by Liz Fielding
The freesias were still there, where he had left them on the hall table, the sweet scent reaching out to her. She couldn’t leave them there to wither and die and she couldn’t, despite her declared intention, cold-heartedly dump them in the bin. So she put them in a silver bud vase and stood them on her desk beside the unwanted bank draft.
She looked at her watch. Four o’clock. Too early to ring the hospital, but she couldn’t face her bed, the sheets rumpled from the bittersweet moments of passion in Luke’s arms. Instead, she curled up on the sofa and closed her eyes.
It was still dark when she telephoned the hospital. Her father had just woken and the nurse passed on his message that he needed a toothbrush and razor, his own pyjamas and a dressing gown, the blue silk Paisley one. Fizz raised a smile at that. He was definitely on the mend. Relief lifted her spirits a little and after a brief hot shower to revive her, she went to collect her father’s things. Claudia, who had also telephoned the hospital, was already doing it.
‘Do you think they’ll allow visitors in at dawn?’ she asked Fizz, smothering a yawn as she folded the specified dressing gown into a bag.
‘Just for a minute or two while we give him his clean pyjamas. We can go back later for a proper visit.’ Fizz touched her sister’s arm. ‘Claudia, I’ve got something to tell you.’
She looked up, then straightened. ‘Lord, Fizz, what is it?’
‘I don’t quite know how to begin.’
Claudia stared at her for a moment. ‘No, you can’t be pregnant, you haven’t known him long enough.’
‘How long does it take?’
‘I’ll rephrase that. You haven’t known him long enough to be certain.’
Fizz felt the colour flooding to her cheeks. ‘No, well. It’s not that. Look, I think we’d better sit down. This is going to take some time.’ So Claudia sat down and Fizz told her that they had a sister. That Edward Beaumont had his three daughters after all.
*****
They arrived at the hospital just after seven and found Melanie waiting for them in the day room. She leapt up as they entered, clearly nervous of her reception and there was a moment of awkwardness when no one seemed to know quite what to do. Then Claudia stepped forward to hug the younger girl. Fizz joined her and for a moment everyone was overcome with tears and laughter.
‘Mel?’ They turned as one at the sound of Luke’s voice. He looked, Fizz thought, as bad as any man she had seen who was still walking, his skin drained of colour, his eyes all dark hollows. ‘Edward would like to see you.’
For a moment she didn’t move. Then she turned to Fizz and Claudia. ‘Do you mind?’
Claudia gave her a little push. ‘It’s your big moment, kid. Go take a bow.’
‘I know it’s stupid, but my legs won’t work.’
‘Come on. I’ll hold your hand as far as the door.’
‘After that I’m on my own?’
‘On your own? Hey, you’re a Beaumont,’ she said, with a broad grin. ‘You’ll never be on your own again.’
When they had gone leaving her alone with Luke, Fizz shifted awkwardly, turning to the window to stare out at the sea. ‘How is he this morning?’
‘Sad to hear about Juliet. He talked about her. Wept a little. But to discover that he was loved so much, that they had a daughter -’ ... he raked his thick dark hair back from his forehead with his fingers ... ‘- to discover that would, I think, be sufficient to put the life back into any man.’ He looked down at her. ‘Are you going to be all right, Fizz? You look tired.’
And he didn’t? ‘The station won’t fall apart if I take a few days off to catch up on my sleep.’
‘Won’t it? I thought you were afraid it might disappear altogether if you weren’t there to keep an eye on it twenty-four hours a day,’ he said, trying to tempt a smile from her.
She half turned, looking down, avoiding his eyes.
‘I thought you wanted the radio station. I was so afraid that you would try to take it from me that it blinded me to everything else. I suppose that’s why I never saw the real danger.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘No, that’s not true. I always recognised the danger, but it was blurred, confused by ... by everything. Last night was a mistake, Luke.’ Her gesture, small, restrained, painful, needed no words. ‘Now, I think I’d better go and find Claudia.’
