by Karen Swan
She opened the door, the charming smile she’d spread across her face fading fast as she saw her client.
She shut the door behind her, quickly.
‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Monty said. ‘How else did you expect me to get hold of you? You won’t return my calls. No one’s heard from you. I have no idea where you’re staying.’
He stared at her. He couldn’t believe how good she looked. She’d had her hair cut and she’d dropped a few pounds. And that suit – he’d never seen her in anything so slinky. Especially not for work.
‘Where are you staying?’ he frowned.
‘That’s none of your business,’ she clipped. She couldn’t believe how dreadful he looked. He’d lost a colossal amount of weight and seemed to have aged eight years. His sandy-blond hair had started to grey, as though the pigmentation was draining out of him, as if he was being slowly washed away.
‘You can’t stay here, Monty. I’ve got another appointment in ten min–– ’ she checked her watch. ‘No, in five minutes. I’m running late. This isn’t the time or the place.’
‘Then when is? How am I expected to reach you?’
‘You’re not. My lawyers will contact you with all the relevant paperwork.’
She couldn’t look at him. He was ruining her day.
‘The paperw–– ’ His mouth dropped open. ‘What paperwork? What are you saying?’
‘You know exactly what I’m saying. There’s no point in us pretending any longer. It’s over. It has been for a long time.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Kate! Be reasonable,’ he pleaded. ‘This isn’t my fault. It’s all as much a surprise to me as it is to you.’
‘Yup. Bit of a difference though. You get the consolation prize of being a daddy. Me? I’m the same as I ever was.’
‘But I don’t want this without you.’
‘You are a father. I’m not a mother. I can’t do this with you. Not like this.’
Monty dropped his face in his hands and turned away. How had everything turned out like this? He still couldn’t take it in. Lily’s lies. James’s complicity. Billy his son. And now Kate – carefree, unconcerned. Gone.
‘The marriage was failing anyway, Monts,’ she said quietly. ‘Deep down, you know that. We weren’t going to make it. It was too hard.’
He turned back to face her. For all her cold words, she looked tiny at the other side of the table. He moved around it, taking her hands in his.
‘Kate, you don’t mean any of this. You know I have nothing without you. It’s always been about you. Ever since we were kids.’
‘Not for fifteen crucial minutes though, hey?’ She slid her hands out of his and backed away.
‘Kate, I was eighteen! I was trying to do what I thought I ought to be doing – playing the field, sowing my oats. But it wasn’t what I wanted. Even then, when I was just one giant hormone.’
Kate shrugged and perched on the edge of the table. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But you know what? This is what I want now. Because I’m having a ball.’ She saw the incredulity cross his face. ‘No, really. There is actually an upside of not having kids – freedom. Hedonism. Time. Cash. You don’t get any of that with babies, you know. But you and I – we didn’t appreciate it. We didn’t realize what we had. We didn’t go out and take drugs and have sex in the park. We stayed in and went to bed early, as though there really was a baby in the next room and we couldn’t get a babysitter. We tried to live both lives and ended up having neither.’
She slapped a hand down on the table and began to laugh. ‘I mean – what the fuck were we doing, Monty, living childless in the middle of Nappy Valley?’ She tipped her head back and laughed at their own ridiculousness.
Monty watched her. This euphoria, this anti-kids rhetoric. Where was it coming from? What was making her so damned happy?
She heard the elevators ping open and wiggled off the table. He watched her move. She seemed so sexual. Sexed up.
Christ – was she seeing someone?
‘That’ll be my next client,’ she said, smiling patiently. Patronizingly. As though the breakdown of their marriage was nothing more than paperwork she wanted to clear off her desk.
‘So that’s it?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be in touch about the division of assets. I suggest we each draw up a list and then meet again to discuss it. There’s no need for this to be anything other than amicable.’
She opened the door and walked through it. He followed after her, his mouth open, his heart in his boots.
