Chelsea Wives

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

  Sebastian smiled coldly.

  ‘I’ll expect a daily update. In the meantime, please understand that my wife has had a dreadful shock – we all have. So if you could keep it brief …’

  Mitch nodded and watched as Sebastian stormed purposefully from the room, the door making an ominous thud as it closed behind him.

  And suddenly they were alone.

  CHAPTER 53

  Imogen spoke first.

  ‘It really is you,’ she said, as if saying it aloud might somehow convince her of the fact. She looked up at him, her soft, doleful dark eyes causing his heart to stand still in his chest. ‘I thought perhaps you were dead,’ she said, though she didn’t know why she had said this, never once had she thought such a thing.

  Mitch stood opposite her, watching as she surreptitiously brushed a tear from her face. His need to go to her then, to embrace her, was so strong that he had to hold on to the side of the chesterfield to prevent himself from doing so.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘This is all such a shock … I didn’t believe it when I saw you.’ His voice sounded a little gruff and he cleared his throat. ‘When I saw the name on the crime sheet, I didn’t think for a moment that Imogen Forbes was you, the wo …’ He stopped himself, unsure of what to say.

  Over the years Mitch had thought of a thousand things he had wanted to say to her should he ever get the chance to. There had been so many moments in time he had wished she could’ve been there to share with him; funny incidents, the day-to-day inanities of life that he would have given anything to appreciate with her by his side. Only now that this day had arrived, all conversation seemed to have abandoned him.

  ‘Anyway, you … you look well,’ he eventually said, cursing himself underneath his breath. She had always had the ability to make him feel tongue-tied. Mitch attempted to compose himself; he was here to do a job, for God’s sake. And she was married now, had probably forgotten all about him and their affair long ago.

  Imogen smiled softly.

  ‘You too, Mickey,’ she said. Just being able to say his name aloud gave her a sense of joy. ‘Or should that be Mitch?’ She looked up at him then, her eyes, lightly smudged by mascara, a little playful.

  He smiled apologetically.

  ‘I became Mitch when I joined the force,’ he explained, ‘too many Michaels.’

  She resisted the urge to reply, ‘But only ever one for me.’

  ‘Mitch,’ she said aloud, as if trying it out for size. ‘I suppose you must want to ask me some questions – about the bank, I mean,’ she added for clarity. ‘I was sorry to hear about the security guard. They do think he’ll be OK, don’t they?’ she enquired, careful to keep the panic she felt from betraying her in her voice.

  ‘He suffered a massive coronary by all accounts,’ Mitch replied. ‘Probably down to the shock of finding the diamond missing, though we can only be sure of the details when he comes round. If he comes round.’

  ‘If?’ she enquired nervously.

  Mitch wondered if all the questions were a diversion, a means of avoiding having to talk about the obvious. There were so many things he wanted to ask her, so many questions.

  ‘There’s hope,’ he smiled softly.

  Consumed by guilt, Imogen dropped her head and nodded. Hope. She had spent the last fourteen years of her life secretly hoping; hoping that one day she would see him again, that he had not forgotten her. And yet now that her faith in hope had been rewarded, her conscience could not allow her to enjoy it.

  ‘Look, Imogen, I– ’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, interrupting him suddenly. ‘I realise you couldn’t possibly have known that you would see me here today, that you’re just here to do your job. It’s just that it’s been a bit of a shocker all round.’ Mickey nodded. There was a moment’s pause.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said eventually, mustering up a smile from a place she never knew existed inside of her. ‘How’s Aimee?’

  Imogen watched his expression cloud over.

  ‘She died, a little over eighteen months ago now,’ he replied quietly, almost instantly. He turned away from her, making his way over towards the large sash window, the grey London sky peeping from between the shutters offering him little comfort. He didn’t want her to see his face as he spoke, lest she see straight through him like she had always been able to. ‘Pulmonary embolism. There was nothing that could be done.’

  Imogen shook her head and covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Oh Mickey, I’m sorry,’ she said genuinely. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The softness of her voice made him smile and for a fleeting moment he felt his spirits lift. He turned to face her then, moving in a little closer to her, but not too close. He didn’t trust himself.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he replied. ‘In a way, it was for the best.’ Mitch shocked himself with the honesty of the statement. ‘I came back from New Zealand a little over a year ago now. Transferred to the Met.’

