The Maestro's Mistress (26 page)

She looked out of the window and
saw the English Channel gleaming grey and pearl-like below. Tara thought
longingly of her home in Oxfordshire. She longed to see her mother. She ached
for Alessandra. She burned with heat at the prospect of being united with Saul.

As for her career – well, she
would find a way. And Saul would help her.

‘So?’ he had said. She knew
exactly what that cryptic communication conveyed. It was an enigmatic message
combining the highest of praise with a dose of stern caution. She was at last
beginning to understand how his mind worked.

OK, things would not be easy. But
now all things seemed possible.  Tara sensed that she was not quite the same
person who had flown out to Vienna the day previously. She was enriched,
strengthened, emboldened. The world was out there to be grasped. The future was
suddenly not only shining, but controllable.

CHAPTER
22

Georgiana’s interest was caught
by the stark beauty of the little country church, a black shape against a
lowering, sulky August sky. She slowed her speed, her glance taking in the
squat steeple and the grotesquely comical weathered gargoyles guarding the
guttering.

Just outside the churchyard
several busy figures were unloading their cars, emerging pink-faced and
panting, their arms filled with flowers and ribbons and silver horse-shoes. The
figures hurried down the mossy path, disappeared into the dark doorway of the
church.

A wedding!

Georgiana’s foot pressed firmly
on the brake. She stepped with the grace of a dancer from the car, and walked
to the arched stone entrance, her eyes trying to pierce the gloom of the inside
of the church. Something about it fascinated her and drew her in.

The women busy in the nave and at
the chancel steps glanced at her, wondering if she was a guest misguidedly
turning up hours too early. Georgiana smiled in reassurance, pointing to an
empty pew indicating her wish to do nothing more than partake of the
consolations and tranquillity to be had in a church.

They smiled back, nodding with
relief and continued to grapple with vast swathes of tiger lilies, apricot
roses and huge daisy-like chrysanthemums which were already shedding peppery
yellow dust.

Georgiana knelt, her hands
clasped in an attitude of prayer. She was not a religious woman. She did not
attend church except for the big three life events – christenings, marriage and
death. Nevertheless she appreciated the hallowed atmosphere of a church. It
comforted her to hope for the possibility of a life after death.

She hated to think about death,
and even more about ageing; the sagging of the face and the awful collapse of
the body.  It was this horror which had kept her from visiting her mother in
California during the ordeal of Saul’s rejection. Georgiana had not lied when she
told Dr Denton that her mother was still a beauty. She was indeed lovely – if
one looked only at the right side of her face. A stroke two years previously had
made a malevolent alteration on the left side which Georgiana found both
horrifying and depressing.

Nevertheless she and her mother
spoke regularly on the telephone. Her mother had been justly appalled at Saul’s
actions, but had reassured her daughter that he was bound to come to his
senses. Sooner or later she would get him back, and all the status that went
with him.

Georgina raised herself into a
sitting position, touching her face with tentative fingers and finding the
contours still smooth and perfect. She looked down the nave to the chancel
steps. A white shaft of sun glinted on the brass stair rods. She blinked,
checking that the glimmer was real, not one of the iridescent displays that
were like hot grit beneath her eyelids, reverberating needles of fire at the
base of her armpits. Carefully she traced the source of the spear of light to
the arched window behind the pulpit. She smiled and breathed deeply. There was
nothing to fear.

The women were now looping swags
of delphinium and cow parsley around the lectern. Country folk obviously. But
the effect was rather charming, she had to admit. She regretted she would not
be able to stay on for the wedding ceremony, cast her eye over the bridal
procession.

She and Saul had been married in
a country church. It had been decorated with twenty dozen white roses. And at a
time when it was fashionable for brides to look like lace-festooned balloons
with skirt hems frothing around their calves, she Georgiana, had worn a
sculpted floor length sheath in heavy satin and carried a single orchid. She
had set a lasting trend.

Saul had been the perfect escort,
a recipient entirely worthy of her loveliness. He had looked so aristocratic in
his grey morning dress; a trophy of male beauty, lofty bearing and breathtaking
talent.

Still in his twenties he was
already both a virtuoso pianist and a budding conductor, his engagement diary
filling up in line with his wallet.

He had been a solitary and evocatively
romantic figure. Saul had been a solitary orphan brought up by his unmarried
uncle – a renowned cardiac surgeon. At the wedding he had wanted only one
friend – his music agent.

This solitariness of Saul, this
mystery of his roots had all been part of his god-like fascination. She had
always thought of him as having in some way invented himself, shaping his life
from a blank sheet. She had often wondered if he had aristocratic blood flowing
in his veins, thinking it not at all unlikely.

And now he had created a real
flesh and blood family, started a dynasty all of his own. The idea filled
Georgiana with a rapturous, incandescent glow.

She bowed her head in a final
prayer, asking whatever God might inhabit this church to give her a blessing.

CHAPTER
23

Tara picked up her car at the
airport and made her way through the complex jumble of London’s outer circular
roads. Once on the motorway she pressed her foot firmly on the accelerator and allowed
the Jaguar’s five litre engine to show her what it could do.

Xavier had taught her to drive
fast and had recently provided her with a wonderful piece of engineering for
the purpose. The surge of speed pressed her spine against the seat and brought
a smile of pleasure to her lips. She hoped she was not slaughtering too many
flies with her side windows.

She glowed with well being. The
persistent nausea of the early weeks of her pregnancy seemed at last to have
vanished. She felt alert and fit, sharpened up with a new sense of her own
worth and fresh purpose.

