On a Beautiful Day Page 6

  The sky was flinty, a light drizzle speckling the windscreen and, as Eve left the office car park and drove past the cemetery, her checklist continued to scroll through her mind. She should give her mum a ring, they hadn’t spoken in a couple of days; oh, and she’d promised to sort through some of the girls’ old clothes for a charity collection at Sophie’s school, hadn’t she? And . . .

  Wait a minute. She frowned as her thoughts juddered to a halt, then went spooling into reverse. She had switched on the slow-cooker that morning, hadn’t she? She could remember briskly cutting the lamb into pieces, measuring out the spices and water, chopping the aubergine and . . . Indicating left as she approached the junction, she tried to recall if she’d actually flicked on the switch at the wall, once the ingredients had all been added. She could picture it: the white socket, the plug in place, but when it came to visualizing her finger on the switch, her memory blanked. Oh Christ. Had she really forgotten? Could she have been so stupid? Would she arrive home to find the meat still raw, and starting to taint, no doubt, where it had been left at room temperature all day?

  THUMP. Crunch. ‘What the hell? Jesus!’ yelled a voice, and in a single shocked heartbeat, Eve was wrenched away from her kitchen and back to the real world where – oh shit – a cyclist was sprawled on the pavement to her left, his bike clattering beside him. Oh my God. She hadn’t been concentrating. She hadn’t been looking. She had been thinking about lamb tagine and a socket switch and she must have swung round the left turn without noticing the cyclist, who was now . . .

  Panting in horror, almost crying with shock, she thumped at her hazard lights and lunged for the handbrake, spilling out of her driver’s door and almost being hit by another car in the process, speeding around the turn. BEEEEP. ‘Bloody idiot!’ the driver yelled at her.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she cried wretchedly, running round to the cyclist, who was gingerly sitting up and unclipping his helmet in order to rub his head. ‘Oh God, I am so sorry,’ she began, and then her heart almost went into arrest as she realized that . . .

  ‘Lewis?’ she gulped, and he scowled up at her. Of all the people. Kill me now, she thought.

  ‘We meet again,’ he said sourly. ‘Do you do this to all your clients, or just the really “hopeless” ones, eh?’

  Her face flamed. So he had heard. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, mortified. ‘I am really, really sorry. I didn’t see you. I just—’ She put a hand up to her mouth, trembling all over. ‘Should I call an ambulance? I’ll pay for your bike. I’m just . . . I can’t believe I did that. God. I am so sorry.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ he said crossly, inspecting his elbow, which had scarlet blood leaking from it, as wet and glossy as paint. ‘So you keep saying.’ Then he glowered up at her. ‘Have you not heard of cycle lanes or something? Because the way you were driving, you didn’t seem to have seen one before.’

  Eve hung her head in shame, her breath tight and painful in her chest, knowing that she deserved every bit of his sarcasm and anger. Blood dripped messily from the ripped skin of his arm, leaving splotches on the pavement; angry red splashes that danced before her eyes when she looked away. She had done that to him. She, Eve Taylor, the most careful driver in Manchester, who had never got so much as a parking fine or a speeding ticket before, let alone injured another person, causing them to bleed onto paving stones so vividly. It was a horrible echo of the accident on Saturday, she thought, only she wasn’t having a heart attack and losing control at the wheel. What even was her excuse? Oh, I was thinking about a lamb tagine actually. It was ludicrous. She was ludicrous!

  Another car blared its horn, bundling around the corner too fast and almost slamming straight into the back of Eve’s Golf which she’d left skew-whiff, sticking out in the road.

  ‘You should probably move that,’ Lewis commented. He was still sitting down on the pavement and tentatively shook one leg out, then the other. There was a hole in one knee of his jogging bottoms, and Eve had to suppress a mad accountancy instinct to remind him that he could put a new pair on expenses. Not the time, Eve. Besides which, if anyone should be buying new trousers for him, it was her. ‘Your wee car,’ he prompted when she didn’t reply. There was a sneer in his voice as he looked up at her. ‘Don’t want to cause any more accidents now, do we?’

