“You broke things off with her because you found out she was sleeping with your father. You loved her. You never stopped loving her. But you wouldn’t forgive her.”
“Forgive her?” Gordon shoved back his chair and shook a cigarette from the packet on the counter, then lit it with an angry strike of a match. “Why should I even have believed her? And what difference would it have made if I had? Can you imagine what an aboveboard relationship with Annabelle Hammond would have meant? Do you think I’d have let myself be vetted by her family to see if I passed muster? That I’d have put on a coat and tie and gone to work as her flunkey in the family firm?”
Gemma stood up so quickly that her chair rocked and teetered. “You lied to me. And I put myself on the line for you!”
“Is that what this is about? You and your professional credibility?” His face was inches from hers. “That’s bollocks. I’ve been interviewed by the police before, and they didn’t dance with me in the park, or come alone to my flat. You want me to be honest with you, Gemma, then you be honest with me. You tell me this isn’t about you and me.”
“I … You …” Gemma couldn’t look away from him, and to her dismay she felt herself trembling.
“You can’t, can you?” He was almost shouting now, and he plunged his unfinished cigarette into his barely touched coffee. Sam opened his eyes and looked up at them, his brow furrowed. “Don’t accuse me of holding out on you when you won’t admit that.”
“All right, goddamn it,” Gemma said, her own voice rising. “It’s not about my credibility. It’s not about the job. It’s about whatever this is between us—”
Gordon grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. He stared down at her, and the pressure of his fingertips seemed to burn her bare skin.
In an instant of appalling clarity, Gemma saw that his fair eyelashes were darker at the roots, that he had a small indented scar at the inner edge of his brow from chicken pox, and that he had a crease in his lower lip. She smelled toothpaste and coffee and cigarettes on his breath, and the strong odor of his skin that came from sleeping. Her eyes strayed to the rumpled bed and she saw Annabelle, her perfect body naked, her red hair spread out beneath him … and then she saw herself there, with him—
A phone rang, shrill and nearby. Gemma jumped, heart pounding. She jerked herself free from his hands. It took her a moment to realize that the phone was hers, tucked into the pocket of her handbag.
“Answer it then, why don’t you?” Gordon was breathing hard.
“I—” Gemma took another step back, groping for her bag. “No … I—I’ve got to go.” Her fingers closed on the strap of the handbag. She turned and ran down the stairs as if the devil himself were after her.
“T URKEY,” SAID C OOK . “W E’RE GOING TO have the biggest turkey you’ve ever seen—just let that Mr. Hitler think he can spoil our Christmas,” she added indignantly, wiping the tip of her red nose on her apron.
“And mince pie?” prompted Lewis. He sat at the kitchen table, feet tucked round the chair legs, laboring over an essay for Mr. Cuddy on the historical basis of Italy’s war against Greece.
Although he was no longer awed by the Hall—he ran carelessly up and down the stairs to the first-floor schoolroom where he and William had their lessons with Mr. Cuddy, and he now knocked on the door of Edwina’s drawing room without hesitation—he’d taken to doing his lessons in the kitchen. It was always warm and filled with good smells, and he’d learned he could make the occasional response to Cook’s chatter without really paying attention.
“Don’t you tell a soul about my mince pies,” cautioned Cook. “Why, just the other day I heard that Mavis Cole trying to bribe the grocer for a few sultanas. If word got out, we’d have half the village here begging for a taste.”
Fruit of any kind—fresh, dried, or candied—had become extremely rare, but Cook had a few jars of last Christmas’s mince tucked away in the pantry and meant to make the most of it. Lewis suspected that in spite of her admonition, she’d already dropped a careful hint or two in the village, and was very much looking forward to being besieged with requests. And if he suspected as well that Cook had a soft spot for him, he had no qualms about taking advantage. “That’s because your pies are the best,” he said, looking up from his paper.
