Robert was making a speech. His voice was full-bodied and measured, grave, as befitted a person speaking of the dead. He was asking them to ignore Andrew’s weaknesses in the final months of his life and to think instead of the man he had been before he fell victim to the unfortunate circumstances which had led to his taking his own life. To listen to him, one would have thought he felt nothing but sympathy and compassion for Andrew, Philippa reflected as she watched him.
Was this really the same man who had told her that he couldn’t help her, that he couldn’t afford to be tainted by the relationship between them, who had betrayed so conclusively his own weakness of character; his own selfishness and instinct for self-preservation?
It surprised her a little how distant and divorced from the proceedings she actually felt, more as though she was merely a casual observer rather than Andrew’s widow, her feelings, her emotions numb and frozen. Would they, like thawed fingers and toes, start to ache with violent pain when that numbness wore off?
Robert had stopped speaking. People shuffled politely, waiting for her to make the first move. Silently she did so, pausing as she emerged into the cold rawness outside the crematorium, her body stiff as she thanked people for coming and accepted their expressions of sympathy.
There had been few mourners there, few brave enough to admit that they knew the dead man. Was it that they feared that they might be contaminated by the failure which had destroyed him? Philippa smiled bitterly to herself.
‘Come along, my dear,’ her father urged her, taking hold of her arm. ‘We all understand how you must be feeling.’
Did they? She doubted it, Philippa thought savagely as she pulled away from him, ignoring his irritated frown and her mother’s displeased tutting.
Oh, she knew how they expected her to feel, the conventional emotion she was expected to betray. The shock, the tears, the grief.
But it was none of these she felt as she walked back to the car.
If she wept now it would not be for Andrew, it would be for herself, and they would not be tears of grief but tears of anger and resentment. Tears of admission of a helplessness she could not afford to feel—neither for her sons nor for herself.
PHILIPPA dressed apprehensively for her appointment with the bank manager. What did one wear for such an interview? Her black suit was probably the most appropriate and businesslike thing she had in her wardrobe, but she shrank from putting it on again so soon.
The only other formal outfits she possessed were the pretty silk dresses and matching jackets, the expensive silk and cashmere pastel-coloured separates which Andrew had always insisted on her wearing; the kind of clothes which looked fragile and luxurious. School open days and private garden and house party clothes, Philippa had always privately thought of them. Pretty clothes for a pretty woman; expensive and impractical clothes to show off and underline Andrew’s wealth and achievements.
And totally unsuitable for her to wear now; they would make her feel like a modern Marie Antoinette, flaunting her luxuries while others went without.
Now that she was over the initial shock of Andrew’s death, now that she had forced herself to admit the anger and resentment she felt at what he had done, she had started to broaden the scope of her thoughts and anxieties. She might not be responsible in any way for the fate of the factory, of those who worked in it, but that did not stop her feeling concerned, anxious, guilty almost, mentally comparing their fate with her own.
In the end she wore the black suit, crushing down her feelings of distaste as she put it on.
She had driven up to the school yesterday, Sunday, to see the boys, and her car would now need filling with petrol, she reminded herself as she left the house.
Both Rory and Daniel seemed to be coping well with their father’s death, but she suspected that the reality of it would not really touch them until they returned home for the Easter holidays.
Her appointment at the bank was not until ten o’clock and she had plenty of time, she assured herself as she pulled in at the garage where she always got her petrol. Andrew had an account there; it was one of those domineering male traits which she often resented in him that, while he always insisted on her having the best of everything, he did not like handing actual cash over to her. The bills for all her credit cards were sent to him; her car, her clothes, even their food were all paid for via these cards and the small amount of actual cash he allowed her carefully monitored by him. Not because he didn’t trust her, but, she suspected, because he enjoyed and needed to feel he was in control of her and of her life.
She filled her tank with petrol and then walked into the shop.
The woman behind the till was the wife of the garage manager. Philippa smiled at her as she asked her if she would put the cost of her petrol on their account.
The woman flushed uncomfortably and glanced uncertainly over her shoulder towards an open door that led into what Philippa presumed was an office. Then, even though there was no one else in the shop, she lowered her voice slightly as she leaned towards Philippa and asked awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ryecart, but could you possibly pay cash?’
Taken aback and flushing slightly herself in response to the woman’s embarrassment, Philippa reached automatically into her handbag, fumbling for her purse.
‘It’s the rules, you see,’ the woman was explaining uncomfortably. ‘The account was in your husband’s name and …’
‘Yes, yes, of course. I understand,’ Philippa assured her. She could feel her face starting to burn with embarrassed heat as she opened her purse. How much money did she have? Please God, let it be enough to pay for her petrol. Why on earth hadn’t she had the sense to realise for herself that this would happen? Andrew had always countersigned the petrol bill at the end of the month when he’d paid it and she ought to have recognised that with him dead problems might arise. The garage obviously had done.
Even as she felt the relief of discovering that she had enough cash with her to cover the bill, she was still furiously angry with herself and dismayingly aware of how dismally lacking in common sense and ordinary everyday awareness she must be not to have anticipated what might happen.
She could sign cheques on the joint account, a concession it had taken her many months to win, but only for amounts of fifty pounds at a time and never more than two hundred pounds in one month.
No doubt this was one of the reasons why the bank manager wanted to see her, she acknowledged as she left the garage and got back into her car.
Neville Wilson was a pleasant enough man, very much the archetypal bank manager type, worthy and perhaps a little on the dull side, addicted to his golf, and the type of man who enjoyed observing the conventions of small-town life and who would, in Philippa’s estimation, feel uneasy and out of his depth without them.
Andrew had often boasted to her that he was the bank’s biggest customer and that because of his flair and initiative, because of the way he had expanded the company, Neville’s stock had been increased with his head office.
‘It’s no wonder they’ve never promoted him,’ Andrew had told her after they had left one of the Wilsons’ dinner parties. Andrew had been in a good mood that night, boasting at the dinner-table about the new contract he expected
