Beaumont Brides Collection (37 page)

‘The doctor’s with him, Fizz,’ Jim said, quietly. ‘They’re taking blood for tests, that sort of thing. It’ll be a while. Come and sit down.’ He glanced up. ‘Claudia for goodness sake sit down, you’re wearing out the carpet.’

Claudia stopped pacing. ‘Sorry.’ She looked deathly pale beneath the glamour of her make-up and Fizz broke away from Jim and went to her, taking her hand, squeezing it.

‘I just feel so bloody helpless,’ she said. ‘Now I know why people smoke. I’ll be biting my fingernails next. There’s nothing else to do when you’re waiting.’ She looked over the top of Fizz’s head. ‘Oh, Luke. I didn’t expect to see you.’

‘I drove Fizz to the hospital. What’s the news?’ Fizz didn’t turn round, not quite able to face him. Or to face the fact that the man she was stupidly, crazily in love with, who had just made passionate love to her, who had just asked her to marry him, was somehow responsible for causing her father to collapse. He hadn’t denied it when she had challenged him. But how?

‘The doctor’s with Edward now,’ Jim said, filling the silence. ‘Tests, that sort of thing. There’s coffee if you want it.’

Luke shook his head. Claudia resumed her pacing. Jim helped himself to coffee. The hands of the clock dragged round.

‘I can’t stand any more of this,’ Claudia said, finally. ‘I’m going to find out what’s happening.’

‘Claudia they’ll come for you,’ Jim began, but she had already pushed the door open and was striding down the corridor. Fizz wanted to go with her, run after her. But she was afraid, terribly afraid of what she might find.

The door opened and a nurse stuck her head around it. ‘Miss Beaumont?’ Fizz spun around. ‘Do you want to pop down and see your father now? Your sister is with him.’

‘No one else,’ the nurse warned, looking around the waiting room as if anticipating a sudden invasion. ‘He needs to be quiet.’

Edward Beaumont was white, hollow cheeked, with a drip-tube in the back of his hand and the constant bleep of the heart and blood pressure monitor a counterpoint to the low background hum of machinery. He still managed to raise a smile for his girls, lifting the oxygen mask so that he could speak. ‘Sorry to give everyone such a fright,’ he said, in a series of short gasping breaths. ‘I should know better at my age.’

Fizz leaned forward to kiss him. ‘Don’t talk,’ she said. ‘Save your strength.’

‘I think perhaps you should let your father rest now,’ a nurse advised.

‘What’s the matter with him? Can I speak to the doctor?’ Fizz asked.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until the morning to see the doctor. We’re having a busy night. Has your father been under a lot of stress lately?’

‘Yes,’ Claudia said. ‘Quite a lot.’

‘Then that may be the cause of his collapse. There doesn’t appear to be any obvious sign of a heart attack, although until the tests come back we can’t be sure. He’s being given a clot buster drug as a precaution, that’s all.’

That’s all? ‘Can we stay at the hospital?’ Fizz asked.

‘We’ll ring you if there’s the slightest change, I promise.’ But she’d been a nurse long enough to recognise the need to be close to a loved one in trouble. ‘Look, why don’t you stay until he’s asleep? There’s tea and coffee in the waiting room. Just help yourself.’

‘But if we wanted to stay?’

‘I won’t throw you out, but I really wouldn’t advise it. And it won’t do your father any good if you wear yourselves out, will it?’

Luke and Jim looked up as they went back into the waiting room. ‘How is he?’ Luke asked.

Claudia looked at Fizz obviously expecting her to answer, but Fizz was incapable of speaking. ‘Stress, exhaustion. Hopefully not a heart attack. He looked done in when he came to the studios.  I suppose after a day of meetings the drive back here in time to record “Holiday Bay” was just too much.’

‘He didn’t have to do that,’ Fizz said. ‘We could have edited him in tomorrow.’

Claudia glanced at Luke. ‘He didn’t want to disappoint Melanie. He knew how much she was looking forward to her big scene with him.’

‘Big scene? I thought it was just a couple of sentences?’

