Creeping Ivy (32 page)

‘Who was it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking mulish. ‘There’s no point asking because I don’t know.’

‘Could it have been Robert?’

‘No,’ The fact that she hadn’t qualified the denial in any way impressed Trish. More passion would definitely have suggested less certainty. But did her certainty come from knowledge or hope?

‘If it’s anyone in this house, it’s Antonia.’

‘Nicky, you cannot say that sort of thing just because she’s been rough on you. Why on earth would someone like Antonia have anything to do with that sort of filth?’

‘Because she doesn’t like me.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Nicky. Look, I’ve got to go in a minute. I only really came to talk to Antonia. Can I trust you to tell her I came and that I want her to ring me if she needs anything.’

‘Yes,’ she said, her face closing in. ‘Ms Maguire, Trish, do
you
think there’s any hope for Lottie?’

Could anyone sound so desperate if they knew the answer to that question?

‘I don’t know, Nicky. I wish I thought there could be.’

Nicky nodded and turned away.

‘Don’t go for a minute,’ said Trish suddenly. Nicky looked back. ‘Charlotte talked to you about her bad dreams, didn’t she?’

The misery in Nicky’s face was diluted with affection and even amusement.

‘Yeah. Poor little thing. It was so sad. You know she loved gardening?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Well, she did. She liked digging and planting seeds and picking flowers, but of course Antonia wouldn’t let her do it here. Her precious garden’s much too important for a messy child to be allowed to play in it. But one of Lottie’s friends is allowed to have her own patch in her parents’ garden and when we went for tea Lottie always did some digging.’

‘She must have enjoyed it,’ said Trish, seeing almost pure pleasure in Nicky’s memories.

‘She did until the day she found the worms. She was happy as anything one afternoon, digging away with Mattie, but then we heard these awful screams. They’d turned up a kind of clump of the biggest worms you’ve ever seen. Great fat pinky-bluey things they were, all wound round each other and lifting up round the prongs of the fork. Lottie was terrified. And she had nightmares about them ever after. Every night I had to make a kind of checklist of all the places where she thought they might be and prove they weren’t.’

‘So did I once,’ said Trish.

‘Yes. She told me. She liked you, Trish. Is there anything else? Otherwise I’d better go. Robert’s hungry, you see.’

‘No. There’s nothing else, Nicky. Thank you. I’m glad she had you to look after her.’

Trish let herself out of the house, trying to work out what she felt. Nicky’s story was utterly plausible, much more so really than any of the other explanations for the wiggly worms. But if Nicky and Robert had really both been as good to Charlotte as Nicky’s artless explanations suggested, there was nothing to explain what had happened.

Driving south again, Trish vaguely noticed that the trees lining the pavements and poking up from behind the houses looked unexpectedly full and green in the glow of the street-lights, but all she could think about was Charlotte. She felt that there must have been something she’d heard or should have guessed that would give her a clue. But she had failed. The fact that the police had failed too, in spite of their much greater resources, didn’t help. There was an answer out there, somewhere. There had to be.

As she reached the Embankment and sat waiting for the lights to change, she started to think about her only other suspect. Ben had been just as plausible as Nicky, but he was older and cleverer and perhaps better at disguising his feelings. If Antonia had been meeting him, then she must have some suspicions, too. There was nothing else Trish could think of that would have made her cousin approach him. If Robert was right and they were together, then Bella would probably be on her own at the house. It could be a good moment to try to get her to talk.

Although it was after ten, Trish turned away from her route home and drove west along the Embankment to cross the river at Chelsea Bridge.

There was a delectable smell leaking out of the front door of the house in Clapham when she got there. She sniffed appreciatively and realised that she was hungry. She rang the bell. The door was opened by Bella, wearing an enormous blue-and-white striped butcher’s apron and wielding a wooden spoon.

‘Haven’t you gotten your key?’ she asked before she had seen who was on the step. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Ben not in?’

‘No. If you want him, I can have him call you when he gets back.’ Bella was not exactly blocking the way into the house, but she was defensive enough to show that she was not offering any kind of welcome.

‘It’s a bit more urgent than that. Could I come in and wait? I’d like to talk to him face to face,’ said Trish with a placatory smile. ‘That is, if it’s not too inconvenient.’

