Oh well, that should delay matters a little, thought Ellie, offering up a prayer of thanks to whatever it was that almost certainly wasn’t there.
As if to reproach her for this qualification in her devotion, the phone rang.
‘Shit,’ said Cressida. ‘See what you can do with this sodding thing, will you?’
As soon as she left the room, Ellie pulled out her mobile and pressed her husband’s speed-dial key. He answered almost immediately.
‘Peter,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me.’
‘What? It’s a lousy line.’
‘Just listen. I need you earlier.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Second bottle time already, eh?’
He was quick. That was one of the good things about him. One of many good things.
‘Third,’ she said. ‘No sign of food and she’s been dumped again. Some medic. She’s started on about the problems of sex in a Maserati.’
‘Poor thing. Can’t you tell her you’ve got a headache? Always works with me.’
‘Ha ha. Can you get here soon? Say it’s some problem with the sitter.’
‘I’m on my way. Fifteen minutes tops. Hang in there, girl.’
She’d just got the phone into her bag when Cressida came back into the room.
‘Sue-Lynn,’ she said. ‘My sister-in-law. Wants to know if I’ve heard from Pal. Seems he didn’t turn up for his squash with Jase and nobody knows where he is. Silly bitch.’
In the five years of their friendship, she’d never talked in any detail about her family, not even her brother Pal with whom she was close and who’d been indirectly responsible for bringing Ellie and Cress together. He ran an antique shop called Archimagus in the town’s medieval area near the cathedral. Ellie had been in a couple of times without buying anything and without registering more about the proprietor than that he was a good-looking young man who after a token offer of help became a non-hassling background presence. On the third occasion when she expressed interest in a seventeenth-century knife box in walnut with a beautiful mother-of-pearl butterfly inlay on the lid, he’d answered her questions with an eloquent expertise that very subtly implied that only a person of the most sensitive taste would have selected this item above all the rest of his stock. Finally he suggested she took it home to see how it looked in situ, no obligation, which had made a young woman who’d just come into the shop roar with laughter.
‘I bet he hasn’t mentioned the price yet,’ she said.
On reflection, Ellie had to admit this was true.
A price was mentioned. Ellie looked at the newcomer and raised an eyebrow enquiringly.
She pursed her lips, shook her head and said, ‘That the best you can do for a friend of your sister?’
‘You two are friends?’ said Pal.
Cressida had looked at Ellie, grinned and said, ‘No, but I think we could be.’
To which Pal had replied, ‘So let me know how it works out, then we can discuss a possible price cut.’
It had worked out well and the knife box now adorned the Pascoe dining room. But though her friendship with Cressida burgeoned, the brother never became anything more than an antiques dealer with whom she was on first-name terms. As for the rest of the family, Ellie had picked up that there was a younger sister, and also that they’d lost their parents some time in childhood, but she’d made no attempt to pry into the exact nature of the evident tensions and problems Cress’s upbringing had left her with. This didn’t mean she wasn’t curious – hell, they were friends, weren’t they? And knowing your friends was even more important than knowing your enemies – but in Ellie’s book though mere curiosity might get you nebbing into the life of a stranger, it was never enough to justify sticking your nose into the affairs of a friend.
But if the confidences came unasked, she was not about to discourage them, particularly in a situation where they also served the useful function of postponing the threatened pounce.
‘You’re not worried?’ she said.
‘No. He’s probably still at work, giving discount.’
‘Sorry?’
Cressida grinned.
‘Well-heeled ladies love their objets d’art but love their money even more. Pal says I’d be amazed how many of them after a bout of haggling will say, “Do you give a discount for cash, Mr Maciver? Or something …?”’
‘I presume you didn’t say this to your sister-in-law?’
‘Thought about it, but in the end I just said if she was really worried she should ring the police and the hospitals.’
‘Decided to go for reassurance then.’
‘You needn’t concern yourself about Sue-Lynn. Self-centred cow. Any worries she’s got will be about herself, not Pal.’
‘But his squash partner is worried too … Jase, you said?’
‘Jason Dunn. My brother-in-law,’ said Cressida, sounding rather surprised, as if she’d just worked out the relationship.
‘So, married to your sister?’
‘Yeah, Helen the child bride.’
‘Lot younger than you then?’ said Ellie.
‘She’s younger than everyone,’ said Cress dismissively. ‘Like Snow White. Doesn’t get any older no matter how often you see the picture. Only this one still adores the wicked stepmother.’
‘Stepmother?’ This was completely new. ‘I didn’t know you had a stepmother.’
‘Not something I boast about. You don’t want to hear all this crap. Haven’t you got that bottle open yet?’
‘Sorry. It’s this broken cork. This stepmother, is she really wicked?’
‘Goes with the job, doesn’t it? She’s a pain in the arse anyway. You’ve probably seen her name in the papers. You wouldn’t forget it. Kay Kafka, would you believe? Why do Yanks always have these crazy fucking names? Here, let me try.’
She grabbed the bottle from Ellie and began poking at the broken cork.
Ellie, feeling that a gibe about names didn’t come well from someone called Cressida who had a brother called Palinurus, was by now sufficiently interested in the family background to have pursued it even without its pounce-postponing potential.
‘So you don’t care for your stepmother? And Pal?’
‘Hates her guts.’
‘But Helen took to her?’
‘She was only a kid when Dad remarried. It was easy for Kay to sink her talons in. Me and Pal were older, our shells had toughened up.’
‘And when your father died … when was that?’
‘Ten years ago. Pal was of age so out of it. I was seventeen so officially still in need of a responsible adult to care over me. I was determined it wasn’t going to be Kay even if it meant signing up with dotty old Vinnie till I made eighteen.’
‘Vinnie?’
‘My aunt Lavinia. Dad’s only sister. Mad as a hatter; you need feathers and a beak before she’ll even speak to you. But being a blood relative did the trick and I was able to give Kay the finger.’
‘But Helen thought different?’
‘Don’t think thought entered into it. She was only nine. Pal and I tried to get her out of the clutches, but she went all hysterical at the idea of being separated from Kay. Poor little