False Charity (22 page)

‘Would you care to let me have a copy of the outstanding invoice? I can't promise anything, but if I were able to get some of the money back …?'

‘What percentage would you take?'

She blinked. She ought to have thought of that. Hamilton would have thought of it. The labourer was worthy of his hire, etcetera. ‘We'd charge a fee to cover our time, wages bill, that sort of thing, but it would be minimal.'

He'd caught her momentary hesitation. She could see him lose respect for her. His smile morphed into a sneer. He accessed a file on his computer and worked on it for a couple of minutes before printing off a sheet of paper and handing it to her.

She looked at it. ‘More creative accounting? Surely they didn't owe this much?'

‘Naturally I added a little to cover interest, our wages bill, that sort of thing.'

‘Naturally,' she said, thinking that she neither liked nor trusted him, and that if she did succeed in getting any money back from the con men, she'd discount his bill by a good fifteen per cent. She folded the sheet and put it in her handbag. ‘By the way, do you happen to have a photograph of the team?'

He opened a drawer, extracted a photograph and spun it across the desk to her. The photograph showed the same Asian girl, flanked by the manager and another round-faced, self-satisfied looking man, possibly the club president. Bea turned the photo over. No label. It was another dead end.

‘Polaroid?'

‘The photographer said it saved time and hassle. A bit amateur, but …' He shrugged.

She rose to her feet. ‘Well, if anything comes of this, we'll let you know.'

He flashed his smile again. Hamilton would have called him ‘a slimy cove'.

Bea flashed an equally insincere smile back.

On the way home, Bea began to think about Maggie, who was superficially a capable woman but inwardly an insecure teenager, despite her bossy front. The sooner Bea was shot of her, the better. What a relief it would be to have the house to herself at last! She suppressed the memory that Oliver had been worried about the girl.

Bea found a parking space just down the road from her house, and let herself in through the front door. All was quiet. No phones ringing. No drinks clinking. No visitors. The aroma of spicy cooking hung in the air if she sniffed hard. Perhaps the filter over the cooker needed changing?

Oliver appeared from the basement, looking worried. He gestured towards the closed kitchen door. ‘Mrs Abbot, I'm glad you're back. She told me to get out, to leave her alone. She's been banging pots and pans around, and shouting a lot.'

‘Thank you, Oliver.' Bea straightened her shoulders and went into the kitchen, shutting the door in Oliver's face. Maggie was sitting at the table with her head in her hands. She had cut off all her long golden curls. Tufts of hair stuck out on her head in all directions. Had she been punishing herself for being raped?

Bea made an inarticulate sound, thinking she ought not to have gone to the Country Club, but to have come straight back when Oliver told her he was worried about Maggie. But then, was Maggie really her responsibility?

At least the child hadn't cut her wrists, which Bea had heard young girls sometimes did when they got into despairing mode. Bea thought, I am
not
a professional counsellor. I don't know what to do. What I do know is that I'm tired and cold and thirsty and hungry and could do with being looked after, instead of having to look after someone else. She investigated the contents of saucepans on the top of the oven. Soup? Just the thing.

‘Soup?' she asked Maggie. ‘Looks good.'

‘Courgette and brie.' The girl wasn't crying. Not at the moment, anyway.

‘Want some?' Bea pretended everything was normal. She poured herself out a liberal helping, and some for Maggie. Hooking up a stool, Bea sat opposite the girl and started on her soup.

‘The thing is,' said Maggie, ‘I realize it wasn't all his fault last night. I was giving him the wrong signals. I was trying to be glamorous, which is really not me at all. My mother and my husband were always on at me to “make the best of myself”, which meant looking like a brainless bimbo with long blonde hair and big boobs. But I'm not beautiful and sexy and I'm not going to kill myself trying to look like that any longer, right?'

‘Mmm,' said Bea, rather surprised to hear Maggie showing insight into her problem.

‘I was the girl next door. Three doors away, anyway. Our mothers were great friends. He was, is … I looked up to him, always. He's much older. Brainy, wonderful job, friends everywhere, models and television people and minor royalty and a long-term girlfriend whose father owns a yacht and a country house and ponies, and, well, everything. Everything I wasn't. Only the girlfriend went off with someone else and suddenly he was all over me. I was so surprised!

