by Peter James
There was a cheery fug in the cafe, which reminded her of her student days. Formica table-tops, the haze of cigarette smoke, the smell of meat sauce, the chatter of people at tables crammed close together, and newspapers swinging on their wooden poles each time the door opened.
It was five past three. It would take her a good forty minutes to get to Victoria, half an hour on the Gatwick Express and a further twenty-five minutes' drive from there. She wouldn't be home much before five thirty, she calculated. Just in time to have supper with Alec.
Across the table, Oliver, his unruly hair even more tangled by the wind, asked, 'Did you do anything about having a medical check-up?'
She remembered him studying her palm in the cafe at the General Trading Company. 'Actually, I did.'
'I'm glad. All OK?'
She hesitated. 'I'm waiting to hear — the doctor took some blood tests and stuff.'
'I hope you didn't mind my —'
'No.' In the warmth, with the cigarette smoke, her nausea was returning, but she did not want to tell him this. 'It was a good thing. I — hadn't had a check-up for a while.'
'And you're fine?'
She didn't want to tell him about her depression because she didn't want to appear flawed. 'In rude health, I think the expression is.' She could see doubt in his eyes — or maybe that was in her imagination?
'Good. I'm glad.' There was a long silence, and then he said, 'You know something, Faith, it's really been good seeing you.'
'Thank you. I've enjoyed myself too.'
'Can I see you again?'
Her attraction to him was scaring her yet boosting her. It felt so good being with him. She knew she ought to say no, but instead she heard herself say, 'I'd like to — yes.'
'Can you get away tomorrow?'
'It's half-term and I'm taking my son and two friends of his out for the day.'
'Sometime next week?'
Hesitantly she said, 'Perhaps we'd better talk on the phone when I see how my diary is. I have several committee meetings, and it's Ross's birthday on Wednesday.'
Bad thoughts swirled through her. Thoughts about Ross finding out, throwing her out, forbidding her ever to see Alec again.
Oliver raised his palms to her with a genial grin. 'Look, whenever. Cut yourself some slack when you have the chance, and if you feel like seeing me, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.' He prodded around inside his empty coffee-cup with his spoon, and scraped some remnants of froth from the sides. 'I just want you to know that I really do want to see you again. OK?'
As she stepped outside, the wind slashed her hair against her face, and then, suddenly, it seemed to have found its way inside her and was swirling in her belly. She was so cold she almost cried out, and then the nausea rose. The whole street seemed to come loose, as if it had been torn from its mountings, and she saw the pavement tilt, coming straight at her face.
She was dimly aware of Oliver's arm catching her, strong, firm, saw his blurred face. Heard his disembodied voice.
'Faith? Jesus. Faith?'
He helped her back to her feet and she stood, unsteadily, supported now by his arm around her waist. She breathed deeply, felt the air cooling her burning face, stared at him, could see the lines of deep concern etched like charcoal around his eyes.
'Want to go back inside?', he asked.
'No, I'm OK — just the — the air —'
'Let's go back in, sit down for a few minutes.'
'No, I'm OK, I have to get back. Can you call me a taxi? I'll be fine, really.'
'I'm not putting you in a taxi. I'll drive you.'
'Thanks, no, I'm OK, really.'
She felt a little better — until suddenly there was a blinding pain behind her eyes, as if she'd been stabbed through the head. Another bout of the nausea hit her, and she clutched him, bile clawing up inside her throat, everything around her a blur again. Her legs buckled.
* * *
The seat in Oliver's dark blue Jeep was soft, like an armchair, giving her the sensation that she was on a boat, swaying, rocking. She listened to the solid rattle of the diesel, the whir of the fan, felt the warm stream of air, heard the faint strains of Mozart on the sound system, which was turned right down but not off. She was concentrating hard on one thing.
Don't throw up. Don't throw up. Don't throw up.
He changed gear, pulling away from lights. 'What did your doctor say to you, Faith?'
