Old Sins (123 page)

‘Not sure. Yes I am. I’m going to meet Miles.’

‘Ah. Where was he yesterday?’

‘In Scotland,’ said Phaedria. ‘With Roz.’

‘Good Christ. She’s not letting you get your hands on him, is she?’

‘Fraid not.’

‘Will you promise to call me when you’ve finished with him?’

‘Why?’

‘Now, that is a ridiculous question. I can hardly believe you’ve asked it. Because I want to know what he’s like. Because I want to know how you get on with him. Because I want to
know what might be happening. Because I need to know how goodlooking he is, in case I have to get jealous.’

‘Michael, please please stop talking like this.’

‘Why?’

‘You know why.’

‘I know why you think I should. I really don’t know that I know. I have been giving our situation a great deal of thought, and I have come to a conclusion or two. Do you want to know what they are, or shall I stop donating half my income to the Bell Telephone Company and go back to sleep?’

Phaedria was silent, struggling with herself. Then she said, ‘Yes, I want to know.’

‘OK. Here we go. I think you’re terrific. I think you’re clever and funny and beautiful. I love being with you. How am I doing?’

‘All right.’

‘Only all right? For Christ’s sake, Phaedria, here I am reciting a love letter over the Atlantic and all you can say is it’s all right.’

‘Sorry. But you know – well, you know what I think.’

‘I plan on destroying your capacity to think. Can I go on?’

‘All right.’

‘I want to go to bed with you.’

‘You can’t. I’ve told you. Don’t even think about it.’

‘Darling, I can’t think about anything else.’

‘You have to. You have to think about Roz.’

‘I’ve thought about Roz. Very hard.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t love her any more.’

‘How do you know?’ she said, and her heart was thudding so hard she could scarcely hear him.

‘I just do. I did love her, very much. I loved a lot about her. But she’s killed it. Strangled it. It’s dead.’

‘Michael, you can’t do that to her.’

‘Do what?’

‘Fail her now. You just can’t. She’s so unhappy.’

‘Phaedria, I was so unhappy, lots of times. I was so unhappy, so lonely for her, I didn’t know how to stand it. She didn’t give a monkey’s fart. She said she did, but she didn’t. All she ever
cared about was that company and that father of hers. Your husband. I beg your pardon, I don’t mean to insult him . . .’

‘Please don’t –’

‘Sorry. I have to try and explain it and he is crucial to the explanation. I spent years fighting him for Roz. It didn’t stop when he died. Now I seem to be fighting him for you.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Well that’s what it feels like. OK, let’s drop him. Let’s go back to us.’

‘There isn’t an us,’ she said, with such a huge effort it physically drained her.

‘Phaedria, there should be. There has to be.’

‘There can’t be.’

‘There will be. I swear it.’

‘Michael –’

‘Phaedria, listen to me. Please, darling, please listen for God’s sake.’

‘I’m listening,’ she said, her resolve weakened by the urgency in his voice.

‘Good. Because it’s very important. Very important.’ He was silent for a moment. Outside, she heard a car pull up. Pete perhaps, back with the files she had sent for from the office.

‘Phaedria, I know we have problems. Difficulties. I can see we have to take our time, tread carefully. But I can’t go back to Roz now. I absolutely cannot.’ There was a pause. And a knock at the front door.

‘Phaedria. I am rather seriously in love with you.’ Another pause. Voices.

‘Phaedria, I think – no, for God’s sake, I know, I want you to –’

‘Good morning, Phaedria.’

Phaedria slammed the phone down.

Roz was standing in the doorway.

‘Good morning Phaedria,’ she said again. ‘Please don’t let me disturb your phone call. Was it important?’

‘No,’ said Phaedria. ‘No, not at all. Good morning, Roz. How are you?’

‘Very well, thank you. A little – tired, shall we say, but well. So this is the baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very nice,’ said Roz, glancing dispassionately at Julia rather as if she were an ornament or a dress she didn’t like the look of very much, but felt forced to at least acknowledge.

Phaedria looked at Roz steadily. She was pale but composed; she was wearing black, as she so often did, with a scarlet scarf knotted round her shoulders. She looked dramatic, fierce but not hostile, indeed she was smiling faintly.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘welcome back to London.’

‘Thank you. Roz, I’m so sorry about the news – about your father. I did try to ring you several times, but . . .’

‘I know you did,’ said Roz. ‘Thank you. I got the messages.’

Phaedria stared at her, so effectively rebuffed she couldn’t even speak.

‘I – I think I’ll just take Julia upstairs,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Hamlyn for coffee.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Roz. ‘I won’t be here long.’

‘Well, I’d like some,’ said Phaedria firmly. ‘Excuse me for a moment.’

She put the baby in the cot and looked down at her for a while, then as if drawing strength from her, stood up very straight and walked back downstairs.

Roz turned and looked at her, taking in the tanned skin, the glossy hair, the slender figure.

‘You look very well,’ she said. ‘But then I suppose you would. You have just had what amounts to a very long holiday.’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘But you are fully recovered at last.’

‘Oh, I am very fully recovered. It’s been Julia’s health that has kept me there, as you know. She was very frail.’

‘But she’s well now?’

‘Oh, very, thank you.’

‘And when are we to expect the pleasure of seeing you back at work?’

‘Oh, very soon,’ said Phaedria, ‘as soon as I have Julia settled with a nanny. I’m looking forward to it.’

‘I daresay you are. You must have been bored and – lonely over there. Or weren’t you?’

A cold crawling chill invaded Phaedria’s body; she felt sick. So that was it. She swallowed hard and met Roz’s eyes steadily.

‘Not really. I made friends. I had Julia. I was at the hospital most of the time.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Roz, poisonously sweet, ‘and then you had visitors, I believe?’

‘Yes, I did. Several.’

‘Several?’

‘Yes, several,’ said Phaedria steadily. ‘My father, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘And Susan came, and C. J. and David Sassoon, and your mother.’

‘So she did. How very thoroughly you have become a part of this family. Inveigled yourself into it.’

‘Hardly inveigled,’ said Phaedria, meeting her stormy eyes. ‘I did after all marry into it.’

‘You did. I tend to forget that. I somehow get the impression you do as well, from time to time.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, I’m afraid,’ said Phaedria.

‘Don’t you?’ said Roz. ‘Well, never mind. I believe Michael came to visit you?’

‘Yes,’ said Phaedria. ‘Yes he did. He came to see us.’

‘Us?’

‘Yes us. Me and the baby.’

‘How touching.’

‘It was very nice of him.’

‘Very. Extraordinarily nice. He stayed at your hotel, I believe?’

Phaedria had not realized she had known this. She swallowed again, hoping Roz wouldn’t notice.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, he did.’

‘For two nights?’

‘Yes.’

‘You slut,’ said Roz quite quietly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said you were a slut. My father has only been dead six months, that child of yours is only just born, and you start sleeping around with anyone who takes your fancy. Who else has been consoling you in your widowhood down there? C. J.? No, he hasn’t got the balls. David Sassoon? You always did have the hots for him.’

‘Roz,’ said Phaedria, keeping her voice quiet with a huge
effort, ‘please could we stop this. I’m finding it grossly insulting. I know it’s very hard to believe, I can see what’s happened is very unfortunate and difficult for you to accept, but nothing, absolutely nothing happened between Michael and me.’

‘I don’t find that hard to believe. I find it impossible.’

Phaedria shrugged. ‘That’s your problem.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘What else could there be?’

Roz was silent for a moment.

‘I think you’re lying,’ she said.

‘You can think what you like,’ said Phaedria. ‘I really don’t care. I do care, though,’ and there was an icily warning edge to her voice, ‘if you share your thoughts with other people. I have not slept with Michael Browning, or indeed anyone else, nothing whatever happened between us and that is the end of the matter. Have you talked to Michael about it?’

‘Yes. He spun the same fairy story.’

‘Oh Roz,’ said Phaedria, ‘it’s not a fairy story. It’s –’ and her lips twitched, despite herself, into a half smile – ‘too unlikely to be untrue. Please for all our sakes take his word for it, if you won’t take mine. God, we have enough real problems, I would have thought, without manufacturing any more.’

‘Most of our problems,’ said Roz, ‘can be laid at your door. If you hadn’t set out to trap my father, to worm your way into the company, to get your hands on his money, there would be no problems at all now.’

‘Roz, I did not trap your father.’

