Page 55 of The Lie
Leo didn’t reply.Is this just Dad’s fantasy?A throwback to when his father felt Romy was always there for him? Because his mum’s behaviour earlier certainly hadn’t suggested she was on board with the idea.
‘The problem is, she seems to find me revolting,’ Michael added, in a musing sort of way.
Shocked out of his reverie, Leo said, ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say, Dad.’
‘Is it?’ Michael turned away, apparently looking for his crutch, which was propped against the worktop behind him. He grabbed it. ‘I need a pee.’
Leo jumped up to help him, but his father pushed him away. ‘Didn’t you hear your mother?’ he snapped. ‘I’ve got to do this myself.’
He watched Michael clumping slowly towards the door and had to restrain himself from rushing to his side. He listened intently as the step/drag, step/drag and the clunking of the aluminium crutch faded along the corridor to the loo, then heard the door slam shut. He folded his arms on the table and dropped his head to rest on them. He felt for his father. It was almost painful to hear him say how much he loved his mum – and it was the only time Leo had ever heard it. But there’d been something in his mother’s face – he got the feeling she was ready to burst with pent-up emotion – something specifically directed at his father that she was hiding from them both.This isn’t just about Fincham, he decided.So what is it about?
38
Romy held herself together on the Tube to Embankment, the walk up to Charing Cross, the hour and a half on the train to Hastings. She felt as if she needed to keep pressing down on a living presence in her body, leaning heavily on it – as you might the contents of a bulging suitcase – so that it didn’t splurge out of her mouth in a horrific explosion.
She greeted Bettina, who picked her up from the station, and chatted inconsequentially on the short trip to her house in the centre of the old town, in a grand terrace close to the bakery she and Jost ran. She took her case up to her room and gazed longingly at the pristine sheets and plump duvet. She went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table, took the glass of cold Sancerre that her friend slid across to her. She took a large gulp, choked and sensed the presence inside her rumbling, then suddenly bursting its bonds. It was too late to stop it. Her cries thundered like the first waves of a massive tsunami.
Bettina, predictably, was calm, immediately enveloping her in a maternal hug from which Romy wanted never to be released. She clung to her friend, incoherent, wanting to explain so much that had happened and not knowing where to start. It was a long time before she could even catch her breath.
Later, Romy sat on the sofa in the high-ceilinged sitting room, the large sash windows facing out towards the sea. She was all cried out. Bettina sat beside her. She had listened intently, but said very little as Romy revealed the twists and turns of her story.
‘Hmm,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s unbelievably unfair, Grace turning out to be Finch’s stepdaughter, to say the least.’ Romy didn’t reply and it was a while before Bettina continued. ‘Walk away, is my advice. From the lot of them.’
‘I don’t have much choice. Finch will choose Grace over me every time. She’s Nell’s daughter. I should have trusted what she said from the start.’
‘You’ve never met the girl. Why would you do that?’
‘Tell that to Finch,’ she said sadly.
‘It’s such a muddle.’ Bettina let out a frustrated breath. ‘I mean, if Michael came clean, explained what really happened …’
‘It’s pathetic, but I can’t even bring myself to have the conversation with him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because – because – I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to hear what he has to say.’
Her friend absorbed this, then gave a shrug. ‘Do you have to know? Can’t you just leave it in the past, where it belongs?’ She grabbed her hand. ‘None of these people – including Michael – is your responsibility, Romy. Get a good carer-housekeeper person and move on with your life.’
‘I’m trying, believe me. You saw the sorry bunch of candidates last time.’ Romy felt suddenly fed up withherself and her whingeing. ‘Listen, can we just go down to the sea and forget about the whole bang shoot? I want to drink too much wine and sleep like the dead and never let the names Michael or Grace or Finch darken my lips ever again.’
It must have been around midnight that Romy finally threw herself down on Bettina’s beautifully laundered cotton sheets. Jost had come back from the shop in time for supper. Tall and lean, tanned, with a longish mop of fading brown hair, he was a man with a soft smile, who said very little. Bettina was the extrovert and it was she who wooed the customers, who knew all about their likes and dislikes, their ailments and allergies, their children and grandchildren, the names of their dogs tied up to the hooks outside. Jost did the baking, catering to the London crowd who had migrated to Hastings and craved pricey artisan loaves – stone-baked, sourdough, seeds, rye flour – and gluten-free cakes.
The day had been muggy, the temperature barely dropping as evening approached, and too hot to cook, so they’d eaten cold chicken and Caesar salad, no one saying very much, the silence easy between old friends. Romy, however, had been drinking for a large part of the day, her glass constantly topped up by Bettina. By the time she fell into bed, she was dizzy with it.
On a drunken impulse, as she checked for messages from Leo or Michael before plugging her phone in to charge, she pressed on Finch’s number. Lying back, mobile to her ear, she listened woozily to the ring-tone, never expecting him to pick up. It was enough just to hearhis voice on his answer message. So when he spoke in person, she shot up in bed as if the phone had delivered a powerful volt.
‘Romy?’ Finch’s voice sounded wary, but she didn’t care, it was such a joy to hear his voice.
‘Hi.’
Silence, then, ‘How are you?’
‘I’m pissed.’
Finch didn’t laugh, as, in her inebriated state, she had thought he might – as he would previously have done. He didn’t respond at all.
‘Finch?’
