Be Careful What You Wish For (The Clifton Chronicles 4)

When the taxi drew up outside the block of flats, Jessica handed the cabbie a ten-bob note, which was all she had, and said, “Would you be kind enough to wait? I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Sure thing, luv.”

* * *

He’d almost completed the job, which he was enjoying, when he thought he heard a car pulling up in the street outside.

He placed the knife on a side table, went across to the window and pulled the curtain back a few inches. He watched as she climbed out of the back of the taxi and had a word with the cabbie. He moved swiftly back across the room, switched off the light and opened the door; another quick check up and down the corridor, again nothing.

He jogged down the stairs and, as he opened the front door, he saw Jessica coming up the path toward him. She was taking a key out of her handbag when he brushed past her. She glanced around, but didn’t recognize him, which surprised her, because she thought she knew everyone who lived in the building.

She let herself in and began to climb the stairs. She felt quite exhausted by the time she reached the second floor and opened the door to flat number 4. The first thing she must do was phone Seb and let him know what had happened. She switched on the light and headed toward the phone on the far side of the room. That was when she first saw her paintings.

* * *

Clive turned into Glebe Place twenty minutes later, still hoping he might have got back before her. He looked up, and saw that the bedroom light was on. She must be there, he thought, with overwhelming relief.

He parked his car behind a cab that still had its engine running. Was it waiting for her? He hoped not. He opened the front door and ran up the stairs to find the entrance to the flat wide open and all the lights on. He walked in, and the moment he saw them he fell to his knees and was violently sick. He stared at the wreckage strewn around him. All of Jessica’s drawings, watercolors and oils looked as if they’d been stabbed again and again, with the exception of Smog Two, which a large, jagged hole had been cut from the center of the canvas. What could have driven her to do something so irrational?

“Jess!” he screamed, but there was no reply. He pushed himself up and walked slowly into the bedroom, but there was no sign of her. That was when he heard the sound of a running tap, and swung around to see a trickle of water seeping under the bathroom door. He rushed across, pulled the door open and stared in disbelief at his beloved Jess. Her head was floating above the water, but her wrist, with two deep incisions no longer shedding blood, hung limply over the side of the bath. And then he saw the flick knife on the floor beside her.

He lifted her lifeless body gently out of the water, and collapsed on to the floor, holding her in his arms. He wept uncontrollably. One thought kept running through his mind. If only he hadn’t gone back upstairs to get dressed, but had driven straight to the station, Jessica would still be alive.

The last thing he remembered doing was taking the engagement ring out of his pocket and placing it back on her finger.

25

THE BISHOP OF Bristol looked down from the pulpit at the packed congregation of St. Mary Redcliffe, and was reminded of the impact Jessica Clifton had made on so many different people in her short life. After all, a drawing of him as the Dean of Truro hung proudly in the corridor of the Bishop’s Palace. He glanced at his notes.

“When a loved one dies in their seventies or eighties,” he began, “we gather to mourn them. We recall their long lives with affection, respect and gratitude, exchanging anecdotes and happy memories. We shed a tear, of course we do, but at the same time we accept that it’s the natural order of things. When a beautiful young woman, who has displayed such a rare talent that her elders accept without question that they are not her betters, dies, we are bound to shed many more tears because we can only wonder what might have been.”

Emma had shed so many tears since she’d heard the news that she was mentally and physically exhausted. She could only wonder if there was anything she could have done to prevent her beloved daughter suffering such a cruel and unnecessary death. Of course there was. She should have told her the truth. Emma felt she was just as much to blame as anyone.

Harry, who sat beside her in the front pew, had aged a decade in a week, and wasn’t in any doubt who was to blame. Jessica’s death would continually remind him that he should have told her years ago why they had adopted her. If he had, surely she would be alive today.

Giles sat between his sisters, holding their hands for the first time in years. Or were they holding his? Grace, who disapproved of any public show of emotion, wept throughout the entire service.

Sebastian, who sat on the other side of his father, was not listening to the bishop’s oration. He no longer believed in an all-caring, all-understanding compassionate deity, who could give with one hand, then took away with the other. He’d lost his best friend, whom he’d adored, and no one could ever take her place.

Harold Guinzburg sat quietly at the back of the church. When he’d called Harry he was unawar

e that his life had been shattered in a single moment. He’d just wanted to share with him the triumphant news that his latest novel had gone to number 1 on The New York Times bestsellers list.

Harold must have been surprised by his author’s lack of response, but then, how could he have known that Harry no longer cared for such baubles, and would have been content not to have sold a single copy if in exchange Jessica could be there standing by his side, and not being laid to rest in an untimely grave.

After the burial ceremony was over and everyone else had departed to continue their lives, Harry fell on his knees and remained by the graveside. His sin would not be expiated quite that easily. He had already accepted that not a day, possibly not an hour, would go by when Jessica wouldn’t barge into his thoughts, laughing, chattering, teasing. Like the bishop, he too could only wonder what might have been. Would she have married Clive? What would his grandchildren have been like? Would he have lived long enough to see her become a Royal Academician? How he wished that it was her kneeling by his grave, mourning him.

“Forgive me,” he said aloud.

What made it worse, he knew she would have.

CEDRIC HARDCASTLE

1964

26

“ALL MY LIFE I’ve been considered by my fellow men to be a cautious, boring, dull sort of fellow. I have often heard myself described as a safe pair of hands. ‘You won’t go far wrong with Hardcastle.’ It was ever thus. At school, I always fielded at long stop, and I was never asked to open the batting. In the school play, I was always the spear carrier and never the king, and when it came to exams, I passed everything, but never came in the top three. While others might have been hurt, even insulted, by such epithets, I was flattered. If you set yourself up as a fit and proper person to take care of other people’s money, then, in my opinion, these are the very qualities that should be expected of you.