by Susan Lewis
‘Mr Denby?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you, Corrie?’ He hoped he sounded at the very least approachable, and wished he could tell her that she didn’t have to call him that.
‘I was hoping we could meet,’ Corrie said. ‘I have something important I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘Are you free this evening?’ Did she have any idea, he wondered, how very like her mother she sounded?
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,’ Corrie said.
Smiling at the surprise in her voice, Phillip said, ‘Then why don’t we meet at the Ritz. In the cocktail bar at six thirty?’ Was that the kind of treat she might enjoy?
‘That should be fine,’ Corrie said, and rang off.
Phillip wandered out to Pam. ‘She says she’s got something important to discuss with me,’ he told her. Then, almost because it was second nature for him to respond that way, he was suddenly stricken with panic. ‘Do you think she’s planning to tell Annalise who she is?’
‘Does it matter?’ Pam asked.
‘Yes. Yes it does.’
‘Why?’
‘Because then Octavia will find out …’
‘I don’t see that that matters either.’
‘It does! Octavia has no idea that I was married before, she doesn’t even know that Edwina existed … But she’ll have to know, sooner or later, won’t she?’ he added, and he seemed quite pleased by the notion. ‘But not right now,’ he said. ‘I have to think it through first. In fact, if I feel it’s right to do so, I’ll talk it over with Corrie.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Pam chuckled. ‘And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell her how worried you are about Annalise?’
‘Oh, hang on,’ Phillip said, holding up his hands. ‘I want to give her the chance to get used to being my daughter before I start loading her half-sister’s problems onto her.’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s already carrying them,’ Pam remarked. ‘Didn’t you say they work as a team?’
‘Mmm,’ Phillip nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know, I hope I’m right about this, that she is going to give me another chance. It’s more than I deserve after the way I’ve treated her, I know, but now all that business with Luke is over there’s nothing else in the world I want more than to get to know her.’
But it’s not over is it! Pam wanted to scream, for love him as she did, the way he blinkered himself to situations made her want to strangle him at times. But she said nothing, since this was a subject they’d argued about too many times already. She could only hope now that Corrie would say something tonight that might persuade him to see sense. Because, if Pam’s instincts were serving her aright, then Corrie wanted to talk to her father about Annalise, for what could be more important to Phillip than Annalise? And Corrie would know more than anyone else exactly what was going on between Annalise and Luke.
‘I think,’ Phillip said, ‘that I might start by telling her how much I loved her mother. What do you think?’
Pam looked at him in despair. Sometimes, she thought, shaking her head in fond exasperation, the man was beyond all hope.
Corrie arrived at the Ritz early, hoping to calm her nerves with a drink before her father arrived. It had taken her a few weeks to pluck up the courage to make the call, feeling as vulnerable as she did lately she didn’t think she could handle another rejection so close on Cristos. That pain still hadn’t gone away, but she was coping with it better now, at least on the surface she was. What she felt inside she only ever discussed with Paula, like the way she still lay awake at nights, her whole body yearning for him to touch her and look at her again with that heartrending tenderness in his eyes. She knew that she was probably driving Paula as crazy as she was driving herself with her sudden swings in moods and incessant repeating of ‘Why did it ever have to happen?’ and she was going to make herself stop. Just as she was going to put an end to this nonsense of scanning the newspapers to find out if he was filming in England yet. He was, she’d read it only that day, but what difference did it make? She certainly wasn’t going to ring him! And if he rang her …? Well, he wouldn’t so there was no point in thinking about that. But if he did … She’d tell him to go straight to hell, that’s what she’d do. There were more important things in life than Cristos Bennati, like the frustration she’d started to feel lately about the programmes TW were making.
