by Anne Mather
The following afternoon he was waiting for her when she left her office. She hardly recognised him in a well cut navy lounge suit, but when she did, she was astounded at his audacity. All her earlier doubts returned, and she convinced herself he intended to incriminate her in some plot to rob the gallery.
His suggestion that she joined him for a drink before going home both excited and frightened her. She wanted to go with him, she knew that, but she also believed she was playing with fire, though how much, she had yet to learn.
In the event, she had agreed to accompany him to a club nearby, the exclusiveness of its clientele only occurring to her when she was seated on a plush stool at the bar. It was difficult to think of anything with his dark eyes playing lazily over her face, lingering longer than was necessary on her mouth, before returning to tantalise the darting uncertainty of hers. She had never met anyone quite like him before, and her lips twisted now when she remembered how naïve she must have seemed.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ he prompted, when she had taken possession of a tall glass of Campari soda—her choice, not his—and she had found herself explaining that although she had been born in Northumberland, since her parents’ death two years ago she had been living with her married sister, Laura, in Wimbledon.
‘And you’ve worked at the gallery how long?’ he probed, studying her expression, and she admitted she had only been there a little over six months, having spent her first year in London, taking a secretarial course.
‘I thought I hadn’t seen you there before,’ he remarked, surprising her, and Tobie thought it was time she asked some questions of her own.
‘What—er—what do you do, Mr—Mr—’ she had begun awkwardly, realising she didn’t even know his name, and his dark brows had drawn together aggressively.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ he asked, his expression coldly sceptical, and she had had her first glimpse of another side to his character.
‘No,’ she insisted, glancing uneasily about her. ‘Why should I?’
Robert had looked at her sharply, as if gauging her sincerity, and then, without provocation, he demanded: ‘So what the hell are you doing, accepting invitations from strange men? Didn’t that sister of yours tell you anything?’
His attack was so unexpected, Tobie was stunned by it. One minute they had been sitting enjoying a quiet drink together, and the next his dark face was contorted with anger, his lips thin and impatient. More than anything, it convinced her of the veracity of his words, and she fumbled desperately for her handbag, jumping down from her stool, and charging out of the club as if the devil himself was at her heels.
And he was—or so she thought when Robert caught up with her in the narrow side street adjoining the main thoroughfare. His face was grim and unrepentant, and the fingers that closed over her wrist were as hard and relentless as any tool of torture might be.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he had exhorted, swinging her round to face him, and despite her tearful mortification, the desire to leave him melted beneath the powerful attraction he exerted.
‘I—I—’ she stammered helplessly, unable to find the words to express her consternation, and with a shake of his head he had pulled her closer to him and bent his mouth to hers.
She thought at first he had intended to kiss her as a form of punishment, a way of avenging himself for her embarrassing departure from the club, but it didn’t work out that way at all. From the minute his lips touched hers everything changed, and what had begun as a tentative caress deepened into a passionate embrace. The fact that they were standing in a street—albeit a quiet one—in broad daylight, meant nothing to Tobie. She had lost all sense of time and consequence, and when he finally lifted his head she was weak with emotion.
‘Come on,’ he had said, in a husky voice, urging her forward along the pavement, and she went with him, making no objection when they came to where a low steel-grey sports car was parked, and he put her into the front seat, before striding round the bonnet to get in beside her …
‘Can’t you sleep?’
Mark’s concerned voice broke into her reverie, and she turned almost guiltily to find him behind her. She had been so far from this colourful little island that it was incredibly difficult to reorientate herself. She stared at him blankly for several seconds before recovering her composure, and was grateful for his obtuseness when he added gently:
‘It’s the jet lag, isn’t it? It takes some getting used to. You’re tired, but you feel you shouldn’t be, isn’t that right? It’s a kind of mental hurdle, and it affects different people different ways. Personally, I find the atmosphere here makes me feel rather sleepy, and I never have any trouble adjusting to the time change.’
