She didn’t really know what she was looking for, in the study. It seemed Peter de Winter’s personal effects at the time of his death had been gathered up and examined, by the police or the Ministry of Defence or MI5, she didn’t know, and dumped here, at some point after. Some attempt had been made to arrange and organise the piles, Alessa supposed by Hugo, when he’d come to live here. Squatting to pull open drawers, she caught the hem of her shirt around the handle, ripping a hole in it when she wrenched the drawer free. She unhooked herself and tucked the damaged item of clothing into her jeans.
What a lot of changes Hugo has been through, she thought, sitting back on her heels and rubbing her eyes, which were streaming with the dust. Leaving the armed forces, going into business, his marriage failing, his stepfather dying, his mother presumably selling their home… She wondered about the order of events, and if Amanda had kept the marital home, Hugo deciding to move here a few years ago. He was restoring the house, she saw, when she took a break to explore. The restoration work was beautiful, the pool and gym a good example.
She took photos of the case file numbers, as well as of anything else that looked important. Hmm. There were gaps in things. The pictures of Peter with his Research and Development co-workers and manager looked so innocuous. Alessa turned these over to photograph the names on the backs, wondering if any of these people had been involved too. She was going through bank statements—even the old utilities bills were meticulously preserved—when her phone trilled and she almost dropped it.
“I’m outside,” Hugo announced. “And do I smell burning?”
Chapter Ten
What? No! She heaped the papers and files back onto the table and desk and into the drawers and cupboards, raced to open the front door, then darted to the kitchen, to discover he’d been kidding. “Not funny!” she raged, turning to flick him with a tea towel, her breath catching in her throat at how unnecessarily gorgeous he looked in his overcoat and scarf, tiny snowflakes dusting his hair and eyelashes.
“Is that huge-eyed look for the wine?” Hugo indicated the bottle in his hand. “But I see you’ve provided that too. And four bottles of the stuff? Excellent. The more the merrier.” He brushed dust from her jeans, raising an eyebrow.
He insisted on helping, when he’d divested himself of his coat, and apologised for setting the table in the kitchen—the dining room was still undergoing redecoration.
“Hmm, interesting priorities.” Alessa placed the dish on the table. “No dining room, but a pool and gym and some sort of game room, complete with bar and snooker tables?” She blushed, realising she’d given away that she’d been nosing around the place.
“Where else could we hold the monthly poker nights? And pool tournaments? Which you are more than welcome to attend. And my house is your house.” Hugo poured wine for them both.
“I didn’t go upstairs,” Alessa assured him, her stupidity immediately making her blush more.
“I won’t reply to that.” Hugo grinned, making Alessa’s heart squeeze. She loved those eye crinkles that spread down his face when he was amused. She loved making him happy. She loved—
“So, this is lamb…?” Hugo lifted the lid, raising an eyebrow.
“Ragù? Hotpot. Casserole? It has a few names.” Alessa grabbed the serving spoon. “Help yourself to veg.”
Hugo praised her cooking so much, including the pie that turned out to be crumble, and how clean the kitchen was after such a Herculean effort that she had to confess to not having prepared the food there. Or all of it herself. She said the last in a mutter, then realised from the gleam in his eyes he’d known, and was piling on the guilt.
“Alessa, I don’t care if you don’t cook,” Hugo began.
“I do! I mean, I can. I would. I will.” She had to go easy on the wine, not that she’d had much. “Today’s been so hectic and… Talking of, how’s the theatre project going?”
She was genuinely interested in what he was doing. Not just the new Mill Island development, but his life in general, his former projects, his business… Even when, the meal over, they moved to the living room and the huge sofa to watch the historical drama they were both fans of, she preferred to listen to Hugo talk and to share details of her life with him. He pulled her close and she tilted her face up to his, breathing in his scent, his essence, and soon they were kissing and exchanging long, slow caresses that were more intimate than the wild sex they’d indulged in and so revealing that Alessa pulled away.
“I’d better go,” she said, pushing her dishevelled hair back.
