‘By the time I’ve finished,’ she panted, the words coming
viciously through gritted teeth,
‘no-one
will
want you, you
bitch.’ And the knife
slashed again, at the smooth brown neck
hung with gold chains and at the
face which Camilla was trying
to cover with
her hands. More blood sprayed, splattering the
table and the thick apricot carpet and Juliet marvelled at its
glossy brightness. Shifting her position,
balancing herself over
the terrified woman beneath her, she wrenched
away the hands with brutal force and slid the knife across Camilla’s elegant
cheek. Such a very sharp knife . . . it was as easy
as cutting
through butter . . . and so much blood. Well, Camilla Lewis
certainly wasn’t looking so great now . . .
She didn’t hear the door open behind her. When the scream
echoed through the room she let go of Camilla’s hair and spun round too late to
avoid the impact. A heavy china pot slammed into her chest and lukewarm water
cascaded everywhere, splash
ing her face and
soaking her clothes. Cursing, blinking the
liquid from her eyes, Juliet stared in horror at the screaming
boy,
naked apart from a T-shirt. Dimly hearing Camilla croak, ‘Marty’, she looked
down at the broken pot lying at her feet and
felt
a wave of nausea surge in her throat. There could be no
doubt that it was an old-fashioned chamber pot.
And the
lukewarm liquid in which she was drenched wasn’t just water .. .
‘
You filthy animal!’ she
yelled, gagging helplessly, and the
boy
let out an unearthly wail, launching himself at her like a
small human
bullet.
He’s handicapped, Juliet realized
faintly, struggling to fend
him off as he clawed with frantic strength at her arms. Looks
like Down’s Syndrome . . . not perfect, after all .. .
With the last of her own strength she
flung him away,
snatched up her bag
and ran towards the door. Her eyes burned
with
tears. Beside her, the phone started ringing. Turning to
look back she
saw the little boy kneel beside Camilla, and place his arms tenderly around the
bloody mess of her head. He was
sobbing
loudly, making unintelligible noises and taking great
gulps of air as he cradled her against his chest,
now stained
crimson with her blood.
The phone
continued to ring.
Slowly,
Juliet picked up the receiver and heard a series of long-distance clicks. ‘Hello?’
said a male voice when she didn’t speak. Carni, is that you? It’s Nico.’
‘
Camilla needs an ambulance,’ said Juliet, her hands
starting
to shake. ‘Please call an ambulance. Now.’
Replacing
the receiver, she turned back once more to look at what she had done.
‘
I’m sorry,’ she said through chattering teeth,
wiping her
sweating palms against her skirt and realizing that it was
still
soaked with urine. ‘I had to do it. I
didn’t know your little boy
had Down’s Syndrome . . . I thought he would
be perfect.’
Camilla, floating on the grey border of consciousness,
managed to
raise one hand and rest it upon Marty’s spiky dark head. In a voice barely
above a whisper she said slowly, ‘He is perfect.’
Shaking her
head, not understanding at all, Juliet closed the front door behind her.
Chapter 56
Discovering
his wife in bed with his keyboards player, Nico
realized, was one of the best things that had ever happened to
him.
Watching them from the doorway, almost admiring the
expression of horror and defiance on Caroline’s face as she
turned
and saw him standing there, he felt a great weight of responsibility float
away. His green eyes registered wry amuse
ment
as she dragged the emerald covers over her perspiring,
naked body.
‘
I
have
seen
it before,’ he observed mildly.
Paddy lit a cigarette.
‘Sorry mate. You know how it is.’
‘
I know,’ said Nico,
dead-pan. ‘I just dropped by to tell you
that
I’m flying back to London. Right away. Something’s come
up. We’re booked here until the end of the week so the rest of
you may as
well stay out here until then. OK?’
Paddy shrugged. ‘OK.’
‘What about me?’ said Caroline, shivering with shock.
Nico, privately amazed by his complete lack of either anger
or
jealousy, said slowly, ‘What about you? You’d prefer to stay
here, wouldn’t you? Let’s face it, Caroline. We’ve
both known
for a while that our so-called marriage was over. I’ll
contact my solicitor when I get back and he can get things moving.’
‘It’s not a
so-called marriage –’ she began, automatically defending herself from
criticism, but Nico intercepted her.
‘
When we
met,’ he said evenly, ‘you pretended not to know
who I was. That
was a lie, and lies aren’t the most suitable foundation upon which to build a
lasting relationship.’
‘
But I didn’t
want you to think that . . .’ Caroline broke off,
realizing that arguing wasn’t going to help. With defiance in
her eyes she said sullenly, ‘Oh, never mind. How
did you find
out, anyway?’
‘
I didn’t,’ replied Nico,
turning towards the door. ‘It was just
a lucky guess.’
Camilla lay back against the starched white pillows and
gingerly
lifted the sheet covering her body.
Since there were no mirrors
in the room she hadn’t been able to see what
her face and neck
looked like, but she could
imagine the horror show. If the
wounds
there were anything like those on her body, she must
look ghastly. And
they hurt like hell, too, despite the painkillers.
But it could have been worse. The
knife had been a small
one and the woman’s intention had clearly been to scar rather than to
kill. By slashing instead of stabbing, many of the cuts
were relatively superficial. The median nerve in her left
forearm had evidently been spared by less than a centimetre. No major
organs had been punctured. The doctor had spent
hours repairing
her wounds with
literally hundreds of painstakingly minute
stitches, and had reassured her that the degree of eventual scarring
would be far less than seemed possible now, with
congealed blood and
emerging purplish bruising staining the otherwise smooth tanned flesh.
