Deception and Desire (66 page)

‘Goodnight, Mike,' she said. And turned and went upstairs.

Don Kennedy was hovering anxiously outside the door of what had once been Van's study. His smooth pink face was flushed with anxiety and there was a strained look about his eyes. It had, he thought, been one hell of a day – and it was not over yet.

He hesitated, listening out for any sound from within the study, but heard nothing.

‘Dinah!' he called urgently. ‘Dinah – it's me, Don. Are you all right in there?'

Still no reply. It was almost an hour now since Mrs Brunt, Dinah's housekeeper, had called him on his car phone and asked him to come at once, and apparently almost three hours since Dinah had arrived home from the factory and locked herself in Van's study.

‘I'm frantic about her, Mr Kennedy,' the housekeeper had said when he had arrived, parking his BMW untidily on the gravel drive and hurrying into the house. ‘I don't know what it is that's the matter with her, but something is, and if you ask me it's pretty serious. I've never seen her like this before – leastways, not since Mr Van got killed.'

‘Yes, I think it is serious,' Don said. After lunching with Dinah he had not returned to the office but had gone into the city for a series of business meetings, and he had been on his way home when Mrs Brunt had finally reached him. He had immediately pulled into a lay-by – Don never used the telephone whilst he was actually at the wheel – and called Vandina to see if he could find out what was going on. A distraught Liz had told him the events of the afternoon and at once he had headed for Luscombe Manor, driving with a reckless speed that was totally foreign to his cautious nature and cursing himself for not having been there when Dinah had most needed him.

Dammit, he'd known there was something about Steve he didn't like – why hadn't he acted upon his intuition and had the guy checked out? But it was easy to be wise with hindsight – until this moment he'd thought that perhaps his dislike was founded on jealousy for the man who had walked in and monopolised Dinah's affections, and this brutal self-honesty had made him ashamed. Don loathed selfishness, in himself as in others, and he had not been proud of the fact that he should feel such burning resentment towards a young man who had patently made Dinah so happy.

That, of course, was the other reason he had stood by and done nothing. He hadn't wanted to destroy her happiness. Now, staring disaster in the face, he wished wholeheartedly that he had been more circumspect.

What the hell next? he had wondered, putting his foot flat to the floor of his BMW in his anxiety to get to Dinah. Her whole world, once so secure, seemed to be caving in around her. First Van's death, then Ros's disappearance, then the ‘mole' – a mystery still not satisfactorily solved – and now this. All devastating, all quite enough to rock Dinah off her fragile base.

‘Fill me in, Mrs Brunt,' he had said as the housekeeper stood wringing her hands nervously. ‘ Where is Miss Marshall now?'

‘Still in the study. She came in looking like she'd seen a ghost – white as a sheet, she was. ‘‘ Miss Marshall, whatever is the matter?” I said to her, but she wouldn't answer me. She was like in a daze – her eyes were all … dead. I don't know if she even heard me, Mr Kennedy, and that's the truth. Then: ‘‘I'm going to be with Van,” she said. ‘‘Whatever do you mean, Miss Marshall?” I said. She gave me quite a turn, the way she said it. But no, she still didn't take any notice of me. She went past me like I wasn't there, straight into his study, and she's been there ever since. Whatever is it, Mr Kennedy? Whatever is the matter, for her to take on like it?'

‘It's to do with Steve,' Don said. ‘You'll hear all about it before long. But just now the most important thing is Miss Marshall's welfare, don't you think? I'll talk to her.'

‘Oh I wish you would, Mr Kennedy. That's why I called you. You're the only one she's likely to take notice of. Except for Steve, of course, but when I rang the factory they said he wasn't there …'

She was following Don along the passage, talking all the while, obviously hoping to discover what was going on. Don did not answer her. The last thing he wanted just now was to have to go through the story as he knew it – and he was uncertain at the moment as to whether he was in full possession of the facts in any case. The garbled explanation he had had from Liz at Vandina had been that Steve had made some sort of attack on Ros's sister and then disappeared, but there was also some suggestion that doubt had been cast on Steve's identity. Well, for the moment both his and Mrs Brunt's curiosity would have to wait. The most important thing, as he had pointed out, was Dinah's welfare.

