Amersham Road was very quiet after the bustle of the office, and the Quennell house was the quietest in the road. Nicky knocked and rang and, as there was no answer, peered through the stained glass into the empty hall.
‘Can I help you?’ a voice asked.
Elderly man, tweedy, nice smile, neighbourhood-watch person with a Dobermann Pinscher on a lead.
She gave him her sweetest smile and told him she’d come to see Dr Quennell.
‘They’ve gone to Birmingham,’ the neighbour volunteered. ‘I’m keeping an eye on things. You’ve only just missed them, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh dear! Will they be away long?’
‘No, no. Not long. He’s gone there to appear on television, Friday Forum. Rather exciting, don’t you think?’
Great! Nicky thought. Couldn’t be better. What timing! ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘the one I really came to see is Gemma Goodeve. She used to live here, I believe.’
‘A lovely girl,’ the neighbour said. ‘Yes. She did. We saw quite a lot of her.’
‘So she has moved. Isn’t that just my luck!’
Now, and a bit late, her informant remembered his lookout duties and thought he ought to ask a few questions of his own. ‘Are you a relation, by any chance?’
‘No,’ Nicky told him. ‘I wish I were. She’s just the sort of relation I’d love. Wouldn’t we all! No, I’m a reporter. I’m the one who wrote up her story after the crash. We all think she’s wonderful Such courage.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, relieved by her information. ‘So do we. Like I said, a lovely girl.’
‘And of course, she’s in the news again, with this second report coming out, so we wondered how she was. I don’t suppose you see so much of her now she’s moved.’
‘Oh she comes back,’ he told her, ‘regularly. She was here at Christmas in fact. We often see her.’
‘They must be very fond of her,’ she fished.
‘Oh yes,’ he agreed. ‘Very fond.’
‘She’s lucky to have them to look after her.’
He agreed with that too. ‘They’re a lovely family,’ he said. ‘We all think very highly of them round here. Pillars of the establishment, you might say. Well we often do. It doesn’t make it any less true for being a truism. He’s such a good doctor. Nothing’s too much trouble for him. And of course Mrs Quennell was a sister at the clinic. She used to run the mother and baby clinic before she retired. She looked after my Christabel when she had the pleurisy. So kind.’
‘Very nice,’ Nicky said, wondering how she could steer him back on target.
‘And then of course there’s the two boys,’ the old man rambled on. ‘They’re both doctors, you know. The older one’s out in Canada. Such a nice boy, although I dare say he’s a bit more than a boy now. Time goes by so quickly. I remember him as a little lad playing in the garden with his brother. That’s the younger son, the one at St Thomas’s. He was at the crash too. Quite a family affair that crash. We all remarked on it. Especially with the daughter being involved. Such a nice girl and so clever. She wrote the report, you know.’
Nicky hadn’t been paying much attention to him but at the word ‘report’ she was instantly alerted.
‘What report was that?’
‘Why, the report into the crash. The one that was in all the papers. She wrote it, the daughter.’
‘How wonderful!’ Nicky said and this time she wasn’t gushing. ‘I don’t suppose you remember her name, do you?’
‘Susan,’ he said. ‘Susan Pengilly. She used to work for British Rail but she’s got a job in York now with one of the new companies. Such a nice girl.’
Nicky phoned Garry McKendrick as soon as she was back in her car.
‘Listen to this,’ she said and told him what she’d just heard. ‘Front page or what?’
‘I think I ought to talk to this feller of yours,’ McKendrick decided. ‘You check out the daughter and I’ll get him to come in.’
Tim Ledgerwood was chuffed to be summoned to Wapping and went there at once. Strike while the iron’s hot, he thought. And if he was any judge, this one was blazing.
It was an impressive place. Computers everywhere, like blue lights on every desk, smell of cigars, perfume, aftershave, men in shirt sleeves and braces, power-dressed women, just what he’d imagined. And Garry McKendrick was exactly what he expected too, heavily built, with a determined face that could be brutal, and a beer belly to rival Ken Clarke’s. And he was flatteringly interested in what Tim had come to say.
