The Four of Us (49 page)

She'd suspected that Kiki might have had a hand in Simon's decision to end their love affair, but she'd never been certain of it; had never wanted to be certain of it. Now it confronted her in a way there was no avoiding.

She closed her eyes, the past of thirty years ago as close and as real as yesterday. If Kiki hadn't so cruelly sunk all her dreams for her then there would never have been any question of her giving Destiny up for adoption. She and Simon would have married and, with Destiny, would have lived at Petts Wood. Destiny would never have been taken to Spain by Rupert; would never have drowned. Destiny would be with her here, now.

She opened her eyes. And she would never have had the life she had lived with Ted. There would have been no love-filled little house in Rotherhithe. No Millie, Joanne, Josh and Lucy. What had happened had happened. Kiki wasn't to blame. If Simon had truly loved her – as Ted had truly loved her – then no amount of Kiki's pleadings would have made him change his mind about marrying her.

She looked across at Kiki, Kiki who no longer seemed at least fifteen years younger than her actual age, but who, perhaps for the first time in her life, was visibly sick with anguished regret and guilt.

‘Nothing is all down to you, Kiki,' she said quietly. ‘What you did caused me a lot of pain, but the aftermath of that pain wasn't your fault – Simon didn't have to take notice of what you said and I had a choice as to whether to keep Destiny or have Artemis and Rupert adopt her. There are no hard feelings, Kiki. Truly. What matters now is the present, not the past. And the present is the four of us being together again, just like we used to be.'

Kiki bit her lip and then, without a word, spun round, heading out of the room.

‘Kiki!' Primmie slammed her glass of whisky down on to the coffee table. ‘Kiki, come back!' She ran across the room after her. ‘Don't leave, Kiki! There's absolutely no need for you to leave!'

Out in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs, Kiki paused. ‘I'm not leaving, Primmie,' she said, turning to look at her, one hand on the newel post. ‘I'm going to your bedroom. I want to see Destiny's photograph. I want to see if my little half-sister looked anything at all like me.'

The next morning Kiki did something she had never, by choice, done before. She got up early. With Rags at her heels, she let herself quietly out of the house and set off down the track. In the meadow Black-Hearted Alice was tearing grass and thistles out of the ground, and the air was so still she could hear the sound of her jaws chewing relentlessly. There was no sign of Maybelline, who presumably didn't come out to graze until after she had been milked. Marvelling at the way Primmie had turned herself from a Londoner into a woman who could quite equably milk cows and goats she opened Ruthven's double gates.

It was a glorious morning, full of the promise of Indian-summer heat, and she paused, taking off her trainers, tying the laces together in order to hang them round her neck. Then, closing the gates behind her, she set off across the dew-wet grass, towards the headland and the sea.

There wasn't another soul in sight. With Rags repeatedly streaking off in front of her and then pounding back to circle her and race off again, it was as if she had the whole of Cornwall to herself. The two low-lying arms of the cove were a muted, misty green, the sea a shimmering, glittering silver.

With Rags's white plume of a tail leading the way she slipped and slithered down the shallow incline to the ribbon of sand, grateful for the emptiness and the tranquillity, aware she had a lot to think about.

That her father had died having had a child he had known nothing about seemed, to her, surreal. How on earth had Primmie managed to keep such a secret? She picked up some small flat stones from the shoreline and began spinning them out to sea. Rags, thinking it a game, plunged into the waves after them. She watched him frolicking in the shallows, reliving the moment in Primmie's bedroom when she had looked down at the face of her little half-sister. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such a mind-blowing, absolutely indescribable experience.

The photograph had been taken at a birthday party, for Destiny had been holding a balloon in one hand, printed with the words ‘YOU ARE 4', and her dress was a ruffled and flounced pink party dress. Her eyes were shining and she was laughing with glee. Somehow, she had expected that Destiny's hair would be red, like hers. It wasn't. It was fair, like her father's; like Primmie's. And, like Primmie's, it was curly. Destiny had her short, kitten-shaped face, though. And her stubborn chin.

She sat down on the sand, hugging her knees, grieving for the half-sister she had never known, overcome by all she had missed out on.

