‘Did Gilbert tell you that Tate and I were having an argument when it happened?’ Grace said. Violet felt her interest peak.
‘Tate?’
Grace nodded. ‘Yes, and the Dutch family have complained, asked for a refund, and Alistair is angry because he thinks it’s unprofessional and people might start wondering if we were causing a diversion.’
‘Were you?’
‘No. Of course not.’ Grace appeared affronted, but then seemed to lapse back into misery. ‘It’s awful. I’ve never, ever had someone complain before and they had every right. I really let him get to me.’
Violet sat forward. ‘Ah, Tate. Gilbert … well, Gilbert seems to think he’s nice. “A breath of fresh air” I think he called him.’
Grace definitely didn’t care for Tate, even the way she took a bite of her sandwich suggested that. She didn’t need to be quite so wild, though – a bit of egg had fallen back on to her plate.
Violet considered getting the dustpan and brush out, but decided that would interrupt the flow of conversation.
‘In fact, Gilbert talks about Tate quite a bit.’ Violet let that sit for a while. ‘And someone called … Baby.’
‘Bebbie.’
‘Hmm. Yes, an unusual name. I can’t quite picture what a woman with that kind of name would look like.’
Grace screwed her mouth up, which was not attractive.
‘She’s quite stunning: long legs, long hair. Arty type, you know.’
Violet didn’t, but she did know danger when she heard it described to her. She looked around her sitting room, imagining what a long-limbed, long-haired arty woman would do to it. Would do to Gilbert. It was no good; she couldn’t go on inching her way forward like this. She put down her plate.
‘Is she someone Gilbert might like?’ she said, knowing her voice had wavered as she’d asked the question.
She saw Grace’s expression change as if something had just broken above her mind and the noise had made her wake up. Her face looked like those idiots from social services; she was leaning forward. Did she still have her feet on the paper? Just.
‘Are you worried about something, Violet? Is that why you wanted to see me?’
Violet nodded at the relief of being understood. ‘Yes, and please, Grace, not a word to Gilbert … but this Tate, he seems to be bringing in all these women and Gilbert … well, Gilbert … he likes beautiful things.’
Violet feared that Grace was going to try to reach out for her hand, but she must have thought better of it.
‘Violet,’ she said, and her tone was gentle, a nice gentle, not that horrible patting-on-the-head gentle, ‘Bebbie is no threat to you. She was Tate’s girlfriend; not so sure she is now. Don’t expect she’ll be around much.’
‘And Corinne? And Jo?’
‘Joe is actually a man. He and Corinne are together, I think.’
Violet was daring to hope. ‘And Shawna?’
Grace frowned and then her expression straightened itself out. ‘Oh, Shawna! Well, she’s just an artist we met. She doesn’t come to the office.’
‘But Gilbert might still like her.’
Violet couldn’t work out what Grace was doing with her face now. There was obviously some kind of fight going on in her brain. Maybe she was hearing voices. Couldn’t be the mice, they were quiet at the moment. But they’d be back. They’d come sniffing after those sandwiches.
‘Violet,’ Grace said finally, ‘I can promise you, absolutely, that Gilbert is not going to be interested in any woman who Tate introduces him to.’
‘Promise? Absolutely?’ Violet said. ‘Is that possible? He’s … he seems unsettled, not himself. Complains a lot. About food – that we have chops on a Tuesday, that kind of thing – and I thought maybe there’s a woman, and you know how women are, making you discontented with what you’ve got, getting you to spend money on them, dragging you away from what you’ve always …’
She stopped because Grace was looking at her in ‘that’ way and Violet realised she was clasping and clawing at her own hands.
She remembered what Gilbert said about focusing on something in the room and calming herself.
When she felt she was calm enough, which was sometimes before other people thought she was, she tried again.
‘You’re certain … about the women?’
‘Trust me. You don’t have anything to fear from any woman.’
