Angel of Death

Outside in a corridor footsteps quickened into a run. The door was flung open. Lights blazed in the room.

A nurse hurried over to her.

‘What’s wrong? Are you in pain, Mrs Grey?’

‘Get him away from me!’

‘Who?’ The nurse looked round the room.

It was empty. There was nobody there. Miranda lay down again, trembling violently. Had she still been dreaming, after all?

The nurse gave her an injection. Miranda went back into her dream; into the cold, green sea. The angel of death was waiting for her there. That night and for many nights afterwards.

But she never saw him again when she was awake.

Chapter One

Until three years later.

Miranda drove down to Sussex one bright May morning feeling better than she had for a very long time. It was a lovely day and she was pleased with the way she looked in her new pale mauve suit. She had given herself a little more height by buying high-heeled white sandals. It would be a mistake to try to walk far in them. She knew she was a little unsteady on them but their delicacy and style made her feel really elegant, and what she needed was a boost to her self-confidence, which had been at an all-time low for a long time.

It had surprised her to be invited to the engagement party of her boss’s son. She barely knew Sean, who was eight years younger than her; a good-looking, very sophisticated twenty-one-year-old who already knew it all, judging by his manner and the condescending way he spoke to her, as if she was a halfwit, or an old granny.

She had a sneaking feeling Sean did not even know she was on the invitation list. Her boss had sent out the invitations – to personal friends of his own, or Sean’s buddies, or friends of the new fiancée, and, of course, to relatives from either side. There was a lot of excitement in the firm about who would be invited and who would not, but Miranda had not expected to be on the list.

She had accepted, of course – how could she refuse? Only later did it dawn on her that she had nothing to wear except clothes she had already worn to work and it would never do to wear any of them.

It was years since she had taken any interest in how she looked, but for a party like that she had to have something really good. People might notice. Her boss certainly would. He noticed everything; sharp as a tack, as her mother would say. So, last week she had taken a long lunch hour and gone to Oxford Street. After wandering from shop to shop, walking for half an hour, she had finally seen this suit. The soft colour suited her own pigmentation. She was no beauty, but she knew she had fresh, clear skin, a loose brunette swirl of shoulder-length hair and light hazel eyes. She had not inherited her mother’s stunning looks. As a girl, she had kept hoping her hair would turn that shiny golden blonde colour, that her eyes would go grass green, that she would somehow acquire the ability to make men’s heads turn, but she had her father’s colouring and features, and the magic transformation had never happened. Life was full of disappointments.

In one of those odd coincidences she had spotted the shoes in a shop right next door and known at once that they would be the perfect match. She had been back at her office more or less on time, after all, and had eaten a yoghurt and a pear at her desk before starting work.

She had got a job with the firm six months after Tom’s death. She suspected – no, she was certain – Terry had offered it to her out of a sense of guilt. Tom had worked for Terry’s firm. They had been on the yacht at Terry’s invitation – he had chartered it as a floating conference centre and brought on board a dozen of his top executives, with their wives and girlfriends, as well as some of his best customers. The others had all been saved when the yacht broke up on rocks. Only Tom had drowned.

She had been ill for months afterwards. When she was sent home she found she had lost her post with a large public relations firm. They were apologetic, but explained that they had not been able to keep her job open for ever, especially as they had no idea how long she would be kept in hospital.

The uneasy expression on their faces had told her they thought she was going to make trouble. That she was possibly a bit nuts. And maybe she had been, at first.

But she was back to normal when she left hospital and, after she had spent a fortnight convalescing with her mother down in Dorset, she was calm and rational. She saw there was no point in arguing or protesting. Her firm did not want her back.

She started applying for jobs at once, without much success at first, until, a few days later, Terry had visited her, heard about her predicament, and asked her to take on his firm’s public relations.

‘We haven’t had a PR department, before, but we’re growing, fast, and I think we probably need one now, to handle advertising and dealings with the media.’

Neither of them mentioned Tom’s death. She had looked into Terry’s warm, brown eyes and decided she liked him. They had first met on the yacht and she barely knew him, but she sensed he was a good man.

Big, muscled, with a pleasantly ugly face which was angular, bony and confident, he had a strength and cheerfulness which was instantly likeable. His very short, brown hair curled all over his head in little curls like the horns of a small goat. His grins and barks of laughter aroused answering smiles from most people he met.

He wore casual, light suits, in shades of blue or cream, with coloured shirts, pink or turquoise, and expensive silk ties. Conventional businessmen in striped grey city suits found his outfits worrying. Could he be serious when he dressed like that?

The success of his company was sufficient answer. Terry Finnigan was an electronic genius and understood both what he sold and how to make money selling it. He had founded his company ten years ago with a small legacy from the sale of his dead father’s house.

Miranda wasn’t sure how he had made a living before that. She had the idea that he hadn’t been well off. Everything in his house was new, oddly impersonal in spite of being bright, modern, and very expensive.

Today, the company was worth millions, and Terry owned a majority of the shares. He also owned a large country house, a number of very expensive cars, and leased an office complex in which he had a flat that he and his son used when they were in London. Divorced, Terry dated quite often, but did not seem interested in marrying again, although he liked women.

His preference seemed to be for tall, curvy, showbiz girls, curiously similar in type to his first wife, Sandra, a nightclub singer. Maybe men always picked the same sort of women?

Sandra was now living in Spain with her second partner, to whom she was not married.