The Undoing of de Luca (21 page)

She took a train to Bodmin and then hired a taxi for the journey to her mother’s cottage near Padstow. Anne Dunant rented a modest place on the outskirts of the town where she worked as a librarian. In the six months since her mother had left Maddock Manor, Ellery had only been there once. Now she took in the neatly tended garden, the welcome mat in front of the door, the vase of flowers in the window and was glad her mother had made a life for herself, away from the Manor. Away from the memories.

Her mother opened the door before she could knock and enveloped Ellery in a quick, fierce hug before she uttered a word. ‘I’m so glad you came.’

‘Me too,’ Ellery said. It had been a sudden and surprising decision during the long hours of her endless flight from Naples, but one she’d realized she needed to take before she got on with her life.

‘Come in, I’ve made tea.’

‘Thanks. I’m exhausted.’

‘I’m sure you are. What on earth were you doing in Italy?’ Her mother, still elegant at fifty, and in jeans and a jumper, moved into the cottage’s tiny kitchen. It was all such a far cry from the space and elegance of Maddock Manor—at least in its glory days—but Ellery knew that wasn’t a bad thing.

It wasn’t a bad thing at all.

‘I was on holiday of sorts,’ she said after a moment. ‘With a man.’

Anne paused, the kettle in her hand. ‘Promising?’ she asked and Ellery smiled wearily.

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She made the tea and brought it over to the sitting room that led directly off the kitchen. ‘I worry about you, you know, stuck up in Suffolk all alone.’ Her mother gave her a rather shaky smile. ‘I know you wanted to keep that place, Ellery, and I understand, but—’

‘It’s all right.’ Ellery smiled back and took a sip of tea. ‘I wanted to thank you for letting me stay there, actually. I realize if you’d sold it you could have been a lot more comfortable—’

Anne waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Ellery, I’m fine. And how could I sell the only home you knew? It’s your inheritance. It’s not mine to give away.’

Ellery nodded, her mug cradled between her hands. ‘Still. Thank you. I realize…’ Her throat suddenly ached and she took another sip of tea. ‘I realize I needed to live there for a while. I needed to…think about things. And,’ she added, swallowing past the tightness, ‘I needed to get away. Get some perspective.’

‘And did you?’ Anne asked quietly.

‘Yes.’ Ellery nodded and put her mug down. ‘Yes, I did. It wasn’t easy or comfortable, but I did. In fact, I have some ideas I wanted to talk to you about.’

Anne smiled and reached for Ellery’s hand. ‘I can’t wait to hear them.’

Growing up, Ellery had loved her father more than her mother; he had taken up all the space in her heart with his booming laugh and bear hugs, his absences making her, predictably, love him all the more. Her mother had been remote, removed, lost, no doubt, in her own secret heartache. Yet, in the five years since his death, they’d slowly and steadily drawn closer, brought together by her father’s betrayal, by their own disappointments and now, Ellery hoped, by their determination and desire to build new and better lives.

The past was done. She was moving on.

As the taxi turned up the Manor’s sweeping drive, Ellery’s jaw dropped in soundless shock. The lawns were covered with camera crews and their endless equipment, and a trailer had been parked on the gravel in front of the house.

‘Something going on, luv?’ the driver asked as he pulled up. Ellery took a few pound coins from her purse.

‘I suppose so,’ she said and got out of the car.

She’d spent the weekend at her mother’s cottage, a relaxed respite from her current cares, and yet clearly life had gone on, plans had been made and put into action without her approval or even her permission.

As the taxi disappeared down the drive, Ellery saw Amelie come around the corner of the house, swathed in faux fur, a mobile clamped to her ear. When she caught sight of her, she snapped the phone shut, her mouth curving into a horribly false smile.

‘
Sweetie!
We’ve been wondering when you’d get back.’

‘I was in Cornwall, visiting my mother,’ Ellery said tightly. ‘What on earth is going on?’

‘The photo shoot, of course.’ Amelie tucked her arm into Ellery’s; she’d never been so close to the woman before, and her perfume overpowered even the crisp scent of leaves and frost in the air. ‘We need to have the photos out by Christmas.’

‘What if I hadn’t come back?’ Ellery couldn’t help but ask. Amelie’s arrogance was unbelievable.

‘Oh, I knew you would,’ Amelie replied cosily as she steered Ellery towards her own front door. ‘After all, where would you go?’

