood as it means he has to do more of the chambermaiding duties, which he thinks are beneath him. He always gets in a temper when I escape for some shopping for a day or two.’

And while everyone laughed, Chris leant forward and kissed Ginny on the cheek.

That was nice
, thought Ginny. If he ever wanted to do that again, he’d be most welcome.

Debbie watched the removal men loading Taz’s possessions with cool satisfaction. The bitch was going, so that was a result. She wasn’t entirely surprised, and felt that she deserved some of the credit for ridding this place of such a troublesome neighbour. It had only been a month ago that she had run into Taz in the village post office.

‘Great to see you again,’ said Taz. ‘Now everything is back to normal, you and Danny must come and have some lunch.’

Debbie gave herself a mental shake to make sure she hadn’t misheard the invitation. ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘Normal? You call things normal?’

‘Well, compared to how they were in the new year.’ Taz smiled brightly.

‘Right.’ Debbie nodded. ‘Well, for your information I don’t think things are normal in the Davies household, and they won’t be for some time – if ever. And Ginny has resigned her commission, so she’s out of a job. Alisdair is still running the regiment with Richard’s help but as there still isn’t a second in command, nor an admin officer, they never get home before eight. But hey, I suppose things are pretty normal compared to the way they were when you legged it.’

Taz’s expression hardened. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Debbie, you can’t blame me for this. I was just doing my job.’

‘Just obeying orders, eh? That’s an excuse that, traditionally, hasn’t gone down too well with the British army. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get on.’ And with that she swivelled Danny’s pushchair round and swept out. She didn’t return home but went straight to Jayne Potts’ house to have a word with her about the local toddler group she organised.

Jayne listened as Debbie told her of Taz’s involvement in the scandal. ‘Blooming heck,’ she said. ‘I had no idea. Not a very friendly thing to do, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t. Look, I don’t want to interfere, but I don’t think the other mums would want to associate with her if they knew what she had done. I for one can’t trust her as far as I can throw her. She’s proved herself more than capable of using her friends to further her career, not caring about the consequences.’

‘So you want me to ban her from the toddler group?’

Debbie nodded.

‘I can’t promise that I will. I’ll have a word with some of the other mums – see what they say. If they agree with you … well, it’s my toddler group. I can run it how I want.’

A week later, Debbie had had an angry phone call from Taz.

‘It’s your doing, isn’t it?’ she said, without preamble.

Debbie knew exactly what she was referring to but she played dumb. ‘What’s that then, Taz?’

‘That Amelia has been banned from the toddler group.’

‘Has she? Oh dear.’

‘She has nothing to do with my job. She loved going to toddlers. Why should she get it in the neck because of something I did?’

‘I expect that’s exactly what Bob and Alice asked when Megan got dragged into things. She was nothing to do with her father’s job or his actions, now was she? But she had a terrible time for weeks after.’

‘That’s different.’

‘It isn’t, Taz. It’s exactly the same. If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t dish it. And personally, if I had people saying the sort of things about me that they’re saying about you, I wouldn’t want to hang around. No one likes you around here any more. You’re not welcome.’ And with that parting shot, Debbie put the phone down.

It was nice, she thought as she watched Taz’s furniture being loaded into the van, that her advice had been taken. The only fly in the ointment was seeing the ad in the local paper and discovering that Taz was set to make a healthy profit when she found a buyer for her house. Well, you couldn’t have everything, thought Debbie as she turned to the postbox and dropped a long letter to Ginny into it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A few weeks later, Alice watched the removal men pack up her possessions at Montgomery House.
Less than a year
, she thought. She sighed. She would have liked to stay longer, but it wasn’t possible. The new commanding officer was arriving in a few days so there was no way. And she wasn’t looking forward to the new place. She had seen the house they had been allocated for Bob’s next posting at the Ministry of Defence. It was a poky little four-bedroom box on the outskirts of London. Such a comedown after the space and opulence of this place, but it couldn’t be helped. She turned away from the activity she had been observing and picked up the cut-glass bowl from the table beside her. It was her leaving present from the officers’ wives. They had presented it to her at a surprise party held at Sarah’s house, and she had been genuinely touched by their real expressions of sorrow that she was leaving. She had found it hard not to get weepy but she had just about managed it. She had dragged up some self-control from somewhere and her eyes had stayed dry.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Bob.

‘Fine, I think,’ said Alice. ‘They reckon they’ll be done by tonight.’

‘That’s good.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll be glad to see the back of this place, what with one thing and another.’

‘Will you, dear?’ She looked away so he wouldn’t see the regret on her face. She didn’t feel a bit like that. She was going to miss this patch. She was going to miss her friends – real friends, not just acquaintances – the other wives who had stood by her and given her strength and who had got her through the darkest of days. The very wives over whom she had once had visions of lording it; to whom she had thought she would be able to show the correct way of doing things.
Well
, she thought,
it didn’t work like that
. She had been the one on the learning curve and she was grateful. She’d come a long way in the past year and she was a better person for it.

‘I fancy a beer before lunch,’ said Bob. ‘Anything for you?’

‘A stiff gin and tonic, please,’ said Alice. ‘I need some medicine to get me through yet another move.’

Kate Lace

A Regimental Affair
A Question of Loyalty
The Eye of the Storm

For more information about
Kate Lace

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Accent Press
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Published by Accent Press Ltd 2015

ISBN 9781783757992

Copyright ©
Kate Lace
2015

First published 2003

The right of
Kate Lace
to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN