‘Jonquil, as I say, is very volatile. She can agree to something one day and then totally disagree the next. For a long time I’ve been trying to get her to agree to the sale of the Goffham house. But she’s kept being resistant to the idea.’
‘Is that because she thinks it represents your marriage? That once that’s sold, it will be a kind of acknowledgement that the marriage is really over?’
‘God, no. Jonquil was the one who wanted the marriage over, at least initially. She was the one who kept on having affairs and saying how claustrophobic she felt in the relationship. For a long time I thought I could somehow still make it work.’
‘And do you still think that, Piers?’
‘No. For years now I’ve really known that it was over. But I dithered. Because of her mental state, Jonquil can be very vulnerable at times. I didn’t want to do anything that might push her over the edge.’
‘What do you mean by “push her over the edge”?’
‘I mean: make her do something stupid.’
‘And you’re using “do something stupid” in the traditional sense of attempting suicide?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘Jonquil has attempted suicide before?’ He nodded. ‘Genuine attempts, actually trying to kill herself, or just as a means of gaining attention?’
‘In retrospect I’d have said the latter. But that didn’t make them any less scary at the time. And didn’t make me feel any less guilty.’
Of course it was going to be true, thought Jude again, that nobody gets to our age without accumulating baggage. And it seemed like Piers Targett had got a serious amount of baggage. ‘You still haven’t told me why Jonquil came to the house on Saturday,’ she reminded him.
‘No. Well, as I say, she’s very inconsistent, but I’d spoken to her when I got back from Paris on Friday evening.’
Jude couldn’t stop herself from remembering jealously that he hadn’t found time to ring her the same evening. God, she was pathetic.
‘Anyway, I was feeling really positive and I said it was daft for us to go on doing nothing about the house and we really ought to sell it. And Jonquil actually agreed with me. She was very calm and rational and she said she couldn’t imagine why we hadn’t put the house on the market years ago.’
‘Any particular reason why she had changed her mind?’
‘She’s got a new chap.’
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘No idea. When we were living down here, in quite a lot of cases I did know who her men were, because they were people in our circle. Since she’s moved to Brighton, I’ve no idea who she consorts with.’
‘But if she’s now in a good relationship, then maybe that’ll take the pressure off you, and she’ll finally get out of your life. .?’
‘Jude, I’ve been here before. Many times. With Jonquil every new relationship is going to be The Big Thing. And so it is for a few weeks, months sometimes, years in my case. . and then she starts getting unsettled and jealous. . and pretty soon she’s off with someone else. It’s a recurring pattern with her, one that I’m afraid never gets broken.’
‘So why did she appear at the house on Saturday?’
‘Because she’d changed her mind. Whatever she’d said on the Friday evening, on the Saturday she no longer wanted to sell the house. She could have told me on the phone but, being Jonquil, no, of course she had to do it in person. She knew I’d be there, so she decided to give me the latest in a long, long line of shocks.’ He sounded infinitely weary. ‘The fact that she found you there when she arrived was. . I don’t know, whatever the opposite of “serendipity” is. Shit, probably.’
‘And what did she say after I’d left?’
‘Basically that she’d never agree to our selling the house. And a whole lot of other stuff.’
‘Like?’
‘Old stuff, infinitely recycled recriminations. Believe me, Jude, you really don’t want to know.’
She really did want to know, but there’d be time enough in the future to ask those questions. Jude rose from her draped armchair, went across the room and kissed Piers gently on the forehead.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘how about a drink?’
‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ said Piers Targett drowsily, after their emotional rapprochement had been followed by a physical rapprochement. He turned over in the bed and looked down at Jude. Her blonde hair was spread in beautiful disarray over the pillow.
‘Tell me,’ she murmured.
‘I’m going to fix for you to have a real tennis lesson with George Hazlitt.’
‘Really? Do you think you should?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I wonder if I put a jinx on that tennis court. Remember what happened last time I went there.’
‘Hm.’ He was silent for a moment, reminded of his old friend’s death. ‘Incidentally, Reggie’s funeral is on Thursday.’
‘Yes, I heard from Oenone.’
‘Jude. .’
‘Hm?’
‘I’d very much like it if you would come with me to the funeral. I think it’s going to be an emotional strain for me. I’d feel better if you were there.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want I’d be very glad to come.’ But even in the peacefulness of love the small idea formed in her mind that she would see a lot of the Lockleigh House tennis court members at the funeral and might be able to advance her investigation a little.
‘Anyway, this lesson of yours with George. I’ll set it up and let you know when.’
‘All right,’ said Jude softly. ‘Though I don’t think I’ll ever understand that business of chases. .’
‘It’s very simple,’ Piers protested. ‘The chase lines are marked in yards parallel with the back wall both ends of the court. If the ball lands
Jude was already asleep.
TWENTY
As Donna Grodsky had suggested, Carole didn’t have any difficulty in finding information about Iain Holland online. He had his own website and there were lots of reports about him from local newspapers. He could also be contacted or followed through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, though these were not avenues she was likely to go down. The day that someone as secretive and paranoid as Carole Seddon might expose secrets of her life to all and sundry over the Internet was the day when hell had not only frozen over but was also hosting the Winter Olympics.
It was clear from all the references that Iain Holland was a Conservative local councillor for one of the Brighton wards. It was also clear that he was an expert at self-promotion. From the amount of events he managed to attend and be photographed at, he must have handed over the day-to-day running of his stationery empire to managers. Fetes, prize-givings, openings of new buildings, protests, demonstrations, hundredth-birthday cake- cuttings in old people’s home, Iain Holland’s smiling face was seen at all of them.
And his CV was everywhere. The story of how he had been educated through the state system, with the help of long after-school hours spent in his local library: how he’d rejected the possibility of university because he ‘wanted to get straight into the business of making a living’; how he’d borrowed from his parents to buy a stationery shop that was about to go belly-up; how by dint of sheer hard work and entrepreneurial flair he’d built up that business and gradually added others until he was in charge of one of the country’s most recognizable stationery
