Deception

by Marciano, Jane

  I clung onto him, sobbing with relief, barely even conscious of the pain in my leg and the fact that I was bleeding all over his shoes. He made me raise my leg, and fussed over me a bit. I let him, not minding at all. It was great to feel protected again.

  I looked up at his face, so stern, and yet so tender. Seeing me looking at him, he raised a hand and wiped the sweat off my brow, then crushed me to his chest so that I could barely breathe. I didn’t mind. It was a lovely feeling. Safe, and warm, and wonderful. He bent his head and kissed my lips, and that felt pretty good too. We just stood there for a moment, he holding me tight in his arms while my heart stopped racing and slowly subsided to a more normal pace.

  Finally I risked a question, and asked, “Kristie?”

  His expression sombre, he said, “Just as you jumped, she leaned over the railing and stabbed downwards. She was aiming for your back but she only nicked your leg, but she’d leaned over too far and the speed and momentum caused her to overbalance.” He jerked his head, and I shuddered. “She’s down there somewhere, if she hasn’t already been washed out to sea.”

  I found I was trembling all over. Seeing it, he gave me a quick hug.

  Nestling against him I said, “What now?”

  “Well, Miss, now we have to get your leg seen to. Thank God it doesn’t seem too deep a cut. You might get away with just a couple of Steristrips. That’s butterfly stiches, which are narrow adhesive strips that help to close the edges of small wounds and encourage the skin to heal. And I think a call to the police would be in order, too.”

  “And then?”

  “And then it’s up to you, Bailey. You always had a choice with what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go.”

  For a moment I didn’t respond.

  He said to lighten the moment, “I actually drove here in the cab.”

  I laughed. “You brought a London taxi cab all this way?”

  “Can you think of a better way to travel? It’s parked in one of the hotel bays. Primed and ready to go whenever you’re ready. To take you wherever you wish to go.”

  I looked up at him admiringly. “I do believe you’re a very intelligent and resourceful man, Ari Ferrari.”

  He lightly stroked my cheek with his knuckle. “You didn’t do too badly there either, Miss Cathcart. You kept your cool and didn’t panic in the face of danger.”

  As we went through Kristie’s room and then back towards my bedroom to collect my bags, with me hopping beside him as he held me around the waist, I said, coaxingly, “Tell me what you do as a volunteer with the IDF. I think it must be something rather special.”

  He smiled mysteriously as he took my cases from me. “I’ll tell you when I’ve got to know you better.”

  Now there’s something to look forward to, I thought happily.

  If you enjoyed ‘Deception’ then you may be interested in ‘My Mother’s Wedding’ by Frankie McGowan, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from ‘My Mother’s Wedding’ by Frankie McGowan

  'The minute you get back,' Alice said. She knew her voice was shaking. 'I'll keep my phone on. Call. Just call.'

  She leaned against the window frame, one arm wrapped tightly around her stomach, the other holding the phone so rigidly against her ear, it had begun to hurt. She felt breathless. He was going to tell his wife. 'Oh God,’ she said into the phone. 'I can't think straight.'

  She heard him laugh. A nervous laugh. 'Will you be alright?' she asked.

  From where she was standing in the bay window of her ground floor flat she was vaguely aware of the family who lived directly across the narrow street in Fulham, piling their three children into a shiny new people carrier, the father trying to cajole a large, unruly Labrador into the gated bit at the back. It was a family with whom she was only on nodding terms. But for reasons she did not have to dig too deeply to understand, a family she found attractive, enviable.

  'I have no idea,' Claude said from his apartment on the Rue de Vaugirard. 'But this is stupid. You there, me here, spending a fortune to be with each other. She has to know sometime, doesn't she? And I have a life too, don't I? So, I will tell her, divorce or no divorce, you will be with me.'

  Alice struggled to summon up a vision of Claude being as firm as he sounded, with a wife whose steel-like grip on the finer points of French divorce law had made a nonsense of retaining the services of her very expensive lawyer. Only the day before, when clearly any further legitimate grounds for preventing a divorce seemed to have temporarily failed her, she had, Claude said, fielded a new concern regarding their three small boys who lived with her. Divorce, she had announced down the phone, was impossible until the boys were much, much older. The trauma of their father not living in the same house anymore was bad enough but her counsellor had now said, after observing the children at play that it was bordering on mental abuse. Irreparable damage was mentioned.

