‘I should think not. I worked my fingers to the bone all night mending that for you.’
‘And talking of night,’ Emma said. ‘Look at that sky out there.’
‘It’ll mean I’ll have to drag my eyes away from you but …’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ Emma said, turning her face up to him and kissing his chin. ‘I’ll tell you. It’s going to be a beautiful sunset. The sky’s all stripy – darkish grey, which I expect will go indigo later, and raspberry, like one of Signor Cascarini’s ice cream raspberry ripple sundaes. I’ll tell you about him some time.’
Matthew yawned theatrically, and then he laughed. ‘Tom, bless his heart, told me more than you probably wanted him to about Signor Cascarini. How he’s sweet on you …’
‘I should never have encouraged him.’
‘And I hope you didn’t encourage him in the way you’ve just encouraged me?’
‘Of course not!’ Emma said, mock-outraged. ‘What do you take me for?’
‘A very sexy, beautiful, adorable strumpet at the moment.’
‘Guilty as charged,’ Emma said. ‘And if it wasn’t for the fact I really will need to go and fetch Fleur soon, I’d show you just how much of a strumpet I can be.’
‘Ah …’ Matthew said.
‘That was a very loaded “ah” if I may say so.’
‘Was it?’
‘Oh God, Matthew,’ Emma said, sitting up straighter in the bed, removing her head from Matthew’s shoulder to look at him, face to face. She knew that tone of voice. He had another agenda. ‘I was right in my thinking just now when you stiffened after I said all that poetic stuff about being a good wife and a good stepmother to Fleur, wasn’t I? What is it?’
‘I love you, Emma, and that’s the truth. Whether or not you will love me—’
‘Matthew! Tell me! Please.’
She was frightened now. She’d been this man’s housekeeper for months and months back when she’d been barely sixteen years old and she’d learned to read his moods. Learned that often what he didn’t say was more important than what he did. And she knew beyond doubt when he was hiding something from her, and that when he thought he was hiding it from her for her own good. He’d got her to safety at Nase Head House – when he knew Reuben Jago and his sons Carter and Miles, Seth’s father and brothers, would harm her if they could – on the pretext of taking her to dine and showing her how to read a menu and to drink champagne, hadn’t he?
‘We’ll dress first,’ Matthew said. He slid out of bed and handed Emma the clothes she’d thrown in her haste all over the floor.
‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘Fleur should be telephoning me soon. It’s getting dark. Actually, I expected her to call before now. I—’
‘You’re worried about something?’ Matthew said. ‘That Fleur will take a dim view of her mother being made love to?’
‘No. Not that.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking coming up here, thinking only of my own pleasure when Fleur could be in danger out there?’
She didn’t trust Caroline further than she could throw her. There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach that there had been someone waiting outside in a car for Caroline the afternoon of Fleur’s birthday. Were they being spied on? Had Fleur been spied on?
Emma shivered and Matthew put his hand in the small of her back and smoothed it, comfortingly, up and down.
‘What sort of danger, Emma? You can tell me, you know you can.’
So she did. Almost word for word the conversations she’d had with Caroline. The words came tumbling out like water from an overflowing stream going over rocks. And there wasn’t any relief in the telling, not even to Matthew.
‘First things first,’ Matthew said. ‘We’ll dress – much as I’d like a repeat performance or two of what we’ve just been doing so splendidly – and then you telephone Signor Cascarini and ask to speak to Fleur. It will put your mind at rest if nothing else.’
Emma’s breath caught in her throat. ‘What if she’s not there? What …’ Matthew knew something, didn’t he? The way he was looking at her – an uncomfortable mix of desire and fear and anger. ‘What do you know that I don’t?’
‘Only what you’ve just told me. But I know Caroline of old—’
‘You do?’
Matthew laughed, a little uneasily, Emma thought.
