A Regimental Affair (42 page)

‘Poor man.’

‘He told me that the military police are going to interview him soon. And then it’s just a question of waiting for the date of the court martial.’

‘Then the shit’ll hit the fan all over again. Great.’

Hesitantly, Bob dialled Ginny’s number. He was very unsure about the wisdom of this action but Alisdair had said that he thought he ought to. Besides, he didn’t have to contact her ever again if he didn’t want to. The phone was answered almost immediately.

‘Have you spoken to the police yet?’ asked Ginny as soon as perfunctory and rather cool greetings had been exchanged.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I’m going to tell them I lied. That I made it all up.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’ll get you off the hook. I’ve got the police interviewing me tomorrow. But I had to be sure that you hadn’t spoken to them yet. We’ve got to tell them the same story.’

‘OK. But I still don’t understand …?’

‘I’ll tell them I did it out of spite. That I was angry that you had rejected my advances …’

‘But you didn’t make …’

‘That I told Taz a pack of lies. That I suspected that she was a reporter …’

‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘Of course not, but I don’t think they’ll be able to prove anything. I’ll tell them that I was jealous of your marriage and did it to break it up.’

‘And were you?’ asked Bob.

Ginny hesitated. ‘I was jealous of Alice. I am jealous of her, but I don’t want you to suffer.’ And then, after a pause, ‘Or Alice, or Megan.’

‘But I don’t understand why you are doing this.’

‘Because you don’t deserve to be destroyed. I didn’t set out to hurt you and I have. All I wanted was some sympathy and then all this happened. This is the only way I can put things right. So you must deny everything too.’

‘But I alread …’ He stopped himself abruptly. ‘If you insist, then I will. Thank you, Ginny.’

‘I’m doing it because I love you, Bob. I just want you to know that.’

‘Thanks,’ he said again. He hadn’t wanted to know that. He’d had enough to cope with of late. He didn’t need to be burdened with guilt too.
Damn woman
. He put the phone down. He breathed a sigh of relief that he’d managed to stop himself from admitting that he’d already denied everything; he had come frighteningly close to letting that slip. And if he had, she might have changed her mind again.

Thank God it looked like this dreadful business was now almost over. He knew he wouldn’t get back the command of the regiment. He probably wouldn’t get promoted again, but he still had a job, he would still get his pension and, he hoped, he still had a family.

Marcus Hepplewhite put down the phone on his desk and looked at it for a while. A smile spread slowly across his face. No one noticed the unusual but momentary inactivity of the news editor. As usual the newspaper office was buzzing with conversation and noisy with the clatter of keyboards and the shrill of phones. Then, after a couple of minutes’ thought, he picked up the receiver again, flipped open his address book, and dialled.

‘You’ll never guess what,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Taz, recognising the voice instantly.

‘I’ve just had the duty press officer from the Ministry of Defence on the phone.’

‘And?’

‘Your friend Ginny has changed her tune. She’s denied everything. Says she made it all up. That she told you a pack of lies to get even with Colonel Car Crash.’

Tabitha snorted. ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. I was there, remember, when she spilt the beans. She wasn’t lying. What I got was the truth.’

‘That’s as maybe, but the army has dropped the charge of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline against him. It was her word against his, and now she’s saying she lied, and as there wasn’t a shred of evidence there’s nothing else they can do.’

‘Then Colonel Bob is a very lucky man.’

‘Not that we can prove that he is.’

‘So are you going to run this?’

‘I thought we might if you want to do a piece for me. Got an idea about an angle?’

Tabitha thought for a moment. ‘Ginny wants the world to think that she fooled me with lies the last time she spoke to me. Well, if that’s what she wants, she can have it. I’ll write a piece showing her to be the most devious, scheming, lying little cow that ever walked this planet. That should make her think twice about telling porkies in the future.’

Marcus chuckled. ‘That’s what I like about you, Taz, you’re all heart.’

‘That’s me.’

