by Jenny Harper
‘Yes?’
‘Oh – nothing.’
‘Come on, Molly, what’s eating you?’
‘I saw a notice in the paper. Adam’s uncle has died.’
‘I didn’t remember that he had an uncle.’
‘We didn’t see much of them – George and Adam’s father fell out years ago. But they came to our wedding, and I really liked them. Jean, his aunt’s called.’
‘So?’
‘I was wondering whether I should go to the funeral.’
Lexie put her mug down, frowning. ‘Why? You barely knew him and he’s not a relative any more.’
‘Well, strictly speaking, he is still a relative.’
‘And when are you going to address that, by the way?’
The matter of her divorce was a recurring theme, and as usual, Molly changed the subject instead of answering. ‘I think I’d feel better if I went. I could just slip in at the back.’
‘You could.’
‘Arrive late and leave early.’
‘If you want.’
‘Yes.’ Molly shoved her mug away and stood up. ‘That’s what I’ll do.’
‘That’s sorted then,’ Lexie said, looking amused. ‘Delighted to be able to help you make up your mind.’
The irony was lost on Molly. ‘Yes. Thanks, sweetie.’ She hugged Lexie. ‘Must dash, lots to do. See you later. Oh—’ she turned at the door, ‘—if I think of a name I’ll let you know.’
‘Yes,’ said Lexie, shaking her head and smiling, ‘you do that.’
Forgie Church sat on a hill so that, although small, it dominated the village. Built in the eighteenth century, it was typically Scottish – plain, airy and unadorned except for a magnificent stained glass window depicting the bush burning in the desert. A dark oak pulpit rose forbiddingly above the congregation, who had to sit on uncomfortably upright pews arranged in neat rows.
They’d visited this church, she and Adam, when they’d been planning their wedding.
‘Too traditional,’ Adam had said.
‘Too stuffy,’ had been Molly’s verdict, and they had settled, instead, on having their wedding in the hills.
She could see the top of Adam’s head from where she stood. From here he looked just like his father – slim and upright, the tilt of the head just so.
The King of love my Shepherd is—
How appropriate for Geordie Blair. Molly remembered him as bluff and hearty, a real man of the land. Adam’s type of man, really. A shepherd of sheep, literally.
—streams of living water flow—
—verdant pastures grow—
How clever of Jean to choose this hymn.
She was still looking at Adam, and now she glimpsed a whisk of white. He was blowing his nose. Molly felt the tears flood into her eyes in sympathy and wished she could be beside him.
The church was full. George Blair must have been a popular man. She looked around, recognised a face here and there, and wondered if perhaps Logan had come.
She would slip out after the last hymn. She didn’t want to risk bumping into Adam nor, for that matter, into his parents. She had only seen James Blair once since she and Adam had separated, and though she’d made herself respond to a couple of invitations from Rosemary, she’d found Adam’s mother’s kindness and bottomless understanding ridiculously hard to bear.
There was a tribute by some cousin – not by James, the brother, which was interesting. The minister spoke, but Molly only half listened. Weighed down by an emotion that had hooked itself somehow to the funeral but didn’t really belong to it, she felt sapped of energy.
—Take from our souls the strain and stress/And let our ordered lives confess/The beauty of thy peace—
How lovely those words were. The beauty of thy peace. Molly sat back and closed her eyes. Wouldn’t it be nice to find peace? It had been so long since she had felt at one with herself, and with the world.
Around her, people swayed and sat, the music faded and rose again, dark clothing swirled and heels clicked on the marble floor, but in the warmth of the church, Molly, exhausted, had fallen asleep.
‘Molly? Is it you?’
She woke with a start. Above her, a familiar face was surveying her with some concern.
‘Rosemary?’ she muttered, still drowsy. ‘Oh, goodness!’
She leapt to her feet and looked around. The church was almost empty. The family must have exited down the central aisle, so – thank heavens – she would have been hidden by the congregation. Blood flooded to her cheeks. How had Rosemary ...?
