Sins (45 page)

There was only one way to find out. Grabbing her keys, she raced for the door, locking it behind her, and then ran down the stairs to the main exit to the building.

It was almost dusk, that odd twilight time when the sky remains light whilst closer to earth the air is heavier, somehow, and darker. The street was empty–too late for people to be going out and too early for them to be going home. Rose heard the distant growl of the E type’s engine.

Something moved in the gutter, a shimmer of gold fabric fluttering in the wind.

She ran to the roadside and crouched down, her heart thumping as she looked at Emerald’s still body. As her
anxious gaze adjusted to the growing darkness Rose could see that the gold dress Emerald was wearing was ripped, exposing her creamy flesh. Hastily she removed her own jacket and placed it over her.

The dark head moved and Emerald gave a low moan.

She was alive. Rose released a shaky breath, only now willing to admit how much she had feared the worst.

Emerald opened her eyes and then blinked before saying flatly, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Don’t move,’ Rose warned her. ‘Just stay where you are whilst I go and get help.’

‘No.’

Rose could hear fear as well as arrogance in her voice as Emerald looked down the road. Fearing that the E type and its driver might come back?

Rose’s lips compressed. She could guess who the driver was. Everyone knew about Emerald’s affair with the supposedly reformed East End gangster.

‘I’m all right,’ Emerald told Rose as she tried to struggle to her feet and had to stop, collapsing back on her knees when nausea from the pain overwhelmed her.

‘Emerald,’ Rose protested, automatically going to her aid and putting her arms round her to support her.

‘Just get me a taxi, will you, so that I can get home. I’ll be all right once I’m there.’

‘You need to see a doctor. You could have broken something…’

Emerald shook her head. ‘I’m fine. It was nothing. Just a bit of a…misunderstanding. Help me up,’ she commanded, clinging to Rose’s arm as she gave in and helped her to her feet.

Rose was relieved in a way that Emerald could be so demanding and, well, so very Emerald. For a moment, seeing her there lying in the gutter, she’d been really afraid.

Now, though, that Emerald was on her feet, clutching Rose’s jacket around her ripped dress, Rose was appalled to see her split lip and the cut on the side of her face. And for all that Emerald might say she was all right and had managed to stand up she was still doubled over, the only colour in her face coming from the bloodstains on her skin.

Rose came to a swift decision. ‘I’ll take you,’ she told her. ‘I’ve got the Mini round the corner.’

She was still supporting Emerald, and she could feel the sag of relief from her body, far more telling than any words.

Once they were in the car, Emerald leaned back in the passenger seat, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow, quite obviously in no state to make conversation, ask questions or give orders.

Rose didn’t care what Emerald said, her cousin needed urgent medical attention, and that was exactly what she was going to get. She set off west as fast as she dared.

It was only when she heard the screech of an ambulance siren that Emerald opened her eyes, but by then it
was too late. Rose had parked the Mini right outside the entrance to the casualty department.

A uniformed hospital porter was bearing down on them.

‘You can’t park here,’ he began as Rose wound down the window.

‘It’s my cousin. She’s…she’s had an accident–a–a fall–and I’m dreadfully worried about her.’

The porter looked at Emerald and then grunted. ‘Stay there. I’ll bring you a wheelchair.’

‘I told you to take me home,’ Emerald hissed furiously to Rose once he had gone.

‘And I told you that you needed medical attention,’ Rose fired back, amazed to realise how easy she was finding it to hold her own with Emerald after all this time.

The porter had returned with a wheelchair and a medical orderly, the two of them expertly getting Emerald out of the car and into the wheelchair, ignoring her protests.

As soon as she had seen them safely wheeling Emerald into the hospital, Rose restarted the Mini. There was nothing for her to stay for now was there? Emerald was perfectly capable of sorting herself out and wasn’t going to want or need her around. And besides, why should she put herself out even more for someone who had always treated her so badly?

The orderly wheeled Emerald into casualty. Lighting up a cigarette, he told her off-handedly, ‘You’re going to have a long wait with it being a Saturday. Place is full of them mods and rockers wot was having a bit of
a ruckus on the Edgware Road earlier. Your old man had a go at you, ‘as he? Given you a fair old pastin’, by the looks of it.’

