Читать книгу Misleading Engagement - Marjorie Lewty - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER the activities of the Brent wedding, the couple of weeks that followed were an anticlimax. There were no answers to Anne’s advertisement and her doorstep calls were either flatly rejected or met with a smiling, ‘Oh, we have our own camcorder now, thank you: It was all rather depressing.

Then, to make things worse, the gas bill came in. Anne stared at it with horror. Surely she hadn’t used all that gas in one quarter? But it had been a cold spring and it was a big house. Too big, as her wedding-night guest had told her, for one small girl to live in alone. At five feet six and a half she had never considered herself small, but perhaps if you were over six feet it would seem so.

She had a quick, confused picture in her mind of Mark Rayne. She had seen him looking arrogant and disdainful and she had seen him looking charmingly apologetic, and, of course, she had seen him in the photograph with an adoring smile on his lips. Now that she had seen the man she could imagine him looking deeply in love. Her heart seemed to miss a beat. Then she blinked and pulled herself together. This was no time to indulge in fantasies about a man she scarcely knew. She should be thinking about gas bills and how to pay them.

After a whole day spent poring over bills and cash book and bank statements, she had to face the fact that she had been much too optimistic to believe she could support herself with her video work and continue to live in this big house, which was all Daddy had had to leave her. She would have to sell the house and find somewhere much smaller, and if there wasn’t enough money left after the mortgage had been paid off it would have to be a bedsitter. And she must find another job.

The only bright spot on the horizon was that she had by now acquired her contact lenses and had gone through the necessary period of adjustment. They were a great success, although she wondered now if she should have spent all that money on them. But they improved not only her looks but her confidence, and they would make her video work much easier—if she ever got any more work.

Suddenly she felt frighteningly alone—Daddy gone, Keith gone and the future stretching ahead emptily. She put her head down on the table and wept.

But this was no time for self-pity, she told herself, wiping her eyes. It was the time for action.

All weekend she worked on the house, cleaning it from top to bottom until it looked cared for, if rather shabby. Tomorrow, she promised herself as she fell into bed late on Sunday night, she would go and visit an estate agent.

Anne slept very late on Monday morning, and by the time she had showered, breakfasted and got dressed to go into town it was after eleven o’clock. Just as she reached the front door the phone rang in the kitchen, and she rushed to answer it. A new customer? Had she despaired too soon?

She lifted the receiver. ‘Anne Grey,’ she said in her crisp, businesslike voice.

A man’s voice said, ‘Hello, Anne.’ It was a deep voice, and for one mad moment she thought it was Mark Rayne and her throat tightened. Then the voice went on, ‘This is Bob Riley here.’

Bob Riley, the cameraman she had been to college with and whom she had met at the Brent wedding, when he had told her he was setting up his own company.

‘Bob! How nice to hear from you. How are things going?’

‘Badly. I’m in the devil of a fix, Anne. The fact is that I’m in the middle of a job and I’ve been idiot enough to break my wrist. I can’t handle my camera. I can’t even pick it up.’

‘Oh, Bob, how rotten for you,’ she cried with ready sympathy. ‘Can I help at all?’

‘That’s why I’ve called you,’ he said. ‘You’re my last hope. Are you madly busy?’

Madly busy! That was a joke. ‘I’m free just at present,’ she said.

‘Well, could you possibly get yourself down here and stand in for me at a recording session tomorrow morning? It’s a terrific lot to ask of you at a moment’s notice, but it’s very important. It might be make or break for our new company.’

‘Why not? But you haven’t told me where “down here” is.’

Bob said sheepishly, ‘I didn’t want to frighten you off at the start. We’re in Cornwall.’

‘Cornwall!’ Anne gasped. ‘B-but that’s three hundred miles away.’ She looked at her watch, which said nearly midday. The thought of driving three hundred miles on a strange route in her small car was rather horrifying. But Bob was a fellow pro and a friend and she couldn’t let him down.

Bob’s voice came anxiously from the other end of the line. ‘Anne, are you still there?’

‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘I’ll try to get to you, Bob. Will you give me the address and advise me on the best route?’

After hours sitting behind the wheel of her car Anne was aching all over by nine o’clock that same evening, when she finally arrived at the address Bob had given her—the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Penryll. She parked the car beside three or four others at the front of the building and stood, stretching and yawning, looking for the entrance.

‘Hotel’ seemed rather too grand for this small, friendly-looking place, she thought. It was old, as if two or three fishermen’s cottages had been knocked into one, and lights shone from all the small, deep-set windows on the ground floor. From the two windows on the left, which were wide open to the road, there issued the unmistakable sounds of a public bar. No jukebox, thank goodness, simply the loud talk and rough laughter of the local folk enjoying their evening pint.

The next door bore the word ‘Residents’, and Anne pushed it open and blinked around. A steep flight of narrow stairs faced her and on her right was a door marked ‘Residents’ Lounge’. There was no sound from within. She opened the door and found herself in a small room with red velvet banquettes round the wall and three armchairs arranged round an ancient oak table. In one of the chairs sat Bob Riley, a glass of whisky beside him, his head drooping on his chest. His right arm was in plaster and supported by a sling. He looked the picture of misery.

‘Hello, Bob,’ Anne said brightly.

His head jerked up, his pleasant fair face lighting with a wide smile. ‘Anne, angel—you made it. I’d begun to think you’d got stuck somewhere. Am I pleased to see you! Come here and let me give you a hug with my one good arm.’ She went across to him and he gave her a delighted hug with his left arm. ‘Forgive me for not getting up,’ he said. ‘Pull up a chair. Would you like something to eat or drink?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m OK. I had some sandwiches at a service place on the motorway. Now, tell me what’s going on. Where are the others?’

‘They went down for a breath of sea air. The beach is just at the bottom of the hill. They’ll be back soon.’ He gave her a worried look. ‘I hope we haven’t brought you all this way in vain, Anne. I’m afraid things are not all plain sailing yet. Roger went to see this writer bloke—he’s the subject of our film, by the way—a couple of hours ago, to tell him we were expecting a replacement and to check that we could still start tomorrow morning, as arranged. Roger didn’t get much joy.

‘He said Gardiner was in a black mood—something about a computer that had let him down—and he was making noises about not wasting his time pulling pretty faces in front of a camera until he’d got someone out to fix the computer, which, Roger gathered, was problematical. We’re a long way from any technology centres. As there are ladies present, I’ve edited his language.’

Anne sat up. ‘Gardiner? Is that his name?’

‘That’s the name he writes under—Francis Gardiner. I believe his real name is Rayne.’

Anne slumped back in her chair weakly. She supposed she might have guessed. Lady Brent had said his pen-name had something to do with gardens. And he himself had said he had three hundred miles to drive when he’d left her that morning. ‘I believe I know him,’ she said slowly. ‘How about if I go along and try my hand at smoothing him down?’

Bob regarded her doubtfully. ‘Are you sure you aren’t too tired to beard the lion in his den?’