Folly's Child Page 45

  Mark nodded. ‘That’s just how I feel.’ He brought his hand down with a thud on the arm of the chair. ‘How the hell could she do it, Skeet? I just don’t understand.’

  ‘I think I do,’ Harriet said. ‘I think it was just as she said – she honestly kidded herself it was for the best. And she was terribly afraid of losing everything. She had always been in Paula’s shadow, from the time they were children. She just couldn’t imagine Dad would still want her if he knew Paula was alive and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. In a way she was right, I suppose. If Dad had found out he would have had Paula brought home. She would probably have been confined to an asylum here but he would never have been free. Maybe she’d have lived for years and years, a sort of vegetable. And all the while he would have felt obliged to be faithful to her, because that is his way – and because he loved her so much.’

  ‘All the same …’ As yet Mark found it impossible to be so forgiving.

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s made Sally very happy,’ Harriet said. ‘She’s not a bad person, not hard at all really, just a bit weak perhaps. It must have played on her mind dreadfully. But the longer something like that goes on the more impossible it becomes to come clean and tell the truth. The original guilt is compounded by all the years of silence.’

  ‘What a mess! What a horrible, unbelievable mess! Which brings me back to my original question – what are we going to do?’

  ‘About Dad? Nothing – at the moment. There’s nothing we can do. We’ll just have to play it by ear. But what about Theresa?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. In some ways, though it goes against the grain, I almost think Sally is right. Theresa is not looking to find out who she really is. She’s too well adjusted to care. So why rock the boat?’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘I know. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m in love with her it might be for the best to leave her in blissful ignorance. But I am in love with her, and as I said to Sally, I am not prepared to live a lie. Besides which …’ He got up, taking a cigarette from a box on a side table and lighting it. ‘Besides which she could do with some help financially – and that much I reckon we owe her. She’s a talented designer, Skeet – a talent she obviously inherited from Dad – and she’s struggling. She needs backing desperately. A little of what is no more than her birthright would mean an end to her financial worries and she could concentrate on what she’s good at. Dad had backing, first Greg Martin – God help us all – and then Kurt Eklund. If he hadn’t he would never have got where he is today. Theresa deserves something similar and she hasn’t a clue how to go about getting it.’

  ‘Perhaps Sally …?’ Harried suggested.

  ‘I’m sure she would,’ Mark said with a trace of bitterness. ‘ I expect she would quite happily come up with the readies as conscience money if for no other reason – if we were prepared to keep quiet about what we know. But I can’t imagine Theresa taking money from an unknown benefactor unless she knew the reason – and perhaps not even if she did know. She’s not that sort of girl. She’s proud. She would want to know she was being backed for her talent, not for any other reason.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Harriet said. ‘I know how important it was to me to make my own way on the basis of my talent for photography …’ She broke off. ‘Oh shit!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be doing another assignment for Nick. I wonder he hasn’t been on to me about it before now – except that he probably hasn’t a clue where to find me! With all that’s been going on I forgot all about it.’

  ‘What sort of assignment?’ Mark asked, quite glad to give himself a rest from their seemingly insoluble problems.

  ‘Photo stories. I haven’t had a chance to do anything special, but I did shoot off a lot of unusual stuff in Australia – aborigines, wild types in a Darwin bar, that sort of thing, that he might be able to use. In fact,’ she said reflectively, ‘if I’d had time to sift it and put it together properly it might be quite good. It’s certainly the ‘‘other Australia’’ – quite different from what’s pictured in the glossy travel brochures. It was the sort of place I’d like to go back to some time, though I don’t suppose I ever will.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She smiled sadly, remembering the aura of magic she had experienced in the wild Northern Territory. Even now, knowing how Tom had used her, the memory of those days they had shared was imbued with a rosy glow, a happiness she had never experienced before. Not even the sense of betrayal could take that away. But if she were to go back … no, without Tom it could never be the same.

