Worst Fears by Fay Weldon Read Free Book Online

fastening: you slipped one bit of plastic into another at an angle, then flattened it and it snapped to. Except she couldn’t do it, even looking at it. She gave up and let the belt just fall to the floor. Wouldn’t you know how to fasten your own suspender belt? Not if it was years old, pre-marriage, pre-motherhood, in the stockings-and-suspender party days. You’d have forgotten. She supposed.
    She looked under the bed: nothing: spick and span. There were the usual two suitcases there. They’d been dusted. Theresa the help had been away for the week in Spain. Theresa was 17 and as many stone. Theresa had trouble vacuuming under the beds: she didn’t bend easily in her middle. Abbie must have done it. The carpet was a little damp, towards the window. Had it rained? Alexandra couldn’t remember. When the rain was from the West, fine and strong, water could creep into the room between window frame and window, forcing itself in along with the delicate new tendrils of Virginia creeper. Perhaps that was it. But when she’d been weeding the pansies the soil had been dry, dry, dry.
    Alexandra had a sudden clear impression that Ned had died on the bed, not downstairs at all. That for some reason nobody had told her this. But that was absurd. Why would they lie? Perhaps they’d thought it would make her reluctant to sleep in her own bed? They were wrong. She wanted to be where Ned’s last breaths had been. Perhaps such breaths lingered in the air and she detected them. She lay down upon the coverlet and fell asleep. Diamond crept up the stairs and lay beside her.
    The phone woke her. She went downstairs to answer it. There was no extension in the bedroom. It was the Daily Mail asking her how she felt. She put the phone down. It rang again. The caller was the assistant to a broadsheet’s theatre critic, saying she was sorry to disturb Alexandra at a time like this, but could the paper have advance notice of the funeral: they would be sending a photographer: such a great loss. Alexandra put the phone down.
    The doorbell went. A flashbulb popped in her face. She slammed the door shut, went into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and crouched the other side of the door. The bell rang again. She opened the door quickly, brandishing the knife. But it was only a bunch of flowers from the local florist, cellophane wrapped. They were from Jenny Linden. “Forgive and forget,” it read. “In fond friendship, Jenny.” Alexandra threw them after the florist, and then, as they scattered over the path, noticed a man with a camera standing amongst the long artichokes, beneath the clothes line, where the green sheets from the marital bed had lately hung to dry.
    “Just a minute there!” he called to her, so she quickly went inside and called the police. They said they’d send someone as soon as possible.
    The phone rang. It was Abbie. She said she couldn’t get over because one of her Japanese students had choked on a plum stone and become hysterical. No, the girl was fine physically, just humiliated. The Japanese were like that. Abbie would come over in the afternoon. She’d hoped Jenny Linden would stay quiet and out of the way, but apparently not. The only thing to do with her was to physically throw her out.
    “That’s what I did,” said Alexandra.
    “She’s had a crush on Ned for years,” said Abbie. “She’s on the verge of psychopathic. She’d hang round in the garden a lot. He’s had to call the police. You know, like Fatal Attraction but without the sex. A total fan. A kind of sub-stalker.”
    “Why didn’t Ned tell me?”
    “It was embarrassing, I suppose,” said Abbie.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Alexandra.
    “She was so pathetic. It was so ridiculous. I just thought she’d go away or be locked up or something, and we’d all forget it. I’d rather tell you this in person. It’s so cold like this. Can’t it wait till this afternoon?”
    “No. It’s Wednesday. Hamish is coming this