She had hardly cried since childhood – and very rarely then – but tears rolled mercilessly down her cheeks and on to her clasped hands.

Rags, seaweed in his mouth, padded up to her, shaking water from his fur. For once she ignored him. Dropping seaweed from his mouth he flopped down beside her, and not for a long time – not until his coat had dried in the early morning sunshine – did either of them move.

When she returned to Ruthven, it was to find both Matt and Hugo in the kitchen, drinking mugs of coffee.

Primmie was grilling bacon.

Geraldine, wearing a narrow turquoise dress, her silk-black hair hanging long and heavy down her back, was seated at the kitchen table, chatting to Matt and making notes in a small notebook as they talked.

Artemis, still wearing her floral dress and jacket, was recalling a number on her mobile.

Hugo, flamboyant in a pink sweater and grey slacks, was scrutinizing a drawing that seemed to consist of nothing but brilliantly coloured, geometric shapes.

‘Brett Kenwyn is your best bet if you want an all-round, dependable workman,' Matt was saying to Geraldine. ‘He's a carpenter by trade, but he turns his hand to practically anything. He'll certainly be able to convert the barn into sleeping accommodation and he'll knock up a stand for Primmie to milk Alice on in no time at all.'

‘And his phone number?'

As Matt gave it to her, Artemis said despairingly, ‘Orlando isn't replying and Sholto's mobile is switched off.'

‘Why are you ringing them?' As she asked the question, Kiki crossed the kitchen to where Primmie was now carving thick slices of bread.

‘I need them to collect luggage I took with me on the cruise. Plus I want personal possessions I treasure taking out of the house before that bitch Serena rifles through them.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to do that personally?' Hugo put the diagram for the proposed potager down on the kitchen table, giving her his full attention. ‘I could take you. I'd quite like a long drive to … where would we be going?'

‘Gloucestershire … but I couldn't ask it of you, Hugo. It's too far and besides …' Her cheeks flushed pink. ‘Besides, collecting my things personally will be a little awkward.'

Kiki, busy forking slices of crispy bacon on to the hunks of bread, said impatiently, ‘For crying out loud, Temmy, how can it be awkward? It's your
home
, for God's sake. And you are going to fight for it, aren't you? You're not just going to accept this statement of Rupert's that it's his and he's keeping it?'

‘No, of course I'm not.' Artemis looked affronted. ‘Though I'll only be doing so on principle. I don't want to live in it again – not after Serena's polluted it.'

‘Well, then,' Kiki began passing around a plate stacked high with bacon butties, ‘what's the problem?'

Artemis flushed even pinker. ‘Before I walked out of the house I was a little violent.'

‘Well, if you threw everything you could lay your hands on at him, no one could blame you.' Geraldine closed her notebook. ‘Just as long as they were things he treasured and you didn't give a damn for.'

‘They weren't things at all.'

Everyone looked at her with interest.

Looking deeply uncomfortable, Artemis said, ‘I hit him. With my fist. On his jaw.'

Hugo choked on his coffee. Kiki gave a whoop of delight. Geraldine cracked with laughter. Primmie said incredulously, ‘You mean you
decked
him?'

Artemis nodded.

‘And hurt him?'

‘Well, he was flat on his back and not moving.'

Kiki and Geraldine collapsed in gales of laughter. Primmie tried to keep a straight face, and couldn't. Matt looked horrified. Hugo looked dazed.

‘And so you see Hugo taking me to the house to collect things might be a little awkward,' Artemis finished with masterly understatement.

All eyes turned to Hugo. Manfully he came to terms with the realization that his Rubenesque goddess wasn't quite as helpless as he had imagined. He reminded himself of how shamefully she had been provoked and indignation, on her behalf, flooded through him. ‘Let's set off now,' he said decisively. ‘We can be there and back by early evening.'

‘But what will Rupert think?' It was a reflex question born of thirty-two years of married life.

‘He doesn't know you and …'

Kiki groaned. Geraldine rolled her eyes in despair. Primmie said patiently, ‘If Rupert was to say that his affair with Serena had all been a ghastly mistake and he wanted a reconciliation, would you agree to one?'

