About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  When we reached the arch over the front of the cobbled mews, Paddy stopped. His eyes scanned the road. ‘Good.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Felix left for lunch in a black Golf, we saw it go from his house. I just wanted to check it wasn’t here.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Down we went, to the pink house at the bottom, on the right. I pressed the doorbell.

  ‘Who shall I say you are?’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘Yes, no, I just thought …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I didn’t. And anyway, footsteps could be heard coming down the hall towards us so there was only time for me to arrange my features in an appropriately grave manner and await Robert’s florid face creasing into a smile of welcome above an extravagantly bright cravat. Neither came to fruition. The door was opened by a lean, almost bony young man, his dark hair tied back in a ponytail. He had a sallow complexion and a rather guarded expression. He regarded us wordlessly.

  ‘Oh,’ I faltered. ‘Hello. I was looking for Robert?’

  ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid. I’m his grandson. Can I help?’

  Felix’s son. The artist. But not like him at all, apart from the high cheekbones. And of course the eyes, I suddenly realized.

  ‘May we come in a moment?’ asked Paddy pleasantly, and rather boldly, I thought. ‘We won’t be a moment, and we could just as easily explain this to you as to your grandfather.’

  This, to me, seemed like a gross miscalculation on Paddy’s part. We knew Robert. Or I did. Knew he was a good egg. We didn’t know this young man at all, and as Felix’s son and the next heir, this could go badly wrong. But the ponytailed young man had shrugged and was holding open the door, and Paddy was already following him down the hall to the kitchen whilst I, unable to do otherwise, followed like jetsam in his wake.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ asked the young man with understandable caution once we were in the kitchen. He plucked a piece of burnt toast from the toaster, which was smoking, and flung open the back door to let the fumes out.

  Paddy explained, matter-of-factly and succinctly, as if he were merely outlining a recent business transaction between myself and his father. He told the tale in a methodical way which left nothing to the imagination, no embarrassing stone unturned, but at the same time gave plenty of credence to Felix in terms of a possible misunderstanding and therefore lack of culpability. There were no accusations, no suggestions of foul play, just puzzlement at the nature of the contract – which Paddy placed carefully on the table – in the light of my original agreement with Robert. He wondered if – ‘I’m so sorry, what was your name?’

  ‘Daniel.’

  If Daniel would be able to shed any further light, because obviously we didn’t want to upset his grandfather. It wasn’t a threat, just a statement of fact. When Paddy got to the part about me being unable to remember if I’d signed it, and waking up in Felix’s bed the following morning, I had to slide away my eyes, which up until then had been firmly on Daniel’s green ones, to the floor. But when I glanced up, Daniel’s expression hadn’t changed. He remained inscrutable as he digested what he’d just been told: as I would, I decided, if I had the sangfroid, and if I’d been told something similar about my father. I wondered why Paddy thought it was OK to shock a son rather than a grandfather.

  Yet, as Daniel perched on a stool at the breakfast bar and lit a cigarette, I could see that he was not shocked. What I couldn’t work out was what his response might be. What excuse he would give, what character assassination he might make of me, to whom his eyes were turning in slight disgust (and who could blame him?): what form his mitigation on behalf of his father might take. When it came, it was blunt and to the point.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘I mean, I believe what you,’ he glanced at Paddy, ‘have just told me, but I don’t believe you didn’t know what you were signing.’ He looked at me. ‘I believe you fell headlong for my dad, as many others have done before and many still will. I think he sold it to you on the basis that you’d live here together. I think – and I’m under no illusions here – that he gave you all sorts of promises and visions of the future, and that madly in love – and I use that word advisedly, it does send people bonkers – you agreed to anything he proposed, under the guise of it being what Cuthbert would have wanted. I think your conscience pricked you, too. There you were, a very recent heir with no previous knowledge of this family at all, helicoptering in, stealing the family silver. I think this compromise appealed to you. Made you feel better. Seduced by Dad’s charm, you agreed he was right and signed the contract. Only afterwards, when he no doubt dumped you, did you turn into a woman scorned. So then you came round here with all your fury and your spokesperson friend, and your righteous indignation. That’s what I think happened.’

  He made it sound so plausible that I wondered for a crazy moment if that was indeed the case. Love was a kind of madness. But I knew I hadn’t been that deranged. That was the fate of foolish old sugar daddies in a fable straight out of the Daily Mail and bore no relation to me.

  ‘OK,’ said Paddy, ‘that’s understandable. You’re going to line up with your father in his camp. But we’re not here to discover what you think, actually, we’re here to outline what we will say to your grandfather, which frankly we’d rather not do.’

  ‘Feel free. He’ll say the same as me.’

  ‘Like hell he will.’ A woman’s voice came from the garden. We all swung about. Through the open back door we saw a bicycle being flung on the grass, an open gate in the garden wall revealing its point of entry. Camilla came into the kitchen from outside. Her slight frame looked even smaller in oversized faded dungarees and a white vest, and her beautiful, heart-shaped face was etched with pain and misery. She ignored me and Paddy and crossed the room to square up to Daniel. Her bottom lip was quivering. ‘Like hell.’

