Got You Back

  A few moments later and there he was, striding into the hotel foyer with all the confidence in the world. He was still in his work clothes so he had obviously left home in a hurry. Katie waited until he had gone in, then got out of her car and stood pretending to look in the window of a shop fifty metres or so along the street. Her heart was pounding and she felt sick with anticipation. She stood there for what seemed like an age, and then he emerged with two old people in tow, a tiny woman who looked sweet and friendly, and a distinguished, white-haired man. Katie took a deep breath and walked forward: she had to reach them before they got to the restaurant.

  23

  James thought he was hallucinating at first. He was trying to explain to his parents how the reservation at Le Château had fallen through (‘Trouble in the kitchen, they've had to close down for the night’ was the best that he could do) and why, instead of just taking them over to the pub in Lower Shippingham, they were now going to eat at what looked like a greasy spoon.

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ his mother was saying. ‘Hygiene?’

  ‘I've no idea. Probably,’ he said, slandering Le Château even further.

  ‘What, though?’ Pauline persisted. ‘Rats? Cockroaches? It doesn't bear thinking about, really, does it?’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ James was saying, ‘this place is meant to be very good. Their chef came from Rome,’ he added, making things up off the top of his head. ‘He's well known in…’

  A woman who looked just like Katie was walking towards them. Paranoia, he thought, was making him see things. The woman was staring straight at him. She really did look a lot like Katie and, of course, Katie was in Lincoln this evening, although her class would be under way by now. Nevertheless he tried to usher Pauline and John along but he couldn't seem to get them to move at more than a snail's pace.

  ‘In where, dear?’ Pauline was saying.

  The woman was still heading his way. She had Katie's newly dyed red hair — which, by the way, was still making him feel rather unsettled. When he'd woken up this morning she had had her back to him and he had thought she was Stephanie, and it had taken him a moment to work out where he was and who he was with. She was wearing the clothes Katie had been wearing when she'd left the house, the flowing pink skirt and the white T-shirt with the soft baby pink mohair hoodie over the top. Shit, he thought. It's Katie.

  There was a moment before she spoke when he felt as if he was moving very fast in a tunnel. He could hear the blood whooshing round in his head and he wondered, briefly, if he might black out. His mother was wittering on, something about Italian food and how you couldn't go wrong with it, except for sometimes when they got a bit carried away with the garlic, and he thought briefly about turning round and simply walking off in the other direction before Katie could catch him.

  ‘James?’

  Too late.

  He raised his eyebrows at her as if she might somehow understand telepathically what he was asking her to do. This was it. This was the moment when both Katie and his parents would find out about his double life.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, in a voice so falsely jovial he sounded a little insane. ‘What are you doing here?’

  His parents had stopped and were smiling at this woman, who was obviously a friend of their son's.

  ‘I've got my evening class, remember?’ Katie said, in a tone that gave nothing away. ‘Only I got the time wrong. It starts at seven thirty, not seven. So, I was just walking around, killing time.’

  He waited for her to say more, to say, ‘What the hell are you doing here when I just left you at home eating dinner?’ but for some reason she didn't.

  ‘I'm just having a quick dinner with Pauline and John here,’ he said, gesturing towards the restaurant. If he could just get in there, away from her, everything might be OK. He would have time to conjure up a plausible story. Something about old family friends and phoning out of the blue. He started to move away, hoping his parents would take the hint and follow, but his mother, of course, was not going to miss an opportunity to say hello to one of his friends.

  ‘I'm Pauline,’ she said, ‘James's mum, and this is John, his dad.’

  Katie just stood there looking at them all. There was still time to save the situation. OK, so he had lied to her about being estranged from his parents but he'd think of something. Just as long as she didn't say, ‘Hi, I'm Katie, I'm his girlfriend.’

