It took me a few minutes to take in what Delia Kent was telling me: Alistair had tried to commit suicide last night by jumping off London Bridge.
I guess that was some super-disturbing news he’d heard from Dame Whatsis.
Delia kept urging me to drink tea—the English solution to everything. The milky sweet drink was actually pretty soothing, once my hands stopped shaking enough to get the cup to my lips.
“Alistair tried to kill himself. But he’s all right.” I didn’t voice this as a question, but a statement of fact, as I worked at getting my brain around it. “He’s in a hospital? Should we go there?”
A flash of lightning illuminated the garden outside. The rain was still coming down by the pailful.
“No. My husband Thomas is with him. He’ll phone here to let me know if I should take Alistair’s papers and things to the hospital or to jail.”
Jail. It was too awful. I looked at Delia, whose flawless face and halo of golden curls made her seem otherworldly.
“I don’t suppose Alistair mentioned why he wanted to kill himself?”
Delia’s expression darkened.
“Well, because of you, of course, dear. Because you were going to leave him. He’s potty about you, you know.”
Her beauty might be supernatural, but not her brain power.
“I’m afraid he’s been telling you fairy tales after all. I never said I was leaving.”
Of course, I’d been thinking about leaving before I discovered the Brontës would provide no refuge. Had he sensed that without my speaking it out loud? I felt an awful pang of guilt.
Delia gave a grim laugh. “That’s just like Alistair, isn’t it? He’ll never talk about what’s really bothering him. That’s why I never know what parts of his stories to believe. One must always surmount his wall of charming banter and conversational embellishments.” Her mouth stiffened. “But the problem is your drug-taking, dear. I know you probably just smoke a little herb, but he’s terribly sensitive about it. He grew up with an alcoholic father, you know—completely out of control—who was cut off from the family fortune.”
I suppose I showed my disbelief, because Delia stopped and covered her mouth.
“Oh shit, have I let something out of the bag? Alistair puts on such a show of being wealthy with the silly suits and name dropping, but he hasn’t a bean. I’m sorry. But you had to find out sooner or later.”
It didn’t surprise me at all to find out he had no money, but the rest was another story. Nonsense, from beginning to end. I couldn’t say anything for a moment, so I picked up the moldering crumpet and took it to the bin under the sink. Alistair didn’t even know who his father was—as he was always eager to point out when I started complaining about mine. I stared at the rain sheeting the window to the garden. It made everything outside look as unreal as this situation felt.
I had to fight back with a little truth. “Miss Kent, I know Alistair is poor, but he doesn’t have an alcoholic father.”
Her expression didn’t even change. “Of course his father’s not alcoholic now. He’s been to one of those rehabilitation places. Did Alistair tell you how he got him there?”
She motioned me back to my chair and offered more tea. She was trying to be kind, so I sat.
“It’s quite a story. It seems his asshole father had two bottles of terribly expensive wine—a Chateau Margaux, I believe—but no matter how drunk the man was, he never touched those bottles because he was saving them until Alistair finished Princeton…”
I nearly snorted tea out my nose as I suppressed a laugh. To think Alistair had pretended he didn’t even remember our adventure with the wine. In fact, I’d thought he wasn’t paying attention when I told him my father’s rehab story last Thursday. We’d made love quite passionately afterward—while in his head Alistair must have been remanufacturing my story in order to take it to Delia.
“Miss Kent, when did Alistair tell you this—about the Chateau Margaux?”
“A few days ago, when he came to Bedfordshire to bring us a copy of his play.”
Her smile was strained.
“Do call me Delia. I’m not that much older than you.” She sipped tea. “But you do understand, don’t you—why his experiences with his father make him so bloody nervous about your drug taking?”
It didn’t seem worth it to tell her the truth about Alistair’s story-larceny. It seemed so petty. But I was getting annoyed by the drug accusations.
“I had one hit off a joint. Mostly for the tobacco. I was out of cigarettes.”
“Exactly.” Delia gave me a knowing smile. “You just experiment—like everyone else of your generation…except Alistair. He seems to have been born middle-aged.”
She reached in the purse hung on the back of her chair.
“But I’m so glad you smoke. I’m dying for a fag.” She offered a pack of Benson and Hedges.
