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‘Or you can redefine yourself. You get to an age when you’ve done all that was expected of you. You’ve got the education that gets you the job that gets you the pension and then you look around and say – so have I lived all my life and worked all my life just so that I can have a pension when I’m old? That’s what happened to me. I was an accountant, I spent years and years getting my exams, getting my partnership, working for my clients, and suddenly I woke up one morning and thought I am so damn bored of this I can hardly get out of bed. It’s my life, and it bores me to tears.’
Isobel waited. She had an odd sense that she was hearing something of immense importance, that this man whom she had taken at first to be something of a fool was telling her something that she should hear.
‘Well, I cut loose,’ Freddie said quietly. ‘I came out. I told my mother and father that I was gay. I chucked in my job, I trained as an interior designer, and I studded my penis with jewellery.’
Isobel blinked and felt her mascara cling to her eyelashes like tears.
‘It’s my way of saying that I don’t have to sit in a pigeonhole. I don’t have to be what people think of me. I can find my own way, I can be someone else. I don’t have to have the identity my parents chose for me. I don’t even have to stay with my first choice of identity. I can set myself free.’
Isobel nodded. ‘I do know what you mean,’ she said. ‘Though it’s not true for everybody. Some people have to stay inside their boundaries. Some people take a choice, which isn’t perhaps the easiest choice, but it’s the right thing to do. Some people want to do the right thing more than they want to do anything else. Some people see the rules and stay inside them. Some people have to.’
Freddie shook his head. ‘No-one has to.’
Three (#ulink_245b4210-7f8c-537d-b9f8-af2294149275)
Back at his flat Troy poured pink champagne. Freddie raised an eyebrow at him and said: ‘I have some stuff on me, if you’d like it?’
Troy glanced at Isobel, who was pretending to examine an antique mirror over the mantelpiece but really admiring in wonder the sheen on her hair and the glow of her skin.
‘Excuse us for just a moment,’ he said to her.
Freddie looked surprised. ‘Wouldn’t Zelda like …?’
‘No,’ Troy said briefly. ‘Allergic.’
Freddie was astounded. ‘Allergic to cocaine? But how dreadful! You poor dear! How d’you ever manage? I would just die …’
‘What?’ Isobel asked, suddenly realising what he was saying.
Troy shook his head warningly at Freddie, but it was too late.
‘D’you take cocaine?’ Isobel demanded, deeply shocked.
‘He doesn’t, I do,’ Freddie said, desperately lying. ‘I’m always trying to persuade Troy to try it, but he won’t.’
‘I should think not,’ Isobel said staunchly. ‘It’s terribly addictive, isn’t it? And bad for you?’
Troy looked meaningfully at Isobel. ‘You surprise me,’ he said carefully. ‘I’d always thought of you as a woman of great sophistication. Everyone says to me that Zelda Vere is very much a woman of the world.’
Isobel checked herself for a moment and then wiped her look of indignation from her face. ‘Oh, of course,’ she said, recovering. ‘I’ve just seen so many people have so much trouble with it.’
Troy nodded. ‘Let’s just stick with champagne, shall we?’
‘Sure,’ Freddie said, agreeably.
Troy poured them all another glass and the two men started to exchange anecdotes, for Isobel’s amusement. Isobel kicked off the pink mules and curled her long legs underneath her, and felt young and bohemian and daring. They laughed together as the level in the bottle fell lower and lower.
‘Now then,’ Troy said as the conversation paused. ‘Let’s see the family jewels, Freddie.’
Isobel followed the two men to the spare bedroom. Troy closed the door behind him and there was a sudden moment of delicious, clandestine intimacy. Isobel, dizzy from the champagne and aroused: by her own new beauty, by the company of two handsome men, by the whole extraordinary circumstances, leaned back against the door and absorbed the fact that she was in a bedroom, rather drunk and quite alone with two attractive young men.
‘I feel quite shy,’ Freddie said.
‘Do show,’ Isobel encouraged him. ‘I really do need to know.’
Freddie unzipped his trousers, let them fall to his knees and then slid his black silk boxer shorts downwards to show her his gently rising penis. ‘Excuse us,’ he said charmingly. ‘It’s just all the attention.’
She regarded it with fascination. This was only the second penis she had ever seen in her life. Philip had been her first and only lover and she had not seen him naked and aroused for more than three years. ‘Why, it’s lovely,’ she breathed.
He had ringed the foreskin with delicate studs of silver and the very peak boasted a delicate silver sleeper. The three of them gazed at it, quietly impressed.
‘Will it be of any help?’ Freddie asked.
The question was too much for Troy. He exploded into raucous mirth. ‘I should think it would be of tremendous help!’
Isobel hesitated, trying to keep a straight face, and then was caught by the wave of laughter, howling with merriment until the tears came into her eyes and smudged her mascara.
Troy bundled Freddie out of the house at ten and then turned to Isobel. ‘C’mon, Cinderella,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get you back into rags to catch the train.’
