Written in Red

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Written in Red Page 22

by Annie Dalton


  ‘You’d have done the same for me. We always had each other’s backs, didn’t we?’ Tim gave her a fleeting smile. ‘I think, in the circumstances, I’ll save my other news for later.’

  Anna had forgotten about Tim’s mysterious news.

  ‘I promise it’s nothing to do with spies or murder. I’ll come over some time, if that’s OK?’

  Anna felt too emotionally blasted to do more than nod. She wondered vaguely how Jake was getting on with Sabina and her dad. God, but she was shattered. Hopefully it was just lack of sleep catching up and she wasn’t going down with something.

  All I want right now, she thought, is to be back at home with Bonnie. Instead of this thought comforting her, she found her mind turning to the disgraced young civil servant whose life Tallis had helped to destroy, living out on the street in all weathers, despised and reviled by everyone except his dog.

  NINETEEN

  ‘And Catherine just sat everyone down and confessed to helping this handler guy conceal the murder? She helped to cover it up, the nun?’ Wearing an oversize grey sweater with skinny jeans, her hair still wet from the shower, Sabina paced Isadora’s kitchen, as she struggled to absorb this startling development. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said, obviously struck by a disturbing new thought. ‘Another fucking psycho nun!’

  ‘I wouldn’t describe Catherine as psycho,’ Anna said.

  ‘Oh? So how would you describe her?’

  Mark Bingham, Sabina’s dad, came through the door like a man hoping to pick a fight. He’d been out to fetch something from his car, for the third or fourth time in the half hour since Anna had arrived at Isadora’s, in between checking his laptop and his phone. Anna had started to wonder if Mark might have some kind of condition. He certainly had an alarming surplus of nervous energy. Anna, who also wasn’t great at sitting still, had initially felt sympathy. Now she just wished he’d jump in his car and drive back to London taking his jittery vibes with him.

  ‘Obviously I didn’t know Catherine when she was young.’ Anna was trying not to sound confrontational. ‘But the woman I met yesterday has been to hell and back. She knows what a terrible thing she did and she’s willing to face the consequences.’

  ‘And that makes it all right does it?’ Mark said in a jeering tone.

  Jake turned around from Isadora’s cooker where he was making French toast, closely watched by Bonnie who had developed a passion for anything egg-related. ‘Anna didn’t say that made it all right,’ he said mildly. ‘She was suggesting that people shouldn’t fling the psycho label around. As a rule, psychopaths and sociopaths aren’t capable of remorse.’

  Sabina’s father made an irritated huffing sound, but subsided into a chair and fished out his phone to check his messages. Anna wondered what had made Sabina’s mother fall so much in love with this man that she’d moved countries to be with him. She supposed Mark was quite good-looking, if you like men who look like sulky boys.

  Jake piled the last pieces of French toast on to to a large platter and brought them to the table, along with a plate of crispy bacon rashers.

  ‘I’ll grab the maple syrup,’ Sabina said, and went to fetch it.

  Mark Bingham put his phone down beside his plate and went to help himself to a piece of puffy golden-brown French toast. He seemed to be having difficulty spearing it with his fork. For the first time Anna properly noticed the bandage wrapped around the fingers of his right hand. ‘Oh, what did you do to your poor hand?’ she asked with a solicitousness she didn’t really feel.

  ‘Just a silly accident,’ he said, without looking up, clearly reluctant to go into it.

  Anna could feel Jake carefully not reacting. He obviously had his own suspicions as to how Mark might have hurt his hand. Judging from what Anna had seen so far, Mark Bingham only had two settings: aggrieved and aggressive. He’d told her he was on medication for high blood pressure and she wasn’t surprised. Jake had been amazing, Anna thought, stepping in to support Sabina and now playing host to her bizarre father.

  When she arrived at Isadora’s with the dogs, Jake had opened the front door, wearing jeans and a dark blue sweater, his reading glasses on his head and the book she’d bought him in his hand. His first words to her were, ‘Did you know dogs can smell food even when it’s inside the refrigerator! I mean, that’s like a superpower!’

  Anna could still feel that little flicker of happiness inside as she sat eating her share of the brunch Jake had cooked for everybody. He liked her present. He really, really liked it.

  Sabina carefully drizzled maple syrup over her toast. ‘You make good French toast,’ she told Jake.