Bella shrugged. ‘I’m working in the kitchen. Do you mind?’

‘No, of course not,’ Trish followed her and the delicious smell down the dark passage to the kitchen, which was looking as colourful and chaotic as ever. A huge heap of sliced onion was being slowly sweated in a wide frying pan on the cooker and two covered pans were seething gently on the back rings. Four newly baked wholemeal loaves were cooling on a rack on the cluttered worktop, amid baskets of lemons, pots of growing basil and coriander, and piles of books. There were four children’s paintings stuck up on the wall above the fridge.

‘Those’re great,’ Trish said as Bella gave her pans a vigorous stir. ‘Are they by Ben’s pupils?’

Bella looked at Trish and then in the direction of her pointing finger.

‘No. They’re by his godson, Alex, and his brother. They were here at the weekend. D’you know them, the Wallingfords?’

‘No, I don’t think so. They must be since my time.’

‘They’re great little artists, aren’t they?’ Bella’s face seemed to be showing genuine enthusiasm, which gave Trish the lead she wanted.

‘Yes. You must love children to enjoy them so much.’

‘I’d hardly work with them if I didn’t,’ said Bella, looking at her with a certain amount of derision.

Since she seemed to be deliberately trying to provoke a reaction, Trish merely smiled and pointed out that the smell of caramel suggested that the onions were burning. Bella hurriedly turned back to the pan and stirred the browning heap. When she turned back, she said in a less unpleasant tone, ‘Ben’s told me a lot about you, you know.’

‘That must have been dull for you,’ said Trish with enough conviction to make Bella smile.

‘It was hard when I first moved in,’ she said with more direct honesty than Trish had expected. ‘He was always saying, “You’ll love Trish; let me ask her round”. “You’d be so interested in Trish’s work; why don’t you call her? She might send you clients”. And then he always added at the end: “Trish is wonderful; you’ll really like her”.’

‘God, Bella, I’m sorry,’ said Trish. ‘I had no idea it was as bad as that. No wonder you looked ready to kill me when I first came. How could Ben have been so insensitive? He’s usually well aware of what people are feeling.’

‘Maybe you were just too important to him. He couldn’t see why I didn’t want you in my home.’

‘Well, I can. But could we make peace now? Whatever there was between me and Ben – and it was almost nothing, I promise you – it’s years ago now. I’ve moved on and so has he, long since. Couldn’t you and I be friends at least?’

Bella didn’t answer, only reaching for a small green bottle and saying, ‘Can I get you some ginger cordial?’

‘Actually,’ said Trish, hoping she was not jeopardising her chances of building some kind of trust in Bella, ‘I don’t much like ginger. Could I just have water? I’m quite thirsty.’

‘Sure. Fizzy or regular?’

‘Fizzy, please. Thanks.’

Bella filled two tall tumblers with ice and poured their drinks, saying over her shoulder, ‘Do you eat smoked oysters? I have a tin here.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Trish, wishing that she could lie but knowing that swallowing smoked oysters would be even more difficult for her than eating rare chicken livers, which were her worst culinary nightmare.

‘You don’t? No. We don’t share many tastes, do we? Except Ben,’ Then Bella laughed and Trish thought it was going to be all right.

‘Not many,’ she agreed.

‘Here.’ Bella pushed forward one of the glasses.

‘Thank you. The bread smells wonderful. I’m really impressed that you do your own baking when you’re so busy at work.’

Bella looked at her, the newly friendly smile disappearing. ‘I cook when I’m worried. It’s the only kind of therapy that works for me. But it does mean Daisy has to be exiled to the garden. She goes wild when she smells the food and I can’t cope. She’s only just stopped barking.’

‘Why are you worried now?’ asked Trish, ignoring Daisy’s plight.

‘Charlotte, of course. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Trish felt the frown tightening her forehead. ‘But then I know her. You don’t.’

‘I’d worry about any child in this situation. But the worst is that it’s hurting Ben. He was doing so well until she was taken.’

Trish frowned.

‘He’d gotten over most of the damage Antonia had done and he’d gotten over you, Trish, and now this, bringing you both back into his life, calling into question everything he’d come to believe about himself, and then the child …’

Trish felt the coldness of her glass between her palms. She looked down at the bubbles rising jauntily to the surface and bursting as they met the air. She did not know what to say. Eventually she raised her head.