‘Thank goodness you’ve never lost your habit of questioning everything a man says! But I don’t mean I know her in the way you’re probably thinking. I saw her in court, lying through her teeth but there was nothing that could be pinned on her, only Miles. But she’s dangerous, Emma, and we both know it.’ Matthew began pulling on his underthings, stepped into his trousers, stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his shirt.
Emma followed suit. She’d never dressed so quickly in her life.
‘Name, miss,’ the policeman said.
‘I’ve already told you,’ Fleur replied. ‘In the cinema.’ She glanced across the cell-like room to the woman police constable standing ramrod straight in the corner, with her arms behind her back. Tell him I’ve already told him, Fleur’s eyes pleaded, but she was met with a blank stare.
‘Tell me again. Terrible memory.’
Fleur sighed. Her head was beginning to ache. Were Caroline and Archie in the police station? Not that she wanted to see them but they were responsible for her being here, weren’t they? What time was it? Should she ask this constable sitting across the table from her, looking bored out of his mind. Pushing back the sleeve of her jacket, Fleur gasped.
‘My watch! My beautiful watch that Ma bought me for my birthday! It’s gone. What have you done with it?’
‘Look, miss, I don’t know what your game is but I’m beginning to make a guess at it. Watch missing you say? A likely story. Name?’
‘Fleur Jago. However many times you ask me, you’ll get the same answer. It’s the truth.’
‘Address?’
‘Romer Lodge. Cleveland Road. Paignton.’
Fleur was frightened now. Really frightened. How had she lost her watch?
‘Father’s name?’ the constable asked.
‘He’s dead,’ Fleur said, a lump in her throat. However many times she had to tell someone her pa was dead it still hurt.
‘And what was he called before he died?’
Not an ounce of sympathy. But then, why should she expect him to have sympathy for her? The man probably dealt with the dregs of society; people like Archie, and – yes, she had to admit it – Caroline, every day. How could she ever have been duped by her? Why wasn’t she here now protecting her if she was her mother as she claimed to be?
‘Seth Jago,’ Fleur said, swallowing back tears.
‘Jago, you say. Now that name rings a bell.’ There was the twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips and Fleur might have imagined it but she thought she saw the hardness in his eyes soften a little. ‘Sit with the prisoner, Heatley, will you?’ he said to the woman police constable. ‘I think I need a word with the sarge.’
Prisoner? What am I guilty of?
‘And make a note of anything she says,’ the constable said as he left the room, slamming shut the heavy door behind him.
‘Will do,’ the woman police constable said.
And there’s going to be nothing to write down, Fleur thought, because I’m saying nothing until my ma gets here.
Chapter Nineteen
‘She’s not there,’ Emma said to Matthew, her hand shook holding the telephone receiver out in front of her as though it might bite. Or poison her in some way.
Eduardo, delighted as he was that she had telephoned him, had sounded genuinely puzzled as to why she thought Fleur was working in his ice cream parlour. Emma had asked if Paolo was there and been told he wasn’t. Eduardo had no idea where he was, he’d said. ‘Is Tuesday. He have half day on Tuesday. No work in afternoon. He too old to ask every step of his day, si?’
Why had Fleur lied to her? Again. Where was sh
e? And with whom? Had it been Caroline on the telephone yesterday and not Paolo as Fleur had claimed? Goodness, she’d like to wring the little madam’s neck for lying to her! No, she wouldn’t – all she wanted was to see her, hold her, tell her that although she was cross she loved her dearly and would die for her. She nearly had once, back in 1912, when Margaret Phipps had beaten Emma black and blue in the churchyard of St Mary’s and left her for dead, taking baby Fleur who’d been missing for a whole day almost before Seth’s friend, Olly Underwood, had found her in a cardboard box in the back garden of Shingle Cottage, plonked on top of the compost heap.
‘History is repeating itself,’ Emma said to Matthew, her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.
‘Emma? You there?’ Eduardo’s voice shouted in her ear, so loud that Matthew heard, the loudness of it making him start.
‘Let me speak to him,’ Matthew said.
