Deception and Desire (47 page)

Slowly, deliberately, Brendan climbed up on to the parapet. He felt quite calm now, filled only with a sense of purpose. It was going to be easy, so easy. One move, one slip, perhaps a moment's fear as the air rushed past him, and it would all be over. No more failure, no more pain, no more guilt. The newspapers could write what they liked about him, it would no longer matter – to him at any rate. He stood, poised, gazing into the blackness below.

A shout shattered his trance. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw a figure running towards him, calling something to him. Brendan could not make out the words but he knew he could not wait around to find out. No one was going to stop him now, no one was going to thwart him this time. He had made up his mind and for once he was not going to fail in his intention.

Brendan braced himself.

‘I'm sorry, Ros,' he said.

Then he jumped.

Mike heard the news as he grabbed a quick bowl of cornflakes before leaving for his school trip.

A man had fallen from the suspension bridge the previous evening. Police had recovered a body. The man had not yet been named.

Mike went on with his cornflakes, scarcely even registering what he had heard. It wasn't that unusual. People jumped from the suspension bridge with monotonous regularity. Sometimes they travelled quite long distances to do it. Mike shook his head, an indication to himself of his total incomprehension of what could drive any man to take his own life, particularly that way. He had fallen once when rock climbing; he could still remember the sickening feeling inside him as the air rushed past and the jarring thud as he hit the ground, knocking all the breath out of his body. That had been a short fall compared with the one from the suspension bridge at low tide but he wouldn't care to repeat it. Not that they all died, of course, the people who jumped. Sometimes their fall was broken by scrub on the river banks or by the bridge itself, sometimes they lay horribly injured on the mud flats for hours before anyone realised they were there, sometimes they drowned.

If I was going to kill myself I'd get in my car and drive like hell at some very large immovable object, Mike thought. But he could not, in all honesty, imagine ever getting to such a state himself and he found it almost impossible to identify with anyone who had.

Poor stupid fool, Mike thought. Money problems, woman trouble, whatever, none of it was worth taking your own life over. Things had a way of sorting themselves out. Insoluble as any problem seemed in the present, five years hence and it was hard to remember what all the fuss was about.

He switched off the radio and went to pack his rucksack with crisps, Mars bars, a squashed-looking meat pie that he rather fancied might be past its sell-by date and a Thermos of coffee.

A day in the company of a coachload of twelve-year-olds stretched before him uninvitingly. All part of the job, he knew, but today he resented it.

What he really wanted to do was spend the day with Maggie.

Maggie did not put the radio on that morning and consequently she did not hear about the man who had fallen from the suspension bridge. She slept late, was horrified to see the time when she did wake, and was about to leap out of bed when she remembered – there was nothing to get up for. Mike was away on a trip, she had nothing whatever planned and in all honesty there was not a thing she could do towards finding out what had happened to Ros.

In any case, Ros seemed to have been relegated almost to the back of her mind. Ever since Mike had telephoned to say she was missing, Maggie had thought of little else and anxiety for her sister had obsessed her. Now, suddenly, it was as if that obsession had burnt itself out, exhausted by overkill, and instead her thoughts were almost exclusively of Mike whilst her body remembered with disturbing clarity just how she had felt last night when he had kissed her.

The sense of guilt was still there, of course, reminding her that neither she nor Mike was free, but it didn't stop the feelings of excitement and anticipation that tingled and teased somewhere in the depths of her, couldn't prevent her from longing to see Mike again or blot out the image of his face that was there, tantalisingly, in front of her closed eyes. Maggie had forgotten in the months and years of desperately trying to make her marriage work what it felt like to fall in love. Now every nerve ending, every fibre of her being conspired together to make her remember. And in spite of knowing it was impossible, as well as wrong, she was ridiculously, soaringly happy.

She lay quietly, savouring the happiness and trying not to think about the reality, that with Ros and Ari standing between them it would be impossible for things to turn out the way she knew her heart wanted them to. Ari seemed a million miles away, the long shadow of Ros had no power to touch her this morning. If Mike was here, if she was going to have to face him in a few hours, the choices would have to be made and she knew she would decide just as she had done last night to step away from the rubicon rather than cross it. But Mike was not here. For the moment, at any rate, she could allow herself the luxury of pretending, of allowing her dreams full rein.