  26

  Camilla kept her eyes firmly on Daniel’s, almost daring them to look away. ‘Come on, Dan.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘You know as well as I do something like this was bound to happen. Something had to give.’

  It was as if we weren’t there. She was addressing only the young man, inches away from him. Her face was older close up, I realized, with a faint fretwork of lines around the eyes and mouth. Still lovely, but not in the first flush of youth. Mid-thirties, maybe. She took one of Daniel’s cigarettes from the island and lit it, which made the fine lines pucker even more. As she exhaled above his head, Daniel averted his gaze: it rested somewhere in the middle distance, somewhere beyond all of us.

  She turned. ‘The only reason he’s here,’ she told Paddy, ‘is to have his own vendetta with his father. Felix has been hoicking his prices up to ridiculous levels. Mount Street are severely pissed off, isn’t that right, Dan?’

  ‘Leave it, Camilla,’ Daniel muttered.

  ‘No, I will not leave it. He jeopardizes your standing at the gallery by accumulating all the work they don’t exhibit, all your old stuff – which by your own admission is not up to your recent standard – he inflates the prices exorbitantly to snare some Dutch dealer, and how d’you think that goes down with Pascal at Manon, who you’re supposed to have such an exclusive relationship with? Just as I am supposed to have such an exclusive relationship with your father.’ For the first time she turned and looked at me, training her cool blue eyes in my direction. I felt myself shrink. ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re not the first, not by any means. Felix’s love life is littered with women like you. I’m not a complete fool.’

  I found my voice. ‘I realize that now. At the time, I didn’t even know you were together. I’ve been a complete idiot.’

  ‘Women always are where he’s concerned. And I’ve obviously been the biggest of all, so don’t beat yourself up about it. But not any more. I’ve had it with him. I’m too sick and tired of the lies and the excuses and the constant need to kid myself. I’m sick of being a victim. Always looking, de
spite all the overwhelming evidence, for a reason to believe in Felix Carrington.’ She took another drag of her cigarette then stubbed it out savagely. Her chin wobbled. ‘But you don’t need to hear all this. I’ll save it for when I see him. Just as Dan here, who came round with his own agenda, his own pent-up fury, will hopefully do the same. I’d like to think we’ve both come to the end of our respective tethers.’ She gave him a meaningful look but he didn’t return it. ‘Harder, I know, in his case. When it’s blood. You don’t want to believe your father is skimming a profit off your art, trying to steal a march on your talents.’

  ‘He won’t succeed,’ said Paddy. ‘That was a scam on the part of myself and a friend called Willem Brecht, the Dutchman you referred to, to find the agreement Molly signed.’ He turned to Daniel. ‘For what it’s worth, he left us in his house so as not to stand up your grandfather.’ That wasn’t quite how Paddy had originally described it to me but I let it go, knowing he was being kind.

  ‘And to be fair, he’s always broke,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘He’s had a run of bad luck with his work.’

  ‘He’s never had any good luck because he’s not in any way, shape or form an artist of calibre,’ said Camilla. ‘Not like you. He’s not even a respected critic any more; his judgement is questioned constantly. Look at that awards show he judged in Glasgow, overturned immediately by a committee at the College of Art following an appeal, and that fiasco in Milan.’

  ‘So what are you saying, he’s crap at what he does? So what? So are a lot of people, it’s not a crime.’

  ‘It’s a crime if he’s corrupt at what he does, too, Dan. And he is. In every sphere of his life. You heard the story they just told you, you know in your heart it’s true.’

  Daniel stared at a small space on the floor, a crack in the tiles, a million miles away. His shoulders were hunched. ‘He wasn’t always like that,’ he said softly.

  ‘I know!’ she cried, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘D’you think I don’t know that? Why d’you think I fell in love with him? Why d’you think I’ve stayed with him all these years, not just because he’s brilliant company and the best fun, but because I know there’s a better person deep inside. But the much worse person has been creeping up and up and slowly suffocating that one for years now, and we’re deluding ourselves if we don’t recognize that.’ She turned swiftly to me. ‘You’ve lost your driving licence, haven’t you?’

  I blanched, wrong-footed. ‘My … my driving licence?’

  ‘Yes, I found it in Felix’s house. He probably meant to pop it back in your purse, but you woke up and he didn’t get a chance.’

  I stared at her. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Take a look.’

  I rummaged in my bag. Found my purse. It wasn’t there.

  ‘And that’s OK,’ Camilla went on, ‘because you’d have just been irritated when you eventually needed it, to hire a car abroad or something, and imagined you’d dropped it. You wouldn’t think Felix would steal it while you were asleep and copy the signature.’

  I felt my mouth fall open. ‘Is that what …?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But you don’t remember signing that thing, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So maybe. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  ‘Oh.’ I put my hand over my mouth as I realized something. Removed it to speak. ‘It had the flourish on the F of Faulkner. I haven’t done that for years. I thought it was odd. It was an affectation I had when I was younger.’

