Charity (65 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Hugh hesitated outside Holly Bush House, a bunch of red roses in one hand, his briefcase in the other.

It hadn’t taken much detective work to find out where Rob had tucked Charity away: all Hugh had had to do was phone Stratton Promotions and say he wanted to send Charity some flowers. It was a smarter place than he’d expected, though. A big detached house in a tree-lined quiet cul-de-sac, backing on to the river. From what he knew about most of Rob’s patients, few of them could afford even a day out in Brighton.

Hugh almost wished now that he hadn’t seen Charity’s picture in the paper. For some odd reason he couldn’t get her out of his mind, and Sophie was starting to notice how distracted he was. Only last night she’d asked him if he was having an affair.

The trouble was, he was finding fault constantly with Sophie, comparing her unfavourably to a girl he hadn’t seen for twelve years. What sort of madness was it that made a man in his position start dreaming about sunlit pools, walks in woods and bike rides, and what made him feel he’d missed out somewhere along the line?

‘I’d like to see Miss Stratton, please,’ he said to the black nurse who answered the door.

‘I’m afraid she doesn’t have visitors unless by prior arrangement,’ the nurse replied starchily.

‘I’m a solicitor, and an old friend of Miss Stratton’s.’ Hugh smiled engagingly, removing his bowler hat. ‘I wanted to surprise her. But if you’re unsure you could always stay in the room with us.’

He took out his business card and handed it to her. Molly read it, looked up at his smooth, handsome face and weakened.

‘I should ask her first,’ she said.

‘That would spoil the surprise,’ Hugh said. ‘Go on, let me just see her for a few minutes. As I said, you can stay in the room if you think I look a bit dodgy.’

Molly was a romantic at heart. She looked at his dark blue eyes, then at the roses. Matron wouldn’t approve, but then she was out for the evening. Besides a solicitor wasn’t just anyone, it was as safe as a doctor.

‘For you I’ll bend the rules,’ she said. ‘But if Charity’s upset I’ll throw you out.’

Hugh followed the nurse up the stairs. He was impressed by the place, it was more like a good hotel than a nursing home, airy and bright, with thick plain carpets and pastel walls.

Molly stopped before a door at the end of a passage and turned to Hugh. ‘Miss Stratton is easily upset,’ she whispered. ‘Please be very tactful.’

‘Of course,’ Hugh assured her. ‘Now don’t tell her my name, just say it’s an old friend.’

He stood back.

‘You’ve got a surprise visitor,’ he heard her say. ‘Shall I ask him to come in?’

‘Him?’ Hugh heard Charity reply and just that one word brought her image back to him and made his heart lurch.

‘He doesn’t want me to tell you who he is,’ the nurse replied in a low voice. ‘But he looks nice.’

Hugh heard Charity giggle and he could wait no longer. He stepped inside the door.

Her one good hand flew up to cover her mouth and her eyes opened wide as if she’d been slapped.

‘Are you all right, Charity?’ Molly leaned down towards her patient, who was sitting in the chair. She had registered the shock, but couldn’t tell if there was pleasure there too.

Charity could only stare. Although she hadn’t recognised Rob immediately, she would have known Hugh anywhere. He was stockier, and his hair was longer. Twelve years ago his cheeks were almost as smooth as hers; now he had the dark shadow of a beard and a few lines around his eyes. But his dark blue eyes were instantly recognisable, just like Daniel’s.

‘What a surprise,’ she managed to get out at last. ‘Yes Molly, it’s OK. Mr Mainwaring can stay for a while.’

Molly paused before she left. She wasn’t entirely happy about this. Charity looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

‘Ring the bell if you need me,’ she said nervously. ‘I won’t be far away.’

Once Molly had closed the door behind her, Charity struggled to compose herself. Her heart was crashing painfully against her ribs.

‘Well I never expected to see you again,’ she said. ‘I’m astounded at your cheek.’

Hugh put the flowers down on the table. He was chilled by the ice in her voice, and shocked by her scars. If the photograph in the paper had been of her like this, he would never have known her. Setting aside the scars, her eyes were hard and cold now, even the long straight hair was curly, all that was left was her wide mouth, and that wasn’t smiling.

‘I don’t really know where to start,’ he said. ‘I was a bit of a louse, wasn’t I?’