  He gave her a humorous salute. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘You put vanilla in,’ Anna commented.

  Jake raised a surprised eyebrow. ‘You don’t use vanilla when you make it?’

  ‘No, never!’ Anna slid him a grin. ‘But I shall from now on. It’s delicious!’

  ‘So – what happens next,’ Sabina asked. ‘I mean, about Catherine and Tallis?’

  Thanks to Liam Goodhart, who was once again talking to Tansy, Anna was able to tell Sabina that Catherine had followed through with her resolution to confess her part in Hetty’s murder to the police. She and Tallis had been taken down to Thames Valley Police headquarters for questioning.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Sabina said, but Anna noticed that she sounded far less venomous than before. Sabina was going to need to rethink everything she knew about her family’s history, Anna thought. All her life, James had been a pantomime villain to boo and hiss, the man who’d murdered Hetty Vallier then sent guilt money to her orphaned little girl. Like so often, real life had turned out not to be that simple.

  Having silently devoured his breakfast, Sabina’s dad was once again fiddling with his phone, checking for new messages or updates, or anything that would take him out of this room, Anna thought. ‘So have you packed your bags, Sabs?’ he asked his daughter. ‘I need to get back to the office.’ He gave his hostile laugh. ‘Those bills won’t pay themselves.’

  ‘Actually …’ Sabina sounded tentative. ‘I’ve kind of changed my mind about coming back with you. I think I’m going to stay here.’

  His face darkened. ‘You seriously intend to stay with this woman after she turned her back on your grandmother at her time of greatest need?’

  Sabina looked flustered. ‘Dad, we don’t know for sure if that’s what happened. Anna said Isadora didn’t even know Hetty was having Mum.’

  ‘They’re friends! Of course she’s going to bloody back her up.’ Hearing Mark’s raised voice Bonnie came out from under the table, deliberately interposing herself between him and Anna. She didn’t growl but the corner of her lip lifted very slightly.

  ‘Dad, please, I don’t want to have a fight.’ Sabina gave his uninjured hand a loving little pat. ‘I really appreciate you coming up to see me and I promise I’ll come to visit soon. But I think I ought to stay here for now.’ She deliberately met his eyes, willing him to understand. ‘Ms Salzman is going to need someone to be here when she comes out of the hospital. I can, you know, walk Hero and stuff. That’s, if she’ll let me.’ She shot a shame-faced look at Anna.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be incredibly grateful.’ Anna said. She was touched. Sabina had obviously done some soul-searching and decided to try to make it up to Isadora for her earlier behaviour.

  Mark stood up, his features suffused with rage. ‘Well, that’s unusually forgiving of you, Sabina. Extremely …’ He seemed to be searching for a suitably hurtful word. ‘Christian,’ he finished triumphantly. ‘I wonder what your poor mother would think about your wonderfully Christian behaviour, if she were here.’

  ‘Dad, please don’t be like this—’ Sabina started, but her father carried on like he hadn’t heard her.

  ‘Your mother should have been the love of my life, Sabina.’ His voice quivered with emotion. ‘She was so beautiful, so perfect. I never saw anyone so perfect. But she was broken inside, absolutely broken by her exper
iences in that orphanage. If you ask me, Hetty’s so-called friends deserve everything that’s happened and more. I’ve got nothing but contempt for the whole pack of them!’

  Anna avoided Jake’s eyes. She suspected they were thinking the same thing. Mark Bingham’s moral outrage seemed a bit misplaced for a man who had left his young child in the sole care of her ‘absolutely broken’ mother.

  Not long afterwards, she and Jake stood in the doorway with Bonnie, watching Sabina and her father say their goodbyes through his car window. Sabina had wrapped herself in the pale pashmina she’d worn the first time Anna saw her, but the biting wind kept briskly unwrapping it.

  ‘Well, ain’t he a real charmer?’ Jake’s voice took on its most southern intonation.

  ‘I’d assumed it was Sabina’s mother who’d poisoned her mind against Isadora and her friends,’ Anna said. ‘Now I’m wondering if it was Mark.’

  ‘“Your mother should have been the love of my life”,’ Jake quoted. ‘You have to hope he hasn’t passed that delightful piece of info on to his current wife!’

