It wasn’t until Saturday that Libby had time to go to the house in Highgate. It was getting dark by the time she left school at four and though she was in the rudest health, not queasy at all, she was so tired that most nights she was tucked up in bed by eight o’clock, with a hot water bottle and a novel, eyelids already drooping.
Freddy had cleared out the little junk room next to his bedroom and was sleeping in there. He told Millicent and the ladies, though no one seemed to care, that he often got up at odd hours as inspiration struck and he didn’t want to disturb Libby. No one seemed to care either that Libby was wearing a motley assortment of smocks and loose blouses or that she appeared for every meal with a book strategically held over her stomach.
There would be murders eventually, when she packed up her belongings and left, but Libby rather hoped that she’d be long gone and wouldn’t be able to hear Millicent’s histrionics as far away as Highgate.
Not that the house was ready to move into, Libby thought, when she unlocked the door that chilly Saturday morning. The radiators had arrived – huge cumbersome appliances – but various complicated things had to be done to them before they started emitting heat. Still, she found it thrilling to walk through the house again. It was so clean, so modern. She’d never get used to the novelty of flicking a switch and lo! There was light! To turn on the tap in the kitchen and the boiler roared into life and hot water gushed out.
Libby drifted upstairs. She and Hugo would sleep in the large back bedroom, its windows looking out on to the gardens and the woods beyond. The bedroom next door would be the nursery though she’d have the pickle in with them at first. They’d need a cot, a little chest of drawers, a set of shelves for toys and books.
Libby took out her diary and wrote out a list then moved to the front bedroom. Four bedrooms, two more than they needed, but perhaps if she were lucky, there might be another child. An only child was a lonely child and she’d loved having a little sister; had adored bossing Charlotte about and having a playmate on hand. Libby peered out of the window. The house opposite was already occupied. Mrs Lister had introduced herself the first time Libby had been by and now they always exchanged smiles and said hello. She had a little girl of about five or so and a baby in a pram so the pickle would have friends here.
She stepped back from the window as a car pulled up outside. Didn’t want to get a reputation as a curtain twitcher, even if there were no curtains to twitch. Now, what were they to do with this room? Maybe Hugo would want it for a study or Libby could take up a hobby. Scrapbooking or sewing or something.
What did one do with oneself all day if one didn’t work?
There was a sudden ring on the bell. Libby’s heart thudded as she hurried downstairs. This house, the life she and Hugo would have, even the pickle, was a secret and yet there was someone at the door. Perhaps it was Mrs Lister being neighbourly.
Libby patted down her hair, licked her lips nervously then opened the door, a bright, welcoming smile on her face.
‘Hello!’ she trilled at the woman standing there, who certainly wasn’t Mrs Lister. This woman was older, blonde, swathed in a fur coat. The woman fingered the diamond necklace round her neck as if it were a rosary and at last Libby focused on her face. There was something petulant in the downward cast of her mouth, the cold look in her pale blue eyes, which made her prettiness seem brittle.
‘You’re Libby?’ the woman asked. ‘I’m Pamela, Hugo’s wife. I thought it was about time we had a chat.’
It was all very cordial. Libby agreed that they should have a chat, though what they needed to talk about she dreaded to imagine. They decided that the house wasn’t an appropriate venue so Libby had slipped on her coat and got into Pamela’s racy little car and they’d driven to Crouch End, chattering politely but stiltedly about the weather.
Now they sat in the tearoom of Wilson’s department store with the battle lines, consisting of a cake stand and teapot, drawn between them.
‘I thought you’d be younger,’ Pamela said coolly, though up close she had a good ten years on Libby.
‘Really?’ Libby countered with just as much froideur. ‘I hardly thought about you at all.’
That much was true. Pamela had been packed away in a box and tucked out of sight where she couldn’t do any harm. Yet here she was.
Pamela worried at her diamonds again. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so rude,’ she said. ‘It’s just if you were younger, I could pretend you were just a silly little girl who’d caught Hugo’s eye, that it was a meaningless fling; but you’re not and it’s not.’
‘It’s not,’ Libby confirmed. Every word she spoke felt charged as if she weren’t speaking so much as walking a tightrope and each placement of her foot was the difference between life and death. ‘I love Hugo and he loves me.’
