Chapter Twenty-two

ALTHOUGH ACHING WITH tiredness, Hetty couldn’t sleep well. Guilt from abandoning the party before the last guest had gone added to her torment. She was so furious with Connor’s high-handed dismissal of her achievements she was glad that it would punish him more than her. But after she had slept a bit, and dawn was breaking, she knew she didn’t want him to lose the car he loved so dearly.

Of course the car would bring in cash, and he was right about the cheques needing time to clear. And Connor would have money over with which to buy another, ordinary, car. But he wouldn’t find another quite so special. Surely there was another way round the problem?

It occurred to her at five o’clock, when she gave up trying to sleep and got up, that what she ought to do was to convince him to put off selling his car, and demand that the loan people wait a few days for the cheques to clear. But she realized, her toothbrush half-way to her mouth, that they would probably refuse. They would be far more interested in getting their hands on Courtbridge House. Which would explain why Connor was so insistent on selling his car. Which, she concluded, was a point in his favour.

Hetty wiped the flecks of toothpaste off the bathroom mirror with her sleeve, wishing she could clear her feelings about Connor as easily. But she couldn’t. Love, hate, frustration and pure rage churned about like an emotional soup: it was quite impossible to extract one ingredient and react to it separately.

On the other hand, if the loan was to be paid off, she couldn’t waste time wondering if she loved Connor or hated him, wanted him to keep his car, or thought losing it a just punishment. Getting the loan paid off was the important thing, and that needed action, not philosophical introspection. Hetty went back to her bedroom to get dressed, and as she did so an idea came to her so outrageous she rejected it several times before allowing it to develop. But while she was rejecting it, she did put on clean, relatively smart clothes, instead of the jeans and T-shirt she had originally salvaged from her bedroom chair. And having done that it seemed a waste not to go ahead with it. She didn’t want to change her clothes again, after all.

She refined the details as she walked home across the fields with the dogs. The beauty of the plan was that Connor had given it to her. He had told her he was borrowing Phyllis’s car and taking the cash up to London. Anything he could do, she could do better. She would borrow Connor’s car, go and see the under-manager at the bank and ask him for an overdraft for the four days necessary to clear the cheques, and ask for it in cash. Then, cash in hand, she would drive up to London and pay off the debt, then come home again and give Connor’s car back. And while he’d never admit he was glad it had been out of the way, and therefore couldn’t be sold, in his heart he would be.

And if the under-manager refused her very reasonable request, (and this was distinctly possible) she could just come back and let Connor carry on with his plan, entirely unaware of her interference.

So elated was she by this poem of tactics and method that she happily washed up until seven o’clock, which she judged was when she should leave. Any earlier and she would be hanging around town for hours waiting for the bank to open – any later and Connor would be up. The thought of stealing his car filled her with a dreadful excitement, but the thought of stealing it while he was actually awake took excitement over the edge to terror.

Hetty was determined not to get carried away and make some fatal mistake, like forgetting the cheques. She put on a bit of make-up (London required make-up), brushed her hair, made sure she had the correspondence from the loan company as well as the cheques, then tiptoed out of the house, having left a note stating that she’d gone to see Caroline. It was important that no one miss her before they missed the car. And the car, which had been parked well out of the way of the visiting cars the day before, wouldn’t be missed until the man came to buy it.

It was a little nerve-racking, driving through the gate, thinking that at any moment Connor might look out of the window and see his precious car disappearing. And the car felt very strange to drive. She didn’t dare stop to walk back and shut the gate until she’d driven the car some way down the lane.

Even having made her escape, Hetty found she couldn’t relax. The car, as it turned out, was not only strange but difficult. It was heavy, and seemed to pull to the left. By the time Hetty got to the town her arms were aching. Just as well it was so early, she thought. It meant there were plenty of parking spaces, and she could choose one she could just slide into. She wouldn’t have wanted to do much backing and filling in a car that was difficult to steer.

She bought a newspaper and then found the café where Phyllis had taken her the day she had visited the bank. There she indulged in a pot of tea and a scone, still warm from the oven, and settled down to calculate, on a paper napkin, exactly what Courtbridge House owed, and what was owing to Courtbridge House.

