Authors: Catherine George
At the end of the week Jo went early to put flowers on Claire's grave, and stood beside it for some time, staring blindly at the massed blooms heaped on it. Rufus, it seemed, had been earlier still. When she got back she switched on her computer and sat staring at the screen. She was four-fifths of the way through the story, and had only the climax to get in print—the ending which had been planned in her head since the start. But after her early-morning pilgrimage she found it even harder than ever to transfer her finale from her head to the computer, and in the end she gave it up and went out shopping for food supplies.
Later, at the Mitre, where she was working every night for the time being, Jo was too busy to notice when Rufus arrived, unaware that he was watching from the other end of the bar as she poured drinks for a crowd of young men celebrating a stag-night. The prospective bridegroom leaned close, chatting Jo up with a sort of fevered desperation which she parried with her usual impersonal friendliness as she provided him with a tray-load of drinks. She thanked him pleasantly for the large tip he gave her, then turned away to put the money in the staff box, her smile fading as she saw Rufus.
'Hello,' he said quietly.
'Hi.' She summoned the smile back hastily. 'What can I get you? Scotch?'
He nodded, and Jo put a glass up to the optic for a measure of whisky, added some soda and pushed the glass across the bar. Rufus gave her some money and Jo rang it up on the till, feeling tongue-tied.
'How are you?' he asked.
Aware that the query was no automatic, meaningless pleasantry, Jo shrugged. 'I'm fine.'
'When do you finish tonight, Jo?'
'It depends. It was after midnight last night.'
'I'll drive you home.'
'No need; I came on my bike.'
'You really shouldn't ride home alone at that hour,' he said disapprovingly.
Jo's eyes flashed. 'I've been doing it for years. It never worried you before.'
'Because I wasn't aware of it. Now I am. And the risk involved appalls me.'
'I cycle along well-lit roads,' she said impatiently, then her eyes narrowed. 'Or are we discussing a different kind of risk here?'
He frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'Oh come
on,'
she said scornfully. 'If the —the eventuality we discussed does occur, you probably think that cycling on a mountain bike isn't a good idea.'
Rufus, to her surprise, looked discomfited. 'I hadn't given it a thought. I was thinking of mugging. Or worse.'
'Oh.' Jo eyed him for a moment, then turned away to serve a sudden influx of customers. When she was free again Rufus was nowhere in sight.
The night seemed long. Normally when she was busy the hours flew by, but after talking to Rufus the time dragged. She was glad when Phil Dexter told her to go home.
'You look tired,' he told her. 'When the other girls get back take some time off,
Io.
You've earned it.'
'Thanks. I'll take you up on that.'
When Jo went out into the car park she didn't even bother to fetch her bicycle. Rufus, as expected, was leaning against his car under the exit light, waiting for her. As she drew near he opened the door and Jo slid inside, secretly not sorry to give her cycle ride a miss.
'Have you eaten today?' he asked.
'I had some lunch.'
'Will you scream blue murder if I take you to my place and give you supper?' he asked.
She shook her head, resigned. 'No. Because I know why.'
He shot a sidelong look at her. 'Do you?'
'Today's a year since the funeral. Another anniversary.'
'Actually it's not. You're a day out, Jo.'
'What?' She stared at his profile angrily. 'What are you talking about? Today's the thirtieth of August— a year since Claire was buried. I put flowers on her grave this morning.'
'Didn't you think it strange there were so many there already?' he said gently.
Her eyelids flickered. 'Well—no. I assumed you'd been there early—the Beaumonts too.'
'They're on a cruise. I put the flowers there for them. Yesterday. It's August the thirty-first today, Jo.'
She slumped in her seat, feeling utterly horrified. 'It can't be.'
'It is.'
'Then I missed visiting Claire on the actual day—' She tensed as he put out a hand to grasp hers.
'She's not there, Jo.'
