by Susan Lewis
‘Why am I finding out like this?’ she suddenly cried. ‘Why didn’t anyone call me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Laurie answered. ‘They’re probably trying.’
Beth looked at the phone that had hardly stopped ringing. Was it odd that she hadn’t been more forceful about answering? It seemed so to her, but what did Laurie Forbes think? What the hell did it matter what Laurie Forbes thought?
Beth looked at her helplessly. ‘Where is he?’ she asked.
‘I think they’re holding him at Notting Hill.’
Beth was confused. ‘Why there?’
‘It’s near where it happened.’
Beth felt agitated and afraid. Her mind wasn’t functioning well. What should she say next? She must get rid of this girl. Maybe then she could breathe.
‘Sophie Long’s flat is in Ladbroke Grove,’ Laurie expanded. ‘It happened there.’
Beth’s eyes closed as images of Colin brutally slashing a female body to shreds began closing in on her. She pressed her hands into her eyes, and saw blood splattering unfamiliar walls, spurting into her husband’s handsome face. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped.
‘Have some more,’ Laurie said, indicating the whisky.
The reporters were still shouting outside, banging on the door. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing.
‘I should check the machine,’ Beth said dully.
Neither of them moved.
‘Did you know about the affair?’ Laurie asked.
‘Not really. I mean …’ Realizing what was happening, Beth got abruptly to her feet, spilling the whisky. ‘You should go now,’ she said. ‘Thank you for …’ For what? ‘Please go.’
Laurie stood up. ‘You shouldn’t be alone,’ she said, sounding as though she cared.
‘No. But I don’t know you, and I have nothing to say to the press.’ You’re devious and conniving, and I know very well that you want to trick me into saying things you can twist into shameless lies that’ll hurt my husband and degrade me …
Laurie was just inside the hall. ‘What will you say to the PM, if he calls?’ she asked, turning back.
Considering who Colin was, it was a question the girl had to ask, but Beth didn’t have to answer. ‘Just go,’ she responded.
‘Beth! For God’s sake, are you in there?’ a voice called above the others outside. ‘It’s me, Georgie! Let me in.’
‘Georgie!’ Beth shoved past the blonde and ran down the hall.
‘Wait!’ Laurie shouted, before she could tear the door open.
Beth turned back.
‘I’ll let her in,’ Laurie said. ‘They’ll be all over you otherwise.’
Beth stood aside. A few moments later Laurie Forbes had gone and Beth’s closest friend, Georgie Cottle, white-faced and trembling, was pulling her into an embrace.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve been trying to get through since I heard. Are you OK? Oh my God, what a stupid question. Of course you’re not. How could you be?’
‘What are you doing here?’ Beth said, squeezing her tight. ‘I didn’t even know you were in London.’ The comfort of holding someone she loved was like finding soft ground in the middle of a long, terrifying plunge to disaster. But it was only temporary, for the reality of why Georgie was there wrenched her brutally back into freefall.
‘I drove up with Bruce this morning,’ Georgie answered. ‘Just thank God I did. I came as soon as we got the call.’
‘What call?’
‘From Colin. Telling us he’d been arrested.’
Beth drew back. ‘He called you and not me?’ she said, baffled.
‘Not me, Bruce,’ Georgie corrected. ‘His lawyer,’ she added, by way of reminder.
Beth’s hand went to her head. It was icy cold. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I can’t seem to grasp any of this.’
‘You’re in shock,’ Georgie told her.
Beth nodded. ‘I know that, but it’s not helping. Everything’s so disconnected. I don’t feel as though I’m doing or saying any of the right things.’
‘There are no right things in a situation like this,’ Georgie assured her. ‘Have you spoken to him at all?’
Beth shook her head.
‘So who told you?’
‘The reporter who just let you in.’
‘Are you serious?’ Georgie groaned in dismay.
Beth turned away, then started as someone thumped on the door. A sudden anger flared inside her. ‘It’s the damned press,’ she seethed. ‘They’re all over this already, blocking my phone, bombarding my house. If it weren’t for them …’ She shivered with revulsion. ‘They make my skin crawl. Just go away!’ she shrieked as another fist threatened to break through the panels.
‘Sssh, it’s OK,’ Georgie soothed. ‘We just need to get you out of here. Let’s go and pack a bag.’
Beth started towards the stairs, then suddenly stopped. ‘I should have known before the press,’ she raged, spinning round. Her eyes were glittering, her fists were clenched at her sides. ‘He didn’t call to warn me. Why didn’t he call to warn me?’
‘Maybe he’s been trying.’
‘But he should have called me first! Not Bruce. Not you. I’m his wife, for God’s sake.’
‘Who threw him out a week ago,’ Georgie reminded her gently. ‘Maybe he thought … Well, I don’t know what he thought.’
‘I’m always throwing him out,’ Beth cried hotly. ‘He knows it’s not serious. When has it ever been serious? And when have I ever not taken him back?’
