Читать книгу Joanne Sefton Book 2 - Joanne Sefton - Страница 10

They’d eaten the Crespelle con Pollo after all. She’d changed her clothes, cleared up the smashed mixing bowl, and mopped the gloopy batter from the floor tiles. There was plenty of flour and eggs in the house, so the whole episode only set her back twenty minutes or so. But the joy had gone out of it. The pancakes were greasy and slightly too thick. She burnt her hand being careless with the saucepan for the béchamel. Her mind was no longer on the food, but on the memory of the woman she’d once called her best friend.

When Tash came home with her friend Claire, they’d gone straight to the den. Barely a word, and they refused her offer of hot drinks and home-made flapjack. Callie had trooped through the door a few minutes later, proclaiming herself so exhausted that she needed to lie down before ballet. With the chicken in the oven, and an uneasy restlessness still troubling her, Karen picked up her phone and scrolled through reports about the bombing. There were plenty of pictures, but no more of the woman who looked like Alex.

Listlessly, she checked her email and immediately wished she hadn’t bothered. More troubling news from her solicitor. She closed the email down; she wasn’t in the mood to worry about money just now. In fact, all she wanted to do was tell someone what she’d seen. But who? Jonathan, said a voice in her head, and the familiar stab of pain twisted in her guts. Her husband had died in a boating accident in 2008. It did get easier, but it never got easy. She’d long got used to taking out the bins and making the big decisions about mortgages and schools on her own, but still the grief broke the surface from time to time, shattering her equilibrium, often when she least expected it.

Don’t get maudlin, she told herself, sternly, and then another thought popped into her head. She could phone Andrew Dyer. With a renewed energy, she thumbed through her contacts.

‘Hello, Karen? What’s up?’

‘Hi, Andrew. I …’ How to say it? She hadn’t thought of this before picking up the phone. ‘Um. I wanted to talk about Alex, actually, if you’ve got a few minutes.’

‘Right.’

Even from that one word, she could tell he was taken aback, but there was something else there too.

‘I’m actually wrapping up a meeting just now. Err … do you want to meet up, maybe go for dinner? We’ve not caught up in a while.’

‘Yes, okay. As long as Tash is in to keep an eye on Callie, I can do most nights. When were you thinking? Later this week works.’

*

He’d picked an upmarket Thai place, which boasted pale wood and expensive-looking art in place of the usual rhinestones and buddhas. The front of the restaurant was crowded and bustling, but a waitress had led her to one of the high-backed upholstered booths that lined the back wall. It had been a bit of a trek for Karen to come so far east, but it was near his offices. Andrew had set up an online furniture retail business years ago, and after steady initial growth it had exploded in the last couple of years. It seemed impolite to ask in anything but the vaguest terms but, given that the TV ad was now appearing all over the evening schedules, she could only assume that business was booming.

She saw him come through the door and took a moment to observe him whilst he waited to speak to a member of staff. There was a trace of the old jazzman cool about him. He had remained slim and a charcoal grey suit fell sleekly from his elegant frame. The silver showing in his dark hair did nothing to detract from his svelte good looks, but where she remembered a tanned complexion his face now carried the pallor of someone who spent little time outdoors.

When she’d seen enough, she waved him over, accepting his kiss on the cheek and his flustered apology for being five minutes late.

‘Will you have a drink?’ he said, pushing the wine list across the table. ‘I always go for lager with anything spicy, so don’t worry about me.’

‘Actually, I think I’ll join you. It’s been ages since I had a nice cold beer.’

He ordered swiftly, checking quickly with her before telling the waitress they’d share a banquet for two.

‘Saves picking,’ he explained. ‘So, tell me what’s going on. Why on earth did you want to see me about Alex?’

His bonhomie had evaporated. He didn’t add ‘this had better be good’ but that was the clear message she took from his tone and the flint-hard look in his eyes. Suddenly the drive and decisiveness that he must possess to have become so successful was laid out on show. There was something vulpine about him.

