Whitethorn Woods Read online

  Blond, blue eyes, tousled hair, perfect teeth. He was startlingly good-looking. And so nice and easy. It began almost immediately between us. We discovered we had literally everything in common, just everything. We both loved Greece and Italy, we loved Thai food, and skiing, and re-runs of old movies on television. We liked big dogs, and tap dancing, and long brunches on a Sunday.

  Mother had been going through a depressive stage at the time and she was very doubtful about my new romance.

  ‘Everyone likes those things, Becca, you silly girl. Do stop getting your hopes up, darling, he’s only stating the obvious. Imagine anyone not liking Italy, or Sergeant Bilko, or Dad’s Army, or skiing! Be sensible, darling. Please!’

  Then she met Franklin and like everyone else she was bowled over.

  He was charming to her. She loved everything that he said.

  ‘I see where Becca gets her wonderful cheekbones.’ ‘You must be fearfully intelligent to play bridge so well.’ ‘You must let me call you Gabrielle, you’re much too young for me to call you “Mrs King”.’

  Now if I had been cynical, I could have said that it was just a line, he knew what to say to older ladies. But I’m not cynical – I’m sunny and optimistic and I said nothing. Just smiled.

  And because Franklin, the poor lamb, had nowhere proper to stay at the moment, he came to stay with us. There was a fiction for a while that he stayed in the guest room, but actually we soon needed the spare room for all his gear so he moved into mine.

  Franklin didn’t have a job, not as such, but he and another man called Wilfred, a friend of his, were developing an idea, a concept. They were going into business together. It had to do with mobile phones and was very hard to explain and, indeed, to understand. But Franklin and Wilfred were like two bright schoolboys with a project. Their enthusiasm carried them along.

  Mother said to me many times that I should have a plan to keep him because treasures like Franklin didn’t come along every day of the week. I should be more domestic for one thing, and cook for him. Also I should dress up more, borrow clothes from the boutique, get them dry-cleaned and give them back. Show him what an asset I was and could be in life.

  We were all so happy together. Mother taught us all, Franklin and Wilfred and me, how to play bridge, and then I would make us a supper. It was a wonderful four months.

  Franklin and I had a terrific understanding. We were both twenty-nine years old so, naturally, we had a bit of a past but we had never ever loved anyone else in the past, not one tenth as much as we loved each other. And if for any reason our love began to diminish or we met someone else, there would be no deceit, no lies. We would tell each other straight out. We pealed with laughter at the very idea! It was so unlikely that it would ever happen.

  Then one evening Franklin told me that he had met this girl called Janice and that they had feelings for each other, so true to our promise and our understanding he was telling me immediately. He smiled at me his heartbreaking smile.

  He had a look on his face as if he should somehow be praised for telling me about this damn Janice. As if his honesty and trustworthiness had somehow been proved. I gritted my teeth and forced a smile on to my face. There was an ache at my cheekbones, so like my mother’s cheekbones apparently.

  ‘Maybe you only think you have feelings for her,’ I said. ‘Possibly, when you get to know her, you’ll find it’s quite different.’ I admired myself so much for staying so calm.

  But then he explained that he did know. He was very sure.

  ‘Shouldn’t you wait till you’ve slept with her to be sure?’ I was so proud of how I was handling this.

  ‘Oh, I have,’ he said.

  ‘That wasn’t exactly part of our understanding, having sex before telling each other, was it?’ I hoped my voice didn’t sound quite as steely outside as it did from within.

  ‘But you weren’t there, I couldn’t ask you,’ he said, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  ‘Wasn’t where exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘In the hotel. Wilfred and I were there meeting some investors and there happened to be a bridge session on, so we joined it and that’s where I met Janice.’

  I realised that my own mother had delivered the weapon of destruction herself. Why couldn’t she have left Franklin ignorant of how to play bridge? If she had, then he would never have met this Janice. Our lives would have been perfect.

  But I knew that I must have a plan. And that until I had one I must remain calm.