  ‘ This is Katie,’ he blurted out. ‘She lives in the village.’ He looked at Katie and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. She would know what it meant — don't say anything — and, hopefully, sweet, unsuspecting Katie would still trust him enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wasn't the sort of woman who would ever have a public confrontation.

  Luckily, she said nothing. She just smiled sweetly at his mother.

  ‘Right,’ he said, clapping his hands. ‘We'd better go — don't want to be late for our table. ’Bye, Katie, nice to see you.’

  He moved off towards the restaurant praying that she would just go away. If she did, if she was really that loving and innocent and generous that she would let him get away with whatever he was getting away with and be content to wait until later to hear an explanation, he swore to himself that he would make it up to her. He would never deceive her again. He kept his fingers crossed as he walked away and then he heard: ‘Well, it was nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too, dear,’ his mother said.

  James dared to look round just as Katie was walking off. She looked back briefly and frowned at him, out of sight of his mum and dad, as if to say, ‘What's going on?’, and he pulled what he hoped was a ‘trust-me’ face before ushering his parents through the door of Sorrento.

  ‘She seemed nice. Who was she again?’

  ‘Oh, just some woman from the village. She brings her dog into the surgery sometimes.’

  James could feel that his heart was still on overdrive. Jesus, that had been close.

  Concentrating on Reflexology Class One had not been easy. Katie had arrived a few minutes late, having got lost trying to find the college. Her head was all over the place, and she had turned left instead of right and by the time she had worked out where she'd gone wrong, she had been on the dual carriageway heading out of the city.

  Once she'd reached the classroom she had muttered apologies to the lecturer, who was already in full flow with his introductory speech, smiled hesitantly at her new classmates and taken a seat at the back. She'd felt elated in one way, that she had pulled it off, that she had put James on the back foot and left him stewing about how he was going to handle the consequences, but at the same time the whole thing had made her uneasy. If their meeting had been truly accidental, if she hadn't known what she knew, then she had no doubt she would have introduced herself to Pauline and John as James's girlfriend and the whole sorry story would have come out. She couldn't believe James was stupid enough to have woven this elaborate web of lies in the first place. How could he ever have thought it would have a happy ending for any of the parties concerned? The truth was, she knew now, he had never been thinking about anyone other than himself. Well, she'd unsettled him now. That was a good thing.

  She'd tried to concentrate on what the lecturer was saying and on the complicated diagrams of the human anatomy that had accompanied his talk. She had to keep her wits about her for her confrontation with James when she got home. She needed to be indignant about the way he had lied to her, to press for a satisfactory explanation without even giving a hint that she was aware of what was really going on. The one thing she knew was that he would never offer up the truth unless she actually presented him with it.

  By the time she got home James was already there. He leaped out of his armchair before she had even had time to close the front door behind her. ‘I can explain,’ he said.

  Remember, Katie thought, be sweet, innocent Katie. Don't push it too far. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I'm listening.’

  James had obviously been planning his speech a
nd she decided to let him deliver it uninterrupted.

  ‘I couldn't tell you,’ he said. ‘I wanted to, but I couldn't. The truth, the absolute truth, is that my mum got in touch with me recently. She said she was sorry about how she'd been, and she wanted us to try and put it behind us. I invited them up to see if we could sort things out.’

  He paused, and Katie wasn't sure if he had finished or not. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

  ‘But that's great. I just don't understand what all the secrecy was about.’

  ‘Because I haven't told them about you. That's why I had them stay in Lincoln, not over here. You see, I think it's a big step for them to accept that it's not my fault my marriage is over. I don't think in a million years they could cope with me telling them I was already with someone new. Not yet, anyway. They'd always be thinking that maybe we'd got together before Steph and I split up, that maybe you were the cause. And I'd really hate for them to have bad feelings towards you.’

  She had to give it to him, he was good. Katie put a hand on his forearm. ‘But why didn't you just tell me that? I would have understood. I'd just have been happy for you that you were patching things up with them.’

