“Thank you,” I said. “But I may not make it in tomorrow. Claudia is not very well, and I’ll probably work from home using the remote-access system. I hope to see you on Friday.”
“Right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved that he had at least another day to dampen the erupting Gregory volcano. “I’ll see you on Friday.”
He hung up and I sat for a while wondering about my future, if I still had one with a gun-toting assassin on the loose.
“What was all that about?” my mother asked with concern.
“Oh, nothing, Mum,” I said. “Just a little problem at work. Nothing to worry about.”
But I did worry about it.
I had really enjoyed working for Lyall & Black over the last five years, but the role of an independent financial adviser was one that necessitated absolute trust, both of the client and of one’s colleagues. What sort of future did I have in a firm where one of the senior partners believed me to be involved in an attempted murder, and, at the same time, I wondered if he had been involved in a successful one?
The three of us sat at my mother’s dining table for dinner, and I ate and drank too much for my own good.
“What’s happened to your cat?” I asked, noticing its absence from under the table.
“It’s not my cat,” my mother said. “He’s just an irregular visitor, and I haven’t seen him for days. He’ll probably be back sometime soon.”
No doubt when fillet steak was back on the menu, I thought.
Claudia and I went up to bed early for us, around ten o’clock.
“You are such a clever thing,” Claudia said to me as we snuggled up together under the duvet.
“In what way?” I asked.
“Insisting we came here,” she said. “If we’d gone home, I would have felt pressured to cook or clean, or do something useful. Here, I can relax completely, my phone doesn’t even ring, and your mother is such a dear.”
I smiled in the darkness. Now, that was a turn up.
“But we can’t stay here very long,” I said seriously.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because if she goes on feeding me as she’s done today, I’ll end up with a waistline like Homer Simpson.”
We giggled uncontrollably.
Since we’d left the hospital that morning, neither of us had mentioned anything about the cancer or the upcoming chemo treatments. It was as if we had left all our troubles behind in London.
But they were about to come looking for us.
I dreamt that I was riding in a race, but, like all dreams, it was inconsistent and erratic. One second I was on a horse, the next on an ostrich or in a car. However, one part of the dream was unvarying: Whatever we were riding, I was always racing against Gregory. And he was ever smiling and aiming a gun with a silencer at my head.
I woke up with a jerk, breathing fast, ready to run.
I relaxed, and lay there in the dark listening to Claudia’s rhythmic breathing beside me.
Did I really think that Gregory Black was involved in fraud and murder?
I didn’t know, but I was sure interested to hear the results of the postmortem examination on Jolyon Roberts, if there had been one.
I drifted back to sleep but only fitfully, waking often to listen for sounds that shouldn’t have been there. Woodmancote was much quieter without traffic, and much darker without streetlamps, than our home in Lichfield Grove, but nevertheless I slept badly and was wide awake long before the sun lit up the bedroom window soon after six o’clock.
I got up quietly and padded silently downstairs in bare feet with my computer. I had been seriously neglecting my clients over the past two weeks and, if I didn’t pull my finger out soon, I’d have no job worthy of the name at Lyall & Black to cry about even if I was fired.
I logged on to the Internet.
I had forty-three unread e-mails, including a fresh one from Jan Setter telling me how fantastic the first night of the Florence Nightingale show had been and how crazy I was to have missed it. It was timed at five-fifty a.m. this morning, and the show in London hadn’t finished until ten-thirty last night, not to mention how late the after-show party had gone on. Did she never sleep or had she’d sent it as soon as she arrived home?
I e-mailed back to her and said how pleased I was she had enjoyed it and how I hoped it would make her lots of money.
Then I went onto the daily newspaper websites to read the reviews. All but one were pretty encouraging, so maybe the show might make some money. Backing shows and films was always a risky business. I usually told my clients that it was far more of a gamble than they would have on the stock market, but, as with most risky investments, the potential gains were greater too. But they had to be prepared to lose
One of my clients never expected any financial return from such investments, he just reveled in rubbing shoulders with the stars at the first-night functions and taking all his friends to see “his” show in the best seats. “I know I might lose it all,” he would say, “but, if I do, I’ll enjoy every minute while I’m losing it. And, you never know, I might just make a fortune.”
And he had done precisely that the previous year.
At my suggestion, he had backed a small independent film company to make an obscure and irreverent comedy based around the first transportation of convicts from England to Australia in 1787. To everyone’s surprise, not least my client’s, the film had been a huge international hit. At the box office worldwide it had earned back over two hundred times its production cost, as well as receiving an Oscar nomination for its young star who played the title role in
But the successes were few and the disasters many.
It took me over two hours just to answer my outstanding e-mails, by which time I could hear movement above and, presently, my mother came downstairs in her dressing gown.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “You’re up early.”
“I’ve been down here over two hours,” I said. “I have work to do.”
“Yes, dear,” she said. “Don’t we all. Now, what would you like for breakfast? I have some bacon and local eggs, and Mr. Ayers, my butcher, has made me some wonderful sausages. How many would you like?”
“Just a coffee and a slice of toast would be lovely,” I said.
It was like King Canute trying to hold back the tide.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, already placing a frying pan on the stove. “You’ve got to have a proper breakfast. What sort of mother would I be if I didn’t feed you?”
I sighed. Perhaps Claudia and I would go out for a drive at lunchtime.
I took her up a cup of tea while the sausages and bacon were sizzling in the pan.
“Morning, gorgeous,” I said, pulling open the curtains. “How are you feeling today?”
“Still a bit sore,” she said, sitting up. “But better than yesterday.”
“Good,” I said. “Time to get up. Julia Child downstairs is cooking breakfast.”
“Mmm, I can smell it,” she said, laughing. “Now, don’t you expect that every morning when we’re married.”
“What?” I said in mock horror. “No cooked breakfasts! The wedding’s off!”
“We haven’t even fixed a date for it yet,” she said.
“Before or after the hair loss?” I asked seriously.
She thought for a moment. “After it grows back. Give me time to get used to this engagement business first.”
“After it is, then,” I said. I leaned down and kissed her. “Don’t be long or Mr. Ayers’s sausages will get cold.”
She dived back under the covers and put a pillow over her head. “I’m staying here.”
“Hiding won’t help,” I said, laughing, and leaving her alone.