She was waiting on the doorstep when the bank opened, and, consequently, didn’t have too long to wait before she got to see the manager.

‘I need an overdraft!’ she declared, sounding a bit melodramatic, even to her own ears.

The bank manager raised his eyebrows, wishing Hetty hadn’t refused coffee. He so needed some himself.

Hetty subsided into her role as supplicant. ‘You did say that you might be able to help with one if the house became a profit-making concern.’ She pulled out two crumpled cheques. ‘We would have been in profit before if it hadn’t been for the iniquitous rate of interest we’ve had to pay on Samuel’s loan.’

‘Oh?’ He took the cheques. ‘What are these?’

‘One’s a deposit for a wedding. The final cheque will be huge.’ She didn’t know this for a fact, but it was a reasonable assumption. ‘And the other is part-payment for an event that took place last night. The rest of the money should be coming very soon. Here’s what we’re due.’ She handed him the napkin on which her sums were written.

‘When are you expecting the balance of the money?’

‘Pretty soon. Mr Makepiece, whose party it was, gave me the interim cheque because he knows what a bad time small businesses have when people don’t pay promptly.’

‘That’s certainly true.’

‘So I don’t think he’ll keep us waiting long for the balance.’

‘No. And I see from your calculations’ – he peered at her napkin – ‘that you are owed well in excess of the money required to pay off the loan. So why do you need an overdraft?’

She produced the letter from the loan company. ‘I need to pay them today. It’s the third of June.’

‘Tricky. You want a loan to cover the period that the cheques take to clear?’

Hetty nodded. ‘In cash.’

‘Supposing the cheques bounce?’

‘They won’t.’

The under-manager considered her proposal and how it might impinge on his career for what seemed like hours. ‘OK. As you’ve done so much to turn round the fortunes of the house, in a comparatively short time, I’ll allow you the cash.’

It took an age for the money to appear, but when it did it was in neat paper bands and had the unmistakable smell of new money. Hetty stuffed it into her bag, realizing it wouldn’t fit and that she’d have to find something else to put it in, and then rushed round the table and hugged the bank manager. Too surprised to know what he was doing, he hugged her back.

Hetty found the way to the motorway quite easily and, although her arms were aching, the car went well enough. She stopped for fuel and filled up, glad she’d had the forethought to put a wedge of notes in her handbag, for ready use. The rest of the money was in a carrier bag, concealed under a bag of baps and a lardy cake, which she’d bought while waiting for the bank to open.

She was passing the Lucozade bottle on the approach to Hammersmith when it dawned on her that, after she’d returned the car, she would never be able to go back to the house – at least, not while Connor was there. For even if her plan came off (and she had doubts, even now), he would hate her for taking control of the situation, not telling him what she’d planned. It was going behind his back on a grand scale.

Hetty didn’t like driving in central London at the best of times, which these were certainly not. To avoid having to, she found a quiet corner of Hammersmith and parked, glad Connor’s car had a Krook-lock, praying it wouldn’t be stolen while she took the tube into town.

A life-time seemed to have passed since Hetty was last in London, but she still knew her way round the tube system, and, the money still safe under its doughy blanket, she reached the Strand by one o’clock.

All I have to do now, she thought, is find the building. Having bought a copy of The Big Issue, she asked the boy who sold it to her the way. He walked along the street with her until they reached it.

‘They’d better not all be at lunch, bloody people,’ she muttered as she ran up the steps of the building.

They weren’t. There was a man there to receive the money, but he was put out to see Hetty and not Connor and did it with bad grace – it would have been so much more satisfying for him if Courtbridge House had been distrained against – handling the plastic bag which contained it with disdainful fingers. True, the lardy cake had oozed a bit, and some of the bundles of notes were rather sticky, but it was all there, as the man reluctantly discovered, when he pedantically counted it.

Hetty paused at the entrance to the tube, suddenly not wanting to go back to Courtbridge. Connor would be so furious with her, as would everyone. No one would understand why she’d found it necessary to get Connor’s car out of the way, except perhaps Jack. And he would have expected her to hide it at his house, not drive it to London with a large amount of banknotes riding shotgun.