Emerald’s mouth compressed. How typical of Rose to have brought her somewhere like this. No doubt it had amused her to abandon her here. Emerald’s vision suddenly blurred.

‘Here, you’ve dropped this,’ the orderly told her, handing her Rose’s jacket.

The denim felt unfamiliar beneath her touch. Emerald wouldn’t dream of wearing something like that. She started to release it–to reject it–and then for some reason instead she tightened her hold on it and gripped it, lifting it towards her face. It smelled of Rose herself and the light floral scent she always wore. There was a tight painful ache at the back of Emerald’s throat, that brought more tears into her eyes.

Crying? Her? For Rose, whom she loathed and despised?

Rose had almost reached Cheyne Walk when she stopped and turned round, mentally deriding herself for every yard she drove back to the hospital, as she listed all the reasons why there was no need or point in her doing what she was now doing.

The first thing Rose saw when she reached the casualty department door was Emerald, sitting in a wheelchair, tears in her eyes and clutching Rose’s own denim jacket like a child holding a comforter.

Emerald hadn’t seen her and instinctively Rose stepped back into the shadows. Her heart was pounding heavily
and unsteadily. She wanted to turn and leave–run away from what she had seen and the demands having seen it imposed on her. She had every reason still to dislike and resent Emerald. There was a tight ball of unwanted emotion squeezing her throat.

Damn, damn, damn, she swore under her breath but she still stepped forward, swinging inside with enough noise to make sure Emerald saw her and could compose herself.

Rose had come back? Emerald’s fingers tightened around the denim, whilst the orderly greeted Rose’s return with obvious relief, announcing, ‘I’ll leave ‘er wiv yer now ’cos it’s time I went off duty.’

He’d gone before either of them could object.

‘I suppose you’ve come back for this,’ Emerald told Rose, throwing the denim jacket towards her with contemptuous disdain.

‘No,’ Rose told her equably, scooping up the jacket, ‘that isn’t why I came back. Has anyone seen you yet?’ she asked without giving Emerald the chance to launch another salvo.

‘No. And I don’t need to see anyone. I’m perfectly all right.’

Rose arched an eyebrow and opened the plain black leather Hermès Kelly bag she had treated herself to with her first commission cheque because she had loved it and because it was large enough to hold her writing pad, pens and pencils, and a tape measure. Riffling in it, she found her compact, which she handed to Emerald without a word.

Emerald opened it and looked at her own reflection,
aghast. Her lip was swollen and crusted with dried blood. Her cheekbone was swollen and shiny, and there was matted blood in her hair from the cut on the side of her face.

‘Well, I feel all right,’ she told Rose, but shakily.

To Rose’s relief a nurse came bustling up. She sized them both up with what was obviously an experienced eye, looking from Emerald to Rose, and then asking Rose, ‘Name?’

Rose knew exactly what was meant by Emerald’s indrawn breath. Emerald was a well-known socialite whose name would be recognised even if right now her face couldn’t be.

Stepping forward, Rose said firmly, ‘It’s Em-Emma. Emma Pickford.’

The dark gaze studied Rose again. Because of the way she looked? Because of the way she spoke? Probably the combination of both, Rose thought.

‘Address?’

Quietly, Rose gave the nurse the address of the Cheyne Walk house.

‘Friends, are you?’ the nurse asked.

‘We’re cousins,’ Rose told her, earning herself another swiftly assessing look. She knew what she was thinking–how would they be related?

‘So I’ll put you down as next of kin then, shall I?’

This time it was Emerald who answered her saying, quickly, ‘Yes, please.’

‘
Yo u r
name then?’ the nurse asked Rose.

‘Rose. Rose Pickford.’

‘So what happened then?’

They looked at one another, and then quickly, before she could change her mind, Rose fibbed, ‘We were at a party. We went with some friends–I can’t really remember where it was. There were lots of people there, and as we were leaving Em-Emma…I fell down the stairs.’

‘And landed on her?’ The nurse turned to Emerald. ‘I suppose you’re going to stick to the same story, are you?’

Emerald nodded.

