Everyone turns to him with a look of puzzled boredom. Vicar, the man of peace, jumps in to save both the day and the flow of the discussion. ‘As a man of the cloth,’ he declares in fruity tones, ‘I feel it my duty to see the good in everyone. The saint and the sinner, as it were. And I think that Godiva was a very real person. Flawed, of course – and who among us can claim to be perfect – but good at bottom. And we must not forget the manner of her death. If ever there was a Damascene conversion, I would say that this was one—’
‘Nonsense!’ cries Leeza. ‘It was the best career move she ever made!’
A tiny silence. Then Mandy, professional to the last, says, ‘What do you mean by that, Leeza?’ and Leeza continues.
‘Godiva Fawcett was an actress, for heaven’s sake. An actress and a publicity merchant. And her career had gone into freefall years before. She’d managed to prop it up with the bleeding-heart routine, but even that was wearing thin, and she knew it. I think it’s fairly obvious that she decided to go out with a bang, that’s all. Played out her greatest scene before the camera. And jolly effective it was too.’
Even Mandy finds this one hard to cope with. ‘Well, that’s certainly a strong opinion, Leeza,’ she stutters.
Solemnity is unable to hold herself back. ‘But there were the miracles!’ she insists. ‘Everyone knows about the miracles. She was always making ill people better. Why, my own daughter came out of a year-long depression just from seeing Godiva on the television talking about her own troubles …’
‘Hardly a miracle,’ says Leeza. Pulls the sort of face you see teenage girls making at dowdy rivals in discos.
‘And I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it at that,’ says Mandy hastily. ‘Thank you so much for joining us, Mavis Rogers, Peregrine Hart-Dumplington, Leeza Hayman and Nicholas Redfern. Now some of you may remember’ – she turns to face the autocue – ‘that we reported a few weeks back on the case of the little Nottingham girl who was found to have a sycamore growing from her left ear. Well, news reaches us today of an even more amazing …’
I turn the volume down. So Godiva no longer qualifies for sainthood. After all that, she turns out to be little more than a tailor’s dummy. And through various feelings of amusement and disappointment and relief, a single word is topmost in my thoughts.
Harriet.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Reconciliation
And of course, the wolves are back outside the front gate, just as I knew they would be. Half a dozen of them gathered, hands in pockets, on the pavement, backs to me as I round the corner. Damn. I duck back out of sight before one of them turns, speed-dial our number, which is still stored under AAA in my mobile.
She’s screening, of course. ‘This is a machine,’ says the machine. ‘If you leave a message, it will not steal your soul. If you’re lucky.’
It beeps. I speak. ‘Hello, it’s me.’
Pause. ‘Harriet, it’s me. Pick up the phone.’
She picks up. ‘Annie?’
I’m quiet for a moment, then say, ‘Hello.’
‘I’m so glad you called,’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m okay,’ I say, feeling awkward.
I can hear her thinking, considering, then she says, again, ‘How are you? How are things?’
‘Fine,’ I reply. And again, ‘How are you?’
‘Yeah,’ says Harriet. ‘Fine. Keeping busy. Have you heard the news about my mother?
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not,’ she says. ‘Maybe the Solemnities will find something else to get worked up about now. They’ve had to let Anthony Figgis go, by the way.’
‘What?’
‘Couldn’t actually tie him in with any of the other stuff. Can’t keep someone locked up on a single burglary charge alone.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I can hear her shake her head. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be up to anything much else,’ she says. ‘I gather he’s been scared witless by being pulled in as it is.’
Then I think: what am I doing, talking to her on the phone? ‘Harriet,’ I tell her, ‘I came to see if you’re okay.’
Her voice changes: fear, excitement, something else. ‘You’re outside?’
‘Round the corner.’
‘Oh, thank God,’ she says, and the words come in a rush as though she’s been holding her breath.
‘Can I come up?’
‘Yes! Yes, please!’ It sounds like she is about to lose her voice.
‘I’ll tell you when I get to the gate,’ I tell her. ‘Then you’d better buzz me in. I don’t want to hand the combination over to all those gits out there.’
