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TWO

Until a week ago, Delia had never heard of Beatrice Malaspina, nor of the Villa Dante. She had been in her London flat when the postman’s whistle was followed by the bang of the letter flap and the thud as the post hit the doormat.

She went into the small hall and picked up the letters. A brown envelope from the electricity company. A white envelope, with a handwritten address. She knew who that was from, her agent Roger Stein’s wild scrawl was unmistakable. Her heart sank. He only wrote when he had something nasty to say, otherwise he’d be on the phone with a breezy, ‘Delia, dear girl …’

And what was this? She looked at the long envelope. It had to be a lawyer’s letter; why did lawyers feel the need to have different-sized stationery from everyone else? She turned it over. It was from Winthrop, Winthrop & Jarvis, the family solicitors—or at least, her father’s solicitors; they were nothing to do with her these days.

Was her father communicating with her now through his solicitors? Had things got that bad?

She began to cough, and cursed at the stab of pain in her chest. She took the post into the kitchen and put it down on the table. Then she went to the stove and turned on the gas under the kettle. Coffee would clear her brain and give her strength to open the letters.

She had her back turned to the window, and hadn’t seen the figure that was standing there, on the other side of the glass.

Jessica tapped on the window, softly at first, and then more loudly. Delia whirled round, startled and alarmed, then relaxed as she saw who it was. She hurried to the window, threw up the sash, and hauled Jessica in over the sill. A small black and tan dog jumped in after her, trailing its lead.

‘Jessica, for God’s sake, you nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she said, grabbing the dog’s lead and unclipping it from its collar. ‘What on earth are you doing climbing up my fire escape?’

‘I tell you what, it’s a miracle burglars aren’t in and out all day long. It’s hardly difficult.’

‘There’s an alarm I put on at night and when I go out,’ Delia said. ‘It makes a terrific racket, like an air raid siren. Good thing it wasn’t set, or you’d have had the heart attack and plunged to the ground. Oh, Lord; I can guess why you’re on my fire escape. Reporters?’

Jessica nodded.

‘Here?’

‘Staked out at the front, two of them, would you believe it? They know you’re a friend of mine; honestly, wouldn’t you think they had something better to do than follow me around?’

Delia went into her sitting room, edged round the Schiedmayer grand piano which took up nearly all the available space, and peered down into the square.

‘You’re absolutely right, there they are, bold as brass, not even bothering to lurk or look inconspicuous. The neighbours will be complaining, and pointing out that this is a nice area.’

‘Is it?’

‘Not really, or I couldn’t afford to live here. Respectable is what they mean. What’s up? You look all in. I can see your ghastly husband hasn’t agreed to give you a divorce. What’s he done now?’

‘Haven’t you seen the papers?’

‘Not that foul Giles Slattery again?’

‘No, although he’s one of the reporters hanging round the front door downstairs. No, this is important news, headlines in The Times kind: Richie’s been appointed a junior minister at the Foreign Office.’

‘Hell,’ Delia said. ‘That’ll make him even keener to stay respectably married, won’t it?’

Delia was Jessica’s oldest and best friend, and the only person who knew and understood her predicament, the only person whose advice she trusted. Despite the fact that their lives had taken such very different paths, and despite the fact that Jessica’s husband, Richard Meldon, disliked Delia almost as much as she did him, Delia and Jessica had remained the closest of friends. It was inevitable that if Jessica was in trouble she would come to Delia for refuge, advice, sympathy, good sense, and, Delia not being one to mince words, the truth.

‘How long have you got before he gets back from Hong Kong?’

‘One of the reporters outside my house shouted out something about him being back next week. Because of the new job, do you think? Or maybe just fed up with China.’

Jessica threw herself down on Delia’s large and comfortable sofa, and her dog jumped up beside her.

Delia’s sitting room was like Delia herself: exotic, larger than life and full of bright colours and untidiness. Delia, who was taller and had more curves than Jessica, liked bold colours on herself as well as in her surroundings, and she was dressed today in a huge scarlet sloppy joe jumper, with red sneakers on her feet and large gypsy hoops in her ears.

She looked at Jessica with affection tinged with anxiety. Jessica used to be a colourful dresser herself, favouring the blues and greens that suited her silvery blonde hair and the deep blue eyes set in a long Plantagenet face, but since her marriage she had become more and more neutral, camouflaging herself in camels and beiges and pale greys, none of which suited her colouring or her personality.

‘Come on, what else did the damned reporter say?’

‘Oh, he asked if Richie would be joining me in the Chelsea house.’

