Creeping Ivy (33 page)

‘Someone has told them a lot about my past, things that have nothing to do with Charlotte but that they’ve turned into reasons why they can suspect me of …’ Trish faltered ‘… of hurting her. I wondered if some of that information had come from Ben.’

Bella thought about it for a while and then shook her blonde curls.

‘I doubt it. He’s never said anything to me that suggests they’ve wanted information on you and, considering how he feels, I can’t think he’d give them anything damaging. Now, you want to eat something while you wait for him?’

Bella made sandwiches, laden with piles of thinly sliced ham and salad and mayonnaise, and they ate them at the kitchen worktop. Then, since there was really nothing more to say and no sign of Ben, Trish left and Bella went to rescue Daisy.

Back in the flat, she rang Antonia’s number, late though it was, determined to try once more.

‘Yes?’ came her voice, full of suspicion.

‘Hi, it’s me. Trish,’ she said quickly. ‘Did you get my message?’

‘I’ve got all of them. Since there was very little for us to say to one another, I didn’t think I’d waste my time returning them.’

‘Antonia, please,’ said Trish, hating her cousin’s hostility. ‘Please, if our relationship has ever meant anything to you, tell me it wasn’t you who gave the police all that stuff about my damaging children I was looking after.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What children? Trish, what have you been doing?’

‘I haven’t been doing anything. That’s the point. But someone’s been telling the police that I have.’

‘And you thought it was me? Trish, how could you?’ The outrage seemed almost convincing. ‘I haven’t said a word to them except that first day to explain that you were coming round and that you were my cousin.’

‘Haven’t they asked you anything about me and Charlotte? About the evening when I took her up to bed?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Antonia, sounding surprised. ‘Yes, of course. And I told them everything I knew, which wasn’t much. That you volunteered to take her back to bed and that you were up there with her for twenty minutes.’

‘Did they ask what I was doing?’

‘Of course they did. And of course I told them you hadn’t been doing any of the things they were suggesting. Trish, how can you? In the middle of all this. Haven’t I got enough to put up with?’

‘Antonia, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t a think I could have … could have hurt Charlotte.’

‘Will you shut up?’ she shouted. ‘I can’t bear it. You keep on at me all the time, all of you, telling me you haven’t hurt her. We all know that someone has. I can’t trust any of you. And I can’t bear it. I don’t want to talk any more.’

‘Antonia! Antonia!’ Trish heard the buzzing on the line that meant the other receiver had been replaced. Most of her own anger had gone, but none of the hurt. The thought that Antonia, who had known her so long, could possibly believe her capable of damaging Charlotte – or any child – was awful. And yet the picture of her in such distress with no one but the adulterous Robert and Nicky to help was dreadful, too. If Trish had not been absolutely certain that Antonia would hate it, she would have got straight back into her car and driven to Kensington at once.

Chapter Twenty Four

The following morning, Trish was once again woken by the postman. He looked disappointed by the sight of her long, crumpled T-shirt, which merely had a picture of a woman atop a mountain under the slogan
Woman with Altitude
. He handed her another heavy package from her hopeful publisher.

‘Thanks,’ said Trish, still blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

She had had a better night, perhaps because of the peace she had made with Bella, or perhaps simply because the body takes the sleep it needs in the end. It had left her groggy and very thirsty.

Two large mugs of tea and a long, hot shower later, she was beginning to wake up properly. As soon as she had dressed, she opened Chris’s package to find yet more deeply upsetting evidence of cruelty visited on children by adults they had trusted. Unable to confront it just then, Trish added it to the other heaps of paper on her long, untidy desk, and began to admit some of the anxieties she had been suppressing for so long.

After a while she dialled Emma’s number, half-hoping that she would get the machine, but for once Emma herself answered.

‘Oh, I’m not so bad,’ she said in answer to Trish’s first question. ‘We’ve had an offer for the flat that will leave me enough for a deposit on a place of my own. And sometimes I’m even quite pleased to be alone again.’

‘Good for you.’

‘But then I wobble. What can I do for you, Trish?’

‘Emma, do you remember the day you went to Antonia’s to administer the polygraph test?’

‘Of course.’

