Chapter 29
‘Roo, are you okay now?’ asked Elizabeth in the dark, hearing Roo sniff.
‘I’m fine,’ replied Roo, guessing why she had asked. ‘I’m just sniffing, not crying, honestly. Today helped. I think if I ever meet the real BBC, I might buy him a pint for playing that bloody awful song.’
‘He burst a spot that badly needed bursting, I think. But you’ll still hurt. It was very cruel what they both did to you. Gutless. You need more of a man than that.’ How easy it is to give advice, so much easier than taking it, said a voice in Elizabeth’s head.
‘The thing is that I know if he came back crawling, I couldn’t forgive him. I just couldn’t ever trust him again.’
Elizabeth nodded, she couldn’t forgive someone being unfaithful to her either.
Gregory wasn’t that type. She didn’t think he liked sex that much for it to be a driving force.
She felt it was more obligation than pleasure for him, something he was expected to do for himself as proof of his virility and to ‘perform’ for his partner.
One day, the act would be a means to procreation and she would find her fulfilment in their child.
In the industry he was known as a machine: hard, unfeelingly efficient, duty before emotion, business before passion.
In bed, he was exactly the same. She had squared it with herself though.
Better to have someone like that than the standard big wheel who couldn’t keep it in his trousers, the mould so many of them had been cast into because power and sex seemed to go hand in hand.
Was it necessary for him to desire her in a primal way?
Was it important that he didn’t ‘hold her heart in careful hands’ as Frank put it, when everything else lined up?
‘You deserve better, as Tim said, Roo. No one should be treated like that. Especially not by someone who once purported to love them.’
‘Tonight is the first night where I have felt just a little bit better, thanks to everyone here.’
‘Good.’
‘Can I tell you a secret, Elizabeth? I didn’t know what I was going to do in Whitby. I was that low, I… I was having trouble seeing a way out.’
Elizabeth sat up quickly. ‘You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you, Roo?’
‘I went to the docs and they gave me some anti-depressants but they take six weeks to kick in and I thought, what’s the point of me even being here? I didn’t want to exist any more.’
‘Roo, stop.’ Elizabeth was horrified. She might have been more horrified if she’d known that it had crossed Roo’s mind at one point to flip her YES/NO coin to decide her fate.
At least, in that distilled moment, realising she had gotten so low to have even contemplated that option hoicked her rudely back from the brink, from the dark web of her mind.
‘Please tell me that you don’t feel like that now.’
‘I don’t.’ The whole train debacle had probably saved her.
Spending Christmas alone where she’d live in her head and torture herself wasn’t the best idea, so thank goodness now she’d never know how that would have played out.
She still wasn’t exactly dancing on cloud nine but she could see some sunshine on her horizon in the shape of plans, change, hope.
When she went home, she would upend this non-life she was presently living.
There was nothing to keep her in South Yorkshire where she was bored and lonely.
She’d find somewhere else to go where she’d probably be as bored and lonely to begin with but at least she wouldn’t be in danger of bumping into them or see any of the rubbish friends scurrying around corners to avoid her because they’d thrown in their lot with the other side.
‘I’m okay, honestly. Anyway, I’m fed up of talking about it, so tell me, what will your married name be, Elizabeth?’
‘Pennington.’
‘That’s nice and classy.’
In the early days she used to practise writing ‘Elizabeth Pennington’ but she didn’t any more.
‘Elizabeth Diamond sounds better.’
‘Roo, stop that. You’re very naughty.’
‘He likes you. Trust me, I’m very good at working people out, give or take the knobs who were under my nose. I’ve built all my comedy routines on observational humour.’
‘I like him too. As a good person,’ replied Elizabeth, attempting to disarm Roo from thinking on those lines. There was no point in evaluating Vincent in any other way than a ship that she was presently in the process of passing in the night. No point in giving her head the permission to go there.
Roo chuckled. ‘Were you listening when he and Frank were talking about how a gent should treat a lady. Wasn’t it lovely? Grace is a lucky woman, although someone should tell her face that.’
