Tomorrow's ghost

Have you met them - the Audleys?'

Nannie blinked, and her nose seemed less aggressive. 'You know Dr Audley, Miss Fitzgibbon?'

'One of my bosses - my first, actually ... Though I'm assigned to the Colonel at the moment. Which is why I'm here now, of course.' Frances nodded encouragingly. The bridge - a totally false structure, but built with convenient pieces of genuine truth - was beginning to feel solid beneath her. It even occurred to her that she was building better than she had intended: if Colonel Butler himself didn't altogether approve of David Audley - at least if Paul Mitchell was to be believed - it looked as though Nannie differed from that view; and that coincided with her own observation, that while Audley was generally rather rude to his equals, who were usually male, he was unfailingly courteous to women.

(The first time she'd encountered David Audley he'd been having a blazing row with Hugh Roskill, who hated his guts, when she'd been Hugh's secretary; and he - David -

had apologised to her next day (but not to Hugh!) with a big box of After Eights.) But she was losing momentum with Nannie now - and she only needed another few steps to be over the Bridge of Lies. Already she was so far over and committed to the crossing that the last worst lying truth, the truest lie, was no longer too outrageous to use.

'It's 'Mrs', not 'Miss', Nannie ... actually.'

''Mrs'?' Nannie frowned, yet somehow more at herself than at Frances. 'Oh ... I'm sorry, Mrs Fitzgibbon...'

'Yes?' Frances hooked on to Nannie's uncertainty. One way or another she had to fish the right cue out of her. 'Yes?'

'I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch what the constable said when he introduced you...'

Nannie wriggled on the hook.

That wasn't the right cue. But it also wasn't what was really in Nannie's mind, Frances sensed. There was something else.

'Yes?' Frances jerked at the line. Given time she would have played Nannie gently, that was the whole essence of the art of interrogation, even with a hard-shell/soft-centre subject like this one. But time was what she hadn't been given, this time.

She looked down at her wrist-watch, and as she raised her eyes again she saw that Nannie was staring in the same direction.

She looked down again: Nannie couldn't be interested in the time; Colonel Butler's girls - my girls - didn't get home until 6.20, they did their two preps at school after tea, just as she had done once upon a time, a thousand years ago.

Nannie had looked down at the same angle - nose at the same angle - a few moments before, at the hand on her arm.

At the hand.

Frances looked at her hands. There was nothing to catch Nannie's interest, or her disapproval either (yesterday morning Marilyn's unspeakable Rose Glory red would have aroused that, but now the talons were trimmed and clear-varnished - now the hands were hers again).

Nothing - they were simply hands and fingers, unadorned.

Nothing!

Oh, beautiful! thought Frances - like the mention of David Audley, it was better than she had designed, the ultimate true-lie handed to her - handed indeed! - on a plate, steaming hot. and appetising!

She ought to have spotted it more quickly, the thing that she always looked for in other women. But now she mustn't spoil her good fortune by looking up from her third finger in triumph: and to get the right expression all she had to remember was what a dirty, despicable, millstone-round-the-neck unforgiveable lie she was about to tell.

The lie twisted under her breasts as she met Nannie's eyes.

'No wedding ring, you mean?' She spread the empty hand eloquently without looking down at it again. 'No wedding ring?'

She clenched the fingers into a small fist as soon as she was sure that Nannie was looking at them.

'The ring is with my husband. He was killed in Ulster three years ago. Three years and six months and a week. He was with the SAS at the time, but he was a Green jacket really. And we were married for seven months and four days.' Frances plucked all the years and months and days out of the air for effect: she might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and lies that couldn't be checked ought always to be fully-grown and vigorous, and hard- working.

Now there was pain in Nannie's eyes, and that was good.

So ... it was time for a little more truth.

'I was a secretary in the department - ' Hugh was on good terms with Butler, as near a friend as the Colonel had among his colleagues ' - Group-Captain Roskill's secretary.

Do you know Group-Captain Roskill, Nannie?'

Nannie knew Hugh Roskill, she could see that. And since Hugh was also no slouch with women, young or old (though not in the David Audley class), that was good too.

In fact, she was home and dry now: Nannie knew enough to make all the necessary connections and deductions from the Fitzgibbon saga. Which was a merciful deliverance from the need to use the ultimate weapon, the last truth that was itself a deliverance of a sort; the little Robert, or little Frances, who hadn't made the grade, accident (or too much gin) cancelling out accident.

That wasn't even in the records, anyway, it was one of the few private things left, and she'd given enough by now to expect to collect on her investment.

'Your husband served with the Colonel, didn't he?' Frances changed the subject unashamedly, as of right. It