  James looked at her like a grateful puppy. ‘Yes, you would have, wouldn't you? I'm so sorry, darling. I underestimated you. It's just… well, it's just that I'm not used to being with someone who's so supportive and kind.’

  ‘But I thought we didn't have secrets from each other,’ Katie just about managed to say, without a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘I know, I know, you're right. But sometimes I forget how amazing you are. You know, after all those years with Steph. She would never have been so understanding.’

  ‘Well, I think it's great,’ Katie said. ‘And one day you'll feel able to tell them and we can have them to stay and start being a real family.’

  ‘Definitely,’ James said, putting his arms round her. She could feel through his shirt that he was dripping with sweat.

  24

  Pauline and John's visit to London was over, Stephanie felt, too soon. As she put them in a taxi to Paddington on Friday morning she found herself thinking how sad it was that she was going to lose them as in-laws and she felt her eyes well up as she hugged Pauline goodbye. Pull yourself together, she thought. They'll still be Finn's grandparents; you'll see them just as much as you ever did.

  Pauline, especially, had been full of their trip to Lincoln, how kind James had been, and how much time he'd been able to spend with them despite being so busy. Stephanie was a little disappointed that she didn't mention the nice ladyfriend of James's that they had met so that she could have quizzed James about who it was just to put him on the spot. She had heard all the details of the meeting, and James's subsequent cover-up, from Katie, of course.

  Finn had been spoilt rotten for two days and was hyper with sugar and attention overload. He had somehow persuaded his grandparents to buy him a guinea pig on the way home from school. Now it sat sulkily in the garden, in a corner of a large cage that James had brought home from work after Stephanie had phoned him in a panic because it was running round the kitchen. Finn had named it David, somewhat prosaically, after his favourite Doctor Who.

  James, Stephanie thought, had been on his best behaviour, indulging his parents with their long and rambling reminiscences about his childhood. She wished they didn't have to leave. Having them around had taken the pressure off somehow. It was much easier to deal with James when she didn't have to be alone with him. He had also seemed tired and, maybe, a little subdued, hopefully because the stress of his double life was starting to get to him.

  ‘Why should we make it easy for him?’ she said to Katie, on the phone on Monday afternoon.

  ‘Too right,’ Katie said.

  By the time James arrived home again on Wednesday Stephanie had been out shopping and purchased the low-cut, floaty top which Katie had sent her a photo of. ‘Only £9.99 in New Look!’ the accompanying text had declared. ‘It'll be worth it.’ It was a mixture of pinks and purples in an abstract pattern that, Stephanie thought, she would never have chosen, with her colouring, but it was certainly distinctive enough that there was little chance of James failing to remember it. It had been a good idea of Katie's, and Stephanie was pleased that she seemed to be getting into the plan properly at last, looking for ways to have fun at James's expense.

  Stephanie was at home when James arrived and she rushed to the door, flinging it open enthusiastically and beaming at him as if he were a brandy-bearing St Bernard in a snowstorm. His face reflected her warmth momentarily — there was no doubt he was pleased to see her — but then she had noticed his eyes flick down and a look of confusion replaced his smile for a second. Stephanie nearly laughed but instead she looked down at her top and said, as innocently as she could, ‘Oh, do you like it? I bought it today.’

  James, who was definitely looking pale, managed to say, ‘Mmm, yes, nice.’ He didn't, she noticed, tell her it was driving him crazy.

  On Friday evening she asked him to get home from work early so she could have a drink with Natasha. It felt like an age since she had been out for anything other than a swift glass of wine after work. James usually moaned if she asked him to do babysitting duty. ‘I hardly see you as it is,’ he would say, and she had always used to think it was sweet that he didn't want to spend any more evenings away from her than he had to. Now she knew it was because he didn't want the hassle of trying to convince Finn to go to bed on time.

  This time, though, he agreed without complaint, and Stephanie got enjoyably pissed in the pub with Natasha and felt almost generous towards him when she got home.

