Silence.
Outside the window the blue sky was ragged with piebald clouds racing before a stiff breeze. The double-glazing hushed the thunder of traffic to a whisper. Amongst the trees, birds could be seen but not heard. Diane leaned her elbows on the bed. Her heart was beating not fast, but hard, as though running in seven-league boots. ‘We could’ve afforded another car.’
‘We could have had another car ages ago – if you’d challenged Freddy.’
And Diane looked at him and saw that he was ugly. Not because of the swelling or the bruises, but because of what he’d let his grudge make him do – hide his wealth and his family away like kinky perversions. ‘Do you remember when we were happy?’ she murmured. ‘When it didn’t matter that we had no money, it was us against the rest. My parents tried everything they could to come between us when they were alive and you let them achieve their aim once they were dead.’
He shook his head. ‘You let them achieve it.’
‘It was only money.’
He grimaced. ‘And we only didn’t have any.’
Diane left the room, shaking. The traffic would be gathering impetus as the dreaded rush hour approached but she couldn’t command her disobedient legs to carry her to the car. She felt as if she were made of drumsticks, stiff and clunky, held together with brittle old thread.
In an embrasure beside a tall window facing the hospital gardens she discovered a water dispenser that turned the sunrays into a rainbow, and a comfy little chair in plum leather with a cushion in the same fabric as the curtains. She sank down, weedy in the wake of battle. She so rarely confronted Gareth; long experience had taught her it wasn’t the best way to manage him. And the scene had been ugly with old sores and unsettled scores.
No, she wasn’t really surprised that he hadn’t told her about Harold because of the money. It had always been about money, about the days when she had money and he didn’t.
Not much more than twenty-five years ago, when they began to get serious, Gareth had been prepared for resistance from her parents. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how the world worked and thatfitter from a council estatewouldn’t be on Peter and Karen Wibberley’s list of prospective sons-in-law. He’d expected a chilly reception when Diane took him to meet her parents.
But they had both been shaken by the depths of Peter and Karen Wibberley’s repugnance.
Sitting back in his imposing house with a fragile teacup in his hand Peter Wibberley hadn’t pulled any punches. ‘And what do you do?’
‘I’m a fitter at Greatorex Packaging.’
‘And where do you live?’
‘The Brightside Estate.’
Peter Wibberley’s silver hair was combed straight back, his moustache darker grey. He nodded sadly, as if his worst suspicions had been confirmed. ‘I am not the sort of father,’ he pronounced, ‘to expect to vet my daughter’s friends. Normally, I trust her judgement.’ He sipped his tea.
Diane felt her palm sweating, where it lay in Gareth’s hand as they sat side-by-side on the sofa.
‘However,’ Peter continued, ‘I think we might as well be straight from the outset. We had envisaged something – someone – very different for our daughter. I can’t imagine your relationship with Diane lasting and my wife and myself will not be acknowledging it.’
Karen Wibberley turned to stare at Gareth, her hair permed into a fuzz of mousy curls. ‘She’s only eighteen. Eighteen! We have to protect her from … people like you. From herself,’ she added, as if Diane wasn’t even there.
A crackling silence. Then Gareth rattled his cup and saucer onto the coffee table and strode from the room.
Diane flew after him in tears of fury, hair sticking to her cheeks. ‘Gareth, I didn’t know –’
‘Well, now you do,’ he said, without breaking stride. ‘Now you fucking-well know.’
Gareth had sulked for a fortnight, a fortnight during which Diane’s parents had been kind but unyielding. Gareth Jenner was out of her life. Good. If she accepted that then they would forget the whole unfortunate episode and things would go on just as before, with Diane bathed by her parents’ approval.
But then Gareth rang Diane at work, from a callbox. ‘Let’s talk,’ he suggested. That night she lied to her parents about her movements and met him at a restaurant. ‘It was a bit of a sodding shock,’ he said, grimly, ‘that shit your parents handed out. I thought that if I kept my nose clean and worked hard it would be enough in this so-called classless society. I didn’t think it mattered where me mum brought me up. I thought what mattered was what I made of myself.’
Diane was forlorn. ‘I thought they’d be OK when they met you.’
Gareth sliced through his steak with suppressed violence. ‘Some bloody hope! I suppose that there’s no point in asking you to marry me, now.’
Her mouth dropped open.
‘No, I shouldn’t have asked.’ He took a slug of his beer. Diane drank wine in restaurants but Gareth hadn’t taken to it. ‘Blood’s thicker than water. You have to please your parents.’
Anger set her face on fire. ‘I’m not twelve, you know.’
