Читать книгу Celebration - Rosie Thomas - Страница 4

Love divine, all loves excelling … sang the choir. The hot afternoon sun struck through the rose window and illuminated the little church, all along its length to the chancel steps. It rested on the bride in her froth of white tulle and silk as she turned to smile at her bridegroom, and made pink and purple diamonds on his black coat as he tucked her hand under his arm.

Two tiny bridesmaids in forget-me-not blue stooped to pick up the corners of the bride’s train and the little procession moved out of the flower-scented brilliance of the church and into the dimness of the vestry.

The bride looked down and saw her left hand clenched around the bouquet of cream and yellow roses. On the third finger shone the plain, thin circle of gold, but she hardly glanced at it. She was much more surprised to see the tense whiteness of her knuckles. Very deliberately she made herself put the flowers down and pick up the gold pen. Her left hand smoothed the paper and the vicar’s finger pointed to the place.

She wrote

‘Annabel Elizabeth’

and then paused. The stuffy little room was silent, but outside she could hear the congregation crashing into the last verse of the last hymn. With an effort she concentrated on the register again and wrote her new name.

‘Brooke’

There, it was done. But it was hideously wrong.

There was no such person as Annabel Elizabeth Brooke, and there never would be. Impatiently she shook off the vicar’s hand. He was trying to take away the pen, but she hadn’t finished. Underneath the non-person’s name she wrote, in deep black letters that scored the page,

‘this is all a terrible mistake.’

Then she turned and ran. She tore off the horrible, imprisoning white veil, twisted up the long skirts to show her pale silk stockings, and stumbled away. All the way down the chancel steps and along the nave, between the rows of gaping guests, she could hear Edward’s voice calling after her.

‘Bell! Bell! For God’s sake don’t go. Come back. Come back to me.’

Her face was wet with tears and sobs were bursting in her chest, but she would never go back. Never, never, never.

The dreamer rolled over and flung her arm up to protect herself. She opened her eyes and immediately felt that they were wet. She was panting, and the suffocating fingers of the bad dream were still trying to pull her back, but she was struggling free of it.

‘It didn’t happen,’ she told herself in her calm daytime voice. ‘It couldn’t have happened.’ But then why, why did these dreams keep coming back to haunt and terrify her? What was she so afraid of?

Bell Farrer wearily pushed back the tumble of dark brown hair from her face and looked around the room. It was daylight, but still very early. The tranquil, creamy colours of her bedroom reassured her and reminded her of the ordered efficiency of her waking life. While she was awake she had everything under control. It was only at night that her unconscious fears could billow out and smother her. In reality there was nothing to run away from and nothing to hide.

In any case, there wasn’t anyone to hide anything from.

Bell looked down at the smooth pillow beside her own damp and wrinkled one. Edward wasn’t there, of course.

They didn’t live together any more, and he understood that she would never marry him. Just as he had always understood everything except the strange, perverse fear that had driven her to give him up. Yet he knew her better than anyone else in the world, knew the secret, vulnerable Bell that seemed well hidden from the rest of her friends. If she telephoned him now, she could tell him about the stupid dream, and they would laugh about it together.

Bell reached for the receiver on the bedside table, but then her hand dropped. She must remember that she was on her own now. She was living the life of the successful career girl, the life that she had always dreamed of, and there was no place in that scheme of things for ringing up Edward every time she needed comforting after a bad dream.

Instead she pushed back the covers and padded into the kitchen to make a big pot of coffee. Half an hour later, in her thinking clothes of jeans and the scarlet sweatshirt emblazoned ‘Weehawken Majorettes’ that Edward had brought back from a business tour of America, she was at her desk. On top of a pile of notes lay Cocks et Féret, the ‘bible’ of Bordeaux, and Michael Broadbent’s The Great Vintage Wine Book. Bell opened the Broadbent and flipped through the pages to Bordeaux. Then she ran her finger down the columns looking for Château Reynard.

