He hesitated. ‘Are you all right for money, Diane? Are you managing?’
A smile crooked her mouth and she gazed at him with curiosity. ‘You’ve lain here with all that money at your fingertips and that’s the first time you’ve bothered asking. Your boss phoned to check I was getting your sick pay, your union rep asked if I’d like to draw from the welfare fund, Harold offered help and Freddy wanted to send me a cheque. Thanks, Gareth, thank you for finally bothering about me but I’m OK. For now, your sick pay’s covering the mortgage and I’m meeting everything else myself. I’ve even got in all the money Trish Warboys and Maria Cuthbert owed.’
Silence. Then, ‘I still love you.’
She made a rude noise. ‘Words are cheap.’
Fresh sweat broke out on his face. ‘We can get through this. I’ll have counselling. Some people don’t cope well when they have a big windfall. They go on the spree. I just did the opposite, that’s all –’
‘How did it happen?’ she interrupted.
‘What?’ The afternoon sun slanted low into his window, making him squint.
‘When Harold got in touch with you. Did he write? Phone? Just turn up one day when I wasn’t there?’
She watched the expressions chase across his face – indecision, guilt, guile. He cleared his throat. ‘A bloke waited outside for me one day. I sent him on his way.’
‘Why?’
He grinned. ‘I thought that Melvyn or Ivan had got in bother with a loan and maybe got a bit creative with my signature and put me down as guarantor. You know how those lads expect my help.’
‘Yes, I do.’ She didn’t smile.
‘Then a letter arrived at our house. It was directly from my father. I was … flabbergasted. Blown away. You can’t imagine – ’
‘Was I there when you read it?’
His eyes flicked left and she knew he was searching for the politically expedient reply. Probably he knew that the wrong answer would ignite her simmering fury. ‘It was a Saturday, you were upstairs in your workroom when the post came. I don’t think I meant not to tell you. But it was unreal. That’s it, honestly – unreal. I didn’t know what to do. He said that the agency believed that I was born to Wendy Jenner and he was likely to be my father. And he would very much like to meet me.
‘I couldn’t get my head round it. Didn’t want to be made a fool of by it turning out to be some crackpot joke.
‘I had to answer a load of questions about Mum’s age, height and colouring and the names of her parents and siblings. I had a meeting with somebody from the agency, then I had a meeting with my father.’ His voice shook. ‘It was at the Great Northern Hotel. You know how swanky that is.’
‘Yes. I haven’t been there since before we were married, of course.’
The eyes dropped again, uncomfortably. She so rarely alluded to the fact that marrying him had sent her finances hurtling downhill as fast as a bob sleigh. ‘We met for dinner. He was there, waiting for me. I was nervous, didn’t know what to expect. I’d bought a new white shirt so that I didn’t feel like a tramp in that swish dining room. I dropped my spoon in my soup and was so concerned with checking my new shirt that I didn’t realise I’d showered his suit. I felt such a berk! The waiter looked at me as if I’d come in on his shoe. But Harold just laughed and told me not to worry.’
‘Did you have blood tests?’ Diane felt a creeping sensation of unreality that Gareth, her husband, could have been living in the same house as her yet keep hidden all these momentous developments in his life. Was she blind? Complacent? Stupid?
‘Yes. Neither of us wanted to find later that we’d believed in something that wasn’t true. Diane, he’s a really good bloke and we get on well.’
‘Yes, he’s a gentleman.’
‘Then he took me to meet Valerie, and we hit it off, too. She took me out in her sports car and up in her helicopter. I mean – ahelicopter. My relationship with her is all novelty. Not just the flying, not just that she’s a sister instead of a brother – but because she doesn’t expect me to make her decisions for her.’
‘And it was all just too nice to share?’
He sagged wearily on his pillows, hunted and grumpy. He was being honest(ish) and she was still responding with her sour little comments, not cutting him any slack at all. In a minute he’d lose his temper and ability to apologise and this cautious, uncomfortable conversation would be wasted. Implacable, angry Diane was wearing to deal with. The normal Diane, the one who liked a quiet life, was easier to manipulate. He studied his wife. She looked half her age today in cropped jeans with a red and gold cuff at the bottom. He thought, irrelevantly, that he’d forgotten how blue her eyes were. Blue steel.
But maybe it was time for a controlled offensive. ‘You know how I feel about what you did to me about your parents’ money. And you know what lies are like. Suddenly, I was creating a whole new life for myself. Forme. Not for you, not for my brothers or mum.’
‘Nor for your daughter,’ she added, helpfully.
He hesitated. Thought about Bryony and the baby. ‘I’m going to make it up to her.’
‘Put her in your will, do you mean? So she’ll have to wait about 30 years, but if there’s anything left, she’ll get it?’ Diane laughed.
Abruptly, the hold on his temper snapped. ‘Oh, fuck off!’
