Almost a Crime (30 page)

‘Yes?’

‘Your guest is here, Mr Fleming.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Please ask her to come up to the

room.’

He was not a religious man; but as he waited, in those last

few minutes at the door, he did find his brain forming what

in some ways resembled a prayer.

Octavia didn’t after all phone Louise. By the time she left

the pub and Gabriel Bingham it was already nearly ten

thirty. Much too late to disturb a stricken household.

Somehow it had been quite hard to finish the conversation

with Gabriel Bingham.

He had, she decided, a rather sexy mind: disturbing and

distracting. He was rather sexy altogether. Not good

looking, not conventionally charming, not her type at all:

but still sexy. She had enjoyed their conversation. He had

enjoyed it too; he had said so. She had been extremely

surprised, he had seemed to disapprove so strongly of her

and all she stood for; but, ‘I find you interesting,’ he had

said, as they stood by their cars.

‘As a social curiosity?’ she had said, and he had said yes,

that too, but he actually found her mind interesting and

talking to her an interesting experience.

It had seemed a rather surprising thing for him to say, after making it so plain he disapproved of her, but she had

found the words pleasing; they warmed and comforted her

after the earlier horrors of the day. She was not entirely

stupid, it seemed, not entirely worthless; a man, a hugely

intelligent man — he had been a Winchester scholar, she had

discovered, as the conversation slithered away from intellectual

challenge and into social exploration — had told her he

actually found her mind interesting.

‘In fact,’ he had said, looking at her rather solemnly, ‘I

find you interesting altogether.’

As she had pulled out of the car park, looked into her

driving mirror, she saw that he was watching her still, not

moving. And although he could not see her, she had smiled

into the mirror and felt, foolishly, that he would have

known.

Of the putative fiancee, there had been no word at all.

‘Now I want you to go easy on the sex in these pictures,

Jonty,’ said Ritz Franklyn. ‘I know she’s the ultimate in

sensuous virginity, and you’ll know it too when you see

her, but I don’t want the mother frightened off. She’s rather

sharp. Quite capable of pulling the plug on us if she thinks

we’re going to corrupt her little baby.’

‘Yeah, okay. That’s fine. I wasn’t actually going to have

her lying on the bed, playing with her pubes, Ritz. I do

have some sensitivity.’

‘You could have fooled me. The other thing is that I’m

going to try to get Christie’s along to the session. I want

them to see her before we go public with her. Get their

mouths watering, put her price up. So just act dumb if they

turn up, okay?’

‘Okay, but not Fido.’

‘No, definitely not Fido. He really would put the mother

off.’ Fido was their codename for George Smythe, managing

director of Christie’s; overweight, sweaty and famous

for his propensity for trying to mount, as Ritz put it, any

young and half-attractive woman who entered his orbit.

‘No, I’ve put in a call to Serena Fox. She has a lot of clout

there.’

‘Charles? Hallo, it’s Octavia Fleming here. Could I possibly

speak to Louise? Oh, I see. Nothing serious, I— Oh, well,

I’m so sorry. Give her my love. Look, I was just wondering.

Would it be all right if I came down tomorrow? To see

Anna? Yes? Well, tell Louise to ring me if not. Oh, and tell

her I’ve gone public on Bartles Wood. Made a speech

down there. Yes, she’ll know what I mean. And give Anna

my love as well, won’t you? My best love.’

Octavia put the phone down, dialled Tom’s direct line.

‘Tom? Hallo. It’s me. I just wanted to make sure you

would be home tonight. We do have to talk. It’s very

important.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll be there. Maybe not till about eight

thirty but—’

‘That’s fine. Oh, and tomorrow, I won’t be home till

very late. I’m going down to see Anna Madison.’

‘Oh really? Is that a good idea? When she’s so ill?’

‘Tom, it’s precisely because she’s so ill that I’m going.

She’s very special, very important to me.’

‘Well, if you think that’s best. Will Louise be there?’

‘I expect so, yes. She’s virtually living there at the

moment. Although she’s not well today herself, apparently.

I just spoke to her father. So, I’ll see you tonight, then?’

‘Yes. I won’t be late.’

‘Please don’t be.’

She felt, shockingly, almost excited at the prospect of the

conversation.”

Serena Fox was just putting the final seal on her brilliantly

red mouth when Ritz Franklyn phoned. Serena was the

creative director of Christie’s Cosmetics. She was forty,

darkly and dramatically beautiful, chic, brilliant and worth

every one of the hundred and fifty thousand pounds

Christie’s paid her each year. She was also a lesbian.

She liked Ritz; she had hoped for a while she too might

be a lesbian, or at least a bi; but a tentative, carefully coded

approach to her after an award dinner revealed that she was

wrong.

‘Serena, hi. You’re still on for tonight, aren’t you? Our

final?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m looking forward to it.’

‘Look, you don’t have a window in your diary at around

four this afternoon, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. Why?’

‘We have got this incredible babe as a finalist. I mean gorgeous. She is going to win. No doubt about it.’

‘Yes?’

‘Serena, I think she could be your girl. She’s so — perfect.

Untouched. Skin like you haven’t seen. Sheets of pale

blonde hair. And — wait for it — huge green eyes.’

‘Green!’

A girl with green eyes: that had been their ideal. So far

they had auditioned over a hundred girls; with blue, brown,

grey, hazel eyes. Not one pair of green.

‘Yup. Now look, I shouldn’t be doing this, and Jonty

will freak, but if you just happened to be around his studio

at four, you could get a preview. Revlon are coming

tonight. And Arden. They’re both looking too. You could

get in just that bit sooner …’

Serena put the phone down and told her secretary that

she would be going out for an hour that afternoon and to

move everything in her diary along to accommodate it.

