Earlier that evening, as Helena was working on the chair she had to finish before tackling Ivo’s desk, she had been distracted by the sound of the telephone. Wanting to finish what she was doing, she had left it to ring until the answering machine cut in. By seven both her concentration and her hands had started to wobble, and she packed up for the day. When she had cleaned her tools and locked the shed, she went across to the house to listen to all the messages. The last was from her mother, who had said: ‘Hello, Helena. This is Miranda. My case has just finished, and I feel like a treat. I know you don’t approve of what I’ve been doing, but I wondered whether you would be prepared to celebrate with me? I’d very much like to take you out to dinner. If you are around and would like to come, could you give me a ring? I was thinking about Ferrato’s in Old Gloucester Street. It’s new but said to be very good.’
Helena quickly tapped in her mother’s number and thanked her for the invitation, agreeing to meet at the restaurant at eight o’clock. Catching sight of herself in the bathroom mirror a moment later and seeing what a mess she looked, she wished that she had asked for an extra half hour. She wrenched off her clothes and turned on the shower to maximum force, letting the jets sluice the dust out of her hair and off her skin before rubbing in shampoo and soap. She got some of both in her eyes and eventually emerged from the shower clean but uncomfortable.
Later, when she had dried her hair, she dressed in the black silk trousers and a taupe shirt. As she stroked on some mascara to disguise the redness of her eyes, she noticed that her clean hair was looking particularly lank. She rummaged in one of the cupboards for some mousse that Mike’s predecessor had given her in an attempt to endow her with the sort of hair he thought his girlfriend should have.
When she had smoothed in the small spreading ball of sticky white foam and attempted to put her hair into some kind of shape, the whole effect was worse than before, stiff and most unlike her. Irritated and despising herself for minding so much about how she looked, she rushed back into the bathroom to wash her hair all over again. Then she had to change her shirt because she had splashed so much water on it.
The whole silly process left her no time to walk to Ferrato’s, which she had wanted to do to loosen her muscles after bending over her work all day. Instead she took the van to Old Gloucester Street and found a parking space easily enough, but she was ten minutes late when she walked, breathless, into the restaurant.
To her surprise Miranda stood up and said: ‘Oh, you do look well. How lovely!’
‘Really? Ratstaily hair and all?’
‘Definitely. You’ve got more colour than usual and a wonderful light in your eyes. Come and sit down and tell me why. What would you like to drink?’
Helena tried to think of something to order that would not make it seem as though she were either alcoholic or ashamed of the amount she had drunk when Miranda came to Clerkenwell. After a moment Miranda said: ‘I’m having a glass of the house claret. How would that be?’
‘That would be fine,’ said Helena. ‘Look, I don’t want you to think …’ She could not work out how to finish the sentence. Her mother laughed.
‘I don’t. And I have assumed that you don’t think that’s the amount I normally drink either.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘There you are, then. That’s your answer. As we now know, we’re enough alike for you to have had similar reactions to mine.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true. I did feel bad about it though, when I realized how much I’d got through.’
‘You shouldn’t have worried. I enjoyed the evening very much indeed, and I was glad that you could let go of that much control with me. I hoped the same might be true for you.’
Helena could not think of a neat enough phrase to return the compliment and so she merely smiled.
‘And I’m also relieved to see,’ said Miranda with a more impish look than usual, ‘that nothing dreadful came of it.’
At that Helena laughed and said quite easily: ‘My hangover could certainly have been described as dreadful, but I do know what you mean.’
‘That’s better,’ said her mother with an entirely new smile, warm and almost trustful.
‘Isn’t it? Now tell me about the case. Presumably you won it if you’re in a mood to celebrate.’
‘I did, which is why I was in two minds about whether to involve you this evening. I know that the idea of those two out on the streets again worries you.’
‘And it doesn’t worry you? Really?’ As Miranda hesitated, Helena added with deliberate wickedness: ‘After all, we are very alike.’
‘I deserved that. Yes, all right; it does bother me. But that’s all you’re getting on that subject. By the way, I’ve brought you a kind of present. I’m not sure that you’re going to like it much, but …’
‘A present? I’m sure I will,’ said Helena with unusual emphasis. ‘How frightfully kind of you!’
Miranda leaned down to get something out of her handbag. When she sat up again she was holding an ordinary white envelope, which she passed across the table. As Helena accepted it, wondering why she suddenly felt unsafe, a waitress appeared to take their order. Miranda waved her away.