Tobie bent her head. ‘How lucky for you,’ she commented, and fortunately Mark didn’t hear the irony in her tone. Nevertheless, the fact that it was there at all troubled her, and she felt the start of a headache hammering at her temples. It was the thought of tomorrow, she realised uneasily, the thought of going to Emerald Cay and meeting Robert again, with the awareness of his condition like a Damoclean sword hanging over her head.
‘We could make love,’ Mark murmured now, sliding his arms about her waist and drawing her closer to him, but as usual, Tobie panicked at the possessive touch of his hands. There were times, like this, when she wondered if she would be able to respond to any man again, and her words were sharper than they might have been because of her uncertainty.
‘Oh, not now, Mark!’ she exclaimed, releasing herself without consideration for his feelings, her sense of guilt redoubling at the awareness of the pain she was inflicting. ‘I—want to take a shower, and get changed for dinner. Do you mind?’
Mark hesitated. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked perceptively, alerted by her nervousness, and with a sigh she spread her hands.
‘I’ve got a headache, if you must know,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘I—I’ve had it since we got off the plane. I’m sorry if I’m bad company, but it really is painful.’
‘Hey, why didn’t you say?’ Mark disappeared back into his own room to reappear a few moments later with a bottle of tablets. ‘Here, swallow a couple of these. They’ll take care of the headache, and the jet lag. Take a cool shower, and I’ll meet you in the bar downstairs in half an hour. I promise you, you’ll feel a different woman.’
Tobie wished she could feel as sure, but she thanked him for his kindness, bestowing a warm kiss of appeasement on his mouth before he departed once more. ‘I don’t deserve you, do you know that?’ she murmured, touching his cheek with wondering fingers, and he captured them and carried them to his mouth before wishing her a gruff farewell.
The twin-engined Cessna made its approach to the tiny airstrip on Emerald Cay at eleven o’clock the following morning. As it circled the small island, Mark pointed out the places of interest to Tobie, leaning past her to indicate the whereabouts of his brother’s villa, and to share her admiration of the shimmering green waters of the lagoon.
‘The reef provides a natural barrier to intruders,’ he remarked, drawing her attention to its exposed teeth. ‘There’s one point of access, below the villa. Rob had an entry blasted in the coral so that his yacht can get in and out, but otherwise …’ He shrugged.
Tobie digested this. So Robert had a yacht. It was probably one of those motor yachts, the luxurious kind she had seen in the harbour at Castries that morning, not one of the tall-masted sailing vessels, whose sails looked so picturesque against the azure blue waters of the ocean. Robert had always loved speed, and Mark had told her that some of them could do thirty knots.
‘How many people live on the island?’ she asked now, trying to compose herself for their arrival, and Mark frowned.
‘Let me see—well, there’s Monique and Henri. They’re the married couple who look after the villa. Monique does most of the cooking and cleaning, and Henri looks after the garden. My mother instructs them, of course. She’s Rob’s housekeeper.’
> ‘I see.’ Tobie digested this. ‘And—and that’s all?’
‘No. There are one or two of Monique and Henri’s offspring about the place. I think their eldest son is married, and he and his wife live down near the harbour and look after the boats. Then there’s Harvey Jennings, of course. He and his daughter live on the far side of the island. Rob bought the place from them, and he lets them stay here free gratis.’
Tobie glanced at him. ‘You don’t like them?’ she asked, responding to the censure in his voice, and Mark shrugged again.
‘I don’t like Harvey,’ he admitted. ‘He’s a sponger, always making out he’s hard up. He relies on Rob far too much. Cilla—well, she’s all right. Quite a nice girl, actually. She’s often at the villa. My mother likes her too. I know that Cilla comes over for different reasons, but there you are. Rob’s a likeable character.’
He shrugged, but it wasn’t difficult to understand his meaning, and Tobie was appalled by her own reactions to it. Even after all this time, she could still feel the agony of Robert’s desertion, and she doubted coming here was going to blunt the pain.
