No Escape (3 page)

Enrolling in night school, Clare had completed courses in IT, bookkeeping and business administration. She liked learning, enjoyed using her new skills to reorganize and market the agency while
managing to bring down overheads and, to Novak’s relief and gratitude, helping them to break even for the first time and, soon after that, to move into profit. Still eager, she had urged her
husband into some extracurricular studies of his own so that he might become an ABI member.

‘Respectability and contacts,’ she’d said, ‘can’t hurt.’

‘That’s what Robin says,’ Novak told her.

‘Oh, well,’ Clare said wryly. ‘If Robin says so.’

She had never felt entirely certain about Robin Allbeury or convinced by his unusual, unorthodox and apparently altruistic activities, felt that he had to be concealing his true motives. If he
was, Novak had told her, he hadn’t yet found out what they were, and, to be frank, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out so long as Allbeury went on helping people.

‘Women,’ Clare had said.

‘He helps us pay our bills,’ Novak had pointed out.

She’d had no argument with that.

‘And he thinks you’re a remarkable person.’

‘Why should he think that?’

‘Because he’s a clever man,’ Novak had said.

Two years after that, heartache had returned for them both with the death, at birth, of their longed-for first child. Clare, alone at home and taking a bath, had passed out
before being able to summon help, and their son, born with frightening speed, had suffered breathing difficulties and had not survived. Grief had poleaxed them. For a week after Clare’s
discharge from hospital, neither she nor Novak had moved from the flat, unable to eat or sleep. Robin Allbeury, concerned by the lack of response to his messages, had come to the flat and all but
taken over, shopping and cooking, alerting Clare’s father to the tragedy (though Malcolm Killin had himself been ill with pneumonia at the time, and unable to help) and helping Novak to
organize the small, sad funeral.

After the hideousness of the inquest, they’d picked themselves up with agonizing slowness, had forced themselves to visit a bereavement counsellor but found her of limited help. Work,
predictably, had helped the most, and time. Months passed and they began to throw themselves more vigorously into the agency, to build again. But nothing was the same any more, everything felt
contaminated by sorrow, shame or fear. If something made them laugh, they felt guilty because their child was in his grave. If they made love, they clung to each other like swimmers close to
drowning. If they saw an infant in a pushchair, the force of their envy cut off their ability to breathe.

Yet even that had passed.

‘Would you mind,’ Clare asked one morning, almost a year after their loss, ‘if I took on a part-time nursing job? Just two or three evenings a week.’

Novak had been startled. ‘I didn’t know you were even thinking about nursing.’

‘I wasn’t, till Maureen phoned last week.’

Maureen Donnelly, a former colleague of Clare’s, had transferred to Waltham General in Essex two years before to be closer to her father, who had Parkinson’s disease. Mindful, in the
past, not to overdo shop talk when she and Clare got together, Maureen had lately noticed her old friend becoming increasingly keen to listen to A&E news and was happy enough to oblige by
talking her through some of the more interesting cases that had come through her department.

Nick Parry was one such case, a twenty-eight-year-old paraplegic who had come in the previous month after his adapted car had been involved in an accident on the North Circular. Struck by the
young man’s courage and sense of humour, and upon hearing that one of his favourite part-time carers was about to be sent back to New Zealand by the Home Office, Maureen had promised to scout
around for a replacement on his behalf.

‘Maureen thought we might get on,’ Clare told Novak, ‘so I went to visit him.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I thought you’d either get excited for me and then upset if it didn’t work out, or worried about it and upset if it did.’

‘Apparently it did,’ Novak said. ‘Work out.’

‘If you don’t mind.’

He’d looked at her for a moment. ‘Do you still not really know me? I’d never stop you doing anything you wanted to do.’ He had paused, then quickly asked the question
suddenly uppermost in his mind. ‘Do you want to leave the agency?’

‘No,’ Clare had replied decisively. ‘Never. The agency’s what healed me.’ She had paused ‘And you, of course.’

‘
You
healed you,’ Novak had told her.

Clare had kissed him then, leaned very close and laid her lips gently against his mouth. ‘You’re the best, Mike,’ she said. ‘You know that?’