‘I’ve been in two minds about this as well, but since we shared that evening I’ve been wanting to clear something up and this seemed the best way.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Helena held on to the envelope but could not bring herself to open it. She reminded herself that there were innumerable occasions in the past on which she had felt just as much at risk for no reason whatsoever.
Miranda licked her lips as though they had become suddenly dry. She looked directly at Helena and said formally: ‘I know I upset you that evening last month when you came to my house and I suggested that Ivo might be hiding something. I found that I couldn’t bear you to think I’d said it out of malice.’
Helena frowned, remembering her own discovery that Ivo had not been as open with her as she had once assumed.
‘I’m not sure I thought it was malice exactly,’ she said, ‘but I suppose I was a bit troubled that you should say those sorts of things about someone you hardly know. After all, you’ve no reason to slander him. It did seem unfair.’
‘I know. That’s why I wanted to show you what I meant.’
‘Oh.’
‘The easiest way seemed to be to find out who it is he’s working for at that farmhouse he lives in,’ said Miranda.
‘And have you?’
‘Not exactly. Have a look.’
Helena knew that she did not want the ‘present’her mother was offering her. She also knew that she would never be able to refuse it. If she did not look at whatever document Miranda had produced, she would end up tormenting herself with wild imaginings of what it might have been. Eventually, knowing that she would have to do something, she tore open the envelope.
It contained a copy of the Land Registry certificate for Ivo’s farmhouse. Helena read it twice and looked up, frowning.
‘But I don’t understand,’ she said, feeling as obstructive as she used to feel whenever Fin had tried to explain anything legal to her. ‘I thought they had to put the freeholder’s name in, not the caretaker or the tenant.’
‘They have to put the name of the registered proprietor and that of any mortgage holder.’ Miranda sounded as though she were controlling impatience with difficulty. ‘And that’s exactly what they’ve done.’
‘You mean you’re telling me that the whole house is Ivo’s?’ said Helena, still staring at her mother. ‘And without a mortgage?’
‘Either that or he’s someone’s nominee, yes,’ said Miranda. She raised her hand and then let it drop onto the tablecloth again as though she had wanted to reach across to touch Helena and then thought better of it. ‘Shall we order some food? You look as though you need it. You’ve gone a bit pale. Here, have a look at the menu.’
Helena stared down at the stiff card, not feeling hungry, and chose the lightest things she could see, which were melon and grilled sole. Miranda waved to the waitress and gave the order, herself choosing an artichoke and calves’liver with sage. She also asked for a litre of sparkling mineral water.
Helena noticed the gleam of amusement in Miranda’s eyes as she talked of water, but could not respond to it. All her energies were involved in dealing with what she had just learned. She was no expert in property prices, but the house she had seen had been a large one and appealing, set as it was in countryside that was probably very attractive to those who liked that sort of thing. She imagined that Ivo must have paid something like two hundred thousand for it, possibly even more. He could hardly have made that much from tutoring and gambling, however successful he might have been.
‘What is it?’ asked Miranda quietly.
Helena looked up to see that the waitress had gone. She shook her head, finding the sympathy in her mother’s eyes almost harder to bear than the coldness that had preceded it or the incipient contempt she thought she had seen.
‘I don’t understand,’ Helena said. ‘He told me that he had an understanding bank manager when I asked how on earth he had managed to buy that desk, which is worth a small fortune itself. But this … Do you know how he paid for it?’
Miranda shook her head. ‘There’s probably a perfectly simple explanation, merely one he hasn’t chosen to give the people who care about him.’
Helena looked away, trying not to think about all the implications of that. The waitress brought their first courses. Still in silence Helena picked up her spoon and ate some melon, which was ripe and highly scented but she could hardly taste at all. Miranda pulled off the leaves of her artichoke one by one and scraped off the glaucous flesh between her small, sharp-looking teeth.
‘What sort of explanation?’ Helena asked when her mother was about halfway to the choke itself.
‘I’ve no idea.’ Miranda glanced up, a scraped leaf between her fingers, looking surprised. ‘You know him so much better than I that you must be in a much better position to guess. What do you think?’
Helena did not want to answer what had sounded like a taunt, and yet she had to say something.
‘His sister suggested that he might be on the game.’ She tried to sound frivolous and as though she were enjoying a trivial joke that could have no connection to anything in real life. ‘Perhaps he’s got a rich admirer who bought it and bestowed it on him.’
‘Well, he’s certainly pretty enough,’ said her mother just as lightly. ‘And good enough company to be very expensive.’
‘Yes, but it’s a stupid idea. I don’t believe it.’
‘I know you don’t. Nor do I.’
