Obsession (66 page)

‘What’s going on?’ she murmured. ‘Luke …’ She stopped as he got up from his chair and watched him walk around the desk.

‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, pulling the door open, ‘I was about to make a telephone call.’

‘No, I’m not leaving until …’

‘You’re leaving now, Corrie. Right this instant,’ and gripping her by the arm he manhandled her back into the production office.

That night Corrie told Phillip about those few minutes in Luke’s office, wanting to know if he, Phillip, had spoken to Octavia yet. He had, but had got no further than Corrie had with Luke.

Over the next few days Corrie summoned the courage several times to speak to Luke again, but though there was no repeat of what had happened the first time, she knew that her probings were sliding from his implacable exterior as impenetrably as the rain was sliding down the windows outside. He seemed so calm, so frighteningly collected, that he was starting to appear almost inhuman. It was then that Corrie realized it was no longer Luke she was dealing with. The very idea made her fear for her own sanity, but it was like someone else was inside his skin. And the fact that Annalise was repeatedly assuring Corrie that everything was going well with her and Luke, disturbed Corrie even more. It was only a matter of time now, she knew
that
, though what would happen she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Three intolerable weeks went by. Though Corrie spoke to Cristos every day on the phone, and was in no doubt that he was missing her just as much as she was him, being apart like this was even more insufferable than the waiting game they all seemed to be playing with Luke. There were times when she seemed to be living just to hear Cristos’s voice break into the insanity of her world telling her how his editing was coming along, or asking her how her projects were doing. She was working hard, but that her efforts were in the end only going to pull them further apart confused and depressed her even further. She seemed to have no anchor in her life, it was as though she was drifting inexorably away from him towards the sweeping current of disaster. In her heart she knew that if she held out her hand he would pull her back, but somehow she couldn’t make herself do it. Nevertheless, she lost count of the times she ended up crying on the telephone. As soon as she did it made her laugh, but she longed to hear him tell her he loved her.

‘I told you, not until you do,’ he said. ‘They’re just three words, Corrie, so why torture yourself like this when I already know you love me.’

‘I hate it when you’re so sure of yourself,’ she told him.

‘I know you do. But you’ll have to live with it.’

‘Rather than marry it?’

He laughed. ‘Something like that.’

‘I hate you.’

‘Sure you do.’

Brief as they sometimes were, it was these conversations that kept Corrie going as she continued to miss him more as each day passed. She saw a lot of Phillip, who had tried again to talk to Annalise, going so far as to confirm what Corrie had told her about the way Luke had accused him of incest with her. But Annalise just laughed, telling him
that
he had got the wrong end of the stick – as everyone did with Luke.

‘No one understands him except me,’ she would fire off as her parting remark.

Then one night, just as Corrie was packing up to leave the office, Octavia walked in. There was no one else around, and seeming not even to notice Corrie’s presence, she stalked straight into Luke’s office and closed the door.

From where she was sitting Corrie couldn’t hear a thing, so she moved closer, making a pretence of searching for something on Luke’s secretary’s desk. Still their voices were muffled, so she risked pressing her ear to the door. After just a few minutes she recoiled in disgust.

‘Well what sort of things were they saying?’ Paula asked, when Corrie rang her later.

‘I don’t want to repeat it,’ Corrie said. ‘Except I will tell you that he called her a corrupt, evil bitch and she just laughed and said, “keep driving your cock into me, mother-fucker!”’

‘Mother-fucker!’ Paula cried.

‘That’s what she called him.’

‘You don’t mean …? You don’t seriously think …?’

‘That she’s his mother?’ Corrie finished. ‘How can she be, she’s only about five years older than him.’

‘So it was just a word she used?’

‘It would seem so. But with all his accusations of incest …’

‘Corrie,’ Paula said carefully, ‘didn’t you tell me she’s had a lot of plastic surgery?’

‘Yes, I did. And she has, for all the good it’s done her. But she’s forty-seven, I just checked with Phillip. He has her birth certificate. Not only that he more or less grew up with her.’

‘You mean you’ve told Phillip what you heard?’

