Текст книги "Hope"

Автор книги: Len Deighton

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Hope

Len Deighton was trained as an illustrator at the Royal College of Art in London. His writing career began with The Ipcress File which was a spectacular success and was made into a classic film starring Michael Caine.

Since then he has written many books of fiction and non-fiction. These include spy stories and war novels such as Goodbye Mickey Mouse and Bomber which the BBC recently made into a day-long radio drama in 'real time'. Last year Deighton's history of World War Two, Blood, Tears and Folly, was published to wide acclaim – Jack Higgins called it 'an absolute landmark'.

The first three Bernard Samson stories – Game, Set and Match – were made into an internationally aired thirteen-hour television series. These were followed by Hook, Line and Sinker. Deighton's latest novel, Charity, brings to a close the third Samson trilogy, Faith, Hope and Charity.

BY LEN DEIGHTON

FICTION NON-FICTION

The Ipcress File Fighter: The True Story of the Battle

Horse Under Water of Britain

Funeral in Berlin Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to

Billion Dollar Brain the Fall of Dunkirk

An Expensive Place to Die Airshipwreck

Only When I Larf ABC of French Food

Bomber Blood, Tears and Folly

Declarations of War

Close-Up

Spy Story

Yesterday's Spy

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

SS-GB

XPD

Goodbye Mickey Mouse

Mamista

City of Gold

Violent Ward

THE SAMSON SERIES

Berlin Game

Mexico Set

London Match

Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945

Spy Hook

Spy Line

Spy Sinker

Faith

Hope

Charity

LEN DEIGHTON

____________________________________________________

HOPE

HarperCollins Publishers

HarperCollinsPublishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

Special overseas edition 1996

This paperback edition 1996

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 1995

Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company, BV 1995

ISBN 0 00 647899 9

Set in Linotron Sabon by

Rowland Photosetting Ltd,

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd, Glasgow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or

otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent

in any form of binding or cover than that in which it

is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

HOPE

I

Mayfair, London, October 1987.

A caller who wakes you in the small dark silent hours is unlikely to be a bringer of good news.

When the buzzer sounded a second time I reluctantly climbed out of bed. I was at home alone. My wife was at her parents' with our children.

'Kosinski?'

'No,' I said.

The overhead light of the hallway shone down upon a thin, haggard man in a short waterproof flight jacket and a navy-blue knitted hat. In one hand he was carrying a cheap briefcase of the sort that every office worker in Eastern Europe flaunts as a status symbol. The front of his denim shirt was bloody and so was his stubbly face, and the outstretched hand in which he held the key to my apartment. 'No,' I said again.

'Please help me,' he said. I guessed his command of English was limited. I couldn't place the accent but his voice was muffled and distorted by the loss of some teeth. That he'd been badly hurt was evident from his hunched posture and the expression on his face.

I opened the door. As he tottered in he rested his weight against me, as if he'd expended every last atom of energy in getting to the doorbell and pressing it.

He only got a few more steps before twisting round to slump on to the low hall table. There was blood everywhere now. He must have read my mind for he said, 'No. No blood on the stairs.'

He'd taken the stairs rather than the lift. It was the choice of experienced fugitives. Lifts in the small hours make the sort of sound that wakens janitors and arouses security men. 'Kosinski,' he said anxiously. 'Who are you? This is Kosinski's place.' If he had been a bit stronger he might have been angry.

'I'm just a friendly burglar,' I explained.

I got him back on his feet and dragged him to the bathroom and to the tub. He rolled over the edge of it until he was full length in the empty bath. It was better that he bled there. 'I'm Kosinski's partner,' he said.

'Sure,' I said. 'Sure.' It was a preposterous claim.

I got his jacket off and pushed him flat to open his shirt. I could see no arterial bleeding and most of the blood was in that tacky congealed state. There were a dozen or more deep cuts on his hands and arms where he had deflected the attack, but it was the small stab wounds on his body that were the life-threatening ones. Under his clothes he was wearing a moneybelt. It had saved him from the initial attack. It wasn't the sort of belt worn by tourists and backpackers, but the heavy-duty type used by professional smugglers. Almost six inches wide, it was made of strong canvas that from many years of use was now frayed and stained and bleached to a light gray color. The whole belt was constructed of pockets that would hold ingots of the size and shape of small chocolate bars. Now it was entirely empty. Loaded it would have weighed a ton, for which reason there were two straps that went over the shoulders. It was one of these shoulder straps that had no doubt saved this man's life, for there was a fresh and bloody cut in it. A knife thrust had narrowly missed the place where a twisted blade floods the lungs with blood and brings death within sixty seconds.

