Jeremy Hall didn’t collect the car on his first return, nor on the second and when he tried on the third the battery was flat and it had to be jump-started from the gardener’s Land-Rover. He learned to enjoy helicopter travel and tolerate the unremitting curiosity and media hounding. Unthinkingly on his part the routine became his spending the week in London before coming down to Hampshire on a Friday, although there were telephone calls in between. It was Emily who said it was what her father did, briefly creating an awkwardness that Jennifer handled better than Hall did.
By then the relationship between Jennifer and Emily had almost completely reverted to what it had been before. Emily stopped bed-wetting the second week and by the fourth she had practically lost any attention-seeking precocity. It was during the fourth week – the week when Hall finally persuaded the parents of the brain-damaged boy to accept the hospital insurer’s newly increased out-of-court offer – that Jennifer suggested he stay for the weekend instead of flying back the same day, which was what he’d always done until then.
‘I might need support,’ she said. ‘And I’ve started to write it. I’d like you to see what I’ve done so far.’
Jennifer recognized the risk on several levels and was nervous of each – nervous one would collapse and destroy the still secret hope of the others – and still wasn’t sure if she would positively force the issue, although she wanted to. Wasn’t sure, even, if she was correctly reading the signs because there’d scarcely been any. He always came laden with papers and faxes and letters from publishers and newspapers and they always spent part of his visit, sometimes the majority, comparing the advantages of one contract against another but she didn’t think he’d needed personally to come so often. Unless he’d wanted to. Her satisfaction that he did went beyond the unspoken hopes. She had figures and percentages and subsidiary profits to think about and calculate and it was like a door opening on to a dusty room in her mind, although the dust quickly blew away. She was far better at the financial assessments than Hall, who said so openly when they’d pared the approaches down to a final three.
‘You don’t really need me,’ he complained.
‘We’re not negotiating yet: we’re necessary together as a team,’ said Jennifer, intentionally ambiguous.
‘Let’s see,’ said Hall, which didn’t help her.
It was the fourth, full weekend visit. As usual he came heavy with briefcases, although by then they both knew the figures from the three favoured publishers, all American.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ she announced, consciously boasting her financial acumen because she wanted him to be impressed. ‘These three are all for world rights. One upfront payment, the highest at the moment $8,000,000. Each contract gives them the right to sell individually to other countries. But we’ve got offers of ?1,500,000 from England and $5,000,000 from Japan and approaches from all those other countries in Europe. Which the Americans will pick up if we sell outright. They’re not spending anything: they’re into profit before they start. Why don’t we sell just the American rights to the Americans and negotiate ourselves and separately with each of the other countries? That way we make the profit.’
Emily had long since been put to bed and Annabelle was in her separate annexe. They’d eaten dinner – duck – in the kitchen and carried the remainder of the wine through into the lounge. He’d shaken his head against brandy, uncomfortably aware of the similarity with the night of Jane Lomax’s death. Jennifer didn’t appear aware of it. He smiled at her and said, ‘I didn’t think you needed the money.’
‘I don’t!’ she said, coming forward in her facing chair. ‘It’s never the money! It’s the deal: shaving a point, gaining a percentage.’
‘Like the old days?’ he suggested, seriously.
‘Close enough.’
‘It’ll involve our having to discuss a lot more, after we close the American contract,’ he said, looking directly at her.
‘I know,’ said Jennifer, holding his eyes. Meet me halfway, she thought.
‘I’d like that.’
Far enough! Still room to retreat. ‘I hoped you would. I would, too.’
He was as relieved as she was, almost too eager. ‘We could create a lot of new problems for ourselves.’
There was no misunderstanding that! ‘You want to see my CV? There’s a whole page listed under problems.’
‘Your terms. If you decide…’
‘… I don’t want ground rules!’ she stopped. ‘Just for once, for the first time since I can’t remember when, I want something to happen as it happens. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘But there are things to get out of the way.’ It wasn’t an immediate contradiction. She had to tell him. It would be her barrier if she didn’t: she had to risk it becoming his.
‘I don’t think you do,’ he said, cautiously.
‘It’s for me,’ she admitted.
‘OK,’ he said again, although more doubtfully this time.
Jennifer had tried to rehearse it, to take away the vileness, but there were no words that could. She talked staring intently at him, seeking the twitch of revulsion that would tell her she’d lost before it began. His face remained blank. She almost wished it hadn’t: for there to have been something, whatever it was. ‘Doctor Lloyd made the tests, at the hospital. I’m not… it’s all right. I’m all right.’
Hall nodded but didn’t speak.
‘I wanted you to know.’ Say something! Please say something!
‘And now I do.’
Not enough. Still blank faced: non-committal. ‘And?’
‘I can understand it being your problem. It’s not mine.’
There was a flood of relief. The smile was still hesitant. She had to get everything out of the way: a fresh start or whatever cliche it was. ‘And we haven’t talked about Gerald.’
‘Do we need to?’
