A Place Of Safety (19 page)

Joyce smiled, content to let him run on. That was one of the comfortable things about actors. They were so easy. You were never short of a subject for conversation.

She watched Cully kiss her husband’s cheek, raise her glass, happy and excited. But having a daughter in the business had made Joyce sharply aware of the vagaries of the artist’s life. Up one minute, down the next. And she knew Nicolas, too, quite well enough to understand that by the evening doubts would gradually be breaking the surface of all this sparkling ebullience. Even now having just said that Trevor Nunn seemed really encouraging, he added, ‘Of course,
seemed
. . .’

Joyce looked out of the window at the sun glittering on the river and at London’s great iron bridges and sighed with pleasure. She had the gift of always knowing she was having a wonderful time while she was actually having it, not just in retrospect like so many people. It would be such fun telling Tom. When he came into the kitchen she was still lost in reverie.

‘I say!’ He was staring at the table. ‘This looks a bit of all right. What’s that?’ He pointed to a spectacular pudding.

‘Pear Charlotte. You can just have the pears.’

‘Where d’you get all this?’

‘Fortnum’s.’ Then, when her husband looked puzzled, ‘I’ve been to London.’

‘What for?’

‘Tom, honestly.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

‘I’m not going to.’

‘There’s some Chardonnay in the hall that would go a treat with this. D’you mind, love?’

When Joyce returned from the wine rack, a bottle of Glen Carlou in her hand, Barnaby said, ‘Nico’s audition.’

‘You looked at the calendar.’

‘Has he got in?’

‘I’ll tell you all about it over supper.’ She opened the wine. ‘The Gavestons cancelled, by the way.’

‘Jolly good. So . . .’ he waved his hand at the crystal and glasses and flowers. ‘What’s all this for?’

‘It’s for us.’ Joyce gave him a glass of wine and a brisk kiss on the cheek.

‘Mm.’ Barnaby drank deep. ‘Very nice. A cheeky little number with a warm undertow and a steely backbone. Reminds me of someone not a million miles away.’ He started to sing ‘The Air That I Breathe’ quietly, under his breath. It had been their song, years ago, played at their wedding. ‘ “If I could make a wish I think I’d pass . . .” ’

Joyce passed him a napkin.

‘Remember that, darling?’

‘What?’ She had started eating.

‘The Hollies?’

‘Mm. Vaguely.’

It was nearly ten the following morning when Ann Lawrence regained consciousness. No way could you call it simply ‘waking up’. The Hoover on the landing outside her room buzzed faintly at first, no louder than a bee. Gradually the level of the sound increased. There was knocking as the machine banged against the skirting board.

Ann felt as if she was swimming up from the depths of the ocean. On and on she swam, struggling through dark layers of muddy mind swamp until finally somehow heaving back her swollen eyelids. She found herself in semi-darkness. For a moment, lying on the pillow, she stared at the uncertain outlines of heavy furniture. It all looked completely unfamiliar. Then she made the mistake of trying to lift her head.

‘Ahhh . . .’ A searing pain flared behind her eyes. Gasping from the shock of it, she closed her eyes and waited for the agony to pass. Then, keeping her head very steady and pressing down weakly on the mattress, Ann levered herself up the bed until she was leaning against the headboard and rested there, absolutely still.

The vacuum cleaner had been switched off. There was a very gentle tap at the door. Hetty Leathers put her head round then came cautiously into the room.

‘Thank goodness. I thought you was never waking up.’ She crossed over to the window and drew the curtains. A grey dullness crept into the room.

‘Don’t put the light on!’

‘I wasn’t going to.’ She sat on the side of the bed and took Ann’s hand. ‘My goodness, Mrs Lawrence, what on earth happened to you?’

‘I . . . don’t know.’

‘I said you should never have had two of them tablets. I told him.’

‘What?’

‘Last night. When you went to bed.’

‘But . . . you’re not here . . .’ Ann sighed deeply, made another effort to complete the sentence but failed.

