FRAUD Read online

“So, do you want one or not?”

  “No, I’m okay. I won’t deprive you.”

  She shrugged as she packed the cigarettes away and they set off through the dimly lit, deserted streets, her heeled boots echoing among the cottages. Ted still had not told her about his own humiliation that day but, then again, he did not want to steal her thunder.

  “What really pisses me off,” she exploded suddenly, “is that those bastards who were running the auditions were so snide. And when I was doing my big rebellion speech they kept chattering to each other. I reckon they’d already got someone in mind for the part – some friend of theirs, probably.”

  “Sod them. It’s their loss.”

  “I mean, I did loads of stuff at Edinburgh. My Ophelia was legendary. Not to mention my Juliet. And I was in some fringe productions at the Festival – I even had a part in ‘Taggart’ once. I could act rings round those fucking amateurs!” Her voice was rising to a wail and then she halted in her tracks. “I only did it to… to keep my eye in.” Her hands covered her face, dropping her cigarette, and she was in tears.

  Ted turned to her in dismay. “Hey, Nicola, don’t cry! They’re not worth it.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just… everything.”

  After a moment’s hesitation he slid his arms rather awkwardly around her, her leather jacket cold and unyielding under his hands. God, this was a weird day, he thought to himself. Here he was under the stars comforting the stroppy waitress with whom, only three hours earlier, he had been arguing about Worcester sauce. The louts, finally ejected from the pub, could be heard elsewhere in the sleeping town, pursuing their lonely and pathetic quest for fun, their drunken cries dispersing into the firmament.

  He patted her shoulder as she drew away. Had they been in a film he might have offered her his pristine white handkerchief but, having a fair idea of the condition of his real-life handkerchief, he thought better of it.

  “You must think I’m a stupid bitch,” she sniffed, dabbing her eyes with a knot of tissue she’d dug from her pocket.

  “Not at all. I understand. And I’m not just saying that, I really do understand.”

  “Thanks. You’re a star,” she smiled wanly, “even though you are a pain in the arse. I mean, who the fuck has mustard, ketchup, vinegar and Worcester sauce with their pie and chips?”

  “I told you, it’s been a lousy day. I needed to pull out all the stops.”

  “So come on then,” she said as they set off again. “What was this terrible thing that happened?”

  “Oh, it was nothing. I’m getting things out of perspective.”

  “No you’re not. Tell me.”

  “Well, first I need to explain that I’m a writer. I’m what’s known in the trade as an NYP author.”

  “What’s an NYP author when it’s at home?”

  “Not yet published. It’s a polite euphemism for a failure who’s stupid enough to keep on trying.”

  He briefly painted a heart-rending backdrop of struggle, discouragement and rejection concluding with the letter, which he found he could recite almost verbatim.

  “Bastard! Fucking cheek! How dare he? Excuse my language.”

  “It’s all right. Those were pretty much my exact words when I read it.”

  “It makes my little knockback seem pretty minor.”

  “Rubbish. What happened to you is exactly the same thing in a different form. That’s why I mentioned it – to try and make you feel better.”

  “Yeah, but I was just going after one crappy little part in a crappy little production. I bet you’ve been slogging away at that novel half your life.”

  She was right. And it was a life which was running out, unlike hers, which was all ahead of her.

  “So what’s it about, your novel?”

  “The central character’s loosely based on my adopted sister Julie who became… well, surplus to requirements when I was born. She didn’t have an easy time. I know it wasn’t my fault but somehow I’ve never stopped feeling badly for her.”

  “So your parents didn’t love her?”

  Ted thought about it. “It wasn’t that they didn’t love her. They just somehow never managed to love her in the same way as the rest of us. It was quite subtle, very often.”

  “Did she mind you basing the character on her?”

  “No, not at all, I think she was rather flattered. I worked on it with her for weeks on end, going over old stuff. I guess she found it quite painful, but therapeutic as well.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  “She died, sadly, at the age of forty-two. Breast cancer.”

  “Shhhhit,” Nicola murmured.

  “I know.”

  “And did she ever meet her biological mother?”

  “No. No, she didn’t.”

  Feeling he had cast something of a pall over the proceedings, Ted changed the subject.

  “So what about you? Are you in a flat-share in Snetsham?”

  “Nah, I’m living with my mother. Temporarily.” She didn’t seem inclined to enlarge on her situation so he did not press it.

  The village of Snetsham, on the north side of Wemborne, had, due to the rash of building in the fifties and sixties, fused with its larger neighbour, thus becoming little more than a rather superior suburb. They reached a bench at the entrance to Dunstan Crescent and Nicola suggested they sit down for a while. Ted wondered why, since they must have been close to their destination.

  “I hate going home,” she said, as though reading his thoughts.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, these are verboten for a start,” she laughed, resurrecting her trusty pack of cigarettes. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

  “Oh, all right, go on then.”

  She lit them both and they sat for a while smoking in companionable silence.

  “I take it you don’t get on with your mother.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century!” she snorted. “She just makes me feel so tense all the time. I live in constant terror of staining the Laura Ashley sofa cover or spilling coffee on the fucking escritoire.”