When Jessica had stormed out of the matrimonial home, a house in Mayfair, she had moved into a tiny house in Chelsea that belonged to friends who had been posted abroad, and Delia knew how happy she had felt there, in a place untainted by the husband she so hated.

They looked at each other in silence. ‘You’re welcome to stay here,’ said Delia. ‘Any time. You and Harry the pooch.’

Jessica’s dog, named Harry because he had come from Harrods, had been Delia’s wedding present to her. ‘So that at least there’ll be someone for you to love,’ Delia had said with savage percipience.

Richie had disliked the little dog from the start.

‘What is he, some kind of mongrel?’

‘He’s a Heeler.’

‘A what? Never heard of any such dog.’

‘They come from Lancashire. They nip at the heels of cattle.’

‘You believe that, you believe anything. What a stupid little tail, curled over like that. Why didn’t you ask me? I’d have bought you a proper dog.’

‘Thank you, Harry’s perfect.’

Delia knew that Richie wasn’t a man who could easily be kept out of anywhere he wanted to be; her Chelsea house would no longer seem safe to Jessica.

‘Talk about not wanting to take a hint,’ she said. ‘Why doesn’t he accept that the marriage is over, that it’s been a failure?’

‘Why ask? Nothing Richie does can be a failure.’

Delia had her own opinion about that. Richie was a failure as a human being, and not all his glowing war record as an ace fighter in the RAF, the brilliance as a speaker that had taken him into Parliament, his dashing good looks, his wealth, his connections or his influence made up for the fact that, deep down, ‘He’s a shit,’ she said.

‘I know that, and you know that, but he’s no such thing in the eyes of the world, and that’s why I’m now the demon woman for daring to leave him. My loving husband, so wonderful, how could I want to divorce him?’

‘Yes, it’s tough on you that the press eat out of his hand. Did you know that he and Giles Slattery go back a long way? They were at school together.’

Delia saw the flash of anxiety in Jessica’s eyes, those eyes that always showed when a sensitive spot had been touched.

‘I had no idea,’ Jessica said. ‘That’s an unholy alliance, if you like. Oh, God, do you suppose Richie sicked Slattery on to me? Just to torment?’

‘I expect so. It’s a good way of keeping tabs on you, while keeping his own nose clean.’

‘I’m going to have to get away. Go abroad. Only do you think the reporters would follow me there?’

‘What, send out search parties all over the Continent? You aren’t that much of a story.’

‘I wish I weren’t any kind of a story at all. Oh, why didn’t I listen to you? If I had, I wouldn’t be in this fix now.’

Delia had never really got to the heart of the reason why Jessica had married Richard Meldon. On the surface, it seemed a perfect match, but to one who knew Jessica as well as she did, it was doomed to disaster. Her reaction to Jessica’s engagement to Richie had been openly unenthusiastic.

‘Marry that man? Jessica, you can’t be serious. Go and take a cold bath, or hop on a banana boat to South America, anything to make you come to your senses.’

‘What’s wrong with Richie? He’s handsome, successful—’

‘And rich. Is he in love with you, or the fact that your family goes back for nine centuries? And what about his liking for older women?’

‘What older women?’

‘He has a reputation, that’s all. He’s discreet about it, but I heard from Fanny Arbuthnot that—’

‘Fanny’s a tedious gossip and always has been.’

‘Maybe, but she stayed with some people in the south of France and your Richie was among those present, and spent a good deal of his time in the company of Jane Hinton, who must be quite twenty years older than he is. And Fanny says he’s known for it.’

‘As it happens, I don’t care. My past is past, and so is his. Neither of us is coming virginal and innocent to the bridal chamber, why should I mind who he’s slept with before me?’

‘It’s who he’ll sleep with after you that you should worry about,’ Delia muttered.

‘Make me a cocktail,’ Jessica said. ‘A strong one.’

‘You’re drinking too much.’

‘It keeps the goblins at bay.’

‘Yes, it’s a pity you ever married the wretched man,’ Delia said. ‘I still don’t understand how you came to do anything so stupid. It wasn’t as though your friends didn’t warn you.’

‘Oh, trust me to make a mistake,’ Jessica said. ‘When you get into scrapes, you somehow manage to wriggle out of them, don’t you? With my scrapes, I end up having to live with the consequences.’

‘Richie’s more than a scrape.’

‘Unfortunately, he is. And marriage—God, what a colossal mistake that was. A few words said in front of an indifferent clergyman, and bang! you’re bound in chains.’

‘He’s still adamant about no divorce?’