  ‘Bonnie really didn’t like him,’ Anna said. Hero didn’t like anyone much except Isadora, but until recent unfortunate events Bonnie had always been a people dog.

  Jake shook his head. ‘Reminded me too much of my old man.’

  Anna glanced at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Hell, yeah! Same self-pity, same rage, everything is always someone else’s fault. Of course, he was also a drunk which obviously didn’t improve him any.’

  Jake never talked much about his parents. He had told her a bit about Aunt Mimi, the neighbour who had intuited some goodness in him and allowed him to walk her dog, the first Bonnie. Anna would have liked to ask Jake about his mother, but Sabina was slowly walking back up to the house, her blonde hair whipping across her face.

  ‘It’s downright eerie how much that girl looks like Hetty, isn’t it?’ Jake commented. ‘I saw it straight off. She was breaking her heart about what had happened to Isadora and I thought, I know you! Then it dawned on me who I’d confused her with. So I said, ‘“Are you a relative of Hetty Vallier?” And she fell to pieces!’

  Anna hadn’t thought to question how Sabina came to confess her authorship of the anonymous letters to Jake within minutes of meeting him. Now she could see exactly how it had come about. Sabina had just found Isadora unconscious and bleeding. She must have been traumatized, also feeling extremely guilty; all her defences would have been down. Then Jake brought up the family resemblance and Sabina must have thought the game was up.

  ‘Sabina,’ she said, as the three of them walked back into the house. ‘I’m going to visit Isadora later. Would you like to come?’

  Sabina seemed thrown. ‘I – I don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘Don’t you think it might upset her?’

  Anna smilingly shook her head. ‘She’s longing to meet you! Well, obviously she’s met you, but she feels as if she hasn’t really, because she didn’t actually know who you were!’

  Sabina looked as if she might cry again. ‘I don’t think I’d want to see me,’ she said tearfully. ‘I hurt her. I wanted to give her a little taste of what my mum had to suffer, and I did and now I feel so bad.’

  ‘The thing you need to understand about Isadora is that she’s a tough cookie. Isadora’s been through things we’ll never know, but she tries not to let those things dictate how she lives her life. Give her a choice between love and hate and she’ll always—’ Anna had a sudden vivid memory of a wrathful Isadora brandishing a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and swiftly corrected what she’d been going to say, ‘and nine times out of ten she’ll choose love.’

  ‘I don’t really feel like I deserve to be loved,’ Sabina said in a small voice.

  ‘I don’t think you get a choice!’ Anna told her. ‘You’re Hetty’s granddaughter. Isadora can’t help but love you! Just come with me and you’ll see.’

  In fact, twenty minutes after their arrival by Isadora’s bedside, Anna and Jake slipped Sabina her taxi fare and discreetly excused themselves. This was a special moment for both Isadora and Sabina and it felt right that it should be private.

  On the short car journey back to Park Town, Hero started panting, possibly wondering which house she was being taken back to. For a dog that disliked all forms of change, she must be completely out of her comfort zone, Anna thought.

  This was the first chance she and Jake had had to talk about her and Tim’s experiences at Mercy Hospice, so with a small panting dog for her soundtrack, Anna filled him in, as she drove. When she’d finished Jake gave a soft whistle. ‘That was some confession. Not an easy thing to have to hear.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘And there was Tallis, apparently not giving a shit about what he’d done. That was hard too.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to picture the moment when the elderly nun opened the door to reveal her secret lover. Exactly what you want to find behind your Advent calendar – a rogue agent in a wheelchair!’

  Anna laughed. ‘I suppose it was quite a moment!’ She briefly took her eyes off the road. ‘You think that’s what he was? A rogue agent?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘Agents get used to walking on the shady side of the street. They use fake names, swap identities, play people off against each other. Whatever gets results. Unfortunately with some of them it gets to be a habit – a compulsion even. It sounds like that’s what happened to Tallis. At some point, he decided he needn’t answer to any authority but himself.’

  As they parked outside Anna’s house Hero began to whine. Anna wasn’t sure if it was anticipation or protest. Jake smiled at Anna. ‘That was really sweet back there at the hospital. Isadora and Sabina will be good for each other.’

  Anna thought back to the scene they’d just left. Isadora tentatively taking on the role of substitute grandmother, Sabina shyly responding to Isadora’s warm overtures.

