The Foundling’s Daughter

by Ann Bennett

  ‘I’m not going to admit to something I haven’t done. You’ve got to believe me.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she says, standing up.

  ‘Storm off if you want to. It isn’t going to change anything. Look, you’ve come all this way. You might as well tell me about what the police asked you while you’re here.’

  ‘Why should I help you, Alex? Just tell me that?’

  But she doesn’t leave. She just stands there in front of the desk, staring into his eyes.

  What’s happened to us? We used to do everything together, know each other’s thoughts, trust each other completely.

  Suddenly she’s twenty-one again and back in that starchy hotel restaurant in Bristol, dressed in an ill-fitting black dress and an uncomfortable white pinafore, carrying a tray into the kitchen, smarting from the rudeness of a customer who’d just sent his main course back. She put the tray down on the nearest surface.

  ‘Don’t put it there – that’s the plating up area. Don’t they teach you lot anything?’

  One of the sous chefs was shouting at her.

  The noise and heat was overwhelming. The place was filled with smoke and steam, rows of chefs were working at the counters chopping food, sweating over hotplates.

  Sarah felt close to tears.

  ‘Hey, don’t talk to the waitresses like that, Johnno, mate.’ The head chef turned and glanced at her. Then he looked again and smiled. She was struck by those blue eyes then.

  ‘Do you need help? It’s your first night, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. A man sent this fish back. He was very rude,’ she said, holding the plate out for him, half expecting his smile to vanish, for him to yell at her like the customer and the sous chef. Instead he frowned, stopped what he was doing and came over to where she was standing.

  ‘Let me look at that,’ he said, taking the plate from her. He examined the fish with a fork. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the dish. Perfectly cooked I’d say.’

  Sarah felt her face drop, but she mustered a smile. ‘OK, I’ll take it back to him if you like,’ she said. She wasn’t going to let this defeat her on her first night.

  The chef smiled into her eyes. ‘No, don’t do that. He can have another fish freshly cooked. I’ll do it myself. He’ll kick up a fuss if we just take it back. I know the type. And the customer is king round here. But thanks for offering. That takes guts.’

  The relief must have been plain in her eyes and she stood and watched him fry another sea bass, flipping and turning it with expert hands.

  After that he made a point of talking to her whenever she came into the kitchen. She was drawn in by his charm and his love of the job. He ran the team of chefs like clockwork. All the staff looked up to him and were carried along by his enthusiasm. He was a natural leader. Like them, Sarah began to idolise him, and when he asked her out a couple of weeks later she was astonished and flattered.

  ‘Come on, Sarah. Give me a break,’ he says now. ‘It won’t cost you anything to say what you know.’

  She steps back from the desk but doesn’t sit down. ‘They wanted to know all about the new business,’ she says, her voice dry. ‘I told them what I knew. That you set it up with Jack and some of his associates. I told them that I wasn’t part of it. It took them a while to believe that.’

  His eyes are on her face and he is tapping his pen nervously on the desk. Tap, tap, tap.

  ‘Shouldn’t I have said that?’ she asks when he doesn’t respond. ‘I was only telling the truth.’

  ‘That’s all you said?’ He carries on tapping.

  She bites her lip, again she wants to yell at him, but instead she says, ‘Yes. I told you before. Why. What is this? What’s happened?’

  He hesitates. At last he says, ‘It’s Jack. They’ve finally charged him.’

  ‘Charged him? Do you know what with?’

  ‘Some sort of money laundering. The details are a bit vague.’

  His voice is deadpan, but Sarah can feel the stress and tension radiating from his body.

  ‘Money laundering? You’re joking,’ the words haven’t quite hit home yet.

  Alex doesn’t answer. Just carries on staring at her.

  ‘But what’s that got to do with you?’ she asks finally.

  ‘They’re investigating every operation Jack’s got an interest in. And the new business we’ve set up together is one of those.’

  ‘But why on earth would they think that setting up a new restaurant chain would have anything to do with money laundering?’

