Veil of Darkness (20 page)

She is, after all, only the typist.

Bernie’s mounting disloyal thoughts remain harmlessly in her head. If only she had someone else with whom she could swap ideas. Most of her old Scouse mates would sympathize and take her side, have a giggle, a drink and a good old slagging-off session, fired by injustice. But she can’t do that with boring Avril, who won’t hear a bad word said about Kirsty, who takes life so bloody seriously, especially her farcical friendship with that old bore Ed Board. Ed is clearly some kind of pervert who likes a bit of rough with big women, and Avril is so naive she couldn’t see how his small eyes lit up when he heard about Avril’s good fortune. But it’s not up to Bernie to dampen her ardour, to pour scorn on the first relationship the moron has experienced in her whole life.

The phone call from Dominic comes through to the suite just as Bernie is preparing for dinner with Candice Love’s preferred editor, a woman from the publishing house that paid the highest auction price for
Magdalene
—a record, goes the rumour, but the details have not yet been made public.

It’s important that Bernie and this editor hit it off. They will have to work closely together, both now and in the future. So Bernie feels more nervous than normal.

Avril, as usual, picks up the phone. Always at hand. Ready to help. Sometimes Bernie fights the urge to kick her out of the way. Boring boring
boring
.

Avril gasps. ‘Bernie, it’s Dominic’

Bernie whirls round blinking, eyeliner still in her hand.

‘Dominic?’

Avril nods stupidly.

‘I thought I’d give you a ring,’ says Dominic. ‘Congratulations! I read about your incredible book and everything that’s happening and I wondered if you’d remember me now you’re famous.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ says Bernie, and still, after all that has happened, his voice affects the rhythm of her heart. She is conscious of nothing except his voice. Breathless with hope, ecstatic is the only word for her now.

‘And I wondered if we could meet again.’

She would have said tonight, but remembers the meeting with the editor which could go on until late. She drops a heavy sigh. ‘What’s happened to you and Belinda?’

He doesn’t answer immediately and Bernie stops breathing. After the pause and her gasp he says, ‘Oh, you know me, Bernie, I’ve always been selfish, but I’ve had a long time to think, to look at the way my life is going, and I can’t go through another month searching for something I lost when you and I split up last year.’

This doesn’t sound like the carefree Dominic Bernie once knew. She can’t remember him ever going into himself and his feelings without some stupid punch line at the end.

‘I’ve been very lonely, Dom,’ she says.

‘I don’t expect you’ll ever want to give me another chance?’

‘I never found anyone else.’

‘And I know you won’t have lacked offers.’

Dominic sounds so serious. This change in him is astonishing. It’s as if he has had a religious experience, like Paul on the road to Damascus. This couldn’t be a joke, could it? There couldn’t be people listening in, holding back their hysteria, ready to burst out laughing the moment he gives the signal? No, no, no, even Dom could never be so cruel, although… she doesn’t know what to think any more.

‘We could have dinner tonight,’ he says. ‘I know a place—’

‘I can’t,’ are the most difficult words Bernie has ever spoken.

Dominic pauses, sounds almost relieved. ‘I ought to have known, I’m a fool—’

‘No, no, it’s only because I’m meeting someone. Tomorrow… I could meet you tomorrow?’

‘We’ve got so much to catch up on, you and me.’

This can’t be because of the money, can it? Here she is, suspecting Ed Board of coming on strong because of the dosh, and silly Avril being blind to the truth, but no, Dominic’s family is rolling in it, Dominic doesn’t need money. He is heir to a cardboard-box fortune. Why oh why can’t Bernie stop thinking that nothing deeper than greed drives him back?

‘Tomorrow night then, I’ll come and get you. Is eight o’clock OK?’

‘Fine,’ says Bernie, closing her eyes on a miracle she had begun to despair of, ‘I’ll see you then.’

Oh, Dom, oh, Dom.

Avril has ordered supper in her room and invited Kirsty to join her. This is far more appropriate for Bernie than having Avril tagging along, although, this evening, after that magical phone call, Bernie feels a warm flow of love for everybody around her. But Avril is always so irritating, droning on about her own little problems, she’d bore any dinner guest stiff with talk of her family’s arrival, or her little flirtation with gross old Ed. Especially a dinner guest as influential and sophisticated as this one promises to be. It’s hard to imagine how anyone else could outdo Candice in the role of super-dominant, manipulative human being. Perhaps she herself will be like that one day.