“Couldn’t you stay over?” Hugo looked deep into her eyes and stroked her waves of hair from her face. “I’d really like you to.”
“I—” Her damn phone. Tom, wondering why she wasn’t checking in.
“You know I’m busy for the next few days?” Hugo took her hand. “I’m away, in fact, for a couple of days, but what are you doing Christmas Eve?”
“That’s not for—early next week. Right.” Alessa swallowed. “I’m away over the break. Just a day or two.” And would be busy searching archives and filing freedom of information requests. “But I’ll be back right after, and we could…do something?”
“Something.” Hugo smiled, but it didn’t lighten his eyes as usual. “Will you stay in touch when you’re away?”
“Of course!”
And what a strange note to end such a wonderful evening on, she mused, wishing she could stay over, as Hugo had put it. Alessa steeled her resolve. She wouldn’t settle for half a relationship, with someone unable to communicate, to commit, really. No relationship was better than that. But it wouldn’t come to that, she told herself. Not with my help! They spoke on the phone over the next couple of days. Hugo was researching trams, of all things, testing out the feasibility of having that mode of transport in Montford. Three times the energy efficiency of buses and higher overall speeds, he’d told her.
‘You’re just a big kid who wants to be an engine driver,’ she’d replied.
She missed him, and hated having to be cagey about what she was doing. Which was, driving to the snooty Lychwood Conservation Area, that residential suburb bristling with large Victorian houses on the edge of the city, where her Mini could thankfully be hidden on the wide bush and tree-lined drive of the beautiful property she’d be helping Tom housesit, and not lower the tone of the neighbourhood. Even the holiday decorations were restrained and tasteful, she noted, peering up and down the wide street, waiting for Tom to let her in.
“Surface-to-air guided weapons or high-speed research aircraft?” came his question, as he indicated two of the piles of research he’d laid out in the living room, where a warm fire blazed. “What’s your strongest area of those two?”
Alessa dropped her bag in the hall. She could see how deeply into the project Tom was—his brown eyes shone with the light of a challenge and his normally soft curly brown hair was wild with static. “And people say I get buried deep in what I’m doing. Oh, and Merry Festivus.”
“What?” He spared her a glance. “You didn’t have anything better to do, did you?”
“I…suppose not.” Alessa wanted nothing more than to be with Hugo, but not as this week’s blonde. So she’d give this her best shot. “So, Peter de Winter. You’re thinking he was framed, right? So, we have to discover by whom.”
* * * *
“Amanda? What the hell are you doing here?” Hugo got the shock of his life when his ex-wife opened his own door for him, from inside his house, before he could. “And however you got a key, I’ll take it back, thanks.”
“I’m just dropping off presents.” Amanda flipped an airy hand at a pile of gaily wrapped gifts, wafting her cloying violet scent around. “And I was worried you were on your own, on Christmas Eve.”
“I have plans.” He had obligations, rather, but not with whom he really wanted to spend time with.
“Oh, your annual Christmas Eve church concert thing. And she’s coming? The girl I met last time?”
Hugo sighed. “Is that any of your business?”
“No, of course not.” Amanda dropped into her wounded-but-brave mode. “I just wondered how she was getting on.”
“With…”
“Her story. Her long-form piece or review piece, whatever the polite term is. Well, I don’t want to say exposé… Sounds so tabloid!” She flickered a glance of her heavily lashed eyes towards the study, or dump room.
A chill rippled over Hugo’s skin. “What are you talking about?” he questioned, taking a long time to shrug out of his coat.
“Alessandra’s true crime piece about Peter de Winter, of course! I caught her rifling through stuff in there and she explained how there hasn’t been a proper look at him, and now, with newspapers so hard-pressed for readers, it’s really only writing about this sort of thing that grabs an audience.”
“No.” His denial was instinctive.
“Oh, yes. I understand the appeal, I suppose. All that titillation of secrets unmasked along with the context and background provided, so you don’t feel too dirty getting stuck into the scandal.” Amanda pursed her lips.
“I don’t believe you.” Alessa wouldn’t do such a thing—
“Oh, sorry. I just assumed you’d given the okay. Didn’t realise she was going behind your back.”
