bitterly, ‘but he still has to know.’
Guy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And from Janey, of all people. So much, he decided, for mutual trust.
Maxine had gone to the supermarket and the children were at school. Janey, sitting bolt upright on a kitchen chair with her wet hair plastered to her head, had refused his offer of coffee and had come straight to the point. She was also, very obviously, on Thea’s side.
‘So what you’re telling me,’ said Guy evenly, ‘is that your mother has been having an affair with my father. They’ve practically been living together. And you knew all about it.’
He was clearly angry. And Thea had been right, thought Janey. The fact that Oliver was dead wasn’t what was bothering him. The anger was directed solely at her.
‘I found out about it, yes.’ Struggling to curb her impatience, she pushed a damp strand of hair away from her eye. ‘But is that really important? OK, so you had a quarrel with him years ago but that’s over now. Guy, your father died last night. Josh and Ella will be upset even if you aren’t.’
‘You knew where he was all the time.’ It was as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’
Janey’s dark eyes flashed. The contrast between Thea’s terrible grief and this total lack of concern couldn’t have been more marked. ‘I thought about telling you,’ she said coldly. ‘And I decided against it. I’m glad now that I did.’
‘Did what?’ Maxine, buckling under the weight of six carrier bags, and even more sodden and bedraggled than Janey, appeared in the doorway. ‘Am I interrupting something personal here?’ Her eyebrows creased in suspicion. ‘Are you talking about me?’
Guy, assuming that Maxine was in on it too, didn’t say anything.
‘Oliver Cassidy died last night,’ Janey told her.
‘Oh my God, you’re not serious!’ For a moment, Maxine looked as if she didn’t know whether to laugh orcry. One of the carrier bags dropped to the floor with an ominous crash.
‘No, it’s a joke,’ snapped Guy.
‘So he wasn’t lying,’ Maxine wailed. ‘I knew he wouldn’t lie to me! Bloody Bruno . !’
‘What?’ Guy demanded, sensing that he hadn’t heard anything yet. He glared at Maxine.
‘Come on, out with it! What else has been going on that I don’t know about?’
Jesus,’ he sighed, when she had finished telling him.
‘Oh calm down.’ Maxine, having rummaged energetically through every carrier, finally located the chocolate digestives. ‘He’s dead now, so what does it matter? I’m just glad I let him see the kids,’ she added with renewed defiance. ‘Go on, have a biscuit.’
It was like a jigsaw puzzle, thought Guy. Everyone had been holding different pieces.
Maxine’s story was clearly news to Janey.
But the oddness of Janey’s presence in the house had apparently only just struck Maxine.
Turning to her sister and speaking through a mouthful of biscuit, she said, ‘I don’t understand.
Why are you here?’
‘Janey came to tell me about my father.’ Guy couldn’t resist it. It was, he decided, his turn to spring a surprise. Maxine frowned. ‘But how did she know?’
‘Your mother sent her over here.’ His eyes glittered with malicious pleasure. ‘My father, you see, was in her bed when he died.’
The funeral took place three days later. With typical thoroughness and attention to detail, Oliver Cassidy had made all the arrangements himself. Even he, however, hadn’t been able to organize the weather, which had gone from bad to atrocious. Trezale churchyard, cruelly exposed to the elements, was awash with freezing rain. The small funeral party had to struggle to stay standing against the force of the bitter, north-westerly gales as Oliver’s coffin was lowered slowly into the ground.
Back at Thea’s house afterwards, the sitting room was warm but the atmosphere remained distinctly chilly. Guy, barely speaking to anyone, looked bored. Douglas Burke, Oliver’s solicitor, had travelled down from Bristol to preside over the reading of the will as instructed by his late client and was anxious to get it over with so that he might return home to his extremely pregnant wife. Thea was desperately trying to contain her grief. Only the presence of Ella and Josh, who had insisted on attending the funeral, brightened the proceedings at all.
‘At least the food’s cheerful,’ Maxine murmured in Janey’s ear. Oliver had organized that too, making a private arrangement with the head chef from the Grand Rock where he had retained a room until the end though seldom visiting it. The hors d’oeuvres, arranged on silver platters, were ludicrously over the top; each stuffed cherry tomato had been precision carved, each quail’s egg painstakingly studded with caviar. The sculptured smoked-salmon mousse, a work of art in itself, could have graced a plinth in the Tate Gallery. The champagne was Taittinger.
‘There’s only us,’ Janey fretted. ‘It doesn’t seem right, but the solicitor insisted it was what Oliver wanted.’
She had phoned him herself, on her mother’s behalf. Her suggestion that an announcement should he placed in the Telegraph had been firmly rebuffed. Not until after the funeral, Oliver had apparently instructed. He didn’t want his gaggle of ex-wives descending on Trezale and upsetting Thea.
‘Look at Guy,’ whispered Maxine, giving him a mischievous wink just to annoy him.
‘Moody sod.’
‘I don’t think he’s ever going to speak to me again.’ Janey tried to sound as if she couldn’t care less. ‘He said I’d betrayed him.’
‘I suppose we all did.’ Maxine grinned. ‘I still think it’s funny. It was like a mass conspiracy, except none of us realized we were all separately involved.’
‘Poor Oliver. Poor Mum,’ sighed Janey, toying idly with an asparagus canape she didn’t have the heart to eat.