  ‘I’d better mail the stuff to Nick,’ she said. ‘Help me to remember to do it tomorrow, will you?’

  Mark ground out his cigarette.

  ‘I’ll go one better than that. I’ll take it with me.’

  ‘You’re going to London?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Yes. Heaven alone knows what I’m going to say to her. But I think I owe it to myself – and to her – to see Theresa.’

  After being up until the small hours both Harriet and Mark slept late. From her room at the top of the triplex it was impossible to hear the doorbell but afterwards Harriet wondered if some sixth sense had disturbed her when it rang, for she was already awake, going over and over the events of the previous day in her mind, when Jane tapped on the door.

  ‘Miss Varna – are you awake? You have a visitor.’

  ‘A visitor? At this hour?’

  ‘It is ten o’clock. Miss Varna.’

  ‘It’s not! I don’t believe it!’ Harriet shot up in bed. Her head was thumping dully and she felt unbelievably wooden. ‘Ten o’clock! Good grief.’

  ‘It is I’m afraid. I wouldn’t have disturbed you, but he said it was important …’

  ‘He?’ Harried queried, pushing back the duvet.

  ‘A Mr O’Neill. He says he’s an insurance investigator.’

  Tom – here. Her heart pumped madly and the blood pounded painfully at her already aching temples. What did he want? For a delicious heady moment she imagined he had come to sweep her off her feet. Just supposing he should say: ‘ Harriet, I’m here because I am in love with you – I am not going to let any stupid misunderstanding come between us.’ How would she react? Without even thinking about it her racing pulses gave her the answer. Oh Tom, Tom, is that why you are here – because you couldn’t stay away …?

  She pulled on her jeans with hands that trembled, and jerked a comb through her hair, wishing she had the time to improve on her appearance. She didn’t think Tom had ever seen her at her best – and he wasn’t about to this morning. She sprayed her face with Evian water, patted it dry with a tissue, and applied just a touch of mascara. Her eyes still looked heavy but the mascara had the effect of opening them a little more, and because to apply blusher to her bare, still moist, face would probably have looked ridiculous she pinched her cheeks, like some latter-day Scarlett O’Hara, to bring them a little colour. Then she went downstairs.

  Jane had shown him into the room Sally referred to as ‘the den’. Probably the smallest room in the triplex, it was cluttered with soft leather furniture, a television and a full-size pool table. Tom was standing with his back to the door, reading the tides of some of the books on the shelves that lined the walls. He looked even taller than she remembered him, as if he had been shoe-horned into the cluttered room. Her heart came into her mouth and she hesitated in the doorway, made suddenly shy by her fantasies of a few moments ago.

  Tom!’ she said, and it did not come out at all as she intended it, but clipped somehow and slightly strained.

  He turned. ‘Harriet.’ No rush towards her, no eager sweeping her off her feet.

  ‘Why are you here?’ That didn’t sound the way she meant it to either, but she was so screwed up with tension she seemed to have no control over her voice.

  She fancied she saw his mouth tighten a shade.

  ‘I have some news for y
ou.’

  ‘Oh … yes?’ It was all wrong. She was going to be disappointed. Stupid naive idiot for dunking it might be any different. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Greg Martin is dead.’

  The words fell like stones in a pond, flat and heavy in the overheated atmosphere of the small room. She stared at him, all dreams forgotten.

  ‘What?’ she said. And then: ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. Last night, Australian time. I thought you would like to know.’

  ‘Yes. But …’ Her mind was racing in circles. ‘ But how?’

  ‘Maria Vincenti shot him, quite deliberately according to the police chief in Sydney. He had gone back to the house for some documents and she found him in his room upstairs late at night. She could have claimed she thought he was an intruder or even that she shot him in self-defence. But she didn’t. She made a statement saying she did it in cold blood because he deserved it.’

  ‘And so he did!’ Harriet said vehemently. ‘ I think I could have done it myself.’ She was silent for a moment, then added thoughtfully: ‘But now we’ll never know exactly what happened to my mother.’

