by Jane Green
‘A Gmail account?’
‘Hotmail, I think.’ Grace is stunned she hadn’t remembered this until now. ‘Same difference. I never thought . . . God, how utterly stupid am I? It never occurred to me to question it at the time. Anyway, it’s too late now.’
‘Is it, though? Don’t you think of exposing her? Surely if Ted were to realize she had machinated all of this, he’d see the error of his ways?’
‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I think he’s completely obsessed and won’t listen to any kind of reason. The only one I really want to believe me now is Clemmie.’
‘How much does she know?’
‘She’s confused. About whether to believe me or whether to believe what her father says is the true diagnosis; she doesn’t know if Beth is this sweet woman who has befriended her and is looking after her dad, and appears to be deeply concerned about her mother, or if she’s actually someone whose motives are, as I believe, far more sinister. Poor girl. I hate that she is being dragged in, but she’s a smart girl. Time will throw up the truth. At least that’s what I’m praying for.’
‘I hope so,’ says Patrick, holding out his hand to help her over the next fence. ‘And if not, we could always turn it into a film.’
‘Don’t be so blasé about it,’ says Grace, turning serious. ‘She’s my daughter and I love her. God only knows whether I’m able to repair our relationship. God only knows whether she’ll ever be able to see the whole truth.’
PUMPKIN GINGERBREAD TRIFLE
(Serves 8–10)
INGREDIENTS
For the gingerbread
400g plain flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1½ teaspoons ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
¾ teaspoon salt
300g white sugar
250ml vegetable oil
280g dark treacle
125ml apple juice
2 eggs
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
80g chopped crystallized ginger
Butter and flour a 10-inch springform cake tin.
Preheat oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.
Stir together flour, cinnamon, cloves, ground ginger, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
Mix sugar with oil, juice, treacle, eggs and fresh ginger in a large bowl. Mix in crystallized ginger. Stir in flour mixture. Pour into prepared cake tin, then bake for 1 hour. Cool this for 15 minutes, then remove from the cake tin and cool completely.
For the pumpkin custard
300ml single cream
300ml whole milk
6 large eggs
100g granulated sugar
170g brown sugar
100g black treacle
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon salt
650g pureed pumpkin, or about 1½ cans
For the assembly
1 litre cream, whipped until stiff
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
40g crystallized ginger
Scald the milk and single cream in a heavy saucepan (‘scald’ means take it to the edge of boiling, them remove from heat).
Beat together eggs, two types of sugar, treacle, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. Mix in pumpkin, single cream, and milk. When it is smooth, put it in buttered baking dish, which you then put into a bain-marie: put dish into larger baking dish and fill larger dish with hot water to about 1 inch below the rim of the custard dish. Bake this at 170°C/gas mark 3 for 50 minutes and then start to check it. You want a set, firm custard – when a knife is inserted into the centre, it should come out clean. Cool and refrigerate overnight.
To assemble your trifle, get your trifle bowl out.
Whip the double cream with half a teaspoon of vanilla extract, then fold in the crystallized ginger, and set aside.
Spoon half the pumpkin custard into the bowl and layer half the gingerbread over that and half the whipped cream over that. Do it again. Top the final layer of whipped cream with gingersnaps, or gingersnap crumbs, and, if you like, drizzle with Calvados.
Thirty-one
‘Well, don’t you look lovely?’ Patrick stands up from the table and reaches out to kiss Grace, holding her at arm’s length to examine her from head to toe. ‘Fantastic dress,’ he says approvingly, Grace smiling, loving how Patrick has the unnerving ability to make her feel sexy, even now.
‘I can’t believe you dragged me up to London,’ Grace said. ‘All this way for a dinner. It had better be good.’
‘It will be magnificent.’ He gestures around the restaurant. ‘You have my word. Did you book a room at my hotel? I would have offered mine for you to bunk in, but I didn’t want you to get the right idea.’
‘You mean the wrong idea.’