‘Fine.’
I drop the phone to my side, round the corner once again and walk with a determined stride towards the wolf pack. It takes a few seconds before they notice me, then they rush towards me like a wave towards a rock, break over my head in a hullabaloo of shouted questions, though, as there are only six of them, it would scarcely seem necessary. Half a dozen tape machines plunge towards my face, making me flinch. ‘You’ll take someone’s eye out one day,’ I tell a man in a polyester tie, and in return he shouts, ‘Are you going to visit Lady Harriet? What does she think about the findings of the autopsy? Will she be appealing to the Vatican? Can I have a quote on her reaction? What’s going to happen now?’
I smile sweetly and try to look calm, though inside I’m bricking it, scarcely able to keep walking. God, please let this go okay. I miss her. I can’t help it: I miss her. We reach the gate and suddenly all fall quiet as they wait to see what I’m going to do next.
‘Sorry, guys,’ I say. Lift the phone to my ear and say, ‘I’m here.’
A second later, the lock clunks and I slip inside, then lean all my weight against it to push it shut against the resistance without.
The yard hasn’t changed much, aside from a few extra tyre marks from the police presence and a pile of bin liners against the wall. I don’t know why I should have thought it would have. The car, petrol cap replaced, festers under the rowan, which is already covered in festive red berries.
And now I’m inside, I’m scared to go forward. I don’t know what to say to her. Because I know nothing about reconciliation. I have experience in obeying, in punishment, in total and final estrangement, but I’m twenty-nine years old and in all that time I’ve never spoken bitter words and then asked for forgiveness.
I’ve slowed to a crawl. It takes me nearly five minutes of dawdling to get as far as the bridge. The weather has turned from blazing sun to one of those perfect early autumn days where the air is light and the light is clean, and you’re suddenly aware that winter won’t be far behind. What do I do? What do I say? Oh, God, let me go back to before, let me un-say the things I said, take back the thoughts, just be me and Harriet, cat-ladies for ever. My stomach is churning, my skin burns, there’s a twitch in my cheek that won’t be still.
And then I realise that I can’t go through with it. I can’t face her. I can’t do this. Losing her the first time – throwing our friendship away the first time – was like a death. I’d rather die. I’d rather die myself, right now, than go through it again. I stop in my tracks, look at my shoes, make to turn back towards the gate.
And then the door bursts open at the foot of the tower and she’s pounding down the path towards me, hair flying, face twisted with – what? – I don’t know.
And then I do know. Because her arms are open and she’s shouting and sobbing all at once, ‘Darling, darling, I’m sorry! You came back and I’m sorry and thank you and oh God, Anna, you came back!’
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The Rules of Promiscuity
Thursday night. There are twenty-five church candles on the coffee table and it takes nearly five minutes to light them all. But it’s worth it, because it gives me an opportunity to turn off the background lighting once the first one is lit, and then I know I look good with the warm yellow glow playing on my face and my backless dress fallin
g lightly forward as I lean casually over them to reveal just the merest hint of breast. I use a long wax taper rather than a cigarette lighter to light them; it looks classy, and besides, I get an opportunity to pout delicately, looking all the while into his eyes over the flame, as I blow it out.
François sits back, arm along the back of the sofa, and watches in silence as I perform the ritual. Shoulder-length black hair, sleek and glossy like a raven’s wing, angular, squared-off bones to his face like the rock Gods of Rapa Nui, arched, defined eyebrows, slightly slanted eyes that in the light are an intriguing shade of khaki and by candlelight are a vivid gold. They are slightly narrowed, speculative, as he watches me perform my task. He may be French by birth, but the blood is pure – well, part – Pacific.
I finish, sit back and smile. Am pleased to see him slightly adjust his posture on the seat. I lean forward again, pick up my brandy glass, lick a finger and run it round the rim to make it sing. Which in the language of seduction is roughly tantamount to saying, ‘Make me sing, big boy, why don’t you?’ François’s eyes narrow a little more and a smile plays around the corners of his lips.
