Sins (50 page)

As she told Mr Beard all this he looked increasingly grave. A clerk was sent for, and an instruction given. Mr Beard’s secretary produced a cup of tea, half of which Janey spilled into the saucer of her delicate china cup in her anxiety, as she waited for Mr Beard to study the papers and the cheques he had had brought to him.

‘Well…’ he said, steepling his fingertips together, his elbows on his desk, his stance the reason, she guessed absently, for the shiny patches on his suit. ‘I think we have an explanation. It seems that your partner has drawn cheques made out to herself on the account.’

‘Not…not for all the money, surely?’ Janey protested, still unable to comprehend what was happening.

‘I’m afraid so,’ the bank manager confirmed.

‘But…but she can’t do that.’

‘I’m afraid that legally she could,’ Mr Beard told her, ‘since there is nothing in the bank account mandate to prevent her from doing so or to limit the amount of money she was allowed to draw.’

‘Then I can’t get the money back?’

‘Not unless she is willing to return it,’ Mr Beard agreed.

From the way he was looking at her Janey suspected that Mr Beard shared her own belief that there was no way that Janey’s money was going to be returned. No one emptied a bank account in the way that Cindy had done and then simply agreed to pay it back.

Nevertheless, on the way back to the shop Janey tried to convince herself that it
could
be a mistake; that despite their quarrel over Charlie, Cindy couldn’t have actually taken the money, and that there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for its absence.

But as Janey quickly discovered, the money wasn’t the only thing that had gone missing: Cindy herself was missing as well. The girl who eventually answered Janey’s anxious telephone call to her flat announced that Cindy had left and that she had told her she was going back to America.

‘They were both going,’ she informed Janey, ‘Cindy and that boyfriend of hers, the one that’s the model.’

Boyfriend?

‘You mean Charlie?’ Janey asked. Her stomach felt hollowed out with panic and the longing for this not to be happening.

‘Yes, that’s the one.’

So much for Cindy telling her that she and Charlie
were just friends, Janey thought dizzily, reeling from the blow she had just been dealt. Had they planned to rob her all along, or had Cindy merely acted spontaneously out of spite?

What difference did it make? She had let them make a fool of her and she didn’t want to see either of them ever again.

Thanking the other girl for her help, Janey replaced the telephone receiver and leaned back against the wall. This couldn’t be happening. But it was, it was. She had been such a idiot, believing them both, never suspecting, whilst they’d been stealing from her, stealing her trust, her belief in them, her love and her money.

Oh God…God…What was she going to do? She needed help, and she needed it quickly and desperately, Janey knew. There was only one person she could think of whom she could trust to give her that help, only one person she wanted to turn to.

She knew that John had intended to return to his club so she rang him there, her fingers tightening round the telephone receiver as she waited for him to be informed that she wished to speak with him.

‘Janey?’

Just the sound of his voice was immediately comforting.

‘John, something terrible has happened. Could you come round to the shop now?’

‘Of course.’

He would think her a complete fool all over again, and of course she was.

*  *  *

To her relief John arrived at the shop within half an hour, listening in silence whilst she told him what had happened.

‘I have to pay the girls, John, and I just didn’t dare ask the bank to lend me any money.’

‘Are you saying that you want me to lend it to you?’

Janey’s heart sank. He wasn’t being anything like as sympathetic as she had believed he would be. Had she made yet another mistake, and another misjudgement? Was he not after all the true white knight she had secretly been thinking him in her heart?

‘It just seemed natural to…to turn to you for help.’ She was feeling really uncomfortable now, and wishing that she had not telephoned him and spoiled her silly romantic fantasy that he was something–someone–very special. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve put you in an embarrassing position. I didn’t mean to. I know my parents will help me and, of course, I’ve got my trust fund.’

If anything John looked even more grave–and disapproving.

‘I’m sorry.’ He was shaking his head. ‘But I have to warn you that I can’t help you.’ Janey felt as though the bottom had dropped out of her world–not because he was refusing her but because she had been so wrong about him. She had believed that he was a true knight in shining armour, gallant and dependable and wonderful, but when had her judgement ever been any good? She only had to think of Charlie and Cindy to know that it wasn’t.

