by Janet Tanner
The sun was low in the sky now, bathing the cottage in a soft rosy glow. Almost impossible to believe anything bad could have happened here, in this fairy-tale setting. But beside him Maggie had begun to tremble again, almost imperceptibly but enough to remind him that the peace and tranquillity were an illusion. Anger filled him once more; if he could get hold of that bastard Lomax just now he’d throttle the life out of him!
He pulled up outside the cottage, turned off the engine and unbuckled his seat belt.
‘Wait in the car.’
‘No. I’ll come in with you.’
‘Maggie, you don’t have to. Better not.’
‘I’d rather come in.’ Her jaw was set, controlling the chattering of her teeth. ‘I want to face up to it.’
‘Why? There’s no need.’
‘There’s every need. It’s like riding a horse. They say if you fall off you should get straight back on again or you never will.’
‘You don’t have to go into the cottage ever again.’
‘Yes I do. It is … was … my sister’s home.’ Her voice wavered. ‘I don’t want strangers turning over her things, Mike. When it comes to … doing what has to be done I am the one who should do it. And if I don’t go in now, tonight, I don’t know if I’ll ever find the courage. Take me with you, Mike. Only please – hold my hand …’
He did, searching one-handed for the cottage key and opening the door. The silence came out to meet them, unbroken as the peaceful summer evening outside, and apart from an overturned chair and the large muddy print of a policeman’s boot on the pale hall carpet everything looked just as it always did.
Once inside the cottage Maggie let go of Mike’s hand, wandering from room to room as if in a dream, and Mike let her go, torn between preventing her from torturing herself and allowing her to do what she had to do.
She returned at last from whatever internal journey she had been making and went to him, putting her arms around him and laying her head against his shoulder.
‘All right?’ he whispered against her hair.
‘Yes. Shall we go, Mike?’
‘Yes.’
A small scraping sound came from the hall. They both stiffened, listening and looking at one another.
‘What the hell … ?’ Mike asked.
‘It sounded like the door. As if someone was coming in …’
‘Is there someone there?’ a voice called from the hall.
Maggie and Mike stared at one another again in disbelief.
‘My God …’
The door to the hall opened. A young woman stood there, a young woman in beautifully cut designer jeans and a silk shirt, a young woman whose startled expression reflected their own.
Maggie took a step forward, the blood draining from her head so that for a moment she thought she might be going to faint, and when she spoke her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘Ros!’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Maggie!’ Ros’s tone conveyed equal disbelief. ‘ Maggie – what are you doing here?’
Maggie ignored the question; scarcely even heard it. Joy and relief were coursing through her now, small electric shocks piercing the blanket of utter breathtaking surprise.
‘We thought you were dead!’
‘Dead?’ Ros repeated blankly. ‘Why should you think I was dead?’
‘We didn’t know where you were. We thought … and he said …’ She broke off. Impossible to explain in the course of a few sentences all that had happened. For a moment, with Ros standing there in the flesh looking much as she always did, it seemed to Maggie as if the last days had been nothing but a nightmare, a figment of a crazed imagination. In a moment she would wake up and find herself back home in Corfu with Ari snoring beside her.
It was Mike who broke the silence and it was his voice, bewildered and a little angry, that convinced her this was no dream.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘What do you mean – where the hell have I been?’ Ros flared back, responding to the accusation in his tone. ‘I’ve been away – isn’t that obvious?’
‘Without telling a soul where you were going? We’ve been worried sick about you, Ros.’
‘I don’t see why. Surely I don’t have to report all my movements to you? Anyway, you weren’t here when I left. You were away at camp with those schoolchildren of yours. And I did try to ring you, whenever I was anywhere near a phone, but the international lines were so bad I couldn’t get through.’
‘International lines from where?’
‘South America.’ Ros banged her bag down on to a chair. ‘God, I need a drink. I’ve been travelling since forever. And when I got back to the station I couldn’t find my car. The man on duty told me it had been towed away – I ask you! You can’t even leave your car in a station car park without it being towed away!’
Mike and Maggie exchanged glances. Presumably the police, taking an interest at last, had removed it for examination.
‘You didn’t ring the police about it?’ Mike asked.
‘I did not! I’ll do that in the morning. Tonight all I wanted was to get home and have a bath.’
As she spoke Ros was opening her cupboard, taking out a bottle and glass.
‘I’m having a vodka,’ she said carelessly. ‘Do either of you want one? Then Maggie can tell me what she’s doing in England and you can both tell me why you are here in my home.’
‘I think, Ros,’ Mike said, ‘that you had better make that vodka a large one. I have a feeling you are going to need it.’
She glanced at him, raising her finely arched eyebrows.
‘I am?’
‘Yes. And pour one for Maggie too. No – on second thoughts make that a whisky. That’s what she’s been drinking already.’
‘And you?’
‘No thanks. I have to drive. I also have to go to work in the morning. Christ, Ros, you haven’t the faintest idea, have you, of the trouble you have caused?’
Ros poured whisky into a tumbler, passed it to Maggie, then raised her own glass in a half-humorous salute.
