Walking in Darkness (39 page)

‘My wife ran at you, sobbing,’ Gowrie said. ‘She picked you up and wouldn’t let go of you. She thought you were her own baby, she kept calling you Cathy, and that was what gave me the idea. I had to get her out of the country, safely back home, I was scared what might happen to her if she was trapped there, couldn’t get out. She would never have recovered from that double shock. I couldn’t let that happen to her. She needed to get home, back to the States. I admit I used you, Cathy . . . yes! I used you, you see I don’t deny it.’ His eyes were liquid with emotion, with pleading, coaxing her to see the story his way, to be convinced. Words were his stock in trade, he lied easily, without thinking. ‘But only to save her sanity. You know she’s been balanced on a knife-edge all your life, anything could have tipped her over at that moment. She needed you, Cathy, and I was ready to grab at anything that helped her.’

Cathy looked back into her childhood and remembered her mother’s good times and bad times – the increasing strangeness of her weeping and laughing, the hysteria, the frightening outbursts when she threw her arms round Cathy, clutched her, covered her face in kisses, held her too tightly, scaring her silly. The sinking into silence and staring, her thumb in her mouth, rocking back and forth in her chair, while five-year-old, six-year-old, eight-year-old Cathy watched and wanted to cry, wanted to get away from this strange, scary mother who was unlike the mothers of any of her friends.

‘But why keep it up once you were back in the States?’ Steve asked coolly. ‘Why not tell Mrs Gowrie’s father what had happened? Because you didn’t, did you? He has no idea that Cathy is not his granddaughter.’

Gowrie looked into Cathy’s eyes and spoke to her, answering Steve. ‘Your mother needed you so badly, I couldn’t do that to her. If I had told Grandee I was afraid he wouldn’t let her keep you. Cathy, be honest with yourself – was what I did so terrible? If I hadn’t taken you to the States you would have grown up in the most abject poverty – your real mother had nothing. She would barely have been able to feed you, she couldn’t offer you much of a future. I was doing her a favour, taking you off her hands; she was half crazy after losing her husband.’

Sophie angrily burst out, ‘You’re twisting the truth! Yes, she’d lost her husband and she was desperate – so what did you do? You took away the only thing she had left that she cared about. Her baby. And you left her feeling guilty. Isn’t that crazy? She lost her husband and her child on the same day, and ever since she’s felt she was to blame.’

‘She was looked after,’ Gowrie defensively said. ‘And so were you. She had plenty of money from me. If she felt that badly, why did she accept it?’

Flushing, Sophie said, ‘Because she was terrified to say anything! She was afraid of what might happen to her, and to me, too. You know what life under Communism was like – she was afraid she’d be accused of collaborating with the enemies of the state. Taking money from an American spy . . . she thought they might shoot her.’

‘You’re making my case for me!’ Gowrie told her, then looked at Cathy, ‘You see what I saved you from? It wouldn’t have been much of a life. Even now, they’re living on a very basic level.’ He looked at Sophie. ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’

She nodded, her face tense. How could she deny it when she had struggled and fought to escape from that poverty trap, from having to scrimp and save every cent just to buy clothes or shoes for herself.

Gowrie gave Cathy an insistent stare. ‘There you are – even she admits it! Instead of living on the breadline and going without all the things that make life pleasant, even bearable, you were brought up as an American “princess”. You had everything a girl could want – lovely clothes, dogs, ponies, the best education money could buy.’ He stopped and gave her a pleading smile. ‘And you were loved, you can’t deny you were loved. By me, by your mother, when she wasn’t sick, by Grandee. You had a happy childhood, Cathy. And if you tell the world what you’ve found out, if you insist on ruining everything I’ve tried to do for you, Grandee will disinherit you and your mother will lose any chance she has of recovering her sanity, because whenever she remembers anything she wants to see you.’

Her mother occasionally came out of her long retreat from reality and was pitifully herself for a while, clinging to Cathy as if she were the child and Cathy the adult.

Cathy bit her lip, and Gowrie went on soberly, ‘And as for you yourself, Cathy, don’t you realize that you’ll probably lose your American citizenship and have to go back to Czechoslovakia? God knows what the legal implications will be – for me, as well as you. I may go to prison for fraud – is that what you want to happen to me, Cathy?’ His eyes reproached, glazed as if with tears. ‘Do you hate me that much?’

