The Body of a Woman (6 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Body of a Woman
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She learned that he had a serious side, loved classical music,
had once studied art and exhibited in London and New York. His age made him only four years her senior, but there were decades of experience separating his life and hers.
It was on their third outing together that he drove her to Henley-on-Thames and they boarded a small cruiser to sail upriver. While she took over the helm he performed masterly moves in the galley, producing omelettes stuffed with creamed ham, and a dressed salad of mangetout, spring onions, olives, cucumber and mixed peppers.
When they'd moored she went below to where he'd set the square table and opened wine from the miniature fridge. He'd known where everything was kept and hadn't hesitated over the basic cooking facilities. So if it wasn't his own boat, at least he'd had use of it before.
‘There is no sweet,' he announced, carrying off the used dishes. ‘Except you.'
He came back from the galley carrying two globes of cognac and sat beside her on the padded bench. ‘To us,' he said, put down his glass and kissed her. Kissed her properly this time, deliberately, drawing away once to challenge her eyes.
‘No,' she said weakly.
‘Oh, but I think yes. You think so too, don't you? It is time you took a chance with me. I know you want to.'
They made love tenderly and exploratively, and talked until the sky darkened from primrose to purple. Then he let her steer the boat back to where they had found it, relocked the cabin and led her back to the car. When they neared home she knew she would be staying with him, whether there were lights in her own windows or not.
It was the first time she had seen where he lived. Unlike the trim little river craft the cottage was old and almost tumbledown, one of the two original flint and red brick labourer's dwellings from before the village was gentrified. Since it was built there had been infilling for the full stretch of the long lane, with a mixture of Victorian villas, thirties'semis and postwar detached four-bedroomed houses. Amongst them this pair of
ancient cottages was as eccentric as Pascal's own appearance when they first met, with his battered panama hat and cream flannels stopping two inches above his ankles.
She found it endearing. Indoors she ran her hand along the uneven whitewashed brick, smiling as Pascal bent to avoid the beam before the narrow doorway and showed her the minuscule kitchen and bathroom beyond. Colourful daubs covered the living-room walls, some mounted and framed, others curling with heat and casually attached by blu-tack. Perhaps there was no electricity, because he lit an oil lamp, turned up the wick and said, ‘Behind that curtain you'll find a crooked staircase. At the top is the bedroom.'
She held the lamp high and went up in front of him, stumbling a little at the steepness of the irregular wooden steps. She found the bed already turned down, and the linen was fresh. Pascal had put a bottle of chilled Sancerre and glasses to hand.
‘You knew I would come,' she accused him.
‘Of course. Welcome, Leila, to my country retreat.'
 
Next morning he showed her how to operate the shower from an overhead tank with a hand-held release chain. She dressed again in the pyjamas he had lent her, waiting in the sitting-room while Pascal fried bacon over the kitchen's wood-burning stove. The dream quality of the previous day continued. She had no thought for a possible awakening. As she finished towelling her hair there came a rattling outside and the sound of steps receding over flagstones.
‘That will be the post,' Pascal called. ‘Would you mind fetching it in?'
She found a handful of letters thrust into a horizontal drainpipe fixed at waist height just outside the front door. It was junk mail mostly; also a wrapped newspaper; three business envelopes and one duke size, hand-written, with a foreign stamp.
Her heart lurched at sight of the writing. She must be mistaken, but there was that curious capital G for his surname
Gregory. There was only one person she knew who slashed the letter through with that extravagant curlicue. And there below was her ornate capital B that began the county.
How on earth did Chloe come to know Pascal? And be writing to him from abroad?
Leila held up the envelope to the window's light to make out the postmark. The stamp was a Swiss one franked in Montreux.
And Chloë had done her vanishing trick almost two weeks back, on a supposed trip to southern France.
She should have remained there and faced him out. It was too late by the time she knew that.
So much had already happened in the last twenty-four hours, such an emotional upheaval in her drab life, forcing passion from her, shaking her concept of what she stood for, that she couldn't take in this new shock. It had struck alien into a warm experience of being awakened after coma. Her mind seemed to fall about inside like one of those equilibrist dolls which you push one way and it keeps swinging back at you. Totally overcome, like a hunted beast she had instinctively run for home.
All her misgivings now revolved about Chloe. At least the girl had been able to write and post that letter, so at least she was in control of her own actions. This was something to hold on to. But the connection with Pascal remained inexplicable.
Leila blamed herself bitterly that she'd allowed her fascination for him to smother her unease over Chloe. Since the last negative phone call to Mrs Knightley she'd taken no steps to discover where her stepdaughter might have gone. Now, in view of the letter, she was little wiser, except to know from which town and country Chloë had written. If the girl was bent on travelling through Europe she could well have moved on by now.
She'd had Chloë's letter in her hands and left it behind. Why? From scruples because it was addressed to Pascal? That was stupid. She should have hung on to it and insisted that he explain. Or concealed it, taken it away to open in private. Which could have given her time to think before she faced him over it.
