Deceptions (48 page)

felt drained, as lifeless as Stephanie. Because pan of me is yone. I am burying my sister, who is also myself,

'No/ she said aloud. *No, they can't buiy us. I won't let them. No. No. No!'

'Stephanie/ said Garth. She had not heard him come in, but he was kneeling beside her, his arm around her shoulders. Huddled beside the coffin, Sabrina felt the life in his arm, the life in her body, and trembled. Who lay in the coffin? To this man she was Stephanie, she lived with him in Stephanie's house, caring for Stephanie's children, loving them, loving Stephanie's husband. And she was in London to bury Stephanie's sister. What have I done? she thought frantically. I've caused us both to die. A low cry tore from her throat, and then Garth was helping her into a taxi to take her to Sabrina's house.

'My love,' Garth said as they moved slowly through the afternoon traffic. 'I'll help you all I can, but in the end you have to face this yourself.' His voice was gentle but unsparing; he could not do it all for her. 'Are you sure you want to stay at Sabrina's house?' She nodded. 'Do you want to use a guest room instead of her bedroom?' She shook her head. 'It might be less painful for you.'

'No,' she said. 'It's my room; I'll stay in it.'

'Whatever you want,' he said. 'I'll do anything I can to help you.*

No, you won't. Not when I tell you. When we get home and we're alone and I tell you the truth.

At Cadogan Square, Mrs. Thirkell, crumpled with grief, met them at the door and gestured toward the upper floors. 'Mrs Andersen, your father arrived a few minutes ago; he's very ill, and your mother is—*

Sabrina flew past her up the suirs, leaving Garth to follow. She found Gordon and Laura in the third-floor study, her father sitting in a leather chair, his face gray and pinched, her mother at the telephone. 'Stephanie, thank goodness you're here. Do you know how to call an ambulance? I don't suppose you do, but— '

'Dial 999. I'll do it.' She dialed and turned to her father as Garth came into the room. 'What happened?'

He was bewildered. 'My chest and arm... thought it was indigestion. Airplane food.' His voice was shallow.

Laura paced angrily. 'His doctor said he shouldn't come to London. He's already had two of these—'

'An ambulance/ Sabrina said into the telephone. 'For St George's Hospital.' She gave the address on Cadogan Square. 'The home of Lady Longworth. Please hurry; her father may have had a heart attack.' She looked at her parents. 'You never told me about other attacks.'

'Incidents/ Gordon murmured. 'Not the real thing.* 'The doctors say they're warnings/ said Laura. 'What luck that you knew about the hospital. How did you know?'

'I've been here before.' Sabrina dialed on the house phone. 'Mrs Thirkell, an ambulance will come for Mr Hartwell. Please call us as soon as it arrives.'

Garth was watching her thoughtfully as she leaned over Gordon, who seemed small and frail, clinging to her hand like a child. Where was the tall powerful father of her childhood? She pushed aside her mourning and knelt before him. 'Is the pain bad?'

'Better. Would you bring me a shot of Scotch?'

'No.'

'Stephanie,' said Laura. 'What has happened to you?'

Gordon smiled palely. 'She is being as strong-willed as Sabrina. But an obedient daughter would not deny her father a small medicinal Scotch.'

'An obedient daughter would not kill her father,' Sabrina said, trying to keep her voice light. 'How do I know what Scotch would do to an uncooperative heart?'

Mrs Thirkell called to say the ambulance had arrived. They're bringing up the stretcher, my lady.' Her embarrassment came over the telephone. 'I'm sony, I meant Mrs Andersen. I can't get used to—'

'It's all right,' Sabrina said. 'I understand.'

As the attendants came in, Gordon stood up, pushing his hands against the arms of the chair. 'I'll walk, Stephanie.' 'No,* she said. 'It's three flights.' As he hesitated she took his arm. 'Don't argue; we're trying to help you.'

He peered at her. 'How fierce you have become.' But he let them wrap him in a blanket and strap him down before

carrying him out. 'We'll follow in a taxi,' Sabrina called after them, but as soon as they were gone her knees buckled. Garth was there in an instant, holding her. He sent Laura in a taxi to the hospital and settled Sabrina on a love seat in the drawing room.