She closed her eyes, remembering the feel of his mouth on hers and the responses of her body, wrapped her arms around herself and pretended they were Mike's. Soon, whether she had any plans for the day or not, she would have to get up and let go of the delicious illusion. Perhaps she would telephone Ari, or at least try to telephone him – being Sunday he would almost certainly be at home in Kassiopi. No woman, not even Melina, would be able to change the habits of a lifetime; not even the prospect of a day of illicit and steamy love would be compensation for his mother's disapproval. But she was not ready to do it yet. Let the dream last just a little longer …

Relaxed at last after the stress and strain of the previous week, Maggie began to drift once more into a light doze. When she did she dreamed of Mike. He was standing on a path that ran through a dense woodland. He was holding out his arms to her and smiling.

‘I'm coming, my darling,' she said. But the branches of the trees were slapping at her and her feet seemed to be bogged down in quicksand. Try as she might she could not reach him.

‘Isn't it wonderful to have a really fine day at last? We'll eat alfresco at lunchtime – in fact I think we might go the whole hog and have a barbeque,' Dinah said. ‘ What do you think, Don?'

Don Kennedy smiled indulgently. Personally he did not like eating outdoors at all. He preferred a proper meal, taken at a leisurely pace at a table inside, with fine wine in the best crystal and no sudden gust of breeze to make his cigar burn unevenly, but he did not want to put a damper on Dinah's enthusiasm, which was at times almost childlike and which he always found utterly charming.

‘I'm sure either would be very pleasant,' he said easily. ‘Do whatever you like, Dinah – as long as you don't expect me to cook the barbeque, if that's what you're having. My efforts are always less than edible and no one really wants burnt sausages or undercooked chicken, do they?'

‘It won't be sausages or chicken. It'll be steak. And Steve has the knack of making them taste wonderful,' Dinah said happily. ‘That's settled then. I'll ask Mrs Brunt to prepare them and some interesting salads. I really do think we should make the most of a fine day while we have the chance.'

She went in search of the housekeeper, moving with that quick grace which never failed to please him. She was like a gazelle, he thought, a slim fair-haired gazelle, pretty to look at but much too easily hurt. If only he could protect her from the harsh realities of life! He would never hurt her as Van had done, never do anything to cause her pain. And he would kill, with his bare hands, anyone who did. But he was not in a position to look after her as he would have liked. She was fond of him, he knew, and since Van's death she had come to depend on him more and more. But that was the extent of it. She had never encouraged him to come any closer and he was afraid to force the issue in case he overstepped some invisible boundary and destroyed the relationship that existed between them. It might not be as much or as close as he would have liked but it was very precious to him. Better to have Dinah as a loving friend than not at all.

Tyres crunched on gravel outside the window. Don looked out to see Steve's car pulling in and grimaced. He had been hoping for a little longer alone with Dinah before Steve returned – he had gone out to buy the Sunday papers, Dinah had said, but he had been gone some time and since he was obviously doing something more than simply popping into the nearest newsagent's Don had thought – hoped – that he would be a good while longer.

Don always found Steve's presence a little annoying. Dinah gave him her full attention to the exclusion of everyone else and Don felt her slipping even further away from him. Don was not sure that he liked Steve very much but he was honest enough to suspect that feeling might be rooted in jealousy. If Steve had not turned up so soon after Van's death Don might have been able to consolidate his position as Dinah's supportive confidant. But even feeling as he did, Don knew it would have been churlish in the extreme to deny her the happiness that had come from finding her son again, and in any case such wishful thinking would be a pointless exercise. Steve was here, back in Dinah's life on every level – business as well as personal. No amount of wishing would make him disappear again.

His reflections on Steve's role in Dinah's recovery from mourning Van were vindicated when, a moment later, Dinah came hurrying in, her face rosy with pleasure, clutching a cellophane-wrapped bouquet.

‘Look, Don, aren't they lovely? Steve got them for me at the garage down the road. Wasn't that sweet of him?'