‘Yes. I told him because … Wait for this … Annalise rang me when I got in just now to tell me that she, Luke
and
Octavia are going to Spain for a two week holiday, tomorrow!’

‘My God!’ Paula breathed. ‘What did Phillip say?’

‘He was as appalled as I was. But how is anyone going to stop them? And as Phillip said, if this is the way that Annalise has to find out what her mother’s really like, then so be it. We’ll just have to make sure we’re around to pick up the pieces.’

After a pause, Paula said, ‘Has it ever occurred to you how any of this might fit in with what happened to those prostitutes?’

‘That’s a question Phillip and I rack our brains over just about every time we meet. We can’t come up with an answer.’

‘But there’s one there somewhere,’ Paula said.

‘I know, it’s just finding it.’

It was just over a week after Luke, Octavia and Annalise had flown off to Spain that Corrie received the telephone call that was finally to bring everything to a head. She was at home, idling around watching TV and waiting for the call she knew would come any minute. In fact the phone had rung only a few minutes ago – it had been Annalise calling from Spain to say they were all having a wonderful time, but … They’d been cut off then, and Corrie was half afraid that Annalise would ring again and tie up the line before Cristos got through. But when it eventually rang it was Cristos. Though it was in the early morning for him he sounded exhausted.

‘Yeah, sure I am,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve been here with this pre-mix all night. It’s not going so well and I’m not too sure we’re going to make it at this rate. I got to tell you, Corrie, that it sure doesn’t help with you being over there. I miss you so bad it’s creating hell with my concentration.’

Corrie smiled. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘You better. I want you so much it’s driving me crazy. What are you doing to me, woman?’

‘Obviously driving you crazy.’

‘Damn right you are. Shit, Corrie, can’t you say you want me too?’

‘I want you, Cristos,’ she said softly, ‘I want you just as badly.’

‘Then come over.’

‘For a holiday?’

‘Call it what you like, just come.’

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

The next morning when Corrie asked Bob for the time off he didn’t even stop to think about it, ‘Why the hell not?’ he grumbled. ‘Every fucker else around here’s on holiday, why should you be any different!’

‘I’ll book the flight for next Monday, so I’ll be here to help out until the end of the week,’ Corrie said, trying to sound generous. In fact Paula’s baby was being christened on Sunday and Corrie was Godmother, so she wouldn’t have gone until Monday anyway.

Then, to her amazement, on Friday afternoon, while she was helping out with telephone calls for another researcher Luke and Annalise walked into the office.

‘You weren’t due back until next Tuesday,’ Corrie said, embracing Annalise. ‘What happened?’

‘Luke has an appointment he’d forgotten,’ Annalise answered, distractedly.

‘But everything’s all right, isn’t it?’ Corrie pressed.

‘Yes, it’s fine,’ Annalise answered, walking over to pick up her mail.

But it was obvious it wasn’t, and Corrie suddenly felt so resentful she wanted to scream. Why did Annalise have to come back like this now? How could she just go off to Los Angeles and leave her, when things had clearly started to go wrong again? But she would, she told herself, vehemently. Damn it she would.

She started to wonder though, when Luke sent for her, if her leave wasn’t about to be cancelled, but to her surprise he simply said,

‘Bob tells me you’re taking some time off and going to Los Angeles?’

‘Yes,’ she said, a challenging light springing to her eyes.

‘OK. Well, I guess I’ve given you a hard enough time over Cristos in the past, so how about to make up for it I drive you to the airport.’

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ she said. ‘I can take a taxi.’

‘Then at least let one of the secretaries book you a car, courtesy of TW – it’s the least I can do given the way I’ve tried to interfere in your life before.’

Shrugging her acceptance Corrie went off to a secretary, then gathering up her belongings left to go to Paula’s for the weekend.

As she watched Corrie go Annalise’s heart was breaking. Never in her life had she needed Corrie more than she needed her now. But she knew if she were to tell Corrie the real horror of what she had discovered in Spain then Corrie would never go to Cristos, and Annalise didn’t want to do that to her. Besides, Corrie staying here would change nothing – it was too late now, nothing in the world could alter what had been done. She thought back to the night, all those months ago, when she had first suspected that her mother was having an affair with Luke. Well she knew now that her mother was, and dropping her head in her hands Annalise felt the tears burn across her eyes. If only it were as simple as that, but it wasn’t, and all she could think of was that if she lost Corrie to Cristos now then she wouldn’t want to go on living.

