Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

  ‘She thinks she’s indispensable at Vandina, and I shouldn’t be surprised if she isn’t right.’ He said it lightly but Maggie heard the edge of anxiety which he was trying to conceal in order to avoid worrying her. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, Maggie. I just thought you might be able to shed some light on it.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t. What will you do, Mike?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what I can do, apart from keep trying to think of where she might be.’

  ‘Try her friends in London.’

  ‘Perhaps I will. Though I imagine the police will do that.’

  ‘The police! What do you mean – the police?’

  There was a small silence. The line crackled ominously as if it was about to break up. Then he said a trifle awkwardly: ‘I reported her missing this afternoon.’

  ‘To the police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The police!’ Maggie repeated, the enormity of it beginning to sink in. ‘You mean – you really think something might have happened to her?’

  ‘I sincerely hope not. But I thought maybe I ought to, just to be on the safe side. Look, Maggie, I’m sorry if I’ve worried you. I didn’t mean to. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. But he didn’t sound very sure, she thought. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news.’

  ‘Mike …’ Crackles. Silence, followed by a loud buzzing. ‘Mike!’ she said again urgently. But the line had finally broken up.

  Maggie replaced the receiver and stood, her fingers pressed against her mouth, thinking furiously.

  Ros missing? It was crazy – it made no sense at all. But there was no doubt Mike had been worried. From what Maggie could remember of him he had certainly not seemed the sort to panic. And everything he had said was true. Ros wasn’t a fly-by-night. She wasn’t the type just to drop everything and go off without a word to anyone, and certainly it was totally unlike her to let her employers down.

  Again Maggie thought of the last time Ros had come out to Corfu to visit her. She had been here only a week, and she had worked overtime before she had left to make sure everything was in order, she’d told Maggie. Yet still she had been gnawing her nails fretting about what might be happening in her absence. Either she had undergone a complete change of character or else there was a very good reason for her disappearance. A very good reason … or a sinister one.

  Brendan, Maggie thought, going cold. Oh God, has Brendan got anything to do with it?

  Brendan was Ros’s ex-husband. Once upon a time he had had a promising career in the media. For a while he’d had his own programme on a local radio station, and had even made TV appearances. Maggie could remember how impossibly glamorous he had seemed to her, an impressionable teenager, when Ros had first started going out with him. But he’d blown it all because of a fondness for the good times – and the bottle – and he’d blown his marriage to Ros too.

  Ros had been through a terrible time with him, Maggie knew, though her sister had done her best to keep the worst of it from her. She had covered up for him, pretending to her mother and to Maggie that everything was all right, making up stories about falling downstairs and walking into doors to explain away the bruises that frequently disfigured her face and arms. But in the end she could take no more and she had admitted it. Brendan was impossibly jealous, he had a violent temper, he drank – and when he was drunk he let his imagination run riot and lost control of his fists. She had left him, but it had not ended there. He had refused to accept it, pestered her, threatened her, lain in wait for her. Maggie remembered one terrible night when Brendan had come to the cottage when she had been there, banging on the door and demanding to be let in, roaring abuse, even ramming Ros’s car with his. In the end they had had to call the police to have him removed and the sisters had sat up half the night after everything was quiet again, talking and talking because there was no way they could sleep. Maggie could never remember seeing Ros more shaken, and with her emotional defences down it had all come out.

  ‘I’m scared to death of him,’ Ros had confessed. ‘ He’s so jealous it’s crazy. He’s always been the same.’

  ‘You never gave him any cause for it, did you?’ Maggie had asked.

  Ros had shaken her head. ‘Brendan doesn’t need cause. Not real cause, anyway. It was all in his mind. We could be fine, having a really nice evening out together, and he’d suddenly turn, just like that, because he imagined someone was looking at me or trying to chat me up. He’d whisk me out, take me home – and then more often than not take it out on me because he said I must have been encouraging them. He can be really violent, Maggie, and to be honest, I’m terrified of him.’

  ‘But you’ve left him now,’ Maggie had said. ‘He doesn’t own you any more.’

  Ros had laughed a trifle bitterly.

  ‘I’m not sure Brendan sees it like that. He threatened me once, you know. If I can’t have you, no one else will.’

  ‘That’s just talk,’ Maggie had comforted her. ‘ He’ll get over it in time and leave you alone.’

  ‘Will he? I’m not sure.’

  ‘He’d never really harm you, Ros,’ Maggie had said. ‘ If he loves you, he’d never do you any real harm.’

  She had almost believed it then. Even with the thunder of Brendan’s fists against the cottage door still ringing in her ears it had been almost impossible to imagine he could be really dangerous. Jealous, yes. Violent, when the drink was in him, yes. But as for really dangerous … that was the sort of thing that only happened in lurid newspaper stories. Not in real life … their lives …

  Time had passed, Brendan seemed to accept that he had no option but to leave Ros alone, and Maggie had all but forgotten what had happened.

  But now the cold place inside her spread and grew as she found herself remembering all too vividly.