So instead of taking the tube back to Hammersmith, she went to the cinema. Then she rang Penny, her friend from the office, and agreed to meet her after work. Thus it was seven o’clock when, the worst of the rush-hour over, Hetty got back to Connor’s car and, having given a brief prayer of thanksgiving that it was still there and undamaged, set off for home.

It seemed to take for ever to get out of London. The sun was in her eyes most of the time and lack of sleep was catching up with her. Why, after nights of tossing and turning and praying for sleep should it suddenly descend upon her like an inescapable blanket, just when she least wanted it? She fought from under it, but got off the motorway as soon as she could, pulled over, and closed her eyes for ten minutes or so.

Slightly refreshed, she carried on, pulling off bits of lardy cake and bap from the crumpled paper bag at her side. But the car seemed to be getting harder and harder to drive. It didn’t want to stay on the road, showing a strong preference for the hedge instead. She stopped worrying about what Connor would do to her when she finally got back – in case she didn’t. Being torn limb from limb by the man you loved seemed a better end than hurtling head first through the windscreen, or into the side of a lorry.

She was about twenty miles from Courtbridge, and had just decided that the best thing to do when – if – she finally got home would be to park the car away from the house and slink in when no one was looking, when the car’s penchant for hedges became too strong for Hetty. As she steered round a bend, the car went straight on, ploughing past a telegraph pole and not stopping until it was entirely surrounded by hawthorn and covered with late blossom. Hetty jerked against the taut seat-belt and knocked her head on the door pillar.

‘Are you all right?’

Hetty opened her eyes and looked directly at the policeman. She felt entirely serene. ‘I think so.’

‘Anything broken, do you think?’

She shook her head and then the pain came. ‘I’m not sure. My side hurts, and I feel a bit muzzy.’

‘When did you last have anything to drink?’

Hetty had to think about this. ‘About half-past five.’

‘And how much did you drink?’

‘About half a pint, I suppose.’

‘You suppose? And what was it you were drinking, madam?’

‘Oh, I had a Grapefruit Henry.’

The policeman’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that?’

Hetty found herself having to think hard. ‘Grapefruit juice and lemonade.’

The policeman turned his back and mumbled into his radio. When he turned back his expression was stern. ‘This car has been reported stolen.’

‘Well, it would have been,’ said Hetty. ‘I stole it.’

‘Would you mind if I smelt your breath, miss?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t, but if you feel you must.’

He felt he must. ‘You don’t smell as if you’ve been drinking and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look like a car thief.’ He began to check her limbs for broken bones.

‘I’d mind it a whole lot more if you thought I did look like a car thief. Ouch. But I did steal it,’ she added.

‘Mmm,’ said the policeman. ‘The ambulance’ll be here in a little while, and I don’t think the car will burst into flames, so you just sit there.’

‘Is the car badly damaged?’

‘Don’t you worry about that, dear. You just sit quietly.’

‘But I am worried. How badly is it damaged? You must be able to tell me.’

The policeman shook his head. ‘With luck you won’t have to be cut out of it, but it hit a telegraph pole on its way down the bank. I’d say it was a write-off.’

Hetty closed her eyes. She’d tried so hard to save Connor’s car, and all she’d succeeded in doing was wrecking it. ‘Oh, God.’

‘There’s no point in crying, love. If you didn’t want the car damaged, you shouldn’t have stolen it.’

He moved away. Hetty could hear him complaining to his colleague that it was a bloody domestic, and that people really should keep their private quarrels off the public highway.

Hetty subsided into an uneasy doze, which seemed preferable to facing the reality of the situation. She was forced out of it when the paramedics came. They strapped her to a board, which was incredibly uncomfortable, and put her into an ambulance.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, as they secured the stretcher.

‘Wheatstone General Hospital.’

‘Oh.’ Not too near Courtbridge then. And not the same hospital as Samuel was in. This seemed like good news. Would it be possible, she wondered, to go straight to her parents’ from there? Could her father possibly come and get her before Connor did? But Connor wouldn’t come and get her, would he? He’d go and see about his car. And having done that he’d come back to kill her. She was trying to calculate how long everything would take when her brain fogged over.

