A Place in the Country (26 page)

“He didn't leave you,” Caroline said coldly. “You told me yourself he had been murdered.”

“I don't know that for sure,” Melanie said indignantly, raising her face to them for a moment.

Was she going back on what she'd already told her? Caroline wondered.

“
I
think he was murdered,” Issy said, eying Melanie, who was scrambling ungracefully to her feet, hampered by her tight black skirt. With it she wore a black chiffon blouse with a big pussycat bow. With pale makeup and no lipstick, she was all innocent blue eyes and long blond hair.

Caroline thought it odd though, her child bore absolutely no resemblance to her; no blue eyes and pale skin. “Mark also believes James was killed,” she said. “And the matter is now being investigated by the police.”

Melanie smoothed her skirt over her curvy hips. She looked suddenly nervous. “Yes, well they can't call me as a witness at the trial,” she said defensively, “I wasn't even in Hong Kong when…”

“When it happened,” Issy finished for her. The two eyed each other across the table. Then Issy turned to look at her “supposed” sister.

“Who is your
real
mother anyway?” she said.

Everyone turned to look at Asia, who hung her head and said nothing.

“You'd better have some proof of all this,” Henry said, and this time to Melanie, but Melanie just cried some more. Jesus got up and handed her a box of tissues. She took one and dabbed her eyes. There was the sound of a dropped plate in the background and then Sarah swearing at Lily who apologized loudly to anyone who was listening.

“You can't be Asia's mother.” Issy turned to look at Melanie. “Dad would never have had anything to do with a woman like you. He knew about classy women, just look at my mother. I know he
knew
how to love, what he wanted from that love and that he loved me.”

There was a sudden hiccupping sob from Asia who Melanie seemed to have forgotten. Issy went over and put her arm protectively round Asia's shoulder. She just couldn't bear to hear her cry.

 

chapter 61

Melanie turned
and went into the bar. A minute later she came back holding what looked like a double vodka. It certainly wasn't water.

Henry walked round the table and pulled out a chair for her. “Sit here, Melanie, why don't you,” he said. “Opposite me.”

She threw him a wary glance. “Thank you,” she said, obviously wondering why he was suddenly being nice to her. She took a gulp of the vodka and put the glass on the table.

Then Jesus went to the bar and came back with another round of bitters for James and himself, and a second martini for Cassandra. He sat down again and they all looked silently at Melanie.

“First thing Melanie,” Henry said. “Since you came here to prove that James is Asia's father and that you are her mother, you will have brought Asia's birth certificate. We would like to see that.”

Melanie said triumphantly, “Hah! I knew you would ask that. Just you wait!” She took another gulp of vodka, pushed back her chair, got up and walked out.

They heard her heels clacking up the stairs, then clacking back down again. She was holding a piece of paper. She took another sip of the vodka.

“Well, here you are then.
The evidence.
” She slid the paper across the table.

Henry read it, then passed it to Cassandra, who also read it then passed it on to Caroline.

Henry said, “Everyone, this is Asia's valid birth certificate. It says James Evans is the father and Melanie Morton the mother. It's signed by both parents and properly notarized.”

Caroline read it again, still not quite believing.
How could James have had a child with this crude vulgar woman with her snaggly overshot teeth and predatory blue eyes? How could he possibly have loved her?
Memories of how she and James had loved each other, him so beautiful (if you could ever call a man beautiful, James was) and she so young and passionately in love. Theirs had been a wondrous relationship. It had not lasted but now she felt lucky to have had it, and to remember James as he used to be and not the man he'd become.

Melanie leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette. “Now what?”

Jim got up and removed the cigarette from between her fingers. “This is a no-smoking zone.” He doused it in the sink.

“Good for you,” Clumsy Lily whispered to him. “She's a right bitch, ain't she?”

Sarah shook her head at Lily, she should not interfere. “Sorry,” Lily muttered. “Got a bit caught up.” Then both girls leaned back against the sink, arms folded, dying to see what would happen.