‘Why did you do it?’ asked Helena after a long, uncomfortable silence.
‘I told you: to show you that I wasn’t being unfair when I suggested he might not be quite the simple, charming young man he pretends to be.’ Miranda paused, looking at her daughter, and then added casually, as though it didn’t matter very much: ‘You see, I mind what you think of me, Helena.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘You can.’
Helena shook her head. She was surprised to find that there was a paradoxical reassurance mixed in with all the other emotions that were making it so difficult to eat, but it did not take her long to understand it. For months she had been wrestling with the knowledge that the cruel, unfeeling deserter of her childhood was in fact an intelligent, sympathetic woman, whom she would have had no difficulty in liking if they had met as strangers. To discover that Miranda was indeed ruthless – perhaps even malicious and certainly conscienceless – made the old anger seem more acceptable to Helena than it had for some time.
‘In that case, what possible motive do you imagine I might have had?’ asked Miranda as coolly as though she were cross-examining a hostile witness.
Helena looked at the familiar face in front of her and felt an equally familiar misery.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps to make trouble between me and Ivo in order to hurt Irene. After all, you hate her, don’t you?’
Miranda had stopped tearing the leaves off her artichoke. Helena noticed the waitress coming back towards their table as though to remove their plates and then, having seen their faces, backing away.
‘You don’t know me very well,’ said Miranda, looking at the floor.
‘I haven’t exactly had much chance,’ snapped Helena before she could stop herself. She moderated her voice and added quietly: ‘And you do hate her, don’t you?’
‘I suppose in a way I do. I think we’d better stop this conversation here. It’s not going anywhere useful. I’m sorry the information has been so unwelcome.’
After a short silence, which Helena could not find a way to break, Miranda launched into an account of some of the more entertaining cases of her career. As she talked, Helena managed to bury her difficult feelings and retrieve most of her manners.
‘You enjoy your work, don’t you?’ she said politely as she finished a respectable amount of the fish and was relieved to hear that her voice had returned to normal.
‘Yes, I do now. It was hard to begin with; so hard that I can’t imagine how I stuck to it. And I still get so nervous sometimes that I can hardly force myself to walk into court.’
‘Although you win mostly these days, don’t you?’
‘Often enough, but not mostly. All barristers have to lose sometimes. After all, fifty per cent of all cases are lost.’
It took Helena a moment to work that out but then she smiled.
‘Yes, I suppose so, but not, I imagine, fifty per cent of each individual barrister’s cases. Some must lose an awful lot more than others.’
‘Naturally. Now, pudding?’
‘No, thank you. It’s been a good dinner, and I’m glad … well, you know, that in a way we’ve got back on track. But I think I ought to be getting home now.’
‘Won’t you even have coffee with me?’
‘No, thank you. Really. But it’s been …’
‘Not exactly fun, I know. But at least I’m not hiding anything from you. That seemed important.’
Helena flinched and tried to disguise the movement by laying her napkin on the table. Miranda, apparently unaware of her daughter’s turmoil, signalled for the bill, paid by credit card and got up. When they reached the door, she said: ‘Thank you for coming this evening. It’s meant a lot to me. I’m sorry about the bad bits.’
‘It was kind of you to bring me here,’ said Helena as they went out on to the warm, dusty pavement to walk to her van. ‘Can I give you a lift home?’
‘No, thank you. It’s only a short walk and it’ll do me good.’ Miranda waited on the pavement as Helena unlocked the van and got into the driving seat, winding down the window. Miranda bent down, smiled and said casually: ‘The only reason I have ever had for hating Irene is that she made you love her so much. Good night.’
She straightened up and walked away without giving Helena a chance to say anything at all, which was perhaps just as well since she had no idea what she would have said.
When she got back home, having tried to think of nothing but the traffic and the way the van’s gears were sticking, she found a note from Mike pushed through her letter box.
Dearest Helena, Just back from New York – the deal was done and they signed! – I whizzed round, but there you weren’t. Alas. I found your stepmother and thought I was going to be consoled by her company, but she refused even to have a drink with me on the grounds that you haven’t introduced us yet. I thought that was rather a pity. She looked both interesting and … nice is the only word I can think of and it’s pretty pathetic. Anyway, I wasn’t surprised that you like her so much. And she clearly feels just the same. You’re very lucky.
It would be good if you felt like ringing when you get in. I hope you had a good evening. All love, Mike.
