The Question Read online

  THE QUESTION

  Jane Asher

  Dedication

  For Clare

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Keep Reading

  Acknowledgements

  Also by the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  ‘So how was your holiday?’

  ‘Wonderful, thank you, Mrs Hamilton. Absolutely wonderful. You can never be quite sure about the weather out there, but we were really lucky – it was gorgeous. Jackie got really burnt and I was covered in freckles, as usual, but we really enjoyed ourselves.’

  Eleanor grimaced a little to herself as she continued listening to Ruth’s chatter, the girl’s tone and the liberal sprinkling of ‘reallys’ as grating to her ear as ever. She smoothed a hand across her upper lip to wipe away the tension she could feel settling into the muscles around her mouth, then hunched up her shoulder and gripped the receiver against it with her chin. She reached out to pull the kettle closer towards her along the hardtop, tilting her head to examine more clearly the distorted reflection in its rounded chrome surface, feeling the usual jolt of unpleasant surprise at seeing the clarity and depth of the lines running from nose to mouth.

  ‘Lucky you!’ she volunteered, the flat calmness of her voice giving no indication of the intense scrutiny she was giving herself as she peered even closer at the image in front of her.

  ‘Oh yes, we were. Really lucky. Getting that late booking was a real stroke of luck, and Mr Hamilton letting me go a week early like that too. We only got back on Friday evening and it still seems a bit like a dream.’

  Eleanor stretched her mouth downwards and raised her eyebrows, pulling the soft skin of her face into an elongated, surprised O and the eyes into inquisitive rounds that challenged her in the reflection. The lines lengthened and thinned but remained stubbornly in place. She forced her lips into a grin – wide, huge and humourless – and gripped the receiver again with her hand as she turned her head from side to side to check the profiles. Now that the lines were buried in the flesh of her cheeks they were more acceptable, the forced smile giving them an excuse to be there. She relaxed a little, even allowing a little genuine warmth to creep into the still maintained rictus of her lips. Her hair was looking good, she decided. The new girl had cut just enough to add some bounce and style without giving her that shorn look she hated. And the colour was perfect – exactly the right amount of Russet Brown to warm it up and soften the grey without looking overcoloured and hard around the tidemark, as John always called it. Suddenly she pictured Ruth’s thick, dark red hair spilling and curling, as she knew it must be, over the receiver as she talked on, and felt an uncomfortable little stab of envy pinch deep inside. The grin dropped a little and she sighed.

  ‘Anyway, Ruth,’ she interrupted, ‘I wanted to show Martin Havers some new swatches I picked up the other day. Lovely colours. And not unreasonable.’

  ‘For the—’

  ‘For the show house. Manchester one.’

  ‘Oh right, yes. Do you want to come in, or shall I—’

  ‘No, I’ll come in. It’s curtains I’m talking about. You know.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hamilton, I’m with you now. Do you want to—’

  ‘I’ll come up to town tomorrow. Do you know if he’s particularly busy or will any time suit him?’

  ‘I’ll put you through to Mr Havers’ office in just a moment. Did you find a good yellow after all that? It was a yellow you were after wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I did. How clever of you to remember. Gorgeous. A lovely yellow.’

  As she spoke, Eleanor could see herself spreading the large sample of lemony cotton piqué across Martin Havers’ desk, acknowledging his appreciative reaction with a satisfied little nod of her head. She pictured folds of it gathered and ruched and blowing from open sunlit windows into the magnolia-washed rooms of the new house. She was happy planning the schemes for the company’s more upmarket developments; the chance to spend a little more on fabrics and paint finishes made her feel less uneasy about the cheaper end of her work on the lower cost estates, where budgets were so tight as to give her no option but to plump for inferior, crudely patterned man-made furnishings that she knew she would never be able to live with herself.

  ‘Mr Havers’ line is engaged at the moment, Mrs Hamilton, but I’ll keep trying. Did you want a word with Mr Hamilton? He’s around somewhere but he seems to have slipped away from his desk. He has a ten o’clock meeting booked so he’s bound to be back in a second.’

  ‘No, don’t worry, I don’t need to speak to him; it was only to fix a time to come in and see Martin. I’ll ring back later on – or he can ring me. There’s no mad rush. Yellow curtains can wait till I’ve walked George.’

  ‘Talking of yellow – I love Mr H.’s new tie. All those swirly things on it – very unlike his usual.’

  ‘Well, I’m obviously in my yellow phase at the moment. I think it perks him up; very jolly. Certainly better than the usual old dark red. Anyway, Ruth, I’ll see you next time I come up. I’m so glad you had such a good holiday – and just ask Martin to give me a ring later.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Mrs Hamilton. Nice to talk to you. ’Bye.’