‘No, of course not!’ Cathy was distraught; there was a dull thudding in her head, an aching in her heart. She didn’t know what to think or feel. ‘It’s all so complicated,’ she muttered. ‘But I don’t hate you, Dad – I couldn’t, how could I?’ Her eyes slid to Sophie and Steve. ‘How could I?’ she repeated to them, begging them to understand. ‘It’s true, all of it – I had the happiest childhood, I loved him, and Grandee . . . we were a happy family.’ She had even loved that strange, remote, scary figure she had thought of as Mother, felt guilt and pity and uneasiness about her, but a sort of love, too.

‘I know,’ Sophie said in a comforting voice, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Of course you did, nobody says you didn’t.’

Gowrie was quick to see his advantage and rush in, ‘I just wish I had been the one who told you the truth – but I never felt I could, it was never the right time – but at least I wouldn’t have hurt you like this.’ He looked at Sophie with accusation in his eyes. ‘Why the hell did you come here and break it to her the way you did? I suppose you wanted to get some sort of spiteful revenge on me? And on her, too! Oh, I know you keep saying you have a noble reason for doing this . . . because your mother is dying, and because you wanted to see the sister you’d thought was dead. But the truth is you’ve already gone a long way to destroying her life. When her husband finds out, do you think he’s going to stay married to some Czech peasant girl who has no money or background?’

Cathy was white, her very lips bloodless. So he thought that too – he suspected what she did, that Paul would turn against her now, would no longer want a woman who wasn’t the woman he thought he was marrying.

Sophie flinched and angrily said, ‘I don’t want to hurt her. I just wanted to find her, for my mother’s sake – why should my mother die without ever seeing her own child again? You have no right to quarrel with that! You’ve already deprived my mother of Cathy since she was a baby; surely to God she can see her now, even if it is only for a last time? I couldn’t just forget it, once my mother had told me the truth. I thought Anya was dead, then I was told she was alive, and I had to find her, I had to.’

‘Even if it wrecked her life?’ Gowrie’s voice was loaded with scorn. ‘Believe me, she’ll hate you for this one day, when she realizes what you’ve done to her. If you really care about her you’ll tell her to be sensible and forget she ever heard your name! And then you’ll vanish again to wherever you came from, and stay away. You owe her that – and me, too.’

‘She doesn’t owe you a thing!’ Steve bit out. ‘I haven’t forgotten the attempts on her life, even if she has.’

Gowrie kept his temper, but his voice was thick and his cheekbones carried a dark red stain. ‘I don’t know exactly what your game is in all this, Colbourne – but I suppose you’re after the story to use in your TV programme. That’s all you really care about, isn’t it? You used to care for Cathy, though – until she married someone else. Is this your revenge for her preferring another man?’

‘You have a low, dirty mind, Senator,’ Steve ground out between his teeth. ‘I’m not here as a reporter, and I’m not the vengeful type, although I guess you are. I don’t want to hurt Cathy. I’m here because I care about Sophie, and for no other reason.’ He put his arm around her and Sophie gave a little sob and turned her face into his chest, leaning on him. Steve began to stroke her hair comfortingly, feeling her quiver against him.

Cathy watched them, envying their intimacy, the closeness between them. If only Paul would come, would put his arm around her, the way Steve was holding Sophie. If only she could be sure he wouldn’t turn away from her now – she had been so sure he loved her once; why was she no longer sure? Why had this great abyss opened up between them?

Gowrie saw he had made a psychological error, and hurriedly said, ‘OK, I see . . . Look, I swear to you, Colbourne, it was my secretary who tried to kill Sophie. She wasn’t too balanced, she must have had some sort of brainstorm. She knew Sophie was causing a problem for me, she wanted to help me – but I had no idea what she was up to.’ He gave Cathy a sideways look, then said in a low voice, ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell you. I’d been having a . . . a relationship . . . with her for some time. She was in love with me, and I found her very attractive. I haven’t had a real marriage for so long.’ He looked at Cathy again, begging her to sympathize. ‘You know that, Cathy. I’ve been very lonely at times, especially after you got married. My wife hasn’t been a real wife to me for years, I needed some sort of companionship and love. Emily threw herself at me, and I . . . I’m human, I was tempted. I wish to God, though, that I’d never got involved with her. She was no more balanced than my wife, as it turned out.’ His voice roughened, took on a slur of rage. ‘Why do I keep getting women like that? Why always the screwballs?’ Then he stopped, reddening as he saw how they all looked at him, and hurriedly added, ‘If I’d known what she was planning I’d have stopped her, but she was acting on her own initiative – she thought she was saving me from ruin. When she told me what she had done I was appalled.’

