Hidden, Page 3

  Because of her daily jogging, she knew every corner of Westport. She forced herself to focus, to follow the route he was taking. She listened to the traffic noise, but this giant car seemed to be almost soundproof. She listened harder. She needed to know where this man was taking her, so she could plan her escape.

  The driver seemed to be repeating the same pattern over and over, and with a sinking feeling Claire realised what was happening. He was driving in circles to confuse her. And he had certainly succeeded.

  They drove for what seemed like an hour but it could have been minutes. Claire cursed herself for not putting on a watch this morning. The car had begun to pick up speed. Highway. They were on a highway. She listened carefully. No trucks. That much she could tell. So it couldn’t be route 95. The Merritt, maybe. She couldn’t be sure. And with all the twists and turns she had no idea if they were heading north or south. Damn!

  She began to shiver and her mouth felt dry as a desert. Panic. She knew the symptoms well and fought them as best she could. She leaned back on the seat and took slow, deep breaths, her mind a jumble of thoughts. Mark. Was he just trying to frighten her? Or was Sasha right? Was she in danger? He had a hair-trigger temper, yes. But he loved her and adored Deborah. He wouldn’t dare … or would he?

  She never should have threatened to call the police. She had known as soon as the words were spoken that she had crossed a line. Why hadn’t she listened to Sasha, got away from him somehow? Whatever love they once had was gone. But there was Deborah. A girl needed a father.

  Stop it, she told herself. Stop finding excuses for him. When, she wondered, had she turned into this passive person, too frightened to stand up for herself, too weak to leave a dangerous relationship?

  Claire forced herself to push away the knowledge that Mark Saunders was capable of just about anything – wonderful or terrible. The man had everything: intellect, good looks, brilliant education, charm, even a great sense of humour. Everything but self-control.

  But he had not been like this during most of their twenty-year marriage. He had been loving, playful even. And he worshipped his adopted daughter and had been a great father to her. So what was it? What had happened to change him? Why had he suddenly become obsessed with the man who fathered Deborah?

  Walker. She rarely allowed herself to think of him, of how they once were. They had just six months together, but it had felt like a passion that would last until the day the world ended. Even after more than twenty years, she remembered everything: how his eyes would crinkle before he laughed, how he knew what she would say before she did. And, of course, she remembered how it felt to be loved by him. No matter how she tried to shut her mind to the memory, if she closed her eyes she could almost feel his hands on her body.

  Then he was gone. He just disappeared.

  The note said it had all been a mistake, but it hadn’t been, not for her. Neither was the child, his child she was carrying. She had never considered adoption, or abortion. This part of him would live, would thrive and be loved, as Claire had loved Walker. And still did, if truth be told. She knew she was in love with a memory.

  She had met Mark when Deborah was an infant. She was a single mom doing three jobs, determined that Deborah would have the best life that love and money could provide. She had begun working at Gilda when she was still pregnant, at night she did telephone sales for a magazine publisher. When it was too late to make calls she would design and create one-of-a-kind hair ornaments and fancy bows that she sold on Lexington Avenue outside Bloomingdale’s.

  Claire was tireless back then. Deborah was thriving in the best nursery in New York City, and already showing a musical talent that was a bit alarming to her mother, who couldn’t sing a tune.

  Mark had come into Gilda to buy a gift for his current girlfriend. Claire had been busy with another client. He had taken one look at her, and told the other staff that he would wait. He left the store that day with no gift, but a promise from a reluctant Claire to have dinner with him that night. She told him she had a daughter and didn’t date, but Mark Saunders had a way of getting what he wanted. Then and now.

  His courtship of her had been like something out of a fairy tale. Claire knew that it was his kindness to her daughter that caused her to open her heart and let him in. He was funny and handsome and powerful: a heady mix. Over time she grew to love him. True, it wasn’t the kind of passion she’d had with Walker, yet it was real and strong and, she had thought, plenty to build a life on.

