by Susan Lewis
Naturally David had taken a note of the boy’s details, which he’d passed on to Dee at the end of the session, along with all his other notes and instructions on how to proceed with each of the cases.
Dee was still at the church now, making sure the place was empty before locking up, but she’d be following on any minute to join them for a bite to eat at the Globe at Newton St Loe.
‘How are you getting to the station after lunch?’ David was asking Miles as they crossed the main road and started down the alley next to the Old Bank pub.
‘Dee’s offered,’ Miles replied, fishing out his mobile as it started to ring. ‘Ah, Tristan,’ he declared, referring to one of the researchers. ‘About time too.’
As he took the call David strode on into the car park to find his Mercedes standing out like royalty at a jumble sale amongst all the old Fords and Vauxhalls belonging to the pub’s patrons. It was a stark reminder of why he generally let Dee drive him to constituency events in her old Volvo, because flaunting his wealth in the face of voters was a singularly insensitive and unpleasant way to behave.
After removing his jacket, he was just thinking about calling Lisa when he realised that the key he was using to open the car was refusing to go in the lock. He checked to make sure it was the right one and tried again, but it still wouldn’t fit.
Starting to get annoyed, he attempted to force it in but there was simply no way it would go.
Gritting his teeth he tried a different key, but that wasn’t any good either. Unable to believe it, he stood back to get a good look at the car. There was no doubt it was his, The Times was on the back seat where he’d dropped it earlier, and so was the pile of catalogues Lisa had given him to take back to London.
Feeling more frustration starting to boil up inside him he tried the keys again, and when they still wouldn’t work he completely lost it. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he raged as Miles came up behind him. ‘I can’t open the damned car.’
Miles blinked in surprise as he looked at the keys. ‘Where’s the remote?’ he asked cautiously.
David’s face was rigid as he turned to him. ‘The keys won’t fit,’ he seethed furiously, as though somehow it was Miles’s fault.
‘But you don’t usually …’ Miles began. Then, ‘Shall I give them a go?’
Slapping them into Miles’s hand David stood aside, so angry now that he was tempted to drive a fist into the bloody car – or Miles, if he somehow succeeded where he had ridiculously failed.
Miles glanced at the keys, then at David. ‘These aren’t for the car,’ he said, almost apologetically.
David glared at him.
Swallowing drily, Miles asked, ‘Do you have the ones with the remote control?’
Feeling his temper surging back to fever pitch, David thrust his jacket at Miles and began patting his shirt and trouser pockets so hard it hurt.
‘They’re not here,’ Miles said, after checking the jacket. ‘You must have left them at the church. I’ll go and see.’
As Miles ran back across the car park David dropped his head in his hands, the ferocity of his temper abating now almost as quickly as it had flared. Why the heck had he flown off the handle like that? They were just keys for God’s sake, and so he’d made a mistake. It happened. He had a lot on his mind, and for some bizarre reason he’d momentarily forgotten that he had a remote control to open the car doors. Yet how could he have forgotten when it was something he did every day without even thinking? And he never used to get angry over trivial things, or worked up about issues that could easily be resolved, so what the hell was going on with his tolerance level? He had to get a grip on himself, because outbursts like that just weren’t acceptable, or indeed rational. And when he added them to the feelings of anxiety he’d been suffering over all sorts of things lately, such as how far he wanted to take his career, and whether Lisa would still want him if he chose to remain a backbench MP, or even if he was actually ready to get married again, he could really start to think he was losing the plot. Where on earth was it all coming from? It wasn’t as if he doubted his feelings for her, or hers for him. At least, he was sure of them most of the time, but he couldn’t deny there were moments, like now, when for no logical reason he found himself in an odd place of disorientation and even insecurity, as though he’d somehow fallen out of kilter with himself, never mind his own life.
None of it was making any sense. He was losing a grip on what he was thinking, and even feeling, and whenever he asked himself why it could be, his mind immediately began charging off past all common sense and reason to plunge headlong over the horizon into a nightmare of imagined possibilities.
Taking a deep breath, he lifted his head and stared across the car park to where Dee and Miles were hurrying towards him. Seeing how worried they looked, he quickly pulled himself together, assuming the kind of self-mocking smile they knew well as he held out a hand to take the keys Miles was dangling ready to drop into it.
‘Dee found them on the desk,’ Miles told him. ‘They must have been under some paperwork or something, and you didn’t notice when you picked it up.’
Assuming an even greater irony, David said, ‘Well, hopefully they’ll get me into the flat when I return to London.’
Miles’s laugh rang awkwardly as he glanced at Dee, who was still looking perplexed.
‘Come on then,’ David said cheerily, ‘let’s go and eat, shall we? I don’t know about you two, but I’m starving,’ and using the remote to flip up the locks he got into the car, ready to drive away.
‘Are you all right?’ Amy asked, bringing the car to a stop outside Bristol Parkway station. ‘You’ve been very quiet since we left the caterer’s. Are you having second thoughts about him?’
