Creeping Ivy (35 page)
‘It’s fishy, if you ask me,’ he said when he got to the end of the article. ‘Fishy. That’s what it is. Anyway she’s been sacked now, and she won’t be getting another smart job like that one in a hurry, that’s for sure.’
‘Oh, don’t sound so pleased about it!’ shouted Renie, banging the pan on the cooker and making hot fat splutter into the flames. She’d been more upset than she liked to think about not having had an answer from Nicolette. It seemed cruel and unlike the child she remembered. It was making her think she might not have known her as well as she thought. It made her worry about the other child, too, the one Nicolette had been looking after, little Charlotte Weblock.
After all, she’d had that nice letter from Charlotte’s mother so the letters must’ve got there. She’d said she was trying to keep believing her little Charlotte would come back to her, and how it helped when people like Renie, who understood what it was like being a mother, sent their sympathy. She’d actually thanked Renie for bothering to write to her.
So it wasn’t as though the letters hadn’t ever got to her house. Nicolette must’ve had hers too but, unlike the unknown but obviously kind Mrs Weblock, she hadn’t even bothered to answer.
‘Nicolette’s had a terrible time and she must be feeling miserable,’ she said, trying to believe it, ‘and you’re pleased she’s not going to get another job. You’re horrible.’
‘What’s got into you?’ Harold said, looking at her in astonishment.
‘Nothing,’ she said dully, turning back to the bacon. ‘I’ve got a headache.’
‘Have you been in touch with her?’ he asked, sounding almost dangerous.
‘I wrote,’ said Renie, who had been needing to share the information with someone for weeks, ‘but she’s never answered me.’
‘There you are then. It’s what I always said: selfish, ungrateful little brat. She always was.’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Renie, sliding the crisp rashers onto the two warmed plates. She carefully turned down the gas, and when the fat had cooled sufficiently, broke the eggs into it. ‘Not then. She was a sweet girl and the brightest we ever had and the kindest. I’ve missed her ever since they took her away. I miss her now, and I’ll always miss her. If anyone’s selfish, it’s you. You scared the living daylights out of her.’
‘Rubbish! I teased her like I always teased them. Did them all good.’
‘Not Nicolette. Like I said, it scared her. There’s your breakfast. Eat it while it’s hot.’ She put her foot on the pedal of the bin to raise the lid and scraped the other plateful into it.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ Harold asked, sounding completely at sea.
‘No. I’m going out.’
‘Renie. Renie! What’s the matter? What’s got into you this morning, woman? You’ve gone mad. Renie, come back here!’
She closed the door on his voice and set off towards the station. She’d find Nicolette, somehow she’d find her, and then she’d get the truth out of her.
Trish stood in front of the mirror and settled the wig on her head, making sure that a few spikes of her own black hair showed in front of the yellowing horsehair curls. The sleeves of her black gown hung like wings from her arms as she adjusted the wig, and the bands at her throat had the crisp whiteness of the inside of a fresh radish. Her brief lay at her side, neatly tied in its narrow pink tape. She knew it backwards and, believing in its absolute legitimacy, could hardly wait to get into court.
‘Hey, Trish. Great to see you back! How are you?’ asked one of the friendliest of the silks as her reflection darted up behind Trish in the mirror. Trish swung round to confirm the reality of the image.
‘I’m fine, Gina. Thanks.’
‘I’ve been hearing great things of this book of yours. When’s it due out?’
‘Not till next spring.’
‘Oh, ages. What a pity.’
‘I know. And it’s been on the gruelling side, but it’s finished now, and I can get on with my life.’
‘Good for you. What’re you on today?’
‘A case of George Henton’s in Court Five.’
‘Oh, I know. Going to win?’
‘Of course.’ Trish was still smiling. She could not help it. Even now, after five months of slowly growing confidence in her feelings for George, being able to say his name aloud to other people made her insides swim with pleasure.
‘I’d better get on,’ said Gina. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks. And to you. See you in the mess later?’
‘Yes.’
