by Susan Lewis
What was really incensing the press was the fact that a man was dead – and not just any man either, for as a journalist and television personality Luke Fitzpatrick was one of them. They felt they had the right to know what had happened in that villa on Cap Ferrat and they weren’t going to let up until they did.
In the end the police came forward with the announcement of Bobby McIver’s release. The furore that followed reverberated around the world, since it was now known that Luke Fitzpatrick had killed the prostitutes. Press and public sympathy veered back to Corrie, but under her own instructions they were to be told nothing else.
‘She doesn’t want any distortions,’ Paula told Cristos when he called later that day, ‘besides which she feels that it should be Annalise’s decision as to how much anyone should be told.’
‘How is Annalise?’ Cristos asked.
‘Getting there, I think. She’s still in the clinic. Corrie and Phillip go to see her every day, but I think she could be home soon.’
‘And Corrie? How’s she doing?’
‘Getting better all the time. She went without a sleeping pill last night and, so she says, there were no nightmares. Well, I’d have heard if there were, so …’
‘Is she still getting the counselling?’
‘Oh yes. Three times a week.’
‘Is it working?’
‘She doesn’t talk about it really. At least not to me. I think she does to Phillip though. Why don’t you call him, I know he won’t mind.’
‘It’s OK, he called me. She’s doing fine with the counselling, I just hoped that maybe she’d said something more to you.’
There was a pause and Paula could sense the strain he was under. The fact that Corrie was refusing to speak to him, had shut him out completely when he needed so badly to help her was, Paula knew, tormenting him beyond endurance.
‘I know what you’re trying to ask,’ she said, her voice imbued with sympathy, ‘but I’m sorry, she still hasn’t mentioned you. I tried, just this morning, to get her to say something, but …’ She broke off as she heard the front door open. ‘I’ll have to go,’ she whispered, ‘she’s just come in. I’ll call you again tomorrow.’
‘Who was that you were talking to?’ Corrie asked, coming into the room.
‘Oh, just my mother,’ Paula answered.
Corrie turned to look at her, but before she could point out that Paula’s mother lived just across the street Paula said,
‘How was Annalise today?’
Corrie sighed and collapsed into her mother’s favourite armchair. ‘Improving, at least physically she is. She wants to come home, but Phillip’s afraid that it might still be too early. And I guess, as he’s paying, the doctor’s only too glad to do what he wants. Anyway, they’re taking the stitches out of her legs tomorrow, she’s hoping Phillip will change his mind then.’
‘Is her counsellor making any headway with her yet?’
Corrie shook her head. ‘She’s still refusing to talk to anyone about it, except me. And when she does it’s like she’s obsessed by it. She goes over and over it as though, well I don’t know, I suppose it’s as though she’s trying to find some divine reason for it all.’ She sighed wearily. ‘If you could see her, Paula, God, it tears your heart apart. She looks half manic, but at the same time she’s so lost, so unsure of herself. Well, that’s hardly surprising I suppose, but sometimes, when I listen to her reliving every moment of it, I wonder if she’ll ever get over it.’
‘And what about you?’ Paula said gently. ‘Do you think you will?’
Corrie gave a dry, mirthless laugh as her eyes wandered about the room. ‘Are Uncle Ted and Auntie Hattie coming for dinner tonight?’ she asked, pointedly changing the subject.
‘I think so,’ Paula answered, unable to hide her disappointment. ‘Corrie,’ she said after a pause. ‘Corrie, why won’t you …’
‘No, Paula,’ Corrie interrupted. ‘I know what you’re going to say so please don’t.’
‘But I’m your best friend, Corrie. I want to help if I can.’
‘You are helping by letting me stay here. But I can’t discuss it with you, Paula, please try to understand that. I talk to Annalise about it every day, to counsellors three times a week, and to Phillip too. If I start going over it again with you, well, I’ll never be talking about anything else, will I? And that doesn’t seem to me to be the best way of getting my life back to normal.’
