Chapter 18 #2
I’m relieved when another car pulls up beside mine, stopping me from going there in my mind. I turn with a smile on my face to nod a greeting at a relative or a carer on a back shift. Then my mouth drops open. Aileen Murdoch is sitting in the other car staring back at me.
I step out and go to speak to her, taking my chance to prove I’m a suitable adult to be around her boys.
“Lindsay?” she says. She’s more astonished than I can quite account for. It’s as if we’ve met in Zanzibar instead of in an unexpected setting five miles from where we both live.
“Aileen,” I say. “Have you got a relative . . . ?” But I blink and stop talking. Surely David would have known that. He would have mentioned it to me, if an ex-parent-in-law lived where Peggy March ended up. But then it was only two short texts. I’m being daft.
“Aunt,” Aileen says. “She’s not been here long but she seems to like it.
” Obviously she hasn’t mentioned this family detail to her ex-husband and it’s hardly the sort of titbit that two boys would itch to pass on either.
“I thought . . . aren’t your parents . .
. ?” she goes on. Like I couldn’t have an aunt too.
“Long story,” I say. Then, since the boys have crossed my mind, I add, “David mentioned that you’re being cautious about me meeting the kids. I understand.” I hold up both hands when it seems she might be about to protest. “But I was just wondering what I could do to set your mind at ease.”
“About you hanging out around two boys of . . . their age?” she says.
It was a strange hesitation. It was as if she didn’t want me to know even that detail about them.
I want to tell her I saw them in the car on the first day David and I met.
“Go for it, if that’s what floats your boat,” she tells me, and I can’t help the expression that crosses my face.
I know she must mean to ridicule me, out of some misplaced jealousy, but she’s pretty much done it by alluding to her boys as targets for unhealthy interest. It strikes me as a very weird thing to say.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I answer carefully. “Just that they’re part of the package and it’ll get awkward otherwise.”
She doesn’t flush. She’s got the wrong colouring for it, apart from anything else. But she looks distinctly uncomfortable, as if she’s only just realised what she said to me.
“Whatever,” she says. It sounds peculiar coming out of her mouth. She can’t possibly talk like that at work. Maybe she talks like her sons when she’s talking about them. I smile at the thought.
“Thanks,” I say. “I’m glad I’ve managed to reassure you.”
“What you do is all one to me,” she says. “But I’ll certainly be having a word with David.” She’s either in a really foul mood or she’s a really unpleasant person. I hope for David’s, the boys’, and her wife’s sake that it’s a bad day. Or maybe it’s me.
“Look,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t— I’m sorry I can’t dredge up school memories, Aileen. The last few months have taken a toll.”
“What’s been happening in the last few months?” she says.
I wave the question off, but it bothers me. Didn’t David tell her about Kai when he was presenting me as a suitable person to be around her sons? Or is that me being weird, thinking widowhood confers respectability?
As I set off, I try to think about how popular that retriever or mountain dog would make me with my boyfriend’s sons.
I don’t quite manage it though, and I find myself wishing I could tell all this to someone, then wondering why I’m not driving back to Chloe to tell her.
As I’m slowing to turn into Saint Helen’s, however, I see the perfect person.
Bunny has just left his own drive on foot and is heading my way.
“Are you taking the air?” I ask him. “Or could I persuade you to a cup of tea?”
“Always,” he says, climbing into the passenger seat and pointing up my drive with one long, arthritic finger, his nail as thick and curved as a talon. “Is something troubling you?”
“I mean, I don’t need a reason to have tea with a neighbour, but yes as it happens.”
“The therapist is in,” says Bunny, making me laugh.
“Let’s get inside and I’ll tell you everything,” I say.
“I’m having boyfriend trouble,” I begin, as I’m filling the kettle. He toddles over to the mantelpiece and reaches down the biscuit tin. “Can I tell you and you just nod and maybe tut?”
“I shall do my best,” he says. “I don’t pretend to understand your ways, you young creatures, but I shall do my best in this very different world where I find myself. No judgement from this corner, Lindsay.”
“Okay, here goes,” I say, putting teabags in a pair of mugs. “I stayed overnight at my new boyfriend’s place last night.”
“Last night?” says Bunny. “You slept elsewhere? Gosh! I see. Well, I hope you— Sorry.”
This is not a great start if I’m hoping not to shock him, but I plough on.
“Well, the point is, it was when his kids weren’t there.
He said his wife—we were at school together, although I don’t remember her—but anyway he said she was cutting up rough about me hanging around them so soon.
Fair enough. I’m not moaning about that. ”
“His wife?” says Bunny. “I know I assured you—”
“Bugger!” I say. “Ex-wife.”
“Phew,” he says. “It’s such a different world, but I have my limits. I must say, I applaud you for getting off your blocks so smartly, Lindsay. Do you use an app?”
“Um,” I say. “I don’t, actually. But right, okay, yeah—back to the ex-wife.
I just ran into her, by pure chance, and she didn’t seem bothered about me meeting her kids.
At all. But she did seem hacked off with her ex-husband.
So either she is bothered but she was too embarrassed to tell me to my face.
Or—and this is what’s worrying me—he lied. ”
“Hm,” says Bunny. “Where did you run into her? Might she have been on the back foot, as it were?”
“That’s a good point, but I don’t think so. It was at the nursing home. Oh! I found out what nursing home Peggy went to.”
“For your plan to donate in her memory,” says Bunny, nodding.
“Yes, my boyfriend found out which one it was and I went round there and it turns out his ex-wife has got an old lady in there too. Which, I thought it was weird he never said, but it’s only an auntie so he wouldn’t necessarily know.”
“And how did he manage to do what outwitted you?” says Bunny.
“Through work, but the thing I’m needing help with is— That’s two potential strikes, right? If Aileen was straight with me when I just met her there, then David’s been lying to me. And he’s been running Aileen down, bad-mouthing the mother of his children.”
“Absolutely,” says Bunny. “He’s keeping you at arm’s length—one. And he’s blaming his ex-wife for it—two. Explains why she didn’t know what you were talking about and why she seemed miffed with him when she found out.”
“I knew it was too good to be true,” I say. Which is a lie. I didn’t know that at all. I leapt into it, trusting that I deserved something this good after all the bad stuff.
“Or,” says Bunny, holding up that long, bony finger again, “this ex-wife is thoroughly nasty to him but doesn’t have the guts to be equally nasty to strangers.
Or perhaps she’s bitter about him, even about men in general, but she’s fonder of and fairer to women.
What?” he adds when I can’t help reacting.
“She left him for a woman,” I say, wondering if this is where I lose him.
“Heavens,” he says. Then he surprises me. “Poor chap. Poor wife, trying to deny her nature. Are they terribly religious or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“She’s a lawyer.”
“One does slightly wonder then why she wasn’t open all along.
Different in my day, of course. People led heartbreaking lives through no fault of their own.
I am a big fan of a great deal about the modern world.
Never feel you have to water any of it down for me.
You’re a long time dead, Lindsay, as you know. Why not, is all I’ll ever say to you.”
“Why not what?” I ask him.
“Why not whatever takes your fancy,” he says. “And now I’ve made you blush. Have I been ‘inappropriate’?”
“You’ve been perfect,” I tell him. “Thank you.”