You Think You Know Me

by Clare Chase

  She smiled. ‘It’s horrible doing it. The thing is, Anna, I’ve seen it happen before. No one I know has ever been out with anyone quite like Darrick, I have to say, but the forgiving, going back and getting hurt again cycle is very familiar. It’s happened to me more than once.’ She finished off her wine. ‘Maybe you need to sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning. The trip to Glasgow sounds like a slog, but at least it’ll give you the chance to get away, and a bit of distance might help you see things in perspective. You’ll get some time to take stock.’

  I went back upstairs feeling utterly deflated and gave in to the tears that had been threatening to arrive in Sally’s room. In the end, I did as she’d suggested, and though I glanced at Darrick’s text twice more before switching out my light, I didn’t send a reply.

  The next morning I woke at 5.30 a.m. and mulled over my plans for the day. I’d been meaning to take the train up to Glasgow, my mission being to do the Feldenstein job in one quick hit and then get home again.

  Lying there in bed, I had plenty of time to consider what Sally had said. Maybe she was right about getting some distance from the situation I was in. And Darrick was away anyway, it wasn’t as though there was any chance of him turning up.

  I wondered about using my car instead, and then taking off somewhere on Saturday. I could stop overnight at a nice, faceless motel on my way home and make a weekend of it. It would be good to get some peace and quiet and I wouldn’t have to face however many hours of small talk in a crowded carriage. I let the idea play around in my head between periods of dozing and by 6.30 a.m. I was up, and looking at a road map.

  I went downstairs for an early breakfast and planned my day. If I set off quickly I could stop for a decent break over lunch and still manage to fetch up at my hotel with plenty of time to preen myself before my dinner date.

  The drive was good. I set the radio to a music station and focused my mind on the journey, pushing out other thoughts. Suburbs slipped by in a blur and the idea of submitting a nice big diesel bill to Monica played pleasingly in the back of mind.

  At the restaurant I had a surprise. Henry Feldenstein had been called away at the last minute and instead, I got his business adviser, one Morgan Rose. He was intense, and not a bit flirty. He had a jutting cleft chin, wore a dark suit and black-framed designer glasses and sat up very straight, listening to every word I said. No assertion I made went unquestioned. I had a feeling he’d see straight through the flattery that Seb had recommended for his boss, so I modified my behaviour accordingly. My conscious scheming increased my distaste for what I was doing. It was all so calculated. Still, I’d made my pact with Seb, and he’d helped me out with Lester. I just had to swallow my sensibilities and get on with it.

  Eventually Rose cut across me and said, ‘How much does Rice want to let Feldenstein see Oriel’s work in advance of any other buyers?’

  Seb had said this would happen and I had all the right answers to give him. There was no way he was going to exclude the possibility of a bidding war, so Feldenstein was out of luck. My job was to keep him sweet, yet desperate, by telling him the private view would be very exclusive. I was anxious that having to do this through Rose might weaken the strategy, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

  My worries about an endless evening, possibly winding up in some dodgy club, were dispelled. He was clearly one of those people who measured every minute of their time, never wasting a second on unnecessary fripperies. By 10.30 p.m. I was back at my hotel, soaking in a hot bath and rinsing away my manipulative performance, which I felt was clinging to me like dirt.

  Even as I looked at the road map the next morning I was aware that my imagined intention of giving myself space was under threat. I wondered if, subconsciously, the idea had been at the back of my mind ever since I’d lain in bed that morning. If you looked at the route from Glasgow to London, veering off to stay overnight in the Lakes seemed like a very reasonable plan.

  Though the Dales would make just as much sense, an inner voice argued. But I already knew I was going to ignore it.

  Chapter Thirty

  There was no earthly use in going to Cumbria. Julia had been dead for fourteen years and Seb’s parents no longer lived there; there would be nothing to see, nothing to find out. But the desire to go built up as I sat over my hotel breakfast. The more partial information I had on Darrick, the more I wanted to know. It was like having an itch: the more I scratched the more I felt the need to.

