Rebecca Tanner had been the actress of the moment, adored by the public, feted by the most influential producers, and indulged by the fiercest of film and theatre critics. Talent and beauty in equal measure, a devastating combination. Why she had killed herself at the age of twenty-five, when a successful career was laid out before her was still unexplained, still the stuff of rumour and speculation in the tabloid press. An overdose of barbiturates, combined with a half bottle of gin. No suicide note, no clues given to the desperate unhappiness that had driven her to take the deadly cocktail.
Joanna stared at the photograph and felt unutterably sad. Rebecca had come to the agency straight from drama school. When she came to Hugh and asked him to represent her he had signed her immediately. Unusually, on this occasion, he did not talk it through with Joanna first, though she would have readily agreed with his decision.
A gentle knocking on the door drew Joanna back from the precipice of dark and dangerous imaginings. John Rosen sauntered in, smiling, then he saw the open file on her desk and the smile slipped from his face. "Peter's going frantic looking for that," he said.
"Then he should be more careful where he leaves his things. I've just found it in my desk drawer, though he swears he left it on his desk last night."
"I did." Peter stood in the doorway behind John. John turned at the sound of his voice and the look that passed between them excluded Joanna.
The belligerence faded from Peter's eyes in an instant and he came into the room, hand outstretched to take the file.
The telephone rang suddenly in the outside office. Before anyone could pick it up the answering message cut in and Hugh's voice sounded out. At first it was the same message Joanna had heard on the Saturday she visited the office but gradually the voice changed. The official message subtly altered with Hugh's voice becoming huskier, softer, until Joanna began to recognise the seductive voice he used when they were making love. Only he wasn't talking to her, that was obvious, he was speaking to another woman. He didn't use a name but he laughed in a certain way, he used words to describe what he wanted to do with the woman, words he never used with Joanna. And then the voice told Rebecca that it adored her.
Joanna walked into the reception where Michelle was standing staring at the telephone in open-mouthed astonishment. Without hesitation Joanna pulled the wire from the wall as she had done with her own telephone last night.
"Get the message on the answering machine changed and then come into my office," she said to Michelle. "Now," she added harshly when Michelle didn't move. There was no sign of Peter and John. Evidently they had gone out.
About five minutes later Michelle came in, looking more her normal self. Joanna had already poured out two large brandies. Michelle took her glass, and swallowed the drink quickly. Joanna did the same and poured two more drinks.
Neither of them spoke but both knew what the subject would be when they did. "God knows he was at the flat often enough. But it's all circumstantial. I never had any real proof." It was Michelle who broke the deadlock.
"Her flat?"
"Well, she was using it, but it belongs to the agency. I thought you knew." Michelle had the strength to look directly at Joanna as she spoke.
"It seems there's a hell of a lot that I knew nothing about," Joanna said. "But then I was only Hugh's wife." The bitterness of the words seemed to wash over the office. "So what's happened to the flat now?"
"It's still vacant. Nobody but Hugh went there after she died. We didn't like to..." Her voice trailed off.
"Take the rest of the day off," Joanna said. "I need the keys to the flat, they weren't with Hugh's things."
"In my desk. Second drawer down. Hugh threw them in there a few days before he had the accident."
"The address of the flat?"
"St John Street, in Clerkenwell. The number's on a tag attached to the keys."
Clerkenwell was becoming the latest fashionable area in London to live. Once the hub of the jewellery and watch-making trade, high rates and rents had driven out the craftsmen who had plied their trade in the area for decades. City of London overspill and an influx of Hong Kong businessmen had provided the money, and left the way clear for the developers to move in, sweeping away workshops and small factories, and replacing them with high-priced residential accommodations. As wealthy people moved in to the salubrious studio flats and loft apartments, the whole area had taken on the image of an inner city village. Expensive restaurants and wine bars catered for those who could afford their inflated tariffs and clothes shops selling designer wear were flourishing.
St John Street was in the centre of this cultural revolution. Close to the Smithfield meat market, its once dilapidated buildings had been given a face-lift, and now even abandoned meat-lockers were converted into dwellings for the monied few. The flat lived in by Rebecca Tanner was in one of those very buildings. The front wall of the building still bore the legend, "Smithfield Cold Store", picked out in blue ceramic tiles dating back to the turn of the century, a once functional sign turned into a design conceit by the architect commissioned to convert the building.
Once inside, polished steel and smoked glass banished any echoes from the past. The stairs leading to the upper floors were pink granite, polished to a rich lustre. Joanna slipped the key into the lock of 12b and turned it. She hesitated then, wanting to go into the flat, to see for herself what Hugh and Rebecca's love-nest looked like, yet terribly aware that once she opened the door of the flat she would be stepping into a chasm of emotional turmoil. Grief at death had been transformed into gradual realisation that he had deceived her. The pain and disappointment were a sharp counterpoint to the anger she had been so successful in hiding from herself for so long.
John and Peter had tried to stop her going to the flat. They had returned to the office and were furious that she had sent Michelle home. When she rummaged in Michelle's desk and found the key they had both remonstrated with her, telling her it was a bad idea coming here.
