‘I’m just escaping from Babyland,’ he said. ‘Not that she isn’t beautiful. She’s very sweet, isn’t she?’
We all agreed that she was.
‘Obviously every parent is convinced that their own baby is the most beautiful in the world,’ said Joe. ‘I can remember saying something of the kind when Becky was born.’ He picked up a slice of cake before Mary could stop him. He took a bite as he continued talking, crumbs spilling from his mouth. ‘The difference is that when I said it I was right.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mary, and I could see she was about to launch into a Robin-is-best speech.
‘To return to what we were saying,’ interrupted Gwen, hastily, ‘Ellie has to do something to stop the police messing her about.’
‘What are they up to now?’ asked Joe, raising his eyebrows at me and grinning. I could tell he was trying to make me feel better about the mess I’d caused, turning it into a kind of joke that we could laugh at.
So, of course, Gwen had to explain to all and sundry about my latest encounter with the police. I was a bit ashamed to be the centre of attention again. They’d had to be sympathetic to me as a widow, listen to my rants about Greg and his innocence, then deal with my activities as some kind of fraudster. And always it had been me, me, me at the centre of things, with everyone else in a supporting role, their concerns pushed aside.
‘You should have asked us to come with you,’ said Mary. ‘I can’t bear to think you went on your own. It must have been grim.’
‘You’d done enough already, all of you. Besides, it was something I needed to do alone.’
‘What’s outrageous,’ said Joe, ‘is that visiting the scene of your husband’s death is something they should find suspicious. Of course you had to go. It would be stranger if you hadn’t.’
‘Do you think they were really suspicious?’ asked Gwen. ‘Of what, for God’s sake?’
‘I get the impression that they’re extremely irritated by me,’ I said, and then cast a glance at Gwen. ‘As you probably are. Or, at least, you should be.’
There was a joint, rustling murmur that of course they weren’t and how none of it mattered.
‘On the other hand,’ said Gwen, ‘have you thought that you may need some advice? I mean, legal advice.’
‘Legal advice?’ Fergus had come into the room with a plate of biscuits. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ said Gwen, slowly and carefully, ‘if they were talking to Ellie about when she went to the scene, and asking if anybody was with her to corroborate what she was saying…’ She turned to me. ‘It feels awful even to say it but you’re the one, after all, who’s been claiming that Greg’s death was not what they assumed, was inexplicable. So it looks as if they might be thinking that…’But she stopped, unable to say it out loud.
‘That I had something to do with it,’ I finished for her. ‘Yes. That I was taking revenge on my husband and his presumed lover… So, are you going to ask if I’ve got an alibi?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Mary, in a shocked tone.
‘Of course it’ll never come to that,’ I said. ‘But I sort of do.’ I tried to recall the day in accurate detail. The terrible news had been such a blow that it was as if it had eliminated everything that went before. But I could remember. ‘I’d had a good day, funny as it may seem. I’d been working on a rather beautiful Georgian chair. It had taken longer than I’d expected so in the end I had to jump in a cab and take it down to the company who had hired me to do it for them. It was a solicitors’ office just off Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I remember the time because I was in a rush to get there before they closed. It must have been just a couple of minutes before six. When I handed it over, I had to sign a receipt for them, showing I’d delivered it. I wrote the date and the time on it. So I couldn’t have been in East London tampering with my husband’s car, if that’s what was required. There we are. Too much information.’
There was another awkward silence.
‘But why are they even looking at the scene of the crash?’ said Joe.
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘It was an accident. We were at the inquest.’
‘God knows,’ I said. ‘I’ve caused so much trouble with my blundering around that the police don’t know what they think any more. It doesn’t bother me. I’m finished with it all. I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago, which is get myself sorted out, be good, do some useful work.’
And so I did. Or, at least, I made a start. I helped carry the cake back into the midst of the baby celebrations. I picked up Ruby, who looked drunk after her feed, like a spaced-out old woman with blurry eyes and a milk blister on her lower lip, and held her in my arms, terrified I would drop her. I offered her my little finger to grip in her fist, and pressed my face to her neck; she smelled of sawdust and mustard. Then I handed her over for someone else to coo at and left.
The previous day, a man had dropped off six dining chairs at the house. They had been in his shed for years and he had forgotten about them. Could I do anything with them? Yes, I could. I could strip off the surfaces with wire wool and white spirit. I could replace broken slats and balance the legs so that they sat flush. I could arrange for the seats to be re-covered, and then I could smooth and polish the surfaces. I had given a quote that would have paid for a reasonable second-hand car and the man had seemed happy enough. I was happy too. The chairs would give me days of tricky, fiddly, messy, scrapy, lonely, lovely, satisfying work. It gave me a possibility of happiness. Well, maybe not happiness, but something to lose myself in, somewhere to escape, or so I thought.
If I had known who it was, I would never have answered. I had just come in from the shed to make myself a cup of tea and was caught off guard. I picked up the phone automatically, without thinking it might be someone I wanted to avoid, and when I heard his voice I was so shocked that I slopped scalding tea over my wrist, then dropped the mug, which shattered on the floor. I stared at the receiver, thinking I might simply put it back in its holster and shut myself up in the shed, where no one could get at me.
‘Hello.’ The voice was cool and uninflected; even now, he wasn’t going to show his emotions. I imagined him at the other end: his greying dark hair, his impeccable clothes and manicured hands, his languid air of slightly contemptuous amusement; above all, his watchfulness.
‘David,’ I said at last, trying to match my voice to his. ‘What do you want?’
‘Straight to the point.’ He gave a small laugh that held no mirth. ‘I want to see you.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m surprised you need to ask. There are certain things that need to be made clear.’
‘I’ve got nothing to say to you that I haven’t already told the police.’
‘I, on the other hand, have things to say to you. And I’d prefer not to do it over the phone.’
‘I don’t want to come to your house.’
‘I imagine not.’ At last I heard the current of anger in his voice. ‘Shall I come to yours?’
‘No, I don’t want that either.’
‘I have a cast-iron alibi, you know, Eleanor.’ He gave a light emphasis to my name, to remind me that I had been an impostor. ‘If you’re imagining that I might be a murderer, you needn’t trouble yourself.’
‘I wasn’t,’ I said, although of course I had thought about David murdering Frances, and had found it very easy to picture: he was a cold, clever, ruthless man, rather than a messy creature of conscience. However, the reason for keeping him out of my house was not fear but an instinctive, deeply felt revulsion at the idea of him setting his well-polished brogues in my own shabby, Greg-haunted world.
‘We could meet in my club, if you want. There are private rooms.’