At twenty-seven, Bell Farrer was the wine and food editor of a national daily paper. She had worked her way up from being the most junior of trainee reporters. Her editor, hard-nosed Henry Stobbs with his determinedly northern antecedents and loathing of the London smart set, had taken a lot of convincing that his paper needed a wine and food writer at all. But Bell was quite out of the ordinary run, and Henry Stobbs was always good at spotting talent. Bell’s name was becoming familiar to her own generation who had money to spend and no patience with outmoded conventions. They read what she wrote, then ate at the restaurants and ordered the wine that she recommended.

They also bought her newspaper, so Henry Stobbs was happy too.

At her desk, Bell found what she was looking for and began to read a list of dates and tasting notes, frowning with concentration. Tomorrow was the start of her biggest single assignment, and there was a lot of homework to be done first. Bell had been invited to spend a few days at Château Reynard in the Haut-Médoc, to write about the making of one of the world’s greatest wines. As she thought about it, she felt a nervous churning sensation in her stomach. Baron Charles de Gillesmont, her host, had a reputation for being withdrawn and difficult, as well as very hostile to the press. Bell had been flattered and excited when the invitation arrived exclusively for her. None of her press colleagues had been invited, yet now she began to wish that she was going with the usual cheerful set of wine writers for company and camouflage. She squashed the thought at once.

‘Come on,’ she told herself impatiently. ‘This is a coup, so make the most of it. They can’t eat you, it’s only three days, and somehow you must make some copy out of it that Stobbs will approve of.’

She bent over her book again, but the phone rang beside her.

‘Hello. Tell me if this isn’t a welcome call and I’ll hang up right away.’ Bell’s face split into a smile that showed the dimples at the corners of her mouth.

‘Edward. Do you know, I dreamt about us?’

‘Oh.’ The voice was guarded, the response of someone who had been recently hurt and was quick to defend himself. Bell winced, then let the words tumble on.

‘I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter. What are you doing, this lovely Sunday?’ Outside her window she could see the summer sunshine catching the tops of the trees in Kensington Gardens.

‘Wondering if we should see each other this evening before you go off on your travels. I could come round and have a quick drink with you, then take you to Les Amoureuses. Mary and Elspeth might join us.’

‘Fine,’ said Bell, a little blankly. She remembered his voice calling after her in the dream. Don’t go. Come back to me. But she had wanted her freedom, wanted it so badly that she had hurt them both in disentangling herself. Now she was free, and she had no claims on him any more. Certainly no right to his exclusive attention. But she missed it, even more than she was willing to admit. An evening sharing him with their friends would be better than not seeing him at all and staying in alone.

‘See you about seven, then?’ He rang off.

Bell tilted backwards in her chair, chewing on the end of her pen. When she felt confident, being alone suited her.

At the best of times she was sure that she could take on the world and win, single-handed. She loved her job, and she had plenty of friends. She had planned it carefully, imagining herself getting steadily more successful, travelling and writing and meeting new people. There would be lovers along the way – yes, of course there would. But she was sure that she didn’t want a husband. Her thoughts shied away from that ominous truth. She didn’t want to think about why, not just now. It was too bound up with her guilt about her panicky retreat from Edward, and the fears that gave her those horrible dreams about weddings. And with other things, too.

Work was the thing to concentrate on. Her career was what mattered, after all. Just so long as she could keep going. Keep doing it right. Keep writing what they wanted to read.

Bell pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She was scared today, and lonely. She hadn’t reckoned with that, when she had blindly broken away from Edward. Sometimes life was very bleak. There were empty weekends when everyone she knew seemed to have gone away for a few romantic days à deux. Parties she had to go to alone, and then escape from in a solitary taxi. And days like today, when she needed a shoulder to cry on, and then someone to tell her that of course she could confront the baron in his château and carry off the role of the calm career woman that she had imposed on herself.

