Authors: Rachel Hore
Mel toyed with the idea of lying but gave it up straightaway. Greg was the sort of man who would spot a lie a mile off.
‘I’m afraid I won’t tell you any more. If you want to wait for Patrick and speak to him, that’s fine, but otherwise I’d really advise you to go back to London. Perhaps I can tell Irina you’ve been looking for her.’
‘And away she will fly . . .’ said Greg Weldon softly. ‘I don’t think I need to trouble Mr Winterton. Is he the old man’s son, then? My source was a little light on facts.’
‘His nephew.’
He nodded. ‘Well, good day. And thank you again for the refreshment.’ He touched his thumb to his forehead as though he were wearing a hat, an old-fashioned courtesy that belied his anger, and walked up the slope, around the Hall, and was gone.
Mel sat down in a state of turmoil. Then stood up again. Irina. She had to warn her.
Irina’s home phone rang several times, then clicked onto message mode. ‘Irina, this is Mel,’ Mel said fiercely. ‘This is to warn you, your husband has been here looking for you. I haven’t told him where you are, of course. Ring me.’ She put down the phone and looked at her watch. Five-thirty. She picked up the handset again and with her other hand riffled through her diary until she found a number scrawled against the name Carrie. The phone in the hotel was answered on the fifth ring. A man’s voice.
‘Is that you, Matt?’ she asked. ‘It’s me – Mel.’
‘Hello, how are you?’ came Matt’s voice. Warm, friendly again, good old Matt.
‘Is Irina there?’
‘Sorry? Just a moment, the other phone’s ringing.’
She heard him pick up another call and some discussion ensued. He finished that call, then she heard him say, ‘Good evening, can I help you?’ and a man’s voice, deep, polite, asked, ‘I wondered if you had a room for tonight.’ It was Greg Weldon.
What should she do? She shouted, ‘
Matt!
’ The receiver was picked up and she heard Matt say to Greg, ‘Just one moment, sir.’ Then he said down the phone, ‘I think she’s upstairs. Do you want to speak to her? I can go and find her in a moment, when I’m less busy.’
‘Matt, I can’t explain now, but that man who’s come – you mustn’t let him know where Irina is, mustn’t let him see her.’
‘What?’
‘I think the man there in front of you is Irina’s husband. And she doesn’t want to see him. You mustn’t tell him where she is.’
‘Right, right, certainly,’ he said, and his changed tone caused her a wave of relief. ‘I’ll hand over the message and I’m sure my mother will ring you back later. Goodbye.’
‘What did you do?’ she breathed when Matt called back half an hour later.
‘Simple,’ he said. ‘I just said that we didn’t have a room. Sent him up to Mrs Penhaligon’s at Buryan. A shame though, because we’d just had a cancellation, but there we are.’
‘Matt, thank you. Have you seen Irina?’
‘Yes, of course. And I’ve told her. Heck, Mel, I had no idea about this situation. I thought she must be divorced or something but this sounds like some soap opera plot.’
‘Yeah, I know. How did she react?’
‘Well, very shocked.’
‘You didn’t send her home, did you? He’ll find her there – someone will tell him.’
‘Of course not. When the other receptionist gets here I’ll take Irina to fetch Lana from her friend’s. They can stay here for a bit, maybe, while she decides what to do. She’s just upstairs calling Amber’s mum. Look, Mel,’ he lowered his voice, ‘she hasn’t told me much. Do you know what it was all about?’
‘No, not entirely. Only a bit and – well, it sounds unkind, but I’m not sure she’s told the complete story. Certain things don’t tie up.’
‘Okay. Look, I’ve got to go now. With you in a moment, madam, just finishing this call.’
‘I’ll ring later on,’ said Mel, then impulsively, ‘bring them here if you need to.’
‘Great. Okay, bye.’
‘How is she?’ Mel half-rose as Irina came into the drawing room at Merryn later that night.
Irina stood twisting her hands and said, ‘She sleeps now.’
Matt had brought Irina and her daughter to Merryn Hall as the safest place Irina could think of just now, then left, promising to come back after dinner was over at the hotel.
‘Mum’s not been too well today. She won’t be able to manage if I don’t go back.’
Explaining the situation to Lana had proved beyond Irina’s capabilities. First of all she had tried to say nothing of Greg’s arrival. ‘I thought it would be nice to stay with Patrick for a little while. For a change.’ Even Mel had been embarrassed hearing Irina lie so blatantly. Lana had seen through that story straight away.
‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Mummy? It’s something to do with Daddy, isn’t it? I heard you talking to Matt.’