‘But I loved him first,’ Pamela protested as if her prior claim trumped everything. ‘Please, Libby, I’ve made a terrible mistake and I’m asking you, begging you, woman to woman, to send Hugo home, to me.’
It was a pretty speech and Pamela’s performance was note perfect. Her rather thin lips trembled, pale eyes glassine, one tear clinging to her bottom lashes.
‘You humiliated him,’ Libby reminded her. ‘Carrying on with the younger brother of his business partner and yet Hugo was still determined to do the decent thing and let you divorce him.’ She was indignant on Hugo’s behalf when she remembered how ashamed, how furious, he’d been that weekend in Brighton. ‘You’ve behaved abominably.’
They were forced to hiss. Loud enough that they could hear each other over the melodies of the string quartet in the corner yet quiet enough not be overheard by the woman and her two young daughters at the next table.
‘You’re the last person to lecture me about behaving abominably. You knew Hugo was married…’ Pamela pressed the tips of her fingers together and blinked her eyes at Libby. ‘If you only knew what it was like. All those years married to a man who was so cold, so angry with me.’
Libby could feel herself being drawn in. ‘Why would he be angry with you?’ she asked, lifting the teapot to refill her cup because she couldn’t think of anything else to do with her hands. ‘It sounded to me as if you had the perfect life. The children, summers in Suffolk, the house in Maida Vale, isn’t it?’
‘St John’s Wood.’ Pamela held her cup aloft so Libby could fill her up too. ‘It does sound perfect, doesn’t it? It’s a lie, an illusion.’ The tears were flowing unchecked now and Libby had heart enough to shuffle her chair round to block Pamela from view. ‘I couldn’t give Hugo children, carry on the Watkins name, which was the one thing he wanted. It’s the reason why, as the years passed, he grew more distant. No longer wanted to be intimate with me,’ she finished on a choked whisper.
It was all Libby could do not to roll her eyes. ‘That’s simply not true. What about Robin and Susan?’ she asked. ‘Hugo has said, repeatedly, that you were the mother of his children.’
‘They’re my sister’s children.’ Pamela dabbed ineffectually at her eyes with a lace-edged hankie that she’d produced from her handbag. ‘She and my brother died in a car crash in nineteen twenty-four. Hugo and I had been married for eight years by then and I just…’ She buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking. Surely her grief had to be genuine, absolute?
‘I’m sorry,’ Libby said and she meant it. ‘That sounds awful.’
‘Eight years,’ Pamela repeated as if Libby hadn’t said anything. She seized hold of Libby’s arm to pull her closer. ‘Eight years of desperately wanting a child and when we adopted Robin and Susan, it was the answer to all our prayers but they were eight and six when they came to us, old enough that they still remember their own mother and father and we could only ever be second best. So Hugo and I kept hoping for children of our own but every time I lost another baby, I could feel him pulling away, becoming more aloof. I’ve been so lonely, so very unhappy for such a long time. Made an utter fool of myself over a man just because he showed me a little affection. Everything would have been different if Hugo and I had had a child of our own.’
Libby was close to tears herself. It had been far easier when Pamela had been bundled away in that box, instead of a living, breathing, crying woman sitting across from her, who knew, even more than Libby, the unceasing agony of losing a child. Libby couldn’t, wouldn’t, be able to go through that again, without losing her mind too.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered and she was crying as well, fishing in her own bag for her hankie. ‘I think… Men, they couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like to carry a baby, to fall in love with someone who hasn’t even drawn breath. It would be so much easier if one’s love died with it.’
Somehow, she and Pamela were clutching each other’s hands, united in sorrow. ‘Libby, oh, Libby.’ Pamela sounded quite unhinged now. ‘This could all come good if you let Hugo and I have the baby. I promise you I’ll love it as if it were my own. Hugo will love it too and it won’t want for any —’
Libby reared back in her chair and yanked her hand free so she could wrap her arms around her middle. Feel the bulge of the baby as solid and comforting as ever. ‘What? What on earth…? How could you possibly ask me something like that? You must be quite mad.’
