Page 84 of The Love Letter

‘Damn it,’ she groaned quietly, wishing a taxi would arrive inches away from her and carry her off home. Staggering upright, Joanna decided buses and tubes were a non-starter tonight. She set off along the street once more, hoping she’d find a taxi in the maze of roads behind Oxford Street. She walked along Harley Street, constantly sticking out her arm to full taxis, turned the corner and found herself in Welbeck Street. This was where Zoe lived – number ten – she remembered. Zoe had written the address down for her after they’d had supper.

Joanna paused on the street, seeing she was standing almost directly opposite number ten. Another wave of faintness overtook her and she wondered if it would seem intrusive to knock on Zoe’s door and ask for a cup of hot sweet tea to help her on her way. She could see the lights were on inside the house and decided she’d go and knock on the front door.

Just as she was trying to stagger to her feet, she saw Zoe’s front door open. From Joanna’s perfect vantage point, she saw Zoe peep from behind the door, then another figure leapt out of a car in front of the house and ran up the short path towards her. The two of them disappeared inside the house and the door shut behind them.

Joanna knew she was gawping like an idiot. But she was absolutely positive she had just seen Arthur James Henry, Duke of York – commonly known to his family and the media as ‘Art’ – royal prince and third in line to the throne, walk into Zoe Harrison’s house.

Forty-five minutes later, having eventually managed to find a taxi, Joanna lay back on her new and very comfortable beige-coloured sofa, and took a sip of the brandy she’d poured to help with her toothache. She stared up at the cracked magnolia ceiling for inspiration. Forget letters from strange little old ladies, deaths of ageing actors, plots and conspiracies . . . Unless she was imagining things, she had just witnessed some kind of tryst between one of the world’s most eligible – and newsworthy – bachelors, and a young and very beautiful actress.

Who had a child.

A tremble of excitement travelled up Joanna’s spine. If she had caught that moment on camera, by now she could have probably netted a hundred thousand from whichever British newspaper took her fancy.

‘Zoe Harrison and Prince Arthur, Duke of York. What a story!’ she breathed.

Tomorrow she must do some research, find out whether the two of them had any past, or whether she should write off what she’d seen as a meeting of two ‘old friends’. She was seeing Zoe on Saturday. It might be possible to extract some information subtly. There was no doubt that a scoop like this would have her off Pets and Gardens faster than you could say ‘manure’.

Then Joanna groaned, horrified by her treacherous thoughts. How could she eventhinkof blowing the whistle? She was going out with Zoe’s brother – whom she might, just might, be in love with – and she and Zoe had got on well enough for her to think there could be the basis for a strong future friendship. She also remembered sombrely what she had said to Marcus at their first meeting about welcoming the privacy laws.

The sad thing was that if the Prince and Zoewerehaving a relationship, whether she spilt the beans or not, the story would be broken in the very near future. The news-hounds could sniff out a scandal before the two people concerned had shared a first kiss.

There was a knock on the front door, and Joanna reluctantly got off the sofa to open it. Marcus grinned at her, proffering half a bottle of brandy.

‘Hi, sweetheart, how’s the toothache?’ he murmured as he went in for a kiss.

‘Better after a brandy, thanks. I’ve just run out, so this is perfect. You mentioned earlier on the phone that we had to talk . . .’ She trailed off as Marcus held a finger to his lips. Then he took out a piece of notepaper and handed it to her.

William Fielding attacked. Think our flats have been bugged, the note read.Had weird builder arrive to repair damp. Need to do a search before we can talk. Put some loud music on.

Joanna nodded, her suspicions confirmed. She turned up the CD player to full volume and they proceeded to conduct a thorough sweep of the flat, feeling for new grooves in the wall, along the floorboards, underneath lampshades, and the backs of cupboards.

‘This is ridiculous!’ Joanna sighed, forty minutes into their fruitless search. She slumped down onto the new sofa, and Marcus joined her. ‘We’ve been through everything with a fine-tooth comb, unless they’ve hidden something inside the walls,’ she whispered in his ear, trying to make herself heard by him over the music that was pounding out of the stereo.

‘Have a think – who’s been in your house since this whole thing started?’ he whispered back.

‘Me, Simon, you, at least four different police officers, three delivery men . . .’ she whispered, counting them off on her fingers, then paused.

Without further word, she leapt off the sofa to the landline telephone sitting on a side table in a corner of the room. She inspected the wire and felt along its length to where it led into the wall. Pointing at it, she looked at Marcus, her eyes wide. She put a cautious finger to her lips, then pulled him into the hall, grabbed their coats and ushered him out of the flat.

They walked down the quiet lamp-lit street, and Joanna could feel herself trembling. Marcus wrapped his arm around her tightly.

‘Oh God, Marcus . . . my phone . . . I was surprised at the time when the telephone engineer turned up without notice after I’d been burgled!’

‘It’s okay, darling, it’ll all be okay.’

‘It’s been there since January! All the things they must have heard! Alec warned me about this. What do we do? Do we pull out the line? How do we get rid of it?’

He paused, then shook his head. ‘No, or they’ll know we’re on to them. And just come back and replace it.’

‘I can’t bear the thought of them in my flat again! Jesus!’

‘Listen, Jo, we’re in a good position. We’re one step ahead of them, finally—’

‘How can you say that? We don’t know where the bugs are or how many there are.’

‘We’ll just have to be careful with what we say,’ he said slowly. ‘And where we say it. We don’t know if they can just transmit your phone conversations or are able to transmit all the sound in your flat. But we can’t let them know that we know. We’ll also have to be careful using our mobile phones – they might be tapping those too.’

She nodded, then bit her lip. ‘William Fielding’s murder wasn’t a coincidence,’ she said eventually. ‘I think that’s a certainty now.’