‘When you came here afterwards, you said something rather odd, something about it’s being Antonia I ought to be worrying about, not Nicky. What did you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Did I say that?’

‘Yes.’

There was a short silence before Emma said carefully, ‘I didn’t like her, I’m afraid. And I thought the way she attacked Nicky was unkind and rather silly, but then I reminded myself that she doesn’t know anything about lie-detection and couldn’t have known how counterproductive she was being. I think that’s all. I found her a very unpleasant woman.’

‘Ah. So you didn’t mean you thought she could have done something to Charlotte?’

‘God, no! Trish, of course not. She’s Charlotte’s mother. And anyway, wasn’t she abroad?’

‘Yes. I’m losing my marbles, Emma. Pay no attention.’

‘I should think the anxiety’s getting to you, Trish. I’m not surprised. It must be awful.’

‘Yeah. Thank you, Emma. Look, I’d better go.’

‘OK. Let me know if you need anything.’

‘I will. Bye.’

Trish put down the receiver, knowing that she couldn’t leave it there. She had to talk to Antonia. She’d take her some flowers and pretend to be apologising for the late-night telephone call. That would be a way to start, and then she’d just have to force Antonia to talk. Somehow.

There were no good florists anywhere near the flat and so Trish stopped the car halfway to Kensington at a favourite shop, where she had a selection of bright red and royal-blue flowers made up into a tight, round bunch, tied with raffia. With the flowers surrounded by hard clear cellophane and carefully laid on the front passenger seat, she drove through exasperatingly clogged streets to Antonia’s house, parked at a meter and rang the bell.

The sound of Hoovering from inside was so loud that she had to ring a second time and then knock before she was heard. Eventually the roar of the cleaner stopped abruptly; there was the sound of a muttering in Spanish and then some heavy footseps. A small gap appeared between the door and its frame.

‘Yes?’ said Maria, peering through the slit, her dark eyes glittering. As she recognised Trish, she shut the door again so that she could unclip the chain and then fling it wide open.

‘Miss Antonia not in. You wait?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Maria. Could you put these in water for her?’

‘OK.’

‘Is Nicky here?’

‘Out. And Mr Antonia. No one in house.’

‘OK. I’ll wait in the drawing room, shall I?’ said Trish, leading the way in spite of Maria’s inarticulate protest.

The meaning of that was clear as soon as Trish reached the room. Maria’s tools were all over it – dusters, feather dusters, polish, cloths and the Hoover itself.

‘Is upstairs clean,’ said Maria severely.

‘OK,’ said Trish, amazed by the opportunity. ‘I’ll wait up there, shall I?’

Maria nodded vigorously and gestured with both hands and the expensive flowers as though she would have liked to push Trish physically out of the room. Obediently she went up the perfectly dusted staircase and wondered where to start.

The desk in Antonia’s study was a shaming contrast to her own. The computer was neatly shrouded and the few papers on the desk were arranged in mahogany trays. A matching desk tidy held paperclips and an assortment of pencils and felt-tipped pens. Apart from the unmarked blotter, there was only a large photograph of Charlotte at about two, smiling up at the camera with wide damp lips and a gloriously mischievous glint in her dark eyes.

How could anyone have hurt a child like that? Trish went on up to Charlotte’s bedroom and stood looking at all the places where she had searched for the menacing worms. Only the doll’s pram was missing, which she had had to search with particular thoroughness. The yellow-and-white toy box still stood at the left of the fireplace and the huge teddy bear that her banking godfather had given her sat in stately splendour in a wicker chair opposite the window. He was enormous, far too big for a child to hold.

The clouds moved, letting bright sun flood in, glinting on the bear’s ginger fur and shining back at Trish out of his glass eyes. They looked different from each other.

A second later Trish was on her knees in front of the bear, peering into the eyes, seeing in the left-hand one something that looked remarkably like a camera lens.

It had always surprised her that Antonia could have seen the bruises on Charlotte’s arms and suspected Nicky of causing them – to the extent of leaving the office during the day to come back and check up on her – and yet not set up any kind of video surveillance. Here was the unmistakable evidence that she had. Trish went on to search the nursery bathroom and found another camera attached to the side of the wall-heater. A third nestled in the ornately carved frame of an ugly mirror on the wall of Nicky’s bedroom with a perfect view of her narrow bed.