She sighed. Sitting here feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to help her to do what had to be done at Château Reynard.

She turned to her work again, her determination doubled.

She worked hard for the rest of the day, keeping her attention fixed on the pages in front of her. At last she felt that she had boned up on all the background she could possibly need. She gave a decisive nod and fanned out her sheaf of notes, then snapped them together into a neat pile and clipped them to her list of questions. She would need those to act as a prompt in case she dried up in her first interview with the baron.

Bell looked at her watch. An hour before Edward was due to arrive. Plenty of time to change and then do some packing. Les Amoureuses was a newish supper club with a tiny dance floor, and good French food. It would be hot and crowded. Bell put on a pale lilac round-necked shirt and a pair of narrow-legged trousers in exactly the same shade. On top went a loose violet linen jacket. She brushed out her hair until it made a glossy frame for her high-cheekboned face, and stroked a careful glow of amethyst shadow on to her eyelids. She was ready. Bell pulled a workmanlike canvas bag out of her cupboard and turned back to the wardrobe. Her job meant a lot of travelling, and she was beginning to feel that her clothes would be a credit to any magazine feature on capsule wardrobes. Plans for a few days’ stay in a Bordeaux château with a baron for company required a little more thought than usual.

Moving quickly, she laid out her travelling-wine-writer’s outfits – mostly carefully chosen separates in soft shades, but all spiced with other bits and pieces in her favourite colours, periwinkle blue and violet. Last of all she pulled out a well-loved evening blazer, the grey and violet stripes shot through with multi-coloured threads and lines of gold. Bell knew that it suited her and she smiled with satisfaction as she smoothed the lapels. She was getting used, these days, to her reputation preceding her when she went to interview people. But she was feminine enough to enjoy their surprise – especially the surprise of middle-aged Frenchmen – when they actually saw her. She was so much younger and better-looking than they expected.

She shook the folds out of her blazer and held it up against herself with a little surge of excitement. Perhaps this trip would be fun after all. The blazer was the last item. Bell was noticing with satisfaction that the little collection would fit easily into the canvas bag when the doorbell rang. Edward didn’t have his own keys any more.

She opened the door and stood there smiling at him, framed in the doorway like a picture.

Just as he always did, Edward thought how striking she was. Not beautiful exactly, more interesting than that. She was almost as tall as he was, and thin enough to look rangy. Tonight her hair was loose, waving frivolously around her narrow face. Her eyes were an extraordinary blue-green mixture that changed with the light. Aquamarine.

‘Come in,’ she said softly. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

He kissed her briefly on the cheek and followed her into the familiar room. They had furnished it together, bidding for the furniture at auctions and picking up the other things in country junk-shops. In one corner a palm tree flourished luxuriously in a green and gold jardinière. He stared at it, trying to dam up the memories that came flooding back.

‘What would you like to drink?’ Bell repeated.

‘Oh … white wine?’ he said, vaguely. His eyes went to the windows, to the familiar jumble of rooftops and chimney stacks and the greenness of the park beyond. Bell put a cold glass in his hand.

‘Sancerre,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you think of it.’

They had been together all through Bell’s steady climb up the ladder towards the success she had set her heart on. He had shared the special bottles and the celebration meals, advising her and encouraging her.

Their eyes met at last, and she smiled awkwardly at him.

‘Edward, I …’ but he put his hand to her lips to stop her saying any more.

Instead he guided her to the rocking chair in front of one of the windows, and sat down beside her. They sat in silence, staring out at the view, exactly as they had done hundreds of times before. Her fingers wound and knotted themselves in his hair.

‘I feel so … sad today,’ she said at last. ‘I keep remembering all the things we used to do together. How hopeful and excited we were. What a waste.’ Her voice was full of bitterness.

‘No, not a waste. You learnt something about yourself. I discovered a lot too. You were right, Bell.’ He was talking quickly, urgently, trying to convince himself as well as her. ‘You couldn’t have married me, and we wouldn’t have made each other happy. Not in the end.’