She took a deep breath and pulled out her tablet. Wordlessly, she keyed in the passcode, tapped open the saved screenshot and slid it across the table to him.

He gazed at it, seemingly impassive, for a few seconds that seemed like an eternity.

‘I think I need that beer.’

‘You see it too then?’

By way of answer, his hand travelled up to his temples, mirroring the posture of the woman in the background of the picture. Karen didn’t need to see the tablet – the arch of the woman’s arm, half-raised, her fingers brushing her forehead as if to smooth away some stray, invisible hairs, was etched on her brain.

‘She used to do that all the time. If she was anxious, or just uncertain. She was so polished, you know, always looking perfect, knowing exactly what to say, but when you got to know her there was so much vulnerability underneath.’

Andrew was right, now she came to think of it; she’d forgotten that tic of grazing her forehead with her fingertips, which had been one of Alex’s characteristic gestures.

‘Could it be her?’ she asked, her voice a whisper. ‘It’s not a twenty-year-old who looks like she did then. This is the grown-up version, though it’s hard to guess if the ages match because of all that dust. I just can’t imagine anyone else being so like her, in so many ways. Right down to that gesture, like you say.’

Just then the waitress arrived with two frosted bottles of Singha. Andrew took his time – and a long draught of the lager – before he answered her.

‘You know, there’s nothing I’d like more than to believe it could be her.’ He spoke to the bottle in his hand more than to Karen. ‘I know we were only twenty-one, twenty-two, but she was the one for me. I’ve never had anything like that in my life since.’

‘I do understand,’ she said, softly. ‘I know how it feels to lose a partner.’

‘Of course you do, and I wouldn’t for a moment take away from what happened to Jonathan. That was a tragedy and you had the girls’ grief to deal with too. But …’ she watched his face crease with the effort of trying to express himself, ‘… I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. I don’t want you to feel like I’m diminishing your suffering or trying to be competitive.’

‘No, no, of course not. I’ve known you long enough that I’d never think that of you.’

She reached out to place a reassuring hand on his forearm and was rewarded with a smile of relief. It struck her as the most heartfelt expression she’d seen on his face that evening.

‘The thing is that when Jonathan died, everyone around you recognised your loss. That it was something horrendous, huge … and that you needed and deserved every bit of support they could give you.’

She nodded, not entirely sure where he was going, but sensing that she couldn’t hurry him, she just had to let him try to explain in his own way. He rubbed at his forehead and opened a button on his shirt. It was clearly difficult for him to talk about Alex’s death, despite the length of time that had passed.

‘Well …’ he continued, carefully, ‘it wasn’t like that for me when Alex died.’

His explanation was cut off by the waitress arriving laden with their starters. She fussed for a couple of minutes, clearing the table of its flower arrangement and candles and naming a variety of dishes as she set down the ornate little bowls. They waited in silence, save for the odd muttered ‘thank you’ and when the waitress was finally ready to depart, Karen found that she didn’t want to be the one to break it. When Andrew spoke, his voice was strained with emotion, and his words were unexpected.

‘There isn’t a formula, you know, for losing the love of your life at twenty-one. I didn’t know what was expected of me. I certainly didn’t know what I should expect of them. Alex’s family … it felt like they closed round like … I don’t know … like a flock of vultures or something. I was on the outside. All I got was sharp pecks to keep me away.’

He held up one hand and mimed a vicious avian attack, managing to laugh, in spite of himself. Karen wondered with a jolt whether he’d ever given himself the chance to talk about these painful memories before now and felt a weight of responsibility on her shoulders.

‘What about your own family – surely they would have been there for you?’

He shook his head. ‘They were living in Wales then. It was a long way to Cambridge. I spoke to my sisters about it a bit, but they were both a long way away too, and they had young families. Enough on their plates without a mourning younger brother to deal with.’

‘So, there wasn’t really anyone for you to talk to?’

