Tell the Girl

by Sandra Howard

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  tell the girl

  Also by Sandra Howard:

  Glass Houses

  Ursula’s Story

  A Matter of Loyalty

  Ex-Wives

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Sandra Howard, 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Sandra Howard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN: 978-1-47111-135-8

  TPB ISBN: 978-1-47111-136-5

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47111-138-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Michael – always

  For what is knowledge duly weighed?

  Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet;

  Yea, all the progress he had made

  Was but to learn that all is small

  Save love, for love is all in all.

  Christina Rossetti

  But only this:

  No reason ask of Love.

  John Marston

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Susannah Forbes had kept up a long vigil. She’d brought reading matter, newspapers, a biography of Harper Lee written by a close friend, but had hardly turned a page. Most of the time her eyes had been on the still shape under the hospital sheets, the blue lips, the slack, slipped jaw. There was no visible rise and fall of the chest, no restless turning. When she had touched the back of Clive’s hand, the extreme chill had transmitted itself. The intensive care unit had felt cold enough to be a morgue.

  The pauses in his breathing had become longer. He’d been in a semi-coma, but even so tried at times to speak. Susannah had leaned closer, listening hard, murmuring encouragement, hollow words about pulling through. She’d willed him to say more than faint unintelligible mumbles, something to hold onto, some last thread of connection, if not hope.

  The mass of beeping high-tech equipment had made the cubicle look like the cockpit of a plane. But all the dials and graphs on the screens had been plain to read, with every jiggering, jittery line undeniably on a nosedive.

  The hospital team had explained that Mr Barfield’s severely increased respiratory congestion, the thirty-point drop from normal blood pressure and his inability to swallow were all signs, but they couldn’t tell exactly when death would occur. It was a time to be realistic and compassionate, they said; time to let go. Her presence at the bedside would be reaching him, helping and giving him peace.

  ‘Talk to me, darling,’ Susannah had whispered, bending over the bed once more, staring steadily into his ashen sagging face. ‘Hold on, find the strength. You can do it.’

  Clive had opened his eyes. His lips moved. ‘These last . . . months . . . such joy, more than I could . . . You must . . . be . . .’ His breathing paused again and that was it, nothing more. No more words.

  It was three years since Clive had died; hectic, stimulating years in a terrific new career, which at Susannah’s age was against any yardstick and the longest odds. She’d had the same amazing luck in her first career as a photographic model. That had soared too, with bewildering speed in the high-drama times of her twenties; instant success at both ends of her working life and a rainbow arc of love, emotion and disillusionment in between. Not bad going.

  She was going to a dinner party. She’d had a busy, productive day and stepping into a black silk dress, fastening a plaited gold chain around her neck, Susannah was mystified by her edgy, unsettled mood. She wandered into the living-room where the window of her penthouse flat spanned the longest wall.

  Susannah stood gazing out, listening to the filtered sounds: a faint murmur of traffic, the whipping and whistling of a fierce wind. The flat overlooked the playing fields and tennis courts of Burton Court, a great open space in front of the splendid Royal Hospital, designed by Wren and home to the Chelsea Pensioners. Darkness had fallen, but a familiar line of tall lime trees was just visible, their leafless branches weaving and swaying as though to music. In the street-lit distance were the elegant Georgian houses of St Leonard’s Terrace, tall and sought-after. It was London at its most beautiful.

  The dinner was in Chester Square, a mile away at most, and Susannah decided to walk. It felt contrary, being buffeted by a fearsome wind on the way to a formal do, but it suited her mood. Her black velvet evening shoes were lowish-heeled and she had a pale ivory leather coat, snugly warm and satin-soft with a delicate sheen like mother-of-pearl that shouldn’t look too out of place.

  She wished she hadn’t accepted the invitation, something she felt too often these days, as the evening stood little chance of being fun. The hosts, Maynard and Ginny Wilson, who weren’t close friends, clung to the formalities of Maynard’s past career. He was an ex-ambassador, his last posting in the Balkans. A physically insubstantial man, he looked as though a punch would leave a hollow, and he wouldn’t have fared well at a rugby-playing school. He was likeable enough, mild-mannered and amenable, while Ginny was ingratiating, adept at exploiting people’s kindnesses; any return of favours seemed an entirely alien concept to her. She had slightly protruding, staring eyes, yet had perfected the kind of helpless looks of entreaty guaranteed to bring out the protective instinct in any male. Ginny had money of her own and Maynard was in business now too – making a packet, it would seem.

  Susannah shrugged on her leather coat, faintly imbued with her Chanel scent and as softly supple as luxury car seating. Posh, her skinny little Siamese cat, was rubbing round her ankles. ‘Lucky Posh puss,’ she muttered, bending to stroke her. Leaving the flat, she tried to think more positively; the Wilsons spread their net wide – you never knew.

