A Dark Dividing (27 page)

Harry dialled the number of St Luke’s Hospital straight away.

Roz had always known that one day she would find Simone, and she was deeply grateful to this journalist, this Harry Fitzglen who had written the article on the stupid pretentious gallery. Roz had skimmed the article in her lunch-break, only half-interested, but then she had looked at the photographs with closer attention. Was it Simone? Could it really be Simone? But she had known it was, and light and brilliance had begun to explode inside her head. I’ve found her! After all these years I’ve found her! I know where she’s working and what she’s doing, and I know the name she’s using! Marriot, that’s her name now. Simone Marriot.

The elderly aunt who had brought her up would have been fastidiously shocked to think that Roz had telephoned a strange man, and even more horrified to think that Roz had agreed to meet him that same evening in a wine bar. Hardly the behaviour of a nice girl, the aunt would have said, thinning her lips disapprovingly, and would have observed that women old enough to be past such foolishness asked for trouble if they ran after men. Roz often thought that it was as well her aunt had died before the wicked 1980s started, and it was certainly a good thing that she had never seen the decadent 1990s.

Harry Fitzglen had said on the phone that he would find out about putting Miss Raffan in touch with Simone Marriot, but suggested they meet first. Was Miss Raffan likely to be free that evening by any chance? he asked, and Roz had said please to call her Rosie, and that tonight was rather short notice but she might sort something out. She managed to make it sound as if she would have to rearrange another commitment. And where exactly—? Oh yes, Giorgio’s would be fine. Yes, she knew it very well. She hoped this sounded as if she quite often called in at Giorgio’s, which was a modern and quite upmarket wine bar near the hospital. Before ringing off she remembered to ask how she would recognize him.

‘I’ll get one of the tables and I’ll tell them I’m expecting someone. Then if you ask for me at the bar they’ll show you through. Is that all right? Good. I’ll see you around eight, Rosie.’

Rosie. It was more than twenty years since anyone had called her Rosie and it gave Roz a jolt to hear it. But just as she had known, within about ten seconds of reading the article on Thorne’s Gallery, that she had found Simone, so had she also known that she was going to resurrect Rosie.

It was, of course, Rosie rather than Roz who went to Giorgio’s that evening to meet Harry Fitzglen. She was even wearing Rosie’s choice of clothes. A red silk skirt—shockingly expensive and what her aunt would have called a tart’s colour, but it had been displayed in the window of a small exclusive boutique on her way home that very evening and she had not been able to resist going in and buying it. With it she wore a black silky sweater, and she had fluffed her hair out more than she usually did and had even added big gold earrings. They had been a Christmas present from one of the nurses and she had never worn them, but they would be just right tonight. She felt attractive and altogether good about herself. More to the point, she felt different.

Harry Fitzglen was waiting for her, which was polite of him. He bought her a drink and then said he would be very happy to pass a letter to Simone Marriot, but he had wanted to meet Rosie first, just to be sure who he was dealing with. You got all kinds of weirdos ringing newspaper offices at times—she would understand that, of course.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Could I ask you—how well did you know Simone and Sonia?’

Simone and Sonia. The names dropped into Roz’s mind like chips of ice, and for a moment the crowded wine bar blurred and there was a roaring in her ears. Stay calm, said Rosie’s voice softly. You can deal with this. You have dealt with far worse than this. She sipped some more of her wine, grateful for the cool dry taste, and said, Well, she had known the twins as tiny babies—it had been before the operation to separate them, of course—and she had known their parents as well.

‘Their mother? You knew their mother?’ He leaned forward, his eyes on her. He was really rather nice-looking when he wasn’t frowning at the world. His eyes were that very clear grey you seldom saw, edged with black rims. Roz wondered how old he was. She had originally thought he was quite a lot younger than she was, but she was revising this opinion. He was perhaps about thirty—thirty-two at a push. Not all that much younger after all. Ten or twelve years, maybe.

He was saying, ‘I’m sorry, did that sound intrusive? It’s just that with this launching of Thorne’s my editor’s dreamt up the idea of a follow-up feature on the twins—what they’ve done with their lives, how they coped with growing up. I expect you know the kind of thing I mean,’ said Harry, and Roz nodded and murmured that yes, of course, she knew, and how interesting and what a good idea.

It was not interesting in the least and it was potentially an extremely dangerous idea, and it was a very good thing indeed that Roz had nerved herself to make that phone call and to come to Giorgio’s tonight, or she would not have known that this was being planned. A magazine feature—actually an article about the twins, with people delving around in the past, and in one particular fragment of the past! Dangerous! Dangerous! This man, this journalist with the beautiful eyes, was clever and perceptive and he might uncover all kinds of things. After a moment Roz said, ‘Will you be the one who writes the article?’