  ‘Well, if that’s the way it is, that’s it, Franklin,’ I said with a huge smile. ‘And I truly hope that you and Janice will be very happy together.’

  ‘You are marvellous!’ he cried. ‘You know, I told Janice that you and I had this understanding but she said you’d never honour it. I knew you would, that we both would. So I was right.’ He stood, beaming at me, delighted that his faith had been justified.

  Was he insane? Could he not see what had happened to me – that the light had left my life? Did he not hear the sound that went click in my head and the rush like a great wind that seemed to be blowing all around me? Maybe it was shock. Or a breakdown. Or the beginning of madness. I had never felt that way before, it was like you feel before you faint. As if the world was advancing and receding at me.

  But I couldn’t faint, I must not show any signs of weakness. This was a turning point in my life. Now I still had to work out the plan to get him back, he must have no idea how my world was crashing down around me.

  I told Franklin I had to rush, there was a late-night crisis at the boutique and that I simply had to leave. I wished him every happiness with this Janice and I fled. I hadn’t smoked for five years but I bought a packet of cigarettes. Then I let myself into the boutique and sat down at a table and cried and cried.

  Kevin was there. Always a heavy smoker, he joined me at the table and patted my hand.

  Before I could tell him what was wrong he started to tell me his troubles.

  ‘I’m not in great form myself, Becca,’ he said and I noticed that his face was haggard and gaunt.

  ‘What’s wrong, Kevin?’ I asked politely even though I couldn’t have given a damn.

  Something wrong with the van probably, not much work in the cab business, only two numbers off winning the Lotto – who cared? Who gave a blind damn about it, when Franklin was leaving me for Janice and the world was coming to an end?

  ‘I’ve got really bad cancer, Becca. No point in operating, they say. I’ve got two months at the most.’

  ‘Oh, Kevin, I’m so very sorry,’ I said and I was. For thirty whole seconds I forgot Franklin and Janice and the plan. ‘They’re very good in hospitals nowadays,’ I reassured him. ‘They’ll give you plenty of painkillers.’

  ‘I’m not going to wait, Becca, I couldn’t wake up every day wondering, is it going to happen today.’

  ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘I’ll drive quickly in the van straight into a wall. Splat,’ he said. ‘Much quicker, no waiting, no worrying, no hanging about waiting for it to happen.’

  And that’s where I got my plan.

  Suddenly my brain was working overtime – I felt I could cope with a hundred things at the same time. It was a daring mad plan. But it had a great deal going for it. It would solve everything in a stroke.

  If he were going to kill himself, then he could take Janice with him.

  If he were going to die anyway, and he was afraid of waiting, well then, why couldn’t they both leave this life together?

  I must be very, very clever, he must never know. He must not have an inkling what I was thinking.

  ‘I think you’re quite right, Kevin, that’s just what I’d do if it were me. Well, it will be me one day, of course. And I’ll do just that. Leave at my own time, not someone else’s.’

  He was completely surprised. He had expected me to beg him not to.

  ‘But do you know what I think, Kevin? I think you should do it in a cab rather than your own van
. Cabs are always crashing. It would look more natural when people investigate it, better for your life insurance policy. For your mother or whatever.’

  ‘I see,’ he said slowly. ‘So they wouldn’t pay up if they thought it was suicide?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘You’re very good to be so interested, Becca, but what has you so upset?’

  ‘Oh nothing, compared to your problems, nothing at all, Kevin, a silly quarrel with my mother, it will blow over.’

  ‘But everything’s all right with you and Franklin?’ he asked.

  I think Kevin was always a little bit in love with me. Not, of course, that I showed any sign of noticing that. But he must never know what Franklin had done.

  I reassured him. ‘Oh, Franklin and I are fine, not a cloud on the horizon,’ I said. Just thinking that made me stop crying. Kevin gave me a tissue and I wiped my eyes. It was all going to be all right.