There was no malice in the question, and Ellery felt too tired to bother mustering a sense of affront.

‘So could you open the house?’ Amelie asked, depositing Ellery on the portico. ‘We’ve been doing the outside shots but we need to get inside.’

‘Amelie, I just got back. This is a bit inconvenient—’

‘Trust me, sweetie, ten thousand pounds is worth a little inconvenience.’

Ellery shook her head in disbelief. Even now, Amelie was acting as if she owned the place, as if a bit of money made that much difference. Yet she couldn’t seem to get angry; she was too weary and careworn.

So she smiled instead as she unlocked the door. ‘I suppose you’re right. That money will make a huge difference.’

‘Won’t it just,’ Amelie agreed and breezed past her into the hall. Ellery said nothing. She wasn’t about to tell Amelie Weyton about her plans.

She spent the next two days holed up in her bedroom, spending the time on her laptop and mobile, arranging her affairs. Occasionally she’d go downstairs for something to eat and see the models’ make-up being done in the kitchen; if she wandered to the window, she saw shots being posed from a distance. The models looked artfully lethargic, their beautiful faces blankly bored.

It wasn’t until the last day of the shoot that she realized just why Larenz had decided on Maddock Manor. She’d stayed out of the rooms they were using for actual photography yet, curious for once, she peeped into the drawing room to see a model splayed in front of the fireplace—
their
fireplace—and her jaw dropped. Her heart ached.

The room had been transformed, and terribly. Fake cobwebs hung from the chandelier and bookcases, and everything had been coated with some kind of imitation dust or grime. The curtains at the windows, while shabby, had been in decent condition; they were now replaced with utter tatters.

It looked, Ellery realized, like the mouldering wreck Amelie had claimed it was. It looked like a ghost house, a ruin, a
hovel.
She felt a tight burning in her chest.

‘Isn’t it amazing?’

Ellery spun around to see Amelie smiling happily at her. ‘They did
such
a good job with the cobwebs. We hired a film-set designer. Look how the gown stands out,’ she murmured, turning Ellery back around again. Ellery gazed at the blank-faced girl in a gorgeous fuchsia gown splayed against the now grimy marble. Yes, the colour did stand out against all the gloom and dust; Ellery was level-headed enough to see that there was indeed something artistic about the shot. Beauty and the Beast.

But this was her house. Her
home.
The place she’d been trying to keep afloat for the past six months, and this photo shoot felt like a mockery of everything she’d made of it, everything she’d been.

And Larenz had known all along.

She took in a deep breath and let it out again. She was moving on, past the house, past the hurt. She thought of the money and where it was going and she turned to Amelie with a cool smile. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘very artistic. Today’s the last day?’

Amelie had the audacity to pat her cheek. ‘We’ll be out of here before teatime, sweetie. That’s a promise.’

And they were. Ellery watched as they packed up their cameras and vans, the models climbing almost sulkily into a waiting limo. They’d removed all the trappings of decay, and Amelie had even arranged for a professional cleaning service to come and restore the rooms they’d used to their former glory. If there had been any mocking irony in her voice, Ellery hadn’t heard it.

Amelie was, apparently, among other things, a professional.

Ellery turned from the window and went to the kitchen to make herself a much-needed cup of tea. The house felt very empty now, and she was glad she would be leaving again soon.

‘Hello, Ellery.’

Ellery whirled from the sink where she’d been filling the kettle. Larenz stood in the kitchen doorway; a gust of cold air blew in from the open door and rattled the windowpanes.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ellery managed. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, for she was too busy drinking him in greedily, her eyes lingering on his crisp curling hair, his glinting eyes, the hint of stubble on his jaw. He wore a woollen trenchcoat and held a pair of leather gloves in one hand. His cheeks were reddened with cold.

‘May I come in?’

Ellery realized she’d left the tap running and turned it off. ‘Yes. I suppose…Why are you here, Larenz?’

‘I came to give you the cheque.’

‘Oh.’ It was ridiculous to feel disappointed. For a moment—seeing him again—her spirits had buoyed, sailing far too high as her heart forgot every hurtful thing he’d done and said.

Now she remembered.

She grabbed the kettle and plonked it on the stove. ‘You could have posted it, you know.’

‘I didn’t want it to go astray. It’s a lot of money.’

‘Not to you.’