  His children. His passion. His conscience. Until this morning, Alice had accepted he was no proof against such anguish. Nor, it had to be said, was she. But she had several reservations about this therapist dispensing such dubious advice, doubts which she wisely kept to herself. Alice had never, of course, met Sylvie in person, but she'd seen her photograph in Claude's apartment, draped around her three boys. The spitting image of Claude. But even on such slight evidence, Alice didn't find it at all hard to equate the dark-eyed, black-haired, pixie faced woman who stared confidently back at her with someone who expected - and got - her own way. But she hadn't kept a grip on Claude.

  Alice wasn't at all sure clinging on to such a dead marriage had anything to do with Sylvie's feelings for Claude; just wanting to make sure the future was laid out to her requirements,

  ‘Alice?’ Claude repeated into the brief silence. 'Are you alright?'

  'Of course. Fine. Just terrified.'

  'I know, but I said, will you mind?' Claude asked. 'Giving everything up? The gallery? Your house? I know how hard-'

  'Claude,' she interrupted gently. 'Not being with you is far harder. Listen, truly. I'm not exactly raking it in, am I? So, no big deal. Now, just call, the minute you've got some news.'

  'As soon as I turn the corner of the road, ' he promised. 'Where will you be?'

  'Where?' Alice repeated, dragging her eyes from the window. The car carrying the squabbling children and boisterous dog had pulled away and was out of view. She glanced at her watch. They'd been talking for almost an hour. 'Oh my God,' she groaned. 'I'm late for Dad's garden party. '

  'Garden party? Can't it wait?'

  'Not this one,' she glanced slightly more anxiously at her watch.

  'You have to be there?'

  'Oh God yes. Three line whip.'

  'What?'

  'Political expression in England. Must attend. He's just been asked to chair some government advisory board - medical stuff - not sure what. He wants us all there.'

  'Oh,' was all Claude said. 'Will you tell them? Your father?'

  Alice headed for her bedroom still clutching the phone. 'Shouldn't I wait until-'

  'No,' he cut in. 'No. He doesn't like me but - no Alice, please. You know that's true, but better to be honest. We have nothing to hide, do we?'

  'Not a thing I can think of. You know,' she said pulling open her wardrobe. 'I think he'll be pleased, in his own way. Really I do. I have to go. Love you.’

  Less than half an hour later having locked up, set the alarm and left a scribbled note for Elsa, who rented the flat above from her, to remember to put out the bins on Sunday evening, Alice was edging her battered jeep out of the car-congested narrow road, one of a warren running either side of the scruffier end of Fulham Road, that had been her home for the last two years.

  It was extraordinary, she decided as she manoeuvred her way almost without being conscious of what she was doing, through the Saturday afternoon traffic that was clogging up all the bridges crossing to the south side of the river, how different she had become since Claude. She who was - or had been (she had
to acknowledge the past tense) - so matter of fact, so - oh how she hated to say it but it was true - famously sensible, was no longer recognisable as the person who had once tended to roll her eyes and shake a disbelieving head when she heard about the sort of person she herself had become. Besotted. Irredeemably besotted. She was restless, unfocussed. She knew it and hated it. It was so not what she was about. But what could she do?

  'If this’, she told herself fearfully as she drove, 'is love, then I'm not sure I'm cut out for it.'

  By the time she joined the motorway, any hope of being in Sussex in less than two hours had been abandoned. Traffic, queues and queues of it. And endless road works, the kind that blisteringly hot afternoons such as this - and even hotter tempers - seemed to specialise in. She grappled in her bag for her phone. The house phone went to the machine. Of course, everyone would be outside. She pressed her mother's mobile number.

  'Ma?' she shouted into her mother's voicemail above the noise of the lines of lorries belching and squealing either side of her. 'Traffic's vile but on my way’. She paused, before adding almost pleadingly: 'Tell Dad for me, will you? Really sorry, just got held up.'