The young QC left. Trish shut her black tin wig box with a satisfactory snap, straightened her shoulders, took a last look at her reflection and then bent to pick up her papers. She followed Gina out of the robing room, pleasantly aware of the swish of her gown and the click of her heels. Her whole body felt good to her and her mind was operating with a blessed independence of her feelings. George was doing his damnedest to feed her up, but she was resisting and was not yet weighed down by an ounce of spare fat.
She had a moment’s anxiety as she left the safety of the robing room to make her first appearance in court for months. But it would be all right. It was her work and she could do it. Loosening her knees, she ran down the wide stairs to the long passage outside the courts, where the lawyers and their clients and witnesses for both sides gathered in a resentful crowd.
‘Trish,’ said a familiar, commanding voice.
Her muscles seized up at the sound and she had to think how to breathe. It was a shock to realise how close she still was to the line between freedom and the webtrap of anger and disgust that had held her down for so long. She looked at her watch. There were still fifteen minutes before she had to be in court. She turned slowly, smiling.
‘Antonia. Good morning. What are you doing here?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. You must think I’m a complete fool, all of you. Plotting behind my back to get Charlotte away from me.’
‘I’ve never thought you a fool, but I hadn’t expected to see you here, that’s all.’
‘As you very well know, I’m here because you’ve manipulated Ben into trying to get involved in Charlotte’s life. Aren’t you representing him?’
Trish shook her head, glad of the wig and gown that distanced her a little from Antonia. ‘No. I knew what he was trying to do and I’ve done everything I could to help. But I’m not acting for him and I didn’t realise it was on this morning.’
‘You know what’ll happen if he succeeds, don’t you?’
Yes, thought Trish, there will be someone around to keep Charlotte safe from any more of your devious games. I wish I’d been able to find out how you managed it, who ‘Sue and Sammy’ were and how you persuaded them to keep quiet about your plot. But you can’t really have thought we’d have left a little child permanently with a woman who could do that to her own daughter.
‘If you all get your way,’ said Antonia with a hiss in her voice, ‘she’ll be brought up by that idiotic American, who can’t have her own children and so has to steal someone else’s.’
‘She’s not so bad,’ said Trish, whose respect for Bella had been increasing each time they met and was beginning to turn into affection. ‘And she has a lot of sympathy for you. You might find dealing with her over Charlotte helps.’
The dislike in Antonia’s eyes grew colder as her jaw hardened and the powerful little muscles at either side of her mouth pulled it down into a clown’s grimace.
‘She has no right to have anything to do with Charlotte – and the idea that she has the impertinence to feel sympathy for me makes me sick to my stomach.’
As Antonia swung away, Trish put out a hand to stop her.
‘Wait. Don’t go.’
For a moment Antonia was very still under her hand. Then she shrugged it off and turned back.
‘What is it now, Trish?’
‘You’re not really going to fight Ben’s action, are you?’
‘Of course. Why not? I don’t want my child involved with him and that American bitch. You’re not going to try to stop me, are you, Trish? That’ll be fun.’
‘No, it won’t. Antonia, if you force me, I’ll—’
‘You’ll what? Start trying to get the judge to believe that ludicrous fantasy you invented on the day Charlotte was found? Oh, Trish. You’ll ruin yourself, you know.’
‘No,’ said Trish steadily. ‘We’ve all agreed that it would do Charlotte far too much damage if that story ever came out. It’s for her sake that we’ve all held our tongues and let the police believe the fantasy
you
devised about secretly paying a ransom to get her back.’
There was not even a flicker in Antonia’s granite-coloured eyes.
‘You did a brilliant job convincing them that you’d concealed the payment of some vast sum,’ Trish went on. ‘They wouldn’t listen to any alternative theories then, and they won’t now. You’ve got away with it – unfortunately. But you’re not a fit mother, and Charlotte has to see something of Ben, now that DNA test has proved he is her father.’
Trish thought of the meetings that had been taking place in Ben’s tatty but floriferous garden over the past few months. The three of them, often joined by Emma and sometimes by Willow, had talked round and round what they were sure had happened and how they ought to deal with it. They hadn’t involved Tom because of his official position, but they were holding him in reserve in case the judge refused to allow Ben contact with Charlotte.
