Last night in church she had seemed an outsider, her shield against the world penetrable only when she sang; here, she moved with the grace of familiarity. Here, he had found her in her element.
Chapter Ten
Juliet’s hand had seemed to turn the key in the ignition of its own accord, her foot had eased in the clutch, and she’d found herself driving. Her reflexes had taken over, funneling her into the most familiar route, up the A towards Nantwich.
The rolling meadows of the Cheshire Plain had slipped by, dark stubble now peeking through the snow. At each roundabout she hesitated, thinking she must turn back, but her body seemed unwilling to obey her mind’s instructions.
Suddenly, she realized she’d reached the southern outskirts of Nantwich. Swerving the car into a side street, she pulled up against the curb and lifted her trembling hands from the wheel.
What the hell had she done, leaving Caspar’s parents like that?
She had to go back, had to make some sort of excuse, but what could she say? No excuse would soften Caspar’s cold fury; she had done the unforgivable: embarrassing him in front of his parents. And what would she tell the children? That it had been the sound of her mother- in- law’s voice as she said, “Juliet, darling, if you could just give the gravy boat a little rinse?”
Rita Newcombe had turned from her state-of- the-art oven to
give Juliet a brittle smile and a nod in the direction of the gold-rimmed gravy boat on the worktop, as if Juliet were too dense to recognize a gravy boat when she saw one. Rita, Juliet knew from experience, hated to risk her manicured nails with washing up, and would no doubt find a good excuse to stick her daughter- in- law with a sink full of dirty crockery when the meal was finished as well.
Juliet had complied, her lips pressed together in irritation, but if Rita noticed her bad grace, she gave no sign. They were having stuffed goose, Rita informed her, a recipe she’d seen in a gourmet cooking magazine, and Juliet doubted the children would do more than push it around on their plates. It would never have occurred to Rita that the children would have preferred plain roast turkey, and if it had been pointed out to her, she’d have announced that the children needed a bit more sophistication—implying that Juliet was falling down on the job at home.
Now it made Juliet flush with shame to remember that when she’d first married Caspar, she’d compared her parents to his and wished hers had a bit more polish, a bit more appreciation for the finer things in life, and a little less interest in books.
How could she have been so stupid? And how could she have gone all these years without realizing how thoroughly she despised her in-laws? Rita, with her flawlessly colored hair and trendy jogging outfits—
although Juliet had never been able to imagine her actually running, or doing anything else that might cause an unladylike sweat. And Ralph—
or Rafe, as he insisted on being called—with his paunch and thinning hair, who fancied himself irresistible to anything in a skirt, and flirted shamelessly whenever Rita’s back was turned.
The Newcombes had embraced their retirement, trading in their suburban home in Crewe for a modern flat overlooking the locks in Audlem, a pretty town near the Shropshire border. The fl at was open plan and too small for the children to stay over, a defi cit that Juliet suspected was intentional.
The truth was that her mother- and father- in- law didn’t like the
disruption of grandchildren—didn’t really even like to admit that they had grandchildren, because it meant they were losing their tenacious grip on middle age.
Juliet had wiped the gravy boat dry and set it beside the stacked dishes waiting to be carried to the perfectly set table. As she turned from the sink, she’d glanced into the combined dining and sitting areas. Caspar and his father were ensconced with whiskies in the corner Rita referred to as “the nook,” and from the drone of her father- in-law’s voice, Juliet guessed he’d launched into one of his interminable golf stories. Sam sat on the floor near the ultra realistic gas fi re, silently picking at one of his shoelaces. And Lally . . . Lally had been curled at her father’s knee, tilting her head so that he could stroke her hair.
Then Caspar had looked up and met her eyes, and the venom in his glance struck Juliet like a physical blow. Suddenly her head swam and her heart pounded. She couldn’t seem to move air into her lungs. Sweat broke out on her face and arms, trickled down between her shoulder blades.
Heart attack, she thought. She was having a heart attack. Don’t be daft, she told herself, it was just the overheated fl at coupled with the stress of her rush of anger. But then a wave of nausea clutched her, and she knew if she didn’t get outside that instant she would disgrace herself.
“Sorry,” she’d mumbled desperately. “Left something. In the car.
Back in a tick.” She glimpsed their white, startled faces, turning towards her like sea anemones moving in an ocean current, then she was out the door and down the stairs, gulping clean cold air as she ran.
When she’d reached the car, she’d leaned against it, fists pressed to her heaving chest. Something sharp jabbed her palm, and looking down, she realized that she had somehow, miraculously, snatched up her keys as she ran out the door. They had come in her aging Vauxhall Vectra, thank God, as Caspar’s little sports model didn’t have room for the kids, and when Juliet unlocked the door and slipped into the driver’s seat, it felt like a safe haven.
The car’s interior was warm from the sun, and at first she only meant to sit there until her heart slowed and her head cleared. Then it occurred to her that someone might come after her, and she knew she couldn’t face anyone quite yet, not even her children, not until she pulled herself together.
So she had driven away, but she hadn’t pulled herself together, even now, sitting in an unfamiliar street outside a house where some other family would be having their Christmas dinner. She swallowed hard against the nausea rising again in her throat. The image of Lally at her father’s knee, looking at her with alien, sullen eyes, seemed frozen in her mind.
Despair clutched at her. She would lose her children if she didn’t get out of this marriage; already Lally was slipping away. Caspar was poisoning her children against her, as Piers had poisoned him, and she felt powerless to stop it. Caspar was weak, susceptible to suggestion, but Piers . . . she knew now what Piers was, she had seen what lurked beneath the charm, and that had been her downfall. Hatred surged through her, corrosive and searing as acid. Her body jerked from the force of it, and for a moment her heart seemed to squeeze to a stop.
But then, slowly, she sank back into her seat. Calm washed through her and everything took on an unexpected clarity. She touched the keys dangling from the ignition with fingertips that felt sensitive as a newborn’s.
Caspar was stranded in Audlem, until he had to humiliate himself by begging a ride home from his parents. Piers, as Caspar had told her repeatedly, was spending the day in Chester with his father, a retired barrister. She had the keys to the office, and the freedom to do whatever she pleased, unobserved.
It was time she brought Piers Dutton to account.
The town center was deserted, the shops and cafés tightly, protectively, shut. It was an illustrator’s dream, gilded by the afternoon
sun, the roofs of the buildings still bearing a confectioners’-sugar dusting of snow, unmarred by the messy unpredictability of human subjects.
Juliet passed the empty space just in front of Newcombe and Dutton, cautiously parking a few streets away. She’d left without her coat, and as she made her way back to Monk’s Lane, she soon discovered that the afternoon’s clear golden light was deceptive. The cold bit through her thin blouse, and by the time she reached the office, her teeth were chattering. She chafed her hands together, trying to warm them enough to fumble the key into the lock.