‘Yes, but what sentences. We’ve just recorded the “Holiday Bay” equivalent of the shooting of JR, the death of Grace Archer, The Killing of Sister George -’

‘Who are we killing off?’ Fizz demanded, horrified.

‘Weren’t you at the script conference?’ Claudia hadn’t been.

‘Well, yes, but I wasn’t paying that much attention to be honest. I’ve had a lot on my mind.’ She turned as the door opened behind her.

‘Mr Beaumont is asleep.’ The young nurse who brought the news blushed as she found herself suddenly centre stage. ‘I really do think you should all go home. You can ring anytime. First thing in the morning, as early as you like, I don’t mind.’

‘And you promise you’ll ring us if anything happens?’ Fizz asked. ‘Have you got a number?’

‘They’ve got mine,’ Claudia said.

‘I’ll ring, I promise.’

‘Come on, Fizz, we’re just in the way here. Jim, can you give me a lift back to the prom? My car’s still there,’ Claudia asked.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Fizz said, quickly, not looking at Luke. She couldn’t bear to look at him. The intensity of both loving him and hating him were too much to bear. She sensed rather than saw his determined move towards her. ‘In fact I think I’ll stay with you tonight, if you don’t mind?’

Fizz saw Claudia frown, glance at Luke, decide not to say what she was thinking. ‘Whatever you like.’

But when Jim dropped them at the pier, Fizz didn’t get into Claudia’s car. ‘There’s something I have to do.’

‘Fizz -’

‘Don’t worry. Someone will run me home. Or I’ll get a taxi.’

‘I thought you were going to stay with me, or was that just an excuse to avoid Luke?’ Fizz didn’t answer. Claudia sighed. ‘Patrick March should have been horsewhipped for what he did to you. I let him off far too lightly.’

‘Patrick?’ No one had dared to say that name in her presence for years. Suddenly it was common currency. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Just a few well-placed rumours to make nervous producers back off. I couldn’t have him rocketing to stardom while you were languishing with permanent stage fright, now could I? It wouldn’t have been right.’

‘But he had real talent. With the right breaks -’

‘So did you, little sister.’ She kissed Fizz on the cheek. ‘And he didn’t give a damn for your breaks did he? He never did anything to put things right.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for him, Fizz. You’ve worked hard to make something of your life, even if it does mean slaving away in that ghastly little office. Patrick March was pretty and he had talent, but he saw a short cut and took it without a thought for what it would do to you. If he’d had half your strength he would have made it, no matter what.’ Claudia reached out, rubbed absently at her sister’s cheek. ‘You could still be a star if you wanted it badly enough.’ Fizz could hardly believe her ears. Claudia had been the first to say she had got the film part purely because of her name and she shouldn’t let it go to her head because she was bound to make a mess of it. And the first to race to her side when the predicted mess hit the fan. ‘Do you want it?’

‘Who’d run my radio station?’

‘Good grief, who would want to? Well, don’t work too hard, Fizz. I’ll see you at the hospital first thing. Oh, and if Luke rings, I’ll tell him I’ve tucked you up with a hot water bottle and a sleeping pill, shall I?’

‘You can tell him whatever you wish.’

‘I’ll let you off the hook temporarily, little sister, but he’s not going away and you’re going to have to face him sooner or later. Unless you plan to spend the rest of your emotional life in hiding?’

Emotional life. What a joke.

 ‘I’m not in hiding, Claud. Not any more.’ She shook her head as she anticipated her sister’s interest. ‘There’s something I have to do. It won’t take long. I’ll see you in the morning.’

The station was quiet, the offices empty and dark, only the newsroom and one of the broadcasting suites were occupied so late. Fizz went straight to the recording studio, turning on the light that flashed momentarily and then flooded the room.

As she expected, abandoned “Holiday Bay” scripts lay strewn over the table and the floor where the actors had dropped them as they had read their parts. Just so much waste paper. She gathered them up into a heap and began to sift through them, looking for a complete set.

Then she sat down and read it through quickly anxious to get to the last few lines that seem to have caused her father to collapse.