Lisa smiled as she looked at her. ‘No, I loved what he gave us today, didn’t you? And his testimonials are very impressive.’
‘So you’re definitely going with him?’
‘Absolutely. I told him so before we left. Didn’t you hear me?’
‘I was on the phone, remember?’ Amy glanced at the time. ‘It’s another twenty minutes before the next train, and I’m not in a rush, so come on, what’s really going on with you? You’re hiding something from me, and I want to know what it is.’
Lisa sighed and let her head fall back. ‘It’s nothing really,’ she said. ‘I just … I don’t know.’
‘Lisa,’ Amy said in a tone Lisa knew well.
Turning to her, Lisa said, ‘OK, tell me this, does David seem all right to you?’
Amy’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I’m not sure. Well, I suppose I keep wondering if the stress of everything is starting to get to him a bit. I told him a month ago, when he decided we should get married in August, that it was all too soon, but he wouldn’t listen. He wants to do it then, and that’s that.’
‘Are you saying that you don’t?’
‘No, not at all. Most of the time I can hardly wait, but actually there’s no particular reason to rush, and if we were to postpone everything by a year maybe that would be enough time for Rosalind to come around, and if she did …’
‘Hang on, hang on. You can’t let her rule your lives,’ Amy protested. ‘You want this wedding as much as David does.’
‘I know, but think how we’d have felt if Mum had raced off up the aisle with someone else less than a year after Dad went. We wouldn’t have liked it very much, would we?’
‘Probably not, but if it was what she wanted, and he was a good man, we’d have found a way to live with it.’
‘That’s just it. I definitely don’t think Rosalind sees me as “good”.’
Turning in her seat, Amy said, ‘Listen, David will find a way of dealing with his daughter, and in the meantime all you have to do is focus on the wedding, because it’s going to be an absolutely wonderful day. You’ll be the most beautiful bride. He’ll be the proudest man alive. All your closest friends and family will be there cheering you on. The music
ians and the minister are flying in from all over to make it special for you, and as far as I’m concerned, you couldn’t deserve it more. So promise me you’re not going to let anything, or anyone, spoil it for you, particularly not her.’
Lisa smiled and squeezed Amy’s hand. ‘OK, I promise,’ she whispered, in spite of knowing that she was no more able to control Rosalind than Amy was.
Rosalind was sitting at the kitchen table with the contents of her father’s briefcase laid out in front of her. There had been such a fuss before he’d left this morning, trying to find his car keys, which had finally turned up in Lawrence’s room, that after dumping his holdall and some files on the back seat of the car, he’d promptly managed to go off without his briefcase. This, coming hot on the heels of the peculiar incident yesterday that Dee had told her about, when he’d tried to use his front-door keys to open the Mercedes, was yet further proof, to her mind, of the state of agitation Lisa Martin had worked him into over weddings and new houses and God only knew what other kinds of demands she was making, when what he should really be doing was dealing with his grief.
He did feel it, didn’t he? Surely he must.
Naturally, she’d called him the minute she’d found the briefcase on the drive, but by then he was already halfway up the M4, so she was now waiting for a courier to come and collect it.
She’d enjoyed having him to stay last night. For once they’d managed to spend some time together without it descending into bitterness or tears, but that was only because they’d made a pact on the phone before he turned up that they wouldn’t discuss his girlfriend, or the wedding. She’d told him she didn’t want him to come if it was only to talk about her, but he’d assured her that all he wanted was to make sure they were friends before he returned to London – and to be certain that she knew he’d never allow anything to come between them.
Quite how he was going to manage that when he seemed so determined to marry the Martin woman, Rosalind had no idea. However, since Miles had revealed the fact that some new information had come to light which could change things quite radically, she’d been feeling a little more hopeful that her father was going to be brought to his senses long before the fateful day dawned.
Then, only moments ago, her confidence had faltered badly and was now draining away as she gazed down at everything she’d taken out of his briefcase. She knew she shouldn’t have gone looking, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself, and the card she’d found that he’d written, but not yet sent, was so romantic that she knew, had it been meant for her, from Jerry, it would have made her the happiest woman alive.
On the front in an uneven red foil script were four lines, one above the other: I love you for ever; je t’aime; my one and only; love of my life. Inside, in his own hand, was, You make me so happy, my darling. I wonder by my troth, what thou and I did till we loved.
Rosalind had no idea which poet he was quoting, but it hardly mattered. Simply to think of her mother, and how little she seemed to mean to him now, filled her heart with so much sadness she could hardly bear it. It was as though his marriage had faded into a distant background, leaving no more than a vague imprint on his memory that he barely even looked at now. All he could see was her. More than thirty years of marriage, bringing up a child, building a business, sharing dreams, seeing one another through the bad times, and being there for each other in ways that made two people one, were rendered nothing by this card.
It wasn’t hard for her to imagine how her mother would feel were she able to see it, because Rosalind knew what it was like to feel insecure in a husband’s love. That her dear, kind, wonderful mother who’d absolutely adored her father should have suffered those terrible feelings too was even worse than having gone through it herself.