‘Mmm. Right. Well, you can stay here,’ the nurse told Rose, going to the back of the wheelchair.

‘No. I want her to come with me,’ Emerald said.

For a moment Rose thought the nurse was going to refuse but then a commotion by the door as some new patients arrived distracted her and as she left Emerald she called, ‘Third cubicle on your left.’

The young doctor was thorough and patient, finally pronouncing that Emerald was very lucky that she had got off as lightly as she had, with badly bruised ribs and what would probably end up as a black eye.

‘We’ll get you cleaned up and bandaged, and then you can go home. You’ll be in pain for a few days, so I’ll give you a prescription for sleeping pills and painkillers. If you aren’t starting to feel better within the week then you’ll need to go and see your own GP. You’ll need to have someone with you for tonight. I don’t think there’s any risk of concussion but just in case, I can only release you if you can assure me that you won’t be on your own.’

‘Perhaps you ought to stay here in the hospital—’ Rose began in alarm. But Emerald told the doctor, ‘She’ll be with me. She’s my cousin.’

It was just gone two o’clock in the morning when they finally got back into the Mini.

Rose started the engine. She felt completely drained of energy, exhausted and shivery with the aftermath of shock.

As she reached for the handbrake, Emerald, who hadn’t spoken to her since they had left casualty, looked straight ahead through the windscreen and said quietly, ‘Thanks.’

Rose wasn’t sure which of them was the more astonished, her or Emerald herself, who was now looking away from her and demanding fretfully, ‘For goodness’ sake, are you going to drive this thing or are we going to sit here all night?’

New York. Sunshine. Pretty girls. This was the life, Ollie acknowledged, or at least it would have been if he hadn’t been having to work with Princess Frigid Knickers today.

He’d been in
Vogue
’s general office the previous week, waiting to see the fashion editor when he’d overheard some of the girls talking about Ella, marvelling about the fact that she was keeping some guy or other dangling. He was quite a catch, according to what Ollie had overheard, and they were bemused by Ella’s attitude to him. Well, he wasn’t. He’d seen in London how she’d worked that ice princess stuff of hers. He felt sorry for any poor sod who got the hots for her. They’d have to take a blowtorch to the ice. Personally he liked his women hot and willing. Luckily for him there was no shortage of his kind of girl, either in London or here in New York.

He was fortunate that
Vogue
had offered him the use of an apartment belonging to a fellow photographer–a photojournalist who was working overseas for a year. The apartment came with everything Ollie needed, and a view over Central Park. The photojournalist was well connected and had family money. Oliver too had family
money now, of course, thanks to his real father. Funny how he’d not been able to stop wondering and wishing about the man who had fathered him: wondering what he’d really been like and wishing that he had spent more time with him. That’s what happened when life held too many unanswered questions and a kid didn’t get to know who his dad was until it was too late.

This had to be the longest interview and photo shoot she’d ever been involved with, Ella thought tiredly.

She’d been sick in the night–something she’d eaten, she suspected–and although she was fine now, the combination of lost sleep, a demanding interviewee, an even more demanding photographer, and the fact that the post had brought her the most intoxicating letter from Brad, telling her that he was wishing the summer away so that he could be with her, had resulted in her feeling both wrung out and somehow also weirdly elated.

The interview had gone well, and she’d got some wonderful quotes, not because of her interview technique so much as Oliver’s ability to use his well-documented sexual chemistry on any and every woman–except, of course, her.

Maisie Fischerbaum, the eighty-year-old philanthropist whose art collection was on loan to the Guggenheim and promised to it after her death, had been a wealth of anecdotes–some so potentially scandalous that they were unprintable. She and her late husband had, it seemed, known and met everyone, including President Kennedy, whose death, even now, was so raw and unbelievable, and whilst Oliver flirted with her and photographed her,
Ella had kept on asking questions and taking down the answers in shorthand.

The afternoon had been punctuated by the frequent appearances of Maisie’s maid, bringing in Martinis, Maisie’s favourite cocktail, and Ella had been amazed to see just how much the old lady could drink without it affecting her, other than to make her increasingly flirtatious with Oliver, and even more garrulous.