The aircraft landed, and Mark went to bid farewell to their pilot. He had introduced him to Tobie as Jim Matheson, and as they crossed the airstrip he explained that Robert and the pilot owned the plane jointly.
‘It’s a small business venture,’ he remarked, glancing back at the blue and white Cessna glinting in the sunlight. ‘They own half a dozen of these small aircraft, hiring them out for trips around the islands. You’d be surprised how many people enjoy island-hopping, as they call it. It’s quite a going concern.’
Tobie was impressed, or at least she hoped she appeared that way. Inside, she was a churning mass of tangled emotions, and the sight of the gleaming convertible, parked in the shade of a clump of palm trees, obviously waiting for them, filled her with real panic.
‘Mark!’
The affectionate calling of his name, accompanied by the sight of an elegant woman in her late fifties climbing out of the back of the vehicle, told its own story. Evidently, this was his mother, come to meet them, and Tobie breathed a little easier when she saw that the only other occupant of the car was black.
Mark allowed himself to be enveloped in a warm embrace, and over his shoulder Tobie met the strangely malevolent eyes of the woman who had deserted her eldest son when he was little more than seven years old. She had left her home, and her family, to run away with a man more than twice her age, and that was what had created the rift between her and Robert, the rift Tobie had never expected to see mended. Mark was her second husband’s son, of course, but his father was dead now. Mark had told her he had died of a heart attack soon after Marks’s eighteenth birthday, and it was this as much as anything which had turned his interest towards medicine. Robert’s own father had committed suicide. A week after the divorce was made absolute he had hanged himself in the summerhouse of their Kingston home, and Robert had been brought up by a series of nannies, acting under his aunt’s instructions. His own mother had made little effort to see him, too absorbed with her new life and her new baby, and it was only when Robert became famous that he began getting letters from her. Letters he had destroyed, so far as Tobie was aware—until the accident—
Standing there with the sun beating down upon her head, Tobie tried desperately to relax. She was here now. There was nothing she could do about it. And if Robert’s mother knew who she was, and that was why she was looking at her so hostilely, there was nothing she could do about that either. Perhaps Mrs Newman was merely jealous of her younger son’s affection. But if there was any other reason for her hostility, she would soon find out.
Mark was freeing himself from his mother’s embrace now, assuring her that they had had a good journey—that he was in the best of health—that he wasn’t working too hard—and that no, he hadn’t lost weight. He was obviously amused by his mother’s insistence, but as Tobie waited somewhat apprehensively to be introduced, she had the feeling that Mrs Newman’s delaying tactics were deliberate.
At last Mark succeeded in drawing her forward, and with evident pride he introduced her to his mother. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ he demanded, his arm possessively about Tobie’s shoulders. ‘I told you she was. Don’t you think I’m the luckiest man in the world?’
His mother viewed Tobie with cool assessing eyes. She was a tall woman, like her son, almost as tall as Tobie’s five feet six inches, with the heavier limbs of middle age. Yet she was quite an attractive woman still, with greying blonde hair and fair skin, that just avoided the gnarled weathered look. If she had had any heartache in her life she disguised it well, and presented the appearance of someone well able to take care of herself. She seemed much more Mark’s mother than Robert’s, and only the inimical gaze of her dark brown eyes reminded Tobie of how Robert had looked when he slammed out of the apartment that fatal afternoon.
‘So nice to meet you—er—Tobie,’ she said now, offering a curiously limp hand, and Tobie took it.
‘It was kind of you to invite me,’ she said, forcing a tight smile. ‘You live in a very beautiful part of the world.’
‘Oh, you must thank my son for your invitation,’ Mrs Newman demurred, her remark verging on discourtesy, and Tobie stiffened.
‘I’ve thanked Mark, naturally,’ she said, glancing at him, but his mother quickly intervened.
‘I meant Robert, of course,’ she said, ignoring her younger son’s discomfort. ‘Emerald Cay belongs to him, not to us, and it was he who offered the invitation.’