  I could afford to spend time being kind to Kevin. ‘Come on, Kevin, I’ll take you out for a Chinese supper,’ I said, and he looked so pathetically grateful.

  ‘Won’t Franklin mind?’ he asked.

  ‘Franklin lets me do what I want to do,’ I said.

  ‘If you were mine I’d be just the same,’ Kevin said.

  And we went and had a long and terribly depressing meal where he told me about his diagnosis and his wish to end it all. I nodded sympathetically and told him he was absolutely right. I didn’t listen to one word of what he said. I sat there thinking about my plan. Kevin would do it for me. Kevin would see it through.

  I would pretend to be enthusiastic about this awful Janice, I would become her friend.

  Then I would give her Kevin’s number as a reliable taxi driver. Of course Kevin naturally wouldn’t want to take a perfectly innocent passenger with him, kill her, so to speak. So I’d have to tell him some story that Janice was also suffering from a terrible incurable disease and she had asked me to arrange a swift exit from the world. It was going to be a challenging role for me. It was if I had to write it and act it. But it had to be done. It was the perfect plan. No one would ever suspect me because I was going to be Ms Nice Guy, full of human kindness.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Becca,’ Kevin said to me a dozen times during the Chinese meal.

  ‘And I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Kevin,’ I said to him truthfully.

  Wilfred, who was Franklin’s friend and business partner, was astounded by me.

  ‘You’re really full of surprises,’ he said. ‘I thought we’d have the full hell hath no fury bit – but I was totally wrong.’

  I laughed a tinkling laugh. ‘Franklin and I always had an understanding, Wilfred,’ and as I saw him looking at me in awe, I gave him a smile that I hoped would break his heart as well as Franklin’s.

  My mother was astonished when I told her that there was no point whatsoever in trying to hold on to Franklin if he didn’t want to be held. She shook her head in wonder and said that I had always been even more unbalanced than she was, so it was amazing to see me so rational.

  I told Franklin that he must be in no hurry to move out. But that, of course, he would sleep in the guest room now that things were different. I went out a lot myself. Often with Kevin. It seemed only fair. But of course the real part of the plan was getting to know Janice.

  The first blow was that she was only nineteen.

  Then she wasn’t interested in clothes, so I couldn’t offer her cheap things from the boutique. She didn’t care about cookery so I couldn’t give her recipes. How was I to get to know her?

  As so often in life, the solution was to be found in the game of bridge. I asked the loathsome Janice to do me a favour and be my bridge partner at a ladies’ social evening for charity. Since I’d been so nice to her and so desperately decent about handing her Franklin without any grumbling, there was really nothing she could do but accept.

  We got on fine that first night and several times she told me that she admired me and my generation for our attitude to love. Some day she hoped she would be as mature as that.

  I resisted choking her to death at the bridge table with my own hands. After all, I had a much better plan.

  We actually won the competition and agreed to play together again the next week at another charity function at the Rossmore Hotel. In many ways she was a fairly pleasant companion. A university student with far too much money and time for her own good, but nice manners and, I have to say, a good bridge player. Very young and silly of course, like a niece or a neighbour’s child.

  And naturally I had a few pangs, a little remorse, a concern, I suppose you’d call it, about sending a nineteen-year-old girl to her death. I mean, I am human. Who wouldn’t feel something? But then she had come between me and my one true love, there was no way he could be talked out of her or she of him.

  It was this or nothing.

  So on and on we played, Janice and I. We had been out together several times before I chose the night.

  Franklin was talking about moving out of our home but I begged him to stay for a few more days. ‘You can always go and spend nights with Janice,’ I purred at him. ‘But don’t move all your gear yet.’

  The plan would only work if he were still living with us when she died.

  Kevin was very troublesome these days.

  He was beginning to have second thoughts. He had become most concerned about taking another passenger with him. He thought he should discuss it with her first, ask her what preferences she had. Maybe she would like to be sedated before the crash, he suggested?

