False Tongues (4 page)

The bed was the one thing that looked different. Callie had used her own flowered duvet cover, her own thick down duvet. Now it had a more institutional appearance, with a thin synthetic duvet encased in a dark-coloured, geometrically patterned cover. It didn't look very inviting, but at this point Callie didn't care.

She opened her case and found her sleep shirt. Then she quickly shed her clothes, tossing them on the arm chair, and pulled the shirt over her head.

She'd used the loo at the station, while waiting for the taxi, so she didn't have to make a trip down the corridor. Too weary even to clean her teeth or wash her face, Callie switched off the light, slid under the duvet, closed her eyes and fell asleep almost instantly.

A few minutes later—five? ten?—she was jolted back to consciousness by an insistent tapping. She pried her eyes open; the noise seemed to be coming from her door. ‘What is it?' she called out, her heart pounding.

The door flew open; she'd forgot to lock it.

A halo of blond curls was back-lit from the corridor for just a moment before Tamsin Howells slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. She put her hands on her hips. ‘Callie Anson,' she said severely, ‘where on earth have you
been
?'

Chapter Three

Waking in her bed on Monday morning, Margaret Phillips, the Principal of Archbishop Temple House, reached for her husband Hal.

Hal wasn't there. As a matter of fact he had never shared this bed with her, but at least twice a week she dreamed about him, vividly, and woke expecting to find him with her. Margaret sometimes wondered when those dreams would stop. Probably never—or not until she stopped dreaming altogether, when they shut her in a box…

The trouble was that she'd never stopped loving him—though she recognised all too well that sometimes love wasn't enough.

Sighing, Margaret turned over, looked at the clock and thought about getting up. It was Easter Monday, a holiday for most, yet that didn't mean it was a day off for her. Most of the students had gone home for the Easter holidays, but their places had been taken by the returning deacons. The daily services in the college chapel would be held as usual, and Margaret would want to be there, whether she was taking the services herself or not.

This was Margaret's second academic year as Principal, which meant that it was also her second Deacons' Week. But this one was different, she'd already realised. Last year the returning deacons had been strangers to her, a legacy from the last Principal. This year, though, they were
hers
—the fledgling priests-in-waiting whom she'd nurtured through their final year of theological training and turned loose on the Church of England in various stages of readiness. She felt responsible for them: protective, maternal. This first group would always be special to her, and she was looking forward to seeing them again.

Some of them—maybe most of them—would be at Morning Prayer in the chapel, whether driven by nostalgia, conscientiousness, or curiosity.

Shaking her head sharply to rid herself of the remnants of the dream—until the next time—Margaret got out of bed and headed for the shower.

***

Coffee. Strong coffee: that's what she needed.

Miranda Frost had been up for most of the night, working—in spite of the fact that it was Easter. She had, in fact, discovered over the years that people were more rather than less likely to do themselves a mischief on a holiday. If the drink was flowing freely, the results often ended up in A and E—the victims of traffic accidents, fights, and just plain carelessness.

Miranda yawned, stretched, and climbed out of bed. She would let Richard sleep on. He had been working last night as well, but unlike his wife he had the Bank Holiday off today. Miranda was on call and had no illusions that she would be spending the day at home. Her eyes barely open, she groped her way down the stairs to the kitchen.

The Italian coffee machine was state-of-the-art, an object of great beauty, and had cost a bomb. Worth every penny, in Miranda's opinion, as it got more use than the rest of the kitchen appliances put together—with the possible exception of the microwave. She pushed a few buttons and within seconds the beans were being ground and the fabulous aroma filled the small kitchen.

The kitchen really needed re-fitting and extending, Miranda reflected—not for the first time—as she waited for her coffee to squirt into the cup. They'd just never got round to it. Couldn't face the aggro of obtaining planning permission, and then all of the disruption while the work was being done. And at the end of the day it still wouldn't be much more than a place to house the coffee machine and the microwave.

Funnily enough, of the three of them, Sebastian was the one most likely to be found messing about in the kitchen—though he would rather die, of course, than admit it to his mates. A few times Miranda had come home to find Sebastian watching cookery programmes on the telly. He had immediately switched over to MTV, as though an interest in food was too shameful to display even to his mother.