  Was it possible Brendan had had something to do with Ros’s disappearance? Oh surely not! It was all so long ago now. But with a man as obsessively jealous as Brendan, who could tell? Who knew how his mind worked, who knew what fantasies had been festering away all this time? Who could say what would trigger him to suddenly take it into his head to do something about it? Maggie had not really talked to Ros for some time now. Suppose Brendan had started bothering her again, maddened by the knowledge that she had someone else? Suppose he’d just been biding his time? Mike had been away at school camp, he had said. Perhaps Brendan had known that and taken his chance …

  Maggie realised suddenly that she was shaking all over. She reached for another cigarette, lighting it with hands that seemed unwilling to respond to the commands of her brain and drawing deeply on the smoke.

  For goodness’ sake, Ros, what has happened to you? Am I getting into a panic about nothing? Probably. It’s just because I’m so far away I feel so helpless.

  But Mike had been worried too. She had heard it in his voice, and if she hadn’t it would have been self-evident. He would never have telephoned her here if he hadn’t been very concerned indeed. And he certainly would not have reported Ros’s disappearance to the police unless he too thought there was a possibility something terrible had happened to Ros.

  Oh if only I were there! Maggie thought, and almost instantaneously knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to go home and help Mike search for Ros.

  For a few minutes she sat pondering the idea. It seemed drastic, but at the same time she was able to justify it to herself. She might be able to suggest somewhere Ros might be that Mike hadn’t thought of – once upon a time she and her sister had been close and that must count for something. And at least she would be on the spot. The thought of simply staying here and waiting for news was unbearable.

  With a quick, decisive movement Maggie ground out her cigarette. She’d begin packing now and in the morning she’d find out about flights to England. There should be plenty at this time of year; she’d surely be able to get a seat on one of them at short notice.

  Ari wouldn’t like it of course – b
ut the hell with it! Ros was her sister and she was now desperately worried about her. And besides, Ari did as he liked – why shouldn’t she do the same?

  Chapter Three

  Dinah Marshall stared at the pile of papers and documents heaped on the desk in front of her and thought there was nothing in the world she hated quite as much as paperwork. Long wordy reports confused her – her attention was always wandering before she’d finished so much as the first few paragraphs – computer print-outs of stock, orders and sales were nothing but mumbo-jumbo, terrifyingly well organised, of course, but mumbo-jumbo all the same. As for forecasts, they were even worse, a combination of factors that seemed to have no relevance, and all put together with the primary intention of making her feel hopelessly inadequate – a kind of crackling black-and-white hell from which she could not escape.

  It wasn’t that she was stupid – far from it. It was just that her creative quicksilver brain didn’t work this way. Dinah saw things in her imagination, felt them with a rush of excitement in her pores, created them with her nimble fingers. It was the smell of leather and the touch of soft pure silk that excited her. Acres of neatly typed print and columns of figures simply made her want to run away.

  But she couldn’t run away. She was imprisoned in her ultramodern studio and Liz Christopher, her secretary, was the jailer, seated behind her typewriter in the outer office and waiting for Dinah’s call to say that she had read her mail and was ready to dictate some replies, discuss the business of the day and check her appointment diary.

  Dinah sighed, running her fingers through her short-cropped silver-blonde hair. She hated the office too, hated the ordered perfection of its layout and the highly polished pine woodwork, hated the smooth blue leather in which the chairs were upholstered and the ankle-deep blue carpet chosen to look luxurious but not to show scuff-marks. Wood should look as though it was able to breathe, she thought, leather ever so slightly worn. And the floor should be woodblocks with rugs, not this soulless wall-to-wall practicality. Often, looking at it, she longed with all her heart for the comfortable scruffiness of her little studio in the dilapidated building they had used in the old days. It might have been inconvenient, with nowhere really to put anything and know where to find it again, it might have been cold in winter, heated only by a portable gas fire and with draughts coming under the door and in at the old-fashioned, rather loose-fitting windows, it might have been lacking all the mod cons to impress visiting buyers, but it had been home! Dinah believed fervently that she had done most of her best work there. But of course that might have had more to do with the way things had been in those days, with an exciting future beckoning, than it had with her environment. Goodness knows, she could hardly complain about the surroundings here. The purpose-built factory and office block were set in miles of beautiful countryside – obtaining planning permission for them had been a major achievement in itself – and the view from Dinah’s office window was as peaceful as it was spectacular, green fields with cows grazing, broken only by hedgerows and a little copse of trees, now in full summer leaf.

  As for the fabric of the building, Van had employed only the very best architects and interior designers with a brief to produce a setting that was both functional and impressive. Vandina had an international reputation to uphold, he had maintained, it was important for them to project an image of elegance and material success. And perhaps he had been right – almost certainly he had been. When had Van’s instincts ever been out of trim? From their impressive new headquarters Vandina had gone from strength to strength, a success story that had become a legend in the world of fashion accessories, and Dinah had been forced to concede that once again Van’s drive and confidence had been well placed, even if it did not coincide with her own vision of how things should be done. She had been content to leave all the organisation to Van and concentrate on what she did best – watching the market, planning the new season’s ranges and playing her hunches in setting new styles and trends.