‘Of course he is. He won’t hear of it, just shouts me down. I always thought divorce was quite simple. Didn’t you think, as I did, that the man of honour hops off down to Brighton to be found in bed with the chambermaid or whoever he’s paid for the privilege, and bingo, six months later you’re a free woman?’

‘Only Richie won’t do the honourable thing.’

‘Has Richie ever done an honourable thing in his life?’

They adjourned to the kitchen, where Delia rescued the coffee and they sat on either side of the kitchen table, with Harry between their feet.

‘Abroad isn’t such a bad idea,’ Delia said. ‘Where could you go? It would have to be somewhere Richie couldn’t track you down. It’s tricky, because even if you book yourself into some pension in a remote French village, you have to fill in all those forms for the police. And what officials know, Richie will be able to find out.’

‘I know,’ said Jessica. ‘Christ, what a mess.’ She looked down at the table. ‘You haven’t opened your letters. That’s me barging in and distracting you.’

‘They’re hardly important. An electricity bill, a moan from my agent and a lawyer’s letter.’ Delia began to cough again, and Jessica silently rose and got her a drink of water.

‘It doesn’t sound as though you’ve got rid of your bronchitis.’

‘No, it just lingers. The dreadful weather doesn’t help, and there’s nothing I can do except wait for it to clear up, which the specialist says it will, eventually.’

‘You’ve seen a specialist, then?’

‘Of course I have. All we singers rush to our favourite man at the hint of a sore throat or a chest infection.’

Delia was an opera singer, still too young at twenty-seven for the really major roles, but she was considered a rising star, booked for Glyndebourne, Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Opera House—and due to make her Salzburg debut that summer.

‘That’s what my agent’s moaning about,’ she said, opening his letter with some reluctance. ‘Yes, here we go, fatal to get a name for unreliability, can I give him a firm date when I will be well enough…’ She scrunched up the letter. ‘And this one is from my father’s lawyers,’ she went on. ‘God knows what he’s up to.’

She slit open the envelope and took out a single sheet of paper. ‘What on earth?’ She picked up the envelope again—yes, it was addressed to her, and the letter began ‘Dear Miss Vaughan’. Beneath the salutation was typed in capital letters, THE ESTATE OF THE LATE BEATRICE MALASPINA.

‘What is it?’ said Jessica. ‘Bad news?’

‘No,’ said Delia, passing her the letter.

‘Who’s this Beatrice Malaspina? Was she your godmother or something?’

‘I have no idea. I’ve never heard of her.’

They stared at one another. ‘How odd,’ said Jessica. ‘And yet she must have left you a legacy of some kind, otherwise why the letter? What do they say—please call at their office at your earliest convenience? How exciting. Get changed, and off you go.’

Delia had no intention of going to the offices of Winthrop, Winthrop & Jarvis, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and she said so. Jessica took no notice, and half an hour later Delia found herself sitting in a cab, wrapped up in a scarlet coat, ‘Like a matador’s cape,’ Jessica said, ‘but perfect for keeping out the cold,’ with a headscarf wound round her head.

Jessica had insisted on her taking a cab. ‘Walk, with that cough? Certainly not, and mind you come back by taxi, as soon as ever you can; don’t you see that I shall be dying of curiosity to know what it’s all about?’

Delia climbed the steep, ill-lit stairs which led to the sombre chambers of Winthrop, Winthrop & Jarvis, where the clerk eyed her with disfavour.

‘There’s no need to look at me like that,’ Delia said. ‘I’ve come to see Mr Winthrop. Tell him I’m here, please. Miss Vaughan. No, I don’t have an appointment, but I’m sure he’ll see me.’

‘I’m not sure whether—’

‘Just tell him I’m here.’

Reluctantly, the clerk disappeared through a dark door, to return in a few moments and, even more reluctantly, show her into the handsome panelled room which was the lair of Josiah Winthrop, senior partner of the firm.

Mr Winthrop greeted Delia with a formal, chilly courtesy that made her indignant. He was not a man ever to show much warmth, but he had known her since she was a child and there was no need to treat her as though she were one of his criminal clients. Bother him, Delia said inwardly; I know he wishes I weren’t here at all, but he could try to hide the fact.

‘Okay,’ she said deliberately, and watched him wince at the slang, so out of place in these surroundings where every word was weighed and considered. She took off her headscarf and shook her dark hair loose before sitting down on the hard wooden chair with arms that Mr Winthrop had moved forward for her. An uncomfortable chair, which ensured that undesirable clients didn’t outstay their welcome.

‘Spit it out,’ she said. ‘Who is this Beatrice Malaspina, and what has she to do with me?’