Written in Red

by Annie Dalton

  Robert was already hurrying towards them. ‘Isadora? Isadora Salzman?’

  ‘Hello, Robert,’ Isadora said.

  He patted his waistline with a laugh. ‘There’s considerably more of me than there was the last time we met! I’m flattered you recognized me. But look at you! You’ve hardly changed at all! You still have those amazing dark eyes and that fabulous Pre-Raphaelite hair.’

  Isadora gave a brittle laugh. ‘How wonderfully tactful of you to edit out all the rest of me! But how are you, Robert? Are you well?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you,’ he said in his big hearty voice. ‘My wife finally left me. My children hate me. My grandchildren hardly know me. But life still goes rolling merrily on, ha ha ha!’ Robert seemed to realize that this was an inappropriate comment for a wake, adding hastily, ‘Still in shock about poor old James, obviously. What a dreadful thing – you just can’t imagine that anything like that could happen here inside these hallowed walls.’

  He was drunk, Anna thought. Still upright and articulate but lacking any kind of social filter. His slightly unfocused gaze suddenly locked on to Anna. ‘But you must introduce me to your young friend, Isadora darling!’

  Isadora introduced Anna, tactfully omitting the unfortunate circumstances in which they’d met, and they exchanged polite inanities. Anna wondered if Robert Keane was a habitual drunk, or if he’d just needed a few stiff drinks to help him get through this rather unique ordeal. Like Isadora, Robert had defied their handler’s instructions in order to honour James’s memory. Perhaps this was as painful for him as it was for her? Anna sensed something dark and desperate beneath Robert’s persona of the jolly drunk. Depression seeped from him like stale body odour. Possibly Isadora felt it too, because she said in gentler tone, ‘It’s good that you came, Robert. I did wonder … well, I hoped, that some of us – you know, might feel it was time …’

  ‘Well, Cathy Hetherington obviously did!’ Robert’s expression darkened. ‘She doesn’t call herself that now, obviously. She’s Sister fucking Mary Catherine or something equally godly.’ He let out a humourless laugh. ‘I presume she eventually gave herself to Jesus because, apart from yours truly, he was the only male left who hadn’t already had a poke!’ The raw anger in his voice made Anna want to take a step back.

  Isadora stared at him. ‘Catherine? Catherine’s here?’

  ‘Over there by the window,’ he said in the same aggrieved tone. ‘She’s the one dressed like Katharine Hepburn playing a missionary.’

  Anna followed Isadora’s gaze to a tall, rather-too-thin woman. Catherine was dressed exactly as Robert had described, in a long shapeless skirt and jacket that didn’t suit her, would not have suited any woman, in fact. Her expression was as you’d expect a nun’s to be, composed and calm. All at once her tranquil expression became oddly fixed. Anna followed her gaze and saw the young pink-cheeked woman wheeling the elderly man she’d seen in the memorial gardens, now without his rakish fedora. Catherine went hurrying across to talk to them.

  ‘No!’ Robert said in a harsh voice. ‘Fucking hell, no! That can’t be him.’

  ‘It is,’ Isadora almost whispered. She was suddenly ashen under her make-up.

  Robert gulped the last of his brandy. ‘He needn’t think I’m going over to talk to him, the old bastard.’ For all his aggression, he sounded shaken, almost frightened.

  ‘Who is that man?’ Anna asked, although she was almost sure she knew.

  Isadora didn’t answer. Catching hold of Anna’s hand, she pulled her through the crowd, galvanized by some furious energy, though whether it was anger or simply excitement, Anna couldn’t tell. But when they finally caught up with Catherine she had returned to stand by her solitary window, and the man in the wheelchair had vanished.

  ‘Catherine?’ Isadora said. ‘I can’t believe it’s you after all these years! How wonderful that you came!’ For a moment she was the old actressy Isadora, her voice rich with warmth and affection.

  Catherine might dress like a dowdy headmistress but she was still lovely, Anna thought. Close up, with the winter light from the mullioned window falling on her face, she had that almost painful beauty which Anna associated with saints in old paintings. ‘Hello, Isadora,’ she said coolly. ‘Actually I’m Sister Mary Catherine now.’ The words were obviously meant as a reproof.

