Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (30 page)

Nothing from Triona. Nothing.

Jack had said he’d be wearing red. A red jacket, a red hat, a red scarf, a red jumper like her?

Alex scanned the people in the vicinity of the clock. There was a woman wearing red leather gloves, a girl with a red rucksack on her back. Both seemed to be just passing through, on their way to somewhere else.

He’s gone, she said to herself, a wave of desolation engulfing her. Gone, gone, gone. She’d endured the wretched tube journey, come all this way, and it was too late. He hadn’t waited for her.

Tears pricked at her eyes.

‘Sasha?’ said a voice from behind her.

Alex spun round, all smiles now; no one but Jack knew her by her
nom de plume.

But the person who had spoken to her wasn’t the handsome boy she knew so well from the oft-kissed photo in her locket. This was a man. An
old
man, older than her dad. Fatter than her dad. Balder than her dad. Though he was wearing a red baseball cap, she could see that he didn’t have much hair at all.

‘Sasha?’ he repeated, grinning. His teeth were bad.

‘You’re not Jack.’ She didn’t realise she’d said it aloud—
vehemently
— until he nodded his head.

‘I’m Jack, all right. If you’re gonna get upset with me because I don’t look a lot like my photo…Well, Sasha, you don’t look much like yours, either.’ He grinned again—those horrible teeth—and took a step towards her. ‘I won’t complain if you don’t.’

‘No.’ Alex didn’t take her eyes from him, stepping back blindly. He continued to advance.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘Come on, Sasha. Let’s go and get a burger. We can have a good time together.’

‘No.’

He reached a hand towards her, touched her cheek.

Only then did she turn and run through the crowded terminus, as if for her very life. She saw a narrow opening between two people pulling suitcases and squeezed between them, sprinting towards the exit. ‘Sasha!’ she heard him shout; she didn’t look back.

Frances usually took the bus home to Notting Hill, but today she decided to walk. The buses were crowded, and though it was cold as darkness descended, she felt she needed the fresh air. Towards the end of the afternoon the hospital had seemed stifling to her, overheated and airless.

She wished, as she walked briskly along the pavement, that Leo weren’t so far away. Some of his down-to-earth advice would be welcome, as would one of his comforting bear-hugs.

Well, Frances reminded herself, husbands were good for supplying those things as well. With any luck, Graham would be at home.

He was in his study, scribbling away at his desk.

‘Do you have time for a chat?’ Frances asked, putting her head round the door.

Graham laid his pen down straightaway. ‘Always.’ He peered at her over the tops of his glasses. ‘Sweetheart, you look frozen! Your face is redder than your hair!’

‘I’m a bit cold,’ she admitted.

He went to her and cupped her cheeks in his warm hands. ‘You need a cup of tea,’ he announced. ‘Let’s put the kettle on.’

Frances followed her husband to the kitchen and allowed him to fuss about with the tea, while she stripped her gloves off and warmed her hands on the radiator.

Graham had been a priest for a good many more years than Frances had. Though she knew she wasn’t free to share Rachel’s story with him, there was no harm in drawing on his
experience
to help her in dealing with it. ‘Darling,’ she began. ‘Can I ask your advice?’ Without waiting for a reply she went on, ‘Something happened today. Someone told me something… important.’

He stopped what he was doing and turned to look at her.

‘Important?’

It was the way Graham said the word, raising his eyebrows, that made her defensive. ‘Oh, I know. Everything that everyone tells me is important. To them. To other people as well,
sometimes
. But this was more than that.’ How much could she safely say? ‘This has bearing on…on a police matter. On a criminal investigation.’

He opened a cupboard and reached for two mugs. ‘So you have some information which would help the police—something they don’t know.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

Frances nodded.

‘Is anyone’s life in danger?’

‘No. Not now.’

‘And you promised this…person…that you wouldn’t tell anyone?’ he surmised.

‘As a priest. I gave my word.’

‘Then I think you know the answer, Fran.’ Graham poured boiling water into the tea pot. ‘It’s hard. One of the hardest things we’re called to as priests.’

‘To hold people’s secrets for them,’ she said.

‘When it would be so much easier—and so much better for everyone concerned—to pass them on.’ He sat down abruptly at the kitchen table and sighed. ‘There’s something…I never was able to tell even
you
about this, Fran. It happened a long time ago, but I still think about it.’

‘What?’