'Just a scratch,' I said. He smiled. He knew how bad it was.

To my astonishment George Kosinski, my brother-in-law, arrived five minutes later. George, who had left England never to return, was back! I suppose he'd been trying to head off my visitor, for he showed little surprise to find him there. George was nearly forty years old, his wavy hair graying at the temples. He took off his glasses. 'I came by cab, Bernard. A car will arrive any minute and I'll take this fellow off your hands.' He said it as casually as if he were the owner of a limousine service. Then he took out a handkerchief and began rubbing the condensation from his thick-rimmed glasses.

'He loses consciousness and then comes back to life,' I said. 'He urgently needs attention. He's lost a lot of blood; he could die any time.'

'And you don't want him to die here,' said George, putting his glasses on and looking at the comatose man in the bathtub. His eyes were tightly closed and his breathing slow, and with the sort of snoring noise that sometimes denotes impending death. George looked at me and said, 'I'm taking him to a Polish doctor in Kensington. He's expected there. He'll relax and trust someone who can talk his language.' George moved into the drawing room, as if he didn't want to think about the man expiring in my bathtub.

'It's internal bleeding, George. I think he's dying.'

This prognosis showed no effect on George. He went to the window and looked down at the street as if hoping to see the car arrive. I think it was done to reassure me rather than because he really thought he'd see the promised car. George was Polish by extraction and a Londoner by birth. He was not handsome or charming but he was direct in manner and unstinting in his generosity. Like most self-made men he was intuitive, and like most rich ones, cynical. Many of the men he did deals with, and the ones who sat alongside him on his charity committees, were Poles, or considered themselves as such. George went out of his way to be sociable with Poles, but he was a man of many moods. Where his supporters found a cheerful self-confidence others encountered a stubborn ego. And when his mask slipped a little, his energetic impatience could become raging bad temper.

Now I watched him marching backwards and forwards and around the room, flapping the long vicuna overcoat, or cracking the bones of his knuckles, and displaying that kind of restless energy that some claim is part of the process of reasoning. His face was clenched in anger. You wouldn't have recognized him as a man grieving for his desperately loved wife. Neither would you have thought that this apartment had been until recently his own home, for he blundered against the chairs, kicked his polished brogues at the carpets and fumed like a teetotaler held on a drunk-driving charge.

'He had nowhere to go,' said George.

'You're wrong,' I said, waving the key at him. 'He had a key to this apartment. He tried the doorbell only to discover if it was clear.'

George scowled. 'I thought I'd called in all the keys. But perhaps you'd better have the locks changed, just to be on the safe side.' He lifted his eyes quickly, caught the full force of the annoyance on my face and added, 'They can't just walk the streets, Bernard.'

'Why not? Because they're illegals? Because they don't have papers or passports or visas? Is that what you mean?' I put the key in my pocket and resolved to change the locks just as soon as I could get someone along here to do it. 'Damn you, George, don't you have any consideration for me or Fiona? She'll be furious if she hears about this.'

'Must you tell her?'

'She'll see the blood on the mat in the hall.'

'I'll send someone round to clean up.'

'I'm the world's foremost expert on cleaning blood marks off the floor,' I said.

'Then get a new mat,' he said with exasperation, as if I was capriciously making problems for him.

'I can't think of anything more likely to excite Fiona's suspicions than me going out to buy a new mat.'

'So confide in her. Ask her to keep it to herself.'

'It wouldn't be fair to ask her. Fiona is big brass in the Department nowadays. And anyway she wouldn't agree. She'd report it. She prefers doing things by the book, that's how she got to the top.'

George stopped pacing and went to take a brief look at the man in the bath, who was even paler than before, although his breathing was marginally easier. 'Don't make problems for me, Bernard,' he said in an offhand manner that angered me.

'My employers . . .' I stopped, counted to ten and started again. More calmly I said: 'The sort of people who run the Secret Service have old-fashioned ideas about East European escapers having the doorkey to their employees' homes.'

George put on his conciliatory hat. 'I can see that. It was a terrible mistake. I'm truly sorry, Bernard.' He patted my shoulder. 'That means you will have to report it, eh?'

