The news of Theo’s impending marriage had been in Jed’s column just before Christmas and the nationals had picked it up the next day, but there was still no sign of it. Ironically there had been a picture of Ellie at a reception with Clive O’Connell Moore in one of the tabloids on the same gossip page as the one that featured Stirling.
Jerome wondered what Stirling would do if he knew Ellie had a profile ready that would cripple his reputation. Murder her, he decided, and the thought made him feel a great deal happier for the rest of the day.
Ellie had never known it was possible to feel so dead inside. Christmas had been a nightmare, trying to be cheerful for her family’s sake. She had taken the minimum time off, arriving at Oliver’s late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and leaving early in the evening on Boxing Day.
Clive had disappeared in the direction of Joanne’s house, seen off like Father Christmas piled high with presents for the boys and some ‘offerings’, as he called them, for Joanne. Before he went he gave Ellie a Clarice Cliffe bowl that she had spotted one Sunday as they strolled through Rye. She gave him one of her father’s watercolours of the lake at Delcourt, which he had wanted to buy from her the minute he saw it hanging in her flat. They were to meet up to spend New Year together but in the event they didn’t.
It had been touch and go whether her father and Alison would manage to join everyone at Delcourt for the holiday, but to their delight at the last minute Alison rang to say they would be there for a rare family Christmas.
But a long walk alone with her father along the beach on Boxing Day had done nothing to reconcile him to the fact that Oliver stubbornly believed that with public support behind him, he could see off both Basil Oldburn and Theo Stirling and protect his hotel. Raw-nerved and still in shock, Ellie was impatient with him and they returned for the first time either could remember totally fed up with each other.
‘He just wants the past to stay buried,’ sighed Alison, finding Ellie in her room packing to return to London. ‘He doesn’t want to discuss it, or mention it any more. He was obviously so hurt by it all.’
‘And he’s not the only one,’ Ellie snapped back. But her stepmother’s wounded expression made her regret having ever embarked on the subject, and she couldn’t help feeling that everyone was relieved when she finally disappeared down the drive and headed back to Fulham.
Only Jill had remained aloof from it all and very sensibly too, thought Ellie savagely as she joined the motorway. Why didn’t I do the same?
Her mood did not improve when she pushed open the door of her flat and hastily flipped through the cards and letters that had arrived in her absence. Since none of them had a New York postmark she lost interest in them and tossed them along with all the others into the Clarice Cliffe fruit bowl, chiding herself for clutching at straws.
The campaign in Willetts Green was now a well-known cause. True to their word Gregory Merton and Charles Peterhouse had written marvellous tub-thumping pieces for the Recorder which had delighted both Joe and Gregory’s constituency manager, who had been concerned for some time at his MP’s low popularity rating locally.
Car stickers and posters sprouted throughout the area with a distinctive pink and white entwined motif of larkspurs in the corner, which Carol had designed. Those guests to the hotel who had enquired about its significance had discreetly had the campaign brought to their attention and had willingly pledged their support.
Maurice Middleton was now a firm member of the team. Not only had he become an enthusiastic supporter and helper but his days at Delcourt liaising with Oliver and Joe had made him two more unexpected friends. Chloe and Miles, denied a grandfather figure, had virtually adopted him and he was practically one of the family.
Led by Maurice, a local conservation club had held two meetings which Oliver addressed along with Gregory, who was now on to a Good Thing. Sandy Barlow, asking Ellie to talk on his show about her Focus profile on the new woman governor of a top security prison, managed to slip in a couple of questions under the pretext of general environmental issues. It was now simply a matter of keeping interest alive awaiting Conrad Linton’s return from Australia at the end of March when the planning committee was due to consider its decision.
New Year saw Ellie at Roland’s house where he and Thelma gave a wildly successful, not to say drunken, party for their friends and the staff of Focus. Lucy came with her latest boyfriend who, she said, had a record out and was big in Tokyo. Rosie brought Piers Imber, a photographer she had been trying to get her hands on for months. Paul arrived with Kiki Stevens, the beautiful but dim model who had cut her hair off and so enraged Rosie.
