by Susan Lewis
Laurie went to pick it up. The number she dialled put her straight through to the voice mail at the hotel. She keyed in her own password then ordered a taxi to come as soon as possible.
When she’d finished she turned round to find Beth staring right at her.
Startled, she felt herself colour as she said, ‘Shouldn’t be long.’
Beth passed her a glass of water.
Laurie swallowed some, watching her over the rim of the glass. Though on one level she seemed quite normal, there was something about her that was making Laurie edgy.
Suddenly the phone rang.
Laurie gasped, then laughed. Then they both stood there listening as Mitzi’s voice announced that there was no one in, so please leave a message. The tone sounded, then the line went dead.
Beth carried her drink over to the sliding French windows and gazed out to where she’d left her watering can and basket, next to the gazebo. After a while she said, ‘I really wasn’t going to let you in, you know. But then I thought, why not? I don’t like being alone.’
‘Georgie wants you to go home.’
‘Home? With her and Bruce?’ She shook her head. ‘My home is with Colin and that’s over now, isn’t it? There’s no home for us any more.’
Not sure whether she meant because he was in prison, or because he was divorcing her, Laurie said softly, ‘You could make another. Start a new life.’
‘What do you think I’ve been doing here?’ She laughed drily. ‘I haven’t made much of a success of it, though, have I? But it’s OK. It’ll all be over soon, and it’s good that you’ll be here when it happens. You can be a witness.’
‘When what happens?’ Laurie said, experiencing another beat of unease.
‘Actually, you could probably make the call,’ Beth continued. ‘If it works out that way. But it might not. We’ll see.’
Laurie frowned. ‘I don’t understand. What call?’ she asked.
Beth turned away from the window and smiled. ‘It won’t work out that way,’ she assured her, ‘so don’t worry. Shall we go and sit down? It’s prettier outside, but cooler in the sitting room.’
Laurie followed her back along the hall, then down the three steps that descended from the square entrance hall into the sitting room. There were several armchairs and two sofas grouped around a large glass coffee table in front of the fireplace. Magazines were scattered about the rugs and limestone floor, some open, some not. A few cigarette ends littered an ashtray, and the TV cabinet had been moved out of its corner, bringing it closer to the nearest chair. Beth turned the chair to face into the room and sat down. Laurie chose one of the sofas, avoiding the thin shafts of sunlight that cut through the closed slats of the shutters.
Beth smiled warmly and raised her glass.
Laurie returned the salute and they both drank. She had no idea what was going to happen now, whether someone was going to arrive as Beth had intimated, whether she’d guess the taxi was a hoax and make her leave, or even if she might suddenly open up and talk. Her expression was so benign, there was simply no knowing what was going on in her mind, though surely, if there was a chance someone might come, and that it might be Kleinstein, or Wingate, she wouldn’t be this calm.
Taking small heart from that, Laurie sipped her water again and was about to speak when Beth suddenly said, ‘You heard about what they did to me, didn’t you? I know, because you told Georgie. I just wondered who told you.’
Surprised by the frankness, Laurie said, ‘Actually, someone told Elliot Russell and he told me.’
Beth nodded. ‘Someone,’ she repeated. ‘Always protecting your sources. Colin was very particular about that too.’ She looked towards the fireplace, tilting her glass back and forth to make the ice clink, then her eyes slanted back to Laurie. ‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’
‘I’m afraid he doesn’t look very good,’ Laurie answered. ‘I think he’s finding it hard in prison.’
The corners of Beth’s mouth went down as she acknowledged that. Then gazing off towards the hearth again she said, ‘He wouldn’t see me. Except once.’ She paused, then attempted a laugh. ‘That hurt a lot,’ she confessed. ‘Almost as much as Heather Dance and her child. But he was always hurting me, one way or another, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he did it again.’
‘Was he ever physical?’ Laurie dared to ask. ‘I mean in the way he hurt you?’
