Edward said nothing, as she eyeballed him accusingly. The colour draining from his ruddy cheeks, he simply looked at her for a second, and then dropped his gaze and turned away. The silence was so profound you could hear a pin drop as, avoiding the astonished gaze of his neighbours, he walked silently towards the door.
Trembling, Emily looked disbelievingly towards Fran. It was her.She’dbeen doing this. Destroying people. Driving them to the edge of despair, with no thought or feeling for the devastating consequences. Her heart banging as the whispers began to ripple around her, she looked towards where Edward had disappeared through the exit door, and then went after him.
Thirty-Six
Frantically Emily scoured the road back into the centre of the village. She breathed out a huge sigh of relief when she spotted Edward sitting on the bench overlooking the river. His hands resting on his knees, his shoulders slumped, he was gazing out over the water; seeing nothing but his world crashing around him, she imagined, supposing any of what Fran had said was true. Judging by his reaction, she had an awful feeling it might be.
Careful not to startle him, she made her way down the path and sat down beside him.
‘First you take a drink, then the drink takes you,’ he said quietly after a moment. ‘It obviously loosened her tongue. She would never have said the things she did otherwise.’
Emily wasn’t so sure about that. Fran might have spat out her accusations in a drunken rage – she’d clearly had much more to drink than the three glasses of wine she’d had at the party – but the woman’s tongue worked perfectly well with or without alcohol.
Thinking it better not to voice her opinion, she watched Edward carefully as he fell silent again. She wanted to reach for his hand, to reassure him in some way, but guessing from his long intake of breath that he was trying to hold himself together, she waited instead, allowing him the space he might need.
‘She was talking about Tom, by the way, not Jake, you do realise that?’ He glanced at her briefly. ‘I can’t abide gossip, as I think you know, but since Fran has opened that particular can of worms … Her daughter, Leah. If you look, you can see the likeness. I don’t think Tom ever has.’
Leah?Emily stared at him in a combination of bewilderment and disbelief. Fran’s daughter was Tom’s? And she’d never told him?Why?
‘She was married at the time,’ Edward explained intuitively. ‘Definitely a case of throwing stones in glass houses, I’d say. It’s not common knowledge, incidentally. She confided in me once – had a drop too much to drink then, too, I suspect – so …’
He was asking her not to say anything. But didn’t Tom have a right to know? Didn’t Jake?
‘I expect you’re wondering if what she said about me has any truth in it?’ Edward asked, taking another long breath. ‘It shames me to say it, but I’m afraid it does.’
Oh God, no.Emily’s stomach dropped.
‘I believe Fran overheard me on the phone to my mortgage provider. She cleans the building I worked in, as bad luck would have it,’ he continued. ‘I wasn’t sure how much she’d heard. Enough, obviously. I think she’s had eyes on me ever since. Been doing a bit of sleuthing. You can’t blame her.’
Obviously she’d been gathering information to fuel her nasty gossip. Had Edward been about to become the next recipient of a letter? Emily wondered. None of this information would be on his file, though, which might have cast doubt on the assumption that someone from the surgery was sending them out.
‘I’m basically bankrupt.’ Edward cut through her thoughts, stunning her.
Bankrupt? But how? When? ‘Edward, you don’t have to tell me any of this,’ she said quickly. She dearly wanted him to know he could talk to her – he’d offered his shoulder to so many people – yet if she was honest, she didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want any of it to be true.
He reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. ‘I think I probably do,’ he said gruffly. ‘There are no excuses, but I’d like to try to explain, if I may?’
Emily nodded, glancing down at her hand as he tucked it back in her lap, patting it gently as if she were a child. She felt like one. Felt like sobbing like a child, for Edward, for Joyce. For Fran, ludicrously.
‘I hit a few problems at work,’ he admitted. ‘My accountancy business went under, a while back now. That new firm, Affordable Accountancy, opening up next to the bank did for me, I suspect. I couldn’t compete. I was obviously getting a bit slow in my old age.’
‘Oh Edward …’ Emily’s heart broke for him.
‘I tried to keep going for a while, relying on my savings and investments. I ran out of funds eventually. The thing is … the investments were supposed to fund our retirement. I haven’t made any other pension provision. Damn bloody foolish thing to have done.’
He had no income? Nothing coming in at all? Bewildered, Emily searched his face. It was riddled with shame and regret.
‘I tried not to worry about it at the time, thinking I would cross that bridge when I came to it. They have a habit of coming up on you faster than you expect them to, though, don’t they?’ He smiled ruefully.
Emily had no idea what to say. ‘Couldn’t you have sold up?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Downsized?’ He met her eyes sadly, and then looked away. ‘That was the plan,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t told Joyce, unfortunately. I knew she’d stand by me, but … Pride, I suppose, stopped me initially. Then I thought I would choose my time, break the news gently. Time waits for no man, though.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Joyce got ill, as you know, and when she told me she would be happy with whatever time she had left as long as she could potter about in her garden and smell her roses …’
Emily wiped away a tear that spilled down her cheek. ‘So she doesn’t know any of this?’ she probed gently.
Edward shook his head. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to tell her,’ he said, his voice catching. ‘I haven’t told anyone apart from Jake, and even then I only hinted at how bad things were, for obvious reasons.’
Jake knew? Why hadn’t he mentioned it to her? Because they’d hardly been speaking unless to argue, she reminded herself, her heart twisting.Why?Why did people tear each other apart when life was so short?
