chapter Four
Chloe increased the wipers’ speed a notch, but they were fighting a losing battle against the downpour. The weeks of brilliant early summer weather had broken, finally, and the slate-coloured skies of the last twenty-four hours had opened up.
She steered the Astra carefully, uncertain of the route. It was a part of Pemberham with which she was unfamiliar, the south side, more deprived than the chocolate-box old town. Drab estates squatted miserably, their greyness darkened by the rain.
Despite the dullness and faint menace of the environment, Chloe felt a thrill of excitement. She was on her first assignment as an investigative reporter. Her whimsical column had proved so popular over the last two months that her editor, Mike Sellers, had invited her along to the Pemberham Gazette’s small office suite in the town centre the previous week for a chat.
‘Your column’s great, and I hope you’ll continue to provide it for a long time,’ Mike told her. ‘But you’re too good a writer to be confined to a fortnightly it of amusement. I’d like you to do some real journalism, if you’re interested.’
The story was a relatively minor one, certainly by London standards, but it was significant for a town like Pemberham. Residents of the Stratwell estate on the south side of town were becoming increasingly vocal about the hooliganism plaguing their area. Night after night brought a fresh crop of graffiti on the walls, drunken noise well into the early hours, smashed car and flat windows. The residents had notified the police who’d investigated, but had advised that the town council were ultimately best placed to tackle the problem. The chairman of the residents’ association had written to the council and made numerous telephone calls, with little response. Finally, in desperation, the residents had taken their concerns to the Pemberham Gazette.
Mike Sellers gave the story to Chloe, lock, stock and barrel. She was to interview the residents, then attempt to gain an audience with a senior member of the town council to find out what was being done about the problem on the estate. The Gazette wasn’t party political, but regarded holding the town’s elected representatives to account as part of its civic duty.
Chloe parked in an unmarked bay just inside the estate and glanced around after locking the doors, a little nervous about leaving her car. Jake was with Mrs McFarland for the afternoon. Working from home was all very well, but Chloe knew that if she began to do more field work like this, she’d need to look for a regular paid sitter for her son.
She found the flat with difficulty, peering through the rain at the numbers on the doors before coming across the right one. Inside were six members of the residents’ association, including their chairman, a burly man with a friendly air. They greeted her with enthusiasm, as though she’d arrived as a saviour. Chloe was touched to see the spread they’d laid out for her: tea, sandwiches, home-baked cakes and biscuits.
For a full two hours she perched on the edge of an armchair and took notes, recording statements from time to time, asking the occasional question for clarification but generally just listening. Gradually a heartbreaking picture was built up of a community in terror, at the mercy of a small number of out-of-control youths who themselves sounded as if they had limited options for advancement. The residents admitted they had given up on asking the council for assistance, and had taken to painting over the graffiti each morning themselves, trying to set up with limited success more youth activities on the estate, and generally making do themselves.
‘But there’s a limit, Miz Edwards,’ said one woman. ‘We’re not rich people here. We go out to work ourselves. The council get paid to sort places like this out, so why are they leaving us to do their job for them? It’s not right.’
When she’d gleaned all she could from the residents – and when she realised she’d better be getting back to relieve Mrs McFarland, Chloe stood and thanked them.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said. ‘At the very least, your story will be on the front page of the Gazette.’
She was aware of the atmosphere of hope, even triumph, she left behind her, and she felt the burden of their expectations as she returned to her car. Chloe hoped fervently she wouldn’t let them down.
Her Astra was intact and unmarked, she noted thankfully. She set off for home. The return journey was easier, not least because the rain had eased off. Deciding to take a shortcut and avoid the centre of town, Chloe turned towards the moderately well-to-do streets of the western district.
The main road took her past Dr Carlisle’s house. She knew where it was because she’d once been giving Mrs McFarland a lift and her friend had pointed it out to her. Expecting Mrs McFarland to pass another comment, oblique or otherwise, suggesting that Chloe get closer to the doctor, Chloe hadn’t said anything but had driven on, quickly diverting the conversation in another direction. She’d noticed the house, however: a modest, attractive two-storey structure with a thatched roof and a generous front garden.
She glanced in the direction of the house now as she approached. Tom Carlisle’s car was in the driveway, she noted; it must be one of his split days at work. Another car was parked behind his, a Mercedes, flashier and pricier than his Ford. As Chloe drew abreast, a woman stepped out of the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and, swinging the door shut, began to stride briskly towards the front door.
