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  Jenny had been out when he’d called her earlier, and then the day’s events had overtaken his good intentions. He wanted to make sure she was alone and no one could overhear their conversation when he told her about the accident. Jenny was the only woman apart from his mother who could tell when he was lying, so he’d have to come clean about it. So far Matt had been able to keep things quiet, even though some of the news-hungry paps were still camped outside the gates of the Lodge.

  He had been lucky that Doc Goodman was at the Lodge already when the helicopter had landed on the lawn. Bringing back another guest whose partner had died, he was told, but Tim didn’t care. All he cared about was the repair job on his face and from what Tim had been able to see, it looked like the doc had done a brilliant job hiding what would be a scar in one of the “character lines” on his forehead. It would mean an end to the botox, which was a pity. Although he could grow his hair – that would cover it.

  He’d hoped to spend a few days recovering quietly at the Lodge, but his insurance company required him to fly up to Auckland the next day to get a second opinion from a plastic surgeon. His face was his fortune and any scar would be magnified in every close-up shot, so it had to be the best repair possible.

  “Now hold up my little guy so I can get a good look at him,” he ordered the nanny.

  “But he’s asleep.”

  “He is not.”

  “Well, he isn’t now.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Mr James, here he is. Isaac, say hello to your daddy, who is all the way across the sea in Australia.”

  “New Zealand.”

  “Aren’t they the same?”

  “No they are not.” Tim was getting impatient with this nanny. Too chatty by half. He wanted to talk to his son, not her.

  “Damned isolated country with goddamned slow internet,” he cursed as the screen froze again. He didn’t want to upset his son, but the painkillers were wearing off and he had one hell of a headache. Truth be told he also felt a bit foolish. He should have paid more attention to Mike, and everyone from Jimmy down to the caterers knew the accident probably wouldn’t have happened if he had.

  The baby took one look at his father’s bandage-clad face grimacing at him and broke into howls of tears. For a brief moment he stopped crying to take a breath, and opened his eyes, but his daddy’s unfamiliar face still loomed over him and he screamed and writhed in the nanny’s arms, inconsolable.

  The nanny was obviously displeased and suggested maybe Mr James should call it a night so she could settle his son. Tim could only acquiesce graciously. She could wait. The screen went blank as she cut the connection. He would see that young madam when he got home. If he wanted to see his son at any time of the night or day, he expected the staff to make sure it would be the best father-son bonding experience money could buy. When he called home he didn’t expect to have to deal with a screaming baby and a stroppy young woman telling him his time was up.

  Tim had been enchanted when, twelve weeks ago, the baby had been put in his arms to hold while Jenny’s abdomen was stitched up. Isaac had looked at him with the blurry eyes of a newborn and Tim’s heart had melted. Since then, he had hardly seen the boy. He’d been finishing a film in Spain and had flown home for the birth before going straight back for another month. The few days in LA on his way to New Zealand had been spent in meetings and attending social functions.

  “I have to be seen and so do you,” he’d told Jenny. “We can see Isaac later.”

  But the days had passed quickly and the next minute here he was in New Zealand with a bandage over his forehead.

  Tonight, though, had provided one consolation to the distant father. Peering closely at the frozen-screen baby Isaac, Tim had caught sight of a small pear-shaped mole he hadn’t seen before on the back of his son’s neck. When he’d seen the blemish, his own hand had moved unconsciously to rub the very same mole on the back of his own neck. Headache forgotten, Tim’s heart had lurched with joy and with the overwhelming relief that indeed the boy was truly, and beyond doubt, his boy.

  “I really, really am a father,” he whispered.

  Against Doc Goodman’s orders Tim poured himself a congratulatory whisky and stepped out onto his snowy veranda to smoke one of the bespoke hand-rolled Cuban cigars he allowed himself each night to compensate for being away from home. The doctor had advised no stimulants and lots of rest, but what did he know? Truth be told, Tim relished his after-dinner cigar but employed a myriad of excuses to convince himself he was actually a non-smoker.

  It was a calm, clear evening, and the sky above the lake was scattered with stars. They were brighter here, far away from the lights of the civilised world. Taking his time to exhale a cloud of thick luxuriant smoke redolent with the scent of the tropics, Tim let the stillness envelop him. The nicotine surged through his blood, giving him the brain hit he craved at this time of day, but making his headache suddenly much worse. Even the whisky had turned against him. Instead of soothing his palate, it burned his throat and was making him nauseous.

  He tossed the still lit cigar onto the lawn in front of him and tipped the single malt into a plant box. Feeling distinctly unwell, he heard the sound of a woman’s muffled sobs from one of the other cottages.

  Knowing that another guest, a man, had died skiing that afternoon, he surmised the sounds of distress coming from next door, must be from his wife or girlfriend. Tim shivered at this uninvited proximity to loss, his awareness heightened by his own near miss in the boat this morning. He went inside shutting the door tightly behind him, and after tossing down some more painkillers settled in front of the fire to do some work.