The casualty department was fairly quiet. A few people sat on chairs, flicking through magazines. One had his foot wound up in a bandage, and another had on a very grubby sling. Two others appeared to be waiting for people undergoing treatment. Hetty, victim of an RTA, was ushered straight in.

It was a relief to get off her board and on to an examination bed, and a greater relief to be rid of the paramedics, who had spent the short journey from the back of the ambulance to the cubicle discussing the damage on Connor’s car. They seemed to wonder if it would have much scrap value, or whether it could be salvaged for parts. They might as well have been discussing whether Hetty’s vital organs could be recycled, she thought.

A nurse with very cold hands but a warm smile probed Hetty tentatively, having removed her clothes and put her into a hospital gown. ‘You’ll definitely need to stay in for the night,’ she said eventually. ‘Just wait here quietly for the doctor.’

Hetty’s eyes had just closed again when she heard hard, loud, long strides marching down the Marley tiles. There was a little bit of conversation and then the footsteps came nearer. Hetty hoped against hope that it was the doctor. The curtain was pulled violently aside. It wasn’t.

‘Are you all right?’ Connor was white under his fading tan, sweat glistened on his neck and chest, revealed by his unbuttoned shirt. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was wild.

‘I’m fine. But the car –’

‘So, you’re fine are you? Well isn’t that just dandy! You’re fine and my car is a write-off. God, I know you have reason not to like me, Hetty, but I didn’t think you hated me that much. And I didn’t think you capable of spite, and spite on such a grand scale! I thought you had enough honour to fight me face to face, not steal what I cared most about and wreck it!’

‘I didn’t –’ Her voice was barely audible.

‘Oh, don’t crow about getting the debt paid off. I don’t want to hear about how you got the cash to do it. What I would like to know is why the fuck you didn’t tell me, why you couldn’t have just put our differences aside and told me? I could have got the cash to London without having to sacrifice my car to do it.’

‘Please –’

‘Don’t you dare speak to me! You knew how much that car meant to me, you thought of the one way you could really hurt me, and you used it. By God, if you weren’t already in a hospital bed, I’d damn well put you in one myself! You could have been killed! Or crippled for life! Or was that part of your plan too, to have me had up for manslaughter!’

‘Manslaughter?’

‘Or are you trying to tell me you didn’t know there was a problem with the steering?’

‘I didn’t – how could I have done?’

He ignored her strangled whisper. ‘Do you really think that house – any house – is worth the kind of risk you took? If the steering had gone on the motorway you’d have killed yourself and taken dozens with you. It was the most thoughtless, childish, hysterical, half-baked, self-indulgent, idiotic thing to do. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’

Hetty hesitated a moment to see if he was going to allow her time to answer.

‘Well?’ he demanded, having deemed three seconds enough.

‘I didn’t think you’d take too kindly to being woken at two in the morning, which is when I first thought of the plan –’

‘Oh, didn’t you?’ Sarcasm like molten metal flowed over the white heat of his anger. ‘You thought I’d take kindly to finding my car gone, just before it was due to be sold, and you missing too? You thought I’d appreciate spending the entire day worried sick, waiting for the police to come and tell me you were dead? Wondering what could have happened to you, what lunatic notion you’d taken into your head about paying off the loan? I had it all set up to do that, you know. But oh no, you couldn’t let me, Conan the Barbarian, save the house. It had to be Hetty Saves the Day, and to hell with the consequences.’

‘I really –’

‘To think I thought . . . Thank God I found out what a stupid, heartless, thoughtless little bitch you are before it’s too late!’

Hetty closed her eyes and listened for the sounds of him leaving. They didn’t come.

‘And when the fuck can I take you home?’

‘Not until she’s had the gash in the back of her head seen to,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘And been thoroughly tested.’

Hetty’s eyes flew open in time to see a diminutive creature in a white coat and a stethoscope reduce Connor to silence. He glared at the doctor, and glared at Hetty. ‘So you’re a liar as well as everything else, are you?’ Then he strode off down the passage.

‘God, they’re beautiful when they’re angry,’ said the doctor when the echoes of his footsteps had died away. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll forgive you.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Hetty. ‘I killed his car.’