‘No, but I think you are about to tell me.’
‘Ros, this is not a joke. I don’t know where you have been or why, but today your sister was very nearly killed.’
Ros froze, the glass halfway to her mouth.
‘Maggie! How?’
‘By Steve Bloody Lomax. Who, incidentally, we thought had also murdered you.’
‘Me!’
‘Yes, Ros, you. Look, it’s one hell of a long story, but it all hinges on the fact that he is an imposter, not Dinah’s son at all. Which you, of course, knew all the time, but we only learned about today.’
‘How did you find out?’ Ros asked sharply.
Maggie took over the explanation. ‘From your files at Vandina. And when Steve discovered I knew the truth and was likely to spill the beans he was prepared to go to any lengths to silence me. I thought he’d already done the same to you, Ros. I thought you must have faced him with what you knew and he …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘Didn’t he know you knew?’
Ros shook her head. ‘I wanted to keep it to myself until I was a hundred per cent sure. I knew it would destroy Dinah – if she even believed me. She’s so obsessed with Steve she might simply have called me a liar and dismissed the whole idea out of hand. That’s why I’ve been haring around the world – trying to tie up the loose ends and make some sense out of what was going on, and maybe salvage something from the whole bloody mess. Look, guys, I’m really sorry if you’ve been worried, but I honestly didn’t intend to be gone so long. I only set out to go to London, but then this other angle came up. And I have tried to telephone, truly I have. Once I actually got through – I heard you speak, Mike, and then the line just went dead.’
Mike nodded. ‘The other evening. I had a funny feeling it was you. But I thought I was just kidding myself. Where were you ringing from?’
‘I told you. South America. Argentina to be precise.’
‘What the hell were you doing in Argentina?’
‘I think I know,’ Maggie said. ‘ That’s where Dinah’s real son was working when he was killed, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, except that …’ Ros broke off. ‘What’s happened to Steve? Where is he now?’
‘We don’t know,’ Mike said. ‘After Maggie managed to get away from him she just bolted. Presumably, he did the same, knowing the game was up. As far as I can gather no one has seen him since. But you can bet your bottom dollar the police are looking for him right this minute.’
‘So Dinah … knows?’
‘I suppose she must do. Quite honestly Dinah Marshall is the least of my worries.’
Ros put down her drink. ‘Oh poor Dinah! I must get over there!’
‘For God’s sake!’ Mike exploded. ‘You come waltzing back in here after causing utter mayhem and all you can think about is Dinah!’
‘I have to see her. There’s something I have to tell her.’
‘Surely it can wait. Don’t you think your own sister should be your priority just now?’
Ros cast him a narrow glance.
‘It looks to me as if she has you.’
‘Ros – it’s not what you think …’ Maggie began anxiously, but Mike was not going to let her off the hook so lightly.
‘After what we’ve been through, Ros, I think you owe us a very full explanation.’
Ros grinned almost ruefully.
‘That’s what I love about you, Mike, you’re so masterful! I arrive home after one hell of a time and all you do is order me about. All right, let’s have another drink and I’ll fill you in. But I warn you, it’s a very long story and I’m not sure where to begin.’
‘Perhaps,’ Mike said, still stern, ‘you could begin with what made you suspect Steve Lomax of being an imposter in the first place. And, incidentally, why you never mentioned your suspicions to me.’
Ros held his angry glare for a moment then her eyes dropped away and she sat turning the empty vodka glass between her hands, searching for the best way to answer. How could she say now that she had not wanted to tell him the truth – that to her certain knowledge two quite different young men had turned up, both claiming to be Dinah’s son – because to do so would have meant admitting things she preferred to keep to herself – admitting she had been at Van’s apartment one winter’s night and seen the first claimant with her own eyes. Yet strangely she was unsure just why she had been so anxious to keep the long affair a secret. Perhaps, she thought, it was a habit that had become too deeply ingrained, for in his lifetime Van had insisted on complete discretion.
‘I won’t have Dinah hurt,’ Van had said when Ros had once asked him why he never took her out to a restaurant or club, why their meetings all had to be in the utter privacy of his town apartment. ‘You never know who you are going to run into, and then tongues begin wagging.’
‘If you care so much for her feelings why are you having an affair with me at all?’ Ros had flared.
‘Because, my dear, you are young and beautiful and very, very sexy.’
‘But not because you love me.’
Van had fixed her with his hypnotic, yet strangely impersonal stare.
‘I have never loved anyone in my life, I don’t intend to start now.’
‘You seem to love Dinah.’
For a moment there had been a flicker within those navy-blue eyes, a memory touched upon, perhaps, which had been pushed aside and subjugated over the years. But Van had no intention of admitting to weakness of any sort – and to him love equated with weakness. Once, long ago, he had allowed his heart to rule his head, but not for long. He had realised his mistake in time and acted ruthlessly to ensure it did not mar the pattern of his life. Now the image he presented to the world was of a hard, if not totally ruthless man, and he had almost come to believe his own publicity.
