‘Can we come home with you now, today, Mum?’
Philippa pushed aside her own painful thoughts and smiled at her elder son. ‘No, I’m afraid not, Rory.’
Much as she would have loved to have the comfort of them at home with her, she did not want them exposed to all the gossip and speculation that Andrew’s suicide had caused locally. Their fees were paid until the end of the current year and she had already decided that it would be best if they remain here until then. That would give her time to sort things out at home.
She had rung Robert almost immediately after the police had left that fateful morning. He had been in a meeting, his secretary had informed her, but she had rung back later to say that Robert would ring her that evening.
He was going to the factory today, but had already complained to her that he was a very busy man, with his own business to run and that he could ill afford to take time off to sort out the mess his brother-in-law had made of his life.
‘You realise, of course, that the company’s virtually bankrupt,’ he had told her angrily when he had called round after the visit to Kilcoyne’s.
She hadn’t, although she had wondered, worried especially about the money Andrew had borrowed, but years of conditioning, of being subservient to the men in her life, had programmed her into not exposing emotions they did not want to handle, and so she had simply sat silently while Robert told her.
‘This whole mess really is most inconvenient. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for me—you do know that, don’t you? I’m putting myself forward for selection as our local parliamentary candidate and this whole unsavoury business is bound to reflect badly on me.
‘Of course it’s typical of Andrew; he always was a trifle melodramatic for my taste. He should never have bought Kilcoyne’s in the first place. I did try to warn him. You might have told me he was likely to do something like this.’
Philippa had stared at her brother, willing back the angry tears she could feel prickling her eyes as she swallowed down the huge swell of anger threatening to overwhelm her.
‘I didn’t know,’ she told him quietly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You must have had some inkling. You were his wife. An intelligent woman, or so you’ve always claimed. You must have guessed…’
‘I knew he was having financial problems, but he wouldn’t discuss them with me,’ she had told him woodenly.
‘The whole world and his wife knew he was having financial problems. I told him months ago that there was no point in panicking the way he was doing, letting everyone know that he couldn’t hold the business together. I warned you at the time against marrying him, Philippa,’ he had added critically, while Philippa had gritted her teeth and then said as slowly and quietly as she could,
‘No, you didn’t, Robert. You wanted me to marry him.
You said he would be a good husband for me.’
‘Rubbish… I never said any such thing.’ He’d given her an angry look. ‘Not that it matters now. What’s past is past, and what we have to do now is to get this whole mess cleaned up as quickly and quietly as possible.’
‘How?’ she had asked him.
He had shrugged impatiently and turned his back on her, walking over to look out of the French windows. ‘Well, the bank will have to be informed, of course, if they don’t know already, and after that it’s their problem…’
‘Their problem…’
He had swung round then, eyeing her irritably. ‘Oh, come on—you must have realised for yourself that the reason he killed himself was because of the business. I don’t know what the exact financial situation is, of course, and in my position I obviously can’t afford to get involved—not now. No, your best bet is to leave everything in the hands of the bank. They’ll do everything that’s necessary. Look, Philippa, there’s nothing I can do…’
Nothing you can do, or nothing you will do? she had asked herself after he had gone and she was mentally reviewing her brother’s assets: the huge house he and Lydia owned, the château in France they had bought three years ago which he constantly boasted had now practically trebled its value, not to mention the rental money it brought in from carefully vetted holidaymakers.
What would he have said if she had told him that it wasn’t his financial help she had actually wanted, but the help, the support, the sturdy male shoulder to lean femininely and weakly on as she had been conditioned to do since birth?
She had grimaced at herself as she passed the hall mirror.
What good were a pretty face and even prettier manners going to do her now?
And from the past, an echo of a pain she had long ago told herself she had never, ever felt, never mind forgotten, had come the taunting words to haunt her.
‘Yes, you’re pretty, Philippa, as pretty and prettily packaged as a little doll and just as insipid and lifeless. What I want is a real woman, a woman who laughs and cries, who sweats and screams when she makes love, who is a woman who thinks and feels… a woman who isn’t afraid to be a woman, who cares more about what goes on inside her head than on her face, a woman who thinks it’s more important to nourish her intellect than her skin—in plain fact, a woman full stop, and not a pretty cut-out cardboard doll.’
A woman who didn’t need a man to lean on and turn to… A woman who could stand alone… A woman such as she could never be… Had never been allowed to be.
* * *
‘So you’ll stay here at school until the end of term and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do,’ she told the boys now. She had already made up her mind that they would not attend the funeral. It was a farce to dress them up in black as her family would expect her to do, and to grieve for a father they had never really known, never mind loved.