Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“That’s okay, Miss Harrington, we do. We’ll see to that.”

Did she imagine the flicker that crossed the man’s face at the word “ex-wife”? Perhaps. She didn’t know. She could never banish from her mind what they’d told her about Jeff not booking that hotel for their wedding on the appointed day or any other day. Why had he lied to her? Was it that he’d never meant to marry her? She’d tried to talk about it with Michelle, but her neighbor, usually so warm and affectionate, grew remote and impenetrable when expected to reassure her about Jeff’s shortcomings. Fiona wanted excuses made for him, not suggestions, however gently put, that she should try to look to the future instead of dwelling on a man who was-well, she’d never even hinted at this but Fiona knew the missing words were “after her money.”

“You’ve told us about friends and family, insofar as you can. Now, how about enemies? Did Jeff have any enemies?”

She didn’t like the way they referred to her as Miss Harrington but to him as Jeff, as if he were too much of a villain to be accorded the dignity of a surname. What do they say to each other about me when they get out of here, she often asked herself. “I don’t know that he had any,” she said wearily. “Do ordinary people have enemies?”

“They have people who don’t like them.”

“Yes, but that’s different. I mean, my neighbors, the Jarveys, didn’t like Jeff. Mrs. Jarvey admitted it. They both disliked him.”

“Why was that, Miss Harrington?”

“Jeff was-you have to understand he’d got an enormous lot of vitality. He was so full of life and energy…” Fiona couldn’t keep back a little sob when she said this.

“Don’t upset yourself, Miss Harrington.”

How could you help upsetting yourself when you were forced to talk about things you’d have liked to keep locked up inside you forever? She wiped her eyes carefully. “What I was going to say was, Jeff came out with things that-well, that sounded unkind, but he didn’t mean them, they just sort of brimmed over.”

“What kind of things?”

“He made digs, sort of jokes, at Michelle-Mrs. Jarvey. About her size. I mean, he called her husband and her Little and Large, things like that. She didn’t like it and her husband hated it. If it had been left to her I don’t think she’d ever have had anything more to do with Jeff.” Fiona realized what she was saying and tried to make a better impression. “I don’t mean they did anything about it, they didn’t even say anything. Michelle’s been an angel to me. It was just that they didn’t understand Jeff.” She made herself think from Michelle’s point of view, though she’d never faced up to it before. The lie Jeff had told about the hotel booking returned to her mind. “I suppose the truth is Michelle didn’t want me to marry Jeff, she thought he was bad for me. And-well, Michelle thinks of me as a daughter really, she told me so. My happiness is very important to her.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Harrington,” said the inspector. “I don’t think we’ll have to trouble you again. You won’t be needed at the inquest. Be sure to give us a call if you think of anything you haven’t told us.”

In the car he said to his sergeant, “The poor cow’s having a rude awakening.”

“D’you want me to keep on searching for that divorce decree?”

“There are some things you can search for, Malcolm, that you’re never going to find. Because they don’t exist, right?”

“So do we do her for bigamy?”

“I reckon we leave it to the DPP to sort out. We’ve got enough on our plate without that.”

“I shall be going down to the constituency this afternoon,” said Jims, “but I’ll delay it till after four so that you have time to fetch Eugenie from school first.”

Zillah gave him an aggrieved look. “Don’t bother. I’m not coming.” How could she? She was meeting Mark Fryer for coffee in Starbuck’s at eleven on Friday. “What made you think I’d be coming?”

Jims had forgotten that dream of himself as prime minister with Zillah as his consort. “I’ll tell you what made me think it, darling . We made a bargain, remember? So far you’ve got everything out of this marriage and I’ve got fuck-all. You’re my wife, at least you’re the ornament I chose to impress my constituents, and if I choose that you accompany me to Dorset, you do it. In case, as is more than likely, you never read a newspaper or watch anything on television above the level of a hospital soap, there’s a by-election in North Wessex next week and I intend to be there on Saturday to support our candidate. With you. Dressed in your best and looking lovely and gracious and devoted . With the kiddiwinks, trusting that little devil doesn’t bawl the place down.”

“You bastard.”

“The children are yours, not mine, but you’d be wiser not to use language like that in front of them.”

“What about you saying ‘fuck-all’ then?”

Jordan had taken the new pacifier out of his mouth and flung it across the room. “Fuck-all,” he said thoughtfully. It seemed a better panacea to stop him crying than the pacifier. “You bastard.”

“Anyway, I’m not coming. I never want to see Dorset again. I saw all I wanted to while I was living there. Take that Leonardo. I bet you were going to.”

“I hope I know something about discretion, Zillah, which is more than you do. By the by, have you remembered to inquire after your father?”

The next morning neither of them saw Natalie Reckman’s article, Jims because he woke up late and had to rush to get to his office in Toneborough on time, Zillah because she went off straight from dropping the children to have a facial and makeup done at the Army and Navy Stores. At just after eleven, a vision of loveliness in Mark Fryer’s words, which didn’t sound as if he meant to be sarcastic, she was drinking cappuccino with him in Horseferry Road, where he told her all about his broken marriage, recent divorce-a sensitive word to Zillah at the moment-and was disbelieving when she said she had to go and pick up Jordan.

“Let me come with you.”

Afterward Zillah could never imagine how she’d come to get out of the car with Jordan and Mark Fryer and, instead of going up to the flat in the lift, walked round to the front of the block. Could it have been because the building was beautiful from the front and a dingy concrete nightmare in the basement? Had she wanted to impress him? Perhaps. But there it was. They all walked along Millbank and turned the corner into Great College Street.

A crowd had gathered outside Abbey Gardens Mansions, made up mostly of press photographers and young women with notepads. They turned as one when they saw Zillah approaching and closed in upon her, strident voices bombarding her with questions and bulbs flashing. She tried to cover her face with her hands, then, she hoped, with Mark’s jacket which he’d been carrying over his shoulder.

He snatched it back, said hastily, “This is no place for me. See you,” and disappeared. Jordan began to scream.

IT WAS LAF’S day off. At eleven in the morning the Wilsons were sitting outside their French doors, drinking coffee and reading the Mail and the Express . Sonovia kept her small garden as she often said a garden should be, “a riot of color,” in contrast to next door where everything was neat, sterile, and flower-free. Tubs held shocking-pink azaleas, scarlet and pastel-pink geraniums were coming into bloom, while trailing plants in Oxford and Cambridge boat-race colors spilled out of hanging baskets and over the rims of stone troughs. A bright yellow climber no one knew the name of blazed against the far fence.