Puppies Are For Life (11 page)

There were definitely several undercurrents
around, she decided, shoo-ing the men from the cosy cottage and out into the chilly night; but she didn’t know quite what to make of them.

Jan was woken by a bird on the caravan roof – just one, hopping about and scratching with sharp little claws, but it was enough. She stared at the painted ceiling, wondering how a bird could make so much noise; she had forgotten what camping was like.

‘Not the most comfortable of mattresses,’ Frank grumbled, squinting in the half-light beside her. ‘Feels a bit damp to me, too.’

‘But at least we’re back in England.’ Jan struggled out of the sheets, grabbed her thick padded anorak, and began to make some tea, her heart swelling with pleasure at being home again at last. Let birds hop about on the roof if they wanted to. They were British birds, weren’t they? They were home!

But what had they actually come home to? A family in dire straits?

‘I don’t suppose you noticed, Frank,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘that things seemed not quite right?’

Frank watched her fill the kettle and plug it into the wall. Used as he was to picking up Jan’s
scattered thoughts and gluing them into a coherent whole, this time he was struggling. ‘Come again?’ he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes and trying hard to concentrate.

‘The family. Got problems,’ she said slowly, as though he were deaf.

‘Families always have.’ He shrugged. ‘What business is it of ours?’

‘Well, of course it’s our business! It’s one of our reasons for coming back.’

‘Is it?’ Frank looked bemused.

‘Yes! Oh, come on, Frank; we missed not being involved, didn’t we? And that means going along with the good and the bad. Not that Susannah let us be all that involved, but still …’

‘Hmm. I suppose you’re right. So what’s wrong with our wonderful family then? They seemed all right to me.’

Jan tutted to herself; men were as blind as bats. ‘For a start, there’s poor little Katy. What’s to become of her I’ve no idea. And then there’s Simon and Natalie: something’s going on there. Simon couldn’t look me in the eye when he spoke about the girl. And why has she gone to live with a girl friend? For a young mother to go off and leave her baby with its father … But the most worrying thing of all is Susannah and Paul.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I could sense trouble between them, like a big black cloud. Trouble with a capital T. He was rather rude to her, I thought, which surprised me very
much. I know he can’t be an angel all the time – how many men are? – but I’ve never known him to be discourteous to anyone, least of all to Susannah. And they obviously haven’t been communicating with each other … Oh dear, I didn’t expect this. It’s come as rather a shock.’

‘Are you sure you aren’t imagining things?’

‘Yes, Frank, I’m sure!’

As soon as she walked into the office Susannah became aware of an unusual atmosphere, but couldn’t immediately identify it. Could it simply be that she was late and therefore unused to everyone else being at their desks with nothing better to do than cast virtuous glances in her direction? No, there was more to it than that. These weren’t mere glances she was getting; there was something afoot, something to do with her, and she was the only one not in on the secret.

‘Go on,’ she whispered to Molly, trying to shrug off her uneasiness with a smile, ‘tell me my underwear’s showing, or whatever it is. I can’t stand the suspense any longer.’

But Molly wouldn’t even look her in the eye. ‘Rather late in the day,’ she commented, raising her head from her work and ducking it again. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming in.’

‘We
are
on flexi-time,’ Susannah reminded her. Something in Molly’s voice told her it might have been preferable if she hadn’t come in at all. What was going on?

She began to shed layers of clothes, throwing off her coat and her non-slip driving gloves, unzipping her fleece-lined boots, and unwinding three long loops of blue rib-knit scarf. But she couldn’t discard the feeling.

‘So what was it this time – an influx of visitors?’ Molly wanted to know, her nose in a batch of claims.

‘What?’

‘Well, your weekend hasn’t exactly rejuvenated you, has it?’

‘Thanks, Molly. I can always rely on you for the feel-good factor.’ Susannah sat down and located her pen; began clicking the end up and down. ‘It
was
visitors actually. Sort of.’