‘I’ll be right with you,’ he heard her saying. He looked up and found Harry Hunter, in a blue open-necked shirt, navy cashmere tank and jeans, sitting on the leather sofa, arms splayed out wide across the top, an ankle resting casually on his knee.
‘I’m happy to wait for you,’ Harry smiled back at her.
Monty looked at Kate. Her cheeks had flushed a little, and her body language seemed to have become . . . coquettish, somehow.
Oh no, not a crush on Harry Hunter, he despaired. She didn’t stand a chance. He felt so protective of her, seeing her single and tough and all on her own in the big bad world, with cocky bastards like Harry looking for an easy lay.
‘Monty,’ Harry acknowledged, getting up from the sofa and offering a hand.
‘Harry,’ Monty said, shaking back, unaware of Harry’s role in the Cornwall debacle.
‘I’m not sure what the right thing is to say in these situations. But I hear you’re a father,’ Harry said. ‘Congratulations?’
Monty’s smile froze.
‘Very kind of you, Harry,’ he said, looking back to Kate. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, trying to keep their marriage woes private from Harry and hoping desperately she’d come to her senses and walk back through their front door.
He walked into the lifts and pressed to go down, watching her walk slowly back to her office – she clearly couldn’t walk in such a daft skirt – to where Harry was waiting.
‘He won’t, will he?’ Harry murmured into her neck, once she’d locked her door.
She sighed as she felt his hands travel up and down her body. ‘Of course not,’ she breathed.
‘Good. Because I was planning something special for us tonight. I’ve told Emily I’m in Bristol accepting an honorary degree.’ He chuckled at the deception. He still hadn’t managed to get her to go out in public with him. Camera-shy wasn’t the word. She was perfectly happy playing wife, holed up in the riverside apartment and waiting for him to come home. And frankly, since getting it on with Kate in Cornwall, he’d lost all momentum in trying to get her to do anything at all. It suited him fine if she wanted to stay there.
At Kate’s behest, he’d spent the previous night with Emily – so that he didn’t arouse her suspicion that anyone else was on the scene – but even the prospect of her impressive sexual gymnastics didn’t hold their usual thrill, and it was 10 p.m. before he rocked in. She was sulking, of course, but it only took two orgasms in twenty minutes for all to be forgiven, and she had ordered in truffle risotto from San Lorenzo for supper, whereupon they collapsed on the sofa and he hadn’t had to deal with her for the rest of the night. Job done.
For one night anyway. Kate wouldn’t go public with him, nor let him dump Emily until he had secured paparazzo proof of his relationship with her first. Kate kept warning him that Emily could be very dangerous, but it pissed him off. It was pointless having one woman in one apartment, and another at his club, and both of them a secret.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Kate asked, moaning a little as he unbuttoned her jacket and found her wearing just the cupless bra underneath.
‘Here. On the desk. Twice,’ he smiled, eyes dancing.
She giggled helplessly. But he wasn’t lying.
Chapter Thirty-two
Fat clouds plodded across the sky, and Cress shivered on her recliner as she watched Greta push the children on the swings in the garden and play around the very
tree where she’d shagged her boyfriend.
‘Hon, can you pass my jumper?’ she asked, looking over at Mark, who was reading the paper – or supposed to be. His eyes were on Greta too.
She looked back down again quickly. Nearly a month had passed since she’d found him at the window, and she was only just blagging her way through it. She was sleeping in the spare room, blaming a noisy radiator for keeping her awake at night, but she knew Mark wasn’t buying it. They hadn’t had sex since she’d come back from Cornwall – it was the longest time they’d ever gone without each other – and she could tell he was increasingly frustrated, snapping at the kids and spending long hours in the gym in the basement, knocking the bejesus out of the punchbag.
They had tried a few times, to be fair. She wasn’t withholding out of spite. But just as her body had started to respond to his touch, the image of him watching Greta had replayed itself in her mind and she had pulled away angrily, frigidly. Did she measure up? Could her body, which had borne four children, match up to Greta’s tight, springy figure?