‘You’d better sit down,’ Charity said, her voice shaking. The casual way Hugh had breezed in without even phoning first suggested he had no idea how much he’d hurt her. She wasn’t sure whether she could even speak to someone so grossly insensitive.

‘You were a louse,’ she said coldly. ‘I expect you still are.’

‘Not completely unredeemable.’ He flashed his most winning smile. ‘When I read about your accident I was terribly concerned about you. I found I kept thinking about you.’

It was like playing a game of ping-pong. She airily told him she now lived in London. He spoke of his university days. Charity went on to talk about her promotions agency; he told her about becoming a solicitor.

‘Hell, Charity,’ he smiled with all his old charm, maybe it was a good thing my parents twisted my arm to break it off with you. I expect if you’d come to Oxford neither of us would have got any work done.’

She smiled and let him go on about his days in Oxford. He always had been a good talker, but now she heard the emptiness in his words. He spoke of the parties, the drunken binges, even some of the students she’d met at the pub that summer. She could see just how it had been. His parents had bribed him with the sports car he spoke of and in no time at all he had forgotten there was a girl who had nothing in her life but him.

Glib phrases tripped off his tongue: he’d ‘missed her’, he’d been ‘worried’ about her, all weak phrases, considering what she had been through. He told her about his wife, his hopes to start his own firm of solicitors.

As Charity sat listening to him she remembered the other side of him, not the one she once loved. The way he had goaded the cleaning lady, his snobbish attitude, how he’d added bottles of drinks to the Cuthbertsons’ account and humiliated her at the pub.

A fire began to kindle inside, growing fiercer by the minute.

‘What was it exactly that made you come here?’ she said eventually. ‘Idle curiosity, a do-gooding venture, or a combination of both? Or did you want to be able to dine out on the inside information you’d obtained about a suspected murderess? I bet your heart raced a bit faster when you recognised my face in the paper. I bet you thought “My God, I slept with that woman” and it gave you the kind of thrill your boring wife can’t.’

‘No Charity!’ He jumped up, his face bright red. ‘I loved you, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t get over you for years.’

‘Fat lot you know about love,’ she screamed, the fire within her out of control. ‘I was
pregnant
, Hugh. I was carrying your child when you dumped me.’

The colour drained from his face.

The nursing home was silent, not even the sound of a television in the distance. Charity could hear her heart pumping hard with rage.

‘Our son was born in May of the following year, after I’d been through the kind of hell someone like you could never imagine. I had to give him up for adoption because I had no money or home to take him to. Have you
any
idea what that does to a woman?

‘What were you doing on the 7th of May? Swanning around a May Ball in a tuxedo, with some horsy girl your parents approved of?’

Hugh felt faint. All the time they’d been talking he’d been waiting to hear sentimental words from those lovely lips. He’d sensed the chilly reception, but was sure he could charm her round. But a
baby
! Not once had he ever imagined anything like that.

‘Oh Charity.’ He sighed, moving over to her chair, wanting to reach out and touch her but not daring to. ‘I had no idea. If I’d known!’

‘If you’d known you would have run for it anyway. They bribed you with a car, didn’t they? I can tell you now I was well rid of you. I wouldn’t want to be part of a family like yours. Clear off now to your socially acceptable wife. You can brighten up your evening by telling her about me.’

‘I can’t believe you’re saying such things,’ he said weakly. ‘You’ve changed so much. The Charity I knew was never like this.’

She laughed then. He looked like a little lost boy who’d had his ice-cream snatched out of his hands, all wide-eyed innocence and naïvety.

‘I’m not the same girl now.’ She leaned forward in her seat and her eyes were icy. ‘These scars on my face are nothing to the ones inside me. There hasn’t been a day in eleven years I haven’t thought about our son – he had his eleventh birthday just before my accident. The ache for him never goes away, and it never will. I loved you Hugh, I believed in you and if the truth was known I’d have been a better wife than the one you married because if you’d stayed with me, you wouldn’t be wanting to look for a bit on the side now!’

Hugh backed away, frightened by the fury in her. But she was right. He
had
been gutless – and if his life didn’t shine quite as brightly as he’d hoped for, he only had himself to blame.

