by Zoe Sharp
‘I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, you need to push Simone to ask more awkward questions about her father, see how he reacts. What do you make of the new wife?’
I shrugged. ‘She seems OK,’ I said, cautious. ‘Business-like and no-nonsense, though. If you don’t dig your heels in she rides right on over you.’
She’d tried it with me over the matter of which room I was due to sleep in. After the initial awkwardness of the introductions, Rosalind Lucas quickly regained her composure. Lucas might have been the army man, but his second wife had command of the home and he seemed happy to leave the domestic decisions to her in the same way officers casually deferred to their NCOs in the matter of day-to-day logistics. Rosalind gave us a tour of the house with brisk efficiency, automatically assuming that we’d fall in with her arrangements.
The house had four bedrooms in total, which would have worked out fine apart from the fact that three of them, including the master suite, were on the upper floor, and the fourth was in the basement.
Fitted-out basements are not a common thing in the UK. The only things that are normally kept in the cellar – apart from wine – are old tins of paint, mildew, and an inordinate number of spiders. In the Lucases’ case ‘basement’ was a bit of a misnomer. The guest suite had its own windows to the outside, courtesy of the fact that at the rear of the house the land dropped down towards the ski slope a hundred metres or so away through the trees.
The whole of the lower floor was luxuriously appointed, with a fully equipped exercise room, a home cinema, and several locked doorways to rooms that were just described as ‘storage’. I eyed the heavy-duty padlocks and assumed that was where Lucas kept his gun collection. If Simone came to the same conclusion, she didn’t mention it.
Rosalind had put Simone and Ella in the two spare rooms upstairs, leaving me in the dungeon, and looked very put out when I objected, ostensibly on the grounds that I ought to be nearer Ella, just in case she woke in the night.
‘But surely…is that likely?’ Rosalind had asked, looking baffled. She’d glanced across to where Ella had been sitting on the sofa alongside the man who claimed to be her grandfather, proudly showing him the motheaten Eeyore and, from the slightly bemused look on his face, giving him the stuffed animal’s life history and quirks of character.
Simone had hesitated, not wanting to be awkward with her hosts, but then she saw the way my eyebrows had come down meaningfully.
‘Well, it is Charlie’s job,’ she said then, with an apologetic smile. Rosalind had done her best to make friends with her stepdaughter, but I don’t think Simone would have been fighting my corner quite so hard if it had been Lucas himself who’d raised the query.
Eventually, they found a rollout bed for Ella to use in Simone’s room, while I was given the smaller of the guest rooms on the upper floor nearby. Rosalind was clearly mystified at my insistent disruption of her plans, but she accepted it with some measure of grace. When she showed me up to my room she even apologised profusely for the fact that it didn’t have its own en suite bathroom.
Now, I finished my quick call to Sean and left the room, pulling the door closed behind me. As I did so, Rosalind stepped out of a doorway across the landing, leading from the master suite. I wondered briefly if she’d been able to eavesdrop on my conversation, then dismissed the thought. I’d never been in the habit of shouting into a mobile phone, and the house seemed well built enough to be reasonably soundproof.
‘So, how long have you been Simone’s au pair?’ Rosalind asked as she led the way back down the polished wooden staircase.
‘Oh no, I’m paid to work for her,’ I said cheerfully, deliberately obtuse.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Au pairs are traditionally young girls who work for families for pocket money, in order to learn English,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’m a little old for that, and my English is fine.’
‘Er, yes, I see,’ Rosalind said, frowning.
We reached the ground floor. It was mostly open-plan, the through-kitchen and breakfast nook leading to the great room, which was a huge living area with a fireplace built of rounded fieldstone up the end wall. The furniture was dark wood, heavy and rather staid in design, at odds with the light airy feel of the house. Most of one side of the great room was glass, looking out over the deck through the trees and onto the lower part of the ski slopes.
There were elaborate drapes but they didn’t look like they were ever closed, which was going to be tricky from a security point of view. Lovely to be able to enjoy the view, but anyone with a lift pass could see into the house and they had a perfect right to do as many runs past the Lucases’ place as they felt like.
