Kate sighed as she put the hoover away, checked that her father’s lunch was laid out ready for the carer and fetched her coat.
‘That’s me away, Dad,’ she called.
‘All right, love. You just take good care of yourself, now,’ he called back as he always did when she went out to work the mean streets of Halliburgh. Kate was smiling as she drove away. He was very uncomplaining, her dad, however frustrating he found his limitations.
She drove up through sleet that was getting thicker by the minute to Cassie’s cottage. It was certainly picturesque, but she wouldn’t choose to live out here in winter when the smaller roads were so frequently blocked with snow.
At the cottage, she tapped on the door and walked in calling, ‘Hello!’ Cassie must be in the kitchen as usual; Kate wondered if she’d ever sat in the front room since that terrible night. She hurried through it herself.
Cassie was sitting slumped in a chair at the table in the conservatory, her face as bleak as the dreary landscape outside. She turned her head and made an attempt at a smile.
‘Thanks, Kate. I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t even know what there is that you can do.’
‘Make a cup of tea for a start,’ Kate said briskly, switching on the kettle and picking up a tin. ‘And there are some chocolate digestives I brought last time – unless you’ve eaten them all? No, I didn’t think so. Right – now tell me about it.’
Angry colour came into Cassie’s face. ‘Would you believe my mother said nothing – nothing? Not a word, not a look, until she tried to make me go to this party she arranged.’
‘Party?’ Kate was startled.
‘I suppose she’d call it a wake. But none of them cared about Felix, Kate. Most of them didn’t know him at all. It was a public relations exercise to protect The Brand.’
Kate had heard all about The Brand, to which everything else had to be subservient. She brought over the mugs and biscuits and sat down, taking a biscuit herself and putting one in front of Cassie. ‘So what are you going to do now?’
Cassie bit into the biscuit, almost absent-mindedly. ‘I suppose I’m going to get up tomorrow and just keep buggering on. What’s the alternative?’
‘Will you be happy to go on working for your mother, after what you’ve said to me?’
Cassie gave a deep, deep sigh. ‘If I resigned the only person it would hurt would be me. She wouldn’t care.’
Anna Harper, as portrayed by her daughter, had no emotions recognisable as human. Kate had felt the icy edge of her personality herself, but Anna had taken some trouble to keep her daughter close. Affection? Expediency? She wouldn’t presume to know.
‘Are you going in tomorrow?’ Kate was concerned. ‘You’re looking shattered. Should you not take a few days off?’
Cassie gave a short laugh. ‘And do what? Sit here staring out at that?’
The sleet was turning to snow, the flakes thicker, dancing a silent ballet against the grey backdrop of hill and sky. She was probably right to keep herself busy, but when Kate left she was still concerned. The problem was she couldn’t think what else to suggest. She certainly couldn’t see Cassie going to her mother so they could grieve together.
The guests had lingered at Highfield House as if no one quite liked to be the first to go. With the leaden sky the light had been fading even before they left and now it was quite dark. The fire in the stone fireplace was dying, just a few smouldering embers in their pile of ash. A basket heaped with logs stood beside it, but Anna Harper made no move to put them on, and though there were several table lamps casting pools of ambient light she had chosen to sit in a corner where no light fell. The floor-to-ceiling windows that ran right across one end of the room with no curtains to mar their architectural elegance were great squares of blackness.
She didn’t turn her head when the door opened. Marta’s voice said ‘Anna?’ and then, ‘Oh, you are there. At first I didn’t see you. And the fire – it is going out.’ She bustled over to create a base of kindling then logs piled so skilfully that they caught at once. ‘That’s better. I know the heating’s on but you always like to see the flames.’ She turned round.
Anna was sitting on a cream leather sofa with a glass in her hand and Marta frowned. ‘You are drinking all day, cara. How many pills did you take?’
‘Not enough.’
Marta sighed then went over to the drinks cupboard, which was standing open, and poured herself a glass before she came back to sit at the other end. ‘You managed.’