‘No,’ says Patrick deliberately. ‘I meant the right idea.’
‘Patrick Propper! Are you still flirting with me? After all these years?’ Grace shakes the napkin into her lap as she shoots him a schoolmarmish look of disapproval.
‘Absolutely!’ he says. ‘My crush on you is still as strong as ever. Maybe even stronger.’ He glances down at her breasts as she crosses her arms with a scowl. ‘Sorry. What will you have to drink? Martini?’
‘Perfect!’ she says, looking around the restaurant at the other tables, many of whom appear to be on romantic dates. I wonder, she thinks, if they will think assume we are on a romantic date. How odd, and how funny, and how enormously flattering.
She turns back to find Patrick smiling at her as the waiter delivers their drinks and they toast one another.
‘To old friends!’ Patrick’s eyes sparkle warmly across the table at her. ‘And new loves.’
‘Hang on!’ She bursts out laughing. ‘That’s a bit presumptuous of you, isn’t it?’
‘I just meant generally. Not you and me specifically. Although obviously, if you’re offering, I’m hardly going to turn you down. Are you?’
‘Offering? No!’ She takes a sip of her drink. ‘Although I’m not sure I’m ready for the “new loves” bit. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the old. There has been a development, in case your mum didn’t already tell you.’
‘Clemmie finding Beth has in fact taken over your life and moved in on everything you care about?’
Grace shakes her head. ‘God, Patrick. Your mother is impossible. You’d think at her age she would have learned the art of discretion. She tells you lot everything.’
‘Of course she does. She considers you to be one of her children and there’s nothing better than family gossip when you’re on the phone to Mum. How do you think I know that Robert had a secret vasectomy after Emily threatened to have more sprogs.’
‘No!’ Grace’s eyes open wide. ‘Does Emily know?’
‘Absolutely not! She’d murder him in his sleep. Poor old Robert. He never did have any balls, just a great big bloody scowl. But enough about him, let’s talk about the evil Beth and her dastardly plan of world domination.’
‘I don’t think it’s world domination,’ says Grace. ‘I think it’s just Ted domination.’
Patrick shudders. ‘I just had a vision of handcuffs. Thanks for that.’
Grace is smiling. ‘How is it that we are talking about my husband’s betrayal, maybe my soon-to-be-ex-husband, and you have me smiling? In fact, worse than that, I’m having fun.’
‘You always did have the most fun with me,’ says Patrick. ‘I can’t think how you didn’t run off with me when you had the chance.’
‘When I had the chance? What chance was that?’
‘Any chance. Every chance. Any time. But back to the point, what are you going to do about Beth?’
‘What can we do? Other than hope it all plays itself out.’
‘Grace. There is more you can do. Surely. I think maybe you begin with the reference. You said it was by email,
so you could start by tracking the actual woman down and seeing what she says. Or Google her, find out about her. There must be something.’
‘I already Googled her.’ Grace sighs. ‘I’ve Googled her a million times and there’s nothing.’
‘How about Intelius?’
‘What?’
‘It’s a site where you pay for an online background check. I use it for all my employees. I almost took on a show runner once who had a list of convictions as long as my arm.’
‘Really?’ Grace stares at him.
‘Well, not quite. But he had been to jail for tax evasion, which is much the same thing. The point is, we have to find out about Beth. We have to find out whether she’s ever done this before.’
‘Stolen another woman’s husband?’
‘Yes. Ruined other people’s lives. I have no idea why I feel this, but I’m certain you’re not the first.’
Grace is astonished at the flutter of excitement in her stomach. She does want to find out more about Beth, if for nothing else than to satisfy her own curiosity, to try and find out why Beth has done what she has done.
Not that it will change anything, but suddenly knowing more about Beth feels like the most important thing in the world.
Patrick insists on paying for dinner before they share a cab back to the Charlotte Street hotel.
Charlotte Street is packed with people standing outside pubs, restaurants, racing down the street to try and catch up with friends.