‘Do I look OK?’

And although she asks, she knows the answer, and what is the use of Avril’s opinion?

Bernie sets off downstairs, beautiful and blessed. Some magical light shines off her, and it isn’t because of the tight black taffeta or the sling-back shoes or the diamante earrings Candice lent her. It is the light of love, the power of passion, the trembling turbulence of tumultuous obsession, as blinding and yet every bit as delicate as the thousands of prisms that twinkle in the great chandelier above her head.

It’s an old lady in a scruffy brown wig.

The majestic Candice bears down on Bernie, pulling the crone behind her. ‘This is Clementine, Bernie.’ Candice makes her introductions before leading the way into the bar, the usual cloud of designer perfume lingering in the air behind her.

As Candice orders the drinks, Bernie stares hard at her new editor, who almost disappears in the lumps of the ancient leather chesterfield. Her small, narrow face, almost worn to the bone, is well-shaped, and her eyes are set deep in their sockets, from which they still peer, sharp and bright. She could have been a spy in the French resistance, Odette grown old, or the little sparrow singing sad love songs, there is such a mischievous look about her.

‘Rum and coke for you, Bernie,’ says Candice, not without a sniff, ‘and a double brandy for Clementine.’

The papier-mâché banana earrings worn by the editor look incongruous with the twinset and kilt, the knee-length socks and the ethnic sandals. This is obviously a woman, barely five feet high, who prefers to be comfortable, and not only that. This is obviously a woman, with wisps of grey hair showing under the brown, far more shrewd and knowing than Candice, with all her worldly assurance, and Bernie feels uncertain, as if she’s already been sussed.

‘What an exquisite child,’ says Clementine Davaine, in a voice surprisingly deep and strong. ‘I have been so looking forward to meeting the author of
Magdalene
, by far the best book I have read in years. Congratulations, my dear.’ And Clementine Davaine holds out a gnarled old hand, the arthritic fingers set firmly in a pen-holding grip.

H
AH! GOD LIVES. HE
ought to have known the Burleston Hotel would not have bothered with the Yellow Pages. Trev thinks they are possibly ex-directory when he receives the understated brochure, but on such expensive top-notch paper you can’t help but guess at the quality of the place.

Trev was three-quarters of the way through his free Yellow Pages directory, but had certainly not given up hope when he came upon the article in
Country Life
. He was having his tea break at the time, installing a new central-heating system for a Mrs Strange of Birkenhead. A fine old house surrounded by new development, with a ten-foot fence to keep out the masses.

The article itself was boring: some food and wine convention held by those obnoxious snobs who have time for such crap. There they were in their evening clothes, clashing their long-stemmed glasses together and gazing glazenly into the camera. Now Trev doesn’t have the memory of an elephant, but the name of the hotel bugged him, he didn’t think he’d heard that name, and when he got home he checked up. He rang directory enquiries, fearing the worst, but the computer voice gave him the number slowly and clearly and Trev was quickly into his Inspector Bates persona.

Rhoda, on the other end of the phone, feeling hard done by because, since Avril’s sudden rise in the world, Mr Derek has not yet supplied a replacement, nevertheless responded with interest when she heard it was the police.

‘What d’you want Kirsty for?’ she asked quickly.

‘Oh, nothing important. Just checking up on a few things.’

Typical, the fuzz are so mysterious. Like squeezing water out of a stone. Rhoda wouldn’t have known about Kirsty if she and Avril hadn’t been friends; she would have had to look up the list of Burleston employees, and might well have denied they had such a person to save herself the trouble of searching for it. Well, there’s so much extra work lately, the phones always going and faxes from London for that snooty Candice Love.

‘Kirsty Hoskins is one of our chambermaids.’

‘And could I have Mrs Hoskins’s address?’

‘Oh, she lives in. They mostly do, the seasonal ones.’

‘So presumably her children are not with her?’

‘I’ve never heard of any children.’

‘Right, that’s all I need to know, thank you. Naturally I would be grateful for your discretion on this matter, Miss…’

‘Carp, as in the fish,’ said Rhoda, a habit Mr Derek is trying to train her out of. ‘Shall I send you our brochure?’