Violet liked the way Grace was so definite about that, but not the way she’d shifted her gaze away before she’d finished talking.
Oh well, perhaps it was something to do with having sore eyes.
Violet unclenched her toes and let her legs relax. A feeling of ease spread slowly up her body.
‘Thank you, Grace,’ she said, ‘you’ve put my mind at rest. Gilbert can be so evasive sometimes. I can always depend on you to tell me the truth.’
Grace made a funny noise at that, like she had a sore throat as well as sore eyes. And then she sat there, not eating or drinking anything and, if possible, looking even more miserable until Violet was half hoping that the mice might put in an appearance just to add a bit of life to the proceedings.
CHAPTER 25
The phone on her desk rang.
‘I’m not speaking to you,’ Felicity said. ‘I’m only calling to see you’re all right.’
‘Even by your standards, Mum, that sentence is gibberish.’
‘And I’m not listening to you either, so don’t be snitty with me. Well … are you all right? You were in that gallery, weren’t you, when it was robbed?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Your father left a message. So, are you all right? You don’t sound all right.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘You’re not all right, are you? I can hear it in your voice.’
‘You said you weren’t listening to me.’
The line went dead and Grace knew that wasn’t the way to handle her mother if she was ever going to broker some kind of reconciliation between her parents.
Her father. She was surprised he’d had either the time or the inclination to ring her mother. He’d practically been dancing around the flat on Monday evening when she came home, bleary-eyed and dishevelled. For him, this robbery was the payback for all of those years of preparation, all that crime-watching and analysing – and, added jackpot, now he had an eyewitness he could question any time he chose. New files and plans and graphs had materialised to colonise her worktops by the time she’d left for work the next day, and after returning from Violet’s last night she’d had to face interrogation in the sitting room by the Newham Gang – her on a stool from the kitchen, them lounging around on the sofa and easy chairs.
They seemed particularly interested in pinpointing where each of the gallery attendants had been at the time of the robbery, something Grace had no way of knowing, but which didn’t stop them repeatedly asking her. This led her to conclude that they had joined the ranks of people who felt it must have been an inside job, or at least carried out with some inside help. When she let slip that Norman had appeared and then disappeared again, Nadim became thoughtful and said, ‘Is he the one with the Russian wife?’ which set off a lot of meaningful nods from the others and much discussion about the black market for icons. Unable to bear any more of it, Grace had left the room, reasoning that it was going to be hard to lie down on the sofa with two ex-policemen still sitting on it. She wanted to detour via the kitchen, just to have a look at the contents of her biscuit tin, but forced herself to go and lie on her bed instead, pushing aside her father’s papers to do so and trying to ignore the smell of white spirit and paint that still lingered in the flat. While her father and his mates were sifting through facts and figures and psychological profiling, all she kept seeing was the icon shoved in a lock-up garage somewhere or just about to disappear into some private collection.
Grace stopped thinking about her father’s interrogation techniques and returned to the present moment and her office. She was
still holding the phone even though her mother was long gone. She put it down on the desk and hoped that it would ring again and it would be Mark. She debated calling his mobile. He’d contacted her when he’d seen the robbery on the news, not sure if she’d been in it or not. Then he’d made all the right sympathetic noises, even sent her some flowers. She looked at them now in their glass vase on her desk: white roses, long-stemmed. He said he’d make a real effort to grab that couple of hours with her before he flew off again this evening. She could just ring him and see if it was still on.
Alistair came in as she was dialling the number, so she stopped and put the phone down. Ignoring Alistair just at this moment wasn’t a good idea. He was still put out with her for arguing with Tate in front of clients.
‘The Paddwick won’t reopen again until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Just been talking to the director. He sounds gutted, I can tell you. I apologised for … any upset you might have caused beforehand. I don’t think he was really listening.’
‘It wasn’t just me, Alistair. Tate can be very—’
‘You’re my right-hand woman, Grace, we went over this yesterday. I expect better of you. The other galleries hear about it and they might think about restricting our access.’