Ellie watched without a flicker of emotion as Paul kissed Kiki and told him he was pushing his luck when ten minutes later he tried to persuade Ellie to leave the party early with him.
Whatever had she ever seen in him, she thought, and went in search of Jed who was to drive with her to Gemma and Bill’s to have a drink.
‘Why not,’ he agreed. ‘I work so hard, I don’t have time to find anyone to love.’
‘You’re very lucky,’ she said with such sadness in her voice that he slipped an arm around her shoulders as they went to collect their coats.
‘Sorry, love,’ Jed apologized, seeing the pain in her eyes. ‘I had to write it.’
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. The latest issue of Focus had a picture of Debra with Theo leaving her apartment in New York, with a caption saying friends expected an announcement that they were to be a permanent item any day now.
Ellie hugged his arm. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘After all I started the ball rolling.’
Jed now knew the truth. The whole truth. Two days after he had returned from his brief trip to New York just before Christmas, he had tried to phone Ellie to find out how she had managed to get such a scoop on Theo Stirling and Debra Carlysle, but he was told by the operator her phone had been left off the hook. Not getting any reply from the flat, he rang Oliver’s and then Amanda’s. Gemma and Bill he knew had already departed for Scotland. There was no answer from Clive and anyway wasn’t he still in Dublin?
Jed never knew quite why he’d felt uneasy, but he said later it was more Ellie’s recent roller-coaster emotions that had set the alarm bells ringing than any real evidence that something must have happened.
As he pulled up outside her flat he could see immediately that the place was in darkness, but her car was there. So too was the milk, three separate pints, uncollected, frozen solid on the doorstep. Pushing open the gate to the area steps he ran down, not at all confident that his journey had been without cause, and leaned on the buzzer.
Nothing.
Bending down, he knelt in front of the letter box and tried to see through to the darkened hallway, calling her name. The windows were secured and the blinds down. But the back, the back by the patio might not be. The only way in was through the house that backed on to Ellie’s.
Leaving his car he ran round the block, counting off the houses until he found the one that he guessed lined up with Ellie’s, and banged on the door. The owner, a woman, appeared almost immediately and Jed, who rather admired his own ingenuity, poured out a story about looking after his friend’s flat and he had gone out leaving the keys inside. The woman, as well she might, was inclined not to believe him, until Jed, seeing her hesitation, added swiftly that he was sure he’d left the gas on.
Within minutes he was scaling the wall at the back, agreeing that she had better waste no time calling the gas board, and was pounding on Ellie’s patio windows.
Then the blind was pulled back and at five o’clock on a Sunday evening, wrapped in one of Oliver’s old rugger shirts over black leggings, barefoot and clutching a half-empty wine glass, Ellie appeared.
Jed had never seen her look so haggard — or so drunk.
‘Okay, Carter,’ he said, pushing past her and switching on a couple of lamps. ‘Let’s get some coffee going, some heat on and then you might as well get used to the idea
that I’m not leaving until I know what’s going on.’
A swift look round and he took in the empty wine bottles and a glass that had deposited its contents on to the carpet.
Ellie was telling him she was fine. And what was he doing coming in the back? A headache, that’s all.
‘No, don’t give me that crap about colds and flu and headaches,’ Jed went on, collecting up the wine bottles and tipping them into the waste bin.
Ellie didn’t even protest when Jed ushered her into her bedroom with orders to wash her face, change her clothes and be out in ten minutes. After fifteen, having discovered there was no food in the fridge, Jed phoned a local take away home delivery service, and having turned the heat on full and brewed up some coffee, he went to find her. She was lying on her bed, her arms wrapped around a pillow, and crying as though her heart would never mend.