‘Not unless, that is…’

Janey, who had been looking down at the floor and
biting her lip, looked up at him. His face had gone a bit pink.

‘Not unless what?’

‘Not unless you say that you will let me propose to you.’

Propose to her?

Feeling giddy and thrilled, and as though by magic all her earlier anxiety and misery had disappeared, Janey said breathlessly, ‘You mean you want to ask me to marry you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, John!’

In a near delirium of relief, Janey flung her arms around his neck and lifted her face towards his.

Oh, but this was heaven, after all that she had just been through: to be held so was tightly and lovingly, so protectively by darling John, Janey thought as she returned his kiss with excited enthusiasm.

Being married to someone like John, who would look after her, would be wonderful. Being in his arms felt so right, as though they had always been meant to hold her, Janey thought.

Held in John’s arms, it came to Janey that with John she would never need to worry about trying to make things right and trying to make him happy, trying to win his approval, because he loved her, truly loved her.

Tears filled her eyes.

‘He isn’t worth your tears,’ John told her.

‘I’m not crying for him,’ Janey told him truthfully. ‘I’m crying because knowing you love me makes me feel so happy.’

*  *  *

‘I was going to wait until Christmas to ask you,’ John told her later, when they were sitting drinking the champagne he had ordered, ‘but I was worried that some other chap might come along and bag you before I got the chance, so…’

‘So when I had to ask you for help you decided to make me listen to your proposal now,’ Janey finished for him happily. ‘Oh, John, it’s almost like fate meant us to be together, isn’t it? What with you rescuing me from the march and then me finding out about Charlie, and now this; just like all the time fate’s been showing me how perfect you are. Not that I needed to be shown, not since you were so kind over Charlie. I thought then how wonderful you were and how lucky the girl you eventually married would be.’

John gave her a passionate look and squeezed her hand.

‘There’ll be some compromises to be made, I know,’ he told her. ‘My place is in Cheshire, running the estate, and you’ve got your shop here in London. I dare say we’ll work something out, though. Your parents did, after all. Jay runs the estate and Amber has her business here in London.’

Janey’s heart overflowed with gratitude. Darling, darling John, who was so traditional and old-fashioned, loved her enough to want her to be happy so much that he was prepared to make the kind of compromises that none of her previous boyfriends had ever considered making.

‘My designing is important to me,’ she agreed, ‘but I can do that just as easily at Fitton Hall as I can here in
London. I want to be with you,’ she told him fiercely, ‘not separated from you. Oh, John, I never knew that love could be like this. I think it was worth losing all that money because it’s made me so happy. You’ve made me so happy.’

‘Good. Because making you happy matters more to me than anything else,’ John told her truthfully.

He’d fallen in love with her the night of her twenty-first birthday party, but had never thought he’d stand a chance–him, a dull fellow, a countryman–not when she was here in London surrounded by far more dashing and attractive chaps. But fate had stepped in and now she was his.

‘Feeling a bit better now, old chap?’

Emerald glared at both her son and Drogo.

‘Oh, do stop fussing over him, will you, Drogo? There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s simply being difficult because he doesn’t want to have lunch at the Savoy.’

They were in Hyde Park, where Drogo had taken Robbie riding earlier in the morning, something he had been doing virtually every morning since they had returned to London. But now, to Emerald’s irritation, Robbie was complaining that he had a headache and didn’t feel well.

She knew what was wrong really. Given the chance, Robbie would have spent every hour he could in Drogo’s company–he positively worshipped him–and was sulking because she was taking him away from his hero, to go home and get changed for her lunch engagement with Jeannie de la Salles at the Savoy.

When Jeannie had telephoned she had told her that she had some important news for her, but then refused to divulge it over the telephone, so naturally Emerald wanted to find out what it was.