*****
Fizz had left all the arrangements for the Restaurant launch party to John and Susie and as a result discovered that there was nothing for her to do but enjoy herself. Unfortunately, enjoying herself was the last thing she was capable of.
She felt lost and very alone despite the crush of guests. Any sense of achievement in the restaurant had been leached away by the announcement of the takeover by John. The evening was his and she did not begrudge him his moment, but it left her feeling superfluous, a hostess whose party has moved on.
She looked around. Edward, seated in state, still officially taking things easy, was enjoying the flattering attention of his new found daughter and didn’t need her. Claudia had spotted Julian the moment he arrived and informing Fizz that she didn’t know a good thing when she saw one, appropriated him for herself.
Susie, she knew, had invited Luke even though she had personally crossed him off the guest list. She had not seen him since their encounter in the hospital and she dreaded meeting him again, but as the evening wore on it seemed increasingly likely that even he would not put in an appearance to disturb the tedium of the occasion.
Then the door opened behind her and Fizz, not meaning to, turned. It wasn’t Luke, but she still felt the sudden wobble in her knees. Her throat dried and her pulse was racketing like a drum. Not with excitement, not with desire, but with anger.
‘Patrick March.’ The words, though startled from her, had a dead quality, nothing of welcome. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I asked Susie to send him an invitation.’ And this time the knee wobble mattered as Luke closed the door behind him. ‘I’ve suddenly become very conscious of the damage that can be caused by unlaid ghosts.’
‘And having finally laid all yours to rest, you’re on a crusade?’ She lifted her chin, the sparkle back in her eyes.
‘Something like that.’
Claudia appeared at her side. ‘Well, this is a pretty gathering,’ she said. ‘Can I offer either of you gentlemen a drink?’
‘Thank you.’ Patrick March seized the opportunity with evident relief. ‘A whisky. A large one.’
‘I do hope you’re not driving. Oh, no. Of course not. You lost your license last year didn’t you?’ Claudia didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Luke?’ He shook his head. Fizz waited. Patrick fidgeted. Claudia returned. ‘Whisky for you, Patrick. And I brought this for you Fizz. I’ll leave the target to your discretion.’ She offered Fizz a bowl piled up with avocado mousse.
‘Take it away, Claudia,’ she declared, crossly. ‘This isn’t a farce. Luke was right first time. It’s a melodrama - a very bad one. Drink up, Patrick and start walking. It’s a long way down the pier, but Luke isn’t stopping either so he can keep you company.’
‘We’ll go in minute, Fizz, but I brought him with me because he has something to say to you,’ Luke insisted, quietly.
‘Nothing I want to hear.’
‘Fizz, please,’ Patrick pleaded. ‘Listen to me, please. I have to... I want to tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you. Truly sorry. I used you without a second thought. When I asked you to marry me I was thinking only of myself, what marrying you would do for my career. The worst thing was not coming clean, pretending that it was your fault. I was still lying about it a couple of weeks ago to Mr Devlin. He’s made me see how wrong it is.’ The room had fallen silent, everyone looking in his direction. ‘There are no excuses. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just wanted you to know that I’ll do whatever you want to put things right.’
The silence stretched endlessly as the second hand ticked around the clock. Then Claudia touched her arm and Fizz stirred. ‘Very pretty,’ she said. �
�I hope your speech writer was well paid.’
‘Fizz,’ he protested. ‘That came straight from the heart.’
‘Did it?’ Perhaps it had. That convincing sincerity had once been his stock in trade. He had missed his vocation when he took to the stage. He would have made a far better politician. ‘If you say so.’ She looked at his empty glass. ‘I’m sure you could do with another drink after that ordeal.’ She made a gesture towards the bar. ‘Help yourself.’
The other guests let out a collectively held breath and Patrick was absorbed into a crowd that began to buzz with excited conversation. Then Julian appeared at her side, glared briefly at Luke, before saying, ‘Can I do anything, Fizz? Throw anyone out? Hit anyone? You only have to ask.’
Luke glared him. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
Before he could answer Claudia pulled him away. ‘Come and dance, darling, before you get into trouble.’