‘Nah. I mean, I had some mates who tried, but they were twenty-year-old blokes, you know? Not exactly renowned for their emotional intelligence.’ She acknowledged the comment with a grimace. ‘Besides, I was so into Alex. I suppose I’d let other friendships wither a bit. I was happy to have a drink or a chat or whatever – I mean I knew you and Misty fairly well – but I didn’t get beneath the surface with people, because I had Alex for that.’

‘I don’t know if it helps …’ she took a breath, trying to phrase what she wanted to say as carefully as possible, ‘… but I remember that she felt really deeply about you too. She used to joke that it was a shame she’d found “the one” at university, because you’d end up getting married and she’d never get to have a proper single life.’

He gave a sad smile and picked at some food.

‘We did talk about the future,’ he agreed. ‘That’s one reason why it’s strange. She’d gone through a really bad phase, with the … the weight thing.’ Karen’s stomach dropped at the reference. She didn’t want to think about how Alex had died; she couldn’t trust herself to go there. Andrew, though, was still talking.

‘It had been over a year earlier, though, before we were going out – or at least going out seriously. I expect you remember?’

Karen nodded. She remembered only too well.

He shook his head. ‘I really thought she was over it. We had all these plans – moving to London, getting a flat together. Then … boom. It’s all over.’

He gazed at her. His eyes were blue, intense – too needy to be the eyes of an entrepreneur. She felt a sweat break out on her palms and a lump rise in her throat. The last thing she wanted was to think back to that winter. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

‘Okay …’ she said, trying to steady herself as much as anything else.

‘It happened so suddenly …’ His voice had become a monotone. He was struggling to go on. ‘I don’t even know why she went home that night … She should have been in college. And then … and then she just didn’t come back.’

His voice cracked then, and he rubbed at his face with the back of a hand, tears not quite coming but clearly not far away. Karen wanted to say something to make it easier, but nothing would come out. Mutely, she nodded.

‘… I called the house. Her mum answered and it was clear something was very wrong. She couldn’t tell me. She tried to get it out a couple of times, then she passed the phone to Alex’s dad. He told me she was dead.’

‘Her heart failed.’ Karen’s voice was a whisper. She felt her own eyes moisten as she remembered that horrible time.

‘On the Sunday morning!’ There was anger in Andrew’s voice. It came suddenly, as if from nowhere. ‘A day and a half and they hadn’t told me. They hadn’t even tried. If I’d not phoned the house, I’m not sure they’d ever have bothered.’

‘They must have been in terrible shock …’

‘I know, I know. That’s what everyone says, that’s what was going around in my head at the time. But do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘He didn’t sound shocked. Eric Penrith was as composed as a … a traffic warden telling me he’d already written my ticket. I never saw him lose it. I never saw him well up, or struggle to keep it together. He certainly had the wherewithal to talk to me on the phone, even if his wife didn’t.’

There wasn’t much that Karen could say. It seemed likely that however much Alex Penrith and Andrew Dyer had loved each other, wherever the relationship might have gone, Alex’s parents viewed it as little more than an inconsequential crush. Right or wrong, there wasn’t much to be said about it all these years later.

‘Do you know what? They never even let me see the body.’ His face was twisted with torment as he spoke, the hurt and impotence of his younger self etched over the veneer of confidence and success. ‘I pleaded – I fucking begged those people to let me say goodbye to her. I may as well have saved my breath. They were cold as stone, deaf as stone too.’

Instinctively, Karen reached out again. This time she took his hand, trying to offer a little bit of comfort where she knew that no words would assist.

‘God … I’m being ridiculous.’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘It’s been years since I talked about this stuff – seeing that picture, out of the blue like that – it’s just opened the wound again.’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have …’

‘No, no, it’s not your fault. I’m glad you brought it.’

As she looked at his shaking shoulders and pained expression, she wondered if he’d done so well not in spite of that awful early experience, but rather because of it. Perhaps all of his life since that time had been about making sure he would never feel so desperately powerless again.

‘I wish you hadn’t had to go through all that, Andrew.’

