False Picture (14 page)

‘As in … his death?'

‘No, no.' The little man was disturbed by this. ‘At least, it is my sincerest wish that does not happen, although I have a bad feeling about this.'

‘So do I,' said Bea. ‘We'll keep in touch, right?'

She switched off her phone, reflecting that she'd been using it a lot lately and it might need charging up that evening; but no, it was still registering almost full. Good. She looked about for a taxi to take her home. Walking in these shoes was not an option.

Sunday evening

Bea poached a couple of eggs for supper and ate them in the kitchen with the newspaper propped up in front of her. She channel-flipped through television programmes for a while, but nothing held her interest. She couldn't do anything about the things which were on her mind. Max didn't ring. Nor did Maggie. Philip's mobile phone lay on her desk, charging itself up, but the messages on it were inaccessible. She refused to tackle routine business letters on a Sunday.

Sundays were for resting from one's labours, giving one space to think. Doing a little praying on the side, if you weren't feeling too bolshy to do so – which was Bea's case at the moment. She could only manage some arrow prayers.
Please. If you could …? Such a mess. Look after Sandy and Velma?

She had a long, refreshing bath and got into bed with a book that she'd read before. Like a sick child, she was rereading old favourites rather than trying to work herself into something new.

She woke with a start, to hear the house alarm set off its racket and then stop. Oliver must have come in and misjudged his timing. Only, suppose it wasn't Oliver, but someone who'd learned the code by torturing either Oliver or Maggie, who were now being held prisoners in a dungeon somewhere …?

Scolding herself for her stupidity, Bea nevertheless listened hard for a sound that would indicate either of her young friends had returned. It wasn't Maggie, because the house remained silent; no radio or television was turned on. Footsteps climbed the stairs outside her bedroom, going up to the top floor.

Bea shot upright in bed, dislodging her reading glasses. Was that the sound of a sob? But …! Oliver, crying?

His bedroom door opened and closed. He hadn't thought to tap on her door to announce his return. Well, surely there was no need for him to do that, was there? He wasn't her son, he'd turned eighteen and she wasn't his mother. She rescued her glasses and looked at the clock. Half past eleven. Not that late, really. Except that it was only recently that Oliver had taken to going out at night to the gym and to meet his friends. She'd been pleased that he'd started to socialize.

She took off her glasses and lay back on the pillows. Why should Oliver cry?

Well, if she came to think about it, there were many reasons why Oliver Ingram should be distressed. He'd always been the odd one out in his family and Bea suspected that he'd either been adopted or was the result of a sideslip on the part of his mother. Two blue-eyed parents do not produce a brown-eyed lad. Oliver's elder brother followed the family trend: well-built, sporting and of medium intelligence. Oliver had ‘A'-grade A levels and was destined for Cambridge, right up to the point where he'd discovered porn on his father's laptop and his world had imploded.

Mr Ingram had thrown Oliver out, and the boy had huddled by the water in the park till Maggie had rescued him and brought him back with her. Oliver had kept the agency afloat while Max had gone off to play with his mates at the House of Commons. Oliver had rescued his belongings from his father's house and settled down to work for Bea when she took over the agency.

But, Oliver was eighteen years old and from looking forward to university and a brilliant career, he'd been dumped in a basement office, sorting out jobs for nannies. Meeting up with old school friends couldn't have helped, either, if they were full of plans for university and brilliant futures. The contrast must be painful.

Bea had suggested once that she help Oliver to get to university, but he'd declined, possibly out of pride? Possibly still raw from his father's rejection?

Added to which, he'd muffed disabling the house alarm and let out a sob on his way up the stairs. Conclusion: Oliver was in a bad way.

Of course Bea didn't have to do anything about it. It was none of her business. She'd offered him a room and a job and he'd taken it, period. She could turn off the light and go to sleep with a clear conscience.

Sighing, she got out of bed, found bedroom slippers and a towelling robe to go over her nightdress, and trailed up the stairs to the top floor.

As she approached, Oliver switched off the light in his room. He couldn't have sent a clearer signal. Oliver did not want to talk to her.