She nodded, hoping that he was right and grateful for his generosity.

‘It would be sadder still if we didn’t miss each other at all,’ he reminded her.

‘All those years.’

Four years, to be exact, before she had felt the terror of commitment closing around her. Four years before she had realized that if she didn’t escape now she never would. A long time to get used to having somebody so close. Long enough to become dependent on him. Almost too long.

‘Do you remember,’ Edward said into the silence that had fallen, ‘the first time that we came into this room? We’d only known each other a few weeks, but we were quite sure that we wanted to live together. Happily ever after.’

Bell laughed, remembering. ‘I loved you desperately. I couldn’t believe that I could be so lucky. As soon as we got the keys we dashed up here with an armful of books, that potted palm …’

‘… and I grabbed you and we made love on the bare floorboards.’ Bell leant her head back against the cushions and closed her eyes.

‘I know we’re only remembering the good things, but it was wonderful. All those Sundays when we stayed in bed until lunchtime …’

‘… and then had kippers and a bottle of Chablis …’

‘… and then went out for a walk in the park …’

‘… and then out to see a film and have a pizza.’

‘It wasn’t always a pizza. Sometimes a curry.’

They had met at a party, an ordinary, crowded party in someone’s flat with beer spilt on the floor and a girl in a long skirt crying on the stairs. Edward was in his first year out of Oxford, bored with his job and irritable with the confines of London. He was, without realizing it, very lonely. Then he saw Bell.

She was stretched out in an armchair with an untouched glass of murky red wine in her hand. Edward could see that she wasn’t listening to the man who was perched on the arm of her chair, although he was leaning over her and shouting above the blare of the music. Even in the dim light Edward noticed her intense blue-green eyes, fixed far beyond the tawdry party.

Bell felt even more cut off than Edward. She was just back from a year in France, and was, she told herself, buckling down to real life. It was just that real life seemed to add up to nothing more than a very junior job in the subs’ room of a newspaper. She knew that she was lucky to have even that, and saw clearly that to get a better job she had to do this one as well as she could, but she still felt impatient and restless.

She sighed in the sagging armchair and rotated the sticky glass gently in her fingers. Her eyes flickered over the man, still talking, still straddling the arm of her chair. At twenty-two Bell knew surprisingly little about men, but she knew enough to recognize that this one was planning to sleep with her. She frowned at the thought, knowing that she would fend him off by pretending to be coolly surprised. It always worked. Inside she was puzzled, nearly always shy and unsure of herself, but she was getting better and better at hiding it. The more she played up her natural reserve, the more people mistook it for calm confidence.

That was easy, but it wasn’t at all easy to escape from behind her own defences. She wasn’t really aloof or cold, even though people often thought she was. It was just that as far as love was concerned, even demonstrative affection, she was not even in the beginners’ class.

Bell’s mother had died when she was eleven years old, leaving her in the care of her father. She had no brothers or sisters, and her father was too shattered by his own grief to help his bewildered child.

She had had a solitary, bookish adolescence. When she was sixteen her childish gawkiness had disappeared almost overnight, but by then she was too used to being alone to know what to do with the young men who started to swarm around her. She kept them at bay, politely but definitely, and stuck to her books. She had enjoyed university and had emerged with an excellent degree and several very close friends. But she had never been in love. She had no idea how it happened to other people.

Bell thought, afterwards, that it was in answer to her unspoken question how, that Edward pushed his way across the room and stood in front of her. She saw a man with a quick smile, brown eyes and silky, almost feminine hair pushed back from his forehead. He was nodding at her glass.

‘Can I try and find you a glass of something else?’

She stood up and put the tumbler down carefully on the mantelpiece. Staring straight into Edward’s eyes, she answered, ‘I don’t think there is anything …’

‘In that case,’ he said decisively, ‘I shall have to take you away from here.’ He took her hand and guided her across the room. Bell heard the stream of anxious talk from the armchair stop in mid-sentence.

