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  Rupert shot a look at Sarah, “My parents hadn’t told me, said that it was bad enough having a drug addict for a daughter and that I needn’t know what she’d been up to.”

  He looked back at the fire, “And she told me that she was pregnant, not a clue who the father was. That’s why she came to me, she knew that she couldn’t stay on the stuff with a baby on the way and couldn’t bring herself to have an abortion, though I found out years later that she’d made appointments abortion clinics twice and then walked away.”

  He looked back at Sarah, admiration in his eyes, “She came off via cold turkey, didn’t use substitutes or panaceas, she just came off. Stopped smoking at the same time.”

  He sighed, “Reckon Peter saved her life; if she hadn’t become pregnant she’d have died of an overdose in some rubbish laden hell-hole or other.”

  Sarah stirred, “She sounds quite a woman.”

  He nodded, “But she was hell to live with the first couple of years, she was totally unpredictable. I went out to church one day and found her slicing her arms with a Stanley knife when I came back early, she said the pain was the only way she could get through to herself. A couple of months later she went missing for two days and came back with two broken wrists; she never said how she got them. To be honest I think that if she hadn’t had Peter she’d have committed suicide.”

  He turned to face Sarah, “But she worked through it, by the time Peter was four she was on an even keel and began to enjoy life again. She even courted for a time, but nothing came of it.”

  He went silent for a moment and then smiled, “I remember when…”

  As they all set off from the dining room to the lounge for coffee Julia sidled up to Mark and hissed, “I need help. I need to sleep at Ambrose House tonight, how on earth do I tell dad?”

  Mark rolled his eyes, “What is it with the snow? We’ve only been snowed in for a couple of days and Norman is playing nooky with Petra, Colin suddenly brings his intended fiancé home and you want to go off to Ambrose House to…”

  Julia interrupted him, “Norman and Petra?”

  “They say they were practising acting, if you ask me it was method acting with a vengeance.”

  Julia grabbed his elbow and looked in his eyes, “I’m not sleeping with Buster OK, but I do need to sleep at Ambrose House.”

  Mark nodded, “I’ll think of something.”

  The all settled into the lounge and Harriet yawned, Julia smiled at Jill, “She can sleep in my room if you like till you go home.”

  Mark suddenly grinned like an idiot, “Actually I’m sure that Julia wouldn’t mind if you slept there as well – there’s a pull out rolling mattress under Julia’s bed. I’m sure she’d love to sleep in one of the luxury bedrooms at Ambrose House that she’d described to me.”

  Jill shook her head, “I couldn’t possibly…”

  Julia woke up to Mark’s solution. “It would be no trouble, and I’ve always fancied sleeping between silk sheets.”

  Jenny looked from Mark to Julia, she knew that they were up to something, they always had been as kids and Jenny now had that same feeling. Colin joined in, “That would be marvellous. Sure you don’t mind Julia?”

  “Not in the least, she can then realise just how much you snore when the wall starts to vibrate in sympathy.”

  “I do not snore!”

  “Oh sorry, it must be Norman at the other end of the house.”

  The conversation descended into teasing and Julia gave Mark a big smile and a mouthed ‘Thank you’ just before her father brought the coffee in and normality returned.

  “…we even tried our hand at dry ski-slope skiing, but I’d forgotten everything and kept falling over, much to Peter’s glee.”

  Sarah smiled, Rupert was describing the last holiday time he’d spent alone with Peter while Anna had been having a short holiday by herself. Rupert suddenly wriggled in his seat, “Then a fortnight after Anna returned they died in a needless car accident.”

  Sarah decided to probe a little, “Did the police check the car over afterwards?”

  “He replied, somewhat passionately, “What was left of it – they said they could find nothing at fault, but I’m sure the accelerator must have stuck open.”

  “Had it stuck open before?”

  “No, but I always maintained the car myself, it saved money that way. Maybe I missed something, something that would have meant…”

  He tailed off into silence. Sarah said quietly, “And maybe there was nothing you could have done.”