  He shrugs. ‘Search me.’

  ‘What are they going to do about it?’

  ‘If they find anything that incriminates me, they’ll charge me too.’

  She stares at him. She has the odd sensation that she doesn’t know him, that she doesn’t know anything about him anymore. They’d once been so close, or at least that’s how it had seemed, but perhaps she never knew him at all.

  ‘And will they find anything?’ she asks, not taking her gaze away from his.

  Irritation flashes in his blue eyes, ‘Of course not. Sarah, you’ve got to believe me. I had no idea that Jack was into anything illegal.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Alex,’ she laughs. ‘You knew very well that Jack wasn’t straight down the line. We often spoke about it. You used to joke that he had connections with the Russian Mafia. Remember?’

  ‘OK he’s always been a bit of a wheeler dealer. He works in the city for God’s sake. That’s nothing unusual. He knows how to make money, how to manipulate the rules to his advantage.’

  ‘And what about those thugs he hangs about with?’

  ‘They’re just full of bravado. It’s all show… Look, if they do charge me and it goes to trial you’ve got to testify for me.’

  Her anger and resentment resurface. ‘I’m not lying, Alex. Not for you, not for anyone.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to lie. I’m just asking you to tell the truth. You have to tell them I didn’t know anything about whatever Jack’s up to.’

  She stares at him. ‘But how do I know that?’

  ‘Of course you know,’ he was getting impatient now, colour rising in his face, ‘You know me. Look if you don’t do this for me I’m ruined. Can you imagine what would happen to this place if I went to jail?’

  She laughs bitterly. ‘At first you thought it would be good publicity.’

  ‘Well, going to prison wouldn’t be. Surely even you can see that.’

  ‘Even me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. That came out wrong. Look, I know you’re angry with me.’

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ she says, anger making her voice quiet. Why had she let him persuade her into coming here? She’d known deep down it would be a mistake.

  ‘Don’t go. Please, Sarah. Please, just hear me out. I swear I had nothing to do with anything Jack’s into. He just offered investment. I didn’t ask questions.’

  ‘Well maybe you should have done. I don’t know how it works, Alex, but anyone who comes within a mile of Jack can tell he’s not straight.’

  ‘OK. OK. It was a mistake. I admit that. But if you could just help me to convince the police that I didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘But how can I know that? I don’t know what you did or didn’t know, do I? You lied to me about that girl. Why wouldn’t you lie about other things?’

  He’s silent, his head buried in his hands. ‘I told you. It’s not what you think.’

  ‘Well why don’t you tell me what it is then? If it’s not what I think it is, then what is it?’

  He shakes his head silently, not looking at her. Sounds float through from the restaurant, guests getting up to leave, the scraping of chairs. The sounds that had once been the familiar background to their lives now seem to reinforce the distance between them.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Alex,’ she says, wanting to break the silence. ‘You insist on me coming here, but you won’t talk about the thing that matters most. The re
ason why I left. I don’t know how you’ve got the gall to ask me to help you when you can’t even be honest about your affair now that I’ve found out. I don’t think I ever realised until now how much of a coward you are.’

  She heads for the door. ‘I’m going along to the house now to collect a few clothes and things, if that’s OK?’

  ‘Of course,’ there’s defeat in his voice. ‘Take whatever you want.’

  ‘And I’ll be bringing a van up in a couple of weeks to take a few bits of furniture.’

  He frowns. ‘Why? I mean that’s fine. But why do you need furniture at your dad’s house?’

  ‘I’m buying somewhere. A house of my own.’

  ‘Buying somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, Dad’s lending me the money.’

  ‘That’s a bit sudden!’

  ‘I need to move on, Alex. And it’s going to take time for you to buy me out.’

  ‘Have you found somewhere? Already?’

  She nods. ‘Yes, it’s an old place that needs doing up. I had to move quickly. We’re completing next week.’

  There’s pain in his eyes now. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done that. I thought we might be able to patch things up.’