I couldn’t help feeling grateful as we both lit up. I’d smoked half my pack since Alistair took off in his huff yesterday.
“So Alistair finally finished his Gatsby play?” I steered toward a change of subject. “That’s fantastic. He’s been working on it since I met him.”
Delia leaned back and blew smoke.
“In a manner of speaking. He finished it when he was living in our guest house last spring, and he and I read some scenes together that weren’t bad…”
She stopped and let out a heavy sigh.
“But I’m afraid most of it’s bloody awful. You mustn’t ever, ever tell him I said that, but… he’ll find out soon. He’s full of tragically high hopes that Thomas will direct it and I’ll star. I’m afraid he even approached Dame Mary Whitlock about playing Gatsby’s mother....”
She scrunched her face in an exaggerated cringe.
“Dame Mary called me last weekend, having read the thing with the understanding Thomas and I were already attached, and she was, shall we say, underwhelmed.”
Dame Mary Whitlock. That’s who Alistair visited yesterday. Now I understood.
“Don’t you think he might have been suicidal over the play—not me?”
“Oh, no. I haven’t even talked to him about it. In fact, now, I’m not sure how I will. It will be so fucking devastating to him. I’ll have to caution Dame Mary to be very, very gentle—and not let on that Thomas thinks its bollocks. I think Alistair is supposed to see her this week. Maybe it’s just as well he’ll be in custody.”
But I knew he’d already been to see Dame Mary, poor guy. He probably pushed her to see him earlier than previously arranged. He could be like an eager child when he wanted something, and I imagined he wanted very much to have that play produced. It sounds calloused, but hearing that he’d been hit with such a defeat made things better. It took the blame off me.
“Are the police going to arrest him right there in the hospital? That’s going to be pretty devastating, too.”
Alistair wouldn’t do well in jail at any point, but now it might be tragic.
“He’ll be mortified. He is already. That’s why he sent me here to get his things. He said he couldn’t face you if you were still here. He told me you’d never forgive him. I suppose I made it worse by not believing you existed. I do apologize for that.” She glanced at the bread knife. “I suppose I pictured you as a bit more…I mean, um, less…hippiesh.”
I looked down at my traveling jeans and elderly T-shirt. “I’m not a hippie. I just don’t dress very well. Alistair’s been trying to help…”
I stopped myself, with the awful thought that maybe Alistair had bought me the nice things in order to costume me for the role of “heiress” to impress people like Delia.
She chose to ignore my comment. “But you still love him?”
I exhaled slowly, listening to the thunder crashing above us, wondering if I’d ever loved Alistair. He had a hold on me, but I wasn’t sure I’d call it love.
Delia took my hesitation as a no.
“Please let him down kindly. He’s so bloody sensitive. You’re not the first girl who’s sent him over the edge. There was one named Emily. He claimed she was a wealthy heiress, although she was living in some scruffy flat in Maida Vale. They’d been lovers at University, but when he looked her up, she slammed the door in his face. ”
Emily. It was hard for me to keep my own face under control. I suppose he’d genuinely gone to look up the Brontës and they’d given him short shrift, but Alistair’s talent for pretzeling the truth into new and self-serving configurations made me want to laugh out loud. I held my lips together and made an “mmm” sound.
Delia kept going. “He’d been doing a piece on our house in Surrey when it happened, and the next I heard, he’d taken an overdose of tablets and collapsed in the men’s room at Claridge’s. Emily devastated him that much.”
I nodded, trying not to show my skepticism. “You’ve known him a long time?”
Delia gave a wry smile. “Oh, no. He introduced himself to us at a theater party a year ago. He was somebody’s guest. I forget who. He’d seen me in a production of Gatsby a couple of seasons ago, and kept larding on the praise. I have to admit I thought he was a little much at first—and such a child—but when he contacted us saying he was doing a photo piece on English country houses for a big-circulation American magazine, Thomas advised me to accept. I’d just wrapped a little independent picture with no publicity budget. Alistair offered the kind of publicity they couldn’t otherwise afford.”
I nodded politely. If I hadn’t seen the Look article with my own eyes, I would have put this story in the same category as the Chateau Margaux, but at this point he seemed to have been telling Delia the truth.
