A Place of Hiding

“Oh.” Ana?s’s voice reflected her disappointment. No reading of a will suggested no sure knowledge of whether, when, or how she was going to be able to pay for the myriad paths she’d followed to keep herself young since meeting Guy. It also meant the wolves were probably ten steps closer to the front door of that overly impressive house that she and her children occupied at the north end of the island near Le Grand Havre Bay. Ruth had always suspected Ana?s Abbott was living well above her means. Financier’s widow or not—and who knew what that meant anyway: my husband was a financier, in these days of stocks worth nothing one week after they were purchased and world markets sitting on top of quicksand? Naturally, he could have been a financial wizard who made other people’s money multiply like loaves before the hungry, or an investment broker capable of turning five pounds into five million given enough time, faith, and resources. But on the other hand, he could have just been a clerk at Barclays whose life insurance policy had enabled his grieving widow to move in loftier circles than those into which she had been born and had wed. In either case, gaining entrance to those circles and moving in them took cold, hard cash: for the house, the clothing, the car, the holidays...not to mention for little incidentals like food. So it stood to reason that Ana?s Abbott was likely in dire straits at this point. She’d made a considerable investment in her relationship with Guy. For that investment to produce in dividends, the assumption had been that Guy would remain alive and heading towards marriage.

Even if Ruth felt a degree of aversion for Ana?s Abbott because of the Master Plan from which she believed the other woman had always been operating, she knew she had to excuse at least part of her machinations. For Guy had indeed led her to believe in the possibility of a union between them. A legal union. Hand in hand before a minister or a few minutes of smiling and blushing in Le Greffe. It had been reasonable for Ana?s to make certain assumptions because Guy had been generous. Ruth knew he’d been the one to send Jemima off to London, and she little doubted that he was also the reason—financial or otherwise—that Ana?s’s breasts protruded like two firm perfect symmetrical cantaloupes from a chest too small to accommodate them naturally. But had it all been paid for? Or were there bills outstanding? That was the question. In a moment, Ruth was given the answer. Ana?s said, “I miss him, Ruth. He was...You know I loved hi m, don’t you? You know how I loved him, don’t you?”

Ruth nodded. The cancer feeding upon her spine was beginning to demand her attention. Nodding was the only thing she could do when the pain was there and she was trying to be its master.

“He was everything to me, Ruth. My rock. My centre.” Ana?s bowed her head. A few soft curls escaped her cloche, lying like the evidence of a man’s caress against the back of her neck. “He had a way of dealing with things...Suggestions he made...things he did...Did you know it was his idea that Jemima go to London for the modeling course? For confidence, he said. That was so like Guy. Full of such generosity and love.”

Ruth nodded again, caught in the grip of her cancer’s caress. She pressed her lips together and suppressed a moan.

“Not a single thing he wouldn’t do for us,” Ana?s said. “The car... its maintenance... the garden pool... There he was. Helping. Giving. What a wonderful man. I’ll never meet anyone even close to being...He was so good to me. And without him now...? I feel I’ve lost it all. Did he tell you he paid for school uniforms this year? I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t because that was part of his goodness, protecting the pride of the people he helped. He even... Ruth, this good, dear man was even giving me a monthly allowance. ‘You’re more to me than I thought a woman could ever be and I want you to have more than you can give yourself.’ I thanked him, Ruth, time and time again. But I never stopped to thank him enough. Still, I wanted you to know some of the good he did. The good he did for me. To help me, Ruth.”

She could have made her request more blatant only by scrawling it on the Wilton carpet. Ruth wondered how much more tasteless her brother’s putative mourners were going to become.

“Thank you for such an elegy, Ana?s,” she settled upon saying to the woman. “To know you knew he was goodness itself...” And he was, he was, Ruth’s heart cried out. “It’s an act of kindness for you to come here and tell me. I’m terribly grateful. You’re very good.”

Ana?s opened her mouth to speak. She even drew breath before she appeared to realise there was nothing more to say. She couldn’t directly ask for money at this point without appearing grasping and crass. Even if she had no regard for that, she probably wasn’t going to be willing any time soon to set aside the pretence that she was an independent widow for whom a meaningful textured relationship was more important than what funded it. She’d been living that pretence too long. So Ana?s Abbott said nothing more and neither did Ruth as they sat together in the morning room. Really, at the end of the day, what more could they possibly say?





Chapter 7