  ‘Are you serious? After what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened. This is all a complete over-reaction. You don’t need to do this.’

  ‘I knew it was a mistake me coming here. You want me to help you but you won’t give anything in return.’ She opens the door and walks out.

  In the lobby, Carlo hurries towards her carrying her coat. There’s concern in his old eyes. She smiles awkwardly and lets him help her on with it.

  ‘I’m so sorry, madam, about everything,’ he says. She can barely look at him as she chokes back the tears and heads for the door.

  The house feels strange as she lets herself in through the front door. She is reminded powerfully of the day she left. Now it smells of stale cooking, of neglect. She stands in the kitchen doorway and runs her eyes over the mess inside, dirty crockery piled beside the sink, takeaway food cartons on the table, the bin overflowing with litter.

  Sighing deeply and shutting the door on the chaos, she goes up the stairs into their bedroom. Alex’s clothes are strewn everywhere. The bed is unmade, the sheets in a tangle. It looks as though they haven’t been changed since she left.

  She quickly pulls a suitcase from under the bed and piles in some clothes that she didn’t have room to take before. She can’t wait to finish. She needs to get out of here as quickly as she can. Now she doesn’t know now if she can face coming back for any furniture after all.

  She’s halfway down the stairs with one large suitcase and a holdall slung over her shoulder when the telephone in the hall starts to ring. She’s tempted to answer it, but she knows she should leave it, that picking it up could only lead to more trouble and pain. She ignores the persistent ringing as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, walks past the phone without even looking at it and moves towards the front door. It stops ringing and the answerphone kicks in. In a few seconds a voice sounds from the machine that makes Sarah’s blood run cold.

  ‘Alex? Are you there?’ It’s a young woman’s voice, bright and clear. Sarah instantly recognises it.

  She drops the bags down in the narrow hallway and stands there in shock.

  ‘Alex can you pick up the phone please? I need to talk to you. I’ve left messages on your mobile, but you haven’t called me. Please Alex. Call me as soon as you get this. It’s important.’

  She’s tempted to snatch up the phone and yell abuse at the girl, but with a huge effort of will she stops herself. Instead, trembling and feeling sick with rage, she rushes through the door with her bags and slams it behind her. She runs towards her car, not looking back.

  Thirteen

  Sarah

  ‘Hey, look at this, Sarah,’ her father’s voice echoes from the other end of Cedar Lodge. ‘They’ve left a piece of furniture in here. An old desk.’

  Sarah puts down the box of groceries on the draining board in the kitchen and walks down the passage and through the panelled hallway towards the study. She stops in the doorway. Her father is standing in the middle of the room, staring at a huge oak bureau that fills the entire wall at the far end. The sight of it gives her heart an odd turn. She hovers on the threshold. Her father turns and smiles.

  ‘I wonder why they left it?’ he says.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘Cartwrights didn’t say anything about it to me. Nor did Jonathan Squires.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful piece of furniture,’ muses her father, running a hand over the tooled leather top.

  ‘Hmm, maybe…’ she says dubiously.

  It’s true, it is beautifully made, but it’s also old-fashioned, dark, and heavy. And it has a sort of brooding presence about it that feels vaguely unnerving. The sight of the old desk stirs the memory of the first and only time Sarah was inside this house before, and of how the strange atmosphere of the place, so redolent of a forgotten era, had stayed with her for days afterwards.

  ‘Perhaps they couldn’t get it out of the room?’ ventures her father. ‘Perhaps that’s why they left it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she says, trying to ignore the chill running through her, ‘I wish they’d told us.’

  Her father smiles at her mischievously. ‘I don’t think we were flavour of the month with Jonathan Squires, Sarah, coming in with that offer, gazumping their developer chums at the eleventh hour.’

  She laughs. ‘Yes, I’m sure they’re furious with us. It’s all a bit cosy around here, isn’t it? At least old Miss Burroughs was on our side, though.’

  ‘What a stroke of luck that you managed to speak to her that day. Perhaps their noses were out of joint and they thought that leaving this old desk here would make things a bit difficult for us.’