“You’re a flatterer, Lewis Finch; you mind yourself,” said Cook, fanning herself, but her face turned just a shade ruddier and Lewis knew she was pleased. “Now what about them onions for your mum? Shall we pack them up nice with some of my marrow and ginger jam?”
“Yes, please. And some of the greengages?” Lewis gave her his best smile.
There had been no question of Lewis’s going home for Christmas this year. Although the attack on Coventry on the 14th of November had marked the beginning of a decrease in raids on London, the bombs were still falling. And even had it been safe, there was not really anyplace for him to go. The damage to the Stebondale Street house had been irreparable; his parents had been finally resettled in a tiny, one-room flat in Millwall, a few blocks from the Mudchute.
The food shortages were even more evident in London than in the country, and he and Cook had conspired to send a few much-prized things, including onions from the Hall’s kitchen garden. His mum had written that she’d seen a lone onion on a cushion in a greengrocer’s window, priced at 6d, and that the sight of it had made her weep with longing.
His mother wrote often, full of news of fires tamed and rescues carried out in the course of her new duties as a volunteer ARP warden. After the chaos of the first few nights of bombing, she’d been determined to make herself useful and had gone about it with her usual practicality. And besides, she’d confessed to Lewis in a letter written on a late night watch, it helped take her mind off worrying about his brothers, who had been posted together to a cruiser in the North Atlantic—and about Cath, who had taken to going to the cinema and staying the night in a public shelter if the warning sounded while she was out.
“Greengages it is,” Cook agreed, twinkling. “Your mum and dad will think Father Christmas came in the post.”
John came in then, his arms full of faggots for the stove, and as he and Cook talked about the business of the day, Lewis went back to his essay. In the past year he had discovered, to his surprise, that he rather liked schoolwork. Mr. Cuddy even made history interesting, and he had determined that the children should understand the war in what he called an “historical context.” They had put an enormous map up on the wall in the schoolroom, and kept track of the campaigns in Europe and the Mediterranean with pushpins and colored pencils. This made the names of places mean something to Lewis, but every once in a while a glance would remind him how close their little part of England was to Occupied France, and he would shiver. He tried not to think about what would happen if Hitler decided to send his armies across the Channel. At least for now he seemed to be busy elsewhere, though in a dream Lewis had seen Hitler’s mind as a great red eye, turning this way and that, and the image had haunted him ever since.
William banged through the door from the corridor, bringing Lewis back to his unfinished essay with a start. “I’ve finished mine,” William taunted him with a grin. “Race you to the shops. Edwina wants a newspaper before they close, and she said I could get some glue for my model.”
“Right,” said Lewis, letting his chewed pencil bounce onto his paper, and they jostled one another out the door and into the courtyard.
A sun the color of blood was setting against a translucent sky etched by the black skeletal silhouettes of trees, the air smelled of frost and wood smoke, and the last of the leaves swirled suddenly on the courtyard cobbles as if stirred by an invisible hand. Lewis stopped, seized by a sensation he couldn’t quite put a name to, but it reminded him of the way he’d felt when he’d watched one of the great ships steam into the docks at home.
Then the moment passed as William shouted for him to hurry, and he pounded off down the drive.
A WEEK LATER , L EWIS WAS CROSSING the c
ourtyard after finishing up his midday chores in the barn when he looked up and saw his mother standing in the kitchen doorway. He stopped and blinked, believing for a moment that his eyes were playing tricks, but it was his mum in her old bottle-green coat and the plum-colored felt hat she kept for “best,” and she smiled and held out her arms to him.
He ran then, skidding across the drizzle-slick cobbles as he reached her and was enveloped in a fierce hug. To his amazement, he found that his face was on a level with hers, or perhaps a bit higher.
“Lewis Finch, I swear you’ve grown a foot.” She held him off so that she could study him. But although she was still smiling, there was something not quite right about her voice, a quaveriness. Up close, he saw that her pale skin had the faint blue cast of fresh milk, and there was a puffiness round about her eyes.
