by Joan Smith
“Barry Webb.” Discomfited by her scrutiny, he thrust out his hand and muttered the name of a tabloid newspaper. When Loretta ignored it he converted the movement into an introduction, waving forward a woman who had just got out of a car parked on double yellow lines further down the road. “And this . . .” He waited for her to join him by the gate. “This is the Contessa Davvero.”
Loretta blinked; it was the sort of name she had encountered only in Hello!, leafing through back numbers in her sister’s loo. The Contessa didn’t remotely resemble a reporter or a photographer—she radiated the confidence of a minor celebrity, posing on the pavement like a film star about to be interviewed about her new lover or her new Mercedes. Loretta couldn’t imagine why she was here, with this raffish tabloid hack, and she stared in amazement at the Contessa’s honey-colored hair, shocking-pink suit and spectacular gold earrings.
“Adviser to royalty and the stars,” the reporter said rapidly, like an actor who has belatedly developed doubts about his script, “including the Prin—”
“I told you.” She slapped his wrist playfully, showing off pink-lacquered nails. “My clients”—her voice was husky, foreign, though Loretta immediately suspected the accent was put on—“my clients must be confidential.” She gazed intently at Loretta and raised a slender hand. “Already I am feeling . . .” She closed her eyes, lowering green-painted lids fringed by false lashes. “Yes, is a garden . . . una capanna.” Loretta swayed back as the blindingly pink talons came dangerously close to her cheek.
“You mean she’s a psychic?” Bridget demanded. “Like a—like Doris Stokes?”
Loretta could not imagine a more inapposite comparison but the reporter was briefing the clairvoyant, sotto voce: “Not her. The other one.” He turned, checked Bridget’s torso for confirmation and was visibly relieved by the sight of the slight bump under her borrowed sweater.
“I’ve heard everything now. Go on, Loretta.”
Webb grasped the top of the gate and pulled it shut, preventing Loretta from responding to the gentle pressure of Bridget’s hand in the small of her back.
“Loretta—”
“Just five minutes,” he wheedled, refusing to let go. “The Contessa’s a very busy woman and we’ve come all the way from London.”
“I don’t care if you’ve come from Timbuktu. Would you please let go?”
“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,” he protested, an inappropriate choice of metaphor for someone involved in a tussle over a garden gate. “It’s not an interview we’re after. We’ve invited the Contessa, in view of her amazing track record—”
“Ze case of the buried ballerina,” the clairvoyant said in a loud whisper. “Ze Crowdon Crusher.”
“The Croydon Crusher,” he corrected hurriedly. “Contessa Davvero spent fifteen minutes, just fifteen minutes, at the scene of the crime and described the weapon in amazing detail.”
“What?” asked Loretta, who had no idea what they were talking about.
“So what’s she doing here?” Bridget demanded. “I mean, this isn’t where it happened—the scene of the crime or whatever.”
“Yes, well, the cops aren’t being what you’d call cooperative about that. The Contessa has a feeling about this case, all she wants to do is go somewhere quiet with Miss Bennett and, um, hold her hand—”
“You must be joking,” said Bridget, recoiling. “I don’t believe in astrology and all that crap. Go on, Loretta.” They took advantage of the clairvoyant’s voluble and angry response, directed more at the reporter than at Bridget, to slip round the gate.
“Come on, girls. It’s not asking much.” Webb leaned forward as Bridget passed, lowering her voice so the Contessa wouldn’t hear. “If it’s money you’re after—”
“Jerk.” Bridget shook him off and caught up with Loretta.
He called after them, without much conviction: “You’re missing a great opportunity.”
Loretta turned, holding up her hands in a final gesture of rejection, and was surprised to see the Contessa hurrying towards her as fast as her tight skirt would allow.
“I aff to warn you,” she said urgently, grasping Loretta’s arm through her thin raincoat. “Is trouble ahead, big trouble—”
“Leave her alone,” Bridget snapped. “Let go or I’ll call the police.” She started to walk back towards the house.
