Folly's Child (7 page)

The situation could not last, of course. One day Leonie's employer had got wind of what was going on, sacked Leonie and placed a telephone call to Victor Nicholson, the ignorant, ill-tempered manufacturer Hugo was contracted to at the time. A distraught Leonie tried unsuccessfully to contact Hugo to warn him and the first he knew of the débâcle was when he was summoned to Nicholson's cramped stale-tobacco smelling office. The moment he walked in at the door he knew something was very wrong. Nicholson, who could often be found reading cartoon comics at this time of day, was pacing the untidy office like a caged lion, his face and his thick neck suffused ugly puce above the none-too-white collar of his shirt.

As Hugo entered the office he whirled round, blundering into his flimsy chair and almost overturning it.

‘What the hell is going on, eh, you little runt? You trying to ruin me, is that it?'

Totally taken by surprise Hugo could only stare. Nicholson reached across the desk, grabbing Hugo by the lapels and pulling him towards him.

‘Don't stand there looking like Shirley Bloody Temple. You know what I'm talking about. You've been cheating me, you stinking ass hole, letting me pay you for second-rate designs while you market the best ideas yourself.'

Hugo understood then. He began to shake, not because he was physically afraid of Nicholson, though the man was twice his size, but because he could suddenly see his world falling apart around him. He'd taken a chance and he'd been found out.

‘I suppose this means you want me to leave,' he said with what dignity he could, half-sprawled across the desk with his chin six inches above the remains of a take-away pizza and a cardboard cup of coffee dregs.

‘Too right it does. And that's not all.' Nicholson released him, pushing him back so hard he almost fell. ‘Now hear this and hear it good. I'm suing you, Varna, for every cent you've made from your dirty little deals – and for the designs. They belong to me – you're under contract, don't forget.'

Hugo snorted derisively. Although the very thought of court action had brought him out in a cold sweat, the same grittiness which had enabled his father to jump ship and seek a new life now came to his rescue.

‘Waste your money on lawyers if that's the way you want it,' he retorted. ‘You'll make a fool of yourself though. Those designs are mine, done in my own time and made up by my own outworkers. You'd never use them anyway. They have too much class for the women who buy the rubbish you produce.'

Nicholson had turned such a deep shade of purple Hugo thought he was about to suffer a stroke.

‘Get out of here!' he yelled. ‘I don't want to see your ass around here again – understand? Get out!'

Hugo had got out. He had left the squalid little office that afternoon never to return. It was the most important thing he had ever done in his life, he had told Margie Llewellyn, and across a nation the rich and famous, the elegant and the glittering society women who were his clients wholeheartedly echoed the sentiment.

Nicholson had never carried out his threat to sue, though Hugo had endured some worrying weeks waiting to see if papers would be served on him, and the experience had made him determined never to work for the likes of Nicholson again.

His early ventures into freelance design had been reasonably successful; with Leonie's encouragement he worked long hours as a restaurant porter to earn enough money to buy a couple of ancient industrial machines which he set up at one end of the living room of his mother's house. Soon the place was alive with their busy whirr as Leonie and one of her friends stitched samples; to their accompaniment Hugo worked on new designs.

The story of this far from illustrious beginning was one Hugo never tired of telling, for the fact that he had started with nothing but raw talent and stubborn determination was something of which he was justifiably proud but he was less forthcoming about what had happened next. When Margie had mentioned his association with Greg Martin, the financier who had made him the loan which had set him up in a small showroom and enabled him to move the sewing machines out of the living room and into a work room, Hugo became not so much evasive as totally silent.

Without a doubt it had been Greg's backing which had propelled him into the big league; without him, for all his talent, Hugo might have been trapped in small-time design and manufacture for ever. But the very mention of Greg Martin's name was painful to Hugo. He had skilfully evaded Margie's questions, moving on to talk instead about Kurt Eklund, the financial genius he had hired after Greg's death to help him avoid what had seemed at the time almost certain ruin. It had been Kurt who had set up the dozens of licensing deals for menswear and toiletries, bedlinen and beachwear, soft furnishings and costume jewellery, all bearing the name of Hugo Varna, which had not only saved him from bankruptcy but also made him his first million. In the process Kurt had graduated from business adviser to trusted friend; Hugo had rewarded him with a fifteen per cent share of the business and never regretted it.