She tapped on the door. No reply. She tapped harder. ‘Oliver, I know you're not asleep yet. Let me in.' No reply. She glanced down at her nightdress and robe, and qualified that. ‘No, don't let me in, or I'll be had up for sexual harassment or something. Not that I … anyway, what I mean is, will you please come out of your room so that we can talk?'

The room remained in darkness. ‘Nothing to talk about.' The words were muffled. Was he still crying?

‘Humour me. I need to talk to you, even if you don't need to talk to me.'

‘Can't. Need to go to the bathroom.'

Bea stepped back. ‘All right. Ten minutes. Downstairs in the kitchen. I could do with a hot milky drink, couldn't you?' Without waiting for a reply, she set off back down the stairs to the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. The first thing she did in the kitchen was to turn on the radio, searching for some late-night music and turning down the volume. Maggie would have approved; except that Maggie would have had the volume turned right up and danced to it. Ah well. Bea wondered how the girl was getting on.

She fancied some buttered toast. Or would she like Marmite on it? No, plain. But with good butter. Hot chocolate? Mm, maybe.

She pulled down the blinds at the kitchen windows to shut out the blank blackness outside. Oliver shuffled in, still in his jeans and sweatshirt. Yes, he had been crying. No, she was not going to notice. ‘Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, honey and lemon? Toast; plain, buttered and with jam? Biscuits?'

He shook his head. Hunched his shoulders. ‘What do you want to talk about?'

‘Life. Choices. Regrets. Why did I marry Piers at nineteen, when I could have gone to college and got a degree? My parents warned me, but …' She shrugged. ‘Who listens to older folk? Perhaps a more interesting questions is; why did he marry me? Did he really imagine he'd stop chasing every woman in sight if he married a serious, chaste schoolgirl? Don't answer that. Instead, tell me what's going on with you.' She put some sliced bread into the toaster and depressed the handle.

‘Nothing. The usual. I met up with my best friend from school. Naturally, it's made me realize what my life might have been like if only I hadn't upset my father.'

Bea thought that explanation had come out a little too easily. Yes, the boy was concerned about not going to university but no, it wasn't the whole story. ‘I told you I'd help you get to university if that's what you want.' She rescued the bread as it flew up out of the toaster, and sought for the butter in the fridge.

A long, defeated sigh. ‘It's complicated. I don't want anything to eat or drink. I had something earlier.'

‘At the pub?' Bea put a mug of cold milk into the microwave. If it wasn't the loss of his university career that was bothering him, then what was? Mind you, she'd be devastated if he did go. How could she run the agency without him? She buttered slices of toast, cut it into ‘soldiers' and pushed the plate towards him.

‘My friend asked me back to his place after we'd been out for the day. It was his father who took such an interest in me before, taught me so many tricks on the computer. He'd been asking after me. I couldn't refuse to go, could I?'

‘Of course not.' She removed one mug of hot milk, and put in another. Hot chocolate? Yes. ‘I expect he was urging you to go to university too, wasn't he?'

Silence.

Bea stirred chocolate into one mug of hot milk, and left it at his elbow. She'd asked the wrong question, obviously. She took the first bite of her own toast, relishing it. Now what did she know about this adult friend of his? Mm-hmm. Oliver had said something a while back about not going to see him again, because his father had spread a rumour that it had been Oliver who'd been accessing porn.

She said, ‘He asked you for the real reason you'd left home at such a critical time in your life?'

Oliver nodded. The phone rang somewhere in the house, but Bea let it ring. Whoever it was could leave a message. Were those Maggie's dulcet tones she could hear? Yes. Maggie sounded chirpy. Good for her.

Bea said, ‘You told him the truth?'

The words burst out of him. ‘I'd decided I'd never tell, because he'd have to investigate, being a school governor, and my father's only got that house because he's headmaster and if he gets thrown out, what will my mother do …' He swiped a hand across his eyes. ‘I told him the lot. Everything. About my finding the porn on my father's laptop, and confronting him, and him saying … you know. That. And he believed me. I wish he hadn't. I wish I'd cut my tongue out before …'

‘You feel you betrayed your father?'

‘Yes.'

‘Even though he traduced your character and threw you out?'

‘I've ruined him!'

‘He ruined himself. It was his decision to access porn.'