  She swallowed hard, trying to get a grip on herself. More accidents, like this was a habit of hers. ‘Yes,’ she said faintly, but didn’t seem able to move. I have just been involved in an accident, she thought, in a daze. I have knocked this man off his bike. I could have killed him. And I didn’t even notice he was there. The front wheel of his bike was bent and buckled where she’d driven right over it, and bile rose in her throat as she realized it could have been his arm or leg, breaking beneath the weight of the vehicle, his bones snapping like twigs.

  ‘Are you . . . Are you all right? Should I take you to A&E?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Do you think anything’s broken?’ She tried to summon up the first-aid training she’d done when Grace was tiny, back when she still thought she could protect her family from everything. Head injuries – that was what she should be worrying about. ‘Um, did you hit your head?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said, grimacing as he pulled a lump of gravel from his elbow. ‘Few bumps and bruises, but nothing broken. Well, apart from the bike.’ He bent over to inspect it.

  ‘I’ll pay for another one,’ she said at once. ‘And let me give you a lift to wherever you were going. Please. It’s the least I can do. I can probably fit your bike in the back of my car, if I fold the seats down.’ She rubbed her arms, feeling shivery even though it was early evening and still warm, despite the drizzle. ‘And we should swap numbers and all that – sort out how much I owe you. Will you . . .’ A terrible new thought struck her and she bowed her head in penitence. ‘Will you want to report this to the police? I guess we probably should.’

  ‘To the police? Don’t be daft. There’s no need for that. They’ve got better things to do and . . .’ He softened a little, seemingly noticing her distress. ‘Look, there’s no real harm done, eh? It was an accident. You don’t seem like the sort of person who goes round shoving cyclists off the road out of some – I dunno – mad vendetta or grudge.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she agreed gladly. ‘I don’t. I really don’t.’ She twisted her fingers together, feeling utterly wretched. ‘Thank you,’ she added. ‘You’re being very kind. I’m not sure I deserve—’

  Yet another car beeped them and flashed its lights as it came round the corner, and Lewis put up his hand in apology. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he called. ‘We’re just going.’ Then, with a certain amount of stiffness – was he more hurt than he was letting on? she wondered – he took hold of the bike. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should get out of the way at least.’

  Her hands trembled as she opened the boot and they manoeuvred the bike inside the car. Then they both clambered into the front seats and she took a deep breath as she slid the key back in the ignition. Right, then. Try again – and this time, focus. Concentrate. Do not think about lamb tagines or how you nearly just killed someone.

  Breathing hard, she indicated to move back into the road, checking her mirrors several times over before setting off. ‘Where am I taking you then?’ she asked.

  ‘I was on my way to my girlfriend’s house near Gorse Hill,’ he replied. ‘If that’s okay.’ His legs looked long and lanky, crunched up as they were in the small front seats, and there were blood spatters on his mustard-coloured T-shirt.

  ‘Of course,’ she said humbly.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence. He was simultaneously texting someone and giving her intermittent directions, and Eve felt too wrung out to think up any other kind of conversation, the moment of impact still looping ceaselessly in her head. This was the sort of thing that happened to other people, not her. India, for example, a self-confessed terrible driver, who thought nothing of jumping out of her car in a supermarket car park and asking a complete stranger to reverse it into
a space for her. (Eve had felt an appalled sort of awe when this story had been cheerfully related over lunch the other day. You had to applaud India for her shamelessness sometimes.) Or Janie, one of the PAs at work, who was so ditzy that she was permanently losing things – files, data, her phone. She was the sort of person who knocked into innocent cyclists. Not Eve.

  As they arrived at the house, thankfully with no further mishaps, Eve killed the engine and dug out a business card. ‘My phone number and email address are on there,’ she said shakily, passing it to Lewis once they’d clambered out of the car. ‘I can cover the cost of repairing your bike, or get a new one if it’s a write-off. And if your T-shirt needs dry-cleaning, I can pay for that too. And some new jogging bottoms.’

  He was already heaving his bike out of the back, grunting a little with the exertion. ‘Okay, thanks, I’ll be in touch,’ he said, slotting the card in his back pocket.

