Sins of the Fathers

by Anthea Fraser

  Into the silence Sebastian demanded harshly, ‘Is this true?’

  Mark swallowed and straightened his shoulders. ‘Yes, it is. I was going on a walking holiday, and at the station she mistook me for an escort she’d booked.’

  ‘Escort?’ Sebastian interrupted sharply.

  Natalie made a dismissive gesture. ‘There’s a firm she uses when she needs a partner for official dinners. She told me about it – it’s all quite above board.’

  Attention switched back to Mark, and he continued. ‘Well, she wouldn’t let me explain and virtually manhandled me on to the train.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d nothing to lose, so I agreed to play along.’

  ‘My God!’ said Nick softly. Then, ‘So what is your name?’

  ‘Mark Richmond.’

  Harry looked up suddenly. ‘Mark—? Isn’t that the guy in the news whose wife is missing?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And now – surprise, surprise – so is Helena!’

  ‘Harry!’ Sebastian said sharply. ‘That’s quite enough!’ He turned to Lexie. ‘You’d better finish what you came to say.’

  She passed a hand over her face. ‘That was the point when Blair finally snapped. All the hurt came pouring out and he accused her of playing fast and loose with everyone’s feelings and ruining his chances of a happy marriage with Kirsty. He finished by saying he never wanted to see her again.’ She bit her lip. ‘He told me she looked traumatized and he immediately wanted to take at least some of it back. But she spun round and fled, and he didn’t try to stop her.’

  After a minute Natalie asked, ‘What time was that?’

  Lexie shrugged. ‘About three, I suppose.’

  Harry had come to his feet. ‘And it’s now after six.’ He again looked at Mark, his eyes still suspicious. ‘You didn’t get back till around five. Are you sure you didn’t go after her?’

  Lexie said quickly, ‘When I phoned you about the girl and Hellie wasn’t here or answering her mobile, Callum and Blair immediately organized a search party. They’re out looking for her now.’

  ‘But it’s dark!’ Natalie exclaimed, her voice rising. She glanced at the uncurtained window. ‘And it’s snowing quite heavily. Suppose she’s lying hurt somewhere? She wouldn’t survive the night in this weather.’

  ‘We’ll go and join them,’ Sebastian said, turning sharply as a little voice from the doorway asked plaintively, ‘Is it nearly teatime?’

  Natalie, pale-faced, came to her feet. ‘Yes, darling, it certainly is,’ she replied, going to her nephew and taking his hand. ‘And you can choose what you’d like to have. Let’s go and look in the fridge.’

  The rest of them had also stood. Lexie said softly, ‘I’m so very sorry about this.’

  ‘Hardly your fault – or Blair’s,’ Sebastian said briskly. ‘Provided Helena’s OK, let’s hope it’s taught her a lesson. Right, everyone, wrap up – boots, if we have them. It’ll be pretty unpleasant out there.’

  Mark said quietly, ‘I’d like to come with you, if I may.’

  Harry made a movement of protest, but Seb said firmly, ‘Of course, the more the better.’

  Joining the general movement towards the door, Nick gave Mark a very welcome grin of sympathy. ‘Reckon you got more than you bargained for!’ he said in a low voice.

  It was the longest evening any of them could remember. It had been agreed that news of Helena’s absence should be kept from Paula, and that Natalie would stall should her mother phone and ask to speak to either of her brothers.

  The Touchstone part of the search had meanwhile split into two. Mark and Nick volunteered to cover the area between the house and hotel, while the Crawfords, who’d established mobile contact with Blair, went back in the car with Lexie to help search the town centre and the front. Snow was falling heavily, reducing visibility to a few feet and stinging their faces with splinters of ice, while the wind, fiercely bitter, penetrated their clothes and numbed their ears.

  Mark, head down and gripping one of the torches Sebastian had supplied, wondered uneasily if his dig about Blair Mackay that morning had sent Helena hotfoot into his arms. He could only hope not. It was ironic that he’d left Chislehurst hoping for a respite from his worries, and had ended up suspected of involvement in the disappearance of two women.

  He sent up an incoherent prayer that they’d both soon be found safe and well.

  An hour later he and Nick had combed the road down into town, together with several of the side streets, inch by inch, calling Helena’s name every so often. They’d met no one on their travels – hardly surprising, given the weather. Almost stiff with cold, buffeted by the increasingly strong wind, they had paused in the shelter of a hedge to take stock. Neither of them liked to be the first to suggest returning to the house, but both felt they’d exhausted every possibility of Helena’s being in the vicinity. Then, above the howl of the wind, came the reassuringly familiar sound of a mobile.