Molly’s head came up again. ‘Go on, spill the beans,’ she said, one hand poised for effect with a pen above a claim form, the other clipping in and out of a bag of crisps at regular intervals.

Susannah launched into her saga.

‘What?’ Molly exclaimed when she’d finished, ‘your father and Jan too? As well as Simon and the baby and Katy? Flipping ’eck! And doesn’t it seem a bit odd,’ she went on, ‘about Natalie not turning up, and going off on her own to her friend’s?’

‘Yes.’ Susannah sighed; that worry had been niggling her too. She had hoped that Paul might have learned something of Simon’s problems on their trip to the pub. Vain hope. From what she could gather they had discussed nothing more enlightening than where to go for the cheapest petrol,
who would be the next Prime Minister, and Formula One racing.

Susannah had intended to have a quiet word with Simon herself, but there had been so little time over the weekend, and he’d been asleep when she’d left for work that morning.

Justin hadn’t been asleep though. He had woken her up at ten minutes to five. Not by hollering, but by snuffling and whimpering and thumping about in his cot. Even through the solid old floorboards of the cottage the sound had managed to penetrate. At least, it had beaten a path to
her
room; it apparently drew the line at Katy’s door. And why it hadn’t gone the other way and bored through the wall to his father in the next room remained a mystery.

At first Susannah had lain silent and motionless next to an equally oblivious Paul, fully expecting to hear stirring sounds from Simon so that, happy in the knowledge that all was under control, she could squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep. But it was soon clear that she might more realistically expect hell to freeze over: Simon was temporarily but thoroughly deaf – a comatose heap under two zipped-together sleeping bags.

In the end she had given in, creeping downstairs, tip-toeing past Simon in search of a jar of baby food, and noting with rising despair a collection of dirty crocks in the sink and that the cat had made an evil mess in its tray – or beside the tray to be precise; he’d not got the hang of it yet.

There was nothing ‘breakfasty’ in the baby bag but Justin didn’t care; he accepted each microwaved spoonful of creamed rice with a beam of gratitude and a clapping together of hands.

Thank goodness he was as eager to get it inside him as she was, she thought, wiping his hands and face afterwards with kitchen roll and trying to make it seem fun. Then she scouted in the fridge, poured milk into a saucer for Gazza who had kept up a dogged leg-weaving exercise for the past ten minutes, and gave Justin some in a bottle to hold for himself, though not without suffering pangs of guilt because all the baby books she’d ever read said it was wrong not to nurse a baby in your arms.

‘Bollocks to that,’ she muttered, chipping a block of lean mince out of the freezer, ‘I had more time to myself then. And I thought those days were the worst!’

Would she be expected to feed her father and Jan, she wondered, sizing up the meat. She tracked down another pack and left them both next to the sink to defrost.

There wasn’t much time for anything else after that. After a change of nappy Justin had been content to go back to his cot with a yellow plastic hammer, leaving Susannah free at last to take a shower. She had stepped into it seconds after Paul stepped out, and when she had rushed back downstairs, her hair still damp, her clothes slung on anyhow, and her nerves stretched almost to
breaking point, Paul was leaning over Justin’s cot looking spruce in his office suit.

‘No trouble at all,’ he was saying, ‘are you, little chap?’

And he’d not looked so happy in weeks.

‘Susannah –’ Molly broke in on her thoughts – ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you this but – well – Duffy came in this morning, just a few minutes before you arrived. Said he wanted you to see him as soon as you got in.’

The radiator in Mr Duffy’s room did not bring out the best in him. The atmosphere was laden with body odour; stale alcohol fumes tainted the air.

‘Ah,’ he said when he discovered who had come to see him. There was no politeness injected into the word as he glared at Susannah across the desk, and certainly no pleasure.

‘I won’t keep you long.’ He made no attempt to offer her a seat. ‘Perhaps you can throw some light on these.’

Swivelling a heap of papers so that the writing was Susannah’s way up, he peered up at her from under his grizzled brows. ‘I take it you know what they are?’

‘Of course,’ she replied as coolly as she could. ‘They’re forms ACS 6B. They’re – er – for manual payments.’

