Barbara Taylor Bradford - Where You Belong

It had occurred to me on the drive up to Hampstead with Jake that their home, whether Tony had vacated it recently or not, would also tell me a great deal about their relationship. And then there were the children, eighteen-year-old Rory, and Moira, who was twenty. In my experience, children frequently said a lot about their parents, and without actually meaning to they invariably revealed a few secrets. I hoped this would be the case today.

Where was the monster? Where was the harridan? Where was the disturbed woman Tony had complained about so often?

Certainly not present today, as far as I could ascertain, not unless Fiona was a superb actress or suffering from a split personality. Could she be a Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde? I was rather doubtful of that. In fact, she appeared to be a pleasant sort of woman who seemed perfectly normal to me.

I knew she was forty, but she didn’t look her age at all. A pretty woman, it was her colouring that was the most striking thing about her; her natural flame-coloured hair and bright, dark eyes gave her a kind of vivid radiance. Of medium height and build, she had an innate gracefulness which was most apparent now as she moved around the room, tending to the needs of her guests. Including Fiona and her children, there were eleven of us altogether, since only Niall, his wife Kate, and several really close friends and colleagues had been invited to the intimate buffet lunch.

I sat on the sofa alone, facing the French windows which led to the garden. Jake was off in a corner, deep in conversation with Rory and Moira, and so I took this opportunity to catch my breath, to relax and review the past few hours. It had been a wild morning. Emotional. Disturbing. And in many ways more dismaying than I’d anticipated.

Outside the windows the scene was pastoral, and I was enjoying sitting here looking at it, enjoying this moment of quietness and solitude in the midst of the gathering. Everyone was engaged in conversation, but this did not bother me; I was part of them yet separate. I might easily have been in the depths of the country, and not in Hampstead, although parts of this area of London were bucolic, I knew that.

From my position on the sofa I could see a number of large trees, including an oak and a sycamore, and a verdant lawn which was held in check by herbaceous borders. There was an ancient fountain spraying arcs of shimmering water up into the air, and beyond this, a high, old stone wall into which had been set a wrought-iron gate with an elaborate scroll design.

This gate led to an apple orchard, so Fiona had told me a moment ago, and she had added, ‘Tony’s favourite spot. He did love his garden so.’

Nodding, smiling, I had not uttered a word on hearing this. It was something which seemed so unlikely; but I had taken a fast sip of the sherry Rory had poured for me earlier, to be followed by several more sips in quick succession. Her words had startled me. I had no idea how to respond, and then realized that no response was necessary.

When did he have time to sit in a garden? I asked myself wonderingly, frowning at her retreating figure, as she flitted away to serve more drinks, and questioning the veracity of her remark. Yet there was no reason for her to make this comment if it were not true. What did she have to gain? Nothing, of course. Anyway, it had been said almost off-handedly, as if no thought had been given to it. Nevertheless, I found it curious.

Almost instantly it struck me that he’d had plenty of time to spend here in the garden, because he had always hot-footed it to London at the end of an assignment, leaving me and Jake to make our way back to France together.

And Tony had usually had plenty of good reasons for rushing off, ready excuses on the tip of his tongue; he had to check in with his news-photo agency, spend time at the agency, see his kids, have lunch with his brother, get a doctor’s check-up, go to the dentist, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. No, he had never been at a loss when it came to explaining away his absence from my life when we were not working.

Tony had been in London through June and most of July, and certainly he could have easily done a lot of garden-sitting then. He had not joined us in Paris until the last few days of July, just before we set off for Kosovo in August to cover the war.

Do we ever really know another person? Until earlier today I had believed I knew everything there was to know about Tony Hampton. Not so, it seemed.

I’d had a bit of a shock in the Brompton Oratory, when it had suddenly hit me, with some force, that I was actually standing next to Tony’s widow and not his ex-wife, as I had believed her to be. But the shock had receded somewhat, and I had begun to regain some of my equilibrium.

When I’d rushed out of the church I’d been full of rage; but as the anger had subsided I had accepted the fact that I’d been duped. Not only that, I could also admit to myself that Tony had purposely set out to beguile me last year, and I had been foolishly sucked in, captivated by his Irish charm – if anyone had kissed the Blarney Stone he had. I had been bowled over by his sudden and rather intense interest in me; it had been so unexpected. After all, he had known me for several years and had always treated me as a pal. Suddenly I was the focus of his romantic and sexual interest, and for a while I was baffled. But he was charismatic, and of course I had not been able to resist his looks, his humour, his cleverness, his sexuality. I had been a sitting duck…

There was something else. I trusted my gut instinct absolutely, and earlier today it had told me Tony had died a married man. I was convinced I was right about that, even if Jake was wavering on this point.

I was baffled by Tony’s behaviour at the end of July. Why had he unexpectedly announced to Jake that he was divorced? And why had he told me exactly the same thing? I’d certainly not been bugging him about marriage. And who could fathom out a blatant lie like that? What was the motivation behind it? What was the reason for the lie? What had he hoped to gain?

All kinds of other questions jostled for prominence in my mind, as I sat there in his house in Hampstead with his widow playing hostess; I went on sipping her dry sherry and pondering my love affair with him.

Had Tony been playing for time? Had he been intending to marry me, as he had often said he would, and in doing so commit bigamy? Had he merely been stringing me along, hoping that Fiona would leave him? Or that I would tire of waiting? Had he found himself in so deep with me he didn’t know how to extricate himself, and therefore had invented the divorce and given me the Grecian ring as… pacifiers ? Had he been hoping that something would happen to solve his problems?

Tony had had a favourite expression, one which he used frequently. ‘Life has a way of taking care of itself,’ he would say to me and others.

Well, life had indeed taken care of itself in the end. Had he always known he would die covering a war? Had he had a presentiment about this? An icy shiver shot through me at this appalling thought, and I immediately put it out of my head. Otherwise, I might start thinking that his recklessness had in some way been calculated.

A feeling of dismay mingled with frustration now lodged in the pit of my stomach, as I recognized that I would never know what had been in Tony’s mind. No one would. The only person who had all the answers was dead and buried.

Not wishing to wrestle any further with the puzzle of Tony’s marital status and his terrible game-playing, if that was what he had been doing, I focused my eyes on the garden for a short while longer. It was so tranquil, filled with such a calm beauty, I took a measure of peace from it. And again I was thankful that nobody was disturbing me with their idle chatter.