As a director of Furness Durwent he received a big beaming salary, bonuses, dividends and profit sharing. Investments added to his income. Valerie had a private income from the chain of department stores that had eventually swallowed upMyers. All three of his daughters were beneficiaries of grandparental trusts.
His family were used to plenty: plenty of money, clothes, a lovely house, new cars; they were used to being pleasantly and materially spoilt.
He wished that he could return Diane to that kind of comfort.
Certainly, he could’ve taken her to a nicer restaurant – her clothes were slightly crazy but always good. She would’ve enjoyed a decent restaurant and he would have enjoyed her enjoyment. And they would have lingered longer over a meal that wasn’t bashed out in the kitchen of a chain of pubs. It would have been good for both of them to lay down their respective burdens for a while.
‘And did you blame Gareth?’ he heard himself ask.
Thoughtfully, she shook her head. ‘No, I never did. For being an ordinary man? It’s hardly a crime, is it?’
‘You must’ve loved him, to marry him?’
She smiled suddenly and he wished he could capture it, like a photo, capture the light in her eyes and the lazy way she turned up the corners of her fine mouth.
‘Yes. I think I loved him. He was what Bryony would called “socool” with his scooter and Parka. He stopped to help me when I had a flat tyre at the side of the road, me gazing at the jack, mystified. By the time he’d changed the wheel, I was in love. Gareth was quite –’ She drew in a long breath. ‘He was quite different then. Assured, capable, friendly, sexy, good-looking. He only had to smile and I’d melt. Of course, I quickly realised he had issues. He was all attitude and grievances, veryus and them. It took me a while to realise that I would never be anything else butthem.’
James’s meal was only half-eaten but he was getting a bad taste in his mouth. He laid down his knife and fork. ‘Surely that’s not why he “forgot” to tell you about Harold and Valerie? And about the money?’
Her eyes managed a tiny twinkle. ‘I’m afraid that was good old-fashioned tit for tat. My parents left everything to my brother, Freddy, when they died. I refused to allow him to make half over to me.’
James tried, but failed, to conceive of a grudge so black and bitter that it continued past the grave. Of parents who’d let their child and grandchild live in straightened circumstances while they rested on their fat bank account, a husband who’d condemn his wife to unnecessary adversity out of spite. It went against his nature. At various times his family had given him to understand that he was managing, controlling, overprotective and/or an obsessive provider, but if any one of them were to be listening to Diane, they might even begin to feel grateful. He was always there for his own, even though it was a long time since Valerie had deserved it. ‘Has money … been a big problem?’
She laughed, but he saw that her eyes shimmered. ‘If you mean the lack of it, then desperately! And Bryony was ill so much that I was always rushing to the village shop for cough medicine and paracetamol stuff. The doctor used to put as much as he could on prescription for her but just getting to him – in Holbeach – was almost impossible, sometimes. Her asthma meant I couldn’t hold down a full-time job. Hence the sewing.’
After coffee – as if to make up for the almost uneaten sandwich, she drank two cappuccinos, each with double sprinkles – they walked out to the car park. The air was soft with rain and the dusk smelled pleasantly fresh.
Inside the car, Diane patted the leather dash. ‘So it’s really fast?’
‘Very fast,’ he agreed, as he steered towards the exit of the pub car park.
‘And it’s an expensive car?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘I’ve never been driven really fast in an expensive car.’ She turned and grinned, her eyes gleaming in the umbrellas of light cast by the enormous car park lampposts.
He tried to withstand the temptation. He was a responsible adult. There were one-eyed monsters on every verge around Peterborough and he’d only just copped three points on his licence from one of the little bastards.
But he heard his voice say, ‘Would you like to?’ as the car purred up the service road and back onto the dual carriageway.
And before she could answer he thrust his foot down on the accelerator and the seat delivered a punch to his back as the car launched itself at the road ahead.
‘Whoohoo!’ She grabbed her seat.
James drove faster, surging along the dual carriageway from Paston Parkway to Perkins Parkway, weaving, overtaking taillights that were like red stars on either side until he hit a clear patch of road and he could really open up, enjoying Diane’s yelps and whoops as she rocked in her seat and he let the car do what it was made to.
Her laughter bubbled around them. ‘I hope you don’t get stopped!’
‘So do I.’ One wary eye on his mirrors in case a flashing blue light materialised out of the dusk, he braked dangerously hard to pass a camera. But this wasfun. And the woman beside him seemed to be having fun, too, clinging on and squeaking with delight at every swerve.
She gasped as he let the back end drift out. ‘Wow, James!’ He liked the way his name sounded on her tongue.
Eventually, he slowed.
The car slid sedately onto a slip road, past McDonalds and the cluster of car showrooms around the cinema, around a couple of roundabouts and into the Farcet Fen lane, safely reined in to thirty as they approached Farcet village. The main road through the village, busy during the day, was quiet now. Over speed bumps, they passed the school and friendly family homes in red brick and pebbledash. Just as the village became the countryside again he rolled the car to a stop in a lay-by beside the wall and railings of a small cemetery. The light had faded into the long deep twilight of a clear summer evening. No moon or stars yet, just infinite indigo sky.
Diane unfastened her belt and turned in her seat, breathlessly. ‘That was great. Thanks for the ride.’