She watched her nanny do delicate ballet-runs across the lawn like a gazelle, closely followed by Flick copying her, her arms above her head in a very dodgy first position. Not a hope. Cress didn’t fancy her chances against Greta in a tutu.
She looked back at the paperwork on her lap – her signature green ink scrawled all over the drafts. There was precious little progress on that front either, despite Rosie suspending all her PA duties to investigate further. It had turned out Brendan Hillier was dead – had been for quite a long time actually: August 1989, so at least that ruled him out as the Wrong Prince author. Rosie had managed to establish that the deeds to the flat had passed to this woman, Bridget Hillier, although they still didn’t know who she was. Sister? Aunt? Cousin? Mother? And searches on Amelie Hillier were still bringing up nothing.
Poor Rosie was searching every public record office she could think of, but the backlogs for each were several weeks long and seemingly even a cash incentive couldn’t leapfrog you to the front. Cress was tempted to just park Rosie in a camper-van outside the flat and wait for one of the Hilliers to return. So what if it freaked out the neighbours?
She handled the thick bundle of letters, now tied together with string, which she’d taken from the Felden Street flat. Seven publishing houses had come back with offers to publish. Seven! Whoever this author was, if he ever got hold of these letters, he could command a bidding war that would price Sapphire out of the market. Despite the company’s paper value, and the bank’s goodwill, there would be a cashflow crisis if talks went beyond a certain ceiling.
Too cold to stay outside any longer, she got up and went into the house. The phone was ringing. She picked it up, cradling it on one shoulder while she peered into the larder cupboard for some nibbles.
‘Yes?’ she said brusquely, spying a packet of dried apple rings.
‘Mrs Pelling? It’s Mrs Beevor, from Littlington Hall.’
Lucy’s headmistress? What did she want? Cress felt herself tense. It was either money, or help at the Christmas Fayre. Please God, let it be money.
‘How can I help you, Mrs Beevor?’
‘I was ringing to inquire whether there was a particular reason you didn’t attend Lucy’s parents’ evening on Thursday? We had you down for the 7.20 p.m. slot and I know several of Lucy’s teachers were keen to speak to you.’
Parents’ evening? This was the first she’d heard of it.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Beevor. I had no idea parents’ evening had even been on.’
‘We sent the letters home in the book bags.’
‘Hang on a moment, could you? I’ll just consult the diary.’ Cress went into the study and brought back the family diary, a big brown leather desk-bound volume in which she and Mark wrote down their various schedules on a daily basis, and Greta added in the children’s appointments – play dates, dental appointments, events at school and so on. Cress couldn’t imagine not consulting it. It was a habit as regular as brushing her teeth.
As she walked back into the kitchen, she looked out into the garden. The game had ended in tears, with Felicity crying and Orlando looking sheepish. Mark was holding her in his arms as Greta played peekaboo – or was it Happy Families? – from behind his arm to make her laugh. She was holding his bicep, standing so close, and Cress could see that her hair was tickling Mark’s neck, her breasts brushing his arm. Felicity was in fits, though. She wondered whether both levels of Greta’s play were having the desired effect.
‘Mrs Pelling?’
She looked quickly back down.
‘Um . . . where was I? Oh yes, let me see . . . Thursday . . . what was the date? . . . Oh, here it is. Thursday the twenty-seventh. I’m quite sure . . . oh!’
There it was. Written in Greta’s distinctive European hand. ‘Parents’ Evening, Littlington, Prep Block, Room 17, 7.20 p.m.’ She was sure it hadn’t been there on Thursday morning. She remembered checking because she’d had a hair appointment and couldn’t remember the time.
‘Well, I don’t know what to say, Mrs Beevor. It’s written here, plain as day, but I just don’t know how I managed to miss it.’ There was a stiff silence as Kathleen Beevor took in Cress’s weak excuse. Cress was well known among the teachers and other parents for her hands-off approach to parenting – she never did the school run, and had missed last year’s nativity and sports day – and Kathleen had long suspected it was the root of Lucy’s increasingly troublesome behaviour.
