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‘Of course. I knew it—you look French!’
‘I’d be here all night if I started talking about the way you look!’ he murmured, and Lucy blushed and laughed excitedly.
Clare was so angry that her teeth hurt. ‘Helen is in a hurry to get home, remember,’ she told Denzil Black tightly.
He gave her a dry look, then glanced towards the car, and at that moment Helen leaned forward and banged peremptorily on the window, gesturing.
‘Denzil!’ they all heard her call crossly.
He gave her a wave, looked down at Lucy, smiled, his eyes glowing and dark-centred.
‘I’m afraid I have to go, and I’m leaving for the States tomorrow for a couple of months, but I’ll be back—we’ll meet again.’
He got back into the car, the engine fired and the Lamborghini moved off with a dulcet roar.
‘I want that car,’ Lucy said dreamily. ‘Isn’t it heavenly? And him...what did he say his name was? Denzil something? That’s a very unusual name; I’ve never met anyone called Denzil before. Is he your new boyfriend, Clare? You’ve never mentioned him—have you been keeping him a secret? He’s as gorgeous as his car. I’ve never seen anyone like him—where did you find him and why is he with Helen Sherrard? Tell me all about him.’
‘He isn’t my boyfriend. I barely know the man; he’s just a client.’ Clare tried not to lose her temper, but her voice was raw and she felt Lucy staring at her in surprise. It was very unusual for Clare to show temper.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lucy asked uncertainly.
‘Oh, never mind. Let’s get indoors, it’s cold,’ Clare said, walking towards the house, very fast.
She had not liked the acquisitive way Denzil Black had been looking at Lucy. She barely knew the man, but she did not like or trust him.
Despite the temptation of her own share of the purchase price on Dark Tarn, she hoped the owner would turn down Denzil Black’s offer for the house. Then, maybe, Denzil Black would go away and find somewhere else to live, and she needn’t worry about what might happen next time he met her little sister.
CHAPTER TWO
THE owner, however, accepted Denzil Black’s offer at once. ‘So we’ve managed to get rid of that white elephant at last!’ Clare’s father said, hearing the news, then gave her a shrewd look. ‘You don’t look overjoyed! Got doubts about the buyer’s ability to pay?’
‘No,’ Clare said grimly, not bothering to explain the doubts she did have, and went to ring Helen Sherrard.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ Helen said in lack-lustre tones, barely managing to sound alive, let alone delighted by the news. ‘I’ll make sure you get the deposit immediately, and start proceedings rolling.’
‘This offer isn’t subject to a surveyor’s report, is it?’ That was unusual, but Denzil Black had not mentioned the idea of getting a surveyor in to look at the house.
‘No, Denzil says he’ll take it, whatever the condition. He’s going to do a lot of work on the house anyway, and he has taken that into account in the offer he made.’
‘He’s getting a very good bargain,’ said Clare, almost wishing he would make difficulties so that she could talk the client into not selling to him, although that would be cutting her nose off to spite her face, and she wasn’t usually that childish. She was surprised at herself. ‘If he’s paying cash, then it shouldn’t take long to complete the transaction.’
‘No, I’m sure it won’t,’ said Helen slowly. ‘I just have to do the land search, to prove title.’ She gave an audible sigh.
‘You sound so tired, Helen—are you working too hard?’
‘Not really, but I get so bored with work; mine isn’t exactly a thrilling job, you know. And I’m missing Denzil. He seems to have been away for months, although he only left a few days ago.’
Clare was doodling on her desk pad, frowning. ‘How long did you say he would be away?’
‘Oh, a couple of months, at least—he hopes to be back in time for Christmas, but he isn’t sure he’ll make it now, it seems.’
‘Too bad,’ Clare said indifferently. ‘Well, let me have the deposit, then, and I’ll make sure my client gets in touch with his solicitor too. Bye, Helen. Talk to you again soon, I expect.’
A couple of days later she met Helen in the High Street and was shocked by her pallor. ‘You’ve lost a lot more weight, Helen. I think you ought to see a doctor! There must be something wrong with you.’
‘Oh, don’t fuss!’ Helen snapped. ‘You sound like my mother!’
‘Sorry to do that,’ drawled Clare, laughing. ‘Was Mr Black pleased to hear his offer had been accepted?’
Helen’s face tightened. ‘Yes. Did you see the picture of him in the Sunday papers?’
‘Never read them,’ said Clare. ‘Haven’t got the energy to do anything on Sunday mornings except sleep late. Why was he in the newspapers?’
‘He got some award or other. There was a big photo of him with the star of the film, that one who was a serious actress, did a lot of plays on Broadway before going into films. She has long black hair and a fabulous figure. Deirdre something-or-other, I think; she’s half Mexican, half Irish.’
‘What a combination! I know who you mean, though,’ said Clare, frowning. ‘It wasn’t Deirdre, it was Bella something or other. I saw her last big film, the vampire film—it was pretty way out, if you ask me! The sex scenes almost burnt the celluloid they were printed on.’
