Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“No, thanks, as always.”

“I see you’re packing. Going somewhere nice?”

She told him, adding sulkily that it was their honeymoon. Jeff burst out laughing, roaring uncontrollably, tickled to death. He stopped as quickly as he’d begun. “You didn’t answer my question. Where are my children?”

“Out for a walk.” She invented, “With their nanny.”

“I see. A nanny. Jims-oh isn’t short of a penny or two, is he? And will you be taking them to the Maldives?”

Zillah would have liked to say yes, but Mrs. Peacock and the children might return at any time. She’d already had enough stick from Eugenie because she wasn’t taking them. “I told you,” she said, “it’s a honeymoon. My mother will be here to look after them.”

Jeff, who hadn’t sat down again but had been roving about the room, said, “I won’t stay to see them. It might be upsetting for them and me. But I don’t like the sound of what you’ve been saying, Zil. It strikes me neither you nor Jims really want my kids. You didn’t say a word about them to those newspapers, not a hint to that magazine that you’d got any kids-oh, yes, I read it, I made it my business to read it.” He paused. “Now, Fiona loves children.”

This casual remark had the effect he hoped for. “Who the hell’s Fiona?”

“My fiancée.” Jeff smiled wolfishly. “She’s a merchant banker. She’s got a very nice house in Hampstead.” He left out the West.

“I suppose the BMW belongs to her.”

“As you say. Her house would be an ideal home for children. Four bedrooms, garden, everything the heart could wish for. And I’m home all day to look after them while she earns the moolah to keep them in luxury.”

“What are you saying?”

“Frankly, my dear, I’m not sure yet. I haven’t thought it through. But I will and I very likely may come up with a plan. Like applying for sole custody, right?”

“You wouldn’t stand a chance!” Zillah shouted.

“No? Not if the court heard you’d committed bigamy?”

Zillah began to cry. There was a notepad on the table with tearoff pages in a silver case. He wrote down Fiona’s address and gave it to Zillah, pretty sure he could retrieve any letter that came to Jerry Leach. Then he left, whistling “Walk on By.” As he closed the front door behind him he could hear her loud sobs. Of course he’d no intention of taking the children away from her, but the threat was a useful weapon. And he wouldn’t mind getting his own back on Jims, who was certainly using Eugenie and Jordan as pawns in the game he was playing to prove himself an exponent of family values. Should he tell Fiona about it? Perhaps. A doctored version at any rate.

Still, where were his children? That story about the nanny might be an invention. If Zillah had dumped them, where had she dumped them? With her mother? He didn’t like it. Perhaps he’d call again next week when Nora Watling was there and find out the truth. If she was there-if that wasn’t a lie too.

Now for lunch at the Atrium. On Zillah’s credit card? A bit dangerous. She and Jims might be regular visitors. Jeff had an idea that a credit card had some sort of code on it that betrayed the sex of the customer using it. In an Italian restaurant in Victoria Street he put it to the test and had no problem. All was well. Imitating Zillah’s signature was no problem either; he’d often done it in the past. The Talented Mr. Ripley , the three-fifteen showing, had just begun when Jeff got to the cinema. The small, intimate theater was almost empty, just himself, two other men on their own, and a lone middle-aged woman. It always amused him to see how they’d placed themselves, as far apart as possible, one of the men near the front on the extreme right, another, who looked very old, on the left halfway down and the third in the back row. The woman sat next to the aisle but as far as possible from the old man. It seemed to Jeff that human beings didn’t like their own kind much. Sheep, for instance, would all have huddled together in the center. He took his seat behind the woman-just to be different.

Matthew came home in the middle of the afternoon. Naturally, he’d had no lunch. Without Michelle to look after him and coax him, he’d never eat at all. But he looked well, very nearly a normal thin man. The recording for the television program had been highly enjoyable. “I loved it,” he said, just like the old Matthew she’d married. “I didn’t really expect to. I was full of gloomy forebodings.”

“You should have told me, darling.”

“I know, but I can’t unload all my burdens on you.”

She said in an unusually bitter voice, “You could. My shoulders are broad enough.”

He looked at her with concern, sat down next to her, and took her hands. “What is it, my love? What’s wrong? You’re pleased for me, I know that. This program may be the start of many. We’ll be richer, though I know you don’t care about that. What is it?”

She came out with it. She could no longer keep it to herself. “Why do you never say I’m fat? Why don’t you tell me I’m gross and bloated and hideous? Look at me. I’m not a woman, I’m a great obese balloon of flesh. I said my shoulders are broad enough-well, I hope yours are for what I’m saying. That’s my burden: my size, my awful, huge, revolting size.”

He was looking at her, but not aghast, not in horror. His poor, thin, wizened face was softened and changed by tenderness. “My darling,” he said. “My sweet, dearest darling. Will you believe me when I say I’ve never noticed?”

“You must have. You’re an intelligent man, you’re perceptive. You must have noticed and-and hated it!”

“What’s brought this on, Michelle?” he asked seriously.

“I don’t know. I’m a fool. But-yes, I do know. It’s Jeff, Jeff Leigh. Every time I see him he makes some sort of joke about my size. It was-well, this morning it was ‘stoking up the boilers?’ and the other day he said-no, darling, I can’t tell you what he said.”

“Shall I speak to him? Tell him he’s hurt you? I will, I shan’t mind doing that. You know me, aggressive bastard when I’m roused.”

She shook her head. “I’m not a child. I don’t need Daddy to tell the boy next door to stop it.” A little smile transformed her face. “I never thought I’d say this about anyone but I-I hate him. I really do. I hate him. I know he’s not worth it, but I can’t help it. Tell me about the television.”

He told her. She pretended to listen and made encouraging noises, but she was thinking how deeply she disliked Jeff Leigh, how certain she was that he was a petty crook and she wondered if she could find the strength to warn Fiona. As if she were her mother. Did people ever heed that kind of warning? She didn’t know. But she wasn’t Fiona’s mother and that would make a big difference.

When she had made a meal for Matthew (milkless tea, a Ryvita, two slices of kiwi fruit, and twelve dry-roasted peanuts), she went upstairs, of necessity holding on to the banisters with both hands, puffing at the top as she always did, and entered the bathroom. The scales were for Matthew. She had never stepped on them. How delighted they both were when Matthew weighed himself last week and the scales registered 100 pounds instead of the needle quivering on the 84-pound mark as it once had. Michelle kicked off her shoes, looking down at her legs and feet. They were beautiful, as lovely in shape as any of those models’, if not as long. Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the scales.

At first she didn’t look. But she had to look, that was the point. Slowly she lowered her closed eyes, forced herself to open them. Her breath expelled in a long sigh, she took her eyes away from what it came to in kilos, in pounds. She weighed three times what Matthew did.