Still, she had three children at the school, and one more to come up. Her termly fees were significant, so it wouldn’t do to kick her into touch. Besides, everybody knew Cressida Pelling was Harry Hunter’s publisher. Although she rarely graced the school grounds, there was a palpable buzz of excitement among the mothers at the gates and the admin staff in the office when she did stride in. Kathleen was biding her time before angling for Harry to do a reading at the school. The Board of Governors would lap it up.
‘Well, we all lead such busy lives, don’t we? Shall we reschedule another time? Lucy’s teachers do feel we need to meet as a matter of urgency.’
She touched briefly on the topic of concern, and they arranged a date for the following week. Cress put the phone down, stunned, wondering how on earth she was going to tell Mark not only that they’d missed this key event in their daughter’s school career, but that their eldest child was also the class bully.
She looked back at Greta’s original diary entry. She didn’t understand how she could have missed it. Unless . . . a thought struck her . . . unless Greta had entered it after the event.
Cress narrowed her eyes. It had to have been that. Another petty sabotage. She and Mark had argued only the previous morning when she’d realized her Perretti gold bone cuff was missing and had suggested asking Greta point-blank if she’d taken it. Mark had hit the roof. He’d said if Cress was going to get rid of her, she’d need a rock-solid charge and not some jealous hunch. It had occurred to Cress to ask Mark why he would think she was jealous of Greta – did she have reason to be? But she had left it.
She closed the diary and put it back on the desk in the study. She needed some air, and anyway, the phone call had reminded her of something she needed to deal with. If she popped out now, no one would even notice she’d gone. She walked over to the bookcase next to the fireplace and ran her manicured hand along the spines of a collection of tall leather volumes, looking for the join. When her fingers found it, she pushed down firmly and the dummy door swung back, revealing the gunmetal grey safe.
She deftly entered the code and felt the door click open. Ignoring the pillarbox red leather Asprey boxes, and the formally waxed wills, she reached down to the glossy Littlington Hall prospectus lying on the floor of the safe.
She sank down into the chair and opened it up. There, in the back cover, was an innocuous brown envelope, with Strictly Private and Confidential stamped twice, boasting that its contents were more important than they looked.
My,
hadn’t that proved to be the case.
Whoever had sent it had taken no chances. Cress’s name had been printed, rather than hand-written, and it had been hand-delivered. The porters hadn’t been able to give a description of the courier – Sapphire shared the building (and postal depot) with four other companies – as most of them made the drop with their motorcycle helmets still on.
She peered inside the envelope, just to reassure herself it was still there, and clasped it to her chest. It had been an enormous risk leaving it in the safe – Mark could have chanced upon it many times. But he hadn’t really been her main concern. It was Harry Hunter she didn’t trust. With his money, there were plenty of avenues open to him for making sure he got what he wanted. When the alarm hadn’t been set the night she’d come back from Cornwall, she’d thought . . .
But she’d thought wrong. Over-estimated Harry Hunter and under-estimated the nanny on that occasion. Anyway, she didn’t want to think back to that night. What did it matter now? There could be room for only one thing in her mind – getting this evidence out of the house.
Chapter Thirty-three
She wasn’t stupid. Or certainly not as stupid as she looked, anyway. The blonde hair and habitual bra-lessness could be deceptive, but she knew what was going on. The doors of the elevator trilled open and she saw the resident clique of photographers sitting on their mopeds outside. She pushed open the door and they rushed forwards, camera poised. With her red beret, tight jeans and navy-striped jumper, she was every inch Harry’s type. Posh Totty done up as Miss October.
‘’Ere, you don’t know when Mr Hunter’s gonna be home, do you, love?’
‘What?’ Emily gasped. ‘Harry Hunter lives here? Ohmigod! You are kidding me! I had no idea. Which apartment’s he in?’
They dropped back with disappointment. ‘The penthouse,’ they said wearily. He had been around here less and less recently. She wasn’t the only one with her suspicions.