Touched both by his choice of words and by Irene’s loyalty, Helena walked over to the answering machine. Sure enough, the light was winking. She pressed the various buttons and soon heard Irene’s voice, saying: ‘I think your Mike is thoroughly attractive. I’m not surprised you don’t want to share him. We ran into each other outside your front door, both wanting the solace of your company. I hope he got his. I’ll settle for a chat in due course when you have time to ring.’
The world is good and there are good people in it, and I don’t have to think about anything or anyone except them, thought Helena as she pressed the automatic dialling button for Irene’s number. Then she realized that she could not talk to Irene until she had sorted out what, if anything, she was going to do with the knowledge Miranda had given her. She cancelled the call just in time and instead rang Mike, who for once seemed safer than anyone else in her life.
‘Helena! You’re back,’ he said before she had opened her mouth. It was only later that she thought it odd that he had known it was she who was calling him.
‘Yes. Sorry I wasn’t here when you came round.’
‘No need for that. You’re allowed a life of your own.’
‘Yes. Perhaps. Anyway, how was your trip?’
‘Oh, all right. Look, it’s not very late. Would you … How would you feel if I popped round and told you all about it?’
‘I’d love it. Have you eaten? I’m not sure there’s much food here.’
‘I’m not after food.’ He laughed. ‘Just you.’
Helena laughed too and hoped that the sound was convincing. She had been feeling the first signs of panic and was determined to stop them before they grew into a full-blown attack. Her breathing was faster and shallower than usual, her forehead felt tight, nausea gripped her stomach, and she wanted more than anything else for someone to hold on to her physically and tell her that everything would be all right.
‘I don’t have panic attacks any more,’ she said as soon as she had put down the telephone receiver. ‘I’ve grown out of them. This is something else. I can stop it.’
If she could have wiped out the knowledge Miranda had given her, she would have done so at once, but it was there in her mind and nothing she could do would take it away or calm the wild fears it was whipping up. No matter how often she told herself that Ivo could not possibly be storing stolen antiques in the farmhouse, or acting as a front for a money launderer, or, as Jane had already suggested, blackmailing someone, Helena could not persuade herself that he was not involved in something illegal.
Mike arrived before she could work herself into a complete frenzy and she ran out of the drawing room to open the front door. Even the sight of his cheerful duck-like face was reassuring. As he stepped across the threshold, she laid her head against his broad chest and felt his arms close around her.
Kissing the top of her head, he kicked the door shut behind him and said nothing. He just stood there, stroking her back until she moved away.
‘Hello,’ she said, leaning away to smile up at him. ‘Sorry about that. Come and tell me all about New York. It must have been very tiring having to go back so soon like that.’
‘I’m used to it,’ he said, following her into the drawing room, where the remains of the day’s light had drawn warm lines on the polished wooden floor. ‘The worst was the weather. Manhattan was still revoltingly hot. Coming out of those air-conditioned buildings into the street was like walking into a wall of wringing wet, hot towels. But they did finally sign and that was all that mattered. I saw some old friends, too, who sent you a message.’
‘Me? Do I know them?’
‘No. But they said to tell you that you were doing a great job. They said they’d never seen my stress levels so low and that since that must be down to you they’d like to make your acquaintance next time I go over.’
Helena smiled. ‘How lovely! I’m not sure I could ever take the credit for relaxing anyone, but it’s a jolly nice compliment.’
‘Would you come?’ he asked casually, watching her over the rims of his glasses. ‘To New York I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said at once, before she remembered how much she detested travelling. Then she decided that Mike’s offer to include her in his life was worth much more than any of her old phobias and said again: ‘Yes. I’d like that, very much.’
‘Good. That’s settled then. So what have you been doing while I was away?’
‘Nothing half as interesting as you. Finishing a chair I’ve been restoring for a faithful but impatient client is really all.’
‘And this evening?’ As her face closed in, Mike quickly added: ‘You don’t need to look like that. I was only asking. I’m not trying to keep tabs on you.’
‘No, I know,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s only that I was dining with my mother and finding it even harder than usual. Let’s talk about something different. I … I’ll tell you all about her in the end, but I can’t quite yet. It’s still too kind of raw.’
‘I liked your stepmother,’ he said obediently.
‘Good.’ Helena relaxed and let herself lean against him on the sofa. ‘Ah, that’s better. She’s good-looking, isn’t she?’
Mike frowned. ‘I suppose so, in a magnificent sort of way.’
‘Don’t you like magnificence?’
‘Not all that much in people. She’d make a striking statue, but …’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Come on, Helena. You know that you’re my ideal of feminine whatsit; am I likely to be taken with someone almost your exact opposite?’
