Lady of Hay

  Nick let out a deep breath. “No, I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  Ceecliff laughed. “You can say I’m gaga if you like, but I haven’t lived nearly eighty years without learning something. And one of the things I’ve learned is that anything is possible, Nick. Why do you think you met Jo? It cannot have been coincidence.”

  “Sam introduced us.”

  “Perhaps that act was his first step on his own road to salvation.”

  “Perhaps.” Nick looked skeptical. “Look, Ceecliff, I’m sorry, I’d love to believe this, I really would—but I can’t.” He stood up and began pacing up and down the carpet.

  “But you do believe in your brother’s power over you?” Ceecliff looked up at him, not moving from the sofa.

  He stopped. “I’ve had proof of that.”

  “And you have had proof that your love for Joey is stronger than his evil intent. You nearly hurt her, Nicholas. You had it in your power to hurt her, even to kill her last night, but you didn’t actually do it.” She reached up toward him. “You were ungentle and ungentlemanly.” She gave him a smile. “But you did not actually harm her, did you?”

  Nick shook his head slowly.

  “You could have forced her to tell you her story to the end last night, Nick. You could have forced her to experience once more the moment of death. But you didn’t do it. You could have killed her, Nick. And if you were going to, if that was what you really wanted, you would have done it then. But you didn’t!” She pulled herself up off the sofa and went to her shopping bags, which still lay on the chair near the door. “I bought us a nice bottle of Amontillado in Harrods before I came. Why don’t you open it, Nick. And pour Jo one as well.” She glanced at him with a gentle smile. “Think about what I’ve said, won’t you? Don’t just dismiss it out of hand.”

  Jo was in her bedroom, lying on the bed, her arm across her face. Nick sat down on the bed beside her. “I’ve brought you a sherry, Jo.”

  She turned and looked at him, her eyes still swollen from crying. “What do you think of Ceecliff’s theory?”

  He smiled. “I’ll buy it. Anything is better than mine, and I hear John is next after Richard III for reappraisal and reinstatement by historians.” He reached forward and pushed her hair gently back from her face. “I want to believe Ceecliff’s love story, Jo.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. “I want to very badly. It would mean that at the end of the story you will marry your handsome prince and live happily ever after.”

  Jo gave a snort. She pushed him away and reached for the sherry glass he had put down on the bedside table.

  “Don’t overdo it, Nick.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Her smile faded. “What about Sam? He’s not going to want a happy ending, Nick.” She couldn’t hide the sudden tremor in her voice.

  “I’ll deal with Sam.” Nick put his arm around her. “But you mustn’t see him, Jo. You are too susceptible, and you do realize, don’t you, that you must never, never go back to Matilda’s world again? You know as much of her story as you need to know. There must be no more.”

  She nodded. “I had already decided that. I didn’t want to know any more anyway. It was you who forced me to go on last night, Nick.”

  He grimaced. “God forgive me. Jo, just for a while, I still don’t want you ever to be alone with me either. Not yet. Ceecliff has said she’ll stay with you for a few days, if you want. I think you should let her.”

  Jo nodded. “I’d like that.”

  He grinned. “Good. It’ll soon be over, Jo, I promise. It will soon be over now.”

  ***

  “Why so formal, Nicholas?” Sam eyed his brother across the table with grim amusement. “And so extravagant. Claridge’s, no less!”

  Nick was looking at the wine list. “I wanted to talk to you somewhere quiet.”

  “Then why not the apartment?”

  “Because I don’t trust you.” Nick ordered a bottle of claret, then he leaned back in his chair and looked Sam straight in the eye. “It hasn’t worked, Sam. You’re a devious bastard, and I’ll admit you had me shit-scared for a while, but it hasn’t worked.”

  Sam smiled. “Pity.” He put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand, looking at Nick through narrowed eyes. “You are quite sure, are you?”

  Nick felt a prickle of unease stir the small hairs at the nape of his neck. “I know it,” he said firmly. “But tell me one thing. Why? Okay. You despise me. Fair enough, I suppose: a brother’s prerogative. But why Jo? Why hurt her?”