‘Just because I have a lot of money,’ Larenz said, ‘doesn’t mean I don’t value it.’

‘Oh, well, at least that’s something you value.’ Ellery closed her eyes, her back still to Larenz. She sounded far too spiteful and hurt, and she didn’t want to be. She
wasn’t.
She was moving on, forgetting Larenz, forgetting the foolish hopes she’d once had, so briefly—

‘Ellery—’

‘Thanks, anyway.’ She turned around quickly and held out her hand.

Larenz didn’t move. His gaze held hers, intense and even urgent, yet he didn’t say anything and neither did she.

‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said quietly, ‘for the way things happened.’

It was so little. So damned little. He made it sound as if it had been an accident, a twist of fate or nature, rather than his coldblooded decision to end things in such a callous way, to treat her as no more than the mistress she’d always been.

Ellery smiled coolly. ‘The cheque, please, Larenz.’

‘Ellery—’

‘Why did you come here?’ she demanded, her voice only a little raw. ‘What did you hope to gain? There’s nothing between us, Larenz. There never was. You made that quite clear when you dismissed me from your presence—’

‘It wasn’t—’

‘Oh, but it was. And coming back here and seeing this photo shoot you authorised? Turning my home into some kind of mouldering mockery—Amelie explained it all—’

Larenz flinched. ‘It’s just a photo shoot, Ellery, and I knew the money—’

‘Damn the money! And damn all your
justs.
It’s not just a photo shoot, or just a word, or just a fling. Not to me.’ Her voice shook and she strove to level it. ‘I suppose that’s how you keep your distance, how you justify it all to yourself. Everything—everyone—is
just.
No one comes close enough to be more than that.’

‘Don’t,’ Larenz said quietly, but the word still sounded dangerous, a threat.

‘I won’t,’ Ellery replied simply. ‘I’m done. I thought, for a little while, that I loved you. Or at least that I
could
love you, which was quite a big deal for me. That’s what made me so afraid that night, when I told you to answer the phone. I thought you were going to tell me you loved me—silly me—and I was afraid. Afraid of being hurt.’ Larenz’s lips tightened but he said nothing. She took a breath, spreading her hands wide. There was nothing left to hide now. ‘I know it’s all a bit tired and trite, but I’ve always had a difficult time trusting men. I didn’t want them to leave the way my father always did, so I never let them get close. And when I learned about his double life, well, that sealed the deal. My heart was off-limits.’

‘Sometimes,’ Larenz said in a low voice, ‘it’s better that way.’

Ellery nodded. ‘Yes, you would say that, wouldn’t you? We’re of the same mind, apparently.’ She let out a mirthless laugh. ‘That’s one thing we agree on, I suppose.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’ll take the cheque now.’

Slowly, Larenz withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket. ‘What will you do with it?’ he asked. ‘Mow the lawns a bit more or fix the heating?’ There was a glimmer of the old amusement, the old Larenz in his voice and it hurt to hear it.

‘I’ve already arranged those,’ Ellery replied flatly. ‘I sold the Rolls.’

Larenz raised his eyebrows. ‘You did?’

‘Yes.’ She crossed the kitchen and took the envelope without touching his hand. She was afraid that even that little bit of contact would weaken her resolve. She’d start to cry, or beg, or worse. She slipped the envelope into the pocket of her jumper. ‘This money is actually going to charity.’

Larenz’s mouth dropped open; it was, Ellery, thought, a rather satisfying sight. ‘What?’

‘I’m selling Maddock Manor,’ she told him. ‘It’s time.’

‘But it’s your home—’

‘Just like that empty palazzo is yours?’ Ellery shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’ She paused, her gaze resting on him, taking him in and memorizing every curve and line of his face and body because she knew she would never see him again. ‘They say home is where the heart is,’ she said quietly, ‘and it’s not here.’

The words seemed to fall into the stillness, to reverberate in the silence of the room. Larenz took their double meaning for he nodded once, in acceptance.

‘Goodbye, Ellery,’ he said and he turned around and walked out of the kitchen.

Standing in the emptiness of the room, it occurred to Ellery that they’d both had a turn at leaving each other.

And that they were both still, and always, alone.

Chapter Thirteen

I
T WAS
snowing when Ellery left the school. It didn’t look as if it would stick, but the thick white flakes glittered under the London street lights as she walked down the road, busy with people leaving work, their heads lowered against the falling snow.