Was it possible that the mystery of their brother’s disappearance united the sisters together in some abnormally close fashion?
And where did Geoff Krimble fit into all this? Was he an innocent fall guy? A non-participant? An amused, sceptical bystander? What was his take on this? Did he sympathize with his wife’s delusions? Was he angry with her – or was his anger directed at the men she was claiming to have fathered his children with? Did he share Charles Tissot’s verdict – that Heather was ‘nuts’? And because she was a psychiatrist and psychiatrists ask questions, Claire asked herself one now. Was it possible that Heather’s obsession with other men was masking some aberration in her husband’s behaviour? Was Geoff Krimble abusive? Was that why his wife wanted to deny his part in the fathering of her children? Was she seeing this from the wrong angle? Rather than an accusation against other men, was this primarily a rejection of her husband?
What was his take on all this? His opinion would surely be of significance. She added him to the list. Maybe when she met Mr Krimble she would understand all.
She put her head in her hands. To sift through all this, sort out truth from fiction could be a challenge. Lying, so far in the shadows, were allegations that could stick like a burr to Charles even if the child proved to be Geoff’s. And once the child was born and its paternity established, what would be its fate? Would it, too, die?
She closed the notes.
It was late by the time she left Greatbach, and she was too tired to do her usual run or spend an hour at the gym. By nine o’clock she had showered and, in her pyjamas, she was watching something so banal on the television that she couldn’t remember the next morning what it was she had watched.
TEN
Saturday, 20 June, 12.30 p.m.
She had spent the morning at the hospital catching up on her reports, but by lunchtime she was free to meet up with her friend, Julia Seddon, and her partner, Gina Aldi. Julia was an old friend from medical school who was now a GP in Hanley, the city centre of the five towns. Her partner, Gina, was the diametric opposite of the pedantic, scientific doctor. She was an artist from the Potteries who was making a name for herself with some contemporary designs and pottery sculptures, mainly of fantastic animals derived purely from her imagination. Animals with tusks and long, snaking bodies, horses with beaks, birds with fabulous and frivolous crests like models’ hairstyles, fish with hooves. They were instantly recognizable as her work. Claire had bought one, a sheep with a shark’s fin on its back. It made her smile whenever she looked at it, which was possibly the key to Gina’s worldwide success. The model stood on the windowsill of her study, at the back of the house, overlooking the garden and its ancient apple tree.
But for all their obvious differences, her two friends were similar, both full of enthusiasm, energy and sparkle and always up for a long, chatty lunch. It was a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon which was dull and rainy – nothing like the flaming June which now seemed as much a fantasy as one of Gina’s sculptures. Her friends had been hugely supportive when Grant had disappeared and equally so when he had reappeared, like some genie with magical powers.
They had met at a small Italian restaurant in the centre of the city and settled down for a good old chinwag. The restaurant stayed open between lunchtime and dinner so there was no need to rush. They always had plenty to talk about. So many subjects, except one. Even though Julia was another doctor, Claire avoided mentioning Charles Tissot, although all those years ago she had talked to Julia about the encounter in his car. Then, she had desisted from giving advice, merely listening, and when she had come out later Claire thought she understood why. The subject of hetero sex was foreign to her.
But the rules on confidentiality were unambiguous and protected the patient, even when the confidant was another doctor. Sharing medical information with a colleague was only justified if the colleague had a medical interest. Under the law of need to know.
So instead they chatted about a holiday she was wondering about, a brief tour of classical Spain, the Alhambra, Seville (Carmen!), Cordoba and the famous cathedral/mosque. The minutes ticked away into hours, the conversation meandering like a stream, through meadows and fields, deep cuts and dark valleys, galloping across plains and climbing mountains. None of them was driving home. Claire planned to take a taxi home. Julia and Gina lived within walking distance of the restaurant so they had no need to watch their alcohol intake, and a bottle soon replaced the one they had just emptied.