‘That’s the one,’ said Helen, palely smiling. ‘That’s Denzil’s last film.’
Clare’s eyes opened wide. ‘You’re kidding? He made that?’ It gave her a new idea of Denzil Black. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a sexier film.
‘And from what they said in the papers this Sunday, he and Bella what’s-her-name are having an affair!’ Helen said huskily, almost as white as paper. She turned on her heel to walk away, stopped, swayed, and crumpled up. Clare was too late to catch her. Before she understood what was happening, Helen had fallen sideways and hit her head on a lamp-post.
A crowd gathered, of course. Clare knelt down anxiously and looked at the wan, shadowed face in its frame of rich auburn hair. ‘Helen? Helen, are you OK?’
‘She’s fainted!’ someone in the crowd said.
‘Knocked herself out,’ someone else insisted. ‘I saw her do it; she hit her head on that lamp-post. Drunk, most likely; she looked drunk to me.’
‘Send for an ambulance! She needs to go to hospital; she’s out for the count,’ somebody said, and a shopkeeper leaned forward.
‘I just did. They’ll be here any minute.’
Helen’s lashes were flickering. She sighed through lips almost as white as her face. Clare almost caught the word she said. She was almost sure Helen had said, ‘Denzil...’
Clare didn’t know whether to be sorry for her, or furious with her, or just furious with Denzil Black. Any woman who let a man reduce her to this state deserved a good slap, she thought, watching the other woman bleakly.
The ambulance arrived a moment later, siren wailing. The crowd cleared enough to let the men through with their stretcher. They took a look at Helen, asked, ‘What happened?’
A babble of voices tried to answer.
Clare cut through them coldly and efficiently. ‘She fainted, and managed to hit her head on that lamp-post while she was falling.’
The voices stopped, and people stared at her. She was well-known in town; nobody argued openly, although she heard a few whispered comments from those who preferred to believe Helen had been drunk.
She went to the hospital with Helen, and rang Helen’s mother from the waiting-room. ‘They’re keeping her in here tonight; they want to do some tests on her. They think she could be anaemic; apparently her blood-count was very low, and so is her blood-pressure.’
Helen’s mother sounded terrified. She was a small, delicate woman, and very highly strung. She often seemed to Clare still to be grieving for her husband, who had died a couple of years ago. Tears came easily to her, and she wore either black or grey most of the time.
‘Oh, no; you don’t think...they don’t think...it might be...? Her father died of cancer, you know—’ She broke off, obviously close to tears now. ‘Clare, if anything happened to Helen... I’ve been so worried about her; she has been terribly pale lately, and she never has any energy. That was how it happened to her father. She used to be the life and soul of the party. Well, you remember what she was like before the divorce, Clare! I know you weren’t a close friend, but you’ve known Helen for years; she was always full of fun. But over the last couple of months she’s been fading away, and yet the doctor could never find anything wrong with her.’
Clare’s blue eyes had an icy sparkle. Well, she knew what had been wrong with Helen lately, and there was nothing the doctor could do to help that pain. ‘Will you ring Paul and let him know?’ she asked Joyce.
‘Paul? Oh, do you think I should tell him? After all, they are divorced; I expect he has someone else by now.’
‘Well, they were married for a long time. I’m sure he’ll be concerned about her.’
‘Oh...Clare, I...Clare, couldn’t you?’ gabbled Joyce. ‘If you rang him, it would be so much easier. I mean...I don’t like to interfere...Helen wouldn’t thank me; she might be furious with me for doing it.’
Clare sighed. ‘I hardly know him, Joyce!’
‘Please, Clare...would you?’
Clare gave in, her face grim. She rang Paul Sherrard at his hotel and was put through to his office. His secretary answered breathlessly, sounding very young and faintly scatty.
‘Mr Sherrard’s office. Oh, yes? Miss Summer? Was it important? Well, I don’t know if he’s...I’ll see if he’s free...’
Paul’s voice appeared on the line a second later. ‘Good morning, Clare. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, Paul, but I’m ringing from the hospital—Helen is here, and they’re keeping her in overnight. She may be seriously ill; they aren’t sure yet. I thought I ought to let you know.’
‘What do you mean, seriously ill?’ Paul asked curtly. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘I’ve no idea, Paul, but she looks terrible. I just thought I should let you know. I’ve rung her mother; she was very upset. I wish I could get the doctors here to be frank, but they won’t commit themselves.’
‘Oh, won’t they? We’ll see about that. I’ll be there in half an hour,’ Paul said, and rang off.
Clare stayed at the hospital until Paul and Helen’s mother arrived, almost at the same time, and then she had to get back to the office, which had been closed all this time.
She rang the hospital later that day, but there was no further news, other than that Helen was in no danger, was conscious again, and would be in hospital for some days. Clare sent her flowers and a get-well card. She visited her the next afternoon and found her sitting up against banked pillows, still pale, still listless.