He knocked on the door, called out, waited and knocked again. His anxiety was a tight knot in his stomach now and unwillingly he acknowledged the fear that had assailed him when Mrs Brunt had reported Dinah's words – ‘I'm going to be with Van.'

Surely –
surely
– she hadn't done something really stupid? Could it be that what had happened had finally tipped the balance of her precarious mental stability? She took sedatives, he knew – the doctor had prescribed them for her when Van had been killed – and she had been unable to give them up completely, even during the happier times after Steve's arrival. When she had said she was going to be with Van had she meant that she simply wanted to be there in the room where she felt his presence most strongly – or had she been thinking of going to him in a more literal sense? Don felt the beads of sweat begin on his forehead. He pulled out a handkerchief to mop them away and banged on the door again.

‘Dinah! For God's sake, answer me!'

Still there was only silence from the study.

‘Dinah!' he called again. ‘If you won't open this door I am going to have to break it down!'

‘No!' The voice from behind the closed door was so tiny, so soft, that at first he thought he had imagined it. Then, as he pressed his face against the wood panelling, he heard it again. ‘ Please … just leave me alone!'

Relief coursed through him, followed almost immediately by a fresh bout of anxiety. She was alive but her voice had sounded muffled. By tears? Or because she was drowsy?

‘You can't stay in there forever,' he called, trying to make his voice authoritative and comforting at the same time. ‘ Now open the door for me, Dinah, there's a good girl.'

He waited, mopping the beads of sweat from his forehead again.

‘I suppose you could break a window,' Mrs Brunt said behind him. ‘It would be easier than the door.'

He ignored her. ‘Dinah, can you hear me?' he called. ‘If you don't come out on your own I'm going to have to come in there and get you.'

And to his intense relief he heard the sound of the key being turned in the lock.

‘All right, Mrs Brunt, I'll deal with this,' he said hastily, knowing that the last thing Dinah would want would be to have the two of them fussing over her, and unwillingly the housekeeper backed away a few steps, standing arms akimbo, head poked forward on her ample shoulders to gain the best possible view of proceedings.

He waited for Dinah to open the door. She did not, but when he tried the handle it turned. Dinah had retreated back into the room, standing beneath Van's portrait and staring up at it without moving.

Don went into the study, closing the door behind him. After a moment Dinah turned round, and although he had expected something of the sort he was still shacked by her appearance.

She had aged ten years, he thought, in the hours since he had last seen her. Her fine features were pale and drawn, her eyes huge and haunted. She looked almost unbelievably fragile, her slim figure in its perpetual black appearing more waif-like than elegant.

‘Oh Don!' she said. It was half sigh, half sob. ‘ You've heard, I suppose, what has happened?'

‘Only that Steve has disappeared. The details are very sketchy.'

‘He has disappeared because the police want to talk to him. It seems he attacked Ros's sister and they think he might have something to do with Ros's disappearance too. And you know what is behind it? Ros had found out that he has been deceiving all of us. All the time. He's not my son at all. He's an American, who knew my son – my real son. They worked together on an oil rig in the North Sea. And when my son was killed …' Her voice cracked. ‘… he took his birth certificate and his identity. It's so awful I just can't believe it. Can you?'

‘Dinah, my darling …' The endearment slipped out unintentionally, but now that he had gained access to the study he honestly did not know what to say to her that would not sound false or contrived. ‘Dinah – I am so sorry.'

‘Oh, don't be sorry!' There was an edge to her voice that might almost have been hysteria. ‘I've got no one to blame but myself. What a fool I've been! What a bloody fool!'

‘You weren't to know, Dinah,' Don said gently. ‘We were all taken in. He was very plausible.'

Her hands clenched and unclenched.