‘I got through it, yes. But Marta,’ her voice was thick with tears, ‘Cassie thinks I didn’t love him. I did, you know I did!’
‘Cassie’s upset. She doesn’t really mean it.’
‘Oh yes, she does, and I know why. I’ve been an odd sort of mother. It’s just that when I’m writing, I’m possessed, as if somehow I’m being forced to write, and I get so absorbed that the books are more real than reality. Real people seem sort of – faded, I suppose, compared to the characters. Real people are, well, out there, whereas they’re in me, part of me, all the time.’
‘I know, I know.’ Marta reached across to pat Anna’s hand. ‘You do what you must do. You were given the gift for a purpose and right from the day when Stolen Fire was published, you have been changing people’s lives, right across the world. How many of your readers have written to thank you? Hundreds – thousands, even! And your children – they have wanted for nothing.’
Anna looked at her, mouth twisted in a cynical smile.
‘Wanted for nothing,’ Marta repeated firmly. ‘But they could not have everything. They wanted all of you – that’s what every child wants – and they couldn’t have it. What does he say – the writer you like? You march to a different drum?’
‘Thoreau,’ Anna said. ‘Oh yes.’ She took another sip of her wine.
‘Anyway, it was all right today, do you think?’
Anna sighed. ‘I hope so. They seemed to accept Cassie not being there.’
‘That was natural – she is a girl who has lost her brother. They were sympathetic.’
‘It’s just we can’t afford scandal, Marta – not right now with so much attention on the book coming out.’
‘Not scandal. Just tragedy.’
‘Yes.’ Anna shifted in her seat. ‘It’s just … well, you know. With this hanging over us …’
‘It’s gone quiet these past two weeks,’ Marta said. ‘We don’t even know what it is all about – we are only guessing. And here we have good security.’
‘Yes of course, it could be anything and we’re just hypersensitive. But whatever it is, how did he know we were here? How did he even know my personal addresses? The last note came here, right after we left Holland Park. I feel he could be watching us at this moment. I feel trapped – it’s like being imprisoned. And how can you go to the police when you’re a criminal yourself? Did you look at the crowd at the crematorium this morning?’
‘Of course. No one seemed strange, but then I don’t know what I look for. Not even if it is him or her.’ Marta leant forward to look the other woman in the face. ‘Anna, you always said you didn’t know. Now, I have to be sure – was that really true?’
‘Oh yes,’ Anna said heavily. ‘You remember – they’d said it would be best, given what I fed them about the father having got custody and taking it away. And I certainly didn’t want to know.’
Marta sighed. ‘Yes. They were right, I think, but now … Could a woman be so cruel, ruthless, like a man would be?’
‘Why not? “More deadly than the male,” you know. And probably more subtle too.’
‘I suppose, maybe. But we must not be frightened into being stupid. It is all about money, I think. Blackmail. You have money. Pay him to go away.’
‘But there’s no contact! How can I, when all we get is these notes, with no way to get back to him? He doesn’t mention money.’ She looked up to meet her friend’s eyes. ‘“You know what you have done”, and then all the guilt and atonement stuff.
Perhaps he is just a random religious nut, but I don’t think so and neither do you. He means to frighten us, and he does. I’m afraid, Marta – I’m so afraid!’ Anna drained her glass and got up to refill it.
Marta got up, determinedly practical. ‘If you drink any more you will not be more brave, you will just be ill. You need to eat. I will make you an omelette, yes?’ She didn’t wait for an answer before she went downstairs to the kitchen.
Anna took her full glass and went to stand by the window, looking out. All she could see was her own reflection and beyond it the reflection of the lamps in the room, dancing on the darkness. Was he, or she, out there looking in? She shuddered, suddenly feeling vulnerable, a target in this lighted room, and fled back to her shadowy corner.
She heard Marta’s footsteps coming back up the stairs, quick footsteps, her shoes clicking on the polished wood floor. Too soon to have made the omelette. With sudden foreboding, Anna swung round.
