Gagged & Bound Page 33

  ‘Camilla, stop it. And please tell Dan Stamford not to interfere.’ Seeing her shock, he quickly added, as though to an ignorant child, ‘And make sure he doesn’t talk to anyone else. If I break the terms of the agreement, that leaves the way open for them to say anything they want. I can’t have that, now can I?’

  As she shook her head, her long soft hair swung gently across her face, hiding it from him.

  ‘Daddy?’ she said, more tentative than he’d heard her for years.

  ‘Yes, sweetheart?’

  ‘Daddy, Dan said the only reason you won’t go public is that …’ A tear slipped over the edge of her eye and slid down her cheek, carrying a smear of mascara with it. She wiped it away with her hand, then wiped that on the seat of her jeans. ‘I can’t say it.’

  ‘Fine. Then don’t worry about it either.’

  ‘But I can’t not. I mean, I have to. Daddy, Dan says he thinks you’re afraid of publicity because it was you. He’s wrong, isn’t he? You weren’t that Baiborn? Tell me you weren’t.’

  He’d been shaking his head ever since she’d started the question, but she didn’t seem to understand. So he tried a laugh, but that didn’t help either.

  ‘Sweetheart, you’ve gone mad. Of course I’m not.’

  She was backing away, taking one tiny step at a time, as though she thought he wouldn’t notice if the steps were small enough.

  ‘Camilla!’

  Now it was her turn to shake her head. She was at the door and had it half open before she found her voice again.

  ‘He’s right, isn’t he? You always look like that when you’re lying. It was you. All these years, and I … You … You killed all those children, and threatened the other man and let him spend more than twenty years in prison. How could you?’

  He opened his mouth, but no words emerged. His tongue felt like rubber and his jaw wouldn’t move. He forced out the syllables of her name. But she was gone.

  Bee had left the celebration dinner to go home to Silas, finally persuaded that whatever they might believe about Simon Tick and his part in the bombing of X8 Pharmaceuticals, they had no evidence that could trigger an official investigation. But she was still unhappy that he was going to get away with what he’d done to the passengers on the bus, to Jeremy and his mother, and less directly to her. Trish was still struggling with much the same problem in relation to what she was convinced he’d done to David.

  It seemed monstrous to both of them that Tick should get away with any of it. Trish knew that every time she saw his name in the papers or his smooth face on Newsnight, she would hate him all over again, but, without evidence, there was nothing she or anyone else could do. Caro had confirmed it.

  She and Jess had gone too, and Trish had sent David to bed. When she went to turn out his light, she saw him lying under his duvet, hugging the signed copy of his favourite author’s new book, which Bee had given him.

  Trish bent down to kiss him and went back to George, who was still sitting at the table. He looked up.

  ‘Sunday tomorrow. We can leave the washing-up,’ he said, idly twirling a single grape until it fell off its twig with a tiny squelch.

  ‘More wine?’ She sat down opposite him. ‘Or fizzy water for rehydration?’

  ‘Neither.’ Another grape followed the first. She wondered what the problem was. He knew she hated the wet fruity blobs he left when he maltreated a bunch of grapes like this, so he hardly ever did it these days. He was concentrating on the grape between his fingers, actually peeling it.

  ‘Hey, George?’

  He looked up and presented her with the naked grape. His face looked quite unprotected below hair that was wilder than ever.

  ‘It’s not much of an apology, Trish, but I can’t think of a way of saying what has to be said.’

  ‘Haven’t you and I got past the stage of needing to say anything?’ she said.

  The row was so far in the past – so much had happened since, and the two of them had learned how to be easy with each other again – that it seemed mad to bring it up now.

  ‘I don’t think so. I used to think like that, and kidded myself it was the only rational way of dealing with difficult emotions. Now I don’t. You’re owed an explanation after the way I ranted at you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I trampled on things that matter, Trish. You know that Yeats poem, “tread softly for you tread on my dreams”?’

  This was typical George: always retreating to poetry when his own words seemed too dangerous. She nodded, not at all sure what she was going to hear next.

  ‘Treading on other people’s fears deserves even more softness,’ he said, grabbing two grapes this time and making even more mess of the bunch. Trish braced herself for another rebuke for the risks she’d taken with David’s life and happiness.

  ‘But I trampled on yours with clodhopping great boots. And I hurt you. I know how hard you’ve had to work to get over the fear that you might crack up again. There’s no excuse for the way I used that, except my own …’

  Again she waited, holding on to her impulse to finish other people’s sentences and decode their feelings. Whatever skill she might have had deserted her now. She didn’t know what he was getting at. And it mattered too much for her to make any mistakes.

