Page 24

I thought I’d had enough of the Crace family for one day, but I was wrong. As I arrived back at my new home in Crouch End, I heard a car door slam shut and saw Eliot Crace on the other side of the road, getting out of a beaten-up BMW coupé. He was grubby, unshaven, his hair greasy, a moth-eaten scarf hanging around his neck. He was wearing a black shirt and skinny jeans. I waited for him to cross the road and come over to me.

‘You’re in a residents’ parking zone,’ I warned him.

‘I can afford a ticket and you’re worth it, Susan.’

There was something almost licentious in the way he said that, leering at me. He wasn’t drunk, but the smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke from the night before still clung to him, as if he had crawled out of bed in the same clothes he’d been wearing when he got into it.

‘You look terrible,’ I said.

‘I was at Boon’s …’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s a club I go to in the Portobello Road. Don’t tell Gillian! It’s my little bolt-hole. I met some friends and then I worked all night. I thought you’d be pleased.’ He lifted a hand and I saw that he was holding an A4 manila envelope. ‘I’ve got something for you. Can I come in?’

‘Have you just got here? Or have you been waiting for me?’ I didn’t mean to be offensive, but there was something about Eliot that was a little disgusting. I knew he’d been damaged, that his childhood at Marble Hall had been disastrous. But this was Crouch End on a sunny afternoon and there was something pathetic about this rich kid who had an attractive wife, an expensive house in Notting Hill Gate, a publishing deal with Causton Books and much less to complain about than a hundred thousand other young people struggling to make ends meet in the grindstone that London could all too easily become.

‘I just got here,’ he said. He was surprised by my abruptness.

‘How did you know where I live?’ I asked.

‘Michael Flynn told me. I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’

In fact, I was a little surprised that Michael would be handing out my address without asking me, but I relented. Eliot was still my author, my responsibility. ‘I’m always pleased to see you,’ I said. ‘Come in. I’ll make you some coffee.’

I was half tempted to take him through to the bathroom and throw him in the shower, just as Elaine had once done, but instead I led him into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle and searched for the strongest coffee I could find. Hugo, the cat, had heard us arrive and leapt onto the counter, arching his back, purring and generally going through his feline repertoire.

‘I didn’t think you were the sort to keep cats,’ Eliot said.

‘I’m not,’ I assured him. ‘My sister got him for me.’

‘Have you been here long?’

‘I used to live round the corner, so I know the area. But this place is new.’

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t – but you can go out in the garden, if you like.’

Whenever I’d visited my sister, Katie, she’d also made me go out into the garden to keep the smell of cigarette smoke out of the house. It reminded me that she’d always thought of me as the wild one, racing around town in my red MG, married to my work, to launch parties, to drinking sessions that stretched into the small hours. What right did I have to make any judgement about Eliot? Here I was, well into my second half-century. What sort of person was I becoming?

I made the coffee and carried it over. He was sitting at the table with the envelope in front of him.

‘Is this the next section of the novel?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I printed it out for you.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Eliot. Do you have a new title yet?’

‘I hate titles. Have you noticed? All murder mysteries are the same. It’s Death … this or Murder … that. It’s like there are only half a dozen words in the English language you can use.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘Blood, Kill, Murder, Death, Knife, Body … I’d like to call my book The Man with White Hair – but you wouldn’t like that at all, would you?’

‘Actually, I do quite like it,’ I said. ‘Although it might give too much away.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it suggests that Elmer Waysmith is the killer.’

‘He might not be.’

‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want you to spoil the ending.’

He sipped his coffee and winced. ‘Have you got any sugar?’

I went over to a cupboard and pulled out a bag of granulated, deliberately ignoring the little bowl with the teaspoon and the sugar cubes beside the fridge. ‘So you must have been working very hard,’ I said. ‘When I met you at Causton Books, you said you’d only done another ten thousand words.’

‘I’ve been working non-stop since then.’ He smiled at me and I remembered the wild child I’d met all those years ago and always liked. ‘You must have inspired me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘I haven’t made any changes to the first bit. Not yet. I just want to get to the end before I go back to the beginning.’

‘I think that’s sensible. And you’re sure you want me to keep reading?’

‘I’ve put my phone numbers on the envelope. I’ll be interested to know what you think.’

‘I’ll call you.’

I took the envelope. Just from the weight, I knew that was quite a bit shorter than the section I’d already read … probably around twenty thousand words. There was an editor I once worked with who could tell the length of a manuscript to the nearest five hundred words just by holding it in her hand.

‘By the way, I took your advice and went to Marble Hall,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ He looked alarmed. ‘What did you think?’

‘I found it hard to imagine you living there when you were young. All those things you said at Elaine’s. You obviously had a horrible time. But I thought it was a nice enough house and the grounds were beautiful. It’s sad, really. Lots of children would have loved growing up there.’

‘Not if they had a horrible old crone watching over them.’

‘I bumped into the manager … Frederick Turner. You’ve been very naughty, Eliot. Turning him into a French detective.’

‘You don’t think he’ll be amused?’

‘He might be offended, going on about his injuries.’ Eliot said nothing, so I asked: ‘Is that how your character lost an eye? Careless driving?’

‘Frédéric Voltaire got blown up in the war. You’ll read about that in the new pages. And as for Uncle Fred, it wasn’t careless driving.’

‘So what was it really?’

‘He was drunk or something … I don’t know. I remember when it happened. Fred said he wasn’t concentrating, but the police asked him a lot of questions. Leylah – my aunt – said he was breathalysed.’