“Jesus, that sounded so fucking money-grubbing, didn’t it?” Delia offered me another cigarette. “But Alistair worked magic. After the issue came out, the film got wide release. Alistair’s been so helpful. He seems to know everybody.”
I was beginning to wonder if “seems” might not be the operative word here, but I wasn’t ready to say so out loud. “This suicide attempt—the first one. It happened while he was photographing your house?”
“It was just after he’d finished the shoot. He’d left a camera lens in the conservatory—we’d had such lovely chats there—and needed to come back for it. Apparently that was the day he’d been dumped by this Emily girl. I knew something was terribly wrong, but he wouldn’t say what.”
I made sympathetic noises.
Delia shook her head. “I’m afraid I treated him badly at that point. He was in a state and asked if he could stay in our guest house for a few days, and I flatly refused. Thomas was coming home, you see, and I didn’t want Thom to think…” She heaved a sigh. “My husband and I had been having difficulties and he’d gone off to New York for three months and…” She interrupted herself. “Not that Thomas wouldn’t have welcomed him. Alistair had been a great help finding Thomas a furnished flat in New York.”
This had a familiar ring. “Alistair can be such a wizard at solving problems, can’t he? He once found my missing luggage…”
Delia grabbed my hand with sudden ferocity. “I didn’t sleep with him. You need to know I would never do that. But there was, well, a flirtatious nature to our friendship that I was afraid might upset Thomas, so I sent Alistair packing. With terrible consequences…the next thing I knew, I got a call from the concierge at Claridge’s.”
Uh-huh. “After the Claridge’s incident—you changed your mind about the guest house?” Alistair’s suicide attempts were beginning to look awfully convenient.
Delia nodded, her eyes full of guilt. “I felt so dreadful. It was the least I could do. He spent a couple of months there working on his play, and he was terribly helpful to me with some financial dealings with American producers. But when summer came, we really needed the house for guests who had already been invited. That’s when I offered him this cottage. As I told him—he needed to be in London anyway, where he could meet someone new to get over Emily.” She beamed. “And then you appeared—his old flame. Like magic. Had you come looking for him?”
“No. It was just dumb luck we ran into each other.” I wondered if I was the one who was dumb. Had he somehow engineered that, too?
“It was sodding good luck for Alistair.” Delia gave me a motherly smile. “He was devastated when you left him two years ago for that revolutionary—the one who died blowing things up in Philadelphia.”
So that’s how he’d been playing it.
“Alistair’s so fond of your family. He says he’s had wonderful times at your estate in Kennebunkport.”
I murmured something about my Aunt enjoying his company but I knew it was time to tell Delia the truth. She and Sir Thomas were being taken for a ride. Alistair must have faked those suicide attempts. He probably didn’t have a scratch on him. I stubbed out my cigarette, trying to decide where to begin.
But noises outside startled us. The front door opened with a whoosh of wind and rain and in came a handsome older man, followed by Alistair—an Alistair I hardly recognized. He limped in with an arm in a sling and a large bandage on his right cheek.
“I was able to talk that watchman out of filing charges,” the older man said with a grin. “Alistair is free as a bird.”
As Alistair limped toward us, Delia rose to meet him, but he pushed past her and reached for me with his one good arm. “Oh, Nicky, can you ever forgive me? I was so terrified I’d lost you…I’ve fouled things up so badly. I feel like Jay Gatsby, as “foul dust floats in the wake of my dreams.”
I looked at the raging storm outside, then at Delia and the man who must be her husband, Sir Thomas Hume. Even damp, he had that glossy, polished look of the very rich. I knew what I had to do.
I threw my arms around Alistair and said, “Of course I forgive you. I’ll stay right here and nurse you until it’s time for my flight back home.”
“Let’s leave these lovebirds alone,” Sir Thomas said, giving his wife a kiss. “It’s time we were on our way home. We have a long drive back to Biggleswood.”
I watched them rush out into the storm, leaving their warm, cozy cottage to Alistair and me. I felt a pang of guilt. They were such nice people. And now I was conning them, too.
“Oh, damn, I’m bleeding again,” Alistair said. “I’m afraid I’ve got some on you, Nick.” He touched the damp bandage on his cheek. Blood was seeping through it.
I felt something warm on my forehead and wiped it off with my hand.
It was blood all right. Warm. Red. And very real.