‘I came back in for my order of service,’ Rosemary Blair said, smiling, ‘and spotted someone here at the back. I didn’t realise it was you until ... How are you, Molly dear? It’s good of you to come.’
‘I’m well. I – I must get going.’
But there was no escape. James Blair, returning to look for his wife, appeared at the end of the pew so that both of them now blocked her way.
‘I wondered where you ... Oh. Molly. Hello.’
Adam’s father hadn’t known how to treat her since the separation. She’d only met him once, when he’d come to a corporate dinner at Fleming House, not realising she worked there. That encounter had been stiff, and this looked as though it would be no different.
‘I’m well, thank you. Nice to see you. I really must get going.’
‘Adam’s outside,’ Rosemary said, smiling and extending an arm for Molly to hook hers through. ‘He’ll be pleased to see you.’
She was trapped.
He was standing alone near the gate, a pile of russet leaves whisking round his feet in the breeze. She wasn’t used to seeing him in black. There was something so still about him – as if this death had undermined his equilibrium and he needed to expend all his concentration just to remain upright – that Molly’s throat caught all over again.
‘Adam!’ Rosemary called, her arm tightening its grip.
Adam looked around. Rosemary quickened her pace. And from the opposite direction, Molly was conscious of a slender figure striding purposefully towards her husband. High heels, sharp suit, long dark hair billowing in the wind.
Sunita Ghosh.
Molly tried to stop, but Rosemary was unrelenting.
‘No, I—’ Molly tried to say, but already Rosemary was calling, ‘Adam, look who I found hiding in the church.’
They arrived beside Adam at precisely the same time as Sunita.
Rosemary has engineered this, Molly thought. But why?
‘You all right, darling?’ Sunita murmured, insinuating herself as close to Adam as she could get.
Rosemary said, ‘Wasn’t it kind of Molly to come?’
And Molly and Adam stared at each other, entwined in mutual anguish and embarrassment.
She stopped at The Gables to unburden herself. Once, this place had been just another big house overlooking the Thomson Memorial Park, owned by someone with a shedload of cash. Now it was where Lexie lived with Patrick Mulgrew, and Molly was in here just about as often as she was in her own flat at Fleming House. She loved every inch of it. Patrick, a man of great taste, had made the place into something straight out of World of Interiors, and the paintings on the walls must be worth a small fortune, but somehow it still felt homely.
She heard a distinct snuffle and glanced towards a small speaker above one of the kitchen cabinets.
‘Baby?’
‘Don’t worry, she’ll sleep for a bit longer,’ Lexie said. ‘Was it awful?’
‘You can’t imagine,’ Molly groaned.
They were sitting on stylish chrome and leather bar stools in the kitchen. Usually, she would be drinking in the atmosphere of the place, comparing everything to her own makeshift arrangement in her flat, wishing she could be sitting once more in the kitchen she loved so much in her house in Trinity. Now, she was in no state to admire Lexie’s kitchen or dream about her own. She propped her elbows on the granite counter in front of her and buried her head in her hands.
‘You
’re being kind,’ she groaned. ‘Why are you being kind? You told me I was stupid to go and you were right.’
‘That doesn’t mean I’m pleased about it,’ Lexie said. ‘Tell me.’
‘What?’ The word was muffled.
‘Are you still in love with him?’
Molly’s head came up. ‘No!’
‘Are you sure?’
She stared at Lexie, the blood rushing to her cheeks. ‘Of course not.’
‘I think you are. And I think Rosemary Blair would like you and Adam to be together again.’
‘No! Impossible. After what I ...? No. And anyway, Adam has moved on. And,’ Molly finished with determination, ‘I’m moving on too. London is waiting!’
Lexie nodded and looked at her speculatively. ‘If you say so.’
She should not have come here. Lexie’s probing, after the trauma of the afternoon, was brutal.
‘I’d better go.’
‘You could stay for something to eat. Patrick will be home shortly.’
