Deception and Desire (13 page)

But he was not feeling enthusiastic this morning, far from it. This morning despair seemed to throb through his body in time with the pounding behind his temples. There was not a single positive thought in his head beyond closing the curtains and shutting out that God-awful bright sunlight.

He stumbled across the floor, stubbing his toe on a discarded shoe as he went and swearing at it. He jerked the heavy curtains across the window and visited the bathroom. The sun was there too, slanting in bars through the venetian blind and making bright sparkling patterns on the mirror. Trying not to open his eyes too wide he fumbled through the bathroom cabinet for the Alka-Seltzer. Several other items fell out on to the floor – a pack of plasters and a pouch that had once contained the cleaning kit for his contact lenses – but he did not bother to pick them up. Bending over would only make his head thump more than ever, he knew. He split the packet, put two Alka-Seltzers into a tumbler and filled it with water. God, why did they have to make such a noise? Why couldn't you get
silent
relief for hangover headaches? He started to drink the fizzy solution and was almost sick.

When he raised his head again his own image stared back at him from the mirror above the sink and his sense of utter depression deepened. Once he had been considered handsome. Now the face that not so long ago had been round and boyish looked bloated and raddled both at the same time, distorted by pouches and hollows. His eyes, red-rimmed and dull, seemed to have sunk into folds of flesh, his jawline, with its shadow of dark uneven stubble, was indistinct with the beginnings of a serious double chin. At least he still had all his hair, but it flopped unbecomingly over his forehead, and the jet blackness of it, which came out of a bottle since he had started to grey, very early, at the temples, emphasised the doughy pallor of his skin.

Brendan stared at his reflection in disgust. Would anyone really believe this was the same face that smiled winningly out of his publicity photographs? But at least no one need see him looking like this. He'd go back to bed for an hour and give the Alka-Seltzers time to work before he so much as poked his nose out from beneath the duvet again.

He had been back in bed for about twenty minutes and was dozing when his doorbell rang. He swore, burying himself deeper under the duvet and willing whoever it was to go away. But the bell only rang again, more insistently, as if his caller was keeping a finger on it. Brendan threw back the covers and stamped across to the intercom.

‘Yes? Who is it?'

‘Maggie Veritos. I need to talk to you, Brendan.'

A great flood of anger washed over him. Maggie, Ros's sister. The bitch. She'd encouraged Ros to dump him, he was sure of it. But along with the rage was something else – a cold prickle of something that might have been fear. Fear? Why should he be afraid of Ros's sister? She was only a woman, when all was said and done. Or was there a reason – a reason he had forgotten?

‘Brendan? Will you let me in please?' He heard the determination in her voice. There was no way Maggie was going to go quietly away.

‘All right. I'm opening the door now.' He depressed the button and heard the buzz as the door of the ground-floor lobby released. Then he went back to the bedroom, pulled on a red silk dressing gown and opened his own front door.

Maggie was already running up the last flight of stairs. Dislike stirred in him again and with it a slight sense of surprise. Somehow in his mind's eye he always saw Maggie as the teenager she had been when he had first begun courting Ros, a tall, slightly gangly girl in blue denim jeans and oversized rugby shirts. Though he had seen her grow up, the image had remained with him, and when she had gone to Corfu and he rarely saw her any more it had somehow superseded the other, more recent, images so that it had become the way he remembered her. Now he realised with a shock that she and Ros were far more alike than he had allowed. They had the same clear-cut features, the same shade of blue-green eyes – ‘like the sea when it catches the first light of morning' he had said once in lyrical mood – even the shape of their faces was similar. Maggie's hair, too, was long and luxuriant as Ros's had been before she had had it cut in that short, sharp bob that she considered more suitable for her image as a professional businesswoman in the fashion industry.

A nerve twisted somewhere deep within Brendan's solar plexus, exciting an unbearably sweet sensation that was half pleasure, half pain. It was like looking into the past and seeing Ros as she had once been, running up the stairs towards him, and he was consumed by longing for times lost and happiness which had slipped from his grasp.