  He held a hand up, “Stop, please don’t go on to say that she could have done it deliberately, the police hinted at that, but that’s a terrible thought. Anna loved Peter, he was her whole life. She’d never take her own life and take Peter along for the ride.”

  Sarah was sure he didn’t intend the pun. “Suppose Peter was desperately ill?”

  He shook his head, “She’d have moved heaven and earth to find a cure or love him till the end. I know she was suicidal at times, but never, ever, in the last eight years.”

  “You can’t blame yourself Rupert, it’s probably one of life’s great unknowns.”

  He nodded, “I know that and I don’t know that. I keep going over it in my mind, supposing I had…”

  Sarah laid a hand on Rupert’s hand and said softly, “Would Anna want you to live like this, trying to take the blame for what’s not your fault?”

  He shook his head and stood up, “Thanks Sarah it was good to talk of the good times. Please shut the stove doors before you come up”

  He walked out without looking at her. Sarah sat deep in thought for a good fifteen minuets before reaching into her back pocket and placing the brown envelope, with its little message of despair, into the stove. She didn’t know if this was the right thing or not, but she was sure about one thing, if Rupert knew what Anna had done it would shatter his illusion of her as a loving mother. She sighed, perhaps it wasn’t an illusion. She wondered how far she’d go to protect a child of her own from a terrible death before getting up and closing the stove doors. She muttered to herself, “It’s all academic.” And went to bed.

  Chapter 13

  Fall Out

  Buster stamped the snow off his boots and then, with great difficulty, started to pull them off. Julia, already devoid of footwear, opened the lobby door into the hall, it was like entering a sauna. “Is the house always this hot?”

  “Always.”

  “Can’t you turn it down?”

  Buster grunted as his left boot became free, “Love to, but as the builder’s nicely put it, there is a slight design fault in the heating system, the heating is either flat out or off. So if you turn the thermostat down the heating clicks off and never comes on again until you press an over-ride button on the control panel. He pulled off the other boot and waddled over to the thermostat in the lounge, he turned it down and Julia couldn’t notice the difference. “If you get cold,” he said, “the control panel is in the walk in airing cupboard next to the pink bathroom.”

  Julia nodded, she could feel the warmth of the floor beneath her feet and it was somehow both comforting and disconcerting. Buster stretched his arms upwards, “Ready for bed?”

  “Not yet, wide awake after our mini-trek through the arctic.”

  He grimaced, “Why grown men ever want to cross the snow-caps is beyond me.”

  He looked up the stairs, “Fancy a root about in their study then?”

  She nodded and he led her upstairs into the room over the back lounge. To call it minimalist would have been an understatement. Three walls were off-white and the fourth was a huge picture window with matching off-white vertical blinds. In the centre, in grand isolation, sat the only real piece of furniture – a giant S shaped desk with two leather executive desk chairs. It was obviously a double desk with a chair placed each side. Buster closed the blinds. “If you press the silver button on the edge of the desk there’s a small compartment with their laptop in it, one each end his and hers so to s
peak.”

  Julia opened the compartment and opened the laptop. Buster sighed, “No good looking there, it’s double password protected and I don’t know the passwords.”

  Julia peered at the screen, “No it’s not, but there’s nothing on it, just an MSDOS chevron.”

  Buster walked over and peered over her shoulder before checking the second laptop, with the same results. Julia pressed a few keys, “And there’s no windows directory, my guess is that the hard disc’s been wiped clean.”

  Buster’s eyes swivelled to the two matching black patent leather briefcases in the corner of the room. Julia looked at him, “Why would they wipe their hard-drives?”

  Buster whispered, “Because they were never coming back.”

  Julia cocked her head, “How do you know?”

  He shrugged, “I’ve never seen Maria so miffed as when the helicopter wouldn’t land. If they were departing for good that would explain all.”

  “But there’s piles of money in the safe, and spare passports.”

