Drawing the Line (17 page)

‘In all the papers?’
I repeated.

‘Well, not the better ones. But the tabloids. They say he’s reformed now. But in all my years in the classroom, I’ve never known a leopard change its spots.’

So what colour were mine? I had a nasty idea that if she’d known what my background was she’d have run a mile. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d have taken me in hand, the way Griff had. I had an idea she wouldn’t have given up on me, like my other teachers had. The Mrs Walkers of this world didn’t. Not even when Blue Rinse One stood over our table, looking far from happy.

‘I never found that Japanese woman,’ she said, without bothering to greet Mrs Walker.

‘Japanese woman?’

‘This young lady says she saw one with a camcorder.’

‘I haven’t seen –’ Mrs Walker looked at me and changed gear, beautifully smoothly ‘– her since about three-thirty. I told her not to use it. I even made her wipe what she’d shot already.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ I said sincerely. ‘Most items stolen from places like this are stolen on demand.
A dodgy buyer wants X, a thief takes pictures to confirm that they’re talking about the same X, and then an accomplice goes back and steals it. Or maybe they’re simply checking the security. Which reminds me,’ I said, going into Griff mode, ‘I was terribly grateful to you for letting me back in, but doesn’t having just one person on duty leave the Hall rather vulnerable?’ I was very glad that Griff had made me pronounce the l in the middle of the word. It would have mattered if I hadn’t.

‘Evelina is an antiques restorer,’ Mrs Walker said quickly. ‘An expert in her field. She was very concerned too about the state of some of our china.’

Before Blue Rinse could ask why I’d fiddled my way back in, as opposed to simply paying again, I stood, flipping one of Griff’s business cards at her. I gave Mrs Walker a second. ‘My boss would be delighted to assist in anyway he can,’ I assured her. I’d better tell him that he would over supper.

Except I wouldn’t be seeing him for supper, would I?

Every moment of the journey home I wondered what to say to Griff. I had plenty of time to think. From Bossingham to Bredeham’s about half an hour – forty minutes at most – by car. It should have been about the same from Canterbury to Bredeham by train. First I had to get to Canterbury, of course, and I was two hundred yards from the end of that wonderful avenue when the bus sailed past. A two-hour wait or risk hitching? I got a brilliant lift from an anxious young clergyman with bright yellow curly hair and blue eyes, who might have been a cherub except he was tall and rangy with the most joggly Adam’s apple I’d ever seen. He insisted on driving me all the way to the station.

‘No, honestly. Just drop me where you’re going. I shall be fine.’

‘I’m sure you would. But I’ll take you to the station all the same.’

I dug into my memory. ‘Acting on instructions from the Boss, I suppose?’ I grinned, pointing upwards in case he didn’t twig. ‘Going the extra mile!’

I was rewarded by a guffaw. ‘Right. I’m Robin, by the way.’

‘Lina.’

His effort was wasted by an hour’s wait at the station while they sorted out a signal failure. When the train actually arrived, it was so slow I wanted to get out and push. Then of course it would be a couple of miles’ walk from Bredeham station to the actual village. But I’d got to get there first, and there we were, stuck at another damned signal.

So what did I say to Griff? None of the words I tried was right. I went over them all. OK, ‘sorry’ for a start – but ‘sorry’ didn’t begin to cover what I felt or what he deserved. At last, I did what I should have done hours ago: I phoned to tell him to save me some supper.

Or I would have done, if I’d got through. The phone rang and rang. The answerphone didn’t cut in. Had I – or rather, the phone – dialled the wrong number? I tried manually, digit by careful digit. Same response.

At last we inched towards Bredeham. Bother all the instructions about not opening carriage doors until the train’s stationary – down in the south east, we’d still got carriages that took Noah and his animals to the Ark, so there were no automatic safety systems. I was out and halfway down the platform before I realised I’d forgotten my carrier bags. I’d grabbed them and was on my way again before the train had officially stopped.

It’s a good job I couldn’t see what awaited me outside Griff’s cottage or I wouldn’t have bothered. Aidan’s Merc. All that hot sweaty journey, all my efforts to reach him and he wouldn’t even pick up the phone because he was too busy entertaining Aidan. In bed with Aidan. I just kept on walking. I hardly noticed the deep cuts the carrier bags were making in my fingers, hardly noticed the blisters my new trainers had rubbed up, hardly noticed anything except the huge pain in my chest that made me want to howl out loud. No, not that sort of pain, not the sort I worried about if Griff rubbed his chest before popping an antacid. The sort of pain Griff’s damned poets wrote about.