It was a body blow, but whether Mrs Newman was aware of its significance, Tobie could not be sure. After all, if Robert had not told her about their relationship, how could she know? And yet there was something here, some undercurrent that Tobie sensed but could not make contact with.
‘Well, we’re here, anyway,’ Mark observed tautly, his expression mirroring his impatience with his mother. ‘So let’s go, shall we? It’s hot, and I for one could do with a dip in the pool.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’
Tobie guessed Mrs Newman really meant it as she gestured towards the car. She was obviously very fond of Mark, but in spite of her comments about Robert, Tobie wasn’t altogether sure how she felt towards him. Yet they must be friends. They lived here together. They shared the same house. There had to be some feeling between them.
The drive from the airstrip to the villa gave her a little time to assimilate her own position. The news that Robert had offered the invitation required some adjustment in her thinking, and she couldn’t help wondering how he proposed to behave towards her. She had thought if he hadn’t admitted to Mark that he knew her before, he could be relied upon not to do so now, but that was not taking into account his condition, and who knew what quirks in his personality that might have created? She was both apprehensive and uneasy, and her feelings made a mockery of her boast to Laura that she loved Mark, and nothing Robert did could change that.
The road curved up from the flat stretch of earth that provided a landing strip, climbing towards the hills that formed the backbone of the island. It was a dusty track, rutted in places, where the rains had dislodged the stones that held the track together, but the scenery was so magnificent one could ignore the discomfort.
As they climbed, beyond the airstrip they could see miles and miles of unbroken sand, stretching to infinity. This side of the island must be uninhabited, Tobie thought, and the lace-edged waters of the ocean were the only intruders on these shores. It was a disturbing concept, and she experienced a moment’s awareness of how ship-wrecked mariners must have felt when faced with their own insignificance.
The hillside was thickly covered with stunted trees and flowering shrubs, their roots even encroaching on to the road at times. One could stretch out one’s hand and touch them as one passed, and Mark snatched a magnolia blossom to tuck behind Tobie’s ear. She shared his laughter for a moment, and then encountering his mother’s speculative gaze was silenced.
As
if sensing the sudden tension, Mark broke into conversation, asking how Robert was, questioning his mother about his brother’s paralysis.
Mrs Newman seemed unnecessarily pessimistic about her son’s condition. ‘He says he’s quite well,’ she replied, plucking at the leather on the back of the seat in front. ‘But you know how independent he is. I keep my own counsel. I have my own opinion. I know what his doctors say. But it’s not a subject I’d advise you to discuss with him. At least—’ she paused, allowing her eyes to move to Tobie once more, ‘not in front of—strangers.’
‘But he’s—no worse?’ Mark insisted, his hand finding Tobie’s in gentle reassurance, and his mother shrugged.
‘Were it not for the lingering amnesia, I’d say he is as recovered as he’ll ever be,’ she responded succinctly, and when Tobie’s head jerked towards her, a mocking smile tugged at the comers of her mouth. ‘Didn’t Mark tell you, my dear?’ she enquired, with what Tobie was almost convinced was malicious amusement. ‘Robert still suffers a mental blackout of everything that happened immediately before the accident. He’s lost six whole months of his life. Isn’t that a shame?’
CHAPTER TWO
ROBERT’S villa lay on the south-west side of the island, above the tiny manmade harbour. As they came down the winding road towards the sea again, Tobie saw its sprawling green-tiled roof, and realised it was much more than the comfortably-sized bungalow she had envisaged. It was much bigger, for one thing, and set on different levels, it looked more like a Spanish hacienda, with the large circular swimming pool providing a focal point. The walls were colour-washed in pastel shades, and overgrown with clinging vines and bougainvillaea, and as they drew nearer she could see the white shutters bolted back against the walls, and the arched courtyard below the patio. It was, without doubt, the most beautiful house she had ever seen, and in other circumstances she would hardly have been able to contain her excitement. As it was, she felt a bewildered sense of confusion, and was troubled by the knowledge that Mark’s mother was not as ingenuous as he imagined her to be.