  ‘Here.’ She opened a leather pouch slung around her waist and placed my licence on the counter between us. Paddy put the document beside it; he flipped to the last page. The signatures were identical. Uncannily so.

  ‘He’d have been able to do that,’ said Daniel bitterly. ‘He’s a good draughtsman, good at copying. Look at that Sam Spencer he rattled off for Harry.’

  ‘I know,’ said Camilla shortly, shooting him a look. Clearly there were murkier depths we could dredge if we felt like it.

  ‘So … does that make this null and void?’ I asked.

  ‘It certainly makes it open to rigorous legal investigation,’ said Paddy. ‘And by that I mean the police, rather than a lawyer.’

  Camilla and Daniel both looked scared. ‘Please. There’s no need for that,’ said Daniel nervously. ‘We’ll talk to him. I’m sure he just got … carried away.’

  Paddy frowned and looked thoughtful.

  Camilla’s voice broke the silence. ‘And actually, there really is no need for that, because what Felix doesn’t realize is that there’s another will. A more recent one.’ She raised her chin. ‘And after all, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Why you’re here?’

  We stared at her.

  ‘What d’you mean, another will?’ said Paddy. ‘We didn’t think there was a will at all, thought he’d died intestate?’

  ‘Not a bit of it, there were two. Cuthbert knew what would happen, you see. He was a cunning old sod. And he loved a game. He left the first one very deliberately in the top right-hand drawer of his bureau so that when Felix instantly searched the place – indecently quickly, I might add, hours after Cuthbert’s death; I found him prowling around while Robert was still grief-stricken – he’d find it very quickly. And destroy it. But then be horrified to discover that the estate would go to a blood relative. Well, he was furious. And Cuthbert knew he’d be furious, absolutely livid, and that he’d get up to no good. Try to contest it, override it, take it to court and maybe even win. After all, some judges might look favourably on such a long relationship which, to all intents and purposes, was a marriage. On the other hand, some might have said – no, the law’s the law. If there’s no will, follow the bloodline. It stands. So it was a risk. But I can tell you now, Felix was definitely going to do it. He’d looked into it, seen a solicitor. But the problem was, it was expensive. So instead, when he met Molly, he simply decided to seduce her. And get her to agree to something different.

  ‘Cuthbert didn’t know that would happen, of course. What he did know, though, was that eventually there would be a catch in place. A comeuppance for Felix. He’d put it there. In his second will, which I found recently. He knew, you see, that only one person would eventually sort through his stuff, his papers. Me. Robert would just leave it and Felix wouldn’t bother. So he knew that, sometime down the line, I’d find it. A more recent will. The one I was supposed to find. With a letter, to me. I’m not going to tell you what the letter said because it’s very private. Cuthbert and I were very close. I’d worked for him for years and he was my friend. But suffice to say, he detailed pretty much exactly what would happen, the expense Felix would go to, the route he’d take towards the courts – oh, Cuthbert was enjoying himself immensely. He was a controlling old queen and he very much wanted to thwart Felix from beyond the grave. He must have disliked him very much,’ she said sadly.

  She swallowed, then went on. ‘He said – he knew I loved Felix, but I would ruin my life if I stayed with him. This was his way of warning me off him. And my test, if you like, was my own morality. My own honesty. He asked me to produce the real will, the most recent one, to override the last one, and to put a stop to all Felix’s shenanigans. I think he anticipated a good few months of legal fees and costs mounting up by this stage. How he must have rubbed his hands with glee,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘When was this?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘When did I find it? Oh, about a week ago. I didn’t tell anyone, though. Because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I still loved Felix very much. Probably still do. And producing this would ruin all his plans, all the ones I pretended not to know about. And it would most certainly be the end of us. Did I want that? Of course not.’

  ‘But now?’

  ‘Now … I’ve listened to what you’ve had to say,’ she looked at Paddy, ‘and I’ve believed it. If I’m in any way going to save my own soul and not continually be blindsided by him, I have to show you.’

/>   She walked through the middle of us and out of the kitchen towards the sitting room. The rest of us followed, not daring to utter a word in case she changed her mind. She hadn’t taken it home or hidden it away somewhere. It was clearly exactly where she’d found it: right at the bottom of the last drawer of a tallboy, an exquisite piece of Georgian walnut furniture at the far end of the room overlooking the garden. The piece was stuffed, it seemed, with papers and photograph albums and years and years of history.

  ‘For some reason I started at the bottom,’ she told us, ‘which Cuthbert probably wouldn’t have anticipated.’ She knelt and pulled out the drawer, but it was so heavy, so overloaded, it stuck. Paddy crouched and helped her. Together they removed the entire drawer, crammed with paperwork, and set it on the Persian carpet. Camilla rummaged with her hand down at the left-hand side, delving right to the bottom. She produced an A4 manila envelope with her name, Camilla Bennett, in black ink. She fished inside and withdrew a folded piece of paper. She handed it to Paddy. ‘Here.’