by Peter James
Next there was another circular letter, this time from the husband of her closest friend, Sammy Harrison, whom she was having lunch with today. John had entered a charity bike ride in Uganda in aid of Children In Need and a sponsorship form was enclosed. She set it to one side to ask Ross how much they should give.
Then, changing her mind, she picked it up again. Sod it, she thought, glancing down the column, looking at the rest of the donations and picking up her pen. I'm going to decide.
She rubbed her eyes, then dabbed them with her handkerchief. The clock on the wall said twenty to ten. Friday today. Ross would be home tonight, and Alec was going to stay the weekend on the Isle of Wight with a schoolfriend. She had mixed feelings about that. She was glad that he was going to be distanced from the bad atmosphere between herself and Ross, but she missed Alec when he was away. And it meant she was going to be stuck with Ross on his own. It was a long weekend. Bank Holiday. Three whole days.
She opened the local paper and turned to the back of the property pages, looking at the classifieds for rental properties. The two-bedroom flats started at around eighty pounds a week, and she knew that even in grotty areas of London, they would be far higher than that. She was going to need around ten thousand pounds a year just for rent and food for herself and Alec, and she needed to run a car on top of that, plus all the other costs of living.
Hopefully she could get work in catering, but it would be a struggle on their own. A struggle, yes, but better than this existence.
If Ross would let her go.
And if he wouldn't let her go freely she would run away with Alec. Ross could argue for custody on the grounds of her depression, but now that he had hit both her and Alec no court would allow that.
She could hear Mrs Fogg, in a spare room now. She went up to her room, took out her contact lenses and put them into the solution in their container. When she put them back in, her eyes felt just as raw. It was probably from tiredness because she was barely sleeping, worrying about Ross and about what was wrong with her.
It was now three days since Oliver had examined her, and he'd told her it would take time to get the results from the blood tests. She thought about him constantly. Nothing had happened between them, yet she missed him. Badly, dangerously.
She picked up the cordless phone and, walking downstairs, dialled Dr Ritterman's number. His secretary answered, her usual cold, defensive voice.
'It's Faith Ransome speaking, I'd like a word with Dr Ritterman, please.'
'You rang yesterday.' The woman made it sound like an accusation.
'I did, and he still hasn't rung me back. I came to see him over a fortnight ago and now I want the results of my tests.'
'Dr Ritterman is very busy. He will be in touch when he has some news.'
'That's not good enough,' Faith said. 'I expect my doctor to return my calls. I'd like to speak to him now, please.'
'I'm afraid he's with a patient and cannot be disturbed. I'll tell him you phoned.'
'Look, I'd —'
But the woman had hung up.
Faith stared furiously at the receiver, on the verge of redialling, when Rasputin raced out into the hall, barking. Moments later the front doorbell rang.
Faith's heart sank. Felice D'Eath stood in the porch in a bright yellow sou'-wester, looking as if she'd just climbed out of a lifeboat. She was clutching an ornate bottle of extra virgin olive oil in one hand, a basket of pot-pourri in the other, and had a large pink teddy bear crammed under her arm. The tailgate of her Mercedes estate was open, piled high with another load of tombola prizes for the NSPCC ball.
'Beastly weather. You were expecting me, weren't you? Ten o'clock, you said?'
Faith had forgotten. As she helped unload the contents of the car, and lugged everything into the upstairs room where they were storing and labelling the prizes, Felice reminded her twice, and then a third time for good measure, that it was less than six months to the ball, and Faith silently wondered where she and Alec would be in six months' time.
She knelt amid a sea of prizes, most of them tat, being the dutiful committee woman, labelling each in turn under the command of Felice, who was reading out the entire list of all five hundred gifts and their donors.
'Christ, I pity anyone who wins this,' Faith said, holding up a prancing china horse with a clock growing out of what appeared to be a tumour in the side of its stomach. 'Who on earth donated it?'
'I did.'