  ‘You were in New Zealand?’ she said, almost relieved by this admission. So her fantasies of bumping into him had been way off the mark. He had emigrated to the other side of the world!

  ‘I’ve heard it’s very green, lots of greenery,’ she said, suddenly feeling painfully self-conscious.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘it is. There’s lots of open space and … greenery.’

  They both laughed a little awkwardly and Imogen thought that even though he had hardly changed in over a decade, everything else around them had. She felt the sadness and regret of all the time that had been lost between them. However much she had wished it could’ve been different, they were strangers now, strangers who had once been intimate lovers and she didn’t know how to behave; how to rectify the two together.

  ‘So here we are again, in a library,’ he said, pointing out the irony.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled. Life, it seemed, had somehow come full circle.

  ‘I’m pleased to see you’ve done so well for yourself,’ he said, careful to keep the tone of the conversation light. He looked up at the ornate ceiling, as if to admire it. ‘And that you’re married and happy.’ He had chosen his words carefully, keen to observe her reaction.

  Imogen turned away from him and closed her eyes. The words ‘happy’ and ‘married’ had never sat well together in the same sentence as far as she and Seb were concerned.

  ‘None of it’s mine,’ she said. ‘Not really. It all belongs to my wonderful husband.’ It was a sarcastic remark and she recognised it immediately as a foolish one. Imogen realised that how she felt about her marriage was probably something she should be keeping from Mitch. He belonged to his job now. She could not allow herself to trust him.

  ‘I gave up modelling when I had my daughter,’ she said, quickly changing the subject.

  ‘Your daughter?’ Mitch felt a stab of anguish. She had a child. A family. He did not know why he felt so aggrieved by this news. After all, he could hardly have expected her life to have stood still the day he had walked from it.

  ‘Yes. Her name is Bryony. She’s at school in Switzerland. In fact, you just missed her. She was here visiting for her fath … for Seb’s birthday.’

  ‘How old is she?’ Mitch enquired curiously, his hands absentmindedly fiddling with his notebook and pen.

  ‘She’s thirteen, fourteen in April. She’s a wonderful girl, Mickey,’ she gushed, her eyes lighting up at the mention of her daughter’s name. ‘You would be so prou …’ Imogen stopped herself and Mitch stared at her, his heart racing inside his chest. They paused for the longest moment, neither one able to look directly at the other.

  Mitch finally spoke.

  ‘Please forgive me for asking this, Imogen,’ he said. ‘But I need to know where you were yesterday evening. It’s just a formality, but I have to ask.’

  ‘Really, it’s OK,’ she replied softly. ‘I understand. You’re just doing your job.’ Though she had to admit that it felt strange, him questioning her like she was a stranger. ‘I was with friends at
Calvary Rothschild’s house. Calvary’s an old – and very good friend. I have her address if you need it.’ She smiled and paused for a moment. ‘We had a little cocktail party, you know, a sort of girls’ night in.’ The rehearsed words spilled quickly from her mouth like lemmings. ‘There were just the three of us. Myself, Calvary Rothschild and Lady Yasmin Belmont-Jones.’

  Mitch nodded, making notes as she spoke. ‘Well, anyway. I must have got to Cal’s around eight-ish, didn’t leave until the early hours of this morning. Hence my little lie-in,’ she smiled again, though he noted that it did not reach her eyes.

  ‘And you drove home?’

  ‘Yes, about 4:00 a.m. this morning.’

  ‘After all those cocktails?’ he raised an eyebrow.

  Imogen smiled but it belied her panic.

  ‘Well, I’d only had a few. It’s just round the corner and I …’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Mitch laughed then, breaking a little of the tension that was mounting between them. ‘I’m not about to cuff you and drag you off down the station.’

  The idea conjured up an image that caused them both to turn away from each other in mild embarrassment and he wished he had not said it.

  ‘It’s purely procedure to need to corroborate this,’ he added quickly. ‘We think that this was probably an inside job, committed by persons who knew your husband well, had access to personal information only he could have known.’