Simone was standing looking out of the window, cradling Ella. Lucas was standing beside them, his hand on Simone’s shoulder as he pointed out the line of the ski run, their heads tilted close together. When Rosalind saw them she stopped abruptly and I caught the unguarded expression on her face before she had a chance to mask it. But was it hurt I saw? Or anger?
Lucas heard our footsteps and turned, letting his hand drop away a little too quickly.
Interesting…
‘Ah, there you are, Charlie,’ he said, overly hearty. ‘All settled in?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.
‘You all must be hungry after your journey,’ Rosalind said, her features schooled back into a cool politeness once more. ‘I have a Brunswick stew in the crockpot. We can eat whenever you’re ready.’
The conversation over our late lunch was somewhat stilted. Lucas was doing his best to play genial host, but the tension in Rosalind communicated itself to Simone, and then on to Ella, like they were connected by wires. Apparently oblivious, Lucas appeared quite happy to chat about his first wife in front of his second. He seemed to be going out of his way to drop into little reminiscences about Simone’s childhood – a well-loved toy, the wallpaper in her nursery, her favourite picture book.
To begin with, Simone seemed reluctant to join in this game of ‘do you remember’ but as Lucas kept coming up with snatches of her infancy that she clearly did remember, she found herself inexorably drawn in. And, as the conversation began to flow more freely, so the whole atmosphere relaxed a little. When I glanced at Rosalind, even she no longer seemed quite so stiff in her upright dining chair.
The Brunswick stew turned out to be mainly chicken and vegetables, served up with mashed potatoes. Although Ella picked her way around the carrots with some caution, she was hungry enough to clear her plate and accept a second helping. Even if she did seem to end up wearing more of the gravy than she was managing to spoon into her mouth.
I, too, kept my mouth occupied with eating rather than joining in the talk, content to observe rather than take part, despite Lucas’s occasional attempts to involve me in the proceedings.
‘So, did you always want to work with children, Charlie?’
That question, from Rosalind, had me glancing up from my food in surprise. It had sounded so pointed, as if she knew I was either more – or less – than I was pretending to be. I wondered again if she’d been listening in on my conversation with Sean.
‘Not really,’ I said, offering as much of the truth as I was able to, ‘but I suppose I like the idea of looking after people.’ Besides, during the previous summer I’d finally come to terms with the fact that I was capable of behaviour that took me to the extremes of social acceptability, and the more I was able to channel those traits into something useful – and legal – so much the better.
Rosalind frowned, something she seemed to do a lot if you gave an answer she didn’t like or wasn’t expecting.
‘And how did you meet Simone?’
‘She was recommended by a friend of the family.’ It was Simone herself who answered, shooting me a quick smile as she did so.
‘I thought you didn’t have any family – apart from the fact that you now have us, of course,’ Rosalind said, raising a small smile of her own in the direction of her husband, who
answered it cheerfully enough.
‘Yes, and it’s wonderful to suddenly discover I have two of you where I only ever expected – dreamt, really – to find one,’ Simone said. She paused, picking her next words with care. ‘And I can’t wait until Greg and I have the tests done and we can make it all official.’
Simone delivered this news with such artful casualness, beaming at the pair of them and carrying on eating, apparently oblivious to the fact that they’d both frozen in their chairs.
‘Tests?’ Rosalind echoed.
‘DNA,’ Simone said. ‘I’m assuming we can get them done locally, can we?’
I scanned their faces quickly, suppressing a cheer and the desire to jump up and hug Simone for her sudden display of level-headedness. Lucas and his wife exchanged glances, too fast for me to catch the message that flashed between them.
‘Surely there’s no need to go that far, is there?’ Rosalind said with a breathless kind of a laugh. ‘After everything Greg’s told you…?’
‘Oh, it’s a formality, of course,’ Simone said breezily. ‘I mean, I’m absolutely convinced, but my solicitor will skin me if I don’t come back with undisputed proof – especially when there’s Ella to consider.’