Fizz waited in the quiet space that surrounded the two of them and finally Luke broke the silence. ‘If I come back in five years, Fizz, will you be as generous to me?’ He looked across the room to where Patrick was helping himself to food from the buffet.
‘Five years? A century wouldn’t be long enough to atone for what you tried to do, so very nearly did, to my family.’
‘You hate me that much?’
‘Hate you? If I could hate you, Luke, I could anticipate that one day I might be able to feel what I feel for Patrick. Nothing. But you came here to make me fall in love with you and you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. That I cannot forgive.’
‘You loved Patrick once.’
‘I thought I loved him, but it was just infatuation.’ She’d had all week to think about it, compare the pangs of calf love with the real thing. ‘No doubt I’d have got over him in a few weeks if he hadn’t betrayed me quite so brutally, if I hadn’t been quite so young. But I shall never get over you.’
He looked at her for a moment, before nodding, accepting that she meant precisely what she said. ‘Then we must both suffer for my mistakes. If you need anything, Phillip will be taking over here. Just call him.’
‘You’re going away?’
‘Oh, yes. Unless you call me back, Broomhill has seen the last of me.’ He waited a moment. ‘Goodbye, Fizz.’
‘Goodbye, Luke.’ She was still staring at the door when Claudia, taking pity on her, put her cloak about her shoulders and took her home.
*****
‘Fizz? It’s on. We’re going to do it!’
She looked up from her desk as Claudia bounced into her office and plumped herself down on the sofa. She had moved into her father’s luxurious suite on the mezzanine floor and she was busy preparing to battle for the retention of her franchise, well aware that a rival was preparing to try and outbid her. But she sat back, ready to listen to her sister’s news. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Private Lives! Amanda for me, Sibyl for Melanie with Dad directing. I can’t believe our luck.’
Fizz sighed. ‘Oh, I’m sure you can, if you think about it. Luke is using his money to put your lives back together. Money is all he has left.’
‘Don’t be paranoid, Fizz. It’s being backed by a well known theatrical entrepreneur.’
She shrugged. ‘If you say so. But I wouldn’t have expected him to be obvious about it. He’s far too clever for that.’
‘Have you heard from him?’ Fizz shook her head. ‘Do you expect to?’
‘Not this side of a hundred years.’
‘A hundred years? Is that the time scale you laid down for forgiveness?’
‘I didn’t want him to be in any doubt.’
‘But he loves you.’ Fizz raised her brows. ‘He would have stayed if he didn’t,’ Claudia said. ‘You must know that.’
‘I know nothing of the sort.’
‘And it will break his heart not to see Melanie make her West End debut.’
‘The more so I imagine, since he’s footing the bill.’
‘It’ll be a sell out. He’ll get his investment back and a handsome profit.’
‘Then nothing much has changed, has it?’
Claudia stood up. ‘Nothing at all. You’ve wasted five years because of that bastard Patrick March and now you’re doing it all over again. This life isn’t a rehearsal, Fizz. You only get one crack at it. And it’s all your baby will have. Perhaps you should ask Melanie what that feels like.’
Fizz flushed. ‘How did you know I was pregnant?’
Claudia smiled, turning in the doorway. ‘You’re my sister. I know you. Of course, the fact that you’ve been regularly rushing out of meetings to throw up hasn’t gone unnoticed either,’ she added.
‘I haven’t!’ Fizz stared at her sister. ‘Are you telling me that everyone knows?’
‘Everyone except the father. Melanie wanted to write and tell him, but I told her it was better not to mention you at all in her letters. I thought the silence would drive him crazy and he’d come back all the quicker.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course, I didn’t know about the hundred years embargo.’
‘No one is to tell him anything,’ Fizz said.
‘Oh, I agree. That’s your job, but I wouldn’t leave it too long,’ she added, eyes full of mischief, ‘or he won’t be around to rub your back when you need him most.’