  ‘We know more than we did,’ Tom said. ‘Apparently Greg told Maria he tricked Paula into a dinghy and then sailed away and left her. His intention was that she should be drowned – and when no more was heard of her he presumed that was what had happened. But I don’t believe that was the end of the story, do you Harriet?’

  Her heart had begun to pound again but this time for a quite different reason.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look, Harriet, the last thing I want to do is upset you. You must believe that. But I have a job to do.’

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt about that!’ Would it ever stop hurting, knowing that he had used her?

  ‘… and I have to say the Aeolie Islands keep figuring in my investigations. Sally went there just after the explosion, didn’t she? And you have just been there – at least you’ve been to Italy and I wouldn’t mind betting the Aeolies were where you were headed. Why, Harriet? You might as well tell me so that we can get this whole thing sorted out and put behind us.’

  She had begun to shake. That was it then. He was on to it, just as she should have known he would be. The whole thing was going to come out and God alone knew what it would do to her father.

  ‘Tom – can’t you leave it … please?’ she begged.

  ‘You know I can’t.’

  ‘Please! For me? We had something, didn’t we? I thought we did, anyway.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Then I beg you, Tom, close your files. My mother is dead. I swear to you – she is dead. Only don’t probe any more. Just – don’t probe any more!’

  His eyes were narrowed. Behind his almost expressionless face Tom the investigator was tussling with Tom the man. But Harriet was not to know that.

  ‘Look – I’m sorry, but I have to get at the truth. I have a job to do,’ he said and she saw only that all the strength she had longed to cling to had turned against her.

  ‘You bastard,’ she whispered. ‘Well, I’m not telling you anything. You’ll have to find it out for yourself, as I did. And I only hope you can live with yourself, hurting people, deceiving them, turning their lives upside down …’

  ‘Now hang on a minute!’ he said sternly. ‘I don’t mean to do any of those things.’

  ‘Well tough – you do!’

  The only people I hurt are the ones who deserve it – the ones who try to cheat the insurance companies – no, dammit, not the companies but everyone who wants to take out a policy. They’re the ones who pay in the end if their premiums are raised to cover the frauds.’

  ‘Perhaps. But innocent people do get hurt all the same. Don’t you care about them?’

  ‘Harriet – you must believe I wasn’t using you. However it looked …’

  ‘I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about my father and all the others like him. He’s a good man. He’s never done a thing to hurt anyone else in his whole life. And he’s certainly never tried to steal money that didn’t belong to him.’

  ‘Then he has nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Oh!’ she exploded. ‘ It’s all black and white to you, isn’t it, no shades of grey at all. You’ve no imagination, that’s your trouble. You just can’t see beyond your objective. That’s all that matters to you. Facts, facts, facts, find the damned truth and never mind who gets hurt in the process.’

  ‘Now listen …’

  ‘Skeet? Is everything ah right?’ It was Mark, alerted by the sound of raised voices.

  ‘No, it’s not all right. Mark, will you please talk to this man for me? Tell him …’

  At that moment the telephone began to shrill and they all stopped, turning towards the sound as if each of them individually had had a premonition about the importance of the call. After a few moments the maid appeared in the doorway, her eyes flicking nervously from Harriet to Mark and back again, her distressed expression filling them with dread.

  ‘It’s the hospital. I think perhaps it might be best if you took the call, Mr Bristow …’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Mark moved towards the door but Harriet was quicker. Her face was ashen. She already knew without being told that it was bad news – perhaps the worst.

  ‘It’s all right, Mark, I’ll take it.’

  The two men waited in awkward silence. A few minutes later Harriet was back. She looked shell-shocked, and she stood very upright in the doorway as if she was carefully holding onto erself, consciously controlling every muscle.