‘God, I’d forgotten this,’ says Grace, turning as a drunken woman staggers down the road, trying to pull her skirt down. ‘All the people! Everyone out on the streets having fun after a long day’s work!’
‘I know.’ Patrick looks at the girl staggering down the street. ‘I do miss drunken women out on the piss. Somehow, however wonderful LA is, without a drunken secretary roaring to her friends, it misses a certain charm.’
‘I never miss it when I’m in the States,’ says Grace, linking her arm through his as they step into the hotel. ‘At least, I don’t miss London. I miss Dorset terribly, but London was never much of a home.’
‘Shall we have a nightcap in the living room?’ says Patrick, waiting while Grace checks in. ‘They have an honesty bar. What can I get you?’
‘Vodka on the rocks, please.’ Grace sinks into a squishy sofa as Patrick prepares the drinks. She watches him, astonished suddenly at the man he has become. More astonished that a judder of something she vaguely remembers as lust jolts through her body.
It’s Patrick, she thinks. Surely not. It must be the vodka, she decides, crossing her legs and smiling over at him in as benign a way as possible, hoping to give nothing away.
‘Let me run upstairs,’ he says. ‘I’m going to grab my computer. Let’s get to work. It’s Intelius time.’
Background check or criminal record check?’ muses Patrick, both of them hunched over his tiny screen.
‘We don’t know if she has a criminal record,’ says Grace. ‘Let’s start with background check. Here. Let me fill it in.’ She grabs the computer off his lap and swiftly types in Beth’s name, then Northvale as the town, before deleting it. ‘I just remembered she moved to Northvale right before working for us. Before that she said she was living somewhere else. Bugger. Where was it? Somewhere in Connecticut. Fairfield! That’s where she lived! Let’s try Fairfield.’
She hits enter, and they both watch the words on the screen: Intelius is searching billions of records for Beth McCarthy in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Moments later, it says they have found six people that match Beth McCarthy in Fairfield.
‘That’s the one,’ says Grace, moving the cursor to one name.
‘Here goes nothing. Let’s get the report.’
Grace gets her credit card and fills in the form. As they wait, the air is heavy with anticipation for the computer to pull up the records, the results of which, it says, will then be emailed to them.
‘I feel weirdly excited,’ says Grace. ‘If nothing comes up I may actually cry.’
‘I know!’ Patrick cannot tear his eyes off the computer. ‘I’m praying she’s a serial killer.’ Grace shoots him a look. ‘Okay, not a serial killer, then, but I’m dying to find out whether there really is a backstory there.’
‘Here goes.’ Grace logs in to her Gmail account and clicks the email, both of them craning forward to read.
‘Well,’ he says after a while. ‘That’s interesting. We haven’t been able to find anything on Beth McCarthy, but we haven’t thought to look for Liz McCarthy. Or Betsy McCarthy. I presume her given name is Elizabeth?’
‘It never occurred to me she might go by other names.’ Grace is wide-eyed as she looks at Patrick, turning straight back to the screen to search the other names.
And there she is. Betsy McCarthy. Smiling widely in a photograph taken at the Near and Far Aid gala in Westport in 2010. She looked entirely different. Blonde, coiffed, elegant, she was as far away from the dumpy girl Grace met as you can imagine.
‘Now what?’ asks Grace, stumped at where they take it from here.
‘Near and Far Aid gala. What is that? Presumably a charity with a committee.’
‘Aha!’ Grace’s eyes light up. ‘You’re brilliant. Who was the chair that year?’ A few taps and they come up with a name: Anne Lindstrom; a few more taps and her home details are there on the screen. An address in Greenfield Hill and, more importantly, a phone number.
Grace looks at her watch. ‘It’s only five in the afternoon in Connecticut,’ she says.
‘Let’s be honest,’ says Patrick. ‘Now that we know, it would be rude not to call.’
Thirty-two
‘Is that Anne Lindstrom?’