  As Eleanor walked out of the large, tastefully decorated drawing room into her large, tastefully decorated hall she brushed a hand gently through the front of her hair, then patted the soft curls at her neck. Going up the stairs she automatically straightened her back and pulled in her stomach, vainly trying to flatten the persistent bulge that swelled from below the waistband of her camel skirt to the creases at the tops of her thighs. She paused at the window on the half-landing one flight up and squinted at the faintly reflected outline that she could just make out against the dark background of the shadowed lawns beyond. She sighed a little, pulled the muscles even tighter and moved briskly up the next flight and towards the bedroom, vaguely wondering, as she so often did, why she bothered to worry about her face and figure. John, she knew, loved her just the way she was. Indeed, he never stopped reminding her of it. He was aware and appreciative of the way she dressed; of the trouble she always took over her hair and makeup; of her neat nails and polished shoes (well groomed, as her father had described it), but the relentless signs of ageing that Eleanor acknowledged were creeping into every aspect of her body had never affected his feelings for her and seemed to have no bearing on the inevitable ebbs and flows of the physical side of the marriage. Their sexual relationship came and went in slowly moving cycles of which she was only indistinctly and intermittently aware. On odd occasions she would find herself lying in bed mulling over the evolving shapes and patterns of her marriage, like some infinite, dreamlike version of the earth’s surface – giant plates imperceptibly shifting over millennia to meet in slow motion crashes for a few centuries, before gliding away from each other again into frigid separation. There were periods when she would realise, without surprise or even regret, that they hadn’t made love for several weeks – even months. Certainly there had not, at least since the early days of their relationship
over thirty years ago, been times when it had been more frequent than weekly, and, for her part, their supposedly joint decision to have no children had given their sex life an aspect of pointlessness that added to her lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes, during her night-time musings, she would admit to herself that John had talked her into the policy of childlessness; that she herself would have welcomed the ‘disruption’ and ‘diversion’ from their ‘comfortable life’ that he was so adamant had to be avoided, and at times she hated herself for having acquiesced so easily. In the main, however, she convinced herself that she had fully accepted the idea, and felt no lack at either the absence of offspring or the irregularity and unadventurousness of their love-making. The comforting friendliness and companionship of the partnership was enough, and she had long ago understood that John’s libido had gently dwindled, as hers had, to the stage where the occasional routine coupling was all that was needed to keep both parties satisfied.

  She walked into the salmon quietness of the large bedroom and made to cross to her dressing table, but stopped suddenly in the middle of the room, her gaze fixed on the window in front of her, but seeing nothing.

  At first she couldn’t think why she knew so certainly that her life had changed for ever. She stood suspended in mid-step, frozen into immobility by the shock of the knowledge that as yet had no substance or reason. Her mind wildly flashed back over the past few seconds, seeing in disjointed, back-to-front snatches the moments leading up to the present one. She saw herself entering the room; then her steps into the doorway; then the walk across the carpet of the landing; then her feet taking the last few treads up the stairs – no, her mind had been calm then; she could sense from this distance her normality on the stairs. It had been somewhere between the top of the stairs and—

  Eleanor walked quickly out of the bedroom and back onto the landing, hoping she had been wrong; silently screaming at whatever force was controlling this pivotal moment in her destiny to transform what she knew she was about to see lying on the couch in the dressing-room next door.

  She had no realistic hope of changing the fact that the yellow snake would still be there, coiled, waiting, on the velvet surface, just as it had been when she saw it those few moments before, but she forced herself to believe that she just might be able to make it change into something less portentous; differently patterned; differently coloured: less deadly. From where she now stood she could see only one blue arm of the couch: the seat and the other end being hidden by the frame of the open dressing-room door. She leant her body the last few inches sideways needed to clear her view, tilting her head to peer reluctantly at what she didn’t want to see. As she moved, the unfocused white gloss moulding in the foreground of her vision slipped away to the side like a curtain pulled back from a sickening tableau.

  It still lay there, just as she knew it must; the dark blue pattern along its length pulsing against the bright yellow background. As she stared at it, mesmerised by its unassuming yet deadly presence, she could feel the poison already seeping into her soul. She marvelled at the intricacies of her subconscious; only now in retrospect beginning to work out consciously what she had known instinctively in that first millisecond of awareness when she had passed the open door of the room that lifetime of a few short moments ago.

  She stayed unmoving, fascinated, trawling through the evidence logically and calmly, still, in spite of the reptilian silk in front of her, harbouring a tiny seed of hope that something had been missed, that the inevitable conclusion could be changed or avoided. But the facts that forced themselves on her attention chafed at her relentlessly, like some horrific piece of logic leading inexorably to one answer:

  I bought the new tie only last week.

  The tie is lying here in front of me.

  Ruth has been away on holiday for two weeks.

  Ruth only arrived back on Friday evening.

  Therefore, class,

  John is not wearing the tie today.

  Ruth hasn’t seen John for two weeks until this morning.

  Therefore, again,

  Ruth hasn’t seen John’s new tie.

  But she has just told me she likes his new yellow tie.

  Conclusion:

  Someone is lying.

  Discuss.