They were all right in their own way, but there was nothing innovative about them – they were just the same as all the other current affairs programmes going out on all the other channels. They were dry, sometimes pompous and very often boring. There was nothing in them to make people really sit up and listen, to motivate them into doing anything about changing a situation. And what did they themselves as programme makers do to improve the plight of those they made programmes about? Nothing. They just shot it, transmitted it, then forgot it. It wasn’t good enough, Corrie felt, there had to be a way of really getting to the people, of doing something effective, worthwhile and vital.
She’d talked this over with Bob, who, to her surprise, agreed with her, but when he’d taken her suggestions to Luke, Luke had sneeringly reminded her that she wasn’t running the company yet! It was that yet! that had made Corrie back off, remembering the way she’d got her promotion to producer. She didn’t want anything like that happening again. But she wasn’t going to give up that easily, in fact she was going to fight this and win! And what was more, she was going to get everyone else at TW on her side. It seemed that most were already, since other producers had started asking her to work with them, and her fellow researchers were lately spending quite a lot of time at her studio sounding her out on their own ideas.
So there were things in life more important than Cristos Bennati, and the very idea of spending her days pampering herself in his bathroom while waiting for him to come home was so ludicrous, so laughable as to make her no better than those Hollywood airheads even for thinking it. Not that she’d ever seriously thought that was the way their relationship would be … Were she and Cristos ever to be seriously involved …
Stop it! she told herself vehemently. Just stop! She knew what was happening, and it was making her angrier even than her unrelenting preoccupation with Cristos. For she was purposefully evading even thinking about the repellent, horrifying, even chilling problem she’d come here to discuss with her father. But she must! She had to go through it in her mind coherently and logically, make certain she overdramatized nothing, but still got across the seriousness of the situation, for, to Corrie’s mind it most certainly had become serious now.
Since they’d returned from the States everything had been so ‘blissfully wonderful,’ to use Annalise’s expression, between her and Luke, that Corrie had only just stopped short of yelling at her for being so stupid and so blind. Annalise had actually walked into Luke’s office only two days before to find Luke trying to kiss her, Corrie. Of course Luke had twisted it round, saying that it was she who was trying to kiss him, and Annalise had actually said that she didn’t blame Corrie; that she understood if Corrie still fancied Luke, and wasn’t Corrie impressed by the way she was coming to terms with his lack of fidelity? It was enough to send Corrie screaming mad with frustration. But that was only the tip of the iceberg.
Annalise would never admit it, of course, but she was violently jealous of any attention Luke paid to Corrie, and Corrie knew it. What was more, if Annalise even as much as mentioned the way she felt to Luke, he beat her. Corrie had seen Annalise’s bruises for herself, and to her mind they were much worse than before. And now Luke was blaming her, corrie, for what he was doing. He’d actually told her that it was because she was refusing to marry him that he beat Annalise, and until she agreed to be his wife he’d just keep right on doing it. For over two weeks he’d been bombarding Corrie with telephone calls and letters pleading with her to say yes, then just last night he’d come round to her studio.
It was approaching midnight when he’d arrive
d and Corrie had kept the chain on the door, refusing to let him in. He had simply stood outside, at the top of the steps, and spoken to her from there.
Corrie had listened, at first in disgust, then in mounting fear. He sounded so rational, so sane, yet what he was saying was crazy.
‘But why me?’ she’d cried when he’d finished explaining once again that she was the only one who could save Annalise from further pain.
‘Because I love you,’ he pleaded, pushing his fingers through the crack in the door. ‘Don’t you understand that? I love you, Corrie.’
‘You don’t!’ she cried. ‘And I don’t love you. I don’t want to marry you, Luke. Can’t you understand that?’
‘But you have to, Corrie,’ he said. ‘Now you be letting me in, like a good girl.’
It was that sudden and sinister introduction of the Irish brogue that had made Corrie think of what Felicity had told her when the two of them had finally caught up with each other.
‘He’s sick,’ Felicity had proclaimed, ‘I mean seriously sick. He thinks he’s someone else, or he’s pretending to, I don’t know which, but he needs help, Corrie. You’re right to try and keep him away from Annalise, but you can’t do it alone.’