Artemis paused for an infinitesimal moment and then shook her head. ‘No.'

‘And so you want a divorce as much as he does?'

‘Yes.' There was surprise at the realization in Artemis's voice. ‘Yes, Primmie. I do.'

‘Then it doesn't matter
what
Rupert thinks about you being in the company of a man he knows nothing about. Far better to have Hugo take you and for you to collect everything you want yourself than to ask one of your sons to do it for you, which is what Rupert – and Orlando and Sholto – will be expecting you to do.'

‘And if you don't leave now, this very minute, I shall never speak to you again,' Geraldine said in mock severity as Artemis still hesitated.

Artemis hesitated no longer.

‘I'll get my handbag from the bedroom,' she said to Hugo. ‘And be right with you.'

She was back downstairs a minute later, her clutch bag in her hand. Automatically, without thinking about it, everyone followed Hugo and her out to Hugo's parked Mercedes.

‘They make a nice couple, don't they?' Primmie said as Hugo opened the passenger-seat door for Artemis.

Geraldine chuckled. ‘Give them time, Primmie. Artemis only left the marital home yesterday.'

‘Maybe; but her marriage has been over for ages, probably for years – though I don't think she's aware, yet, of just how long it's been dead.'

‘It sometimes takes a long time to realize things.' Kiki's eyes were on the Mercedes as Hugo drove it out of the yard and on to the track leading down between the fields to the gates. ‘I realized something only this morning.'

‘And that was?' Geraldine, too, was still watching the car.

‘That yesterday, when you said that my running off with Francis on your wedding morning was the lowest, shittiest, most despicable act possible – you were right. It was. And I want to tell you that I'm sorry, Geraldine. I shouldn't have done it.'

Primmie, standing only a foot or so away from them, waited for Geraldine's response with bated breath.

It was a long time in coming.

At last, as the Mercedes turned out of the gates inland, beginning to pick up speed, she said, without turning her head towards Kiki, ‘Apology accepted – and there's something I want to say to you, too.'

Kiki looked towards her, her eyes apprehensive.

Aware that Kiki was expecting her to say something heavy, the corner of Geraldine's beautifully sculpted mouth twitched slightly. ‘Congratulations on taking Rags to the beauty parlour. He looks the bee's knees.'

Later, as Geraldine walked with her across the meadow, towards the hen arks, Primmie was tempted to say how glad she was that the estrangement with Kiki had finally been laid to rest. She decided against it. Just because an apology had been given, and accepted, didn't mean the subject matter was no longer hurtful.

‘Do you always keep the hens in their runs until midday?' Geraldine asked, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘I thought they were happiest running free.'

‘They are.' Primmie put the basket she'd brought with her on the grass and knelt beside the first of the arks. ‘And this is when I let them out – at midday, when they've finished laying. If I let them out earlier they lay their eggs under hedges and all over the place and I never find half of them.'

She slid the door back that gave access to the nesting boxes.

Watching her as she began lifting the eggs and placing them in the basket, Geraldine said, ‘There's something I need to tell you, Primmie.'

Primmie stopped what she was doing and leaned back on her heels, her tummy muscles tightening. This was the moment she'd been waiting for – and dreading – ever since she had realized that Geraldine was ill.

Geraldine sat down, her long legs coiled elegantly beneath her, her back against the wire mesh of the hen run. ‘I'm suffering from something called severe aplastic anaemia,' she said starkly. ‘Unless I have a bone marrow transplant and the chances of having one aren't high – it's terminal.'

The blood drained from Primmie's face. She felt her head swim and for one dizzying moment thought she was going to faint.

Aware of the effect her news had had, Geraldine said. ‘I'm sorry, Primmie. It isn't the kind of news that can be broken gently.'

It was the understatement of all understatements.

Primmie pressed the back of her hand hard against her mouth, knowing that for Geraldine's sake she had to remain calm. If she were to give way to the howls of protest and anguish clutching at her throat, then Geraldine's self-control – control she must have battled hard and long for – would also break down.