  Eleanor’s immediate instinct was to rush back to the phone and get through to Ruth again; to demand an explanation and to scream her panic down the line. Then she thought better of it: that was too easy. Over the phone Ruth could bluff her way out of it; she wasn’t stupid. A physical confrontation was needed – a trip up to town and a storm into the office as in a scene from a film – the avenging wife crashing through into the heartland of her husband’s empire, denouncing, shaming. But picturing the faces of receptionists, secretaries, junior managers, turned towards her incredulously, young eyes agape, lips parted in expectation and enjoyment of the wonderfully embarrassing scene unfolding in front of them, made her quiver in disgust and humiliation. She forced herself to be still and breathe quietly for a few moments before slowly moving across the landing and towards the stairs.

  Back in the kitchen she walked over to the kettle and plugged it in, only half aware now of the reflection of the whitened face that stared back at her. There could, of course, be a perfectly rational explanation for this, she told herself. She was getting it all entirely out of proportion. But then why did her whole body tell her something was so dreadfully wrong? Going over it again she tried to work out just what it was that was making her feel so threatened. If Ruth had been away till Friday night then there was no possibility of her having seen the new tie, that was incontrovertible. But perhaps there was another tie? She must have meant a different one. Was there another tie she could possibly have seen that might just have fitted the description of swirly things on yellow? That she could describe as ‘new’?

  As the water in the kettle began to mutter and growl around the heat of the element, Eleanor struggled to remember what tie she had seen John wearing as he had left in the morning. She could see him coming out of the bathroom, his thick grey hair still wet, brushed neatly back as always. In her mind’s eye she watched him walk out of the bedroom, his tall figure slightly stooped in the white towelling dressing gown. They had been chatting about the week ahead of them, as they always did on a Monday morning, shouting to each other from bedroom to dressing room, Eleanor sitting at the dressing table carefully sponging beige foundation onto her moisturised face.

  ‘So I’ll stay up till Thursday, darling,’ John had called out to her, ‘probably. It depends how it goes. I might leave it till Friday, but I’ll see. Abbotts are nearing finishing the plans on Devon and I want to work through them before they’re finalised. And year-end reports are getting horribly close. Have we anything on?’

  ‘Not really, although I told Amanda we might drop in on them for a drink at some point, but the weekend’ll be fine. Is Devon going to have more ghastly whirly ceilings?’

  There was a silence. Eleanor knew John found it particularly irritating when she criticised the inferior plaster finishes on the housing estates, but there was something about the depressing combed half-circles of thick white plaster applied quickly and cheaply to their ceilings that she found objectionable and dishonest and she could never resist saying so. To her eye, combined with the sprayed-on roughcast exteriors, the ceilings gave the houses the impression of shoddy goods covered quickly with an unattractive veneer of mock sophistication.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Yes. Probably. Well, of course, yes.’

  She could hear the annoyance in his voice but went on, enjoying the predictability of the marital friction that she knew she was inflaming, puffing powder over her face as she talked. ‘I’d just love to see you live in a house like that, that’s all.’

  John didn’t bother to reply, but continued dressing next door in silence. Eleanor could hear the slight squeak of hinges as he opened the old mahogany wardrobe, and the faint clink of metal as the hooks of the clothes hangers were p
ushed together as he sifted through his jackets.

  The hinges squeaked again as the wardrobe was closed. Eleanor brushed brown shadow across her eyelid as she half listened to the rustle of cellophane as John took a shirt from its laundry wrappings, and then to the whip of cloth as he briskly shook it free of its folds. She was waiting for the moment when he would come back into the bedroom to proffer first one, then the other arm for her to do up his cuff links. Until she saw his face she felt unable to judge his mood, and unsure as to whether it was worth pursuing the ceiling conversation or whether the annoyance factor was too great to be overcome. Not that she felt particularly strongly about the poorly finished ceilings, but it had become an interesting and long-running challenge to get John to admit that he thought them as ugly and vulgar as she did. The unspoken words that were passed via the briefest of looks on both sides during such discussions were as revealing as those that were actually uttered. A quick glance from beneath John’s raised eyebrow silently asked Eleanor why she couldn’t appreciate that everything that she now enjoyed in the way of lifestyle was paid for by the very ceilings that she so abhorred. Eleanor’s returning smirk conveyed that she was, indeed, only too aware of just what it was that paid the bills but didn’t he realise that there existed men who could provide for their women to a standard as high – or higher – than he did without having to compromise on moral or aesthetic standards? The toing and froing of question, answer, recrimination and impatience would often continue for some time, the silent conversation bouncing between them like some invisible ball.

  The click of the kettle’s switch as it came to the boil snapped Eleanor back into the present as she still struggled to picture John as he had walked back into the bedroom. However hard she tried to remember, the tie he had been wearing refused to materialise, but it was quite clear to her that he must have worn one of the relatively limited choice of safe, striped ones that he tended to revert to unless pushed by her into something else. His natural instinct was to quiet conformity, and she would certainly have noticed if he had worn anything even remotely similar to the brightly patterned yellow of the one still pulsing its terrifying implications from the couch upstairs.