by Liz Fielding
Max eventually led away a slightly unsteady Flora and when Ally put down the cup she was holding and made to follow them he made his move.
“Ally ...”
“Fredrik.”
Her smile barely reached her eyes, her voice was cool and instead of the apology he’d been mentally rehearsing, he heard himself say, “Why do you call yourself that when you have such a lovely name?”
He thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to answer. That she was simply waiting for him to move out of her way but then she said, “Alice is what my mother called me when I was sick as a kid and she sat all night by my bed. She said it softly, over and over, like a prayer. It’s what she called me when I was naughty. Al-ice!” She was speaking softly, but that unmistakable rising intonation of a furious mother came through. “‘Oh, Alice!’ is what she says when I’ve disappointed her.” She made a tiny moue. “When, rarely, I’ve made her proud. She’s earned that right. No one else.” She waited. “Is that it?”
“What did Dominic say to you?”
“That you don’t talk to your mother. That she sat by your bed and prayed when you were injured. That you sent her away when you were strong enough to say the words.”
“I didn’t send her away. I sensed her there but when I finally came out of it, she had gone.”
“She knew you wouldn’t want her there?” She was clearly horrified. Anyone would be. “Because she remarried?”
“Yes ...” It was what everyone thought. They thought him distant, cruel and he hadn’t cared because anything was better than the truth. Now Ally would think it and she, too, would walk away. But this time it was different. As he looked at her he realized that he would do anything to change that and he said, “No.”
And just as she had when Princess Anna suggested a trip into the mountains, she reached out and took his hand.
Chapter Eight
Fredrik looked down at their hands, then up at her as if unsure what to say or do. Ally wasn’t sure, either, only that he’d known when she needed to talk. Now she felt the same need in him and no matter how bad it was, she would be there. She would listen. She would do her best not to judge.
“Walk me to my room, Fredrik.”
For a moment she thought he was going to make excuses, go through the whole protocol thing again, but then his grasp tightened and he walked her out of the white drawing room, past a blank-faced footman and down the seemingly endless corridors without a word.
She didn’t wait for him to do his “gentleman” bit but pushed the door open, drawing him in after her, closing it.
“I went to see him,” she said, before he could speak. “The boy in the car park.”
If the sudden switch in subject threw him he didn’t show it. He was showing nothing ... Then he said, “On your own?”
“He’s an accountant. Very respectable.” Her hand still in his, she turned and walked across to a sofa set before the fireplace, only letting go to kick off her shoes and curl up into the corner of the sofa. He bent, lit the gas fire but when he joined her on the sofa he kept a safe distance. “He has an office in Ayesborough,” she said. “The day after you left I phoned and made an appointment.”
“Did he know it was you?”
“I gave his receptionist my name and address. He was expecting me.”
Fredrik, concentrating on her story now, lifted his knee to the cushion and turned to face her. “What did he say?”
“Nothing.” She swallowed, remembering the shock of it. “He just stood there looking at me, tears running down his cheeks.”
“He was afraid you were going to make trouble?”
“No.” It hadn’t been like that. “They were tears of relief, I think. The chance to finally apologize, explain.”
“He could have done that any time in the last few years.”
“It’s hard, though, isn’t it? It would have taken a lot more courage than he had to walk up to my front door and knock. To get past my mother. And the longer you wait, the harder it becomes.”
Fredrik managed a half-smile. “She disapproved of his sister, I recall. Your mother.”
“She disapproved of the whole family.”
“With good reason.”
She shrugged, acknowledging the truth of that. “She has high standards.”
“She’s a good mother. You’re very lucky.”
“Yes.” She knew it and her heart broke for whatever had happened between him and his own mother.
“So what did this respectable accountant have to say for himself?”
“It seems that he’d overheard his sister talking on the phone. She and her little clique planned to get me drunk and, once I was sufficiently out of it, the boys were going to be invited to draw lots to do me the favour of relieving me of my virginity.” She pulled a face so that he wouldn’t see her shiver. “My stupid fault for thinking I could –”
“You were not to blame, Ally,” he said, sharply. “They were jealous of both you and Hope. You had something that they would never have.” She raised a questioning eyebrow. “A future.”
“Yes, well, I realize that now but teenage girls are desperate for a tribe. To be part of the group.” She shook her head. “Simon told her that he knew what she planned, that he was going to tell their mother. She just laughed, but said I was a stuck-up cow not worth bothering with, that leaving me waiting all night in the Three Bells car park would bring me down a peg or two.”
“And he began to think about that.”
“He came to tell me to go home.”
“But there you were, waiting in the dark. He was already churned up, excited to be your hero, his teenage hormones out of control.”
“He said he was so nervous he couldn’t speak and reached out without thinking and when I screamed he panicked. Afterwards he wanted to come and tell me he was sorry but he couldn’t face me and the longer he waited the more impossible it got. The years slip by and it’s still there, for both you. A dark place in the mind where you never go.” She looked across at Fredrik, wanting him to understand what she was saying. That it was never too late ...