‘Bell? You’re not going, are you?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, not loudly enough for even Edward to hear. ‘I think I am going.’

Out on the shabby landing they stood side by side, staring into the kitchen where a beer barrel was dripping on to a carpet of newspapers. An array of green and brown wine bottles stood in a litter of French bread and cheese. Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other.

‘Have you got a coat?’

‘On the bed, in there.’

The bedroom door was locked now and he retrieved it from the pile that had been flung out on to the landing floor. They picked their way down the stairs, past the girl in the long skirt, and out into the street. To Edward, for the very first time, the thick London air smelt clean and invigorating.

He took Bell out to dinner and then back to the door of her flat.

He saw her every day for a week before he kissed her, and it was a month before he felt he was even beginning to know her. Every time he saw her he was surprised by the way her beauty unfolded. At first he had seen her simply as an attractive girl with unusual eyes, but gradually he noticed the luxuriance of her dark hair, the fragility of her long neck and the bloom of her skin, and the vulnerability of her mouth.

Her face kept changing.

For Bell they were weeks of enlightenment. Slowly she discovered that Edward could be trusted not to disappoint her. He was never dull, never at a loss. To her delight she found that if he wasn’t beside her he was a step ahead, waiting for her to catch up. She found that she could be herself with him, as with no one else. She began to show him aspects of herself that she had buried deeply years ago, when she was a little girl convinced that her mother had been taken away from her to punish her own wickedness. Not even her closest friends knew about her spurts of temper, or her bleak fits of pessimism. Bell stopped hiding them from Edward, and her feelings for him quickened when she saw that he accepted her faults as gratefully as her merits.

The habits of years fell away as she accepted the rhythm of life with him. She began to think in the plural after what felt like a lifetime of solitude.

One evening, Edward brought her home as he always did. They had been to see a film, and then for a meal at the tiny restaurant around the corner. Bell had watched the candlelight making black shadows in the hollows of his face as he talked and she had realized, with a little shock, that she knew the contours of it as well as she knew her own face. She was faintly surprised when she remembered that she was still keeping part of herself from someone so well-loved.

In the deserted flat Edward took Bell in his arms to kiss her goodnight.

‘Don’t go,’ she had said, in a small clear voice. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but I’m ready now.’

There was no need to say any more. Edward put his hand on the catch of her bedroom door and it swung open. They stepped into the dim warmth of her room. With infinite tenderness he took off her clothes and knelt beside her.

‘Are you quite sure?’

Her eyes were luminous as she answered, ‘Quite sure. I love you, Edward.’

He had been astounded by the depth of her passion. It was as if she had flung herself blindly into an uncharted sea, and found that she could swim like a fish.

They had been very happy, Bell recalled. Until their need for each other had become claustrophobic to her, threatening rather than secure. Until she had begun to have dreams about being trapped underwater, or about failing to rescue him from burning tenements. Or about jilting him. She remembered her early-morning dream, the feel of her billowing wedding dress gathered up in her fists to leave her free to run, and her mouth went dry.

It had been painful, and it still was, but she had done the right thing. She wished that there had never been any nagging sense of something missing, so that she could have been happy with Edward for ever. But it was not to be, and now even in her loneliest moments she delighted in her freedom. It had been hard to win, this independence, and now she had it it felt like a prize.

Suddenly she felt a suffocating wave of affectionate tenderness for him. She bent forward and wrapped her arms around his hunched shoulders, rubbing her cheek against his hair.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s helped, sitting here remembering all the good things. It seems less of a … waste. And it’s made the bad bits easier to contemplate.’ Edward stood up and pulled Bell to her feet. The wine bottle was empty, and she knew that it was time to go and meet their friends. He raised his eyebrows and she nodded, half smiling.

‘I’ll go and get my things.’