Silently he covered her with the quilt which had slid down to the floor and, stroking her head as though she were a small child just as she had once done for him when he thought he couldn’t face another day listening to the jokes and jibes about his private life, let her cry.
‘Sorry, Jed,’ she said after a while, propping herself up on one elbow, blowing her nose and giving him a weak smile. ‘I thought I could do this on my own.’
‘Not as bright as you look sometimes, my flower,’ he said and left her to fetch the freshly brewed coffee. ‘Now let’s have it. Theo, isn’t it?’ It was a statement more than a question as he handed her a steaming mug of coffee.
She nodded, knowing Jed would understand, not judge her, stay silent.
‘Why don’t you start from the beginning. You’ve known him for longer than you’ve let on, haven’t you?’ he asked shrewdly and propping himself up next to her on the bed, settled down to listen.
So there in her cosy, tiny bedroom, sipping black coffee, on a cold December evening, Ellie described to her best friend the events that had changed all their lives all those years before.
‘We had lived in that house forever. The Stirlings had a house locally, but they mainly lived in the States. I never really knew Theo because he was older and his sisters are only a year or two younger than him, so they were away at school and went to the States during the holidays. I never saw them.
‘Besides, they were amazingly wealthy even then, and Dad never had two pennies to rub together. In fact Aunt Belle said she saw more of the bailiff than she did of Dad.
‘You see, Theo’s father had inherited the company from his father, Theo’s grandfather, when old man Stirling retired to the Bahamas. Robert Stirling had come back to oversee the transition of Stirling Industries to its new London headquarters, so for about a year he lived in the big house, the one I was at on Saturday.’
For a moment her voice faltered, but she drew a deep breath and went on.
‘Robert Stirling had seen some of Dad’s work and asked him if he would paint a portrait of Theo’s mother. Dad was obviously thrilled. It meant money and because Robert was so established locally, suddenly Dad became flavour of the month and all the local bigwigs, who wanted to impress Robert I suppose, were all having their portraits painted. It had begun to look as though we were out of the woods. Dad was happy because Alison was around, looking after him and quite clearly, although I never guessed it at the time, wanting to marry him.
‘I came home from school for the summer and for once I wasn’t immediately handed a list of lights I was to remember to switch off and Dad said at this rate when I got back for the winter, we might even turn the heating on.’
‘It sounds ghastly,’ said Jed sympathetically.
‘Oh, it wasn’t,’ said Ellie quickly. ‘It was a wonderful time. You see, Oliver and I didn’t know any different. That house was a stable thing in our lives, because Dad was always running out of money and I never knew from one term to the next what school I would be going to, provided of course Dad could scrape up the money — or usually poor old Aunt Belle, I’m afraid.
‘It was that summer she fell out with Dad, over Alison’s alterations to the house — and the fact that Dad had bought the Lagonda instead of spending the money on the house — so from then, Oliver and I fended for ourselves when we were home from school and Aunt Belle would just come in the long summer break.’
‘So then what happened?’
Ellie told him how suddenly everything changed. How Robert Stirling had arrived at the house one afternoon and she and Oliver had overheard the dreadful accusations, the raised voices, and her father protesting his innocence.
‘He was accusing Pa of stealing plans that would have seriously damaged Stirling Industries if Oldburns — that was the other property developer locally — acted on them. Which he said they undoubtedly would. And,’ Ellie took a deep breath, ‘they did. The Stirlings lost a huge contract, it nearly wiped them out over here.’
Jed looked puzzled.
‘But why would your father want them? He’s not in the property business?’
Ellie took a gulp of coffee, shaking her head.
‘No. Just that we were so broke all the time, I suppose Robert Stirling must have thought Dad would have sold them to get some money. They’d gone missing, you see, from Stirling’s house and a copy — or part of it — had been delivered back to Robert Stirling by the printers who had copied the original. They were somewhere over in Bournemouth, about fifty miles away.
‘The cheque paying for the copies was traced to Dad, who couldn’t make them believe it was for artist’s materials, you know, cartridge paper, that sort of thing — the coincidence was too great.’