‘Bit a dirt on Quack-quack, that’s the size of it. Right?’
‘Rather more than a bit, I’d say,’ Tim told him, casually. ‘We’re talking enticement here. He’s after my daughter’s money. Half a million.’
Garry McKendrick lit another cigarette from the stub of the one he’d just finished. ‘And your daughter’s Gemma Goodeve. Right? So what’s the angle?’
Tim told his story coolly, provided dates, times and addresses, revealed Gemma’s postcards with their vague messages – ‘she didn’t want her mother to know where she was and that’s most unlike her’ – and finally, with the air of a man who is clinching his argument, laid Mr Gresham’s first letter on the worktop to prove that the claim for compensation was genuine.
‘Right!’ Garry McKendrick said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Can’t promise anything, mind. It’s up to the editor what we print, but I’ll check it out and get back to you.’ He grinned at his visitor. ‘Be great to nail the bugger. I can’t be doing with heroes.’
Tim seized his opening. ‘Maybe he’s not such a hero.’
‘Won a fucking medal, didn’t he?’ the reporter said. ‘I’ve got the cutting here somewhere. Fucking Cyprus.’ He flicked through a bulging folder and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘There y’are. Military Medal. Bravery under fire. Makes you sick.’
Tim drew on his cigarette, his eyes narrowed. ‘What if I were to tell you he shot an unarmed man while he was out there winning his medal.’
‘Did he?’
‘A teenager,’ Tim said. ‘Sixteen. Shot on the road to the Troödos mountains. I’ve just come back from the place. I interviewed his cousin.’
‘So tell me about it,’ Garry McKendrick said. It would need checking out, but it would make a great follow-up to Nicky’s story. And if it was really good it could run for days.
The copy for her own story had been composed in Nicky’s sharp young brain, headline and all, before she got back to the office.
TV GURU AND CRASH HEROINE
Gemma Goodeve, courageous heroine of the Wandsworth rail crash at centre of tug-of-love tussle. ‘My girl has been enticed away from us,’ says Tim Ledgerwood, 46-year-old father of Gemma. ‘I was forced to play detective to find out where she was. What does this man think he’s doing?’ Dark secret of TV guru. Parents distraught. Grieving mother. Hidden heroine. Where is she now?
At that moment the hidden heroine was sitting in front of the window in her totally silent bedroom, looking out at the river and thinking hard. She’d been so busy at school that morning that she hadn’t had time to think about anything except the job in hand – which in one way had been a very good thing because it had taken her away from her nightmares – but now the muddle of her emotions pressed in upon her.
In the calm of the afternoon it was hard to remember half the hurtful things they’d said to one another but the feelings that had been roused still lay dark and disturbing just under the surface of her mind. She’d been so angry to be offered help. She was angry about it now. Which was ridiculous when so many people had helped her and she’d been glad of it. She thought of the flowers that all those strangers had sent, of the way the nurses had treated her, of how kind they’d been at the rehab centre, of Catherine arriving in the restaurant to offer her the flat, of the couple from St Mary’s driving her home. And here she was actually working as a helper. It was stupid to be so touchy. Ridiculous to feel such rage. But she couldn’t be pitied. That was the bottom line.
Couldn’t and wouldn’t Especially by him.
And here you are, she told herself with a grin, pitying yourself. But the flat was spotlessly clean and she certainly wasn’t going to sit and watch television, so what could she do to keep herself occupied and away from foolish thoughts?
I shall put on my coat, she decided, and go across to the couple who’ve just moved into the flat opposite and introduce myself and see if they’d like to join me for supper. She’d got more than enough food since her trip to the supermarket and it would be a pity to cook it just for one. Even if they didn’t want to join her, they’d be company for a minute or two.
Chapter 29
Tim Ledgerwood was the first person in the newsagent’s the next morning and one look at the headlines had him running back to the flat to show Billie.
‘There you are!’ he said, triumphantly. ‘Look at that! What a revenge, eh?’
