Worst Fears by Fay Weldon Read Free Book Online Page B

a thing, Alexandra,” said Abbie mildly. “When you think of other male sins. He felt bad about Jenny. Her life was so empty, he said. He tried all kinds of things to make her leave him alone. Being horrid, being nice, appealing to reason. Perhaps he thought if Diamond wore her out she’d give up. Diamond would wear anyone out.”
    “How long has it been going on?”
    “A couple of years, I suppose.”
    “Years?” Alexandra was incredulous. “Who knew about this?”
    “Most people, I suppose.”
    Alexandra absorbed this.
    “Extraordinary,” she said.
    “Not really,” said Abbie. “If someone’s having an affair the partner’s always the last to know. No one likes to be the one to break the news; and anyway they think it will all go away, or even perhaps they’re wrong.
    Of course this wasn’t an affair, don’t think that. Jenny just pestered him. She’s an obsessive.”
    “But people like that can be dangerous,” said Alexandra. “Sometimes they even kill. I should have been told.”
    “You’re an artist,” said Abbie, with just a hint of malice. “No one wants to upset you. You have to be away from home a lot: you can’t help it: not much fun for you to know there’s a mad woman stalking your husband.”
    “It’s not a bundle of laughs,” said Alexandra. “Then what happened?”
    “I opened the back door, Diamond ran out and went off with Jenny,” said Abbie. “Then I looked through the window and saw the body and came in and started making phone calls, then Jenny came back with
    Diamond, right into the house, and saw the body and had hysterics and ran round like a mad thing all morning tearing her hair as if she were in some Greek tragedy. So I called Vilna because she’s good at seeing people off, and Vilna did; she saw Jenny Linden off. Vilna can be marvellous.”
    “Well, whatever Vilna did then,” said Alexandra, “Jenny Linden’s come back. She’s unbalanced. One moment she wants to be friends, the next she hates me.”
    “That’s what Ned said,” observed Abbie. “She’s unbalanced. That always seemed to be the worst sin in Ned’s eyes. He didn’t like nutty people. The only reason he liked me was because I was so observably sane, I sometimes think. Alexandra, I have to go. The doctor’s coming up the drive.”
    “Dr. Moebius?”
    “Yes.”
    “Isn’t he in his surgery?”
    “Wasp stings to the tongue count as an emergency, especially if it’s an
    Arab princeling with enough money to buy up all Eddon Gurney.”
    Abbie went to answer the door to the doctor. The student with the stung tongue met her in the corridor and said, carefully, “I might have just imagined it, having seen the wasp fly away.” He got his tenses right and Arthur, who had also gone to answer the door, was pleased with him; Abbie less so. It was the School’s responsibility to pay for medical emergencies, and Dr. Moebius had been called out, and would charge. Dr. Moebius went away.
    Alexandra left the house and drove the half mile to Vilna’s place. Vilna lived in a small mansion in a charming, olde-world village where property prices were the highest around. The house was called Pineapple Lodge because of two large carved stone pineapples, circa 1750, sitting on each of the gateposts which flanked the wrought-iron gates (Coalbrookdale, 1830) to the drive. The gate, once permanently open, was now permanently closed, and could be opened only by remote control from inside the house. Security devices were everywhere. Vilna’s husband was in prison. He was an Australian junk bond dealer who had run into trouble with the law three years back. Most of his properties had been sold, except for this one, originally purchased for Vilna’s mother, who had got out of Yugoslavia just before the country collapsed into little murderous parts, and could enter five songs, not one, for the Eurovision Song Contest. Here the two women, mother and daughter, waited until the time came when Clive would be