Party Games (42 page)

A hysterical Vanessa Powell was filmed crouching down in her gown, beside a young, dark-haired man who looked seriously injured. The ambulance had wailed off, lights flashing, towards Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

In Beeversham half the journalists drafted in for election day rushed off to the gates of Tresco House instead. That evening when Catherine went out for the all-important final push, she found constituents glued to their television sets.

By 11 p.m., there was one street left to tick off. Blackbird Rise, the pro-Labour street, had been a thorn
in Catherine’s side ever since she’d started. Everyone had told her to leave well alone. She had just seen it as a challenge.

The woman who’d shut her door in Catherine’s face that very first morning greeted her with a knowing smile. ‘Hello. I suppose you’ve come to hassle me about turning out to vote tomorrow?’

‘I’d prefer to use the word cajole,’ Catherine said wearily.

A TV blared down the hall. Catherine could hear a crowd screaming and the screech of brakes. ‘You know how it was,’ the woman told her. ‘I’ve always voted Labour, but you’ve ended up by impressing me. You tell it how it is, which makes a change from most of these politicians trying to cover their arses.’

Catherine felt ridiculously close to tears. ‘Thank you.’

Kitty and Clive were waiting faithfully at the bottom of the street. ‘Are you OK?’ Clive asked.

‘Not really.’

Kitty put her hand on Catherine’s arm. ‘Look,’ she said gently. ‘Look at the houses.’

She turned round. Once a sea of red posters, every second window now had a ‘Vote Connor’ poster up. She felt herself welling up again.

‘I really think we can do this,’ Kitty told her.

Kitty and Clive dropped Catherine back at Tory HQ. Aubrey and the others were long gone. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right by yourself?’ Clive asked, for the umpteenth time.

‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I’ve just got a few last-minute things to catch up on.’

Felix had turned up as usual that morning, but any relief Catherine might have felt at having her campaign manager back had swiftly disappeared. Clearly devastated by the Ye Olde Worlde decision, he’d been preoccupied and short-tempered all day. It had surprised her and made her nervous. She’d expected him to come back fighting, and be right behind her. Instead, he’d seemed to have given up at the last hurdle.

The office looked like they were preparing for a military advance: piles of polling cards stacked neatly alongside thousands of names and addresses. She knew she should run through everything a final time, but she couldn’t face it. Instead she left the cluttered office and went down the corridor to the meeting room. Pulling out a chair, she sat down in the dark.

A beam of moonlight streamed in through the window, turning her hands a ghostly white. They were trembling, just as they had been since she’d listened to John’s voicemail. Had it really only been six days ago? It felt like she’d lived a lifetime since.

It had become an exercise in futility, but she tried his mobile once more. She waited for her new best friend the voicemail woman to finish.
‘Please leave your message after the beep.’

‘John. It’s me. Again.’ She stared at the wall, desperately thinking what to say.

‘I’m so sorry for the way I’ve acted. I wish you’d come home and we could work it out.’ A lump rose up in her voice. ‘Things have been ruined and it’s all my fault.

‘I’ve had a lot of time to think, and you’re right. I have been pushing you away. I’ve deliberately sabotaged our marriage. Our wonderful, beautiful, amazing marriage.
I think, deep down, I’ve always been scared I wasn’t good enough. I think, deep down …’ God, why couldn’t she just say it? ‘I was scared you’d leave me like my mum did. I guess I thought I might as well get in there first and make you go.’

Catherine choked out a laugh. ‘See what a pathetic fuck-up you married? I know it’s too late for us, John, but I want you to know I take full responsibility for what I’ve done. If you came back …’ She stumbled over her words. ‘I know I would never take you for granted again.

‘I’ve got something else to tell you. I’m pregnant. I know I should tell you face to face but, well, I guess this is how we’re communicating these days.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve decided I’m keeping the baby. It’s not a trick to try and keep you. I’ll understand if there’s no chance for us.’

Tears ran silently down her cheeks, pooling in cold streaks around her neck. ‘I should go now. Leave you to digest the bombshell.’ She felt her heart break in two. ‘Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy.’

Her phone went off a few minutes later. Catherine lifted her head from where she’d been sobbing on the table.

‘John?’