  The word ‘crime’ resonated inside Imogen’s head, throbbed like a migraine. God, it was never meant to have been like this. Any of it.

  ‘I see,’ Imogen said, her voice small. She felt his eyes on her then, even when she had turned away from him, and she wondered if he knew something. He had always been so good at being able to read her.

  Mitch’s sharp instincts were telling him that Imogen was holding something back. That she knew far more about all of this than she was letting on. He would need to watch her closely, he thought, as he made the motions to leave.

  ‘Wow, Mickey, a policeman,’ Imogen said, shaking her head in a subconscious bid to stall him. She had waited so long to see his face again, and now he was getting ready to leave. ‘And you always hated the idea of a uniform. Said that it tried to “instil intangible values and institutionalised the wearer”.’

  Mitch chuckled softly, touched that she had remembered such a conversation verbatim.

  ‘I said that?’ He wondered when he might be able to find another excuse to see her, to talk to her alone. ‘Well, the truth is, I can’t believe it either. I fell into it, I suppose. After law school no longer became an option …’ he paused, thinking it wise not to revisit any old, painful memories. ‘Well, let’s just say I was lucky to find something else that I could learn to be good at,’ he said instead. ‘As they say, life’s full of surprises.’

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ Imogen replied, watching as he made his way towards the door, leaving a lifetime of unspoken words hanging heavy in the air between them.

  CHAPTER 54

  ‘We’re going to have to stop making a habit of this,’ Sammie Grainger said as she stood at her front door, a bathrobe wrapped around her wet skin. ‘People will talk.’

  ‘Can I come in?’ Yasmin asked tremulously. She looked pale and drawn and Sammie noticed the visible bags underneath her eyes that not even her usual thick undercoat of foundation could disguise.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Sammie asked, her smile fading fast as she stood back from the door.

  After what had happened between them during their last meeting, she had half expected never to see her again.

  The kiss had taken Sammie as much by surprise as she was sure it had Yasmin. And although Yasmin had run away immediately afterwards, practically sprinting from the room, Sammie had sensed that she had felt it too, the tiny bolts of electricity that had passed between them as their lips had touched, the comfort they had felt in each other’s arms. Was that such a terrible thing?

  Yasmin pushed past Sammie through into the small studio apartment.

  ‘There’s something I need you to do for me.’

  Sammie smiled, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Isn’t there always?’ she deadpanned.

  ‘This is no joke, Sam,’ Yasmin said and Sammie saw from the look on her face that she meant it.

  ‘I need you to promise me that you’ll keep something safe for me.’

  Sammie absentmindedly rubbed her wet hair with an old chewing gum-white towel.

  ‘Keep what safe?’

  ‘This.’ Yasmin pulled the VHS cassette from her Marni shopper and handed it to her. ‘If anything should happen to me, I want you to promise me that this tape will see the light of day, do you understand? More importantly,’ she continued, not giving Sammie the chance to respond, ‘you have to promise me that you won’t watch it. At least, not yet, not until I’m back.’

  ‘Well, you know, that’s a lot of promises.’

  Yasmin looked at her with pleading eyes.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Sammie said, throwing her towel over the chair. ‘Is this what I think it is? Is this the tape? The tape of your sis– ’

  ‘Just promise me that you’ll take good care of it and that please,’ Yasmin interrupted her, ‘make a copy of it; make a dozen copies! If anything should happen to me, take one to the police, and the others to the papers ’

  ‘OK. OK,’ Sammie said softly, concerned. ‘Look, why don’t you sit down …’

  Yasmin shook her head fiercely.

  ‘I don’t have time. I’m flying out to the Cote D’Azur this afternoon with my husband and I don’t know when I’ll be back – but I will be back. And when I am, rest assured you’ll have your story, like I promised.’

  Sammie watched as Yasmin held the tape out to her with a shaking hand. She paused for a moment, suddenly reaching for a copy of the Evening Star London on the coffee table, her mind switching into journalistic overdrive.

  ‘You’ve seen the papers today?’ Sammie asked, picking it up and tossing it in her direction.