They were like actors in a play, intent on the work they had to do. He helped her take off the pink jacket and hang it on the hanger, he put shoe trees in the mules. The wardrobe in his spare bedroom was now dedicated to Zelda Vere’s shrouded clothes. There were two stands for the wigs. Zelda Vere’s expensive cosmetics were in the dressing-table drawer. Isobel let Troy draw the plastic covers over the jacket and skirt while she pulled on her linen dress. She realised for the first time that it did not exactly fit. It gaped slightly at the armholes, you could glimpse her old ill-fitting bra from the side, the waist was too long; the fall of the skirt to mid-calf with the flat shoes made her legs look short and fat.
‘I could take one of the suits home,’ she said wistfully.
‘Not one of them,’ Troy ruled. ‘If you overlap your identities at all, someone will see you and make the connection. You’ve got to be like a spy. You’ve got to have waterproof compartments. Zelda waits for you here – in the drawers and in the wardrobe. Isobel is catching the train home tonight and you’d better have some idea where she’s been all evening, if you’re hoping to keep this deception up.’
‘He already knows I’ll be late,’ Isobel said reluctantly. ‘I rang him from Harrods to tell him I was having dinner with my publishers. He isn’t expecting me home.’
‘Just get your story perfect,’ Troy urged her, putting her jacket round her shoulders and opening the front door. ‘Where did you have dinner? What did you eat? That sort of thing. If this deception is to work it has to be totally, totally convincing.’
She hesitated on the doorstep, reluctant to leave him. ‘Thank you for today,’ she said. ‘We’ve never spent so much time together before and you’ve been my agent for – what? – six years.’
In an odd courtly gesture he took her hand and kissed it. ‘It was my pleasure,’ he said. ‘We did great shopping. And I loved sitting on the sofa like a sultan and seeing you modelling things.’
The thought of him enjoying her gave her pause. ‘You liked seeing me?’
He made a little deprecatory gesture. ‘Of course. You were transforming from one sort of woman to another. One would have to have a heart of stone not to be fascinated.’
Her face warmed at the thought of being fascinating. Oh Troy! I always thought that you …’ She hesitated to choose her words carefully. ‘I always thought that you were not very interested in women.’
He laughed. ‘I’m interested in people,’ he said. ‘I love Freddie because he’s bold and risk-taking and exciting. And I like you because you’re determined and courageous and suddenly you have embarked on some kind of new path here that could take you anywhere – and that’s fascinating for me.’
‘But your preference?’ she asked delicately.
He stepped forward and hailed a cab. The car swung in and Troy opened the door for her. ‘Neither here nor there. Don’t forget to construct your alibi on the way home.’
‘You were late last night,’ Philip said at breakfast. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I know,’ Isobel said. ‘It went on and on.’
‘You should have told them you had a train to catch,’ he said with disapproval. ‘You must have got the last one home.’
‘I didn’t want to make a fuss.’
‘You should make a fuss,’ he corrected her. ‘They may be the publishers but you’re the author. Where do they get their living from, that’s what I’d like to know?’
‘They look after me very well,’ she said. She put his toast down before him and poured his tea. She wondered at the readiness of the lies that were sliding from her mouth.
‘I sat next to James Ware,’ she told Philip. ‘Of the Sunday Times.’
‘Did you tell him what I said about that last review of your book?’ Philip asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We talked about Spender.’
‘Fat lot he’d know,’ Philip said crossly, and opened the newspaper. ‘You should have told him what I said. If I’d been there I’d have made sure that he knew he had completely the wrong end of the stick.’
She hesitated. ‘What are you going to do today?’
He looked around the paper. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘My exercises, the crossword, lunch, walk, tea. What are you doing today? Writing?’
Isobel looked at her navy calf-length skirt with mild dissatisfaction. ‘I thought I might go to Tonbridge and look at some clothes. I’m so bored of all my clothes.’
‘Why bother?’ he asked. ‘You hardly go anywhere. What d’you want a smart dress for?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘I just thought in London yesterday that the cream shift is awfully – ordinary.’
He smiled his charming smile at her. ‘We’re ordinary people,’ he said. ‘That’s our strength. We don’t need the gloss. We have genuine substance.’
‘I suppose one could have both,’ she said. ‘Gloss on the outside and substance underneath. We don’t have to be wholly solid and worthy and always wearing flat shoes.’
Philip looked puzzled at her disagreement. ‘Of course you can’t have both,’ he said. ‘You’re either a trivial person or a deep one. You either care about the things that matter or you run continually after fashion. We know who we are. How we appear doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘So no point wasting your time and our money on shopping.’
‘No,’ Isobel conceded. ‘I’d better get to work.’
She closed the study door behind her and pulled out her chair. She switched on the computer and watched the screen come to life. She thought that she had been doing these actions, like a line worker in a factory, every morning at this time for the last six years. It seemed very odd to her that this was perhaps the first morning ever that she had resented it.