Unfazed by the presumption, Beth merely shook her head. ‘No, but sometimes I almost wished he would be. At least that kind of pain goes away. The other just stays and stays and …’ She smiled, brightly. ‘But it wasn’t all pain. We loved each other too, and …’
‘And?’ Laurie prompted.
‘Nothing. We just loved each other. As a matter of fact we still do, but he’s got a child by someone else now, so he has to go to her, if they free him.’
‘Do you think they will?’
Beth nodded, then drank some water. The mouthful was too large. ‘Yes, if he can prove he didn’t do it,’ she said, wiping the excess liquid from her chin.
‘Did he do it?’
‘He keeps saying he didn’t, so maybe we should believe him. Georgie says you already do.’
Laurie was watching her closely. ‘I think there’s a chance he’s telling the truth, yes,’ she admitted. ‘Don’t you?’
Beth’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘Does it matter what I think?’ she said.
‘I’m sure it does to him.’
She seemed to find that amusing. Then, after drinking some more, she leant forward to put her glass on the table. ‘Of course, it’s all much more complicated than it appears, you do realize that, don’t you?’ she said.
‘I think so,’ Laurie answered. ‘I’m just not sure how.’
‘You’ve read my book? We sent it to you.’
Laurie nodded.
‘So you’ve been trying to work it all out from that?’
Again Laurie nodded.
‘That’s why you asked if he’d ever hurt me physically, of course. But no, Colin wasn’t like Rodrigo in that respect.’
‘But he was in others?’
Beth nodded. ‘Oh yes. Very much so.’
‘Did he help you write it?’
Her eyes flashed angrily. ‘No! Did he tell you that? He’s a liar if he told you that.’
‘No, no,’ Laurie assured her. ‘He didn’t say that at all. It was just me asking.’
‘Why?’ she spat. ‘Do you think I’m incapable of creating something like that alone? Yes, of course you do. You’re one of them. You all think I’m nothing –’
‘That’s not true,’ Laurie cried. ‘No one thinks that about you, least of all me. The book is brilliant. I honestly didn’t mean any offence. It was stupid and insensitive. I’m sorry.’
Beth eyed her suspiciously, like a mouse watching a cat, or maybe it was the other way round.
‘I’m sorry,’ Laurie said again.
The hostility slowly retreated, then a smile began to play on her lips. ‘So tell me what you liked best about the book,’ she challenged.
Relieved that the small storm was over, Laurie seized the firmer ground, saying, ‘Probably the way you ended it, in modern times. It had such a wonderful pathos. I actually cried and laughed at the same time. I was so afraid it would be tragic, like her previous life.’
Beth almost glowed. ‘Life should be more like fiction, don’t you agree?’ she said, pressing her hands together and pushing them between her knees. ‘Think how happy we’d all be if we could write our own lives. I’ve never seen the point in misery, have you?’
Laurie smiled. ‘Not really,’ she replied.
Beth laughed. ‘Who’d write themselves a life of misery?’ she said. ‘Not me, that’s for sure. I’ve got God to thank for mine. Have you ever known misery? You don’t look as though you have.’
‘My sister died a year ago,’ Laurie answered. ‘That was very hard. She was my twin.’
‘O
h dear, yes, I can imagine that would be hard. How did she die?’
‘She committed suicide.’
Beth’s eyes rounded. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘She … It’s not easy to talk about …’
‘Was it to do with a man?’
‘Partly.’
Beth nodded, her eyes full of knowing. ‘So she understood what misery was. How did she do it?’
‘You mean kill herself? She drove her car into a wall.’
Beth drew back in horror. ‘That’s terrible,’ she exclaimed. ‘Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. Death can be so violent.’
Wanting to get off the subject Laurie said, ‘How long did it take you to write the book?’
Beth rolled her eyes. ‘All my life,’ she smiled. ‘Or that’s how it feels.’ Gazing off at nothing, she said, ‘We are the sum total of our life’s experiences, are we not? No, don’t agree with me, because we’re not. We’re all of us more than life gives us – much, much more. You are more than just the person sitting there on that sofa, prying into my life. This is only one aspect of you. There are others, so many you probably don’t even know the half, and never will, unless you’re brave enough to explore them.’