How he had loved her – loved her with a fierce fire that had burned him up. But she had thrown it all back in his face. The Ros he had worshipped and placed on a pedestal had disappeared – maybe she had never existed at all – and the one who had taken her place was nothing more than a parody of his beloved, a cold, hard, ambitious woman who had lied to him, cheated on him, betrayed his trust. That Ros he hated with an intensity that was almost paranoid, that Ros … His mind closed over the thought that was forming, blanking it out. But he knew that it was there, all the same, that desire, that sometimes washed over him with the merciless rush of a flood tide, to take all that flawed beauty and destroy it.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust

He couldn't remember now where he had first heard the quotation but it had become a litany to him, anguished as he was by his destructive blind passion. Ros's hair wasn't golden, it was brown, but that did not matter. What mattered was the way the lines made him feel, powerful somehow, as if just speaking them gave him jurisdiction over her fate, condemned her to a condition that put her beyond the reach of other men.

If he couldn't have her he would make sure no one else did. He had said it often enough, and the poem did it for him. But it didn't stop there always. Sometimes he imagined killing her himself, putting his hands around her throat and squeezing the life out of her. Occasionally he dreamed he'd done just that. Recently the dream had come more often – the other night the aura of it had remained with him the whole of the next day, making him feel certain that Ros was dead and it was his doing.

So real had the impression been it had almost frightened him.

You are mad! he had thought. You really are going mad! Next thing, my boy, they'll have you in the funny farm. But still he couldn't rid himself of the pervading sense of guilt, coupled with something like euphoria, and now, as he looked at Maggie coming towards him, he thought for a moment he was seeing a ghost.

But the ghost was flesh and blood, breathing a little heavily from running up the stairs. The ghost was wearing a loose cotton sweater and tailored slacks, both in pale blue, that he had never seen before. He gripped the edge of the door, feeling his head spinning.

‘Hello, Brendan.' The voice, too, was definitely not Ros's but Maggie's. It was missing that ring of briskness that Ros had acquired after she had begun to move up the ladder at Vandina.

‘Maggie.' It came out sounding thick. He cleared his throat and the effort made his head pound again. He clung to the door, not daring to move.

‘Aren't you going to ask me in, Brendan?' Maggie said.

He felt defensive suddenly, the fear was back, though he did not know why.

‘What do you want?'

‘To talk to you. About Ros.'

‘What about Ros?'

‘Brendan, I would really rather not have this conversation on the doorstep. Why won't you let me in?'

‘You've just got me out of bed. What time of day do you call this?'

‘Half past eleven. Hardly the crack of dawn.'

He threw open the door with a sudden impatient gesture.

‘Oh, all right, come in if you must. But whatever you have to say, say it and get out again. I'm feeling bloody lousy.'

‘You don't look very special,' Maggie said tartly, but the astringency did not quite cover the little tremble in her voice. She was nervous, he thought, surprised. Why the hell should she be nervous?

He shut the door after her and followed her into the kitchen, aware that it looked a complete tip and not caring. He saw Maggie's eyes moving over the litter of dirty coffee cups, overflowing ashtrays and discarded clothing and almost laughed. If she was as much like Ros as she appeared to be she'd hate it – Ros had been fanatical about everything being clean and tidy. He cleared a muddle of magazines, an empty loaf wrapper and an odd sock from a chair, throwing them into the corner behind him, and sat down. If he didn't he'd fall down, he thought. Maggie remained standing. He covered his eyes with his hand so as not to have to look at her.

‘Brendan,' Maggie said. ‘Did you know Ros is missing?'

The words penetrated the thick fog that was his brain this morning. He looked up sharply as if they had shocked him and pain like a white hot needle shot through his temple. But it wasn't a shock really, of course. He did know. It was just hearing Maggie say it that was the shock.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘ Well, at least a policeman came to see me. I told him I didn't know where she was.'

‘When was this?' Maggie asked.

‘Oh, I don't know – yesterday or the day before. What does it matter? And why the hell should they ask
me
where Ros is anyway? How would I know? I'm only her ex-husband. I'm not party to her plans nowadays.' There was a whine of bitterness and self-pity in his voice.

