Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

Even as she chided herself at the pettiness of such an exercise, Kate retreated to the dining room and through it to the terrace steps. She saw Polly straight away, sitting on a low wooden stool, talking, laughing, tossing her hair back from her face. She was with Ashley Parnell, Appleby House’s nearest neighbour. He was in a green and white striped deckchair; resting as he always was, his state of health not being conducive to leaping about. But even at a distance, and not at all well, his beauty was still remarkable. Kate watched as he replied to Polly, who immediately became gravely attentive, locking her glance into his. Resting her chin in the palm of her hand and leaning forward.

Kate saw Ashley’s wife, Judith, moving towards the couple, walking rather urgently as if in a hurry. She stood over them, brusquely interrupting their discourse and gesturing towards the lane. Then, half helping, half tugging her husband up from his chair they walked away, Ashley turning to smile goodbye.

Polly waved, then immediately got up and lay back in the deckchair he had just vacated. She didn’t move for a long while. Just sat and sat, as if in a daze, gazing up at the clear blue sky.

Half an hour later and Judith Parnell was just beginning to recover, though still feeling somewhat shaky.

“Sorry about that – dragging you away. I really felt quite strange.”

“Are you all right now?”

“Fine. Just needed a rest.”

Judith looked across to where her husband was sitting in a high-backed wicker chair, an angora blanket thrown across his knees despite the heat of the day. He was gazing, rather longingly it seemed to her, across their front garden in the direction of Appleby House.

Judith observed his shining dark blue eyes, the elegant plane of his cheek and perfect jaw and momentarily felt sick in earnest. So far the ravages of this mysterious illness were slight. But these were early days – only three months since the first symptoms appeared. Unable to help herself Judith crossed the room and laid a hand on his soft, pale yellow hair. Ashley jerked his head away.

“Sorry, darling.” Lately he had begun to hate being touched. Judith frequently forgot this and now recalled that she had also tried to hold his hand at breakfast.

“No, I’m sorry.” He wrapped her fingers round his own and squeezed them gently. “My scalp hurts today, that’s all.”

“Poor Ash.”

Could that be the real reason? Was a tender scalp a symptom of his illness? As they had still not discovered what that illness was, it proved impossible to say. He could be making it up, using it to keep her at a distance. Perhaps he was falling out of love.

There was a time she could have touched him anywhere and everywhere at any hour of the day or night. They had sex once in his office, sprawled across the desk behind unlocked doors minutes before a Japanese business delegation was due to be shown in. Now he had not approached her for weeks.

Judith would never admit to anyone, and had only once, in a painfully sharp moment of insight, admitted to herself, that she was glad Ashley was ill. Ill meant out of circulation. She wanted him to get better – of course she did – but perhaps not a hundred per cent better. Not restored to his former Apollonian strength and beauty, for then she would be back on the old treadmill. Jealously assessing every woman he looked at or spoke to, needing to denigrate everything about them: their hair, their skin, their eyes, their clothes. Not aloud, of course. It would never do for Ashley to become aware that she was terrified of losing him; to put the idea in his mind.

Judith’s thoughts flew nervously back to the wake in Carey Lawson’s garden. Tired as he was, Ashley had seemed really happy to be out and about, mixing with people. And genuinely regretful when she had dragged him home on the pretence of a sudden attack of nausea. Of course that might have been because of the Lawsons’ ghastly daughter flashing her legs and teeth at him, half naked like a tart in a brothel. Teasing surely, for what interest could an ailing middle-aged man have for a young, strong, lovely…? Judith fought to remain calm, breathing slowly and evenly. She had got him away – that was the main thing. The girl was here for the funeral; a day or two would see the back of her.

But rumour in the village already had it that her parents might be moving down for good. So Kate, with her freckled, apricot skin and soft ash-blonde hair pinned up any-old-how, would be a stone’s throw away. In her late forties she looked, in spite of the dreadful time she had been having with Mallory, a good ten years younger. Ashley had always liked Kate. She was gentle and intelligent, quite sexy in a school-marmish sort of way – oh sod it.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” Ashley looked worried. He started nervously brushing the skin on his arms. “Maybe you could put off this meeting tonight, Jude. Say you’re not well.”

“Better not. It’s a new contact. Don’t want to make a bad impression.”

“What does he do again?”

“Manufactures surgical instruments. A small firm but apparently stable. Seems his accountant’s retiring so he’s looking round.”

“Isn’t it strange you’re not meeting at the factory?”

“Not at all. Business meetings often take place at hotels.”

Just then the fax began chattering in Judith’s office, a tiny, dark place next to the stairs. “The visitors’ parlour,” they had larkily christened it when first moving into their Victorian villa. Where the gentry would have presented their cards and been offered a dry sherry and a caraway biscuit before moving into the larger sitting room to exchange discreet gossip. They had seen themselves entertaining too in a modest way but somehow it had never come about. And now, with every spare penny going on Ashley’s health, they couldn’t afford it.

“I know who it is.” She moved away from the window, widening the space between herself and her husband. Giving Ashley what he called “room to breathe.” “It’s slimy Alec.”

“Is that any way to speak of a client?”

“Faxing his phoney expenses. He’s claiming for a new Alfa Romeo, which was stolen almost as soon as it was delivered. Alas—”

“The paperwork was still in the glove compartment.”

“You’re way ahead of me.”

“Tell him to chuck it.”

Judith made her way reluctantly into the hall, marvelling at the casual ease with which the solution had been offered. It wasn’t Ashley’s fault. He had no idea how difficult, desperate even, their plight had become. He thought his wife had given up her Aylesbury office and laid off her clerk purely so she could work from home and look after him. But that was only part of it.

The heart of the problem was that, until Ashley’s illness had been properly diagnosed, his insurance would not pay out and the disability allowance people had also dug their heels in. And Judith could not afford to keep them both and also pay rent for an office and wages.

An unforeseen by-product of the decision to work from home had been a suggestion from one high-profile customer that, as her overheads would now be so much lower, his fees should be reduced. Instead of explaining the circumstances behind her decision, worry and nervous strain provoked a quick, sharply worded refusal. He transferred his account elsewhere.

The foot-and-mouth crisis in British farming took its toll and several of her agricultural clients chose this year to give up. Then there was the young couple with a thriving specialist food business who decided, with advice and support from the Internet, to go it alone.

So there was no question, thought Judith, watching the neatly perforated pages of immaculately printed lies falling softly into her in-tray, of telling slimy Alec to chuck it.