Marta’s face was pale. She was holding out an envelope addressed to Anna Harper, in block capitals and black ink. ‘On the hall table,’ she said. ‘I only noticed it when I switched the lights on just now.’
Anna took it, though her hands were shaking so much she had to take two attempts to slip her thumb under the seal. She drew out the note inside and Marta came to stand beside her so that they could read it together.
It was computer-printed on ordinary paper, as usual, and it was brief, as all the notes had been. Just two words.
‘Payback time.’
CHAPTER THREE
Kayleigh Burns took an anxious glance at her watch and gave a final polish to the gleaming black marble surface beside the sink in Anna Harper’s kitchen. She undid the strings of the smart black and white-striped linen apron inherited from the previous cleaner, which tied twice round her slim waist, and went to put it away in the cleaning cupboard. It swung open to a fingertip touch and she hung it on the hook below the label marked ‘apron’ in Marta’s firm script.
She gave a final glance round to make sure nothing marred the pristine surfaces: no garish bottle of cleaner, no blue rubber gloves carelessly left out to spoil the chilly purity of the black and white room. It was a kitchen meant for cooking in, not for being the cosy hub of the house, and Marta was apt to behave as if someone had goosed her if she came in and found something out of place – dried up old bat! She wasn’t sure how Anna would react; she wasn’t entirely sure that Anna had ever been in the kitchen. Not that she was ‘Anna’ to Kayleigh. Presumably she was Mrs Trentham, though Marta always referred to her as Ms Harper. Kayleigh hadn’t as yet really had occasion to call her anything.
In addition to her routine cleaning, the caterers had left her with all the clearing-up to do, though she obviously hadn’t been considered worthy of the honour of handing round drinks to the guests. There hadn’t been that many of them but from the sound of it they’d enjoyed themselves all right – lots of chat and even laughter, empty bottles and hardly any canapés left over for her to finish off.
Anna hadn’t been exactly in pieces, then. That figured; Kayleigh hadn’t seen any sign that she’d been devastated when it happened, either. Cold-blooded, she’d been. Showed what sort of mother she was, caring so little about her child.
It made Kayleigh think about her own son. She glanced at her watch again. She’d been hoping to get back to the flat before he got home from school. She was running late; Jason, her partner, was always irritable if Danny interrupted his writing schedule and if Danny found that she wasn’t in he was likely to go straight back out again. She was worried about the company he was keeping; he was a big boy for twelve and some of the kids he ran around with were years older. She knew all too well the sort of stuff they were into and the thought of Danny getting drawn in scared her rigid.
With a last glance around the big room that under the LED task lighting looked as sterile as an operating theatre, Kayleigh hurried out. It fell into darkness behind her as she pressed the switch but as soon as she stepped outside the security lights came on.
There was a soughing wind now and the soft, wet snow was falling fast. It wasn’t lying, though; the tarmac on the area here at the back where she parked her elderly Fiat was glistening black. She drove down to the electric gate and got out to key in the code. The gate swung open obediently and she drove off down the hill. As she took the turn on to the road the car slid just slightly and her heart missed a beat; the road surface was greasy under the worn tyres she couldn’t afford to replace and if she wrote off the car she’d lose her job and that would be a disaster. She got it back without mishap, though, and parked it outside the flat in a side road just off the high street.
‘Hello!’ she called as she let herself in, brushing a few snowflakes off her hair.
There was no reply and her heart sank. She knew not to expect a response from Jason if the writing was going well but by now Danny should be home. ‘Danny?’ she called, going along to open the door to his bedroom. It was empty, if you could describe as empty a tiny room so crammed with random objects. She was forbidden to tidy it, but she picked her way across to collect up the dirty glass and plate with toast crumbs from the top of the pile of stuff on the table by his bed.
In the galley kitchen, almost comical in its shoddiness compared to the one she had just left, a jar of Nutella stood on the chipped red Formica surface with a knife still stuck in it alongside a half-empty two-litre bottle of Irn-Bru with the cap left off. She sighed as she screwed it on again and put it back in the fridge. She couldn’t see the Nutella lid but she washed the knife and put it back in the drawer, her stomach knotting with tension. She should have left earlier but Marta Morelli would be on her case if there was so much as a mug on the draining board.