Picking up her bag she wandered aimlessly out of the office and down to the street. She had nowhere to go, no one to turn to – she couldn’t even tell her father what she had learned because were she to repeat those heinous, vile
words
she had heard from her own mother’s lips, then Annalise knew that Phillip’s world would come to an end too.

When Corrie arrived back at her studio on Sunday night there were two messages waiting on her answerphone. The first was from Cristos telling her that Jeannie would pick her up from the airport the next day and take her straight to where he was dubbing. The second was from Phillip saying that he had a meeting near Heathrow in the morning so would come and have a coffee with her before she flew off.

After calling Paula to tell her she’d arrived back safely, Corrie put on some music then set about packing. She was grinning to herself as she wondered whether she would be able to hold off telling Cristos she loved him over the next ten days. Perhaps she wouldn’t even try, after all it was a futile game she was playing that was fooling no one, least of all him. Oh what the hell, she laughed to herself, she would tell him, and not only because she so desperately longed to hear him say it again, but because she was just being obtuse in not accepting the fact that she’d already given one hundred per cent of herself to him anyway. Whether or not she said the words couldn’t change that, and now she’d had a taste of what it was like not to have the reassurance of hearing them she realized that she didn’t want to inflict it on him any longer.

Having reached her decision she was sorely tempted to pick up the telephone and tell him now. But no, she’d wait until they were together, she wanted to see the look in his eyes when she said it.

Before she went to bed she tried calling Annalise, but the answerphones were on at both Luke’s and Annalise’s. Deciding to try again in the morning Corrie rang off without leaving a message on either machine.

Just after ten the next morning, having woken up in
the
night thinking about Annalise, Corrie called the office. Annalise wasn’t there so Corrie tried her at home. Again she got the answerphone, but as she started to leave a message, Annalise’s voice cut in.

‘Yes, of course I’m going in to work today,’ Annalise assured her when Corrie asked. ‘In fact I was just on my way out of the door.’

‘Did you have a good weekend?’ Corrie asked.

‘Mmm, not bad. How did the Christening go?’

‘Beth was wonderful. How come you didn’t stay with Luke last night?’

‘Oh, we had a bit of a tiff, nothing serious. Anyway, I’d better go seeing as I’m already late, but you have a great time, and don’t forget to ring me if you get the chance.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Corrie said, and they rang off.

At her end Annalise, who was hunched into an armchair, gathered her knees into her arms as though trying to collect the crumbling pieces of her life. She was still in her nightgown and doubted she’d get dressed all day. If she did she certainly wouldn’t be going to the office. For a moment she was tempted to call Corrie back and ask if she could go with her to LA. But Corrie wouldn’t want her there, so Annalise remained as she was – the way she had been the entire weekend, frozen in the nightmare of her life.

At eleven o’clock Corrie’s doorbell rang announcing the arrival of the taxi.

‘Coming!’ Corrie called out, snapping her suitcase shut. She checked around to make sure she had everything, and that all that should be was switched off, then hitting the button to turn on the answerphone she picked up her bags to go. She’d get Phillip to check on Annalise later, she was thinking as she opened the door, and heaving her suitcase onto the top step she turned back again to lock up. At that very moment the telephone rang, and just in case it was Annalise, Corrie ran inside to answer it, but whoever it was rang off before she could get there.

Pressing his foot hard on the accelerator Phillip’s car all but flew up over the ramp in Terminal Four’s short-term car park. As he swerved around the corner he had to break hard to avoid an old couple with three luggage trollies who were suddenly barring his way. Hooting loudly on the horn Phillip tore past them and squealed the car to a halt in a nearby parking space. Ignoring the pensioners’ remonstrations, he pressed the remote on his key chain, locking and alarming the car, then ran towards the stairs. The damned meeting had gone on much longer than he’d expected, and now, if it wasn’t too late already, he was going to miss Corrie.