‘I mean, what did he see in me? Working as an assistant in a school for children with special needs, helping at the local soup kitchen, that was me. Not done anything much, or been anywhere, never even dreamed of it. Then suddenly he was saying how shallow his life was and how I'd got all the right values. Why did I believe him? Because he was the first man who'd ever told me I was beautiful. Even though I knew it was a lie, I believed it. Isn't that stupid? My mother was thrilled, wouldn't you know? Big wedding, lovely big flat, parties, parties.

‘Only, once we were married, he wanted me to change, to be more like his ex, and of course I couldn't. Bed wasn't what I'd expected, either, though I tried … how I tried! He kept saying I should make more of an effort. I dyed my hair and bought mad clothes and tried to like his friends and remember who was important and who wasn't, but it didn't do any good. One evening we were at a party and
she
was there. He sent me home in a taxi and never came home himself. She was married by then, of course, not that it made any difference to her, or to him. I hoped I might be pregnant, but I wasn't.'

‘Dear me,' said Bea, reaching for another helping of soup. ‘I hope you got a good solicitor.'

‘I wouldn't take a penny from him, no way!' Maggie tried to shake back what was left of her hair. ‘He's supposed to give me some money when he sells the flat, but he hasn't even put it on the market yet. No, I went back home to Mummy – who was horrified to have her ugly duckling back on her hands – and tried to find another job.'

‘Ah, the perfect victim. Now I had hoped you'd kicked him in the goolies at the very least.'

A snort. ‘Well, actually, I did get my own back a little. We met in a restaurant to have “a civilized discussion”. I tipped the curry over into his lap and left. I wish it had been scalding water from a kettle!'

‘Good girl. You're well rid of him, of course. You'd had a boyfriend before, I trust?'

‘Not really. There was someone who seemed to like me at work, one of the teachers at the school I was working at. But then I left to get married. I haven't been back. Too ashamed.'

‘And yesterday, there was love's young dream?'

‘Come to think of it, he had much the same line of patter. “How unusual you are, Maggie.” That sort of thing. Reminded me of my ex. Am I stupid, or what? I've decided; in future, I'm done pretending to be what I'm not. I'm just plain old Maggie. Good for cooking and cleaning and hopeless in bed.' She ran a comb under the tap and tried to make her tufts of hair lie down.

Bea resisted an urge to help.

Maggie pulled a face at herself in the mirror. ‘Do you think the agency could find me a job as a housekeeper?'

Bea thought Maggie deserved something better. ‘We'll get you a good haircut in the morning. Something sleek and shapely. And one or two good outfits, also sleek and shapely.'

Maggie dragged the bowl of soup towards her, and began to eat. ‘Sleek and shapely. I don't think I could do sleek and shapely. Not enough up top.' She indicated her skimpy top.

‘You've got a model's figure, girl. You could do anything you set your mind to. Is there anything else to eat?'

‘Oh, you poor thing,' said Maggie, reverting to her Mother Earth role. ‘You must be so hungry and tired. Would you like a piece of quiche and some salad? Quiche Lorraine, or Mushroom?'

‘Either. Thanks, Maggie. I could do with something to eat.'

Maggie bustled around between fridge and microwave.

Bea lifted her voice. ‘You can come in now, Oliver.'

‘Listening at the door, was he?' said Maggie.

Oliver inched his way in, looking embarrassed. He gave Maggie's haircut a sideways look and scuttled to a stool. Maggie ladled out soup for him, and put a huge slice of warmed quiche in front of Bea.

‘This is nice,' said Bea. ‘The Three Musketeers, or something.'

‘There were four, after D'Artagnan joined them,' said Oliver.

‘Oh, don't let's include Piers for the moment. Too much trouble.'

The doorbell rang, and Bea cringed. ‘Not Piers, please! I can't cope.'

‘I'll tell him you've gone to bed early,' said Oliver, and disappeared. Maggie made another attempt to flatten her hair, and sighed.

Oliver had left the door ajar. They could hear him exclaim, and a man's voice raised in anger.

‘Not Piers,' said Bea.