‘Yes, but—’
That was as far as Rosalind got when, suddenly, the doorbell rang.
Rosalind’s eyes flew to her husband’s, startled. Lucas almost ducked sideways slightly in his seat, as if to hide. The dining area wasn’t quite in direct line of sight to the glazed front door, but it was pretty close.
‘I’ll go,’ he said, but the smile he gave Rosalind was a strained one. He wiped his mouth on his napkin and dropped it onto the table as he got to his feet.
Unconsciously, we listened to his footsteps on the polished wooden floor of the hallway, could imagine the blast of cold air washing towards us as he opened the front door, heard the murmur of voices. Only Ella seemed unconcerned – both by the interruption and the turn the conversation had taken before it. She was totally absorbed with making a sandcastle of sorts out of her second helping of mashed potato and trying to create a moat for the gravy round the outside of it.
The voices continued by the front door. Lucas and another man’s, deeper and somewhat colder for it. I couldn’t make out the words but thought I detected a note of strain in Lucas’s. His tone went sharp, then stopped abruptly, like it had snapped off.
I glanced at Rosalind and found her apparently placid expression belied by the fact that she was gripping her fork so tightly her knuckles had turned white. I pushed my chair back slightly from the table and found myself automatically measuring the distance between us and the nearest doorway to the outside, which was behind where Ella and Simone were sitting. A pair of double doors led out onto part of the external decking that seemed to surround the house on three sides, with steps down into the woods.
There was another door leading to a screened porch by the fireplace in the great room, which was behind me and over to my left. I hadn’t initially liked the number of different access points to the house, but now I was glad of the options they provided.
Lucas came back into view at the end of the hallway with another man beside him. There was a study off to the right and as they passed it Lucas tried to shepherd the visitor into it, saying firmly, ‘Come into the den and we can talk,’ but the man kept walking towards us, as though Lucas hadn’t spoken, almost brushing straight past Lucas’s outstretched arm. As they reached the dining area, Rosalind pushed back her chair and stood, defensive, allowing the man to kiss her pale cheek. An act of submission rather than affection.
The man was of a similar age to Lucas himself, perhaps a little older – into his early sixties – but this was clearly no pensioner. He had iron-grey hair, cut short enough to see his scalp through it, and there was an altogether harder edge to him.
‘Rosalind, my dear,’ he said smoothly as he advanced. He had a craggy face with a strong nose and a full-lipped mouth, and his eyes were pale, a faded green or grey. ‘A pleasure, as always.’ His eyes skimmed over the three of us as he spoke, and he made a convincingly rueful face. ‘My timing is impeccable, I see.’
‘You know you’re always welcome, Felix. Why don’t you join us?’ Rosalind said, contriving to keep her voice pleasant, even though her face was frigid.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, but making no moves to leave. His gaze swung to Lucas. ‘I saw your car was out front, but I didn’t realise you had people visiting.’
‘Yes,’ Lucas said bluntly. There was a long pause. The man, Felix, raised his eyebrows slightly and craned his neck forwards, as if straining to hear. Eventually, he said softly, ‘So, aren’t you going to introduce me to these lovely ladies.’
Lucas flushed as his lack of manners was rammed down his throat. I saw his eyes flick to Simone and realised she was the one whose good opinion he wanted to maintain.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘This is, er, my daughter, Simone, and her friend Charlie Fox.’
The stranger’s eyebrows, if anything, climbed a little higher at this news. He directed a piercing stare first in Simone’s direction, then in mine. And finally he looked at Ella, who was gazing at him without apparent concern and chewing artlessly with her mouth open. ‘Well, well,’ he murmured. ‘Is it really?’
‘And this is Felix Vaughan,’ Lucas said, with obvious reluctance. ‘A business colleague of mine.’
