‘She’s sixty-five next birthday, Eddie! She’s always been delicate, you know that, but I look after her and I always will.’
They had stared at each other, then Eddie had sighed. ‘I’m too old to get into a fight with you, Don, but when you get back I want her to come and stay with me for a while.’
‘Sure, of course,’ Don had said, in quick relief, but knowing that he did not dare leave her beh
ind or let her stay with her father once they got back to the States. He wouldn’t want Eddie Ramsey to realise his daughter was very close to the edge of sanity, if she wasn’t already way over it. Drugs and constant supervision kept her within limits, for the moment, but it was turning into a race between her last flicker of sanity and her father’s last flicker of life. Don hoped the old man would go first; it would be unbearable for him if his last living child had to be shut away for ever in a mental hospital, for one thing, and for another Don would be safe from any prospect of Eddie Ramsey changing his will.
Steve had to attend a budget meeting that afternoon, to listen to the latest gloomy prognostications of the head accountant on the perennial problem of advertising revenue versus costs, but managed to snatch a few minutes first to take a cab to the photography shop where they had blown up individual sections of Lilli’s wheel for him.
‘They’re very grainy, a bit scratchy, but you can see the faces a lot clearer, Steve,’ the guy said, watching him peering at the glossy sheets. ‘Is that OK? I can’t blow them up any bigger, they’d go completely out of focus if I tried.’
‘They’re fine,’ Steve said, shuffling them together. ‘How much do I owe you?’
He paid cash and left. In the cab taking him back to the network headquarters he had another look at the blown-up copies; the faces were certainly clearer, yet even more mysterious and alien now that they were three or four times as large. Looking at them more closely, he wasn’t even sure why he had had them blown up, what he had thought he might get out of them. There was nothing terribly interesting here.
They were poignant and rather pathetic, these faces – the old man in some sort of crumpled uniform, his hair oiled down, parted in the middle, a bushy moustache above his lip, a rifle propped against his shoulder – he must have lived around the turn of the century. But when had they lived, this young couple on their wedding-day? The bride looking as if she was barely out of childhood, a little girl dressing up, thick dark hair piled up behind her head, looking plump and yet childish in an old-fashioned wedding dress which might have been her mother’s, it was so shapeless and yellowed, carrying a bouquet of lilies and smiling solemnly at the camera, her groom a mere boy, taller than her by a foot, dark, very thin, looking slightly dazed, in a suit which fitted him so badly it must surely have been borrowed or hired? Were these Sophie’s parents – or her grandparents? He couldn’t guess from the clothes.
The one face he was certain about was that of Sophie’s dead sister. He briefly looked at it, oddly moved by the thought that this lovely child was dead. Well, from the age of these photos, many of these people must be dead or very old by now – yet somehow that was not as heart-wrenching.
They had lived out their span, these old people, but the baby had died before it had had a chance to live. Steve felt his throat move roughly and pushed all the photos back into the envelope.
Well, that hadn’t told him anything. He had wasted his money. Or had he? Hadn’t all those faces told him something about Sophie? These were her people. Part of them lived on in her. Discovering something about them was to find out more about her.
Suddenly remembering that she had not yet talked to Vladimir, Sophie rang him in Prague, got his answerphone and left a message telling him where she was staying and that she would be flying back to London next day.
‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to pay,’ she added, explaining that her trip was being paid for by the TV network. ‘I’m officially going as a researcher and I’ll be working for their team while I’m there, but I’ll still file you stories about the political angle of the Gowrie visit.’
After she’d hung up she rang Theo’s flat and got Lilli.
‘Are you OK?’ she was asked anxiously. ‘Where are you?’
‘At Steve Colbourne’s hotel –’
‘I hope he got you a room of your own! If he makes a pass, flatten him.’
‘So far he’s been a perfect gentleman. He brought me here this morning and I haven’t even seen him since,’ Sophie said, not adding that she had several times wished he had not left her alone like that. She needed to talk to someone.
‘He’s lulling you into a false sense of security, that’s all!’ Lilli said darkly.
Sophie laughed. ‘Oh, come on, Lilli, all men aren’t like that! I think he has more class than to make a cheap pass. And I thought you liked him!’
‘What made you think that?’
‘He did. The way he tells it you trust him completely – or why did you give him my suitcase and let him pick me up at the hospital?’
Lilli laughed. ‘Well, OK, sure, I let him collect you from the hospital. He convinced me it was the safest idea, that nobody would try anything with him beside you. That’s just the trouble. The guy is plausible. He can talk a good story.’
Sophie grimaced. ‘Can’t he just? Well, don’t worry about me, Lilli, I’ll be fine. I shall be off to London tomorrow. I’ve rung Vladimir and left a message on his answerphone. Could you do me a favour? Ask Theo to cover for me while I’m away? I’ll be filing from Europe, but if anything interesting comes up here meanwhile, could he send Vlad something on it?’
‘Sure. He’s out shopping right now. Do you want him to ring you at the hotel?’
‘If he has time, thanks, Lilli.’
‘What’s it like, the hotel? As luxurious as it looks from the outside? I’ve never been able to afford to go inside.’
‘It’s a palace,’ Sophie told her, then started sharply as someone knocked on her door. ‘Sorry . . . somebody just arrived, I’ll have to go.’
‘Be careful!’ Lilli said, immediately anxious.