Then people were everywhere, purposeful, bustling about. Everyone but Sabrina. Restless and confused, she followed them, watching, and now and then they moved her from one place to another, like a puppet, heavy and numb. Like Stephanie.

We're in the way, she thought wryly. No one needs us; they all have jobs to do. I have something to do, too. But I can't remember what it is.

She remembered it at the cemetery as the Vicar came to the end of the service. 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.'

The crowd was still except for the rustle of its weeping. Behind Sabrina, Alexandra stood with Antonio, tears streaming down her face; next to her, in front of Brooks, Gabrielle sobbed into a handkerchief. Jolie held hands with a stony-faced Michel, and Nicholas Blackford bounced in agitation while Amelia tried to keep him still. Everyone was there: the American ambassador and his staff; a cluster of art dealers, some of whom had flown in from Paris and Rome; the nobility who had been clients and friends; servants, waiters and shop clerks who remembered a smile and a word of thanks. They were all there, even Mrs Pemberley, standing behind a stuimed and motionless Brian, and Mrs Thirkell. clutching wet handkerchiefs to her crumpled face, and Olivia standing in a group that included the dim figures of Lady Iris Longworth and Denton Longworth. How strange that they had come, Sabrina thought. The Raddisons had not.

She felt the strength of Garth's arm around her shoulders. Standing at the edge of the grave, she heard the Vicar's cadenced voice.

'May we yet see the radiance of a new day.'

On this day she was burying her sister, her father was in the hospital and her mother stood beside her, clutching her hand.

'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.* The Vicar looked at her, telling her with his sad eyes that it was time for her to throw the first handful of earth on the coffin. Everyone was waiting. All of them, waiting, and the Vicar looking at her. The first handful of earth on the coffin. The first handful of earth. And Sabrina remembered. You haven't told them. This isyour last chance. Tell them now. You can't put it off any longer. Tell them, TELL THEM!

A long shudder ran through her body and Sabrina fell to her knees beside the grave. 'It's not Sabrina!' she cried. She heard gasps behind her, and a moan from Laura. She looked at the coffin and then pleadingly at the Vicar. 'It wasn't Sabrina who died, it was Stephanie! Stephanie died! Or perhaps it was both of us. sometimes it seems that ... Sometimes I feel like Stephanie but I'm not, I'm Sabrina, I've always been Sabrina. I've only been Stephanie since we—'

'Stop, my love.' Garth was raising her, his voice urgent, his arms holding her tightly against him. 'I'm going to take you home.'

'No, wait, listen.' She pushed against his arms. 'Listen to me—!'

Brooks was beside them and Garth met his eyes. 'You and the Vicar can finish the service?'

'Of course. We'll see you at the house. There's a Dr Farr. by the way—'

'Stop, please, stop!' Sabrina cried. 'Listen to me. Don't you understand, I'm trying to tell you—'

'—who could give her something; his number is in the book.'

Garth nodded and led his wife away. The Vicar's voice followed them. 'And may God have mercy on her soul.'

'1 think we should call Dr Farr,' Garth said as they walked to the limousine. To help you through these first few days.'

Sabrina stumbled beside him. sick and empty, angiy at herself. If it hadn't been for her confusion, when she wasn't sure who she was, they would have believed her. 'You didn't let me finish,' she said despairingly. 'I was trying to tell you the truth and you wouldn't hsten.'

'Later.'

•You didn't believe me.'

'Later, my love.'

Garth remembered when his parents died, feeling anger and grief because they had left him. But his wife's mourning was more frantic: she was distraught, as if her whole being had been ripped from her. Even knowing that it was her twin sister who had died, he was puzzled that the strong woman he knew, who had taken command when her father was ill, could collapse into incoherence and overwhelming despair.

He knew that, in grief, people often took refuge in denial, refusing to acknowledge that a loved one had died. But if that were the case she would say her sister was alive, traveling, and they would be together soon. Instead she pretended to be her sister. Why? To make up to her for something? Or was it that, in spite of physical separation, the twins had been far closer, more innately parts of a whole, than he realized?

At Cadogan Square, Sabrina refused to see Dr Farr. 'He'll give me something to put me to sleep. Why can't you let me have my grief?'

'You should have grief. But not hysteria.'

'I'll try to avoid that,' she said with a trace of her own dry humor, and Garth let her have her way. She was right; it would be best if she could pull out of it herself.