  ‘Except my own fears,’ he said at last, as though he’d had to squeeze the thought out of the narrowest tube. ‘I felt …’ He stopped again and looked down at the two mangled grapes between his fingers. That gave him time, pushing the pulp off and then wiping his hands on one of the scrumpled napkins on the table. ‘I wasn’t really even talking about David when I savaged you for making him trust you and then putting him at risk. You’ve got so far into me and my … self, really, that I’ve got no defences left.’

  She frowned. ‘You don’t need defences. Not against me.’

  ‘If you ever dumped me, it would be me who’d crack up.’

  ‘George …’

  ‘I’ve got to finish this, Trish. I’ve been protecting myself against the knowledge of how much I need you. I haven’t felt as vulnerable as this since I was eight, and I hated it then. So it was my terror, and my need that made me hurt you. Not David’s. I was just using those. I’m sorry.’

  ‘George,’ she said again, but she didn’t know how to carry on. He’d always been the strong one, the one who knew everything and was confident of his place in the world. The magnitude of his surrender made her breathless.

  He looked so scared – and so young – that she had to say something. She’d told him so often that she loved him, that he meant more to her than she knew how to explain, that all the familiar words seemed useless. At last, she leaned across the table to take both his hands and looked up into his dark-brown eyes.

  ‘George, I don’t do dumping.’

  His solemn expression broke into a smile that spread and spread.

  ‘Trish … You … I … Oh, sod it, why is talking so difficult?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, letting go of his hands. As she pushed herself up from the table, she felt as though he had pulled the last of the life-long splinters out of her flesh. ‘We can do this one without words. Are you coming up to bed?’

  ‘If you want me.’

  ‘I want you.’

  Epilogue

  Monday 30 April

  Trish was slicing a mango for breakfast, listening to a spirited argument on the Today programme on Radio 4, when she heard the footfall. It was far heavier than David’s even on his most triumphant mornings. The breathing was heavier too. She whirled with her heart thudding and the knife in her hand. It pointed straight at George’s stomach. He looked worried.

  Dropping the knife on the worktop, she stilled her raging heart and reached out a hand to turn off the radio.

  ‘You startled me,’ she said mildly.

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Why are you here? On a work morning?’

  He pulled a folded newspaper from under his arm. ‘I know you don�
�t have a paper delivered on weekdays any more, and I thought you should have a chance to read this before you go into chambers and maybe have to answer questions.’

  When she’d taken the newspaper and was shaking it out, he took her place at the chopping board to deal with the mango so he had his back to her.

  ‘I thought you’d need time to work out what you’re going to say.’

  Worried now, Trish looked down at the headline on the front page and gasped.

  Greater damage does there none

  Than the body turned to self-destruction.

  Anon

  Author’s Note

  Thanks are owing to any number of friends, in particular to Myles Allfrey, Suzanne Baboneau, Andrew Caldecott, Mary Carter, Broo Doherty, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Jane Gregory, Mary Lane at BAAF, Paul Sidey, Anna Valdinger and Melissa Weatherill.

  None of the events recorded in this novel has any basis in fact, and every character who appears in it is a figment of my imagination.

  Natasha Cooper

  Also by Natasha Cooper

  Creeping Ivy

  Fault Lines

  Prey to All

  Out of the Dark

  A Place of Safety

  Keep Me Alive

  Accused Chief Inspector Skips Bail

  Speed-reading the columns below, she saw that John Crayley, freed on bail by the magistrates last week, had disappeared. It was believed he might have left the country on a fake passport. His estranged wife, Lulu, was reported to have sold her story to one of the tabloids for quarter of a million pounds. His mother, Gillian Crayley, had refused to make any comment.

  ‘Poor woman,’ Trish said. ‘I wonder if MI5 had a hand in it.’

  ‘Most unlikely,’ George said. He sounded so surprised that Trish looked at him and saw that he was frowning.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In a hanging? Don’t be absurd.’

  Puzzled, she looked back at the paper in her hands. On the left-hand side, at the bottom, was a smaller headline. The black words seemed to become three dimensional as she stared at them, and they grew into great accusing fingers.

  Lord Tick of Southsea Hangs Himself.

  GAGGED & BOUND. Copyright © 2005 by Natasha Cooper. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain by

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2005

  A Viacom Company

  eISBN 9781466810051

  First eBook Edition : January 2012

  EAN 978-0-312-34921-9

  First U.S. Edition: September 2005