He'd been cooking something last night, it was evident from the pans piled in the sink: unfortunately his covert interest in cookery did not extend to washing up. Miranda sighed as she snatched the coffee cup from under the nozzle of the machine, unable to wait a second more for that first scalding sip.

Sebastian didn't like coffee; he didn't even like the smell of it, and often complained that her prized machine ponged up the house. He was too young, Miranda thought: just wait until he got to university. That's where she'd first developed her addiction. All of those late nights, studying for exams, memorising the bones of the hand or the components of the lymphatic system. And then the years as a junior doctor, on call, on endless night shifts…

Was it possible to be a doctor without caffeine? Miranda didn't think so.

Of course, there was a real possibility that Sebastian wouldn't go into medicine. She and Richard had always hoped that he would, following their footsteps into that noblest of professions. He did well in the necessary subjects at school—he seemed to have a facility for the sciences. But that didn't necessarily mean anything. Miranda knew that she was prejudiced where her son was concerned, but Sebastian was an all-rounder—good at sport, clever with computers, popular with his mates. He was capable of succeeding in just about any field he fancied. He might even want to be a…a professional footballer. Miranda shuddered at the thought.

She gulped down her first cup of coffee, and immediately made a second. That one she would savour. And she would make one to take upstairs for Richard, just in case he'd woken.

Balancing the two cups of coffee, Miranda went back upstairs. She paused for a moment outside of Sebastian's firmly closed door, listening for any sounds to indicate that he was awake. It was the school holidays, of course, so there was no need for him to be up, but it wasn't all that early and he often could be heard at his computer in the mornings, playing games or music.

‘Sebastian?' she said quietly; when there was no reply she juggled both cups into one hand and nudged the door open. ‘Sebastian?' she repeated, blinking in the darkness.

He wasn't there, either in his bed or at his desk. And what's more, it was immediately apparent to Miranda Frost that her son's bed had not been slept in that night.

***

Tamsin hadn't stayed very long—just long enough to give Callie a hug, get an explanation for her delayed arrival, and promise to catch up with her after Morning Prayer—but Callie found it was impossible to get back to sleep. In spite of her exhaustion, she'd lain awake, her brain buzzing like a groggy bee, turning from one side to another in the narrow bed, listening to the various colleges' bells announcing the quarter-hours in their unsynchronised way.

If they'd given everyone their old room, she reasoned, that meant that Adam would be down the corridor. Sleeping like a baby, no doubt, in the bed which had once been covered by an old Indian throw.

But why, Callie asked herself wretchedly, was she obsessing about Adam? Why did it matter where he was, or what he was doing? Adam was ancient history. Marco was her present; Marco was her future.

What future, though, did she have with Marco, when he was unable to tell his family that he wanted to marry her? Would this engagement evaporate into thin air, the way the last one had? Adam was so deep in denial that he now seemed to regard their engagement as little more than a vague attachment, to be discarded without regret as soon as he'd met someone more appealing. It was true that he'd never given her a ring—hadn't been able to afford it, he'd said—but they had arranged curacies in neighbouring parishes, had even discussed the timing of their wedding. It was to have been this summer, in a few months' time, after they'd settled into their new jobs. Instead he had married the perfect Pippa just after Christmas.

And Callie was wearing Marco's ring. For whatever it was worth.

Finally, as the birds began their noisy dawn chorus outside of her window—why did the birds in London not sing like that?—Callie fell into a deep sleep. The bell woke her at last: not her travel alarm, which she hadn't yet taken out of her case, but the loud bell which summoned the faithful to Morning Prayer.

No Morning Prayer for her, then. At least it meant she wouldn't have to wait for the loo or the shower, as presumably everyone else had already availed themselves of the facilities and were on their way to the chapel.

Not that long ago it hadn't seemed much of a hardship to Callie to share bathroom facilities with various other people. But now she was so used to having her own bathroom that she resented the necessary trip down the hall. Nevertheless she accomplished it briskly, aware that if she hurried she could still make it to breakfast.

Returning to her room, Callie threw her suitcase on the bed and rooted round for something appropriate to wear—something sober, conservative, and clerical seemed the safest, until she discovered what everyone else was wearing. Then she delved for her phone charger, down at the bottom of the case, and plugged the dead phone in to recharge.