‘I just love you,’ he said.

‘So what do you think, Lizzie?’

It was the second Monday of March – two days after Sophie’s seventh birthday party – and Andrew France, her agent, had just telephoned Lizzie at the house in Marlow to tell her
that Vicuna Press, her publishers, had come through with their very handsome share of an offer – made in conjunction with the Food and Drink Channel – for a new Lizzie Piper book and TV
series that would, if she accepted, take her on a European tour, tasting and creating new recipes for publication.

‘It sounds marvellous.’ Lizzie leaned back in the leather swivel chair in her study. ‘I can’t quite take it in.’

‘It really is quite extraordinarily exciting.’ Andrew sounded gratified by her response.

‘You haven’t said yes?’

‘Of course not.’ The agent’s tone became a touch wary. ‘But I must admit I imagined it an almost foregone conclusion.’ He paused. ‘You do want this, Lizzie,
don’t you? Christopher certainly seemed sure you’d be leaping up and down.’

Lizzie was silent for an instant. ‘When did you speak to Christopher?’

‘Less than two hours ago. While you were still out on the school run. I know I asked him to let me give you the news myself, but I felt sure he wouldn’t be able to resist saying
something.’

Lizzie heard the surprise in Andrew’s voice. ‘He was called to London before I got back,’ she said casually. ‘There’s probably a note somewhere.’

‘That explains it,’ Andrew said.

‘So what exactly did Christopher say about this offer?’

‘Not much,’ Andrew replied. ‘Except that he really was very happy for you. Which, if I may say so, Lizzie, you don’t seem to be.’

‘Oh, I am.’ Lizzie tried to sound it. ‘Of course I am.’

‘So can I go back to them, clinch it?’

She hesitated. ‘Give me a little while, Andrew, please. I can’t just say yes to something as big, or at least as time-consuming, as this, without talking to the whole family.’
She paused. ‘Could you get a few more details for me? When, for instance, and how long, and which countries?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Andrew said. ‘Though naturally all that’ll be open for discussion. No one’s going to expect you to drop everything and fly off, Lizzie.’

‘I couldn’t,’ she said.

‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘I know you couldn’t. So does Howard.’

Lizzie knew that Andrew was right about Howard Dunn, her editor, but there was no certainty that the television people would be as sympathetic or obliging.

‘Quite right to be cautious, my darling,’ Christopher said later that night, after he’d returned from London, and they were sharing a nightcap in the drawing room.
‘Though I expect they’ll all be flexible. They want you happy, after all, clearly.’

The children were all in bed, and Lizzie was confident that both Edward and Sophie were sound asleep, though it was unlikely that Jack would be sleeping. He often slept badly, but coped with
insomnia by having two Walkmans by his bedside, one loaded with music, the other with an audio book, so that all he had to do was stick on his headphones and press a button.

What Jack did not appreciate these days was too many nighttime visits by either of his parents to check on him.

‘If I have a problem,’ he told them, ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘I daresay Vicuna would prefer me to be happy,’ Lizzie answered Christopher now. ‘But TV people have rigid schedules, and unions, and weather conditions to consider, all of
which I’m sure they’d expect me to fit into.’

‘And which I’m sure you’ll manage to, as you always manage most things, my love. Brilliantly.’

Christopher was nothing if not charming, had always been that, and supportive, too, of Lizzie and her talents, and she had almost always been grateful for that.

Gratitude had, in fact, been a large part of the package when she had first met and fallen in love with him. A car crash in her early thirties had left Angela Piper with ugly scarring on her
left breast and abdomen. The priority at the time of the accident had been to keep her alive, after which no one had seemed to understand how desperately the pretty brunette had felt about her
disfigurement – not even Maurice Piper, her husband, who had frankly been too busy rejoicing at having his wife still with him and nine-year-old Lizzie. But Angela had found herself unable to
cope with what she regarded as great ugliness and, ashamed for what she saw as her own ingratitude and superficiality, she had stumbled into deep, long-term clinical depression, during which time
Lizzie had grown into an isolated teenager, looking forward to escaping to university.

