Reversing Over Liberace (31 page)

I'm sorry. My parting remark probably means that my karma is now in negative figures and I'm going to have to suffer reincarnation as a jampot cover, but I couldn't help myself. “I'll see you soon, Luke. I'm really looking forward to next weekend.”

I saw Nadine blanche further and hurry away before she could throw up at me. Having spent the past twenty years as the thrower-upper, I was in no hurry at all to be on the shoe-splatty end of things. Although, I swallowed, experimentally. I couldn't actually remember the last time I'd thrown up. Cal and I had a relationship. God, yes, did we ever, and I hadn't been sick on him for ages. Maybe I had finally “grown out of it”.

 

 

 

We all went back to the house. Cal had promised to cook dinner, Jazz and OC were high on each other, and even Grace was stunned into an unusual silence by the general air of bonhomie and levity which hovered around us all.

“I think”—Clay raised a glass—“that I'd like to drink a toast to Ganda, for all the changes in our lives.”

“I'll drink to Ganda, but I'm not sure what you mean.” I moved the bottle to one side, so that Cal could put down a steaming dish containing apple and ginger-wine pie. “I didn't get what he intended me to from his inheritance. I suppose you got the allotment, but OC got Booter and Snag.”

“Which, kind of indirectly, got me Jazz.” OC grinned. Since the advent of herself and Jazz as a couple, she'd become a lot more relaxed. Gone was the super-housewife personality. All right, she'd never be Slob of the Century but even so, only this morning I'd seen her throw a crisp bag at the bin, miss,
and not instantly get up to throw it away properly
. “It was when he kept coming round to help walk the dogs that I realised what a gorgeous man he really is.”

“That and the hours of hypnotism he put in,” Ash whispered to me. “It was like Derren Brown with spaniels.”

“Sssh.” I kicked his ankle.

“And Bree”—Clay nodded at his younger brother—“is writing a book based on all the stuff Ganda left him.”

“It's from Ganda's diaries and letters. The story of an inventor and some of the crazy gadgets he comes up with, and how he finds his true love.” It was the longest, most coherent sentence I'd ever heard Bree say.

“
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, anyone?”

“No, Ash, it's much more realistic than that. Anyway, I've got a publisher for it and they want to publish some of Ganda's other notebooks. Like
Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady
, only with gadgets.”

Blimey. Bree was almost fluent now.

“What about Ash?”

“Ah, well, my theory all falls down there a bit. Still got the twelve pairs of waders, Ash?”

“Yep. But I'm taking them to the tip tomorrow, if anyone wants to come for a ceremonial seeing-off.”

I caught Cal's eye and we grinned at each other. I hadn't come so badly out of the inheritance thing. Maybe the half a million pounds hadn't materialised, but I'd got Cal, I'd got a whole new life beckoning to me from fifteen acres of moorland and a small, white house. Oh, and a nose, in a matchbox.

 

 

 

I couldn't settle at work on Friday. In fact, we were all edgy, twitchily enervated by the muggy heat, snappy with each other and miserable with overwork.

“The twins wouldn't go to bed last night, till midnight,” Katie said. “They said it was ‘too hot'. Were you hot last night, Clive?”

“I'm hot every night, darlin'.”

I looked at her. “Why do you even bother?”

“I keep hoping he'll break his programming.”

I fiddled with a notepad, tearing little strips off the corners, shredding them and starting again. I couldn't concentrate on work, even though I knew I should. I
had
to get this article in shape before the paper went to press on Tuesday, and there were still the pictures to sort out.

“Why don't you go home, Will?”

“What, and sit around thinking? Can't. I need to be occupied.”

“Go round to your man's then. I'm sure he'll occupy you.”

Clive went “hur hur” in the background. Katie reached out a foot, depressed the handle under his chair and watched smugly as the seat shot downwards, causing him to bang his chin on his desk.

“Cal's busy, sorting things out for tomorrow. I don't want to get in the way.”