The room fell silent. Outside, a sentry’s footsteps echoed along the castle battlements. A car with a hole in its exhaust growled up the hill. A ferry hooted as it arrived in the port.
Fredrik understood what Ally had been doing. She was showing him how talking, confronting something bad that had happened to her, had made the fear, the darkness, go away and he was glad to have been a small part of that.
“What did Dominic tell you?” he asked again. “Apart from the fact that I don’t speak to my mother.”
“Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t answer. “He said that you never forgave her for marrying again. For moving on, having a life, being happy when your father was dead.” She tilted her head and a curl escaped the pin, descended to her shoulder. She pushed it behind her ear. “You’re saying that’s not true?”
He shook his head. “It’s part of it, I suppose, and I let people think it, especially my brother and sister, because it’s easier for them.”
He’d never told a soul what had happened and he could stop now, get up, walk away. It was what he’d been doing all his life. From his mother, from his family, from Eloise. He’d watched Ally this evening, talking to Dominic, talking to her friends, knowing that this moment would come and tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter because he scarcely knew her. A couple of kisses, a walk in the dark, a cup of coffee in the square. It should have meant nothing.
Should have.
He’d spent very little time with Ally but for every moment of it she had challenged him, laughed at him, laughed with him, teased him and made him feel alive. He’d arrived in Combe St Philip determined not to trust her further than he could throw her. She might be Hope’s best friend, but she didn’t have a job or any prospect of one and he knew exactly how much she owed on her credit cards.
Common sense told him that she had to be building a story around the royal wed
ding. It had everything. The scandal involving the bride’s father. The protocol-mad Crown Princess who’d had an empathy bypass and was having entire litters of kittens at the idea of a royal wedding taking place in an English village, completely out of her control. She already knew the younger playboy prince with his string of B-minus celebrity girlfriends, who the family were trying to marry off to The Gorgon. Nico would be only too happy to offload to a friendly ear. And then there was the palace head of security who suffered from PTSD and was estranged from his family.
Celebrity, or one of its rivals, having had their offers of seven-figure sums for exclusive coverage of the wedding turned down by Hope and Jonas, would doubtless pay a fortune to be able to run that story the week of the wedding. It would triple their circulation.
Best friends had been betrayed for a lot less and yet every instinct told him that she was the real deal.
The silence had gone on for an age but she had not rushed him, had waited for him to decide whether to open up or walk away; bare his soul or leave without a backward glance.
He knew that if he held out his hand she would take it, wanting to make it easier for him but there could be no attempt to soften the story, to win her empathy through touch. Just the bare, cold truth.
He focused on an ornate ormolu clock sitting on the mantel. A fat cherub ... “When I was eleven years old,” be began, his mouth as dry as if he’d run a four-minute mile, “I saw my mother kill my father.”
He heard the little puff of shock that she had been unable to contain.
“I wasn’t supposed to be there. My father had been climbing with a friend when he fell off the rock-face. He’d had a heart attack. The rope saved him from more than cuts and grazes. If he’d been at home, or in his office, he would have been in the emergency room within minutes, recovery pretty much assured, but by the time the mountain rescue team reached him he was in a coma. He was in hospital for a while and then my mother had him brought home.”
Everything was as sharp and clear as the day it had happened.
“I was supposed to be in school but I knew something was wrong so I bunked off, wanting to be with him. I arrived just in time to see my mother switch off his life support system.”
“Fredrik ...”
“I watched for a moment, not sure, but then the machine monitoring his heartbeat began to stutter and a moment later the room was filled with that high-pitched sound as it flatlined.”
He turned from the cherub to look at her. Her eyes were streaming with tears and without thinking he moved to gather her in and, as he breathed into her hair, felt her warmth, he wanted to weep, too.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You needed to tell someone. I’m glad you trusted me enough ...” She gave a little sniff. “What did you do?”
“I backed away, went back to school ...” He took a long breath. “A little while later the headmaster came to find me, told me that my father had died. That I was the man of the family and it was my duty to support my mother, take care of Dominic and Katerina.”
And that’s what he’d done, she realized. Protected his mother and his younger siblings from what he’d seen, but at a terrible cost to himself.
“Have you ever talked to anyone about this?”
“I found it difficult to talk to my mother. At first it was put down to grief though eventually I was sent to a see a child psychologist but what was I going to say? That my mother had murdered my father?” He stood up, turned away, his arm on the mantel as he stared down into the flames of the gas fire.
“You’ve never told anyone? A family member, a priest?”
He shook his head and her heart just about broke for that eleven-year-old boy who’d seen something he didn’t understand. The man whose mind was frozen in that moment of trauma and who had been protecting his mother ever since. Protecting her, but unable to forgive her.
What on earth could she say to him? How could she help him?
She stood up, went to him, took his hands in hers.
“Fredrik, you were a child. Someone should have talked to you, helped you understand what had happened.”