Graham closed his eyes, as if in pain. ‘One of my
parishioners
— not in this parish—told me about a…compulsion he
had. Something that did him no good, and was positively bad for his wife. A few months later she ended up in hospital. She almost died. If she
had
died…well, to this day I don’t know how I would have lived with myself.’

Frances resisted the temptation to figure out which of his former parishioners he was talking about. ‘Did you ever think about telling the police?’

‘That,’ said Graham, ‘wasn’t an option. I knew it then, and you know it now. There’s only one thing you
can
do.’

She didn’t need to ask, but she did. ‘What’s that?’

‘Pray, Fran,’ he said. ‘Pray for them, and for yourself.’

Angus Hamilton wasn’t really an impulsive sort of man, though he sometimes liked to think of himself that way. After all, he’d married Jilly; he’d left the town where he’d lived all his life and moved to London. What he failed to understand about himself was that the chief motivator in all he did, impulsive or not, was the need to be in control.

That was really why he went home early on Friday afternoon. If anything, he usually left the office quite late on a Friday, after everyone else had gone, wanting to make sure that everything was in order for the next week.

But on this particular Friday, one of his underlings came to him with a request. ‘Do you mind if I leave a bit early, Mr. Hamilton? The traffic’s foul, and I don’t want to miss my little boy’s school Christmas concert tonight. He’s playing a solo.’

Angus Hamilton said no, for no particular reason except that he could. Then, as if to emphasise his exalted position as Chief Financial Officer, conferring on him the rights and
privileges
denied to others, he decided that perhaps he would try to beat the rush hour traffic himself, and leave an hour before his accustomed time.

He took the lift down to the underground executive car park; on the way he tried to ring Jilly, to let her know he’d be early and to ask her to ring his favourite restaurant to book a
table for dinner. But the line was engaged, so instead he rang the restaurant himself.

‘We’re very busy tonight, Mr. Hamilton. Coming up to Christmas, you know. Fully booked, all evening. But I’m sure we’ll be able to do something for you. Squeeze you in.’

Something
wasn’t good enough. ‘I would like my usual table,’ he insisted.

‘Consider it done, Mr. Hamilton.’

He gave a grunt of satisfaction. That was all right, then. It was as well he hadn’t left it to Jilly, he reflected. She might have been fobbed off with some inferior table, necessitating an unpleasant scene on their arrival.

He had booked the table for three people, in the hopes that Alex would condescend to go with them. That was by no means assured; the lass had grown so stubborn these days, and was as like as not to refuse flat out. She used to be so biddable, such a sunny little thing, but teenage stroppiness had set in early in her case, and he never knew what would set her off.

No, that wasn’t quite true. What set her off, more times than not, was Jilly.

Unconsciously he reached into his pocket for an indigestion tablet.

His job was demanding, yes, but by far the biggest source of stress in Angus Hamilton’s life was the tension between his wife and his daughter.

He hadn’t really expected Alex to react to a new stepmother with joy and rapture. Nor had he any illusions about Jilly’s
maternal
instincts—she’d never pretended to have any. Yet he hadn’t really been prepared for the problems the new set-up would engender. Alex and Jilly: their dislike was mutual, characterised by contempt on the one side, and indifference on the other. Alex despised Jilly and didn’t bother to hide it; Jilly wasn’t the least bit interested in Alex, finding her presence a burden. ‘She’s not my child,’ she was fond of reminding him whenever Alex was being difficult about something.

Jilly would have been far happier, he knew, if he hadn’t insisted on having Alex with them. But she was his daughter; it was out of the question that she should have been allowed to stay in Scotland with her mentally and emotionally unstable mother. Or
his
mother, for that matter, who had offered to keep Alex when the move to London was first mooted. Alex was his flesh and blood; she belonged with him.

As much as he loved anyone other than himself, he loved Alex.

Mark looked at his watch as he pulled his jacket on. ‘I’m out of here,’ he said to no one in particular.

He wanted to go home, have a shower, and change into something a bit smarter before he met Callie. They had arranged to meet at a wine bar in the West End for a drink, then go on to La Venezia from there.

But when he was halfway home, squashed in a packed Central Line carriage, he realised that he hadn’t made any arrangements for their dinner. Any other time of the year it wouldn’t be a problem; at the moment, though, with all of those blooming Christmas parties…

Having made up his mind to do this, he was desperate that it should go well, should happen according to plan.

Once he was over ground and assured of a clear signal, he pulled out his mobile and rang the restaurant. As he’d hoped, Serena answered.