ago. Handsome, and talented. Women fought to get at him. And he was so sure that he was going to be famous and rich. I used to be asked everywhere just because I was his half-sister. Ha, those were the days.’ She was laughing wheezily.
‘What happened?’
‘Bugger all. A little, early-flowering talent, that was Gerry. He had too much, too easy and too early, and he frittered the whole lot away. He’s been trying to get some of it back ever since.’
‘How sad,’ Helen said absently.
‘Sad? Not at all. Pathetic, perhaps.’ Rose’s voice was harsh. ‘He’s luckier than most. At least he had something, once. You know,’ she said, meditatively, as if it had just occurred to her, ‘I think perhaps Oliver’s a little like him.’
‘No, he isn’t.’ It was Helen’s turn to sound harsh now. ‘Oliver’s nothing like that.’
Rose’s white face hung expressionlessly in front of her like a pasty moon.
‘Oh, Oliver’s got money, of course. Not a lot, but enough to keep him going at the rate he spends it. Gerry never had that. And there’s Montcalm, and the title, and all that aristocratic rigmarole. But if you took all that away, you’d see the same thing in them both. Self-destructiveness.’
Helen remembered the inner, secret Oliver that she wanted so much to believe in. Perhaps his cool arrogance was to protect that. Not destructive, but protective. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ she told Rose, as humbly as she could. There was a little, bitten-off smile at the corners of Rose’s mouth. ‘Perhaps. Tell me, love, are you serious about him?’
‘Yes. No. Does it matter?’
‘Only to you, love.’ Rose smoothed her knitting with an air of having finished the conversation. ‘Did you come down here hoping to find him?’
‘No,’ said Helen bleakly.
‘Because, as you see, he isn’t here. He only comes when he needs something. He’s at the rehearsal rooms. If you want him, you should go straight out and get him. Just like he’d do himself.’
Yes, thought Helen. She’s right.
Without moving or saying any more, Rose watched her leave. Then, very slowly, she shook her head and turned back to her knitting.
It was even colder outside than it had looked from her window. Helen shivered and plunged forward. She was thinking of nothing, not imagining what she would find when she reached the address that Rose had given her, except that Oliver would be there.
She was breathless when she reached the disused warehouse that was used as a rehearsal room. A blank grey door in the side wall had a rainwashed notice on it reading ‘PLAYHOUSE’. There was no bell or knocker, but the door opened when she pushed it. Inside was a little windowless lobby with a heavy steel sliding door blocking one wall. A flight of stone steps faced Helen, and as she ran up them, there was still no thought in her head except Oliver. At the top of the steps she groped in the airless darkness and then caught a breath of clearer air. Following it, she came out on to a catwalk that looked down into the main body of the warehouse.
In the middle of the bare concrete floor below her, lit by a single desk light, was a battered table covered with notes. On hard chairs drawn up to the table, Pansy and Oliver were sitting facing each other.
Helen heard Pansy’s voice first. It was soft but penetrating, filling the warehouse to the remotest corner. She was reading a scene and Oliver was following the lines, waiting for his cue.
Helen started forward to call out to them, then stopped herself. Don’t interrupt. She would let them finish the scene. She leaned back against the wall to watch, folding her arms patiently.
Oliver and Pansy were completely unaware of being watched. Pansy kept starting her speech and then stopping, trying new emphases. Oliver watched her face intently, and when Pansy looked up to meet his eyes, there was a ripple of laughter between them.
‘Perfectionist,’ Oliver murmured.
‘It will be perfect,’ Pansy whispered back. ‘It must be. When we stand up there …’
‘If you want it, then it will be.’
She was looking across at him, serious-faced. ‘What do you want, Oliver?’
The warehouse was a pool of silence. Helen’s spine crawled, icy with sudden dread.
As she watched, incapable of moving, Oliver’s hand reached out. Pansy’s was resting on the table and Oliver took it and touched each of the fingers in turn. Then he traced a circle in the palm.
‘You,’ he said simply.
The sudden, shocking clatter was his chair overturning as he stood up. Both his hands grasped Pansy’s and he lifted her from her seat to face him. Slowly, as if she was frozen, Helen’s fist went to her mouth. She bit into the clenched fingers and tried to force her eyes to close, but the scene refused to disappear. They were standing close together now, the gold head bent over the silvery one, their hands still locked together. Neither of them spoke, but their eyes explored each other’s faces, waiting.
Then Pansy smiled. It was unmistakable, both an invitation and a challenge to him. At once Oliver dropped her hands. His fingers went to her face, combing back the points of hair so that her cheeks were left exposed and vulnerable. Then, with her dazzling face cupped in his hands, his mouth moved to her. For a second they hung there, motionless, then Pansy reached to pull him closer. At once their kiss was open, hungry and self-devouring. Their two bodies were glued inseparably together.
Helen was hit by a wave of physical jealousy so naked and powerful that it almost choked her. It swept over her simultaneously with a surge of shocked self-disgust. I want him to do that to me, her body told her imperatively. I need him, and he was mine. At the same time she thought, why am I creeping and spying like this? I must get out of here. Stop humiliating myself. The realisation unlocked her frozen muscles. She wrenched her head away from the sight of Pansy stretched on tiptoe to reach Oliver’s face and stumbled back against the door to the catwalk. As she moved, her foot caught against something hollow and metallic and sent it rolling and bouncing away from her.
In the circle of light below, two heads jerked upwards.
‘Who’s there?’ Oliver’s voice was sharp, angry. In spite of the gloom, he saw her almost at once. ‘Helen? Oh, Lord. What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Helen’s voice was unnaturally high and shaky. ‘I didn’t mean … I just came to see you.’ Trembling with shock and with tight bands of panic spanning her chest, Helen groped for the door, opened it and fled. She had just had time to see Pansy staring after her, her eyes and mouth three circles of surprise and concern.
She was outside in the dreary, early dusk before she realised that someone was running after her. There was time for her to have a wild, surging hope that it was Oliver, coming to explain and to make everything all right again, before a hand gripped her shoulder and pulled her round.
It was Tom.
‘Wait,’ he said. His face was dark and angry, and his mouth was compressed into a thin line. He looked round swiftly, then guided her into the sheltering angle of a building. As she backed against it, Helen felt crumbling mortar and little cushions of moss beneath her fingers.
‘You look terrible,’ Tom told her. ‘Don’t go and … just don’t be stupid, okay? I saw it too. We were both spying, and we saw what we deserved to see. Finish. Forget it now.’
Helen struggled to focus on what he was saying. What was he doing, intruding into this?
‘I’m not stupid,’ she told him mechanically. Then the thought struck her that he must feel for Pansy as she did for Oliver. Of course Tom loved her. Even this detached, accomplished man was vulnerable to her. He must be stinging from what they had just seen as much as she was herself.
For a moment