Caroline collected Hetty after a second night in hospital. The cut in her head had been neatly stapled, and no other injuries discovered. The police had told her that Connor was not going to press charges. Probably, thought Hetty, deeply depressed, so he wouldn’t have to see her in court. Caroline, who, during Hetty’s day of tests, had plied her with grapes, magazines and a bottle of champagne, which they shared with all the staff, was to take her back to Phyllis’s.

‘It’s all been worked out. Your mother will come for you as soon as she can, but you’ve got to have complete rest for a few days, so you can’t go back to Courtbridge House.’

‘Why don’t you just tell me the truth, Caroline? Connor wouldn’t let me within a mile of the place, even if I wanted to go.’

‘Oh, no! I don’t think he’s said anything like that. Although he is still hopping mad, of course.’ Caroline shot her a glance as she changed gear. ‘You must have been a bit mad yourself, don’t you think?’

‘At the time it seemed the only logical thing. I didn’t want Connor to sell his car. I needed to get to London to pay off the loan. It killed two birds with one stone. I didn’t know about the steering fault.’

‘I told him you didn’t, but I’m afraid he’s too angry to listen to reason.’

‘I can’t blame him, I suppose.’

‘And I think he minds more about what might have happened to you than about the car.’

‘But you can’t be sure? Well, I can. He may have felt a moment or two of anxiety about me, but that’ll soon be forgotten. After all, I’ll get better. His car won’t.’

‘I’m afraid you’re probably right.’

Hetty turned to stare out of the window, biting her lip, fighting tears.

‘The bank holiday wedding people confirmed,’ Caroline went on, observing Hetty’s averted head. ‘And Mrs Makepiece sent her cheque. Phyllis told me. She’s had several other inquiries too. It seems everyone wants to have a rural celebration at Courtbridge House.’

Hetty got her voice under control. ‘Oh, good. I’m really, really glad. But I won’t be able to go back, you know. Ever.’

Caroline didn’t speak immediately. Hetty had half hoped that she would protest and argue and tell her not to be silly. ‘Well, not for a bit anyway,’ she said eventually.

The following morning, Phyllis came into Hetty’s room carrying a tray.

‘I rang your mother, as you asked, and managed to persuade her not to come, but she wanted to know if you’d done anything about those people in Shropshire.’ Phyllis set the tray down on Hetty’s knees. ‘I told her I didn’t expect you’d done anything yet, and may not for a while. Was I right?’

‘Absolutely. And you really shouldn’t spoil me like this. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘Tell me that after you’ve been to the bathroom and I’ll believe you,’ said Phyllis, handing Hetty a dressing-gown.

Having done this, Hetty was very pleased to get back into bed. ‘I feel as if I’ve been run over by a bus.’

‘Jolly lucky you weren’t. Connor said the car had a steering fault. You could have been killed.’ Phyllis perched on the end of the bed, nearly causing Hetty’s cornflakes to spill. ‘It was why he reported the car stolen. He knew you’d taken it and wanted you stopped before you –’

‘Killed myself?’

She nodded. ‘He’ll probably come in to see you later.’

Hetty suddenly felt incredibly weak. ‘I can’t face him. I feel so guilty about his car. Does he know why I stole it?’

‘I think so. He told me about the loan, by the way. You poor child. Couldn’t tell me about the loan, couldn’t tell Connor about the listing. Well, I’ve told him now. And I think he’s agreed.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘Now I ought to cut along to Courtbridge, if you don’t mind being left. With Connor out there’s no one to open up.’

‘With Connor in there’s no one to open up.’

‘He’s really a very good man, you know, under all that bluster.’

Hetty managed a feeble smile. ‘I’m glad he’ll have you as a character witness when he murders me for writing his car off.’

Hetty slept for most of the day, glad to be away from Courtbridge House, away from Connor. She desperately wanted to avoid seeing him. She would have to learn to live with her guilt, and it would be easier if Connor’s hatred wasn’t branded on her memory. She’d seen it once, and that threatened to leave a permanent scar.

Phyllis came back at tea-time. ‘I’d better warn you that Connor’s planning to come and see you this evening.’

‘Oh, God! Can’t you tell him I’m too ill?’

‘Too late, I’m afraid. Anyway, he’s probably had a chance to calm down, now. He might not shout.’