Stranded Page 3

  Of course, I blamed myself for my stupidity, my eagerness to believe that a man as charismatic as Sam could fall for me. Good old reliable Sarah, the safe pair of hands who secondguessed authors’ needs before they could even voice them. I felt such a fool. A bruised, exploited fool.

  Time passed, but there was still a raw place deep inside me. Sam Uttley had taken more from me than a few nights of sexual pleasure; he’d taken away my trust in my judgement. I told nobody about my humiliation. It would have been one pain too many.

  Then Lindsay McConnell arrived. An award-winning dramatist, she’d come to give a series of workshops on radio adaptation. She was impeccably professional, no trouble to take care of. And we hit it off straightaway. On her last night, I took her to my favourite Moscow eating place, a traditional Georgian restaurant tucked away in a courtyard in the Armenian quarter. As the wine slipped down, we gossiped and giggled. Then, in the course of some anecdote, she mentioned Sam Uttley. Just hearing his name made my guts clench. ‘You know Sam?’ I asked, struggling not to sound too interested.

  ‘Oh God, yes. I was at university with Rachel, his wife. Of course, you had Sam out here last year, didn’t you? He said he’d had a really interesting time.’

  I bet he did, I thought bitterly. ‘How are they now? Sam and Rachel?’ I asked with the true masochist’s desire for the twist of the knife.

  Lindsay looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean, how are they now?’

  ‘When Sam was here, Rachel had just left him.’

  She frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re not confusing him with someone else? They’re solid as a rock, Sam and Rachel. God knows, if he was mine I’d have murdered him years ago, but Rachel thinks the sun shines out of his arse.’

  It was my turn to frown. ‘He told me she’d just walked out on him. He was really depressed about it.’

  Lindsay shook her head. ‘God, how very Sam. He hates touring, you know. He’ll do anything to squeeze out a bit of sympathy, make sure he gets premier-league treatment. He just likes to have everyone running around after him, Sarah. I’m telling you, Rachel has never left him. Now I think about it, that week he was in Russia, I went round there for dinner. Me and Rachel and a couple of her colleagues. You know, from Material Girl. The magazine she works for. I think if they’d split up, she might have mentioned it, don’t you?’

  I hoped I wasn’t looking as stunned as I felt. I’d never thought of myself as stupid, but that calculating bastard had spun me a line and reeled me in open-mouthed like the dumbest fish in the pond. But of course, because I’m a woman and that’s how we’re trained to think, I was still blaming myself more than him. I’d clearly been sending out the signals of needy gullibility and he’d just come up with the right line to exploit them.

  A few weeks later, I was still smarting from what I saw as my self-inflicted wound at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where us British Council types gather like bees to pollen. But at least I’d finally have the chance to share my idiocy with Camilla, my opposite number in Jerusalem. We’d worked together years before in Paris, and we’d become bosom buddies. The only reason I hadn’t told her about Sam previously was that every time I wrote it down in an e-mail, it just looked moronic. It needed a girls’ night in with a couple of bottles of decent red wine before I could let this one spill out.

  Late on the second night, after a particularly gruelling Amnesty International event, we sneaked back to the flat we were sharing with a couple of the boys from the Berlin office and started in on the confessional. My story crawled out of me, and I realised yet again how foolish I’d been from the horrified expression on Camilla’s face. That and her appalled silence. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she breathed.

  ‘I know, I know,’ I groaned. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said angrily. ‘Not you, Sarah. Sam Uttley.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That duplicitous bastard Uttley. He pulled exactly the same stunt on Georgie Bullen in Madrid. The identical line about his wife leaving him. She told me about it when I flew in for Semana Negra last month.’

  ‘But I thought Georgie was living with someone?’

  ‘She was,’ Camilla said. ‘Paco, the stage manager at the opera house. She’d taken Uttley down to Granada to do some lectures there, that’s when it happened. Georgie saw the scumbag off on the plane and came straight home and told Paco it was over, she’d met someone else. She threw him out, then two days later she got the killer e-mail from Sam.’

