Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Nina insisted. ‘So that I don’t become a drunk again. You have to understand that, Nick. If I let that happen, I’ll be hurting Zoë – and Phoebe, too. She helped me so much when I needed her, and now she needs me, and I’m not going to let her down.’

  ‘She needs us all,’ Nick pointed out. ‘You know how much I care about Phoebe – you know I want to do everything, anything I can, to see she gets better.’ He felt he was fighting for his life. ‘I’d have been there all the time I could, if your father hadn’t been standing sentry duty over her.’

  ‘I know that.’ Nina gave a small, sad smile.

  Nick got to his feet again. He looked at the botched canvas on his easel, wanted to pick it up and smash it, only that wouldn’t help anything – all it would do was make things worse, if they could get any worse.

  ‘So what are you saying, Nina?’ He was getting closer to desperation, could feel it coming, like a thunderstorm. ‘Do you want me to make promises I might not be able to keep?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I want.’

  Nick waited.

  ‘For one thing,’ she said, ‘I’m going to be going to AA meetings every day for a while, but I’m going to go alone.’

  Nick said nothing.

  He couldn’t bear to look at her face.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Nina went on. ‘But I’m just so afraid of destroying myself. I have Zoë to think about now. And I am so terribly confused.’

  ‘Then that’s one big difference between us,’ Nick said quietly, still not looking at her. ‘Because that’s the one thing I’ve never been confused about from the day I met you. My feelings.’

  He came back to the stool, sat down again. He had the sudden, terrifying sensation that if he moved too far – physically – away from Nina now, he might never get close to her again.

  ‘Everything changed when I found you, Nina,’ he said. ‘Meeting you put my whole life into perspective. The past. The present. My hopes for the future. With you. That was all that mattered then, and it’s all that matters now.’

  He did look at her then. Her eyes were swimming with tears.

  ‘I still love you, Nick,’ she said. ‘As much as I ever did.’ Her voice caught in her throat. Abruptly she stood up. ‘But right now, the only way I know how to cope is the way I did it before, by putting that old wall back up around myself and going it alone.’

  ‘But you’re not alone. You have me.’ His own voice cracked with despair.

  ‘I don’t have you.’ Nina brought herself back under control, wiped away the tears with the back of her right hand. ‘Not all of you. Not as long as part of you is out searching for Holly Bourne.’

  ‘Then I won’t.’ He felt almost like a boy, pleading. ‘I’ll stay here with you and Zoë.’

  ‘That won’t make any difference.’ Nina shook her head. ‘Even if you’re not running around, physically searching for her, I’ll know you’re still thinking about her, making sure the cops or her father or your private investigators are doing whatever has to be done —’

  ‘How can I not want her found?’ Nick asked her. ‘How can you not want her stopped, after what she’s done?’

  ‘The difference is I can leave it to the police. Trust them to do their job. To find Holly Bourne and to prove what she’s done, and then to make sure she’s punished.’ Nina paused. ‘But you won’t do that, Nick. And I can’t cope with that anymore – not now that I know I’m still a drunk.’

  Nick stared at her.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ he asked again. The fear was back, more swamping than ever. ‘That you really want me to leave?’

  The answer was a long time coming.

  ‘I’m saying,’ she said, and there was genuine misery in the words, ‘that it may be easier on me if you do check into a hotel. At least for a little while.’

  Nick tried to speak, but his mouth was very dry.

  He swallowed.

  ‘What about Zoë?’ he asked.

  Nina went to the door. He watched her put out a hand to steady herself against the frame.

  ‘You can see her any time you want.’ She did not turn around, did not look at him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again.

  And went.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Holly has returned to Antonia Street. She hung around in LA for a little over twenty-four hours after getting out of the Mistral Inn, before boarding ‘The Coast Starlight’ at Union Station at nine-thirty on Monday morning, arriving at Oakland a little after eight in the evening from where she was shuttled, with the other passengers, to the Ferry Building in San Francisco by eight-thirty. She was mindful that Nick might have the police or his investigators checking names at LAX, and she had no passport or ID for Barbara Rowe. No such problems with Amtrak. And in a way, slow as it was, she liked it. Time to stop and drift. Just for her and her baby.

