“Mum, you remember Inspector Austin. Cup of tea?”
“Oh no, I’m off back to bed.” She wrapped her dressing gown more tightly around her in a faintly modest gesture as she shook Max Austin’s hand.
“There’s always a chance he might not live,” said Max simply. “That’s why I’m pleased Cath is here with you. But let’s be optimistic.”
I expected him to go once my mother had returned to bed but he lingered. How many whiskeys had he had? Maybe he was a little drunk by now. Maybe he needed to talk to someone.
“In spite of what you say,” I said carefully, “it can’t be easy carrying on after what happened. Did you and your wife have a lot of friends? Have they been supportive? Do you still hanker after the past or are you feeling your way towards making a fresh start, a different kind of life to the one you had with—Sadie?”
I was taking quite a risk being so nosy but I was genuinely interested. I was asking him exactly the sort of questions I would ask if I were preparing to ghost his story. The worst he could do was tell me to fuck off.
But he didn’t even get the chance to do that because the front door banged and Tommy lurched into the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. He saw Max Austin and said rather defensively, “I’m drunk but I haven’t been driving. I took a cab home.”
“Tommy,” I pointed out, “you haven’t got a car.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Max pick up his coat and slip out the door into the hall.
“What’s he doing here at this time of night? Has there been another fire?”
I explained about Richie and that Cath was asleep upstairs.
“Cath?” Now he looked bewildered. “You never said she was back in your life.”
“Well, she wasn’t until tonight.”
“How was she? Still crazy about me?”
I didn’t laugh. Tommy could be so crass at times. There was Richie fighting for his life and he had to go and say a thing like that.
“Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry about her bloke. Sorry I’m drunk. Christ, where’ve you put her? Is she upstairs in bed with Angel?”
“Angel’s gone.”
“Sorry about that too.”
“No, you’re not,” I told him firmly.
“Okay, I’m not. A man’s not entitled to his own opinion when you’re around, Lee.”
Suddenly I was dog tired and I could feel my anger rising.
“So where the hell have you been?” I challenged him. “It’s nearly three o’clock in the morning.”
“How do you do, Lee the Shrew.” He reached for the whiskey and I moved it away from him. “I went to see Mum in hospital. Is that okay with you? I was there a lot longer than I expected so I had to go back to the BBC and work late to make up the time.”
Until three in the morning? Well, okay, I wouldn’t ask. Things were getting edgy enough as it was.
“So? How was she? Oh, and by the way, I’ve just remembered. There was someone with her when I went to see her. Who’s Marie-Chantal?”
“Who?”
It had been a casual question but the way he said “Who?” in that oh-so-innocent tone made me pay attention. Tommy is a hopeless liar probably because it isn’t something he practices very often. I know him so well that his delivery of one word can alert me to the fact that he’s nervous.
“When I last went to see your mother she had another visitor, a French woman whom she introduced as Marie-Chantal. Noreen said she worked with you at the Beeb.”
“Oh her.”
He’d gone bright red. Now why would he go red at the mention of someone he worked with?
“Well? Why was she visiting your mother?”
“She likes her.”
“How did she meet her?”
“I suppose I must have introduced them at some stage.”
“You suppose. Tommy, who is this woman?”
“I think I may have mentioned her.” He was looking very sheepish. “She’s that teacher they brought in to broadcast that program. You know, I told you, when we were staying with your parents and you discovered I spoke French.”
“She gave you French lessons. So you knew her pretty well?”
He was hopeless. It was written all over his face how well he knew her.
“Tell me all about it, Tommy,” I said quietly.
“You just didn’t seem to care anymore. You were writing all the time, you didn’t want me round here. You made me feel like I was this awful person who kept interrupting your life, you didn’t seem to want to take the relationship to—”
If he says to the next level, I thought, I’ll kill him. But when he did I forced myself to curb my irritation. His mother was seriously ill. He must be far more worried than he let on. Whatever I was about to learn about Marie-Chantal I would have to deal with another time.
“So you worked with her on this broadcast and—?” I prompted him.
“I liked her. She didn’t make fun of the fact that I couldn’t speak French. She corrected my pronunciation and after a while I began to get the hang of it and she told me I had a good ear. She offered to give me lessons. It began with the odd cup of coffee during a break”—Exactly like he’d begun with me, I thought wryly, a cup of BBC tea and a Kit Kat—“and then we had lunch and she took me shopping, showed me the sort of clothes she thought would suit me. She was very thoughtful in that respect.”
Dear God! The number of times I’d tried to interest him in a new wardrobe. Just because she was French.
“Those sweaters you were wearing at Christmas?”
He nodded happily. He seemed relieved he didn’t have to lie anymore. “Beautiful, weren’t they? She has great taste.”
I sat on my hands so I couldn’t punch him. Now it seemed there’d be no stopping him. Did I really want to know the sordid details?
“Tommy,” I said carefully, disguising my mounting indignation and hurt with a light conversational tone, “tell me, does Marie-Chantal suffer from cystitis at all?”
He looked at me in genuine bewilderment.