‘They say I can go home at the weekend,’ Helen said. ‘After these tests. They think I’m anaemic. I’ll have to drink blood, like Dracula!’ She laughed.
Clare didn’t. She was too horrified by how ill Helen looked; by the dark shadows under Helen’s eyes and the thin, restless, frail fingers. It was a relief to find that the illness was nothing worse than anaemia—no doubt that would be a huge weight off Mrs Storr’s mind—but Clare kept remembering Helen’s look of pain as she talked about Denzil Black and his sexy actress. That man had a lot to answer for! ‘You’re beginning to look better,’ she lied.
Helen brightened. ‘Do you think so? They say I mustn’t go back to work, I must rest for a few weeks, and I’m going to my brother’s place, to stay with him. Paul thinks I should go abroad after Christmas; he’s going to Majorca to the apartment we owned over there, and he suggested I came too.’ A faint flush crept up her cheeks. She gave Clare a defiant look, looked away quickly. ‘Well, we were married for years. Nobody will think anything odd about that.’
‘Of course not,’ said Clare. ‘I think it’s a brilliant idea.’
She smiled at Helen warmly. If Paul took her away she would soon forget Denzil Black, and maybe Helen and Paul might even get together again for good, not just for a holiday?
Very flushed, Helen said, ‘Oh, and Johnny Pritchard is dealing with Dark Tarn, by the way.’
‘I wasn’t worried about it,’ Clare said coolly. ‘It can wait.’
‘Oh, no,’ Helen said, sounding shocked. ‘Denzil is in a hurry.’
‘Never mind him,’ said Clare. ‘You just look after yourself.’
Over the next few weeks she seemed to be busier than usual. This was usually a dead time of year. People didn’t buy and sell houses in winter; spring was when their minds turned to moving home. But that winter Clare was very busy. A firm had recently built a large block of luxury apartments overlooking the harbour, and, failing to sell half of them, was eager to rent them out rather than leave them empty. They gave Clare the job of finding tenants, and for a while she was constantly driving possible clients out to the apartment building, showing them round, and dealing with their rental agreements.
As she was out of the office so much her father came in to help part-time, but she still had a lot of extra paperwork to do.
One evening in late November she was working at her desk after all the other shops had closed when the phone rang.
Grimacing, she answered. ‘Hello?’
‘You sound bad-tempered.’
A jab of shock went through her, but she pretended she hadn’t recognised his voice. ‘Who’s speaking?’ she asked distantly.
He laughed. She flushed.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I need to have a team of men look over Dark Tarn to recommend how it can be modernised without losing its atmosphere. Will you see that they have the keys for a day? My architect is Bernard Atkins. He’ll be in touch this week.’
‘Very well, but nothing can be done until you actually own the house, of course!’
‘I realise that. How long do you think it will be before the contract is ready for signature?’
‘A week or two.’ She paused, then, her voice chilling even more, asked, ‘I presume you know Helen is very ill?’
‘Yes, I had a letter from her, explaining. If I’m back in time before she goes off to Majorca, I’ll go and see her.’
‘I shouldn’t,’ Clare said quickly. ‘She needs complete rest; she isn’t having visitors.’
‘She’ll want to see me,’ he said with a soft inflexion that made Clare shiver.
‘Maybe she would,’ she bit back. ‘But it wouldn’t be good for her!’
His voice even softer, he said, ‘You don’t like me much, do you, Miss Summer?’
‘I don’t know you well enough to have an opinion one way or another!’
‘When I get back, we must do something about that!’ he murmured, and she bit her lip.
‘I must go, Mr Black—I’m very busy, I’m afraid. I’ll make sure your architect gets the keys. Goodbye.’
Clare put the phone down hurriedly before he could say anything else and sat there staring out into the dark, empty street, feeling a hot pulse beating in her throat. She put a nervous hand up to it, pressed down into her flesh and felt the leap of blood under her fingertip.
Snatching her hand down, she angrily told herself not to let the man get to her. He was on the other side of the Atlantic, and she hoped he would stay there for a very long time, but when he did get back Clare had no intention of getting to know him any better!
She went home an hour later and wasn’t surprised to find that nobody had cooked the evening meal yet. They were all supposed to do it in turn, but in practice it was more often than not Clare who ended up doing the cooking. Clare’s father did the shopping most days, but cooking wasn’t something he enjoyed or was good at, nor were any of the others. Robin and Jamie thought cooking was ‘for girls’ and Lucy, although always willing to do it, often drifted off into daydreams and forgot.
That evening she wasn’t even home yet, and only walked in halfway through the meal. ‘Oh, terrific! Sausages and onions,’ she said happily, sitting down in her usual chair, and helping herself from the large dish in the centre of the table.
‘You were supposed to cook tonight, Lucy!’ her father reproached her.
Lucy gave a groan. ‘Oh, no, I knew there was something I’d forgotten! Who cooked it, then?’