I hardly noticed this car coming up alongside me either. It slowed almost to a stop, and then accelerated
away. Nothing special. A metallic blue Focus. I hardly registered it except to hope someone didn’t want long, complicated directions. I registered it a bit more when it turned and came back towards me, and a very great deal more when it repeated the process, stopping thirty yards behind me. I wasn’t supposed to notice that, but I was using the pharmacy window as a mirror. There was no real food in the caravan, so I’d have to stop at Eddie Ho’s for a take-away, or get something in Londis I could heat in the microwave. Food apart, and I mustn’t forget the small matter of breakfast, I needed to lurk somewhere for some time, long enough to get some idea of whether the Focus driver was really hanging about on my account or simply waiting for his girlfriend. If only I’d taken a closer look when I’d had the chance. There was no way I could check him out now.

But I did do something Tony or Dave, the policemen, would have approved. I could write down the registration. Mirror image it might be, but I could sort that out later. A something or other recollected in tranquillity. I could also do something even brighter – amazing how ideas came when you least expected them. What was Dave’s phone number?

I should have called him anyway, to thank him for the evening out. That’s what Griff had dinned into me. He always wrote personal thank you messages in elegant cards, but had conceded that my generation might prefer to text. On the other hand, maybe Dave should have phoned me – in Griff’s book of etiquette, that would have been the advice. Actually I suspect the reason that neither of us had called the other was that the evening had not been a success, and that both of us preferred to
bury our mistakes. So instead of Dave, I phoned Tony.

Who was on duty, of course, and not taking calls. I left him the Focus’s number anyway, and told him I’d be in the caravan later – but not to tell Griff. Dave? He wasn’t taking calls either. Now I felt more alone than I had before – especially as the Focus was still parked with no sign of activity.

OK: which first, Londis or Eddie’s? I could get more for less at Londis, I reckoned – Eddie would have been horrified if I’d only wanted rice or noodles or chips, and there was no way I could explain my sudden meanness. Iris had insisted I shop for end-dated products, and a root around the Reduced basket found a couple of ready meals, some fruit juice and a loaf of bread. Add some long life milk and an apple and I wouldn’t starve. I wouldn’t die of carrier bags cutting into my fingers, either, even though I now had another to manage.

‘That’ll tear,’ the girl on the till said, pointing at the handle. ‘Here – if you repack everything, you might get away with these two. Got far to go?’ she added, weighing them in her hands.

I told her.

‘We can drop you off if you like. ’Cos these here are bloody heavy and my dad’ll be picking me up as soon as the boss takes over,’ she said. ‘He’s over there. See? That red Honda. You can go and tell him Shaz sent you if you like.’

‘I’ll hang on for you,’ I said. ‘You’re sure he won’t mind?’

‘Got to go past the farm anyway, I told you.’ She peered. No sign of her boss yet. ‘Cow. Always does this. Pays by the hour, works you by the hour and a quarter.’
Safe and sound in the caravan. Or was I? Safe, yes, thanks to Shaz and her dad and Saturday’s new lock on the door. But I wasn’t very sound, because what I’d really hoped to see was a note from Griff. He must have worked out where I’d be. And he’d have known what contact from him would have meant to me. But he was too busy with Aidan and his bloody Merc. I banged everything down on what’d soon be my bed. Better to thump something that wasn’t my own face. At least no one had stared at me today: a combination of ointments and tablets and heavy make-up had got me through. All I had to worry about now was what I should do the following day.

The librarians in Ashford were very patient with me, as I wrestled with what I’d described as research. They probably thought that a college project on Bossingham Hall was legitimate, especially as I could rattle off loads of information about the place, but might have wondered why I wanted so much information about Lord Elham. I’d have tried to come up with some silly explanation if Griff hadn’t drummed it into me that you should never tell anyone more than you had to.