‘In the evening? That’s right. But he rang nine o’clock yesterday wanting to know what to do about his supper.’ Hetty’s voice still quivered with an echo of the irritation she had felt. As if the man couldn’t have opened a tin of soup and made himself a sandwich. ‘So I thought I’d better come back this morning or you wouldn’t have a bite all day.’

‘Who rang?’

‘Who?’ Hetty stared in amazement. ‘Why, Mr Lawrence, of course.’

‘Ah.’

‘Had to ask my neighbour to sit with Candy. I wouldn’t of come only he said you were ill.’

‘Yes.’ Ann’s cheeks became hot as certain vivid scenes, disjointed and seemingly quite disconnected, started jerkily running through her mind. A distraught woman being seized and bundled, struggling, into a car. The same woman, weeping, pushing a man away as he tried to calm her, fighting a woman in a nurse’s uniform who was trying to hold her arm. Then the whole set-up becoming stable but distant, as if being viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. Finally the woman seated in surroundings which seemed vaguely familiar but also intangible like a room in a dream. The place was crammed with bulky but strangely insubstantial furniture. She was slopping tea against her lips and tipping it everywhere.

‘I can’t stay here!’ A sudden movement and nausea possessed her. Ann clapped a hand to her mouth.

‘What do you mean, Mrs Lawrence? Where would you go?’

‘I . . . don’t know.’

‘You try and rest. There’s nothing downstairs to worry about.’ Hetty got up from the bed. ‘Everything’s running smoothly. Now, what if I make you a nice hot drink?’

‘Feel sick.’

‘Listen.’ Hetty hesitated. ‘It may be none of my business but them trankerlisers don’t suit everybody. If I were you I’d chuck the lot out the window.’

Ann eased her way back down the bed and rested on the pillow. She lay flat on her back staring at a single spot on the ceiling and gradually the sickness passed. She began to feel better. A little bit stronger. But only in her body.

Her mind was still a rag bag of jumbled sounds, pictures and impressions that seemed quite meaningless. Then a single spear of light pierced the tangled mess and Ann understood that she was the woman in the strange, dreamlike sequence.

If this recognition was alarming - she really had made a public exhibition of herself, been forced into her husband’s car and made to submit to treatment in a doctor’s surgery - it was also consoling. Memory had played her true and there was nothing seriously wrong with her mind.

But how had she got into this state in the first place? Ann tried to concentrate. Before being found and made to get into the car, she had met someone - Louise Fainlight! And there had been some unpleasantness - no,
she
had been unpleasant. Louise had been simply friendly in a perfectly normal way. Yet Ann had seen her as some sort of threat. Why?

Ann gently agitated a head packed with scrunched-up barbed wire. Struck her forehead with the heel of her hand and grunted with frustration. Causton. The market. Louise at a cash point. Herself leaving a building. The bank. What had she been doing in—

Oh God. It all returned, like a noxious stream of water flooding her consciousness. She sat up quickly, the swimming in her head hardly noticed. She breathed quickly, almost panting with emotion and fear, swung her legs out of bed, reached for her handbag. The envelope was still there. She scrabbled at the flap of the brown envelope, pulled out the rubber-banded wads of notes and stared at them.
Five grand this time murderer same place same time tomorrow
.

At midnight the ‘same time’ she had been lying unconscious in a drugged sleep. But he wouldn’t know that. He would think she was defying him. What would he do? Send another note? Ring up and threaten? Should she perhaps take the money to Carter’s Wood tonight and leave it in the litter bin anyway?

But what if he did not return? Anyone might find it. Or the bin might be emptied and the money lost. Ann recalled her humiliating interview with the bank manager. She couldn’t bear to go through that again.

On the other side of the room on an old walnut chest of drawers was a large photograph of her father in a silver frame. She wished with all her heart that he was still alive. He would have had no truck with blackmailers. She could just see him sailing out to confront whoever it was, flailing around with his heavy ash stick and cursing fluently in the full glory of his rage.

That this would have been foolish, Ann had to admit. Here was no passing tramp or layabout to be subdued by bullish authority. What they were dealing with contained a dark authority of its own that would not be easily overcome. And she could do nothing.