  It wasn't her mother she worried about. Gentle and clever, Molly Melrose never minded what any of her children did. But to anyone who knew the whole family, Alice, the youngest of Harry Melrose's three children, seemed to possess the ability, on a fairly majestic scale, to trigger her father’s temper on the turn of a sixpence. And here she was, hopelessly late, and about to break it to him about Claude. Either option perfectly capable of creating the kind of scene she dreaded.

  Claude. A fait accompli. Alice almost laughed. She felt insane. She imagined him in his car, heading away from his home in the centre of Paris to drive half an hour to Neuilly-sur-Seine, to tell his wife that all their lives were now going to be different.

  By the time Alice finally turned into the narrow country lane in Sussex leading to the Georgian rectory where she had grown up, its pale primrose walls bathed in sunlight, and having argued herself into believing that her father would be pleased for her, she had begun to feel quite buoyant about the conversation that lay ahead.

  Years ago, and she well knew it, she should have got over this absurd regression into reacting as a child whenever she had to confront her father. But as she slowed to turn into the lane that led up to the house, her spirits were unexpectedly lifted by the sight of a gleaming fleet of BMW's, Mercedes, a Ferrari or two, all wedged up against the thick hedgerows that shielded the surrounding fields from the road. Sound evidence, she grinned to herself, that while she was horribly late, no-one was leaving early either. She might not have been missed.

  'Ye-ay,' she cheered, giving the air a little punch. 'Oh God,' she groaned in the same breath. 'How pathetic are you?'

  *

  The house was quiet and deserted. Only the faint babble of voices from the horde of people milling about in the garden and the strains of a string quartet playing selections from Bach to Coldplay drifted in as Alice made for the stairs on the far side of the hallway to change in her old room.

  'Alice,' a relieved voice called. 'There you are.'

  She looked up to see her mother just rounding the bend in the stairs bewilderingly clutching a straw boater, flowing ribbons streaming from its brim totally at odds with the understated white V-necked linen top and silk navy skirt she was wearing.

  'Sorry,' Alice leaned forward to kiss her cheek. 'Traffic. I did ring.'

  'I know, dear,' Molly said hugging her. 'I told him. He's fine,' she soothed as Alice raised a doubtful eyebrow. 'Too busy to really notice. And when you're ready, give this to Bob Maynard's wife, will you?' She gave the hat a shake and handed it to Alice. 'What possesses them to dress as though they're at a wedding beats me.' Suddenly, she paused and searched her daughter's face.

  'You look different dear. Now what have you done?' But before Alice could reply Molly gave a start. 'Talking of pretty. You've just reminded me. There's a photographer somewhere. That magazine that Vix always goes on about. Dad said we had to put up with it, but I'm staying out of the way, just in case, but I think he'll be happy with just Dad and Vix. Or you.'

  'Certainly not me,' Alice said cheerfully. 'You and Dad are what he'll want. Mind you,' she teased. 'Soap star daughter?' she gave a little balancing movement with her hand. 'Wife of big noise in the City? Bit of a contest there I'd say.'

  'Fingers crossed, then,' Molly laughed. 'To be honest, I think we're just a side show. Half the cabinet seem to be here. Making sure Dad doesn't back out. Aiming for six o’clock news to announce it I gather. Oh, and Alice?'

  'Don't worry,' Alice called back reaching the top of the stairs. She knew what her mother was going to say. 'I won't upset him. Promise.'

  'That'll be a first,' Molly sighed continuing on her way.

  'Sorry?' Alice looked down through the stair well.

  'I said, I know you won't,' Molly lied.

  Alice craned over the stairwell to watch her mother go. Molly was as tall and slender as Alice, the same high cheekbones and serious grey eyes. What they also shared was fairly unruly hair. But apart from having, that very morning, her much shorter, and now greying, hair tamed into obedience by the village hairdresser, a narrow gold watch on one wrist and a single neat row of Cartier pearls that her husband had bought for her on their last anniversary around her neck, Molly made no particular statement that claimed she was the wife of a very rich man.