  “What about your dad? Do you get on with him?”

  “I did. I never see him now.”

  She flicked some ash onto the pavement. “So what about you? You married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kids?”

  “Three – two boys and a girl. All grown up. And three grandchildren – three and counting.”

  “Wow! So won’t your wife be wondering where you are?”

  “No, she’s gone on holiday so I’ve been let off the leash for a few days. Just as well, the mood I was in when I got that letter.”

  “It must have been a bummer,” she murmured.

  “It was. But, then again, it may have been a blessing in disguise.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m thinking of jacking it in. Getting back to some sort of proper job and trying to get my finances back in order.”

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t do that!” she retorted, facing him, “This is your dream! Your lifelong ambition! And you’re going to jack it in just because of one stupid letter from some little wanker publisher!”

  “Unfortunately Alistair Milner isn’t just some little wanker publisher, he’s a highly respected professional who’s been in the business for years. He knows what he’s talking about. If he says my work’s rubbish, it probably is.”

  “Bollocks! They’re all the same these fucking people! They wouldn’t know quality if it crapped on them!”

  “I appreciate your vote of confidence,” Ted laughed, “but you haven’t actually read it, have you?”

  “Well, show it me then. I’ll soon tell you whether it’s any good or not – I read drama and English Lit at uni.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “You’d really like to read it?”

  “Yeah. Why not? I can read you know.”

  “I know, but it’s pretty long – four hundred and seventy pages to be precis
e.”

  “Ted.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean... I just thought you might be too busy. What with your job and everything.”

  “Well I’m not, okay? So what’s it called, this masterpiece of yours?”

  “The Tyranny of Love.”

  “Right,” she murmured, after a pause.

  “You don’t like the title?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s okay.”

  “I’m not sure if the style will be to your liking.”

  “Don’t tell me about it – you’ll pre-empt my reaction. Show it me.”

  “Okay. I’ll bring a copy up to the pub tomorrow, shall I?”

  “Fine.”

  Ted realised that, for the first time since receiving the letter, he was feeling almost positive again. He and Nicola seemed united in their misfortune, united against the common enemy. And he was enjoying his illicit cigarette, enjoying chatting to this strange girl on a bench in the middle of the night.

  “Ah well,” she sighed, tossing down her stub and grinding it under her heel. “I suppose I'd better go and face the music.”

  “Have you done something wrong, then?” he laughed.

  “Bound to have done.”

  “Thanks for letting me witter on, especially when you've had such a rotten day yourself. It really helped.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said as she stood up. “Besides, it’s nice to meet someone in this god-forsaken dump who’s got two brain cells to rub together. And thanks for walking me home. It do get a bit nervous, I have to admit. So I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah? With your manuscript.”

  “Lunchtime or evening?”

  “Either. I’m working both.”

  He stood by the bench and watched her go. When she was about to vanish around the corner, she turned back, smiled and briefly waved.

  3

  The church clock struck three. A cargo plane, high in the stratosphere, droned off into the distance like a bumblebee on a summer afternoon. Alone in his bed in his empty house, Ted listened to the sound receding into nothingness. He began, yet again, to relive the day in memory, to reopen, once again, that tantalising envelope, to feel, once again, the fury and then that old familiar bleakness and despair. And yet those emotions now seemed strangely removed from him, as though they were happening to someone else, or as though he were watching himself experiencing them on film.

  In the morning he set to work promptly at his laptop but, after half an hour, found himself gazing out of the window thinking about Nicola. He forced himself to work again then lapsed again into thought. At ten to twelve he remembered he had not picked up Anne’s message from the previous afternoon, so he went and checked the answering machine, finding, to his surprise, that there were two messages. The second must have been left while he was at the pub.

  “Bonjour, mes chéris! Just calling to see how you are! Call back if you have a moment! Je t’embrasse!”

  He was glad he had missed her, since Marie never called ‘just to see how they were’ – there was always an ulterior motive. Either she wanted a favour (which he, as an unpublished author whiling away the hours at home, was in a perfect position to grant) or she had made some vital contact he just had to meet in order to get his career belatedly off the ground. “She means well,” Anne always said, but to Ted she was just an interfering, controlling busybody. Why, he often wondered, did she imagine that having the arbitrary good fortune to be the only child of a French perfume manufacturer and wife of an American corporate lawyer (who had also been his best friend at Oxford) gave her the right to be so relentlessly patronising?

  Suddenly needing to escape the house, he took down one of four weighty copies of The Tyranny of Love which were stored on top of the cupboard and slid it into a Sainsbury’s carrier bag. Then he put on his coat and set off for the Queen’s. He reckoned that lunchtime, when the place was less busy than in the evening, would be a better time to give it to Nicola. At least, that was what he told himself.

  It was a grey, blustery afternoon with fitful bursts of sunshine. He stopped at the corner shop and guiltily bought a packet of cigarettes then carried on through the suburbs. On reaching his destination he was greeted by the comforting words: “The usual, Ted?”

  As Ian was drawing his pint, he glanced around, but could see no sign of the object of his journey. “Is Nicola working today?” he asked with studied casualness.