'You're playing with fire, George.' I wondered if perhaps the death of his wife, Tessa, had turned his brain.

'It's simply that I'm not supposed to be in this jurisdiction: tax-wise. I'm in the process of losing residence. Just putting it around that I've been in England could cause me a lot of trouble, Bernard.'

I noted the words – jurisdiction, tax-wise. Only men like George had a call on words like that. 'I know what you're doing, George. You're asking some of these roughnecks to investigate the death of your wife. That could lead to trouble.'

'They are Poles – my people. I have to do what I can for them.' His claim sounded hollow when pitched in that unmistakable East London accent.

'These people can't bring her back, George. No one can.'

'Stop preaching at me, Bernard, please.'

Listen, George,' I said, 'your friend next door isn't just a run-of-the-mill victim of a street mugging or a fracas in a pub. He was attacked by a professional killer. Whoever came after him was aiming his blade for an artery and knew exactly where to find the place he wanted. Only the canvas moneybelt saved him, and that was probably because it was twisted across his body at the time. I think he's dying. He should be in an intensive-care ward, not on his way to a cozy old family doctor in Kensington. Believe me, these are rough playmates. Next time it could be you.'

I had rather hoped that this revelation might bring George to his senses, but he seemed quite unperturbed. 'Many of these poor wretches are on the run, Bernard,' he said cheerfully. 'Nothing in the belt, was there? And yes, you're right. It's inevitable that the regime infiltrates their own spies. Black market gangsters and other violent riffraff use our escape line. We screen them all but it takes time. This one was doubly unlucky; a really nice youngster, he wanted to help. If you could see some of the deserving cases. The youngsters . . . It's heartbreaking.'

'I can't tell you how to run your life, George. I know you've always contributed generously to Polish funds and good causes for these dissidents and political refugees. But the communist government in Warsaw sees such overseas organizations as subversive. You must know that. And there is a big chance that you are being exploited by political elements without understanding what you're doing.'

George rubbed his face. 'He's hurt bad, you think?' He stroked the telephone.

'Yes, George, bad.'

His face stiffened and he picked up the phone and called some unknown person, presumably to hurry things along. When there was no answer to his call he looked at me and said,

'This won't happen again, Bernard. I promise you that.' He waited only a few minutes before trying his number again and got the busy signal. He crashed the phone down with such force that it broke. I had been crashing phones down into their cradles for years but I'd never broken one. Was it a measure of his anger, his grief, his embarrassment, or something else? He held up his hands in supplication, looked at me and smiled.

I sighed. No man chooses his brother-in-law. They are strangers society thrusts upon us to test the limits of our compassion and forbearance. I was lucky, I liked my brother-in-law; more perhaps than he liked me. That was the trouble; I liked George.

'Look, George,' I said in one final attempt to make him see sense. 'To you it's obvious that you're not an enemy agent-just a well – meaning philanthropist – but don't rely upon others being so perceptive. The sort of people I work for think that there is no smoke without fire. Cool it. Or you are likely to find a fire extinguisher up your ass.'

'I live in Switzerland,' said George.

'So a Swiss fire extinguisher.'

'I told you I'm sorry, Bernard. You know I wouldn't have had this happen for the world. I can't blame you for being angry. In your place I would be angry too.' Both his arms were clasped round the cheap briefcase as if it was a baby. I suddenly guessed that it was stuffed with money; money that had come from the exchange of the gold.

At that I gave up. There are some people who won't learn by good advice, only by experience. George Kosinski was that sort of person.

Soon after that a man I recognized as George's driver and handyman arrived. He brought a car rug to wrap around the injured man and lifted him with effortless ease. George watched as if it was his own sick child.

Perhaps it was pain that caused the injured man's eyes to flicker. His lips moved but he didn't speak. Then he was carried down to the car.

'I'm sorry, Bernard,' said George, standing at the door as if trying to be contrite. 'If you have to report it, you have to. I understand. You can't risk your job.'

*

I cleaned the mat as well as possible, got rid of the worst marks in the bathroom and soaked a bloody towel in cold water before sending it to the laundry. In my usual infantile fashion, I decided to wait and see if Fiona noticed any of the marks. As a way of making an important decision it was about as good as spinning a coin in the air, but Fiona had eyes for little beyond the mountains of work she brought home every evening, so I didn't mention my uninvited visitors to anyone. But my hopes that George and his antics were finished and forgotten did not last beyond the following week, when I returned from a meeting and found a message on my desk summoning me to the presence of my boss Dicky Cruyer, newly appointed European Controller.