  She could see a woman with raven-black hair peering out of the window expectantly – his girlfriend, presumably – and felt a prickle of embarrassment that she’d ended up in this predicament, with a client, no less. All of a sudden she felt the burning need to explain herself, to make him understand that this – this behaviour – was not her. Not at all. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry about . . . about everything,’ she blurted out. ‘It’s because . . . well, I found a lump,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’m just scared. And a bit all over the place. And . . .’ She cringed, wanting to stop, but the words kept on tumbling out. ‘And nobody else knows, not even my husband.’

  It was written all over his face then, a new wariness – oh Christ, mad emotional woman: run away, run away – and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘Right,’ he said uncertainly, hesitating on the pavement.

  ‘But anyway,’ she went on in an over-bright sort of way, shutting the boot with a too-loud slam. ‘I’m really sorry, is what I’m trying to say. Have a good evening. And let me know about the bike, won’t you?’ She scuttled round to her door and got inside the car before he felt obliged to reply. Poor bloody sod. First she insulted him behind his back, then she nearly drove over him, then she started burdening him with her problems. Get a grip, Eve. You are behaving like a total basket case.

  Mortified, she drove away, just remembering to pick up Sophie en route, before returning home, where an aromatic and perfectly cooked lamb tagine awaited their return. Of course it did.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Is this yours: “Miriam Kerwin”?’

  Rick was kneeling on the bedroom floor, packing for his Dublin trip, and Jo looked across to see him holding up a small white business card that she must have dropped.

  ‘Miriam – oh yes,’ she said, before returning to the business of make-up removal at the mirror. Rick had such beautifully crisp white bed linen that she felt obliged to be absolutely scrupulous when it came to this job, for fear of smearing mascara all over his pillowcases. (Needless to say, she was much sluttier when it came to her own ancient bedding.) ‘She’s the woman who was hurt in the crash – she asked me to ring her husband.’

  ‘Ash Grove,’ Rick said, reading the address on the card and quirking an eyebrow. ‘That’s a coincidence; it’s where I used to live, in Didsbury.’ He corrected himself quickly. ‘Well, they’re still there, of course. Polly and Maisie. Anyway – here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jo, tucking it in her make-up bag. ‘Small world,’ she added, trying to sound nonchalant, although really she was imagining the big Didsbury family house he’d once called home and the quiet leafy avenues of his former neighbourhood. Did he miss that sense of community and belonging, now that he lived up here in the luxurious hush of his executive apartment block? she wondered. Did he think back to that suburban way of life – the generously sized garden, the dinner parties with posh neighbours – with a pang of regret? Sure, he might have this lovely new flat, all clean lines and sleekness, but in some ways it was more like staying in a fancy hotel than an actual home.

  ‘Have you, um, heard from Maisie at all since the other night?’ she dared ask with faux casualness. Although he’d apologized about his daughter turning up mid-date like that, saying that he’d had a word with his ex-wife Polly and that it wouldn’t happen again, he hadn’t really said much else about either of them since.

  He glanced up at her quizzically for a moment, then resumed folding a shirt. ‘This and that. A few texts, nothing major.’ His face was guarded, wary. Warning! Proceed with caution!

  ‘And . . . Polly?’ Jo went on bravely. It was the first time she’d ever dared say the other woman’s name aloud. She had googled her, of course, after Maisie had sat there trumpeting her mother’s many achievements the other evening, and had discovered, with dismay, that the girl’s claims appeared to be largely true. Yes, Polly Silver was a fashion journalist who seemed to be friends with umpteen beautiful people. She had co-authored a glossy coffee-table sort of book about shoes, the sort of thing Jo would never read. Not to mention the fact that she appeared intimidatingly beautiful in all the online photos, toned and tanned with a shoulder-length blonde bob and come-to-bed blue eyes. Jo swallowed, trying to banish the now-familiar stab of jealousy. ‘How are things with her? Are you two amicable or . . . ?’

  He gave a short barking sort of laugh, one she’d never heard him make before, not a proper laugh at all in fact. ‘We’re not exactly amicable, no,’ came his sardonic reply, with accompanying grimace.

  Okay. Enough said. More than enough, judging by the tension in his shoulders. No further questions, Your Honour. ‘Er, by the way, is there anything I should know about this place while you’re away?’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘Things I should be locking, or checking, or cleaning . . . ?’