  “It amused me to see you both dancing like puppets at my command.” Sam stretched his long legs under the table. “You and that wimp, Heacham. His memories are genuine, you know. He’s a real sensitive, poor bastard.” He sat back in silence as Nick scrutinized the label on the wine bottle and then sipped thoughtfully from his glass.

  With a curt nod at the wine waiter Nick watched the two glasses slowly poured, then he picked his up and extended it toward Sam. “I’ll drink to your speedy and permanent return to Scotland.”

  Sam clinked glasses with him amiably. “It will be within the week,” he said. “I have only one or two things left to do in London.”

  “Just so long as they don’t involve Jo.”

  Sam smiled. “Jo barely exists for me any longer,” he said cryptically. And he took another sip from his glass.

  Nick reached into his pocket. Silently he laid the crucifix on the table.

  Sam looked at it. He set down his glass. “Where did you find that?”

  “In the wastebasket. Is it a symbol of discarded belief or a prop you don’t need anymore?”

  After picking up the cross, Sam held it in his hand for a moment, staring at it expressionlessly, then he slipped it into the pocket of his suit. He glanced up at Nick, who was watching him closely. “Oh, I need it,” he said softly. “I’ll need it for another week at least. What’s wrong? Did you think I would shrink back like a vampire and disappear in a puff of smoke when you confronted me with it?” He laughed out loud. “You are rattled, little brother.” His eyes had grown suddenly very cold. “Rattled and rather stupid.” He turned to the food that had been put down before him.

  Nick fought back a wave of nausea. Doggedly he picked up his knife and fork. “Just keep away from Jo,” he said again. “And just in case you feel like looking her up, I warn you, her grandmother is staying with her, so she won’t be alone, ever.”

  ***

  Jim Greerson sat back in his chair and began to fill his pipe slowly. He glanced at the man opposite him. “Nick won’t be too keen on us pursuing this King John business,” he said with an apologetic smile. “It’s one hell of an invasion of his privacy.”

  Mike Desmond smiled. “Privacy is there to be invaded, Jim. Look.” He handed him a piece of paper. “One of your fellows slipped me this.” It was an unmistakable caricature of Nick with, on his head, a lopsided crown.

  Jim whistled. “You’d better not let Nick find out who drew that. He would be for the bullet.”

  “Or a raise. Look.” Mike produced a second piece of paper. “See this? Get something along these lines on TV at peak time and it’ll be worth a few bob on your account.”

  Jim shook his head slowly. “Nick will kill us if we suggest it.”

  “You want our account, Jim? Look, for Pete’s sake! I’ve done all the work for you! There can’t be a paper in the country that hasn’t picked up that story about Nick. Everyone in the country knows what he does. They’ll all recognize him. It will sell, Jim, you know that. But for God’s sake get your skates on. I want to be topical! Hammer out a storyboard fast. It will be worth it.”

  Jim grimaced. “You’re the boss, I suppose.”

  “Right. I’m the boss. I pay your fat salaries and supply the fuel for that car of Nick’s. Besides, you’ll be boosting all your other clients by implication, so if it means Nick Franklyn has to lay his head on the block for a few nights, I’d say it was worth it, ten times over.??
? He stood up. “Tell him that from me, Jim. I’ll expect to hear from him this afternoon.”

  Jim walked over to the window and threw it up, letting in a blast of hot traffic fumes and noise. He ran his fingers rather desperately through his hair, then he walked over to his desk and pressed the buzzer.

  “Jane? Where is Nick?”

  “He’s not back from lunch yet.”

  Jim glanced at his watch. “It’s after three, for Christ’s sake! Where was he going, do you know?”

  “He was meeting his brother at Claridge’s.”

  Jim sighed. “Okay, Janey, love. The second he appears wheel him in here. It’s double desperate.” He sat down and drummed his fingers on the desk top. Then he pulled the two sketches toward him and studied them critically. He grinned. They were really rather good.