  Nick scrabbled frantically in the pocket of his greatcoat, his fingers almost too numb to open it. ‘Yes?’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘We’ve got her!’ It was Harry’s jubilant voice.

  ‘That’s great! Is she OK?’

  ‘Hypothermic and with a badly sprained ankle, but alive, thank God. We’re dropping her off at the hospital and will take the opportunity to pop in to see the parents, but we’ll be back at the house in about an hour. All details then.’

  He rang off. Nick fumbled the phone back into his pocket and he and Mark exchanged an instinctive hug of relief before thankfully setting off back up the hill.

  It was after nine o’clock when Blair dropped Seb and Harry back at the house, declining their invitation to go in. ‘We’ll touch base again tomorrow,’ he said.

  Seated round the fire as they thawed out, whisky macs in hand, they recounted how they’d liaised with the group from the hotel, comprising Callum, Blair, Jean-Luc and a couple of waiters. It had been one of the latter who’d found her, huddled on a bench a fair way along the promenade. She’d been too weak to question, but it seemed clear that having fled the hotel in a turbulent state of mind, she’d felt the need to calm down before returning home, and set off along the promenade hoping the icy air would restore some sense of balance. It wasn’t, of course, snowing at the time.

  At some stage she must have slipped on a patch of ice, sprained her ankle and found it impossible to put it to the ground. The final straw would have come when she realized her mobile had run out of battery.

  ‘Anyway,’ Seb concluded, sipping his drink appreciatively, ‘she was coming round by the time we left, so she should also be home tomorrow. When, incidentally, she’ll have quite a bit of explaining to do, including an apology to Adam-stroke-Mark for getting him into this mess.’

  Harry glanced at Mark shamefacedly. ‘And I owe you one, too,’ he said gruffly. ‘Put it down to the heat of the moment, but I’m sorry I talked out of the back of my head.’

  Mark nodded acceptance and Seb added, ‘And talking of apologies, it seems there’s another forthcoming. Dad and Mum have obviously had a long talk, and the upshot is that they’ve invited Ellie to come back later in the week, so we can get to know her properly.’

  ‘So she is his daughter!’ breathed Natalie.

  ‘It seems so, though to give him his due, he only found out today.’

  Having been too caught up in events to phone home the previous evening, Mark was determined to repeat his early morning call of the day before and, this time wrapped more warmly, he again went down before breakfast and let himself out of the house, his footsteps crunching in the fresh snow, and took up his position beyond the screening hedge.

  As before, his call was answered on the first ring. ‘Mark! You promised to ring last night!’

  ‘I know, Mum, but all kinds of things blew up—’

  ‘Here too,’ she interrupted, ‘but the main thing is we’ve found Sophie!’

  He let out his breath in a long sigh, watching it vaporize in the cold air. ‘Thank God for that. And what was he
r excuse?’

  His mother’s tone was grave. ‘She’d a very good one, Mark. She’d been kidnapped, would you believe, kept tied up, gagged and sedated.’ Margot’s voice faltered.

  Mark stiffened disbelievingly. ‘What?’

  ‘Apparently she and Stella had been seeing a couple of men – Lydia swears she had no idea – and one of them turned decidedly nasty. Anyway, an old lady became suspicious after hearing odd noises in the flat above, and she and her nephew found her.’ She gave a brief laugh. ‘Lyddie said the man told Stella’s boyfriend his neighbour in the flat below was deaf. Well, she might have looked frail but she’d the hearing of a bat, and that was his undoing. The police were waiting for him when he returned last night.’

  ‘But how’s Sophie now? And where is she?’

  ‘In Sevenoaks Hospital, very shaken, badly bruised and traumatized, as you’d expect.’ Her voice changed. ‘Darling, I know you’ve had your differences and she’s behaved foolishly, but this experience has made her finally grow up. She – she keeps asking for you.’

  In that snow-covered Scottish street Mark stood immobile, his mind baulking at the vision his mother had conjured up of his lovely Sophie with her face battered and bruised. How dared that bastard treat her like that? A wealth of feelings, previously suppressed, surged inside him, an amalgam of anger and overwhelming protective love. Sophie and little Florence: they were his world. What the hell was he doing up here, hundreds of miles away?

  ‘Mark?’ Margot said tentatively.

  ‘It’ll be OK, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’m coming home.’