  But now Van was no longer here to supervise the day-to-day management of Vandina and mastermind long-term projects. It was over a year since he had been killed when his Cessna had crashed into a Gloucestershire hillside, and she still mourned him and missed him as sharply as if it had been just yesterday.

  When the crash had happened Dinah had thought her world had come to an end. On a personal level she had felt as if her heart had been torn out, leaving a great gaping hole that refused to heal, and often in the beginning she had wished that she had been with him and had died at his side in the blazing wreck of the Cessna. She and Van had been together so long she could scarcely remember a time when she had not loved him, and the thought of a future without him was a desert waste too bleak to contemplate.

  But for Dinah the loss was not only personal. There was also the business to think of – the business which Van had controlled and masterminded from its very inception.

  How the hell could she keep going? she had wondered when the first numbing shock of his death had begun to wear off and she could think again. How the hell could Vandina survive without him? But the need to work had been strong – it was the only analgesic for the all-consuming pain of loss – and besides, she had known she had to keep going for Van’s sake.

  Vandina had been their dream. Together they had built it. Now it would be his memorial.

  There were, of course, plenty of advisers Dinah could turn to. Vandina had not grown to its present size without collecting an army of accountants and lawyers, a strong middle-management team and a sales force second to none. Dinah had taken advice and promoted the best of them to take on increased responsibility in their own fields. But she had been unwilling to relinquish control to them, hopelessly inadequate though she sometimes felt. Instead she had hired a new and inspired designer, Jayne Peters-Browne, to take over some of the work she had previously done herself, and tried, in her own way, to assume the helm.

  It was an uphill struggle and Dinah hated it. But at least with the help and advice of her team she was making it work – or so she had thought. The last few days she had not been so sure. Ros Newman, her personal assistant, had taken unexpected leave, and as she floundered among the mounds of paperwork that now came directly to her Dinah began to realise with a sinking heart just how vital a role Ros had assumed in the running of the company.

  Sighing, Dinah reached for her spectacles and slipped them on. The metal frame cut uncomfortably into the narrow bridge of her nose, and she adjusted it carefully with a beautifully manicured finger. The spectacle frame wasn’t the most sensible design, she knew, much too heavy for long periods of use, but she liked the way she looked in them – stylishly businesslike. So many of the frames had made her look, in her opinion, ‘mumsy’ – the very last impression she wanted to project.

  This worry was, in fact, totally unfounded. Though Dinah was now almost fifty years old there was nothing even marginally ‘mumsy’ about her appearance. Her hair, highlighted to conceal the dull grey that had begun to appear in the natural silver-blonde, was cut short and feathered into a style that was both glamorous and flattering, and her face, with its minimal make-up, was clear-skinned and almost unlined. Dinah had gone on record as an advocate of hormone replacement therapy, and certainly her glow and vitality appeared to be a testament to it. Her figure, always slim and shapely, had been kept in trim by a rigorous diet and the use of health clubs and Van’s home gym – though she had not been able to bring herself to use the gym since his death.

  As might be expected of a woman in her position Dinah’s dress sense was perfect if, surprisingly, a little unadventurous. She had always worn a great deal of black; since Van’s death she had worn nothing else – little black dresses, short snappy black skirts with black satin opaque tights, black sweaters with either scoop or polo necks, black cigarette pants, oversized black jackets, masculine style. Today it was a tailored suit, obligatory short skirt and cropped jacket teamed with a perfectly cut black silk blouse. Dinah had some important
meetings today, so she had felt the need to be a little more formal. But first there were the motions to go through – this stultifyingly boring pile of papers that had been put on her desk for her attention.

  One by one she leafed through them, noting with relief the ones that could be passed on, trying to absorb information from the others so that she could discuss them intelligently with the relevant departmental heads. Amongst the pile was a report from the fabric design department with computerised sketches of how the new fabrics would look made up into the blouses she intended integrating into the range, and she put it to one side to study later. That, at least, would be a pleasant job.

  Next in the pile was a newspaper cutting marked for her attention. Dinah instantly recognised the layout of the women’s page of a popular national daily in whose columns Vandina often figured.

  Not today, however. The article headlined ‘ Bags of Glamour’ seemed to be about Reubens, a new firm on the fashion accessory scene. The moment she realised it Dinah felt her hackles begin to rise, and as she read on her irritation grew, through disbelief to full-blown anger. When she had finished she read it again, trembling with fury. Then she reached for the intercom and buzzed for Liz. A moment later the blue leather-padded door opened and the secretary appeared, pad, pencil and engagement diary in her hands.

  ‘You’re ready for me now, Miss Marshall?’

  ‘Have you seen this?’ Dinah demanded, stubbing at the article with her pink-tipped finger.

  Liz Christopher nodded. She was an excellent secretary, a pretty if rather plump girl, whose softly rounded face became almost beautiful when she smiled. She was not smiling now.

  ‘Yes, Miss Marshall. It was in my morning paper. I thought you ought to know about it.’