In the glimpse Chloe got before she passed, she noticed that the woman was beautiful. Around thirty, Chloe’s age, she was elegantly decked out in an expensive-looking green sheath dress that clung to her slender figure. Her long blonde hair was carefully, discreetly highlighted and swung free, and her face had the high-cheekboned features of a makeup model. In her rearview mirror Chloe watched the woman reach up to the doorbell, and a few seconds later she saw the front door open and Tom appear. Then they were lost to view as Chloe turned the Astra off the main road.
His girlfriend, she thought.
And why not? He was a single, highly attractive man, with great looks, a winning personality and a good, well-respected job. A catch if ever there was one. It stood to reason he’d have no difficulty finding somebody, and no disinclination to do so. In any case, why was she even thinking about the subject? She ought to be concentrating on the piece she was going to write about the problems on the estate, shaping the prose in her head.
It was only when she caught her breath that Chloe realised she’d been forgetting to breathe for a few seconds. Gripping the steering wheel, she reproached herself. You’re turning into a nosey parker like Margaret McFarland.
She forced herself to think of her forthcoming article, of the supper she was going to make Jake and herself that evening, of the service her Astra was going to need in a few weeks. By the time she drew up outside her cottage, she was hardly thinking of Tom or the mystery woman at all.
***
‘Cup of tea?’
‘No thanks.’ As she’d done the other few times she’d visited his and Kelly’s home, Rebecca was casting a less-than-discreet eye over the décor, the furnishings. Her expression suggested she found them wanting.
Tom studied Rebecca. His ex-wife was perched primly on the edge of the sofa as though to sit back more comfortably would be to indulge in a friendliness she didn’t feel. She looked good, he had to admit. No, more than that: she looked absolutely stunning. Her clothes, her teeth and hair, were perfect. The tan looked natural, achieved on the beaches of the French Riviera rather than on a sunbed. And her body… it was dynamite, as supple and curvy as it had been when he’d first met her eleven years earlier. He’d been a medical student of twenty-two, she a nineteen-year-old studying fashion design. Little more than a decade ago, yet another era, it seemed.
The day was warm in spite of the earlier rain. Rebecca’s lustrous golden skin, the headiness of her perfume, all contributed to the atmosphere of mellow heat. But Tom felt cold as a man in rags on a winter’s night.
‘Where’s Kelly?’ asked Rebecca.
‘At nursery.’ Although Tom was at home, it wasn’t his usual split day. He’d asked his colleague Ben Okoro to cover him at the surgery for a couple of hours so he could meet Rebecca. Tom glanced pointedly at her handbag.
‘Are they in there?’
She arched a perfect eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The papers.’
‘Which papers are those?’
‘The legal papers. The summons, or whatever it is.’
She sighed, making even that sound elegant, practised. ‘It hasn’t come to that. There are no legal proceedings. I asked to meet you because I wanted to discuss this face to face.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss, Rebecca.’
‘Tom –’
‘Nothing we haven’t spoken about on the phone. You’ve wasted a trip here.’
She rested her pretty chin on her folded hands, looking away from him and blinking as though marshalling her thoughts.
‘I could take it further. Down the legal route.’
‘You could,’ he said. ‘And you’ll have to, frankly, if you want to pursue it.’
‘She’s my daughter.’
‘And mine.’
‘I’m her mother.’
‘In a sense.’ She stared at him as though stung, and he immediately regretted his words. He held his hands up in apology. ‘Sorry. That was a bit harsh. Of course you’re her mother, and she adores you. I’ve never tried to poison Kelly’s love for you, Rebecca. I never would, never will. I’ll never say a bad word about you in front of her. But you agreed to my having sole custody. Agreed even when your lawyer, and mine, both pressed you on whether you were absolutely certain that was what you wanted.’
‘I know,’ she said. She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘But I’ve changed my mind.’
Even though she’d said them before, the words gripped his heart.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve had time to consider. Having Kelly with us in Paris the other weekend was wonderful. It made me realise I need her to grow up with me.’
‘You need her. What about what she needs?’
‘A child needs a mother.’
‘A father too.’
‘She’d have a father –’
‘Don’t you dare.’ Tom fought the urge to rise from his chair and jab a finger in her direction. ‘Don’t you dare suggest he could be her father.’
‘Andrew’s a loving, capable man.’
‘Yes, I know that. He certainly proved capable of loving you away from me, didn’t he?’ Tom let the bitterness soak through. ‘So what about the lifestyle you’d have to sacrifice with a child to weigh you down? No more jetting off to the Caribbean on a whim, no more guarantees of cosy, romantic nights when there are fevers to be attended to, bad dreams to be soothed away. Have you actually thought of any of that?’
