She smiled. ‘Pushy I can cope with. What had you got in mind?’
‘I’ve got the night off, maybe we could go out for a meal?’
Dora nodded. ‘I’d like that. What time?’
‘Eight-ish?’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll pick you up here.’
After she closed the door behind him, Dora pressed her forehead against the cool woodwork and wondered exactly what had happened to all the years since she had last seen him, and why they had never kissed. Behind her, Oscar mewled malevolently and scrambled into the kitchen. She went back into the office and plugged the phone in. Her daughter, Kate, answered on the third ring.
Dora barely had a chance to get past hello.
‘Mum, is that you? Aunty Sheila rang me to say you’d been burgled. I’ve been ringing and ringing –’
‘I unplugged the phone,’ Dora said.
Kate sniffed, sounding uncannily like Sheila. Concern was rapidly being displaced by indignation. ‘Why on earth did you do that? I’ve been so worried. Are you all right? Did they take much?’
Dora took a breath to reassure her she was fine, but Kate continued. ‘Have you rung Dad yet? I said to Mike that maybe we ought to ring Dad and let him know.’
Dora stared at the receiver. Some part of Kate had never been reconciled to the fact that she and Ray were divorced. Marriage, even if legally dead, somehow meant you were permanently, irreversibly joined at the hip.
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, I haven’t rung your father.’
Kate sniffed again. ‘Do you want me to ring him? Do you want me and Mike to drive up? I mean, it’s only a couple of hours. Or you could come and stay down here for a while with us. We’ve got the spare room done now, we’re out at work all day but –’
Dora sighed, and dropped her voice into the tone she had once used to reassure Kate that she was more than a match for any monsters that lurked, fangs dripping, under her bed.
‘Really, love, I’m absolutely fine, how’s everything with you? How’s Mike?’
Kate sucked in a long breath, determined not to be side-tracked into conversations about her marriage. ‘I’ve been really worried.’
When Dora finally hung up she felt drained dry.
As she switched off the office light, in the darkness something caught her eye in the street below. Parked just outside the arc of a street lamp was a small dark car; inside was a man looking up at her window. A featureless moon-white face stared up at the flat. Dora smiled; the local plod. Jon had been as good as his word.
In her house in a select avenue overlooking Fairbeach park gardens, Alicia Markham waited for the fluorescent light to stop flickering. She let her eyes adjust to the glare and then slipped on her spectacles. The rest of the kitchen was in darkness, everywhere still and quiet.
Carefully, she lifted a box down from the shelf in the pantry. Inside, a diary and a filofax were neatly wrapped up in a curl of tissue paper. Her man had delivered two, or so her resident house boy had informed her. She glanced up at the other box, not that there was really time to look in that either now.
They had been delivered while she was out at Jack’s memorial supper. She stood the box on the butcher’s block and thumbed through the contents. No photographs, nothing that she could use. Alicia knew exactly what she hoped to turn up, and of course there might be other things too that could be of value, one could never be certain what would be trawled up. All she needed was one positive piece of evidence and Guy Phelps would be on his way to Westminster.
‘Alicia, darling, are you down there?’ Edwin Halliday MP’s silky-smooth orator’s voice followed her down the back stairs. Alicia glanced over her shoulder as she slipped the lid back on the cake box.
‘I won’t be a moment, Edwin, go back to bed, darling.’
They went back a long way, Alicia and Edwin, even if their links and the liaisons had always been very tenuous. Neither had any long-term plans for the other. They met at party Conferences, weekend think tanks, networking retreats and funerals. She undid the top two buttons of her negligee and folded her spectacles back into their case.
‘Just getting another bottle of Krug,’ she called, snapping off the pantry light. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
If Edwin hadn’t been so bloody honest she might have recruited him to help her win Fairbeach for Guy. She hurried back upstairs to bed. Perhaps the man she had hired would be able to turn up something else. They had a little more time.
‘Post for you, Mrs Hall,’ said a disembodied voice over the security speaker.
Dora glanced out of the office window. The new morning looked uninvitingly grim, but at least there was no sign of the reporter from the Gazette. She stood her cereal bowl beside the computer and pressed the call button, swallowing down a mouthful of cornflakes.
‘Morning, Javid, just stick it through the letter box, will you? Or do you need me to sign something?’
The postman coughed. ‘Do you think you could come down?’
Dora yawned and tied the belt of her robe tighter, before hurrying downstairs. Javid stood on the doorstep, grinning sheepishly, rain dripping off the peak of his cap. In his arms, he was holding a large damp cardboard box. She waved him inside out of the downpour.
‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. I’ve finally come up on the Reader’s Digest prize draw?’
‘Not exactly. Are you taking mail in for someone called Catiana Moran? The address is the same, I think.’
Dora pulled open the flaps of the box and took a letter from the pile inside.
‘Catiana Moran, above the shoe shop. Gunners Terrace, Fairbeach.’ She held out her arms. ‘Sounds like that’s meant for here, Javid. Better pass them over.’
He screwed up his nose. ‘Have you taken in a lodger, Mrs Hall?’
Dora shook her head. ‘Not exactly, Javid.’ She gave him a tight smile and struggled back upstairs.
She tipped the box out onto the kitchen table and picked up a knife. ‘Dear Catiana …’ the first letter began.
Just after one o’clock, Dora shook out her umbrella and stepped from the biting, driving rain into the warmth and subdued social noises of Filbert’s Restaurant.
The maitre d’ smiled warmly in her direction. ‘Hello, Mrs Hall. How very nice to see you again.’
Dora smiled. ‘How are you, George? How’s the family?’
‘Very well, thank you, and yourself?’
Dora nodded her reply.
‘Mr Roberts is already here. Would you like me to take your coat?’
Dora shook her head and headed towards the rotund figure of Calvin Roberts, who was sitting at a corner table, watching the rain trickle down the French windows. He turned as she approached him and frowned. ‘Christ, you look rough.’
Dora pulled out a chair and slipped her coat over the back.
‘Well, how very nice of you to notice, Calvin. Actually I feel a lot worse than I look. Maybe you’d like to cast your eyes over these.’ She took a bundle of envelopes out of her handbag. ‘Just a small selection of this morning’s post.’
Calvin opened the first one. ‘“Beloved Catiana, I have read all your books, I think …”’ He