A ringing sound. Her mobile. Inside her handbag. What had the doctor said? Nothing. The phone was still ringing. She found the zip, pulled it, dug in the bag, pulled out the phone, looked at the display.
It was Ross again.
She switched it off, dropped it back in her bag. Speaking was an effort. 'Just… something I picked up… in Thailand… They have different bacteria… I'm — OK.'
'The hell you are.'
He was braking again, stopping at a light in a corridor between two juggernauts. She could hear the hammering of their engines, could feel them shaking — shaking her whole world. Oliver felt so strong, so good to be with. A deep, terrible fear seeped through her, a darkness like a black lake of ink spreading through blotting paper, a fear of what was wrong with her, a fear of Ross's anger, and this Jeep, this sanctuary, was going to deliver her to Victoria, to her train home.
Her train to hell.
25
The petrol tumbled unevenly from the can. Panicking, Ross had to tilt it back then forward to get the best results. Come on, please, please, please. The smell was intense, and his eyes stung from the vapour. He poured some over the sofa, come on, come on, the carpet, the dining table. Then, making a continuous trail, he backed out of the door into the hall and continued the trail all the way to the kitchen door.
The man was making all the noise in the bedroom now. Ross could hear the springs creaking, the man grunting louder and louder.
Still pouring he hurried back to the bedroom door. Then, angling it carefully so that the petrol would pour in through the open chink, he laid the can down on its side.
There was a dull, booming sound from the can as the petrol continued to pour out in uneven spurts and flowed away, through the crack, into the bedroom. But the sound was drowned by the noises the man was making.
'Yes!' the man screamed. 'Yes, yes, yes!'
Ross retreated through the kitchen to the door. He waited as long as he dared, then tried to pull the matches out of his pocket.
This was the one bit he hadn't rehearsed. His rubber gloves stuck in the lining of his trousers.
Don't do this to me.
Panicking badly now, the stench of petrol all around him, he ripped off the glove, dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the box. As he opened it several spilled on the floor. When he knelt to pick them up, all the rest emptied on the floor also.
He heard a shout of surprise. 'Hey? Jesus — what the hell —'
A door crashed open. Footsteps.
No time to look up, no time to do anything except seize one matchstick, strike it, toss it.
WWHHHUMMMPPPPPHHHHH.
The speed at which the line of flame travelled across the floor took him by surprise. He looked up in time to see, for one fleeting second, a naked man standing in the hall, and in the next instant, with a truly terrible cry of pain and fear, the man was engulfed in a brilliant yellow and green fireball.
The crying was even worse now, terrible, desperate, agonised howls. And suddenly there was another voice, a woman screeching, hysterical with fear.
Ross allowed himself one moment to savour the cries and screams as if they were music. Then he snatched up his rubber glove, slammed the door shut behind him, turned the key, pulled it from the lock and, clutching it in his teeth while he pulled on the glove, sprinted down the fire-escape.
He clambered over the back wall, dropped on to the cement foundations of the construction site, and immediately scrambled down a ramp into what would eventually be the underground car-park. There was enough of an orange glow from the streetli
ghting outside for him to see reasonably well in here.
His bike was waiting, tucked carefully behind a cement-mixer where he had left it. He jumped on it, keeping the lights off for the moment, and pedalled furiously across to the far side, up the ramp and out into the busy main road.
When he considered himself a safe distance away, he stopped and switched on his front and rear lamps. Then he pedalled on at a relaxed pace, just part of the night and of interest to no one.
It was a full five minutes before he heard the first siren.
26
'Mr Ransome, I simply fail to understand how you cannot see it,' Lady Geraldine Reynes-Rayleigh said. 'Absolutely everyone else can. Absolutely everyone.'
Each syllable was articulated with slow, tortuous precision, underpinned with disdain, as if she were criticising a servant who had only the most rudimentary grasp of the English language, and as if the act of speaking to him was something she considered utterly beneath her.