I opened the office door. Dicky was standing behind his desk, twisting a white starched handkerchief tight around his wounded fingers, while half a dozen tiny drips of blood patterned the report he had brought back from his meeting.

There was no need for him to explain. I'd been on the top floor and heard the sudden snarling and baritone growls. The only beast permitted through the guarded front entrance of London Central was the Director General's venerable black Labrador, and it only came when accompanied by its master.

'Berne,' said Dicky, indicating the papers freshly arrived in his tray. 'The Berne office again.'

I put on a blank expression. 'Berne?' I said. 'Berne, Switzerland?'

'Don't act the bloody innocent, Bernard. Your brother-in-law fives in Switzerland, doesn't he?' Dicky was trembling. His sanguinary encounter with the Director-General and his canine companion had left him wounded in both body and spirit. It made me wonder what condition the other two were in.

'I've never denied it,' I said.

The door to the adjoining office opened. Jennifer, the youngest, most devoted and attentive of Dicky's female assistants, put her head round the door and said, 'Shall I get antiseptic from the first-aid box, Mr. Cruyer?'

'No,' said Dicky in a stagy whisper over his shoulder, vexed that word of his misfortune had spread so quickly. 'Well?' he said, turning to me again.

I shrugged. 'We all have to live somewhere.'

'Four Stasi agents pass through in seven days? Are you telling me that's just a coincidence?' A pensive pause. 'They went to see your brother-in-law in Zurich.'

'How do you know where they went?'

'They all went to Zurich. It's obvious, isn't it?'

'I don't know what you're implying,' I said. 'If the Stasi want to talk to George Kosinski they don't have to send four men to Zurich; roughnecks that even our penpushers in Berne can recognize. I mean, it's a bit high-profile, isn't it?'

Dicky looked round to see if Jennifer was still standing in the doorway looking worried. She was. 'Very well, then,' he said, sitting down suddenly as if surrendering to his pain. 'Get the antiseptic.' The door closed and, as he tightened the handkerchief round his fingers, he noticed the bloodstains on his papers.

'You should have an anti-tetanus shot,' I advised. 'That dog is full of fleas and mange.'

Dicky said, 'Never mind the dog. Let's keep to the business in hand. Your brother-in-law is in contact with East German intelligence, and I'm going over there to face him with it.'

'When?'

'This weekend. And you are coming with me.'

'I have to finish all that material you gave me yesterday. You said the D-G wanted the report on his desk on Monday.'

Dicky eyed me suspiciously. We both knew that he recklessly used the name of the Director-General when he wanted work done hurriedly or late at night. 'He's changed his mind about the report. He told me to take you to Switzerland with me.'

Now it was possible to see a little deeper into Dicky's state of mind. The questions he had just put to me were questions he'd failed to answer to the D-G's satisfaction. The Director had then told Dicky to take me along with him, and it was that that had dented Dicky's ego. The nip from the dog was extracurricular. 'Because it's your brother-in-law,' he added, lest I began to think myself indispensable.

Using his uninjured hand Dicky picked up his phone and called Fiona, who worked in the next office. 'Fiona, darling,' he said in his jokey drawl. 'Hubby is with me. Could you join us for a moment?'

I went and looked out of the window and tried to forget I had a crackpot brother-in-law in whom Dicky was taking a sudden and unsympathetic interest. Summer had passed; we had winter to endure before it came again but this was a glorious golden day, and from this top-floor room I could see across the London basin to the high ground at Hampstead. The clouds, gauzy and gray like a bundle of discarded bandages, were fixed to the ground by shiny brass pins pretending to be sunbeams.

My wife came in, her face darkened with the stem expression that I'd learned to recognize as one she wore when wrenched away from something that needed uninterrupted concentration. Fiona's work load had become the talk of the top floor. And she handled the political decisions with consummate skill. But I saw in her eyes that bright gleam a light bulb provides just before going ping.

'Yes, Dicky?' she said.

'I'm enticing your hubby away for a brief fling in Zurich, Fiona my dearest. We must leave Sunday morning. Can you endure a weekend without him?'