‘Did you know that he’d been watching Charlotte in the park?’

‘Not at first.’ Bella’s face had the look of someone in the middle of an attack of neuralgia. ‘But after those calls of yours I made him tell me. It … it hurt some that he’d hidden it, but I can understand it. If he and I can’t have our own kids, then it matters to him that Charlotte could be his. I can understand that.’

The frown deepened as Trish had to face the fact of Bella’s generosity.

‘And has he told you that he’s been seeing Antonia?’

‘Oh, sure. He tells me everything – in the end. She called him one evening to say that she was afraid of what her new man might’ve been doing to Charlotte. She was hysterical. Ben told her to tell the police and then when he heard her crying down the phone he asked if she’d like to meet.’

‘Why, after everything she’d done to him? Didn’t it make you …? Bella, haven’t you ever wondered whether Ben might have had some kind of brainstorm and taken Charlotte?’

‘No. Oh, OK, yes of course I wondered. But I know he didn’t. The man I know couldn’t have. And if he had, he’d have told me by now. He always tells me in the end. He went to Antonia because he can’t
not
help when someone is in need. You know what a generous guy he is.’

‘Yes. At least, I thought I did.’

‘And how the only thing that’s given him any self-esteem in the past has been his ability to help people?’

‘That too. I didn’t realise at the time, but I’ve seen it since. He wants to heal the world.’

‘That’s because he was never allowed to feel that he was worth being healed himself,’ said Bella with enough sadness to make Trish ashamed of her old childish dislike. ‘I should have seen it coming, realised that if Antonia ever asked him for anything he’d drop everything to give it to her. You’re not drinking. Is there something wrong with the water?’

‘No. Goodness, it’s delicious,’ said Trish, hurriedly drinking about half the glassful, bumping her nose on the floating ice cubes. ‘Bella, you understand so much, have you come to any conclusions about what drives Antonia?’

There was a short silence while Bella transferred her cooked onions to a wide plate to cool. Then she said: ‘In what way?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, but Ben’s not the strongest of characters,’ Trish said carefully, still trying to share Bella’s faith in him. ‘And Robert Hithe is positively weak and, I’d have said, devious, too. What is it in Antonia that drives her to try to love weak men?’

‘I’d say her fear of being controlled, wouldn’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ said Trish, thinking over the past. ‘She certainly can’t bear anything she sees as a challenge to her power.’

‘That’s right.’ Bella turned away to the cooker. ‘Everything I’ve heard suggests she’s borderline psychotic. Which is why if she hadn’t been in the States when it happened, I’d be worried about what
she
might have done to Charlotte.’

‘Oh Bella, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t know her. Take it from me; she’s not psychotic. And Charlotte wouldn’t ever present that kind of challenge to her power.’

‘No? Sure of that, Trish? Ben’s heard quite a lot about the child from the police now and from Antonia herself, and it’s clear she’s no pushover. If she’d stood up to Antonia – maybe had a temper tantrum – at a moment when she felt her control over other people beginning to slip, she could have—’

‘But she
was
away,’ said Trish quickly, even as she remembered all the things Nicky had said about Antonia’s treatment of Charlotte.

‘
Yes
. Luckily. You’re her cousin, Trish, you must know about her childhood. What were her parents like?’

‘I know very little. You see, our families have never had much to do with each other. It was our grandmothers who were sisters, and mine married an Irishman. Hers disapproved and they never saw each other again. Antonia and I hadn’t even met until we’d left university. And she hardly ever talks about her parents. They’re both dead, you know. Her mother died when she was about seventeen, I think, and her father a couple of years ago.’

‘Pity.’

‘Bella, you said something about the police talking to Ben about Charlotte, telling him about her?’

‘Yes. So what?’

‘That sounds as though they’ve seen quite a lot of him.’

‘Sure. They never leave us alone. They’ve been to the school twice; they’ve been to my consulting rooms. They come here. They’ve talked to the neighbours.’

‘Have they talked to Ben about me?’

Bella looked up from her cooking in surprise. ‘I don’t know, Trish. Why should they?’