  And if I was going to go somewhere, it might as well be the Lakes: beautiful destination of my childhood holidays, and a place where I wouldn’t need to get my bearings. After all, I only had one night. I booked myself into the Penrith Travelodge, keeping to my plan to stay somewhere faceless at least. Once I’d been back to my old haunts I could shut myself away for the night.

  I drove straight to the hamlet where Seb and Julia had once lived; I couldn’t help myself. It was the first time I’d been back since Julia’s funeral and suddenly it seemed important to make the trip, a way of laying the past to rest. The urge made me realise how strong my sense of guilt was for sleeping with Seb so soon after she’d died. I suppose it was the knowledge that I’d wanted him, all that time they were together, that made me feel so bad. Crazy really, in the grand scheme of things, but now was the time to face up to it, and let it go.

  It was raining lightly as I parked opposite Julia’s old house. I got out and stood in the tall, damp grass, looking at the building. The smell of mud mingled with that of the wood smoke which wove its way from one of the chimneys. The house had changed. Someone had added a conservatory to its west side and there was an ugly brick-built garage near the entrance gates. But the atmosphere was the same; the grey stone was forbidding in the overcast weather. I felt the echoes of fourteen years earlier. I could still see Julia as she had been when I’d first met her: leaning against Seb, his arms around her, her silvery hair spilling over his jumper.

  A man with a terrier came up the road. ‘You lost, love?’ he said, dragging me back to the present.

  I shook my head. ‘Just visiting an old haunt.’ I paused a moment. ‘I remember there was a village shop round here somewhere, but I can’t recall how to find it.’

  The man rubbed his chin. ‘Could be Henley’s? Just a mile up the road and then turn left and you’ll see it.’

  The shop had an old-fashioned bell and its sound took me back to my last visit. The effect was unexpected, giving me an odd pulling sensation inside. Memories tugged at my emotions as the smell of sweets and newsprint filled my nostrils. Even the woman behind the counter looked familiar, with her beaky nose and bright bird-like eyes. She wore a blue checked overall and had a bit of a hunch, as though she’d spent too many years stooping over her till.

  I bought a newspaper, a Coke and a sandwich. ‘You won’t remember me,’ I said, as I handed over my fiver, ‘but I used to come and stay near here. I remember this shop.’ I stood there thinking, letting the past come back to me. ‘We used to buy you out of fudge when we were feeling hungry.’

  The woman smiled. ‘Family holidays was it? We get a lot of little ones in here, spending their pocket money on the local sweets. We still do the fudge, if you’re interested.’

  She waved a small, bony hand at some shelves near the window and I went over and picked up a packet, feeling the familiar cellophane crackle under my grasp.

  ‘Actually, it was when I was a bit older than that.’ We’d bought the fudge as a morning-after-the-night-before treatment. Kill or cure. ‘I used to come up to see Seb Rice and his girlfriend Julia, when she was living up at the big house.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, well I knew Sebastian and his mum and dad of course,’ she said. ‘That’s how it is if you run the only shop in the village.’

  ‘It must be nice, being at the heart of the community.’

  She nodded, the corners of her mouth jumping up again, covering her face with laughter lines. ‘You get to know everyone, so if you’re inte
rested in people it’s the ideal job. I’ve been working here for thirty-eight years too, so I’ve seen all the changes. Villagers coming and going, babies born, growing up and getting married …’ Then her expression changed. ‘And that poor child, Julia. I knew her too of course, though she wasn’t around for as long as the Rices. It was her parents’ house before she inherited, but they travelled so much I barely caught sight of them. It was mostly tenanted until Julia turned up.’ She sighed. ‘Terrible tragedy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Awful,’ I agreed. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard.’

  She nodded. ‘And young Sebastian seemed so smitten with her.’ She leant forward on the counter, pushing grey hair out of eyes that glistened slightly. ‘She was just coming out of the woods. She’d had such bad luck, poor pet, and there he was, ready to take care of her. I remember I was quite struck by the romance of it at the time – it seemed like the happy ending she deserved. And then …’ She tapped her fingers down on the counter. ‘… all of it gone overnight.’ She took the extra money for the fudge and sighed. ‘How is Sebastian now? Do you still see him at all?’