‘He’s Italian. He’s hard to understand sometimes,’ Emma whispered. She handed Matthew the telephone. It was good to have someone share this terrible moment.
Emma listened as Matthew asked simple questions. What time did Paolo go out? When was he expected back? Had Eduardo been at the ice cream parlour all day? Was his motherin-law there?
‘Thank you, Signor Cascarini,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ll say goodbye now. I have other telephone calls to make.’
Emma clutched his arm. ‘Matthew, there are things I have to tell you before you telephone anyone. About Caroline. What else she said.’
She tried to pull him away from the telephone and walk across the hall to the sitting room but her legs were more wobbly than half-set junket. Her breathing was rapid and shallow.
Stay focused. Getting Fleur back safely is paramount. I’d never have spent the afternoon in bed with Matthew if I’d known she was in danger. It felt bittersweet now – their reunion, their loving – to be shocked back into reality with this.
Matthew must have sensed her physical distress because he half led, half carried her into the sitting room and gently eased her onto a couch. He sat down beside her, taking both hands in his.
‘Tell,’ he said. ‘As quickly as you can.’
‘The day after Fleur’s birthday tea, Caroline came back. She told me – but not Fleur – that Seth wasn’t her pa, but that Miles was. And that Fleur wasn’t born on the 16th of July, but on the 22nd September. The birth certificate she left for Seth was – is, I suppose – a forgery. I begged her not to tell Fleur any of that. She promised she wouldn’t as long as I let her meet Fleur, and …’
And I’ve just realised that if that is true then it might not have been me who was unable to have babies in our marriage, but Seth.
‘And?’ Matthew prompted.
‘And that’s about the sum of it,’ Emma said. She couldn’t waste time thinking about babies and the lack of them now – it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was finding Fleur.
And fast.
And it seemed Matthew was thinking along the very same lines because he leapt from the couch and ran into the hall. Within seconds she heard him speaking to someone, although she couldn’t hear the exact words – it was just a jumble of sound, fighting to be heard against the blood rushing past her ears with her fear.
If she hadn’t come back to England – to Devon – then none of this would be happening. Fleur would be in Vancouver and probably out enjoying a trip to the shops with her friends. Or at college doing a course of some sort. But whichever – she would be safe.
Oh, Seth, I am so sorry. I haven’t looked after her as I should. And I was making love to Matthew, throwing myself at him, and all thoughts of Fleur banished from my mind while I did. What sort of a woman have I become?
More telephone calls followed. Emma heard Matthew say ‘Thank you. Goodbye’ a couple of times. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked slowly on – it seemed to echo in the room. Every second was precious. Critical for Fleur.
She heard Matthew return the telephone to the cradle. And then she heard it ring again.
‘I’ll answer it,’ Matthew called to her.
More low mumbling from Matthew. She heard him say her name. And then Seth’s. Just the names.
‘She’s in custody,’ Matthew said, coming back into the sitting room. He had a big grin on his face.
How could he find something like that amusing?
‘In custody? Where?’
‘Torquay police station.’
‘Why?’
‘It seems there was some sort of brouhaha at the Odeon cinema. Fleur was in a box—’
‘A box? With Paolo? Eduardo said Paolo had gone out. Perhaps—’
‘Stop making up imaginary scenarios, Emma,’ Matthew said, gently enough, but, to Emma, it sounded like a telling off. How would he feel if it were his son who had gone missing?
‘Not with Paolo,’ Matthew said. ‘From the description the usherette was able to give the police I’m pretty certain Fleur was with Caroline—’
‘Oh my God!’ Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘I might have known. I’ll get my bag and a jacket and I’ll go there and—’
‘And it seems Fleur and Caroline weren’t alone,’ Matthew interrupted, ignoring her suggestion. ‘There was a man with them.’
‘Tell me this is a dream,’ Emma said. ‘A man? Who?’
‘Darling Emma, if you’d just let me finish—’
‘Go on,’ Emma said, and then couldn’t help but laugh that she’d interrupted him yet again, but relief was flooding through her now that Fleur was at least safe if she was in custody. Safe from harm being done to her by Caroline and the mysterious man.