  He zipped up the case and shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said, and then at last he was smiling at her. ‘It’s all yours. Just make yourself at home.’

  ‘Make yourself at home, he said,’ Jo sighed down the phone to her sister when they next spoke, two days later. She’d popped out on her lunch break and caught herself reflected in a shop window, hardly recognizing her own face with its big, silly smile. ‘Honestly, Laura, it’s like being on holiday. It’s dead glam. He’s going to have to drag me bodily out of there, if he ever wants the place to himself again, I’m telling you.’ She found herself imagining him grappling with her in the hall, the two of them laughing breathlessly, her grabbing Rick’s tie and pulling him down to kiss her, as if they were starring in a cheesy romcom. (All of a sudden she quite fancied herself in that role.)

  ‘You lucky cow,’ Laura said in her ear, interrupting the reverie.

  ‘I know,’ Jo agreed, thinking about the thick, pale carpet that felt so soft and luxurious when you took your shoes off. The chrome light fittings, the granite worktops in the kitchen, the monsoon shower in the bathroom. Rick’s PR firm was clearly doing pretty well, if these were the accompanying fruits of his labours.

  ‘And have we been respecting his boundaries and privacy while he’s away?’ Laura asked sweetly. ‘Or have we been poking through his stuff, trying to find some dirt about his ex-wife?’

  ‘Laura!’ cried Jo, trying to sound indignant, but she could feel her cheeks turning red with guilt at the same time. Trust her sister to go asking the one thing she’d been feeling bad about all morning.

  ‘Come on. I know you too well. What did you find? Wait, let me guess. Was there loads of kinky sex stuff in his bottom drawer? A secret door leading to a bondage dungeon? His ex-wife, dead in the attic?’

  ‘Bondage dungeon?’ Jo yelped, perhaps louder than intended, because a woman walking a Westie nearby gave her a very odd look. ‘What sort of films have you been watching lately?’ she hissed. Then she sighed. ‘Although . . . Oh, Laura, I’ve done something awful. I’ve kind of blown my cover.’

  ‘What? What have you done?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Jo still felt sick when she thought about what had happened. She’d honestly been quite restrained initially, when first alone in the flat, confining hers
elf to a brief skim through the bathroom cabinet (it was the nurse in her), a leafing-through of books and clothes and then a nosy at what he had on his TV planner (some dull history documentaries, a Scandi detective series, a BBC Four programme on punk). Then she’d noticed that at the top of the floating white bookshelves in the living room there appeared to be a set of photo albums. Evidence, she’d thought, of his life pre her, when he lived in that fancy house in Ash Grove with Polly and Maisie, his suburban family existence. And all of a sudden she was desperate to pore over them, to see the at-home side of the woman who’d gone before, the woman he’d been so cagey about.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Laura, as Jo related all of this. ‘Now I’m worried.’

  ‘So I’m up on this footstool, on my tiptoes, stretching to reach them down, just for a tiny little flick-through, just to check precisely how happy he really looked in all those old pictures, and then . . .’

  Thump. Something had gone whistling past her, landing on the floor. Shit, she thought, peering down to see a painted clay trophy, presumably made by Rick’s daughter when she was younger. BEST DAD!!! was lovingly carved into the front in childish writing and there were two rather lopsided handles, one on either side, so that the whole could be thrust into the air, in the manner of a triumphant Wimbledon winner (or indeed a champion parent). Except that it now sported a large crack down the middle, with one handle broken clean off.

  ‘Nooo,’ wailed Laura when she heard. ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘I wish I was. Of all the things to go and break, it had to be the irreplaceable one.’ Jo groaned, remembering the cold, panicked sensation that had flooded her system. ‘I felt so bad,’ she went on. ‘And I must pick up some superglue in a minute, actually, so that I can mend it before he gets back on Friday. He must never find out what a terrible girlfriend I am.’ She gave a little laugh, but it sounded hollow to her own ears. Thank goodness for thick carpets, was all she’d been able to think, guiltily lifting the broken pieces onto the coffee table. If the floor had been slate tiles or even varnished boards, she’d be looking at a whole new jigsaw.