In Focus (2009)

CHANGE OF SEASON

CHESTNUT LANE

THE CORRIGAN LEGACY

FAMILY CONNECTIONS

A FORBIDDEN EMBRACE

AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN

IN FOCUS

KIRSTY’S VINEYARD

MARRYING MISS MARTHA

MISTRESS OF MARYMOOR

REPLENISH THE EARTH

SAVING WILLOWBROOK

SEASONS OF LOVE

THE WISHING WELL

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This first world edition published 2009

in Great Britain and 2010 in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2009 by Anna Jacobs.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Jacobs, Anna.

In Focus.

1. Television personalities – Fiction. 2. Missing

children – Fiction. 3. Adoptees – Fiction. 4. Love stories.

I. Title

823.9′14-dc22

978-1-78010-036-4   (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6807-7   (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-194-2   (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

Prologue

It seemed a day like any other. Beth Harding got up at six o’clock and stared out of the window. Another grey London day. Would spring never come? She made a mug of tea and went to check her emails before work. Living alone meant she could do as she pleased in the mornings.

Today there was an email from someone called ‘lostgirl’. She nearly deleted it, then previewed it and choked on a mouthful of tea.

Beth read it again, printed it out and carried the piece of paper into the kitchen, pressing it against her cheek as if that would bring her closer to the daughter who had run away from home at the tender age of sixteen. She’d heard nothing from Jo since.

Tears welled in her eyes and everything around her turned into a blur. Suddenly she was sobbing, a harsh ragged sound that seemed to echo through the flat.

By the time she’d calmed down a little, the message she’d printed out was bubbled and blotched with her tears.

Until this moment Beth hadn’t even known that, though she’d hoped. You had to hope. Three years ago Jo had gone out one day and not returned. She’d taken a few of her possessions, but left most of them behind. The police investigations had got nowhere and none of Jo’s friends had seen or heard from her since.

Beth’s marriage had broken up the year before Jo vanished, but Shane had joined her in night watches for their daughter, searching places where down-and-outs congregated, visiting hostels. They had both been desperate for anything that might give them a clue, anything at all. They’d even forgotten their differences and grown to be almost friends again.

Shane now lived in Canada, was married to a much younger woman and had two young children. Beth was still on her own and at forty-three she had no intention of risking another relationship.

As she made a second mug of tea, she murmured her daughter’s name like a mantra. ‘Jo, Jo.’ More tears welled in her eyes, leaving cool trails down her cheeks. It was wonderful news, but painful. She didn’t doubt that the email was genuine because of the dog’s name. Jo had loved that dog, been desolate when Libby died.

Beth hadn’t realized how passionate teenage rebellion could be, because she’d never been free to rebel, had always had to be sensible. Maybe she should have gone a bit easier on Jo after the divorce. Or maybe not. She could live with an untidy home, but not a dirty one. And though she could also live with Jo being sexually active from an early age, however much she disapproved, she didn’t want a series of randy young guys bedding down in her flat. She’d freaked out the first time she bumped into a strange man in the corridor. She and Jo had had the first of their bad quarrels over that.

She sighed. What use was there in agonizing over the past? It was another country. She wasn’t sure who had said that, but it fitted her situation.

Although she knew the email off by heart, she read it again anyway. The message was painfully short. There was no clue as to where her daughter was, or if she was ever coming back.

She’d thought it would be enough simply to know Jo was alive, but it wasn’t. She ached to see her only child again, be with her.

After a quick check of the time, she rang Shane. He’d not received an email from their daughter, but he sobbed at the other end of the line when she told him Jo was still alive.

One

Normally the six-storey building was deserted when the cleaning team came in, but Beth was surprised to see lights at one end of the top floor even though it was ten o’clock at night. She waited in the basement car park, only getting out of her car when the two other cleaners arrived, because she always felt nervous if she had to be out alone late at night.

One of them greeted her with a friendly grin. ‘Hi, boss! Coming to keep an eye on us, are you?’

Beth smiled back. ‘Pam couldn’t make it tonight and all my relief staff are busy.’ She occasionally filled in when someone called in sick. It kept her in touch with her staff and she knew they respected her for not being afraid to get her hands dirty. ‘Which floors shall I take?’

‘Pam always did the top two.’

They walked in together, setting more lights blazing.

On the sixth floor, Beth checked the large, cluttered room in the small corner suite belonging to the IT company Aldeb, since this was where she’d seen lights. It had even more computers and pieces of equipment crammed in than last time she’d been here. The two young owners, Al and Debbie, were hunched over their computers to one side. A guy in a suit was sitting in the corner, drumming his fingers on the desk and looking bored.

The woman turned to smile at Beth. ‘Sorry. We’ve got a glitch in the new program and we’re still trying to sort it out. Can you clean round us? We don’t mind the noise and it won’t hurt to leave a few metres of floor untouched for one night.’

‘No worries. I’m doing the top two floors, so I can start on the fifth and come up here last.’

Just as she was about to tackle their part of the sixth floor, she heard a yell of triumph from the corner and turned to smile at the joyful faces.

The woman beckoned to her. ‘We think we’ve fixed it but we need to test it out. Would you mind helping us? It’ll only take a few minutes.’

‘I’m no expert on computers.’

‘We don’t need your expertise; we need your face.’ She chuckled at Beth’s puzzlement. ‘This program turns older faces back to children’s, or vice versa – and it can be about eighty per cent accurate, as far as we can work out, unless someone’s had plastic surgery, of course.’ She brandished a camera. ‘If we take a photo of you and turn it into you as a child, you’ll know whether it’s a good likeness, won’t you?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Beth had intended to refuse because she was exhausted, but was intrigued by the idea. ‘Oh, OK. But we usually go out to our cars together for security reasons and the others won’t want to hang around after their shift is over. Could one of you walk me out to my car afterwards?’

The man in the corner spoke. ‘I’ll do that.’

She studied him: tall and looked a capable sort. Yes, she’d feel safe with him. ‘Thanks.’

They photographed her and asked her a couple of questions about herself as a child.

‘I had blonde hair, a little lighter than now, and I was scrawny.’

As they fiddled around with the computer, the man sitting by the window continued to watch. He was good-looking in a quiet way, wearing a smart business suit with his tie loosened. The other two were dressed extremely casually, and the younger man had dreadlocks tied in a bunch at the back of his head.

Beth was suddenly conscious that it was the end of a long, hard day. What a time to have a photo taken! She must look a real mess. Then she shrugged. As if that mattered!

But when she sneaked a look at her reflection in the big glass windows, she realized she looked haggard as well as untidy. And for the first time in ages, that did matter, for some reason.

Edward watched the woman lean against a cupboard and study the two programmers. She was gaunt, looked weary and her clothes were crumpled beneath the cleaning company overall. He’d not have given her a second glance if it hadn’t been for her eyes: big, brown and surprisingly beautiful in a face that was bleached bone-white with exhaustion.

He was tired too. Managing his celebrity cousin wasn’t the easiest job on earth, though it did pay well and – just as important to him – led him into some interesting experiences. This wasn’t one of them. He’d been marking time here all evening while Al and Debbie fiddled around with their computers.