His jaw clenched. “I saw what happened.”
“You saw the moment your mother switched off the life support machine but ask yourself what had happened in the days before that. Ask yourself why your mother had your father brought home. Ask the doctor who cared for him; ask to see his notes. Better still,” she said, “go and ask your mother.” She raised herself on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Do it now.”
Ally had lain awake for hours, haunted by the boy who’d lost his father so young and had never come to terms with it. Haunted by the look on Fredrik’s face as he’d turned, grey-faced, and walked from her room without a word.
He’d opened an emotional artery but instead of offering him unconditional comfort, taking him to her bed, she’d told him to think about what he’d seen. Not through the eyes of that eleven-year-old boy but as an adult.
She was sure that she was right that, stuck in the groundhog-day loop of trauma, he had never been able to see that his father was in a vegetative state, that the medical staff had left his mother to say her last goodbye in private before doing this one last thing for the man she loved.
Would he be able to see that truth or was he too locked in to his nightmare? She should have followed him. Would have but for the sharp click as he’d closed the door that made it very clear that he wanted to be alone.
She understood, but knew that if the situation had been reversed nothing would have deterred him. He would have followed her, made sure that she came to no harm. Not that he needed protecting, except perhaps from himself.
Dominic had placed a card into her hand as she’d left the table. She’d put it in the little clutch bag she’d been carrying without a glance but now, unable to sleep, she thought she might ring him. Tell him what had happened. Ask him to go and look for his brother.
There was just a name, Claudia Nero, and a telephone number printed on the front. On the back she had written, “I’m Fredrik’s mother. Please call me.”
Despite the lateness of the hour she had no doubt that her call would be picked up before the second ring – but what could she say?
She’d already said more than enough and pulling a sweater and pants over her PJs and grabbing her phone, she ran along the corridor. She’d half expected to see a footman standing in the grand marble and gilt entrance, but there was no one there. The doors were shut; well of course they were, and not just shut. A light blinking on and off warned her that an alarm had replaced the sentries. Had she set it off? Was there a hidden camera? She looked around, wondering if Fredrik was in his office, if he could see her. If one of his men would come and politely escort her back to her room.
No one came and, afraid that she would wake the whole palace and embarrass Fredrik if she tried to open the door, she walked back to her room. Leaving the door unlocked in case he returned, she curled up on the sofa, certain that she would not sleep. But the sofa was huge, the cushions soft; it had been a very long day and the next thing she knew it was daylight.
Horrified that she’d fallen asleep when Fredrik was out there somewhere, feeling heaven knew what, she reached for her phone hoping for a message, something, anything to reassure her.
There was nothing. Determined to go and find him she threw back the cover and headed for the bathroom. She had taken two, maybe three steps, when she stopped, turned ...
She hadn’t taken a blanket from the bed.
It had to have been Fredrik. Who else could it have been?
He’d come back, found her asleep and covered her up. She looked around, saw a note propped against a bowl of flowers.
It wasn’t a card in one of his crested envelopes. It was just a sheet of lined paper torn from a small pocket notebook and it said, “Lunch, 12.30. F”
She swallowed, felt the prick of tears against her lids as relief flooded through her.
The
note was brusque and he’d already told Prince Carlo that he was taking her to lunch so this might just be duty. But he was safe.
She crossed to the window and threw it open, breathing in the soft, salt-laden air.
The sea was milky calm with a mist that was turning gold in the sunrise. It was too beautiful to be inside and she pulled on a vest and shorts and tied back her hair and went for a heart-pumping run around the battlements.
She finally stopped to do her cooling-down exercise, took a swig from the water bottle she carried and leaned against the parapet. There were layers of sound: the murmur of voices, birds proclaiming territorial rights, the hoot of a ferry arriving in the port. She stowed them all away to bring out later when she wrote about San Michele.
Back in her room she took a shower, then spent some time choosing what to wear.
Protocol suggested she needed to wear something very grown-up to call on the Crown Princess and the Dowager, but she didn’t want to look like a journalist. She wanted to look like Hope’s friend.
She settled on a pair of bright pink capri pants, a fine short-sleeved cotton sweater and a pair of pink and white polka dot high-heeled sandals. They were girlfriend casual and exactly what she’d choose to wear for a waterfront lunch with a good-looking man. The shoes might even make him smile.
Luisa brought tea, warm croissants wrapped in a napkin and fresh orange juice while Ally was painting her toenails to match her shoes.
Obviously surprised to see her up and dressed Luisa said, “Madam Flora is still fast asleep. Sir Max is with the children.”
She sounded a touch disapproving and Ally looked up, smiled. “They are his children, Luisa. Is Miss Hope about?”
“I have not seen her.”
She wanted to ask if she’d seen Fredrik. If he was in his office, but restrained herself.
She finished her nails, ate her breakfast and had just got dressed when her phone rang. The number came up as “not recognized”. Not Fredrik.