Georgie looked at her bloodless face. There was nothing she could say. All she knew of the current break-up was that Beth had called last week to say she couldn’t take any more. Georgie had lost count of how many times she’d heard Beth utter those words, so this new drama had come as no surprise, and had caused no alarm. The endless parting and making-up was as much a feature of the Ashby marriage as the wedding bands and shared name. So, sadly, were Colin’s affairs, every one of which broke Beth’s heart. Yet she always forgave him, and still she loved him, though God only knew what was going to happen after today. If he really had killed that girl – and things weren’t looking good – then Georgie just couldn’t see how Beth could forgive that.
She followed Beth up the stairs, watching her long, slender back while trying to imagine how she was feeling inside. Part of her had expected more questions than this, something closer to panic, or hysteria, though Bruce had warned her that shock was likely to cause a temporary rewiring of the brain. So whatever Georgie might consider an appropriate or understandable response would have no bearing on the disjointed, delayed reactions and emotional trauma going on in Beth’s mind. Just these first few minutes were proving Bruce right and, caring for Beth as deeply as she did, Georgie was determined not to judge, only to support.
On the landing, where an ironing board and iron partially blocked the way, Beth took a large holdall from the top shelf of a linen cupboard, opened it to check it was empty, then carried it into the master bedroom – the inner sanctum of a marriage. Georgie wondered how many shared bedrooms had such a pervasive air of intimacy as this one. Everything about the room was redolent of the couple who slept here, from the cologne-scented air, to the music centre built into the shelves, to the untidy collection of blues and soft rock CDs; the jazzy ties draped over the top of an open wardrobe door, the exquisite iron bedstead they’d bought at a French antiquities fair, then had Georgie and Bruce rent a van to come and help bring home; the eleven years’ worth of photographs that were on every surface, some partly obscured by fancy perfume bottles, coloured feathers, or pearl beads, or the kind of silly notes lovers wrote. Several pairs of Colin’s shoes made a disorderly pile against one wall; his trouser press was open as though awaiting a fresh pair. A tangle of clean laundry spilt from a basket over in one corner, Beth’s tights entwined with Colin’s socks, her bras wrapped around his boxers, their shirts, tracksuits and shared towels. It was no wonder Beth had expected h
im back, when just one glance around this room made it hard to believe he’d even gone.
The brief anger Beth had shown at the foot of the stairs had vanished. Now she seemed tightly wrapped up in herself, fiercely guarding her emotions, suppressing her pain. Georgie could only guess at the extent of her dread and confusion. How strange her life must seem at this moment, not only because of what had happened today – though God knew that alone was enough to derail anyone from their senses – but because of the whole new world Colin and his ambitions had catapulted them into during these past three months, since his long-awaited government appointment. Becoming a public figure had been the most natural and smoothest of steps for him, with his easy charm and intellect, as well as his multiple Oxford honours and Establishment connections. He was born to it, unlike his shy, intensely private wife who’d lately been showing signs of the strain. And who could blame her, when this public path wasn’t one she’d ever have chosen for herself, despite knowing how passionately Colin coveted it. Not that she’d ever tried to talk him out of it – she knew better even than to try – she’d just wanted him to understand how deeply she resented the intrusion into their private life, which to Beth was more precious than any amount of power or success. The worst part of it, at least so far, had been having to measure virtually every word she uttered for fear of how it might be construed, by his colleagues and their stiletto-tongued wives, and, of course, the press, a couple of whom had already dubbed her rude or standoffish for turning down their requests for interviews or comments.
What the hell were the next few weeks going to be like?
Georgie looked at Colin’s photograph on the nightstand and wondered what was happening to him now. It was utterly bewildering to think of him being read his rights, handcuffed and locked up in a cell. Despite the seriousness of the situation, and his understandable dread of how Beth would take it, Georgie couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t called her first. As a journalist himself, who until recently had been editor-in-chief of one of the leading nationals, he would know very well what kind of press barrage she was facing now. And there had to have been a window somewhere between his arrest and the inevitable media tip-off, when he could have got through to her. So maybe he’d taken their recent rift to be more serious than Beth realized. When Beth had told Georgie she hadn’t made it sound any different from the previous bust-ups, though unusually there hadn’t been any mention of an affair. This time, if Georgie’s memory was holding up, it had been about some function Beth had refused to attend because he’d told her about it too late, and as it was the anniversary of the first time they’d made love she’d already prepared a candlelit dinner at home. Apparently Colin had gone to the function anyway, so Beth had called the twenty-four-hour locksmith she was by now on first-name terms with, and when Colin had returned in the early hours he’d found his keys defunct and a pile of his dirty laundry providing a bed for someone’s cat on the doorstep. Whether they’d spoken at all since, Georgie didn’t know, though it had seemed an irony to her that Beth had thrown him out of a house that they were both due to leave at the end of next week. No more turn-of-the-century, yuppified mid-terrace in Fulham for one of the Prime Minister’s right-hand men. The entire upper storey of a Philip Gruben converted warehouse, with all the fancy lancets and loggias the stocky Italian was famous for, three en-suite bedrooms with gazebo-style bathrooms, and a view of the Thames that stretched from Wapping to Waterloo was much more like it. Georgie hadn’t asked where all the money was coming from, and now, with a sinking dismay, she couldn’t help wondering what connection it might have to what had happened today.