But scars there would be, nevertheless, and Camilla realized
that she was on the verge of panic. Having been heavily sedated earlier, the
full horror of the attack was only beginning now, at midnight, to make itself
felt. If Marty hadn’t been there, if Nico hadn’t chosen exactly that moment to
call her, if Piers’ wife had
not for some
bizarre reason answered the phone, it could all
have been far, far worse.
She should
be grateful to even be alive.
So why did she feel so wretched and so very afraid?
Reaching for the bell to summon a nurse, Camilla pressed
it and felt the hot tears course down her cheeks. Maybe a sedative
or a sleeping pill would help. In the morning,
after a few hours
of oblivion, she might feel more able to cope.
When the door opened she wiped her eyes
with the back of
her
good hand and blinked as the overhead light came on.
Coming through the door was a vast
walking bouquet of pink,
blue and white flowers. For a single, heart-stopping moment
she thought, Nico! then subsided,
embarrassed by a tidal wave
of
disappointment. Of course it wasn’t him. The night nurse, a slender girl with a
gap between her front teeth, grinned at her as she hauled the enormous basket
of flowers on to the top on the bedside locker.
‘Special delivery, you lucky girl,’ announced the nurse,
so cheerily that Camilla winced.
‘
Is there a card?’ she
said, pulling herself one-handedly into
a sitting position. Maybe Loulou
had sent them, or Roz and Sebastian.
‘
No card. And no
visitors either as a rule, but this one
charmed his way into the nurses’
station and we simply couldn’t say no. Are you up to a visit, do you think?’
Camilla stared at her. Surely,
surely
Piers hadn’t come here
to see her.
Horrified, she said, ‘Does he have dark curly hair?’
‘
No, I bloody well do
not!’ exclaimed an outraged voice on
the other side of the door, and
this time Camilla’s spirits soared. As Nico appeared in the room she realized
that subconsciously she had been expecting him, and that there was no-one else
in
the
entire world whom she wanted to see more.
The night
nurse melted tactfully away.
‘
I had to come,’ he said, placing his arms carefully around her and
kissing her undamaged cheek. Then he stepped back
and
grinned. ‘And here you are, pining away for some gypsy Heathcliffe type. Bloody
charming.’
‘
Serves you right for
eavesdropping,’ said Camilla with a
weak
smile as she took his hand. ‘And anyway, he was the one
I
didn’t
want
to see. Oh Nico, I’m so glad you’re here.’
Tenderly, he lifted the strap of her nightdress back on to
her
shoulder. ‘I’m glad I’m here too,’ he
said, wishing he could kiss
her again.
‘Every time I see you you’re either scantily clad or
stark naked. It’s
enough to give a man ideas.’
‘
I’m usually crying,
too,’ Camilla reminded him, realizing
that
she was about to do it again. Stupidly, Nico’s sudden
appearances seemed to have that effect on her. ‘And
I can’t
imagine that the sight of me
now could give any man ideas.’
The
words gushed out just ahead of the tears; the next moment
she was clinging to Nico, sobbing helplessly, and
he was holding
her, kissing her hair and murmuring reassurances.
‘Sshh,’ he whispered, when the heaving sobs at last began
to subside. "The nurses will kick me out if we aren’t careful.’
‘
Let them try,’ hiccuped
Camilla with a watery smile. ‘Oh
but
Nico, look at my face. They won’t even let me see it. Is it
really as
horrible as I think it is?’
Taking her seriously, realizing how scared and desperately
in need of reassurance she was, he studied her closely for several
seconds. It
was
horrible, but it didn’t seem
so to him because
she was still Camilla, she was still alive and that
was all that
mattered. The longest cut swept
from her temple along the line
of her cheekbone. Another bisected her
left eyebrow and severalsmaller ones ran down her lower jaw and on to her neck.
‘This side of your face is a bit swollen,’ he said,
running his
index finger lightly along an
undamaged part of it. ‘And it all
looks far worse than it is because of
the blood that’s still there. These little cuts down here will heal easily.
This big one, if it
leaves any sign of a
scar, will look rather dashing because it’s
right beneath your
cheekbone. I’m serious, Cami. They’re really
not
as bad as you think.’ He saw the relief in her eyes and
winked, tugging
playfully at her shoulder strap. ‘Got any more you’d like me to see whilst I’m
here?’
‘You’re nothing but a tart,’ she said smiling. ‘And thank
you. You’ve cheered me up. I still can’t believe that you’ve flown all this way
to see me.’
‘
I sent you a postcard
yesterday, too,’ Nico retaliated with
mock
indignation. ‘If I’d known I’d be coming back today I
could have saved
myself the price of a stamp.’
‘
The flowers are lovely.’
‘
Mmm.’ He looked vaguely embarrassed. ‘Actually they’re
on loan.’
‘
On loan?’ cried
Camilla, trying not to laugh. ‘Where did
you get them?’
‘
The hotel across the
road. They’re the main display in
reception.
I had to give the receptionist a kiss and promise to
return them within
the hour. Well,
you
try and buy flowers at eleven thirty at night,’ he
concluded defensively.