It was as this knowledge of her own helplessness slowly took hold that Ann felt in herself the first beginnings of resentment quickly followed by a warming flicker of anger.

Was this her lot then? To just sit, meek and trembling, awaiting instructions like some pathetic Victorian skivvy. Running to obey these the minute they were issued. Selling more and more of her precious possessions to satisfy the outrageous greed of an unknown persecutor. She could not bear it. She
wouldn’t
bear it.

Yet what was the alternative? For the first time she sat and considered, not unthinkingly in a panic-stricken rush but with calm seriousness, what would happen if she did not pay.

He would tell the police. An anonymous tip-off at no risk to himself. They would come and ask questions. She could not lie or brazen it out. It was against her nature and everything she had been taught to believe in. So she would tell them the truth.

How terrible would the consequences be? Would she be arrested? Perhaps. Questioned? Certainly. Lionel would be devastated and the village would have something really exciting to gossip about. But this would pass and Ann was surprised to realise that she was not all that concerned about Lionel’s possible devastation. After all, he had spent years running around after people in trouble, so he should be able to cope with a spot of his own.

As if she was already being interviewed, Ann started to go through the dreadful course of events once more. The missing earrings, Carlotta’s wild response and flight, the struggle on the bridge. The terrible moment when the girl fell in. Her own frantic running and searching along the river bank. The 999 call.

Surely the police would see that she was not the sort of person to deliberately harm someone. And Carlotta’s . . . Ann flinched from the word. Carlotta had not been found. She may have scrambled ashore even while Ann was urgently calling her name. Though the moon had been bright, there were dark patches that would have given cover.

It was an accident. That was the truth of it and they would have to believe her. She would return the money to the bank and her unknown persecutor could do his worst.

 

Louise, heavy-hearted and dull from lack of sleep, was getting dressed. She had not seen her brother since their row on Friday evening. He had left before she got up the next day, leaving a note saying simply that he had gone to London. Lying wide awake at nearly 3 a.m., she had heard him come in. Usually she would have waited up, wanting to know how his day had gone, but last night she had hesitated, afraid it would make him angry.

Louise, tying the belt of the first dress she laid hands on, stood suddenly still, jolted by the sheer novelty of such an observation. She had never been afraid of Valentine in her life. Bewilderment was slowly transformed into a quiet rage. She got up and strode over to the wall facing the village street. Pressing her hands flat against the glass, she stared across at the Old Rectory garden, at the giant cedar and the flat over the garage and felt her rage harden into hatred.

Why couldn’t it have been Jax instead of Charlie Leathers? A miserable, not very pleasant old man would have lived and a foul young one, at the very beginning of his havoc-dealing life, would have been destroyed. I could have done it myself, thought Louise, truly believing at that moment that she was capable of murder. Not hand-to-hand, of course, she could not have borne to touch him. But say there had been a remote control - a button to be simply pressed. Well, that might have been a different matter.

She lifted her hands, studied the blurred imprint of her palms and finger span then wiped her forearm quickly across the glass, obliterating all trace. If she could do it like that, with no more concern than squashing a greenfly on the roses . . .

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Ah!’ Louise jumped away from the window then moved quickly back. She stood in front of the smeared handprint as if it was readable, making her malevolence plain. ‘You made me . . . I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I’m just going for a shower.’ Val was wearing his cycling gear. Black Lycra knee shorts and yellow top, both dripping wet, plastered to his powerful shoulders and muscular thighs. He looked at her without expression. ‘Put some coffee on, Lou.’

In the kitchen, waiting for him to come down, Louise breathed evenly and deeply. She was determined not to be drawn into an argument; she would remain uncritical and calm. It was his life. Only, prayed Louise silently, let me not be driven from it.

There was coffee on the table and brioche with pale butter and Swiss black cherry jam. When Valentine came in he sat straight down and poured the coffee without looking at her and Louise knew what was coming.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday.’

‘That’s all right. Everyone has—’

‘I was very unfair. You’ve always more than paid your way here.’

‘That’s all right, Val. We were both upset.’