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‘I thought we’d been into all that.’

‘No, not all of it, but after dinner, we will.’ It was phrased as a polite statement, but to Kate it sounded very much like a threat.

She had never felt less like cooking in her life and even all the gadgetry and the microwave oven woke no spark of enthusiasm in her breast. She grumbled silently about men who said ‘We will have dinner’ and then went away to another room and left a woman to get on with it. The freezer was full, however, and she delved among its neat packages and dragged out steak and vegetables to thaw and then worked off some of her bad temper in battering the steaks with a serrated mallet. All the time she was frying the steak, sautéing the potatoes, cooking the peas and whipping up a cheesecake, she thought. She thought about what she would do, what she would say and how she would say it, and then moved on to her priorities.

Her first priority was to get in touch with Gerald. She had changed her mind about escaping; she would do it if she could, and she couldn’t do it on her own. She would need somewhere to hide, and the only place available was her own flat—Noelle Lowe’s flat, she corrected herself— and that would be the first place where Jerome would look. What she wanted was somewhere remote, the Lake District or Scotland, perhaps. Then she grinned to herself wryly. In such a place, she and Philip would stick out like a couple of sore thumbs. She would be
much
better here in London, in a very densely populated part where people were too busy to bother about who lived in the room above or below. A bedsitter would do for the time being, and Gerald could surely find her that.

She then thought up several smart and tart answers to use if Jerome asked the right questions, and when the food was ready, and the table laid, she went off to the bedroom to change. She peeped through the communicating door at Philip and crept softly to his bedside. He was asleep, flat on his back, with an expression of angelic innocence on his face and his puppy curled up beside him and making a dreadful mess of the thick satin coverlet. Kate bent to tuck the covers more closely about the boy and dropped a soft kiss on his cheek while her hand went to stroke the black curls which clustered on his forehead. He was a beautiful boy, she thought; well worth any sacrifice she might have to make—and she would make any sacrifice to remain with him. He was all she had now that Shirley was gone, her only link, and she was not going to be parted from him, not even if it meant marrying Jerome Manfred! But it hadn’t come to that, not yet. She had promised, but it was a promise extracted under duress, so she would have no compunction in breaking it. If she had the opportunity!

Softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child, she rummaged through her suitcases for a change of clothes. The selection available was strictly limited and they were all ‘Kate’ clothes with not a wisp of glamour anywhere. She sighed as she realised that Helen had been right, she had grown used to lovely clothes, used to wearing them and looking good in them. At the cottage, she hadn’t bothered much what she had worn, she had been too worried, too full of the perpetual nagging fear of
being
tracked down. But now the worst that she had feared, being found by the Manfreds, had happened and
she
hadn’t had time to start worrying about her new problems yet. Come to think of it, she hadn’t yet worked out what her new problems would be.

Finally she settled for a fine wool skirt in tobacco brown, a bronzy green silk shirt and the only elegant shoes she had with her, dressy courts, high-heeled and slim in bronze patent leather. The reflection which stared back at her from the mirror was a minor shock. Four months in a remote cottage, out of reach of a hairdresser, had transformed her smooth, sophisticated hairdo into an over-long, over-thick mess. She regretted having washed it, but the bathroom in this apartment had been more than she could resist; after four months of tin baths in front of the kitchen fire, Jerome Manfred’s luxuriously appointed bath had drawn her like a magnet. She had wallowed in sybaritic luxury, up to her chin in delicately perfumed water, and it had seemed sinful not to wash her hair at the same time, so she had lathered and rinsed until the chestnut mass squeaked between her fingers. Now the short ends were curling about her temples and on the nape of her neck, refusing to lie smoothly, and the rest of her thick mane had an ungovernable air. Resolutely she reached for her brush and started methodically to tame it.

Kate laid out her few remaining bits of make-up on the dressing table and surveyed the scanty collection with grim satisfaction. They would have done for Kate Forrest in a cottage on Bodmin Moor, but here, in London, in this luxury apartment, they were woefully inadequate. She shrugged to herself. There was nobody to see her here except Jerome Manfred, and he had seen her in the cottage—and in any case, she didn’t care what he thought. It might be a good idea to make herself look as repulsive as possible. If he thought he was marrying Noelle Lowe or even having dinner with her, he was in for a rude awakening and a severe disappointment!