The door opened and Rob stood there panting from running up the stairs. His face was white, with two red spots on his cheeks.

‘You had to come, didn’t you?’ he yelled at Hugh. ‘You couldn’t leave well alone, could you?’

Charity tried to haul herself out of her chair, frightened by the sparks flying between the two men. ‘Enough!’ she shouted. ‘I’m glad Hugh came, Rob. At least I’ve been able to tell him about Daniel. But he’s going now. We’ve nothing more to say to one another.’

Charity watched the sun come up through her window. Rob had put her to bed soon after Hugh left, but she was aware of him sitting silently beside her for some time, just holding her hand. It was dark when she woke and she had reached out for him blindly. But it was three in the morning and she couldn’t expect him still to be sitting there. She hadn’t slept since.

Seeing Hugh again had been like opening long-closed doors in her mind. Through them she could see herself and him at that secret pool, the water lilies, the overgrown garden. She could feel the sun hot on her back as they lay naked in each other’s arms and she could hear him whispering how much he loved her.

Yet it meant nothing now, just a pretty out-of-focus picture. What was real was the scene in the adoption society, seeing that woman walk out of the room with Daniel in her arms, and knowing that a part of herself was lost for ever.

Her anger was gone. She’d thrown it all at Hugh and the knowledge that he now held the burden of guilt and remorse left her with a trace of pity for him.

The sun was bright red, as it came up over the roofs of the houses behind the river. Slowly it pushed away the darkness, black turning to grey and then to pink. She focused her eyes on the black part of the sky, finding it oddly similar to that dark part in her mind which she couldn’t reach into. The sun was the truth, pushing until it banished all the black. Today she would tell Rob those last few dark secrets, clear them out once and for all.

‘Hallo George,’ Dorothy’s voice purred down the phone, rich and sensual. ‘It’s Dorothy, have you got anything for me yet?’

‘Not a great deal,’ he said warily. ‘People don’t want to open up.’

‘Then lean on them, George,’ she said. ‘I need some information quickly.’

‘Look, come round to my office,’ George said. There’s one or two things that might interest you.’

‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes.’

Soho by day was very different from Soho by night. The strip clubs and dirty book shops seemed to disappear without their neon lights and the streets were full of office workers going to lunch. Dorothy caught a taxi to Tottenham Court Road and as she passed through Soho Square there were groups of people sunbathing on the central green and eating sandwiches. It reminded her fleetingly of Barkston Gardens and how the three of them used to lie outside all day on hot Sundays, gossiping and laughing.

Between visiting Charity, going to see Prudence, and giving Rita a hand at the agency she had barely thought about herself since she stepped off the plane at London airport. Now she could see this is how life had been for Charity: always doing things for other people, thinking how her actions would affect everyone, employees and family. No wonder she had no private life, no peace of mind.

Robert Cuthbertson was in love with Charity, that to Dorothy was as plain as a pikestaff. She had met him for a quick supper last night and he hadn’t fooled her for a minute. Dorothy knew about men, if nothing else. Of course it was hard to gauge how Charity felt about Rob, she wasn’t in a fit state to think about romance, but surely Robert Cuthbertson was the kind of man any sane woman would want? He had integrity, a sense of humour, he was far more interested in others than in himself. Dorothy had listened while he talked about his work at the mental hospital at Colney Hatch. Even with all her cynicism, she could see the man was an idealist, a carer. He and Charity were designed for one another.

I’ll make sure you end up happy, Chas, if it’s the last thing I do, she thought grimly as she approached George’s office. You deserve it more than any of us.

‘Drink?’ George said as she sat down. It was very hot in his office, a small fan merely moving the air about. Dorothy sat in the chair nearest to the open window.

‘Gin and tonic please,’ she said, taking off her jacket and flinging it over another chair. ‘Christ, it’s hot in here!’

George looked round at her as he poured the drinks. She looked serenely cool in a pale blue silk dress, her hair twisted up loosely on the top of her head. He thought she was quite the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen with those sensational almond eyes and that glowing olive skin. He wondered if there was a man in her life, but didn’t dare to ask.

‘I keep thinking of moving my office somewhere a bit smarter,’ he said with a smile. ‘But Soho is where it all happens and I can’t be too far away from my interests. Do you live in London still?’