Folly's Child (58 page)

‘Do you think Hugo will ever be strong enough to face the truth?' he asked.

She shook her head helplessly.

‘Who can say? It's bound to be a terrible shock to him to discover that all this time Sally has kept something so important from him. It would be bad enough if he was in full health – something like that undermines everything they have ever shared – but as he is …'

She broke off, thinking of her father as she had last seen him, so frail and ill. ‘Sally's probably right,' she went on. ‘It would kill him. But living a lie is so dreadful too. For all of us to know something he doesn't … it's an insult to him in a way, isn't it?'

Mark nodded. ‘That's just how I feel.' He brought his hand down with a thud on the arm of the chair. ‘How the hell could she do it, Skeet? I just don't understand.'

‘I think I do,' Harriet said. ‘I think it was just as she said – she honestly kidded herself it was for the best. And she was terribly afraid of losing everything. She had always been in Paula's shadow, from the time they were children. She just couldn't imagine Dad would still want her if he knew Paula was alive and she couldn't bear the thought of losing him. In a way she was right, I suppose. If Dad had found out he would have had Paula brought home. She would probably have been confined to an asylum here but he would never have been free. Maybe she'd have lived for years and years, a sort of vegetable. And all the while he would have felt obliged to be faithful to her, because that is his way – and because he loved her so much.'

‘All the same …' As yet Mark found it impossible to be so forgiving.

‘I don't suppose it's made Sally very happy,' Harriet said. ‘She's not a bad person, not hard at all really, just a bit weak perhaps. It must have played on her mind dreadfully. But the longer something like that goes on the more impossible it becomes to come clean and tell the truth. The original guilt is compounded by all the years of silence.'

‘What a mess! What a horrible, unbelievable mess! Which brings me back to my original question – what are we going to do?'

‘About Dad? Nothing – at the moment. There's nothing we can do. We'll just have to play it by ear. But what about Theresa?'

He shook his head. ‘I don't know. In some ways, though it goes against the grain, I almost think Sally is right. Theresa is not looking to find out who she really is. She's too well adjusted to care. So why rock the boat?'

‘But you said …'

‘I know. If it weren't for the fact that I'm in love with her it might be for the best to leave her in blissful ignorance. But I am in love with her, and as I said to Sally, I am not prepared to live a lie. Besides which …' He got up, taking a cigarette from a box on a side table and lighting it. ‘Besides which she could do with some help financially – and that much I reckon we owe her. She's a talented designer, Skeet – a talent she obviously inherited from Dad – and she's struggling. She needs backing desperately. A little of what is no more than her birthright would mean an end to her financial worries and she could concentrate on what she's good at. Dad had backing, first Greg Martin – God help us all – and then Kurt Eklund. If he hadn't he would never have got where he is today. Theresa deserves something similar and she hasn't a clue how to go about getting it.'

‘Perhaps Sally …?' Harried suggested.

‘I'm sure she would,' Mark said with a trace of bitterness. ‘ I expect she would quite happily come up with the readies as conscience money if for no other reason – if we were prepared to keep quiet about what we know. But I can't imagine Theresa taking money from an unknown benefactor unless she knew the reason – and perhaps not even if she
did
know. She's not that sort of girl. She's proud. She would want to know she was being backed for her talent, not for any other reason.'

‘I can understand that,' Harriet said. ‘I know how important it was to me to make my own way on the basis of my talent for photography …' She broke off. ‘Oh shit!'

‘What's wrong?'

‘I'm supposed to be doing another assignment for Nick. I wonder he hasn't been on to me about it before now – except that he probably hasn't a clue where to find me! With all that's been going on I forgot all about it.'

‘What sort of assignment?' Mark asked, quite glad to give himself a rest from their seemingly insoluble problems.