  ‘I suppose I could give Cartwrights a call and insist they come and take it away.’

  ‘No, don’t do that, darling. It suits the house. And it must be quite valuable.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she says, turning back into the hallway. ‘I’ll see how I feel about it when my furniture arrives this afternoon.’

  At Sarah’s request, Judith Marshall had sent Alex a list of furniture and other items she wanted from their house in Primrose Hill. Her visit to the restaurant and the house, three weeks ago now, had left her feeling so low that she’d decided not to go back there for a long time, at least not until she felt stronger. She’d also made herself a promise that she wouldn’t contact Alex directly again. The voice of that girl on the answerphone had rung in her ears all the way back to her father’s house, and the painful conversation she’d had with Alex in his office had gone round and round in her mind until she was exhausted with the turmoil it provoked. How could he have had the cheek to ask for her help with the police investigation, when all the time he was lying to her about seeing Jemma? Why couldn’t he show her enough respect to admit his sordid little affair? She knew she would never be able to trust anything he said again. It reinforced the feeling she’d had that day at the restaurant, that she really knew nothing about him at all.

  Without any protest, Alex had agreed to send the furniture. He also agreed to the condition she’d insisted upon: that the things would be brought to Weirfield by a removal company, and not by Alex himself.

  This morning she’d been so thrilled to receive the call from Cartwrights that the sale had gone through, that the painful situation with Alex had temporarily been displaced in her mind. It had felt like a new beginning as she’d set off to Country Squires to collect the keys. She’d driven Dad into Weirfield tingling with excitement, the back of her car loaded with boxes of her belongings. The weather had fitted her mood too; a crisp winter morning, bright and clear, the great River Thames sparkling in the sunlit valley below.

  As she’d pulled up in the empty courtyard behind Cedar Lodge and parked in front of the old coach house she’d turned to Dad with shining eyes.

  ‘It’s actu
ally ours, Dad. This fantastic place. I can hardly believe it!’

  Her hands were trembling as she’d opened the back door with that bunch of ancient keys. When she stepped into the back hallway any trepidation she felt that the house might seem forlorn and forbidding had lifted instantly.

  The house had been cleaned from top to bottom. It was light and airy, the walls bare and the floorboards clean. It smelled of lavender and lemon. There had been no trace of the former occupants. Sun streamed through the clean windows and without the clutter and detritus of the Burroughs’ lives, and their heavy, shabby furniture, the rooms felt far more spacious and welcoming than she remembered them.

  But the sight of that enormous oak desk has given her a strange sense of unease. She goes back through to the kitchen and unpacks the kettle from the box she’d brought from Dad’s house. She fills it from the gurgling tap in the butler sink and plugs it into a dangerous-looking plug on the windowsill. She hears Dad’s footsteps in the hall.

  ‘Are you alright, Sarah? You looked a bit upset in the study.’

  ‘I’m fine, Dad.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. Why don’t you get the teapot and teabags out of the box and I’ll make a cuppa.’

  He peers at her with curiosity, but says nothing.

  They stroll around the rooms while the kettle boils. Each time she opens a door she wonders whether some other reminder of the Burroughs family will have been left behind. But there is nothing else here. Each room is bare and the only traces of the former occupants are the pale patches on the walls where pictures have been taken down.

  ‘It’s lovely, Sarah,’ her father says as she shows him around. ‘I thought it would be gloomy, but it’s not like that at all. It’s got so much potential.’

  They walk into every room, admiring the space and the symmetry of the house, the big windows, the views of the garden.

  Last of all she shows him the conservatory behind the kitchen. In the back of her mind lurks the picture. The photograph of the two young Burroughs girls standing in there all those decades ago. She’s thought about it so much over the past few weeks that she half expects the two of them to be standing there as she goes down the steps into the conservatory. It’s empty, of course, the flagstone tiles on the floor swept clean. The withering vine has been removed and there are no plants at all left on the slatted shelves.