  “No, mate. She’s gone.”

  Ted stared at him. “What do you mean gone?”

  “She’s gone. Buggered off. Couldn’t even be bothered to phone in. Her Mum had to do it for her. Reading between the lines, I’d say they’d had another row. She was full of apology – Angela, I mean – but to be honest, Ted, I’m glad to see the back of her. I was willing to give her a chance for Angela’s sake but she was more trouble than she was worth, that girl.”

  “When did she phone, the mother?”

  “‘Bout an hour ago.”

  “And did she say where she was going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you got a mobile number for her?”

  “For Nicola? No, I just get her at her mum’s.”

  Ian went to serve another customer, then returned to find Ted’s pint abandoned on the bar. He assumed he’d gone to relieve himself.

  He was retracing his steps of the night before, still lugging his manuscript and wishing he had the car. But at least on foot there was more chance of spotting her, if she hadn’t already left town. He checked the main bus stops along the High Street but she was nowhere to be seen. He took a detour via the station but both platforms were deserted. The next train to London wasn’t for another hour.

  He resumed his journey towards Snetsham, branching off into a shortcut over a scrubby common which he guessed that Nicola, since it was daytime, would have taken had she been coming the other way. The path, as it approached the village, lay over a grassy hillock topped by some straggling birches beneath which a bench had been concreted into the ground – an ugly, functional affair upon whose backrest some inspired soul had scrawled the single word ‘fuck’ with a marker pen. It commanded what the town council had clearly deemed to be one of Wemborne’s finest view – a meadow where some cows grazed listlessly, bordered by a sluggish stream beyond which two overlapping hills hid all but a tantalizing glimpse of the sea. Ted sat down to rest and wonder what to do next. He could see clearly below him the orderly semi-circle of substantial houses comprising Dunstan Crescent, their spacious lawns bordered by mature trees, shrubs and flowerbeds and, in some cases, a swimming pool. In the sixty years of its existence the crescent and its surrounding streets and avenues had acquired a look of permanence, of grandeur almost. This was no hideous executive housing tossed up on some former spinney with barely room to park the Landcruiser and the BMW. This was where the old new money of Wemborne lived. It all looked so much more depressing in daylight than it had the night before, modelled in sfumato tones by the streetlamps.

  His gaze turned back to the cows dotted about the field below, though his thoughts were miles away. The only hope of finding Nicola, he knew, was to go down there and brave her mother. What would she make of this scruffy, middle-aged man on her doorstep inquiring into her daughter’s whereabouts? Whatever her feelings, she would no doubt make them plain.

  Bracing himself, he rose from the seat and walked down the slope. An elderly lady with a Yorkshire terrier on a lead gave him directions to Mrs. Pearson’s house – number twenty-seven – but when he found it, the tall, wrought-iron gates were locked. An intercom was embedded in one of the pillars. He pressed the button.

  “Yes?” crackled a woman’s voice after a few moments.

  “I’m very sorry to bother you,” said Ted, wedging his mouth close to the little grille. “I was wondering if I might speak to Nicola.”

  “She isn’t here.”

  “Do you... happen to know where I might find her?”

  “I’ve no idea. On her way to London I should imagine.”
/>   Ted wondered if it might help if he made clear to this woman that he was not just some old rake with dubious designs on her daughter.

  “The thing is, I’m a writer by profession and I’m also a friend of Ian’s at The Queen’s Head. Nicola very kindly agreed to read one of my manuscripts and give her opinion of it. I feel it would be very helpful to me, since she’s young. A different perspective and… so on.”

  The machine did not respond.

  “You wouldn’t have a mobile number by any chance?”

  After a pause, the voice said, “Come in” and the gate buzzed and unlocked.

  Ted entered and advanced across what seemed an acre of driveway, his tread deafening on the gravel. A brand-new silver Audi stood before the garage doors. As he was approaching the porch, the front door opened.

  He could see at once where Nicola had got her looks. The woman who stood before him was tall and beautiful with a perfectly cut bob of ash-blonde hair and, though dressed casually in jeans and a jumper, looked smarter than Ted would have looked in evening wear. If there had been a bust-up with her daughter only hours before, her face betrayed no sign of it – no sign, in fact, of anything.

  “I can’t keep track of her mobiles,” she said. “She keeps losing them or having them stolen, the company she mixes with.”

  “I see.”

  Seeming to sense that the intruder was not going to give up, she finally said, “I might have an email address.”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  She disappeared, leaving him hovering on the doorstep. He leaned forward surreptitiously and peered into the house. The hall and stairs and the part of the drawing room visible through its open door betrayed exactly what Nicola had suggested – wall-to-wall carpeting in muted, perfectly-balanced shades, carefully positioned ornaments and pictures – purchased, no doubt, by gold-plated credit card solely for their effect in the ensemble. Nothing had been inherited from a loved one or bought on a whim or received as a gift or simply washed up as part of the flotsam and jetsam of life.

  The woman eventually reappeared holding a flowery notelet which she handed to him. The email address was written out in a very neat, schoolgirl hand in which the most expert graphologist would have been hard put to find any trace of character.