“You said you weren’t coming to visit,” he said, ignoring the tiny prickle of fear. “Did you get my present? Is that why you’ve come? Where’s Da?” Then a sound from the kitchen drew his attention, and he looked past his mother into the room. Cook sat at the table, her apron drawn up over her face, and he suddenly knew it was a sob he’d heard, for he could see her shoulders shaking.
He looked back at his mother, stepping away. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“We’ll go for a walk—somewhere we can talk,” she said, slipping her arm through his, but she didn’t meet his eyes, and from the kitchen he heard Cook sob again.
He led her blindly, out through the gate in the back of the yard, across the blackening stubble in the pasture, to the old stone wall that marked the lip of the valley. Below them, the trees marched down the slope and up the other side, their branches as gray today as the mist that shrouded them, like wraiths standing in a sea of russet leaves.
“We had a telegram,” his mother began in a careful, level voice. “A supply convoy and its naval escort were attacked in the North Atlantic—”
“Is it Tommy? Or Edward?” Lewis interrupted, the knowledge of what was coming squeezing the air from his lungs. He heard a faint buzzing in his ears, and unbidden, the names of the German battleships he’d read in the newspapers flashed before him: the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau, the Admiral Scheer.
His mother didn’t answer. When Lewis dared look at her, he saw that she was staring down into the valley, her face still except for a tiny tic at the corner of her mouth.
“No.” Lewis tried to shout it, but the mist seemed to catch the word, dampening it in cotton-wool fingers.
“Your brothers were born ten months apart,” his mother said slowly. “And from the very first they always wanted to be together.” She turned to him at last, touching his cheek with her cold fingertips. “Oh, Lewis … I’m afraid that’s all the comfort we have.”
WHEN GEMMA HAD FIRST MOVED INTO the Cavendishes’ garage flat, which had only a tiny shower, Hazel had given her carte blanche use of the bathtub in the house. She’d seldom found time to take advantage of the offer, but tonight, after the children had been bathed and got ready for bed, she’d brought over a towel, a dressing gown, and a handful of CDs and locked herself in the bathroom.
Hazel kept a small CD player on the shelf above the tub, insisting that music not only kept the children calm in the bath, but restored her own sanity, and at the moment Gemma felt in dire need of a little restorative treatment. She started the water, added lavender bath gel, lit the candles Hazel kept ready, then hesitated over the choice of music. In the end, she chose Jim Brickman over Loreena McKennitt, and as the unaccompanied notes of the piano filled the room, she slipped out of her clothes and dimmed the lights.
The bathroom was large enough to have existed as a dressing room in a previous incarnation, but Hazel had managed to make it serene and cozy at the same time. A stained-glass lamp produced multiple reflections in the mahogany dressing table’s time-speckled triple mirrors; the walls had been sponged a soft, periwinkle blue with a border of seashells; and a bookcase held volumes for perusing while soaking in the clawfoot tub.
But the books didn’t tempt Gemma for once, and the room did little to calm her troubled thoughts. She sank down into the foaming water, willing herself into the music as if she could absorb the clean simplicity of it.
Involuntarily, however, she looked down at her body, half submerged in the water, and touched her bare shoulders as if Gordon Finch’s fingertips might have left a tactile impression on her skin. Even remembering the sensation made her shiver, then flush with shame. She’d tried telling herself that nothing had actually happened between them that afternoon, but she knew she’d teetered on the very edge of temptation—and that if she had fallen she would have compromised both her career and her relationship with Duncan irrevocably.
As much as she wanted to believe Gordon innocent, he was a suspect in a murder investigation, and her behavior had been rash and dangerous. The fact that she suspected something similar had happened to Duncan on a case they’d worked last year didn’t make her feel any better, and he’d at least not been involved with her at the time.
She closed her eyes and eased herself further down into the water, wishing she could wash away what had happened. But she knew that no amount of guilt or regret could alter the connection that existed between her and Gordon Finch—a connection she somehow had never doubted was mutual, a connection so powerful it had made her contemplate throwing away everything that made her who she was.