What had Antonia seen on the films? Trish asked herself as she pulled the mirror away from the wall to find out how the camera was attached.

‘Hello, Trish. Just what exactly d’you think you’re doing?’

Trish let the mirror swing gently back against the wall and turned. Antonia’s face was contorted with fury and what looked disturbingly like hatred.

‘You saw them, didn’t you?’ Trish said. ‘Nicky and Robert cavorting on her bed in the middle of the afternoon when he should’ve been at work and she should’ve been with Charlotte. No wonder you’ve been so angry with them both.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh yes, you do. I was surprised when you talked about having to come home to check up on Nicky when there’s been all that stuff in the press about cameras like these. I thought if you’d really been worried you’d have had some put in here. But it never occurred to me that you might have had some installed and said nothing to the police about them. Why, Antonia? What did you see that you didn’t want the police to know about?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Why wouldn’t you want them knowing about Nicky and Robert? That’s what I can’t understand.’

Antonia turned. ‘I don’t have to listen to any of this crap. Maria said you were here and I thought I’d better find out what you were up to. Now I have, and I want you out of my house.’

‘I’m not leaving until you tell me exactly what’s been going on, Antonia.’

‘What the fuck do you mean, you’re not going? You’ll do as you’re bloody well told. I don’t want you in my house, Trish. Is that clear? You’ve caused enough trouble already. All the time you were pretending to be on my side, you were plotting with Nicky. You sided with her from the beginning, didn’t you, and then when I’d persuaded the police to look seriously at her, you got her the best solicitor in London to stop her answering their questions. How could you be so wicked?’

‘Antonia, I’m sorry you feel like that. My only thought all along has been to find out what really happened to Charlotte and – if possible – to get …’

Something in Antonia’s eyes, something that looked almost like pleasure, silenced Trish. Her mind started working like a calculator, adding, subtracting, multiplying and producing an answer.

‘But you didn’t want anyone to find out what happened, did you?’

‘You’re mad,’ said Antonia, just as the telephone began to ring downstairs. ‘And sick.’

‘Because you set the whole thing up to punish Nicky and Robert for their affair, didn’t you? You wanted them suspected of harming Charlotte, but you didn’t want it to look as though that’s what you were doing: all those artistic protests you made that they must be innocent were just so much window-dressing, weren’t they? After all, you made it entirely clear to me – and presumably the police as well – that you were hellishly suspicious of them both. What have you done with Charlotte? You haven’t hurt her, I’m sure of that. Even you couldn’t—’

‘Miss Antonia,’ Maria shouted up from downstairs. ‘Miss Antonia, phone. Is police.’

‘Wait,’ said Antonia as she ran down to her bedroom. But Trish disobeyed and followed her, hovering just outside the door as she picked up her call.

‘You have?’ Antonia was saying in a completely different voice. ‘Oh, how … how fantastic! How is she? Is she all right? What’s happened? How did she get there? What? Yes, I see. Of course I’m coming. I’ll be as quick as I can. Tell her I’m coming.’

‘So now you’ve arranged her miraculous return, have you?’ said Trish, as Antonia came running out of the room.

‘I think you’ve gone completely mad, Trish, but I know you’re fond enough of Charlotte to be glad she’s been found. I’m going to the police station now. She’s in a terrible state, apparently, and they’ve got to examine her for … for all sorts of things. I’ve got to go.’

‘Can I come with you?’ asked Trish urgently. ‘Please, Antonia. I …
Please
.’

Antonia looked at her suspiciously and then laughed. ‘I don’t care about anything any more, not now I know she’s alive. Yes, if you want, come on. But hurry.’

Trish’s certainty wavered, but not her determination to stick with Antonia and see for herself that Charlotte really was safe.

They left the house at a run, pursued by the journalists, scenting a story, and reached the police station breathless. The press were kept at the front desk while Trish and Antonia were taken straight to the rape suite, which was the softest-looking and most comfortable room in the station. Charlotte was there with Sergeant Lacie and Constable Derring and two other young women in plain clothes. There were no male officers anywhere to be seen.