And Pascal - surely a stranger - clearly more in the child's confidence than she was herself! Where did he stand in this? When she fled from his cottage he hadn't run after her.
So what had he thought when she suddenly vanished? He had been preoccupied in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, still talking to her through the open doorway. Eventually he would have come out to see why she didn't answer.
Then he'd have picked up the mail which she'd dropped. He'd have seen Chloë's writing on the envelope and surely he'd know she'd recognised it.
So now he would realise her shock, would surely follow her here and offer some explanation.
She thought of the morning she'd found him on her doorstep with the empty teacup. It seemed months ago. Amused at his fake excuse, she'd invited him into her home, where he'd picked up the photograph. He'd remarked how alike they were, stepmother and stepdaughter.
All this time he had known Chloë and he hadn't let on. That was deliberate deceit. What need had there been to keep their association secret? The deception was scary.
As for herself, this - this tenderness she'd thought she felt for him, and his pretence of interest in her - she could see now he'd been playing her along for some ulterior reason. To what purpose? How would he expect to use her? Was he intimate enough with Chloë ever to confide to her that her father's wife had slept with him? Was that his intention? - to shame Leila in the child's eyes, widening the gulf between her parents?
Deliberate entrapment. That much was clear now. Even at their first meeting, out on the cricket field, he must have known who she was, and on some whim he'd set out to charm her. Why her? It hadn't been for her brains or beauty: she couldn't fool herself she was something special.
What she'd taken for interest - fondness even - was deliberate mischief-making. The reason had to be that she was Chloë's guardian. In some way he hoped to get at the child through her.
And Chloë only fifteen!
If Leila herself, supposedly adult, could be so easily hoodwinked,
what chance against him had a schoolgirl with even less experience?
I have to keep a cool head, she warned herself. Whatever else, I've put myself in a position to be blackmailed. But I won't cover up for him. I'd rather it all came out and Aidan blew his top, than allow that fiend to get anywhere near my daughter. Anyway, why should I be afraid of what my husband thinks, with him the pathetic womaniser he is?
She went through to the kitchen and put her face under the cold tap, letting water dribble over her hair. Her underlying fear was that she was too late. Perhaps the Frenchman already had the child submissive to him. Chloe seduced? But if so he would surely have been abroad with her now. No, maybe she was sent on ahead and he would be joining her later. There might be a chance yet to keep them apart.
Certainly Chloe concealed secrets Leila had never suspected. It was vital she find out more. Perhaps upstairs Chloe had left behind a diary or an address book. There must surely be some way to get in touch and warn her off the man.
Normally scatterbrain with her belongings, the girl had taken some pride in her new room. It was twice the size of the one in Caversham and she had chosen the decoration herself. One wall was painted bright yellow, one dark blue and the other two terracotta. Leila had gone with her to choose the bedcover and curtains of wildly patterned indigo.
As a parent she had never invaded Chloë's privacy and it shamed her to be reduced to it, but as she cautiously went through her stepdaughter's clothes and papers she told herself it was for protection rather than invasive.
The room's tidiness seemed unnatural, although Leila knew the girl was almost obsessively meticulous when it came to her schoolwork. She'd be an academic perfectionist like her father, although still a scatty teenager.
The written exercises, stacked and tied in subject bundles, were stored on the floor of her wardrobe behind the
four mirror-fronted sliding doors. There was no private correspondence there.
She wasn't on the internet but the work station for her word processor had been set up in the window's bay so that she could sun herself over her revision. Floppy disks, all neatly docketed, were boxed on a lower shelf. Leila helped herself to the one labelled Personal. A quick skim through revealed no more than girlish correspondence with her friends.
Chloë at only fifteen was bright enough to have tackled several GCSE subjects a year in advance, but these letters revealed a childish innocence only thinly masked by a pose of sophistication. Young and silly, her mild adventures would have been recounted with a superior smirk and read with giggles: childish opinions on adult eccentricities; the occasional snide poke at someone who'd briefly offended. But no passion; no angst; no real duplicity.
Finally Leila went through the drawers of the tallboy. Again nothing unexpected, except that the lowest drawer jammed as she shut it. The runners were slightly warped and she had to force it back in place. That was perhaps why the drawer contained only leftover Christmas wrappings, glitzy paper, gift tags and satin ribbons provided by Leila herself from PARTY FUN stock.
Slamming the drawer finally shut made the whole piece shake. The triptych mirror on top wobbled, threatening to fall. She reached out instinctively to save it and her fingertips closed on a lump behind one edge of the frame.
She laid the mirror flat and peeled off the sticky tape which secured a small flat package wrapped in a white tissue. The contents yielded like granules of coffee sweetener.
She held her breath and gently eased off the tape seal. The tissue tore but she could always replace it. No,of course she'd never replace it; not if inside there was what she suspected.