‘Does getting back to normal include …?’ Paula stopped. Maddeningly she could hear the baby stirring upstairs so now wasn’t the time to raise the subject of Cristos. ‘Will you go back to London?’ she asked.
‘Probably. I’ve been talking things over with Phillip, but we haven’t exactly resolved anything yet. Well we can’t until we know how Annalise is going to be, or what she wants to do. It looks like he’s managed to sell his house, though. Pam’s found another, somewhere in Kensington, Phillip’s driving up there now to look at it. There’s an independent flat in the basement, Phillip’s hoping that Annalise will live there.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll go back to my studio, eventually.’
‘And TW?’
‘Yes, well, we’re still discussing what to do about that. Since Phillip has suspended transmissions I doubt it’s going to be easy to get the network slot back. Still, that’s all in the future. What matters now is that my God-daughter is about to scream the place down.’
A few minutes later Paula was standing over the sink preparing vegetables when Corrie, with the baby resting happily on her hip, came to stand in the doorway. ‘Paula,’ she said carefully.
‘Mmm?’
‘Look at me, please. I want to see your eyes when I ask you this question.’
Paula turned. ‘This sounds serious,’ she remarked curiously.
Corrie looked at her for a long moment, before saying, ‘You’ve been speaking to Cristos, haven’t you?’ She smiled as the colour in Paula’s cheeks deepened. ‘Yes, I thought so.’
‘He’s worried about you, Corrie,’ Paula said defensively. ‘You can hardly blame him for that, can you?’
‘No.’
When Corrie turned away and started pulling faces at Beth Paula thought the subject was going to be dropped, but after a moment or two, with her attention still on the baby, she said, ‘How is he?’
The relief and delight in Paula’s eyes was ummistakable. ‘Having a hard time with the press, he tells me, but his main concern is for you.’
‘What do you tell him about me?’
Paula shrugged. ‘All kinds of things really.’ She waited a moment, then very tentatively she said, ‘Why don’t you give him a call?’
‘No!’ Corrie was adamant. ‘No, I can’t. I just wanted to know how he was, that’s all. I’d better go and change Beth’s nappy.’
‘Corrie, this can’t go on,’ Paula said, following her into the sitting room. ‘You’ll lose him if you carry on like this.’
‘I know,’ Corrie said quietly. She was kneeling over Beth, who was laughing and gurgling up into her face.
‘He loves you so much, Corrie,’ Paula persisted, ‘and I know you love him. So, please, for both your sakes, call him.’
As Corrie gazed down at the baby the happy fat little face started to blur. ‘I want to,’ she whispered, her voice so filled with tears it was barely audible. ‘Oh, God, Paula, if only you knew how much I want to speak to him.’
‘Then why don’t you?’ Paula pleaded, going to sit on the floor beside her.
‘Because I’m afraid. I’m so afraid that it’ll never be the same again. That I won’t be able to … to love him the way he wants me to. Oh Paula!’ she sobbed breaking down as Paula pulled her into her arms. ‘It’s all such a mess and I don’t know what to do.’
‘Well running away from it isn’t going to do any good,’ Paula told her gently. ‘There’s only one person who can help you over this, and that’s Cristos.’
‘But I’ve only got to imagine him
coming near me to see Luke’s face. Those things he did to me, Paula, I don’t think they’ll ever leave me. It was so … Oh God, it was so horrible … I keep thinking he’s out there somewhere, watching me, and that if I go to Cristos he’ll rape me like that again. I know it’s nonsense, that he’s dead, that it can’t ever happen again, but it’s like he’s haunting me. He won’t let me go.’
‘And he never will unless you let him go,’ Paula said, stroking her hair. ‘And the only way you’re going to do that is to get on with your life. And to let those who love you help you to put it behind you.’
‘It’s not as easy as that, though, is it?’ Corrie sniffed. ‘I mean, there’s Annalise to consider. She’s been through so much more than I have. What would she do if I went to Cristos?’
