Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (29 page)

Her mother had perennially been the most difficult person to buy for. Callie knew, without a doubt, that anything she selected for her mother would be unsatisfactory in some way: wrong size, wrong colour, wrong style. Furthermore, Laura Anson wouldn’t hesitate to let her know in what way the gift had fallen short. The safest thing was to buy it—whatever it was—at a chain store where it could be easily returned. As far as Callie was aware, her mother had never kept one of her gifts. It was an exercise in futility. So why did she bother? Habit, she supposed. And a little challenge to herself: one day, maybe her mother would open a Christmas present and say, ‘Oh, Callie! It’s just perfect—I love it!’ instead of saying, ‘I’ve always loathed this shade of blue’ or ‘This is way too big for me, dear. I’d swim in it!’ Playing it safe, Callie selected a dressing gown in a colour very similar to one she’d seen her mother wearing. It was soft and appealingly cuddly, but Callie was sure that her mother would be able to find fault with it in some way. Maybe, when the inevitable happened, she wouldn’t bother to return it: she’d just keep it for herself and give her mother the money to buy something else.

At least she didn’t have to worry about buying anything for Adam this year. She should, Callie reflected, be thankful for small mercies. But there was the very fraught question of Marco.

She’d been thinking about it for a long time. She needed to get him something—almost certainly he’d give her a gift of some sort, and she must reciprocate. But what? How intimate, how costly should it be? She could scarcely give him a box of
handkerchiefs, yet she couldn’t presume to buy him an item of clothing or something more personal.

In the end she settled on a gift that seemed a perfect
compromise
. She’d stumbled on it while choosing Peter’s cookery book, and had fallen on it with a cry of joy. It was a lavish, large-format book of photographs of Venice. He would, she was certain, love it. She couldn’t wait to see his face when he opened it, as he paged through its slick pages of glorious and evocative photos.

Pouring out her tea and waiting for it to cool, that image of Marco’s face brought back the preoccupation that her mind had been circling around for hours: Marco’s phone call, with its sudden suggestion of dinner at La Venezia, and the hint of revelations to be made. Significant revelations, at that. ‘Things I need to explain,’ he’d said.

What sort of things did he need to explain? And did she really want to hear them? Although she was curious about his family, and had often wondered about his reticence in talking about them, this development seemed to signal a new phase in their relationship, and Callie wasn’t entirely sure that she was ready to go there.

She’d had to assimilate so many changes to her life recently, with the new job following right on the heels of her parting from Adam. And, by and large, the relationship with Marco was fine just as it was. Why did it have to change? Falling in love with Adam, taking step after step down the road of commitment to him, had brought her only heartache.

Peter was the one who fell in love at the drop of a hat. Callie knew herself to be more cautious, and she had been badly burned—not that long ago.

And yet…

Yet she did enjoy Marco’s company. More than that: there was a strong chemistry between them. Marco was handsome and sexy; his kisses gave her flutters in all the right places. And it wasn’t just physical, either. From the first time they’d met she’d found him easy to talk to, like someone she’d known all her life. She could relax and be herself with him: no pretence, no games. That was a rare and wonderful thing.

And, she reminded herself, she wasn’t getting any younger. She was thirty. Not a great age in this day and time, but sooner or later the alarm on her biological clock was going to go off, big-time.

Why did life have to be so complicated? Was she being overly cautious, looking for excuses to keep Marco at arm’s length? Recently hurt, new job and new situation, innate wariness. Were they just excuses for fear? Was she no more than a coward, unable to cope with growth and change?

She took a gulp of the tea before it had cooled sufficiently, and gasped as it burned all the way down her throat. Get a grip, Callie, she told herself. Just look at this evening as a chance to get away from Peter, and don’t sweat it. As the Italians would say,
che serà, serà.
 

Wear something red.

Alex rummaged through the clothes in her wardrobe, trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. Red wasn’t really her colour. It drew too much attention to her, when all she wanted to do was fade into the background.

Her mother loved red. Red suited Mum, brought out her dark colouring and resonated with her vibrant personality.

Alex preferred brown or black or navy.

Then she remembered the jumper that Granny had knit for her, last Christmas. Scarlet, it was. A cheerful lipstick red. She’d put it on a couple of times, to make Granny happy, but since moving to London she hadn’t worn it even once.

She thought perhaps she’d seen it recently, in the bottom of her chest of drawers. Kneeling on the floor, she rummaged through the untidy drawer, pulling out and dropping on the floor other similarly unworn items of clothing till she unearthed the red jumper. Alex unbuttoned her school blouse, added it to the discards on the floor, and pulled the jumper over her head, inspecting herself in the mirror.

