John had moved quickly to curtail such enjoyable excess, and, just as he saw his friends in the City doing, he cut his own and all the staff’s lunch breaks to a maximum of one hour when taken as part of the normal office routine, or an hour and a half when entertaining clients. The in-house catering had had to go: pleasant though it was to be cooked for by a regular small team who knew one’s every taste in food and drink, it was an extravagant indulgence that the company could do without.
The plans for the development of fifteen four- to six-bedroomed detached houses on the estate just outside Manchester were still spread out across the desk, and he pulled them over towards him, swivelling the large photostatted sheet round to face him. He was particularly proud of this project: the houses were going to look elegant and well-proportioned, with just enough garden round each one to give a feeling of privacy, in spite of his having insisted on squeezing in one more than the originally scheduled fourteen. He had listened to his architects’ arguments about angles of building height, diagonals of wall relative to ground span, proportion of garden size to number of rooms, but he was convinced the illusion of space given by the carefully planned hedges, arches and strategically placed walls would make up for the small amount of land he took from each plot. His speech to the planning officer had been masterful, even if he did say so himself.
It wouldn’t be long now before they finished the final plastering, and the interest from local estate agents had been extremely encouraging. He particularly wanted a quick turnround for these, and reached for the phone to check on the progress of the show house, and to remind himself of the date of its opening.
‘Ruth, get me Martin, would you? Did Mrs Hamilton show him the colour schemes this morning? I didn’t see her go – did she manage to get together with him, do you know?’
‘I don’t think she did, Mr Hamilton. I didn’t see her go either, I’m afraid. Do you want me to try and get hold of her?’
‘No, don’t worry. Just put me through to Martin, would you?’
He wondered idly why Eleanor had gone without saying goodbye – hadn’t she asked for a cup of tea or something? Usually she would bring her drink into his office and fill him in on her latest ideas for design, but maybe she’d had somewhere to go on to today. The large variety of charity work, church organising and general local do-gooding that she was involved in meant he was never quite sure what she was talking about when she discussed anything relevant to their life in Surrey. Perhaps she’d had something to go back to this afternoon – but then it was odd that she’d bothered to come up to town at all. She certainly wouldn’t have driven in just to meet Martin and show him her samples; there must have been something up in town for her to do. He knew it was no good his thinking back over their conversation this morning; she had said something about her plans, but as usual he hadn’t really been listening. During such conversations he generally managed to reply often and noncommittally enough to convince her that he was interested and aware, but all he could remember from this morning was a vaguely uncomfortable feeling that she had brought up the old whirly ceiling business again, and that he had half known she had unwittingly hit the nail on the head in that particular instance. The Devon houses weren’t going to be one of his better schemes: they would sell because there was a desperate shortage of houses in that area of this particular type and price bracket, but they were overpriced and ugly, and the sooner they were finished, sold and forgotten, the happier he would be.
He gave up waiting for Martin to come to the phone, and instead pressed the speed dial button on the telephone that was programmed for the Surrey number, ready to leave a warm and thoughtfully interested conjugal message on the machine to greet Eleanor when she returned, but was surprised to hear her voice answer in reality, rather than via the rather strained message that she had recorded on the answering tape.
‘Hello?’
John thought she sounded quieter than normal, almost hesitant. Eleanor’s middle-class tones usually had a quality of stridency about them that cut across the most crowded of rooms; this softly spoken one-worded question was almost inaudible.
‘Eleanor? It’s me. Are you OK? You haven’t got a migraine or anything, have you?’
‘No, why should I have a migraine? I thought you were Andrew ringing back.’
‘Because you came into the office and then just disappeared. I thought you must have an appointment in town, so I was surprised to find you answering the – Andrew? Andrew, brother Andrew? Why should he be ringing?’
‘Because I rang him.’
‘Oh I see.’
There was no doubt about it; there was something very peculiar in her tone. John couldn’t quite put his finger on it. After thirty years he prided himself on judging her moods and state of health very finely; knowing exactly when to leave her alone and when to indulge in the comforting husband scenario he knew he was so good at. But this one was a bit of a puzzle.
‘Why were you ringing Andrew?’
‘I just felt like it.’
‘You felt like it? You haven’t felt like ringing your brother for as long as I can remember. Had to, yes; felt you ought to, plenty of times, but not wanted to off your own bat. Not that I can think of. Is he all right?’
‘Yes, he’s fine.’
There was another pause, and John found himself getting irritated by this mysterious laconic exchange.
‘OK, I’ll leave you to it, then. Are you coming up tomorrow?’
Yes, thought Eleanor, no doubt I am. No doubt I am.
‘No, I’ll be here all day.’
‘Right. I’ll ring you this evening, anyway. ’Bye, darling.’
‘’Bye.’ The tiniest of pauses. ‘Darling.’
Eleanor went up to London for the next three days running. She managed to cancel or postpone most of her local meetings and social arrangements without causing too many problems, getting back to the country each day in time to fulfil at least some of the prearranged appointments. She surprised herself by being calmly efficient in her lying; smoothly explaining that John had had a change of schedule in one of his developments, and that her interior design work had been brought forward. She had no worries that her subterfuge would be found out – her life in Surrey was so separate from John’s in London that the two rarely intertwined at all. She was quite well aware that John understood almost nothing of the time she spent apart from him during the week; she knew even as she chatted to him on a Sunday evening or Monday morning of her plans for the week ahead that he neither understood nor cared about the people and places she was describing. It had never worried her; she had found it rather sweet the way he bothered to grunt or reply occasionally in roughly the right places so as to keep her happy, and the monologues – which in effect was what they were – were delivered as much to herself as to her bored husband. Now, however, she found herself thinking quite differently about his lack of interest in her life, although it was proving very useful when it came to her surreptitious excursions up to town.
She divided her time between watching the outside of the office and that of the flat, happy to sit calmly in the car for hours at a time; parking it carefully so that the likelihood of it being identified was kept to a minimum. She still occasionally thought she might be imagining that there was any problem at all, but as she churned over it, time and time again, she knew more definitely all the time that she was right. The possibility that Ruth had happened to be at the same block of flats as John’s purely by chance, coupled with the knowledge of the tie and the way she had clearly lied about not having seen him over her holiday added up to only one conclusion. Eleanor didn’t know quite what she was waiting for. She just knew that if she gave it long enough, something or somebody would reveal a further clue, give her a little more evidence, a little more knowledge. Two questions dominated her thoughts