Where You Belong. Barbara Taylor Bradford

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СКАЧАТЬ plenty of time to spend here in the garden, because he had always hot-footed it to London at the end of an assignment, leaving me and Jake to make our way back to France together.

      And Tony had usually had plenty of good reasons for rushing off, ready excuses on the tip of his tongue; he had to check in with his news-photo agency, spend time at the agency, see his kids, have lunch with his brother, get a doctor’s check-up, go to the dentist, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. No, he had never been at a loss when it came to explaining away his absence from my life when we were not working.

      Tony had been in London through June and most of July, and certainly he could have easily done a lot of garden-sitting then. He had not joined us in Paris until the last few days of July, just before we set off for Kosovo in August to cover the war.

      Do we ever really know another person? Until earlier today I had believed I knew everything there was to know about Tony Hampton. Not so, it seemed.

      I’d had a bit of a shock in the Brompton Oratory, when it had suddenly hit me, with some force, that I was actually standing next to Tony’s widow and not his ex-wife, as I had believed her to be. But the shock had receded somewhat, and I had begun to regain some of my equilibrium.

      When I’d rushed out of the church I’d been full of rage; but as the anger had subsided I had accepted the fact that I’d been duped. Not only that, I could also admit to myself that Tony had purposely set out to beguile me last year, and I had been foolishly sucked in, captivated by his Irish charm – if anyone had kissed the Blarney Stone he had. I had been bowled over by his sudden and rather intense interest in me; it had been so unexpected. After all, he had known me for several years and had always treated me as a pal. Suddenly I was the focus of his romantic and sexual interest, and for a while I was baffled. But he was charismatic, and of course I had not been able to resist his looks, his humour, his cleverness, his sexuality. I had been a sitting duck…

      There was something else. I trusted my gut instinct absolutely, and earlier today it had told me Tony had died a married man. I was convinced I was right about that, even if Jake was wavering on this point.

      I was baffled by Tony’s behaviour at the end of July. Why had he unexpectedly announced to Jake that he was divorced? And why had he told me exactly the same thing? I’d certainly not been bugging him about marriage. And who could fathom out a blatant lie like that? What was the motivation behind it? What was the reason for the lie? What had he hoped to gain?

      All kinds of other questions jostled for prominence in my mind, as I sat there in his house in Hampstead with his widow playing hostess; I went on sipping her dry sherry and pondering my love affair with him.

      Had Tony been playing for time? Had he been intending to marry me, as he had often said he would, and in doing so commit bigamy? Had he merely been stringing me along, hoping that Fiona would leave him? Or that I would tire of waiting? Had he found himself in so deep with me he didn’t know how to extricate himself, and therefore had invented the divorce and given me the Grecian ring as…pacifiers? Had he been hoping that something would happen to solve his problems?

      Tony had had a favourite expression, one which he used frequently. ‘Life has a way of taking care of itself,’ he would say to me and others.

      Well, life had indeed taken care of itself in the end. Had he always known he would die covering a war? Had he had a presentiment about this? An icy shiver shot through me at this appalling thought, and I immediately put it out of my head. Otherwise, I might start thinking that his recklessness had in some way been calculated.

      A feeling of dismay mingled with frustration now lodged in the pit of my stomach, as I recognized that I would never know what had been in Tony’s mind. No one would. The only person who had all the answers was dead and buried.

      IV

      Not wishing to wrestle any further with the puzzle of Tony’s marital status and his terrible game-playing, if that was what he had been doing, I focused my eyes on the garden for a short while longer. It was so tranquil, filled with such a calm beauty, I took a measure of peace from it. And again I was thankful that nobody was disturbing me with their idle chatter.

      The slashing rain had long since stopped and the day had turned sunny; airy white clouds floated across a soft periwinkle-blue sky, and it had become one of those lovely September afternoons which are so endemic to England.

      Suddenly that bright sunlight was pouring into the room. Yellow was the predominant colour and the result was magical; the whole room acquired a shimmer to it, a warm, golden glow that appeared to make everything gleam. My eyes roamed around, taking everything in for the first time since I’d arrived.

      There were some attractive modern paintings on the walls, and a number of handsome Georgian antiques were on display. But essentially it was a room which had been furnished rather than decorated, because there was no cohesive decorative theme to it. Beautiful things were dotted here and there, but they looked as if they had been gathered somewhat indiscriminately and then placed around haphazardly. The room did have comfort and there was more than a hint of refined taste at work, but very little of Tony was in evidence here. This setting had been created solely by Fiona, I was sure of that.

      Jake moved away from the corner of the room at last, sauntered over to me and looked down. He said, ‘You seem a bit pensive. Are you all right?’

      ‘I’m fine. I’ve just been sitting here, thinking. Thinking things through.’

      Jake nodded, gave me a small lopsided smile. ‘We’ll talk later. In the meantime, how about coming into the dining room, getting a little food? You should try and eat something, Val, before we go to the airport.’

      I agreed.

      V

      In the end it was the study that told the real story.

      Jake and I had just finished eating when Fiona came over. Leaning closer to us, she said in a low confidential voice, ‘Let’s slip away. I want you to choose something of Tony’s as a memento.’

      I jumped up at this invitation. Jake and I followed her out of the dining room, up the stairs, down the corridor and into the long spacious room which had been Tony’s private abode.

      The moment I stepped inside I knew that no one else could possibly have occupied it; his own unique imprint was stamped on it everywhere.

      The first thing I noticed was the baseball cap, and my stomach lurched.

      How could I miss it? I had bought it for him last year, on our vacation in the south of France. There were a number of other hats hanging on the antique mahogany hat-stand near the door, but my baseball cap had been his favourite. The way it hung there now, a bit lopsidedly, made me catch my breath. He might have just flung it onto the peg a moment ago.

      Feeling decidedly queasy, I glanced away and moved farther into the room.

      Along one wall, a series of built-in cupboards ran down towards the window, and I guessed that this was his filing system; those cabinets more than likely housed hundreds of his photographs and all of his records. And God knows what else. I wished I could get into them, but no hope of that I knew.

      Stacks of magazines, piles of books, and a selection of very expensive cameras were carefully arranged on top of the cabinets, and above the long countertop the wall was lined with cork. Onto this Tony had СКАЧАТЬ