But she was jumping to conclusions, thinking the worst, when there was every chance that by this time tomorrow they’d be celebrating his release and raising a glass to the PM in much the same way as they had the day he’d called to ask Colin to head the Downing Street Press Office. In truth the call had been a formality, since Colin had already privately been promised the job, and no one had worked, or angled, harder than he had to get it, first as a reporter on one of the better tabloids, then as a TV news producer, then as the editor-in-chief of one of the nation’s leading broadsheets. And over the years he’d done everything in his journalistic power to elevate his old university chum Edward Carlyle from the relative obscurity of the back benches to the hallowed interior of the nation’s most famous political address.
Not surprisingly Colin’s appointment had received several scathing attacks from the far right, though none so bitter as those from the previous incumbent, Alan Dowling, whose fall from grace had been much more ignominious than it need have been, largely because he’d publicly vowed to bring Colin down too. Considering that threat, today might not be a good day for Dowling either, Georgie thought, if he didn’t have an alibi. And God only knew what the bullish, ruthlessly ambitious Edward Carlyle and his icily glamorous wife, who now reigned at Number Ten, were making of it all, particularly when they’d already come to rely heavily on Colin’s inimitable gift for damage control. When had they ever needed him more – Colin Ashby, the silver-tongued hero of blundering politicians, unskilled leaders and unworkable policies? What kind of spin would he have put on this, Georgie couldn’t help wondering. Anyway, it was going to be interesting to see just how the PM handled this awkward little snag in his new party image.
‘I should check the machine,’ Beth suddenly said.
Abandoning her packing she started back down the stairs.
Together she and Georgie listened to the endless messages. None was from Colin.
Beth’s eyes were burning as she turned to Georgie. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange?’ she demanded. ‘How could he not have called?’
‘Maybe there’s still a rule about only one call,’ Georgie said. ‘We can ask Bruce.’
‘Is Bruce with him now?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Beth’s gaze drifted with her thoughts. ‘How much do you know?’ she said finally. ‘I mean, they’ve arrested him, so the police must think he did it.’
‘I don’t know any details,’ Georgie answered. ‘When we got the call I came straight here.’
‘Maybe we should turn on the TV.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it. Let’s just get you away from all that out there, maybe then we’ll be able to think straight.’
Beth didn’t move. ‘I’m not saying I foresaw this,’ she said, staring at nothing. ‘How could I? How could anyone? But ever since he got that job …’ Her voice became husky with emotion. ‘I’ve had a feeling something bad would happen.’ Her dark eyes met Georgie’s. ‘How am I going to get through this?’ she whispered, her mouth trembling with the effort of holding on.
‘You will,’ Georgie said, hugging her. ‘And I know it might not look good right now, but by this time tomorrow it could all be totally different –’
The phone rang, cutting her off. Without thinking she picked it up. ‘Can you speak to who?’ she said, watching Beth turn away. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong number. Well, yes, that is the right … No, there’s no one here by that name. Yes, I heard what you said, but there’s no Ava Montgomery here …’
Beth spun round and took the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she said, almost breathlessly. ‘Yes, this is Ava speaking.’ Her eyes avoided Georgie’s as twin patches of colour rose up in her cheeks. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course I’ll be there. Would you tell me your name again, please?’ She wrote it down, then a time and a date, and after thanking the caller she dropped the phone back in its cradle.
For a moment neither of them moved. Then Beth clasped her hands to her cheeks and started to shake.
‘What was that about?’ Georgie began. ‘Who on earth’s –’
‘Don’t ask,’ Beth interrupted. ‘Please. Just don’t ask.’
By the time they were ready to leave the house, several uniformed police had arrived and a couple of detectives, who agreed, after a few perfunctory questions that established Beth had been at home all day apa
rt from a short trip to the stationer’s, to delay further interrogation until she came into the station tomorrow. The uniformed officers helped clear a path to Georgie’s car. Nevertheless, the crush was terrifying and despite keeping her eyes lowered Beth was blinded by flashguns and jostled so hard against one of the officers that a flower of blood bloomed on his lip where her head banged it into his teeth. Everyone was shouting at once, but she forced herself not to listen. Small satellite dishes were sprouting up like electronic daisies, news-gathering vehicles cluttered even the pavements, while reports were yelled live from the scene of Colin Ashby’s home where Mrs Ashby was just leaving, presumably to go to see her husband.
‘Mrs Ashby! Beth! Do you have any words for Sophie Long’s family?’
‘When did you last speak to your husband?’
‘Can you tell us what he told you?’
‘Is it true your husband is claiming he’s innocent?’
‘Have you heard from the Prime Minister?’