Gina’s talk was all of designs she was filching from Japanese folklore. Kappa, the water monkey. Heikegani, the crab with a face of a dead Samurai. Kasa-obake, adapting her themes to larger objects, goldfish bowls and garden seats and incorporating contemporary design. And often she’d slip images in of the Potteries, the Portland Vase, a piece of Portmeirion pottery, some Spode or Wedgwood. Bottle kilns, barges, even the red-and-white stripes of Stoke City Football Club. She delighted in making her clients search for the connection with her city.
Her wares were a unique combination of the contemporary, angular, bright, imaginative, bold colours similar to Clarice Cliff’s traditional design. They were instantly recognizable as her work even before you saw the signature on the bottom: Gina Aldi.
As Julia listened and Gina talked, Claire watched her silver hoop earrings sparkle in the light, flashing in the tangle of her tumbling dark gypsy hair. The contrast between the two had never been more marked. Gina was all animation while Julia was quieter, more restrained, very polite. While Gina was all about movement, Julia was still. And because she too was a medic, she tended to ask more probing questions about Claire’s work.
Claire kept off the subject of Charles Tissot’s current little problem; she didn’t feel she knew or understood enough of Heather’s case to make it interesting – even without mentioning her name. But Riley Finch proved an animating topic which interested all of them, even Gina understanding the potential for further trouble. And the three of them touched, in a sympathetic way, on Arthur Connolly’s crime and the position of a male dominated by a female, Julia and Gina laughingly making the comment that this would be a problem they would never experience. There were plenty of other subjects to keep the conversation rolling. And then, halfway through the meal, the conversation having been intermittently lazy and desultory at times, and at others animated and noisy, with them pausing only to refuel with food, Julia’s gaze wandered across to the other side of the restaurant. Mid-sentence, she stopped speaking, her face frozen, her pasta slowly sliding off her fork. She was looking over Claire’s right shoulder out into the room, focusing on a spot near the door at some newcomers.
Her eyes widened. She glanced at Claire, alarmed. ‘Gosh, Claire,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that your ex?’
Something cold crept up Claire’s spine. She didn’t want to turn around. Her head felt as though it was in a vice. Julia gazing, transfixed, Gina watching her, silent now and immobile. When Claire did finally turn her head, she was looking straight into Grant Steadman’s dark eyes. As luck would have it, he and his companion had been placed on the table right next to them. She could have reached out and touched his sleeve. Six months had gone by since she had last seen him. It could have been six milliseconds.
It would have seemed puerile to have pretended she hadn’t seen him. She couldn’t have done it anyway; neither could she stick her chin in the air, make a show of ignoring him, pretend it didn’t matter. Besides, it wouldn’t have fooled Julia or Gina – or even Grant – for a moment. Her friends were watching her with a mixture of anticipation and sympathy, mouths open, breath held, waiting for her to …
Do what exactly?
She made her mind up, pushed her chair back and stood up, crossing the two feet between them as he too scrambled to his feet, eyes level with hers. She had just time to take in the fact that he was sitting with a much older woman she took to be his mother.
‘Hello.’ She addressed both, hoping she sounded suitable – detached but friendly. In control
. Unlike Grant, whose eyes were desperate. He leaned into her, gripped her shoulders, brushed her cheek with his lips. She felt their heat, the scratch of his newly grown beard, breathed in his tang, the spice and the soap, the shower gel and shampoo. Felt his presence. His inner circle.
‘God, Claire,’ he said, voice husky. ‘It’s good to see you. So very good to see you.’
‘You too.’ It had come out before she could stop it.
He extracted the full sense, the complete meaning behind the phrase. His eyes widened. ‘Really?’
‘Ahem.’ The splinter of sound broke their contact and seemed to rouse him.
He moved away. Dropped his arms. Actions which told her everything.
‘Sorry. This is my mum.’
