Astrid pulled the garage door open and went inside, dragging her umbrella behind her without bothering to close it. Bad luck, in this case, meant getting even wetter than she was already. It was barely a two-minute walk from the hotel, but the wind had blown the rain in under its defences‚ and the water gushing down the steep incline had soaked her shoes and splashed her dress. Perhaps it was God’s way of telling her that meeting a stranger at midnight with an important day ahead of her was not the most sensible idea she had ever had, but Astrid had never set much store by God’s rules‚ and the evening had left her feeling troubled and lonely. Danny – although she didn’t know him very well – was the nearest thing she had to a friend, and spending an hour or two with him couldn’t do any harm. Too honest to let herself get away with that, Astrid smiled; the more she saw of Daniel Lascelles, the more attractive she found him, and friendship was only part of it. The invitation to meet him somewhere private in the middle of a storm had not taken much consideration.
She was a few minutes late, but everything was in darkness. The garage smelt faintly of oil, rubber and wood, that peculiarly masculine combination, and she wondered why – of all places – he had suggested they meet here. Folding the umbrella and leaning it against the wall, she was surprised by how acutely the scent took her back to the suburbs of London where she had grown up. Her adoptive father had owned a series of unreliable cars, each boasting something more seriously wrong with it than the last, and he seemed to spend most weekends alone in the garage of their semi-detached house, trying to make something roadworthy. On rainy afternoons, when she was bored and the day seemed to stretch out in front of her, she would wander in and watch him, silently absorbed in his task. He was a kind, shy man – not an easy talker, even with his wife – and he had no idea, really, how to engage a child, but he never gave up trying. He’d smile at her, and she would do her best to follow what he was doing so that the two of them had something in common, as if by learning where each small piece of metal went and what it did she could somehow teach herself how to fit into their lives.
Hurried footsteps outside brought her back to the present, but they were accompanied by voices and laughter‚ and they carried on towards the hotel. Wondering where Danny had got to, Astrid fumbled for a light switch and eventually found it by the door. She flicked it, but nothing happened. Impatiently, she switched it on and off repeatedly as if she could trick the light into working, but it refused to pander to her bullying. Just as she had decided that no man was worth sitting in the dark for, she heard more footsteps outside – along the side of the building from the Piazza this time, and slower. They stopped, and she thought for a moment that whoever it was had turned right up the hill towards the stable block, but then she heard the twist of the door handle and, through the chink of moonlight, saw the silhouette of a man slip quietly inside and close the door behind him. ‘Danny?’ she whispered, instinctively moving further back into the garage.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late.’ When she heard his voice, she sighed with relief and cursed herself for allowing her imagination to get the better of her. ‘I went for a walk after dinner to clear my head and got caught in the storm. I had to go and change.’
‘It’s all right. I haven’t been here long myself, and I suppose it
is
difficult to know what to wear for a garage rendezvous. I’m not sure there’s a recognised etiquette on the subject.’ She heard him laugh and relax a little. ‘It’s an interesting choice of venue.’
‘But at least it’s private.’ There was an awkward silence, and Astrid guessed that he was blushing. ‘Is there a light switch?’ he asked.
‘Near where you’re standing, but it doesn’t work.’
He tried it anyway, and she smiled at the typically male refusal to accept a woman’s assessment of anything mechanical. ‘Hang on a minute.’ She waited while he felt his way round to the front of the car, then opened the driver’s door and switched on the headlamps. The room – if hardly flooded with light – was now at least navigable, and she noticed that what looked like an individual garage from the outside was actually a larger space for two cars, divided down the centre by stone pillars and accessed through separate entrances. Danny pointed to the ceiling, where the light flex hung impotently down, stripped of its bulb. ‘I would have thought this place attracted a better class of clientele than that,’ he said. ‘Cutlery and crockery I can understand, bathrobes are worth it if you’ve got the nerve, but walking off with the light bulbs smacks of desperation.’ He walked over to the other car, an open-top Morris, and flicked on its lights. ‘That’s as good as it gets, I’m afraid. Dingy or moody. Take your pick.’