The thought frightened her so much she felt tears well behind her closed eyelids. She blinked them angrily away. Were her commitments to the job and to Duncan flimsy fabrications that would crumble under the slightest pressure?
Could it be that she didn’t know herself at all?
CHAPTER 13 The trade and industry which had first brought work and workers to the Island in the nineteenth century was now in terminal decline. One by one, in the 1970s the remaining factories closed their gates and moved away; rumours that the Docks too might close, proved to be all too true. The last ships came and went.
Eve Hostettler, from
Memories of Childhood
on the Isle of Dogs, 1870–1970
Teresa Robbins dressed carefully in her best pale blue suit and white lawn blouse, even putting on tights, although it took the help of a bit of talcum powder to get them up in the morning’s sticky heat. At least the sky was solidly overcast, she thought, and there was hope the weather might break by the end of the day.
She painstakingly applied her makeup, and at the last minute used a bit of spray to set her hair—all the while feeling as if she were the condemned going to face the guillotine. Sharply, she reminded herself that it was unlikely anything that happened to her today could be worse than the things she had endured in the past week.
She had thought her grief for Annabelle more than she could bear, until Annabelle had been revealed to her as a liar and a cheat; she had thought she and Reg might find some comfort in one another, until she’d learned that he had used her for the most unconscionable sort of revenge.
Yesterday she’d steeled herself to face him, but he hadn’t come in at all, and she’d gone home exhausted after a day spent preparing ever more dire financial predictions for this morning’s meeting.
As she walked down Saunders Ness from Island Gardens Station, she wondered if she could bring herself to work for Reg if they made him managing director, or if she wanted to go on at Hammond’s at all if they brought someone in from outside.
Then she’d stepped into the building and smelled the familiar combination of scents—motor oil and dust overlaid by the rich perfume of the teas—and she wondered how she could possibly bear even the thought of leaving.
William arrived first, looking stern but rather frail; then Sir Peter, dapper and cheery; then Jo; and finally, Martin Lowell, whom Teresa had never met. She stared at him curiously, but couldn’t read the expression on his darkly handsome features.
Reg did not arrive until they were assembled in Teresa and Annabelle’s office, and in spite of everyth
ing that had happened between them, Teresa couldn’t help feeling a spasm of concern. He looked exhausted, possibly even ill. As he took his seat in one of the chairs gathered in a semicircle round the desks, he closed his eyes.
William called the meeting to order, and as Teresa read her reports she was conscious of Martin Lowell’s gaze on her.
When she’d finished, there was a moment’s silence. After a glance at William, who nodded, Sir Peter looked round at them and said, “There are obviously many issues that need addressing, but today our primary concern is to decide who will be in charge of the day-to-day operations of the firm. As great as is our loss, we must think of the future of Hammond’s—”
“If there is any future to think of,” Martin Lowell interrupted impatiently. When he knew he had their attention, he went on, “It’s obvious that this firm is facing a financial crisis, and as my children now have a considerable interest, thanks to Annabelle’s generosity, I intend to do whatever I can to resolve this.” He smiled, and they all stared at him as if mesmerized—even Peter Mortimer, whom Teresa had seldom seen lose command of a situation.
Jo was first to recover. “Look here, Martin. You can’t just start in as if you owned the bloody—”
“You have as much at stake as anyone, Jo—your own financial security as well as the children’s. Surely, you’re not willing to see that frittered away through mismanagement—”
“Just a minute, Martin,” broke in Sir Peter. “No one’s suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting that you cannot even begin to consider as the new managing director of this firm someone who has proved himself incompetent.” Martin looked directly at Reg, who paled even further.
“Wait a minute.” Reg pointed an unsteady finger in Martin’s direction. “You’ve no right to—”
“And what’s more, how can you possibly consider giving Annabelle’s job to someone who is accused of murdering her?”
Kissed a Sad Goodbye Page 30