“You will be sorry.” The woman threw Bridget a savage glance and released Loretta, hissing: “I tell you—be very careful.” She clipped away from them on her high heels, walked straight past Loretta’s house and stopped beside the reporter’s car. He rushed to open the passenger door, waiting obsequiously as she swiveled her legs over the sill like a model at the Motor Show.
Loretta suppressed a shiver as they walked on. “What was all that about?”
Bridget said: “I suppose it sells papers. Hey, you’re not getting superstitious in your old age? Come on, forget it.”
The reporter’s car overtook them near the end of Southmoor Road and Loretta glimpsed the Contessa in the passenger seat, peering into a hand-held mirror. “Sorry?”
“I said, isn’t that where your friend lives?” Bridget waved a hand at the house they were passing and named a literary novelist.
“I wouldn’t say she’s a friend. I’ve met her a couple of times.”
“What’s her new book like?”
Loretta began a faltering description, unable to dismiss from her mind a vivid imprint of the psychic’s distorted features. She had just finished describing the plot when they turned left into Aristotle Lane and crossed the bridge over the canal, lowering their heads as they encountered the full force of the wind. Bridget let out a sound between a gasp and a laugh as a particularly vicious gust took her breath away, slipping her hand into the crook of Loretta’s arm and clinging to her as they struggled down onto Port Meadow. When they were safely on lower ground Bridget released her and danced ahead, throwing her arms wide: “Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t you glad you came?”
Loretta answered with a smile and stared beyond her to the thin silver ribbon of the river. The fields were flooded with that dramatic light which often accompanies summer rain, coloring the grass a raw green and reducing the lush undergrowth and grazing animals to the flatness of a painted backdrop.
“Loretta.”
“Mmm?” She watched a couple of large birds circle above the river, too far away to make out what they were. The previous week she had seen a heron standing in the shallows, solitary and aloof, and she wondered if it was still in the area.
“I’ve had an idea. Would you mind if I said I’d made a mistake—that I had lunch with you that Thursday?”
Loretta, still thinking about the heron, said: “What Thursday?”
“You know, the one they were so interested in. The police.”
She turned her head. “What for?”
“It doesn’t make a lot of difference,” Bridget said in a rush, “because we did actually have lunch the next day—the Friday, remember? At the Duke of Cambridge? You had kedgeree and we—there was a stupid argument about names, you can’t have forgotten.”
“No, but why? What’s the point?”
“The point—” Bridget was becoming exasperated. “I’d have thought it was obvious. I don’t want them to see my diary, that’s all. If I say we were talking about it after they left and you said, hang on, isn’t that the day we had lunch—”
“Wait a minute.” Loretta was alert now, her brief interest in wild birds forgotten. “I know it’s not very pleasant, the idea of a lot of policemen reading your diary—”
“It’s not that” Bridget lunged sideways, not looking at Loretta, and pulled the heads off a clump of tall grass. She balled her fist, opened it to toss away the damp foliage and shook her fingers when the damp seeds stuck to them.
“Do you want a tissue?”
“N-no.” Bridget rubbed her hands together, then wiped them on Loretta’s sweater.
Loretta’s fingers close
d on the paper handkerchief in her raincoat pocket, tearing it into little pieces. “I’m not sure I—you mean there’s something you don’t want them to see?”
“Yes, Loretta,” Bridget said sarcastically, “that’s exactly what I mean.” She sighed. “I can’t explain because . . . well, it involves someone else. All I’m asking you to do is tell a little white he, say we had lunch on a Thursday instead of a Friday.”
“What if . . .” Loretta tried to focus on the purely practical aspects of this proposal. “What if they ask to see my diary? I’m sure I wrote it down, the Duke of Cambridge, one o’clock Friday.” A year ago she would have assumed Bridget was covering up some sexual intrigue, an assignation with a married man perhaps, but it didn’t seem likely, not in the present circumstances . . .