In her hand lay a small plastic envelope containing white powder. One corner had been snipped off and a little eased out as she held it. Dear God, no!
Pointless to try it on her tongue. What should it taste of? Shouldn't taste of? And in any case she knew: she'd seen it so often on television, in films; little packages like this, and the knowing glance exchanged between investigating police. She knew the contents because she knew the cliché.
But what had this to do with Chloe? It made her present disappearance more alarming. Supposedly visiting her grandmother, she was deep into deceit, concealing her whereabouts from her family; perhaps planning her flight to Montreux with a grown-up lover. Or waiting there alone, and writing back to demand why he hadn't caught up with her?
It had to be Pascal she was involved with. And now this new discovery must surely mean that he was her supplier.
Everything had suddenly changed, yet again lurched into a Kafkaesque distortion. She saw now that searching she'd been looking for something different, proof that Chloë's link with the man was less serious; some innocent reason for her writing. It would have been disturbing enough because unsuspected, but hurtful on a personal level only because Leila herself had been attracted, and deceived, by him. She'd not have needed to see Chloe and herself in the same predicament.
Now that she knew for certain that the child was in moral danger she must search more thoroughly. She began again, desperately.
Nothing new in the drawers, which yielded only underclothes, with school uniform strictly segregated. The sliding doors of her wardrobe re-opened on to the same hanging garments; on the floor the same games gear and files of school notes, lacrosse and hockey sticks; a box with microscope and slides; shoes neatly lined up in pairs; stationery for personal correspondence and for printer.
Nothing. Leila sat back on her heels. If Chloe had anything relating to her secret life she would have taken it away with her. So what had she actually packed in her single suitcase? Which of her clothes were missing?
As Leila's hands brushed along them a hanger clattered and some filmy material cascaded down. She bent to pick it up and saw that at the top it was still attached to the hanger. A full-length evening dress.
She lifted it out. It was of semi-transparent silk chiffon and low cut, panelled on the bias. Weird purples, black and poison green merged into each other under a glittering tracery of silver thread. Quite fabulous.
She laid the dress on the bed and stared at it; imagined Chloe spellbound by its fantasy. And she had never spoken of it, kept to herself what must have been a very thrilling, personal gift, because no way would her pocket money ever have stretched to this.
Leila felt sick at how easily the girl had been bought: with drugs and a fabulous dress.
But she was a greater fool herself, when it took no more than a Centre Court ticket and a river trip to have her convinced that Pascal was in love with her! And herself with him. That had been enough to destroy a lifetime's belief in a wife's due loyalty. Something inside seemed to shrivel at the thought. ‘God,' she moaned, ‘what a pathetic fool!'
She heard the squeal of the garden gate. Someone was approaching the house by the front path. From behind the curtain she looked down and saw Pascal loping towards the front porch. So at last he had thought up some scheme of damage limitation.
She wasn't ready for him. He shouldn't find her here.
He rang three times with long pauses between. Even when his footfalls had died away she stayed crouched beside Chloë's bed, the fabric of the abominable dress crumpled in one fist. She let time pass before standing up, and found she had stiffened.
She straightened and took stock. One thing about the dress now puzzled her: that it was still here. That and the powder, whatever it was.
If Chloe had special plans for Montreux, why hadn't she
taken these things with her? It was unaccountable, on a level with Pascal himself having stayed behind.
She had thought she knew her stepdaughter. Was it just possible that the extravagant gift of the dress had embarrassed her and she'd sense enough to see through the motive behind it? Handing it back might have been awkward, involving seeing the man again. The letter from abroad could be her way of explaining how she felt.
No, it was a wilful stretching of imagination to think that Chloe had repudiated him and that, rejected, he'd then meant to use her stepmother to regain access. And yet why else such deliberate pursuit? - and it had been deliberate, she saw now; from the first, with that self-guying, stage-Gallic role he'd played to catch her attention at the cricket match.
Holding the dress close Leila now became aware of its perfume. The whole wardrobe had smelled faintly of Chloë's favourite Je Reviens - one of Uncle Charles's unsuitable gifts last Christmas. The scent certainly didn't come off her laundered school uniform. It was this filmy material that had perfumed the rest.
Which suggested that Chloe had already worn it.
Now that Leila examined it more closely she found a drawn thread puckering the fabric of one slim shoulder strap. And the hem had been amateurishly turned up to make it two inches shorter. Not even hemmed, but secured at distances of four or five inches with stationery staples.
At some time Chloe must have gone out dressed in this seductive outfit and her parents had known nothing of it. Nor that she was experimenting with what could be cocaine.
There seemed no end to the disasters that threatened to submerge her. For a short while Leila's reason deserted her. In febrile shock she went round the house double-locking outer doors and closing windows, as if preparing for a high gale. She felt the house under siege, and herself gone to earth like a hunted beast.

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