It was a nice twist.

The wedding had been on and off for so long that the listeners would be sure that something would go wrong. But it didn’t. The groom survived the stag night high jinks. Just. The bride’s last minute nerves were dealt with. Everything, in fact, proceeded as smoothly as a well oiled clock. The tension built. Something had to go wrong. And of course it did.

Just as the bride, Claudia’s character, and her father, played by Edward, are due to set off for the church, a pretty young girl arrives and in a strong Australian accent declares herself to be the illegitimate daughter of the father of the bride. The bride’s father has a heart attack. Will the wedding take place? Will the father die? Is the girl telling the truth? Who was her mother?

Fizz wished she had paid more attention at the script conference. Knew who had come up with particular storyline. But the small cold spot in the pit of her stomach told her that she was clutching at straws. She let her mind drift back to the first morning that Melanie had visited the radio station and knew that the answer to everything had been staring her in the face all along.

When Fizz had shown Melanie around the studio that first morning she had taken every opportunity to probe for some clue as to Luke’s motives in supporting the station, still not quite able to believe that Melanie was really keen to take part in “Holiday Bay”. ‘I’m surprised you’re so interested in radio,’ she said, angling for some lead.

‘Oh, yes. My mother loved it, you see. No lines to learn, no make-up, wearing comfortable old clothes. It was all in the voice, she said.’ Melanie’s face momentarily clouded. ‘I have some recordings of her, Fizz. She was really wonderful. She was always being offered parts in films and on television but she wouldn’t take them. She said she enjoyed the anonymity of radio. That’s why I was so pleased to get the chance to try it for myself.’

‘Was your father an actor too?’

Melanie’s cheeks flushed a little. ‘My mother never talked about him.’ She saw Fizz frown slightly. ‘They weren’t married, you see.’ Fizz, about to say something casual about such things hardly mattering these days to cover the girl’s embarrassment, suddenly realised that to Melanie it did. It mattered deeply. ‘I thought she might have been ashamed of him. I asked her once if that was the reason she wouldn’t tell me who he was.’

Fizz, heartily wishing she had never brought up the subject, was noncommittal. ‘Did you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry. Then she cried a bit and then she hugged me and said she wasn’t in the least bit ashamed of him. She said he was a good man, but it was impossible for them to be together. He hadn’t abandoned me, he hadn’t even known about me.’

‘She never told him?’ Fizz was shocked.

‘He had a family. A wife who really needed him.’

Melanie had needed him too, Fizz thought, with a cold anger for such selfishness. ‘Is that why you’ve come to Broomhill? To look for him?’

Melanie stared at her. ‘Broomhill? Heaven’s I shouldn’t think he’s here. I imagine he’s in Australia somewhere. I mean, why else would she have gone there in the first place?’

Why else? ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry. I thought Luke said your family had come from this area. I must have misunderstood.’

Perhaps.

Fizz got to her feet. But there was nothing here to explain her father’s collapse. And yet standing in the doorway of her bedroom, listening to Melanie tell Luke what had happened, she had been so sure that there was something.

“He just said, ‘Juliet’, then he sort of crumpled up…”

She paced the studio. Maybe it was nothing. Except that she had been so certain that Luke was using “Holiday Bay” in some way. Tonight he had as good as admitted as much. Tonight. Her mind shied away from what had happened tonight. But it was a seriously elaborate exercise just to pay back a catty remark. Rather like using a pile-driver to crack a nut.

Juliet. Who was Juliet? She’d heard the name recently.

She went through the scripts again, certain somehow that the answer must lie there. Each of the actors had their own way of highlighting their lines and she automatically sorted them into individual characters. Then she realised that if there was any clue to be found on the scripts it must be on either her father’s or on Melanie’s.

Melanie had highlighted her lines in orange Day-Glo and they were easy to pick out, but the last page was missing.

She looked around and spotted the corner of white paper sticking out from beneath the piano. She pulled it out and felt her heart contract as she saw the alteration to the last line and everything finally fell into place.