She felt the injustice of what he was saying and he must have seen it.
‘All right, all right, just be careful, hmm? Best behaviour when you get back in there.’
Grace didn’t want to go back in there ever again. The embarrassment she could cope with; the empty room where the icon had been she could not.
Please let whoever had the icon be looking after it. Please don’t let them have splintered the wood or scratched the gilding.
When she thought of that little foot in the blanket shoved somewhere unloved and unlooked at, it made her want to cry. No, not just cry – she wanted to beat her chest and wail. She should have kept more of an eye on it; when the tear gas started, she should have realised and run to it. Kept it safe. It was the least she could have done to make some kind of amends.
Alistair, perhaps spooked by her misery, had gone back to his office. Now she felt too upset to ring Mark. She would come across as needy.
This was Tate’s fault. He’d caused it somehow just by existing. Since he’d arrived things had been going wrong – Grace’s parents, Emma and Alistair, Gilbert and Violet, Esther … and now this. And she was letting them go wrong, letting things slip away from her.
Why hadn’t they stolen Tate instead of the icon?
She back-pedalled on that as she remembered how he’d got her out of the gallery, how kind he’d been finding the water. She could feel his hand around her wrist again.
No, no, no. Stop thinking about that. And about yesterday – how before the police had been to the office, after the police had been, he’d been acting as if this shared experience had created some bond between them. Kept asking her if she was all right. Telling her not to worry, the icon would be found.
Getting back in control, especially of any feelings for him, was even more important now than ever. She must keep her back turned on all this. Keep the lid on that tin. She’d been distracted by him and whoosh … she’d begun to slide towards that pit.
The phone rang again.
‘Aurillia,’ she said when she recognised the voice. ‘What are you doing? What time is it over there?’
‘Early, very early, but as you haven’t answered my latest email, or Zin and Serafina’s, how else are we going to communicate with you?’ There was an aggrieved whine under the drawl which Aurillia had affected despite only having been in America a couple of years. ‘Think of this as an intervention.’
‘A what?’
‘Mum has been on the phone saying you’ve actually accused her of having sex with Jay. Is that right?’
‘Not exactly. Dad—’
‘Don’t hide behind Dad on this. Look, you really need to start chilling – about this, about everything – or you’ll have some kind of breakdown. The body is only the mind’s carrier. Mum swears that Jay Houghton and she just have a business arrangement, not that she really needs to explain anything to us anyway – a woman is in charge of her own body. So, the question is, why have you purposely chosen to disbelieve her? You wanna’ think about that—’
‘No, I don’t,’ Grace said firmly, ‘this is not about me. This is about our mother and our father and how the latter feels the former has had some kind of sexual encounter – I did not say “sex”– with Jay Houghton. Now, you can empathise and sympathise with Mum all you like, but it is Dad who needs to be made to feel better.’
‘I have tried to talk to him,’ Aurillia said in a sulky voice.
‘Really, or have you talked at him?’
‘You’re very aggressive this morning. Why are you so aggressive?’
‘Well, perhaps because I have been in a robbery, been tear-gassed, if there is such an expression, and one of my favourite paintings in the whole world has been stolen. Yes, that will be it. I don’t suppose Mum mentioned that?’
There was a beat of silence and then Aurillia said, ‘A robbery. My God, you’re probably suffering from posttraumatic stress … you need to go lie on the floor. No, wait, we do courses to help you deal with the feeling of helplessness and deep-seated pain that can arise from one of these incidents. You ought to think about it.’
It was with supreme self-restraint that Grace did not shout, Oh, bugger off! down the phone. ‘Thank you, I will consider it,’ she said instead. ‘In the meantime, if the coven could get its act together, if the three of you could try to make Dad feel better about this, I’d be grateful. Was that all? Good.’