‘Did he lose his licence?’

‘No. But he never talks about it. He was different after the accident. He was angry. He wasn’t much fun to have around.’

That was hardly surprising. Frederick Turner had lost an eye and he was still in pain. ‘Why did you put him in the book?’ I asked.

Eliot shrugged. ‘No reason. I was just having a bit of fun.’

In other words, he wasn’t going to tell me. I was tempted to ask him about his father, how Edward Crace had become Elmer Waysmith, but this wasn’t the right time. I wanted Eliot to finish the book before we had our inevitable set-to. ‘Frederick mentioned that you once set fire to the house,’ I said.

Eliot smiled. ‘That was in Notting Hill. It was no big deal. I fell asleep with a cigarette and it burned a hole in the carpet. It set off the smoke alarms, though. My dad hit the roof, but then everything I did seemed to annoy him.’

‘Are you going to the party?’ He looked blank. ‘Next Tuesday. It’s the twentieth anniversary of your grandmother’s death.’

‘Oh – that!’ He shrugged. ‘I might. What else did Fred tell you about me?’

‘He didn’t say anything bad about you, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Once again, I was tiptoeing around the truth. I seemed to have done nothing else since I had been introduced to the Craces. ‘He told me you were very imaginative and he hoped the book would be a success.’

I had already decided I wasn’t going to say anything about my meeting with Dr Lambert. Nor did I tell him that I had just come back from the office in Kingston Street, where I’d met both his brother and his uncle. I didn’t want Eliot to think that I was snooping around, asking questions about him behind his back. He looked worn out. I was keen to get him out of the house so that I could read the new pages, and perhaps he sensed this. He drank some more of the coffee, yawned and stood up.

‘I’ll leave you to get on with it,’ he said. He looked around, as if noticing his surroundings for the first time. ‘Nice place you’ve got.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You live here alone?’

‘Yes.’ I’m not sure he meant to offend me by asking me that, but I still found the question intrusive somehow. What business was it of his who I lived with or if I didn’t live with anyone? He probably knew about Andreas and me. Elaine would have told him. Not for the first time, I got the sense that I was being drawn into something more than the editing of a continuation novel. But it was too late to walk out now. Michael Flynn might never forgive me and it would certainly be the end of my career at Causton Books.

We walked to the door.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I’ve had an invitation to go on Front Row .’

‘On the BBC?’ Front Row was a magazine programme broadcast on Radio 4. It covered books, films, TV … everything to do with the arts. When I was working at Cloverleaf, I’d often tried to get my authors invited.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not sure you should do it, Eliot,’ I said. The news really troubled me. ‘It would be much better to wait until next year when the book is published. Why talk about the book now when we haven’t got any copies to sell?’

‘They don’t want me to talk about my book. They don’t even know I’m writing it. You reminded me just now when you mentioned the anniversary. Twenty years since her death. They want me to talk about my grandmother.’ He breathed out and once again I smelled cigarette smoke and the dregs of old white wine, now mixed with coffee. It was an unpleasant combination. ‘I’ve got a few stories I could tell that might surprise them,’ he added.

‘I recommend you don’t do that, Eliot.’ It occurred to me that I was doing exactly what Jonathan wanted – but it wasn’t the estate I was protecting. It was Eliot. ‘If you say bad things about your grandmother, it won’t help you. Quite the opposite. When we come to publicise your book, it’ll really help that you’re her grandson. Whatever you may think of her, she still sells millions and if only one per cent of her readers decide to give you a go, that’ll push you into the bestseller lists.’

‘You don’t think the book is good enough on its own?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. I told you. I love what you’re writing and I can’t wait to start on the next section. But it’s too soon to go on Front Row . If people think you’re being negative, that’s simply going to turn them away from you. Please promise me you’ll reconsider and that you won’t do it.’

‘I haven’t given them an answer yet.’

‘Would you like me to call them for you? I’ll be happy to talk to them and we can ask them to have you later in the year. Please take my advice. I don’t think a radio appearance right now will do you any good at all and that would be a shame after all your hard work.’

He stood there, clearly wondering whether to be annoyed. Then he relaxed. ‘All right, Susan,’ he said, with a lopsided grin. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’ll call them. I didn’t want to do it anyway.’

He reached towards me and I thought he was going to kiss me goodbye, but instead he patted me clumsily on the shoulder. Fishing out his car keys, he disappeared through the door, and with a sense of relief, I closed it.

Should I call Jonathan? Or Michael Flynn? When it comes to media appearances, you always have to be careful. What can look like a marvellous piece of publicity can all too easily turn into a trap. Twenty years ago, I’d published a book about a Sinhalese detective and I still remember sitting outside the studio, listening in horror as the discussion turned into a barrage of accusations about cultural appropriation, with the author completely out of her depth. It was a series that had extended to exactly one book. These days, publishers are much more in tune with what is and what is not acceptable, but we all know that a single step over a line that’s so ill-defined as to be practically invisible can cause all sorts of problems, and that there are any number of ambitious young journalists out there keen to make headlines.

I picked up my mobile phone and my thumb hovered over the speed dial, but in the end I didn’t make the call, and I’m afraid that was a mistake I would soon come to regret. Eliot would never have forgiven me if I’d shopped him to his uncle and I still thought there was a chance he would take my advice and ignore Front Row until there was a reason to go on it. I persuaded myself that I was acting in his best interests and put the phone down.

Instead, I opened the manuscript and began to read.