Glittering Fortunes (19 page)

‘What is there to think about?
You’re
the successor to Usherwood, of course you are! There’s nothing else for it.’

‘I need answers. I need evidence.’

Oh, how she could throttle that bedridden crone! With the same wicked shock as a bucket of ice being tossed over her head, Susanna thought of her pursed-lipped long-limbed girlfriends back in Beverly Hills, who had always been so envious of her allegiance with a real-life aristocrat... Imagine having to confess Cato’s illegitimacy! It couldn’t happen. It couldn’t and it wouldn’t, because all this was nonsense.

He
was heir to the Lomax legacy, not Charles.

‘We’re going back,’ said Cato, spurred to action. ‘That geriatric started this—and if he can’t finish it,’ Cato pounded his chest, ‘then by God I will.’

Chapter Thirty

T
HE
ROADS
WERE
empty. Cato bombed along deserted lanes, weaving between black walls of shrubbery as the headlamps swept ghostly beams across the countryside.

When they arrived at
Hedge Betty
the place was shrouded in darkness. Susanna had quietly woken Thorn and left him with the Pony Trap’s landlady, explaining that there was something important she had to do but that she’d be back very soon. She couldn’t risk bringing him here. Who knew what they were about to uncover? Charles could be storming through the place like a maniac. Decca could have flung herself into the water. Olivia might decide to release the dogs on them. Even under dire circumstances, Thorn’s safety occurred to her as a significant thing.

Despite her premonitions, Charlie’s Land Rover was nowhere to be seen.

‘What the hell are you doing, woman?’ Cato hissed as Susanna picked her way over the gangplank. His summons prompted her to slip on a squelch of mulch and flail urgently at the handrail, swinging from it like a monkey on a tree branch.

‘What do you think?’ she rasped back, righting herself with all the dignity she could muster. ‘We’re not going to stand out here all night, are we?’

‘Shut up and follow me.’

Cato led the way round the side of the boat, where a narrow ridge just wide enough for a single shoe was tacked with knotted ropes. Big white floats shone like molars against the twinkling water. Susanna removed her footwear and tiptoed after him. Passing the galley window she saw that Cato’s carnage had been cleared, everything packed and tidied away as it had been when they’d arrived.

‘Quiet!’ she entreated loudly. ‘They’re back!’

Cato whirled, exasperated, waving his arms to bat her down. Frantically she pointed into the window, yearning to flee but at the same trapped on an impossible precipice. He rounded the bow, disappeared from sight and seconds later there was a deep, single thud, followed by a disembodied hand waggling at her to approach. Tentatively she skirted round, just in time to see Cato’s back-end vanishing through an open hatch. She was alarmed when his voice came back at her full volume: ‘All clear, Mole!’

Susanna was attempting to fold herself through the aperture when a series of ferocious growls stopped her in her tracks. Wolves!

‘It’s me, you stupid mutts.’ Cato’s scold came drifting through. There followed a thin whicker, as if the creature making it had been kicked.

As she flopped through she spied the dogs cowering on a blanket in the corner. There was another one with them, a great big ugly thing with fur like wire wool. It released a low rumble in its throat. Its eyes were yellow, like a witch’s.

‘Is it a hyena?’ Susanna fretted, flattening herself against the stove.

‘Don’t be absurd. It’s an idiot dog.’

Cato pushed open one of the cabins. Across the threshold was a boudoir swimming in fabrics and cushions, a tepee-style arrangement hanging from the ceiling and books scattered all over the floor. An incense stick rested in a bed of powdery ash, filling the space with a foreign, unpleasant aroma. He flicked the light.

‘Can we find what we’re looking for and get out of here?’

‘Patience, Mole...’

Cato worked methodically. He opened all the drawers in sequence, top to bottom, left to right, rifling through before closing them, empty-handed but calm. He fumbled for a box on top of the closet, wobbling on a moth-eaten stool to reach it, and when he lifted it down he skimmed logically through papers, bills, statements, boring bureaucracy that, judging by the standard of living, Susanna was surprised existed at all. He crouched to inspect under the bed, dragging out a chest brimming with old photographs, mostly of the couple, hand in hand by the Egyptian pyramids, arms round each other at Machu Picchu, grinning against a backdrop of the glinting Taj Mahal. Many of them were taken here, on the boat. In one, Decca was reclining in the open air with a glass of wine. In another, Barnaby grinned as he operated a lock.