‘Their only son died five years ago,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘Frank told us earlier that she can’t get over it.’
‘Oh god, I feel awful now,’ said Roo, propping herself up on her elbow. ‘I thought she was just a misery guts.’
‘I think maybe she’s allowed herself to be consumed by despair, by grief. I get the feeling that… that they’re almost broken as a couple.’
‘It’s a lot easier splitting up from someone when you don’t have a house and a business,’ Roo said eventually. ‘Luckily, all we had were things at each other’s places, clothes, toiletries, stuff. I didn’t bother asking for mine and I put his in a skip down the road.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I’ve only got a cheapo bedsit. I was looking forward to moving into his nice semi until we found somewhere that we could buy together, somewhere that was “ours”. You live with Gregory?’
‘Not yet. We can’t agree on what we want, but if we split it would be every bit as complicated.’
‘Because you work together, you mean?’ asked Roo.
‘Not just that,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If we were to break up, I’d be throwing my life as I know it away.
I’d lose my job; my father wouldn’t lose Gregory from the business so I’d be the one to go and he’d engineer it so I did.
And I’d lose my father because he wouldn’t be able to bear the embarrassment’ – or the disobedience.
‘Everyone wants it to happen. On paper we are absolutely perfect, you see.’
Compliant Elizabeth, broodmare in the making, who would look good on his future-politician’s arm. Heir to the massively successful company he would eventually own via their union. Every box ticked. For him.
Roo’s turn to sound worried now. ‘Elizabeth, it looks to me like you’ve thought about ending it with him. Aren’t you happy?’
Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t have said anything that invited questions. She was terrified of opening up because she wasn’t sure if she started talking she would be able to stop. She forced out a trill of laughter.
‘Of course I am. I was speaking hypothetically. I didn’t mean to imply that we’re only perfect on paper.
I was just saying what would happen if we did split.
It would be rather awful, but luckily we have no intentions of breaking up.
Anyway, goodnight, sleep tight. I imagine you will be glad to see the back of this day. ’
‘Yes, I will. Night night,’ said Roo, wondering if Elizabeth had just pulled up a drawbridge there before what was behind it escaped.
Tim lay in the dark thinking about his daughter, his lovely Fleur and the sight of her in his head brought a sharp pain with it.
There’s no fool like an old fool, even if he wasn’t old – but he was acting old, like a stubborn old man, like his dad and that would be his worst nightmare, to turn into him.
He’d been as cold and distant as his mum was warm and loving.
Tim didn’t ever want to be the sort of parent who couldn’t show his love for his child, who didn’t make them feel treasured.
He didn’t want to damage his daughter, as he had been damaged by his father’s froideur.
He couldn’t help but suspect, though, he’d inherited some of his inability to process his emotions – it would explain why he was acting like such an immature prat that even his own brain was telling him off for it.
As young Roo had said though, would Fleur be making the effort if she didn’t care?
She was trying to wear him down with persistence.
Hadn’t she already said to him that she understood why he was hurt at her living at the other end of the planet but she wanted him to come over whenever he wanted to?
She said she loved him, that she understood why he’d had to work so much and give them a comfortable life, all the luxuries he’d never had as a boy and he was being silly beating himself up.
But she was a lovely kid, and she would say all that, wouldn’t she?
At least there was an advantage in her not ringing him at Christmas, at least she wouldn’t be hurt again that he wasn’t picking up the phone when she rang.
She wrote real letters to him every month, because she thought he might just read those.
Calls, he could ignore, emails could be consigned to junk or he could miss them – but he wouldn’t miss a letter landing on his doormat.
One had arrived on the morning the day he left for Newcastle…
yesterday – lord, was it only yesterday?
He’d dipped in, his eyes had scooped up only a few words: Dear Daddy… I won’t ring at Christmas…
He’d torn it into pieces, opened the door of the log burner and watched the flames eat it. He’d pushed her to it and it had happened: she’d finally given up on him, and who could blame her.