The woman was eyeing her with curiosity and disdain. She gave a small jerk of her head. She was in her fifties, by the look of her, and had short hair, skilfully streaked blonde and beige. She was well made up but thin, with an aged complexion emphasized rather than disguised by an overambitious attempt to disguise it, heavy kohl around the eyes and a sharp, citrus-orange lipstick. She looked so unhappy, with sagging eyes and a guarded expression, that Claire could hardly imagine the expression ever fading. It was too deeply scored by chronic anxiety, presumably rooted in her daughter’s poor health.
‘This is Claire.’
The woman’s expression turned even more hostile and she said nothing but regarded her as though she was an arch enemy. Claire managed to return a cool response and an attempt at a smile. ‘Mrs Steadman. Hello.’
Her eyes searched the room and returned to Grant. ‘And Maisie?’
The subtext was always there. Maisie, your little baby sister with cystic fibrosis, the sister who needed you so much more than I. The sister who manipulated you into abandoning me, the sister who finally replaced me. Well – she won in the end, didn’t she?
Her eyes scanned the room again before returning to a direct gaze into Grant’s pirate eyes. Where was she?
‘Shit, Claire.’ Grant’s eyes were amazing; very, very dark, with almost girlish long lashes but unmistakably heavy masculine eyebrows. She knew from experience it could be hard to resist those eyes. Eyes that could reflect every single emotion, search so deep into your soul that he found dark places hidden to all – except him. She felt any resistance, hostility, resentment tumble straight into those eyes. And die. His mouth was equally expressive: hard, soft, full, tight, generous, angry, mean, pink, moist, dry. She knew that mouth in all its phases. She lowered her gaze.
‘Maisie’s in hospital.’ His voice was husky, while his mother’s face sagged further. ‘We just came back to collect some of her stuff. Stuff she wanted.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She put a hand on his arm, watched his mother’s shoulders stiffening even at this tiny gesture. ‘Is she very bad?’
‘They’re talking about a heart and lung transplant. She’s been on the list for ages.’ He made a weak attempt at a joke. ‘No one seems to want to give theirs up.’
As a joke, it was feeble. The weakness behind it was breaking her heart. As a tragedy for a young woman loved by her mother and brother, it was terrible. Whatever Claire resented about Maisie’s domination and manipulation of her older brother, sending him on a guilt trip every time he had a life which didn’t put her centre stage, Maisie was still a young woman. Not yet thirty but had a diagnosis which had meant a lifetime’s ill health and a shortened life expectancy. Maisie had suffered more procedures and courses of antibiotics than most people would have if they lived for three hundred years.
‘Grant, I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. Well.’ He glanced at his mother. ‘We’re hoping …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. His mother had given up trying to be brave and had dropped her face into her hands. Not before Claire had seen that her heavy black kohl was smudged, trailing dark, miserable rivulets down her cheeks.
She turned back to Grant. ‘If there’s anything …’
He simply stared at her. The silence between them extended until it became thick and embarrassing. Claire struggled for something to fill it. Grant seemed incapable. He half turned towards his mother, who was now sitting very still, rigidly watching them. He moved in to speak very softly in her ear. ‘They need me, Claire. And I need you.’
There was not a word in the entire English language suitable for a response. And now he had said it, Grant, too, was silent.
Then he did manage something. He stroked his chin and made an attempt at a mischievous grin. ‘Do you like the beard?’
It was that watered-down look of mischief that finally did it, that reminded her of all that had been good between them. It would be this that she would remember. People talk about someone being a shadow of their former self. This Grant was not so much a shadow as a photographic negative. Light and shade in the wrong places.
She backed away. ‘It was nice to see you.’ It was all she could manage. Nice … to finish on a cliché. She could have bitten her tongue off. And that was that. Encounter over. She backed away, returned to her table and two friends, and behind her she heard him sit down again and muttered conversation between him and his mother.
End of. Except she had read the look in his eyes. Despair. Pleading. They need me, Claire. I need you. She needed him. Simple as that. She could not live her life without him, whatever the difficulties thrown at them.
