The Vow (10 page)

Marcus smiled.
‘It is part of the Public Relations Department’s job to monitor the media for any mention of the Delacroix Corporation and anything or anyone connected with it.’

‘
That’s an awful lot of reading. Do they get time to do anything else?’

‘
They confine themselves to relevant publications. I don’t believe they spend much time on The Woodworkers Weekly or The Pigeon Fancier,’ Marcus replied dryly. ‘Anyway, I am reliably informed Mr Culver has not mentioned either of us since last Saturday. Has he tried to contact you again?’

Leafing through the paper Lucy told him,
‘No, I’ve had no more calls. There’s nothing in today’s column, perhaps he’s lost interest.’

Marcus looked unconvinced but did not comment. Looking up he said instead,
‘Ah good, here’s Burt.’

A small thickset man in his sixties with a shock of unruly silver hair was walking across the lawn towards them. Burt Maddox had been gardener and handyman at
Graylings since the Delacroixs bought the house. He had helped Helena remodel the garden and now looked after it as he thought she would have wanted, with the occasional referral to Marcus. He lived about a mile down the road with his wife, the redoubtable Dorothy, who attended to the domestic arrangements of the house.

Marcus made the introductions, Burt took a seat, and together they discussed how the grounds were looking. Burt watched Lucy with interest, taking in everything about her, right down to her bare tanned feet with engraved silver rings on several toes.

Later that evening, as they sat in the lounge bar of The Feathers waiting for the friends they spent every Saturday night with, he said to his wife,

‘
She’s a good looking girl, got a lovely head of long black hair. Nice with it too, no airs and graces like that Friday-faced old trout of a sister he’s got.’

Throughout
Dot’s long career as the local ‘lady who does’, Alicia Wyndham-Price was the only person who had ever called into question the quality of her cleaning and ironing. She nodded vigorously in agreement with her husband who went on to say, ‘She’s a lot younger than him though, it’ll be interesting when you go on Monday morning to see how many beds have been slept in.’

Dot giggled.
‘Oh Burt, you are a one!’

As Marcus and Burt went off to look at some guttering that needed attention Lucy took the tea things indoors and went upstairs to have a bath and change before dinner. From the window on the landing she saw that the two men were now heading away from the house towards the orchard and, curiosity getting the better of her, she decided to take the opportunity to have a quick peek in Marcus’s room.

The door was slightly ajar; she pushed it open just far enough to get a good look. With its big wooden bed, heavy furniture and jewel colours it was a man’s room, no pretty feminine touches here. About to leave she caught sight of two framed photos sitting on a mahogany tallboy and, laughing at herself for tiptoeing, she went over to look at them. They were both of Marcus and Helena. The first appeared to be of their wedding and in the second much more recent one they were dressed in formal eveningwear, Champagne glasses in their hands. Lucy was struck by how handsome Marcus had been as a young man, but it was the images of Helena which held her attention.

Somehow Lucy had always envisaged
Helena as the elegant, sophisticated older woman but these photographs told a different story. The wedding shot showed a short plain woman with mousy hair dressed in a cream suit of a cut which would have better suited a slimmer woman. In the second picture when, Lucy guessed, she must have been in her mid-sixties she looked every one of those years and her rather frumpy evening gown did not flatter her. What did shine out from both photos was her obvious good nature, her sweet smile and the happiness which was written all over her face. Looking again at the images of a youthful Marcus, and the still good-looking man in his late forties, Lucy could not help but think they made an incongruous pair. Through the open window came the sound of farewells and Lucy scampered off to her own room.

After they had eaten they decide
d to watch a film on TV neither of them had seen before. Making their way to the sitting room Lucy commented, ‘I’m surprised you don’t have papers to look over or some sort of work to do. I thought business tycoons were all workaholics.’

‘
I make a point of not working at the weekends unless it’s something crucial. I come here to get away from all that, relax, and do the things I really enjoy like playing golf. I was hoping to get nine holes in tomorrow morning if that’s ok with you. We could have lunch at the club afterwards, the restaurant is very good. Do you play by the way?’

‘
No, I never have,’ she told him. ‘Tennis is my game, not that I’ve played lately.’

‘
Well, would you like to try? I can arrange a lesson for you with Greg the club Pro, you might enjoy it.’

Lucy thought this highly unlikely having always
considered golf was about as interesting as watching paint dry, but she got the feeling it would please him so she replied, ‘Why not? Might be fun.’

She was right, he smiled approvingly and told her,
‘I’ll ring the club now. I might just catch Greg in the bar.’

Lucy sat on the sofa and tried to fathom out how the remote control for the television worked. Marcus returned in a few minutes and announced with satisfaction,
‘All settled, he’s free from nine thirty for an hour. You’ll have a bit of a wait for me after that, you could drive yourself back here if you prefer and then return for lunch.’

Lucy looked at him in amazement.
‘You’d let me drive your car? You must be mad! No, I’ll bring a book and sit somewhere in the sun until you’re finished. I don’t know if I’ve got the right clothes for this, what should I wear?’

‘
You’ll be fine in jeans. What size are your feet? There’s a pair of ladies golfing shoes in the hall cupboard. I bought them for Helena, she tried it once and hated it. Let’s go and find them.’

The shoes were duly located at the back of the overflowing hall cupboard and Lucy tried them on. They were a perfect fit and she couldn’t quite suppress the thought that here she was, quite literally now, stepping into the dead woman’s shoes.