Relaxed, Melanie sat back. “So, now you'll want to know why I am here? With James's daughter!” There was a fresh note of triumph in her voice which had risen a couple of notches with the vodka. Jesus motioned Maggie to get her another double. Booze unlocked many a tongue and drunks talked truth.

“My daughter …
me and
my daughter need help. Financial. James gave me nothing. I am broke. Of course I can't work with a little kid like that to look after, I mean it's all too much, the least the man could have done was take care of his child. And me, of course.
Asia's mother,
” she added with a smile at Caroline. “
You
know how it is, don't you? Except I'll bet James made sure to take good care of Issy. He told me there was plenty of money.”

Caroline thought of her meager divorce settlement. Now of course she knew James had been in severe financial trouble, otherwise he would have been sure to take care of Issy. “He didn't have it to leave to anyone,” she said. “That's the truth of the matter, Melanie. There is no money.”

“Oh yes there is.” Melanie was on the second double. Her eyes narrowed. “It's in a Hong Kong bank account. A big trust fund for Isabel Evans, to be accessed when she is sixteen years old.”

“
Sixteen!
” Cassandra exclaimed. “But that's next week.”

“What
trust fund
?” Caroline demanded. “I know nothing about any big trust fund, there's only the one meant to pay her school fees.”

Melanie shrugged. “James told me so himself. He said there was lots of money and it was for Asia. And I'm her mom so that means it goes to me.”

“You are not my mommy,”
Asia said.

Stunned, everyone looked at her and she began to cry again, howling, head thrown back, tears gushing.

Issy grabbed her and Sam hurried her out of there. They put her on the bed in Sam's room. Asia howled some more.

“Oh my God, she wants Melanie,” Issy said. “I think she really must be my sister.”

In the kitchen, still sitting round the table, Henry knew Melanie was lying. He said, “I'd like to see your passport Melanie please.”

She jerked suddenly upright, obviously frightened. “I only show my passport to immigration. You've no right to ask…”

“I think I do.”

“Well you can't and that's that.” She downed the rest of the vodka and sat there, glaring at him.

Maggie got up and left the room.

“It would be better if you just showed it to us,” Henry told Melanie. “Then I won't have to call the police.”

“
What're you
talking
about
, cops…”

Maggie came back with the passport. “People always hide things in their underwear drawer,” she said, handing it to Henry.

He flipped it open, looked at the picture, then checked the name.

“This is interesting,” he said. His glance took in the people sitting round the table. “May I introduce you to Jacqueline Ferris. Single woman. Age thirty-eight. Resident of
Singapore.
No children.”

Caroline sagged with relief. Melanie was not Asia's mother after all. Maybe her whole story was an invention, a ploy to get money. Her eyes met Cassandra's.
“Thank God,”
her mother mouthed silently.

Melanie was staring down at the table, twiddling the vodka glass with its melting ice.

Henry took out the piece of paper folded into the passport. He read it and said, “This is a note from the real Melanie Morton, giving this woman, whose name is Jacqueline Ferris, permission to take her daughter, Asia Morton Evans, out of the country for the period of one month. It seems Asia's real mother was in cahoots to try to extort money.”

“Bravo,
Hercule,
” Jim said, seeing the game was up.

Jesus opened some wine. Maggie got glasses from the shelf. Sarah sprang to life and brought over a platter of fried chicken nuggets, overdone to a crisp and not anything Maggie or Caroline would ever serve, but needs must and it was all she had time for, what with all that was going on.

Henry looked at his daughter. He thought about his granddaughter upstairs with that little girl, James's other daughter. “Well, Caroline,” he said, “now I think we have the truth.”

Caroline wasn't so sure. Was Asia James's daughter, or wasn't she?