Edward watched her go. In an automatic gesture she stretched out her fingers as she passed to feel the dampness of the earth in the potted palm. Instantly the memory came back to him. He smelt the dust and her perfume, saw himself lying in her arms and felt the drooping palm fronds brushing his skin. Suddenly he longed to take hold of her again, to feel the softness of her against him one more time. She was standing in the doorway again, turning up the collar of her jacket.

‘Let’s go and eat,’ he said, in a voice made rough with desire. She heard it at once, and her eyes jumped to the palm. How well we know each other, he thought.

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I think we should.’ She took his arm and the door closed behind them with a neat click.

Every table in Les Amoureuses was taken, and the bar and dance floor were packed. Edward and Bell peered through the smoky atmosphere, trying to see some faces in the crowd.

‘Table in the corner,’ Edward mouthed at her and they squirmed past the crammed tables. Three people looked up as they arrived, large blonde Mary and little dark Elspeth with half-moon glasses, and Marcus who was Edward’s best friend. He had straw-coloured hair and a rubbery, mobile face.

‘Oh good, the fun people. Bell, darling, how chic you look. Now, press yourselves in where you can and I’ll see if I can conjure up some glasses.’

Edward kissed the two girls and they sat down. It was, thought Bell, going to be an evening exactly like hundreds of others.

Odd that life was such a combination of the frightening and the absolutely, routinely predictable.

‘… going well in the world of high finance?’ asked Mary.

‘Oh, just the same as always,’ Edward answered, evasively. He worked, very successfully, in a City merchant bank, but considered it something to be hushed up as far as possible.

‘Bell’s the only one who ever does anything interesting. You should see her diary. Bordeaux tomorrow, next week California.’

‘California?’ Mary and Elspeth looked at her with such open envy that Bell felt herself blushing.

‘All thanks to Marcus,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m going to stay with a friend of his, researching a series for the paper on West Coast life. Wine, food, people. I suggested it ages ago to Stobbs and he liked the idea, then came up with a budget that would have kept me alive in San Francisco for about twenty-five minutes. So Marcus suggested his rich friend who lives in the Napa Valley. He responded with true Californian hospitality, and I can afford to go after all. I’ve never been to the West Coast, and I’m longing to see it. It’ll be hard work, too,’ she finished defensively.

‘Work?’ Mary was derisive. ‘Who is this friend, Marcus? Got any others to spare?’

Marcus finished his mouthful deliberately and then flattened his features to produce a wide, toothy American smile.

‘He’s always glad to offer a bed to an English chick. Specially one with an ass like yours, Mare.’

Bell said, ‘Marcus, you didn’t tell me that.’

Marcus winked at her. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll like him. He’s larger than life in every respect. Maverick, almost certainly a con-man. You could fill all your articles with him alone.’

‘Anyway, Bell,’ Mary put in, ‘who could be better equipped to deal with someone like that than you? Just give him your ice-maiden act.’

Into the little silence that fell around the table, Edward said, ‘Shall we have a dance, Bell? I think there’s a spare foot of space on the floor.’

‘And pardon me, too,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m going to the boys’ room.’

The two women were left alone at the table. Mary lit one of Marcus’s cigarettes and blew the smoke out on a long breath. She was watching Edward and Bell dancing, forced close together by the press of other dancers.

‘I think she’ll regret it in the end,’ she said.

‘What?’ Elspeth sounded resigned.

‘Edward, of course. He’s still in love with her, poor sap. And Bell Farrer is going the right way to end up with nobody. One of those lonely, successful women with nothing to talk about but her work. Why does she bother? Edward’s going to be very rich one of these days.’

‘Mary,’ Elspeth protested, ‘Bell wouldn’t have cared about the money. She’s just not like that. Don’t you think it’s possible that she just couldn’t love him as much as he needed? Whereas you could, of course.’

Mary chose to ignore the stab.

