by Liz Fielding
Meetings. Mergers. Takeovers. More money. More power. Anything to fill the aching void within him.
Then, unable to just walk away, ‘Is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?’
That was almost a plea, he realised with a jolt and for a moment he thought he might have got to her, but she shook her head.
Finding it harder to leave than he would have believed possible, he looked around the small, hard-used apartment. ‘You can’t stay here. Give me a day or two and I’ll arrange for somewhere more comfortable for you to live.’
‘Is that what’s worrying you?’ she demanded, taking him by surprise as she flared up at him. ‘That it won’t look good if the world discovers that I’m holed up in a tiny flat near Camden Lock rather than expensively housed in a penthouse in Chelsea Harbour?’
‘This isn’t about me.’ Except that it was. He needed to rid himself of this feeling of helplessness. If he could do something, regain some measure of control…’I just want you to be comfortable. To be safe.’ To come home. ‘This is a very mixed neighbourhood.’
‘I know you mean well, Ivo-’
Was a man ever damned with fainter praise?
‘-but I need to be in my own place right now.’ Then, before he could argue, ‘I’ll call Miranda and make arrangements to have my things moved from your house.’
Your house…
Not our house. Not even the more neutral the house, but a place that had been furnished over the centuries, decorated to match its historic importance. More like a museum than somewhere offering the comfort of home.
Somehow they got through the awkwardness of goodbye without touching, using the meaningless words that people say when they don’t know what to say.
‘If you need anything…’
‘I’ll call.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said as she made to follow him to the door, not able to face that moment at the door when to kiss her would be unacceptable, not to kiss her would be impossible.
And while he was still strong enough to resist the tug of some force that seemed to draw him inexorably towards her, just as a current drew a drifting ship on to rocks, he walked away, out of her flat, down the steps and out into the busy streets.
His chauffeur opened the door of the Rolls, ready to whisk him back to his ivory tower, but, on the point of stepping in, he changed his mind. Stood back.
‘Call the office, let my secretary know that I won’t be back today, Paul.’
The man cleared his throat. ‘She rang a few minutes ago, Mr Grenville. Threadneedle Street called to ask where you were.’
He had a meeting at the Bank of England and he’d forgotten. Something that had never happened to him before.
‘Ask her to call and make my apologies, will you?’ Then, ‘I won’t need you until the morning.’ And, without waiting for a reply, he began to walk.
If Belle were a company that he wanted to acquire he’d know what to do.
Look at the balance sheets. Analyse performance. Formulate a plan…
CHAPTER FOUR
BELLE forced herself to eat. She had not been hungry. Cooking had been no more than a distraction, a focus for her eyes, something safe to do with her hands, but the horror of wasting food was too deeply ingrained to simply tip it into the bin and so she chewed food she could not taste, swallowing down a throat choked with pain.
Just because she knew what she was doing was right-right for her and right for Ivo-didn’t mean it was easy.
Even now his presence filled the small kitchen, marking her space, owning it with a faint trace of something that lingered in the air. The warmth of his skin, the clean scent of perfectly laundered clothes, something that she couldn’t name, but which left her weak with longing, hanging on to the edge of the worktop as if it were a lifeline.
In desperation she grabbed an air freshener from the cupboard beneath the sink and sprayed it around. What had been proved to eradicate the odour of sweaty socks, however, had no discernible effect on the subtler, pervasive essence of Ivo Grenville.
The scent, she realised, was in her head; she would have to live with it until it wore away under the attrition of everyday life. Fading like a bittersweet memory. Or a photograph left in the light.
On autopilot, she forced herself through the motions, rinsing the dishes, putting them in the dishwasher. She wiped down the work surfaces, counting to a hundred before she allowed herself to go to the computer and check the email. Appeasing the Fates with patience, so that the news was more likely to be good. Or maybe just afraid that it wasn’t the one she was waiting for.
The Fates clearly thought she needed a little more time.
It was not news about Daisy but an email from Simone, who was in a bit of a flap about losing the diary she’d been writing all through her trip. Confessing that towards the end it had become more an emotional than physical record of her journey, containing the secrets that had spilled out in the clear quiet of the mountains.
If anyone had found it they all risked exposure.
Maybe it was disappointment, or that she was still aching from the encounter with Ivo, but she couldn’t bring herself to get worked up about it. But Simone was anxious, full of remorse, and Belle responded with reassurance-the diary was undoubtedly in some airport trash compactor and on the way to landfill by now. Then, because the contact restored her, renewed her conviction in the rightness of what she was doing, she scanned one of the pictures from the strip she’d taken in the photo booth, adding:
I’m attaching a picture of the ‘new’ me. As you can see, I’m now a little less Monroe, rather more, well, me, I suppose. And not before time. I spent the weekend shopping for new clothes too and not an image consultant in sight. The combination had a blissfully jaw-dropping effect when I walked into the studio at the crack of dawn this morning, an effect that was considerably enhanced when I announced that I wouldn’t be renewing my contract.
