by Janet Tanner
‘He had a copy of his birth certificate. It’s possible to obtain them these days, of course – God knows why the law was changed to allow it. Much better in the old days when these things were treated as utterly confidential. Anyway, I have persuaded him not to bother Dinah with any of this. He has gone back to Scotland – he’s a diver on one of the offshore rigs, as far as I can make out – and I don’t think he’ll be back. So please, Ros, will you say nothing?’
Ros settled herself more comfortably against Van’s shoulder. She could hardly believe what he had just told her; that cool, perfect, untouched Dinah had an illegitimate son. Even more unbelievable was the fact that he had been here and she had seen him with her own eyes. She found herself trying to recall what he had looked like and wishing she had taken more notice of him. He had not struck her as being particularly like Dinah, but then why should he be?
She thought again of the fragment of conversation she had overheard.
‘So Dinah didn’t want to see him?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘I can understand her being upset, but if it were me I don’t think I’d be able to resist seeing how my own son had turned out.’
Van sat up abruptly, stubbing out his cigar in the huge crystal ashtray he kept on the bedside table.
‘Dinah does not know he’s been here. I’d be very much obliged if you would make sure she does not find out.’
‘She doesn’t know?’
‘I intercepted his letter. I wrote back to him myself. I don’t want Dinah upset by any of this. I will not have her upset – do you understand?’
Ros had nodded, not knowing whether to be shocked by Van’s arbitrary decision or smug because she now knew something Dinah did not know and presumably never would.
It was not long, of course, before the novelty value of her newly acquired knowledge began to wear off. A ‘nine-days wonder’ is an old adage but one with much truth in it, and soon Ros forgot about Dinah’s son. She was busy and fulfilled in her job, she had met and begun to date Mike Thompson, but her affair with Van continued nevertheless. He still fascinated her too much to allow her to end it, for Mike or anyone else.
One night when Van was making love to her something rather dreadful happened.
One minute he was lying on top of her, pumping with the ferocious vigour that seemed to be necessary to bring him to a climax these days, the next he gasped and rolled away from her, fighting for breath and clutching his chest.
‘My God, Van – are you all right?’ Ros raised herself on one elbow, looking down at his face, which was grey and suddenly old-looking, and his eyes, curiously distant. He did not answer her, simply lay there concentrating on getting his breath, and Ros got out of bed, slipping into a dressing gown and wondering if she should do something positive, like calling a doctor. She didn’t want to do that, it would be horrendously embarrassing, but she didn’t care for the look of Van at all.
She knelt down beside the bed, taking his hand.
‘Van? Can you hear me?’
His eyelids blinked: Yes.
‘Van – what is it? Are you in pain?’
Again, a tiny flicker. The real difficulty seemed to be his breathing. His chest heaved as he struggled with it.
‘Van, I’m going to get help.’
‘No!’ He managed to say the word, and in spite of his condition his tone carried as much authority as ever.
She waited and gradually his breathing eased and his colour returned to normal. At last he sat up, reaching for her, and she put her arms around him.
‘God, Van, you frightened me to death! What was it – your heart?’
‘Could be.’
‘Could be? What do you mean, could be? Have you had something like this happen to you before?’
‘A few times, yes.’
‘And what does the doctor say about them?’
‘The doctor doesn’t say anything. I haven’t told him.’
‘Van, you must! You looked really ill just then.’
‘I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anyone to know. If they think there’s anything wrong with me they’ll revoke my p.p. I. and I don’t want that.’
Van had gained his private pilot’s licence soon after establishing the business, and now he had his own plane, which he flew whenever he could for pleasure. The thought of losing his licence was unbearable.
‘They’ll find out when you have your next medical anyway,’ Ros said. ‘You have to have one every year, don’t you?’
‘Yes – but I’ll be over all this nonsense by then. For God’s sake stop fussing, Ros. I’ve had a bit of a chesty cold and I had too heavy a dinner – that’s all.’
Ros felt sure it had been much more than that but she also knew that where Van was concerned argument was useless.
The next time she saw Van clearly unwell she tried again to insist that he seek medical attention. They had been away on a business trip, and driving back along the motorway he suddenly fell silent. She glanced at him and saw beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked sharply.
‘Yes.’ But his voice was tight and a moment later he swung on to the hard shoulder, braking hard and sitting with his head pressed back against the headrest while his breath came in hard, shallow gasps.
‘Move over,’ she ordered. ‘I’m taking you to a hospital.’
He moved, and she got into the driving seat and put her foot hard down, watching him anxiously out of the corner of her eye. But by the time she had taken the next exit from the motorway and was racing along the country roads trying to remember where she would find the nearest hospital he had begun to recover, and with recovery came the typical assertiveness for which Van was renowned.
‘I’m all right now, Ros. Let’s just go home.’
At Vandina she parked, then faced him squarely.
‘Van, you have got to do something about these turns of yours. You can’t just let them go on happening.’
‘Don’t try to tell me what to do, sweetness.’
‘You are ill, Van.’
‘I had too much to drink last night, that’s all. If I consider there is anything seriously wrong I’ll seek help. Do you understand?’