Not very good. The jumper was tight—she
had
grown in the past year—and only emphasised the flatness of her chest. No room for concealment, for suggesting that a voluptuous figure lurked somewhere within. For a moment, regarding herself in the mirror, she considered what she might do to remedy the situation.

Frilly Jilly, she thought. Brainless though Jilly might be, if there was one commodity she didn’t lack, it was cleavage. Presumably she had a drawerful of frilly bras to emphasise the fact.

If Jilly was in her bedroom, it was a lost cause.

But luck was with Alex. The door to the master bedroom was open, and she could hear that Jilly was in the adjoining ensuite, running a bath. Quietly, on tiptoes, she slipped into the bedroom and started opening drawers at random.

There was a drawer full of knickers—mere scraps of lace. Alex held one pair up to inspect it; for reasons she didn’t quite understand, it made her uncomfortable, and her face burned with embarassment. ‘Gross,’ she said out loud, dropping the knickers and shoving the drawer shut.

The next drawer yielded nothing but a pile of envelopes. Alex was about to push it back in when she saw that the one on top was addressed to her. ‘Miss Alexandra Hamilton,’ it said, along with the address.

Alex pulled it out and looked at it. The letter had been through the post, but it was unopened. Beneath it was another, also with her name and address.

A whole stack of letters! Unopened letters, for her. In Jilly’s drawer! Alex scooped them out, just as the cordless phone on the bedside table rang.

Would Jilly cut her bath short to answer the phone? Alex couldn’t take any chances.

She dashed back to her own room, abandoning the idea of borrowed cleavage.

Jack would have to take her as she was. If he didn’t like that, there was nothing she could do about it now.

‘You’re going out?’ Peter, lounging on the sofa with a mug of coffee resting on his stomach, raised his eyebrows in mild
surprise
. ‘You didn’t say so this morning. Not that it matters,’ he added. ‘I’m out this evening as well. A gig. Playing for some Christmas party.’

‘Marco rang earlier.’ Callie kept her voice deliberately calm. ‘He wants to take me to La Venezia for dinner.’

‘Oh!’ That brought Peter into a sudden sitting position as hot coffee slopped all over him and the sofa. ‘Oh, bugger. I didn’t mean to do that.’

Callie sprinted to the kitchen for a cloth, which she applied to the sofa as Peter dabbed at himself with his handkerchief. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Only a few second-degree burns. I’ll live.’

‘You haven’t done your shirt any good, either,’ she pointed out. ‘Take it off and I’ll put it in the washing machine before it sets.’

‘Seriously, Sis.’ Obediently Peter unbuttoned his shirt. ‘He’s taking you to La Venezia! At last. He wants you to meet his family?’

‘He didn’t say,’ she admitted.

‘That must be what it’s about. Oh, this is brilliant!’

Callie’s mouth twisted as she reached for the shirt. ‘I’m glad you think so. I’m not so sure. Now that it’s come down to it, I don’t know that I
want
to meet his family.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you, Sis? Go with the flow. And hold on to Marco with both hands. He’s a keeper. A vast improvement over what’s-his-name.’

‘Adam,’ she supplied wearily.

Peter shrugged. ‘Whatever. He’s history. You care about Marco, don’t you?’

‘Of course. But…’

‘Then go with it. Meet the family. See what happens. And,’ he added with a wink, ‘if nothing else, you’ll get a jolly good meal out of it. Trust me on that one.’

Alex was dying to examine the letters, but there wasn’t time. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to Paddington Station, or how much it would cost. She didn’t want to be late, and she didn’t want to be caught short of cash.

Her father had always been generous with pocket money, and Alex’s needs were minimal—a few packets of crisps and bars of chocolate each week. So she had a stash of ten-pound notes in the bottom of her sock drawer. She went to it now and stuffed a handful of notes into the pocket of her jeans: better to be safe than sorry.

Alex put her head out of her bedroom and crept into the sitting room. She could hear Jilly on the phone in the master bedroom: probably talking to her sister, telling her how
unrepentant
and uncooperative Alex had been.

Too bad.

Alex grabbed her coat from the chair where she’d dropped it, shoved the bundle of letters into one of its deep pockets, opened the front door of the flat, slipped through, and pulled it shut quietly behind her. Jilly would be none the wiser—not for hours, if at all. Jilly always left her alone when she was in her room. Her dad usually stuck his head in to say hello when he got back from work, but that was a long way off. She’d probably be home by then, and with any luck she could sneak back in without ever having been missed.