  It was dark when she arrived at Antonia Street. She saw no one in the Miller house and no one saw her. She was thirsting to know what had gone on since Nick had returned from LA. But there was time for that. She would find out all she needed to from Vasquez and Samuel Keitel soon enough.

  Vasquez telephoned this afternoon, ten minutes after Holly, watching from the third floor, saw Nina going out. Vasquez wanted to know where Barbara Rowe had been, where she’d been when Vasquez had been trying to reach her on her evening off. Holly was tart with her, put her in her place but then, instantly regretful, began smoothing the nanny’s ruffled feathers with a request for another cooking lesson.

  ‘You promised to teach me to make chorizo,’ she said, humbly.

  ‘It’s difficult now,’ Teresa said, with a touch of huffiness. ‘Now that Mr Miller has gone away, my free time is more hard to find.’

  ‘He’s gone away again?’ Holly felt her heartbeat speed up. ‘Where to this time?’

  ‘I don’t think Mrs Miller would wish me to talk about this,’ Teresa said, primly.

  ‘Then you must not.’ Holly was peaceable. ‘Though since you and I are friends, Teresa, and since Mrs Miller and I don’t know one another, I don’t think there’d be much harm if you did tell me.’

  She could almost hear the other woman thinking.

  ‘He is in San Francisco.’ Teresa relented. ‘But in a hotel.’

  ‘Why?’ Pleasure surged violently, but Holly kept tight control.

  ‘I think they had a fight. Mrs Miller is unhappy.’

  ‘More trouble for you,’ Holly sympathized. ‘Poor Teresa.’

  ‘I am responsible for so much now,’ Teresa agreed. ‘Too much, I think.’

  ‘Which hotel is he staying at?’ Holly posed the question lightly.

  ‘I don’t remember the name,’ Teresa said.

  ‘Really?’ Holly didn’t want to push too hard.

  ‘I will remember it later.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Holly said.

  Keitel would find out.

  Keitel returns her call just after four o’clock.

  ‘Miller’s moved into a hotel,’ Holly tells him sharply.

  ‘Yes, I know, Mrs Rowe. That’s what I’m calling to tell you.’

  ‘Which hotel?’

  ‘It’s called the Art Center,’ Keitel says. ‘A little bed and breakfast place in the Marina district. On Filbert Street. Seems a nice enough place.’

  ‘How long’s he booked in for?’

  ‘I don’t know that yet.’

  ‘Find out.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Rowe.’

  Holly puts down the telephone and sits back in her seat.

  And allows the pleasure to rise.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  One of the crazy ironies of my new situation is that Nina wanted me out of the house because she was sure I would not give up the idea of searching for Holly. Now here I am – I’ve been staying in this nice, friendly little San Francisco B&B for almost fourteen days – and I don’t have anyplace to look. Since I spoke to Norman Capelli about what happened at
the Mistral Inn – and since he got confirmation of my complaint from the LAPD – I get the feeling that he and Wilson really may, at long last, be making an effort to find Holly. And of course Interstate Investigations are still on the retainer I parted with just a couple of weeks ago. But still, no one has found Holly, and by now she could be anywhere from Maine to New Mexico or even further away. The cops think it unlikely she could have left the country under either the name of Bourne or Taylor without them finding out, but I don’t really believe that. They still don’t understand what they’re up against. They still don’t realize that Holly is capable of almost anything.

  Anything.

  I called Richard Bourne again yesterday, fenced for a while with the redoubtable Eileen Ridge, but finally nailed her with a ‘news apertaining to his daughter’s health’ manoeuvre. I’d thought about it long and hard before landing this one on the poor bastard, but at the end of the day I figured that Bourne ought to know that Holly now seems to be having delusions about expecting my baby. I don’t know, I told him, maybe she is pregnant, but it sure as hell would beat the Bible and all-comers if it’s mine.