Billie was making the tea but she stopped to examine the paper. ‘It’s on the front page!’ she said.
‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘It’s important. Wait till they see it, eh. Oh I’d like to be a fly on the wall when they see it.’
But in fact, had he been turned into such an insect, he would have been a sorely disappointed one. For none of his intended targets saw the paper that morning.
Gemma was up too late to bother with news of any kind. She’d spent a cheerful evening with her new neighbours who’d invited her in ‘to see how they were settling’ and had accepted her invitation to supper providing they could supply the sweet. He was a paraplegic and she had chronic asthma, but their motto, as Gemma discovered to her delight, was ‘There’s nothing wrong with us!’
‘That’s what I say too,’ she told them. ‘We ought to have it carved in stone above the entrance.’
‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ he joked.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me!’ she replied.
She had gone to bed very late, feeling that she’d picked herself up again. And had then been sucked down into the horror of another terrible nightmare from which she woke at five o’clock, weeping and afraid. She recovered quickly, rebuking herself for being stupid, but once she’d had breakfast, all she wanted was to drive to school and get on with the day. She didn’t even bother to listen to the news on the radio.
* * *
Nick was all on his own in the Tuileries Gardens and in no mood to read newspapers either. Paris is not the right place to be when you are young and in love and on your own. He’d enjoyed the journey because his friends had been such good company, he’d relished the food, and the first day had passed pleasantly enough, but in the evening the five of them had gone to a club and everything had changed. There had been plenty to drink and lots of kidding and laughing, but he’d been horribly aware that he was a gooseberry and he missed Gemma so much that her absence was like a physical pain. Now, mooching about the gardens in the early morning while his friends slept off their excesses, he was facing the fact that wonderful though this city was he really shouldn’t have come here.
It was nearly spring, that was the trouble. He hadn’t noticed it in London but here the air was stirring, chestnut trees in bud, flowerbeds sprouting long green spears, blackbirds fighting, jumping at one another, shrill with challenge, wings outspread, and there were lovers everywhere, strolling with their arms about each other, gazing into each other’s eyes or stopping to kiss under the budding trees.
Even when he crept away into the Louvre it was no better. There were lovers depicted on every canvas, plump limbs erotically entwined, eye to eye, breast to breast. It was impossible. Oh Gemma, he grieved, my dear, darling gorgeous Gemma, why did you say such awful things to me? And worse, why did I say such awful things to you? How could I have got everything so wrong?
In Poppleton, the Pengilly morning had started in its usual way, the girls dawdling over their Sugar Puffs, Susan drinking black coffee as she checked her files, Rob eating bacon and eggs. But nobody in that household had seen the papers either because the paper boy hadn’t delivered them.
‘I’ll pick them up on my way to work,’ Rob offered as he stood at the kitchen door putting on his leather jacket.
‘That’s the third time this week,’ Susan complained. She didn’t look up from her work but Rob could tell she was scowling from the sound of her voice.
‘Have you told Sheryl she’s to pick up the girls?’
It was all taken care of. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, still concentrating on the file.
‘I shall be in York this afternoon. I’m going to make a start on the hotel gardens. I told you that, didn’t I?’
She answered that vaguely too. ‘Yes, I know. Don’t take any more, Helen. There isn’t time.’
‘I’m off then,’ Rob said. ‘Be good kids.’
The girls waved to him, their mouths too full to answer. But Susan still didn’t look up. Notice me, he willed her, lingering at the door. Leave those wretched files for two seconds and acknowledge that I’m alive. Don’t let the job eat you. It isn’t worth it. Just look up. Once. You need me as much as I need you. But she went on working, biting her underlip.
‘How about us going out tonight?’ he tried. ‘For a meal or something. We haven’t been out for ages.’
No answer.
‘There might be something on at the Theatre Royal. I could get tickets this afternoon if you like. Or we could go to the pictures. What d’you think?’
‘Can’t be done,’ she said, not looking up. ‘I’ve got this report to finish. You know how it is. There’ll be all hell to pay if it’s late.’
