Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game. Tilly Bagshawe

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СКАЧАТЬ Peter had nodded, yes, yes, he understood, of course, they’d done all they could. He’d watched them wheel Alex away, her ashen face covered with a bloodstained hospital sheet. He stood there, breathing in and out. But of course, it wasn’t real. How could it be? His Alex wasn’t dead. The whole thing was preposterous. Women didn’t die in childbirth for God’s sake, not in this day and age. This was 1984. This was New York City.

      The shrill, plaintive cry seemed to come out of nowhere. Even in his profound state of shock, some primal instinct would not allow Peter to ignore it. Suddenly someone was handing him a tiny swaddled bundle, and the next thing Peter knew he was gazing into his daughter’s eyes. In an instant, every last brick of the protective wall he’d been building around his heart crumbled to dust. For one, blissful moment, his heart swelled with pure love.

      Then it shattered.

      

      Wrenching the baby out of his arms, Nurse Matthews thrust her at an orderly.

      ‘Take her to the nursery. And get a psych up here, right now. He’s losing it.’

      Nurse Matthews was good in a crisis. But inside she was riddled with guilt. She should never have let him hold the child. What was she thinking? After what that poor man had just been through? He might have killed her.

      In her defense, though, Peter had seemed so stable. Fifteen minutes ago he was signing forms and talking to Dr Farrar and …

      Peter’s screams grew louder. Outside in the corridor, visitors exchanged worried glances and craned their necks to get a better view through the glass window of the delivery suite.

      Hands were on him again. Peter felt the sharp prick of a needle in his arm. As he lost consciousness, he knew that the peaceful blackness of the well would never return to him.

      This wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.

      His beloved Alex was gone.

      

      The press had a field day.

      ALEXANDRA BLACKWELL DIES IN CHILDBIRTH!

      To the public she would always be Alexandra Blackwell, just as Eve was for ever known by her maiden name. ‘Templeton’ and ‘Webster’ simply didn’t have the same caché.

      

      KRUGER-BRENT HEIRESS DEAD AT THIRTY-FOUR

      AMERICA’S FIRST FAMILY STRUGGLE TO COPE WITH LOSS

      The national fascination with the Blackwells was well into its fifth decade, but not since Eve Blackwell’s surgical ‘mishap’ had the papers been thrown such a juicy bone. Rumors were rife.

      There was no baby: Alexandra had died of Aids.

      Her handsome husband, Peter Templeton, was having an affair and had somehow contrived to end his wife’s life.

      It was a government plot, designed to bring down Kruger-Brent’s share price and limit the company’s enormous power on the world stage.

      Like Peter Templeton, no one could quite believe that a healthy, wealthy young woman could be admitted into New York’s finest maternity hospital in the summer of 1984 and wind up twenty-four hours later on a slab in the morgue.

      The rumors were fuelled by a stony silence from both the family and the Kruger-Brent press office. Brad Rogers, acting chairman since Kate Blackwell’s death, had appeared just once in front of the cameras. Looking even older than his eighty-eight years, a white-haired apparition, his papery hands trembled as he read a terse statement:

      ‘Alexandra Templeton’s tragic and untimely death is entirely a private matter. Mrs Templeton held no official role within Kruger-Brent, Ltd and her passing is not pertinent to the management or future of this great company in any way. We ask that her family’s request for privacy be respected at this difficult time. Thank you.’

      Refusing to take questions, he scurried back into the maze of the Kruger-Brent headquarters like a distressed beetle searching for the safety of its nest. Nothing had been heard from him since.

      Undeterred by the lack of official information, perhaps even encouraged by it, the tabloids felt free to start making the story up themselves. Soon the rumor mill had taken on a life of its own, and by then it was too late for the family or anyone else to stop it.

      ‘We must do something about these press reports.’

      Peter Templeton was in his study at home. With its tatty Persian rugs, antique Victorian upright piano, walnut paneling and bookcases crammed to bursting with first editions, it had been one of Alex’s favorite rooms, a place to retreat to after the stresses of the day. Now Peter paced it furiously like a caged tiger, shaking the newspaper in his hands.

      ‘I mean this is The New York Times for God’s sake, not some supermarket rag.’ The disdain in his voice was palpable as he read aloud: ‘“Alexandra Blackwell is believed to have been suffering from complications of the immune system for some time.” Believed by whom? Where do they get this nonsense?’

      Dr Barnabus Hunt, a fat, Santa Claus of a man with a tonsure of white hair around his bald spot and permanently ruddy cheeks, took a contemplative draw on his pipe. A fellow psychiatrist, and Peter Templeton’s life-long friend, he had been a frequent visitor to the house since Alex’s death.

      ‘Does it matter where they get it? You know my advice Peter. Don’t read this rubbish. Rise above it.’

      ‘That’s all very well, Barney. But what about Robbie? He’s hearing this kind of poison day and night, poor kid.’

      It was the first time in weeks that Peter had expressed concern for his son’s feelings. Barney Hunt thought: ‘that’s a good sign.’

      ‘As if his mother were some kind of prostitute,’ Peter raged on, ‘or a homosexual or a … a drug addict! I mean, anyone less likely to have Aids than Alexandra …’

      Under other circumstances, Barney Hunt would have gently challenged his friend’s assumptions. As a medical man, Peter should know better than to give any credence to the pernicious idea that Aids was some sort of righteous punishment for sinners. That was another thing the press should be blamed for: whipping the entire country into such a frenzy of HIV terror that gay men were being attacked in the streets, refused employment and even housing. As if the dreaded disease could be spread by association. 1984 was a bad year to be gay in New York City – something Barney Hunt knew a lot more about than his friend Peter Templeton would ever have suspected.

      But now was not the time to raise these things. Six weeks after Alex’s death and Peter’s grief was still as raw as an open wound. His office at the Kruger-Brent headquarters remained empty. Not that he’d ever done much there anyway. When Peter first married Alexandra, he’d insisted to Kate Blackwell that he would never go into the family business.

      ‘I’ll stick with my psychiatry practice, Mrs Blackwell, if that’s OK with you. I’m a doctor, not a businessman.’

      But in the years that followed, the old woman had ground him down. Kate Blackwell expected the men in her family to contribute to ‘the firm’, as she called it. And what Kate Blackwell wanted, Kate Blackwell always got in the end.

      But СКАЧАТЬ