“Just because that’s your fucking speciality—” Hugo collected himself. “Amanda, we’re finished. As in, you have no reason to be here, or to come here again. Please understand that. I’m sorry Javier is through with you—”
“Dumped me, like you did.”
“Not like I did. I imagine it’s for a different set of reasons. I’d say give the key back, but I presume you have a copy. So keep it, and I’ll change the locks.” One day, he’d find out which of his neighbours she’d charmed, who then tipped her off whenever a woman came here. Or maybe she had spy cams set up.
He stepped into her space, towering over her. “I’ve told you about not just showing up and not bringing Amelia here at all. I know things are difficult for her”—Amanda had made them that way—“but that doesn’t help her. Maybe instead you could learn some better life skills?”
“Ha! Like you have, Mr Stiff-bloody-upper lip—”
“I am trying!” Hugo gritted, helping Amanda through the door and handing her coat to her as she went.
“Well, you certainly helped your playmate—to a book deal, or even a TV movie contract!” was yelled at a vicious decibel through the closed door. “Has she turned the tables on you and finished with you, now she’s got what she wanted?”
Amanda. Bitter to the end. And so wrong. Wasn’t she? As much as he tried not to, Hugo visualised Alessa’s dusty, nervy state a few days ago, when she’d been here. Cooking dinner. Except she hadn’t cooked it. So, what had she been doing that had had her so flustered and grimy? And all the probing questions about his childhood… Without meaning to, without wanting to, he entered the study, the room he’d dumped everything of his late father’s into, and stood, seeking he didn’t know what.
It was evident within a second that things had been disturbed. But Amanda could have done that, the vindictive hellcat could have moved things and…caught Alessa’s shirt on a drawer? The same shirt she’d had on that evening, the one with the rip in its hem, whose missing scrap of striped cotton fabric was trapped here?
No. She hadn’t been using him… He snatched out his phone and called her. No answer. Where was she? He wouldn’t like the answer to that either, he knew. Away with another guy. Tom. He couldn’t deceive himself any longer that Alessa was taking things slowly, maybe afraid of getting hurt if she rushed it, was looking at her options, or finishing with a casual boyfriend…
He still held his phone and, seized by something he wouldn’t name, thumbed through his apps, clicking on Find my Friends. He’d enabled it so Alessa could see when he was on his way last week and time the meal accordingly. He didn’t think she’d understood, or used it, but he did. She was still in Montford?
What had he been imagining, some glitzy Christmas break in the snow or far-flung climes? He didn’t really tumble to what he was doing until he was in the car, heading for the address on the map. And when he got there, he didn’t really believe he was doing this, that this was happening, until he glimpsed Alessa’s unmistakeable purple vehicle right where the dot on the map marked, which made him park his car and ring the doorbell.
“Tom, who else are we expect—” Alessa opened the door and stared at him. “Hugo? What are you doing here? What—”
“Another Xmas refugee? Come on in!” called a man’s voice, so, glaring at Alessa, Hugo did.
What the hell? Hugo here? How? Why? She hurried after him into the living room, where he stood staring at the piles of documents and photos, then looked from Tom, ensconced in front of the fireplace, to her.
“Oh! It isn’t what you’re thinking!” Alessa felt weak with relief. “We’re not—involved.”
“We were. Once upon a long time ago.” Tom stood, despite Alessa shaking her head. “Tom Keaton.”
Hugo didn’t shake Tom’s hand or give his name in return. He picked up a photograph of Peter de Winter, his hand shaking slightly. “So it’s true. You’re writing some muckraking piece on my father and used me to get some primary material.”
“What?” Alessa stumbled back from the winter-cold fury in Hugo’s eyes. “No! Of course not! I didn’t even know who he was, who you were, until I was at your house. That’s when I got curious and decided to look into it.”
“Sparks, that doesn’t sound as good as you think it—”
“And it’s not any sort of scandalmongering.” Alessa cut Tom off. “We’re researching a serious piece about a miscarriage of justice. Because we think Peter was framed!” It didn’t get the reaction she’d expected. “I was able to dig in places you couldn’t!”