The voice in the hall went on and on. Bea and Maggie guessed who it was at the same moment and made for the hall, Bea leading by a short head. Like his elder son, Darren's father was big, blonde and blue-eyed. He wore a good suit and an authoritative manner. His lips barely moved as he scolded his son.

Oliver was trying to speak, hands raised to try to stem the tirade.

‘Mr Ingram, I presume,' said Bea, advancing on him with her shiniest smile. ‘I'm delighted to meet you. I've heard so much about you from your son, who's been doing a perfectly splendid job helping me out in the agency. Will you come into the drawing room? A sherry, perhaps? Coffee?'

‘Mrs Abbot, I presume?' He radiated barely controlled anger. ‘All I need is five minutes with my son.'

‘No trouble, I assure you.' She led the way and after a moment's hesitation, father and son followed her. She waved them to seats, but Mr Ingram preferred to stand.

‘I wish to speak to my son in private.'

Bea continued to smile. ‘I daresay, but this is my house, and you are my guest.' She seated herself by the fireplace, wishing that Hamilton had been here. He would have known how to deal with this pompous prat, while she was just muddling along and probably saying the wrong thing. ‘I'll just sit on the sidelines and be umpire, shall I?'

Oliver's colour had risen, but his voice was steady. ‘Dad, I had to tell Mrs Abbot what I saw, but I promise you no one else knows. I haven't told Mum, and I won't unless … I mean, No, I won't tell her. She wouldn't be able to cope.'

‘I don't know what you think you saw. You've always had a vivid imagination.'

Oliver swallowed. ‘What you said about me being into porn, well, I understand that you were trying to stop me telling Mum, but you didn't need to say that, because I wouldn't.'

‘Naturally that's what you
would
say.'

Oliver made a helpless movement with his hands. Bea lost the next bit of conversation because it had suddenly struck her that two blue-eyed parents couldn't produce a brown-eyed child, could they? And there was the small matter of a slightly dusky tinge to Oliver's skin, and his very dark, almost black hair. Had the boy been adopted, or was he the result of a side-slip on the part of his mother? Either way, if he had grown up not conforming to the family image, then he would indeed be the odd one out. Which explained a lot about his treatment at the hands of his family.

Did Oliver realize it? Probably not. What a tangle!

Bea tuned back into the conversation to hear the headmaster saying, ‘… and if I ever hear that you've been telling lies about me, saying that I've accessed certain sites, sites of which I can assure you that there is absolutely no trace, then you can never return home.'

‘Oh, Dad.' Oliver held his head in his hands. ‘You may have deleted the sites but they're still there on the hard drive, and any expert could retrieve them. Likewise there is no porn on my computer and never has been, and any computer expert could confirm that.'

A slight flush rose to the headmaster's cheeks. ‘In any event, you realize there is no place for you now at home.'

‘I didn't expect anything else,' said Oliver, bracing himself. ‘Before you go, there's something I need to tell you. I was pretty angry when you threw me out, plus I was skint. So I used your credit card details to buy some stuff on the Internet, and sell it again. To give myself some cash.'

‘What! You did what? I don't believe you! Not even you!' His blood pressure was visibly rising.

Oliver took a chequebook out of his pocket. Bea could see that his hands were trembling but he wrote out a cheque and handed it to his father. ‘This covers what I took out. I'm sorry.'

‘You …!' Mr Ingram raised his hand to hit his son, and Oliver ducked. Both men were breathing hard. It looked to Bea as if Oliver were accustomed to having punches thrown at him. She wondered if his father only became physical with his family. Did he treat the children in his charge the same way? Because if so, he was going to lose his job pretty soon.

Oliver laid the cheque on the mantelpiece and took a couple of paces back. ‘Take it. It's all there.'

‘Why, you thieving …!'

‘You stole my reputation,' said Oliver. ‘I don't expect you to apologize, but—'

‘I should think not!' Mr Ingram stowed the cheque in his pocket. ‘You …! If I catch you anywhere near—'

Oliver said, ‘I won't. Provided you let me have my A level certificates.'

The headmaster ground his teeth. ‘I don't want you contacting your mother. I don't want to hear from you, ever again.'