felt compelled to respond and to force a smile, but being friendly didn’t feel right. So this was why Rosemary hadn’t given her surname; knowing that, if she had, Lucia would have got to hell out of here.
After releasing her hand, Grey Calderwood turned his attention to his mother, stooping to brush a kiss on her cheek.
Straightening, he said, ‘It’s been a tough week. I felt like a day in the country.’
Someone else came into the room: a grey-haired woman in a plain blouse and skirt. She was carrying a cup and saucer. ‘I saw you coming from upstairs, Mr Grey,’ she said, smiling up at him.
‘Thanks, Braddy.’ He took the cup from her. As she was leaving, he filled it with coffee. ‘I’m not interrupting anything, I hope?’ The question was directed at both his mother and her guest. Then, to Lucia, he said, ‘Mine being the only car outside, I take it you live locally, Ms Graham?’
‘I hope Lucia is going to live here,’ said Rosemary Calderwood. ‘I’ve just offered her the job of being my painting partner.’
‘Oh really?’ Leaving the cup on the table, her son moved to the back of a nearby wing chair and pushed it closer to where they were sitting. As he sat down and crossed his long legs, he looked at Lucia more closely than he had before.
Any moment now…she thought.
And a few seconds later it happened: he switched on a different part of his brain and it processed her name and came up with all the facts it had been ignoring.
His grey eyes suddenly cold, he said, ‘We’ve met before…in court. You’re the forger.’
Lucia said a silent goodbye to the gift from the gods. She ought to have known it couldn’t work out. Life just wasn’t like that.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
‘What the hell are you doing in this house?’ He didn’t raise his voice, but his eyes were like lasers.
‘Lucia is here at my invitation,’ said his mother. ‘I knew she was being released this morning. I sent Jackson to fetch her. As you know, I was never happy about the court’s decision, but now it’s over and done with. She needs help getting back on her feet, and I need help with my travel plans.’
‘Mother, you’re out of your mind.’
Before Mrs Calderwood could reply, a telephone on the small table beside her chair began to ring.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to Lucia. Then, ‘Hello? Mary…how nice to hear from you. Would you mind holding on for a minute? I’ll be right back.’ As she rose from her chair, she said to the others, ‘I’ll take this call in the study. Do help yourself to more coffee, Lucia.’ A moment later she had stepped outside and vanished.
With the instinctive reflex of a man brought up in a family where old-fashioned courtesies were maintained, Grey Calderwood had risen while his mother was leaving the room. Now, still on his feet, he scowled down at Lucia. ‘It isn’t a year since you were sentenced. What are you doing out of prison?’
‘I’ve been allowed early-release.’ She leaned forward to pick up the coffee pot. ‘Would you like another cup, Mr Calderwood?’
He shook his head. ‘Has my mother been in touch with you while you were in prison?’
‘No, never. This morning, before I was released, the governor told me there was someone willing to help me rebuild my life. A car was waiting outside the prison gates. I met Mrs Calderwood when I got here.’
‘My mother has a quixotic nature. Sometimes she allows it to overrule her common sense,’ he said coldly. ‘The governor would have done better to put you in touch with the various organisations that help released prisoners. While he’s taking you to wherever you wish to go, you can use Jackson’s mobile to call a Citizens’ Advice Bureau. They’ll put you in touch with the right people to help you.’
It took all Lucia’s concentration to keep her hand steady as she refilled her cup. Before her arrest and imprisonment, she had been a self-confident person, a good mixer. They were characteristics, once effortless and taken for granted, that she would have to relearn. She was all right with someone friendly, like Mrs Calderwood, but the son, now that he had turned hostile, was harder for her to handle. He sapped her shaky amour propre merely by looking at her.
‘I would like to accept the post your mother has offered me,’ she told him.
‘Out of the question,’ he snapped. ‘If my mother is determined to go on these trips, it’s essential she has someone with her who has impeccable references and will be absolutely reliable. Not someone fresh out of prison for a serious offence.’ His voice had the same cold ring she remembered from the court room.
‘But not the kind of offence that makes me an unsafe person to be in charge of young children or elderly people.’
‘That depends. In my judgment you are not a suitable companion for my mother.’
‘Isn’t that for her to decide?’
His mouth compressed in a hard line. The dark grey eyes flashed like steel blades.
‘Perhaps a hand-out will persuade you to see reason.’ He went to the chair where he had left his coat and took a cheque book from an inside pocket. As she watched he uncapped an expensive black fountain pen.
She watched him writing the cheque, wondering what he would consider a suitable pay-off. Although she had disliked the man from the moment he stepped into the witness box and looked across the court room as if, in his opinion, she was as despicable as a drug dealer or a child abuser, a part of her mind was forced to admire the articulation of his long strong fingers.
‘There…that should cover your overheads until they find you a job.’ He held out the cheque.
Lucia took it, curious to see what he was prepared to pay her. Her parents had not been well-off even when both were working, her father as a reporter on a provincial city’s evening newspaper, her mother as a public librarian. There had never been a time when Lucia hadn’t had to be careful with her own earnings. She couldn’t imagine being able to scrawl a cheque with three noughts as casually as people dropped spare change in a charity worker’s collecting tin.
The amount he had written in figures and numbers took her breath away. Particularly as there was no element of kindness involved. Clearly, he didn’t want to help her. She felt he wouldn’t have cared if her sentence had been ten times as long.
‘But don’t take it into your head that there might be more where that came from,’ he said cuttingly. ‘It’s a one-off payment that will never be repeated. I’m making it on condition that you vanish from our lives and don’t reappear…ever. In the circumstances, it’s exceedingly generous of me to offer you any help. If you show up again, you’ll regret it. I can make big trouble for you—and will. You had better believe that.’
‘Oh, I do. You already have,’ she said dryly, folding the cheque in two and then in four.
‘You brought that on yourself, though I dare say you’ll never admit it. You’d rather believe the sob story cooked up by your lawyer.’
There was no point in arguing with him. He was the type