After Claudia had gone Fizz sat for a long time staring out of the window. A warm Easter had brought the crowds flocking to the sea and the pier was thronging with hoards of happy visitors.
The restaurant was busy.
The shop was selling stock as fast as it could be put on the shelves and advertisers were clamouring for air time because of the publicity about Melanie. She should have been happy. She put her hand to her waist. She was happy, she told herself. Perfectly happy.
‘Perfectly happy,’ she said, out loud, defying anyone to contradict her. No one did, because her office, like her life, had only one occupant. Claudia was right; without Luke neither her life, nor her baby’s life could ever be truly complete. If only there was some way to know how he felt about her before his guilt and her pride had got in the way.
Susie put her head around the door. ‘Are you feeling generous? I’m collecting for a wedding present for Jim and Maggie.’
Fizz reached for her bag and took out her wallet. ‘Here,’ she said, stuffing a note into the big brown envelope. ‘What are you getting them?’
‘We thought a pram.’ Susie grinned. ‘They do say it’s catching,’ she added, cheekily.
‘They do say everything comes in threes. I’d be careful if I were you,’ Fizz warned as Susie beat a hasty retreat.
Fizz pushed her wallet back in her bag. Stuffed to the seams with receipts and bills it protested and she sighed, pulling out a handful of paper to sort out, some to be passed to accounts, most to be tossed in the bin. She was sifting through them when she came across the letter that Luke had left on her doorstep weeks earlier, the night of the party at Winterbourne Manor. The night she had fled the scene of her embarrassment and he had come after her.
Creased, stained, still unopened, she laid it on the desk in front of her. She had wanted to know how he felt, really felt, before they had, so briefly, become lovers, before her father had collapsed. Could this grubby envelope possibly give her the answer?
Her heart beating too fast for comfort she pushed her thumb under the flap. The single sheet of paper didn’t say much, but the few words were enough.
“Tonight was real, Fizz. Whatever happens I want you to know that. Luke.”
Whatever happens. The words were scrawled, hurried, with nothing studied or careful in their composition. And everything about the groundwork in his plans to destroy her family had been just that. Nothing had been left to chance. He must have been so relieved when he realised she had thrown it away unopened.
She picked up the letter and laid it against her cheek, laughed a little then wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. She knew it was genuine for the simple reason that he would have take
n so much more trouble if it had been his intention to deceive.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUKE saw the long plume of dust turning pink in the setting sun long before he could hear the complaining note of the jeep as it climbed the long slow rise to his campsite.
He stood up to poke his fire into life, throw on some more wood and set a billy to boil. Visitors were rare this far out in the bush and, even if not particularly welcome, the civilities still had to be observed.
He glared down at the trail before turning away and ducking inside his store tent to pick out a couple of extra tins for supper. There wasn’t much to choose from. He’d have to head back to civilization soon. But what then?
Melanie had a new family; her letters were full of them, at least full of Claudia and Edward, tactfully silent on the subject of Fizz. Another couple of weeks and she’d be opening in the West End of London and he wouldn’t even be there to see her.
His plans for Harries were in Phillip’s capable hands. He wasn’t needed in Broomhill.
He looked around the tent and thought briefly, painfully of Winterbourne Manor. He’d made an offer for the place, had planned to lay it in Fizz’s lap as his wedding present.
His mouth tightened. Everything he had striven for, worked so hard to achieve had been thrown away in a mindless, stupid act of revenge. He might have all the wealth he would ever need, but in his heart he was right back where he had started all those years ago when he followed Juliet to Australia after their mother had died. At least then, he’d had a goal, ambition.
What was left to him now but to make more money? A man needed more than that.
He thought of Fizz, wondered what she was doing. He half smiled. He knew. He could see her shivering in that pokey little office at the top of the pavilion, worrying away at a column of figures. She needed more than that too. Love, a family of her own.
He laughed out loud. God, what was he thinking of? Nothing to strive for when she was there, in Broomhill? Damn it, he’d go back and convince her. Lay siege to the pier, for every day of her hundred years if necessary. Refuse to take no for an answer.
