The Art of Deception (Choc Lit)

The Art of Deception

Liz Harris

This is a novella of approximately 120 pages

Copyright © 2013 Liz Harris

Published 2013 by Choc Lit Limited

Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB, UK

www.choc-lit.c
om

The right of Liz Harris to be identified as the Author of this Work has
 been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the
 public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE

ISBN-978-1-781891-12-4

Chapter One

In a matter of minutes Jenny was going to come face to face with one of the men who’d killed her father. Her mouth felt dry, and she ran her tongue around her lips.

The taxi stopped in front of the office block in Holborn.
She paid the cab driver, stepped out on to the pavement and walked slowly towards the building, smoothing down the skirt of her suit as she went.

For the last two weeks this
was the moment she’d been longing for, and also the moment she’d been dreading – it was almost impossible to believe that it was only fourteen days since her world had turned upside down …

She’d been leafing through the weekly educational newspaper that she’d borrowed from the staff room. The final pieces of work done by her pupils at her teachers’ training placement really did need marking, but getting a job for September was even more urgent than that.

Her heart s
ank. Once again, the only openings for newly qualified art teachers were miles away in the north of England. That was much too far from Cornwall. Her mother would be alone when she’d gone, and she wanted to be able to come home and see her often, and see her friends, too.

She took
a sip of coffee, and turned to the last section of the paper, where vacancies for private tutors were advertised. A few hours a week as a tutor would be better than nothing until she could get a permanent job. Even though she’d worked for two years after leaving school to save enough money to study for her Art degree, her three years at college, plus her year afterwards as a PGCE student, had left her completely broke. She had to earn some money as soon as possible.

She sat up sharply, spilling her coffee.
Max Castanien was advertising for someone to teach art classes throughout the summer in Italy. This was a name she knew well, a name that she and her mother would never forget. She spread the paper flat on the desk and stared hard at the advertisement. Her heart started to race, and she put her hand to her mouth to steady herself.

Then s
he took a deep breath – she was being silly, letting herself get into a state at the sight of a mere name. There was obviously more than one family in the country with that surname, and there was probably more than one Max Castanien, unusual though the name was. It was highly unlikely that the man advertising was one of the Castanien brothers, Max and Peter, whom she and her mother hated so much.

For several moments, she sat biting her thumbnail, staring at the
advertisement. The only other information, apart from the name and brief job description, was an e-mail address.

Could this possibly be
the same family, she wondered. She pushed the newspaper aside, pulled her computer towards her and switched it on. It couldn’t be that difficult to find out, and she couldn’t leave it – she had to know.

The
Castanien family had a large textiles company so there were bound to be any number of references to the family and their business on the internet, and if it was
the
Max Castanien, one of the references might say something that linked him to Italy. If the man who was looking to hire an art teacher did turn out to be one of the brothers responsible for her father’s death …

She could hardly breathe
at the thought.

If she could just meet him, she
’d have a chance – albeit a slim chance – of finding out why the brothers had acted as they had done. She’d been twelve when her father died – too young for her mother to feel able to talk to her in depth about it, but not too young to know that the Castaniens had brought misery into their lives. As she’d got older, she’d increasingly wanted to know the reason why.

Her mother had answered any questions she'd asked
over the years – but she'd never been able to tell her
why
they'd done it.  But with an opportunity like this to meet the brothers, and a chance to find out what had happened for herself …

Jenny
felt a sudden surge of hope at the thought of learning why they had let her father down as badly as they had, and she felt a momentary shock at the strength of her feeling. She hadn’t realised quite how desperately she wanted answers to her questions.

Several times over the years
, she’d thought about writing to them and asking for an explanation, telling them that she needed to know, but she’d always instantly dismissed the idea. There’d be no point: they’d have time to compose something that sounded like a good answer, but which was unlikely to be the whole truth. And if she made an appointment to see them in person and asked them outright – they’d be immediately on the defensive and would probably lie. She’d never know if she could believe them or not.

But if she could get to know them without them
realising who she was, then she might have an opportunity to ask them in person. If they became friends, they’d be more likely to want to tell her the truth, whatever that truth was. And even if they lied, she’d know them well enough to be able see it in their body language.

She mentally shook herself. She was letting herself get carried away. The first step was to find out if this was
the
Max Castanien. Her heart thudding with sudden nervousness, she typed his name into Google. As she’d expected, there were several pages of entries. Skimming down the first page, she found an interview that Max Castanien, textiles tycoon, had given recently; she read every word.

When she came to the end of
it, she was shaking.

Max
answered questions about his role in his local business community, and then, when he’d been asked what he did in his free time, he told the interviewer that he’d just bought a place in Umbria and was planning to offer art classes.

