When Suzanne looked up Angela’s address in Winchester she found that it was near the centre of the city, and she imagined the two of them, old friends, soaking up the historic atmosphere of the ancient college and cathedral precincts, visiting Jane Austen’s tomb and perhaps her house at Chawton nearby, places she hadn’t been to since she was a child. But Angela had other ideas.
She had been divorced for four months, and was still working through some of the issues. From what Suzanne could gather, the separation had been relatively straightforward-Angela had got the house in Winchester and her husband the flat in London, and neither money nor the adult children had been a problem. But the matter of his thirty-year-old girlfriend, which she’d begun by dismissing as grotesque and pathetic, had affected her in ways she still hardly knew how to acknowledge. For a start, the relationship hadn’t collapsed within a few months as she’d predicted, but was looking increasingly solid. But it was the inescapable contrasts, between the other woman’s youth and her own age, between beauty in its full flush on the one hand and laboured facsimile on the other, that had gradually got to her in deep and harrowing ways. She had started out shrugging these things off as spurious, but they had come to mean everything. Her life was her own, but it was over. What did she have?
Well, booze for a start, and from the moment that Suzanne walked through the front door and the first glass of bubbly was thrust into her hand, she found herself caught up in a race towards oblivion, quite liberating and amusing at first, then increasingly rather alarming. It was clear that Angela had already had a few, but she carried them pretty well, greeting Suzanne with tremendous warmth.
‘Oh God, when you contacted me I just couldn’t believe it! Seeing you again-you haven’t changed a bit!-takes me back to those wonderful days, when everything seemed possible and just so, so wonderful!’
But she didn’t really want to talk about those wonderful days, about which she had only the haziest memories. What she really wanted to talk about was being deserted for a very much younger woman.
‘No, look, I have to say she really is a very charming person. The kids tell me she is, and they would know, having seen so much more of her than I have. And very pretty. Well, good luck to them both. I feel
… like I have a whole new life in front of me. It’s a fabulous feeling. God, I’ve even started smoking again, after thirty years! That’s how old she is, incidentally. Did I mention that? Come on, drink up. A toast-to real friends.’
There was no sign of food in the kitchen, and when Suzanne said she’d like to take Angela out for dinner, there was talk about a really marvellous little restaurant not far away, but when Suzanne suggested she phone up to book, it being a Saturday night, Angela got distracted in the middle of searching for their number when she found a photo of herself and her family in happier days, which provoked a sudden tearful collapse.
They eventually crawled into their beds without dinner and without having talked about Dougie Warrender and Notting Hill.
The next morning, very hungover, Suzanne made her way downstairs towards the smell of coffee. Angela seemed to be in slightly better shape than her, and apologised profusely for being such a bad host.
‘God, we didn’t have a thing to eat, did we? But I’m going to make it up to you, with breakfast for a start. Bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms…’
Suzanne shook her head vigorously, the motion making her feel even more nauseous. ‘No, really, Angela. A bit of toast and coffee will be just fine for me.’
But Angela had made up her mind, and Suzanne sat at the kitchen table, trying not to retch, as her friend attacked the sizzling frying pan.
‘So you met Dougie Warrender again! What’s he like? As charming as ever?’
‘Yes, just the same.’ She was about to say ‘much older, of course’, but wisely decided to avoid that tack. ‘Very rich. He’s a merchant banker or something. And the houses, yours and theirs, are immaculate. Have you been back there recently?’
‘No, not since we moved, ages ago. And you say that dragon of a mother of his is still there too? You had a real thing for Dougie, didn’t you? Did you have sex?’
‘No, of course not! I was only thirteen.’
‘I did, with his cousin Jack. But maybe that was the next year. Didn’t I tell you?’
‘No, I don’t think so. You were sent off to boarding school.’
‘Yes. In fact that’s why I was sent off to boarding school.’ She giggled. ‘He was ever so gentle, and afterwards he told me all the family secrets. I wonder what he’s doing now. I might get in touch.’
‘I’m afraid he’s dead, Angela. Dougie told me. Heart attack, ten years ago.’
‘Oh God.’
Suzanne saw Angela’s shoulders slump, and rapidly tried to head off a change of mood. ‘What family secrets?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember. We should have champagne and orange juice for our celebratory breakfast.’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t, Angela.’
‘You’ll feel much better if you do. Hair of the dog.’
‘No, really.’
‘Oh well. Here we go.’
She placed a plate of heaped fried stuff under Suzanne’s nose, then sat down with her own and began to tuck in.
‘In India,’ she said suddenly. ‘What Dougie got up to in India, that’s what Jack’s secrets were all about.’
‘Really? What did he get up to? He didn’t tell me much, as far as I can remember. In fact I can hardly remember him saying anything at all. He just stood around or hit a ball in the gardens, looking sultry and gorgeous. Any time he actually spoke to me I was reduced to a jelly.’
‘It was about a girl… What do they call them in India, is it amah or ayah? A nanny or housekeeper?’
‘Dougie had a love affair with his nanny?’
‘No.’ Angela giggled. ‘With his ayah’s daughter, I think. I can’t remember much, except that it ended tragically somehow. Come on, eat up.’
‘How tragically?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, doomed teenage romance, I suppose, class and race, that sort of thing. Are you sure about the champagne? I think I will.’
Suzanne managed to escape before lunch, when the first gin and tonic appeared, pleading a crisis at the shop.
‘You have a shop!’ Angela beamed. ‘How marvellous! I’ve often thought of starting up a little business, you know-a little hobby, really. Perhaps we could go into partnership together. Maybe something organic, beauty products or something. What does your shop sell?’
‘Antiques.’
‘Oh.’ Angela’s face dropped, and Suzanne made for the car.
•
Brock too had woken with a hangover that morning-mild, but enough to make him feel grumpy as he shuffled about the kitchen, making coffee and toast. It wasn’t just the hangover; he had woken with the clear conviction that Suzanne had been lying to him. It was such an ugly and improbable thought that he’d tried to dismiss it, but it wouldn’t go away. Yesterday he had been merely exasperated by her contacting the Warrenders during his murder investigation, but now her secretiveness and evasive explanations seemed to cast that intrusion in a murkier light. Why hadn’t she told him she was coming up to London last Wednesday? And who was the nameless, genderless friend from the past that she’d had to spend the night with?
He stewed on this for a while, then swore and tried to immerse himself in the paperwork he’d brought home. After a couple of hours of that he put on an overcoat and set off down the lane that ran along the railway embankment to the house of a neighbour, whose dog he sometimes took to the park. When they reached it, he recalled that the last time he’d done this was with Suzanne’s grandchildren, Stewart and Miranda. It occurred to him how much he would miss them all, if things fell apart with Suzanne again.
•
The shop was busy when Suzanne returned to Battle, the spring weather bringing people out for a drive down to the coast. Her assistant Ginny was barely coping with the press of customers in the crowded rooms, and Suzanne immediately hung up her coat and got to work. It remained like that all day.
She’d had no time for a lunch break, and was feeling weary on her feet when the Dutch couple, who had been