  Buster nodded, “But you don’t take it, or them. Be a red flag to customs, piles of banknotes and more than one passport.”

  He gave Julia a briefcase, “Start working on the combination locks. Start with 000 and then 001 and so on. There’s only 1000 combinations each side.”

  “Oh whoopee,” she replied before sitting down.

  Sarah lay in the bed and listened to the sounds of the house. Unlike her flat it wasn’t human sounds or mechanical sounds, just the odd creak of timber and the gentle wind against the window. She began to wonder if houses like this had really nasty creepy-crawlies when she fell asleep.

  There was a plop and Julia proudly announced that she’d got one. She tried the same combination on the second lock both forward and reverse with no luck . She decided to start her combination checking on the second lock at 555 and got lucky, the lock popped at 562. Buster looked up, “Don’t open it!”

  She hesitated with her fingers on the edge of the lid. He pointed to the brief cases’ motif. “Open it while pressing that in, if you don’t you’ll get covered in yellow dye.”

  She did as she was told and opened the case. They sorted out the contents. A make-up bag, a night-dress of expensive turquoise diaphanous material, a dozen pairs of pants, an equal number of bras and a pink envelope. Buster investigated the envelope and placed the contents in front of Julia. “First class tickets on Eurostar to Paris and flights from Paris to Portugal..”

  “But where then?”

  He shrugged, “They’d have a hotel booked and stuff already there for the next part of the journey or an apartment that they’d have in reserve for years and looked after by a faithful concierge.”

  “And you didn’t know?”

  He shook his head, “Not a clue, not a bloody clue.”

  Julia looked around, “And they’d just walk away from this place?”

  Buster thought for a moment, “Probably not, this is their English Bolt-hole. They’ve poured thousands into this place and not told anyone – not even Dermot – where it is. When they’re up here they always use their mobile phones, never a landline.”

  Julia swallowed, “So the money in the safe and the extra passports are in case they ever need to come back?”

  He nodded, “Probably, make sense in case they had to leave somewhere in a hurry. Safe house so to speak.”

  He went back to fiddling with the other briefcase and Julia, for want of something to do, inspected the one that was open.

  Norman was surprised when his door opened and Petra slipped into his room wearing Julia’s spare dressing gown. She slipped it off and slid into bed beside him totally naked. “I thought,” she said with a giggle, “that you might like some instruction in bedroom scenes.”

  She silenced his reply with a kiss.

  The fire crackled as Colin sat with his arm around Jill on the lounge sofa, every body else had gone to bed long ago. Jill yawned and stirred under his arm, “It’s been lovely Colin. I really think that your folks are nice.”

  “Mum didn’t grill you too much?”

  She shook her head and Colin smelt a hint of the perfume she always sprayed on her hair. “I thought I’d get the third degree over Harriet, you know who’s the father and so on, but she was more interested in how I’d cope living in the country, it doesn’t enter her mind that if we married you might move to London to live with me.”

  Colin sighed and she suddenly felt tension in his arm, “That’s because they’re pinning their hopes of the farm onto me. Bill’s already left home, Norman wants to leave yesterday and Julia’s got a career in teaching.”

  She looked up into his eyes, “That’s fine by me, you’d be a lost cause in London.”

  She felt him relax, “Do you really mean that, it’s a heck of a change of lifestyle for you.”

  She nodded, “Isn’t that why I moved up here, as a try out? I actually love it and it’s a far better place to bring up Harriet.”

  Colin shifted slightly, “You’ve only been up here long enough to qualify for a holiday pass.”

  She put a finger over his lips, “And I’m happy to extend that to a lifetime pass, OK?”

  She kissed him tenderly on the lips and stood up, “Now I really must get some sleep. It was lovely of your sister to let us have her room for the night.”

  Colin smiled and led her upstairs, the fact that his sister may have had an ulterior motive for vacation her room never crossed his mind.

  There was a second plop and Buster smiled, “Would you believe the second combination was 007 and I started at 999?”