‘Dinah works best when she is happy,’ he had said blandly. ‘Upset the equilibrium and you impede the creative flow.’
‘You bastard!’ Ros had said, shocked at the heartlessness of the remark yet forced to concede that this side of him was one of the things that made him so devastatingly attractive – to her, at least. To be in the company of such a man was an aphrodisiac in itself – the challenge he presented was a constant excitement. Sometimes she despised Van, sometimes she despised herself, but it made no difference. Ros was obsessed with him as she had never been obsessed by any other man. Liking or disliking did not come into it.
But she had not been proud of herself. Sometimes, thinking of how willingly she had gone to Van’s apartment, she cringed, and she shrank from admitting to anyone, least of all Mike, that someone who prided herself on her independence and fierce self-reliance could have allowed herself to become putty in the hands of a man like Van.
It had begun, their affair, soon after she had gone to work at Vandina. From the first time she had met him she had been intoxicated with him, and like an alcoholic craving another drink, she had seized upon every possible excuse to be in his company. At first she did not think he had even noticed her, but he had – he had. And he teased her along, throwing her crumbs here and there to make her more avid than ever – a look, a smile, a throwaway remark to be remembered and dissected and stored away. And when he was ready, when he knew she would not refuse him, he had made his move and she had gone to him willingly, forgetting every scruple, every loyalty, drawn by that strange power he exerted so well into a web which she knew might strangle her but from which she had no wish to escape.
At times she had felt guilt for those she was betraying – Brendan, her husband; Dinah, her employer and friend – but it made no difference. When Brendan became violent towards her she almost welcomed it, for she felt that in some way she was paying for her pleasure; as for Dinah, she worked all the harder and cared for her loyally. She came to know, better than anyone – except perhaps Van himself – that childlike side of Dinah which needed reassurance and protection, and she made it her business to minister to it in every way possible, as if by so doing she could somehow exonerate the guilt that came from knowing she was screwing Dinah’s husband.
They had been together often at Van’s town apartment – though perhaps not as often as Ros would have liked. And that particular winter’s night when Dinah’s son had come had begun no differently from all the others, except that Van had told her not to come before eight.
‘I have an appointment earlier,’ he had said, giving no word of explanation as to who it was he was expecting.
Ros, though she paid lip service to independence and the freedom of the individual, nevertheless was the possessor of a strongly jealous streak and it had occurred to her to wonder if the unnamed visitor might be a woman. The thought that she might have a rival had incensed her and she had made up her mind to be at Van’s apartment in good time to see who left.
She remembered still, with almost startling clarity, how her face had burned as she ran up the stairs, partly from the cold, partly from a flush of apprehension for what she might find and dread of the scene that would follow. Strange, really, that it was that aspect of the evening that remained most vivid in her mind – that and the utter relief she had felt when she had opened the door with her key and come face to face not with a woman who might have usurped her, but a young man.
She had been curious – the snippet of conversation she had overheard had whetted her appetite – but she had known better than to ask there and then who he was and what he had been doing there. That had come later, after she and Van had made love.
They were lying in bed between his black silk sheets with her head nestled against his shoulder and their legs entwined, and Van was smoking one of his cigars, the smoke tickling in Ros’s nostrils.
‘Who was that guy who was here when I arrived?’ she asked.
‘No one you’d know, sweetness. Just business.’
She tugged gently at some of the greying hair that grew thickly down his breastbone, twisting it between
her fingers.
‘It didn’t sound like business to me. It sounded very personal. ‘‘Tell my mother from me that the last thing I intended was to cause her distress … that I have made a good life for myself without her help.” Business associates don’t say things like that.’
‘Don’t they, sweetness?’
‘No, they don’t. Oh well, if you won’t tell me the truth about him I shall just have to ask some questions until I find out for myself …’
He stiffened then. She felt a wave of anger run through him.
‘You’ll say nothing to anyone about him being here.’
She pretended innocence. ‘ Why not?’
‘Because I am telling you so.’
She laughed. ‘Oh Van, we are not in the office now and I don’t have to do what you tell me! I shall pry all I like and …’
‘All right,’ he said suddenly, and his tone told her that this was no game to him, but deadly serious. ‘I’ll tell you, Ros, but you have got to realise it is confidential.’
‘I can keep a secret.’
‘I know you can. You wouldn’t have the job you are in and you wouldn’t be here with me now if you could not.’ There was a tiny threatening undertone in his voice – break confidence and I’ll break you, he seemed to be saying. ‘That young man was, or claims to be, Dinah’s son.’
‘What!’ In spite of what she had overheard she was still staggered. ‘I didn’t know Dinah had a son.’
‘Nor does anyone else. That is why I don’t want you shooting your mouth off. Dinah had an illegitimate child when she was very young. In those days it was still a matter for great shame. The baby was adopted at birth, Dinah and I were married and she put the whole wretched business behind her. Now, out of the blue, comes this young man claiming to be that child.’ He puffed on his cigar.
‘How do you know there’s any truth in his claim?’ Ros asked.