  I said that I thought that she would very definitely not change her mind. As Kevin and I went through the details over and over again this was always his sticking point. Suppose she changed her mind at the last moment? He wouldn’t be able to stop. It would be too late.

  No, I said, this was definitely not going to happen. Again and again I explained that Janice had this terrible illness that was already beginning to take its toll, the pain would be unbearable. And in addition to this wasting disease she was developing a personality disorder. She had asked me to arrange it so that she wouldn’t have to think about it or discuss it.

  Well, he only wanted to do what was best, Kevin said. He really was such a kind and considerate man. Sometimes I allowed myself to think how much easier life would have been to love someone like that. But I didn’t waste time going down that road of speculation. Since the incident when Franklin had told me about Janice I had become very focused.

  Sometimes Kevin wondered was he right to take his own life. Was it his to take?

  I dealt with that too. People preached about a loving God who understood everything. If this was so, then this God would understand that Kevin couldn’t hang about and wait for what was inevitable. That he was just speeding things up. For everybody. Usually it worked after about ten or fifteen minutes but it was utterly exhausting.

  During this time, Mother, Franklin, Wilfred, people at work and even poor Kevin himself told me I was not looking myself. Wild, somehow. Unhinged, Mother said. But I put on more make-up and smiled a nightmarish grin.

  The big night eventually came, the date that would be the night of the accident. I had met Kevin earlier that day and reassured him that he was doing the right thing about himself, and that we were both doing the right thing about Janice. He turned up just as we had planned outside the door of the hotel where the charity bridge function was taking place.

  ‘Oh, here’s a taxi for you, Janice!’ I said, sounding pleased.

  ‘You are marvellous, Becca, everyone else is rushing about looking for them and you find one immediately.’ She looked genuinely admiring.

  Kevin got out of the driver’s seat and came to open the passenger door. He and I gripped each other’s hands.

  Janice was going back to her flat where Franklin would join her later. He and Wilfred were out at yet another business meeting. I said that I must run now as my bus was just coming and we were going
in different directions anyway.

  ‘Bye, lovely Becca,’ Kevin said.

  ‘See what I mean, Becca, everyone’s mad about you,’ Janice said enviously as she waved me goodbye.

  And I went home and I talked to my mother for a long time and then went to bed. Franklin telephoned to know what time we had all left the bridge function because Janice wasn’t back yet. I said I couldn’t understand it, lots of people had seen her getting into a cab hours ago. And in the morning he telephoned again and said she hadn’t come home all night.

  I was so sympathetic but I had no idea what could have happened.

  In the afternoon he rang to say that poor lovely little Janice had been killed and the taxi driver too, they had ploughed into a wall. Everyone was shocked. Franklin didn’t move out because he was so shattered, and soon he began to love me again. The whole thing should have been perfect, it would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for Kevin.

  I was right.

  He did love me.

  And he had insured his life in my favour. I was going to get a small fortune. This of course destroyed the whole plan. No one would ever have connected it with me if it hadn’t been for this policy.

  That and the letter Kevin left thanking me for all I had done for him.

  Now everyone was investigating it. Insurance people, police, everyone. And the whole of Rossmore is talking about me. They say that Janice’s mother and sisters went up to that ridiculous well in the woods and a kind of procession went after them. As if that was going to bring her back!

  People say I am as hard as nails. I never used to be, I was always as soft as a kitten.

  Of course I may not get charged with anything. But Franklin is nervous of me. He didn’t say so but he started to move all his things out last week.

  It had been such a perfect plan – if only Kevin hadn’t tried to be generous. Tried to give me something as he ended his life.

  Instead of which he managed to take my whole life away.

  Part 2 – Gabrielle

  All my friends at the bridge club have been very kind. Very kind indeed.

  They glare at each other if someone accidentally mentions prison, or murder, or convicts, or anything. They think I am very brave to go to visit Becca in jail every week and to hold my head up everywhere I go in Rossmore. It’s not all that hard to have confidence actually. It depends really on how you look. I always knew that but I never had the money to look well.