They were in love, their smiles flaunting happiness. Susanna experienced a stab of bitterness and ground it out before she asked why.

‘Do hurry, Cato!’

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ He shoved the case back where it came from and scanned the room through narrowed eyes. Finally he tore back the bed covers, lifted the pillows and ripped off their cases, and chucked the whole lot on the floor. ‘Damn it!’ He stamped on the sheets. ‘Damn it to hell!’

Susanna’s eyes fell on a hardback novel tucked behind the headboard. A white sheaf of paper was escaping its pages.

Cato snatched it before she could.

‘Let me see!’ She clambered over the mattress. ‘Let me see!’

Cato lifted it high above her head.

‘Bingo.’ He extracted a crisp envelope and held it up to the light.

It read, in elaborate script:
My darling brother
...

‘I can’t look,’ Susanna choked, squeezing her eyes shut.

Cato sat down. Inside the envelope was a letter. Despite herself Susanna craned to see over his shoulder, her heart thundering against her ribs.

The date was August 1993, a year after his uncle’s dismissal.

Beloved Barney,

There is no one else to turn to. God help me but I am trapped in this house. Every day is an eternity and I am so tired; I am tired of pretending for the sake of my boys and I am tired of the heartache. Have you heard word? Has there been news? I should give up asking—I know that he is gone and never coming back. Sometimes I scribble him letters, as I am to you now, and fold them up and keep them with me. Isn’t that silly? They are never sent.

Forgive me for not writing in a long time. Richmond watches me as a hawk might a worm and I swear he reads my mind. He knows when I am thinking about the man who gave me my child; he senses when I turn from him at night... He has given up trying to touch me, which is some small mercy.

Never do I stop remembering that evening. If only I hadn’t confessed my secret, if only Richmond hadn’t been there, if only, if only... The façade would still be mine, and so would Ben. That makes me selfish, I know, but I cannot help it. Nor can I help the fact of Charles’ birth; it should never have happened. I was stupid. I should have taken care because now look where we are—trapped in a web of our own making, spinning lies faster than we can tear through them, and Charles can never know where he came from.

A terrible admission, but one that Richmond would concede: Charles will always be the lesser loved.

How can it be different?

Yours affectionately,

Bea x

A slow smile spread across Cato’s face. Susanna fell against him.

‘That’s it, darling!’ she rejoiced. ‘There it is!’

Cato scanned the note again, starched with age.

‘Strange,’ he mused, ‘that it used to feel like me.’

She was beside herself with relief. ‘What did?’

‘The lesser loved. Daddy used to compare me with Charles, especially as we got older. And all that time...’ He shook his head. ‘I must have invented it.’

‘You must have. A new brother arriving—’

‘A half-blood.’

‘I stand corrected. You were five when he came along, it was a wrench to share your parents.’ She touched his arm. ‘And they
are
your parents, Cato. They
are
. You’re a true Lomax, there was never a doubt in my mind!’

Cato tucked the note into his pocket and replaced the hardback.

‘The question now,’ he exited the room, ‘is how to break it to Charles...’

Susanna chased after him. ‘What are you going to do?’

In the corridor he scanned the cabins, settling on one whose door was ajar. His half-brother’s belongings were at the foot of the bunk.

Half-brother.
Well that was a turn up for the books.

‘It’d be terrible for the old boy to find this, wouldn’t it?’ Cato mused, running his nail along the edge of the letter. ‘If he were to have it spelled out, just like that, in our mother’s own hand,’ he imagined it, a wicked gleam in his eye, ‘no warning and no time to prepare. Such a brutal discovery that would be...’

‘Certainly. Perhaps we ought to ease him into it gently?’

Cato put his head on one side. He considered it.

‘Then again,’ he laid the paper flat, their mother’s writing naked for all to see, ‘I wouldn’t want to keep it from him longer than was necessary.’

He kissed Susanna hard on the mouth.

‘That wouldn’t be very brotherly, now, would it?’