‘When did you last see her?' Maggie asked.

‘Not for months. It must have been before Christmas. No, wait, I tell a lie – I saw her a few weeks ago in a bar in Clifton. We didn't talk, though. She was with somebody.'

‘Who?'

‘A man, of course.' He got up, switching on the kettle and searching for a jar of coffee in an effort to divert himself, blot out the memory of seeing Ros with another man. He had known she had someone else, of course – hadn't she always? Ros was a queen bee where the men were concerned, letting them dance attendance on her and leading them a merry chase. He'd learned to live with it – hadn't he? But actually seeing them together was something else entirely. It had torn his guts out.

‘It was Mike, I expect,' Maggie said.

‘Mike? You mean that bloody PE teacher?' he said disparagingly. ‘No. It wasn't him.'

‘Who was it then?'

‘How the hell should I know?' The truth was that the edges of his mind were closing in again but he wasn't about to admit it. Ros, with another man. That was the important thing. Who he was didn't matter. If he'd laid hands on him he'd have killed the bastard, whoever he was, as well as Ros. But Keith Buchanan, his one-time colleague and old friend, had been with him and he had kept him talking until Ros and the man left. There had been no confrontation that night at least.

He opened the cupboard to look for a mug but the shelf was empty. He took one of the used ones from where it had been dumped on the windowsill, emptying the dregs down the sink and swilling it out under the cold tap.

‘Do you want one?' he asked Maggie.

‘Are you offering?'

‘Well of course I'm offering. What does it sound like?'

‘I didn't think you felt like being hospitable.'

‘I don't. But since the kettle's on … There aren't any clean cups though.'

‘I can see that. I'll wash some up for you.' She moved round the kitchen, collecting mugs and taking them to stack on the draining board. ‘ Is there any hot water?'

‘There should be some if you let the tap run. But you've no need to do it. I survive.'

‘I can see that,' Maggie said drily, searching for washing-up liquid and finding only an old bottle, glued by stale spilled solution to the shelf. ‘If I'm joining you for a coffee, however, I really would prefer a clean cup. One that I
know
is clean.'

‘Suit yourself.' He poured boiling water on to the granules in his own mug. ‘You'd rather make your own as well, I suppose.'

‘Yes, I think I would. But whilst I'm about it I'll do all these cups for you. Are there any more anywhere else? It's a pity to waste this nice hot water.'

‘Leave them …' he started to say, but it was too late. Maggie was already disappearing out through the door.

He stirred sugar into his coffee and sipped it, black. It seared his tongue and when it hit his stomach he felt sick again. He jettisoned the cup and made for the bathroom, but it was only another wave of nausea.

When he emerged Maggie was coming out of the bedroom.

‘What the hell are you doing in there?' he demanded.

‘Collecting dirty cups.'

‘Well you won't find any in there!' he snapped, annoyed at the way she seemed to be making herself at home.

Maggie rattled a mug and a whisky tumbler under his nose.

‘That's where you're wrong. These were under the bed. Plus three in the lounge. How can you live like this, Brendan? It's like a pigsty.'

Oh yes, he thought, bitterly sarcastic. Just as he'd expected – it was Ros all over again.

‘Was there anything else you wanted?' he asked. All he could think of now was getting her out of the flat so he could get back to bed and try to ease this splitting head.

‘Not if you don't know where Ros is,' Maggie said.

‘I told you I don't know.'

‘And she hasn't been here recently, you say?'

‘She hasn't been here for bloody ages. I told you, when I see her I see her out. She doesn't like being alone with me – don't ask me why. I used to be her husband, after all – she was happy enough to be alone with me then. But times change, Maggie, times change.' He laughed suddenly. ‘I think she was afraid of me.'

‘I see.' Maggie's back was towards him, and again he was struck by the similarity to the old Ros, the girl he had married. He put out a hand, letting it hover over her hair where it fell in a soft sweep over her shoulders, then withdrew it again very quickly without having actually touched her as Maggie banged the last mug on to the draining board and turned to him.