‘Moody. I’m the glass half-full type.’ In fact, the understated lamplight was not unpleasant. Objects hanging down from the rafters – ropes and metal cans for petrol, tools and other paraphernalia used by Portmeirion’s gardeners – cast larger-than-life shadows on the ceiling, but the yellow glow from the headlamps was strong enough to give the room a welcome warmth. She cast her eyes admiringly over the sleek lines of the Alvis. ‘Which is more than Leyton Turnbull will be in the morning when he finds out he’s got a flat battery.’
‘I think that’ll be the least of Turnbull’s troubles, don’t you? If it were me, after what went on at dinner, I’m not sure I’d even hang around until the morning.’
‘Yes, it’s been a strange evening. After all the unpleasantness, it was nice to get your note.’
Danny looked confused. ‘I didn’t send you a note.’
‘Of course you did. I picked it up from reception.’
‘No. I picked
yours
up from reception. Look.’ He put his hand in his breast pocket and passed her a piece of blue paper.
‘I don’t understand,’ Astrid said. ‘Except for the signature, this is exactly the same as the one I had.’ She took her own from her bag to compare. ‘See – the handwriting, the wording – they’re identical. “Meet me in Garage No. 1 at midnight. I’ll bring the champagne.”’ They looked at each other. ‘It’s obviously someone’s idea of a joke, but I can’t imagine what it means.’
‘It means we’ve got no damned champagne,’ Danny said matter-of-factly. ‘I’ll go and get some from the hotel.’
‘No, Danny, it’s fine. You can’t go racing about for champagne in this weather.’ The joke seemed harmless enough, but Astrid was reluctant to be left alone when someone obviously knew exactly where to find her. ‘Look, as neither of us seems to be particularly attached to these garages after all, why don’t we go to the hotel and have a drink there?’
‘Or we could go back to my apartment,’ Danny said. ‘I’ve got some brandy.’ Astrid hesitated, remembering what Bella Hutton had said. Danny was staying in Government House, just a stone’s throw from the Hitchcocks’ apartment, and she didn’t want to be seen. He sensed her dilemma and began to apologise. ‘I’m sorry, Astrid. I wasn’t suggesting . . . of course you don’t want to do that.’
His embarrassment won her over. She put a finger to his lips and said‚ ‘It’s fine, Danny. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s go.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
He grinned and went over to the door. Astrid walked round to switch the car’s headlights off, but hesitated when she heard him swearing under his breath. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The door won’t open.’ He put his shoulder to the wood and pushed harder, but still it resisted. ‘It’s jammed with something. I’ll try the other one.’
She watched him walk over to the other side of the garage, but something told her that he wasn’t going to have any more luck there. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said angrily, giving the door a kick. ‘I didn’t have any problem getting in, did you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but somebody’s idea of a joke obviously doesn’t stop at sending us bogus notes.’
‘You think someone’s done this deliberately?’
‘Of course they have, and don’t you think it smacks of our host? He’s been having a laugh at someone’s expense all night, and now it’s our turn.’ She cast her eye around the garage, then looked inside Turnbull’s car. ‘There you go. I knew it.’ On the back seat was a large parcel, extravagantly wrapped and half hidden under a blanket. ‘Doesn’t that look too precious to be left out here overnight?’ she asked, reaching for the label. ‘See? It’s got our names on it.’ Danny watched, bewildered, as she bent down to listen. ‘And it seems to be ticking.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked, but Astrid was already ripping the box open. When she turned round, she was holding a toy dog with an alarm clock tied to its collar.
‘I have no idea what this is about,’ she said, making an effort not to smile, ‘but the look on your face was priceless. Our champagne’s here, too, and caviar, chocolates, cigarettes: everything you could possibly need if you’re locked in a garage with a stranger.’
Relieved, Danny laughed and joined her by the car. ‘Hang on – there’s a card.’ He took it out and read it in an exaggerated impersonation of Hitchcock’s voice. ‘“Well, boys and girls, time is ticking and the audition has begun. Good luck.’” The card was signed with the director’s familiar caricature of himself.
She smiled. ‘Perhaps Hitchcock doesn’t object so strongly to fraternisation after all.’ He looked questioningly at her. ‘It was something Bella Hutton said to me: he doesn’t like his stars to get too close to each other.’
‘Could have fooled me. What else did Bella tell you? I noticed you talking to her.’
