Taking a deep breath, she announced, ‘Dee, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. It’s about Julian Cox and... and the money...your money...’
‘He hasn’t backed out of advising you on investing it, has he?’ Dee asked her sharply. ‘Although it has taken some time to lure him in, I thought he’d well and truly taken our bait’
‘No. He hasn’t backed out,’ Anna told her, ‘but...’
She paused and cleared her throat. There was just no easy way for her to tell Dee this.
‘Dee, he’s disappeared, and he’s taken the money, your fifty thousand pounds, with him.’
‘He’s what?’
‘I know, I’m sorry; it’s my fault...’ Anna began guiltily, but Dee stopped her immediately.
‘Of course it isn’t your fault. How could it be? I was the one... Tell me exactly what has happened, Anna.’
Anna took another deep breath.
‘Well, I did as you’d said, and I told Julian that I’d got fifty thousand pounds to invest and that I wanted a good return on it. He said he knew just the right kind of investment for me. He also suggested that we keep things very informal. He said that the deal he had in mind was an off-shore thing—something to do with Hong Kong—and he said that the less paperwork involved, the better the profit would be for both of us.
‘I did try to ring you to get your advice but you...’
‘I was in London on business. I know. I picked up your message, but even if I’d been here it wouldn’t have made any difference because I would most certainly have told you to go ahead.’
‘Well, I agreed to what Julian was suggesting and wrote him the cheque. I thought that the mere fact that it would have to go through my bank account and his would be proof that he had had the money. He said he’d be in touch. I hadn’t really intended to ring him at all—after all, it was only last week that I gave him the cheque—but then I bumped into Brough’s sister Eve with your cousin Harry and she just happened to mention that she had seen Julian at the airport. Apparently he was just getting out of a taxi as they were getting into one. She said that he didn’t see them and...
‘Anyway, I don’t know why, but I just got a feeling that something wasn’t quite right so I rang Julian. His telephone had been cut off and when I went round to his address his place was up to let. I tried his bank and all they would tell me was that they had no knowledge of his whereabouts. Brough’s made some enquiries, though, and he’s discovered that Julian has closed his account.
‘No one seems to know where he’s gone, Dee, or when he’s coming back and I’m very much afraid...’
‘That he won’t be coming back,’ Dee finished grimly for her.
‘I think you’re probably right, given what we know about his precarious finances. With fifty thousand pounds in his pocket he could quite easily have decided to cut his losses here, and dodge his debts, and simply start the whole dishonest game afresh somewhere else.’ Anna bit her lip.
‘Dee, I’m so sorry...’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Dee assured her immediately. ‘If anyone’s to blame, it has to be me.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Anna asked her anxiously.
‘What you are going to do is relax and stop worrying,’ Dee told her gently. ‘As for what I shall do...I’m not sure yet, Anna. God, but it makes me so angry to think he’s getting away with what he’s done absolutely scot-free. The man’s only a hair’s breadth away from being a criminal, if indeed he isn’t legally one, but it isn’t so much the actual money he’s cheated other people out of that—’
Dee broke off and Anna could hear the emotion in her husky voice as she continued shakily, ‘It’s the damage he’s done to other people, the hurt and harm he’s caused.’
‘Well, Beth seems to be recovering from her heartbreak over him now.’ Anna tried to console her.
‘Yes,’ Dee agreed. ‘But it isn’t just—’ She stopped abruptly, and not for the first time Anna had the distinct impression that there was much, much more to Dee’s determination to unmask Julian Cox than just the heartache he had caused Beth. She knew better than to pry, though. Dee was an extremely proud woman, and a rather vulnerable one behind that pride. If she wanted to confide in her Anna knew that she would do so, and until, or unless, she did so Anna felt that she had no right to probe into what she guessed was an extremely sensitive issue.
‘Perhaps Dee and Julian were an item once,’ Kelly had once mused to Anna when they were discussing the subject. ‘Perhaps he dropped her in the same way he did Beth.’
But Anna had immediately shaken her head in denial.
‘No. Never. Dee would never be attracted to a man like Julian,’ she had told Kelly firmly. ‘Never.’
‘No. No, you’re right,’ Kelly had agreed. ‘But there must be something.’
‘If there is and if she wants to tell us about it then I’m sure she knows she can,’ Anna had pointed out gently then, and a little shamefacedly Kelly had agreed that Dee was entitled to her privacy and her past.
‘Dee, I feel so guilty about your money,’ Anna repeated unhappily now. ‘I should have realised... suspected...’
‘There’s no way I want you to feel guilty, Anna. In fact...’
Dee paused and then continued quietly, ‘I rather suspected that something like this might happen, or I thought he might be tempted to try to abscond with the money. What I didn’t allow for was that he would do it so openly or so fast. You aren’t in any way to blame,’ she added firmly. ‘His situation must be even more desperate than I thought for him to have behaved so recklessly. After this there’s no way he can come back, not to Rye. No way at all.
‘What are you doing this weekend?’ Dee asked, changing the subject.
‘Nothing special. Beth’s going down to Cornwall to see her parents. Kelly and Brough are away. What about you?’
‘My aunt in Northumberland hasn’t been too well again so I’m going to go up and see her. Her doctor wants her to have an operation but she’s afraid that if she does she might not recover, so I thought I’d try to talk to her and make her see sense.’
‘Dee, do you think we’ll be able to track Julian down?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Dee told her soberly. ‘If I know Julian he’ll have gone somewhere where he can’t be touched by European law and it probably isn’t just our fifty thousand pounds he’s taken with him.’
For a long time after she had said goodbye to Dee and replaced her telephone receiver, Anna stood silently in her conservatory, ignoring the indignant miaows of her cat, Whittaker, as he wove round her legs. Beth’s mother, her cousin, had suggested that it was high time she paid a visit home to Cornwall. Perhaps she should, Anna acknowledged. The time was past now when the hurt of going back to the place she had once loved so much, knowing it had taken the life of the man she loved, had been too much for her to bear.
Their love had been a gentle, very young and idealistic kind of love, the intimacy between them a little awkward and hesitant, both of them learning the art of loving together, and what hurt more than anything else now was knowing that Ralph had never been allowed to reach his full potential, to grow from the boy he had in reality still been to the man he would have become.
She could barely remember now how it had felt to love him, how it had felt to be loved by him. Try as she might she could hardly conjure up now those nights they had lain in one another’s arms. They seemed to belong to a