The encounter had put a dampener on the afternoon, prevented it from stretching into a gay evening. The sparkle had gone. The rest of the evening was subdued. Julia had always been a sensitive person. She regarded Claire and said nothing, except she stretched her hand across the table and touched Claire’s. ‘Darling.’ That was all she said.
And Gina’s smile added her sympathy.
ELEVEN
Monday, 22 June, 8.45 a.m.
She was glad to return to work on the Monday, put distance between herself, Grant and his poison ivy family and start focusing on the case in hand. Heather.
How was she going to tackle it when no one was quite speaking the truth and every step could mean trampling on the eggshells of Charles’s career and her own previous experience, which she had largely blocked out – until now?
So, sitting in her office, nibbling the nail of her index finger, she started to plan her campaign. To get at the truth, she needed to speak to three people.
Top of the list was Heather’s enigmatic sister. Alone.
Then there was the acquiescent husband, Geoff. She couldn’t quite get a handle on this man, who appeared to have married his wife when she was already pregnant before tolerating her claim that her next child was not his but the result of an extra-marital liaison … with the window cleaner. A claim which was proved wrong. And now a third – again not his but the result of yet another affair. Was he so docile, so passive? Two children had already died. How had he taken that? Just as passively? Perhaps Geoff’s take on this bizarre situation would shed some light on Heather’s current claim.
And then there was Heather herself. Claire realized from a sudden, sharp pain in her finger that she had bitten her nail right down to the quick. Was Heather mad, bad, dangerous to know, or simply a sad fantasist? Did she really believe that Charles was desperately in love with her? Claire shook her head. Certainly she didn’t appear to fit neatly into the little box of ICD classification of mental disorders. The edges were too ill-defined.
She decided to take a step or two further into the strange world of Heather Krimble, so she added two more names to her list: Timothy Cartwright, boss of the Cartwright Printing Company, alleged father of Eliza Krimble and Sam Maddox, window cleaner, proven not to have been Freddie’s dad.
Her pen hovered over her list. It was incomplete, one name still missing – perhaps the single most important name. She realized she was reluctant to add it.
Was there any point questioning Charles about this? Something inside her shrank from any further contact. But even thinking about him had led her in a different direction. What had actually happened
between him and his ex-wife to make him so apprehensive of a meeting between the two women? An exchange of confidences?
She smiled at a memory. Claire. Will you ever stop asking questions? Will you ever get all the answers?
Grant.
She squared her shoulders. She had to start somewhere. So she picked up the phone and asked Rita to make an appointment as soon as she had a free space.
Tuesday, 23 June, 10.30 a.m.
Ruth Acton turned up on time, neatly dressed in what looked like her work clothes, an A-line black skirt modestly touching her knees and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She had her sister’s rather prissy air as well her pointy little chin, but Heather was prettier. In her case, the pointy little chin nicely finished off a heart-shaped face, but the same feature in her sister made her look sharp and spinsterish. She wore little make-up except a tangerine-coloured lipstick that drew the eyes as she talked, changing shape to form words. She carried a large black handbag from which she produced a small notebook and a biro and laid them, closed, on the desk in front of her. There was something both businesslike and threatening in the gesture. It felt like a lawyer’s action, waiting to record the interview verbatim.
Claire greeted her warmly and thanked her for coming. But she soon realized that sisterly loyalty was winning. Ruth was careful in choosing her responses, guarded in what she said and her eyes were wary and suspicious throughout.
Claire began by laying her cards down on the table, mentally flipping them over one by one as she covered her points.
‘We need to get to the truth of your sister’s account,’ she began. ‘I’m sure you understand that there are some serious implications, particularly for Mr Tissot, if her account is reliable.’
Ruth stared back at her, hesitating before she responded. ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Doctor. Mr Tissot and his career are not the issue here. My sister is not a liar.’
The Deceiver Page 9