Ginny knew nothing about the new story in the
Mercury
as she walked into the Trelisk Hotel the next morning. She thought Vicki gave her an odd stare as she squeezed round the reception desk, but thought no more about it as she headed along the corridor to Chris’s office. She opened the door to the now transformed place of work, where rows of neat box files lined the walls; two gleaming filing cabinets stood like sentries on either side of the door; the desktop was clear apart from a phone, a blotter, a desk tidy and two filing trays. There was no clutter; no loose pieces of paper, no mess. It was now the epitome of an efficient business centre and, provided she could persuade Chris to keep on top of the filing and the general organization, it should stay that way for years.

She looked around her achievement with more than a little pride as she took off her coat and hung it behind the door and put her bag on the corner of the desk. And she felt her pride was justified. She had undertaken a Herculean task and she had sorted it out so that even a child could understand her system and maintain it. Not that it had been easy. Once or twice she had almost found herself crying with frustration and annoyance at the appalling state into which Chris had let everything deteriorate. Well, today was the last day. All she had planned to do this morning was to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s and then teach Chris how her filing system worked.

But then what? Then she wouldn’t have anything to occupy her. Her resignation letter to the army had gone in the post only hours after her interview with Major Griggs. She wasn’t sure that his reaction to her change of story was going to be universal in the army, but she had a pretty good idea that it would reflect the opinion of the majority. To say that he had been livid was an understatement. He had railed against her for wasting police time, for ruining the reputation of a senior officer and for bringing the army into disrepute. He had informed her that he would have to go to higher authorities, and he was quite certain that they would want to take the matter further. By the time he had left the farm, Ginny had felt like she had been through a mangle and she was in no doubt that it would be impossible for her to continue her career in the army. And, after the way her friends in the regiment had all drifted away from her and had taken the side of Alice, she wasn’t sure she wanted it to continue anyway.

She sat in the chair behind the desk and pondered on her future. From her current perspective, it looked pretty bleak. She had nowhere to live – she knew she could stay with Netta for a bit, but not for ever – she had no job, she had precious little in the way of savings, she had no man … In short, she had almost nothing. She was going to have to start from scratch, to write off the last ten years of her life and begin again. It was a tough prospect, she thought, at an age when settling down should be on the horizon, not a complete change. All in all she felt pretty blue.

Chris came into the office clutching a newspaper. He threw it on the desk in front of her. His face was thunderous. ‘Look at this,’ he shouted, red with rage.

Ginny pulled the paper towards her and saw her picture, yet again, on the front page and a headline in red. “The revenge of the scarlet woman,” it blared. Transfixed, Ginny read the story, from Tabitha’s byline at the top, to where it was continued on page two, page three, page four
and
page five. It detailed the original story and what had happened to the main players since. Apart from anything else, it went into significant detail about the fact that Ginny was “hiding in the out-of-the-way Isles of Scilly and working at the family-run Trelisk Hotel”, and worse, it included pictures of the exterior of the hotel and a shot of one of the bedrooms. That slimy reporter who had been around earlier had to be responsible for that. Ginny read on with increasing horror. In front of the desk, Chris fidgeted and paced impatiently, waiting for her to finish.

‘It is just appalling,’ she whispered to Chris as she closed the paper.

‘It’s worse than that,’ he shouted. ‘It’s a disgrace, it’s outrageous!’

Ginny looked at his face and saw the anger, the rage he felt. It was her own fault that her reputation was shot to bits, and no doubt she had brought most of it on herself, but to drag his hotel into the ghastly story too – that was unforgivable. There was no way Chris’s business deserved to be smeared with the muck they were throwing at her. She was so, so sorry. Why was it that everything she did these days, everything she touched, became ruined and blackened? It was like the Midas touch, in reverse. She didn’t know what to say, and she was too hurt and appalled at the vile article to think straight. And what with everything that had been going on recently, she didn’t think she could bear another dressing down – and Chris was obviously on the brink of letting rip. She had to get away. She’d apologise later when he’d had a chance to cool off. She grabbed her bag off the corner of the desk and rushed past him out of the office.

‘Hey, Ginny!’ he yelled after her, but she wasn’t going to stop and risk his scorn and fury on top of the poisonous piece in the
Mercury
, so she ignored his shouting and ran out of the hotel, past a startled Vicki and Carole.