“Well, go and help your sister with the baby then. I'm sure she'd be glad of someone to take Grace out for a push so she can catch up with her beauty sleep.”

“She's busy, too. She's moving in with Jazz.”

“In with
Jazz
? Is she mad? His place is only a short hop from being an anthrax zone.” Katie sighed. “I still think you should be somewhere else, Will. I'll finish the article for you.”

“Do you know what to say?”

“Of course I do. Now, just go.”

“If Luke rings…”

“I'll tell him you've gone home early to pack. All right?”

So I went home. The house felt strangely underoccupied without OC and Grace. Ash had gone off to the tip on Monday and not been seen since, and even Clay had gone out somewhere, so there was complete quiet as I let myself in.

Thunder rumbled. The humidity made my head ache and I rested my forehead against the cool wall of the hallway, slumping against it with my eyes closed. I stayed like this for a few minutes. I felt flat and dopey with the combination of muggy air and the logistics for tomorrow, so the quiet was welcome. Outside I heard the birds stop thrashing about in the hedge, an unnatural peace descending as everything hurried for shelter from the oncoming storm.

Thunder rolled again and I straightened away from the wall. As I turned to go through the kitchen to the back door, I heard a rattle behind me and swivelled in time to see an envelope flutter to the floor, landing with a tiny pfff alongside the mat and sliding a few inches on the wood boards.

I recognised the envelope without needing to pick it up. Another of those anonymous letters, probably still saying “you don't deserve it”, although in a sudden rush of creativity the unknown sender had managed “I feel sorry for you” (very big of them) and a couple of “I hope you learn your lesson”. Not exactly Shakespearian, but disturbing nonetheless.

This one, flopping to the floor like a dying goldfish, as my head pounded and the thunder bundled about, was the last straw. Angry, slightly scared and incredibly frustrated, I swept to the door and flung it open, leaping outside and intercepting the sender just before the garden gate.

“Ow! You're hurting me.”

“Serves you right, Nadine. What the hell are you playing at?”

Sulkily Nadine rubbed her arm where I'd grabbed hold of her. “I'm not.”

Sorry, do I sound unsurprised? I'd kind of, sort of,
almost
figured it out when I'd seen her desk, an imagination-free zone filled with cutesy toys and knick-knacks, all hailing from the fuchsia end of the spectrum. Who else would write such curiously childish notes? And then, as though my disbelieving stare finally shook something loose in her head, she burst out, “He's lying to you, he
doesn't
love you and he's not
really
going to marry you and he only went out with you so that you'd give him money. He loves
me
and we're going to have a baby and get married and—”

“Well,
duh
, dear.”

Nadine stopped, mid-tirade. “What? You
knew
?” Her legs seemed to give way and her weight slumped against me. “But if you knew, then why are you going away with him this weekend?” Her head began shaking from side to side. “He won't sleep with you, you know. He's told me about you trying to seduce him, wearing stupid underwear and prancing about half-naked to try and turn him on, but he won't do it because he loves
me
.”

I rolled my eyes and waited.

“And as soon as he's taken you for every penny, we're going to go to Canada and get married and have our baby and he's going to buy a design company so that I can work with him and he'll do the designs and I'll be his model and…”

Now
I
was the one shaking my head. “Nadine. Listen to me. Luke Fry is a liar and a fraud. I know you won't believe me because you love him, but come with me and I'll introduce you to someone who can prove it. If we
can't
convince you, then I promise I'll forget all about the letters and you can go back to him and start your new life in Canada, okay?”

“You're hurting me again.”

“It's not far.”

Dragging Nadine, who moaned and protested all the way, I headed for Cal's flat. When we arrived, I dumped her on his sofa and asked him to show her all the evidence we'd acquired against Luke Fry, and whilst I told her the story of how he'd used her, Cal dropped printed sheets in her lap. Everything we'd taken off his computer, all the letters he'd written to her, the emails, the files he'd held on me and the other women, the archived internet chats, everything.