It was a familiar Welsh accent instead. ‘It’s me. Gwyn.’

‘Oh.’ The disappointment was crushing. ‘Gwyn, hi.’

‘You sound terrible, is now a bad time?’

‘Heavy cold.’ Catherine wiped her eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Well.’ He paused. ‘Don’t want to set the cat amongst
the pigeons the night before your big day, but I’ve found out who owns Pear Tree Holdings.’

Catherine sat up. ‘Who?’

What Gwyn told her next made Catherine forget everything else, at least for the time being.

Ten more minutes later she was in her car, heading for Beau Rainford’s.

There had been two places sacred to Fleur growing up. One was Cooper’s Croft and the other was in the little copse, high up on the outskirts of the farm. She and her sister had spent entire summer holidays there, stretched out, eating apples from the garden, or homemade cookies if they were lucky. It was their own private kingdom, in which real time had no meaning. It was only when her mother hoisted the red blanket up on the washing line that Fleur and her sister knew it was time to go home for tea.

It had been years since she’d been there, but the little corrugated iron shack was still there, as were the sisters’ initials carved into a tree. After discovering her dad and Beau’s treachery, it had been the first place she had thought of.

She lay on the grass, curled on her side. A swathe of stars was sprinkled across the sky. In another lifetime, she would have thought how pretty it was. She had no idea how long she’d been here, only that it was very late and that no one would have fed the animals. If her
dad had any wits left about him, he would have called Ben in to do it.

She was still only wearing shorts and a vest, but she couldn’t feel the cold. She couldn’t feel anything. Shock and anger had given way to numbness. It was all starting to make sense now. Beau’s interest in the farm, the loaded comments Spencer had made about ‘laying the groundwork’, that she’d assumed was him referring to another business deal. They’d been laughing at her the whole time: Beau’s textbook seduction of the hick country girl. Fleur wanted to tear herself apart. When she thought about the things she’d let Beau do to her, how he’d made her feel.

Deep down, she knew she couldn’t blame her dad. In his own misguided way he’d thought he was doing the right thing. He was ill. Did it really matter that they were losing the farm? It was going to be sold off anyway. What mattered was that Beau had wormed his way into their lives and struck when they were at their most vulnerable.

The same questions kept tormenting her.
How could one human being do that to another?
He’d pretended they had a connection, bonding with her over their dead mothers.
How could someone be so beautiful on the outside, and be so ruthless and calculating inside?
How could she have fallen for it?

‘I loved you,’ she whispered.

Catherine pulled up outside Ridings and sat behind the steering wheel, wondering what to do. There was a pile of manifesto leaflets on the back seat. She got a pen out of her bag. She started to compose a note, taking
her time. It might be the most important thing she’d ever write in her life.

Vanessa sat on the plastic seat in the waiting room at A & E. She was still in her five-thousand-pound ball-gown. Even the old drunk across from her had woken up to stare. News reports were playing endlessly on the hospital TV screens.

Thank God, it was looking as if the other injured onlookers had escaped with cuts and bruises. Conrad was in custody. The police wanted to talk to Vanessa, as did her mother and Marty and her lawyer, but she didn’t want to see anyone. All she wanted to know was if Dylan was going to be OK.

A doctor approached. ‘Mrs Powell?’

She jumped up. ‘Is he going to be all right?’

Everyone around craned their ears. ‘Please,’ the doctor said quietly. ‘Come with me.’

The downstairs hall light was on as Catherine pulled up in front of the Hollies. She sat and composed herself for a moment, before unbuckling her seat belt and getting out.

She rang the doorbell and a figure appeared through the stained glass. Felix pulled the door open, looking surprised to see her. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Sorry to disturb you so late. Can I come in?’

‘Of course. I’m still up, anyway.’ He led Catherine through. ‘Can I get you a nightcap? I was just having a whisky myself.’

‘No, thank you.’ She sat down in the armchair. ‘Is Ginny here?’

‘No, she’s at her sister’s.’ He frowned at her. ‘You look awfully serious. Is it John? I did hear you two were having some trouble.’

‘Felix, I’m not here about John,’ she said quietly.

He sat down in the chair opposite her. ‘Oh, right.’

