Shadows on the Nile (12 page)

Jessie knew. The moment she opened the door to her flat, she knew.

‘Who’s there?’ she called out.

The room lay in darkness. She listened intently for movement, the hairs rising at the back of her neck, then flicked the switch, flooding the spaces with light, forcing the shadows into the corners. Her heart hammered in her chest.

‘Who’s there?’ she called again.

As if a burglar would say,
Hello, don’t mind me, I’m just rummaging through your cupboards.

Something touched her ankle, making her jump.

‘Jabez!’ she hissed as the cat rubbed its cheek against her shin. The animal seemed unconcerned, uttering a purr of welcome. That was a good sign, unlike the open drawers in the sideboard and the wanton scattering of papers and books on the floor.

Someone had been here. She searched each room in the flat. They had broken in through the kitchen window which now stood wide open, letting in the dank
night air. The cupboards in the kitchen, in the bathroom and in Tabitha’s room were untouched, but in her own bedroom and in the living room every drawer and every cabinet hung open with its contents disturbed.

Oddly, Jessie wasn’t frightened. She should be. Alone at two o’clock in the morning in an empty flat that had been burgled – she knew she should be scared witless. But she wasn’t. She was angry. Angry and sad. She strode over to the telephone and started to dial the emergency number for the police but she stopped after only the second number. She stood there for a long moment, earpiece in one hand, its cord swaying, thoughts charging through her mind, and then she hung up.

She couldn’t do it to him.

Instead she walked into Tabitha’s room, a space he hadn’t violated, and sat down on the bed. Jabez was on her lap in a flash, green eyes half-closed with contentment, his claws kneading through the material of her dress to her skin underneath. A mixture of pleasure and pain. That’s what she felt whenever she let Georgie into her head – pleasure and pain, in unpredictable combinations that she couldn’t control. It could be an ordinary burglar who had done this, of course it could, most probably was. She knew that. But what if it wasn’t? Could she take that risk?

Because in a hard immutable place in the centre of her brain she was convinced it was Georgie who had tracked her here and broken into her flat. Examined her belongings. Thrown them around. Brought disorder into her life, the same way she had brought chaos into his by not looking after him better when he was a child. By not locking her arms around him and refusing to let him go. Where was she when he cried out for her that night twenty years ago? Sobbing on her carpet. What use was that to a frightened little boy?

Her breathing came fast and shallow. She did not know how she would feel if she had walked in while Georgie was still here, seeing one of her drawings or even her pillow in his hands. She would want to hold him, to hug him close, to press him back into that precious Georgie-shaped hole that bled inside her, and
he would hate that. She tried to imagine his adult face and his adult hands, but couldn’t. They would be a stranger’s face and a stranger’s hands.

She leaned forward and brushed her cheek against her cat’s silken fur. ‘Did you see him?’ she whispered into the pointed black ear. ‘Did he touch you?’

Jabez purred and closed his eyes on his secrets.

Do you have a cat, Georgie? Can you tolerate such contact now?

Not for a minute did Jessie think there would be pink clouds of happiness if they met now. He must hate her. She had abandoned him. And sometimes she hated him. Because … the words struggled to form in her head … because if he had acted just a bit more like a normal brother and done the small things she had told him to do, like let Ma touch his hair once in a while or not tell Pa his breath stank like a cowpat after a cigarette, they would have let her keep him. None of this need have happened. That’s why – sometimes – she hated Georgie.

It took her over an hour to tidy up the mess and there was nothing missing that she could see, but by the time Tabitha arrived home with her yawns and tousled black hair released from its plait, the flat was back to its usual state.

‘What are you doing up at this hour?’ Tabitha asked as she flopped down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and stretching her feet up on the cushion.

Outside, the night had turned raw and the air hung black and matted with fog. The flames of the gas fire murmured quietly to themselves as though drifting off to sleep.

‘Not in the mood to sleep,’ Jessie said cheerfully and vanished into the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later with a cup of milky cocoa for them both and a ginger biscuit for Tabitha.

‘Thanks,’ Tabitha said and dunked the biscuit in her drink, her eyes on Jessie. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Huh!’ Tabitha sipped her cocoa. ‘Tell me, Jess, what’s got your eyes so bright all of a sudden? Met someone special on the way home, did you?’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ Jessie laughed. It sounded almost
convincing. ‘I’m just on edge about tomorrow. Each day that goes by, Tim could be in worse trouble, needing my help.’