‘Oh, but surely we know each other better than that, Lucas?’ Felix Vaughan said in that soft deep voice of his. ‘Charmed, my dear,’ he added, shaking Simone’s reluctantly proffered hand, although his eyes still seemed fixed on Ella. He held on to Simone for just a little too long. I saw the way Simone’s shoulder flexed as she tried to withdraw and was unable to, and rose from my seat.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Vaughan,’ I said, offering him my hand instead.
Vaughan’s eyes glittered as they flickered over me very deliberately, insulting in their calculation. Eventually, he released Simone’s hand in such a way that he managed to make it look like she’d been the one who’d been prolonging the contact. Simone winced and massaged her crushed fingers.
Vaughan liked that. He was smiling as he reached for me, but as our hands came together I jammed mine forwards, so the fleshy vee between my thumb and forefinger was hard up against Vaughan’s before he had the chance to close his fingers around my knuckles. I’d dealt with too many macho squaddies whose first instinct was to prove how weak and feeble female soldiers really were. The bone-crushing handshake was usually their opening salvo, in my experience, and I’d learnt a long time ago how to counteract it.
As it was, I saw Vaughan’s eyes widen slightly, then narrow as he tried to apply pressure and found himself outmanoeuvred. I offered him a bland smile and said nothing. After a few moments he got bored with the game and let my hand drop.
‘So, what’s your story, Miss Fox?’ he asked, casually taking Lucas’s chair at the head of the table. Lucas, I noticed, had moved to stand behind his wife and was gripping the back of her chair with both hands.
‘I look after Simone,’ I said, level, letting Vaughan know that if he was determined to cause trouble for her, he’d have to go through me.
‘She’s the nanny, Felix,’ Rosalind put in quickly.
‘Ah yes, of course – the child,’ Vaughan said, turning his attention back to Ella. The way he said it made all the hairs come up on the back of my neck. ‘So you’re Ella, are you, my dear?’
Ella, completely unafraid, shovelled in another mouthful of mashed potato and said, through it, ‘Yes, and I’m four.’
‘Are you really? And is this your mommy, Ella?’ Vaughan asked, inclining his head towards Simone. He moved with a kind of controlled violence, as if his instinct was to lash out and he had to make a conscious effort to keep himself in check at all times.
Ella chewed thoughtfully for a long moment, then nodded vigorously, and I could have sworn I heard the hiss of collected breath escaping from Lucas.
Simone edged her chair closer to her daughter’s and glared at Vaughan. I saw her flick a reproachful little glance in Lucas’s direction, as though she couldn’t understand why her father was letting this man torment her. Come to that, I couldn’t understand it, either, but I was prepared to let it ride a little longer, just to find out.
‘It’s strange that you’ve never mentioned having children before,’ Vaughan said directly to Rosalind, and a faint edge of colour crept along her pale cheekbones.
‘We made the decision not to have any children,’ she said stiffly. ‘Simone is Greg’s daughter from his first marriage. This is the first time I’ve met her.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Vaughan said carefully, his pale eyes ranging over Rosalind and Lucas. ‘How fortuitous that she should decide to reacquaint herself with her father now, don’t you think?’
‘I live in England,’ Simone put in, her voice puzzled but growing more defensive by the minute.
‘Really?’ The raised eyebrow and the faintly sardonic tone sent a flush across her cheeks. ‘He’s never mentioned you.’
‘We lost touch after my parents divorced,’ Simone snapped. ‘I’ve been looking for him for years.’
‘Is that so?’ Vaughan said, his voice entirely neutral. ‘And can you be quite sure that you’ve found him now?’
I heard a gasp that might have come from Rosalind, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off Vaughan long enough to make sure. Simone’s flush went into instant decline, leaving her pale. Her lips thinned. ‘We’ll be having DNA tests to confirm it,’ she said, ‘If it’s any business of yours.’
For a moment Vaughan said nothing. Then he nodded once, almost to himself, and smiled. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘And – always assuming the tests turn out to everyone’s satisfaction, of course – how long do you plan to stay?’ I’d had enough of this interrogation. ‘We haven’t made any definite plans,’ I put in before she had time to answer.