Ivo dropped by and nearly had a conniption when I told him I’d bought a car…
On the point of telling them about how she’d teased him, she stopped herself. She’d told Claire and Simone that they were separated. To use them to talk about him would be self-indulgence of the worst kind. She had to excise him from her thoughts. Difficult. Maybe impossible. But she could excise him from her emails…She continued:
But that’s just the cosmetic stuff.
My big news is that I’ve registered with the Adoption Register. If Daisy has done the same, I should be in contact very quickly. If not…
If not, tracking her down could take weeks, months, years…
Simone had urged her to ask Ivo for help.
She glanced automatically towards the door, as if half expecting to see him still there, waiting for an answer to his question.
‘If you need anything…?’
A million things. Help her find Daisy. With his contacts he could probably do it in a second. But truly there was only one thing she wanted from him. His love. But that had never been on offer.
Turning back to the email, she deleted, If not…
She would not, must not, allow herself to be sucked in by negative thoughts. Or transmit them to Claire and Simone, who had their own demons to face. Instead she asked how their own plans were going, prompting Claire, in whom she sensed hesitation, not to delay her own search, before signing off, with love.
Then she returned to the adoption website, obsessively reading the stories of people who had been adopted with both wonderful and tragic results. Mothers who had parted with their children. Children hunting for their roots. Stories full of loss, joy, experiences that covered the entire spectrum of emotion. Looking for something that would give her hope, using it to stuff her mind against thoughts of Ivo that, no matter how hard she tried to block them, would seep in and fill her head.
Ivo, on the day they’d stood on a tropical beach, her hand in his as she’d repeated their not to be taken too literally till-death-us-do-part vows. Maybe h
er heart had known then what her brain had refused to admit.
Ivo, turning away from some close discussion about a major business deal to seek her out, find her at the far end of the dinner table.
Ivo, in a rare moment when he’d fallen asleep in her arms and was, for a brief, blissful moment, entirely hers.
It was late when Ivo finally got home.
‘Your secretary rang,’ Manda said, her irritation driven, he knew, by anxiety. ‘You missed a meeting.’
‘I know. I sent my apologies.’
‘That’s not the point! No one knew where you were.’
‘Will I get detention?’ he asked.
‘Ivo…’
Belle would have laughed. She might have been angry with him, but she wouldn’t have been able to help herself. He’d tried so hard not to take more than she had signed up for-the sex and security deal-but she’d drained the tension from him with a smile, a touch.
‘You’ve been to see her, haven’t you?’ Adding, ‘Belle.’ As if she could have meant anyone else.
‘There were things we needed to talk about.’
Not that they had. Talked. At least not about anything that mattered. But it had been informative, nonetheless. Belle hadn’t wanted him looking at her laptop. Had twitched to close it. Hide what she was doing. And she had positively jumped when an email had dropped into her inbox. She was hiding something-not another man, she wouldn’t have been able to hide that. Wouldn’t have tried to.
He wished he’d taken more notice of what had been on the screen…
‘Ivo?’
He realised that his sister was waiting, expecting more, but he shook his head. ‘Belle will be in touch about picking up her things.’
‘Oh, right, and I’m supposed to snap to attention, I suppose, and run around organising one of the staff to help her pack. Sort out transport to shift it all.’
‘I thought you’d relish the moment. Isn’t it what you’ve been waiting for?’
‘I…I always knew this would happen.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure you weren’t alone.’
‘Ivo…’
He turned away from her sympathy, cutting in sharply with, ‘If Belle chooses to call ahead as a matter of courtesy it’s because she has the instincts of a lady, even if she didn’t have the benefit of the most expensive education money can buy.’ Then, ‘She is my wife, Manda. This is her home.’
‘So where is she, hmm?’ She made a single sweeping gesture to indicate her absence. As if he needed reminding. ‘What is it about her?’ she demanded. ‘How does she do it? Reduce everyone to drooling mush. She floats about on a cloud of sweetness and light doing absolutely nothing except look glamorous and yet she has the entire world at her feet.’
‘If that’s all you see, Miranda, then you’re not nearly as clever as you think you are,’ he said, too angry to use her childhood name.
‘Even now, when she’s walked out on you, you’re defending her.’
‘She doesn’t need me to defend her.’
Didn’t need him for anything. Was that what she’d learned on the mountains? That she was strong enough to stand alone?
‘As for the sweetness and light thing,’ he added, ‘you could, with benefit, try it yourself once in a while.’
His sister flamed, then shrugged, an oddly awkward gesture. ‘It’s not my style, Ivo.’ She lifted her hands in an out of character gesture of helplessness. ‘I can’t…’ Then, ‘She makes me feel so…inadequate. As a woman,’ she added quickly, in case he thought she meant in any way that was really important. ‘The minute she walks into a room I feel as if I’ve suddenly become invisible…’
‘Manda…’
She shook off the moment of weakness, straightened. ‘I’ll do whatever I can to help,’ she said, making an effort to be helpful, ‘but wouldn’t it be more sensible for Belle to wait until she’s moved before collecting more than her basic needs?’
‘Moved?’
‘You’re not going to let her stay in that poky little flat in Camden?’
‘I don’t appear to have a say in the matter.’
‘Oh, I see. She’s going to stay put and play poverty to jack up the settlement she’ll wring out of you.’