Chapter Thirty-One

A
FTER
B
ARNABY
’
S
DEATH
,
arrangements were swiftly made. The funeral was scheduled for a week’s time and Olivia stayed with Decca on the barge until her family arrived.

It wasn’t easy. She could help in the practical ways—cleaning, cooking, accepting the sympathy bouquets that arrived at the door—but beyond that struggled to comfort the woman she had known just a few days. Decca would sit in the window for hours, bundled up in her cardigan and gazing blankly out, the occasional sad smile dimming her features. The discovery of a favourite mug, a song on the radio, a mournful glance from Bess the dog, was enough to trigger a cloudburst of grief. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t talk. Olivia tried to be what she needed, but the only person Decca needed was Barnaby, and Barnaby wasn’t there.

Neither, for that matter, was Charlie.

Since the night his uncle died he had retreated from her completely. He was barely around. She’d thought she had reached him, the almost-moment they’d shared enough to compress the distance. Now it was as if it had never happened. He had reverted to the old Charlie, avoiding conversation, never meeting her eye; leaving a room as soon as she stepped in. He took long walks by himself with no indication as to where he was going or when he’d be back. He wouldn’t speak of Barnaby, or his mother, or of Usherwood, and he categorically refused to see Cato. He removed himself utterly, reassembling the wall he had in a reckless instant allowed her to glimpse behind. Whatever confidence they had reached, it was gone.

Olivia reminded herself that he was dealing with the biggest uncertainty of his life. She could scarcely imagine how it must feel. The one person who could solve the riddle had taken it to his grave, leaving only a giant question mark where the answer should have been. Charlie’s withdrawal wasn’t about her, or anything to do with her.

Even so, it hurt.

Cato and Susanna were quick to organise their return trip to Cornwall. The Lomax helicopter arrived in a whirlwind of sound, tearing up the surrounding fields and attracting a flurry of attention from the locals.

Olivia went to see them off. When she arrived Cato was sharing a joke with the pilot, laughing jovially, his hands on his hips, his crisp peach shirt fluid in the breeze and the sleeves pushed up to reveal the wolfish black hair drenching his forearms. She thought such high spirits were inappropriate given the circumstances, not to mention inexplicable. Wasn’t he going through the same turmoil as Charlie, wracked with doubt, the story of his life upended on a single shattering evening? She supposed each man must have his private way of dealing with it. Charlie certainly did.

Thorn was going with them, due to be returned to Jonty later that day. Olivia kissed him goodbye and promised to visit once she moved back to London.

Susanna helped him climb aboard. ‘Now,’ she said, carefully strapping him in, ‘if you feel sick this time, you will tell me, won’t you?’

The boy was absorbed in the plastic pterodactyl Susanna had bought him during that morning’s trip to a local dinosaur museum. ‘OK.’ He beamed.

‘That’s my darling.’

‘What about Roger?’

She stroked his hair. ‘Who’s Roger?’

Thorn held up the pterodactyl.

Susanna sighed. ‘He’ll have to tell me, too.’

Slipping on her shades, she turned to Olivia. Somewhere in that 180-degree movement, Mommy Susanna became Movie Star Susanna and she was back to the super-diva the world knew and didn’t really love.

‘It seems I didn’t need you quite as much as I’d thought,’ she said brusquely, easing on a pair of sleek leather gloves. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll still get paid—I just think he’s better off with his mother at a time like this, don’t you?’

‘Absolutely.’

Susanna checked that Cato was still occupied with the pilot.

‘It’s odd,’ she mused, ‘but I could get used to this. I never thought I’d say it, but, well...I’ve become rather attached to the boy.’

Olivia shrugged, and stated the obvious. ‘He is your son.’

It came out a bit flippant, not how she’d intended, and she was sure Susanna would pick up on it. She didn’t. Instead she considered it for a moment, her head on one side, as if this were an entirely new concept.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, with a smile. ‘I suppose he is.’

* * *

O
N
T
HURSDAY
NIGHT
the Sennets descended, and she and Charlie moved with the dogs to a nearby B&B. There was a misunderstanding at check-in, and when they arrived they saw it was one room, not two. Charlie returned to sort it out.

