Out of the Shadows

by Susan Lewis

  ‘Do you think whoever it is might pose any kind of threat?’

  ‘I doubt it very much. People who send anonymous letters are a bit like frustrated puppeteers, never seen, but trying to pull the strings anyway. If they get a response it reminds them they’re alive.’

  ‘How sad.’

  ‘Very, but in this instance not worth losing any sleep over. The police clearly aren’t if they haven’t come to talk to you, and as there’s nothing malicious or even particularly personal in the messages, you might as well ignore them too and tell me how it went today. I know, you were spectacular.’

  Laughing, she said, ‘Modesty prevails, but everyone seemed really happy with my performance and I have to say I loved every single minute I was out there, in spite of the rain. Best of all, though, was riding Silver. He’s something else, honestly. If I could, I’d take him out again right now this minute, but there are strict rules forbidding recreational rides, for our own safety and the horses’. Why are there always rules against things we enjoy? Anyway, what about your day? How was that?’

  ‘Nothing like as exciting as yours,’ he responded drily, ‘but it had its moments when a very generous patient invited me to join her book club in Wimbledon, and another sent me a video of himself that he’s posted on YouTube.’

  Laughing, Susannah said, ‘I’m sure there’s a whole slew of great characters passing through your doors, if only you could discuss them. Have you seen Neve this evening?’

  ‘No, Sasha’s housekeeper was picking them up today. It’s my turn on Wednesday. So I’m having a bachelor dinner in front of the TV, then I might do some work on the computer before I go to bed. How about you?’

  Hoping he wasn’t going to mind about this, she said, ‘A few of us are talking about going to a pub. Nothing special. I’d much rather be with you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, it might help my Lean Cuisine go down a bit better. Are you still due to come back on Friday evening?’

  ‘It’s looking that way,’ she replied, ‘but there’s still no knowing how the week might develop. If it carries on raining and we fall behind, I might not make the early train.’

  ‘Then let’s hope the weather’s on our side. Oh, by the way, you’re not the only one who had flowers today. I had some too, from Pats, thanking us for the weekend.’

  ‘Really? How thoughtful, especially when she’s so busy. I’ll send her a text to say thank you and try to call tomorrow. She’s obviously not quite herself at the moment. I’d better ring off now, because I still have to speak to Neve and Lola before I go out. And the marvellous thing is, I’m famished at last. I was beginning to think I’d never be able to eat again.’

  ‘Then bon appétit, chérie, and come home soon.’

  After putting the phone down at his end, Alan sat staring into space as too many thoughts whirled around in his head. In the end he turned to his computer and composed an email to his lawyer, telling him about the message Susannah had received and asking for his comments.

  Half an hour later his mobile started to ring. Seeing it was Ken he clicked on.

  ‘There’s probably no connection,’ he was told, ‘but I’ll make some enquiries. If it does turn out to be from your wife, or her brother, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Alan replied. ‘Let’s get an answer to the question first, then we’ll speak again.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘FRANK! WHAT ARE you doing here?’ Patsy demanded, sounding much more brusque than she intended as he came sauntering into her office. ‘It’s only Wednesday. I thought you weren’t back until Friday?’

  ‘Aha,’ he said, looking extremely pleased, ‘does this mean that you ’ave been missing me?’

  ‘Nooo,’ she replied, drawing out the word. ‘It means I thought you weren’t back until Friday.’

  Pulling out a chair to sit down, he said, ‘I agree, that was my intention, but then I find I am missing you so Michelle has carried on alone.’

  Patsy sat back in her own chair and folded her arms. ‘OK. So now, let’s have the real story,’ she said. ‘Why are you back early?’

  ‘I have to say, you are a very difficult woman to compliment,’ he told her. ‘Most women would be very ’appy to know they are missed …’

  ‘Frank, come to the point.’

  With a more tempered Gallic shrug than normal, he said, ‘I am here, because I receive your email about the advertising budgets and I think maybe, it make more sense for me to be at the meeting tomorrow than to be galvanising around Bordeaux.’