  We gazed at each other, mouths open. ‘The bastard,’ I said. For the first time, anger blotted out my selfpity and pain.

  ‘Piece of shit,’ Camilla agreed.

  We spent the rest of the bottle and most of the second one thinking of ways to exact revenge on Sam Uttley, but we both knew that there was no way I was going back to Moscow to find a hit man to take him out. The trouble was, we couldn’t think of anything that would show him up without making us look like silly credulous girls. Most blokes, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise, would reckon: good on him for working out such a foolproof scam to get his leg over. Most women would reckon we’d got what we deserved for being so naïve.

  I was thirty thousand feet above Poland when the answer came to me. The woman in the seat next to me had been reading Material Girl and she offered it to me when she’d finished. I looked down the editorial list, curious to see exactly what Rachel Uttley did on the magazine. Her name was near the top of the credits. Fiction editor, Rachel Uttley. A quick look at the contents helped me deduce that, as well as the books page, Rachel was responsible for editing the three short stories. There, at the end of the third, was a sentence saying that submissions for publication should be sent to her.

  I’ve always wanted to write. One of the reasons I took this job in the first place was to learn as much as I could from those who do it successfully. I’ve got half a novel on my hard disk, but I reckoned it was time to try a short story.

  Two days later, I’d written it. The central character was a biographer who specialises in seducing professional colleagues on foreign trips with a tale about his wife having left him. Then he’d dump them as soon as he’d got home. When one of his victims realises what he’s been up to, she exposes the serial adulterer by sending his wife, a magazine editor, a short story revealing his exploits. And the wife, recognising her errant husband from the pen portrait, finally does walk out on him.

  Before I could have second thoughts, I printed it out and stuffed it in an envelope addressed to Rachel at Material Girl. Then I sat back and waited.

  For a couple of weeks, nothing happened.

  Then, one Tuesday morning, I was sitting in the office browsing BBC online news. His name leapt out at me. ‘Sam Uttley Dies in Burglary’, read the headline in the latest-news section. I clicked on the button.

  Bestselling biographer and TV presenter Sam Uttley was found dead this morning at his home in North London. It is believed he disturbed a burglar. He died from a single stab wound to the stomach. Police say there was evidence of a break-in at the rear of the house.

  Uttley was discovered by his wife, Rachel, a journalist. Police are calling for witnesses who may have seen one or two men fleeing the scene in the early hours of the morning.

  I had to read the bare words three or four times before they sank in. Suddenly, his lies didn’t matter any more. All I could think of was his eyes on mine, the flash of his easy smile, the touch of his hand. The sparkle of wit in his conversation. The life in him that had been snuffed out. The books he would never write.

  Over a succession of numb days, I pursued the story via the internet. Bits and pieces emerged gradually. They’d had an attempted burglary a few months before. That night, Rachel had gone off to bed but Sam had stayed up late, working in his study. Sam, the police reckoned, had heard the sound of breaking glass and gone downstairs to
investigate. The intruder had snatched up a knife from the kitchen worktop and plunged it into his stomach then fled. Sam had bled to death on the kitchen floor. It had taken him a while to die, they thought. And Rachel had come down for breakfast to find him stiff and cold. Poor bloody Rachel, I thought.

  On the fifth day after the news broke, there was a large manila envelope among my post, franked with the Material Girl logo. My story had come winging its way back to me. Inside, there was a handwritten note from Rachel.

  Dear Sarah,

  Thank you so much for your submission. I found your story intriguing and thought-provoking. A real eye-opener, in fact. But I felt the ending was rather weak and so I regret we’re unable to publish it. However, I like your style. I’d be very interested to see more of your work.

  Gratefully yours,

  Rachel Uttley

  That’s when I realised what I’d done. Like Oscar Wilde, I’d killed the thing I’d loved. And Rachel had made sure I knew it.

