‘Can’t you guess?’
Unfortunately she could – and was proved right.
‘She couldn’t stand the hostility of the girls. Selfish little bitches.’
This one sure knew how to divide a family, Martha thought. Privately she felt that Christabel could have held back, bided her time. What was the hurry anyway? Simon had been widowed for a year. Why on earth did he feel he had to rush into
A thought struck her. ‘Simon,’ she said. ‘Whose idea was it to be married?’
‘Hers,’ he said shortly. ‘She’d had a boyfriend she was engaged to and he cheated on her. She said she felt insecure unless she was married. He persistently refused to marry her. I wasn’t going to tell you this, Martha, but she got pregnant, hoping he would marry her. He not only refused to but insisted if they were to stay together that she should have an abortion, poor girl. She was devastated. At about the time that I was feeling so vulnerable so was she. It was inevitable we should get together and comfort one another. The poor child.’
Something stirred in Martha, the smallest of understandings of a situation.
But she said nothing except: ‘Are you all right? Do you want to come round here? Drown your sorrows? You can stay if you want.’
He heaved a great big sad sigh. ‘Yes – no. I don’t know.’
She allowed him to be silent for a while.
‘No, I’d better not. I’ve already had a couple of whiskies. I’m probably over the limit. The last thing I want is to lose my driving licence. It’d be the last straw. I’d better stay here.’
She would have offered to drive across herself but it was late. She was tired and she didn’t want to push her attentions on him. Not for the first time she wished Martin was around. He would have jumped in the car, shared a ‘jar’ or two with his pal, talked over ‘varsity days’ and seen his friend through this dark hour which Martha believed would be shorter than Simon imagined.
He continued speaking, sounding quite sorry for himself. ‘I suppose at the back of my mind I suspected that it would prove a temporary thing but when she wanted to get married…’ His voice trailed away. ‘I needed someone to need me. And you must admit it, Martha, she’s very beautiful.’
‘Mmm,’ she said conscious that acknowledging a much younger woman’s ‘beauty’ was just a little too large of a horse pill for her to swallow.
Simon gave a bitter laugh. ‘I know what you’re going to say, Martha,’ he said. ‘I was trying to recapture my youth. I don’t know. Maybe I was. Maybe it was just loneliness or lust.’ He gave another mirthless, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t know but I can’t ever forgive the girls for putting their own prejudices before my happiness.’
Martha knew she must tread very carefully but she could not see Simon make such a sweeping statement of alienation of his daughters without defending them on Evelyn’s behalf.
‘Maybe it was less to do with them wanting to block your happiness,’ she said tentatively, ‘and more to do with them seeing you as vulnerable, wanting to protect you from hurt. Perhaps they didn’t think this relationship was right for you, that it would not lead to happiness. At least not long term. They’ve lost their mother, Simon, and although I admit I didn’t really know Christabel, certainly not well enough to make a judgement on her character, she appeared very different from Evelyn.’
‘But Evelyn’s dead,’ he said. ‘However nice, however beautiful, however lovely, warm, comfortable and loving she was, she is not here for me now.’
His words struck her. He had never expressed this selfish grief before.
‘No, Simon,’ she said, very softly. ‘Evelyn is not here. Not through her own choice. You perhaps need to allow your grief to come out a little longer before you can form another relationship.’
‘But, Martha, I hate it,’ he said viciously. ‘I hate these long evenings alone. No one to holiday with or come home to at the end of a day. I hate it.’
‘Be careful, Simon,’ she said. ‘You’re a very wealthy man in a very vulnerable state. Be very careful.’
‘Thanks for the advice,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have one more whisky and then take one of Evelyn’s sleeping tablets and go to bed.’
‘Good night,’ she said, struggling not to sound cross with him.
When he had hung up she sat and stared at the silent, moving pictures on the television screen. Simon had said something that had a bearing on the case. There was the obvious connection of Alice in an equally disturbed state finding oblivion through alcohol and sleeping tablets. Yes, there was that. But there was something else too. It was the reference to what lay people call an abortion but medics call a termination. Terminations of pregnancy are not legal after 24 weeks unless there is a specific and serious medical defect in the foetus. She knew that as a medic.
But the child who had been brought to the hospital would have shown no sign of a medical defect until it was born. And it had been a full term foetus. Not an abortion. So why did she feel instinctively that it had a bearing on the case?
She went to sleep with the question still buzzing around inside her.
FIFTEEN
Simon rang again first thing Tuesday morning making it the second morning she had been awakened by the telephone. At this rate she wouldn’t even need an alarm clock, she thought, stretching out a hand for the receiver.
‘I’ve rung to apologize, Martha,’ he said, speaking in a short, abrupt manner. ‘I feel such a fool. I should have remembered that whisky makes me maudlin. It really wasn’t a good idea to dump it all on you. I was in my cups last night and have the headache this morning to prove it. Again – I apologize -’ he laughed – ‘most humbly. You’re going to think I’m an idiot,’ he continued, ‘or worse a prat, but I sort of needed to do something stupid. I feel much better for it this morning. And,’ he said grandly, ‘to prove how very sorry I am for dumping all that on your lovely shoulders I want to take you out for dinner.’ He paused for a second. ‘If we’re still friends, that is.’
‘Of course,’ she said, smiling at his penitent humility – not his usual attitude. ‘Although neither the apology nor the dinner is necessary. I consider it a compliment that you chose to speak to me.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Even if you were pissed. It’s a mark of true friendship, Simon. Anyone is willing to share happiness but it’s true friends who confide in you in their hour of adversity and expose their vulnerability as you did. Besides – I really owe you a dinner.’
‘How so?’
‘You’ve given me insight into one of my current cases.’
‘Which one?’
‘I can’t tell you, Simon. It’ll probably all come out in the end and then I promise I will explain all.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry to be so mysterious but I’m a bit tied up at the moment so can we hang back on the dinner until this case has come to court? Then I can really look forward to the evening.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You’ll ring me?’
‘I will, Simon,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
‘Until then, Martha.’
As she put the phone down she reflected on Simon Pendlebury and his mysterious past, both recent and distant. He had been at university with Martin and they had been unlikely friends. Different both in personality and in their looks. Simon had been the good looking one while Martin… well, Martin had had the personality. Simon had initially been shy but had grown into a tall, handsome man who had married the gentlest of women, Evelyn. Martha had known Evelyn Pendlebury for almost as long as Simon and she had never heard her say an unkind or unpleasant word about anybody. Which could have made her appear bland, insincere, shallow even, when she was anything but. Evelyn had explained her lack of malice in typical humble and honest fashion. She had said to Martha that she simply ‘didn’t bother’ with anyone about whom she would want to say anything unpleasant. ‘I select my friends
