Page 46 of Happily Ever After
So I got out of bed, put on the thickest clothes I had and, leaving the cat to resettle in the warm bit of bed I’d left, I went out into the first early brightness. The sky was grey, the night gradually dragging the day over the sky as it retreated, and everything wore long shadows of the retiring darkness, and drizzle. I padded my way out of the back door, around the house and down the path.
Jay would be up. He was a gardener. Whatever time of day – and night, too, come to that – I went outside, there he would be, snipping and mowing and generally gardening. Dawn was probably his natural time, he’d be skipping about somewhere, snipping roses or tying back some trailing growth in a top beaded with condensation, and shorts.
I kept an eye open, but couldn’t see him anywhere, so decided to start at Ground Zero and went to his cottage. Jay, it turned out, wasn’t skipping anywhere and was, in fact, irritable and newly awoken when I banged at his door, rang the bell and pressed the buzzer that he’d had installed to bypass his need to wear his hearing aids at night.
‘What? Andi? What…? It’s about ten past midnight, isn’t it? Why aren’t you asleep? Never mind, I’ve not got my aids in, hold on, I’ll come down.’
The upstairs window banged shut and I jiggled on the step for a few moments until Jay, in a T-shirt with Homer Simpson looking very past his best on, and boxer shorts, opened the door.
‘I thought you’d be up,’ I said, apologetically, sliding into the hall.
Jay didn’t answer. He led the way through to the kitchen, which was warm and brighter than the rest of the house, fumbled on the table, and found his hearing aids. ‘All right,’ he said, as though he were trying to lose the last dregs of dreams. ‘All right. I’m here. What’s the panic?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said as soon as he turned round. ‘I thought – gardening, up at dawn, digging and… and… everything…’ I trailed off, at his grin.
‘In spring, maybe. In summer, yep, up early to get the watering done. But it’s autumn. Most things are shutting down. I’m keeping the autumn colour beds going but now I don’t need to cut the grass every five minutes or weed absolutely everywhere, I get a lie-in. Until a very strange woman turns up on my doorstep while the sparrows are still in bed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, still hopping from foot to foot, powered by the rocket fuel of discovery. ‘But I needed to talk to someone.’
‘And you thought of me? I’m flattered.’ Jay ran a hand through his hair, which didn’t help the middle-of-the-night look. ‘Right. Let me put the kettle on.’
While he did so, I took out the diaries that I’d carried over, clamped once more to my bosom and laid them on the table. Jay turned around from filling the kettle and plonking it onto the Aga plate, saw them and raised his eyebrows.
‘Thatexciting, eh?’ He looked at the diaries and then at me. ‘I do hope that you aren’t so filled with lust as a result of those that you’ve come over to have your wicked way with me. It’s early, I might need a bit of a run up.’
‘Sorry, no,’ I said, and then wondered why I’d apologised. ‘I read them all last night and I have to offload.’
Jay whistled. ‘All right. All right. Sit down, stop dancing. Would you like some toast?’
‘Toast?’ Obediently I pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘For you this is clearly earth-shattering. For me, it’s dawn, I was asleep, I need toast. I’m making some anyway and need to know whether to make extra.’
His pragmatism in the face of my evident incredulity was both calming and incredibly annoying. ‘Yes. No! Look, this is important!’
‘Better make it wholemeal then. Right, you talk, I’ll toast. Go.’
I took a deep breath. Where to start?
‘You know that Lady Tanith came to be a companion to Caroline, Oswald’s wife?’
‘I’d gathered that, yes.’
‘And Lady Tanith became his muse, they fell in love but Oswald was too honourable to leave Caroline, so they had an affair under her nose. When she died, he took some time out, went to Switzerland and died there. That’s the story, right?’
The kettle whistled and Jay poured water into mugs. I waited until he turned back around to see my face. He’d got his hearing aids in, but I didn’t want to have to repeat any of this.
‘Right.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you saying that’s not what happened?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Not according to Oswald.’
‘Maybe he edited things? Didn’t want to be seen in a bad light? Seducing the young companion while his wife was quietly dying upstairs?’
I shook my head impatiently. ‘He didn’t need to worry. These diaries were hidden, weren’t they? If he’d wanted them to be squeaky clean, maybe for publication, he would have either written a fake set, put them somewhere easy to find, or he’d have self-edited and not hidden them at all. These were his own, private recollections and records – trust me, there is alotabout the running of the estate in here. Maybe he’d been going to edit them or destroy them when he got back from Switzerland, only he didn’tcomeback.’
I took the mug of tea. Over in the corner, two slices of toast popped, and I had to wait for those to be buttered before I carried on.
‘I’m imagining all kinds of nefarious dealings.’ Jay handed me a slice, warm and dripping with melted butter. ‘Carry on.’