Faith felt her face burning with embarrassment.
'My first husband gave it to me — I've never been able to stand it.'
Smiling with relief, Faith said, 'I didn't know you were married before.'
'I got rid of him ten years ago. Best thing I ever did.'
'Tell me more, Felice,' she said eagerly. Suddenly the woman was interesting.
With her wet-weather kit removed, in a jumper and baggy black trousers, the other woman looked small and vulnerable. But her expression was tough and proud. 'Jonathan was a bully, and one day I decided life was too short and I wasn't going to put up with him any more. I packed, collected the children from school and left home with them while he was away at work.'
'And?'
'He came after me, made my life hell for a couple of years, poisoned the children against me, beat up my boyfriend. But,' she shrugged, 'in the end it was worth it. Sometimes in life you have to stand up for yourself. You're lucky if you have a good marriage. You and Ross seem happy together.'
Faith smiled thinly. 'I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies. At least he never bought me one of these.'
44
Ross came through the front door with a huge smile. He barely acknowledged Rasputin's greeting, just scooped Faith into his arms and held her tightly. 'Faith,' he said. 'My darling. My darling.'
Faith wondered if he had been drinking, but there was no smell of liquor on him, just the faintest antiseptic redolence of operating theatres.
'God I missed you,' he murmured. 'I love you so much, Faith. I want to stop staying up in London, we shouldn't be apart so much. I miss you terribly. Do you miss me?'
A hesitation in her voice too faint for him to notice. 'Of course I do.'
Rasputin, upgrading his efforts at getting attention from his master, launched a volley of deafening barks.
'Of course? Only of course? Don't you miss me terribly, wildly, every second of the day?'
Uncertain where this was leading, she said, 'You know I do.'
He kissed her again. 'Do I? How do I? You don't ring me to tell me how much you're missing me. You used to — do you remember? — when we were first married?'
Tiptoeing through a minefield, knowing his mood could swing at any moment, she eased his coat off his shoulders, and said, 'You don't like me calling you at work — you always sound so annoyed when I do, these days.' Then she walked to the cloakroom and hung up the coat. When she came out, Ross was sifting through his post on the hall table.
Casually he said, 'I fixed that problem with your credit cards. They should all be OK now.'
'They are.'
'You booked the tickets?'
'Yes.'
'Life Is Beautiful?'
'You said you wanted to see it.'
They had missed it on previous occasions when it had shown. Now it was on for tonight only at an art-house cinema in Brighton.
'Where's Alec?' he said casually.
'Gone to the Isle of Wight for the weekend with the Caiborns.'
His face fell. 'That was this weekend?'
'Yes.'
'I'm not going to see him? At all?'
'He'll be back early next week.'
'I don't remember agreeing this.'
'We discussed it,' she said.
'I'd never have agreed to it. I don't see enough of him as it is — I mean, I don't mind if he goes out for a day or something, but a whole long weekend? I miss him — don't you understand that? I really miss him.'
'I miss him too.'
He slipp
ed his arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck. 'At least I have you to myself for the whole weekend. You know something? I fancy you even more now than I did twelve years ago — that's got to be a good sign, hasn't it?'
She felt only revulsion for him, wanted to push him away, but she squeezed him back. She could feel his hardness pressing against her, and could see the signal in his eyes. 'We have to leave in a minute,' she said. 'The film starts at eight.'
'I need a quick drink.'
'I'll get it for you,' she said, relieved to have an excuse to ease herself away from him. 'Are you going to change?'
'Yes.'
But instead of going upstairs he followed her into the kitchen, and leaned against a pine dresser, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar. 'We don't have to see the film, if you don't want to.'
'I do want to, very much.'
'We could have dinner somewhere instead.'
'I've paid for the tickets. We agreed we'd eat afterwards.' Faith took a crystal tumbler from the display cabinet, held it against the spigot on the fridge and pressed hard. Several ice cubes were ejected into the glass.