  'Hey,' Alice called after her mother's retreating figure. 'If I wear this hat, that photographer might think I'm someone as well.'

  'No he won't,' called Molly calmly back. 'He'll think you're deranged.'

  Alice chuckled. She was home. It felt good.

  *

  Alice paused to survey the crowd gathered on the terrace and spilling down into the perfectly manicured lawn that stretched in one direction to a high stone wall beyond which lay fields where in the distance a herd of cows could be heard lazily moo-ing or swishing their tails at flies who ventured too near. In the other, it rolled like soft velvet towards the copse of trees behind which her mother's precious greenhouses could be found. All around a profusion of pink and blue peonies jostled with purple columbine in flower beds that sturdily guarded the walls of the house, the parterre with its gravel paths, the vine house where all year round Molly coaxed all manner of fruit and a fine tribute to her genius for gardening. It was, for those knowing the considerable knock on effect on their own standing at being seen in Harry Melrose's company, a potent scene.

  An afternoon downing quite obscenely generous amounts of very chilled Krug in gardens where the scent of mimosa and jasmine hung as heavily on the air as the opportunity - heavily disguised as supporting underprivileged children - to broker deals, was considered by Harry's guests, if not their wives, well worth a slog out of London on the hottest afternoon of the year. By the time they were all into their fourth or fifth glass, the hefty donation they were obliged to make to Harry's chosen charity suddenly seemed a steal if it meant they were regarded as big enough players to enjoy his charmingly vast Georgian home, perfectly positioned overlooking the sea.

  Alice had managed a quick shower, slipped into a cool, cotton vintage tea dress, left her legs bare and now felt more equal to facing her father.

  Having delivered the ancient straw boater to the gently perspiring Mrs Maynard, who looked as though she would have happily worn a fridge on her head if it had meant she had a fighting chance against such heat, Alice craned her neck looking for the familiar figure of Harry Melrose. And suddenly, there he was. Just as she turned the corner of the terrace where it looked out over the sea, she saw the outline of his back.

  Stocky, his thick, once dark hair, now sliced with grey, a navy linen jacket, a face that was routinely described as handsome and the kind of charm for which he was famed, obviously mesmerising the crowd around him. Alice took a deep breath.

  'Hey,' she touched his arm. Even in flat sandals she was almost as tall as him. He turn
ed and instantly put an arm around her and kissed her cheek.

  'Don't you own a watch?' he growled.

  The little group surrounding them smiled at what they naturally assumed was mock paternal sternness. Alice knew better.

  'That's it,' She suggested lightly. 'My birthday present. Sorted.'

  He put his head on one side surveying her. 'You look pleased with the world.'

  She hesitated. And then. What the hell? Claude would be ringing any minute. 'Got some exciting news,' she beamed.

  'Really? Found the next Matisse?'

  She laughed. 'I wish. No. Much better.’

  'Then you'd better tell me,' he smiled gazing thoughtfully at her. 'James?' He beckoned to his son, older than Alice, a clone of his father, who had strolled over to greet his sister.

  'Of course,' James smiled giving Alice a peck on the cheek and took his father's place, as he was expected to do in the small circle, all of whom valiantly tried to hide their disappointment at the exchange of the powerful chairman of Europe's largest pharmaceutical company for his perfectly nice, but less useful, son.

  'You should say, "Thank you Alice",' she murmured as she followed her father through the press of people making their progress to a more discreet spot a slow one.

  'For?' He half turned.

  'Rescuing you.'

  'No point in having three children if they can't be put to good use.'

  'Charming.'

  'My pleasure. Ah, Anthony’. He stretched a hand out to a man that Alice instantly recognised as the anchor for a television current affairs programme. 'Just bear with me. My daughter wants me for something. Will it keep?' He turned to her.

  'Absolutely,' she said. She smiled, allowed the anchor-man to kiss her on both cheeks who, under the impression that having briefly met her at Harry's Winter Ball at the Grosvenor House six months before, was sufficient grounds for doing so. Harry gave her a level look, grunted and turned away to confirm to the veteran broadcaster that the PM had indeed asked him to chair the new advisory committee looking at the regulation of children in care.