‘Photo stories. I haven't had a chance to do anything special, but I did shoot off a lot of unusual stuff in Australia – aborigines, wild types in a Darwin bar, that sort of thing, that he might be able to use. In fact,' she said reflectively, ‘if I'd had time to sift it and put it together properly it might be quite good. It's certainly the ‘‘other Australia'' – quite different from what's pictured in the glossy travel brochures. It was the sort of place I'd like to go back to some time, though I don't suppose I ever will.'

‘Why not?'

She smiled sadly, remembering the aura of magic she had experienced in the wild Northern Territory. Even now, knowing how Tom had used her, the memory of those days they had shared was imbued with a rosy glow, a happiness she had never experienced before. Not even the sense of betrayal could take that away. But if she were to go back … no, without Tom it could never be the same.

‘I'd better mail the stuff to Nick,' she said. ‘Help me to remember to do it tomorrow, will you?'

Mark ground out his cigarette.

‘I'll go one better than that. I'll take it with me.'

‘You're going to London?'

He nodded.

‘Yes. Heaven alone knows what I'm going to say to her. But I think I owe it to myself – and to her – to see Theresa.'

After being up until the small hours both Harriet and Mark slept late. From her room at the top of the triplex it was impossible to hear the doorbell but afterwards Harriet wondered if some sixth sense had disturbed her when it rang, for she was already awake, going over and over the events of the previous day in her mind, when Jane tapped on the door.

‘Miss Varna – are you awake? You have a visitor.'

‘A visitor? At this hour?'

‘It is ten o'clock. Miss Varna.'

‘It's not! I don't believe it!' Harriet shot up in bed. Her head was thumping dully and she felt unbelievably wooden. ‘Ten o'clock! Good grief.'

‘It is I'm afraid. I wouldn't have disturbed you, but he said it was important …'

‘He?' Harried queried, pushing back the duvet.

‘A Mr O'Neill. He says he's an insurance investigator.'

Tom – here. Her heart pumped madly and the blood pounded painfully at her already aching temples. What did he want? For a delicious heady moment she imagined he had come to sweep her off her feet. Just supposing he should say: ‘ Harriet, I'm here because I am in love with you – I am not going to let any stupid misunderstanding come between us.' How would she react? Without even thinking about it her racing pulses gave her the answer. Oh Tom, Tom, is that why you are here – because you couldn't stay away …?

She pulled on her jeans with hands that trembled, and jerked a comb through her hair, wishing she had the time to improve on her appearance. She didn't think Tom had ever seen her at her best – and he wasn't about to this morning. She sprayed her face with Evian water, patted it dry with a tissue, and applied just a touch of mascara. Her eyes still looked heavy but the mascara had the effect of opening them a little more, and because to apply blusher to her bare, still moist, face would probably have looked ridiculous she pinched her cheeks, like some latter-day Scarlett O'Hara, to bring them a little colour. Then she went downstairs.

Jane had shown him into the room Sally referred to as ‘the den'. Probably the smallest room in the triplex, it was cluttered with soft leather furniture, a television and a full-size pool table. Tom was standing with his back to the door, reading the tides of some of the books on the shelves that lined the walls. He looked even taller than she remembered him, as if he had been shoe-horned into the cluttered room. Her heart came into her mouth and she hesitated in the doorway, made suddenly shy by her fantasies of a few moments ago.

Tom!' she said, and it did not come out at all as she intended it, but clipped somehow and slightly strained.

He turned. ‘Harriet.' No rush towards her, no eager sweeping her off her feet.

‘Why are you here?' That didn't sound the way she meant it to either, but she was so screwed up with tension she seemed to have no control over her voice.

She fancied she saw his mouth tighten a shade.

‘I have some news for you.'

‘Oh … yes?' It was all wrong. She was going to be disappointed. Stupid naive idiot for dunking it might be any different. ‘What is that?'

‘Greg Martin is dead.'

The words fell like stones in a pond, flat and heavy in the overheated atmosphere of the small room. She stared at him, all dreams forgotten.

‘What?' she said. And then: ‘When?'

‘Yesterday. Last night, Australian time. I thought you would like to know.'