They had agreed that the best way of presenting Ben’s case would be to concentrate on his ability to spend much more of his time with Charlotte than Antonia ever could, and to give her a proper family life. Now that Robert had gone, Antonia and Charlotte had been living a bleak existence with a starchily uniformed nanny who never left the child alone for a moment. If the judge proved sticky, the fallback plan was to point out that Antonia’s lifestyle and career had led her in the past to hire a nanny irresponsible enough to allow Charlotte to be kidnapped, but they all hoped it wouldn’t come to that. And if that, too, failed then they were going to go to Tom, tell him everything they knew and guessed.
‘So why aren’t you convinced about the ransom, Trish? What makes you think you’re so much cleverer than the police?’ Antonia was smiling again, but this time there was real amusement in her face.
‘Because I’ve seen you angry before. I didn’t understand at the beginning. I was too involved, too terrified, and so – unforgiveably – I failed Charlotte and all the other people you tore apart. God knows how many of them there are.’
‘You always were melodramatic where Charlotte was concerned. Frustrated mother complex, that’s what it is, Trish. You ought to have some of your own. That might sort you out.’
‘I can understand why you wanted to punish Nicky and Robert for what they did, but to use Charlotte like that. How could you?’
‘Fantasy, Trish. Pure fantasy. Sick, too.’
‘I know you arranged for her to be taken away for the week and I’m sure you took care that she wasn’t ill-treated, but it’s not good enough, Antonia.’
‘And what did I do then in this little fairy-tale of yours?’
‘You got rid of Robert after he brought you back from the airport and then set the stage. You planted the nude photographs and porno mags under Nicky’s floorboards and you did a bit of digging in the flower beds to make it look as though someone had been trying to bury something there. I don’t know if you put the polythene under the soil or if that was just a lucky coincidence that distracted the police for a few hours. You definitely put the soil into the doll’s pram and I’m perfectly certain that you put the blood and hair in it too, even though I don’t know how.’
‘Hair? Blood? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Antonia looked at her Rolex and brushed a minute piece of fluff from the cuff of her Jil Sander suit.
‘I must go or I’ll be late,’ she drawled, ‘and I don’t want to make a bad impression on the judge. After all, I am fighting for my child’s health and sanity here.’
Trish opened her mouth, but her protest was overridden before she could make it.
‘I have to win, Trish. And I shall. I learned very early on that if I didn’t take control of everything myself, nothing would ever be properly done and I would never be safe.’ Antonia smiled, ‘But I make sure it is, you see. And so I always get what I want. You ought to know that by now. I’ll keep Charlotte, you’ll see.’
Over my dead body, thought Trish.
Epilogue
She let herself into the house, hating the gloating voices that hummed all round her.
‘How d’you feel about your ex-husband getting access to Charlotte after everything you did to get her back last spring?’
‘Are you going to appeal?’
‘What did Charlotte say when you had to leave her with him? Was she crying?’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Is there a new man in your life?’
‘How d’you feel?’
‘How d’you feel?’
‘How d’you feel?’
Antonia slammed the door on them all and leaned against it with her palms smacked against the panels and her teeth clamped together. She could still hear them shouting at her through the thick wood. Vultures, all of them.
Her arms started aching as they always did when she was upset. She slipped her hands inside her shirt and stroked the skin of her shoulders. It didn’t help.
Pulling herself away from the door with almost as much difficulty as the police had had getting Charlotte away from her on the day she was found in the park, Antonia took off her coat, shook it to get the creases out and hung it up. Then she went into the kitchen, which Maria had left as immaculate as ever, and took a bottle of white burgundy from the fridge. She screwed the cork out and poured herself a glass to take upstairs to her bedroom.
She’d lie on her bed, well away from the journalists, and work out how to get Ben out of Charlotte’s life.
I am a winner, she thought. Trish is wrong. They’re all wrong. They’ll see. I will beat them all. That wimp Ben and his American bitch will have to give up in the end.
She drank, tilting her head back against the pillow so that the fragrant wine trickled smoothly over the back of her tongue.
In a way she had won the first skirmish of the war. There was some satisfaction to be had in that. She’d split Nicky and Robert up and made sure both of them would be looked at askance wherever they went for the rest of their lives.