He came back moments later. ‘They’ve only got this available,’ he said, and put the key in the lock. It jammed. He gave it a hard shove with his shoulder.

Olivia followed him in. The double bed stared back at them accusingly.

‘Isn’t there anywhere else?’ she asked.

‘Not prepared to take the dogs.’ There was an adjoining porch for Comet and Sigmund, who wagged their tails in approval. ‘Besides, it’s getting late.’

Charlie began tugging blankets out of a cupboard and casting them down. Immediately the dogs settled. He nudged their tummies with his foot.

‘What are you doing?’ Olivia sat on the mattress. It was hard, and lumpy.

‘Taking the floor.’

‘You’ll be cold.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

She wished he would look at her. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

‘Please talk to me,’ she said.

He crouched, straightening the sheet.

‘If there’s anything...’

‘There isn’t.’

‘But—’

‘Please, Olivia, don’t. There isn’t any point.’

‘But you can’t just bottle things up.’

‘I can do what I want.’

‘Everything isn’t lost,’ she tried. ‘We don’t have the facts yet, remember?’

‘I’m not a Lomax.’ He was cold. Empty. Resigned to his fate. ‘I’m not and I’ll never be. I’m sorry if that’s a disappointment to you.’

‘Why would it be?’

No reply.

‘You can’t be sure,’ she pressed.

‘Yes, I can.’

‘But Barnaby said—’

‘Barnaby didn’t need to say.’ He took a pillow from the bed and punched it violently into place. The impact of his fist left a deep penetration. ‘Forget it.’

‘I can’t forget it. You let me into this and I’m not going to abandon you to sort through it on your own. You might not like that, but tough, there it is.’

‘I appreciate your concern but I don’t need it. I don’t need rescuing. I don’t need your help, or anyone’s.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘That’s your problem. Leave it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve asked you to.’

She waited a moment before coming to sit next to him.

His back was to her. Hesitantly she touched his shoulder. He flinched as if he’d been burned, and still he didn’t look at her.

‘I know it might feel like it,’ she said, ‘but you’re not alone in this.’

Charlie bowed his dark head, turned it slightly. His chin was a shiver from her touch. She could feel the coarse stubble on his jaw and the heat of his skin. There was that profile again, arresting and exciting. As if it had been painted in broad, bold brushstrokes by someone who knew what they were doing.

‘Trust me,’ she said.

Finally he met her eye. His stare was hot. ‘I’m not sure I can.’

She returned it. ‘I am.’

There was a knock at the door. Neither of them moved.

‘That’ll be another room come free,’ said Charlie.

‘Yes.’

‘Which is good.’

‘Yes.’

The knock came again. One of the dogs barked.

‘I should get it.’

Seconds passed. Her cheeks were blazing and her throat was in her mouth.

But when she opened the door, she saw it wasn’t another room come free.

Addy Gold was standing on the porch, his grin wide and his blond hair rippling in the wind. In his arms was an enormous bunch of yellow roses.

‘Surprise!’ Addy beamed.

Words escaped her. She stumbled to find a response. ‘Oh. Hi.’

He was holding out the flowers like the hero in one of Susanna’s rom-coms.

‘These are for you.’ He laughed when she numbly took them. ‘Hello? Earth to Olivia? Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

Hastily she stepped outside and pulled the door shut. She shoved her brain into gear. ‘Yes, yes, I am. It’s a shock, that’s all.’

‘A nice one, though, right?’

‘Sure. Of course it is. I just didn’t expect you.’

‘You didn’t get my texts?’

‘Well, yes, but...’ She’d had so much on her mind that she’d ignored them all. He’d sent one on the night Barnaby died saying he’d arrived, but there had been so many other things going on that she hadn’t thought twice about it...

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘It’s taken long enough,’ he joked. With one hand on the door frame and the swathe of honey across his forehead, Addy could just as easily be propping up the counter at the Blue Paradise. Seeing him in this new context was weird. It felt wrong. It wasn’t just in Norfolk that he didn’t belong—it was here, generally, with her.

‘I’ve been crashing with a mate for a bit,’ he mused, ‘he’s got this party pad down the road. Everyone’s wired about Cato being in town and then we heard the old guy bit the dust. A reporter gave me a tip-off about the boat, and the boat gave me here, so...’