  That’s when my sleepless nights started.

  And that’s why I’m so very, very grateful for Roger and the case they call Wagon Mound (No.1). And for an understanding of proximity. Thanks to him, I’ve finally realised I’m not the guilty party here. Neither is Rachel.

  The guilty party is the one who started the wagon rolling. Lovely, sexy, reckless Sam Uttley.

  Breathtaking Ignorance

  Every caterer’s nightmare. The choking customer, collapsed on the floor gasping for breath. I’d already hurtled through from the kitchen as soon as I heard the coughing and spluttering, and I made it to his side just as he slumped to the floor like a Bonfire Night guy, legs splayed, head lolling, eyes popping.

  The boardroom crowd were keeping their distance, remembering all the strictures they’d ever heard about giving people air. There was a nervous hush, the only sounds the croaking gasps of the man on the floor. I knew exactly who he was. Brian Bayliss, chief legal executive of Kaymen Merchant Bank. I’d catered functions for him, both at the bank’s Canary Wharf headquarters and at his opulent house in Suffolk, and I knew he was as pompous and bossy as they come. But that didn’t stop me kneeling down beside him and dragging him into a sitting position so I could perform the Heimlich manoeuvre. That’s one of the many fascinating things you learn at catering college. You encircle the victim with your arms, hug them tightly and sharply, forcing the air out of their lungs, which in turn frees whatever is blocking their windpipe. The downside is that somebody usually ends up covered in sick.

  Bayliss was bright scarlet by now, his lips turning an ominous blue. I got my arms round him, smelling the sweat that mingled with his expensive cologne. I contracted my arms, forcing his ribs inward. Nothing happened. His gasping sounded ever more frantic, less effective.

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance, Meg,’ John Collings said desperately, moving towards the boardroom phone. He’d organised this lunch, and I could see this was the last contract for a directors’ thrash that I’d be getting from him.

  I tried the manoeuvre again. This time, Bayliss slumped heavily against me. The dreadful retching of his breathing suddenly ceased. The heaving in his chest seemed to have stopped. ‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘He’s stopped breathing.’

  A couple of the other guests moved forward and gingerly pulled Bayliss’s still body away from me. I freed my skirt from under him and crawled round him on my knees, saying, ‘Quick, the kiss of life.’ Out of the corner of my eye I could see John slam the phone down. In the corner behind him, Tessa, the waitress who’d served him, was weeping quietly.

  John’s chief accountant had taken on the unenviable task of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Somehow, I knew he was wasting his time. I leaned back on my heels, muttering, ‘I don’t understand it. I just don’t understand it.’

  The ambulance crew arrived within five minutes and clamped an oxygen mask over his face. They strapped Bayliss to a stretcher and I followed them down the corridor and into the lift. David Bromley, Bayliss’s deputy, climbed into the ambulance alongside me, looking like he wanted to ask what the hell I thought I was doing.

  ‘It was my food he was eating,’ I said defensively. ‘I want to make sure he’s all right.’

  ‘Looks a bit late for that,’ he said. He didn’t sound filled with regret.

  At the hospital, David and I found a quiet corner near the WRVS coffee stall. I stared glumly at the floor and said softly, ‘He didn’t look like he was going to pull through.’

  ‘No,’ David agreed with a note almost of relish in his voice.

  ‘You don’t sound too upset,’ I hazarded.

  ‘That obvious, is it?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘No, I’m not upset. The bank will be a better place without him. The guy’s a complete shit. He’s a tyrant at the office and at home too, from what I can gather. He says jump and the only question you’re allowed to ask is, how high? He goes through secretaries like other people go through rolls of Sellotape.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I groaned. ‘So if he recovers, he’ll probably sue me for negligence.’

  ‘I doubt if he’d have a case. His own greed was too much of a contributory factor. I saw him stuffing down those chicken and garlic canapés like there was no tomorrow,’ David consoled me.