She did not argue. What was the point? And besides, what had just happened could well have been exactly what he had said – a slight case of hangover, no more, no less – while she could hardly describe to anyone what had happened on the previous occasion without admitting their illicit liaison. She was worried, but she said nothing to anyone.
A few weeks later she was bitterly regretting her decision. Flying himself in his little Cessna, Van had crashed. The moment she heard about it, long before the speculation began, Ros knew what had happened and blamed herself dreadfully. Whatever the consequences she should have told someone of her suspicions as to Van’s state of health. She had not – and now he was dead. He had been wrong to ignore the warning signals – but so had she. If she had done what she had known she should have done maybe she could have saved him.
In her worst nightmares Ros asked herself how she would have felt if Van had managed to kill someone else besides himself; at other times she gratefully thanked the fates that he had not. She wept into her pillow, tears of grief for the man who had obsessed her, and guilt for her failure to do what she could have done to save him, and she salved her conscience as far as she was able by doing everything she could to comfort and support Dinah, who was devastated by Van’s death.
Ros had always been fond of her mercurial boss. Everyone who knew Dinah loved her and wanted to protect her, and Ros was no exception. Sometimes it had occurred to her to wonder how this loyalty could co-exist alongside the knowledge that she was carrying on a long-term affair with Dinah’s husband, but somehow it did and the fact that she not only suspected but knew Dinah’s true vulnerability only made her more anxious to spare her any pain. After Van’s death this emotion intensified. Although her own grief was sometimes insupportable, seeing Dinah�
��s total collapse made her somehow strong and she found herself caring for Dinah, buffering her, as Van had done.
I am doing it for him, Ros told herself, and the sense of purpose helped her through the pain of her own loss.
She had long since forgotten about the young man she had met in Van’s apartment. She remembered it only when she went into the office one morning to find a Dinah glowing with radiance and trembling with excitement.
The change from the gaunt and grief-stricken woman she had become since Van’s death was so startling that Ros could only stare in amazement. And then Dinah had told her that she had received a letter from her son, adopted as a baby, and whom she had never expected to see again.
Ros had had to pretend surprise, of course. She could not let Dinah know she already knew she had a son, much less that she had met him. But Dinah’s delight was disconcerting. Van had said he was keeping the reappearance of the boy a secret from her because he did not want to upset her – clearly the letter she had received from him now had had quite the opposite effect.
‘I can’t believe it!’ Dinah whispered to Ros, her face glowing, her hands pressed to her cheeks like a child. ‘I never thought I’d see him again, and now … Oh, if you knew how I’ve longed for him, Ros, how I have blamed myself for giving him up to strangers, wanted … oh, just to get a glimpse of him so that I’d know what he looked like! And now, right out of the blue, he’s written to me, asking if we can meet! Isn’t fate strange? They say God never shuts a door but he opens a window. I’ve lost Van but now suddenly my son is back. It’s unbelievable really!’
Not as unbelievable as all that, Ros thought cynically. Van had sent him away before and now he had read of the great man’s death he was back, trying to set up a meeting all over again. But in view of Dinah’s obvious happiness it could be no bad thing.
When Steve finally arrived, however, and Ros was introduced to him, she was both startled and puzzled. For though she had seen Dinah’s son only briefly at Van’s apartment the young man standing before her, holding proprietorially on to Dinah’s arm, was not at all the way she remembered him.
At first Ros had told herself that memory must be playing her false. Like her, that night he had been dressed for the cold winter weather – she remembered a bulky parka distorting his shape – and she told herself that in the intervening years she must have superimposed the face of someone else she had met briefly, either in the course of her work or socially. She could not, after all, picture with any clarity what the man she had met at Van’s apartment had looked like, only that she did not think he had looked like this. And it wasn’t only the face that was wrong, it was the voice too. She had only heard him speak one sentence but she could have sworn he had an ordinary English voice, whilst this Steve spoke with a slight but unmistakable transatlantic accent. He had explained to Dinah that the family who had adopted him had emigrated to Canada and he had been brought up there, and she had accepted it without question. But it jarred on Ros all the same.
Carefully employing all her tact Ros had begun questioning him. The answers he gave were slick and plausible but instead of being satisfied Ros’s sense of unease grew.
One day she tentatively mentioned Van’s apartment.
‘Lucky for him it was ground floor,’ she said, almost holding her breath. ‘If he’d had stairs to run up and down maybe his heart would have given out much earlier.’
And Steve, without so much as blinking an eyelid, replied: ‘That’s true. Though if he’d had prior warning he might be alive today.’
Ros knew then without any doubt that she was right – he had never been to Van’s apartment. So – one of the young men who claimed to be Dinah’s son was an imposter. But which one? With all her heart Ros hoped it was Steve who was genuine. To discover she had been duped would break Dinah’s heart.
Ros puzzled and worried the facts around. With a mother like Dinah and an empire like Vandina to aspire to it was not difficult to see why an unscrupulous fortune-hunter should want to lay down a claim. But it wasn’t that simple. The fact that Dinah had had an illegitimate son had been a closely guarded secret, and details of parentage would only be released to a genuine applicant after a great deal of official counselling. It did not make sense, any of it.