He’d raised his voice at the end, unable to help himself. Rebecca didn’t flinch. She smoothed her exquisitely manicured hands down her thighs and said, ‘Andrew and I have considered this at great length. And we’ve come to the conclusion it’s what we want.’
‘Just like one of his business deals, is it? Cost-benefit ratios weighed up, risk analyses carried out…’
‘Now you’re just being childish, Tom.’
He slumped back in his chair, staring at her, at a loss for words. This is how it begins, he thought. The vicious back-and-forth sniping that damages a child for ever. The divorce eighteen months earlier had been terrible, more painful than Tom had ever imagined, but at least they’d avoided the nightmare of a custody battle. Rebecca, dazzled by the glamorous world her new man Andrew was whirling her into, had quite readily conceded that Kelly would live with Tom. Everything had been legally settled, and since then, whenever Rebecca had expressed a wish to have Kelly visit or even come away for a weekend, Tom had quite willingly agreed, thankful for the privilege of having his daughter live with him and more than magnanimous in granting visiting rights to her mother.
Then the phone call had come, several weeks earlier when he’d been in the playground talking to Chloe, and Rebecca had announced that she wanted sole custody, wanted Kelly to live with her and the new guy. Tom had hung up on her. She’d phoned again, and eventually they’d held a conversation of sorts, in which he made his position as clear as he could: over my dead body. Rebecca had texted him a few days ago, asking for a meeting, and he’d agreed, assuming as he’d told her earlier that she was going to bring out the legal papers.
‘You could visit,’ Rebecca said. ‘Often.’
He pictured it. The Sunday trips by car to London, the day of frenetic “fun” activities while his heart broke again and again every time he looked at his daughter. The agony of separation at the end, and the dreary slog back home, alone.
‘Forget it,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
Rebecca drew a long breath. The last time Tom remembered her doing that was just before she announced to him she was having an affair with Andrew.
‘There’s something else,’ she said.
Tom waited.
She looked him full in the face. ‘Andrew and I are moving to France,’ she said. ‘We want Kelly to come with us.’
He was silent. The news might have floored him, but instead Tom felt numbed.
‘Then that’s clinched it,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to discuss this any further.’
‘Tom, you’d –’
‘You had your chance, Rebecca, and you passed it up. I’ve been more than reasonable in letting Kelly visit you over the last year and a half, both when we lived in London and since we moved. You can’t deny that. And I’m happy for that to continue. But for her to come and live with you, for her to move abroad… no.’
‘You’d better listen to what I have to say.’
He stood up. ‘This conversation, and this visit, is over. Please leave.’
Rebecca remained seated. ‘You can’t win this.’
‘Oh, but I can. And I will.’
‘I’ll get the lawyers involved if I have to.’
‘Do your worst.’
‘The courts will always look favourably on the mother in a case like this.’
‘Not if she’s already renounced custody once before.’
This time she did stand. She took a step forward. Almost as tall as he was, around five feet ten in her heels, her gaze was level with his.
‘This could get very, very nasty, Tom.’
‘It already is.’
Her tone became soft, as close to menacing as he’d ever heard her.
‘You have no idea what I’m capable of. No idea.’
‘I’m starting to get an inkling.’ He held out an arm towards the front door. ‘Go, Rebecca. Please.’
He watched her stalk off towards the Mercedes and disappear in a squeal of tyres. She didn’t look back.
Tom closed the front door and leaned heavily against it, his eyes closed. He felt utterly drained, more so than he had after some of the thirty-hour shifts he’d done as a junior hospital doctor.
You have no idea what I’m capable of.
What had she meant by it? He supposed it was bluster, empty threats. Yes, she had a point that the courts tended to favour the mother in custody battles. But he was of excellent character, and had a steady, respectable job. And, as he’d reminded her, she had voluntarily ceded custody of Kelly to him at the time of the divorce.
Feeling light-headed and a little shaky, Tom got ready to return to work.
***
‘No bother at all,’ said Mrs McFarland, studying Jake fondly as he toyed around Chloe’s legs. The two women were seated at Mrs McFarland’s kitchen table having a cup of tea. Chloe had entered the cottage to the sounds of her son’s raucous, uninhibited laughter, and Mrs McFarland said he’d been in high spirits all afternoon.