“It’s an infection of the bladder,” I explained pleasantly, “and it can be irritated by sex. I’ve had it from time to time. It’s best to get up and pee as soon as you’ve finished having sex. Do you remember me doing that?” He nodded. “And another cure is some rather nasty medicine called mist pot cit.”
“Oh, that’s what that’s for. There was a bottle in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom for ages and I hadn’t a clue what it was doing there.”
“Well, now you know.”
“Poor Marie-Chantal. She must suffer from what’s it called? She never said.”
“It’s a bit of a turnoff to mention it during sex.”
“That’s probably why—” He stopped. “Lee, I never—she—”
“Are you still seeing her? Have you just been with her? Is that why you were so late home?”
“Well, she was there seeing Mum and afterwards we went for a drink because I was upset, but we didn’t—I mean, I haven’t slept with her since before Christmas. Not since we went to France and you and I—”
And that made it okay? What had he done? Made it some kind of New Year’s resolution to simplify his life and only have sex with me?
But the worst part about it was that I didn’t really have the right to be angry with him because of what I’d done with Buzz. Of course he didn’t know about that. But I did. The words “double standard” flitted through my mind.
“Are you angry with me?” He was giving me a wary look. I didn’t say anything. “You are, aren’t you?” he went on. “Listen, I’ve always loved you and I’ve always told you so, over and over again. It’s you who doesn’t love me, or if you do you have a pretty funny way of showing it. If you made me feel you loved me do you seriously think I would have played away? If you really want to know the truth, there have been times recently when I wondered if you might be seeing someone on the side.”
So now he had to go and make me
feel guilty on top of everything else. He was right, damn him. He was right about everything. I could feel the tears coming and if I spent another minute with him, I’d give myself away. All I wanted to do was take him in my arms and comfort him about Noreen but Marie-Chantal had come between us. When I moved toward him, he backed away.
“I know that look. You’re mad as hell. I should never have told you. But you know what?” He took a step toward me and looked me right in the eye. “Maybe it’s better this happened, that it’s out in the open. You’re mad at me but maybe you should just take some time out to think about why I got together with Marie-Chantal in the first place.”
And then before I could make any further attempt to placate him, he walked right past me and out the door. I yelled after him.
“Tommy! Tommy, come back, for God’s sake.”
But he’d gone. Alone, I let the tears flow freely in my frustration and picked up the whiskey, by now nearly empty, and took a swig straight from the bottle. Then I heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs. Oh God, all I needed was my mother wanting a late-night chat. But then the front door slammed and I peeped through the curtains to see Max Austin hurrying into the night.
He must have gone upstairs to have a pee because the floor had been taken up in the downstairs cloakroom by the damp people. So at what point did he start coming downstairs again?
Just how much of my miserable exchange with Tommy had he overheard?
CHAPTER 18
I’D HAD ROWS WITH TOMMY BEFORE—LOTS OF THEM, generally when I was tired or fretful. For some reason I always took it out on him. What usually happened was that I would pick a fight with him over something small like what were his dirty socks doing under the bed when I had distinctly asked him to take them home or put them in the laundry basket.
Tommy always apologized but invariably with a smirk on his face and this only served to provoke me even more so I would start shouting at him. He would shout back for a while, just for good measure, so I could feel like I’d cleared the air. Then we wouldn’t speak for a few hours so we would both know the point, whatever it was, had been well and truly made. Peace would be restored when my mood lifted and I’d forgotten whatever it was that had angered me in the first place. And here Tommy was smart. He knew exactly when it was safe to approach me again and once he did, we’d carry on as if nothing had happened.
But he had never walked out on me with such an air of finality before.
In spite of my exhaustion, I couldn’t summon the energy to climb back up the stairs to bed. I suppose I harbored some hope that Tommy would return and beg my forgiveness. I found a load of washing-up in the sink and knew without a doubt that he had left it there. Maybe he had had a bite to eat before going to see his mother in hospital. A dirty saucepan, a bowl, a glass and some silver. Why was it beyond him to perform the simple task of reaching down and placing these items in the dishwasher?
And in spite of my craving for my bed, I continued to sit there waiting for him, dozing off every now and then and coming to with a start when I heard the sound of a key in the front door around 5:30.
I ran into the hall as the key stopped rattling and the door blew open from the cold early morning wind outside. Bianca stood there in her red duffel coat.
For a second I was totally baffled. When had I given Bianca a key? Then I remembered Selma’s offer to my mother to send Bianca to clean the house. My mother must have given her the key but what on earth was she doing here at such an ungodly hour?
“Good morning, Bianca.”
She didn’t answer, of course. Just let out a little shriek of surprise and then, when she’d recovered her composure, she gave me one of her impassive looks and stomped her feet hard on the floor to warm them, scattering bits of wet mud. Well, fine, she could clean it up.
There was something perverse about the way she refused to return any courtesies I extended to her, never answered my questions politely, and in spite of myself, I began to look upon it as a challenge. I would make her acknowledge me, whatever it took.
“Do you always start work so early?” I asked her, smiling warmly even though I felt like death.
“Why you no in bed?”
“Cup of tea, Bianca?”
“Where you keep Hoover?”
“Cup of tea, Bianca?” I persisted, the tone of my voice making it clear that I meant business.