  Bourne listened to what I had to tell him, and I have to say that in the self-control stakes he’s pretty incredible. A guy calls him up and tells him that his daughter has moved on from harassment, wasting police time and attempted murder, to illegally entering hotel rooms, damaging property, exposing herself and claiming immaculate conception. And yet Richard Bourne can still remain, at least superficially, composed – though I did hear – or maybe I just sensed – the heartsickness beneath the surface.

  I did feel bad for the man. But I still think he had to know.

  ‘Are you being careful?’ I asked Nina this evening when we spoke on the phone after dinner. She keeps it much briefer than I would like, but at least we do talk for a few moments each day, mostly about her sister or Zoë.

  ‘Very careful.’

  ‘Because you know she could be anywhere, do anything.’

  ‘You’ve told me, Nick.’

  I heard her irritation, knew I was breaking her rule about not referring to Holly. ‘I can’t help being anxious for you and Zoë.’

  ‘I know you can’t,’ Nina said, but there was little understanding in her voice.

  I changed the subject swiftly. ‘How’s Phoebe?’

  ‘Better, physically.’

  ‘But not otherwise.’

  ‘No.’

  My heart aches for Phoebe. I miss her so much. If Phoebe were able to speak, this would not be happening to us. She would knock sense into Nina. Into us both.

  ‘Dr Chen still says the aphonia could be resolved any time,’ Nina told me.

  ‘And how are you doing, Nina?’

  ‘Not bad.’ She paused. ‘One day at a time. You know.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  I took a moment, needing to straighten out my voice.

  ‘Can I come by and see Zoë tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course. What time?’

  ‘So you can arrange to be out?’ I couldn’t hide my bitterness.

  ‘So I can tell Teresa to expect you.’ Nina answered me steadily.

  We already sound like an old divorced couple.

  Oh Christ, that scares me.

  NOVEMBER

  Chapter Sixty-six

  ‘Sue him,’ Eleanor Bourne told her husband in the midst of getting ready for sleep on the first Monday of the month.

  ‘Not a good idea,’ Richard Bourne answered her from their bed, to which he had retreated in hopes of reading that morning’s Washington Post.

  Eleanor was too angry to carry on cleansing her face. ‘Of course it’s a good idea. He’s slandering our daughter! It’s the only thing we can do, except trying to get him locked up.’

  ‘We can’t sue Nick Miller if we think there’s a chance he might be telling the truth,’ Richard pointed out.

  ‘We don’t think any such thing,’ Eleanor said, furiously. ‘You’re the only one here who’s guilty of that. How can you defend him?’

  Eleanor’s carefully constructed world had been sliding further offtrack with every passing week since Holly had gone missing and Richard had no longer had any alternative but to tell his wife all he knew, yet she was still steadfastly refusing to accept the facts.

  Holly had been gone for a month now, with no word from her and not a trace of evidence as to where she’d gone, apart from Nick Miller’s alleged sighting of her in Los Angeles – which had, if nothing else, laid the worst of their fears for her safety to rest. Jack Taylor, wounded, angry and bewildered, was staying in regular contact with Richard. Two eminent lawyers, both accustomed to being in control, reduced to anxious father and deserted husband. The big difference being, Eleanor was unhappily aware, that while Richard (despite the appalling fact that he doubted his daughter) would continue to love her no matter what, Taylor was not likely – and who could blame him? – to stay the course for much more than another month or so.

  That would leave Holly divorced, jobless, her brilliant career in tatters. Everything she’d worked for – everything Eleanor had wanted for her – ruined.

  ‘If Holly does have some problems,’ she told her husband now, ‘Nick Miller’s to blame for them.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Richard said.

  Eleanor slammed down a jar of cold cream on her dressing table so hard that the mirror trembled. ‘Of course we know it. Making outrageous accusations, trying to wreck her career and her reputation – telling a string of lies to the police and paying private detectives to track her down like some sort of criminal. The man’s a menace – he always was.’