‘He's a good headmaster, he's done a lot for that school.'

‘If someone else had blown the whistle on your father, wouldn't you have thought it the right thing to do?'

A mutter that didn't make it into words.

‘You still care about him?'

‘I hate him!' The lad clutched his head. ‘I've hated him for years, for his snide remarks to Mum and the way he used to put me down.'

‘He's an inadequate personality,' said Bea. ‘Afraid of a much brighter son.'

‘I think he loved me when I was small, and I loved him. But when I got older, when it was clear I was never going to excel at sport like my elder brother … that's when it all started to go wrong. I realized I was cleverer than him, and that helped me not care so much what he said to me, and even to be sorry for him. I took the high moral ground, thinking myself so much better than him, but it turns out now that I'm just as filthy, just as … I don't deserve to …' He shook his head, unable to continue.

‘I'm with you,' said Bea. ‘Just. So you feel you did the wrong thing in telling on him? I'm not sure that you did, but then I'm looking at this from the outside. I think that a headmaster who accesses that kind of porn deserves investigation.'

‘Oh, he'll get that all right. They'll be down on him with inspectors and police and everything. He might even go to prison.'

‘We all make choices which affect our future as we grow older,' said Bea. ‘Sometimes the choices we make alter our perception of ourselves. Until last night you hadn't realized you wanted revenge. Usually it's too late to do anything about a destructive action, but sometimes you can rectify or soften what you've done. Suppose you were to warn him, now, tonight? Tell him to get rid of his laptop. Dump it. Burn the hard drive, or whatever you have to do to remove the evidence. He'd still be investigated, still be frightened, maybe lose some credibility. But he might keep his job, and if he keeps his nose clean, he might see his time out in the usual way.'

Oliver looked at her, and through her.

She said, ‘And you will rethink about going to university, won't you?'

The phone rang again. Bea started, but Oliver didn't seem to have heard it. Someone was leaving another message. Max? Yes, Max. Bea didn't move to pick it up. It was more important not to interrupt Oliver's chain of thought. What he did now might well affect the whole course of his life. She began to pray.
Dear Lord, be with Oliver. I don't know if what he did was right or not. Perhaps it was. But he's damaged himself almost as much as he's damaged his father. Put the right words into his head. Into my head. Be with us both.

By the time she'd finished, Max had stopped speaking. Oliver brought his gaze back into focus, and reached for his mobile phone.

Bea said, ‘You'll want this conversation to be private.'

She slipped out of the room with her mug of hot chocolate, which was no longer very hot, but would do. She drifted into the big living-room, without putting on the lights. She stood beneath Hamilton's portrait, and toasted him. ‘Here's to you, my best friend and true love. I wonder what you'd have done in my place. Told Oliver he was right to tell on his father? I'm not sure he was. He doesn't think he was. Besides which, haven't I heard you say that every man deserves one warning? Although I must say, Mr Ingram doesn't seem the kind of man I'd normally go out of my way to help. But Oliver is, isn't he?'

The answerphone light was flashing, but she left it alone, her ears on the stretch to hear what Oliver would do next. He put his head round the door. ‘Thanks. I'll be off to bed now. See you in the morning.'

Bea told herself that she didn't need the details, even though she would have liked to hear them. She depressed play on the answerphone. The first call was from Maggie, high on excitement.

‘Mrs Abbot, are you there? I tried a couple of times earlier but you weren't picking up. Anyway, this is just to say not to expect me in tomorrow morning because I'm off with Zander, Charlotte and Liam to Bruges for a couple of days. Liam's rented a car and booked us on an early train through the tunnel. Luckily Charlotte has a driving licence. Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it myself!

‘Zander didn't say anything about it when we were out today, but Liam's talked him round. I'm just walking on air, and so is Charlotte. I dropped by earlier to collect my passport and a couple of jazzy tops to make the boys' eyes pop out. I borrowed your small overnight bag, because Liam says Zander wants me to put in something else that he needs when we get over there. Hope you don't mind. I just didn't have room in my suitcase for everything we're taking. We'll be there in time for a late lunch tomorrow, back on Wednesday night, so I'll see you Thursday morning, if I don't oversleep.