  I nodded. ‘He’s all right, though I don’t think he’ll ever quite get over what happened.’

  She shook her head. ‘How could he, when all’s said and done? We can’t go through life untouched by our experiences. But he’s coping?’

  I explained about the success of the gallery, and how kind he’d been, giving me my job.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear that,’ she said. There was an odd look in her eye. ‘I worried for him after she died. Even more than I might have done for a different person, I mean. He’d been looking after her of course, but, in many ways, my husband Harry and I thought she was the making of him.’

  I looked at her but she waved away what she’d said with a quick flick of her hand.

  ‘There, it doesn’t matter now, in any case. And of course, Sebastian had lots of other nice friends to see him through.’ She nodded in my direction, smiling, and then her eyes were far away again. ‘I do remember there were a couple of larky lads he brought up here once.’ She paused, rubbing the small of her back as though it hurt her. ‘They certainly livened the place up. Mind, they did wake me up in the middle of the night one time. Seemed to think they could buy my sweets at two in the morning. But I didn’t get up, and they bought me the most enormous bunch of flowers to apologise the next day, which was a nice touch.’

  I smiled myself then. ‘I’ll bet that was Terry and Jez. They were always like that: extremely well meaning, but with a tendency to get overexcited.’

  She nodded, beaming. ‘That fits all right. And then there was one man who used to come and pick Julia up to go sailing on Derwentwater. He told me she was having lessons, but she didn’t have a car, so he would drive over and get her. Always turned up in a Range Rover all covered in mud. They used to park across the road and come in for sandwiches. Of course, he must have been local though, so you may never have known him.’

  I shook my head. Then it suddenly came to me that she might remember Julia’s other visitors too. Knowing would hurt, but I made myself ask, ‘You don’t by any chance remember another friend of mine, do you?’ and gave her a description of Darrick.

  ‘Sounds like Irish colouring,’ she said. ‘Dark hair, and very blue eyes?’

  I nodded.

  She shook her head. ‘Sorry love, you’ve got me there; we get so many visitors. The man who took Julia sailing just happened to stick in my head – because he was semi-regular. And then the two lads I mentioned made an impression because they were so young.’

  ‘And noisy,’ I added.

  She laughed. ‘In fact, I think that’s what I meant when I said they were young. They were the same age as Sebastian, I suppose – but they acted young; full of the joys of youth. Some of the others he brought up here were just the opposite. From a different mould, so to speak; older and harder.’ She reddened for a moment. ‘Stuck up Londoners, Harry and I used to call them, I’m afraid. Proud of themselves they were, plumped up with their position in life. We often wondered which way Sebastian would go – whether he’d stick with the fun-loving, innocent sort, like your two friends, or if he’d be swallowed up by that adult, money-grabbing world.’

  Back at the Travelodge I made myself a cup of black coffee to avoid the long-life milk and sat on the sofa, scalding my mouth as I failed to distance myself from Darrick.

  True, the woman who ran Henley’s had never come across him, but it wasn’t reasonable to draw any conclusions from that. She couldn’t possibly have seen everyone who visited. In any case, he and Julia could have met elsewhere – and the wedding photo proved that they had – but they couldn’t have done this on a very regular basis. After all, Julia didn’t drive, so whenever she went further afield she’d be relying on buses or lifts. Rather than putting the lid on any thoughts I had of seeing him again, the lack of information just made me more restless.

  And then I wondered which of Seb’s friends the shopkeeper had been talking about when she referred to that nasty, tainted adult world. None of my friends fitted the bill, but then Seb had probably already been making more high-powered contacts. I realised that whether I admired him for the fact, or wrote him off as an operator, entirely depended on my mood at the time.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Back in London on Sunday evening, I went to get some things ready for supper in the kitchen. I was halfway through chopping an onion when Alicia appeared, as was her habit. I think she looked for any excuse to come and check up on either me or Sally, seeing it as her duty to watch over us and fulfil all necessary nagging duties.