Margie had not pressed Hugo to talk about Greg Martin though her professional instincts had nagged at her that if she could probe a little into the association it would produce some riveting television. But she also sensed how deep Hugo's hurt ran and since his first wife's death was also connected with the man she told herself it would be tasteless to dwell on it.

The truth was, of course, that hard-nosed journalist though she was, Margie was as attracted to Hugo as was almost every other woman who met him and she actually wanted him to
like
her.

The momentary weakness had bothered her for weeks afterwards as she worried as to whether she had lost her professionalism along with the opportunity to grill Hugo Varna over the truth about his relationship – and Paula's – with the man who had died as he lived in a blaze of publicity. But whether she had been right or wrong, Hugo had been allowed off the hook. He did not talk about Greg Martin. He did not even think about Greg Martin if he could help it. As he left the studio after the interview his well-programmed defence mechanism had come into operation, and he had pushed the painful memories into a corner of his brain where his conscious mind could not reach them.

Now, however, to his intense discomfort, Hugo found there was no way he could prevent himself from thinking about Greg Martin. From the moment the news had broken that he was not dead at all but very much alive in Australia he had been unable to think of anything else. None of the usual tricks for shutting off memory would work now; whatever he did, whichever way he diverted his attention it would only come wandering back, like a man in a maze who continually finds himself back in the same spot. It was insufferable – awful. He was beginning to think he was going mad. His nerves jangled in time with the balls on the executive toy on his desk and his brain felt as thick and muzzy as the grey January sky above the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

A slight commotion in the outer office attracted his attention.

His secretary's voice, raised in agitation: ‘I'm sorry – Mr Varna is not to be disturbed. You can't go in there!'

And another voice, one he instantly recognised: ‘Like hell I can't!'

The door flew open and Harriet burst in. Behind her the secretary floundered helplessly.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Varna, I couldn't stop her.'

‘It's all right, Nancy. This is my daughter.'

‘Oh, Mr Varna, I'm so sorry …' she stuttered, even more horrified by her gaffe than she had been about letting a strange woman push her way into the holy of holies. Nancy Ball had only been with Hugo for a few months and it was much longer than that since Harriet had visited him at the office. It had simply never occurred to her that the young woman in a ski jacket with faded jeans tucked into her boots might actually be Hugo Varna's daughter!

‘Don't worry about it, Nancy,' he said comfortingly. ‘You weren't to know.'

She retreated, casting one last flustered glance at Harriet. Sally, Hugo's wife, was always so beautifully turned out, while this girl was … well, frankly almost scruffy! Women simply
never
turned up at the showrooms of one of America's top designers dressed like that, and with practically no make-up. Hugo's daughter! Well! well!

‘Dad – I had to come,' Harriet said as the door closed after the secretary. ‘You've heard the news, of course.'

‘Yes.' Even without the simple affirmation his face would have given her the answer; he looked pale and drawn, as if he had slept even less than she had. ‘I tried to call you but there was no reply from your flat.'

‘I was in Paris on a job. I saw a newspaper there. I rushed back to London, packed a few fresh things and came straight here.'

‘Harriet … I'm so sorry.'

‘Why should you be sorry?'

‘It must have been a terrible shock for you …'

‘And for you!' she said hotly. ‘After all this time – it's almost unbelievable. Do you suppose there's any truth in it?'

He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I wish I knew. But I can't see why anyone should invent a story like that.'

‘Maybe she's some kind of nut.'