‘Yes. He has come here, but we can’t see him.’
‘But why can’t I see Daddy? I want to see him.’
‘Lana.’ Irina tried to put her arms around her daughter, but Lana pushed her away.
‘You never let me see him. I want to see him.’ Lana’s whine rose into a wail.
‘Lana.’ Irina tried to sound firm, but her voice wobbled. ‘I have told you so many times. Your father loves you, I’m sure he loves you, but I do not love him and I cannot be with him. He has not been kind to me.’
‘But I want to see him.’
Lana looked at Mel and said in a low voice, ‘They were close, you see. He gave her presents. She was his little princess. It’s very hard for her.’
Mel stared at Irina, restrained by Lana’s listening ears from asking any of the multitude of questions swirling in her mind.
‘I’ll go and see about the beds,’ she muttered, and fled the room. ‘Are there more sheets somewhere?’ she asked Patrick, who was keeping out of the way in the kitchen, cooking supper.
He frowned as he turned pieces of chicken in the pan. ‘Try the old chest on the landing if you can’t find any in the airing cupboard. How is it going in there?’
‘Badly. It doesn’t look very simple to me. I know it’s always impossible to tell what someone else’s marriage is like from the inside, but Irina has run off with Lana and effectively cut her off from her father. It doesn’t seem quite right.’
‘Why would she have done that?’
‘I don’t know, except she’s obviously afraid of Greg. From what she said just now I don’t think Greg mistreated Lana. Lana sounds really fond of him. I suppose Irina believes Greg would take the child from her, that she wouldn’t be allowed to see her.’
‘Maybe.’ Patrick opened an oven door and, with a fork, prodded the pudding baking inside. ‘Wonder if there was a legal arrangement . . .’
At this moment, they both froze as the sound of sobbing reached their ears.
‘Lana!’ they heard Irina shout, this followed by running footsteps in the hall, up the stairs.
Mel moved into the hall at the same time as Irina emerged from the drawing room next door. Irina raised her hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘She hates me,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘Says I’ve ruined her life.’
‘Would you like me to try to talk to her?’ Mel offered. ‘Not that I’m sure what to say.’
‘Thank you, but it’s best to leave her to cool down. She’ll have gone up to her old room. I’ll follow her in a minute.’
Patrick put his head out of the kitchen. ‘Supper’s ready whenever. Glass of wine?’
‘A large one, I think, please.’ Irina was looking exhausted. She fumbled in her bag for a packet of cigarettes. ‘Look, do you mind?’ she asked in a desperate tone.
Patrick nodded amused assent.
Mel ran up the stairs two at a time, which did little to relieve her feelings of frustration, and pulled open the door of the airing cupboard. Whilst she sorted through the piles of old curtains, towels and bedspreads for suitable bedding, she felt someone watching her and turned to see a dejected figure standing in a bedroom doorway.
‘I’ll pop these on the bed for you,’ she told Lana. The girl shrugged and wandered back into the room.
‘Will you help me? Here, catch this end.’ Lana picked up a sheet corner with two fingers and draped it over the bed in a listless movement.
‘Don’t be too hard on your mum,’ Mel said gently, as she straightened the sheet and tucked in the edges. ‘She’s only trying to do the best for you.’
Lana mumbled something. ‘Sorry?’ Mel said.
The girl slumped down on the half-made bed and drew an arm tiredly across her face. ‘I want my daddy, but she won’t let me.’ She fell silent.
Mel crouched down beside her. ‘I am sure it can be sorted out, darling. Don’t worry. Come and have some supper and then we’ll get you to bed.’
But as she followed Lana slowly down the stairs she hoped she hadn’t made an empty promise.
‘She cried until she fell asleep,’ Irina said, where she sat hunched miserably on a sofa. She had been restless all evening, smoking cigarette after cigarette and starting at every sound from outside, staring anxiously out of the windows.
‘It sounds as though she really misses her father,’ Mel said, just as Patrick came into the room and sat down in an armchair.
Irina wouldn’t look at her. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said roughly.
‘Is there no way you can sort it out between you, you and Greg?’ Mel went on. ‘Couldn’t your solicitor help you?’
Irina reached again for her cigarettes, fumbled them and the packet fell to the floor. She cursed in her own language and picked them up.
‘That is the trouble. Greg is supposed to see the child half the time. He was told to buy me a house in London and to pay money to keep us. But he threatened me. Said he would take Lana from me unless I stopped it all and came back. So . . . I had to keep her away from him.’
‘Can he do that – take her away, I mean? Why did you believe him?’ Was Irina telling the full story even now, Mel wondered.