‘Quite so. I thought you’d be familiar with them. Been using quite a few of them recently, haven’t you?’

Susannah swallowed hard before launching into her explanation, but he swiftly cut her short.

‘It’s not your reason that interests me for the moment. It’s the signature at the bottom. I presume you recognise it?’

‘I ought to – she tilted her chin – ‘because it’s mine.’

‘Precisely. And do you know on which date these forms were signed?’

‘Not exactly …’

‘Oh, come!’

‘Well, it might have been – um – Friday. I think. Possibly.’

‘You are correct. It was Friday. Last week. And where was I on Friday of last week? Was I here, or was I on leave?’

‘You were –’ she looked about her vaguely – ‘here somewhere, I suppose.’ She hadn’t searched too hard for him, having been ninety-nine per cent certain that at that time of day, and on any day of the week come to that, he would be enjoying a long and entirely liquid lunch at the Huntsman’s Arms.

Duffy held her with disdainful eyes. ‘Mrs Harding, you are allowed to sign ACS 6Bs when – and only when – you have been authorised to substitute for me. Friday was not such a day. Please remember, in future, that you must work within the rules.’ He waggled his narrow head in a kind of exasperated shudder. ‘And by the way …’ He stopped her as she headed for the door, sighing deeply as though troubled by a wayward child.
‘You keyed out in core time that same afternoon. I do hope it won’t happen again.’

Susannah didn’t attempt an answer. She contented herself with letting off an explosive ‘Paugh!’, once out in the corridor.

‘I must be mad to put up with this,’ she muttered on her way back to her desk. All those years of incessant toil, and what thanks did she get for it?

It had only been the thought of Paul and his TESSAs, his PEPs, his shares and his building society accounts, that had stopped her telling Duffy exactly where to get off. Paul would not be at all happy if she lost her job and could no longer contribute to his precious retirement fund.

Then she remembered that Harvey Webb was coming to see her mosaic work that afternoon and a thrill ran through her. He might give her her first commission! And after that there were sure to be others. It might not be long before she was back in Duffy’s room, handing in her notice and telling him a few home truths …

She floated back to her office, smiling at her harmless dream.

If there was one thing that annoyed Harvey it was the advertising junk that fell out of magazines. Today a ton of it slithered across the carpet when he attempted to clear a space for himself on the sitting-room sofa.

Not bothering to scoop it up, he settled down with a cup of coffee and began to consider how he
might fill in time until his appointment with Susannah Harding.

Susannah … Harding.

A smile curved his lips as he called her image to mind. It was her tip-tilted nose that did it. It was only slightly turned up at the end, but he’d always had a weakness for noses like that. His first girlfriend had had one.

But what did he think he was playing at? Playing away from home – or thinking about it, at least? He was pretty certain she wasn’t the type. Neither was he, really. Julia had always been enough for him. And anyway, with his current difficulties, a bit of hanky-panky was out of the question. He was just after a bit of harmless amusement, wasn’t he? And he was genuinely interested in what she was doing. His foot skidded about on something on the carpet.

That junk mail again … or was it? He picked up the booklet. Exam notes! The kind of thing keen parents bought their offspring in the hope that they’d get good results. How such a thing should have found its way inside one of Julia’s weeklies, he couldn’t imagine. Thumbing through the magazine produced no answers: there was no feature on exams and they weren’t giving exam notes away as free gifts! So the booklet had to have been put there by Julia.

But Julia? With exam notes? He couldn’t be more shocked if he’d found her in bed with another man.

His coffee forgotten, Harvey rubbed his chin. At times Julia seemed nine-tenths a mystery to him; at
others he felt that ‘what you saw was what you got’ and he knew all there was to know. Suddenly he felt he didn’t know her at all. What was she up to behind his back?

‘I’m going now,’ Julia told him briefly from the door. She had part of her hairdressing kit in her hand and was about to disappear again, but decided after a moment’s hesitation to go over and kiss him goodbye.