‘Right,’ he said, accepting defeat as he’d done so often since the New Year. There didn’t seem to be any way he could get through to her. ‘See you tonight then.’
‘Um,’ she said.
Catherine and Andrew were the only ones who were starting their day in a happy mood but although they’d read the Guardian over their hotel breakfast, they hadn’t seen the Chronicle. Now they were back in their room, debating the important matter of which tie he was going to wear for his appearance on Friday Forum.
‘The blue,’ Catherine said. ‘That always looks good with your grey. Not the other one. It’s got zigzag stripes and they look awful on television.’
‘It’s grey,’ he corrected, dangling it for inspection.
‘The pattern’s blue.’
‘If I wear it, what d’you bet I drop gravy down it at lunch,’ Andrew said.
‘We won’t order gravy.’
‘Well, sauce then. Whatever.’
‘Take the other one as a spare, just in case.’
‘Now,’ he said, ‘where are my notes? I shall need to be on top of things on a show like this.’
The notes were found and checked. ‘Ready for the off!’ he said, happily.
The television centre at Pebble Mill in Birmingham is a handsome, prestigious building and fronts a wide, prestigious road. No one approaching it by taxi, as Andrew and Catherine did that morning, could fail to be aware of its importance, for it looks what it is, one of the major centres of the television industry. Taxis arrive and depart one after the other, as though it were an airport or a railway terminus, and the famous carry their recognisable faces in and out of the building with the insouciance of princes.
It made Andrew think of an ocean liner, although he couldn’t have explained why. The length, probably, and the dazzle of all those huge windows, or the ocean-green gardens that swelled below and around it, or the ramp that led from the pavement to the entrance like a long concrete gangplank.
He and Catherine climbed the steps to the front entrance, recognising the view they’d seen through the studio windows when they’d been watching the place on their TV screens and feeling, as Catherine put it, like visiting royalty. The feeling increased when they were greeted by a uniformed doorman and led to a desk in a foyer full of sofas and screens and pictures of the stars. There, a receptionist gave them name-tags and told them that someone would be down to collect them directly. And s
omeone was, a brightly dressed, brightly smiling, cheerful girl who led them off through a maze of corridors talking all the way. She said her name was Sandra, and hoped they’d had a good journey and confided that she’d seen all Andrew’s broadcasts and thought they were terrific.
‘You ought to be in politics,’ she said, as they reached yet another labelled door. ‘Here we are, if you’ll just follow me.’
More greetings, a visit to make-up, the usual briefing from a girl with a clip-board, then back to ‘hospitality’ where they were to wait until they were called. By this time all the guests for the morning’s show had arrived and were standing about making small talk in the guarded way of men who would soon be adversaries.
There was a tall, untidy man from Railtrack and a short neat one from Railways South, a porcine young man with rimless glasses who said he was a politician ‘for my sins. But a very minor one. You wouldn’t have heard of me.’ A thickset man with a beer belly was sitting at one end of a line of easy chairs smoking a cigar, and a sharply dressed, sharp-featured woman was pointedly displaying the longest pair of legs that Andrew had ever seen and, equally pointedly, not saying who she was or why she was there.
‘A journalist,’ Andrew guessed, sotto voce to Catherine.
Catherine thought it likely.
The politician began to hold forth about the value of privatisation. ‘Of course this inquiry is all very sad,’ he said, ‘but that in no way detracts from the success of our privatisation process. Competition is the key to success, believe me. It’s the making of any organisation, large or small. It cuts out waste, it gives you an edge, it keeps you efficient. Lean and mean and efficient, that’s the name of the game. That’s what we need in this country if we are to succeed against our European competitors. It’s tough but we have to cut out the flab. It’s the only way.’
There wasn’t time for anyone to argue with him because the cheerful girl had arrived to escort them to the studio. Drinks were finished, glasses set down and off they all went, the politician continuing his peroration all the way.
‘That’s going to be his opening statement,’ Andrew said to Catherine. And so it was, word for word.
Gemma's Journey Page 33