Outside, the weather was cold and grey but Ginny was oblivious to the temperature as she rushed blindly along the road. She was so wrapped up in her misery and mortification that she was unaware of where she was going until, finally, the road petered out and she found herself on a white, sandy beach with iron-grey rollers crashing on to it, sending up white salty spray. The noise of the waves was deafening and Ginny sat down amongst the marram grass in a dip in one of the dunes, gazing miserably out towards the horizon and letting her thoughts wash over her like the sea was washing over the beach.

It was the raw weather that eventually brought her back to reality. She slowly became aware that she was shuddering from the cold. Her jeans and jersey were not enough to protect her from the chilly, damp breeze that was stirring the sharp grass around her. She had been completely self-obsessed with wretchedness and anger, and had no idea how long she had been there. But one thing was clear; she hadn’t solved anything in this self-indulgent wallow in misery. It was time to face the music. She uncurled her stiff limbs and stood up. She looked at her watch. It was gone eleven. She realised with a shock that she had been there nearly two hours. Cold and stiff, she stumbled back towards the road. She slapped her arms around her to try to get her circulation going and to warm herself up. She wasn’t exactly sure where she was on the island, but that was the advantage of being in such a small place – she was sure she would soon find some familiar landmark and from there be able to determine her way home.

It was only forty minutes or so later that she arrived back at the farm. She steeled herself before she opened the kitchen door. For a start, she was going to have to apologise to Netta for bringing her family into disrepute yet again. The islanders all knew about Netta’s sister’s connection to Colonel Car Crash, so this latest story would make the Pengellys the centre of gossip yet again. Then she was going to have to eat yet more humble pie as she apologised to Chris for the lousy publicity she had unwittingly foisted on his business.

Cautiously, she opened the door and peered round. Netta and Carole were sitting either side of the big pine table, each cradling a cup of tea. Rose was asleep in her Moses basket by the Aga, and the cats were dozing on the sofa. It all looked so peaceful in contrast to the turmoil going on in Ginny’s head. But although part of Ginny wanted to be enveloped by this warm and placid scene, she was shaken by the sight of Carole. Instantly she wondered why Carole was there. Had she come to tear a strip off her too? Did she want some sort of compensation for the damage Ginny’s connection with the Trelisk must have inflicted?

Netta leapt to her feet at the sight of her sister coming through the door. Ginny was so uptight that she almost flinched at the sudden movement. She paused by the door, unwilling to enter the kitchen, on the brink of turning and running again. Netta seemed to sense this. She zoomed across the room and grabbed her sister’s arm to drag her in.

‘Ginny! There you are! We’ve been worried sick about you. Where have you been?’

Ginny didn’t answer right away. She felt too drained by the morning’s events and too shell-shocked. Instead, she allowed herself to be dragged across to a chair and sat down.

‘You’re frozen,’ reprimanded Netta, feeling Ginny’s hand. She bustled over to the Aga and poured Ginny a cup of tea from the pot warming there. Then she added a couple of spoons of sugar and a slosh of milk. ‘Here, get this inside you,’ she said, putting it into her sister’s hand.

Ginny smiled wanly and clasped both hands round the warm mug.

There was an extended silence while Ginny sipped her drink.

When she had nearly finished, Netta asked again where she had been.

‘Nowhere really,’ she replied dully.

‘We were worried.’

‘You shouldn’t have been.’

‘But Chris showed me the article. No wonder you were upset.’

Ginny felt self-pity welling up again. She swallowed hard and blinked to get control of herself. ‘It wasn’t just the article. I was so ashamed of getting you involved too,’ she said to Carole. ‘And Chris was so angry.’

‘He was,’ said Carole. ‘I’ve never seen him so mad. It’s the first time he’s ever felt really involved in such an awful story.’

There
, thought Ginny dully.
Even his wife hasn’t seen him that angry
. It was getting worse. The phone rang. Ginny jumped like she had been scalded and shot Netta an agonised look. God, what if the press were after her again? Hadn’t they done enough damage?’