Brooks and Olivia had arranged the funeral, and now the lunch guests they had invited were filling the house. Mrs Thirkell threw all the energies of her grief into directing the activities of the hired staff, and within a short time platters of meat and fish, cheeses, pat^s, breads, pastries and tortes covered long tables in the dining room and drawing room. Sabrina moved among the guests with Garth at her side, watching her. Pale and aloof, her head high, she moved easily through the rooms as if she belonged in them, or was taking Sabrina's place. Everyone commented on the resemblance between them and how natural it seemed to see her there, and she listened to them politely, as if trying to understand what they had to do with her.

Garth felt, painfully, that he had never loved her as much as now, when she seemed both lost and at home, needing him yet apart from him. Grief cloaked her in mystery and

vulnerability; he wanted to draw her close and kiss her despairing eyes, and listen closely to everything she said« whether it made sense or not, so that he could understand what it meant to lose someone who was so deeply a part of her.

But she said very little and so, while keeping watch over her, he listened to those around them talk about the accident. Brooks had told the stoiy to a few, and it had spread rapidly. No one knew what caused the Lafitte to go down, but the rumor was that the fuel tanks had exploded just as it left the harbor at Monte Carlo. Denton Longworth had been gambling in the casino that week, and, when he heard it was Max Stuyvesant's yacht, he called the coast guard to offer his services. He was there when the first bodies were pulled from the water; one of them was Sabrina, and it was Denton who identified her.

The police had called London for the names of Lady Longworth's next-of-kin, but Gabrielle, who took the call, told them to call Brooks. And a good thing. Garth thought, for he had handled the complicated arrangements, involving Monaco police, the French coast guard and police, British Airways and British police, quietly and smoothly. Garth liked Brooks. Wary at first of his imperiousness, he soon found himself responding to his honesty. 'I'm going to miss Sabrina,' Brooks had said when the two men sat late over drinks the night before the funeral. 'I've got a problem on my hands - we needn't go into it - and Sabrina made me see that it might be partly my fault, or, rather that I might be looking at it the wrong way. She was a very whole person who knew what she believed in and was impatient with those who pretended they were something they weren't. I suppose she was as capable of pretending as the rest of us, but I always felt, when she told me something, that it was honest - it was the way she really felt.'

Garth had looked around the study and pictured the other rooms of the house with their quiet beauty and harmony, their interplay of serenity and wit. He had never been there before. If he had, he would have known much more about his sister-in-law, for the house was a reflection of a woman in many ways like his wife, not the woman he had imagined

Sabrina to be. 'I never really knew her/ he said to Brooks. 'I wish I had/

And the next day, after the fiineral, as he stood with his wife, listening to Sabrina's friends talk about her, he thought again how much he did not know.

'She worked very hard/ Olivia recalled, taking a bite of torte.

Tor a long time she was afraid of failing/ said Alexandra.

'Nonsense. I never knew a woman more sure of herself. She had a way of listening to my ideas and nodding pleasantly, and then telling me just as pleasantly why I was wrong. I'm amazed when I think of how often she did that and how I took it from her.'

Jolie turned to Olivia. Tou don't think she was afraid of failure in the beginning? When everyone ignored her?'

'Why talk about bad times?' Nicholas interrupted. 'When she became successftil and had her choice of clients, she worked for love-the love of beauty, the love of creating with her impeccable style, the love of—'

'Money,' Alexandra said with a small chuckle. 'Don't forget that. Unlike the rest of us, she had to earn her own living.'

Garth saw his wife listening with interest. 'I'm sorry,' he said to her softly. 'All the times I criticized her ... I didn't really know her, which is exactly what you kept telling me.'

She nodded. 'Yes, but it doesn't matter, does it? Once I thought there was plenty of time for the truth, but I was wrong. Lies and mistakes keep growing, and it's so hard to stop them; and then it doesn't seem to matter so much.*

He had no idea what she was talking about, but before he could respond, a stranger came to them: tall, dark, with heavy brows in a thin face, and black, intense eyes. 'I'm sorry,' Sabrina said as he took her hand. 'I don't—'

'Dmitri Karras,' he said, smiling slightly. 'We met once a long time ago in—'

'Athens!' she cried, her face coming to hfe. 'When you hid us! But isn't this amazing! After all these years! Do you live