‘Oh, just that Leyton Turnbull destroys young women, so nothing new, really.’ He didn’t laugh as she had expected him to, so she added‚ ‘She may be as wrong about that as she is about Hitchcock, though. It seems to me that he positively encourages fraternisation – unless this is a test, of course.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps we’re supposed to scream the place down in moral indignation until someone rescues us.’
‘Is that what you’d like to do?’ She shook her head. ‘Then make yourself at home, Miss Lake.’
He gave a mock bow and held the door of the Alvis open for her, and she climbed into the passenger seat, noticing that the lamps on the Morris were already beginning to fade. ‘I bet this is down to David Franks,’ she said. ‘No wonder he gave me such a cheery goodnight.’
Danny got in beside her. ‘What do you make of him?’
The question was expressed casually as he opened the bottle, but Astrid knew that he was more interested in her answer than he cared to admit and she considered it carefully. ‘I think he’s dangerous,’ she said, holding out her glass. ‘Just from that conversation out on the terrace, you could tell he was the type to bleed people dry and move on, whether it’s Bella Hutton and her connections or Hitchcock and his expertise.’
He poured his own drink in the dwindling light and stood the bottle on the floor. ‘There goes our ambience,’ he said as the Alvis followed the other car’s example. ‘Nice while it lasted. Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’
‘Franks has surely met his match if he’s going to take Hitchcock on, though?’
‘Probably, but I’m not sticking up for him either. Schoolboy stuff like this is all very well, but some of the things he did tonight were completely out of order.’
‘I know what you mean. I dropped in on Turnbull when I went back to change, just to see if he was all right and apologise again for what I said, but he was either out or just not answering.’ Astrid was quiet. She had been shocked by her conversation with Bella Hutton, but had also seen a different side to the actress later which reinforced her original instinct to trust only herself. Film wasn’t an industry that took any prisoners: at dinner, as everyone – herself included – responded to Hitchcock’s goading, she had felt dirty all over. As if the thought had transferred itself, Danny said‚ ‘Thanks for speaking out tonight. I began to think that Hitchcock had set me up to be the only one to talk.’ It was true, Astrid realised: the whole evening had been geared around encouraging people to turn on one another, leaving each of them isolated in their own way. ‘I didn’t know you were adopted,’ Danny continued gently as she said nothing. ‘All the time I spent during that last film complaining about my relationship with my father, and you never had the chance to know yours at all. I’m sorry. It was selfish of me‚ and you were so kind, but you should have said something.’
She ignored his apology because to acknowledge it would have meant talking more about her own life than she cared to. ‘The thing you were wrongly accused of,’ she said, deflecting the attention back to him. ‘Is that what you and your father fell out about?’
He said nothing, and she thought at first that he was avoiding the question, but he put his finger to his lips. ‘I think I heard the door,’ he whispered. ‘Someone’s coming in.’
Instinctively, they slid down in their seats, hoping not to be caught. They were in luck: rather than coming right into the garage, the visitor stayed at the back of the car‚ and, after several attempts, eventually managed to unlock the boot. ‘It must be Turnbull,’ Astrid whispered. ‘You don’t think he
is
leaving, do you? What are we going to do?’
Danny shrugged. ‘Sit tight and blame Hitchcock if we’re caught.’ There was a noise that sounded like the zip being drawn back on a bag or suitcase, and then the lid of the boot was firmly closed. ‘Perhaps he’s just packing his career away,’ Danny said softly, and Astrid had to struggle to contain her laughter. Anxiously, they waited for footsteps to come round to the front of the car, but there was nothing. Instead, they heard the creak of the garage door again, and then silence.
‘Christ, I thought we’d had it there,’ Danny said when he was sure it was safe to speak. ‘All that moralising I did at dinner, only to be found taking advantage of a helpless young woman in someone else’s car.’ He wound the window down and looked back towards the entrance. ‘He’s left the door ajar, though. Rescued just when it was getting interesting. That’s my luck all over.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ Astrid said. ‘We may as well finish the bottle while we’re waiting for this rain to stop.’ He smiled and refilled her glass. ‘So are you going to tell me what it was, this childish prank you mentioned at dinner?’