‘I don’t want to begin with any…’ She stumbled to a halt, sniggering nervously.
‘… Ghosts?’ he suggested, smiling back.
‘I can’t imagine I was going to say that!’
‘Julian Mason would probably think it was good that you were.’
Jennifer became serious again, her emotions on a switch-back. ‘I don’t feel anything. I supposed I should… wish almost that I did because it’s not right to feel nothing… but that’s what it is. Nothing. Not hate or sadness or regret. Nothing. It’s as if he never happened. Never existed… Does that make me strange…?’ She managed another faint smile. ‘… Stranger than I have been…?’
‘That is a question for Julian Mason.’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘You were married to a man you never knew: whom no-one knew. How can you feel something for someone you never knew?’
Jennifer’s smile broadened. ‘Thank you. That makes some kind of sense… as much as anything does.’
‘Is that the end of the ground rules that never were?’
‘Yes.’ I don’t expect another miracle, God, but make this work: please make this work.
‘Do you want any more wine?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘Your room. Emily’s taken to coming in to mine, if she wakes up.’
It didn’t work. Jennifer was tense, rigid, and Hall couldn’t relax, either, and was too relaxed because of it.
‘It’s my fault,’ he apologized.
‘Mine.’
‘It’s no-one’s fault. It’ll be all right.’
‘It will be, won’t it?’ she said, anxiously. ‘You’re not frightened of… you know…?’
‘I’m not frightened of anything. I’m very excited, which is the problem and I love you and everything is going to be wonderful.’
‘There’s one more thing we haven’t talked about.’
‘What?’
‘I think it’s time Emily knew about Gerald.’
Hall felt an intruder when Jennifer discussed it with Annabelle, trying to decide a good time and concluding between them there wasn’t one, and even more awkward when Jennifer pulled the child on to her lap and said she had something important to tell her.
‘It’s about Daddy,’ Jennifer said. Would she feel anything about Gerald now? Not about Gerald, she thought. For Emily, about Gerald, perhaps.
‘When’s he coming home!’ demanded the child, pulling away from Jennifer and grinning up at her.
‘That’s what I’ve got to tell you. He won’t be coming home, darling.’
‘Not till when?’
‘Not ever.’
‘Not ever, ever? ’
‘No.’
‘He’s got to!’
‘You know when I came home, with the man who told you he knew God?’ began Jennifer, anxiously.
Emily sat with her lip between her teeth, tiny face creased in uncertainty. She nodded.
‘And you told him about Miss Singleton and the picture of Him on the wall?’ It was becoming too long! Too convoluted!
Emily nodded again.
‘Has Miss Singleton told you about Heaven.’
‘It’s where God lives.’
‘That’s right,’ encouraged Jennifer. ‘And that’s where Daddy is now. God needed someone to help him and asked Daddy to go. So he has.’
That’s not fair!’ protested Emily, eyes brimming. ‘I want him! I want him to come back.’
‘He can’t, darling.’
‘Tell the man who knows God to make Him send Daddy back.’
The tears started and Jennifer had to swallow, against her own. ‘He can’t do that.’
‘I want Daddy!’ demanded Emily, through the tears, slapping out rudely at Jennifer.
‘Daddy has gone,’ said Jennifer, as firm-voiced as she could manage. ‘He’s not coming back because he can’t.’
‘I want him!’
‘It’s just going to be the two of us now, you and me,’ said Jennifer, looking solemnly over Emily’s head to Jeremy Hall.
Emily pulled away from her mother again, looking in the same direction. ‘You’re not going to be my Daddy!’
‘I know,’ said Hall.
That night Emily wet the bed. Jennifer and Hall still didn’t manage to make love properly.
Until that week Jennifer had not maintained her promise in a church: instead a priest in Alton, an anxious young man named Tomkins, had twice a week braved the outside multitude to come to her and with inadvertent naivety provided three days of tabloid headlines the worst of which had been ‘God to the Rescue’.
That Sunday Jennifer decided to go to him and to his church for the first time.
Considering himself a hardened expert, Hall warned Inspector Hughes – suspecting as he did so that police leaks resulted in the very media invasion he was seeking protection against – and there was a familiar cordon around the church when they arrived after battling through the throng immediately outside the house. In the pew Emily positioned herself very positively and suspiciously away from Jeremy Hall, between Annabelle and her mother. The row behind them remained empty. Only two people stayed in the one in front, crushed together at the far end. Tomkins took his sermon from the Book of Proverbs and quoted, ‘Let us solace ourselves with love, for the good man is not at home, he has gone on a long journey,’ which Hall thought appropriate for their reluctant acceptance by the congregation. He expected her to take communion but she didn’t. Seeming aware of his surprise she said on the chaotic ride back, ‘I’m not ready yet. My baptism and confirmation will be my acceptance.’
Before he got into the helicopter that came that night to collect him Hall said, ‘It’s been quite a weekend.’
Jennifer said, ‘I’d wanted it to be better.’
‘There’ll be a lot more that are.’