  Richard put down his newspaper, still unread. ‘Nick claims it’s the other way around.’

  ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ Eleanor tossed tissue into her pale cream waste paper basket. ‘What I can’t accept is that you appear to believe a man who’s treated your own daughter so monstrously – who’s defaming her to anyone who’ll listen.’

  ‘That’s hardly true.’ Richard sighed. ‘Eleanor, we have to stop fooling ourselves.’ He was still trying to be as gentle as possible. ‘Holly has never been the happy success story we both wanted to believe she was.’ Lord knew that was turning out to be the understatement of the decade.

  ‘And if she isn’t, whose fault is that?’ Eleanor got up and stalked into the bathroom, the hem of her negligée lifting a few inches off the ground in her wake.

  ‘You think it’s Nick’s.’ Richard raised his voice a little.

  ‘Of course it’s Nick’s fault.’ She came out again, rubbing cream into her hands. ‘Who else’s could it be?’

  ‘Maybe it’s Holly’s own fault,’ Richard said, quiet again.

  Eleanor, midway through untying the belt of her gown, stopped, her eyes appalled. ‘You really are on that man’s side.’

  ‘I’m on our daughter’s side. I’m just trying to be realistic, mostly because I believe that’s the best way to help her in the long term.’

  ‘But we can’t help her, can we?’ Eleanor sat down on her side of their bed. ‘Because we don’t know where she is.’ She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I can’t understand you, Richard. After all that’s happened in the past. After all you’ve learned about his run-ins with the police in California and New York.’ She stood up again and began pacing back and forth across the Aubusson rug. ‘He has a record, Richard. Nick Miller is a criminal.’

  ‘He seems quite convinced that he’s been set up.’

  ‘By our daughter,’ Eleanor said, frigidly, and sat down on the bed again, kicking off her slippers.

  ‘Yes.’ Richard paused. ‘And I’m very much afraid that the police are beginning to believe him.’

  ‘Well, I never will.’

  ‘That’s your prerogative, Eleanor. You’re her mother.’

  ‘And you’re her father.’

  Richard sighed and put his glasses on his bedside table. ‘You have to admit
that Holly isn’t exactly helping the situation by disappearing the way she has.’

  ‘She’s probably scared to death.’

  ‘Then who better to come to than her husband or her parents?’

  ‘She’s left her husband,’ Eleanor reminded him. ‘And why should she come to us when her own father’s already made it clear to her that he doesn’t trust her?’

  Though Richard had repeatedly cautioned his wife to say nothing about Holly’s troubles to anyone – especially not to the Millers – every time Eleanor set eyes on either Kate or Ethan she could feel her outrage simmering inside her.

  Late the following Thursday afternoon, it finally boiled over.

  She was parking her BMW in the driveway after a particularly irritating day’s work when she saw Kate carrying her attaché case into the Miller house.

  ‘Hi there,’ Kate said.

  It was enough.

  ‘How dare you?’ Eleanor said, stomping in her navy calf Ferragamo shoes across the grass to her neighbour’s front path.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Kate Miller’s clear blue eyes were startled.

  ‘How do you have the nerve to stand there and “Hi there” me after what your son has been doing to my daughter?’

  ‘I’m not aware that Nick has been doing anything to Holly,’ Kate said steadily. ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘Your son is a criminal,’ Eleanor said, loudly, hoisting the strap of her handbag higher onto her shoulder.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Kate said.

  Her front door opened and Ethan appeared.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He had a smudge of draughtsman’s ink on his right cheek close to his nose.

  ‘Nothing much,’ Kate answered. ‘Just Eleanor sounding off.’

  Eleanor turned her full wrath on Nick’s father. ‘A message for you, Ethan Miller,’ she said. ‘Tell your low-life son to stop slandering my daughter, or he’ll be very sorry.’

  ‘Would you like to come inside, Eleanor?’ Ethan tried to stay composed.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Afraid the other neighbours will hear about your drug-pushing, child-molesting son?’