'No.' She breathed in shakily. 'But neither was
I. I
can't see how I missed it. I stared at that wretched calendar so much I had to put it in a drawer. . .' She eyed him belligerently. 'You're not joking, Rufus?'
'Of course I'm not joking,' he said with distaste. 'You'd made two marks for the thirtieth, Jo, and only one of them was for Claire's funeral. You've mislaid a day somewhere.'
'I can't imagine how,' she said bitterly. 'It's been the longest week of my life as it is.' She bit her lip. 'I'm not working my usual shifts at the Mitre. I've somehow got out of rhythm.' Heat rose in her face then drained away, leaving her cold, and she trembled as she faced the significance of her discovery. But it was only one day. One day didn't count.
Rufus drew up outside a house halfway along a crescent of the type that Pennington was famed for. Built in the early nineteenth century, with wrought- iron balconies and multi-paned windows breaking the perfect symmetry of the flat, white-painted walls, the house had one of the best addresses in the town.
'I'm surprised you moved here,' she said. 'I thought you preferred the country.'
He helped her out of the car. 'No. It was Claire who wanted to live so far out. Because of her riding. My own preference has always been for a house near the hub of things. But this type rarely comes up for sale. It was in crying need of repair, which meant the price was too tempting to pass up. I've been having it done up for the past six months. It's not finished, by any means, but the roof's secure and the ground floor's habitable.' He led her up the steps to a very handsome front door.
Jo braced herself for the ordeal of confronting Claire's possessions, then paused in the long, narrow hallway in surprise. There was nothing of Claire here. Claire had liked deep-piled, wall-to-wall carpeting, and velvet curtains, with cushions piled on chintz-covered furniture, and ornaments and vases of flowers everywhere. And the house Rufus had bought her had been modern, with big, open-plan rooms and great plate-glass windows.
This house was austere by comparison. The hall floor had no carpet at all to hide black and white diamond-shaped tiles. Delicate wrought-iron banisters edged a stairway which curved up to the first floor with no visible means of support, leaving an alcove below for a
pembroke
table surmounted by a mirror, both of them new to Jo, who had known Rufus
Grierson's
former home far better than she knew Rufus.
He ushered her into a sitting room with walls painted the authentic dark red of the Regency period. Several chairs and a large sofa were covered in plain, unbleached linen; heavy straw-
coloured
silk hung at the tall windows. Books lined white-painted shelves in deep alcoves which flanked the fireplace, and the fringed carpet on the gleaming wood floor was thin and old and obviously hailed from somewhere in the East.
'Do you like it?' asked Rufus.
'Yes. It's lovely,' said Jo faintly.
'The dining room's in here.' He led her along the hall to the next room, where the walls were painted tawny gold, but the only furniture was an oval table with graceful legs ending in brass lion's paws. 'I haven't found the right chairs yet, or some form of sideboard,' he told her, then went ahead of her through an archway into a lofty, spacious kitchen with dark green walls and white cupboards. White wooden shutters were folded back from tall,
uncurtained
windows, and a door led into a conservatory looking out on a narrow, high-walled garden. Ladder-back chairs surrounded an oak table, and on one of the cupboards a tray waited, laid with coffee-pot and cups.
Rufus pulled out a chair for her. 'Sit down, Jo. I'll make us some sandwiches.'
She did as he said, glad to rest her aching feet. 'What happened to Claire's things?' she asked.
'Are you shocked because I haven't kept them?' He filled a kettle and switched it on, took bread from a crock and began to slice it while Jo thought it over.
'No,' she said at last. 'I think you're very wise. But, my goodness, Rufus, you really loved her, didn't you?'
Rufus turned sharply, his eyes searching. 'Did you ever doubt that?'
'No, never.' She turned away. 'I meant because you let her furnish the other house so completely to her own taste. She wouldn't have liked this at all.'
'I know. Claire wanted something modern, very different from the house she'd been brought up in. So I bought her dream house for her and let her do her own thing with it. And the result was supreme comfort and warmth.' He turned back to make coffee as the kettle boiled.