It
was
the same man.

For several moments, she stared at the screen
, motionless.

And what about Peter
? He was the older brother, if she remembered rightly, so he was probably the guiltier of the two. Was Peter also involved in the art project? She typed in his name.

Seeing
the obituaries felt like a blow to the face.

She drew her breath in sharply
. Peter had died after a short illness five years ago. She’d been hating him for those five years, and he hadn’t even been alive.

Feeling sick to her stomach, she clicked on the first of the obituaries and read it. He’d left a wife and a son of
fourteen, Stephen – not a lot older than she’d been when she lost her father. The obituary quoted Max’s eulogy, word for word. He had spoken movingly about his brother, praising him as an excellent businessman and as a loving brother, husband and father, and he’d ended up by promising that he would always be a strong presence in the life of his nephew, Stephen.

Peter may well have been all those things, she thought in a sudden wave of bitterness, but he certainly wasn’t a good friend. And nor was Max.

She glanced at the small photograph of Peter in the corner of the obituary, clicked on it to make it larger, and stared at it long and hard. He'd been nothing out of the ordinary, she thought – quite attractive, but he had a weak chin.

She closed the obituary and returned to the pages about Max. Further down there was an article
about the family business, and as she’d suspected there’d be, there was a photograph of him. She enlarged the photo and studied his face. He was definitely better-looking than Peter, and he had a stronger chin. In fact, she hated to admit it but he was good-looking.

Neither man looked unpleasant, but that just showed how deceptive appearances could be. A person’s actions told the truth, and what the Castaniens had done spoke volumes about them.

But one thing was clear from the photos of the brothers, and that was that she’d been wrong in thinking that Peter would have been the power behind every action that they’d taken. Despite being several years younger, it would have been Max. There was a strength and determination in his face, in the set of his chin and in his eyes, that was lacking in Peter’s.

She sank back in her chair, her eyes still on the screen. It felt very strange, seeing th
eir faces after all this time. She could have looked at their photos at any time over the years, but she’d never wanted to. It had been difficult enough to know that they’d destroyed her family; seeing them would have made everything horribly real. But now … now that there was a chance that she might be able to meet Max in person …

She sat up. There was no time to waste. She must
apply for the job at once, and her letter must be good enough to get her an interview. She glanced at the words of the advertisement again, and wondered how best to begin. She knew that she had enough experience to run his art classes: two years’ working before university, her Art degree, and her teaching qualification, and that must come across in her application.

And so mus
t her ability to speak Italian.

Alongside her main subject, she’d
also studied Italian. The photos of her work, which all of the teaching trainees had been advised to send in with any job application, would show both her painting ability and her genuine interest in Italy. She’d spent two summer vacations in Florence, looking after children, and she’d be certain to send photos of the best of the paintings she’d done in her free time there. And if she wrote a few lines in Italian at the end of the letter, and included a translation, that would make her application really stand out.

She bent over the computer, h
er fingers hovering above the keyboard, but her mind was blank and she couldn’t move. For several minutes, she stared helplessly at the empty screen, but then she straightened up. It was no good: she felt completely drained and she hadn’t a clue how to begin.

H
er shoulders ached as if she was carrying a huge weight on them, and she rubbed the back of her neck with her hands. She’d leave the letter until the following day, she decided. By then, she’d feel fresher and less emotionally exhausted by having discovered Max Castanien and by what she was planning to do.

She
shut down the laptop, closed the lid and stood up.

The Holborn traffic was loud behind her.
She glanced up at the tall office block, and her steps faltered. Everything had happened so quickly. Was she really ready to go through with this?

The day
after she’d seen the advertisement, she’d written her letter of application, attached the photos of her work, and had e-mailed everything. She was confident that he’d never recognise her mother’s maiden name, the surname they’d used since the newspapers went overboard after the inquest into her father’s death. Jenny had felt a stab of guilt about acting in such an underhand way. But there wasn’t any alternative. And she was doing this for her mother as well as for herself. She wouldn’t tell her mother what she was doing, though. There’d be time enough for that if she was successful. And if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have raised her hopes in vain.

Two days later
, her teaching mentor at the school pulled her aside and told her that her references had been taken up. Her momentary numbness had been followed by a mixture of excitement and fear.

A few days after that
, Max Castanien’s assistant, Louisa, had telephoned to ask if she could come up to London for an interview. Apparently, he’d been greatly impressed by her work, Louisa had told her, and by the fact that she spoke Italian. Both things had made her a strong contender for the position.

The
gap between the phone call and the interview had passed in a daze.

But
she was now in London, and she was about to face him for the first time. She took a step forward, and her heart thumped loudly.