She had the kind of body a lot of women would kill for — especially at her age: tall, willowy, with a terrific bust, whose shape and preservation she owed to her previous plastic surgeon, equally terrific legs, which she owed to her genes, and sensational long blonde tresses, which, her tell-tale black eyebrows told the world, she owed to the skills of her hairdresser.
Internally, her biological clock had just ticked up fifty-two, but the press gave her age as forty-seven. Externally, her previous surgeon had nipped, tucked and liposuctioned away a good twelve of those years. Not many thirty-five-year-olds managed to look this good, Ross thought. Shame surgery couldn't do anything about her personality.
Poised on the armchair in his office, she was power-dressed in the way that only the very rich can. There was something about truly expensive clothes that set them and their wearers apart from lesser mortals, and Lady Geraldine Reynes-Rayleigh was a whole planet away from lesser mortals. He had long tried to get Faith to have this kind of air about her, but it didn't seem to matter how much money he spent, the exact formula had always eluded him.
'I came to you, Mr Ransome, because everyone I spoke to said you were the number-one surgeon in this country,' she continued.
The true reason she had changed surgeons, Ross knew but did not reveal to her, was that her previous surgeon, a brilliant man called Nicholas Parkhouse, had found her so impossible that he had refused to operate on her again. Ross had usually been able to cope with troublesome patients, but he was bitterly regretting having taken this one on.
It was the Reynes-Rayleigh name that had seduced him. She had fast-tracked herself from page-three bimbo to A-list socialite through three marriages, each to a richer, better-connected man than the last. Her current conquest, a shrewd, flamboyant baronet, had been ranked in the top one hundred richest men in the Sunday Times, and the pair were scarcely out of the society columns throughout every season, from polo with the Prince of Wales, to Wimbledon with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, to Glyndebourne with the King and Queen of Norway. She had wanted the face-lift prior to a Hello! photo session at their revamped Palladian stately pile, but she was not happy with the results. It was inevitable, he realised now to his chagrin. She was not a woman it would ever be possible to please.
Perhaps some of the sniping about her that Faith had pointed out to him in the Dempster diary column in the Daily Mail was true. Two or three times he had seen pieces alluding to her reluctance to pay bills, despite her wealth.
'The two sides of my face are simply not even — you absolutely must be able to see this.'
'Lady Reynes-Rayleigh, if you study the Mona Lisa you'll see that her face is asymmetrical, too.'
Plumed horses, parading through the folds of couture silk that encased her neck, rose gently up and down as she spoke. 'She's an old boot, if you want my opinion. I don't find the comparison flattering. You've also made a complete mess of my nose. It's now totally straight and I distinctly told you I wanted the bump reduced. There's no way I'm going to pay you for this mess, so perhaps you would like to tell me precisely what you intend to do about it?'
It took a supreme effort of self-will to restrain himself from being rude to her. The woman was being unreasonable: he had done a superb job — there was simply no comparison with how she had looked previously to now. But he knew that if he did nothing, or was rude to her, she could do him a lot of damage.
Putting on the charm he said, 'Tell me, how does your husband feel about how you look?'
'I don't think that has anything to do with the issue, Mr Ransome. It's how I feel.'
Biting his tongue, 'Of course.'
'So what do you intend to do about it?'
Raising his hands in the air, he said, 'Are you prepared to face another operation?'
'I'm not a coward, you know. Do I look like a coward? With my asymmetrical face?'
'Of course not.'
'A second operation is going to be most inconvenient, you understand that, don't you?'
'And there are risks with every operation, Lady Reynes-Rayleigh — I do need to point that out.'
Acidly, she retorted, 'I've just said I'm not a coward, but I do have an extremely full diary. And I will expect you to compensate me for any extra expenses I incur, naturally.'
Calmly, he said, 'Can you give me some indication of what you expect these to be?'
With a smile that could corrode steel she replied, 'My solicitors are preparing a list for you.'