She’d gone on to tell Corrie then how Luke had asked her, Felicity, to tell him where he might find rabbits. He wanted her to eat them! And all the time he was asking he was speaking in an Irish accent. It had frightened Felicity half to death, so she’d just leapt in her car and driven to some friends where she’d stayed until she knew he was on the plane back to England.
But there was no such easy escape for Corrie, she was trapped inside her studio, and he was right there, outside, begging her to let him in.
‘Corrie, Corrie, Corrie,’ he sang. ‘Corrie, be letting me in now. I won’t be going away till you do.’
‘Luke,’ she cried, ‘I’ll call the police. I swear it, I’ll call them if you don’t go right now.’
‘I don’t want to be hurting you now, Corrie, I just want to be talking to you. Now please let me in, there’s a good girl. If you don’t I’ll just be waiting here till you do.’
‘Luke, didn’t you hear me? I’m going to call the police. Now go. Please, just go!’
‘And just what would you be telling the police?’ he laughed softly. ‘Now you don’t want Annalise to be hurt anymore, do you? So you just be letting me in there.’
‘Why are you doing this, Luke?’ she cried. ‘What’s the matter with you? Why are you using that horrible voice?’
She hadn’t been able to see him, he was standing in the shadows, but even though there was no answer she’d known he was still there. She listened, waited, her heart pounding thunderously through her ears. And then she heard him again. He wasn’t speaking, neither was he laughing, but there was a sound coming from him that in her terror she just couldn’t recognize.
Minutes later, in a voice totally his own, he said, ‘You have to understand, Corrie. I want it to be you, because you’re the only one it can be,’ then she heard his footsteps running down the steps to the street.
And now here she was at the Ritz, not knowing how she was even going to begin to explain this to her father, but believing that he was the only person she could turn to now. Please God, he wouldn’t let her down.
By the time Phillip arrived Corrie was already on her second Bellini. She saw him before he saw her, and thought straight away how different he looked to the last time they’d met. He seemed to be standing straighter, walking tall and there was an expression of something like eagerness in his eyes. Then, to her amazement, when he spotted her his whole face lit up.
Corrie was instantly annoyed. Though he had sounded friendly enough on the phone earlier, she certainly hadn’t expected anything like this. But if something had happened to soften him then he could at least, she thought, show some remorse for the way he’d treated her before. She quickly pushed that to one side though, it hardly mattered now in light of what she had to tell him. If anything, she realized with inordinate relief, it was going to make it easier.
‘Hello,’ he said, sitting down on the small couch beside her. ‘Am I late?’
‘No,’ Corrie told him. ‘I was early. I needed to fortify myself before you got here in case you turned on me again.’
‘I’m not going to do that,’ Phillip assured her, with an immediate and very genuine sorrow in his eyes. ‘I’m never going to do that again, Corrie. In fact, I was hoping, I mean, if you’re agreeable, that we might turn back the clock and pretend that this is the first time we’ve ever met.’
Corrie was more than a little thrown by this, and found herself looking helplessly about the plush, dusky-pink room as though in its ornateness she might discover what she should say. She didn’t want to sound churlish by telling him it was too late for that, yet on the other hand it just wasn’t that easy to forget all that had gone before. Why, she wondered angrily, did she feel that if Cristos were here he could give her the answer? She was perfectly capable of finding it for herself! Except she couldn’t. So she simply turned back to her father and forced herself to smile.
He smiled too, and then she saw the uncertainty in his eyes. He was afraid she would reject him, was even expecting her to, and because of it Corrie felt her heart starting to thaw.
‘I’m a weak man,’ he said frankly, ‘I know that. And I have many other faults besides. But I am capable of love, and I want you to know, Corrie, that I loved your mother more than I’ve ever loved any woman.’