‘Your father’s a good man,’ her mother had said weakly during the days before she’d finally let go. ‘He stood by me, and you … He’s always been there for us, always, and I know he’ll never let you down, because he loves you very much. You mean everything to him, Rosalind, far more than I ever did.’
But she had meant something to him, Rosalind was sure of it, and more than just something, because he’d loved her too. He did, Mum, he really did, and he’s lost without you, I just know it.
As more tears trickled down her cheeks, Rosalind screwed up the card and let it drop to the floor where she squashed it underfoot. He might wonder what had happened to it, but she didn’t care. Let him think he’d lost it, the way he had his keys this morning … The pretence of what had happened then twisted the grief inside her to a point that made her sob out loud. He’d blamed himself for being careless, saying he must have put them down when he’d gone to say goodnight to Lawrence, but they’d both known that it was much more likely that Lawrence had hidden them, because he didn’t want him to leave. To think of Lawrence feeling deeply enough to do something like that was tearing at her in a way that almost nothing else ever could. He showed so little emotion, gave almost nothing of himself, yet something in him had connected with her father, and because of that, and because she loved them both so much, she must pray to God that she was never forced to deliver an ultimatum to her father. If she did, and he chose her, what on earth would she and Lawrence do?
Chapter Six
‘WHAT THE HELL are you doing here?’ Lisa cried in shock.
There was only one person in the world she’d ever have greeted like that and she really didn’t want to believe he was sitting there now, grinning up at her in the way he’d always considered devilish, as though he had every right to be at this table in Gordon Ramsay’s Claridge’s, when as far as she was concerned it was Brendan who should be there, and if not Brendan then anyone, anyone but the man she was glaring at.
Tony Sommerville rose to his feet and before she could stop him he’d swept her into a crushing embrace. ‘It’s wonderful to see you too,’ he told her, giving a wink to the waiter. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’
‘Let me go,’ she said through her teeth.
‘Did you say champagne?’ he asked, tilting his tousled dark head to one side. ‘Great idea. Should have thought of it before, cos this is certainly cause for celebration. Make that a bottle of the best,’ he told the waiter. ‘Pink,’ he added, ‘the lady has always had a preference for it, and I don’t imagine that’s changed.’ Then before the waiter could beat him to it, he pulled out a chair for her to sit down.
Since her legs had gone weak with shock she hit the seat with an unladylike thud. ‘Where is Brendan?’ she demanded, as Tony returned to his own chair, his familiar style of waistcoat and collarless shirt over jeans stirring memories that instantly annoyed her for the way they were trying to evoke a fondness that had no more business at this table than he did. Then, getting a picture of what had happened, how he’d come to be here, she said, ‘No, don’t bother answering that. This is obviously a set-up. You talked him into it … I’d forgotten how far back you two go. What a fool. Why didn’t I see this coming?’
Tony’s chin was resting on one hand as he grinned at her lovingly.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she hissed, glancing round to see if anyone might be watching.
Slapping his own face for misbehaving, he straightened his expression while completely failing to douse the merriment in his eyes. Tall and dark he certainly was, but hardly classically handsome, since his lazy blue eyes were too narrow, his beaky nose was boxed crooked, and his smile … Well, she had to admit it had a tendency to come good there, because it was as dazzling and captivating as ever, damn it to hell.
Angered by how flustered she was, she said, too fiercely, ‘I’ll ask again, what are you doing here?’
‘You know,’ he replied, seeming puzzled, ‘before you came, I was trying to work out how long it’s been since we last saw each other. Can it really be three years since you walked out without as much as a goodbye?’
Her eyes widened with amazement. That certainly wasn’t how she remembered it. However, it wasn’t a subject she cared to
get into, so rather than grace his question with an answer she merely stared at him hard, waiting for him to explain the reason for this subterfuge. Her heart had only performed the ungainly somersault it had when she’d first seen him out of habit, or shock, she assured herself. Probably both.
‘I’m here,’ he said, ‘to save you from yourself.’
She started. ‘What?’
Perfectly mildly, he said, ‘When I heard you were getting married … Well, you and I both know that you’re not cut out for it, Lisa. You’re looking stunning, by the way, and how old will you be next birthday?’
Torn between wanting to slap him and getting up and walking out, she heard herself saying, ‘Forty, the same as you, but clearly only one of us is wearing well.’
Apparently enjoying her riposte, he sat back as the waiter turned up with the champagne, and nodded approval when he was shown the label.
Though sorely tempted to refuse a glass, if only to take that smug look off his face, she wasn’t going to leave before finding out what this was really about – or before making it abundantly clear that she did not appreciate him waltzing back into her life unannounced like this. In fact, the day had finally dawned when she didn’t want him back in her life at all, so if he had any thoughts in his head about staying he could banish them right now.
When their glasses were full and the waiter had gone, Tony lifted his, and touching it to hers he smiled into her eyes as he said, ‘Here’s to us.’