He sighed. That hadn’t lasted long.
‘Belle will have trouble pleading poverty,’ he pointed out. The one thing he had been able to do for her was ensure that her considerable earnings had been well-managed. Maybe that had been his mistake. If her investments had been bungled she would still need the security she craved. That he could offer. ‘Wringing will not be necessary, however. Everything I have is hers for the asking.’
‘Including this house?’
Unlikely. The one possession of his that Belle would not want, he suspected, would be this house. But he wasn’t feeling kind. ‘Maybe you’d better start house-hunting yourself,’ he advised. ‘Just in case. I’m told Camden is going up in the world. Maybe Belle will do a swap. Her flat isn’t that poky.’
Not poky at all. It was small in comparison with this house-anything would be small in comparison with it-and shabby, but it had a welcoming warmth which, despite every imaginable luxury, was totally absent from the pile of masonry he called home whenever Belle was absent. And of course that was the point. It was Belle who made the difference.
‘Once it’s redecorated,’ he added, recalling the colour cards and fabric swatches he’d seen lying on the table beside her laptop…
Adoption.
It had been a website about adoption. And suddenly everything fell into place.
‘…it’ll be fine,’ he finished.
The email she’d been waiting for came the next day. Daisy Porter had registered with the agency and had been informed that a family member was looking for her. If she wanted to send a letter they would forward it…
Belle wrote a dozen letters. Long. Short. Every length in between. Finally she summoned a courier-she couldn’t wait an extra day for the post-and sent one that contained the bare essentials. No excuses. No apologies. Asking her to write or ring. Giving her address. Her phone number. Her mobile phone number. And, at the last moment, she clipped one of the photographs from the strip she had taken at the photo booth and enclosed that too.
And, because the waiting was unbearable, because she had to do something, she stripped the wallpaper from the living room walls.
By the weekend she wasn’t stripping the walls, she was climbing them, so she bought a stepladder and started painting the ceiling. She was working on a fiddly bit of the cornice that decorated her high ceiling when the phone rang, shatteringly loud in a room stripped of curtains and carpet.
She grabbed the handle at the top of the ladder and steadied herself.
She’d expected an instant response from Daisy but, after days of rushing to answer every call, she forced herself to ignore it. Racing up and down a stepladder was just asking for trouble.
It was more likely to be someone from the media who’d finally tracked her down, she told herself, still doing her best to appease the Fates.
So far the studio had managed to keep a lid on the fact that she wasn’t renewing her contract. That two weeks from now-unless they could persuade her to change her mind-there would be a new face to go with the cornflakes. And the newspapers and gossip magazines, totally obsessed with her new look-her face ached with smiling at photo sessions-had somehow missed the really big story, that she’d moved out of the marital home. That the smile was not the real thing, but something she had to coax her muscles to do. That it had taken all the make-up artist’s skill to cover the dark hollows under her eyes. That her mascara had to be waterproof.
It couldn’t last and when the story broke the phone would be her enemy, not her friend.
She should have just given Daisy her cellphone number. Bought a special phone with a number that only she would know. Too late…
The machine picked up, the message played. She’d left the pre-recorded response until she’d heard that Daisy
had registered to look for her. Once she’d given her the number, she’d recorded a message in her own voice. Probably a mistake. If it was some gossip columnist hoping to confirm a suspicion, he’d just done it.
She glanced out of the curtainless window, but there were no photographers with long lenses pointed in her direction. No, well-easing her aching shoulder while the message played, hoping against hope that it would be the one call she was waiting for-she still didn’t really believe it herself.
The caller hung up without leaving a message.
She dipped her brush into the paint. Her nails, her fingers, were coated in the stuff. More work for her manicurist who had taken to joking that she was going to finance a Christmas holiday in the Caribbean with all the extra money she was making.
The phone began to ring again. She dropped the brush, slid down the stepladder, grabbed the phone before the machine could pick up.
‘Yes?’ she gasped breathlessly. ‘I’m here.’ There was the briefest silence. Then once again the caller hung up.
Fingers shaking, she punched in 1471. Listened to the recording telling her that ‘…we do not have the caller’s number…’
She rubbed briskly at her arms, stippled with gooseflesh. Of course she was cold. She’d opened the windows…What she needed was a warm drink, a hot mug to wrap her fingers around.
She’d just reached the kettle when the phone rang again. She grabbed the receiver fastened to the kitchen wall and said, ‘Please don’t hang up!’
‘Belle?’
Ivo.
‘Oh…’
‘Not who you were expecting, evidently.’
‘No…Yes…’ She shook her head, which was pretty pointless since he couldn’t see.
She should have guessed he’d ring.
He’d called at the flat earlier: she’d looked out of the window and seen his car-not the work day Rolls with Paul at the wheel, but the big BMW he drove himself-and had resolutely ignored the doorbell.
This was hard enough without these constant reminders of everything she was missing. Not just the scent of him that nothing seemed to eradicate, but the way he loosened his tie, undid the top button of his shirt, without even realising what he was doing. The way his hair slid across his forehead, evoking memories of it damp, tousled from the shower…