  ***

  The house lay bathed in moonlight. It was completely silent, the undrawn curtains turning the windows into dark pools, reflecting deeply into the interior of the building. Slowly the figure tiptoed up the grass on the edge of the drive and made its way around to the back. It crept up to the back door and tried it gently, before skirting the dustbins and pushing at the small rear window. That too was locked.

  Systematically the dark-clad shadow tried every downstairs window before shining a powerful flashlight up at the second floor. The light beam slid over the wisteria around the front door, playing among the fronds, almost lovingly caressing the weeping greenery until it found what it was seeking, the blue, square box on the wall that marked the burglar alarm.

  There was a quiet chuckle in the silence as, slowly, he bent and picked up one of the large granite lumps that marked the flowerbed edge. After raising it above his head, he hurled it through the front window on the left side of the door with a deafening splintering of glass.

  For a moment the wailing alarm seemed deceptively quiet in the black, back-lit moonlight of the garden as, without a backward glance, the figure slipped into the bushes and out of sight, but already, next door, the lights were beginning to come on.

  ***

  Jo and Ceecliff were planning a visit to the watercolor viewing day at Sotheby’s when the phone rang. Jo answered it, then, with a frown, passed it over to her grandmother. It was several minutes before Ceecliff hung up. Her face had gone pale.

  “That was Julian Frederickson who lives next door,” she said slowly. “My house has been burgled.”

  Jo stared at her, shocked. “Oh, no. Was much taken?”

  Cecliff shrugged. “They don’t know. The alarm went off in the middle of the night and they’ve found a broken window. Julian is a key holder and he’s been in and looked around. He says there’s no damage as far as he can see, but—” She caught Jo’s hand. “I’m going to have to go back.”

  “Of course.” Jo gave her a hug. “I’ll drive you down.”

  “No, dear. I know you have another meeting with your editor to choose your pictures this afternoon. You can’t possibly come.” Ceecliff smiled. “Julian would have known if anything had been touched. He knows the house well enough. It sounds as though that beastly alarm scared them off. I’ll get dressed quickly and catch the first train I can get hold of.”

  Jo rummaged in her bag and produced her car keys. “Here. At least take my car. Please. By the time you’ve crossed London to Liverpool Street and found a train and made the connections to Sudbury it will be midnight. Take my car and I’ll come up at the weekend and collect it.”

  “You’re sure, dear?” Ceecliff stared at her doubtfully.

  Jo nodded. “I’m sure.”

  “And can you get someone to come and stay with you? You mustn’t be alone.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Jo kissed her on the forehead. “There are loads of people I can ask.”

  She stood on the pavement waving as Celia Clifford expertly slotted the blue MG into the traffic and disappeared, then she walked back slowly inside, feeling curiously bereft.

  After shutting the door, she slipped the bolt automatically and fixed the chain. She glanced at her watch. It was just after ten. Plenty of time to call someone a bit later, but first there was something she wanted to do.

  Ceecliff had been with her since Monday. Now it was Thursday. She’d finished the Clements article but started nothing new. She stood and ran her fingers over the pile of books and tapes and documents on her desk. Three weeks to write the three articles, she had said to Bet. But what about the book? The biography, the quest for her past existence. What of Matilda?

  She sat down and pulled the first notebook toward her. Then she inserted a sheet of paper into her typewriter.

  Once upon a time…

  It was the way all the best stories started.

  She worked steadily right through the day, commanding her brain to answer questions, marshaling memories, holding her emotions in an iron grasp as she wrote. It was hard to dissociate herself from the story. Her fingers would race more and more quickly over the keys, filling in detail she never knew she possessed, till, cramped and exhausted, she had to rest them. The time of her meeting with Bet had come and passed. Apologetically she called the office, promising to come in first thing on Monday, then she wandered into the kitchen for a glass of milk before going back and switching on the tape of one of her earlier regressions and listening intently as she sat down and put her feet up on the cushions.

