Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,35

ear. “We’re almost ready — trust me!”

“I love you!” I said aloud, quite absurdly, for he must have known it all along.

“Yes!” he said, and hugged me so hard I thought it would be my turn for a couple of cracked ribs.

Then Bianca’s face zoomed in, disagreeably close, and Charles’ arms slackened and fell.

“What a crude technique,” she said in that barbed-wire voice of hers. “Snatch and grab! No wonder Felicity opted out.”

“I must go,” said Charles, anxious eyes on me.

“I understand,” I said, trying to get it over not only that I had received his messages, but that I did believe in him.

“Yes, do go,” said Bianca, opening the front door for him. “It’s getting late, and Sue hasn’t even started on supper for us.”

*

If I had been tired when the Brenners and Maudsleys had taken me from my flat, by the end of the evening I was exhausted. Neither Julian nor Bianca ate much, but both Ruth and Robert had done justice to my cooking. I ate the scraps they left over, and forced myself to clean the kitchen before going to bed.

It was an easy house to run; there was a hatch through from the kitchen into the dark-panelled dining-room, and a utility room on the other side of the kitchen, containing an enormous freezing cabinet — now only half full of produce — and a dishwasher. Somebody had spent a lot of money on the house. There was every laboursaving gadget you could think of, and when I had a chance to explore the house, I found the same evidence of wealth in every room. Julian’s den, for instance, had its own television set and cocktail cabinet; it was a sad little room full of stale cigar smoke, with pornographic magazines tucked under the cushions of the biggest chair. Bianca’s sitting-room was quite another matter; panelled in french grey, furnished in Louis Quinze style, brocaded and gilded, it looked more like a show room in a West End furniture shop than a room in which you could relax.

I don’t think Bianca did relax much — except with the bottle. She caught Julian leering at me as I pulled on the banister to help myself up the stairs to bed. She nearly choked over her drink. “Feel like trying her, Julian?” she asked. He went scarlet, and turned away to his den. She yelled after him that she was taking the bottle to bed with her in lieu of anything more potent. At that I turned my own head away, so that she should not see me blush for her — or Julian.

Was his impotence at the root of her unhappiness? Of had she made him impotent by her attitude to him? Either way, it was a most unhappy marriage. I thought of Charles telling me he’d always felt the cold until he slept with me, and knew he’d meant something even deeper; that he’d never had a satisfactory relationship with a woman until he’d met me. At that moment I pitied the Brenners.

“I’m not locking you into your room,” Bianca said, appearing in my doorway as I began to undress. “The front and back doors are double-locked, but that’s to stop burglars breaking in, not to prevent you leaving. You understand why, don’t you?”

“I think so. If I don’t play ball with you, then you’ll leave the bottle of digitalin at the side of J.B.’s body on Sunday, so as to incriminate Charles.”

“That’s right, poppet. You behave yourself, and you can take the bottle of digitalin away with you on Sunday. And by the way, if Charles shows any signs of weakening before then, you might remind him that we’ve got enough on him already to send him to jail for a long time. You saw for yourself how he’s been fiddling money out of his boss.”

I shook my head. She had a fine instinct, had Bianca. She knew that the affair of the cheque had upset me. Luckily I had the sense not to discuss it with her.

“Early morning tea at half past eight,” she ordered. “And for God’s sake don’t make too much noise pulling back the curtains when you bring it in.”

I woke at seven, dressed rapidly, and after listening at all the bedroom doors to see if anyone else was awake, I went downstairs to phone Charles.

He was inclined to curse me for ringing so early. He said he’d been up till two rewriting J.B.’s speech, and that J.B. had got him