‘Why not?’ said Trevor, taking his final bow as the sleuth Inspector Bates.

No bugger is willing to help him, nobody will believe him, everyone takes the view that Kirsty must have had a reason to run. And, as if life isn’t fraught enough, Trev’s bid for legal aid has failed and he’s been forced to cough up for that useless meeting with that weedy poof Gillespie. But Trevor has two weeks of his holidays left and, although it’s 1 September on Tuesday and a busy month for holidays, he persuades his best mate, Greg, to swap. He was only going to his mother-in-law’s and seemed quite keen to oblige.

If the kids aren’t with Kirsty then where the hell are they? A caring mother, too caring thinks Trev, she would be highly unlikely to dump them just anywhere. Trev’s anger grows. If only he’d acted before, or talked to someone other than his mother. He ought to have guessed she would bolt one day, but Trev is the type of macho man who believes that to discuss private problems is a symptom of weakness, and there is such a thing as disloyalty to the family.

He thinks of himself as the strong, silent type.

His is a nonchalant, carefree image. Wife and kiddies at home, central heating, double glazing, everything in his garden is rosy although a quick look at Trev’s garden would soon reveal some hidden truths: discarded clothes-pegs dropped about, cardboard boxes just tossed anywhere, rotting sunbeds not put away, patches of border dug but not finished, now sprouting dandelions amidst pale-green grasses all signs of Kirsty’s malaise in Trev’s sick mind. Trev sincerely believes that Kirsty is to blame; he has convinced himself that black is white in his pursuit of vengeance. ‘Part of her problem was her cleanliness phobia,’ he tells disbelieving friends, turning the truth on its head. ‘The house had to be spotless, even if it meant tipping little messes—old pans of fat and the burned remains of casseroles—out of the kitchen door onto the abandoned beds.’ All lies. ‘And although she dumped bits of broken bike and pram in the garden, indoors the kids’ toys were never in sight—under the beds they had to go, one toy out at a time was the rule. Bloody hell, sometimes I got home and thought I’d arrived in hospital, so strong was the damn disinfectant smell.

‘The cow would shout at me, “Take your shoes off.” Never, ever, “What sort of day have you had?” or ask about the traffic. And the meal was always banged down on the table, mustard, mustard, mustard with everything, and gravy poured all over it. I found her books hidden everywhere, three or four on the go at a time, as if the bitch felt guilty for reading and needed to hide her dirty deeds as though they were some kind of female secret.’

Trev couldn’t care if she read or not so long as he had his
Sun
for the sport and the
Sunday People
for the competitions.

Kirsty was obsessive, he told them.

She insisted on ironing and folding his socks.

She hated talking over the telly.

She hid the bills until he had it out with her—when the telephone was cut off, and the electric, he came home once to find them sitting round in the dark, a cold tea, ham with mustard, ready for him on the table. And she’s got such a fetish about her hair, she never allowed him to touch it. She tried to sell his Bisto tin once, knowing it was a favourite of his; she took it to a secondhand shop, along with his mum’s coronation mug. When he finally got the truth out of her, when she admitted what she’d done, he was forced to take his pride in his hands and try to explain at the shop.

The slightest thing would set her off. OK, he admits it, he has hit her in the past; he had to, he had no alternative, it was the only way to bring her to her senses. She thought she was one of her bloody heroines, Amelia or Bethany, Bettina or Wanda—crazy names acted out in even crazier situations. She was lost in a haze of designer gowns or artists’ studios or in the clinics of famous surgeons. Those damn Mills and Boons hypnotized her; chameleonlike, she became the heroine. At times like these she left him; he could wave his hand before her face and she didn’t even flinch, she was gone into another, happier, more glamorous world than Trev could provide.

He told them that he’d tried his best to be patient, that the kiddies didn’t know what was happening; he bathed them and put them to bed but it was their mummy they wanted.

But now, at least, he knows where she’s gone and he’s determined to confront her. This is the last time she will mess them all up—Trev, his mum, the kiddies—Trev’s patience snapped long ago; that nutcase will agree to have treatment if he has to drag her there himself, and he goes off to hire a Vauxhall Cavalier, reliable wheels for his southbound journey.