‘And what will Cristos do if you don’t?’
‘He’d survive. I’m not so sure about Annalise.’
‘But you can’t take that burden of responsibility, Corrie. I know she’s your sister, and I know too how much you blame yourself for taking her to France, but you have your own life to lead.’
Corrie was shaking her head. ‘I can’t turn my back on her, Paula. I just can’t.’
‘All right, but I think you should speak to Cristos and explain it to him. Tell him everything you’ve told me and I know, I just know it in my heart, that he’ll find a way for you to be together.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Corrie said, drying her eyes on Beth’s clean nappy. ‘Just give me some more time.’
She spent the next few days with Phillip and Pam at the Denby country house helping them prepare for Annalise’s homecoming that weekend. The first night she was there Pam went to bed early leaving her and Phillip talking way into the early hours. For Corrie it was such a welcome release to discuss something other than Luke that she found herself relaxing to the point of genuine laughter as Phillip told her stories of her great-grandmother, Cornelia, who, if his outrageous tales were to be believed, had been quite a character. And, as Corrie listened to him, and they talked about Edwina and her own childhood, she found herself warming to him in a way she never had before. She’d had no idea he could be so witty, or so easy to be with, but he had changed this past month, he was more self-assured, somehow more in control, which Corrie guessed had a great deal to do with being free of Octavia.
Octavia was a subject they had, over the past weeks, discussed in great detail, and, when Annalise came home that weekend it was brought up again. The three of them spent many hours in Phillip’s study, though precisely what fate they were planning for Octavia, who had recently sold her story to a tabloid newspaper, Pam had no idea.
‘They’re locked away in there again today,’ she said to Paula on Monday morning, when Paula called around with Beth.
‘I take it Annalise has read the story then,’ Paula said.
‘Oh yes, she read it all right. Every dirty rotten lie of it. How that woman had the nerve to tell those journalists that she had suffered for years at Luke Fitzpatrick’s hands, I’ll never know. And to say that Phillip has thrown her out because of her infidelity when all she was was a poor, helpless victim of a man who’d terrorized her into doing the things she did, well, I ask you! I can’t think for one minute that anyone’ll believe it, but I suppose the important thing is that she didn’t mention anything about Annalise not being Phillip’s daughter. He’s received a letter from her though, threatening to reveal even more of the story if he doesn’t give her some money soon. I imagine that’s what they’re discussing now.’
‘I see,’ Paula said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose they’ll have to do something or Octavia’s going to be blackmailing him for ever. Incidentally, do you think Annalise is Phillip’s daughter?’
Pam sighed. ‘I doubt even Octavia knows the answer to that, but all that matters right now is that she isn’t Luke’s. If she had been, well, I’m really not sure she’d have survived it.’
Paula watched her walk across the kitchen to pour them both more coffee. ‘How is Annalise now?’ she said. ‘I saw her on Saturday when she came home, she seemed a bit tired then …’
‘Annalise,’ Pam said, turning around, ‘is undergoing some kind of metamorphosis, if you ask me. Like you said, she was limp and frail when she got home two days ago, since, well it’s like someone’s turned a light on inside her. God only knows what the three of them are cooking up in there, but whatever it is it’s doing that girl a power of good.’
Paula knew, because Corrie had confided in her the night before, precisely what was being discussed in the study, but if no one had told Pam yet then she really didn’t feel it was her place to do so. ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘that Annalise seems as attached to Corrie as she was when she was in the hospital?’
‘No doubt about it,’ Pam answered without hesitation. ‘She may have lost a mother, but she’s gained a sister, is the way she sees it, and to her way of thinking that just about makes up for everything. She’s devoted to Corrie.’
‘I see,’ Paula said dully. ‘I was afraid you’d say something like that.’