Fiona looked at me sternly. I winked at her but she didn't react. 'Must he go?' she said.

'Duty calls,' said Dicky.

'What did you do to your hand, Dicky?'

As if in response, Jennifer arrived with antiseptic, cotton wool and a packet of Band-Aids. Dicky held his hand out like some potentate accepting a vow of fidelity. Jennifer crouched and began work on his wound.

'The children were coming home on Sunday,' Fiona told Dicky. 'But if Bernard is going to be on a trip, I'll lock myself away and work on those wretched figures you need for the Minister.'

'Splendid,' said Dicky. 'Ouch, that hurts,' he told Jennifer.

'I'm sorry, Mr. Cruyer.'

To me Fiona said, 'Daddy suggests keeping the children with him a little longer.' Perhaps she saw the quizzical look in my face for, in explanation, she added, 'I phoned them this morning. It's their wedding anniversary.'

'We'll talk about it,' I said.

'I've told Daddy to reserve places for them at the school next term, just in case.' She clasped her hands together as if praying that I would not explode. 'If we lose the deposit, so be it.'

For a moment I was speechless. Her father was doing everything he could to keep my children with him, and I wanted them home with us.

Dicky, feeling left out of this conversation, said, 'Has Daphne been in touch, by any chance?'

This question about his wife was addressed to Fiona, who looked at him and said, 'Not since I called and thanked her for that divine dinner party.'

'I just wondered,' said Dicky lamely. With Fiona looking at him and waiting for more, he added, 'Daph's been a bit low lately; and there are no friends like old friends. I told her that.'

'Shall I call her?'

'No,' said Dicky hurriedly. 'She'll be all right. I think she's going through the change of life.'

Fiona grinned. 'You say that every time you have a tiff with her, Dicky.'

'No, I don't,' said Dicky crossly. 'Daphne needs counseling. She's making life damned difficult right now. And with all the work piled up here I don't need any distractions. '

'No,' said Fiona, backing down and becoming the loyal assistant. Now that Dicky had maneuvered himself into being the European Controller, while still holding on to the German Desk, no one in the Department was safe from his whims and fancies.

Dicky said, 'Work is the best medicine. I've always been a workaholic; it's too late to change now.'

Fiona nodded and I looked out of the window. There was really no way to respond to this amazing claim by the Rip Van Winkle of London Central, and if I'd caught her eye we might both have rolled around on the floor with merriment.

*

We stayed at home that evening, eating dinner I'd fetched from a Chinese take-away. F'ulham was too far to go for shriveled duck and plastic pancakes but Fiona had read about it in a magazine at the hairdresser's. That restaurant critic must have led the dullest of lives to have found the black bean spareribs 'memorable.' The bill might have proved even more memorable for him, had restaurant critics been given bills.

'You don't like it?' Fiona said.

'I'm full.'

'You've eaten hardly anything.'

'I'm thinking about my trip to Zurich.'

'It won't be so bad.'

'With Dicky?'

'Dicky depends upon you, he really does,' she said, her feminine reasoning making her think that this dependence would encourage me to overlook his faults for the sake of the Department.

'No more rice, no more fish and no more pancakes,' I said as she pushed the serving plates towards me. 'And certainly no more spareribs.'

Fiona switched on the TV to catch the evening news. There was a discussion between four people best known for their availability to appear on TV discussion programs. A college professor was holding forth on the latest news from Poland. '. . . Historically the Poles lack a consciousness of their own position in the European dimension. For hundreds of years they have acted out a totemic role that they lack the capacity to sustain. Now I think the Poles are about to get a rude awakening.' The professor touched his beard reflectively. 'They have pushed and provoked the Soviet Union . . . The Warsaw Pact autumn exercises are taking place along the border. Any time now the Russian tanks will roll across it.'

'Literally?' asked the TV anchor man.

'It is time the West acted,' said a woman with a Polish Solidarity badge pinned to her Chanel suit.

'Yes, literally,' said the professor with that determined solemnity with which those past military age discuss war. 'The Soviets will use it as a way of cautioning the hotheads in the Baltic States. We must make it absolutely clear to Chairman Gorbachev that any action, I do mean any action, he takes against the Poles will not be permitted to provoke a major East-West conflict.'

'Who will rid me of these troublesome Poles? Is that how the Americans see it?' the Solidarity woman asked bitterly. 'Best abandon the Poles to their fate?'