‘So your flatmate,’ he says in that smooth and fluid voice, ‘she’s not here tonight?’
I smile back over the rim of my glass, stop the singing and dip my finger in my Armagnac. Bring it to my slightly parted lips, place the tip between them, close and suck. Even the most basic learner doesn’t need a lot of help in translating that gesture.
‘No,’ I reply slowly. ‘She’s staying at her boyfriend’s.’
He nods with a hint of satisfaction. ‘And the artist? That’s her? Or you?’
‘Her,’ I tell him.
‘Ah, of course,’ he says. ‘And you work in a restaurant.’
‘Very good,’ I tease. ‘You’re obviously a spy.’
He reaches out a hand, runs the backs of his fingers along the hairline on my neck. I shiver. ‘You like?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘yes, I do. And next year I’m going to open one of my own.’ You see, because I’m twenty-nine, I can make plans for what to do with Peter’s money now. It’s not just a pie floating far off in the clouds.
François sits forward. ‘Aha. Your own restaurant. And what will it be like?’
‘It will be lovely,’ I announce, taking a lump of ice from my drink and rubbing it over my lips. ‘It will be the perfect restaurant. Huge sofas and dark corners and candlelight, and food you eat with your fingers. Terracotta and azure and gold, and velvet curtains.’
‘Beautiful,’ he says, and this time I know he’s not talking about the restaurant. He reaches out again, closes his hand over the hand in which I’m holding the ice cube and gently prises it from my fingers. ‘Now close your eyes,’ he orders. At last. I comply, fingers pressed together in my lap. Sensation: cold and kind, running down my upper arm, first on the outside, and then on the tender skin on the inside of my elbow.
‘You like?’ he asks again.
‘Oh, yes,’ I tell him, ‘I like.’
The ice runs back up my arm, over my collarbone, works a line up my neck to the pulse point just below my ear. And then, after pausing a moment, it moves on, fingers replacing it with a gentle caress on my throat that brings an involuntary moan of pleasure from my lips. And with the ice, he runs on down the back of my neck, traces the line of my spine so that my whole body is suddenly tingling with anticipation. Oh, oh, ohhh.
‘You like?’ he whispers again, so close to my ear that I can feel his hot breath against the frozen skin. And all I can do in return is turn my mouth towards him, breathe in and swooningly press flesh to flesh.
The sixth rule of promiscuity: Get over it. Move on.
Chapter Sixty
The Secret Policeman’s Ball
There are secrets that women never share, and Harriet and I have ours. Mike never knew – never will know, I think, at least until we are all so old and gnarled and used to each other that we can treat it as a family joke – the whole story behind Harriet and my estrangement. He knows, of course, that it was to do with him, but he believes that my anger was about being exiled while they developed their bliss.
Neither of us has felt it necessary to tell him more.
And bliss it is, I can see that. Not a bliss I want for myself just yet, but I can appreciate how sweet it is for them. They’re crazy, mad, love-bubble people, riding the surf, plunging down the waterfall, diving through the water. They need nothing, right now: not food, not drink, not books or music: all they need to do for sustenance is look at each other and they’re full again.
And besides, having a Plod around is proving to have its uses. It’s been six weeks since the fire and nothing untowards has happened aside from Henry bringing in a dog-collar one night. And I don’t mean the collar from a dog; I mean a dog-collar. Go figure. But Anthony Figgis has evidently had his fill, or the truth about Godiva has worked wonders, and we’re almost back to normal.
Harriet, having vanquished the foe, seems finally free to talk. ‘The thing I don’t get,’ she says, ‘is how a little guy like that could get himself so worked up in the first place. I mean, I can understand the sneaky things, but it’s the other ones. The restaurant and the march. He just didn’t seem that confrontational a type.’