“God, Loretta, all you have to say is you don’t keep one. The point is, they already know about mine. All you’ve got to say is we had lunch, went for a walk on Port Meadow—”
“What?” Now Bridget was asking for an alibi for the whole afternoon. She must have spent the time with someone, some man, yet Loretta had never previously doubted her devotion to Sam. Something stirred in her memory, Janet’s remark about Bridget’s lovers and what the police might come up with if they asked enough people—
“Why don’t you just tell me?” she cried. “I won’t say anything to—I won’t say anything. Then we can work out what to do—”
“Loretta.” Bridget’s face was white, etched with anxious lines. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if—Oh, forget it.”
“Bridget—”
“I said forget it—forget I ever mentioned it. I’m going back, there’s a phone call I have to make. I’ll see you at the house.” She turned, stumbled briefly on an uneven patch of ground and began walking in the direction they had come.
Loretta watched her go, vaguely aware that the sharp, nervous tugs had started up again in her stomach. “Bridget,” she said quietly, then, louder: “Shit. Oh, shit.” She swung her right foot and kicked at the soft earth, doubling over in pain when it connected with a concealed stone. Two of her toenails seemed to be broken and there was a jagged scratch on her sandal. Loretta knelt, wiping away mud and blood with the tattered remains of her paper handkerchief. After a moment, when the pain had declined to a dull ache, she stood up, balancing on her good foot and lowering the other gently to the ground. She discovered she could walk, as long as she kept her toes at an angle, and she set off at a hobble, glancing anxiously to the west when a distant roll of thunder signaled the approach of a storm. She increased her pace, not wanting to get caught in the open, and had just reached the bridge when the first drops of rain splashed onto her eyelashes, trickling down her cheeks like cold tears.
6
Loretta Came Out Of The Bathroom Next morning and paused on the half-landing to stick back an Elastoplast which was flapping loose from her toes. She lifted her head, surprised by the unexpected fragrance of freshly baked bread, and followed it down to the kitchen where someone was moving around, opening cupboards and clinking glasses. She walked into the room and found Sam standing by the table, polishing her cutlery with a cloth like a waiter in a pretentious restaurant.
“Hi,” he said, quickly disguising his disappointment when he saw she wasn’t Bridget. “I didn’t know whether to call you.” He lined up a knife beside a place mat, gave a cursory wipe to a dessert spoon and turned back to her with a bright good-morning smile. “How’s the foot this morning?”
“Oh, a bit sore.” She was suddenly self-conscious, aware that her old Lynx T-shirt just covered the tops of her thighs and she was not wearing any knickers. Sam, by contrast, was wearing an immaculate short-sleeved shirt, a muted tie and neatly pressed trousers, which made her wonder briefly who did his ironing; not Bridget, unless she really had undergone a dramatic metamorphosis. Loretta felt Sam’s cool gaze travel down her bare legs, past the bruise on her shin to the grubby plasters on her foot, and wished she had remembered he was in the house before coming down.
“What can I get you?” he asked into the awkward silence, folding the cloth and hanging it neatly over the back of a chair. “I can offer you French bread, straight out of the oven”—he held up a pink and white bag from the Blanc Patisserie and Loretta caught an even stronger whiff of new bread—“and croissants with or without almond paste. Bridget’ll be down in a couple of minutes, she’s just taking a shower.”
Loretta frowned. “Is she? A croissant, please, plain. Oh, and some grapefruit,” she added, noticing he had already peeled the fruit and divided it into segments.
He handed her a bowl and she slid into a chair, keeping her legs tightly together until they were hidden under the table. Sam joined her, eating without speaking so she had a moment to take in the clean linen cloth, the jug of fresh orange juice—a superfluous touch, Loretta thought, after the grapefruit—and the vase of white and yellow freesias. She leaned forward to inhale their thin, mustardy scent and drew back when she felt the beginnings of a sneeze.
“Bless you.”
Loretta got up, tore off a length of kitchen paper and blew her nose. “When did you—you’ve been out?”
“Yeah, the bakery next to Browns opens at seven, seven thirty.” He went to the sink, rinsed his bowl under the tap and spooned dark, aromatic coffee grounds into the cafetiere while he waited for the kettle to boil. “This is the first real breakfast I’ve had since Sunday,” he remarked conversationally, then picked up the Guardian which was lying on a worktop. “You want to look at the paper?”