‘Maybe. But as you said, Harri, it's such a long time ago. Most people have forgotten all about Greg Martin. I can't imagine what would prompt this woman to dredge it all up if there wasn't some truth in it. I can think of a dozen men of much more recent notoriety if she was simply inventing it for some cranky reason of her own. Besides …' He broke off, staring for a moment at the glinting gold balls, then raising his eyes to meet Harriet's directly, ‘if you look at the past, it's quite feasible that she knew Greg. There was a connection.'

‘You knew her?' Harriet asked, surprised.

‘No, but I know of her family.'

‘Who is she then? The paper said she was Italian, didn't it?'

‘That's right. Her family were fabric manufacturers with mills and factories around Lake Como. Greg was working on some kind of deal in Italy not long before he … before the accident. It's quite conceivable they were involved in it and he met Maria as a result. He swept her off her feet, I shouldn't wonder.' His lip curled in a bitter smile. ‘ He was very attractive to women, was Greg.'

Harriet ignored the implication.

‘But Dad – twenty years! If it's true and he is alive where has he been all this time? And why the hell should he have pretended to be dead if he wasn't?'

‘Because I guess it suited him.' Hugo ran a finger under the roll collar of his shirt. It felt tight and hot in spite of being made of the softest combed cotton. ‘ He left one hell of a mess behind him, Harriet.'

‘Financial difficulties, you mean?'

‘And some! Oh yes, he'd overstretched himself, all right. And there was the suggestion of fraud, too. It took months – and the best financial brains in New York – to unravel his dealings and what they found was a web of debt – and worse. What a time that was!' His eyes darkened at the memory. ‘For a while I thought we'd go down because of it. If it hadn't been for Kurt I would have done. He rescued me, not a doubt of it, and thank God he did. But as for Greg … I suppose you could say I was all kinds of a fool to trust him, but I'm a designer, not an accountant. And I wasn't the only one taken in by him – far from it. There were plenty of others with more experience in these matters than I who were deceived. Oh yes, if Greg had been around when the storm broke he'd have faced ruin – and probably gone to gaol into the bargain. No doubt about it, he made a very timely exit one way or the other.'

Harriet was silent for a moment, chewing on her thumbnail. So … Greg had been little better than a crook on the business front – and he had very nearly dragged her father – and his stupendous talent – down with him. She had suspected as much, though it had never occurred to her that Greg's death had been anything but an accident. But important as all this might once have been it did not concern her now. Hugo had weathered that particular storm with Kurt's help and backing. No one had charged him with anything more serious than naivity and now he was one of the most successful fashion designers in New York. Besides, business dealings never figured very largely in Harriet's reckoning. There were other, far more important aspects to life – and death.

‘Greg is only half the story though isn't he, Dad?' she said quietly.

His eyes narrowed, emphasising the small lines and creases around them. ‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Oh Dad!' she remonstrated. ‘ You know very well what I mean. What about Mom?'

He looked away. ‘What about her?'

‘Dad – come out from that clam shell of yours. I know how good you are at hiding away inside it when you don't want to face up to the real world. But it's out here and it won't go away.'

‘Your mother is dead', he said flatly.

‘Is she though?' Harriet shook her head slowly. ‘ We don't really know that any more do we? We were always led to believe there were survivors when the
Lorelei
blew up. Now it seems that wasn't the case. If this Maria Vincenti is to be believed, Greg survived. So I repeat – what happened to Mom?'

‘Harriet …' He leaned on his desk wearily, not looking at her. ‘It's so long ago now.'

‘What difference does that make? Twenty weeks – twenty months – twenty years – the questions are still the same and they have to be answered. If we don't ask them someone else will. The insurance people are already starting to probe. One of them came to see me last night when I got back from Paris. He wanted to know when I last saw Mom.'

He blanched visibly. ‘Bastards! I was afraid of something like this. So they think … yes, I suppose they would. What did you tell him?'

‘That I'd never seen her from that day to this, of course. But that's no longer enough, is it? For God's sake what happened when the
Lorelei
blew up? And what happened afterwards? Don't you want to know? Dad – stop fiddling with that damned desk toy and
listen to me!'