With a lazy grin Tabitha rolled her eyes and pointed her biscuit at Jessie. ‘You’re crazy, you know that?’

‘That’s not the way to talk to someone who has just brought you a life-sustaining cocoa.’

Steam from their cups drifted between them, warm and sweet-smelling.

‘It’s not your job, this seeking for Timothy. He may be your brother, but you’re not his keeper.’

You’re not his keeper.
How wrong could she be?

‘Of course it’s my job.’

‘It’s not. It’s your father’s and your mother’s. Or it’s the job of the police. Not yours.’ Abruptly Tabitha swung her feet to the floor and leaned forward, the tips of her elbows balanced on her knees. ‘I don’t want to see you get your fingers burnt, honey. Honestly I don’t. Stay out of it.’

The sudden severity of her friend’s tone and the sharpness in her dark eyes startled Jessie.

‘Do you know something, Tabitha? That I don’t? Did Tim tell you he was involved in something?’

Tabitha looked away. Jessie felt her heart pitch sideways and she waited. After a long silence during which she watched her friend’s face, Tabitha turned back to her and her expression had changed. Jessie didn’t like it. It was caring and tender.

‘Look, Jess,’ she said softly, ‘you’re getting too obsessed. I hate to see you like this. Even at the club tonight you couldn’t relax.’

But Jessie would not be sidetracked. ‘Do you know something?’

Tabitha sighed. ‘Not really.’

‘What exactly does that mean?’

‘It means just that. Not really. Tim told me last time he came to the club that he was …’ she hesitated.

‘Was what?’ Jessie pressed.

‘Was involved in something with your father.’

‘Involved in what with
my father?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Did he give any hints?’

‘No. But I’m sure it’s nothing much or your father would have mentioned it.’ Tabitha paused, a frown creasing her pale forehead. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

Jessie placed her cup of cocoa firmly on a side table and stood up. ‘Excuse me while I go to my room and kick something.’

‘It’s eight o’clock in the morning and it’s Sunday. This had better be good, Jessica.’

There was a light drizzle, enough to dampen her father’s dressing gown and spatter his spectacles as he stood in the doorway. He opened the door wider and stepped back into the hallway. It smelled strongly of flowers, the same musty floral scent as at a funeral, and Jessie saw a huge bouquet of bronze-tinged chrysanthemums in a vase on the hall table. She wondered who had sent them.

‘Pa, I have to talk to you about something.’

They remained in the hall, making no move towards the drawing room. As if she were a stranger who had barged in off the street. Whenever she entered this house, the moment her foot touched the Afghan rug in the hall, it sent her tumbling back into her childhood. This was where the past lived. Trapped here. She rubbed shoulders with it each time she stepped over the threshold, aware that it was a solid presence that walked up and down the stairs, its heart beating, its breath smelling of rhubarb and custard. Its voice murmuring Georgie’s name.

Her father stood stiff and sombre, his grey eyes examining her face, a distance of far more than a few feet of woven carpet stretching between his paisley slippers and her wet shoes.

‘What is it now, Jessica?’ he asked in a quiet voice. ‘What has got you all riled up this time?’

She ignored the barb, just added it to the nest of barbs that lay hidden away inside her where no one could see. She kept her tone neutral. ‘I heard that you and Tim are involved in
something together.’ She saw something flicker. So it was true. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to tell me? Before sending me off into the bullring?’

‘You exaggerate,’ he said.

‘Do I?’

He removed his spectacles and wiped them clean on a folded handkerchief from his dressing-gown pocket. He was gaining thinking time for himself. What was it he had to think about? What were her father and his blue-eyed boy engaged in that was not meant for her ears? She waited, keeping her words inside her head, knowing that her father had never been able to abide a silence. As a child, it had been her only weapon against him, but now the hallway started to fill up with it until they were drowning in it.

‘It has nothing to with his disappearance, Jessica, I assure you.’

‘Can you be certain?’

‘Yes, I can.’ His words carried conviction. He would have made a good politician.