She promised herself that in the
coming months she would practise for at least five hours a day come what may.
Obviously she would need to put any ideas of playing in public on hold until
after the baby was born, but there would be no need to hold back after that.

All of which meant she must start
making plans in order to be fully prepared. She decided that now was time to go
ahead and find a kind and affectionate nanny to care for Alessandra for some
part of the day in order that she would have the mental and physical freedom to
play for as long as she felt was necessary.

Alessandra was steadily emerging
from babyhood, reaching a developmental point where it was becoming possible to
talk and reason with her on simple issues. Tara began to frame the words of
explanation and reassurance in her head, confident that she could set things
out to her small daughter in a way that would not make her upset.

She imagined Saul’s eyebrows
lifting ironically at the news, the mocking ‘I told you so’ expression in his
eyes.

The car leapt forward seeming to
sense the driver’s urgency, her surge of longing to reach home and translate
thoughts into action.

As she turned into the drive her
heart lurched in consternation as she registered the presence of a police car
parked outside the front door. She groaned, her mind leaping over the last
twenty minutes when she had been averaging over a hundred miles per hour on the
motorway.

But as she entered the house she
knew immediately that something deeply serious and threatening was wrong. She
could almost touch it in the atmosphere: a dense silence, an air of stillness,
a heavy quality about the air, thick with dark expectancy.

Her mother came down the hallway
to greet her. Her face was deathly white, her eyes hunted and fearful. She
raised her arms, reaching out to Tara, and then instantly let them fall again
so they hung slack by her side.

‘Oh, Tara!’

Mother and daughter confronted each
other in a silent moment of panic and horror.

‘What?’ Tara breathed.

‘Alessandra,’ Rachel said. Her
eyes glittered with fever and panic. ‘Alessandra,’ she repeated. ‘Oh my God,
Tara. She’s disappeared. Been taken.’

Tara eyes widened with shock.
‘Taken?’ She stared at Rachel unable to believe what she had heard.

‘She didn’t sleep much last
night. She was restless and she fell asleep this morning whilst I was playing
with her in the garden. I settled her in her pram.’  Rachel paused, needing to
gather strength before she could continue.

Tara tried to concentrate on her
mother’s words. Their meaning slithered away from her before she could grasp
it.

‘I only went inside for a moment.
The phone rang; I thought it might be you. It was a wrong number. When I got
back she had gone.’

Tara stiffened. Her face felt
frozen.

‘Dear God in heaven, Tara, I’ll
never forgive myself,’ Rachel said bitterly.

Tara shook her head. ‘No. Don’t
say that. I’ve often left her in the garden for a minute or two.’ It was true
but Tara knew that she blamed Rachel nevertheless, that if anything happened to
Alessandra she would never be able to forgive her.

‘Does Saul know?’ Tara asked
softly.

‘Yes. He phoned from the airport
an hour ago, just after it happened. He’ll be back as soon as he can.’

‘How did he take it?’ Tara’s eyes
widened with fresh anxiety.

‘How can you ever know with him?’
Rachel responded, turning her face away.

‘This is all my fault,’ Tara
burst out. ‘I should never have gone to Vienna. Never have left her.’

Rachel sighed. ‘You need to talk
to the police, Tara.’ She led the way into the drawing room. A man and a woman
were standing silent and musing in front of the Picasso.  They turned when Tara
entered.

She stared at them – strangers in
her and Xavier’s house. She found herself hating them because of what had
happened to bring them here. Because they had not suffered the crushing grief
and terror of having their child taken.

Taking deep breaths she
controlled her savage feelings, reminding herself that there was only one human
being on earth to blame for all this misery: the wicked, death-deserving
creature who had snatched her baby.

When she spoke to the police
officers it was with impeccable politeness, admirable calm. She was a
performer. She knew how to dissemble, how to cloak her nerves. There were
endless questions to respond to. Tara listened carefully and answered as best
she could.

The officers were gentle but they
had a host of issues to address. Who were the people who had access to the
house and garden? Who might know the routine of the household, times when the
baby might be left alone for a few moments? Was there anyone Tara could think
of who might have some reason to take the child?

They came back to that last point
on more than one occasion. Tara tried to think. Her mind kept crying out,
‘Alessandra!
Oh God, please, please!
Over and over, her mind racing in panic like a
hunted animal.

She forced her brain to make
connections. But she could think of no one she knew who would be so cruel and
heartless to take a young child from its home. She looked up at the cool,
law-enforcing professionals. ‘What do we do now?’ she whispered, her eyes
wounded and pleading.

They explained to her that press,
radio and TV news conferences were already being set up. They judged it would
be helpful if she and Saul would agree to appear on a TV news bulletin and make
an appeal to the abductor to give the child back. It would be an ordeal, they
agreed – painful and distressing, but a ploy which had worked in previous
cases.

‘I’ll do anything. Anything at
all to get her back,’ Tara told them.

She heard them communicating with
their headquarters. Voices buzzed and rasped as the details of arrangements
were discussed.

Rachel perched on the sofa, her
face etched with misery. She looked at her daughter and felt the deep gulf
between them expanding by the second.

Tara sat beside the window, her
body hunched in despair. She had the sense that all the pain she had
experienced in her previous existence had merely been a pale rehearsal for what
she was feeling now. In her mind’s eye she saw Alessandra’s silken, unblemished
skin, the polished plumpness of her young thighs, the watery clearness of her
innocent trusting eyes. She tried not to allow here imagination to explore the
little girl’s feelings of bewilderment, shied away from any picturing of true
fear or pain.