She blinked. ‘I am?’
‘You must know that.’
Amused, taken aback, and very pleased, she was tempted to use his own question back to him: how can I possibly know if you don’t tell me?
‘Would I be this besotted with you if you weren’t?’
‘I don’t know. Are you?’
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. Then he looked at her again, shaking his head.
‘I think I’d better take you up to bed, hadn’t I? Physical communication seems to be a lot easier than words.’
Later, as they were unromantically drinking large mugs of tea-bag tea in bed, Helena said as casually as possible: ‘Mike, you know how you said that people with money to launder use businesses like yours?’
‘I’m not sure I ever said anything quite like that.’ He turned his head sleepily to watch her face. ‘I imagine it was more that money-launderers would like to use businesses like mine.’
‘Yes, probably. It comes to much the same.’
‘No, it doesn’t: not the same at all,’ he said with a note of mock outrage in his voice. ‘Come on, Helena. Don’t insult me or my company.’
‘No, sorry,’ she said, trying to look as though she shared his amusement. ‘I’ve just been wondering ever since you told me that: what other sorts of businesses do money launderers use?’
‘Why have you been wondering that? What are money launderers to you, Helena?’
‘Or me to Hecuba?’ she said without thinking.
‘I’m sorry?’ Mike looked so puzzled that she realized what she had said and tried to explain, repeating: ‘“What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?” Hamlet, you know. It’s just one of those quotations that pop up like toast whenever a phrase pushes the right button.’
Mike looked at her as though she was talking nonsense and she reached out to touch his bare shoulder.
‘It’s not important, Mike. Nor are money-launderers. I was just curious and you seemed to know such a lot about them that I thought I’d ask what it is they actually do when they suborn a business.’
As she watched his face change, Helena knew that his New York friends would have changed their minds about her effect on his stress levels.
‘As far as I know,’ he said, sounding bored, ‘the usual thing is to try to find a cash-based retail concern: garage, restaurant, hairdresser or casino; something like that. Anyone who regularly takes large amounts of cash to a bank is useful. The people with the funds to launder will add them to the legitimate takings and then be repaid, perhaps on spurious invoices in the case of garages and the like or with a casino’s note. Any form of gambling is particularly useful because the amounts can be so large and as they’re tax-free I imagine the records can be more flexible than in other sorts of business.’
Helena listened with only half her mind as Mike went on to describe the three stages of money-laundering: placement, layering and integration. The rest was obsessed with the words ‘gambling’, ‘casinos’, and ‘flexible records’, which seemed to lead her straight back to Ivo’s reluctant – and in retrospect wholly unconvincing – explanation of his wealth. She wished that she had never started the conversation.
‘And, as you know perfectly well, art and antiques are exceedingly useful because of the secrecy your sort of business uses,’ Mike added, making Helena’s mind switch to the present again with an almost visible jolt.
‘Yes, I do know,’ she said bleakly. ‘Not least because no-one has to prove title to an antique or work of art before they sell it.’
‘Helena, what’s the matter?’ he said in a quite different voice.
‘Nothing. I must be tired.’ She pretended to yawn.
Mike did not look convinced, but after a long look at her defended face he nodded as though he had seen something there. Having put his mug down on the bedside table, he took her head between his hands and stroked the hair away from her face.
‘Try not to worry too much,’ he said gently.
‘Worry? I’m not worrying.’
‘You’re a dreadful liar, Helena, which is admirable from my point of view if not from yours. If you’ve persuaded yourself that someone is trying to use you to launder money, I honestly think you’re off your trolley. Without wanting to be rude, your business just isn’t big enough to interest a money-launderer.’
She managed to laugh. ‘That’s not rude at all. It’s lovely and reassuring.’
‘Good. Now, I know you fret about all sorts of things, but thinking you might become unknowingly involved in a money-laundering scam is pretty far-fetched even for you. I take it that is what the problem is?’
‘In a way.’
‘Well, it’s idiotic. I’m sorry if that sounds unsympathetic, but it’s a completely irrational fear. Now, I’m going to have to go because I’ve got a hellishly early start tomorrow and meetings stacked up all day. If the last one finishes at a civilized hour, I’ll ring you. Can you control your terrors until then?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ she said, surprised and touched that he wanted to help. ‘I’m sorry to be so silly.’
‘No need. Just don’t torment yourself with weird fantasies about things that are never going to happen. No, don’t get up. I’ll let myself out.’
‘I’ll have to,’ she said, reaching for her dressing gown. ‘I’ve got to lock up after you.’