Then she walked across to the cabinet where she kept the whisky bottle in permanent readiness. Ross was now peering intently at the framed photographs ranged along the pine shelves between the willow-pattern china. He picked up one that sat between the gravy-boat and the teapot. It was of the two of them skiing in Zermatt, with the majestic peak of the Matterhorn towering behind them. 'I can remember this photograph being taken,' he said. 'It was our second wedding anniversary. It was freezing up there and you tried taking your bobble hat off but the wind hurt your ears. Do you remember?'
She poured three fingers of whisky. 'Yes.'
He picked up another photograph. 'Mount Vesuvius! I put the camera on a rock with the timer and you said all we'd get was a photo of our feet. Remember?' There was a look of childlike joy on his face.
Handing him his glass, she said, 'I remember we climbed all the way up, and when we got to the top we saw there was a chairlift on the other side.'
He picked up a photograph of Alec sitting on a lawn, hugging Rasputin, and studied it. 'I love you, Faith,' he said, then took a sip of his drink. 'You don't have any idea how much I love you.'
The show of affection was puzzling her. It was unusual for him to be this loving without having been angry first, and she was not sure how to respond. She said nothing.
'How much do you think?' he insisted.
'I don't know. Tell me.'
He drained half the whisky in one gulp, replaced the photograph on the shelf and leaned back against the work-surface. 'To the end of the universe and back — that much.'
He was scaring her. His mouth was smiling, but there was darkness in his eyes.
'Just this universe?' she teased.
Suddenly, as if a switch had been pulled inside him, he seemed barely to hear her. He rotated his tumbler thoughtfully. 'Oh, by the way,' there was a forced casualness in his voice, 'I spoke to Jules Ritterman today. He apologised for not being in touch — some hiccup in the lab. They got some of your samples mixed with someone else's and it took them a while to unravel it.'
'I rang him, too. His secretary hung up on me. I want a new doctor, Ross.'
He continued to stare at his glass. 'No, he's a good man.'
'Ross, I'm not having my doctor's secretary hang up on me.'
'I'll talk to him about her.'
'No, Ross, I'm sorry, it's not about him talking to her. I'm going to find myself a doctor I'm comfortable with.'
'So, anyway,' he continued, as if he hadn't heard her, 'there's nothing to worry about. You do have a bug — one of those tourist things, the locals aren't affected by it, but our western immune systems are susceptible. It's the same thing if these people come over here — they get bugs that we don't because our bodies are used to them.'
'How do I get rid of it?'
He dug his right hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small cylindrical container, which he handed to her. On the exterior was printed in green letters on a white ground, 'Moliou-Orelan (UK) plc. NOT FOR SALE. PHS. 2', then several rows of numbers and letters.
Smiling encouragingly he said, 'Brand new antibiotic — Jules managed to wangle some for me. Guaranteed to nuke any tummy-bug. You take two three times a day with food.'
There was an eagerness in Ross's voice that felt wrong to Faith.
'Isn't it better to take some established antibiotic? I'm not sure I like the idea of taking something new — what about side effects?'
'The ones I gave you last week are an established antibiotic and they've had no effect,' Ross replied. 'Moliou are a great company, good people, lot of integrity, I have total confidence in them. The problem with existing antibiotics is that we've all taken so many of them, they're losing their efficacy and bugs are getting more resistant to them. These are what you need, trust me.'
She unscrewed the lid, pulled out the cotton wadding, then tipped two tiny grey capsules into her palm. Each had a row of numbers printed in bright blue, too small to read.
'Take them with you,' Ross urged. 'Swallow them in the restaurant before we eat. We're going for a Chinese after the film, right?'
'Or a curry, if you prefer.'
'No, you prefer Chinese. We'll go to the China Garden, have their special starter assortment, yes?'
'Great.'
'And after that some crispy duck with pancakes. You love crispy duck, don't you?'
'I didn't think you cared for it.'
'No, I love it!'
