about you finding out than he was about me. He says your friendship is important to him.'
'He's a bloody hypocrite.'
I didn't disagree. 'Why do you care?' I asked. 'As you said yourself it was dead and buried years ago.'
But Jock didn't want to be reminded of his own mealy-mouthed platitudes. 'He got me to lie for him.'
'You were happy to do it,' I pointed out.
'I might have felt differently if I'd known he was with Libby.'
I lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. 'Who's the hypocrite now?'
He turned away, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.
'In any case,' I went on, 'I'm betting it was Libby who pushed him into it. The police were asking everyone in the street if they'd seen or heard anything at the time of the accident, and I think she was afraid someone would say they'd spotted Sam leaving your house around nine o'clock. It was safer all 'round if he could deny it and say he was with you at our place.'
The steps from bewilderment to hate were short and ugly and could be measured in their passage across his face. I had taken those steps myself and recognized the signs. Yet the object of his hatred was not the man who'd betrayed him, but the woman. 'She loved making a fool of me, you know. She's probably been wetting herself for years knowing I was the one who covered their tracks.'
I shook my head. 'You shouldn't dwell on it. If Sam had been anything more to Libby than a stopgap lover, you'd have been out on your ear and he and I wouldn't still be married.'
'I was out anyway,' he said angrily. 'I never had a chance.'
'You had the same chances I did,' I said coolly. 'If either of us had known what was going on, then both our marriages would have ended in divorce. Because we didn't, yours held together a little longer and mine survived. But yours was on the rocks already, Jock, and you can't blame Sam for that. He was a symptom, not a cause.'
He began a rambling defense of his own part in that long-dead relationship. Did I have any idea what it was like to be rejected by someone I loved? Why would he have taken up with Sharon if Libby had shown the slightest bit of interest m him? What did I think it did to a man's self-esteem to have to pay for sex? Of course he hadn't told Sam about her. No man in his right mind would want his friends laughing at him behind his back...
Listening to him expose his heartache in that room stuffed with hidden secrets, I was more amused than sympathetic. Was he so blind to his own duplicity that double standards held no embarrassment for him? And why did he think he could trust me with his pain, when mine was older, more monstrous and a great deal crueller? Like Sam, he saw himself more sinned against than sinning, and, like Sam, his belligerence grew as his own guilt paled before the guilt of others.
When he finally ran out of steam, I stood up and pulled on my rucksack. 'I wouldn't waste any more time on it if I were you,' I said kindly. 'It won't change anything, just make you angry.'
'If that's what you wanted you should have left me in ignorance.' He watched morosely as I checked to see I'd left nothing behind. 'Why didn't you?'
'I didn't think it was fair.'
He gave a mirthless laugh. 'Well, maybe I don't put such a high price on fairness as you do. Did you think about that? Sam and I go back a long way. Maybe I'd have been happier not knowing.'
I was sure he was right. It was truly said that what you don't know can't hurt you, and Sam and he could have gone on forever, the one lying about his stalwart support of his friend, the other lying about his success. It was also truly said that misery loves company and I laid a quiet bet with myself that Jock-a man not given to suffering in silence-would pick up the telephone after I left and offload some of his misery onto my husband.
It seemed eminently fair to me-justice demands a penalty-but whether they would ever speak again was questionable. I wasn't troubled by it. I had waited a very long time for my pound of flesh.
CURRAN HOUSE
Whitehay Road
Torquay
Devon
*18*
My last port of call that day was a small 1930s semi in Isleworth with pebble-dashed walls and lattice-style windows. It was too far to walk so I took a taxi from Richmond station and asked the driver to wait in case there was no one at home or the occupants refused to speak to me. I heard a dog bark as I rang the bell, then the door was flung open by a small curly haired boy, and a Great Dane came bounding out to circle 'round me, growling. 'Mu-mmy!' the child screamed. 'Satan's going to bite a lady. Mu-mmy!'
