Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

‘Well, yes, of course I am, and I am very sorry for your—’

‘Yes, Mr Lindsay,’ I interrupted. ‘Of course you are, it’s been all over the media, hasn’t it? So, therefore, if I were to ask you to indicate if it was likely to be possible for any moneys to be transferred from that R. Anderson account into our joint account in the near future, could you not do so?’

There was a slightly longer silence this time before George Lindsay spoke again. He spoke with a distinct North Devon accent, something I always found reassuring, probably for no other reason than having been brought up there.

‘I think I can do that, Mrs Anderson,’ he said. ‘And no, it is not likely to be possible. Certainly not for as long as your husband remains in prison and unable to deal with his affairs.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lindsay,’ I said. ‘I have just one other question. Will that overdraft limit still be honoured?’

‘I see no reason why not,’ said George Lindsay, whom I was quite sure could see any number of reasons why not.

Thank God for that, I thought. And thank God too, I reckoned, for George Lindsay. I hadn’t known that banks still employed human beings. His days had to be numbered, surely.

I realized what I should do next was contact Robert in prison. But I had no wish to, even though he had given every indication of wishing to stay in close contact. I’d already received several letters from him, which I hadn’t opened, and there had even been phone calls I’d left to the answer machine, deleting the messages before even listening to them. In any case I suspected that he would be unable to help even if he wanted to. It was pretty clear that, with devastating timing, his money had run out.

Of course, if Brenda had not discovered his double life and so cruelly set about destroying part of it, it was possible that Robert would have found a way around his financial problems, a way of carrying on with his extraordinary deception. After all, he had proved himself to have the most inventive of minds, that was sure.

I called Mrs Rowlands and asked her about the possibility of returning to my teaching work. She told me she was sorry but she’d actually just hired another full-time staff member, long overdue, she said. She’d been friendly enough and expressed what I thought was genuine concern about my predicament, and I expected it was probably true about the new full-time teacher. But I somehow doubted she would have wanted me back anyway. In addition to having a husband who never really was my husband awaiting prosecution for murder, I had been arrested on suspicion of the abduction and attempted murder of a child. Not something any headmistress would want her school associated with if she could avoid it. All charges against me may have been dropped, but such matters are never forgotten. Mud sticks, and Dartmoor mud sticks particularly well, I’d told Gladys Ponsonby Smythe. It was the truth.

Ultimately I reckoned the best thing for me to do was to try to live on that joint account overdraft until Robert’s trial. I realized I was merely putting off the inevitable, and sooner or later the financial mess I was in would have to be dealt with along with everything else. But there was a case for at least waiting until I knew what was going to happen to Robert. That was what I told myself anyway.

Having made that decision, I turned Highrise into a kind of Hitler’s Bunker, in which I existed in a trance-like state, cut off as much as possible from the outside world.

I could no longer afford to heat the place properly, so I more or less lived in the kitchen, feeding the Aga from the vast store of logs Robert and Robbie had amassed before the nightmare began. Not only had we regularly culled the abundant sycamores and ash on our land, but there was also that old oak that Robert had acquired and behind a pile of which I had found little Luke Macintyre naked and half dead. Only I tried not to think about that any more.

Anyway, this long-burning, non-spitting stuff was supposed to be our best wood, to be burned only in the inglenook in the sitting room. But during those few months waiting for Robert’s trial I burned ‘best wood’ in the range along with whatever else came to hand, every morning loading logs into a wheelbarrow and pushing it straight into the kitchen.

I couldn’t afford to buy the malt whisky I had been numbing my senses with since Robbie’s death, but that, I was forced to admit, might not have been such a bad thing. And there was plenty of wine in Robert’s wine store. Enough to last one person several months, I thought, even at the rate I seemed to be going through it.

I spent much of each day huddled up in the big old leather armchair pulled close to the stove, Florrie half straddling my lap. Sometimes I watched TV on the little portable I had set up the day after Highrise had been trashed, and sometimes I tried to read. But I didn’t seem able to take much in.

I dreamed of Robbie sometimes. And of Robert too, though I didn’t want to. Occasionally I thought about sex with him. It was hard to so abruptly lose a good sex life. And also to know that, whatever happened, you would never want to have sex with that person again. I even fantasized about sex with some anonymous fit young man, as a kind of ultimate diversion. But there wasn’t much chance of that as long as I remained in the back of beyond. In any case, I was far from ready for a new lover.

I could not stop myself reliving the past, the good and the bad, wondering if things really had been as good as I’d thought, and just how I had managed to remain so unsuspecting for so long. I remembered driving Robert to and from the local airports. I imagine Brenda had done the same. Presumably sometimes I had dropped Robert off, assuming that he was flying to Aberdeen, only for him to have been picked up by Brenda. And the other way round. And surely that had involved risk of discovery. But Robert had never let me go into the terminal, even when I picked him up, in order to avoid the hassle and unnecessary expense of parking, he’d said. At each airport he’d found a tucked-away place for me to park and wait. Just as he had for Brenda, I assumed. And, in any case, I guess that after sixteen years of getting away with an extraordinary deception you must begin to believe you will never be found out. I certainly had never come close to finding him out until Robbie died. I felt such a fool. And sometimes almost as angry with myself as with Robert.

As winter deepened and the nights grew bitingly cold I moved the smallest of the two sitting-room sofas into the kitchen and even slept there through the hours of darkness.

Gladys and Tom Farley were regular visitors, although, perhaps to my shame, I rarely invited them in. They brought boxes of food and provisions which apparently the entire village contributed to. I had no idea how they knew that I had money problems on top of everything else — perhaps my living only in the kitchen had been a clue — but they certainly seemed to have guessed it and I was deeply touched by their kindness. However, I could not cope with their company and was always somewhat relieved once they had left.

Florrie was my greatest comfort. She never left my side, and everything about her indicated, to me at least, that she somehow understood the depth of my misery. I know every dog owner says this, but I honestly believe it to be true.

Christmas came and went, and I might not have noticed it were it not for my little band of supporters. Gladys brought me a special box of Christmas goodies: chocolates, nuts, a pudding, some mince pies, clotted cream, and an oven-ready pheasant.

‘Even a turkey crown’s too big for one,’ she’d said in her businesslike way.

She’d begged me to join the Reverend Gerald and her for lunch at the vicarage, promising: ‘You needn’t worry, luvvie, it won’t be a religious affair. Once the morning service is over Gerry and I just get stuck in to eating and drinking far too much like everyone else. And if you feel like you want to contribute something, I did hear that husband of yours kept rather a good wine cellar...’