‘Yes. But …' Her mind was racing in circles. ‘ But how?'

‘Maria Vincenti shot him, quite deliberately according to the police chief in Sydney. He had gone back to the house for some documents and she found him in his room upstairs late at night. She could have claimed she thought he was an intruder or even that she shot him in self-defence. But she didn't. She made a statement saying she did it in cold blood because he deserved it.'

‘And so he did!' Harriet said vehemently. ‘ I think I could have done it myself.' She was silent for a moment, then added thoughtfully: ‘But now we'll never know exactly what happened to my mother.'

‘We know more than we did,' Tom said. ‘Apparently Greg told Maria he tricked Paula into a dinghy and then sailed away and left her. His intention was that she should be drowned – and when no more was heard of her he presumed that was what had happened. But I don't believe that was the end of the story, do you Harriet?'

Her heart had begun to pound again but this time for a quite different reason.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Look, Harriet, the last thing I want to do is upset you. You must believe that. But I have a job to do.'

‘Oh yes, no doubt about that!' Would it ever stop hurting, knowing that he had used her?

‘… and I have to say the Aeolie Islands keep figuring in my investigations. Sally went there just after the explosion, didn't she? And you have just been there – at least you've been to Italy and I wouldn't mind betting the Aeolies were where you were headed. Why, Harriet? You might as well tell me so that we can get this whole thing sorted out and put behind us.'

She had begun to shake. That was it then. He was on to it, just as she should have known he would be. The whole thing was going to come out and God alone knew what it would do to her father.

‘Tom – can't you leave it … please?' she begged.

‘You know I can't.'

‘Please! For me? We had something, didn't we? I thought we did, anyway.'

‘We did.'

‘Then I beg you, Tom, close your files. My mother is dead. I swear to you – she is dead. Only don't probe any more. Just – don't probe any more!'

His eyes were narrowed. Behind his almost expressionless face Tom the investigator was tussling with Tom the man. But Harriet was not to know that.

‘Look – I'm sorry, but I
have
to get at the truth. I have a job to do,' he said and she saw only that all the strength she had longed to cling to had turned against her.

‘You bastard,' she whispered. ‘Well, I'm not telling you anything. You'll have to find it out for yourself, as I did. And I only hope you can live with yourself, hurting people, deceiving them, turning their lives upside down …'

‘Now hang on a minute!' he said sternly. ‘I don't mean to do any of those things.'

‘Well tough – you do!'

The only people I hurt are the ones who deserve it – the ones who try to cheat the insurance companies – no, dammit, not the companies but everyone who wants to take out a policy. They're the ones who pay in the end if their premiums are raised to cover the frauds.'

‘Perhaps. But innocent people do get hurt all the same. Don't you care about them?'

‘Harriet – you must believe I wasn't using you. However it looked …'

‘I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about my father and all the others like him. He's a good man. He's never done a thing to hurt anyone else in his whole life. And he's certainly never tried to steal money that didn't belong to him.'

‘Then he has nothing to worry about.'

‘Oh!' she exploded. ‘ It's all black and white to you, isn't it, no shades of grey at all. You've no imagination, that's your trouble. You just can't see beyond your objective. That's all that matters to you. Facts, facts, facts, find the damned truth and never mind who gets hurt in the process.'

‘Now listen …'

‘Skeet? Is everything ah right?' It was Mark, alerted by the sound of raised voices.

‘No, it's not all right. Mark, will you please talk to this man for me? Tell him …'

At that moment the telephone began to shrill and they all stopped, turning towards the sound as if each of them individually had had a premonition about the importance of the call. After a few moments the maid appeared in the doorway, her eyes flicking nervously from Harriet to Mark and back again, her distressed expression filling them with dread.

‘It's the hospital. I think perhaps it might be best if
you
took the call, Mr Bristow …'

‘Yes, of course.' Mark moved towards the door but Harriet was quicker. Her face was ashen. She already knew without being told that it was bad news – perhaps the worst.