It had been the conversation at breakfast. Philip’s certainty in her seriousness, in her moral values, should have been a matter of joy to her. That her husband thought well of her should please any woman. But because she was held so high in his esteem she was never given new clothes. Because he admired her intellect and her seriousness, she was never given treats. He discouraged her from taking an interest in fashion, or from changing her appearance in any way. Isobel had worn flat shoes, calf-length skirts and her hair tied back at their first meeting when she had been a scholarly postgraduate; and nothing had ever changed. Isobel thought that she was fifty-two and she had not known till yesterday that she had a beautiful neck. Perhaps fifty-two was rather late to discover such an asset. Who would admire it, other than well-trained shop assistants selling earrings? Who would notice if she had her ears pierced? Who would run a finger from ear lobe to collarbone? Would anyone ever sweep up her hair and kiss the nape of her neck and graze the skin with his teeth?
Isobel clicked on the file marked ‘Letters to the Bank’ and put the vision of a man caressing her neck out of her mind. She had made a commitment to Philip and a promise to herself, never to look back, never to wonder how their marriage might have been if he had not been ill. She believed that she should be grateful only that he had lived. That was the most important thing. Shopping, and a man with a liking for long necks, and vanity were supremely irrelevant. She opened chapter one and started to format and print it.
Isobel carried the first ten chapters of her novel into the village post office and put it on the scales. It weighed as much as a complete manuscript of one of her usual books. She paid for it to be sent recorded delivery to Troy’s office, and then stepped back from the counter. Isobel normally never ate sweets of any kind. She had been forbidden them as a child, except for one chocolate egg at Easter, and had never acquired the taste. But she felt that the posting of the first instalment of the Zelda Vere novel deserved some reward. And she was certain that Zelda Vere ate chocolate.
She looked at the confectionery counter. There were few things she remembered from her childhood. Then she saw a large box of chocolate brazils. She smiled. Of course Zelda Vere would eat chocolate brazils, probably while drinking crème de menthe. ‘I’ll have them,’ she said, pointing.
‘For a present?’ the woman asked, reaching for the large box.
‘Yes,’ Isobel said.
‘Lucky lady,’ the woman said.
‘Yes,’ Isobel agreed. ‘She is terribly lucky.’
She parked on the side of the road on the way back to her house and ate a dozen of them, one after another, with intense relish, filling her mouth with the sharp taste and then savouring the warm nuttiness of the centre. When she had eaten so many that she felt slightly, guiltily queasy, she hid the rest of the box under a scarf on the back seat. She was just about to start the car when she remembered Troy’s warning that the compartments between Isobel Latimer and Zelda Vere must be watertight. She must be like a spy. Reluctantly she got from the car and looked at the land falling away from the road – a patchwork of fields intersected by half-hidden lanes, a farmhouse down to her left, her own house hidden by the fold of the hill. With a powerful overarm throw she flung the box high into the air. It went up in a grand arc into the blue sky and then turned over in the air and scattered chocolate brazils like a rain storm of incredible richness. Isobel clapped her hands together in delight and watched the expensive chocolates tumble recklessly down on Kent.
‘That was pure Zelda Vere,’ she whispered to herself and wiped the chocolate from her lips, pulled up the sagging waistband of her navy skirt, got back into the car and drove home.
‘Did you get some whisky?’ Philip asked her. ‘We’re nearly out.’
‘Didn’t you put it on the list for Mrs M? It’s her day to shop tomorrow.’
‘I don’t like her buying my whisky,’ Philip complained.
‘I don’t see why not.’
They were at lunch together. Isobel, a little sick from too many chocolate brazils, was eating very little. Philip had a green salad before him and a slice of cheese on toast.
‘Doesn’t seem right,’ he said.
Isobel raised her eyebrows. She knew that she was being unusually impatient with Philip. Something of the spirit of Zelda Vere had entered her with the chocolate brazils.
‘Well, I wasn’t planning to go down to the village again,’ she said shortly. ‘I want to work this afternoon.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to go then,’ he said. There was a pause while he waited for her to say that she would drive down rather than make him go. Isobel said nothing.
‘I could walk down and you could pick me up,’ he said. ‘It could be my afternoon walk.’
Isobel hesitated for only one moment and then she experienced the familiar rush of guilt at the thought that she was being selfish and ungracious to Philip. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Shall I pick you up from the pub at two thirty?’
He smiled, pleased that he had got his own way. ‘Call it three and that’ll give you time to pop into the off licence and buy the whisky on your way,’ he said. ‘I’d rather not trek down the High Street. I’ll wait for you in the pub.’
‘All right,’ Isobel said again. ‘At three.’
‘There’s a problem with the manuscript,’ Troy said on the telephone.
Isobel felt the falling sensation of fear. ‘What?’ she asked quickly.
‘I don’t think you completely understand the genre,’ he said.
‘What d’you mean?’ Isobel demanded. She looked at the screen before her where Charity was about to confront the businesswoman who had left the coven and founded an international cosmetics business. Charity was posing as a model, the face of the spring collection. At any moment she would tie the woman up and scar her face forever. The woman would never be seen in public again. Isobel was as certain as she could be that the scene was a perfect example of the genre.
‘It’s these semi-colons,’ Troy said, the glee at last revealed in his voice.
‘What?’
‘Nobody in popular fiction uses semi-colons. They wouldn’t know what to do with them.’