  Isadora looked as if she’d been slapped. This was how the seventeen-year-old Isadora Salzman must have looked, Anna thought, as she blundered through her first weeks among Oxford’s great and good. But Isadora was older and tougher now. Making a lightning-fast recovery, she went on the attack. ‘I saw you talking to Tallis! Why was he here?’

  Catherine’s response was so swift that it almost didn’t seem like a lie. ‘I haven’t seen Tallis since the nineteen-sixties, Isadora. You must have seen me talking to my old teacher from LMH.’ She gave an involuntary glance across the room, before briefly returning her attention to Isadora. ‘It’s good to see you again. I really was so sorry to hear about James. But I’m afraid I can’t stay, they’re expecting me back at the Mother House.’

  She hurried away leaving Isadora looking after her in dismay. ‘He was here. I know it was him. You saw him, didn’t you Anna?’

  ‘If you mean that man in the wheelchair, yes, I saw him,’ Anna said. ‘And I saw him earlier in the memorial gardens.’

  ‘And Robert most definitely saw him.’ Isadora seemed to be trying to convince herself.

  But when they tried to find Robert to ask him, he had also disappeared.

  ‘It’s so ridiculous. I’m so ridiculous,’ Isadora said in despair, when they’d returned to her house in Summertown. ‘But whenever I pictured meeting any of them again, I’d always imagined it would be just like it was; that we’d simply resume that wonderful effortless connection. But they could have been two utter strangers. Robert is just a drunken old banker and Catherine looked at me as if she hated me.’ She tried to laugh. ‘Not very nun-like of her, I have to say!’

  They were sitting on opposite sides of Isadora’s kitchen table. Anna was drinking coffee. Isadora was nursing a glass of vodka. A large manila envelope lay on the table between them. Isadora had taken out a handful of photographs none of which she’d yet shown to Anna. She fanned them out, keeping them face inward like a hand of cards that she wasn’t quite ready to reveal.

  ‘It’s not just that I wanted to see my old friends, Anna. I wanted – I needed – them to see me. Nobody knows me now the way they did. It makes me feel so alone, so bleak – I can’t even describe it. And Catherine made me feel as if I was going insane!’ Isadora extracted two photographs from her fan, pushing the others into a pile. ‘I don’t intend to bore you with hundreds of tedious photos. In fact, I have hardly any from those days. I just want to show you these two.’

  She showed Anna a picture of the six friends posed against a lovingly polished London cab. Anna examined it with interest. ‘That’s such a sixties’ picture! Is that Piers Courtenay driving the cab?’

  Isadora’s expression became fond. ‘Yes. He was so proud of it. He was always lovingly polishing and valeting it! He’d go off to fetch it for one of our jaunts, and we’d hang around on the corner, saying, “Don’t worry, a cab will come along in a minute!” then Piers and his cab would appear around the corner and we’d all flag him down! It sounds silly now, but at the time it seemed like such fun!’

  ‘It certainly looks like you’re having fun in the picture!’ Anna was still studying the photograph. ‘And that’s Catherine leaning on the bonnet.’ Her face already had that painfully exposed look as if she’d been born without the normal human defences. Catherine definitely belonged in a Renaissance painting, Anna thought, not out in the world, grappling with the mess and muddle of real life.

  ‘So I’m guessing that lovely girl with the long blonde hair must be Hetty?’ Anna said, though she’d seen at a glance that Hetty was far more than simply ‘lovely’. She had that luminous quality which the camera loves but which is impossible
to pin down.

  ‘She was extremely attractive to men,’ Isadora said unnecessarily.

  ‘Was she a bit of a wild child?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Was she!’ Isadora said, with one of her great hoots of laughter. ‘Oh, my goodness, that girl!’

  But though Hetty’s body language said ‘sixties’ wild child’, her beautiful eyes held a great deal of hurt for someone so young, Anna thought.

  ‘James absolutely worshipped her,’ Isadora said.

  ‘James was very handsome when he was young,’ Anna commented. ‘Don’t you think he looks like the young Dirk Bogarde?’

  Isadora leaned in to examine James’s features more closely. ‘So he does! You know I’ve never seen that till now. I probably didn’t appreciate him as much as I should have,’ she added in a wistful tone.

  ‘You didn’t even have a little tiny crush?’

  ‘No,’ Isadora said, with a faraway look. ‘I somehow never saw James in that light.’

  ‘What about Catherine? Did she have a thing for James?’