  At five Ceecliff called. “Just to let you know all is well, dear. They must have been scared off. Julian organized someone to mend the window for me, so I’m snug and safe. Let me know when you’re arriving. You’ll find my car in the station parking lot…I only hope it will start after a week.” She paused. “Is there someone there with you, Jo?”

  Jo started guiltily. She had forgotten all about phoning someone to come and be with her. “Don’t worry, everything is organized,” she said. “Now take care. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know when I’m coming.”

  She broke the connection and then she dialed the office in Berkeley Street. “Please come this evening, Nick.”

  “Is Ceecliff still with you?”

  “No, she had to go back.”

  “Then I shouldn’t come, Jo.”

  “We have to believe her, Nick. We have to trust ourselves. Please come. I need you.”

  Nick sighed. “It’s you who have to do all the trusting, Jo.”

  “I’m prepared to risk it. I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Then I’ll come.” As Nick put down the phone he pressed the intercom button. “Jane, tell Jim I’m leaving in twenty minutes. If he wants me to countersign those documents he’ll have to bring them now. And Jane, did you check the orders for tomorrow’s champagne?”

  “Have done.” Jane’s voice echoed lightly in the room. “Will there be anything else, Your Majesty?”

  He cut off the peal of laughter with a good-humored curse. Was it really worth it? Allowing himself to be made a fool of for the sake of the firm. He deliberately put the thought out of his mind. This time tomorrow Mike Desmond would have signed the contract and the team going to the States would be three quarters of the way across the Atlantic.

  Until then, there was Jo.

  ***

  She met him at the door dressed in a soft silk dress of plum-red. He stared at her for a moment, unmoving, before he entered the apartment.

  “What is it?” Nervously she fingered the skirt. “Don’t you like it? Ceecliff helped me to choose it.”

  He smiled. “It’s quite lovely.” He took her in his arms and buried his face in her hair. It was loose, he noticed. No scarf, no ribbon. How could he tell her he had seen a life-size picture of her in Tim Heacham’s studio, wearing a gown of just that shade of red?

  He closed the door behind him and slipped on the chain. “Why did Ceecliff go so suddenly?”

  “She had a phone call that someone had tried to burgle her house. They didn’t get in, but obviously she had to go and check.”

  “And she’s not afraid of being there alone?”


  “Apparently not.” Jo looked away suddenly. “That’s my weakness at the moment.”

  “Not a weakness. It’s common sense. You’d be a fool to be alone as long as Sam’s around.” Nick pushed her away reluctantly and walked through into the living room. “I had lunch with him the day before yesterday. The good news is, he’s going back to Edinburgh at the weekend.”

  Jo sighed. “I hope he never comes back.”

  “Or not for a very long time. You’ve decided to go on and write it, then?” Nick was standing looking down at her desk. He picked up one of the books from the pile.

  She nodded wearily. “It’s the only way I’ll be free,” she said. “Otherwise Matilda is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.” She hesitated, glancing at him. “Bet wants me to mention you in the story, Nick. Do you mind?”

  He laughed. “W I A is about the only periodical that hasn’t mentioned me yet. But isn’t the story a bit over the top for them? I’d have thought such a tale of love and despair and unmitigated male chauvinism would have turned all those Women in Action readers off for good.”

  Jo smiled. “Perhaps. Bet thinks it will turn them on. But in fact, all it does is prove that some women at least were just as capable in those days, and had enormous managerial responsibilities, and that men were male chauvinist pigs every one, as ever. The readers will love it.”

  “And my role? The arch MCP, I suppose?”

  Jo busied herself in the drinks cabinet, holding up empty bottles to the light.

  “I shall be suitably diplomatic about your role. Would you rather be the villain or the romantic hero?”

  “You decide. As long as you know which I am in real life.” Nick looked down at her as she raised her eyes to his. For a long moment they stared at each other, then he reached down and took her hand. “That is empty,” he said, firmly closing the cabinet. “If ever I saw an empty cabinet, that is it. I’ll nip up to the liquor store and get something.” He gave her a rueful smile. “While I’m there, glance at this. It’s the storyboard for the TV ad Desco wants us to put on.”