  Later, when he’d almost forgotten about the whole business, one of his staff, dropping off a script for his approval, made an inane remark about the death of his neighbour, and how important it was to seize each day because you just never know what’s going to happen next. Tim had snapped at the young guy, telling him to keep his T-shirt philosophy to himself.

  People had said the same stupid thing at the few funerals he’d been unable to avoid attending, and it always irritated him intensely. He always made a point of seizing each day so tightly he was afraid that if he seized it any harder it would kill him. For as long as he could remember, he’d extracted every single precious moment not only from his life but also from the lives of the characters he played. He had no patience with passive passengers on life’s great journey.

  When he was alone again, he tried to settle in front of the fire and check the requested additions to the script. The noise of the woman wailing next door was just audible. Obviously the thick floor-to-ceiling curtains on the windows and the solid walls of the buildings were not enough to block out the loud crying of a woman in grief.

  The man was dead, for chrissake – nada, nothing. His body would rot or be burned in the next few days, leaving the world to the living.

  It was the way of things and it terrified Tim. He couldn’t imagine not being alive, here on earth, making things happen. The thought of not seeing, hearing, feeling, breathing, fucking his wife, or anyone else’s wife for that matter; of the world going on without him as if he didn’t matter, filled him with dread. Rationally he knew, of course, that his own death was totally inevitable, and he wasn’t so stupid as to not understand that. But it drove him each waking moment to strive even harder to be the best, the winner in the only game in town, the man who was not forgotten, and would never be forgotten. He would live forever in his films. Tim was prepared to consider the possibility of death only when he decided he’d had enough. His accident today was a wake-up call to be more careful.

  Thoughts of his mother arrived unbidden and unwelcome. If anyone was going to die, it should be her – his ageing but very lippy mother. It was her turn next, and then maybe he would get some peace from her public jibes about how mean he was with money and what a bad son he was. Ungrateful bitch. He’d made her famous and now she was tittle tattling about him to the press.<
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  Did she think the cheap women’s magazines whose pages she frequented would take any notice of her moans of neglect and deprivation were she not the mother of the multi-award winning, world famous, fabulously wealthy and handsome actor, Tim James?

  He’d put up with her snarky comments for years before deciding he had to cut her off so she wouldn’t bleed him dry. Then she really would have something to moan about. It had worked up to a point. Having to work for a living meant she had less time to hassle him and the scum journalists who believed her, so gradually her whines of poverty and neglect had drifted into the ether of rumour and back-handed asides. He’d bought her a house so she had somewhere to live, and his conscience was clear, but that didn’t make for a story. No one wanted to know what he had done for her, just what he hadn’t – and his mother had a list as long as your arm.

  Her life wasn’t that bad, he thought, as he fingered the bandage on his head. We all have to work. Working keeps you healthy, especially at her age. She should be thanking him, not bad-mouthing him.

  Tim turned on the TV, but the face of that annoying little jerk Jonathon Bramble filled the screen. Rather than flick through the channels to find something worth watching, he clicked it off.

  The silence was broken by the sounds from next door.

  Normally he would have called management and complained, but he knew how it would look if he did. It was such a small town, and no matter how much discretion was promised it would be bound to get out that he was a callous and unsympathetic bastard who didn’t respect a woman’s grief.

  Returning to his armchair beside the open fire, he picked up the house phone and spoke to the duty manager.

  “Tim James here. I know it’s late, but you guys are fabulous and can do anything,” he schmoozed. “Would you please send a very large bouquet of flowers to the poor woman in the cottage next to mine? I feel I have to do something. Yes, it has to be tonight. Just a small card, and if you could write, ‘With sympathy for your loss, Tim James’, I will be more than grateful. Whatever it costs,” he added, leaving the rest to the duty manager’s imagination.

  “Of course, Mr James,” came the reply. “My name is Geoff Banks and I would be happy to organise that for you. And may I say how thoughtful of you. It will be done within the hour. Good night, Sir.”

  Tim gave himself a mental pat on the back. Word of his kind gesture would no doubt spread, but possibly too slowly to be of use, particularly if there was no guiding hand. He messaged his PR manager and explained why there would be an expensive bill for flowers on his account. He knew Matt would understand the point of the message – and soon the rest of the world would know he had sent flowers in the middle of the night to a grieving widow.

  There was no point in working now, so he went to bed. Just as he drifted off to sleep, the crying stopped.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maggie punched a code into the number pad set into one of the stone pillars at the bottom of Jilly’s drive. The gates swung open noiselessly. Driving up to the house she was puzzled to see lights blazing from every room. It was supposed to be empty. She didn’t see another car but the garage door was shut, so maybe someone had put their car inside out of the cold. Perhaps it was the cleaning lady forgetting to turn things off, she thought. She peered through the windows into the brightly lit interior looking for anything unusual, but nothing seemed out of place.

  Dressed in her usual black she was instantly absorbed into the shadows, almost invisible to anyone looking out. Sticking to the dark patches around the house and clutching her phone for security, Maggie tiptoed around the outside of the house looking for signs of an intruder, her heart beating heavily in her chest.

  You’re an idiot, she thought. What if someone is here?