‘Well, it’s in the past now, isn’t it? But maybe it helps you to understand why I’d love to have hope. God, if you could bring Alex back to me, I’d give you the world on a plate. But no one can, Karen.’

She didn’t try to contradict him; she didn’t say anything at all. She just kept her hand on his arm whilst he stared ruefully down at the table. It was a moment of stillness, an accidental intimacy that would evaporate soon enough. Her thoughts, though, were anything but still. The image of the closed coffin, laden with white lilies, remained as crisp as the day she had first seen it. But if Andrew hadn’t seen the body, then how did she know anyone else had? What if there was more to Alex’s parents’ mistreatment of him than an oversight on the part of a grieving couple who’d never thought that much of him anyway?

The waitress arrived to clear away the starters that they had barely touched and returned a minute or two later with steaming bowls of curry and rice. With a slight reluctance, Karen pulled her arm away. Andrew gave her an apologetic smile.

‘We should talk about something else, probably?’

She nodded but busied herself with the food instead. Her mind was still whirling with possibilities. What if Alex’s death had actually been some sort of staged disappearing act? Perhaps she’d been recruited into some shady branch of the secret service. Unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible; after all, it had been the height of the Cold War back then, and Cambridge was a prime recruiting ground for all that stuff, wasn’t it? She glanced at Andrew, whose plate remained empty, his gaze heavy and settled in the middle distance. She had enough tact to realise that now was not the time to share her theories.

‘Do you want some of this? It smells fantastic.’

‘Yes, thanks, sorry, I think I drifted off a bit.’

‘So, business good?’

‘Busy, but good, yes. We’re opening more bricks-and-mortar stores, and we’ve got a small operation setting up in Canada as a precursor to trying to get into the US market. Don’t get me started though, we’ll both end up bored witless. How’s life with you?’

‘Oh, same as ever. Evie’s at university now – you probably knew that – she’s doing law at Brighton and networking and CV-building like crazy. They don’t just drink and piss about like we did, you know! Tash and Callie are fine, just glued to their phones all day like all teenagers.’

‘And what about Karen?’

‘Me? Well …’ For a moment she thought about telling the truth. That it scared her how quickly Evie had adjusted to life away from home, how little she seemed to need her mother and how soon Tash and Callie would be off down the same road. That she had money worries because the nice financial adviser she’d been paying to manage the payouts from prudent Jonathan’s various insurance products and investments was turning out to be not so nice after all. That she was approaching fifty and contemplating the rest of her life on her own and finding it bothered her much more now than it had ten years ago. ‘Well, I’m planning my fiftieth. I’ve decided to have a bit of a party.’

He smiled, his first genuine, untarnished smile of the evening. ‘That’s brave. I just had a skiing weekend with a couple of mates and we drank champagne and cognac in a bar where they played Edith Piaf on a loop.’

‘Did it end in tears?’

‘Absolutely. We got so emotional we slept in the next day and missed the surprise skidoo trip they’d booked for my birthday present.’

She had to laugh. ‘Why don’t you come to my party? I’m having it in the garden at home. I can’t promise cognac, Edith Piaf or skidoos, but there will definitely be champagne.’

‘Well, that would be nice, thank you.’

They checked the dates and he made a note in his calendar. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thought – the party guests were mainly local couples. With three kids and big age gaps she’d met a lot of school mums over the years. But there were a few friends she’d met as work colleagues in a previous life, some book club members and the odd neighbour.

‘Feel free to bring someone; the more the merrier.’

‘I’ll have a think about that. I’m looking forward to it.’

They chatted easily as they finished the meal, staying away from the subject of Alex and university. After coffees, Andrew offered to call her a car, explaining that he was going back to the office to pick up a few things first. She was impressed by the sleek new Mercedes that turned up, and even more impressed when she got back to Twickenham and it transpired that the journey had been paid for on his company’s account.

He’d said if someone could bring Alex back, he’d give them the world on a plate. What if Alex was out there somewhere? And what if Karen could be the one to find her?