 

chapter 62

In Hong Kong,
Gayle Lee Chen knew something was wrong the moment the elevator doors slid open and she stepped into her elegant apartment. No white-jacketed white-gloved houseboy was there to greet her. No maid in a black dress and ruffled apron came to attend to her. She stood for a moment listening to the silence, then she walked over to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows with their faint golden tint that kept out the glare. The view of Repulse Bay was what had drawn her in the first place. By day it showed a jumbled overcrowded city with the gunmetal sea beyond, so often in monsoon season capped with white-frothed waves that sent boats spinning and capsizing. Nighttime was her favorite though. Then it turned into a neon bejeweled city, rubies and sapphires, emeralds, and a million diamonds, reminding her of the ones she had collected and had often worn around her neck, on her wrists and fingers.

She stood for a long time looking at her jewel box, as she called the city, before turning back to the table in the entrance. She had noticed the casket placed there as soon as she walked in but had chosen to ignore it. Now, she no longer could. That gilded casket contained her future.

Opening it, she looked at the gun that had killed James.

The night it happened she had followed James to the boat, then to the bars, she'd waited in her car, until James returned alone to the boat again. He was drunk; passed out on the banquette. She had hoped to blame him for the missing millions, get off the hook from her mobster investors.

She saw the Hermès bag with the scarf, knew somehow this was meant to be her own farewell gift, as though all those years together had meant nothing. Still, she could not bear to see James's blood spilled, and she'd wrapped the scarf carefully round his head. He'd opened his eyes, looked at her, surprised.

Had he recognized her? She hoped not. She would not have liked his final memory of her to be the moment she pulled the trigger.

No one heard. No one saw. Or if they did, they took no notice. And James,
her beloved James,
was gone. No one else would ever have him. Only she knew his last moments. It was her final secret.

Now, the apartment was deserted. She kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot into her bedroom. The missing servants had always hated her anyway, hated her arrogance, her demands for perfection, her lack of interest in who they were, only in what they could do for her. Humanity was not part of Gayle Lee Chen's allure, yet it was that very coldness that had drawn James to her. She knew he'd wanted to conquer her, make her his own; for years he had fought her, challenged her, left Caroline for her, but he'd always come back. She had enthralled him, with his lust for her and the money. Until he had finally fallen in love with someone else and she had proven powerless against that emotion. She'd found she was an ordinary mortal, after all.

A quick glance at the small gold Cartier clock on her bedside table told her time was passing. She must hurry.

The casket with the gun had been placed on the table in her home by the man she worked for; the man whose money she had taken to invest, whose money she had stolen. She'd gotten away with it all these years, sometimes she'd invested, giving him grand financial returns. And sometimes not. Somehow it had always worked out, walking that tightrope. Now, like all classic Ponzi scams, it was over. And his answer faced her in that casket. He knew about James. He knew everything, and he knew how to exact his revenge. He'd given her a choice. The gun? Or the police?

Gayle took a quick shower then went and sat at her vanity table, properly named she thought because she was the most vain of women. She looked at herself in the Venetian mirror that dated from the seventeenth century and was framed in golden twirls and leaves. The short platinum bob was her trademark. Walk into any room, everyone knew her. Now, she put up her hands and lifted off the wig. No one knew about that, well, only the man who made it for her in India of the finest European hair. “A virgin's hair,” he used to say, cackling with laughter.

Gayle looked at the different woman she saw in that beautiful mirror. It was the same Chinese woman who played the gambling tables in her old-style dark blue jacket and wide-legged pants. In one moment she had turned herself from urban sophisticate to traditional peasant.

She wiped off her makeup and went and put on the dark blue jacket and pants. She put on the cotton slippers and buttoned the strap over her instep.

She wasted no time now. One quick glance around the splendor of her master suite where only she had ever been the true “master.” Then she walked back into the hall, took the gun from the casket, checked that it was loaded, put it in her pocket next to the small packet of dollar bills held together by an elastic band.

One last glance in the mirror. It showed a small, aging Chinese woman who might be anybody from anywhere in that vast country. In just twenty minutes she had turned back the calendar a hundred years. She looked exactly the way her mother and her mother's mother had, when they rolled up their pants legs and worked, backs bent, up to their knees in water in the rice fields. She had achieved nothing, after all.