‘But you didn’t stop her trying again, did you?’ Steve sardonically pointed out.

‘I tried to stop her! I told her to leave Sophie alone, I told her I didn’t want her to hurt Sophie, but last night –’ He broke off, shuddering, lost all his colour, a dew of perspiration bursting out on his forehead, above his mouth. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it over his pale, sweating face. ‘Well, you know what happened last night. I can’t bear to think about it, about what she tried to do, how she died.’

He wasn’t lying now, thought Cathy. Even a career diplomat trained to lie with total plausibility could not control his bodily functions, make himself sweat, make himself go pale or shake like that. No, this was a real reaction.

Had he been in love with that woman? It didn’t surprise her to know he had had an affair; she had often suspected he might have other women, although she couldn’t actually remember anyone in particular. She had never thought much about his sexual needs or tastes – you never did, where your own father was concerned, did you?

But she knew he was a man who feared pain – he always had, as long as she could remember. Once when they were fishing from a boat off the bay near Easton he had got a hook embedded in his palm and had gone white and looked sick. He had told her to row back to shore while he sat there nursing his hand, the blood welling up around the buried hook, and he couldn’t even look at it, he hadn’t watched while a doctor extracted the hook and put some stitches into his palm.

She wondered if it was Emily Sanderson’s death he found painful – or the way she had died, the image of that death, which must be burnt on his mind’s retina, indelible, like the ghost of a word forever there on a computer screen left switched on too long.

Gowrie took a deep breath and pushed his handkerchief back into his pocket, looked from one to the other of them, dwelling longest on Cathy. ‘The bottom line is . . . if this gets out we’ll all suffer. It won’t just be me. Cathy will possibly lose everything, maybe even her home here and her husband, and you, Sophie, you may well lose her, once she realizes who is to blame for blowing her life to pieces – which, if you really care about Sophie, Colbourne, isn’t going to be good news for you either. On the other hand, if nobody talks, and I become the next president, then we’ll all benefit.’ His eyes moved from one face to the other again. ‘I would be a very powerful friend for all of you. Colbourne, you’d have the inner track at the White House; I’d make sure your career went sky-high. You and Sophie would have a great future together. Cathy’s marriage wouldn’t fall apart. Nobody will lose, everyone will benefit. All we have to do is make sure our secret never gets out.’

All three of them stared at him in silence; then into the stillness a footstep fell and they swung round to find Paul standing there, his eyes implacable.

‘Making deals, Gowrie? You left me out of your conference, didn’t you? What’s on offer for me to keep my mouth shut?’

Cathy’s heart had leapt at the sight of him, but at the sound of his voice all the hope left her. She knew at that instant that it was over. She was going to lose him. She had known it last night, but in some corner of her mind a tiny, fugitive hope had lingered and now it died, and it hurt more than she could bear.

She had to get away. She ran past him without looking at him, out of the stable yard, along the gravelled terrace.

‘Cathy, wait!’ Sophie pulled herself free of Steve and hurried after her. Paul turned hurriedly, too, as if to go after her too, his face marble, stiff and white and without any visible humanity, but then he stopped dead, his hands hanging by his sides, changing his mind.

Gowrie quickly said, ‘Just name your price, Paul. We’re men of the world, we both know it’s always possible to make a deal. Tell me what you want and I’ll make sure you get it. I know about your money problems; I wouldn’t insult you by suggesting you married Cathy for her money, but clearly you need financial help with your companies and you wouldn’t get it from the Ramsey family trust if they ever found out Cathy wasn’t really a Ramsey, wasn’t my wife’s child. They’ll disown her once they know that. It can’t possibly be in your interests for them to find out.’

Paul stared at him and laughed shortly. ‘You evil little man.’

Steve’s eyes widened in surprise and interest. The tone was filled with such loathing. He knew how Paul felt, he felt the same; yet he was surprised by the sheer depth of the hatred. He had thought Paul was the type to take a shock like this in his stride. The man had always seemed so cool, so civilized, a typical drawling Englishman with ice-water in his veins. Obviously he had been completely mistaken about the guy.