a sudden mental picture of Phil walking into her bedroom in his suit, briefcase in hand. Emma waiting on the bed, reclining perhaps in a silk robe. I felt myself rock.
‘Really?’
‘Really. And as for blaming you, with your lack of sexual favours – how low can you get? I know darned well you felt very rejected in the bedroom.’
‘Yes, but if I’m honest I didn’t really care.’
‘None of us care!’ squealed Jennie. ‘A few children down the line, none of us care if we ever have sex again, but it doesn’t mean he can go off-piste!’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘NO!’ they all roared in unison, fists clenched.
There was a silence. The room felt very charged, very tense.
‘This is not your fault, Poppy,’ said Peggy gravely, at length. ‘Is that what you’ve been thinking, my love? These past few weeks?’
‘Well, I’ve …’ Suddenly I felt I might crumble. Her term of endearment hadn’t helped. It seemed to me I were made entirely of ancient parchment which could disintegrate to the touch. I thought back to Emma, getting up hesitantly from the leather sofa in my sitting room. Twisting her hands about and saying how sorry she was to be the bearer of bad news. I remembered feeling so shocked as I looked at her. I’d already lost a husband, my children’s father. I’d already been dealing with that. But … how can you lose someone who wasn’t there? Phil had never been there. I’d been on my own for a very long time. I just hadn’t known it. The sense of abandonment had threatened to overwhelm me. I remembered not being able to breathe.
Somehow I’d got to my feet, followed Emma to the door, where she’d stumbled out some more apologies, saying she’d only wanted to comfort him, in what he felt to be a sterile marriage.
‘Sterile marriage!’ shrieked Angie. I’d said it out loud. ‘And no doubt she said you’d been cold and unfeeling, and that, oh dear God, the poor man had felt driven away? Poppy, have I not talked to you about Tom? Run you through his lines?’
‘Well, I –’
‘This is all mighty familiar,’ she hissed. ‘And it is nothing whatsoever to do with this,’ she slapped her hand to her heart, ‘and everything,’ she seized a large courgette from the vegetable rack, brandished it priapically, ‘to do with this.’
There was a silence.
‘So she said she was sorry, did she?’ mused Peggy.
‘Yes, she did.’ I cast back to Emma. By the front door, eyes downcast. Shoulder bag on.
‘And that she never meant to cause trouble, particularly when there were children involved?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that she was mortified you had to find out this way. That you had to find out at all, even. She never wanted to add to your grief?’
‘Yes, she said all that.’
‘And then she left, trying to walk slowly and calmly down the path, but unable to resist scuttling a bit at the end.’
‘She did … scuttle, a bit.’ I frowned as I recalled her quickly shutting the garden gate; leaping into her Mini. Glancing back over her shoulder as she pulled out sharply, not bothering with the seat belt, eyes flitting up to the rear-view mirror, to me.
‘And she left you, the widow, feeling like a heel.’
‘More than a heel,’ I whispered.
‘Like a cold, unfeeling, heartless wife, who’d driven her husband into another woman’s bed.’
Buckled as I was, I caught the ironic tone.
‘She doesn’t want any money,’ I told them, almost defensively. ‘That’s what she came to say.’
‘So she’s got a conscience. Or so she says. But she’s running scared, Poppy. She knew you’d be banging on her door the moment the will was read, so she thought she’d bang on yours first. She came to see you to pre-empt the situation, before the shit hit the fan. No doubt Phil made provision for her assuming he’d die at eighty, and incidentally, how cynical is that? To plan on cheating on you for ever?’ Peggy paused. ‘Your husband was a bastard, Poppy.’ I looked up. Peggy’s eyes were unnaturally unamused. No benign, sardonic twinkle to them now. ‘He treated you appallingly. In fact he made a mockery of your marriage. He controlled you, he told you what to wear, he lowered your self-esteem and confidence, he handed you money as if you were a child, and then he compounded the crime, added insult to injury, by sleeping with another woman.’
I breathed in sharply. ‘I never thought of it like that,’ I muttered.