‘So tell me, what is it that you have involved him in?’

Light footsteps sounded on the stairs and they both looked up to see Jessie’s mother descending. She was fully dressed in a pleated skirt and white embroidered blouse, her fair hair arranged in an elegant twist at the back of her head – clearly what she’d been doing since the doorbell rang. Her face was powdered, her lashes heavy with mascara. Catherine Kenton was not one to enter the fray of life without her armour on, but at the sight of her daughter a crack appeared in it. Her blue eyes widened with alarm and her feet hurried down the last stairs.

‘Any news?’ she asked urgently. ‘Is Timothy …?’

‘No, nothing. Not yet.’

‘Oh.’

‘I just came to ask Pa a few questions.’

‘At this hour?’

‘I have other things to do today – like searching for Tim.’

There was a slight pause. Her words sounded melodramatic
on a quiet Sunday morning in a leafy suburb of England, not at all what she intended. She turned back to her father and he realised that she was not going to go away until he told her what he’d been doing with Tim. He tightened the belt of his dressing gown.

‘Timothy was helping me set up meetings and arrange publicity for the BUF, that’s all.’

‘The British Union of Fascists?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Oswald Mosley’s new party?’

‘Yes.’

She recalled the pamphlets in his workshop. ‘No,’ she said softly, shaking her head. ‘Please don’t drag Tim into …’

‘Timothy makes his own choices, young lady. He recognises the party’s worth and the strength of its aims to put this country back on its feet.’

‘Jessica,’ her mother interrupted sharply, ‘will you join us for breakfast?’

Jessie caught the look her father gave her mother.

‘No, thank you, Ma. I have to get back.’

They walked her to the door faster than she expected. ‘What does Tim do for the BUF?’ she asked her father.

‘Oh, anything really. Just lends a hand.’

That was it. No more.

She smiled at her mother and for once, because she looked so tight with worry, Jessie kissed her powdered cheek. It smelt of freesias.

‘I’ll let you know as soon as I learn anything definite,’ she promised. She glanced back around the hall, remembering waiting behind the door for her father all those years ago, a letter in her pocket. Her gaze fell on the chrysanthemums. ‘Nice flowers,’ she commented.

Her mother nodded. ‘From Sir Oswald, actually. And his wife, Lady Cynthia, of course.’

So correct. Yet the whole world knew that Mosley was having a blatant affair with Diana Mitford, who was married to one of the Guinness family. As Jessie walked to her car through the
drizzle, she wondered what had prompted Oswald Mosley to send her mother flowers.

Jessie swung into the drive at exactly two o’clock and parked next to Sir Montague Chamford’s elegant cream automobile. His tall figure was standing beside it, polishing the high arch of its front mudguard with his handkerchief till it gleamed in the thin afternoon sunshine. She recognised it as a Rolls-Royce by the Spirit of Ecstasy mascot that was poised on the tip of its long bonnet. He informed her it was a 1922 Silver Ghost and had belonged to his father.

The present Sir Montague, dressed in tweeds, spent the first part of the journey through the country lanes chatting with animation about the car, expanding on its charms. Discussing its silent engine, its huge reserves of power which were delivered in what he termed ‘an unruffled manner’, his enthusiasm was infectious. His long-boned face softened as if he were talking about a lover who set his pulse racing.

‘She has a magnificent seven and a half litre engine, with two spark plugs fitted to each of the six cylinders.’ His fingers ran around the steering wheel, stroking it fondly. His nails were spotless today. ‘Phosphor bronze and nickel steel are used in the construction of the timing gears,’ he informed Jessie, ‘which are all ground and polished by hand. They are a thing of beauty, I assure you.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Am I boring you?’

‘Not at all.’

He concentrated on manoeuvring the long gear stick as they bowled through the streets of High Wycombe, a town of furniture manufacturers north-west of London, where heads turned to admire the Rolls-Royce as it passed.

‘Do you hear that, Coriolanus?’ Sir Montague called out to the sheepdog on the rear seat. ‘We have a sceptic in our midst, I do believe.’

The dog pushed its wet nose against its
master’s ear from behind, as though whispering something private. Sir Montague laughed, but when Jessie didn’t join in he glanced across at her, his eyes checking her face and then her hands tight on her lap.