Pam looked surprised at this response, but said nothing until she was sitting back at the table. ‘What’s on your mind, love?’ she asked, her eyes filled with concern. ‘If you’re thinking that this will change your friendship with Corrie …’
‘No, no, I can’t imagine anything ever changing that,’ Paula said. ‘It’s just that … Well, you see, really, in her heart of hearts, Corrie wants to be with Cristos, I know she does. She’s still nervous about the after effects of the rape and everything, but he’ll get her over that, I’m certain of it, if only she’d give him the chance. And I just know that she would give him the chance if it weren’t for Annalise. You see, she’s afraid, if she goes to Cristos, of how Annalise might react. I keep trying to tell her that she has her own life to lead, that she mustn’t give him up out of a sense of family duty, but … Why are you smiling?’
‘I don’t think you need worry too much about the family duty bit,’ Pam laughed. ‘Phillip has matters in hand. I don’t know if you’re aware of how frequently he and Cristos have been speaking on the telephone this past couple of weeks … Well, they have. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that, but you’ll see what I’m talking about soon enough.’
Three days later Phillip picked Cristos up from Heathrow airport and drove him into London.
‘Did you tell her yet, that I was coming?’ Cristos asked as they sped along the M4.
‘No, not yet. I was planning to tell her tonight.’
Cristos nodded. ‘Shit,’ he grumbled after a moment or two, ‘I feel as jittery as a Goddamned schoolboy. Are you sure her counsellor said this was a good idea?’
Phillip chuckled. ‘That’s what she said, and now is not the time to be telling me you’re getting cold feet.’
‘Like hell I am. It’s just that that daughter of yours can be so Goddamned unpredictable at times.’
Phillip’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You’re the one who was telling me how she would respond,’ he pointed out.
‘Yeah, well I don’t feel quite so sure right now. What if she refuses to see me?’
‘She won’t. Not once she knows you’re already here. Which is why I’ve held off telling her. I think you should prepare yourself for a wait though, it might take her a day or two to come to terms with the fact that she has to face you.’
But it didn’t, for the following morning when Cristos was on the point of going to see Corrie’s counsellor Corrie herself called.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply.
‘Sorry? What for?’
‘For all that I’ve put you through.’
‘Oh Corrie,’ he groaned. ‘All that matters to me is that you’re all right.’
‘Is that why you’re in London?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I’m here, in Suffolk.’
For a moment he was silent, hardly daring to hope … ‘You mean … Are you saying …?’
‘Cristos,
please come,’ she whispered.
Throughout the entire train journey he was trying to prepare himself, telling himself that he must treat her gently, must not touch her unless she touched him. One step at a time and it would be all right, he told himself over and over again.
Dave was waiting at the station, his straw hat sitting jauntily on his head as he lolled across the bonnet of his car soaking up the summer sun. They drove through the still, sleepy countryside straight to the cottage where Paula was waiting at the door to greet them.
‘She’s out in the back garden playing with Beth,’ she whispered to Cristos. ‘Go on through.’
Cristos’s heart was thudding so hard he found himself taking deep breaths to steady it. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and, had he but known it, his long hair was an unruly mess from where he kept dashing his fingers through it. He crossed the sitting room and walked into a pool of sunlight, streaming in through the open kitchen door. His eyes shot to the window, but there was no sign of her. He walked on, out through the door, and then he stopped …
She was sitting in a corner of the garden, laughing as the baby mangled a daisy chain in her chubby little fists. She was wearing a pure white cotton dress and her glossy chestnut hair was tumbling over her face. Because of the way the sun was shining down on her she looked almost ethereal, and as she laughed again and it blended with the cheery sounds of birdlife it was as though his whole heart was being torn from its roots. For a while he just watched her, not believing it was possible to love someone this much. Then sensing his eyes on her she looked up and seeing him she smiled. It was almost his undoing. His emotions were so close to the surface that all he wanted was to take her in his arms and smother her with all the love burning inside him. But he couldn’t do that, he had to take it real slow, had to be sure she was ready … Please God in heaven she would be.
‘Hello,’ she said, getting to her feet.
‘How you doing?’ he said softly.