‘Entirely possible. I don’t think Bell is capable of loving anyone except herself. She couldn’t possibly be so cool and efficient and successful if she didn’t devote all her attention to number one.’

Elspeth laughed. ‘I know what you mean, but I think you’re being a bit hard on her. Everyone likes her, after all, except perhaps you.’

‘Oh, I like her too. I just don’t believe in her. She’s too good to be true, that’s all.’

‘You’re jealous.’

The other girl stubbed out her cigarette and turned to stare at her friend. ‘Of course I’m jealous. That’s just the point. However likeable she may be, if everyone she knows is jealous of her she’ll end up alone and unhappy. You have to be vulnerable to get human sympathy, and do you think Bell is vulnerable?’ There was no answer, and they both looked across at the knot of dancers. Neither of them had ever seen Bell crying, or ill, or apparently unsure of herself. No one had, for years, except Edward.

And now she didn’t have Edward any more.

Bell would have laughed, unbelieving, if she could have heard their conversation. She let herself lean against Edward, feeling the familiar contours of their bodies fitting together. It felt very secure. Temptingly secure.

Yet tomorrow she had to go to France and face up to the intimidating French baron, alone. Not only face up to him, but impress him enough to make him talk about his Château as he’d never talked to any other journalist. She didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t stay where she was either.

Bell knew that she was in a mess. It would have amused her if she could have known that anyone envied her at that moment.

The evening came to an end at last. They all stood outside the door of the club, hugging each other affectionately. The two women and Marcus wished her bon voyage.

‘If we don’t see you before, send us a postcard from San Francisco,’ said Elspeth. ‘Have a wonderful time.’

‘Give my love to Valentine,’ Marcus called. ‘’Byeeee.’

Edward slammed the door of his battered car and reversed recklessly down the street before glancing at Bell.

‘Cheer up,’ he advised her. ‘You are quite lucky, you know.’ She bit her lip. Guilty of self-pity, as well.

He left her at the door of her flat and drove away with a cheerful wave and his habitual three toots on the horn.

Bell let herself in and wandered into her bedroom. Her packing was done, and she wasn’t sleepy yet. A nightcap, perhaps. She sloshed a measure of brandy into Edward’s empty wine glass that was still standing on the coffee table, then went over to her dressing-table to look at the open diary.

The square for the next day read ‘10 a.m. Wigmore & Welch. Plane 12.30’. That meant a wine-tasting first at an old-established firm of merchants, always worth a visit, and straight from there to the airport. The next three days were crossed through with neat diagonals and the words ‘Ch. Reynard’. The second of those days was to be her twenty-eighth birthday.

The realization made Bell smile ruefully and she sat down to examine her face in the mirror. Not too many lines, yet, and the ones that she could see were all laughter lines. Automatically she picked up her hairbrush and began to stroke rhythmically at her hair. The one hundred nightly strokes was a habit left over from childhood and she clung to it obstinately, as a link with her dead mother.

In one of Bell’s last memories of her she was standing at her side with the identical blue-green eyes fixed on her own in the mirror.

‘A hundred times, Bell,’ she was saying, ‘and your hair will shine like silk.’

That was it, of course.

The thing she was really frightened of, and the thing she wouldn’t let herself think about. Except at times like now, when she was alone with a brandy glass in her hand and the memories were too vivid to suppress. She had seen it all through the agonizingly clear eyes of childhood. Her mother had died, and she had watched her father disintegrate. Day after day, year after year, defencelessly turning into a wreck of what he had once been.

Bell didn’t think she was remembering her very early years with any particular romantic distortion. Her parents had very obviously been deeply in love. They had been quite satisfied with their single child. Bell had the impression that her father didn’t want her mother to share out her love any further. He wanted the lion’s share of it for himself.

Selfish of him, probably, but he had suffered enough for that.

There had been very good times, early on. Her father was a successful stockbroker in those days, comfortably off. There had been a pretty house in Sussex, French holidays, birthday parties for Bell and the company of her witty, beautiful mother.