Ten years later, Maurice had suffered a fatal heart attack, Angela had gone into free-fall and Lizzie, reading English and enjoying freedom in Sussex, had felt compelled to return home.
Bleakness had spread out before her like fog; an end, she had felt, to learning and fun and friends, until Angela’s psychologist, Stuart Bride, had suggested that perhaps if someone were able
to improve the old scars that clearly still disturbed his patient, it might do more for her mind than years of therapy.

Christopher Wade – tall, impressive, with shaggy blond hair and piercing grey eyes behind round steel spectacles, a man who wore hats and doffed them regularly for ladies – had swept
into the Pipers’ world with a blast of kindness and, in the fullness of time, at least a degree of healing. And Lizzie, thirteen years younger, had been there to witness it all, the
gentleness, commonsense and skill, as well as the charm, so that when the surgeon had first asked her to lunch, soon after her mother’s second successful operation, she had been intensely
pleased to accept.

‘Be careful,’ Angela had said when Lizzie had told her about it.

‘It’s only lunch,’ Lizzie had said.

‘No such thing between an attractive older man and a beautiful innocent.’

‘Not quite innocent, Mum, and hardly beautiful.’ Lizzie liked her blue eyes and blond hair well enough, but her nose was rather sharp and her legs, in her opinion, too short.
‘Certainly not when you consider what he must be used to.’

‘Damaged goods,’ Angela had said, wry yet serene, ‘is what he’s used to.’

Lizzie and Christopher had married the following year, the bride, back at her studies, now at London University, the groom proud and happy, guiding his young wife out of St
Paul’s, Knightsbridge into their new life in his large garden flat in Holland Park. An almost undiluted marital joy that had lasted until first son Edward was three, baby Jack was one, they
had just bought the house, and the nearest thing to an imperfection in Lizzie’s world was Edward’s allergy to dogs and cats.

The other – very much less attractive – side of her husband of which Lizzie would, in time, become all too aware, had manifested itself the first time in little more than a glint of
darkness, like a small warning slick of brake fluid beneath a car, an alert of trouble to come.

It had happened in the summer of 1993, following an evening spent celebrating the news that, after several years of writing magazine articles, Lizzie’s first book,
Fooling Around . . .
In the Kitchen
had been accepted for publication by Vicuna Press.

Christopher had come home from London, drained by hours in the operating theatres at the Beauchamp Clinic (of which he was a director) and St Clare’s Hospital, but bearing a bouquet of
white roses, and had told Lizzie how very clever she was, how proud of her he was, and what a brilliant career she was going to have. And he’d insisted, despite his fatigue, on taking her out
to dinner in Bray, and it had all been wonderful.

Until about three in the morning, when he had woken Lizzie by switching on his bedside light, pulling up her nightdress and determinedly fondling her between her thighs until he was sure she was
properly conscious.

‘I’m half asleep.’ She’d smiled up at him but pushed away his hand.

‘I don’t mind,’ he’d said, and put it back.

The kiss had been the first thing that had jarred because of its roughness, though in a second or two, its intensity had swept away the last of her sleepiness, arousing her, and she’d
kissed him back with equal passion.

‘God, Lizzie,’ he had said, and then, right away, begun making love to her, and that had been uncharacteristically rough too.

‘Go easy, darling,’ she’d said, after a few moments.

‘Be quiet,’ he’d told her, and gone straight on.

Lizzie had told herself afterwards that nothing much had happened, that it had just been a blip, something to forget about as soon as possible. After all, nothing major had occurred. Just that
slight –
not so slight
,
not really
– roughness.

And those words.

‘
Be quiet.
’

Christopher never spoke to her like that.

She had broached it next morning, before breakfast.

‘That was unusual,’ she said. ‘Last night.’

‘Unusual?’ he repeated.

‘Not the lovemaking,’ she said. ‘That was lovely.’

‘I thought so.’

‘Except,’ she said.

‘Except what?’ Christopher had asked.

‘It was a bit rough,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really am, Lizzie.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It was just a surprise, that’s all.’

Something had worked in Christopher’s face for a moment. A hint of disappointment, Lizzie had thought.