‘I wanted him to be my son so much! All these years I've longed for him so! But I should have known it wasn't him – surely, surely I should have known!' Her voice tailed away and he searched for words of comfort, but before he could begin she went on in the same flat, distant voice: ‘The funny thing is I think I did know really. There was a little voice inside me saying it was too good to be true. And I couldn't see anything of us in him, no matter how hard I looked. Nothing of me and nothing of Van. That was what I couldn't understand really. I thought there would have to be something of Van. A man like him, so vital, so … powerful … surely he would have passed something on to his son?'

Dear God, she has taken leave of her senses, Don thought.

‘Dinah,' he said aloud, ‘I think you are letting your imagination run away with you.'

‘No,' she said, ‘not now – not any more. It was when
he
came that I did that. It wasn't just that I thought he was my son, my darling baby, who I'd never expected to see again. It was as if Van had come back to me – or that was what I wanted to think. And now I know it was all a lie. Van is dead and our son is dead and I'll never see either of them again.'

She leaned against the wall rocking back and forth in an agonised frenzy.

‘Dinah …' Don felt helpless in the face of such overwhelming emotion. ‘Darling, please don't do this to yourself.'

‘He made me do it, you know,' Dinah wept. ‘He made me give up our child and pretend it had been stillborn. He didn't want to share me. He loved me so much – and I loved him. But he shouldn't have made me do it! How could he do that to me – and to his own child?'

Don realised then, with a sense of shock, just how far Dinah had been deluding herself. When had she begun to believe that Steve was not just her own son but also a part of Van come back to her?

‘Van was not the father of your child, Dinah,' he said gently. ‘You know that as well as I do. He only did what he thought was best, for both of you.'

Dinah's eyes were blank, questioning. ‘ Did he?'

‘Yes, he did. I know things haven't turned out the way you hoped but you are just going to have to try to come to terms with that. You still have your work and you have a lot of friends who care a great deal for you.'

For a moment longer Dinah stared blankly, then suddenly her head jerked back, her features contorting into a soundless scream, and her arms clutched wildly at empty air.

‘I don't want my work!' she sobbed. ‘ I don't want my friends. Don't you understand … I just want my son!'

He waited helplessly until the spasm passed and she folded her arms around herself, weeping.

‘Oh Don – Don – nobody will ever understand what it's been like. You go on, everyone thinks you have forgotten, but you haven't– oh no. Inside, inside it never goes away. When he came back I thought … I thought …' Her voice tailed away to a whisper. ‘I don't want to go on living. Oh Don, what am I going to do?'

Her pain tore at him and he did the only thing he could do, the one thing he had wanted to do through all the years he had known her. He went to her, taking her in his arms, holding her face into his shoulder while she sobbed her hurt, her grief, her longing.

‘Dinah, dear Dinah, let me take care of you.'

And to his disbelief, to his joy in the midst of utter confusion, he heard her whisper: ‘Oh please, Don. Please – yes.'

The headlights of Mike's car cut a swathe through the darkness as Ros turned into the drive leading to Luscombe Manor, a darkness made more complete by the thick overhanging trees and the fact that there was no moon. But when the house came into view there was suddenly light in abundance, blazing from every window since no one had bothered to draw the curtains, and Ros thought it looked a little like an empty stage with the spotlights full on, waiting for the players.

The sick dread of the coming interview weighed heavily within her along with the tiredness that comes from a long, wearisome journey. Ros felt as if she had been travelling forever. First the coach from the coast back to the village in company with the divers and roughnecks, then the light aircraft, the internal flight and finally the international airliner, only to be followed by the train journey from Heathrow and the taxi from Bristol. Exhausting both physically and mentally, and she had wanted nothing more than to get home, make herself a hot drink, run a deep bath with at least a bottle of scented oil in it – oh, the luxury after the spartan existence of the past week! – and go to bed in her own comfortable bed. But when she had been confronted by Mike and Maggie – what in the world had Mike been thinking of to drag Maggie all the way from Corfu? – she had realised that such a course of action was completely out of the question.