Joy Farrer had probably never been very strong. Bell remembered the thinness of her arms when they hugged her, and the bony ridges of her chest when she laid her head against it. Sometimes she had been mysteriously ill, but Bell remembered those days only as brief shadows.

Then, with brutal suddenness, she was gone.

One night when Bell went to bed she was there, reminding her not to skimp on the one hundred strokes with the hairbrush. In the morning she had disappeared. The house was full of whispers and strange, serious faces. Her father’s study door was locked.

It was several days before they told her she was dead, but she had really known it from the moment when she woke up on the first morning. The house had smelled dead. Something in it had shrivelled up and vanished overnight. A housekeeper arrived, but Bell did her crying alone. The sense of loss suffocated her, and at night she would try to stifle herself with her pillow to shut out the misery. She was convinced, in her logical, childish mind, that her mother’s death was her own, Bell’s, fault.

She had rarely seen her father in those first months. She learned from an aunt, years later, that he had taken to going out all night and driving his car round the Sussex lanes. Round and round, going nowhere. With a bottle of whisky on the seat beside him. By the time he was convicted of drunken driving Bell was away at boarding school and knew nothing about it. He simply stopped coming to pick her up from school at half-terms and holidays, and she travelled on the little local train instead. All she did know was that he was getting thinner, and an unfamiliar smell emanated from the well-cut grey suits that were now too large, creased, and slightly stained.

Her once-handsome, assured father was turning into a grey-haired stranger who behaved peculiarly.

It was in the middle of the summer holidays when she was fourteen that Bell realized that her father was an alcoholic. She found the plastic sack of empty whisky bottles in the garage when she was looking for the turpentine. She had been trying to brighten up the dingy kitchen with a coat of white paint.

That was the day Bell grew up.

She understood, in a single flash, how badly he had crumbled after the death of his wife. At the same moment she accepted another weight on to her burden of guilt. If only she could have compensated him in some way. If only she had been older, or more interesting to him. If only her mother and father hadn’t loved each other quite so much, and she herself had been more lovable. If only.

Her father had died when she was seventeen. Cirrhosis of the liver, of course. Bell looked down at her empty glass. It was ironic that she should be making her living now by writing about drink. She toyed with the idea of pouring herself another brandy, but it was easy to decide not to do it. No. Whatever else might happen to her, she didn’t think that was going to be her particular problem. It was enough to have watched it happen to her father.

‘Well now.’ Bell looked at her white face in the mirror. ‘While you are thinking about this, why not try to be totally honest?

‘Is it that you are scared of Edward being hurt like that one day if you disappear? You’re trying to protect him, in your heavy-handed way?

‘Well, yes …

‘Or are you really much more frightened of it happening to you? No commitment, therefore no risk?

‘Yes.’

Bell folded her arms on the dressing-table in front of her, laid her head on them and cried.

If someone else had told her her own story she would have dismissed it as too neat and pat. Incapable of loving, of marrying, because of her parents’ tragedy? Cool and collected outside in self-protection, but a guilty mess inside? Surely human beings were more complex than that?

‘This one isn’t,’ said Bell, through the sobs.

At last the storm subsided. She snatched up a handful of tissues from the box in front of her and blew her nose. A red-eyed spectre confronted her in the mirror.

‘What you really need,’ she addressed herself again, ‘is to look a complete fright tomorrow. That will give just the important, extra edge of confidence. Come on, Bell. What’s past is past, and the only thing that you can do now is carry on. At least you seem to understand yourself quite well.’

She put her tongue out at herself and caught the answering grin. That’s better.

She leant over and stuffed her passport and tickets into one of the pockets of her squashy leather handbag. Then she zipped and buckled the canvas holdall and stood the two bags side by side next to the door.

Notebooks, traveller’s cheques, file, tape recorder … she counted off in her head. All there.

She was ready to go, whatever might lie ahead.