Where was Danny? There was often a gang of them that met up round the bus shelter and once or twice she’d actually braved his fury and gone down there to fetch him home, but apart from that Kayleigh wouldn’t begin to know where to look for him – and surely they wouldn’t be outside on a night like this?
She hesitated. Was there any point in disturbing Jason to ask if Danny had spoken to him? It would certainly put Jason in a bad mood and he was unlikely even to have seen him. Then she heard him opening the door of their bedroom where he had fitted up a corner as a workspace.
‘Oh good!’ she said. ‘Jason, have you seen Danny?’
He looked at her sardonically. ‘Not, “Hello, love, have you had a good day?” No, I haven’t. I heard him come in and I heard him go out again about ten minutes ago.’
‘Oh. Well, I expect he’ll be back when he’s hungry.’ Kayleigh managed a smile. ‘So – how was your day, then?’
Jason shrugged. ‘Got a bit done. But more to the point, how were things at Anna’s palace?’
‘Busy. People came back after the funeral and I’d a lot of clearing up to do—’
He made an impatient sound. ‘I meant, how’s she taking it? Quite a humiliation for the Queen of Perfection to have to admit to a crackhead son OD-ing. What was she wearing?’ His tone was unpleasant.
‘I didn’t see her.’
‘Of course, with you working below stairs, you wouldn’t. Didn’t come and give you a twirl once she was ready to go? I wondered, you see, if she’d go deep black for mourning or a defiant bright red to pretend it was a service of thanksgiving – unlikely that, I suppose, since she must be pissed off as hell that he did it just before the big launch we’ve been hearing so much about. Do you suppose he did that deliberately, to spoil her fun? She certainly asks for it.’
Kayleigh knew all too well why Jason was bitter. It was a grievance he rehearsed so regularly that she could have recited it in unison with him. The local paper had interviewed him when his debut novel came out and, clearly taken with the notion of two great novelists in one small place, made an unfortunate reference to ‘a young Anna Harper in the making’. The review that had appeared in the Sunday Times the following week had been pitiless and the fortune the book was going to make him h
ad never materialised. Having read The Dark Hunger herself, Kayleigh was fairly certain that it hadn’t been going to anyway – there had been no other reviews – but Jason claimed that Anna had the critic in her pocket and that he’d been a victim of the Harper curse. Her reaction to anyone setting even a tentative toe on her territory was reputedly brutal and he had just been unlucky.
It was all the more surprising that he’d applied for a place on one of the Harper Foundation’s Writers’ Retreat weeks – not only that, but for this particular one, where Anna Harper gave her once-a-year masterclass. It had, of course, been heavily oversubscribed but local applicants usually got preferential treatment. And maybe Anna had felt a bit guilty about that review, but if she thought this would soften him up, she’d another thing coming.
Kayleigh had thought too that he’d object when she announced she’d got the job at Highfield but he’d only said, ‘Might as well get something out of the old bitch,’ and it certainly paid better than anything else around here. She was permanently skint, though he always seemed to have money for whatever he wanted to do. His only reply to Kayleigh’s suggestion that he should get a job was, ‘I have one already. I’m an author.’
He liked to indulge himself with constant gibes like, ‘Do you have to turn your face to the wall and curtsey if you meet Her Majesty on the stairs?’ and there was no doubt he was relishing what had happened.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ she said flatly, then, ‘Danny didn’t speak to you, then?’
‘No.’ Jason’s voice was equally flat.
‘Right. I’ll go and start the tea, anyway.’
Kayleigh went through to the kitchen loosening her dark hair from the ponytail she wore to work and running her hands through the curly mass, still damp from the snow. She rubbed her forehead; a muzzy headache had come on. It usually did when she got home, as if her body was reacting to the poison gas of hostility in the air. Next week, with him mostly along at the Foundation, would be a relief.
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