‘So.’

‘So,’ he held his arms out, ‘here I am!’

‘Here you are,’ she echoed.

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

Olivia glanced over her shoulder. Thought of Charlie and made a decision.

‘D’you know what?’ she said. ‘I’m hungry. I think I’d rather go out.’

‘Sure.’ He seemed pleased. ‘Whatever you say.’

* * *

T
HE
HARBOUR
AT
Stickling was twinkling with restaurants. It was a popular tourist spot, moonlight shimmering on the water from a clear canopy of stars. Couples roamed waterside and the aroma of seafood drifted through the night.

After supper, they strolled to the jetty. Addy took her hand. It didn’t feel like the same hand that had held hers all those times before. It didn’t feel like the same hand that had touched her at the beach that night, or the same hand she had gazed longingly at since she was eight, wishing and hoping and praying for this day.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he murmured, guiding her to a stop under the pagoda.

She had put those words into his mouth so many times. How it would feel to say them back:
I’ve missed you
,
too.
But now she was here, now it was happening, they didn’t come. She hadn’t missed him. For once, she really hadn’t.

‘I have to tell you something,’ Addy said, against a tantalising soundtrack of rippling wavelets and nodding sailboats. ‘It’s taken me a while to realise, but I can’t deny it any longer. Oli, I feel so strongly about you.’ He claimed her hands. ‘We’ve been friends all our lives, and I guess I never saw it before, but now it’s become so much more. You’re different, since you came back from London.’

His blue eyes sparkled in the night. The studio lights were glowing. The script was word-perfect. Her fourteen—year-old self couldn’t have written it better.

‘You mean since I started working with the Lomaxes?’

He was offended. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

She knew. Over the meal, Addy had filled her in. Since the party he’d taken pains to strike up a liaison with Sam Levy’s agent, and had wasted no time informing the woman he was ‘a close personal friend’ of the Lomaxes (‘which is only half a white lie because you and me are so tight, Oli’). The connection seemed to have played in his favour, with the woman promising to get in touch with Cato’s people to arrange a Kensington lunch. Given that Addy’s isolated dialogue with the man himself could hardly be construed as a meaningful relationship, Olivia felt confident he would soon be putting his feelers out for a reunion. He had a matter of days to be upgraded from Sycophantic Wannabe to All-Time Best Buddy, and as far as he was concerned, she was his hot ticket. She had come on holiday with the family. She could open those doors for him. She could put in a good word. It didn’t much matter who she was, or what she was about, so long as she could do that.

‘When I took the job at Usherwood you were all of a sudden into me.’

‘I was into you way before then!’

‘Crap. When I first came back to the cove you weren’t.’

‘I was working up to it!’ His expression was injured. ‘Thought you weren’t interested, didn’t I? Moving hundreds of miles away kinda drops a hint...’

She searched his face—for truth, for honesty, for clarity, for what?—and realised then that she was never going to discover it, because this wasn’t the face she wanted to be searching, after all. She could spend the rest of her life searching Addy Gold’s face and never unearth anything new, anything that enthralled her, anything that had been for such a long time so deeply and determinedly buried that she was the first person to root it out and dust it off and hold it up to the light.

She had been searching Addy Gold’s face for fifteen years and she still hadn’t found what she was looking for.

It had taken most of her life, but finally she had it figured: Addy was habit. He was what she’d learned to accept. He was all the stuff she used to think she wanted to be, but now realised she didn’t. She had known him before she knew herself.

Can’t you see him for what he really is?

If anyone had treated Beth the way Addy had treated her, she wouldn’t have stood for it for a second. The length of their friendship had always excused his bad behaviour, when in fact it should have been reason enough for the behaviour to stop. Beth had known it, her mum had known it—the two people Olivia cared about most in the world—and she had shut her ears to their counsel because she hadn’t wanted to hear it. Infatuation was not the same thing as love. She understood that now.

‘Look,’ Addy soothed, mistaking her silence for shocked elation, ‘the way I see it is: it’s fate! I believe in all that stuff, you know? The cosmos and asteroids and shit.’ He gazed up at the dome of constellations. ‘See up there? That’s Oreo’s Belt.’