Tom had only just reached the office when Octavia had

rung. When he switched on his voice mail and listened to

his father-in-law’s message, he knew his fears about Octavia

and her reasons for wanting to talk to him were very well

founded.

Felix Miller was contemplating calling his son-in-law yet

again when Octavia phoned. She sounded absolutely fine,

he thought: quite breezy and cheerful.

‘Daddy, hi. How are you?’

‘Octavia. Where on earth have you been? Why didn’t

you ring me yesterday? I was so worried about you.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I heard you crying on the phone, that’s

why, hysterically. And because then you wouldn’t phone

me back, and because you were out last night. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. Truly. I’m sorry you were worried. I had

a bit of a bad morning. Very bad. Then I had to go down

near Bath, to a meeting.’

‘So why were you in that state?’

‘Oh, I’ve probably lost a client, an important one, and—’

‘Octavia, you don’t get hysterical because you lose a

client.’

‘I did. Yesterday. Look, I really can’t go into it all now,

but I will. I promise. Maybe we can have dinner one night.

I’d like to talk to you about it.’

‘Darling, of course we can. Any night. Tonight?’

‘No, tonight I have to be home. And tomorrow I’m

going down to see Anna. She’s very ill.’

‘Yes, I remember. What about Friday?’

‘Friday’d be good. Do you want to come to the house,

then you can see the children?’

‘Will Tom be there? I phoned him about you yesterday,

told him how worried I was, but he didn’t phone me back.’

‘Tom won’t be there, no,’ said Octavia. ‘Definitely he

won’t be there.’

She really had sounded all right, thought Felix, putting the

phone down; quite cheerful in fact, and very positive.

Maybe she had just been having a bad day. Still unforgivable

of Tom not to have phoned him.

‘Felix? Tom.’

‘Good morning.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t ring you yesterday. I simply didn’t get

the message. I was out of town and my mobile was up the

spout.’

‘Not very impressive,’ said Felix heavily. ‘Suppose I’d

been a client?’

‘If you’d been a client, Aubrey could have talked to you,’

said Tom, his voice on the edge of rage. ‘Anyway, Octavia’s

perfectly all right. I’ve just spoken to her.’

‘As have I. Well, she sounded far from all right yesterday.

And if it was really about losing a client, she’s obviously at

the end of her tether, she shouldn’t be reacting like that.’

‘A client? She didn’t mention losing a client to me. But it

happens all the time. Part of life’s rich pattern, isn’t it? If I

had hysterics every time we lost a client, there’d be a world

shortage of Kleenex. Anyway, no doubt I shall hear in due

course. I must go now, Felix. Good morning to you.’

‘Bastard,’ Tom said heavily as he put the phone down;

interfering, sanctimonious bastard. What was it the Princess

of Wales had said about her marriage? That there were

three of them in it, and it was a bit crowded. He could

commiserate with her there. Only his was even more

crowded. There’d been three in his, from the very

beginning. And then four. Not for the first time, he

reflected that being forced to accommodate the third had

led him, almost inevitably, to allowing in the fourth.

Felix had forgotten, when he made the arrangement to

have dinner with Octavia, that he had promised to take

Marianne away for the weekend. She needed a break, she

had told him, her family was wearing her out, and if he

cared for her at all, he would think of some nice way of

distracting her. He had accordingly booked them on

Eurostar to Paris on Friday night, and into a suite at the

Crillon, her favourite hotel. Now he had either to cancel

Octavia, or postpone the trip to Paris. Postponing it would

be easier; they could leave early on Saturday morning

instead. Octavia might think she was all right, but she

clearly wasn’t. Losing a client was unfortunate, serious even,

but not grounds for having lengthy and noisy hysterics. No,

it was too important, their dinner, to cancel; she would be

relying on him.

He phoned Marianne to ask her if she would mind

postponing their departure until Saturday morning, and

explained why; and was extremely surprised and irritated

when she told him she would mind very much, so much

indeed that she would prefer to postpone the whole

weekend, and that not for the first time she was beginning to find the role of understudy to his daughter very tedious

indeed. Then she put the phone down.

Marianne sat in the studio, watching her daughter being

made love to. She felt rather sick. The fact that it was only a

camera lens working on her, arousing her, making her

aware of her sexuality, didn’t help very much. They were

being very careful of course; she was not so stupid that she

couldn’t see that. Ritz Franklyn had been courtesy itself,

assuring her that nothing would be done to Romilly in the

way of hair and make-up that Marianne would not be

entirely happy with, that she could have a say in the clothes

she wore for the pictures, that anyway all the girls were

being photographed first in jeans and white Tshirts, before

changing into a dress — ‘Most of them are long, and the

short ones really young looking.’

Marianne wouldn’t have said that the dress Romilly was

wearing was particularly young looking, although it was

very short; it was pale pink crepe, covered almost entirely in

overlapping pink and silver sequins, and Romilly’s makeup

was rather extreme, huge pink and silver arcs painted above

each eye, right up to her brows, and a large silver tear added

to one cheek. .She had looked so lovely though, that when

Ritz had asked if Marianne was happy with it, she had felt

she couldn’t possibly object; and then the straight fall of hair

had looked unhappy with the stylised make-up, and the

thick plait they had done and then wound up on top of her

head had clearly been so exactly right. They were very

clever, there was no doubt about that.

But the change in Romilly’s appearance was affecting the

photographer’s reaction to her, and indeed hers to him; he

had been gentleness itself on the first shot, in the jeans and

T-shirt, asking her about school, teasing her about her

exams, but as she had walked in from the dressing room,

taken up her position in front of the camera — and was she