  She looked toward the gates and the snow falling softly on the gravel drive. Her heavy snowboots meant running wasn’t an option. Not fast, anyway. And there was no way she could climb those gates, even if she did get that far.

  If there was an intruder, the best place to be would be the car. She’d have to get back there, lock the doors and call the police. Maybe sound the horn for the neighbours.

  Good plan, she thought, and tiptoed round the next corner only to trip and fall over a garden hose. She sat on the ground for a minute, waiting to see if she’d been heard, but there was no sound; no footsteps of someone coming to find out about the noise. She was alone. She got up, dusting the light snow off her jacket, and started walking back to the front door. Get what you need from the house andskedaddle, she said to herself.

  Suddenly two strong arms reached around her from behind, pinning her hard against a man’s chest. Too surprised and terrified to scream, Maggie’s survival instincts and self-defence training took over. She lifted one boot and crunched it down hard on the man’s foot behind her, kicking the other backwards into his shin. His vice-like hold on her loosened and leaning forwards, she tumbled free and was off, back to her car. Locking the doors she fumbled for her phone, and at the same time pounded on the horn shattering the still night air.

  The man came hurtling round the corner after her, his shape silhouetted against the house lights, and thumped hard into the front of her car. It shook, but Maggie didn’t look up. She was concentrating on trying to stop shaking so she could punch in the emergency number. This was easier said than done as she tried to hit the correct numbers on the tiny screen, but to no avail – she had to try again. She huddled over the gear stick, willing herself to get it right, refusing to look outside her safe zone. She knew he could see her in the light from the screen, but she couldn’t see him. He was just a very scary shape looming in the dark outside, trying to get to her, to do God knows what.

  It took another moment or two of sheer panic for her to slowly register that her attacker was calling her name.

  “Maggie. For goodness sake, Maggie – it’s me! Open the door!”

  Maggie took her hand off the horn and peered through the window. Ben Goodman’s pained and panting face was looking back at her. It took another minute for her to process the fact that it was indeed the good doctor, the man who had been drinking coffee in her living room that afternoon. She didn’t know him particularly well, and it was possible he could be an axe murderer, but on balance she thought she was probably safe.

  “Fire, Police or Ambulance?” a voice asked from her lap.

  “It’s all right,” said Maggie, putting the phone to her ear. “Pocket dial. Sorry.”

  She unlocked the door and got out of the car. Ben stepped back and let her go first into the house. She jumped at the sound of the door closing behind her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to sound confident.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, bending down to rub the front of his shin. “What are you doing sneaking around my house and peering in the windows at this hour of the night? For an undertaker you sure get around.”

  “Funeral director,” said Maggie.

  “Ah yes, funeral director. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Come into the kitchen and warm up. Then you can tell me why you’re here.”

  Maggie perched on a stool, keeping the bench between them, willing herself to stop shaking before he noticed.

  “You look very pale,” he said. He took a glass from one of the cupboards, filled it from the tap and passed it over. “Drink this.”

  Maggie didn’t need to be told twice. She sipped the water slowly until it was all gone and her shaking had stopped. She felt him staring at her, and looked up.

  Ben was leaning back against the fridge, his arms folded across his chest. “Is it good luck for the first guest in your new house to be an undertaker – sorry, funeral director – do you think?”

  “Your house? But Lucy told me she and Mark had bought this house.”

  “They certainly made an offer, but I was able to top them and my offer was formally accepted by the vendor this afternoon, just after I dropped Lucy off at the Lodge.” He paused and loo
ked around. “I’ve had lots of houses, but this one … there’s something very special about it, don’t you think?” His eyes sparkled and Maggie heard the excitement in his voice.

  Damned if she was going to get caught up in his mood. All she could see was Lucy crying in her living room only a few hours ago, lamenting the loss of her lover just as they were finally going to be happy together in this very house.

  “It’s stunning. It’s the most fabulous house I’ve ever seen.” Then, before she could stop herself, “Lucy loved it.”

  Ben froze. “Yes, but–”

  “But what?” said Maggie. “It must have been an interesting drive back to the Lodge this afternoon. Just long enough for you to convince her to withdraw her offer so you could step in and buy it. And here you are, triumphant. Mark not dead twelve hours. The woman’s broken heart just a stepping stone for you to get what you want.”

  “It was nothing like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Do you think I would do something like that?”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “No, you don’t.” He sighed, the excitement in his voice gone. “So what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be tucked up in bed, sound asleep in your black pyjamas?”

  “What I wear to bed is none of your business.”

  “Then why are you here, creeping around in the dark? Did you follow me?”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course I didn’t follow you. Why would I? I’m not interested in you.”

  “You’ve made that perfectly clear. So? Explain.”

  “I came to get Jilly’s things for her funeral tomorrow. Not that it’s any of your business. Why are you here? You may have signed the contract, but that’s all you’ve done. Estelle should be shot for giving you a key.”

  “It’s not her fault. I persuaded her against her better judgement.”

  “And you always get what you want, don’t you?”

  “I give up, Maggie. You do what you need to. I’ll be in the garage.”