And now here was Drogo, typically trying to undermine her authority and encourage Robbie to be difficult. Emerald gave them each another glare. They were standing side by side, and whilst she had been speaking Robbie had moved closer to Drogo and was now almost leaning against him, Drogo’s hand resting protectively on the little boy’s shoulder. Protectively? What was he supposed to be protecting Robbie from? She was his mother.

‘He does look a bit pale,’ Drogo told her.

‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ Emerald snapped. ‘I dare say if I were to give in and tell him he could stay with you, his headache would disappear within seconds.’

To o late Emerald realised that she might have betrayed herself. It came too close to the way she had felt as a child, this feeling she got when she saw Robbie with Drogo and was forced to recognise the closeness they shared, the relationship from which she was excluded, for her to ignore it.

Unwanted tears stung the back of her throat as she turned away from Drogo and Robbie. She scarcely knew herself sometimes. The intensity of her emotions made her feel so vulnerable: the fear that Max had beaten into her–not of his return, but of what the fact that she had ever wanted him in the first place said about her; the panic that came when she told herself that it was surely unthinkable that without her adoptive father she could ever have become one of those women Max had compared her with; the resentment, the jealousy she felt when Robbie aligned himself to Drogo, rejecting her; the fear and rejection she felt whenever
she remembered how she had felt in the hospital, holding Rose’s jacket.

She tensed as she felt Drogo’s hand on her arm.

‘Why don’t I take Robbie back to Lenchester House with me? Then you can go to your lunch without having to worry about him.’

‘No. Don’t you think I know that is exactly what he’s hoping for and why he’s claiming to have a headache? No, he’s coming with me.’

The look in Drogo’s eyes, a mixture of anger and pity, whipped up her own temper.

Grabbing hold of Robbie’s arm, Emerald told her son curtly, ‘You can stop all this right now, Robbie, because it won’t work. Come along, it’s time to go home and get changed for lunch.’

‘Oh, you decided not to bring Robbie with you then?’ Jeannie asked Emerald as they embraced.

‘No.’

Emerald was still seething about Robbie, who, when she had told him to go and sit downstairs and wait for her to finished getting ready, had told her that he felt nauseous and then had promptly been sick. Deliberately induced sickness, of course. She could remember doing much the same thing herself as a child. It had always worked with Nanny, but she was made of sterner stuff and she had sent Robbie to get undressed and have a bath, telling him that since he had made it impossible for her to take him out with her he would have to stay at home on his own–in bed. He had, no doubt, been hoping that she would give in and send him round to
Lenchester House and Drogo rather than leave him in on his own. In fact she wouldn’t have put it past Drogo to have put him up to the whole thing, just to get the better of her. Well, they would both have to learn that Robbie had to do what she said.

‘It’s probably just as well. Just look how busy this place is. I’d thought that with everyone away for the summer it would be virtually empty. I’d forgotten about the American tourists.’

Emerald had to wait until they were seated at their table, the light salads they’d both ordered in front of them, before she was able to demand, ‘So tell me then, what is this important news?’

‘It’s about Max.’ Jeannie leaned closer to her, her voice dropping to a hushed whisper as she continued, ‘He hasn’t been around for the last few weeks. I thought that was because you and he had split up but now apparently he’s in the most dreadful trouble. He’s been arrested, apparently, something to do with that dreadful East End murder. You know, the one where the victim was battered to death? It was in all the papers.’

‘You mean that gangland—’

Shush…’ Jeannie warned her. ‘Peter says that we shouldn’t talk about him in case the police start asking us questions, but I’ve heard that Max owed someone important from the East End an awful lot of money. He did always like to gamble heavily.’ Jeannie gave a small shiver but Emerald could see that she looked more excited than afraid.

‘You’re not still seeing him, I take it?’

Emerald’s mouth compressed. So Jeannie didn’t just
want to impart information; she was hoping she might get some juicy titbits back from her.

‘No, I’m not,’ she answered her truthfully. ‘It was only ever a very casual sort of thing,’ she added, giving a small dismissive shrug for emphasis. ‘And in fact if you hadn’t introduced him to me I would never have given him a second look.’