Liz hoped that meant he was looking forward to seeing her as well. She had missed him at work, both as a boss (the best she’d ever had) and as… what exactly? She had only recently acknowledged to herself how strong her feelings were for Charles, yet they had never exchanged so much as a kiss. She wondered if that would change now, then immediately felt guilty about envisaging a future with Charles that Joanne Wetherby would never now have.
Next to Liz, her mother’s friend Edward Treglown put the order of service paper neatly folded on his knee, and whispered something to Liz’s mother on his other side. Liz had been astonished by the coincidence that Edward, who had known her mother for only a couple of years, was a childhood friend of Joanne Wetherby. It turned out that they had grown up together in the same town in Kent. As adults they had lost touch, but came back into contact – because of Liz, curiously enough.
After Liz had been badly hurt several months before, during an investigation into a plot to derail a Middle East peace conference, she had gone to her mother’s to convalesce. Concerned about her safety there, Charles Wetherby had contacted Edward; meeting in London, the two had immediately taken to each other, even before discovering Edward’s earlier friendship with Joanne. By this time Joanne was already very ill, but Liz gathered that Edward and her mother had been to see both Wetherbys on more than one occasion. If either Susan Carlyle or Edward had any inkling of Liz’s own feelings for Charles, they kept it to themselves.
The Bach Prelude ended, and there was a chilly silence in the church, the only noise that of light rain thrown by the wind against the stained glass windows. Then the vicar stood before the congregation and the service began. It was traditional, with old standbys for the hymns, and a short appreciation by an old friend of Joanne’s. There were two readings, given by the sons; Sam’s voice quavered as he reached the end of Keats’s ‘Ode to Autumn’, a favourite of his mother’s as he’d told the crowded church. There were tears in many eyes as resolutely he gathered himself together and finished with a strong, resonant voice:
A final hymn and the service concluded. As the haunting sound of the organ playing Purcell filled the nave, the congregation rose and began slowly to file out. The thin drizzle had ended, and the sky had lightened slightly to a chalky mix of greys as Charles stood outside the church with the boys next to him. Liz let Edward and her mother go first to offer condolences. Then it was her turn.
‘Liz,’ said Charles, gripping her hand firmly. ‘It’s lovely to see you. Thank you so much for coming. How have you been?’
‘I’m fine, Charles,’ she said as brightly as she could. It was characteristic of him to ask how she was.
‘You’ve met Sam before,’ he said, turning slightly to include his son. The boy smiled shyly and shook her hand. The woman in the black hat Liz had noticed in church came up to the other son, laying a comforting hand on his arm. Was she an aunt? Charles said, ‘Liz, I want you to meet Alison.’
The woman looked up and smiled. She had a striking but friendly face, with high cheekbones, a sharp nose, and unusual violet eyes. ‘Liz,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
Really? thought Liz with surprise. From Charles? Or from Joanne?
Charles explained, ‘Alison lives next door to us. We’ve been neighbours for years.’
‘Yes. Joanne brought me a cake on the day we moved in.’ She looked fondly at Sam. ‘You weren’t even born then, young man.’
Other people were waiting to speak to Charles, so Liz moved on. She had been invited with others for refreshments at the Wetherby house several miles away, but she couldn’t face a large gathering just now – she wanted to see Charles, but she wanted to see him alone. Her presence or absence would be neither here nor there among the dozens of people certain to be found at the Wetherbys.
Saying goodbye to her mother and Edward, she left, having decided to drive straight back to Thames House and get on with her work. She’d see Charles there soon enough. If he needed someone to talk to today, Liz sensed that his neighbour Alison would be happy to stand in.
3
Something was holding them up. Their driver tapped his fingers impatiently on the wheel and Beth Davis looked out of the window at the patchy woods that lined the A307 south of Richmond. She had two meetings planned for that afternoon and was wondering if she’d be back in time for either of them.
She glanced at DG sitting next to her. He looked the soul of patience. Typical of him, thought Beth. God knows how many meetings he must have scheduled, yet at the gathering after the service at Charles’s house, he had been a model of tact: solicitous of Charles, polite to the array of friends and relatives he’d been introduced to, never giving any indication that he had pressing business elsewhere.
The car inched forward, tyres churning the slushy piles of leaves in the gutter of the road. ‘Lovely service,’ DG said with a small sigh.
‘The boys read beautifully,’ said Beth, and DG nodded. She went on, ‘It must be awfully hard on them, especially now that they’re boarding.’
‘I think only the eldest is boarding yet. And boarding may be a good thing. They’re kept busy, lots of distractions, all their friends around them. Being at home might be much harder. Too many ghosts; too many reminders.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Still, it will make it more difficult for Charles when they’re both away. Wandering around that house all alone.’
DG gave a small grunt. After a moment he said, ‘Our lot made a good show of it, I thought.’
‘Yes. Thames House must have been seriously undermanned for a few hours.’
‘I didn’t see anyone leaving the service, so let’s hope there were no crises.’ DG smiled, then grew serious. ‘I didn’t see Liz Carlyle.’
‘I did; she was at the church, with her mother. She didn’t go on to the house though. She must have had to get straight back.’
DG nodded and looked thoughtful. Beth sensed what he was thinking – it was no secret that Liz and Charles were close, though no doubt the two of them believed no one else had noticed. But how could you fail to observe their obvious mutual attraction? The way Charles’s face would light up when Liz joined a meeting he was chairing. The rapt look on Liz’s face when Charles was speaking. You would have been blind to miss it.
The couple’s feelings for each other would not have been a problem if Liz had worked for anyone else. But now she was reporting to Charles again, since he had taken over the counter espionage branch, and that’s where matters grew complicated.
It was not an unknown, or even uncommon situation. It was understood within the service that the secrecy of the job made it hard to forge relationships with anyone ‘outside’, and that therefore office romances were inevitable. Joanne Wetherby herself had worked for Charles, Beth remembered, though once Joanne and Charles had started seeing each other she’d been posted – to work for DG in fact, when he had still been a director.
What was expected, however, was that the participants in office romances declare themselves at once, and understand that one of the pair would have to be moved. The power of love might be accepted, but its inevitable impact on working relations couldn’t be.
As far as Beth knew, Liz and Charles had nothing to declare. If anyone had told her that the pair of them sloped off quietly at lunchtime to the City Inn Hotel on John Islip Street, or rendezvoused at the weekend in a West Country B&B, she would not have believed them. Charles was far too upright, too devoted to his wife to do anything like that. And Beth simply couldn’t see Liz in the role of mistress, waiting restlessly by the phone for a call from her married lover. Beth was sure that with these two, there had been no illicit affair. And that was the problem: everything was bubbling beneath the surface.