by Susan Lewis
‘Darling, don’t you understand what she’s doing? She sent the clock to you knowing you would react this way. Oh God, Mark! Don’t let her do this. Please, don’t let her do it.’
The clock was still in his hands. He looked down at it for a long, long time. She was drowning again, spiralling away to a place where she was imprisoned with Shelley, shut away from the world, snatched brutally from the new life they were planning. She didn’t move, she could only watch him, and wait, and pray that once the shock was over …
After an interminable, unbearable time he finally put the clock on the desk. Then turning to her he pulled her into his arms and held her tight. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, feeling how violently she was shaking. ‘It’s all right.’
She clung to him and felt the air returning to her lungs. He believed her. Oh thank God, thank God. She was looking at the clock. Thank God.
‘What shall we do with it?’ she said.
‘I guess we have to tell the police it’s turned up.’
She nodded and reached out to touch it.
‘I’ll get it put in the safe for now.’
She looked up at him again, uncertainty still darkening her eyes. ‘You really scared me,’ she told him. ‘I thought … I thought maybe she was going to win.’
He smiled. ‘It scared me too,’ he confessed. Then, turning her to the door, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go get a drink. I think we both need one.’
‘Do you think it’s all over now?’ she said, after the concierge had locked the clock away.
‘I certainly hope so,’ he answered, standing aside for her to walk ahead of him down to the bar.
A smartly dressed woman who’d arrived the day before was coming up the steps towards them, and broke into a beaming smile as she saw Allyson. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she gushed, ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, but well, I feel as if I know you, and I just wanted to tell you how much I used to love your programme, and how sorry I am for all that you’ve been through. I never believed, even for a minute, that you could have done such a terrible thing, none of us did, but it must have been a very difficult time for you.’ She glanced approvingly at Mark. ‘I’m so glad it’s working out for you now.’
Allyson smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
The woman moved on, flushed with the pleasure of having spoken to Allyson Jaymes.
Mark’s eyes were teasing as he left her to go to the bar.
Laughing, Allyson wandered out to the terrace to watch the spectacular blaze of the sunset and listen to the idle chatter of the guests. It was incredible, she was thinking, the power of fame. Would she ever have had such support without it? Would anyone have been so ready to believe her? They all felt as though they knew her, as though she was somehow a part of their lives, and she couldn’t help wondering if the jury had felt that way too. They watched TV, so just like everyone else it would have been easy for them to see her as belonging to them, like a sister, a daughter, a mother, who had known pain and betrayal, who needed to be shown the same compassion she’d always shown to others. They knew everything about her. Her life had been laid open, she’d had no secrets by the time the trial was over. Yet she was still Allyson Jaymes, the TV personality they all knew and loved and implicitly trusted. It wasn’t possible for her to be a killer, not only because there had been no evidence to say she was, but because it just wasn’t possible for them to believe it of someone they knew to have such a good and kind heart.
Yes, it really was incredible, the power of fame, because despite the investigation, despite the trial and the verdict, the fact still remained: she could have done it …
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Copyright © Susan Lewis 2000
Susan Lewis has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
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ISBN 9780099534358