  Isadora shook her head. ‘Catherine was one of those women who seem doomed to have huge unrequited passions – for Piers, for instance.’ She passed the second photo to Anna.

  ‘That’s you at a ball!’ Anna said, delighted. ‘Is that the one where you were partnered with James?’

  Isadora shook her head. ‘This was in my second year, when we all went to the May Ball. This wasn’t taken at the ball but afterwards. What they call “a survivor’s photo”.’ She let out a yelp of laughter that threatened to turn into tears. ‘We should have got someone to take one at James’s wake. Me, Catherine and Robert. The three elderly survivors of the Oxford Six!’

  Anna looked at the six young unused faces smiling back at the camera and tried to imagine how it must feel to see them through Isadora’s eyes; so much shining potential, so many broken dreams. Somehow this all goes back to Hetty, she thought. James’s violent death, though terrible in its own right, had reopened old wounds caused by Hetty’s murder, an event which had obviously traumatized Isadora so badly that she still wouldn’t – or couldn’t – tell Anna and Tansy the full story.

  From her long experience of trauma Anna knew better than to press her. She drained the last of her coffee. ‘I’m going to have to go back now, Isadora. Tansy’s having a pre-Christmas thing with her family and Bonnie is due for another walk.’ She picked up her bag, feeling guilty to be leaving Isadora alone with her sad memories.

  ‘I have to say that is one decided benefit of having a very small, extremely lazy little doggie.’ Isadora’s voice was suddenly falsely bright. Gathering Hero into her arms she covered her startled furry face with kisses.

  And that’s how Anna left her, cuddling her dog and sorting through her envelope of old photos, a half-full bottle of vodka at her side.

  SEVEN

  In her office a few days later, with the rain hammering against the windows, and the smell of her and Kirsty’s wet coats drying out above the radiator, Anna was struggling to concentrate.

  Like most people, Anna had learned to switch channels when she came into work, shutting off personal concerns in order to focus on the steady flow of requests and complaints needing her attention, but this morning Nadine’s to-do list seemed more than usually mind-numbing. Anna found her thoughts straying to Professor Lowell’s funeral and the strange puzzle of the Oxford Six. Had the elderly man in the wheelchair really been Tallis, their former handler? Isadora and Robert obviously thought so. But then why would Catherine lie? What might it take to make a nun lie?

  Part way through the morning, she heard Kirsty ask, ‘Are you trying to melt a hole in it?’

  Her amused voice pulled Anna back to the present with a bump. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’ve been staring so intensely at that wall,’ Kirsty explained. ‘I was scared you might accidentally create a portal into another dimension.’

  ‘With my amazing superpowers?’ Anna suggested.

  ‘Or something along those lines!’ Kirsty agreed, straight-faced.

  Anna laughed. ‘You know, for a minute there I thought you’d been possessed by the spirit of Comic-Con Paul! Portals? Other dimensions? Seriously?’

  ‘I don’t think of it as being possessed, so much as being open to exciting new ways of thinking,’ Kirsty said demurely. She gave Anna a naughty smirk. ‘Can you imagine Nadine’s expression if she came in this afternoon and found her office had sprung a leak into another dimension?’

  ‘Can you imagine the Post-its waiting next time I come into the office?’ Anna said darkly.

  ‘You do understand the meaning of the phrase “duty of care”, Anna!’ Kirsty mimicked. ‘I’ve already got the To-Do List from Hell without running around saving Walsingham’s students from flesh-eating zombies!’

  Their mutual teasing went a long way to lightening Anna’s mood. Even so, she was relieved when it was time for her to leave the office. There were times when half a day as a university administrator was more than enough.

  On her way out, she stopped inside the porter’s lodge to drop off some post.

  ‘Afternoon, Miss Hopkins. You off home now?’ asked Tate, the new porter.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to take my dog for a good long walk so I hope the rain eases off! Are you all on your own today?’ Anna hoped she had managed to keep the surprise out of her voice. Though Tate appeared cheerful and hardworking, she and Kirsty had noticed that Boswell still seemed to be keeping him on an extremely tight leash.

  Tate gave her a grin. ‘Yeah, Mr Boswell had an emergency dentist appointment and Mr Phipps has gone down with flu. So what kind of dog you got?’

  ‘A White Shepherd,’ she said.