‘Oh really? I suppose he fell madly and hopelessly in love with you, and just swept you off your feet. And his money and his position meant nothing at all to you. Because if that’s so, I don’t quite understand why you can’t just go away now, leave us alone, instead of hanging on for dear life, apparently totally set on getting your pound, or rather millions of pounds, of flesh. And anything else that might catch your fancy in the process.’

‘Roz, I think I’d like you to leave,’ said Phaedria. ‘I don’t want to listen to any more of this.’

‘I don’t suppose you do. Nobody else would say it, would they? They’re all so besotted with you, so totally deceived by
your innocent face, and your little-girly ways, your grieving widow number. Well, I’m not. You make me want to throw up.’

‘Get out,’ said Phaedria, her eyes blazing. ‘Just get out. And shut up.’

Roz looked at her consideringly.

‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll go. I don’t believe any of what you say but I can’t prove it, that it’s not true, so before you start threatening me with slander action again, you have my word I won’t share my thoughts. For now.’ She looked at Phaedria very intently, the hatred in her eyes almost a physical force.

‘Is there anything else you’d like to consider trying to take away from me? she said. ‘First my father. Then my birthright. My lover. Well, I do assure you there’s something you are not going to get your hands on, Phaedria Blenheim, and that’s Miles and his two per cent.’

‘Well,’ said Miles, ‘you certainly are a good-looking family.’

He was standing in the doorway of the drawing room at Regent’s Park; Phaedria had invited him to tea. Roz had gone straight to the office after her morning’s visit to Phaedria, and was consequently unable to keep him under her eye any longer.

Phaedria inclined her head just slightly. ‘Thank you. I could return the compliment.’

‘Please do,’ he said, smiling. ‘A little flattery and I’m anyone’s.’

‘Are you really?’ She smiled. ‘Come in and sit down. Mrs Hamlyn is bringing tea up in a minute.’

‘Thank you. So this is the famous baby?’

‘This is.’

‘She’s cute.’

‘Isn’t she?’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘she has a head start on most of the human race, beginning her life in California.’

‘I do have to agree with you,’ said Phaedria with a sigh, looking out at the greyness of Regent’s Park, the leaden sky, the dripping trees. ‘It seemed to me just the nicest place in the world. I was so happy there.’

‘Me too.’ He sat down. ‘And I plan to go back there just as soon as ever I can.’

‘Do you really?’

‘I really do. To Malibu. To the beach.’

‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘here you are, one of the most potentially powerful and rich young men in the world, and all you want to do is sit on a beach in California.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t knock it.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m not knocking it. I envy you. I think it would be marvellous.’

‘Well,’ he said with simple logic, ‘you could go wherever you liked, couldn’t you? You’re not exactly pushed for the fare.’

‘No, that’s true. But I have – well, things to do.’

‘It’s very odd,’ he said, dropping the argument, ‘to hear myself described as powerful. Or even rich. I’ve always been so hard up and so – well, unpowerful.’

She smiled at him. ‘The correct word is impotent.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said grinning back, ‘I’m not that. Thank heaven.’

‘Good,’ said Phaedria briskly. ‘That must be very nice for someone.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You must feel you’ve strayed into some kind of bad dream,’ said Phaedria suddenly.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s not all bad. But it is pretty strange. I really want to get back soon, but I can see I have some decisions to make first.’

‘Not really,’ said Phaedria. ‘Surely they can wait.’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I’d rather get it settled. Stay maybe a week or two, and make up my mind. Then go home with a clear conscience.’

‘And you wouldn’t even consider staying and getting involved?’

He looked at her and smiled into her eyes. Phaedria, who had not yet been on the receiving end of this particular experience, felt momentarily weak. She had no interest in Miles whatsoever, he was absolutely not the type of man she found attractive, and yet at that moment, had he chosen, he could have trawled her into a fairly immoderate level of sexual interest.

‘No,’ he said in answer to her question. ‘Not for a moment.’

She was confused by him, and the tangle of her thoughts.

‘Sorry? Not for a moment what?’

He smiled again, aware of what he had done to her. ‘Not for a moment would I consider it. Getting involved.’

‘So what do you intend to do?’

‘Sell up. Take the money and run. Initially I thought I’d just run, but Roz said that was silly.’