car until mine’s ready.’
Eddie panicked. He felt like a smoker having his cigarettes confiscated.
‘But I might—’
‘Might what?’ Pru’s delicate eyebrows lifted. ‘Need it? Oh no, you won’t need it, Eddie. You’re banned.’
Chapter 13
By the time Pru arrived back at the scene of the crash, someone else had got there before her.
The Mini was still lying on its side in the ditch but the five bulging black bin liners she had piled on to the back seat were gone.
This was a major blow; Pru’s landlord didn’t know it yet, but paying the rent depended rather heavily on the contents of those bags.
Pru, who had astonished herself this morning – she’d never been that bold and assertive with anyone in her life – now felt her eyes begin to prickle with distinctly unassertive tears. All her good clothes, fifteen years’ worth, had been stolen. It had taken her hours to wash, press and check everything, making sure no buttons were missing, no hems coming undone. The woman who ran the designer as- new shop in Carlton Street, the Changing Room, had been keen to take as many of Pru’s outfits, with their impressive labels, as she wanted to be rid of.
Pru didn’t want to be rid of any of them but it was fast becoming a question of selling either her clothes or her body, and she couldn’t imagine anyone being interested just now in her scrawny frame. Selling the clothes, on the other hand, would give her enough for six months’ rent.
Pru stared at the Mini’s empty back seat and hanging-open doors and wondered who could have nicked them. Had a smartly dressed young businesswoman spotted the car on her way to work, stopped to make sure nobody was lying hurt, and taken a peek inside one of the bags? Maybe she’d pulled out the navy-blue Escada suit, held it up against herself and thought, ‘Size 10, what a stroke of luck, let’s see what else we’ve got here ...’ Then, clearly liking what she found, had she stowed the five bin bags in the boot of her own sporty little car and zoomed off to work, happy in the knowledge that that was her spring wardrobe sorted out?
Or had a gang of school kids found the bags, torn them open and dumped her clothes in the nearest pond in disgust?
‘Don’t fret about it,’ Marion Hayes declared when Pru finally turned up at Beech Farm. Arriving two hours late, and in a posh car, meant Marion’s curiosity was aroused. Before she started work, Pru was forced to sit down, eat Hob Nobs, drink tea and tell all.
‘That’s his problem, not yours.’ Marion dismissed Pru’s worries with an airy flick of the hand.
‘Just give him an estimate stating how much the stuff was worth. He’ll send it on to his insurance people. They’ll pay up.’
Pru nodded and tried to look suitably relieved. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Marion the whole story — about Eddie Hammond being banned and therefore uninsured — not out of any sense of loyalty, but because some things were simply safer left unsaid. She didn’t fancy being arrested and slung into prison for aiding and abetting a criminal.
She couldn’t help wondering, either, just how suspicious Eddie was going to be when she suddenly presented him with a hefty additional bill for stolen frocks.
I mean, how likely did it sound, Pru thought gloomily, thousands of pounds’ worth of designer labels being nicked from the back of a clapped-out Mini? She used to buy shoes that cost more than that car.
‘Well, at least you weren’t hurt,’ said Marion, draining her tea and standing up as the clock in the hall struck nine. ‘Time I was out of here. The cows’ll be wondering when they’re going to get fed. I’ll leave you in peace.’
* * *
When Pru had finished washing up the breakfast things she scrubbed the kitchen floor. While that was drying she vacuumed through downstairs. Next she cleaned the drawing room windows.
When the floor was dry in the kitchen she threw a great pile of muddy jeans into the washing machine. Then she sat down at the table to polish silver and listen to a radio phone-in on the subject of dishonesty.
‘When my husband’s been horrible to me,’ Teresa from Tunbridge Wells was confessing with a guilty giggle, ‘I wait until he’s asleep and pinch a fiver out of his wallet. The next day I spend it on chocolate.’
Pru idly considered phoning up the programme to say if anyone listening had her bin bags, could they please give them back?
She imagined herself on the radio, appealing to the thief’s better nature: ‘The thing is, I know they’re nice clothes, but please don’t think I’m rich. Because I’m not, any more. I’m horribly broke.’
At this point, the presenter would enquire gently: ‘Pru, if it’s not too personal a question, what brought this about?’
‘Well, Gary, let me put it this way. Two months ago I had a wonderful husband, a perfect home.
I employed a cleaning woman. Now I have no husband, no home, and I work as a cleaning woman.’
‘Pru, that’s terrible. But how did it happen?’
‘How did it happen? Gary, I’ll tell you how it happened. Some husbands do the routine thing, they have flings with their secretaries. But my husband had to be different, Gary. He didn’t even have the decency to have an affair with his secretary, oh no, he had to be different, didn’t he? He had to go and do it with our cleaner.’
‘Pru, are you all right?’
Pru leapt a foot out of her chair. Marion was standing in the doorway giving her an extremely odd look.
Horrified, Pru realised she was pressing a half-polished silver candlestick to her ear, holding it like a telephone.
Hastily she pretended to be testing its temperature against her sizzling cheek. ‘Oh hi! Amazing, don’t you think, how the harder you rub, the warmer it gets?’
‘Pru, you could have bumped your head in the crash.’ Marion sounded nervous. ‘Maybe you should see a doctor after all.’
Liza had never really felt guilty before. It was awful; she didn’t like it one bit. She
