Max's Proposal

Her next thought, as Vella rose from his chair behind the desk, was that he seemed even taller and broader-shouldered today. But he seemed welcoming. She was seated, offered tea or coffee, and started to say, ‘No, thank you,’ when she changed her mind. The headache she had woken with was still lurking. Even an affable Max Vella would be stressful and a tea or coffee might steady her. ‘I would like a coffee,’ she said.

Coffee for two was brought in by an elegant blonde. Max Vella took his black; Sara doubted if he went for sweetness in anything. She had sugar in hers but it was scalding when she took a sip, and that showed the state she was in because any fool could see it was steaming hot. It brought tears to her eyes as she gulped it down instead of spluttering it out, only thankful that she hadn’t dropped the cup.

After a few seconds she managed to say, ‘Thank you for seeing me. My editor was very pleased.’

‘We aim to please,’ said Vella.

She hoped, but from what she knew the one he aimed to please was usually himself. She took her pocket recorder out of her handbag and put it on the desk, switching it on and asking, ‘Do you mind?’

‘You don’t think you’re going to hear anything interesting enough to remember?’

‘Oh, I’m sure I shall.’ She was not sure at all.

‘Or is this likely to be more reliable than your notes?’ He had to be harking back to the time when Sara had given the impression he was turfing somebody out of a cottage when he had been doing no such thing, and the paper had had to print an apology in the next edition.

She snapped, ‘You don’t forget, do you? I was a student then; I’ve learned a lot since.’ And suddenly he was smiling and it was more like it had been last night.

‘So where do we start?’ he said, and she went quickly into her first question.

‘Anything you can tell our readers about your local plans? Such as the cinema?’

A supermarket near the town centre had closed down and options for the site were being considered. There was talk of a group of businessmen with Vella at their head building a cinema. ‘What do you think?’ he asked her. ‘Is there a demand? The last cinema closed down.’

The Chronicle had printed letters from the public and Sara had done a street quiz asking the opinions of passers-by. This was a tourist town with a theatre. Most visitors and most of the locals would welcome the extra entertainment. ‘The old cinema was years ago,’ she said. ‘I’m sure a new one would do well this time.’

‘You’d patronise it?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘What are your favourite films?’

They discussed a few films—what she had seen recently, which she had enjoyed, which had bored her, which had made her think. It was such a relief to find him easy to talk to. She asked, ‘What were you doing here when you walked over the hills and first saw the Moated House?’

He told her. ‘Working with a travelling fair. I was one of the strong-arm gang who put up and dismantled the heavy rides.’

This was lovely stuff, and she recalled something else he had said last night. ‘You were only fourteen when you were doing this?’

‘I looked older. Big for my age and a good liar.’

‘And then?’

‘I started in the scrap-metal business, got a small yard in Yorkshire, went on the markets up and down the country, buying, selling, one thing leading to another.’

It sounded easy but it must have been a killing struggle, and she said with real admiration, ‘From small-time huckster to tycoon was a magnum leap.’

‘A step at a time.’

‘Why did you leave the fair?’

‘Time to move on. And there was a fight.’ His smile made her smile. ‘Bordering on a brawl.’

She tried to imagine him younger, hungrier, a scrapper, and couldn’t. The boy and the man were a world apart. His hands were smooth, the nails manicured, but they were strong enough to be a fighter’s hands, and she wondered when he had stopped using brute force because his brain was a deadlier weapon.

She asked, ‘Did you get that scar in the brawl?’ She was feeling confident enough to ask, as if they were on their way to being friends.

But he said, ‘I got it in the road accident that killed my parents.’

And she cringed at her lack of sensitivity, stammering, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘Now tell me about yourself.’ And somehow the conversation reverted back to Sara.

She didn’t mind. She answered everything he asked about her job, her likes and dislikes, although it did seem more as if he were interviewing her than the other way round. It was when he said, ‘Which was your house when you lived in Eddlestone?’ that she became uneasy.

She said abruptly, ‘The Grange, next to the church. That was a long time ago too.’

He nodded. ‘You were Geoffrey Solway’s daughter.’ But she was not discussing her father with him. Max Vella had been here when Geoffrey Solway had died but Vella had always been in a much higher league. There had been no business dealings between them. If they had met it had been casually. That part of Sara’s life was no concern of Max Vella, and she resented him dragging it into this—interrogation.

She was realising now that was the word for how the interview was going. She was being interrogated. She had been beguiled into believing this was a friendly meeting, but he had questioned her far more than she had been permitted to question him. ‘Where are you living now?’ he asked her.

She said, ‘In a very small flat in the square. You’re not the only one to make a quantum leap. Only yours was up and mine was down.’

A phone on the desk rang. Saved by the bell, she thought, and picked up her tape recorder. When she was calmer she would play it back and see what she could dig out.

‘I’ll be with you,’ Vella said into the phone, and to Sara, ‘We’ll continue this later. This evening over dinner. I’m thinking of offering you a job. I’ll collect you at your flat at seven-thirty p.m.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she said. She heard the words come out of her mouth but he didn’t seem to. He was glancing through a sheaf of papers he had taken out of a drawer, and the sharp-suited young man appeared at Sara’s elbow as suddenly as a genie popping out of a bottle. Max Vella could turn up where he liked at seven-thirty Sara decided; she would be anywhere but the flat.