‘Yes?’ The voice on the end of the phone is cautious, cool. Before Grace moved to America she had the deep misconception that all Americans were superfriendly, would instantly go out of their way to help. She hadn’t met the New England Yankees, but swiftly grew to recognize the Mayflower WASPs, the ones with stiff, gracious smiles, who were polite, but never warm, unless you were one of their own.
‘Mrs Lindstrom, you don’t know me, but my name is Grace Chapman. I am trying—’
‘Grace Chapman?’ The voice is now warm, intrigued. ‘The Grace Chapman? Ted Chapman’s wife?’
Grace is embarrassed. ‘Yes.’
‘I was just reading about you in Country Flair! What an honour! What on earth can I do for you? And please, call me Anne.’
‘Anne. I’m trying to find someone who was in a photograph taken at the Near and Far Aid gala back in 2010, when you were the chair. I don’t know if you know her, but I was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction. Her name is Betsy McCarthy.’
There is a sharp intake of breath, then silence.
‘Anne? Are you there?’
The voice is now cold again. ‘What do you want with her?’ There is almost a sneering quality. Grace knows, instantly, that the story isn’t good, but that she won’t get anything more out of Anne unless she explains, at least a little.
‘Anne, I don’t know you, but I have to ask you to keep this to yourself, at least for now.’
‘Okay.’
‘My husband has an assistant who goes by the name of Beth McCarthy. Without going into too much detail, she has fairly successfully ruined – or maybe I should say, stolen – my life. Today I found out she goes by a series of other names, “Betsy” being one of them. I’m trying to find out more about her. I’m trying to stop any further damage being done.’
Anne’s voice is quiet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘This isn’t the first time she has ruined people’s lives. You need to talk to Emily Tallman. Let me get her number for you. Can you give me five minutes just so I can let her know you’re going to be calling?’
‘Of course. Thank you so much.’
‘I won’t discuss this with anyone. If you went through anything like what Emily went through, I know just how devastating this woman is. I’m sorry. Good lu
ck. If there’s anything at all I can do, please let me know.’
‘Thank you.’ Grace is overwhelmed by the kindness of this stranger. ‘Thank you.’
Emily Tallman’s number goes straight to the machine. Grace doesn’t leave a message, fearful of being misunderstood, of not being called back. Instead, she and Patrick sit on the sofa, drinking more and more vodka, trying to figure out what happened to Emily Tallman. There were photographs of her with her husband, Campbell Tallman, and then there weren’t.
There were records of a house being sold to Emily and Campbell Tallman, a big, rambling house on the harbour in Southport, and then, less than two years later, selling it for less than they bought it for.
Emily Tallman’s address comes up now, in Southport. There are no names associated with her. What happened to her children, Grace asks herself, for the former address lists children – Daisy and Ben. The view of her home is one of a pretty little cottage on a quiet side street, not big enough, Grace thinks, for two children.
A quick search shows Campbell Tallman living in Norwalk, the children listed at that address.
‘I’m intrigued.’ Grace turns to Patrick. ‘Why are the children living with him? And what does this have to do with Beth?’
‘You know what I think? I think it’s time to go home. America home. I think the only way to get to the bottom of this is to go and see her. And anyone else you might find. I wish I could come with you, but I’m always here for you. You can phone me anytime. You aren’t alone anymore, Grace.’
‘You’re an amazing friend, do you know that?’
Patrick smiles. ‘I’m also an amazing lover. Just in case you were wondering . . .’
Grace doesn’t smile this time. She just stares at him, knowing she ought to look away, but there is that jolt again, so unexpected, so discombobulating.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, knowing she is flushing. ‘Excuse me. I’m just going to the bathroom.’
In the bathroom, she is stunned at what she sees in the mirror. Her eyes are glittering, her lips full. This is not the sylphlike Grace that she was before, but nor is it the bloated, unhappy Grace of a few months back. Although bigger, tonight she is beautiful.