  Before we could say more, a weary-looking woman in a white coat approached us. ‘Are you the two people who came in the ambulance with –’, she checked her clipboard. ‘Brian Bayliss?’ We nodded. ‘Are you related to Mr Bayliss?’

  We shook our heads. ‘I’m a colleague,’ David said.

  ‘And I catered the lunch where Mr Bayliss had his choking fit,’ I revealed.

  The doctor nodded. ‘Can you tell me what Mr Bayliss had to eat?’

  ‘Just some canapés. That’s all we’d served by then,’ I said defensively.

  ‘And what exactly was in the canapés?’

  ‘There were two sorts,’ I explained. ‘Smoked chicken or salmon and lobster.’

  ‘Brian was eating the chicken ones,’ David added helpfully.

  The doctor looked slightly puzzled. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. He never touched fish,’ David added. ‘He wouldn’t even have it on the menu if we were hosting a function.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘What exactly is the problem here?’

  The doctor sighed. ‘Mr Bayliss has died, apparently as a result of anaphylactic shock.’ We must both have looked bewildered, for she went on to explain. ‘A profound allergic reaction. Essentially, the pathways in his respiratory tract just closed up. He couldn’t physically get enough air into his lungs, so he asphyxiated. I’ve never heard of it being brought on by chicken, though. The most common cause is an allergic reaction to a bee sting,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘I know he was allergic to shellfish,’ David offered. ‘That’s why he had this thing about never serving fish.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I wailed. ‘The lobster!’ They both stared at me. ‘I ground up the lobster shells into powder and mixed them with mayonnaise for the fish canapés. The mayo for the chicken ones had grilled red peppers and roast garlic mixed into it. They looked very similar. Surely there couldn’t have been a mix-up in the kitchen?’ I covered my face with my hands as I realised what had happened.

  Of course, they both fussed over me and insisted it wasn’t my fault. I pulled myself together after a few minutes, then the doctor asked David about Bayliss’s next of kin. ‘His wife’s called Alexandra,’ he told her, and recited their home number.

  How did I know it was their home number? Not from catering executive lunches, I’m afraid. Perhaps I should have mentioned that Alexandra and I have been lovers for just over a year now. And that Brian was adamant that if she left him, he’d make sure she left without a penny from him. And, more importantly, that she’d never see her children again.

  I just hope the mix-u
p with the mayo won’t hurt my reputation for gourmet boardroom food too much.

  White Nights, Black Magic

  When night falls in St Petersburg, the dead become more palpable. In this city built on blood and bone, they’re always present. But when darkness gathers, they’re harder to escape. The frozen, drowned serfs who paid the price for Peter the Great’s determination to fulfil Nostradamus’s prediction that Venice would rise from the dead waters of the north; the assassinated tsars whose murders changed surprisingly little; the starved victims of the Wehrmacht’s nine-hundred-day siege; the buried corpses of lords of the imagination such as Dostoevsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov – they’re all there in the shifting shadows, their foetid breath tainting the chilly air that comes off the Neva and shivers through the streets.

  My dead too. I never feel closer to Elinor than when I walk along the embankment of Vasilyevsky Ostrov on a winter’s night. The familiar grandeur of the Hermitage and St Isaac’s cathedral on the opposite bank touch me not at all. What resonates inside me is the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, the spark of her eyes.

  It shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be the darkness that conjures her up for me, because we didn’t make those memories in the dead core of winter. The love that exploded between us was a child of the light, a dream state that played itself out against the backdrop of the White Nights, those heady summer weeks when the sun never sets over St Petersburg.

  Like all lovers, we thought the sun would never set on us either. But it did. And although Elinor isn’t one of the St Petersburg dead, she comes back to haunt me when the city’s ghosts drift through the streets in wraiths of river mist. I know too that this is no neutral visitation. Her presence demands something of me, and it’s taken me a long time to figure out what that is. But I know now. Elinor understood that Russia can be a cruel and terrible place, and also that I am profoundly Russian. So tonight, I will make reparation.