The young man saw her down in the lift and the commissionaire touched the peak of his hat in salute as she left the building. She sat in her car, fingers clenched, trying to quell a surge of frustration.

There were several expensive cars in the car park and if she had to guess which was Vella’s she would pick the silver-grey Mercedes—it looked like his kind of car. Sara had a real urge to scratch the gleaming paintwork. He had annoyed and disturbed her. Bringing up her family background was probably no more than the bluntness of a man who never had to consider anyone else’s feelings, but it had hit a raw nerve in Sara. She was over-sensitive today with Beth going back to Jeremy, and the problem would be waiting for Sara: how much the bookies had let Jeremy run up this time.

Beth would be phoning Sara or coming to the flat, and when Sara found the door at the top of the stairs unlocked she half expected to find Beth and Jeremy sitting in her living room, both looking woebegone and very young. Jeremy was another one who never seemed to age. He and Beth could pass as teenagers but Sara felt very old indeed.

The living room was empty, and she called, ‘Hello,’ getting no reply. There was no one in the kitchen, and the bathroom door was ajar. Nobody in there either.

She called again, ‘Hello, Beth,’ lifting the latch on her bedroom door. She couldn’t get in because the bolt had been slipped in there, and for a second she thought resentfully, They could have stayed in their own home to make up. But of course they would have done. And then she heard a little choking sound, like a strangled whimper.

The children could have done it, if they had been left alone for a few minutes. She spoke through the narrow space edging the door that didn’t fit too well. ‘Jo, Josh, are you in there? Pull the bolt back. You can do it. Just pull it along.’ There was silence, and she spoke louder. ‘Who is in there?’ Rapping with her knuckles, ‘Can you hear me?’

Nobody answered; something was very wrong. She beat on the door again, shouting, ‘Answer me.’ When no one did she was turning away—she had to get in, maybe with a ladder to the window—then she heard the click of the bolt sliding back. She lifted the latch and pushed the door, and Beth stood there swaying, her eyes glazed and little white pills slipping through her nerveless fingers.

CHAPTER THREE

SARA caught Beth as she slumped to the floor and staggered with her to the bed. Beth’s head fell back, her mouth was open, there were pills on her tongue, and when Sara put fingers into her mouth she gagged and heaved.

‘How many?’ Sara’s voice was hoarse and Beth wasn’t hearing. A bottle of pills was half-empty. A few more pills were scattered on the bedside table with an empty glass and a vodka bottle. Beth was no drinker—a couple of glasses of wine could get her giggling and silly, and spirits always brought on one of her migraines—but Sara was praying she only had a hangover to deal with here. When Beth’s eyelids fluttered Sara hissed in her ear, ‘How many pills have you taken?’

‘I swallowed some, I think,’ Beth whimpered.

‘Not those that were in your mouth.’ Sara shook her gently but insistently. ‘Don’t go to sleep. Wake up. Come on Bethie.’ She heaved her sister into the sitting position. ‘Talk to me; what are you doing? It’s going to be all right, whatever’s happened; I promise you, Bethie.’

She rushed to the kitchen to switch on the kettle and scoop spoonfuls of instant coffee into a mug. Then back to Beth, who was still sitting up on the bed with her head dropping onto her knees, moaning, ‘Oh, God, I feel awful.’

‘Of course you do,’ Sara howled. Beth had come to the door with a fistful of pills. Sara had scooped three of them off her tongue and now she worked frantically, getting strong coffee down her.

‘Come on, Bethie, there’s a good girl, it’s going to be all right.’ Beth’s fuddled mind cleared enough for her to assure Sara that the sleeping pills in her mouth were the first she had taken.

‘Where are the children?’ Sara had been so caught up in the horror of finding Beth like this there had been no time to think of anything else, but for a moment now she was terrified.

When Beth whispered, ‘I left them with Maureen before I went home,’ Sara breathed a prayer of relief. Maureen was a friend and neighbour of Beth’s, a sensible, middle-aged woman. The children would be safe with her.

She had Beth stumbling around, drinking water now, and slowly coming out of the anaesthetic of alcohol into the despair that had made her lock herself in that room.

When Sara asked, ‘Why?’ Beth began weeping.

‘It’s over.’

‘Has Jeremy left you?’ Sara thought that could only be a blessing.

But Beth said, ‘Of course not. But this time there’s no hope at all.’ She sat down on the little sofa in the living room, hugging herself and rocking to and fro. ‘There are men after him, money lenders and that, who are going to half kill him, and then at work—’ Jeremy worked at an estate agent’s in town ‘—there’s big money trouble there. He’s got till the end of the month to pay it back and he can’t, and he’s going to end up in prison, in jail. And I can’t face it, Sar.’ She lifted a tear-stained, stricken face. ‘If you hadn’t come back early I wouldn’t have had to.’

Sara’s blood ran cold when she thought what she would have found if she had returned at her usual time. ‘What about the children?’ she demanded. ‘How could you leave the children?’

‘They’d have been all right. You’d have looked after them.’

Beth was a child herself, as loving and as vulnerable. Sara had always known that, and what she had to do now was make Beth see that nothing was so bad there was no hope. They couldn’t find the cash to save Jeremy. Sara had no assets and her credit rating was nil, but as she racked her brain a sudden thought came like a flash of light.