  On Saturday Finn was in heaven because James had got up early and spent most of the day in the back garden with him, creating an appropriate home for David. They built an Addams Family hutch out of wood and then James took Finn to B&Q where they bought chicken wire to make a run. Stephanie could hear them chatting away happily outside. Above all else, Finn loved to spend time with his father.

  ‘You have to remember to feed him every single day, and to change his water and let him have a little run around,’ James was saying.

  Stephanie peered through the slats in the blind. She could see that Finn was hanging on his every word.

  ‘And you know that Sebastian will eat him, given half a chance?’

  Finn nodded, deadly serious.

  ‘And you have to make sure he's shut in the little house bit before you go to bed so the foxes don't get him.’

  She took them out sandwiches and Coke for lunch, and watched them eat, sitting side by side on the grass. At four o'clock she went out to watch as David was transferred from his cage to his palatial new home where he immediately edged his way to the corner and resumed his sulky position.

  ‘That was my best day ever,’ Finn said later, as she was tucking him up in bed.

  Stephanie and James shared a bottle of wine in front of the TV. It felt relaxed, they felt like a family, they even had quite a jolly conversation, and then at about ten thirty, he had picked up his mobile and left the room.

  A few minutes later she got a text: ‘Said he's been to dinner with two of Abi and Peter's friends in Vauxhall. Said it was boring.’

  ‘I'm going to bed,’ Stephanie said, when he came back in. ‘Night.’

  She left the room without bothering to kiss him goodnight.

  There was a letter waiting for James when he got to the country practice on Monday morning. ‘It has been brought to our attention that there may be some irregularities in your tax returns for 2005/2006 and 2006/2007. Please be aware that one of our inspectors will be carrying out a full audit of your accounts in the coming weeks,’ it said.

  Fucking Sally, James thought. Fucking bitch. No wonder she hadn't confronted him since he'd sacked her. She'd obviously got straight on the phone to the Inland Revenue. He knew he should never have been so open at work about the fact that he was often paid in cash, but that was him, he was too trusting, he had assumed
that he had loyalty from his staff. Besides, everyone did it in the country. It was just a version of the barter system. If he'd let the farmers pay him in pigs, it would probably have been OK, but what would he have done with a freezer full of pork chops and ham hocks?

  His head was starting to pound. This was all he needed. He slammed a few things around on his desk, upsetting his coffee all over some papers.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he shouted. ‘Shit and bollocks.’

  Sally had opened his door at just that moment and he was about to lay into her when he saw that she was closely followed by his first client, Sharon Collins and her elderly border collie, Rex, so he tried to look as if everything was normal. Like shouting ‘shit and bollocks’ loudly and dabbing angrily at your papers with a wadge of Kleenex was common practice for vets first thing in the morning.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, smiling through his teeth, ‘I spilled my coffee.’

  By the time Sharon had left, he was feeling more rational if no less angry. What had the country come to that the tax people would take the word of any old disgruntled employee? Was this how the world worked now? That if you were fed up with someone you could just ring the authorities and make life hell for them? Well, he thought, it'll be my word against hers and who are they more likely to take notice of? As long as none of the farmers corroborated what she'd said, and he couldn't imagine that they would, it wouldn't look good for them either.

  ‘You have no evidence that this has anything to do with Sally,’ Malcolm said, when James had filled him in. ‘It might not even be about the taking-payment-in-cash thing. You could have just filled your form out wrong.’

  ‘It's Sally,’ James was adamant. ‘Otherwise the whole thing's a bit of a coincidence, don't you think?’ He had known Malcolm and Simon wouldn't be sympathetic. Malcolm shook his head at him in a way that made James want to slap him. He knew that what he was really saying was ‘Well, if you hadn't taken cash payments in the first place and you hadn't treated Sally so badly then this wouldn't be happening.’ Malcolm's view — and Simon's too — would be that he had brought it on himself.