‘Very,' Don said, thinking that Steve certainly knew how to give Dinah pleasure. The house was always full of flowers, most of them delivered ready-arranged by the most exclusive florist in a fifteen-mile radius, and it would not occur to most people, himself included, to buy a bunch of flowers costing less than five pounds along with the petrol. But Steve had, and Dinah, without a doubt, appreciated it.

‘Are we going to have five minutes alone?' he asked now. ‘I want to talk to you about these plans you have to redeem the Reubens fiasco.'

‘Oh – yes … Well, let me just put these in water. I'll arrange them later and they should have a good drink first anyway. It's so dreadfully hot and dirty outside these garage shops – I feel Steve almost rescued them!' She laughed. ‘Give me two seconds, Don, and I'll be back.'

She flitted out again and Don heard her talking to Steve in the kitchen as she drew a jug of water, her voice animated with the special happiness that always bubbled through in his presence. He hoped fervently that Steve wouldn't butt in on the short time he would have alone with Dinah – he knew Jayne and Drew were expected for lunch. But to his relief when Dinah returned she was alone.

‘Right – what were you going to say to me, Don?'

‘I've looked at the costings for your ideas. It's going to be very expensive. It will have to go before a full meeting of the board, of course, but I have to tell you I am a little concerned. With this level of financial commitment we can't afford to get it wrong. I feel the marketing department should investigate thoroughly before we commit ourselves.'

‘There's no time for that, Don. We need to move quickly to get the range into production.'

‘I'm concerned the outlay will show badly on our half-yearly figures, that's the trouble. Full order books may not be enough to convince the bank manager that you are not taking one hell of a risk. And besides, are you sure we have the capacity to expand so drastically at a moment's notice? Production Management should be in on this one before a decision is taken. Have you consulted with them?'

‘Not yet, but I know they will do whatever is necessary.'

‘You must talk to them, Dinah, sooner rather than later.'

‘I'll talk to them tomorrow, I promise. But I want to keep the element of surprise. The fewer people who know until the last possible moment the better. I don't want Reubens or anyone else for that matter getting wind of this. If there's a spy in the camp and we don't know who it is the closer to our chests we can play it, the better.'

As she spoke the word ‘spy' her face clouded, evidence of her distress – and distaste.

‘You still don't know who it is?' he asked.

‘No, but Steve is working on it. I'm sure he'll come up with a name soon.'

‘Steve thinks he already has.'

Engrossed in their conversation, neither had noticed Steve in the doorway. He came into the room, casually elegant as always, dressed for relaxation this morning in a blue denim shirt and expensively cut jeans. A pair of Raybans jutted from the pocket of his shirt and though the recent weather had been less than summery he looked bronzed and fit, his hair streaked blond as if he had just spent a fortnight soaking up the sun on a continental beach.

‘You've found out who has been passing information on our range?' Don asked.

‘I think so, yes.'

‘Well – who is it?'

‘I'd rather not say at the moment. I have a few more enquiries to do first.'

‘Couldn't you at least let us in on what you've learnt so far?'

‘I'd rather not.' Steve glanced at Dinah. ‘ You're not going to like it. If I'm right it's very bad news indeed. That's why I want to be certain of the facts before I start throwing accusations about.'

Dinah had turned very pale. ‘ You mean … ?' Her voice was faint.

‘Please – don't press me at the moment.'

‘But Steve, we need to know,' Don said. ‘We have to get a discussion going on Dinah's new designs and we need to have some idea who we can, or can't trust.'

A car approached up the gravel drive. They all looked towards the window, the tension of the moment splintering. Jayne and Drew were arriving for drinks before lunch. Steve moved to the door where he stood for a moment, hand resting casually on the jamb. His china-blue eyes were narrowed in his tanned face, his expression one that might almost have been triumph. For the first time, he had them almost exactly where he wanted them. Dinah, of course, had reached out to him eagerly but even she had been cautious where the business was concerned. And Don Kennedy … Don resented him, Steve sensed, and had done his best to slow his progress to the heart of the company. Now he felt the beginnings of power. It was a heady sensation.