‘No, thanks.’ She slid off the stool. ‘Tell Patrick I’ll catch up some other time.’ All Molly wanted to do was have a hot bath and slink into bed. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said as she reached the door, ‘I’ve had a thought.’
‘About?’
‘Baby. Her name.’
‘Try me.’
‘Keira. It means “dark haired”,’ Molly explained as Lexie stared at her.
‘It does? Wow.’ She looked at the huge black-and-white photograph of the baby in pride of place on the wall next to the table. The baby still hadn’t lost the down-soft black mop she’d been born with. Lexie smiled – a huge, beaming smile. ‘It’s Irish. It’s pretty. And it describes her perfectly. Thank you, Molly, it’s absolutely right.’
Chapter Twenty One
It took Caitlyn almost two hours to sift through all the client documentation in Mr Keir’s files, and for every second of that time her heart thumped in her chest. What if he came back? What if he caught her in his room? What if he ...?
Despite her terror, she took care to be methodical. Most of the documents could be refiled immediately after she looked at them. Anything more than a couple of years old seemed fine. Anything, that meant, from the period that Mr Robertson had been in charge of compliance. She looked more carefully at every piece of paper dated within the last couple of years.
She found the form that had been the cause of all her problems a year ago, still exactly as she’d seen it last time with the post-dated signature. He never had changed it.
To her horror, she also found more than a dozen forms attributing new client introductions to her. Stilling her shaking fingers with an effort of will, she examined the supporting documentation for each form. There were photocopies of exactly four passports. Each had been used three or four times and the names looked as though they had been deliberately blurred. Most of the second signatures were those of Hugo McPartlin, the youngest partner in the firm. Caitlyn only knew him by sight – an earnest young man with heavy black-rimmed spectacles and a constant frown, as though he were having to concentrate to keep up.
Either Mr McPartlin was part of whatever scam Mr Keir had set up, or he was completely ignorant of it. Caitlyn was inclined to believe the latter.
After a further fifteen minutes, she found a form that had been completed by Hugo himself, and countersigned by Adam Blair. Name of client: Lord Whitmuir. Hmm, very grand. She wondered whether he was a relative of Hugo’s, or maybe a family friend. Mr McPartlin looked like the kind of bloke who’d know posh people. She compared the signature on this form with the ones on the documents Mr Keir had filled in. They were quite similar, but something looked subtly different. If she had to describe it, she’d say that on Mr Keir’s forms, Hugo’s signature looked more ... careful.
By the time she’d been through every file in the new-clients section, she had found eighteen suspicious forms. Now what?
Caitlyn thought carefully. Her name was on many of the forms – what would anyone else finding these documents think? That she was part of the scam, whatever it was?
She had to act. This time, saying nothing was not an option.
Agnes Buchanan was the obvious first port of call, and a bit less daunting to approach than the partners. She knew everything about everything in Blair King and, if there was something amiss, surely she’d know best how to handle it. But Agnes shared an office with the two cashiers who worked under her and there was nowhere secure Caitlyn could think of to put the evidence.
Her mind raced. Young Mr Blair was the obvious person to go to. After all, he was the person who’d asked her to come back. He’d been warm and welcoming on her first day. She didn’t find him as scary as some of the other partners, even though he was the boss’s son.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. Quarter to eight. Malkie must be wondering where the hell she was – she’d been meant to meet him at seven-thirty. But she couldn’t stop now – she had to do something quickly, in case Mr Keir came back.
She picked up all the documents she was sure were falsified and ran to the nearest photocopier. Please don’t come back, she thought as she raced along the corridor. Please don’t come back, her brain repeated as the machine whirred and clicked its way through the papers. It seemed so slow!
The words hammered in her head – please don’t come back, please don’t come back, please, please, pleeeease – until at last she copied the final form, gathered everything together, found a large envelope and pushed all the copies into it. Her heart still pounding, she sealed it, addressed it and ran down the two flights of stairs to where Mr Blair’s office was. The door was locked. Damn! Now what? The carpet almost blocked the gap under the door.