Outside it was dark, and getting colder again. Alex headed for the St. John’s Wood tube station, her breath preceding her in a frozen cloud. She couldn’t walk too fast; the pavements were now slick with re-freezing moisture and her trainers had a tendency to slip, so she had to lift her feet carefully and try not to rush. That didn’t come easily to her; at one point she picked up speed, skidded and took a tumble onto the pavement.

‘Be careful, little girl,’ admonished an old man who’d seen it happen, giving her a hand to help her to her feet.

‘Thanks.’ Alex flashed him a smile and continued, a bit more cautiously.

A couple of tourists—middle-aged, hung about with cameras, as unmistakable as if they’d been wearing signs—were emerging from the tube station as Alex drew near. ‘Abbey Road?’ said one of them to Alex in a broad American accent.

Alex pointed. ‘That way,’ she said. It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked, out and about in St. John’s Wood, but she never had understood what all the fuss was about. The Beatles had been famous about a hundred years ago. Even before her dad was born.

She’d never been in the tube station before, had never ridden on the tube. On the rare occasions she’d been out with her father and Jilly, they’d gone in his car or taken a taxi. But how hard could it be? Lots of people did it every day. There was a ticket machine; she fed a ten-pound note into it, only to have it spit back out at her. ‘No change’ said the digital read-out. So Alex went to the ticket window and shoved her money through the opening. ‘Paddington. Return,’ she requested in a firm voice, trying to sound authoritative.

With her tickets and her change she received confirmation that her efforts hadn’t been too successful. ‘Change at Baker Street,’ said the ticket woman kindly. ‘Bakerloo, Circle or Hammersmith and City.’

‘Thanks.’

Through the ticket barrier, down the escalator, on to the train. Not too crowded, going in towards town. At Baker Street, though, rush hour had begun in earnest, and once she’d found her way through the maze of tunnels to the Bakerloo Line, Alex had to shove her way into a packed carriage.

She’d already decided that she didn’t like the tube. Too many people, too close together. No personal space, and there were evidently people in the world—in London, even—who didn’t have a daily bath. Alex clung to an upright pole, trying not to breathe too deeply, hoping not to get trampled. Maybe she’d take a taxi home, in spite of the fact that she had a return ticket.

She almost missed her stop at Paddington, fighting her way between immobile pairs of legs to the carriage doors just before they slammed shut. ‘Excuse me. Excuse me,’ she repeated
breathlessly
till she achieved the platform.

Now. Where was the clock? Jack had assumed that she would know where to find it.

Not here. Not on this platform. She waited a minute, until the train had pulled out and people began filing up the platform in anticipation of the next one.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to a kind-looking older woman. ‘Could you tell me where the clock is?’

‘Oh, you want the time?’ The woman looked at her wrist. ‘It’s just gone five, dear.’

She was late, then. ‘No, I want the clock. I’m meeting
someone
there.’ Surely Jack would wait for her. Surely. Surely.

‘The clock?’ The woman glanced round. ‘Oh, you must mean the big clock. In the mainline rail station. Up the escalator. You can’t miss it.’

‘Thanks,’ said Alex over her shoulder, already following the ‘Way Out’ sign.

Down the corridor, up the escalator, through the ticket
barrier
. Alex hadn’t known she’d need the ticket again at this end; fortunately she hadn’t thrown it away, but there was a momentary delay as she scrabbled in her pockets for it.

The mainline station was massive, cluttered with shops and eateries like a self-contained town. People strode through it
rapidly
, from train to tube and from tube to train. A few paused to buy a newspaper or a sandwich. Some checked the giant boards which displayed train information: arrivals, departures,
destinations
, platform numbers, times. Changing every few seconds.

And there—there in the middle—was the clock. The big clock.

Alex stopped and took a deep breath.

The clock read ten past five.

Neville had sent Yolanda home; now he could hardly wait to follow her example. It was Friday evening, for God’s sake, and he was sick to death of this case. A week of slogging away, and they were no farther on than they’d been. He wanted to go home, switch on something mindless on the telly, eat a takeaway curry, then drink himself into a state of numbness. He was scheduled
to have the weekend off, which meant that he could drink as much as he bloody well wanted to.

Drinking. Triona. So much had been happening that he hadn’t been able to spare a thought for her. For the e-mail he’d sent her, and the reply she would surely have sent by now.

He turned to the computer on his desk, opening the e-mail program.

Lots of junk. Spam, and other rubbish. People wanting to sell him something.