Nicola Upson - Two for Sorrow

‘All right. See you later.’

‘What the fuck was that about?’ Ronnie asked peevishly as they made their way out into the foyer.

Marta sat by the window for a long time after Josephine left, half afraid to go anywhere else in the house. It was a neat trick, this conjuring of loneliness from solitude, restlessness from peace, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on how Josephine had managed it in just a few hours, but all her carefully constructed self-sufficiency had disappeared in a taxi to Cavendish Square, and what she was left with now felt empty and desolate.

Tired of the silence, she walked over to the gramophone to put some music on, then changed her mind and made some coffee instead. Her head ached from too much wine and too little sleep, and she turned the bathroom cabinet inside out looking for the aspirin before remembering that she’d left the bottle on the terrace the day before, when her back had lost the war against the ceanothus. Throwing a coat on over her pyjamas, she went out to fetch them. The garden looked worse than ever this morning: it had that weary, dirty feel that always follows snow, and her efforts to clear the borders had only succeeded in trampling mud into the grass and creating piles of dead wood and rubble wherever she looked. As she stared out over a barren, bleak stretch of earth, a wasteland with no hope of spring, she wondered why she had ever imagined that there was a point to all this.

She picked the bottle of pills up and put it down again, afraid of how comforting it felt in her hand. By now, she had lost count of how many times this particular routine had played itself out in her life, but she was surely running out of excuses. She turned to go back inside, the tablets once again in her pocket, but something caught her eye by the wall—a flash of brilliant yellow which hadn’t been there yesterday. Bending down, she looked in delight at the winter daffodil, and smiled to think that it should have chosen today to arrive.

Before she could change her mind, Marta walked back to the house, wrestling with the lid of the bottle as she went. She swallowed two aspirin with a mouthful of cold coffee, then took a card out of the wastepaper basket and went over to the telephone.

Josephine stared at her reflection in the looking glass on the back of the door, and decided that it wasn’t going to get any better. There was no question that Ronnie and Lettice had excelled themselves on her behalf: the dress was modelled on a design by Lucien Lelong which she had casually admired when last at their studios, never suspecting that they would recreate it for her. Cut low at the back, and made of a soft satin which clung to the waist and hips and draped in sinuous folds from the thigh, the gown was predominantly black except for a twisted column of scarlet and emerald ribbons that extended down the spine to the floor. It was stunning, and normally she would have been thrilled, but dressing to be on show was the last thing she wanted to do this evening; she only hoped that she had appeared more gracious than she felt when she tried the dress on earlier.

She fastened a single string of pearls around her neck so that it hung down her back, emphasising the low-cut line of the dress, and left the room while she could still resist the urge to crawl between the sheets and hide. Going down the stairs, she was careful not to tread on one of the club’s more idiosyncratic features—a silver cross, embedded into one of the steps as a memorial to an unfortunate resident of the old house who had died from a fall and was supposed to haunt the first-floor landing. It was all nonsense, of course, but it fascinated some of the members and Celia had always been happy to exploit any legend that brought in more subscriptions—in fact, Josephine had once joked that she probably put it there herself. After the tragic accident at the weekend, though, the remark had ceased to be amusing. She wondered how Lucy was, and remembered how nervous and clumsy she had seemed at their two brief meetings; with the luxury of hindsight, it seemed inevitable that something would happen to the girl sooner or later, but Josephine had never envisaged the horror of the injuries which Celia had described to her.

Archie was waiting at reception, and she smiled nervously at him, wondering how quickly they would be able to leave yesterday’s argument behind. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, bending to kiss her. ‘Gertrude who?’

The words were warm, but Josephine saw her own anxieties reflected in his face and she led him over to the door, out of earshot of the group of women by the desk. ‘Archie, I’m so sorry about yesterday,’ she said. ‘I should never have expected you to counsel me on what to do about Marta, or about anyone else for that matter.’

‘I should be apologizing, not you. I didn’t mean to be so impatient with you, but this case is …’

She raised her hand to interrupt him. ‘Don’t blame yourself or the case when I’m at fault. Please, Archie.’

He smiled. ‘All right. Shall we go in?’

She took his arm, relieved that he seemed as reluctant as she was at the moment to return to the subject of Marta, but they hadn’t got far before Lettice came hurrying out of the dining room. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking out for you. Sorry, Archie, but I just need a quick word with Josephine—you can have her back in a minute.’

‘All right, but let’s get a drink first,’ Josephine said. ‘I’m dying for one.’

‘No, I need to speak to you before you go in,’ Lettice insisted, then added more quietly: ‘After that you can have as many drinks as you like—you’ll probably need them.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

Before Lettice could answer, Lydia came up behind them and threw her arms around both of them. ‘Josephine—how lovely to see you.’

‘Lydia, I need to speak to Josephine in private for a moment,’ Lettice said impatiently, and Josephine looked at her in surprise: she rarely lost her temper with anybody; the pressure of the gala and the shock of Marjorie’s death seemed to have taken their toll.

‘Of course,’ Lydia said, ‘but I wanted to say it as soon as I saw you. Thank you, Josephine.’

‘You’re welcome. What for?’

Lydia laughed. ‘Don’t be so modest. For Marta, of course. She’s here tonight, and she told me that you spoke to her and encouraged her to get in touch. I’m so grateful, Josephine.’

Lettice mouthed an apology behind Lydia’s back, while Archie looked as if all his Christmases had come at once. Wondering if she had inadvertently walked on stage in a farce at the Vaudeville, Josephine heard herself give the sort of nervous laugh which usually made her want to slap someone. ‘Marta’s here tonight?’ she asked, the voice barely recognisable as her own. ‘Gosh—she doesn’t waste much time.’

‘No. I sent her an invitation weeks ago, never dreaming that she’d say yes, but she phoned this morning, completely out of the blue.’

‘I’ll meet you inside in a minute,’ Josephine said to Lettice and Archie. ‘Lydia and I will just have a quick chat out here while it’s peaceful.’

‘No, no—Lettice needs to talk to you and I don’t want to interrupt.’

‘It’s fine,’ Lettice said, defeated. ‘I can wait.’ She disappeared into the crowd with Archie, glancing back apologetically over her shoulder.

Lydia took Josephine’s hand and led her over to the window. ‘Let’s sit down here for a minute,’ she said. ‘I owe you an apology, as well as a thank you.’ Her words came so soon after Archie’s unwarranted contrition that Josephine began to suspect some sort of conspiracy, designed to make her feel worse than she already did. ‘I haven’t been a very good friend to you since Marta and I split up, have I?’ Lydia began hesitantly.