‘I feel as if I’m thinking clearly for the first time in years,’ Pamela said. ‘Before I left for Suffolk, John threw me over. Said he’d met someone else.’ She’d stopped crying now and straightened up, her voice not thick with grief any more. ‘I don’t see why I should be punished for one silly mistake. Besides, the whole business with John, well, it made me realise, you see, that what Hugo and I had wasn’t so bad.’
‘Have you even bothered to apologise to Hugo for the hell you put him through?’
‘Of course I have.’ Pamela narrowed her eyes as if she simply couldn’t comprehend the impertinence of Libby’s question. ‘Then I told him that we’d simply have to make the best of it. That he couldn’t obtain a divorce without my consent and I refused to give it. But when he came back to town and discovered you were expecting, I realised there was a way that Hugo and I could really be together again, be happy as we used to be.’
‘I’m sorry about the disappointments you’ve had, I really am, but if you think you and Hugo could ever be happy, you’re a fool. I love him and he loves me…’
‘No, I don’t think it’s love,’ Pamela said as if she’d given the matter much thought. ‘I’d say it was infatuation on Hugo’s part. But that’s not important. Now, Libby, I need you to be honest with me: is Hugo really the father?’
Libby had her hands braced on the edge of the table, all ready to hoist herself up and run away. Escape from Pamela’s lies, her casual disregard for the truth, twisting it this way and that so it was ruined, spoilt. She wanted to rush to the station, board a train to Manchester and find Hugo. Beg him to put his arms around her, hold her, repeat the promises he’d made to her so she’d know that all this was the last spiteful act of a spurned woman. But Libby stayed where she was. She wasn’t even sure that her legs would hold her up and she couldn’t tear herself away from Pamela’s knowing gaze. ‘I’m not some cheap little tart who jumps into bed with any man who bats his eyes at her,’ Libby said in such strident tones that the woman at the next table shot her a fearful look and urged her two young daughters to make haste with their iced buns. ‘Of course Hugo is the father.’
‘Then he has certain rights, rights that will take precedence because what kind of life could you give the baby, Libby?’ Pamela’s expression and tone grew softer, more cajoling. ‘Really? You’re an actress —’
‘I’m a teacher,’ Libby interrupted. ‘Not that it matters because I would happily die rather than give up the baby.’
Libby half expected Pamela to say that Libby’s death could be arranged. The other woman was staring, transfixed, at Libby’s belly as if she planned to rip her open with the cake slice and snatch the baby there and then. ‘If you love the child, then you’ll want to do the right thing,’ Pamela insisted. ‘We could give it more than you ever could. You have a rickety sort of life, living on the edge, going away to hotels with men; yes, Hugo has told me everything. What does someone like you truly know of love?’
‘I would never have gone away to that hotel if…’
‘Freddy hadn’t left you. You couldn’t even keep your husband,’ Pamela said, though she was a fine one to talk. If Pamela hadn’t been fucking another man, Hugo would have had no need to go away to a hotel with a paid colluder. ‘Deep down, you know this is the right thing, the kindest thing, to do for the baby.’
For one brutal moment, Libby considered it. Imagined Hugo gone, the baby asleep in the corner of a dressing room as she tried to earn a living, begging for parts she’d have turned her nose up at a year ago. Then the vision cleared and she imagined the baby at her breast, the fierce pull of love. She’d never known a love like it.
‘No,’ Libby said. ‘No.’
‘It’s not the end of the world for you, Libby. You and Freddy could make a go of it. You could even have another baby.’ Pamela tried to reach for Libby’s hand again but she scraped her chair back, flinched away from her.
It was quite clear that things had ended with her lover, Hugo was intent on leaving her, and Pamela was desperate to cling on by any means necessary.
‘Hugo,’ Libby said, as she struggled to her feet because never had she felt so weighed down. ‘Hugo,’ she said his name again as if it were a lifebelt being thrown out as she flailed in choppy waters. ‘He loves me. I love him. That’s what you seem to forget. I’m having his child and we’re going to be very happy together and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.’
‘You stupid girl, he doesn’t love you,’ Pamela said, rising to her feet as well so they stood facing each other and glaring over the sandwiches with their crusts cut off, the delicate array of cakes arranged on bone china. ‘He told me himself that he could never love a woman who let him do the things that you’ve let him do.’