“How dare you!”
Hugo’s exclamation shocked her.
“Not just for a story! Also to help you?” she tried.
“Help me?” The darkness in Hugo’s tone hit her and, at the look in his eyes, she stepped back. “Like help me with how it felt when my stepfather died and I had to pack up his house, his life, because my mother couldn’t? No, different. How about we backtrack, to how I felt leaving the army to rescue my stepfather from a business he was running into the ground, putting people’s livelihoods in jeopardy?”
“Hugo.” Please, Alessa wanted to add.
“Or when, on leaving the army, I learned my wife had only married me for my money and position, and had had a string of affairs that only ended when she got pregnant by another man, the reason I knew the child wasn’t mine being I can’t have children? Or the emotions that came with her lying to me, trying to blackmail me, getting me ostracised by my friends when they believed her side of things?”
“I—”
“Or the emotions involved in leaving that life and starting over in a new place, alone, at my age?” Hugo ignored Tom’s attempt to intervene. “Do you have any idea how any of that feels, Alessa? And do you understand that some people might need more time to come to terms with the utter crap they go through, but that you can’t force them into it, make them into something you want? That you have to trust they might finally find the strength to start seeing a specialised therapist, to deal with all of that, to get mentally healthy enough to be in a relationship?”
“A therapist?” Alessa flashed to the woman she’d seen Hugo with, their postures, their expressions. “In that new building in King Street? You weren’t—”
“Sleeping around? No. I would never do that, and especially not with you. I thought, I hoped, that we had something. I thought you…” He sighed. “Oh, what’s the point? Please excuse me.”
“Alessa?” Tom looked from the sound of the door closing behind Hugo to her. “Didn’t you stop to think that maybe Hugo wouldn’t be so enthusiastic about your ‘digging’?”
Alessa could hardly force out words through the hurt. Hurt to Hugo and hurt to her, now h
e was gone. “I… No. No, I suppose I didn’t. I—”
“Was focussed on the story, as usual. Except this isn’t just a story, is it. It’s a man’s life! A man I think you love. And one you might lose, unless you go after him. Now!”
“Tom?” Anguished, confused, Alessa had no choice but to walk through the door he held open, grabbing her holdall bag as she left. It wasn’t a question of catching up with Hugo—his silver Merc sped past the gate as she reached the step. She could hardly overtake him, flag him down. But she wanted to go to him, to be with them. Because the thought that in her quest for a story, in being led by her reporter’s nose, she’d ruined everything, would never be with him again, was like trying to move without a heart.
* * * *
St Aidan’s Christmas service and concert was the last place Hugo wanted to be, but reneging on his obligations, his promises, was unthinkable. And painful though it was to be with his fellow parishioners who were full of festive cheer, it meant he wasn’t thinking about Alessa and what could have been. He escaped the festivities as soon as he could, well before the midnight service, needing space.
The weight of loss and sorrow pressed on him and must have made him mentally slow, he rationalised, because when he got into his house and went to turn off the alarm, it was already off, meaning someone had got to the house before him and he hadn’t noticed. And when he turned around, half afraid to breathe in, in case Amanda’s sickly scent assaulted him, Alessa was there.
“I’m sorry,” she began. “So sorry. I was a total idiot. You’re right. I was trying to research and write and force things better. But people aren’t things. Feelings…they don’t have a set schedule. I didn’t realise.”
“You were trying to right weighty, heavy wrongs all by yourself, like with the corrupt councillor.” That still rankled with him.
Alessa looked at the floor. “Yes. That was…similar. But this isn’t. Tom—who’s a friend—is setting up a meeting with the Times Investigative Reporting Team. This needs people with wider reach and stronger…resources. But they’ll take him on as a researcher and credit me with additional reporting. Because this has to be done, Hugo. I’m so sorry, but the story is big. We think your father’s manager at Harrington-Baxter, in Lantborough, was the real traitor. And after, he failed upwards, went to work at—”
Winter Sparks Page 10