'When?' said the TV anchor man. Already the camera was tracking back to show that the program was ending. A gigantic Polish eagle of polystyrene on a red and white flag formed the backdrop to the studio.

'When the winter hardens the ground enough for their modem heavy armor to go in,' answered the professor, who clearly knew that a note of terror heard on the box in the evening was a newspaper headline by morning. 'They'll crush the Poles in forty-eight hours. The Russian army has one or two special Spetsnaz brigades that have been trained to suppress unruly satellites. One of them, stationed at Maryinagorko in the Byelorussian Military District, was put on alert two days ago. Yes, Polish blood will flow. But quite frankly, if a few thousand Polish casualties are the price we pay to avoid World War Three, we must thank our lucky stars and pay up.'

Loud stirring music increased in volume to eventually drown his voice and, while the panel sat in silhouette, a roller provided details of about one hundred and fifty people who had worked on this thirty-minute unscripted discussion programme.

The end roller was still going when the phone rang. It was my son Billy calling from my father-in-law's home where he was staying. 'Dad? Is that you, Dad? Did Mum tell you about the weekend?'

'What about the weekend?' I saw Fiona frowning as she watched me.

'It's going to be super. Grandad is taking us to France,' said Billy, almost bursting with excitement. 'To France! Just for one night. A private plane to Dinard. Can we go, Dad? Say yes, Dad. Please.'

'Of course you can, Billy. Is Sally keen to go?'

'Of course she is,' said Billy, as if the question was absurd. 'We are going to stay in a château.'

'I'll see you the following weekend then,' I said as cheerfully as I could manage. 'And you can tell me all about it.'

'Grandad's bought a video camera. He's going to take pictures of us. You'll be able to see us. On the TV!'

'That's wonderful,' I said.

'He's already taken videos of his best horses. Of course I'd rather be with you, Dad,' said Billy, desperately trying to mend his fences. Perhaps he heard the disappointment.

'All the world's a video,' I improvised. 'And all the men and women merely directors. They have their zooms and their parts, and one man in his time plays back the results too many times. Is Sally there?'

'That's a good joke,' said Billy with measured reserve. 'Sally's in bed. Grandad is letting me stay up to see the TV news.' Fiona had quietened our TV, but over the phone from Grandad's I could hear the orchestrated fanfares and drumrolls that introduce the TV news bulletins; a presentational style that Dr. Goebbels created for the Nazis. I visualized Grandad fingering the volume control and urging our conversation to a close.

'Sleep well, Billy. Give my love to Say. And to Grandad and Grandma-' I held up the phone, offering it, but Fiona shook her head. 'And love from Mummy too,' I said. Then I hung up.

'It's not my doing,' said Fiona defensively.

'Who said it was?'

'I can see it on your face.'

'Why can't your father ask me?'

'It will be lovely for them,' said Fiona– 'And anyway you couldn't have gone on Sunday.'

'I could have gone on Saturday.' The silent TV pictures changed rapidly as the news flashed quickly from one calamity to another.

'It wasn't my idea,' she snapped.

'I don't see why I should be the focus of your anger,' I said mildly. 'I'm the victim.'

'Yes,' she said. 'You're always the victim, Bernard. That's what makes you so hard to live with.'

'What then?'

She got up and said, 'Let's not argue, darling. I love the children just as much as you do. Don't keep putting me in the middle.'

'But why didn't you tell me?' I said.

'Daddy is so worried. The stock market has become unpredictable, he says. He doesn't know what he'll be worth next week.'

'For him that's new? For me it's always been like that.' This aggravated her. 'With you on one side and my father on the other, sometimes I just want to scream.'

'Scream away,' I said.

'I'm tired. I'll clean my teeth.' She rose to her feet and put everything she had into a smile. 'Tomorrow we'll have lunch, and fight all you want.'

'Lovely! And I'll arm wrestle the waiter to settle the bill,' I said. 'Switch off that bloody TV, will you?'

She switched it off and went to bed leaving the desolation of our meal still on the table. Sitting there staring at the blank screen of the TV, I found myself simmering with anger at the way my father-in-law was holding on to my children. But was Fiona fit and well enough to be a proper mother to them? Perhaps Fiona would remain incapable of looking after them. Perhaps she knew that. And perhaps my awful father-in-law knew it. Perhaps I was the only one who couldn't see the tragic situation for what it really was.