  When she had accepted his proposal of marriage, when they made the agreement about Deborah, she swore to herself that she would put Walker completely out of her mind and heart. She owed Mark that. And she had done it; shut him out. There was just one reminder she couldn’t avoid. Deborah had her father’s eyes and, like his, they crinkled just before she laughed, signalling the delight to come.

  Sometimes, when she looked at her daughter, she would have to force the memory of Walker away. Shut her mind to the love she had seen in those eyes that first time they had been together. It hadn’t been awkward or shameful, just a celebration of a forever love that didn’t last.

  Stop it! Think of nothing, she told herself. Save energy. Close your eyes and breathe. She needed to be ready when they got to wherever they were going. She would be. She was going to be the woman she used to be, before the violence began. She was strong and she could run like the wind. She would get away. She closed her eyes and took more deep breaths.

  Claire awoke with a start to the sound of gravel crunching under the tyres. She’d fallen asleep! How was that possible? The big four by four was slowing down. We’re here, she thought, wherever here is.

  She heard the dull click of the locks being released, and in an instant she had thrown open the door, leapt to the ground and started running, arms pumping, long legs stretching out across a great lawn. She was practically flying when she glimpsed a path through a stand of birch trees, and headed for it. Claire knew the man would be after her, but he’d better be Usain Bolt if he expected to catch her.

  The sound confused her. It wasn’t the footfalls of the driver racing after her, but tyres on gravel. She risked a glance over her shoulder. The big car was leaving, following the driveway back down the hill. And there was no one else coming after her, at least as far as the eye could see. But she kept running towards the path, slowing a bit. She needed to be careful now.

  Once she reached the cover of the trees, and made sure that no one was following her, Claire slowed to a walk, searching the horizon for something, anything.

  She heard a rush of water, waves breaking. She was near water. The ocean … she was near the ocean. She could smell it. One step more and she was able to make out stone breakwaters jutting out into the greenish water. The waves seemed gentle. It was the Sound. Long Island Sound. That she was sure of. She listened for some clue, a sign of human life, but there was nothing. Only the screech of gulls, the rush of the incoming tide, and the pounding of her own heart.

  Seven

  Deborah Saunders hurtled down Devonshire Street, her long sandy curls tossed and tangled by the wind. There had been a late-afternoon shower of rain, so there were puddles to splash in, and splash she did.

  She was tall and lean like her mother, but instead of Claire’s turquoise eyes hers were hazel, flecked with green and gold. Deborah was lithe like a colt, and full of life.

  She screeched to a halt in front of a pair of handsome double doors and began fumbling for her keys.

  Her room-mate, Mavis, followed more slowly, lugging a cello, yet still arriving in plenty of time to open the doors before Deborah. Mavis couldn’t help laughing at her friend. Deborah was, as usual, scurrying about the pavement, trying to gather up the sheet music that had scattered to the four winds when she’d dropped her backpack, again as usual.

  ‘Do you New Yorkers ever walk anywhere?’ Mavis asked, stooping to prevent an expensive musical score from turning into pulp.

  ‘Not when we’re excited,’ Deborah sai
d, shaking the water off a Mozart sonata, and stuffing it messily into her bag.

  ‘Which is every minute of every day, if you are an example.’

  ‘You Brits are too laid-back by half,’ Deborah said, pouncing upon one particular folder of music, cradling it to her with reverence. ‘How can you not be filled with joy every minute, just being here in London? I mean, look at the light!’

  ‘I do love being here, Deb. But I guess the English are not the sort to leap about,’ Mavis laughed. ‘It could also be because I’ve been carrying a giant fiddle around with me since I was six.’

  Deborah held the door so Mavis could wrestle her cello through it and into the lift. ‘See you upstairs,’ Deborah called as she bounded up the stairs two at a time, the precious folder clutched to her heart. The flat was everything Deborah had dreamed of when she got on the plane to London. Cramped, noisy, quirky and thrillingly her own. She had dreamed of studyng at the Royal Academy for as long as she could remember, probably ever since her mother had begun letting slip tiny details about her own time in London.