“I drink the coffee.”
I wasn’t quite sure whether this constituted a point on her side or mine but I decided to let it go. At any rate, until I gave her instructions and showed her where everything was she couldn’t very well start work. I wondered what she would have done if I hadn’t been up. How could she have possibly have known I would be downstairs to greet her at 5:30 in the morning?
“Sit down,” I gestured to a chair at the kitchen table. “Black or white?” As it happened, knowing I wouldn’t be going back to sleep, I had made myself a pot of coffee about an hour ago and it was still warm on the hot plate of the coffee machine.
When she didn’t answer, I retrieved the key she was still clutching in her hand and laid it on the table in front of her beside a mug of black coffee. I pushed a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar lumps toward her, smiling at the giant fluorescent green label attached to the key ring with my name and address on it written in Selma’s flowery scrawl, together with the words DON’T FORGET!
Bianca was nervous, I saw to my surprise. Her hands shook as she reached for the coffee. She was perched on the edge of her chair, in her coat, with her bag still hanging from her shoulder.
“Here, I’ll hang that up for you.”
I reached for the bag and she leapt away from me with the result that it fell on the floor between us. She was on her knees in a second, scrabbling around for her belongings. A photograph had fluttered over to the other side of the room and I went to retrieve it.
“Who’s this?” I asked, highly intrigued. The photo was of an unusually beautiful woman. She was sitting on a bench, barefoot at the water’s edge with her trousers rolled up to her calves. She was laughing at the camera, presenting the kind of carefree image I associated with advertisements for health clubs. She was a Latina, long black hair, dark flashing eyes, the whole bit. But she appeared so vibrant and engaging, I couldn’t stop looking at the picture. There was something else about her, something that was bugging me. She was familiar in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
When Bianca said “Is my sister,” it fell into place. There was a resemblance. Same set of the eyes except the sister’s were larger. Same mouth except the sister’s was wider. Same broad shoulders except the sister looked to be a good six inches taller than Bianca. It was a classic case of one sister getting all the good features and the other getting none. But it was more than that. The woman in the photograph had an open face. She looked like she would offer warmth, humor, understanding whereas Bianca’s expression seemed to be permanently closed and disagreeable.
“Bianca, she’s beautiful.” Even as I said it I wondered how often she had heard this and resented the attention never focused on her. “What’s her name?”
But Bianca’s face softened slightly as she took the photograph from me. She didn’t look resentful, only sad. “Maria,” she said, “but she don’t look like that now. Here”—she thrust another picture into my hand—“here is Maria today.”
I gasped. If Bianca said it was the same woman then it was the same woman but I could barely see it. She was slumped in a wheelchair, about two stone lighter. The beautiful dark eyes were now sunken holes in her gaunt face with horrible shadows underneath and there was something wrong with her nose. I remembered a small straight nose in the other picture but here there was an ugly bump in the middle.
“What happened? Did she have an accident?”
I was trying to recall what Selma had told me. Something about Bianca having a sister who was sick and whom she took care of.
Bianca’s eyes were very bright. She was blinking and I r
ealized with a shock that she was trying to suppress tears. Should I go over and put my arm around her?
“What’s the matter?” I asked as gently as I could.
But her opaque look was back and in answer to my question, she repeated, “Where you keep Hoover?”
“Bianca,” I said, not bothering to hide my anger, “you can’t Hoover at this time of the morning, you’ll wake everyone up.”
“Who here?” She looked surprised.
“My mother—remember, you met her. And my friend Cath is staying here. She is very tired. We have to let her sleep. She’s at the very top of the house, you can work your way up there slowly.”
“Where that girl sleep? She back with you?”
I had to think for a minute and then I realized who she meant.
“Angel’s gone.”
“Where she gone?”
“Bianca, I don’t know. So why are you here so early?”
She shrugged as if it was obvious. “I clean you and then I clean Miss Selma.”
I supposed that made sense. She was squeezing me in before Selma. She couldn’t do me after because she had to go home and take care of her sister. I thought of something.
“Bianca, do you know? Does Selma have a sister—in New York?”
“Miss Selma no have sister or brother or mother or father. Miss Selma all alone.”
“She has Buzz,” I said and waited to see what Bianca had to say about that.
“Sometimes.” Well, that was an interesting answer.
“Oh, you mean like he wasn’t with her at Christmas? But that was because she went away. Do you know where she went?” I said it casually, deliberately not looking at her as if I wasn’t really listening.
“She go to seaside.”
“Seaside? The beach? She went to the coast near New York? I thought she went to Manhattan.”
“No,” said Bianca, “no New York.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure. She send me postcard. Here, I show you.”
Once again she produced it from her bag, clearly the repository of any number of interesting items. I looked at the picture of a strip of sand, at the bottom of an anonymous-looking cliff. It could be anywhere. I turned the postcard over and read that it was a place I’d never heard of in Devon. The postmark bore that out and the date showed that the card had been mailed on Christmas Eve. So Selma had lied about New York. She had been in England all along. She could have come up to London from Devon on New Year’s Eve.
How to Seduce a Ghost Page 27