'Claire loved it—so you were happy.'
'Because she was,' agreed Rufus. He laid smoked salmon on thinly sliced brown bread, added a squeeze of lemon, and cut the sandwiches into neat triangles, then put them on a china platter that Jo had never seen before. 'All her life Claire was surrounded with people wanting to make her happy. You included.'
'I never thought of it that way.'
'You gave in when she wanted you for a bridesmaid.' He put two plates on the table, put the tray in front of her, then sat down opposite her, raising a dark eyebrow at her. 'I knew you weren't keen on the idea.'
She gazed at him in surprise. 'How?'
'Claire told me.' His smile was sardonic. 'Besides, I remember you clearly at the wedding. You didn't enjoy it. But you hid your feelings very well behind those remarkable eyelashes.'
Jo swallowed, deeply thankful that she had. And she knew perfectly well she had long eyelashes, like all the Fielding women. As a student she'd laid on mascara with a lavish hand to
emphasise
the grey-green eyes she looked on as her only good point. She'd had plenty of compliments on the subject before, but from Rufus it flustered her.
'I couldn't refuse Claire,' she said at last.
'Of course not. No one ever denied Claire anything she wanted in her entire life. Mainly,' added Rufus, 'because she was oddly undemanding. The luxuries in life had always been there for her. She rarely had to ask for anything. It's a miracle she remained so
unspoilt
.' He pushed the platter towards her. 'Have a sandwich. Sorry it isn't something more exciting, but cooking's not my strong point. How about you?'
'Strictly a no-nonsense cook.' Jo bit into a sandwich without enthusiasm. Normally she loved smoked salmon. But not tonight. She frowned suddenly. 'How did you know I liked this? Claire loathed it.'
Rufus finished his own sandwich unhurriedly, eyeing her with an odd glint of irony. 'I know a lot about you, because Claire kept me fully informed. For instance, I know you're fiercely independent, that you would never accept costly presents from her, or let her treat you to expensive meals, that you were madly in love with someone at university—'
'Good heavens, she told you all that? How boring for you.'
'Not at all. Claire didn't tell me everything at once. Odd snippets of information filtered through from time to time. So before I asked you back tonight I had some smoked salmon in because I remembered it was your
favourite
.' He smiled. 'The mind is a very complicated piece of machinery.'
So is the body, thought Jo morosely. She eyed the coffee longingly, wondering if it would bring on another headache, or at the very least keep her awake half the night.
'It's decaffeinated,' said Rufus, reading her mind with disquieting ease. 'I remembered the headache.'
'What it is to own a trained legal mind.' Jo smiled a little, and filled the cups, adding milk to her own. 'Would I be trespassing if I asked what you've done with the furniture from the other house?'
'Not at all. I sold most of it at auction.' He shot a dark, remorseful look at her. 'I'm sorry, Jo. Would you have liked anything? It never occurred to me that you would.'
'And you're right,' said Jo swiftly. 'Besides, you gave me the earrings. Or was that Mrs Beaumont's idea?'
'No. It was mine.' He stared down into his coffee- cup. 'Unlike the bridal bouquet on the coffin. That was definitely Gloria's idea.'
Jo nodded, unsurprised. 'I thought it was out of character for you at the time.'
'Gloria thought it was a touch Claire would have loved,' he said without expression.
'She was right.' Jo smiled compassionately. 'But you know that, of course.'
'This is very relaxing,' he said, surprising her. 'With anyone else it would be treason to admit that sometimes Claire and I saw things in a different light.'
'But isn't that what loving someone means? Accepting the differences?' asked Jo carefully. 'Claire and I were poles apart in so many ways it was a miracle we stayed so close. She was so lovely through and through, it was hard to live up to her sometimes.' She smiled wryly. 'I knew that my lifestyle was anathema to her. To be honest, hers was to me too, but it made no difference.'