‘But what was your father doing there? So far from home?’
Ellie shrugged. ‘I never found out and neither did Oliver, but Dad was — is — eccentric. It didn’t sound at all odd to us. Just to other people. But the coincidence was enough for Robert Stirling.’
‘But why blame him?’
Ellie’s face clouded over at the memory of the stormy scene in her father’s study.
‘Because to them it made sense. You see the really awful part about it was that Robert knew that Dad had been commissioned by Basil Oldburn to paint his daughters, and Dad was the only one who had access to Robert Stirling’s office up at the house — when he used to go for sittings with Mrs Stirling. Even worse, clearly he needed the money that selling the plans to Oldburns would have brought.’
Quietly she recounted the next nightmare scenario in her young life — how suddenly everyone began to cancel their commissions. Robert had plenty of influence and no-one wanted to be seen to do anything to offend him.
She told Jed how she and Oliver finally stopped going to the village because the humiliation of being studiously ignored by everyone, too embarrassed to approach them, proved too much. Local people who had once automatically included them in invitations suddenly stopped calling, friends found excuses not to come to the phone. Aunt Belle’s rapid departure simply added fuel to their belief that John Carter was guilty. Robert Stirling had also offered to act as guarantor for a loan John Carter had taken out at the bank to pay off some of his debts and he naturally withdrew the offer.
‘The problem was Dad had borrowed against the promise. Enter Theo.’ She covered her face wearily. ‘He arrived out of the blue, about four weeks later, to see Dad. Dad emerged from the meeting saying he had no option but to sell the house to Theo Stirling, otherwise we would starve – funny that, we already were.
‘Aunt Belle had gone and we were reduced to living off Alison. But she wasn’t earning much, certainly not enough to pay the bills, which were colossal, and keep us. The tenants were leaving in droves because the rooms needed repairs and Dad couldn’t afford to do them up. It was all such a mess. Jed, I was so frightened. There was no-one to turn to. Dad, lovely though he is, was useless.
‘Anyway, he emerged from the meeting with Theo saying that he would sell the house for a rock-bottom price to the Stirlings and that as long as we didn’t live in Dorset we could go where we liked. No-one actually s
aid it, but I think it was because the Stirlings didn’t want to be seen to be grinding Dad’s nose in it, that they wanted us as far away from Willetts Green as possible.
‘And that’s what we did. At first I thought Oliver and I would have to leave school — again — but Dad scraped the money together to keep us there. Just as well really, I don’t suppose Alison wanted two teenage stepchildren foisted on her the minute she got married.
‘Alison stood by Dad and after they bought the house in Devon where they now live, they got married. I was hardly there. After A levels I left school land went to work for Joe McPhee. He’s the only reason I went back. I knew him from way back and dear man that he is, he got the editor to give me a job. I just wanted to be a journalist and finding anyone to take me on was a nightmare.’
‘Because of your dad?’ Jed asked.
‘God no.’ She shook her head. ‘Ask anyone trying to get a break how hard it is. I just grabbed it. I just ignored the nasty looks and got on with it. Oliver was in Switzerland in the middle of his training. So that’s what happened. I got a bedsit in the town. Best time I ever had.’
Ellie was by now considerably calmer. The relief of unloading such a burden after years of silence and months of anguish was beyond description.
She smiled at Jed and he squeezed her hand.
‘But the bit I don’t understand,’ he said, taking her mug from her and refilling it, ‘is why, with all that evidence, didn’t Stirling bring in the police? They couldn’t have been that certain, could they?’
It was Ellie’s turn to frown. ‘Oh, they did bring the police in, Dad was interviewed, but then they dropped the case after Dad agreed to sell the land to them. I’ve always had this odd feeling that it wouldn’t have done Stirling any good to prosecute a man and convict him, leaving his children high and dry. They’re terribly into reputation you know, the Stirlings.’
Another Way Page 33