"Hugh would not have approved of this," John said, in a desperate, last ditch attempt to make her see sense.
"Hugh's dead," she said coldly. "There's no point trying to protect him now."
John and Peter had obviously been talking together because when John next spoke it had all the hallmarks of a rehearsed speech. "Look, Joanna, I'll be honest. There was something going on between Hugh and Rebecca. It wasn't serious, I'm sure it didn't mean anything to Hugh and he had ended it weeks ago. He told me he couldn't bear to deceive you any longer."
Hard as his death was to bear, Joanna felt the thrust of his betrayal even more difficult to accept. Death was final, and her grief had a natural cadence to it. His infidelity was just as permanent, but because it was unfinished business between them it would always be there, spoiling the memories, infecting the healing process. "It means something to me. You all knew, and I didn't."
Peter spoke for the first time. "When Hugh ditched her she was devastated..."
"Peter, no..." John tried to intervene.
"...She couldn't cope with his rejection. She blamed you. It's why she killed herself."
Joanna opened the door to 12b and stepped inside. She found herself in a small lobby, tastefully decorated in cobalt blue. An antique coat stand was to the left of the door, hanging from it a Burberry mackintosh and a Hermes scarf. Expensive domesticity that did more than hint at a long-term commitment. The area was lit by a skylight that let in the sun, enhancing the blue of the walls, making them shimmer like water. There were three doors leading from the lobby. Joanna opened one and found herself in the kitchen. Smallbone, hand-painted units, German engineered appliances, marble worktops. Hugh had obviously spared no expense.
Despite the grandeur of the kitchen there was something wrong with it. For a moment she could not decide what it was, then she opened the cupboards. Every conceivable pot and pan, casserole and roaster was there, stacked in neat, clean towers. Some of them still had the makers' labels stuck to them. She opened the refriger
ator and apart from two bottles of tonic water it was empty. The eye-level cupboards were the same. There was not a scrap of food to be seen. The place was expensive but shallow. Designed for living without being a home.
She walked through to the living room. It was a large room with the floor laid to board, maple with exaggerated graining. The furniture was upholstered in white leather, and a wide-screened television dominated one corner of the room. Light came from a huge picture window at one end of the room, which gave a view along St John Street, to the Smithfield Arch and beyond to the rising stately dome of St Paul's Cathedral.
The atmosphere in the apartment was curiously flat. Joanna had no idea what she was expecting. Some clue, perhaps, to the personality of the woman who had stolen her husband, but in the two rooms she had been in there was nothing. They, for all their opulence, were bland, empty shells devoid of character. They had the same unlived-in feeling found when you visit show-houses on new estates. There was no evidence of the high passion that had caused Hugh to deceive her so cruelly.
If there were no clues here to the character of Rebecca Tanner, the bedroom painted an altogether more vivid picture. There were silk sheets on the unmade, circular bed, clothes littered the floor and hung from the backs of the two Regency chairs that stood sentinel either side of the door. The dressing table was cluttered. Pots of cream, tubes of foundation and bottles of nail polish, jostled for space on its crowded surface. Stuck to the mirror, surrounding the glass like a garland, were pictures of Hugh. Hugh relaxing in a pub garden, Hugh in his dinner jacket at a business function, Hugh dressed in sweater and slacks, ready for a game of golf, looking incredibly handsome.
Joanna pulled one away from the mirror to take a closer look at it and somewhere in the room something hissed. Startled, she dropped the picture to the floor and spun around, but the room was empty. There was a bottle of perfume on the dressing table. She opened it and sniffed. It was the same sickly smell of scent that had been haunting her for days.
Something caught her eye in the half-open wardrobe. She pulled the door wide and ran her hand over the soft, silky fur of a mink coat. She lifted the sleeve of the coat and touched it to her cheek, shivering as the feel of fur on her skin reminded her of something that had brushed across her face.
If she needed any more confirmation that Hugh had shared the flat with Rebecca then she found it hanging from the rail in the wardrobe. Two suits that could only be Hugh’s, a casual jacket and several shirts, as well as three pairs of the tan slacks he favoured, hung in silent condemnation of their illicit affair. Clothes he never wore at home, bought exclusively for this life. She lifted the sleeve of one of the jackets and breathed in the smell. It was the perfume that was so familiar to her. She had never smelt it on Hugh. Not on his clothes, nor on his body. Washed clean before he came home, late to her, as though he could cleanse his guilt so easily. Or her anger.
"Oh, Hugh. You bastard," she whispered, and closed the door of the wardrobe, when an awful childish giggle insinuated itself into the room. She froze where she stood, realising what she had anticipated. She was not alone.
She took another step towards the door, and something struck her in the middle of the back, knocking the wind out of her. Breathless she staggered forward to be met by a stinging blow that caught her across the cheek, and sent her reeling backwards.
The silence in the room was an almost tangible force, so complete it weighed down on her like earth upon a grave. With her hand pressed to her face to relieve the pain of the slap, she moved forward again and walked into an invisible cloud of perfume, so rich and dense that she immediately started gagging for air. The fumes were choking, making her eyes stream, blurring her vision.
