‘Watch yourself, Colbourne! Who the hell do you think you are, talking to the senator like that?’ Beverley snapped, but Gowrie intervened in his best diplomatic tone, smooth as cream.
‘You come too, Colbourne, if you’re worried, but for heaven’s sakes . . . d’you really think I’d hurt my own daughter?’
Tears stung Cathy’s eyes. She swallowed, her face averted. All the years of growing up rushed into her head in a swarm of memories.
‘I love Cathy,’ Gowrie said in a deep, moved voice, and it was impossible to believe he was lying.
Sophie moved closer to Steve, and he looked down at her. ‘Sophie comes too,’ he said, seeing the anxiety in her face. ‘We’re not going with you and leaving Sophie alone with your thugs. They’d have her in that chopper and aw
ay before we knew what was happening.’
‘Oh, very well, all three of you, then,’ Gowrie said, as if he was reluctant – but he had meant to talk to them all together. His apparent surrender was purely tactical, part of his negotiating strategy. If you had ‘given in’ on one point, your opponents could be made to feel obliged to give in to you later over something more important.
In the house, Paul had come down the stairs and noticed the open front door. He was walking slowly towards it when the phone in the hall began to ring just as he was passing it. On a reflex instinct he picked it up. His voice was curt. ‘Yes? What? Mr Colbourne’s colleague is here to join him?’ For a second his eyes flashed with rage. So Colbourne had started inviting people to the house now, had he? Could they expect a camera crew next, complete with soundmen and electricians? Oh, yes, they would come – and the rest of the media. They would all come, crowding in on the scene like some Greek chorus, to stare and be amused, to make their comments and pass judgement on people whose lives they had envied until now, and, above all, to talk pityingly yet with hidden glee, glad that, after all, they were not them, but led quiet, safe, unremembered lives out of the sight of the gods.
He stared into the ornate gilt-framed eighteenth-century Venetian mirror hanging on the wall in front of him. His white face looked back at him, haggard with pain, convulsed with anger. Fate played strange games. Why was Colbourne involved in this? Another of fate’s little jokes? If he, personally, had not been so closely involved, Paul might even have found the irony amusing – but it hurt too much for him to summon a smile.
Colbourne, of all people. Paul had always been jealous of Colbourne. Cathy had once been close to marrying him, whatever she said now. She had sworn that she had never been in love with Colbourne, but they had been lovers, she admitted that, and Paul hated to know it; couldn’t stop his imagination picturing them together.
And now it was Colbourne who was the instrument of fate; Colbourne who had brought this calamity down on their heads.
‘Ask him to wait,’ he said bleakly into the phone and hung up. He would like to have said: tell him to get lost! But there was no point in taking such a position. He might as well face facts.
Once before he had been faced with disaster and had refused to accept his fate, had escaped – but he knew now with all the fatalism of his race, the melancholy acceptance which had always been there in his blood, behind his confidence and drive, that this time he was finished.
He had thought himself in the very middle of his life with much still to do; he had dreamt of all sorts of futures for himself and Cathy, not least a dream of having children. Thank God – at least they had been spared that.
He walked into the breakfast-room and found it empty, the table already cleared of their breakfast remains. As he hesitated he heard voices outside in the stable yard, recognized Gowrie’s voice, then Cathy’s. She sounded distraught. His forehead tightened in anxiety and pain.
He wasn’t hungry but he needed some hot, strong coffee before he went out to face her. He rang for the housekeeper.
Gowrie said nothing as they walked slowly along the gravelled terrace running round the house past the small, formal box trees in square white-painted pots which gave the house such a French air, reminiscent of Paris parks where nurserymaids walked their charges and lovers met under the blue summer shadow of plane trees. All this had been designed by Paul himself; he had deliberately brought memories of his homeland into this very English setting, and it gave the old house a very different personality, a foreign look which was nevertheless graceful and charming, and suited the eighteenth-century formality of the building.
Sophie murmured something about it to Cathy. ‘Very French, like the dècor in your house. Did you choose it? It’s lovely.’
Cathy smiled. ‘We love it,’ then her breath caught, and she huskily corrected herself, ‘Loved it.’
Steve shot her a quick, sharp look, noting the past tense, as they entered the beautifully kept stable yard. She might deny that she believed Sophie, but obviously she did. A groom was curry-combing Mr Tiffany, who immediately on seeing Cathy showed his yellow piano-teeth in that grin of mingled pleasure and mischief, tossing his head, his long chestnut mane gleaming in the sunlight.
The groom said, ‘Morning, Mrs Brougham.’ Taking in the fact that she was not wearing jodhpurs or boots, he asked politely, ‘Shall I get Mr Tiffany saddled, or would you like me to bring out any of the other horses?’
‘No, just leave that for now. Go and have a cup of tea, would you?’
He nodded and led the chestnut back into his stall, closed the half-door on him and walked away towards the house.
As he vanished indoors, Cathy turned to look directly at Gowrie, seeing the long-loved familiarity of his face and hurting because she had never really known him after all, he had lied to her all her life. Behind that familiar face lived a stranger. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Cathy –’
Angrily she stopped the words rising to his tongue. ‘Don’t lie, not this time.’
‘Cathy, darling,’ he quickly said, moving to put an arm round her, but she immediately stepped back, shaking her head.
‘It will be easy to prove the truth, you know. I only have to have a blood test. There’s no arguing with DNA.’
He had never thought of that before. No, there was no arguing with DNA. Blood didn’t lie.
‘But I don’t even need to wait for the test results to know the truth,’ Cathy said, pain in her eyes because she had loved him all her remembered life and been cheated by him. Bleakly, she said, ‘I’m not your daughter, I’m Sophie’s sister, and you smuggled me out of Czechoslovakia and into the States on the passport of your own child who was dead, was buried as me. That is the truth, isn’t it?’