Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
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bent his head. As the warmth fogged his face some other recollection stirred, the pale eye of a cup held for him, the elusive warmth of his mother.
Vicky sat down beside him. ‘How do you feel?’
Darcy considered the possible responses. ‘Drunk,’ he offered. ‘Sorry about the evening.’
‘The evening doesn’t matter in the least. But you shouldn’t drink so much.’
Simple, he thought. Good, wholesome advice. Too late.
‘Hannah …’
‘No.’ Very gently. ‘It’s Vicky.’
‘I know that. I’m not so far gone. Vicky, Vicky. I remember. I was going to say, Hannah tells me the same thing. And the doctors. Ha. Bad for the heart. Only I keep thinking it might have been easier to go the first time. Saved a … saved what? I don’t know.’ Darcy shrugged. ‘Saved a lot of formalities.’
Vicky took the empty cup away from him. He felt the mattress absorbing the shift of her weight and he was reminded again, with the same detachment, of the far-off mornings they had spent on this bed. Vicky put her arms around him. She was murmuring to him, cajoling.
‘You mustn’t say that. You mustn’t even think it. You’ve been ill, but you’re getting better. You have to let yourself get better, wait for it to happen naturally, not think it’s something you can fix like you’re able to fix everything else.’
Her broad hands rubbed his shoulders, her fingers cupped his jaw, holding the weight of his head for him. The associations stirred in him again.
‘Was able to.’
Slowly Darcy let his head drop forward until it rested against her and Vicky held him, her words becoming indecipherable croonings as she cradled him in her arms.
‘I’m tired,’ Darcy said. It was true. He could feel sleep thickening at the back of his eyes.
‘I know.’
Then he told her, ‘I’m afraid, as well.’
To Vicky he sounded like a child acknowledging his fears at the end of the day.
‘I know,’ she said again. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No. It isn’t. It can’t be.’
‘Darcy, don’t go to sleep now. Hannah will want to take you home.’
Later, after the couples had gone, Gordon went upstairs. Vicky was already in bed, sitting up in her nightdress. He perched on the edge beside her so she had to put down what she was reading.
‘What did you make of Darcy?’ he asked.
‘Beyond the obvious, you mean? He told me that he was afraid.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. The same things that we are all afraid of, I suppose.’
His wife’s smooth face and clear eyes seemed to Gordon to deflect his questions. He could have asked her if she had had an affair with Darcy, but he did not think Vicky would divulge her secrets. He understood that perhaps he should not try to make her, and that more probably he did not want to know the truth.
He stood, and she calmly picked up the magazine she had laid aside. He was thinking of Nina as he undressed, in her cool house in the close. He wondered if it would be his fate to think of her with longing every night from now until he was an old man.
The next morning Darcy was downstairs early, before anyone else in the house was awake. He had not been able to sleep and so went to the kitchen and made tea. He sat at the table with his cup, staring out at the garden and the view beyond it.
A car came up the driveway from the lane. It was quiet enough in the house for Darcy to hear the driver leave the car and cross the expanse of gravel to the front door. A moment later the bell rang. Darcy pulled his bathrobe tighter around him and went to answer it.
There was a man standing under the umbrella of wisteria that shielded the front door. Darcy knew him quite well. He was an accountant called Geoffrey Lawson. The last time they had met was when both men had played in a charity golf tournament.
‘Geoffrey? You’re very early. We’re not scheduled to meet today, are we?’
‘No. But may I come in?’
The man followed Darcy through the quiet house to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway holding his briefcase, stiff in his dark suit.
‘What can I offer you? Coffee? Or breakfast, perhaps?’ Darcy asked. He glanced pointedly at the kitchen clock. It was not yet eight a.m.
‘Nothing, thank you. Darcy, I’ll come straight to the point. I had a call from Vincent Templeman yesterday evening.’
Darcy stood without moving. He could only wait for what would come next.
The man said, ‘Could we go through into your office?’
‘Of course,’ Darcy said.
In his briefcase, Geoffrey Lawson had the books of his client Vincent Templeman’s private company. Templeman was a property magnate, now retired to Jersey. Darcy had managed his private funds and assets for almost five years. Lawson laid the books on Darcy’s desk.
‘When Vincent called me last night, he told me that there are one or two aspects of these figures’ – he tapped the folders under his hand – ‘that are troubling him. I promised him that I would drive down here first thing to see you.’
There was a moment’s silence. From upstairs, Darcy heard one of the children, Laura or Freddie, running the length of the landing. The au pair girl was calling them to get dressed. Soon Hannah would be downstairs.
‘May I see the company cheque books?’ Geoffrey Lawson asked.
Darcy went to the safe, took them out and handed them to the accountant.
‘And may I sit here?’ Lawson indicated Darcy’s desk chair.
‘Of course,’ Darcy said again. Now that this was happening, after the weeks of convincing himself that it could not, he felt only a merciful detachment. He watched the man set out his papers, his neat silver pen and his calculator in a leather folder.
‘I will go and put some clothes on,’ Darcy said. He left the man, head bent over the accounts at his own desk, like some threatening doppelgänger.
Hannah was out of bed. When he went into their bedroom Darcy heard her singing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ in the shower. He went into his own bathroom and shaved, and then dressed himself in a dark suit, better cut than the accountant’s, and a silk tie, as if it were one of his days for going to London. Then he went slowly back down the stairs. He could hear Mandy talking to Laura and Freddie over their breakfast in the kitchen. The man in his office looked up at Darcy when he came in, then returned to his work.
A little while later he replaced the cap on his silver pen. His fingers rested on the calculator keypad while he spoke. His voice was perfectly level.
‘Darcy, it appears that five unaccounted cheques have been drawn on the Templeman company account. Three are in your own name, the others are to Kleinwort Benson. The sum in question amounts to something over nine hundred thousand pounds. Is there any explanation you would like me to relay to my client?’
‘Not immediately,’ Darcy said. The explanations would come. He would have to begin the counterplay, even though he was so tired that he wondered if he could even lift the telephone.
‘I shall have to call Templeman. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Darcy inclined his head. He watched as Lawson gathered up his papers and the cheque books and locked them in his briefcase. He escorted the man to the front door and watched him as he climbed into his car and drove away.
Hannah came down the stairs. ‘Who was that?’
‘Geoff