  ‘It’s Dad,’ she said in a small tight voice. ‘The hospital called to give us the news. He died ten minutes ago.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Theresa Arnold knelt on the floor in her workroom pouring boiling water from her temperamental old electric kettle onto a spoonful of instant coffee in a mug. The mug was bright blue and bore the legend ‘You’re the Tops’ above a cartoon of a pleased-looking ginger cat with one ear and a striped bow around its neck. Theresa had bought it – from a market stall – because it amused her and the cat’s smug grin had the power to cheer her up when she was feeling low. Today however she scarcely glanced at it, merely clasped it tightly between hands that felt colder than ever although the weather had taken a turn for the better.

  Tonight she was due to pay her visit to Fergal Hillyard’s apartment – and she was dreading it.

  Oh God, I’m little better than a prostitute! Theresa thought wretchedly, for she had no illusions about the strings that were to be attached to any money he put up to back her. He had made it clear enough and for that at least she was grateful to him. At least he hadn’t pretended to be interested only as an entrepreneur and then swung the conditions on her later. No, he had laid it on the line – be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you – and sick though she felt every time she thought of it Theresa didn’t see that she had any option if she wanted to save her business – and her mother’s investment in it of everything she owned.

  I can’t allow her to lose her house, Theresa thought, sipping the coffee so hot that it scalded her throat. If there was any other way I’d tell him what he could do with his money, but there isn’t.

  In the last week since Fergal had made his qualified offer she had urged Linda to redouble her efforts to find new markets but Linda, who thought she had already done rather well in arranging the meeting with Fergal, was less cooperative than usual and Theresa was ashamed to tell her of the boutique owner’s proposition and the fact that she had, for even a moment, considered doing as he asked. But in any case, no matter how hard Linda worked for her, Theresa didn’t expect she would have had much luck. Everywhere, it seemed, stores and boutiques were pulling their horns in and ‘sales’, as in discounted merchandise, not profits, were the order of the day – not just end-of-season sales but mid-season too, anything to move the garments off the racks. With falling profits no one was in to taking chances of any kind – and certainly not on some unknown designer. And
besides Theresa was fast losing confidence in Linda and herself as a team. Once, she thought, she had been prepared to work all the hours that God sent, in whatever conditions she had to, to make a success of the business. Now all her determination seemed to have gone, sapped away by one blow after another, eroded by worries about how the bills were to be paid and repayments on the loan met, where the next lot of materials were coming from and what the hell would her mother do if she lost everything.

  All week Theresa had found work almost impossible. She tore up page after page of sketches until her wastepaper basket was overflowing. And eventually, unable to think about anything else but the impossibility of the situation, she had succumbed and telephoned the number Fergal had given her. Just hearing his voice made her stomach quake, imagining that smooth smile and remembering the stale smell of his breath had made her want to vomit. But she had held on to herself tightly and tried not to give him any indication of the revulsion she was feeling. It was done now. She had arranged to go to his flat this evening. But the fact that the decision was made did not make her feel any better, any more than it helped to tell herself she was not the first, and would certainly not be the last, who had sold herself for reasons other than love or even desire.

  A door banging at street level made her glance up and she heard footsteps on the stairs. Linda – with some good news just in time to save her? But the steps were heavy and too slow – Linda, bursting with energy, always ran up the stairs. Weasel, then, or one of the others. In her present state Theresa hoped not. She did not feel like being sociable.

  She watched, semi-mesmerised, expecting to see the door handle turn. Instead there was a tap. Theresa was surprised. None of her friends ever bothered to knock.

  ‘Come in,’ she called.

  The door opened and Theresa stared, unable to believe her own eyes.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  And with a small gasp that was part pleasure, part astonishment, she whispered: ‘ Mark!’ He came into the workroom, tall, fair and handsome in sneakers and jeans and a black leather jacket. Her pulses were racing; she felt slightly sick. So often she had day-dreamed about him walking in exactly like this, unannounced, but she hadn’t really believed he ever would. Men didn’t. They came and went – mostly went, especially if you cared deeply for them. Unexpected reunions only happened in romantic novels … didn’t they?