  Suppressing a laugh she said, ‘I think you might mean gallivanting. Or there again … Anyway, I’m glad you’ve taken that decision, because it would be extremely helpful to have you there. There’s also –’ was she really adding this? – ‘an invitation to the opera tonight, courtesy of Elle magazine as a thank-you for our patronage. Since it’s a major event in the social calendar I thought you might like to go.’

  He seemed surprised and pleased. ‘With you?’ he ventured.

  ‘No. Alone.’

  He scowled. ‘Now I am not so interested. Why are you not also going?’

  ‘I don’t like opera.’

  ‘I will go if you will go,’ he said, folding his arms.

  ‘Frank, don’t be childish, it doesn’t suit you.’

  He laughed and she lowered her eyes because she liked the look and sound of it too much. ‘Please come,’ he said. ‘I will teach you how to love opera.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to learn how …’ She stopped, realising she was being childish now. ‘OK,’ she said, cringing at how fast she caved in. ‘There are drinks first, in one of the salons, so I’ll meet you there at seven.’

  Standing up, he pushed the chair forward, saying, ‘I will pick you up at six thirty. Please do not keep me waiting, unless, of course, you would like some ’elp with your zip.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ she muttered, and before he could see her smile she turned back to her computer, willing, but only reluctantly, to admit how much lighter she felt inside knowing he was around again. Then, seeing the staff appraisals she’d been working on when he’d turned up, she raised an eyebrow. Luckily for them, they were likely to have a much easier time of it now their champion had made an unscheduled return. Then her smiled dropped as for one uncomfortable moment she wondered if it was a coincidence, him walking in when she was right in the middle of trashing them all. Not that she’d actually intended posting any bad reports, it was just a way of getting things off her chest before she got round to the kind of assessment that none of them deserved, but with any luck might help her win a few friends and influence some people.

  Realising she was in danger of seeing a conspiracy in her own mirror if she carried on like this, she pushed the suspicion away, and continued to type.

  Wouldn’t it be odd, she was thinking, if she turned out actually to like opera?

  ‘Shut up already,’ Neve giggled. ‘I am so not going to do that.’

  ‘Why?’ Sasha demanded. ‘It would be dead easy, and I bet anything it would work.’

  Neve shook her head and stared down at the open homework books spread out between them on the desk in Sasha’s room.

  ‘It would,’ Sasha insisted. ‘Look, he said just now, when he dropped us off, that he’s picking us up again next Wednesday, right?’

  Neve didn’t answer.

  ‘Right,’ Sasha said for her. ‘So all you’ve got to do between now and then is ask if we can stay the night at your place, then at the last minute I can be “sick” and you can go on your own. Easy. No-brainer. It’ll work.’

  Feeling a thousand knots tightening and twisting inside her, Neve said, ‘I don’t know. I mean, what if he says, “OK, then I’ll have to take you back to Sasha’s, or Lola’s?”’

  Sasha shrugged. ‘So he brings you back. But he won’t. You’ll see. He’ll definitely let you stay at home for the night. I’ll put money on it.’

  Inhaling shakily, Neve said, ‘I don�
��t know. I mean …’

  ‘Oh come on, it’s you who keeps on about it all the time,’ Sasha reminded her. ‘I’m just telling you how to make it happen.’

  ‘I really want to,’ Neve said, ‘but …’

  Sasha threw out her hands. ‘You’re just scared, which is normal, but it’ll be OK once you’re there.’

  Neve’s eyes stayed down. ‘No, it won’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just won’t.’

  ‘You know what your trouble is,’ Sasha declared. ‘You’re all talk.’

  ‘I so am not!’ Neve cried defensively.

  ‘Yes you are. You got like this over Brendon Draycott, saying you were going to go all the way, then backing off at the last minute.’

  ‘Because I didn’t fancy him any more.’

  ‘So you’ve stopped fancying Alan?’

  Neve’s eyes went down again. ‘No. It’s just …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, well, suit yourself. I’ve told you how to do it, if you decide not to bother, then it’s up to you. Just don’t blame me when people start calling you a tease, because actually, that’s what they’re starting to say.’

  Neve’s face turned pale. ‘No it isn’t,’ she protested.

  ‘Yes it is. Ask anyone. I keep telling them it’s not true, but the way you’re carrying on I’m beginning to think it is.’