He was acting very strangely, she thought. Was he worrying about his behaviour last Friday when he'd struck her? Contrite about it? Or scared? There was nothing he could have picked up from any phone bugging this week — she had been careful to say nothing at all over the phones at home, and her new mobile was now switched off and safely hidden in the cellar. At any moment she was expecting him to start quizzing her about her visit to Oliver Cabot's clinic.
But he said nothing about it, not a word. He was meek as a lamb.
All weekend.
45
Three days was the longest Faith had ever been apart from Alec, and by Tuesday morning, she was missing him dreadfully. They'd spoken every day: Alec was having the time of his life, gabbling breathlessly about multi-coloured sands at Alum Bay, and seeing needles that weren't really needles at all but rocks called The Needles.
From their bedroom window, she watched Ross's car disappear down the drive, her emotions in turmoil. In the hall, Rasputin was barking furiously, the way he always did when his master left the house.
'Quiet!' she yelled.
In the bathroom the radio chattered, but she wasn't listening, her mind was elsewhere. Tightening the belt of her dressing-gown, she went downstairs, her slippers slapping across the flagstones of the cold hall, and into the warmth of the kitchen.
Her breakfast place was laid on the table, the two capsules on the side plate so she wouldn't forget them, not that they'd made much of a difference so far. The bouts of nausea had continued to come and go over the weekend, and she was having a minor one now.
She went down the brick steps to the cellar, switched on the lights and walked past the racks of wines to the far end where the chest freezer sat. Reaching into the space between it and the wall, she retrieved her mobile phone and carried it upstairs.
Rasputin padded into the room, snuffled around, then picked a rubber bone off his bean-bag and began worrying it. Faith yawned. The clock said 5.50.
She switched on the phone. There were three new messages.
Only one person knew the number.
'Faith, it's Oliver, seven thirty Friday evening, sorry I didn't get back to you sooner — I had to wait on some of the tests. Give me a call as soon as you can. I'll be on my home number or my cellphone all weekend.'
'Hi, Faith, Oliver again. Saturday morning. I'm going to be tied up with patients until noon. I'll be on my cellphone the rest of the day.'
'Faith, it's Oliver, Sunday, eleven. I really need to talk to you about the tests as soon as possible. Appreciate it may not be easy for you to call. If for any reason you get through to my voice-mail, leave a message where I can call you back.'
Faith waited until eight before she tried his home number. There was no answer. She tried him on his mobile and left a message for him.
At nine, Oliver rang her back. At ten, she was on a train to London.
46
At ten, the Boeing 737 touched down at Malaga airport in Spain. Ross, carrying his leather briefcase, squinted against the brightness as he stepped out into the humid, kerosene-drenched sunlight.
He followed the other passengers down the gangway and into the bus. Ten minutes later, still carrying only his briefcase, he walked out through the customs area into the din of the arrivals hall, and scanned the sea of jostling placards, kuoni. THOMAS cook. m. a. BANOUN. DR peter dean. avis, DAVID ROYSTON. Then he saw the rather shabby rectangle of cardboard, SNR ROSS ransome.
The man looked like a pimp and spoke no English. He insisted on taking Ross's briefcase, then led him outside to a spotless white Mercedes with a chauffeur behind the wheel.
The pimp opened the rear door for Ross, handed him back his briefcase, then climbed into the front passenger seat. The leather interior of the car reeked of cigar smoke and the temperature felt below zero.
In broken English the driver greeted him. 'You have good flight, Senor Ransome?'
Pulling on his seatbelt Ross said, 'Thank you, it was fine.' He opened his briefcase, removed his mobile phone and the copy of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery, which he hadn't finished reading on the plane, then his sunglasses which he slid into the top pocket of his jacket. Addressing both men he said, 'How is il capitano?'
The driver, easing the car away from the kerb, turned his head with a broad smile, parading an erratic mouthful of gold. 'Senor Milward? Senor Milward very well.'