A faint silky rustling sound broke the silence and she turned towards the bed. The sheets were filling out, rising and pulling as though someone had slid underneath them. She wiped the tears away from her eyes as the sheets started to undulate obscenely. Far from being one figure beneath the sheets it was obvious there were two. A faint moan swelled up to become a scream of ecstasy as the bed started to rock and shake in a steady pulsating rhythm. Gasps of delight, squeals of pleasure, echoed from the walls, and Joanna clamped her hands over her ears to try to shut them out. It was no use. Rebecca was not going to be denied her final performance, and Joanna was the unwilling audience. The figures under the sheets were moving with sensual precision, building slowly towards a conclusion that was inevitable.
Joanna started edging towards the door, and was inches away, when unseen hands gripped her shoulder and threw her to the floor. She crashed against the dressing table, sending bottles and jars tumbling. Her head hit one of the ornate rococo handles, and the sharp metal opened a gash on her forehead. Blood began to pour into her eyes and she pushed herself into a sitting position, wiping the blood away with the sleeve of her blouse.
On the bed the sheets were rising up, draped and creased over a lithe sensuous form, taking the shape of one person instead of two. Joanna could make out the swell of the breasts, the rounded shape of the head. It stood wavering in front of her, as suddenly sharp nailed fingers clutched her throat and dragged her towards the bed. She tried to scream but could not draw enough air into her lungs. Gradually she was pulled to within inches of the draped form, watching in horror as the sheet moulded itself into the perfect form of a woman. She finally screamed as the fingers released her throat and she found herself staring at a smooth silken face. The scream reverberated in her head, mingling with the throaty laughter coming from the shrouded figure.
Then Joanna became aware of something else in the room. Eddying all around her, displacing the cloying stench of perfume was the rich, pungent aroma of cigar smoke. The sheet bucked and twisted and fell back to the bed where it writhed and rippled, rising and falling in frantic motion as another figure took shape beneath it. Joanna looked on helplessly as the two figures struggled with each other, no longer in a passionate embrace. In one was strength with weakness, in the other desperation with courage. It was an erratic dance, not harmonised, not coherent. A low wail of despair began to rise up from the bed, a keening, unearthly screech that shattered the mirror of the dressing table, and made the entire room vibrate. Joanna sank to her knees, her senses battered into submission by the sound. Blood started to trickle from her ears and her head began to swim. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was the empty sheet fluttering down to the floor where it lay still. Joanna pitched forward in a dead faint as the shriek was cut off by a cold and final silence.
Someone else now owns the office in the Grays Inn Road. Joanna sold the agency a few days after the incident at the flat. Peter still works there, though John left immediately the sale went through, and started up on his own in a small room in Shaftsbury Avenue. Michelle married her actor fiancé and is now somewhere with him in central Africa, helping him stage Shakespearean drama's against a jungle backdrop.
With the money she made from the agency, and from the sale of the house, Joanna ended her brief career as an agent and went to live in Cornwall, where she now spends her time looking after three cats, two goats and a pig. When she has some spare time she writes the occasional romance story for women's magazines. It is a full life, but a fairly lonely one. She still misses Hugh enormously, and always will. There is a gaping, empty hole where once was the warmth of companionship and love. She misses Hugh, but will she ever forgive him?
As the mist draws in over the jetty, and over the estuary at the rear of the house, she often asks herself if forgiveness is possible. Always the answer is the same. No, probably not.
PICNIC
Cathy Masters, five years old and growing fast, came running down the stairs into the kitchen of her parent's house, shouting her excitement at the top of her voice. The picnic had been planned for weeks and she had talked about little else for days. Her father, Jack, had got a new job and he'd promised Cathy and her elder sister, Sue, they would celebrate with a picnic. Picnics were the favourite treat for the famil
y. The day had arrived.
"Quiet, Cathy, you'll wake Stripes." Beth Masters scolded her young daughter gently. Stripes was their cat, a neurotic black and white animal, a stray who had adopted the family two summers ago.
"Oh, he's okay, he never wakes up unless he's hungry and wants to be fed."
Cathy ran up to her mother, who was busy putting lettuce into plastic containers, and hugged her through the towelling bathrobe she was still wearing. Beth crouched down beside her daughter and tucked a loose strand of hair back into Cathy's ponytail. Her daughter's hair was blonde, the same colour as hers, but while Cathy's reached half way down her back, Beth kept hers cropped short. Hers had been long when she was younger.
"Stripes is like your daddy...it doesn't look as if he wants to get up today either. Why don't you run up and see if you can persuade him to get out of bed."
"He gets grumpy if I wake him up."
"Not today he won't. Today's a special kind of day. No-one gets grumpy today."
Cathy looked doubtful. "Sure?"
Beth nodded. "Today is picnic day."
"Okay then." Cathy spun round and ran out of the kitchen. Beth stood up and smiled. Child psychologists, who needs them? She returned her attention to the lettuce, only to be interrupted almost immediately by Sue. She seemed to appear in the kitchen from nowhere, demanding to know what all the fuss was about. She was seven and a half, more than two years older than Cathy, which gave her full opportunity to show disapproval of her younger sister's babyish behaviour. She sat down at the kitchen table and poured some cereal into a bowl.
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