Harriet is putting on make-up because she is going to the CID summer party with her beloved. This particular shindig is known as the Secret Policeman’s Ball in the trade, because they try to keep quiet about the fact that it happens in case they come in for flak about taxpayers’ money and lose even more Plod off the streets. I’ll tell you what, there are some sacrifices I’d never make to be in the love-bubble. The bubblers even offered to take me along if I wanted, but somehow the prospect of a night listening to a load of blokes in bomber jackets share perpetrator stories over a pint of bitter is less enticing than a night in painting my toenails and watching old Take That videos. But Harriet is making an effort; she wants PC Mike to be proud, and proud he will be. She has on a fifties-style dress with a low neckline and full skirt in a red and gold brocade I’m sure I last saw dressing the Chinese drawing-room windows at Belhaven; she even has a matching fichu, starched and tied about the shoulders to frame her swan neck and Audrey Hepburn beehive. She looks beautiful.
‘Well, yeah,’ I say, ‘but he obviously hired people for the march. Believe me, none of them were weaselly blokes with moustaches and anoraks. God, Figgis is much more like the kind of person Grace attracts than a man of action.’
The mention of Grace makes her change the subject, but this time it’s not one of those clunking subject-changes that characterised the topic of her stalker a couple of months ago. ‘I don’t suppose that Grace has lived up to her name and got in touch with you after your letter?’ she asks, though she must know the answer because she knows I would have told her.
‘Uh-uh.’ I shake my head. Look in the mirror and see a little pixie staring back at me beside the Titania that is my friend. ‘I don’t think she will either.’
Harriet draws lines in crimson around the outside of her lips. ‘How do you feel about that?’
I pull a wry face. Because even though I know what Grace is like, I still have regrets that we can’t get along.
Harriet stops painting, looks at me in the mirror. ‘Strikes me,’ she says, ‘that maybe you ought to give up on Grace now.’
‘God. I’ve got Carolyn on one side telling me I ought to persist and you on the other telling me to give up. It’s not easy, you know.’
‘No, look,’ she says, ‘you’ve tried the persisting bit. But in the end there has to come a cut-off point. Maybe it’s now. If she’s not been in touch, the chances are that she won’t be.’
‘Maybe …’
‘Look,’ she says again. ‘The ball’s in her court now. And she’s made it clear what she thinks. She’s had you over a barrel all your life and now she can’t any more, she’s taking her revenge.’
‘Hardly revenge, Harriet.’
‘Yes, it i
s. It’s revenge. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s doing it to hurt you. Let it go, Anna. Let her get on with it. Grace Waters is obviously one of those people who never forgive anything. I think she’ll carry her grudge with her until one or the other of you dies. There’s no point torturing yourself about it any more. I’ve met her, remember. She’s implacable. That’s the only word I can think of for her.’
I sigh. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘What would you do if she walked in right now?’
‘I don’t know. I think maybe I’d be glad.’
‘Glad? Glad? You’ve only just got rid of the bitch.’
‘Yes, but if she walked in now, it might mean that there was some chance …’
Harriet finishes off her lips, turns to me. ‘It would be more likely that she’d come back for another go, Anna. You’re better off without her.’
Mike looks like a copper. He’s wearing a numbered baseball jacket over a checked shirt. God, they look odd together: the princess and the frog, the duchess and the bodyguard. Now that my own love-bubble has burst, I can’t see what filled it in the first place. But Harriet can. She stands by him in the doorway, looks up at him with an expression of such soppy adoration that I think I might need to get her on a course of Prozac.
‘You’re sure you don’t want to come?’ he offers once more. ‘We’ve still got a spare ticket.’
Like a hole in the head I want to come, I think. But I say, ‘It’s really sweet of you, darling, but I’m totally washed out.’
‘You’re sure you’re going to be okay?’ asks Harriet.
‘Of course. I’m looking forward to a quiet night,’ I lie. Actually, I’m beginning to think about maybe calling the lovely François and seeing what we could do with the set of handcuffs that Mike hasn’t noticed I’ve swiped from his overnight bag and secreted in my bedroom. I wouldn’t mind a rematch. François’s body was made for climbing up cliffs and diving off them again. Lots of upper-body musculature.
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