  Patsy couldn’t believe she’d just said what she had. It was as though the words had grown wings and flown straight out of her mouth, unassisted by her, unprogrammed by her brain, and were now creating all kinds of havoc. Worse, Fronk was clearly finding it highly amusing.

  She should never have agreed to go to the opera, chanting, screaming, undulating debacle it had turned out to be. It might have helped if she understood more than three words of German instead of having to depend on the sur titres – and a fat lot of good they’d been, because she still had no idea what the plot was about. However, she had to admit the costumes were impressive, and the parties before and after had been fun … Anyway, it was bad enough that she’d let him coerce her into sitting through all that shameless overacting and scary music, but to have allowed him to talk her into an after-theatre supper in this alarmingly intimate little bistro tucked around the back of the Champs Elysées, all soft music and low lights, had been the biggest mistake of all. She’d only agreed because she was hungry, and well, why not admit it, he was reasonably good company – or he had been until she’d just blurted the most idiotic question of her entire grown-up career right into his face.

  It had to be the drink, she told herself. The thought wouldn’t even have entered her head if she hadn’t downed all that champagne before the show. And now, here she was, halfway through a second glass already, and the amuse-bouches hadn’t even turned up yet, never mind the entrée. Or maybe it was still the first glass, and just felt like the fourth. Whatever. If he didn’t stop grinning at her like a Hallowe’en pumpkin with idiosyncratically perfect teeth, she was going to … Well, she’d do something, she just hadn’t worked out what, yet.

  ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to answer that question,’ she told him, sounding amazingly relaxed. ‘It’s absolutely none of my business …’

  ‘You would like to know if I am having an affair with Michelle Maurice,’ he said, repeating it in a way that made her wince and want to throw the rest of her drink in his face, or maybe her own.

  She’d only asked because she now felt sure he wasn’t, which made this entire scene more farcical than any she’d just suffered from an opera box, and even more ludicrous than the lorgnette he’d brought with him and perched on the end of his beaky nose. Except it had made her laugh when he’d produced it, as he’d clearly known it would, which was quite possibly why he’d done it.

  ‘OK, the truth,’ he declared.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ she told him hastily. ‘I’m honestly not interested. I’m not sure what made me …’

  ‘I am very madly in love with Michelle,’ he told her earnestly. ‘I have been since the day I first see her, but alas, she is ’appily married and I have not yet been able to persuade her to have an affair with me. So you see, your … How you say? Intuition? Is very good. I thought maybe no one notice, but you, Patreesha, know me so well. I think, perhaps, you know me better than I know myself.’

  Far more flummoxed than she could deal with in an instant, Patsy picked up her glass and drank. He could be winding her up, of course, and she was almost willing to believe he was. On the other hand, everyone knew the French were into extramarital affairs big-time, with so many blind eyes being turned it was no wonder all the traffic kept ramming into itself.

  ‘So the answer to your question,’ he said mournfully, ‘is that I live in ’ope. I think, maybe when we are in Marseilles, that she will succumb to my irresistabilityness – is that a word?’

  ‘No, but I get the picture.’

  ‘Mais, hélas,’ he went on, with a fountain of hands, ‘her husband arrive just as we are getting into bed.’

  Patsy’s eyes widened.

  ‘So you can say maybe that my charm work its magic, but then the wrong genie pop out of the bottle.’

  In spite of it all Patsy sniggered. ‘You are a terrible storyteller,’ she informed him, inexpressibly relieved to realise he was teasing her.

  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it is not entirely a story, because I am, of course, very attracted to Michelle and I would like, more than anything, to make love with her as often as is possible. She is desiring of this too, but, unfortunately, my life is very complicated right now, so it is better that I do not make it any more that way.’

  As the laughter dried on Patsy’s lips, she looked down at her glass and wished she could leave now.

  ‘I am sorry, I feel this is not the answer you were hoping to hear,’ he said softly.

  ‘No, no. It’s exactly what I thought,’ she assured him. ‘Well, more or less. Anyway, I’d like to talk about our customer-service plan, and now seems a very good time.’