Then why did you abandon her the way you did? Corrie wanted to shout. Though deep in her inner-self she was asking herself if she should tell him that Edwina had loved him too – until the day she died. But fearing that would upset him, Corrie decided not to. And it was that decision which started her realizing that coming to him was going to be of no help at all. If anything, it was he who needed her help. He wanted her to ease him over his guilt, not only by forgiving him for what he’d done to her mother, but by telling him that she understood. Corrie could see it all written there in his earnestly imploring eyes. But she didn’t understand! She could never understand a man who had allowed his child to grow up pretending he didn’t even know she existed. And to think of all the pain he had caused her mother …
But then she remembered Luke, recalled vividly the night she had seen Phillip at Luke’s apartment, and how certain she had been that Luke was somehow, for some reason, tormenting her father. Just like he was tormenting Annalise. And that, after all, was why she was here – to talk about Annalise, or, she realized now, more specifically about Luke. But, dear God, how to begin?
She did, somehow, but with more false starts than she’d care to remember, until eventually she realized that she had her father’s undivided attention. In fact, he was listening so intently to everything she was telling him, that Corrie could feel herself in danger of losing her concentration. She was suddenly reassessing him, thinking that perhaps he wasn’t so spineless after all, because the look on his face was of such deep anger and concern that she just couldn’t believe that he was incapable of acting now.
When Corrie had finished, sparing him nothing, right down to the way Luke had threatened the night before that he would hurt Annalise again if Corrie didn’t agree to marry him, Phillip’s face was so rigid that she really didn’t know what he was thinking. But she found out soon enough, and if his response hadn’t been so tragic it would have been laughable.
‘Just tell me what you want me to do, Corrie,’ he said, gravely. ‘Just tell me and I’ll do it.’
Unable to stop herself Corrie closed her eyes in exasperation. So the decisions were going to be hers. How tired she suddenly felt, and how responsible too. He was like a child, and just as though he were a child, she had no doubt that he meant every word he’d said. He would do anything she asked of him, it was just that he wouldn’t, probably couldn’t, take the responsibility himself.
‘You could begin,’ she said, wearily, ‘by telling me what it is that Luke
Fitzpatrick is holding over you.’
If she’d expected any reluctance, hesitation even, she’d have been wrong, because there was none. ‘Oh, that’s to do with my wife,’ he said, and his eagerness in honesty was so touching that Corrie actually found herself moved by it. She listened, with no surprise, to what he then told her about Octavia. It was so frank, so utterly repulsive and revealing of himself, that it had to be true. No man would make up a story like that about his wife, most of all not about himself, and after all Corrie had met Octavia herself. The profligacy wasn’t difficult to believe.
‘But there’s more, isn’t there,’ she said, when he’d finished. ‘There has to be, or why else is Luke behaving the way he is with Annalise and me?’
‘I really don’t know the answer to that,’ Phillip said helplessly. ‘God knows, I wish I did.’
Corrie looked at him, then steeling herself to be brutal she began by saying, ‘Luke must hate you to an almost unimaginable degree to be doing this to you, after all we are your daughters. So please, tell me, what have you done to him? Because you must have done something for …’
‘I’ve done nothing, Corrie. I swear to you, nothing. I don’t know why he’s doing it, I don’t even know what he’s trying to achieve. All I know is that he’s been terrorizing my family one way or another ever since I went into partnership with him. That was why I didn’t want to get involved with you. I was afraid that if he knew who you were he’d start hurting you too.’
‘But you’re here now,’ Corrie said. ‘So what’s happened to change that?’
Phillip bowed his head and Corrie could already sense there was another heart-wrenching confession to come. It saddened her to think that it had to be like this, but how else could she help him – any of them – unless he told her the entire truth?
It was some time before he spoke, but when he did it was only to ask if he could hold her hands. Had he not asked then things might have turned out very differently, but he did, and Corrie gave him her hands. And that was how, before Phillip could tell her anything about the prostitutes, Octavia discovered them.