~

It was a fifteen-minute drive to the Oakwood Golf Club. The day had dawned warm and sunny yet again with just a few fluffy white clouds in an azure blue sky. They left the Aston Martin amongst good company in the car park and walked towards the gaggle of smart buildings which housed the bar, restaurant, administrative offices and the club’s shop. Colourful tubs of flowers sat on the weed free gravel forecourt, the parasols of the terrace tables fluttered in the gentle breeze and the immaculate greens stretched out in front of them. Marcus’s partner for the morning, a jolly red-faced retired plastic surgeon, waved to them from where he stood waiting by the first tee.

As he left her Marcus pointed out the bench where Greg would meet her at the appointed time and said, ‘See you later. I hope you enjoy your lesson. You’ll like Greg, he’s a nice chap.’

He turned away, his mind focusing on the game ahead and Lucy sat down on the bench to await her instructor. A few minutes before nine-thirty, the door of the shop opened and a tall blonde young man of about her own age
strolled out into the sunshine.

‘
Hi, you must be Lucy. I’m Greg Anderson, welcome to Oakwood.’

His smile was warm as he held out his hand to shake hers. The tanned face was open and good-humoured, Lucy liked him immediately.

As they walked towards the driving range he asked, ‘Are you a niece of Marcus? I know he doesn’t have any children.’

Slightly embarrassed, Lucy didn’t know quite what to say.

‘No, I’m his, err, I’m his girlfriend actually,’ she managed to get out. The words sounded strange to her and she felt the colour rising in her cheeks. It was Greg’s turn to struggle for the right words.

‘
Oh, right. Yes, of course, sorry. Nice bloke, Marcus, good golfer too.’ Feeling the need to say more, he went on, ‘Lovely car too, the Aston Martin. Of course, he can afford to buy whatever he wants.’

Realising how this must have sounded he blushed and ploughed on with,
‘I didn’t mean to say … I wasn’t suggesting…’

But Lucy was laughing.
‘Shall I go and get you a spade so you can finish digging this hole for yourself?’

Greg smiled ruefully and wondered why he couldn’t find a nice looking girl with a sense of humour for himself.

On their return, Marcus and Charles found Lucy sitting on the terrace engrossed in her book. She looked up, smiled, and said, ‘Hello you two. Good game or round or whatever you call it?’

It was Charles who answered.
‘I couldn’t find my stroke at all, but Marcus was on good form.’

‘
Yes, not too bad,’ Marcus agreed. ‘But what about you, how did it go?’

‘
I really quite enjoyed it,’ Lucy enthused. ‘Greg says I have natural talent.’

‘
Does he now?’ said Marcus with interest. ‘Lets go and get a drink in the bar and you can tell us all about it.’

The bar was beginning to fill with people having a pre-lunch drink, they found a table and over the next half hour several members came over to chat and meet Lucy. She noticed Marcus introduced her simply by name without qualifying their relationship. No one made Greg’s mistake.

Half listening to a conversation Charles was having with a woman about the very hot summer being forecast, Lucy noticed a stout man dressed in outrageously coloured plaid trousers approach Marcus.

‘
Alicia not with you, Marcus?’ he asked.

She didn’t catch Marcus’s reply and Charles brought her attention back to their conversation with a question about the weather in the area of
France where she had lived.

~

As they ate their starter Lucy asked, ‘Who is Alicia?’

Marcus looked surprised and then with amusement in his voice replied,
‘You always seem to be asking me about the women in my life, Lucy.’

‘
That’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ she responded indignantly. ‘I’ve only ever asked about Lydia Whatshername with the pointy little nose. Anyway, I heard that man in those awful trousers ask where she was.’

‘
That was the club captain and I’ll have you know those trousers are at the cutting edge of golfing fashion,’ he told her loftily.

‘
Well, I’m glad you don’t wear them, they look ridiculous. So, who’s Alicia?’

She wasn’t about to let him avoid the question.

‘Alicia is my sister.’

‘
You didn’t tell me you had a sister!’

‘
Didn’t I? How remiss of me.’

‘
Well?’ Lucy asked, exasperated.

‘
Well what?’ He saw the look on her face and relented. ‘Alright, alright! Alicia is a couple of years younger than me, divorced, she comes down here occasionally and is the lynch pin in the club’s ladies team which is why Alan was asking after her, there’s a tournament coming up.’ His face grew more serious as he went on to say, ‘You will meet in due course, but I don’t think either of you are ready for that experience yet.’

Lucy didn’t know quite what to make of that remark and didn’t like to ask, so instead enquired,
‘Do you have any other family?’

‘
No, our parents have been dead for some time, they were both only children so no aunts, uncles or cousins. Like me Alicia has no children so our branch of the family is in danger of dying out, another reason why I should like to have an heir.’

~

They set off back to London early that evening and Lucy was already looking forward to her next visit. She realised it wasn’t going to be quite as soon as she would have liked when, as they were driving along, Marcus told her, ‘I leave for the States on Friday; I’m not sure exactly how long I will be gone. After the meetings I’ve arranged I want to spend a couple of days with a friend from university who’s based in Boston these days.’

‘
You will be back for the wedding, won’t you?’ Lucy asked anxiously.

‘
Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten,’ he assured her. ‘It’s the 10th of June isn’t it? I should be back two or three days before. Tell me about the people I’m going to meet.’

‘
Well, my dad obviously, and Sarah who he’s marrying. I’m not sure exactly how old she is, early forties I think, she’s a researcher with one of the big advertising agencies.’

‘
And do you like her?’ Marcus asked.

‘
Oh yes, she’s lovely and very good for Dad. Then there’s Mum, you and her were at Cambridge at the same time. She was Amelia Davenport then.’

Marcus thought for a moment before saying,
‘Reading Law, yes I remember her. She had very long dark hair just like yours.’