“I suggest we review the situation in a month’s time,” Adrian continued. “And leave the offer on the table until then.”

“That sounds reasonable to me,” said Jennifer.

“And me,” mumbled Simon.

Adrian looked at Uncle Larry with raised eyebrows. The old fellow cleared his throat and adjusted the knot of his tie. “Fair enough,” he said at last.

Bella looked across at me and made a mocking little circle of her mouth, as if to say, “Oh dear.” But what she actually said was: “Well, why not?”

“Because this should be settled now,” I said, trying hard not to shout. “Once and for all.”

“But that’s not the sentiment of the meeting,” said Adrian, goading me with the placidity of his expression. “Is it?”

“Apparently not.”

“Very well, then.” He smiled and flicked open his diary. “I suggest we hold a special meeting to discuss progress on, let me see, Thursday the twenty-eighth of October.”

“No good,” objected Simon gloomily. “You and me are going up to Lancashire, remember? To persuade a certain rising star to flash a T and S bat in front of the TV cameras.”

“Of course. The following Thursday, then. The fourth of November.”

“That’s six weeks away,” I protested.

“Well, we’re all busy people, Robin,” Adrian replied. “Especially me, now I have to go to Sydney at short notice.”

“Yes, but you only asked for-” I gave up, sensing hostility growing around me. It was bad enough for me to have opposed what Simon, Jennifer and Uncle Larry all obviously considered to be a sensible compromise. I was now in danger of looking petty-minded into the bargain. “Oh, forget it,” I concluded impatiently. “The fourth of November it is.”

“Good,” said Adrian, so affably you might have thought an unfortunate clash of dates was all he was trying to resolve. “Will you be able to join us then, Bella?”

“I’ll be able to, certainly,” she replied. “As to whether I will…” She glanced across at me and shook her head faintly, as if to disclaim responsibility for the way things had gone. “That depends.”

Bella and I had agreed beforehand to leave Frenchman’s Road at different times, in order to avoid stoking up suspicion, and to rendezvous at the Five Bells in Buriton. I’d expected to feel in a celebratory mood, tolerant of her vagaries. Instead, I was angry and resentful. Angry with myself for not having foreseen what might happen at the meeting. And resentful of the enviable position events had placed her in. Instead of having to fulfil her half of our bargain first, then trust me to fulfil mine, she could now sit back and await the results of my efforts on her behalf, knowing it would be six weeks before I could call in her debt. By which time, if I’d achieved nothing of value, she could go back on our agreement, secure in the knowledge that there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it. There was no way I could stretch my enquiries out to fill six weeks. Long before the fourth of November, I’d have to come up with the goods. Or admit my failure. And the latter seemed much the likelier outcome. Which left me with no alternative but to seek a promise from her I knew she wouldn’t feel bound to keep.

“I’ll do what I can, Bella. But if I end up even more certain than I am now that Paul’s telling the truth…”

“Can you rely on me to vote with you on the fourth of November?”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just find out what Paul’s up to.”

“Yes, but-”

“You should be glad things turned out as they did, really.”

“Why?”

“Because this gives you just the incentive you need.” She smiled disingenuously. “I don’t know why you’re glowering at me like that. Anyone would think what happened was my fault.” It was a thought that until then hadn’t occurred to me. But now it had been planted in my mind, I knew it wouldn’t go away. Was it possible she’d tipped Adrian off in some way, foreseeing how he’d react? Was it conceivable she’d set me up from the start? “I’m going back to Biarritz tomorrow, Robin. I’ll phone you early next week to see how you’re getting on. And remember…” There was a twinkle in her eyes as she sipped her drink and looked up at me across the rim of her glass. “There’s no time to be lost.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I phoned the Bryants that night and asked if we could meet to discuss the implications of Paul’s confession. It was his father I spoke to and he seemed quite touched that a member of the Paxton family-as my connection with Bella somehow made him regard me-should want to see them at all in the circumstances. It was also clear that any help I could offer them would be gratefully received. “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Timariot,” he said, “Dot and I have been beside ourselves with worry this past week. We just don’t know which way to turn.” I was obviously going to be greeted as a welcome visitor in Surbiton on Saturday afternoon. Though whether I’d be remembered as such was altogether less certain.

I didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry when the weekend came. By then, I’d had a bellyful of the recriminations at Timariot & Small that had followed Thursday’s board meeting. Adrian and I said nothing to each other, biding our time for our own particular reasons. But Simon and Jennifer more than compensated for that with endless dissections of a situation both confessed they couldn’t understand. “What’s Bella up to?” demanded Jennifer. “The game you’ve persuaded her to play could lose us this offer, you know.” She treated me to more of the same, in innumerable variations. While Simon veered from bemusement to paranoia. From “Adrian can’t seriously think he’s going to get anything out of Harvey McGraw,” to “You’ve cooked this up with Joan, haven’t you, to stop me buying my way out of her clutches?” But however wild his theories became, they could never match the truth. I felt I was almost doing him a favour by keeping him in the dark where that was concerned.

The Bryants lived in Skylark Avenue, a long curving road of identical pebble-dashed mock Tudor semis on the Berrylands side of Surbiton. I knew from Paul, of course, that they’d lived there all their married life. Driving along it on a mild grey Saturday afternoon of lawnmowing and car cleaning, I sensed the stultifying predictability he’d rebelled against in his teens. Yet I couldn’t help identifying with it at the same time. The scrawny youth tinkering with his rust-patched car while a football commentator lisped at him from a badly tuned radio. The overweight commuter working up a weekly sweat by trimming his hedge to geometric perfection. They were each in their own frustrated way part of the fabric of life. Which Paul had ripped to shreds in a single night.

The first sign of which was the lack of outdoor activity at number 34. The silence and stillness of mourning reigned. And Norman Bryant invited me in with the subdued politeness of the recently bereaved. What I’d called to discuss was worse than a death, though. Paul’s mere extinction wouldn’t have left his father’s shoulders bent with shame as well as sadness. It would in fact, his bearing implied, have been preferable to the blow he’d suffered. He was a thin stooped timid-looking man in his early sixties, the tie beneath his pullover a testimony to forty years of dressing for the bank. His skin and hair were grey, his clothes brown, his mind set in ways not designed to meet their present challenge. “It’ll be a relief just to be able to talk about it to somebody else,” he admitted. “Bottling this up isn’t doing Dot any good.” Nor him, I strongly suspected. “Thank God at least we’ve both retired. How I’d have faced them at the bank…” He shook his head at the unthinkability of such a prospect, then showed me into the lounge.

Mrs. Bryant was waiting there with one of her daughters. I recognized them from the wedding, doleful though the contrast was. Mrs. Bryant was a small round pink-faced woman whose dimpled smile had been my clearest memory of her. But there was no sign of that now. She was trembling and fidgeting like a startled dormouse, her eyes alternately staring and darting. And her handshake was so limp I expected her arm to drop to her side the moment I let go. “You’re… Lady Paxton’s brother?” she said, so hesitantly I hadn’t the heart to correct her. “This is… our daughter… Cheryl.”