‘Have you been able to?’ Laurie asked.
‘Explore my other dimensions? Of course. Writers have to. You see, every character I create has come from inside of me.’
‘Even the aristocrats?’
She nodded. ‘Correct.’
‘What about inspiration? Doesn’t that come from outside of you?’
‘Of course. It can’t be otherwise.’ Her eyes seemed to drift off for a moment. Then, as though addressing an imagined dilemma, she said, ‘I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone, the way they hurt me.’ She looked at Laurie. ‘Do you know the reason they beat me with a whip? Would you like to see the scars?’ She was already lowering the zip of her dress and standing up to show her back.
One glimpse of the still-livid welts, cutting through the soft bronze skin of her back like angry red tongues, was enough to make Laurie wince and look away.
‘Not pretty, is it?’ Beth said, pulling her dress back up and sitting down. ‘Do you know why they did it?’
Laurie shook her head.
‘They did it,’ she said, ‘because they didn’t understand my book. They thought I was accusing them of murder, but how could I when I wrote it before Sophie Long died?’
Laurie’s heartbeat was slowing, but she said nothing, only waited for her to go on.
She laughed suddenly, almost bitterly. ‘What a comedy of errors it turned out to be,’ she said. ‘Them beating me for something they didn’t understand, me telling them the very last thing they expected to hear.’
‘Which was what?’ Laurie asked.
Beth’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her. ‘You’re not asking the right questions,’ she told her. ‘You should be asking why they were so concerned about an accusation of murder.’
‘OK,’ Laurie responded. ‘So why were they?’
Beth’s head went to one side, as though considering the answer. Finally she said, ‘They thought I knew about some approach they’d made to Colin, something that was going to make him fantastically rich. But I didn’t, not until that night. All I knew was that Marcus Gatling had far too much power over my husband, and I hated him for it. Colin would never admit it, of course, but it was true. He was a victim of his own ego. He wouldn’t allow himself to see how deeply he was in the pockets of men who wanted to control him for their own purposes, first as a reporter, then as an editor, then as a government puppet. They didn’t put him there because he was good; they put him there to serve them. Of course you’re recognizing all this from the book, aren’t you?’
Laurie nodded.
‘Well, obviously, I was drawing on Marcus Gatling and his cronies when I devised the aristocrats – cronies who were faceless to me until the night they did this.’ She was pointing over her shoulder at her back. ‘But they weren’t the only source I had to draw on because there were Colin’s colleagues too, the ones who’d ridiculed and ignored me for years. Those who talked across me as if I weren’t there; never asking my opinion on anything, or just dismissing it if I gave one. They knew Colin was having affairs all over the place, so if he had no respect for me, why should they? And if I had no respect for myself, which obviously I didn’t because of the way I kept taking him back, then I wasn’t really worth bothering with at all. So the aristocrats comprise every one of them, his colleagues, his friends, his mentors, even his mistresses. But Marcus Gatling presumed I was referring only to him, that like the Hydra I’d given him many heads, but the body, the muse, was no one but him. That’s what guilt does, you see. It makes you lose perspective, confuses rationale. It’s an extremely uneasy bedfellow, and when you can’t sleep at night paranoia soon comes calling.’ She smiled and picked up her water. ‘Am I going too fast for you?’ she said. ‘Is it all making sense?’
Laurie nodded. ‘I think so,’ she answered, judging it best to hold back her questions for now.