‘I found out something tonight that is going to have huge implications for this town and everyone in it.’

He looked concerned. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come right out with it.’

‘Dear girl, you’re starting to worry me! Has something happened at the office?’

‘I know you’re the one behind Pear Tree Holdings.’

Felix’s silver eyebrows shot up. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’ve received credible information tonight that you own Pear Tree Holdings, and have done so for a number of years.’ Catherine looked him squarely in the eye. ‘You’ve been in cahoots with Sid Sykes all along.’

‘That’s preposterous!’

‘I wish it was. I also know that you fixed the county council verdict and paid off several of the key councillors. Ye Olde Worlde was always going to get the go-ahead, whatever we did to try and stop it.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ he said angrily. ‘Why would I do that? I’m the one who’s against the bloody thing!’

There was a loud hammering on the front door. ‘What the …’ He got up. ‘Who the hell’s that?’

He left her alone in the room. She looked down at her hands; this time they were perfectly still. A moment later there was the sound of an altercation in the hallway and she heard Felix exclaim. Beau appeared in the study doorway, blond hair dishevelled. ‘I just got your note,’ he told her.

Felix pushed past his brother and went over to the window. ‘I don’t know what you two are trying to cook up against me,’ he snapped. ‘But it’s not going to work.’

Catherine felt oddly detached, as if the whole thing was happening to someone else. ‘I’m afraid it is. I’ve got all the evidence: how you’ve already put an offer
in for a three-million-pound house in Belgravia, and another for a pile in Yorkshire. You’re planning to sell up and leave, aren’t you? You never had any intention of sticking around once the planning permission got through.’

A vein started to pulse in his throat.

Beau gave a low whistle. ‘My God, Felix, you’ve got more balls than I thought. It takes some nerve to try and pull off a stunt like this.’

‘What the hell would you know about nerve?’ Felix spat at him. ‘You’ve had everything handed to you on a bloody plate!’

‘You were in control of everything,’ Catherine said quietly. ‘By being at the forefront, you ensured no one would suspect you.’

The once-twinkly eyes were flat and hard, like pebbles on a beach. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s been like all these years?
Do you?
A small-town solicitor, bogged down in the mundane pettiness of other people’s lives?’ His voice rose. ‘Having to put up with the likes of Aubrey Taunton-Brown when I should be in parliament, alongside my contemporaries? I was destined to make decisions, not follow them!’

‘You’ve got some God complex,’ Beau told him.

‘Shut up!’ Felix snapped. He rounded on Catherine. ‘And you! Breezing in here like you owned the place. Beeversham should have been my seat years ago.’ He jabbed his chest.
‘Mine
. I’ve dedicated my life to my party, and all they’ve done is use me.’ He put on a horrible whiny voice. ‘“Oh, Felix will do it, he’s a good old chap. You can dump anything on old Felix.”’

‘Why did you help me?’ she asked quietly.

‘I didn’t have much bloody choice in the matter, did I? Not that I thought you had a hope of winning.’

‘So the plan was to buy yourself a nice new life?’ Beau asked. ‘Slip out of here with no one any the wiser?’

‘No one else was going to give it to me! And then
she
came along and I was nominated as her chief babysitter.’ The look he gave Catherine made her blood run cold. ‘Poking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted.’

‘And where did Ginny fit into all this?’ Beau enquired coldly. ‘Were you going to tell her, or just up and leave?’

Felix stared him out. ‘Of course not, I was going to get a divorce.’

‘Aren’t you the big man,’ Beau said softly. ‘Actually, leaving Ginny is the one good thing you could ever do for her. You’ve made her life miserable enough through the years.’

‘Why do you care so much about my wife? Do you have designs on her now?’

Beau’s jaw tightened. ‘Ginny is like a mother to me. And you can talk about putting it about, you disgusting hypocrite. At least I take care of my responsibilities.’

‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that! Show me some respect!’

‘You have to earn respect,’ Beau shot back. ‘Clearly something you’re incapable of achieving.’

Every ounce of warmth had gone from Felix’s face. Catherine was mesmerized. There was nothing left of the person she had known.

‘Christ,’ Beau said casually. ‘If you needed the money that badly, I would have given it to you.’