It seemed to him that Diane Jenner was so independent/bloody-minded that if Gareth took a turn for the worse, she’d set out to cope on her own, no matter how much help she needed. It might be better if he had reports on Gareth, too, in case he had to divert any of his attention to the Jenners.
Gareth had been an unexpected branch to grow on the family tree but Val was much fonder of him than James would have expected, considering his blunt manners and his uncomfortable upbringing. Valerie was amused and entertained by Gareth. It wasn’t in her to feel compassion – leave that to Harold – but she genuinely enjoyed Gareth’s company. Once or twice she’d undiplomatically banged on about her privileged childhood but Gareth seemed more fascinated than resentful and eager to spend time in the North household. In the helicopter. In Val’s car.
James had wondered. What about his poor, mentally sick wife? He had occasionally pictured a sad-faced woman with her nose pressed up against the window, waiting for her husband, her only link with the outside world.
But all the time, that wife at home had been quite normal.
He grinned as he opened an attachment to an email, a report from Cherry in HR about training requirements in the coming quarter. Diane Jenner seemed to be coping admirably with the fact that Valerie had nearly killed herself and Gareth with her stupid antics.
The lines of Cherry’s report blurred suddenly.
Valerie had nearly died.
The thought revolved slowly as his eyes focused again and his heart resumed its normal rhythm. He tried to imagine what would have happened – the grief of his daughters. Tamzin, especially. Tamzin would have been in bits. He tried, and failed, to imagine Tamzin coping.
He shuddered. Once Valerie was well enough he was going to give her such a bollocking. Fucking Valerie.
He returned to the report’s introduction, trying to concentrate, trying to deny to himself that he had just suffered something unpleasantly like shock.
That’s what had changed his whole adult life, fucking Valerie. Made him a married man and a father way ahead of schedule, tied to a woman who had picked him as her life partner for all the wrong reasons.
Or maybe for pragmatic reasons. Maybe she’d recognised a man who would never let anything bad happen to her.
But she had overlooked a fundamental fact: it could be hard for two people who loved and respected each other, and had stuff in common, to live together without bloodshed.
Let alone those who would have been happier apart.
As a kid, he’d assumed, naively, that he would someday meet a woman he’d fall in love with and with whom he would want to be. Simple.
Things hadn’t worked out like that and, in principle, he could leave Valerie right now. But he wouldn’t, for all the reasons that he had never left Val – he had no cause to go. No hatred between him and his wife. No love between him and someone else.
And then there was Tamzin. Poor, fragile Tamzin, needing support even though, perhaps taking her cue from her mother, she sometimes treated James as if he were the enemy.
Instead of her only friend.
Chapter Four
Over the following weeks, Diane developed a routine of working at her sewing machine in the mornings and visiting Gareth in the afternoons, when the roads were relatively quiet, leaving the evenings free for Ivan and Melvyn if they wished to keep their brother company. ‘You can have some evenings, if you want,’ offered Ivan, handsomely.
‘Gareth wouldn’t like me driving in the dark,’ she responded, truthfully, because Gareth generally had some objection to make to any idea she put forward. Which left her free to do her hand sewing in the evenings while the best television programmes were on, enjoying having custody of the TV remote.
She even became accustomed to ‘going private’. The hotel-like hospital had a pleasant serenity. It was the task of the nurses and doctors to keep a close eye on Gareth’s head trauma and the things that pinned him together; Diane’s was to interact with him. As he wasn’t exactly up to games of cards or even keeping up his end of a conversation, she sat beside his bed and updated him on life as it went on without him.
‘Only bills in today’s post – I’m opening all your letters now. The lady in your wages office says that you’re entitled to three months’ on full pay before the company reviews the situation. That’s generous, isn’t it? After it stops, we’ll have to claim statutory sick pay, I suppose, because you won’t be fit to return to work in three months. You’ve always refused to claim benefit, but the bills must be paid, and the mortgage.’ She flicked a glance his way in the hopes of reaction but was disappointed.
With Gareth unable to prevent her investigations she was beginning to get to grips with the tricks he’d exerted to maintain control in their marriage. ‘I’m enjoying the novelty of being in charge of the bank account. Money’s a little less tight than before. You’re spending nothing, of course, and shopping for one is cheaper than for two. And Ivan and Melvyn aren’t likely to approach me for a sub with you in hospital, are they? Also, somehow, your salary is quite a bit higher than I understood.’
Gareth regarded her through the slit eyes in his lurid head. His expression, on that bloated face, was impossible to read.
She could have added:‘Isn’t that funny, Gareth? Especially as you’ve only been working a three-day week. Your hourly rate must be nearly double what you told me.’But he needed quiet and calm; the doctors and nurses said so. So she just smiled sweetly at him to let him know:I’m on to you, mate.
At the end of the hour she patted his chest, an area that was free of plaster. ‘I’ll leave you to rest.’ And breezed from the room that he was stuck in, knowing that she’d irritated him with her cheery reports of ferreting into areas that he’d hitherto guarded from her eyes. Out in the corridor, phones rang, nurses raised reassuring voices, cheerful porters piloted gurneys and she strolled through them feeling pleasantly revenged by her liberty.
Sometimes she came across Harold and his veined face would brighten. ‘I’ll duck in and see Gareth after Valerie, my dear!’ There was no sign of the pinched pallor of the night of the accident; he was hearty and energetic.
Occasionally she’d catch sight of James’s dark figure striding in to see his wife and he’d grin at her as if enjoying a private joke, but he visited mainly in the evenings. No doubt he had a job to do on weekdays. Once she saw Tamzin with two young women so like her – except rounded and robust – she knew even before Tamzin introduced them that they must be James’s other daughters, Alice and Natalia.
‘Poor Uncle Gareth!’ they chorused, corn-coloured hair swept up with bright ornaments behind their heads. ‘Bless him! His poor face!’