‘It’s not a new situation. The cloakrooms were ransacked. Jewellery taken from jacket collars, money stolen. More than a dozen men have reported their wallets taken from their inside pockets in the foyer. Watches have been slipped from wrists without the wearers noticing.’
‘Not Fleur?’ Emma said. ‘Please tell me Fleur had no part in that?’
‘She says not—’
‘And I believe her,’ Emma said.
Just so you know. I am not going to let Fleur be tarred with the same brush as her late grandfather and uncles. And – it seems – her birth mother.
‘That’s my girl,’ Matthew said. ‘As feisty and fiery as ever.’ He kissed the tip of Emma’s nose and while it was a lovely gesture she wished he hadn’t done it because it was giving her all sorts of mixed feelings.
‘I’m too old to change now,’ Emma said. ‘But I do believe her.’
‘Of course you believe her. As I do. But as Caroline and this man managed to escape, they can’t question them. Yet.’
‘But they’ll find them?’
‘Oh, they’ll find them, or my name’s not Matthew Caunter.’
Yes, if anyone could find them it would be Matthew. And then a thought occurred to her – had he known all along that Caroline was around?
‘Did you know she was back?’ Emma asked. ‘Caroline, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know that I can believe you. I can’t believe you haven’t lost the knack of seeing things that people shouldn’t be doing, that they’re trying to hide.’
‘I find it sad you have such a low opinion of me, Emma. Don’t you think I’d have protected you from all this had I known? Didn’t I put my own life at risk once before to protect you and Seth, and Fleur when she was a baby? Didn’t I show you just how much you meant to me then, and again just now?’ Matthew pointed up at the ceiling and her bedroom overhead.
‘Yes. You know all that’s true. But you were so calm talking to the police. Detached. As if you were waiting to make such a call or be told such news.’
‘Darling, Emma,’ Matthew said. ‘Forever questioning things. That was the old me, the surveillance officer of old taking over. Do you think I would have been any good at my job if I let my emotions show? I had to keep a cool demeanour at all times.’
Darling. He called me darling. A second time.
‘Of
course,’ Emma said. ‘I shouldn’t have questioned you. I think it’s fear making me say things I oughtn’t. And I know that Fleur will be frightened. All alone. It’s dark now. She—’
‘She’s safe and that’s all that matters for the moment. No harm can come to her having a cup of tea in Torquay police station, now can it?’
‘I hope not,’ Emma said.
‘And Caroline probably has a lot of stuff – not all of it legally come by I’d bet my life-savings on – back at her mother’s place and she will no doubt be going back there to collect it. And she’ll have a welcome party when she does. And so, while we wait for the police to telephone again to tell me when we can go and collect Fleur, you can bring me up to date on what it is you’ve been doing all these years since we last saw one another. Still making delectable crab tarts?’
‘I am. But not in a business sense. I’ll make you one if you’d like one though.’
‘I would. So, if you’re not cooking what are you doing that enables you to afford a lovely house like this?’
‘Seth left me well-provided for, although I’d have preferred it if he hadn’t died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Matthew said. ‘There’s a trite comment I could make to that, but I won’t.’
That he wouldn’t have come back into my life, he means. And we wouldn’t have spent the last two hours making wonderful love.
‘No. Don’t. I loved Seth. He loved me. We had a good marriage. He’ll always be in my heart.’
‘I’d expect nothing less of you, Emma. Seth was a good man. But I can’t imagine you sitting idly all day looking at magazines, listening to the wireless, taking tea with friends.’
‘How well you know me!’
‘So, what are you doing now in this beautiful house to keep boredom at bay?’
‘Sewing,’ Emma said. How wonderful it was to be talking of nicer things, of things that had a future. ‘Couture dresses. Wedding dresses. Come into my atelier and I’ll show you.’
Emma and Her Daughter Page 25