4

The smog of Los Angeles hung low over the city. The haze transformed the low-lying urban sprawl into something approaching a mirage, a fragment from a half-remembered dream. Nothing was what it seemed in this city, thought Kate. Appropriate really, considering its main industry was the manufacture and export of illusions.

Sure it was dirty, crime-ridden, superficial, traffic-bound, and, in parts, pretty ugly. Yet no matter how many times she had tried to leave LA – her college days in New York and in London, a summer in Paris, a couple of years working for her doctorate in Manchester, England – she always returned back to the city. Who said of LA, ‘there is no there there’? She couldn’t remember, but whoever it was summed it up pretty well. Perhaps that was why she liked it, she thought. It was a place you could make your own, shape it according to your own desires and fantasies. That and the fact that she had grown up here.

Her closest friends knew that her mom had once been big in movies and that her father had composed the scores for a dozen or so famous films. But it wasn’t something she liked to talk about. Josh had always accused her of being something of an inverted snob. But it wasn’t that, far from it. She was proud of her parents’ achievements – neither of them had come from particularly wealthy backgrounds; in fact her mom’s family had all been in service in England. In a city that worshipped the motion picture industry like a religion or some kind of cult – and in which folks would have looked up to her parents as if they were minor deities – Kate didn’t want to create an artificial divide between her and potential friends. She hadn’t told Josh about her parents until they had been dating at least a couple of months. He had repeatedly bugged her with dinner invitations until she had no choice but to finally gave in.

‘What’s the big secret?’ he had joked over dinner at that restaurant up in the hills.

‘Those no big secret. I told you they were in the entertainment business.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What did they do?

‘Both worked in the film business. Sort of on the edges.’

‘Doing what?’

‘You are curious. I can see why you became a detective. Did you always want to be a cop?’

‘Don’t try and change the subject. I’ve done enough talking about myself. Now it’s your turn.’

‘Okay, I take your point. But it’s no big deal, honest. My dad is a composer, Saul Cramer, he’s a bit frail now, and my mom was an actress.’

‘Does she have a name?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘What’s she called?’

‘You probably won’t have heard of her. Hope Ashley.’

‘You mean the Hope Ashley? As in The Night is Day and The Silent Lie? I thought - ’

‘Yeah, you thought she was dead, right?’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. Just that I didn’t know she was still around, living in the city.’

‘Yep, she’s still around and just as crazy as ever.’

They had both laughed then. Had that been when she had felt she was falling for him? She pushed the memory out of her mind. What did it matter now? He was no longer part of her life. Another man she could confine to history. And what about the child? He had made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to be encumbered with a baby, it was just one commitment too many. She could cope by herself. And even if she couldn’t she wouldn’t go running back to him.

‘Darling? Darling, where are you?’ It was her mother, calling from inside the house. The tone was theatrical, the accent upper-class English, a product of elocution lessons, RADA and a life in front of the cameras, the kind of voice that today you never heard outside of old movies. ‘Gosh, I was getting worried for a moment there. How are you feeling? Are you all right?’

‘Yes, mom, I’m fine,’ said Kate.

‘I know, but I keep thinking of what you must have gone through. The shock. How awful it must have been for you.’

‘Yeah, it was a bit of a shock. But honestly mom, I’m fine.’

She saw her mother – still fine-boned and something of a beauty in her seventies – give her that concerned look, like she was trying to peer beneath her skin.

‘Mom, I said I’m fine. You don’t need to use your freaky X-ray vision.’

‘Darling, I don’t know what you mean. The things you say,’ she said, laughing. ‘Quite extraordinary. But good that you can joke after seeing such a horror. I thought you’d seen the last of those kind of things when you packed in that grisly job of yours.’

‘Mom –‘

‘I know you’ve told me to hold my tongue. And I will, darling. But I’m so pleased that you don’t have to do that kind of thing anymore. Taking photographs is much, much better. But God knows why you chose to go into that line of work in the first place. So macabre. Sends shivers down my spine just thinking of it. Probably your way of rebelling against your father and me. Yes, I know, I know, I’ll keep my peace.’

Hope looked at her daughter, sensing there was something on her mind. Kate seemed tired, drawn somehow. Understandable considering what she had been through – that awful break-up with Josh – and now with what she had seen. And yet – yet she was sure there was something she was not telling her. She sat down at the circular wooden dining table, drawing a chair into the shade of the umbrella and moving slightly closer to her daughter.

Kate remained in control, her face impassive. She was fine, of course she was. But then she felt her mother’s kindly, brilliantly blue eyes searching her face for signs of unhappiness. She couldn’t hold it in anymore.

‘Oh, mom,’ she said, her face melting with sadness.

‘Darling,’ said Hope, embracing her daughter. ‘I know, I know. Let it out. Awful, just awful.’

Kate sobbed on to her mother’s shoulder just as she had done as a little girl.

‘To think of that little thing in the ocean. Who on earth could do such a thing?’

After a minute or so Kate looked up from her mother and wiped back the tears. That’s it, she thought to herself, I’ve had my cry, now pull yourself together. She swallowed the wave of sadness that threatened to sweep over her again and bit her lip. She had to tell somebody.

‘M-mom,’ she stuttered. ‘There’s something else. I’ve got some news.’

‘I knew it, I knew there was something. It’s not Josh again, is it? If I ever get my hands on him I’ll wring his scrawny –‘