He didn’t appear to be disappointed when she joined him in the dining area where he was inspecting her preparations. He seemed ... nothing! There was no expression on his face, his features were cold and impassive and his eyes hooded and unreadable. He looked down at her, one sweeping glance taking in Kate.

‘If you were expecting Noelle,’ she was belligerent, ‘I’d better tell you now so that you won’t have any wrong ideas for the future. That lady only existed for the photographers. The person you see standing before you is me, Kate Forrest, ex-schoolteacher. This is the way I look, the way I like to look. Take it or leave it!’ His eyes slid down over her body and she felt the hot blood in her cheeks and a throb of fear in her veins. It was as if he had stripped her and was assessing the smooth, shapely body underneath.

‘There’s a lot of Noelle Lowe left,’ he murmured. ‘I mean the basic material on which the girl was built. I can do without that smooth, egglike face with the features painted on so exquisitely and I can do without the sexy clothes which clung in all the right places. You’re a fool, Kate, if you insist that there were two different people, Kate Forrest and Noelle Lowe. Stop deceiving yourself. Noelle never existed at all, she was only ever Kate, dressed up and wearing a painted mask on her face.’

‘And there you’re wrong!’ She struggled with the ties of a gay plastic apron, going red in the face with effort. ‘I am Kate Forrest, I invented Noelle and she existed all right! She did things which Kate would never have done and I disliked her very much. Four months ago I ended her existence. She didn’t even think like me!’

There was a quirk of grim amusement about his mouth as he carefully sorted out the tangled tapes of the apron and drew it from her. ‘You don’t need this. Sit down, Kate, and stop worrying. Whichever woman I find, I shall call her “Kate”.’

She subsided into the chair he had pulled out for her and carefully ignored the glass of sherry which he offered. She looked at the counter where the bottles of table wine stood ready and her lips firmed. Whatever happened, she was going to drink nothing but water. If he thought he was going to get her into his bed in a drunken stupor, then he was very much mistaken. Perhaps when dinner was over and she had given him his coffee, she would make herself a mug of cocoa. Mugs of cocoa were earthy things, there was nothing even vaguely romantic or seductive about them. A man would find it hard to indulge in a passionate interlude with a woman who was clutching a mug of cocoa!

They ate the meal in silence, and for Kate it seemed to go on for ever. Jerome didn’t seem to consider it necessary to indulge in light conversation, she supposed that he wasn’t used to it. He probably worked on the presumption that women were necessary to satisfy certain of his appetites, and for that, they didn’t have to talk! When it was at last over, she rose swiftly and began to roll up the sleeves of her shirt. As she did so, she moved purposefully towards the sink. If luck was with her, she would take at least an hour to wash up and then she would get her mug of cocoa and go straight to bed, thereby postponing any discussion until the morning at the earliest. Her hand was just reaching towards the hot tap when Jerome’s voice cut across her self-congratulatory mood.

‘Our discussion, Kate,’ she was reminded.

‘I’ll clear up first and get everything tidy.’ She turned an artificially bright smile on him as she put the plug in the sink and squirted in far too much washing up liquid. ‘I couldn’t sit talking with all this clutter to be cleared,’ she waved at the table, draining board and counter where used crockery, cutlery, glasses and pans were stacked. ‘Even if I was in another room and couldn’t see the mess, I’d not be able to concentrate on a word you said, not until it was all cleared away and the place tidied up. It’s one of the unpleasant things about schoolteachers, we generally turn into fusspots. We can’t help it, I’ve seen it happen to so many of us. I think it must be an occupational hazard.’

She was still babbling brightly and inanely when she heard a faint sound of exasperation behind her and firm hands shifted her bodily to one side as he passed her and started to load the dishwasher.

‘There!’ She continued her chattering in a cheerful vein. ‘That’s what living in a cottage on Bodmin Moor does for you, that and being a member of the lower orders, of course. When there’s work to be done, we automatically use our hands. We’re not used to gadgets or servants, you see, and it’s very hard for us to adjust. Some of us never....’

There was no more time for her to explain further what some of the lower orders would never be able to adjust to, because a firm hand, a relentless hand, came about her arm.

