sick and unhappy about his cavalier waste of fine art and money.
Elizabeth sat very still, clutching the jacket, fighting back tears. She thought her memories might drive her mad. She wished she wasn’t alone; she wanted someone to make it go away. She wondered why Hutch still hadn’t called and reached for her phone to check. There was a text, but it was from Matthew and it warned her that all news outlets were about to run the story. By the time she’d settled on a subdued navy blue skirt and a crisp white blouse, she was ready for the 8 o’clock headlines:
News just in of the sudden death of television and radio personality Ricky Clough. It’s thought that he collapsed last night in the studio where he was recording his chat show, and that paramedics were unable to save him. No details have been released as to the cause of death but it is reported that police were also called to the studio premises. We’ll bring you more news on this as it comes in.
Her phone buzzed.
‘Elizabeth.’ Hutch’s voice was early-morning deep and gravelly. ‘Really? He died during the show? Well! Not for the first time, eh?’
Elizabeth wondered if this was what she’d been avoiding: Hutch’s need to say the unsayable. The very thing that attracted her to him in the first place was now the very last thing she wanted to hear. She also realised it was a time of day they rarely spoke. But nothing was usual, today. ‘I’m not up to it, Hutch. Not now. Honestly. It was horrible.’
His voice was softer. ‘Yeah, I bet it was. Poor you. Poor Miss Clumsy. Did you have to take charge?’
‘Yes. Matthew turned up – after it was all over. I tried to do what I could, but you know, the drill, first aid – those things just go out of your head when it’s really happening. He seemed so out of it, almost immediately. I’ve got to go to the police station this morning. But Hutch, none of us saw it coming! I mean, he didn’t seem ill or pissed – not at all! If anything, he was more relaxed. It was just like the old times. We’d got Paolo Culone on – remember, I told you I’d booked him for the show after you and I went to his restaurant? And Ricky was firing on all cylinders, taking him down for his overly poncey food – the stuff he used to do in the past, that everyone loved. It was all going well… until…’ Elizabeth’s voice wobbled dangerously.
‘So it was a heart attack?’
She thought again of Ricky’s bloodshot eyes and violently contorting body. Was that what had happened to her dear dad? A half moan escaped her. ‘I guess it must have been. Oh God, Hutch, I don’t even know how old he was! I mean, officially.’
‘He was fifty-two.’ His voice was flat, certain. He seemed unaware of her distress. ‘He’s exactly ten years older than me. We’re both Aries. And that’s where the similarities end.’ She could hear him yawning. ‘Or should I say, ended.’
‘Hutch! Please.’ Elizabeth refrained from saying that a cruel wit was at least one other striking similarity between the two of them. She was struck by the fact that he was yawning, stretching, drinking coffee – as if waking up to a normal day. All the ordinary morning things she’d never seen him do. ‘Hutch, Ricky knew about the pilot! He knew we were trying out a new show with you. I was so worried about him finding out – but he already knew. So it’s even more extraordinary that he should be so fine in the studio yesterday.’
‘Really? Who told him?’ Hutch’s voice had a sudden sharpness, a hack’s nose for a source.
‘Well, Matthew did actually. The day before, at lunch, apparently.’
‘Did he indeed! That’s interesting.’ There was a pause.
‘You didn’t call or text last night.’ Elizabeth gazed at Hutch’s jumper on her bedroom chair.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I was at the match and then went out to dinner with Sue.’ Her name hung in the air. Like a stale smell.
‘Oh.’ And behind that ‘oh’ was an entire avalanche of suppressed emotions: hurt, dismay, jealousy. Resignation.
‘Are you around later? Can I buy you lunch? After you’ve been to the police station?’
Elizabeth paused, but her heart began to beat faster. She desperately wanted some arms around her. She wanted someone to be there for her. But she tried to sound as casual as he did. ‘Yes, I think I can do that. Usual place?’
‘Yes. Usual place. One o’clock. Oh, and Elizabeth? Don’t confess. Even if they waterboard you.’
Elizabeth couldn’t help herself, she smiled. He still had the ability to do that, despite everything, to make her laugh.
‘Fuck off, Hutch.’
Elizabeth took the bus to Paddington Green Police Station. She liked the unusual sensation of sitting up top on a bus and watching London crawl beneath her. She had a car, a Volkswagen Beetle Convertible, which she drove furiously and much too fast. (She once drove Hutch down the Embankment and around Parliament Square and afterwards he said he needed a brandy and a lie-down.) But in the trauma of last night she’d left it parked at the production offices, where it was currently acquiring the undesirable accessory of a sticky plastic parking ticket. It was Elizabeth’s fourth ticket in six weeks and on each occasion she’d made up her mind that she would renew her acquaintance with Transport for London. Her family had strong links with public transport: one grandad had been a linesman on the railways, the other a bus conductor, all his life on the same route – the 38. As Elizabeth’s nan had said rather bitterly after he died, ‘Never got promoted. Never got to do the 176 or the 55. Never got to go up Park Lane, or down Piccadilly. Never got to be a driver, neither. Always the same bloody route. Every day of his life.’ But her grandad hadn’t sought promotion, he’d been perfectly happy with his lot. And Elizabeth thought there was much to be said for being happy with your lot. You never know when it might all disappear.
As the 73 chugged and chewed its way down Euston Road and through the early morning rush hour, it shaved some overhanging horse chestnut trees, showering the roof with pale white blooms that fluttered down past the window like the ghostly remains of a bridal bouquet. Hutch once took her for the night to one of those five-star hotels that turns your towels into origami animals and scatters petals across the bed (the bed was the size of a small continent) and in the middle of the night, Elizabeth found pale pink petals stuck between her thighs and in her armpits. Later, in the waterfall shower, she found another one between Hutch’s buttocks. It was there that Hutch first told her he loved her and promised that he would leave his wife.
And in turn, she had finally told him about Jamie, and about the wedding that wasn’t.
Her wedding day turned out to be a perfect pink Magnolia May morning, just as she’d imagined it would be. It had been just four weeks since Jamie’s surprise proposal. They’d decided there was no point in waiting – after all, they’d waited ten years. Jamie didn’t want the full pomp and ceremony of a church wedding and thought it a waste of money, and Elizabeth had convinced herself they were just getting the right piece of paper before having children. So she’d approached the production of her rushed wedding as if it was a last-minute live television programme. She came up with a strictly limited guest list, she wrote out a running order and she had an Excel spreadsheet on which she eked out their wedding