She shoved at it desperately. Once she’d managed to get one edge in, it wasn’t so difficult – the envelope was bulky, but its bulk made it relatively rigid. She gave it one last thrust, and it disappeared from view.
Caitlyn straightened up and heaved a huge sigh of relief. She hurried back to Mr Keir’s office. All she had to do now was file everything again, and wait for developments.
It took endless minutes to drop the eighteen forms back in their places. Finally, she opened the small drawer in his desk and laid the keys inside, turned out the light in his office and ran down the stairs back to her own room. In a frantic flurry of movement, she jerked on her coat, picked up her bag and rushed to the door. Her mobile showed that Malkie had rung three times, but she couldn’t wait to listen to the messages, not now. If she ran, she might just make the next train. She could call him back then.
At last she pushed open the door to the street – and found herself staring right into the eyes of Mr Keir himself.
She jerked back, shocked. ‘Oh!’
‘Still here?’ He looked almost as taken aback as she was.
Caitlyn swallowed hard and croaked, ‘Just leaving. Must run. Have a good weekend,’ darted past him and leapt down the stone steps to the pavement. Was he staring after her? She didn’t wait to look.
They never did get to see the Brad Pitt film. Still shaking when the train pulled in at Hailesbank, Caitlyn sank into Malkie’s welcoming arms and burst into tears.
‘Hey,’ he said gently when the sobs began to subside, ‘he’s not worth it, you know.’
‘What? Who?’
Caitlyn was bewildered. How could Malkie know about Mr Keir?
‘Brad Pitt. We’ve missed the beginning, but if you’re that desperate to see him, we’ll go anyway. Or we can see the whole film tomorrow maybe?’
Despite herself, Caitlyn giggled. It sounded shaky, but it was a giggle nevertheless.
‘It’s not Brad.’
‘I hope you haven’t stood me up for some other bloke?’
He had adopted an expression of mock severity. She shook her head violently.
‘Then it’s nothing that can’t be sorted.’
If only, she thought, but his calmness was soothing.
‘Let’s go somewhere quiet and you can
tell me what’s up.’
Finding somewhere quiet wasn’t so easy. The Murray household would be pandemonium. Malkie was living with two mates, who’d both invited their girlfriends round for a takeaway.
‘And the rest,’ Malkie said, grinning.
‘What about Besalù?’
‘Mm, I could fancy some tapas, but it’s Friday. It’ll be heaving.’
‘Then no-one will be able to hear us. It’ll be too noisy.’
‘True. I suppose we could try.’
They were in luck.
‘We’ve just had a cancellation,’ said Carlotta Wood, Besalù’s diminutive but fiery Spanish owner. ‘It’s that table in the alcove, if you don’t mind being a bit out of the way.’
By the time the crispy deep fried calamares arrived, Caitlyn found that her earlier adrenalin had translated into genuine hunger.
‘’S good,’ she announced, munching the succulent, garlicky squid.
Malkie grinned. ‘Didn’t you have lunch?’
‘That was ages ago.’
Twice she tried to embark on her story, and each time Malkie stopped her.
‘You can tell me when we’re done with eating. This is too good to spoil.’
They finished their favourites – Manchego cheese with orange marmalade, calamares, tortilla, patatas bravas and chargrilled ribs – and a carafe of house red. Caitlyn sat back with a sigh.
‘You’re a miracle, Malkie Milne, do you know that?’
Caitlyn reached out and laid a hand over the large one gripping his wine glass. He let go of the stem and curled his fingers round hers. ‘Ready?’
She nodded. For a moment, the panic threatened to return, but she took strength from his steadiness and drew a deep breath.
‘This is what happened this evening,’ she started.
It took fifteen minutes to outline it all. She spoke carefully, and went back over the ground if he wasn’t following her. Around them, the restaurant buzzed with happy conversation. It felt as if all of Hailesbank was out enjoying itself tonight. The walls of the alcove screened them from the worst of the noise. There was no chance anyone else would be able to hear what they were saying.