Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

Nick grabbed the paper and ran for the nearest phone, which was in his father’s library. It was a colourless room of dull books to do with commerce and politics, frothed up by a few constipated fictional classics that anyway Joss never read.

The number was a foreign one, Greece, as it turned out. Serena was not on a boat either, but in the Mediterranean shore house of some elderly actor, along with about fifty other people. She was around seventeen then, but fluent for her years in languages, and other matters.

“Nicky - what’s this about Mum?” She was the only one who sometimes called Claudia that, and even then never to Claudia’s face.

Nick, now with the calm of utterly ingrained shock and despair, described Laurence’s call.

She replied, “Yes, that’s why I called you - because he called me too. It was bloody inconvenient. We were just going to have a swim. Max,” - this, the actor - “loves to see all us young ones disporting ourselves, as he puts it. But what happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Nick. “He went out and turned his mobile off.”

“Bastard,” said Serena. In the background a young male voice called: “Reenie! Your drink’s getting warm.” “Look, Nicky, if you hear anything let me know, will you? It’ll be nothing. Laurie’s such a cretin. Of course, she does drink too much. And she does take risks.” More voices. “What? Oh -oh look, Nicky, have to go. Call me, right?” And then some outpouring of incomprehensible Greek, whether a show-off farewell for him or greeting for one of her companions he did not know.

Nick sat in the library and started to cry again. As he cried he thought he should somehow do something after all.

He had enough money for the last bus to the nearest town, and then he could catch trains, (at least two changes, he thought) and get to London - but did he have enough cash for trains? Nobody would drive him, that was a fact. Could he hitch a lift? What did it matter if he ended up in the car of a maniac if Claudia were dead?

He fell asleep by the phone, so when it rang just after 6 p.m. he started awake and clutched the receiver and had it to his ear before he even remembered why he must.

“Hello, darling,” she said.

He remembered then, and knew it could not be her.

“Who is this?” he asked, and now his voice had crumbled into its rough lower register.

“Guess,” she said, her tone full of smiling, full of her. Like her scent, and warmth.

“Claudia.”

“Who else? Are you all right, Nick, my love?”

He heard himself say, “Yes, yes I’m… Yes.”

“Good. Listen, darling. I’m going to be late, about ten. Your brother took me to this absurd bar, supposed to be American. It was hilarious. But I won’t be getting the car now until eight. Tell Roo,” (this was Mrs Rush) “to leave me something I can eat cold, with some Chablis. Darling, I love you. See you later.”

When he put the phone down his head fell forward rather as if it had come off. Perhaps he passed out for a pair of seconds. Nothing worse.

It was not until the ultimate shock, of relief, had eased a little that he reasoned Laurence had played a trick on him, and presumably on Serena too, but that it would be no use Nick’s reporting this to his mother, let alone complaining of it. Claudia had never taken Laurence seriously, or so Nick believed. And Laurence would seek to visit retribution.

It would be no use, definitely, speaking to Laurence himself.

Sound advice. In fact Laurence called him again later, around nine fifteen. “Did Claudia reach you? She’s going to be late.”

“Yes,” said Nick. He had by then eaten some of the fish and cheese and salad served him. He felt an uncanny lightness, as if part of him had fallen away forever, as perhaps it had.

“Regrets about the panic before,” said Laurence. His tone was now that of a human viper, thick and rich with poison, tasting it, savouringly, on a forked and unrelenting tongue.

“Of course you wouldn’t have known where Claudia and I were supposed to meet. I had the address on me all the time.”

So that was the tale. Laurence had originally called Nick to ask if Nick knew the venue for the lunch date. And Nick had imagined, (imaginative, nervy Nick, always scribbling his silly little scraps of stories) that Laurence had been in a ‘panic’ because Claudia had not come back to the Highgate house, and no one knew where she was. (He must have bribed or also confused Marj.) And Laurence would say Serena too had got the wrong end of the stick, but she never concentrated, did she, busy with her own overfull narcissistic life. Either that or Laurence had co-opted Serena into the joke. “Go on, let’s give baby bro a scare. Bloody spoilt little rat. Beloved Claudia’s disappeared. He’ll shit himself.”

And if that had been the plot’s goal, well, Nick nearly had.

He said to the nine o’clock phone, “’S OK, Laurence.” He sounded flat and ordinary. “You can’t help being a complete pillock.”

Laurence could not quite resist. He let out a spurt of laughter. “Touché, you little bugger,” was all he said. And that was that.

Claudia came in a few minutes after ten.

The hall lamp gilded her and she looked like an angel. But she always did. She was alive.

“I didn’t go to school,” Nick said. “I threw up.”

“Poorest Nick. Are you all right now?”

“I’m fine now.”

She hugged him. She smelled of perfume and faint smoke and the indefinable Known. They shared supper in the kitchen, the casual domestics all dissolved away, and she gave him half a glass of the Chablis, quoting the Bible, “Take a little wine, for thy stomach’s sake.”

5

“Perhaps you should answer it,” suggests Pond, just as the phone stops ringing and the ansa-machine kicks in.

He and Nick stand, listening respectfully to the recorded female