Her room was still dark. Callie opened the curtains and, as she had done so many times in the past, paused involuntarily to admire the view. Yes, it was a perfect spring morning, limpid and blue, but that was just the proverbial icing on the cake.

Archbishop Temple House had been built round an elegant Victorian mansion, now the Principal's Lodge, on Cambridge's famous and picturesque Backs. The buildings—including chapel, refectory, lecture rooms, staff housing, and student lodgings—formed a rectangle bordering the interior courtyard. The courtyard was beautiful, especially in spring, with a carpet of flowers lapping the trunks of mature cherry trees, and those whose rooms faced onto the courtyard counted themselves fortunate. The most envied of all, though, were the lucky few on the east side of the second floor of B staircase, whose windows provided a view across the Backs toward Kings' College and its magnificent Chapel. The rooms on the ground floor and even the first floor weren't high enough; their inhabitants saw only the high brick wall surrounding the college. But from the top story the view was breathtaking.

Callie could have stood there all day, watching the shifting light and shadows, observing the people coming and going—on foot or cycling madly—along the always-busy Backs. She'd spent not a few hours of her life doing just that, in years past. Now, though, there were more important things to do. Breakfast was waiting.

***

No matter how she may have felt about her son's absence, Miranda Frost stayed outwardly calm, because that was what she did. It was a persona honed through many years in her profession: people liked their surgeon to be cool, unruffled, in control. Miranda saw no reason why her private life should be any different; she'd observed enough histrionics in her patients to know that such behaviour was rarely helpful in any situation.

The first thing she did, after checking every room in the house and before waking Richard, was to ring Sebastian's mobile. He never went anywhere without his beloved iPhone, she knew. But there was no reassuring voice on the other end, not even a request to leave a message, just an automated message informing her that the phone was not in service.

That was odd.

She was by no means a paranoid, overprotective parent, but Miranda was an organised person who liked to have information at her fingertips, so at some point she had asked Sebastian to give her a list of his friends' mobile phone numbers. After taking a moment to regroup and locate the list in her Filofax, she rang Hugo, Sebastian's best mate.

‘'Lo?' Hugo sounded as if she'd waked him from a sound sleep—which was probably, Miranda realised, exactly what she'd done.

She took a deep breath and spoke calmly. ‘Hugo, it's Miranda Frost. Is Sebastian by any chance with you?'

‘Seb? No. Why would he be?'

Miranda answered with another question. ‘You don't happen to know where he is, then?'

‘No. Sorry, Mrs Frost.'

‘When was the last time you saw him?'

Was there a fractional hesitation, or was Hugo just half asleep? ‘Yesterday,' he mumbled.

‘Yesterday afternoon?' she pursued.

‘Yeah. I had this new game, see. Blaster of the Universe. He came round.'

Miranda could tell that she was on to a loser; she wasn't going to get any more information out of Hugo. ‘Well, thanks, Hugo,' she said. ‘If Sebastian turns up, or you happen to see him, could you please ask him to ring me?'

‘Yeah, sure.' As a seeming afterthought he added, ‘You might try Olly. Or Tom.'

Below Hugo's name on her list were Tom and Olly. She didn't really expect a positive result from either of them, and indeed they both averred that they hadn't seen Sebastian since Saturday night.

Miranda went back to the kitchen and checked round to see whether Sebastian had left a note anywhere—magneted to the fridge door, or on the worktop—which she might have missed in her semi-comatose pre-coffee state. The only evidence of Sebastian's presence in the kitchen was the jumble of dirty dishes in the sink.

It was, she decided, time to wake Richard. Perhaps Sebastian had mentioned something to him about plans to go out. He'd left for work later than she did yesterday; it was possible that he'd talked to Sebastian before leaving the house, or had even had a previous conversation with him on the subject.

She took one more look in Sebastian's room as she went by, regretting that she hadn't checked on him when she got home in the early hours of the morning. It was something she'd always done when he was younger, but now that he was a teenager it seemed an invasion of his much-valued privacy. As she'd expected, his bed was still pristine; there was still no sign of him.

Richard was sleeping on his side, his knees drawn up toward his chest like Sebastian had always slept. In so many ways Sebastian was very like his father; the most instantly noticeable similarities were the long, lanky frame and the tightly curled hair. But Richard's curls were light brown, now liberally interspersed with grey, while Sebastian had inherited Miranda's much darker hair.