Griff wouldn’t have approved of the newspapers I found myself scanning. He insisted on papers with news, not gossip. But it was gossip I needed. I found plenty of it, too. If Lord Elham had come from any sort of family but an aristocratic one, my bet was that that the columnists kindly referred to as his high spirits would have landed him in young offenders’ centres such as Feltham. With his taste in drugs and booze, he’d have probably had to steal to feed his habit, ending up
spending more time in gaol than at home – or, more likely, on the streets. As it was, he might be stuck in only one wing of his home – but hey, what a wing, what a home. And he’d had good fun getting there, by all accounts. This party, that match. Henley, Lords, Wimbledon: but I don’t think he was there as a brilliant sportsman, or even to watch: in each photo there was either a glass or a young woman flaunting her tits. OK: sour grapes. The tits were usually bigger than mine, and always in much nicer dresses than I could dream of. Usually I stopped myself getting bitter by reminding myself how happy I was with Griff. Today even my scribbling of notes was furious.

And then depressed. My mother certainly hadn’t been the sort of woman you’d find at any of the places he’d been photographed. Not front of house, as it were. Backstage, yes. The woman passing the drinks or the canapés. That’d be my mum. Or even a washer-up. So how on earth could I link this man with her?

I worked on and on. I must have got every reference to Lord Elham ever printed. He loved the press, didn’t he? If I’d been up to half as many jinks as he had, I’d have retired to a nunnery, or whatever girls like me did these days. Unless I’d been a Kylie or Lady Victoria or anyone else who seemed to grab publicity with both hands.

I packed up my things and headed out, thanking the women who’d been so helpful.

‘No problem. Let us have a copy of the book when it’s published!’

‘Book?’ I repeated blankly.

‘Or dissertation or whatever: there’s more than just a project there, surely! Or you could write yet another piece on him. Sell it to
Hello!’

We both knew she was joking, but as I worked out where I could get the cheapest cup of drinkable coffee I was beginning to get the glimmer of an idea.

By the time I’d got my caffeine-fix and a burst of sugar into the blood, via a doughnut that really wasn’t very nice, I knew what I was going to do. The first thing was to nip off to a phone box and dial a 118 number for a number – cheaper than calling from the mobile. Amazingly the guy wasn’t ex-directory. I put on a Mrs Hatch sort of voice and announced I was from Day Trip Films – yes, I know it sounded mad, but look at the names of real-life film companies getting stuff on TV. And somewhere deep down, I wanted some association with Griff, though whether for luck or revenge I didn’t know. As for me, I wouldn’t be Evelina, though I suspected that might be just the name for a girl from Day Trip Films: I introduced myself as Lena, as in Horne. After all, he might just have memories of an Evelina, and fear a trap.

He didn’t sound suspicious, not at all. I might have been the long-lost cousin whose call he’d longed for for years. He took the lure of a biopic without question, and agreed he’d love to talk to me. Talk? Drawl, more like. Was it his education or too much booze?

‘Oh, yes – any time. Diary’s not very full these days. Only one condition. Have to be pretty, eh? Oh, and bring a bottle of champers. Decent stuff – don’t want to
upset the old tum with Chateau Rot Gut. Tell you what – nothing on the box this afternoon. Why not toddle along after lunch?’

There was no way I could toddle anywhere as I was. I might be clean and decent, but what I needed was the sort of clothes Lena as in Horne might wear: the suit and boots I’d bought at the Outlet. The suit and boots I’d left at Griff’s. Hell and damnation. But forget gear – what would a Lena as in Horne say?

‘Oh gosh. Golly, that’d be great.’ I mustn’t admit I was stuck with public transport. I’d get there somehow. ‘About four?’

‘I don’t know what time you have your meals, my dear,’ he brayed, ‘but four will be fine. You know how to get here?’

Perhaps it would sound better if I pretended I needed directions.

He gave them and rang off.

I should have been over the moon. But when I tried to work out what my emotions were, there was a good deal of panic. I couldn’t go and interview a lord like this. I couldn’t go and interview my possible father like this. I couldn’t go and interview anyone like this. The Outlet was just within striding distance, but if I had to shell out for champagne, which would have to be good, that must take priority. I braced my shoulders and looked round. As I’d proved the other day, Ashford had its share of charity shops: Lena as in Horne would have to be into retro-chic and, given the walking she’d have to do, whatever she chose would have to work with trainers. Her budget had better run to some sticking plasters too, to
protect yesterday’s blisters. As I headed for the shops – sorry, no tip today, either – I made myself a big and solemn promise. If I ever had the chance to get a lot of money, no matter what it involved, I’d grab it with both hands.