At first Nadine wouldn't even look at the papers. She kept looking from me to Cal as though hoping that this was just a simple abduction. It was when I began to describe how Luke had pretended to buy the flat, and how we'd had sex there, that she flinched.

“I bet he told you that he refused to sleep with me, did he? What, that I begged, but he managed to keep me at bay with promises? And you were scared that he might give in, that maybe this weekend would be the one? Nadine, this weekend, after I'd given him the money, of course, he was going to skip out on both of us.”

“No. We're going to Canada!” It was the first real reaction she'd shown.

“Look.” I showed her the conversation with Argento in Bristol. “Here. Where he says he'll be coming to the South West on ‘business'. That's next week. What's the betting that this ‘phone call' he's talking about making to her was where he set up a meeting? He's going to meet her, Nadine—next week—with the money from me in his pocket.”

“I…don't…” Protectively Nadine clutched at her bump. Then with a small sigh she fainted and slid to the floor in a strangely serene tangle of limbs.

Cal looked at me. “What do we do?”

“Leave her there for now. She'll be all right. But we
have
to get her on our side, Cal. If she goes to Luke and tells him that I know all about him, he'll drop from the radar so fast that even your boys won't be able to track him.”

“And we're certain that she's not part of it? That he really
isn't
going to whisk her off to Canada for a good old colonial lifestyle in the Rockies?”

“What do
you
think? He'll have gone through any money Nadine had, and you've seen what he said to this Argento woman. Did that sound like a man who was planning to emigrate any time soon?”

“She's pregnant.”

“Probably poor and pregnant by now. He's a wanker. Old news.”

“I just meant, he is
such
a bastard.”

I flashed him a quick smile. “Can I leave her with you for a bit? I've got to go and make some phone calls about tomorrow, and she might take the story better from you than me. She thinks I've got an axe to grind.”

“I'll do my best. But what if she
won't
co-operate?”

“Then you'll have to use your charm, won't you?”

“Which one? The shrunken human head or the silver horseshoe?”

“Very funny.”

“Willow.” Cal reached across the prostrate body on the floor and took my hand. “You realise that if Luke even so much as
suspects
that you know about him, he might not just disappear. He could be dangerous.”

The thought had occurred to me. “That's why I have to make sure that he is one hundred percent convinced of my undying devotion to him. Plus, of course, I have the world's most powerful aphrodisiac at my disposal.”

“Mmm? It's working for me, by the way.”

“Oh this one wouldn't work on you, you've got enough of your own. I'll call you later, okay?”

“Be careful.” His eyes were guarded now. “I don't want anything to happen to you.”

“Not, I would bet, quite as much as
I
don't want anything to happen to me. See you tomorrow.” And I skipped off down the stairs, with the sting of adrenaline sharp in my mouth.

Chapter Thirty

By Saturday morning the storm had swept clear of York, leaving trails of gravel strewn with petals and branches about the streets as though a thousand careless landscape gardeners had passed by. I was up as soon as it was light, pacing about my bedroom, muttering to myself—there was still so much that could go wrong, so much that I couldn't leave to trust, to faith, to
Cal
.

But I had to, didn't I?

It had to work. It just
had
to.

At least I knew that Luke would be there. Whoever,
whatever
else might go wrong, Luke would be there. Yesterday's phone call had made sure of that. Although he'd been a bit cool to start off with.

“How did the gig go? I would have come and said hello as soon as I realised it was you, but you were…chatting to that man.” A clever insertion of a pause, long enough to make me wonder whether he'd seen anything incriminating, until I realised we hadn't been
doing
anything incriminating.

“It was good, thanks. I thought I'd ring to let you know that the bank is releasing the money, so that I can write you out a cheque tomorrow, if you like. At the hotel? Are you still on for that?”

The word “money” acted on Luke like Viagra cream applied direct to his libido. Suddenly he was the besotted, devoted boyfriend, couldn't do enough for me. Did I want picking up? Could he bring anything? Oh, and by the way, the dress I'd worn on Sunday to perform in—stunning, made me look like Jessica Alba.