‘You don’t know Greg.’ The other woman shook her head sadly. ‘He does what he wants.’
What about what Lana wants? thought Mel, looking meaningfully at Patrick.
‘How did you come to marry him, Irina?’ Patrick asked. ‘There must have been a time when you weren’t frightened of him.’
Mel remembered the powerful stance of Greg’s body, his direct, ruthless gaze.
Irina finally lit her cigarette, took a long drag and said, ‘Yes, a bit, but I didn’t know what else to do. You know I come from Dubrovnik?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Mel. ‘I saw the photograph of your hotel. You said your brother runs it now.’
‘I can never go back there. I never want to see my brother again.
Never
. I will tell it to you. I was twenty-four when it happened. I had started work as a teacher and my fiancé, Goran, we were saving to get married. Goran was a journalist on a political paper. Unfortunately, his newspaper had opinions that many Catholics, and that included my brother, did not like. When the fighting began, Goran and the others on his paper became targets. It was not safe to be with him where he was hiding and my parents were very worried for me. My brother was angry that I still intended to marry Goran. But I tell you, I did not agree with everything my fiancé wrote, but he was a good man. He had radical beliefs, that is true, but he really wanted to help people. He wanted to stand up to the bullies.’ She fell silent for a moment, lost in the past. ‘What happened?’ asked Mel.
‘He was betrayed,’ Irina said, tears welling in her eyes. ‘Some men found his hiding-place and shot him and the two others with him. Just like that, in cold blood. Goran had never hurt anyone in his life and they did that to him.’ She stabbed the cigarette, only half-gone, into the ashtray and shivered, turning once more to look nervously at the windows, though the curtains were drawn now against the dusk.
‘Then one night a friend told me. It was my brother who gave away Goran’s hiding-place to those . . . those thugs. My brother who had caused the death of the man I loved. A man who had done him no harm.’
‘Oh, Irina.’ What else could Mel say? Patrick was leaning forward in his chair, listening intently but saying nothing.
‘You hear that people can go mad with grief. Well, I was mad for a while, quite ill. When I got a little better, I knew I could not stay there with my family. I could not bear to see my brother ever again, or his friends . And there were others we knew who believed my brother had done his duty as a patriot, as a Catholic . I did not belong there among them any more.’
She sighed, twisting her nail-bitten fingers together in her lap. ‘Well, there was a man staying in the hotel, a businessman from Britain. He said he would help me. He said he was in love with me. I tell you, I was not myself. And he seemed so strong, so safe. He knew what to do, how to talk to the right people. He took me on a plane with him to England. I have told you the rest, haven’t I? How we married and Lana was born.’
‘Yes – yes, you have. But,’ Mel wrestled with how to ask the question, ‘why did you have to marry him – if you didn’t love him, I mean. Was it so you could stay in Britain?’
Irina shrugged. ‘Partly, but I tell you, he can be very charming. And to feel safe, cared for, after so many bad things, you cannot imagine how grateful I was. And he was very gentle with me at first.'
At that moment there came the sound of footsteps outside. Someone knocked on the back door.
‘It’s him.’ Irina stood up, poised for flight, her face deathly white.
Patrick hurried out of the room and in a moment came the sound of voices. The women listened, anxious.
‘It’s all right – it’s Matt, I think,’ whispered Mel, and Irina dropped back onto her seat.
‘I’m sorry,’ came Matt’s voice from the doorway. ‘We’ve been very busy tonight and I had to send Mum up to bed she’s so tired. Irina, how are you doing? How’s Lana?’ He nodded to Mel and hurried across the room to sit next to Irina.
The woman explained in a low voice how upset Lana had been.
‘What are you going to do? Stay here for the moment?’ Matt asked.
‘You’re most welcome to stay for a few days if that helps,’ said Patrick gruffly. ‘Thank you,’ said Irina.
‘But Irina ,’ Matt said, ‘your husband will be back and you’ll have to talk to him. I don’t see how else it can be.’
‘We’ll be here for you,’ said Mel.
‘I know I must talk to him,’ said Irina, sighing. ‘But I would like to know that you are nearby.’
It was past midnight before Matt left and they all got to bed, Patrick patiently checking all the windows and doors were locked to allay Irina’s anxiety.
Patrick fell asleep quickly, but Mel lay awake troubled by all the events of the day.
In semi -consciousness, drifting towards sleep, her mind slipped back to her conversation with the old man that afternoon, of what he had revealed to her about Pearl. Another woman seeking sanctuary at Merryn, who had risked everything and gained – what?