‘So the killing of Carlotta’s spirit in the book,’ Beth continued, ‘symbolizes the killing of mine in life, because that’s what they’ve done to me: they’ve killed who I really am. They’ve treated me as though I don’t exist, so I’ve stopped existing. Beth Ashby died the day of Sophie Long’s murder, and Ava Montgomery was born, which sounds insane because it is. But that was how it felt, because, you see, the timing was so propitious. My husband was arrested for murder, and only a few hours later I received a call telling me my book was going to be published. So on the one hand my nightmares were just beginning, while on the other a dream was coming true. Which would you have chosen? The disgrace of the man you love? Or the glory of the woman you’ve created? I wanted both, of course. I wasn’t just going to walk away and leave him. He needed me now in a way he never had before, and because I love him, the way Carlotta loves Rodrigo – with all my heart and soul – I wanted to be there for him. But he wouldn’t let me. He told me to go and make a new life, that he was divorcing me and didn’t want to see me again. The killing of my spirit wasn’t over. It was just going to go on and on. That was how it felt. No one loved Beth; no one wanted her, not even Colin any more. So why should I want her? Why should I struggle to keep her alive when Ava was so full of promise, had already received her first recognition that was in no way dependent on him, or because of him. I’d done it alone, and no one could ever say I was being published because I was his wife, because no one knew until after. They thought Ava Montgomery was a real person, which she was, because she’s a part of me, the part that had the courage and confidence to write the book, and believe in it enough to submit it. Beth couldn’t have done that. She was too timid, too insecure and dulled by Colin’s shadow. So it really was as though Beth started to die that day, as Ava came alive. Along with Carlotta and Sophie, Beth became the victim of the aristocrats.’ She used her fingers to mark quotes around aristocrats. ‘But of course I’m still here, you’re looking at me, listening to me, you’re probably even slightly nervous of me. I don’t blame you. I’m afraid too, because I can’t sleep, and now paranoia has come calling on me.’
‘Is your paranoia driven by guilt?’ Laurie asked.
Beth nodded. ‘Yes. Essentially, yes.’
‘What kind of guilt?’
She sighed and seemed to think about that for a while. ‘The guilt of my husband,’ she answered, ‘the guilt of my own thoughts, my actions.’
‘Of writing something that then proved itself in reality?’
Beth stared at her hard. ‘Now you’re going to say that it was a fluke, that I couldn’t possibly have known, so it doesn’t make me responsible,’ she said.
‘The responsibility lies with the person who did it,’ Laurie responded.
‘Of course, and I have no intention of taking it away from that person. The girl was a sacrificial lamb, just like in the book.’
‘But Sophie Long wasn’t a dimension of som
e fictional character’s psyche,’ Laurie protested. ‘She was real.’
Beth nodded. ‘Yes, she was, that’s why they were so paranoid.’
‘They being Marcus Gatling and his wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know,’ Laurie said, ‘that they were at Sophie’s flat the morning she was killed?’
Beth blinked, then frowned and looked at her strangely. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘No one’s ever mentioned it before.’ Then after a pause, ‘Why were they there?’
‘I don’t know. Do you?’
‘Me?’ she laughed. ‘Why would I know?’
Laurie’s eyes were watching her very closely.
‘Why would I know?’ she cried, throwing out her arms.
‘You may not know why they were there, but you do know they were there, don’t you?’ Laurie challenged.
She didn’t answer.
‘Why are you protecting them?’
Her eyebrows flew up. ‘To protect myself, of course.’
‘From what?’
She looked at Laurie incredulously. ‘More of this,’ she said, indicating her back again.
‘What else?’ Laurie challenged. ‘There is more, isn’t there?’
‘You really don’t know what it is? After all I’ve just said, you still don’t know what it is?’
Laurie shook her head slowly, though in truth she thought she might. ‘How do you know they were there?’ she said.
Beth only looked at her.
‘You saw them, didn’t you?’
Her expression didn’t change.
‘That’s what you told them that night when they beat you, wasn’t it, that you’d seen them at Sophie Long’s the day she was murdered?’
Beth laughed softly. ‘A comedy of errors,’ she repeated.
Laurie looked at her, praying her fear didn’t show. She didn’t want to go any further with this now, for she knew absolutely where it was going to end.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Beth told her. ‘I can see in your eyes that you know now. So there you have it. Now you know the truth. Is it what you were expecting?’