Margaret wanted of course to know all about Chloe’s “assignment”, as she called it. Chloe said she couldn’t reveal many details, which intrigued the older woman all the more. In the end Chloe let slip that she was going to try to interview a senior member of the town council about something, and this inflamed Mrs McFarland’s curiosity to the point where Chloe, laughing, had to put her hands up and insist that she really couldn’t say any more, and that was that.
A thought seemed to occur to Margaret and she leaned across the table conspiratorially. In a low voice she said, ‘Oh. Bit of gossip. Jill Bryson phoned just before you got here to tell me she’d seen Rebecca Carlyle at the petrol station earlier.’
‘Rebecca Carlyle? Who’s that?’ But Chloe thought she knew.
‘Dr Carlyle’s ex, dear. Nobody’s seen her around town for ages. She came to pick up the little girl once, several months ago, but that was the last time. And there she was, according to Jill, getting into her car after filling up. Done up to the nines, she was, too. Though she always was a stylish girl.’
Chloe felt something gnawing at her, deep in her stomach. ‘What does she look like?’
‘She’s – why?’ Mrs McFarland’s glance was sharp and shrewd.
‘Oh, I just think I might have seen her too.’
‘Tall, very pretty. Long blonde hair. Takes care of herself. Not that you don’t, dear,’ the older woman added hastily, patting Chloe’s hand.
Chloe stared off in silence until Mrs McFarland said, ‘Well?’
‘What?’
‘Is she the one you saw earlier?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so. Visiting Dr Carlyle.’ As she said it, Chloe felt the sensation spreading through her chest. She couldn’t identify it, exactly. She just knew it was making her struggle to breathe.
‘Ah.’ Mrs McFarland drew the syllable out knowingly. ‘Now that’s interesting. You don’t think – no.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t think… they might be getting together again?’
Chloe said nothing. But yes, that was precisely what she’d been thinking.
Mrs McFarland was off, seeming not to notice Chloe’s discomfort. ‘It would be lovely, you know. We were all so sorry to hear of the divorce, even though young Tom wasn’t living here at the time. And it would be so good for little Kelly as well, to have both parents around again. We didn’t know Rebecca well in Pemberham, but Tom brought her up from London a few times while he was courting her, and she seemed like a nice girl.’ She rubbed her hands, clearly delighted at this latest morsel of gossip she was going to be able to share with her circle. ‘So what did it look like to you? Did you see him kiss her?’
‘No, no.’ Chloe waved a hand, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘I was driving past his house and I just saw her go up to the door, that’s all.’
‘Ah.’ Mrs McFarland seemed disappointed. ‘Still, I’m sure we’ll find out more soon enough.’
I bet you will, thought Chloe wryly. But her mind was on other things.
She made small talk for another few minutes, all the while struggling to recognise the tightness in her chest for what it was. Words were Chloe’s stock-in-trade, the way she made her living, and she liked to be able to pin concepts and feelings down and define them in verbal terms. But this experience was proving hard to characterise. There was a strong physical component – a choking sensation, a rapid pulse, a tingling – but the name of the accompanying emotion was eluding her.
So what if Dr Carlyle – Tom, she really should get used to calling him, since everyone else did – was getting back together with his former wife? Wasn’t that usually considered a good thing, especially when there were children involved? Shouldn’t Chloe be happy for him? Or, more accurately, why should she care one way or the other, apart from feeling the natural benevolence a decent person would for an casual acquaintance’s good fortune?
Besides, Chloe herself might benefit if Tom and his ex reconciled. It would put an end to the speculation about her and Tom as two eligible, unattached people of a similar age, speculation which Chloe sensed was still rife in town despite her protest about it to Margaret McFarland. Chloe wouldn’t have to worry that every casual conversation between her and Tom on the playground or in the supermarket would be misinterpreted as evidence of attraction or a growing attachment between them.
Her musings continued after she’d gathered up Jake and returned to their own cottage, and they resumed later once he was tucked up in bed after supper and Chloe was at her laptop, writing up notes from her interview that afternoon with the residents of the estate. In Chloe’s experience, when she couldn’t let go of a topic it was usually because she’d made a mistake somewhere along the line, a mistake in her reasoning. Deciding she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on her work while she was thus preoccupied, Chloe shut her laptop and closed her eyes.
And in a moment she had it. The mistake she’d made was that she’d been dishonest. Not dishonest with anyone else, but with herself.
She knew the name of the emotion she’d been experiencing after hearing about Rebecca Carlyle’s return. Had in fact been experiencing since she’d seen this glamorous woman walking up to Tom’s door.
The emotion was called jealousy.