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‘Well, it’s obvious isn’t it?’ Chris insisted.
‘No, I wouldn’t have said so,’ said Ward.
‘Oh for god’s sake, of course it is. We’re okay for money, we’ve got good pensions, nice cars, this house, secure jobs, there isonlyone next step. And we’d get a tax advantage being married.’
‘Tax advantage,’ Will echoed, deadpan.
‘Will, you see things differently when you’re my age. You look ahead, to the future and… security and things.’
‘Worth doing for tax alone,’ put in Ward, nodding enthusiastically. ‘But of course if you had married, all pre-existing wills would be revoked, you do know that? She’d have got everything if you popped your clogs.’
Shauna gasped loudly and Will tried to hide a smirk. She hadn’t been aware of that, then.
‘Don’t panic, love, I was going to suggest doing new willsto her after the wedding. This is my house and it goes to you and Will when I die.’
‘And they say romance is dead,’ said Will. He was ready for running off from them all himself. He knew how Polly felt.
‘Look, darling, there were only friends and family there today,’ said Camay, putting her hand comfortingly over her brother’s. ‘They’ll have nothing but sympathy for you. You mustn’t dwell on the embarrassment and humiliation because it will fade away very quickly. And if people are going to laugh at you behind your back, let them. That will say more about them than you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Chris, wishing she’d shut up trying to make things better because she really wasn’t any good at it.
Camay kept up the smile as she said, ‘Mind you, I’ll still have to give you the bill, Christopher, even though it was all a terrible exercise in waste. I expect the hotel staff had a good feed.’
‘Couldn’t you have justaskedher to marry you, Dad?’ said Will.
‘She’d clearly have said no and then you’d have saved yourself all this bother,’ said Ward.
‘Well that’s very helpful, Ward, thank you,’ said Chris with a sneer. He poured himself a glass of malt before Ward drank it all.
Shauna slunk upstairs. She wondered if there was something in the room with all Polly’s stuff in it that might point to what she had been planning. She did hope she’d find something satisfyingly incriminating.
Orville Bell had the misfortune not only to be named after a giant green duck but to be known by the contraction ‘’Orrible’. He was a low-level scrote and always would be with that moniker. It didn’t bother his girlfriend Tina, who thought it was quirky, but it bothered him more with every year that passed. Others in his orbit had equally insalubrious nicknames: Cockeye, Davy Strong Fingers, Shagger Corbett, but at least theirs had an element of masculinity about them, whereas his was just scummy and also cast in cement, so there was nothing he could do about it. Hedidneed to do something about the predicament he was presently in because he owed Billy the Donk a car. He’d been sent out on an easy steal and he’d smoked too muchherbon the night in question and missed the window of opportunity. And now he was in trouble unless he came up with the goods – and quick. Or stumped up the heavy cash penalty which Billy had levelled at him for cocking up.
He had an uncle in Slattercove who’d given him more pep talks than he’d had hot dinners and at the end of every one, Orrible had promised to change his ways and yet he never had. Uncle Benny had a fleet of burger vans that served the area. He didn’t have to work himself, yet he still chose to bring a van up here to this remote spot. Orrible had been wondering why that was for ages, so he’d eventually gone on a detective trail. He’d discovered that his uncle always parked up, stuck a notice in the window that he’d be back in half an hour but he was missing for much longer. And that was because naughty married Uncle Benny spent all those stretched-out ‘half an hours’ in a nearby cottage in the company of a blowzy widow with bouncy bleached-blonde curls and even bouncier breasts. He’d hung onto that ace card until he needed to play it – and that time was now. Desperatesituations called for desperate measures and a bit of blackmail had to be done.
So Orrible set off to the beauty spot to catch up with his uncle. But what did he find parked up there but a black car, the type that had a very juicy catalytic converter underneath, and a lone woman sitting on a bench – presumably the owner. No one else around. As he walked towards her, he saw her smile at him and he wished she wouldn’t because that was going to make things so much harder.
Chapter 16
Will could tell from Shauna’s face when she came downstairs that she’d found a knife to stick into Polly.
‘I’m sorry to tell you, Dad,’ she began, in a voice that said she was anything but sorry, ‘she’s a total slag.’
All eyes turned to her.
‘I found this in her things. Right in the middle of a bunch of other stuff – hidden away,’ said Shauna, lifting up a single sheet of A4. ‘Let me read it to you.’ She cleared her throat and then began, with badly disguised glee.
‘My darling, I cannot live a lie any longer. I have to come to you before my soul fades away and I am nothing. I am yours and yours only. You are the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins. You are essential as air. If I have you, I need nothing else, no one else means anything to me. I—’
Chris leapt up from his chair and snatched the letter from his daughter. It was typed, but in a scrolling, romantic font. There was no address at the top, only a date of three months ago. He read on silently from where Shauna had been forced to break off: ‘You are my oasis in the desert. Every night away from you is torture. I may sleep in bed with another but it is you I think of…’
There was more, but he’d seen enough, so he skipped to the end. ‘My raison d’être. My heart, my everything Xxxx’
Camay wrested it from his hand, took her glasses out of her bag and read it herself.
‘Goodness me,’ she said, her chins wobbling with indignation. ‘Well, there you have it, Christopher – proof of what she was up to. Now if anyone wants to snigger at you, you can tell them exactly what she was doing behind your back. Who’ll be laughing then, eh?’
‘Cuckold,’ put in Ward, for some reason thinking the word would help. It didn’t.