‘I hope not. Personally I think the idea’s crap,’ said Harry. ‘But my editor’s asked me to do some preliminary research to see if there’s enough material, and that’s the other reason I wanted to meet you tonight.’ He paused to drink his own wine. ‘I’ve been trying to find Sonia,’ he said. ‘The younger twin. But I’ve drawn a complete blank. As far as I can make out she hasn’t died or got married or had children or applied for a passport or a driving licence.’

‘It sounds so sad when you put it like that,’ said Roz softly.

‘Well, if she has done any of those things, she’s managed it without getting it recorded anywhere,’ said Harry. ‘So it occurred to me that if you knew the family you might be able to give me some background. But I do understand you might not have known them well enough.’

He was clearly giving her a polite get-out if she did not want to talk, but Roz could have laughed out loud. How well had she known the family! Oh, only well enough to make love with the twins’ father in the prim sitting-room of her aunt’s little house. Only well enough that when that cheating bitch, Melissa, ran away taking the babies with her, it had been Roz who had discovered where the ungrateful creature had gone. The past came swooping forward, dark and hurting and viciously unfair.

But none of these things could be said and most of them ought not to be remembered. ‘I was at the hospital when the twins were born,’ she said, speaking slowly as if thinking back. ‘I was only a student nurse in those days, but I remember the publicity and all the fuss. And I went to the house a few times to help with the twins when they left hospital, and I babysat a few times. That’s why I’d like to write to Simone now—to say how pleased I am to read about her success.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘Why is Simone called Marriot now, by the way? Has she got married?’

‘No idea. No husband’s been mentioned, not that that means anything.’

He was evading the question, of course. The answer was almost certainly that Melissa had changed her name all those years ago; Roz had guessed that at the time, of course, although she had known that one day she would find the bitch. She had not known it would happen like this, though. But she said, ‘I wonder if I could find any photos of the family, or letters for your article.’

‘Could you? From so far back?’ He sounded surprised.

‘Oh, I’m a bit of a magpie,’ said Roz cheerfully. ‘I’ve got boxes of photos and old Christmas cards and stuff. I’ll have a look and phone you, shall I?’

‘That would be great. And listen, if you want to let me have a letter I’ll pass it to Simone with pleasure.’

‘I’d love to see her again,’ said Roz, in a wistful voice. ‘I didn’t quite like to write to that gallery—Thorne’s. Not very private, I thought.’

‘I understand that.’ He smiled at her; he looked completely different when he smiled. ‘I’m glad you phoned me, Rosie,’ he said. ‘Would you like to have something to eat while we’re here? They do quite a good lasagne, I think.’

Roz had never eaten Italian food in a wine bar with a man. So it was Rosie—Rosie whose mind was already considering plans and strategies—who smiled, and who said, ‘What a good idea. I love lasagne.’

Harry reached his own flat an hour later, too full of slightly acidic lasagne and of nameless red wine that would probably give him a skewering headache tomorrow morning.

He poured a large whisky and then played back the messages on his answerphone. There was one from Angelica Thorne who was full of expensive-sounding plans for going to a really fun-sounding club on Monday evening with a few friends. She wondered if Harry might like to come along, what did he think?

What Harry thought was that at this rate he was going to end up even more insolvent than he had done with Amanda, and from the sound of things twice as quickly. He reached for the phone book to look up details of the nightclub, and after this disinterred his last bank and credit card statements. These made glum reading, in fact it looked as if that vow about starving before writing the Anderson/ Marriot article was nearer to the truth than he had realized. He then spent ten minutes picturing his exit from the bankruptcy court, haggard and unshaven, brooding on the perfidy of females as he walked to the nearest homeless centre, supping the bitter wormwood of lost love and quaffing the salt-sick gall of angry passion. This random jumble of quotations pleased him so much that he wrote it down in case it could be used some time or other.

Philip Fleury had understood about using good phrases. Harry was rationing himself to reading just a couple of chapters of
The Ivory Gate
at a time, because otherwise he would probably have devoured the book at a single sitting. There was nothing wrong with devouring a book at a single sitting; he had done it many times in the past and it had been one of the traits that had irritated and annoyed Amanda. Living through other people’s emotions she had called it, proffering the expression as if it was an original observation of Kierkegaard or Goethe.

But this was not a book that Harry wanted to read in a greedy devouring sweep; it was a book he wanted to read slowly, absorbing the story and its people very thoroughly indeed. He had not yet been able to decide why he had not told Simone about finding Floy. Was it because he wanted to find out more about Floy—even find out who ‘C’ and Viola and Sorrel had been—and hand the entire package to Simone? To say, Here you are, my dear, this is the man who owned your house, in fact this is a photograph of him—good-looking, isn’t he?—and I’ve found out what happened to him in later life as well. So come out to dinner, Simone, and let me tell you all about it…

As a chat-up line it was about as nauseating as you could get. I suppose, said Harry’s mind sarcastically, that you think it’s all that’s needed to make her fall into your arms or your bed, swooning with gratitude?