When Dinah began installing Steve as heir apparent Ros grew more and more worried. She was convinced something was very wrong but her loyalty to Dinah imposed an insurmountable dilemma. If Steve was an imposter then he could not be allowed to go on taking advantage of Dinah. But such a revelation would come as a terrible shock to her and would break her heart. For weeks Ros agonised, even allowing Steve to wine and dine her once or twice in an effort to get close to him and learn the truth. But she was unable to penetrate the persona he had created for himself and eventually she reached a decision. Somehow she had to find out exactly what was going on. Then, and only then, could she decide what to do about it.
Now, twisting the vodka glass between her fingers as she talked with Maggie and Mike, she faced again the dilemma that had tormented her. To explain why it was she had been suspicious of Steve meant admitting to her affair with Van. Ros, secretive and passionate by nature, was still unwilling to tell the whole truth. Yet with the knowledge now in her possession she knew that the time had come when she had to be honest about at least some of it.
‘I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure,’ she said. ‘ Can’t you see, Mike, what a devastating accusation I would have been making?’
‘Couldn’t you have trusted me?’ Mike asked.
‘I should have done, I suppose. But I thought it was better to keep my suspicions to myself until I was sure.’
‘I still don’t see why you went off without a word. Didn’t you realise how worried we would be?’
Ros sighed, shaking her head.
‘Mike, please try to see it from my point of view. I thought that while you were away at school camp would be the ideal opportunity for me to follow up my investigations without you asking awkward questions. I never intended to be gone so long.’
‘You couldn’t have been so naive as to think you could go to Argentina and back in the same way you could go to Bournemouth.’
‘I told you, I didn’t set out to go to Argentina. I only intended to go to London. I had been in touch with Excel Oil – the company who employed Steve in the North Sea. They gave me the address of a man who worked closely with him on the rigs – a Londoner named Des Taylor. I decided to go and see him.’
Maggie and Mike exchanged glances. Des Taylor – the man who had rung the cottage asking for Ros.
‘So – what happened?’
‘This Des Taylor was away – my fault, I suppose, for not checking first to make sure I would find him at home. But I was able to talk to his parents. They showed me a photograph – their son with the two other divers who made up his team. One was Steve. The other was the young man I saw at Van’s apartment.’
‘What do you mean … you saw?’ Mike queried.
Ros coloured faintly. ‘I was at Van’s apartment one night – working – when this young man was there. Van sent him away saying that Dinah would not want to be reminded of her past. Anyway, I immediately recognised the man in the photograph as being that same man. Des Taylor’s parents said they knew him as ‘‘Mac” and that he had gone to Argentina to dive for one of the multinationals there. They also said that soon afterwards word had got back to the Excel rig that he had been killed in a diving accident. That, I suppose, was when Steve decided to take his identity.’
‘The bastard!’ Mike exploded.
Tears welled unexpectedly in Maggie’s eyes. The events of the day had left her raw and emotional and she was overwhelmed by a rush of pity for the woman who had been exploited so ruthlessly.
‘Poor, poor Dinah.’
‘Yes, poor Dinah,’ Ros echoed grimly. ‘She’s had a pretty rotten deal from life, hasn’t she? A great many people envy her, I expect, but they haven’t a clue about all the traumas and
heartaches she has had to endure.’
‘I still don’t really understand why you went straight off to Argentina without letting us know about it,’ Mike said. His voice was hard, the outward manifestation of the strains of the day and the jumble of emotions he was now experiencing.
‘You know me, Mike,’ Ros said tightly. ‘I believe in striking whilst the iron is hot, and I honestly never thought for a moment it would cause all this upset. Why should you think I was dead, for heaven’s sake?’
‘All kinds of reasons!’ Maggie snapped. The relief was now beginning to turn to anger that Ros should have put them through all this anxiety and be seemingly totally unrepentant. ‘Your bank statement, for one thing. You hadn’t drawn any money. How did you go to Argentina without drawing any money?’
‘I used my new American Express. Why the hell shouldn’t I?’
‘And your car – the driving seat was in the wrong position for you … too far back. Did someone take you to the station?’ Mike asked.
‘Of course not! The seat was moved back, you say? I don’t understand why that should be … Oh yes, wait a minute. I dropped an earring. I suppose I moved the seat back to pick it up. But I don’t see what you were doing poking about in my bank statements and my car anyway.’
‘If you’d had a little more forethought, Ros, we wouldn’t have had to.’
Ros, on the point of snapping back, changed her mind.
‘I’m going to see Dinah.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight. There’s something I have to tell her which might help to soften the blow. I was going to leave it on the back burner until tomorrow, but under the circumstances I think she should know at once. Can I take your car, Mike?’
‘Now – tonight? Ros, I …’
‘If you won’t let me, I suppose I’ll have to call a taxi.’
‘Why do you have to go and see her tonight? I shouldn’t think she’d be in a fit state to see anyone. After unleashing all this, what can you tell her that will be any help at all?’
‘Possibly the one thing that will give her a glimmer of hope.’
‘Which is?’