  ‘I think so too,’ Anna said. ‘Sabina is overdue some love in her life. I know Iona loves her but she’s so damaged I suspect Sabina has ended up parenting her most of the time.’

  ‘So anyway,’ Jake said, very obviously changing the subject. ‘Before we go inside your house, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you.’

  His expression gave no clue to what this mysterious something might be so she just said cautiously, ‘OK?’

  He nodded. ‘I wanted to say that I am seriously impressed with your British self-control.’

  Anna suddenly felt slightly too warm. ‘You are?’

  ‘Hell, yeah! I’d have had the gift wrap ripped off in a heartbeat. In fact, I believe I did! But so far as I know yours is still waiting to be opened?’

  ‘Oh, you’re talking about my present!’ Anna could feel herself getting flustered. ‘It’s honestly not that I don’t want to. But you said to wait until I was alone, and then Isadora got attacked, and there was all the business with Sabina, not to mention the hospice.’

  ‘And hearing Catherine confess to concealing a murder.’ Jake gave Anna a wry smile. ‘It’s been quite a crowded few days, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It has and this is probably going to sound really silly. But it feels like – like the lovely sparkly Christmas boat has sailed away till next year now, and I don’t – well, I didn’t want to just open it like an afterthought, if that makes any sense?’ Shut up, Anna, you’re embarrassing yourself. She remembered disentangling her hair from his watch strap. She remembered waking in his arms, hearing the slow steady ebb and flow of his breath.

  ‘You wanted it to be special,’ Jake suggested. Anna could feel his eyes on her. She swallowed, afraid that she’d already given away too much.

  He thought for a moment. ‘OK, then, so how about we make a new plan? I have really always been more of a New Year man; fresh starts, new hopes. How about opening my present on New Year’s Eve?’

  She smiled at him. ‘I think I like that plan.’

  They let the dogs out of the jeep and went into Anna’s flat.

  They found Tansy downstair
s on the small kitchen sofa texting feverishly. She looked up, said, ‘Just let me send this!’ then put her phone down on the sofa arm and said, ‘So how’s Isadora?’

  ‘She seems much better. All being well they’ll let her out tomorrow. We left her with Sabina,’ Anna added.

  ‘Sabina went to visit her?’ Tansy’s eyes widened. ‘Is that the first time Isadora’s seen her since it came out about the letters?’ Anna nodded. ‘That was really brave of Sabina,’ Tansy conceded.

  ‘She is brave,’ Anna said. ‘She’s a surprisingly OK person, considering her parentage.’

  ‘Anna met Sabina’s father,’ Jake explained. ‘She wasn’t overly impressed.’

  ‘I only had to put up with him for an hour,’ Anna told Tansy. ‘I don’t know how Jake coped.’

  He laughed. ‘I was in the military, don’t forget. If I let myself get wound up by every creep who crossed my path, I’d have been in trouble!’

  Tansy uncurled from the sofa. ‘Do you guys want coffee?’

  ‘Always,’ Anna said smiling.

  Sensing that a treat of some kind was on offer, Hero was immediately alert. ‘I know what you want, you greedy little dog, you want cheese,’ Tansy told her. Hero gave a short sharp bark. ‘Yes, you’re a greedy little cheese-eating goblin dog, and you are going to be so happy tomorrow when Isadora gets out of hospital!’

  Anna watched Tansy cut tiny cubes of cheese for both the dogs, her denim dungarees tucked into brightly coloured slipper socks. She seemed so at home that Anna had to remind herself that she wasn’t a permanent fixture.

  Tansy poured water into the coffee maker and switched it on. ‘I just heard from Liam. Catherine and Tallis have been taken into custody. The police formally charged Tallis with Hetty Vallier’s murder and Catherine with perverting the course of justice and preventing the burial of a body.’

  Anna took a few moments to let this sink in. It was doubtful if Tallis would survive until the case was brought to trial, but it seemed likely that Catherine would have to spend the rest of her life in prison. It was a sad ending for Isadora’s old friend, who must have started out with so many hopes and dreams. But the most important thing, obviously, was that Hetty’s murderer had finally been found. The toxic secret that had blighted so many lives was finally going to be brought out into the light. ‘I’m glad,’ Anna told Tansy. ‘It’s been a long time coming.’

 

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