  Yasmin shook her head, casting her eye over the headline: ‘BUNGLED BANK JOB SEES SECURITY GUARD FIGHTING FOR LIFE.’

  ‘Can’t say that I have,’ she replied, feigning ignorance as her heartbeat quickened in her chest.

  ‘So, you know nothing about a break-in at Forbes Bank then?’

  Yasmin shrugged. ‘No. I don’t. And I can’t say I’m all that interested either.’ She glanced sideways at her. There was a loaded pause.

  ‘Where did you get the tape?’ Sammie asked, her tone a little accusatory.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Yasmin snapped back a response. ‘All that matters is now I have it, I can finish this goddamn thing once and for all. Look,’ she said, her tone softening slightly. ‘Lord knows why but you’re the only person in the world who I can trust to take care of this for me. I need you to promise me that you’ll keep this tape safe. Promise me!’

  Sammie felt the first flutters of fear inside her belly. It had not taken her long to put two and two together; she had told Yasmin that the evidence she’d been searching for was down in that vault and then, oh God, then there was the interview that she herself had conducted with Forbes …

  ‘What have you done, Yasmin?’ Sammie asked gravely, tentatively taking the cassette from her grasp, her eyes narrowing with suspicion and fear. ‘Tell me, what in God’s name have you done?’

  Yasmin laughed then. A malevolent low cackle that sent a shiver the length of Sammie’s spine.

  ‘Oh, it’s not what I have done that you need to be worried about,’ she said, fixing her with an icy stare that was cold enough to chill the entire room. ‘It’s what I’m about to do.’

  CHAPTER 55

  Imogen sank back into the antique Victorian claw-foot bath and immersed her body in the warm, fragrant water. Adding some more Jo Malone Lime, Basil and Mandarin bath oil to the tub, she took a deep breath.

  Seeing Mickey again so suddenly, so unexpectedly, had left her in a state of total shock, rendering
her incapable of concentrating on anything else, least of all deciding how best to deal with the situation at hand. A situation that seemed to have spiralled way out of her control.

  Earlier that day Imogen had taken a frenetic call from Calvary. She’d had an unannounced visit from the police. From Mickey.

  ‘They know something, Ims, I’m telling you, they know,’ she had hissed down the line, panic all too evident in her voice. ‘An Inspector McLaren something or other; he was asking a lot of questions.’

  Imogen watched the steam as it rose up from the water, disappearing into the atmosphere above her like smoke. She had decided against telling Calvary about who Mickey was, for now at least. She needed to give herself time to get her head round the situation first. It wouldn’t be long before the police started to pick holes in her story, start to take apart her alibi and probe further and deeper into her marriage.

  If only she had come clean from the off. Explained it away as a silly prank, a practical joke that had got out of hand. Now she would probably go to prison, especially if Dickie didn’t pull through, and certainly if Seb had anything to do with it. Even with such a dark threat looming over her, Imogen couldn’t dwell on the thought for too long, not now that Mickey was back in her life again. He was all she could think of.

  Imogen re-enacted the moment she had walked into the library and seen him standing there over and over again. Like a broken record, she replayed everything in her mind, reliving every word he had spoken, every detail, to ensure she had not missed a thing. He had told her that Aimee was dead and to her ever-burgeoning shame, she had felt a guilty slither of elation at this news. The look on Mickey’s face had somehow told her that Aimee’s death had been his emancipation. And in that moment Imogen felt sure of it; fate had brought them together again.

  Pouring some matching Jo Malone body wash onto a pouf and working it up into a zesty fragrant lather, Imogen began soaping herself, covering her skin in tiny bubbles, allowing her hands to explore her own breasts, imagining for a moment that they were Mickey’s hands. She let out a low, soft sigh of pleasure as she closed her eyes and thought about the time they had been together on the beach, the very last time they had made love, with the sound of the sea behind them and the scent of the sand and pine trees in the air. She could almost smell his skin as it touched her own, that familiar scent of lemon soap and cigarettes that had never left her after all these years. The smell of him. But a voice whispered to her, penetrating her intimate thoughts, and it told her that she must tread carefully because Mickey McLaren was now Mitch McLaren. Detective Inspector Mitch McLaren.