  Julia walked round the desk as he opened the case. He spread the contents out. One portable electric shaver, three pairs of silk boxer shorts, a bag of men’s toiletries, four brown envelopes and one pink envelope. Two of the brown envelopes had names and addresses on them and a small clutch of stamps, but none of them were sealed. He opened the pink envelope and tipped out two passports, both in the right names, and $2000 of traveller’s cheques, half signed by Jeremy and half by Maria. He picked up a brown envelope and took out the contents. Julia waited while he read what looked like to be a closely typed two page letter with a vehicle registration document on the back. He finally looked at her and cleared his throat of some imaginary obstruction. “Letter to Dermot telling him that this letter is a confirmation of an e-mail sent at midnight today stating that both casinos have been sold to a company called Black-Ball Holdings and that he is now employed by them. It also states that as a thank you for the work he’s put in for them they’ve transferred ownership of the BMW to him.”

  Julia said softly, “So they were leaving.”

  Buster nodded and picked up the second envelope, it had a half page letter, again with a vehicle registration document pinned to the back. “This is to Caitrín, she’s head croupier in the first casino they opened. They’ve given her the Mini.”

  He took the third envelope, it held a one page letter, closely typed. Buster read it and re-read it before checking the envelope. He then tipped out the contents of the final envelope, two cheque books, a brand-new bank cheque guarantee card and two small letters. Buster looked at Julia, bewilderment in his eyes, “These two books are for me. The letter states that they have gone abroad for an indefinite period and while abroad will be unreachable. They’ve asked me to look after this place and await their return. They’ve set up a bank account in my name and state that they’ve authorised £3000 a month to be paid in monthly from an offshore account for a period of ten years and that if they’re not back by then I’ll get a final payment of £20,000 to walk away and leave the house to rot. The second cheque book is for paying the house bills, rates and suchlike.”

  Julia’s eyes opened wide and she did a swift calculation, “That’s £380,000 they’re offering you.”

  He puckered his lips, “If you say so, drop in the ocean to them, reckon their both multi-millionaires by now if they’ve sold both casinos.”

  “They must trust you.” />
  He ignored he statement and looked at the first of the two small letters as he spoke, “They’ve even forged my signature on the back of the cheque card and at the bank, and they’ve even told me to get the heating fixed!”

  He looked up and waved the letter, “Solicitor’s letter confirming that I’m authorised by them to make any repairs and alterations to the house that I see fit and draw on the house account until they get a countermanding letter. Second one’s a copy.”

  Julia frowned, “Suppose you didn’t want to play ball?”

  He waved the long letter. “I’m to leave a plea for a Mr Kenneth Eric Broxton-Smith of Haverhill in Suffolk to contact his solicitors as a matter of urgency in the personal column of the Times on three consecutive Fridays.”

  He tossed the letter down, “They want ten years of my life as a bloody caretaker.”

  Julia looked at him, “Wanted Buster, it’s what they wanted; it’s not what’s happened.”

  He simmered down and Julia said softly, “You know what this means, you could live here forever and be paid for the privilege.”

  He shrugged, “Ten years isn’t forever.”

  She walked back round her side of the desk and sat down. “But it needn’t be ten years. They say walk away and leave the house to rot, suppose, given that we know they are never coming back, you just stayed on once the ten years is up?”

  Buster pondered on this and then looked Julia straight in the eyes. “Only one reason for doing that.”

  “Which is?”

  “If I was living here with a lass like you,” he paused, “no not a lass like you, but you and you alone.”

  Mark listened to the muffled noises coming through his floor and sighed. He was glad that Jill, Harriet and Simon were at the other end of the house and that his parent’s bedroom was in the old annex over the kitchen that was totally isolated from the noises. He just couldn’t understand his brother at all in his liaisons with Petra. He sighed again and thought of Laura, his almost girl-friend. He resolved to give her a call in the morning and fell asleep before he could think of what to say.