27
The service-station canopy seemed to be acting like a wind tunnel. Faith, head bowed against the stinging pellets of rain, stood beside the Range Rover. The pump seemed slow today as she watched the litres tick up on the dial, the rain coming at her from every direction, rattling against the worn wax coating of her Barbour, gluing her jeans to her legs and drenching her hair.
Alec, strapped into the back seat, waved at her and made a silly face. She made a face back. He leaned over, squishing his nose up against the window, then let his tongue loll like an imbecile. She laughed. You're such a wonderful child, she thought. You're funny and smart and kind and innocent. I want to get you away from Ross before he makes you arrogant, rude and cruel like himself.
For the past twenty-four hours, since almost collapsing with Oliver Cabot yesterday, she had been feeling a lot better, physically and mentally. She'd got her appetite back last night, had been hungry this morning and again at lunchtime, wolfing down a vile hamburger and soggy chips at the amusement park with Alec and his two friends, whom she had just dropped off at home. It was the first time since coming back from Thailand that she'd really felt like eating. She was hungry again now, craving something sweet.
Maybe Dr Ritterman was right, after all, and this bug was clearing up of its own accord.
The nozzle clicked. Fuel roared up inside the neck of the fuel tank and, moments later, gushed out and ran down the side of the car. She hung up the nozzle, closed the petrol cap, then ran into the warmth and shelter of the service-station shop.
There was a queue for the cashier. Before joining it, she stepped over to the magazine racks and allowed herself the luxury of a few moments' browsing. Magazines were one of her weaknesses, and she loved cookery and interior-design pages in particular. She finally selected the new issues of Good Housekeeping, Country Homes and Hello!, then picked up a bag of Maltesers for herself, a tube of Smarties for Alec, and joined the queue, just ahead of a harried-looking man in a suit.
Her least favourite attendant was on duty today: a slight, cocky youth, of no more than twenty, with greasy blond hair backcombed into a quiff, an ear-stud, designer bum-fluff, and a sly grin.
He seemed to be taking an age with the people in front of her, and she was miles away when her turn came.
'Pump?'
She stared at him blankly, momentarily forgetting where she was.
'Pump?' he repeated, more loudly than was necessary.
Now she got it. You know which pump, you little twerp, you know my car. I've been filling it up here twice a week
for God knows how long. All you have to do is look out of the window. This was his little game, she knew, flexing the only power he had.
Glancing out of the window, and taking her time, making him wait, paying him back (sad, but it felt good), she said, 'Number four.' She put the magazines and sweets on the counter, then glanced up at a poster for the national lottery. It had been a while since she'd bought any tickets — Ross disapproved.
'Sixty-eight pounds seventeen.'
She handed him her Mastercard, and looked back at the poster, tempted. She'd won ten pounds a few times, and was often lucky at raffles. But she didn't want to buy any tickets here, from this creep: they'd be jinxed.
And the creep was having difficulties. He was swiping her card for a second time now. Then he studied the display on the machine and suddenly thrust the card back at her. 'Not valid.'
She stared into his sly little eyes. 'Not valid? What do you mean?'
'Your card's not valid.'
Angrily snatching it out of his hand, she said, 'Don't be ridiculous.' Conscious of the queue of people behind her, she checked the expiry date. The card had over five months to run. Handing it back to him she said, haughtily, 'The card's valid. I think you have a problem with your computer.'
Without a word, he took back the card, picked up a phone and dialled. She felt a tug on her coat and looked down. Alec was standing there, clutching a Beano. 'Can I have this, Mummy?'
'I told you to stay in the car, darling.'
He screwed up his face, imploringly. 'Yes, I know, but can I have this? I haven't got this one. Please?'
'Not valid,' the attendant said again, loudly enough for everyone to hear. 'Must be past your credit limit.'
Could it be? She racked her brains. Impossible. There was a ten-thousand-pound limit on the card and she'd spent only a few hundred pounds on it so far this month. 'No way.' Faith put it down angrily, then rummaged around in her purse and pulled out her platinum American Express card, which she rarely used, and handed that to the attendant, feeling some of her dignity restored.