  He nodded soberly. ‘I believe it does,’ he agreed. ‘Please tell me how you are going to revolutionise La France. I am very interested to hear.’

  ‘It’s my intention,’ she said, passing over his irony, ‘to send our senior salespeople to a seminar in California, which, as I’m sure you’re aware, is the customer-service capital of the world.’

  ‘Mais, bien sûr,’ he agreed, appearing impressed. ‘I find this an excellent idea, but a very costly one, no?’

  ‘Of course, but I think it’ll be worth it. I’d prefer you not to mention it to anyone for the time being, I’m still costing it, and I need to discuss it with Claudia before I put anything into … practice.’ She trailed off as his mobile started to ring.

  Checking to see who it was, he gave her an apologetic look as he said, ‘I’m sorry, I must take it. Please excuse me,’ and getting up from the table he put the phone to his ear as he walked away saying, ‘Oui? J’écoute.’

  Unsure whether she was more annoyed or intrigued to know who he had to speak to at eleven o’clock at night, she gestured to the waiter to refill their glasses.

  It was ten minutes or more before he returned, by which time Pats was so mad she was on the point of storming out and leaving him to find an empty space when he finally deigned to come back. Had the food not arrived when it did she might have done so, but she was hungry and actually, she wanted to hear his explanation, because to her mind nothing warranted this sort of rudeness.

  ‘Patreesha,’ he said, coming back to the table, ‘I am very sorry, but I have to go ’ome. I know it is inexcusable to leave you like this, but I will make sure to pay the bill first.’

  Patsy stared at him in mute astonishment. He was seriously going to abandon her, in the middle of a dinner? No, surely not. She couldn’t have heard right.

  ‘The tarte tatin is excellent here,’ he told her. ‘I can recommend it very highly,’ and after downing what was
left in his glass, he turned around and left.

  The week had sped by so fast that it was hard to believe Friday was upon them already. Fortunately the weather had undergone a dramatic improvement since Monday, so both red and blue units were set to finish on schedule, meaning that the first two episodes of Larkspur would be in the can and ready to edit by the end of the day. Everyone was delighted with the relatively smooth start to the series, and the few rushes Susannah had managed to see had left her both relieved and thrilled to discover that she hadn’t completely disgraced herself.

  Having been so busy she’d all but forgotten about the anonymous email by now; however, at Alan’s insistence, she’d checked yesterday with Cordelia, the mail manager, to find out if anything else had arrived, and apparently it hadn’t. Since Susannah had an idea who might be trying to make mischief, she wasn’t altogether surprised. However, if she was right and no more turned up, it would be best to leave her suspicions unaired. If they did, then she’d try to deal with it herself rather than create a fuss.

  It was eight thirty in the morning now and she was still at the lodge, enjoying a more leisurely start to the day than she’d had so far, thanks to a nine fifteen make-up call. She’d already showered and washed her hair, and was towelling it dry as she wandered down to the kitchen. To her surprise she found Polly sitting at the table, dunking a biscuit in a cup of coffee and reading her script.

  ‘Good morning,’ Susannah said pleasantly, in spite of the sudden tension inside her. ‘I thought you had a seven o’clock start.’

  ‘It was changed last night,’ Polly replied without looking up.

  Susannah carried on rubbing her hair as she went to unhook a mug from an overhead beam. This was the first time they’d actually been at the lodge together, apart from when sleeping or passing one another on the way in or out, and she couldn’t help wishing they’d adhered to the tacit agreement at least to try and avoid one another. On set was a different story, since they had several scenes together so had no choice about facing one another, but as there was no love lost between their characters those occasions often provided a gratifying outlet for her frustration, thanks to Marianne’s unerring ability to deliver a gloriously stinging last word. Usually Penelope was left open-mouthed with shock, or swollen with rage, or perhaps muttering some kind of ludicrous vow to get even. Yesterday, however, Marianne’s cruelty had reduced her to tears, an outcome that had clearly incensed Polly beyond reason. Though she hadn’t embarrassed herself by venting her fury then, it had been plain to see. Though it seemed absurd now, Susannah began wondering if that was why Polly was still here this morning, to try and settle a score that wasn’t even real.