‘Now we’ll go into the sitting room,’ he said urbanely as he dragged her through the door.

Kate sat primly, her ankles neatly crossed and her hands lying loosely in her lap while she turned an uninterested face to him.

‘Noelle?’ He made it a question. ‘How much of her reputation was deserved? She was seen about with a great many escorts, some of them were a trifle, shall we say, unsavoury. At one time it was impossible to find a paper or magazine which didn’t picture her dining with some man and apparently on quite intimate terms with him.’

‘It was a con.’ She was terse. ‘They wanted to launch products using my face and they explained to me that for the campaigns to be a success, my face had to be better known, brought out of the ivory tower of the studio and shown to be human.’ She made a moue of distaste. ‘You’d be surprised at the number of wealthy and quite eligible men who are willing to act as an escort when there’s a bit of publicity about. Of course,’ her mouth grew bitter, ‘even though the meals were paid for and the drinks and theatre tickets were free, it was surprising to me how high a value they put on their time. Most of them thought that an evening with Noelle didn’t end until nine the next morning, or that it shouldn’t! A lot of them were very hard to convince.’ She smiled a bitter smile of reminiscence. ‘One member of the jet set found himself lumbered with Philip, who was cutting teeth at the time, and with Shirley who was having hysterics because she was being kept awake by his crying. It served him right! He shouldn’t have assumed that he was God’s little gift to the female sex.’

Jerome nodded as if he was satisfied and went on to detail arrangements.

‘Today is Monday, tomorrow I shall apply for a licence and we shall be married on Saturday morning at a small church nearby. No!’ he raised his hand to stop her comments, ‘it will be done as quickly as possible under the circumstances, but unfortunately for you, there will have to be some show and publicity. Afterwards there’ll be a reasonably large reception, but the gentlemen of the Press will be barred from that. My mother will make all the arrangements. I don’t need any information from you for the actual application for the licence, I have it all already.’

‘Your private spies!’ Kate made them sound like the Gestapo.

‘Precisely. I know your date of birth and where you were born, I know your mother’s maiden name and the profession of your father, so there’s no need for any more nonsense about the “lower orders”. Since when has a professor of English Literature earned his bread with sweat?’

‘My father’s hobby was bricklaying,’ she told him sweetly. ‘He often said that he was a better bricklayer than a professor.’ She choked back the rest of the sarcastic remark which she had been going to make so that it died before it reached her lips. She was going to be calm, placid Kate, she remembered; sensible and boring! ‘Is that all?’ she enquired, ‘because, if it is, I think I’ll ask you to excuse me. It’s been a long upsetting day and I slept badly last night. I’m feeling very tired.’

‘One or two things more.’ He was watching her closely and she felt like a mouse being stalked by a hungry cat. ‘After the wedding, we shall take a short honeymoon. I’m afraid it will have to be short, I have some business coming up. Where would you like to go?’

Kate yawned pointedly at him. ‘Anywhere, I suppose. I’m not greatly interested.’ She didn’t sound interested. ‘Somewhere Philip will enjoy, somewhere warm and sunny, it’s not been a very nice winter for him. As long as he’s happy, I don’t give a row of pins where we go.’

‘I hadn’t envisaged taking Philip.’ It was the growl of the big cat just before it unsheathed its claws.

‘Not take Philip!’ Calm, sensible Kate nearly vanished in a blaze of indignation. ‘What did you propose to do with him, leave him in a luggage office labelled “To Be Called For”? He’s a little boy, not a parcel, and where I go, he goes.’

‘Not on your honeymoon.’ Jerome contemplated the burning tip of his cigarette.

‘Then there won’t be a honeymoon.’ She was defiant. ‘You can take us where we’re going to live and we’ll stay there. It will save time, money and all the bother of travelling. It will be better for Philip anyway, he’s at
an
age when he needs a settled home. The cottage
was
all right, but the weather was bad and I wasn’t the best of company, although I tried hard not to let it show. I was nervous about being found. Oh, and by the way, don’t suggest that we live in this apartment, because I refuse. It’s not at all the sort of place in which to bring up children.’ She cast a glance around the modernistically immaculate room. ‘It looks like the waiting room in a private clinic.’