  Maddeningly, the Claire-Sphinx, as she and her friends called her exotic mother, rarely gave up details about that time. If you asked her about studying at the Royal Academy of Art, she would say things like, ‘It was special but a long time ago.’

  Sometimes, right out of the blue, Claire would start talking about London in a way that made you see it … about rain showers that just happened and then went away; how a little corner of the city could become your very own place; and how there was a time, when she was in London, that Claire believed any dream could come true.

  Deborah had had her own dream since she first sat down at a piano. To make it come true, she had practised when she would rather have been hanging out with her best friends. Astonishingly, they were the children of her mom’s best friends. She was a student at the Juilliard School, and when her friends went to Cancun in Mexico for spring break, she flew to Ohio to take an intensive course with famous pianists.

  The news that she had been accepted at the Royal Academy of Music to study piano performance made it worth every sleepover, every party, she had ever missed. She had insisted on coming to London alone. She wanted to find her own flat, make her own way. Her dad had not been keen; in fact, he had been adamantly opposed to her coming to London at all. He had fought tooth and nail to stop her from enrolling in the Royal Academy.

  Her mother, on the other hand, had been fiercely supportive of her. ‘She’s earned the right to make her own choices,’ Claire had insisted and, despite immense pressure from Deborah’s dad, she never wavered, nor deferred to him, as she usually did.

  Mavis took her cello from its case, propped it up in its stand, and sat on the piano bench next to Deborah. ‘Tell me again how you got your hands on this piece of music?’

  Deborah was studying the composition, her fingers moving unconsciously as she read each bar. ‘I stole it, of course.’

  ‘When we heard it at the Albert Hall it was the very first performance. The piece hasn’t even been published yet.’

  ‘Which is why,’ Deborah said, continuing her study of the score, ‘I had to pinch it.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. Although I prefer the term borrowed. But I just had to have it. You heard it. It’s such a magnificent composition, so filled with passion and longing.’

  ‘So you just walked into Maestro Connelly’s office and took it? You know you could get expelled.’

  ‘I would never risk that. You know Renny from composition class? He played first bassoon at the concert?’

  ‘The storky fellow?’

  ‘Be nice. You need to be tall to play the bassoon. Anyway, I asked him if I could have a look at Rhapsody for Claire, and he said yes.’

  ‘Just like that, he handed you a piece of music that’s still a work in progress?’

  ‘Well, I did have to promise to meet him for tea when I return it tomorrow.’

  ‘You are shameless.’

  ‘Isn’t it great! I’ve never been shameless before, and I quite like it. Anyway, I’m doing it for a good cause. I’m going to learn the rhapsody and play it for Mom when she comes for my term-end concert in July. Rhapsody for Claire, performed by piano prodigy, Deborah Saunders.’

  ‘Very cool. All right, I approve this crime.’

  Claire pulled out her computer and a small keyboard and began to copy the piece.

  ‘If you’re going to get that thing copied by tea-time tomorrow, you’ll have to pull an all-nighter,’ Mavis said, standing up. ‘I’ll brew up a pot of tea that’ll keep you awake until St George’s Day.’

  It was late in London, and Mavis had long since gone to bed. Deborah was so engrossed in her work that, when her phone rang, she actually jumped. She checked caller ID: it said, HOME. ‘Hi, Mom, what’s up?’

  ‘It’s me, Deborah.’

  ‘Dad! When did you get home from Cairo?’

  ‘Just a little while ago.’

  ‘So did you make the world safe for democracy?’

  ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. That may take a few more centuries. So tell me about your classes.’

  Ten minutes later they were still talking about nothing. Her father, who usually was a just the facts, ma’am kind of guy, had asked more questions on this call than he had in the last ten years.

  Mavis wandered sleepily out of the bedroom and mouthed, ‘Everything all right?’

  Deborah shrugged and mouthed back, ‘Dad.’ She made the hand gesture that shows someone is talking and talking, and rolled her eyes.