  ‘Eating in?’ she asked. I hadn’t treated her to the same résumé of my evening out with Darrick as I’d given Sally, so she was still probing for details in her usual unsubtle way. This particular tack was her method of trying to draw me out about any further dinner dates I might have planned.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, refusing to be goaded. ‘I’m going to have spaghetti bolognaise.’ I brushed my streaming eyes with the back of my hand. Bloody onions.

  ‘Want any help?’ Alicia appeared unaffected by the vapours.

  ‘It may not end up being cordon bleu,’ I said, ‘but given that I learnt to cook it when I was ten, I think I can manage, thank you.’

  She sniffed. ‘It was just a thought.’

  ‘Very kind.’

  She peered at the mushrooms I’d bought. I could see her struggling with herself and then managing not to tell me that they weren’t really the best sort, and that I hadn’t been storing them correctly.

  ‘So what are you up to tonight?’ I asked, realising that she wasn’t going to go away just because I was ignoring her.

  ‘Tonight’s my meet up with Mel,’ she said. ‘We’re going to that Vietnamese place just off Leicester Square I told you about.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, swiping the mushrooms from under her nose and starting to wipe them with kitchen paper. I wondered if they would talk about Seb and his fictitious affair with Radley. ‘So what’s Mel up to these days?’

  ‘Just starting up a new venture as a matter of fact,’ Alicia said. ‘She’s opening up a restaurant.’

  ‘Really?’ I was interested. ‘I thought she was still involved in galleries.’

  She sat down at the table. ‘Oh she is. She’s still got joint ownership of the one in Putney. But this isn’t entirely unrelated and it’s quite ground-breaking. She’s planning to have up-and-coming artists working whilst people eat. They’re going to produce things quite quickly so that, if the clients want, they can buy the pictures and take them away there and then.’

  ‘Will people want to buy them?’ I was slightly sceptical.

  ‘Well, Mel does quite well in the art world, you know. She’s good at spotting talent just as Sebastian is, and the success of his gallery is partly built on what she achieved too.’

  ‘So she’ll pick the right artists?’

  ‘I’m quite sure she will.’ Al
icia looked up and spotted the bottle of red I’d opened. ‘Mind if I have some of your wine?’

  I felt guilty I hadn’t offered first and passed her a glass. It wasn’t that I grudged her a share, just that I hadn’t wanted to prolong her visit. ‘So presumably she’ll be after people who are early in their career,’ I said, ‘if they’re willing to stand around sketching all evening?’

  Alicia picked up her glass. ‘She’s aiming to fine tune the whole thing to perfection,’ she said. ‘She’ll pick people who are just bubbling up and starting to sell. She’ll market them as the next big thing to the restaurant goers, so that their sketches will seem like a bargain, to be snapped up by the discerning art collector.

  ‘And because they’ll literally be the work of an hour, the artists will be willing to sell the drawings for a reasonable price. It’ll be good from their point of view too, because they’ll get to keep most of what they charge.’ She took a swig of her wine. ‘And let’s face it, it’s so much easier trying to sell people things when they’ve had a few drinks. After a well-oiled meal, Mel’s quite sure her clients will be loose with their cash, and I suspect she’s right. Also, she thinks the pictures will sell well to couples, as romantic mementoes of their evening out.’

  ‘It sounds like an interesting idea,’ I said, putting down the mushroom I’d been holding. ‘So what cut will she get of the artists’ profits?’

  ‘Just a small percentage,’ Alicia said. ‘She’ll make most of her money by having a hip new restaurant everyone wants to be seen at. And the artists that feature will be on display at the Putney gallery too.’

  ‘So Mel’s hoping to attract the restaurant goers back to her exhibitions to buy something more valuable?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Alicia said, nodding.

  ‘She must be planning to draw in a rich crowd.’

  ‘Oh they don’t have to be super rich; just the sort who’d be willing to spend the odd thousand to make themselves feel superior to their friends.’