She took it unenthusiastically and returned to her seat, her eyes sliding past a story about an alleged atrocity in Croatia and a report citing further evidence that the British economy was slipping into recession.
“They released her name.”
“Sorry?”
He plunged down the top of the cafetiere. “Page two—they released her name. Here, let me find it for you.” He took the paper back, opened it and read aloud: “Police investigating the death of a woman whose body was found in a barn in Oxfordshire on Sunday said last night they’d identified her as Paula Wolf, 19, from Oak Falls, Ohio.”
“Ohio?” A line from a song came into Loretta’s mind, something horribly appropriate from an American musical, and she had to prevent herself from humming it aloud: “Why, oh-why, oh-why-oh, did I ever leave Ohio?” She put her hand to her head, acknowledging the deep tiredness which had precipitated this bizarre piece of free association, and was hardly aware of Sam’s voice continuing in the background. Her thoughts skipped instantly to her book, to the impossibility of getting any work done until she had had a proper night’s sleep, and she began an anxious calculation of the number of chapters she’d written multiplied by five thousand words, the average length of a chapter.
“Loretta?”
Sam was watching her over the paper, brows drawn together, and she realized he had read part of the report aloud and was waiting for her reaction. “Urn,” she said, grasping at straws, “Wolf, did you say? What was her first name?”
“Paula.” He was holding the paper out again, folded open at the inside page, and she exclaimed with genuine interest as she took it from him: “It’s you—your picture.”
“Yeah, they were snapping away all through the press conference. You want some coffee, Loretta?”
“What? No thanks.”
“Juice?”
“Please. Who’s the man on your left? Oh, it says here he’s the man who recognized her.” The caption identified him as Kevin Day, a company director from Essex who had been on the same flight from New York as the dead woman, but his sharp suit and greedy expression had reminded Loretta at first glance of a City shark, gleefully announcing a hostile takeover bid. “He looks very pleased with himself.”
Sam snorted as he filled her glass with orange juice. “Can you believe it? The guy was handing out business cards—seemed to think it was some kind of a business opportunity.”
“What does he do?”
A
nother snort. “He sells mobile phones. Moment he saw all those journalists he was in hog heaven.”
“Did he sit next to her? I mean, did he talk to her?” The flight to London took seven hours and Loretta knew from experience that a neighbor who was determined to make small talk was hard to ignore.
“I got the impression he tried”—he shrugged—“but nothing doing. He said there was a seat between them and he spent most of the night sleeping. When he did wake up she was reading a book, some kind of a blockbuster.”
She read quickly through the story and looked up. “So they still don’t know why she came to England?”
“Last time I spoke to the cops they were waiting to hear from her folks—from the cops in Ohio, that is. Maybe she had an English boyfriend.”
“Wait a minute.” A point had occurred to Loretta and she was no longer listening. “It says here they confirmed her identity through fingerprints—they got her name from the airline and then they sent her fingerprints to the States—”
“So?” Sam sipped his coffee standing up.
“Well, surely that means she’s got a criminal record? I mean, even under Reagan they didn’t fingerprint the entire nation.”
“So she’s a junkie or something,” he said dismissively. “I’m sure we’ll find out. I’m kind of surprised the cops haven’t called already, I told them I was staying here last night. Listen, Loretta”—he put down his cup and saucer, glanced at his watch—“I don’t have much time, but I want to thank you for everything you’re doing for Bridget.”
“Oh—” She shook her head, unwilling to talk about Bridget after their row on Port Meadow the previous afternoon. “It’s me who should be thanking you—for dinner last night, I mean. I haven’t been there for ages.” Sam had insisted on taking Loretta and Bridget out to eat at the Lebanese restaurant at the bottom of Walton Crescent, where he had impressed her by ordering a bottle of Chateau Musar without wincing at the price. She had enjoyed the meal less than she usually did because of the strained atmosphere between herself and Bridget, but Sam had given no sign that he was aware of the tension or of the longish gaps in the conversation.