  Finally she cut in. ‘Dad, it’s great talking to you, but I’ve still got a lot of work to do before class tomorrow. Thanks for calling, and thanks again for all the birthday presents. I didn’t even know you knew what a metronome was.’

  ‘I’m a man of many talents,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you get back to it.’

  ‘Okay Dad, love you.’ She started to end the call but he stopped her.

  ‘I was wondering … when did you last talk to your mother?’

  ‘Mom? Tonight. Well, my tonight, your afternoon. Why?’

  ‘No reason. Just wondered.’ There was a long pause. ‘Talk about anything special?’

  ‘Dad, you sound weird.’ There was something about this call that was bothering her. ‘Is everything all right with Mom?’

  ‘Of course. She’s just fine. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just a little jet-lagged, I guess. Get back to whatever you were doing. Night.’

  Mark hung up the phone quickly, and cursed himself for his clumsiness. He poured himself another drink and prowled around the long room, feeling as jumpy as a caged lion.

  He needed to find out how much Claire had told their daughter about their personal problems. He suspected she was telling everyone she ran into about things that should be private between a man and his wife. He checked his watch. Soon, he thought. Soon things will be settled once and for all.

  Eight

  Claire was huddled in a little shelter she had found down at the water’s edge. She was shivering, but not from fear. She was past that now, her panic replaced by a steely determination to survive at all costs. She was cold. She had checked the shoreline and could see no sign of life. She had to clear her mind, to think. Where was she? And, more importantly, why was she here?

  ‘Mrs Saunders! Claire!’

  The voice, a woman’s voice, was coming from up the hill, near where Claire had jumped from the four by four. She kept very still, making herself as small as possible in the corner of the old shelter.

  ‘Claire! My dear child, where are you? You must be freezing.’ The voice was closer now, a little out of breath. Silently, Claire got to her feet, reached up for one of the wooden oars that had been stored in the roof of the hut, and held it at the ready. It would make a clumsy but effective weapon. Who was this woman? She sounded so … kind. Not at all like someone coming to cut her throat. It had to be a trap.

  ‘Forgive me for not being there to greet y
ou. There was an emergency. Where are you, my dear? Don’t be frightened. Please.’

  ‘Don’t come any closer!’ Claire hardly knew her own voice. ‘I warn you.’ A twig snapped on the other side of the shelter, and Claire whirled around.

  ‘I’ve brought a shawl for you.’

  Claire cocked the oar over her shoulder like a baseball bat.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’ The woman stopped when she saw Claire. ‘My goodness, that looks heavy.’

  Claire just stared. Standing before her, showing no fear whatever, was a pink-cheeked middle-aged woman dressed in a ruby-red, almost pink, nun’s habit.

  ‘Take this,’ the woman said, holding out a bright pink shawl. ‘I’m Sister Mary Theresa. And of course I know all about you. Claire Saunders. You are as lovely as I was told.’

  Claire’s mind seemed to be shutting down. ‘Who are you? What is this place? Why was I brought here?’ She was still holding the oar at the ready.

  ‘So many questions. Why don’t you put that down, dear? You’re liable to get a splinter. It’s been out here all winter.’

  Despite the plight she was in, Claire saw something in this woman that just washed her fear away. Slowly, almost without realising, she lowered the oar. She still kept her distance, but her breathing was slowly returning to normal. ‘Why did you have me kidnapped?’

  ‘Kidnapped? We didn’t think of it like that. But, of course, I can see how you might.’

  Claire felt as if she were Alice in Wonderland, and had just tumbled down the rabbit hole and run into the Mad Hatter dressed as a pink nun. ‘You said us. Who is us? What do you want with me?’

  Sister Mary Theresa crossed quickly to Claire and wrapped the shawl around her trembling shoulders. ‘Come with me up to the house. I’ve got a fire going, and once you have a hot cup of tea we will explain everything.’

  ‘I don’t want tea and I’m not going anywhere with you! I want an explanation and I want it now. And who is we?’