Grace was rather pleased with her measured response to such provocation and with equal delicacy opened up her email account and zapped every one of her sisters’ latest emails without reading them.
The phone rang again. It was her dad.
‘Can you remember? Were the blinds fully up or halfway down in the room you were in when the robbery started?’
‘If I tell you, will you listen to what I have to say first?’
‘Uh … ye-es.’
‘Right. You had better brace yourself as it is likely that today you will have phone calls and emails from Zin, Aurillia and Serafina. We are all getting weary of being ping-ponged back and forth between you and Mum. At some point you have to talk about this to Mum, face-to-face. So … blinds? All the way up. Goodbye.’
She contemplated ringing Mark. No, he’d come to her if he could.
The phone rang again. Bernice.
‘You couldn’t come down for a few minutes, could you? Esther’s not in till later.’
That was intriguing enough to get her down the stairs.
After some initial fussing around her to make sure she was not suffering any long-term effects from the robbery – Grace avoided looking Bernice in the eye when she said, ‘No’ – and a bit of news about how the garden overhaul was going now the house was finished, Bernice jabbed her thumb towards Esther’s desk.
‘She’s up to something,’ she said. ‘See, that’s the trouble when she gets ideas in her head. And …’ she seemed to be considering whether to go on or not. She lowered her voice. ‘Look, Esther is family and she’s not had an easy life, but she gets fixations, you know. Goes for years placid as anything, then gets … focused on things … on people.’ Bernice’s look suggested she was trying to tell Grace something without actually saying it.
‘Do you mean people, or do you mean men?’ Grace asked.
‘I mean men, Grace. A few years back this guy, local driving instructor, persuaded her she needed to learn to drive; it would give her some freedom, no need to wait for buses, blah de blah. Anyway, he starts teaching her and she’s getting along fine, but I can tell …’ Bernice didn’t actually tap her nose but the inference was there in the tip of her head. ‘I can tell she’s getting a bit fonder of the guy than the driving. He rings me up one day. She’s sitting in a car outside his house and every time he goes out she’
s on him … not literally but, you know, questions about gear changes and the Highway Code. She’s only gone and bought a car, got a friend to drive it there. His wife’s getting jittery about the whole thing, he’s getting jittery. Can I do something about it?’
‘Could you?’
‘Well, this was before Sol, so me and me Dad and brothers went around and drove the car away with her in it and had a chat with her, you know, explained that it was too over the top. Off-putting. Of course she’s upset, says she’s in love with him and he’s in love with her. My brothers are ready to go back round and punch the guy for leading her on, but then it becomes clear it’s all in her head. He’s just been teaching her to drive, been nice, chatty, kind.’ Bernice grimaced. ‘You might want to give Blond Boy the nod ’cos I’m reading the signs, Grace, reading the signs.’
Grace went back up to the office, the rational side of her brain planning how to tell Tate, the irrational side laughing its head off that Mr Free Spirit had started something that was going to come back and bite him on the bum. Probably literally in Esther’s case.
She spent a few minutes getting to grips with the urgent stuff on her desk and on her computer, including sending a refund off, with a wince, to the de Janvers, but she couldn’t really settle. She’d thought yesterday had been bad: a stream of people calling in to see what had happened – Joe and Corinne, the police – but this silence was worse. Too much space in which to worry about that tiny foot in that blanket. There was only one other place where she might feel at peace and gather some strength. She went through to Alistair and made up some reason for going out.
‘Go on then, I’ll man the fort. No, wait, before you head off, have you rung Tate with numbers for his tour yet? No. OK, leave that with me then. Well, go on, what are you waiting for? And don’t be too long. I have a meeting later.’
Another phantom meeting. She agreed that she’d only be out a while and she was, just long enough to stand in the Shillingsworth and talk to the icon there. She told the mother about the other robbery, warned her to look after herself and the baby. Said, yet again, that she was sorry, so, so sorry.
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