  The chill April wind tugged viciously at her hair and took her breath away. She skirted round the south side of Burton Court with her mind on penthouses; wistfully on her o
wn, the cosy evening in she was missing, but also on Jimmy Rose’s. It had been his luxury apartment, after all, with its fabulous views up and down the Thames that had managed to turn her life on its head. Susannah still found it hard to believe.

  Jimmy was a delightful, sprightly man with expensive tastes in property, cigars and champagne. He was a wine dealer and Conservative Party treasurer, and a few years ago had asked her round for a drink, saying he wanted a quiet word, just the two of them. He’d pressed on her a glass of his best vintage champagne and joked about the latest political mess-up before bouncing her with a proposition. He wanted her to redecorate his pad.

  ‘And I’m talking a proper business deal here, Susannah. I love your style, a whole lot more than many a top designer I could name. I won’t take no for an answer.’

  She’d protested. Jimmy was a wonderful friend and she knew he admired her own home, but she was no decorator and couldn’t possibly take it on. ‘I’d only do it as a loss leader,’ she said finally, weakening, flattered and tempted, secretly longing to give it a go.

  That conversation had taken place before her marriage to Clive. Although comfortably off at the time, Susannah had never been in the penthouse league. Her parents had struggled, she’d had a childhood of making do. Becoming a successful photographic model had been head-spinning, yet her first husband’s debts had left their finances strained. She’d remarried, twice, and lost her third husband, Edward, to a brain tumour. It had been a wretched, desolate time, but life moved on and she needed a fresh challenge, like trying her hand at interior design.

  A couple of years later, at one of Jimmy’s drinks parties for his rich cosmopolitan friends, everyone had cooed and raved about the new décor. They’d been wowed by its recent makeover, the glass cubes and lightness, touches of vivid colour; high praise from a roomful of blasé sophisticates. Jimmy had bowed theatrically and held out a hand to Susannah. It was all down to her, he said, basking in the glow. The credit was entirely hers.

  By then, Susannah had done up another penthouse and a lavish apartment in Eaton Square. She’d formed her own company, Susannah Forbes Design, and had other commissions in the pipeline, new clients dangling plans.

  The apartment in Eaton Square had been testing. She’d felt doomed, done for, as though her parachute had stuck fast and on only her second jump. The client, a statuesque Texan heiress, had known exactly what she wanted, thank you very much. No fresh, innovative designs, clean lines and Italian modernity; her eye was in for rich, heavy silks and brocades. She’d dug in her bejewelled heels and refused to budge. Susannah had despaired. Yet realism about who was pay-mistress soon kicked in and, swallowing her pride, she had walled the Texan’s entire dining room in sumptuous gold-threaded brocade. With a set of fourteen high-backed chairs upholstered to match, the room had certainly made a statement.

  The Texan blonde giantess had been ecstatic. It was precisely the French-château, Marie-Antoinette feel she was after, she’d enthused, promising to spread the word from Louisiana to Long Island, London to the South of France.

  Magazines and newspapers had begun to do features and interviews. Susannah was a much-married top model, often in the gossip columns, and with her sudden success as a designer, the spanking richness of her clients, the media had gone to town.

  She was almost at the Wilsons’, walking up Chester Row, a graceful narrow slip of a street that led to the Square. Recalling Jimmy’s drinks party had made her feel sorrowful, even a little fearful, and she strained to think why. It was a culmination, she decided – a warning signal perhaps, that the more soaring of life’s highs were over and its winding down had begun. Depressing. Susannah bridled at the thought.

  She’d been seeing a bit of Clive Barfield in the months before Jimmy’s party, bald-headed Clive, a seventy-year-old businessman, a captain of industry with cheeks as saggy as a Beagle’s and a trad, timid taste in clothes. He’d first asked her out a year after the death of her third husband, Edward. Clive had made no demands, he’d understood and known her fragile state. Kind, unexciting Clive had been about the only person whose company she could have borne.

  Edward had died suddenly, struck down as though by the force of God’s mighty hand, leaving Susannah adrift, unable ever to imagine normal life again. Edward had been her foreground, her horizon, and now she was in a wasteland, alone. He’d come into her life when she was twice divorced and still only thirty. Her unflinching certainty about the wisdom of marrying him had amazed no one more than herself.

  It had been quite as brave of Edward. He’d ignored all the guarded comments, warnings from friends, and taken her on, along with her eight-year-old daughter, five-year-old dog and two cats of considerable age. Edward hadn’t been especially beautiful, with thinning hay-coloured hair that was soft to stroke and touch; a strong straight nose and deep, chestnut-brown eyes that invariably reflected his moods. They’d radiated love and responsiveness, glittered with his impossibly quick temper. Thirty feisty, passionate, sparring, loving years: more than her fair share.