  ‘First thing I’m going to do when I can afford my own place,’ he confided, ‘get myself a dog. A working cocker like old Roop’s and get her trained as a gun dog.’

  ‘Roop’s?’ Anna wondered if she’d heard correctly.

  ‘Roop’s one of the gardeners. He’s got a lovely little spaniel. She’s getting on now but her tail never stops wagging.’ His smile became wistful. ‘I love dogs. They’re the most loyalest creatures on earth. A human will always betray you if the price is right, but a dog will stick by you through thick and thin.’

  By the time Anna had reached home and made a hasty toasted cheese sandwich, the rain had slowed to a misty drizzle. Grateful that Jake wasn’t here to see her in her hideous fishermen’s waterproofs, Anna set out with Bonnie for Port Meadow. She should really make the effort to find some new walks, Anna thought. Port Meadow was just so convenient that she’d unthinkingly fallen into a routine. She let Bonnie off her lead as soon as they were safely inside the gates. At the start of a walk she could almost feel her young healthy dog’s pent-up energy longing for release. Gathering her snowy limbs together, Bonnie shot away across the water-logged grass then stopped, looking back at Anna with an expectant expression.

  ‘Oh, you want a race!’ Anna said laughing.

  They ran, chasing each other in and out of trees, sloshing through the temporary streamlets that often appeared after heavy rain, and Anna felt some of the stress and sadness of the past weeks falling away. At last, she came to a breathless standstill, bracing her hands on her knees, as she gulped in air. This was the true pleasure of living with dogs, she thought. Regardless of mud, cold or rain, they were ridiculously joyous – and it was catching!

  They walked back to her flat at a more sedate pace. Once Anna glanced down and caught Bonnie looking up at her with her soulful dark-rimmed eyes. ‘You are a lovely dog, you know that?’ she told her.

  Lovely, but disgustingly muddy. Anna whisked Bonnie down to the kitchen, and was in the middle of cleaning her off with an old towel when the doorbell rang. Anna hastily sloughed off her trawler-man outfit and hurried upstairs to answer the door.

  When she saw the strangely familiar dark-haired man standing on her step, she was initially too stunned to react, and then she thought her heart was going to jump out of her mouth. Confu
sion and terror robbing her of all social graces, she went to slam the door in Tim Freemantle’s face. Before it could close, he said urgently, ‘Anna, please, I found Max Strauli. He agreed to talk to me. He’s told me all about that night.’

  She froze, still gripping on to the door handle. She didn’t know which freaked her out more, the arrival of her childhood friend still recognizable after so many years, or the news that had brought him here to her door. After the night when Anna had arrived home to find her family bloodily slaughtered, like in a scene from a revenge tragedy, her boyfriend, Max, disappeared off the map and she’d never been able to find him. She managed to say, ‘You’ve talked to Max?’

  ‘Yes, for a couple of hours. Can I please come in and tell you what I’ve found out?’

  Tim must have had a growth spurt in his late teens because they now stood exactly eye to eye. He’d always been skinny; that hadn’t changed. His clothes still looked rumpled, but they were nice, slightly hipster-ish clothes. She could see fine dark stubble on his chin, the same colour as his short curly hair.

  Every protective instinct implored Anna not to let him in, yet like a sleepwalker she found herself stepping back from the door. ‘OK. But first I’ve got to finish drying off my dog.’

  Tim followed her down to the kitchen where Bonnie was drinking noisily from her bowl, surrounded by a decorative frieze of muddy paw prints. She turned briefly to inspect Tim, decided that he didn’t pose an immediate threat and went back to gulping down water.

  ‘Coffee?’ Anna said.

  ‘Coffee can wait until you’ve dried your dog.’ Tim cast an awed glance at Bonnie. ‘I can see there’s quite a lot to dry.’

  Anna was relieved to be able to delay the moment, to take the time to rub down Bonnie, followed by the near-automatic process of making coffee. Her heart hammered inside her chest, but she could just about breathe. She could deal with this. She hoped she could deal with this.

  With a flicker of alarm, she noticed Tansy’s unsent Christmas card still lying on the table and quickly slid it behind the toaster. Very few people knew that Tansy was Frankie McVeigh’s daughter and Tansy preferred to keep it that way. When Anna returned her attention to Tim she found him covertly studying her face. ‘What?’ she said.