not to panic, she swung her feet to the floor and went to open her laptop. It was six-forty-five, so yes, she’d been here all night. Funny how her brain was finding it so hard to accept it. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the day before, her mouth was stale and her hair was tangled around her face.
She pushed it back, rubbed her eyes and made her way to the WC, not only to satisfy the need to pee, but to put her mouth under the tap for some water.
She was hungry, so hungry that she had to force her mind away from food at least until Brenda arrived. That should be in about an hour.
Everything would be fine once Brenda got here.
After refreshing herself the best she could she ran down to the library to check the door again. It still wouldn’t open and as her frustration threatened to boil over into angry shouts and hot, bitter tears she looked around at the mess she’d created the night before, books all over the place, scattered and damaged like innocent victims of a storm.
What if Brenda didn’t come?
There was no obvious way out, she knew that, unless she wanted to risk her life on the wisteria, and right now she really didn’t.
The moth, or young Freda as we called her in the story, is your mother.
The words had gone round and round in her head through the night as the music had repeated over and over, making it almost impossible to think straight.
Right now it was quiet, though probably not for much longer so running back to the writing room she took a sheet of paper from the printer and wrote Freda in the top left corner. In the opposite corner she wrote David Michaels.
She tried to remember what other names Freda had mentioned, but could think of none. It was always ‘my parents’, ‘my father’, ‘his uncle’, ‘his mother’. Were there more twists and lies that Freda hadn’t yet revealed? She flipped open her laptop to check and as she went through the memoir she discovered that apart from random school friends or teachers, she was right, there were no other names.
Just the girlfriend that hadn’t been mentioned until the end.
Linda.
Joely turned cold to her core.
Linda was her mother’s name. Linda Marianne.
In one enormous leap her mind reached a conclusion that sent her reeling. Was Sir her father?
She pushed herself away from the desk, needing to escape this insane scenario. Sir couldn’t be her father, any more than her mother could be young Freda, or Linda the girlfriend … Her parents had nothing to do with this …
Oh God no! No! No! The music was starting up again pummelling the tower, crashing through the silence and tossing her thoughts into chaos.
‘Sir can’t be my father,’ she cried into the clamour, ‘he can’t,’ but with the violins shrieking like demons and heavy drums thundering through her ears she was unable to seize on why it couldn’t be true.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Marianne had just called the office to let them know she wouldn’t be in today. She wasn’t unwell, nor was she someone who normally shirked work. If anything she embraced it, but not today.
The shock of what was happening, of what had been handed to her by the postman first thing this morning, caused her heart to twist with another sickening wrench of fear.
Going through to the kitchen of her Kensington town house, she picked up the phone to try calling Joely again.
Still no answer.
Ludicrously she made another attempt from her mobile, as if it might have a better chance of connecting than a landline.
Still no answer.
She was becoming more concerned and agitated by the hour. She hated not being able to get hold of her daughter at the best of times, at a time like this …
Maybe she should call Callum. She knew he’d come if she asked him to, but he was at work, possibly in a meeting, or even in the studio recording a programme. It wouldn’t be fair to disturb him when she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d say to him. ‘I can’t get hold of Joely,’ would hardly seem like an emergency when they’d both had such trouble these past two weeks.
She couldn’t say any more than that, at least not until she’d spoken to her daughter to get a clearer idea of what was going on.
Her confused blue eyes returned to the screensaver on her mobile – Joely, Callum and Holly in