  Edward had been an economist, moving in political and business circles. He and Susannah had often had friends to kitchen supper, and when he’d happened to meet and like Clive Barfield he’d suggested asking him along. He’d be good balance for some of the shouters amongst their friends. Clive had become quite a regular after that.

  Clive had never married. He was a workaholic, gripped by the need to succeed and perhaps lacking the active libido that might have seen him paired off at an early stage of life. But whatever the married joys and woes he’d missed out on, Clive had struck gold with his non-stick kitchenware business. He’d broken the French stranglehold on that market with solid, well-designed and sensibly priced goods. Pots and pans had made him a very rich man.

  He was a dry seventy-year-old and Susannah was no girl. Clive wasn’t without a humorous side, yet his expression was so naturally solemn, he was always so thoughtful and slow that any flashes of wit came as something of a surprise. He’d taken her to theatres and films during the year before Jimmy’s drinks party, they’d had dinner together, lunch or a drink in the garden of his duplex flat in Little Venice, that quietly posh corner of London. They’d nattered about plants, paintings, Susannah’s children; Clive always seemed genuinely interested in their doings, despite having no family of his own. He’d never put her under any pressure, a squeeze of the hand, a kissed cheek – a peck on the lips once or twice.

  She hadn’t talked to Clive at Jimmy’s party, being keen to have useful conversations and make eye-contact with potential clients; she was being feted and praised and loving it. The champagne was Dom Perignon, the canapés, dainty morsels: quail’s eggs, mini rolls of rare beef, blinis with a mere scraping of caviar. No more healthy, hefty scoops of the stuff. Even Jimmy was feeling the national pinch, it seemed.

  An American, Warren Lindsay, had discussed the décor with Susannah while showing a flattering, more personal interest as well. He then began to pour out his personal woes. Warren was mid-divorce and wearyingly bitter, the scars of battle uncomfortably exposed.

  ‘She’s a vulture, that woman, but she’s not going to win. I can be pushed just so far . . .’ Warren’s honey-bronze eyes had hardened under the jut of a broad brow.

  Was he trying to convince himself, Susannah wondered, or was he simply a man of ruthless, unflinching determination? He was her sort of age, possibly a bit younger, with a good head of dark hair, flecked all over with grey-white specks like rocks by the sea. He hadn’t mentioned dinner and hadn’t really been seeing her, Susannah felt, hard as he’d stared. It had been a slight anti-climax since people were drifting off and it was a natural time to have suggested coming out for a meal. She’d moved away, feeling a mild sense of failure and also that she should really catch up with good-natured Clive.

  Susannah remembered thinking he looked even more sombre and lugubrious than usual that evening. He had inclined his head to a quiet spot where the view up and down the Thames was truly spectacular
with the lights of London spangling the dark. ‘Can we go over there?’ he asked her. ‘I’d like to propose something, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I’ve been propositioned in this flat before,’ she laughed, walking with him.

  ‘Why? Has Jimmy . . . ?’ The air around them was suddenly electric and she saw a previously unknown side of Clive – the steely, formidable force in the boardroom side.

  ‘God no, that’s hardly Jimmy’s thing! I just meant the decorating job.’

  ‘I wanted to mention this idea in advance,’ Clive said gravely, ‘to give you plenty of room for manoeuvre. If you don’t hate the very thought of it, though, perhaps we could have dinner and, well, talk about it.’ He gave one of his rare grins. ‘But this little gift,’ he said, pressing a small pouch into her palm, ‘is quite unconnected. It’s for you to keep, whatever you decide.’ He smiled more gently, and she did too, amazed beyond belief. He took her arm and they went together to say their goodbyes.

  The gift had been a sumptuous single diamond. Converted into a ring, its scintillations were like flames of white fire. It was staggering. Susannah wore it on evenings out and, walking now to Chester Square, kept her hand in her coat pocket. She glanced down at it wistfully, arriving at the Wilsons’ doorstep, thinking how much she owed to Clive. Not least the six wonderfully contented months of marriage before he’d caught pneumonia three years ago, suffered the complications of diabetes, and died.

  She put her lips to the ring with a fond heart then banged down the doorknocker. Chester Square was Georgian splendour, magnificent houses, but – probably because of her feelings about Ginny – the Wilsons’ house somehow gave off a reek of superior exclusiveness that got up Susannah’s nose. The buffed-up brasswork on its sleek, black-painted front door could have been on military parade.

  The door was opened silently and the Filipino waiter behind it took her coat. Another waiter escorted her upstairs. Susannah could hear the clink and chatter coming from the first-floor drawing room. She braced herself and prepared to greet her hosts.